Cooper tilted his head to the side in a conciliatory gesture. “Maybe you’re right. Now, maybe you’re wrong, but maybe you’re right and neither one of us is going to be able to prove one way or the other. How about we just not worry about it? What we do works. We don’t know why. It’s something we need to deal with on a daily basis – let’s just work off of that, okay?”
Jared set the handheld sander on the ground and wiped his dusty hands on his jeans. He still looked a little prissy, and a lot stubborn. He didn’t look like the kind of a guy who would shut up over things that could be disproven.
Ash turned all the way towards Jared, doing that tall and slightly forward lean which Cooper had seen him employ when he had been trying to convince someone to see things his way. “Look,” he said in his smooth, soft baritone, patting down the air in front of him with the palm of his hand. “I respect your beliefs. Let’s just make sure that we all can get along regardless of how and why we think we are here, okay?”
“So where do you stand in all of this?” Jared was halfway hopeful, halfway defensive.
“Honestly? I really don’t know.” Ash spread his hands and shrugged. “I never really had a chance to think about it, not in these terms. I know what my personal values are, but those personal values would be the same regardless where the gifts came from. What I care about is how people act, not who’s pulling the puppet strings.”
Jared, who was starting to look more hopeful, frowned again. “See,” he said as he walked toward Ash. “When you use a term like that, puppet strings, you imply some kind of an evil intent. So whatever entities gave us these powers, you figure they’re up to no good. And I can’t stand for that.”
Cooper was about to step between them.
He halted.
Raw elemental power coiled around Ash like a thick and lively snake. Had the day not been sunny outside, Ash would have been giving off sparks, like a stroked cat before a storm. The energy he bore shimmered in the air around him, giving him a menacing look. Ash didn’t look like a guy Jared should tangle with.
“Sometimes – no, most of the time – it’s the society that pulls the puppet strings. Look around yourself! Look at all organized religions in the world, and tell me it’s not people who’re causing all the trouble! Every single religious war, every jihad or crusade, every muddy legislation that’s taking away yet another individual right? All of that’s done by regular, somewhat misguided people. And even if those people think they’re good, their strong beliefs don’t necessarily make them right.”
The coils of power around Ash swelled and began to spread, with a shimmering wall of energy pushing its way out like an inflating balloon that had no intention of bursting. Ash was exerting influence of the most unusual kind. It wasn’t anything Cooper had ever seen with his own eyes, and now as Ash forced Jared a step back, then another, his festering discomfort propelled Cooper forward.
“Hey, Ash.” Cooper strove to make eye contact, but Ash had his gaze locked with Jared.
Jared kept backing up.
“Ash, I need you to stop.” A few quick steps brought Cooper to Ash’s side, barging through a wall of force that wasn’t supposed to exist.
Except Cooper did feel it, and he did recognize it.
“Ash, you’re feeding off of the ley line!”
Cooper grabbed Ash’s elbow. A tingle skittered through him, as though he’d been sitting on his hand and had just begun to feel his nerves again, nerves that vibrated all the way down to his feet.
The tingle became a live current of raw power that came in pulsating waves, and now Cooper was its conduit.
And that bubble? It burst.
Cooper both saw and felt raw power drain from Ash into his own hands, and through him, into the structure of the house.
Into the earth.
He knew which pathways it took as though he could clearly see it on a diagram. Wending its way between rocks, seeking the path of least resistance along little fault lines. Down the old foundation cracks and into the sewers where the ever-present trickles of water neutralized it, carrying it into the river.
Ash shook his head, as though somebody had stunned him and he was just coming to. “What happened?”
“You’ve been drawing power off the ley line,” Cooper choked out. The room around him began to wobble. “You tried to use it against Jared, and I tried to stop you, and...”
“He was like a lightning rod,” Jared said in a hushed voice. “I saw it. I can see the currents, and the power was all boiling up and honing in on him.”
