Running Hot

THIRTY-SIX

The monster did not come from under the bed, he came down the unlit hall. She heard him unlock the door that she had locked so carefully. Frozen with panic, she watched his terrifying aura as he moved stealthily into her room.

She had just turned fourteen. She had been in the foster care system for only a few months but her survival instincts were already razor sharp. She had gone to bed fully clothed every night because she sensed that sooner or later the husband would come to her room.

In the dense shadows she could not see him but his energy field blazed with the darkness of perverted lust. He came to stand beside the bed.

“Are you awake, sweetie?” he crooned. “I came to kiss you good night.”

She did not answer. She did not move. She did not think she could move. Perhaps if she pretended to be asleep, the monster would go away.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and put one hand on her leg. She trembled, instinctively shrinking from him.

“So you are awake,” he whispered. “I thought so. You’re a sexy young lady. All grown up. I’ll bet you’ve had a couple of boyfriends already, haven’t you?” He drew his hand up her thigh. “But you probably haven’t had a real man yet.”

“Please, don’t.” Her throat was so tight she could hardly get the words out.

“I’m going to teach you how to please a man. By the time you’ve had some lessons from me, you’ll be able to get any guy you want.”

“No.”

“Don’t worry, with an ass like yours, you’ll be a natural.”

His hand moved up the blanket, over her hip, heading toward her breast. She saw the sick pulsations in his aura. She struggled to a sitting position.

“No,” she said.

It should have come out as a scream but fear partially gagged her.

“Stop it,” he ordered angrily. “Stop it right now. This is how it’s going to be. You’re going to learn that tonight. I’m going to make a woman out of you. Believe me, in the end you’ll be grateful to me.”

She wanted to run but he had her trapped against the headboard. She was shivering violently to the beat of her own pulse. She struggled but he was far too strong. He forced her back down onto the pillows and yanked aside the sheet and blanket.

“Wore your jeans to bed, I see.” He chuckled. “You are a nervous little filly, aren’t you? But we’ll get you past that, don’t you worry.”

He started to unfasten her jeans.

She flattened her hands against his upper chest. Her palms touched his rough, hairy skin. She realized he was wearing the grimy tank-style shirt that he’d had on earlier.

“Go ahead and struggle,” he said. “It’ll make things more fun.”

He tugged at her jeans.

“No,” she repeated. Her voice was still half strangled.

She knew a terrible sense of helplessness. She had no chance against him physically. He was too big and too strong and too aroused. Frantic, she pushed back at him with her hands and with her fully jacked aura.

As though it had been triggered by the threat, her new, rapidly developing talent flared higher than it ever had before. She felt the leap and pulse and flash of the invisible energy. She could not see the fierce veil that surrounded her—she had learned early on that individuals could not view their own auras, not even aura readers—but power could always be sensed. The effects were immediate and devastating to her attacker.

He jerked wildly, as though he had touched a live electrical wire. The scream of rage and fear was trapped in his throat. Seconds later he collapsed on top of her, a dead weight.

Her hands burned.

“Grace.”

Luther’s voice, laced with solid, reassuring command, brought her out of the dream. She awoke with a start, shivering. He pulled her against him, comforting her with his body and a gentling hand.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay.” He stroked the length of her spine. “I was tempted to calm your aura but the last time I tried that you didn’t appreciate it.”

“No.” She hesitated. “I’d rather deal with the nightmares than feel that someone else is controlling me.”

“Understood.”

She huddled close. After a while she stopped trembling. Her breathing returned to normal. She exhaled slowly, sat up on the side of the bed and wrapped her arms around herself.

“In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m pretty screwed up, Luther. Are you sure you want to get involved with me?”

“In case you haven’t figured it out, we’re already involved.” He grabbed his cane and made his way around the foot of the bed to sit beside her. Close but not quite touching. “And you aren’t the only one in this relationship who is a little screwed up. So what? How bad was the dream?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yes,” he said, “I do.”

He had a right to know, she thought.

“I told you that I was responsible for Martin Crocker’s death,” she said quietly. “But he wasn’t the first.”

Luther said nothing. He just waited.

“There was another man. When I was fourteen.”

“While you were in the foster care system?”

“Yes.” She unfolded her arms and looked at her hands. “He came to my room one night. Said he was going to make a woman out of me. His aura terrified me. I fought back instinctively with talent but I had only recently come into it. I didn’t know what I could do, what I was capable of. I didn’t have any control.”

“You fought back and he died.”

“He was leaning over me, touching me. I put my hands on his chest and

shoved.”

“With your hands and the full energy of your aura.”

