Beacon's Fury (Potomac Shadows Book 3)

by Jim Johnson

  Once I had a spot, I sat down cross-legged and laid the remains of the journal on my lap. I gathered my energies around me, and settled in to delve deep into what remained of the journal’s matrix.

  I hadn’t attempted this before, sort of assuming it was Charity’s home and realm of existence, and it was really none of my business anyway, but now was not the time to be shy. I had to dig deep to find out if she was still with us.

  Peripherally, I sensed Malcolm reach out into the ley as well and create a stable warding shield. I guessed he was going to spread it wide to cover the whole house, but I wasn’t sure about that. All I knew for sure was that I was bordering exhaustion, and that I needed to hurry the hell up to try and find Charity, or I’d be useless to anyone.

  I pushed thoughts of Abbie and Malcolm aside, and focused my ley energies like an arrow and pushed my consciousness deep into the journal’s matrix. Once past the initial barriers, I shifted the arrowhead to a wide fan, and spread my senses out as far as I could, desperately seeking any trace of my friend.

  I lost track of time completely. All that mattered right now was burning up as much ley energies as I could muster to try and find Charity’s soul. If she were dead and gone, well…I’d mourn her loss but at least I’d know what happened to her. If she were still alive though—I’d do all I could to help her, to save her, whatever it took. I had no idea how I’d help her find a new matrix to reside in, but for now, the first step was just to find her.

  Without any sense of time, I simply reached deep down toward the ley grid far below, and tapped into that endless wellspring of power. I hadn’t grabbed so much power since I had faced off against the Spinner and had taken him down. I now took all the power I could muster, which, honestly, was more than I had used against the Spinner.

  I had several more months of experience with my abilities, and that meant I was able to call forth and harness a greater amount of ley energy than before. I gathered up as much as I could stand, and then a little bit more.

  Feeling like my etheric body might burst apart at the seams from all the ley energy I was sponging up, I shifted the flow and dumped as much of it as I could into my sensory threads I had fanned out all across the ley grid. I even created a tiny stable rift in the Veil and pushed a thick cable of ley threads into it and spread that one far and wide.

  If Charity’s soul was anywhere on mortal earth or in the immortal Holding, I hoped to God I’d find it.

  The rush of power through my will and conduits and on toward the etherics was incredible. For a moment, I got a sense of what real power felt like. This must be how the Spinner feels, all the time.

  The thought sobered me, even as I sought out Charity’s presence. The sheer amount of power under my control right now was staggering, and I’d like to think a lesser person might want to do something with that power that wasn’t entirely, you know, legal.

  Oh God! Thinking of legal matters reminded me of my secret shoebox hidden within the floorboards of this very bedroom.

  I opened my eyes and put my scanning aside for a moment. I leaned over and pushed the broken remains of Abbie’s bed aside, and examined the floorboards beneath the bed. Aside from some scarring on the wood floor itself, the secret door’s locking mechanism was still intact.

  I tweaked a ley thread and shoved it into the lock, and twisted it home. The little lock popped and the trap door sprung up about half an inch, plenty of room for me to get a finger under the door and pry it open. Abbie had no idea who had built the trapdoor and the safe the trapdoor hid, but I was grateful for its existence all the same.

  I looked into the safe and was relieved to see the small box that I had hidden in there. The box had once belonged to Charity herself, before she had died and then agreed to have her consciousness placed into a protective matrix within the journal on my lap.

  I whispered a prayer of thanks, and then pulled the narrow box out of the safe hidden by the trap door. I rested the box in front of me on the floor, and then with a moment’s hesitation, popped open the box.

  Carefully nestled within the box, wrapped in a simple black velvet kerchief, were about three hundred gold milled coins. I studied their dull greenish gleam, somewhat relieved to find them all still intact. I hadn’t told Abbie about this particular windfall; hell, I hadn’t even told Bonita or Malcolm either.

  I had told my grandpa though, and he was the one who was supposed to take me to the pawn shop so that I could sell them, but we hadn’t had a chance to connect just yet.

  With some relief easing my broken heart, I replaced the box and closed the safe and trap door. I refocused my will and cast out once more for Charity. After another long period of apparent timelessness, where I felt that strange Other presence I’d felt a time or two before, I caught the slightest tremor of thought out there, in the ley grid. It was familiar, and yet, so distant.

  I pulled more ley threads, then realized that the area around had largely been tapped out. There wasn’t much left for me to work with, and I was exhausted besides.

  I couldn’t keep this up much longer. Desperate, I channeled all my remaining strength and power into one tightly focused message, and shot that down the grid toward the source of the disturbance, the spot where I had been sure I had detected some vestige of Charity.

  I watched the ley thread containing the message streak away from me, heading toward the target, and then I had to shut down most of my ley grid activity. I was nodding off sitting on the floor, and had hardly any energy left.

  I surfaced back into my ruined room at home, and let my ley energies slough out of me and back into the ley grid, to be replenished after Malcolm and I left and we could go hole up somewhere and get some sleep.

  Once out of the scanning meditation, I sagged to the floor and my chin hit my chest again. I could barely keep my eyes open.

