I can feel it too, said Mike.
I see him, Ciara added, her voice calm and clear, surprising Jane.
Jane whipped around and leaned in closer to the booth. Her eyes glared open as she looked out the window and searched the street for what Ciara had referred to. She gaped as she saw the two blue lights that shone from Elliot’s eyes. He was standing at a corner across the street, a hundred feet away, peering out from behind the building there.
That’s him. Ciara said. His telepathic ability was too strong—amplified! He learned to completely shield his approach this time.
Jane turned back to Morris. What do we do?
Morris was still staring out the window. When an expression of apprehension stole across his features, Jane turned back around to the window and saw that the young teenager—Elliot—had left the corner of the building and was walking across the street toward them. The air around him rippled with power. Jane heard Ciara groan. As she glanced at her, Jane saw Ciara flinch and place a hand to her forehead.
We have to go, Jane, right now! Ciara said as she stood up from the booth, pushing with her hands for support.
OK. I’ll clear the diner. Jane turned her attention to the restaurant and spoke with the strongest telepathic voice she could manage, knowing that this massively powerful and dangerous Ethereal was now coming directly toward them. The look of ambivalent defiance on Elliot’s face was what scared Jane the most. Everyone, leave immediately, she commanded. Exit through the back doors. Do not wait. Leave now!
For a moment, the two patrons on her right—who had been preparing to leave anyway—stared at her, perplexed. Then their expressions went blank. They stood up from their chairs and, robot-like, walked toward the back exit, leaving their belongings on the table. Jane spared a split second to focus on the few things they had left—a cellphone, a purse, a sweater. For some reason, an image came to her mind of those objects covered in dust, as though relics from some ancient, apocalyptic event.
Next, Jane turned her attention to the elderly man sitting on a swivel chair. He was looking at her with a curiously blank expression. Jane’s jaw clenched at his slow reaction to her psychic command. She had no time for this. For a moment, he continued staring at her, and she was concerned that somehow she wouldn’t be able to convince him to leave. However, after a moment, with a slight nod, which surprised her, he stood up from his stool, took his hat from the counter, and walked toward the same exit in the far right corner. He kept his eyes on Jane until he reached the passageway that led to the exit; then he turned and looked away. Sauntering up the narrow partition, he slowly disappeared from her sight in the darkness there. Jane’s brow furrowed as she watched him leave, wondering about this strange encounter. There had been something oddly familiar about him, but she didn’t have time to think on it further.
Quickly, Jane directed her attention to the kitchen, which she scanned. She noticed the last of the kitchen staff running toward a back exit there. Turning on her heel, Jane glanced out the window and saw that Elliot had now reached the halfway point, crossing the street. Jane looked at Ciara, feeling fear come off her in waves.
Go! Go right now! Ciara practically yelled in their minds. She dragged Mike out of the booth, and they broke into a run. Morris took Jane’s hand, and for a moment they watched as Elliot approached the sidewalk outside the cafe.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Morris asked.
Probably not, Jane replied.
That you’re tired of running?
I am, but in this case, I think it’s for the best.
What are you doing? Ciara yelled from behind them, having stopped at the door that led to the kitchen.
In front of them, the windows exploded inward. Jane and Morris raised their hands reflexively and deflected the glass. Jane was ready to let it fall to the floor when she felt Morris grip it more tightly, pulling it out of her reach. She watched as he clenched his fist, and the hundreds of fragments of glass drifted across the space in front of her, twinkling as they moved. Then they began to coalesce; there was a crunching sound as they were crushed under the influence of his power. Jane saw Morris grit his teeth with the struggle, and there was a brief flash of light as the glass fused. When the light disappeared, Jane saw that Morris had formed it into the rough shape of a sphere, which was hovering just above his palm where, only moments before, the glinting fragments had floated. Morris exhaled and staggered a bit from the exertion.
Then he flung his arm forward and the sphere rocketed out through the newly opened window frames, toward Elliot. It moved so fast, Jane barely had time to follow its trajectory. Still, as she whipped her head around, she saw it reach Elliot. The approach of the glass sphere didn’t stop him though. Instead, he raised both hands upward, palms facing inward, forming the shape of an X. The glass impacted an invisible psychic barrier and exploded into a thousand pieces, which scattered over the street.
Morris took another deep breath. OK, he said. You were right. From just outside the diner, they heard crunching glass as Elliot walked over the shards from the blast. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, he raised both hands in the air, palms facing outward this time. White energy glowed at the center of each of his hands. Jane and Morris stared breathlessly at him as he approached. Jane realized then that the old, red-stained floorboards beneath them were vibrating, and she looked down to see them rattle beneath her feet. In the back, she heard dishes crash to the floor. She glanced back up to see that the luminescence emanating from Elliot’s palms was growing brighter. Arcs of light appeared and disappeared there, casting new, eerie shadows around the darkened interior.
Jane felt Morris grab her wrist, and she was pulled along with him as he ran toward the back, lagging behind him. She caught up quickly and broke into a run just as the lights above them exploded, sending a rain of glass and sparks around them. They continued to run, nearing the door. Then, unable to help herself, Jane glanced over her shoulder just as the diner was engulfed in an explosive release of psychokinetic power. Every piece of furniture was ripped from its housing and tossed into the air. The floorboards rose, and a hundred different objects flew in their direction. Jane turned back around and ran faster, knowing that if they stopped, the tsunami of debris would take only seconds to reach them.
