Hunter's Need (6 page)

Marie was screaming.

Begging.

Pleading.

Dying . . .

Dying while a voice whispered,
Let me take care of you. You’re mine. I have to take care of you . . . protect you . . . love you . . .

 

 

A
NA came awake, choking on her own scream, nausea roiling in her gut, vomit boiling up in her throat. She barely made it to the bathroom in time. Huddled over the cool porcelain, she emptied her gut, tears and sweat mingling on her face while images flashed through her mind.

“God.”

She’d seen . . . something. It hovered just behind a veil, its malevolence just barely contained, the stink of blood and death curling out in smoky, nasty green tendrils. Reaching for her.

Once the sickness passed, she eased away from the toilet and pressed her back against the wall, staring off into nothingness. Her mind turned inward, back to the dream.

Back to Marie. Paul. The story of a missing girl and the lurid scene the book’s author had depicted, Paul hunting and stalking Marie, killing her in a fit of rage and hiding her body. Like a child trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle, Ana worked with the memories of the dream, tried to get them to align with the story she’d read in the book.

They wouldn’t line up.

It didn’t fit.

Useless . . .

Ana blocked the voice out and made herself focus. Yeah, her psychic gift, the only gift that could be useful in any kind of positive aspect, wasn’t all that great. Without her shielding, random thoughts and images bombarded her, but she couldn’t make much sense of them. It was like having five or ten radio stations blaring at top volume.

Within her shields, it was better. She could focus, pick up on individual thoughts from time to time, use the gift to pick up on whether or not somebody was lying, whether somebody was hiding something, whether there were other gifted people around.

But she’d never had any sort of cognitive psychic ability—she’d never had visions, not of past events, and not of future ones.

Her strongest ability was just to muffle psychic activity, casting the area where she was into a huge null where it seemed nothing extraordinary existed. To some extent, it even worked to blunt the instincts of some gifted people—people like Duke.

As far as Ana was concerned, it was more a burden than a gift, one that had been used to hurt people in the past. None of her decidedly limited abilities were much use in trying to figure out that dream, or why she’d had it.

“Overactive imagination,” she whispered, closing her eyes and willing herself to believe it.

But it wasn’t her imagination. Deep down, she knew it. Body aching, she shoved to her feet, flushed the toilet and then shuffled over to the sink. She washed her face, brushed her teeth and combed her hair and still, she felt dirty. Tainted.

And on edge.

The memory of her dream, the memory of Marie’s face, danced in her mind, right at the edge of her consciousness, demanding Ana’s attention. Unable to ignore it, she left the bathroom and headed to the computer.

“Just a dream.” She rubbed her fingertips over her eyes, wishing she could just erase those memories from her mind that easily.

She plugged Marie Onalik’s name into Google. One or two MySpace pages popped up at the top of the search results. Off the side, there were paid advertisements for people searches, criminal background checks and the ubiquitous ad,
Did you go to school with . . .

Scrolling past those, she read the brief bits of text available under each individual result. The second to last entry to the page made her heart skip a beat and her hands go cold.

Ana clicked on it and then heaved out a relieved sigh as a girl’s face flashed on the screen. Color photograph. Judging just by the hairstyle, it was way too recent to be a girl who had disappeared back in the seventies. Her focus sharpened. Not Marie—but she couldn’t click away from the page. Couldn’t. Something made her read the article in its entirety, pity welling inside her as she read the family’s impassioned pleas, begging for information about their daughter.

“Were you ever found?” Ana asked sadly. She glanced back at the top of the page. Ten years. The article was from ten years ago.

She grabbed a pen and jotted the name down on a pad of paper. She read on, uncertain exactly why—morbid curiosity wasn’t her thing. Ana was like an ostrich. She’d much rather bury her head in the sand, even when it was something important. Or rather, especially when it was something important.

Yet she couldn’t tear her attention from the computer screen and on the second page, in the final section of the article, she saw why.