“It was all instinct and panic on my part. I think he tried to scream but no sound came out. He just collapsed and died.” She closed her hands into small fists. “It was as if I’d touched a red-hot stove. But there were no marks on my palms. The pain faded rapidly. The worst was over within forty-eight hours. But four days later I was in a fast-food restaurant getting a slice of pizza. The clerk accidentally dropped the plastic plate. We both reached for it. Our hands collided. The burning sensation came back. Not nearly as strong but it

hurt. I was terrified. I thought I’d been somehow marked for life.”

He took one of her hands in his. “That was the first time you got sensitized?”

She looked at his hand wrapped around hers, marveling anew at how good it felt to be able to touch and be touched.

“Yes,” she said.

“What did you do?” he asked. “Afterward?”

She knew he wasn’t talking about the pizza incident. “After the monster collapsed on my bed, I packed the few things I owned, took the money out of his wallet and I ran.”

“Smart.”

“I was afraid I’d be blamed for his death.” She hesitated. “And, given that I actually was guilty, I didn’t think it would be a good idea to hang around to try to explain things. In the end they called it a heart attack but the fact that I was missing along with the money didn’t look good. I knew I had to stay gone. I could not have gone back into that house under any condition.”

“That’s when you hit the streets?”

“Yes. I told you, my talent kept me alive there. It let me know who to trust and who to avoid. You could say that I was endowed with the ultimate in street smarts. I slept in shelters for a while. Washed a lot of dishes. Made some connections. Eventually I built up a successful small business selling . . . things.”

“But not yourself,” he said, very sure.

“No. Even if I had been desperate enough to sell myself, it wasn’t an option. It’s hard enough for me to touch people I like. I can’t even imagine trying to have sex with someone just for the money. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.” She made a face. “I probably would have freaked and wound up killing off my clients, which would not have been good for business.”

“What did you sell?”

“Mostly I brokered fake IDs on the Internet. My mother was a high-level crypto talent, a computer wizard. I learned a lot about navigating the online universe from her before she died. I was very good at putting buyers and sellers together.”

“You took a commission on the deals you set up?”

“Yes. It was actually a fairly lucrative line of work but it was also a tad risky. One day I decided to get a real job, something beyond dishwashing and selling fake IDs.”

“Why?”

She raised a shoulder and let it fall. “Mostly because I wanted to see what it was like to feel normal. I should have known better. I don’t think people like us ever get to feel normal.”

“What kind of job did you get?”

“Believe it or not, I went to work in a flower shop.” She smiled a little, thinking back. “I loved it, even if it didn’t make me feel normal. After a while I was promoted to manager. That’s where Martin found me. He came in to buy a dozen roses for one of his women. He recognized me immediately as a strong sensitive. He was a high-level strat and he understood right away that I could be very useful to him. He was managing a small casino at the time and he was having problems. He offered me a position on his security staff.”

“What kind of problems was he having?”

“A ring of cheats had targeted the casino. They were bleeding it dry. Martin’s boss began to suspect that he was the one responsible for the losses.”

Luther gripped her hand more tightly. “What did Crocker have you do?”

“I profiled the players. Pointed out the members of the ring. One thing led to another. Eventually Martin was promoted to president of the company that owned the casino. We branched out from there.”

“He used you.”

She shook her head. “It was an equal partnership. In exchange for my help, Martin saw to it that I made a lot of money and got an education. He used to refer to himself as Pygmalion. After he founded Crocker World, I not only got a very, very good salary, I got stock in the company.”

Luther whistled softly. “A slice of Crocker World, must have been worth a fortune at one time.”

“It was. When I first noticed the effects of the drug in his aura, I thought about selling off my portfolio and tucking the money away in an offshore account, but I was afraid Martin would find out. Once he started taking the formula, he became extremely suspicious of everyone around him. I had to be careful. Then I found out about the arms dealing.”

Luther’s hand tightened around hers. “And the bastard tried to kill you.”

“After Martin’s body was found, the value of the company shares plummeted to almost nothing. They never recovered.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if they had bounced back. You still couldn’t have sold off your portfolio. The authorities would have noticed the activity in the dead butler’s accounts.”

“Yes. Turns out the Arcane Society pays well, though, and it doesn’t cost a lot to live in Eclipse Bay. I’m doing fine.”

“Still, you had to walk away from the empire that you and Crocker built.”

“Toward the end the profits were tainted by the arms deals that Martin had arranged for Nightshade. Blood money.” She shivered. “Even if it had been safe to do so, I couldn’t have touched those shares. Not for anything. It sickened me to realize that, for a time, I was a part of that business.”

He put an arm around her and pulled her close against his side.

“Not everyone would have seen it that way,” he said. “Money is money. A lot of folks would tell you that the blood washes off very easily.”

“They’re wrong.”