Beacon's Spark (Potomac Shadows Book 1)

by Jim Johnson

  He worked the slide on the top of the gun and another bullet popped up into the air and landed in the tall grass near the steps.

  “Shouldn’t you get rid of that?”

  He glanced at me, and then focused on the gun. I felt a buzz in the air, like a growing charge of electricity.

  I winced at the intensity, feeling my little energy cocoon constrict around me. I reached out a hand toward him and the gun. “I don’t think that’s such a good…”

  He clenched his hand around the now-smoking gun, which suddenly exploded in a burst of blue and bronze energy.

  My ley cocoon collapsed and I cried out as bits of debris cut into my arm. “Ow! Damn it!”

  Malcolm also yowled in pain as he dropped the smoldering remains of the handgun. He waved his hand around, wisps of smoke trailing off it. The harsh tang of ozone filled the air around us.

  I took a few steps away from him. My hoodie sleeve was tattered and bloodstained, and had a few scorch marks on it. I gingerly pulled up the sleeve. My arm was scratched and bloodied, but didn’t look to be seriously injured—mostly superficial damage.

  I glared at him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  He stared hard at me, surprise evident in his eyes. “What’s wrong with me? Your crystal...how are you doing that?”

  I stared at him and then glanced down, already knowing what I’d see. The crystal pendant hanging around my neck glowed bright blue, with an inner glow matching the silver of my aura. The light was pure and bright, nearly too intense to look at straight on. I was still jacked up with adrenaline, clinging to the remnants of my ley thread cocoon.

  “Uh, yeah. That happens sometimes.” The surge of anger drained out of me.

  Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t know what’s more frightening, that you can make a crystal glow or that I can make blue fire erupt from my hands.”

  I shook my wounded arm at him. “I think this has to qualify somewhere on the terror scale!”

  He nodded, but then met my eyes. “Then why don’t I feel scared?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, Malcolm! I don’t feel fear either.” And I didn’t, even with my wounded arm; with what had happened. I took a deep breath and tried to refocus, wincing at the pain from my injury. “You’ve clearly handled a gun before.”

  He looked uncertain, but then nodded. “Scout camp. I spent most of a week on the range shooting rifles and pistols for a merit badge.”

  I snorted. “They let scouts handle semi-automatics?”

  He shrugged as he carefully flexed his wounded hand. “It was a special scout camp.”

  “Whatever.” I focused on him as I cradled my arm to my body. “So…what now? How do we find this guy you want so bad?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I keep looking, I guess. Maybe Sandelle’s fallen in with a better crowd than I thought. Maybe she doesn’t hang out with guys who work in dumps like this.”

  I latched onto the one little positive out of this whole mess. “Well, that’s a good thing, right?” I glanced around the entrance to the drug den, feeling dirtier than I had in a long time. The reek of despair clung to the place—a stink that would probably never wash clean.

  I stared at him. “Can we get the hell out of here now?”

  Chapter 27

  I HAD MALCOLM DROP ME OFF a couple blocks from my house. I had made him drive me home since I wasn’t about to ride the bus with a wounded arm. He rolled down his window as I moved over to the sidewalk.

  “Thanks for coming with me, Rachel.”

  A mix of emotions had fused my mouth shut. I forced myself to push them aside, and croaked, “I don’t even know what to say, Malcolm. Today was…” I stopped and took a breath, stalling to collect my thoughts.

  “I have no idea what the hell today was. I need time to process all of this.” I stared at him and shook my head. “Clearly we need to keep looking for clues to help your sister, but please don’t do anything by yourself, okay? We’re dealing with abilities we hardly even understand. I think we’d be better off working through them together.”

  A flurry of emotions crossed his face, but finally, he nodded. “All right. Will you be around tomorrow? I’m willing to work with you, but I don’t want to wait too long. This is my little sister we’re talking about helping.”

  I lifted my arm. “I gotta get this cleaned up, but yeah. Probably tomorrow afternoon? Maybe Monday afternoon at the latest.”

