“Jennie, calm down,” Baxter soothed. “There’s no one there.”
The words cut through Jennie’s anger instantly. Confusion filled her face as she spun to face Baxter and looked at him as though nothing in the world could have been crazier than what he had just said.
Yet true enough, when Jennie turned once more to where Zhao had been, there was no sign of him.
“What the…” Jennie muttered, flushing with embarrassment for the first time in years. “How?”
The spectral woman stared at her knowingly. “Look inside you, dear. It’s amazing what imagination can do, is it not?”
Jennie caught her breath and heard Zhao inside her head once more.
If you play with my head, I’m going to play with yours. His laughter was abrasive, grating inside her mind. Amazing what a little cognitive manipulation can do, isn’t it? You may think you see me, but can you really trust your eyes now? What’s the difference between reality and the images I put inside your head?
She blinked and Zhao was sitting right in front of her. Jennie reached forward and swiped her hand through nothing.
Baxter let her go, a concerned expression on his face. “Jennie? What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Jennie nodded slowly, unsure of how to answer. No, she didn’t feel okay. Zhao was well and truly in her head, and she needed to find a way to catch him and expel him from her thoughts.
Also, the world was on fire.
The spectral woman laughed, apparently pleased at the state of things before her. Jennie’s eyes locked onto her, and an idea clicked into place. “You’re coming with us,” she ordered.
The woman’s face fell. She pushed backward and tried to fade through the walls, but Jennie latched onto her. “Nice try.” She turned to face the others. “This shitshow has officially been upgraded to a clusterfuck. Assemble every available man, woman, and specter, and bring them back to Red Hook.” She sighed. “I’m sorry Rhone, you’re going to need to update Jack and Ruby so they can inform Lionus. Wait, before that, call Daggro. We need greater SIA intervention, and I don’t trust that little weasel as far as we can throw him.”
Rhone looked crestfallen but nodded nonetheless. Triton took a step forward. “Even with all of that, are we going to have the numbers we need to stop the spread of this chaos?”
Jennie considered this, still finding it hard to shake off Zhao’s thoughts inside her head. She was aware that he would be looking in on her, but that didn’t matter. It might do him good to know the forces that he was messing with.
“I’ve got a contact,” Jennie announced at last. “You guys probably aren’t going to like this, but we need all hands on deck.”
She felt Zhao’s curiosity peak in her mind. That’s right, baby specter. You’ve kicked the wrong hornet nest. You truly have no idea what and who you’re messing with here. Level up, baby. It’s game time.
Richmond, Virginia, USA
The expressionless women led them to the outskirts of the city. They stopped for no one, forcing civilians to move out of their path. Their pace didn’t falter, and the journey felt like it took forever.
Lupe complained, “Can’t we just strap them to the hood and let them point the way? It’d be faster.”
Tanya laughed. She had no intention of exiting the car to grab them. For all she knew, that could snap them from their reverie, and her curiosity was raging. Somehow, she knew this was connected to the specter they’d witnessed last night and the explosive sounds of the quarry.
A fact that was confirmed when they passed a road sign reading, “Richmond Quarry Site: 1 mile.”
“What the hell is going on over there?” Tanya muttered.
The city dissolved behind them, opening out into the rolling hills surrounding the city. They passed fields and farms, heading ever closer to the quarry and its relentless drilling and humming of machinery. There were more people gathering along the roads and paths and walking toward the quarry, each with that same blank look in their eyes.
Sandra retreated into her chair. “I don’t like the look of this.”
“Me neither,” Tanya agreed.
Jiao watched with fascination.
They decided to park a short distance from the quarry and walk the last few hundred meters. The quarry was easy to find. They simply followed the incessant noise from the machines. Soon they found themselves at the top of a hill, overlooking a large man-made cut that had been dug into the ground.
It stretched for half a kilometer in either direction and was about as deep as it was wide. A sloping haul road wide enough for the machines to pass two abreast connected the upper level to the bottom of the cut, its surface smoothed from the heavy vehicles that passed up and down.
They inched on their stomachs and peered over the edge of the rock face, seeing a smattering of people gathering on the quarry floor almost directly beneath them. The drill on the opposite face of the cut continued working as if the operator hadn’t seen the gathering people. The loader/drivers similarly continued to remove the rock as it was cleaved into manageable chunks, seemingly unaware of the danger they posed to the people nearby.
The strangest part of it all was that the possessed—for what other word was there for them?—all looked in the same direction, facing the wall that was directly below Tanya, Lupe, Sandra, and Jiao. They couldn’t see the point of fascination from their vantage point, but something in Tanya’s gut told her it probably wasn’t good.
Lupe squinted, his lips moving silently as he counted the number of individuals. “Twenty-three so far. Twenty-three standing there. And, look, more are coming. What is going on here?”
Jiao answered. “They’ve found something. Something in the rock.”
The possibility had crossed Tanya’s mind. Through her years of research and dabbling with the knowledge of the spectral realm, she had come across various pieces of research detailing old relics that had been dug up from the ground. Many linked back several hundred years, some even further than that. Each had some remnant of spectral energy which, until Jennie revealed the spectral realm to her in its entirety, had remained nothing more than a mystery.
