The Bite Before Christmas - Argeneau Series - Book 15.5 Page 0,94

in reality instead of the nightmare I’d been forced to relive. “What did you see?”

I righted myself on the bed and threw the charred piece of fabric at him.

“I saw someone named Raziel get Krispy-Kremed by a vampire who apparently can control fire,” I said, still trying to shake off the echoes of that gruesome death.

The four of them exchanged a look that could only be described as delighted. “Jackpot!” Psycho exclaimed, pumping his fists into the air.

From how happy they were, I guessed that either Raziel hadn’t been a friend or they already knew what had happened to him and this had been a test.

“Let’s be a hundred percent sure,” Jackal said, his grin fading. “Touch the ring next.”

I looked at it with dread. It probably contained the essence from another death, but unless I wanted to hasten my own, I had no choice.

I picked it up, tensing in grim expectation, but a scattershot of images I’d already seen filled my mind. They were still revolting enough to make me want to vomit, but in addition to being in the grayish colors of the past, they felt fainter, like I was watching a movie instead of experiencing them firsthand. With a shake of my head to clear it, I set the ring back down by Jackal.

“Maybe you made a mistake. The only impressions I’m picking up off this are yours, and they don’t tell me anything new.”

His hazel eyes gleamed emerald for a second, and then he let out a loud whoop that made me flinch.

“It’s not a fluke, she’s for fucking real!”

Anything that thrilled a sadistic child murderer freaked me out, but I tried not to let it show. Don’t panic, Marty had said. Prey panics, and then prey gets eaten.

“On to the next one?” I asked, trying to sound as cool and collected as I could under the circumstances.

They stopped their high-fiving to look at me. “Yeah,” Jackal said, pushing the knife toward me. His excitement was almost palpable. “Only this time, I want you to concentrate on the firestarter. Try to see where the bastard is, not just what happened when he butchered Neddy.”

That told me the knife would make me relive another murder, but that wasn’t what made me pause before reaching for it.

“The firestarter?” I repeated. “He’s who you want me to find through these objects?”

Are you out of your minds? I almost added, but didn’t because even if they were, I wasn’t.

“You can do it, right?” Jackal asked, all mirth wiping from his expression.

Sure I could, but I didn’t want to. I doubted the firestarter was a friend; Jackal calling him a bastard in that contemptuous tone plus wanting me to find where he was smacked of nefarious intentions. Anyone smart would avoid being on the same continent as that creature if they were at odds, yet Jackal and the others must be trying to ambush him. The memory of the firestarter’s charming smile right before he burned Raziel to a heap of smoldering ruins was something I wanted to forget. But if I refused to look for him, I wouldn’t live long enough to worry about forgetting anything.

Any way you cut it, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or, more accurately, between a fang and a sharp place.

I reached for the silver knife without another word. With that single touch, the grayish images from Neddy’s death invaded my consciousness. No surprise that the firestarter was the one who killed him, using the knife after some preliminary toasting. Also, no shock was that he did it with the same sort of detached geniality he’d shown Raziel. I pushed past the searing pain I felt, past the feeling of Neddy floating into whatever awaited people after death, and focused on the firestarter, trying to see him now instead of only then.

This part was harder. In highly emotional situations, everyone left a piece of their essence onto objects, but the firestarter hadn’t been worked up over killing Neddy so only a smidgeon of his remained on the knife. Still, detached or not, nothing tied two people closer together than death. Something about the door to the other world cracking open made essences merge and imprint more strongly, so once I pushed past the seething remains of Neddy’s rage and fear, I felt the firestarter’s distinct essence. It was only as big as a thread, but I wrapped all my concentration around it and pulled.

Black and white images were replaced with full-color clarity. Instead of the dingy riverfront setting where Neddy had met his end, I saw opulent drapes surrounding me. At first I thought I was in a small room, but then I realized the midnight-green drapes hung around a large bed, cocooning it. The firestarter lay in the center of it, fully clothed, his eyes closed as though he were asleep.

Gotcha, I thought, torn between relief and dismay at finding him in what I knew was the present.

I’d only seen him before through the grayish tones of past memories, so I took my time studying him now. At first he looked like a normal, well-built man in his thirties, but then hints of his uniqueness showed. His espresso-colored hair was past his shoulders—longer than most men dared, but on him it somehow looked supremely masculine. Black pants and an indigo shirt draped muscles that appeared far harder than a gym membership usually accounted for, and though no flames clung to his hands, they were crisscrossed with scars that looked like former battle wounds. His high cheekbones were accented by stubble somewhere between a five o’clock shadow and a beard, yet instead of coming across as unkempt, it was rugged and enticing. I hadn’t seen a man pull that look off so well since Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, and his eyes. . .

. . . were no longer closed. They opened, not an indistinct gray from the colorless lens of the past, but a rich copper shade encircled by rings of evergreen. I would have thought they were beautiful, but at the moment they looked as though they were staring right into mine.

It unnerved me, but I reminded myself it was only coincidence. No one ever knew it when I used my abilities to establish a link. I could be the world’s biggest voyeur if I wanted, but my most fervent wish was to know less about people, not more—

“Who are you?”

I jumped as though stung. If I hadn’t seen his finely shaped lips move, I would’ve thought I’d imagined the words, but they were real. Coincidence, I reminded myself again. Any second someone would come into my line of vision and I’d see who he was really talking to.

“I’ll ask a second time,” his deep, slightly accented voice said. “Who are you, and how the hell are you inside my head?”

That scared me into dropping the link at once, forcing all of my focus back to the hotel room with my four kidnappers. The ornate bed with its encircling drapes disappeared, replaced by ass-ugly wallpaper and a bed that would probably result in my getting bug bites. I let go of the silver knife as though it burned me, still reeling over what just happened.

“Well?” Jackal asked. “Did you find him?”

“Oh, yeah.” My voice was nearly a croak from shock.

“And?” he prodded.

No way was I going to tell him the firestarter had somehow realized he was being spied on. If Jackal knew that, he’d kill me on the spot so the firestarter couldn’t follow the link back through me to find him. It was possible. If he could feel me in his head, the firestarter could probably hear me, too. . .

With a flash of inspiration that was more reckless than smart, I knew what I had to do to get free of my kidnappers.