Storm Kissed by Jessica Andersen Read Free Book Online Page A

going for the false bottom where she kept a second set of IDs and a credit card that ought to keep her off the radar unless Strike and his people had major clearance, or a big-assed back door into the system.
    Given that they were looking for Dez, the latter seemed a far stronger possibility. He hadn’t been—wasn’t?—an acronym kind of guy.
    Dez. God. Could he really be alive? Her throat closed and a sob rattled in her chest, but she made herself keep going, her fingers shaking as she popped the bottom of the carryall. But then a strange tickle shimmied down the back of her neck and her instincts kicked hard.
    Her heart lunged into her throat as she spun in a full circle without seeing a damned thing out of place. But then an electric crackle laced the atmosphere, displaced air whoomped , and Strike freaking materialized right in front of her.
    As Reese stared in shock, he glanced around, locked on her, and looked profoundly relieved.
    Relieved? What the hell?
    She went for her .38 as her mind scrambled, but before the gun was clear of her waistband, his expression shifted to one of fucking-get-it-done determination. Moving fast, he grabbed her wrist, twisted and chucked her gun, and then said, “Sorry about this.”
    Sudden vertigo slammed into her, tunneling her vision.
    “What . . . ?” She reeled, tried to run, and staggered drunkenly instead.
    Her brain went fuzzy and she felt herself falling, felt strong arms catch her in an impersonal grip. And the world went dark.

CHAPTER THREE
    Some immeasurable time later—maybe a few minutes, maybe a few days—Reese struggled back to consciousness. But instead of making it all the way there, she found herself caught, vulnerable, in the woozy dream state between asleep and awake, where she knew she should be afraid but couldn’t muster the energy for panic.
    Even more disconcerting, she wasn’t alone inside her own skull. There was a strange presence there with her, controlling her. An unfamiliar voice echoed in her head, saying: Show us .
    She was dimly aware that she was lying on a couch in a room that smelled spicy, like scented candles or incense. Strike was there, along with a younger, sharp-faced man who stared down at her, his gray eyes so intense they seemed silver. He was the presence inside her, she knew, without knowing how she knew it. Show us the night of the storm , he whispered in her mind.
    She didn’t want to go back there, didn’t want to remember. But without meaning to, she did.
    The images unspooled: She saw Dez, his eyes hot and wild as he kissed her and carried her to his bed, saw the lightning, heard the thunder, felt her body go cold as he headed for the door. Then things sped up in a scatter shot of images and sensations: She heard Jocko’s warning; felt herself racing through the storm, only to arrive too late. She saw the mad glee in Keban’s scarred face as he leaned over Dez, gloating; felt the pain as he turned and shot her. Then there was Dez’s rage. Chaos. Lightning. Thunder. Screams. Things happening that couldn’t be real.
    The memories sped up, becoming a blur of the weeks that followed and the growing pain that came, not from her healing injuries, but from the way Dez had changed, how he kept trying to call magic that didn’t exist, and how each failure had pushed him further over the line. His temper sharpened. He quit his job, then got pissed when she cornered him about it.
    Show me , the inner voice said. And she did.
     
    “Don’t you get it?” he snapped, boots thudding an angry staccato as he paced the apartment like a caged animal. “The ‘work your way up’ thing is a fucking pipe dream. The only way people like us can get what we deserve is by being creative.”
    In the past few weeks he had gained a good thirty pounds of pure muscle, shaved his head, and gotten tattoos to cover the handcuff scars: twin bands of strange symbols done in dark blue-green ink. He was turning into a stranger, and a scary one, but