Blood Dreams (19 page)

Dani and Marc followed, but she had to ask, “Do you believe it’s his fault?”

Roxanne paused for only an instant, looking back over her shoulder—

And for an instant, Dani saw Paris instead.

And then Hollis.

And then Miranda.

And when Roxanne replied, she sounded like an eerie blend of four different voices. “He played God one time too many. He thinks he can stop the prophecy. And we’re paying the price for his arrogance.”

We’re paying the price.

We are.

Prophecy? What prophecy?

Dani held on to Marc’s hand even tighter as they followed the other woman. She could hardly breathe, her throat tighter despite the fact that, as they reached the rear half of the building, the smoke wasn’t nearly as thick. They very quickly discovered, in the back of what might once have been a small office, a door that opened smoothly and silently to reveal a stairwell.

The stairwell was already lighted.

“Bingo,” Roxanne said.

Useless to warn them. We all know it’s a trap. Why are we just walking into it?

Wait.

I know this. The trap was the whole idea.

It wasn’t about killing women. Not here, not in Venture. That was only…window dressing.

That was the first part of the trap, to lure…us.

Us. Bishop because he’s the threat and had to be…disarmed. Paris because he wanted her ability. And now he knows it’s mine, so the trap is for me.

This trap was always for me.

Roxanne shifted her weapon to a steady two-handed grip and sent Dani and Marc a quick look. “Ready?”

Dani didn’t spare the energy to wonder how anyone on earth could ever be ready for this. Instead, she just nodded.

Marc squeezed her hand, then released it and took a half step closer to Roxanne, saying to Dani, “Stay behind me. You’re the only one of us without a gun.”

“She doesn’t need a gun,” Roxanne said.

At least I know now why I don’t need a gun. If she means what I think she means.

“Maybe not, but I still want her behind me,” Marc said in a tone that not many would have argued with. “Let’s go if we’re going.”

Roxanne had only taken one step when a thunderous crash sounded behind them and a new wave of almost intolerable heat threatened to shove them bodily into the stairwell.

The roof was falling in.

They exchanged glances and then, without emotion, Roxanne said, “Close the door behind us.”

Oh, shit.

It always ends this way.

Dani gathered all the courage she could find, and if her response wasn’t as emotionless as the other woman’s, at least it was steady.

“Right,” she said, and closed the door behind them as they began their descent into hell.

21

Monday, October 13
8:30
A.M.

T
HIS IS ONE MORNING
when I definitely need more than donuts, with or without sprinkles,” Hollis said with a yawn as she climbed out of Jordan’s cruiser in the parking lot of a small, moderately busy café one street back from Main in downtown Venture. “I just can’t pull all-nighters like I used to.”

“Join the club.” He shut the door on his side and stretched to ease stiff muscles, then glanced toward the café and groaned. “Oh, hell, here comes Matt Condrey.”

“Friend of yours?” she asked, amused as she watched a sturdy bearded man about the same age as the chief deputy weaving among cars to quickly make his way toward Jordan.

“It’s a myth that men don’t gossip,” Jordan said, mostly from the side of his mouth. “Because here comes the worst gossip in Prophet County. Bet you ten bucks the first words out of his mouth will be to ask why we haven’t arrested anybody for the murders the public isn’t supposed to know about yet.”

“I don’t think I’ll take that bet. Meet you inside.”

“Yeah, leave me to my doom. Thanks very much. You’re a cruel woman.” He raised his voice to add, “Hey, Matt. Something I can do for you?”

“Jordan, you and the sheriff have got to do something about those teenagers parking out at my place every weekend. I mean, I understand hormones, but…”

I should have taken the bet.
Still amused, Hollis set out on her own wandering path among the cars and around the building to the side entrance. It was not the most obvious location for a “front” door and was in fact one that would have hurt most businesses, but Jordan had told her this place made the best biscuits and gravy in four counties—and in the South, that was saying something.

Customers find your door when they really, really like what you’re selling them, even if you make them walk around overgrown shrubbery and wedge themselves in between improbably placed stacks of lumber, presumably for some reno project as yet unstarted.

“Ow!” And get stung by bees—

Hollis stared at the object she found sticking in her thigh and for an instant was aware of nothing except total incomprehension.

Then she got it.

She had time only to wish with all her heart and soul that she had taken the bet with Jordan and remained with him back at the car to collect her winnings.

And then the world spun wildly on its axis, and everything went black.

D
ani turned off Marc’s portable phone and set it back on its base, seeing her fingers tremble. “Dammit. Bishop said Hollis and Jordan had gone out to get breakfast. Jordan called in not two minutes ago. Somebody stopped him in the restaurant’s parking lot to ask about something totally unimportant. Hollis went on. When he got inside, she was just…gone. No evidence of a struggle. Nobody saw anything.”

