"True," Henry agreed. "Well, here in the Cove we were into meditation, self-sufficient eco-living, serious philosophical inquiry and, oh, yeah, free love."
Vera rolled her eyes. "In hindsight I think it is safe to say that as far as the Asshole and the other men were concerned, it was the free love that was the big attraction."
"Which was probably what destroyed your community," Fallon said.
Everyone except Walker stared at him as if he had just spoken in tongues.
He shrugged. "Sex is the most powerful force in any social group. It has to be controlled and regulated in some manner or else it tears the fabric of the community apart. It's a fact that when a commune or intentional community disintegrates, it's invariably because of the sexual dynamics."
"Sure was fun while it lasted, though," Henry said somewhat wistfully. He winked at Vera.
"But it only lasted about six months," Vera said crisply. "The Seekers discovered what every other intentional community learns the hard way. Human emotions trump Utopian ideals every damn time."
"'Hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate,'" Isabella quoted softly.
"Yeah," Henry said. "Fallon's right. Turns out the free love thing is one of those interesting concepts that just doesn't work out in the real world. Anyhow, six months into what we called the Grand Experiment, we met at the Scar and officially dissolved the community. Not that there was much left to dissolve by that time. The Asshole was already gone. One of the women went with him."
Walker stiffened. "Rachel."
Vera nodded. "That's right, Walker. Rachel Stewart went with him."
"Tell me about the vault," Fallon said.
"Right," Henry said. "The vault. Well, it's all connected, you see. The black-ops people showed up about a month before Gordon Lasher and Rachel left. There were three of them. They weren't interested in the Cove. All they wanted was this lodge. It was empty at the time."
"What was it about the Sea Breeze that attracted them?" Isabella asked.
Walker rocked. "The vault."
Henry put down his coffee mug. "Like Walker says, they wanted the vault. Come with me. I'll show you."
Fallon set his mug aside and got to his feet. Isabella rose, too. Together with Vera and Walker they followed Henry through the kitchen and out the back door into the yard.
Fallon sensed Isabella heightening her talent. She halted abruptly beside him. He heard her take a sharp breath.
"See anything?" he asked quietly.
"Oh, yes," she said in low tones. "There is some serious fog out here. I've never noticed it before because I've never been behind the lodge."
"We don't bring a lot of people back here," Henry explained.
"Why not?" Fallon asked
Henry pointed to a large, circular steel plate set into the ground. The steel had to be three inches thick, Fallon thought. It was secured with a heavy chain and a lock.
"What in the world?" Isabella asked. "It looks like a large manhole cover."
"It's the entrance to what we call the vault," Vera said. "But it's actually an old bomb shelter. It must have been constructed sometime back in the late nineteen-fifties or early sixties. In those days a lot of folks believed that a full-on atomic war between the U.S. and what used to be the U.S.S.R. was pretty much inevitable."
"The real paranoids like the man who owned the lodge at the time built private bunkers underground in their backyards," Henry explained. "Stocked 'em with enough supplies to last a year."
Fallon studied the steel plate. "The hatch doesn't look that old."
"It isn't," Henry said. "The black-ops folks took out the old hatch and installed this one twenty-two years ago when they took over the lodge for a time. Guess they wanted something more substantial."
Fallon gave that some thought. "Most of the people who built shelters kept quiet about it. When the bombs started falling, they didn't want to have to fight off their friends and neighbors, who would all try to get into the shelter."
"Right." Henry squinted again. "You're wondering how the black-ops people knew about this shelter in the first place, aren't you?"
"The question does come to mind."
"I don't have an answer," Henry said. "All we can tell you is that they must have known that the shelter was here. Moved right on in as if they owned the place."
Isabella narrowed her eyes. "Sure sounds like someone set up a clandestine government lab here."
"A secret lab, yes," Fallon agreed. "But I doubt that it was connected to any of the standard issue intelligence agencies. They've got plenty of underground research facilities of their own. They wouldn't need to buy an old motor lodge with a bomb shelter out back."
