"I'm glad you liked the trips. I'm glad we could help." As I said it, I felt my dark mood lighten just a little. Helping the nymphs keeps me going; that and my hobby, which is using my unique skills to hunt down killers.
If I couldn't travel beyond a cove or grove or pool, I know how I'd feel if someone helped me get to Paris or the Taj Mahal. Fortunately, I'm not stuck in one place in spite of my nymphiness. Duke's theory is that I'm an oread, a land-based nymph linked to mountains and valleys—but apparently, I'm a moveable oread. That's a good thing, because I think I'd totally lose my mind if I were stuck in one place for life. I like having my home base in a small town, but I also like being able to get away whenever I want to.
So I really identify with my special customers, and I can tell they like me, too. We share a bond I just don't have with other people. They're important to me, right up there with Duke; in fact, my best friend Aggie is one of them.
"Well now." Duke slid off the desk and clapped his hands together. "Are you sufficiently caffeinated, my dear? Would you care to help with these young ladies' itinerary?"
I took a long swallow of the warm, mellow coffee. (Did I mention Duke makes the best coffee on the planet?) I hated to admit it, but I was actually feeling better. Almost smiled but didn't want to give him the satisfaction.
"Nag nag nag." I lowered my voice for his benefit. "Why can't you let me wallow in my misery?"
Duke spoke softly, too. "Because this is a business, and I'd rather if you don't drive away all the customers." He gave me his most withering look, but I knew it was a put-on. The old man didn't have it in him to be pissed at me.
I drained the cup of coffee and plunked it on the desk. "Big man, telling me how to run my business."
"Good luck finding someone else who can do it better." Duke chuckled and ran a hand over his wavy hair, dyed shoe-polish black except for his sideburns, which were gray. Being who and what he was, he could've looked any age he liked, but he chose to be an old man. He looked like he was in his mid-70s, near the end of his life. He looked exactly the way he had near the end of his first life, back in the day. His real life. Back before he became what he is now, which isn't the same, isn't even human.
"You win this time," I said, though the truth was, Duke won every time. "Now get outta my way, Edward." With that, I pushed out of my chair and brushed past him.
"All right, ladies." I managed a grin as I thought about my last jab; Duke hated when I called him "Edward." Maybe today would turn out all right, after all. "Who wants to hear about a Peruvian Incan city that isn't on any maps?"
Minthe beamed like a floodlight. "Really?"
"You know of one?" Nephelae was breathless.
"But of course." I gave my hand a casual toss. "You won't find reference to it anywhere...but Cruel World Travel will set you up." It was true. Another of my special skills; I know places no one else alive in the world has ever seen or heard of.
Just as I settled into a chair between Minthe and Nephelae, I heard the front door's ring tone...a little ditty Duke was fond of called "Caravan." We'd set it to play every time someone opened the door; it sure beat the little bell every other business in North America used.
I didn't bother to turn around. Figured we had another customer and Duke could take care of them. But then I heard the familiar boots on the hardwood. Even before Duke said a word, I knew who it was.
"Good morning, Sheriff Briar." Duke sounded pleased; he liked the Sheriff a lot. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?"
"No, thank you," said Briar. "I just need to talk to Gaia. I hate to interrupt..."
"You can't fool me, Dale." I smirked as I turned to face him. "Interrupting me is how you get your rocks off." It was a joke, because Dale Briar was a rockhound on the side—a rock collector slash prospector slash amateur gemologist.
But Briar wasn't in the mood for jokes. "This is pretty important, Gaia." He winced and combed his fingers through his thick brown hair. He looked uncomfortable.
"You need to wrap up Ray Long?" I figured there must be loose ends from the killer I'd turned over the night before. Wouldn't be the first time. "Can it wait like an hour or so? I'm with customers."
Briar shook his head and sighed. "Can't wait, Gaia. It's about Aggie."
Suddenly, I shot straight into red alert mode. I got up and walked away from Minthe and Nephelae without a word or a sideways glance.
"When was the last time you saw her?" said Briar. His expression was frighteningly grim.
