“This is a
high alert. Bounty hunter in severe distress. All available spirits are required at Rushing Waters Lighthouse, coordinates one-thirty east, three-ninety-five north. Proceed with caution. Amanda Kroger, aka The Lighthouse Widow, murdered her abusive husband and anchored his body in the sea in 1915. When her crime was discovered, she was imprisoned, tried, and executed. She has now turned her rage onto one of our own. Repeat. This is a high alert. Bounty hunter in severe distress…”
Beside him, Martino sucked in a breath. “Shit. A Fury. A bad one, if they’re hooking all of us into it. Think the poor schmuck who originally pulled this detail is still whole?”
An excellent question. Like Luc had tried to explain to Jodie, Furies could be…
Oh, shit.
A chill crept into his bones, freezing him to the floor. Some inner sense screamed the identity of the poor schmuck who originally pulled this detail. “Jodie!”
Chapter 1
4
She rocketed toward Jodie on black thorny wings, hands curled into claws with nails sharp enough to cut a diamond. Sheets of flame encased her ebony mourning gown, yet never singed a thread. Beneath a frilly white lace cap and steel wool hair, her pale face was a contorted mask of rage. Garnet eyes blazed with hellfire.
Amanda Kroger, aka the Lighthouse Widow
. A Fury.
B
loodless lips opened in a puckered suture line. “By what business do you dare to disturb my solitude?” Her voice, raspy as sand, scraped Jodie’s hackles.
Still,
Jodie gathered enough energy to shout back, “By the order of the Board. I’ve been sent to take you back with me to the Welcome Level of the Afterlife. A new life awaits you there.”
“
To hell with your new life!” On a blur of violent hues, the widow’s talons slashed Jodie’s face.
Her a
toms split like fabric tearing along a seam. The universe diffused, casting her into a spiral vortex of dust and debris.
Funny…who knew dead people could still suffer pain?
But agony radiated through Jodie’s cells, and she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. Centipedes of color began a frenetic dance across her consciousness: white-hot sparks turned yellow, collided with red, bounced off orange, and wavered over pulsing blue lines. The sparks blinded her, their flashes of neon intensifying each needle-like stab in her vision.
The widow expelled enough hatred to feed a global war for centuries. Instead, though, she focused all that negative energy toward harming Jodie.
Chaos ruled, and she spun like fruit in a blender, colliding with the walls, the glass, the iron rail, even the burning lens. Each impact brought a new series of shocks to jolt her, as if she wrestled an electric eel.
Slam! Zap! Slam! Zap!
Maniacal laughter rang in her ears
while the Fury continued to toy with her. With no fight left and her energy completely depleted, she sagged like a sodden rag doll. Apparently, Amanda Kroger grew bored with a spirit who didn’t fight back. She slowed Jodie’s dizzying speed to a more reasonable rotation until equilibrium returned. Slowly, Jodie sank to the floor and stayed still.
Too dazed to move,
she lay scattered across the cold concrete. Searing heat blistered the paint beneath her hands, and then crackled over the walls of the service room. Struggling to pull herself together—literally as well as figuratively—she recalled Luc’s comments regarding Furies.
Trying to convince a Fury to release his hold on Earth and return to the Afterlife often results in violence and destruction. These spirits are so full of hate they’ll wreak havoc rather than move on.
Yeah, well, she could certainly attest to that. In hindsight, announcing her intention like a dorm mother during a panty raid was probably not the wisest way to handle a Fury.
A high-pitched shriek drew her attention a heartbeat before the glass walls overhead burst. Running on instinct, Jodie covered her head with folded arms. Shattered slivers rained down. A thousand knives sliced her elbows, neck and back, severing her newly gathered focus into pieces yet again.
In her mind,
Jodie catapulted back to that day in El Salvador. Her parents’ bodies jerked and danced in the front seat. Blood popped everywhere, splattering her hands, her cheeks, her bare legs. Screams and pungent smoke filled the air. The sharp taste of gunpowder pierced her tongue. Fear filled her throat, clogged the scream struggling to escape. And then, the hiss of the gas lines…
“Aiiiiiiiii!”
Amanda Kroger’s bellow summoned more ravens.
The
inky cloud shot toward her on ear-splitting squawks and violently flapping wings, the widow’s harbingers of doom.
Oh, God. I’m going to die. Again.
And suddenly Luc’s mocking voice popped into her head.
I always knew you were too soft for this job. See? I was right.
Oh, hell, no.
No way would she let him have the last say on this. She’d get this bitch or die again trying. Jodie had too much to prove—to Luc, to the Board, to herself—to let the Lighthouse Widow get away.
But how was she supposed to convince this crazed maniac to come along with her to a new life? Peace
fully? Clearly, Amanda Kroger had no intention of relinquishing her hold on this lighthouse and this shadowy existence.
Damn it! She had no experience dealing with Furies.
Luc hadn’t bothered to share much information with her about the nasties of the Afterlife. For all she knew, he’d never before come up against one.
Maybe, though, that would work to her advantage. She and Luc had very different ways of handling the soul
s they’d captured thus far. She might be better off without Luc’s input. Using her own instincts, she would solve this problem. On her own. Without his voice inside her head, second-guessing her every move.
From somewhere behind her, a door slammed. The
widow! While she’d been focused on Luc, the widow had slipped to the only door in this room and was now trying to flee! She had to go after the bitch, but dammit, her body screamed for time to heal. Oh, how she’d love nothing more than to lie on her hard bed at the Halfway House, surrendering to the need to reboot.
