The Candlestone (12 page)
“What are your names?” Bonnie asked.
The redhead spoke up. “I’m Karen.” With a finger she tapped the tallest of the other girls on her blonde head. “This is Stacey. She’s eleven.” Karen moved her hand to a shorter dark-skinned girl. “This is Rebecca, but we call her Beck. She’s nine.” Karen then pointed to a petite Asian girl. “And Monique is four, but we always call her Pebbles.”
“Pebbles?” Bonnie repeated.
Karen grinned and cracked her chewing gum. “Yeah. When Doc found her, she was so hungry she was trying to eat pebbles.”
“Doc?” Bonnie asked. “Who’s Doc?”
“Your father,” Ashley said.
Bonnie raised her head and slowly nodded. “Oh . . . okay.” Devin had mentioned a “Doc” back in West Virginia, proving the partnership her father admitted having with the slayer, but she still didn’t know how close their ties were. Maybe her dad didn’t really trust Devin and was simply picking his brain for research, just like he had said. Bonnie wanted to get on with it—to find the truth . . . and her mother. But with the girls continuing to caress her wings in silent awe, she felt stuck. She took a deep breath and caught Karen’s eye. “And do you have a nickname?”
Stacey piped up. “We call her Red.”
Karen bopped Stacey playfully on the head with her fist. “My name’s Karen, you silly goose!”
Bonnie stifled a laugh. “And how old are you, Karen?”
“Thirteen,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders. “But I can’t prove it.”
“No birth certificate,” Ashley explained. “You see, your father took these girls in. They were either street kids, abandoned children, or runaways —nobody wanted them.” She placed a hand on Karen’s shoulder. “Karen’s mother left her out in a snowstorm when she was just a toddler, and she’s been in the foster system ever since. Six months ago she ran away from an abusive home and wound up wandering the university campus looking for a job. A lady at Human Resources called your father to tell him about her, so he took her in.
“Dr. Conner found Stacey in an alley with a man who . . . well, let’s just say he didn’t have her best interests in mind. I’ll bet that guy won’t be bothering any little girls again after Doc got through with him. Anyway, Stacey refused to tell Doc where she came from, so he just kept her.
“Beck came over the border from Baja California, and both her parents died in the desert. A California family hid her for a while and then sent her to some friends here in Montana. That family dumped Beck into the foster system, and your father heard about her. They were going to ship her back to Mexico. Doc has a friend in the foster system who let him keep her, until they, as he put it, ‘can look into the matter.’”
Ashley patted Monique on the head. “And little Pebbles is a long story. We think she’s Korean, and it looks like she was smuggled into a port on the Washington coast, probably for a black market adoption. Anyway, your father was surf fishing with a friend, and she was wandering on the beach trying to find something to eat. There was no one else around. The poor little girl was trying to bite into pieces of drift wood and pebbles.”
Bonnie gazed into Monique’s wide brown eyes. “Wow! That’s amazing! How does he just ‘find’ these girls? That seems too weird.”
“Pebbles was first,” Ashley explained. “After taking her in, he actually started looking for orphans. Once a month he went into bad parts of town at night looking for runaways. And he asks his friends to call him if someone needs a home. He feels he can help them, and at the same time they can help him with his research.”
Bonnie took Monique’s hand and held it close to her side. “Well, it’s awesome that they have a home now, but how can they help him?”
Ashley waved her arm toward the dorm rooms. “Go on back now. You’ll get to talk to Bonnie more in a little while.”
Ashley’s abrupt dismissal of the girls seemed awkward. Bonnie caught a glimpse of Karen’s arm as she drew her caressing hand away.
Are those needle marks?
A sense of dread came back stronger than ever. Karen paused at the doorway to her room, stared at Bonnie for a second, and then ducked inside.
Ashley unlocked the first door on the left. “This is your room. The other girls live two to a room so they don’t get lonely. I’ll be staying here with you, if that’s all right.”
Bonnie cleared her throat to quell any trembling in her voice. “Sure. I guess so.” She read the homemade cardboard sign on the door. It said, “Alberta Einstein.”
Ashley ushered her toward the open door. “You look tired. Why don’t you rest up? The bathroom is the last door down the hall on the left, and there’s a shower there, too.” She put her hands on her hips. “Does the room look okay? Check it out.”
Bonnie poked her head into the dorm room. Two beds on opposite walls displayed their dressy attire—colorful, quilted bedspreads and lacey dust ruffles. Soft, light blue carpet covered the floor, matching the hint of azure in the off-white walls.
One side of the room seemed “lived in.” A poster of Albert
Einstein hung on one wall, and a drawing of the cavern laboratory had been taped next to it. The most prominent feature, however, was a strange painting, the portrait of an old man—old, that is, from the neck up. His face was worn and haggard, but his body exuded youthful muscles, bulging through a track athlete’s uniform. He was planting his feet at the start of a race, ready to sprint from the block. A caption read, “Daddy’s Dream: A Sagacious Mind in a Robust Body,” and the painting was signed by Ashley.
