She took a breath and wondered why the room seemed to be spinning around her. A buzzing-tingling sensation began in her fingers, raced up her arms, turning into red-hot pinpricks, before twisting around in her gut and flashing all along her left side. Two little girls shrieked inside her head.
She clung to the top of the school bus seat in front of her, digging her fingers in so hard she could feel the old metal bending and the paint flaking away. Children screamed all around her as her stomach twisted and the world spun around her.
"Jane!" Kurt shook her, pulling her out of the bus, away from the children.
She still heard Kelly and Kory shrieking in her head, but the terror and shock had turned to fury and Jane could deal with that much better. Fury pushed her into action, while fear paralyzed.
"It's got the girls," she spat, and twisted her hands around in his grip to hold onto him before the sensation pulled her down into the school bus again.
A school bus that fell through a sudden oily black hole in the pavement, down and down, twisting in darkness that was thick, cold, smothering, like dirty, frozen motor oil.
"What do you mean, it's got—" Kurt growled and light flashed all over him as he pulled her close to his chest and shot up through the roof of her apartment.
He held onto her even after she regained her breath. They flew to Divine's. She regained her equilibrium enough to be disgruntled that the protective shields around the house didn't even slow him down as he flew them both through the front wall. They landed in the main room and he set Jane down in a chair at one of the bistro tables.
"The children," Angela gasped, and stumbled into the room, so pale her hair looked dirty brown against her skin.
"What happened?" Kurt demanded as he caught hold of her hand and guided her down into a chair next to Jane.
"A whole school bus full of kids." Jane shuddered, feeling a cold so deep inside she thought it might never be warmed away. "My impression was of a deep hole. The bus just kept falling."
"It's after the twins," he said. "That's the only explanation."
"My fault."
"No."
"Why do you think that?" Angela asked, her voice almost normal again, but for a whispery rasp, as if she had screamed and strained her vocal cords before they arrived.
"I was just thinking that I slept really well, undisturbed sleep last night. We were at the Sanctum, far enough away the Voice couldn't get at me. It's been focusing on me, so it didn't feel the girls. Maybe they weren't generating enough energy for it to be interested, or even notice them. With me gone, it felt them, probably got inside their heads, decided they were just starting to settle into their Gifts, no defenses, now is the time to take them." Jane felt her stomach twisting around the remains of the breakfast she had eaten in the Sanctum.
"If it couldn't feel the girls until you were gone..." Kurt pressed his fists against his temples. "Any chance it might be so busy with them, whatever it's doing to the bus of kids, it doesn't know we're back?" He turned to Angela.
"Let's hope so." She had regained a little of her color. Reaching for Jane's hands, she caught hold of them, interweaving their fingers so they were palm-to-palm. "You have a strong enough link to the twins that you felt and saw what happened to them. Maybe they reached out to you, unknowing."
"Maybe Big Ugly sent the impression to Jane, to set a trap," Kurt said. He stepped back, fists jammed into his hips, frowning as he looked back and forth between them.
"What did you see?" Angela said. "Think hard. Focus on the smallest detail. I can feel all the ground shaking underneath Neighborlee. The power fluctuations make it hard to find what's hidden inside the churning."
Jane closed her eyes and focused, taking deep, loud breaths through her nose to fight the nausea. Angela's hands gave her an anchor so she was able to resist the sensation of falling and at the same time spinning up through the air. Halting, feeling as if she pulled the words out with pliers, she described the cavern, the falling and spinning, the damp and cold and thick, filthy slickness.
When she finished, Jane cautiously opened her eyes. Angela still held onto her hands and she sat with head bowed, eyes closed, gnawing on her bottom lip. Slowly, she shook her head.
"What's wrong?" Kurt said, his voice gentle enough to make Jane shiver. Again it struck her that she didn't know him well enough to read all the subtleties of his face and body and his reactions, but she sensed he was afraid.
