Circle of Dreams (The Quytel Series Book 1) Read online

  “How long have I been out?” Cole asked, his voice thin in his own ears.

  “Not long. A second or two,” Jay told him, lines of worry creasing his forehead. “I’m not sure you even lost consciousness. Man, you flew the minute you touched that woman’s body. What the hell happened?”

  The wolf raged with the need to run free and fight. Cole’s palms began to sweat with the strain of preventing the shift. The itch of his pads and the sharpness of his claws ached to burst through his skin and fingertips. The wolf wanted freedom, needed to hunt down whoever was screwing with them.

  Cole took several deep breaths to calm the beast. The wolf balked, circling and pawing the space around the pearl. Nose up in the air, he gave a harsh snort, eyes fixed on the foreign object lodged in their torso. Later, Cole promised as he tried to push himself to his feet.

  He scowled in irritation. “I have no idea what that was. Help me up.” He grabbed Jay’s outstretched hand. “Mali?” He croaked the question, his throat parched. “Is she okay?”

  “What the hell happened out there?” Dean demanded.

  “Where’s Mali?” A shot of adrenaline pumped into Cole’s already abused system, giving him the strength to stand. He could suddenly feel his sister’s pain and confusion. They were so deeply connected there was no way she hadn’t known something had happened to him. He only hoped she hadn’t been pulled into the nightmarish experience with him.

  “I’m okay.” Mali finally announced, her voice hoarse in his earpiece.

  Relief turned his legs to rubber. He leaned heavily on Jay, who stumbled under his weight.

  “Cole, what was that?” she demanded.

  Yes, his sister had definitely experienced a taste of whatever had knocked him into another reality. Cole stood on shaky feet and surveyed the area. “I’m not entirely sure . . . looks like we’ve got a couple of bodies we can’t touch.”

  Jay grimaced and nodded.

  “Let’s get this done. Dean, watch her,” Cole ordered. “We’ll be there soon.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” Maliha insisted. It was a tired conversation between them. She could never accept his protectiveness, seeing in it gender implications he didn’t connect with. She was his sister. Period.

  “I’m on it.” Dean stopped her protest. “You two be careful—there’s some freaky shit out there.”

  Cole knew his sister hated it when he thought she couldn’t care for herself, but he would take no chances with any of their lives.

  “Mali,” he started. For the first time in a long while he had trouble focusing on the conversation, the job, anything but that haunting vision. The pearl pulsed to life with clawing need. Whoever, or whatever, had planted something in him, and it grew wildly, strong and fearsome.

  In his mind’s eye, the luminescent pearl glowed with the force of compulsion as it became another part of him, waiting and guiding. It had been less than five minutes, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop himself from dropping everything to hunt for whatever the hell she wanted him to find.

  “Cole?” Maliha asked again. “Cole? Are you okay?”

  He winced at the worry tingeing his sister’s voice. He hated the idea of being forced to do anything he didn’t understand or choose. And he had no idea how the hell he could explain all of this to his team, so he lied, “I’m good.”

  After a long pause on the other end of the line, Cole glanced at Jay, catching the tail end of his eye roll.

  “I’m fine,” Cole repeated. For his benefit or the team’s, he wasn’t sure.

  “Yeah.” Mali’s voice was clipped and professional. “Dean called the police, and they’re on their way to retrieve the bodies. You’re clear to come home.”

  He and Jay left quickly, striding carefully between the buildings of the deserted docks to a parking lot where Cole had left his pickup.

  Several hours later, a rapid knock on his hotel room door had Cole leaping out of bed. He knew instantly his sister hadn’t been able to sleep any more than he had. She was never subtle when she wanted to question him about something.

  Pulling on a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants, he crossed the small room, the pearl weighing heavy in his solar plexus. Mali was connected to him, and he wasn’t sure how much this would affect her, or maybe already had. He felt sick to his stomach at the thought of her in danger, especially if it happened because of him.

  He yanked the door open, and Mali pushed past him into the utilitarian room.

  “Come on in.” He waved his hand, closing and locking the door behind her.

  His sister was nearly as tall as he, with matching silver highlights in her dark hair. She paced the confined area in U-shaped laps around the double bed in the center of the room.

  He leaned against the door and watched her, mildly amused.

  Stopping abruptly, slapping her hands on her hips, she pinned him with an accusing glare. “This is serious, Cole.”

  “Agreed.” He crossed his arms over his chest. He’d left important details out of the debrief with the rest of his team, including the other woman with frightened green eyes he’d seen in the vision right before he’d slammed back into his body. He’d returned to his room and obsessively sketched from memory, one figure morphing into the other.

  Mali spotted the drawings strewn across the low coffee table in front of the small tube TV.

  She knelt to get a closer look. “Tell me the rest of it.”

  Embarrassed, Cole resisted the urge to snatch the sketches away from her. He’d started drawing the powerful witch, or whatever she was, from his vision. Quickly becoming obsessed with capturing every detail he could remember of the other woman, his imagination filled in the details.