Bonnie opened the closet on her side of the room. A burst of colors greeted her eyes, a dazzling assortment of beautiful dresses and stylish slacks hung from the clothes rod, and boots, shoes, and sweaters lay in cubbyholes beneath. Bonnie couldn’t believe it. “Are these for me?”
“Uh-huh. I had to guess your size from an old photo. I hope they fit.”
Bonnie pulled out a dress and held it up. She draped one of the long turquoise sleeves down her arm and smiled. “It looks perfect.”
“Then I guessed right; I won’t have to measure you. I’ll help you alter them for your wings later. I couldn’t guess where to make the slits in the back.” Ashley stood in the doorway and pushed her hand through her hair. “For now, you should get some rest. I’m going to set up a communication session for tonight, and you’ll want to be wide awake for that.”
Bonnie put the dress back in the closet. “Communication session? With who?”
“I’ll explain exactly how it works when we do it, but I’ve built a way to communicate with the life forces inside the candlestone. It may be hard to believe, but within a few hours you’ll be talking with your mother.”
Chapter 8
Dr. Conner spun the dial on the wall safe and then steadily guided it through its combination stops. After he reached the final number and turned the handle, he heard an unexpected click. He spun around to see Ashley stepping out of the dorm’s hallway and locking the door behind her.
Dr. Conner slid the candlestone’s protective box from the case and gingerly walked it to the marble pedestal at the center of the chamber, setting it gently in place.
Ashley strode to his side and lifted the lid a crack. She peered at the candlestone for a moment before closing the box again. “How’s Daddy doing?”
“I’m sure it’s just a virus. I gave him something to help him rest, so he’s sleeping.”
Dr. Conner walked the few steps back to the main control panel, sat down at its swivel chair, and flipped a switch. A device that looked like a futuristic ray gun rose slowly from the floor near the pedestal, stopping when the gun’s barrel reached the level of the candlestone’s box. “Is Bonnie asleep?”
Ashley joined him. “If she’s not, she will be soon. She looked real tired, so I told her to get some rest.” She pointed to a line on a flat panel monitor. “If you’re going to shoot it now, you’ll have to set the distortion allowance to about seventy-five.”
Dr. Conner turned one of the dozens of knobs while watching the monitor. “And what did she say about the girls?”
Ashley scratched her head through her tangled hair and leaned over to read a stream of data that began flashing on the screen. “Not much. They were excited to see her, and she was friendly, even when they crowded around and wanted to touch her wings.”
Dr. Conner rotated a dial, clicking it from zero to eight. A thin beam shot out from the gun, painting a tiny crimson circle on one side of the candlestone’s leaden box. “It would be better if she doesn’t talk to them privately. Do you understand?”
Ashley sighed and nodded. “Yes. I understand.”
Dr. Conner’s eyes darted over the controls. “Which voiceprint is in memory right now?”
Ashley pointed to a switch. “Devin’s. His is channel A. Bonnie’s mom is channel B.”
“He’s communicating on alpha frequency, right?”
Ashley pushed her hair back with one hand and tapped a digital display with the other. “Uh-huh. That’s where he’s supposed to be. But I noticed lately that he’s not always there, like he might be experimenting with other frequencies.”
Dr. Conner jerked his head around and glared at Ashley. “Nonsense! You must have been misreading it.”
Ashley let her hair fall haphazardly and blew it out of her way with an angry huff. “Misreading it? Me? You’re the one who didn’t know which frequency to use just now.”
Dr. Conner turned his attention back to the controls and adjusted a dial. “I was just double-checking. And you should tell me when you notice something unusual in the stone, especially frequency drift. I don’t want you speculating. You know what happens when your head gets in the clouds.”
Ashley stepped back from the panel and put her hands on her hips. “In the clouds? What are you talking about?”
Dr. Conner stood and pushed one hand in his pocket, slowly letting out a sigh. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I should know better.” He laughed and added, “Before you came here I didn’t know squat about physics. How did you say it that day you got so mad at me?”
Ashley squeezed her lips together. “I said, ‘You don’t know a tachion beam from a tackle box.’”
“That’s right. Back then I was just a research panhandler begging for a government grant! Yesterday I turned down two geezers who practically threw their money at me.”
Ashley met Dr. Conner’s gaze. “Well, using dragon blood was your vision.”
Dr. Conner pulled Ashley’s hand into a handshake. “Then we’re a good team, and I’ll try not to forget it.” He fished in his pocket for his keys and extended the key chain toward her. “As my teammate, would you please go up to the Explorer and get my spiral notebook? I left it on the front passenger’s seat.”
