Circle of Dreams (The Quytel Series Book 1) Page 2

  “Bastard,” Jay shot back. “Sittin’ here watching the show? Aren’t we paying you for something?”

  Banter helped calm them on the job, and on this one they needed it. All the victims thus far had been psychic, stripped of their powers and their lives. Each member of the team was all too aware of how vulnerable they would be without the gifts that made them excel and helped them survive when little else could.

  “Now, now, boys. You know how I love it when you get all touchy-feely on me.” Cole’s twin sister, Maliha, joked through the small earpiece allowing seamless communication between them in the field.

  Maliha ran surveillance and tech support for the team. A shape-shifter like Cole, she also had the rare psychic abilities of a tracker and a gift with electronics.

  Dean, the fourth member of their team, muttered in the background, ready to tag and follow even the slightest hint of a clue. The tall, lean computer network genius had skin the color of night.

  Cole and Jay were usually in the field while Dean and Maliha ran surveillance and tech support. Nathanial was the fifth member, silent and deadly. Most often in the background, he protected them all whether they wanted it or not.

  Cole had emerged as the natural team leader—the alpha of their mixed family even if none of them named him as such. They trusted his gut instinct with their lives.

  “Anything?” Cole whispered.

  “Man, these folks are screwed.” Alarm spiked in Jay’s voice. “I can’t get any of their own thoughts anymore. Just the damn command to be here.”

  The couple started walking, their movements unnatural and jerky, as if an unseen force propelled them forward. They approached the warehouse door, which swung open as if waiting for them.

  “We have to stop them!” Jay insisted a little too loudly.

  That gut instinct of Cole’s screamed that death waited behind the door. “Not yet.” He wouldn’t risk his team, his family, unnecessarily.

  Out of nowhere, he felt a gentle brush—a feather along the edges of his aura, a lover’s touch. He inhaled swiftly and spun around. “What the hell?”

  “What?” Jay echoed, nearly bumping into him.

  Cole took a step away and spread his arms wide. “Did you feel that?”

  “Not a damn thing,” Jay answered.

  “Cole! What was that?” Maliha’s voice, sharp with worry, nearly pierced his eardrum.

  She’d felt it too. Being twins, Cole and his sister had a strong link, beyond psychics, beyond wolf pups growing up without a pack.

  “They’re gone!” Jay squeaked before Cole could respond to his sister.

  “What do you mean?” Cole gnashed his teeth, the wolf rising to the surface with a fierce growl.

  “No more thoughts. No commands. Their minds are gone. I can’t get a damn thing,” Jay swore.

  “Shit.” Cole closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. The wolf was close, too close. It usually wasn’t this hard for him to keep the other half of himself in check. He reached for the earth deep beneath the concrete slab and pushed all thought away, calming the beast.

  “Cole!” Mali’s voice broke the haze of his need to shift, helping to bring him back into control.

  “I’m good,” he assured her, breathing hard with the effort to contain the wolf’s impulse.

  “Yeah?” More than a hint of doubt surfaced in her question.

  “Yeah.” He drew deep green, grounding energy up from the earth through the arches of his feet. He knew his sister, and Mali was likely biting her tongue. They were too connected for her not to know his struggle with the wolf. She wouldn’t call him out on it, though, not in front of the rest of the team. Not unless she needed to. And he wasn’t so far gone quite yet.

  Cole drew his gun, tracking. He steadied his shaking hand, hoping Jay wouldn’t notice how rattled he felt. “Move in. Nice and easy.” He added the last as much for himself as for Jay.

  Jay silently fell into place beside him as they approached the warehouse. They stayed in the deeper shadows, moving forward with careful, quiet steps until they flanked the door through which the couple had entered. The dim streetlights were too far away to give them much of a look at whatever might be lurking in or around the shadows of the silent warehouse.

  The sticky sweet scent of death filled his nostrils. “Not good.” Cole tried to shake off the weight of dread in the pit his stomach.

  The wolf rose up again, bringing to Cole’s human body the strength and senses of his animal half, sharpening his natural human abilities. His mind cleared. His body now hyper-alert, power and speed poured into his muscles. He and the wolf were as one, intimately woven together. At times like this, the shift rode the surface of his skin. Cole resisted the transformation, calling on long, painful years of deliberately building discipline, training himself to be in control of his animal nature at all times. The wolf snarled, then retreated, reluctantly waiting. It was the best he could do for now. With a small nod to Jay, Cole slipped silently inside.

  His eyes adjusted quickly to the interior darkness of the cavernous building. The space appeared empty. Barely any light from the street made its way through the large windows covered in years of dirt, dust, and smoke. The air was cool and musty from disuse.

  The fallen bodies in the far corner immediately drew his attention.

  “Anyone else here?” Cole sent the question mentally to Jay’s mind, seeing the answer in the shake of his head almost as he thought it. People could hide their physical bodies from a strong telepath, but not their minds.

  They inched along the interior concrete wall. Jay covered Cole as he approached the bodies cautiously, his gun trained on the flattened corpses.

  The woman and man lay beside each other, completely deflated, like the others. Sagging skin melted into the floor, punctuated only by the curves and points of intact skeletons.

