But she couldn't go to sleep just yet. Not until she'd investigated the house belonging to the ranger known as Jimmy. If he was dead in his house, it had to mean he'd invited Dunleavy into his home. While she wasn't absolutely certain Dunleavy had a telepathic link with everyone who wore his spells, she couldn't risk the fact that he didn't, either. She had to presume he'd know, sooner or later, that the big man had told her about Jimmy. Had to presume that if there was evidence there to find, he'd make sure it was quickly destroyed.
She pushed away from the wall and did up her shirt as she made her way out to the main room. After digging out a jacket from her pack, she pulled it on and headed out the door. She didn't bother locking it.
The only two people likely to come here right now were the only two people not likely to be stopped by locks. She just had to hope the threshold would stop Dunleavy, if not Kinnard.
The night air was colder than it had seemed half an hour ago. Or maybe it was simply a matter of her still being overheated. She shivered and shoved her hands into her pockets as she made her way down the steps and up the dusty road to the house on the corner.
The light still burned brightly, shining out the windows like a beacon. She glanced at the door, then moved to a side window and peered inside.
The room was small and neat, the cream-colored walls bare of decoration. There were a couple of wooden chairs sitting around an old table, and to one side of that, a leather sofa. She shifted a little and saw the TV. Buffy the Vampire Slayer , she thought, and smiled at the odd appropriateness of it. The sound was turned down, however, and she couldn't see anyone watching the show.
She pulled away, letting her gaze roam across the darkness. The sensation that the night had eyes rippled across her skin, yet she couldn't actually sense anyone out there. Not that she would if the barrier was preventing the psychic talents she'd long depended upon from working. Maybe it was just nerves.
Maybe it wasn't.
She pushed up the sleeves of her coat, ensuring she had easy access to the knives strapped to her wrists. Then she walked around to the front door and tested the handle. It wasn't locked.
'Hello?' she said, as she pushed the door open.
No one answered—not that she expected anyone to, even if there was anyone alive in the house. She listened to the silence for a moment, then stepped inside.
The smell hit her immediately. It was the smell of death. The smell of decay.
She closed her eyes, fighting the instinct to just turn around and leave. She'd seen death plenty of times before, and nothing she'd see here was likely to be as bad as what she'd seen in the whorehouse earlier tonight. Dunleavy had been out to shock her, for whatever sick reason. But here it would be a calculated death, a death designed either as a booster for his own strength or that of his dark Gods.
She walked over to the TV. The back of the unit was hot, indicating it had been running for some time.
She switched it off and walked across to the sofa. The newspaper sitting on the sofa was Wednesday's news, and the coffee cup sitting on the floor was half filled with congealed milk.
Her gaze drifted to the doorway to her right. Death waited for her down that small hall, and there was no use putting off the discovery. Not if she wanted to get some sleep tonight.
She'd barely taken three steps into the hall when the sense of wrongness hit her. She froze, listening to the silence, to the creaks of the old house, to the sound of her own breathing.
And knew she was no longer alone.
Something, or someone, was here with her.
And suddenly she remembered what else Seline had said about that first night in Hartwell. Two men had attacked her, one human, one not.
Two men waited for her in the darkness ahead.
One was human. One wasn't.
Michael had rescued Seline that first time, but Michael couldn't rescue her here, because he couldn't cross the threshold uninvited.
She took a step back, and all hell broke loose.
Chapter Nine
Michael squatted to study the footprints in the sandy soil. These prints were far heavier than those leading up to this point, which indicated someone had obviously stopped here for some time. He swept his gaze around the surrounding darkness. This was roughly where he'd seen Kinnard, so the question was what had Kinnard been watching?
Or, perhaps, waiting for?
He couldn't have been spying on them—the pump house was in the way, and he wouldn't have seen them until they'd come around it.
So why stop here? There was nothing else here but the old reservoir and lots of weeds. He rose, scanning the ground for more prints. Kinnard had disappeared very shortly after Michael had spotted him, but he couldn't have disappeared without leaving some trace. Even vampires, who could move with the speed of the wind, left footprints.
But there was nothing. It was as if Kinnard had disappeared into thin air.
Maybe he was a shape changer. The glow of his body's energy hadn't suggested any type of shape changer Michael had ever come across, but he knew better than to think that, even in all his years of existence, he'd come across every type of shifter there was.
Frowning, he followed the fall of the ground away from the pond. The weeds were still relatively thick here, providing ample protection for a rat like Kinnard. He pulled free a thick, long handful, holding them by the roots as he walked on.
The ground around him rose, until he was walking into a small valley. Hartwell had disappeared from sight, and the darkness here was deeper, though the sounds of drunken singing carried easily on the still night air. It was amazing anyone in that town was still in a fit enough state to look at a whore, let alone carouse with them.
He switched his sight to infrared, scanning the ground as he walked. After a few minutes, he saw a scuff in the soil that looked like half the heel of a boot. A few more steps and he saw two deep prints. Kinnard had not only stopped here, but if the odd impressions just in front of the boot prints were any indication, he'd knelt down.
He stopped, sweeping his gaze across the ground directly in front of him. Something was here; he was certain of it.
A crack in the dirt caught his attention. It was too straight, too perfect, to be caused by weather or the natural drying of soil.
He squatted beside the crack and ran his fingers across the dirt. Soil shifted beneath his fingertips, revealing a hardness underneath. Wood. He ran his fingers along the crack until he found a junction of two corners, then he retraced the crack until he found a similar junction on the other side. A trap door, here in the desert. It had probably once been the entrance into a mine, but now, it was obviously a rat hole.
He glanced skyward. The night was far from over, and he wasn't foolish enough to confront Dunleavy on his own ground. He'd wait until dawn, when the sunlight drove Dunleavy into sleep. When it came to the likes of a fiend like Dunleavy, it didn't pay to play fair. He'd already tried that, and Christine had paid the price for his stupidity.
He followed his own steps back, using the long weeds to brush over his prints as he retreated.
Hopefully, it would disguise the fact that he'd been here. Once back at the pond, he tossed the weeds into the murky water and watched them sink.
What now?
His gaze drifted to the warm lights to his left. And even as he fought the desire to go to the witch, pain hit, flaring down his thigh as sharply as the kiss of a knife. And he knew, without knowing how, that it was her pain he was feeling.
With a curse, he spun and raced toward her.
Nikki backpedaled as the two men came at her. She had to get out of here, out of this house, get free of the
