Chapter 19
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S teele and Cyna agreed to leave soon, but she was in no condition to do so quite yet. So he went out and paid for the room and went to get coffee because, goddammit, he needed it.
Walking awkwardly into the hotel room, holding two cups of coffee, he placed them on the night table next to the bed where she’d gone to lie down after eating. Her energy appeared to be normal, so he didn’t think anything was off about that particularly.
She opened her eyes and suddenly stared up at him.
He smiled and pointed. “Hey, I just brought you a coffee.”
She blinked several times, looked at the coffee, then at him, and finally seemed to be awake enough that she sat up and nodded. “Thanks. I remember you leaving, but I don’t know how long ago that was.”
“Only a few minutes. I just went around the corner,” he explained.
“I went to sleep thinking about the Beacon,” she shared, turning to him.
He recognized that intense look on her face—not because he knew her, but because he knew her energy.
After all, her memories were also familiar to him through their exchange of energies.
It was confusing as his soul wanted to accept blindly all she said, meant, and felt.
However, his mind?… Well, it was arguing that he didn’t know her yet—not at this level—and to take it slow and to question much of her words.
Yet his soul was like, Screw that.… We’re good .
She continued about her thoughts of the Beacon.
“I mean, a lot of people out there don’t even know they have abilities, and they may very well be drawn to that portal without realizing why.
The entire purpose of the Beacon was to reach out to those of us with abilities, letting us know that Terk’s there, inviting us to become a part of the community. ”
Emotions flooded through him—her emotions. Frustration, fear, and a determined need to resolve this. He totally understood because it felt right, normal. Which also meant their energies were blending even more.
She added, “I almost feel like the Beacon is broken and was never meant to be what we are currently seeing.”
“So, we have a few problems.” He sat down on the bed beside her, still holding his cup in his hand. “One, the Beacon. Two, how much Terk understands about the issue. Three, what we can do about it.”
She nodded. “And that brings us to the point where we have to ask an important question.”
He agreed. “I can hear what you’re about to say. Do we care? ”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “We absolutely need to connect with Terk, but a part of me doesn’t want to go back into the woods.” She glanced at him sideways. “You were just following the Beacon, correct?”
He nodded.
“I had told them that I was coming a long while ago, so they were expecting me. That Beacon in its current form makes me feel like either they didn’t share the message that I was coming to the Beacon or they didn’t think I would be coming anytime soon or—this one’s a little bit more of an oddity.
” She frowned as she added, “Maybe it’s trying to keep me away. ”
Such reluctance filled her tone that Steele knew she had been seriously considering such a possibility, and it wasn’t something that sat well with her.
He contemplated what that would mean to her.
Rejection . Neither of them handled that well after a lifetime of being different.
It also explained the walls she kept trying to put up, but he was bringing them down as fast as she built them.
Steele shook his head. “If you weren’t welcome, they would have told you flat-out.
Terk is no pushover. They have way too many people coming and going through their place to play games like that.
So, if you were welcome back then, and you were on your way, I would take that at face value,” he shared.
She looked at him and then slowly relaxed. “That’s kind of what I was hoping would be the answer, but those attacks on us tend to make me a little leery.”
He laughed. “Nothing quite like having Terk set up this Beacon system, only to have it not work the way he thought it would. I mean, I knew that this Beacon existed because obviously I could hear and see it, but I had never come across such a thing as Terk ’s Beacon before, so it wasn’t exactly what I expected.
On the other hand, having entered that section quite free and clear, not in any way expecting a negative reaction,” he explained, “I’m still quite shocked at what we came up against. Whether that’s some malfunction or whether it’s literally because somebody else is involved, I don’t know,” he admitted.
“That is something we can’t answer, but Terk and his team need to.
So, when you’re ready, we need to talk to them,… if we can get through.”
She leaned back against the headboard as if she could sink in deeper. “Here I’m saying I don’t want anything else to do with the woods, and you’re the crazy-ass nutcase who wants to go diving back in there.”
Steele shrugged. “I feel like we’ve been beat twice, and it kind of pisses me off,” he admitted. A laugh burbled out of Cyan, and he saw her shoulders drop with a heavy sigh.
“I’m not even into keeping score,” she began, “but it’s pissing me off too.
And now I feel like… I don’t want to say it’s a trap, but it does feel like a trap.
I mean, what’s with all the tests to get through those gates, when they—the Beacon or our attacker—just let us waltz right out of there every night?
” She shook her head. “I don’t get it. Unless they don’t know about all our talents and don’t want to push it.
If the Beacon triggers our talents, our energy work in the forest will also shift the vibration.
That can have all kinds of consequences. ”
“I know,” he agreed. “Why is it tricky to get inside, a true test of our skills, and not tricky to get back outside? You would think our attacker, if not the Beacon itself, would love to keep us trapped inside their tricky maze, right? It feels like we should have been more prepared, and we weren’t. ”
“I hate to even look at it that way,” she muttered, “but, yeah, obviously something is there that we need to sort out. I hate to say it, but it does seem like we’ll have to go back in.”
“I can go in alone,” he offered. “Let’s put it on the table right now. You don’t have to go, not if you don’t want to. Not if it’s outside your comfort zone.”
“Whether it’s out of my comfort zone or not,” she grumbled, “I’m not a person who would send you out there alone.
We don’t know what’s going on, but we are more prepared than other people to handle whatever this is.
