Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

But in other beds, people lay still and silent, with machines beeping quietly nearby. Most were just sleeping or unconscious, she knew that. Even then, she knew that.

Some were gone. Their bodies lay there and breathed, their heartbeats recorded by those beeping machines, but the people who had once been inside those bodies were gone.

And they were never coming back.

Diana had known that, with utter certainty. Beyond a small child's ability to communicate the knowledge, beyond words, beyond reason, she had known exactly what had happened to those people.

Someone had opened a door, perhaps even they themselves. And now they were trapped on the other side, unable to return to their physical selves.

Diana's terror had been deep and wordless, but it had been nothing compared to what she had felt when her father led her into one of the rooms. When she saw her mother lying still and silent in a bed. When she heard the machines beeping quietly.

When she understood.

"Diana?"

She blinked and stared at Missy's young, solemn face. "My God. It happened to her. She was... gone. Before Daddy or the doctors ever realized, a long time before they said it, before her body finally stopped, she was gone."

"Yes."

"I didn't... why didn't I remember that?"

"You were too afraid to remember."

This time, Diana understood. "Because I knew I could do what she'd been able to."

Missy nodded. "You were afraid you couldn't control it, that you'd be lost on this side just like she was. And you couldn't control it, then. You were too little, you didn't know how. And she wasn't there to help you understand. No one was. Not then."

"Until now."

"There are no medicines fogging your mind now. And he's here to push you to see what is. To help you understand. You needed that. But you're still afraid. That's why you argue with him when he wants to talk about it."

"I have reason to be afraid, don't I? You said yourself you didn't know whether I could be trapped on this side. But we both know it's possible, so—"

"There are worse things than being trapped here, Diana."

Tha-thum.

Tha-thum.

It wasn't a sound so much as a sensation, and shocking in this gray place of stillness and silence.

Quentin had asked her if she had ever felt or heard something like a heartbeat inside her, and Diana had denied it because she hadn't remembered. But now she recognized it instantly. She remembered it, an echo from her childhood and from somewhere inside her, someplace deeper than instinct.

She knew this.

Tha-thum.

Tha-thum.

It was vast and dark and smelled of damp earth and rotten eggs. It was so cold it burned, and the blackness of it stole every flicker of light. And it was...inevitable. Ancient. Beyond powerful. So overwhelming she felt weak and terrified.

Tha-thum.

Tha-thum.

"It's coming," Missy said. "It's ready to kill again."

"You mean him, don't you? That murderer."

"He stopped being a person even before they buried him alive. Now there's only... it. And you know what it is."

Diana did. That was the terrifying thing. She did.

"What will it look like this time?" she whispered. "Who will it take over?"

"It almost always looks like someone we trust, doesn't it?" Missy turned and again led the way down the long, gray corridor. "This way. Hurry, Diana."

Because she couldn't do anything else, Diana followed, frightened of what was coming and uneasily aware of the growing distance between the part of her taking this journey and the part of her left behind with Quentin. An anxiety that only increased when she realized this corridor was unfamiliar and that she had no idea how to find her way back to him.

Quentin prowled the lounge restlessly, his gaze returning again and again to Diana's face. Her eyes were closed, her face peaceful, and if he hadn't known better, he would have believed her to be asleep.

She wasn't sleeping, though.

A room service waiter had come and gone, but the coffee Stephanie had sent up sat untouched on the tray. Quentin didn't want coffee, though he could have done with something stronger. Something a lot stronger.

"Don't touch me. There's something I have to — Just don't touch me. Wait."

Wait. Just wait. How long was he supposed to wait? How long was it safe for her to be... wherever she was?

She was in the gray time, he assumed. He wasn't certain what had triggered the event, unless it had been a combination of Diana's troubled emotional state after finding out about Missy and the storm rumbling outside. Probably that, he thought. The storm was certainly scrambling all his senses, and given what had happened during the last one, this one had undoubtedly enhanced hers.

It was his own undependable senses that kept him from reaching out to her now, touching her, anchoring her. Even more so than usual during a storm, he felt almost disconnected from the sensory input his body and mind were accustomed to. Everything was muffled, distant, beyond his reach.

All he knew for sure was that what Diana was doing was dangerous. And necessary.

That was what he couldn't get past, that strong certainty that she had to do this, that it was important. And that if he interfered, if he yanked her back from wherever she had to be right now, he would regret it.

The question was, could he trust even his own deepest certainties? Could he trust his instincts?

Because if he couldn't, and he waited too long before trying to draw her back... she could be beyond his or anyone's reach.

"She's done this before," he heard himself mutter as he paced and watched her. "For years, she's done it, decades. I wasn't there then, and she got back without my help. Without anyone's help. She can get back now."

If she was as strong as he believed she was.

If she was strong enough.

Quentin hated this. He hated waiting, hated standing by with nothing to do except worry. He'd been forced to do it more than once in the past and, in fact, suspected that Bishop had from time to time put him in that position quite deliberately in order to teach him some patience.

Confronted with Quentin's suspicion, Bishop hadn't denied it. But he hadn't confirmed it either.

Par for the course.

In any case, if a lesson had been intended, Quentin had yet to learn it. It went against his deepest instincts, his very nature, to allow someone else to take the active role while he waited around twiddling his thumbs. Especially when that person was, despite her strength, damaged and fragile and someone he cared about—

A loud crash of thunder sounded almost deafening in his ears the brilliant flash of lightning so blinding that for an instant he was totally in the dark and abruptly alone inside his own head. Except for...

Now. Hurry. Before it's too late.

The storm had his senses so scrambled that he thought it was a wonder he could even hear that whisper in his mind. Or maybe it had been whispering for a long time now, and he'd been unable to hear it.

Suddenly afraid he had waited too long, Quentin hurried back to Diana's side and took her cool hand in his, holding it strongly.

Nothing. No reaction, no response. She sat there, still and silent, her eyes closed, face peaceful.

He had never been called upon to be someone's lifeline, but Quentin had learned long ago that the mind could do remarkable things if properly motivated and harnessed.

Concentrating, fiercely closing out the distraction of the storm, he fixed all his will on reaching Diana and pulling her back to him.

“Missy, where are you taking me?" The uneasiness Diana felt was increasing, building, and she had the sudden, frightened notion that this spirit of her supposed sister might be far less benevolent than Diana had assumed her to be. "There's something I have to show you."