Soulbound: A Lone Star Witch Novel (28 page)

I find it a little odd that he’s invited a strange woman into his security detail and now he’s suddenly Officer Safety, but I’m not going to argue. I pop off a quick text to Donovan, telling him where I am, and then another to Lily—just in case. I haven’t seen her since she left the house yesterday afternoon, but she texted me this morning to let me know she was spending the day with Brandon.

Then I follow Brett along the fence line until we come to a small gate—which, had I known about it to begin with—could have saved me a lot of pain and trouble. Hannah taught me to pick locks when we were kids, part of our campaign to torture and harass Donovan and Rachael.

I wait while Brett fumbles the right key into the lock. The pain is gone and in its place is that same humming I felt right before I found Lina. Whoever I’m meant to find is close. I can’t help being relieved—I don’t have to search for a way into the building, after all. The body must be outside, on the grounds somewhere.

My relief is followed closely by horror. How can I possibly be relieved at the thought of finding a body? Of another woman being dead?

Brett holds the gate open for me and we walk through. There’s a trail that winds through the sprawling yard and connects our small gate with the main pathway that leads up and around the building. When we get there, Brett turns right. I start to follow him, but the second I step onto the walkway, the pain starts again. Not as overwhelming as before, but sharp enough to get
my attention. To tell me that we’re going in the wrong direction.

I wrack my brain, try to come up with something to get him to turn the other way, but I’m sure he’s got his own routine worked out. He’s already deviated from the program by bringing me back here—if I push him any more, he’ll probably get suspicious. Especially if what I suspect is true and there’s a dead body over there.

I grit my teeth and bear the pain that comes with each step I take in the wrong direction. If I could concentrate on it, just breathe through it, it might not be so bad. But Brett is talking—a lot, thank goddess—but still, I have to pay attention and respond.

We’re halfway around the circle before the pain starts easing up, only to be replaced by that strange vibrating that makes me feel like I am on the verge of coming apart.

The pathway is lit, but Brett sweeps his flashlight over the lawn and bushes as we walk. We finally circle around, so that we’re on the left side of the Capitol, near the huge grove of trees that fills up this part of the common area. The shaking is getting worse until my entire body seems to be throbbing to the time set by some invisible metronome.

We’re close now, I know it with every cell of my being. I try to look under the trees, but it’s too dark over there and Brett seems determined to concentrate his flashlight on the areas near the path. Which is pretty damn stupid in my opinion—not just him, but the fact that there aren’t many lights out there in that huge, shaded area that is obviously a perfect body dump.

“What kind of trees are those?” I ask, a little bit desperate as I point toward the copse of trees. I’m terrified we’re going to miss her and that poor woman will have to spend all night out here on the cold ground. Not that it will matter to her, I suppose, but it matters to me and
I don’t want to see that happen. Plus, I have a feeling my entire body will go up in flames if I somehow manage to screw this up.

“The trees?” Brett asks, surprised. I guess I don’t blame him as he was in the middle of a story about a couple of tourists that would have been really amusing if I wasn’t so damn terrified.

“I saw them when I was here yesterday and they were so pretty I wanted to ask someone, but when I went inside and saw all that pink marble I totally forgot about it.”

“They’re mesquite trees,” he tells me with an authority that’s laughable, considering they’re actually oaks. I don’t mention to him that mesquite trees grow in West Texas and are ugly as hell.

“All of them?” I ask. “I thought there were a couple of different varieties.”

“I’m not sure.” Finally, finally, he sweeps his flashlight over the grove. It’s so quick that I don’t have a chance to see anything, and obviously neither does he.

Still, I have to do something or I will be completely screwed. “Did you see that!” I demand.

“What?” He looks at me like I’m crazy.

“There’s something over there, near those trees.” I point at a random grouping, making sure to keep things a little vague.

“Probably just another squirrel,” he tells me with a laugh.

“Are you sure? It looked awfully big to be a squirrel.” I clutch at his arm and bat my eyes hard enough to achieve liftoff.

“Maybe it was an armadillo. Have you ever seen one up close?”