  As Mali examined the drawings of the witch who had nearly stolen his soul, he suppressed a shudder. In the black-and-white sketch, Cole had shadowed her high cheekbones and managed to render the luminescence of her eyes, lit from within and glowing with incredible power. Adorned in flowing robes, her long hair hung well past her waist.

  “She’s beautiful,” Mali said slowly. “And terrifying.”

  Cole rubbed his chin with a thumb and forefinger. “In only the way a goddess who is about to strike you down can be.”

  She glanced up at him, her gray eyes sharp with curiosity. “You don’t believe in that. Gods and goddesses.”

  He shrugged and leaned against the wall.

  “Who is she?” Mali turned to one of the many sketches of the other woman.

  He’d spent two hours drawing her from every angle. “I wish I knew.”

  Mali stood and faced him. “You have to come clean. What didn’t you tell us at the debrief? We don’t keep things from each other. All we know is you feel compelled by something you can’t describe. I can’t help you if I don’t know what this is.”

  Cole took a step toward her. “I don’t want you to be in any more danger. Any of you.”

  “Not an option, little brother,” she shot back, as protective of him as he was of her.

  Cole gave her a small smile and rolled his eyes. Mali had been born a couple of minutes before him and never let him forget it. “I don’t know what you could actually do to help.” He dismissed her concern.

  Mali drew herself up to her full height, still a good six inches shorter than him. Fire flashed in her eyes, quicksilver.

  “You’re an ass. I should let you go off and get yourself killed.”

  Her transparent face gave away her thoughts and emotions. She hated it, of course. Cole found it endearing and useful to know she couldn’t hide much from him.

  “Don’t be cocky.” She swatted his arm affectionately, yet hard enough to sting. He flinched. “We don’t know what we’re up against here and how all of this is tied together. You can’t do this on your o
wn.”

  Cole dragged his hands through his hair and grabbed a drawing of the second woman from the coffee table, staring at it in frustration. “I need to find her.”

  He felt Mali’s eyes boring a hole in the back of his head.

  “I’ll put her picture into the databases and see what we come up with,” she said. “What else?”

  He handed her the cleanest sketch, shocked at how difficult it was to let it go. He needed more help than he could ever admit to his sister. Sinking into the drab-colored armchair, he rested his head on the high back and closed his eyes. The pearl pulsed like a bright beacon. The wolf raised his head and watched it with a low growl of warning.

  “Whatever this is, Mali.” Cole paused as the tug in his diaphragm turned to a throbbing beat that constricted his breathing, consuming his thoughts and desires. He’d examined himself in the mirror when he’d returned to his room and nothing showed on the surface of his skin. “It’s trying to tell me something, guide me to find something. Maybe to find her?”

  Mali knelt by his chair and laid her hand gently on his forearm. His impulse to pull away, to keep her disconnected from whatever had lodged itself inside him, was difficult to ignore. Their connection had been forged long ago. They’d been through hell as young children, needing each other to survive their father’s brutality. Each could feel the other, especially when one was in trouble. And there was no question in his mind he was in trouble.

  “I sensed it too,” she reminded him. “When you connect to the earth, what do you feel?”

  Cole closed his eyes and felt for the soil and rock beneath the foundation of the building. A ray of deep green, the deepest part of the forest barely illuminated by sunlight, rose up into his body as though it was coming home. The wolf calmed and settled in.

  Suddenly, a beam of white tore him open, and he could see where the pearl wanted him to go.

  He blinked hard as Mali’s eyes searched his. Her stern expression told him she’d felt it too.

  “I need a map.” Cole stood abruptly and crossed to the small closet. He pulled out his beat-up duffel bag and retrieved the atlas he always kept on hand. He didn’t trust technology enough to ditch it entirely. Flipping to the full map of the United States on one of the front two pages, he laid it out on the coffee table.

  Mali’s finger traced the I-5 due north to Seattle. “It’s as good a place to start as any, I guess.” She glanced up at him.

  The pearl pulsed in approval. Cole ran an agitated hand through his hair and crossed the room to the compact bathroom in the corner. He leaned on the sink and glared at his reflection in the mirror. The eyes staring at him were a darker gray than usual, troubled. He turned on the tap and splashed cold water over his face, wondering how the hell he’d ended up with some mystical compulsion calling the shots.

  When he looked up, Mali’s reflection stared back at him.

  He grabbed a small towel and scrubbed his face dry before tossing it on the vanity. “You’re not going.”

  She bristled. “Cole. We’re not—”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “I’m serious, Mali. This could be a wild goose chase, for all I know, to throw us off.”

  She smacked her hands back on her hips in protest, but let him finish.

  “You have to stay with the rest of the team and keep working on this,” he insisted, knowing she wouldn’t drop the case before they found out how to stop the killers.

  “They’ll be fine without me,” she fired off. “You’re my priority.”

  She was an expert tracker, one of her stronger psychic talents, and extremely stubborn. He knew her techniques and could hide himself from her long enough to give him a head start.

  “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  Mali cocked her head and rolled her eyes.

  It wasn’t a clever plan. Leaving before she got up in the morning and hoping he got the jump on her was easier than fighting her about it.

