Cassidy Jones and the Luminous (Cassidy Jones Adventures Book 4) (31 page)

“He’s walking again,” I whispered.

Gavin gave a sharp nod. “I have a visual. Joe, on my signal. She-Ra, stand down. This one is mine.”

I slunk back into the shadows while Joe and Gavin pressed themselves on either side of the doorway. Barely breathing, Joe gripped the knob. The fingers on his other hand twitched at his side, as though warming up for a brawl. Gavin flipped to Joe’s side of the door, bending his knees.

In the window, I glimpsed a head of shaggy brown hair angled over a cell phone. The man’s hair hid his face, but I could see his thumbs adeptly punching out a text. By his appearance, voice, and quick texting, I guessed he was young, and I could hear the song he listened to now. Muse’s “Uprising.”

Gavin signaled to Joe. Joe swung the door open, and Gavin sprang at the man, slamming him to the floor with such brute force that the back of his head bounced off it. His baby face twisted in pain and shock, and I noted patches of acne and a pierced eyebrow and lip. He looked to be about eighteen or nineteen.

“Ooooooo,” the boy groaned, his eyes attempting to focus on Gavin.

Gavin gathered him by his Led Zeppelin T-shirt to haul him into the stairwell and out of sight, but the skin on the boy’s neck appeared to ripple, like agitated water in a pond. The collar Gavin held sliced through the boy’s neck, which didn’t lose form. It was as though his neck was solid and fluid at the same time.

Joe gasped.

Gavin pulled back his fist and drove it into the boy’s jaw. His knuckles glanced over the surface of the boy’s skin, leaving droplets of water in the blow’s wake. The shocking sight brought to mind how water looks when a rock is skipped across the top. The disengaged droplets drew back to the boy from midair, as though a magnet attracted them, melding back into his skin, which suddenly appeared solid again. The injured boy was clearly having trouble controlling whatever his power was. What would he have unleashed, if he hadn’t been hurt?

Gavin wasn’t going to find out.

He dragged the nearly unconscious boy to a sitting position, clasped a strong hand on his forehead, and slammed his head into the floor. The boy’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he lay under Gavin’s straddling legs, limp as a rag.

I stared at the violent scene, stunned. I had been at the center of violence more times than I cared to remember, but witnessing brutality was a whole other animal.

“She-Ra, take him,” Gavin commanded in a hoarse voice, appearing slightly shaken.

I gathered the boy in my arms and carried him into the stairwell, depositing him gently on the floor. Gavin shut the door behind us. Nausea slid through my stomach. What did Gavin plan on doing to him now?

“Poor kid,” Joe said, smoothing the unconscious boy’s disarrayed hair. “What is he?”

“We don’t know,” Gavin responded, peering out the window. “Status?”

“They’re preparing to leave the facility,” Emery reported. He hadn’t made a peep during the ambush. “The Host claims to have something interesting to share. I assume they’re headed your way.”

“Why didn’t you tell us until now?” I screeched.

Gavin gave me a sharp look.

“I don’t care if they hear me,” I said through my teeth, glaring at him. “Jared isn’t stepping one foot inside this building!”

“Your Jared?” Joe asked. Then he shook his head, as though trying to gather his thoughts, and fixed me with a stern look. “Green Eyes, don’t act rashly. Follow orders, or this could go bad for Jared.”

“I won’t do anything stupid,” I growled.

Or would I?

Letting Joe handle me, Gavin squatted next to the boy, evaluating him. “I’m taping him, for all the good it’ll do. She-Ra, my bag.”

“He’ll be out for a while,” Joe predicted, smoothing the boy’s unruly mop again.

I handed Gavin his tactical bag.

“For our sake, I hope you’re right. Because this won’t hold him for long.” Gavin removed duct tape from the bag.

After taping the boy’s mouth, Gavin turned him onto his belly. Then he wound tape around his captive’s wrists with a proficiency that implied he’d done it many times before. I watched quietly, with an anxious, heavy heart. Listening to music, arguing with a girlfriend—all totally normal for a teenage boy. Looking at him, there had been nothing that suggested he was anything other than that, until his flesh became a watery substance.

There has to be some of him left in there
, I reasoned, as Gavin finished taping his ankles together. He stuffed the duct tape back inside his tactical bag.
A mind-controlling parasite wouldn’t care about rock music, or girls.