Okay, then. The sooner she lassoed this Fury, the sooner her body could rest.
Determination drew Jodie upright, all energy cells in their proper place, bouncing, but not too eager for action. Rather than the rapid boil she normally controlled, her cells fused together in a low simmer now, too drained to create active kinesis.
On raucous cries, the ravens swooped, no doubt determined to peck her into submission while their mistress made her escape.
No time to fly, barely enough energy to move. In order to prevent the birds from landing a talon or beak on her, she focused her molecules into rapid perpetual motion until she’d spun herself finer than grains of salt.
The aviary attack
came on a cacophony of flaps and squawks. But with nothing solid to strike, the ravens’ assault had no more impact than a prizefighter’s punch to a waterfall. Every peck, dive, and scratch shot harmlessly into musty emptiness. While the birds tussled in a murder of black feathers, Jodie took advantage of their frenzy to seek out the exit. Only one door sat conspicuously in the walls, and Jodie oozed her way from the service room, slipping beneath the crack.
She found herself in the lighthouse’s
tower. An oxidized green steel staircase spiraled downward. Exhaustion claimed her, but she refused to give in. On a deep inhale, she dove headlong toward the bottom. Mildewed air stung and a stale, moist breeze hampered her progress. Thankfully, gravity still overpowered humidity on Earth. A few feet from the floor, she slowed her plunge and floated feather-like until her feet touched damp cement.
E
mptiness blinded her. Unlike the service room, no moonlight touched these thick stone walls to lend illumination. By the time her vision adjusted, she barely caught sight of the hem of Amanda’s ebony gown slipping into a small cubbyhole. Slowly, carefully, Jodie inched toward the niche, but remained outside the space, thoughtful.
N
ow what?
Regardless of
how normal bounty hunters handled this type of situation, Jodie clung to the lessons regarding self-preservation she’d learned while growing up in the wilds of Central America.
Rule number one: Never walk into an entrance where you can’t see a viable exit.
Guerillas, military foes, and other villains set booby traps in caves, blind alleys, and darkened rooms.
Which meant following the Fury
into her hideout was out of the question. After all, judging by their first less-than-successful encounter, the old widow was a helluva lot stronger and more ruthless than Jodie.
No, she’d need another weapon to wrangle this renegade into submission. Too bad she didn’t have a golden lariat like Wonder Woman.
So what exactly did she have in her arsenal a Fury wouldn’t?
That arrogant voice from her memory chimed in.
You’re too damn soft for this kind of work.
“Screw you, Luc,” she
muttered. “I don’t care what you think. I’m going to do this
my
way.”
But, wait. Hadn’t she said something very similar when she’d gone after that schoolteacher? And hadn’t she used her softness to reach out to the little boy? And that poor woman with the secret baby? Even the trouble she’d gotten into with Mr. Finch was due to one quality Luc considered her fatal flaw.
Compassion.
When she was little, h
er dad used to tell her, “Jodie, my girl, you’ve got a heart bigger than Wyoming and a gift for gab. Never lose those attributes. Too many people don’t realize what a truly human quality compassion is. You could talk the devil himself onto the path of righteousness.”
God, I hope you’re right, Daddy
.
Because
this was probably as close as she’d ever get to that unholy conversation.
With safety uppermost in her mind, she remained as scattered as astral dust in the Milky Way. Inch by inch, she neared the doorway until she hovered close enough to keep an eye on that trailing skirt hem but far enough away to remain safe from outstretched claws.
“Mrs. Kroger?”
A snarl was her only reply.
“May I call you Amanda?”
No snarl this time, more like a throaty meow. Hmmm… An interesting response. Based on what she knew about the widow’s past, however, she sensed
“Amanda” met with more approval than “Mrs. Kroger.” No woman wanted her name eternally attached to the man who used to beat her for entertainment.
A
n idea suddenly illuminated the dark corners of her brain. “I’m so sorry, Amanda,” she said on a soft sigh. “You got a raw deal.”
Another meow…or growl
? Definitely not mean. More pitiable. Dare she press her luck? Did she have a choice?
Well, yeah. She could fly out of here, admit defeat, and head for the Halfway House where Luc would no doubt delight in crowing about her failure.
Fat chance.
Before she might lose her nerve, she blurted, “Did you love him?”
“No! Never!” roared back from the bowels of
whatever room in which the widow had hidden herself. “Bastard. I hated him. Every time he touched me I wanted to kill him.”
“And so you finally gave in to that need inside you?”
A pair of burning eyes appeared in the darkness, pinpoint fire lasers. “Don’t you dare to judge me!”
Jodie skittered backward a little farther. “No judgment, Amanda. Seems to me you’ve already judged yourself far more harshly than any other woman would judge you.”
“They hanged me! For thirty years, I was the one who kept this light blazing. Silas was always too drunk to climb the stairs. And what do I get for all my years of service? They hanged me!”
“
Men
hanged you.” She kept her voice even and calm, although somewhere in her center, her energy levels rose like spurts of adrenaline. “Because you dared to stand up for yourself. But you know what? You can have the last laugh if you want. I’m here to give you a second chance. This is your opportunity to lead the life you should have lived last time around.”
“No! I’m not putting myself into another
human woman’s body, becoming the target of another man’s fists, forced to grit my teeth and bear the pain of him pushing himself into me night after night.” Her voice lowered to a mere whisper, a soft rustle in the dank air. “I’m free here. No one comes near me. No one disturbs me. Except for you.”