“Well, given that we want to keep moving away from Jacoby’s cabin and take the most direct route, that means we’ll be covering some pretty rough terrain, straight down the mountain. You’re still favoring your leg and need to; put too much strain on it too soon, and you won’t be able to hike at all.”
“What about the old logging roads you talked about?”
“They make the trip shorter—if you’re in a vehicle. But it’s not at all a direct route, and on foot following the roads would take twice as long as heading straight down the mountain.”
“Okay, that makes sense. So how long?”
“Probably a few hours. Wouldn’t want to start now; by the time we got ready and got out of here, it would mean night would catch us long before we reached town. Dunno about you, but I’d rather not either camp or hike out in the open at night, at least until we have a better handle on exactly what this energy is and whether it’s still expanding.”
“You won’t get an argument on that. But it means giving Jacoby more time to do whatever it is he’s doing.”
“It’s a risk. Stay or go, if he takes us out, there’s nobody to warn either the town or our respective bosses and other law enforcement that Jacoby is a lot more than a simple bank robber and dangerous as hell.”
“We just don’t know
how
he’s dangerous. Besides his guns, I mean.”
“I’m less worried about his guns than I am the negative energy. And I still want to know as much as possible about that blood. Check it out more extensively to see if there’s more, maybe a trail that maybe leads somewhere useful.”
Even if she’s already gone, don’t I owe it to her to find her? Owe it to her family?
“Callie, going back out there is
not
a good idea.”
“I’m sure I’ve had better,” she agreed. “But we need intel. Even before we leave this cabin, we need some idea of where that blood came from and where it leads, if anywhere. And we need to know
for sure
if the energy is centered on Jacoby or on the area around his cabin.”
“Callie—”
“Look, I’ll take Cesar and I’ll keep my shields up. And my shields don’t have a crack or a chink or any other vulnerability.”
“As far as you know,” Luther said grimly. “We can assume I was targeted because of a vulnerability, a chink in my shield, but we can’t know that, not absolutely. There could have been some other reason, and maybe that didn’t involve testing your shield. So we can’t possibly be certain your shield has been tested and can withstand that energy.”
“The whole point of being chosen for this,” she reminded him, “is that I deal well with negative energy. My shield holds up against it, and sometimes I can even deflect it.”
“But you admitted yourself this energy is unlike anything you’ve sensed before.”
Callie shrugged. “Uncharted territory in some ways. We face that a lot in the SCU, and I’m guessing Haven operatives do as well.”
He nodded reluctantly.
“So we get on with the job. Face what’s in front of us, deal with it as best we can, and keep going.” Callie shook her head. “I just . . . have to be sure there’s not a victim somewhere up here being hurt.”
Even if Cesar is sure. Even if I can’t help her. I have to know.
“Before we leave. I couldn’t live with myself if I found out later that I could have helped someone and didn’t when I had the chance.”
Luther finally voiced a possibility that had been bothering him. “And what if that blood was deliberately left to draw you out?” He lifted a hand when she would have spoken. “I know you said you thought Jacoby hadn’t noticed you, wasn’t aware of you as any kind of threat, but when we talked about that, it was in a slightly different context. The assumption that he was too busy struggling against what was trying to dominate him to bother worrying about you.”
Callie sighed. “We didn’t talk about something else being aware of me as a possible threat, because we didn’t know for certain that it had a consciousness separate from Jacoby’s. That negative energy.”
“You believe it took my memories of more than a day.” Luther kept his voice even with an effort. “A day with you. A day during which we talked about ourselves—and cleaned our weapons. And maybe knowledge I have, about Haven, about the SCU. It could have gotten that information even if it didn’t take it. If that energy does have a consciousness with a plan, it knows exactly who we are. Both of us. And that means it knows we’re both a threat.”
* * *
COLE JACOBY THOUGHT
at first that he was just slipping into sleep, and he was thankful because he was so, so tired.