“We need to get down there,” Tanya urged, her eyes tracking the additional possessed slowly making their way into the quarry. “We need to see what they’ve found.”
“But how are we going to get down there?” Lupe asked. “What if they all turn on us at once? What if whatever’s making them do this decides they don’t like us meddling? What then? Are we going to leave Hendrick all alone in the manor, locked away in his lab while the city goes insane?”
Tanya smirked. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, dude. We don’t know that’s what’s happening.”
“Of course that’s what’s happening,” Lupe replied. “Think about it, in the last few months, has anything ever been a case of being simple and easy to solve? No. We’re tied in with Jennie. Everything we do is fraught with danger. We can’t even buy chocolate fro-yo without fear of getting attacked by specters.”
Tanya raised an eyebrow. “You really loved that fro-yo, didn’t you?”
“It was the best!” Lupe replied, a little loudly.
They ducked their heads for a few minutes. When they thought they were safe again, they peeked back out.
It was strange that the work appeared to be continuing while the possessed gathered. Surely that would increase the chances of accidents down there? Perhaps a rockfall, or a landslide, or a piece of machinery going rogue and turning one of the possessed into pulp?
Lupe narrowed his eyes, then sighed. “We have to call Jennie. This is too big for us to—”
Tanya shushed him with a finger and pointed down below.
Madame Celestine walked out from the rock face below them, appearing before the possessed with her fingers laced behind her back. Her hood was lowered, leaving her silver hair flying gracefully behind her in the wind. She studied each person in turn and, although they couldn’t see her face, they were sure that her eyes wou
ld also be as blank as the possessed.
“What is she doing?” Sandra muttered.
No one replied. They simply watched as she patiently waited for the others to finish walking down the road. Lupe counted thirty in total before they were all in position, and then a strange thing happened.
The sky darkened, and the world around them appeared to slow for a moment. The sound of the machines was suddenly muted, as though they’d been plunged underwater and could only hear sounds as fuzzy shapes. They turned their heads upon seeing a dark rippling shape speeding down the access road toward the quarry.
The shape looked like a boiling cloud of darkness. An orb with feathers of dark shadows streaking behind it. Where it sped, the air rippled around it like tarmac on a hot summer’s day. It traced its way down the access road and found its target by launching into Madame Celestine, much in the same way it had attacked the previous night.
Madame Celestine’s body jerked. Her head lowered, then raised to the others. A voice that wasn’t her own started to speak.
Just then, their hearing returned to its former clarity, and the sound of the machines kicked back in. Tanya’s heart sank. They could only make out the tone of the voice coming from Madame Celestine, but not the words.
The possessed stared obediently at Madame Celestine before she turned on the spot and walked back into the rock face below them. The possessed fell in line, trailing behind Madame Celestine like ducklings following their mother.
Then they were gone.
They waited a long moment before anyone moved. The machines hummed on as if nothing had happened.
Tanya was the first to speak. “We might as well go back to the manor. There’s nothing we can do here without Jennie.”
Tanya, Lupe, Sandra, and Jiao racked their brains to try and find some kind of plausible explanation as they returned to the car, their silence breaking the minute the doors were closed and they felt safe once again. Tanya kicked the car into action and sped away from that place, knowing that if they stayed any longer, something drastic might happen. Not that anything drastic hadn’t happened, but how the hell did they approach and handle this?
Lupe stared at the quarry through the rear window. “I have so many questions.”
“Join the club,” Tanya replied.
“We have to tell Jennie,” Sandra urged. “She’ll know what to do. She always knows what to do.”
Tanya looked at the girl in the rear-view mirror. “She’s clearly busy, Sandra. We can’t trouble her with this, too.”
“But this is huge!” Sandra complained. “Even if she can’t come back, she’ll be able to help us out, surely? There’s a power we don’t understand down there. I felt it. It was unlike anything I’ve felt before.”
Lupe remained tight-lipped, deep in thought.
Tanya knew Sandra was right, but there was a reason for her hesitation to call Jennie. It wasn’t just that Jennie was busy, she also hated being a burden on the woman. She’d come to know Jennie as a friend, and she couldn’t understand her work ethic. How she had so much energy and resilience to dive into one problem after another. Tanya had only been along for the ride for a few months, and she was already exhausted. She wanted to protect Jennie where she could.
Jennie doesn’t need protecting. This is her life.
She knew Sandra was right. Things were evolving fast in Richmond, and action needed to be taken before it was too late. For all they knew, the whole city could be possessed in a matter of days. What then? What would Jennie have to return to?
Tanya sighed and tapped her phone. She put the call on speaker and waited for Jennie to answer.
A part of her hoped she wouldn’t. Yet, after a couple of rings, Jennie spoke to the car.
“Hello? Tanya?”
Tanya looked once more into Sandra’s eyes before answering. “Hey, Jennie. Er, I think we’ve got a problem.”
Jennie gave a short chuckle. “I was wondering when you’d call.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
New York City, New York, USA
Jennie hung up the phone and allowed herself a moment to think.
