by Sheryl Lynn
Needles pierced her. An unearthly yowl shattered the paralysis like ice. She fought for her life, flailing and punching at air. She battled hot needles and the crushing weight on her chest. She twisted and screamed. She grabbed something large and muscular and tried to fling it away. For a moment it refused to budge. When she tore the weight away, she screamed again as skin went with it.
Gasping with the spasms in her throat, struggling to breathe, she groped for the light, knocked a book to the floor and finally found the switch.
Spike stood at the end of the bed. His eyes were black and his fur stood, making him look twice his size. With his ears laid flat his head was a ball of fury. Back arched, he hissed and growled.
She looked down at her chest where deep scratches leaked blood onto her pajama top.
“You son of a bitch!” She threw a pillow at the cat and he streaked out of the bedroom. She could hear him growling in the hallway.
She coughed as her throat spasmed again. Her chest was on fire. Damned cat must have been sleeping on her throat. She stumbled out of bed and tried to shake away the image of the black figure pinning her to the mattress, smothering her…strangling her.
On rubbery legs she made it to the bathroom and turned on the light. Blood splotched her pajama top and leaked from a bite on her chin. She fumbled open the pajamas, baring her chest. Deep scratches raked from her collarbone to her breast. Bruises purpled around holes where Spike’s claws had pierced her skin. The wounds burned and throbbed. Her chin felt as if she’d been punched.
Behind her Spike’s growling rose and fell.
She swallowed hard. Her throat ached as if she’d been punched in the larynx. She leaned toward the mirror and lifted her chin.
Finger impressions encircled her throat.
BUCK MET DESI in the parking lot. When her frantic call awakened him, he offered to go to her place, but she begged for his address. She sounded on the verge of panic, barely coherent. She parked the Subaru and he opened the car door. Her eyes were huge. He hustled her out of the cold and into his first-floor apartment.
With a cop’s eyes he took in her bruised, bloody face, glazed eyes, tangled hair and the fact that she wore her coat over pajamas. He wanted to kill whoever did this to her. He guided her to the sofa, hunkered before her and took her hands. They were ice-cold and shaking.
“What happened, honey?” he asked. “It’s okay. Talk to me.”
Her teeth chattered. “He tried to kill me.”
It took every ounce of willpower he possessed to not leap into action. He forced himself to stay where he was, to keep her looking into his eyes, and to keep his voice calm. “Who tried to kill you?”
“The gardener.” She blinked rapidly and her gaze came into focus.
He rose and nearly pounced on the phone.
“Who are you calling?” she cried.
“I’m calling this in. He might still be in the neighborhood. I need a description, honey. Did you see his face?”
She leapt off the sofa, nearly tripped over the coffee table and grabbed at the phone in his hands. “He didn’t have a face!”
He caught her before she fell.
“It’s the ghost,” she gasped. “The ghost tried to kill me.” She gulped. Her hands, though small, had strength and clutched his biceps in a painful grip. “I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. He choked me and I couldn’t fight, I couldn’t do anything. He was black, just black, like looking into a bottomless pit. Spike attacked me—or attacked the ghost. It broke his hold.”
Her chin was inflamed, turning dark with a bruise, and bore unmistakable animal bites. He guided her to a bar stool and hoisted her onto the seat. She struggled for normal breathing, but the shaking continued unabated.
He unzipped her coat. Beneath it she wore a fleece pajama top printed with snowflakes and penguins on ice skates. The top was streaked and splotched with blood.
“Let me look, okay?” Gently, he unbuttoned the top two buttons and eased back the fabric. Deep, bloody scratches crossed angry red flesh. “I’m taking you to the emergency room.”
“I don’t need a doctor! It’s just scratches.”
“You need a tetanus shot. Maybe antibiotics.” He ever so gently touched her chin, examining the bite wound. Knowing how much it hurt her, he winced in sympathy. “Animal bites are nasty. They cause infection. You have to—”
He stopped when he saw them. Five distinct marks darkening her throat. Three on one side, two on another, they were, without the slightest doubt, finger impressions.
