Haven of Nightmares (Littlemoon Investigations Book 5) (14 page)

Bethany shrugged. “It could be one of the dead, or it could be what they created in their deaths. That anger may have taken on its own form, and it’s causing hell.”

Great
.

This was shitty.

“So we don’t know if it’s Roman’s or Matilda’s sisters. It’s just something that’s manifesting anger and building. Okay, so what does it look like?”

“This big black blob,” Trey stated. “Mist-like.”

Yeah, she’d seen that.

It had to be strong if she was picking it up without being in a trance. Bethany was incredibly strong, being dead for nearly a century, and Tori only got glimpses of her out of her peripheral.

“Can you pull any in for me to talk to them?” she asked.

Bethany hesitated.

“I need to do this, and you know it. This is our most dangerous case, and we need to get in, set them free, and then get out. Our mission is clear.”

“I can, but you know that three spirits make you sick. You get tired.”

She was aware, but what choice did she have? This was about working this case, getting them peace, and moving on.

Them.

And the team.

“Do it.”

Trey moved to stand in front of his sister. “I’ll keep the spirit off of you.”

She was grateful to have her big brother there. At least she knew he’d keep her safe.

“Here you go,” warned Bethany.

Without warning, there was an explosion in the room. It was icy light, and it gave her goose bumps.

Yeah, they weren’t kidding.

This felt evil.

It was tainting the dead.

“Who are you?” asked the girl. “Where am I?”

“I’m Tori, and I’m going to help you. What do you need for me to do?”

The girl looked around blindly, as if she couldn’t see. That gave Tori a few clues. She didn’t know where she was hidden. That likely meant that she didn’t see who did this to her.

Damn!

“I want to go home. Where are my mom and dad?” she asked. “Why do I feel so cold?”

Here was her next clue. With past experience, cold generally meant somewhere dark and maybe buried in the ground. The dead would give away clues if you just listened.

“What’s your name?”

“Felicity. Who did this to me? I can’t feel my body.”

Tori moved closer, and Trey didn’t leave her side. He was trying to put himself between them, but Tori needed to
‘see’
the girl’s true form.

“We’re looking for who did this to you.”

“I’m trapped. I wanted to cross, but he said words. He said weird words.”

Tori made a mental note. “What kind? Do you remember them?”

She shook her disheveled hair.

Tori was starting to see her as she was after death. She was pale, there was a long slice across her throat, and there was tape around her wrists.

She had bled out.

“What happened to you, Felicity? Tell me, so I can help you through this.”

“I was walking to class. I was heading toward the gym, and someone grabbed me from behind. I smelled something sickly and sweet, and then I couldn’t wake up.”

Tori knew, from working a few FBI cases, that she had to be chloroformed.

“Keep going, Felicity.”

“When I woke up, I was naked. My hands were bound, and there were two others with me. We were so scared. They’re here. I’ve seen them.”

“Are you together?”

She nodded. “He put us together. I’m so cold.”

“Show me all of you.”

As if the spirit couldn’t stop, she began morphing into a skeleton. From her mouth, first came concrete dust, and then dirt—lots and lots of dirt.

Tori knew how to find her.

“Please find us. There’s something evil here. We can’t leave until you find who did this. Set me free! I want to go home!”

The energy in the room changed drastically.

Tori took that as her sign to back up, and fast.

As soon as she did, Felicity morphed again, into this horribly looking beast. Then it charged at her.

Trey stood between her, and when they collided, another explosion happened in the room.

They were gone.

“Trey! Trey! Is he okay?” she asked.

Bethany moved toward her and touched her baby bump. “He’s just burned out. He’ll be back before you know it. His good energy and its bad energy cancelled out. He’s empty.”

She relaxed. “But he’s okay, right?”

“Well, Mr. Sexy is still dead, but other than that, hot stuff will be back. Don’t worry.”

Tori was getting tired.

Her whole body began moving slowly.

“Keep watching for the other two girls who died with Felicity. She was a mess.”

“She was swallowed by evil. They all were. Their murders created this entity.”

“If I find the killer, will they be at peace?”

“Yes, but that thing won’t make it easy on you. It knows you can do it. You’re a target, Victoria. You have to be careful. This is it,” she offered, pointing at her baby bump.

“Okay, let’s keep that from Julian. He’s going to flip out as it is. Once I say
‘EVIL ENTITY’
, he’s going nuclear.”

“You focus on your job, and Mr. Sexy and I will handle the rest on our side.”

