But this, I could buy. She'd been talking for a while about working with the news team at her station on a hard news project. This must have been it, a perfect assignment considering she was a nymph. So what had gone wrong? "How'd you find out about the exposé?"
"The questions made everyone suspicious," said Phaola, "but what really blew her cover was her training. She wouldn't go through with it, if you know what I mean. After that, I didn't see her around anymore."
"When did you see her last?" said Briar.
"Yesterday afternoon." Phaola looked away. Maybe there was a hint of remorse in her eyes. "I had other things on my mind."
The feeling of dread I'd had from the start was stronger than ever. I knew exactly how this was going to play out. But what else could I do? Ask a question, follow directions, see it with my own two eyes. "Where's Time-Out?"
*****
Chapter 9
The clock was ticking as Phaola led us from the bedroom. I was sure Holloway's bunch had been watching us on camera, so I knew we had a limited amount of time until they came after us.
The coming after us part didn't worry me much; if anything, I was itching for a fight with those people. But I didn't want to risk losing Aggie in a lockdown. I was close to finding her, I knew it, and I didn't want them to snatch her away.
So we didn't bother with stealth at that point. Didn't tiptoe or try to keep up our undercover sham. We didn't talk, but that was just because of the tension.
We followed Phaola through a labyrinth of white-walled corridors lined with windowless doors. Each door had an electronic key card scanner mounted on the frame at doorknob level.
Eventually, we came to a door that was different from all the rest. We turned a corner into one last short spur of hallway, and there at the end was a red door. Fire engine red. Glossy as a candy apple in the fluorescent light.
A black letter "X" had been spray-painted on the door at eye level. You could see where the paint had run from the arms and legs of the "X."
"Time-Out." Phaola stepped to one side and gestured at the door.
I pushed forward and tried the handle, but it wouldn't budge. "We need a key card."
"Don't look at me." Phaola looked down the corridor behind us. She was waiting for Divinities' cavalry to show up, just like the rest of us. "Holloway's the only one with a swipe card for Time-Out."
I threw my shoulder against the red door, but it was rock solid. No give. Briar helped with a second try, but the result was the same.
Heart thundering in my chest, I stepped back. Reached out with my mind and powers, fishing for a way in. The good news was, I was underground, surrounded by the source of my strength. Surrounded by earth.
In fact, I sensed good, responsive earth around three walls of the Time-Out room behind the door. Lots of controllable potential energy there, waiting to be released. Waiting for the go-ahead to break through and break down the door.
The bad news was, the walls were thick, and I wasn't in direct contact with them. I was going to have to work hard to make this happen.
"I can do this." Spreading my hands against the surface of the door, I pushed past the worry and focused all my will on commanding the earth. Reaching through the door and the room and the reinforced concrete walls, sliding my mind into the dirt and rock beyond.
My eyes were closed, but I could see the patterns of stress like rainbow-colored ripples pulsating on the walls. Constantly shifting and flowing, revealing the zones of greatest stability...and greatest weakness. I focused on those.
And I pulled. With all my heart, I pulled, but all I felt was the slightest stutter of the hard-packed earth.
Grunting from the effort, I threw myself against the door and tried harder. Tugged with all my might. Then doubled that, crying out. Briar reached for me, and I screamed at him to get away.
Then doubled the effort again. Sweat pouring down my face and back and sides. Tripled the effort. Clawing at the door.
Finally, I felt a wall begin to crack. A tiny fissure crawled over the concrete and slowly widened. Almost there.
The crack opened wider. Grains of dirt squeezed through and trickled to the floor. A little further.
Then, suddenly, my concentration flickered. My attention was drawn back to the hallway around me. People were shouting.
"Stop what you're doing!" I recognized Holloway's voice. "Step away from the door immediately."
Keeping a tenuous link to the widening crack, I turned my head and opened my eyes. What I saw there sent a shiver through me, but it wasn't a shiver of fear.
Holloway, still masked and top-hatted, had a semi-automatic pistol in each hand. One pointed at me, the other at Briar.
And Holloway wasn't alone. Six of the women from his stable surrounded him, some with feet on the floor, some hovering in mid-air. They were nymphs and goddesses, all gifted with one set of talents or another. Ready and waiting to unleash them on us.
They made me shiver when I saw them. Shiver with the fresh inspiration I needed.
Throwing all my attention and power back through the door, I wrenched at the crack in the wall. Split it wide open like I was tearing apart a rag with my hands.
And a stream of dirt and rock leaped across the room, slamming against the door like a battering ram.
*****
Chapter 10
The shower of dirt and rock rattled against the door from inside Time-Out. I kept it coming through the widening crack in the wall in an ever stronger stream, hoping as I did so that Aggie wouldn't get hurt in the process. I hadn't heard her cry out, so maybe that was a good sign; she would've had plenty of warning when the dirt started trickling, plenty of time to move out of the path of the bombardment.
Or, maybe, the fact that she hadn't cried out wasn't a good sign at all.
As I kept up the pressure, Briar and Duke bought me some time. I heard them through the haze of my concentration.
"Now, look," said Duke. "I think we can make a deal here. How many gold bars will it take to make everything right?"
