Blood Dreams

Chapter Twenty-two

BETWEEN THE TIME Marc had called from his house and their arrival at the sheriff's department, someone had managed to produce original blueprints for the old mental hospital, blueprints they unrolled on the hood of Marc's cruiser when they parked all the vehicles at the base of the long driveway.

It was 1:15.

"I gather we think this guy's expecting us," Jordan commented as they studied the plans.

Dani was frowning down at them, wishing she could remember more details from the vision dream when she wasn't actually in the middle of it. Wasn't there supposed to be a storm?

That thought had barely crossed her mind when she heard distant thunder, right on cue.

Sometimes she thought the universe had a sense of humor.

This wasn't one of those times.

"We have to assume he is," Marc replied to Jordan. "Dani believes this was his goal all along, to collect himself a few psychics. Divide and conquer, so to speak, and build up his own resume. He probably wanted to start with Paris because her ability could be used as a weapon, but…"

Dani finished, "But I think he wants any ability he can grab." She eyed the darkening sky uneasily.

Gabriel was checking his weapon, and said with a grunt, "He'll be disappointed in Rox and me. Each of us is psychic only when we're asleep. A bit like Dani used to be. Hell. Dani-"

"Sorry."

"You're shocking all of us," Jordan said, shifting just a bit to put another inch of space between his arm and hers. "All except Marc, that is."

Dani and Marc exchanged glances, and she said, "Yeah, we noticed that. Sorry for the static discharge, guys. I don't know if it's the coming storm or… well, whatever we find in there, but I can't seem to control it very well right now."

Roxanne said, "As intense as this is, I'm not surprised." She took a closer look at the plans, and added, "Two main buildings, both presumably with basements. We split up to search?"

Marc was nodding. "No other way to cover the ground, not if we need to hurry. And we do. Dani, do you sense anything from the buildings?"

She frowned, concentrating, then winced. "General pain and sadness, old echoes. This was not a positive place at any stage of its life."

"Bishop? Are you getting anything?"

He shook his head. "Miranda and I have each closed down the connection between us as far as we could. Without that, I'm at less than half strength. And the weather affects me more without the benefit of her shields. I can barely read Jordan, and he's broadcasting like a beacon."

Jordan blinked. "I am?"

"You are. Remind me to talk to you about shielding, if we have a minute at the end of this."

"You mean if we're still standing at the end of this? Because I got the impression that wasn't likely."

"Don't be a pessimist," Marc said. "Dani, if you don't have strong feelings about it one way or the other, I'm picking the front building for you, me, and Bishop. Gabriel, Roxanne, and Jordan will take the one in the back."

Roxanne exchanged a look with her brother, and then said to Marc, "I need to be with you guys."

"Why?"

"Because if this monster is bent on collecting psychics, each group needs at least one nonpsychic with a gun ready who won't be affected by any kind of mental attack. That'll be me. When I'm awake, I have zero psychic abilities."

"My ability is passive," Marc pointed out.

"It's evolved. Probably the connection with Dani. And, trust me, if this guy is collecting neat abilities, he'll want yours; being able to identify another psychic can come in mighty handy when those are the folks hunting you."

"She has a point," Dani said.

"Meant to tell you," Bishop murmured. "Right now you're also a bit like a conduit for Dani. Which means he could get to her through you."

"And vice versa," Dani said.

Bishop nodded.

Jordan said, "The rear building is quite a bit smaller than the one in front, so I think Gabriel and I can search it fairly quickly alone. That is-Dani, are you sure it's a basement?"

"All I know is that I don't remember seeing any windows," she told him.

Jordan sighed. "We'll hurry."

"Yeah, I would."

"Marc, if we do meet up with this guy, then what are our orders?"

"Shoot to kill."

Jordan blinked again. "That always sounds so melodramatic in movies. In real life, not so much. What if he isn't armed?"

"He is. Armed and dangerous. That is my official statement as sheriff of Prophet County." Marc looked at his chief deputy steadily. "We couldn't come out here in force, and we're short on time. Hollis is in there, probably being tortured. It's a monster, Jordan. If you see one, shoot it."