  The stench of death permeated the air around him and lodged in his joints. The wolf growled. It’s okay, he soothed. He’d seen too many bodies like this over the past two weeks. Yet this woman was different.

  He knelt beside her. Her short dark hair appeared strangely alive next to her shrunken face. A chill chased down his spine. This woman had been like him. The remnants of her power to connect with the earth lingered faintly within her. His wolf howled a mournful wail, reverberating in his bones. He didn’t know how many were out there like him. Cole had assumed his dual nature made him that way, although even his sister didn’t have the gift of connecting to the earth.

  Grief shot through him, beyond thought. He shared the loss of her passing with the earth and felt the welcoming deep green energy, rock solid and dense.

  “What are you doing?” Cole heard Jay’s startled question; he sounded far away.

  “Cole, no!” Mali screamed just as a whisper of power brushed his mind and flowed into him.

  Cole trembled with it. Before he could stop himself, he laid his warm hand on the remains of the woman’s cold body. And froze in place. Suddenly thrust into the mind of another, he followed the last thread of the dead woman’s life energy to its new resting place.

  Crippling pain wracked his bones and made him want to cry out. He couldn’t. She couldn’t.

  She knew she wouldn’t survive much longer. Her soul had been crushed under the weight of what she’d been forced to do. It happened more frequently now, and the toll it took on her each time was tremendous.

  Was there any part of her original self that remained?

  She tried sometimes to remember what her life had been like, who she had been before. Memory was a curious torture that grew less important each day.

  She couldn’t find the strength to fight it anymore. She hadn’t fought it for years.

  Had it only been years? It felt like centuries. She had no way of knowing.

 
What had been left of her heart had shriveled up and died long ago, and in its place, a festering addiction. An addiction he had grown and cultivated with patience and persistence over the long, excruciating years.

  Bargaining with the devil was soul deadening.

  He was coming to her, for her. She knew it as well as she knew her own breath. Death drew closer with each click of his shiny shoes.

  One day soon it might be. She prayed most days it would.

  She thought again about evil and power. Was she the evil she had been made into? This question invaded her thoughts more now than it had in the past.

  In the beginning she had tried to refuse him, hadn’t she? To fight his power over her? To pretend his threats wouldn’t destroy her soul? To keep a small part of herself separate from the horror of it, from him? He had worn her down mercilessly until only the thinnest layer of her true self remained beneath the monster who now craved the power he fed her.

  It scared her more to think a piece of her still hoped for a different outcome.

  The key turned in the lock, and she waited. Waited for his now familiar and always frightening face to emerge. That little half smile twisting into a cruel sneer when he wanted to use her. He knew. It was all in his sick smile. She waited for his scent to reach her nostrils. A wave of fear and anticipation washed over her.

  She was his monster, and at times she knew at least that much.

  He smiled at her. She knew what he thought of her. He’d told her countless times. His treasure. His salvation. His ultimate success.

  “My dear, it’s time.”

  Bri drifted between slumber and waking, memories of her mother slipping in and out of her sleep-drenched mind. The way her mother had held her close and rocked her to sleep as a baby. The love in each touch as she gently stroked her cheek, dressed her, or tucked her in at night—her mother’s green eyes sparkling with love and amusement.

  Those eyes.

  Dread and a frightening eagerness crept in, waking her up. If she fell asleep, it would come again.

  Feeling the delicate weight of the coin in her hand, her body started to tingle. Bri tried to calm her erratic breathing and keep hope at bay and fear in check, but terror crouched inside her mind. She had to see those eyes again for herself.

  Paralysis gripped her. Pain ground into her bones, and the deepest sadness she’d ever felt throbbed in her veins. Her throat constricted. She couldn’t take it another moment, but she had to.

  It’s a dream! It’s not real! she yelled. It came out as a whisper, not at all convincing. She had to endure a little longer, hold on to more than her sanity.

  Through a swirl of mist, the cave emerged and an unseen hand encircled her neck. Bri tried to turn around to see her attacker.

  No one. She gasped and clawed at her neck with her free hand, barely able to suck in little sips of air. Fear made her heart stutter and then thud painfully in her chest. Could the nightmare actually kill her?

  Bri clung hard to the coin in her hand. Remembering. The death grip on her throat loosened, and she could breathe again. The rush of adrenaline made her knees weak. Terror slowly drained out of her feet, reabsorbed into the walls of the cave with a flicker illuminating a crystal here and there. Her mind began to clear.

  A small, barely conscious part of her rejoiced as the knot of dread deep in her stomach unfurled a little at a time. She looked around the landscape of her nightmare with new eyes. And then she felt him.

  Bri turned to the man standing beside her and was nearly blinded by a flashing light partially obscured by his body. The air had turned thick as if the molecules inside the cave had become oversaturated, slowing any movement to a crawl.

  The man had his back to her. A good foot taller than she, his dark hair, highlighted by silver streaks, seemed to shimmer in the now-flickering light of the cave. The effect was mesmerizing.

  She crept forward, forcing one foot in front of the other.

