Hold Back the Dark

by Kay Hooper

  Miranda lightly touched the two legal pads. “These six people did. A definite summons, probably geared to each in some way unique to their abilities. None of them are in the unit. None are cops, or even investigators. Something they all have in common.”

  “But psychics,” Tony said, leaning forward and peering at the legal pads. He possessed the quite-often-useful knack of reading upside down. “I don’t recognize most of those names, but I remember Bishop talking once about Dalton Davenport. Said he could have blown the top off our scale as a telepath if he’d had training and support, especially early on.”

  Bishop nodded. “That’s the second thing every person on these two lists has in common. All are exceptionally powerful, or have the potential to be, even though most lack even nominal control.”

  Tony grappled with that for a moment in frowning silence, then asked, “Is there a third thing they have in common?”

  It was Miranda who answered. “Yeah. They’ve all met each other, spent some time together. For a while, they lived in a sort of group home. Some have known each other for years. And some of them were, at least at one time, close.”

  “To each other? I take it you mean emotionally close? Or psychically close?” Tony lifted a brow.

  “In some cases, both.” She nodded. “There have been a few . . . let’s call them informal support groups . . . and group homes . . . formed over the years in different parts of the country, usually whenever there were a number of psychics in the same city or area. Noah encouraged that from the beginning, set up the logistics along with John Garett’s help, and by now it’s official SCU and Haven policy. The homes are privately owned and run, inspected regularly by any . . . interested state or federal parties. There’s at least one doctor and nurse on staff, as well as visiting psychiatrists trained by our own people specializing in psychic as well as emotional trauma. And, of course, with no drain on the taxpayers, the FBI didn’t have much to complain about.”

  “Though they did try,” Bishop murmured.

  Miranda sent him a quick smile. “Not even they could argue with success, especially given the amount of knowledge we’ve learned about psychic ability.”

  “Lab rats?” Tony asked, a bit troubled.

  “No, nothing like that,” Bishop answered. These were and are people who . . . need to know they aren’t alone. Need to feel safe. Need to know there are others they can talk to openly about what they can do, and how they feel about that. No meds, no forced therapy, no medical procedures whatsoever. Just a safe place where they can live for a few months or as many years as they like.”

  “Indefinitely?” Tony asked.

  “If they need a safe place that long, then of course. John and I set up the group homes very carefully, and we have a list of very trustworthy caretakers as well as a healthy endowment to make certain the homes exist long after we do.”

  Tony didn’t much like to think about a time “after” Bishop, which surprised him a little. Not that it had ever bothered him, because he’d never considered the matter before. But now he had a strong hunch that Bishop had “set up” a great many things so that the SCU as well as his “rogue” psychics would remain protected and enjoy useful lives long after he was gone.

  Miranda continued, “We know that psychics are drawn to one another, and even if they’re reluctant to join us or Haven, they still need whatever knowledge we can provide, plus emotional support that mainstream medicine doesn’t offer. Just the relief of being able to talk to someone else who understands what it is to be psychic can break down a lot of walls.” She paused, adding wryly, “And build a few.”

  The phone rang just then, and Bishop reached out to take the call, automatically hitting the speaker button. Before he could even say his name, a strong voice that sounded somewhere between highly irritated and intensely curious erupted from the speaker.

  “What the hell was that?” Agent Hollis Templeton demanded. “I thought my head was going to split open, and even Reese got a nosebleed.”

  * * *

  • • •

  NEITHER BISHOP NOR Miranda was surprised that Hollis was the first to call in; she was, arguably, the most powerful individual psychic in the unit.

  Miranda asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, now. Hurt like hell for a few minutes there, but we finally managed to stop the pain. And Reese’s nosebleed.”

  In the background, clearly on speaker, her partner, Reese DeMarco, could be heard to say with his usual calm that he appreciated that.

  “It was a mutual effort and you know it,” Hollis told her partner, adding to those on the other end of the connection. “Neither of us was shielding at all, so we really got slammed.”

  “What else did you both experience?” Bishop asked.

  “You mean aside from pain, nausea, a dandy color light show, and the unpleasant sensation of our skin wanting to depart our bodies?”

  “Yeah. Aside from all that.”

  “Prosperity,” she said distinctly. “Reese got it via a voice in his head. I got it from a very upset spirit who popped out of nowhere—well, you know what I mean—insisting we had to go to Prosperity, that something awful is going to happen unless we stop it. She was crying, and by the time she popped away again, I was too.” The last few words held a slight quaver as well as irritation, and she added, “Oh, damn, this empath thing is hard. Why do I have to feel what spirits feel as well as the living? What have I done to piss off the universe?”

  Rightly judging those to be rhetorical questions, Bishop said, “I gather you and Reese both felt a sense of urgency?”

  “Well . . . yes and no. The urge to start packing, but not the urge to take off right this instant.”

  “Where are you?” he asked. They had been taking accumulated annual leave time and hadn’t checked in for more than six weeks.