"I'll smash your head in with a gold bar!" said Holloway. "Now shut up and get away from the fucking door!"
"What's the harm here?" said Duke. "We're just having a look around. Your facility is most impressive, my good man."
"Are you blind?" said Holloway. "Do you not see the six angels of destruction over here waiting to tear you to shreds?"
"You think they're your personal death squad?" said Briar. "When you say 'jump,' they say 'how high?' I don't know. I'm thinking maybe they'd be as interested as we are in finding out what happened to Aggie Regal."
"Aggie doesn't matter!" said Holloway. "She never did! These women are true believers, and they can't be swayed."
As the drama continued, I felt the door buckle toward me. The sustained pounding was finally taking a toll, wearing down the structural weaknesses. I sensed fractures spreading through the metal, jagged spider-web tracery fanning out and overlapping, stamping break-points like fingerprints at the nodes of greatest intersection.
The door was just about to give. I edged away from the middle, where the fractures were concentrated, and kept pouring on the juice. The breakthrough would come any minute now.
Unfortunately, Holloway's groupies weren't planning to give me the minute I needed.
"Get them!" As soon as Holloway said it, I heard the sound of running feet getting closer.
"Time's up, Gaia!" said Briar. "Here they come!"
Just then, a blast of strong, cold wind slammed into me, pinning me against the door. One of the nymphs or goddesses was shooting off her powers—Saraesa, maybe? I'd planned her trip to Galapagos three years ago.
The wind rattled my concentration but didn't break it. I reached deeper and pulled harder, widening the crack in the wall and adding mass and force to the column of rock and dirt. Any second now...
"Stand down!" Briar said it in his most commanding voice. "I'm a police officer!" I could imagine him flashing his badge, as if that would
do any good.
Almost there.
"Ladies! Do not come any closer!" This time, it was Duke. "This object I've just pulled out of my pocket is a stick of unstable dynamite. It will likely explode on contact if it hits you!"
Suddenly, there were gunshots. Two of them. Had to be from Holloway's twin pistols. I heard Briar shouting, "Get down! Shots fired!"
Then, someone turned a firehose on me. The same thing, practically: a powerful jet of water from one of my ex-friends—a water nymph, a naiad, no doubt. The jet caught me hard in the hip and wouldn't let up, kept trying to bowl me over.
But I wouldn't go down easily. Not with Aggie possibly so close. Not with the door about to burst.
The water intensified, and so did the wind. I heard the sounds of a struggle, but I didn't dare turn to see. Not even after another pair of gunshots.
Come on...
The door stubbornly held on. The bulging red surface was one big network of fissures, but it wouldn't give. And the water and wind torture was wearing me down fast.
Then, someone threw in a tongue of fire. It splashed against the wall, barely missing me, charring the paint. Burning the hairs on my arm. Triggering an adrenaline rush.
Crying out, I cranked my power off the scale, felt the shower of earth plow into the door with the greatest force yet. Suddenly, a tiny chip of rock penetrated the metal and shot past me...and I knew. Finally, it was time for the big breakthrough.
I ducked back out of the way just as the door exploded into the corridor. The column of earth rushed through with a roar.
Spinning, I held on to the flume of dirt and rock with my mind, just barely. Dug into the torrent as it punched past and split it into four waves. Shunted each in a different direction, toward the enemy.
A hovering blonde nymph, the one with the fire power, went down first. I caught her square in the chest with a wave, driving her back into a wall.
The dark-haired naiad with the water power fell next. Then, a red-head conjuring thorny vines from thin air.
But my fourth wave missed its target, Holloway. He squeezed off two gunshots in my direction as he darted away...both wide.
Another gust of icy wind crashed into me, and I zeroed in on the source—a floating nymph with silver hair and glowing silver eyes. I flung a wave of earth at her, and she repelled it. Grimacing with effort, arms outstretched, she deflected it with a wall of wind...at least until I sent in another wave to bash her from behind.
I was just turning to choose my next target when a bullet slashed past, grazing my hip. Howling in pain, I swung around with a fresh wave of earth, just in time to see I didn't need to use it on Holloway. Briar clobbered him with a left uppercut to the head, dropping him on the spot.
That left two opponents still standing. Duke took care of one of them, a redhead in an emerald gown. When she generated a sphere of blinding light between her hands, Duke pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and calmly put them on. Then reached into his other pocket and pulled out a can of spray paint. It was black, and when he sprayed it on her hands, the light went dark.
The last of the bunch raised her hands to do something, who knows what...then turned and ran when I pitched a wave of earth at her. She didn't come back, and I didn't go after her. Bigger fish to fry, my whole reason for being there.
Fight over, I yanked my mind out of the torrent. All that animated dirt and rock crashed to the floor at once.
Then, without another moment's delay, I whipped around to face the red door. Crouching, I squeezed through the hole I'd punched through it and stepped into the room. Stepped into Time-Out.
*****
Chapter 11
My heart broke when I entered the room. I knew, as I'd known all along, what I would find there.
No one followed me in. Aggie was my best friend; whatever happened, this was our moment.
