Trish Lamoree

 

–  Chapter 1  —

 

iara blinked and the world shifted, blurred, and became a nightmare of blood.  She let the knife fall from fingers numb with shock.  It made a sickening splat in the pool of blood at her feet.  The hysteria of the moment built in her chest as she watched a single drop of blood slide from her hand onto the one clean spot that had been left on the knife’s handle.  The handle of the long butcher knife had been clean where her hand had gripped it.  Her hand was covered in blood and the pristine steel of the blade had also been dripping with it, but the handle of the knife held only fingerprints. 

Her mind shuddered.  That clean place on the handle of the knife was where her own hand had clutched it so tightly that the rest of the dribbling blood on her hands and the blade hadn’t penetrated.  She didn’t want to look up, so she watched the knife at her feet.  There was more blood all over the room, but she stared at her feet trying to get a grip on herself. 

With a shudder, she clamped down on her panic.  There was no escape from the blood by looking at her feet.  Her sneakers had been a pretty white with blue stripes, and she reasoned that she wouldn’t be wearing them to the gym anymore.  With a start, she realized that she had remembered something but when her mind reached for the memory of working out at a gym, it seemed to stumble like a stalling car engine.  She reached for the memory, grasping desperately for it as she realized that it was the only one she had of anything before the blood.  It slipped away, laughing at her as if she was falling down a great hole in the earth.  The memory laughed as she tumbled by it on the way down into hell.  She shook off the image before it pulled her into an insane spiral.

Some part of her knew that it wasn’t her blood, but as she searched her mind for an explanation she felt as if she was reaching up from the bottom of that hole.  The top and reality seemed so very far away.  The blood wasn’t her own.  She hadn’t hurt anyone.  She knew these things as if they were the core of her. 

The more she reached for the past, the more she vividly knew nothing before the blood.  There was an eerie calm in her mind at that emptiness, and even as she rebelled and mentally tried to climb out, her eyes slid to the rest of the room.  She didn’t have time to deal with the holes in her mind if she was going to survive the crisis in front of her. 

The holes in her mind were less real than the room she stood in and time seemed to be ticking away in her panic.  It was time that she couldn’t afford to waste.  Somehow her moments of mental searching left her feeling that she was late.  Late for what she didn’t know, but somehow she needed to be running toward something, and the room in front of her was the only tangible thing she had to deal with.

It was a very cheap hotel room.  In the middle of one wall was a large bed, its lime green bedspread, like the worn carpet, darkened with the blood. One scarred nightstand held a phone that she briefly considered picking up to call the authorities.  At the thought of having to explain anything in this room with or without the memories behind the wall in her mind, she shifted her attention elsewhere. 

The dresser matched the nightstand in that it was scarred, and it matched the bed and carpet in that it was drenched in blood.  Its drawers were thrown open and empty.  Even the television hadn’t been spared the splattering of blood, nor the walls, nor the artwork on the walls, such as it was.  The blood splayed across the walls in arcs of droplets that drooled down the wallpaper connecting daisies like childish dots.

She shut her eyes, trying to shut the blood-stained room out long enough to regain control of herself.   She was trying to hold onto the tilting world but reality was slippery.  It was just so hard to believe she stood here in this nightmare.  She begged her mind to concentrate.  She had to stay here in the present and deal with this situation before time ran out and the situation dealt with her.  She couldn’t explain anything in this room and if anyone found her here, she would have to come up with answers her mind just wouldn’t deliver. 

She wanted to sit in a corner and cry.  Any sane person would, she justified to herself.  Reality shifted as she grabbed hold of her emotions and rebuilt her spine out of sheer will.  She would not quiver in a corner – not for anything.   

She brought a hand up to her forehead to brush the hair out of her eyes before she remembered that her hand was sticky with drying blood.  She opened her eyes to stare at that bloody hand and tried to focus on the fact that it was somehow her own hand.  A little niggling of paranoia shouted at the edge of her mind that she was a killer.  She had killed someone and splattered their blood all over this room in a fit of raging insanity. 

Perhaps she had another personality that had committed this heinous act.  Maybe that was the pit in her mind.  Maybe there was another personality in that portion of her mind that had done something unspeakable and left this side of her to deal with it.  The steel control she clamped on her emotions firmed into a cold detachment, analytically attempting to examine herself.

Or maybe she had done this to herself.  Maybe she was dead and standing here as a ghost of herself.  Maybe someone had killed her and her body was somewhere in this room.  And perhaps she would be forced to haunt this room until someone found her killer.  Maybe the room was saturated in her blood, and she was dead at her own hand or someone else’s. 

But then what was she to have earned such a gruesome death in this tawdry hotel room.  She wanted it to be a dream and hoped that she would wake up in that cold sweat that bad dreams leave on your body.  She wouldn’t even mind the interrupted sleep this time if she could just wake up.

