Beacon's Spark (Potomac Shadows Book 1)

by Jim Johnson

  Cooper stared at me, or more specifically, my crystal. “Hey…that’s pretty cool.”

  I frowned and wrapped one of my hands around the crystal, and reached into it and willed it to stop glowing. It was a real struggle to manipulate the ley threads this time—I had reached the end of my endurance with them. The crystal’s glow did fade in intensity, though.

  Abbie glared at me and then pushed her way between Penny and Cooper and headed down the hallway. I called out, “Hey, wait!” and pushed in after her. I sensed Penny and Cooper falling into line behind me.

  As a group, we followed Abbie downstairs and along the hallway and stood outside Vinya’s door. Abbie knocked on it. “Vinya? Honey, it’s Abbie. Can we talk?”

  Muffled sobs sounded from inside the room. “Go away, you freaks! I know what I saw!”

  Oh, crap. That didn’t sound good. I glanced at Penny and Cooper, and then moved in next to Abbie and tapped on the door. “It’s Rachel. I’m really sorry about this. Can you open the door so I can explain what happened?”

  “What did happen?” A soft voice called out behind us. The four of us turned to look. A young woman about my age and height, with short dark hair, wide-spaced eyes, lightly tanned skin, and soft features stood in the hallway. She was wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt that hung down to her knees and had a little pocket LED flashlight in her hand pointed at the floor.

  “Uh…Tamara?” I stammered. Penny and Cooper echoed me, only with different variations of her name. I guess none of us were quite sure what her name was.

  The woman shook her head. “Tonia.” She glanced past us at the closed door. “Is Vinya all right? I heard a scream when the lights went out.”

  My senses started to gather together. “Uh…yeah. I…a transformer blew outside and knocked the power out.”

  Tonia lifted the flashlight’s beam toward my chest. “Unusual. We weren’t expecting high winds or a storm, were we?”

  I shook my head and glanced at the others, who looked about as dumbfounded as I felt.

  Cooper perked up. “Hey, nice to meet you, Tonia. Haven’t met you yet.”

  Tonia flicked the flashlight beam toward him. “Thank you. I’ve been here over a month, now.”

  Cooper frowned. “Yeah, but…I don’t think none of us have hardly seen you. You’re like a ghost.”

  I blanched and shot a glance at Abbie, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  Penny ribbed Cooper with her elbow. “Cooper, shut up.” She focused on Tonia. “I’m really sorry for the disturbance.” She shot a meaningful glance toward me. “Nights here are usually quieter and much less intense.”

  Another sob sounded from behind Vinya’s door. Abbie turned and tapped on the door again. “Vinya? Come on, open up. Can we please talk?”

  A loud banging from the front door reverberated down the hallway, startling all of us. Penny shook her head. “Now what?”

  Abbie said, “Maybe someone asking about the power outage?”

  The banging on the door increased in intensity and volume, and then stopped. I started toward Tonia, to pass her to go open the door. I felt a sudden surge within the ley threads nearby, focusing on the door, and heard the lock on the door snap open.

  The door swung inward on its hinges, and Miss Chin walked into the house, her face set in a fearsome expression, her eyes aglow in bright green fire.

  My mouth hinged open. “What the fuuu…?”

  Before I could finish the utterance, Miss Chin had slammed the door shut with one hand and had raised the other toward me. Bright flashes of green and blue etherics soared all around and wrapped around me like living things. More threads lengthened from her and past me. I managed a quick glance back to see the others were becoming likewise gathered up by Miss Chin’s ley threads.

  “You will all be still, and silent.” Miss Chin said, in a commanding tone that had a reverb quality to it that I hadn’t heard before. It echoed in my mind’s Eye, and I saw another flash of her green aura.

  Miss Chin moved toward me. “You’ve made a mess of things, Rachel. It’s rare I have to act as Warden on a problem one of my own students created.” She paused in front of me. “This is my fault, of course. I should have placed blocks on your abilities; certain triggers to prevent you from doing something like what happened tonight.”

  “Hey…who are you?” Cooper asked, somewhere behind me. Just then, the lights in the hallway flickered and then returned to normal intensity.

  Miss Chin glanced at the now-lit ceiling lamp and then flicked another green-tinged ley thread toward Cooper. “Hush now.” I heard a muffled noise behind me. Miss Chin kept her eyes on me.

  I managed to find my voice. “You…you can do that? Block my powers?”

  She looked deep into my eyes. I could see little sparkles of green deep within her brown eyes—beautiful and terrifying at the same time. “Theoretically, yes. I suspect the barriers would not hold for long, however. Yours is a significant talent, Rachel. With proper training, I suspect you may even surpass me.”

  Both my eyebrows shot up in surprise. She held my look and then focused beyond me. “All of you will forget the specifics of what happened tonight and will not discuss it further.”

  Miss Chin tightened her hold on the ley threads holding me in place, and leaned in. “And you. Meet me at the amphitheater tomorrow morning.” Her large brown eyes loomed larger, sparks of bright green threads running through them. I was riveted, unable to look away. “Now, go get some rest. You need it. All of you.”

