by Jayne Castle
“Her plan worked at first because the two of you started dating,” Harry said. “She even persuaded you to go to a matchmaking agency and take the test. Lo and behold the two of you were a perfect match.”
Drake winced. “Don’t remind me. Who knew you could bribe a matchmaker to fake the results of the test? Is nothing sacred?”
Fletcher shook his head. “Nope.”
“It soon became clear to Tucker that, in spite of what the agency test showed, you were not going to marry her and you certainly had no intention of taking her into your confidence,” Harry continued. “Hell, our family has never even officially acknowledged that the Old World crystals existed. Those damn rocks were a deep, dark family secret and we intended to keep it that way.”
“When I ended the relationship,” Drake said, “she was furious because she saw everything she had worked for going down in flames. In her rage, she used the Alien laser on me and then she faked her own death.”
Alice pursed her lips. “In hindsight, it certainly looks as if the two of you should have conducted a more thorough investigation into her disappearance.”
Harry and Drake looked at her.
“Thank you for that advice,” Harry said.
Drake nodded solemnly. “Have to remember that the next time I run into a mad scientist.”
Alice shrugged. “Just saying.”
Rachel and Charlotte smiled.
“Got any idea how hard it is to prove that someone did not fake her own death by walking off into an uncharted section of the catacombs?” Harry asked. “People disappear into the tunnels all the time. In this instance, there was a note. There was a record of a recent para-psych evaluation in which the doctor noted that Tucker was at risk of doing herself some harm. A stash of potent hallucinogens were discovered in her bedroom. None of her bank accounts were ever accessed after she vanished. None of her credit cards were ever used.”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Alice said. “You thought she was dead. I will admit that it’s easier to disappear than most people assume—if you’re willing to leave everything behind.”
Drake cleared his throat. “Moving right along, Tucker reinvented herself as an Alien antiquities expert in the black market. It was the perfect cover. She operated freely in the shadows of that world and in the process she met Aldwin Hampstead, director of the Whitcomb Museum. They did business together but Tucker never gave up on her goal. She went looking for a North descendant who could lead her to the crystals.”
“Eventually she found me,” Alice said. “But I had no idea that my family history was connected to Rainshadow. All I knew was that I had a talent for disappearing.”
“Tucker had to figure out a way to get you on board without letting you discover your heritage and your claim to half of anything found on Rainshadow,” Drake said. “She was afraid that if you learned the truth you would go straight to the Sebastian family to demand your share. She didn’t dare let that happen.”
“She had another problem as well,” Alice said. “She was going to need a lot of money to conduct an illicit excavation here on Rainshadow.”
Fletcher raised a brow. “That’s where Aldwin Hampstead came in, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Drake said. “He had a direct pipeline into the Whitcomb family fortune. He also knew enough about the family dynamics to realize that Fulton Whitcomb would jump at the chance to prove to his mom and everyone else that he was not a loser.”
“Tucker and Hampstead decided to bring him in on the project,” Alice said. “Whitcomb was thrilled when they approached him with the idea of going after the crystals and the ruins. They told him all he had to do was convince me to enter into a full Covenant Marriage in order to be able to claim half of whatever they found on the island.”
Rachel gave Alice a wicked smile. “I’m sure they were all stunned when you turned down Whitcomb’s offer of a CM in favor of a trial marriage.”
“Yeah, well, there was this small voice whispering that it was all just a little too good to be true,” Alice said.
“After Egan Quinton murdered Fulton Whitcomb, Tucker came to Rainshadow with the diary, the secret of the catacomb entrance, and the three crystals,” Drake said. “Sure enough, she was able to use the stones to locate the pyramid. Thanks to Hampstead, she was able to tap into the museum endowment fund to finance a small-scale excavation.”
