Beacon's Fury (Potomac Shadows Book 3)

by Jim Johnson

  I couldn’t let him get away, not again. Inspired by the ring of souls around me, I reached down deep into the ley grid at my feet, and with a last breath of defiance, opened myself up to that pure presence and power, and pushed it all toward the Spinner, determined to burn him down from where he stood all the way to wherever his mortal body existed.

  He had nearly pulled himself off the blade when he took the blast of my ley-fueled soul full in the face. His eyes and soul widened with surprise as my consciousness slammed into his.

  We twined our energies together and fought, a battle of wills long overdue. For the first time, I sensed something unusual—we were battling as equals rather than him having the upper hand again.

  And somehow he knew it. I continued battering him over and over, drawing on the endless ley power contained within the grid. He had access to the same power, and met me blow for blow.

  Back and forth we struggled, toe to toe, metaphorically. I had become a conduit for something bigger than myself. I felt a portion of my mind and consciousness burn away, replaced by something far greater and unimaginable that I could only guess at. It felt beautiful and pure and wholly divine, and it both terrified and elated me in equal measure.

  The Spinner sensed that change too, and cried out in despair. After that, with the pressure of our infinite power pressing down on him, the Spinner began to burn out.

  The divine fires passing through me and into him burned away his abilities, his strength, even his comprehension and sense of self. I latched onto his ley threads and led the pillar of downward into his very soul, tracking all the way back to earth to where his mortal body lay secured to a hospital bed in a shabby hospital room with one tiny window.

  In the final moment, I saw the Spinner for who he truly was—a broken man with a brilliant mind, twisted to evil by means unknown to me. As much as he had inflicted pain, he had received a lifetime of pain as well. For all the victims he had created, he himself was a victim.

  In that last moment, all I felt for him was compassion, and I sensed I had just enough time for one message.

  “I’ll light your path to the Holding, when you’re ready.”

  His mortal eyes snapped open and focused on me, and I saw recognition in those eyes.

  And then I guided the brilliant pillar of flame, that I had been made the temporary wielder of, into the Spinner’s mind and very soul. An etheric outline of the cathedral shone out all around me, and the voices of all those touched by the Spinner called out together in one glorious chorus. A descant of unearthly voices added to their song, drowning out all other sound and thought.

  And then there was light, and heat, and a fiery agony, and then blissful, total nothingness.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  A LOW BUZZING IN MY EARS sounded, and slowly, painfully, I regained consciousness. I was laying in the ley grid, the endless swirls of electric blue etherics all around me. I had the worst headache of my life, and found I could not focus my eyes at all. I switched over to my Sight, and found that much easier to manage.

  There was no trace of the Spinner or the glowing sword I had shoved into his chest. The etheric energies all around me rippled back and forth, slower and slower, until finally the ley grid was a still pool once more, full of power and potential.

  I sensed none of the souls around me, those souls that had gathered to pay witness to the Spinner’s last moments. I saw no trace of Charity either.

  And yet something had changed within me. I frowned, and pulled some ley threads together and scanned inwardly for some sense of the change. Parts of my mind had been altered, and I could only guess at the reason.

  I refocused my senses, and pulled myself up and out of the ley grid, and shot toward the surface, bearing toward that glowing beacon of light that was the National Cathedral.

  I reappeared in the center of the building, where Miss Chin, Malcolm, and I had fought the Spinner. I did not see either of them through the etherics, but I knew was not alone.

  Before I had a chance get my bearings back in the mortal world, I was encased by a powerful warding sphere crackling with electric blue energy. Half a dozen men and women, all wearing business suits and earpieces, stretched their hands toward me, weaving the etheric sphere all around me.

  I was stuck tight. Even with my enhanced senses and reforged Sight, I couldn’t break their hold on me. I tried switching to my regular sight, but saw only darkness. I reached up my hand to touch my face. The skin around my eyes felt hot to the touch, like I’d suffered a bad sunburn or worse.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Rachel. Let us help you.”

  My eyesight was gone, so I switched over to my Sight again. Through the etherics, the familiar silhouette of Agent Bello moved toward me through the cathedral debris. He took a few steps closer and stood outside the warding sphere his allies had erected around me.

  “My God, Rachel. What the hell happened to you?”

  I opened my mouth, closed it, then shrugged. “I’m not really sure, but I’m pretty sure the Spinner is dead. I think I sent him back to become one with the etherics.”

  Bello shook his head and gestured toward the wreckage all around us. “How much of a hand did you have in all this?”

  I shook my head. “Not a lot. Malcolm and I can be blamed for some of the damage outside, but the Spinner, he and Miss Chin went at it in here and wrecked the place.”

  He sighed. “We found her and Malcolm. He’ll be all right, but…I’m sorry, Rachel. Miss Chin is dead.”

  Somehow I had suspected that, even though I hadn’t sensed her passing. She hadn’t been one of the souls arrayed around the Spinner.

  “Can you take me to Malcolm?”

  Bello nodded and then passed a glance along his allies. “Drop the shield and start containment and clean up procedures. You know the drill.”

