Chapter Twenty-Three

Scouting Sortie

Wish touched my shoulder to get my attention and whispered, "Shaun's here."

I looked around at her, a little surprised and a lot uncertain. Even now I don't quite understand what Shaun is; Wish tells me he's another soul mate---a man she knew and loved in some past life where she and I weren't together---and that he's chosen to remain non-carnate during this particular lifetime of Wish's so that he could serve as a kind of overseer and protector for her. In conventional terms you'd probably prefer to think of him as a guardian angel, but Wish insists that this particular definition's inaccurate; Shaun is someone who loves her just as much as I do, but who feels he can best aid and protect her by not limiting himself to the physical world this time around. After all, non-corporeals aren't hampered by solid barriers and distances the way physical beings are; there are some advantages to not having a physical body, I suppose. Being the spirit of a once-living person suggested to me that he was a ghost, but she told me that definition was wrong, too: When people die, their spirits go back to the etheric plane for remembering their past lives and what they've learned through the incarnation process to date, further education, and choosing the assignment of their next physical lives; ghosts, on the other hand, are the spirits of people who haven't managed to get back to the etheric plane yet, for some reason (usually because they've been wronged in some terrible way, like being murdered, and they just can't let go of this world and life because of it)?but Shaun's been back to the etheric plane since his last lifetime, and he's deliberately put off coming back to another physical lifetime this time around so that he can shuttle back and forth between the physical and etheric worlds as needed in order to look out for Wish.

Wish told me she first became aware of his presence around age five, which was a traumatic year for her, what with the passing of her grandmother and all?but she wasn't able to communicate with him in any coherent fashion until her early teens. She's maintained a kind of off-and-on contact with him ever since; he's not usually around, that she can tell, but when she really needs him he's always Johnny-on-the-spot. There were dozens of references to him in her journal, when she read it to me, and since then I've spoken to the Professor about Shaun and his nature at greater length, trying to gather a better understanding of who and what he is. The Professor is fully aware of Shaun's existence, and he says he's actually seen him with his arms around Wish, protecting her, during traumatic events in her life. I've tried to communicate with Shaun on occasion, but so far I've had no luck at it; either he functions on a "frequency" that I'm not sensitive to, like a human trying to hear the sound of an ultrasonic dog whistle, or else he chooses not to have anything to do with me directly, for reasons of his own. If he was a husband or lover to Wish in some past life, it's understandable that he might not want to have anything to do with me in this lifetime. I suppose even non-corporeals can suffer from a touch of jealousy, no matter how advanced they might be, spiritually. Or I might be misinterpreting things completely, and accusing him of something he's not guilty of because all this is being done for reasons I'm simply not equipped to understand as yet; human comprehension has its limitations, after all.

All this is a little like not being able to understand some fields of science; for instance, gravitons exist (they have to, or else matter - and therefore the entire universe - simply couldn't hold together), but all the king's horses and all the king's men in the world of physics still can't find one with their instruments. And they may never find any; gravitons may not work on exactly the same set of frequencies that the matter our bodies and instruments work on, and they may remain forever out of our technological reach---or they might be discovered and harnessed tomorrow. The same could apply to the whys and wherefores of beings like Shaun; there's got to be a good reason for why they do what they do, even if we can't understand it. But then again, that understanding may not be forever beyond our reach, either.

Wish hugged me a little and whispered, "He's here, right now."

I looked around, wishing I could see him. Inspiration struck, and I retuned my perceptions so that I could scan for auras; I'd never tried that before while trying to detect him, so maybe taking that approach would do some good. For the very first time, I caught a faint glow---not quite a living aura, but very similar. I nodded toward it and murmured, "There?"

She nodded, eyes widening in surprise. "You can see him?"

I shook my head. "No---I'm just picking up something vaguely like a living aura; no image, no figure."

The glow slid closer, and I got an impression of communication happening between it and Wish. "What's he saying?"

