Circle Of Death

Chapter Six

Kirby froze and stared at the creature that had suddenly appeared before them. It was big, with a shaggy gray coat and wild yellow eyes that were somehow almost human. It looked like a damn wolf. It even snarled like a wolf. But wolves didn't exist in Australia, not outside the confines of zoos, anyway. Maybe this one had escaped, though that didn't explain how it had gotten past the locked door and windows and into their room.

The wolf took a pace forward. It snarled again, teeth gleaming brightly. She reached for the fire.

"Don't," Doyle said softly. "Wait."

"Are you crazy?" But she clenched her fists, holding in check the energy that flowed warmly across her fingers.

He continued to stare at the wolf. After a moment, the animal stopped snarling, but its head was still lowered, and it looked ready to attack.

"You are under a light glamour," Doyle said softly to the wolf. "I can feel its restraints on you."

Kirby frowned. A glamour was some kind of spell. She knew that much from Helen. But why would he think the wolf was under one? And why would he think a wolf would even understand or care?

"If you attack, you will die," he continued. "You know what I am, and you know I am faster and stronger than you."

The wolf didn't move, just continued to stare at Doyle with an odd sort of intelligence in its eyes. It was almost as if it could understand what Doyle was saying, which meant it was a good two steps ahead of her .

"I can open the door and let you leave, or you can die. The choice is yours, wolf."

No one moved—not Doyle, not the wolf, not her. Energy burned across her fists, flickering wild fingers of light across the ceiling. She continued holding her power in check, even though she doubted the sanity of doing so. After several seconds, the wolf sat back on its haunches.

"Wise move," Doyle said and opened the door.

The wolf glanced at her a final time, then padded out.

Doyle locked the door and swung around. "Move. I don't think we have much time before another attack comes."

"How did that thing get in here?" She grabbed a pair of jeans out of her bag and pulled them on. She didn't bother with socks, just slipped on her still damp running shoes over her bare feet.

He'd stripped off his coat and was pulling on his shirt. He had the body of an athlete—a runner. Trim, taut and well-tanned. Very nice, even with the white ring of bandages around his ribs.

He glanced at her, amusement glimmering in his eyes. Heat stole across her cheeks. "Stop reading my thoughts and just answer my damn questions," she snapped.

"I have no idea why I'm catching your thoughts so clearly, so I can't exactly stop it." He put his coat back on and swept up her bag. "And to answer your question, that wolf was sent here by whoever is after you."

She frowned. "But sent here how?"

"Magic. You ready to go?"

"Yes." The sooner they got moving, and the sooner she got away from this craziness, the better. "Where are we going?"

"To find a woman named Rachel Grant." He ushered her through the door, then grabbed her arm and walked her down to reception.

Not taking a chance on her running, she thought with amusement. Which she would, if he made one wrong move. "Why are we trying to find this woman?"

He hesitated, his gaze considering her for several seconds. Judging her, she thought, and wondered why it suddenly seemed so important she pass his test.

"We believe she's the next in line to be murdered." He opened the reception door and motioned her through.

A chill ran through her. "Have you told the police?"

"I doubt the police will take a great deal of notice of the words of an old witch."

An old guy wandered in, his presence stopping her from asking any more questions. Doyle paid their room account, and chatted cheerfully with the manager. It was hard to imagine his easy grin hid a killer's instincts.

He flashed her an annoyed look, and she bit her lip, glancing away. Killer or not, he had saved her life.

And she'd have to remember to watch what she was thinking when she was around him.

They headed back to his car and climbed in. "The cops will pull you over with a windscreen like that," she commented.

"A risk we'll have to take. I don't have the time to get it fixed right now." He started the car, then reached into his pocket and handed her a breakfast menu. On it were three addresses. "You navigate.

There's a street map in the back."

She twisted around and grabbed it. The first address was in Carlton, barely fifteen minutes away. She found the street, then backtracked and gave him directions from where they were.

He sped off. The wind whipped in through the hole in the windscreen, it's touch forceful and icy. She zipped up her coat and fleetingly wished she had gloves. Her hands were so cold her fingers were aching.

"Here," Doyle said, producing a pair of black leather gloves from his pockets. "Wear these. They'll be too big, but they will at least keep you warm."

She accepted the gloves with a smile of thanks and pulled them on. "What don't you keep in those pockets of yours?" Like him she had to raise her voice to be heard above the wind.

"Lots of things," he said. "Like answers. Did you or Helen ever try to find out who your parents were?"

Helen had certainly been thinking about it, but now she'd never get the chance. She blinked away the sudden sting of tears and looked out the side window. "No. Why do you ask?"

"Because the first victim had begun a search to find her relatives. We thought maybe that was a possible connection."

"What makes you think Helen's murder is even remotely connected to this other murder?" Helen had spoken to the wind many times, but she'd never seen their deaths being connected to anything more than an accident of fate.

She crossed her arms and shivered. It wasn't supposed to be like this. They were supposed to die together in a car crash years from now. Why had fate stepped in and snatched Helen away long before her time?

"Two things connect her," he said. "A manarei tore her apart, and it carved a symbol on both doors."

Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed against it. She didn't want Helen connected to the other murder, and she didn't know why. "Why in hell would someone want to do something like that?"

He shrugged. "If we knew the reason, we would probably have been able to prevent it."

She looked at him. His profile was a painter's dream, classic and stunning. "What do you mean, we?

Who else is working on this with you?"

He hesitated. "I work for an organization called the Damask Circle. There are three of us currently in Melbourne, trying to solve these murders."

