Wicked Wings (Lizzie Grace #5) - Keri Arthur Page 0,79

their job.

I took another deep breath and—keeping mental fingers crossed that Belle was awake—reached for her.

There was no immediate response, which meant she was probably asleep. While I could break the spells that protected her room from the constant buzz of my thoughts, it would take more time and energy than I really wanted to expend right now. Which meant that I might have to go on alone—

You called? came her thought.

Yeah—did I wake you?

Nope. I had to pee. What’s the problem?

There have been two more murders, but this time, we have a witness. She’s been heavily sedated, so I’m going to directly connect with her mind and relive her memories.

And you want me to monitor, just in case. Wait a sec while I get comfortable. There was several seconds of silence, then, Right, go for it.

I immediately closed my eyes and pushed into Jeni’s mind.

Nothing happened. Not straight away. All I felt were the muted echoes of her horror and disbelief. The deeper I went, the greater those two emotions became, until they crawled across my senses and dragged tears from my eyes. It was warning enough that the memories I was about to access were very bad indeed.

I pressed past another layer. While the drugs still held sway here, images were now flickering. They were fragile wisps that spoke of blood and gore and horror, but they fragmented and spun away the minute I reached for them.

Then, with an abruptness that had my breath snagging in my throat, I was in… Saw Byron, who should have protected me, reduced to bits in an instant. Blood… and body parts… everywhere. On the ground, on me. It’s all I can smell, all I can see…

“Liz,” Aiden said softly. “You need to tell us what you see.”

I jumped and fought to place a layer of distance between the thick heat of her emotions and me. “She was on her way home when she heard the screaming. It sounded like her friend Jimmy, so she ran to help him. What she saw instead…”

I paused, and swallowed heavily as the images once again flared thick and fast across my senses. Jimmy with two women who were both beautiful and naked. Women who attacked him, shredded him with claws and teeth, their bodies slick with his blood as he screamed and writhed. The abrupt silence as he died, and yet remained upright and still as the women stripped him of all humanity before finally licking his bones clean. Bones that were unnaturally white in the gleam of the moon. Oh God, oh God…

Lizzie, came Belle’s warning. Pull back.

I shuddered and did so. As distance returned, I was suddenly aware of my rapid breathing and the thick churning in my stomach. I swallowed heavily, and then said, “She saw the two Empusae attacking Jimmy… and then she ran.”

Back down the forest, away from the destruction. And yet, for all of her terror, for all of her fear, she had the presence of mind to call the rangers.

“Can you describe these women?” Joseph asked. “Give us facial composites?”

“Yes, although I’m not sure they’ll do much good, given Empusae also have owl form and can basically hide anywhere.”

“We’ve already organized a reservation-wide search for possible dens,” Joseph said. “If these things are hiding in any of our forests or compounds, we’ll find them. It’s the possibility of them hiding within our residential areas that worries me.”

“From the little we’ve learned of them, that’s not likely.”

“What about Byron?” Aiden said. “Why did he get out of the SUV?”

I took a breath and went back into Jeni’s memories.

“They were both in the SUV, as ordered. Byron was trying to calm Jeni down, without a whole lot of success. Then someone else began screaming… a woman, in the forest behind them rather than at the crossroad ahead where Jimmy died.”

I paused as Jeni’s panic washed through me—her fear that Byron was going to leave her in the truck alone. Her begging him to stay, to not get out and investigate. The screaming intensifying, and then the door being wrenched open. And then, and then…

“Lizzie,” Aiden said, again softly. “Tell us what you’re seeing.”

“Byron didn’t get out of the car.” Tears slipped past my closed eyelids. I could not only see his death through Jeni’s memories, but also feel Byron’s horror, his confusion, and the utter, mind-numbing agony he’d so briefly suffered in those few brief minutes of sensation between life and death. I swallowed heavily, my voice quavering a little