Song of Ariel: A Blue Light Thriller (Book 2) (Blue Light Series)

by Mark Edward Hall

  Then she’d saved his life in Jackson. She knew it hadn’t really been his life alone she’d saved. In shooting that guy off the running board of their truck she had most probably saved both their lives. But the fact was, if it hadn’t been for her he wouldn’t even be alive.

  And then he had betrayed her. From the time Jason had met Danielle, Charlee knew that Jason was no longer hers. Yes, she had acted bravely in that tobacco field by shooting those militia guys, and then later, after Jason had healed her, she had actually jumped out of an airplane. She’d done none of it out of bravery, though; the truth was, she’d done it all for him. And now he was back there working side by side with the woman who’d come along and swept him off his feet, the woman Charlee wished was dead.

  “Yeah, sure I’m scared,” Johnny replied to Charlee’s question. “Everything and everyone in the world has gone crazy and there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it.”

  “Are you my babysitter?” Charlee asked. “Is that why they left you here with me?”

  “They didn’t leave me here with you. I just didn’t volunteer to help them. This isn’t my fight?”

  “But that big police detective, Jennings, said it was everybody’s fight.”

  “I don’t care what he said. I didn’t ask for any of this?”

  “But you have one of those objects.”

  “I didn’t ask for that either. Trust me, if I had it to do over again I never would have gone out to California and met with that old scientist.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything,” Charlee said.

  “For me it would have. I wouldn’t have to be here. I wouldn’t have to be dealing with this shit.”

  Charlee was silent for a long moment. Finally she said, “What do you think those people out there want?” She cocked her thumb toward the entrance door.

  Cobain sighed and put his head back against the chair. “The obvious answer, I suppose, is that kid. Buy maybe that’s not all they want.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Cobain reached in his pocket and drew out his artifact. He and Charlee both stared at it. “Somebody killed that old man for this thing right in front of me. Maybe this is part of what they’re after.”

  “You really think so?” Charlee asked, brightening.

  “I don’t know. I’m just talking trash.”

  “Maybe not,” Charlee said. “When I touched the one Jason has, I saw Ariel. “I saw a bunch of other shit too, stuff I can’t explain, and it scared the crap out of me.

  “Yeah, me too,” Cobain said. “I never want to see that stuff again. I never want to think those thoughts again. It was like all this science shit was just flowing into my brain and I almost couldn’t handle it. The scary part is I think it changed me in some strange way. I just can’t explain how.”

  Charlee stared at him. “Are you seeing anything right now? I mean, you’re holding it.”

  He shook his head. “Funny, but no. Nothing. It’s like it’s turned off or something. Supposedly these things were brought here by aliens, you know.”

  “You believe that?”

  Cobain shrugged. “That’s what Shutzenberger said. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “Can I hold it?” Charlee said.

  “I thought you didn’t like the things you saw.”

  “I didn’t . . . but you’re not seeing anything right now. I just want to see if it’s different with me.”

  Cobain coughed out a disconcerted little laugh. “Be my guest,” he said. “Maybe you’re the one who should have had it in the first place.” He handed the object over to Charlee. Charlee’s eyes glazed the moment she took it.

  CHAPTER 40

  Ice Caves. Northern Maine Wilderness. July 6th.

  In the control room Eli watched the monitors while everyone else pitched in removing rubble. Every minute or so he shouted updates. The landing troops were no longer encountering heavy resistance. At least that was the impression Eli got. Through all the smoke it was hard to see anything clearly, and now night was beginning to fall. That news was bad enough but there was worse. There were soldiers moving in their direction, and without the shelter of foliage it wouldn’t be long before they spotted the entrance door. Once that happened it was just a matter of time before they broke through and entered the caverns.

  As he watched the action outside, he could not help but wonder how five of their group had vanished without a trace. First Nadia, and then Dr. Randal, and now Annie and Ariel, as well as his own best friend Danny Wolf. They were all gone, maybe dead. Eli did not want to think about that, so he meditated and concentrated on his breathing. Determined that he would keep a rational face on the situation, Eli was not one who ever allowed panic to get into him and work its terrible magic. Even so, he couldn’t help feel twinges of raw fear. And something else too. He felt deeply that there was some exterior force trying to worm its way into his consciousness.

  He set these uncomfortable thoughts aside and concentrated on Ariel. If she was gone, or dead, then all of this was for nothing. Eli hadn’t known Ariel existed until yesterday. Now he felt he’d known her forever, as though she had always been a staid presence in his life, leading him to this very moment in time. He felt a species of love for the child that he could not adequately describe. He’d loved before, and at times—much to his dismay—had hated in equal measure. But he had never felt the sort of emotions he experienced while in the presence of the child Ariel. She had put her arms around him, touched him with her tiny, delicate hands and he had changed. He did not yet know the extent of those changes, but he was sure that given time—which was not guaranteed considering their grave situation—he would understand why this was so. The thought of not going with Ariel to wherever she was destined to go sent waves of depression rippling through him. It was like nothing he had ever before experienced.

