“Found a new porn channel?” Carolyn quipped.
Julia shook her head. “No. It’s a message from the guys over in Richmond. Jennie, check this out.”
Jennie examined the series of images sent over by Jiao. “A sarcophagus? Oh, that’s never a good sign.” She pinched the screen and enlarged the image. “What language is this?”
“I don’t know,” Julie replied. “But I’m going to find out.”
“Well, get a move on. We’ll be up in the air for a couple of hours, but once we’re in Boston, we’ll need all hands on deck.” Jennie watched the world fall away beneath her as they were lifted into the air.
God, spectral trouble is just like waiting for the bus. Nothing for ages, then they all come along at once.
Richmond, Virginia, USA
Lupe met them at the door, confusion on his face as Rhone and Triton walked in, each carrying the body of an unconscious yoga student.
“What the…” he tried to say before Tanya cut over him.
“Not now,” she snapped.
Even the poltergeists’ attention was caught as they lumbered them upstairs and toward the rooms that would soon become the holding cells. Currently, there was no protection to keep specters from entering the room, but the lock would be enough to deter mortals.
They placed them inside the room and watched them for a few minutes. The girl on the left had shocking red hair, and a cut across her brow. A dark bruise was already forming on her exposed stomach. The woman on the right was younger, petite, with blonde hair. Her lip was cut, and gentle snores came from her lips.
Roman held the others behind him and knelt between the pair. He unscrewed the lid of a bottle of water and threw it on each of their faces in turn.
Immediately the girls awoke, springing onto all fours like feral animals. The leapt at Roman, who managed to grab the red-head and pin her down by the throat to the floor. Triton rushed into the room and grabbed the blonde woman’s arms, trapping them behind her back and holding her still.
“Calm down!” Triton growled, his muscles straining to keep her in his grasp. Roman flipped the redhead over and pushed her face to the ground, cursing her for giving him angry scratches on his arm and face to match Tanya’s.
Lupe shook his head. “What the hell have you brought into this house? What’s wrong with them?”
“We don’t know,” Tanya replied. “That’s what we want to find out. Feng Mian, any ideas?”
Feng Mian crossed over to Roman and his hostage and placed a hand on her forehead. He looked deep into her eyes even as she huffed and tried to chomp at his fingers. “Definitely possessed. I don’t know how to dispel the darkness inside, though.”
She tried to bite his hand.
“She can see you?” Lupe asked. “Is she a conduit?”
Ula shook her head. “Doubtful. It might just be the spectral power inside her that allows her to see. Whoever this woman is, she’s not herself right now. Nor is the other one. Roman, what do you suggest?”
Roman half-turned over his shoulder. “We keep them detained and search for an answer. Drop a line to Julia, perhaps? She’s dealt with possessions before. In the meantime, we set up a guard and restrict them to this room. Who knows, perhaps time in isolation will help flush out the darkness.”
Tanya touched her cheek, forgetting the scratches for a moment, and winced. “We can’t leave them together, surely? They’ll kill each other.”
“They didn’t kill each other in that cave,” Roman replied. “They should be okay together. The guards can keep an eye on them. Feng Mian, Ula, you’re up first.”
They backed out of the room, leaving Roman and Triton with their captives. Once everyone was clear, they shoved the possessed women against the wall and slipped out of the room, locking the door behind them.
Feng Mian and Ula took their stations, standing either side of the door as the women banged and slammed their fists against the solid wood.
“What was this room before?” Triton asked.
Tanya shrugged. “A storage room. No windows, a solid plastered ceiling. Perfect detention for mortals.”
“You’ll need to upgrade before you capture specters,” Roman grunted.
Tanya nodded her agreement.
* * *
They switched guard through the night, each playing their part to keep their detainees in check. Lupe and Triton took the next shift on guard, then Roman and Tanya. At some point in the early hours, Hendrick and Jiao switched in, although Hendrick was considerably more reluctant than the others had been.
“I have important work to do,” he protested into the empty corridor. “This is a waste of my talents.”
Jiao remained silent, back resting against the wall beside the door. The banging had finally stopped, the two women having either grown weary or simply given up. She stared into the gloom and saw shapes moving in the shadows on the wall.
“Jennie would not want me wasting time just standing here. I’ve so much to unpack and arrange. I need help and staff. Do you know how difficult it is to build a laboratory from scratch? The number of things you forget to order that you don’t realize until you need them. Thank God for twenty-four-hour delivery.”
Jiao ignored the ancient mole man. Her attention was directed at the room behind her. The women intrigued her. She wondered how possession worked and whether they would be able to expunge the power from them. What was the purpose of it all? What had they uncovered?
The others were either fast asleep or preoccupied in their rooms. Despite Hendrick’s formula for tiredness, nothing could beat a good night’s rest. Jiao rose to her feet and pressed her ear against the door.
“They’re asleep,” Hendrick stated matter-of-factly.
Jiao raised an eyebrow.
“I may be old, but my hearing is magnificent.” Hendrick tapped his ear. “They’re snoring beside the door.”
Jiao rested her hand on the golden knob and pinched the key with the fingers of her other hand. She twisted the key until it clicked in the lock.
