Death at First Sight (Spero Heights Book 2) (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

The Datsun groaned as Dr. Delph pressed his foot into the gas pedal. It bounced over a hill, and he felt his stomach launch into his throat as the top of his head smacked the ceiling. The road would start winding soon, and he would be forced to slow down, so he needed to make up for as much lost time as he possibly could now.

He prayed that Lia was still alive. He couldn’t imagine Saunders taking her if he just intended to kill her soon after. She was valuable to him and his professional ambitions. Dr. Delph’s hope was hinged on that fact, though it nearly shattered when he rounded a corner and spotted the smoking carnage of Saunders’ car. Rain speckled the smashed hood, and the engine made a clicking noise, still humming out its death rattle.

Dr. Delph’s brakes squeaked as he pulled off on the side of the road.
What am I doing?
he thought, pushing his door open. He was alone and unarmed. Saunders had a gun, and if he saw that Dr. Delph was still alive, he was sure to aim for his head next.

An engine roared behind him as he climbed out of the Datsun. Zelda parked Logan’s rusty blue truck on the roadside and quickly joined him, peering into Saunders’ mangled car for survivors.

“Selena called, but the pack is out under the moon tonight. What the hell’s going on?” she asked, glancing further down the road to where it disappeared around the next bend. “Whose car is this?”

The woods were extra noisy, and as Dr. Delph strained to hear through the crickets and the hiss of the wind, he thought he heard someone shouting beyond the trees.

Zelda’s eyes widened as she heard it too. “We should wait for Selena,” she said quietly, giving him a worried look.

“Not a chance.” He ducked back into his car long enough to grab the flashlight out of his glove compartment. Then he tore off into the woods without a second thought. Lia was out there somewhere. Saunders too.

Dr. Delph gritted his teeth as something slithered across his ankle. He hated the woods. For as fond as he was of holistic remedies and nature in general, he just couldn’t bring himself to find comfort in the thicker stretches of overgrown wilderness. It reminded him too much of his childhood.

His mother had been a free spirit, living her life recklessly and caving to every desire, knowing her time was fleeting. When she’d passed on, he was sent to live with Henry, the man who had fathered him. He was a rugged creature, much more suited to be one of his mother’s lovers than a young boy’s role model. He’d been a violent drunk too.

Dr. Delph remembered the last night he’d seen him, standing in the doorway of his cabin, a mostly empty bottle of tequila in one hand and a shotgun in the other. Dr. Delph had just packed his bags for Europe. He was seventeen, and tired of constantly being reminded that he wasn’t living up to his father’s absurd expectations. He didn’t know how to hold his liquor. He didn’t fight or hunt. He looked too much like his mother, and he had a girly name. It was always something different.

If you’re leaving, Chris, don’t even think about coming back. I’ll kill you,
Henry had said.
Dr. Delph had the feeling that he was relieved to be rid of him, but just to make sure he’d driven the threat home, Henry had blasted out several rounds from the shotgun. It was enough to scare any teenager senseless, and Dr. Delph had spent the next hour running through the trees that stretched between the cabin and the state road a few miles away, positive that the bastard was right on his tail.

Night descended before he’d made it out of those woods, and he didn’t see the barbed wire fence until he’d tripped upon it, his hands grasping out blindly. The barbs tore through his flesh as he tried to brace his fall, and the scars across his palms ached at the memory.

He hadn’t been alone in the woods since, and he had no desire to be. But tonight, none of that mattered. As he pushed through the thick flora, he focused on the future instead of the past and tried to process the new visions that the Fates had dropped on him, searching for something familiar or useful. He was sure he had seen a full moon in there somewhere. Maybe a babbling creek. He forged ahead, trying to remember where the local nymphs’ swimming hole was located. He’d seen it on the map in Graham’s study.

Zelda’s hushed voiced wove through the trees behind him, laced with enchantment. She was casting a spell from the road, trying to saddle the void between aiding him and obeying Selena.

An eerie fog lifted up from the damp earth, glowing softly in the scattered moonlight. It lent enough visibility that Dr. Delph was able to increase his speed through the perilous underbrush. He hurried, trying to stay ahead of it before it could reach Saunders and aid him as well.

No more than a few minutes could have passed, but Dr. Delph’s heart beat like he’d been running for hours. A rustling noise to the left caught his attention, and then an unseen animal grunted from the shadowy undergrowth, setting his teeth on edge.

He crouched down low, twisting in a wide circle as he searched for the source of the sounds. The fog thickened, and crickets filled his ears with white noise, disorienting him until he was unsure of what direction he’d come from.

Not too far away, a throaty cough sounded over the hum of nature.
Saunders.
Dr. Delph clicked off the flashlight. His breath heaved murderously as he forgot the long years he’d spent meditating and mastering the art of tranquil intuition. He was going to
kill
that monster—with his bare hands if he had to. The Fates had intended Lia for him, and he’d be damned if he was going to let a self-absorbed, dirty cop steal her away and condemn her back to the miserable existence she’d escaped.

