There was nothing more to say, so Waters simply nodded and made her escape from Martelli’s office. As far as she was concerned, being ‘well advised’ wasn’t the same as being ordered to stay away. And her workload was heavy, but it didn’t use up all her free time. Her cheerful attitude resurfaced as she made her way back to her cluttered cubicle.
I can use the paranormal study as an excuse to go back over there. Tell them it’s just a follow-up. That’ll give me an excuse to get to know them better. I might even get laid—Mark or Lisa, doesn’t matter which. I’m fairly sure I felt some interest from both of them the last time…and hey, what better way to get to know somebody than with a wild party in bed?
She shivered at that—partly from excitement, partly fear. She’d felt their sexual interest, but she’d also felt an undercurrent of power, and a strong, predatory vibe. I might get laid, she thought. On the other hand, I might get vaporized. But if that happens, at least I’ll die knowing I was right.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Wake-Up Call
Six months later, Sparkling Waters still hadn’t gotten laid, but neither had she been vaporized. She had, however, developed a rather strong friendship with Mark and Lisa—to the point where she was dropping by to see them two or three times a week for lunch, dinner at an upscale restaurant, or just an afternoon chat. They seemed to run Charon’s Ferry on a very relaxed schedule and always had time for her—often unannounced—visits.
It was a new experience for her. She’d spent much of her early life on her own, trusting no one and wary of close relationships. Then she’d joined LEI, where everything was strictly business—for the most part cold and impersonal. She didn’t know why she’d gotten so close to the odd-ball couple, but she found their company not just pleasant but warm and reassuring.
That was surprising, considering what she knew about them. She hadn’t mentioned it again to Martelli, but with every visit to the Ferry she was more certain she was right.
Meanwhile, she was still a working girl, and Martelli had plenty of work for her. Some assignments were less enjoyable than others…
Waters’ face had that distant, distracted look—what the Shooters called the “thousand-yard stare.” She looked around the warehouse but didn’t seem to be aware of her surroundings. “It’s not here…”
“Where did it go?” Burch demanded. “You said it was here a minute ago.”
“That way…back door. It crossed the alley. It’s in the next building.”
“The factory?”
“Yes…It knows we’re after it. It’s going up the stairs to the second floor.”
“Chief, Alpha Team,” Wilcox said into his hand-held. “It’s on the move. Waters says it’s now in the factory. We’re going over there.”
“Roger that,” Martelli’s voice crackled in their earbuds. “We’ll reposition to cover the exits.”
“Stay here,” Wilcox told Waters. “We’ll call you when it’s over.”
“But…”
“If it’s going upstairs, it can’t get away. We’ll take it from here.”
“But…”
“Look, Waters, we’ve been over this. You don’t have a license; you’re not a Shooter. You’ve done what we needed you to do. The thing is nasty—when I take it down, I don’t want to worry about whether you’re in the line of fire.”
“But…”
“Stay here!” he ordered. He and Burch were already headed for the door.
Waters swallowed hard. This was not her idea of fun—alone in an old warehouse, unarmed, in the middle of the night. A few lights were on over the main aisle, but the rows of containers made for dark, narrow corridors along each side.
Nervously, she moved back to the center of the building. Her special sense told her the thing was still in the next building, now moving to the third floor. There were no walkways connecting the buildings above ground, so it shouldn’t be able to get back without going past the Shooters, but…
She wished she were somewhere else. She wished she were anywhere else.
“Moving to the third floor, Chief,” Wilcox reported. “Still no contact, but first and second floors are clear.”
“We’ve got the first floor covered,” Martelli advised. “Going up to second, but we’ll hold there until we hear from you.”
Burch nodded to his partner. They had studied both buildings for the mission brief. There were only two stairwells, and the north one was locked during the night.
It was moving up again…now it was in the open, on the roof. Her roof! It was coming for her!
Waters shivered in terror as she heard the crash of breaking glass, followed by a thump on top of a container as the creature dropped through the shattered skylight.
Got to let them know!
She tried to retrieve the handheld from her shoulder bag but fumbled it. The radio slipped from her hand and hit the concrete floor with a crash. She scrambled to pick it up, tried to make a call, but it was dead.
It’s coming! The thing was down at floor level now, moving in her direction. It was between her and the door, cutting off her escape. She caught a glimpse of the hideous creature as it crept into the main aisle.
She turned and ran down one of the dark corridors between the stacked containers, hoping it hadn’t seen her. A forlorn hope. Her sense told her it was aware of her, was stalking her, taking its time because it knew she couldn’t get away.
“Where the hell is it?” Burch scanned the factory roof. There was no hiding place.
“We couldn’t have missed it,” Wilcox insisted. “Unless…oh shit!”
He ran to the parapet wall on the south side of the factory and looked down into the alley. Nothing.
