Embraced By Darkness (Riley Jenson Guardian 5)

She smiled. "It may not be all bad, Riley."

"Which is not saying that it'll all be good."

"No. It rarely is."

She closed her eyes and her fingers clenched around mine. Electricity washed across my skin - a warm tingle of energy that made the hairs on my arms stand on end and my pulse race. Not in excitement or in fear, but from some emotion that resided between the two. The wolf inside had her teeth bared, ready to fight. But this was a force I'd invited in, and I couldn't back away from that now.

So I held myself still as the tingly sensation washed up my arm and swept across my body, until it felt like I was wrapped in a blanket of energy.

Dia shuddered. "I see the deaths. I see the agony of their souls."

I didn't say anything. After all, what was there to say? Not only had I seen it, I'd felt it, and that was not a place I wanted to revisit, even in memory.

"I see the two cases. Separate cases." She hesitated, frowning lightly. "I see a woman. She is red, like you. Different, like you. She has a gift, a pack gift that is both different and stronger than her father's, and it sometimes aids her work. The club and its owners hold many secrets, one which the wolf you seek uncovered."

Dia paused, and another shudder went through her. "The second case is different. It is shadowed by a malevolence that constantly hungers for vengeance."

"Vengeance for what?" I asked softly, not sure if by speaking I'd break the vision, but needing to ask all the same.

"Betrayal. He has been seeking retribution for many years."

Which would suggest the second victim had betrayed her husband somehow.

"He hates," Dia continued. "And he will continue to hunt and kill until he is stopped."

"You can't tell me who? Give me a name or description?"

She either didn't hear or didn't know, because she tilted her head and said, "An emotional decision comes for you."

My heart sunk to the depths of my stomach. This was exactly the sort of thing I didn't want her seeing. "I don't want to know, Dia."

Her grip on my fingers seemed to tighten, even though I made no move to pull my hand from hers. Well, I guess she had warned me, and now I would have to face up to whatever she was seeing.

Maybe just this once, forewarned would be forearmed.

"You will gain what you have always wanted, but it will not be in the form you have dreamed of."

I blinked. What I'd always wanted was a hubby and a family of my own - how could I gain all that if it wasn't in the form I dreamed of? "And that means?"

"that sometimes what we wish and what life offers are two completely different things."

Like I didn't already know that.

She continued softly, "There are many men in your life, but I see three who will become special."

"Three? I don't need three. I need one." Just one. That wasn't asking too much, was it?

"There is always one. But there are others. One will hurt One will heal. And one will always be there, regardless."

I hesitated, part of me wanting to ask the question, the other fearing it. "Is one of them my soul mate?"

"Can a spirit with two souls have one soul mate? That is a. question only time can answer."

"Well, that's a crappy sort of answer, if you ask me."

She blinked, then squeezed my fingers and released them. "I'm sorry I couldn't concentrate more on the murders, but as I warned, sometimes my foresight goes where it wills."

Yeah, and it didn't exactly give us more than what we already had. Still, if these murders weren't new, as Dia had implied, then a trip into the files for a closer look at past murders was obviously in order. The clues might lay in the past. Whether they'd help us solve the present crimes was anyone's guess.