His mouth a straight, ruthless line, Gavin contemplated the boy. I grew more afraid for him.

Joe touched Gavin’s shoulder. “He’s had enough. We’ll be outta here ’fore he can cause any trouble.”

Gavin nodded, rubbing his forehead. “Status?”

“They haven’t left the plant,” Emery replied. “Nightcrawler and I have managed to delay them.”

Despite the horrific situation, a smile tugged at my lips.
Maybe Grimm will become so exasperated by Jared’s constant questions that he’ll forget all about whatever he has planned down here . . .

What is going on down here?

“We need to assume anyone we encounter is like
him
,” Gavin said as he patted the boy down for weapons. He extracted a handgun from the boy’s waistband. “He would’ve used this.” He looked directly at me, then stuffed the handgun into his empty holster. “We strike them before they can strike us. Surprise will be our only advantage.”

Gavin put on his tactical bag and recovered his gun, which he had holstered prior to attacking the kid. Eyeing him, Joe collected his crowbar and the gun Gavin had given him from the floor.

I could see that Joe recognized that Gavin had experienced and seen things most men hadn’t, and never would, which earned him a level of respect, although Joe would keep a sharp eye on him, regardless. So would I.

I loved Gavin, but I knew he was capable of anything.

Gavin told me to find the source of the water. Joe trailed me, with Gavin keeping watch of the rear, his gun in position, even though I’d assured him that I could only hear the hummer, whom we were headed toward, and the man and woman, who were in the opposite direction, deep in conversation. Their voices sounded garbled, like those of the adults in the
Charlie Brown
cartoons. I didn’t dare fix too much attention on them and risk compromising my senses and possibly missing a threat.

“They’ve left the plant,” Emery informed.

I came to a halt.

“Keep moving,” Gavin commanded in a low voice. “The Host is bringing Nightcrawler to wherever this water is coming from. We need to be in position when they arrive.”

Half a dozen questions fired through my head, such as
Why don’t we just stop them before they enter the building?
However, I refrained from asking them. I had to trust Gavin.

Emery will tell us if Jared is in danger
, I consoled myself, getting a whiff of a familiar scent.

“I smell a cat,” I whispered to Gavin and Joe.

“Cleo?” Joe asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Who’s Cleo?” Gavin demanded.

“Lady Jane’s cat. She’s a friend of Joe’s, and she’s missing, too.”

“Do you smell Lady Jane?” Gavin asked.

“No,” I confirmed, watching Joe. A certain clairvoyance had settled on his face. Joe didn’t look as though he liked the truths that were materializing behind those sad, wise eyes of his.

“Keep moving,” Gavin ordered me again.

I led them down another hall, stopping at the end. The sound of running water echoed behind two double doors about fifty feet from us, in what I assumed was a very large space.

“The boiler room,” Joe guessed.

“Let’s see.” Gavin stepped past me.

“Wait,” I said, grabbing his arm. “The woman isn’t humming anymore.”

“Is she walking?” Gavin asked. He moved in front of me, his gun trained on the doors.

I listened and smiled. “Can you hear that?”

Alert, Gavin and Joe shook their heads.

“She is so loud, I’m surprised. She’s
sleeping
,
and
snoring up a storm!”

“Are you positive she is alone?” Gavin asked.

“Yes, she is,” Emery answered for me. “The Host and his party are headed your way. I’ll let you know when they enter the facility.”

My stomach clenched.

“Where are they now?” I asked, breaking protocol. My dad suddenly sprang to mind. With only Emery communicating with us, I had forgotten he was there, too, watching and listening to everything that was going on. No doubt he was sick with worry.

“Dad, everything is okay,” I assured.

Joe’s eyebrows lifted at the word “Dad.”

“Affirmative, She-Ra,” Emery answered, sounding perturbed. “Proceed.”

Gavin motioned for Joe and me to wait. Gun poised, he moved quickly and stealthily toward the doors. The door on the right was slightly ajar. Plastering himself against the doorframe, he peered inside. His eyes and chin dropped, indicating that the room was lower than the floor we were on. He waved for us to follow, then slipped through the opening, careful not to touch the door, in case it creaked and woke the woman.

