Earthshaker

Chapter 20-2

We hiked another twenty minutes till Laurel told us we were there. We found ourselves on the edge of a tumble of deadfall—dead and dying trees bent and broken, thrown down like pick-up sticks amid rocks and scraggly brush. Looked like a tornado had touched down there, snapping fifty and sixty-foot trees like campfire kindling.

Laurel led us a little further, picking her way through the deadfall wreckage. Carefully, we climbed over and under toppled trunks, helping each other through tangled branches and splintered shafts like the spears in a punji pit.

When we reached the middle of the deadfall, Laurel gathered us around a huge tree stump, at least five feet in diameter. The wood was gray and rimmed with scalloped shelves of brown and white fungus. The top of the stump was chipped and scored with black bursts where the wood had been scorched. The mark of kids playing with fireworks, I thought.

"This is it," said Laurel. "The heart of Cousin Canyon. This is where her spirit resided."

Owen touched the stump and nodded. "Poor Cousin."

I hunkered down and planted my palm flat on the surface of the stump. "Let's reach in there and see if we find anything. Check the ley lines and energy fields." I looked up at Laurel then, expecting her to join me.

But she just stood there with arms folded over her chest. Met my gaze and tipped her chin at the stump. "Go ahead, Gaia. You don't need me."

"How do you figure?" I said. "I only did it the first time because you took me in."

"I just gave you a jump start," said Laurel. "You can do it yourself. You always could. You just needed to know where to look."

I frowned and drummed my fingers on the stump. I wasn't convinced she was right about my being able to do it alone. "Come with me anyway. I'm still new at this. Make sure I don't miss anything."

Laurel shook her head. "Don't worry, you'll be fine. I'll be here if you need me."

Irritated, I turned my attention to the stump. Wondered if maybe Laurel was getting back at me for swerving the SUV and breaking up her moment with Briar. Didn't seem likely, but hey, you never know.

"All right, all right." I blew out my breath. Put my left hand on the stump beside my right.

Then felt a hand grip my shoulder. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to." It was Briar. "Trail's probably cold by now, anyway."

I didn't dare look up at him, because I felt my face flushing. What was going on with me all of a sudden? "I'll be okay." I liked that it felt like he was siding with me against Laurel. "Don't worry, Dale." Since when did I call him Dale?

"Go ahead," said Laurel. "Just like we did before. Move toward the channels. Reach for the energy flowing through the ley lines."

"And be careful!" said Owen. "The poison that killed Cousin could still be down there."

"I will." I closed my eyes and bowed my head, reaching out with my mind through my fingers. That part was easy; I'd been doing it all my life, reaching into the world around me, testing the parts and forces of the earth. Making them work for me.

But then I had to push past the familiar. Cast about for the new pathways and energies Laurel had led me to. That crackling, buzzing network of nervelike tendrils I'd somehow been blind to for so long.

At first, I couldn't find it. All around me, I felt the same abundance of detail to which I was accustomed, the same multilayered portrait of rocks and minerals and life, all intertwined. Roots of trees and shrubs twisting down into soil...plates of stone grinding together underground, shifting against each other almost imperceptibly...organic matter and radioactive elements decomposing, humming softly in the clay. Molecules and atoms and protons and quarks, whirling in their eternal shivering dance, a zillion jostling gyroscopes flickering in the fizzing quantum foam.

I knew I had to filter the input differently. Change the angle at which I sensed it, the way looking at a hologram from different angles changes its appearance to the naked eye.

Remembering the nature of the energy flow Laurel had shown me, its color and texture and sound, I let my mind drift through the underground. Let my senses turn in a kind of random orbit, fishing for any trace of what I'd found before to home in on.

I found it—the slightest taste of the singed earth around one of the conduits. The faintly acrid flavor of hot clay, toasted by the passage of geomantic current sizzling through its substance.

Grabbing on to that single trace, I dove toward it. Opened my senses up wide and angled them between the crystalline planes of familiar perception. Determined to reach my destination.

Suddenly, it all burst into being around me—the dimly glowing network with its multitude of branching and rebranching tendrils, buzzing faintly. Stretching into the distance in all directions.

Laurel had been right. I'd done it, reached the ley line network on my own. Made me wonder what else I could do that I didn't know about.

Focusing my attention on the tangled tendrils around me, I looked for a sign to point the way. Some clue to who or what had poisoned Cousin Canyon.

The damage, at least, was obvious. There in Cousin's heart, it was much worse than at the canyon's rim. The dead zones of darkened conduits were much bigger and farther reaching. In some places, sections of blackened tendrils had slumped and sloughed off, leaving open ends of mangled channels leaking energy backwash one glowing drop at a time.

The whole place stank like sulfur, like a rotting carcass. Instead of the crackle of flowing energy, I heard the soft crumble of a general slumping and subsidence. The breakdown of strata of dirt and stone no longer supported by vital spirit. Everything slowly caving in now that the heart and soul had been hollowed out.

I slid through the wreckage, touching it with my mind as I passed. Feeling for any trace of a clue. Finding only the dimmest ebbing of the light that once had powered the beautiful place.

There were no messages etched in the earth, nothing left behind by a dying mind to point to the killer. Nothing like a fingerprint—no out-of-place evidence identifying a murderous visitor. Not even a hint of the poisonous energy that had infiltrated Cousin Canyon. All I could find in every direction was the final result, the devastation. The ruined heart within the corpse.

Then, suddenly, I had the feeling I was being watched. Watched by someone or something underground.

A chill rippled up my back. My heart pounded. Slowly, I turned my mind's eye in a circle, reaching out with my senses cranked up all the way.

The feeling of being watched grew stronger. I continued to turn, looking and listening as hard as I could. Wondering in the back of my mind what I'd do if I saw someone down there. Did I even have any power in that state?

Turning further, I realized I was back where I'd started from. I quickly reversed course, whipping in the opposite direction...and that was when I got a look at it.

The thing must have been following my rotation, hiding just out of sight as my field of vision turned from left to right. It seemed surprised when I spotted it, and it clung there a moment, staring back at me.

The thing looked like a bloodshot eyeball perched in the center of a glowing starburst. The rays of the starburst hooked around ley lines, sapping their energy and holding itself in place at the same time.

As I gazed into that eye, I felt a familiar pressure in my mind. It was definitely looking back at me with intelligence, awareness...and intent. Another mind was behind it, staring out through it, driving it. Projecting hints of a towering presence from far away.

It was a presence, a mind, a force I recognized. I'd encountered it twice before—once in Aggie's apartment, once at Secret Valley. There was no doubt in my mind that I was facing the same malevolent being who had reached for me from the ashes of my best friend's body.

Only this time, instead of reaching for me, it ran. Spun and zipped off along a ley line, leaving a twinkling trail in its wake.

I hesitated for the briefest fraction of a split second, not sure what to do. The eyeball and the force behind it were my only leads in the death of Cousin Canyon...and more. Surely, it was no coincidence that Laurel was dying of the same poison, and Aggie had been helping her investigate the murder. Aggie, who had ended up dead, leaving behind a shell of hardened volcanic ash and mud imprinted with the same cruel intellect I again sensed here.

I couldn't stand by and let that thing get away. The presence it channeled filled me with dread, but I had to get over it. Had to go after it like it was just another bad guy waiting to be pelted with rocks and dirt.

So I gathered my strength and shot off after it, propelling my mind along the network in its wake. Vaguely aware of a voice calling out to me as I did so. Laurel's voice, faint and distant, telling me not to do it. Urging me to come back before it was too late.