Isabella beetled her brows. "I'm not so sure about that. Looks like a perfect cover to me. Just the kind of thing a black-ops project would use. And you said yourself this stretch of the coastline is a nexus. They probably knew that."
He looked at her. "I'm supposed to be the conspiracy theorist in this agency."
She smiled. "Learn from the best is my motto."
He decided the only thing he could do with that was ignore it. "Whatever the hell was going on here, I'm ninety-eight-point-five percent certain it was not a secret government lab."
"Hmm." She considered that for a couple of beats. "A private research lab, maybe?"
"I think so, yes," Fallon said.
"Under contract to one of the intelligence agencies?" she prompted hopefully.
"No." He tried to quell her with a warning look. "Just some private researchers who somehow got their hands on one or more of Mrs. Bridewell's curiosities."
"Ah," Isabella said. "So we're talking mad scientists. What about the funding?"
He abandoned the attempt to introduce a degree of logic into the discussion. "What funding, damn it?"
"Who financed this small, private lab?" she asked with an air of sweet reason. "Labs take money. Lots of it."
"I don't know who financed the project," he admitted. "But I doubt that it was the government."
Isabella was disappointed, but this time she stayed silent.
Fallon turned back to Henry. "You said this lab was only in operation for about a month?"
Henry scratched his ear. "That's all. Right, Walker?"
Walker nodded in his jerky fashion. "And then s-something real bad happened down there."
"Tell me about that part," Fallon said to Henry.
Henry heaved a massive shrug. "Who the hell knows? Whatever it was, it killed one of the three researchers. They hauled the body out of the shelter, threw it into the back of a van and drove off. Like I said, no one ever returned."
"Did they take anything with them in addition to the body?" Fallon asked.
Vera and Henry turned to Walker.
"Book," Walker said, voice ringing with certainty. He jiggled anxiously. "One of them had a book. Black cover."
"Sounds like a lab notebook," Fallon said.
"Like I said, they took off in a hurry," Henry said. "At that point we figured everyone in the Cove was probably walking six feet under."
Isabella stared at him. "You thought you were going to die?"
Henry grimaced. "Hell, as far as we knew it was a secret weapons research lab and something had gone real wrong. What else were we supposed to think? Figured we'd all been irradiated or poisoned."
"Of course," Isabella said, nodding in sympathy. "Those are certainly the first two possibilities that would come to my mind."
Fallon looked at Henry. "What did you do?"
"In another life I was trained as an engineer," Henry said. "I drove to San Francisco and bought a radiation detector and some basic soil, water and air-quality test equipment. Brought the instruments back here. Ran every test I could think of. There was no detectable radiation. No traces of any poisonous gas leaking out from under the ground."
"So you decided to go down and take a look, didn't you?" Fallon asked.
"Yeah." Henry shook his head. "Guess it was the engineer i
n me. I had to know what we were dealing with."
"A-alien technology," Walker rasped.
"I agree with Vera and Henry," Isabella said to Walker. "This looks more like a black-ops group conducting research on paranormal weapons."
Walker pondered that. "Alien paranormal weapons."
"Well, that's certainly a possibility," Isabella allowed.
With a valiant effort, Fallon possessed himself in patience. "What happened when you opened the shelter, Henry?"
"Hard to describe." Henry stared down at the thick steel hatch with a troubled expression.
Vera took up the tale. "He made everyone move several yards back before he raised the hatch."
Henry did not take his eyes off the steel lid. "Some kind of energy poured out. Felt like a strong wind but nothing moved. It didn't ruffle the leaves or my shirt or my hair. But it was intense and very disturbing."
"We all felt it," Vera said, "even though the rest of us were standing some distance away."
"Sounds like paranormal radiation of some kind," Fallon said.
