Soulbound: A Lone Star Witch Novel (14 page)

I reach for her again and images bombard me.

A dark room.

A knife, slicing cleanly across flesh.

Pain.

Fists raining down on bare skin.

A hand thrusting between legs stubbornly clamped shut.

More pain, excruciating pain.

Cold steel around wrists, ankles.

A heavy body thrusting between open legs.

A silent scream.

Pain, unimaginable and never ending.

I rip my hands away as her pain wells up inside me. I’m not touching her anymore but it’s too late for me to escape her torment. It surrounds me, tears through me with each shuddering breath I take, until I’m completely sucked under. Overwhelmed. Held in thrall to her anguish and distress.

I try to pull away but a conduit’s been opened between her final hours and my brain and I can’t do anything but absorb the images that run through my head like a snuff film on high speed. It goes on and on and on, every flicker of pain, every cry of emotion, rolling through me. Desperate to stop the agony, I pull my knees up to my chest. Wrap my arms around them and curl myself into a ball as I pray for it to end.

It does, finally, with a powerful blow to the head that has my ears ringing and me seeing double when I finally work up the nerve to open my eyes. I’m afraid to move, almost afraid to breathe for fear of triggering the nightmare all over again. But when minutes pass and nothing else happens, I force myself to my hands and knees. Then I crawl to the lake’s edge and bracing myself for goddess only knows what, I slide my hands under her armpits and—as quickly as I can—pull her halfway onto the shore.

There’s no pain now, just a yawning emptiness that is somehow worse.

My first real glimpse of her face cements the knowledge that I’m too late. Her cheeks are pale white, her lips tinged with blue. I feel for a pulse, but of course, there is none.

What she does have are hundreds upon hundreds of shallow cuts—up her arms, across her bare breasts, down her stomach, over her thighs. I don’t need to see them to know that they are there—I felt each one as it was made.
Long before some sick bastard shoved her in the water to dispose of her, he made her suffer.

For a moment, just a moment, I get an impression of cold deliberation. Of determination not sickness. Like she was just a small stumbling block in his path, barely a bleep on his radar.

Somehow that makes all of this so much worse.

I can’t stand touching her any longer. Her pain was bad enough, but feeling what he felt—it’s horrific. I try to stand, but she’s partly draped over my leg. Not that I’m sure my legs will support me anyway. In the end, I scuttle backward through the mud like a crab. I want to say I’m gentle with her abused body, but the truth is, I don’t think I am. There’s a red haze in front of my eyes and all I can think about is getting her off me, and getting away.

As I scramble out from under her, her head falls to the right and I get my first glimpse of the elaborate circlet of Isis that has been carved into her left shoulder. Just like the body in my parents’ forest, she has been branded with the mark of Isis.

Though hers is easily three times as large as the one I bear on my neck and collarbone, it is very obviously my mark.

For long seconds I can’t process what I’m seeing, can’t do anything but sit here in the muck as, inside, I scream and scream and scream. Then I’m turning over and crawling up the embankment, my hands slipping off the wet vegetation as I slip and slide through the rain and the mud. I make it a few feet before the shock and pain get me and I collapse.

I don’t know how long I sit here, the horror—and implications—of what I’ve just seen reverberating through me.

Long enough for the world around me to grow fuzzy, and then clear again.

Long enough for bone-rattling shivers to set in.

More than long enough to figure out that this is no accident. I am meant to be here. No matter what I try to tell myself, no matter what I want to believe. Two dead bodies in eight years is a bad coincidence. Two dead bodies in less than eight days is something else entirely. Especially when they both carry my mark.

Goddamn that belladonna. If I find out that it actually worked, that my mother somehow opened me up to this, I will never forgive her. Because next to this, the humiliation of being latent feels like one big party.

But whatever it is that got me here—belladonna, malicious spell, bad luck of epic proportions—I can’t walk away now. Not when that poor girl lies here, unclaimed and unprotected.

