Jayne Castle - Canyons of Night

“No,” he said. “It’s not the smugglers. If they had found us they would have shot us by now. You heard them back there at the cove. They said they couldn’t follow us into the Preserve.”

“They think that whatever is in here will get us. Don’t know about you but that doesn’t make me feel any better. Who knows what’s in this place?”

“You’ve lived on Rainshadow all your life. If there were dangerous wild animals in here you would have heard about them by now.”

“I’m not talking about wild animals. I’m talking about other stuff. Lots of people have gone missing in the Preserve over the years. What if they didn’t just die? What if they’re still around?”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“How do you know that?”

It was, Devin thought, a legitimate question. How did he know there was no such thing as ghosts? He decided he did not want to pursue that line of logic.

“At least it’s not too cold in here,” he said. “If we have to spend the night we won’t get that hypo thing.”

“Hypothermia,” Nate said automatically.

“Yeah. That.”

Devin took out the old compass that Charlotte Enright had given him. He held it tightly in his hand. He had already discovered that it didn’t work inside the Preserve. When he’d tried to use it earlier he saw that all four points of the compass were glowing equally brightly. There was no way to tell which way was true north. But it felt good to hold it in his hand. Comforting.

“I’m thirsty,” Nate said after a while. “I’m going to get some water.”

“Me, too.” Devin got to his feet.

They moved across the grass to the grotto pool and looked down at the frothy water.

“Huh,” Nate said. “Something weird about that water.”

“Like what?”

But he could sense it, too, Devin thought, probably better than Nate could. There was something strange about the water in the pool.

“You can’t see the bottom,” Nate said. He looked down into the pool as if he was fascinated by it.

“The rocks at the bottom are dark so the water looks dark. That’s why you can’t see anything,” Devin said.

“Oh, man, there’s something down there,” Nate whispered.

“A fish, maybe,” Devin said uneasily.

“Whatever it is, it’s big. Don’t know about you but I’m not thirsty enough to put my hand into that water.”

“It’s just a fish.” Devin started to lean forward to scoop up some of the water.

Something dark swirled in the depths of the water. He realized he suddenly felt an overpowering urge to plunge into the pool. The darkness down below summoned him with a force that was slowly becoming irresistible. His heart started to pound. He leaned a little farther forward.

“Are you crazy, man?” Nate shouted.

He grabbed Devin’s arm and yanked him back from the edge.

Devin felt as if he had just awakened from a nightmare. He gasped for air and took several deep breaths trying to calm his racing pulse.

“Thanks,” he managed.

“Come on, we need to get away from this place,” Nate whispered.

“If we start running around in the Preserve no one will ever find us.”

“No one’s ever gonna find us, anyway,” Nate said. He did not take his eyes off the dark surface of the pool.

“Wrong,” Devin said. “The chief will find us.”

SLADE BROUGHT THE SUV TO A HALT AT THE END OF Merton Road and sat quietly for a moment, hands resting on the wheel. The first frisson of unease shifted across his senses.

“This is not good,” he said to Rex. “We should have passed the boys on their bicycles somewhere along the way.”

Rex was perched on the back of the passenger seat where he had a good view out the windows. Sensing Slade’s concern, he muttered.

“We’d better go take a look.” Slade opened the door. “If Devin did decide to try to get Nate and himself into the Preserve and it turns out they got lost, I’m going to be pissed.”

Clutch in paw, Rex sidestepped along the back of the seats and hopped onto Slade’s arm. From there he scrambled up onto Slade’s shoulder.

They made their way through the trees along the top of the cliffs. To the left sheer rock walls plunged into the cold, churning waters of the Amber Sea. Slade knew that the rock face went down several hundred more feet below the surface. Rainshadow was a natural fortress, he thought. It wasn’t the first time that realization had crossed his mind. If you wanted to conceal some serious secrets, this was a good place to do it.

Fifteen minutes later he stood on top of the low cliff above Hidden Beach. There was no sign of Nate and Devin. He tried to shake off the chill factor but his senses were growing colder and more acute. His hunter intuition was telling him the truth, whether he wanted to acknowledge it or not.