  With whatever energy I had left, I muttered, “Malcolm…”

  A soft voice behind me said, “Rachel? My God…what happened here?”

  My heart leaped into my throat. Oh, Abbie.

  I turned, and my heart, already in my throat, skipped a beat. Malcolm was standing out in the hallway, looking grim. Abbie stood in front of him, in the doorway, staring at me with confusion and fear clearly written on her face. My heavy eyelids blinked once or twice, but I had no words.

  And over Abbie’s shoulder, looking like the minister of bad news himself, loomed Special Agent Bello.

  We locked eyes over Abbie’s shoulder. My vision swam as I lost grip of consciousness. The last thing I heard was Bello saying, “We need to talk.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  FROM HIS VANTAGE POINT WITHIN THE Holding, the Spinner gathered up his sensor threads and focused them on Rachel and those around her. Just as he had expected, she had returned home with her friend Malcolm, though they had arrived prepared for trouble.

  He guessed that the strange presence he had detected in that old book had somehow tipped them off, but of course now there was no way to be sure. He had tried to locate and destroy that presence, but it had been clever and had found hiding spaces within the Holding and the ley grid that he would have never thought of using.

  So rather than trying to destroy the presence itself, he had done the next best thing and destroyed its place of residence, the journal. He’d ripped pages out of it and shattered the cover. Once he had finished pulsing ley energies into the book, he was confident that the matrix built into the journal had been destroyed. That presence would never use the book as sanctuary again.

  Though, in hindsight, the Spinner wished that maybe he had resisted the urge to destroy and had taken some time to study that journal. What little he remembered of it suggested that it wasn’t all that different from the matrix he had built for himself in the Holding. He’d needed a stable location to rest and to recharge, and the pool of ley energy he’d built had served that purpose.

  In fact, the matrix he’d built into his new avatar wasn’t all that different either. Given that his mortal,
physical body was a wreck and not worth housing his consciousness, he’d needed something constructed through the etherics to be a more effective home for his soul.

  Interesting, all the same. But, a missed opportunity. He refocused on Rachel and the people around her, forcing himself to take a few deep breaths and study rather than lash out. Surprise would be on his side, but now the odds were not in his favor. He needed to see what the opposition truly looked like.

  Rachel had passed out from the stress and exertions of the day. He had to admit he was impressed she had gotten through as much as she had without breaking down earlier. The trip to her friend’s store seemed to have given her a much-needed break.

  Battling the ‘geist he had created from the girl in the basement and then seeing her soul safely escorted into the Holding had taken a toll, as had dealing with what he had left behind on the upper level of the house.

  The Spinner cursed quietly to himself. Just terrible timing on his part that two of Rachel’s house mates, including her girlfriend, had not been home at the time he had invited himself in. He’d killed the girl in the basement and the man on the top level after he put up a fight, and had captured the girl on the main level and forced her into the Holding.

  He glanced over at her unconscious form, tied fast with multiple ley threads. He had pulled a physical being into the Holding just a few times, and was eager to experiment on her to see what he could accomplish above and beyond what he could do to immortal souls.

  Malcolm was with Rachel, as was a young black woman in a nice suit and short dreadlocks he assumed was Rachel’s girlfriend. The other person in the room was a tall black man, bald, in a very fine suit. More importantly, he was closely shielded through the ley and was clearly a powerful practitioner. He wasn’t flashy about it, but he could practically taste the man’s presence within the etherics. This one would need to be watched closely. Was this Rachel and Malcolm’s mentor?

  As he studied the group of people in the room, he sensed a pair of large vehicles approaching the house at great speed. He split off some of his sensory threads to focus on the new arrivals.

  A pair of long, black SUVs pulled up to the front of the house, each disgorging five people, a mix of men and women, all wearing dark business suits. Every one of them was pulsing with etheric energies.

  His interest piqued, the Spinner focused on the two groups as they moved toward the house. Some of them hung back in the yard, calling out orders to each other.

  It took a moment for him to realize it, but they weren’t actually orders—the group of operators outside the house were manipulating the ley threads, effectively casting a spell together.

  In a flash of bright blue etheric energy, and with a surge of power fueled by the ley grid far down underground, the group erected a powerful shield that glowed pure white in his etheric Sight.

  He sensed the impact coming before it hit, and he was able to pull back his sensory threads before the shield crashed into him. The shield arced up and around the house and then fused together, completely enveloping the house in a sphere of protective energy.

  He probed the shield with a tentative thread of his own energy, and just the slightest touch told him that he’d have a very hard time breaking into it. These people were well-trained and had access to the ley grid.

  He was alternately angry and amazed. Angry that there were in his way of getting to Rachel and Malcolm. Amazed that this group was so powerful, and that he had never encountered them before, as much as he could recall, at any rate.

  He suspected that once Rachel and Malcolm tell them about him and what he was capable of and what he had done up to this point, that they would become enemies. That gave him pause, but only for a moment. He had a lot of resources at his disposal, including the young woman trapped by his side.

  He turned to her and extended a few ley threads toward her. “Well, my dear. It seems more pieces have been added to the board and the gears are starting to turn.” He paused, then chuckled. “Excuse the mixing of metaphors.”

