“Blood.” The color leeched from Miriam’s face. “Belial. Oh, man.” She looked at Sean. “That explains what I saw this afternoon.”
Adam came to full attention. “Tell me what happened.” His voice was utterly calm, but Julia sensed his intensity.
Miriam’s shell-shocked expression had returned. “It happened when I touched Sean’s family picture. He said he got it from Matt’s house two days ago, so maybe what I saw came from Matt.”
“Two days ago.” Adam looked at Sean, then back to her. “You’re probably picking up on recent energy. What did you see?”
Miriam closed her eyes, as if seeing it again. “Blood. There was a large group of people, and blood was spurting from them. I heard gunshots and screaming, and then the words, ‘All for Belial,’ spoken by a man. I felt intense hatred and anger.” Deathly pale, she looked at Adam. “I hadn’t even heard of Belial until you told me about him just now.”
His expression grim, he asked, “Did you see anything specific? A face or a place? Any details that might help us locate a potential attack?”
She shook her head. “No. It happened too quickly. I’m sorry.”
“It actually ties in with Julia’s vision. Let’s consider the possibilities.” Adam sat on the sofa near Julia.
She felt the warmth emanating from him, along with the tug of arousal that was a given. He was so dynamic, so completely in control, she found herself wanting to burrow against him, to draw on his strength. She hated her sudden neediness. For years, she’d done just fine on her own.
“We believe there will be an attack on the Riverwalk,” Adam continued. “It was daytime in Julia’s vision, and there were a lot of people. It will probably occur on a weekend, when it’s more crowded. What Miriam saw confirms the weapon of attack will be a gun. Since we suspect the Belian has possessed Matt, we know what it will look like.”
Sean’s jaw worked, but he nodded. He could no longer deny Matt was possessed. “Okay. So we know a lot of stuff, but what do we do about it?”
“This is where I think Miriam’s particular talents might be helpful.”
She squared her shoulders. “I’ll do what I can. What did you have in mind?”
“I want you to use your crystal to try to divine the exact area of the attack.” Adam pushed the coffee table closer to Miriam and unfolded a detailed map of the Riverwalk.
She slipped the crystal and chain over her head. “I hope I can tap into the right energies. I’d do better if I could hold something the Belian had touched, like the photograph.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Adam told her. “I’ll feed you a little of the energy I’ve picked up from it.”
Concern skittered through Julia. She knew how nasty Belian vibrations could be. “Adam, don’t you think that will be too much for her?”
“She can handle it. I’m only going to channel a small amount. And Sean and I will shield.”
“Shield?” Miriam asked. “Is that like calling for protection?”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Adam said. He pulled a pendant from beneath his cashmere sweater. Julia had seen Marla’s husband, Luke, wearing something similar, but this was more ornate. Entwined gold and silver wire framed the pink stone, and it appeared there were inscriptions ringing the edges of the stone itself.
“Wow,” Miriam said. “That’s pink quartz, right?”
“Yes, similar to your scrying stone, but this one is attuned to the vibration of the Tuaoi stone, also known as the Great Crystal, which was on Atlantis.”
“It wasn’t destroyed with Atlantis?”
“No, but that’s another story. Do you do any sort of centering or protections?”
“Always,” Miriam said. “There’s a lot of bad stuff out there, and I don’t want to attract it to me.”
“Smart girl.” Adam looked at Sean, who had slipped out his own crystal pendant. “Then let’s get to it.”
He wrapped his fingers around his pendant, closed his eyes. Miriam and Sean followed suit. Julia could feel the surge of air and heat and power. The hairs on her arms stood on end, and the room practically crackled with energy. It reminded her of college physics experiments with electrostatic machines—except this was being done without any machine.
“Oh, man,” Miriam breathed, opening her eyes. “I’ve never felt anything quite like this. It’s awesome.”
“And hopefully, it will offer sufficient protection from discarnate entities, and keep the Belian from sensing us.” Adam tucked his pendant beneath his sweater, sat beside her on the love seat. “Are you ready?”