“The fucking skylight!” Burch pointed across the alley to the warehouse building, where light streamed up through the shattered structure. “It must have jumped over the alley.”
“No way!” Wilcox muttered. The other building was at least 40 feet away.
“Chief!” Burch was already on the radio. “It jumped across to the warehouse roof. Looks like it went in through a skylight. Waters is over there…by herself!”
“Son of a bitch! Move! Back to the warehouse!” Martelli issued orders to his team, then addressed Burch again. “We were already up to the third floor! We thought Waters was with you! Get your asses down here and back us up!”
The corridor was a dead end, the huge steel containers stacked within inches of the concrete wall. Their sheer sides offered no handholds to climb. Sparkling Waters was trapped, and now the creature was coming down the long, dark lane toward her.
She let out a shriek of terror—soundless, a cry of despair from her soul, not meant for human ears.
Mark sat up in bed, suddenly wide awake—echoes of a desperate cry for help ringing in his brain. He turned to find Lisa sitting up next to him, staring at him in wide-eyed concern.
Sparkle’s in trouble!
Her lips didn’t move, but he clearly heard the declaration.
Big trouble! And a long way away from here. Around him, the bedroom began to dissolve in a crimson fog. His initial feeling of helplessness was gone, replaced by a terrible resolve.
Not on my watch…
Nor on mine. I’m gone…Lisa disappeared as the crimson fog thickened.
Right behind you, Babe…
Waters sobbed in terror. The creature was almost on her, no more than a few steps away, its long arms spread wide to grab her if she should try to escape. There was no escape; she was about to die—horribly, if the condition of its last victim was any indication.
Suddenly she heard a sound—not a growl, more like a subsonic rumble, felt more than heard—from behind her. She spun around, and her heart nearly stopped at the sight. It was so big, so close she couldn’t even make out its form, but she saw the eyes, glowing brightly in the darkness.
Huge eyes, set wide apart, looking down on her and the creature from well above. The eyes were a deep, crystal blue, and looked very familia
r.
Then a second set of eyes—steel gray in color, but also somehow familiar—appeared beside the first, and the subsonic rumble came again. Remembering the threat, she turned back to the creature in front of her…and found it backing away, making wet, snarling sounds. Suddenly, it whirled and bounded away down the corridor—and she felt, rather than saw—the great bulk that went thundering past her in pursuit of the beast. It reached the end in an instant and slithered around the corner in the direction its quarry had gone.
Sensory overload took her. The last thing Waters remembered as she slid into darkness was a huge pair of clawed hands closing around her waist.
I’ve got Sparkle. Can you deal with that thing?
Oh, yeah…got it cornered. You’re mine, fucker…
Sparkling Waters lay curled up in a fetal position, unconsciously sucking her thumb in the middle of Lisa’s oversized bed.
“Heart rate, BP, respiration,” Mark said. “All normal, or close to it.”
“No injuries I can see,” Lisa reached out to gently stroke the younger woman’s hair. “Poor kid just got scared out of her wits. What the hell was that thing, anyway?”
“No idea.” He shrugged. “But it won’t be bothering her or anybody else again.”
“What did you do to it?”
“I’m not really sure. All I know is that it suddenly ceased to be a problem.”
“Holy shit!” Special Agent Miller stared at the charred pile of skeletal remains on the warehouse floor. “What the hell is that?”
“That,” Martelli replied, “is what we came here to kill…or what’s left of it. The canine skull, the tail, the long arms—that’s it, all right.”
“Well, looks like somebody dumped a really big can of whoop-ass on it. Smoking hot, char-broiled instant barbecue whoop-ass, from the look of it.”
“Yeah…somebody…the question is who? I have a feeling we need to call Arcane Arts on this one. I hate to bring those people in—bunch of arrogant bastards—but there’ll be hell to pay if we can’t sort this out.”
“Chief, Wilcox…you’d better come over here,” the Shooter’s voice crackled in Martelli’s earbug.
“Did you find Waters?”
“Well…yes…no…not exactly. You need to see this.”
“I think we’ll just let her wake up when she’s ready, but…” Lisa looked up at Mark, “what just happened here?”
“Don’t know,” he admitted. “She called for help—from about forty miles away—we woke up, and the rest is…we did what needed to be done. We rescued her.”
“Yeah…we rescued her. She was forty miles away, like you said. We just went there, we dealt with the problem, and now she’s here. What’s it been—about two minutes since we woke up? How did we do that?”
“Don’t know,” he said again, “but it felt perfectly natural at the time.”
“The same for me…and that kind of scares me.”
Mark looked down at the young woman curled up on the bed.
“Hmmm…I’m pretty sure she was dressed when we got there. What happened to her clothes?”
“You’re right...” Lisa looked puzzled. “She was dressed. I guess I forgot to bring them. I’m kind of new at this stuff, you know.”