“Thanks to her work in the antiquities black market, she had already found her pet ghost hunter, Egan,” Alice said. “He was a professional killer with a talent for disguise. His job was to keep the tunnels cleared of UDEMs and serve as her spy in Shadow Bay. He rounded up a couple of his pals to handle security and bring in supplies by way of Deception Cove.”
Jasper frowned. “You say Tucker had all three crystals but only two of them were found inside the pyramid. How did the third one end up in the aquarium?”
Slade sat forward. “I can answer that. I talked to Tucker again this morning. She said she didn’t want to take any chances with the pyramid until she knew more about the power of the crystals. She took them to the aquarium to run some experiments. But she made the mistake of putting one of the stones into the rainstone vault at the aquarium.”
Rachel looked surprised. “She was able to work the rainstone to open the vault?”
“No,” Slade said. “The vault was open when she arrived at the aquarium. She took one of the crystals inside to see if it would resonate with any of the antiquities. Her action triggered the vault’s closing mechanism. When she realized that she was about to get locked inside, she panicked and ran for the exit, leaving the crystal behind. She barely made it.”
“Once the vault closed there was no way to open it again,” Harry said. He gave Rachel a knowing look. “Not unless you happen to have a talent for working rainstone.”
“In the end, Tucker was left with only two crystals,” Drake said. “She had no interest in the aquarium facility, so she went back to the pyramid chamber and planted the remaining two crystals inside. They eventually set up the unstable resonance frequencies that overheated the Chamber and ignited the fog.”
Slade looked at him. “You are going to take all of those people who are currently sitting in my jail away from Shadow Bay, right? I want them out of town as soon as possible.”
“Harry will handle that end of things,” Drake said.
“Don’t worry,” Harry said. “I’ve already talked to headquarters. A Foundation Security team—the real Foundation Security people this time—will be here in the morning. We’ll transport your guests back to the mainland and hand them over to the FBPI.”
“I’ll bet Zara Tucker lands in a locked para-psych ward,” Rachel said. “Something really twisted in that pretty little blonde head.”
“Tell me about it,” Drake said. “I still can’t believe I dated that crazy woman.”
Alice made a face. “I can’t believe I agreed to an MC with Fulton Whitcomb.”
Rachel smiled. “Everyone makes mistakes when it comes to that kind of thing. What you both need to remember is that in the end you listened to your intuition and cut your losses before you wound up in a Covenant Marriage.”
Alice shuddered. “Imagine being stuck in a marriage with someone like Fulton Whitcomb for the rest of your life.”
Sunlight flashed on Drake’s glasses. “Whitcomb and the others never intended a long-term marriage to be a problem for you.”
“There is that,” Alice said.
She shook off the creepy sensation that swept across her senses. She was safe now. It was over. And so was her Rainshadow honeymoon. At that thought, the creepy feeling gave way to an inexplicable sense of loss. Not like it was ever a real marriage in the first place, she reminded herself.
“What’s next on our to-do list?” Harry asked.
Drake straightened away from the wall. Energy sparked in the atmosphere around him. “Next up is a closer look inside the pyramid.”
“Right,” Harry said. “We need to find out how da
ngerous that Chamber really is.”
“And if it is dangerous?” Slade asked.
“Then we have to find a way to destroy it,” Drake said. “Preferably without taking out the whole island.”
Chapter 45
DRAKE STOOD IN THE CENTER OF THE PYRAMID AND opened his other vision. The translucent stones that formed the walls and the floor of the Chamber still seethed with energy, but the currents were stable now that the Old World crystals were gone. The wall of midnight that had blocked the entrance had disappeared.
“Feels much calmer in here now,” Alice said. “Not nearly so dark, either. I can see some of the energy locked in the walls, but it’s all sort of muted to my vision, as if this room is drenched in paranormal shadows.”
“That’s the way the daylight world appears to me when I view it through my glasses,” Drake said.
“I understand,” Alice said. “What do you see in here?”
