“It’s not working,” she gasped, looking over her shoulder at her mother, but now it was too dark to see anything.
Her mother reached forward, ran her palm against Cassie’s cheek. “One more time, baby, as hard as you can.”
Cassie paused, panting. “You and Dad will be right behind me, okay?”
“Of course we will. We love you, baby.”
This time, Cassie hit the window with every ounce of strength she possessed. She had expected it to stay in place, so when the window suddenly came loose, and an onslaught of cold water and mud rushed into the car, Cassie was taken completely by surprise. The slurry, the consistency of thick soup, filled her open mouth and choked her.
The air, now suddenly released, was sucked out in one huge bubble, carrying Cassie along with it. Panicking, she swallowed even more water. With no idea which way was up, she was certain she was about to drown. But then her head broke free of the water. She hacked, coughing and wheezing, but she was breathing. Air had never been so amazing.
The current grabbed her, carrying her away from her parents’ submerged car. No, her subconscious told her. This isn’t happening; it’s just that damned nightmare again. With that knowledge, her dreams shifted and went to a better place.
* * *
Eventually, Cassie began to wake. She didn’t know why, but her subconscious warned her against waking up. There’s safety in sleep, an inner voice whispered. It was a way to avoid something horrible that she couldn’t face. Inevitably, though, she had no choice. Groaning, she opened her eyes.
At first, she thought she was back in her hospital room, but then she realized she was in another hospital room, which made no sense at all. This one was smaller than the room she had shared with Elizabeth and shrouded in shadow. The blinds on the windows were closed, but there was bright sunlight coming in around the edges and she was covered by warm blankets. It was nice here—pleasant. She heard soft footsteps as someone approached the side of the bed. Gentle fingers took her hand and then brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “How are you feeling?” a female voice asked.
How was she feeling?
“Fine,” she mumbled then closed her eyes again.
Giant blue eyes flashed in her memory. Once again, she saw rows of jagged teeth dripping blood—Alice’s blood! Cassie bolted upright, gasping for air. Heat and power flushed through her body, bringing with it that odd metallic taste in her throat once again. The drape-covered windows exploded outward in an eruption of glass and shattered blinds, instantly filling the room with bright sunlight. Beside her, Cassie saw the terror on the face of a young woman wearing a medical uniform. The woman, a nurse or a doctor, covered her face with her arms.
Alice! Oh, God, no—Alice!
Cassie screamed and was only dimly aware as more people rushed into the room. They gripped her, holding her down on the bed, where she continued to thrash and yell. She felt pressure running through her arm and realized someone must have given her a shot. The power that she had filled her body with was replaced by a wave of numbness. Nausea rippled through her core, and she closed her eyes, trying to breathe through huge heaving sobs. Alice is dead.
When Cassie passed out again, it was a blessing.
* * *
When Cassie finally woke up again, Alice was still dead. A moan escaped her lips as she brought her hand up to cover her eyes. There was an intravenous tube attached to the back of her hand, running to a drip bag hanging from a hook on the wall. This time, the lights in the room were on, and McKnight sat in a chair beside her bed, a report in his hand, reading glasses on his face. When he saw Cassie was awake, he closed the file, removed his glasses, and smiled.
“Good morning. Or rather, good evening. It’s almost seven p.m.,” he said softly.
“How long have I been out?” Her mouth felt as if she had been chewing on an old sock.
“Since yesterday. You woke up once, but there were some… issues. We had to sedate you, move you to another room. The medical staff will want to examine you and make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m okay. Where am I? What medical staff? Health Canada staff?”
McKnight sat back, regarding her with a piercing look. Long moments passed before he spoke again. “No, Cassie. Army medical staff. You never really believed I was with Health Canada, did you?”
Cassie pushed herself up on her elbows then winced as a wave of vertigo rushed through her. “Army? What’s the Canadian Army doing this far north?”
“US Army, actually.” He climbed out of his chair and approached Cassie’s side. “Although we’re working jointly with your military. Captain Benoit—Alex, the man who brought you here—is with the Canadian Army.” He picked up a remote control attached to the hospital bed by a thick, rubberized cable. Holding one of the buttons down, he automatically adjusted the angle of Cassie’s bed, raising it so that she could sit up and see him more comfortably. “That good?”
Cassie nodded, still feeling ill.
McKnight stepped away, disappearing into a bathroom. Cassie heard water running. When he reappeared, he handed her a glass of water, which she took in two shaky hands and drank from, spilling some of it down her chin. He waited by her bedside and took the empty glass back when she was done. “More?”
Cassie shook her head. “Who are you really?”
He sat back down again. “My name really is Oscar Redford McKnight. It’s just that the full title is Colonel Oscar Redford McKnight.”
She nodded. “You look like a soldier, not a government official. You’re too… serious looking.”
McKnight smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It isn’t a compliment.”
He winced.
Despite all the deception, Cassie found herself liking him. She shoved that impulse down, concentrating on her situation. She knew nothing of this man. For all she knew, she could be in grave danger. “So, what do I call you—sir?”
