Embraced by Darkness (17 page)

I raised my eyebrows. “So she’s not psychic like you?”

“Oh, she is. I’m just not sure what direction her talent will take, as it is still developing. But it’s there and it’s strong. More so than mine.” She shrugged, then added, “From what I have seen—or felt—from the clients who have gone there, the club is a good place to be. But I have always sensed something predatory behind it.”

“Most werewolf clubs have that feel. The hunt is on for sex.”

She nodded. “But this is different.”

“In what way?”

She hesitated. “It has something to do with the owners. They are predators.”

“They?”

“There are two of them, and they are what the club is.”

“Which makes a whole lot of sense,” I muttered.

She smiled. “What I see through my visions is not always definable. You know that.”

I blew out a breath, then said, “Have you heard any recent news reports?”

She studied me for a minute, blind eyes unfocused and yet curiously aware all the same. “You’re hunting whoever is tearing apart those poor women, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Unfortunately. “But nothing is making sense. We found both killers dead for no apparent reason, and neither should have been capable of tearing someone apart like they did.”

“Sometimes humans can do extraordinary things.”

And sometimes something else is involved. “At least one of the victims was unfaithful. I know anger can often give a little extra strength, but this goes beyond that. And what I really can’t understand is why these men would go to such extremes. I mean, why destroy their own lives as well as their partner’s? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Jealousy often doesn’t. And it can be a very destructive emotion.”

Yeah, but the cause of these murders was more than that. I was sure of it. “It just doesn’t
feel
right.”

And if anyone would understand that statement, then it would be Dia.

She continued to study me for several seconds, then said, “If you want me to help, I need to touch you.”

My heart accelerated. I knew it was fear of the unknown more than fear of her. Which was odd, really, considering some of the truly depraved men I’d brought down over the last year. “Why?”

She smiled. “We both know you are afraid of what I might or might not see of your future, which is why you are so reluctant to even shake my hand in greeting. But if you want my help on these cases, I need to see what you have seen. And to do that, I must first touch you.”

And here I was thinking I’d been so clever about concealing my apprehension about her powers.

She held out a hand, palm up. With some reluctance, I placed my fingers in hers.

“If you see more shit in my future, I do
not
want to know about it. I’ve been through enough this last year.”

Her expression was serious as her blind gaze swept my face. Sometimes it was hard to remember this woman could not see. “I cannot always control the direction of my gifts. If you do not wish to hear where they lead, then it is best we not do this. I will not censure what I see. I never have.”

Which is probably why she’d become as renowned as she was. Good or bad, she told it all—and honesty was rare in her field.

I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Let’s just do this, then.”

She smiled. “It may not be all bad, Riley.”

“Which is not saying that it’ll all be good.”

“No. It rarely is.”

She closed her eyes and her fingers clenched around mine. Electricity washed across my skin—a warm tingle of energy that made the hairs on my arms stand on end and my pulse race. Not in excitement or in fear, but from some emotion that resided between the two. The wolf inside had her teeth bared, ready to fight. But this was a force I’d invited in, and I couldn’t back away from that now.

So I held myself still as the tingly sensation washed up my arm and swept across my body, until it felt like I was wrapped in a blanket of energy.

Dia shuddered. “I see the deaths. I see the agony of their souls.”

I didn’t say anything. After all, what was there to say? Not only had I seen it, I’d felt it, and that was not a place I wanted to revisit, even in memory.

“I see the two cases. Separate cases.” She hesitated, frowning lightly. “I see a woman. She is red, like you. Different, like you. She has a gift, a pack gift that is both different and stronger than her father’s, and it sometimes aids her work. The club and its owners hold many secrets, one which the wolf you seek uncovered.”

Dia paused, and another shudder went through her. “The second case is different. It is shadowed by a malevolence that constantly hungers for vengeance.”

“Vengeance for what?” I asked softly, not sure if by speaking I’d break the vision, but needing to ask all the same.

“Betrayal. He has been seeking retribution for many years.”

Which would suggest the second victim
had
betrayed her husband somehow.

“He hates,” Dia continued. “And he will continue to hunt and kill until he is stopped.”

“You can’t tell me who? Give me a name or description?”

She either didn’t hear or didn’t know, because she tilted her head and said, “An emotional decision comes for you.”

My heart sunk to the depths of my stomach. This was exactly the sort of thing I
didn’t
want her seeing. “I don’t want to know, Dia.”

Her grip on my fingers seemed to tighten, even though I made no move to pull my hand from hers. Well, I guess she
had
warned me, and now I would have to face up to whatever she was seeing.

Maybe just this once, forewarned would be forearmed.

“You will gain what you have always wanted, but it will not be in the form you have dreamed of.”

I blinked. What I’d always wanted was a hubby and a family of my own—how could I gain all that if it wasn’t in the form I dreamed of? “And that means?”

“That sometimes what we wish and what life offers are two completely different things.”

Like I didn’t already know
that
.

She continued softly, “There are many men in your life, but I see three who will become special.”

“Three? I don’t need three. I need one.” Just one. That wasn’t asking too much, was it?

“There is always one. But there are others. One will hurt. One will heal. And one will always be there, regardless.”

I hesitated, part of me wanting to ask the question, the other fearing it. “Is one of them my soul mate?”

“Can a spirit with two souls have one soul mate? That is a question only time can answer.”

