Heart Flesh

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

In the months following Tim’s death, Sarah dreams. When a mysterious book with a strange dedication and an even stranger plot arrives at her home, her dreams turn to nightmares. Sarah no longer knows how to differentiate dreams from reality. Finding the truth will make the difference between a frightening end or a new beginning.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Heart Flesh” follows a grieving widow on her disturbing journey of self-discovery through the fear and despair of devastating loss.

“Rusch is a great storyteller.”
—RT Book Reviews

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.
To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com, fictionriver.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Nov 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311712431

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

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Heart Flesh

Copyright © 2013 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

First published in Touch Wood: Narrow Houses Volume Two, edited by Peter Crowther, Little Brown UK, 1993

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © 2013 by WMG Publishing

Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Daioda/Dreamstime

Smashwords Edition

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

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IN THOSE WEEKS, I had trouble getting out of bed. Sleep brought me dreams of Tim—laughing, taking my hand, his fingers firm and warm in mine. Sometimes he would kiss me and I would relish those dreams more than others. Then I would wake and lie there on the faded sheets, sheets I didn’t wash until three weeks after the funeral, hoping to preserve Tim’s scent as long as possible.

But dreams were dreams, memories were memories, and Tim was dead at thirty-four. He had a brain aneurism while driving to the grocery store at three a.m. on 18 August, 1992. He lost consciousness at thirty miles per hour and the car drifted straight, even after the road turned, hitting an electric pole and knocking out the power to half the city. At three-thirty, I knew something was wrong. By four, I was pacing. At five, the police officer arrived, hat in hand, to take me to the hospital.

After that, everything blurred into a jumble of noise and images. Occasional unattributed sentences stuck in my memory: You’re lucky he died, Sarah. If he lived, he would have