She and Morris were nearing the door when Jane sensed something approach from behind. Her brow furrowed. Unable to help herself, she turned yet again to see a metallic tray flying directly toward her, spinning end over end. She was about to turn her power on it, to try and stop it, when she felt Morris’s arm drag her forward. Against her better judgment, Jane turned. The tray hit the back of her head as they both crashed through the door in front of the mass of debris thundering up behind them.
Morris turned his power on the door and slammed it shut. He raised both arms and stepped sideways so that he was standing directly in front of it. His eyes grew wide and his stance rock solid as he focused his will, preparing to reinforce the door against the approaching mass of objects. His hands shook as the colossal tide of furniture impacted the door through which they had just run. The frame buckled at the edges, and the plaster and concrete that held it in place burst out around it by a full inch.
Behind him, Ciara took a step back and glanced toward the top of the door, where she saw a crack crease the plaster above it. This crack spread rapidly through and across the roof, sending clouds of dust into the room below. A metallic frame filled with kitchen utensils, which had been fixed to the ceiling, broke away from its housing and fell to the floor, sending pots, pans, and other objects clattering all over the room.
***
Finally, it stopped. Morris took a deep breath and lowered his hands. The doorframe had split in several places, but remained mostly intact. Now, still taking deep breaths, he turned around to find that Jane had fallen to the floor and appeared to be unconscious. Morris laid a hand to his temple, and his eyes grew wide with new fear as he placed one knee on the ground; i
n the chaos, he hadn’t even realized she had fallen. Jane lay on her back with her head tilted to the right, and her hair lay across the ground beneath her. Gently, Morris turned her head toward him, then leaned in quickly and listened for her breath. He heaved a deep sigh of relief as he heard it, but also noticed with horror that it was shallow.
Ciara and Mike had gathered around their friend and were leaning over her on the other side.
“Ciara?” Morris asked.
“I’m scanning her,” Ciara said. “She’s unconscious, but I think she’s OK. She was hit in the back of the head by something.” Ciara paused for a second, then reached down and gently lifted Jane’s head. She let out a gasp as she saw a small open wound there, where blood matted the roots of Jane’s hair. “We need to get her to a hospital. We can’t leave her like this.”
“And we can’t stay here either,” Mike added.
Morris glanced up at the door through which they had come, his face filled with vitriol. “He’s not doing this alone.”
Ciara stepped closer to him. “No,” she replied. “He’s not, but that’s not our concern right now.” Her gaze drifted up the walls of the room as she appeared to focus on something else. Morris watched her. “He’s moving again—and we should be, too.” Turning around, Ciara glanced behind her toward the only other door in the room. “That’s where Jane was leading us. There’s a back exit here. We can get out onto another street.”
After a pause, Morris turned back to Jane and gently lifted her into his arms. As he rose to his feet, he glanced at her face with a forlorn expression as it lay against his right shoulder. Then he looked up and nodded at Ciara. “Go,” he said.
Ciara nodded firmly. She turned and walked quickly through a narrow partition that led to another room. Inside it was dark, and all they saw were shelves lined with supplies. They made their way through slowly, eventually coming upon an open door to an office. Ahead of him, Morris saw Ciara glance toward the front.
“There,” she said, pointing straight ahead. Through the dark, directly ahead of them, Morris saw a large frosted glass window. On the left was a small door.
“OK, keep going,” he said. They made their way through the darkened office. When they approached the door, they found that it was locked. Mike stepped forward and, turning his power on it, easily broke the locks. The outside metallic portions split off and were sent flying out into the street beyond. Then Mike raised his foot and kicked the door open.
They spilled out onto the road, Morris trailing behind them. Then both Ciara and Mike turned to check on Jane again. Morris stood at the edge of the sidewalk and glanced fretfully between Jane and Ciara. “How is she now?” he asked.
Ciara stepped forward and gently placed her hand on Jane’s forehead. Closing her eyes, she concentrated. Then, after a moment, Ciara removed her hand and glanced up at him. “She needs help, Morris. I can’t reach her at all. It must be a bad concussion.”
Morris looked down the alleyway to his left, from where he guessed Elliot might emerge at any moment. Then he glanced right, where he saw another street. Both areas were almost devoid of traffic; he saw not one pedestrian on either of them. “OK, where do we go?” he asked, still glancing at the empty street to his left, staying alert for any sign that their young pursuer might arrive again to wreak new havoc.
Ciara turned to her left and shut her eyes, once again concentrating. For a moment,
Morris was jealous of her advanced telepathic senses; she could scan any area within moments and find what they were looking for. She could do things they could not. However, he reasoned, her psychokinetic abilities were more limited than theirs. Not only that, Mike had demonstrated secondary faculties to which none of them seemed to have access. Morris doubted very much that he could make devastating blasts of light shoot from his hands. Neither could he scan a region with his psychic senses as quickly or as accurately as Ciara could.
