After a few moments browsing my phone, I sighed, walked to the dresser, and picked up the envelope. Inside, I found a gold, five-pointed star medal with a woman’s profile in the middle and the words “The United States of America” encircling her. It looked like some sort of military decoration. The Medal of Honor, perhaps? I really didn’t know.
I didn’t like this item for tracking. Not at all.
Would I be searching for an honorable, dead man who should be left in peace?
I shivered, remembering that body hanging over the miniature model at Ulfen’s party. If Blake was truly dead, I feared the emptiness I would encounter during the trance. I didn’t know why, but it scared the hell out of me. Maybe because I hoped there would be more to the afterlife than a bunch of nothing. I didn’t like to think that, after death, everything was over. I preferred to imagine that we moved on to something else, something better. It gave me hope.
But that wasn’t the only thing I feared.
I also was afraid of finding that Blake was alive. If he was out there, it meant that things were more complicated than we had imagined. It meant that he was a bad man, and Stephen would have to learn that someone he trusted had betrayed him.
Either way, I had to do this.
Knowing the hard truth was always better than believing a harmless lie.
With the medal tight in my grip, I lay on the bed and, without delay, went into the trance. Darkness welcomed me. I hesitated for just an instant before opening my sense of hearing. When a loud cacophony of sounds flooded me, I realized with dismay that I’d been hoping for a whole lot of emptiness.
Instead, Blake was, indeed, alive.
As I sifted through all the sounds, dismissing them one at a time, I focused on a wet and muffled thudding. It came rhythmically, accompanied by grunts of pain. At first, I couldn’t tell what it was, but when my heart started racing, I realized that my instincts knew exactly what the sound meant.
Quickly, I released my sense of smell. I recognized the first scent that hit me immediately. It was coppery and tangy, and it sharply overpowered every other scent.
It was blood, a lot of it.
I shuddered, already knowing that I had to use my sight to pinpoint a location. What I’d gathered so far wasn’t enough.
Overwhelmed by panic, I fought to release my last sense. It took a few seconds longer than it should have, and in the end, I only engaged my vision because I feared to lengthen my recovery on the other side of the trance. What I saw when I finally opened my eyes turned my blood to ice.
Blake was standing in front of a man, who was tied to a chair. Blake looked different than I remembered, broader, and with less hair. His face was honed in sharp, wild angles and rage. He wore a blood-splattered, white shirt rolled up to his elbows.
The man across from him was unrecognizable, his face a mangled mess of blood and bruises. His head dangled limply to one side.
Blake’s fist shone red as he pulled it back and delivered a vicious right hook to his captive’s face. The man’s neck and head snapped back with a crack, and a stream of blood shot out of his mouth and sprayed the concrete floor. He moaned and mumbled something unintelligible. Blake smiled, pleased with his work. He cracked his knuckles and delivered another strike, this time to the gut.
Dark blood trickled from the man’s mouth as he bent forward. Blake sidestepped, cursing, the drops narrowly missing him.
Horror gripped me at the gruesome sight. Blake was torturing the man and enjoying it. But for what purpose? The man was beyond being able to share anything Blake might want to know, which made me think this wasn’t an interrogation, but a spiteful act.
As Blake pulled his fist back again, his eyes full of glee, he delivered an upward punch that collided with the man’s nose and sent his entire body backward. The strike contained so much power that the chair tipped and fell, carrying the man down.
I watched with alarm, dimly aware of the ticking seconds as they piled on top of each other, promising a high price for my recovery.
Blake reached for the chair’s front legs, ready to right it and continue his savage assault. But just as he started to pull it up, the man started convulsing, his body twitching, his head and tongue lolling to one side, and his eyes rolling into the back of his head.
My stomach roiled, twisting with disgust and distress. I had never seen such brutality, never witnessed the damage one person could inflict on another, never imagined the pleasure a heartless individual could derive from a gruesome death.
Ending the trance abruptly, I reeled back, shutting off my senses to the vile spectacle. I came to, panting and sobbing like a child. Deaf and blind, I curled up in my bed, my eyes squeezed tightly, my hands pressed over my ears as the wet thudding of Blake’s strikes echoed inside my head.
Trying to muffle my sobs, I pressed my face to the pillow, rocking back and forth, willing the horrific images out of my mind, trying to think of other things: my car, the home where I grew up, the blue sky, Jake’s face.
My breathing slowed, and I calmed down by degrees. Finally, I stopped crying, and I lay on my side, breathing more easily. Without Rosalina to let me know, I had no idea how long I’d stayed in the trance, and how long it would take me to regain my senses. All I could do was lie there, trying to sleep with the sole purpose of shortening my misery.
I fought desperately to