  The man turned as if he sensed her presence, and their eyes met, gray touching green, his high cheekbones and beautiful expression somehow familiar.

  He had broad shoulders and a powerful build. Her stomach flipped, and her breath quickened. She had the strangest urge to rub up against him and kiss the tender spot at the base of his neck just to taste him. For a moment, Bri forgot where she was, the fear of the dream fading. This apparition was without a doubt the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen.

  He suddenly wailed, a terrifying sound that tore at her heart. Light poured out of him, too much for his body to contain. She reached out to catch him, hold on to him, but it was like trying to catch a cloud, wisps of his essence floating through her fingers.

  Deep in the recesses of her mind, she heard her own scream of despair as his body melted into nothingness.

  Chapter 3

  One moment Cole was touching the dead woman.

  The next thing he knew, he’d been punched across the warehouse on a blast of pure white energy slamming into his mind and then his body. He rode the shock waves coursing through him as his back and head hit the concrete floor, rattling his brain. His wolf must have been knocked out also because the two came alive in an instant.

  Cole reeled as the wolf rushed forward, trying to force the shift, doubling the crushing pain in his joints. Nothing happened, and he gritted his teeth against the additional strain. Even if he wanted to shift, he couldn’t. His body refused to move, eyes glued shut. Equally immobilized, his wolf frantically struggled to come to his aid.

  The image of a woman floated into view. He didn’t know her, did he? She was somehow familiar and beautiful—a cold, luminous beauty, like glacial ice. Thick silver hair rippled to her waist and pale-blue robes swirled hypnotically around her slender ankles. Glowing with the power of an ancient goddess, she raised thin arms skyward as if she could reach through the high ceiling of the crystal cave containing her.

  Cole resisted the urge to turn away from the blinding light, forcing himself to examine the scene from all angles. Was she reaching out to him? He wasn’t sure. He felt a deep pull to go to her, to give her anything and everything he was; as though he had no sense of self left, no desire to live if she wished otherwise.

  He fought the impulse, but only for an instant, the slightest of hesitations. He couldn’t look away no matter how hard he tried. Arcs of lightning raced from her fingers and palms, down her raised arms. She held him entranced, pulsating with the energy she gathered. Finally, she focused her glowing green eyes on him with a hand outstretched, a ray of white energy connecting them, palm to sternum.

  Almost without protest, Cole let her power wash over him, tear him apart. His connection to the earth, his wolf, his life force, all of it bled out of him and into her. A howl of protest echoed in the very core of his being. The wolf couldn’t fight it any more than he could, first powerless, and then beyond caring.

  Suddenly, the pain receded. Her grip on him shifting, he was left whole, although everything ached, as if he’d been stretched on the rack. The medieval image invaded his mind with disturbing clarity.

  Cole’s brain began functioning again. He should have been shocked by his lack of resistance, but couldn’t find the strength to be bothered by any of it. He caught a glimmer of strain stretching across the woman’s features, a battle within herself for control, as if she too were trapped by a gruesome spell. Focusing on that duality, Cole fought to see a presence beyond the icy surface. He felt, more than saw, the woman taken over by something far more terrifying.

  She turned the full force of her gaze on him, and any last resistance he had melted away. Even his wolf was curiously silent, equally entranced.

  Cole could refuse her nothing, nor stop the feeling she was reaching out to him. Pleading with him to help her, maybe to save her or find her. He wasn’t sure. Man and wolf embraced whatever end she chose
for him, opening up completely to her, finding a strange sort of bliss in surrender.

  When his lips parted to speak, no sound left his throat.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of someone with him, and he turned. He locked on to a deep green gaze, and for a moment he couldn’t look away. A woman, tall and thin, with long blond hair. Fear lit those gorgeous eyes. He wanted to reach out to her, comfort and protect her. Unfortunately, his body and mind were not his own, not anymore.

  The one with the power and light pulled him to her and then released him.

  Cole stumbled. He didn’t want to leave her. He actually didn’t know if he could, even to save himself. He didn’t have a choice. In the flicker of a moment, he was jolted back into his physical body. He could have sworn he felt the featherlight touch of fingertips brush his face. The agonizing howl of his wolf and the scream of the other woman shot through his bones. What the hell happened to me?

  He felt it then. A weight, delicate yet unmistakably solid, nestled in his solar plexus. The wolf noticed it too and paced around the smooth and shiny, pearly object, sniffing and pawing the ground.

  Strong hands gripped his shoulders, and he heard Jay’s hoarse voice from far away, “Cole. Cole! Man, are you okay?”

  The heat of Jay’s body hovered above him, and Cole latched onto his friend’s presence to bring him back to his world.

  The concrete floor of the warehouse was cold against his spine. He’d been to hell and somehow made it out the other side, his body beat up and spat out like a WWF practice dummy. He struggled to open his eyes, afraid of what he might see . . . afraid of what he might not see.

  The pearl the woman had planted felt heavy and well defined now, pulsing with need, impossible to ignore. A deep longing churned in his gut. Anger flared and gave way to something close to terror. What if he couldn’t fight this? What if he couldn’t get rid of it until he played out her game like a puppet? Was the woman a witch?