by P. C. Cast
Had Raef not been so accustomed to the many faces of evil, he would have automatically discounted Braggs. The guy was absolutely average. His height was average—his balding was average—even the slight paunch he was working on was completely average. He appeared as harmless as Raef’s dorky tenth-grade math teacher.
But Raef had spent ten years with the OSI in the air force, and he’d been involved in the apprehension of men who looked like Mr. Rogers, even after they’d strapped explosives to women and babies and intimidated them into going into restaurants to blow themselves up, along with innocent civilians, just to make a pseudo-religious point. It’d been tough to learn to separate the seen from the unseen, but he’d damn well figured it out—lives had depended on him. He’d been good at his OSI job then, and that military experience had helped him become one of the best psychic murder investigators in the U.S. of A.
So, Raef looked past what his eyes could see, reached out and tested the invisible energy around him. Nothing. He felt nothing. Not even the slight hum of irritation Braggs should have been feeling at being interrupted.
“I’m Buddy Chapman,” Raef began when they were within handshaking distance of Braggs, “and this is my wife—”
But Raef didn’t get a chance to finish his introduction. Lauren, who had been following just a little behind him, had stopped like she’d run into a glass wall. Her eyes were wide, staring at the tray Braggs was working on, and her voice was unusually loud. “You’re cutting up a cat!”
Braggs looked up, pulled off his glasses again, his average brown eyes blinking like he was having trouble focusing on Lauren. “Young woman, I am dissecting the internal organs of a feline specimen for tomorrow’s nursing students to identify in their anatomy and physiology midterm,” he said patronizingly. “I realize this might appear unsavory to an outsider, but I hope you will try to realize that this creature died for the greater good of science.” He hesitated and blinked again. Then, as if his vision had finally cleared, his eyes widened. He smiled at Lauren. “You look familiar. Are you a graduate of TU?”
It was when Braggs smiled that the bedlam of emotions hit Raef. Braggs’s expression never changed—never wavered from the benign dismissiveness and slight curiosity he was showing Lauren—but inside the real Braggs was a seething cesspool of hatred and rage, lust and fear, all mixed with the most disturbing wash of greed and violence Raef had ever felt.
“Graduate of TU? My wife?” Even though Raef was being battered by emotions, Raef forced himself to keep his tone normal, his voice jovial and as mildly patronizing as Braggs’s charade. “No, sir. My little woman here married me right outta high school. She went straight to the college of havin’ babies, if you know what I mean.” As Raef spoke he kept his eyes on Braggs, moving one more step forward, and positioning himself directly in front of the professor, who was on the opposite side of the dissection table, and between him and Lauren. “Hey, I gotta apologize. We shouldn’t have barged in here on ya. I just got a question about the big elm in my front yard. It’s lookin’ sickly and I hear you’re a damn good tree doctor.”
“Well, thank you,” Braggs said, sounding calm and cordial, even though Raef could feel that he roiled with hatred and a deep, desperate need for violence. “I truly do not mind that you and your lovely wife have sought me out.”
“Yeah, but you got your work to do, and the wife, she’s a little squeamish.” Raef tried to chuckle, but only managed to clear his throat. “How ’bout you give me your card and I call and set up an appointment proper?”
“Whatever you wish, Mr. Chapman. I have cards here in my desk, and I do see that your wife is looking rather faint.”
Braggs opened the top drawer of the dissection table, and Raef took the opportunity to glance back at Lauren saying, “Honey, you go on back to the car and the kids. I’ll get Dr. Braggs’s info and meet you—”
“Raef! Watch out!” Lauren screamed, eyes wide and terrified.
Raef lunged to the side, reaching for the concealed Glock he kept in his side holster, but Braggs was already over the table and on him, striking with superhuman speed at his arm with a dissection blade that was so sharp it slit through Raef’s sweater and sliced a long, deep path down his arm from bicep to wrist, causing him to drop the gun. It skittered across the slick floor as if it had been paved with ice.
“Lauren, go! Now!” Raef couldn’t even look at her. All of his attention was focused on Braggs, who had suddenly morphed from average Joe Blow to a slashing, cutting machine.
Raef grunted with effort as he dodged the guy’s blows. His body was taking too damn long to respond. No, it’s not me. It’s Braggs. He’s abnormally fast—abnormally strong. Braggs struck again. Raef couldn’t be quick enough. This time the blade sliced a red line across his chest, but Raef’s adrenaline was pumping so hard he only felt the warm wetness of his blood. The pain would come later—if he lived until later. Gotta buy Lauren time to get out of here—to get help.
Braggs slashed again, ripping a line of blooming scarlet down the inside of Raef’s thigh. As Raef staggered, Braggs rushed around him.
“No!” Raef snarled, reaching out and catching the edge of his lab coat and pulling him back. “You’re not getting her unless you go through me.”
Braggs laughed. Raef thought it was the most terrible sound he’d ever heard. “She’s as dead as you are.” His words were filled with venom. His face was twisted with anger. “I won’t go after her until you bleed out. She can run as far as she wants. I’ll find her. I’ll kill her. I’ll drain her. Just like I did her sister.”
