Medusa's Dagger: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Aya Harris Collection Book 1) (5 page)

“Listen, there’s been some stuff going on in my apartment building…”

No way in heaven or hades was I going to tell him where I lived. I’d spent the last few years feeling relatively safe knowing that Nicky couldn’t find me. Since college, I’d learned a few tricks. Don’t get a phone line so my name doesn’t appear in the phonebook. Get all my mail sent to a P.O. Box on the other side of town and then forwarded here. Avoid all hotspots where I’d likely have my photo taken and splayed all over the internet. It sounded paranoid, but it’d kept me safe, so far, from those who wanted to hunt me down.

“I’m not really sure why I’m calling, I guess I just wanted to know if you knew anything about it. But… probably not. You don’t have to call me back if you don’t want to. Anyway... that’s it. Bye, Nicky.”

I hung up the phone and let it fall to my black chevron rug.

Chapter Four

Wine. I needed a giant glass of calm-my-nerves and cuddle-on-the-couch wine that left me with just enough of a buzz to end the day in a great mood. Bursting through my bedroom door, I jogged across the living room and grabbed a bottle of California Merlot off the wine rack. Somewhere in the stacks of Johnny’s kitchen utensils was a cork screw. All I needed to do was dig.

I was elbow deep in one of the kitchen drawers when a knock sounded at the door. Glancing lustfully at the unopened bottle on the counter, I disengaged myself from the drawer and went to answer the door. Standing there in a pair of dark wash jeans, a casual blue buttoned up shirt, and a supple old leather jacket with the collar popped, was Gideon. He leaned against the doorframe as if I’d taken hours to answer, the muscles in his jaw flexing at the sight of me.

“What now?” I asked, turning away from the door.

Gideon’s unexpected presence made my thirst grow tenfold. I needed that cork screw.

“Just following up.”

He followed me into the room. I shrugged and motioned for him to close the door. We didn’t need a crazy old cat lady barging in. That would really make my night.

“Where’s your partner? Agent…”

Her name escaped me, but I couldn’t forget the way she’d scowled at me at the museum.

“Silva. She’s off following her own leads. I don’t think she wanted to come, anyway. She thinks you’re a dead end.” Gideon eyed the bottle of wine on the counter. “Expecting company?”

“Nope, that’s all for me.” I opened the bottom drawer next to the sink. The cork screw glinted up at me, the harsh florescent light bouncing off its shiny surface. “Success!” I grabbed it and pumped my arm in the air.

Gideon raised his eyebrow at me, but didn’t comment.

“Want a glass?” I asked, feeling slightly generous.

“Sure.” He turned to the black bookshelf near the hallway.

A few books took up the space on the bottom shelves. Mostly Johnny’s cookbooks and some of my trashy romances. The top shelves were claimed by a giant spider plant and more than a dozen photo frames of different designs. There was a photo of Johnny, Steven, Angel, and me. Another of just Johnny and Steven. And several of Johnny with his various family members. They were frequent guests at our small apartment. I just loved it when Johnny’s parents came into town. They were so loud and warm and loving. It felt like the way a family should be – nothing like my own.

“Where’s your family?” Gideon asked, as if he could read my mind.

I popped the cork on the bottle and let it rest. “We don’t like taking pictures.” I couldn’t meet his eye. I busied myself with grabbing two wine glasses and setting them on the counter.

“Is this your boyfriend?” Gideon pointed to Johnny in the picture of the four of us.

I had to admit, Johnny was ridiculously handsome. His smooth bald head, trimmed beard, ebony skin, and vividly white teeth made for the perfect package. And it didn’t hurt that he was blessed with an athletic figure. When I responded to his ad for a roommate, I’d been momentarily blinded by his good looks. Luckily, it didn’t take me long to realize Johnny was permanently off the market for someone like me.

“No, that’s my roommate,” I told Gideon, handing him a glass of wine. “And that other man in the picture is Johnny’s partner.”

Gideon’s mouth fell slightly open when the realization came over him, but he quickly shut it.

“I recognized Angel from the museum.” He pointed back at the picture.

“Yeah, she’s great. You should give her a call sometime. She’s really interested in you.”

I wasn’t sure why I was letting my mouth run away from me. My wine glass hadn’t even been touched. Something about Gideon made my brain turn to blubber. So, I took a giant gulp of merlot to shut it up.