"I'm sorry." Angela slowly raised her head and opened her eyes. "You have a link with the girls. Divine's shields us all, perhaps blocks the link. I don't want to ask you—"
"To go outside and see what comes to me." Jane managed to smile, and tugged her hands free of Angela's. "For the girls. For all the kids. That's what we were born for, if you really think about it."
Kurt caught hold of her hand and she was grateful, though she really didn't need any support or his guidance to walk down the hallway to the front door of Divine's Emporium. Jane took a deep breath and braced for the first onslaught of terror and a return to the feeling of darkness and cold and filth and falling, but it didn't come. She glanced back once as she stepped down from the porch. Angela stood in the doorway, watching them.
"You might need to get entirely off the property," she said. "I have an idea. We might need something to help us get to the children, and your description reminds me of something I read once..." She frowned, her gaze going distant for a few moments. "Go on, and I will join you as soon as I can."
"I'm gonna call for reinforcements," Kurt said as they walked down the sidewalk to the fence across the front of the yard. He grimaced and looked up as an icy wind full of snow swirled down around them. "Well, duh. We left so fast we didn't get our coats. Here." He pulled out his phone, then let go of Jane's hand and wrapped his arm around her.
"I can do better," she said, and activated the Ghost field enough to ward off the wind.
"Nice. Now—" He grinned as his phone rang and he turned it so she could see Lanie's name on the display. "What's the word?" he said as he opened the connection.
"We just heard about a school bus vanishing. Any chance Jane got anything, since it's the elementary school bus?" Lanie asked. "Any link with the twins?"
"And then some," he said. "We're at Divine's. Meet us in the park."
"I'll fly us," Jane said. "You talk."
"Marry me," he muttered, pressed a kiss against her forehead—stunning her thoughtless for a precious five seconds—and got to work filling Lanie in.
Jane felt the tingling of Lanie's Gift at work as she brought them in for a landing inside a stand of trees in the park in the center of town. As she made them visible again, Lanie's chair came sliding up the sidewalk faster than she had ever seen a wheelchair move, but her hands weren't on the wheels.
"What has she got— That's why Lanie is our fearless leader." Kurt had kept his arm around Jane until that moment. He stepped away, out of the field she used to shield them from the wind and snow, and went to meet Lanie.
Now Jane could see that she seemed to be bent over, holding something dark on her lap. A few more yards closer, and she guessed it was a thick bundle of material. Lanie tossed part of it to Kurt, and as it fell through the air, it unfolded, turning into a long coat.
"I borrowed some things from the Goodwill collection box behind our building, on the way out," Lanie explained. "No need for you two to freeze while we're looking for the kids."
"Thanks." Jane released the Ghost field and caught the coat Lanie threw at her. It was a pea coat and she muffled choked laughter. She had always wanted a pea coat. Then the sensation of thick, oily, filthy cold and damp wrapped around her. "Getting the signal." She went to her knees on the sidewalk and retched, feeling as if the thick, dirty, icy oil tried to flow down her throat. "Duh. My field cut off the connection."
"It talked to you before, when you were flying," Kurt said. He dropped his coat and helped Jane put on hers. "Maybe it's distracted."
"The girls are probab
ly putting up a good fight," Lanie said. "What do you see? What do you feel?"
Hello, darling, the Voice said. The elegance and humor had vanished. Jane hoped part of the snarl in the tones were from strain, that yes, Kelly and Kory were fighting the creature that kept them captive. It's about time you were polite enough to listen when you're called.
Polite? What do you call someone who takes what isn't offered? You've been draining me, all the while you were talking about sharing and working together. Don't go throwing stones when you're more guilty than anyone. What do you want?
You, of course. The children are delicious, but not what I need. Too much time and effort and waiting until they'd be useful. I'm tired of waiting. Come join them?
