They both looked hard at the cottage. Slade had no idea what was going through Rex’s brain but his own hunter’s intuition was flashing a warning. His first instinctive thought was, No need to make yourself a target.
He moved back into the trees. Rex sleeked out. They had both picked up the same bad vibes, Slade thought. There was something very wrong with the tranquil scene.
He raised his talent. He was no longer worried about being overwhelmed by the darkness at the end of the spectrum; nevertheless, he was cautious. He knew that he could control the storm of power but it was useless to him until he figured out how to focus it. He did not need the distraction just then.
It did not require a lot of energy to view the psi-prints on the ground. There were two distinct sets. The tracks came out of the trees on the right and wound around the cabin, vanishing behind it. The intruders had not wanted to chance being surprised by someone coming along the drive. They had gone in through the kitchen door.
The question now was whether the pair was still inside the house. He studied the fluorescing prints closely. There were two more sets of tracks leading away from the house and back into the trees toward the road.
He worked his way through the woods to the trail of retreating prints. Rex growled softly. When they reached the tracks, Slade crouched and took a close look. The prints were familiar. He’d seen them yesterday at Hidden Beach. The two men who had chased Devin and Nate into the Preserve had evidently concluded that the local chief of police was going to be a problem.
“I thought we’d have to go looking for them,” Slade said quietly to Rex. “Maybe do some actual investigation work. But they’re going to make it easy. They’re coming after me. Probably disappointed last night when they found out I wasn’t home. I’m sure they’ll try again.”
Rex rumbled.
Slade returned to the cabin. The front door was still locked. He made his way around to the back porch and went up the steps. The intruders had popped the lock on the kitchen door, as he had expected. He shook his head, disgusted.
“Looks like they weren’t even trying to be subtle,” he said.
He opened the door and moved into the kitchen, rezzing his talent again. Out of long habit he stood quietly for a moment, absorbing the silence. Empty houses always had a unique vibe. He did not pick up any of the energy that indicated there was someone lurking on the premises. He went to the cupboard and opened a door.
Rex muttered. Slade understood the outrage. This was their territory. It had been invaded by intruders. That could not be allowed to stand.
“We’ll get them,” Slade said.
Rex tumbled down to the ground, still sleeked, and headed for the front room of the cabin.
Slade was mildly surprised to find his laptop still safely tucked away on the highest shelf of the cupboard. Not the most original of hiding places, but on the other hand, he hadn’t been trying to protect Bureau secrets, just a business plan. Losing the computer would have been annoying and expensive but not a disaster.
“They didn’t do a very good job of searching the place,” he said.
But maybe that had not been their goal, he thought. Maybe they had just come here to kill him and had left when it turned out he wasn’t home. Typical thug mentality.
Rex’s low growl rumbled from the living room. Slade went to the kitchen doorway.
Rex was standing on his hind paws, gazing intently into the short hall that led to the bath and bedroom. He had dropped his beloved purse on the floor.
“What is it?” Slade asked. He walked across the small space. “Did they screw up and leave something behind? That would be useful. More hard evidence is always good.”
He heard the sound just as he reached Rex. The scrape-and-clunk iced his senses. He looked down the hall and saw a large, mechanical doll nearly three feet tall coming toward him. The gnomelike figure had long white hair and a flowing beard. There was a floppy velvet cap on its head. It was dressed in elaborately embroidered green-and-gold robes decorated with ancient alchemical symbols. The doll’s glass eyes glittered with dark, malevolent energy.
“Son of a bitch,” Slade said. “Sylvester Jones.”
He had a vague memory of an old Arcane legend, something about a Victorian clockmaker who had created some very dangerous clockwork toys.
The blast of ice and lightning hit him before he could remember the details, threatening to freeze both his paranormal as well as his normal senses. The force of the blast drove him to his knees. Rex crouched beside him, snarling furiously. He was fully sleeked out, a tough little predator.
It took everything Slade had not to crumple to the floor. His heart started to pound. He could hardly breathe. The atmosphere was darkening around him. He was dying, murdered by a damn clockwork toy.
Charlotte, he thought. He would never see her again. He wanted to explain that it hadn’t been just an island romance for him. But now there would not be time.
Rex crowded close against his thigh. Slade managed to put one hand on him. Rex was shivering, too.
The clockwork Sylvester halted a short distance away. Its glass eyes radiated a steady, sustained blast of lethal energy.
Slade grew colder. He tightened his hold on the snarling Rex and whispered the only name that mattered to him.
“Charlotte.”
THE FLASH OF DREAD ARCED ACROSS CHARLOTTE’S senses just as she stepped outside onto the front porch. The chilling frisson struck along with the wind that was bringing in the storm. The sensation was so ominous, so overwhelming, it shocked her breathless. Something awful was happening. To Slade.
She did not know how she could be certain that Slade was in danger but she did not question the knowledge. The Arcane experts claimed there was no such thing as telepathy but no one in the Society doubted the reality of intuition. She did not even try to tell herself that she was imagining things. She yanked her keys out of her purse and ran for her car.
Chapter 26
THIS WOULD BE A DAMN STUPID WAY TO GO OUT, SLADE thought. He could see the note in his Bureau file, Agent Slade Attridge assassinated by large doll.
He was still on his knees confronting Sylvester, the snarling Rex pressed close to his side. It was as if they were trying to give each other some psychical support through physical contact. And maybe that was what was happening.
Charlotte.
This time he said it in his head, not aloud, but it had the same steadying effect. It helped him focus and that was what he needed most in that moment. He summoned the full force of his will, the same will that he used to control his talent, and slammed his senses into the hot zone.
He entered the stormlight region of his talent. For an instant the gale of energy threatened to disorient him but he powered through the disruptive currents until he found the eerie calm at the center.
The energy storm flashed around him in multicolored lightning strikes. It was an astonishingly simple, wholly intuitive process to identify the wavelengths he required to neutralize the energy of the Sylvester toy. The pressure of the cold, killing radiation lessened quickly but it took everything he had to maintain the dampening currents. He could not move. It was all he could do to take another breath. All of his energy had to be focused on countering the lethal currents. He knew he would not be able to hold on for long.
The clockwork device, on the other hand, seemed to be able to generate an endless stream of energy. It showed no signs of weakening. Every time he eased off the counterpoint currents, the energy from the Sylvester doll intensified immediately. He had to find a way to shut it down and quickly, before he exhausted his senses. If he did not show up at the station this morning, Myrna would send someone to look for him, Devin, maybe. Whoever walked through the front door to see what had happened to him would fall victim to Sylvester.