  The insanely powerful warding sphere around me snapped off and the agents moved away to tend to their orders. Bello reached a hand out toward me.

  “Here, let me help. Can you even see?”

  I shook my head. “Just within the etherics. I can’t see anything with my normal eyes.”

  He shook his head as he led me around the rubble within the cathedral. “Looks like your eyes got burned pretty bad. Just looks like scabbed-over scar tissue, to be honest.”

  I shook my head and stumbled against him, and then recharged my Sight so that I could use that instead. “I’ll figure something out.”

  I stopped and squeezed his hand. “Wait! Abbie and Bonita…they’re in the garden. They…”

  “Relax, Rachel. They’re both all right. Your warding sphere held. Kept them safe.”

  He grinned. “You have some natural ability with shielding that I bet you’re not aware of. One of our specialists analyzed it before dismantling it and was impressed.”

  “Uh, thanks, I guess? I don’t really know how to respond to that.”

  He nodded and then led me toward a semi-tractor trailer with a moving company’s logo on the sides. “Come on, you can come see them. We’re going to take you all to our facility for health monitoring.”

  “And some questions.”

  He shrugged. “Naturally.”

  I sighed, and then stopped so that I could glance back at the cathedral with my Sight. The building still stood, despite the holes in the walls and the broken windows. “How bad’s the damage?”

  He glanced at the cathedral and shrugged. “Most of it is cosmetic, fortunately. Some windows damaged, the doors, some walls and arches. The building inspector’s on the way, but I’m confident the old lady will stand for a while longer. It’l be expensive as hell to repair, but I guess since the place had a long-term repair job underway, it’ll just take longer to complete.”

  I nodded. “I guess so.”

  He nudged me. “Come on, let’s go see your friends.”

  I let him lead me toward the trailer, though I wondered what would become of us now that the Spinner was gone. I focused on my friends ahead, opting to
look ahead rather than back.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  BELLO PUT US UP IN THE same suites as before, as guests of his agency for a few days. The official word was that there had been a construction accident at the cathedral. The statement said that the accident had resulted in more structural damage but no one had been harmed.

  Of course, both statements were bullshit, but no one called them on the press release. We all knew what the cost of the fight had been, but there wasn’t going to be an official acknowledgement of that cost.

  The Spinner, gone. Miss Chin, gone. Charity, gone. The rest of us, wounded but alive. My eyes had been burned to uselessness, and all the nerve endings around them shot to hell. I felt a numbness on my face, but that was all. The agency’s doctors said the skin would heal in time, but that I’d be physically blind the rest of my life. At least I had my Sight.

  And that other presence I had felt, had linked up with near the end of the fight, right before that incredible burst of radiant white light. I had some ideas about what that might have been, but needed some time and maybe a visit to a pastor or two before I would let myself try to make sense of it.

  Bonita was the first to be released, and she told me she’d see us soon, at her store, or wherever we wanted to catch up.

  Bello took longer to let go of Malcolm, Abbie, and I, though he held onto Abbie longer than needed more because she was my girlfriend, rather than having any more questions for her.

  Once he finally got some answers to his questions, thought probably not the answers he wanted, we left the agency’s building and piled into Malcolm’s car.

  Later, after some much-needed food, Malcolm, Abbie, and I stood on the front porch of Miss Chin’s elegant house in Del Ray, which was set back off the road a bit deeper than either of her neighbor’s houses. The indent gave us a little privacy.

  I reached out to the lock and flipped the tumblers with some carefully manipulated ley threads, just as Malcolm had taught me. I felt the mechanism unlock.

  I sighed, then glanced at Abbie and Malcolm with my Sight. “I guess this is it.”

  Malcolm nodded. “I can’t believe she gave us her house.”

  I shrugged. “Not so much gave it as loaned it to us. Grandpa got his lawyer to talk to Miss Chin’s lawyer, and it turns out that she put the house into some sort of trust. It’ll never be sold or rented, and we’ll be the caretakers of the place until we want or need to move on.”

  Abbie stared at me in surprise. I hadn’t had a chance to tell her the details. “No rent or mortgage payments?”

  I shook my head. “House is paid for. We’re just responsible for maintenance and upkeep, and even then, Miss Chin had a chunk of money set aside for just that purpose.”

  Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t get it. Why would she leave you, or us, the house, when she never really seemed to like us?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea. She was our teacher, though, our mentor, and I have to believe she did it for a reason.”

  Abbie squeezed my hand. “Maybe she left a note or something inside.”

  I nodded. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

  I opened the screen door, and reached out for the brass knob on the big wooden door. It opened smoothly.

  Mister Parkour, Miss Chin’s massive tabby cat, sat on the floor just inside the doorway. He stared at us and gave out a massive, imperious yowl, and then turned around and trundled up the wide staircase.

  Malcolm raised an eyebrow. “Oh, man. Mister Parkour is still here.”

  I grinned as the big cat disappeared from view at the top of the stairs. “He’ll keep us in line, I’m sure of it.”

  With that, I led Abbie and Malcolm into our new home and closed the door. There were lost souls waiting to be guided to the Holding, and more souls within the Holding to be led to their next destination, but for now, all was quiet, and all was calm. I promised I’d get to them all in due course. For now, it was enough to be alive. It was enough to be home.

