The NightShade Forensic Files: Echo and Ember (Book 4)

by A. J. Scudiere

  Eleri had worked NCAVC—the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime—through the Bureau for a while. She knew her sociopathy test, and these girls were passing with flying colors.

  Unfortunately, Sociopaths had a strong evolutionary advantage: they just didn’t care. They weren’t beholden to social norms, or the belief in life as sacred. It meant Eleri was the severely handicapped player here. Also she was one against two with no backup on the way. She took another slow breath and let it out with a little sound, rolling her shoulders again.

  She’d been playing a long game here. Her fingers touched her gun and she couldn’t resist. Another low half-moan, half-breath, another small squirm as though she were still sleeping deeply. She knew they were watching her, waiting. But Eleri now had her hand firmly on the butt of her gun. She settled back in to feign deeper sleep and wait for her best chance. She only hoped she didn’t feel the stab of a knife or the burn of a bullet first. She had no idea what weapons they were holding. No idea if she’d even feel the heat before she burst into flame.

  Their next words told her that—unfortunately—her thoughts were right on target.

  “Is she ever going to wake up?”

  “Let’s just get it over with.”

  “No. I want her to hurt.”

  “Trust me, Echo. If she wakes up on fire, she’ll hurt.”

  “I want her to see us. I want her to know that we did this.” There was a brief pause, then a tone that belied the teenagers they were. “I want people to know they can’t fuck with us and get away with it.”

  “Oh, I think they know. I just want to be sure she burns.”

  “You and that fire. You get to kill all of them.”

  “You get to do all the other fun stuff. Like convince people you’re an FBI agent!”

  “That we’re FBI agents.”

  “True. Push her. Wake her up. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Eleri felt it pulling on her brain like a tide. Wake up. She wasn’t asleep, so she couldn’t actually wake up. She fought it.

  It came again, stronger. Wake up.

  Unable to fight it completely, she took a deep breath and made a noise. It released some of the pressure, some of the overwhelming desire to sit up, rub her eyes and look at them. It sounded like they were standing at the foot of her bed. They were no longer speaking.

  Eleri’s hand gripped the gun, hidden, and ready to use. It was loaded, one in the chamber, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so glad she slept with it ready.

  Wake up.

  She let her eyes flutter. In those brief flashes of light, she saw them. Two girls—on their way to being women, but truly just girls—standing at the end of her bed. Identical faces. Sweet. Beautiful. They looked like their mother.

  Eleri made a noise as though she were confused and blinked again. She didn’t pull her hand out from under the covers, though she’d shifted the gun, they couldn’t see. If one of them could read her mind, she was screwed. But so far, neither had shouted, “Gun!”

  She started to focus on their faces, thinking about how she could bring them in. She’d kill them if she had to, but she didn’t want to. They were kids. Maybe they could be saved.

  “Do you want to burn her first? Or play with her?”

  Eleri blinked her eyes wide. Okay, fuck them. She wasn’t waiting for a kill order from Westerfield. Not anymore. She focused on one, then the other. “Hello, Faith. Hello Grace.”

  The shock on their faces told her she’d gotten it right. They thought she could tell them apart. Eleri kept her expression bland, but it had been a flat-out gamble.

  As she watched, they faded from view.

  Fuck.

  She was fighting ghosts.

  A laugh came from the corner of the room. The curtains swayed, caught fire and slowly burned out.

  They’re flame retardant, you idiot, she thought it, but looked at the curtains as though she were puzzled. But that might not be the right way to play it. They knew that she knew what they were. She’d called them by name.

  The curtains flared to life this time. Not just one spot, but the entire window, the whole length of the room. The heat pushed at her. She ignored it. Scooted her hand a little closer.

  Despite the thick carpet, she heard them—little flutters here and there that betrayed that they’d split up. She fought the urge to turn her head and look.

  The tide in her head turned. No longer was she being pushed to be awake, but Eleri felt them trying to make her afraid. They weren’t just doing scary things to her, they were overriding fear itself on their victims.

