Possession

by Linda Mooney

  Sam had to be going through sheer hell. Never knowing from day to day whether Kiel would be there. She ached in sympathy for him.

  She was coming down the stairs when the front doorbell rang. Unable to mask the big smile on her face, she opened the front door to a radiance the size of a small sun.

  “Good morning, J. Or is it Jackie? Jacqueline? Jenna? Jessie?”

  J laughed openly and held out a hand for his arm. “Good morning, yourself, Casper. You don’t give up, do you?”

  “When it comes to figuring out a puzzle, nope.”

  To her delight, Kiel climbed into the backseat with her. The day even got brighter when he laced his fingers through hers and held her hand next to his thigh as Sam chauffeured them to the crime scene.

  “This one’s going to be rough, J,” Sam tried to warn her. “Captain called it to our attention less than a half-hour ago.”

  “They know for certain it’s our killer?”

  “Yeah,” Kiel replied. “You heard what the press is calling him now?”

  “Uh-huh. The Shredder.” Her body shuddered involuntarily at the image that suddenly flashed in her mind. The hand holding hers tightened perceptibly.

  His thigh was warm and hard, like tough rope. Immediately the bloody image in her mind disappeared, replaced by the question of whether or not the rest of his body would be just as well-muscled. A flush of heat burned her face, forcing her to turn her head away from him and pretend she was looking out the other window. She wanted to run her hands over him, memorizing every line and detail so that after he was gone she would never forget. Every minute, every second now was a treasure she had to find a way of keeping. Store it away in her chest of memories. She always had an excellent mind for specifics. While she could, while they could, she wanted to learn everything about Kiel Stark.

  Everything. Because her memories would be all she would have left of him after he was gone.

  Clearing her throat, she tried to get herself into her work frame of mind. “Where is this place we’re going?”

  “Believe it or not, it’s an alley in a residential neighborhood. Why? Are you getting some sort of signal?” Sam asked.

  J couldn’t help but smile. It was nearly impossible to explain how she knew what she knew. Crap, it was even difficult for her to understand why. But it definitely wasn’t anything like receiving “signals”, as if she was some sort of human radio. No, it was better to let them think what they wanted to if they could get a better grasp of her abilities that way. “It didn’t sound like we were downtown.”

  “You must have remarkable ears,” Kiel chuckled.

  “You’d be amazed what I can hear, Detective. Don’t forget that when a person loses one of their senses, the others try to compensate for the loss. If what I’m hearing is correct, there should be an ambulance and I think four more cop cars waiting for us when we arrive.”

  She was met with silence. No doubt the brothers were giving each other visual signals. She was about to ask another question when Sam picked up the mic. “Delta Echo Six Five, we copy.”

  “Are you bringing the little lady with you?” a tinny voice inquired. She recognized Captain Redd’s gruff baritone.

  “Affirmative. Our ETA is about seven minutes.”

  “Copy that. You’d better circle the block and come in the back way.”

  “Ten-four, Captain. Back door it is.”

  “News media?” J said softly.

  She felt a slight movement of Kiel’s hand.

  “Has to be,” he answered her.

  His thumb stroked the side of her hand. Whether it was intentional or second nature, she couldn’t tell, but she loved the touch. He had a callous between his thumb and forefinger. It surprised her how even the most minute distinctions on his body could be maintained when he needed to appear alive.

  They continued on as they listened to the squawk box. Apparently the press wasn’t the only one crowding the scene, which gave J an idea.

  “Kiel? Sam? You know, I don’t have to get right up on top of everything to read it.”

  “What are you saying, J?”

  “When we get there, let me walk around on my own. Sort of blend in with the neighborhood. That way you two can go do your police thing, and I get to evaluate without worrying about being spotted.”

  “You sure, J?”

  She flashed Kiel a warm smile. “Hey, who’s the seer around here? Yes, I’m sure. Like I said, I don’t have to stumble over the bodies to get impressions from them.”

  “Sam?”