I stepped down into the collapsed remains of the torrent of earth, a furrow running straight from the door to the far wall. At first, I was glad to see there wasn't a body underneath it; Aggie had not been caught by the stream of dirt and rock I'd channeled.
Looking further into the room, however, I saw why this was the case. And I froze.
Time-Out was a padded room...and, clearly, a torture chamber. The only furnishings were silver chains and manacles dangling from the ceiling. Six pairs of them, all empty.
Except one.
I shivered uncontrollably. My heart was in my throat. What I saw in the far corner made me want to leave and never look back.
Even before I touched it, I knew the truth. Knew here was confirmation of what I'd feared. Unimpeachable evidence. The stuff of nightmares I was going to have for the rest of my life.
There was nothing left alive in that room. The thing that was hanging from the last pair of manacles was not alive. But it had been.
I took a step back toward the door. Gasped and shook my head.
"Gaia?" Duke leaned in through the hole in the door. "Are you all right?"
I didn't answer him. He kept talking, so did Briar, but none of it registered.
All I could think of was that photo of Aggie from the Divinities flyer, grinning and waving goodbye. One last perfect image of her in her prime, unspoiled, aglow. One last image before this.
Drawing a deep breath, I walked toward the thing in the manacles. Shut down every emotion, made myself as numb as I could. Preparing myself.
It was shaped like a slender woman, wrists clamped in the manacles. Toes dragging on the padded floor. Every inch of her encased in a gray stone shell.
Just like the cat in Aggie's apartment. Flash-baked in a shell of ash and mud. Flesh melted away inside, form preserved by the hard casing.
The worst part was the face, because I recognized it. Also because she'd been screaming when it happened; she was frozen forever in mid-scream, mouth gaping, head thrown back. She'd died in pain and terror.
My best friend, Aggie, had died in pain and terror.
When I got within an arm's length of her, I stopped. Felt like I was going to throw up. So much for numbness. A feeling of dread was one thing; coming face to face with fatal reality was another.
Bending over, I put my hands on my knees and took deep breaths. Fighting for control. The important thing now was to find the truth; the best way to do that was to read the message the killer had left. Aggie's remains, in other words.
Duke was saying something again, he was in the room now, but I ignored him. Straightening, I slowly reached one shaking hand toward the stony shroud.
When my fingers touched the rough surface, a powerful shock crackled through me. Then, a tumult of images and sensations flooded my mind...the same kind of deluge I'd experienced with the flash-baked cat in Aggie's apartment. Only this time, the images didn't have anything to do with a cat.
I fought to make sense of the onrushing storm of input, latching on to pieces like driftwood in a whirlpool. The bitter taste of volcanic ash and mud, suffused with lingering heat. Deeper, the remnants of silky blonde hair, charred and brittle. Bones like river rock, smooth and hard and clean. And familiar. Artifacts that added up to the essence of her, of Aggie.
I would never see her alive again. The thought of it jolted me to the core.
And then, I was jolted again. The sense of a sinister presence gazing back at me from the abyss. The same presence I'd felt watching when I'd read the cat in Aggie's apartment.
Its malevolence was unmistakable. It stared over the shattered wasteland of my dead friend, its terrible handiwork. Cruel and aware.
It knew me. It reached for me, like before.
I withdrew, wrenching my consciousness away from it. Evading its clutching grasp. Almost.
Like the last time, it managed to lay a finger on me. Tapped my fleeing spirit and sent it reeling.
Something exploded inside me again. I felt myself collapse, falling toward the floor...and then I was elsewhere...
Collapsing onto silken bedsheets, flush with the fire of lov
emaking. Just finished, at least for now, and well satisfied.
My lover rolled over beside me and stroked my cheek with his fingertip. "Now do you see?" He was the same man I'd seen in my first vision, the fair-featured one who'd sat beside me on the hill overlooking the city. "Do you see how love can be between two souls?"
I smiled at him. I kissed his finger and felt a tremor of fresh passion. I knew it was the first time I had ever been with a man, with anyone; I was dizzy with the afterglow and wanted to do it again.
"It was everything I said it would be, wasn't it?" said my lover.
I looked around the vast room, taking everything in. The walls were inlaid with colorful frescoes depicting romantic interludes out of myth. Beautiful bowls and urns, worked in glass and precious metals, were arranged on shelves and pedestals. Sunlight and soft breezes streamed in from a balcony; one entire wall was open to the elements. I heard the cries of gulls and the lapping of surf from nearby.
"Now aren't you glad you did it?" said my lover. "Aren't you glad you joined us?"
"Yes." I didn't need to think about it for even an instant. "I feel so alive."
"I knew you would," he said. "I wanted you to feel that way. To lay aside your burdens after all this time and finally know true joy."
I felt a rush of desire as I gazed at him—so handsome, so caring, so perfect. He was like an angel, haloed in the summer morning's light streaming in from outside. His dazzling smile was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life.
Then, suddenly, everything changed, as if someone had flipped a switch. I was somewhere else, somewhere dark and cold and damp. He was still with me, but he was different.
His face was twisted with rage. No trace of love to be seen. Eyes afire with blazing hatred, directed at me. Glaring right at me.
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