"I couldn't handle the wind, whatever it was," Henry continued. "But the Asshole was still around at the time. He didn't seem bothered by it. Neither did Rachel Stewart. The radiation didn't seem to affect Walker, either. So those three went down into the shelter."
"What happened?" Isabella asked.
"When they came back up, Walker seemed to be his usual self."
They all looked at Walker, who rocked harder in response to the attention.
"I take it he was always like he is now?" Isabella asked quietly.
"Yes," Vera said. "Just the same. But Rachel and Gordon Lasher were terribly excited when they came up the ladder, especially Lasher. He was shivering and he could hardly speak."
"When he calmed down, he told us that he'd seen a lot of lab equipment down there," Henry explained. "He told us that there were signs of a violent explosion but that the place was so hot with some kind of energy that no one else should risk going down."
"He said we should let the shelter cool down for a few weeks or months before anyone went back into it," Vera said.
"By then I couldn't stand the guy," Henry added. "But I agreed with him."
"But the shelter has never cooled down, has it?" Fallon asked. "Paranormal radiation tends to hang around for a while."
"Yeah, I noticed that," Henry said. "The Asshole took off with Rachel a couple of days later. That was the last we saw of either of them. A few weeks after that I decided to try going down into the shelter. I made it as far as the bottom of the ladder. That's the last I remember."
"What happened?" Isabella asked.
"Damned if I know," Henry said. "I passed out."
Walker rocked harder. "The Q-Queen."
"When I came to, I was lying flat on my back on the ground up here," Henry said. "Vera and Walker were standing around looking down at me."
"How did you get out?" Fallon asked.
"Walker was with us when Henry opened the hatch," Vera said. "Henry went down alone and disappeared. We called out to him but there was no response. I couldn't get through the energy wind no matter how hard I tried. But Walker climbed down and brought Henry back out."
"Figure Walker probably saved my life," Henry said.
Isabella smiled at Walker. "You were a hero."
Walker rocked and looked confused.
"Yes, Walker was a hero," Vera agreed. "Afterward everyone who was left in town got together to talk about the situation. We concluded that we could not allow whatever was down there in the shelter to fall into the wrong hands. We also needed to make sure that no children or thrill seekers fell into the shelter."
"We get a few drifters through the Cove from time to time, as you know," Henry added. "Didn't want to take a chance that some of them might try to go down, either."
Fallon nodded. "So you locked it down."
"Figured if the government wasn't going to take responsibility for protecting people from whatever was down there, we would have to do the job," Vera concluded. "And that's what we've done for the past twenty-two years."
"Good plan," Fallon said. "Heavy paranormal radiation can have unpredictable effects. And if there are more of Mrs. Bridewell's nasty little toys in the shelter, we're dealing with some very dangerous weapons." He studied the heavy lock on the steel hatch. "I take it you have the key to this thing?"
"Sure." Henry reached deep into the pocket of his overalls and removed a large key. "I keep it with me all the time."
"I'll go down," Fallon said, "assuming I can get past the energy winds." He looked at Isabella. "If anything goes wrong, make sure this hatch gets closed and locked again immediately. Then call Zack Jones. You have the number."
"I think I should go down with you," Isabella said.
He said the first thing that came into his head. "No."
"You're not being logical here, Fallon," she said calmly. "You don't know what you're going to find in the shelter. You might need backup like I did yesterday, remember?"
"Not the sort of thing I'm likely to forget."
"I'm good at finding things," she insisted. "And there is something down there that needs to be found."
Fallon gave it about three seconds' worth of thought, but he only needed a fraction of one second to reach the bottom line. She was right. Her talent might prove useful. He pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to Henry.
"I'll go first and check the place out. When I give the all clear, Isabella will follow me. Anything goes wrong, seal the shelter again and call that number. Do it real fast."
Henry studied the card. "Who am I calling?"
"Zack Jones. Master of the Arcane Society. My agency's biggest client. Don't worry, Zack will take charge. He always does. It's a damned irritating habit."
