Raintree: Oracle (Raintree 4)

The people of this village needed to be afraid. They needed to be prepared for fearsome.

Echo knew she could go, as Ryder had suggested often in the past few hours. Without her here odds were Ryder would be happy to leave Cloughban to the invaders, take his daughter and start his own new life elsewhere. A life of dark magic, of decadence and excess. He would use his own dark powers as well as his gifted child to get what he wanted.

It was more than worry about Cassidy that made Echo accept that she could not leave.

Without Ryder, her Ryder, she didn’t have a life worth going back to.

“Run,” he whispered in her ear. Was that her Ryder talking, or was it the other? Both. An order or a plea? Had he managed a glimpse into the mind she was working so hard to shield from him?

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed the side of his neck. He was so cold, so hard. So lost. She whispered back, her lips near his ear.

“No.”

Chapter 22

It was the clap of thunder that woke Rye from a deep sleep. He sat up in bed, and for a moment, a few precious seconds, he forgot where he was. He forgot who he was. All he remembered was Echo.

Everything that had happened in the past two days came rushing back, filling his head and his heart with pain.

Then the darkness he’d unleashed came rushing back, as well.

For the moment they shared the same mind, the same body. Two separate beings, two personalities, two distinct souls. Eventually one of them would have to go. He wasn’t yet sure which one it would be.

Echo was curled up against his side. She should’ve run yesterday, when she’d had the chance. Now it was too late.

Again, a clap of thunder. Lightning flashed. The storm outside his window was not at all natural. He felt it deep down.

Had it begun? Echo had seen the Ansara attack happening by the light of day, and it was not yet dawn. Her visions were sometimes late, but she was—as far as he knew—never wrong.

She stirred with the third clap, and as he had she jumped up.

“He’s here.”

“Who’s here?” It was annoying to have to ask. She’d done a good job of hiding her thoughts from him, protecting them in a way no one else had ever been able to do.

She narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. “Which one are you?”

He began to answer truthfully. Both. But she didn’t wait for his response.

“Never mind,” she said as she hopped from the bed and grabbed her clothes. She looked at him as she dressed quickly. “Even if you’re mostly my Ryder at the moment, the other will also hear and know, and...not yet. Sorry.” She threw open the door. “Soon, I promise!”

Echo ran out of the room and down the stairs. Rye dressed more slowly than she had before following her. He didn’t know what she’d planned, but the energy of his surroundings had changed somehow. He felt a current flowing through him. Power. Electricity.

He found Echo standing in the middle of the street, in front of the pub. The sun had not yet risen, but he could not say the skies were dark. There was a blue cast to everything, and it spread as far as the eye could see. The storm, which was unusual for the area, had drawn out others, as well. Those who lived along this main road were coming out of their homes to look to the east.

Blue lightning started near the ground and traveled up in powerful streams of electricity that lit the sky. Thunder followed, rumbling with unnatural power. It was beautiful and frightening and unnatural.

And Echo smiled.

A man was walking along the road, cursing and shooting sparks as he went. Rye would’ve known this man anywhere, even if Echo hadn’t started running toward him with a joyfully shouted, “Gideon!”

* * *

“What the hell?” Gideon shouted as she drew closer to him. Electricity danced along his arms. He must’ve come straight from work. He’d left his suit jacket and tie behind somewhere, but wore black trousers and a white dress shirt, as well as his badge and gun. Her cousin was a homicide detective. A homicide detective who could talk to the ghosts of victims. That gave him a decided advantage.

He lit the early morning in an unnatural way, and she soon saw his wife, Hope, well behind him. She was no longer a detective—she stayed home with their two girls these days—but she wore a gun, too.

They must have come over on Dante’s private jet and landed at a private airfield. That would explain their early arrival and the firearms. They had not come through customs...