Despite her strange behavior, Hendrick allowed this. “You’re making a mistake.”
Jiao entered nonetheless, having to lean a little more weight against the door to open it wide enough to squeeze through. Out of everyone in the house, this was a maneuver that only she could manage with her narrow frame.
The women were out cold. Their hair was stressed into nests, and their fingernails were broken and blood caked their fingertips. Jiao knelt beside them and placed a hand on the blonde woman’s forehead, remembering the lessons she had been taught by him and the rituals and arcane movements she had learned. A sense of cold calm passed from her to the sleeping woman.
Jiao wore three rings on her fingers, and each gave off a golden glow. The girl’s eyes remained closed, but a long gasp came from her mouth as though she were trying to steam up a window with her breath. Something snaked out of her throat like the fumes after a smoker’s inhalation.
The gaseous cloud, no larger than the size of a tennis ball, hovered above her. Jiao repeated her action with the redhead girl, and another dark orb joined the air in front of her.
She checked that no one was watching behind her and nudged the door closed, leaving only an inch in case she needed to make a quick escape.
She rose to her feet and studied the gaseous orbs. They made their own shapes and pulsed with their own life. They pushed themselves together and became a larger ball, and when Jiao extended a hand and smiled, it hovered above her palm. She could almost feel the weight of it.
A single declaration came from the orb, transferred more so in her mind than in real words. “Thank you.”
The next thing she knew, the orb darted for the gap in the door and sped out of the house.
Hendrick thought he saw something streaking past him, but as good as his hearing was, he had learned not to trust his eyes.
Chapter Forty
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
The Airbus touched down in North
Street Park, across from the Rose Kennedy Greenway. From the air, it was easy to see where the bomb had detonated, given the surrounding mass of cop cars that encircled the red brick building of the Public Market.
When they had passed over, smoke was still filtering in faint ribbons. Rhone narrowed his eyes, looking down from the air. “It’s not like the markets I saw as a kid. They were all outdoor, open-air. Stalls upon stalls of greengrocers, cheeses, toys, and wine.”
Boston Public Market sold all of those things yet existed in the comfort of an old corner building, which took up almost the entire block. As they retreated a safe enough distance away to hopefully deflect unwanted attention from themselves, they saw that one side of the building was exposed, the brickwork shoved violently into the streets with the bomb’s blast.
Inside was just a mess.
They jumped out of the chopper and onto soft grass. Jennie thanked Ashton and told him to wait in the chopper. He saluted. “Happy to,” came his cheery reply.
Julia was less inclined to jump out of the helicopter. Already she had spent a considerable amount of time on her phone, looking for the answers to the riddle of the sarcophagus. A short while ago, she had determined the language to be some lost cousin of Latin, and she had managed to translate half of the words on the side of the stone box.
“Are you coming?” Jennie asked.
Julia waved a hand without looking. “Bomb sites and gunfire are more your thing. I’ll keep working on this.” Her eyes widened as her screen went black. “Shit! Ashton, don’t suppose you have a power cable, do you?”
Ashton fished into a compartment underneath a panel of dials and pulled out a flat black box with a wire sticking out. “Mobile charging unit. Not sure how much juice is left in there. Worth a shot.”
Jennie rolled her eyes. “We’ll leave you both to it.”
“And hands off,” Rhone added with a smirk. “Julia’s promised to Roman. You don’t want to piss that guy off.”
Julia glared at Rhone.
They crossed over the Greenway and waited out of sight from the market building. Cop cars encircled the front of the building and the road was closed from pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
Jennie adjusted her earpiece and checked she was tuned in with Rhone. He would act as a guard while the specters explored the site, hopefully undetected.
“Call it in if you see anything suspect,” Jennie instructed.
Rhone grinned. “You act like I’ve never done this before.”
Jennie latched onto Baxter, Carolyn, and Sandra and turned spectral. Her spectral power cells activated and filled with power. Jennie still hadn’t gotten used to that sensation, it was as though she had been injected with additional adrenaline. Each step was like she was being given assistance. It was effortless, powerful.
They walked through cop cars, passing through a number of cops who shivered but blamed it on the night’s chill. They passed through the threshold and took in the extent of the damage.
Stalls had been reduced to tatters of canvas and metal frames. The stairwell no longer supported a passage to the balconies. There was a lingering smell of food items, and the floor was littered with debris everywhere they looked.
Jennie guided the specters onward, using the evidence before them to track the location of the bomb. It wasn’t too difficult to find, given that a group of two men and two women were gathered around a section of blackened ground where a crater had been blown into the floor.
The younger woman placed her hands on her hips and shook her head. She wore a dark blue uniform, her hair tied back in a severe ponytail. “A fresh-meat salesman? Why would someone selling meat want to destroy himself and his business, as well as his competitors around him?”
“Why does anyone do anything like this?” one of the men replied. “Could be a number of reasons. We’ll have to examine all the possibilities here.”
“Like what?” the other woman asked. Jennie instantly recognized her for the trainee she was.
