Come now, darling, don't be arrogant. Though for such magnificent creatures as us, destined to rule, arrogance is necessary. Healthy. No, this isn't from your power. I used that up in moments as soon as I drained it out of you. This is fresh, untapped, untrained. Untamed power.
The twins. Jane leaped forward, down the aisle of the bus to reach the twins.
Rather, she tried to.
The air thickened around her. The rippling rainbow of light flared once and she heard one of the girls whimper. She understood. The Voice was draining the girls to fuel what it was doing, and they had no understanding of their power, their Gifts, no training or discipline to help them resist. She remembered how they had clung together, the light swirling around them. They were defending themselves the only way they knew how, even if it was totally unconscious.
The energy they were expending fed the Voice and kept her away.
Come, darling. Time to get smart. You'll quite enjoy being queen of the universe. All the universes. Just let go.
You let go, Jane snarled. She reached out and snatched up two girls in the curve of one arm, a boy from the other side of the school bus aisle in the other, and shot up, through stone and iron and dirt.
She gagged and collapsed to her knees as she emerged aboveground. Hands pulled the children from her arms and she rolled onto her back, struggling to breathe. The sun was so bright, piercing her body with heat and light.
There were eleven children and the driver left on the bus, according to the information Lanie had obtained from her friend at the school board office. She had to go back. Where was Kurt? He could take children up too. Where was Kurt?
"He's on his way," Angela said. When had she gotten there? She helped Jane sit up and wiped damp strands of hair out of her. "We can't go down there with you, but maybe we can help get the children up."
"No, you definitely can't. I can barely hold up the field around myself." Jane staggered to her feet. Time raced by belowground. Any moment now, the Voice might let the crushing begin, just to be nasty. To punish her for not giving in.
"Don't ask how or why," Angela said, guiding Jane away from the edge of the road. "Just believe that it will work. Look up for help."
She pointed at what looked like a frame from a painting lying in the snow and grit a few steps off the side of the road. Dark water with rainbow streaks swirled around in the frame, rippling in waves, back and forth. It reminded Jane of the material that made up the Wishing Ball, but it was liquid.
"We can see you in it," Lanie said. She was on her knees in the snow, both hands pressing hard on the frame. "At least, we could when you were down there. Maybe if you can see us, you can hand the kids up to us through it. I'm going to pull, and you push and...
"There's no maybe about it working. It has to."
Yeah, it has to. Jane took a few more deep breaths, then gently stepped back from Angela's support.
The crunching of tires on the gravel at the side of the road startled her and she turned, praying it was Kurt coming to join them. Her heart sank when she saw the black-and-white SUV. The biggest policeman she had ever seen climbed out, and it seemed the SUV rose up a few inches higher once he was out of it.
"Came as soon as I heard," the officer said.
"Gordon, this is Jane Wilson. She owns the spa that opened up in Spindelmutter's. Jane... Well, the important thing is that Gordon belongs to my Star Trek club," Lanie said with a crooked grin. "That means totally freaky won't blow his circuits."
"Uh huh, thought so," Gordon said. He nodded to Jane. "Okay, Captain, what do you need me to do?"
"Start thinking of a good story to explain whatever happens next," Angela said. "Jane?"
Jane shook her head. She would wait for later to ask for all the explanations, the subtexts of what was said and unsaid. She was just grateful that one of the local cops would be there to support them and cover up something so huge, even all her Ghost powers wouldn't be able to handle it.
If she had any Ghost powers left when this rescue was done.
She saluted them, took a deep breath, and sank down.
Stop fighting, the Voice said. The raspy undertones were stronger. At the same time...was it possible the Voice sounded weaker? Give in and give yourself to me, and all this will stop. Stop wasting your energy.
Stop wasting what you want to use for yourself, you mean. Jane focused on the bus driver. The woman was thin, with elfin features, elegantly long legs, narrow hips—and felt like she weighed about a thousand pounds as Jane tried to pull her up out of the stair step well where she had fallen.