"Copy that," Jordan said.

Marc looked at the others. "Okay, then. Roxanne, you're with us."

"Copy that," she said.

By the time they reached the buildings, moving cautiously, the storm was upon them. And it was a very dangerous storm for an area that hadn't seen any decent rain for weeks: It was a dry electrical storm.

The raw energy swirling all around them didn't do much for Dani's control; when she reached for a metal door handle, the sparks ignited a clump of long grass growing wild at its base.

"Damn," she said.

"Let me." Bishop brushed past her, ignoring the skittering of sparks that danced across the arm of his leather jacket, and paused only to stamp out the little fire before going to work on the lock.

Worried, Dani said to Marc, "If all this energy is feeding him the way it's feeding me, this is worse than a trap. The deeper we go into this building, the easier it'll be to contain energy, focus it. The walls, the ceilings, the floors, everything will help. Help him, if he's been practicing his control. But I haven't been practicing. I don't know if I can control this. At all."

"Make it a weapon," Roxanne suggested, her own at the ready. "Dunno if it's lethal, but you could sure surprise the hell out of somebody." She followed Bishop into the building.

"She's right," Marc said. "I know you don't want to carry a gun, so use what you've got."

"You're getting more psychic all the time." When he questioned silently with a lifted brow, she added, "The gun thing. We haven't discussed it. Out loud, anyway."

They eased into the building behind the other two, and as she looked around, Dani saw absolutely nothing that looked familiar.

And nothing that looked like a warehouse.

They had entered through a huge kitchen and from there found their way out into the central area of what appeared to be the ground floor.

It was a strange and uneasy mix of Victorian hospital and Art Deco hotel decor-the furnishings still in place, brass fixtures, and dusty velvet draperies cloaking all the windows so that the space was dim and filled with shadows.

"Creepy place," Roxanne said. "Big creepy place. How we doing on time?"

Dani didn't have to look at a clock or watch. "We're running out of it. Hollis is running out of it. And I don't see a damn thing that looks familiar."

"One plus is that the building isn't on fire," Marc said. "A symbolic representation of energy, maybe?"

"Maybe," Dani agreed.

"This place could take a lightning hit yet and go up like a match." Roxanne shrugged. "I say expect the worst and then you can only be surprised pleasantly. We split up?"

Marc looked at Dani, then nodded. "Have to. We're looking for stairs down. But nobody goes down alone. Understand?"

Bishop and Roxanne both nodded and went in separate directions.

"Marc, this isn't the vision."

"Is that such a surprise? You said yourself it had been changing all along. Maybe this is just the final version."

"I guess. But if so much changed, or was symbolic and not literal, then are we still looking for a basement?"

He considered. "If I remember correctly, you said the only constants were that we all knew we were going down into a trap and that the building was falling in behind us."

"Pretty much."

"Sounds like a very final trap. Doom. Maybe that's why it was all so… elaborate. The burning building, with smoke preventing you from being able to tell much about it. Going down into a basement to face a killer. Maybe it was only the signposts that mattered. Maybe the rest was just your mind conjuring the worst sort of trap it could imagine."

Despite the closed stuffiness of the space around them, Dani shivered. "Maybe. I hate fire. Scares the hell out of me."

"There you go, then."

"Okay. But-"

"Listen." He touched her cheek with his free hand. "I don't want you to leave yourself open to any sort of attack, with this guy probably ready for us and lurking around somewhere, but can you forget about the vision for just a minute and feel what this building is telling you? Because it's talking to me."

As soon as she stopped trying to recall the vision, as soon as she let her mind go quiet, Dani heard the building loud and clear.

"Basement. There is a basement."

"Yeah. With a cold and slimy monster as tenant."

"Guys." Roxanne appeared suddenly in a hallway to their left. "This way. Bishop's found the stairs."

In less than a minute they were there, looking down at welcoming lights.

"Well," Dani said, "that's the same. But why make a trap so obviously a trap? I would have expected something a lot more subtle from him."

