He woke on a bellow of pain and rage. His fist slammed into the monster’s jaw, but it did little good.
“Sibyl!” he shouted. “Run!”
The word was barely out of his mouth when the demon picked him up and slammed him headfirst into a wall. He bounced off, hit the floor and didn’t move again.
But the demon didn’t stop. It dug its claws into Cain’s unconscious body and flung him across the room. Blood sprayed over the bedding. A lamp toppled and shattered.
Over and over, the demon tossed him about, slowing only to slide its blistered tongue over Cain’s bloody body before each vicious attack. Then suddenly, the monster’s muzzle lifted as if it had heard something. It dashed off through the door, leaving Cain in a puddle of blood and broken glass.
The whole thing had taken only seconds, and in that time, Rory had grown cold and nauseated. She’d been helpless to stop the demon, forced to witness the brutal display of violence and power.
People rushed into the room and went to work healing his injuries. She wanted to stay and make sure that he was safe, but the vision shoved her out of the room into a different one. This one was filled with frills and pastel pink. A child-sized bed sat under a canopy near the shattered window. The covers were streaming through the ragged opening as if someone had ripped the child from her bed.
A porcelain doll sat on the floor, its glassy eyes staring at the ceiling. There were no signs of a struggle here. No blood. No toppled furniture. Only the broken window and empty bed.
Rory felt like there was something here she was supposed to see, but she had no idea what it was. Her fear for Cain was still pounding through her, making it hard to concentrate. She knew he was alive and well—he’d told her not to be afraid, but that was easier said than done.
She forced herself to take a step, and then another, scanning the room for whatever it was she needed to see so that this blasted vision would end. The tiny table and chairs, set with a china tea service held no interest. The looming bookshelves were stuffed full of textbooks and stories way too adult for this room’s occupant. Sitting on one of the lower shelves, lovingly framed in silver, was a single photo.
Rory bent down to look at it. Cain was there, smiling so big his fatherly pride shone through all the way to his eyes. On his lap sat a little blond girl with the cutest ringlet curls Rory had ever seen. Her cheeks were round and pink, and her blue eyes were the same color as a cloudless summer sky. She wore no smile on her face, only a lonely, haunted look, as if some vital person was missing from the photo.
Once again the vision shifted and Cain stood in the same bedroom alone. The air in here was different now. Heavier, darker. Grief and guilt hung on him, bowing his shoulders with their weight. Tears hovered in his eyes, but did not fall. He made a slow circle around the room, touching things here and there, as if each one held some importance or precious memory. As he came across the photo, he picked it up, his hands shaking visibly. He cradled the image with a kind of reverence reserved for priceless, irreplaceable things.
His obvious pain and grief burrowed into Rory, filling her with the need to make it stop. He’d lost his little girl, but Rory could think of no way to bring back the dead. She’d lost Nana, but this was different. Nana had been ready to go. It had been her time. The girl in that photo could not have been more than eight or nine. There was nothing natural about her death.
Rory stepped forward to wrap her arms around him, only to find herself standing in her own living room once again. The sun had begun to set, leaving a golden glow over her familiar surroundings.
Cain stood in front of her, filling her line of sight. There were no hints of weakness about him now—only the solid, unyielding strength she’d come to recognize. But now she saw something she hadn’t seen before, or maybe she simply hadn’t recognized it. Sadness hovered over him, shadowing his eyes. Once again, the urge to rid him of his pain crashed into her, sending her into a tailspin.
Rory wasn’t used to feeling such things. She hadn’t been around people enough to even know how to see what made them tick, much less patch up whatever damage had been done to them.
All she knew was that the man standing before her now was the same one she’d met last night, but she could no longer see him in the same light. He wasn’t simply some crazy stranger who turned her on and made her visions go away. He was . . . real. He hurt, he grieved, he bled. Cain was such a formidable-looking man that it had been easy for her to assume he had no weakness.
And yet she’d seen exactly how grief-stricken and devastated he could be.
“You had a daughter.”
Cain’s face crumpled for a moment before he regained his composure. Sadness poured out of him, chafing against her skin. His voice was a low, quiet rumble, like distant thunder. “She was my ward, but she’d been with me for a long, long time.”
“But she was only a child.”
His words came out slow and unsteady, as if each one had been ripped from a place down deep, leaving a ragged bleeding hole in his chest. “Sibyl was more than a child, and while she was not mine by birth, she was my greatest joy.” His lips pressed together as if he was trying to hold back words he didn’t want to say. “She was cursed to appear as a child even though her mind was anything but. Her small size and weakness made her vulnerable. She needed me.” He said those last words as if Sibyl had given him some kind of gift—as if her need for Cain was something precious to him, rather than a burden, and now that need was gone.
Rory remembered the way he cradled the photo, anguish twisting his features. There had been guilt there, too. Based on what she’d seen—the demon attack, the broken window and empty, child-sized bed, Cain’s torment and guilt—she knew how the story ended. “I’m so sorry you lost her.”
“It was my fault. Had I been more careful, she never would have walked away. But I failed her, and now she rarely calls or writes.”
“She’s alive? I saw the broken window, saw that she was gone.”