Beacon's Fury (Potomac Shadows Book 3)

by Jim Johnson

  I paused and stared up at the glowing shield-skein and the swirls of ghostly souls all around. “I know that if word got out about this, if our knowledge and our abilities were to become common knowledge,I honestly have no idea what would happen to our world. A lot of people would have a lot of questions, that’s for sure.”

  Charity slid over to us and touched me with a tendril of thought. Would this be the wrong time to introduce me to Abbie?

  I stared at Charity, holding the link with the two of them separate but close. There was no shortage of ley threads here and I felt as comfortable in the ley as I had in a long time.

  A sudden tremor in the ley field all around me distracted me and scattered the swirl of ghosts. I instinctively adjusted the shield to better protect Abbie, and then focused a new string of senses toward the disturbance.

  “Charity, did you sense that?” I could feel she had also drawn on the nearby threads to juice her own senses.

  I sensed it, but the feeling passed before I could identify it. Whatever it was, it’s gone now.

  I glanced up. “And it scared off all the ghosts as well.”

  Charity sighed. They were a beautiful, if sad, sight.

  I nodded, but then focused on Abbie. She was staring at me with a strange look, and yet her eyes were filled with tears and she had a smile on her face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Just…nothing. Thank you for showing me this, Rachel. It’s beautiful. I don’t know what happened right at the end there, but I got this feeling that you were worried, or scared, or…something. I’m not sure what it was.”

  I pulled her into a hug and held her close, then released her and smiled. “It’s great that you sensed that. I tried to shield you from the worst of it.”

  I waved toward the shield above. “There was a…tremor in those threads I use to pull power from. Something scared off the ghosts.”

  Abbie frowned and gently pulled her hands from mine. She leaned up against the deck railing. “What could scare a ghost? Seems like a crazy idea.”

  I nodded and sat down on one of the rattan deck chairs. “Remember the, uh, bad guy we tangled with during that meditation session?”

  Abbie blanched. “How could I forget?”

  I nodded. “Right. So he could scare them off, but he also has, ah, agents of sorts, sort of evil spirits, that can cause problems for lost souls.”

  That wasn’t entirely the truth, but I wasn’t going to freak Abbie out over the details. Some things were better left unexplained.

  She sighed. “Still, that was a beautiful sight. Do you use that shield a lot?”

  I stared at her, wondering if I should tell her the truth—that I had some form of shielding up almost all the time now, over her and me while we slept, and around myself and Malcolm most of the time while we were training.

  Finally, I decided not to tell her, again assuming that the less she knew, the safer she’d be. “Just once in a while. When it seems likely to be needed.”

  She nodded and then met my eyes. “I hope that’s not too often.”

  I tried to keep hold of her eyes, to keep from having to lie to her again.

  Just then, the back screen door banged open and Penny poked her head in from the kitchen. “Who the hell spilled beer all over the counter? There are two open bottles in here and I’m not cleaning up someone else’s mess again!”

  I locked eyes with Abbie and forced myself not to grin. God, what a night.

  Chapter Nine

  AFTER IT SEEMED CLEAR THAT THE ghosts weren’t going to return any time soon, and that whatever had scared them off wasn’t reappearing, I closed down the shield, gathered up Charity’s leather journal, and then returned to the kitchen with Abbie.

  I gave Penny the appropriate noises, mostly to shut her up, and then cleaned up the two beers I had apparently spilled in my rush to get outside to see what all the fuss had been about.

  I got Cooper his replacement beer. He’d been totally engrossed in his phone game and hadn’t even noticed how long I’d been gone. He also had missed Penny’s return home, and Abbie and I decided to beat a hasty retreat to our bedroom so that we could avoid most of the collateral damage from the impending argument.

  Once safely locked in our bedroom, I sloughed off my jeans, hoodie, and t-shirt and crawled under the cool sheets spread out on our bed.

  Abbie did her nighttime thing and then grabbed a book and joined me in bed. We got our legs all tangled together in a wonderfully warm mix, and then relaxed into an hour or so of quiet reading, punctuated by occasional questions about our day. It felt so good to stare at a dog-eared paperback and feel my lover’s body heat close up against mine.

  My mind kept wanting to dart over to the day’s events, especially what had happened outside with the ghosts, but I pushed all that aside for a while, determined to have a nice, quiet night with Abbie.

  I even sort of pushed my awareness of Charity aside. She was usually really good about giving me and Abbie our space, had even mentioned that, as long as her journal was propped open, she could send her consciousness roaming out along the ley grid or the neighborhood. I called it stretching her legs, but she reminded me that she also did it to give Abbie and I some space and time.

  We weren’t exactly loud lovers, but I could see where the two of us getting it on might frustrate or distract Charity, who, after all, was a woman’s consciousness trapped inside an old leather journal. She hadn’t exactly asked to be added to our relationship, and she didn’t expect us to change our lifestyle just because we had a third person in the room with us almost all the time.