“Are you getting naked with my dead brother?” Tori asked. “Wait. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

She laughed. “Julian is calling for you. Be safe, Tori. I love you.”

She began slipping away.

“I love you too, Bethany,” she said, and realized it was true.

Her family was definitely growing.

And that was a good thing--
albeit weird.

Julian was holding her in his lap as he ran his lips across her chilly cheek. “Come on, Tori,” he whispered.

When her eyes popped open, he sighed in relief. “Tori! You scare the shit out of me!”

She sat up and patted him on the cheek. Tori was so glad she was sitting. She felt as if she was spinning on some wild carnival ride and at any second, she was going to be sick.

Really sick.

“Well, how bad is it?” Roman asked.

“I have good news and bad news.”

Julian didn’t like the sound of that.

At all.

“What?” he asked.

“I spoke to Felicity Sepp. She’s pretty much given me all the clues we need to find her. I think we can locate her, Rylee, and Devora.”

“That’s great,” stated Matilda. “She was taken with our sisters, and she might lead us to their bodies.”

“Well, they are buried together. The three of them were taken by the same person, put in a trunk, and then killed.”

“Why do you look worried?” Julian asked.

It was time for the bad news.

She told them about the negative energy their deaths created. Tori held nothing back.

She couldn’t.

They were in for one hell of a tough case, and she knew it. Before this was done, they were going to be facing an uphill battle of epic proportions.

“Their murders created something.”

“Like?”

“Evil. That’s the only word I can use to describe it. It’s pure, unadulterated evil.”

Roman closed his eyes. “When this is over, I’m burning this place to the ground. I never want to see it again.”

Matilda hugged him. “It’ll be okay, Roman. We’ll be fine. Just have faith.”

Oddly, he would.

That last little reserve of it was coming from her. He would have faith because she was there with him. It had to mean something in the grand scheme of it all.

“We can rule out that it’s your sisters who are trying to hurt you. It’s more the energy they created when they died. What really has me freaked out is that she said that as they were getting ready to die, the killer was chanting.”

Julian got where Tori was taking it. They’d both worked cases where that played some part of it. “So, you’re thinking a ritual killing?”

She shrugged. “This isn’t my area of expertise. We may need to call in our expert. Nyx is good with all those wonky religions like Witchcraft and Voodoo. That’s her thing.”

“Oh God, that can’t be good,” whispered Mattie. When a company has a resident occult expert on their staff, well…that said a lot about them.

“What’s the good news?”

“Back to Felicity for that one. When I spoke to her, she said she was somewhere dark and cold.”

Julian knew what the woman was trying to tell them. “She’s buried somewhere.”

“Yeah, likely. That’s where my mind went the second I saw her.”

He thought back to the last case with the dead girls. They said the same thing, and they ended up in a crypt.

“Is there a cemetery here?” Tori asked. She wasn’t sure if the school would have something like that, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

“Not really. My mother and father are buried here, and there’s a marker for my sister, but she’s not there.”

That wouldn’t be it.

“When the girls had disappeared was there anything being built? Maybe there was an addition to the property? A building?”

He thought about it.

Tori thought back to what Felicity showed her. There was dirt and concrete dust.

“I don’t know if there were any additions. My mind is so fuzzy and confused right now,” Roman stated.

Who could really blame him?

Matilda touched his arm, getting his attention. “Roman, there was some construction. It was in the Quad. They were putting in a slab of concrete and a fountain for the students. Quite a few of us would study there outside in the sun.”

He thought about it. “She’s right.”

“Well, Felicity had concrete and dirt falling out of her skeleton mouth, so that’s the top spot for us to look around.” She was glad that she was beginning to pick up the subtle clues that the dead were showing her.

It made it a little easier for all of them.

“Ewwww,” stated Matilda. “That had to be one hell of a horrible thing to see.”

Yeah, she had no idea, and that was saying a lot since Tori had been a Fed.

“Well, it looks like we have our first clue to where the girls are. We should head there.”

“And do what?” Roman asked.

Tori grabbed her gear. “We’re going to dig them up.”

Julian wished that was the first time his wife had said that in their marriage. Unfortunately, they tended to dig up a lot of corpses.

It was getting to be a habit.

A bad one.

Chapter Seven

Haven

Police Department

He loved his job.

Truth be told, he was meant to be a cop from the day he was born. On that day, the heavens smiled down on him, giving him a huge gift.

Everhart Rose was born with the gift of intuition.

He wasn’t talking about the well-honed skill that all cops eventually formed after years in the field. No, that was a given. What he’d been blessed with was a little more complicated.

