Blood Moons (33 page)

When she pushed it open, a half man, half beast stopped in his attack to stare at her with murder in his eyes—one green and one golden. He was snarling at her, but kept still, poised to strike as soon as she came within range. Not a 299

Blood Moons

by Alianne Donnelly

mindless beast. She felt him in her mind, not scanning, but forcing his frenzied thoughts at her.

Her vision blurred with tears. He was panicking, too far away from his mate to protect her and it translated to violence. Horrible, unimaginable violence that he unleashed on his prison for now. On his captors later. Dara had gone off without him, into danger, toward death, and he blamed Amelia.

She couldn't move a step farther, and realized it was because he was keeping her there. Cold fear gripped her.

"Not just a mind reader."

The guards outside...

"No safer than you, even with their guns."

The others in the colony...

"Irrelevant. Need out. Protect Dara ... despite herself."
She didn't trust him, Tristan knew. She thought he would hurt her.
"Never!"

Amelia's heart broke for him.
You love her.

The beast stilled, in her mind as well as in the cage.

Surprise. Confusion. Images of Dara smiling in the sunlight.

Warmth and comfort so far out of reach. Fear—for her—so
deep it obliterated coherent thought. Doubt.
Could
he harm
her?
Should
he let her go?

Another roar shook the walls around them. The beast in the cage became fully tiger and rammed the bars again and again. One of them snapped high up toward the top. Tristan turned human and pried at it until he'd bent it out of the way.

It still wasn't enough to accommodate his large frame.

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Frozen in place, shivering in the face of his rage, Amelia fought the compulsion he'd placed on her and unclenched her fingers from around the satchel. It dropped to the floor. "Y-you'll need that," she managed to force out through her clenched teeth. She couldn't unlock her jaw.

Again, the beast, more human than tiger, stopped in his assault and cocked his head curiously. Long fingers curled around a bar. Muscles bulged and strained. The bar broke above and below. Tristan forced his way through the opening he'd created, the jagged edges cutting deep. By the time he stalked toward Amelia, the tears in his skin were mended.

He came toe to toe with her, staring down through eyes changing rapidly between green and gold, huffing deep breaths against her hair. For long moments he stood, unmoving. Thinking. Deciding.

When he bent close, Amelia squeezed her eyes shut, preparing to feel his fangs tear open her throat. It would be no more than she deserved.

But the bite never came. She waited tensely for her end, cringing, more afraid of dying than the after. She was so locked up that her body swayed back and she had to take a step to keep her balance. Miraculously, she could. She could move again!

Amelia opened her eyes.

Tristan was gone.

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301

Blood Moons

by Alianne Donnelly

27th day of the 4th Blood Moon, 3028

"He always kills on the night of the new moon," Dara said carefully. Everything she did now, she did carefully. There was a grenade in her mind with the pin pulled. She had no idea what might set it off.

"Yes, we know," the police psychologist said. He was a pretty boy, a year or two younger than Dara, and had been brought in by the skeptical chief of police to construct a profile. It was clear he had no idea what he was dealing with, otherwise he wouldn't be so eager to get the killer to
study
him. No one had told him yet that the killer wouldn't be coming in quietly, if at all. "It is a metaphor for the darkness inherent in our society."

"Excuse me," she said. "But you don't know shit."

The boy drew himself up, offended. Michael Allen Roseli.

Graduate and PhD recipient of Athens University's very prestigious psych program. With honors. Star student, good boy who never got into trouble, never even skipped class. The only way he had to experience the bad side of life—without it messing up his perfectly carefree existence, of course—was through "studying" people who waded through its murky waters day after day.

Dara had a masters of lit from a little nowhere college. The only way she could have gotten into a school as good as Athens U had been to work there. She'd paid her college tuition by working in the digital library department of a 302

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university almost as good as the one Dr. Roseli graduated from.

She'd still been working there after graduation, right up until the day of her arrest. A quiet life, a solitary job, anything to minimize her contact with the outside world and the droves of people milling about in it. She'd met her boss once, to be hired and trained in her duties. After that, her pay had gone straight to her bank account. No human interaction required.

It had been a good cocoon for her. Dara had loved her job because all she had to do was look at books all day long.

Dara had used to envy the students who sent her reference queries there. Clever, lucky kids who got to learn from some of the best professors on Earth. Now, annoyed by this one's arrogance and stupid sense of entitlement, she realized she might have romanticized them a little.

"I understand that this is difficult for you," Dr. Roseli said, making his voice reasonable, but his eyes were still hard.

"And you're directing your frustration at me because I'm the nearest available target, but I've studied the human thought process for—"

"I have been inside his mind," she said to shut him up. "All your theories and years of study don't even come close to what I
know
for a fact." The killer's light pulsed in her mind.

With MacMurphy's and Calen's help she'd managed to stabilize the crack somewhat, but there was no way to seal it.

It gave her a glimpse of him, but only by exposing herself in return. And agitation of any kind seemed to make him ...

eager to pay attention. All Dara could do was keep herself 303

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calm and as far from that light as possible. "May I continue now?"

Like a petulant teenager, the psychologist leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. But he shut up and let her talk.

"He is highly unstable. Killing is an addiction to him. He craves the thrill of the hunt, and the kill. His victims' fear excites him. But he's also very superstitious and needs to justify his actions as the
right ones
. He kills on the night of the new moon as a tribute to the universe. Because he's told himself that society is corrupt and he was sent to cleanse it, to the point where he actually believes it now. He hears ...

not voices, exactly, but some kind of directions from the universe that tell him who to take, where to kill them, and what messages to leave."

