by Kay Hooper
Riley held up a hand to stop him. “Wait. Just a minute.” Taking the chance of further depleting her energy reserves, she concentrated on listening, on reaching out to hear the ocean, too far away from this house to be easily discernible through insulated walls and triple-pane glass.
Almost immediately, as though a door had opened just yards from the beach, she heard the waves, the rhythmic crash of water against earth. She could almost feel the foamy surf lapping around her ankles, smell the slightly fishy salt air.
Her spider sense was back.
She reached farther, tried harder—
—he was already dead by the time she reached the otherwise-deserted clearing.
Smoke from the final glowing embers of the fire curled upward, and the smell of sulfur and blood was almost overpowering. She didn’t approach the headless corpse, still dripping blood, but circled the clearing warily, gun in hand and senses flaring.
All her senses.
She wasn’t getting much, just faint impressions of dark figures that had moved here, danced here, damned their souls here. The lingering echoes of chanting, and bells, and invocations in Latin.
But no sense of identity, and no real sense of life. It was…weird. As though the ghosts in her mind were only that, unreal figures conjured like a nightmare of images superimposed on this place.
Yet the corpse was real. He had been tortured and killed in this place, without doubt. She knew that if she touched it the body would still be warm.
The blood-spattered rocks were real. The dying fire. The circle of salt she found on the ground.
To sanctify the circle, or protect whoever had stood within it?
She didn’t know. And the harder she tried to open her senses, the more Riley had the uneasy realization of…a barrier. There was a muffled quality to the normal night sounds she heard. The acrid stench of sulfur was fading more rapidly than she expected, more rapidly than it should have, and the blood—
She couldn’t smell the blood anymore.
Riley looked quickly at the corpse, half-convinced she would find that it had been conjured by her own imagination. But the lifeless body hung there still.
She took a step toward it and then froze, abruptly aware that she had stepped inside the circle for the first time.
The unbroken circle.
Utter silence closed around her, and her vision began to dim. She tried to move but couldn’t, couldn’t even lift her gun or make a sound, and the darkness became a tangible thing, wrapping her in a cold embrace she couldn’t escape.
There was barely time for the first faint hints of comprehension to fight their way through the dark fog of her mind.
Barely time for her to begin to understand what was happening to her.
And then the force of a train slammed into her, hot agony blazing along her nerves, bright fire in her mind. For an eternal instant she felt herself literally connected to the ground beneath her feet, a spear of burning energy impaling the earth.
Discharging all her strength into it, like a lightning rod—
“Riley.”
She realized she had closed her eyes only when his voice pulled her back to the room in which they were standing, and she opened them to see the reflection of his worried frown. And feel his hands still on her shoulders but tighter now, almost holding her upright.
With an effort, she steadied herself. “Sorry. But, Ash—”
“Look at your face, Riley.”
She realized she had been looking at his, and turned her gaze instead to her own.
The earlier chill came back with a vengeance.
Her face looked…gaunt. Not so much as if she had aged, but as though she were starving.
Riley lifted probing fingers, shaping the sharp cheekbones and the hollows beneath them. Hollows that hadn’t been anywhere near this pronounced only hours before.
“This isn’t normal,” Ash said, his voice roughening for the first time.
“No…it isn’t natural,” she corrected slowly.
“What’s the difference? Christ, Riley, you’re burning calories so fast there’s no way you can keep up with the demands of your body. You’ve got to stop pushing yourself, stop trying to use abilities that Taser must have destroyed.”
Still looking at that haggard face in the mirror, at eyes staring back at her with a feverish intensity that belied the chill shivering through her body, Riley said, “I don’t think that’s it. The start of it, maybe. Probably. The first step. Only it wasn’t intended to take me out of the game. It wasn’t intended to kill me. It was intended to weaken me. To make me vulnerable.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The biggest piece of the puzzle, Ash. It’s me.”
He turned her around to face him, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “How could that be? Honey, all this occult shit started weeks before you got here. Weeks before you had any intention of coming here.”
“But it was a dandy lure, wasn’t it?” She was working it out even as she spoke, slowly putting together what had seemed to be disparate facts and events. Ragged memories and uncertain visions. “Possible occult activity in a sleepy little seaside community, nothing violent or vicious, no need for a whole team to come investigate. Just one. Just me. Just the unit’s expert in the occult.”
His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Gordon Skinner is the one who called you down here. Someone you trust. Right?”
“Yes. And that had to be part of the plan. Going into a situation knowing a trusted friend had my back if necessary, I wouldn’t have felt any hesitation in coming alone.”
“Are you saying he’s involved?”
“No.” Riley shook her head, hesitated, then lifted her hands to grasp Ash’s wrists. Almost instantly, she began to feel a little stronger. Her head was clearer, thoughts and conclusions falling rapidly into place in her mind.
She was right about this.
It’s about connections. And this is a connection I need to work this case. Hell, maybe I need it just to survive.
“No, I don’t believe Gordon’s part of it. Willingly, at least. Knowingly. But he could be a pawn. Maneuvered just like so many other people and events have been maneuvered.”