The second man picked up a piece of metallic shrapnel, its edges razor sharp from the explosion. “Mental health issues, relationship worries, competitor envy, possibly even entry into an extremist terrorist organization. With the other cities suffering casualties like this, that’s where I’m placing my bet. It seems too coincidental to be a one-off scenario. This shit was planned.”
No kidding, Jennie thought.
They stood behind them and listened for a short while but gleaned nothing of note. Jennie passed through them, examining the evidence herself. There was more at stake. Given that Sturgeon and the SIS were already on her for killing their primary suspect, she needed to find something tangible among the debris. Something that would get her back on the track to solving this damn riddle and helping get this over with.
I had to. He was a maniac. If he slipped through our net again, who knew what more he was capable of.
But that wasn’t the whole truth, was it? The truth was that he had been inside her head. An invader in the only place where Jennie ever truly felt safe. Attacking her thoughts and rifling through her memories. That kind of damage was worse than anything physical for her.
Besides, he had passed on the baton, hadn’t he? He had introduced a new Dragon…somewhere. What use could he have been? Even under interrogation, Jennie doubted he would yield anything useful. A short week in the spectral world, and already he was happy to die.
A claymore mine had been the device used to cause such destruction. There was evidence of three of them set up in different directions to maximize the blast radius. Jennie brushed her finger over the lettering on a shard of metal casing and sighed.
Why are people so determined to cause destruction? That was a question she’d never know the answer to.
“Anything?” Jennie asked.
Carolyn and Baxter were spread out in different directions. Once more they were turning up empty-handed. They could piece together the claymore, perhaps. Gather the serial numbers and track down the purchase history of the device. They could follow the cops and question the family of the owners of the market stall.
But all of that took time, and time was something Jennie knew they didn’t have.
Something caught her eye, standing back against the wall of the upper level, a flash of white. Jennie turned to the specter, and he tensed. She stood up slowly, scared to spook him.
But it was too late.
The man took off at a sprint.
“Go!” Jennie shouted, catching the attention of Carolyn, Sandra, and Baxter. They had just enough time to see the specter disappearing around a corner before they kicked into action.
With the stairs blown out, they had to get creative. Jennie called for Carolyn to stay on the lower floor and cover the outside with Sandra, while Baxter caught up with her stride. As they ran, he picked her up with his muscular arms, swung her around, and sent her flying toward the balcony. Her fingertips clutched the guardrail, and she hauled herself over.
The specter was still in sight. She sprinted toward him, knowing that he’d likely have the advantage of knowing the layout of the building. Yet, she still had an ace up her sleeve.
Not yet. Let’s do this amicably.
Jennie gained momentum and closed the gap. He made a sharp right, and Jennie countered by running through the walls at a forty-five-degree angle. Her spectral power cells enabled her to keep going, even though her connection to Baxter and Carolyn was waning.
She came out to an empty corridor. The entire left side of the walls was made of glass. Jennie focused her thoughts and felt for the specter, surprised by how strong the spectral signal was up here.
Either he’s a really strong specter, or…
She didn’t need to finish her thought. From a doorway at the end of the corridor came a group of half a dozen specters. The specter she had been chasing was among them, hidden at the back. Based on the apron that he wore, and the grease and bloodstains on the white of his linens, she gathered that he was the meat vendor wh
o had triggered the explosion.
A woman with wide shoulders and a square jaw stepped out of the group. She had a buzz cut and held a spectral machete in her hand. She readied her stance, a sickening grin on her face.
“The infamous Rogue,” the woman crooned, a note of admiration in her words. “I wondered how long it would be until we met. In all honesty, I thought you were nothing more than a fairy tale. A rumor muttered among the specters to scare us into obedience. It’s nice to see some truth to the fable.”
“You’ve heard of me?” Jennie asked, genuinely curious as to how far her legend had spread across the US. It had been hit and miss, so far. Those in the populated areas of spectral activity had some kind of inkling, but there were still a great many who hadn’t heard of her.
The woman gave a curt nod. “The Paranormal Court told us about your powers when they tried to tame Massachusetts. Their venture didn’t go very far, but your name did stick. I’m not sure how much of your legend I believe, though. You know that rumor is more powerful than fiction.”
Jennie slowed her breathing and calmed herself. Five against one. Six, if the butcher got involved. Not the greatest odds, but she had taken worse.
Jennie’s hand moved to her guns.
“Oh, no.” The woman laughed. “No firearms. That’s cheating. I want to see what you’re capable of without long-range weapons.”
Jennie didn’t often play to those who tried to test her ego, but in that situation, she felt charitable. As her first encounter with specters in a strange state, it would pay dividends to provide a show that the specters could tell the tale of to their peers.
Jennie drew both guns, then tossed them lazily aside. “Fine. Have it your way.”
The woman grinned. The other specters drew their makeshift weapons. One had a table leg, another a switchblade, and one held what looked like a roughly hewn edge of a tin can attached to a length of copper wire.
Jennie made the first step toward the group. They readied themselves for the attack. As she neared them, she sent out her spectral feelers. Her cells automatically began to fill as Jennie studied their abilities while trying not to raise the alarm.
Agents, Agreements and Aggravations: In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service™ Book Three Page 31