He questioned his sanity once again at the decision to just hop into a truck with people he barely knew, only to be dumped off so far from civilization that no one would hear him scream.
“You have nothing to be anxious about, Micah.” Trish hopped out of the truck with an agility that belied her age. “You’re among friends.”
Jacquelyn snorted as she climbed out of her seat. So reassuring. “We need you to tell us what happened here, Micah,” she explained. “So get out and let’s put that emotional sniffer of yours to work.”
“How in the hell am I supposed to know what happened?” He took the safer route, avoiding Jacquelyn and exited on Trish’s side of the truck. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Another gust of frustration hit Micah like a strong wind and he drew in a sharp breath. A low, barely audible sigh escaped Jacquelyn’s throat. Her pale green eyes were apologetic, yet her expression was determined when she said, “This is serious, Micah. I know I’m throwing you under the bus here, but I need you get with the program—like now.”
“Oh, Jacquelyn, for the love of God, give the poor boy a break!” Trish’s exasperated voice seemed to amplify, echoing off the trees. “Go walk off that sassy attitude of yours. Leave me with him for a moment.”
Though he couldn’t hear the words grumbled under Jacquelyn’s breath, he felt the force behind them as she tromped through the brush and out of sight. With her absence, a weight seemed to lift from around him. As if he’d been covered up with too many blankets, and only now managed to kick them off. Finally, he could take a deep breath.
“She certainly has a presence, doesn’t she?” Trish remarked.
Micah hadn’t realized the old woman had come to stand by him. “That’s an understatement.” He massaged his temples. Prickling pain throbbed behind his eyes. He wished he had an Ativan. Or maybe a Xanax. Or both.
“You don’t need them, Micah,” Trish said.
“What?”
“Whatever it is you’re poisoning your body with.”
Micah stared wide-eyed at Trish. How could she have known?
“I know a lot of things. Least of all the pain you’re in.” She wound her soft, weathered hand around his. “The less you fight it, the better off you’ll be. Come over here and let me show you.”
Trish’s grip on his hand tightened and warmth radiated from her palm. Micah didn’t argue, didn’t speak. He simply let her guide him to the inky spot in the field. Without warning, Trish dropped to her knees in the crisp autumn grass, tugging Micah’s arm as she went. But he didn’t follow her to the ground. He didn’t think he could. Suddenly repulsed, an unseen force urged him back, just as he was struck with a strong surge of rage. He pulled free of her grasp and staggered backward, desperately filling his aching lungs with air.
“What is that?” he choked. “I can’t breathe.” Micah blinked several times to clear the cloud of anger from his vision. “My—head. I—can’t…” His stilted words stilled in his throat. The taste of bitter chocolate burned on the back of his tongue and his stomach heaved. Panic raced through his bloodstream. He couldn’t draw a deep breath…
“Micah,” Trish’s calm voice broke through the haze of his thoughts. “You’re all right. Relax.”
The command was strong in his mind, overriding the rage, the panic. As if the troubling emotions had been sucked down a drain, his body responded and he could finally fill his lungs with enough oxygen to steady his quaking limbs.
“How did you do that?” Jesus, she was like the Merlin of small town grandmas.
Trish smiled and gave a little chuckle. “You can do it too, Micah. But let’s worry about that later. Come down here. Kneel with me for a moment.”
“I don’t know if I can.” His thoughts drifted to Jacquelyn. Where had she gone? It didn’t feel safe here, she shouldn’t have wandered off. The tainted grass repulsed him and he pulled against Trish’s grasp. He needed to find Jacquelyn and leave.
“She’s fine,” Trish replied as if she’d heard his thoughts. “Don’t worry about her right now. Jacquelyn can take care of herself.”
“How do you do that?” Micah asked. “Did you read my mind?”
Trish laughed. The raspy sound reminded him of crinkling tissue paper. “I do not read minds. I read feelings. Yours are strong.”
“Is that what you think I can do? Read feelings?”
Trish tugged at his hand and despite the strong urge to pull back, he kneeled at her side. Bits of twigs and rocks dug into his knees through his jeans. The dried grass broke off under his weight, poking into his palm as he steadied himself. He turned toward Trish. “What do you want me to do?”
