01 Serial Killer (FBI Paranormal Casefiles) Read online

  Where was I?

  Fire burned in my veins. My magic tried to break free but my senses weren’t fully alert. I couldn’t gather the magic. Every time I tried to grip it, it escaped me, an elusive presence. It was maddening. My magic was a part of me. I’d never been so helpless in using it before.

  If only I could control it…

  If I could grip it…but it slipped past as if it wasn’t substantial.

  It was fog, mist.

  A loud noise startled me. With an effort, I turned my head and saw the gory sight: Bryan was tied to a chair and the chair was the thing that fell on the ground. He must have smashed his head hard. A guy grabbed the chair and pulled him upright. Blood streamed down from a vicious cut on his forehead. Bryan didn’t look good, and yet his gaze was fixed on me.

  Clearly, he expected me to do something, but I was as helpless as a newborn baby. My magic flitted inside me, and still I couldn’t harness the power of it. With an effort, I tried to sit or to will my limbs to some sort of movement, but everything failed. I could see and hear, but I couldn’t move, and I definitely couldn’t do anything to help Bryan.

  “If you don’t spill the beans, man, I am going to split your body from head to feet,” growled the man who hovered close to Bryan. He leant forward. “What does the FBI know about our business? What did you want from Perry?” He slapped Bryan so hard that his head whipped around. “Talk.”

  “We wanted to make him confess to his crimes. He hypnotized someone and then killed them.”

  “Don’t lie,” the guy shrieked. “Perry is a no-good hypnotist. Why would the FBI want him?”

  So I was right; Perry definitely wasn’t as good as our murderer needed to be to tackle a mage and a werewolf. Shit. We were in trouble. Well, of course, we should have been more careful. The guy whom I hit in the bar leaned against a wall, his beady, mean gaze fixed on me. A shiver ran through my body. Even without my magic, I could tackle men like him, but never before did I feel so vulnerable.

  My body wasn’t mine to control.

  It was the strangest, more frightening feeling I ever experienced.

  “I’m telling the truth,” said Bryan. “And you better release us. Our team would be looking for us. You can’t kidnap federal agents.”

  “I just did.” The guy stepped back and spread his arms wide. He’d a goatee, and his arms bulged with muscles. “This is my domain. I’ve got people who would tell me if FBI agents came through. In any case, they wouldn’t know how to look for you.”

  “They might have a tracker on them,” said the big guy whom I punched in the bar.

  He was the reason why we were here.

  Might have better to go easy on him.

  “Oh, please. No trackers. No guns. They are ours, and that girl isn’t even FBI. She doesn’t have their ID card.” The guy slapped Bryan hard again. “Talk now.”

  “I’ve already told you everything.”

  The man looked to his left, and my gaze followed his. Perry was lying on the floor with a big hole in his head. He was dead. “We shouldn’t have done business with that bastard. He was nothing but trouble.”

  Ah!

  Perry was probably their distributor. He used his shows to sell drugs. Maybe people got high on his drugs and later spread the word that he was good. We’d absolutely landed in with the wrong crowd. If my magic wasn’t contained, I would have taught them a lesson.

  But, I was a victim of some sort of paralysis. It was probably a drug.

  But which one?

  And what the hell was I supposed to do?

  “How much does the FBI know about our business?”

  “Nothing. We didn’t even know there was something going on here.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  Bryan licked his lip. “I’m not lying. Look, we don’t want trouble. Just let us go and we’ll forget that this ever happened.”

  The guy laughed. He was tall and quite young. Probably a young hoodlum who was trying to make it big in the city. He had his gang and his area, and he thought that made him invincible. And right now, he was. I willed my magic to break free. It flowed inside me, but my mind couldn’t grasp it. It felt as if there was a disconnect between my mind and my body, and I couldn’t seem to make them both fall in sync.

  Anger sizzled inside me. It was as much directed at the men as it was at me. How could I lose control over my gift? It was a part of me, an extension of me, and yet right now, it felt like a distant dream or a faded memory.

