Damned. Lisa Childs

at the opulent living room of the penthouse or the view outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Barrett, Michigan, aglow with lights in the black sky. She stared instead at whatever images played out inside her head.

      “Tell us everything you’re seeing,” he prodded her, as he would have any witness.

      “She’s on the street, like I saw her before,” Elena said, taunted by the old vision like the old memory that wouldn’t quite leave Ty alone.

      “What do you see?” He needed some landmarks, something so he could pinpoint the place instead of wandering the streets the way he had.

      “It’s dark….”

      “No street lamps?”

      She squeezed her eyes closed, then shook her head. “Not here. The buildings are too tall. They block the light. So does the Dumpster.”

      “Then it’s not a street. It’s an alley.” And he’d searched most of those in Barrett. But just because Irina had been adopted in Barrett didn’t mean she still lived in the city, so he’d searched some surrounding areas, too. His gut twisted again at the thought of Irina in any of those dangerous areas, alone. “Tell me about the buildings. Describe them to me.”

      Elena’s brow furrowed. “It’s dark. All I see are walls of dark brick, maybe red, maybe brown—”

      “A sign. Something—”

      “Just the Dumpster. The name of the company’s worn off the side. She’s hiding behind the Dumpster.”

      Had she been in one of those alleys he’d searched, hiding? Had he been that close to finding her, to protecting her from a killer?

      Come on, Irina. Come out. Stop hiding. Let me find you. Let me save you.

      As she’d saved him? He shook his head, amazed that the thought had occurred to him, all wrapped up with the old, nagging memory. But looking into his past wouldn’t help him find Irina; only looking into her future would.

      “You have to concentrate. Focus on what’s around her!” His agitation raised his voice above the usual rasp of his damaged vocal cords.

      “Ty…” Ariel warned.

      He expected Elena to protest, too, to remind him that her gift didn’t work this way, on demand, as if she directed a camera onto a scene she’d orchestrated.

      Her breath audibly caught, and she flinched at whatever scene played out inside her head. This wasn’t just a memory; she was in the midst of a vision. “Oh my God…”

      “What?” he asked, his guts twisting again.

      “She—she steps out from behind the Dumpster, she drags herself out of there. But it’s too late.” Her voice rose with a hint of hysteria. “She tries to run, but he catches her. He grabs her so hard. He’s hurting her! She’s too weak to fight him…too weak to save herself….”

      Damn Donovan Roarke to hell! As soon as Ty tracked him down, he intended to send him there.

      “It’s okay,” Ariel said, wrapping her arm around Elena’s thin shoulders. “Your visions are of the future. This hasn’t happened yet.”

      “But—”

      “It hasn’t happened yet,” Ariel insisted.

      “And it won’t,” Ty maintained. He wouldn’t let Roarke get to Irina.

      Maybe as desperate to convince herself as her sister, Ariel said, “He doesn’t have her.”

      Yet.

      “I’ve had this vision twice now,” Elena reminded them, her voice cracking with emotion, her pale eyes shimmering with unshed tears and fear. “He’s going to find her before we do. And we all know what he’s going to do to her.”

      Kill her.

      She had had that vision, too. The one of Irina dying just as horrifically as their mother had. Elena had gotten good at recounting her visions, but she had yet to find a way to deal with what she saw. She was shaking.

      And so was Ty.

      As Ariel had said, Elena’s visions were of the future. Donovan didn’t have her yet, but Ty suspected the madman was closer to finding her than Ty was. He had to beat the killer to her, because once Roarke got his hands on Irina, Ty would be too late to save someone. Again.

      A new voice echoed in her head now, louder than all the others she’d heard before. And full of hatred. He talked about killing people, about making them suffer.

      Irina knew about suffering, and lately not even the drugs or alcohol could relieve hers. She’d been weeks without and felt no different sober from inebriated. Except for the shaking. She couldn’t stop shaking.

      Summer had fled quickly from western Michigan, leaving early autumn cold, the nights chilly enough that she lost feeling in her fingers and toes. She might have to find someplace warmer than the alley to sleep. But then she’d have to deal with people.

      Fear gripped her. Fear of the man inside her head. Because even though he hadn’t said her name, like the women who called for her, she knew he intended to kill her as he had the other witches. He thought she was a witch and he wanted the charms he thought her mother had given her and her sisters two decades ago. He believed they were powerful, that they would heal the pain that reverberated inside his head.

      And hers. She winced, pressing her palms against her eyes, blinded from the voices and the pain. Like the women he’d killed, she felt his torment as acutely as theirs. The hammering at the base of her skull and her temples. Her body reeled from the onslaught, and she writhed in agony on her makeshift bed behind the Dumpster.

      She had to deal with the pain the best she could. She had to let go of reality and slip into the abyss, into the calm where her mind and spirit left her tortured body, where she ceased to exist as she had these past months.

      But as she started slipping away, a raspy voice called out to her. “Irina…”

      She moaned and shifted again on the bed, drawing her knees to her chest to curl into a ball. She resisted the compulsion to open her eyes, refusing to come back into a world where she knew only pain and suffering.

      “Irina, come out….”

      But he was just as stubborn, refusing to let her go. She heard the determination in his voice, along with a trace of desperation. She recognized that more readily, as it called to her own.

      “Irina, let me save you….”

      His raspy whisper raised goose bumps on her skin. Was he nearby? Or even closer, inside her head?

      She opened her eyes and blinked, clearing the sparks and the sea of black from her vision. All that loomed before her was the big Dumpster, the distant glow of the street lamps glinting off the rusted metal.

      The cold reduced the stench, so only a faint odor of coffee grounds and mold drifted from it. But her stomach churned even though it was empty of everything but nerves. What had she done to herself? What had she become?

      God, she’d been desperate for so long, desperate for a peace of mind she would probably never know.

      “Irina, we need you….” called out a feminine voice, cracking with emotion. “We need our baby sister.”

      Another woman added her thoughts. “The only way we can stop the witch hunt is with all three charms….”

      Charms?

      She peered up at the sky, at the sliver of crescent moon that hung high above the buildings, high above the earth. Out of Irina’s reach, like the memory from her childhood of her sisters, of her mother…that last time she’d seen them before their family had been ripped apart. Pain and fear were all she remembered as she trembled under the renewed force of those emotions. She’d only been five then and she’d survived. She hadn’t given up.

      Until