Кей Хупер - Blood Ties

Like something in the movies. It was incredibly bright and incredibly loud, with bits of still-burning debris showering the street and the sound of glass tinkling almost musically as shards of it fell.

Entirely forgetting that he was a deputy—even if only a part-time one—he stood there in the middle of the street and watched the show. Watched the sheriff appear from somewhere and begin trying to shepherd people back toward the buildings. Watched the feds arrive, not even out of breath despite running several blocks, and while one of them moved the undamaged—or at least unexploded—SUV away from the burning one, the others joined in the efforts to get people off the street.

It occurred to Dale only then that the danger might not be over, and he found himself pondering that with a curious detachment. Nothing had hit the SUV; he had been watching, after all. It had just… blown sky-high.

Which meant it must have had explosives in it.

A bomb. And that meant that somebody had deliberately set explosives in order to destroy the SUV. And maybe a healthy chunk of Main Street.

Maybe even a few people.

That was when Dale wondered, for the first time, if maybe the show wasn’t quite over yet.

He didn’t even have time to really get scared about that before feeling a tremendous punch to his back, as though a two-by-four had slammed into him. He saw his sweatshirt sort of balloon out from his chest, the pale gray material turning scarlet, and a strange-tasting hot liquid bubbled up in his mouth.

He didn’t actually see the bullet. But as the world tilted crazily and the pavement reared up to meet him, Deputy Dale McMurry realized he had been shot.

And it wasn’t anything at all like the movies.

Diana wasn’t quite sure where she was at first. Oh, she knew she was in the gray time; that was unmistakable. Everything was gray and still and cold and silent. And there was the unsettling odor, faint though it was, of rotten eggs.

But where was she within—or outside—the gray time?

She looked around herself with a frown and finally recognized the place as, oddly, the cramped conference room at the sheriff’s department, where they had sat the evening before, speculating about the case.

And that was odd because she almost always began a visit to the gray time in the room in which she had been sleeping or had otherwise managed to put herself into a trancelike state.

Almost always.

Still frowning, she left that cramped room and moved through the building toward the front door. The empty desks, the round clock—handless and numberless—high on the wall, the silent TV and telephones she passed, all held the eerie qualities of the gray time: the lack of depth or dimension, the lack of color or light or shadow.

She wondered if she would ever truly get used to it.

Probably not.

Probably not supposed to .

Because even without putting it to the test, Diana believed what she had told the others, that the gray time was not a place or time for the living and that no living thing would be able to exist there except temporarily.

She walked out the front door of the building and paused, surprised but not sure why. Main Street, town of Serenade. The street looked like streets in the gray time always looked. Like every place in the gray time looked. Eerie. There were vehicles parked here and there, including the two SUVs left for them the night before.

No people, of course.

The gray twilight surrounded her. She felt cold and absently rubbed her arms, even though she knew it wouldn’t help. The presence of the two vehicles bugged her, though she wasn’t sure why.

“Okay, so where’s my guide?” she asked aloud. “I don’t want to wander around in here—out here—with no idea where I’m supposed to go or what I’m supposed to see. Come on, a little help here.”

As usual, her voice sounded oddly flat, almost hollow.

After what felt like a long minute or so, she shrugged and continued down the walkway toward the street. She walked around the nearest SUV, sparing it no more than a glance as she passed.

She paused in the street, wondering where the hell she was supposed to go with no guide—

“Diana.”

Finally. She turned to find the same guide who had greeted her the previous night.

“Brooke. Okay why am I here? I don’t remember falling asleep and, besides, isn’t it the middle of the day?”

“Is it?”

“Please, let’s not do the cryptic guide thing, okay?”

The little girl nodded gravely. “Okay. You came here because you had to, Diana.”

“And why is that?”

“I need you to concentrate.”

“On what? And why?”

“On Quentin. Reach for him, Diana.”

“Before I’ve done whatever it is I’ve come here to do?”

“This is what you’ve come here to do.”

Diana frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It will. Reach for Quentin. Hold on to the connection the two of you share.”

Deciding to humor the guide, Diana thought about Quentin, thought about reaching for him. But even as she did, she knew the effort wasn’t a complete one, because she was wary of that connection and used it only when she had to.

There was a sudden flash, as if lightning brightened the twilight for an instant. And for that instant, Diana had the sense of color and noise and life. Of people around her, and movement.

Just for an instant.

Something very similar had happened nearly a year before, when she first met Quentin. When the connection between them began to form, or they both recognized that it had been there for a long time. She still wasn’t quite sure which it was.

When she began to consciously remember the gray time for the first time in her adult life.

“Brooke, I don’t—”

“Diana, you have to try harder.”

Diana was beginning to feel cold, and not because of the normal chill of the gray time. She concentrated, this time reaching for Quentin with more focus, more will.

A lightning flash, this one lasting several seconds. The noise was almost deafening, a roar, the sound of thudding feet and loud voices, a curiously musical tinkling, like wind chimes. Or maybe it was glass breaking and falling to strike some solid surface like concrete or asphalt. A wave of heat swept over her, yet she still felt cold.

Almost at her feet, a young man she vaguely recognized lay on the street. A woman and a man knelt on either side of the young man, and they were pressing what looked like somebody’s yellow shirt against his chest. The yellow material was turning scarlet, and the young man, more blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, stared up into the sky with a look she recognized.

He was already dead.

The lightning flash was gone, and she was in the gray time again with only Brooke.

“That poor kid,” she said. “He’s one of the deputies, I think. What happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Am I supposed to?” A nameless unease crawled over her, cold and slithering.

“Reach for Quentin, Diana. You have to.”

She was even more reluctant now, but not for the same reasons. Now she wasn’t afraid of the connection. She was afraid of what the connection would show her.

“You have to,” Brooke insisted.

Diana braced herself inwardly and then concentrated, reached for Quentin again.

The bright daylight almost hurt her eyes for a moment or two, and the noise was still deafening, with people running about and shouting, and the SUV burning, and—

She turned her head a little, more in response to the noise and brightness than out of conscious intent, and that was when she saw. She took a step, and then another. And felt her legs go weak.

Yards away from where the young man had fallen lay another bleeding body, surrounded by other frantic people trying to stop the bleeding, trying by sheer force of will to hold life in a vessel even her layman’s eye recognized as too damaged to sustain life on its own.