  The girl was awake, but unable to move. Her eyes were open and full of terror. She stared at his mighty etheric avatar with what was surely wonder and awe.

  He moved closer, towering over her in his new etheric form. “Rachel and Malcolm have new allies, it seems, and I think it fair for me to have a new friend as well.” He leaned down closer to the young girl with the wide eyes. “How about it? Want to be my new friend?”

  Of course, the girl couldn’t answer with the controls he had placed on her, but her wide open eyes were all he needed for an answer.

  He grinned. “Well, no matter. You’ll be my friend, even though I’ll make you do things that even a friend would hesitate to commit.”

  He knelt down next to her, sensing her desire to back away from him, but being unable to do so due to her etheric bonds. He reached out and rested a palm on her shoulder. “While I have turned immortal souls into weapons with some judicious use of power, I have yet to turn a full human being into a weapon. This might hurt a bit, though I really don’t know.”

  He grinned within his etheric suit, not knowing or caring what expression appeared on the outside of his suit. He gathered ley threads into his grip, settled down close to the girl, and started his work.

  Her screams encouraged him on to greater creativity. Her final form would be an amazing piece of art.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  RACHEL?

  MY NAME WAS WHISPERED, OR the speaker said it at some great distance. I couldn’t tell. My eyes were closed, and I found I couldn’t open them up. That made me scared, and angry, and I reached out for the ley threads for support and strength, but they were gone.

  Gone?

  Now I panicked. I thrashed around, though I couldn’t move, and I screamed into the darkness and the silence, and yet nothing seemed to help.

  Ever since I had Awakened, I occasionally had nightmares about what it would be like to lose my abilities, to be thrust back into the mundane world I had started off with in life. This felt about like my nightmares, though perhaps even worse since I couldn’t see or move either.

  I screamed out for help a few times, but I had no idea if anyone was hearing me, or if I was even actually making any noise.

  The utter darkness and lack of etherics was hard to get past. The threads had been a constant companion over the last several months, and to have them suddenly be just…gone. Gods. What was I going to do? Was I dead? Was I a lost soul waiting for a new Beacon to shine some light on me and guide me home? Even the presence of that strange Other, that I had encountered once or twice through the etherics, even that was hidden from my Sight.

  I lost all track of time floating in the dark void. My mind wandered over all the recent events, and images of Carlos, and Tonia, and Cooper, and all the lost souls I had guided home crossed my mind.

  I liked to think I would have wept for them, but I was numb. So numb that even thinking of losing Abbie left me cold. If the rest of my existence was to remain in this dark void, maybe I’d just let it be?

  No. No no no! I wasn’t going to give up! Not now, not here, wherever here was. I gathered up my tattered strength of will, and dug my consciousness deep down, all the way down to the very core of my soul, where my immortal soul’s unquenchable battery of etheric energy resided, and I unlocked that precious vessel. I channeled the raw power contained within me, contained within all of us, and pushed that brilliant white light out as far as I could, illuminating my sight and my Sight in a pure fireball of will.

  The flash of light lingered for some time, imprinted on my retinas and my soul. I blinked, or at least imagined I blinked. Nothing came into view, but it felt like whatever bonds had been holding me fast were gone.

  And then, I sensed a presence near me, calm, soothing, and yet carrying a massive weight of loss and grief.

  Rachel? The presence said, the word boring deep into my being.

  It took precious seconds for the memory of the voice behind that word t
o reach my recall.

  “Charity? Charity, is that you?”

  It is. She sounded as exhausted as I felt, and from a very far distance away.

  I said, “What happened to you?”

  The Spinner. He attacked the house. He…killed Tonia and Cooper, and I tried to stop him, but…he’s so powerful. He tracked my consciousness to my journal, and…

  She trailed off, and I sensed her grief increase. I pushed what calming feelings I could toward her.

  “There was nothing you could have done, Charity. The Spinner’s so powerful now, and so evil. I saw what he did to Tonia, and to Cooper. What he did to your journal. He’s crazy, and I don’t think he’s going to stop until we’re all dead.”

  There was a flicker of blue energy in my field of vision, a sudden lighting bolt of electric blue fire pulled straight from the ley grid. The lightning bolt coalesced into a blob of light, and then that blob formed into Charity’s etheric form.

  She appeared as a middle-aged black woman wearing a simple blouse, skirt, and a kerchief tied over her short hair. Sadness was clear in her eyes, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in a decade.

  I reached out for her, surprised to see the hands of my own etheric form appear in front of me, glowing with a soft blue glow, wreathed in silver light.

  She reached out and took my hands, and we sort of pulled each other into an embrace and just hugged each other within the etheric field, losing ourselves in the companionship of each other’s presence.

  After a comfortable silence and the joy of reconnecting, I eased back and looked into her eyes. “I’m so grateful you’re still with us, Charity.”

  She nodded, but the sadness didn’t leave her eyes. I as well. I feared the Spinner would destroy me, but I was able to hide within the Holding. He had more immediate concerns than to chase me through endless nooks and crannies.

  “I saw the journal. I’m afraid…there’s not much left to it.”