“Shit,” he breathed. “No ghost did this. Damn it, Desi, someone was in your house.”
She slapped his hands away and clutched the pajama top closed. “It wasn’t a man! It wasn’t human. I swear to God, it was not a person.” Her eyes brightened with unshed tears. “You have to believe me. Say you believe me.”
He looked around for her guardian spirit. He was now convinced it was the spirit of her grandmother who’d died only a few years ago. She wasn’t here. Nameless fear turned his guts to ice.
“I believe you, honey. But you really should go to the emergency room. That’s a bad bite.”
“Don’t want to,” she said, sullen. Her shaking eased. “I hate doctors. Besides, Spike has bitten me before. They never got infected.”
He sighed. “I have a first-aid kit. At least let me clean those.”
She slumped, miserable and pale. Then, nodding, she worked off her coat. Her top pulled, exposing the swell of her breast where deep scratches inflamed her flesh. Buck led her to the bathroom. He had her sit on the vanity, next to the sink. He brought out the first-aid kit, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and several towels.
“You should take off your shirt. This is going to be messy.” He forced a smile. “I won’t peek.”
A trace of color brightened her cheeks.
He opened the medicine cabinet and picked up a bottle of over-the-counter pain relievers. “I’ll get you a glass of water.”
He fetched water from the kitchen. When he returned, she sat shirtless and holding a towel to her breasts. Her bare back, revealed in the mirror, was delicate with fine bones and sleek muscles covered in flawless skin. It hurt his heart to see the extent of her injuries. The scratches were concentrated on her chest, but she had them on her shoulders and upper arms, too. Spike had pulled a real cat-o’-nine-tails on her body.
She swallowed two tablets, drained the water glass and sighed.
“Let’s start with your chin,” he said.
She tipped her face far back and closed her eyes. Other than a small gasp when the hydrogen peroxide first touched, she didn’t make a sound. There were two deep punctures, but he suspected that her traumatized flesh would bruise over her entire jaw and half her face before healing was complete. He worked antibiotic cream into the bites. A single tear trickled from the corner of an eye.
“You can cry if you want,” he said. “I would.”
“I never cry,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
“Never?”
“Never.”
He bandaged her chin and moved on to her throat. The finger-shaped bruises creeped him out. He’d had a few physical encounters with entities. Once he’d ended up with wicked claw marks on his back. Where a thin scar remained as a reminder of the encounter. Twice he’d been knocked down, and several times he’d been slapped hard enough to leave welts. He easily imagined the terror Desi must have felt to have ghostly hands strangling her. There was nothing in the first-aid kit that could treat the bruises, so he moved to the scratches.
He cleaned them first with hydrogen peroxide then set to work with a washcloth and antibacterial soap. Most were surface scratches, but there were several puncture marks that dotted her skin with purplish-black spots. The worst scratch raked diagonally from her collarbone to her breast. The end of it disappeared beneath the towel.
She held her head high, eyes on the ceiling. “So what do you see?”
“A woman who should be in the ER, ge
tting this properly treated.”
“I mean ghosts. What do you see?”
“Oh.” He had to scrub where the cat’s claws had opened her skin. Cords stood out on her neck, making him feel like a total jerk for hurting her. “Depends. Sometimes shadows, sometimes a glow. If they notice me or want contact, they show themselves. Some look as real as you or me.”
“Full body apparitions?”
“Not often. A face, or hands. I see a lot of hands. Or they show me things that were important to them in life. The only thing I’m ever positive about is whether they’re male or female. Don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.”
“I heard you call them guardian spirits.”
“The nice ones. They hang around because they’re worried. At least that’s my best guess. Somebody is troubled or needs assurance. I’ve heard people say their guardian spirits show up in dreams.”
It amused him at how comfortable he felt talking about it. Since he’d met the people of Rampart he’d talked more about the paranormal than he had in his entire life.
“And the bad ones? What do they look like?”
He blotted her skin dry, then set to work with the antibiotic cream. “Black…just black. No features, no real shape. I try not to look at them. It’s better if they don’t know I can see them.”
“Why is that?”
