She thought she would have collapsed onto the ground otherwise.
"What did I do?" she asked, the thick, rusty sound of her own voice unfamiliar to her.
"You went white as a sheet," he said grimly, frowning down at her. "And cried out something I couldn't quite catch. By the time I got over here, you were shaking and-"
He lifted one hand and touched her cheek, showing her the wetness on the tips of his fingers. "-crying."
"Oh." She stared at the evidence of her tears. "I wonder why I did that. I was horrified, but-"
"Horrified by what? Riley, what the hell happened?"
She looked up at him, wishing she didn't feel so weak and drained, so utterly bewildered. "I-saw what happened here. At least, I think I did."
"The murder?"
"Yeah. Except…" She fought to think clearly. "Except it wasn't right. He hadn't been tortured beforehand. And blood couldn't have splashed the flat altar stone because there was something lying across it, covering it almost completely. And there was too much noise, someone would have heard. And it was…wrong. What they said, what they did. Wrong in too many ways."
"Riley, are you telling me you had some kind of vision?"
"I think so. I've never had one before, not like that, but some of the others on the team have talked about them and-and I think that's what it was. But it was wrong, Ash. The details were wrong. The whole ceremony was…was like something you'd see in a horror movie."
He seemed to understand what she meant. "Over the top? Exaggerated?"
"In a way. As if someone who didn't really know what Satanism was imagined how it must be. Or knew and wanted to-to twist it into something truly evil."
"Maybe one of those fringe groups you mentioned earlier?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe. It's nothing I've ever heard of, I know that much. An actual human sacrifice is about as evil as you can get; add that to a weird ceremony that includes getting drenched in a dying man's blood while you screw in a coffin, and-"
"Screw in a-Jesus, Riley."
"Believe me, it looked as horrifying as it sounds. And from what I heard, I gather the purpose of the ritual was to draw power from the sacrifice and the sex."
"Power to do what?"
"I have no idea. But there has to be some reason behind it, some need for supernatural power."
"Same as with the arson? Attempts to harness elemental energy?"
"Yeah, and a hell of a lot of it. I can't imagine why someone would need so much power, but-" She felt herself slump a little, and thought her energy reserves must be really low.
"Riley-"
"I'm fine, Ash. I'll be-"
Riley sat up in bed with a gasp, her heart racing. She almost immediately recognized her bedroom, quiet and lit only by moonlight filtering through the blinds on the windows. A quick look showed her Ash sleeping peacefully beside her.
The clock on the nightstand said it was 5:30 in the morning.
Oh, Christ.
She slipped from the bed, finding her sleep-shirt on the floor and putting it on with an icy sense of déjà vu.
It couldn't be happening again.
Not again.
She went into the living room and found the remote to turn on the TV, her hands shaking so much that just pressing the right small buttons on the device was a challenge.
CNN confirmed her fears. It was Thursday.
She'd lost more than eighteen hours this time.
Chapter 15
Riley tried to think and realized that her energy reserves were so drained she was literally swaying on her feet. She went into the kitchen and drank orange juice straight out of the carton, then ate two PowerBars, one right after the other, barely chewing them and not tasting them at all.
She had a terrifying sense of being completely out of control.
I'm not just losing time. I'm losing me.
She ate a third PowerBar and finished the juice while she waited for the coffeemaker to do its job, and by the time there was caffeine to join the calories, she felt steadier.
Physically, at least.
What's happening to me?
The last thing she remembered was the experience in the clearing and talking to Ash, briefly, afterward. She thought he had said something to her, asked her something, and then…
Here. Now.
There was no trigger she could recall, no definitive word or action she could point to as the cause of these…blackouts. One moment she had been having a perfectly ordinary conversation with someone-at least as ordinary as conversations could be in her line of work-and the next moment hours had passed.
Too many hours.
Riley carried her coffee to the table where her laptop was set up. Once again, it was obvious that she had been here, working, during at least some of the most recent missing time. But there was one difference from the previous day.
She had to enter a password to access her report.
She didn't remember setting that up but had no difficulty in deciding what the password had to be. Because it was always the same, a nonsense word from her childhood, the secret name of a mythical kingdom she had created as a little girl's escape from the rough-and-tumble world of older brothers and military bases and living all over the globe.
She typed in the word, unsurprised when it proved to be the correct one.
There were, it seemed, at least a few truths in her life she could hold on to.
What she couldn't figure out was why she had decided to password-protect her report. She hadn't when she first began the report.
Or maybe I did. Maybe I just don't remember that either.
She hoped the report itself would answer at least a few of her questions, but she found herself reading only details she actually remembered. Going to the sheriff's department, meeting with Jake, Leah, and Ash. Noting that she herself had asked Ash to join the investigation, primarily because she was afraid she might lose more time and needed someone she trusted to keep an eye on her.
Well, I called that one. Dammit.
Riley winced when she reached the end of that very brief "report." Because it ended quite abruptly with:
Returned to the murder scene with Ash. Experienced a highly unusual variation of clairvoyance I can only describe as some kind of vision. Extreme black rites, possibly genuine but darker and more twisted than any I've ever heard about. I was unable to positively identify any of the individuals participating in it, though the purpose of the ritual was, clearly, to gain power.
But for what? I don't know. I hate to admit that my mind is still affected by the Taser attack, but it must be, because thinking clearly is still difficult, sometimes impossible. One moment I'm certain of something, someone, and in the next I find myself doubting, questioning, worrying.
I don't understand. Something is happening to me, has happened, something more than the Taser attack. The only possibility I can think of, incredible as it sounds, is-
"Shit," Riley muttered.
The entry broke off, presumably because she'd been interrupted. And for whatever reason, she had never finished that sentence, never noted whatever possibility it was that had occurred to her.
Now she couldn't remember what it had been.
If it had been.
"Oh, Christ, I'm losing my mind." She put her hands up and rubbed her face slowly. Trying to think. Trying to understand.
"I was going to ask if you were feeling better, but I guess not."
Riley put her hands down, automatically touching the laptop's keyboard in a macro command that would instantly bring up an innocuous screen saver. The motion was so smooth and practiced that she doubted Ash had even noticed.