Ashley grinned, and her eyes sparkled. “Sure, Doc.” She waltzed toward the Alpha exit door. “But I have my own set of keys, remember?”
“And would you hit the lights on your way out—switch them from manual to panel control?”
Ashley swiped at the light switches and closed the door behind her. Darkness flooded the chamber, and her steps faded in the corridor.
The scarlet laser beam knifed through the blackness, and a faint glow from the control panel diodes cast a ghostly light. Dr. Conner followed the beam to the pedestal. He knew Ashley would be gone for a while. Although the hike through the tunnel was easy, the hundreds of upward steps that followed would slow even the best athlete.
He opened the box and took out the candlestone, setting the gem on the flat marble surface directly in the laser’s path. The candlestone absorbed the red beam like a thirsty sponge; its surface glowed pink, then stark red as the light poured through every crystalline particle. After a few seconds, it became engorged with ruby light and spurted bright cherry sparks, like blood pumping from a pulsating heart.
The stone’s exit facet leaned against a nickel-sized grid attached to the end of a curved glass pipe that protruded from the top of the pedestal. The drops of discharged light collected in the grid and sped through an optic tube that ran across the tile and into a floor-standing computer near the control panel.
Dr. Conner returned to his seat at the controls and raised a black shield at the back of the panel, deflecting the glowing lights away from the candlestone. With the flip of a switch, large floor speakers on each side of his body began spewing static. As he adjusted a series of slider bars, the various sounds harmonized, coming together like altos and sopranos in a haunting electrostatic opera. With another click of a switch, the sound changed abruptly, and a deep, throaty voice replaced the operatic buzz.
“—delays are annoying me. Can you hear me now?”
Dr. Conner snatched a microphone from the top of the control panel. “Yes, yes. I hear you. Can you hear me?” As the doctor spoke, each word etched a fluctuating pattern of red on the candlestone’s surface.
“Yes, Doctor. It’s about time you provided an update.”
Dr. Conner wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “Of course. That’s why I’m contacting you now.” He swallowed hard before continuing. “Bonnie’s here. She’s anxious to see her mother, but I don’t think she suspects anything. I plan to set up contact at nine tonight. Are you still able to mark time?”
“Yes. What time is it now?”
Dr. Conner pressed a button on his watch, lighting up its analog face. “Exactly two minutes after six in the evening.”
“I’ve got it. Are your daughter’s friends going to be any trouble?”
“Palin called. Our colleague in West Virginia says that they’re on their way—the Bannister boy, his mother, another male teenager, and an old man. If they go to the address on the card, my greeting party will take care of them.”
“The man is likely a teacher I know, Charles Hamilton. He is brilliant and cunning, but he is, as you say, an old man. Bannister, on the other hand, may be more trouble than you’ve bargained for. His breath can kill you with one puff.”
“I’ve heard,” Dr. Conner replied, trying not to sound agitated. “But don’t worry. Palin will be there.”
“Good. He’ll know what to do. We’ve battled dragons with more fire than that mongrel could ever blow.”
Dr. Conner pushed a hand into his pocket and felt for his keys. “Are you planning to kill him?”
“What I decide should be of no consequence to you, Doctor. Remember our deal. I’ll spare the girl and leave her with you, but I get the boy, no questions asked. Understood?”
Dr. Conner gulped as quietly as he could. “Understood. But I’m keeping the DNA markings encoded, just to make sure you keep your end of the deal.”
“I understand completely. There’s no honor among liars, is there Doctor? But you have nothing to worry about. Your daughter cannot fulfill the prophecy without the boy, so I can leave her in your protective custody.”
Silence descended over the dark lab, and the red light ceased its flickering dance on the wall of the candlestone. Dr. Conner glanced at the Alpha exit door and then at the door leading to the girls’ dorm.
The sparks exiting the candlestone flashed to life once more. “Tell Palin to kill the others and bring the mongrel to me.”
Bonnie opened the door to her room and peered through the crack. No one was in the hall. She stepped out, careful to set her shoes quietly on the floor and tiptoe to Karen’s room on the opposite side of the corridor. The label on her door said in multicolored strokes of wide ink, “Red and Pebbles.” Bonnie didn’t want to risk knocking, so she cautiously turned the knob and pushed the door open just a bit. She whispered, “Can I come in?”
Bonnie heard rustling and a thump. The door flew open, and Karen’s bright, welcoming eyes appeared. She grabbed Bonnie’s hand and pulled her inside before she had time to contract her wings. They bumped painfully against the doorframe as she entered.
Karen peeked out the door before closing it behind her and then bounced back into the room. “Sit down,” she said, pointing to one of the beds. “Pebbles won’t mind.”
Bonnie perched on the edge of the bed and watched the sleeping Asian girl. “Evening nap?”
“Yep. She has nightmares, so she catches a catnap once in a while.” Karen plopped on her own bed, bouncing lightly, as if in time with music only she could hear. “So why’d you come to see me?”