There was Marie’s name. Highlighted and linked.

Along with four other names.

Dread filled her, dragged her down as she moved the mouse to hover over Marie’s name. Then, squeezing her eyes closed, she clicked. She didn’t want to see.

If the article had any pictures of the long-missing Marie, Ana didn’t want to see them. She didn’t
want
to know if the woman she’d dreamed about was Marie. Because if the woman’s face looked anything like what she’d seen in her hazed, unclear dreams, Ana didn’t know what she’d do.

You don’t
have
to do anything
.

She swallowed. Tried to believe that. She didn’t
have
to. Not really. She wasn’t a Hunter. Marie, no matter what had happened, was dead and nothing Ana did would change that fact.

She didn’t
have
to do anything, did she? After all, the girl had most likely been dead for thirty years.

Setting her shoulders, she took a deep breath and made herself open her eyes.

But a weight dropped down on her, crushing the air from her lungs, as she stared into the face of Marie Onalik.

In the back of her mind, she heard a voice. Crying, pleading, begging.

Help me, please . . . oh, God . . . somebody please help
.

 

 

“A
NA Morell, amateur sleuth, on the case,” she muttered, hiking her bag up on her shoulder as she plodded along the side of the road, checking the addresses. Her skin buzzed and she glanced out of the corner of her eye to the houses across the street. Nice houses. Her rented apartment in Hillside was nice, way nice, but these houses made Hillside look like the slums.

Gleaming oak doors, heavy windowpanes of etched glasses. Manicured lawns, riotous bursts of flowers. Two-or three-car garages and the cars parked in some of the driveways were of the Hummer, Mercedes or BMW variety.
Nice
with a capital
N
.

She was about as out of place here as she had been back at Excelsior, completely out of her depth, but she wasn’t turning back. She couldn’t because for the past three days when she tried to sleep, her dreams were haunted with the plaintive cry of
Help me, please . . . oh, God . . . somebody please help.
Not exactly a soft, pretty little tune to fall asleep to.

If she wanted to sleep decently anytime in the near future, then she needed to at least try to figure out what had happened to Marie. Try to understand why the face of a dead woman was haunting her every waking and sleeping thought.

Finally, she reached her destination and she shifted her backpack, holding it on her shoulder as she stared at the house before her. It wasn’t as big as some of the others, constructed of mellow gold logs and lots of windows. Situated on the mountainside just outside of Chugach State Park, the house faced out over Cook Inlet.

There was a tricycle just beside the walk, painted a bright, vivid pink with a purple seat. It had a nameplate on it—
Marie
. Her skin crawled, her throat knotted up and she froze in her tracks, staring at the name tag and struggling to breathe.

Lock it down, girl.
She took a minute to level out her breathing and focus. More to calm herself than anything, she bolstered her shields and went through one of the mental exercises that had been drilled into her head.
Nothing in. Nothing out.

Her normal shields were pretty solid, but they were designed to let some things filter through, the kind of things a psychic started to rely on, without even realizing it. With her normal shields, she was just a little more attuned to things, like hypersensitive instincts.

But right now, she didn’t want that. She didn’t want
anything
filtering in or out. Not until she got the lay of the land, so to speak. She wouldn’t broadcast anything, and she wouldn’t pick anything up. Not unless she chose to, and right now, she definitely didn’t choose. Not when she was getting ready to approach the family of a murdered young woman.

Tearing her gaze away from the tricycle, Ana forced herself to take a step. One. Two. Three. Once she reached the porch, she didn’t slow and try to prepare herself, didn’t take two seconds to brush her hair back from her face or straighten her clothes. If she paused for even a second, she was going to take off running.

She pressed the doorbell, hearing it echo through the house behind a door inlaid with lovely panels of stained glass. Through the glass, she caught a distorted shadow and she pasted a smile on her face.

