Page 61 of Deep Within Me
The scarf was around a female’s throat. The woman with the knife? A man’s hands tugged on the ends, using it as a garrote to strangle her. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream. She’d already clawed the man’s hands in an attempt to get him to stop. He tightened his grip.
Zeke struggled to see more.
His vision showed only her mouth and throat, her futile struggle to survive. Her skin turned the same shade as a bruise while her thickened tongue pushed out between her lips.
Falling. Zeke watched her body drop to the floor, the movement so fast she was no more than a blur, her individual characteristics unidentifiable. Without warning, the scene changed, morphing from her into Carreon’s face.
He regarded the strangled woman, his light eyes empty of sorrow or regret. His mouth formed one word over and over…
Liz, Liz, Liz.
She backed away from Zeke in his vision. Grief flooded her features. Tears dampened her cheeks.Why?He reached out to her, but she was too far away to touch, Carreon suddenly at her side. He’d clamped his hand on her arm so she couldn’t move, couldn’t leave him.
Liz!
Zeke’s thoughts screamed for her. He lunged at Carreon, needing to kill him. The bastard disappeared with Liz, leaving Zeke alone with another horror. He gaped at a woman’s legs sprawled on a carpet. She wore jeans that looked all too familiar. The ones Liz wore?
No, no, no, no, no—
The moccasin on her left foot was partially off, still hiding her toes. The area beneath her legs was damp. With what?
Zeke flinched at a burst of light, the whoosh that accompanied it. Fire? Yes. The flames licked the moccasin, the foot. Where? How? Not Liz. Couldn’t be—
“Zeke?”
Liz’s voice, her touch, wrenched him from the vision. Shuddering at what he’d seen, afraid to know what it meant, he pulled her close.
She held him as tightly. “What is it?”
Zeke looked at his brother. Worry pinched Jacob’s features. He pushed to his elbows. “Another vision?”
Zeke managed a swallow and nodded.
Liz eased back so they’d be face-to-face. “What did you see?”
“I don’t know,” he blurted then growled, “I don’t fucking know.”
“Tell us,” Jacob said. “Maybe we can figure it out.”
“How?” Zeke tensed even more. “This so-called gift is a goddamn curse. How am I supposed to make sense of what I see?”
“Just tell us,” Jacob repeated, “and maybe we can—”
“I saw a woman’s hand holding a knife with blood on the blade. I have no idea whose blood it was. Then a man was using a scarf to strangle a woman. I don’t know who they are; I couldn’t see their faces. As Carreon watched, he kept repeating ‘Liz, Liz, Liz.’
“You were backing away from me,” Zeke said to her, speaking even faster. “Your cheeks were wet as though you’d been crying. Carreon wouldn’t let you go. Then I saw fire.”
Jacob frowned. “What kind of a fire?”
“The kind that destroys a body,” Zeke said. “I saw a woman’s legs. The flames touched her foot. She didn’t move.”
Jacob’s face lost too much color. He glanced at Liz. “Where did this happen—where’s it supposed to happen?”
“I don’t know,” Zeke said through his teeth.
Liz touched his arm. “Did you recognize anything in your vision from this stronghold?”
He thought back as well as he could and shook his head.