  With effort, I raised my hand. My fingers trembled as I managed to get my palm off the mattress, but the energy required to do it was so much that my whole body was bathed in sweat by the time I managed the feat. My magic refused to stir. It failed to respond to my will because my thoughts were in disarray.

  “Let the girl go,” said Bryan.

  As if he suddenly remembered me, the man turned to glance at me. My hand fell on the mattress. The guy stared at me and for a few moments, our gaze met and held. Anger roiled in my eyes, and in his was a storm of power, or perhaps something else. He was high on drugs.

  Curse it.

  Why the hell couldn’t I use my power?

  I could annihilate the lot of them.

  How dare they do this to us?

  The guy marched straight towards me. “Ah. The princess is awake. Damn Miles, I thought you nearly killed her. How much did you give her?”

  Miles, a scrawny guy who was sitting on the floor with a bat in his hand, grinned. “Just a taste of heroin, it was. Seems like our girl is clean. She never took it before.”

  Heroin.

  No wonder, I was a mess.

  Mages didn’t take drugs. It interfered with our gift somehow. I’d only heard warnings before, but now I could understand what it meant to be shot with a few milligrams of the potent stuff. Normal medicinal drugs didn’t adversely affect us, but heroin, cocaine, and even weed could render a mage helpless.

  A fleeting idea whispered in my mind, but it was gone before I could examine it. My gaze was fixed on the man who reached me. His pupils were dilated. Whatever he was high on was doing quite a number on him. He lowered his gun until it touched my cheek. The hard metal felt terrifyingly cold as he swept it down against my skin. The barrel reached my neck. If he shot me now, I would be dead within seconds.

  Death wasn’t a foreign concept.

  Every time I went on a case, I accepted that it could be my last.

  But I didn’t want to die like this, not in a cold warehouse, with these drug dealers for company, far away from a battleground, and without knowing who the culprit was in this case.

  And yet it looked as if this was it.

  These were my last moments.

  “Leave her,” said Bryan. “Kill me instead.”

  Whoa!

  The man was willing to give up his life for me.

  Why?

  “You’ll both die,” said the man in a bored voice. “But…we might have some entertainment before you die, right? What do you think, boys?”

  The men laughed. There was something in his eyes, something that made my blood run cold. What did he want now? “Give her to me,” said Miles.

  “Hey, there is a pecking order in here,” said the guy. He turned and threw his gun at Miles. “You get to kill the guy and I get first turn on this pretty lady. Let me see what an FBI woman agent can do in bed.”

  He meant to rape me.

  Every inch of my body struggled as I tried to connect with my magic. It was there, inside me, waiting to be tapped, but I couldn’t touch it. My power swirled and sizzled within me, enraged, furious. But without my will, it couldn’t come to form. I couldn’t access it even though I needed to save myself. These men were animals. The guy bent forward until his face was right next to me. Every breath that came out of me was a struggle. Fear gripped me. His breath stank a little.

  “Ah!” I’d intended to let loose a scream but all that came out of my mouth was a groan.

  “See how eager she is,�
�� said the guy. Leaning forward even more so, he kissed my cheek. His lips lingered over my skin but when he tried to kiss me on my lips, I turned just a bit. He laughed as he straightened. “She has got some fight left in her. It will be fun to tame this wild beauty.”

  “What should I do with his body?” said Miles as he stood, the gun held causally in his hand.

  “Tie it in plastic and leave it for now. We’ll get rid of them together.”

  “We have to kill her too?”

  The guy put his hands around me and lifted me off the mattress. Waves of dizziness assaulted me. He threw me over his shoulder. My arms hung, limp and unmoving. With my gift, I could’ve sliced him right through. But my fingers refused to move and my magic failed to obey.

  This was a nightmare.

  And Bryan? Shit. They would kill him. With an effort, I turned my head to look at him. There was a crazed, wild look in his eyes as he struggled against the ropes that held him. “Let her go, let her go,” he screamed.