Trish released his hand and patted his back reassuringly. “It’s easy, really. A man died here last night, Micah, and I want to know what killed him. The Bearer who came earlier didn’t sense anything unusual, and the police suspect an animal attack. But I think there’s more to it than meets the eye. That’s why you’re here.”
Micah took a deep breath. Everything he’d been running from had finally caught up to him, hadn’t it? He was fairly certain that karma was having a good laugh at his expense right about now. “How do I do it?”
Trish guided his hand toward the dark sludge covering the ground, but he resisted. Evil. Whatever this…substance was, it reeked of pain, torture, and darkness. Could it be blood? It was so dark, the crimson almost black.
“It can’t hurt you, Micah,” Trish reassured him. “Whatever you feel now will merely be an illusion. The moment has passed and its evil can’t touch you.”
Micah reached down and ran a finger through the viscous goo. Wiping his thumb across his fingers, he left a dark crimson smear to confirm his fears. Blood.
Darkness clouded his vision. It closed in on him, stealing his breath and robbing him of his senses. Stumbling backward, he landed on his back, his head thumped against something hard, and a burst of sparkling light broke through the black mantle of his mind.
Arching his back against sudden, searing pain, Micah clenched his teeth together to keep from crying out. His chest ached with a flood of rage so violent he felt as though his body were being ripped apart. In his mind’s eye, three shrouded figures ghosted toward him, their spindly arms reaching out, their pasty white, greedy hands beckoning. Rage transformed to fear as they approached, and Micah realized that he had taken the place of the victim, living a dead man’s memory.
“Please,” he gasped in a voice not his own, “I have a heart condition. I have a family. What do you want?”
“We want your blood,” three voices said as one. “We want your flesh. A pound, to be exact.”
“A—a pound?” Micah stammered in the man’s memory. “I don’t understand… I’m drunk. That’s it! I—I’m drunk! You’re not real.”
He clutched at his chest. A piercing pain ripped through the upper left side. His arm felt numb, dead beside him. “Leave me alone, demons!” He grunted through the pain.
The three figures converged, and the pain in his chest was nothing in comparison to what they doled out. Sharp teeth and claws ripped through his skin. He’d become paralyzed by fear and pain. But just when he thought he couldn’t take another second of agony, the sensation fled. Replaced by lust, elation, and a perverse satisfaction, he’d left the dead man’s memories behind. Could it be that he was now, in the mind of a killer?
“Micah!” Trish’s voice broke through the haze of emotions swirling through his body. “Micah, it’s not real. Come back.”
As if being propelled through a dark tunnel to the light above, Micah was rocketed from the memory of what happened on this patch of grass and spit back out into the present. “That was no fucking animal.” He spat in an effort to rid the coppery tang from his mouth. “Jesus, what in the hell were they?”
Trish helped him to his knees, surprisingly strong for her apparent age, and laid a comforting hand on his back, making small massaging circles with her palm. With her other hand, she gripped his shoulder, anchor
ing him as she kept him from falling back on the ground. Damned strong for an old woman. Warmth spread from the contact, calming him and bringing him back to the present.
“That was quite the initiation by fire, wasn’t it?” she asked in a soothing tone. “Stay with me, Micah. Don’t slip back into it. Now, tell me, what did you see?”
Jacquelyn took a seat against a tree trunk and planted her heels into the dirt, bringing her knees up to her chest. Over the small knoll, Micah sat with Trish, performing their Bearer’s tricks on the bloody ground. She snorted, driving her sneakered heel into the earth a little deeper. Bearers were all the same: magic and wonder. Soft when they needed to be and equally hard when the occasion called for it. If only Waerds had choices. Waerds served their purpose, did what they were born to do, plain and simple. Violence was what they were good at. And prisoners weren’t allowed choices.
