Blood Secrets - By Jeannie Holmes Page 0,1
she’d never been present when it happened. Forcing herself to relax, she waited to see if someone appeared or if she heard footsteps.
No noise broke the silence. No one showed themselves.
“Hello,” she called. “Is someone there?”
Only her echoed voice answered.
Frowning, Alex peered into the gloom overhead. Had she imagined it? No. She could feel unseen eyes watching her and sense a presence lurking in the darkness. A feeling of familiarity tickled her mind like a forgotten dream dancing at the edges of awareness.
A persistent, steady beeping sounded from her wrist. She checked her watch and sighed. It was time to leave the Hall behind and return to the real world.
Casting a final glance toward the hidden observer, she rose from her seat and headed for a simple wooden door nestled in a tiny alcove. A series of grinding noises behind her signaled the access terminal’s dissolution. It had taken several trips for her to become accustomed to the terminal’s disappearance when she was ready to leave. Without looking back, she knew the terminal and chair had dissolved and once more melded with the stone floor, leaving only smooth granite throughout the rotunda. Dim light filled the alcove as she opened the partially concealed door and stepped through.
The moon had reigned over the Hall’s interior, but once outside, Alex found a sun low on the horizon and the creeping gloom of twilight. Gravestones stretched to either side in endless rows, casting elongated shadows over soft spring grass. Looking over her shoulder as she walked away, the Hall’s door appeared as the entrance to a small mausoleum, what may have been a family name worn away long ago.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she muttered and then smirked at the reference to Alice in Wonderland, one of her favorite childhood books. Sometimes she definitely felt like Alice chasing the rabbit.
Parting the Veil, the thin sliver of psychic energy that separated the physical and spiritual planes, required concentration and wasn’t a task she’d fully mastered. If she wasn’t careful in melding her consciousness with her physical body, a dozen nasty fates awaited her, the least being death.
Her physical body lay in a hotel room in a meditative trance. To an observer, she would appear to be in a really deep sleep. However, waking someone in such a trance could be deadly. Separating the consciousness from the body was a risk, but it was one she was willing to accept if she could find clues to solve her father’s murder.
She sighed and closed her eyes, pushing aside the random thoughts that crowded her mind. Once awake, she would be groggy and disoriented, like someone coming out from under anesthesia. In order to shift her consciousness from the Shadowlands and back to the real world, she had to remember details of the room.
Gradually she recalled the feel of the bed beneath her, the coolness of the air, and the hum of machinery from the nearby elevators. The sensation of a pit yawning beneath her made her stomach roll. She’d learned to keep her eyes tightly shut against the kaleidoscopic whirlwind of colors and shadows as she passed through the Veil and returned to the physical plane.
Alex slowly awoke from the dreamlike trance and alarms immediately sounded in her mind. Her skin prickled under the gaze of an unseen watcher.
Darkness cloaked her surroundings. Disoriented, she searched with her senses, probing for signs of life. She steadied and measured her breathing as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The greenish glow of a security light bathed the window beside the bed on which she lay and cast strange shadows on the wall.
Without turning her head, she looked around the small hotel room, trying to make sense of what she saw. One of the shadows in a far corner shifted and her focus narrowed on it. She eased her hand beneath her pillow, reaching for her loaded Glock G31 .357-caliber pistol.
The shadow detached from the wall and moved toward her.
Alex sat up quickly and aimed her pistol at the shadow as it launched itself onto the bed. Her finger found the trigger.
The shadow landed beside her with an inquisitive warble.
“Damn it, Dweezil,” Alex whispered, jerking her finger from the trigger as the large Maine coon cat swished its tail over her bare legs.
Dweezil head-butted her empty hand and purred.
She chuckled and scratched behind his large tufted ears with her free hand. “Don’t scare me like that. I almost shot you.”
His eyes flashed iridescent green in the light filtering through the window.