She stood facing the mirror over the dresser, but she’d avoided looking in that mirror most of all.  She hadn’t wanted to look in that mirror and see a ghost of herself staring back, or worse nothing staring at her at all.  She didn’t want to look in that mirror and see a killer in her own eyes. 

A shudder rippled through her shoulders.  She was not a killer, she told herself, gritting her teeth.  That eerie calm reasserted itself.  And neither was she asleep.  She clenched her hand into a fist and brushed away the terror.  Her shoulders squared up, her chin lifted, and she took a deep breath of coppery blood and stuffy hotel room.  She would not look into the mirror until she had regained her inner strength. 

She shut out all her senses and touched the core of herself.  She may not have remembered who or what she was at that moment, but she knew her own soul and it would stand and walk through this pit.  The room seemed to quiver with her energy.

She locked her fears and emotions into a cage in her heart and looked up into the mirror.  The familiarity of her angular face, her crystalline blue eyes, her stubborn jaw that refused to quiver and her full lips that refused to shake all calmed her heart.  These were not a killer’s eyes, though the strength in them could stare a killer down or see into someone’s soul.  Another deep breath of relief calmed her further. 

She looked into her own eyes and sunk into the depths of her own personality as if she’d done it a hundred times and she had.  It was as natural as breathing to know the soul behind the eyes.  She recognized her talents as easily as she’d recognized her own face.  It was a comfort to know some detail of her life.  She was gifted and she saw things.  She was a force to be reckoned with no matter the situation.  She was strong and generous.  And she was sane, she told herself sternly.

For a life-saving moment, the blood disappeared and she stood and gazed just at herself.  She was, at that moment, as she had always been.  Her heart opened to her inner self, secure in the fact that she was not a killer.  She was not dead.  She was not dreaming.  And while it was not her blood, it was someone’s blood and she could feel them call to her.  She could also feel a surge of urgency emanating from the blood. 

She couldn’t remain here.  Her eyes scanned her blood-covered body.  She wasn’t stupid enough to leave this motel room looking this way either.  Nor was she stupid enough to call the police.  The blood was human, but she had no proof that the person or people the blood came from weren’t dead by her hands. 

Yes, her mind assured her, that felt right.  She needed to get cleaned up and get out of here.  She needed to go somewhere.  She didn’t know where but there was somewhere she needed to go.  And when it came down to it, that’s all she really had left.  That wall blocking off the memories in her mind left her with only her gut instincts and what felt right.   No one had found her so far.  There were no sirens of authorities coming to get her yet, but there might be.  She could think while she moved.

Her mind switched into problem-solving mode. There was no way she could clean this room, but she could get herself cleaned up.  It was a typical cheap motel room under all the blood, and she could see the doorway to the little bathroom.  She fought down squeamishness as her shoes squished across the wet carpet.  She slipped her shoes off outside the bathroom, and piled the rest of her bloody clothes on the other side of the doorway near the sink.  

She’d start with a shower.  She wasn’t sure what she would wear but she knew that she had to start with a clean body.  She showered, using two of the three little bars of paper-wrapped soap.  Rinsing her long brown hair without shampoo and conditioner was a pain, but at least its dark color would hide what she couldn’t rinse out.

Going through the motions of such a simple thing as a shower reminded her of little things, and she focused on them only enough to glean what she could from them.  Her long legs were limber and muscled because she liked to run, but she only liked to run because she loved to eat fast food and running helped her keep all that fat from going straight to her hips. 

She didn’t have the stick-like figure of today’s models, but Humphrey Bogart would have found her full breasts and hips hot and, seeing as she went for the black and white movies type over the Tom Cruise type, that suited her just fine.  Her heart quivered a bit at the thought of someone special in her life.  Did she miss someone or was she just lonely?  There was an empty place in her heart.  It was harder to shut that out of her mind, but she forced herself to keep moving. 

She hummed big band and blues, country and rock and roll while she showered.  When she tried to remember a particular song that she liked, she hit that wall, but when she let herself not think about it, she was eclectic in what she knew.  She studied herself casually, as if it was something she did often.  It was natural to probe and study people.  She worked with people.  She helped them cope with things.  If she could help others cope with things, she could certainly help herself through this. 

She dried herself with one of the puny towels and reached for a second to dry her hair.  The door to the bathroom swung a little as she tugged the little towel off the rack and she was rocked with a frantic feeling of relief at the backpack that hung on the back of the door.  Her fingers shook as she wrapped the towel around her hair before grabbing the backpack and searching it, desperate for information.  The calm that she demanded of herself was shallow, but it would hold.