He was talking about that little spark in him that lead him through life. Most importantly, Everhart knew when someone was lying.

Missing kids always managed to call to him, and he was there.

There were even a few times where he’d been at the right place at the right time.

Only, it wasn’t a coincidence.

It was intentional.

Some might think that psychic gifts were a crock of shit, but the more he researched, the more he realized that he was born with some gift. It was important to him, and he respected it.

With it came good and bad.

Finding the truth wasn’t always a positive outcome. He was more often than not forced to deal with the cold, hard realities of life. Death happened, and as a Homicide detective, Everhart knew that the end could be right around the corner.

For victims.

For his friends.

Hell!

Even for him.

Some called him lucky.

He leaned toward intuitive, and he was more than okay with that. It kept him alive.

And that was always one hell of a good thing.

As he sat behind his desk, he was staring at the folder in front of him. It was his current case, and already, he had a bad feeling about it.

His gut was tied in a knot, and they were only a day or two into the investigation.

This case was brutal. There were three missing person reports, and all three were local high school girls. They were nothing more than children.

Babies.

What made it a million times worse was that his gut had already told him the truth.

They were dead.

While there were teams of local citizens out there searching, Everhart knew they would not find them alive.

As to where they were…he had his suspicions.

When he stared at the pictures of the lost, he had flashes of thoughts in his head. They told the tale.

Dread.

Pain.

Blood.

Remington Academy.

Yeah, he was pretty sure he knew where they had been placed. It was pretty much a no brainer if you were a cop in that town.

If you grew up in Haven, then you knew about that school. It had once been the apple of the town’s eye, but that soon spoiled. The school had become synonymous with death.

Six girls went missing.

Two people committed suicide.

Some said it was haunted.

None of that made it a place anyone wanted to go. Granted, he was a cop, and the place still freaked him the hell out. If he had the gift of intuition, then to him, that meant there was also a possibility that it could be haunted.

That freaked him out a little.

Remington Academy was a hot mess, and he wouldn’t be shocked to find the bodies there.

Only, there was an obstacle.

The current owner.

Roman Remington was the final family member. His one goal in life was to make it impossible for anyone to get onto the grounds. Without probable cause, or something that would sway a judge, it was out of Everhart’s hands.

If only the owner would let him take a stroll around. He might be able to…

Yeah, it didn’t matter.

Roman Remington was anti-cop, anti-investigation, and anti-social.

To him, that screamed suspicious.

While he didn’t know for sure that the three dead girls were there, he’d be willing to bet his house, car, and career on it.

Only, how could he prove it?

As a cop, he couldn’t climb the fence and sneak around. There were laws, and he had to uphold them. While Detective Everhart Rose would bend the law, he wouldn’t break it.

He couldn’t.

He’d taken an oath, and when you made a promise, you kept it.

No matter what.

So, he was left trying to find a way to tie the old cases to the new.

The only thing that was similar was three girls, five years apart.

That’s it.

Nothing else.

Yeah, there wasn’t a judge in that county who would hand a warrant over for that stretch, and he knew it. He was pretty sure that the owner of Remington Academy would have his rich lawyers all over him the second he approached the gate.

He needed a miracle.

Or luck.

“Hey! Are you in there?” Detective Lewis asked, getting his attention.

Glancing up, Everhart stared at the man standing beside his desk. “I’m sorry! What did you say?”

“I asked if you had any leads.”

Haven was a small town.

Their police force wasn’t huge, and they didn’t have partners. There were three homicide detectives, and they didn’t team up.

More often than not, you bounced ideas off your co-workers in hopes of something popping. He liked it that way, since he was damn good at his job. To Everhart, a partner would slow him down.

He liked working alone.

He had his own back.

“Do you need help?” Detective Lewis asked.

Rarely, thanks to his little gift, did he need any. Mostly, he was good to go, but every now and then, he asked for assistance in order to protect his secret.

Why out himself?

“I’m frustrated.”

“Want to talk it out?” the man asked.

That was what he’d been hoping he’d say.

“I think these killings have to do with the Remington Academy ones.”

Detective Lewis whistled. “That’s a stretch, Hart, are you sure? All that’s similar are that there are three missing girls.”

“I know. If I could get on that campus…”

He laughed. “Hold your horses, Hart. You know you can’t do it. If you do, your ass is going to swing. The boss will tie you up in knots if you get the department sued.”

He was aware.

That’s why he was still sitting there and not climbing the wrought iron gate.