  “You mean you don’t know? I thought this sat phone had a GPS locator in it. As a matter of fact, I’m sure it does.”

  “Yes. But I took Reese at his word when he said you didn’t want to be disturbed and that you two would go looking for a deserted island or cave where I couldn’t find you even if I retasked a satellite.”

  “I’m not entirely sure I believe you,” she told him with characteristic frankness. “But thanks for not bothering us these last weeks.”

  “You’re welcome. Where are you?”

  Reese replied to that one, his voice still calm. “The Bahamas. One of the virtually uninhabited islands. We would have aimed for an entirely deserted one, but Hollis doesn’t camp.”

  “You can say that again. My idea of roughing it is no room service. Which we don’t have here, but it turns out Reese can cook, so he’s been my room service.” There was a brief silence, and then she laughed and added, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  Bishop looked at Miranda and Tony, both of whom were smiling, and said dryly, “Okay. Are you two planning to answer that summons?”

  “Summons?” Hollis’s voice was interested now. “Is that what it was? Who’s calling?”

  “We aren’t sure yet,” Bishop replied. “We’re expecting most of the unit and some psychics on our watch list to begin checking in. We should know more after that.”

  “You and Miranda had a vision?”

  “Yeah. And got six names of psychics who were summoned, none of them current SCU members. We also got that whatever is going to happen—or not happen or is already happening—will be in Prosperity.”

  Clearly unsurprised that Bishop didn’t offer more details of the vision, Hollis merely said, “It’s another seemingly peaceful little mountain town, isn’t it?”

  “In North Carolina,” he confirmed.

  “Huh. They seem to get more than their fair share of monsters, don’t they?” There was a brief silence, during which she undoubtedly consulted with her partner, and then she said, “Okay, we’re in
. You want us to go straight to Prosperity?”

  Bishop exchanged a glance with his wife, and said, “No, the mountain house. It’s large enough and near enough to Prosperity to serve as our command center. And since we don’t yet know what, if anything, has happened in Prosperity, or which psychics will answer the summons, it’s as good a place as any to meet up, put our heads together, and figure out a plan.”

  “A plan?” Hollis was politely incredulous. “You think we’re actually going to have a plan this time, Yoda?” She was the only agent who had ever been heard to assign him a rather mocking—if amused—nickname.

  Being Bishop, he ignored that, as well as her question. “I gather Reese flew you two to your island on a chopper?”

  A brief laugh escaped her, but she didn’t push. “Yeah. So we can be at the mountain house in a few hours.”

  “Wait until tomorrow morning to start,” Bishop said. “Assuming most if not all of the psychics on our list decide to come, it’s going to take some time just for them to get to the mountain house. One of them is in Alaska.”

  “Must have taken a hell of a lot of power to reach that far,” Hollis said slowly. “Unless we’re talking individual power sources all around us. Which I don’t much like the idea of, just so you know.”

  “Neither do I,” Bishop said.

  Reese spoke up then to ask, “Anybody you need us to pick up along the way?”

  “I’ll let you know by tomorrow morning. Call in before you take off.”

  “Copy that.”

  Hollis said, “See you guys tomorrow.” And hung up.

  Bishop reached over to tap the conference phone to cut the connection on his end, and said almost absently, “Depending on who calls in and when, it may take a tight scheduling of both jets to get everybody to the airstrip near the mountain house within a reasonable amount of time.”

  Tony eyed him. “You seem to be very sure that most of those summoned are going to come,” he said.

  “Yes,” Bishop said. “I am. One way or another, I believe they’ll all come.”

  Before Tony could question that, the multi-lined phones in the conference room began ringing all at once. Every line showed a blinking light.

  “Here we go,” Bishop said. “We need to take notes on every call. Who, where they are, what they felt and what the local time was—exactly, if possible—and what they feel now.”

  “And if they ask what they’re supposed to do now?” Tony lifted a brow at the unit chief. “What do we tell them?”

  “For now, we tell them to stand by their phones,” Bishop answered immediately. “What we tell them when we call them back will depend on all the calls.”

  THREE

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7

  Chief Deputy Katie Cole had lived in Prosperity for less than a year but had settled in to the town and her job quickly and without fuss. She had an easy manner and the knack of both talking to people and listening when they needed to talk, so even though she wasn’t a native, she had been accepted completely.

  As far as she could tell, anyway.

  Even though it was a smallish town, and fairly isolated, Prosperity was not entirely off the beaten path; no major highway was close, but the town was located in a section of the Appalachian Mountains considered particularly scenic, so it was the rule rather than the exception that plenty of sightseers and other tourists drove through pretty steadily from spring right up to winter.

  Some of them even stopped for a few days or at least a long weekend, enjoying one of the two very nice hotels in the main part of town, good food, the scenery, and local crafts sold for reasonable prices in small shops staffed by smiling, friendly people.

  Crime was practically nonexistent, in part because Sheriff Jackson Archer was a good cop and a highly respected, homegrown citizen of the town, and in part because Prosperity was . . . well, a prosperous small town. So there were enough jobs to go around and good schools that not only educated the kids but offered plenty of after-school and summer activities. On the whole the citizens were happy.

