Pixie shook her head. “That’s so not a good idea.”
“We don’t have another option.” Pixie wouldn’t be this freaked out if the situation wasn’t serious. Jeremy was a trained agent and both he and Pixie were telepaths. Pixie had to know he was capable of getting himself out of trouble. Which meant that, for whatever reason, this time he couldn’t. “I can take it,” Hailey said, hoping it was true. “I’ve dealt with some pretty messed-up shit lately.”
“Not like this you haven’t,” Pixie said gravely. Whatever it was she’d seen had shaken her badly. She took a deep breath and jumped up and down, shaking out her hands as she blew it out. “Okay, okay. No other options.” She met Hailey’s gaze, looking far older than she really was. “This won’t be pleasant. You better brace yourself.”
“Noted.”
“Close your eyes.”
Hailey did. She waited for a picture to take shape in her mind’s eye. From Jeremy’s previous forays into her head she had a pretty good idea what to expect. But this wasn’t Jeremy, and Pixie didn’t have a picture to show her.
What she got instead was a torrent of them. Chaos swirled inside her head, images, sensations and random thoughts flashing past at the speed of light. For a split second, about half of those pictures crashed together into a bigger one, then shattered again to swirl madly. It happened several times and each time it did Hailey could make out more of what they built together.
Her stomach did a nasty dive. “What is this?”
“It’s you,” Pixie said. “And somewhere in there, it’s Jeremy.”
“Where is he?”
Pixie had to be gritting her teeth when she said, “I don’t know! I tried so hard to make some sense of it, but it’s like a recording. I can’t alter it. All this stuff is just passing through and there’s no filter to it whatsoever. Nothing is retained, so I have nothing to focus on.”
She wasn’t making any sense. Hailey didn’t know squat about telepathy or how it worked except when it came to her and Jeremy.
From what she’d seen, the person who took him was nothing like them. Hell, Pixie couldn’t make sense of it, so what chance did Hailey have? Already her head throbbed from the psychic invasion, and the virus spreading through her body wasn’t helping. Hailey’s heartbeat was ridiculously fast and irregular, her blood pressure fluctuating so much she could feel it. When it went up, her skin throbbed as if it would explode. When it went down, she got so dizzy and light-headed she felt that a single step would send her sprawling. “What was he doing before this happened?” she asked, making herself focus on the conversation. “Where was he? Do you know that?”
The vision blacked out and Hailey opened her eyes.
“He was waiting for you at the Patio,” Pixie said.
Hailey’s heart raced. What the hell was he doing there two hours before we were supposed to meet?
“Did anyone see him?”
Pixie nodded. “Plenty of people. But then they just … didn’t. It’s like he disappeared from right under their noses.”
Hailey took a breath to steady herself. “Okay. I want you to go back to the lab and tell Amelia what you told me. She’ll take care of you. Call Hunt, tell him he might be needed. After his litter is born.” Of all the times to start having pups…
“Hailey. There’s more.”
“What is it?” It couldn’t be worse than this.
“I think he’s killed someone.”
I stand corrected.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Whispers dragged him out of the darkness. Gray ghosts slithering through his mind. Disturbed laughter and through it a litany of mumbles he didn’t understand. Jeremy slammed his mental shields into place, shutting out the nightmare he’d somehow managed to wake from.
He shuddered at the cold silence left in its wake.
His head pounded and his stomach roiled. The bastard had given Jeremy a concussion. Just great. Slowly, carefully, he raised his head. His vision swam as he opened his eyes but thankfully it wasn’t long before it settled.
Good thing too. The way he was leaning, tied to the wooden chair, an inch farther and he would have fallen over.
A figure came toward him, a shadow against the light filtering in from the covered window. Jeremy made out a long coat, head and arms. Human, then. “Are you awake?” It was a man.
Jeremy squinted, trying to make out the features of his face, but it was pointless. The more he tried, the more his head hurt. “Yeah,” he said.