Raef didn’t see her coming. Neither did Braggs. But suddenly Lauren was there, behind the professor. She swung the long metal pipe she was holding in both hands like a baseball bat, connecting with the back of Braggs’s head as she yelled, “Like hell you will!”
Braggs dropped to the floor where he lay utterly motionless.
Lauren was actually descending on him, pipe raised, to hit him again when Raef caught her in his arms. “Stop—he’s unconscious. We got him. We got him.”
Lauren hugged him hard and then abruptly pushed away from him, her trembling hands hovering over his bleeding knife wounds. “He cut you. Oh, God, Raef. You’re bleeding so much.”
“I’m gonna be okay.” He wanted to touch her face—to hold and reassure her—but she was right. He was bleeding. A lot. “Lauren, I’m going to cuff Braggs. You call 9-1-1.” Stifling a painful groan, Raef crouched over Braggs and took out his handcuffs.
“I can’t. I tried, but there’s no reception up here. At all.” Lauren’s breath caught on a sob. “Raef, God, the blood!”
“I’m okay,” Raef repeated, trying to sound calm even though he could already feel that he was getting light-headed. He managed to roll Braggs over and cuff him. “Here’s what you need to do. Go outside. Call 9-1-1. Get help.” He staggered over to where his Glock had slid to a stop against the classroom wall. When he bent to retrieve it his legs gave way so he sat beside the gun, and started to unbuckle the belt to his jeans.
“I’m not going without you.” Lauren rushed to his side and was trying to take his hand, obviously thinking she could tug him to his feet.
“Lauren,” he said, speaking as quickly and clearly as possible as he cinched the belt around his thigh. “I’m six foot four. I weigh two hundred and thirty-five pounds. You can’t even drag me out of here. I’ve got a tourniquet on this leg wound. The rest will wait. If you get your very shapely little butt outside and cal
l 9-1-1. Understand?”
“Yes. Sorry.” She wiped tears from her face, leaving bloody smears across her cheeks. “I’m going right now.” She hesitated only long enough to lean down and kiss his forehead. “Don’t you dare die on me.”
“Not planning on it,” he muttered as she turned and started to hurry away.
It was then that Braggs sat up.
His entire face had changed. His eyes were larger, darker and sunken into his head. Blood flowed freely from the cut in the back of his scalp—it ran down his neck and seemed to cloak him in crimson. Raef had no idea how it could be, but the professor looked as if he’d lost half his body weight in a matter of minutes. He’d become almost skeletal and looked more reptilian than human.
“You have both been very inconvenient. I will take particular pleasure in draining you.” Braggs drew a deep breath, and with that inhalation Raef could feel the surge of siphoned violence and hatred that filled him, and as it did Lauren dropped to her knees with a terrible moan of agony.
“Lauren!” Raef shouted.
Lauren’s gaze met Raef’s. “He’s draining Aubrey now!” she gasped.
“I’ve never had twins before,” Braggs said. “It’s like a two-for-one special.” He lifted his arms and snapped the handcuffs as if they were a child’s plastic toy, spread his arms and embraced the flood of terror and pain that cascaded into him.
The raw sound of agony that escaped from Lauren sliced through Raef. “He’s killing us,” she sobbed.
“No, he fucking is not.” Raef lifted his Glock and, in one smooth, quick movement, shot Braggs between his eyes, blowing away the entire top of his head.
Even though the world was going oddly gray around the edges, Raef could hear Lauren whimpering not far away from him. “Hey, it’s okay. The bastard’s dead. It’s over. Just don’t look at him—it’s not a pretty sight.”
When Lauren didn’t respond, Raef dragged himself over to her, thinking she must be in shock. “Lauren, honey, you gotta pull it together and get me some help. I know I look indestructible, but—” His words cut off as he reached her. She was in a fetal position, her arms wrapped around herself. Her face was absolutely colorless, her eyes blank, open and staring. “Lauren!” With a trembling hand he felt for a pulse. It was weak, but there. “Lauren, damn it! Don’t do this! He’s dead. He can’t hurt you or Aubrey anymore.”
The air above Lauren shimmered as Aubrey tried to materialize. Raef could only catch fleeting glimpses of her silhouette.
“Aubrey, what’s happening? I got the guy—I killed him!”
Like her spirit, her voice was a weak, whispering shadow of itself, and all Raef heard before Aubrey faded away was, “You killed his body. It’s his soul that’s draining us. Save us, Kent....”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Fuck! I’m a moron!” He closed his eyes against the pounding in his head. “Okay, yeah, I can do this. I Track murderers. Just because the asshole’s dead doesn’t mean I can’t Track him.” Raef drew a deep breath and reached out with his Gift.
Nothing.
The only negative emotions left in the room were his own. There was no murder trail. The murderer was dead.
“Save us, Kent…” seemed to hover in the blood-scented air around him.
“How?” Raef shouted. “How the hell do I save you? I can’t Track a dead guy!”