  Her heart raced, her adrenaline—already high—started to slide from her control. Eleri fought to both act afraid and not actually be afraid at the same time.

  She hadn’t done this with her eyes open before and it was harder this way. Taking a long, shallow breath, she tried to flip the switch she’d found, the one that could turn the override Faith Aroya was using on her.

  Nothing.

  Shit.

  A deeper breath this time. A sharper focus.

  Eleri fought the urge to blink. She could see them. One of them—presumably Grace—was standing on the side of the room that was catching fire, one item at a time. Eleri’s head swiveled to look at her but then she kept moving past as though she hadn’t seen. She’d already played one card, that she knew which was which, Eleri didn’t want to let them know she could see them.

  Despite the error, Grace went on lighting things on fire. The small pad of paper on the bedside table. Eleri made sure to jump a little, even as she clenched the gun harder. Her shirt, hanging in the closet burst into flames. Eleri again pretended to be afraid instead of angry. She was glad that her first thought was That was one of my favorite shirts, bitch!

  From the corner of her eye, Eleri caught sight of Faith. She was walking around the bed, staring at Eleri and it was hard not to stare back.

  She sighed. If she waited any longer, the smoke would overtake her. It was hard work, fighting the override Faith had put on her.

  Now or never.

  Eleri scooted her left hand back under the pillow as though she was leaning back, afraid. She looked at the fire and whimpered while she calculated their positions. She shuffled her legs under the covers and gasped as her suitcase caught on fire, too.

  Without a deep breath or even a blink as warning, Eleri shot out of bed, a gun in each hand. Two feet planted firmly on the floor, she looked from one girl to the other, staring them directly in their damned surprised eyes.

  Her right hand came up holding her Glock, aimed on Faith, standing right next to the bed, and her left held her backup piece pulled from under the pillow. Eleri leveled it at Grace, standing near the closet. She didn’t want to shoot until she had to. Deaths weighed heavy, she knew that.

  “FBI. You are under arrest. Put your hands on your heads.” She said it in the voice she’d been trained to use. The one that brooked no questions, allowed no rebuttal against her authority. The one she’d trained on harder than anyone else, because she was tiny, red-headed, and somewhat oddly colored. Authority didn’t follow her like a puppy the way it did with some.

  Faith roared at her. Angry, raging against the fact that her powers weren’t working on Eleri.

  Eleri felt it, the takeover of something—something beyond adrenaline, something beyond the normal—as she felt her own primal growl coming on. “Do. It. Now.”

  Neither girl moved, but Eleri felt her hand grow hot. Aiming in Grace’s direction with her left hand, she shot.

  The recoil was stronger without her other hand for support. The noise deafened the room for a moment.

  Then Grace laughed. “You missed.”

  “I meant to. It was the only warning you’ll get.”

  They laughed in unison this time, and Eleri felt the tide pull her under as she watched Faith’s face transform from beautiful, if haughty young woman to human monster. The edges of her vision crowded with sparkles chased b
y blackness.

  Eleri pulled the trigger as shapes and light disappeared.

  She shot three more times into the empty space in the room, firing on instinct, all sight gone.

  “Eleri!” Donovan’s voice came from the doorway as he stepped inside. But she’d already pulled the trigger again.

  49

  Donovan froze as he waited for the white heat of the bullet to hit his system. It took a moment, he knew. The body rejected all feeling at first because the pain was so great.

  “Eleri!” He yelled it, afraid to take a step forward, afraid he would collapse as he felt the sting in his shoulder.

  Just his shoulder.

  He breathed a sigh of relief as his brain offered up some humor to diffuse the situation. It’s only a flesh wound.

  But as he thought it, he was hit from the left, thrown into the wall by hands he couldn’t see. He smelled them then, two distinct but very similar signatures.

  Grace and Faith.

