Sleeping With Fear (16 page)

"You think there'll be more blackouts?"

"I don't know what to think. Except that whatever I'm experiencing, it's like nothing I've ever heard of before. Blackouts and lost time aren't unknown among psychics. In fact, if anything they're fairly common. But they tend to present as either total unconsciousness or radically different behavior."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that if you and everybody else around here noticed nothing odd about how I was acting during the time I've lost, it can only mean I didn't actually
lose
those hours. I was functional. I was here, doing normal things. I was me. But then, for whatever reason, those memories and experiences…ceased to exist for me. I've lost the perception of their reality."

"Why does that sound a lot more scary to me?"

"Probably for the same reason it feels a lot more scary. Because how we perceive the world
is
our reality. And if I've lost that, even pieces of it, then…I can't trust anything I think, or feel…or believe. Especially now. It's not just holes now; my mind has apparently begun filling in the holes, the blank spots, supplying
memories
that aren't real at all."

"Assuming you can believe me," he noted.

"I have to believe you," she said flatly. "I have to have something solid to hold on to, to anchor me. And that's you. Because you're in my bed. Because before all this started, I trusted you that much. It's never casual for me, in case I didn't mention that. Sex. So you being my lover has to mean I trusted you absolutely within days of meeting you. I may not remember why, but I have to believe that. I have to hold on to it. You're my lifeline, Ash."

"I wish you sounded a little happier about that."

Riley made a determined effort to lighten her tone. "Well, what can I say? It's those control issues, remember? No matter how happy I am, I'll always want to steer my own boat."

"I am the captain of my soul," he murmured.

"Yeah. We're none of us master of our fates, but that doesn't stop us trying to be."

"You and I have debated that before."

"Have we?" Riley shook her head. "Then I imagine we will again. In the meantime, if you want to bail, better now than later."

"I don't bail, Riley."

"Didn't really think you would. Just thought I'd offer."

"Noted. And refused."

She found herself smiling. "I've got a hunch I picked a pretty good lifeline. And it doesn't take anything but common sense to know I'm going to need one. Things may get worse, Ash. A lot worse."

After a moment, he asked, "Is all this due to the Taser attack?"

"I don't know what else it could be."

"You said something once about-Riley, could it be the influence of another psychic?"

"Theoretically? Yeah. Energy to energy. Electromagnetic fields can be manipulated, electronic impulses cut off or redirected. Even created. It's how the brain works, and it can be affected by plenty of external factors. But as far as I know, we've never encountered a psychic with the ability to influence another psychic's mind even in small ways. Not without a very strong blood connection."

"Which isn't possible in this case."

Riley shook her head. "My brothers are scattered around the world and my parents are in Australia. And none of them is psychic anyway."

"There's no way a psychic unrelated to you could be doing this?"

"No way I know of. To alter my memories? To create new ones? Even in theory, the sheer amount of energy anything like that would require is…almost unimaginable."

Burning buildings. A blood sacrifice. No…not just a blood sacrifice…a human sacrifice. How much dark energy would that create?

For a moment, Riley thought there was something on the edge of her mind, but then it slipped off.

"Would you know if your mind was being influenced?"

"Maybe. Probably." Surely she would. Surely. It made her skin crawl to think otherwise, to consider the possibility that her actions weren't her own, her memories and even her very thoughts shaped for her by someone else.

It was far less scary to believe a simple electrical discharge had scrambled all the circuits in her brain.

Still…

Could that be why I'm using up energy so quickly? Because my mind is working to fight off a kind of attack I'm not even consciously aware of? Is that even possible?

"Is that why you're so sure it was the Taser attack?"

"I think that's more likely."
I hope it is, anyway.
She reached up to rub her forehead. "Not that my thinking is all that clear. But I do know that memory is a tricky thing at the best of times; add in an electrical blast of unknown strength and duration, and the brain is very likely to go haywire. Especially a psychic's brain, which tends to have a higher-than-normal amount of electrical activity going on at any given time anyway."