  He nodded. “Aight. Shoot me a text when you’re ready and I’ll come pick you up or meet you wherever you want.” He stared at me with kinder eyes than I would have expected, given what had happened earlier. “Thanks again. I’m really sorry about your arm.”

  I nodded, feeling the weariness in my body taking hold, and turned to make my way through the alleys of my neighborhood. His engine revved but I didn’t look back to watch him drive away.

  I slipped into my back lawn and staggered into the kitchen through the back door with no idea what time it was. At some point during the day, maybe even during the fight, the battery in my cell phone had died again. Since the first visit to the stairwell at Branchwood, electronics didn’t seem to agree with me.

  I hurried over to the sink, grateful that no one else was in the kitchen. I got some warm water going and tossed a clean dish towel into the sink. The microwave clock read 5:10. I didn’t know if Abbie was home or not.

  I used the dish towel to wipe off the worst of the dirt and blood on my hands and arms, and dabbed at the spots on my hoodie and jeans to see if I could get them to come out. I suspected some of the more ground-in stains would need to be treated more aggressively. But not today—I was tired, cranky, and pretty much overwhelmed with everything that had happened this afternoon.

  Jesus, what Malcolm had done to that guy! I had no idea what to think. He hadn’t shown that…ability during our exploration of Branchwood. He could have been holding out on me, or maybe his powers were just manifesting differently than mine. Maybe we were like mutants from the comic books, starting to discover our talents in different ways.

  I rinsed the blood and grime out of the towel as best I could. “This hardly feels like a superhero thing to do.” I didn’t remember ever reading about Supergirl or Rogue doing laundry or washing blood off themselves.

  I got the towel wet again, wrapped it around my skinned forearm, and hurried up the stairs. The house was quiet around me and again I was grateful that everyone seemed to be out of the house.

  Abbie had left a terse note on the bed, stating that she had gone to work after all and that I shouldn’t wait up for her. “Crap.”

  I had decided on the drive home that I was going to sit down with her and try to explain everything that had happened to me over the last few days, but now I wouldn’t be able to until at least tomorrow afternoon. Not unless I stayed up until she got home, and I had no idea when that would be. Plus, given how tired I was, I didn’t think I’d be able to make it up that late anyhow. I was exhausted, as if I’d just run a track meet.

  I shuffled over to the desk and sat down heavily on the chair. I read the short lines on the note again and then crumpled it up and tossed it toward the trash can. I missed, of course.

  I sighed and threw a little pity party for myself for a few minutes, then got off my ass and took a hot shower and scrubbed off the dirt and blood. Showering usually served to lift my mood.

  I was feeling positive enough after getting clean and wrapping up my wounds that I grabbed a snack out of the kitchen and then sat myself at the computer. I found some resume samples online and then opened up the word processor on Abbie’s desktop, and found the focus to get to work.

  I nodded off a few times, but somewhere around nine I felt like I had about as good a resume as I could muster given my skills and work experience, such as it was. I printed a copy, saved the file, and left the resume on the printer.

  I got up and away from the computer and crawled into bed, pulling the covers up tight under my chin. I curled up
on Abbie’s side of the bed, inhaling the faint traces of her favorite chamomile body lotion on her pillow. The scent brought up happy memories and then tears of longing and loss.

  For the first time in a long time, I went to bed without knowing when Abbie would get home. I hated the feeling with every fiber of my being. But I didn’t know what I could do to fix things. I had a lot going on even before Malcolm showed off his new talents, and I was afraid of letting Abbie in completely. And I had no idea why.

  My quiet tears dampened my pillow while I left one hand under my pillow and the other clasped around my crystal pendant. I focused on the crystal with my inner Eye and reached out with my limited senses toward that strange pool of blue energy Bonita had shown me how to find. I tried hooking one of the little threads of etheric power. I caught it on the second try and touched it to my crystal.

