Kay Hooper - Blood Dreams

"Yes. Something Miranda saw. But… it could have been either one of you. There was no way for us to be sure."

"Until I started hearing his voice in my head."

Without flinching, Bishop said, "At first I believed he'd choose Paris as one of his victims. When she wasn't a part of your vision dream, not beside you when she should have been, and once Miranda was out of the picture, that seemed the obvious answer."

"You were going to use her. Watch her, follow her. Wait for him to go after her. Bait on a hook."

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "But it seemed our best chance of catching him. It bothered me from the beginning that neither of you really fit his victim profile, but from the beginning here he was veering from that, at least in terms of coloring. I had to assume his ritual was changing in some fundamental way, and that meant it was possible he was choosing victims using some other criteria and then… making them fit. Both of you could be made to fit.

"You were still dreaming, and Paris was still missing from that dream. That vision dream. But then the killer's M.O. began to change in drastic, unpredictable ways, and quickly. Very quickly. That… neon crime scene. Being a little too obvious in stalking and photographing Marie Goode, a previous victim's jewelry left in her home, plus flowers."

"Too obvious," Dani said, half to herself. "Look at me, look what I'm doing."

Bishop nodded. "Not at all in character for the Boston serial. Not a kind of progression, a kind of evolution, I've ever seen before in a serial killer."

"And yet."

He nodded again. "And yet. We were sure this was the same killer even before we got here, positive in our own minds even without evidence to back that up. Since then, Hollis had seen Becky Huntley, later Shirley Arledge; both of them and Karen Norvell were the right physical type, matching the victims in Boston. And you were hearing that voice, a confirmation of our suspicion that we might be dealing with a psychic killer."

Marc said roughly, "How is that any kind of confirmation of anything?"

Dani looked at him. "I knew," she said simply. "I kept trying to tell myself that I wasn't really hearing an alien voice in my head, that it was just some… weird psychic fluke, a leftover echo from one of the doom dreams I couldn't remember anymore. Anything. Anything but the truth. That he was real. That he was here. And that he had found a way to connect with me."

"Which," Bishop said, "caused me to believe that you, not Paris, were his intended target."

"I kept walking into his trap," Dani said. "In the vision dream, no matter what else changed, that never did. I knew it was a trap, always, every time, and every time I walked into it."

"Yes, another sign that you were the one he was focused on. We didn't leave Paris unprotected," Bishop said. "But I thought he'd come after you."

Marc, his voice still harsh, said, "If you knew the bastard was psychic, why didn't you expect this kind of attack?"

"Because this kind of attack, a psychic attack, is more rare than hen's teeth," Bishop told him. "It just doesn't happen, especially when there's no blood connection. And he hadn't shown any sign that he had even attempted such a thing before."

"There was no way for you to know," Dani said, her fingers tightening in Marc's. "If our abilities worked that way, we'd have all the answers."

"I'd settle for just one or two I can hang my hat on," Marc told her. "Dammit, Dani, you nearly died. Nothing touched you, nobody laid a finger on you, and you nearly died ."

There was more than anxiety in his voice, and she heard it and wished she could wrap herself in it and in him and just stop everything else. For a while. Just a while. But the clock in her head refused to stop ticking, and even though she squeezed Marc's hand again, she forced herself to concentrate on what Bishop was saying.

"Which is why an SCU guardian is on the way here to keep watching. Over you."

"I don't need a guardian."

"Dani-"

"But someone else does, if I'm right. This guardian of yours, what's his ability?"

"Her ability. I choose guardians carefully; among other things, she has a shield she can extend around someone else."

"Psychic protection. Good. Then I need her to stand guard over Paris."

Bishop was frowning but nodded immediately. "Done."

He thought he owed her, Dani thought. And she wasn't at all sure he wasn't right about that.

She looked at Marc. "I have a hunch you won't be getting too far away from me for the duration, right?" It was more than a hunch.

She knew.

Marc was nodding. "Bet your ass. But I'm no psychic guardian, Dani. I can't protect you from another attack like this one."

She wasn't so sure about that, but all she said was, "I think he went after Paris a lot harder than he did me. And I think I know why. I'm not sure about the timing of everything, but I get the motive. I think. Anyway, unless the vision dream changes drastically the next time around, I'm there at the end. Paris… never was." She looked back at Bishop. "Like you said."

He was silent.

"But Miranda was there. Or, at least, I thought she was, even if I never actually saw her. Which, I suppose, should have told me more than it did." Dani didn't pause to explain that, instead asking, "Is she safe?"

Bishop nodded. "I took the threat very seriously. She's as safe as I can possibly make her. She has exceptionally strong shields and is guarded around the clock by other psychics with strong shields. We have several guardians in the unit."

Dani remembered something else. "You're connected, the two of you. Telepathically."

Bishop didn't hesitate. "Yes."

"I'd close that connection, if I were you."

"Easier said than done." He shrugged. "We can narrow the link, but the only thing we've found to shut it down completely severs it."

"Death?"

"Death."

She made a mental note to ask for specifics on that story if they all survived, and said, "Well, my advice is to narrow the link as much as you can. He used the one between Paris and me to attack both of us, and I have a hunch he didn't use all his strength to do it. Hollis warned me just in time, and I was able to deflect him at least a little. But even though my connection with Paris is as much blood as it is psychic, it's also an old one; it hasn't been active in any real sense for years. If yours and Miranda's is as… deep as I believe it is, he could use it against the two of you. He knows you're here, so all he has to do is follow the connection back to Miranda."

Half under his breath, Marc said, "You make it sound like a road."

"It is, psychically speaking," Dani told him.

Bishop's mind was moving along a different pathway. "Dani, what do you know about this killer that I don't know?"

She drew a deep breath, and said, "If I'm right, I know the one thing he really, really doesn't want you to know. We're not just dealing with a vicious serial killer who's psychic. This enemy is your enemy. This trap I've seen from the beginning? The one we all walk into even knowing what it is? It's a trap set for you."

"I'M SORRY ABOUT PARIS," Hollis said to Jordan as they waited in the conference room for the others to arrive. "Yeah, so am I." He shook his head. "Jesus, it was creepy being with her when it happened. Remember when I said I didn't know if it was a relief or a regret, me not being psychic? Well, I've made up my mind. It's a relief."

Hollis smiled wryly. "We are more vulnerable to negative energy than a nonpsychic is, and it has been a problem in the past. But attacks like that one-they're rare. Very rare. We just haven't found many psychics who can affect other psychics in even minor ways."

"No Jedi mind control, huh?"