She swallowed, nodded. Holding the chain in her right thumb and index finger, she positioned it a few inches above the map, over the Drury Inn, where the buildup began at the north end of the Riverwalk.
“Turn your left palm up,” Adam requested. He placed his right hand over her upturned palm. “Now proceed as you normally would.”
Miriam bit her lip, her gaze moving to Adam’s hand, then back to the map. “Will the Belian attack be near this area?” she asked in a low voice. The pendulum moved slightly back and forth. “That’s a no,” she explained.
She moved the pendulum farther east, near the Omni La Mansión del Rio. “Will the Belian attack be here?” Again, a slight back and forth motion. She drew a deep breath, shuddered.
“What’s wrong?” Julia asked.
“Just a little nausea.” Miriam’s eyes were a little glassy, and she was still very pale. “Like I’ve eaten something rotten.”
“It’s the Belian energy,” Adam said. “It won’t cause any permanent damage. We’ll clear any residual from your system when we’re done. Can you hang on?”
“Yeah, sure.” Miriam’s voice was shaky, but her hand was steady enough. She continued to move the pendulum a little bit at a time, getting steady “nos”—until she reached the Hyatt Regency area of the Riverwalk. Then the pendulum began swinging in a circle. “That’s a yes.”
“Can you pinpoint it more?” Adam asked.
She tried, but from the Hyatt Regency south through the heaviest concentration of restaurants, the pendulum kept circling. “I don’t know why it’s picking such a large area,” she said, frustration in her voice.
“Because nothing is set in stone,” Adam said. “The Belian has chosen a general area, and will strike when the opportunity presents itself.” He pulled his hand back. “You can stop now, Miriam. Thank you.”
She lowered the chain. “We can try for a date and the time of the attack.”
Adam nodded. “Good idea. How do we do that?”
Per Miriam’s instructions, Julia got a piece of paper and drew lines dividing it into quadrants, putting the dates for the current day, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, one in each quadrant.
“We’re screwed if it attacks today,” Sean said.
“I don’t think it will,” Adam said. “It will wait for larger crowds. With all the people coming in for Oktoberfest, the Riverwalk will be very crowded this weekend. My money is on Saturday or Sunday. But like I said, nothing is set in stone. It probably hasn’t planned all the details yet.”
Miriam used the pendant over the dates, and it circled over both Saturday and Sunday. It did the same thing with all the times they wrote on another piece of paper.
“Great,” Julia said. “He’s going to attack sometime on Saturday or Sunday, anywhere from the Hyatt Regency to the Hilton Palacio del Rio. Piece of cake.”
“Not ‘he,’ ‘it.’ The Belian might be in a human body, but it has no true humanity,” Adam reminded her. He studied the map. “The information gives us a place to start.”
Not commenting, Sean turned and walked toward the dining area, his body tense.
“Miriam, I’m wondering if you could use the pendulum to locate the Belian,” Adam said. “It’s not staying at Matt’s, but it’s got to be somewhere around San Antonio.”
“I can try.”
Adam went to his briefcase on the table and returned with a map of the entire city.
They spent another thirty minutes with Miriam going painstakingly over every inch of the map, without any positive sign from the pendulum. Finally Adam curtailed the exercise.
“We’re not doing any good here,” he said. “The Belian obviously has control of Matt, and is well shielded. It’s a powerful son of a bitch. It’s most certainly drawing some of that power from Matt.”
Miriam looked despondent. “I haven’t been much help. What else can I do?”
“Believe me, any information is useful,” Adam told her. “Do your psychometric abilities ever show future events?”
“Very rarely. When I hold an object, it usually shows me things about the last owner—emotions, current events, or events in the past. I’m generally not precognitive. What happened this afternoon was very unusual.”
Adam considered. “Then I don’t think there would be any benefit in retrieving anything else from Matt’s house for you to read.”