She couldn't breathe. The pressure against the outside of her Ghost field made her feel as if she would be crushed in another moment. It contracted around her, tightening. All she had to do was release the field and she would be able to breathe.
"Whatever feels right, whatever feels easy when you're in crisis moments," Reginald had lectured from the very beginning, "is probably the worst thing you could do. If you think you're going to drown, that's when you take the deep breath. Anyone strong enough, Gifted enough to fight your Gifts, probably has the talent, the Gift, to make you believe the opposite of what is real."
Letting down her Ghost field would probably let the Voice take over.
Of course.
Jane almost laughed, but she had no breath to spare as she pulled harder on the bus driver. The Ghost field protected her, kept the Voice from taking over.
Why was she pulling on this woman? Why did she seem to have pointy ears? What was she doing down here?
She couldn't breathe. If she could get some air, she could think more clearly. She could remember.
"No," Jane said, and inhaled as deeply as she could. She turned her head away from the woman and threw herself backwards.
They came out of the stair step well like a cork sliding from the neck of a bottle. Jane laughed as she staggered back. She wrapped one arm around the bus driver and turned to look for a child to lift up to safety.
Look up. Someone had told her to look up. She couldn't remember who, but...
Her neck hurt as she tipped her head back, so she almost gave up.
"Freaky," she muttered, seeing black rainbow ripples in the ceiling of the bus. She was pretty sure school buses didn't have reflecting pools in them. Especially not in the roofs.
It wasn't a reflecting pool, was it, if she couldn't see herself? Come to think of it, she could see someone, maybe two someones. Maybe three?
Angela and Lanie. Jane shuddered at the realization that she was forgetting what she was supposed to be doing. She took a deep breath, just because someone had told her to do the opposite, so if she thought she couldn't breathe, that meant...
Yeah, her lungs filled with air and the thudding in her head softened and she could think.
"Upsy daisy," she muttered, and caught the bus driver by her belt, lifting her up. Jane shuddered as the woman's head vanished into the rainbow swirls of glistening black, then her shoulders, then suddenly it sucked her upwards and she vanished.
What are you doing!?!
The thick, oily substance of halted time rippled and swirled around her. Jane had an impression of a giant child shaking a snow globe in preparation for hurtling it to the ground to smash it and send all the glitter water and plastic figures spilling out.
She took a deep breath and snatched up the closest child. Lifted her into the darkness and rainbows. Suction took the child from her hands before she got to the end of her reach. Jane let go and turned, looking for the next. A boy holding a Yoda doll. Breathe deep. Pick up. Lift. Shove into the rainbows. Breathe deep. Turn. Find another child.
The shaking grew stronger. The ripples knocked her off her feet, but the suction pulled up on the boy she had shoved blindly toward the rainbows in the ceiling. Darkness spun around her. She felt tingling in her fingers and toes and the Ghost field contracted so it pressed against her skin. She couldn't breathe. There was no air around her. She had been shrink-wrapped and couldn't breathe.
Shrink-wrapped. A giggle escaped her. Probably she was going brain-dead from lack of oxygen.
Stop! The Voice roared the word over and over.
The bus creaked. Support struts rippled, bending inward like modeling clay falling under its own weight.
"Jane. Come on, Jane. Just a few more."
She didn't know the source of the voice, somewhere behind her, but the man sounded nice. He sounded warm. Strong.
Another hallucination. Another trick of the Voice. She had to fight. She had to concentrate on what she knew was real: she was alone in this bus about to be shredded by reality smashing back into the space where it belonged. All the children were unconscious, frozen in time, and it was up to her to get them out.
"Jane, come on! It's okay!" Kurt's hands burned her skin. They were reaching through the Ghost field and shocking her with the realization of how bitterly cold she was. Her blood had turned to syrup. "Breathe. Come on, baby, breathe! It's okay."
Breathe? She inhaled, despite knowing she would just inhale the plastic bag that clung to her like a second... No, that was air.
"Kurt?"
"Yeah, it's me." He shook her. "Come on. Four more. Get that one."