  “Works for me,” the man behind the wheel acknowledged. “But are you going to be safe out there without one of us to lead you around?”

  “Sure. I brought HANC with me.”

  She heard Kiel chuckle again. “Okay, I give. Who’s Hank?”

  Reaching inside the wide pocket of her shift dress, J pulled out the folded piece of equipment she often carried with her. “HANC. My handy-dandy, all-purpose, no-guide-required cane. H-A-N-C. HANC. Standard equipment for the blind. Fully collapsible. Requires no feeding or maintenance. Just twenty-four ninety-five at your local hospital supply company. All credit cards accepted.”

  This time both men chuckled. A squeeze was pressed into her hand.

  After a few more minutes she felt the car begin to slow and turn. Already she was aware of the rising noise level outside the closed windows. Sam muttered something she couldn’t decipher.

  “Is the crowd blocking our way?” she asked.

  “No. Fortunately they’re not giving us a second look after they spot the light on our dash. I’m going to pull in beside the other cars. Once we stop, you can slip out the door on your left side without much notice.”

  “’Kay.”

  Presently the car came to a stop. She heard Sam leave, and turned to where Kiel was still next to her. There was another squeeze to her hand, then he released it. “When you get out of the car, there’s a big tree straight ahead. Go to it, then look for the sidewalk running about a dozen yards feet just beyond it,” Kiel instructed. “If you take a right and keep to the sidewalk, it’ll take you around the block to the front of the alley where the barricades have been set up. We’ll wait there for you to return.” He paused, then asked again, “Are you sure about this, J?”

  She managed a timid smile. “I’ll be fine. Go do your cop work, and I’ll do mine.”

  Hesitating, she waited to see what he would do next. Hoping he would do what she felt in her heart he had to do. And she wasn’t disappointed. His mouth met hers in a tender but too-brief kiss. She breathed in the scent of musky male. A second later he was gone. There had been no second slam of the car door because Kiel had vanished.

  Getting a firm grip on both her cane and her emotions, J slid across the seat and opened the door. The noise of the crime scene was like facing an auditorium filled with overzealous fans. But Sam had pulled into a virtual parking lot of police cruisers and squad cars. No one would notice the dull little figure leaving the unmarked vehicle as she slowly found her way to the large oak tree, then to the sidewalk a dozen yards past it.

  Keeping the noise to her right, J steadily followed the sidewalk with a steady back-and-forth swing of her fiberglass cane, and the tap-tap-tap like a second heartbeat in her ears. There was no sense of the passing of time. It was something she never managed to get a handle on. Her life in the darkness was always the present. Five minutes felt like fifteen. An hour could be an entire morning, especially when she needed to concentrate her other sight on the job at hand.

  Her cane encountered air. Carefully she reached out with the toe of her slipper to find the curb. End of the block; turn the corner and continue on.

  Now the sound was coming from up ahead. So far she hadn’t been able to receive any impressions from the scene. Then again, she had distanced herself from where the body was located about as far as possible and still be within the perimeter. Mentally steeling herself, J started down the sidewalk, taking extra care to watch out for cables a
nd other paraphernalia the media may have strung out on their way to cover the crime.

  As she drew nearer she began to make out the varying auras of the people gathered hoping to catch a morbid glimpse. She had told Kiel she didn’t know colors the way he did, the way sighted people did. Her knowledge of color was based on feelings and other forms of stimuli. Because of her mother’s and grandmother’s teachings, she knew red as heat, a flaring of warmth and light. Green was a coolness. Whenever she heard the leaves whispering in the trees, she would associate that sound with green, especially since Grandmama told her leaves were green. The earth was brown, its distinctive smell giving her a basic foundation for that shade. And so on.

  The people gawking and watching behind the police barricades were throwing out rainbows of color. Children threw out the brightest auras, she’d discovered. The elderly had the dimmest. J stopped and smiled as a brilliant blue aura as strong as the summer sun went flying by her; the child’s laughter echoed in her ears.