His chest tightened and he forced himself to focus on the scratches. “They can use people to do things. They hurt people. Tell me if I’m hurting you.”
“I’m okay. What do you mean they use people? Are you talking about possession?”
“Could be.” Ugly memories crowded his head. The line between good guy and monster was so very thin. “If a Dark Presence did this to you, we have to stop it.”
“Ya think? How do we do that?”
“The only way I know is to figure out what they want. Since this one wants to choke you I don’t think that’s a plan.”
“It doesn’t want me. It wants Veronica. I read about the murder. How do we convince him I’m not Veronica?”
The question took him aback. Spirits weren’t omniscient, but they had information they didn’t have in life and they knew what loved ones needed. It troubled him that a murderous ghost could mistake a living woman with a woman who’d been dead more than a hundred years.
Maybe Dark Presences were insane. An ugly notion.
“Uh, honey, those scratches…the towel.”
She looked down at her ravaged chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and dropped the towel. “Just do it.”
He was a cop rendering first aid, he reminded himself sternly as he saw her breasts. A single scratch arced across one breast, slicing through the delicate pink areola. Grimly refusing to allow thoughts about how full and beautiful her breasts were, he cleaned the scratch and rubbed in antibiotic cream. Her nipples hardened under his touch, and he nearly lost it. His face actually ached with the repressed urge to kiss away her pain.
He put bandages on the deeper scratches, then stepped back. “Finished.” He hated how choked and adolescent he sounded, and how relieved he felt when she covered herself. “I insist you get a tetanus shot.”
“I insist I don’t. I had to get one last year after I took a header off a hiking trail. I’m up-to-date.”
He picked up the bloody pajama top. “I’ll get you a shirt.” He fetched her a sweatshirt from his bedroom and left her alone to get dressed. He went to the kitchen to make coffee.
When she joined him, she looked waifish in his oversize sweatshirt. Her face looked as if she’d gone a few rounds with Mike Tyson.
“Okay,” he said, “this is what we’re going to do. I go on duty in an hour. I’ll ask my sergeant for some personal time and I’ll go check out your house. I want to make one hundred percent sure that you didn’t have an intruder. If so, I’ll call in a report. If not, I’ll go to work. We’ll figure out what to do about Mr. Nasty this afternoon.”
“Okay.”
“You can stay here if you want.”
“I’ll go to Gwen’s place. Will you feed Spike for me?” Her lower lip trembled. “I blamed him at first. I was pretty mean. But he saved my life.”
“I’ll take care of Spike. Coffee will be ready in a few minutes. I need to get dressed. Do you need anything else? Ice pack?”
“I’m good.”
She looked miserable. And scared. Very, very scared.
Uncertain, uneasy and wishing her grandmother was here, if not to reassure Desi, then to reassure him, he left her.
In the bathroom he cleaned up and put away the first-aid kit. He stripped out of his sweatpants and T-shirt and stepped into the shower. He was reaching for the faucet when he heard her scream.
“You phony son of a bitch!”
He snatched a towel to wrap around his waist and rushed into the living room in time to see the front door slam. He tore the door open. Desi glanced at him from the parking lot. Even in the predawn darkness he felt her blazing rage. She got into her car and peeled rubber out of the parking lot.
He stood at the open door until his skin began to freeze. Then slowly closed the door.
His gaze landed on the coffee table. His insides did an elevator drop.
Scattered across the table was the information he’d found online about the deaths in her family. He’d been snooping. He’d been caught.
Knowing said he’d committed an unforgivable sin.
DESI KNOCKED on Dallas’s door. She rang the bell then knocked again. Finally he opened the door.
She’d caught him in the middle of a workout. He wore cutoff sweatpants and a sweaty T-shirt revealing heavily muscled arms, and he was barefoot. His skin was flushed and shiny with sweat. He looked more like an athlete than a computer geek. And he looked very surprised to see her.
“Oh,” she said. “I interrupted you. I…should go.”
He waved her inside. “Rather talk to you than the weight machine. What’s the deal? You look like—” his gaze raked her top to bottom “—hell.”
