SIX
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8
The “study” of the mountain house was in reality a highly functional command center, its true purpose only betrayed, at first glance, by the massive conference table in the center of the room, which could seat a dozen people in comfortable office chairs without crowding, and more if need be. At second glance, it was clear that various high-tech toys were cunningly integrated among bookshelves and gleaming cabinetry that lined two walls, and at least three workstations were tucked into comfortable niches spaced apart, each with spectacular views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Completing the huge room and effectively removing any lingering sense of being in a place designed only for work were several comfortable seating areas scattered about invitingly, including a large grouping of two long couches and a couple of wide, deep chairs in front of a rock fireplace where gas logs burned cheerfully and warded off the deepening chill of an October afternoon.
Olivia Castle was one of half a dozen people sitting there, maybe avoiding the conference table and the tablets and paper files and legal pads already assembled during the day because she wasn’t quite ready to truly confront the seriousness—and the scary uncertainty—of what they were going to face but more probably because she still felt chilled and welcomed the warmth of the fire. Rex, curled up in her lap after spending the entire morning exploring and happily meeting new friends as well as greeting old ones, was certainly enjoying it.
Especially since he was out of the hated carrier, and because there was a cook in residence who understood the delicate palate of discerning cats.
Hollis Templeton and her partner, Reese DeMarco, had arrived earlier than expected late in the morning, bearing a map and at least the beginnings of an unsettling theory of why they had all been summoned. Or, at least, why Prosperity. Right now, they were silent, faces thoughtful, possibly considering various introductions made in the last hour or so just as Olivia was; they shared one of the big overstuffed chairs, with Hollis sitting in it and DeMarco sitting on one of its wide arms.
The partners never seemed to get very far away from each other, Olivia noted. Not that they were clingy or anything like that, just . . . connected. Obviously connected.
Hollis was a slender, almost delicate woman of medium height, with short, no-fuss brown hair and eyes of an unusual shade of blue very bright and aware in her lightly tanned face. Her other features were good without being in any way remarkable, but that changed the instant she smiled and animation transformed the ordinary into something more than beautiful could ever be.
DeMarco might have been less well known among the non-SCU community of psychics than his partner, but that was because his FBI career for some years before he met Hollis had consisted of a number of highly secretive deep-cover assignments. Since leaving that more stealthy life behind, he was definitely becoming better known.
Physically he was rather overpowering on many levels. He was very large and clearly possessed the kind of strength that could never be earned in a gym, but what any woman would notice immediately was his thick blond hair, extremely sharp blue eyes, and perfect classical handsomeness. It was as if his still, watchful face had been carved from stone by a master sculptor.
Olivia had felt just a little frightened of him initially, which tended to be her default response to large, unfamiliar men, but the first time she’d seen him lean down to say something quietly to his partner, his stone face softened and made very human if only for that fleeting moment, her fear had left her.
Galen, another large and powerful man who also made her feel wary, had not made an appearance in the last hour or so; Olivia could remember hearing him say something to Bishop about weapons, and she assumed—without wanting to spend any time at all thinking about it—he was off gathering whatever it had been decided the team would need.
Both Bishop and Miranda were also absent from the room for the moment, called away quietly by a dark man they hadn’t introduced for some reason he hadn’t explained. Olivia was more than a little worried about that, but she did her best not to think about it until she had to. She considered it a cowardly trait, doing that, but it was the way she’d dealt with scary things her whole life, and she doubted very much that would change anytime soon.
Instead of thinking about scary possibilities, she allowed her gaze to wander from person to person, their scattered positions around the room not, she hoped uneasily, a sign of a team that didn’t know how to be one.
Tory—Victoria Stark—stood alone near one of the big windows, not taking advantage of what looked like a long, comfortable window seat as she gazed out at the view without, it was obvious from her preoccupied expression, taking much, if any, notice of it. She was younger than Olivia but seemed older, with all the calm, self-control, and shrewd watchfulness Olivia felt she herself lacked. She was of medium height, on the thin side but much, much stronger than she looked, and possessed silvery-blond hair cut short and expressive green eyes.