“Good,” his abductor replied. And then he swung a haymaker at Jeremy’s jaw.
Pretty stars…
His head lolled again. The chair had to be much sturdier than he’d thought because he still hadn’t fallen over.
His captor braced his foot on the edge of the chair and pushed it over onto its side. Jeremy crashed and dust clouds floated from the ground. So much for that thought. He coughed, eyes watering. Was that a potato sack in the corner?
This had to be a barn or storage of some kind. That narrowed down the possibilities to just about three hundred different places in Amberley alone. The window was covered with drapes. It was translucent enough to allow light through but Jeremy couldn’t see anything outside to orient himself.
Focus. Any little thing helps. Put the pieces together. Dirt floor and rafters above him meant one-story building. He smelled the dust, dirt, and something … organic. Like vegetables. Potato sack in the corner. Jeremy rolled his head to get a wider view of his surroundings. There were more of those sacks but no tools. This wasn’t a farmhouse, then. He was in town.
Which town; now that was a bigger question.
Sight, smell, touch, taste, sound.
Jeremy closed his eyes to better focus his other senses. He tasted a faint tang of blood. Nothing interesting there—it was his own. It messed with his sense of smell, though. He wouldn’t get any more clues from his nose. As for sound…
His abductor paced. His clothes rustled but his footsteps fell silent on the dirt floor. Beyond that, there was a quiet hum of activity outside. It was far. They weren’t by the square anymore. At this distance, even if he screamed the chances of someone hearing him were slim. It would just be background noise. Easily screened out by busy people.
That was about all he had to work with. It wasn’t enough. He might have to use telepathy to get out of this. That was risky in the best of conditions. But now, with a concussion and a crazy person who’d almost sent him into a coma once already, it seemed safer to take his chances and see how the situation would develop from here.
“Who are you?” he asked, keeping his voice slurred. Not that it was so difficult. His mind might be recovering quickly but his body was significantly lagging behind.
The abductor chuckled. “I am no one.” He said it like some clever inside joke that Jeremy was on the outside of.
Well, he wasn’t. Arthur Glenn. The name came to him like an echo of his own voice. The spectator. A man lost in the world because he wasn’t part of it. No one, indeed.
Jeremy groaned. “No offense, but I’m not really a big fan of bondage unless a really hot female is involved.” Hmm. Something new to explore when he saw Hailey again. And, by God, he would live to see her again. “If you could just—”
Arthur’s boot slammed into his midsection so hard his spine hurt. “Shut up!” he hissed. “You think this is a game? You think you can just waltz in and take her from me and I’ll just sit back and let you?”
God, he was going to throw up. Or pass out. Possibly both. And the confusion wasn’t helping. What was he talking about? Jeremy tried to ask but couldn’t find his voice and couldn’t inhale to try. He shook his head instead.
Aw shit.
Bad idea.
Arthur backed up and breathed in deep, as if to center himself. Then he went back to pacing.
Jeremy coughed weakly and fought to regain his breath little by little.
His head now felt as if someone was trying to shatter it with a hammer. What
the hell…? He relaxed his shields the smallest bit.
Pixie’s frantic emotions crashed through and nearly made him pass out again. She was so scared; he’d never seen her that scared in all her life. She was crying and shaking; she was cold, but her hands were burning, holding something hot. His sister was screaming at him and her presence in his mind obscured everything else. It seemed safe to let her in a little more.
The moment he did, her words flooded his mind, shouted sentences in no coherent order. Chaotic thoughts in a terrified mind, trying at the same time to reason things out, calm herself, get through to him, and who knew what else.
It felt that she’d been yelling for so long, she didn’t even realize he finally heard her. “Pixie,” he said.
The noise stopped completely.
And in that silence, the whispers rose again. Jeremy bit down on his tongue to distract himself while he performed some serious mental gymnastics to close one channel while keeping the other open. It was like trying to patch a leaking dam with chewing gum. It held in some places but only for a moment before it all burst through again.