Jane gagged as the oily cold sensation overwhelmed her. She found herself clinging to the bars behind the driver's seat on the old school bus, peering through darkness. The sound of weeping came to her, barely able to penetrate the thick, oily cold that filled her ears. The longer and harder she concentrated, details emerged. The children were slumped in their seats, on the floor, drenched and coated with darkness, all unconscious, just like the bus driver who lay in the doorstep well where she had fallen. All except for the source of the snuffling, weeping and gasping sounds. Jane pushed against the cold that was solid, filling the air. It was like wading through lard, yet each step felt a little easier. She sensed warmth up ahead, where the sounds came from.
A faint, rainbow-tinted flicker of light guided her, until she reached the seats two-thirds of the way to the back of the bus, where Kelly and Kory clung to each other, huddling on the floor in front of their seat. Jane called their names, but they didn't seem to hear her.
I'll get you out, she promised, and stood up, looking around, trying to find something, anything, to give her a clue where the bus was trapped.
The darkness swirled around her, as if the bus was immersed in exactly what the air felt like—thick, cold, dirty oil. Jane focused on glimpses of movement that went counter to the swirls in the oily substance, straining her eyes until the ache in her temples and the back of her head grew strong enough to threaten to burst outward. What was that? Long lines, fading into darkness. Blunt ends, disturbing the swirling of the oily darkness. They stretched overhead, going from jagged-edged darkness, through the gap where the bus sat, to more darkness. They looked like...broken pipes?
She didn't want to leave the school bus, to go outside into that greater darkness, but Jane firmly told herself she had to do it. She needed to find something that would tell her where the school bus had landed. Besides, she wasn't really there. Not physically anyway. She wasn't there, so nothing could really hurt her. She wasn't—
"Jane?" Kurt wrapped his arm around her and lifted her to her feet. "Are you okay?"
She choked and spat, but it didn't take the filthy, oily feel and taste out of her mouth. "How long was I gone?"
"Gone where?" Lanie said. "You fell and Kurt picked you up."
"It felt like I was there, in the bus with the kids, for...twenty minutes maybe?"
"Where are they?" Kurt demanded. "Did you see anything?"
"I think so." Jane stumbled through the details she could make out as he led her over to a park bench only a dozen or so feet away. Lanie glided over the snowy grass to join them.
"Does that do you any good?" she said, when Jane stumbled to a halt.
"Maybe. There's a legend, rumor, whatever you want to call it. Back when the town was still growing, while the quarry was still a quarry." Kurt turned and gestured out the western side of town, past the city hall and the slopes down into the park, toward the quarry. "There's an old sewer system. It got abandoned when they rebuilt the town." His expression grew grim. "When sinkholes opened up in the middle of streets or swallowed towns whole, in counties around us."
"Previous attempts by Big Ugly to get through into our world?" Lanie mused.
"Who knows? The thing is, they covered up a lot of it, threw reinforcing material across the holes, gave up on the sewer system they were building. Ford Longfellow knows all about the town history, and he has schematics and blueprints and old surveys that show some parts of town that never should have been built on again—but people did, because a lot of town records were lost in a fire around the turn of the century that ate up about half the municipal buildings."
"Big Ugly just yanked the school bus down through the street, into a cavern that's already there," Jane said. "You have an idea where that cavern might be?"
Chapter Eighteen
"I'll have to check with Ford," he said.
"We'll check the school bus route," Lanie said. "Go on." She pulled out her cell phone without waiting to see if Kurt would go.
"Are you gonna—" he began.
"I'll be fine when the kids are safe," Jane said. "Go."
She wished he would have kissed her again, even if it was just on the forehead, but she was glad when he hurried down the sidewalk. He pulled out his cell phone as he hurried. Fortunately, her spa wasn't too far away; he could probably get to his truck before he finished his phone call.
Lanie got the information she wanted from a friend in the school administration building before Jane felt quite recovered from her first visit to the cavern. Despite feeling a little queasy, she stood up when Lanie closed her cell phone and tucked it in her coat pocket. They shared a grim, determined nod and Lanie turned her chair around and led the way out of the park.
