Shimmer: A Novel

by Passarella, John

  Grainger was dealing with the string of paranormal revelations with irritation rather than fear, but he didn’t have to deal with a quantum shift in the nature of his own humanity. He was anchored in the strange new reality, while Fallon felt hopelessly adrift.

  In a whispered moment of chivalry, Logan offered to walk her to her father’s pickup truck. Fallon was too unsettled at the moment to detect any sexist agenda in his offer. Even so, she would have overlooked any protective intimation simply because she wanted the company. She nodded and followed him out.

  The rain had stopped, but a misty haze hung in the air and an oily sheen glistened on the blacktop. Fallon leaned against the driver’s side front quarter panel of the rust-spotted Ford pickup truck and crossed her arms under her chest. She sighed and stared at the row of streetlights without speaking.

  “You okay?” Logan asked.

  “Don’t see how I could be,” she said with a half-hearted grin. She looked at him seriously for a moment and asked, “Is it always like this?”

  Now it was Logan’s turn to sigh. “No,” he said. “This is unusually bad. With the potential to be catastrophically bad. The exception that proves the rule.”

  “Really?”

  “Not that this helps much,” Logan said. “But sometimes all we need to do to preserve the ecological status quo is to… shoo harmless Outsider fauna back through a rift into its own dimension.”

  “Like a poor, defenseless unicorn, maybe?”

  “Wouldn’t call them defenseless,” Logan said, grinning. “Those spiral horns are more than decorative.”

  “You’ve seen an actual unicorn? Living and breathing—and spearing with the horn even?”

  “Well, not personally,” Logan said. “Been over a hundred years since the last unicorn crossing. But Ambrose has—would, he would know when that was, exactly. Keeps very, um, detailed records.” Logan cleared his throat. “Hey, listen. You don’t need to worry about all this. Nobody expects you to deal with it. You haven’t been drafted.”

  She quirked a wry grin. “No?”

  “Trust me,” Logan said. “We Walkers have been dealing with this kind of thing for an incredibly long time. We’ll take care of it. We always have and we always will.”

  She looked at his face and saw the genuine concern for her well-being in his eyes. “Are you as confident as you sound, Logan Walker?”

  He flashed an innocent smile. “Mostly.”

  “Good, because you were beginning to sound like Barrett.”

  “Please!”

  “That guy really thinks he can fix the whole world.”

  “Because he doesn’t have a choice.”

  “What? Failure is not an option?”

  “Yeah, something like that,” Logan said. “What Barrett lacks in experience he makes up for in determination. But who am I to criticize?” His mildly critical tone submerged into self-deprecation. “My role is to wait around for a queasy stomach.”

  Fallon took his hand in hers and smiled at the pleasant tingling sensation that never failed to surprise and delight her. “Good enough to save Chelsea’s life.”

  “Right,” Logan said but his voice trailed off with regret.

  “She will realize that one day, Logan. And thank you.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but it’s not that important to me. The thanking part. Just glad she’s alive. Glad someone’s alive after all this.”

  “Logan, what happened to your parents?” Fallon asked. “Were they…? I mean, did something from a rift…? Like Chelsea’s mom…?”

  Logan pulled his hand gently from her grasp and interlaced his fingers behind his neck. “No, not like that,” he said quickly. “At least I don’t think so. There’s not much to tell, actually. We’re not sure what happened to them.”

  “They just… disappeared?”

  “More or less,” Logan said. “My father had active talents, more like Barrett’s than mine, in other words. My talents are reactive, mostly, even though my system usually reacts before something happens. Like offense versus defense. Anyway, the short version is that my father crossed into a rift and never returned.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She could tap into magic, like Liana and Thalia. But she could also detect and track rifts from afar, even anticipate them and create her own.”

  “She went after him, didn’t she?”

