Vallon stood in the doorway to watch Landon walk down to the waiting van, lugging the bag filled with her ink supplies and the old tomes from her office. She hid her fury by lifting her hand to him as the driver pulled away from the curb. Hugged herself against the cold that was more than the cold air, and that placed a thin coat of brittle ice on the bushes next to the front door.
She would make this work. She would.
At least they hadn’t searched her person, and Landon had barely even seemed to notice the air thick with power in the basement. Perhaps his sensing of it was limited to sensing the Gift’s use of power. That was something to remember.
She listened to the sound of the rain on the leaves and the hissing, rush hour traffic from downhill. In the half-light of falling dusk came the heavy scent of lake water, and from a distance the grinding sound of the locks that kept Puget Sound out of the string of lakes that filled Seattle’s heart. For a moment she wished she were on one of the boats sequestered in Lake Union. The water would muffle the Gift and she would set sail and head out to the sound and beyond. Maybe go to Canada and beyond the reach of the AGS.
She hoped.
But that was silly. The AGS filled a necessary role; otherwise the rampant changes would cause immeasurable damage to the very fabric of society. It was those sorts of changes that had led to the economic crash of the Great Depression, though history books remembered it differently. But rampant change cut at the very core of things. Change the land and you change the people on that land. Change the people and you change what those people do, what influence they have on society. Change too much of that and there is nothing left but a hollow shell of what had been before. And chaos. They had watched the grand experiment of the USSR
What had happened there could happen here, if the AGS didn’t keep a watchful eye.
Like she was being watched? Were there watchers on the watchers?
When she -reached- she knew her Gifted intruder was just down the hill. She stepped inside and quickly shut the door, fighting back the impulse to just march out and confront him. He’d just disappear like before.
Call the cops?
Like that would help.
She went back to the kitchen and pulled out her pad. She’d underlined the connection between Fi and the garage so many times she’d actually worn through the paper in spots. That was where to start. A safe place because Fi had come to her, had tried to warn her about something.
Once she’d learned what Fi knew, then she could circle around the bastard who watched her and come at him from a direction he wouldn’t expect—sort of like triangulating a peak from surrounding mountain tops.
She grabbed another jacket—three-quarter length leather — and headed out to her car, purposely ignoring the flare of Gifted that came from the powerful, foreign-built, black SUV parked three cars down from her Subaru. Not AGS, that was for sure, even though the darkened windows of the vehicle masked the presence of her watcher. His unfriendly gaze set the afterburn flaring like sunspots.
She slid behind the wheel. Fi was obviously on the street, so where would she be in this weather? Huddled in an alley somewhere? At one of the shelters? It was doubtful she’d be in Fremont; the area had become too upscale trendy to tolerate many homeless.
Downtown then.
She started the car and headed south towards the towers and Pikes Place Market. Panhandlers frequented the area because of the tourists, even though the City policed it rigorously. The area around Pioneer Square was another possibility. So was the older part of town around Seattle Center and the space needle.
Too many areas to search visually.
She pulled into the curb and watched in her rearview mirror as the big black SUV came up behind her and passed, the driver still invisible. Awareness of his flame seared through her even though she was afraid to -reach-. In the flow of traffic and with the one-way streets, he’d be forced to go a fair distance before doubling back, so she could lose him if she took off quickly.
She watched him turn down the street two blocks away and tucked her Subaru back into traffic. Passed the street and turned away from the direction he’d gone. Turned again and she was heading back the way she’d come, so surely he wouldn’t find her.
Zoomed down Broad Street toward the water.
“Take that, Mr. Watchman.” Thumped her palm on the steering wheel and turned south again on Alaskan Way by Pier 66 and under the overpass by the glass-fronted World Trade Center.
She dipped her car into one of the few spaces where you could see the open water of Elliott Bay and its huddled masses of container ships. The wind whipped over the promenade that led down towards the numerous tourist shops and restaurants along the water. She had to find Fi, and the only way she was going to do that was to search in her own way. She -reached- struggling through the blockage caused by the nearness of the water—and and the city became a constellation of gleaming beings, flame varying in color from barely a glimmer to the vibrant golden flashes that were the sign of the most Gifted—not that most of them knew that they were.
