Burning Darkness Read online

  “Maybe,” she said, giving him her coy smile again.

  “Who . . . are . . . you?”

  She liked that he couldn’t catch his breath as she moved her hands over his body. “Call me whatever you’d like.”

  He laughed, soft and husky. “This has got to be a dream, which means I’m finally asleep. Thank God.” He looked up at her. “I’ll call you Tawny. Come here, Tawny. I want you to sit on me. I’m going to grind into you and suck you raw.”

  The words stirred her. Yes, raw. She leaned down, as though to do much more than just place a kiss on his stomach. She bet his skin was soft and that those fine golden hairs would tickle her lips, and if she impaled herself on his massive erection and drove her fingernails into his shoulders when she came . . .

  Shock and disgust threw her out of her mission. She blinked to find herself back in her own bed, covered in a fine sheen of perspiration. Her breath came in shallow pants. The worst, the absolutely worst part was the throbbing between her legs.

  She got to her knees and smacked her forehead against the wall. “Whore! Slut!” Her body had responded to her enemy’s. She was weak, a traitor. “Piece of trash.”

  Those were her stepmother’s words, echoing in her brain as they often did. She deserved every one of them. Back then, no. Now . . . yes.

  With her forehead pressed against the wall, she banged her fists on either side of her head. Big, gulping breaths kept away her fury and tears. She sagged back onto the bed. Fatigue came from the tension that it took to keep that fine, tenuous thread between body and soul. When her soul thrust back into her body, the rush of energy was the final, exhausting straw.

  “I will do this. I’ll kill him even if I have to die trying.”

  Eric blinked as the sexy nymph disappeared. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around. Was he dreaming? He felt as awake as he’d been for the last many days. He even pinched himself and felt the pain of it. Damn. Awake. Bleary-eyed, rubber-brained, but awake, and with a junior-high boner. He dropped back on the bed.

  “Hell. I am hallucinating.”

  This wasn’t good. How many steps away from insanity? First, visions of naked women because it had been way too long since he’d had sex. Then what? Would he see the enemy sneaking in with guns and kill them, only to discover he’d killed his friends?

  Psychosis.

  The warning Eric had gotten echoed in his head. Another one of their kind had suffered from sleeplessness right before he went whacked and killed his mother. Eric hadn’t slept since he’d burned Jerryl. Overuse of their abilities could push them over the edge.

  He had rushed headlong into dangerous situations. He’d faced death. Never had he felt afraid. What the sleeplessness and hallucinations meant . . . the prospect scared the hell out of him.

  Chapter 2

  An urgent knock on her door shot Fonda out of bed. She had the trippy mental picture of Eric standing there.

  Who the hell is it?

  It was seven-thirty in the morning. Even during decent hours, she rarely had visitors. She let no one into her life, so there wasn’t a chance that it was some friend in need. Maybe a neighbor, like that elderly lady who had given her a wary smile when she offered to carry up the woman’s groceries once.

  She grabbed her switchblade and peered through the door’s peephole to see a man she didn’t recognize. Wait a minute. She did recognize him! The man who’d been following her last night. Holy crap, how had he found her?

  “What do you want?” she called out, hoping he couldn’t hear the tremble in her voice.

  “Fonda Raine?” He knew her name. Stalker? Crazed rapist?

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Agent Westerfield with the FBI. I’m here to ask you about your work with Gerard Darkwell.”

  That threw her. She tried to get a better look at him. His long coat was draped over his arm. He wore a simple suit, hair brushed back in a neat style, posture straight and businesslike, sort of Fox Mulderish, she supposed. She’d had a ginormous crush on David Duchovny in the X-Files days. He believed in monsters and psychic abilities, in oddities like her. The man at her door was handsome, but he was no Fox.

  “Hold on a minute.”

  She ran to the bathroom, grabbed the switchblade from the floor, and pressed it behind her back as she opened the door a crack. “Your ID?”

