Hold Back the Dark (Bishop/Special Crimes Unit #18)
Kay Hooper
THE SUMMONS
In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.
—DANTE ALIGHIERI
ONE
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7
Olivia Castle had experienced some monster headaches in her time, but this one, she felt sure, was about to make her head quite literally explode. It had come out of nowhere, as if something had just yanked her head into an invisible, tightening vise without warning. A vise with teeth. In pain, queasy, and shaking, she managed to lever herself up from the couch, holding one hand against the head she was sure was about to fall off, and hardly spared a moment to wonder why she’d been on the couch.
Work. She should have been at work.
Shouldn’t she be at work?
Had she come home for lunch? She didn’t remember.
Her head hurt too much to keep thinking about that.
She made it to the kitchen by holding on to various pieces of furniture as she passed, fighting nausea and accidentally grabbing Rex’s tail when she gripped the edge of the sink.
“Waaaurr!”
“Sorry, sorry,” she muttered, the headache so bad by then that her cat’s cry sounded like a dozen angry crows, her own quiet voice sounded like booming thunder in her head, and even her vision was affected in some way she didn’t understand; she couldn’t see the pleasant Vermont view normally visible from this window. She couldn’t see any real view at all.
She was seeing colors she was reasonably sure didn’t exist in nature. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Moving, swirling, like colorful smoke driven by a capricious breeze, opaque and translucent by turn. And everything was so damned bright. “Shouldn’t sit on the counter. How many times have I told you? Didn’t see you, pal. Oh, damn, what is going on?”
There was a large economy-sized bottle of an OTC painkiller near the sink (just as there was one in almost every room of her small house, and in her purse, with a box of extra bottles in the storage closet, in case the zombie apocalypse came without warning and all the pharmacies got looted before she could get to them). Olivia closed her eyes against the unnatural brightness, fumbling the bottle open while bitterly cursing childproof caps foisted upon people who had no children, fumbled just as blindly for a glass and the faucet, and managed, finally, to swallow about eight pills, hoping she could keep them down long enough to do some good.
“Prrupp,” Rex said.
“I know it’s too many, you don’t have to tell me that.” She stood there, eyes still closed, still hanging on to the edge of the sink with one hand and her head with the other, trying to breathe normally despite the pain keeping all her muscles rigid and snatching at her ability to breathe at all, her stomach churning, the weird colors still swirling even though her eyes were closed, wishing pain meds took effect faster. Like immediately. It would have been nice, she thought, to just take a shot of morphine and become unconscious for the duration. But she’d discovered the hard way that both the law and doctors frowned on patients self-medicating, far less walking out the door of any hospital, clinic, or pharmacy with their own supply of morphine or any other industrial-strength painkiller. And besides, they said it was only migraines.
Only migraines. Only migraines. Jesus. Even though no migraine remedy known to medical science and quite a few exotic possibilities Olivia had experimented with herself had so much as touched her periodic killer headaches.
She fumbled blindly for the bottle again.
“Waauurr!”
“All right, all right. I know there hasn’t been enough time. But if the pain doesn’t stop soon, I’m gonna take more. Shit.”
A moment later, Rex hissed.
Olivia managed to pry her eyes open no matter how much the ungodly brightness all around her hurt, and squinted at her cat in surprise. Because Rex didn’t hiss, or at least never had. But as she focused on her rather odd-looking cat, his brindle-tortie coat at odds with the brilliant blue eyes of a Siamese, she realized even through the bright, swirling colors she was still seeing that Rex was scared.
Really scared.
And Rex didn’t scare easily. Or . . . at all.
He was staring past her into the space behind her, the kitchen and den, and his pupils were so narrow that his eyes looked incredibly creepy, like the unnaturally blue eyes of a snake. The fur along his back was standing straight up, and his tail was about three times its natural size.
At the same time, Olivia began hearing a strange rustling sound. At first it sounded like dry leaves skittering along pavement, which was weird enough to hear inside her house with no pavement around. But then she realized it was . . . whispering. Lots of voices. Lots and lots of voices. Whispering.
It was coming from behind her.
Olivia did not want to turn around. Her mouth was dry despite the nausea, her skin was crawling unpleasantly, the pain in her head was getting impossibly worse rather than better, and she was afraid if she turned to confront an axe murderer, she’d beg him to just cut off her head and be quick about it.
Axe murderer. Idiot.
Not an axe murderer, of course. Not anyone.
Not any one . . . thing. Because she heard more than one whisper, many whispers, countless whispers. And she didn’t know what they were saying, but she had the eerie feeling they were all whispering the same thing. The same words.
Still holding the edge of the sink with one hand, Olivia turned slowly to see what so frightened her cat and was making her own skin crawl in a sensation she’d never felt before.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered.
The headache that was still hellishly painful didn’t seem such a big deal now. Because despite all the swirling colors nearly blinding her, she could see, very clearly, why Rex was afraid. Every sharp object in her kitchen and den—every single one from every kitchen knife and fork she owned to three letter openers, two pairs of scissors, two box cutters with razor blades visible, the iron fireplace poker, and half a dozen pens and twice that many sharpened pencils—floated in midair. Different levels, some low, some as high as eye level.
With their pointy ends aimed right at her.
And they were all whispering.
“Waaurr,” Rex muttered, his voice unusually quiet, questioning.
“I’m not doing it. I’d know if I were doing it, right? I always know. I have to concentrate to do it. I mean, unless I’m mad. Angry, not crazy. Though maybe crazy too. Because this has never . . . And, anyway, even if I’m mad, I don’t . . . know how . . . to make anything . . . whisper.”
Or how to stop it when she instinctively tried, an effort that was definitely not rewarded.
Unconsciously, both her hands lifted to her head, pressing as if to hold something in, because the headache suddenly grew horribly worse, impossibly worse, dragging a guttural groan from somewhere deep inside her, and through the bright swirl of colors that was beginning to truly blind her, she could still see all the scary-sharp weapons floating inexorably toward her.
Whispering.
What was whispering? Inanimate objects couldn’t communicate, right? Not like this, at least.
The pain edged into agony, but even so she heard as if from a great distance her own shaking, pleading question.
“What? What are you saying? What do you want of me?”
And from the same great distance, she heard the whispered demand that made no sense to her.
Prosperity. Go to Prosperity.
They were still floating eerily toward her, all the pointy things that promised even more pain if they came much closer, and hard as she tried, Olivia couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t stop it, couldn’t see anything but them or hear anything except for that whispered demand.
Go to Prosperity.
Go to Prosperity.
Olivia heard one last thing: A moan of agony escaped her, and then everything went black.
* * *
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