Cold, damp flesh touched the sides of his face.

This time the shock was so much worse. It was napalm igniting in his veins, hammers pounding his bones, giant hands twisting each of his organs. The agony grew and grew, expanding until every cell of his body screamed for an end to the torture. It grew until his mind snapped and conscious thought disappeared.

And still he felt it when his chest and head exploded.

Chapter Fifteen.

Leah stared at the dead bodies littering her waiting area and wasn't sure how she should feel. Emotions warred with each other inside her-fear, rage, disgust, gratification. She remembered everything that happened. Changing into something else, a process that had been surprisingly easy and painless. The intoxicating sensation of sucking the life force out of the men who'd hurt her. Tried to kill her.

The satisfaction of finally putting an end to the man named Del McCormick. Her contact with his mind had been brief; just long enough for her to see his name and understand that while he held some compa.s.sion for her plight and some hatred for her continued thwarting of his plans, mostly what he felt was simple greed. He saw her as a retirement plan, a commodity to be sold or traded, and there'd be no guilt afterwards.

She'd also seen herself as he had in the moment before his death, a monster from h.e.l.l, a living embodiment of the Grim Reaper.

What she hadn't seen was the name of the person who Del was working with.

The telepathic connection had been completely unexpected, and it had broken as soon as Del's head burst like a dead animal left in the sun for too long.

With the immediate danger gone, Leah had returned to normal, the process now as effortless and natural as waking from a nap.

Unfortunately, the Death her had left the human her with a gigantic disaster. Mummified bodies littered the floor, and her memories told her there were a couple more in the back, individuals who'd tried to run rather than stay and fight. Add to that the scattered gobs of flesh, blood and body parts that had once been Del McCormick, and the police were going to have a field day with her.

Police that will be here any minute, thanks to all the gunfire, she added to herself. Instead of being able to Cure and Kill, why can't I just turn invisible when I need to?

"Quite a mess you've got here."

Leah couldn't help a frightened gasp at the sound of a man's voice. She turned and froze, stunned by the person who stood in the hall leading into the examination areas.

Leonard Marsh.

He held up his hands in mock surrender. "Please don't be alarmed. I'm not here to hurt you or kidnap you. In fact, I'm here to a.s.sist you with your..." he gestured at the grotesque mess on the floor, "...problem. But we need to move quickly, before the police arrive."

Leah let some of her dark Powers rise up, Powers she still didn't understand completely, just enough to create a breeze in the room. From the look on Marsh's face, her own features must have changed as well. Dead eyes? Mottled skin? She knew from Del's mind what she looked like in Death mode.

"You have no reason to trust me," Marsh said, his hands still held out, palms up. "But consider this. I came here because I found out what Mr. McCormick was planning. Unfortunately, I arrived too late to help. Not that you needed it, apparently."

"You saw what I did?"

Marsh nodded. "Very impressive. Almost as impressive as your ability to grant life to a very grateful man with enough money to make this..." another gesture at the room, "...go away. If you'll let me."

"And in return?" Leah knew a person like Marsh would never offer to help for free. There had to be a catch.

There was always a catch.

"Nothing." Marsh shook his head. "I'm the one who will forever be in your debt. There are some things I'd like to talk to you about-things involving me helping you, not the other way around-but only if you choose to speak with me."

Leah chewed her lip. A siren sounded in the distance, quickly joined by others. There was little doubt they were on their way to the clinic.

What choice did she have?

"Okay."

Marsh smiled. "Excellent. Please come with me and let my people take care of everything."

A group of men in dark-blue coveralls entered from behind Marsh, and Leah wondered where they'd been waiting. She also promised herself to install better locks. Marsh offered her his arm and led her through the halls to the back door, which stood open, presumably from Del and his men's entry. A long, stylish limousine idled at the curb.

Leah hesitated when Marsh opened the door.

"I promise this is just to get you away from anything that might link you to more bad press. We can go to your house, or anywhere you feel safe."