  She tried to spot Sam or Kiel in the cluster of auras on the other side of the tape. Once a man jostled her. He started to snap at her, then abruptly excused himself when he saw her unmoving, far-off stare and the simple cane.

  Dammit. She still wasn’t getting any kind of reading, good or bad. Thinking she had to move closer, J tried to maneuver her way through the crowd, when a tingling began to gnaw at the base of her neck. The tingling quickly morphed into a buzzing like an angry bee.

  J shook her head. Her body was telling her something, but it wasn’t like any feeling she’d had in the past. In fact, it was a feeling she didn’t like, period.

  Rather than move forward, she tried to make her way back to the sidewalk. Hopefully she could step a bit further away and try to make another attempt at approaching the police perimeter from a different angle. The tingling increased, and the buzzing grew in volume.

  This wasn’t right. And holding her palms to her ears didn’t help reduce the chainsaw roar that was slowly escalating in her head.

  Take a step backwards, J bumped into a couple of people and hastily begged their forgiveness. The tingling was bringing on a sense of claustrophobia. The chainsaw in her head was bringing on a headache.

  She had never had this kind of reaction before. Which could only mean that something in this place was affecting her. What could be giving off these vibes that were starting to make her stomach churn?

  Panic set in. J turned again, then realized she had lost her sense of direction. Was forward toward the sidewalk? Or back toward the crime scene? Reaching out with her free hand, she snagged a shirt. “Sir? Excuse me, but could you show me which way to the sidewalk? Please?”

  The orange aura turned to look at her. Then, unexpectedly, he jerked his shirt from her grasp and moved away without speaking. J swiveled around. The auras were all around her, like a sea of multihued lights. Biting her lips, she took several deep, calming breaths and tried to fight the suffocating blanket closing around her. The buzzing sound remained loud and grating, filling her ears like the penetrating whirr of a dentist’s drill.

  Lifting her chin, she tried again to move through the ocean of people. Tried to find a clearing or any kind of open area so she could make another effort to shake off this nauseating feeling sinking deeper and deeper into her soul.

  She blinked. There was an open expanse of darkness directly in front of her. The auras remained to her left and right, but just ahead was a patch of emptiness hovering like a deserted island. Keeping her cane straight out and out, J started for the emptiness when an orb of incredible blackness walked directly in front of her.

  Grandmama had said that J could see nothing but blackness. That blind people couldn’t perceive light the way sighted people could. There was nothing J could tell the woman to convince her that she saw blackness, too, because it was also a color. And in her sightless world, the color black was the color of a monster. It was the color of the middle of the night when the monsters came out of closets and from under the beds to take her and eat her, and do all sorts of horrific things to her. Black was the color of evil and sheer horror.

  Black. Like this thing that was standing a few feet away.

  It turned and stared directly at her. Death hung off of it like a stained and shredded shirt. It reeked of blood and bile. Terror froze her feet to the ground, preventing her from escaping as it straightened up. Then it smiled.

  Fear shut down her lungs, until the only breath she had left was a mere whisper. “Noooooo!”

  The thing took a step toward her. She could make out its eyes, its mouth. It lifted a hand, and she could see the length of iron it held in its hand, now red and pulsing with heat. Shiny with fresh blood. Tiny scraps of flesh swung from its outer grooves. She tried to move but her body was paralyzed, unable to answer her mental commands.

  The aura around the monster was a flame of blackness, sucking and feeding on life. The thing took a second step toward her, then a third.

  “I do not want you here,” it said with a voice that echoed inside her skull.

  J never heard the scream that ripped from her throat as the thing reached for her with its free hand. Nor was she aware of collapsing to the grass in a small, unconscious puddle.

  She was moving. That was the first thing she became aware of as the present slowly crept back into her body. She was moving, and she was lying down on her back on a bed of sorts. Moving, gently swaying.

