The Beholder Read Free Page A

mind eaters, demons with the power to erase multitudes of thoughts. Their powers were rarely consistent. They sometimes erased too much memory, and humans ended up with mental disorders or, worse, strokes. And their fees were exorbitant. But if the memory drugs didn’t work, they were regularly employed to keep humans in the dark about the supernatural world.
    “I’ll handle the gleaner,” Kane said.
    “What will you do if it is Ethan?”
    “What I have to.” Kane chugged the contents of hiscup. The scalded cream tasted metallic and thick like blood as a vision of his brother loomed in his mind.
     
    The channeled emotions avalanched through Nina’s temples. She struggled to hold the car on course and thought of the one person who could help her.
    Okay, technically her spirit guide wasn’t a person but a magical being. But he was all hers and the only salvation she had at the moment. To summon him, all she had to do was think about him. Koda, are you there?
    No answer.
    Koda! If she had spoken the name aloud, she would have been yelling it.
    No reply.
    She made a face. Koda usually came to her rescue when the shivers became unbearable. Where are you?
    Empty silence.
    Okay, be stubborn .
    Spirit guides tended to have minds of their own and eccentricities, just like humans. They could be annoying like some humans, too. Right now was a prime example.
    They also couldn’t be relied upon with any frequency. That’s why when Nina began to exhibit her powers, her grandmother, Meikoda, had taught her a method of gaining control over the shivers herself, the Patomani Indian way, through meditation. Meikoda had always warned, “Trusting animal spirit guides can have dire consequences.” Now more than ever, Nina realized the wisdom of her grandmother’s advice.
    An opening in the forest drew her gaze, and she spotted a narrow country road where she could pull off the parkway and deal with her headache.
    She turned, her tires finding every pothole. The forest thickened into an evergreen wall on both sides of the road, thick boughs whipping and thrashing in the wind. Low-lying limbs thumped against her hood and roof. Hail pinged her windshield and sounded like rattling teeth.
    She switched the heater to defrost as she searched for a place to pull over, but the curvy road descended at a sharp angle. There were no pull-offs, just granite mountainside to her right and a sheer drop to her left.
    Just as she doubted if she’d ever find a place to park, she reached an open valley filled with fields of grapevines. Their twisted frozen stalks looked like contorted arms grasping at whatever moved. Something about them caused the pain in her temples to settle in behind her eyes. Another ripple of emotions shook her. Her teeth chattered as her trembling grew uncontrollable.
    Thankfully, she spotted lights. Humanity. A small village. Relief loosened her tensed muscles. If the Fates were on her side, she might even find a cup of hot chocolate to meditate over. All she needed was a little quiet time to mask those foreign emotions in her head.
    She crept past a green sign that read: Brayville, population 102. She reached the sheriff’s office, a white frame building. Beside the sheriff’s office sat the courthouse, a Romanesque stone structure. The buildingbelonged in a bygone English countryside rather than in a Virginia mountainside. Knob’s Grocery rested next to it. A boldfaced sign in the display window read: Fresh Meat Cut Daily.
    She cringed. Man innocently believed that animals were not sentient and thus were unaware of pain, but Nina knew better. She had never been able to eat meat, not without being haunted by the emotional insight of the sacrificed animal. Her powers had sealed her dietary habits as a strict vegan.
    The sidewalk appeared deserted, only a few lights shining from the tiny homes surrounding the village. Something about the place looked untouched, forbidding, frozen in a winter mountain spell. Another surge of