Ash looked from Cooper to Jared. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize I was doing that.” He gave Jared an apologetic, tense smile. “I didn’t mean to do any harm. I... I don’t know where all of that even came from!”
He shifted his gaze toward Cooper. He eyed the ground stone, and his eyes widened.
“What?” As soon as Cooper said it, he felt intense heat, then scorching pain. “Ouch!”
“Lean forward,” Jared said.
Cooper did – and his ground stone dangled away from his body. He wished he could take it off, but he didn’t dare. Not after what he had witnessed, and what he had experienced. He stuck his finger under the cord and straightened slowly, keeping it off his chest.
“Babe.” Ash stared. “Your stone pendant? It must’ve absorbed a lot. It left the burn mark on your shirt.”
ASH WRAPPED A protective arm around Cooper’s shoulders. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I guess.” Cooper’s voice sounded spacey, like he’d suffered a head blow and wasn’t quite with it yet. “What the hell happened? Why were you using that energy?”
Ash shook his head. “I wasn’t using... well. Maybe I was.” He ran his hand over his face. “I don’t know. I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I... I was upset. Defensive, I guess, and that’s my fault.” He knew he’d fucked up royally. He’d endangered his lover and their guest, and for what? Didn’t they argue over some bullshit metaphysical concepts? Did any of that really matter, and would it have killed him to give an inch and just let things slide?
Yes, these ideas did matter in the end, but right now, he was the one in the wrong. He’d caused harm by allowing something negative, something powerful, to come between them. Sure, he had known he wasn’t immune to the ley lines’ energy, but at least those were supposed to be fairly tame, and he had never expected the power to seek him out, instead of vice versa. Now he knew it wasn’t just the node that posed a problem.
“Jared,” Ash asked carefully. “You said you can see these things. Can you tell me what happened?”
Jared gave a dry, brittle laugh. “The energy down there? It wants to be used. It will take any excuse to get out. In fact...” Jared lowered himself to the floor, leaned against the wall, and closed his eyes. “Gimme a minute... Yeah. Oh, wow. Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“What’s the matter?”
Cooper and Ash spoke over each other, then stopped, watching Jared for a long, breathless moment.
Time seemed to have stopped.
Beads of sweat just about halted their even descent down Cooper’s forehead.
“It’s... it’s stronger, guys,” Jared said. He opened his eyes, stood up, and shook himself off as though he was a wet dog. “I don’t know what’s going on, or where, but someone’s feeding it extra power and there’s a lot more than even just few hours ago. It’s like a big steam tank, boiling over, and using the ley lines as a pressure release valve!”
CHAPTER 8
Cooper gripped the wheel of the beat-up, old Honda he had borrowed from Jared as he headed north of Cranberry, aiming for the small township of Eveston. Mr. Hatalsky across the street would’ve loaned him his car, true, but it was also true that Cooper hadn’t done much yard work for the Hatalskys of late, and he didn’t want to impose by taking the car for a trip which was likely to take the whole day. Besides, Jared was helping Ash stain and finish the floors of the last four houses, and they had th
e van.
Not that Cooper minded missing out.
The construction traffic on Route 79 had Cooper take a few local detours. He let the phone navigate him, using the larger back roads, and not so incidentally, bringing him past a place with decent coffee and good breakfast pastries. By the time his morning treat was long gone, Cooper was far away from the steep hills and river valleys of Pittsburgh and well into the softly rolling green hills of the suburbs. The land flattened out further north, and the strata underfoot leveled off as well. It was no longer part of the same orogenic deformation that had once built the huge Appalachian mountains.
He felt the nearness of their deep, underground roots in Pittsburgh, but out here? Not so much. Here, the earth was a bit different, and... stressed.
A mild ache began to settle in Cooper’s mind. Maybe the coffee was too strong, or not strong enough, or... hell, he could drive okay, but how was he going to talk to his client? Graham Cornell was a picky man nearing sixty, who had a very specific house layout in mind. The three-dimensional model was on Cooper’s laptop in the back seat.
