Circle of Death (14 page)

She nodded. He opened the door and ushered Camille inside. Sighing, Kirby leaned back against the wall. The chill of the bricks pressed into her back, easing the fire a little. Her gaze skated across the nearby buildings and settled on the perimeter fence. Bottle-brush and flowering gums lined it, the bright red and gold of their flowers flashing like fire in the fog. For an instant, a memory surfaced—Helen and her, weaving through the trunks of the trees, running in fear. She closed her eyes, trying to remember just what—or whom—they’d run from. But the memory slipped back to the recesses of her mind. She swore and opened her eyes.

Her gaze drifted across the buildings, coming to rest on the third of the five that sat opposite. Like the one beside it, it had been partially destroyed by fire and the elements, and vandals had covered it with graffiti. But the building was theirs—that was where they’d stayed.

She pushed away from the wall. She would see anyone approaching this door from over there, and she could use the shadows crowding the entrance porch to hide in if anyone did walk by. Besides, she had a very bad feeling she
needed
to remember what had happened in this place.

She headed for the third dorm. If she remembered right, the doors were half glass. Maybe she could peer in and jog a few more memories loose.

She was close to the main entrance when she noticed the doors were actually open, and she stopped abruptly. Inside, someone whistled tunelessly, and memories beckoned.

She knew that tune. Had heard it often when she was a little girl stuck here in the darkness.

Clenching her fingers, she walked past the ramps and up the steps, heading inside.

D
OYLE STOPPED
. M
OTES OF DUST DANCED SLUGGISHLY
in the light filtering in from the skylight above them, but it did little to lift the shadows that filled the corridor. Boxes and broken bits of furniture lined the walls, and the whole place smelled of age and decay. No one had been through here in a very long time. No one human, anyway.

“Can you smell him?” Camille whispered softly.

He nodded. “Three doors down.”

“Magic?”

“Two doors down.” Its echo was so sharp his skin burned with it. “It’s got the same feel as the magic that was being performed on Rachel Grant.”

Which had to mean there was something here to find; otherwise, why bother setting a spell in this wasteland?

Camille grunted and pushed past. She stopped near the door, studying it for several seconds. Magic stirred, but this time it felt clean, sunshine compared to rain. Camille, battling the spell with one of her own. After several seconds, she gave a satisfied sigh.

“Looped it,” she said, “so we can get past without triggering it. And it’ll still feel set to the caster.”

“Good.” He hurried to the third door. The scuffing had stopped. No one moved inside, no one breathed. And the only person he could smell was Russell.

Warily, he stepped inside. The room was another wasteland of decay and boxes. Dust-caked windows lined the far wall, filtering brightness into the room—brightness that could kill his friend. Russell was lying in one corner, half in the shadows, half out, his hands and feet tied by wire and tape covering his mouth. Sweat beaded his forehead, and his skin looked red, as if sunburned.

Doyle swore. “Camille, get your van and bring it around the back. The gate is open.”

She hurried off. He took off his coat and flung it over his friend, protecting his uncovered skin from the sun’s rays. Then, tucking his hands under Russell’s shoulders, he dragged him back into the safety of the shadow-filled corridor.

He ripped the tape off Russell’s mouth. As he began unwinding the wire from the vampire’s hands, expletives fell thick and fast into the gloom.

“Tell us what you’re really feeling,” Doyle said, amused.

“When we catch the bitch,” Russell muttered, “she’s going to get a taste of her own medicine.”

Doyle flipped the wire into the rubbish behind him, then shifted to undo the wire around Russell’s feet. “Meaning she’s a vamp?”

“No,” Russell snapped, rubbing his head. “Meaning I’m going to hit the witch over the head and kick her in the gut and groin a few times, just like she did to me.”

“
Tsk
. That’s no way to treat a lady.”

“This is no lady we’re dealing with, believe me.”

He rose and offered Russell a hand up. “It’s unlike you to let anyone sneak up on you. What happened?”

“A goddamn spell. I was looking through the files in some boxes, and suddenly I couldn’t move. Then she appeared from nowhere and clubbed me.”

Doyle raised an eyebrow. “Which suggests she didn’t know you were a vampire. Otherwise, she might have staked you.”

“True,” Russell muttered. “I guess she figured it out pretty quickly, though, because she was cackling when she dragged me into the sunlight.”

“Did she take the files you were looking at?”

“Yeah. But I did manage to get a look at a couple of them first.”

Doyle glanced around as Camille approached. She offered Russell some sunburn cream and patted his shoulder, a look of relief on her face.

“And?” Doyle prodded Russell.

“One was Rachel Grant’s file. Like Helen, she’d been put up for adoption as a baby, but her adoptive parents were killed in a freak storm. A tree went through the roof and crushed them in bed.”

“How old was she when this happened?” Camille asked, frowning.

“Seven.”

“Too young to have gone through puberty,” she murmured. “Talents don’t usually appear until then—unless they’re freakishly strong. What happened to Rachel after that?”

“None of the relatives wanted her, so she came back into government care. She was farmed out to a series of foster parents, but she never lasted with any
of them. The records state she was classed a ‘difficult’ child and she ended up in this center.”

“Like Helen,” Camille said. “It’s looking more and more like this place is the connection.”

“And the second file?” Doyle asked, although he had a pretty good idea who that second file was about.

Russell glanced at him. “Kirby Brown. She was never adopted, and there’s no mention of why. She stayed in several long-term foster homes, but ended up here at eleven.”

“And this is where she and Helen met,” he said, wondering about the strong bond between the two of them. It went far deeper than mere friendship. If he were to believe her thoughts, it was almost as if they’d been spiritually bonded—something that usually only ever happened between twins.

