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nightmares are coming for him. I turn toward
the bed and watch the process begin. Small at first, a few sparks of red glow
in his aura followed by a smattering of sharp spikes. I usually intervene at
the start of it, but today I wait longer, curious to see if his aura will tell
me anything about where he went and what fills him with so much sadness.
    It’s a cruel decision for us both.
Tarren’s aura turns ugly, a swirling mass of oranges, golds, and reds. I name out
their associated emotions in my mind – Regret. Guilt. Pain. The colors
rise up from his body, powerful and anguished. Those big shoulders flex, and a
moan escapes his lips.
    My body reacts to his, the song playing
pure notes of hunger up my bones. My hands are pouring heat, and the skin along
my palms tingles, wanting to pull back and let the feeding bulbs break the
surface. I hold myself in check, staring in awe at the lush colors flooding off
of Tarren, showing me his true face.
    In these moments, when I see the torment
inside him as it truly is, I feel so small and weak against it. How can I heal
something like this? How can I possibly put him back together again? How can I
help him forgive himself for killing his sister Tammy?
    If he killed her , a nasty thought whispers in my mind,
which I quickly squelch.
    Tarren moans again, and I’m on my feet,
swiftly coming round to the bed. I wake him with a gentle squeeze of the
shoulder. I’ve gotten so good at this that he doesn’t even flail anymore. When
he shudders awake, I quickly step back and keep my face calm so he doesn’t know
how hard it is for me to touch him, be anywhere near him when his aura is loose
and lashing.
    Tarren blinks, pants, and casts a
doleful look at me. He hates when I do this, rescue him from the nightmares,
but it’s so much worse for both of us if I let them run their course. He knows
this, so he hasn’t told me to stop, and we both just don’t talk about it.
    I sit down at the table again. “I’ve got
all the info up,” I tell him. “Gabe hasn’t been able to discern any patterns
with the bodies in the earlier states.” And I haven’t come up with a plan,
because I totally suck at life.
    Tarren picks up his watch and gives me
one of his more fearsome scowls. “It’s been over six hours,” he accuses in a
dry voice.
    I turn toward him. “I would have let you
sleep for twenty.”
    We stare at each other. His eyes are
gray and angry. I meet his gaze for a moment longer, and then I turn back to
the computer.
    “You want to get started or what?”
    Tarren sighs, one of those big, gigantic
Tarren sighs that he keeps in reserve for when my existence becomes the bane of
his. Then he wraps strong chains around his aura, muting those shades of guilt
and sadness beneath the solid cobalt blues of his control. He comes to the table
and drops into the second chair, shifting his position to add distance between
us. I pretend not to notice.
    “What are we looking at here?” he asks
with authority, and I begin walking him through the situation.

Chapter 8
    Fucking Peoria. The storm descends, and
it blinds us with thick snowflakes pouring from the sky, deafens us with
screaming wind, distracts us with stinging hail, and basically makes this the
most impossible mission ever.
    I think every crease and crevice of my
body is wet and cold. And it’s all just plain pointless. The town is too big,
the pile of bodies too random. The corpses start showing up right on the eve of
the storm. A motorist was found dead in her car in El Vista, then a nurse dead
at a bus stop downtown, then a 55-year-old chemist in his home in Peoria
Heights. Each victim was killed on a different side of the town, at different
times of the day.
    Tarren and I check out each crime scene,
and each time his ionizing radiation detector confirms elevated radiation.
Angel. One the second day, six missing persons are reported, and our police scanner
leads us to three more bodies. Two of the victims are thought to have