Ghostwalker 07 - Murder Game

here." He stretched out beside her and pulled her close, pillowing her head on his shoulder, his arms holding her. "Go to sleep." He brushed kisses in her hair. "D
    t
    on'
    dream, Tansy, just sleep. I won't leave you."

    C
    HAPTER FIFTEEN

    Tansy was back in the swirling, chaotic world of pure energy. She loved it and hated i , t
    drawn in spite of herself back time and again to a world no one else shared. When it was good, it was paradise, all stars and floating on a sea of happiness, a kind of euphoria unlike anything she'd known—except maybe sex with Kadan. When it was bad, it was the thing of nightmares, blood and gore and vicious, evil sickness.

    She reached for the stars, but knew she'd missed again. She'd been doing that for years now, missing paradise and grabbing hold of hell with both hands. Blood poured into the sky and seeped through the ground, rising like the tide, so thick there was no way to swim and keep her head out of it. Hundreds of heads bobbed with hers, eyes wide with terror, mouths gaping open as they silently screamed. She wondered if she looked the same, desperate to keep from drowning in the red muck.

    And then the volume turned on, and she could hear the screaming, feel it vibrating through her bones. She clenched her teeth and shook her head as fingernails scraped at her skin and bony hands clutched at her arm. Just below the surface she could see a woman looking at her through the murky red veil, her eyes pleading for mercy. Tansy clenched her teeth and reached through the sludge to take hold of the woman's arm. She pulled and pulled—pulled until she felt her arms were being torn out their sockets, but she couldn't budge the woman.

    She steeled herself and dove, head down through the lake of blood, diving deep in an effort to find what was anchoring the woman below the surface. Something bit at her ankle and she looked down. The woman was tied to a round cylinder of metal, left alive ABC Amber LIT Converter
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    to stare toward the surface and safety until the air ran out in her lungs.

    a
    T nsy looked around her, the bloody water so murky she could barely make out the other bodies, all standing straight, eyes raised toward the surface that eluded them by no more than a few inches, all held down by wire tied to their ankles. Fish ate at their flesh as if they were swimming through a drive-through sushi bar.

    She choked. The air exploded out of her lungs and she kicked e
    her way to the surface, h r
    head bursting through the oily sludge, gasping for air, screaming, fighting as hands tried t
    o drag her back down.

    You can't get away now . The whisper was a soft taunt that ran through her mind. She recognized that voice. She fought harder, crying now, pummeling the force holding her down, desperate to get away.

    You're safe. You aren't drowning in blood, baby, you're safe with me . Kadan's voice slipped into her mind and then he was there, filling up every part of her soul until he was the very air around and in her.

    She realized she was pounding at his chest and kicking blankets onto the floor, and she made herself stop. Her own cries echoed in her ears, and she stopped that too, taking in great gulps of air in an effort to calm herself. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Kadan." She pressed her face against his chest.

    He rained kisses over the top of her head and stroked one hand down the length of her hair while he held her tight against him. "There's no reason for you to be sorry."

    "I can't save any of them."

    He swallowed hard. "They're already dead, Tansy. Long dead before you ever touch the object that holds the violent energy. They're gone and no one can save them. All we can do is to try to stop their killers from murdering again."

    "Frog tied her just below the surface of the water so she could see freedom, but couldn't reach it. There were several people, like a colony of them tied down just like that. I saw a cylinder, like an air tank, and there was a logo on it, only it wasn't me seeing the actual logo. It was him . Frog, he was whistling as he prepared an air tank, grinding the logo from the side of the tank." She pressed her face closer to him, trying to crawl inside of him to escape her own mind.

    Kadan stroked her hair several times in an attempt to soothe her. "How did you access Frog when you were handling Blade's piece?"

    Tansy's voice receded, her mind