Ash shook his head. "This is beyond me."

"It's beyond me too," Riley admitted. She hesitated, then added, "I have to report in. Because it's the right thing to do and because if there's anyone who might understand what's going on in my head, it'll be Bishop."

"You sound doubtful."

"Not of that. I'm just wondering how much even he can juggle before one of the plates crashes to the floor."

A
nd you have absolutely no memory of anything you said or did during the two blackouts?" From Bishop's calm tone, no one would have guessed either that he found anything unusual in the situation or that he was in the middle of an incredibly intense investigation of his own. For the moment, at least, he appeared to be perfectly capable of juggling multiple tasks.

"No," Riley answered. "It's like I passed out and then woke up hours later."

"Which," he pointed out, "is different from the first memory loss, immediately after the Taser attack."

It took a moment, but then Riley realized. "When I woke up Monday afternoon, there
were
bits and pieces of memory. Uncertain, even wispy, but they were there."

"Yes. A reasonable physical result of a temporary disruption of the brain's own electrical activity. Like an explosion of energy that caused a scattering, a…fragmentation of memories. You lacked the ability to stitch them together, but all the pieces, all the experiences, were still there."

"Just memories?"

"You tell me."

Riley stood there with the beach house's phone to her ear and gazed absently through the ocean-side windows. Ash was out there on the deck, waiting patiently, his own brooding gaze fixed on the water. She wondered what he was thinking, feeling.

She didn't have a clue.

Drawing a breath, she answered Bishop. "No, not just memories. More. Senses. Emotions. Even the normal ability to read other people, to have some idea of what they're thinking and feeling. It's all scattered, distant."

"But not knowledge. Not training. That you can still access."

"I think so," she said cautiously.

"Then I'm betting it's all still there, Riley."

"In pieces."

"You can reconnect the pieces."

"Yeah? How?" She was afraid her voice sounded as shaky as she felt.

"You made a start. You were able to use your clairvoyance at the murder scene."

"Not like I've ever used it before."

"There's at least a chance the electrical jolt may have changed that for good."

She realized her short nails were biting into her palm and forced herself to unclench her right fist. Staring down at the reddened crescents as they faded, she said slowly, "There's a precedent?"

"Of sorts. Electrical fields affect us, Riley. Virtually all of us. But how depends on the individual. It can have unpredictable side effects ranging from very mild disorientation to a radical change in our abilities. But a direct jolt to the brain…The only similar case I know of involved a second-degree medium who was accidentally electrocuted. His heart stopped, but they brought him back."

"And? He still sees dead people?"

"He couldn't see them before, just barely hear them. Now he sees them in Technicolor and hears them as clearly as you're hearing me. All the time, if he drops the shield it took us more than a year to teach him how to build."

"Like living in the middle of a noisy crowd only you can see and hear."

"Yes. Not pleasant."

"He's not with the team."

"No. Maybe someday, but not yet. Right now it's all he can do to have some semblance of a normal life."

Riley would have preferred to go on talking about someone else's troubles but reluctantly focused on her own. "So…the shock of that Taser might have strengthened or altered my clairvoyance to the point that I can actually experience visions."

"It's possible."

"You didn't mention that possibility before. Did you? Jesus, I don't even remember if I reported in yesterday."

"You did, briefly. And I noticed absolutely nothing unusual in the conversation, so you obviously were functional during those missing hours. As for whether we discussed the possibility that your abilities may have been altered, no, not specifically."

"Did you think this might happen?"

"Honestly?" For the first time a hint of weariness crept into his voice. "There's been so much going on here that I haven't had a great deal of time to consider possibilities elsewhere."

"Yeah, I saw you on the news. Looks like a tough one."

"It is. But all the teams are currently involved in tough cases. Including you. Riley-"

"I know. I should return to Quantico. But the answers are here, Bishop. Besides, at least one man has died and there's a strong possibility of another victim. And I'm involved. Somehow, I'm involved. I can't just walk away from that."