Bonnie caught Karen’s gaze straying toward her wings, but she pretended not to notice. “I just wanted to get to know you better. You know, to get an idea of what’s going on here. You don’t get to see an underground laboratory complete with a girls’ dorm very often.”
Karen laughed and winked. “No. I guess this isn’t the traditional American home, is it?”
Karen’s joyful laugh made Bonnie feel warm inside. “No, not exactly traditional,” she replied. “Do you get to go outside? Do you have school? What do you do all day?”
Karen shifted her gaze toward the ceiling. “We don’t go outside much,” she said, regaining eye contact with Bonnie, “at least not lately. There used to be an easier way out than that long tunnel and those awful stairs. It’s a little door that leads to a cave and then another tunnel. They called it the Omega exit, but I never found out why. It comes out at about the same level we’re at, sort of like in a valley. There’s a real cool place to play there, a creek and a grassy field, but I never went out much after the wildflowers sprouted. I’m real allergic to bee stings.” She let out a sigh. “Anyway, I suppose it’s covered by snow this time of year, and Doc says there’s a monster in the cave now, so we can’t go through there anymore to get to the valley.”
“A monster?” Bonnie tried not to sound too doubtful. “Do you believe him?”
Karen nodded her head, her eyes bulging. “I’ve heard it growl; we all have. I imagine it’s too dark in there to see it, but it’s there all right. I thought at first that it might be a grizzly bear, but it doesn’t sound like any bear I’ve ever heard. It’s more like a Mercedes diesel engine without a muffler.”
Bonnie dragged her teeth across her bottom lip. A monster? Was it a ruse to keep them in line? With all the equipment her father had, it would be easy to fool the girls into thinking something weird was in that cave. “What do you do here all day if you can’t go outside?”
Karen tapped a stack of books on her nightstand. “When Ashley’s here, she teaches us for a couple of hours a day and gives us assignments, and sometimes Doc calls one of us out to the lab to help him.”
Bonnie clenched her hands in her lap. Karen had given the perfect opening to the subject she most wanted to know about, but she didn’t want to seem too eager. “Help him? What do you do?”
Karen hesitated, her lips trembling as her smile faded. “Well,” she said, glancing toward Pebbles, who was squirming under her bed sheet, “I . . . I’m not sure what I can tell you.”
Bonnie tiptoed over to Karen’s bed and sat down. She took Karen’s hand in hers. “You might as well tell me everything. I think we’re in this together now.”
Karen sniffed, and a tear trickled down her cheek. “Okay. I guess it’s all right.” She nodded toward the hall. “We—that is, Beck and Stacey and me—we’re part of Doc’s experiment. He’s trying to figure out a way to get people to live longer.”
“Oh? What does he do?”
Karen rubbed her right index finger along the needle marks on her left arm, starting at the crook and ending a few inches before her wrist. “Well, he used to take our blood and then . . . and then put it back in after he did something to it. He said he’s trying to make our blood work better.”
Bonnie caressed Karen’s tiny scars with her fingers. “Used to take it? What does he do now?”
Karen settled down somewhat and her voice became less fragile. “It changed all of a sudden. I guess you’ve seen the lab out there. It was a lot different a few weeks ago. A couple of guys came in, and they worked with Ashley to build those glass things and all those instruments. That’s about the same time they wouldn’t let us use the tunnel anymore. Anyway, now we do some really weird and scary stuff.”
Karen’s eyes welled up, and she clutched Bonnie’s hand tightly, rubbing her knuckles with her thumb. “It doesn’t hurt or anything, but it’s real scary. He doesn’t explain what’s going on, except a little at a time.”
Bonnie placed her other hand on top of Karen’s. “Go ahead and tell me. Maybe I can figure out what’s going on.”
Karen pursed her lips, and when she continued, her voice trembled again. “Well, I stand in one of those glass things, and Derrick—he’s a seventeen-year-old over in the guys’ dorm—he stands in another. Then Ashley turns on Derrick’s glass, and he disappears, and all I can see is a bunch of jumping light where he used to be.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Then, I see the light from his glass thing coming toward mine through something like a transparent vacuum cleaner hose, and then Ashley turns my glass thing on. All of a sudden, I see everything differently, but it’s not like seeing at all. I can’t really describe it. You sort of feel it, but you understand everything around you just like you’re seeing it, only even stronger. Anyway, Derrick’s light reaches through the tube and grabs hold of me, and I can hear him say, ‘Hang on!’ Then I’m sucked through a chute, flying down real fast like a big dip on a roller coaster. And it gets real dark, darker than anywhere I’ve ever been, sort of like floating in the middle of the universe, with nothing to sit or walk on. I feel like a ghost, but I can’t see anything, except the last few times they did it, I could see flashes of light, like night lightning far away.”