But if he shut down completely he’d break contact with Pixie too.
“Where are you?” Her words came through broken up and she had to say it several times for Jeremy to get the message.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m on the ground at the moment. Can’t see out the window to narrow it down. All I see is sacks of potatoes.”
“That describes every cellar in Amberley!”
“Yeah.”
Pixie was pacing now, all business. She did that when she had to distract herself from something unpleasant. The little general. Jeremy almost smiled. “Okay, is anyone with you?” she asked.
“You could say that.”
“What does that mean?”
“Trust me, sis, you really don’t want to know.”
Pixie stopped. He felt her mind go blank. Some whisper of a memory passed between them, too faint to make out, but whatever it was, it frightened her. “Is he with you?”
“Yes.” He showed her everything he saw but omitted the other senses, including telepathy. It was very little to go on. Arthur Glenn was still no more than a shadow. Jeremy didn’t even know what the guy looked like. He’d never be able to pick him out of a crowd.
“God, Jer, you have to get out!”
“Why?” Being kidnapped was bad, but not bad enough to elicit that kind of response. Used to be his sister had more faith in him. Unless… “What are you not telling me?”
Hesitation. Reluctance. Stubborn refusal to answer. Pixie was talking to someone now, screening her words from Jeremy and just leaving him with an impression of physical conversation. Thank God, at least she wasn’t by herself.
“Is Hunt with you?”
No answer.
More conversation.
Then a sigh. Pixie came back subdued and sad. “Hunt is with Dara. She’s in labor.” Well, that explained why the shifter wasn’t busting in the door and coming to rescue his sorry ass. Jeremy would bet that an army wouldn’t be able to tear Hunt away from his mate now. And for the next year or more. “I didn’t want to tell you,” Pixie continued, “because you need to not freak out right now, but Amelia says I should tell you everything so you know what you’re dealing with. For the record, I disagree.”
“Just tell me already.”
Another sigh. “Mrs. Dunworth is dead. And not just dead. He … did things to her.”
Vague memories surfaced and began to take shape even while Pixie still talked. Images not from his own mind but Arthur Glenn’s. Mrs. Dunworth looking up at him with wide eyes; her scream cut short. A quick thing, to silence her. But the rest of the process took a few minutes.
Gleaming claws slashing across, digging deep, tearing skin and everything underneath.
Blood. Christ, there was so much of it.
And afterward … relief.
Jeremy sucked in a breath. “You sick son of a bitch,” he said, heedless of his own predicament.
In his head, Pixie was yelling for him to stop, stay quiet, but he couldn’t.
Arthur Glenn stopped pacing.
“What could that poor soul have possibly done to you? How the fuck do you even begin to justify killing an innocent woman—a grandmother, for God’s sake!”
“I didn’t kill her,” Arthur replied calmly. “You did.”
Pixie must have heard. Jeremy felt her consciousness fade slowly, flowing in a different direction, using him as the divining rod. Aiming at Arthur.
Sheer panic made Jeremy slam his shields back into place to cage her in. She couldn’t go there. Not ever. Jeremy would die before he let her get lost in that chaos. “What are you talking about?”
“All this time,” Arthur said, “all I could do was manage the effects. But now I can get rid of the cause. I can save her.” He was so damn composed, almost giddy. Like someone who’d racked his brain over a puzzle so long he could hardly believe that he’d solved it.
Jeremy couldn’t see his features but knew he was the object of whatever epiphany this guy had just had. It chilled him.
Arthur came closer and crouched in front of Jeremy. Still too dark to see his face but the sickening tone of his voice was plenty. “You’re the demon,” he whispered, like it was some big secret and he was being naughty telling him. “It all makes sense now. Why she’s been running, why she’s been acting strangely, why she doesn’t remember me. You’re to blame for all of it.”