After just a few seconds, she opened her eyes and pointed in the direction which led to the road on their right. “This way,” she said. “There’s a medical center.”
Morris was taking a step forward when Ciara held up her hand, stopping him in his place.
For a moment, he felt Jane’s weight in his hands, and he took a breath, repositioning her. Then he glanced back at Ciara, seeing that, once again, her eyes were closed. “What’s wrong?” he asked, frowning.
For a moment, she didn’t answer. “I’ve found him,” she said finally, opening her eyes. “At least, I hope I’ve found him. We can’t go this way.” She paused, and her eyes narrowed to slits. “I think I can trick him—I’m going to create a psychic echo, like a mirror reflection of us, heading in a different direction, and direct as much power as I can into it. Hopefully, he’ll follow that. That is, if he isn’t already one step ahead of us and fooling me.
Morris gave a single nod, though by now his jaw was trembling with fear. “OK, do it,” he said, stepping forward.
Ciara closed her eyes again, and they waited. Furrows creased her brow as she concentrated. Then, after a few moments, she opened her eyes and took a breath. “OK, we can go now. I’ll lead us.”
And so they hurried onward, as fast as Jane’s weight would allow Morris to run. After a period of struggle, he reached out with his mind and used his power to lessen the weight, allowing his psychokinetic grip to help him carry Jane’s body.
CHAPTER 14
FACING FUTILITY
Claudia grasped the wooden frame of the boardwalk, from where she hadn’t moved farther than a hundred feet for the entire day, save for attending to various tasks and meetings in the vans that had arrived with her team. She had remained transfixed by the ever-growing tower, which still glimmered, even in the dusk. Claudia couldn’t take her eyes off it. Every now and then, one large piece of its surface would change its orientation against the remaining light, and a brief flash would appear there. At other times, flickers of illumination would appear along the object for no apparent reason. They seemed to be coming from within it. Claudia marveled at this, for, to her, it spoke of the object’s otherworldly nature. At its top, it had already reached through the lower clouds, and there, it was narrowing. A swirling vortex had formed at the peak. Where once puffy spring clouds could be seen on the horizon, now only a slowly swirling mass of purple, gray, and white was visible. Claudia’s stomach lurched when she looked at this, for it was glaringly obvious that the object was affecting the atmosphere. The nature of this effect was completely unknown to her.
Hundreds more people had gathered on the beach in front of her. Behind them, the road was filled with cars, bumper to bumper. People had stopped and stepped out of their vehicles to catch a glimpse of the object in the distance. As Claudia glanced around at the many individuals, it dawned on her just how important this event was. What she was witnessing was quite possibly the most important event ever recorded in human history. The fact that she had been the first to broadcast details of it to the world was mostly immaterial to her— the tower was simply too awe-inspiring (and its presence, indeed, worrisome) to be concerned about such trivial egotistical matters.
“Uh, Claudia,” Josh said from behind her.
She turned, straightening her coat and readying herself to speak into her earpiece.
“Five seconds,” he said, then counted down for her.
“This is Claudia Gellar, reporting once again from the boardwalk at Roosevelt Beach. Thank you for joining us. As you can see behind me, the tower is still growing. New estimates put its height at nearly half a mile—or almost 2600 feet—and it has begun narrowing near the peak. It has reached through the cloud cover there, where some kind of vortex appears to have formed. Although a direct feed of the object from a drone is now difficult to come by, we do know that the United States military has dispatched vessels to the area in an attempt to see what’s happening out there, and to stop it if possible. Once again, the consensus from various experts in the scientific community—from phys
icists to quantum mechanists to parapsychologists and military personnel trained in the field of psionics—is that, once again, the object can only be but malign in nature.”
Before she finished her report, Claudia saw the flash in the camera lens, and she whipped around to see what was happening. The beach was filled with sounds of concern from the people who had crowded there. On the horizon, flashes of light could be seen near the tower’s base. They were much different from the ones Claudia had previously been paying attention to. No, these were explosions, and she knew what that meant.
***
The three naval vessels, which had been constructed far outside the view of the public, were shielded from psionic intrusion. They had been built with the theoretical idea that someday a group of powerful Ethereals could emerge and pose some kind of unpredictable threat. Nobody, however, could have predicted the formation of the tower. The situation had escalated so rapidly that there was a fear it had already become something far beyond the navy’s ability to contain. Either way, the commanders had their orders, and they were following them.
When they were within five hundred feet of the tower’s base, they ran detailed scans. When those revealed no pertinent information about the structure, they opened fire, using the most advanced energy weapons mankind had constructed. The balls of dangerous plasma exploded from ordnance banks lining the sides and front of the vessels. They impacted the shield surrounding the edge of the edifice, lighting up the night sky with enormous flashes, so that the surrounding area temporarily appeared as bright as day. The blue plasmatic fires that spread out from the impacts drifted upward, licking the sides of the great tower and illuminating it with brilliant new light. They managed to fire off more than a hundred shots—without denting the crystal or the shield surrounding it—before they stopped to allow their weapons to begin their recharge cycles.
***
The Crystal Tower (The Ethereal Vision Book 3) Page 28