Her fingers dug for a wallet, a driver’s license, a credit card, something that would tell her who she was and what she was doing there.  She found a clean set of clothes, including underwear, black socks, black jeans, a plain black t-shirt, a thin navy sweater, black sneakers, and a light jeans jacket.  There were also the basic necessities like a toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, a hair brush, deodorant, and such.  There was even a set of keys that gave her a little hope, but no wallet or anything that could remotely identify her. 

She clamped down on the panic that rose when she realized she didn’t know her own name.  There had been enough panic today.  There would be no more.  There would be no more panic and no more shaking, she told herself sternly. 

Thinking that maybe her wallet was in a car parked just outside the hotel room, she hurriedly dried off.  She forced herself to calmly brush her teeth and hair and get herself dressed presentably before she tried to rush to whatever car might be outside, and whatever answers might lay in that car. 

She cleaned the hair out of the drain in the bathtub, wrapped her bloodied clothes and shoes in a plastic laundry bag, and tucked the last bar of soap into her backpack with the clothes.  If she’d really done something wrong, there would be enough forensic evidence here to hang her if they looked closely enough, but she didn’t need to make it easy.  She wiped down surfaces in the bathroom with a washcloth and returned to the main room to get the knife.

She froze.  Either she hadn’t seen them before or they hadn’t been there.  She felt reality shudder in her mind again.  She closed her eyes and took another breath.  The theme from Phantom of the Opera rose in the back of her mind.  Blood still drenched the room but on the dresser stood a large vase filled with a dozen huge white roses. 

Her heart yearned to touch the soft petals but crossing the room would walk her back through the blood on the floor.  She could smell them from where she stood and felt calmed.  Some part of her mind registered the sinister nature of white roses dripping with the red blood, but her heart just wanted to touch them, hold them, and be held by their scent and softness.

It wasn’t rational to go to the roses.  She was running out of time.  She needed to get to whatever vehicle matched the keys in her backpack.  She needed to find out who she was in a safe place away from here.  She heard a voice whisper in her mind, “I love you.”  Irrationally, she ripped the bedspread and sheets from the bed to cover the floor from the bathroom to the dresser.  It wasn’t much help since the bedspread had been drenched too, but at least the blood wouldn’t be splashing at her feet.  In the end, she just didn’t care.  She took the two small steps to the dresser as carefully as she could and took a single rose. 

She glanced up into the mirror over the dresser and the moment froze itself into her mind.  The half of the rose that faced the mirror was red with fresh blood.  Her eyes were caught by those in the mask over her shoulder.  Those eyes smiled at her and her heart melted.  His eyes held hers as he lowered his lips to the back of her neck and whispered a kiss that had her leaning back into the man who wasn’t there. 

The scent of blood and roses snapped her eyes back open and he was gone.  For a moment her heart had been complete, but then he was gone again.  Her eyes hardened as she looked at herself in the mirror.  Wasn’t that just typical of a man and the sappy sentiment of true love? 

–  Chapter 2  —

 

iara slammed the door to the motel room as she strode out into the world.  She had tucked the knife into her backpack with an angry jerk before turning and storming out of the room.  She didn’t see the mirror shatter, but she did hear his gentle laugh follow her into the real world. 

She was too distracted to notice that her shoes left no tracks of blood outside the door.  She shoved the rose into the backpack carelessly and yet it wasn’t crushed.  She just shrugged into the jeans jacket, tossed the pack over one shoulder, and looked around.

“Laugh it up, choirboy,” she muttered between her teeth.  The irreverence made her feel better, more in control of herself.

The motel was situated in the middle of nowhere.  There was a vacant parking lot that dashed her hopes of finding a car, and a closed front office that dashed her hopes of figuring out who had rented the room.  Perhaps the room hadn’t been rented at all. 

She was curious now and wanted to go back to check the room again, but the thought of going backwards made her nervous.  The sooner and farther she got away from this place, the less likely she’d be the one to have to answer any questions about that room.

She took another moment at the street to take in the nowhere of where she was.  It was better to take a moment to think it through than head off blindly into whatever was waiting.  It was basically a truck stop at the edge of a large highway.  There were a few restaurants, fast food joints, gas stations, and motels scattered on each side of the highway, but she wasn’t close enough to any signs to see where she could be. 

Farms and fields covered the rest of the rolling hills around the truck stop.  Rows of grapevines rose over the farthest hill to the west and empty brown grazing land unfolded south.  If this was wine and cattle country, she might be in California along Interstate 5 between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  She gripped another fact about herself.  She was smart and she knew things, even through the darkness in her mind.  Her confidence rose a little.