  Epilogue

  A DISTANT BUZZING SOUND ROUSED THE Spinner to wakefulness, and in the moment or two it took for his consciousness to register where he was, he let out a long, silent scream that reverberated in his mind but brought no one to his side.

  He had been defeated, utterly and completely. That girl…the one with the long brown hair and the glowing crystal around her neck... He could not remember her name; could not remember much beyond that last brilliant burst of radiant white light. It burned away his abilities, his talents, and, apparently, much of his memory.

  He could barely even move his body. He focused all his will on moving his arm, then his wrist, then his fingers, but the best he could manage was a tiny tremor of motion in his pinky finger.

  He cracked open his eyes, seeing the same drab walls arrayed around him with their generic paintings and the endless varieties of medical equipment all around his bed.

  He was in the place he’d never thought he’d come to again, the place he’d tried so desperately to escape while in the Holding. He’d built that avatar to escape this place forever, but he had failed.

  He tried to crane his head back, to look up the wall behind him toward that tiny window set high up on the wall. He couldn’t do it. He was too tired, too infirm, to even be able to shift his head.

  Impotent and powerless, he screamed into his own mind again.

  There were several beeping sounds nearby, and it took him a long time to pull together the memory of an electronic lock. A combination being keyed into a lock. The lock on his door.

  The heavy metal door to his little room swooshed open, revealing a drab hallway beyond. A tall black man, bald and dressed in a navy blue suit, walked into the room.

  He tucked a plastic ID badge into his lapel pocket as the automatic door behind him cycled shut.

  The Spinner could not take his eyes off the man. He had no memory of the man, but was sure he knew him. He didn’t know from where or how, but the stench of familiarity hung all over him. It was maddening to not be able to put the pieces together.

  The man pushed the single guest chair in the room close to the bed and sat down, casually unbuttoning the button on his coat as he did so.

  The Spinner focused on the man’s face, but could not work up the energy to utter a word or to make a sound.

  The man smiled. “I see you both remember me and don’t remember me. That’s all right. You fought the good fight, and now here we are.”

  He had fought a good fight, but it hadn’t been good enough. That girl…whatever her name, had managed to thwart his every move. Whatever they had been. He couldn’t remember.

  The man seated in front of him sighed. “I’m really sorry that it’s come to this, but after reviewing your record and your file, it turns out there’s nothing more we can do for you. We had hoped you’d be the next big step toward a brighter future, but clearly, we made some errors along the way.”

  Had they? Had he? He couldn’t remember. He knew he had spent a lot of time working hard, and had interacted with a lot of people, but clearly it hadn’t been enough.

  The man leaned forward and patted his shoulder. “We thank you for your service and release you now. Rest knowing that your greatest accomplishment was to Awaken two very special people, who we’ll focus on now that you’ll be gone.”

  Ah, that’s something at least. Maybe he hadn’t failed completely. He wasn’t sure. He managed a smile for the black man, and hoped it didn’t look too out of place.

  The black man closed his eyes, and his grip on the Spinner’s hand tightened slightly. Within moments, the Spinner felt very tired and very relieved that his long fight against his own body was about to come to an end.

  He closed his eyes, and imagined himself floating in an endless current of electric blue swirls of energy. They roiled and coiled all around him, and he felt his consciousness float away along with their ebb and flow.

  He soon lost track of the feeling from his body, and then nothing matter
ed any more than to just be one with that glorious blue light, and he slipped into that moment and lost himself within the etherics.

  Afterword

  As always, thanks so much for picking up this book and trying it out. If you enjoyed reading this story, please consider leaving an honest review and rating on Amazon.com. Until a better system comes along, word-of-mouth and a body of reviews remain the most effective means of discoverability for books and writers.

  I love to hear from my readers, so feel free to drop me a note at jim@scribeineti.com and let me know how you’re doing. Alternatively, if you’d like to send me a postcard of the cool places you’ve been or where you live, send them along to the address listed on the copyright page. I’ll share the most fun cards on my blog.

  I trust you enjoyed your time peeking into the shadows, and truly hope you’ll return.

  Jim Johnson

  July 2017

  Alexandria, VA

  Acknowledgments

  As with any book, it took a team to put this one together, and this is where I get to thank those responsible for helping me bring this one to you. Huge thanks to my cover artist, Lou Harper, who patiently worked through my many notes and delivered three great covers for the trilogy. And thanks to my fellow Literary Outlaw and friend, Kevin G. Summers, for preparing the layout for the print edition and offering sound advice along the way.

  To all the beta readers who read this manuscript in its various formats—thank you for your comments. I didn’t use all of them, but you all helped make this a much better book.

  Thanks also to the members and participants of various and sundry writing groups and discussion forums out there on the wild world interwebs, notably the Writer’s Cafe at www.kboards.com, the members of my private Pulp Speeders group, the 20booksto50k crew, and countless other writers and readers who I’ve interacted with over the years. I’ve learned from you all, whether you knew it or not. Even those of you I don’t like all that much, because we learn as much from our differences as our similarities.