Sharing Olivia’s couch was Reno, serene as always. She didn’t look as if she’d pretty much crossed the country twice in a jet in less than twenty-four hours and with no more than brief stops, neither the least bit rumpled nor seemingly in need of sleep. Nor did she appear at all disturbed that one of the three men who had been aboard that jet when it had landed at the airstrip earlier had been sending her hard glares since they had arrived here—and probably, Olivia thought, all the way from Alaska.
Not quite ready to brave those glares even if they weren’t directed specifically at her, Olivia looked across at the other couch, which was occupied by the two other men who had arrived with Reno, the wide space between them more indicative of an automatic reluctance to get too physically close to anyone because of their abilities than of any personal animosity.
Sully Maitland she knew well. Born an empath and a strong one, he was still, at thirty-two, working to strengthen his shields; it was one of the reasons he chose to live on a fairly isolated horse ranch in Montana. He was six-two and powerful, dark hair graying at the temples a sign of struggle more than years, and the most intense golden eyes Olivia had ever seen in a human face.
She had seen something very like them once before, but those intense golden eyes had belonged to a tiger. And not one caged in a zoo.
Like Olivia, Sully was cursed with headaches and blackouts, and like her he considered the blackouts something of a blessing as long as they happened in private rather than public and there was something soft to fall on. It was, he’d told her once, the only real peace he had, since otherwise the feelings of every soul within a hundred yards of him battered at his shields like an only slightly muffled, extremely painful tide, whether he was awake or asleep.
Sully didn’t have a “frequency” that limited his range; the only thing that limited him was distance. Inside a hundred yards—almost exactly—he felt everything from any person who didn’t have a very powerful shield (or rare all-receptive rather than projecting or transmitting abilities, like Reno), and from most animals.
It was one of his unique traits, that he could sense the emotions of animals. Not thoughts, he claimed no ability to communicate with them as such, but he knew what they felt. Not all animals, but most. Including birds, especially, for some reason, crows.
It was why the cattle ranch he had inherited had become instead a horse ranch where not even the chickens were slaughtered and no hunting or trapping was allowed.
Sharing the couch at that careful distance was Logan Alexander, wary and somewhat aloof, as he generally was around other psychics. Olivia knew him, but she wouldn’t have claimed to know him well. She knew he didn’t want to be what he was—a medium, born with that ability. And since, during the single emotional outburst she could ever remember hearing from him, he had confessed that spirits quite literally haunted him, all the time, everywhere, giving him no peace, she really couldn’t blame him.
Logan was a good-looking man and probably, Olivia thought shrewdly, drew women as quickly as his abilities repelled them. He was thirty, six-one, and possessed shaggy black hair and oddly light blue eyes that were almost hypnotic. He was frowning now and had been since he’d arrived, but Olivia had no idea if it was because spirits were bothering him here—or because they weren’t.
From the corner of her eye, Olivia saw Reno move restlessly to glance back over her shoulder with a slight frown marring her normally serene expression as she somewhat ruefully eyed the final member of their team.
Or . . . perhaps not.
Dalton Davenport had been born a telepath. And he quite likely would normally have developed at least a shield of sorts by the time he reached his current age of thirty-three. But Dalton was one of those unlucky souls whose psychic abilities had been misunderstood and feared by those around him from very early in his life, before he hit his teens. Abandoned by family when too young to even try to defend himself, he had lived the secretly feared horror of many psychics: Medically diagnosed with supposedly dangerous mental “disorders” that were judged to pose a danger to himself and to others, he had been kept on an ever-changing regimen of strong medications—and institutionalized.
For nearly twenty years, until Bishop had found him.
So nobody could blame Dalton for the fact that he had begun pacing almost from the moment he’d arrived, along with Reno, Logan, and Sully, less than an hour ago. They couldn’t even blame him for the fact that he had not stopped pacing for an instant and had remained stubbornly unresponsive while all the necessary introductions had been made, keeping his distance and holding on to the glare that was directed often at Reno, but saying nothing.
The problem was that Dalton not only lacked a shield to protect himself and block the thoughts of those around him: He broadcast his own thoughts and emotions. Strongly. And since anger tended to swallow up most other emotions and thoughts, what was coming off Dalton in almost palpable waves was only that. He was angry. He was so very angry. All the time.
And anger was one emotion most telepaths and empaths could not shut out no matter how strong their shields were.
