Кей Хупер - Blood Ties

She looked at Quentin’s door for a moment, tempted, then told herself she had already been here too long. Her legs had that heavy sensation she recognized, and it was a bit harder to breathe than it should have been. She might not tire easily in the gray time but she did tire eventually, and when she did, the progression toward exhaustion was rapid.

She needed to leave.

With still little idea of why she had been brought into the gray time and feeling very frustrated about it, she went to her own bedroom door, opened it, and went inside.

Except it wasn’t her room. It was Quentin’s.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed and rose to smile at her. “Diana. I’ve been waiting for you.”

She stared at him, aware of the niggling sense of something not right, something… off. “Have you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Why?”

“You know why. We belong together. I’ve been waiting for you to realize that. To accept it.”

Diana was straining to listen, and with more than her ears, but it was difficult because she was growing colder and colder. And her strength felt as though it was draining away. As though someone had pulled a plug.

“You have to accept it,” he said in a reasonable tone as he came toward her. “It’s the way things have to be, Diana. I know what’s best for you. You can trust me.”

“No.” She fumbled behind her, trying desperately to find the door handle. “No, I can’t trust you.”

“Diana—”

“You’re not Quentin,” she said.

EVEN AS SHE SAID IT, his face began to change, to distort into something she instinctively recognized as evil, and the only thing Diana knew for certain was that she did not want to see what it would ultimately become.

Who it would become.

She scrabbled frantically behind her for the door handle, and her mind reached as well, everything inside her reached, for the way back, a way out, for safety.

Warm, strong fingers closed over hers.

Diana opened her eyes with a gasp to find herself sitting up in her bed, in her room.

She was staring at Quentin’s face. Not gray and colorless, not a façade over something unspeakably evil, but warm and alive and Quentin .

He was sitting on the edge of the bed facing her, both his hands holding both of hers, watching her with that steady, rock-solid intentness that made her feel so safe and yet, on some deep and nameless level, so terribly uneasy.

“What happened?” she asked, unsurprised by the drained sound of her own voice.

“You tell us.”

Diana looked quickly around to find that Hollis was sitting on the foot of the other bed in the room, wearing the somewhat sexy nightgown she had worn in the gray time. Except now she was also wearing one of the B&B’s thick terry-cloth courtesy robes over it. She was paler than normal, and the skin around her blue eyes bore a shadowy, bruised appearance that made her look very fragile and very tired.

DeMarco leaned almost negligently back against the dresser a couple of feet behind her, dressed as he had been that day, in jeans and a white shirt. He looked wide awake and not in the least tired.

It was Hollis who had spoken.

“We were in the gray time,” she said. “You and me.”

Quentin said, “Something we’ll talk about later.”

Diana knew he was bothered and knew why, so she kept her gaze on Hollis. “I remember,” she said slowly.

Hollis nodded. “We were in a… a very bad place.”

“The hallways. All the doors. You said it had been an asylum.”

“Yeah. What happened after I was pulled out?”

“How were you pulled out?”

Hollis sent a somewhat rueful glance over her shoulder at DeMarco. “Reese thought I was in trouble.”

“I didn’t think you were, I knew you were,” he said imperturbably.

Diana looked at him. “And so you just… pulled her out?”

“It seemed the thing to do.”

Diana studied that coldly handsome, impassive face, then returned her gaze to Quentin’s much warmer and more expressive one. “That’s… interesting.”

“I thought so,” Quentin said. But he was clearly unwilling to follow that interesting tangent, since he immediately added, “But what I want to know is how you two ended up at that old asylum. Especially since it’s been razed to the ground.”

Startled, Diana said, “It has? It doesn’t exist anymore?”

“After what happened there, the property owners barely waited until all the evidence had been collected and it was declared no longer a viable crime scene before they sent in the bulldozers. The buildings were destroyed, and everything that could be burned was. The rest was buried, and buried deep. Last I heard, the plan was to haul tons of topsoil to the spot and plant trees for the forestry service. Nobody wants to build any other structure there. Ever.”

She frowned. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been taken in the gray time to a place that doesn’t exist.”

DeMarco pointed out, “You do call it the gray time —not the gray place . Must be a reason for that. It could be out of sync with our time, even be another dimension. There are plenty of theories about that sort of thing—that time isn’t as linear as we think it is, that other dimensions exist.”

Diana gently pulled one hand from Quentin’s grasp to rub the nape of her neck. She felt stiff and very tired, and there was a fuzziness to her thoughts that made it difficult for her to think straight. ‘Okay, sure, it’s possible. Maybe even probable; it’s certainly something I’ve considered before. But why that place—in any time or dimension—if what happened there is over and done with?”

“Maybe it was my fault,” Hollis said. “What happened there…” Her eyes slid to the side, as if she would have looked back at DeMarco, but she didn’t turn her head. “It wasn’t all that long ago, and with back-to-back cases since, I haven’t had a lot of time to … process… everything. I suppose it’s possible the place was so much on my mind that we were both pulled there. I still have nightmares about it.”

It was Quentin’s turn to frown. “I don’t blame you. But what I know about Diana’s abilities tells me that if you two found yourselves in that place, it’s not because of old memories but because there’s some connection to what we’re doing now. This investigation. This killer.”

Hollis kept her gaze on Diana and repeated, “What happened after I was pulled out?”

“Nothing unusual—at first. A guide appeared. A young girl, maybe thirteen or so. Said her name was Brooke.”

DeMarco said, very evenly, “Brooke.” His face didn’t change, but his weight shifted slightly and he crossed his arms over his chest. As if he needed to move.

Quentin sent a quick glance back at DeMarco and then said, “Assuming it’s the same girl, Brooke was one of Samuel’s… sacrifices. Though we never found a body, there was an eyewitness to her death. From what that witness said, it was a horrible way to die.”

The reminder jogged Diana’s memory. In addition to reading all the reports, she had talked to Quentin about the case and knew that DeMarco had spent more than two years undercover inside that “church.” She couldn’t imagine how much strength that must have taken, to pretend for so long to be someone else without losing who you really were. Even more, to be forced by the role to be unable to act to protect innocent victims. Victims you might well have known. Might have been close to.

Like Brooke.

“I’m sorry,” Diana said to him.

DeMarco nodded slightly but didn’t say anything.

“What did Brooke say—or do?” Quentin asked.

Diana concentrated on remembering. “Typically cryptic, like most guides. I asked her why I was there, in that place, because Hollis had been so—had reacted so strongly to it. So I asked why there, if everything was over and that place was no longer important, no longer mattered. Brooke said everything was connected.”