She stood beside him, surveying the Chamber. Houdini was perched on her shoulder. He did not show any particular interest in the pyramid. Harry and Rachel stood just inside the entrance. Darwina was perched on Rachel’s shoulder, an Amberella doll in one paw.
Drake turned slowly, examining the Chamber. “Each of the big blocks of crystal are made up of hundreds, maybe thousands, of smaller crystals. Each of the small crystals is illuminated in a different shade of dark light. I’ve never seen most of these colors before. But I think I can channel some of this energy.”
“Channel it to what purpose?” Harry asked, sounding wary.
“I’m not sure yet,” Drake said. “But I don’t think there’s any risk in running a couple of experiments. The energy in this place is stable.”
“Go for it,” Harry said.
Drake scanned the myriad building blocks of the pyramid, searching for one that felt right. The lively energy in one of the crystals caught his attention. He could not explain why but he knew intuitively that it was somehow familiar.
He walked closer to the crystal and got a fix. It was as if he had flipped a switch inside the stone. An image appeared the way images do in dreamscapes. In this case, it was a very familiar image.
Houdini chortled excitedly. Darwina joined in, waving her Amberella doll.
“Oh, my goodness,” Alice whispered. “Would you look at that?”
They all gazed at the image in the crystal.
“It’s a dust bunny,” Harry said. “I don’t get it. Why would the Aliens go to the trouble of building this place just to put up a picture of a dust bunny?”
“I think it’s more than just a picture,” Drake said. “It feels like an icon, a symbol indicating something else beneath the surface.”
He fixed his attention on the image. The dust bunny icon dissolved into a series of subtly shifting dream-like images. They floated in and out of focus in a seemingly random pattern. It took a few tries but he finally got the hang of summoning one image and concentrating on it.
Beneath it, however, was another series of eerie, fleeting dreamlight impressions.
Eventually he found the secret to unlocking the dreamscape. The scenes suddenly sprang to life in a three-dimensional, life-sized display that occupied most of the interior of the pyramid.
“It’s as if we’re standing inside a hologram,” Alice whispered.
“A video hologram,” Rachel added. “The images are moving.”
“It’s a dreamscape,” Drake said, very certain now. “A waking dream that was constructed specifically to transmit information via dreamlight. In this case, the data being transmitted is about dust bunnies.”
There were moving images of dust bunnies everywhere. Houdini and Darwina were thrilled. They seemed to understand that the dust bunnies were not real, but that did not stop them from chasing each other through the dreamscape.
The scenes depicted dust bunnies in the wild, dust bunnies at play, dust bunnies on the hunt. But it was the scenes of dust bunnies dashing around a green quartz room furnished with what looked like high-tech lab equipment that made Alice and Rachel cry out simultaneously.
“No,” Alice said.
“Please don’t tell me the Aliens used dust bunnies for experimental purposes,” Rachel whispered. “I don’t care if it did happen a couple of thousand years ago. It would be just too horrible.”
Houdini and Darwina appeared oblivious to the menacing scenes around them. They continued to dash around the pyramid in a mad game of hide-and-seek.
Drake pulled harder on the dreamscape lab images, making them sharper and crisper. As he did so, understanding flooded his senses.
“The dust bunnies are native to Harmony,” he said. “And, yes, initially they were used in experiments involving paranormal forces. The Aliens’ goal was to find a way to adapt to the poisonous environment here.”
“Poisonous to them,” Alice said.
“They came from a world where the paranormal forces were much stronger,” Drake said. “A world lit by a sun that gave off that kind of energy. For the Aliens, the paranormal was normal. They were well adapted to their home world. Colonizing Harmony proved more difficult than they had anticipated.”
“It would be like humans attempting to adapt to a planet that had a much lower level of oxygen or normal sunlight,” Harry said. “The only way to survive would be to synthesize more of what was lacking in the environment.”
Drake studied the myriad crystals of the Chamber, willing the information he wanted to come to the surface.
