Kay Hooper - Blood Sins

"Not unnecessary risks."

"And how do you define unnecessary when a hundred men, women, and children are in danger?"

Sawyer didn't like the corner he'd been backed into. "Okay, then let's talk about effectiveness. There's no sense putting yourself at risk when you can't be effective in a dangerous situation. And from what I saw at the Compound, I'm thinking whatever is going on up there is not something you can handle without unnecessary risk. To you and possibly to everyone else."

"What's he talking about?" Hollis asked.

Sawyer continued to look steadily at Tessa. "What the hell happened to you at the Compound? There at the end, you were so distracted it was visible. As if you were listening to somebody else."

"Maybe I was," Tessa said.

Hollis was looking at her with a frown. "I just assumed that when you opened yourself up at the pet cemetery, all the pain and grief there overwhelmed you."

"It started before we got to the cemetery," Sawyer told her. "She was a little scatty."

"Scatty?"

"Distracted, like I said. I don't know what it was, but something affected her when we left that outdoor pulpit. Maybe sooner."

Tessa drew a breath and let it out. "Still here, guys." Hollis's frown deepened. "Tessa, did you consciously drop your shields at that cemetery?"

She didn't want to answer, but Tessa knew she had to. "No. I opened a door, just a little bit. But I didn't drop my shields."

"Then something was affecting you? Something that got through your shields?"

"Maybe."

"Tessa."

"All right, yes. I heard That same presence as before was in my mind. Not the dark one; the one who said, I see you . Only this time, it was warning me. To be careful. To not let my feelings overwhelm me, because he Samuel, I assumegets in that way. He makes people feel and gets in that way."

"How did you feel?"

It was Tessa's turn to frown as she tried to sort through the fragments of memory and emotion. "It's hard to separate things. At first I felt uneasy, as if someone was watching me. Sawyer felt the same thing."

He nodded when Hollis looked at him. "Tessa said maybe it was the cameras, butit didn't feel like that." He hesitated, then added, "Cameras pointed at me feel a certain way. This was something else."

Tessa nodded. "I felt a tugging, a pull, and when I looked around, I saw something flash at the edge of the pet cemetery. Once we got there, the pain and grief of the people, especially the children, started to overwhelm me. That's when that voice in my mind warned me to shut the door before he got in. So I shut it. Too hard, I guess."

Sawyer frowned at her. "That's why you went out? You did it to yourself?"

"Well, self-preservation. You asked me if I'd know if I was under the sort of attack Samuel is capable of; the insistence in that voice told me I had to protect myself, and fast. So I did."

"We're in trouble," Hollis said.

"Not necessarily."

"Tessa, you were chosen for this assignment partly for the strength of your shields and the fact that you don't read as psychic. No matter who that insistent voice belongs to, it shouldn't have been able to come through to you so clearly, not through what was in effect only a chink in your shields. And you shouldn't have been overwhelmed by the emotions of those people, not with your shields up. At all . That's new, we both know that, and the new stuff is the hardest to handle. We are definitely in trouble."

"I was tired and distracted before I even went up there, Hollis, and you know it. I felt like I was being pulled long before I reached the Compound. You said I connected to someone or something up there yesterday, and I agree." She reached for the piece of paper lying on the table in front of her and looked at it again, read it again.

Please, take care of Lexie.

can't protect her anymore.

Father's started watching me.

"This was addressed to me. Even more, it was placed in Sawyer's Jeep, not my car, when no one could have logically known I wouldn't be leaving the Compound the same way I came."

Hollis shook her head. "You didn't mention meeting any of the kids yesterday, not by name."

"I was introduced to a whole group of them pretty much at once. I barely spoke to them beyond saying hi. Until you told us about seeing Andrea's spirit and what she said about Ruby, I didn't remember picking up any names. But Ruby was there, a dark girl with really pale gray eyes. I think she's the one who touched me, physically touched me, and I'm almost positive she was carrying this bag."

"Almost?" Sawyer stared at her. "Wouldn't it have been obvious?"

Tessa thought about it and frowned again. "Now that you mention it, it should have, shouldn't it? A big bag for a little girl to be carrying, and unusual since they were all in that playground near the church. None of the other kids was carrying any sort of bag or backpack. But Ruby was. I have to concentrate to remember actually seeing it, but when I concentrate, it's there, clear as day."

Softly, Hollis said, "You need her help to stop him."

"Excuse me?" Sawyer said.

"It's what Andrea said. 'You need her help to stop him.' And she was talking about Ruby."

"How could a twelve-year-old girl help stop someone like Samuel?"

Tessa looked at him for a moment, then returned her gaze to Hollis. "Maybe that's why Sarah was so convinced the children were important."

"Who's Sarah?" Sawyer asked.

Knowing that would be a long and probably difficult conversation, Tessa chose to postpone it. "I'll tell you about Sarah later. Right now I'm more worried about Ruby. Hollis, you said Sarah had managed to get three of the kids out, right?"

Hollis nodded.

"Latents. But what if she was picking up the strength of an active psychic and didn't know it, because Ruby has the ability to obscure or disguise what's real?"

"That would be a hell of an ability," Hollis said slowly. "And one I've never heard of outside science fiction."

"But possible?"

"Sure, anything's possible. But how likely would it be that Samuel could miss something that unique?"

"Maybe because it's unique. Or maybe because he hadn't been paying attention. Until lately." Tessa looked down at the note and read the last chilling phrase out loud. " Father's started watching me."

"Christ," Sawyer said. "She's twelveshe's hitting puberty."

Hollis drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. " Bastard . If he's looking for another good source to tap, the chaos of adolescence also produces an enormous amount of energy. Sexually and otherwise. It's when a high percentage of latents become active for the first timeusually because of some kind of trauma. Just guessing, I'd say the simultaneous death of almost all the pets and livestock in the Compound would be very traumatic for a little girl. Especially one who loved her dog."

"She had to protect Lexie," Tessa told them. "So, instinctively, she did. Some kind of energy shield, for sure. But more than that, she must have tapped into her latent ability to hide or disguise an object. And she's been able to continue hiding Lexie all this time, hiding her in plain sight, from everyone in that Compound, including Samuel. She must have thought they were safe. Until she realized he was beginning to look at her the way he looked at the older women. Until she understood."

Quentin Hayes had been a seer most of his life but preferred the official SCU designation of precog or precognitive instead, since the ability to actually see the future was very new to him. Until he had crossed paths with an extremely powerful medium in an extremely dangerous situation not so long ago, all he had been able to claim was an occasional precognitive awareness that something was about to happen.