Chapter Nine

They’d left the brilliant light of day behind.

It felt like they’d even left behind simple things like oxygen and humanity.

Jay couldn’t breathe.

Fear seemed to squeeze what little air she had left in her lungs right out of her body and her heartbeat hammered away somewhere in the vicinity of her throat. It almost made her feel sick as they plowed along through the trees, Oz directing Linc in a cool, emotionless voice. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, but every now and then, she’d falter. When she did, she would pause, look back at Taige and wait.

Taige would point and then they’d move along.

She’s acting weird, Jay thought, focusing her thoughts and staring at Taige, hoping only Taige would pick up on them, but having no guarantee. Oz had a strong but erratic gift.

There was no change in her expression, not even a twitch of her lashes.

But that didn’t mean anything.

Oz revealed emotion when and if she wanted, if she was in the mood. She was mercurial at times.

Right now, she was shut down and locked up tight.

That bothered Jay more than she wanted to acknowledge.

“She’s acting weirder than you probably realize,” Taige said, her mental voice tight, almost strange. “She keeps trying to shut me down.”

Jay closed her eyes.

Shut Taige down—

“I mean exactly what you think I mean.”

Aw, fuck.

Turning her head to look out the window, Jay began the tedious process of altering her shields. She had to keep the basic shields up. She’d learned that brutal bitch of a lesson last night, but there were layers to shields. She could have shields that allowed her to feel shit she didn’t like to feel, but there were things she had to feel so she could do her job. There were shields that allowed her to pick up on the subtle nuances as she handled objects and keyed in on a missing child, a kidnapped woman.

And there were shields that allowed her to skim, so to speak, surface emotions.

She kept most of her shields solid and in place.

But she shifted the outermost shields, the ones that normally kept her from picking up on all those random vibes—the listless, almost lost sadness a woman felt when her husband walked out the door without saying good-bye, the frustration a man experienced when he wanted to fix things, make everything broken better, but just didn’t know how, the hopelessness a young girl felt when she walked back home after school, knowing she’d be going back to a cold and broken home, knowing that nothing would ever get better, that nothing would change—until it did, but not the way she hoped.

Solid shields kept her from picking up those random vibes, just as solid shields kept her from picking up private things—the way a woman felt when she saw an attractive guy and felt that thrill of lust, or the way a guy felt when he saw a woman bending as she loaded groceries into the trunk.

Those shields, something she’d instinctively developed months before she’d walked in and found her mother dead of an overdose, had kept her sane.

Now, her gut told her she needed to lower them.

All she picked up was…resignation.

A cold shiver of dread drifted down her spine and she fought the urge to lean forward, grab Oz’s arm and shout at her.

Tell me! What have you seen?

Because Oz did see things.

Bits and pieces of things, and sometimes they didn’t make sense. Sometimes they were weird things, like lost wedding rings.

Other times, they were miraculous—like the location of a girl who’d been kidnapped more than thirty years earlier. Then there were the harder ones; victims who were already past help and all Oz’s people could do was bring them home so the family could say good-bye.

The words Oz had spoken to Linc came back to haunt Jay and she lifted her hands, dug the heels of her palms against her eyes.

No…

She didn’t want to be here for this. It was a cowardly thing.

She knew it, but she couldn’t help it. Some part of her wished she hadn’t ever come. If she hadn’t come, maybe Oz wouldn’t have seen what she’d seen. Maybe—

“Turn left,” Taige said, abruptly, her voice tight and strained.

And she rested a hand on Jay’s back, rubbed soothingly as she whispered mentally, “This was meant to happen, kid. Whatever is happening, it’s because it had to happen.”

Jay forced herself to sit up, looking around as the trees closed around them. They’d been on a heavily forested, narrow dirt road and Linc was forced to bring the Explorer to a stop. Taige squeezed her shoulder and then let go.

“Do you know what’s coming?” Jay asked, unable to keep the question trapped inside.

Taige paused, for just a second. Then she shook her head. As though they hadn’t been carrying on a silent conversation, Taige looked at the others up front. “We walk from here. It shouldn’t be far.”

“What are we looking for?” Linc asked, his voice hoarse, harsh.

“We’ll know it when we see it,” Oz said, her voice eerie. Almost…haunted.

We’ll know it when we see it…

Linc stopped in the middle of the narrow footpath.

