Sizzle and Burn (The Arcane Society #3)(3)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

He studied the padlocked door and then glanced suspiciously at Raine. “What makes you think there’s a body in there?”

She crossed her arms and went into full defense mode. She had known this was going to be difficult. It was so much simpler when Bradley handled this part, shielding her from derision and disbelief.

“Just a feeling,” she said evenly.

Fulton exhaled slowly. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You think you’re psychic, just like your aunt, right?”

She flashed him her special smile.

“My aunt was psychic,” she said.

Fulton’s bushy brows shot up. “Heard she ended up in a psychiatric hospital in Oriana.”

“She did, mostly because no one believed her. Please open the locker, Officer. If it’s empty, I will apologize for wasting your time.”

“You understand that if I do find a body in that locker, you’re going to have to answer a lot of questions down at the station.”

“Trust me, I am well aware of that.”

He searched her face. For a few seconds she thought he was going to argue further but whatever he saw in her expression silenced him. Without a word he turned to the storage locker and hoisted the bolt cutter.

There was a sharp, metallic crunch when the hasp of the padlock severed. Fulton put down the tool and gripped the flashlight in his left hand. He reached for the doorknob with gloved fingers.

The door opened on a groan of rusty hinges. Raine stopped breathing, afraid to look and equally afraid not to. She made herself look.

A naked woman lay on the cold concrete floor. The one item of clothing in the vicinity was a heavy leather belt coiled like a snake beside her.

The woman was bound hand and foot. Duct tape sealed her mouth. She appeared to be young, no more than eighteen or nineteen, and painfully thin. Tangled dark hair partially obscured her features.

The only real surprise was that she was still alive.

Two

Knives were always the worst. People did unpleasant things with them, and they did those things close up and in a very personal way.

“I don’t like sharp objects,” Zack Jones said.

He did not take his attention off the ceremonial dagger in the glass case. Elaine Brownley, director of the museum, leaned closer to study the artifact.

“Probably all that early childhood advice you got about the dangers of running with scissors,” she suggested. “Leaves a lasting impression.”

“Yeah, that must be it,” Zack said.

This was not the first time he had found himself standing beside Elaine, looking at an unpleasant object housed in a glass case. His was a dual career path. Consulting for the Arcane Society’s curators was one of his businesses.

Elaine removed her glasses and fixed him with a direct look. She was in her mid-fifties. With her short, graying brown hair, round glasses, intelligent eyes and slightly rumpled navy blue skirted suit, she looked like the academic that she was. Zack knew she had a number of degrees in archaeology, anthropology and fine arts. She was also fluent in several languages, living and dead.

At various points in Elaine’s life her instructors, teachers and colleagues had labeled her “gifted.” Most of them had probably never even had a clue how right they were, Zack thought. What she had was a psychic talent for finding and identifying genuine antiquities of any kind. No one could slip a fake past her, whether it was a Renaissance painting or a piece of Roman glass.

When she had left the university world to accept a position with a museum, most of her colleagues expected her to end up at the head of one of the many prestigious institutions that had made jaw-dropping offers.

Instead, she became the director of the Arcane Society’s museum at the West Coast headquarters of the Arcane Society, USA. The museum was one of four the Society operated, three in the United States and one, the original Arcane House, in the United Kingdom.

The Society’s museums were little known and mostly ignored by the mainstream world of archaeology and academic research. The Society liked things that way. Its highly specialized museums collected and studied artifacts and relics that were associated with the paranormal. They were not open to the public.

Elaine peered up at him. “Well?”

“It’s old.” Zack turned back to the dagger. “Lot of static on it. I can feel it from here.”

“I know it’s old.” She made a soft, impatient sound. “I didn’t buy it yesterday at Wal-Mart. It cost me a huge chunk of the museum’s annual budget. Trust me, I wouldn’t have authorized the acquisition if I wasn’t certain that it was second century, A.D. That’s not what I’m asking.”

“I’ll have to handle it to know for sure. No gloves.”

Her mouth pursed at that. Elaine did not like anyone to handle any of the objects in the collection with ungloved hands. But she knew his requirements. If she wanted him to verify her theory about the dagger, she would have to let him have direct physical contact.

Without a word, Elaine punched in a code that opened the case.

Zack readied himself for the shock he knew was coming and deliberately jacked up his psychic senses. He reached down and closed his hand around the jeweled hilt of the dagger.

The current of psychic energy that still clung to the blade even after so many centuries was faint but it had been laid down in blood and it was still strong enough to sear his senses. He locked his teeth together and closed his eyes. Not that shutting his eyes had any effect on the ghostly images that flashed through his mind.

The scenes, layers of them in this instance because the dagger had been used many times for similar purposes, came to him in the hues of nightmares. He was never able to explain the colors of the paranormal visions. They had no equivalent in the normal world.

…He thrilled to the act of driving the dagger downward, savoring the anticipation of how it would feel when it cut into human flesh, sensed the unholy lust and exultation that came with the killing blow, knew the terror of the victim…

He dimmed his psychic senses swiftly and dropped the dagger back into the case.

“Hey,” Elaine yelped, outraged. “Careful with that thing.”

“Sorry.” He gave the hand he had used to grip the blade a little shake as if the small action could rid him of the remnants of the grim visions. He knew better. Luckily the dagger was very, very old.

Elaine raised her brows. “Tell me.”

“It was definitely used to kill people, not animals,” he said. Calling on years of practice and sheer willpower, he managed to repress the visions. It was a temporary fix. They would be back, probably in his dreams that night. “A human-sacrifice scenario.”