A gentle summer breeze drifted past, bringing the scents of mown gra.s.s, barbeque and roses. Leah shivered, not from a chill but from the incongruous transition from violence to serenity.

"You said you wanted to talk to me about something."

He nodded. "Several somethings."

"All right. For now, let's just drive around town." She got into the car, hoping that if Marsh did have something nasty planned, she'd be able to handle it.

Or at least her Death persona would handle it.

"How are they going to explain all that to the police?" she asked as the limo pulled silently away from the curb. The crushed-leather seats hugged her, and she realized that, compared to Marsh's personal car, the limos she'd ridden in with Tal Nova were at the bottom of the luxury list.

Marsh, sitting across from her at a distance longer than her legs could stretch, pressed a b.u.t.ton and a center console slid open, revealing a selection of sodas and waters.

"Please help yourself. There is no alcohol in the car, I'm afraid. Since you, er, alleviated my illness, I've been on something of a health kick." He took a bottle of sparkling water and she did the same, listening carefully for the pop-hiss that let her know the bottle hadn't been unsealed.

"First, let me apologize for the actions of Mr. Nova. His only orders from me were to invite you to the office so that I could offer sincere apologies for my treatment of you. What he did-the whole kidnapping, the brutal treatment of your boyfriend-I knew nothing about that."

She didn't want to believe him-how could someone so rich and powerful not know what their right-hand man was doing?-but his face and voice both sounded totally sincere, nothing at all like the self-absorbed, high-and-mighty a.s.shole he'd been the last time she'd seen him. When she'd Cured him.

"I also want to thank you for not mentioning me in the story you gave to the police," he added.

"I didn't do that for your benefit." A bit of anger rose up and Leah welcomed it. It felt good. "I just figured no one would believe me, and I certainly wasn't going to tell anyone about my ability to Cure."

"Still, you could have tried to throw me under the bus, so to speak, especially when it came out that Tal was one of the dead discovered in that slaughterhouse."

Marsh dipped his hand into the cooler compartment and took out a candy bar. The label was in French, but Leah read the words chocolat fondant and figured it was some type of fancy chocolate. When he offered her a piece, she took it gladly.

"How did that all work out?" She wanted to say more, but the heavenly taste of the chocolate robbed her of the ability to speak. Light, velvety, with hints of raspberry peeking out from below the bittersweet tones of the dark cocoa, it put any other chocolate she'd ever had to shame. By itself, it was worth the chance she'd taken by getting into the car.

"In my business, you have to plan for any eventuality. Between the evidence at the slaughterhouse and what they found in his home, the authorities came to the appropriate conclusion that he'd secretly been smuggling drugs for years and had gotten into a turf war with another gang. Of course, I made sure to remove any mention of your abilities from his work and home computers."

"Then I guess it's me who should be thanking you." Leah ran her tongue across the roof of her mouth, savoring the remaining splashes of flavor.

"No. You saved my life. And there are only two things I can offer you in return. Safety and financial freedom."

"What?" Chocolate heaven forgotten, Leah sat up straighter.

"You turned down my money the last time," Marsh said. "One of the reasons I asked Tal to bring you back to my office was so that I could try to convince you to accept my payment. Now I'm offering you something further. One hundred thousand dollars for your clinic. Another hundred thousand to set up a foundation for veterinary education in the name of your a.s.sistant, the one Tal murdered. And on top of that, my security team will completely outfit your home and your clinic with state-of-the-art security systems and provide personal protection for a period of one year."

"I...I don't know what to say..." Leah's voice trailed off. She had no idea what to do. She didn't even know if she could believe him.

"It's hard to trust me." Marsh gave her a smile, as if he could read her thoughts. Or maybe he was just used to not being trusted. "I was a selfish man for a long time, Ms. DeGarmo. But after you...did what you did...I realized that using your power as a personal tool, like you were some kind of supernatural ma.s.seuse or private physician, just wasn't right. You did more than heal me. You changed me."