How had it become so messy so quickly? Less than twenty-four hours ago, their worries had been small. Zhao had escaped, but there was little more to it. Now, not only were they being beaten to the finish line in every direction they ran, but parts of the country blazed, and Tanya and Lupe were in trouble down in Richmond.
We have to upscale, Jennie had thought after Tanya had informed her of their situation. We’re too small for this kind of operation. We need people covering every site and working together.
She had placed another two calls after getting off the line with Tanya. The first had been to Daggro, detailing the information that Jennie had and demanding deployment of more troops. Daggro had been hesitant, even more so when she realized the information hadn’t come first-hand from Lionus, but she had agreed to move the agents into action.
The last call was one she hadn’t thought she’d be making for a long time. Every time she thought she was free of reliance, she found that that wasn’t quite true.
Jennie pushed aside her misgivings. It’s all teething problems. Every organization needs help in the beginning. Besides, they promised. We made a truce. We’re all in this together, at the end of the day.
Jennie had made her requests to the last person she wanted to request from. Surprisingly, the call had been amicable, and help was promised. When she was finished, she strolled back to the others and found Baxter.
He looked at her with something like sympathy. “Is it done?”
Jennie nodded and rested her head on his shoulder for just a moment.
Buckingham Palace, London, England
The last thing Queen Victoria had expected that afternoon as she strode across the lawns of the palace, was to be notified by her valet about a phone call from America.
Things had grown dramatically quieter since the business in London and Virginia with Rogue. The wheels of the world turned and, while there was still trouble across the globe, Victoria found herself able to enjoy a time of relative peace in her own territory.
Victoria hiked up her dress and walked briskly toward the large doors and made her way through the palace. Still catching up with modern times, Victoria preferred to take her calls on the landline in her boudoir. She took a seat by an ornate golden dresser as she pressed the phone to her ear.
She had to admit that she was surprised. Genevieve’s words were even and measured, and Victoria knew things must be serious if she was reaching out and asking her for help. After the fuss they’d made in Virginia and the paperwork they’d all signed in Washington, she had assumed they would go their separate ways, and that would be that. Genevieve would claim her prize, and all would be well.
For a short while, at least. The idea of one day reclaiming ownership of the globe hadn’t faded from Victoria’s mind, although at that moment, her priorities lay elsewhere.
When she placed the phone down, she thought a long while. Her two meat-head guards flanked her, and she could hear Elizabeth addressing her mortals somewhere in the palace, away from the hidden corridors and chambers that allowed the SIS their access to Victoria without arousing suspicion. It seemed a shame that Victoria’s heir to the mortal throne didn’t have the powers of conduits, but such things couldn’t be rectified, she supposed.
When an agent appeared in the doorway, Victoria spun toward her. She was younger than Clark and Tiptry had been, yet she had earned her reputation as a formidable leader of the SIS in the days and weeks that had followed their deaths. Agent Harrie Sturgeon stood to attention and greeted Victoria with a bow.
That was one thing Victoria liked about the new head of the SIS. She had manners and courtesy. Knowing one’s place was something that seemed to have been lost in these modern times.
Victoria let Agent Sturgeon hold the bow a second longer before giving her permission to speak.
“You wanted to see me, Your Majesty?” Stur
geon asked.
Victoria gave a curt nod. “It seems our friends across the Atlantic are in something of a pickle. They have requested our assistance in a matter that is rather pressing.”
Sturgeon nodded. “I’m assuming this is to do with the bombings along the East Coast?”
Victoria looked at her, impressed. “How did you know?”
“It’s all over the news,” Sturgeon replied respectfully. “Covered by every major news channel.”
Victoria spun slightly in her chair. “Do we believe it’s a spectral issue?”
Sturgeon considered this. “Authorities are reporting no sign of mortal involvement in these cases. I think it’s wise to assume specters have been utilized to trigger the bombs and remain out of sight of the mortal eye.”
Victoria imagined the scenario all too clearly. She recalled similar occasions where conduits who had discovered that specters could do their bidding had used them as a way to get off scot-free from destructive crimes.
“Do you wish for me to deploy the troops?” Sturgeon asked. “I can have every available unit mobilized in a couple of hours. We could be on US soil before midnight.”
Victoria chewed her lip. There was a bubble of anger in her stomach that hadn’t faded since she had been forced to pick up the pen and sign the peace treaty with the United States and Genevieve King. She had ignored it and focused primarily on her issues with the Empire, cleaning up minor political scrapes occurring around the East India Trading routes, as well as a territorial scuffle that had briefly broken out in Australia, yet the pang of rejection still hadn’t entirely faded.
Part of her wanted to teach Genevieve a lesson. To say, “No, this is your fight to deal with. You wanted freedom, you’ve got it.”
Yet, there was something about the girl she couldn’t let go of. At her heart, Victoria was a mother. Her maternal instinct refused to give up. She retained her pity for Genevieve, and it left a morsel of care and consideration for the girl. As much as she wanted to strike out in anger, she had to protect her own.
Agents, Agreements and Aggravations: In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service™ Book Three Page 27
