Possession in Death Read Free Page B

get out.”
    “Who did this to you?”
    “He is the devil.” Those black eyes bore into Eve’s. The words she pushed
out held an accent thick as the heat.
    Eastern European, Eve thought, filing it in her mind.
    “You… you are the warrior. Find Beata. Save Beata.”
    “Okay. Don’t worry.” Eve glanced at Lopez, who shook his head. He began
to murmur in Latin as he crossed himself and made the sign on the woman’s
forehead.
    “The devil killed my body. I cannot fight, I cannot find. I cannot free her.
You must. You are the one. We speak to the dead.”
    Eve heard the sirens, knew they would be too late. The pads, her own
hands, the street was soaked with blood. “Okay. Don’t worry about her. I’ll find
her. Tell me your name.”
    “I am Gizi. I am the promise. You must let me in and keep your promise.”
    “Okay, okay. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Hurry, her mind shouted at
the sirens. For God’s sake, hurry.
    “My blood, your blood.” The woman gripped the hand Eve pressed to her
chest wound with surprising strength, scoring the flesh with her fingernails. “My
heart, your heart. My soul, your soul. Take me in.”
    Eve ignored the quick pain from the little cuts in her palm. “Sure. All right.
Here they come.” She looked up as the ambulance screamed around the corner,
then back into those fierce, depthless black eyes.
    Something burned in her hand, up her arm, until the shocking blow to her
chest stole her breath. The light flashed, blinding her, then went to utter dark.
    In the dark were voices and deeper shadows and the bright form of a young
woman—slim in build, a waterfall of black hair and eyes of deep, velvet brown.
    She is Beata. I am the promise, and the promise is in you. You are the
warrior, and the warrior holds me. We are together until the promise is kept and
the fight is done.
     
    “Eve. Eve. Lieutenant Dallas!”
    She jerked, sucked in air like a diver surfacing, and found herself staring at
Lopez’s face. “What?”
    “Thank God. You’re all right?”
    “Yeah.” She raked a bloodied hand through her hair. “What the hell
happened?”
    “I honestly don’t know.” He glanced over to where, a foot away, two MTs
worked on the woman. “She’s gone. There was a light—such a light. I’ve never
seen… Then she was gone, and you were…” He struggled for words. “Not
unconscious, but blank. Just not there for a moment. I had to pull you away so
they could get to her. You saw the light?”
    “I saw something.” Felt something, she thought. Heard something.
    Now she saw only an old woman whose blood stained the street. “I have to
call this in. I think you’re going to be late for Mass. I need you to give a
statement.”
    She pushed to her feet as one of the MTs stepped over.
    “Nothing we can do for her,” he said. “She’s cold. Must’ve been lying there
for a couple hours before you found her. Fucking New York. People had to walk
right by her.”
    “No.” There were people now, crowding the sidewalk, ranged like a chorus
for the dead. But there hadn’t been… “No,” Eve repeated. “We saw her fall.”
    “Body’s cold,” he repeated. “She’s ninety if she’s a day, and probably more
than that. I don’t see how she could’ve walked two feet with all those slices in
her.”
    “I guess we’d better find out.” She picked up her ‘link, called it in.

Chapter Three
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    After cleaning the blood from her hands, she secured the scene, retrieved
her field kit from the trunk. She was running the victim’s prints when the first
black and white rolled up.
    “She’s not in the database.” Frustrated, Eve pushed to her feet, turned to the
uniforms. “Keep these people back. Talk to them. Find out if anybody knew her,
if anybody saw anything. There’s a blood trail, and I don’t want these people
trampling all over it.”
    And where the hell were they, she wondered, when the woman was
staggering down the street,