When the blackness began to slide over his mind, the small inner self that still wanted to survive, that still wanted to be Cole Jacoby and alive, sensed the difference between this and other times. In all the other times, he had been allowed to rest, to sleep.
This time, he wasn’t going to sleep.
He was going.
He was dying.
Not his body. His soul.
There was, fleetingly, the instinct to fight it, if only because he was afraid his soul was going to hell. But in his final conscious moments as Cole Jacoby, he realized that there was something far, far worse than hell.
There was being consumed by pure evil.
And as Cole Jacoby was swallowed up, there was only the shell evil would use, and his whisper added to the vast chorus of whispers that had all earned their place through the commission of horrifically evil acts.
And the vow of more to come.
* * *
LUTHER HAD DONE
his best, but Callie, he discovered, had a quietly stubborn nature. She didn’t argue with him, she merely got herself ready to go look for a trail, then left with Cesar.
Because she was a good agent, and she had to know.
Only the memory of his knife at her throat kept Luther from going with her. Whether she could withstand or deflect that negative energy might still be an open question, but
his
inability to do so had been proven.
Starkly.
Luther wasn’t a man to pace, which was probably just as well for his healing leg. But in a quiet cabin where the only sounds were the grunts and snores of sleeping dogs and the occasional pop and crackle of the low fire, he had entirely too little to occupy his mind.
Which meant that he thought about why he was sitting here helpless to do his job while his partner—tacit partner, given the situation—was out there facing God only knew what kind of danger. At best, her shield would hold and she’d only be left possibly facing something that looked like Cole Jacoby but was pure evil and could use a gun with skill.
At worst, her shield would fail . . . and Luther had no idea what that black sludge of evil energy would do to her mind. He only knew what it had done to his.
To him.
Eternal minutes passed. An hour.
Even in the worst military situations he had faced, Luther had never known time to pass so slowly. To creep.
But his imagination didn’t creep, it raced. And everything it showed him as a possibility scared the hell out of him.
Dammit, Callie, where are you?
* * *
THE BLOOD WAS
gone.
Callie stood there staring down at it, frowning. No reason to clean blood off the ground, not way out here. So maybe an animal had gotten to it. No tracks, still, except those she had left herself, but—
She could feel it. Feel that strange, dark energy. Pressure, but more than that. Power. Hunger. Determination. Even with her shields up, she could sense it.
Need to go.
The one mental voice that could always reach her, even behind her shields.
Callie looked at her dog, her partner, and said quietly, “You still can’t smell any kind of trail from here?” Out of long habit, she repeated the question silently, in her mind, because she had learned that Cesar understood that inner voice in a way he didn’t completely understand her when she spoke aloud.
No trail. Bad. Bad smell. Bad feeling. Need to go.
“Do you hear anything?”
No. Ears hurt. Smell hurts. Need to go.
Callie didn’t smell anything, and her ears didn’t hurt—but she felt that pressure, same as before. It had to be what Cesar sensed as well. She gave up speaking aloud.
Cesar, if all you can smell is the bad smell, then how do you know we can’t help her?
Smelled death. Before. She’s dead.
And you’re sure?
Sure. Need to go, Callie. Need to go now.
He didn’t often use her name, and the level of worry it indicated made Callie want to reassure him. She leaned down a bit to touch him.
Something slammed into her with an odd whistling sound.
She looked down and saw something sticking out of her jacket. A stick of some kind. With something on the end . . . feathers? How odd.
Cesar grabbed the sleeve of her jacket and jerked her to the ground.
Callie heard another of those peculiar whistles, then a sort of thud, and saw an arrow sticking in the ground a few feet away. One matching the arrow stuck in her. It didn’t take Cesar’s urging to make her scramble awkwardly behind the cover of a thicket of brush to her right.
An arrow? The bastard has a bow and arrows?
Not uncommon for hunters to use compound bows, which could bring down even big game quickly and cleanly, but—
The shock of the sudden attack past, Callie felt the pain. Red-hot and paralyzing. It stole her breath, and made clear thought almost impossible. So it must have been instinct that made her peer in the direction of Jacoby’s cabin, the direction the arrow had come from, to look for her attacker.