  He heard them. Yelling, angry as they ran down the hall, and he heard bullets chasing them. Frantically, he looked around the room at the fires. The curtains were burning out. Eleri’s shirt was dripping in flaming shreds onto her suitcase in what had been a neat closet until it burned. But they weren’t flaring up. The smoke was billowing into the corners—neatly missing the sprinkler heads.

  “I’m blind,” Eleri yelled out, but he watched her lower her guns. At least she wasn’t shooting into nothing anymore. No wonder she’d shot him.

  “Are you okay, Donovan?” This time, it wasn’t about information. The sound came through in her voice, the stress, the threat of tears. “Did I hit you?”

  He already had his hand reaching around to his shoulder blade, where he pressed against the wound for good measure. But when he pulled his fingers back all he saw was a spot of blood. He looked down at the front of his shirt as the gunfire from the hallway ended. The fabric wasn’t even torn. He’d only been nicked by something flying through the air. Thank God. He’d been injured enough on these cases. “No, El. I’m fine. You didn’t hit me.”

  “I missed!” Christina called from the hall beyond the door he’d opened and that the two girls had run out. Christina had unloaded her weapon down the empty-looking hall and hadn’t hit anything.

  “I don’t think I got anything either.” Wade backed her up. They both must have come from their rooms when they heard Eleri fire.

  Donovan had arrived at Eleri’s door, ready to knock when he saw it was open. Hearing her voice, he wanted to push his way in, so she could see him. But something in her tone was so intent, he hadn’t done it. Then he’d heard the other voices.

  Turning quickly, he now looked behind him and saw the hole in the drywall. That made his heart stop. It was so close. Too close. Eleri had almost shot him.

  “We need a better plan,” hollered to her, too loud. His ears were still ringing from the gunshots.

  “FBI!” It wasn’t said with force, but with authority—Christina’s voice. Though the rest of it garbled, he could make out that she was talking to someone from the hotel. Shooting up their establishment tended to bring them out in force.

  He heard Wade’s voice, more garbled words, mashing their way through the tone that now sounded like someone had struck a tuning fork on his skull. At least he knew the phases and that meant it would be fading soon.

  “We’re heading out,” Wade yelled. “Follow when you can.”

  Donovan understood. It didn’t matter if Eleri and Donovan were bleeding out or on fire. Follow when you can. If you can. Wade and Christina were doing the job. The girls had to be caught.

  Grace and Faith Aroya had just run away. They might even still be in the building.

  “Donovan, get me the comm!” Eleri, still blind for some reason, was now sitting on the bed, patting frantically at the table.

  Even as he crossed the room, he could see how close she was, she knew where it was, she just didn’t know exactly where she was.

  “Here.” He thrust his phone at her, knowing she could feel the buttons even if she couldn’t see them.

  He breathed in, smelling the overwhelming scent of powder from the guns Eleri had fired. Looked like she’d gone at it two handed. No wonder she’d missed. But it was smart, facing down two of them, powers like they had. Two guns was the only way to do it.

  Donovan waved a hand in front of Eleri’s face as she flipped the phone around and tested the buttons by feel. The staticky beep of connection came through.

  “Wade! Christina!” Eleri yelled it.

  Donovan watched as her eyes failed to dilate or contract. She didn’t focus on anything. She was blind. And he was concerned that she wasn’t that concerned. She should be pushing her fingers at her sockets, trying to see if there was something physical she could do to restore her sight. She wasn’t. She was frantic, but it was her words that did that, no concern for her eyes.

  “Yes?” Christina’s voice came back, followed immediately by, “Go for Wade.”

  “They call each other Echo and Ember. Grace is Ember, she’s the firebug and Faith is Echo. She has the override.”

  So Christina had been right, he thought. Wondering if that was all the information Eleri had to share. But it wasn’t.

  “You have to know, they are sociopaths! They’ll stop at nothing.”

  His blood chilled as Eleri kept going, frantically.

