by Cait London
Owen rolled his shoulders slowly, his skin slightly tight and uncomfortable. But then, anyone would feel disturbed in a room with two such women; a river of vibrations seemed to run between them, a definite communication. Owen sensed that some change had taken place in Leona’s emotions regarding her mother. They were softer, more understanding.
“Owen, you’re staying here tonight, of course,” Greer murmured, her voice as cool and calm as Leona’s sometimes was.
Leona instantly averted her face and didn’t extend an overnight invitation. Though gracious despite how drawn and tired she was, Leona was too calm. He wondered if she really believed the Missy Franklin setup.
And then there was the danger lurking nearby. There was no need to frighten the women, but Owen had noted the layers of fog around the cul-de-sac when he’d arrived. He’d even spotted the black SUV gleaming softly beneath a streetlight.
Owen had decided not to give chase. Instead he intended to sleep in his pickup, just outside Leona’s house. His pickup would serve notice that he was on guard. So was Max.
As if picking up his thoughts, Leona said, “You might as well get comfortable and bring in your change of clothes. We’ll put away things while you shower.”
The look in her eyes reminded him of the earlier scene at his house. If Leona believed him, she trusted him. If she didn’t believe him…“Bring in your things, Owen,” she murmured. “I’ve picked up men’s soap and a few things for you.”
He stood to dig out his wallet. “You didn’t need to do that. I’ll repay you—”
Leona stood beside him. “Of course, you won’t. You’re doing enough. And I wanted to. Make yourself comfortable and we’ll talk later.”
Leona wanted him with her. That went a long way to proving she didn’t believe Missy’s setup. Owen relaxed and realized he’d been very concerned about Leona’s real take. He was so happy now he thought he might be floating. But then, with two powerful women psychics nearby, maybe he was. Glancing down at his feet, he saw that they were firmly on the ground and his relationship-love with Leona was right on target. He realized he was grinning.
“Hi,” he whispered to Leona. That seemed silly when he’d already been with her for an hour, but this moment was new and special. Her whispered “hi” was intimate and husky, the perfect response. Everything was okay.
Greer smiled up at him. “We both know you’re not going anywhere tonight. You won’t leave Leona—or me. It’s misty outside, and we’re all uneasy. We might as well make the best of the time we have together. We have a lot to talk about and only a few hours to do so. I’m weaker within only a few hours away from the ocean—”
Leona pivoted to Greer. “Is that why you didn’t know they were going to raid our house all those years ago? Why you didn’t know, or feel, something was going to happen, that we were basically kidnapped?”
“Yes. But then, your grandmother had been calling me constantly. She was ailing terribly at that point. Signals can get mixed. I knew there was something horrible going to happen. I thought the signals were coming from my mother. She’d already talked about not wanting to live. I’ve never understood what had happened to her. I really tried to help, but she wouldn’t tell me. A ‘read’ was impossible.”
Greer’s eyes shimmered with tears. “But I should have known, should have expected the researchers would try to find some means to test my daughters. I’d been keeping the scientists at bay for years.”
“I didn’t know. You were torn between Grams and us. I thought you put work ahead of our safety, and that as a clairvoyant, you must have known—”
“I should have. But I didn’t. I am so sorry, Leona. Sometimes we can’t tap into those who are closest to us, or our own futures.”
Leona’s hand reached out to her mother’s. “Do you think a Borg descendant had anything to do with that nightmare?”
Owen instantly slid his arm around Leona and drew her close to whisper, “If you are going to get into details about Borg, put on some music to block your voices. Sound equipment could be outside. Play something. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Alarmed, Leona dug her fingers into his wrist. “Don’t go farther than your car. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Owen’s fierce expression softened momentarily. “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll take care and be right back. Max, stay here.”
After Leona locked the door after Owen, she went to the window and watched him disappear into the night. She quickly moved to turn on her sound system. The whiteout sound of the ocean’s waves, the cry of seagulls, floated over the room. Greer immediately seemed more relaxed, and Leona said, “I noticed that in Tempest and Claire, too. Our affinity to water, the colors, the sounds. It’s because of the Viking seafaring blood, isn’t it?”