Looking around at the others in the room, Olivia saw Hollis wince and rub her left temple, her blue eyes following Dalton’s pacing with both sympathy and pain.
Then she looked up at her partner, and Olivia barely caught her quiet words as he bent his head attentively.
“Can I just apologize for all the time I spent broadcasting? Honestly, I had no idea it was like this. So painful. Why didn’t you tell me?”
DeMarco smiled faintly. “Different situation.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Then he straightened and looked across the room, his attention so obviously yanked from his partner that Olivia found herself following his gaze without even thinking about it.
She saw Dalton reaching one end of his pacing path, turning blindly to start back the other way—and then Victoria moved three quick, soundless steps toward him from behind, reached up both hands to touch his head on either side, and spoke one firm word.
“Sleep.”
Dalton dropped like a stone. Victoria sort of danced back a couple steps in a curiously graceful and clearly practiced maneuver, and caught him under his arms before he could hit the floor.
She let out a grunt when she took his weight, then looked at the others. “Little help here?”
DeMarco and Sully were there in seconds, relieving Victoria of her burden and laying Dalton out on the window seat. He looked utterly boneless and totally peaceful, so much so that he was oddly unfamiliar to those who had known him longest.
“Thanks,” Victoria said.
“No, thank you,” Sully said. “My head was killing me.”
Hollis said, “So was mine. How long will he be out, Victoria?”
Since they had been quickly briefed on their journey here as to the abilities of the non-SCU psychics they’d both be meeting for the first time, neither DeMarco nor Hollis was the least bit surprised by Victoria’s ability.
She shrugged. “An hour if he’s lucky. Ten minutes if we aren’t.”
“Nifty ability,” Hollis noted with a smile as her partner returned to her side. “Is he really out?”
“Sleeping. Deeply. Never tried it on Dalton before, mostly because he wouldn’t let me, but it usually muffles whatever the psychic ability is. He’s stopped broadcasting, I take it?”
Both Sully and Hollis nodded, the latter adding, “All I was getting was anger. And his aura was going really red. Not good.”
Sully, returning to his own place on the couch, said wryly, “It’s been a while, but as I remember, Dalton’s broadcasting was usually wordless rage. Not that I can really blame him.”
“No, not with his history,” Hollis said. For a moment, she looked across the room at Dalton’s peaceful form, her expression speculative. “I wonder . . .”
Nobody really had the nerve to ask what she wondered.
Olivia spoke up then to say, “Tory put me out once when I thought my head was going to explode. All the pain went away, and it was so peaceful.” She sounded a little wistful.
Victoria joined the group around the fireplace, leaning against the back of the couch between Olivia and Reno. With a slight grimace, she said, “It’s a temporary relief—and only works really well the first time I use it on somebody.”
“What happens when you do it again?” Hollis asked.
“For the same person? The effects taper off more and more with every try. Not such deep sleep, shorter and shorter time periods. Abilities less muffled. By the fourth or fifth time they generally just blink and get mad at me.” She glanced over at the sleeping Dalton, adding, “I’d really rather not get that far with him.”
Reno looked at the two SCU agents. “Dalton was never willing, but the rest of us . . . experimented a bit over the years. Victoria was able to put all of us out. Like she said, with . . . gradually diminishing returns when it came to the active abilities, and even blocking receptive abilities like mine. It didn’t affect any of our individual abilities once we woke up. Even if . . .”
“Even if that’s what we hoped would happen,” Logan said. He frowned at Victoria. “Did I get mad when it stopped working?”
“Furious,” she confirmed immediately.
He looked a bit disconcerted. “Sorry. I didn’t remember that.”
Victoria smiled faintly. “It was a very tense time. If I remember correctly, you wanted to get away from a stubborn spirit who’d been following you around for days. I think he was standing right behind me when that last attempt failed. So you were probably more mad at him than at me.”
“Still,” Logan muttered, a tinge of color rising in his cheeks. “Sorry.”
She nodded, then looked at the agents. “So the usefulness of my ability is definitely limited. In my real life it’s helped with the occasional noisy roommate or bad date, but that’s pretty much it. Far as I’ve been able to tell, it doesn’t matter if the person I put out is psychic or not—though psychics remember what happened and nonpsychics wake up confused and wondering why they just suddenly went to sleep. Nonpsychics also tend to be out longer, even up to a couple of hours. Most psychics tend to be grateful for whatever time they’re out. They get a restful nap, at least. The first time. After a few times, it just stops working.”