She tossed me a look of mild surprise. "He says Gregory and Sam are close by, and they'll be here shortly; and he's very adamant about the fact that you have to trust them."

I was drawing a blank. "Gregory? Sam? Who they?"

She ventured a trace of a smile. "Gregory is the Indian you saw in that dream---the one with the three eyes. He's part of our small alliance of psychics. Sam is another member---according to Shaun, he's the one who tracked down Nicodemus's base of operations through the Internet and set the authorities on it."

* * * * *

None of us knew where Tommy and Razor were, at that point. We'd told the police that Tommy was sick, and maybe delirious, and that he'd bolted from the bus after the accident, and Razor had gone after him, and we could only hope that things would work out past that point. Neither Wish nor I were in any condition to go chasing after them, and we certainly couldn't tell the authorities the truth of the matter?they would've locked us away and fed us Thorazine milkshakes for the next decade.

So, while we'd been here waiting for the authorities to find the crash site and shaking the effects of the accident off, Razor had been hot on Tommy/Castevet's trail---and losing ground steadily.

He lost sight of It just as he came into sight of an old, abandoned highway overpass construction site.

He slumped against an old yellow loader parked at the foot of an on-ramp, gasped for air, and wheezed, "Tommy! Where are you?"

There was no response; of course, he was so winded that his voice probably hadn't carried more than a few feet. He struggled to get his breath back and tried again; still no response. The only sound was that of the wind blowing past, and rustling the weeds growing up through the cracks in the beat-up old roadway; there weren't even any bird sounds, or insect noises. The area was so dead quiet it was spooky.

He looked around uneasily and gulped, "Oh, man---the only time all th' birds 'n insects ever stop soundin' off is just b'fore th' monster comes outta th' woods 'n eats someone's face!"

But no monster came out of the underbrush to eat any faces---his or otherwise. He didn't know what to make of all this: His best friend had come down with some weird sort of flu a few days ago, and he'd been acting strange ever since then---strange even for Tommy. When the bus had crashed and rolled, Tommy had gone completely flippo, jumped out of the bus and run off up the road toward this old overpass. His best friend was on the loose, delirious with fever, and running around the backwoods of the Deep South the morning before they were supposed to play a gig in New Orleans; this was not good!

He hesitated at a new thought. Of course, with the bus being wrecked like it is, the chances of them making the gig were probably zero, so he didn't have to worry about that part of things, at least. Better to find Tommy and get him to a doc before he croaked from the heat; fevers and heat stroke in combination could kill a guy quicker'n a gun.

The sun was already to the fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk stage by then. Leaning up against several tons of hot metal out there in direct sunlight wasn't going to do him much good, either. He muttered, "Gettin' hot out here"---and straightened up to look around for Tommy again.

Nothing. He might as well be on Mars for all the good this was doing.

"Where the hell am I? Jeez, it's quiet---too quiet! Where the hell did that little pea-brain go?"

The only place in the area where Tommy might have been able to hide was under the overpass, so he went over to the embankment that led down under the mostly-finished end of the thing and peered down into it. He couldn't see anything, but he could see a line of footprints leading down the sandy embankment and in under the deep shadows of the completed end of the bridge-like structure.

He muttered, "Damn! I hope I don't have to dig him out of a sand pit, or somethin'!" and started down the embankment himself.

Along the way, he noticed something that made the hackles stand straight up; the footprints he was following were spaced a good ten feet apart---as if Tommy had run down this hazardous slope at sixty miles per hour! Now, how could a guy suffering from the flu run like that?? He'd heard of people in delirium being superhumanly strong for a few minutes, but he'd never heard of anyone being able to run like a horse in that state!

He lost his footing halfway down and ended up sliding the rest of the way on his backside; fortunately, the sand was fairly soft, so he just snowplowed his was to the bottom without sustaining any real damage.