In a habitual move, she stuck her hands in her back jeans pockets while she was thinking and found a wad of bills.  In a rush of relief she searched the rest of her pockets in both the jacket and her jeans and came up with enough cash to keep her going for a week or so if she was careful.  She wouldn’t go hungry now, and this made her next stop easy.  Her stomach was already dictating that she eat something and her stress level was crying out for fast food, but she really wanted to be able to sit somewhere comfortable and think for a while so she settled for one of the local restaurants.

As she walked toward the restaurant, she felt her confidence rise to find that she’d been right about her location.  There were four or five of these truck stop areas between LA and the bay area or Sacramento.  She glanced at the headlines of the paper in the newsstand outside the restaurant but nothing jogged her memory, including the date. 

It was mid-afternoon on a Thursday in the middle of September.  She checked her appearance in the reflection of the front door as she walked in but she didn’t look any more ragged than most of the travelers that stopped along this route.

The souvenir shop was just an added bonus for the restaurant and it carried kitschy items from homemade fudge to Indian jewelry.  She found a display of shiny rocks that you could buy by the bag for cheap and on a lark, she picked out a few that hummed nicely.  The rocks were friendly and somehow they spoke to her.  Rather than question the knowledge, she ran with it.  Who was she to determine what might be right or wrong when she’d just stepped out of a nightmare into what she hoped was the real world. 

Sensing a need to be sheltered from the crowds within the room, she requested a booth near the back.  The waitress seemed to be one of two on duty; both bored and busy at the same time.  She ordered a greasy burger to satisfy her fast food craving and studied the rocks. 

She didn’t really notice how loud the surroundings were until she picked up the silvery rock and the background noise stopped.  She tested it out and discovered that it wasn’t that the restaurant patrons were talking so loud; it was that they were thinking really loud.  When she held the silvery rock, she only heard their talking instead of the thoughts as well. 

She set the rock in the middle of the table and shot some energy into it, imagining a dome of silence that surrounded the rock.  When she released the rock, it hummed slightly and the dome became a little smaller, but it stuck and she heard only the verbal banter going on around her.  A part of her wondered if that would keep choirboy out of her head, and she mentally scowled at the portion of her that missed him already.

He’d sent her the roses.  She knew that as surely as she didn’t know how he’d done it, but it was clear evidence that he was probably behind the whole bloody nightmare.  If he’d staged that setup then he was no friend of hers, no matter how much her heart hurt to think that way.  Maybe they’d been lovers.  The thought made her stomach do a little flip-flop that made her feel ridiculously like a schoolgirl with a crush on the star football quarterback.  She thought she detected the smell of blood and roses but it was washed away with the smell of her burger and fries as the waitress delivered her order.

She looked up to say thank you to the waitress and slammed into her eyes.  Her name was Rachel.  She had two kids, and a worthless husband who liked beer and football more than anything else.  The car was on the fritz and he was supposed to be getting it fixed today, but he’d probably spent the money on beer. 

The waitress’s mind swirled into her in a way that made her wonder whether she was remembering her own life or someone else’s life.  Rachel wanted to be swept away by Richard Gere who would recognize her incredible talent as a singer and make her a rock star; a rock star that wore a tiara.  The tiara didn’t fit.

Tiara wrenched herself out of Rachel’s mind with an almost physical jerk.  Her name was Tiara.  The memory of her name tried to slip away but she held onto it.  A stream of emotions crashed around her but she didn’t dare reach out to them or the memories that were attached to them. 

She wanted to keep her name.  She wanted to remember it.  White water river rapids rushed by her as she clung to her name, closing her eyes and hanging on for dear life.  Her name was Tiara.  It was Tiara.  She had to hold on.  The white water began to fade to the red of blood.  Tiara slipped.

“Are you alright, sweetie?” Rachel’s voice pulled her up and out of the river of emotions.

“My name is Tiara,” she shook her head to clear it and crashed back onto the shores of reality.

“Alright, Tiara, but are you alright?  You turned white as a sheet there for a minute.”  Rachel didn’t really care but she knew how to be nice to make a good tip.  Tiara could still feel Rachel’s mind and it helped the river of blood recede, but she needed to appear harmless and normal.  She needed to not stand out.

“Oh, I’m alright,” Tiara said, pasting a smile onto her lips that was meant to charm but probably turned out just a little freaky.  She picked up the pickle from the plate and took a big bite.  “It’s just my dropping blood sugar.  I waited too long to get something to eat.”

“Well, as long as you’re ok.”  Rachel was already thinking of her next table of customers.

“I’ll be fine, now that I’m eating, thanks.”  Tiara smiled warmly through the inner ruckus. 

As soon as Rachel left the circle of the stone, all was quiet again.  Tiara slumped and tried to breath through it.  She considered shutting out the memory of blood but it was one of the few memories she had and she didn’t think she could afford to lose more.  Tiara took a deep breath and dug into her meal hoping that food would help settle her nerves. 

