She shoved away his hand with disgust. “The guy who sucked that body dry and then dumped it out there. Who else?”
“Sucked dry?” The anxious customers mirrored his incredulity. Their murmurs, this time tinged with panic, filled the air. Luther concentrated on blocking them from his mind. “You want to explain that?”
“Yeah, Luther. Your new guy is a vintage bloodsucker, kicking it new school.” Her blue eyes narrowed and she turned with a purpose, heading back to the corpse.
“Gaby, wait.”
Of course she ignored him.
“Shit.” A patrol car chose that auspicious moment to pull up out front, lights flashing, sirens screaming. Luther jerked the door open. “There’s a dead body around back. I need you to keep everyone inside here until I’ve had a chance to talk to them. Got it?”
One startled patrolman nodded and headed inside while another started around back, gun drawn.
Luther rushed through the store to find Gaby, but by the time he got back outside, the only body around was the dead one.
Gaby was long gone.
Gaby knew a cold trail when she found one, but there had to be a clue left or she wouldn’t have been sent here. Allowing instinct to guide her, she went down the alley, out the back to a street . . . and sickness, like a sticky cloak, infiltrated her every pore.
Another body, drained of blood, used to feed the wickedly corrupted; she knew she’d find it, but where?
Luther wouldn’t just wait behind. He’d be searching for her with his misguided notion of protecting her while overseeing the ever-faulty legal process. She had to hurry if she had any hope of keeping him out of the treacherous path of her life.
The power within her had dissipated, but still it churned deep inside. As Gaby scanned the area, the power ripened, began to boil to the surface. Her gaze caught; there, the old building.
She started forward with driving purpose—and a flicker of lightning licked the sky, immobilizing her.
Oh God, no.
Storms always left her inert with scalding, deep-bred irrational fear. A frantic glance at the sky showed ominous clouds—but no more lightning. She strained her ears, but heard no thunder.
A deep breath sent oxygen into her starving lungs. She dragged herself forward, one foot at a time, sluggish but determined. The decrepit building loomed ahead, taunting her, daring her to brave the impending storm to find the malevolence lurking inside.
She had a duty, not only to herself, but to the person now suffering, the person being bled dry. Straining, her feet heavy and her heart clenched, she took two more steps.
The skies lit up. Nature did a full display, sending a bolt of electricity to splinter the air while a cannonade of thunder shook the ground beneath her feet. Gaby’s world squeezed in, turned black and bleak and empty of free volition.
For as long as she could remember it had been this way. Father Mullond, the man who had taken her in and tried to assist her, God rest his soul, had blamed the manner of her mother’s death for the irrational fear.
A deadly lightning strike had stolen her mother’s heartbeat. As her heart had stopped beating, Gaby came into the world—an orphan.
It was a fucked-up way to be born, and had set the tone for a life that deviated from any kind of normalcy.
Whether it was an honest recollection from birth or a learned fear from the stories told her by foster parents, she didn’t know. She fucking well didn’t care. Storms paralyzed her. Fear was fear, and for Gaby Cody—paladin, warrior against evil—it was unacceptable.
And still, she couldn’t get her fucking limbs to move.
Icy rain soaked through her meager clothes, chilled her down to her bones, and prickled her flesh. She could have stood there and died except that she heard the moan.
Not a loud moan. Not a piteous cry that others would have detected. It was faint with weakness, a meager tone that depicted resignation to death.
“Oh God.” Fighting the fear with everything she had, Gaby stumbled forward. Her muscles cramped; her thoughts were wild and scattered. But that sound drew her and she inched closer to it, closer to that deteriorated structure that once might have been a home.
Empty windows framed lush spiderwebs filled with bloated white eggs.
Dead moths littered the pathway, mixed with brittle leaves and some broken beer bottles.
All around the house, a murky aura of misery and malevolence shimmered in and out of the dank air.
The evil lurked inside, doing its foul work.
Another crack of electricity split the skies with a fantastic display of light and power. Gaby collapsed against the side of the house, her eyes going unseeing again. No, not now. God, please not now.
But the rain pounded down in a deafening deluge as the heavens thundered and crashed. Terror pervaded her every limb.
How long she slumped there, shivering and useless, she didn’t know. It felt like an eternity. She hated herself and her weakness, hated that someone suffered while she did nothing.
And then warmth enfolded her; lips touched her temple and she knew.
“Luther?” The whisper was strained, barely audible. His nearness cleared her vision and she saw again that tragic aura circling the house . . . and fading.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you.” He lifted one of her hands and put it under his shirt, against the heat of his powerful chest and the reassuring thump of his steady heartbeat. His forehead rested against hers. “I don’t like it when you leave me, Gaby.”
She didn’t know if he meant physically leaving him—which she had done—or emotionally leaving him—which she also had done. She swallowed the bitterness of defeat and whispered so faintly that her voice barely carried over the violence of the storm, “Can you hear him?”
Luther went on alert, jerked around, searching the vacant area. When he saw no one, he turned back to Gaby, his big hands clasping her upper arms with urgency. “Who?”
“Inside. He’s . . . inside. In terrible pain.” This close to Luther, the awful gripping trepidation eased and her voice gained strength. “He’s sinking into the abyss, Luther. You have to hurry.”
He tilted her back to study her face, and she felt his alarm.
Because he believed her.
His trust helped to strengthen her, too. “Hurry, Luther.”
“Where is he, Gaby? Inside where?”
She turned her head enough to look at the blackened, empty front window of that forsaken home. “There.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “He doesn’t have much longer to live.”
Luther’s beautiful brown eyes flashed with comprehension. “I’m sorry. I’ll be right back.” He settled her down on the stoop and reached for the door. The knob turned, and a harsh wind jerked it from Luther’s hand, crashing it against a crumbling wall. Plaster and dust rose into the damp, chilled air, caught in the wind, and swirled away.
Gun drawn, Luther ventured into the tenebrous core of evil.
The second he left her, coldness and despondency mauled back into Gaby, sending pain into her restricted lungs, narrowing her sight to pinpricks of indistinct light.
Sometime after tunnel vision had closed in on her, Luther rushed back outside. He gathered her close even as he snapped out orders into his radio. The festering fear made it difficult for Gaby to focus, but she grasped that he wanted his partner, Ann Kennedy, to join him, and an ambulance.
When he said, “And bring some tools—something to cut through chains and locks,” Gaby stirred. Chains? Locks?
Voice grim, Luther added to Ann, “Yeah, you heard me right. The poor bastard is shackled down tight to the floor.”
By the time the street filled with police cars, lights, and sirens, the storm had turned fierce beyond anything Gaby had ever experienced.