“Probably. It would take someone like you to notice. Owen had to go, you know. He’s on the hunt.”
“I know, but he’d better come back. I’m only giving him a few minutes. I should be out there with him.” Leona shivered slightly as she noticed that the mist had started to bead on her window.
“He wouldn’t hear of it, and you know it. You gave him a rune to protect him. He’ll be safe. The man we seek is a coward…he won’t let Owen get close to him if he can help it.”
“That’s what Owen said. He’s a coward. I’d thought of him as a predator and our family as being stalked. But now, I believe he is a coward, and that’s very empowering to me. I’m learning about the balance of power and what I can do.”
“The woman, Missy, is already dead. You feel that, don’t you?”
“I knew—later, when I separated my emotions from that image. When I remembered her image, I saw a big man strangling her. There was just no time to warn her—and then, I was pretty angry, too. I’m not exactly certain how to separate precognitive scenes from my own emotions as a woman.”
“Practice. And quickly. You’ve already started, Leona,” Greer said firmly.
Max huffed, wagged his tail and hurried to the door. But Leona had already moved to quickly open it. Owen stood in the doorway, and she reached to draw him inside. “I didn’t knock,” he murmured.
“Get in here…. I could feel you nearby. It’s a good feeling. A safe one.”
“That black SUV was around, but now it’s gone.” Inside Leona’s house, Owen touched her cheek. It was also a good feeling to come home to his woman. He smoothed her hair, and tenderness flowed between them. He bent to kiss her lightly. Leona was doing her thing, her soft essence moving in to calm him. Peace settled over Owen as gently as spring rain. It eased away all the bristling anger and frustration.
However, the need to kill whoever was stalking her simmered in Owen and could reawaken in a heartbeat. “I’d better take that shower.”
When Owen returned a short while later to the candlelit living room, he noted the soothing ocean sounds filling the room. Seated on the sofa, Greer and Leona were talking quietly, their hands joined and their eyes filled with tears. Uncertain about interrupting an obviously emotional feminine and family moment, Owen hesitated.
“Come sit down,” Greer invited. “We need to talk. We’ve waited for you. Leona has something she wants to say to me. For that, she needs you with her.”
Owen eased into Leona’s easy chair. To his surprise, Leona moved to sit on his lap. It wasn’t a sensual gesture, but he sensed she needed contact with him. He held her hand and waited.
“Tell me about Daniel, Leona,” Greer said suddenly. “You let images stream from you when I held your hand just now. I caught them, but I…my emotions are too strong. I don’t want to accept the sight of that boy running in front of Daniel’s car. I need the words. It…it can’t be true, can it? Your father is in your mind, Leona. Why now?”
Leona held Owen’s hand tightly as she softly explained her vision. An eight-year-old boy had imprinted a scene in Daniel Bartel’s mind, and it had led to his death.
Greer closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the sofa. H
er voice was thick with emotion when she whispered unevenly, “So he was strong even then, a child born in revenge and hatred. Instead of playing with toys, he used the lives of others to amuse himself.”
“He had help. Someone was holding his hand, joining his strength and coaching the boy. I suspect—sense—it was someone of the same bloodline, and probably his father.”
Greer seemed to take a deep steadying breath. Suddenly, she stood, her arms crossed over her chest. “And there’s more. I caught more, Leona. But I need the words. Joel and Claire, for some reason they’re tied together in this ugly curse-package.”
Leona glanced at Owen and he nodded slowly. Owen understood perfectly. Leona must explain other disastrous events. “Five years ago—”
Greer’s eyes flashed at Leona. “Five years ago, Claire miscarried. She’d walked into a robbery in progress. The emotions of the frightened crowd in the bank had caused her to overload and faint. She was taken to the hospital, the wrong thing for a delicate empath who is disabled and can’t protect herself. I used my gifts to unravel some of this ugly story. According to what I learned from the staff later, the doctor and nurse who treated her had changed dramatically. Their personalities had become irrational at times. They angered quickly, they stole things, and there was even a report of quick sex in a storage room. Then there was the improper diagnosis and the incomplete paperwork. Even their signatures had changed. Unable to protect herself, Claire would have been surrounded by their greed, lust, hatred…every conceivable evil emotion known to mankind. On maximum overload, she lost her baby and almost her mind.”