  “They said they should have killed Leroy Arvad’s wife so we wouldn’t have traced them so fast. That’s their justification. Leroy Arvad was good to them and they killed him anyway!” She was spilling it all, frantic. “I know what I’m talking about. I know that psychopath test! And they fail it. They aren’t even human, I’m telling you! They’re monsters. I’m issuing a kill order in Westerfield’s stead.”

  Donovan was desperately trying to keep his heart in his chest. What havoc could these two girls wreak if they truly had no respect for human life? He was breathing faster now, worried about Christina and Wade and what they were running into without him and Eleri as backup.

  Eleri pressed her button on the phone again, still far more disturbed by what she was saying than by the fact that she couldn’t see. This was the longest, deepest override Faith—Echo—had perpetrated to date. At least that Donovan knew of. The fire had faded when Christina put the choke hold on Grace. Dana’s inability to breathe, her death, was caused by the fact that Faith was nearby and none of them even knew to look for her, let alone to stop her.

  Eleri hit the button to make it beep at Wade and Christina again. Through the comm line, which they were keeping open, Donovan heard the systematic sweep of the area. If they’d gotten near the girls, they hadn’t known it.

  “I still can’t see!” Eleri yelled into the comm, frantically. “I. Still. Can’t. See.”

  She punctuated it with a sniff and a vocalized gasp. Donovan’s first thought was to hug her, she was so distraught. She held the phone to her head with one hand, and as he looked at her, he realized something was more off than just that her eyes stared into nowhere.

  Her right hand, not holding the phone, tapped a finger on the gun she was still holding. Though it was laid on the bed right beside her, Eleri’s hand still wrapped around the butt. Her first finger, her trigger finger, tapped at the trigger guard as she issued another overly-panicked sniff of fear.

  Donovan almost caught the signal too late.

  She still couldn’t see.

  Faith, or Echo, wasn’t known to override anyone from a distance. If Eleri was still blind then the girl was—

  He sniffed the air.

  Dammit!

  He’d missed it. The smell of gunpowder, the ringing in his ears, he’d just not been paying attention to Eleri’s very un-Eleri like ranting.

  Donovan only prayed that Wade and Christina understood that she still couldn’t see.

  He looked at Eleri for a sign, but she couldn’t see him. She truly was blind. But she signaled him anyway.

  “Donovan?” She snif
fled her way through the word as though she was upset.

  “Yes?” It was all he could say. They were here. At least Faith was. If he said anything more, he would let on.

  It turned out, Eleri wasn’t signaling him, she was locating him. Making sure this time.

  Without warning, she pivoted on the bed, braced both hands on the bed and shot into her closet.

  A scream erupted as well as a yell of fury. Even before he could turn to confront the intruders she’d located, he watched as her eyes focused again. She shot into the closet another time and Donovan lifted his own gun and aimed as he watched the two girls blink in and out of his vision.

  He didn’t let the gun waver.

  One girl held her arm, still screaming, the very noise seeming to set off new fires around the room. Ember, then.

  Echo grabbed at her sister—from what Donovan could tell in the snippet of vision he was seeing—and began to drag her out of the room. Piecing the frames together, and using scent, he rushed to the door and stood in their way. When he lifted the gun, it was a scant inch from Echo’s nose.

  She stopped dead, her still screaming sister bumping into the back of her. It had all happened so fast that Eleri was still yelling “F.B.I. Stop where you are!” and Ember had only begun to drip blood on the carpet. It oozed between her fingers, there was plenty of it, but it probably wasn’t a fatal shot. Damn good job by a blind woman though.

  “Stop.” He told them, his voice deep and menacing. After all, they were just teenagers.

  He saw it before she did it. The deep breath for some primal scream. If Echo loosed all her power, she might liquify their brains. He was reacting before he even realized he did it.

  His lower jaw stretched out, his head rolled side to side, pushing the frontal bones forward, repositioning his zygomatic arches to make his face longer. His arms he held tight, his hand still gripped the gun, but he rolled his shoulders and his hips at the same time.