Page 6

I lose the next few minutes in the crush of bodies heading for the door, wrapped in a blur of movement, and in the process, a haze of brutal images takes me over again, torturing me with a replay. Images my mind refuses to let me extinguish. I don’t know what to do, and my head is too full of gore, pain, and death to wrap itself around options.

Somewhere near the front door of the building, I decide I have to keep Jeremy close. I have to fix my error in defending him. He can’t get away, and right now, that’s not an issue. He’s directly beside me. He glances over at me, and I swear he intentionally presses his arm to mine.

The images flood my mind again—a quick, violent rush of graphic horrors that threaten to knock me on my backside. Those same images also prop me up, straighten my spine, and remind me of the reasons I must push forward, and those reasons are the victims I now owe justice. The bitter, coppery taste of blood invades my taste buds as I wobble on unsteady legs through the crush of people at the double exit doors. I’ve bitten my cheek, I realize, but I really don’t care. I don’t care about my pain any more than I do my own blood. But I feel their pain, those women, and I taste their blood—that of Jeremy’s victims, the many women he’s slaughtered.

I step into the clear winter day, beaming Texas sunlight doing nothing to warm my chilled-to-the-bone feeling, while the yellow glow of its glory pierces my eyes, delivering much-needed presence of mind. I don’t know how I can see his victims. I don’t know what is happening to me, but Jeremy killed them, and I have to stop him from killing again. Anyone else who dies is on me. I’ve let this madman go free to slaughter young women. I will not allow anyone else to die at his hands, no matter the cost or risk to me.

My assistant urges me toward the press podium, where a crowd of at least fifty bystanders, including families and friends of the victims, waits on me to speak. There’s no way I’m going to step to that microphone and proclaim a victory, despite knowing the DA’s office expects me to do nothing less. Jeremy turns to me for guidance, and though he again appears to be the slumped-over, mousy, innocent victim I’d defended, I now see only a killer.

“Monster!” a male voice screams.

My attention swings to my left, to the place the shout originated, and I find myself staring at an automatic gun pointed directly at me—or rather, at Jeremy. Suddenly, keeping him close doesn’t seem as bright an idea as it did a few minutes, or even seconds, before.

My gaze lifts to the distorted face of the man holding the weapon at the same moment he vehemently repeats his shout of “Monster!” and every instinct I own says he’s going to pull the trigger.

I fling myself down on the concrete as the discharge of the weapon rings out into the air. The impact rattles my teeth, and my legs scrape against the hard stone beneath me. Survival instincts tell me to focus and locate imminent danger, then retreat, but I never get the chance. To my horror, Jeremy flattens on top of me, his body cradling mine, the force cracking my forehead against the pavement. Black and white spots explode in front of my eyes. Pain splinters through my skull and transforms into a graphic playback of each of the brutal murders Jeremy committed. There’s no escaping my own mind, only I think it’s not my mind at all. It’s his mind. I’m in his mind. Someone’s bloodcurdling screams vibrate through my body. I am shaking, my heart racing too fast, my spine so hot I am sure it is on fire—I’m on fire. And the screaming—it just won’t stop. Screaming. Screaming. The women in my visions are screaming. I am screaming.

The Sacred Book of Nephilim

Fear is a weakness, a deadly blade, sharp and precise, and when wielded by your enemy, as lethal as it is without limits.

Chapter four

Ijerk to a sitting position with a gasp to find myself in the back of a parked ambulance with the doors standing open. “What happened?” I breathe out. “What happened?” The answer comes in a rush of memory. Gun. Shooter. Jeremy.

“Easy,” a female paramedic urges. “You hit your head pretty good back there.”

I touch my forehead, feeling the golf ball-sized lump, remembering the moment I’d hit the pavement. Remembering Jeremy. “Jeremy,” I say, grabbing the woman’s arm. “My client. Where’s my client? Is he alive? Was he shot?”

The woman’s brow furrows. “I don’t know who Jeremy is, but outside of the one male police officer who got a bit banged up while apprehending the shooter, no one else was injured. I’m thanking God the man didn’t open fire on the crowd and that you hit the ground in time to miss the bullets.”

“Jeremy was the man he was shooting at,” I tell her, sitting up and smoothing my hand over the huge rip in my hose exposed by my hiked-up skirt. “He was the one who came down on top of me.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t here when everything took place. I was told the shooter was targeting you. If you’ll lie down, I’ll see if I can get a police officer to find this Jeremy for you.”

“I have to find him,” I say, pushing to my feet, unwilling to sit here while Jeremy escapes.

“Ms. Thorne,” the EMT chides with a steel tone. “You probably have a concussion, and the shooter is in custody. Whoever this Jeremy is, he isn’t in any further danger.”

“You don’t understand,” I murmur, pressing a hand to the wall and fighting the nausea rolling over me, which is far more about whatever happened with me and Jeremy than my head that feels fine. I have to get out of this truck.

“Ember!” Oliver exclaims, appearing at the open door, looking all James Bond-sleek in his black suit and pressed white dress shirt. He’s tall, broad, and strong, and relief washes over me at the sight of him. I so need strong right now.

I rush to the doors, and ignoring the EMT’s protests, fling myself into his arms, inhaling his earthy, familiar scent, and he drags me off the vehicle and against him, holding me with my feet dangling in the air. “God, Ember, I was worried sick. I can’t believe this happened.” He leans back to look at me, letting my feet settle onto the ground, still holding me close. I don’t want him to let me go. I desperately need a friend right now, even if I don’t dare make him a confidant for fear I’ll sound insane.

“Emily is handling the press,” he says of my assistant, who’s part-time but worthy of full-time, as this moment clearly indicates. “And of course, your parents are freaking out,” he adds.

“My parents are not your parents, and you know it. They’re on their annual holiday vacation. Emily knows I don’t want them bothered.”

“I called them, Ember. They deserve to know.”

They won’t care, I think, not sure how he remains oblivious to that fact after witnessing such behavior on rewind, but Oliver is forever trying to fix things for me, my relationships, or lack thereof, with my parents included. As my grandfather often said on many a topic, sometimes you have to accept what you cannot change and charge onward anyway.

“They’re trying to get a flight out of Europe,” he adds earnestly, and I know this is about more than an attack that’s over now. He hates with all his being the way they leave me for the holiday, but it’s always been that way. For most of my life, I celebrated with my grandfather. And now that he’s gone, I celebrate with him in spirit. I’m strong enough. He raised me that way.

I don’t burst Oliver’s bubble and tell him he’s being played.

They won’t come home. I don’t know if they’d come home if I’d actually been shot, but he’s trying to do a good thing, and I love him for it.