“It never fails to amaze me how nobody sees anything when something completely extraordinary happens,” Marc said, handing her a cup of coffee. “And yet how many UFOs do you suppose get reported every year?”

Dani appreciated the effort but refused to be sidetracked. “Why the hell didn’t I see this coming? Oh, yeah, I forgot—
I did
.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Marc, I should have known how it would go. The vision kept changing, and every time the signposts were all but jumping up and down to get my attention. The different watches, warning me from the very beginning that time was important, that there was less of it than I thought. The baited trap, inescapable, unavoidable, waiting for us at the end of this. The sequence of potential victims baiting that trap, shifting easily no matter what I did, as if it hardly mattered which of them was there, Miranda or Paris or Hollis—”

“What?” he asked when she broke off.

“That was the biggest signpost of all,” she said slowly. “And I kept missing it.”

“Dani, what are you talking about?”

“The bait. It was Miranda even after Bishop made sure she was out of reach, even though it never felt right to me. That was bait for him, to keep him in this—and separated from Miranda. His half of the trap. That’s why he always leaves us in the vision dream, why he always goes alone into one side of the trap.”

“Separated from everybody else,” Marc said. “Weakened strategically.”

“Exactly. That’s partly what the trap—what this whole setup—was designed to do.”

“And the other part? The other side?”

“The side with the teeth. The side intended to capture prey for a psychic killer with his eye on someone else’s abilities.”

“Why a trap at all?” Marc said. “Why not just take what he wanted? The attack on you and Paris was nearly successful, so why not try that again?”

She frowned. “I think…I feel…his abilities are limited, just like every psychic’s are. So for him to be able to steal someone else’s abilities, maybe the conditions have to be right. Electromagnetic fields. Energy. That’s how he was able to try to take Paris’s abilities, because there was a storm threatening, and he was able somehow to tap into that. He needed the energy.

“And that explains the storm in my vision dream. It’s part of the trap. He needs energy outside himself in order to attack any of us.”

“It makes sense,” Marc admitted. “Must have frustrated the hell out of him that the weather didn’t cooperate. He leaves Boston knowing the hunters are on his trail, comes here to take Paris’s abilities—and can’t. You know, that could have been what triggered your first vision dream. He tried to get at Paris.”

“And wasn’t strong enough to register with either of us—consciously,” Dani agreed. “But my subconscious got it. And my abilities took over, trying to warn me. While he was figuring out what he needed, I was dreaming about a trap.”

“Maybe that’s why the murders here were so vicious,” Marc offered. “That was him, just pissed. No rain for weeks, no storms—no energy to attack in the way he needed to attack to get what he wanted.”

“And once his attack was delayed, then he knew he’d have to do something about the psychic hunters on his trail. I was right. He knew Bishop would be here, probably wanted him to be here. Bishop—specifically him. And specifically here,
with
Miranda far away and as separated from Bishop as she could be while both of them are still alive.”

“That connection of theirs?”

“That connection,” Dani said. “Like Paris and me, Bishop has another half. Together, he and Miranda are incredibly powerful. Alone, either one is a lot more vulnerable. The killer had to know Bishop would be on his trail. And because the bastard had to wait for conditions to be right, or wait to be able to create them himself, then he had to make damn sure his enemy was as weakened as possible.”

“So he took away Bishop’s other half. Without even lifting a finger against her.”

“I think so.” Dani drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I think even Bishop has been playing into the killer’s hands, reacting exactly as he was expected to react.”

Marc was frowning. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t it your vision that
caused
Bishop to make sure his wife was protected and far away?”

“Yeah,” Dani replied. “How about that. It’s like Miranda says. Premonitions are tricky beasts.”

I
t was the chill that woke her, Hollis realized. She lay on a cold table in a room that was cold in every sense. She didn’t open her eyes at first, because she was very afraid she knew what she would see and wanted to delay being forced to deal with that.

She had faced death more than once, and it wasn’t getting any easier.

I’ve got to get a different job.

What had happened? She’d gone with Jordan to get breakfast, and…and what? She dimly recalled a distraction but couldn’t remember what it was. Then something stung her leg, she reached down, and she found herself holding some kind of dart.

Shit. No wonder there were no signs of a struggle where the women disappeared. He’s using drugs.

And just like with all the other women, Hollis had apparently been exactly where the killer expected her to be, and he had been ready for her.

Not that the discovery was a hell of a lot of help to Hollis now, except to provide the answer to one of the questions that had nagged at her.

And to give her a couple more minutes’ grace before facing the inevitable. But just a couple, and by then Hollis was wide-awake behind her closed eyes and could hear him, somewhere nearby, humming.

The monster had her.