  Which was maybe, Katie thought, why it struck her as so odd to feel a very unusual tension as she strolled along Main Street, stretching her legs and having a look around. She’d been vaguely conscious of an uneasiness she couldn’t pinpoint for more than a week, but now there was nothing vague about what she felt.

  Except a good reason for it.

  Because she didn’t see any reason for tension; it looked to her like a perfectly normal Tuesday morning in early October. There were quite a few tourists about, she noted, wearing the slightly harried but pleased look of people who were not at home but were bent on enjoyment of their surroundings.

  This far south the leaves hadn’t turned yet, so that wave of visitors was still some weeks away, but the season so far had been nicely busy since spring. And now that the kids had gone back to school, Katie hadn’t had to tell even one teenager that the downtown sidewalks weren’t to be used for skateboarding, they knew that, and what was wrong with the half pipe and surrounding skateboarding area in the very nice park on the west end of town?

  A normal Tuesday.

  Katie said hi to a few people she knew, nodded politely to visitors she didn’t, and tried to hide her own increasing tension behind a pleasant smile as she strolled along the sidewalk.

  What was bugging her? It was an uneasiness inside her, but even more it was something outside her, something she . . . sensed. She caught herself looking back over her shoulder more than once, for some reason always surprised that there was nobody following her, even watching her as far as she could see, and the part of Main Street behind her looked just as normal as what lay ahead. But the feeling had been with her too long to ignore, and it was growing stronger.

  It felt like something was about to happen.

  Something bad.

  And what was going on with her skin? Something else that had begun days ago and had intensified. It was tingling, an unpleasant sort of pins-and-needles sensation as if she had a pinched nerve somewhere. Somewhere that it would affect her whole body. Was that even possible? What—

  Get off the street.

  The commanding voice in her head was something she had experienced enough times in her life to obey without question. She glanced around quickly, knowing she was too far from the station and her office, too far from her Jeep, her apartment.

  And there were people everywhere.

  Without many options, Katie slipped through one of the few narrow alleyways to be found downtown, this one far too narrow to do anything creative with; it was just a musty-smelling passage between brick buildings, out of the sunlight and so growing mold or algae or something on the walls and the concrete floor. At the back, behind each of the buildings on either side, tall wooden fences enclosed small areas where the trash was discreetly hidden from the businesses and homes behind Main Street.

  Quickly, Katie stepped inside one of the areas, knowing she wouldn’t be visible unless someone on a rooftop was peering down at her. She wrinkled her nose at the faint rancid smell of garbage even though it was further hidden from sight by the big rolling trash containers, their lids closed.

  She barely had time to sort of brace herself in one corner, the tall wooden fence support on two sides, before she was hit with something so powerful it literally stole her breath.

  She dimly felt herself sliding down the wood, trying to do that rather than fall over the garbage cans.

  Then everything went black.

  * * *

  • • •

  TWO WEEKS PREVIOUSLY

  Sam Bowers found a bottle of OTC pain relievers in his desk drawer and swallowed several with a sip of cold coffee, grimacing. He hadn’t noticed that the coffee had grown cold while he’d sat there staring at the computer screen without really seeing the information it offered.

  He also hadn’t noticed that the
bottle of pills was more than half empty.

  The headache was getting worse, dammit.

  It had started just a few days before, mild enough in the beginning to be no more than a minor irritant. He’d taken a few pills, and it had gone away, or so he had thought. But by the time he’d driven home after work it was back, stronger, a throbbing behind his eyes that was unusual for him.

  “Maybe a migraine?” his wife, Stacey, had suggested, her expression and tone worried.

  “I don’t get migraines,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Just because you never have before doesn’t mean you’re immune,” she reminded him. “People often develop them later in life. Sam—”

  “Probably a storm system up in the mountains or something,” he’d said dismissively, soothing her worry. “You know how the weather affects me.”

  “We usually don’t get storms in October,” she reminded him.

  “Well, tension, then. I’ve been staring at a computer screen all day. Probably just eye strain. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  She might have said something else, but he kissed her then, effectively distracting her.

  “The kids,” she murmured. “Supper—”

  He reached to turn off two burners without even noticing what was in the pots, then took her hand and led her out of the kitchen and toward the stairs. “The kids are next door; I saw them when I pulled into the driveway. They’re very, very occupied. And, besides, the bedroom door has a lock.”

  “Sam!” But she was laughing, and stopped protesting.

  His headache had gone away that evening, only to reappear late the next morning. And it had remained with him during the following days, held at bay usually by pain meds, but never quite gone. It sort of surged and ebbed, pushing as though against some barrier in his own head, and the surges were more painful every time.

  He was still convinced it wasn’t a migraine, because none of the other symptoms he’d read about (having finally broken down and Googled migraines) accompanied the pain. It was just pain, that’s all. Just a sort of throbbing pain that made him feel irritable.