Jane blinked hard as the blackness faded. Kurt lifted a little girl, thrust her with ease into the black rainbows. He held another in his other arm. As the first was sucked up, he shifted the other.
Jane took another deep breath—why had she forgotten to breathe?—and bent to pick up another child, a girl. She staggered backwards, as something hazy gathered around her head again.
Right. She'd forgot to breathe.
Breathe.
Bend.
Lift. Breathe.
Hand the child to Kurt. Breathe.
"I can't find any more." She choked on the sudden need to burst into tears.
"Where are the twins?" Kurt caught hold of her shoulders and shook her.
For a few seconds she just looked at him and blinked. Twins? What twins?
Kelly and Kory. Right. They were right over...
"They're gone. I know I didn't lift them." Jane took a deep breath. Her head cleared a little.
"Give them up!" Kurt turned and glared out through the front of the bus.
"I don't have them."
"Not you. Big Ugly."
She shuddered, positive he had gone crazy. Who was he talking about? It was just them in the bus. She had lost the twins.
How could she have lost the twins? They were right...there?
Jane squinted, focusing on the place under the seat where she knew the twins had been. They were holding onto each other, wrapped in rainbow streaks of light. They should still be there.
"He's hiding them from us," Kurt said.
"Who?"
"The twins."
"No, who's hiding them?"
"Jane!" He grabbed her shoulders, making her Ghost field buzz against her skin where his hands pressed hardest. "Think! The kids are down here, the bus is down here, because the thing under the town dragged them down here. To trap you. To force you to give yourself up to it. Trade you for them. He's hiding them."
"No..." She took deep breaths, fighting to clear her mind, knowing he was right, but he was wrong, too. "They're hiding."
That was it. The twins were hiding. They were afraid. They sensed the power at work here, sensed the power trying to drain them dry.
That was why the Voice sounded weak and strained. It... He... They... Whatever the Voice was, it wasn't getting energy from the twins. They were fighting. They had hidden themselves.
"They're here." She threw herself forward, fighting the syrupy feel in the air that sucked on her, dragging her backwards. That had to be a sign she was going in the right direction—the Voice, the enemy, didn't want her going near them.
The support struts holding up the domed ceiling of the bus creaked, the sound rising an octave, turning into a squeal.
"You can't have them!" She threw herself down into the space between the seats where she had seen the twins. "Kelly! Kory! You have to hear me!"
Jane bounced. A clang resounded in her ears. The energy surrounding her buzzed, prickling, flashing at the corners of her eyes.
"I think they're there," Kurt said.
She grinned, baring her teeth at him, and knelt just short of where she had almost landed. Jane thrust her arms into the empty space and gasped as a mixed sensation of fire and wasp stings raced up and down her arms. The sensation crawled up her arms, higher as she kept pressing, into the bubble of energy that protected the twins.
"Kelly!" Kurt shouted. His voice reverberated in Jane's ears as he pressed his hands into her shoulders. "Kory! You gotta listen."
"Mr. Kurt?" The little girl voice sounded faint, far off and sleepy.
Jane shuddered, knowing that had to be dangerous. What happened if the girls fell asleep?
"Not gonna happen," she growled, and spread her arms, pushing herself face-first into the bubble of energy, despite the sensation that her skin was crisping right off her bones.
Ghostly images of the girls, clinging together, faded in and out through the haze filling her eyes. They turned to her, moving with glacial slowness. Jane wrapped her arms around them, though she was sobbing with the pain.
"Got them!"
"Got you," Kurt grunted, and shoved her up in the air.
Jane nearly screamed with the pressure, as something dragged her down while Kurt lifted her up. She felt squeezed flat. Then the bubble around the girls popped, shattering with a sour chiming that grew louder with every second. She lifted her arms, shoving them into the black swirling rainbow.
A howl rose up from the chiming, filling her ears, bursting her eardrums, shattering her bones to dust. Through it all, she felt Kurt holding onto her.
"Go, go, go!" he shouted.
Go where?