The flames drifted and flowed like foam on the sea of lesser flame that was the whole of humanity. Strange. She’d never noticed before how the Gifted seemed to form shoals in certain parts of the city. Yes, there was the presence of the AGS like a lighthouse in the fog and yes she could feel the presence of the Academy in its rolling treed setting east of Redmond, but even here in the city there was a shoal of flames around Pioneer Square, another around the Space Needle and the Music Experience museum, and still another located near Pike’s Place Market. Even more strange, for those places catered to the more bohemian of Seattle. The artists and lost hippies—and street people.
But it was Fi she needed to find. She sifted through the sensations that accompanied each small flame and focusing on the smooth mint and licorice feel of her friend. There. Brick.
Vallon took a chance and dove into the earth doing something she had only dared once before from the safety of her basement—followed the bright capillaries of power towards her friend’s presence. Leapt free of the golden flow and saw through a haze like pitted glass:
Victorian brick.
Arches of glass.
An antique streetcar dinging past.
Cobbled streets and iron benches.
She knew that location. A deep breath and she pulled back and became aware she was still in her car. A black SUV slowed and stopped beside her car, blocking her driver side door.
“Dammit!” Anger cut through her. While she’d played around he’d probably used exactly the same method to find her and now he was here.
She had two choices. Abandon her car or ram her way through and destroy both vehicles’ quarter panels. She didn’t even know if her car could ram its way past the much larger SUV. Well, perhaps three choices. She could act totally unaware of him and simply politely ask him to give her space.
The afterburn part of her voted for the ram, but at least this time she was going to think about consequences. If she were going to stay under everyone’s radar while she did her investigation, she had to play it cool.
She beeped her horn lightly and eased the Subaru’s nose up the side of the SUV.
It didn’t move, and neither did the figure she could dimly make out through the tinted glass. That was possibly more chilling than if he had gotten out. What was the point unless he was trying to creep her out?
A warning?
Then the SUV’s side window slowly scrolled down and she got her first good look at her pursuer.
Dark hair as she’d thought, roughly cut chin length so it hung lank in eyes so black she swore they were pinpricks in space. Sharp featured like a hawk, and high, raked cheekbones. A solid, square jaw. A full mouth that, if she wasn’t so freaked, she might have thought kissable.
He made her think of North Africans, flowing robes and turbans. Who was that actor in Lawrence of Arabia?
Homeland Security would be very interested in this guy.
&n
bsp; His hard mouth curved slightly as the force of his gaze slammed into her. Power, so much power that even through the window she caught the feel of him—cedar and incense and desert heat. So much heat the afterburn flared up and torched her skin.
Burned brighter when he lifted a finger, hooked it at her in a clear demand that she approach, and the afterburn-induced terror burned through her because she almost obeyed. Wanted the power he had. Wanted to know and knew if she went, everything would change. And when had any change she sought ever resulted in something good?
She scrambled across the Subaru’s central console and half-fell out the passenger-side door. Terror sent her scrambling down the sidewalk, looking over her shoulder.
The dark SUV followed and where could she go? She slammed into the glass doors of the blue Bell Street Cruise Ship terminal and pressed into the fortunate crowd of tourists flooding back after their tours from the docked Norwegian ship.
When she’d lost herself in the crowd she turned back to study the door. -Reached-. Not near. Not here. Her heart pounded like a piston. What did he want of her? Why was he doing this? Her knees shook so badly she needed to sit down, but in this crowded hall of seniors, there were no empty seats.
She grabbed hold of a twist of radiant earth power and let it pour into her. The afterburn flared, seared like an electric shock, and her mouth tasted like ash, but there was nothing she could do about it now—short of taking one of the senior men into the bathroom and giving him the ride of his life.
Wobbling, she made her way back to the door and peered into the street. Why had he done that? What did he want? Judging by his haunted looks, nothing good, that was clear.
Could he be one of those terrorists Homeland Security so feared?
There was no black SUV in sight—at least not that she could see through the glare of headlights on rain-slicked streets in the leaden early evening. Girding herself, she stepped out into the salt-laden wind and headed back to her car. Night was coming. She didn’t want to meet him after dark unless she was ready, and that would require ink, pens and vellum she didn’t have.