“Well, that’s a crappy sort of answer, if you ask me.”

She blinked, then squeezed my fingers and released them. “I’m sorry I couldn’t concentrate more on the murders, but as I warned, sometimes my foresight goes where it wills.”

Yeah, and it didn’t exactly give us more than what we already had. Still, if these murders weren’t new, as Dia had implied, then a trip into the files for a closer look at past murders was obviously in order. The clues might lay in the past. Whether they’d help us solve the present crimes was anyone’s guess.

“Be careful with this thing you hunt,” Dia said, rubbing her arms lightly. “I do not think it will be easy to stop.”

“The things we hunt never are.”

“No.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry for dipping into your private life. I know you didn’t want to hear that, and it wasn’t my intention—”

I waved her apology away. “Don’t worry. At least it wasn’t totally bad. And at least there’s some hope of my dreams coming true, even if not in the form I desire.”

She smiled. “Which makes no sense when said like that.”

“Tell me about it,” I said wryly.

She pressed her hands against the sofa and stood up. “Would you like tea? Coffee? My next reading isn’t for another hour, and it’s so nice to see someone other than clients for a change.”

Technically, I could be classed as a client, given she now worked for the Directorate, but I knew what she meant. While I had my doubts that Dia and I could ever be pals, I wasn’t about to walk away from a prospective friendship. I had few enough of those, too.

All of which was my fault. I tended to be the prickly, standoffish type—a leftover of my hellish days with the pack, no doubt.

“Coffee would be good,” I said with a smile.

“Good.” She walked around the sofa and headed to a side door, but stopped as her daughter came
choofing
around the corner again.

“Where does she get the energy?” I asked with a grin.

“Heaven only knows,” Dia muttered, then bent and asked, “Risa, would you like a drink? And some cookies?”

The little girl nodded so fast her pigtails were a blur of white. And then she stilled, looked at me, and pointed.

“Death, Mommy. Death.”

Chapter 6

I
stared at the finger pointed so firmly in my direction, then at the wide, violet eyes. There was no fear in those eyes, only a matter-of-factness that chilled me.

Whatever it was she was seeing, she believed it.

“Where do you see death, Risa?” Dia asked, her voice as matter-of-fact as her daughter’s. Like seeing these sort of things was an everyday occurrence. And perhaps for the two of them, it was.

“Here.” The little girl patted her left shoulder.

A chill ran through me. I clenched my fingers and resisted the urge to say anything.

“Can you describe him for me?” Dia asked.

The little girl screwed up her nose. “Dark, floaty. He smiles, Mommy.”

“Does he reach for Riley?”

She shook her head. “He watches.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

“That’s wonderful. Now, would you like a cookie?”

Pigtails went flying again as the little girl nodded enthusiastically.

“Then we’ll race you to the kitchen.”

The little girl took off. Dia rose to her feet and looked at me.

“‘That’s wonderful’?” I asked, eyebrow raised.

“I don’t want Risa to be afraid of what she sees, nor do I ever wish her to be afraid to talk about it. So, I praise rather than react, no matter what she says she sees.”

“And has she ever seen anything bad?”

“She once saw death with his hand on the shoulder of a client. He died the next week, hit by a truck at a pedestrian crossing.”

“Oh.” Great. Not that death and I hadn’t been chummy before. Hell, I’d even faced the god of death himself and was still alive to tell the tale. “So what does it mean when she sees death near me, but not touching?”

“I’d presume it means you’re about to do something dangerous, something that puts your life on the line. Be careful when hunting this serial killer.”

“I intend to be, trust me.” I shivered and rubbed my arms. “I think that coffee you mentioned might be a good idea now.”

She smiled and motioned me to follow her. We went through a large, formal dining room and into a kitchen that was as large as my entire apartment. Unlike the other rooms in this house, though, it had a homey feel to it, filled with warmth and the rich scent of baking. Risa was already in a high chair, munching on cookies.

A thin-looking shifter turned around as we entered, her smile rippling across her face, making her rough, aquiline features glow with cheeriness and affection. Obviously a woman who loved her job.

“A guest! How lovely. Will coffee and cake be good, Miss Dia?”

“Elsa, this is Riley. And coffee and cake would be wonderful.”

“Good, good. You sit, I serve.”

So we sat and we talked, the topics ranging from her work and clients to news, shops, and TV. It was a tentative beginning, but a beginning all the same.

And, oddly enough, despite the fact her visions had confirmed that my future would not be what I’d always imagined, I left Dia’s house feeling a lot more enthusiastic about whatever fate had in store.

I climbed into my car and headed back to the Directorate. Given what Dia had seen of the shadow, my next line of inquiry had to be a search through past murder records, both Directorate and police. Which would probably take ages. But while the computer was doing its stuff, I could at least catch up on Cole’s latest findings. Not that I thought anything would be a lot different from the first murder.

I drove into the parking lot and was lucky enough to find a spot near the elevators. The car keys I pocketed. While regulations said that all keys had to be returned to the responsible officer on reentry to the Directorate, I’d probably need the car later, so it was easier to simply keep them. And besides, it would piss off Salliane.

I went through all the scanner and ID checks, then headed downstairs. Rhoan wasn’t in the squad room when I got back, but Jack was. “Cole’s initial report for the second murder,” he said, handing me a folder. “He expects to complete investigations this evening.”