Hunter's Need by Shiloh Walker Read Free Book Online

when she directed it at one young man, she managed to make him blush every single time.
    Her name was Marie.
    She was nineteen and she was in love with an airman from Elmendorf Air Force Base. Her mother didn’t know, her father didn’t know, but she’d told her older sister, Beverly. Her sister was the one to help cover for her while she slipped out to meet with her boyfriend.
    Caught up with the raw, tender emotion of young love, Ana felt herself getting more and more lost in the dream, unable to pull away, and unwilling to do so. It was sweet, watching them together, sweet to vicariously experience pleasure through Marie as Paul kissed her, stripped her clothes away and made love to her for the first time. Sweeter still to see the tears that burned in Paul’s eyes as Marie agreed to marry him. It left a warmth in her heart, but only seconds after Paul pushed a ring onto Marie’s finger, that warmth in Ana’s chest turned to ice, heavy, arctic ice that threatened to push her down, down, down . . .
    Marie was screaming.
    Begging.
    Pleading.
    Dying . . .
    Dying while a voice whispered, Let me take care of you. You’re mine. I have to take care of you . . . protect you . . . love you . . .
     
     
    A NA came awake, choking on her own scream, nausea roiling in her gut, vomit boiling up in her throat. She barely made it to the bathroom in time. Huddled over the cool porcelain, she emptied her gut, tears and sweat mingling on her face while images flashed through her mind.
    “God.”
    She’d seen . . . something. It hovered just behind a veil, its malevolence just barely contained, the stink of blood and death curling out in smoky, nasty green tendrils. Reaching for her.
    Once the sickness passed, she eased away from the toilet and pressed her back against the wall, staring off into nothingness. Her mind turned inward, back to the dream.
    Back to Marie. Paul. The story of a missing girl and the lurid scene the book’s author had depicted, Paul hunting and stalking Marie, killing her in a fit of rage and hiding her body. Like a child trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle, Ana worked with the memories of the dream, tried to get them to align with the story she’d read in the book.
    They wouldn’t line up.
    It didn’t fit.
    Useless . . .
    Ana blocked the voice out and made herself focus. Yeah, her psychic gift, the only gift that could be useful in any kind of positive aspect, wasn’t all that great. Without her shielding, random thoughts and images bombarded her, but she couldn’t make much sense of them. It was like having five or ten radio stations blaring at top volume.
    Within her shields, it was better. She could focus, pick up on individual thoughts from time to time, use the gift to pick up on whether or not somebody was lying, whether somebody was hiding something, whether there were other gifted people around.
    But she’d never had any sort of cognitive psychic ability—she’d never had visions, not of past events, and not of future ones.
    Her strongest ability was just to muffle psychic activity, casting the area where she was into a huge null where it seemed nothing extraordinary existed. To some extent, it even worked to blunt the instincts of some gifted people—people like Duke.
    As far as Ana was concerned, it was more a burden than a gift, one that had been used to hurt people in the past. None of her decidedly limited abilities were much use in trying to figure out that dream, or why she’d had it.
    “Overactive imagination,” she whispered, closing her eyes and willing herself to believe it.
    But it wasn’t her imagination. Deep down, she knew it. Body aching, she shoved to her feet, flushed the toilet and then shuffled over to the sink. She washed her face, brushed her teeth and combed her hair and still, she felt dirty. Tainted.
    And on edge.
    The memory of her dream, the memory of Marie’s face, danced in her mind, right at the edge of her consciousness, demanding Ana’s attention.