So much for the peace and quiet of a diner.  Although she was sure that a fast food joint would have been much worse with even more background chatter and less privacy.  Besides, if she hadn’t come here, she wouldn’t have gotten the pretty rocks.  She focused on a pretty pink rock and felt herself calm a little more.

The fries were a little soggy but the burger was as greasy as she’d hoped.  The food was giving her the strength to move forward again.  Putting the rocks aside for the moment, she studied the keys.  One key opened a padlock, another looked like a house key, and the third was definitely a car key with a remote alarm.  She pointed the remote at the window and pushed the button but none of the cars within sight responded. 

Tiara spent the rest of her meal imagining the horrible things she would do to the mysterious guy who’d set her up for all this.  Somehow this was all his fault.  He had to be the person who had drenched the room in blood and left her to take the fall.  He was out there somewhere and he was laughing at her.  Tiara wanted to find him, but not before she found herself.  When she figured out what was going on, she was going to exact some retribution from whoever had set her up.

She would have to find the car next.  Without a credit card and identification, she wasn’t getting a motel room tonight so her best bet was being able to crash in the car at a rest stop.  As she paid the check, she picked up a map of California.  She didn’t think she’d need it, but she figured that looking at it, she might remember a place that she needed to be.  On this highway, she was halfway between LA and Sacramento.  She wasn’t sure which way to go to find her next clue.  The next clue had to be in her car, so she headed for parking lots.

Tiara spent the next two hours jogging between the restaurants and fast food joints using the remote alarm to try to find a car that responded.  She felt foolish as it started to get dark and she still hadn’t found the car.  She could see into the soul of a waitress who didn’t give a darn, but she couldn’t find her own darn car.  Since she’d tried all the other places, she decided to try the motels, though it seemed unreasonable that it would be parked there. 

She’d just fled from one motel room in another motel.  If he was going to park the car at a motel, why wouldn’t he just leave it at the same one she came out of?  Several times, she looked over her shoulder expecting to see that masked face laughing at her again.  The helplessness of her anger only made it more potent.

At the best of the motels there, she smelled the faint scent of blood and roses.  With a growl that clamped down on her leaping heart, she walked the parking lot briskly.  The car’s headlights lit up at a room near the back.  She was only excited by the thought of having the car, not by the smell of roses, she told herself.  Besides, the smell was probably coming from her backpack. 

She unlocked the car with a double click of the remote and slid into the driver’s seat.  The car was hot and stuffy but she didn’t care.  It was a safe place that she could call her own right now and it was blessedly quiet of all the murmurs of the people and their thoughts.  She didn’t want to think about why it was quiet.

The car was clean and empty in front.  She popped open the glove compartment and found an envelope entitled with the words “Sweet Dreams” scrawled across the front.  Inside the envelope was a key card for a motel room wrapped in one of those things that told you what room you were in.  She checked the room number and smiled at the fact that it was the same room number as the one she was parked in front of.  With a happy sigh, she laid her head back on the seat and dreamed of taking a nice long bath and sliding between the cool, crisp sheets for a good sleep. 

She got out of the car and tried the door, but it didn’t work.  She slid the card in again and again in frustrated hope that she had just done something wrong.  She twisted the handle angrily.  The power built in her and she felt it vibrate through her hands and into the doorknob when it was suddenly wrenched out of her hand.

“I think you have the wrong room, lady,” he was disheveled and she had obviously just woken him from a deep sleep.

Her anger instantly deflated and the power withered into an embarrassed puddle at her feet.  “I’m so sorry,” she stammered, backing away from the door.

The disheveled man grumbled a bit, scrubbing at his grizzled chin.  She purposely didn’t meet his eyes.  She didn’t want to know him.  Tiara slunk back into her car.  When she read the wrapper more carefully, she noticed that it wasn’t for this motel at all.  It was for a motel of the same name, but it was in another town altogether.  When she looked at her map, she realized that she was hours from rest.  Her next destination was Bakersfield. 

“Very funny, choirboy,” she muttered. 

She’d have to drive to Bakersfield to have a safe place to sleep for the night.  She shouldn’t drive without a license, but if she was stopped, she could claim to have been robbed.  Hopefully the car wasn’t stolen and this trip wouldn’t end up with her in jail.  This little wild goose chase of his was annoying but until she had some options that included her own identity, she’d play along.  Hopefully she wasn’t playing along with a maniac killer who was just toying with his food before devouring her.

She checked the map briefly for directions and drove.  She could think and drive but the sooner she got to her next destination, the sooner she’d have a few more answers.  What kind of sadistic jerk left a girl in the middle of nowhere and still figured there were more practical jokes to make.  It hadn’t been enough to leave her in the middle of the nightmare, but he had to hide the car and make her think she was at the end of the chase for the night as well. 