  I felt a tug within my mind, and a flash of green light superimposed on my Eye. Helpless before her compulsions, I did as she asked, in equal parts amazed and terrified at every step I made down the hall and then up the stairs. Abbie and the others fell in with me and headed to their respective rooms.

  Once at the top of the stairs, I glanced down. Miss Chin stood in the foyer, glaring up at me, looking careworn. “Go, Rachel. Sleep. I will clean all this up. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  I nodded, and headed to the bedroom, unable to think of anything else. Some little part of me screamed inside my mind.

  Chapter 40

  THE SPINNER CRIED OUT IN RAGE as his break in the Veil zipped shut in a flash of silvery light tinged in purple. That girl was proving to be even more resourceful than he expected. He had just managed to blunt the worst of that last surge of energy. She had found another source of power and tapped into it to supplement her own. Together, her combined strength had been enough to push his toe-hold out of the Veil and back into the woven world.

  But, just before the rift sealed shut, he had gotten one last look at her. She was clearly terrified, but defiant, and he stared at her until the rift collapsed, determined to memorize every line and every curve of her features.

  He was left in his secure space within the woven world, alone and furious. He raged around until he was mentally spent. He laid his woven world avatar down on the virtual ground and just breathed, thinking of all the various horrible things he could do to that girl once he got his strength back and could drag her into the woven world.

  That thought sparked an idea, and he sat up and cast a circle of yellow-gold light and spent a few precious moments to center his thoughts and gather his energies. If he wanted to lure her into the woven world, he’d have to craft a trap for her.

  He nodded, then closed his eyes. Any good trap needed the proper bait. He considered that question. What would be effective bait against this girl?

  The woman she had meditated with? She was either a friend or a lover; certainly good potential there for pain and suffering and misery.

  The other people in the house living with her? Hmm, perhaps not. Not as strong a connection as a close friend or lover, and not as strong a tie as family itself.

  Thinking of family set a crooked smile on his face. Few ties were so strong as those of family. Even when family did you wrong, they were still family. A bond that was very hard to break.

  Surely the girl had some fa
mily. A few moments’ thought, and then…of course. He had first encountered this girl at the nursing home. It seemed evident that the girl did not work there, so what other reason could she have for being there?

  She surely had to have a member of her family living there, most likely a grandmother or grandfather. He recalled her aura, her energy signature, and delved deep within his etheric reserves to tap into those few precious souls he had managed to harvest recently, looking for one that might have a similar pattern to hers.

  One of the many things he had learned in his research of the woven world and the arcane arts was that auras and energy signatures tended to run in families, and while he hadn’t had time to do deeper research, he suspected that family members would often have energy patterns along the same wavelength.

  He grinned to himself. Unless, of course, a family member was an aberration, a more powerful practitioner, such as himself. He’d proven stronger than both his mother and his father, though they had proven effective working together, if only briefly.

  The Spinner shook his head and focused on the girl. Time enough later to weep over the past.

  So this girl had a family member living at the nursing home. Some simple research should enable him to figure out whom. And then once he had the name, he could proceed to build and set the trap.

  Yes, that was the right approach. He settled into his meditative patterns and built a virtual reservoir for etheric energy storage. He would siphon off some of his spare energy and tap into the energies contained within the deep well of the ley lines assembled far below.

  Once filled, the reservoir would serve to help him break open the Veil when that girl took the bait, and then in one strong swoop he would pull her in through the Veil and take her for his own. He would strip that silver energy from her one bit at a time and delight in the feast.

  Satisfied with that plan, the Spinner sent a tendril toward his own mortal body. Things there were normal, or as normal as could be. It was night where his broken body resided, and his mortal shell would be left undisturbed for some time.

  He would make the best use of that time in the woven world. He focused his mind to begin the siphoning process, leeching off some of his own etheric energy and feeding it into his newly-made reservoir. Once the feed was established, he partitioned a section of his mind to focus on regulating the flow, so that he didn’t accidentally burn himself out.

  Then, he focused his remaining control and energies toward sending tendrils of thought and control toward the nursing home. He traveled through the woven world, following the streets and paths that shadowed those of the mortal world.

  Once there, he floated into the woven world’s replication of the nursing home and moved toward the main office.

  There, an employee sat at a desk, entering commands into a computer. The Spinner settled in over the young man, and established a thin needle of energy and will and used it to pierce the Veil in such a place that the young man, even if he had looked up, would not see it.

  As it was, the young man seemed distracted and was pitifully easy to influence. He sent the needle of his will into the Veil, pierced it, and then gently drove the etheric energy into the man’s mind.

  The man suddenly shifted in his seat and scratched at the crown of his head, but the thought-needle was securely in place that no amount of physical action would dislodge it.

  The Spinner pushed the needle in deeper into the core of the man’s thoughts and aura, and then spread additional tendrils out into the man’s brain, monitoring some areas and taking control of others.

  He had to be careful what areas to touch and which to leave alone. The first few minds he had tapped into hadn’t been strong enough to stand up to his novice pokings. He had accidentally killed a number of experiments via seizures by hitting one part of the brain or another with too much energy or focused thought.

