Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(98)

That aroused her curiosity. Sam followed Valdis into the bunker, where Daisy was igniting more lanterns with mechanical lighters.

“Does anyone else know about this place?” Sam asked, glancing at the artwork hanging helter-skelter and stacked against the walls.

“The oldest of us,” Val said. “My parents lived here after the bastards burned them out. Their art reflects the evil.” She pointed at a painting done in a similar style to the ones Sam had seen at the lodge.

The man with the long, curly blond hair she assumed was her grandfather faced forward in this painting. He was about her age in this self-portrait. A half-naked pregnant woman reclined on a couch in a mirror on the artist’s wall—her grandmother?

“Early days,” Val barked. “He was a handsome man, and I remember loving the tender look in his expression as he painted my mother. And still it corroded. Look at the eyes. It’s always the eyes. His were once a crystal blue, like yours.”

Daisy held up a lantern so the sparkling color of what had to be decades-old oil was illuminated.

The beautiful young artist’s eyes had turned an evil red.

Sam went from painting to painting. Not all were by the same person. Many were too abstract to discern identity. She thought one rural idyll depicted a man with Kennedy features—her paternal grandfather, Geoffrey? His eyes had turned red too.

“The originals didn’t have the red?” Sam asked skeptically. “They all corroded in the same way over the years?”

“Only the eyes of the infected,” Daisy elaborated. “The children are still fine.” She pointed at a tableau of two blond children with brilliant blue eyes.

“Me and your mother,” Val said curtly. “We escaped. Our mother didn’t, although she held out until the last, when she lost everything.” She pointed at a small portrait of a plump, blond, graying woman with a pleasant expression—and red-rimmed eyes. Not totally red like the others, but infected.

“Now,” Daisy commanded urgently, pointing her staff at the door. “The mountain tumbles now.”



“I’d hoped we could settle peacefully this time,” Cass said sorrowfully, striding toward the vortex.

“Just tell me what the hell is happening and maybe we still can,” Walker urged. “Why is Sam up there? What was Xavier trying to tell me?” He’d radioed for back-up and left the unconscious old man with the nurse Cass had brought in.

He’ll kill them all was a clarion warning if he’d ever heard one, but Walker had to know who and how and why. And Cass wasn’t talking.

Cass gestured at the mountain. “Xavier knows Evil just as we do. He knows it must be buried. We pray we are strong enough to protect Sam. She is the Earth Mother, the good in all of us.”

Disregarding Lucy inanity, Walker focused on the one word to exacerbate terror. “Protect her from what?” Locking down his raging fear, he concentrated on the area Cass pointed at. Had those glints of light always been there?

“Can’t you feel it?” Cass asked in what seemed like despair. “It’s a dark cloud forming. The earth is vibrating with fear and rage.”

The only vibrating he felt was his own fear and rage. “Where is she?” he shouted, giving up on rational discussion.

“We hope she has taken shelter. We tried to warn her not to go.” Cass took the path toward the vortex, where half the town seemed to be gathering.

Or just the Lucy half—the ones with Harvey’s staffs. Except Harvey wasn’t here. Or Sam. Those gathering were of Cass’s generation, the older ones who had been beating up Nulls with canes. What wind had blown them en masse in this direction?

“You’ll be safe with us,” Cass said prosaically. “The vortex energy draws out the evil, but it also protects. We can only hope we have the strength to send enough of the good energy to deflect the bad.”

This time, when Walker studied the mountain, he thought he saw a glimpse of green, not a natural green but the emerald of Xavier’s jacket—the same emerald green that had been on the brochures from eighteen years ago. It made no sense, but Walker gave up on Cass and took off at a run in pursuit of that flash of green.

Cass yelled a warning. He ignored it.

He’d climbed this path following Sam and her stick through the dark last time. This time, there was sufficient daylight to see the trail leading up to Bald Rock and that flash of green. The question became—did he go after the green that might simply be Xavier’s discarded jacket or find Sam?

This job meant making terrible choices that could be the difference between life and death. He wasn’t an all-knowing god. He wanted to save Sam—for his own selfish reasons, because he didn’t want to lose her and all the good her trusting intelligence meant to this world.

But he couldn’t always be there to protect her if there was a murderer on the loose, which was where his duty stepped in. If he believed Xavier and Lucy insanity, the entire community was in danger and would continue to be in danger until the killer was caught.

He had to surmount his defensive urge to protect what was his. War raged within him, but he continued racing up the trail toward Bald Rock—and not down to the farm where he hoped to find Sam.

As if to confirm his decision, Harvey stepped out of a shrub-shrouded crevasse. Garbed in his usual black, he was barely visible except for the glinting crystal in his staff.