Victoria frowned a moment longer, then went a bit pale herself. “You think— You’re saying that the same thing that happened to that deputy could happen to us? That we could be . . . urged . . . to kill someone against our will?”
“I’m saying it’s probably more likely than not that we’ll be targets. That one or more of us will be somehow negatively affected. Anybody with a weak or nonexistent shield is more likely to feel it first. We don’t really know what symptoms to look for; there must be a period before these people heard that voice, when the energy was first taking hold, but so far none of them has been able to tell us much about that.”
“Then—”
“Keep your shield up, Victoria. And if you start experiencing any unusual symptoms, tell us immediately.”
ELEVEN
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8
Hollis attempted to use the phone they carried, but since it only crackled loudly she had to use the hotel landline in their room to report in to base nearly two hours later.
“Communications are really screwed up,” she told Bishop. “My tablet’s already dead, and I had to plug my laptop in for more than ten minutes before it would even boot up.” She was on the bed, leaning back against pillows banked behind her. “Wi-Fi’s useless, but this hotel kept their earlier data ports feeding into a ground line, so it looks like we’ll be able to send and receive information that way. Not sure about the Internet yet.”
“Log on as soon as you can and go through the handshake process with the databases we use. Remember that?”
“Yeah, pretty sure, even if it’s been a while. If not, Logan’s an IT guy, right?”
“How he makes his living.” Bishop paused, then said, “The real estate agent who killed his clients. He was completely blank?”
“Pretty much. I mean, he could talk, he could respond to questions, more or less, but he was clearly out of it, didn’t have a clue what was going on. Even forgot he was wearing handcuffs unless he moved his hands. And even though Archer didn’t seem to notice, Reese and I both believe Weston got . . . worse . . . just in the time we were there. Tomorrow morning, we may find him asleep, catatonic, or, if we’re lucky, no worse than he was. Which would be smiling, pleasant, and with absolutely no memory of what he did.”
“So no help in understanding what’s happening.”
“No, I think we’ve gotten all we’re going to from Elliot Weston, and Reese agrees. We checked the hospital just before calling you, and Leslie Gardner is still asleep. I’m not at all sure she’s ever going to wake up, but we’ll go to the hospital tomorrow anyway and see if Reese can read her. Not sure what we’re going to have when Deputy Lonnagan wakes up, and I don’t know what I fear more—that he’ll still be wild with terror, or that he’ll be mindless.”
“Which do you really expect?”
Hollis paused for a moment to consider, gazing at her partner, who was leaning back on the bed near her feet. “Well, that depends on whatever’s behind the energy. We can’t know yet whether the aim is to destroy the mind—or take control of it just because tools are needed to kill and cause chaos, and leaving a wrecked mind behind is just a side effect of the process.”
“But there’s a definite goal or goals.”
“Oh, yeah. Lonnagan was raving about the voices in his mind telling him to kill his wife. He fought, he resisted, and she’s still alive. Not sure how long ago it started for him. For any of them. I mean, how long do you have to work at a woman’s mind before she’ll butcher her own kids?”
“That probably depends on whether the energy found a weakness in her somehow. A vulnerable place.”
Hollis frowned. “We were thinking that. The deputies who went to check on Lonnagan’s wife came back just before we left the station. Said they found her hysterical, terrified, and that she didn’t say much they could even understand. They called her sister to come stay with her, waited for her to get to the house, then left. The thing is, Reese was able to read one of the deputies, someone who’s been fairly close to the couple, and one thing she got from Kim Lonnagan, hysterical or not, was that her husband had accused her of infidelity, which is apparently a very sensitive thing between them. Both saw their parents’ marriages torn apart by infidelity, and both had always sworn it wouldn’t happen to them.”
“A vulnerability.”
“Yeah. Which, if you ask me, makes this energy thing a lot more dangerous and scary. It not only got into Lonnagan’s head, it apparently knew exactly which button to push—or found it once it was in his mind. That’s not just energy, that’s energy being directed, by a very clever, very devious and ruthless mind.”
“But is it a human mind?”
“I have no idea, and neither does Reese. So far we haven’t sensed anything to tell us if it is. Or if it isn’t. Look, we all know it’s more than possible for a single evil mind to do a hell of a lot, but . . . Assuming this destructive energy is supposed to balance the scale with the positive energy that summoned us, which I really hope is the case, I’m wondering if the positive energy I can sense here is what summoned us, or was left over when we were summoned. And, if so, will it come into play at the right time to help us.”
After a thoughtful moment, Bishop said, “That may depend on how much of the energy was required for the summoning.”
“True. But the negative energy is being used or expended at a very high level. I mean, at the very least this thing has been affecting and controlling people during overlapping time periods. I’m really hoping it’s limited in that way and can’t go after all the people in this valley at once, but we’re all feeling the energy, so who knows? Maybe that’s what it’s building up to.”
“That’s probably more likely than not.”
Hollis had been wondering if he knew more than he’d told them about this. She thought she had her answer. But all she said was, “Then finding the source or sources and sealing whatever doorways or portals are there is the only way to stop the energy buildup.”
“I would expect that to be a first step. Later, we can send people to make those seals as strong as possible, but the most important thing is to close them as best we can as soon as we can.”
“Yeah. Well, Reese and I need to get out and explore the valley tomorrow; the energy is still visible to me even tonight, but it’s a lot clearer in the daytime and a lot more likely to help show us whatever it is we need to know. Hopefully we’ll find those doorways or portals before more people are killed and/or driven mad.”
Bishop was silent for a moment, then said, “You said Logan and Victoria were shaken by the deputy.”
“Not when he first rushed in, I think. They took that pretty calmly, on the whole, and Victoria was quick to act. Looked to me first, which was a bit reassuring; I still don’t know how many of them are going to accept a team leader. Or even being part of a team. Anyway, when Victoria and Logan realized after they saw Lonnagan that it was at least possible the same thing could happen to one or even all of us, that we could be forced to fight just to keep control of our own minds . . . Yeah, that shook them. Shakes me too.”
“You handle energy better than any psychic I’ve ever known,” Bishop said.
“Be that as it may, until we find the source or sources of the energy I don’t think there’s a lot for me to handle. Or, at least, not a lot I can handle. So Reese and I both feel that’s the priority. Unless one of us in some way senses someone in trouble, someone we might be able to help, finding the energy source has to be our priority. Otherwise, we’re just sitting around uselessly speculating or else racing to reach a murder scene too late to do anything about it. Profiling a killer isn’t what this is about, so what we normally do isn’t going to help.”
“I’d agree.”
“I hope Archer does. He called for help and what he got was a group of psychics who are turning his belief system completely upside down. Pretty sure he’s not going to be happy when most of us are just out roaming around this valley looking for the energy source.”