In Too Deep

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."

Together they swept the concrete chamber with their flashlights. Broken lab equipment, overturned metal benches and scraps of paper gave mute testimony to the violence of whatever had occurred in the shelter twenty-two years earlier.

"This place is larger than I would have expected," Isabella said. "It's as big as a double-wide. There's even a second room off this one. I was expecting a tiny, cramped space."

"The folks who built bomb shelters planned to live in them for several months or even a year while they waited for the radiation levels to go down on the surface," Fallon said. "They wanted all the comforts of home."

She shuddered. "I can't imagine camping out down here while all of my friends and neighbors were dying of radiation poisoning on the surface."

"Guess you had to be there to get into the mind-set."

"Guess so. Well, safe to say that something chaotic certainly happened in here. But aside from the broken glass, there are no signs of a normal explosion. No fire damage. The papers and notebooks aren't even charred."

"There was a violent release of energy, but it all came from the paranormal end of the spectrum." Fallon broke off abruptly. "Huh."

Isabella glanced at him and saw that he was aiming his flashlight at the doorway that opened into the other chamber.

"What?" she asked.

But he was already heading toward the second room.

She started to hurry after him, but a faint scratching sound in one dark corner distracted her. She jumped and flicked the light beam in the direction of the noise. Something moved in the shadows.

"Crap," she whispered. "Rats."

"That's not a surprise," Fallon said. He did not look back. "We're underground and this space has been abandoned for years."

"I'm not interested in logical explanations, boss. We're talking about rats."

"They'll run from the light."

"Oh, yeah? I don't see any signs of this sucker running away."

"Wonder how he got in here," Fallon mused. "The place is supposed to be sealed."

"Rats can get into anything."

The scratchy noise got louder. An old-fashioned clockwork doll waddled stiffly out of the darkness. Isabella watched it with a sinking feeling. The doll stood almost three feet tall. It was dressed in what had once been an elaborately worked gown in the late-Victorian style of fashionable mourning. The dress was tattered and frayed, but it had obviously been made of expensive materials and trim.

The doll was mostly bald, but what was left of its hair was parted in the middle and pulled back into a tight chignon. A miniature crown, studied with small, ominous crystals, was perched on top of the porcelain skull.

"I think the Queen has arrived," Isabella whispered. "It's Victoria. She's dressed in black from head to foot. They say that after Prince Albert's death she wore mourning for the rest of her reign."

"It's motion-sensitive, like the clock," Fallon said. "That's a hallmark of Bridewell's work."

"How can it function after all these years?"

"We'll worry about that later."

Energy heightened abruptly in the atmosphere. The doll trundled toward Isabella with unnerving accuracy.

"Looks like she's got a fix on you," Fallon said.

"I can sense it. She's starting to generate some kind of energy. Reminds me of the psi that emanated from the clock just before everything went dark."

"Move," Fallon ordered. "Fast. Force her to get another fix."

Isabella tried to step out of the Queen's path, but her muscles refused to obey. She opened her mouth to tell Fallon that she could not move only to discover that she could not speak. Her mind began to grow cloudy. A terrifying numbness crept through her blood.

She concentrated fiercely on focusing her own talent. She knew how to disorient human psi but this was a doll, a clockwork robot. Nevertheless, the energy that had been infused into the thing originally was human in origin, she reminded herself.

She caught the telltale wavelengths of the paranormal energy emanating from the doll's cold glass eyes and sent out the counteracting currents. The sense of numbness eased. She took a deep breath and managed to step to the side.

There was an eerie clicking in the shadows. The eyes of the doll rattled in their sockets as the machine sought a new fix.

Fallon moved swiftly, coming up behind the Queen.

Sensing his movements, the doll turned, creaking in her high-button shoes, searching for the new target.

Fallon brought the heavy flashlight down on the robot's head in a sharp, savage blow. Porcelain cracked. The queen toppled backward and crashed to the floor, face turned toward the concrete ceiling. The glass eyes continued to skitter wildly in their sockets, seeking a target. The wooden limbs jerked and twitched, but the device could not right itself.

The light shifted at the entrance to the shelter.

"Everything okay down there?" Henry called. "We heard some loud noises."

"Just ran into the Queen," Fallon called back. "But things are under control."

Careful to keep out of range of the robot's eyes, Fallon flipped the clockwork figure facedown on the concrete. The energy pulsing through the eyes was spent harmlessly on the floor. The doll's head and limbs continued to twist and clatter and shiver.

Isabella watched Fallon open up the entire back of the doll, gown, miniature corset and wooden frame. In the beam of the flashlights the elaborate gears of the clockwork mechanism continued to move.

"There should be a lot more corrosion," Fallon said. "I can understand the paranormal energy in the glass eyes surviving all these years. Once infused into an object, a heavy dose of psi will emit radiation for centuries. But like Henry said, sooner or later, metal always corrodes, especially in a climate like this."

"Same story with the clock," Isabella said. "The killer told us that all he had to do was give it some oil and wind it up."

Fallon reached into the body of the doll and did something to one of the gears. The Queen went limp and still.

Isabella looked down at the lifeless robot. "We are not amused."

Fallon smiled briefly. "Couldn't resist, could you?"

"Sorry, no. How often do you get to use a line like that?"

"Rarely." He took a closer look at the guts of the device. "Most of the mechanism is late-nineteenth-century, but someone repaired it and installed some modern parts and fittings."

