people from death, in every corner of the country, always at the
penultimate moment, with miraculous foresight.
By eight o’clock, she had the urge to pound her head against the table,
the wall, the concrete decking around the pool outside, against anything
hard enough to crack her mental block and drive understanding into her.
She decided that it was time to stop thinking, and go to dinner.
She ate in the motel coffeeshop again just broiled chicken and a salad
to atone for lunch at the bakery. She tried to be interested in the
other customers, do a little people-watching. But she could not stop
thinking about Ironheart and his sorcery.
He dominated her thoughts later, as well, when she was lying in bed,
trying to sleep. Staring at the shadows on the ceiling, cast by the
landscape lighting outside and the half open Levolor blinds on the
window, she was honest enough with herself to admit he fascinated her on
other than professional levels. He was the most important story of her
career, yes, true.
And, yes, he was so mysterious that he would have intrigued anyone
reporter or not. But she was also drawn to him because she had been
alone a long time, loneliness had carved an emptiness in her, and Jim
Ironheart was the most appealing man she had met in ages.
Which was insane.
Because maybe he was insane.
She was not one of those women who chased after men who were wrong for
her, subconsciously seeking to be used, hurt, and abandon She was picky
when it came to men. That was why she was alone, for God’s sake.
Few men measured up to her standards.
Sure. Picky, she thought sarcastically. That’s why you’ve got this
thing for a guy who has delusions of being Superman without the tights
cape.
Get real, Thorne. Jesus.
Entertaining romantic fantasies about James Ironheart was short sighted,
irresponsible, futile, and just plain stupid.
But those eyes Holly fell asleep with an image of his face drifting in
her mind, watch over her as if it were a portrait on a giant banner,
rippling gently against cerulean sky. His eyes were even bluer than
that celestial backdrop.
In time she found herself in the dream of blindness again. The circular
room. Wooden floor. Scent of damp limestone. Rain drumming on roof
Rhythmic creaking. Whoosh. Something was coming for her, out of the
darkness that had somehow come alive, a monstrous presence she could
neither hear nor see but could feel. The Enemy. Whoosh. It closing in
relentlessly, hostile and savage, radiating cold the way a fu radiated
heat. Whoosh. She was grateful that she was blind, because she knew
the thing’s appearance was so alien, so terrifying, that just the sight
of it would kill her. Whoosh. Something touched her. A moist, icy
tentacle At the base of her neck. A pencil-thin tentacle. She cried
out, and the tip of the probe bored into her neck, pierced the base of
her skull Whoosh.
With a soft cry of terror, she woke. No disorientation. She knew
immediately where she was: the motel, Laguna Hills.
Whoosh.
The sound of the dream was still with her. A great blade slicing
through the air. But it was not a dream sound. It was real. And the
room was cold as the pitch-black place in the nightmare. As if weighted
down by a heart swollen with terror, she tried to move, could not. She
smelled limestone. From below her, as if there were vast rooms under
them came a soft rumbling sound of she somehow knew-large stones were
grinding against each other.
Whoosh.
Something unspeakable was still squirming along the back of her neck,
writhing sinuously within her skull, a hideous parasite that had chosen
her for a host, worming its way into her, going to lay its eggs in her
brain. But she could not move.
Whoosh.
She could see nothing but bars of pale, pale light against part of the
black ceiling, where the moonsoft glow of landscape lighting projected
the image of the windowblind slats. She desperately wanted more light.
Whoosh.
She was making pathetic whimpers of terror, and she so thoroughly