13
Isabella stood with Walker and Vera. They watched Fallon and Henry open the shelter. The lock gave easily enough, but the men had to use a couple of crowbars to pry up the hatch.
"Don't know what they made this thing out of," Henry said. "Some kind of high-tech steel. But given time, anything will corrode in this climate."
The lid rose ponderously with a grinding squeak and a dull groan. Energy leaked out. Isabella felt the hair on the nape of her neck stir. Icy shivers of awareness slithered across her senses in warning.
The steel hatch rose higher. A storm of paranormal wind roared out of the dark opening. It was unlike anything Isabella had ever experienced. She felt as if she were standing in the teeth of a hurricane, but nothing around her was affected by the strange gale. The grass did not bend beneath the force of the howling energy. No leaves rustled. Her hair and clothes did not flutter.
But her senses responded with an all-consuming awareness. Adrenaline splashed through her veins. An intoxicating excitement rose within her. She was suddenly jacked. She looked at Fallon and knew by the heat in his eyes that he was experiencing a similar reaction to the heavy radiation.
"Shit." Henry dropped the crowbar and staggered back. "See what I mean?"
"Yes," Fallon said. He aimed a flashlight into the opening and got the intense, thoughtful expression Isabella was coming to know well. "Lot of energy down there, all right. Must have been one hell of an explosion. The nexus currents in the area would have intensified the effects."
Vera edged farther away. The dogs hung back, heads lowered. Poppy growled. Walker stayed where he was, but his agitation increased visibly. He rocked madly on his heels and wrapped his arms around himself.
"Alien weapons," Walker said. "The Queen g-guards them."
Isabella braced herself and struggled to focus her talent. When she went into her zone, she saw heavy waves of psi fog crashing out of the shelter hatch.
"Lasher and Rachel must have been fairly strong talents of some kind," she said quietly to Fallon. "That's why they were able to go down there."
"Probably explains why Lasher chose the Cove to found his community of Seekers in the first place," Fallon said.
"Consciously or unconsciously, he sensed the nexus currents here and was drawn to them."
He stirred the darkness with the beam of his flashlight. Isabella saw a ladder leading down into the shadows. The light glinted on the corner of a rusted metal lab bench. Shards of broken glass glittered in the depths. There was also a scattering of yellowed papers and what looked like a couple of notebooks.
"They pulled out in a hurry," she said. "No telling what they left down there."
"The Queen," Walker muttered. "Watch out for the Q-queen."
"I will," Fallon promised.
He disappeared over the edge and descended into the shadows. It occurred to Isabella, not for the first time, that for a big man Fallon Jones moved with an easy, masculine grace that conveyed an impression of both power and control.
"Ladder's in good shape," he called up a short time later. "And the energy level down here isn't any stronger than it is at the opening of the hatch. Come on down, Isabella."
She stuck her flashlight into the pocket of her jacket, stepped over the edge, found her footing on the ladder and descended cautiously. It was like going down into an invisible whirlpool. The energy whipped and flashed around her.
When her foot touched the bottom rung of the ladder, Fallon's strong hand closed around her arm.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Yes, but I have to say I've never experienced anything like this. Any sign of Walker's Queen?"
"Not yet."
"That's royalty for you. Always the last to arrive." She took out her flashlight and switched it on. "Of course it would help if we knew exactly what he was talking about."
"Whatever it was, Walker took it seriously, so we will, too," Fallon said. "Watch your step--there's a lot of broken glass in here."
She crouched and picked up one of the larger shards. "Very thick glass, too."
Fallon took it from her and held it up to the beam of his flashlight. "Looks like the kind they use in banks. Bullet-resistant. Exactly the type of glass that researchers familiar with laws of para-physics would use to deal with the energy generated by Bridewell's curiosities. The best way to disrupt psi that is infused in glass is with a glass barrier."