  Logan nodded. “He disappeared almost… eighteen months ago. When my mother couldn’t create a rift to where he was, she left us to hunt rifts across the globe, trying to find a dimensionally identical rift, one that would take her to the same place. This went on for a while, about six months, and she would write or call with updates. The longer the search went on, the less often she contacted us. Days would pass with no word from her. We got used to it. Nothing unusual. Then a couple weeks passed with no contact and we started to worry that something had happened. After three weeks, we started to look for her, following in her footsteps, so to speak.” Logan shrugged. “But we never found any trace of her.”

  “You think she joined your father in that same dimension?”

  “Possibly,” Logan said. “Or some other dimension from which she can’t return.”

  “They could be alive, Logan,” Fallon said, a sparkle returning to her tired green eyes. “Both of them.”

  “Unlikely,” Logan said. “She could—if she had survived—she was good enough to find a way to return to us. Alone, my father could be stuck on the other side of a rift, but not her. She was… she should…”

  “What?”

  “He should have let her go through first,” Logan said. “Magic users always go through first. That’s the rule. Because, if the rift closes suddenly, magic users have the best chance of reopening—of returning.”

  Fallon guessed the truth, “Your father went through first to protect her.”

  Logan nodded. “How did you…? Yes, she had a scare once. Spooked her. Every crossing after that, he would go first. But then… that last time, the rift closed immediately after he crossed. She never had a chance to follow him.”

  “That’s why she left you and your sisters,” Fallon said. “She blamed herself.”

  “So we lost a mother and a father.”

  “They must have loved each other very much, Logan.”

  He gave a slight nod and she could tell he was having trouble speaking, forced to reopen old emotional wounds at her urging. On impulse—another choice made without considering the repercussions—she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him in a gentle hug. Slowly, his arms came around her back, his hands falling on her shoulders. He rested his cheek against hers, seeking comfort there or maybe hiding his eyes from her. Again, with the flesh to flesh contact, she experienced the warm rush and tingling sensation and a sense of the ground swaying beneath her feet.

  “I’m sorry, Logan.”

  “Not your fault,” he whispered, his breath a gentle caress on her face and ear. “It’s… easier when you don’t dwell on the losses.”

  She sighed but it became a shudder. “I know.” Her voice was soft and weighted with barely concealed grief as she thought of her mother, how she’d allowed her unusual life to overwhelm her and the desperate final choice she’d made, which wasn’t really a choice at all. An end to decisions, Fallon thought. I can’t let this overwhelm me.

  Fallon eased out of Logan’s embrace, but gripped his upper arms as she gazed into his eyes, forcing him to focus on her, on this moment. “This isn’t the end for me,” she said. “I really need to go home now—to study, to sleep, to decompress—but I will come to terms with this. I promise.”

  “Wouldn’t blame you if you ran away.”

  “Running wouldn’t help,” she said with a lopsided grin. “This brave new world is inside me. No escape.”

  “Good point.”

  “I’ll be back,” Fallon said. “And as much as I thank you for guiding me through this craziness, I hope you realize your job is far from over, mist
er.”

  Logan beamed. “Then I’ll see you at school tomorrow?”

  “For starters.”

  She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, contact too brief for the delicious tingling sensation to completely unhinge her knees, then climbed into the pickup truck and drove home to what had passed for normalcy.

  A glance in the rearview mirror showed Logan standing on the sidewalk, giving her a slow overhead wave in parting. She entertained the spark of an idea that something good might come out of the night’s tragedy. A glimmer of hope.

  What had Ambrose said? Life without hope is nothing.

  Chapter 28

  Ambrose grew weary of the protracted discussion. Logan had departed with the unbound girl, and Liana had left to check on Thalia and the sleeping Chelsea Conrad. Unfortunately, Barrett and he had to endure Chief Grainger’s repeated questions, to the point that Ambrose had a clear sense how the man would interrogate a particularly recalcitrant suspect. It seemed as if Grainger would never be completely satisfied with any of their answers. Ambrose’s calm assurances were insufficient, but he was unwilling to offer the man guarantees of success, no matter the lateness of the hour or the circular nature of the man’s arguments.

