Кей Хупер - Blood Ties

DeMarco shook off the memory of that conversation and frowned once again down at the map, this time not really looking at it. He felt oddly… cold… all of a sudden, tense and alert in a way he recognized, every sense flaring, expanding beyond himself to seek out and pinpoint a threat of some kind. He looked up, scanned the room warily. But nothing seemed out of place or otherwise amiss.

Pleasant bedroom, neat and attractive without being overly fussy, which suited him. The TV was on and tuned to MSNBC but muted.

He had removed his shoulder holster, of course, when he at least nominally turned in for the night, but his weapon lay within easy reach. Reaching out slowly, he put his hand on it but didn’t draw it from the holster.

Because everything he felt told him the threat he sensed was not anything a bullet could stop.

DeMarco didn’t particularly like to think about many of his experiences in the military, but they had certainly left him with sharpened instincts in addition to his psychic ones. In those days, it had meant the difference between dying—and coming out alive to not talk about it.

These days it meant a sense that was not quite psychic telling him something was off-kilter around him.

Shit. With my luck, this place is haunted .

But he didn’t think that was it. He wasn’t particularly sensitive to spirits, for one thing, and for another this didn’t feel like a threat to himself but to someone or something else.

DeMarco’s unique double shield made him hypersensitive to the various energies associated with paranormal abilities, but only when he allowed the outer, protective shield to drop and concentrated on using what made the inner shield so remarkable: If his focus was good enough, he could either make that second shield vastly stronger and more impenetrable or else turn it into a kind of magnet that drew in and interpreted—so to speak—psychic energies.

He couldn’t steal anyone else’s ability, but he could hamper their power to project anything forceful outward, and he could tune in to whatever frequency was being used.

“Like a radio,” Quentin had once noted helpfully. “And every other psychic is on a different channel.”

Which simplified an ability that was incredibly complex but defined it well for all of that.

DeMarco was pretty sure somebody in the house was experiencing psychic phenomena. What he wasn’t sure of was whether that person was a threat—or was being threatened.

Either way, it didn’t bode well.

Swearing under his breath, DeMarco sat on the edge of the bed, then closed his eyes and began to concentrate, dropping his outer shield completely and attempting to tune in to whatever was happening.

Almost immediately, he was hit with a wave of stark terror.

Frowning, Diana said, “October? That was when you guys were tracking the killer of all those women in Boston, including Senator LeMott’s daughter, right?”

“Yeah. The monster in this place—or a place identical to this—was the killer.”

“Who was taken out of circulation. Locked up.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Then why are we here?”

Hollis drew another of those get-a-grip breaths and said, “The end of that case turned out not to be. It was connected to what happened later, in January, in Grace.”

“In North Carolina. The church, Samuel. Yeah, that was the party I didn’t get invited to.”

“Be glad. We lost some good people there, and very nearly lost a lot more.”

Diana didn’t like to think of Quentin—of the team —in danger, but she had read the reports and knew what had happened. She knew how terribly high a price had been demanded of them in order to stop that killer.

“Samuel is dead. The church now is made up of a group of mostly bewildered people who aren’t even sure they want to be a church anymore, none of them a killer and none claiming apocalyptic visions. It’s over.”

“Maybe not,” Hollis said, staring down each of the endless, featureless hallways in turn. “Maybe we only thought it was over.”

“Hollis—”

“Shouldn’t there be a guide by now?”

“Maybe. Sometimes I have to walk a bit on my own before I find them. Or they find me.”

“I really don’t want to explore these hallways, Diana.”

“Hollis, this isn’t real. I mean, it’s like a dream; we aren’t here in the flesh. Nothing can hurt us here.”

“Nice try, but I know enough about your gray time to know that if our spirits—our consciousness—get trapped here, somehow cut off from our bodies, then we don’t come back.”

It was another reminder of something Diana didn’t like to think about, but she nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure that’s rare. Besides, I can handle it. I’ve been doing this nearly all my life, and I’ve never not found my way back out.”

“First time for everything.”

“You had to say it.”

“Sorry. Diana, I find your gray time unnerving enough in concept, but to be here in this place is … Let’s just say I’ve been in some majorly scary situations, and this one is right up there with the worst of them.”

“Okay, then, we leave. Now.” Diana gripped her fellow agent’s wrist and said, “Close your eyes and concentrate on the place you want to get back to. Your room in the B&B.”

Hollis wavered visibly. “We might learn something here—”

“Fear is weakness, and neither one of us wants to be weak here, trust me on that. We’re going back.”

Hollis closed her eyes and kept them closed as long as she could. Did her best to concentrate, to focus. But the stillness of the place, the faint odd smell that made her think of rotten eggs and maybe a place too close to hell, the cold that seeped into her very bones, all of it worked on her nerves so that she finally opened her eyes. “Diana?”

“Concentrate.”

“We’re still here.”

Diana opened her eyes and looked around. Steadily, she said, “Okay, then it looks like we have to stay long enough to see what we were brought here to see.”

“Great. That’s just great.”

Still seemingly utterly calm and comfortable in this unnatural place, Diana said, “I’m not going to let you go. We’re going to start walking until we find whatever it is we’re meant to find here.” She waited for Hollis’s nod, then chose a hallway, apparently at random, and began to walk.

Hollis didn’t question the choice. She was totally out of her element here and had to trust that Diana’s experience would lead them—and lead them safely.

Diana tried the doors one by one as they reached them, but each one was locked. The hallway continued to stretch before them, seemingly infinite, with door after door locked and impenetrable.

After a while Hollis began to be more conscious of her weariness than of her fear. Every step required more effort, a heaviness dragging at her. Her breathing grew more labored, and she felt a bit light-headed.

Diana, who appeared to be unaffected, looked back at her with a frown as she paused in the middle of the corridor. “I’ve got to get you out of here.”

“You won’t get an argument.” Hollis tried not to huff and puff as she said it.

Down the corridor a bit, one of the doors swung inward with a faint but audible creak.

“Oh, that can’t be good,” Hollis said.

“Maybe it’s the way out.”

“Yeah, right. They always make that mistake in horror movies. Let’s not, okay?”

Diana hesitated, then said, “My instincts are telling me to go that way, Hollis. To step through that doorway. All my experience is telling me the same thing. I’ve got to get you out, and right now that looks like the only viable option.”

Hollis allowed herself to be pulled along as Diana headed for the door, but said, “You should talk to Dorothy. Ruby slippers. Click your heels, there’s no place like home. All that jazz.”