She had half a mind to just keep driving all the way to Los Angeles and get lost in the crowds.  Or maybe she’d drive to Las Vegas and try her skills out on the nearest slot machines.  Then she’d have enough money to get off this guy’s radar for good.

Traffic was relatively light and fast until she hit the back roads that crossed over from Interstate 5 to 99.  The roads were familiar enough to her if she didn’t think about it.  It wasn’t so familiar that she’d be able to stop and know the people she talked to but she’d driven the route a few times.   

She could find her way to LA or Vegas with the map and her intuition.  She could put this whole thing behind her and start over.  It was a tempting thought.  She fired up her anger to pass the turnoff for Bakersfield and her heart lurched painfully.  The smell of blood and roses filled the car and left her breathless until she made the turn.

Still, Tiara had control of herself.  She convinced herself that it hadn’t been the smell or the lurch of her heart but plain logic to follow this through to the end so that she could confront the jerk and tell him off in person.  She was too angry and strong to run away from danger or difficulty.  She was the type of person who met confrontations like this head-on.  She pushed her anger into an impatient simmer and drove toward Bakersfield.  It was on one of the smaller roads that the tire blew and so did Tiara’s patience!

 

–—

 

“We’ve got a spike, boss,” Marcus was checking the readouts and listening carefully to his monitors.  The control room around him felt like a mix between a spaceship and an FBI backroom operation.  His boss sat calmly beside him in the captain’s chair.

“What’s happening?”  The boss’s voice was unconsciously silky.

“The tire just blew.” Money changed hands at the back of the room. 

“I told you she’d lose her temper before she hit Bakersfield,” Rianna threw Tammy a superior look, pocketing the five dollar bill.

“Do we have anything visual for it?” the boss asked, pretending not to notice the payoff.

“No sir,” Marcus’s formal training took over as he went all business.  “She’s pulled off near an almond orchard in the middle of nowhere so we’re stuck with voice and health monitors.”

The boss smiled as he watched Marcus turn down the voice outputs.  “Is she shaking down the trees out there or something?”

“She’s swearing like a trucker, sir,” Marcus smiled then got more serious as the other monitors screamed.  “She’s stronger, sir.”

“We expected that.”

“I’m not sure we expected this much of a change, sir,” Marcus leaned out of the way as the boss read the monitors over his shoulder. 

 

–—

 

Tiara was too frustrated to notice that the jack was broken.  She changed the tire on a car that floated off the ground on a broken jack.  She’d expected the jack to work and it had.  What she had noticed in the trunk was blood and another note that said, “Don’t get caught.”  There was blood but no body in the trunk of the car.  She’d reached in to get out the spare tire and jack and there’d been blood everywhere.  Her anger spiked and raved.  There was no one on this deserted back road that her instincts had told her was a short cut.  There was no one to see her temper tantrum, so she conceded to her feelings and let them flare while she changed the tire.

The almond trees shook as if they were being harvested.  Tools floated to her outstretched hands.  A trucker heading down the same short cut decided on a whim to take another road.  And over 500 miles away a set of monitors blew out fuses in an impressive array of sparks that would have Marcus up half the night trying to fix it all.  Tiara felt better for the tantrum, and was oblivious of its effects elsewhere.

The rest of the drive to Bakersfield she forced herself to drive the absolute speed limit and nothing faster.  She didn’t want to get pulled over and have to explain the blood in the trunk.  She was glad she didn’t have to check in at the motel since she already had the key. 

She was still mad when she slammed into the motel room, but she was calmer than when she’d pitched the jack into the orchard for collapsing the moment the tire was on.  She was also tired enough not to search the room for new clues.  

Tonight she just wanted to sleep this nightmare away.  When she woke, she’d deal with whatever new surprises the jerk had in store for her, but when she finally caught up with him, she’d have some inventive torture to turn on him.  She collapsed on the bed and passed out.

–  Chapter 3  —

 

is hands slid up from her waist to the sides of her breasts.  His warm breath feathered over her nipples, first one then the other, and they puckered eagerly for his touch.  She relaxed against the sheets, warming with a need for him that relaxed everything inside her. 

Those wonderful hands of his moved under her arms and shoulders and up into her hair to clutch her whole upper body to his as his mouth claimed hers.  His fingers tangled in her hair as he dove into her mouth greedily.  She rubbed her tightened nipples against his slick chest to torture him and he groaned with need for her.

The feel of his powerful arms surrounding her and holding her so securely to him had her arching her back into his chest.  His lips were smooth and silky, but his tongue was demanding and dangerous.  She dug her fingers into his lean, hard shoulders and held on while the core of her melted.  She wanted him inside of her.  She wanted to come home to him.  She needed his touch and he gave her everything.

