The Beholder (3 page)

Empty silence.

Okay, be stubborn
.

Spirit guides tended to have minds of their own and eccentricities, just like humans. They could be annoying like some humans, too. Right now was a prime example.

They also couldn’t be relied upon with any frequency. That’s why when Nina began to exhibit her powers, her grandmother, Meikoda, had taught her a method of gaining control over the shivers herself, the Patomani Indian way, through meditation. Meikoda had always warned, “Trusting animal spirit guides can have dire consequences.” Now more than ever, Nina realized the wisdom of her grandmother’s advice.

An opening in the forest drew her gaze, and she spotted a narrow country road where she could pull off the parkway and deal with her headache.

She turned, her tires finding every pothole. The forest thickened into an evergreen wall on both sides of the road, thick boughs whipping and thrashing in the wind. Low-lying limbs thumped against her hood and roof. Hail pinged her windshield and sounded like rattling teeth.

She switched the heater to defrost as she searched for a place to pull over, but the curvy road descended at a sharp angle. There were no pull-offs, just granite mountainside to her right and a sheer drop to her left.

Just as she doubted if she’d ever find a place to park, she reached an open valley filled with fields of grapevines. Their twisted frozen stalks looked like contorted arms grasping at whatever moved. Something about them caused the pain in her temples to settle in behind her eyes. Another ripple of emotions shook her. Her teeth chattered as her trembling grew uncontrollable.

Thankfully, she spotted lights. Humanity. A small village. Relief loosened her tensed muscles. If the Fates were on her side, she might even find a cup of hot chocolate to meditate over. All she needed was a little quiet time to mask those foreign emotions in her head.

She crept past a green sign that read: Brayville, population 102. She reached the sheriff’s office, a white frame building. Beside the sheriff’s office sat the courthouse, a Romanesque stone structure. The building
belonged in a bygone English countryside rather than in a Virginia mountainside. Knob’s Grocery rested next to it. A boldfaced sign in the display window read: Fresh Meat Cut Daily.

She cringed. Man innocently believed that animals were not sentient and thus were unaware of pain, but Nina knew better. She had never been able to eat meat, not without being haunted by the emotional insight of the sacrificed animal. Her powers had sealed her dietary habits as a strict vegan.

The sidewalk appeared deserted, only a few lights shining from the tiny homes surrounding the village. Something about the place looked untouched, forbidding, frozen in a winter mountain spell. Another surge of shivers rippled, and her trembling became uncontrollable.

That’s when she noticed the glow from an open sign. The Wayside Café. A definite windfall. She drove half a block and parked behind a Jeep and a sheriff’s car.

She donned the gloves Mrs. Winston, a client in her pet-psychic business, had knitted for her. Dog faces flopped on the end of each finger and looked very much like Max, Mrs. Winston’s depressed Scotty. The gloves were pretty horrible. Fashion accessories a child would wear, but Nina could never refuse handmade gifts from clients, particularly if they were as nice as Jane Winston.

As soon as she put her hand on the latch to open the door, Koda’s telepathic thoughts dove directly into her psyche.
Wait!

Now you show up.

I was in a meeting.

Koda’s habitual excuse when he didn’t want to be found.

I could have used your help back there.

You know the rules. I can’t interfere. I can only take you to the Quiet Place and offer advice.

Then you could have taken me to the Quiet Place. I’d have settled for that.

Can’t. Sorry. You’ve been using it too often. I’ve been warned.

Warned? It’s mine to use.

It is a gift, and you’ve abused it.

I don’t see that I’ve done anything so terrible. I needed the breaks. Being bombarded by constant emotions drains me. You know that.
Truth was that at times Nina felt a hundred years old. In the Quiet Place, she escaped her responsibilities, avoided the shivers and cleared her head. What was so wrong with that?

I’ve been advised that you are using it as a crutch.

Well, excuse me. I thought I could use it at my discretion.

Not when it harms you.

I think I should know what is good for me and what is not—thank you very much.

You should, but you don’t. Case in point—you could be in danger right now. Take my advice and don’t go in the café.