  Her ears started to function again. There was the low growl of an engine. A car. She was in a car or van. If she was lying down, she was probably in an ambulance, which would explain the slight pain in her left arm. The IV drip.

  Slowly opening her eyes, J caught the pale yellow aura of someone looking down at her. Managing a weak smile, she said, “Who’s there?”

  “Shh. Lie there quietly, Miss.” It was a female voice. Very low, professional, and soothing.

  “Am I in an ambulance?”

  “Yes, ma’am. My name’s Rosen. I’m an EMS Tech. We’re on our way to Saint Mary’s.”

  “Why? Why am I here?”

  “You had some kind of seizure and collapsed. Are you on any medication?”

  J licked her lips and wished for something to drink. Her throat felt raw, irritated. “No. I’m not on any medications.”

  “Did you take any drugs? Prescription or otherwise?”

  “No. Can I have something to drink, please?”

  “You’ll have to wait until a doctor checks you over,” the tech told her. “You have a pretty nasty bump on your head. They’ll have to take some x-rays to make sure you don’t have a concussion.” The woman proceeded to take her pulse.

  Sighing, J turned her head when she saw the brilliant orb of fire sitting near her feet. Joy swept over her like a surging wave. “Kiel!”

  The tech jerked in surprise. “Who’s Kiel?”

  J kept her sight focused on the searing bright flame hovering at the rear of the vehicle. He appeared to shake his head as he leaned forward slightly. J felt a touch on her foot, like an errant breeze. He was with her but the tech couldn’t see him. For some reason, he didn’t want anyone else to know he had come along.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to swallow again. “A-a friend. I was supposed to meet him. He’s probably wondering what happened to me.”

  The pat on her shoulder was probably supposed to reassure her. “Once we get to the hospital, one of the nurses can call your friend for you.”

  “Thanks,” she said to the tech, and looked back at the sparkling diamond of light. She could swear he was smiling at her.

  When they arrived at the hospital, another tech opened the rear doors and helped to pull her gurney out of the ambulance. J finally heard the soggy slap of the saline bag hanging just above her head as they wheeled her inside. Kiel remained with her, floating nearby, never out of her line of sight.

  They put her in a room and drew a curtain around her. Nurses came in to take her temperature and blood pressure. One drew blood and another dropped
off a hospital gown.

  “We’ll be taking you to x-ray in a few minutes. You’ll need to change into this gown. Just leave your things on the table over there and I’ll bag them up for you.”

  “Will I be here long?”

  “That’ll depend on what the doctor says. But that bruise on your forehead looks pretty nasty.” There were some shuffling sounds, and the nurse said, “I’ll be right back.”

  It got very quiet, although J could still hear movement going on just beyond the thin curtain. Not far away the glowing flame remained still.

  “Kiel, please say something,” she whispered. “Let me know you’re there.”

  The flame shifted almost imperceptibly. Then a warm hand closed around her free one. “Oh, God, J, you scared the crap out of me! Are you okay?” The mattress beside her hip dipped, and she felt him sit down on the bed next to her.

  She no longer cared about the implications or the impossibility of the situation. Lifting her arms, she felt his wide, strong shoulders and the soft short hairs at the nape of his neck as he bent his face and pressed his mouth to her neck. His arms, like wide bands of warm steel, drew her against his chest, pressing her tightly against him.

  To be held like this fed her soul. It bathed her parched heart with life-giving hope, and there was no way she could doubt how he felt about her. Love had its own color because she had seen it in her parents, in Douggie, and shining out of Grandmama. And this blinding beacon of light was edged in that same color like a second aura.

  “Oh, God, J. What happened?” His lips were muffled against her neck. They tickled her skin, sending hot threads of something indescribable streaking straight to her abdomen, then further down. Teasing. Arousing. Consuming. For one of the rare times in her life, J was acutely conscious of the fact that she was a woman. A woman starved for affection, for acceptance, and the need to be completed.

  “I saw the killer,” she whispered. His arms tightened around her.

  “You saw him? How?”