“Do you know if the ability can . . . rebuild over time? Like a static charge?”
“So far, no sign of that. I’ve tried it with a couple of people in this group up to nearly three years after it stopped working. No joy. Whether because I’m limited in that way or they build up immunity or some kind of shield against it, I couldn’t say.”
Hollis nodded but said, “What about your other ability?”
“I don’t have another ability.”
Hollis’s brows went up briefly, and then she studied the younger woman, her bright eyes narrowed slightly. “Maybe you call it something else,” she said finally, “but your aura is shot through with silver on the inside, close to your body, which in my experience means you’re holding in power, electrical and magnetic energy. Power that belongs to you. And it’s stronger now than it was when you put Dalton out, which I assume would have taken at least some of your energy because any active ability does.”
“I have excess energy, that’s all,” Victoria said. “Not another ability.” There was an edge to her voice.
Hollis continued to look at her for a moment, smiling faintly, then shrugged. “Hey, I’m all for holding back a few aces. I hope most of you have more than one ability, because I think we’re going to need everything we can get. But I should warn you that intense investigations tend to bring out everything a psychic has, good or bad, and that includes inactive or latent abilities. So it’s likely that, assuming we all survive this, your abilities will end up changed in some way. All of them. Maybe even a few you don’t—know—you have.”
“That’s your deal, your thing,” Victoria objected. “Different abilities popping up. It doesn’t happen to other psychics I’ve ever heard of.” She was still frowning.
“Well, me aside, if it happens at all, it happens with latent but existing abilities, and during SCU investigations,” Hollis said. “Because of the energies of other psychics. Because there’s generally a human monster we’re hunting, one with all the wrong kind of energy. Because of outside influences producing or using energy, even the weather or other electrical or magnetic fields. And where there’s energy involved, especially negative energy, the changes can be . . . rather drastic.”
Reno spoke up then to ask, “Do we know if negative energy is involved in Prosperity?”
“It is if something bad is happening there. Or will. We were all summoned, after all,” Hollis replied.
Bishop came into the room just then, his wife at his side and Galen just behind them. All three looked grim.
“Something bad just happened,” he said. “Something very bad.”
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8
“This is not . . . I don’t understand this. I don’t understand how this happened,” Sheriff Jackson Archer said. He rubbed his eyes briefly with both hands, as if he could erase the scene before him. But when his hands dropped, he saw the same impossible things just as he had before. What he had been standing here staring at for more than half an hour. It didn’t seem real. Even though he knew it was.
It was a scene of utter carnage.
The normally comfortable and pleasant living room of this nice family home on the outskirts of Prosperity would never be the same again. The Gardner family had consisted of two parents and three children. There were four bodies sprawled around the room, very still, very silent, and very dead.
Blood was everywhere, the acrid, metallic smell of it hanging in the air like smoke.
Ed Gardner, thirty-five, was stretched out on the floor just inside the living room, his head in a large pool of blood, his eyes wide open as if in total shock. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. Three of the fingers on his left hand had been chopped off but left there as if the killer had been interrupted or had just decided it was no fun to chop off body parts if the victim was dead.
Lying closest to her father on one end of a big sectional couch that was unfortunately made of a once light-colored fabric was eleven-year-old Suzy Gardner, the eldest of the three Gardner children. Her eyes were closed, so perhaps she had been rendered unconscious or even dead before the dismembering of her slight body had commenced.
Jesus Christ, I hope she was already dead when that was done. Or out at least. Not aware of what was happening. Drugged, maybe. Or even a blow to the head. Just . . . let it be something like that. Let it be that she was dead before she knew what was being done to her. And who was doing it . . .
But Archer was afraid she had been alive, even if unconscious, because there was a lot of blood soaked into the couch. Blood soaked around her arms, dismembered at the shoulders. Blood soaked around her legs, dismembered at the hips.
Dismembered . . . by a hacksaw. And an axe.
And her limbs lay where they belonged, more or less, as though some demented dollmaker stood ready to sew them back on.