Camille raised an eyebrow. “Has Kirby said much about this place?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t think she can actually remember much about her time here.” Which was odd, considering she seemed to be able to remember everything else about her past.

“Then you’d better start trying to jog her memories, because I’ve got a feeling the answers are locked in the past and what happened in this place.” Camille glanced back at Russell. “Nothing else in those files? None of the other names on the list?”

“There might be. I didn’t get a chance to go through the rest of the files.”

“And now the witch has them. Damn,” Camille commented.

“Nothing’s ever easy when it comes to tracking evil,”
Doyle said. “Do you want to continue checking the boxes?”

Camille shook her head. “Waste of time now. If there
was
anything else here, she would have taken it.”

“And she now knows we’re hunting her,” Russell said. “We need to find the remaining two women.”

They also needed to uncover just
how
Kirby was connected to all this. Was the witch merely after power, or was there something deeper going on? “Have you found anything more about that symbol she’s been carving on the doors?”

“I’m doing an online search through the Circle’s library. It’s going to take time.”

The problem was, time was running out. And with Kirby on the killer’s list, he wanted this case solved as soon as possible.

He glanced at his watch. Half an hour had passed. They wouldn’t be able to reclaim the car just yet. “Do you think it’s safe for me to bring Kirby back in yet?”

Camille hesitated. “I’d rather not take the chance. And to be honest, if the killer is concentrating on finding you and Kirby, then maybe Russell and I can catch her unaware.”

It was a good plan, but he wasn’t happy about using Kirby as bait. Too many things could go wrong—like her running. He had to catch some sleep sometime, and sooner or later she
would
take advantage of it.

“What’s your plan, then?”

“First we get our sunburned friend somewhere safe and out of the light, then I’ll continue searching for that symbol. You and Kirby can go on hunting for our final victim. If you have no luck, Russ can go out again tonight.”

“Did you get those photos I sent you?”

“Yes, but I haven’t had much of a chance to look at them yet.” She patted his arm. “Now, you’d better go find that girl of yours. She’s wandered off again.”

He frowned. “No, she hasn’t.”

Camille raised an eyebrow. “Are you doubting an old woman? She wasn’t at the door when I drove up.”

“Maybe not, but she’s close.”

“She has a pretty distinct smell if you can still catch it above the dust and decay in here,” Russell commented, eyeing him with amusement. “A little smitten with the girl, are we?”

“No.” He was well past being smitten. “I can read her thoughts, and I have no idea why.”

Russ raised his eyebrows. “She telepathic?”

“No, and neither am I—as you know.”

Russ snorted. “Yeah. It’s easier to draw blood from a stone than it is to reach through your thick skull.”

Doyle grinned. “At least it stops you from putting improper thoughts in my head. Like the time you tried to get me—”

“Enough,” Camille said, frowning. “What other talents has she got?”

“Energy,” he said. “It races across her fingers like lightning, and she can cast it like a net.”

Camille’s frown deepened. “Drawing down lightning is usually the provenance of a storm witch, and Kirby certainly isn’t one of those. She has a completely different energy output.”

“Could it be some form of elemental magic?” Russ asked.

“Maybe, but elementals are extremely rare. Besides, air elementals are merely the conduit for the energy.
They rarely have enough control to weave something as intricate as a web.” Her expression was thoughtful. “Let’s get back to the office. Doyle, keep in regular contact.”

“I will.”

He followed them from the building. Camille opened the van’s back doors. The van had been fully lined with sun-blocking material. You could never be too careful when a vampire was part of your team.

Russell dove in and Camille slammed the door shut before he started to sizzle. “I think I know what that symbol being carved on the door is,” she said. “And if I’m right, we could be in real trouble. I’ll call and let you know in a few hours. In the meantime, keep that girl of yours safe.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

She climbed into the van and drove off. He shoved his hands into his pockets and headed across to the third building to find Kirby.

O
FFICE FURNITURE LINED THE WALLS WHERE ONCE
there had been two long rows of beds. Kirby stopped in the middle of the dorm, her gaze going to the fourth window from the remains of the back wall. That was where her bed had been. Helen, when she’d finally arrived at the center, had slept next to her. Damn it, why couldn’t she remember this place, when everything else was so clear?

She sniffed, and the smell hit her—age and mustiness, mixed with the pungent scent of ammonia. Memories stirred, as did her fear. She retreated a step, then stopped. Running wasn’t going to help anyone. If something
had happened in this room, she needed to remember it. The answer to why Helen was murdered could lie anywhere, even in something as innocuous as memories long locked away.

The whistling was coming from the ruins of the back of the dorm, from what had once been the nurse’s quarters. She took a few more steps forward, then stopped. “Hello?”

The whistling cut off abruptly, and a soft whirring filled the gloom. Two seconds later, a man in an electric wheelchair appeared in the doorway, his berry-brown face fixed into a scowl. “And what would you be doing here, girlie?”

His voice was as flat and lifeless as his brown eyes, and it sent a chill up her spine. She knew that voice. In the past she had feared it.

She again resisted the impulse to run. “I’m …” She hesitated, uncertain whether she should really be talking to this man. Surely if she’d once feared him, it had been for good reason. “I stayed at this center for a while. I’m just trying to find a friend I met here.”

Why she lied, she wasn’t entirely sure. She certainly wasn’t going to get much information about her past by inquiring about someone else, and yet instinct suggested it was better than mentioning who she was. Though she had no idea why this would be dangerous, she trusted her instincts. They’d saved her too often in the past to ignore them now.

The old man’s gaze narrowed, and he rolled a little farther into the room. He was scrawny, with thick, steel-gray hair that looked silver in the morning light. He had a clipboard on his lap, and his hands were long and thin. The hands of a piano player, she thought.