A small triangular crystal in one corner brightened. Dreamlight whispered in the atmosphere. Information came to Drake the way it did in a dream—a deep sense of knowing that required no words.
“When they realized that they would be forever trapped underground unless they found a way to bioengineer themselves, they established Rainshadow Island as a research center,” he said. “But for the most part the experiments proved unsuccessful. The majority of the creatures that resulted from the research could only survive in a heavy-psi environment. If they were removed from Rainshadow, they died very quickly. There was only one viable exception.”
“Dust bunnies two-point-oh,” Charlotte said.
“That experiment worked. The dust bunnies thrived both underground and aboveground.”
“Just like humans,” Harry said. “True, we’re not quite as nimble at crossing through low-psi and high-psi environments. But then, the dust bunnies have been adapting to this environment ever since they came out of the Alien labs. We humans are catching up fast, however.”
“The experts have been telling us for years that something in the environment here on Harmony is encouraging the evolution of our latent psychic senses,” Charlotte said.
Alice crossed her arms. “I’m very glad dust bunnies survived, but I hate knowing that the Aliens were experimenting on them.”
Drake summoned more information with his thoughts. Another crystal glowed in the far corner. Once again information was transmitted via dreamlight.
“There are experiments and then there are experiments,” he said, sorting through the dream data. “The Aliens were lonely.”
Alice frowned. “Weren’t there plenty of other Aliens around?”
“Yes,” Drake said. “But there were no creatures of another species on Harmony that were capable of bonding with the Aliens.”
Understanding lit Alice’s face. She smiled. So did Rachel.
“It would be like moving to a world without cats or dogs or other animal companions,” Harry said. “Damn lonely when you think about it.”
“They probably didn’t realize how badly intelligent life needs to connect with other species,” Rachel said. “It’s one of the ways that we define ourselves as human. We need to know on some level that we’re a part of the ecosystem, not separate from it.”
“Here on harmony the Aliens discovered that they were psychically isolated from all the other creatures on the planet,” Drake said. “You’re right, Harry. It would have been a very strange and disturbing kind
of loneliness.”
“They missed their connection to the animal world,” Alice said. “So they set out to bioengineer a species capable of bonding with them.”
Drake searched for more information. “But in the end they abandoned Harmony and the dust bunnies, too. The Aliens never figured out how to adapt.”
“It’s weird,” Alice said. “But I’m getting the hang of this place. You just sort of think about the information you need and it comes to you in the form of a waking dream.”
“Dreamlight is probably a universal language for intelligent life,” Drake said. “At least it’s effective for communicating information between the Aliens and us. Evidently the Aliens dreamed just like we do.”
“Huh.” Harry studied the crystals around them. “So this pyramid is a kind of information storage and retrieval device?”
A dazzling excitement flashed through Drake. “It’s the most spectacular find ever made on Harmony. An ancient computer housing a database loaded with the secrets of the Aliens. The researchers back at Foundation headquarters are going to go wild.”
“Zara Tucker was right about one thing,” Harry said. “In the long run, this thing will be worth a fortune. No telling what technological and medical breakthroughs may come from it.”
Pride sparked in Alice. “And it was my great-grandfather, Nicholas North, who not only discovered it but also the tunnels that make it possible to navigate the territory inside the fence.”
Charlotte laughed. “Don’t forget the best part: that, thanks to your great-grandfather being a very clever pirate, you own half of whatever this computer turns out to be worth.”
Drake looked at Alice, his silvery eyes heating. “As well as half of everything else that remains to be discovered on Rainshadow.”
“The money will be nice,” Alice said.
Drake smiled. “But it’s not the best part about your inheritance here on Rainshadow.”
“No,” Alice said. She tightened her grip on the diary and looked around at the others. “The best part was being involved in this discovery. Just knowing that I have some history here on the island and now some history with you three and Jasper and Fletcher and some of the others in Shadow Bay—that’s the best part.”