by Dale Mayer
Hunter nodded. “It’s possible. I just don’t know if it’s reasonable. Lots of other people speak with the dead. The fact is, for whatever reason, Linnea has a connection to Lacey. And it’s her that she wants to talk to.”
“But what if it’s Linnea who led us here?”
“Oh, there’s no doubt Linnea led us here,” Hunter said. “The problem is, do we trust her? Was she trying to save her sister? Trying to save herself? Or was she in cahoots with whoever is the jailer here?”
“She better not be,” Sebastian said. “We have to find a way to separate her intentions now from what happened back then.”
“And for that, we’ll have Lacey contact her. But Lacey needs to go through some training to help protect herself. She left herself wide open, and obviously something took advantage.”
Chapter 18
Lacey woke up to find both men leaning over her. She gave a yelp and tried to move away. Both men reared back, and yet, at the same time, Sebastian outstretched a hand and said, “Take it easy. You passed out on us.”
She shook her head. “Why would that happen?” The grim look on his face had her heart pounding. She put a shaky hand to her forehead. “I’m not hurt, am I?”
Both men shook their heads.
“But something happened.” She hazarded a guess from the looks on their face. “Did you see something happen?”
“You weren’t feeling good. You complained about a headache. We made you eat and drink water, and you said you felt fine. We took ten steps, and you collapsed, just pitched forward onto the ground—actually on me.” Sebastian crouched beside her. His gaze wandered over her face as if checking her color, seeing how she looked.
“I feel fine.” She held out her hand, and he helped her to a sitting position.
“Take it easy,” he said. “Don’t move too quickly. We don’t want you passing out again.”
She wrinkled her face. “This is really not like me.”
“Maybe not like your life in the US, but it does appear to be who and what you are here.”
She hated to hear that. “I’m not neurotic. I don’t understand what’s going on.” As she watched the two men exchange a glance, she narrowed her gaze. “Tell me. What did you see when I was out?” When Sebastian hesitated, she shook her head at him. “Don’t hide anything from me. It just makes what I’m imagining much worse.”
He gave a one-shoulder shrug. “A black energy formed around your face. For several long moments, we tried to brush it away. Then it appeared to be the mask you drew in the pictures.”
She stared at him in confusion. “A black energy mask?”
Hunter picked up the story. “You definitely had black energy in your belly region after you passed through the barrier the second time, alone. And then we could see a streak of it running down to your toes and up to your head. But, at your head, it seemed to collect and form into a mask. It was hard to move. We only freed it off your face by sliding our energy under and through it, then filling your heart chakra so full of light that there wasn’t room for any of this darkness.”
She dropped her gaze to stare at her fingers, wondering how her world had gone so completely off-the-wall crazy. “I don’t even know what to say,” she murmured. The thought of that mask she had drawn on Sebastian’s face was just recently on hers had her terrified. “I didn’t feel anything, or at least I don’t feel anything now.”
“And that’s a good thing,” Sebastian said cheerfully. “Remember it was energy. It wasn’t like there was this big metal mask on your face.”
She smiled at that. “Thank heavens, but still it’s very disconcerting. Let me try walking about.” She stood slowly, then took several tentative steps, turned and smiled. “The world isn’t spinning. I feel fine. Not faint at all.”
Hunter handed her a bottle of water and said, “Have some more water. Then we’ll get you back to the apartment.”
She took several sips of water, relieved when it went down her throat just fine. She returned the water bottle to him. “Thanks. That was good.” She turned around, looking to see where they were headed and frowned. “I’m not sure which direction we’re going in.”
Sebastian gently slid an arm across her shoulders. “You’re coming with me,” he said. “I’ll get you home.”
She nodded and walked beside him, Hunter on the other side of her. “What do you think it all means?”
“I’m not sure,” Sebastian said, “but, if I have to hazard a guess, I’d say somebody was using these masks, potentially on prisoners for whatever reason, and is now hunting the Earth, looking for more victims.”
Her footsteps faltered. She could hardly catch a breath. Her chest clamped down so tight that she could hardly breathe.
Hunter slapped her hard on the back and ordered, “Don’t panic now. Breathe.”
She stopped, took several deep breaths and said, “I know I asked for the truth, but, holy crap, that’s scary shit.” Her gaze went from one man’s face to the other, and both of them looked at her solemnly. “Do you really believe something so bizarre could be happening?”
Hunter shrugged. “Yes. I’ve seen it before.”
“No,” she corrected, “you’ve seen something like this before. But you haven’t seen this before.”
He tilted his head in acknowledgment. “But, once you see something weird and bizarre, you don’t dismiss other incidents quite so fast or so easily. Life isn’t that simple. We don’t know all the answers.”
“It would be nice if we did.” She took several more slow steps forward, relieved when her body stood strong and firm. Feeling slightly better, she took several more steps, continuing in the direction they had been headed. “But to even think an entity’s out here—and, I mean, a nasty entity—trying to find more potential prisoners is dumbfounding.”