  “You’re pathetic.” She tried to joke with him, her face tense with worry. “Just go. I’ll come when you need me. I have to know where you plan on going. And I want regular updates.”

  Cole nodded with relief and brushed past her, returning to the bedroom. She wouldn’t follow him, at least not until there was trouble. In that case, nothing would likely keep her away.

  “I’ll leave for Seattle first thing in the morning,” he told her.

  She picked up two of his most detailed drawings, one of each woman. “I’ll start running these images tonight. Hopefully, I’ll have something for you by the time you arrive.” With her hand on the doorknob, she turned. “You’d better be safe,” she shot over her shoulder, half-threatening.

  He gave her a small salute, ushering her out the door with a heavy heart. “Will do.”

  There would be little sleep for him tonight.

  Chapter 4

  The sharp ring of her cell phone yanked Bri from the arms of a deep and restful sleep. Disoriented, she lurched across her bed toward the sound, vision blurry. She hated when she forgot to turn the ringer off before going to bed. She grabbed the phone off the nightstand and checked the caller ID. Jonah.

  Bri flopped on the bed and let the call go to voicemail. She wasn’t ready to deal with her father this early in the morning. Between her nightmare and the case she’d been reporting on, it was a miracle she’d gotten any sleep last night at all. Rubbing tired eyes, she trooped downstairs for coffee.

  Jonah had adopted her as a child of five, following her parents’ disappearance. He’d whisked her away to Arizona, away from her hometown, her house, and the few neighborhood friends she could now barely recall. Everything familiar to her had disappeared in an instant. In a haze of grief and the numbness of shock, she’d found herself living in an enormous rambling house on the outskirts of Sedona with a stranger who was rarely around. She’d been left to figure out how to process her loss and adjust to her new life largely on her own.

  Her childhood had been quiet and solitary. Jonah’s bodyguard, Mack, had become more of an uncle to her over the years. He’d been the one who had most often made it to her school plays and recitals when Jonah either forgot or was too busy to attend.

  She loved Jonah as a father, despite his shortcomings. As an adult, she tried to accept who he was and her own almost desperate need to feel his love and approval. She knew he had secrets, deep secrets. Things he never told her about her own life, and how or why he’d adopted her as his daughter. She had tried to get him to open up to her, but he would only give her enough to keep her away from the truth.

  As a reporter, she could tell when she was unlikely to uncover the real story, and at a certain point she’d given up asking, though she’d never stop wanting to know.

  Bri poured herself a cup of coffee, familiar pain clawing at her heart. She missed her parents desperately. It would be one of those days. Sighing, she plodded to her office.

  This house was way too big for her, especially on a reporter’s salary. Jonah had more money than she could even imagine and had insisted on buying her the place when she’d commented on how much she loved it. And she did. From her three-story Victorian she could walk to coffee shops, go for a long run around Green Lake, and from the top-floor balcony, she had a killer view of the mountains ringing the city.

  She’d made one of the second-story bedrooms into an office and often worked from home when she finished up a piece. Her current story was a second part follow-up on a series of murders along the west coast, from Long Beach to Seattle. The week before, another body had been found in an abandoned industrial building along the water, drained of all bodily fluids. The police had no leads, although speculation abounded. Conspiracy theories floated around along with ideas ranging from ritual killings to the paranormal.

  Bri sipped her hot black coffee and instantly felt more a
wake. She flipped through hard files and notes while her computer started. A logical explanation existed for the murders. She knew it in her gut. Her interviews with the special investigator in charge of the crime scene, a scientist who had been called in to examine the bodies, and even a woman who claimed to be a local psychic, had yielded nothing conclusive or likely.

  Then the FBI had arrived on the scene and shut her down. She’d already run the initial story, and two more bodies had been found over the weekend. No way were they going to stop her from publishing the second installment. She was no cop, but she needed to find out who the hell had tortured these people and why.

  Unbidden, the memory of the man who had appeared in her nightmare filled her mind. His face floated in front of her, strong lines and sharp features with the most amazing silver-gray eyes she’d ever seen. Her stomach did a slow flip. She could almost feel his strength, could almost smell him. The image was so realistic, she felt as if she should be able to reach out and touch him.

  Who was he and what had happened to him? And why did she feel drawn to him with an almost desperate, achy need? Her body flushed with desire, and Bri raised her head skyward. She definitely needed to get out more.

  After an hour poring over her notes, Bri remembered what had awoken her. She punched in the code for her voice mail and sipped her second cup of coffee as she listened to Jonah’s message.

  “Bri. Mack will be in town and wants to see you. Expect him later in the day.”

  Brief and to the point, that was Jonah. She smiled and absently glanced out her window to the street below. A black Suburban with tinted windows had parked across the street out front. She knew all of her neighbor’s cars, and this one didn’t fit. Could it be the FBI? Her breath caught in her throat as she moved slowly out of view. Her gut churned. Closing her eyes and hanging her head, she took a deep, shaky breath, allowing herself the precious moments she needed to settle her stomach and focus on the danger outside. She didn’t know how she knew it. Whoever they were, they were there for her, and they might already be surrounding the house.