She frowned. "Why would a brutal murder in Australia be reported in America? It's not that newsworthy."

"No. And it wasn't reported. Seline, the lady in charge of the Circle, did a reading and sent us out here."

"Reading? What is she? Some sort of psychic or witch?"

"Witch," he said. "But not the witch I referred to earlier. That's Camille, who's here with me and Russell."

Russell was obviously the man she'd heard him talking to earlier. She had a feeling there was a whole lot more about his companions—and himself—that he wasn't telling. "So, you have no idea who is behind all this?"

"None whatsoever." He glanced at her, eyes gleaming in the darkness. "But whoever it is seems to want you dead pretty badly. Remember that the next time you decide to run."

What could she say? She certainly couldn't deny there wouldn't be a next time, because she did have every intention of running. Eventually. If there was one lesson she and Helen had learned well over the years, it was to depend on no one but themselves. Rely on no one but themselves.

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."

"Kirby, get serious. I need to get into that house quickly and quietly. I can't do that if you're with me."

"Meaning I'm a lumbering noisemaker?"

"Lumbering, no. Far from it." He hesitated, his gaze sweeping her briefly. Her nerves jumped, as if touched by fire. "Noisy? Well, yes."

He opened the passenger side door and motioned her to get in. She crossed her arms and stood her ground.

"That old lady is probably watching to see if we leave," he said. "I have no doubt she will call the cops if we don't."

"Oh." Feeling foolish, she got in. He climbed into the driver's side and reversed out, heading down the street. He turned right onto another street, then switched off the headlights and turned around, heading back. He parked several houses up from the terrace, this time on the same side of the road.

He took off his seat belt, then turned to face her. "I want you to climb into the driver's seat and keep the engine running. If anything—or anyone—remotely threatening approaches, drive off."

She frowned. "What about you?"

"I'll be okay. I'll meet you at the zoo. It's not that far away, is it?"

She shook her head, wondering how he knew if he'd never been there. He might have good hearing, but surely even he couldn't hear the zoo animals from here.

"I can't just leave you here," she said. "What if you get into trouble and need help?"

"At the slightest hint of trouble, I'll leave. It's more important right now that you keep safe. Climb out and come around to the driver's side."

She did. He'd climbed out and was holding the door open for her. She stopped, suddenly reluctant to get any closer, though what she feared she couldn't exactly say.

For a second, neither of them moved. She stared at him, caught by the sudden intensity in his eyes—an intensity that seemed to delve right through her, touching her soul. Touching her heart. He reached out, trailing the back of his fingers down her cheek. Heat shivered through her, and her breath caught somewhere in her throat. She licked her lips, saw the heat flare deep in his eyes. God, it would be so easy to step fully into his embrace, to let him wrap the lean strength of his arms around her and keep all the demons and fear away. She clenched her fists, fighting the desire—the need —to do just that. It was nothing but crazy thinking. He was a stranger, and she shouldn't even be trusting him, let alone wanting him to hold her. Aching for him to kiss her. Swallowing nervously, she tore her gaze from his.

He placed a finger under her chin, raising it until her gaze met his again. "Please don't run."

His voice was little more than a warm caress in her thoughts, and it scared her.

But what scared her more was the longing she saw deep in the depths of his richly colored eyes—a longing that echoed through every inch of her. This man knew loneliness as intimately as she did, only he hid it a whole lot better.

"I can't promise you that," she whispered. Because this time he wasn't talking about running from life or even running away. Far from it. And in many respects, he was just as dangerous as whatever was out there in the darkness, watching her, stalking her.

Regret flickered in his eyes, and he dropped his hand, though her skin continued to tingle with the warmth of his touch.

"Get in the car and lock the doors. And remember what I said."

"At the first sniff of danger, drive off and meet you at the zoo," she said, climbing into the car.

He slammed the door shut, then tapped the window. She smiled slightly and pushed down the lock. He gave her the thumbs up then walked away, quickly disappearing into the drizzle.

She leaned back and watched the misty rain eddy around her. Minutes dragged by. The silence suddenly seemed so heavy it was a weight pressing down on her, making it difficult to breathe. She shifted slightly in the seat. In the park opposite, the mist's dance quickened, as if someone—or something—had stirred it. The trees seemed to loom in and out of focus, and the feeling of being watched returned tenfold.

Lightning danced across her clenched fingers, sending jagged flashes of brightness through the night. She scanned the park, looking for some sense—some hint—of what the mist was hiding.

There was no suggestion of evil or danger. Nothing more than a sense of expectation—and warmth. She frowned. It was almost as if the mist wanted her to go over there.

She glanced toward the terraces. Doyle had told her to stay in the car, and it made perfectly good sense to do so. She could very easily walk into a trap, despite the fact she could feel nothing dark or dangerous about the presence that waited.

Yet she wasn't going to get any answers sitting around waiting for Doyle to do all the work. She grabbed the keys and climbed out of the car.

Damp fingers of mist crept across the back of her neck, and she shivered. She flipped up her jacket's collar then shoved her hands into the pockets and walked across the street. She stopped at the edge of the park, listening to the silence, studying the looming gum trees. Waiting, but for what she wasn't entirely sure.

A warning tingled across her skin. Something approached. She clenched her fists, and felt the lightning dance warmth across her skin.

Ten feet in front of her, the mist stirred, gently at first but gradually becoming more frantic. The wind had died and nothing moved in the predawn darkness, yet the mist continued to condense. Gradually, the tiny droplets of water found shape, found form. Found life.

Became Helen.