He went down the rough trail to the rocky beach. Small pebbles and debris skittered from under his boots.

The beach was clean. Too clean, he thought. You’d never know a couple of teenage boys had spent time here looking for the lost treasure of a legendary pirate and smuggler who had worked the Amber Sea Islands fifty years earlier.

“The boys have been taught to pack out all of their trash but there should be some traces left behind,” he said to Rex. “We’re talking about a couple of teens. They can’t even keep their rooms this clean.”

He jacked up his senses a couple of notches. The action was automatic. He did not expect to find anything, he did not want to find anything, because the only psi he could detect was the burning radiation that indicated violence. With his talent he could pick up only the bad news. But somewhere along the line he had slipped into hunting mode. There was no turning back.

The flaring acid light he dreaded viewing was splashed like blood all over the rocks on the beach.

“Shit,” he said very softly to Rex.

Rex mumbled ominously, tumbled down to the ground, and began exploring.

The energy was fairly fresh, Slade decided, only a few hours old. It had not been laid down by either Nate or Devin. He knew both boys. Neither of them could have generated such a cold, violent fever. What he was looking at had been left by adults. Two of them, if he was analyzing it correctly. The ultralight in the prints told him that they both possessed some talent. The chill on his senses went glacial.

Rex was at the far end of the tiny beach, investigating the rocks. He appeared very intent on whatever it was he had discovered. A crab, Slade thought, or maybe some other small creature trying to hunt or hide at the water’s edge.

There was no time to waste but for some reason he felt compelled to find out what had captured Rex’s attention. He crossed the beach and studied the rocks.

“What do you see?” he asked softly.

Rex pawed at one rock as though he wanted to play with it. But there was nothing playful in his demeanor. He, too, was in serious hunting mode.

Slade crouched. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He picked up the rock, prepared for a multilegged shore denizen to scuttle away. But it was not a crab that gleamed in the light. It was a spent shell casing. Someone had recently fired a gun here in the cove. Or from the top of the cliff.

He glanced up, thinking about how casings scattered. The violently luminous light was splashed all the way up the trail. He ran the scenario in his mind. The shooters had been surprised while they were on the beach. They had rushed up the trail in a killing frame of mind. It didn’t take any psychic talent to figure out that the boys had been spotted by a couple of thugs who did not want any witnesses.

The sons of bitches went after a couple of unarmed kids, Slade thought.

The hunting fever was upon him now. He took the notebook out of his shirt pocket, ripped out a sheet of paper, and used it to pick up the casing. He folded the paper around the casing and tucked it back into his shirt. While talent could be used to track down criminals, very little evidence of a straight paranormal nature was allowed in court. Judges and juries still liked hard evidence.

He got to his feet and looked at Rex. “How the hell did you know the shell casing was important?”

Rex fixed him with a disturbingly intense look and growled darkly.

“Let’s go,” Slade said.

He started up the trail. Rex scrambled after him.

At the top of the cliff Slade stopped, trying to think like a couple of teenage boys who had inadvertently surprised a pair of men with guns. If they had been scared, which was the only reasonable response, they would have run. If they had fled, they would have dropped their packs. So where were the packs?

The most likely answer, the one he did not want to acknowledge, was that the gunmen had killed the boys and dumped the bodies and the packs into the deep, cold waters of the Amber Sea. But he would not go there yet, not until he had ruled out all other possibilities. The boys might have had time to escape.

He forced himself to look for the black ultralight that indicated spilled blood. Relief roared through him when he did not see any on the ground. He fought back the emotional response because it would interfere with the hunt. Still, it was useful information, a solid fact. He could use a few more facts of that nature.

“No blood,” he said quietly to Rex. “They were shooting at the boys but they didn’t hit either of them. At least not here.”

That left a lot of equally awful possibilities. The gunmen could have chased the boys into the trees, grabbed them, and murdered them elsewhere.