"Recently?"

"No. I'm thinking the repair work was done twenty-two years ago."

"Like the clock?" Isabella asked.

"Yes."

"That's what was going on here. Those three men brought some of Mrs. Bridewell's inventions here to the Cove and tried to get them functional again."

"Yes, but that's not the most interesting aspect of this situation," Fallon said. He looked down at his hand. In the light Isabella saw a faint sheen on his fingers.

"Freshly oiled?" she whispered.

"Yes." Fallon got to his feet and aimed the flashlight at the footprints on the concrete floor. "The guy who left those prints must be the maintenance man."

"But how is he coming and going? Unless Henry and Vera are lying to us about having kept the shelter locked all this time."

"I don't think so," Fallon said. "There's another, more likely possibility. I think I feel a slight draft coming from the other room. Let's take a look."

They walked through the doorway into the adjoining chamber. Isabella froze.

"Good grief," she whispered.

In the twin beams of the flashlights she could see a row of what looked like small coffins elevated on metal stands.

"Take a deep breath," Fallon said. "They aren't coffins."

She started breathing again. "Sure. I knew that. It's just that at first glance they looked pretty freaky."

"You expected freaky?" Fallon aimed the light at what appeared to be a mound of trash. "Does that qualify?"

She saw the skull first. It was human. The rest of the skeleton came into view amid tattered remnants of clothing and a pair of boots. A ring glinted on one finger bone.

"Crap," she said. "Another body."

Fallon went to the skeleton and crouched beside it. He reached into the scattered bones, plucked out a wallet and flipped it open.

"Gordon Lasher," he said. "Looks like we now know what happened to the Asshole."

"He told everyone he was leaving town and then he snuck back here. I'll bet he sensed the power in the clockwork gadgets and planned to steal them. Looks like the Queen got him. Serves him right."

"I don't think the Queen was responsible." Fallon aimed the flashlight at an object that lay on the floor next to the skull. "This wasn't death by paranormal means. Looks more like good old-fashioned blunt force trauma."

"He fell?"

"No." Fallon reached down and picked up a crowbar. "Someone whacked him on the back of the head with this."

"How can you tell all that?"

"Crack in the skull and the body fell facedown," Fallon said absently. "It's not rocket science."

"Oh, right. But that means that there was someone else down here with him."

"Yes," Fallon said. "It does indicate exactly that."

"Henry and Vera told us that Lasher ran off with a woman named Rachel Stewart. Both of them were able to tolerate the psi down here. I'll bet they came together to steal the curiosities. Rachel must have decided that Lasher really was an asshole after all and that she didn't need him anymore. She bashed him in the head with the crowbar."

"I'd say the probability of that scenario is about seventy-four percent."

"Only seventy-four?"

"Yes." Fallon swept the rest of the chamber with his flashlight. "Here we go, there's our second entrance."

Isabella studied the steel door built into the concrete wall. "It's a door but it doesn't go up to the surface."

Fallon went forward, gripped the handle and pulled on the door. It opened with only a few faint squeaks of the hinges. A great darkness lay beyond. Chilly, damp air flowed into the chamber. Isabella heard the muffled rumble of the ocean in the distance.

"A cave," Fallon said. "It leads out to a cove or a beach."

"That door opened fairly easily," Isabella said. "The salt air should have done a lot more damage by now."

"Whoever has been keeping the Queen in functioning order all these years uses this entrance," Fallon said.

"Why do you suppose the original owner built a second entrance?"

"Think about it. If you were down here waiting for the bombs to fall, not knowing what was happening on the surface, wouldn't you want a second escape route in case the first one got blocked?"

"Good point," she said.

He closed the cavern door, walked to the first elongated box and wiped off a layer of grime with one gloved hand.

"More bullet-resistant glass," he said. "They used these boxes to store the curiosities."

Isabella went to stand beside him. The glass box was empty.

"Looks about the right size for the Queen," she said. She glanced down the row of stands and cases. "There's no box on one of the stands. I'll bet that was the one that held the clock. The killer said that when he found the device in the tunnel beneath the Zander house basement, it was in a glass box."

They went to the third case in the row. Fallon wiped off more grime.

Isabella saw a wood-and-bronze clockwork dragon with eerie glass eyes. She moved to the next box. It contained an ornate miniature carriage and two small wooden horses. The glass windows of the vehicle glinted darkly. The third case held a toy-sized merry-go-round decorated with small mythical beasts. The last box held a Victorian-era camera.

"If we assume that the Queen was in the empty case and that the clock was stolen together with its glass box, all of the curiosities that were originally stored here are accounted for," Fallon said.

"You sound relieved."

"Trust me, I am," Fallon said.

"But who comes down here on a regular basis to keep the Queen in working order?"

"Someone who can handle the psi in this place and who also feels a duty to protect the artifacts."

"Walker," she said softly. "But that means he knows about the second entrance. Why didn't he mention it?"

"Walker operates in his own universe and employs his own kind of logic," Fallon said. "It's our fault. We didn't ask the right question."

"I think that, in his mind, he has turned over the responsibility of protecting the inventions to J&J. He probably assumes that you know everything he knows."

"Yes."

Isabella looked at the skeleton. "What do we do with the body?"

"Nothing until we get the inventions out of here. Gordon Lasher has been here for twenty-two years. He can wait a while longer."