I fumble in my pocket for my cell phone, dial 911. Report the body. The operator on the other end assures me that the police are on the way. She asks that I stay at the scene, offers to stay on the line with me until the first patrol car rolls up.

But I can already hear the sirens, and they aren’t that far away. They’ll be here any minute and I still haven’t come up with a reason for why I’m down here. I’d say I was jogging, but the five-inch Jimmy Choos on my feet would mark me as a liar.

The sirens are getting closer and, after hanging up with the operator, I hike my way back up the hill to flag the officers down. It’s still raining and Town Lake isn’t that small—it’ll be easy for them to miss the spot if I’m not there to direct them.

I get to the top just as a car screams around the corner, red and blue lights gleaming in the rain-slicked darkness. Moments later, a second car pulls up and then a third and a fourth. This is Austin, after all. A body in Town Lake is huge enough that everyone wants in on it.

Everyone but me, that is.

The first officer makes his way down the waterlogged hill, his shoes doing a much better job on the slick grass than mine are. “Are you Xandra Morgan?” he asks me, eyes narrowed and voice gruff.

“Yes.”

“Can you show me where the body is?”

I nod, before turning back toward the bridge with a notable lack of enthusiasm. As we walk, we’re joined by two of the other officers. I glance behind me, trying to figure out where the fourth cop is. He’s still at the top of the hill, rolling out yellow crime scene tape.

Somehow the sight of that yellow tape makes all this so much more real. I don’t know why. It’s not like I didn’t realize she was dead before. But that tape…there’s just something about it.

It takes us only a couple of minutes to get to the body, to get to
her
. It seems so impersonal and awful to refer to her as “the body,” even if that’s what she’s become.

The second the officers see her, they start firing questions at me.

Did I move her?

How far did I move her?

Do I know her?

What was I doing down here in the middle of a storm?

When did I find her?

Did I have a problem with the victim?

The first two officers seem to believe me when I say I have no idea who the victim is, but the third is a lot more suspicious—as evinced by the questions he fires at me. I do my best to tell the truth, except of course for the whole strange compulsion thing that got me down here to begin with. Instead I tell them I’d been out with friends and had gotten sick, had decided to walk home instead of cutting the evening short for the others. That was, of course, before the thunderstorm hit.

They want the names and numbers of my friends, but
all I have is Lily’s number so I give it to them. I don’t even know Brandon and Kyle’s last name, but surely she does. I feel awful about bringing police questioning down on any of their heads, but I don’t know what else to do but cooperate. Besides, the sooner they rule me out as the one who killed this girl, the sooner they’ll start looking for the real culprit.

Within a few minutes, Town Lake is crawling with cops. Some are securing crime scene boundaries while others are setting up lights and starting to comb the area for I don’t know what. Evidence? Clues? The murderer?

After a few more questions, I’m shuffled aside. Told to go wait by the police cars for the detectives to show up, in case they have more questions for me. The rain is starting to let up, thank God, so at least I can see where I’m going when I make my way up the hill to the main road for the second time tonight.

I slip a couple of times on my way up as my heels get stuck in the mud and refuse to come out again. The third time I’m poised to go down hard. As my knee twists beneath me, I’m saved by a hand on my elbow. Whoever it is bears my weight, keeps me upright, and saves me a nasty fall.

I turn to say thank you and find myself staring into Nate’s startled eyes. Earlier, I’d wished that I had his phone number, or at least that I knew what precinct he worked for. The fact that I didn’t, and that somehow he’s ended up here anyway, feels an awful lot like fate. Or magical interference. I really hope it’s the first, but everything inside me screams that it’s the latter. I just wish I knew who or why.

“Xandra! What are you doing out here?”

“I’m the one who found her.”

“You’re the witness?” He sounds incredulous, and more than a little wary. I guess he’s not a big believer in fate either.

“Yeah.” I try a smile, but I know it’s lopsided. Still, it’s the best I can do with everything that’s happened tonight. “Sorry to pull you away from the basketball game.”

He shrugs. “The Mavericks were losing anyway.” He glances down at my feet, the back half of which are currently sunk in the mud. “Can I help you up to the street?”

