Free Dark Powers by REBECCA YORK

out.
    When he got up, she tensed, but he was only going into the bathroom. This time it was her turn to listen as he used the toilet and showered. As he came out again, she watched him through slitted eyes. He had taken off his slacks and was dressed in a dark tee shirt and dark briefs. Apparently he hadn’t counted on having a roommate either.
    The scent of soap and man drifted toward her as she rolled to her back and tried to do relaxation exercises.
    Exhaustion and the nerve-wracking day were catching up with her, and she finally drifted off.
    oOo
    Ben had planned to stay awake, but the blow to his skull had taken too much out of him. Despite his best efforts, he drifted off.
    And almost immediately, the dream grabbed him. The one he’d been having for months. The details varied, but the basics were always the same.
    He was in a field of straggly weeds that stretched as far as his eye could see. And he walked among the dead. They came toward him, each of them alone. Men and women. Some were recognizable as human beings with pale skin and large, questioning eyes. Others were mere skeletons. And worst of all were the ones that looked like they’d climbed out of a six-month-old grave.
    He pressed his palms against his sides, willing them to stay there, but it was impossible to stop from reaching out and touching some of them as they passed, catching their last earthly thoughts before blackness closed in.
    Fear. Panic. Sadness. Shock.
    A boy dressed in swimming trunks walked toward him with jerky steps. As he passed, Ben touched him and learned he’d dived into the shallow end of a pool and hit his head, water filling his lungs as his paralyzed body refused to respond.
    Next was a man in a business suit who had stared at the black hole in the barrel of an automatic pistol before the muzzle flash and a moment of blinding pain.
    After him was an eighteen-year-old woman, her thoughts swallowed up by panic as a truck careened toward her car.
    And then the worst of all. A slave girl from the Windward . She’d called herself Jewel, and he’d never known her real name.
    She’d been petite, with olive skin, long dark hair and hazel eyes. Nothing like his sister, yet she’d reminded him of Erin. Naive. Eager for adventure. Eager to please. Ben had found her in one of the dungeon rooms, dead. A man who took pleasure in giving pain had tied her down and tortured her. The guy had crossed the line, and there had been no one to stop him.
    Not Ben Walker or anyone else.
    In the dream, Jewel’s eyes met his. He’d touched her in the morgue. Now she reached out toward him, and he reared back. He didn’t want to watch her final moments. Not again.
    Somehow he clawed his way out of the dream and lay panting in the bed, his body covered with perspiration.
    Glancing over, he was relieved to see that Sage was sleeping. Not watching him relive part of his life that he longed to forget.
    He clenched his fists, willing the wisps of the dream from his mind. Sitting up, he pulled off his undershirt and used it to mop the sweat from his face and neck, then tossed the shirt on the bed beside him. He was thinking about getting a drink of water when he heard a noise outside. A car pulling up.
    He was off the bed with his gun in his hand before the engine cut off.
    oOo
    Something woke Sage from sleep, and her eyes snapped open. The bedside lamp was off, but dim light filtered in from around the drawn curtains. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. Then it all came back to her. Laurel missing. Decorah Security. Ben Walker.
    He was standing by the window, wearing only the dark briefs he’d worn to bed, and holding the gun as he pulled the edge of the curtains aside to look out. Tension radiated through his well-muscled body. The muscles of an endurance runner, not a weight lifter.
    She sprang out of the bed, and he whirled toward her, the gun pointed in her direction.

 
    Chapter Seven
    Sage froze as she stared down the barrel of the