Need to go, Callie. Now.
“He could still be up there,” she heard herself say, even as her gaze tracked up the slope, scanning, seeing nothing. At least, she thought she saw nothing. No one. But she was getting dizzy.
Gone. Black thing gone.
A bit fuzzily, Callie wondered if that was how Cesar saw whatever was left of Cole Jacoby. As just a black thing a canine mind could make no sense of.
Not that a human mind could make much sense of it either.
Go, Callie. Go now.
Taking care to remain behind the screen of the thicket, Callie sat as straight as she could, looking down at the arrow. It had gone in at an angle, since the bowman—Jacoby—had been on higher ground when he shot her. She didn’t have to feel behind her to know that the end of the arrow was sticking out of her back somewhere near her shoulder blade. What she wasn’t sure of was what kind of tip the arrow had. When she forced herself to try reaching behind to touch that tip, the wave of pain nearly made her throw up.
Callie.
“I have to pull it out,” she heard herself mumble. “I know you aren’t supposed to pull things out if they go into your chest or back, but . . . I won’t be able to move with . . . both ends . . . of this thing . . . sticking out of me.”
Get help? Luther?
“No time. I need . . . to get to him, Cesar. I need . . . back to the cabin. Let me—”
She grasped the shaft of the arrow with both hands, as firmly up against her body as she could manage. Then sucked in a deep breath—and pulled.
Everything burst crimson and then went dark.
Callie wasn’t sure how long she had been out, but she woke to Cesar licking her face and whining, and in his mind was wordless urgency. She knew she had lost blood, maybe a lot, and her left shoulder was hurting like hell, but there was nothing she could do about either except get back to the cabin and Luther.
Using Cesar’s sturdy, powerful body, she managed to lever herself upright, more or less. She had to pause without moving for a moment or maybe awhile, until the dizziness faded a bit. When she could finally focus, she found herself looking at the bloodstained arrow she had pulled out of her own body.
“New war story,” she whispered.
Go, Callie. Go now.
“Yeah. Yeah . . . go now. Let’s go, boy. Slow and easy.”
There was nothing easy about it, but Callie hung on to her canine partner and just fought to stay on her feet and moving, allowing him to guide her.
* * *
TWO HOURS.
Unable to sit still a moment longer, Luther retrieved his weapon from the drawer by the couch and examined it. Cleaned, definitely. And reloaded; if he remembered correctly, he’d had only about four rounds left in the clip when Callie had found him in the woods, his extra ammo lost along with all his other gear.
The clip was full.
Ah. They carried the same handgun, a Glock, and Callie had obviously provided him with ammo. He still didn’t remember cleaning or reloading the weapon. Or the war stories. Dammit.
He replaced the clip and leaned forward to place the gun on the coffee table within easy reach, and it was only then that he realized the dogs were all awake.
And tense.
But they weren’t looking at him. All three of them, still lying on their makeshift beds, were staring at the front door. Not growling, just staring. Just . . . waiting.
Luther found himself staring at the door, still leaning forward, his weapon still in his hand and ready.
Ready for—
He didn’t know for what, but when the door swung wide open to admit Callie and Cesar, he felt only relief. For a moment.
Callie pushed the door shut, leaning back against it. She lifted a hand to push her hood away from her face, and he saw the blood on her fingers.
He was already on his feet and moving toward her when she spoke, her breathing labored enough to make the effort to speak clear.
“In the Marines. Did they teach you . . . assumption is the mother . . . of all fuck-ups?”
“I learned,” he said.
About half a laugh escaped her. “I assumed I didn’t need to worry . . . about anything but . . . the negative energy. Wrong . . . assumption.”
Luther caught her before she could hit the floor.
ELEVEN
“It’s Friday,” Hollis said.
“I noticed,” DeMarco said.
She glared at him for a moment, then dropped it and sighed. “I know. We’d be back at Quantico by now, or on the jet heading for a real case, if I could just do what I came to do and make contact with Daniel for Anna.”