  As these thoughts and emotions played through his mind, he concentrated on remaining in that meditative place he always went when he began to feel a loss of control, that place where calm and reason overruled all other emotions. And as he did so, a reservoir opened up inside him and a voice began to speak.

  “I thought you said you knew how to defeat them?” a breathless Rick Jennings said as he and Doug slid a huge slab of granite out of the way. Just beyond them toward the back of the cavern Jason and Slim were wrestling with their own half ton slab of rock. To their left Laura and Danielle were collecting smaller fragments of stone and stacking them out of the way. All the while Laura was wary and watchful, keenly aware of the gun on her hip, even as she privately grieved for the fate of her beautiful and talented husband.

  “I’m working on it,” Doug replied.

  “Don’t you think it would be nice if you let us all in on the little secret?”

  “I told you, I’m working on it,” Doug reiterated. By the tone of his voice everyone knew his nerves were frazzled and his patience was wearing thin. “Let’s find Annie and Ariel first, okay?”

  “Doug, this isn’t funny.”

  “No shit.”

  “If you’re thinking about blowing the perimeters, it’s too late. I think that explosion set them off.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So what the hell are you thinking?”

  Doug did not reply.

  Jason, hearing the exchange, stopped his work, turned toward Doug and in a tentative voice said, “Danielle told me you talked to Annie while you were out?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Doug kept working. “Positive. Why?”

  “Because I was aware of your dream in some strange way.”

  “Really. Please explain?”

  “I already told you about the episode back in the tobacco field where Ariel spoke to me. Actually she more than spoke to me. She opened something up in my mind … I don’t know, maybe in my soul. It was like I had this reservoir I didn’t know existed and she filled it with her knowledge. But it was more t
han the knowledge of how to save Charlee or of what would happen in the immediate future. Now I can see and understand things like I never could before.”

  “You think that’s why you were aware of my dream? Because of this . . . gift you got from my daughter?”

  Jason hesitated. “Maybe. I don’t know.” The look on his face was so serious that Danielle stopped her work and went to him. She stood before him for a moment before putting her arms around him and hugging him fiercely.

  “I think I know where Annie is,” Jason said.

  Danielle let go of him and backed away. Doug abruptly stopped his work and turned to face Jason. Sweat dripped from his brow and his eyes hardened.

  Doug said, “If that’s true then why didn’t you say something before?”

  “Because it just occurred to me. Since all this started my thoughts and emotions are different than they’ve ever been. I’m not sure I can even trust them.”

  “So let’s assume you can trust them.” Doug said. “Where do they say Annie is?”

  “In the web.”

  “The web? What do you mean by that?”

  “The light. The Blue Light. The wormholes.”

  All work stopped now as a slightly embarrassed looking Jason became the focus of everyone’s attention.

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Well, because . . . hell, this is really hard to explain. I just know it’s her, that’s all.”

  “So she’s not dead?” Doug said.

  “I can’t answer that,” Jason said. “If she is dead she’s not dead in the way we think of death. I know what you saw while you were out. And I know that Annie saw it too. She said not to have doubts; that it was real, but that it was only one of several different outcomes. It is real only if things here go a certain way.” Jason hesitated as everyone continued to stare at him. “I don’t understand what any of that means, but maybe you do.”

  “She told me the same thing,” Doug said. “Tell me what you saw.”

  “You were standing on the roof of a building or maybe a balcony of some sort, and you were looking down on a crowd of people. A small blond man was speaking to them . . .” Jason’s voice trailed off.”

  “Doug stared. “And when did you say this occurred to you?”

  “Just now. Listen, I told you I didn’t actually hear Annie’s voice, but I knew it was her. It was like the entire episode just happened to land in my head all at once. Like a computer download.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “What you saw had something to do with ‘visitors’. They arrived at midnight on July 4th, and they’re doing their best to help us, but a lot of what happens in the next few hours would depend on us. Annie said she was okay and not to worry about her.”

  “Visitors?” Danielle said. “What does that mean?”

  “You know what it means,” Slim replied. “You read your grandfather’s file and you heard what Ralph Little said.”

  “Aliens?” Danielle asked Jason. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “This is all so impossible.”

  “Maybe in the world we used to live in,” Doug said. “We don’t live in that world anymore.”

  “You knew about these . . . visitors, didn’t you?” Laura said to Doug.

  “Rick and I have suspected for a long time that that place beneath the ice caves wasn’t built by human hands. What Jason said is correct. When I was out I saw a strange little man talking to a crowd of people, reassuring them. It has to be the same man Jason just mentioned. He said there were others like him out in the world trying to make things right. He called himself an emissary. The important thing is, we’re being helped. Or we will be helped. Or maybe we won’t. What we saw was both real and not real. But enough speculation. We need to move. Annie said to find Ariel and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  “Holy crap,” Eli said exiting the control room. “We’re about to be breached. Spencer’s out there, and we all know what he came for. And there’s this woman with him. She and a group of soldiers are moving steadily toward the entrance.”

  “What woman?” Doug said.

  “Come in here,” Eli said. “You can see her on the monitors.”