I didn't want to answer. I was afraid of what he might say next. "Yesterday morning. Around eight."
"Okay." Briar fidgeted with a ring on his right pinky, twisting it back and forth. The stone was a super-rare red tiger's eye I'd found for him with my talents. Okay, I'd made it for him. He'd tumbled, cut, and set it in gold like a pro. "I'll tell you flat out, Gaia. Aggie's missing, and you were the last to see her."
"Missing?" The word sounded unreal as I said it.
"She didn't show up for work today," said Briar. "Didn't call in, either. No one's seen or heard from her since...well, since you saw her yesterday morning."
"That's over twenty-four hours." My heart pounded like a heavy metal drum solo. I felt flushed and chilled at the same time. Forget red alert; I was at Defcon Five and climbing.
"Does she have any family?" Briar raised his shaggy brows hopefully. "Maybe there was an emergency and she had to drop everything."
"No blood relations," I said. "Aggie's like me."
Briar nodded. He didn't know everything about my world, but he knew enough to get the picture. He'd seen me in action more than a few times. "Can she take care of herself like you?"
I shook my head. Aggie didn't have my kind of abilities, and she wasn't much of a fighter.
"Then this just became my top priority." Briar turned and reached for the doorknob.
I beat him to it. He had to jump back to avoid getting hit in the face with the door as I flung it open.
Without a word to him or anyone, I charged out into the parking lot toward my black hybrid Toyota Highlander SUV. I was behind the wheel before Briar even got the door of his cop cruiser open.
And then I was gone, whipping out of the parking lot like I'd just robbed a bank. Briar chasing me with lights and siren blazing, barely keeping up.
Aggie. My breath caught in my throat as I raced toward her apartment. As I felt my mood shift into a third gear, one that had nothing to do with smooth sailing or sinking fast. One in which everything that slowed me down or distracted me peeled away, leaving nothing but a knifepoint of crystal clear focus and white hot intensity. Willingness to do terrible things. To do anything it took. Fucking Apocalypse in the chamber, hammer cocked, finger on the trigger.
For this mood, I didn't have a clever nickname.
*****
Chapter 3
The only thing out of place in Aggie's apartment was the front door. It laid as I'd left it when I'd smashed it in with a barrage of concrete chunks, hanging from the top hinge, the bottom hinge torn out of the splintered frame.
Otherwise, the place was spotless. Everything was exactly where I remembered, undisturbed. Nothing unusual at first glance.
I stalked around the living room, breathing fast, glaring at furniture and knick-knacks. Paused to run my finger over the framed photo on top of the TV, the photo of Aggie and me in Cancun, laughing as we hoisted umbrella drinks the size of fat babies.
Briar eased past me into the kitchen. "No dirty dishes. Everything's put away." I heard him march into the bedroom. "Bed's made. Phone's on the hook."
I gazed at the gold trophy beside the photo atop the TV, a statuette of a winged woman holding up a globe of interlocking rings—symbol of the atom. It was the Emmy award she'd won as weathercaster on the local TV news. Her prized possession.
"No signs of a struggle." Brian was in the living room now. "No signs of a break-in...till you did a number on the door, anyway."
I spun to face him, brandishing the Emmy like a
weapon. I hadn't even realized I'd picked it up.
Taking a deep breath, I reined in my anger and lowered the Emmy. "It could've been someone she knew," I said. "Someone who puts everything back where he found it." Turning, I replaced the Emmy trophy on top of the TV set.
"Are you picking up anything?" Briar folded his arms over his chest and looked around. "Anything unusual?"
I swallowed hard and tried to focus. Reached out with my senses, groping for bits of dirt or gravel that could have been tracked in. Particles whose scent I could identify and track like a bloodhound.
After a minute, I shook my head. "I don't know. Nothing yet." I was getting pissed off. The situation was getting to me, distracting me, blunting the edge of my knifepoint intensity.
"What about someone like you?" said Briar. "Someone out of the ordinary? Could they have pulled this off?"