When he'd managed to get himself dusted off fairly well, he peered in under the overpass and called, "Tommy?"

No answer---but something under the overpass picked up the sound of his voice and sent it back at him, as distorted and gobbling as the sound of a choking turkey.

He gulped and tried again---this time more a whisper than anything else. "Tommy?"

No sound came back at all this time. He gritted his teeth and followed the footprints in under the overpass; the instant he stepped into the shadow of the thing, it felt as if someone had thrown a blanket of soundproofing over him. The sound of the wind outside was gone; only the sound of his footsteps was audible.

He shivered and muttered, "This place is too damn effin' creepy for me!"

He raised his voice again: "Tommy, can you hear me?"

Still nothing. It was as though the shadows under the overpass were swallowing the sound. He shivered again and remembered the old rock opera, Tommy ; more as an exercise on the order of whistling in the dark than anything else, he began singing the lyrics to himself, softly, as he moved deeper in under the overpass, looking for his friend: "Can you feel me near you? Tommy, can you see me? Can I help to cheer you?"

It wasn't much comfort---particularly since he should be getting back at least a little bit of an echo from the concrete around him?and he wasn't.

He tried again, a little louder, with the chorus: "Oooh, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy."

For all the good it did, he might as well have been deaf. He set his jaw determinedly, growled, "No effin' spook hole's gonna stop me; Tommy's sick, 'n he needs me, 'n that's all there is to it!"

He moved deeper into the gloom.

Once he was well back under the overpass, he could see an opening in the ground underneath it; the concrete facing that had been poured beneath the bridge proper to keep rainwater runoff from eroding the foundations had crumbled away, leaving a cavelike opening just barely large enough for a full-grown man to walk through---if he bent way over.

Razor groaned, "Oh, damn, Tommy! Don't tell me you crawled in there!!"

But the only footprints Tommy had left behind led in under the overpass; no others led out on the other side, or anywhere else, and the sand scattered across the old roadway underneath it hadn't been disturbed by anyone walking over it lately---so logically, the only place Tommy could have gone was into that hole. Razor set his jaw again and ducked through the opening, peering around for signs of his friend.

Nothing. He edged forward, hoping he wouldn't stumble into a really deep hole somewhere along the line and never be found again.

The opening was the entrance to a cave; in the dim light from the outside, he could see that the floor sloped away and downward into a narrow tunnel. He edged forward, telling himself he was crazy for doing this, but his best friend - maybe the only friend he had in the world - was in trouble, and he had to help, so he kept going.

A dozen feet along, the tunnel began to open out, and showed signs of becoming a true cavern; at the same time, the light faded to the point that he couldn't see a thing. He tried looking back the way he'd come, but the gloom was so absolute that he was disoriented; he couldn't be certain he'd turned around exactly one hundred and eighty degrees, and if he hadn't he could end up permanently lost instead of walking back out to the cave mouth.

He didn't even have his cigarette lighter on him for a light source; he'd been wearing shorts and a T-shirt while he slept, and the lighter and his cigarettes were both in the pockets of his jeans, back on the bus. He groaned, "Damn! I'm screwed!"

He started groping around for a wall---anything that might lead him back out to daylight again. To himself more than anything else, he muttered, "I can't believe the little nut case came in here! Sure hope nothing lives in here, like bears---or bats---"

He shuddered at the thought, and segued into thoughts of an old TV series he'd watched as a kid. "---vampire bats---bloodsucking bats named Barnabas, or Quentin, or Angelique. Except she was a babe, that Angelique?"

* * * * *

Wish suddenly cried out, "Shaun!"---and broke out of my arms. She wheeled about and bolted away down the road; Nathan and I took off after her. After going through that bus crash, I hadn't thought any of us was in a condition to run ten feet?but all of a sudden there was Wish moving like FloJo coming out of the starting blocks at the Olympics!