  He showed her a badge that looked authentic, but how could you really know? He was probably in his late forties, his brown hair streaked with silver. He glanced in both directions before saying, “The FBI is studying the unusual project in which you were involved. With the fire, some of the data is lost. I need you to fill in the gaps.”

  She didn’t want to go back there. Only look ahead, not back. But the words came out: “Will the FBI continue the project?”

  “Possibly.”

  Darkwell, a muckety-muck at the CIA, had tapped her for a top-secret government program. She, a nobody from the projects, doing important work. For the first time in her life, she had felt important. And the money had been great, enough to give her a cushion of security she’d never had.

  “Come in.” She opened the door and gestured for him to sit in the bright yellow vinyl chair, a relic from the sixties. “It’s a rocker,” she warned as he eyed it dubiously. “Or you can have the bubble chair.”

  He cleared his throat. “This is fine.”

  She loved things from the past. Life seemed safer then, more innocent. She tucked the switchblade beneath her leg as she sat on the arm of the couch.

  He settled into the chair, steadying it, and then looked at her. “We’ve been trying to track you down since the fire at Darkwell’s estate.”

  The fire Eric Aruda had no doubt set, which destroyed the mansion where she’d been living and working, and that killed Darkwell. “I spent some time with my father.” Sounded so nice and heartwarming, going home for support. “What do you want to know?”

  He held up a digital recorder. “May I? I want to get the details right.” He flipped it on and held it in his hand. “Tell me about your work with Darkwell. I know it was of a supernatural nature.”

  “We considered it paranormal. How much do you know?”

  His mouth twitched, but he kept his expression passive. “To be honest, not much.” He paused, maybe giving her a chance to start rattling away, which she didn’t. “Let’s start with you. You obviously have a super-paranormal ability that Darkwell considered valuable.”

  “I can astral project.” It had been so odd to hear Darkwell casually put into words what she had hidden for so long.

  Westerfield gave no indication of what he thought. “You and the two other contractors were using your abilities to do what, exactly?”

  “Find and kill terrorists. It was supposed to be ones in the Middle East, but a local group called the Rogues were trying to sabotage the program, so we were mostly targeting them. They also have abilities.”

  Finally something made him react. His light gray eyes glittered with interest. “Tell me everything you know about them.”

  She did, ending with, “They’re dangerous. Will you kill them? That’s what Darkwell was trying to do.”

  Instead of answering, he verified the spelling of the names he’d written down. “Just before the fire that destroyed the house there was another fire that killed one of Darkwell’s contractors.”

  A gasp escaped her throat. “Jerryl Evrard,” she whispered. Say it without emotion. The horror had spliced her open and let her deepest fears and feelings bleed out. “Eric Aruda psychically set Jerryl on fire.”

  While we were making love.

  Those horrible moments came roaring back: Jerryl’s scream, the eruption of flames, the ungodly smell of burning flesh. She had been right there, dammit, and couldn’t help him. She tried to smother the flames with a blanket, but it had done nothing. She still had nightmares, still heard his screams of agony, and worse, the silence of death. She had lived, and he had died.

  Even tha
t didn’t shock Westerfield. He took it in as though she’d told him about a summer storm, impassively jotting something down. “There was a prisoner at the estate named Sayre Andrus. What do you know about him?”

  “I knew there was some guy locked in the attic, under guard, but that’s about all. He might have died in the fire. I heard they found two bodies in the rubble.”

  He gauged her every word, her expression, or at least it seemed that way. She felt that power of being important again.

  The chair wobbled as he shifted, and he planted his foot to steady it. “You were not at the estate when the fire broke out?”

  “Darkwell told me to go home, that he suspected there might be trouble from the Rogues.” She’d been angry that he didn’t think she could handle it or help. Maybe she could have taken out one of them. Maybe she could have killed Eric.

  “What did Darkwell tell you about your abilities? About how you came to have them?”

  “He said I inherited my ability from my mother.”

  “That’s all he told you?”

  “What else is there to know?”

