Keri Arthur - Circle Of Death

She blinked back tears and looked out the side window. The rain fell in a mist, muting the glow of the streetlights and filling the silent streets with a curtain of gray. Anything could be out there, she thought.

Anything at all.

She shivered again. She felt so cold it seemed to be seeping deep into her bones. Death, reaching out for her.

"He won't get you while I'm here," Doyle said softly.

She didn't glance at him. Couldn't. She didn't want him to see her tears. "I'm not afraid of death." Just of being alone. Of never finding anyone who would care for her as much as Helen had cared.

Of never finding that one person who could love her as she was rather than being terrified of what she could do.

She bit her lip and watched the gray-slipped world rush by. There was little traffic on the roads and they reached Carlton quickly. She glanced down at the street map. "Turn left here," she said. "Number 28 should be on your side."

He pulled into a parking space and stopped. With the headlights off, the mist seemed to crowd in, encasing them in a blanket of gray. Even the nearby gum trees looked ghostly.

"I don't like the feel of this," she muttered. There was a chill in the air that seemed unnatural. The same sort of chill she'd felt just before she'd pushed through her front door and discovered death had come visiting…

His hand covered hers, his touch flushing heat through her entire body. "Why don't you stay here in the car while I go check it out?"

"Not on your life." She withdrew her hand from the warmth of his. "I'm coming with you."

Annoyance glimmered briefly in his eyes. "It's safer in the car."

"Not if one of those creatures is out there."

"I would know if a manarei were out there, believe me." Yet his gaze swept the drizzle surrounding them, and he frowned.

Did he sense anything? Or was it just the blanket of gray teasing their imagination? She glanced at him.

Somehow, he didn't seem the type to have problems in that department.

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I have an active enough imagination when it matters." A smile touched his lips. "For example, I can easily imagine you actually doing something I ask."

Heat crept through her cheeks again. She looked away and crossed her arms. "I'm coming with you."

He sighed. It was a sound of sheer frustration. "Well, I guess it is one way of knowing where the hell you are. But you do what I tell you to do, is that clear?"

She nodded and climbed out of the car. The mist ran damp fingers across her skin, and she shivered.

The night was quiet, hushed. The street was filled with shadows. Cars and houses loomed briefly as the fine rain swirled sluggishly. Streetlights puddled light down onto the pavement, looking like forlorn stars in the night. Nothing moved. It was very easy to imagine they were the only two people alive in the world right now.

He moved to the rear of the car, then glanced back at her. "You coming?"

She cast an uneasy glance at the shrouded trees, then followed him across the road. "What are you going to say to this woman if she's home?" She shoved her gloved hands into her pockets, still trying to get them warm. "I certainly wouldn't open the door to a couple of wrinkled-looking specimens like us at this goddamn hour of the morning."

He shrugged. "I'm not exactly sure yet."

"Oh great. What if she decides to call the cops? What if she's got a great big dog and decides to set it on us?"

He grinned. "Dogs don't worry me."

"They worry me," she muttered and glanced up. "You know, you never did explain what happened to that panther I saw before."

He raised an eyebrow. "What panther?"

Anger surged through her. This man might be helping her, but in very many ways, he was also treating her like a fool. "You want me to trust you, and yet you can't—or won't—answer the simplest of questions."

He glanced at her. Deep in the depths of his eyes she saw annoyance—and regret. "I'll answer your questions when you decide to stop running."

She stared at him. He wasn't just talking about running from him. She knew instinctively he was talking about running from life—of being so scared of death that she was afraid to live. She pulled her gaze from his. She barely knew this man, and yet he seemed to understand her better than anyone ever had—maybe even Helen.

Twenty-eight was the third house along in the row of eight grand old Victorian-style terraces—she believed they called them row houses in America. Unlike the rest of the houses, number twenty-eight looked in serious need of a bit of love and attention. The picket fence was missing half its pickets, and the shoe-size piece of front garden was knee-high in weeds. Wood boarded the windows on the bottom floor, and the screen door was hanging off its hinges.

She frowned. "It looks abandoned."

He opened the gate and ushered her through. "It's not. I can hear someone moving inside."

She raised an eyebrow. "You can? How?"

"Told you—I've got good hearing."

Shehad good hearing, and she couldn't hear a damn thing. "How can you tell if it's a human moving around inside? It might be a stray cat—or even the wind."

"It's human. Cats rarely get around on two feet." He knocked on the door. The sound seemed to echo through the silence, as sharp as thunder.

"If that's an old lady moving around in there, you've just given her a damn heart attack." She glanced across to the park again. Nothing had moved, and no sound broke the silence. Yet something was out there, near the trees, watching them.

Doyle looked over his shoulder. "Nothing's there," he said after a moment.

He was wrong. Something was. She shivered and rubbed her arms. She felt no sense of danger, no sense of doom approaching, as she had last night when she'd stood on her front porch and watched the police lights flash red through the night. It was just a sense of… waiting. And expectation. Neither of which made any sense.

Inside the house, something moved. Wood scraped against wood, then footsteps approached. "Yes?"

The voice was high-pitched, quavery. The voice of an old woman.

He frowned. "Sorry to bother you, ma'am, but I'm looking for Rachel Grant."

"At this hour? Go bother someone else, or I'll call the police."

"Told you," Kirby muttered.

Doyle ignored her. He splayed one hand across the door, but quickly jerked it away. "It's urgent we speak to Rachel. Is she there?"

"There's no one here by that name. Be gone with you."

Lights appeared in the neighboring terrace. If he wasn't careful, he'd have the whole street down on them. But if he was at all worried by such a prospect, he certainly didn't show it.

"Do you know where we can contact her?" he continued, his voice a little louder.

"Told you, there's no one here by that name. I got the phone in my hand, you know. I'm dialing."

"Thanks for your help, ma'am." He cupped Kirby's elbow and guided her down the steps. On the way past the letterbox, he snatched an envelope that was half sticking out of the box.

"That's theft in this country."

"It's theft in mine, too, but right now, I don't really care." He handed her the envelope. "Take a look."

She did. It was addressed to Rachel Grant. "Could be a mistake. Maybe she's just moved and hasn't had her mail redirected.

"You really think that?"

"No. But it's better than the thought of breaking into that house and seeing who's really in there. That's what you're thinking of doing, isn't it?"

He raised an eyebrow. "I see I'm not the only one reading minds here."

She rubbed her arms and looked away from the warmth in his gaze. "It doesn't take a mind reader to guess that's what you're thinking."

"But I bet you can guess what else I'm thinking."

She grimaced. "Yeah. And you no doubt can guess my answer."