A State Of Sin Amsterdam Occult Series Book Two, Mark Hobson [notion reading list txt] 📗

into the middle of the road, he drove carefully by the cyclist, whose scarf trailed along behind him. Driving on, Tobias glanced in his rearview, seeing the man give him a friendly wave. Tobias laughed quietly to himself.

A little further ahead the road widened to allow oncoming traffic to squeeze past each other, and Tobias steered into the side and then swung the van around in a tight turn until he was facing back the way he had just come. A few hundred yards ahead, the guy on the bike came pedalling along, as merry as can be.

Tobias waited for a few seconds. In his mind, he could already see the outcome of what he was about to do, and everything he saw was painted and splashed with the colour red.

Taking a deep breath, he gently pressed his foot down on the accelerator pedal and the van slowly moved forward, and then he gunned the engine and stamped down harder, and as the van roared and raced straight towards the cyclist, Tobias was hunched over the steering wheel, and his mind screamed in triumph.

◆◆◆

Sitting in Lotte’s cosy little study overlooking the old courtyard, Johan Roost read the text message sent by the Chief Pathologist to the cop.

After spending several hours the previous night outside Van Dijk’s house, shivering from the cold, he had decided instead to leave the hire car parked across the road from the narrow canal house with the IMSI – catcher running, while he listened in to any phone calls or intercepted any text messages from the comfort and warmth of Lotte’s apartment.

He read the message again. There was nothing alarming about it. The cops had pretty much worked out exactly how the abduction had taken place, but this knowledge should not provide them with any significant leads. And even if they worked out where Tobias had obtained the sedative from, it would not reveal Nina’s whereabouts.

Happy that all was in order for now, Johan leaned back in his chair and twisted his head from side to side to ease the ache in his neck muscles. Getting to his feet he wandered over to the small window, taking his steaming mug of coffee with him, and standing there and sipping the drink, he looked through the window pane at the frosty scene outside.

Lotte was sitting on the low wall that ran around the edge of the lawn, the statue of the Virgin Mary behind her seeming to glow in the moonlight.

She’d been there for nearly one hour now. Perfectly still, having not moved one inch, seemingly unaffected by the cold. Just sitting and staring straight ahead, with her eyes rolled up into the back of her head so that they looked like white marble. Twin spots of pale luminescence.

Johan shook his head. Christ, what was she doing?

Best if he didn’t know.

Whatever she was up to, it gave him the creeps.

Lotte was immersed in a deep and meditative trance.

It was a form of self-hypnosis, a technique that she had learnt from a fellow practitioner of the dark arts in Paris several years ago, and which she had since refined and perfected through controlled breathing and mental visualization skills. But even though she had done this many times before, inducing a trance state still did not come easy, and it always carried inherent risks.

Slowing her heart rate was the first stage. This in turn dulled her five basic senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste, so that all outside influences and distractions faded into the background, a little like turning down the volume on a radio. This left a vacuum in her mind. In this inner space she started to mentally construct her secondary body, her Body Of Light she called it.

Once she pictured her secondary body, which hovered just outside her physical form like a pale aura, she next transferred her consciousness across. Through a simple act of will she was able to visualize the detachment of her psyche from her person, and, with a slight vibration that passed through her bones like a tiny electric current, Lotte’s astral form slipped free.

Rising up from her discarded physical body, which remained seated on the wall, still alive but temporarily surplus to requirements, Lotte soared up and out of the old courtyard, higher than the surrounding rooftops, and headed out over the city.

Below her lay the streets and buildings and canals and traffic and people of Amsterdam, spread out like a map. The experience of travelling on the astral plane always thrilled her, and she revelled in the sensation of moving free from her body, to soar high or to swoop low above the rooftops, to move wherever she desired, unseen, unheard. Feeling euphoric, she moved over the city, aiming northwards over the river and within moments she was flying over the outer suburbs, and then the open countryside.

Earlier she had felt something was wrong. An alarm bell had been triggered in her sub-consciousness, something concerning Tobias, and although she could not fully understand what the nature of the problem was, she felt it was necessary to travel quickly to the source and see for herself. Thus she found herself drawn along like this, seeking him out like a bloodhound drawn towards the scent of blood.

There was no sense of time when travelling in astral form. She may have soared through the night for several hours, or for no longer than a few minutes. Additionally, the cold did not affect her: she could feel neither the temperature nor the strong wind blowing across the flat landscape. As for her physical body back in the courtyard: she could maintain her trance state for several hours, and her slow heartbeat would protect her from becoming hypothermic.

Below her a long and straight road stretched across the bleak countryside, visible as a pale grey strip to her hyper-sensitive vision. Further ahead she caught sight of a vehicle’s headlights and she swooped lower, and knew she was in the right place. Yes, now she