“He might let it slide if I find something,” Hart offered, thinking about his captain.

Yeah, no he wouldn’t. He’d hang him out to dry in a heartbeat.

“We’re broke, and I finally got my new Kevlar that I ordered nine months ago. We barely have funds for coffee.”

Again, he was aware.

“That’s why I’m sitting here, frustrated as hell. I can’t figure out how the two schools are connected.”

“Are any of the teachers the same?”

He laughed. “I wish I could answer that. I can’t get Remington’s records. That bastard owner won’t let anyone near the place. I’m telling you. I smell something foul.”

He patted him on the shoulder. “I don’t doubt it. You’re the luckiest SOB on the force. I’m waiting for a model and a million bucks to fall into your lap.”

Everhart snorted. “I don’t want either. I like my women low maintenance and my money earned. I’m a cop, not some rich kid playing a role. I like knowing who my friends are before they start thinking about money.”

“I hear you. Still…a sexy model is a bad thing?”

He laughed, pushing out of his seat. “I’m going to let that one go and head out for a bit. I need to clear my head, and the best way is to drive around town.”

“What you mean is stalk Remington Academy by way of the gate, right?”

He laughed. “You better believe it. Stalking is how I do my best police work.”

Detective Lewis watched him head out.

He had no doubt that Hart would solve it.

He was just that damn lucky.

Every day.

       
         
* * *
  L   i   t   t   l  e  m  o  o  n  * * *

He could tell something was going on.

As he went back to the campus to check on the last sets of graves, he saw too much activity at the main building.

That worried him.

There shouldn’t be anyone wandering around. Roman Remington never came back to the place that spawned him. He closed the place down to let it rot.

That’s why he thought the school would be the perfect place to leave the last three women. Who was going to look for them there?

If anything, someone would think it was a coincidence, and then he could place the three girls with the others.

And then in five years, the next three.

And the next three.

And the…

That had been his long-term plan, and until that moment, he believed it would work out.

He was beginning to feel desperate. He really needed that spell to work. This had the potential to go haywire, so he had to stay ahead of this. If someone was hanging out there, or if Remington had sold the place, he was going to have to take matters into his own hands.

But what?

It looked like he was going to have to start asking questions himself, nosing around the place.

There was too much to lose.

Everything was at risk.

       
         
* * *
  L   i   t   t   l  e  m  o  o  n  * * *

Remington Academy

The Quad

They had surveyed the area.

By quad, Tori thought it would be so much bigger. Fortunately, it wasn’t. It was only the size of a normal room in a house. Each square beneath their feet had been individually laid to form a pattern in the courtyard.

This shouldn’t be too difficult after all.

“Is anyone really wishing Beckett was here?” Julian asked. “It would be so much easier.”

Matilda looked confused.

“Beckett? What does he have to do with finding bodies in concrete?” she asked.

Well, why not go all in on this one?

Julian signaled Roman it was fine, and he explained. “Beckett can touch things and see their past. He would be able to touch the squares and tell us which one they were buried beneath. If the energy was strong, he would simply feel it by being near it.”

She didn’t look surprised.

That said a lot about Matilda’s tenacity, and what she had already seen happen there.

“Well, that’s handy.”

Yeah, unless you were Beckett and had to wear gloves all the time whenever you were around anything old.

“Okay, so he’s not here, so how do we do this? What’s the plan?” Roman asked. “We can dig up the whole damn place. I’m more than okay with that. For all I care, blow the place up.”

Yeah, there was no love lost for Remington Academy.

That was crystal clear in his tone.

Immediately, Mattie tried to soothe him by running her hand up and down his tense arm. Slowly, he relaxed.

When he glanced down at her, he was smiling. “Thank you.”

She didn’t mind at all.

Julian cleared his throat. “Uh, the bodies?”

Tori had an idea, but it involved telling Julian that her gifts were evolving into more. She’d been hesitant, but it looked like they were out of options. There was no way he’d believe if she just picked the square, and there the bodies were.

Yeah, he wouldn’t fall for that.

“I can do it.”

Julian glanced over at his wife. “Pray tell me how you plan to do that?” he inquired.

“If I focus, I can see the spectral trail.”

Julian closed his eyes before he spoke, “I don’t want to know what that is. I want to go home, have a six pack, and sleep.”

Tori patted him on the arm. “It’s okay, babe. I get it. You hate this, and I’m not exactly fond myself, but the same way I could see the blood, I can open myself for the dead victims to tell me where they are.”