"An unknown assailant managed to blindside a trained agent and put you down hard on Sunday night."

"Don't rub it in," she murmured.

Bishop ignored that. "You don't know if it was meant to be a lethal attack, though all signs point that way. Your memories and instincts are, to say the very least, unreliable, and you've been burning energy at a rate far greater than normal for you. You've had two blackouts in the last forty-eight hours, losing well over half that time. You're experiencing dreams and visions of what appear to be extreme black-occult rites, which we both know are as rare as hen's teeth. And you have no backup."

"What's your point?" she asked, deliberately flip and not at all sure he'd let her get away with it. He usually didn't.

"Riley."

"Okay, it's insane. I'm insane. Probably. I'm also scared, in case you're not picking up on that."

"I'm picking up on it," he said. "Even without telepathy. The worse a situation gets, the more flippant you get."

Riley frowned. "I'm that predictable?"

"It's a defense mechanism. In your case, a survival tool."

"As in ‘Don't bother to kill the poor little lunatic blonde, she's obviously out of her mind and, so, harmless'?"

"That's part of it. And a different sort of…protective coloration. If you're laughing about a situation or taking it lightly, then it can't be all that serious, now, can it? Puts other people at ease and tends to stop them crowding you."

Riley returned her gaze to the man waiting outside on the deck, and said, "I don't think it's going to work this time."

"Not with everyone, at any rate. If Ash Prescott is your lifeline, you need to be totally honest with him."

It didn't surprise Riley that Bishop had picked up on her specific uncertainties; she wasn't at all sure he wasn't actually reading her thoughts, long distance. "I told him he was my lifeline. But…do you really think it'll come to that?"

"I think it might. You've experienced two blackouts in two days, Riley, the second one longer than the first. That alone suggests your condition is deteriorating rather than improving."

"Yeah, I was afraid of that. But the brain's designed to repair itself, right? To build new pathways when old ones are destroyed?"

"Yes, more or less. Which is why I would expect your condition to stabilize. The fact that it hasn't indicates some kind of continuing damage."

Riley considered that for a moment, trying to think clearly. There was an idea on the edge of her mind, something she couldn't quite reach, and it was maddening because she thought it represented at least part of the answer.

There was something…something I realized? Something that made sense?

Bishop said, "It's also distinctly unsettling that you were functional during the blackouts."

"You're telling me. Ash has been filling in most of the missing time for me, and as far as I can tell, I was behaving normally."

"So the most likely scenario we're left with is that you experienced the time, lived through it with perfect normality, and afterward, for some unknown reason, lost the memory of it. Or at least can't access it."

"That's what it sounds like."

"And we don't know what triggered either of the blackouts."

"If something did."

"Blackouts are always triggered by something, at least in our experience. You were using your abilities the second time, but not the first; do you recall any commonalities in the moments just before the blackouts?"

She was about to say no, but then Riley paused and thought about it more carefully. "Just before the first blackout, I was talking to two people from that group of satanists I told you about here on the island, Steve and Jenny; when I woke up after that blackout, it was from a dream in which I was watching the celebration of some version of a Black Mass-with Jenny serving as the altar."

"And the second blackout?"

"Happened just minutes after I experienced that vision at the crime scene. In the vision, the celebrants were masked, but the woman could have been Jenny again. The priest might have been Steve. I can't say for sure, but…"

"A possible connection."

"The only one I can think of." Riley was conscious of a chill as she realized it was becoming more difficult to concentrate, to focus. She was losing energy again. Already, she was losing energy.

Damn, damn, damn…

She forced herself to go on. "Ash…suggested the possibility of another psychic. So did Gordon. Someone able to influence my mind. My memories."
And maybe sap my energy?

"It is possible. Your deteriorating condition argues there's something more at work than the single Taser blast. And if there is a combination of black-occult practices and genuine psychic ability manipulating the situation down there, clearly with some success, you can't handle it alone."