“Colonel is fine.”
“Okay, what the fuck is going on, Colonel? My sister is…” Cassie swallowed back a sob. She wasn’t going to cry in front of this guy. He knew what was going on. He sure as hell knew more than he had admitted to when they had first met. Closing her eyes, she put her head back against her headboard, fighting to control her emotions.
“I’m so very sorry about your sister. If we had known it was going to attack the hospital, we would have been there.”
“What was that monster?”
McKnight sighed. His eyebrows rose. “We’re not sure. It escaped after the attack.”
“It escaped? How does a giant dragon escape?”
His face looked pained. “It disappeared.”
She stared at him. “Disappeared?”
He nodded.
“You’re the army. You’re the 9-1-1 for the police. Do something!”
“We’re trying. That’s why we asked you and Elizabeth for help.”
“Why us?”
McKnight looked down, unable or unwilling to meet her eyes. “Because we don’t understand what’s going on.” Silence, heavy and unwelcome, settled over them. “Something changed the night of the electrical storm, and we’re still struggling to understand what. This creature, the giant lizard, it isn’t the first bizarre animal we’ve come across although it’s by far the largest and most dangerous. You and Elizabeth, as well as at least one other individual, are somehow connected to these events—and to that monster.”
“That’s bullshit. I don’t have a goddamned clue what’s going on. That thing murdered my sister.”
“We think it was after you.”
Her mouth hung open, and her vision seemed to tunnel in on her. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how this makes you feel, but that creature went straight for your room. Out of all the rooms in that hospital, it somehow zeroed in on yours, the only one containing a sensitive.”
She shivered. “A what?”
“A sensitive. A mag-sens. That’s how my sta
ff have taken to describing you and the other two affected by the electrical storm—or rather, by the changes that occurred during the storm.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Sensitive to what?”
McKnight, looking utterly uncomfortable, ran a hand over his crew cut. “For lack of a better word… magic.”
“Magic?” she repeated in a barely audible whisper.
McKnight grimaced and sighed. “I do know exactly how this sounds, and believe me, there’s a scientific explanation we just don’t understand yet, but you and the other two are somehow able to tap into something—a kind of energy form that’s never existed here before.”
“Here being Fort St. John?”
“Here being planet Earth.”
She slowly shook her head. “Do you understand how crazy this sounds?”
“You can move objects, can’t you, Cassie? So can Elizabeth, and so can Duncan, although Elizabeth is much better at it. That’s how you destroyed the windows in your room.”
She felt her face go red.
“I… who is Duncan?”
“The third mag-sens. He was the first to join us. You’ll meet him later.”
“What if I don’t want to join you?”
“That creature was after you, Cassie, not the other patients. You. If we don’t stop it…”
Me. Alice is dead because of me. How many others died at the hospital? She was afraid to ask.
“There’s more. You were told that some people affected by the electrical storm went into a coma and didn’t wake up?”
She nodded, feeling a fluttery sensation in her stomach.
“That wasn’t entirely true. Mostly, it was the very elderly who didn’t wake up again, and we think their hearts simply couldn’t cope with the stress. But at least one other person, a middle-aged woman, did wake up. Unfortunately, she spontaneously caught on fire… and died.”
Beneath her covers, Cassie sat up straighter, pulling her knees up against her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “She what?”
“Died. She burned to death. And when you woke up earlier today, you somehow blew the windows out of the room we had you in.”
“I… I don’t remember.” Cassie looked away.
“There’s more. That monster at the hospital, it also demonstrated an… ability.”
Her body tensed, and once again, she saw its glowing blue eyes.
“It turned two of my men to stone. At least… part of them… their skin.”
“That’s… that’s impossible.”
“So is moving objects with your mind and spontaneously catching on fire.”
“I… don’t…”
“The creature that attacked you, that killed your sister—we think it’s a basilisk, a creature straight out of our myths. Apparently, it really exists. Or at least, it existed somewhere else, and now it’s here.”
“What the fuck are you saying?” She heard the panic in her own voice and felt the tremors run through her body.
“This is just a theory, but maybe we know what a basilisk is because humanity has been exposed to them before, just so long ago that we thought they were only a myth. Maybe the myths are based on reality… and so is magic… or at least a force that we just can’t adequately explain yet.”
She shook her head, almost violently, her lips set to a tight line, and she hugged her knees tighter and began to rock back and forth. “This is impossible.”
McKnight inclined his head. “Maybe, but it’s all happening just the same, and we need to cope with it right now. People are dying. That thing, the basilisk, is still out there, and there are other creatures as well.”
She glared at him. “Such as?”
“Giant wolves that breathe fire. My staff call them ‘hellhounds.’”
Hellhounds, basilisks, and now wizards. Cassie closed her eyes, feeling the room spin about her.
McKnight got up and sat on the edge of her bed. He took her hand and held it in both of his. “Cassie, I promise you, we are going to get to the bottom of this. Figuring this out is my job. And we’re going after these creatures—the hellhounds, the basilisk. We’re going to hunt them down, and we’re going to stop them before they hurt anyone else. But we need your help.”