Suddenly, I lashed out at him. "I'm not a suspect, am I? Just because I saw her last?"
Briar snapped right back at me. "Dial it down! I'm asking if anyone who travels in the same circles could've done it."
"Yeah, maybe." I backed off, but it wouldn't take much to make me fly off the handle again. "It's possible."
"Like who?"
"I don't know! She was on TV! Lots of people knew her. All kinds of people." I felt like running out the door. Searching for Aggie my own way. Turning the town upside down and shaking the shit out of it.
"Okay, try this." Briar picked up the stack of mail that had fallen behind the door. "Tell me about her. Tell me who she is really."
I took a deep breath and fought to steady myself. Getting worked up wasn't my style. I was even pretty cool going up against killers or kingpins—but the personal connection to Aggie was kicking my ass. She was my best friend, for God's sake. Other than Duke, she was the only one who could help me keep it together in spite of my highs and lows. I knew if I lost her, I'd fall apart.
I also knew the crazier I acted, the greater the chance I would lose her. Time to pull it together as if she were right there in the room with me.
"Her real name's Aegle," I said. "She's one of the Hesperides." It was working. I felt myself getting calmer as I spoke. "They're a clan of nymphs who tended famous gardens at the edge of the world."
Briar looked surprised, but only for a moment. "These other nymphs. Any problems there?"
"No idea," I said. "It wasn't something she seemed to want to talk about."
"I'd say that's a 'maybe' then." Briar flipped through the stack of mail in his hand. "What about powers? She have any?"
Other than a beautiful singing voice and vivacious personality? "She can do things with light. Control it. Change it. I don't know what all. She only ever showed me a few tricks."
Briar raised a mail piece close to his hazel eyes and squinted at the label. "Could she use tricks of the light to make herself disappear? Could she be right here in front of us, and we just can't see her?"
"I don't know." I shrugged. "I never saw her do anything like that." Then, I headed into the next room, Aggie's office. It looked as tidy as ever—closed laptop computer on the desk, printer beside it, black mesh-backed office chair. Aggie was a minimalist.
"What's 'Divinities Enterprises?'" Briar said from the living room.
Before I could answer, I drove my toe into something on the floor. I cried out at the instant flash of pain in my foot and hopped back a step.
Briar leaped through the doorway with gun drawn, quick as ever. "What is it?"
I frowned as I stared down at the thing I'd stubbed my toe on. "Not sure." At first glance, it looked like a round gray rock with a hole in the middle. It was about the size of a human head.
"Doorstop?" said Briar.
"I don't think so." I was already getting a funny vibe from the thing before I squatted down and reached out to touch it. Reached out with my fingers and my mind.
The shock I got from it was a hell of a lot stronger than the pain of stubbing my toe. I cried out but didn't pull away.
And I was bombarded. Wave after wave of information cascaded through me, overwhelming me. An avalanche of images and impressions, tumbling and crashing and flowing together. Almost impossible to tell where one left off and the next started.
But I wasn't about to let go. Clenching my teeth, I burrowed into the onslaught, drilling my mind through the pounding surf. Forcing myself to capture and sort the chaos.
I took a deep drink of the tide, let it swirl into my head and fill it up like seawater in a jug. Spun it like blood in a centrifuge, separating the component parts, isolating them. Shooting them through the filters of my mind, extracting nuggets like glittering gold dust from a prospector's sluice.
The bombardment became a shower of telltale sensations: the taste of ashes and mud in my mouth, bitter and thick; the touch of fur, silken and staticky; the sound of purring become the final sigh of death; bones at the heart of it all, smooth and hard and opalescent. Suddenly, I realized what it was I was reading. Not a doorstop, not a rock after all.
A cat. Curled up in a ball and dead inside a shell of hardened ash and mud. The neighbor's cat. In my worry and hurry, I'd forgotten Aggie was catsitting.
But there was more beyond that. Lingering heat, wisping from pores in the dried ash and mud. The memory of heat intense enough to flash-bake a stony shell around a living thing...yet controlled enough not to leave a speck of charred carpet or the smell of singed fur.