The door opened and Ana’s smile fell away as she found herself gazing into a disturbingly familiar pair of brown eyes. The woman gave Ana a polite smile and asked, “May I help you?”

Her smile faded as Ana stood there, unable to speak. Lines appeared next to the woman’s eyes, bracketed her mouth and she went to shut the door.

Desperate, Ana moved, lifting a hand and reaching out, touching the woman’s hand. “I’m here about Marie Onalik. Your sister.”

The woman’s eyes widened. Tears appeared.

Pain arced, slamming against Ana’s shields. She jerked her hand away, but not quick enough. Grief and anger slammed into Ana’s shields with gale force, threatening to blast her shielding to smithereens. So much for nothing in—
stupid. You shouldn’t have touched her!

Physical contact made it worse.

Locking her knees, she battled through the outside forces of pain and grief, blocking them out. She slapped up an extra shield, this one so thick and heavy, it was like she’d locked herself in a crypt buried deep below the earth’s surface. Blinded, deafened. Psychically speaking, at least. A werewolf the size of Bigfoot could come up behind her now and unless heard with her ears, she’d never know—not buried under this many shields.

She couldn’t have that pain filter through again. Not if she wanted to get through this without looking like a nutcase.

“Who are you?” Beverly Onalik Hartwick demanded. “Another wannabe writer wanting to sell some macabre story about my sister’s disappearance, how the boy she loved went crazy with jealousy and killed her?”

“No. That’s not what happened.” Ana shook her head.

Beverly snorted. “How would you know? How old are you? Twenty? Twenty-one? My sister’s been missing since 1974—there’s no way you can know what happened to a woman that disappeared before you were born.”

Forcing a smile, Ana said, “I know. It’s just . . . ” She licked her lips and took a breath. She was doing this all wrong. Completely, totally, all wrong. “Look, I’ve met Paul Beasley. I know he used to date your sister, but I don’t think . . . ”

Beverly’s angry glare faded. She studied Ana’s face and then slowly, a sad smile came. “You don’t think Paul had anything to do with it, do you? That what you want to say?”

“Yes.” Ana swallowed the knot in her throat.

Sighing, Beverly stepped back and gestured for Ana to come inside. “I can talk for a few minutes. I watch my granddaughter during the day and she’s down for a nap. Once she wakes up, you’ll have to leave.” She met Ana’s eyes squarely. “My daughter was four when Marie disappeared but she still remembers her aunt. She hurt for a very long time over losing her—gave Marie’s name to her daughter. I won’t have them upset over this.”

“I don’t want to upset anybody.” Following Beverly into a large, open living room, Ana tucked her hands into her pockets and said, “I just wanted to ask a few questions, that’s all.”

“To what purpose?” Beverly asked sadly. “It’s been more than thirty years. She’s not still alive . . . I know that. She won’t ever come back and I doubt I’ll ever know what happened, at least not in this life. What good will it do to ask questions?”

“I don’t really know. I just feel like I need to ask them,” Ana replied honestly.

Beverly settled down at a breakfast bar and gestured to the seat next to her. “I don’t really know how much I can tell you, but if it’s something I can answer, I will.” She waited a beat and then said, “I won’t be offering you a drink. I’m sorry, but I’d rather you just ask your questions and leave.”

Ana opened her mouth, but she still wasn’t sure what exactly she should ask. What she should say. What she needed to know. Before she had any luck figuring that little puzzle out, she heard footsteps. Automatically, she looked up as a tall man, balding and whip-thin, entered the room.

He came to an abrupt stop when he saw her, a puzzled smile on his face. “Hello.” He glanced at Beverly and said, “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t know we were expecting company.”

Beverly smiled at him, but it was strained. “Kyle, I’m sorry . . . we didn’t interrupt you, did we?”

“No.” He smiled at Beverly and then looked back at Ana, curiosity in his gaze.

Ana didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, Beverly did. She gave Ana another smile, this one a little more relaxed. “This is . . . oh, dear, I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”