  Doug frowned in irritation and dropped his crowbar. He followed Eli into the control room and said, “Damn, I don’t believe it. “That’s Greta. De Roché’s right hand witch. Annie told me she was dead, that Joe Remy, her father’s dog handler put a bullet in her on the night she escaped De Roché Manor.”

  Jennings said, “What the hell is she doing here?”

  “Don’t have a clue,” Doug said. “I imagine De Roché sent her. She’s wanted to get her hands on Ariel since she found out Annie was pregnant.”

  “She’s here for more than Ariel,” Eli said. “That woman came for the artifacts.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just know.”

  “Not good enough, Eli.”

  Eli sighed in frustration. “You know what Spencer did to me and Danny and the other kids in that Apocalypse Island facility. He and his MK-Ultra whackos spent years brainwashing us, feeding us radiation, shooting electricity into our brains and bodies. They screwed us up so bad it’s a wonder any of us even survived. They taught us to read other people’s thoughts. Even tried to make us kill with the power of our minds. As a result, I know Spencer like few people know him. I know instinctively that he hates and fears that woman. He would like to kill her but she won’t let him. He’s powerless in her presence. She wants the artifacts and she wants Ariel.”

  “I should have killed that bastard years ago,” Doug said, speaking of De Roché. “Neither he or that witch will ever lay a hand on my little girl.”

  “Bet your ass they won’t,” said Jennings.

  “Ariel’s okay,” Eli said.

  “What?”

  “She’s okay, and so is Danny.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” Jennings said.

  “Something happened while I was watching the monitors. That thing that Danny and I have, courtesy of Spencer, allows us to communicate in a way the rest of you will never understand. Danny got through to me and said he and Ariel are okay. He said she wants us to stop wasting our time trying to get to them and take care of ourselves before it’s too late. She knows that woman’s out there and she’s afraid.”

  No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.’

  Jennings frowned. “What the hell was that,” he asked Eli, “Another one of your clever Buddhism’s?”

  Eli smiled. “It’s a Buddhism for sure,” he said, “but this time it came from Ariel.”

  Danielle stepped toward Doug. “Who the hell is that woman?”

  “Five years ago when we were forced back into Annie’s father’s world she was there, fawning over his every desire. She did everything for him. You can guess what that means. I didn’t like her and neither did Annie. It was as if De Roché had her under some sort of spell. Annie’s mother had been murdered and no one seemed to care, least of all her husband. I always suspected that bitch had something to do with it.”

  “She’s lived a long life,” Eli added. “Maybe hundreds of years. She’s had many names. There’s some sort of terrible darkness inside her. She may not even be human.”

  “You got that from Danny?” Laura said.

  “Yup. Via Ariel.”

  Jennings glanced over at Eli skeptically. “Hundreds of years? Not human? Are you out of your mind?”

  “This isn’t my trip, Rick, it’s yours. You’re the one who loaded me into a paper kite and flew me into an alternate universe. I’m just going with the flow, here, coping the best way I know how. Everything I just said came from the mind of our little messiah. Do you trust her, Rick?”

  Jennings glared at Eli. “Damn right I trust her. She’s amazing.”

  “Okay then, stop being so damned pig headed and get with the progra
m. Ariel wants us to keep that woman away from her at all costs.”

  “You said she’s had many names,” Danielle said to Eli. “Is she still Greta?”

  “What difference does it make?” Doug said.

  “Please, just humor me.”

  Eli said, “These days she goes by the name Angelica.”

  Danielle almost stopped breathing. “Oh Christ,” she said.

  “What?”

  Danielle gave a brief rundown of what happened on the day she found the object in her grandfather’s house, and how that night she had called her boyfriend Greg in Boston and knew instinctively that he was with a woman named Angelica. “Something in the way Greg spoke and acted told me he wasn’t right in the head. I think he was somehow under her spell. And I knew this because the object was telling me. It said to get as far away from that woman as possible, that she was after the object. It was part of the reason I took off and headed west. I had never felt so driven. That night the pathogen struck and the world went belly up. It was totally bizarre, totally creepy.”

  “Listen up,” Eli said. “Spencer has about three hundred troops on the ground. “They’ve wiped out all the remaining Brotherhood security. But Spencer’s choppers didn’t stay on the ground. They’re all back in the air.”

  “So?” Jennings said.

  Eli glanced hesitantly toward Jason. “You’re a soldier,” Eli said. “You could probably explain it better than I could.”

  Jason said, “If what Eli says is true, in ten or fifteen minutes another swarm of choppers from an opposing force will be within range. My guess is they’re carrying some heavy ordinance. First thing they’ll do is strafe the area with mini guns in an attempt to take out as many of Spencer’s ground forces as possible. They might even use something heavier. Depends on how stable the forest is after that initial blast. No one wants an out of control forest fire. Spencer’s choppers didn’t stay on the ground because they’ll have a better strategic advantage in the air. If they remain on the ground they’ll be sitting ducks. I think the next few minutes will see an air war between Spencer’s and the opposing force’s choppers. I don’t think anyone knows how that will turn out. Some will get through, that’s for sure. The ones that do will offload troops and there will be a major ground operation, which, might be a good thing for us.”