At the other end of the sectional sprawled Bobby Gardner, eight, whose small body had been opened from breastbone to crotch. Blood was everywhere. Too much of what had been inside his body had been pulled out to lie on the couch near him or to . . . dangle . . . toward the floor. And his eyes were open.
Archer turned his horrified gaze with more reluctance than he could have expressed to the fourth and final victim of this slaughter, on the carpeted floor, nearly hidden between the big coffee table and that section of the couch.
Five-year-old Luke Gardner, not yet in school, had probably been the first victim, he guessed, because the blood on his small body appeared closer to being dried than what was on and around the others, and what lay around him on the pale carpet of the living room had dulled and . . . congealed.
His head was horribly misshapen, some number of blows with a heavy object having caved in his skull in several places. His ears had been sliced off. Each of his fingers had been chopped off with an axe and, even more unnervingly, were nowhere to be seen. His feet had been chopped off at the ankles and stood bizarrely upright in blood-soaked bedroom slippers with the floppy ears of a rabbit.
Most bizarrely of all, on the big coffee table lay a wooden kitchen cutting board, blood-soaked and bearing the deep imprints of an axe. It had clearly been slid under the children so that the axe had been able to chop more effectively.
Archer tore his gaze away and half turned to look at the chair closest to the front door. It were where Leslie Gardner had been found, curled up in apparently peaceful sleep, her hands covered in blood, her face spattered, clots of blood matting her blond hair. Her jeans and blouse had been literally soaked with blood and all the instruments and objects she had used to slaughter her family lay on the carpet near the chair in a neat semicircle. A huge kitchen butcher knife. An axe. A hacksaw. The heavy bronze figurine of a woman holding a child.
They were all covered with blood.
It doesn’t make any sense. It just doesn’t . . .
“Jack?”
Katie was informal only rarely while they were working, but just as the morning’s inexplicable suicide had shaken her, this horrifically inexplicable mass murder had also shaken her. Badly.
Archer turned to face his chief deputy, noting that she had come only far enough to address him, clearly trying not to look down at the body of Ed Gardner, which was closest to her since she stood in the doorway to the entrance hall. And looking Archer square in the eye out of the equally clear determination to not allow her gaze to stray to the other horrors.
Not again, at least.
“Any word from the hospital?” he asked, functioning on automatic in a situation he had never been trained to handle, his tone queerly detached.
“Yeah, but no real news. Nothing we didn’t know, nothing we couldn’t see for ourselves. Gabby says Leslie Gardner is still asleep—and the doctors say she is asleep even though they haven’t been able to wake her, not faking, not unconscious or in any way injured—and not drugged.”
Gabby Morgan was Archer’s second most experienced deputy, sent to the hospital with EMS and Leslie Gardner, with orders to stick close, follow procedure as far as she was able, and report everything. And not to leave Leslie’s side for a moment.
“They’re sure she wasn’t drugged?” It had been a vain hope, he’d known it even as he’d hoped, struggling to find something that might make sense in a situation that was madness.
“The doctors are sure. They’re conducting more tests on her blood just in case, tests they don’t usually do in . . . normal situations . . . but so far they haven’t found a single sign that she was acting under the influence of anything at all. Except maybe a psychotic break, which they can’t know until she’s awake and shrinks can talk to her. And even if it was something like that, they say there would have been signs people around her would have noticed. Long before it got so bad that something like this could happen.”
Katie drew a deep breath. “Everything was photographed at the hospital, her clothing removed and bagged for us. Or for whatever technicians or lab we send it to. Gabby’s hanging on to that to preserve the chain of evidence. The doctors and nurses checked Leslie Gardner’s body head to toe; there aren’t even any bruises, or the . . . normal . . . cuts we’d expect where the knife might have slipped, should have slipped when it got slippery with blood. The blood was all . . . theirs. All belonged to her husband and kids. She didn’t have a single wound or cut or even a scratch. I don’t have to be a medical examiner or crime scene tech to know that that’s weird.”
She glanced back over her shoulder, noting that deputies Cody Greene and Matt Spencer, still gray with shock since they had responded to the initial call from a worried neighbor, were standing out on the front porch on the other side of the clear storm door. Neither had ventured any farther into the room than where Katie stood now. They had called the station, horrified and bewildered, and it had been the sheriff and his chief deputy who had discovered Leslie Gardner to be very much alive but weirdly unconscious and summoned paramedics.