  He stood. “Thank you, Ms. Raine. I don’t have to tell you that this subject remains highly classified and should not be discussed with anyone. I trust you haven’t.”

  She shook her head, coming to her feet, too, gripping the switchblade behind her back. “Who would believe me?”

  His mouth betrayed a trace of a smile. “True.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “We’ll be in touch.”

  She watched him walk to a black sedan parked out at the curb and get in, though the car remained in its spot for several minutes. Did she want to work for the government again? She couldn’t think about that right now. She couldn’t think of anything but her mission. Revenge kept her going, a gnawing hunger that filled her being. She was afraid that after Eric was dead, she would have a big, gaping hole inside her. Maybe a new top-secret mission would fill that hole.

  Her phone rang. She walked over to the red acrylic telephone stand but let the machine pick up.

  “Hey . . . hon. It’s your dad. I see your stuff is gone, so I’m figuring you went home. That’s okay,” he hurried on to say. “Could you give me a call and let me know you’re all right?” A pause, then a nervous laugh. “I guess I got a taste of how it was living with me all those years . . . like living with a zombie. One day I’d like to . . . well, I can’t make it up to you. But I’d like to try. Funny how it’s easier to say this to a machine than it would have been when you were here.” Another pause. “Okay, I’ll talk to you soon.”

  Her fingers gripped the phone but she couldn’t pick it up. She had never said a thing about why she’d shown up at his house with a duffel bag and a request to stay for a few days, which ended up being a few weeks. He’d never asked.

  “As long as Connie’s in the picture, you’ll never make it up to me,” she said to the phone. “She’ll be out of jail soon, and you’ll go back to using. I can’t lose my dad again. I’ve lost too much already.”

  The man posing as John Westerfield closed the car door and dialed his brother. He knew Malcolm would be in a private place awaiting his call.

  “It’s Neil. Darkwell was doing exactly what we suspected. He recreated the program with the offspring of the original program.”

  He could feel Malcolm’s fury pulsing in the silence but knew restraint would overcome it. After all, restraint had been bred into them from birth.

  “Why didn’t he come to me?” he said at last, a rhetorical question, but Neil answered anyway.

  “He knew you would shut him down. You have a lot more to lose now if this gets out. The seven offspring Darkwell called Rogues are a big problem. She gave me a rundown of their abilities. Eric Aruda is the most dangerous. I’ll fill you in on the details later.”

  “Seven. Seven people who know about Darkwell. Possibly about their origins. It’s messy. I don’t like it.”

  Neil stroked the vehicle’s shifter. “Messy but manageable. Remember what I did last time. I was brilliant, if I don’t say so myself.”

  Malcolm released a breath, possibly of relief. “Yes, it did work out well. But they weren’t expecting it. These people are. They all have to go. Start with Fonda, as she’ll be the easiest to dispatch. Target Eric next.”

  “Now? She’s still in her apartment, so small, my fingers could go around her neck twice.”

  “You’re salivating, aren’t you?”

  Neil swallowed. “It’s been a long time since I’ve killed someone. I’m so ready.”

  “Not now. Someone might have seen you or there could be cameras. We have to be careful. Everything we’ve worked for is at stake. She’s bound to go someplace where you can take her out neatly and quickly. Make it look like a simple mugging, nothing weird that will pique a medical examiner’s interest or show up as an oddity in the news.” He let those words settle for a moment like dust. “Then you can work on finding the rest of them. You’ll get to kill plenty. That should keep you happy for a while.”

  As though he could be placated like a demanding child. Neil disconnected.

  They had been raised to eschew emotions and follow rigid rules, but the world had infected them with its emotions. They were everywhere, filling the air with their intoxicating scents. He breathed them in, made them his own: jealousy, rage, bitterness. How unfair that his brother should still impose rules on him. To preserve Malcolm’s career, he had curtailed himself. Now he was being given permission to kill, but with limitations. There was another emotion he had assimilated: anger.

  Maybe he wouldn’t take Fonda out quickly. He could take her to the lab. Like Darkwell had experimented with people with enhanced psychic abilities long ago, though he himself would work with Fonda for fun.