And somewhat to my astonishment, I found that I was doing almost as well as she was; it's amazing how being worried sick about a loved one can overcome aches, pain and galloping exhaustion.

She'd managed to pull a good hundred feet ahead of me by the time she got to a sharp bend in the road, and I was beginning to labor pretty heavily; it looked like I was going to lose sight of her, and I was just going to have to hope I could catch sight of her again after I got around the curve, or manage to track her by psychic means?

?and she suddenly slammed to a halt.

She was still standing there, stock-still, when I reached her. I stopped beside her, panting, and started to ask her what was wrong---and then I saw what was wrong.

I recognized the bulldozer and loader and the unfinished overpass from our shared dream; my stomach dropped like a rock. The nightmare was back---and this time we were both wide awake!

I'd gotten as far as gasping, "Oh, God!!" when she broke into a run toward the overpass again. And then, just as suddenly, that eerie glow that marked Shaun's location appeared in front of her and she slammed to a halt again, looking as if she wanted to scream in sheer frustration.

I caught her by the arm as I came up behind her and turned her toward me; Nathan came pounding up to us about that time, leaving me feeling vaguely astonished that I'd managed to outpace him so badly in my efforts to catch up to my wife. "Wish!! What's going on, here?"

She was starting to look a little wild-eyed. "It's Shaun! He says Tommy and Razor are under that overpass---and he won't let me go down there!"

The three of us looked down the sandy slope and the overpass that grew out of it. Nathan gulped, "Razor and Tommy are under that bridge? How do you know?"

Apparently Wish was too upset to really remember who she was talking to. "Shaun told me! I just told you that!"

Nathan looked completely lost. "Who the hell is Shaun?"

I waved him down. "Don't worry about that. You wouldn't understand it even if you could accept it."

I threw a look at Shaun's location and then turned back to Wish. "Ask him why he won't allow you down there."

Nathan gaped and peered around uncertainly. "Ask who? It's just the three of us, here!"

Suspicion spread across his face. "Hey, man---don't tell me your wife is as spaced as Tommy is! There are only three people here!"

From behind us, a strange voice observed, "Maybe you should make that four."

All three of us jumped like startled rabbits. And before we were over that, a second strange voice added, "Correction: Make that five."

Nathan spun around, gulping, "Jeezus!"

Wish and I turned as well---and we found the Indian from my dream and a tall, sandy-haired man standing behind us. So far as any of us had known, we three had been alone out there on the road---but obviously we'd been mistaken. We'd all been so concerned with Tommy and Razor and the old overpass construction site that someone might have been able to drive up behind us in a Bigfoot without us noticing.

The sandy-haired man raised his hands in an apologetic, warding-off gesture. "Sorry---didn't mean to startle you. I'm Dr. Sam Burnett, and this is Gregory Running Fox."

The Indian nodded sober acknowledgment. "You are Nathan, you are Bridget Wilma Shirley, and you are Alex Rain. The Professor has told us much about you."

He smiled faintly, winked at me and added, "Nice to see you back in your body, incidentally."

I smiled back in the same manner; I could feel another piece of my dream-puzzle snapping into place. "By the same token, Mr. Running Fox, might I observe that the lack of a third eye becomes you?"

Running Fox chuckled; I joined him, and Burnett joined in as well; Wish wasn't laughing, though---she looked drained and pale. I glanced around at Nathan to see how he was doing, and found him looking around uneasily. I didn't need to initiate a surface-thought scan to tell that he was looking for someplace nearby that might have a phone that he could use to call for the cops and a rubber truck for the lot of us; he was radiating it on all frequencies.

Running Fox clapped a hand onto Nathan's shoulder companionably and favored him with a sober look. "Perhaps we should all be a bit more discreet; we're convincing this poor fellow that we're all quite mad."

Nathan squirmed uncomfortably and dropped his eyes, refusing to meet his gaze any further.