"Maybe that's why he made it obvious," Marc said. "Doesn't really change anything, though."

Dani nodded agreement. "I can feel Hollis now."

"Is she-" Bishop stopped himself.

"She's alive," Dani said. "But… hurting. Let's go."

They went down the stairs very cautiously but at the bottom found only a central area from which stretched several long corridors with blank, featureless doors.

"Shit," Dani whispered. "This does look familiar." But not from her vision. From the dream walk with Paris and Hollis. Worse, there was too much iron and steel in this place, too many hard, reflective surfaces that could easily help channel and focus any kind of energy.

"Solitary?" Roxanne was tense, alert.

"Probably," Marc said, and added, "We are not splitting up down here."

Very familiar.

Dani felt herself move toward the middle corridor, following a pull so strong she was vaguely surprised not to see an actual rope stretched out before her. "This way. At the end, I think."

"Dani, wait-"

But she was already three steps into the corridor, and even though Marc and the others followed quickly, she was well ahead of them and isolated by just enough space when they all saw her aura become not only visible but also begin to shimmer in a rainbow of colors.

"Dani-"

"I know," she said. Her hands moved out to her sides, almost as if she explored an enclosure. "He's coming after me. I'm just not sure… how he's able to do this. I don't hear his voice… the way I did before." She drew a quick breath, and Marc saw her pale. "We have to get to Hollis. Now. I might be able to… keep him occupied… just long enough."

He tried to get to her, but the aura surrounding her began to crackle and spark, and Marc quickly drew back his hand, afraid he would only hurt her more. "Move," he said to the other two.

But Dani had no intention of waiting there and was already moving herself, slowly, carrying the live-energy cloud with her.

At first Marc thought the energy was draining her, but she turned her head slightly and sent him a quick, clear look, and he realized in that instant what she was doing.

"Make it a weapon."

It was dangerous, what she was doing. Potentially deadly. Because a conduit could only accept and channel so much energy without being destroyed in the process.

He didn't know where she was drawing the energy from, though he guessed it was the storm still feeding her, even this far underground. Clearly, she'd been right in believing this place would help contain energy.

Hell, maybe the bastard had chosen his trap well, knowing he could use it, having had the time these last weeks to test his little energy nexus.

Dani had no time for experiments or theories or practice. All she had was her instincts and desperation. All Marc had was the certainty that she was risking her life, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do to stop it.

Bishop had managed to slip past Dani without disturbing her crackling aura, but when he reached the door, there was-nothing. No knob or handle, no lock, just a featureless expanse of solid steel.

He looked back at the others and shook his head grimly.

Nobody had brought anything with which to batter down a door, there was no lock to pick, and even hinges weren't visible, much less accessible.

As she reached the end of the hallway, Dani said very quietly, "I'll get the door. Just-move fast once I do. I don't know what will happen if I-Just move fast."

"Dani, for God's sake, be careful," Marc said, just as quietly. He thought he was braced for anything, but in the last few seconds, as the energy cloud intensified and she visibly gathered herself, he saw two of her inside that aura.

"Oh, Christ," he said.

The sound was like an explosion. Was an explosion. A literal wave of pure raw energy surged forward from Dani with an eerie silence that made the thunderous craa-aack! of the door blowing inward all the more deafening.

Marc followed Bishop and Roxanne to the doorway of the room but not into it, remaining in the corridor, his arm around Dani as she sagged abruptly against him, all her energy spent.

What he saw was more than a little surprising, and from their frozen positions he knew the others were just as stunned by the scene that greeted them.

A very ordinary-looking man most anyone would have passed on the street without a glance cowered in the far corner of the room, what looked like a scalpel in his hand as he slashed wildly at the air around him, making guttural sounds that might have been rage-or terror. He appeared to be fighting, or attempting to defend himself, but whatever his weirdly flat, shiny eyes detected as a threat was invisible to the newcomers.

But to their immense relief, in the center of the room, strapped to a stainless-steel table that was tilted about forty-five degrees up at the head, was Hollis.