But I’m freezing, and I’ve got a migraine coming on, and there’s hot stuff in there to drink.

Don’t go in.

Sorry, but there may not be another café within miles of here. I have to.

Suit yourself.
This last was said in a snit, and his presence left her mind in a final whoosh.

“Go ahead, be that way,” Nina said aloud. It hurt her head to speak, and Max’s many faces blurred before her eyes.

She hesitated for one minute, staring at the inviting hot-coffee sign over the counter; then she held her throbbing temples and climbed out of the car.

Frosty air swirled through her jeans and up her coat. Pellets of hail stung her face. A gust tugged at the tight braid she had coiled into a bun at the back of her head. She felt some of the pins falling out, reached to grab them and missed. The thick black braid flopped down her spine, thumping against her. She ran to the door, snuggling her woolen coat closer around her neck.

Between fighting the weather and her headache, she wasn’t paying attention as she opened the cafe door. A man startled her. She stumbled backward.

His hands shot out with superhuman reflexes and caught her.

The moment he touched her, a shiver speared her, a presence not totally human or animal, but both. A shifter, or two-skin as her people called them. She sensed the inhuman creature caged within his flesh, raging to be set free, tearing at her mind. She panicked and broke his hold on her arm. A pair of harsh jungle-green eyes and a hulking solid-muscled body swept past her peripheral vision as she wheeled and fled.

“Are you okay?” His resounding baritone rumbled
over the wind, the tones resonating from deep within his large chest.

“Yes—never mind.” She yelled over her shoulder,

running for the safety of her car. Koda had been right this time.

She jumped inside and locked the doors. She couldn’t start the engine fast enough; then she sped away.

Abruptly it occurred to her that the temporary interruption with the shape-shifter had diverted her thoughts from the shivers, and her headache had subsided. Though she felt as tightly strung as a guitar string about to break. She couldn’t forget the contact with the two-skin. His brutality and hostility had struck her with such force, she hadn’t been able to discover what type of shifter he was. Just the thought of him now made her quake.

He might be somehow involved with the horrible emotions that had led her to the area. She knew some two-skins lived in groups. Menacing creatures like him could fill this whole village. They might be harming innocents.

She prayed not. She never wanted to feel that beast in him again, much less a whole crowd of them. When she found the cause of the shivers, and if she discovered that he or anyone else in this village was responsible, she’d have to stop them. Unchecked shifters mustn’t be allowed to harm innocents.

She sped along the narrow road, into the teeth of the wind and freezing rain, the force trying to push her
back toward Brayville. She floored it, and the shivers returned full-force, in all their swarming glory, guiding her toward the unknown.

K
ane watched the Taurus pass him as he waved to Arwan through the window of the café. Arwan was still eating, but Kane had lost his appetite after learning about the gleaner. Ethan may have returned. His brother had been foremost in his mind, until he’d bumped into the stranger.

After only a few seconds of gripping her forearms, an awareness still strummed through his veins. The contact roused his darker side. He’d worked years at marshaling those instincts and up until colliding into the human, he’d kept them under strict control. But her scent lingered in his senses. She smelled extraordinarily enticing, otherworldly, more than mere mortal. He’d stake his life on that.

And what about her reaction when they had touched? He’d felt her stiffen, seen those bright blue eyes widen
in fear. Her face had paled in comprehension. Somehow she had sensed his supernatural aura. So what was she? Sorceress? Seer? Another shifter, the likes of which he’d never encountered before? Whatever she was, she had been snooping around here just when a gleaner had returned. Even if she had nothing to do with the gleaner, he had to protect the pride’s privacy. He couldn’t risk humans ever finding out that shifters existed. He had a nose for trouble, and that woman was trouble with a capital
T
.

He bounded into his Jeep and stayed well behind the Taurus. He’d have to follow her and find out exactly what she knew. She was definitely a threat and took precedence over tracking the gleaner. The gleaner could wait. This new prey could not.

