Amalgamate

Chapter 1

Unlike her mind, firing like a piston, her body remained motionless under the cascading streams of warm water falling from her oversized waterfall shower head.

Comfortable. God damn it! She'd gotten too comfortable with her premonitions. It was the only explanation for the grave mistake she'd made tonight.

Slamming her fists into the tiled shower wall she squeezed her eyes shut. She hated herself for being so careless. Her senses were off because she hadn't tuned in enough, maybe that was it? Maybe she'd grown too reliant on Ian and his crew? That was just an excuse! She hated excuses and she wouldn't be making any for what had happened tonight. Nope, she'd own her mistakes tonight just like she had done her entire life.

Her whole body was on fire and her mind was spinning in all different directions. She had to re-group, and pull her shit together. Fucking think!

She lowered her eyes to the tiled floor watching her blood soaked clothing absorb the warm water and then continue its journey downward. The thick reddish brown ooze circled the drain under her feet.

She'd led her team into the slaughter, unknowingly of course. Aw hell, she wanted to yell at herself. That made two excuses in less than five minutes and she wasn't that person. Never had been an excuses kind of girl.

She placed her palms against the cool tile wall to stabilize herself. As the room began to spin out of control, her vision blurred. The first signs of yet another one of her insufferable headaches. They were increasing in both frequency and duration. She had been blaming it on the insurmountable stress she was under. She was working on too many cases at once, but lately it seemed as though they were coming at her from all angles.

She couldn't afford to think about herself right now because she'd lost two tonight. Two. Son of a bitch! She'd never lost a teammate on a raid with Ian. She hadn't even prepared herself for that.

Memories from earlier tonight would be forever burned into her brain. Even as they lay dying they had been brave. Holding her gaze, telling her not to worry and assuring her that it wasn't her fault. Her mind perseverated on their dying images, unable to think of anything else. She didn't know how she would ever look herself in the mirror again, or return to her job. She'd fucked up royally, and the people who had relied on her had paid the ultimate price tonight.

Trying to make sense of it all, she closed her eyes and thought back to earlier in the evening when she'd given the information to Ian's team. They were looking for a man who had disappeared, a bounty hunter. Rowan's premonitions had lead them to this seemingly abandoned warehouse. Standing in the darkened tree line just fifty yards away she'd sensed animals, not people. But, the hokey thing about it all, the thing that hadn't really registered until now was that these animals were accompanied by empty pockets. Hollowed out spaces, void of life, like a tangible nothingness.

It had made sense to her that there would be dogs guarding the warehouse, so she'd given her team the all clear. There were no other perceptible dangers in their vicinity, or so she thought.

Memories from just hours ago overtook her, pulling her into her darkest doldrums she'd ever known. She'd been in some very dark places as a child, but she'd never felt this kind of sadness or guilt. She buried herself under the streams of water attempting to relieve the pressure building in her head readying to explode like a geyser. But, it was no use. She knew that. She was physically experiencing the connections racing back and forth across her cerebellum making her brain hurt even more. These headaches were coming on her fast now, and she knew the only option she had was to let it ride itself out, endure it, like all the others before.

No matter how hard she tried, her left brain took over. There was no time for an emotional unravelling. She started rationalizing every move she'd made that had landed her in this place- landed her on Ian's team. 'How the fuck had she gotten here? Gotten to a place where she was responsible for the deaths of others? ' For some reason, the left brain problem solving person that she was severed the ensuing emotional breakdown and instead focused on the past. Closing her eyes, she thought back to the very first time she'd had a dream, or what she now knew her dreams to be, visions.