Greer’s fierce expression softened slightly. “Your husband’s accident was also five years ago, too. I got the image that someone invited him to go for that snowmobile ride.”
“A man with sharp features and black eyes. He was very busy five years ago.”
“And getting stronger.”
Leona looked at Owen for reassurance. The next death would be even worse to explain. Owen nodded and gently eased Leona from his lap. “Do it.”
She moved to Greer, framed her mother’s face with her hands. With her forehead against her mother’s, Leona focused on images of her maternal grandmother, the kind ones drawing a tender smile from Greer. Then Leona began opening the doors to the darkness slowly, letting the winding streams of red encircle a face with familiar features, slightly different from that of Janice’s sketch. Wine poured in glasses, firelight shimmering in the glasses, turning the wine bloodred. A masculine hand raised, and a silky powder was poured into one drink. The wineglass raised to the woman’s lips….
Focused entirely on the scene, Leona felt her mother’s mind slide into the stream of blue and green, tendrils of red circling them, binding mother and daughter as they coursed together. Greer trembled, but her fingers locked on to Leona’s wrists.
The powder swirled in the glass, and a woman with green eyes and long, red hair raised it to her lips once more.
“Mother…” Greer whispered unevenly, and her eyes opened. “She had an affair. It began with a drugged interlude, then she was blackmailed into more rendezvous. My father died of a heart attack a year later, and she never forgave herself. That’s why…”
Greer held Leona’s face now, looking deeply into her eyes. “How did you know? Don’t tell me you communicated with the dead. How could you know she went mad because of that affair? I didn’t even know.”
“She took her life, not because of her gifts, but because of that affair. She couldn’t live with her betrayal of Grandpa and the probability that she had caused his heart failure. When Dad died, she came to stay with us for a while. Her mind was already slipping, but she tried to keep herself stronger for you—you were so fragile then. She managed for a while, but the timing was so awful. She did try to tell you, but couldn’t. Then she committed suicide to protect us, to end the weakened connection.”
Greer’s hand went to her heart, her expression stunned. “When she stayed with us after Daniel died, you were less than five years old. I was—”
“Vulnerable. She told me I had to be strong for you, and that I had to get my sisters to do the same. We had to see you through, because she knew she was getting weaker. Those images must have been lying in wait for me all these years, until I was a woman and could better understand.”
Leona glanced at Owen, seated in the shadows. His light eyes caught the candlelight, his finger and thumb smoothed that silver rune at his throat.
“Finish it. Tell her the rest.” Owen ordered roughly, his deep voice pulsing around Leona. When she hesitated, Owen leaned forward, his voice sharp and commanding. “Now, Leona. Finish it now.”
Greer’s wide eyes stared at Leona in disbelief. “I always knew you held Aisling closer than any of our family. I need to know. Do what Owen says, finish it.”
“For years, I’d been troubled by what I thought was only Grams’s ramblings. But—Let me do it this way.” Leona placed her forehead against her mother’s and called back the image of her grandmother leaning close to Leona as a child.
Grams’s fingers had gripped Leona’s thin arms tightly as she’d whispered urgently, “He’s coming for all of you. He has someone now who is getting strong and evil enough. He’s already killed. He’ll be an adult before he comes after you and the object he must have…. I won’t be here. You and your sisters have to be strong for your mother. You have to protect all of them. I’m so sorry, Leona. I can’t do this. He’s coming…you’ve got to stop him, Leona.”
“Oh my God…. My mother held on for another five years—she died just after that so-called gang of medical researchers took you and your sisters….” Greer suddenly pushed back from Leona, her body doubled as if in pain. She sagged back onto the sofa, her arms wrapped around herself.