  The crystal started to glow from within with a soft blue glow filtered through the clear facets, flecked through with the same silvery color I had seen before. I used the softly-glowing crystal as a focus, and willed myself into some slow breathing patterns to seek out some centered peace.

  It took a lot longer than I thought to find it. I wrapped my hand around my little warm pendant, closed my eyes, and wished for sleep to take hold. I had so many questions. God—the morning and my meeting with Miss Chin couldn’t get here fast enough.

  Chapter 28

  “THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID I was a Warden of the Veil. What did you mean by that?”

  I shifted my legs to a more comfortable stretching position on the hardwood floor of Miss Chin’s finished basement. She’d invited me to take a seat when I had complained about sore legs after my morning jog.

  Miss Chin dropped the cardboard box she had been moving and shoved it against the wall along with several similar boxes. “Wardens protect the Veil gateways, both naturally-occurring and man-made. Our purpose is to prevent souls from leaving the Holding and re-entering the mortal world, and also to prevent mortals from accidentally stumbling into the Veil and the Holding.”

  I shifted position to stretch out my left leg. “I’m not sure I really understand all that.”

  She sighed and trundled over for another box to move out of the small stack near the center of the room. “The Veil has claimed its fair share of living souls. You’d refer to them as missing persons, perhaps.” She picked up another box and moved it toward the others. “But, this is largely secondary.”

  I stretched my calf farther, feeling the burn and also the ache of fatigue. I still hadn’t recovered fully from yesterday’s events with Malcolm, and had slept poorly without Abbie in bed with me. “Why secondary?”

  She dropped the latest box on top of the stack of moved boxes and then wiped her hands off on her loose silk pants. “Because my research and your statements suggest you’re not actually a Warden.”

  My heart sank. “Then what the hell am I?”

  She gave me a weird little grin. “I suspect you’re actually a Beacon.”

  I stared at her, hoping some additional information would come along right after that. When she simply met my eyes and kept that smile on her face, I raised my hands. “So what does that mean? Am I a light? A guide of some kind?”

  “Yes, both.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “And so much more, if you want to work at it.”

  I signed in exasperation. “I don’t understand.” I glanced up at the largest stack of cardboard boxes, where Mister Parkour sat primly, focusing his large green eyes down on me and Miss Chin. I bet he understood it all.

  Miss Chin sighed, then brought a little stepstool close to me and sat down. “Given what you told me about the souls you’ve seen and how you’ve reacted around them, I believe you are a Beacon, Rachel. You have talents other Weavers do not, or at least, not as strongly.”

  I frowned deeper. “I doubt that. I dropped out of college and barely passed my driver’s license test. I don’t think I’m anything special.” And boy was I reminded of that on a regular basis. All I had to do was look at my broken family and the dust bunnies in my bank account to see how special I was.

  “No, you’re not special.” She paused for a moment to let the barb sink in. “But you could be. If you work at it and want it.”

  I threw up my hands again. “I still don’t understand! How am I special?” I flicked the pendant on my chest. “Because some crystal rock speaks to me? Because I can see a ghost in an alleyway at night? What am I, some freaking lighthouse for the dead?”

  She nodded as I vented. “Yes, all of that. And you’re strong, Rachel. You may not see it, but I suspect you have experienced some things over the last few days that would have broken a weaker soul.”

  I bit my lip and considered that, suspicious. Did she somehow know what Malcolm and I had been up to?

  She leaned in closer, but kept her hands folded in her lap. “Your visit to the nursing home. You saw something very unusual there.”

  I leaned back. “Which trip? They were both pretty unusual.”

  Damn! I clamped my mouth shut, realizing I had given her more information than I had intended.

  She grinned, looking like the cat that had got the cream. “So, both times. An image of someone in the hallway—perhaps a flash of blue energy?”

  “How could you possibly…?”

  She lifted a finger and touched her left temple. “Remember: I’m a Weaver too.”

  I sank back, my aching butt wishing I had been sitting on a mat. “But what does that mean? What does a Weaver, or, I guess, a Beacon, even do?”