He drank half the contents of his water bottle, figuring the summer’s heat was getting to him.
He popped an ibuprofen, hoping the little green capsule would settle his head, and that the new house plans would go over well with his client. His picky, retired client who was bent on rebuilding his newly-purchased farmhouse into a modern dwelling.
At least his land was lovely. His client still owned eleven sprawling acres of what used to be a large farm, and what was now surrounded by a new housing subdivision to the south, and a fishing creek in the woods to the north.
A few more turns on local roads, and Cooper pulled into a short, gravel driveway off the rural Skunk Cabbage Road.
He stopped Jared’s beat-up Honda in a small gravel parking lot. The old farmhouse, a structure with sound bones yet in need of extreme help, squatted to his left. White paint was peeling off the clapboard shingles and the roof needed a do-over – and that was just the exterior.
Cooper had a plan, and a budget, for all that and more. This old farmhouse could become a lovely home again, whether or not the new owner decided to retain some of its historically authentic features.
A barn loomed ahead, just thirty feet from the house. Its dark wood spoke of age, but also of maintenance with old-fashioned creosote, which had kept wood-eating pests at bay.
He glanced up. The new metal roof gleamed in contrast, and so did the big sign above the newly installed windows. It was red, white, and blue, sported an American flag on each side, and said “Graham’s Guns.” Graham Cornell had said he’d be in the barn, so that’s where Cooper headed.
Gravel crunched underfoot and the scent of honeysuckle drifted on the warm summer wind. Cooper focused on the moment, gripping the strap of his backpack as he headed for the dark wood door with a glass pane top.
He knocked, turned the knob, and pushed the door open slowly. “Hello? Mr. Cornell?”
His client was bent over the sturdiest table Cooper had ever seen. “Come in,” he said in a voice roughened with time and tobacco. “Gimme a minute.”
“Take your time.” Cooper pulled out his laptop in the meanwhile, set it onto Graham’s tidy desk, and opened up his architectural program. Then he pulled two rolls out of his backpack. One contained a print-out of his proposed blue prints. The other contained the print-outs of several architectural images, showing what the finished interiors would look like. Cooper was mighty proud of those, because he had learned a new program that let him view each room from a camera angle of his choice. The time he had invested into learning the new tech freed him from meticulous and time-consuming technical drawings.
Five minutes must’ve passed before Graham stood up and straightened his back to his full five feet eleven. “Glad you made it! You’re early, that’s good.” He took off the glasses that sat on the tip of his nose, and rubbed his hands in undisguised glee. “I have a true beauty here. Come have a look at this!”
Cooper crossed half the barn and shook Graham’s hand. “It’s good to see you again,” he said. He glanced at the work table. A gun was laying there.
“This one’s a rare antique. I’m resighting it. The bore on her is incredibly even, for the nineteen thirties. And just look at the beautiful brasswork around the finger guard!”
“Oh, that’s really nice.” Cooper feigned interest. He grew up around guns. His family was outdoorsy enough to sprout a hunter or two, even though Cooper never fell in love with sitting in the woods and freezing his ass off, just so he could get venison for the freezer and a stuffed head with antlers for the wall. Once he tried hunting, he became truly grateful for the existence of modern supermarkets.
“It’s a Pope gun. He was a legendary rifle maker. There are only six left, and this is one of them. Imagine, to make it accurate enough, you have to load your own rounds.”
“And pass the round through the barrel, I imagine?” This was merely a guess on Cooper’s part, a thing he had heard someone talk about. A fanciful practice of matching the ammo to the custom-made rifle perfectly, so’s to match the rifling grooves inside the barrel with the grooves on the slug itself.
“That’s right!” Graham’s eyes lit up with excitement, as though he just met a new and long-lost brother. “Serious shooters would do that to get higher accuracy in shooting competitions. Not many young people know that nowadays.” He beamed his approval at Cooper.
Approval was nice, but Cooper wished it had to do with his design rather than his second-hand rifle expertise. He wished the old man to get on with it. Waiting for potential disapproval was making his gut roil.
