by Keri Arthur
“I’m doing an online search through the Circle’s library. It’s going to take time.”
The problem was, time was running out. And with Kirby on the killer’s list, he wanted this case solved as soon as possible.
He glanced at his watch. Half an hour had passed. They wouldn’t be able to reclaim the car just yet. “Do you think it’s safe for me to bring Kirby back in yet?”
Camille hesitated. “I’d rather not take the chance. And to be honest, if the killer is concentrating on finding you and Kirby, then maybe Russell and I can catch her unaware.”
It was a good plan, but he wasn’t happy about using Kirby as bait. Too many things could go wrong—like her running. He had to catch some sleep sometime, and sooner or later she would take advantage of it.
“What’s your plan, then?”
“First we get our sunburned friend somewhere safe and out of the light, then I’ll continue searching for that symbol. You and Kirby can go on hunting for our final victim. If you have no luck, Russ can go out again tonight.”
“Did you get those photos I sent you?”
“Yes, but I haven’t had much of a chance to look at them yet.” She patted his arm. “Now, you’d better go find that girl of yours. She’s wandered off again.”
He frowned. “No, she hasn’t.”
Camille raised an eyebrow. “Are you doubting an old woman? She wasn’t at the door when I drove up.”
“Maybe not, but she’s close.”
“She has a pretty distinct smell if you can still catch it above the dust and decay in here,” Russell commented, eyeing him with amusement. “A little smitten with the girl, are we?”
“No.” He was well past being smitten. “I can read her thoughts, and I have no idea why.”
Russ raised his eyebrows. “She telepathic?”
“No, and neither am I—as you know.”
Russ snorted. “Yeah. It’s easier to draw blood from a stone than it is to reach through your thick skull.”
Doyle grinned. “At least it stops you from putting improper thoughts in my head. Like the time you tried to get me—”
“Enough,” Camille said, frowning. “What other talents has she got?”
“Energy,” he said. “It races across her fingers like lightning, and she can cast it like a net.”
Camille’s frown deepened. “Drawing down lightning is usually the provenance of a storm witch, and Kirby certainly isn’t one of those. She has a completely different energy output.”
“Could it be some form of elemental magic?” Russ asked.
“Maybe, but elementals are extremely rare. Besides, air elementals are merely the conduit for the energy. They rarely have enough control to weave something as intricate as a web.” Her expression was thoughtful. “Let’s get back to the office. Doyle, keep in regular contact.”
“I will.”
He followed them from the building. Camille opened the van’s back doors. The van had been fully lined with sun-blocking material. You could never be too careful when a vampire was part of your team.
Russell dove in and Camille slammed the door shut before he started to sizzle. “I think I know what that symbol being carved on the door is,” she said. “And if I’m right, we could be in real trouble. I’ll call and let you know in a few hours. In the meantime, keep that girl of yours safe.”
“I will, don’t worry.”
She climbed into the van and drove off. He shoved his hands into his pockets and headed across to the third building to find Kirby.
OFFICE FURNITURE LINED THE WALLS WHERE ONCE there had been two long rows of beds. Kirby stopped in the middle of the dorm, her gaze going to the fourth window from the remains of the back wall. That was where her bed had been. Helen, when she’d finally arrived at the center, had slept next to her. Damn it, why couldn’t she remember this place, when everything else was so clear?
She sniffed, and the smell hit her—age and mustiness, mixed with the pungent scent of ammonia. Memories stirred, as did her fear. She retreated a step, then stopped. Running wasn’t going to help anyone. If something had happened in this room, she needed to remember it. The answer to why Helen was murdered could lie anywhere, even in something as innocuous as memories long locked away.
The whistling was coming from the ruins of the back of the dorm, from what had once been the nurse’s quarters. She took a few more steps forward, then stopped. “Hello?”
The whistling cut off abruptly, and a soft whirring filled the gloom. Two seconds later, a man in an electric wheelchair appeared in the doorway, his berry-brown face fixed into a scowl. “And what would you be doing here, girlie?”
His voice was as flat and lifeless as his brown eyes, and it sent a chill up her spine. She knew that voice. In the past she had feared it.
She again resisted the impulse to run. “I’m …” She hesitated, uncertain whether she should really be talking to this man. Surely if she’d once feared him, it had been for good reason. “I stayed at this center for a while. I’m just trying to find a friend I met here.”
Why she lied, she wasn’t entirely sure. She certainly wasn’t going to get much information about her past by inquiring about someone else, and yet instinct suggested it was better than mentioning who she was. Though she had no idea why this would be dangerous, she trusted her instincts. They’d saved her too often in the past to ignore them now.
The old man’s gaze narrowed, and he rolled a little farther into the room. He was scrawny, with thick, steel-gray hair that looked silver in the morning light. He had a clipboard on his lap, and his hands were long and thin. The hands of a piano player, she thought.
The hands of a molester.
Images hit her, thick and fast. Oh God, she thought, swallowing back the bile that rose in her throat as pictures and sounds swelled around her. Suddenly she was an eleven-year-old again, lying in bed, wide-eyed and fearful, listening to the sounds night after night. Cries of pain, odd grunting, the rough squeak of bedsprings. Not her. He’d never touched her. Didn’t like her green eyes—they were fey, he’d once told her. Dangerous. But he’d touched Helen, and he’d touched others, here in the long nights of darkness.
