Dark Sins and Desert Sands

“I can’t free you unless you free me,” she said, with a look of anguish. “Save me.”

Had she read his mind now? Ray was getting confused. “How can I save you?”

“Make me feel something,” she said.

He could have blinked only once, but when he did, he no longer saw a lioness on the ground, but a woman on her hands and knees, staring up at him with a needy gaze. Naked. Completely naked. He couldn’t look away, unable to tear his eyes from the way her hair flowed like a dark river over her bare shoulders and the elegantly arched curve of her back.

Layla seemed to luxuriate in his openmouthed fascination. She let him look at her glistening body in vivid color. The taut nipples, dark as berries. The thatch of dark hair between her thighs. She let him stare. She was enticing him, daring him to come closer and touch her. “Make me want something. Make my pulse quicken with excitement. Make me sigh with longing. Make my body weak with pleasure. Make me, make me, make me.”

Oh, the things he wanted to make her do …

But it had to be another trap. Just as she’d tried to bury him in sand this afternoon, now she was trying to make him lose himself in lust. He had no intention of becoming a desiccated carcass in the ruin of her mindscape. And yet, the heat of her wanton invitation was so strong that Ray felt himself harden in response.

If she understood the monster he was now, if she knew the mixed-up milieu of desire and hatred for her that swirled inside him, she’d run. Instead, she beckoned and Ray was atop her before he knew it, his body crushing down on hers. She didn’t recoil, not even when she must see him for the horned monster that he was. She stretched her hands up as he lowered his head. Together, they rent the sand, with … his horns or her claws, he couldn’t tell.

He was angry with himself, and angry with her. With his blood running hot, he’d nearly forgot what he’d come here for. He’d come here for answers, for justice. Nothing less would satisfy.

And then she asked, “Will you save me?”

Chapter 3

What lives without a body, and speaks without a tongue? Everyone can hear it, but it’s seen by none.

Her plea was an echo and it tore something inside him, making him thrash. Another sound followed, shrill as a siren, and he thrashed again. Something shredded as a cacophony of beeps exploded in his brain. Someone was shaking him, pulling him out of Layla Bahset’s mind and back into his own body.

It was the teenaged hooker that woke him up. A good thing, too. The alarm clock was ringing and probably had been for some time. What he’d seen inside Layla’s dream had nearly unraveled his sanity and now a headache roared behind his eyes with renewed vengeance.

“What’s the matter with you?” Missy asked, eyeing the shreds of fabric in his hands. He looked down to see that he’d torn the bedsheets, ripped them with such violence that lint floated in the air around them like fairy dust. What’s more, he was burning up, and the motel room was fetid with his sweat. Then there was the blood, freely flowing from both his nostrils.

Missy took a few steps back. “Dude, are you sick? Are you trippin’?”

What was wrong with him? Ray used the ruined sheet to soak up the blood. He felt as chapped and dehydrated as if he’d been trekking a real desert. “Get me something to drink,” he barked, and tried to get his shaking under control while she padded across his room and returned with a cloudy glass of his bourbon. He drank it down in three swallows and it burned all the way.

Squinting his eyes back into focus, Ray saw that his bag was open, his papers all over the floor. There it all was; all the clues and clippings, the file folders and photographs. “You went through my things?”

“I’m not a thief,” the hooker said. “But I am a snoop … or didn’t you see that when you were snooping in my head?”

A group of hooting partiers crowed about their winnings in the parking lot outside and Ray winced at the noise. The motel room door did little to block the sound and it bothered him. Everything bothered him. The colors, the smells, the sounds.

“So who is she?” Missy asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it. In fact, I’ll pay you double to just shut up.”

“Double! No shit, big spenda!” the hooker gasped in feigned astonishment as she waved Layla Bahset’s picture around. “Seriously, who is she?”

Layla Bahset was his tormentor, the cool-eyed bitch who had tried to win his trust—tried to convince him that there was something between them. But it had only been a trick to get him to confess to crimes he didn’t commit. She’d abandoned him in that hellhole. She was a fiend. But now he’d seen inside her mind and … What had he seen?