At her car she shakily keyed herself in and then headed down to Pioneer Square.
The city changed from skyscrapers of glass and steel to four and five-story brick buildings that dated back to the birth of the 20th century.
Neon signs advertising ice cream, salt-water taffy, designer clothing, and antiques all bled into the twilight. She found a place to park and climbed out near the heritage building that housed Elliot Bay Books. The rain was falling harder; hard little pellets of sleet that pelted her head and made her hunch into her jacket.
She -reached- for Fi and felt her presence to her left, and followed along uphill from the water into a poorer area. More closed workshops. A few boarded up buildings, grass edging their foundations. No tourists. Just a few dark figures hunched as she was in the assault of salt-stained rain that now sheeted through the streetlights.
When she found herself facing a rain-stained red door in one of the boarded up buildings, she stopped. Fi was somewhere beyond, her licorice scent almost palpable on the air. Vallon hesitated, but she really had no choice. She rapped on the door.
Nothing, and then the rustle of movement. Her skin crawled with the sensation most people described as someone walking over their grave, but which she knew meant the presence of power. But the sound could be rats for all she knew. She huddled deeper into her leather jacket trying to find shelter in the lee of the building.
Then the door opened a crack and a miasma of pot smoke and a slice of ruddy light spilled out and sent her skin tingling. A single, dilated blue eye looked out at her.
“Yes?” The voice and the half a face she could see belonged to a young man with dirty-brown dreadlocks. He eyed her up and down, clearly assessing her clothing and that she wasn’t ‘from around here’.
Vallon shifted from foot to foot against the cold. Some of the raindrops were coming down white on her jacket. “I’m looking for Fiona—Fi—Murdoch.”
“Sorry. No one here by that name.”
Dreadlock started to push the door closed, but Vallon stopped him with an arm through the door. Caught his hand and felt the familiar flash of like to like. Gifted. It shouldn’t surprise her.
“She is here. She’s a friend of mine and came to see me last night, but we didn’t get a chance to finish our conversation. I need to find her.”
Dreadlock repeated his visual assessment. “You a cop?”
Vallon grinned. “Nope. I got my own beef with them.”
Still the door didn’t move.
“Listen, either call Fi out to talk to me, or let me in. It’s friggin’ freezing out here. You know?”
His blue gaze disappeared for a minute like a survey sighting removed, but he didn’t try to close the door. Then he stepped back and allowed her step past him, and shut the door behind her.
Cobweb-thick air closed in on her, brimstone-scented; far too similar to the basement of her house. She stopped. A single room, low ceiling lost in coils of smoke, but otherwise filled with a strange golden light. Candles at the edge of the room lit peeling, faded-blue paint on the walls, and on the floor old, occupied carpets and pillows and mattresses.
Flophouse, she categorized. The people here stoned out of their minds judging by the way they all were ‘on the nod’.
But not the usual flophouse, what with dreadlock guarding the door. The faces of Gifted—including Fi—looked resentfully up at her from their places like spokes of a wheel around something.
Curious, she stepped forward.
Normal logic said it was a simply a rift in the floor filled with shining water, but the intense glow told her it was something more. Heat radiated from it. The flowing substance not gold, not silver, but filled with the streaming of all colors and none, and releasing not brimstone—though that was the way her mind had interpreted it at first—but perfumes of rose and anise and coriander and clove.
She realized she was on her knees beside it. Had pushed her way through the gifted already there, reached and -reached- out to touch….
“Don’t!” One of the reclining street people knocked her hand away. “You’ll wreck it.”
She pulled her hand back. The speaker was a young Native man clad in a thread-thin grey t-shirt and muddy jeans. Matted black hair was pulled back from his face with a leather thong and decorated with a feather.
“And how would I do that?”
But his black eyes had already returned to the shining pool of what could only be the power she used so carefully.
“Can’t take a chance….” His words faded away into a sigh.
Vallon followed his gaze and -reached-. More power than she’d ever allowed herself to contact rammed into her like a sledgehammer direct to her brain. Afterburn roared and she collapsed onto her stomach, managed to claw her way forward, forward, for this was the thing she’d sought all her life. Warmth and welcome and being one with something greater than herself. She rubbed herself against the worn carpet, rubbed her thighs together.
