“So I gather. It’s fairly obvious that I was…functional. Working at my laptop, starting that damn report. I just don’t remember doing it.”
“Jesus Christ. You want to explain to me why you aren’t in a hospital?”
“They wouldn’t know what to do with me. Ash, about the only thing medical science knows about the human brain is that they don’t know what most of it’s used for. And as far as the SCU can determine, that’s probably the part psychics do use.”
He was frowning. “You’re telling me medical tests wouldn’t show any organic cause for the blackouts?”
“I’m telling you they wouldn’t provide any information I don’t already have. And that it isn’t something a doctor can slap a Band-Aid on and send me home with a prescription for.”
“Riley—”
“Look, you’re going to have to trust me on this. Whatever damage that Taser did, medical science can’t fix. Maybe if I can tap into the clairvoyance, use my brain and senses the way I always have, then I can straighten myself out. Maybe.”
“No guarantees.”
“No.”
“It could make things worse.”
“That’s as likely as any other outcome,” she admitted.
“Is that why you finally decided to tell me the truth? Because you’re afraid you could get worse, lose more time? Is that the sort of trouble you’re expecting?”
“I’m hoping there won’t be any trouble, of course. But if there is, if I do lose more time, I’ll need someone to keep me on track.” Riley drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I really don’t know what could happen if I manage to tap into the clairvoyance. Maybe nothing. Maybe that sense is entirely gone; I certainly haven’t been able to tap into it so far.”
Ash reached out and pulled her into his arms.
Riley was a little surprised, but she found her arms going around his waist and was aware of a rather shaky sense of relief.
Maybe she wasn’t as alone as she’d thought.
“We’ll get through this,” he told her. “And no matter what you believe, you’re a hell of a lot more than just a psychic.”
“Preparing me in case it really is gone for good?” she murmured.
“It’s only a part of you, Riley. Not all of you.”
“If you say so.”
He kept an arm around her as they continued through the dog park to the break in the fence. “It’s your turn to trust me on this. Besides, I’m a lot more worried about these blackouts.”
“You and me both, pal.”
The deputy stationed at the fence obviously knew both of them and only nodded and touched his hat with a polite murmur when they passed, but the faint smile he wore said plainly enough that he had observed the embrace with interest and without surprise.
“So I gather everybody knows about us,” she said dryly.
“We weren’t secretive. Why should we be? We’re both unattached and past the age of consent.”
“I just…tend to keep my private life private, that’s all.”
“Another question in your mind?”
“Let’s just say it’s another sign that something was different. That something changed after I got here. And it’s very frustrating to not remember what that was.”
His arm tightened around her, but all Ash said was, “I’m betting on you, if that’s worth anything. I doubt very much you’ve ever lost a fight in your life. Not one that mattered, at any rate.”
Riley started to tell him he’d lose that bet, but by then they had reached the clearing still roped off with yellow crime-scene tape, and she did her best to push everything else out of her mind.
“What now?” Ash asked.
“Now,” Riley replied, “I try to do my job. Wait here, if you don’t mind.”
He didn’t protest, just watched as she ducked under the tape and headed for the boulders at the center of the clearing. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Well, if my head starts to spin around and I spew pea soup all over the place, please drag my ass out of here.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding.”
She looked back over her shoulder to smile at him. “Yeah. Just keep an eye out, okay? If anything looks weird or wrong to you, break the connection.”
“What connection?”
“This one.” Riley turned her gaze back to the boulders, drawing a deep breath and concentrating on opening every sense she possessed. Then she reached out and placed both hands firmly on the stone that might have helped make up an altar.
She had unconsciously closed her eyes the moment her hands touched the rough stone. Though the bloodstains had faded to rusty marks that might have been mistaken for natural color variations in the rock, she was all too aware of what they really were, and it took all her willpower to deliberately open herself to them.
She hadn’t really expected anything to happen, not given the generally absent state of her senses.
Almost immediately, however, Riley knew that something had. As if a switch had been thrown or a lid closed, she found herself abruptly surrounded by utter silence.
No birds. No distant sounds of traffic and people.
All she heard was her own suddenly shallow breathing.
Riley forced herself to open her eyes and recoiled violently from the altar, stumbling back.
The acrid smoke from the fire stung her nostrils, sulfur making the stench worse. Beyond the firelit clearing, the dark woods might have been miles deep, and ancient, impenetrable guardians for the ceremony taking place here.
The robed figures dancing around the fire some feet away were familiar to Riley, but only in that she recognized the movements and gestures, the low chanting in a language most of the modern world had forgotten. She couldn’t see any of their faces. None of them seemed to be aware of her presence.
In any case, it wasn’t the robed celebrants that held her fascinated gaze but the open coffin placed upon the rock altar.
