Blood Dreams

the building, but every instinct as well as the waves of heat at her back told her there simply wasn't time to wait.

Hollis shifted her weapon to a steady two-handed grip and sent Dani a quick look. 'Ready?'

Dani didn't spare the energy to wonder how anyone on earth could ever be ready for this. Instead, she concentrated on the only weapon she had, the one inside her aching head, and nodded.

Hollis had only taken one step when a thunderous crash sounded behind them and a new wave of almost intolerable heat threatened to shove them bodily into the stairwell.

The roof was falling in.

They exchanged glances and then, without emotion, Hollis said, 'Close the door behind us.'

Dani gathered all the courage she could find, and if her response wasn't as emotionless as the other woman's, at least it was steady.

'Right,' she said, and closed the door behind them as they began their descent into hell.

Chapter One

Tuesday, October 7

'YOU HAD THAT dream again last night, didn't you?' Dani kept her gaze fixed on her coffee cup until the silence dragged on a minute longer than it should have, then looked at her sister's face. 'Yeah. I had that dream.' Paris sat down on the other side of the table, her own cup cradled in both hands. 'Same as before?'

'Pretty much.'

'Then not the same as before. What was different?' It was an answer Dani didn't want to offer, but she knew her sister too well to fight the inevitable; Paris determined was as unstoppable as the tides. 'It was placed in time. Two forty-seven in the afternoon, October twenty-eighth.'

Paris turned her head to study the wall calendar stuck to her refrigerator with South Park character magnets. 'The twenty-eighth, huh? This year?'

'Yeah.'

'That's three weeks from today.'

'I noticed that.'

'Same people?'

Dani nodded. 'Same people. Same conversations. Same burning warehouse. Same feeling of doom.'

'Except for the time being fixed, it was exactly the same?'

'It's never exactly the same, you know that. Some of it's probably symbolic, and I have no way of knowing which parts aren't literal. I only know what I see, and there are always small, sometimes weird changes in that. A word different here or there, a gesture. I think the gun Hollis carried wasn't the same one as before. And Bishop was wearing a black leather jacket this time; before, it was a dark windbreaker.'

'But they're always the same. Those two people are always a part of the dream.'

'Always.'

'People you don't know.'

'People I don't know-yet.' Dani frowned down at her coffee for a moment, then shook her head and met her sister's steady gaze again. 'In the dream, I feel I know them awfully well. I understand them in a way that's difficult to explain.'

'Maybe because they're psychic too.'

Dani hunched her shoulders. 'Maybe.'

'And it ended…'

'Just like it always ends. That doesn't change. I shut the door behind us and we go down the stairs. I know the roof has started collapsing. I know we won't be able to get out the same way we went in. I know something terrible and evil is waiting for us in that basement, that it's a trap.'

'But you go down there anyway.'

'I don't seem to have a choice.'

'Or maybe it's a choice you made before you ever set foot in that building,' Paris said. 'Maybe it's a choice you're making now. The date. How did you see it?'

'Watch.'

'On you? Neither of us can wear a watch.'

Still reluctant, Dani said, 'And it wasn't the sort of watch I'd wear even if I could wear one.'

'What sort of watch was it?'

'It was… military-looking. Big, black, digital. Lots of buttons, more than one display. Looked like it could give me the time in Beijing and the latitude and longitude as well. Hell, maybe it could translate Sanskrit into English, for all I know.'

'What do you think that means?'

Dani sighed. 'One year of psychology under your belt, so naturally everything has to mean something, I guess.'

'When it comes to your dreams, yes, everything means something. We both know that. Come on, Dani. How many times now have you dreamed this same dream?'

'A few.'

'A half dozen times that I know of-and I'm betting you didn't tell me about it right away.'

'So?'

'Dani.'

'Look, it doesn't matter how many times I've had the dream. It doesn't matter because it isn't a premonition.'

'Could have fooled me.'

Dani got up and carried her coffee cup to the sink. 'Yeah, well, it wasn't your dream.'

Paris turned in her chair but remained where she was. 'Dani, is that why you came down here, to Venture? Not to offer me a shoulder to cry on while I go through a messy divorce, but because of that dream?'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'The hell you don't.'

' Paris -'

'I want the truth. Don't make me get it for myself.'

Dani turned around, leaning back against the counter as she once again ruefully faced the knowledge that she would never be able to keep the truth from her sister, not for long.

It was partly the twin thing.

Paris wore her burnished copper hair in a shorter style these days-she called it her divorce rebirth-and she was a bit too thin, but otherwise looking at her was like looking into a mirror. Dani had long since grown accustomed to that and in fact viewed it as an advantage; watching the play of emotions across Paris 's expressive face had taught her to hide her own.

At least from everyone except Paris.

'We promised,' her sister reminded her. 'To leave each other our personal lives, our own thoughts and feelings. And we've gotten very good at keeping that door closed. But I remember how to open it, Dani. We both do.'

It wasn't unusual, of course, for identical twins to have a special connection, but for Dani and Paris that bond had been, in the words of one childhood friend, 'sort of spooky.' It had been more than closeness, more than finishing each other's sentences or dressing alike or playing the twin game of exchanging identities.

Dani and Paris, especially in early childhood, had felt more like two halves of one person rather than separate individuals. Paris was the sunnier half, quick to laugh and joke, invariably cheerful, open and trusting, the extrovert. Dani was quieter, more still and watchful, even secretive. She was slow to anger and to trust and far more introspective than her sister.

Night and Day, their father had called them-and he hadn't been the only one to misunderstand what he