Family and love and fucking forever.
The great golden pool opened perfumed arms. She could throw herself into its sweet embrace and be held safe and warm forever. Never have to care. Never have to worry. All the struggles to find belonging and it was always here. Always in the basement of her house and more than any person could provide. She could lose herself, become something else. Something more.
The afterburn urged her forward until she hung over the edge of the pool. Herself slipping away. Something else filling her.
Heat rippled through her and she reached for the Native youth, pulled him into her breast, wrapped a denim-clad leg around him and ground herself in. Inhaled his musky, unwashed body odor and wet hair and spruce as his mouth found her neck.
One with someone else. Afterburn demanded it. The only way to regain her equilibrium. The only way to be whole.
But Vallon Drake doesn’t need anyone.
Like a bolt, that thought cut through her lust and her need to give in to the afterburn’s demand. Incense filled her nose.
She shoved the youth away and fought her eyes closed. Then she lurched back, reared up on her knees and tore her gaze from the thing she wanted most in the world to see. Like tearing her heart out.
But the room shimmered and moved. Smoke coiled like snakes. Licorice. The heady perfume was lost. Licorice so potent it clogged her throat and cloyed her nose.
The shimmer increased, gathering the smoke in a twisting wind that guttered the candles and sucked at their flames. Sparks ran in veins across the painted walls and Vallon staggered up, all the room’s narcotic effects suddenly burned away, though the afterburn pulsed like a great beast low down in her body.
The glittering skein of lines in the walls increased.
Change. Someone was changing this place, and given the too-familiar licorice scent it had to be whoever had killed Simon. If this building changed, it could do the same to her and all these Gifted.
“Get up! You have to get up!” She grabbed the native kid and heaved him to his knees. He fought her, tried to pull her back down.
She slammed a fist into his gut and he collapsed. She whirled, seeking dreadlock who was seated with his back to the door, his eyes still glazed with the power. She grabbed him and hauled him up. Pointed to the walls.
“Look. Something’s happening. We have to get out of here. Get the others out.”
He shrugged her off, blinking at the growing eddy in the air, the shimmer in the walls that now cast chips of paint and moldering drywall loose. They joined a small maelstrom near the roof that steadily increased in size and power. The candles wavered.
“This whole place is going to change in a minute. If we don’t get these people out, they could all be killed.”
He looked at her blankly. “What are you talking about, man?”
He was Gifted, but only enough to see on his own and not trained enough to -reach-.
“Shit.” She grabbed the door, yanked it open and shoved him out. Turned back to the room and one of the candles fell over in the wind. The flame caught the edge of one of the carpets and flared in the old wool. New smoke, new light, filled the room and still the young people around the rift didn’t move.
“Come on! The place is on fire! You have to get out!” Fi. She had to get Fi out.
They barely stirred. She grabbed the native youth again and yanked him away from the rift in the floor, careful not to look at it herself.
Across the room the flames in the one carpet had spread to two more. They licked at the young people’s feet. Fi’s feet.
Vallon leapt across the glimmering surface and grabbed Fi, hauled her up, though the girl struggled against it.
“No! No! I have to stay. We have to stay home.” Empty eyes. A sharp fist caught Vallon on the temple and put stars in her eyes, but she didn’t let go.
“Dammit, Fi. Listen to me. The place is burning down and there’s change coming.”
Fi’s gaze locked on Vallon’s face and suddenly awareness flooded in. “Vallon?”
“The one and only, now give me a hand and don’t look at that thing in the center of the room.”
Fi’s gaze flickered to the pool and away to the flames, to the cloud gathering overhead. “What’s going on?”
“We don’t have time. Grab one of the others and get out. I’ll get everyone else.”
The smoke from the fire burned Vallon’s eyes. She shoved Fi toward the door and the woman slowly picked her way across the room. Grabbed someone and fought their protests, as Vallon did the same. Billowing smoke made it almost impossible to see and sent Vallon coughing.
She got the women closest to the fire moving, but others—the men—were too big. They refused to budge from the glimmering power. The walls shredded further. A fist to her face sent her reeling back. She came down hard against an upright and sank—right into the wall.
Chapter 11—Where There’s Smoke