Earthshaker

Chapter 19

Chapter 19Owen led the way to Cousin Canyon. He said he knew his way around.

I parked along the road near a trailhead, and the four of us walked in. The woods around us were lush with green summer foliage, the trees alive with the cries of birds. Sunlight filtered through the canopy, dappling the brown dirt of the trail.

"I've spent a lot of time up here," said Owen. "Fishing and hiking. Camping, too. Hell of a pretty place." He let his hand drift over the bark of a tree and sighed. "What a shame."

I looked around, trying to figure out what he meant about it being a shame. So far, everything looked perfectly healthy and normal.

"It'll never be the same," said Owen. "I can never come back here."

Laurel, who'd been walking behind him, moved up and put an arm around his shoulders. Said something to him, I couldn't hear what—and he nodded and smiled sadly at her.

It took us about twenty minutes to hike to the rim of the canyon. Emerging from the treeline, we stood at an overlook and gazed down at the beautiful view spread out before us.

The rim on which we stood fell away down a steep wall studded with boulders and brush. Midway down, the angle of the wall became less steep, and dense trees took over—pine, spruce, and cedar. Far below, leafier varieties of trees lined the canyon floor, split in a winding seam down the middle by a skinny green snake of a river. Two hawks swung in lazy loops against a cloudless sky, banking and gliding along the thermal drafts rising up from below.

A warm wind rippled my hair, and a chill flickered up my back. I guess it wasn't exactly the Grand Canyon, but it was still a pretty sight. Great example of pure and perfect nature, free of parking lots and shopping centers.

Except it wasn't so pure and perfect anymore, apparently.

"Can you feel it?" Laurel frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. "The emptiness?"

Closing my eyes, I reached out with my mind. Let it seep into the ground under my feet and flow outward in all directions. I felt nothing unusual—just the structure and pressure of dirt and rock. The interplay of forces acting upon it from within and without, from the heat of the sun to the sighing of superstrings at the quantum level. All as it should be.

I shrugged and opened my eyes. "Feels normal to me."

"You can do better than that," said Laurel. "You know how to read ley lines, don't you?"

I shook my head. "No, I don't."

"Come with me." She grabbed my hand and led me along the rim. We stopped twenty feet away, and she suddenly dropped to her haunches, taking me with her. "Here." She pressed my palm to the ground and held it there. "Focus on this spot. Tell me what you feel."

I did as she told me, aiming my mind at that single spot on the rim. Reaching down with all my strength, with all my sensitivity. "Still nothing."

Laurel's other hand flashed out and made contact with my left temple before I could duck. "I'll help you."

I felt a familiar tingling and warmth in my head, like the start of her reading the night before. Then, suddenly, I felt something new—something deep below me. A distant vibration, a faint buzzing under the ground.

She pushed me toward it, through the strata of the earth. Close up, I heard and felt a weak crackling underlaying the buzzing, like the snap of static electricity.

In my mind's eye, I saw the source of the buzzing and crackling: a pale node of energy pulsing in the rock. Barely pulsing. Dimly glowing tendrils branched out from the node in all directions, fanning out like a network of roots or nerves. Branching and rebranching, crisscrossing everywhichway...fanning out through the distance and the depths.

As I watched, the dim glow and the buzzing faded. Some of the tendrils here and there winked out completely, creating zones of darkness in the underground web.

And as Laurel held me there, I sensed something else. A cavity, like a hole in the world...not a physical hole, but an absence of spirit. A vast emptiness where something had been, marked by the faintest trace of an echo of what had once filled it. More like the silence that follows the last note of an echo, the dead air moving in the wake of something you've just missed, something that's gone forever.

Then, suddenly, Laurel brought me out of it. Pulled me back to the surface like a lifeguard bringing up a drowning swimmer. "Now do you see?" she said.

I blinked hard against the bright sunlight. "Yes." I nodded, not fully understanding what had been lost here but aware of the fact of its loss.

"Ley lines are the channels through which geomantic energy flows," said Laurel. "Poison those channels, and you poison Landkind."

"And one of your own kind could do this?" I said as she helped me to my feet.

"It's been done before," said Owen, who was standing nearby. "Very rarely, though. We tend to settle our feuds without resorting to violence. We're steadier, remember?"

"The lights are still going out down there." I pointed at the ground. "Does that mean the canyon still has some life in it? Could we question it somehow?"

Laurel sighed and shook her head. "You felt the emptiness, didn't you? The soul of Cousin Canyon is long gone."

I looked at Briar, who was over beside Owen. "There must be something, don't you think? Some kind of evidence."

Briar shrugged. "This is the first time I've investigated the murder of a canyon. I'm not sure where to look."

I walked to the very edge of the rim and gazed out at the canyon sprawling before me. Watched the two hawks still wheeling around the thermals, awash in golden sunlight. Wished I could be one of them.

"What happens to this place?" I said. "Now that its soul is gone?"

Laurel joined me at the edge. "Something else will fill the hole. Something wicked, most likely. Nature abhors a vacuum."

I glanced at her, realizing she was talking about her own fate, too. She was getting a preview, up close and personal, of what was in store for her. Like having terminal cancer and standing on the grave of a dead cancer patient.

In that moment, my heart went out to her with a force that shocked me. I wanted to do everything in my power to help her, even if the only thing I could do was find and punish her killer.

I turned to her. "Does this place have a heart? A core?"

Laurel nodded and pointed into the canyon. "Down there, yes. As close to a heart as you'll find in a place this big."

"Okay." I put my hand on her shoulder. "Will you show me the way?"