Download Sleeping Beauty - Harper Voyager Books

Full night and a bitter moon found us some miles further on, breakingfrom the tree line and setting out across a snowfield where theland turned stony and started to rise. Snow started to fall once more,large-flaked, ghostly, ponderous at first, then rushing as the windpicked up again.I lay on the steel table remembering – seeing lost days unfold. Thedreams that had wrapped me still clung, leeching away urgency andcare. It occurred to me that some drug pulsed in my veins, somesleeping draft to keep me dull. I jerked my body within the bandsthat kept me on the table. Nothing moved. The thing must be boltedto the floor.Each strap had a buckle. One free hand and I’d be out of there.So all that truly held me was the binding on my wrists. I strained tobreak a hand free but the bands weren’t made for breaking.‘Fuck.’I stared around the room. In the top corner, opposite me, a glasseye watched, a short black cylinder ending in a dark lens.The tubes that ran, from bottles on a steel stand to needles in myarm, hung tantalisingly close. Straining until my neck screamed andmy vision blurred, I could almost touch the nearest of the trio withthe tip of my tongue. Close! But ‘close’ can be the difference betweencutting a throat and slicing air.I stared at the tubes, hating them, trying not to let the drugsdrag me down again. I felt myself sinking, the whiteness of theceiling filling my mind.Sinking.I had felt myself sinking into a white embrace when we left thetrees behind. The snow crust lay too thin to hold a man’s weight and