Riley’s first thought was that it must have been a bitch to carry the obviously specially designed coffin all the way out here. And even more of a problem to hide from observers while it was being transported, large as it was. But then she realized that, ornate and gilded though it first appeared, the coffin was actually made of some kind of sturdy cardboard. It fit fairly well on the flat rock they had speculated might be used as an altar.
And it was occupied.
The woman wore a black hood, so it was impossible for Riley to see her face. She was otherwise naked, her arms folded across her breasts in the traditional death pose. But her knees were raised, her legs parted, in a clear if obscene invitation to a lover.
Standing at the foot of the coffin, on one of the smaller boulders, was another robed celebrant, this one wearing a death’s-head mask rather than a hood. His arms were raised as he chanted a bit louder than the others, clearly leading them. His robe was open, and he was naked beneath.
He was also very aroused.
Riley took another step back, and then another, thoughts and questions clashing in her mind. This was wrong, and not just in the sense that most people would undoubtedly be horrified by the scene. It was wrong because the ceremony was wrong. There were familiar bits, things she recognized, the chanting, the candles and incense; even the coffin had a place in a satanic ceremony—but not like this.
It was supposed to be, above all, a celebration of life, of the strength and power of the human animal. And sexuality was a very large part of that, but…this was wrong.
Before she could make it all come clear in her mind, she raised her gaze for the first time and was stunned to see a naked man hanging over the coffin.
He appeared to be unconscious.
Riley tried to get a good look at his face, but when three of the celebrants moved out of the circle around the fire and went to the altar, she couldn’t help but watch what they were doing.
In a weirdly graceful acrobatic movement, two helped the third one to climb to the top of the tallest boul
der, so that he stood parallel to the hanging man.
There was a short sword in his hand, a kind of weapon Riley had never seen before, its sharp blade gleaming in the firelight.
The other two celebrants went to the hanging man, and each reached up to grasp one of his ankles. Then they moved slowly back toward the far side of the altar, pulling his feet back and holding them high until his upper body hung over the coffin and the woman waiting inside it.
Riley almost started forward instinctively when she realized what was going to happen, but that involuntary movement was halted when she reminded herself that this had already happened. Or it was a vision. Or even a figment of her Taser-disordered mind and imagination.
Bottom line, what she was seeing wasn’t actually taking place before her.
There was nothing she could do except watch in horror.
The chanting became louder, the group around the fire danced more frenziedly—and then someone Riley couldn’t see struck a bell sharply three times.
And everything stopped.
Only the snapping, popping fire offered any movement or life for what seemed an eternal moment. And then the man at the foot of the coffin spoke a phrase in Latin, sharply.
Blood is the power? That’s what he said?
The man on the topmost boulder leaned forward, grasped the hanging man’s head by the hair, and drew it back far enough so that he was able to place the sharp blade against that unprotected throat.
The man at the foot of the coffin spoke, again in Latin, a short phrase Riley tried to brand in her mind.
Blood is the life.
Then, her voice muffled and unidentifiable behind the hood covering her face, the woman in the coffin spoke. Her words were also in Latin, and her tone was eerily seductive.
I offer…this sacrifice…and draw from blood spilled…life spilled…the power of darkness…the power of evil…to do my bidding.
The bell was struck three more times, and on the third strike the hanging man’s throat was cut.
Blood gushed out and down, splashing the coffin and the woman in it. She unfolded her arms, holding them out as though welcoming the blood or beckoning a lover. Her hips lifted and undulated. Scarlet coated her breasts and stomach and streamed down the insides of her thighs.
The robed celebrants grouped around the fire began their dancing and chanting again, this time more frantically, their voices rising as the hanging man’s lifeblood was drained from his limp body.
The priest at the foot of the coffin chanted as well, his voice growing louder, more frenzied, until finally the woman convulsed and cried out in an orgasmic tone, and he cast off his robe and climbed into the coffin, mounting her writhing body.
Riley’s stomach heaved. She wanted to close her eyes or look away, but she was helpless to do either. She could only stand there and watch the obscene copulation taking place, while the chanting of the other celebrants became shouts, and the dying man’s blood continued to spatter the two in the coffin, and the smell of incense and blood stung her eyes and her nostrils.
This was wrong. Wrong in so many ways—
“Riley!”
She opened her eyes with a gasp, momentarily dizzy as she stared at the daylit clearing. No coffin. No robed celebrants. No victim hanging above the altar.
She could still smell the blood.
“Riley, what in God’s name—”
Realizing only then that Ash’s arms were around her, that he had undoubtedly pulled her away from the altar, she fought for the strength to get her feet under her and turn to face him. She was grateful when his hands continued to grip her arms.
She thought she would have collapsed onto the ground otherwise.
“What did I do?” she asked, the thick, rusty sound of her own voice unfamiliar to her.
“You went white as a sheet,” he said grimly, frowning down at her. “And cried out something I couldn’t quite catch. By the time I got over here, you were shaking and—”
He lifted one hand and touched her cheek, showing her the wetness on the tips of his fingers. “—crying.”
