Free Skye Cree 02: The Bones Will Tell by Vickie McKeehan Page A

nylon cord the killer had brought with him. Then to be on the safe side, he’d used the gun.
    A voice inside his head kept repeating the same phrase over and over again. So much that Josh’s head pounded with a steady roar. From another room Josh could make out the violence just beginning to ramp up there.
    Through the fog of sleep Josh could see the deadly brown eyes of a madman—make out the rage in them as fury pumped through each slash of the knife—as easily as gasoline flowed through a hose. Because of that it didn’t take long for the other bedroom to become just as bloody as the first, just as bad as the one he’d witnessed as if he’d been right there.
    Josh could almost feel each blow as the defenseless, tied-up woman lay beaten to a pulp. He’d switched weapons. Again. From somewhere the killer had picked up a softball bat. The aluminum had done its damage. Her skull appeared crushed while her assailant kept up the brutal pace shattering bone after bone throughout her body.
    Even in slumber, Josh shuddered. He could smell the iron as the woman’s blood spilled and spattered the walls. He recognized the odor of death, the wrath of a truly evil man.
    The scene was so intense that Kiya had to leap into his line of vision as a warning, much like she had done months earlier when she’d showed him his current path. That had been after he’d gone through the cleansing ritual at The Painted Crow. In his mind he went back to that night when the wolf had shown him the faces and smells of evil.
    But Kiya had missed the mark.
    This was so much worse than Josh had seen that night. Because what he’d seen then in his vision hadn’t seemed real. But with so much carnage now, so much blood to deal with, so many broken bones…
    “The bones…the bones will tell,” mumbled Josh, over and over again as he slept.
     

     
    Skye watched Josh’s fitful movements, let them play out until he settled. She curled into him, wrapped her arms as best she could around his body. For some time he lay there shaking, trembling. Powerful dreams, she knew, could do that—and more—if you let them.
    Every now and again, the nightmares from when she was twelve still wanted to creep in and take hold. Even though that feeling of helplessness had lessened, she could relate to Josh’s torment.
    She would try to walk him through it tomorrow. But as she tried to close her eyes, she couldn’t help but wonder what his words had meant. Questions started humming through her head as sleep eluded her.
    How could bones tell a gamer anything, even if he was ten percent wolf? Were he and Kiya onto some scent that only they could detect? And more importantly, why had she been excluded from the hunt? After everything she’d done, after everything she’d endured, why had the bonding between Kiya and Josh been stronger between the two of them than it ever had been with her?
    Because for her, over the last couple of weeks, her visions had completely dried up. Instead, Josh was now the one who seemed troubled by images he couldn’t stop from coming. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. For the first time since she was thirteen, there were no voices inside her head keeping her up nights, no vivid colors bombarding her brain.
    After all, Kiya was her spirit guide. So why had Skye suddenly been left out of it all? On some level, it hurt to be left out. On another, she could sleep without fears or disturbing images coming to her at all hours. That had to be the major bonus.
    Maybe it was this shared life she now had with Josh. Maybe it was someone looking out for her. There were a hundred maybes, she decided as she tried to close her eyes and blank her mind, let sleep overtake her thoughts.
    But no matter what spin she put on all of it, it still bothered her. So much that she wasn’t sure how long she could handle the feeling of being left out.
     

     
    The ringing phone beside the bed pulled Josh out of images he couldn’t shake. Even as he