“Oh… uh, really?” Gideon ran a hand over the back of his head. He shuffled his feet, looking away from me. “I’m not too sure about that. Not my type.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” I swallowed, and looked at the red lipstick print on my glass. “We didn’t know you were gay.”

“No, no, no,” Gideon said, waving his hands in front of his chest. “I’m not gay.” He gulped a mouthful of air. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being gay. But, I’m not. Gay, that is.”

It was hard to imagine the smooth agent losing his cool, but there he was, sputtering over his glass. I smiled at him, which only managed to make the blush in his neck grow deeper.

“Ok. Not gay. Got it.”

The way he defended himself was so entertaining I was tempted to push it further, but decided against it. This was the guy that had just accused me of having something to do with a kidnapping and murder. It wasn’t the time to flirt.

“So, what was it you wanted?”

Gideon set his untouched glass of wine on the counter, and pulled out a folded manila envelope from inside his leather jacket. “I’ve got some photos to show you. Maybe something’ll look familiar. Any miniscule detail you can recall might help.”

He drew a dozen photos out of the folder and led me to the kitchen table. Sitting just close enough for both of us to be able to view the pictures, he dropped the first photo on the table. I was distracted by the warm and spicy scent of his body wash. Body wash made me think of steamy showers, which then made me think of Gideon with nothing but a towel draped around his waist. And that led to a line of thought I wasn’t willing to pursue. So, I glued my eyes to the photo in front of me.

It showed a mostly empty warehouse. Tin walls stretched up high toward the steel ceiling. A few giant shipping containers still sat on the massive cement floor. In the middle of the photo was a rusty folding table. On the table lay a man, face up. His arms had been straightened out to his sides, as if nailed to a cross.

“Is that…?” I squinted at the photo.

A shock of gray hair on the man’s head confirmed my suspicions. It was Mr. Yonas.

“Why are you showing these to me?”

Gideon didn’t answer. Instead, he threw another photo on the table, this one a closer shot of the body. Mr. Yonas’ arms had several slits up them, with trails of blood leaking from the wounds.

“I don’t want to see this.” I turned my head away and set down my glass. It was way past wine time. Now I needed some heavy liquor.

“I know,” he said. “But this is really important.”

For the first time, he dropped the cocky SI agent act. I looked up into his eyes and saw a glimmer of sympathy.

“I don’t want to do this, but I need you to look,” he continued. “We don’t have any leads. Not a single clue about where the rest of the family is. I need you to think as hard as you can. Look…please.”

The puppy dog expression on his face was getting to me. I nodded and looked down at the table as he began running the rest of the photos by me. More close up shots of Mr. Yonas. Very close shots of the cuts on his arms. A picture of his slackened face that made me want to throw up. More pictures of the warehouse. Nothing clicked.

Gideon was watching me very intently. I avoided his gaze and clicked my fingernails on the table. The sooner we finished looking through these the sooner I could hunt down that bottle of whiskey I knew Johnny kept in the kitchen somewhere.

“Are we finished yet? It’s already almost seven.” I glanced at the cheap plastic wall clock next to the TV. Crawling into bed didn’t sound like such a bad idea. But then I remembered something. “Oh wait, I have a date in an hour. You need to leave.”

Gideon pulled back, his eyebrows raising. “A date? With who?”

“A guy. A friend. A guy-friend,” I said. Real smooth. “He’s taking me out to dinner. You know, a date.”

I could’ve taken that cork screw on the counter and drilled it into my skull.

Gideon nodded and clenched his jaw. He pulled out the last photo and held it in front of him.

“I just need you to look at this photo. Last one, I promise.”

He sat it down in front of me. It was a picture of Mr. Yonas’ bare chest. He was propped up on a metal table, probably in a morgue. His shirt was gone and he lay exposed beneath the cool white light.

I wanted to cover him up, preserve his dignity. But the dead didn’t get to hide their flaws anymore. A bright red circle stood out against the white and soft flesh of his abdomen. Inside the circle was a giant symbol, almost like the letter Z. Four smaller symbols that I didn’t recognize surrounded it.

“What is that…?”