  As Abbie and I were winding down with our books and starting to distract each other with touches and kisses, Charity excused herself. I sensed her consciousness leave the room and the house, and I sighed with a little relief and an equal measure of anxiety. At some point tonight, after Abbie fell asleep, I wanted to roam the ley grid with Charity to determine if we could find anything amiss that might have set off the lost souls. I hoped she’d return soon.

  Abbie’s touches and kisses got more direct, and I dropped my book on my side of the bed, and reached out with an idle ley thread to shut off our lights. I rolled over into Abbie’s embrace and we spent a fun hour or so getting gloriously naughty.

  After we were spent and basking in the afterglow, we took turns in the restroom and then curled up together in bed. I dozed off, finding the twilight balance within my mind and body to recharge and recuperate. I had found that the more I practiced with storing energy and taking care of myself with the ley threads, the less sleep I actually needed. There had been a time when I was groggy if I didn’t get at least twelve hours of sleep, and I had whittled that down to just six hours in the last couple months. Of course, that didn’t mean I was actually out of bed those remaining eighteen hours of the day, but it was something.

  Abbie eventually fell asleep and started snoring quietly in my arms. I settled in behind her, acting as the big spoon tonight. Once I was confident she was gone for a good long while, I settled my body into sleep mode and then reached out for some ley threads and wove a light shield around us, and then released my consciousness from my body and sped astrally toward the ley grid, located far below, deep in the ground.

  As I wended my way through hundreds of feet of rock, water, and other materials between my body and the ley grid, I sensed Charity’s presence floating alongside mine. I glanced over and smiled at her form, and she returned the grin.

  I trust you had a pleasant evening?

  I nodded. “I did, thank you. And Abbie did as well. I’m sorry if you felt like you had to…” It was awkward to talk to her like this, but you have to admit the situation was kinda weird.

  She shook her head as we delved deeper and the world around us started to take on a light electric blue glow. No need to apologize, Rachel. You and Abbie have every right to your privacy. I am perfectly capable of resting or roaming outside the confines of your room and house, and it’s
good for me to ‘stretch my legs’ as it were and get a better sense of the world and time I now inhabit.

  The massive ley grid and its endless blue lines of power started to coalesce into view below us. I called up the mental marker I had created months ago, the waypoint that Malcolm and I and Charity had examined the other day, and had almost failed to escape from.

  “And what have you learned about this world and time?”

  That it’s a very confusing place, and that some things I thought had gone away, are still here, just in a different form and with a different face.

  I raised an eyebrow and glanced at her. “Do I even want to know?”

  She glanced at me as we neared my waypoint. Disease, warfare, racism…they still exist in equal measure. Borders shift and leaders change, but people…people remain people. Imperfect and hard to understand.

  “Isn’t that the truth.” I didn’t know what else to add. I’d had a challenging childhood, sure, but I knew that I had it better than a lot of people, and for sure even being broke most of my adult life, I knew I was better off than a lot of others simply by virtue of my being white.

  “There’s a lot of messed-up stuff in this world, Charity, but I’d say we’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got.”

  She shook her head. I wish I could agree with you, Rachel. I’m honestly not sure any more.

  I frowned, but forced myself to focus less on current affairs and more on our immediate location, pulling power from threads to focus on the waypoint, and the dark conduit we had found the other day. The sensations I was getting from it were…well, they were nonexistent.

  “Something’s wrong here…” I floated my consciousness down next to the conduit and studied with my thread-enhanced abilities.

  I soon sensed Charity linking her senses in with mine, enhancing our abilities several times over. I see your concern and share it. Just a dozen or more hours ago, this thing was an active, malevolent force. Now, it appears to be dead, unused. Perhaps even burned out?

  I shook my head and knelt my etheric form next to it. I pulled more ley threads into my control and touched them to the conduit, intending to study every bit of it as deeply as I could.

  “Keep an eye out for any ‘geists or other malevolent spirits. The Spinner’s out here somewhere, probably waiting for us to make a mistake.”

  I’d been smart enough to shield my bedroom from outside influence, protecting Abbie and I, and had also extended a shield around Charity and I as we delved down into the ley grid, but I couldn’t have a shield everywhere—no Weaver was powerful enough to shield the world.

  I focused on the conduit and studied the different pieces holding it together, getting a sense of how it was woven together out of now-dead ley threads. The evil of the thing, of its creator, was palpable, and left a veneer of slime on my senses, as if I had run my brain through a bucket of fouled grease.

  The connection points had a strange quality to them, and I spent some time trying to figure out the inner workings of the thing. Eventually, I pulled Charity into my link and asked for her help.

  We set up a sort of passive warning grid around us, set to trigger if a ‘geist or other outside influence were to attempt to close in on us, and then we worked together to study the conduit.

  Somewhere deep within my core, I knew that my body was sleeping deep, and that Abbie was quietly sleeping in my arms as well. The thought gave me some comfort and confidence, and I refocused on the work at hand with renewed effort.

  After another thirty minutes or so of hard examination, I pulled back from the conduit. “I think this thing served a purpose and then was shut off. I don’t think it burned out or was damaged.”

  I agree. The Spinner created it for a specific task and then, once that task was completed, simply shut it off.

