Page 25 of Caretaker

I slid the silky pillowcase from the bag and lifted it to my nose, and then, without hesitation, I pulled the scent of Madalyn Bennett into my brain.

She hit me like a hammer right between the eyes. For a few long seconds, I was blind, deaf, and paralyzed. My body stiffened into a painful cramp, my jaw clenched so hard I nearly cracked my teeth, and the side of my face slammed into the window.

Shane slammed on the brakes and if it hadn’t been for the seatbelt, I’d have bounced off the dashboard. He unbuckled me and dragged me across the seat.

But then as abruptly as I’d been shattered, I was floating in clouds of pleasure. Silverlight buzzed at my side, and though I couldn’t see her light, I felt it spiraling around my body like warm, liquid silver, lifting me into the sky.

The world fell away.

I died.

I died just as night came, and something shifted in the world. Something changed. Suddenly, I was floating above Bay Town. It lay in desolated ruins. Piles of ash, crumbled buildings, the gleam of bones picked clean, mountains of rubble…

Bay Town was destroyed because I was dead.

And when Shane body-slammed me to the pavement and forced me to breathe again, I came back with a little more knowledge than I’d had before I’d gone.

When I pulled in a scent, it flipped a switch. It brought the bloodhunter, and it was almost like a shifter changing to her animal.

Madalyn Bennett’s blood was clean and pure, just as mine was, and it had been so intense and sudden it had shocked my system. It had short-circuited something in my brain.

Shane leaned over me, his face a pale moon in the darkness, stark terror lurking in his eyes. “You were dead,” he muttered. “And I felt the absence.”

I reached up to caress his face. I was responsible for him. I didn’t know exactly how or why, but I was. He was mine.

And I was part of the supernaturals, as they were part of me. I was unsure about a lot of things, but I had no doubt that the supernaturals and Bay Town, the city, even, were all connected to me. I was connected to them.

We all had a purpose. And mine, for whatever reason, was tied in with Red Valley, the supernaturals, and Bay Town.

“I can never leave Red Valley,” I realized. I was like a rock holding up a mountain. If I removed myself, the mountain would crumble.

Why me? I didn’t know. Maybe I wasn’t even supposed to. But the place had taken me as its own. I belonged to it.

Then the master appeared suddenly beside me, his eyes wide with black horror, and I realized Shane hadn’t been the only one to feel it when I’d died.