“No! I don’t think I have.” Bat, bat, bat. I think I’m giving myself another headache.

“They’re pretty cool. It’s the Texas state mammal.”
He sweeps his flashlight over the trees a second time. This time, something really does move. “Hey, you want to go check it out? See if we can spot you your very first armadillo?”

Thank goddess for the official Texas state mammal. “I would love to!” I tell him, squeezing a little closer to him for extra encouragement.

We’re only a few steps off the path before my phone goes crazy. A couple of text messages followed by a phone call and then another text message. Donovan has obviously gotten out of his meeting.

Brett looks at me questioningly. “Do you need to get that?”

“It’s probably just Lily calling to check in. I’ll text her later. I really want to see that armadillo.”

There’s no way I’m stopping now—no way I could even if I wanted to. The live wire is back, tugging me forward, forward, forward until I’m practically running as I make a beeline across the lawn. My heels sink into the grass a couple of times, get stuck, and I swear to myself that I’m going to wear flats until this damn nightmare I’m involved in resolves itself.

The third time my heel gets caught, Brett snags my elbow and keeps me from falling for the second time tonight. “Careful,” he tells me, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me flush against his side. “You’re going to end up killing yourself out here.”

I’m not the one I’m worried about. I don’t say that to him, just keep walking—though at a more sedate pace. If I get hurt we’ll never make it to those trees.

Brett has his flashlight on low and is sweeping the whole grounds with it, trying to catch some motion, which is why we stumble over the body before we see her. I trip on something solid, go flying and probably would have landed on her if Brett hadn’t caught me. At first he doesn’t realize anything is wrong, he just thinks
I’ve tripped again. But I know. I felt her, cold and a little clammy from the dew that’s settled on the grass as the temperature drops.

“Brett. There’s someone here!” I drop to my knees.

He whirls the flashlight around. “What are you talking about?”

But then he sees. We both do.

S
he’s naked, lying facedown on the ground, her body covered with so many cuts and burns and bruises that there is almost no unmarred skin to see. Her long black hair is matted with blood and her left arm is angled oddly, the bone poking through the skin in a compound fracture I desperately hope happened postmortem.

“What the hell!” Brett says, squatting down to get a closer look at her. I don’t think it’s yet registered on him what he’s seeing. When it does, he drops the flashlight and uses both hands to turn her over.

The large black circlet of Isis is branded into her left breast. It’s about double the size of the one I have on my inner thigh, and somehow so much more intimidating on the flesh of the dead woman in front of me.

Dead girl, really. She doesn’t look much more than eighteen—though she does look an awful lot like me.

“You shouldn’t move her,” I tell him, though this is the first time I haven’t done the very same thing. The first time I haven’t tried to save her. Because I’ve known all along that she was already gone.

Brett isn’t listening to me, though. He’s trying frantically to find a pulse—in her arm, her neck. I could tell him there isn’t one to find, but then he’d know this isn’t a coincidence.

“Brett.” I crouch down next to him, pull him away. As
I do, my arm brushes against her and it starts—the thing I’ve been dreading all along.

Emotions rush at me, one after the other.

Terror, disbelief, sickness, pain, anger, hope, resignation, agony.

I jerk away, instantly, but it’s too late. Her feelings are followed closely by images of what she went through. They bombard me, flashing through my brain at high speed. A knife cutting her skin, a fist slamming against her face, a foot plowing into her midsection. I feel the blows as well as see them and I wrap my arms around myself, start to rock as the horror of the moment grows.

She’s spread-eagle on a bed—like I was last night—only she’s naked, and he’s above her, his hands rough as they poke and prod at her already abused skin. I feel every pinch and slap he gives her and then he’s between her thighs, raping her and I’m screaming in my head, my own hoarse shouts mingling with hers as I feel him over me, tearing me apart.

I try to pull away, to get out of the vision that is so much more than a vision, but I’m dug into it and can’t make it stop. The pain, the fear, the humiliation—they go on and on and on—until everything ends abruptly, with a quick slice across my throat that has me gasping and clutching at it, expecting to feel blood flowing down my neck.