Before they’d arrived, Katie had silently taken pictures with her cell phone, focusing on Leslie Gardner and the area around her before she could be moved.
Katie wasn’t even sure why she’d done it. And all she knew now was that she couldn’t keep silent any longer.
“Jack . . . first that apparent suicide that didn’t make sense, that doesn’t make sense this morning, and now this. The youngest boy was probably killed hours ago, maybe before the other kids were up, maybe even while we were three streets over trying to figure out why Sam Bowers would have killed himself.”
“Yeah,” Archer responded, his voice sounding hollow.
“There’s absolutely no sign anyone else was involved in this. Nobody broke in. None of the doors or windows have been forced or damaged in any way. Nothing appears to be missing. Everything upstairs looks like—like a Wednesday morning with kids in the house. Beds unmade. Used towels on the bathroom floor. It’s clear everybody had breakfast, dishes not yet put into the dishwasher. Clear the two older kids had their backpacks ready, their lunches inside.
“The neighbor who called in said Suzy and Bobby Gardner went out to catch the bus just like usual, like her kids did, but then for some reason came back in here before the bus came. She said it looked like someone had called them, or they’d heard something from inside the house. But they didn’t come back out, and the bus came and went. Then she noticed that Ed Gardner’s car was still here, and she assumed he was going to take the kids to school.”
Archer nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I got that.”
Katie kept her voice even. “But when she looked out again, around lunchtime, his car was still parked out in the driveway. That was odd, she thought, because he never came home for lunch. She tried the house phone and got voice mail. Tried Leslie Gardner’s cell, and it went straight to voice mail. She even called Ed Gardner’s work, and they told her he hadn’t been in and hadn’t called. She knew then something was very wrong over here.”
“Wonder why she didn’t come over,” Archer mused, but absently, as if the question barely touched his mind.
“She was afraid. Word had already gotten out by then about Sam Bowers, and the news was garbled; nobody was sure it was suicide, maybe murder. And she was scared. Too scared to come over here and find . . . horrors. So she called us.”
“Yeah.”
“Jack . . . this is too much for us. None of us has the training or experience to figure all this out.”
“Sam Bowers killed himself,” Archer said. “Leslie Gardner killed her husband and kids. That’s what happened.”
“Maybe. Probably. But Sam Bowers shouldn’t have killed himself. And if Leslie Gardner slaughtered her entire family, why did she just curl up bloody on that chair and go to sleep? And why can’t the doctors wake her up?”
“What are you saying?” he asked slowly.
“I’m saying we need help. Everything that’s happened today was . . . unnatural. Even unreal. Inexplicable. It’s not just a suicide and a multiple murder. It’s not something ordinary cops can figure out. I feel that, and I know you do too, because we’ve both been trained to handle crimes and these . . . these are something different. There’s something else going on here, Jack. I don’t know what it is, but I know the longer it takes us to figure it out, the more people are going to die.”
He blinked, stared at her. Finally saw her. “What?”
Softly, she said, “This isn’t natural. What happened to these people, what happened to Sam Bowers, it’s not natural. Something . . . outside themselves made these things happen, made them do these things. Something stronger than they were. Something dark. Something we can’t see. And it’s still here, in Prosperity. It isn’t finished yet. I can feel that. You have to feel it. Can’t you feel it?”
“All I feel is horror,” he said. “And . . . helplessness. I’ve never felt that before. Not like this.”
“Neither have I.”
He frowned at her. “I think you know more than I do, Katie. Don’t you?”
Katie drew a breath and tried hard to make her voice steady and matter-of-fact. “What I know is that we’re in trouble. What I know is that we need help. Not just crime scene technicians and a medical examiner, though we do need those. We need someone able to figure out what’s going on here. Someone who knows how to deal with . . . unnatural deaths. Unnatural things. Someone who can see what’s happening here.”
His short laugh was a rusty, almost broken sound. He cleared his throat before speaking again. “I just . . . I get the feeling you know more than you’re saying about this.”
Katie shook her head. “What I know is that it’s too much for us. And I think I know who to call. But I need to call now. Before things get even worse. And before this scene, before any of . . . this . . . is disturbed.”
“Call,” Archer said.