  “What am I supposed to do about this?” Grainger asked in exasperation. “How do I protect my town?”

  “Leave us to our work,” Ambrose said. “Trust that we know the way to defeat this menace.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “You don’t really have a choice, Grainger,” Barrett said impatiently and also a bit dismissively. “You can’t shoot this or slap cuffs on it. You can’t fingerprint it and toss it in a holding cell. Go play cop somewhere else.”

  Ambrose knew Barrett was fighting his own post-battle lethargy. The veneer was clearly off his civility. Grainger has half out of his chair when Ambrose shouted, “Enough! Bickering wastes valuable time.”

  Grainger exhaled sharply and settled back into his wingchair.

  “Now,” Ambrose said after glancing back and forth at them to make sure neither was about to fan the flames of their argument again. “Chief Grainger, we Walkers will do what we must. What I can promise you is that we will keep the lines of communication open. If you want to protect your town, the people here, then I suggest you do so.”

  “But how?”

  “By keeping them out of the way,” Ambrose said. “When we tell you a rift is imminent, it’s likely we’ll have an idea where it will appear. Your best course is to evacuate any civilians in that area. Keep the people out of harm’s way and you will keep them safe. As simple as that.”

  Grainger scoffed. “In theory,” he admitted grudgingly, then sighed. “Okay. I’ll try things your way.”

  Ambrose had been careful how he phrased the instruction, which basically came down to assigning the chief of police the role of crowd control. Unfortunately, if Grainger became any more involved in thwarting the rift and the creature who was attempting to use it as a causeway to earth, he would likely end up as another hapless victim.

  “And while I’m keeping the good people of Hadenford out of your hair,” Grainger said, “will you repair this rift?”

  “And kill the Outsider, but not necessarily in that order,” Barrett said.

  “If you seal the rift, why do you need to kill the… creature?”

  Now it was Barrett’s turn to scoff. “Insurance.”

  Grainger looked a question at Ambrose.

  “This Outsider has the power to manipulate the rift,” Ambrose explained. “It’s possible he also created the rift.”

  “So what’s to stop him from creating another?”

  “Precisely,” Ambrose said.

  “You’re right,” Grainger said, nodding. “The hell with due process on this one.”

  “Not that there ever is any,” Barrett commented gruffly.

  “What?”

  “Due process. We operate outside the law.”

  Grainger frowned. “Sounds like the proverbial slippery slope.”

  Ambrose clasped his hands on the desk. “We’re attempting to stop the corruption of our world, of our very universe. We cannot settle for half-measures. The stakes are, simply, too high.”

  “So the ends justify the means?” Grainger asked. “That’s what you’re saying.”

  “Our ‘means’ are proportionate to the level of the threat,” Ambrose said. “In this instance, any means are justified.” Grainger, as someone accustomed to following rules and procedures to the letter, to filing paperwork in triplicate, and to being accountable to various oversight committees, appeared to have trouble accepting the concept that the Walkers were an enforcement agency that answered to no one. “Our own government takes extraordinary measures in the interest of national security. And our… charter, if you will, is much broader than national security,” Ambrose continued. “National interests are rather parochial where we are concerned. We are responsible for dimensional security.”

  “Who put you in charge? What gives you the right—the power—to act in the interests of an entire planet?”

  Ambrose shrugged mischievously. “Who remembers such things?”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Grainger said, irked.

  “Neither was I,” Ambrose said. “We have been ‘in charge’ as you say for thousands of years. We consider it an honor, a duty, a calling. But let me ask a more important question.”

  “What?”

  “If we relinquish this mantle—the power, as you say—who will replace us? Who out there comprehends the nature of the threat? Or even knows of its existence? Who would battle the unknown on its terms? Who would have the ability, the resources, or the capability to defend our very reality?”