  I nodded and studied the area around the conduit. “I want to say that it’s incomplete. I think the first time I saw it, there had been more to it. Like…maybe this was the pump, and there had been pipes of sorts connected to it.”

  Charity’s features deepened into a frown. What would that suggest?

  I shrugged. “That if this was sort of a…I dunno, an etheric pump, then the pipes I remember seeing were carriers, perhaps to a location somewhere, that maybe…collected the etheric energy being pulled out of the grid?” It was supposition, but as I put voice to it, it just felt right, deep down.

  Charity’s virtual eyes took on a far-away look. That’s possible. Indeed, it’s really nothing more than a scaled-up version of what we did within you—to create a power reservoir and then filled that reservoir with energy from the ley threads.

  I gestured toward the conduit. “Yeah, but we didn’t need a big old pump like this thing. I mean…if it was relatively easy to build and fill a little battery of power within me, what size of power plant did the Spinner have to build in order to need a conduit that big?”

  Charity had no answer for that. I thought it through to the next piece. “And, if he did build a really big battery, did he need more than one of these conduits?”

  Charity shook her head. I have no idea. However, given the time we’ve spent studying this one, perhaps we can extend our senses to determine if there are others like it?

  I nodded. “Couldn’t hurt to try.”

  She reached out a virtual hand and touched my etheric arm. Are you up for this? Your mind needs sleep just as your physical form does.

  I snorted. “Look who’s talking. You need sleep just like I do, don’t you?”

  She offered a little smile. Perhaps, though I’ve found that I require very little sleep. I have discovered something of a twilight state that I can exist in, one that recharges my soul but is also restful.

  “Something else you can teach me, then.” I focused on the conduit. “All right, we just need to pull some markers off this thing that we can use to scan for other ones like it…”

  I dug around with my ley threads to find some consistent markers and power traces within the conduit, and then, once I was satisfied with the few I found, I shared them with Charity so that we both had an idea of what to scan for, and then we split off and started pulling in energy from the grid around us.

  I cast out with my senses, seeing out another formation within the ley grid that matched or was similar to the one we had just examined and had mentally broken down into its component parts. Distantly, I sensed Charity doing likewise.

  I lost track of the time while I worked, though the longer I worked the harder I found it was to focus on the work in front of me, and my mind wandered to Abbie’s warm body pressed against mine and how good it would feel to just shut down for a while.

  Eventually, at one point I found myself simply floating within the ley grid, largely dozing off.

  Charity nudged me. Rachel? I think I found something.

  I pulled myself to some degree of alertness, even ran a quick Miss Chin-patented weariness charm on myself, but the effect was minimal at best. I’d need to get to sleep for real, sooner than later.

  And just then, the thought struck me—did the Spinner sleep? Did he need downtime as well? I asked Charity exactly that question.

  What? Well, I assume so. Every Weaver or ley manipulator I’ve ever known needed some degree of sleep to remain functional. It’s simply not possible to replace our basic human needs with etherics, no matter how powerful the practitioner. If the body and mind aren’t rested, you just can’t be effective with the ley energies.

  I nodded, feeling the fatigue creeping in at the edges of my consciousness. ‘Good to know. Now, what did you find? I drew a blank.”

  She pulled me lightning-fast along a ley line to another section of the ley grid. Here. Another conduit, though far less powerful than the one we examined. I think this was a test run for the Spinner—I studied it closely and I don’t even think it had ever been connected to a pipe or other form of collection device.

  I considered that and then wearily reached out a sensor thread toward it, and studied
it following Charity’s guidance. “Looks solid enough. You may be right. Let’s start to head back and we’ll talk about this on the way up.”

  Charity nodded and, together, we started moving away from the ley grid and back toward the surface, back toward home and my sleeping body.

  I tried to get my tired mind to work out the problem. “So the Spinner builds a test conduit to see if he can make it work, and then I guess, what? He’s successful and then closes up the first one, and builds another one on a larger scale?”

  That sounds plausible. I got no sense of another large conduit anywhere nearby. It’s possible that there’s one tied into another grid beneath a different metropolis, but I suspect the Spinner is local to us.

  I glanced at her as we worked our way up through the dense stone and earth. “Really? I hadn’t given that much thought, but now that you mention it, I suspect you’re right. If he wasn’t local to DC, I doubt he’d be such a pain in our backs.”

  Though if he is local, I would wonder why Miss Chin and your Detective Bello seem to know nothing about him or his abilities.

  I shook my head as we moved closer to home. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m confident Miss Chin knows more than she’s letting on, and good old Bello is a cipher. He’s a ley user for sure, but why and for who, I have no idea.”

  We were close to home now, and I could really feel the fatigue dragging along behind me, like a virtual anchor. “Look, I gotta crash or I’m gonna be useless in the morning.”

  Oh, crap, and I had forgotten I’d be spending most of the day hauling heavy furniture around. The thought passed my mind to call Malcolm and beg off, but…no. He’d need my help, appreciated my company, and it’d be a good time to bring him up to speed on what Charity and I had found out.

  Ah, well. Nothing to do now but make the best of it. I said goodnight to Charity and then lost myself in what sleep I could grab.