Behind him, the trees were a tangle, vines and roots ready to trip the unwary. Foliage was a curtain that had obscured everything until they had rounded a bend.

Now this.

A few years ago, a tornado had hit a neighboring county and left a path of devastation in its wake. One town had been all but wiped off the map, leaving nothing but timber, rubble, twisted bits of metal and destroyed cars as a sign of its presence. What lay before him reminded him of that, only the damage was focused.

It covered roughly a fifty-foot area, circular.

In the dead center of that circle was a squared-off opening into the earth.

Dimly, Linc recognized it.

Some part of his brain even realized what that pit had probably been. A cellar at one point. Maybe there had been a house here. He had no idea.

He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t force the words out.

They just wouldn’t come.

He cleared his throat and after two attempts, he finally managed to speak.

“What…” He closed his eyes and then tried again. “What is this?”

The thrashing of sound behind them had him whirling around, drawing the weapon he’d strapped on out of instinct.

When he recognized the face, he lifted it. It didn’t even faze him when he saw Chief Stephen Mays lift his own weapon in response. His son Blayne was with him, and the kid’s eyes wheeled around in his head, darting past the knot of people in the path to look at the hole in the earth.

“You.” Mays smiled, a twist of his lips. “You are trespassing, son.” That smile on his face took on a devious look as he shifted his attention to the women, all apparently unarmed. “All of you are trespassing. All armed. I’m defending my son, myself. You’re on my land.”

The air around him had been hot, muggy. Now, though, Linc felt icy, cold sweat dripping down his spine. He fought the urge to put his body in front of Jay’s. Nobody had drawn a weapon, so as far as Mays knew, they were unarmed, but Linc knew where this was going.

Jay had a weapon. He’d seen her put it on. A neat little baby Glock she’d settled in a holster at the small of her back. The belt she wore just looked like a studded leather belt, though, and she couldn’t draw without giving herself away, and the look in Mays’s eyes was one that whispered of the need for blood.

“They’re unarmed,” Linc said, his voice low, harsh.

Mays laughed. “The fuck if I care. That’s not the story I’ll tell when I report their deaths. You are on my property. Maybe some uppity-ass Feds will come sniffing around, but in the end, it will go down like this—you have made too many public threats against me, against my boy and you’ve got a gun pointed at us.” He jutted his chin at his son. “My boy will vouch for that. He’s scared to death. I’m protecting myself, my kid. You never should have come here, Dawson. Nobody will fight me on it. And you know it.”

He believed that, Linc realized. Dawson really did believe the shit he spouted. Stupidity? Arrogance? Nobody in the town would fight him, but an FBI agent, Jay, whoever the hell her boss was…that changed things.

But it wouldn’t matter if they were all dead.

Mays shifted his stance, smiling a little. “It’s too bad you had to bring the women into it, son.”

Linc tensed. If he went down, he didn’t give a fuck. His daughter was gone. He understood now. Oz had brought them here, to a place of death and destruction. He could die, knowing he’d given Jay a chance—and she’d take that chance, make the best of it. If he knew anything about her… Fuck, he wished he’d told her how he felt.

“You don’t really think we’re unarmed, do you?”

Fuck. He resisted the urge to snarl at Taige. Her voice low, amused. Full of dismissive mockery and it drew Mays’s attention away from Linc and directly to her.

Linc held his breath. But now Mays had the gun pointed at Taige.

In the next second, Linc felt like reality shifted sideways. Things happened that simply did not happen in his world.

Taige took a step forward.

Mays started to squeeze the trigger.

And the gun was ripped out of his hand.

Taige shot her hand out and caught it as it flew through the air.

She looked down at it, sighed.

Blayne started to babble, his eyes widening as the tall woman started toward him.

He went to jolt away and she shot out a hand, catching him.

Even though he stood taller than her by a good four inches and probably outweighed her by thirty pounds, when she touched him, he went still. “Daddy…Daddy!” He whimpered, going to his knees. “She’s…she’s one of them!”

Through it all, Mays was rigid, still. Like he couldn’t move at all.

Linc stared at him, hard. His face was going an odd shade of purple, and his throat appeared to be squeezed in and he made strange choking sounds, as though he couldn’t breathe.

“Most impressive,” Jay said, her voice a little stunned as she looked at Taige.