Maybe I should say no, let him get to work, but the longer I stand here, the more I’m beginning to doubt my ability to get back up to the street. If Nate wants to help me, who am I to brush him off?

“That’d be great,” I say, holding an arm out to him. He ignores it, wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me flush against his body. Then he all but carries me up the hill.

I have no idea how he makes the muddy climb look so easy, but he does and I appreciate it. He waves off my thanks, tells me I can go wait in his car for a while and then he’ll give me a ride home. This is the most gruesome murder they’ve seen in years and he knows none of the beat cops are going to want to leave the scene for something as mundane as dropping me at home.

I should probably decline the invitation and just head home on my own, but there are a few problems with that scenario. One, I can’t see a cab actually stopping to pick me up when I’m covered in mud and grime. Two, the compulsion still isn’t gone. It’s weakened, enough so that I can walk away from the body, but not so weak that I can leave the area yet. I don’t know what’s holding me here, but whatever the spell is, it isn’t ready to let me walk. And I’m not ready to fight it—after that last little experience in torture, I really don’t need any more pain. And three, I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to be alone, not when I see that girl’s face—and her mark—every time I close my eyes.

In the end, I take Nate up on his offer. He lays a sweatshirt out on the front seat of his car so I don’t mess
it up too badly, then hands me a blanket from the trunk. I climb in, let him close the door, and then I just sit there, trying not to think, as the minutes pass.

It’s harder than it sounds. Especially when I’m smart enough to know that this—that she—is somehow meant for me. But why? Who is doing this and what are they hoping to get out of it? It must be pretty horrific if they’re willing to kill two innocent women to accomplish it.

And what is happening to me? What spell am I dealing with that let me feel that poor woman, that brought me to this place? And that is keeping me here although I’ve already done everything I can for her?

I don’t know enough magic to determine the spell—or even if what I’m experiencing is something a normal witch can engender. Not that I think a normal witch is behind this—from what I saw and what I felt, I can’t imagine anything about the person who did this is normal.

For one brief moment, my mind flashes on Declan. I’m not stupid. I recognize that the only constants between the first girl I found, eight and a half years ago, and this one are Declan and me. And while I don’t have the ability or the desire to cast a magical spell to find dead bodies—just the thought creeps me out—I can’t say the same about Declan. But why would he do this to me? What’s in it for him?

Nothing that I can see—

Nate opens the door without warning and I jump, strangling a scream before it can escape.

“Whoa, Xandra.” He holds his hands up in surrender. “Everything’s okay. I’m sorry I scared you, but I just wanted to check and make sure you’re doing okay?”

Okay seems like a bit of an overstatement, but I’m not going to argue with him. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

He studies me in the dim light afforded by the car’s interior lamp. “Did you fall?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

He points to my cheekbone. “You have a cut and some bruising right under your eye.”

My hand flies to my face and I feel a line of dried blood inches from my eye. For a second, I feel it again, his fist slamming into my face, his ring cutting me. Her, I remind myself viciously. Cutting her. But then why do I bear the mark?

“I tripped a couple times, down near the lake,” I whisper. “When I was trying to get her out.” Again it’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either.

I must be convincing, though, because Nate just nods. “I’ve got a few more minutes here, but not long. Between the rain and the dark, we can’t see much, so we’ll have to come back tomorrow during the day. Most of the trace evidence has already been destroyed.”

Because of me or the rain? I think of how I was slipping and sliding all over the embankment and my cheeks burn with embarrassment. I definitely played a part in destroying evidence, but I don’t know what else I could have done. Left her there, in the water? The compulsion wouldn’t have let me. Besides, something tells me that the wizard or warlock responsible for this didn’t leave any evidence anyway. He was far too deliberate to do something that stupid.

Still, I should say something. “I’m sorry about that.”

“I would have done the same thing. Besides, the rain doesn’t leave us with much to work with anyway.” Someone calls his name and he repeats, “Just a few more minutes,” before slamming the door shut.