Кей Хупер - Blood Ties

“Yeah, I need a reliable shortcut out. I get it,” Diana said. “So far, though, I’ve been at the mercy of the guides pretty much. And when I’ve had to get out, I’ve gotten out.”

“Wasn’t Quentin your lifeline a couple of times?”

“Yes. But I survived on my own doing this for twenty-some-odd years before he came along.”

“No need to bristle. I was just asking.” Hollis was staring at the partially open door they were approaching, most of her attention on that.

The way out?

Or a doorway leading to something infinitely worse?

Hollis did her best to tamp down a rising, unreasoning panic. Not that there was no reason to be afraid in this otherworldly place, this gray time, where everything was outside her experience. But the degree of fear was something she had never felt before. And considering everything she had experienced since a horrifically violent event had changed her life forever, that was an unsettling realization.

Why was that partially open door scaring the shit out of her? What were her own instincts or senses trying to tell her?

Diana said, not quite defensively, “I was not bristling. I just… I don’t want to have to depend on Quentin like that.”

“Okay, I get that, I do. Now, are you absolutely sure we need to walk through that door? Because I’ve got an awful feeling that whatever is waiting for us in there is not a good thing.” She intended to add a few stronger sentiments but stopped, frowning.

“Hollis?”

“That’s odd. Really odd. It feels almost like something is pulling at me.” She looked down at Diana’s hand on her arm, then shook her head. “Not you. Something… I’m sorry, Diana, I—” Hollis vanished, there one instant and gone the next, like a soap bubble.

Her first realization was that she was so tired, moving hardly seemed worth the effort. Breathing hardly seemed worth the effort. But Hollis did breathe and, eventually, did move. She fought to open her eyes. And fought to say something, if only in a whisper.

“Damn, that was—”

She was in her bed, that much she realized, if sluggishly. Strong arms were holding her, and against her cheek she could feel the steady beating of a heart.

Wait, that’s not right .

It felt right, or at least it felt good, felt safe and maybe even something better than safe, but it was unfamiliar.

“Hollis?”

She caught her breath, then concentrated all the strength she could muster into the effort required to push herself away, to sit up in the bed on her own and stare at him.

“Reese? What the hell?”

“I think that’s my question. Want to tell me where you were just now? Because a major part of you wasn’t here.” His hands remained on her shoulders for support.

She was sure it was for support.

“I was—wait. How did you get into my room?”

“I picked the lock.”

Hollis blinked at him, trying mightily to get her sluggish mind moving with some semblance of normalcy. That struggle was complicated by the fact that she could see his aura, and it was so unusual in color and full of what she took to be sparks of flickering power that all she wanted to do was stare at it. “Why?” she managed to ask finally.

“It was the fastest way to get in here.”

“That’s not what I meant. Why did you have to get in here?”

“You were in trouble,” he said, calm and matter-of-fact. His face was expressionless as always, though his pale blue eyes seemed to be darker than normal.

She blinked again. “I was?”

“You were afraid. Terrified. And weakening fast.”

“Wait,” she said again. “You were in my head?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what? Exactly?” She was feeling stronger. And she was feeling defensive.

DeMarco didn’t seem disturbed by that.

“I could sense that something was wrong in the house, that the energy here had changed. It felt like a threat.”

“And you’re hypersensitive to threats,” she remembered.

He nodded. “So I focused on that and realized the threat was directed at you. I knew you were in a bad place. I also knew you couldn’t get out of there alone. So I came to help.”

Hollis was trying to concentrate and finding it very difficult. “How did you know you could? I mean, where I was … That isn’t a place you just walk into, not unless you’re a medium. Hell, not unless you’re Diana.”

“Hollis—”

She felt a chill go through her and stared at him. “Diana couldn’t find her way out. She tried—and couldn’t. And where she is, that awful place…Oh, my God. What if he’s dead? What if he’s dead and back there torturing people all over again? Torturing souls this time? What if he has Diana strapped to that table now?”

Diana had no idea what had happened, but she didn’t have a good feeling about it. At all. She hesitated there where Hollis had vanished, trying to decide whether she should continue on through that invitingly half-open door or turn back and make a concerted effort to get herself out of here.

“Diana.”

She frowned at the grave young girl who had appeared as abruptly as Hollis had vanished. A guide she didn’t recognize, though that wasn’t at all unusual; she seldom encountered the same guide twice.

“Who’re you?”

“I’m Brooke.” The girl, who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen when she was alive, said reprovingly, “Diana, you aren’t supposed to bring living people into the gray time. It’s dangerous for them. And for you too.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yes. This time.”

“Look, I didn’t intend to bring Hollis in.”

“No. But you did once before. You brought her in deliberately. And that opened a channel.”

Diana didn’t like where this was heading. “You mean Hollis can turn up here whenever she likes?”

“No. I mean she can come here when you do. That she’ll be drawn here when you open the door. Because it’s her nature. She’s a medium. The last person you should have brought in here.”

“Shit.”

“It’s taken you a lifetime of experience to be able to come here and move around without losing all your strength. Without the constant danger of becoming trapped here. Hollis hasn’t had that. She could get lost here. She could die here.”

“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Diana—”

With a gesture that swept aside the subject for the moment, Diana said, “Brooke, why am I here? Hollis said this place was where a killer was… kept. On the living side. But that’s over. He isn’t here now and he can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

Brooke shook her head and took a step back, then turned toward the partially opened door. “Everything’s connected, Diana.”

A typically guidelike response.

Diana followed but said, “Nothing like this has ever happened here in the gray time, not to me. What is it you need me to do for you?”

“I need you to find the truth.”

“What truth? How you died?”

“No. It started long before I died. That’s what you have to find. The truth buried underneath it all.”

“Brooke, I don’t understand what you mean.”

“You will.” The young guide walked through the open door.

Diana paused, drew a deep breath, and then followed.

To her surprise, she found she was back at the B&B, though it took her a moment to recognize the hallway in which she stood. She looked around, frowning, but finally oriented herself.

It was the hallway outside her room.

Brooke was gone.

Still, Diana was all too aware that her “trip” into the gray time was not over. Because she was still there. The hallway was gray and cold, everything still and peculiarly one-dimensional. The little side table between her door and the one to Quentin’s room looked as if it was a part of the dull gray wall, and the prints hanging on the walls might have been grayish crayon smudges for all the depth they displayed.