She was tempted to say no again, despite the enormity of the offer. Maybe Marsh hadn't been involved in her kidnappings and John's torture. It was still because of him that it all happened in the first place.

It was still dirty money.

The word dirty reminded her of something John had said to her the night they'd found Marsh's check on the door.

"The minute you cash that check it goes from dirty to clean just because of the good it will do."

Think about it, Leah. The animals. The Chast.i.ty Summers foundation providing grants for veterinary students.

Safety.

Her answer came easily after that. "I accept your offer."

She felt no guilt, no sense of making a deal with the devil.

"On one condition," she added.

"Of course, if I can." Marsh's eyebrows rose, expressing his curiosity.

"I'd like one of those chocolate bars." She pointed to the wrapper.

For a moment Marsh just stared at her; then he burst into laughter. "Ms. DeGarmo, I'll see to it that you get a lifetime supply!"

Twenty minutes later, Leonard Marsh watched Leah DeGarmo unlock the door to her house and go inside.

"Back to the city," he said to his driver, and the limo eased away from the curb. During the short trip through town to the highway entrance, Marsh considered what he'd achieved that night.

He'd turned a potentially deadly enemy into an ally.

He'd quietly removed the last chances of anyone connecting him to the mess Tal Nova had created.

He'd set himself up to broker possibly the largest business deal of his life.

Tal and Del had been small thinkers; that was their problem. One considered DeGarmo a weapon. The other had been ready to sell her like she was some kind of street drug. They'd both been right-she was a weapon and a longevity medicine, to be sure. But that was only the tip of the iceberg.

Who knew what other abilities she possessed?

He took another sip of water. Sure, he'd just spent close to half a million dollars between the cleanup and his payments to her. But it was a small price to pay for gaining her trust.

And the potential returns...

It was time to see what they would be.

He took out a cell phone from the console, a so-called burner phone he'd had his engineers work on so that no GPS signal emanated from it. There was one preprogrammed number in it, which he activated.

"h.e.l.lo, General. Remember the individual we discussed. She's everything I said and much, much more. It's time for us to meet."

Chapter Sixteen.

Leah walked away from Marsh's limo feeling better than she had since...well, since the day she'd come home from the hospital. In her pocket were two checks.

While they'd driven, Marsh had arranged to have one of his security specialists-the same one currently posing as an FBI agent at her clinic and keeping the police out of the building-stop by in the morning and begin work on the new security system. He'd also had his driver stop at a 24-hour pharmacy and purchase a plain pink T-shirt to replace her tattered one.

She was grateful there were no reporters hovering around the yard, which meant he'd been successful at keeping the events at the clinic from reaching the press. That was key. She needed time to decompress, to come to terms with the thing she'd...

What? Mutated into? Maybe you haven't become anything, Leah. Maybe this is who you've always been, and it just needed to be woken up.

Therein lay the problem. Was this all just new manifestations of her Power, or had something happened when she took John's death into herself?

Most importantly, would she be able to control it in the future? What would happen the first time she Cured an animal and then had to pa.s.s its illness on? Would it be the same as before, or was she going to turn into some kind of modern-day Kali, raining h.e.l.l down on anyone in her path?

She opened the door and was halfway across the darkened living room before someone spoke her name.

"Leah."

The light beside the couch came on at the same time she recognized the voice.

"John? What...what are you doing here?"

He looked haggard and old, and not just from the sharply angled shadows thrown by the small lamp. Although still as handsome as ever, he had the appearance of a man who'd gone too many nights with too little sleep.

"I came here to talk to you. I...needed to talk to you. There was no one here, so I used the spare key to come in and wait."

d.a.m.n. She'd meant to get rid of the key she kept in a fake rock in the outside planter. G.o.d, she really did need security help!

"You're leaving." He said it not as a question but as a statement.

She glanced into the dining room, where she'd left the suitcase she'd packed the day before. He was right, although she hadn't planned on leaving that night.