I scurried across the hallway with Joe close behind, stepped through the door, and threw my hands over my mouth to stifle a scream. Joe gasped behind me.

How could anyone have been prepared for this?

Twenty feet below looked like a set from a sci-fi film—only this was real, terrifyingly real.

Two trenches cut across the cavernous cement room. The right was streaming with clear water that dropped off abruptly and poured into a wide ground-level drain. The left was a pool of glimmering, bright-white light. Zillions of bioluminescent parasites had to be swimming through that water. The twinkling water traveled up through two thick glass tubes that were sunk into the parasite-infested stream. One glass tube ran to a large steel machine that resembled an industrial furnace. The other connected to an identical machine mounted next to the first. Eight thinner glass tubes shot out from the other side of each machine, and the conduits carried the water through the cement wall.

In these tubes, the water was clear. At first, I thought the machines had filtered out the parasites, until a vision adjustment revealed that the sixteen glass tubes had been sectioned off at a water bottle length. The parasites hadn’t been removed. They had been distributed, one per section of each tube, so they wouldn’t glow.

Speculating where the tubes went from here wasn’t necessary: the contaminated water was being piped to the Luminous Water plant.

Between both trenches sat an old woman in a rocking chair. White head thrown back, wire-rimmed glasses cock-eyed on her wrinkled face, gray cat curled on her lap, and a knitting project tucked at her side, she whistled snores. I was almost positive the cat was Cleo.

Lined end-to-end between the snoozing woman and the glowing stream, were twenty glass pods. Clear water spewed from a spigot into each enclosed tank, showering upon a human form, one per pod, submerged in parasite-infested water. The twenty humanoids looked very much alive, moving and looking about, each rolling around like a baby in amniotic fluid. They breathed in the water and parasites like oxygen, seeming to exhale more parasites than they inhaled. The twinkling parasites darted in and out of the prisoners’ ears and nostrils, swarming around their faces in eerie frenzies of light. Thick glass tubes extended from the backside of each pod, feeding the glowing white pool.

What are they doing to these people?

An insistent tap on my shoulder freed me from my initial shock. I glanced at Joe’s disturbed face, and he pointed at Gavin, who was already halfway down the metal stairway, setting a foot lightly on each step, carefully distributing his weight so as not to make a sound.

Joe and I followed his lead. I focused my attention on each step as my foot met it, concentrating on the descent to give my rattled state of mind a reprieve. Maybe when I looked up again, the horrible tanks would be gone.

At the bottom, Gavin jerked his head toward the back of the stairs, where a large discarded steel water tank lay on its side. We scampered behind it and peeked over the top. Snores continued to rip from the woman’s throat.

“In that first tank, that’s Z,” Joe whispered tightly.

“Another missing friend?” Gavin deduced as he filmed the horrific scene on his cell. “What about the others?”

“Couldn’t see them clearly coming down. Z’s tank is blocking the view now.”

Z stopped turning in the slow circle he had been making and stared in our direction, as though he’d heard his name. He exhaled a shimmering cloud of parasites.

“He heard us?” Joe croaked out.

“I don’t know,” I whispered back. “Is that Cleo?”

“Looks like her.”

The cat stretched on the sleeping woman’s lap. Z’s head cocked to her. A toothy grin broke out across his face.

“Hey, Cleo,” he said, bubbles and parasites escaping with the words. He tapped the side of the tank, trying to get her attention. Cleo yawned, uninterested, and curled up to go back to sleep.

“He’s aware,” Gavin hissed, astonished.

“And not afraid,” Joe added. “Z wants to be there.”

“They’ve entered the building,” Emery told us.

Just then, a bearded man burst through the surface of the trench containing clear water, as though he’d swam in with the current. Standing up near the edge, he closed his eyes and tilted his head to knock water from his ears, then ran his hands over his hair, pushing it from his face. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt, and appeared to be in his late thirties.

“Doc,” Joe whispered.

Gavin nodded and kept filming.

A woman emerged right after Doc. It took me a moment to recognize her with wet hair. Her large eyes fell on Cleo. A bright smile lit her face.

“Cleo!” she exclaimed with delight, startling the old woman out of sleep.

“Nearly gave me a heart attack,” she scolded a smiling Lady Jane, who swam to the edge of the trench.