His touch demanded and her body responded like it knew what to do.  Her hands flitted over him like they knew every inch of his body by heart.  He was the strongest man she’d ever met and she brought him to shaking with need for her.  She was the hardest woman he’d ever known and he could mold her body like jelly to his merest whim.  They stroked each other to frenzy and the room shook with them.  She clutched at his buttocks, begging to be entered and brought home.

“There’s my girl,” he murmured into her neck.

 

–—

 

Light flashed into her eyes and Tiara jerked with the cold of the room on her bare, damp skin.  In the whirl of emotions, they had blown open the curtains enough to spear the early morning light into her eyes.  The scent of blood and roses rocked her from sleep.  Her body screamed with need for his touch even as her mind wanted to shred his skin from his bones.  Who was he and what right did he have to own her body so totally?  Shame warred with her anger but anger won.

Plunging her face into a pillow, she screamed out her frustration.  When she was spent, she looked up and felt another spike of rage.  Sweet and fresh as if they’d been delivered in her sleep were a dozen white roses arranged prettily in a vase on the dresser of the room.  Each bud was the size of a child’s fist and Tiara wanted to put her fists around each one and scatter the petals.  It wasn’t the white of the roses that enraged her most but the fact that each bloom was brushed with red in a mockery of the scene of the day before.

“Who,” she screamed into the room.  “Who are you to do this to me?”

“I am your mate,” an angry voice responded in her mind.  “And who knew what a shrew you could be.”  His anger stung her pride but her anger struck back.

“What right do you have to be angry with me?” she demanded, her anger now having the focus of his voice. 

“You can look at this room and ask that question?” he sounded a little more calm, but also a little distracted.  Her body, still fresh from the intimacy of her dream, chilled with the censor in his voice and the shame of being exposed to someone who wasn’t even there.

“I see your roses here again, you sick pervert,” she seethed without real thought.  Even as she said it, she scanned the room in a mix of awe and horror.

Lamps were overturned.  Her clothes were scattered.  Drawers from the dresser and nightstands were tumbled around.  The chairs from the sitting area actually still sat calmly on the ceiling of the room.  She did a double-take at the chairs and they fell to the ground with a thump.

“What are you?” she wrapped the bedspread around her.

“I didn’t do this, you did,” he gave a strained chuckle.  She had the image of him just roused from bed himself, bleary eyed and trying to get settled into a chair of some sort.  As she tried to look at the room around him, her mind went blank.  “And quit probing or I’m going to leave you in this mess all by yourself.”

“Promise?” she replied bitterly and walked away from his mind to sulk in her own messy room.

 

–—

 

 “Is Rianna ok?”

“Yeah,” Marcus pointedly ignored his boss’s put together appearance.  “She just got burned trying to contain it.”

“She should be able to sleep it off.”

“Yeah,” Marcus didn’t sound as confident.  “In a few days,” he muttered under his breath.

“What readings did she put off?” the boss pretended not to hear.

“You don’t want to know, sir,” Marcus tried to warn him.

“Well of course I do,” the boss was distracted enough to ignore the warning.  “This is what we’ve been waiting for.”

“Okay, but I warned you,” Marcus handed him a slip of paper.

There was a pause that rapidly became uncomfortable.

 

–—

 

Tiara brought out her silver stone and charged it to shield the whole room.  Then she started to try stuff.  She chose a blue stone from her bag and pointed her finger at it, telling it to move across the bed.  Nothing happened.  Tiara was patient though; she stared at it and asked it to move.  Nothing happened.  It took an hour to lose her patience, at which point, it flew across the room and put a dent in the wall.  She was so happy that it jumped back up on the bed and danced for her.

“It’s all emotions,” she told the empty room.  “Well of course it is.”

The more she tried to control herself, the less power she had to move things around.  The happier or angrier she was, the more she could move.  She got herself angry at the mystery mate and managed to clean up most of the room without getting out of bed.  She was so happy with her accomplishment that she managed to make the bed while she took a shower.  It was telekinesis, and it was wonderful.  It was wonderful until she passed out on the bed again in sheer exhaustion.

 

–—

 

 “She was spiking all over the place, but the area wasn’t registering anything,” Marcus informed him over their fourth cup of coffee.

“Could she have shielded?”

“Sure,” Marcus shrugged.

“That’s a good sign.”

“It is so far, sir,” Marcus was a pessimist at heart.  Nothing about this deal was good.

 

–—

 

His love reached out for her.  Did he even know that he called her?  She didn’t care.  She just knew that she needed him, and she would have what she needed.  In her buzz of success she reached out to the one person she wanted to share it with more than anything else.  It didn’t matter that she was mad at him.  She had power.  She would call him, and she would deal with him on her terms and on her turf.  She called him to her and then waited. 

