Blood Kissed (Lizzie Grace 1)

The darkness moved yet again. This time it showed me an old shack made of stone and roughly split trees. It looked abandoned, but the broken windows had been covered with thick black plastic and there was smoke coming from the chimney. Rather weirdly, under the protective cover of the woodbox next to the front door, sat a dapper pair of black-and-white wingtip shoes. Shoes that fancy certainly had no place in the middle of the Australian bush.

The scene faded into darkness so absolute I couldn’t see anything else. But I was moving—walking—on ground that was wet, sticky, and warm against my bare feet. The farther I walked, the stronger and deeper that flow of moisture became, until I was battling a gelatinous river that came with a very strong metallic smell.

Fear surged at that, but the dream was relentless, refusing me time to dwell on such emotions. The river continued to climb up my body and I started to lose my footing against the force of it. I was thrashing about, both in the dream and in reality, but the dream’s talons were deep within me and would not let go.

The river lifted me up and then swept me over an edge. I plunged down for what seemed like ages before finally hitting something solid. As I sprawled forward face-first, the river became a trickle and shadows began to lift t

he utter darkness again. I rolled onto my hands and knees and looked around.

All I saw was blood. Blood and bodies. Broken, mutilated bodies, for as far as the eye could see.

Horror filled me and I screamed. The dream shattered and I jerked upright in bed, the scream dying on my lips as I stared, wide-eyed, into the safe darkness of my bedroom.

For several minutes I couldn’t move, couldn’t even blink. I just sucked in air in an effort to calm my nerves and sweep away the lingering, shadowy wisps of blood and death.

That dream…. I shuddered. Thank God I’d placed spells around both Belle’s bedroom and mine—not so much to keep evil out, but to give her some mental space from the constant barrage of my thoughts. She might be my familiar, but she didn’t need to be on call twenty-four/seven. That would likely drive even the strongest person insane.

I could break through the protection spells if it was absolutely necessary, though. I wasn’t about to totally alienate myself from her help.

As my heart rate slowed to a more normal rhythm, I thrust the blankets aside and padded over to the wardrobe. I didn’t often drink, but there were definitely some times when coffee and chocolate just didn’t cut it.

This was one of those times.

I grabbed the bottle of Glenfiddich whiskey I’d tucked away when we’d bought this place months ago, and with shaky hands, poured myself a drink. I gulped it down and closed my eyes as the alcohol burned the few remaining vestiges of the dream away.

Prophetic dreams weren’t something that generally plagued me. In fact, the last time I’d had one had been when the sorcerer was stalking the blueblood witches of Canberra, and my sister subsequently had ended up as one of the dead. Hers had also been the very last life he’d taken.

That sorcerer hadn’t, to my knowledge, ever been caught.

So did the dream mean he was active again? I frowned and poured myself another shot. The initial part of the dream had certainly shown the same sort of warehouse in which he’d sacrificed all his victims, but he’d been neither ill-formed nor ungainly. He’d been a man in his prime, both physically and metaphysically.

By the same token, the figure couldn’t have been the vampire who’d attacked Karen, either. Even if he had been using a glamour to fudge what she was seeing, she would have felt the reality of his flesh if it were malformed in any way.

Did that mean the dream was trying to warn me that the vampire wasn’t all we would face in this place? Or was it simply a matter of the spirits’ dire warnings to Belle somehow finding form in my dreams?

I slid down the wall until my butt hit the carpet. If that was the intent behind the first section of the dream, then the latter was undoubtedly a warning about what would happen if the vampire wasn’t caught quickly enough. It was the bit in the middle—the bit about Karen—that I really didn’t understand. Karen was dead. I’d felt the life leave her flesh, so I had no idea what the dreams were trying to tell me. Which wasn’t really surprising as I hadn’t initially understood them the last time it had happened.

And because of that, my sister had died.

I rubbed a hand across my eyes, smearing tears that were a combination of guilt and sorrow. The sane, rational part of me knew that statement for the lie it was—knew that even if I had understood the message, Cat would still have died—but the heart and the mind weren’t always rational.

For some reason, that thought had my mind slipping to Aiden, and curiosity stirred. I downed the rest of the whiskey then reached for my laptop and booted it up. Marjorie had said that the witch ban had come into effect just over a year ago, so that at least gave me a starting point. But whatever had happened here wasn’t likely to be in the national newspapers. It wasn’t even likely to have made the regional papers—most reservations had strict guidelines as to what could and couldn’t be reported. Only something very serious—something that involved multiple deaths—would have made the newspapers. I hadn’t gotten the impression that that was what had happened here.

But if the Interspecies Investigations Team had been involved, there might be some information to be found via the freedom of information section on their website. By law, the IIT were required to place a summation of all investigations online. If Mr. Joe Public wanted a full report, then it could be requested. It was meant to reassure everyone that the IIT was above reproach in all its dealings, and while there had been some instances of corruption or favoritism, for the most part, they did a pretty good job under often difficult conditions.

Not that the werewolves of this reservation seemed to think that.

Once on the website, I did a search for any mention of the Faelan Reservation within the last year and a half. After a few seconds, three files appeared. I clicked the first one and a PDF sheet opened in a second window. It was a report on one James Barton, a baker at Argyle, whose body had been found three days after he’d been reported missing. His death had been classified as a misadventure—he’d fallen down an old mine shaft, had no phone reception, and had bled out.

I closed that one and opened the second. This one involved a murder in Maldoon, the one of five towns that defined the reservation’s borders. The perpetrator—a wolf who’d been on a three-day drinking binge—was currently serving a fifteen-year sentence for murder.

I opened the last one. This summation was brief and to the point but gave very little in the way of information. A witch had been involved in a suspected murder in Castle Rock, but had fled the area before he could be captured. The timing was right, but the file told me nothing else. It didn’t even give me names.

I swore softly and put in a request for the full file. And wondered as I did if the IIT would be obliged to notify the rangers or even the council that it had been requested. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have thought so, but the lack of names in the summary was troubling.

I checked my e-mails and then caught up on what was happening in the social media arena. When five thirty rolled around, I shut down the computer, grabbed a shower, and headed down to the kitchen to start the day’s work.

By the time Belle clattered down the stairs at seven, I not only had most of the prep work done, but also had breakfast ready and waiting.