“Riley—”
“Ash, this isn’t natural, what’s happening to me. It shouldn’t be happening. What damage the Taser did my brain should be repairing, even now. Which means there’s something else here, something else affecting me. Something that was here from the beginning. Stealing my strength, my abilities, playing with my memories, my sense of time, of what’s real and what isn’t.”
“What could be doing all that?”
“Negative energy. Dark energy. Created, controlled, channeled, directed by someone.”
“Another psychic? You said that wasn’t likely.”
“I don’t think it is another psychic. Or at least not like any psychic I’ve ever heard of. I think this is someone who went looking in very dark places for enough power to achieve whatever it is they’re after.”
“Which is?”
Slowly, she said, “Whatever it is, I think it has everything to do with me. I had a flash of memory just now. At least, I’m pretty sure it was a memory. Of Sunday night. Of reaching the clearing, finding the body hanging there, already dead. I was alone. But I felt uneasy, my senses didn’t seem to be working well. And then I stepped inside the circle.”
“The circle made up of salt?”
“Yeah. It had been left unbroken. When I stepped over it, stepped into the circle…I was trapped. Caught. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t hear. Everything was going dark. That was when I was Tasered. I was held in place like a fly in resin, then deliberately electrocuted.”
“Held? How? Are you talking about elemental forces? Or something supernatural?”
“Both. I’m talking about someone with the ability to harness negative energy. Torturing and killing a human being? That’s about as negative as it gets. Suffering generates power. Dying violently creates a
n incredible amount of power; destruction always creates something to replace what’s destroyed, even if it’s only sheer energy. Couple that with a black-occult ceremony intended to generate even more dark energy, and you’d have enough psychic poison to cripple even a strong enemy.”
“You?”
“I’m the one who walked into the trap. I’m the one who woke up crippled.”
“I’d argue with that assessment, but never mind. You’re saying it was all designed for that end? To disable and then harm you? Using energy?”
His doubt was clear, and Riley hardly blamed him for it. What she was suggesting was incredible.
I bet that’s the conclusion I’d come to just before the blackouts, what I began to explain in the report, that—incredible as it seemed—someone was manipulating energy deliberately, dark energy, and that it had all been a setup to get me here. And then destroy me.
But there was something Riley’s enemy hadn’t counted on, she was almost sure of it. Something she herself was only beginning to understand.
The wild card was Ash.
Riley—”
“Ash, there’s nothing magical about it. Nothing unnatural, except in how it was used. It’s…the corruption of a perfectly human ability to manipulate electrical and magnetic fields. We all do it every day in small ways; our bodies are filled with electrical impulses firing off all the time. Automatic. Unthinking. But in this case, someone has found a way to absorb dark energy, negative energy, and use it, even direct it back outward for a specific purpose.”
“Riley, is that even possible? To absorb energy from something else? From someone else?”
She drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I really hope this doesn’t creep you out. Take a closer look at my face.”
He did, and his frown deepened. “You look…your face doesn’t seem so thin. So exhausted as it did a few minutes ago. What—”
Ash was nothing if not quick. His gaze dropped to her hands gripping his wrists—and he got it.
“Wait a minute. You’re pulling energy from me? From us?”
Glad he had added that last bit, she nodded. “I’m pretty sure, yeah. Feeling stronger by the moment. It’s not something I’ve ever been able to do before. And we’ve tried, believe me.”
“We?”
“The SCU. One of the ways Bishop matches some partners is by complementing abilities. Matching a strength with a weakness. My weakness has always been that I use so much energy during a case I end up exhausted, sometimes at very critical moments. So he tried matching me with team members who have…energy to spare. But that never worked, because I could never tap another source, even someone I trusted, someone entirely willing to share. Bishop said—”
“What did he say?”
Riley hesitated. But however uncertain her memory, her body knew, had clearly known for some time, at least one truth.
“He said there’s a rare kind of trust he’s only seen between some siblings and lovers. A trust so deep and so absolute that all the barriers that separate people from each other disappear. He’s like that with his wife; they share their thoughts, their abilities, everything they are. Like two halves of a single soul.”
She drew another breath and finished, “He said I’d probably find that when I fell in love. And if I did, I’d also find an amazing source of strength I’d be able to tap into. He and Miranda are precognitive, so when he says probably, you can pretty much take it to the bank.”
When Ash didn’t immediately respond, she added hastily, “It’s not like I’m an energy vampire or anything like that, it’s just—”
Ash kissed her. Long, slow, and impossibly deep.
When she could, Riley murmured, “Wow.”
He smiled, but his voice was husky when he said, “Honey, the first time we made love, we generated enough heat to ignite a small star. So believe me when I say that I understand how human beings can create and channel energy. Especially the right human beings in the right combination.”
She cleared her throat. “Man, I wish I remembered that.”
“I’ll remind you tonight. If not sooner.” He kissed her again, briefly this time, and added, “Whatever energy you’re drawing from me at the moment, I’m more than willing to give, especially if it’s helping you. Besides, far as I can tell, it’s nothing I can’t spare.”