His frown deepened, and he rolled forward some more. She retreated. She couldn’t help it. Her memories had too strong a grip, and it felt like her fear was going to stifle her.
“You were one of the kids who lived here?” His free hand clenched briefly.
Get out, instinct said. Run.
She nodded. If he got any closer, she’d throw up all over him—all over his overalls and shiny brown shoes.
Shoes he’d always kept on when he’d lain on top of Helen. Fighting horror, she retreated another step.
I’m here behind you, in the shadows, Doyle said, his mind-voice filled with such anger it burned through her like a flame. I won’t let him hurt you. Question him if you want to.
I don’t want to remember this. The man is a monster.
Yes, he is. But he may also hold some answers. I think you need those answers, and not just to solve Helen’s death.
She bit her lip and crossed her arms. The chill in her body was so strong she was beginning to shiver. But he was right. The past, and this man, had to be faced if she wanted to find answers.
“You’ve got green eyes,” the man in the wheelchair said suddenly. “Fey eyes, like a cat’s. I’ve seen them before. Seen you.” He hesitated. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
Fear mingled with the anger in his dead brown eyes. She frowned, wondering why. “One of who? What are you talking about?”
“One of them bitches that did this to me.” He slapped a hand against the wheelchair and rolled a little closer.
His scent surrounded her—cigar smoke and whisky. The same smell that had haunted her nights, all those years ago. Her stomach roiled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He snorted. “You and those other four. You did this to me. You broke my back, made me dead from the
waist down.”
Dead from the waist down was nearly punishment enough, she thought, and rubbed her arms. “Me and what four? I have no idea—”
“Them witches. You formed a circle and smashed me like I was nothing more than one of your stupid dolls. All of you bitches deserve what’s coming to you.”
He hawked and spat at her. The globule barely missed her toes. She stepped back again, watching him closely, another chill racing through her spine. “Did you kill them? Are you responsible?”
Maliciousness mixed with the fear in his brown eyes. He wasn’t responsible, she realized, but he knew who was.
“How could five children possibly throw a man your size around?”
“Magic,” he whispered. “It surrounded me, a shield of energy I couldn’t see. But I could feel it. Oh God, could I feel it …” His voice drifted off, and for a moment the terror of that night showed in his eyes.
She felt no sympathy for him. One night hardly made up for the many nights of hell this fiend had given Helen and the others. “So you killed them? And tore their bodies apart afterward?”
He snorted. “I didn’t kill anyone. Look at me. I’m a goddamn cripple. I don’t pose a threat to anyone these days.”
“Yet you know who is behind these murders, don’t you?”
“What if I do, girlie? What are you going to do? Beat the information out of me?” He grinned maliciously, revealing yellow-stained teeth. “Might like that, you know. Don’t get touched by many women nowadays.”
“She might not beat the information out of you,” Doyle said, his voice flat and yet somehow ferocious. He moved out of the shadows and stopped beside her. “But I’d love to take a crack at you, let me assure you.”
Doyle twined his fingers around hers. The warmth of his touch flushed through her, and while it didn’t completely erase the chill, it made her feel infinitely safer.
The old man’s face went pale. “Who are you?” he whispered hoarsely. “What right have you to threaten me like that?”
“What right did you have to molest eleven-year-olds? I should wring your scrawny neck just for that.”
She touched his arm with her free hand, trying to calm him. It felt like she was touching a tightly coiled spring. It wouldn’t take too much to provoke an attack, of that she was certain. Just as she was certain he would tear this man apart if he provided the slightest excuse—because of what he’d done to the others. Because of the hurt he’d inflicted on her.
No one had ever cared for her that much. No one.
Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them back, then said, “Tell me what you know, or you can tell the police. Your choice.”
The old man’s glance darted between the two of them. “I don’t know much,” he muttered.
“Then tell us what you do know,” Doyle said. His voice was little more than a scratch of sound—almost, but not quite, the growl of a big cat.
She studied him for a minute, wondering if perhaps he was going to become the panther right here in this room. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to see that—wasn’t sure if she’d ever be ready to see that.
He glanced at her, blue eyes narrowed. Give me credit for a little control. I am not a beast who takes the shape of a man, you know.
Sorry. It’s just your voice …
I only mean to scare him—for now, at least.
“Got a visitor last week,” the old man said into the silence. “Said she used to stay here in this cabin. She wasn’t one of my—” He hesitated, his gaze flicking from her to Doyle. “She said she wanted revenge on the witches, just like me.”
“What are you talking about? We never—” She bit back the rest of her words. If she couldn’t remember attacking the caretaker, how could she say they’d never attacked anyone else?
“Do you know this woman’s name?”
He hesitated. “Felicity Barnes.”
“And you recognized her?” she asked, surprised. After all, they’d all been barely eleven when they were here with this man. Surely they’d changed in the years since.
“No. But I checked the files afterward, and she was here.” He sniffed. “She offered me money.”