The pressure sucking her down through the crumpling metal floor of the bus wanted her to go down. That meant she should go up. Jane pushed off, even as the metal collapsed under her feet. Through the furious howling, she heard the scream of the metal and the chiming of glass shattering.
Then suddenly silence, as rock and concrete and antique iron pipes scraped at her fading protective shield. Cold surrounded her, but it felt as bracing and refreshing and warm as summer sunshine compared to the dank and damp and oily thick freezing that had sucked at her bones and brain.
She fell into a snowbank, gasping. It was like she had to learn to breathe all over again. She shuddered and scrubbed at her arms and chest and face, trying to wipe away the oily residue.
"Move, move, move!" a man shouted, just as the ground heaved upwards under her.
Hands grabbed her, dragging her further into the snow. Jane couldn't get the breath to protest. She heard children's voices and then sirens, and a rumbling underneath everything that somehow helped to pull her out of the exhausted, empty, wrung-out feeling.
Breathe. You keep forgetting to breathe.
"Hey." Kurt helped her sit up.
Correction. She was sitting on his lap. Jane snuggled down against him, soaking up the warmth that surged out of him like a furnace. Somehow she got her eyes open.
"Pretty close call, huh?" he said. He pointed, and she followed the direction of his finger.
The road wasn't there anymore. Jagged edges pointed up through the snow and a haze of dirt and debris flung up in the air. She saw the ends of pipes, chunks of concrete, and the snow-filled angles and pits and paths of the old quarries.
"Well, that kind of makes it easy," a man said, accompanied by footsteps coming up behind them. Jane recognized him as the man who had shouted for them to move.
"Hey, Gordon." Kurt slid Jane off his lap, but only long enough to get to his feet and pull her up against him. "Have you met Jane?"
"Oh, yeah. Welcome to Neighborlee." Officer Gordon Priebe nodded to Jane, grinning.
"Makes what easy?" she said, her thoughts snagging on his inexplicable words.
"Well, explainin
g what happened to the bus, how you got the kids out. We'll just tell part of the truth. The bus fell into a sinkhole. You and Kurt got yourselves banged up getting the kids out of the bus before the side of the cliff fell in. Kind of convenient everybody was unconscious."
"Convenient nothing," Kurt said.
"That's just how things work out in Neighborlee," Angela said, coming over to join them. She held out both hands to Jane.
The moment her hands touched Angela's, Jane found it easier to breathe. The heavy, oily, dragging, clogged sensation evaporated. She was able to lift her head and look around. Emergency trucks were just starting to pull up. The school children sat in huddled bunches, holding onto each other. Many of them were crying, most looking like they had just awakened.
"The twins?" Jane asked, as Angela let go of her. She still felt empty, hollow in her bones, like a breath of wind could blow her away. Funny, but she didn't mind.
"Over here," Lanie said. She had both girls cuddled up on her lap in her wheelchair.
"How are they?"
"Exhausted. The air wasn't very good in the sinkhole," Angela said. "Everybody is suffering from tainted air, probably all sorts of noxious gases. Hallucinations."
"And how about the big bad hallucination that was giving us such a hard time?" Kurt said as he caught up to Jane and wrapped his arm around her waist. He pitched his voice low, including only Angela and Gordon.
"Uh huh. That thing from Eden?" The police officer looked Jane over, head to foot, and let out a low whistle. "Welcome to Neighborlee."
* * * *
The cleanup seemed to take forever. Jane found it ironic and yet amusing that everyone was bundled up and taken to Eden II. Only Gordon showed any hesitation about crossing the threshold. She remembered that in the battle with the Oil Slick Monster, Gordon had been let in on the secret of interdimensional invaders and threats lurking in the bedrock of Neighborlee.
Gina took charge of digging out blankets and then all sorts of odds and ends of clothes that had been lost or discarded in the building, to replace everyone's muddy, wet clothes. Her staff scurried around, making hot chocolate and pulling out cookies. The staff nurse took each child into the infirmary for an examination while they waited for the parents and NCH authorities to show up.
Hero Blues Page 28