He should know. He’d destroyed enough minds since he’d been cursed with these powers. He’d left his jailers and torturers trapped and ruined, afraid and devastated. But he wasn’t sure that even he could have taken all her memories and buried them in sand. And he hadn’t done it. Someone else had. Someone else, someone more powerful, had gotten to her first. The realization rocked his world. There might be others, just like him …

“You should really keep all your notes on a laptop or something,” Missy was saying. “Otherwise you just seem like a paranoid nut job.”

He wasn’t paranoid. They’d taken his dog tags from him and put a black bag over his head. They’d bound him with a plastic zip cord that cut into his wrists. His protestations of innocence had made no difference at all. These were just the times.

Ray’s nose seemed to have stopped bleeding, so he threw the bloody rags onto the floor. Then, with a shaking hand, he reached for the glass and the bourbon and filled it. “You can go now.”

Missy didn’t move. “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

“Will you just get the hell out?”

Missy snorted. “Are you going to make me?”

He couldn’t make her do anything in this state. He could barely hold his drink. “Fine, stay or go, I don’t care, but if you stay, put some clothes on.”

“I am wearing clothes,” Missy objected, straightening her miniskirt so that it covered more of her legs. “Besides, you were all hot and bothered in your sleep. So what’s the matter now? Don’t you want me?”

He realized she was actually propositioning him. “Not gonna happen, Jailbait.”

“Why? I don’t charge much. Don’t you like me? I’m not your type?”

“Ask me again in ten years,” Ray said, too weak to get up and gather his things, and still thinking about the woman who was very much his type, all naked in the sand.

Missy arranged some of Ray’s notes in a new pattern on the floor. “Maybe I can help you find the guy who ratted you out. That’s who you’re looking for in all these little pieces of paper, isn’t it?”

“Nobody ratted me out.” Ray took another swallow of liquor. It soothed his nerves. “Somebody flat-out lied about me.”

“And you think this woman in the picture knows who it was?”

Ray nodded. But a fat lot of good it was going to do him now, with her mind wiped clean. He’d hit a dead end and now Missy was laughing at him. “What the hell is so funny, Missy?”

“This chick is a shrink but you were trying to get into her head.”

“Hilarious.” Ray smiled wanly, throwing her a wad of cash. He guessed she’d earned it.

He’ll hurt me if he finds you here, the lioness had said. He’s watching. Was it just the crazy talk of a woman who’d had her mindscape destroyed by someone like Ray? Possibly. But she’d asked him for help and he’d sensed that she was actually in danger.

He shouldn’t give a damn. But he did.

“Hey, Jailbait,” he said to Missy, who was on her way out the door. “Maybe you can help out … I want you to follow Layla Bahset.”

Layla gasped fully awake. The horned monster had only been a dream. She was safe and alone in her own bed. The only thing she had to fear was the syrupy sweetness running through her veins, a dull but incessant throb between her legs. She still remembered the feel of the monster that had crawled into the cradle of her thighs and she didn’t have to be Dr. Freud to understand the symbolism. Could there be a more potent icon of masculinity than a well-endowed bull?

She thought she wasn’t the kind of woman who responded to things like that, but now the sensual tension streaked across the canvas of her body and trailed off, leaving her … unfinished. Incomplete. Wanting. It was better when she didn’t want things, when she didn’t need things, when she didn’t feel like some kind of flower bud that wouldn’t blossom.

A swath of morning sun made its way up the stark white bed and she watched it move over the pillows. Dear God, how long had she slept?

It wasn’t until she slipped out of bed that she saw the jagged rips in the beige silk headboard. The fabric was slashed, like some horned animal had pierced it in the midst of angry passion, and Layla’s heart seized. Throwing on a robe, she ran to check the bolts on her front door. All the locks were still in place. The alarm was set. There was no sign that anyone had been here. No sign at all—except for her torn headboard.

Layla returned to the bedroom and stepped out onto the balcony. The whole expanse of Las Vegas spread out beneath her at a comforting distance. Unless the man in her dreams could fly, there was no way he was actually in her high-rise bedroom last night. It was a dream. A nightmare. She must have slashed the headboard herself. Her stalker had terrorized her so thoroughly that she could no longer tell what was real.