“I wonder.”
“You do? Why?”
DeMarco stopped and stood looking around yet another wide hallway that was dark despite the lights
and
all the sheet-draped furniture; they were, with the permission of their hostess, exploring the wing of the house normally closed except when this was a hotel.
They had looked just about everywhere else for the spirit of Daniel Alexander, and Hollis had suggested this more out of desperation than any real hope of encountering the man’s elusive self.
“Reese?”
“Is it the same here as everywhere else?”
“If you mean the spirits, yes. Not that many, but during the day in a hallway of bedrooms and suites, I wouldn’t expect many.”
“Anybody stand out?”
Hollis looked around, by now more baffled than creeped out by what she saw. “Not really. Mostly maids cleaning the rooms. More than you’d see in your average luxury hotel in a single hallway, but I imagine part of the extra-deluxe service here is not walking into your room at two in the afternoon and discovering the maid hasn’t gotten there yet.”
DeMarco didn’t frown often, but he did then. “Like everywhere else, from different times?”
She took a closer look. “Yeah, I think so. Wait—definitely. The maid uniforms stayed pretty much the same over the years, apparently, but the hemlines go up and down, and so do the sleeves and collars.”
Apparently musing aloud, DeMarco said, “Lots of servants. Lots of guests. Lots of family members you’ve matched to various portraits and photos Anna let us go through. But no Daniel.”
“Yeah, I don’t get it. He should be here. He lived his whole life here. He died here. Where else would he be?”
“Maybe he moved on.”
“I wish I believed that. I’d tell Anna and we could get out of here. But . . . I don’t think so, Reese.”
“Why not?” He was looking at her now, intently.
“I don’t know. Just a feeling. Sometimes I think if I only turned my head fast enough, I’d see him.”
“As if he’s deliberately staying out of your sight line?”
It was Hollis’s turn to frown. “Maybe. But . . . Why would he?”
“Maybe that’s what we should be asking ourselves. Not why you’re seeing so many spirits, but why you aren’t seeing the one you’re looking for.”
She resisted the urge to clutch at her hair. “Jeez, that sounds like a cosmic riddle. I hate riddles. They’re like those math problems with two trains leaving a station.”
“You didn’t like the trains, I take it.”
“Kept seeing them crash. No matter how I worked the math, my trains always crashed into each other.” Hollis stared at her partner and added, “You’re trying not to laugh.”
“Sorry.”
“Crashing trains aren’t funny. People and animals die.”
DeMarco blinked. “Animals?”
“Circus trains. My trains are always circus trains.”
He cleared his throat, but his question still sounded a bit unsteady. “Why?”
“I don’t know. They just are.” Hollis refused to laugh, even though she was beginning to feel the need to.
“So in your math problems, the imaginary trains are circus trains.”
“Yes.”
“Your way of making the exercise interesting?”
“I guess.” She thought about it. “It means more to get it right.”
“So the people and animals don’t die?”
“Well, it wouldn’t mean as much with freight cars. A mess, I suppose, and maybe fire or a chemical spill or something like that.” She thought about it some more and felt a flicker of concern. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want a chemical spill. Almost as bad as circus cars.”
“Bad enough.” DeMarco cleared his throat again. “You’re really tired, aren’t you?”
She actually had to think about
that
, which pretty much answered his question. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. Why am I? Other than walking around the place and talking, it’s not like I’ve done anything to get tired. And God knows I’ve eaten enough for fuel.”
“Opening a door for spirits takes a lot out of you.”
“But I haven’t,” Hollis said slowly, only then realizing. “Not since the other night with Jamie Bell and her message to Owen. Not since . . . Brooke warned me to be careful.”
“All these spirits, and you never opened the door once?”
She shook her head. “No. I mean . . . they were here already. I felt them almost from the first, and after Jamie, after the next morning, they were all around me, and I could see them.”
“After you opened the door for Jamie.”