“Oh.” She stared at the evidence of her tears. “I wonder why I did that. I was horrified, but—”
“Horrified by what? Riley, what the hell happened?”
She looked up at him, wishing she didn’t feel so weak and drained, so utterly bewildered. “I—saw what happened here. At least, I think I did.”
“The murder?”
“Yeah. Except…” She fought to think clearly. “Except it wasn’t right. He hadn’t been tortured beforehand. And blood couldn’t have splashed the flat altar stone because there was something lying across it, covering it almost completely. And there was too much noise, someone would have heard. And it was…wrong. What they said, what they did. Wrong in too many ways.”
“Riley, are you telling me you had some kind of vision?”
“I think so. I’ve never had one before, not like that, but some of the others on the team have talked about them and—and I think that’s what it was. But it was wrong, Ash. The details were wrong. The whole ceremony was…was like something you’d see in a horror movie.”
He seemed to understand what she meant. “Over the top? Exaggerated?”
“In a way. As if someone who didn’t really know what Satanism was imagined how it must be. Or knew and wanted to—to twist it into something truly evil.”
“Maybe one of those fringe groups you mentioned earlier?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s nothing I’ve ever heard of, I know that much. An actual human sacrifice is about as evil as you can get; add that to a weird ceremony that includes getting drenched in a dying man’s blood while you screw in a coffin, and—”
“Screw in a—Jesus, Riley.”
“Believe me, it looked as horrifying as it sounds. And from what I heard, I gather the purpose of the ritual was to draw power from the sacrifice and the sex.”
“Power to do what?”
“I have no idea. But there has to be some reason behind it, some need for supernatural power.”
“Same as with the arson? Attempts to harness elemental energy?”
“Yeah, and a hell of a lot of it. I can’t imagine why someone would need so much power, but—” She felt herself slump a little, and thought her energy reserves must be really low.
“Riley—”
“I’m fine, Ash. I’ll be—”
Riley sat up in bed with a gasp, her heart racing. She almost immediately recognized her bedroom, quiet and lit only by moonlight filtering through the blinds on the windows. A quick look showed her Ash sleeping peacefully beside her.
The clock on the nightstand said it was 5:30 in the morning.
Oh, Christ.
She slipped from the bed, finding her sleep-shirt on the floor and putting it on with an icy sense of déjà vu.
It couldn’t be happening again.
Not again.
She went into the living room and found the remote to turn on the TV, her hands shaking so much that just pressing the right small buttons on the device was a challenge.
CNN confirmed her fears. It was Thursday.
She’d lost more than eighteen hours this time.
Riley tried to think and realized that her energy reserves were so drained she was literally swaying on her feet. She went into the kitchen and drank orange juice straight out of the carton, then ate two PowerBars, one right after the other, barely chewing them and not tasting them at all.
She had a terrifying sense of being completely out of control.
I’m not just losing time. I’m losing me.
She ate a third PowerBar and finished the juice while she waited for the coffeemaker to do its job, and by the time there was caffeine to join the calories, she felt steadier.
Physically, at least.
What’s happening to me?
The last thing she remembered was the experience in the clearing and talking to Ash, briefly, afterward. She thought he ha
d said something to her, asked her something, and then…
Here. Now.
There was no trigger she could recall, no definitive word or action she could point to as the cause of these…blackouts. One moment she had been having a perfectly ordinary conversation with someone—at least as ordinary as conversations could be in her line of work—and the next moment hours had passed.
Too many hours.
Riley carried her coffee to the table where her laptop was set up. Once again, it was obvious that she had been here, working, during at least some of the most recent missing time. But there was one difference from the previous day.
She had to enter a password to access her report.
She didn’t remember setting that up but had no difficulty in deciding what the password had to be. Because it was always the same, a nonsense word from her childhood, the secret name of a mythical kingdom she had created as a little girl’s escape from the rough-and-tumble world of older brothers and military bases and living all over the globe.
She typed in the word, unsurprised when it proved to be the correct one.
There were, it seemed, at least a few truths in her life she could hold on to.
What she couldn’t figure out was why she had decided to password-protect her report. She hadn’t when she first began the report.
Or maybe I did. Maybe I just don’t remember that either.
She hoped the report itself would answer at least a few of her questions, but she found herself reading only details she actually remembered. Going to the sheriff’s department, meeting with Jake, Leah, and Ash. Noting that she herself had asked Ash to join the investigation, primarily because she was afraid she might lose more time and needed someone she trusted to keep an eye on her.
Well, I called that one. Dammit.
Riley winced when she reached the end of that very brief “report.” Because it ended quite abruptly with:
Returned to the murder scene with Ash. Experienced a highly unusual variation of clairvoyance I can only describe as some kind of vision. Extreme black rites, possibly genuine but darker and more twisted than any I’ve ever heard about. I was unable to positively identify any of the individuals participating in it, though the purpose of the ritual was, clearly, to gain power.