The end goal is to get to Terk. Do we try just driving up to the front door of the castle?
Or has the Beacon closed off that access? I guess we won’t know until we try.”
Steele shrugged. “We can try it the old-fashioned way. Somehow I feel like the Beacon has shrouded that route. In fact, both the Beacon and Terk may want all us newcomers to come one way and one way only—via the Beacon’s test maze.
Does Terk know about the fog and the lights and the gates, or is that just the Beacon’s own construct?
Regardless, if Terk knows we’re coming, then he should be looking for us. That alone will help.”
He added, “You know, it’s also quite possibly someone who really doesn’t understand what’s happening either—somebody playing with their energy-working skills and using us as lab rats.”
Cyan snorted. “That just adds to the questions.” She reached up to tuck the loose strands of auburn hair behind her ears. “I was expecting the first two gates, but I wasn’t expecting gates at all beyond that. It feels like there is no end to them, and that is on purpose.”
“Something is causing the Beacon to lock down its simulation and has us running in circles, even though we know that Terk and his entire clan are there somewhere.”
“So, are we locked out, or are they locked in? Personally I think it’s a bit of both.
” She got up then and went to the bathroom.
When she stepped back out, she collected her few items and said, “In that case, let’s pack up and get out of here.
” She turned to him and suggested, “The other thought is—” She stopped to stare at him, then sighed.
“I guess there’s no reason why something like this would be personal, right? ”
“Personal?” he repeated, giving her a surprised expression.
“Yeah, like,… the attacker isn’t here after you, right? Versus being after me? Which I can’t see any reason why anyone would be after me.”
Turning to her, stunned at the question, Steele said, “I’m kind of surprised you would even think that.”
“I’m surprised we didn’t both think of it earlier. I just want to confirm that this isn’t connected to something in our own personal lives,” she pointed out. Her gaze narrowed as she studied him. “You didn’t bring any enemies this way, did you?”
“Not that I know of,” he replied, eyeing her intently. His gaze was assessing as he studied her. “Did you?”
“No,” she muttered, “not knowingly.”
He froze at that and then nodded slowly. “And that’s the trick, isn’t it? Because a straight-up no is one thing, but no with a caveat? That if we did bring someone, we didn’t know about it? That’s an entirely different story. We’ll just have to figure it out as we move forward,” he offered.
And, with that, they packed up their things. He pointed to a couple stores a block away and suggested, “Let’s load up on a few snacks. We don’t want to find ourselves without sustenance again.”
“And yet,” she noted, with a wry look in his direction, “it seems to almost be a circuit we’re doing.”
He frowned and turned to her. “Say that again.”
Startled, she asked, “What?”
“What did you just say?”
“It’s almost like we’re on, you know, Replay.”
“Yes,” he agreed, staring at her carefully. “We wouldn’t be caught in a loop, would we?”
Her eyes widened, and she stared at him in shock. “I don’t know.… I’ve never been caught in a loop before.” She frowned, glanced around nervously, and added, “But I’ve known of a couple people who were.”
“Me too,” he confirmed. “Somebody I know, a good friend at one point in time, and he got caught in an energy-time loop.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got out eventually, but he wasn’t the same person afterward.”
She nodded. “I heard something similar, but I didn’t know them personally.”
“Yeah, well, let’s hope this isn’t a loop,” he stated, “because, if it is, we can expect a whole lot more trouble, and that’s the last thing we need.”
*
Terk slowly swirled the coffee cup in his hand, watching the thick black brew slosh up and around the inside of his cup. His mind sloshed against the different issues in the same way.
“Penny for your thoughts?” his wife asked.
He pushed back his musings, smiling at Celia. “Can you buy anything for a penny these days?”
She chuckled.
The lightness, the sweetness of her voice, her soft heart in everything she did lightened his heart and lifted his spirits. How he loved this woman.
“Nope, but hopefully I can gain insight as to what’s bothering you.”
He chuckled, his voice warm and soft as he wrapped an arm around the woman who was central to his life, tucking her up against his chest. “It’s the Beacon.”
“Of course it is. You have created something magnificent…”
“It will be, but it’s not quite there yet. I’m working on—”
“You’ve been on it steadily for hours. Maybe it’s time to get some rest and either sleep or do something else to give that wonderful mind of yours a break.”
“I can’t yet.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Why not?”
“I need a waystation.”
Her eyes widened. “Sorry?”
He chuckled. “I need a midway station, a safe place for where I can communicate with people caught in the Beacon’s world.
People he won’t let come to us because they are deemed too dangerous, but we need access to in order to help these people.
I didn’t consider that when we first started this.
We expected more direct attacks from enemies heading our way, so the directives to the Beacon reflect that.
Clean and simple. Yet, in our first instance of the Beacon as fully operational, we’re up against the unexpected.
The Beacon has found an issue with Steele, in fact, although there’s something odd with Cyan as well.
The Beacon has separated them from us, as possible threats. ”
“Which was the plan. Make sure enemies couldn’t reach us,” she murmured cautiously, studying his face.
“Exactly, but this isn’t a black-and-white case of an approaching enemy.
I need to communicate with these two people, but the Beacon is doing what it’s supposed to—stopping that communication.
These people, one I know and one I was happy to welcome into the castle, are stuck in that they can’t reach us. ”
Celia frowned. “Also part of the plan…” She reached out her hand and slid her fingers into his free hand. “And a waystation is the solution?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “but I sure hope so.”