Blood Ties (8 page)

And Diana wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t still doing that, at least some of the time. How else could she explain her very calm reactions today—to the bodies, the bear, Hollis nearly being shot?

Jesus, I didn’t even ask Hollis if she was okay
.

Not that Hollis had seemed all that concerned about getting shot at, but despite the other woman’s casual friendliness and humor, Diana didn’t think she knew any of the agents well enough to manage a decent guess at what they might be feeling at any given moment.

Except Quentin. Maybe.

But that wasn’t what was really bothering her.

Am I still sleepwalking? Is that what’s going on here? Why I feel so uneasy and uncertain all the time? So… out of place and unsure of myself? Given the opportunity to live a full life, to get into the game, did I opt out?

No matter what Quentin says, was Dad right when he said I wasn’t cut out for this sort of job, right to believe I wouldn’t be able to handle it? Is that why I’ve been so hesitant, so uncertain? Do I believe him?

Is that why I’ve been pushing Quentin away?

She didn’t want to admit that might be true. Didn’t even want to think it might be true.

Decided not to think about it at all.

Oh, yeah, that’s the grown-up way to handle it. Just put your head in the sand
.

She told her inner self to shut up and rummaged among the rumpled bedclothes for the TV remote. Then, determinedly keeping her mind blank, she began to channel-surf, looking for something even more boring than an old documentary about World War II.

*
Out of the Shadows

Four

D
IANA OPENED HER EYES SLOWLY
, then sat up a lot faster, shoving the covers aside to sit on the edge of her bed.

Her bed—changed. Weirdly one-dimensional, a photograph without light or shadow. Like the room that was dull and without color or life or warmth. It was filled with that oddly flat, colorless twilight that was not day and not night but somewhere in between. She had always suspected that this place lay somewhere outside time, apart from what she knew and understood time to be. That it was something between the living world and whatever lay beyond it.

As far back as she could remember, she’d called it the gray time.

She turned her head and looked at the clock on her nightstand, which had boasted large red digital numbers in a readout easy to see. Now it was blank, featureless and numberless. All clocks were the same here, missing numbers or missing hands and numbers.

No time passed in the gray time. Funny, that.

Creepy.

Diana got out of bed, not bothering to find slippers or even socks, though her feet were cold; it was always cold in the gray time, and no amount of clothing or blankets had ever made a difference. Besides, she wasn’t physically
here
, after all. At least—

She looked back, both relieved and, as always, unsettled to see herself still there in the undisturbed bed, sleeping, face peaceful. Her physical body breathed, its heart beat. It lived.

But everything that made her emotionally and psychologically Diana—her personality, her soul—no longer occupied that body. She couldn’t see the thread connecting the two halves of herself but knew it existed. Knew how fragile it was. How easily it could be severed.

Yeah, great job scaring yourself. Stop thinking about what could happen. Just move
.

“Remember all this in the morning. No matter what happens. There’s no more forgetting now,” she told her sleeping self, unsurprised by the hollow, almost echo of her voice. Normal, for the gray time. And so was the faint and faintly unpleasant smell.

Her own alert readiness and familiarity with this place was also normal, and she wondered as she always did why she never felt this sure of herself in the real world. It would make so many things so much easier, she thought, if she could feel this way all the time.

That rueful awareness had barely dawned when she started around the foot of the bed toward the door and was jolted to a stop by what she saw. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Beats me,” Hollis said, looking around her warily. She was standing just inside the door to the hallway. “This is your world, not mine. I was asleep in bed, minding my own business, a minute ago. I saw me there. Which was an experience I’d rather not repeat, thank you.”

“I told you not to look back.”

“Hey, I was curious. And at least I didn’t turn into a pillar of salt, so, you know, thankful for that. Why’d you pull me in?”

“I didn’t,” Diana said slowly. “I’ve only done that once, when we tried it months ago—and I was surprised as hell that it worked.”

“Then why am I here?”

“That was my question, remember?”

Hollis shivered and absently rubbed her bare arms. “Damn. If I’d known this was going to happen, I would have worn flannel pajamas instead of this nightgown.”

Diana was about to explain that more clothing wouldn’t have helped the chill, but then she took a second look and said, “Huh. That’s an awfully… urn… Not something you usually pack for a work trip, is it?”

“Can we just get on with it, please?”

“Get on with what?”

“Whatever it is I assume I’m here for.”

“I don’t
know
what you’re here for. Or why I’m here, when I haven’t been able to get here for weeks even when I tried.”

“Something to do with the case, no doubt. The more deeply involved in an investigation we get, the more apt we are to find all our senses reacting—including the extra ones.” Hollis shrugged. “At any rate, one thing I’ve learned in the SCU is that you take things as they come. We’re here now, and there has to be a reason why we’re here. What’s your normal procedure? Just start walking and see where your guides—isn’t that what you call them—take you?”

“Yeah, usually. If a guide shows up, that is.”

“I don’t think I’ll ask what happens if no guide shows up. Just lead the way, will you? If I remember correctly, being here in your gray time is physically draining, and we were both tired to begin with.”

“It’s not
my
gray time.” But Diana moved past Hollis and led the way from her room.

As soon as they stepped out into the hallway, it became apparent that they were no longer at the B&B.

“Oh, man, this is creepy,” Hollis breathed.

Diana looked over her shoulder at the other woman. “I don’t recognize this place. You do?”

“I hope not. I really, really hope not.” Hollis didn’t as a rule give much away in terms of her expression, but the strain in her voice was impossible to miss, and her eyes were huge.

Diana looked around them. They stood at what appeared to be an intersection of two seemingly endless corridors. Each corridor was hospital-clean and gleaming even in this dull gray twilight, and each was lined with closed doors that were all identically featureless with the exception of gleaming grayish handles.