“No, you’re one of those people who have…excess. More than you need or would ever use.” Something she had sensed in him from that first moment at the crime scene, memories or no memories, that palpable force of intensity radiating from him.
“You have to buy a new watch every month or so, because they always stop running, and I’ll bet you have problems with ATMs and other computers.”
“I do, as a matter of fact. On both counts.”
“Some people produce a lot of energy and can’t really productively channel the excess. Others burn it off quickly. Even too quickly.”
“So we match perfectly. What I don’t understand is why you’re just now realizing you can tap into my energy. Correct me if I’m wrong, but up until now, I was under the impression that I was one of the major drains on your energy. Or our relationship was, at any rate.”
“You’re not wrong.” She thought about it. “My best guess is that because of my uneasiness about not being in control I wasn’t able to try to tap into your energy, consciously or even subconsciously, until I was desperate. Until my reserves had gotten so low it was a matter of sheer survival. You showed me my reflection, and on a very primitive level I realized I had to reach out—or die.”
With a half smile, he said, “Have you talked to somebody about these control issues of yours?”
She couldn’t help but laugh, albeit briefly. “Yeah. Besides, you’re just the same. It’s hard taking a leap of faith.”
“And putting your fate in someone else’s hands. Yes, I know. You were fairly pissed off about it.”
Riley had to laugh again. “I’ll just bet I was. But it does explain some of this uncharacteristic behavior of mine, huh? I’ve never been in love before.”
“So you said. Scowling at me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. Scowled. Not that I cared. I’ve never been in love before either, and I was a bit cranky about it in the beginning myself. You asked about how open our relationship was around here; I don’t think either of us was able to hide much, and we were…fierce…about each other from the moment we met.”
“The moment?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, you were on a date with Jake when we met. He introduced us.”
Riley winced. “Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, no wonder he’s been…difficult.”
“I’ve tried to make allowances,” Ash admitted.
She pondered for a moment, but then shook her head. “I can’t think about that right now. We’ll mend fences or build bridges or do whatever we need to do with Jake later.”
With a lawyer’s ability to stay on subject when necessary, Ash said, “Okay, so back to your belief that losing energy the way you have is due to someone else’s influence.”
“Yes. If I’m right about that—and I think I am—then the purpose of all this ritualistic occult activity, including the murder or murders, isn’t so much a smoke screen as it is a device.”
“To tap into dark energy and use it.”
Riley nodded.
“But isn’t that always the purpose of black-occult activities?”
“You could get arguments either way. In my experience, most practitioners are more interested in flouting everything even remotely traditional in the way of religion, giving God the finger like gleefully misbehaving children, and convincing themselves it’s liberating to be able to act like animals.”
“Dressing up in robes and screwing in a coffin?”
“Yeah, basically. Only without the human sacrifice.”
“So, usually, nobody dies.”
“Virtually always, nobody dies. It’s rar
e that anybody bleeds. The only exceptions I know of have been cases when someone genuinely evil is leading or otherwise controlling a group. As in sadistic killer types. A few have tried the Charlie Manson bit, convincing followers to kill for them, but most like to do the killing themselves. It just amuses them to dress up in robes and pretend they’re summoning or channeling Satan and it’s all for the noble cause of enlightening the ignorant.”
Ash was frowning. “Okay. So if human sacrifice was only a…by-product of the ritual to create energy, and if you don’t believe Wesley Tate was killed the way he was as a smoke screen to hide a murderer with a motive, then—”
“Who he was may not be so important as I first believed.” It was Riley’s turn to frown. “But he’s part of the puzzle nevertheless. He fits in somewhere, and not just because he provided his lifeblood for some ritual. Victims are chosen. No matter how insane the killer, their logic makes sense in their reality.”
“So the next step is talking to the group at the Pearson house.”
“They are the only avowed satanists we know of so far. And even if they missed the preliminaries—which is troubling and not helping me put the pieces together—they were certainly here in time to participate in whatever happened Sunday night.” She frowned.
“What?”
“That memory flash I just had. I don’t know how trustworthy it was, since I was just getting my strength back, but if it was what really happened to me on Sunday night, then when I got to the clearing I had the weird feeling the whole thing had been staged. Or manipulated somehow. The body was real enough, but everything else, even my sense of an earlier ceremony there, had a feeling of unreality about it.”
Ash shook his head slightly, not following.
“You said it yourself. Conspiracy in cases of murder really is rare. Maybe there was no conspiracy. Whatever occult ceremonies may or may not have taken place here might have all concluded without a murder.”
“And the murder took place later, committed by a single individual?”
“Why not? The satanists have their fun and harmless ritual, dance and chant around the fire, drink a lot of wine and have a fair amount of sex, then go home to sleep it off. The killer comes back later and does his thing, staging it so that it appears to be part of what took place. Ritual. He uses the place and the murder as a means to help generate more negative energy, both through that act and by scaring the shit out of the populace. And he keeps us distracted. So we waste time looking in the wrong places, asking the wrong questions.”