Reaching deeper, I found disruptions at the molecular level, a crazy-quilt of shattered bonds. Like someone had dragged a rake through the lattice-work chemical structure, leaving a jumbled field of uprooted and disconnected debris.
And still there was more. Overshadowing all of it, looming like storm clouds above the destruction, a feeling. A force. A presence. Swelling and seething and aware. Darkness, unfolding and ripening.
Looking back at me. Reaching for me.
I pushed away, and it followed. Calling for me. Sending impressions of the unspeakable things it would do when it caught me.
Gathering all my strength, I focused on breaking the link. Just before I cut all the way through the cord, the dark presence made contact—tapped me on the shoulder as I faded from its sphere of influence.
Something rushed into me then and exploded like a bomb. I felt a surge of heat and light, drowning out everything else—then a burst of input so concentrated and powerful it hurt. A stream of thought and sensation so intense, it made the earlier bombardment seem like a shower of rose petals.
It was too much for me, and I fell. Let go of the flash-baked cat and collapsed on the floor in a seizure.
I heard Briar calling my name, but I couldn't answer. My mind was on fire, my body thrashing out of control. I felt myself biting down on my tongue, tasted blood in my mouth, but I couldn't unclench my jaws.
Then, suddenly, the seizure stopped. Everything went limp, and I slumped on the carpet.
"Gaia!" Briar was shouting at me. "I'm getting an ambulance!"
"Noooo." My voice was slurred. I felt like I was only halfway there, only part of the way back in the real world. The rest of me...
...was elsewhere. When I opened my eyes, I didn't see Briar or the ceiling of Aggie's office. I saw bright turquoise sky, adrift with tufts of cottony cloud. Sitting up, I saw gleaming spires of silver and gold and bronze, climbing from a glittering city sprawled over a vast coastal plain.
"Where am I?" My voice was still slurred. My heart was hammering, but I felt like I was moving through quicksand.
"You made the right choice," said someone else, someone new. His voice was deep and warm, full of tenderness.
And...familiar. Somehow familiar.
I thought if I could see his face, I might recognize him, but that didn't help. When I turned and saw him sitting beside me with his fair features and loving smile, I was left with the same feeling of knowing but not knowing him.
"Who are you?" I said.
"How does it feel to make a fresh start after all this time?"
It was like he hadn't heard my question. "How does it feel to know our secrets?"
My head throbbed. Nothing was making sense. I knew him, but I didn't...and not just him. Everything about that moment was familiar.
We were sitting on the grass on top of a hill overlooking a city I'd never seen before...but somehow I recognized it. I heard birdsong and smelled flowers I'd never heard or smelled before...but somehow, I knew them.
And the words he said. I knew them too. I didn't, but I did. "Our biggest secret of all, I must teach you." He never said that. This never happened. "It's called love."
So real. Everything so sharp and strong and perfect. Like a memory.
Like a memory.
He reached for me then and kissed me under the golden eye of the sun. I felt a shock pour through me, shaking me to the marrow of my bones...and then another explosion. And it was over.
All of it went away in an instant. I blinked, and everything was gone. I was back on the floor of Aggie's office with Briar staring down at me, pushing the hair out of my eyes.
"Ambulance is on the way," he said. "How are you feeling?"
"Like...road kill." I tried to get up but couldn't. Too dizzy, with a migraine to boot. Everywhere I looked, I saw that yellow haze I get when a migraine's at its worst.
"What the hell happened?" said Briar. "What is that thing, anyway?" He nodded in the direction of the stone-encased cat.
"Dolly," I said. "Neighbor's cat."
"That's a cat?"
"Aggie was cat-sitting." I reached up and rubbed my head, wincing at the pain. "She's in trouble."
"Aggie?"
As I remembered the malevolent presence, my headache got worse. "Oh, God, Dale." Tears trickled down my cheeks as I thought of my best friend. "I've got a terrible feeling about this."
*****
Earthshaker Page 2