"Bishop-"

"Nobody handles that sort of thing alone. A psychic with the drive to create dark energy and the ability to tap into it? With the ability to use it? We know evil exists, Riley, that it's a real, tangible force."

"Yeah, but-"

"A force you're vulnerable to, especially now. Your natural defenses have been weakened, all but destroyed; how could you protect yourself from an attack on that level?"

Riley didn't have an answer.

Bishop didn't wait for a response. "If nothing else, black-occult practices would provide the perfect opportunity to channel negative energy. Whether in an attack meant to disable or destroy, or to achieve some other specific purpose. You're the expert on the occult; you know better than most that such rituals are incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands. Whether intentional or not, controlled or not, they create an enormous amount of negative energy-which could well be one of the things affecting you now."

She hadn't thought of that; it had never happened to her before. Then again, she could count the genuine black-occult rituals she had been witness to on the fingers of one hand. With fingers left over.

"Damn."

"Assume the worst, Riley. Assume you have a very powerful enemy out there. The Taser attack may only have been the beginning."

"I don't know who I could have threatened in such a short time, at least not to that extent."

"Which is the answer you need to look for. Whatever's happened to your abilities, your memories, the one thing you know for certain is that you were attacked."

It was, perhaps oddly, something Riley needed to hear, to be reminded of, and by someone who could view the situation with cool logic.

She felt a bit steadier, a bit more centered. She could do this. She was a pro, after all, experienced in investigation. Trained in self-defense and more than able to take care of herself. Knowledgeable about the occult.

She could do this.

She was almost positive she could.

"So you'll let me stay on the case?"

"There are conditions, Riley."

"Okay, but-"

"Listen to me. You chose Ash Prescott as your lifeline, and we both have to trust that you knew what you were doing. Keep him close. Follow what leads you can, look for what connections you can-and report back tomorrow. By the end of the day on Friday. Just as we originally agreed. If there's been no progress in the investigation, or you black out again, even for ten minutes, then you'll be recalled to Quantico. Period."

This time, Riley knew better than to argue. "Understood." She was still fighting to hold on to her concentration and hoped he wasn't picking up on it. "Bishop, one last thing. The serial killer in Charleston. You were going to look at the files?"

"Yes, I have. You don't have to worry about John Henry Price, Riley."

She leaned against the counter, too relieved to even attempt to hide it. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Bad enough it's a copycat, but-"

"Investigate your case, Riley. Report in tomorrow, sooner if anything changes. And
be careful
."

"I will." She cradled the receiver and continued to lean against the counter for a moment, then pushed herself away and went to grab another PowerBar before heading back out to the deck to talk to Ash, trying to convince herself that she couldn't actually feel the energy draining out of her as though someone had pulled the plug.

Bishop closed his cell phone and stared down at the folder open on the table before him.

"You lied to her," Tony noted, his tone neutral.

"I withheld part of the truth."

"A lie by omission is still a lie, boss."

"That," Bishop said, "depends on whether the end justifies the means. In this case, it does."

"And is the end going to be a happy one?"

Without directly replying to that, Bishop said, "Riley needs to feel certain of her trust in her lifeline."

"And one truth too many cuts that line?"

"In this situation, probably. With her abilities, instincts, and memories unreliable, the smallest doubt could cause her to pull away from him. Isolate herself even more. Put her in greater danger."

"This wouldn't exactly be a small doubt."

"No. Not from her point of view."

"It's a little shaky from mine," Tony admitted. "I love a good coincidence, but if working with you has taught me anything it's that we're usually not that lucky. A connection between two seemingly unrelated things-or people-usually means something nasty. For somebody. And for there to be any connection at all between John Henry Price and Ash Prescott at this stage is more than a little creepy. To say the least."

"Price is dead," Bishop said, and reached out to close the file in front of him.

"Mmmm. Except that, in our business, dead doesn't necessarily mean gone. And it sure as hell doesn't mean harmless. Somebody is, after all, killing those people in Charleston."