Free Rush of Darkness by Rhyannon Byrd

voice a delicious rasp of sound as he said, “I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine.”
    Her pulse picked up a little, but then it always didthat whenever he was giving her one of those intense stares that said she had his complete and undivided attention. The train could have slid off the tracks and pitched straight into a ravine, and he wouldn’t have looked away. But she didn’t feel threatened by the predatory look. She felt nervous…flushed.
    “Okay,” she agreed, figuring whatever he asked would be worth it, if it meant she could delve a little deeper into his psyche. Though she’d been resolved not to pry into his private life earlier in the night, they were now stuck with each other, thanks to that bloody Oath—and she never had been the type who could walk away from a puzzle until it was finished.
    “Why you?” he asked her, lifting his head off the back of the seat.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Why does Westmore need you so badly? What’s different about your power?” His dark gaze moved slowly over her face, feature by feature, and she could feel a rush of heat burning in each place that it touched. “I don’t know much about the Alacea,” he admitted, staring at her mouth, before lifting his gaze back to her eyes. “They don’t commit a lot of crimes, so we’re not told much about them in the Collective. Do you all have the same powers?”
    “Um…no. The Alacea are eclectic. Some can see into another’s thoughts, some can’t. Some can use their gifts on command, while others struggle for control. There’s no rhyme or reason to the way power is distributed, and it’s not uncommon for different powers to be held bydifferent members of a family. But usually only one form of sight is given, whether that’s into the past, the present or the future. Even in those rare cases where an Alacea does have two forms of sight, one is often much weaker than the other.”
    “I know you can see into the past, as well as the present. So then your powers are…unique?”
    “I guess you could say that. Especially since reading the present is the most uncommon of the three. But only my family knows that I have, or had , two strong forms of sight.”
    “Then how did Westmore know you were what he needed?”
    “He’d been searching for someone like me for months,” she explained, a bad taste filling her mouth as she thought of the man who had destroyed her life. “He had sent scouts out roaming the earth, spying on every psychic they could find. They could read our powers, and it turned out that I was exactly what he was looking for. It wasn’t the future that interested him, but the past…and especially the present, since he needed me to keep an eye on Saige Buchanan as she deciphered the maps.”
    Saige was engaged to a shape-shifter named Michael Quinn, who was one of the Watchmen back at Harrow House. The woman was also a part of the Merrick clan, which had close ties to the war and were mortal enemy of the Casus. All three of the Buchanan siblings were working with the Watchmen, and they also each possessed a unique gift that had helped in the search for the Dark Markers.
    Saige’s particular gift enabled her to “hear” objects, and she’d used this strange talent to decipher the encrypted maps that led to the places where the Dark Markers had been hidden. By using her Alacea powers, Raine had been able to “watch” as Saige deciphered the maps, and had then passed that information on to Westmore, enabling him to send the Casus after the crosses.
    The one time she’d tried to lie about a Marker’s location, he’d had Rietta killed to teach her a lesson.
    It was clear that Seth wanted to keep questioning her, but the conductor’s voice came over the intercom, announcing the next station stop at the German border, which was where they were getting off. Raine stood and grabbed her backpack from the overhead compartment, then stepped aside so that Seth could unfold his long