  His executioner walked towards him with a gun in his hand, but Bryan was worried about my safety.

  “Shut up,” said the guy who held me. “Kill him quick. I don’t want the noise to disturb my fun.”

  They would murder Bryan in cold blood.

  They would then take turns to rape me.

  The two thoughts ran parallel in my mind, and both were horrific. My magic roiled, ready to be unleashed, but I couldn’t summon it. Even though my brain wasn’t as foggy as before, I failed to connect to my power. I willed to command it. Every muscle in my body, every thought in my mind, strained to touch the magic that bubbled and simmered in my veins.

  Almost.

  Almost.

  But not quite there.

  It was frustrating, scary, terrifying.

  The guy who carried me opened a door. He would do unspeakable things to me. I could almost feel his hands on my body, his skin against mine, and the mere thought of it made me crazy. I would rather die than let him humiliate me in such a manner. Miles reached Bryan. Raising his hand, he put the muzzle of the gun against Bryan’s temple, and even then Bryan didn’t turn to look at him. Instead, his gaze was focused on me. He still struggled against the ropes as if by some miracle he would free himself and then save me.

  Miles would pull the trigger and Bryan would die.

  Our gazes held and we stared at each other, knowing how close to utter disaster we both were.

  A second.

  Two seconds.

  Three seconds.

  He would soon be dead.

  Chapter Ten

  Seconds passed in a heartbreaking agony.

  Miles grinned. His finger twitched, ready to press the trigger. In my mind, I screamed but my lips didn’t move, and the noise merely reverberated in the privacy of my mind.

  The guy who carried me stepped through the door. Every nerve in my body screamed with effort as I willed my magic to come to my aid. I couldn’t let Bryan die.

  No. No. No.

  The gun flew out of Miles’s hand. He screamed as bright, hot ropes of fire swung around him, binding him from head to toe. Magic flared. I fell on the floor as my tormentor dropped the load. In his rush to get to Miles, he stepped on my hand but I couldn’t feel the pain. Everyone looked confused, shocked. The fire burned with intensity. Miles screamed and screamed as it charred his skin and ate through his bones. He struggled against the fiery ropes but they held on. It was a terrifying sight to behold. Magic fire was always unstoppable unless you knew the right spells.

  Clearly, they didn’t.

  A fire mage was in the room.

  But who was it?

  I labored to breathe, struggled to regain some measure of my power, but my body was as helpless as that of a newborn baby. It was impossible to even move a finger.

  “What the hell is going on?” someone yelled.

  Everyone wanted a target so they could shoot and maim. Bryan and I stared at each other, knowing that we had been seconds away from a horrible fate. Where was our savior? Who was he? Or she?

  Did someone come from the farmhouse to help us?

  Was the whole team here? How did they find us?

  It must be Mark and Jeremy. Somehow they must have tracked us. I tried to crawl towards Bryan, but my body was locked, frozen. The drug still ran through my veins, unchecked, fast. My magic was bound. Someone burst through the door on the far side. Splinters of wood flew in the air. The remaining members of the gang exploded in a frenzy of activity shooting and screaming but there was no target except for the waves of fire that blew through the broken door. Two of the men fell on the floor, yelling in agony, as the fire caught them. Flames licked one wall. Soon, this whole place would go up in flames.

  Damn it.

  I needed to reach Bryan and rescue him before the fire guzzled us both.

  I couldn’t move forward an inch.

  This was degrading, humiliating, and scary as hell.

  Flames leapt off the wall and caught another gang member. He crashed on the floor, twisting and turning, in an attempt to douse it. This was no ordinary fire. It wouldn’t let off, not without magical aid. My whole body vibrated with the effort to move, but I was immobile. It was viciously mortifying to witness the events and not be able to participate in the destruction of the men who planned our annihilation.

  I wouldn’t have killed them.