He pushed to his feet and Jeremy had to crane his neck to look up at his face. A little light caught him just enough for Jeremy to make out his nose.
“When I kill you,” Arthur said, before he turned his back on Jeremy, “she’ll be free.”
*
The moment Hailey entered Amberley, the stench of fear and blood overwhelmed her senses. Her body ached from the run but rather than suppress her leopard side it seemed to excite it more. She was fighting herself now not to change. Her cat lashed out, tried to gain dominion. Hailey had to brace herself against a building to keep her balance.
Whatever ground she and Amelia had gained fighting the effects of the virus seemed to be reverting now that she wasn’t constantly getting some treatment or another. The dizziness was back full force and after the mad run to Amberley, she was starting to shiver again. Not from fever, though. The patches along her spine worked like magic for that.
The leopard was frustrated at her weakness. If she could talk, she would probably be using any and every method possible to make Hailey let her out. The virus didn’t seem to be affecting her; but then, it affected the body, not the mind. The animal couldn’t—or wouldn’t—comprehend that.
Hailey decided to name her Hellcat. Seemed fitting. The leopard didn’t exactly follow any rules; she was a persistent little monster, like a little devil whispering in her ear that she could do better. The only reason she wasn’t winning was that she was still separated from Hailey somehow. Possibly by that mental block Hunt was talking about.
The block that was quickly deteriorating.
Hailey was getting more and more of Hellcat invading her thoughts and senses. Even as she shook and shivered, the virus raging through her body, her senses were in overdrive. She could see minute details from fifty feet away. She heard quiet sobs from inside the houses around her. She could smell the blood that had already been cleaned away.
And she could tell when it had been cleaned away, and where the body had been taken.
Hailey distinguished between the scents of fifty different people and could trace those scents to where they were now. It was amazing. Like seeing color-coded lines drawn in the air … except with her nose.
But more than that, there was a sixth sense she had no name for. Hailey felt the way she imagined a predator felt during a hunt. Her body was primed for attack yet leashed somehow, humming with energy that would be explosive when set loose. Part of her thrilled at that, anticipated that moment. But the excitement was contained by tre
mendous focus. It had to be. Hellcat thirsted for blood, wanted to feel flesh tear beneath her claws, wanted to hurt something. Hailey wasn’t sure she disagreed.
Did that make her a monster?
No, was her almost immediate answer. This wasn’t something she did for pleasure; it was self-defense. Survival. Hunt had said that Jeremy was her anchor. She believed it now. If having him around had calmed the beast inside her, having him gone now drove it insane.
And that gave it strength. Hailey’s control was slipping. Every time she shivered now she felt fur itch just beneath her skin. She could no longer tell whether the aggression she felt was her own or Hellcat’s, and she didn’t really care. She needed Jeremy back. If anything happened to him, if she found him in anything less than perfect health, the person responsible would know pain unlike anything he could ever imagine.
Stop it! Can’t think like that. Can’t let the beast win.
Hailey closed her eyes and concentrated on her other senses. Focus on the hunt, not the kill. Slowly, little by little, Hellcat listened. The sensory overload rose to a crescendo in her head, but somehow Hailey managed to make sense of it.
She followed the voices first. The streets were still milling with people, remnants of the celebration that was supposed to be going on even now. Hailey could taste the excitement still lingering in the air. But it was now mingled with other, less appetizing emotions.
She followed a sobbing voice to a window. There, she casually leaned her back against the wall and listened.
“I can’t believe she’s dead,” the woman was saying.
A man was there, trying to comfort her. “I sent my boy to fetch her husband.”
“Oh, God, her children!”
“Easy now. Just breathe.”
“But her body … who could have done such a thing?”
“Looks like wolves. I thought we took care of this last winter. They must have found a way around the fence.”
“No,” the woman sobbed, and there was force behind her tone now. “This was no animal. Animals don’t come near crowds, and they sure as hell don’t kill so quietly. Someone would have heard her screaming.”
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