Blood Sins

knew, who understood, didn't help.

She was afraid.

She didn't doubt Cody when he said something bad was going to happen, something even worse than the things that had already happened. She didn't doubt him because Cody was never wrong about stuff like that, and because she felt it too.

It was like a weight she couldn't escape, that feeling. She lay in her bed for hours feeling it on her, heavy and dark. She tried hard to make her shell even stronger, even thicker, but that didn't seem to make any difference at all. The weight remained. And it was getting heavier by the minute.

She wanted to cry out, to run to her parents' bedroom, as she had once done when a nightmare woke her, seeking comfort. And seeking reassurance that nothing was going to hurt her, that nothing lurked in the darkness of night that she need be afraid of.

Once, that had been true. But not anymore.

In the darkness of her bedroom, lying very still in her bed, Brooke began to cry.

* * * *

On the other side of the Compound, in her own bed, Ruby lay awake. She, too, had been working to strengthen her shell, but even as she did so she had the guilty awareness of hiding at least one truth from her friends. Not because she didn't trust them, of course, it was just It was just that she had only one thing left in the whole world that truly belonged to her, one thing Father hadn't been able to take away.

One thing she had to protect.

Ruby turned on her side in bed and cuddled Lexie close.

'It's all right,' she whispered. 'I won't let anything hurt you. No matter what.'

* * * *

Tessa frowned. 'So Samuel could be precognitive, with a history of visions that came true. Telekinetic, with the ability to move things, maybe even levitate his own body. Telepathic, with the ability to read minds.'

Hollis was nodding. 'Any of which could get their attention, convince them to listen to him, believe him. Follow himeven off a cliff. Maybe help keep the men in line by convincing them he's the alpha, the natural leader chosen by God, that they're destined to follow him. Especially if he added his own unique twist to the whole control issue.'

Tessa was still struggling with the idea that left her more than a little queasy. 'The women. He found a way to give them something better than a drug.'

Grim, Hollis said, 'They don't call it 'the little death' for nothing. An orgasm can produce an extraordinary amount of sheer energy. If he's found a way to psychically trigger that, and then'

'Steal the energy for himself?'

'Why not? As long as he has the control to stop pulling energy before he takes too much, it's pretty much a renewable energy source. Especially if it affects them like a drug and makes them more than willing to submit to him again and again. It could affect him like a drug. Hell, they could all be addicted to it.'

Tessa set her coffee cup down on the kitchen island and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. 'I might be sick,' she muttered.

'Yeah, me too. A kind of sexual domination for the books, that's for sure.'

'And the men, the husbands? They just allow it?'

'Probably aren't quite willing to believe what they may suspect. Maybe can't believe it. From all accounts, he's not causing women to climax in public, in the church during services, at least not fully. Though Sarah said there were at least a few women who seemed to go right to the brink. But a total orgasm, what you saw in your dream? If what you saw is true, he's keeping that part of it very private. A little one-on-one with Father, the results of which are known only by a handful of his retinue. Maybe just the guy you saw.'

'DeMarco? Chief Cavenaugh thinks of him as a ghoul.'

'He sounds like one. Especially if he's carrying Samuel's drained victims back to their beds in the dead of night. No way to know what his motivation is; maybe he genuinely believes in Samuel. Or maybe he's just a hired gun.'

Tessa's frown deepened. 'I didn't get anything from him. And his face sure as hell didn't give his thoughts or emotions away.'

'If he's Samuel's closest adviser, bodyguard, lieutenant, whatever the hell he calls himself, he may be the only one who knows the truth, knows what goes on in private. In public, during services, the other men may well see in the women what a lot of true believers see and feel in churcha kind of rapture. Not quite orgasmic, but close to it. A spiritual experience tying them with even stronger bonds to their father.'

* * * *

Sawyer woke so abruptly he was already sitting up on the couch when his eyes opened. He looked around his dim office for a moment, his heartbeat thudding in his chest, then swung his feet to the floor and ran his fingers through his hair.

Just a dream.

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.

Ignoring that sarcastic inner voice, he checked his watch and grimaced when he saw that it was barely five a.m. He had slept four hours, if that. And, tired as he was, he knew it would be useless to try to go back to sleep.

Because he never could. And because the dream nagged at him.

It always did.

But even more now. Especially now. And you know why. You just won't admit it.

Still ignoring the inner voice, he rose from the leather couch, stretching to ease the kinks and stiffness, and crossed the small room to his desk. He had left the work lamp on, and in the pool of light the folders and maps and other papers covering the blotter looked like chaos.

But Sawyer knew where everything was, and when he sat down, his fingers reached unerringly for a folder underneath two others. It contained summarized reports of half a dozen suspected homicides, all bodies found in the riverbut all so far downstream they were well out of his jurisdiction.

Hell, two of them had washed up in a different state.

The victims had been and continued to be unidentified, so were listed as John and Jane Does. Four women, two men.

Sawyer had not requested autopsy photos, but attached to each report was a single photo of each victim as he or she had been found. Stark black-and-white, cold, clinical, ugly.

As were the reports themselves, just clinical facts couched in unemotional medical terms. All the victims had been young, in their twenties or thirties. None had shown signs of disease or conventional antemortem injuries, and no cause of death had been determined.

No conventional antemortem injuries. No bullet wounds, or stab wounds, no strangulation or blunt force trauma, and no signs of drowning. No evidence of poison, and the toxicology screen on each victim had come back negative for drugs or alcohol.

The only thing these victims had in common was that they should not have died.

According to all the reports, at least. But when Ellen Hodges's body turned up in his own bailiwick, Sawyer looked more closely at what had, until then, been a nagging but unofficial worry. He had requested and studied all the reports, and then he had personally called each of the M.E.s or coroners involved and asked a few direct questions.

People in the investigative fields, he had found, did not in general have lively imaginations. They dealt in facts, usually ugly facts, and if something fit outside the box of an individual's knowledge and experience, it was usually