The realization hit him and Kent’s eyes opened. “I can’t Track a dead guy, but I have Tracked a dead girl. I found Aubrey before—I can find her again. And when I find her, I find the bastard that killed her.”
Raef only had a moment to feel the relief of his discovery when the world pitched and rolled, and suddenly he was on his back lying beside Lauren’s motionless body.
“Hang on, Lauren! I’m not going to die on you!” he tried to shout, but the words came out as barely a whisper. He was losing strength fast…fading fast....
Lauren was going to die. He was going to die. Aubrey was going to cease to exist—they all would. He was going to fail. He was going to die....
So this was it? Time to quit—to give up? He tried to sit, to do something, anything, but his body wasn’t obeying him, wasn’t working. He knew it because his fucking mind wasn’t just working—it was working with bizarre clarity.
Raef might have smiled, but he couldn’t be sure because his face had gone numb.
To hell with this Negative Nancy bullshit, Raef growled silently to himself. If I have to go to the Land of the Dead, being almost dead has gotta be a plus. So all right. Let’s really get this thing done.
Raef closed his eyes and focused on his breathing while he tried to recall what he’d done the night he’d Tracked Aubrey—the night she’d materialized and felt with him. What had that damn book said about soul retrieval and the Land of the Dead?
As his body continued to get weaker, Raef’s mind became sharper and sharper. Snippets of the book he’d breezed through that night came back to him.
…enter the Land of the Dead without protection and experience, and you risk becoming lost, too…
“Too late,” Raef mumbled, and then he continued to recall.
Begin by lighting a candle.
Well, he didn’t have a candle, but he did have the memory of a light that he’d never forget—Aubrey’s shimmering thread of joy. What was next? What were the rest of those damn directions?
They came to him along with another surge of dizziness.
Once you have Tracked the soul to the Land of the Dead, your psychic Gift will cease to work. You must use mortal guile and your own wisdom to retrieve the lost one.
“That’s right. That part seemed like good news then. Now I’m not so sure about my level of guile, let alone wisdom.” Raef’s voice sounded weird, like it wasn’t really attached to his body. Hell, he felt weird, like he wasn’t really attached to his body.
“Probably more good news for where I’m going.” Then Raef shut his mouth and, after one last look at Lauren, closed his eyes.
He thought of Aubrey. Her laughter and her joy. The way she made him feel. No, not just hot and hard and sexy. Aubrey made him feel. Ironically, a dead girl had breathed life into a whole world of emotions he’d believed had been irrevocably lost to him because he’d spent most of a lifetime dealing with death and destruction.
And she called him Kent. No one but Aubrey had called him Kent since his Gift had been discovered.
Raef held the light of Aubrey in his mind and in his heart, and with every bit of his skill as a psychic, he reached with his Gift, seeking, searching....
He found her more easily than he’d expected to, even though Aubrey’s light wasn’t a glowing, ribbonlike trail anymore. All that was left of the shimmering thread of joy he’d glimpsed before was a single, thin beam of light the color of champagne gone flat. The dimness of Aubrey’s light scared him so deeply that it severed the tie that remained with his body, and Raef felt his spirit shoot away from the cold classroom. He didn’t waste time worrying about how the hell he was going to get back. He didn’t hesitate. Instead, he rushed after Aubrey’s fading light, Tracking her with a speed and ease he’d never before experienced, which was good and bad. It was good because it was like he’d been fired from a cannon straight and sure into the Land of the Dead. It was bad because it was like he’d been fired from a cannon straight and sure into the Land of the Dead—and had less than a heartbeat to prepare himself for the experience.
Though I don’t know how the
hell anyone could be prepared for this shit, Raef told himself as he drifted to a halt, watching Aubrey’s fading light disappear into the seething caldron of misery below him.
The sound of it hit him first. Voices drifting up to him were an awful mixture of sobs and screams and pleadings. He tried to make out single words, but it was difficult. It was like he had landed in the middle of an amphitheater that was hosting a chaotic symphony of hopelessness. He stared, trying to find the source of the voices. It was tough to get a good look at what was below him because a thick fog drifted over everything. Raef made himself drop closer to the land, and pockets of fog parted to reveal a landscape of utter desolation. It was like the Mojave mixed with the Arctic mixed with a nuclear wasteland. Almost totally devoid of color, the land lacked anything that was growing or sheltering, and all over the place was littered with what Raef at first thought were bizarrely shaped stones, jutting up from the bleak, drought-cracked ground. It wasn’t until one of the stones moved that he realized they weren’t rocks at all—they were bodies that had become grotesquely fused to the land. A shoulder jutted, an eyeless head was frozen, faceup, an arm protruded.
And even more awful, Raef watched as one of the fused bodies opened its mouth and shrieked.
Raef shuddered with revulsion. The bodies still had life in them, even though they lacked color or animation or expression, and they had actually become part of the land.
Aubrey? Oh, God, is one of them Aubrey? And Lauren? Is that how Braggs has them trapped—not by his own force, but by the force of this terrible place?
Almost in a panic, Raef reached out again for her slim beam of light, but he found nothing—felt nothing. He couldn’t Track her at all.