AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Not that he hadn’t known the worst of it before then.
She looked down at the tattoos he’d skillfully made on the backs of her hands when she turned seventeen. She’d begged him for the ink--her first--and he’d reluctantly agreed only because he understood what it meant to her.
The mark on the back of her right hand, the tattoo she’d pleaded with Oz to conceal, was barely visible anymore, obscured by his beautiful art.
Nova rubbed her thumb over the exotic Egyptian eye and artful flourishes that had once been an entirely different image--one she hated with every fiber of her being.
A black scarab, identical to the one on Orin Doyle’s right hand.
The ones she knew she was going to find on the hands of the other dead men in this room.
Nova shoved Doyle’s body back into its cabinet and closed the door. She opened the compartment next to him and pulled out the drawer. The man’s face was unfamiliar, but he had the scarab mark on his hand, just as Mathias had told her.
Nova opened two more coolers and found two more scarab tattoos. All of the thugs had been in service to her adoptive father.
She shook off a chill that went deep into her marrow. She didn’t want to know more, but she couldn’t stop now. For her own safety, she had to understand what was going on.
And for that, she would have to call upon the dark ability she’d been born with as a Breedmate.
Steadying herself for what was to come, she reached out with her right hand and took hold of the waxy fingers of the dead man closest to her.
A jolt of memory hit her the instant she touched him.
Not her memory, but his.
The awful talent she despised had lost none of its power. It rose up swiftly, vividly, giving her a crystal-clear picture of the dead man’s final moments.
Images flooded her mind as if she was living them herself: she saw the dark water of the Thames under a night sky, a large steel shipping container being unloaded onto a dock.
Someone spoke to her--to the man who would be dead before long--Russian words she couldn’t comprehend. More men stood nearby, speaking urgently, making some kind of deal, from what she could discern from their body language and gestures.
Then the sharp report of gunshots nearby.
Anxious shouts went up, and Nova’s line of vision swung around abruptly as the man whose gaze she was seeing through suddenly turned his head. Orin Doyle stood there, a pistol raised at forehead level in front of Nova’s eyes.
Doyle grinned, then fired.
Nova’s connection cut short as the man dropped to the ground, shot dead at point-blank range by someone he knew and trusted.
“What the hell?”
Sick from the power of her gift and what it showed her, she let go and moved to another of the bodies to repeat the process. Doyle killed him too, another shot ringing out elsewhere at the same time, dropping one of the Russians just before Nova’s connection to Doyle’s victim severed.
She moaned, unable to continue.
Using her ability always left her nauseated and weak. After so many years away from it, and after the grisly visions she’d just witnessed, it was all Nova could do to return all of the dead back to their coolers and close everything up.
She staggered into a vacant restroom down the hallway, her head pounding ferociously, stomach rebelling with each step.
She hit the first stall and retched into the toilet.
As she slumped against the cold metal wall, her mind spun with even more questions than when she’d first arrived at the morgue.
What were Doyle and the other men up to at that dock?
Why had he turned on his own?
And most troubling of all, how could Nova answer any of her questions without risking herself and everyone she cared for?
