Heart Of Evil. Heather Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ seem to know that there was nothing he could do for them anymore. In the dream, he knew that he, like many law-enforcement officers, scent dogs and volunteers, would be called upon to find the dead in the future.

      But now he was seeking the living.

      They called out to him; they were trying to tell him something. Bit by bit, he saw they were trying to show him the way. He thought that there should have been sound, but there was none. He didn’t hear his passage through the water, and nothing emitted from the mouths of the corpses he passed.

      Then he saw the figure on the roof far ahead. He thought it was a woman. She seemed to be in something flowing, which was not unusual. Many victims, living and dead, had been found in nightgowns or boxers or flannel pajamas. What was strange was that she seemed to be the only one alive. She was in tremendous peril as the water rose all around her. He felt that there was something familiar about her, but he didn’t understand what it was that seemed to touch him. The light of the full moon turned her hair golden and gleaming, her white gown flowed in the breeze. Amidst the destruction, she was a beautiful survivor.

      He tried to get closer.

      The watery road grew more clogged and congested. Downed tree branches and appliances floated by. A soaked teddy bear with big black button eyes stared at him sightlessly as it drifted. He ached inside; it was an agony to fight the river, but it was also something he knew he had to do. Especially when she waited; when he could save her. He just had to reach her before the water level rose higher and higher, and swept her away.

      He grew close …

      And that was when he felt the darkness at his back.

      He tried to turn, but he could not. The wind had picked up, and the effort was too much. No matter how he strained, he couldn’t see what evil thing seemed to be tracking him.

      There was suddenly sound. The woman. She was calling out to him.

      She called him by name.

      But he could feel the thing behind him gaining on him. He could almost reach out for her, but he had to turn, had to find out what seemed to be breathing fetid air down his back….

      She called out again.

       Jake!

      If they were to survive, to outrun whatever horror was behind him, they would have to do so together.

       Jake!

      Her voice rang out almost as clearly as if she were next to him in the boat.

      But the darkness was on him, so close….

      He could feel it then, enveloping him, crushing the sound of her voice as it did.

      And he woke with a jerk.

      Jake sat up in bed, deeply disturbed by the reappearance of his frequent dream. For the first time, he knew who he had seen on the roof of the house, about to be swallowed up by the floodwaters.

      It was Ashley. Ashley Donegal.

      He stood and stretched, irritated. The clock on his mantel indicated it was still early.

      He swore and got dressed. He knew why he’d had the dream—and made Ashley the woman on the rooftop. He knew the date. The reenactment was coming. Donegal Plantation would be busy and alive; Ashley would still hurt from the fact that her dad had passed away and would no longer be playing Marshall Donegal, his ancestor. But she’d never show it. She’d be the grand mistress of the ceremonies, beautiful and regal in her Civil War attire.

      He wondered if he would ever fall out of love with her. And then he wondered if the dream had meant something more. Angela—who seemed to have the best sixth sense in what the FBI called their special unit—had told him that dreams could open many doors. In REM sleep, the mind was at the stage where dreams came, and those dreams could easily focus on what the conscious mind rejected. When she was trying to reach memories of the past, she often used sleep.

      If that were the guide, he could easily convince himself to think that Ashley now wanted him. Needed him. And that this was the sign.

      Of course, that was just Angela’s way of seeking the ghosts of the past—even in their own group, they weren’t sure about all the rules of seeking out the help of ghosts.

      He wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh at himself or not.

      Their team was legitimate; they were on-the-books federal agents. They had just spent days at the local training facility, improving their weapons skills, computer literacy and understanding of the mission policy.

      But they were a one-of-a-kind unit, and their true designation wasn’t written down anywhere. Among themselves, they were the Krewe of Hunters; on paper, they were Adam Harrison’s Special Unit. In bizarre situations, they were supposed to smoke out the fakers—and find what might really be remnants of the past.

      The world was filled with ghost hunters and would-be ghost hunters. The problem that most people didn’t see was the fact that few ghosts would really appear for a television crew. Some ghost lore did seem to be true. There were the residual hauntings—ghosts that played out a situation, such as a battle scene at Gettysburg, over and over again. And there were intelligent hauntings: ghosts that lingered for some reason. Ghosts didn’t seem to have rules. Some could find certain individuals who saw them as clearly as day; they could carry on long conversations, appear and disappear, and interact. Sometimes ghosts were frightened of the living, and they hid, and only someone with a real ability to suspend disbelief could coax them out. It was complicated; he was still learning. Sometimes ghosts tried to warn those they cared about when something evil was about to occur, and ghosts often entered into the REM sleep of those they hadn’t managed yet to really touch in the conscious world.

      So the dream meant that Ashley needed him….

      Or he wanted the dream to mean that Ashley needed him.

      He stood up and walked over to his hotel window and looked out over the dark streets of the French Quarter. There was so much history here. So many lives had been lived; so much drama had taken place. Sometimes it was impossible to believe that the energy of the past didn’t remain. Ghosts didn’t have to be old; he knew that himself, though he hadn’t wanted to accept the truth until he had met Adam Harrison and become a part of the unit Adam had started for the FBI. He had been glad of his ability to feel where people were; to imagine that he heard them telling him to come, please. Sometimes he had even been able to find the living. And sometimes he had heard the voices of the dead, when he hadn’t known that they were dead.

      His “gift” had cost him Ashley.

      So why now, all these years later, was he seeing her, adrift, about to be engulfed, and yet reaching for him, even as he reached for her?

      1

      “Ah, dammit! I don’t want to be a Yankee,” Charles Osgood said.

      It was there; it had finally come, and Ashley was grateful.

      And the semi-drama going on here surely meant her mind had been trying to warn her that the day was not going to come without its share of trouble, because it was already proving to be one hell of an afternoon.

      Morning СКАЧАТЬ