“Remember that serial killers, pedophiles—God-only-knows-what kind of dredges of society they were back then—even as spirits, they’re still who they were when they were alive. Just because they died didn’t make them miraculously wonderful people.”
She wrinkled her nose. “And here I was, believing everybody who died had a golden gate, like my mother, and would step across it and be so much better off.”
“A lot of people don’t find that golden gate or cross over.”
“Even if they did cross over, you’re saying they still don’t necessarily become perfect beings?”
“Exactly. As far as we can tell, everybody is here to learn along their journey. What part of that journey you have made it to determines who and what you get to come back as.”
“Scary thought,” she said. “I’ve never really believed in reincarnation myself.”
“No, but you probably will now,” he said. “Think about it. What’s the chance you are Linnea?”
That was another hard physical blow. She was left gasping in its wake.
He took several steps forward, but she couldn’t even begin to move. “That can’t be possible,” she cried out. “That would mean I was talking to her spirit, which would also be me.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her and grinned. “Mind-bending, isn’t it? Maybe you are connected in another way—like her reincarnated sister Sabine? Or one of her other sisters?”
“Maybe. That’s a better explanation than being the reincarnation of Linnea. Because, if I were her, it would still be her spirit inside me. And I wouldn’t see her outside myself.” Even that confused the hell out of her. She twisted her mouth into a grimace, figuring out what she was saying.
Hunter said, “It is possible but not likely. But it would be a snapshot of her who you were speaking to. Almost like a holographic image. And she’d be connecting to something in your own mind, pulling out this past-life information.”
She stared at him, shook her head and walked away. It was just too much. All of it was too much. A holographic image snapshot? Wasn’t it enough that they were already talking about past lives, invisible barriers and black energy masks without going furthe
r? She didn’t know what to say and figured silence was the best bet while all that information rolled around in the back of her head. It was so far-fetched that she struggled to believe any of it. And yet, no doubt she had passed out. What had happened while she’d been unconscious? Well, she didn’t know.
Also a weird buzz continued in the back of her head, but she didn’t dare mention it to the men. They already looked at her strangely, as if afraid some sort of black cloud would take her over again. The thought terrified her. Especially since she had been insensate at the time. It was one thing to consider facing evil while you were awake and aware and yet another thing entirely to be vulnerable while you were not yourself or unconscious, where the evil-doer could do whatever they wanted to you. She kept touching around her mouth, as if afraid the energy of the mask would return. She could visualize it all too easily because she had drawn the sketch of it.
Why not a mask on her face? Why a mask on Sebastian in her drawing, for that matter? What did the mask mean? “There were two masks.”
“Yes, you drew two masks,” Sebastian said. “I did get some information from Bruno.” He filled in about the jailer, Tialox, possibly being the grave his team had opened at the Mayan ruins.
“That’s terrifying. How can the two even be related?” She shook her head. “No, I don’t know why. Did you see one or two on me?”
“Only one,” Sebastian said. “The same one you drew on my face.”
She stared off in the distance but kept her feet moving forward. “There must be different meanings behind the masks.”
“That would make sense,” Hunter said. “But what the meanings are is a little beyond me at the moment.”
“I want to see those images again,” she snapped.
“We can do that.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets and then froze. She spun around, caught sight of her camera on Sebastian’s shoulder and sighed with relief. “I forgot. I thought for a moment there I’d lost my camera.”
He patted the strap on his shoulder where it hung securely. “No. I wouldn’t do that to you. We’ve got it safe and sound.”
She gave him as bright a smile as she could and spun around to keep walking. Now if only that damn buzzing in the back of her head would go away. She slowly rotated her neck to ease the tension building with every step she took. “Do we need to stop at the site to talk to the others?”
“By this time, they’re packing up for the day,” Sebastian said calmly. “We’ll see them at the apartment. If we don’t meet up with them on the road.”
“That would be good,” she said. “I feel bad if I’m not pulling my weight.”
“You need to worry about yourself in a whole different way,” Hunter said. “Forget about the camera at the moment.”
“I can’t do that,” she said simply. “I have a job to do. I’m not about to let it be forgotten because there’s so much other chaos.”
“I appreciate that,” Sebastian said mildly. “But we can’t have you making yourself sick with all this other stuff. You can’t do your work if you’re sick.”
She winced. “Good point. I have to admit I’m hungry now too.”
“Again?”
She shot Hunter a puzzled look. “It’s been hours since we ate.” When the two men exchanged looks, she frowned. “Now what?” she asked in exasperation. “It’s really irritating when the two of you have this private conversation, and then you don’t share it with me.”
“You just ate a granola bar,” Hunter said gently.
She waved her hand at him. “That was completely nothing. I could easily eat ten of them.” Up ahead she recognized one of the main tourist areas they had come through. “Now that I know where we are, we weren’t all that far away from the dig itself, were we?”
“No,” Sebastian said. “Maybe that was the same room Linnea had been pointing out earlier, the doorless one.”