“Lia!” he shouted through the trees. She was probably scared. He had to let her know that she wasn’t out there alone, even if it meant giving up his position. “Lia, I’m here! And more are on the way,” he added, hoping it would discourage Saunders and possibly scare him off.

“Christian?” Lia called out his first name. It was barely a whisper, but it echoed all around him and made goosebumps sprout up across his skin.

Dr. Delph stood slowly, turning in a circle and churning the fog as it coiled around the trees. “Lia?” She’d sounded so close.

Movement flickered from the corner of his eye, and his head jerked back as her face emerged from the mist. She stepped into a small clearing a few yards away, and if Dr. Delph hadn’t known any better, he would have thought she was a ghost.

Her blond hair looked white in the moonlight, wild ringlets haloing her face. Bits of grass and leaves clung to her battered flesh. One knee bled from beneath a pair of his running shorts, leaving a trail down to her ankle and across the top of her bare foot.

“Christian,” she said again, relief crumpling her features as she took a shuddering breath.
Maybe the woods aren’t so bad
, he thought, grateful that they’d protected her.

She took a step toward him, but then Saunders slipped out of the fog behind her.

Dr. Delph didn’t have time to warn Lia. He could only watch as the heathen’s bandaged hand slid over her arm and chest before grasping her throat. His fever had worsened, and blood from a gash across his scalp mingled with the sweat of his brow, creating a morbid mask as it ran down his face. He pulled Lia back against his chest, while his opposite hand held his gun out at Dr. Delph.

“You’re dead,” he shouted across the void. It almost sounded like a question. He squeezed off a round, but it missed, splintering a tree a few feet away. Dr. Delph flinched and held up his flashlight as Saunders pulled the trigger again, but the gun clicked empty.

He swore and tossed it aside. His teeth gnashed together and his amber eyes flickered. The muscles in his neck and face strained through his skin, and Dr. Delph held his breath as he realized what he was witnessing. Saunders was going to shift for the first time, with his meaty hand wrapped around Lia’s throat.

“I can help you,” Dr. Delph said, holding a hand up as he took a careful step toward them. He just needed to stall long enough for Selena to arrive. She’d know what to do. At the very least, she’d be able to face-off with Saunders in a fair fight—well, mostly fair. She
did
have more experience as a nocturnal predator.

“Stay back!” Saunders squeezed Lia’s throat, tilting her chin up until she was forced to close her eyes against the bright glare of the moon. The storm clouds had moved on, leaving a clear sky and a moist chill in the air.

“You were bitten, weren’t you?” Dr. Delph tried again, still inching closer. “I know exactly what you need.”
A shallow grave,
he thought.

Saunders frowned, but he seemed to relax a bit as if considering his offer. Dr. Delph’s pulse hitched. He had no idea what would do once he reached them, but he took another step anyway, his concern for Lia pushing him forward.

Lia’s eyes opened suddenly, revealing inky black pools. She reached up and took Saunders wrist, squeezing through the bandage until he grunted with pain. A howl slipped from him as his head wrenched back, and fur crawled up his neck in thickening lines, encircling his mouth as it tried to elongate into a muzzle.

Lia refused to let go of Saunders, even when his fingers around her throat began to mutate into claws. She stared ahead with foreign eyes and a blank expression that Dr. Delph found all too familiar.

The earth shook, and he wrapped his arms around a tree trunk to keep from falling to his knees. Rough bark rubbed his cheek raw, and the edges of his vision trembled as limbs groaned overhead. A crack ripped down the path he’d just tread, splitting the ground open like crumbling cake batter as it progressed toward Lia and Saunders.

“Delph!” Selena shouted as she came up behind him, steadying herself between two trees. Her fingers dug into his shoulder and she pulled herself over to share his tree, quickly wrapping her tattooed arms around the span of trunk above him. “If we survive this, I’m going to kick your ass,” she growled in his ear.

Chapter Twenty-three

Lia thought it would be painful, letting Daisy fill her head. The visions always hurt, and it hadn’t exactly tickled when the doctors prodded her with their needles and instruments. She’d come to associate all mental invasions with torture, so the delicious power that now coursed through her was exhilarating.

Daisy was still annoyed and reluctant, but she was prepared to see this through. She rocked to the front of Lia’s mind like a typhoon searching for shore. The wind whipped around her face, and Lia felt a laugh work its way up her throat, where Saunders’ fingernails dug into her windpipe.

Lia wanted to understand the ghost’s ability, but her power was steeped in chaos. She was deranged, every emotion layered on top of rage. It was as if her existence was fueled by vengeance. If she let go of that, she’d be lost forever to this world, left to walk unheard and unseen. Sadness floated to the top, but it carried less weight and was soon replaced with Daisy’s go-to wrath.

The ground felt unsteady beneath Lia’s feet, but she stayed planted, feeling the pull of the moon drawing her upright. Saunders’ claws cut into her skin, but the pain wouldn’t register. She was too powerful to be hindered by such trivialities. Daisy’s thoughts melted into own, until she could no longer distinguish where they overlapped.