And if there was anything they knew about him, it was that her chances of survival had just dropped to something close to zero.

The best part about facing death, Hollis had discovered, was that after the first moments of skin-crawling, soul-shivering terror, it was curiously liberating, at least for her. A kind of survival mode kicked in, and all her concentration and energy went into whatever effort was required to better her chances.

She did
not
want to die.

It was, perhaps not coincidentally, also exactly the right state of mind necessary for the best use of her mediumistic abilities. So Hollis wasn’t terribly surprised, when she finally opened her eyes, to see Becky Huntley bending over her.

“Be very still,” Becky whispered. “And you can’t get loose anyway, we all tried our best. He thinks you’re still out. As soon as he knows you’re awake, he’ll want to get started on you. And you don’t want that.”

Instantly, Hollis closed her eyes again and forced her body to go limp, and it wasn’t just because it was still unsettling to her, this absurdly easy communication with the dead.

Is there anything else you can tell me, Becky?
She knew she didn’t have to ask out loud, which was a good thing but also still strange to her.

“We’ll try to help. But…we don’t have much energy. Karen is so sad because she wanted to be a mother, and Shirley can’t believe it’s over for her. And he’s…he’s not human anymore, Hollis. Do you think he knows there’s a hell? Do you think it would matter to him?”

Not if he isn’t human anymore…

But Hollis wasn’t sure about that, so she didn’t dismiss the information. Any bit of knowledge could be a tool, a weapon that could save her life.

If she figured out how to use it.

And when to use it.

“Your friends are trying to find you,” Becky told her. “We think there’s a chance…maybe. If Dani remembers what she can do.”

Without asking what that was, Hollis merely thought,
Go remind her, will you?

“She wouldn’t see me. Or hear me. Just the way he can’t see or hear me. I’ll try to make him see me, because it might take some of his attention off you, but so far it’s taken more energy than I have, than any of us has, to break through. Be very still, Hollis. He’s coming over here. Try not to let him know you’re awake.”

Oh, Christ.

D
ani said, “I don’t think he caused or altered my premonition. I could be wrong about that—easily—but I don’t think so. I think he had targeted Paris, and when I showed up, when he realized, then he decided it could work to his advantage.”

“That sounds an awful lot like luck.”

“No, I don’t think he leaves much to chance. His original plan was to take Paris’s abilities, especially the one that let her channel energy. The one ability that can become a weapon in the right hands. Or the wrong ones. He wanted that potential weapon. That never changed; he just added to the blueprint.” She shook her head. “But I meant what I said: I don’t really care how he’s doing this, or why, not now. I just want to find him and stop him, hopefully before he hurts Hollis and before he has a chance to go after Paris again.”

“All right. Look, we both know following the paper trail and searching warehouses is going to take longer than Hollis has, probably longer than Paris has. So why don’t we take a shortcut?”

“What kind of shortcut?”

“Dream-walk.”

“Marc…we might not have gotten much sleep last night, but we did get some, and I can’t do anything in my dreams unless it’s a natural sleep. Trust me, I’m about as far from sleep as I’ve ever been in my life.”

“I don’t think you have to sleep, Dani. Not anymore—and maybe you never did. I may not know a lot about psychic abilities, but one thing I do know is that psychics have been putting themselves into trances for a
long
time in order to tap into their abilities.”

“I’ve never been able to do that. I was taught all the right meditation techniques, we all are at Haven. It works for a lot of psychics. But I could never put myself into a trance.”

“How hard did you try? Be honest.”

She hesitated. “I don’t know. I mean…I thought I was trying, but…”

“But you were still running. Then. Not now. And now you have every reason in the world to put everything you have into the effort. I’m betting that’ll be more than enough.” He took her hand and led her into the living room and to the sofa. “I’ll help.”

“How? Have you ever tried this before?”

“No. But
my
passive psychic ability, remember, is to recognize the abilities in others. I have a hunch that it isn’t quite as passive as I’ve always believed it to be—or else it’s just evolving because I’ve used it so much more lately. Or because of the connection with you. No way to know for sure, but for whatever reason, I think I may be able to help you focus and channel.”

She didn’t have a clue if it would work, but the clock in her head was ticking louder; a glance at the clock on some of his electronics in the room told her it was now 9:05.

Paris and Hollis were both running out of time.

“Okay,” she said. “Meditation techniques. Deep cleansing breaths—”

“Screw all that,” Marc said. He took her other hand and held them, half turned toward her so that they faced each other. He was smiling slightly. “Energy follows intent; I think if you want something badly enough, you find it. Just close your eyes and think about Hollis and places monsters might hide.”

Dani would never have believed it could be that simple, but she closed her eyes, very conscious of him and of the connection between them that their night together had quite definitely intensified, and did exactly what he suggested.