  He had a much lighter touch now, though, even though he found that using a lighter touch also took time, and sometimes time was a commodity he did not have a lot of. The brute force approach worked just fine for most of his purposes.

  But, this boy was fortunate. He was in no rush to capture the young woman. He had time to gather his strength, complete his research, and plan his attack.

  The Spinner took control of the man’s mind, and directed his thoughts and hands toward the computer, encouraging him to call up the secure database of the home’s residents.

  He would seek out and find the family connection to that girl with the silver energy. And once he found that connection, he would exploit it so that he could destroy her and take her etheric power for himself.

  Chapter 41

  I HUNKERED AS BEST I COULD on the bricks in the Canal Center amphitheater, wishing I could sink down into the ground to hide from Miss Chin’s fury.

  “You must hear what I am saying!” Miss Chin moved into view from behind me where she’d been pacing. The green glow of her warding dome flashed behind her.

  “These powers and energies you’re playing with—they are dangerous in the wrong hands and lethal in the hands of someone who knows how to use them.” She ran a hand along the back of her neck as she sighed in frustration, then settled onto the ground in front of me.

  She clasped her hands together, the emerald rings on her fingers glittering in the lamplight. “I must emphasize that had things gone just a little differently, you or Abbie, or perhaps both of you, might have been killed or worse. You didn’t even have a ward up to protect yourself during the meditation.”

  I was in a full sulk at the moment, barely listening to her. “Come on, what could be worse than death? Death’s pretty much the end of things, isn’t it?” I tried to keep the snotty tone out of my voice, but I was pouting and hurt and just wasn’t feeling much like being helpful. “We were fine. I just lost control for a second.”

  She shook her head. “Rachel, I cannot stress enough the danger of these energies you are throwing around willy-nilly. A trained expert of the mysteries of the Veil and of the ley threads, such as the being you encountered within the Veil, would need but a moment to drive an etheric spear through your mind and soul to utterly destroy you from the inside out.”

  She cast her big brown eyes on my face, caught my eyes, and held the look. I broke off the contact and stared at the bricks underneath us to avoid the awful look on her face.

  The look that told me I had failed her.

  I shook my head and then started to stand. “I…I’m sorry I’m not good...”

  “Sit down.”

  Those two words held more power than I could have ever imagined, and there was that same weird echo to them, like the voice she had used last night. And just like last night, I sensed the weight of her presence press down on my control. My body responded to her compulsion to sit.

  Wide-eyed, I stared at her. I certainly hadn’t intended to, but I had found her command helpless to resist.

  She looked at me with her large, sad eyes, and nodded as she saw me make the connection.

  “Yes, I commanded you to sit, using my voice and an application of the etheric energies under my control. Do you understand how powerful this is—what we can do?”

  I stared at her, wanting to be pissed off, but just feeling really tired. “But...how?”

  “You’re out of control, tired, and above all else, unfocused.” She sighed. “If you want to continue training with me, I absolutely will continue to train you, because you have more potential than I have seen from anyone in a very long time.”

  She raised an elegant finger. “But. You must learn to control your impulses. Doing what you did last night was both foolish and irresponsible.”

  I opened my mouth, but she shifted from holding up one finger to a full spread of her hand. “No. Just listen.”

  I clamped my mouth shut, waiting for the inevitable lecture. I remembered how this was played. My mother had worked this scene with me more than a few times.

  “One of the most important guidelines we must follow is t
hat we do not harm others, and we do not put others into harm’s way by using our abilities.”

  I raised my hand meekly, thinking that would be more effective than blurting out the first thing on my mind.

  “What?”

  I took a breath. “Isn’t just training me putting me in harm’s way?”

  She shook her head. “That’s a different issue, Rachel. I hope you can see that.” She added, “We must be aware of our surroundings at all times, both here on the mortal plane and in the Holding.”

  I frowned. “What? The Holding is a place we can actually go to?”

  “Of course. What did you think it was?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it when an answer didn’t present itself.

  She said, “The Holding is another realm, a shadow of this mortal one, and is the waypoint on the other side of the Veil between here and What Lies Beyond.”

  I remembered part of this discussion from earlier. She continued. “It is a place we can reach by piercing the Veil and passing through it from this mortal world into the Holding.”

  I frowned. “And why would we want to visit the Holding at all if it’s as dangerous as you say it is?” I suspected I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  She shook her head. “Visiting the Holding isn’t dangerous in itself. Crossing over is the hard part, as is meeting souls in the Holding who do not want you there.”

  That sounded ominous. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  She sighed. “Sometimes those lost souls simply want to cross over the Veil and lose themselves in the Holding. Sometimes they want to leave the Holding and come back to the mortal realm. Regardless, Beacons guide them and help them let go of their mortal memories and move on to whatever next lies on their path as travelers.”

  I slumped back, utterly exhausted from the talking and the enormity of what I had somehow gotten involved in. “This sounds like an incredible amount of work.” I could feel the whining starting to seep into my voice, but I was so tired, I didn’t really care.