Page 31 of Possessed

“Aubrey, what’s happening? I got the guy—I killed him!”

Like her spirit, her voice was a weak, whispering shadow of itself, and all Raef heard before Aubrey faded away was,“You killed his body. It’s his soul that’s draining us. Save us, Kent....”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Fuck! I’m a moron!” He closed his eyes against the pounding in his head. “Okay, yeah, I can do this. I Track murderers. Just because the asshole’s dead doesn’t mean I can’t Track him.” Raef drew a deep breath and reached out with his Gift.

Nothing.

The only negative emotions left in the room were his own. There was no murder trail. The murderer was dead.

“Save us, Kent…”seemed to hover in the blood-scented air around him.

“How?” Raef shouted. “How the hell do I save you? I can’t Track a dead guy!”

The realization hit him and Kent’s eyes opened. “I can’t Track a dead guy, but I have Tracked a dead girl. I found Aubrey before—I can find her again. And when I find her, I find the bastard that killed her.”

Raef only had a moment to feel the relief of his discovery when the world pitched and rolled, and suddenly he was on his back lying beside Lauren’s motionless body.

“Hang on, Lauren! I’m not going to die on you!” he tried to shout, but the words came out as barely a whisper. He was losing strength fast…fading fast....

Lauren was going to die. He was going to die. Aubrey was going to cease to exist—they all would. He was going to fail. He was going to die....

So this was it? Time to quit—to give up? He tried to sit, to do something, anything, but his body wasn’t obeying him, wasn’t working. He knew it because his fucking mind wasn’t just working—it was working with bizarre clarity.

Raef might have smiled, but he couldn’t be sure because his face had gone numb.

To hell with this Negative Nancy bullshit,Raef growled silently to himself.If I have to go to the Land of the Dead, being almost dead has gotta be a plus. So all right. Let’s really get this thing done.

Raef closed his eyes and focused on his breathing while he tried to recall what he’d done the night he’d Tracked Aubrey—the night she’d materialized andfeltwith him. What had that damn book said about soul retrieval and the Land of the Dead?

As his body continued to get weaker, Raef’s mind became sharper and sharper. Snippets of the book he’d breezed through that night came back to him.

…enter the Land of the Dead without protection and experience, and you risk becoming lost, too…

“Too late,” Raef mumbled, and then he continued to recall.

Begin by lighting a candle.

Well, he didn’t have a candle, but he did have the memory of a light that he’d never forget—Aubrey’s shimmering thread of joy. What was next? What were the rest of those damn directions?

They came to him along with another surge of dizziness.

Once you have Tracked the soul to the Land of the Dead, your psychic Gift will cease to work. You must use mortal guile and your own wisdom to retrieve the lost one.

“That’s right. That part seemed like good news then. Now I’m not so sure about my level of guile, let alone wisdom.” Raef’s voice sounded weird, like it wasn’t really attached to his body. Hell, he felt weird, likehewasn’t really attached to his body.

“Probably more good news for where I’m going.” Then Raef shut his mouth and, after one last look at Lauren, closed his eyes.

He thought of Aubrey. Her laughter and her joy. The way she made him feel. No, not just hot and hard and sexy. Aubrey made himfeel. Ironically, a dead girl had breathed life into a whole world of emotions he’d believed had been irrevocably lost to him because he’d spent most of a lifetime dealing with death and destruction.

And she called him Kent. No one but Aubrey had called him Kent since his Gift had been discovered.

Raef held the light of Aubrey in his mind and in his heart, and with every bit of his skill as a psychic, he reached with his Gift, seeking, searching....

He found her more easily than he’d expected to, even though Aubrey’s light wasn’t a glowing, ribbonlike trail anymore. All that was left of the shimmering thread of joy he’d glimpsed before was a single, thin beam of light the color of champagne gone flat. The dimness of Aubrey’s light scared him so deeply that it severed the tie that remained with his body, and Raef felt his spirit shoot away from the cold classroom. He didn’t waste time worrying about how the hell he was going to get back. He didn’t hesitate. Instead, he rushed after Aubrey’s fading light, Tracking her with a speed and ease he’d never before experienced, which was good and bad. It was good because it was like he’d been fired from a cannon straight and sure into the Land of the Dead. It was bad because it was like he’d been fired from a cannon straight and sure into the Land of the Dead—and had less than a heartbeat to prepare himself for the experience.

Though I don’t know how the hell anyone could be prepared for this shit,Raef told himself as he drifted to a halt, watching Aubrey’s fading light disappear into the seething caldron of misery below him.