She was more than a little bruised and battered, and it was clear the monster had begun to cut her clothing off before he was… interrupted… but she was very much alive.

"Hollis?" Bishop's normally cool voice was unsteady.

She turned her head and looked at him, and her swollen lips smiled, if only a little. "Boss, I want a raise. Either that or a new job."

"What the hell did you do to him?" Roxanne asked, her gaze fixed on the desperately struggling monster.

"You can't see them, but I have a posse in the room. All his victims have come to visit their murderer. And lemme tell you, they're pissed. Right now, they're telling him all about hell. In Technicolor."

Bishop gestured for Roxanne to keep her gun on the monster, and holstered his own weapon as he went to free Hollis.

"All his victims?"

"Well, most of 'em. I got scared and opened a lot of doors." She winced slightly. "Ow."

Roxanne said, "I may have to shoot him just to get the scalpel away from him."

"Feel free," Marc said. Then he looked at Dani. "Are you okay? That looked-"

" Paris helped. Right at the end."

"Is she…?"

"She's gone." Dani didn't know when she had started to cry, but she couldn't seem to stop. She felt empty and knew it wasn't because of what she had done, but what she had lost. "I think she just stuck around as long as she did so she could help."

It wasn't much solace to Dani to remind herself that, deep down, she and Paris had both known, for weeks, that this was going to happen. It didn't help to recognize that they had, at least, been granted the time to begin to say good-bye.

Half of her had been torn away, or nearly half; Paris had given her twin her abilities, even her life force, and Dani felt that too. She knew she was not quite as alone as others would perceive her to be.

That didn't help either.

"I'm sorry. God, Dani, I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, me too." She tried for a smile and knew it was no more than a shadow. "Even if I knew all along it would happen."

"Did you?"

"I knew. Paris knew too. That's why she gave me her abilities when she could."

"He came after you instead of her."

"Maybe he tried to get to Paris first and found the guardian. Or maybe he intended to go after me all along. But I think I surprised him, maybe even hurt him. I don't think he realized that I could learn so fast to channel energy. Neither did I, really."

She looked at the monster that had taken so much from her, from so many people, and even through her numb sense of loss, an uneasiness stirred. "I don't think…"

"What?" Marc asked.

"I'm too tired to reach out, really, but what I feel from this monster is… it's sick and evil, but… I just don't think-"

"Christ, look over there," Roxanne said, nodding toward the wall where photo collections detailed the stalking and torturing of his victims. "I don't think we'll have any problem convincing a jury this is our killer. Assuming it even gets to trial. Want my take, I say he picked this place because the universe told him it was where he belonged. In an asylum."

Dani avoided looking at the trophies, but she could feel herself frowning. "I wonder if this monster was ever human."

"Dani?" Marc's arm tightened around her.

She realized he didn't have to ask the question for her to know what it was. "Out there in the hallway… what I felt during that attack. It was never from this room. It was never in this room, Marc."

"What do you mean?"

"This is the killer, I know that." Even exhausted and aching, she knew that, felt that. "There are so many dark and twisted things inside him it's like worms. Maggots." She closed her eyes briefly, trying to shut off the unwelcome information. "Audrey…"

"His mother." Hollis, freed from her stainless-steel prison and cautiously testing her bruises, said, "His victims got an earful about her by the end. She doted on him. In a very unnatural way."

Dani shook her head. "He was born twisted; she just made him worse."

"Yeah. Well, before they started putting the fear of hell into him a while ago, one of his victims told me we might want to take a look into the room closest to this one. She seemed to think we were in for a surprise."

Even before they began exploring, they had a baffling mystery on their hands, because when Marc touched the killer he was able to confirm what Dani had already sensed.

"He's not psychic."

"Maybe burned out?" Roxanne suggested. "That last attack against Dani was a fierce one. Maybe too much for him?"

Still surprisingly calm, Hollis said, "If you're talking about whatever energy blew the door in, I doubt he had anything to do with it. He was fully occupied, believe me, for at least ten or fifteen minutes before you guys got here."