“Looks ordinary enough to me,” she said, returning her gaze to Hollis’s very still face. “I mean, no weirder than other places I’ve visited in the gray time.”

“But you’ve never been here before?”

“I don’t think so. Why? Where is this place?”

Hollis drew a breath and let it out slowly. “The first time I saw it, I was in somebody else’s dream.
^*
Found out later it’s a real place. And the real place is… Once upon a time, it was an asylum. Back in October, I met the monster who was caged there. He strapped me down to a table, and…”

“Hollis?”

“And he almost killed me.”

R
eese DeMarco leaned on an elbow as he studied the map spread across his bed, his gaze moving intently from one highlighted spot to the next. Two of the highlights were close together and represented the two bodies found in Pageant County today. Or, rather, the previous day, since it was after midnight now. The other six were spread farther apart, over three southeastern states.

He was looking for a pattern.

He wasn’t finding one.

Not that it surprised him. The SCU was made up of serious and experienced monster hunters with the added edge of psychic abilities, and they were successful because they were very, very good; if a rational pattern in this madness had existed, the efforts of the rest of the team likely would have found it by now.

Eight murders committed in just over eight weeks. Five women, three men. All apparently tortured—with a singular creativity—before they were killed, and the most recent two further mangled and defiled after they were dead. No connection between the victims. No real enemies in any of their backgrounds individually, and virtually no commonalities among them as a group except for race: All had been white.

And all, with the exception of the most recent two, had been dumped like garbage by the side of various roads.

DeMarco frowned as he thought about that one more time. Until Serenade, the victims had been, as far as they could tell, shoved out of a car, possibly even a moving car.

Which, as Miranda had noted, pointed to the possibility of a second murderer, or at least an accomplice, since shoving a body out of a moving car was not an easy thing to do, and shoving one out of a stationary car required at least a few moments and some strength—or help.

That, more than anything else, had made this case, this investigation, unusual even for the SCU. One serial killer rampaging through their towns or counties was virtually always more than the local or state police could handle; they simply weren’t set up, with the procedures, the equipment, or the personnel and experience, to track down a killer of that sort, especially if he was only passing through and had no connection to the area.

Two serial killers, or one with an accomplice, put them into a smaller category than the relatively small one of serial killer: A conspiracy to commit murder was rare, and a serial killer with a partner or a sidekick was even more so. Only a handful of such cases had ever been documented by law enforcement.

“We’re keeping the possibility to ourselves for now,” Miranda had told DeMarco earlier in the evening, just as she had told the other agents on the case. “As well as we can, anyway. No leaks to the media. Nothing written in our reports. We don’t even discuss it among ourselves unless we’re absolutely sure we’re alone. And that includes not telling local police—unless and until we know the killers are in the area and we have a shot at finding them.”

“You know there are two of them, don’t you?” DeMarco had asked.

“We believe there’s a good chance.”
We
meaning she and Bishop. “But we’re not certain, Reese. Until we are, we investigate this case according to procedure and the evidence, not speculation.”

DeMarco had been about to remind her that they speculated all the time, when something she’d said before began to nag at him. “Nothing in our written reports? We don’t let the Bureau in on what’s going on?”

“We don’t speculate in our reports about something we have little or no evidence to support.”

He eyed her. “Oh, they are really not going to be happy with us about that.”

“When we stop these killers, that’ll be the only thing anybody who counts remembers about the investigation. That the killing was stopped.”

“I doubt the Director will be one of those people.”

“That’s okay. There are others. Noah’s spent a great deal of time and effort building a network of support, and that network will hold. No matter what the Director thinks.”

“And what about Bishop’s enemy? Whoever’s been reporting SCU movements back to the Director since—what—last summer? If we don’t know who that was—or is—we can hardly stop the leaks. And if we mean to withhold info from the Bureau, we damn sure need to make sure they don’t catch us doing it.”

Miranda hesitated, then said, “Noah’s working to resolve that situation. It’s one reason he’s not here. Until he does, we’re doing what we can to keep a low profile and not draw undue attention to the SCU.”

“On a serial-murder case with six certain and two possible victims already? Good luck with that.”

“We’ve managed so far. The local police have been willing to work with us, willing to not… overreact… to a body dumped in their jurisdictions, especially since none of the victims have turned out to be local citizens. Since the victims have been dumped over so large an area,
and
since no single police department or sheriff’s department has had to cope with more than one, media attention has been minimal and brief.”

“But we’ve got two possible victims in the same area this time.”

“Yes.”

“Somebody’s going to connect the dots soon enough, Miranda. You know that. There’s a story here.”

“Yes. And an even bigger story if word breaks that we suspect a pair of killers. Which is why we keep that quiet as long as we possibly can.”

DeMarco shook off the memory of that conversation and frowned once again down at the map, this time not really looking at it. He felt oddly… cold… all of a sudden, tense and alert in a way he recognized, every sense flaring, expanding beyond himself to seek out and pinpoint a threat of some kind. He looked up, scanned the room warily. But nothing seemed out of place or otherwise amiss.

Pleasant bedroom, neat and attractive without being overly fussy, which suited him. The TV was on and tuned to MSNBC but muted.

He had removed his shoulder holster, of course, when he at least nominally turned in for the night, but his weapon lay within easy reach. Reaching out slowly, he put his hand on it but didn’t draw it from the holster.

Because everything he felt told him the threat he sensed was not anything a bullet could stop.

DeMarco didn’t particularly like to think about many of his experiences in the military, but they had certainly left him with sharpened instincts in addition to his psychic ones. In those days, it had meant the difference between dying—and coming out alive to not talk about it.

These days it meant a sense that was not quite psychic telling him something was off-kilter around him.