“The Force runs strong in my family.” Taige gave them a sour look over her shoulder before she looked back at the two in front of her. “Oz? Any idea what to do from here?”

“Yes.” Her face was remote as she turned and stared at the center of the clearing, trees smashed, uprooted, tossed aside like a careless giant had come through. “It’s time that we see what’s in the hole over there.”

She blinked, the fringe of her lashes falling over her eyes, and then she looked back at Mays and his son. “Agent Morgan, you probably need to let that piece of shit breathe before you kill him.”

“Do pieces of shit really require oxygen?” Taige asked. But she sighed.

Mays sucked in a breath of air and dropped to the forest floor. On his hands and knees, he stared up at them, his eyes ugly pools of hate. “Yeah, bitches. Go look in that pit over there. I dare you.”

Jay tensed.

She’d been aware of something, crawling and unearthly, prickling against her skin for the past few minutes. It had drawn her and repelled her all at once and the second they’d rounded that little twist in the path and came upon this circle of chaos, she’d wanted to back away with all haste.

There was something deadly here.

The instinct to leave might have come from that remnant instinct, some racial memory all humans had when they lay awake at night, certain that a predator lurked in the darkness.

There was a predator here.

Something that could kill.

The stink of death lingered in the air and she revised that.

Whatever was here had killed, and recently. It was a sickly, sour smell and she knew if she dared to look around, she’d find a body.

Please not DeeDee, please not DeeDee…

The hair on the back of her neck went on end and she saw Linc tense his muscles and right before he lunged, she moved, pushing herself between Linc and that circle of death. Somehow, she knew.

He couldn’t cross that line.

He couldn’t.

“Out of my way,” he growled, his hands coming up to grip her arms, peeling her away.

She set her feet, ready to take him down. She wouldn’t stop him for long. This was sheer desperation—

Then he wasn’t pulling her away any more. He was straining, jerking his hands. Although nothing touched him.

Taige’s face was tight, lines of strain fanning out from her eyes and mouth.

“How many can you hold?” Oz asked.

“Nobody else.” Taige looked at Jay. “Please tell me I won’t have to deal with you.”

Jay turned away. “I feel what’s over there. I’d just as soon live through…whatever this is.”

“Let me go,” Linc snarled, the muscles in his arms bulging as he strained at Taige’s unseen hold.

Mays laughed. It was a laugh of pure evil, something that made Jay’s skin crawl, and if her ears had started to bleed, it wouldn’t have surprised her.

She wanted to scrub the very sound of it from her soul, from her memory, but things couldn’t be unheard, couldn’t be unseen. Thanks, Principal Wood, she thought sourly. Buffy-lore had kept her sane once upon a time, and maybe the sarcastic quips would hold her steady for a few more minutes as she edged closer to that circle and tried to home in on the source of wrong.

Not wrong, some part of her brain whispered.

Broken.

That made her shiver and she wrapped her arms around her middle.

Broken. Full of fear.

“Go on, girl,” Mays whispered. “Go out there and see.”

“If you don’t shut up,” Taige said, her voice lethal, “I’m going to march you out there like a marionette and you can see.”

Jay didn’t turn to see his reaction. It was enough that he was silent.

A hand touched her arm.

She looked over, met Oz’s gaze.

Oz, her silvery eyes unreadable, slid her arm around Jay’s shoulders. “You’ll have to let me go in first.” The words were strangely stilted. “You’ll know once the threat has passed.”

Studying her boss’s face, Jay narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Probably a lot of things.” Oz let it go with that oblique answer, shrugging. Then she closed her eyes, breathing in slow, deep breaths. Tension sloughed away.

Reluctant to disturb her when she understood how important it was to stay focused, Jay backed away. She came within a few inches of Linc, saw him still struggling against Taige’s control. In a low voice, she said, “Stop fighting. It won’t do any good and it’s going to exhaust Taige. We might need her yet.”

“Don’t fucking tell me—” Abruptly, he went silent.

Jay knew why.

Oz had crossed over that barrier, the one that marked the regular wooded area from the devastated land.

That one step had a wail rising in the air.

It brought to mind the cries of the dead. The screams of the damned. Her flesh crawled and she tensed as a piece of wood ripped up from the ground and came flying toward Oz. Oz hit the ground in a crouch, just a split second before it would have hit her. It went harmlessly into the trees a few yards to the right of where they’d been standing.