"I don't think this… man… was ever psychic," Marc said, half consciously brushing his hands together after touching the killer. "I've been able to pick up latent psychic ability, but from him I get nothing at all."

They looked at one another, and Hollis said, "I say we look for whatever Becky thought would surprise us."

They found it about ten minutes later while exploring the rooms nearest his torture chamber. The now seemingly catatonic monster remained cuffed and under the watchful eyes and ready weapons of Gabriel and Roxanne.

It was a neat and scrupulously clean room, as small and unadorned as a monk's cell. Just a cot, a metal chair and desk, and an unfinished pine wardrobe, where his clothing was folded precisely.

"He kept a scrapbook of his own life," Bishop said, finding it in one of the desk drawers. He used his pen to turn several pages back. "Born… Carl Brewster, ordinarily enough. Not much about his early life here, just his birth certificate and what look like some school records. Enough to help us know where to look for more information about him. Pages of doodles the psychologists are going to have a field day with, including the word Prophecy written over and over again."

"Just that word?" Dani asked.

"Looks like. Then the newspaper clippings start. No way to tell just from this what the ultimate trigger was, but it looks like we were right about the Boston murders being his first. There are no clippings or information about earlier murders here."

"When did his mother die?" Dani asked.

Bishop continued to page through the scrapbook, finally stopping about halfway through. "Yeah, that could be it. Her obituary is here. She died last spring, after a long illness."

"Domineering she might have been," Hollis said, "but she was probably his leash and held him hack as long as she was alive. Once she was gone, there was no one to stop him."

Marc said, "What sickens me is that he'll probably live out his life in a prison cell more comfortable than this one, with psychologists, cops, and profilers lining up to try to figure out what makes him tick."

"It might help catch the next one," Bishop reminded him.

"I know, I know. Still."

Before he could say anything else, Jordan appeared in the doorway, holding a manila envelope in his gloved hand. "Guys, look at this. And please tell me it doesn't mean what I think it means." He came into the room, crossed to the bed, and emptied the envelope.

Photographs.

"Of me," Hollis said.

"Yeah." Jordan looked at her steadily. "He apparently had a little workroom across the hall where he liked to cut up the pictures. I found this lying on a table in there, all ready for him. Notice anything unusual?"

But Dani saw it first. "They're dated. All taken with a digital camera. And… some are dated more than a year ago."

"The bastard hunted me for over a year?" Hollis was too bewildered to be angry about it. For now, at least.

"I don't think so." Jordan showed them the envelope. "This was mailed to him at a post office box here in Venture. Mailed from Washington, D.C. Postmarked two days ago."

"He was here two days ago," Marc said slowly.

"Yeah. There are also several empty envelopes in there. D.C. and New York postmarks. Different dates, but all during the past month."

They looked at one another, several things and possibilities falling into place.

"A trained monster," Bishop said. "Or maybe just… a tool. A puppet. But not the puppetmaster."

"That's why it felt different," Dani said slowly. "Why I didn't feel the same energy in his-his torture chamber that I felt out in the hallway. Because he wasn't responsible for the attack. Marc was right, the killer was never psychic. His wasn't the voice in my head."

"He was bait too," Bishop said slowly.

Dani nodded. "The bait to draw us. If you want to trap the monster hunters, you have to provide a monster. Find one. Uncage one. Or create one. Every time we hit a wall in the investigation, another little fact or detail or possible lead would be dangled in front of us. To keep us asking questions, to keep us off balance. To keep us moving, always toward the trap."

"He didn't catch anything in his trap," Jordan pointed out. "Did he?"

"He didn't get Paris's ability," Dani said. "But this attack… it was different. It was stronger, more focused. He may have gained something, even if it wasn't a new ability. The experience alone could have given him something of value to him."

"You said you thought you hurt him," Marc reminded her.

"It felt like I did. A sense of pain, of frustration. But… it wasn't a crippling injury. There was still the echo of a very strong, distinct presence, a personality-especially right at the end, when I discharged all that energy. He knew he'd lost… this round."

Jordan said. "Shit. This round?"

"It isn't over," Marc said.