Running Fox sighed and removed the hand. "That's perfectly all right, young man. You're allowed to believe what you choose to believe, just as mush as we're allowed believe what we choose to believe. Reality is subjective, for the greatest part; if it's real to you, that's what's important to you. Perhaps it would be best for you to rejoin your friends; we'll deal with this matter on our own."

Nathan tried not to look relieved at the notion, but he shook his head stubbornly. "No way. My friends are in trouble, and I'm stickin' with this, no matter how nuts it sounds!"

Burnett shrugged and murmured, "Okay, son---it's your choice. Just don't interfere; you don't understand what's going on or what's at stake; if you jump in and interfere at the wrong moment because you think we're all crazy, you could get everyone killed---yourself included. We're up against something that could wipe this entire town out if it gets loose---at the very least."

He turned back to Wish, took her hand gently and murmured, "Wish, tell us about Shaun. Where is he, now, and what's he doing?"

I looked around for Shaun, myself---and discovered that the glow that had marked his presence was no longer anywhere to be seen.

She wiped the tears away and gulped, "He's at the entrance to a cave under the overpass, now. He says Tommy and Razor are down there, but he forbids me to enter."

Burnett turned to Running Fox. "That's probably best. He has access to a lot more information on the matter than we do. Gregory, can you get a fix on Shaun through Wish?"

Running Fox shrugged. "Perhaps. But only with the young lady's permission."

Wish bit her lip pensively, but nodded agreement and closed her eyes. Running Fox put his left hand on her forehead, over her third-eye position, closed his eyes and lowered his head. Nothing else happened for a long moment, then?

The voice wasn't Running Fox's; it was still male, but it was younger, and with altogether different vocal inflections and an accent I didn't recognize. I gulped, "What the hell?"

Burnett made furious shushing motions at me. "He's Channelling Shaun! Don't disrupt the link!"

That stopped me dead in my tracks. There'd been a time when I'd thought Channelling was pure bushwah, but thanks to Wish and Tommy I knew better, now. I took a closer look at the auras around Wish and Running Fox, and found a trace of that glow that marked Shaun's presence mixed in there with them. Shaun was with us, all right---at least in part.

Burnett turned to Running Fox and asked, "Shaun! What do we need to do?"

Shaun's voice came out of Running Fox again: "Keep Wish and Rain away from the cave---away from Nicodemus! If he catches both of them together it will be disastrous!"

Burnett didn't look at all happy at that. "Shaun, are you in any danger from Nicodemus? And is there any way you can help us?"

Shaun's voice became distant. "The Vortex! Keep them away from the Vortex! Nicodemus can't see me; he doesn't know I'm here; but as long as I stay invisible to him I can't do anything to him, either. If I give up my invisibility, I give up any advantage we might have. When you cut off his power source, he abandoned his physical form and jumped into the Vortex, to draw power from it. The only way to stop him now is to muster our forces and battle him inside the Vortex."

Running Fox snapped out of the trance abruptly; Wish collapsed into my arms, sobbing.

Running Fox blinked uncertainly. "What did he say?"

I'd read about this in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal; some people with the Gift of Channelling are fully aware of what's going on while they're Channelling, but they seem to be the exception to the rule. People who are only partially aware of what's happening while they are Channelling are somewhat more common, but still not what you'd call numerous. As a general rule, Channellers have no idea what's happening while they're Channelling; they're switched out of the loop, so to speak. It looked like Running Fox was one of the latter variety.

Burnett nodded toward the old overpass. "We've got confirmation; the Vortex is somewhere below the overpass, and that cave mouth is the only physical way in. Nicodemus abandoned his physical form when we sabotaged his power source, and moved directly into the Vortex. We're going to have to take him on in there."

I could "hear" Nathan thinking Omigod-I've-landed-in-a-Coocoo-bird-nest thoughts all the time this was going on; he was radiating that loudly on that many wavelengths---but I ignored him; his opinion was of no importance just now; Tommy's and Razor's lives were.