“That’s her clothes, no question,” Wilcox said. “But…she’s not in ‘em. It’s like she just vanished. I mean…there’s a pair of panties inside those jeans—wet panties. Looks like she peed herself.”
“This is her pad,” Martelli examined the smart phone/computer pad he’d pulled from Waters’ canvas shoulder bag. They’d found it on the floor beside the pile of clothing. “So where did she go?”
“That’s typical of an unschooled amateur dabbling in the arts.” Madame Rousseau wore a sour look on her face. “They don’t gather themselves properly before they teleport—things get left behind. It appears, Mr. Martelli, that you have a rogue magic-user on your team.”
“And that,” Simon Webley insisted, “is a problem. Practicing magic without a license is a serious matter. She’ll have to face the consequences—whenever you find her, of course.
“This is the least of the problem.” He waved a hand at the pile of clothing. “That incendiary spell she unleashed on that creature is very disturbing. She might need disciplinary action—a psych adjustment at the very least—to make sure she never does anything like that again.”
“Wait a minute!” Martelli protested. “You don’t think Waters did this herself, do you? That’s impossible! She’s got significant talent as a paranormal tracker, but she’s not a magic user. I think somebody—or something—else got in here, wasted the target, and kidnapped her! I called you in because I want you to start looking for whoever did this!”
“What you think doesn’t concern us,” Rousseau told him. “This pile of clothing tells me all I need to know. When you find your missing agent—and I’m sure you will, unless you want to do a lot of explaining to the British Bitch—we will want to talk to her. And I think you should be planning to fill a vacancy on your team. Psych adjustments aren’t always effective, so we may have to take more…extreme measures.”
Rousseau and Webley turned and headed for the exit, leaving Martelli and his four Shooters standing around the pile of clothing. Halfway down the dark corridor, Webley turned and called back to them.
“Don’t disturb the scene,” he ordered. “Our analysis team will be here in the morning…and they’ll especially want to look at that thing’s remains.”
With that, they turned the corner into the main aisle and headed toward the exit.
“Hey, Sparkle…welcome back. Are you OK?”
Waters opened her eyes and found Lisa looking at her, concern reflected in her crystal-blue eyes.
Oh! Those eyes! She drew a sharp breath as the night’s events came back to her. Then Mark leaned in beside Lisa, adding his gray eyes to her blue.
“You gave us a fright, Spark. What were you doing in that place?”
“I was…it was…” Waters found herself at a loss for words. “How did you…?”
“We don’t know,” Mark’s brow furrowed. “You called, we came…don’t know how, don’t know what happened, but you’re here now, and you’re safe.”
Lisa studied her face.
“Why do I get the feeling you know more about what happened than we do?” she asked. “You look like a little girl who just got caught watching her parents have sex.”
“He warned me…” Waters stammered.
“Who warned you?” Mark looked puzzled.
“My supervisor. He didn’t believe me when I told him about you, but he warned me. He thought I was crazy, but he warned me not to do it. I screwed it up. I did what he told me not to do.”
“You did…what, exactly?” Lisa prompted with a gentle smile.
Waters looked thoroughly miserable. Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“I woke the dragons.”
About John E. Siers
John E. Siers is a Viet Nam-era Air Force veteran who spent several decades working as a software developer designing analytical systems for corporate clients.
An avid reader of science fiction since grade school, John started writing in the late 1970s, mostly for his own enjoyment. He wrote for more than 20 years and produced three complete novels before ever showing his work to anyone.
Escaping from the overcrowded northeast, John moved to Tennessee in 1997. Encouraged by friends, he finally published his first novel, The Moon and Beyond in late 2012, followed by Someday the Stars in 2013. The latter won the 2014 Darrell Award for Best SF Novel by a Midsouth Author.
John’s Lunar Free State series had grown to four novels—with no thought of doing anything outside his own comfort zone—when he encountered William Alan Webb at MidSouthCon in 2019. Bill led John astray…tempting him with visions of other universes—whispering names like Four Horsemen, Last Brigade, and finally…Hit World.
John succumbed to the temptation and The Ferryman is the result. He ha
s since entered a rehab program and produced a fifth novel in his own universe, but rumors have it that he has fallen off the wagon and has produced yet another Hit World story, soon to be released.
John lives with his wife, son, dog. and two cats in west Tennessee. In his spare time (what there is of it) he runs his own firearm repair and service business under the trade name of Gunsmith Jack. Readers can follow him on Amazon, Facebook, or his own website at www.lunarfreestate.com
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The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of the Chimera Company:
The Fall of Rho-Torkis
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Tim C. Taylor
Now Available from Theogony Books
eBook, Paperback, and (soon) Audio
Excerpt from “The Fall of Rho-Torkis:”
“Relax, Sybutu.”
Osu didn’t fall for the man steepling his fingers behind his desk. When a lieutenant colonel told you to relax, you knew your life had just taken a seriously wrong turn.
The Ferryman Page 27