“What the fuck…” Linc whispered.

“I need to be on watch in case any of that comes our way,” Taige said, her voice stark. “Big guy, if I let you go, will you behave?”

Linc jerked his head around, staring at Taige.

Another piece of fallen debris, a branch as big around as Jay’s thigh, came flying through the air. “Jay!” Oz shouted.

Jay hit the ground. It wasn’t needed. Taige cried out and the branch stopped the second it crossed over that odd, eerie line.

“Will you fucking stay here?” she snarled, whipping her head around and glaring at Linc with pale, snapping eyes.

He stared at the branch, looked at Jay.

Then he closed his eyes and nodded.

Something here was dead.

He could smell it.

The scent of death was unique and unlike anything else.

A low, ugly voice split the air as Oz moved closer.

“Go. Away.” The snarl was barely human and he didn’t know what to think as Oz moved closer still. Maybe going away was the best thing.

She was only a foot away now and the piece of debris to go flying was the largest piece yet—it looked to be the top half of a tree trunk.

But it shook and swayed in the air and didn’t move more than five feet.

Oz stopped at the lip of the pit, staring down inside with a dispassionate look on her face.

“You’re tired, aren’t you?”

Whoever was down there just screamed.

The sound of it broke Linc’s heart. It fanned the flames of fury that rode inside him and he turned to look at Mays, at Blayne. Blayne’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he jerked his gaze aside. All the while, they’d been unable to move, but they’d watched the whole ordeal with rapt fascination, like they couldn’t tear their eyes away.

Freed now from the weird bonds that freaky-ass woman Taige had wrapped around him, he moved and crouched in front of Mays and Blayne, watching as Blayne went white, the blood draining out of his face bit by bit. “You need to know,” he said quietly. “Whatever happens here today, you two are going to pay for it. You’re going to suffer.”

Mays curled his lip. “Like you can do shit. You think they’re going to believe jack shit when this goes in front of a court of law? They’ll laugh at you. They’ll think we’re all crazy and nobody will believe shit.” He looked away for a second and then abruptly looked back and spat at him. “That’s what I think about you and your threats, son.”

Linc wiped the saliva away. Then, without blinking an eye, he shot out his hand, hauled Mays forward. Whatever Taige was doing to the evil piece of work, it wasn’t stopping Linc from touching Mays. “I’m not talking about a court of law,” he said, his voice low, raw. “I’m not a sheriff anymore and the law doesn’t tie my hands. You ran me out and maybe you did me a favor. The things I’m going to do to you are things you can’t even imagine.”

For the first time, he saw a flicker of fear in the man’s eyes.

It didn’t feel good, though.

He was just too fucking tired. Too heartsick.

He rose and turned, saw that Oz was kneeling by the lip of the pit. She’d swung a pack off her pack, he saw, and he watched as she unzipped it, then stared inside, a despondent look on her face.

She lifted her head, stared across the clearing at Taige.

Taige’s shoulders stiffened.

“I can’t reach her.”

Taige knew she wasn’t talking about the rope.

For the past ten minutes, Taige had been backing up Oz’s shields with her own, deflecting the power of a mind gone mad.

This, she thought bitterly, is what happens when one of us is broken.

A child.

Just a child.

Flicking a look at Linc, Taige looked back at Oz. “If she sees her father, it might break through. But she won’t recognize him if he just walks over. We have to get her out and he can’t cross over there. He’s too vulnerable.” Oz had sensed the attacks. Taige would sense them. Jay might, but Jay couldn’t deflect those attacks the way Taige could, couldn’t sense them as Oz did.

So hard to believe that the center of the devastation was a girl. Just a girl.

A girl who was like a nuclear weapon, ready to blow.

“What do we do?”

“I shield her.” Oz looked back into the pit. “I’ll have to knock her out while I’m doing it. You bring her out.”

Taige went rigid. That girl would feel anything Oz did and she’d react to the threat. “No,” she whispered.

“It’s the only solution. I’d hoped there’d be another. But I knew, in the end, this was how it would be. It was why I came down here.”

“Don’t!” Taige snarled, taking a step forward. “She’s going to kill you!”

Oz just flicked her eyes to Taige. Then she nodded. “I know.”