Darlings of Paranormal Romance (Anthology) (80 page)

She wandered around the now seemingly
overlarge, empty space...lonely space. The ancient floors creaked
under every step in a rhythm that was almost comforting.

The detective probably considered her
a suspect by now and if not he would soon. That's how they worked.
The police were suspicious of anyone odd. She knew that. She'd come
under their scrutiny more than once. But especially from one
detective.

Her thoughts blackened at the
reminder. That man had been out to get her, and she'd only been
trying to help. Damn him.

Even if this detective did put her on
his suspect list, she had no one to blame but herself. She'd known
it was likely to happen. Still, she'd had to do something. Those
women had no one else.

A shiver of apprehension
raised goose bumps on her arms. The last thing Sam wanted was to
have her life examined under a microscope. She avoided people
because she couldn't stand their questions. And sooner or later,
everyone asked questions.

***

5:19 pm

Brandt grinned at his mother's
antics. He'd stopped in at her self-contained unit in the seniors'
complex, for coffee and to apologize for canceling out on lunch
tomorrow. It didn't take more than a few minutes to realize that
some things never change.

A beautiful young woman, Lisa,
knocked on the door not five minutes after he arrived. Maisy wasted
no time inviting her in to meet Brandt.

An obvious setup, yet no different
from what his mother put him through on a regular basis in her
quest to see him married. Not that old age had crept into her
bones, nor had her health deteriorated. Still, she sought grandkids
in the worst way. And she had no compunction about using
underhanded methods in achieving these goals.

Studying Lisa more closely, he could
see the classical beauty his mother would think appropriate. Baby
blue eyes with a guileless innocence, long straight blond hair and
a slim, but curvy shape. And none of it mattered to him.

All he could see were Sam's haunting
eyes. He had no idea if Sam's body curved or bumped. He knew she
had a slight build and that she didn't eat enough. With her
oversized sweater on, not much else showed. He didn't quite know
how he felt about this interest, but was willing to see where it
went.

He understood that his 'type' was
fluid and fluctuated on impulse. He considered that normal. That
didn't mean he chose to go out with all of the women who appeared
on his radar.

"Brandt.
Brandt
?"

Brandt focused on his mother and
smiled sheepishly. Her knowing smirk immediately put him on his
guard. With a sinking feeling, he realized he'd been staring at
Lisa too long. He groaned softly. Maisy's smirk widened.

"Now Brandt, I know she's adorable.
Do try to concentrate, dear."

He rolled his eyes and stood up. "I'm
sorry, ladies. You'll have to excuse me. It's time for me to head
out."

"Oh, no," Maisy cried out. "You never
stay for a real visit. Won't you stay for dinner at
least?"

Trust her to ignore the fact that
he'd been here for dinner just a couple days ago. Today, he'd come
straight from Samantha's hideaway, needing a touch of normalcy
after seeing her. Only to realize that he preferred Sam to the
Lisas of the world. How contrary could he be?

He excused himself from dinner and
said his good-byes. The sky had clouded over giving an unusual
darkness to the horizon. Once in his truck, his mind immediately
returned to the tiny woman with a huge impact. Sam and that
overgrown mutt, Moses, had chosen a singular existence out in the
middle of nowhere. The dog had been protective when Brandt first
arrived. After a once-over he'd gone and lain down. A guard dog
would never have done that.

Pulling off to the side of the road,
he called into the office for updates. Then he tried calling
Stefan, his difficult, contrary, and incredibly gifted psychic
friend. And left another message.

Given the lateness of the hour, he
decided to go home and mull over the contrariness of human
attraction.

Chapter 5

11:05 pm

Lying
bed that night, Sam couldn't
sleep. Her overwrought mind refused to let up. The tantalizing
possibility that she was meant to do something with this gift
worried at the frayed edges of her mind. Depressed and unsettled,
she fell into a fitful sleep, her dreams dark and disjointed pieces
of past visions.

Screams jarred her from a deep sleep.
Confusion turned to fear when Sam realized the horrific sounds were
coming from her own mouth. Even worse, she had no idea where she
was.

Terror overwhelmed her. Her fingers
spasmed in a death grip around a strange steering wheel as the car
she drove careened further out of control. Still trying to toss off
the remnants of sleep, Sam yanked hard on the wheel in a futile
attempt to turn it. The mid-sized car plowed through a steel
barricade to hang suspended in midair before plummeting to the
rocks below. Screams ripped from her throat and she reefed again on
the useless steering wheel, helpless to stop the deadly impact. Her
foot pounded on worthless brakes. The front grill of the car
crumpled and metal buckled upward. The car slammed into the first
of the rocks below, snapping her forward into the
windshield.

Agonizing pain radiated off her
shattered spine. Grinding metal, exploding glass, and continuous
crunching sounds filled the air as first the bumper flew off, then
the rear window shattered outward. The car tumbled, smashed on a
huge rock, careened to the left and flipped end over end before
coming to a hard landing on its wheels, right side up at the bottom
of the cliff.

Then utter silence.

Sam trembled. Shock and pain pulsed
through her veins even as her blood dripped out one beat at a time
onto the shredded seat beside her. God, she didn't want to
die.

She wanted to live. Please, dear
God.

Someone help!

Blood streamed over her face, her
spine...where a shearing heat set off continuous stabbing pain. The
steering wheel jammed into her ribs. The front dash had crumpled
into a mess of twisted steel and plastic. The famous Mercedes
emblem now hung drunk in midair over the remains of the once
beautiful cream leather seats.

Sam couldn't feel her right arm. And
wished she couldn't feel her left. She closed her eyes, willing
away the image of bone shards that had sliced through her sweater,
a few loose strands of wool clinging to the ends. Heart wrenching
sobs poured from her throat, tears coated her cheeks. She was
alone. And dying.

