Hell's Rayne (Book 1)

Chapter 21

The bags were packed and Jesse was loading them into his rust-bucket of a car, ready for our almost week long trip up North. We were going for a funeral, hardly the happiest of occasions, but I couldn't help the somewhat giddy feeling that bubbled in the pit of my stomach; my plan had worked and this case was finally going somewhere – and that somewhere was apparently up in Yorkshire.

It had been surprisingly easy to plant my suggestion into Jesse's head, he had to feel that asking me to go along with him was a good idea and I'd expected to need at least two or three goes at rooting around in his brain, planting subtle suggestions before the idea really took root. It wasn't so easy to influence someone's thoughts when the idea wasn't already brewing at the back of their own minds, waiting to be coaxed to the forefront – like with Shane and the strangling - planting an entirely new idea was more difficult. Not to mention it played slightly fast and loose with the whole 'free will' concept we were instructed to follow, but I'd always thought our whole world, whole purpose, played a little free with this moral code, bending the rules a little more couldn't hurt.

I reached into his mind that first night while he slept. Jesse had shown me to the guest room, spent an unnerving length of time searching for clean sheets to make up the bed with, then bid me goodnight before he headed down the hall to his own room. A good few hours passed while I did little but twiddle my thumbs before I ventured out of that bedroom and down the dark hallway; I had to be sure he was asleep or the plan wouldn't work.

Gentle snoring came from behind the wood panel door and I whispered a quiet word of thanks; tired wasn't even the word to describe how I was felt at that moment, I really didn't want this to take too long. I pushed the door handle and inched it open carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible, and stepped into his room; leaving the door open behind me. I found Jesse sprawled on his front, taking up as much of the bed as his tall form could find – sleeping alone had its advantages. The thin sheet covering him was bunched at his waist and a thin shaft of moonlight fell over his bare back as it crept through a gap in the curtains.

I tiptoed as far into the room as I dared, still needed to be able to make a hasty exit should Jesse show any sign of waking. Jesse's face came into view, finally peaceful in sleep. I closed my eyes for a moment to gather myself, to call on my innate power before opening them again and gazing at Jesse. I concentrated hard on the air just around him willing my eyes to see the faint coloured hue of energy that surrounded his body, his aura, my doorway into his subconscious.

My eyes turned just this side of blurry as the deep, muddy colour of Jesse's aura started to glow in the darkness. Subtle streaks of red had started to form around his torso and neck, the shades of violence and aggression beginning to grow in his nature, this was a good sign for me. I reached for that haze of light energy with metaphysical fingers and gently felt my way into Jesse's sleeping psyche.

I'd expected his thoughts to be busy, distracted, as his sleeping mind worked through all the chaos that his life had turned into, and that the journey through to find a prime spot to plant my idea would be something akin to trekking through a jungle; a mess of chaotic thoughts and feelings waiting in the darkness to jump out and trip me up. But I found the way surprisingly clear and easy to navigate. Jesse had made some real headway in bringing order to his thoughts and quantifying the emotion he carried while he slept and, from what I saw as a searched for a dream, an image, in which I could inject my own influence, my earlier words had also taken their own hold over his unconscious mind.

A woman, who looked so much like Jesse, featured predominantly in his dreams. I could only assume it was his sister – what I felt was a pretty safe assumption – she was there in many different incarnations. As a young, smiling child, a petulant teenager annoyed with the supervision of her older brother, a university graduate beaming with pride...a bloody corpse, wide eyed and staring as a man that I could not recognise stood over the body, blood dripping from his fingertips.