Leona hurried to her mother, but Owen rose to draw her away. “You’re too filled with the past now, Leona. She can’t take more. I’ll do it.”
He sat beside Greer and drew her against him. “Listen to the sound of the ocean, Greer. Listen, see the ocean and your home and your daughters, and close out everything else.”
Exhausted by pushing herself far beyond the limits she understood, Leona leaned against a wall. She covered her face with her hands and tried to separate herself from that traumatic memory.
“I know exactly who he is, in the flesh,” Greer murmured. She bent down to hold her face in her hands. “I should have known all along.”
Rolf Erling smoothed a cloth over the well-polished sword blade. He held it up to the firelight. He thought of how Owen Shaw’s blood would soon coat the tip. Like a scarlet ribbon, Shaw’s blood would flow down the long center indentation and drip from the ornate guard.
Missy’s neck had snapped so easily in his hands. But then, he’d been practicing since his preteens and had become quite the expert. Alex Cheslav’s scrawny neck had been almost as easy to break as Missy’s.
Missy Franklin had been simply another tool that Rolf had needed. And she had performed badly. Rolf had explained very carefully why she had to die. “It’s not my fault that you failed to get close to Leona or to destroy her bond with Shaw. He wouldn’t be there, in that house with her mother now, if you’d been successful. You were supposed to separate Shaw and Leona emotionally and get that guard dog out into the open where I could kill him.”
The image of the bitch-in-heat running from the German shepherd flitted through the shadows of Rolf’s underground sanctuary. The bitch had drawn the German shepherd out into the field, but Shaw had quickly stopped the German shepherd from engaging with her. Shaw and Leona couldn’t be hit by Rolf’s high-powered rifle. Gunshot wasn’t how they should be destroyed, else he could have killed Shaw earlier with his own father’s revolver. Rolf lifted the sword to the candlelight and studied it; he preferred the tried-and-true, hands-on method.
“No wonder Shaw and Leona get along so well with that dog. Its ancestry traces back to the wolf, the standard of Thorgood, the man who took everything from my family.”
>
Rolf ran his thumb along the honed blade, created by a master craftsman. He’d boasted that it was his best work, and Rolf had instantly decided that the craftsman would not forge another as fine. The man’s death was the blade’s first taste of blood—it seemed only fitting. “Greer can’t stay forever. She’s too smart for that. She knows she gets weaker the longer she is away from the ocean. I’ve never had a functioning problem with geography. All I need are people to feed my energy. When she leaves, it’s back to business as usual.”
He placed the tip of the blade on his mirrored image. In his mind, tiny cracks radiated from that silvery surface. The cracks spidered out, and the mirror seemed to drip away, revealing a familiar, ancient scene: Borg raged at Thorgood, furious that the seer, Aisling, had chosen the Viking chieftain instead of him. A seer in his own right, but one who used mind-altering herbs and dark spells, and fed off the minds of others, Borg had yelled his curse on the witch and the chieftain’s line. Then out of the transparent mist on the mirror, Viking warriors took shape, each fiercely pledged to protect the line he had cursed. When Borg had sought safety, the hunter, a minor seer, had led the pack to him. His own brotherhood had turned against him, led by that man named Hunter, despite the fact that Borg’s visions had kept them safe through crossings and raids. And now Thorgood had replaced him with the red-haired witch….
With Aisling’s unlimited gifts, Borg could have ruled the world—instead, he was left with nothing.
Rolf had learned much from his father, from the oral generation-to-generation history. Each man of the Borg bloodline was bred to carry out the curse. For centuries, they’d studied the strange vulnerabilities of the mind, those little triggers that could link one incident to another like images brought about by the mist.
Claire and Tempest had responded nicely to his psychic calling; that sailboat tipping when the triplets were three gave them a fear of water that had made them vulnerable. Leona was equally vulnerable and receptive. The findings of the parapsychologists’ tests had been only too easy for Rolf’s father to acquire; the institute’s janitor had easy access to everything about the famous triplets.