  Sure, I would’ve gladly dragged them to the police. Perhaps I might have kicked them a few times for good measure before I handed the lot over to the right authorities. But this, I wouldn’t have done.

  They would have raped me, killed Bryan – but I was sickened by the death and mayhem.

  This was barbaric, cruel.

  No one from the commune would have killed people in this appalling manner.

  Whoever was doing this didn’t have much regard for human lives. Although I desired to close my eyes so that I wouldn’t have to see the writhing bodies that twisted on the floor in pain, my gaze was riveted to the gory sight. A shadow caught my attention; it was a mage in a cloak of invisibility. The magic was firm and true as nothing could be seen. If it weren’t for the reflection from the fire, I would have missed it too, but as it was, the magic was weakest at the bottom of the cloak. It was due to the angle at which I lay that I could see it at all. I tracked the shadow as it moved to the person who had carried me. The man didn’t see it coming. Streaks of lightning swelled and crested and hit him bang on the chest. He fell, his face close to mine. His screams chilled my blood, burst through my eardrums, and made me cringe. His chest sizzled from the massive burns. My gaze was fixed on his face; I couldn’t look away.

  My savior had no mercy.

  When the man died, I shifted my gaze to the other poor souls. No one got away. A couple who tried to run were lifted off their feet and slammed into the fiery walls where they burned even as they were impaled on the fire.

  It was the goriest and quickest spate of murders I ever witnessed.

  The shadow stopped close to my face. My breath stopped. Was I next? I’d assumed that he or she was a friend, but it could just be that he saved us as the last targets because we were the easiest. The shadow moved away and then the cloak of invisibility was pulled off. I saw the dark shoes and the tan trousers before the person moved next to Bryan.

  “You?” spluttered Bryan. “How did you get here?”

  “You can thank me later for saving your life,” said the man as he untied Bryan. “She needs some medical attention.”

  I wouldn’t ever forget that voice.

  How could I?

  Bryan looked around. The look on his face told me that he was as horrified by the callous murders as I was. “You didn’t have to kill them.”

  “Not kill them?” Aaron lifted me in his arms as if I weighed nothing. From this vantage point, I could see his face, the sheer beauty of it. His hands were warm and his skin glowed from the use of so much magic. “What did you want me to do? Should I have opened negotiations with them while t
hat guy held the gun to your temple? If I was delayed by a few seconds, you would have been dead, and she would have…” He looked down. The look in his eyes, predatory and yet concerned, scared me as much as the threat of rape that had loomed over me a while ago. “Their deaths were necessary. I’d to use magic and I couldn’t leave behind witnesses. The Council wouldn’t have tolerated a breach of our treaty of Secrecy.”

  He was so cold, so reasonable in his assessment of this terrible decision.

  “So you killed them in order to protect yourself from an investigation?” Bryan said, looking incensed. Aaron strode out of the burning warehouse and Bryan followed at a slower pace. He was clearly hurt.

  “I killed them to save you. Next time, I won’t bother,” he said. “Open the car, please.” He transferred me to the luxury of his Jaguar. “You can ride with me to the farm.”

  “I need to pick up our vehicle.”

  “You need rest. I’ll tell someone to pick it up and deliver it to the farmhouse,” his voice was firm and invited no arguments.

  The man was bossy. He was merciless, cruel.

  He was a menace, but he did save our lives.

  After a short pause, Bryan sat. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I would have to inform my boss about the people who died at the warehouse,” said Bryan.

  Oh oh!

  Big trouble.

  Jones wouldn’t like it. We weren’t allowed to kill civilians even if they were trying to murder us. This was unprecedented. Aaron could face a criminal investigation and even punishment. No mage could be allowed to run unchecked through the city.

  “You can do it,” said Aaron. The car slid forward. There was a large explosion from somewhere deep inside the warehouse. “But there would be no proof to back your claim. The men are dead, and the warehouse will be destroyed within moments. I left some gifts inside which will speed up the annihilation process.”