“We don’t have many answers on the particulars of an attack on a huge number of people on the Riverwalk,” Julia pointed out. “But you can’t just let this go, Adam. You have to contact the authorities.”
“And tell them what? That they have to close one of the largest and busiest sections of the Riverwalk for the entire weekend, and maybe beyond that—all without any proof of eminent danger? Should I call Homeland Security and tell them there will be a terrorist attack?”
He shook his head in frustration. “We face this dilemma with every Belian we track. We have to be careful about raising too many alarms and risking exposure. Not only that, but warning people doesn’t stop the Belian. It just goes somewhere else to wreck havoc.”
He rose and went to stare out over the Riverwalk. “I’m responsible for every innocent who becomes a victim. Damn it!”
When Julia had first met Adam, she’d been convinced he had ice water in his veins and a stone heart. But now she knew better. The more time she spent with him, the more she realized the weight of the burden he carried every day of his existence, and how capably he handled it. Sure made it hard to stay mad over his arrogant and dominating behavior.
Compassion drove her off the couch and over to him. She placed her hand on his arm, felt the strength of tensed muscles, along with the usual jolt of sexual awareness. “I’m not suggesting you’re mishandling this, Adam. But surely there’s something we can do.”
“Believe me, I’ll continue to look for something.”
She dropped her hand. “I wish I could do more.”
“You can,” he said softly. “And very soon.”
A chill went through her, but she wasn’t backing away from this fight. “All right.”
He looked over her at Sean and Miriam. “I want you two to go to your suite, and stay there until I contact you. Order room service if you get hungry.
“Sean, do a cleansing on Miriam to get rid of any residual Belian energy. Also, I’ve got an extra police scanner, and I want you to set it up and monitor it constantly. Miriam, do any meditation, dowsing, Tarot reading, whatever you think might give you more insights.”
He looked back at Julia. “You’re with me, professor.” The dark magic in his voice sent waves of heat curling through her.
They spent a few minutes entering everyone’s mobile number into each cell phone. Then Sean got the scanner, and he and Miriam left. Adam closed the door behind them, stood there a minute. “Something has to break soon, or we’re going to have a large number of casualties.”
“I would say the probabilities of your assumption being correct are high.” Julia’s leg began trembling, so she made her way to the couch.
Adam followed, settling down next to her. The air around them charged with heated energy. “Let me work on that leg for you.”
He was too damned perceptive. “No, it’s not necessary. You don’t need to—Adam, stop!”
But he already had her leg lifted onto his lap, and her shoe slipped off. He slid his hands beneath her pants to massage her cramping muscles.
“Damn it, Adam!” She reached for her cane to smack him, but it slid out of her reach and pitched a few feet away. “Whatever happened to ‘no means no’?” she fumed, trying to free her leg.
“And whatever happened to your claim that you’re not a violent person? That’s a theory that needs revisited.”
“The violent tendencies only come out when I’m around you,” she muttered. “When you’re forcing me into untenable situations.”
“I’m not forcing you into anything right now. I’m just trying to ease your pain.” His fingers pressed into her calf and her abused muscles practically moaned in relief.
All right, so it felt wonderful. The man had great hands, not that she would admit it to him. He didn’t need any encouragement. She leaned her head against the sofa back, her thoughts blurring.
“I have an interesting theory about you,” Adam said, his fingers tracing heated patterns on her calf.
She shook away the mental fog. “It’s more likely a conjecture. Theories don’t mean anything without proofs to back them up.”
“I believe your basic nature is fiery. That up until twelve years ago, you probably were an extroverted personality, with razor-sharp wit and brilliant repartees.”
He was closer than she’d like to admit. But she wasn’t that person anymore. The outgoing, vivacious woman she’d been had died, a casualty of Bennett’s brutality. And it was none of Adam’s damned business.
“That’s just abduction methodology,” she told him. “You’re assigning an explanation to your observations. It’s guessing, which has no scientific value.”