The shivers led Nina to a dark and dismal dirt road at the base of a mountain, not fifteen miles from Brayville. A plywood sign proclaimed Baldoon Farm, No Trespassing. The blue-painted letters had dripped and ran together in an eerie way. A Bates Motel sign, if she ever saw one.

This was the location, all right. Every fiber of her being quaked now. She felt her body temperature steadily dropping, and she’d kill for something hot to drink. She crept up the mountain drive, aware she wasn’t only freezing but fighting a rising case of the heebie-jeebies. The feeling that someone was watching gnawed at her. For the umpteenth time, she glanced at the rearview mirror.

Not a glimmer of a headlight. Nothing but sleet
hitting the rear windshield, forming long rivulets of icy water that glowed blood red from her taillights.

She thought she’d seen someone following her when she’d left Brayville, but the headlights had disappeared about five miles back. Must be a case of nerves, she assured herself.

If she could only leave this place… But she couldn’t abandon the chorus of voices still crying out for help. Her conscience wouldn’t allow her to leave creatures in distress. Her path was set, and she had to follow it to the end.

Her headlights revealed only a heavily wooded forest. Trees swayed and bowed to the storm, the weaker ones looking ready to snap and topple. The higher the Taurus climbed, the stronger the shivers shook her. Emotions scraped etchings inside her mind now. She could even translate the fear into words.

“Help me. I’m afraid. No, no, no! Don’t hurt me, please!” And the monologue went on and on, mingling with terrified screams. It was a recording inside her head that wouldn’t stop. Their pain and fear became a part of her.

Nina gripped the wheel and began humming to drown out the noise marching through her head. Sometimes it helped. Her voice drew to a fevered pitch; then she gave up humming and switched to singing “Coming Out of the Dark” at the top of her lungs. Thank goodness for Gloria Estefan.

The chrome bumper of a black-and-white police car flashed in the headlights not fifty yards in front of her. Brayville Sheriff’s Department was emblazoned across
the trunk. Why were they here? Were they covering up what that beast inside that shifter had done? Her skull still tingled where his massive hands had gripped her arms. The pull of those empty green eyes and the beast’s anger was something she’d never forget. At the memory, icy fingers trailed down her spine and she stopped singing.

Hoping no one saw her lights, she flicked them off and reversed back down the drive, using only her brake lights to see. She found an abandoned logging road and backed into it, driving over waist-high weeds and bushes until her car was properly hidden. She parked and cut the engine.

She eased out the door, insides churning, head hurting as if a swarm of bees were building a nest there. She gulped back the bile of rising fear in her throat.
The Sixth Sense
was pretty on target when it came to seeing the dead. The moments before death were the images that surrounded a spirit while they were trapped on earth. It was never pleasant, always graphic and sometimes hard to endure. She preferred discovering living creatures, ones she could help, ones that gave purpose to her life and the gift she’d been given.

The incline hadn’t felt this steep in the car, but now having to battle the elements and walk straight up made her pant to catch her breath.

Sleet stung her face, and she pulled her coat collar up around her neck. Despite the two pairs of long johns and thick jeans she was wearing, frigid air sliced right through her. She wished she’d worn two sweaters instead of one.

Fatigue gnawed at her. The shivers depleted her energy stores, particularly when she was awakened at 2:00 a.m. by them. She had been on an assignment in Monterey, Virginia, sound asleep at Sally’s B and B, a nice, quiet Victorian home she frequented when she visited Comet, a perpetually depressed bloodhound. Old and arthritic, he felt useless. Nina’s sessions with him always perked him up and made his owners happy. She wished she were helping Comet now, or nestled in that feather-down mattress she had left, anywhere but tramping through this cold and ice.

The realization hit her that she’d left her cell phone charging in the cradle. She couldn’t contact her sister, Takala, or her grandmother. They had always been overprotective of Nina. Sometimes it made her feel loved. At other times, smothered. But she didn’t want to worry them, so she periodically called them when she was on an assignment. They would be concerned when she didn’t check in. She made a mental note to call them later—if she ever got out of this mess.