Pulling the 9mm from her shoulder holster, she leveled the sight at an aspen tree fifty yards ahead. She could’ve shot the tiniest leaf right off the branch if she wanted to. Quivering in the breeze or not. But it took more than a fantastic shot to own the title of Waerd or more appropriately…hunter. Raw edge, ruthless abandon, and a total disregard for moral code was what made her lethal. And somehow, the Sentry had known what she’d grow up to be. They’d seen the potential in an infant and taken her right from her crib. Had her parents known all along what would happen or were they still out there somewhere, searching and hoping for her safe return. did they miss her? Had they wept for her? In the dorms growing up, they were taught not to ask questions. Not about who they were, where they came from, how they got there. They were to accept their fate and rolls in life. Period. Waerds weren’t given options. No say in the matter of their lives. Raised by the Sentry, taught to fight, to kill, to police the supernatural forces in this world, she was nothing more than a number. A nameless agent valuable only for the skills at her disposal and the supposed magic that made her what she was. Jacquelyn had yet to recognize anything in herself that she considered special. She was a killer, plain and simple. Nothing special about that. Property of the Sentry until the day she died. A prisoner. Verdict pronounced: Guilty. Sentence: One hell of a community service.
The grinding sound of metal echoed in her ears as she pulled back the Glock’s slide. She wanted to shoot something, anything, to release the tension pooling in her muscles. Her finger shook as she squeezed the trigger—just a hair’s breadth more and she’d hear the resounding crack, anchoring her to an inexorable fate.
A shout drew her attention and she jammed the Glock back into the holster without bothering to flip the safety. Sprinting over the knoll, she paused twenty yards from where Micah knelt, head between his knees, Trish gently massaging his back. Guess he found something. So much for Finn’s assumptions that Willie’s attack was none of their business.
As far as she could tell, Micah was more shell-shocked than actually hurt. But she drew the gun anyway, taking the extra precaution. Warm fuzzies were best left to Trish. If anything needed a hole blown through it, she was the girl for the job. She approached with caution, guarding her own back as much as she warily watched up ahead. Micah seemed oblivious to everything around him. He’d finally straightened, but his eyes were distant, unfocused. Confused.
Trish smiled reassuringly, her gray eyes remaining serious. “Put that away,” she ordered with a flick of her wrist. “You’ll use any excuse to shoot that thing, won’t you?”
Jacquelyn holstered the gun, relaxing. If Trish could afford a smart-ass remark, danger was nowhere near. “You okay, Micah?” She hoped she sounded soft, concerned.
Micah turned on a heel to face her, wobbling like he hadn’t found his sea legs yet. “No, I’m not fucking okay. I’m outta here. Jesus Christ. Who the hell are you people?”
“We’ll take you back to the RV Park. But—” Jacquelyn hesitated, unwilling to push him over the edge, but needing to just the same—“I need to know, right now, what you saw.”
His dark eyes flashed, widening in shock, or disbelief. Leave the warm fuzzies to Trish, she reminded herself. Jacquelyn was on the hunt and needed to get down to business before the shit hit the fan. “What was it?”
Micah ran a palm over the bristles of his hair. Closing his eyes, a shudder passed along his body. He took a deep breath and his gaze passed over Trish before leveling on Jacquelyn. “Three of them.” His voice was hard, vacant. “The voices were—androgynous—I guess. I don’t know how else to describe it. Maybe a little feminine.”
“What did they want?” Jacquelyn didn’t like leading him along. But she had to be sure that what he saw was interpreted properly and not planted there by her own suspicions.
“Blood.” He seemed to choke on the word. “And flesh. A pound of flesh.”
“Bullshit,” Jacquelyn whispered. “No way. Just… no.”
“What do you mean?” Micah, demanded, his tone hard as he broke from his emotionless stupor. “You think I’m making this up?”
“No dear,” Trish’s comforting voice flowed over Jacquelyn like water. She wondered if her soft way comforted Micah as well. “We don’t think you’re making it up.” The old woman looked straight ahead, a deep line of worry creasing her aged forehead as her gaze locked with Jacquelyn’s.
“Well,” Micah asked. “What are they?”
“Furies,” Jacquelyn replied. “Fucking Furies. We’re in deep shit.”