Again, slowly this time, Hollis shook her head. “I didn’t consciously open the door for her. I was irritated by Owen, and—and she was just there.”
“You weren’t in control.”
“No.” Hollis had lost all desire to laugh.
“But you were tired afterward.” He paused, then added, “Drained, really. Much more so than usual for you. I thought it was just the long travel day topped off by Owen’s attitude, and then Jamie Bell. That the combination took more out of you than usual.”
“I thought so too.”
Reese took her hand and turned to retrace their steps to the main part of the house. “I think we need to call Bishop,” he said.
Hollis was surprised. “It’s not like you to want to check with the boss about anything short of a crisis,” she said.
“I’m beginning to think we’re in the middle of one,” he said, rather grim now.
“Because I see all these spirits?”
“Because you aren’t in control—and see all the spirits. Dammit. I was so busy thinking about what you were seeing that I missed the signs
I
should have been seeing.”
“Signs of what?”
“Signs of a vortex.”
* * *
“THEY’RE RARE,” BISHOP
said. “Are you sure?”
“It’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense,” DeMarco replied.
The phone in the foyer had no speaker, and there was no extension nearby; Hollis was sitting on the foyer table, both because she was tired and because she was better able to comfortably share the phone’s handset with her partner.
“Spirits everywhere, Bishop,” she told their unit chief. “I didn’t let them in. Even trying to contact Daniel Alexander, I haven’t really been doing anything except . . . looking for him in the crowd. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing until Reese made me see.”
DeMarco said, “Old house, remote location, down in a valley with a hell of a lot of granite all around us, and at least a dozen old mine shafts in the area, radiating out like spokes on a wheel. Some on the maps and some not. The family’s been here a long time, much longer than this house, and the history they had printed mentions that before the house was built, there was almost a small town here. Even had a church at the other end of the valley, complete with graveyard.”
“The church isn’t there now?”
“No. Gone before this house was built. There’s Internet access via a satellite dish, so I was able to do a search, even if it was slow as hell. Seems there was a very wet winter followed by an unusually rainy spring one year, and the result was one hell of a mudslide. In fact, witnesses reported that it looked like half the mountain slid down into the valley. Trees, boulders, everything. Took out the church, covered the graveyard in mud and debris so deep no one even suggested they try to uncover the graves. Before the mudslide, this valley was a mile longer than it is now.”
Hollis said, “But it was so long ago you can’t really see any evidence of a mudslide. I mean, a geologist probably could, but not us. There are trees growing down at that end of the valley, big ones. Well, I mean, over a hundred years . . . mighty oaks can grow.” She felt more than saw DeMarco give her a look, and added to Bishop, “But isn’t a vortex some kind of whirlpool?”
“In water, yes. In this case, it would be a whirlpool of energy. Spiritual energy.”
“And nobody saw all the spirits until I got here? But I didn’t
do
anything, seriously.”
“You’re a powerful medium, Hollis. You see auras. You can heal. And if what Reese described is accurate, you can do what only one other psychic I’ve ever known can do: look into time.
6
See pieces of the past, maybe the future as well. All that indicates tremendous power. And that power is attracting what was spiritual energy that was probably a lot more diffuse, unfocused, before you arrived.”
Hollis began to rub her forehead. She had a headache. “Please don’t tell me I’m precognitive. That’s one psychic tool I definitely do not want.”
“No, this is something else entirely.”
“What is it?”
Bishop sounded unusually tense. “It doesn’t really have a name. Hollis, you’re . . . rewriting the book when it comes to psychic development. All I know for sure is that, given the right place, the right physical conditions, and the right circumstances, your presence alone could become a focal point for energies. And not just spiritual energies, but other kinds as well.”
Hollis was almost afraid to ask.
She
was
afraid to ask.
DeMarco did it. “For instance?”
“That depends on what’s on the other side of the vortex. Hollis, these spirits have auras?”
“When I concentrate and look for them, yeah. Why?”
“Auras that vary in intensity and color? As they do with living people?”