I turned toward the overpass: "Regardless of what Shaun says, we've got to get Razor and Tommy out of there. Nathan, I think you should take Wish back to the others, and wait for us there."

Nathan looked as if he wanted to run all the way back to the crash site, by now. He grabbed Wish by a wrist and snapped, "You're all totally insane! C'mon, Wish."

As he towed her away, still somewhat dazed by her Channelling-relay experience, and protesting vehemently at this turn of events, Burnett turned to me, shaking his head soberly. "Shaun warned you away too, Rain."

I growled, "I know---but he specifically warned us against Wish and me going in there together?not me going in without her. Someone has to stop Castevet; he's been victimizing Wish and Tommy and me - and who-knows-how-many other innocent people - for far too long. I'm going after him!"

Running Fox caught me by the arm; his grip was gentle, but it was iron. There was no way for me to pull loose without doing injury to myself. Gently, he told me, "Then, if that is your decision, there are things about Nicodemus Castevet that you must know first. You already know that he is not human; what you do not know is that he is a servant of the Great Old One."

I'd heard of the Great Old One; I was familiar with some of the Native American legends of the creation of the world. I nodded and responded, "I'm familiar with the Great Old One. My great-grandfather was full-blooded Iroquois, and my grandmother was Cheyenne. She used to tell me legends from the Cheyenne traditions, and from those of about a dozen other tribes. According to her, the Great Old One was the Indian version of the Devil---the Prince of Darkness, the Creator-of-Lies, the Devourer-of-Souls?a dark god who fed on life itself."

A gleam of respect showed in Running Fox's eyes. "Very good. The problem is, the Great Old One is still very much in existence---and his servants walk the physical world, spreading pain and misery---and death---in their wake. The one who calls himself Nicodemus Castevet, in this lifetime, is one of the greatest of the Great Old One's servants: A creature of terrible power."

I took a deep breath. This was getting hairier by the minute. "The Professor told me about the battle between the malevolent non-corporeals and the human wizards, almost a half-million years ago, and how the demons get here from their exile-universe, and what the demons really are. From what you've just said, the Great Old One is the Native American conception of the head honcho of the Malevolents, over in that other place."

His eyes widened; surprise and respect flickered across his face. "Ah---you're more aware than I thought; there are very few that the Professor can tell that Old Truth to safely---and you seem to be handling it very well."

He nodded at Burnett and went on: "Thanks to the knowledge you gleaned from the dream world, and related to the Professor, Samuel was able to locate the school that Nicodemus was using as his power base. He manipulated the authorities into raiding the school and removing the young women he held in thrall. That occurred less than two hours ago. With the primary source of his power gone, he was badly weakened; he was forced to abandon his physical form and retreat to the only other place of power left to him in this time and place: the Vortex."

Burnett nodded. "He needs more power in order to pull off what he wants to do. The best option he has right now is to drain a really powerful Psi. The best way to do that is to sucker you into the Vortex, physically. If he can get your body in there, he can literally suck the life right out of you and bring himself back up to full power again. That's why he seized control of Tommy and took him into the cave. Just draining him wouldn't provide him with a tenth of the power you could provide him with, so he gambled that your love for Wish, and her love for Tommy, and thereby, your emotional attachment to him as well would bring you charging into that cave to rescue him. He wasn't expecting Razor, of all people, to be the one to go galloping in there to the rescue. Razor's useless to Nicodemus: He has about as much power to his name as a used match. On the other hand, if you go in there physically, you'll be playing right into his hands; the only way to stop him is to keep your body - and the seat of your life-force - out of that cave, and out of his clutches."

I didn't like the sound of that, but I could feel the truth in what he was saying as clearly as if it were tattooed across his forehead.

"So, how do we get Tommy and Razor out of there---and stop Castevet? And what do you mean, he couldn't get a tenth of the power out of Tommy that he could out of me?"