Come Fill Me (The Prophecy) Read Free

hearse.
    Abruptly, Carreon stopped. He gripped Liz’s wrist as Molly tugged on the SUV’s handle, wanting to open its door.
    Carreon leaned toward Liz. With no emotion, he whispered, “Say one word to either of them, and they both die.”
    Liz didn’t move. She barely breathed.
    Despite her obedience, he tightened his hold.
    “Come here,” the woman demanded of her child, tapping her foot in exasperation. “Get away from that vehicle.”
    “No,” Molly spat. Jutting out her lower lip, she smacked her sucker against the door.
    Bile rose to Liz’s throat. She hoped to god Neekoma wasn’t inside the SUV. If he was and Molly’s mother got close enough to peer past the tinted windows, seeing what no sane person should, Carreon would kidnap her and her daughter. No one would ever find their bodies within the vast New Mexico landscape.
    “I. Said. Come. Here.” Reaching her daughter, the woman gripped Molly’s arm and yanked her away from the SUV. The child howled as her mother pulled her to the other end of the lot toward a dark blue Saturn.
    Liz’s shoulders slumped. Get her out of here, please. Don’t look back.
    Molly’s protests continued, joined by the steady swish of automobiles flowing down the surface roads. In the distance, laughter rang out, its high pitch decidedly female. A car’s horn wailed. Birds squawked.
    The girl’s mother struggled to get the child into her car seat. Successful at last, she plopped into the driver’s side. The Saturn’s engine sputtered to life.
    On a relieved sigh, Liz lifted her face into the caressing breeze scented with flowers, mown grass and the clean, dry heat of the desert. Her relief didn’t last.
    Impatient, Carreon directed her toward the SUV, the slap of his shoes, the click of her heels recording their quick pace. The young man who’d been reading her patient files went to the driver’s side, while his companions hurried into the area behind him. She and Carreon climbed into the backseats. Doors slammed with a series of solid metal thunks.
    Biting her lower lip, Liz regarded the SUV’s dimly lit interior, prepared to see the worst…blood spattered on its doors and seats, Zeke Neekoma’s battered body sprawled on the carpet, his face scrunched with pain or slack with impending death.
    The seats were empty and pristine, smelling of new leather, posing little threat to Molly’s mother if she’d come too close and glanced inside.
    Carreon had never intended to harm them. He’d played Liz again, wanting to instill fear, no doubt having enjoyed how she’d cringed.
    Prick. Leaning as far from him as she could, she turned her face to the window. Its glass reflected her rage and the worry she didn’t want him to see.
    The SUV left the lot, heading toward Las Cruces and its suburbs. A succession of bland strip malls, quaint historic storefronts and patches of weed-ridden lots streamed by, scarcely noticed by Liz. Disquiet ate at her, as it did each time she used her power, a gift she hadn’t asked for, didn’t want, not since her first healing—Carreon. His men had tricked her into saving him.
    The memory of that night assaulted her, refusing to go away.
    She recalled the sound of his lieutenants hammering on her front door, pulling her from the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars. Irritated at the interruption, thinking the two men looked as though they were selling religion, she’d greeted them coolly. “What do you want?”
    “Your father’s been in an accident,” the tallest one had said. His polite answer was as non-threatening as his dark suit jacket and white shirt. “We need you to come with us.”
    At the memory of those words, Liz swallowed. She’d just lost her mother. To have her father taken from her was more than she could bear. She hadn’t questioned either young man. Hadn’t asked for identification, how they knew where to find her, or that Dr. Alphonso Munez was her father. Willingly, she went with them.
    As they passed the