“For whatever reasons—perhaps this sexual chemistry between us—it appears I bring out your edgy side,” he said, ignoring her statement. “Somehow I’m able to trigger all that marvelous fire and passion, and the latent violence behind it. I find it very . . . stimulating.”
“I am not violent!”
He slid his fingers a little higher to the sensitive area behind her knee, and she shivered. Primal sensations surged up her leg, settling in her belly and elsewhere. Damned sexual energy.
“Great. Here we go again,” she muttered. “This is why you shouldn’t be touching me. Enough, Adam.” She tried to retrieve her leg.
“Why do you keep fighting the inevitability of the attraction between us?” His voice dropped to a dark-magic rumble that sent a new wave of heat curling through her. “Am I so abhorrent to you that you can’t accept the fact that we will come together sexually?”
Oh, man. This would be so much easier if he wasn’t so gorgeous and sexy. “Why are you so determined to force a nonexistent issue?” she demanded, trying to ignore the tension pounding through her head. Worse than the tension, than the relentless pull of desire, was the taunting, underlying fear of intimacy with any man.
She wasn’t a coward, damn it. Besides, this attraction wasn’t the real thing. “You’re a Sanctioned. You’ve been celibate for centuries, and you’re not supposed to be affected by so-called matters of the flesh.”
“Tell my body that.” His gaze dropped to her tingling breasts. “While you’re at it, maybe you should consider your own physical responses.”
“Let go of me.” She jerked her leg down, scooted to the end of the couch. “You know I can’t control my physical responses to you. That’s purely a chemical reaction, and has nothing to do with what I really want.”
He stared at her a long moment, those disturbing starbursts of light flashing in his eyes. “I think you’re in denial about what you really want. You need to accept the attraction between us, Julia. It’s not going away. We’re going to have to work in close proximity, so this will happen a lot. Especially considering what we need to do next.”
Uh-oh. “And what’s going to happen next?”
“I’ve worked and reworked the Belian energy from the IMAX crime scene and from Matt’s house. I’ve fed some of it to both you and Miriam, and gotten inconclusive results.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I
’ve got to have more information and a stronger psychic signature to work with. That leaves only one option.”
His burning gaze locked with hers. “We need to do a conduction. Tonight.”
TEN
MIRIAM entered the suite still feeling nauseated, and she had a nasty headache brewing as well. The floral scents in the living area that had been refreshing earlier were now cloying, souring her stomach even more. Sean came in behind her and closed the door as she started toward her bedroom.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “We have unfinished business. I have to debug you.”
The last sentence made her think of the bugging scene in The Matrix. Ewww. “Don’t worry about it. Half a bottle each of Tums and ibuprofen should do the trick.”
He grabbed her arm, pulled her back. “Nope. Sorry. I’ve got my orders.” He tossed the scanner onto the armchair.
She figured it wouldn’t do any good to struggle; she couldn’t win in a physical match with him. If she had her pepper foam handy, that might even the odds.
“And I’m sure you do everything Adam tells you,” she taunted. It might be childish, but she felt like hell, and wasn’t on her best behavior right now.
“You may not believe this, but I generally follow orders. Adam and I might not agree on how to handle the current situation, but he is my boss, for lack of a better word. So I am duty bound to get rid of any Belian energy still inside you.”
She hoped the “debugging” wasn’t as unsettling as the feeling when Adam buzzed her with a little Belian energy. That had been nasty and foul, burning inside her like alcohol on a wound. “Fine. Could we make this as painless as possible?”
He made clucking noises—very mature and appealing. “It won’t hurt for more than a few minutes.”
“Great,” she muttered, trepidation coiling inside her. She’d had enough unpleasantness for one day. Had it really been less than eight hours since she left the Comfort Inn this morning, in search of Dr. Reynolds? It seemed more like days.
Sean placed his large hands on either side of her face. They were warm and surprisingly gentle for such a tough, angry guy. “Close your eyes,” he told her, “And try not to scream too loud.”
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