Violence—dark, malevolent. It poured from the building and rolled off the walls. Something terrible had happened. The energy was living, left behind by the aftermath of what had created it. Death. She smelled it. Knew it waited just inside the building.
Dahlia fought to breathe her way through the pain. She avoided violent energy whenever possible, but she could force herself to endure it if necessary. She’d done it before. She had to go inside. She had to know what happened, and she had to get to Milly and Bernadette and maybe even Jesse. Resolutely, she drew air into her lungs and stood up. Her tongue moistened her suddenly dry lips. It was difficult to concentrate with so much pain, but she’d learned to push it to the back of her head. And she had to see what happened. What was left. It was the only home she could remember. The only people she had contact with lived there with her. Her books. Her music. Her entire world was in that building.
She kept to the trees, running lightly through the tall grass, moving with the breeze rather than against it. She knew there was someone left behind. Someone waiting for her arrival. Energy flowed toward her and it confused her. There was the violence, hot angry waves rolling in to swamp her and a secondary source, completely different. Calm, centered—patient. The contrast was shocking. She’d never experienced it before, and it made her all the more wary.
As she approached her home, she could see several men dragging Jesse Calhoun down the well-worn path to the boat docks. Jesse appeared unconscious and covered in blood. His legs dragged uselessly and she could see the damage, raw and ugly even in the night. “Jesse.” She whispered his name and switched directions, hurrying toward him, using the natural cover, uncertain how she could help him. She never carried a gun. She had long ago realized she couldn’t survive the deliberate taking of a life.
There were too many men slipping through the night toward the waterway. A purge. The men had come to kill her, to wipe out her existence. Why? She’d completed her mission. She tried to maneuver closer, thinking she might be able to scare them away from Jesse with heat and fire. The sound of gunfire erupted from within the building.
“Milly. Bernadette.” She’d never felt so helpless or torn in her life.
Shouts broke out as Jesse woke, struggling and fighting. Dahlia immediately followed the group of men, reaching out to Jesse as she did so. She wasn’t particularly telepathic, but Jesse was, and he would feel her energy and know she was present. Jesse. Tell me what to do.
A man’s voice answered in a hard, authoritative voice… And it wasn’t Jesse. Don’t do anything. Stay away from here.
She froze, sinking into the tall grass. Other than Jesse, no one had ever spoken to her like that. The world was crashing down around her and nothing made sense. The overload of violent energy made her sick, her stomach rebelling as the waves rushed over her, wanting to consume her. Her head was throbbing with pain. She kept her eyes on Jesse, hoping he would reach out to her, tell her what was going on. She saw one of the men deliberately reach down and slam the butt of his gun into the raw mess that was Jesse’s leg. Jesse screamed, a terrible sound that would echo in her dreams for a long time.
The rush of violence hit her hard, swamping her so that she sagged backward, but she kept her gaze focused on the man who had struck Jesse so viciously. Flames rushed up and over him, huge leaping streaks of orange and red, as high as a bonfire, flames she couldn’t possibly control. Chaos erupted. Several men fired shots in scattered directions, uncertain where the attack was coming from. One man rolled his partner in a jacket to put out the flames.
A third man simply shot Jesse a second time, in his other leg. Dahlia had never heard so much agony in a scream. She was sick, over and over, the power of the violent energy swirling around her and beating at her with more force than she’d ever endured before.