"Messages like these?" The boy opened a file on the computer screen table between them and spread out pictures of crime scenes from the last three months. Dara looked away, fighting a wave of nausea.

"Is this necessary?" MacMurphy said, stepping up.

"We have to confirm that the killer acts alone." It was a merciless attempt to put her in her place somehow. She was showing him up and his pride was bruised.

Dara made herself glance at the pictures. There was so much blood. It was everywhere. The messages were scrawled in it across the walls and floors all around the victims' bodies.

The first one read,
A lovely package hides maggots and rot
inside.
The victim had been skinned from head to toe, 304

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exposing evidence of plastic surgery. There were maggots crawling all over the corpse.

The second read,
Money stolen buys everything a dead
man needs.
The body had been cut open from throat to pelvis, the skin pulled aside. Dara shuddered and looked away; that was the one that had sent her to prison. She didn't need to see the pictures to remember what the victim looked like in the aftermath. The killer had poured molten silver down the man's throat. It had cooled and solidified and had replaced what used to be his trachea down to his stomach. Only echoes of his silent screams lingered in her mind now. Dara was grateful for that, at least.

The final picture was even more disturbing. The victim was a woman who had had her face peeled off, her breasts cut off, and her uterus removed. All the parts were arranged in a row next to her. The message said,
Pretty whore. Not so pretty
anymore.

The psychologist pointed out the first picture. "This used to be Layla Logan. She was a small-time actress. From what we could find, she had so much surgery she didn't look like herself anymore." He pointed to the next one. "This man was Mason Duff. An investment banker who embezzled a fortune from his clients. It was even in the news, but the courts couldn't convict him due to lack of evidence." He moved the two aside and brought the third one forward. "Maureen Cunningham. Wife of the Three Oaks mayor. Her personal assistant told the police she came to Gray Dublin two or three times a month to cheat on her husband." The picture returned to the file and the file closed. "Now you tell me, what kind of 305

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message can we expect over the dead and mangled body of Katie Grayson?"

"Death shall come to those unworthy of life," Dara said.

The psychologist looked to MacMurphy thinking,
Is she
serious?
Even though he didn't ask the question aloud, MacMurphy nodded in answer. "What in the hell could that girl have done to deserve this?"

Dara met his gaze, because it sounded like Roseli was demanding an answer from
her.
"You want me to analyze the motives of a deranged psychopath? I thought that was your territory."

"You're the one who was inside his head," Roseli mocked.

"Boy, don't make me beat your face in," MacMurphy warned in a lethal voice.

She'd have to do it...

Dara clutched her head, telling herself it was just a movie she was watching. She focused on the scene, not the killer; on what he saw, not what he felt. She made herself look at the young woman who might soon be reduced to a collection of bloody body parts. "The girl likes to party," she told the psychologist.

"And that's a crime?"

"In the killer's mind, it is, yes. She drinks, takes drugs ...

she makes a spectacle of herself because it's the only way she can draw attention to herself." Living in the shadow of her politically-inclined father who, by all accounts, loved the media more than his own wife, the daughter was probably desperate for it. "I can't tell you where he's planning to kill 306

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her, but I can tell you that her body will be displayed in a very public place."

All that life, that deep yearning to be
seen
... the girl didn't deserve this. Dara had to stop him. And when her determination turned to anger and the foreign light in her mind pulsed, she directed that anger at the killer.

"Dara." MacMurphy touched her shoulder.

"What's going on?" the psychologist asked.

"Shut up," MacMurphy ordered him, then softened his tone. "Dara, look at me. Talk to me."

She couldn't. Every moment she spent protecting herself, she was condemning an innocent girl to a gruesome, torturous death. How could she let it happen and live with herself?

"Dara, don't do anything stupid, you hear? Dara? Dara..."

She let his voice fade away. Turned toward the light. She could feel the killer's eyes on her, eager, curious. It felt as if he was daring her to come out of hiding. At the moment, she felt very much like obliging him. She braced herself inside her own mind, hooked an anchor deep to find her way back, then launched herself at the light.

Dara felt the killer's triumph a split second before what remained of the dark shell shattered, and then she was inside his head. He was gloating. He thought he had her. She let him throw his untrained mental punches, took the pain and forced it to the back of her mind so she could focus. She didn't give a damn about his thoughts, though he screamed them at her, trying to drown her in his madness.

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Dara didn't give him that satisfaction. Tristan had taught her well.

"Dara..."
The killer was in her mind now; she was hearing echoes of what her body perceived. He didn't know how to make sense of thoughts, only used her to spy. MacMurphy wouldn't give him anything, she knew. It gave her the confidence to do some spying of her own.

Except that the killer had closed his eyes. Furious that he would even consider denying her, she
made
him open them.

Forced her way into that part of his mind which controlled his movements and pried his eyelids open. Dara wasn't subtle; she wasn't kind. He felt the manipulation, and it was painful.

She showed him no mercy.

At last, light shone on the darkness and she was able to look through his eyes. Keeping tight control on him, she turned his head to look around. The room looked to be in the middle of construction. The walls weren't finished yet, and the floors were covered with plastic. There were wires sticking out everywhere. No lights were installed, but there was light enough coming from outside.

She moved his head even more, forcing him to turn his whole body or have his neck break.

There!
In the corner on the floor, a girl sat bound and gagged, her eyes covered. Her clothes were filthy; she had been beaten and was shaking, frightened.

Dara was livid. She wanted to kill the bastard. Just make his heart stop and watch him writhe.