Chapter 5 #2
I flipped through my psychic abilities at top speed, aiming each one at the woman as we drew closer, the two-lane street between us.
I ended with a quick Funhouse warp that I rammed into the approximate area where I should’ve been able to sense her mind.
A pair of older Omani gentlemen walking past her staggered as they were caught in the warp.
The lady continued to dig in her oversized bag, unaware of the psychic bombardment I’d unleashed on her.
“A mythic with extreme psychic protection?” Lienna murmured after we had passed the woman. “Or just a fluke?”
“After everything we’ve been through,” I replied, “I don’t believe in flukes.”
We continued down the street, and for a few seconds, I thought maybe she was just a regular tourist overly enamored by her bag, but then I glimpsed the reflection of her bandana on the windows of a passing car. She was moving in the same direction as us.
Looks like she’s going to be a problem, I commented telepathically. Was she waiting for us? How the hell did she know we’d be here?
Lienna pressed her lips into a thin line. She must be carrying a set of anti-Psychica artifacts to completely protect her mind, or she got her hands on a heavy-duty potion.
Artifacts and potions—the latter being the alternate option for defending against psychic attacks—only lasted so long, so their use had to be carefully timed. But how had she known not only that we’d be in Bahla, but also when we’d be here?
We need to get off the main street, Lienna asserted.
Where? I surveyed our surroundings—lots of stores with customers, cars zipping down the road, and groves of date trees. Nothing screamed “private mythic battle arena.”
“The fort,” she answered out loud.
Standing on a hill in the middle of the city, the eponymous Bahla Fort rose from the desert floor like a ginormous sandcastle come to life.
It had all the blocky architecture and cylindrical towers you’d expect of a landlocked medieval fortress on the Arabian Peninsula.
Despite its impressive size, its tawny color helped it blend into the arid mountains behind it.
“It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site,” she continued. “We should check it out.”
“Won’t it be busy?”
“I read an article that said it’s usually pretty empty, especially on weekdays.”
Type-A research to the rescue yet again.
We picked up speed, and a few sneaky over-the-shoulder glances confirmed that the anti-Psychica tourist had matched our pace. A block later, we angled our path toward the main entrance—an open gate built into a thick mud-brick wall.
I targeted the lone employee manning the gate with an invisi-warp, allowing Lienna and me to slip past undetected.
We hurried through another gate, down a short hallway, and into the open courtyard at the heart of the fort.
As Lienna’s reading had suggested, the place appeared deserted.
Sand-colored structures surrounded us, and I had two immediate thoughts: “This is perfect” and “I need a map.”
Contained within the high walls of the fort were so many stairs, windows, doors, paths, ledges, courtyards, rooftops, and structural chaos that I slowed to make sense of it all.
Lienna, however, didn’t stop to gawk. She hauled me straight into the structure dead ahead—a three-story rectangle with tiny window holes peppering its walls.
Shadows fell over us as we hurried inside.
I stole another glance over my shoulder to see the tourist barrel right past the annoyed gate guard, sunglasses perched on her nose and her beach bag bouncing against her side.
She looked so much like she was running late for her walking tour of the fort that I almost doubted my judgment.
Lienna led us down a wide hallway that lacked any hidey-holes for an ambush. Or was this a covered alley and not a hallway? Our path turned to worn brick steps, and we flew down them as fast as possible without breaking our ankles. Our stalker’s footfalls echoed off the walls behind us.
Lienna squeezed my hand, then released it to veer right through a doorway and into the deep shadows of a room—or a house? A courtyard? I needed a garrulous tour guide, stat.
Alone under a beam of hot sunlight from a tall window, I spun on my heel to face the stairs. Just like in Muscat—and every other unpleasant encounter we’d endured for the past three months—I was the bait. Lienna was the sneaky sniper who attacked from the shadows.
The woman with the invisible mind appeared at the top of the steps. She gazed down at me, then gave me a friendly smile and made an odd tossing motion with her right hand.
The harsh desert sun sparkled on something reflective—and then it hurtled toward me as though fired from a gun.
I threw myself sideways into the room opposite the one Lienna was hiding in. With a silver flash, the projectile hit the stone floor—a thin, finger-long, glistening needle.
Holy shit, the woman was a poisoned-needle-wielding telekinetic. She had to know that my oversized bounty was of the “take him alive” variety, but that didn’t mean I wanted to play pincushion or test dummy for whatever fun sauce she’d coated her tiny weapon in.
Scrambling to my feet, I zipped across the room and through the door on the other side, giving the telekinetic time to descend the stairs. Then I whipped around, ready to defend against the next nasty needle she was probably flinging at my back.
Instead, I found myself staring at her back. Rather than following me, she’d gone in the opposite direction—straight into the room where Lienna was hiding.