The transportation department of the Neighborlee School System had its routes down to a science, knowing where each bus would be at any moment during the morning and afternoon pickup and drop-off routine. This gave Lanie enough data to approximate where the bus had vanished, based on what Jane and Kurt had experienced, and when. It also helped that when the bus was five minutes late the next family on the route called to find out if there was a problem. The disappearance occurred on a stretch of non-residential road running along the north side of town. It happened to be the route between the orphanage, its last stop before vanishing, and the longest residential street with elementary school-age children.
"Should have guessed," Lanie said, hooking her thumb over her shoulder at the bulk of the former factory that now housed Eden II.
It took a moment for Jane to connect the pieces and realize what Lanie was referring to. Eden II was the site of the most recent attempts by Big Ugly or the Oil Slick Monster to come through from its dimension to theirs.
"This has to be it," she agreed, looking across the stretch of too-quiet road, to the metal guard rail and the ten-foot-wide strip of ground before the drop-off into the former quarries. She shivered despite the warmth of the thick, heavy coat, remembering riding the bus to school along this very route. She had always tried to sit on the side of the bus that wouldn't face the drop-off. Her imagination had been too strong back then, and she envisioned the bus going around the curve too fast, breaking through the guard rail like wet tissue paper, and tumbling over and over, down the steep slope to the quarries a few hundred feet below.
What were the chances the bus hadn't been pulled through the ground, into a cavern, but had fallen over the edge—without touching the guard rail—and fell into the dark, icy waters of the quarry pits?
Ready to talk, darling?
I'm not your darling, Jane snarled. She shook her head when Lanie reached out to her, concern creasing her face. She refused to be weak and shaky any longer.
Oh, but you are. For all eternity. You and I shall have such fun. All you need to do is relax and enjoy what comes next. It's all up to you. I don't much care either way how quickly you decide, since I know I will win in the end. However, since you find something endearing about the children, you might want to hurry.
Why, what are you going to do to them?
It's not what I'm going to do. It's what I'm not going to do. And what you won't do unless you come down here and decide.
Not going to do what? Jane growled.
Come down. Straight down.
The gleef
ul satisfaction in the Voice made her shudder while fury heat shot through her.
"This is the place," she told Lanie. "I don't know what you'll have to do to break through, if I can't get back out with the kids, but..."
"Jane?"
What aren't you going to do?
They're such filthy little things, they really do need a bath. The Voice chuckled, and an image filled her mind of all the leaking pipes suddenly gushing, shattering, spilling down water that washed away the thick, icy, dirty oily substance.
That wasn't oil, she realized. It was time, slowed so that a few seconds in real time lasted what felt like hours. The Voice had managed to slow time, but any moment now time would resume its normal pace, the pipes would burst and fill the cavern and flood it, drowning the children.
Jane blurted what she feared to Lanie, called up the Ghost field, and fell down. Down through pavement. Through solid ground. Down through a tangled net of old steel girders and rebar and concrete and rusting iron pipes.
Her first impression was that there was no room. When she had been inside the bus and cavern before, in her vision, the impression was vastness. Now that she was physically here, pushing through air that was like gritty, icy syrup, even inside the shelter of her Ghost field, she could see that the pipes and concrete and dirt and rock pressed up tight against the bus. There was literally no room to turn around. The Voice had managed to pull the bus down into the hole, maybe move the hole around to accommodate the bus.
Correction. She heard creaking, felt the trembling through the fabric of the bus, the scraping of metal and stone fighting to occupy the same space. Jane shuddered, envisioning the stone and rebar and girders pushing back into the spot where they belonged, where the bus didn't belong. She could almost see the carnage of compression, the shattering and bursting as flesh and bone and blood lost the battle.
It wasn't water that was about to burst out of those pipes, it was reality flowing back into the shape and space where it belonged.
How did the Voice gather up the energy to do this? Why couldn't it pull itself into Earth's dimension and reality, if it had the power to do this? Jane shuddered again, wondering if all this power was in effect financed by what the Voice had sucked out of her.
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