“I don’t know,” Lacey said. “I’ll have to think on it. Maybe, when I come in tomorrow, I can see if that’s what she was talking about. The thing is, we did locate another unique find, and maybe that’s important archaeologically?” She twisted slightly so she could look at Sebastian’s face. But the thunderous expression on his features made her doubt it.
“No,” Sebastian said. “That’s not something I’m willing to open up to the public. And we can’t excavate because permits are required first.”
“But we just explored it on some level,” Lacey argued.
“It’s typical government bureaucracy,” he said with a shake of his head. “You have to have permits for everything. And a whole new dig site area requires permission.”
“But it is open,” Hunter said. “I’m not advocating making it an excavation site. But it wouldn’t hurt to have a little more in-depth look.”
“I’m in,” Lacey said.
“No,” both men snapped.
Sebastian added, “You’re not going down there.”
She glared at them. “Why not?”
“You’re too susceptible. The energy wants you. Therefore you are the last person allowed to get close to it.” Sebastian said. “I don’t know what’s going on with you yet, but I don’t want you anywhere close to that place.”
“I would like to go back, once the black-energy masks are completely taken care of,” she said. “I also want to see what my photos captured. That should be interesting.” She turned to look at him. “You never thought to take pictures of my face with that bloody mask, did you?”
He shook his head. “No. We were too busy saving you.”
She smiled up at him. “Nice to know you care,” she teased.
He just slanted a look at her.
That had heat rolling up her cheeks. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
He chuckled, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tugged her close. “You can’t know how I feel about you.”
She pushed away from him. “No way I would know how you feel about me.” She shook her head. “Outside of the fact that I’m an oddity and some kind of a magnet for this bullshit energy, I can also see images that might show how buildings looked back then. But other than that, no. Hell no. I don’t know anything about how you feel about me.”
Hunter chuckled and took several steps away from the pair so he was farther ahead.
“You don’t have to run away,” she said.
“Oh, yeah, I do,” Hunter said. “These kinds of conversations are painful when it involves two people. It’s even more painful if three are here. I’m no third wheel for anybody.”
“Chicken,” she called to his receding back.
Sebastian squeezed her shoulders gently.
She turned her glare at him. “You shouldn’t be chasing him away.”
“I didn’t chase him away,” Sebastian protested. “He left on his own.”
She rolled her eyes. “But you turned this into a personal conversation.”
“Good,” he said. “It’s time.”
She deepened her glare. “There isn’t a relationship. You hardly know me.”
He smiled the sweetest of smiles and said, “True, but I do know what I like, and I know what counts.”
She shook her head. “You can’t be serious?” She paused long enough for him to argue with her, but he didn’t. “So far, I’ve been nothing but a weak, fainting, crazy woman. Who wants to spend time with someone like that?”
He laughed out loud. “Me, for one.”
“Or is it that you think I can tell you something about the civilization from a long time ago,” she said, suddenly very tired. “Because I like you. I have to admit you’re a very sexy beast, but I’m not sure I’m ready for a relationship.”
“We’ll deal with that one step at a time,” he said calmly. “But you need to understand it has nothing to do with what you can see or can’t see. I like who you are, just as you are.” He slipped his fingers through hers, as he had many times before, and held her hand as they walked forward.
She stared at th
eir linked fingers, wondering, because he had done this right from the first moment. “Do you think past lives matter in relationships today?”
“They do indeed,” he said softly, squeezing her fingers. “And I like the sexy beast comment.”
“Did you have a past life here?”
He nodded. “Absolutely. But I haven’t ever been able to get any details.”
“Would we have known each other back then?”
“Experts say, if you’re drawn to certain people, that you still have things to work out. In that case it’s likely karma rearing its head. The other possibility is that we’re drawn to people we had strong relationships with back then, and that bond is still with us.”
“Karma is a scary thought,” she said with a laugh. “Because you can do your best and still feel like you’re doing a shitty job. I’ve always tried to be a nice person. But you don’t know what you’ve done in past lifetimes. To think there’s this big cesspool of behavior you didn’t know about—some crap that you might have done when you were a less-than-nice person—yet it’s coming around to bite you in the ass. That is not something I want to contemplate.”
He chuckled. “Trust you to think along that line. Everybody else wants to know whether they were royalty or pirates or politicians or movie stars.”
At that, she laughed out loud. “I doubt I was. I was probably what I’ve always been—a simple woman with simple tastes.”
“Oh, I doubt it.” His voice was serious. “We can take on both female and male physical forms in past lives, in order to experience in greater depth the human life as we live it.”
“That would be fun,” she said, laughing. “I guess you can do a past-life regression too. Or maybe not. I’m not sure I would want to. What if my past was explosive and difficult?”
“Why would you say that?” he asked, frowning down at her.
She shrugged. “Because nothing about this Linnea stuff is easy. I want to believe she is everything I feel she is. But I don’t know how she could be, and yet, still have all this darkness around her. Or this mask stuff and that wall, that barrier. What the hell was that all about? So much here is hard to understand. And how does any of it relate to the dig and things like the broken tools and stolen tools?”