As if she needed the reminder. Afraid to go home, she’d gone to her sister’s apartment over the antique store. Gwen had been shocked, flustered and frustrated by Desi’s running around town in her pajamas and her unwillingness to talk. Desi had turned up her robe collar and clutched it closed to conceal the bruises around her neck; she dismissed her bitten and bruised face as a minor argument with her cat. Desi had finally exclaimed, “Shut up! No more questions! I have to figure this out!” Gwen had looked hurt by the outburst, but Desi was too upset and frazzled to do anything about it. She’d promised to tell Gwen everything in the morning. She’d spent a few pain-filled hours on a sofa in Gwen’s cluttered apartment. After borrowing a pair of jeans, with the legs rolled so she didn’t walk on the bottoms, and a sweater, she’d sneaked out while Gwen was busy in the store. She kept her coat on now to conceal her braless state.
Dallas invited her to find a seat. His living room looked like Mission Control, with multiple computers strung together and an array of monitors. Books and papers were piled everywhere. She followed him into the kitchen.
“Buck is a fraud,” she said. “He’s been playing us from the beginning. Boot his butt to the curb.”
Dallas had opened the refrigerator. He stood still, watching her.
“He has a dossier on me!” Her lower face felt like a gigantic toothache, throbbing with every heartbeat. Her chest felt feverish and sore. She’d already taken enough painkillers to sour her stomach.
“A dossier?”
Whether a few newspaper articles and obituaries counted as a dossier was open to debate. She still knew what she knew.
“He found articles about my parents and the drunk driver who murdered them. And he had Grandma’s obituary. It’s one of the oldest scams on the books,” she said. “He’s no better than that guy who convinced Gwen that the ghosts of Mom and Dad wanted her to invest in his—” She made air quotes with her fingers “real estate ventures. He took her for over fifty thousand before I s
topped it.”
Watching heat creep up Dallas’s neck and the flush on his face turn dangerously hot gave Desi some satisfaction. He closed the refrigerator.
Desi couldn’t count the number of phony psychics who had tried to convince Rampart they were for real. Some of them concocted elaborate ruses in their quest to gain enough credibility to take their sleazy shows on the road.
“How do you know he has a dossier?” Dallas asked.
“I saw it in his apartment.” Her hot face grew hotter. “Nothing is going on between us. I was there because of special circumstances. I saw it.”
“You searched his place?”
The question caught her off-guard. Buck had known she was coming. For a clever scam artist to leave incriminating evidence lying around seemed pretty stupid.
“Does it matter?”
“He’s for real, Desi. I’m convinced of it.”
“Because he made a lucky guess about a life insurance policy? Come on, Dallas!”
Dallas rubbed his jaw with his fingers. Finally he reached past her and picked up a wallet from the counter. “Do you know what’s in here?”
“Am I supposed to?”
“Nobody is supposed to.”
He brought out a quarter and handed it to her. It looked odd, strangely white, though everything else was the same. It took a few seconds to realize it was silver, rather than sandwiched with zinc and copper. It was dated 1955.
“Uncle Dave was my dad’s baby brother. He was only eight years older than me. I have four sisters, so he became my big brother. My best friend. He showed me how to negotiate baseball card trades and shoot a BB gun. He helped me build my first computer. I was a pesky little kid, but he never told me to get lost.”
Desi rested a hip against the counter. Dallas had never talked about his personal life with her before. The sorrow behind his story touched her.
“When I was seven, I got hit on my bike. A car plowed into me. Threw me about fifty feet. Everybody said it was a miracle I survived. Head injury, busted legs and arms, torn liver. Dave never left my side. The nurses got so sick of him hiding from them that they gave up and let him stay.” He stretched a hand toward her. She put the quarter in his palm and he closed his fingers over it. “Dave said the quarter was magic. Said it was guaranteed to make my head better and it would make me walk again. He had this long story about it coming from the mysterious East and being owned by a sorcerer. A bunch of crap, but I was seven.” He shrugged. “I believed. And I got better. Everything healed without a hitch. In six months I was back in school without so much as a limp.”