  She offered a soft smile, as if she was about to tell me some horrible news that was actually good for me, like telling me that I’d passed Calculus but that I was being suspended indefinitely due to poor overall academic progress.

  She took a breath, let it out. “A Weaver can be one of three roles: a Warden, a Mender, or a Beacon. Wardens monitor the Veil, and Menders repair damage to the Veil, if able. Beacons are the guides. Beacons escort lost souls to the Veil and then beyond, to their final destination within the Holding.”

  I blinked several times in rapid succession, not sure which question to ask first. The little logical part of my brain, the one I wished would show up slightly more frequently, decided to make an appearance. She took Miss Chin’s statement and parsed it out, a piece at a time. I was just along for the ride.

  “What’s the Veil?”

  Miss Chin sat up straight on the stool, as if she was eager to share her story. “The Veil is the insubstantial curtain separating the mortal world and what we call the Holding.”

  I was on auto-pilot while Analytical Rachel continued. “What’s the Holding?”

  “The immortal world beyond the mortal world; the way point between where we live and What Lies Beyond.”

  The way she phrased it, I totally heard the capital letters. It wasn’t just some theoretical place beyond, it was for real. To her, at least. “Like, some sort of Purgatory?”

  She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. “Some have called it that. It’s not the term I use, but it works adequately enough for the purposes of understanding.”

  I nodded, then waited eagerly for Analytical Rachel to come up with another question. She didn’t disappoint me. “What lost souls are we guiding?”

  “Any soul that either gets stuck on this side of the Veil, or that makes it to the Holding and cannot find the way to their final rest.”

  I sidestepped A.R. and blurted out the next obvious question. “Really? Are we seriously talking about souls and ghosts, here?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Some souls do not wish to travel beyond the Veil or to find their way out of the Holding. We guide those who want to move on. It’s not worth the time or energy to guide those who do not want to be guided.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” Analytical Rachel was back. “So the electric tube, for lack of a better word, that I saw at Branchwood...”

  She nodded. “A rip in the Veil—a conduit to the Holding.”

&n
bsp; “A rip?” I frowned. “What ripped it?”

  It was her turn to frown. “Dark forces.”

  Oh, this was getting better and better. “So you’re telling me there are bad guys in the Veil? And you—we Weavers—are the good guys?”

  “There have always been those who would destroy what others have built, who would take the power that’s available to them and twist it to terrible means.”

  Not exactly an answer to my question. A.R. tried again. “So, there are, like, Sith guys, and we’re the Jedi?”

  Miss Chin shook her head again. “Not really. For as long as human memory can recall, there has been a war between the guardians of light and the forces of chaos. Even the ancient Egyptians, among the earliest to record history, were aware of a greater evil working to tear apart the underpinnings of the world.”

  I lifted both hands, cutting off both Miss Chin and Analytical Rachel’s next question. “Hold on. Don’t tell me we’re in the middle of some sort of cosmic war between good and evil.”

  Miss Chin frowned and then put on an innocent face. “I think I’ve already done so, albeit obliquely.”

  Well, crap. “That’s it.” I stood up and waved. “This is where I check out. Thanks for your time, Miss Chin. I’m going to get out of here and go…guide myself home and to dinner. This conversation has taken a turn toward the unbelievable.”

  I got three steps away from her before she called out. “The image flashes and whispered voices won’t stop, Rachel. Ever. If you don’t learn to quiet them—to process them—you will lose your mind.”

  I kept walking to the stairs leading up to the main level, though I’ll admit I moved a lot slower as her words sank in. I turned to stare at her. “What if I’ve already lost my mind by just coming here?”

  She stood from her stool and folded her hands in front of her, looking serene. “You’re entirely sane, Rachel, trust me. But believe me when I say that if you don’t let me help you, you will lose yourself to the voices and the images. You would not be the first Weaver to be lost to an institution or a quiet hospice facility far away.” She shook her head. “You can be so much more than that.”