A brilliant flash of light engulfed
the car as the fuel from the pierced gas line flashed into flames.
Heat seared her lungs and scorched her hair, the strands melting
against the inside of her car window. Panicked, she screamed as
flames licked at her feet, burning, and cooking the flesh right off
her bones.

Agony. Pain. Terror.

A voice whispered through the
blackness of her mind, so odd, so different it caught her
attention. She strained to hear the words.

"Let go. It's time to let
go."

Sam
stared through the flames, stunned.
Let go
of what?
She couldn't hear over the roaring
fire and could barely see, but knowing that someone was there
stirred her survival instinct and she started fighting against the
seatbelt jammed at her side. She was saved. Just another minute and
they'd open the door to pull her free. She'd be
fine.

"Please hurry," she cried
out.

"Let go. You don't need to be in
there. Let it all go, and come with me."

She peered through the golden orange
windshield to see a strange male face peering at her through the
flames.

He smiled.

"Come with me."

"I want to, damn it. Can't you see
I'm trapped?" she screamed, her vocals crisping in the
heat.

"Release yourself. Come with me. Say
yes."

The pain hit a crescendo. She twisted
against it, hearing her spine splinter. The car seat melted into
her skin. So much pain, she couldn't breathe. Blackness crowded
into her mind, blessed quiet, soothing darkness. She reached for
it.

"Let go. You don't need to go through
this. Hurry."

She started. Why wasn't he opening
the door or getting others to help? He should be trying to save
her. Shouldn't he? Sam, so confused and so tired she could barely
feel the pain overtaking her body. Where had he gone? She tried to
concentrate. His face was now only a vague outline that rippled
with the heat waves. A soft smile played at the corner of his
mouth. The flames burned around him, weird as they centered him in
the warm glow. She wanted to be with him. To live.

"Here, take my hand."

Dazed and on the brink of death, Sam
focused on the hand reaching for her. She struggled to raise the
charred piece of flesh that had been her arm and reached out to
grasp his.

She was free.

Overwhelmed, cries of relief escaped.
She turned to hug her savior, her head just reaching his shoulder.
He stood beside her, the same radiant beaming look on his face. His
blond hair glowed, and he had the brightest teeth.

She sighed. This beautiful man
pointed to her right arm. Confused, Sam glanced down at her burned
arm, realizing she could feel none of her injuries. Just like her
other one, her broken arm had miraculously healed – whole, smooth,
and soft. Her skin hadn't looked this good in ten years.

Realization hit.

She spun around to find a massive
fireball below. What the hell? She had to be dead. But instead of
the horror or shock, she expected to feel, she felt good. In fact,
she felt great. She turned to the ever-smiling stranger.

"Let's go, sweetheart."

Sam didn't know why he'd called her
that, but she bloomed under his loving gaze. Honestly, she was so
damned grateful to be out of the car, she let him get away with
it.

Holding hands, they floated higher
into the cloudless blue sky. Then when the crash site below had
become a tiny speck, Sam felt a hard flick on her arm and the
words, "Thanks. I can take it from here."

And she woke up.

***

6:05 am, June
16th

Stunned
and disoriented, Sam lay rigid in bed. The sense of loss
overwhelmed her.
He
was gone. She needed his gentle warmth. He made her feel loved
and cared for. Bereft, hot tears welled at the corners of her eyes.
She didn't want to be back here in her own body. She wanted to be
that other woman. That lucky woman.

Sam stopped in shock. That woman was
dead! How lucky could that woman be? She'd be fine now, happy and
at peace...with that man at her side. Lucky to be so
loved.

And who the hell was he?

Sam couldn't believe her vision. Even
now, instead of being overwhelmed with shock and pain, she felt
uplifted.

Mystified, she questioned the
difference this time. Not the death itself, that part
unfortunately, had been normal, right down to the excruciating
pain. But afterwards...? She didn't know who the man had been or
what he might have been to the victim, but he'd cared about her.
She wished she'd had her wits about her to talk to him at the time.
Now it was too late.

There'd been one other major
difference in this vision.

Always before, Sam had been forced to
endure the horror of what one human being could inflict on another.
This had been her first accident. Or was it?

What's the chance someone killed the
woman to make it appear like an accident?

Sam narrowed her eyes, thinking.
Given her relationship to violence – and there's no doubt the woman
had died a violent death, had foul play been involved? Sam replayed
the video locked into her psyche. The brakes hadn't responded,
neither had her steering wheel – then they weren't built for
flying. Suspicion remained. Intuitively, she felt more was
involved. But could she prove it? No. She did know the woman had
not been sleeping at the wheel or drunk. Living her last moments
had given Sam clarity into the woman's mental state. There hadn't
been any drugged or hallucination type of sensation.

Her car had to have been sabotaged.
Sam snorted and threw back the blankets. So what? Just because she
'thought' foul play had been involved didn't mean it had been. Or
that she could convince the police of it.

Grabbing up her journal, she wrote
down as many details from this vision as she could. A process she
went through every time. The impressions about the man were so
clear, so poignant she had to write them down. Finally, she was
done. Closing the book, she put it beside her bed, ready for the
next time. She stared at it for a long moment. If anyone found her
journals...she glanced over at the box beside her suitcase...they'd
be used as evidence against her.

She had
to question what her role was this time. She hadn't been able to
help the poor woman. If she had a 'gift' then she wanted –
no
needed
– to use
it to make a difference. And had yet to do so. The idea, the
concept...to help the victim find justice tantalized her. And then
again, attempting to help these women meant working with the
police. Bile immediately bubbled up in her
stomach.