The vision hit me like a tidal wave, rolling over my body and throwing me back into my chair. Distantly, I felt Gideon’s hands enclosing around my shoulders and propping me up from falling, but that was the last thing I remembered before a dark room appeared in front of my eyes.

It had a cement floor and cracked, dirty walls. The remaining Yonas family cowered on the floor, grasping each other for comfort.

I watched from an angle high above their heads as snakes began to slither under the walls. Black, slimy looking things with rectangular heads and dark eyes. Someone needed to warn them! A scream tore from my throat, but no one looked up. Instead, the snakes kept coming in waves until no floor space remained. They piled high, engulfing the Yonas family, drowning them in the hissing, writhing mess.

I felt my shoulders being shaken. Closing my eyes tight, I tried to push the hands away, but they held on. All I wanted to do was sink into the darkness and go to sleep.

“What did you see? Tell me what you saw.” Gideon’s muffled voice sounded like he was on the other side of a long tunnel.

I opened my eyelids a crack. He was watching me closely, his eyes not moving from my face.

“Was it a vision?”

I turned my head away. Water. I needed water. My head pounded as I pushed Gideon away and stumbled to the kitchen. The giant spider plant on the bookshelf was completely brown. It’d shriveled up as a result of my intense vision, its life force spent. I pressed a hand to my mouth while my stomach threatened to come up.

“I need to know what you saw.”

Gideon chased me to the sink where I filled a glass with faucet water and gulped it down.

“Every detail. Maybe it’ll give us a clue where he’s hiding them.”

I whipped around and the glass flew from my hand, smashing on the kitchen cabinet. “You did this on purpose. You wanted me to have another vision. That’s why you paraded those awful photos in front of me.”

His mouth fell open, but no sound came out. Instead, he gaped at me and then shut his mouth, licking his lips.

“How dare you,” I continued. “Do you know what those visions do to me? After the last one, I couldn’t get out of bed all day. They don’t come free.”

“I’m sorry.” Gideon rubbed the back of his head. “I really am, but I had no choice. We’ve got nothing at the SI. We’re stumped. And people are dying.”

“Yeah, well, you could’ve tried asking.”

I slammed the cupboard open under the sink and snatched the hand broom and dustpan. Sweeping up the glass fragments, I threw them in the garbage with as much rage as I could muster. No one had the right to use me and my visions. It was one of the reasons I ran away from Chicago. My life, my choice.

“I’m sorry, okay?”

Gideon grabbed my wrist. He held it lightly between his fingers, but even that slight touch burned my skin.

I stopped my rampage and looked him straight in the eye. “Don’t ever try to force me to get a vision again or that’ll be the end of it. I won’t be used by anyone.” The warning came out through clenched teeth. I could feel the beginning of frustrated tears springing from the corners of my eyes. I turned away.

“I won’t. Never again.”

Gideon’s promise sounded truthful, even to my still raging head.

He grabbed my other hand and squeezed it. “I didn’t know they were so bad. Are you okay?”

I’d probably have a migraine for the rest of the night and a wicked magic hangover tomorrow morning, but I’d live. Draining the spider plant of its life force seemed to have spared me from most of the damage of the vision. I nodded my head and went back to the kitchen table, collapsing in my chair.

“You want to know what happened? This one’s screwy, so take notes.” I closed my eyes to visualize it. “It was a really dark room. No windows. I’m guessing… underground. Like a basement or something.”

“Did you see the family?” Gideon took out his notebook and began scribbling.

“Yes, all three of them. They were huddled together in the middle of the room. And there were snakes.”

Gideon looked up. “Snakes? What kind?”

“I don’t know. The black slithery kind. They were coming in from every corner of the room, hundreds of them.”

He looked down at his notes and paused. “Why would there be snakes in the room?”

“Maybe it’s not literal.” I chewed on my bottom lip. “Sometimes, my visions are representations or like riddles. Our killer might have something to do with snakes. Is there a wizard that likes snakes?”

Gideon shrugged. He looked as clueless as I felt.

“I don’t know,” I continued, “but the snakes were piled high and drowned the Yonas family. It was awful. I couldn’t do anything.”

We sat in silence. I had the feeling Gideon was wracking his brains for some clue. A snake demon or maybe some kind of river monster. While my visions were helpful at times, sometimes they could be downright frustrating. You’d think for as much life force as they cost me, I’d get a clearer sense of direction.