There’s nothing there, though, and that’s what brings me back. The realization that I’m still alive, that this didn’t happen to me—no matter how much it currently feels like it did.

I’m still sitting on the grass, knees drawn up to my chest in an effort to ward off the pain. Brett’s given up on finding a pulse, is instead puking his guts up in the grass next to me. She must be his first body.

I wonder abstractly how long I was out of it. It feels like forever, but it must not have been that long if Brett is only now pushing to his feet.

“She’s dead,” he tells me after he wipes his mouth, his voice hoarse from horror and throwing up.

I nod. After all, I can still feel the knife slicing across my jugular.

He looks at me strangely, like he expects me to scream or cry or freak out completely. But I already did that—even if it was just in the privacy of my own head. He doesn’t get any more.

When I don’t answer him, he gets in my face. “You okay?” he demands. His breath is puke-scented and it knocks me back.

I nod again. Now that the worst is over, I can’t find it within me to form words. Even simple, reassuring ones.

Brett looks worried as he stands up and pulls me to my feet. “Xandra, you need to go,” he says. “You need to get the hell out of here. I have to call this in and you can’t be here when I do. I broke procedure inviting you inside the gates.”

That’s fine with me. More than fine, to be honest. He’s worried about his job and I just want to get away—from her, from him, from
here
. Part of me—the part that is still able to function—is worried about Nate finding out I was here. After what happened the other night, the last thing I want is to be caught here in the middle of all this.

Nate may believe I’m innocent, but I don’t want to push him. I didn’t do this, but I can see how the police might doubt it if they realize I helped discover this body as well. And if they dig, if they find out about the one in Ipswitch? Friends or not, I’m pretty sure I’ll find myself locked up before I can say cowboy boots.

The other part of me is too numb to think. Too empty and hollow to do anything but stand here and stare down at this girl who looks so much like me. This girl who could have been me. Maybe should have been me. I don’t know.

“Xandra, go!” Brett’s voice is harsh and it gets me moving—which is exactly what he intended, I’m sure.

I stumble away, every step a horror. It hurts—I hurt—and I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the gate and down the long driveway to the sidewalk. I know I can’t leave—not until she’s taken away from here—but I don’t know how I’m going to find the strength to stay. Not when I ache deep inside from what that bastard did to me.

Did to her, I remind myself viciously. Not me. Her. That poor girl whose only crime was to have a haircut like I used to have and skin like mine.

Behind me, I can hear Brett calling in the body—female, DOS, Capitol grounds. I’ve barely made it out of the small gate Brett brought me in through before I see someone running up the main driveway. He stops at the main gate, right under the streetlight, and I realize that it’s Declan. He’s come for me.

He doesn’t see me, though, and as he raises his hands, I know Brett is about to get a show he may never recover from.

“Declan!” I call to him, my voice ragged from all the pain I’ve endured tonight and all the emotions I am holding in check. The numbness is wearing off and I want to yell and scream, to throw myself on the ground and rage at the goddess for letting yet another senseless death take place. But most of all, I want Declan to somehow make tonight’s nightmare disappear. I know it’s not fair, but that’s what I want. “Declan, I’m here!”

I don’t yell very loudly—I don’t want Brett to get suspicious—but Declan hears me anyway. He turns, runs toward me and I just wait for him where I am. I hurt too much to move any farther.

The second he reaches me, he pulls me into his arms. Just yanks me against his chest and wraps himself around me. And I let him. Frankly, I need the comfort, and judging from the way he’s trembling, so does he.

“I thought it was you,” he tells me hoarsely, burying
his face in my hair. “I thought it was you lying there under that tree.”

“How did you know?”

“I have no idea. I was getting ready for the show tonight and suddenly I knew you were in trouble. So I cast a seeking spell and it led me here.” His arms tighten around me until he’s all but crushing me. It hurts, especially since my body already aches from everything it’s gone through tonight and the last few days. I don’t pull away, though. The chill that has been with me since I walked out of Beanz over an hour ago is finally dissipating.