  No doubt thinking about what he had witnessed earlier in the evening, Grainger slowly shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “We walk in shadows because we have always walked in shadows, Chief Grainger,” Ambrose said. “We stand between the darkness and the light. We draw the line there and we defend that line. Would you have us abandon our posts?”

  “Wish I had an alternative,” Grainger said softly. “But right now I got nothing.”

  “If we should fail,” Ambrose said grimly. “Feel free to seek other solutions.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Grainger said and then wearily pushed himself up out of his chair. “I have a lot to think about. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Thank you,” Ambrose said. “Barrett will see you out.”

  “That’s okay,” Grainger said quickly. “I know the way.”

  After Grainger left the office, Barrett started to speak. Ambrose held up his hand for silence, waiting until he heard the front door close before nodding.

  “We’ll be tripping all over him,” Barrett said.

  “On the contrary,” Ambrose said, “I believe he will be fine.”

  “He’s not one to sit back and let others do what he believes is his duty.”

  “Perhaps,” Ambrose conceded. “But I think not. He will realize the enormity of the situation and work with us.”

  “And what if he convinces the governor to call in the National Guard?”

  Ambrose chuckled dryly. “Let hope we resolve this matter before it comes to that. This Carnifex, the one Thalia referred to as Messor Carnis, is impatient. We won’t have much time to prepare. Success or failure will be determined shortly.”

  “Failure?” Barrett asked in a voice tinged with incredulity.

  “Have you not considered the possibility?”

  “On a personal level? Sure,” Barrett said. “I’ve seen it. But… what you said to Grainger about seeking other solutions, I thought you were being facetious.”

  Ambrose shrugged. “Let’s hope he heard the same tone in my voice. The more confidence he has in us, the less likely he is to interfere.”

  “Which is good, right?”

  “Absolutely,” Ambrose said. “We stand the best chance if we are left unfettered by the well-meaning. However, the seriou
sness of this threat eclipses anything the family has faced in centuries, perhaps longer, and our numbers leave much to be desired.” Ambrose spread his hands, as if the rest of his argument was obvious, if better left unspoken.

  “I, for one, won’t give up without one hell of a fight,” Barrett said.

  “I should hope not,” Ambrose said. “But none of us can afford to falter in this battle. One stumble, one miscalculation, could be our undoing.”

  Barrett nodded grimly. “With that in mind, I intend to get some rest.”

  “As you should,” Ambrose said. “Pleasant dreams.”

  “No guarantees, right?” Barrett said and smiled. “You too, old man.”

  “I have a few things to finish here,” Ambrose said from behind his desk, hands folded calmly, where he sat for several minutes after Barrett had left. With a weary sigh, he pushed himself up out of his chair and removed several old volumes of lore from his bookshelves. He intended to look for any references to a being or entity referred to as Carnifex or Messor Carnis. Then he would check the Walker journals in the computer room on the second floor and, finally, perform a database search of the online records. Basically, he planned to research until the approach of dawn. A few hours sleep before morning would have to suffice.

  At the corner of his desk, the telephone rang.

  So as not to disturb the others, Ambrose scooped the receiver up from its cradle before the second ring. A bit of intuition caused a smile to spread across his face. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call, Gideon?”

  “I had… an encounter a short while ago.”

  The smile faltered. “Serious?”

  Gideon’s voice sounded small and far away. “Serious enough.”

  “Oh, it’s just that I thought—you are well, though?”

  “Bruised but unbowed.”

  “Good,” Ambrose said. “That’s certainly good to hear.”

  “He came looking for me… here.”

  “I’m sorry, Gideon,” Ambrose said. “These things happen.”

  A long sigh on the other end of the line. Ambrose sensed that Gideon had already made a decision but was reluctant to give it voice. “I’m coming home, Ambrose,” Gideon said finally. “Flying in tomorrow. If you’ll have me.”