His sly look implied they should be doing the same. Doyle’s fingers twitched against hers. He might be controlling his beast, but she had a feeling it was a struggle.
“I’m offering you life,” he ground out. “Give me a description of this woman.”
The old man’s hand twitched and the wheelchair jerked backward slightly. “Petite little thing, she was. Brown hair, gray eyes, boyish figure. Nothing remarkable.”
Heat flashed in his eyes. Felicity Barnes’s boyish figure had excited him, Kirby realized, feeling sick again. God, if they had indeed been responsible for putting him in the wheelchair all those years ago, why hadn’t they just finished him? Why had they let this monster live?
Doyle’s thoughts touched hers again, offering comfort, offering warmth. She took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. “What did she want you to do?”
“Nothing. She just wanted to look at the files, that’s all.”
“Our files are still here?” she asked, surprised. Surely they should be tucked away somewhere safer.
The caretaker snorted. “This was a government-run facility.”
And it had been a safe environment. Until he’d come. Until Mariel had come. She blinked. Who in the hell was Mariel?
“Do you know which files she wanted?” Doyle asked.
“The witches’ files, what else? Three of them, there was.”
“Why?”
“Photos. Last known address, stuff like that. This place was closed down not long after them bitches attacked me, and all the kids here scattered. Makes tracking them down a little hard.”
But track them down she had. And not only killed them, but ripped their remains to shreds. Or at least, had ripped Helen to shreds. Rachel had died in a more dignified manner. Her stomach twisted, and bile rose in her throat. I’m going to be sick …
She wrenched her hand from Doyle’s and raced outside, barely making it to the garden to the left of the door.
When she’d finished, she leaned back against the cool brick wall and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to remember the past—especially if it was going to reveal more horrors like the caretaker. And it would reveal more; of that she was certain.
But as Doyle had said earlier, it was time she faced the past. For Helen’s sake. And for her own. She’d spent too many years in retreat, afraid to trust, afraid to live. Part of the reason why had now been revealed, but she couldn’t stop, not until the whole truth was out. Helen had once said their future lay locked in acceptance. It was only now that she realized Helen had meant acceptance of the past, of what had happened, and what they’d done.
But just what, exactly, had they done?
She wasn’t sure, and that scared her. What could five prepubescent children have done to this Felicity Barnes that she now exacted bloody revenge all these years later?
Footsteps approached. Doyle walked through the doors and stopped. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t open her eyes. Didn’t want to see the caring in his eyes that she could feel in his thoughts. It was a lie. It had to be. No one could care for her—especially a man who was still such a stranger.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice a little sharper than she’d intended. “Is the caretaker still alive?”
“Scared out of his wits, but yeah, he’s still alive.” His gaze swept over her, a heated touch she felt rather than saw. “I’m not a cold-blooded killer, Kirby. I’m not an animal. I’m just a man.”
No one who could assume the shape of a panther was just a man. She felt an insane desire to laugh at the thought and crossed her arms, trying to hold it back, trying to hold in all the pain. It didn’t work, and a sob escaped.
“Come here,” he all but growled.
Wrapping a hand around her arm, he pulled her toward him. His touch was gentle
yet firm, and she made no effort to resist. Couldn’t resist, in fact. That one sob had broken the dam wall, and she felt so weak her knees were shaking. She fell into his embrace, sobs racking her body, her tears soaking his shirt.
He didn’t say anything, just held her tightly as all the pain, all the fear of the last few days, poured out of her. Even when the sobbing had eased, she remained in his arms, finding strength in his strength, finding comfort in the warm flow of his thoughts through her mind.
After a while, she sighed softly. “Thank you,” she murmured into his chest.
His smile shimmered through her, as warm as sunshine. Anytime you want a chest to cry on, I’m here. Out loud, he said, “Feeling a little better?”
He caressed her hair, his touch running warmth to the pit of her stomach. She looked up, saw the heated look in his eyes, and felt an insane desire to rise up on her toes and taste the sweetness of his lips again. But that had nearly gotten them into trouble an hour ago, so she pulled away instead. His hand slipped from her back to her hip and rested there, warming the base of her spine.
“I’m afraid I’ve soaked your shirt,” she said, plucking at the wet material.
His smile touched his eyes and made her heart stutter. “It’s drip-dry, so don’t worry.” He brushed some hair away from her cheek, his touch trailing heat against her skin. Then he froze, and his grip on her waist tightened slightly. “What the hell …?”
He turned, thrusting her behind him. Fear rose in her throat, and lightning warmed her fingertips. “What—”
She got no further. A chill ran through her, and for an instant, her vision blurred. Suddenly she was seeing inside the dorm, inside the nurse’s quarters where the old man was checking numbers and ticking them off on his clipboard. A small figure cowled in black appeared behind him, its face little more than a rotting skull.
Death, she thought with a shiver. But it wasn’t there for them.
Inside the dorm, the caretaker began screaming.
MAGIC BURNED ACROSS HIS SKIN. IT HAD THE SAME foul flavor as the trap he’d sensed in the other building and the magic he’d felt at Rachel Grant’s. She was getting rid of the evidence, he thought, as the caretaker’s screaming reached fever pitch.