  Neil pulled away from the curb and into the flow of traffic. People hurried about their business, unaware of the magnificence in their midst. Hunger and lust filled him, sharpened by anger. He stopped at a red light and watched a man crossing the street with a group of pedestrians. Another drone. A drone that reminded him of his own role here . . . a drone in his brother’s hive.

  Neil reached toward the man, feeling the power surge inside him. He imagined his hand thrusting into the man’s chest, the soft squishiness of his heart pumping in his palm. He squeezed. The man grasped his chest and dropped to the ground, his face a mask of agony. A shame to use his powers in such a hidden way. Much more exciting would be to make his heart explode right out of his chest, splattering blood all over the people around him. So spectacular. Too weird.

  Someone knelt by the man and checked his pulse. Neil kept squeezing. A horn blasted behind him. Impatience. Annoyance. Traffic did not stop just because a man was dying. The driver behind him gestured for him to go.

  Neil looked at the drone, sprawled out on the asphalt, no longer moving. Fonda Raine would soon be the same.

  ***

  Eric flopped down in bed, but his eyes were open, his brain wired awake. Why couldn’t he sleep?

  Too much on your mind, that’s all.

  But there wasn’t that much going on. After a month and a half of hell, no one was trying to kill him and the people he cared about. The damned thing of it was, he couldn’t even enjoy it.

  Eric opened his nightstand drawer and took out a Ho Ho. As his teeth sank into the chocolate cake, his mind went to his current task: find Sayre Andrus. Without Darkwell’s directive to kill the Rogues, Sayre had been happy to menace them for personal pleasure. So far Sayre had thwarted their efforts to find him.

  He would find Sayre, torch him, and then stop using his pyrokinesis unless absolutely necessary. He no longer had the taste for watching the flames. Yes, he’d felt victory when he sent Jerryl to his fiery hell, but something had changed, erasing that sensuous pull of destruction. He had inadvertently caused two sort-of innocent people to die. He wasn’t even pissed that he hadn’t been the one to kill Darkwell.

  At least he’d had a sweet hallucination. Mo
re like a succubus, seducing him and then torturing him with an unresolved hard-on. He looked at the Thomas Rut paintings that adorned his walls, his one luxury. He half expected one of those women to step out of the painting and start talking to him.

  Eric closed his eyes, willing sleep to come. He managed to grab snatches here and there, but never deep enough for dreams. He drifted into that jagged sleep, also a tease. He didn’t know how much time passed until he opened his eyes again. His chest tightened. The hallucination was back. Tawny. Ghostly, shimmering, beautiful in a flowing dress with a long scarf flowing from her hair.

  “Go away.”

  She walked toward him like a cat, her hips swaying, movements fluid. Her smile reminded him of the Cheshire cat, conspiratorial, mischievous. “I don’t want to. And I don’t think you really want me to either.”

  Oh, he liked the seduction. It was what her presence meant that bothered him.

  He turned his head. “You’re not real.”

  She touched him in that not-real way, running her finger down the center of his chest, following the line of his hair just past the blazing erection he had despite the fact that he didn’t want her there.

  Just to further prove how nuts he was.

  “Mm, I see you do like me here. You can feel me, can’t you?”

  He could, a soft, hot energy that left a burning trail across his skin. “My imagination,” he managed on a whisper. Damn, he had to get laid. He couldn’t handle this craving, this hunger. Maybe the hallucination would go away if he wasn’t so horny.

  “What if I was real? What if I’m a soul fragment of a lonely girl? A dream connection, two souls meeting . . .”

  “Like Lucas and Amy.”

  She paused. “Who?”

  He waved his hand. “Never mind.”

  She continued running her hands over his chest. He grabbed for them, but his hands went right through hers.

  “How come I can feel you touching me, but I can’t touch you?”

  She shrugged, though her fingers trailed first around one nipple, then another, causing them to tighten painfully. “I don’t know how this works.”