“Make it stop!” Saunders demanded, his hot breath assaulting her ear. His voice had a gravelly undertone, like he was slowly losing it. “Make it stop,” he said again, more pleadingly this time.

“I will,” she whispered, turning slowly in his failing grasp. She leaned against his chest intimately, tucking her hands up under the collar of his torn uniform shirt. It was coming apart as his bones and muscles tried to realign themselves.

The ground fractured, running in a line between their parted feet and quickly growing into a dark chasm. Saunders tried to step back as it spread, but Lia held fast to his collar, pulling his face closer to hers over the void as the earth opened beneath them. His terrified eyes locked onto her, and then the ground dissolved under their feet and they fell into darkness.

* * * * *

The tremble in the earth slowly decreased, replaced by the softer pitter-patter of dirt clumps and rocks as they bounced off the sides of the rift. Somewhere deeper in the cavern, a gurgling trickle sounded, feeding into a heavier sloshing noise. Lia couldn’t see it, but she knew that water was rising beneath her.

A spongy jumble of tree roots coiled around her body. She could barely see to untangle herself, relying solely on the thin lines of moonlight that reached beyond the crusty opening of the earth. Daisy was gone, taking her confidence along with her power, and Lia was left alone with the fear knotted in her stomach and the ache of her wounds. She didn’t know if she had the required strength to climb out of the hole she was trapped in.

“Lia?” Dr. Delph shouted down to her.
He was alive.
She still couldn’t believe it.

A flashlight strobed through the chasm and fell on Saunders’ mangled form. Several branches pierced through his chest, almost as if they had all landed just right on their way down. Lia shivered, wondering if that was Daisy’s doing.

Her eyes refused look away from Saunders. She didn’t even recognize him anymore. He’d died halfway through his transformation and was neither man nor beast at this point. His golden eyes were vacant, and the peppered color of his hair had spread over his entire body, disappearing under the tattered remains of his uniform.

“Lia?” Dr. Delph’s flashlight landed on her next, and she squinted up at him.

“I’m okay,” she said, her voice trembling unevenly. She shielded her eyes with a shaky hand and noticed the blood pooling in her nails. Her skin felt too tight, like it had been baked to her body by the fire of Daisy’s rage.

“Here,” a feminine voice called out. A rope slapped against Lia’s arm, and she grasped it before it could fall away. She coiled it around her waist and one leg, not wanting to take any chances with her wavering strength. Then she gave it a tug.

“Okay,” she called back, clutching the rope tightly with both hands.

“Easy,” Dr. Delph grunted at the woman as they heaved Lia upward.

When she neared the opening, Dr. Delph dropped the rope and reached down to take her by the arms, pulling the rest of the way out. He crushed her to his chest and ran his hands down her back and over her shoulders, quickly moving on to her arms and legs.

“Are you all right? Anything broken?” he asked as he smoothed the hair away from her face.

Lia shook her head. The woman standing behind Dr. Delph was backlit by the moon, her red hair glowing softly. She glared down into the hole, illuminating Saunders again with a flashlight. “This is
not
how I wanted to spend the last night of the full moon.”

“Dr. Delph? Councilor Chase?” Another woman slipped through the trees. Lia recognized her voice from that morning, when she’d arrived in Spero Heights. The woman tucked a first aid kit under one arm as she steadied herself against a tree and stepped over a crack in the ground. “Is everyone okay?”

Dr. Delph pressed his lips together. “No,” he said. “She’s lost a lot of blood, and she’s going to need stiches.”

Lia shook her head to protest, but when the red-haired woman slid to one side, allowing the moonlight to spill over her shoulder, she caught sight of herself. Her skin was covered in weeping gashes. Dr. Delph helped her stand, and she swayed on her feet, lightheaded and nauseated. The woman with the first aid kit gave her a pitying smile.

“Let’s get you back to the clinic and have a look,” she said sweetly, reaching for Lia’s arm. Dr. Delph knelt down and scooped up her legs instead, cradling her in his arms.

“I’ve got her.” He turned toward a narrow path in the woods. “Let’s go.”

The redhead huffed behind them. “Zelda,” she snapped, making the other woman jump. “Flash your headlights in the woods west of town before you head to the clinic. Logan will know what it means. This close, he’ll be able to track me down and help clean up this…
mess
.”

The other woman nodded. “I can do that.”

“Hurry,” Dr. Delph added. He turned and began carrying Lia back toward the road. “Use the back parking lot,” he shouted over his shoulder. “We’ll be waiting in the kitchen. I’ll get started cleaning her abrasions.”

Lia tucked her head in under Dr. Delph’s chin as he carried her through the woods, stomping over the underbrush. His breath grazed her forehead and pushed her hair back. She grinned against his neck, not even minding the ache that ran through the entire length of her body.

So this is love
, she thought, holding onto him with what little strength she had left. Though it wasn’t just Dr. Delph that her heart swelled for. The women in the woods… the people of the small town… they stuck their necks out for each other. They protected one another and safeguarded their secrets.

It had been a very long time since Lia had felt the familiar warmth of a family, but now that she did, she could trust in what it meant. This was home.