* * *
Wall-of-gold-comes-up-to-a-man-and-says-what-do-you-get-when-you-cross-an-Academy-graduate-with-a-golden-calf?
Man-answers-I-don’t-know-and-the-wall-smashes-him-into-the-floor-and-says-to-the-barkeep-gild-the-lily,-baby.-Gild-the-lily.
The voice came like a fast coastal wind carrying licorice sand and salt and seawater that drove into Vallon and left her skinned raw and trying to understand as…
Janet Hunt drives her Focus along the rain-drenched two-lane road. Her headlights shimmer on the slick foliage to either side. Clouds obscure the hulking presence of the mountain before her as the shimmer on the wet spruce and pine increases. Light, not headlights, turns golden and she slows the vehicle, aware something is wrong. Sniffs, and suddenly the vehicle windshield disappears.
Rain slaps her face and gets in her recently-permed hair and it pisses her off because something is happening/has happened/is about to happen.
Slows her car and the concrete pavement shivers. Trembles. Undulates like a quake-snake-shake and—is gone.
Hot metal wheel under her hands, hot springs poking through her seat, and the scent of licorice so thick she can’t breathe. She -reaches- into the soil, but can’t find what is happening. Just heat. Licorice stench. Coming from everywhere. -Reached- into the earth to smooth the landscape back into place, but nothing happens.
The metal sears. The plastic steering wheel melts under her hands.
“Shit,” says the mouth that butter wouldn’t melt in. Outta the car and springs away. Turns back when she slips into loose soil up to her knees. How did she get here? Mesmerizing white lines on dark pavement. Knows she made a mistake coming. Coming alone. Getting out of her car and trusting she can handle anything thrown her way. The trees have gold halos around them as they wink out of existence.
The wet slop she stands in quivers and dances and her car’s headlights shake,rattle,roll, as something hauls the rear of the car down into the earth.
Headlights stab sky and glare off raindrops, and what was hard stone that held her softens and she sinks up to her waist. Afraid she sinks up to her breasts, swimming in the damn stuff and swearing as she hauls out her phone. Get a warning out. Sliding up to her neck, one arm stabbed up to keep the phone free. Static and then ringing, ringing, ringing.
“AGS,” a voice answers, but Janet Hunt’s mouth fills with mud that runs unbidden down her throat, stoppers her ears, her nose. The headlights stab upward and in fear her final gaze follows. Sees.
Something new under the night sky.
“Vallon! Damn it, Pigeon, come on back, girl.”
“I told you, you shouldn’t move her. Her neck could be broken. She should be headed for a hospital.”
“You want to answer EMT questions?” Deep booming voice.
Wet cloth on her face. Vallon struggled up from the oddest set of dreams and found herself stretched out on a hard surface. Floor, her mind categorized. Gleason wouldn’t let her be moved. Soft dabs of a cold cloth on her head and the almost non-existent scent of almonds told her Landon was here. And Moore. That was the other voice.
She opened her eyes and found a circle of faces around her. “What?”
“It’s all right, Drake. Damn chair apparently went crazy. You hit the wall.” Gleason peered down at her as she tried to sit up, and the floor shook.
The room had strange halos around the lights, the faces, their eyes. Halos on tree branches and a sense of change. She shivered, clamped her eyes shut a moment because two scenes juxtaposed across her vision.
The war room, filled with concerned faces.
Mount Rainier with a new mountain spur where the town of Wilkeson used to be.
A pulse of power ran up from the floor and she scrambled to her feet and stood swaying, waiting for the signs, the horrible licorice scent. Was the AGS next?
“I need vellum and pen.”
Floor tiles stayed the same. She looked up when she realized her ragged panting was the only sound in the room.
“Drake? You sure you’re okay?” Gleason’s assessing gaze cut through her, but his voice told her the correct answer.
Nodded even while the top of her head felt like it came off and her brain melted through her ears. Didn’t they feel it? No one brought her what she needed. She grabbed the wreckage of the chair, found another pen, more vellum in the console.
“Pigeon, maybe you should lay down for a few minutes.”
She held up her hand to stop him, trying to steady her vision, her connection to the landscape around Wilkeson.
“Janet. Have we been able to contact Janet—Agent Hunt?” She searched from face to face to face. “Shit, maybe there’s still time.”
The wrecked chair was no hope. She ran for the map pit, leapt down even though the delicate map wasn’t meant for someone’s tread.
“There’s been a massive change, or is about to. Hunt went out to check it. She was down by Rainier.” She spread the vellum, uncapped her pen, -reached- even though the clarity of the vision was compromised by the halos across her sight.
“Look! Can’t you see?” So clear. Bright flashes of earth power. A huge fissure in the landscape. The map changed. Earth rose. Wilkeson wisped away like sand in the wind. Trees multiplied on a ridge.
Vallon fell to her knees. Started to draw the landscape as it had been.
Gleason must have seen something in her face. “Get Hunt on the line,” he yelled.
Vallon plunged into the earth’s crust, sped away southeastward. Found the heat, the change. Hunt.
Had to find Hunt. Had to save her. Sketched the road, the town.
There. Flickering flame. Vallon wrenched at the earth surrounding the woman. Tore it away in great sheets of mud. But Hunt only sank. Mud into soil. Hard-packed and firm. She pulled power from the soil and redirected its moisture. Sent the water away like an upwards rain.
Licorice sent groundwater pouring in.
She grabbed earth power and formed dams against the river of water, but an opposing force melted them away with the heat. Heat from deep in the earth.
“Damn it. This isn’t gilding the lily!” She didn’t even know what it meant.
Her hands shook when she tried to push her hair from her face. Even her fingers had halos around them that seemed to suck at her mind, tug her down into the mud like Janet. She could barely see what she drew.
The room was silent. All she saw were two huge feet at the edge of the pit and then Gleason’s knees popped as he stepped down and knelt in front of her.
“What did you say?” His lips had gone white.
She stayed focused on the battle for Janet. Just shook her head and plunged deeper, after the heat. After whoever was doing this.
The mud. The mud. Sucking her down. Janet going under holding her phone. Finger hitting the emergency button as her head went under. Burning. Burning subsonic vibrations in Vallon’s flesh, bursting her apart. She had to get free.
Janet? Where was Janet?
Her flame faded out and now the Licorice woman caught Vallon and hauled her down. Or was it the earth itself grabbing hold of its own. Taking her back to its breast and crushing the life out of her.
No breath. No life. Too deep, and she had no control here, no chance of life. She screamed and threw herself back.
Snapped through soil and rock and dropped the fire-hot pen in time to hear Gleason.
“Where the hell’s that phone line with Hunt?”
“Gone.” The certainty was like a searchlight’s glare flavored with licorice that made Vallon gag.
“So, Gleason? You lose another agent now?”
She looked up at the new voice. Tall, smooth-skinned man with golden hair, but the air was dark around him. Not Gifted. Beside him stood a thin, birdlike man with a predatory razor stare pinned on her. She wished she had the strength to move.
She rubbed her eyes against the crushing pain, the afterburn, the overwhelming sense of failure because Janet was dead and gone, and tri
ed to free herself of the sensation that someone had walked over her grave.
Someone other than these strangers was watching. And because she’d gone too deep, someone knew what she was thinking.
That someone was feeding her an afterburn so debilitating Vallon could barely breathe.
Chapter 14—The Unsteady Earth