The sheets were silk.  The bed was a romantic four poster wrought iron draped in sheer swathes of white fabric.  She stood at the foot of the bed draped in the same fabric as the bed.  Her generous curves were enhanced by the billowing folds of the sheer fabric that would tease him into touching her.  And she thought of him; called to him.  When he arrived, the walls and floor became drenched in deep red velvet.  He stood before her in tight black pants and a plain white harlequin mask. 

“And we dance again,” his voice washed over her like both a balm and a quick fire.

She deliberately stroked her hand up the side of her body where he had touched her the night before.  It was an unspoken invitation.

“Oh but if I touch you today, will you screech at me when you wake?”

She knew that he hardened for her, yet he stayed apart, barely having stepped into the room.  Her answer was a simple pout, trite but effective.

“Your charm is great, but my will is stronger,” he admonished her.

Her pout became real.  “You called me a shrew.”

“You were being a shrew,” he teased her gently.  “Who knew you had it in you?”

“Will you try to tame me?” she taunted.

A wall of whips appeared at the side of the bed.  “Should I?”

“You wouldn’t dare,” she turned the lashes to feathers and fur.

“You have but to ask.”

“Haven’t I already asked for it?” her eyes sparked with a little of the anger he had expected.

Shackles appeared around her wrists and lifted her arms above her head.  Instead of dissolving them, she writhed against the bedpost in feigned helplessness.  She was the bait of this little trap and she wanted him to enter the room.  He smiled lazily.  Two could taunt.

Without moving from the doorway of the room, he touched her with phantom hands.  A light glide of his magic hands at the small of her back and down over her bottom to cup her gently.  A second set of phantom hands cupped her thrusting breasts and teased at her nipples until they strained.  Tiara moaned in earnest and reached for him with her whole body.  The room began to spin with her loss of control but he steadied it with iron will.  More phantom hands lifted and parted her legs probing gently at her sobbing lips.

“Oh Jordan,” she whispered on a sigh.  And he was gone.

 

–—

 

Tiara woke more gently this time.  Her body ached for him.  No, not just him.  His name was Jordan.  Her body ached for Jordan.  Knowing his name was a victory she savored even as her body shook from the withdrawal of his touch.  She felt lethargic and wanted to return to sleep but her stomach protested.  It seemed the energy she used to perform these psychic tricks needed to be replaced with food, sleep, or both.  This time, she caved in to her fast food craving and ordered half the menu from the first one she found.  She surprised herself by eating most of it. 

It was half repentance and half pent up energy that had her taking a long run.  At the end of her run, she ordered a pizza and settled in to think and play with her rocks.   She put out her shielding rock and closed herself off from the outside world as completely as she could.  She was still sensitive to his rebuke of being a shrew and didn’t want to chance her telekinesis hurting anyone. 

At least she didn’t want to hurt anyone but him.  Her emotions were conflicted and before she went for another dream romp, she wanted to get them straight.  And she didn’t want any outside interference while she did it.

From all the evidence so far, she was crazy as a loon.  Her erratic response to dream boy was just the tip of the iceberg.  She’d let loose with both sides of her feelings for him and had gotten a mere name out of all that spent emotion.  Literally less than a day old and she was in a love/hate relationship with a phantom from her mind. 

She couldn’t remember more than her own first name.  She could do very fun things with a handful of rocks and some scary things with a roomful of furniture.  If it wasn’t her imagination, she could do some astral projection in her sleep and she managed telepathy and empathy when she was awake.  Aside from the bloody roses, she was in great shape.

Tiara groaned and gave in to the urge to crush a single rose in her fist.  The scent of blood and roses swept through her like a plague.  Her body shivered with the need for him.  She wanted him desperately, but she hated him for her own helplessness. 

She reminded her treacherous body that he had done this to her and that it was his fault she was losing her mind.  It was only by her own sheer will that she wasn’t dancing naked in the middle of the highway where he’d left her.  There must be some sadistic purpose to this whole thing, but until she remembered everything, nothing was going to make sense.

With a tight clamp on her anger, Tiara marched the roses out of her room and into the nearest dumpster.  Her heart clenched a little at the waste, but her mind won out.  It didn’t get the smell out of her room, especially after she’d crushed the bloom, but it was a start.  Even washing her hands didn’t get the smell off. 

She gorged herself on the pizza and watched a movie on TV to try to put it out of her mind, but as she drifted off to sleep, she placed her hand under her cheek and smelled the roses.  Her lower body tightened in agony and a single tear hit the pillow before she slept.

Thank you for reading the first three chapters of Painting the Roses Red.

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