Chapter 10
MICAH STILL COULDN’T draw a decent breath. The truck bounced along the rocky tracks—hardly classifiable as a road—too fast for the condition of his stomach. For a little old lady, Trish didn’t hold back on the accelerator. But he didn’t think the nausea or the pounding in his skull was due to her driving skills. He’d have to take a whole bottle of Ativan to banish the memory of that man’s death from his mind. The lingering pull of violence and rage tugged at his ragged emotions. Fear coated his tongue, sharp and metallic. Blood scented the air. His gut heaved and he fought the impulse to empty the contents of his stomach, swallowing lungfuls of fresh air from the cracked backseat window.
Jacquelyn sat in the front seat, rigid as stone. She stared straight ahead, one hand resting on the butt of the gun in her shoulder holster, the other resting on her thigh, bouncing impatiently. He wondered what was bouncing around inside her head. Still a little out of it, he didn’t have the focus to read her emotions as he had on the drive there. Another wave of nausea crashed over him, and he took a sharp breath in through his nose. He seriously needed to man-up.
“Micah,” Trish’s voice seemed to float to his ears on clouds of comfort, gentle and strong at the same time, supporting him. “I think it might be a good idea if you stayed with me tonight. I’d hate for you to be alone, and I have plenty of room. You can keep me company.”
Jacquelyn turned her head and quirked a sarcastic brow at the old woman. Micah didn’t sense much curiosity from the simple expression, more of a challenge. As if she was silently scolding Trish for inviting a stranger to stay the night at her house. God, he wished his emotional compass weren’t so off kilter. If he ever wanted to know what Jacquelyn was feeling, it was right now.
“What’s wrong, dear?” Trish asked Jacquelyn in an overly gentle, almost mocking tone. “You look as though you’re about to have some sort of fit or episode. Do we need to pull over?”
Jacquelyn snorted and turned to stare out the window.
“Well, Micah?” Trish nudged, apparently up for Jacquelyn’s challenge. “I haven’t had a house guest in years. Humor an old woman.”
A corner of his mouth tugged upward in a reluctant half-smile. He had a feeling Trish was seldom humored by anyone. More like, obey or else. A night alone with his thoughts and a bottle of pills left a sour taste in his mouth. And for some reason, this seemingly frail woman made him feel protected. He could stay the night and then leave in the morning. A few hours wouldn’t hurt.
“I’ll need to pick up a change of clothes and a few other things if it’s
all right with you.” His smile grew, in spite of his intentions to leave McCall in his wake.
Trish’s steel-gray eyes caught his in the rear-view mirror. They crinkled up at the corners and he didn’t need to see her mouth to recognize the smile there. “Why don’t we let Jacquelyn fetch your things? I’m sure she won’t have any trouble finding what you need. That way you’ll be free to help me with dinner.”
House arrest, huh? She wasn’t about to give him the opportunity to slip away. Sly. And a little scary. What was this woman, some sort of granny mob boss? Maybe over dinner she’d make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. “I guess that’d be okay,” he answered, slowly. “I don’t need much. I can tell her where everything is.”
“Does anyone care if I think that’d be okay?” Jacquelyn sneered from the front seat. “Seriously Trish, when did I get the assignment of errand girl?”
The old woman turned a stern eye, facing Jacquelyn. “You don’t mind.”
Her fingernails clicked impatiently on the butt of the gun and Micah wondered if Jacquelyn was considering drawing the weapon on Trish. He suppressed his laughter as he pictured the Dirty Harry moment, though it wasn’t too far-fetched. Closing his eyes, he took another deep breath and held it in his lungs until they burned. With a gust, he expelled every last particle of air, and with it, the remnants of evil lingering within him.
Better. So much better. His emotional compass had finally begun to right itself and the waves of nausea subsided. Unfortunately, he wasn’t completely free from the clutch of someone else’s emotions. Evil, they weren’t, but Jacquelyn had a way of broadcasting her feelings, jack-hammering each one into his chest. Micah rubbed at his sternum as if he could dissolve the hard knot that had congealed there. Anger, resentment, frustration, and—of all things—sorrow burrowed deep into his soul. The feisty girl sitting in front of him was full of the most painful anguish he’d ever felt. Despair worse than anything he’d drugged himself into forgetting. Wanting nothing more than to take whatever was hurting her away, he focused on the knot in his chest and coughed as it grew, tightening his lungs as if his ribcage were collapsing.
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