As though Graham could detect Cooper’s tension, he nodded toward the work table. “Here, let me put her away and make some space for you. Let’s see what you came up with!” He set the antique rifle in its padded plastic case, and slid the case into a large, stand-up safe. He locked it, spun the dials, and hurried to pull up a second chair next to Cooper.
Meanwhile, Cooper had moved his gun smithing tools to the top of the work table with great care and deliberation. He then powered up his laptop, and spread the rolled-up print-outs and drawings onto the worn surface of the wood. He weighed them down with the polished river pebbles, which he had brought along for the purpose.
Waiting for Graham Cornell was like waiting for death. Slow, painful, and inescapable. When Graham leaned his arms against the table, Cooper turned to him, and grinned. “Let’s see what you think.”
“Let’s see what you have, boy,” Graham cackled. He peered at the laptop’s screen first. It glowed in this antique and entirely analog space like a time-traveling artifact, sharply at odds with the old, but still functional, brass balance scale that held a place of honor at the end of Graham’s workspace.
“Okay, then. What would you like to see first, the three-dimensional model, or the print-outs?” Cooper launched into his presentation.
“The –” Graham began, but stopped as the solid work table trembled under their hands.
The gleaming brass of the scale moved back and forth, as though undecided on its load. Cooper’s open laptop screen trembled on its old hinges, and Cooper hissed and grabbed his head in his hands.
“What in the world?” Graham jumped out of his chair. “That’s the neighbors again! Those dirty sonsabitches!”
Cooper swallowed. The earthquake had been small, just three, maybe a bit more, on the Richter’s scale. It had occurred nearby, though, and the power flow that came with it had left him feeling upside down and inside out.
Nausea roiled his stomach, chasing on the heels of the severe headache that gripped his temples like a vise.
“You okay, Cooper?” Graham was all concern now. “What’s wrong? You’re as white as that piece of paper!”
“Just...” Cooper bit his tongue. He couldn’t say it was a power backlash that got him hurting. At best, Graham would never understand. At worst, he’d take him for a freak, and fire him. “A sudden heada
che, is all.”
“Hmm.” Graham peered at him intently. “Let me go make some coffee. Hopefully it will go away.”
But it didn’t. It got so bad, Cooper’s presentation took three times as long, and culminated in a guided hike around Graham’s property. He used this opportunity to gently extend his earth-sense, hoping he would find whatever was causing the problem.
“See over there?” Graham pointed through the trees to the east. “My neighbors leased their land to one of those fracking companies. And once the noise and dust was too much, they sold the rest of their land, and moved to Florida.” His expression was grim. “I didn’t know that, back when I had bought this farm. That heavy work table won’t do shit for me now. It will quake every time those assholes do their business!”
“Not every time.” Cooper knew earthquakes. “Or, it shouldn’t. But you could have them buy you one of those self-leveling, hydraulic tables. That should help.”
Graham snorted. “The frackers will ruin my well water.”
They probably would, Cooper reflected. Then he’d have to send out Ash and see if Ash could heal the well. He didn’t say anything, though, because he was too focused on the frequency of the sick, disjointed waves of energy that pulsed through the rock under his feet.
He had felt this before.
This energy felt a lot like their rogue node.
CHAPTER 9
Cooper paced the cool tile floor of the kitchen, spanning the seven steps between the door and the window. He was well aware of Ash’s careful eyes on him. Studious and assessing, Ash was in his professional observation mode.
“It felt the same,” he said as he ran his fingers through his short hair. He whirled at Ash, and threw his arms in the air. “The ground up there, it’s unhappy. It’s distressed! Graham told me the neighbors leased the land to a gas extraction company. Frackers, you know?” Cooper was aware he was rubbing his face with his hands, but for the life of him, he just couldn’t stop. The anxiety which he had brought back from his client’s site pursued him all the way home, along with a headache so bad, he had barely been able to drive.
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