She had to think about that, and it made her head hurt more. “Um . . . now that you mention it, I didn’t see a whole lot of variety. And the glow was . . . fainter.”
“Colors?”
“Dark. And . . . not really colors. I mean, not black, but just . . . dark. I thought it was just the house, but even outside, when I saw them, the auras were dark. What the hell does that mean?” Even as she asked, Hollis had the strong suspicion that Bishop knew these answers, had been expecting the questions, and knew a hell of a lot more about what was going on than he had so far revealed.
Which was something she should have been used to by now.
“It means we’re leaving,” DeMarco said.
“No,” Bishop told them, “that’s the last thing you should do.”
Oh, yeah, he knows stuff. Dammit.
“Bishop, she’s getting weaker. Just in the last hour, I’ve almost
seen
the energy draining from her.”
“Isn’t that wrong?” Hollis asked, pushing her mad aside for later and trying her best to think clearly. “I mean, if I’m at the center of this, shouldn’t I be getting stronger?”
“You didn’t open the door, Hollis. Right now, all that energy is rushing around you. Pulling at you. You aren’t in control.”
“That’s what Reese said.”
“And it’s what you have to change.”
“Brooke said to be careful.”
And then vanished. I thought she was going to help. Why isn’t she helping?
“She was right. This energy is very powerful, and you’ll feel the pull of it trying to draw you toward the center, more and more, especially once you start. You’ll need an anchor, a lifeline, and that’s Reese. You know the drill: physical contact, and be very sure that isn’t broken. For the duration, Hollis.”
She thought fleetingly of the possibility of more nights spent here, from now on with the necessity of constant physical contact between her and DeMarco.
A kind of shotgun wedding.
Oh, great, that’s just great. Can’t I do
anything
in my life normally?
Bishop asked, “Where do you see the most spirits?”
Hollis hauled her wayward thoughts back into line and realized she really didn’t have to think about that. “Inside the house. Outside, close to the house. The farther away, the fewer spirits. Out at the barn complex, I didn’t see any. At least, I don’t think I did.”
“Fewer spirits upstairs than on the main floor?”
“Now that I think about it, yes.”
“You haven’t been in the basement?”
“No,” DeMarco answered. “It’s a huge house; we haven’t explored the basement or the attic.”
“The center of the vortex is likely to be below ground level, so I’m guessing the basement. There aren’t only mine shafts in the area, there are unexplored caves as well, and some of them run for miles underground, originally formed by prehistoric rivers. They would provide a natural geological opening for that side of the vortex, and a physical channel for the energy as it moves. The true center has to be somewhere in the basement, and I’m betting you’ll find either a sunken place in the basement floor or else an actual door, perhaps leading down into a cave the builders or original owners had a use for.”
“Bishop—”
“You’ll need to stay away from the center of the vortex when you open the first doors; it’s what’s draining your energy now.”
“Wait, I have to open and then close more than one door?”
“It’s necessary to divert some of the energy and weaken the vortex before you close the final door. There are five specific doorways. North, south, east, and west. Then center. Center
has
to be the last one you face, and that one you don’t try to open wider. That one you have to close. And seal.”
“What? Bishop, this whole thing sounds—”
“Hollis, with everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve experienced, why does this seem so unbelievable to you?”
She didn’t know. She really didn’t.
“I’m just tired. Tell me what to do so I can fix that, will you?”
With uncharacteristic promptness, Bishop told her exactly what she had to do.
* * *
LUTHER WASN’T SURE
how badly Callie was wounded until he got her quilted jacket off, and by then the small hole just below her left collarbone wasn’t terribly reassuring, because he knew she had lost a lot of blood; there was an exit wound almost identical to the entrance wound in her back, slightly lower than the entrance wound, which he automatically noted as evidence that the shooter had been on higher ground—or on his feet when Callie had been crouched or kneeling, something like that.
He pushed all that aside for the moment, because Callie was his first priority, and he was not happy that she had been forced to use far too many of her first-aid supplies earlier patching
him
up.