“I can’t—”
“Cassie, somehow, you’re all connected. You, Elizabeth, Duncan, the basilisk, and all of the other mag-sens who died, maybe even some who’ve survived that we don’t know about yet. We’re going to track this thing down, and we’re going to stop it, but if you don’t help us, more innocent people might die.”
“Who are you people? What is this place? This is the Site C Dam, isn’t it? What are you doing here?”
“We’ve taken over the Dam infrastructure to use as a base of operations. It’s private and out of the way. We’ve put together a very special group of young men and women to go after these creatures.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
McKnight let go of her hand and stood up. “I’m telling you the truth, Cassie. I just don’t know the answers to your questions—not yet. But maybe we can figure this out together.”
It’s my fault Alice is dead. It was after me.
When she answered, her voice was small, almost a whisper. “All right. I’ll help you… if I can.”
He patted her hand and smiled. “You’ve made the right choice, Ms. Rogan. Cassie.”
He got up and walked to the doorway then paused. “Eat. Get some rest. Our scientific staff will want to run some tests.” The door closed behind him, and she was alone again.
Chapter 18
Alex sat back in the plush leather armchair in Colonel McKnight’s office, watching the colonel, who stood in front of the window, his back to his guests. Buck sat on the couch, his ankle resting on his knee, the same pissed-off look on his face that he always had. At the opposite end of the couch, Helena Simmons sat with her notepad open, scribbling into it. Outside, it was almost dark. In the regular army, a meeting at eight in the evening would be very unusual; in the Special Forces, though, these were normal business hours. Things got done at any hour of the day or night.
Alex’s eyes flicked to the large plasma screen mounted on the wall of the colonel’s office. It was muted, but the twenty-four-hour news channels were still covering the basilisk attack at the Fort St. John hospital, still speculating on the origins of that impossible creature. The person being interviewed was a paleontologist who claimed that the creature could only be a dinosaur that had somehow survived extinction and was now living in some “Lost World” in the far north.
Alex shook his head. The colonel leaned against his windowsill, gazing out at the dam in the river. When Alex and the others had arrived a few minutes earlier, the colonel had been on the phone. Alex didn’t know if it had been with Ottawa or Washington, but either way, it had definitely been another ass chewing for the task-force commander. The attack on the hospital was all over the news. Giant dragons with glowing blue eyes tended to have that effect. The basilisk had killed twelve people in the attack—including Pearson and Anders. Fort St. John had become an international media circus with animal experts, zoologists, and paleontologists flying in to stand in front of the damaged hospital and give their bullshit opinions about what had happened. Not one of them had a clue. How could they? The basilisk and the hellhounds came from Rubicon. Somehow, they’ve followed us back.
McKnight sighed and turned to face the others. “Ms. Rogan will work with us. So there’s that at least—we have all three mag-sens.”
Mag-sens—magic-sensitive—was the new term the Task Force Devil scientists were using for those people in the Fort St. John area who were able to draw upon this new energy source. The label made Alex uneasy. Scientists always had to categorize things, fit them into neat boxes for better understanding. But these were people, and they were going through a terrible ordeal. Helena nodded in satisfaction at the colonel’s announcement, but Buck’s scowl deepened, and Alex had to force himself not to smile. There was no point in ant
agonizing Buck; he’d only take it out on Alex at a later point.
“She can join the other two later. Just watch her carefully. The basilisk killed her sister right in front of her. That has to mess you up.”
“She’ll be monitored twenty-four, seven,” said Dr. Simmons. “Perhaps a heart-rate monitor and some other electronics for blood and urine testing—wireless devices.”
McKnight’s lips tightened. “Wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, Doctor.” His gaze swiveled to Alex. “Captain, she’s closer to your age, and you already have a connection after saving her life. Take care of this yourself.”
Buck smiled, and Alex fought back a flash of annoyance. “Yes, sir. Done.”
McKnight still stared at Alex as if he were unsure of what to say next, an unusual moment for such a decisive leader. “Captain, I’ve lost men before. I do understand what you must be feeling, and we’re going to honor Specialists Pearson and Anders. Take comfort in the knowledge that you saved Ms. Rogan. You achieved your mission.”
Alex looked down at his hands, feeling a thickness in his throat. “Those men died while I—”
“Those soldiers died doing their duty. They chose to serve their country. Cassandra Rogan and the other mag-sens are going to make a contribution to Task Force Devil and Operation Rubicon; I know it. Through them, and their manipulation of this new energy source, we will gain a better understanding of what’s happened and how we can fix things and get the mission back on track.”
“If it can be fixed, Colonel,” Helena said.
“Sir,” said Buck, leaning forward. “These civilians might not be able to do anything for us other than distract us from what needs to be done. Who cares if they can telepathically make an empty milk container slide an inch across a table in a laboratory? This isn’t going to help us. We need to apply basic soldiering skills to this problem set, not scientific mumbo jumbo. We hunt these monsters down, and we kill them. Simple.”
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