Grounding Gracus (First Wave Book 6) (16 page)

Since the path was only about six feet wide, she knew that they were safe from attack from the left side, but there was still the front and back to worry about and not much room to scuffle without worrying about being knocked over the edge.
There’s no way anyone would survive a fall from this height
, she thought.

Rebecca was really hoping that this cave was going to be a secret haven, otherwise, they were seriously screwed. If they were lucky, there would be more weapons there at least. That thought caused her to giggle. Yeah, some swords and daggers weren’t going to do much against some aliens and their more updated weapons.

They’d walked up what seemed like miles of the switchback trail before Gibly came bounding back down and skidded to a stop in front of Rebecca.

“I found the cave,” the cat said, as he jumped around in a circle.

Rebecca turned to look at Gracus, but he was already moving past her. When he was in front of her, Gibly continued up the path, leading the way to the cave. They were there in five minutes and Rebecca looked around the area, completely unimpressed. The trail, that was at one time carefully made to reach the cave, was a lot more of a sight to see than this.

The opening itself was only around five and a half feet high and six wide, but there was no depth to it. They could clearly see to the back of it. In fact, it couldn’t really be called a cave. It was more like a hole in the rock.
What the hell were they supposed to do now?
Rebecca wondered, looking behind them to the trail they had come from, where Gibly was standing guard.

She looked around and saw no other way out other than back the way they had come. They had cornered themselves. Even though they had the advantage of the higher ground, it’d be easy for someone to sneak up the side from one of the lower switchbacks they’d taken to get there.

“Touch the stone inside the cave, near the symbol. There has to be a reason the symbols led you here,” Lanze said in her mind, drawing Rebecca out of her thoughts.

“Yes,” she muttered as she walked over to the rock opening and stepped inside.

Rebecca just barely fit inside of the entire hole and she placed her hands on the inner wall. The inside of the hole glowed a light blue color and the images of the people were walking inside of the hole.

How the hell am I supposed to walk into a damn wall
, she thought, just as what she thought was rock melted beneath her hands. She breathed deeply of the strangely fresh air coming from what was now a dark tunnel, before turning to look for Gracus.

“Gracus,” she called out, her voice sounding a little strangled.

Within seconds, Gracus and even Gibly were peering inside what was now a tunnel. To where, they didn’t know, but their choices were pretty slim if the Relians were behind them on the trail. And they all knew it.

“Come out of there and let me go first,” Gracus said, looking suspiciously at the inky interior that even his heightened senses couldn’t penetrate for very far.

Rebecca rolled her eyes at his protective tone of voice and instead stepped inside of the tunnel and looked around in awe as the rock on the floor and walls lit up around her. Gracus huffed in exasperation behind her as he came through the entryway with Gibly weaving through his legs and running past him.

As they stood looking at the twenty or so feet of tunnel that was currently lit, the cave entrance they had used to get inside resealed behind them. Gracus slammed his palms against the wall, attempting to get it to open again, but it wasn’t working.

Rebecca looked at the wall with a puzzled frown. “Let me try,” she said as she walked over to the wall and waited until Gracus moved away before putting her hands on it. As she expected, the three figures popped to life in front of her, this time what they said wasn’t expected at all.

The same female who had spoken the other times said, “Normally, you would be allowed to leave. The sensors along the trail have detected a Relian presence. Please, proceed forward through the tunnel and you will be guided to safety.”

Rebecca turned startled eyes to Gracus before she gave him a smirk. “Told ya so,” she couldn’t help but say.

Gracus looked at her with disbelieving eyes. “Do you really think it would have said anything different? You said yourself, they are in ancient Earth attire. It was probably what happened at the time. They couldn’t have known we’d have Relians following us,” Gracus said, looking down the lit part of the hallway to the darker areas that he still couldn’t see.

Rebecca grinned and shook her head as she looked around the cave. Something about the place felt really nice. Safe.
Yeah
, she thought,
safe was a good word for how the place felt to her
. Even the yellowish light emanating from the floor and walls of the cave were calming and not glaringly bright.

She looked at Gracus and grinned. “Either it’s not a recording loop or Grai and my grandfather found another way out,” she said as she walked passed him down the tunnel.

Rebecca wasn’t the least bit surprised when Gibly ran forward and the tunnel began to light the cat’s path while the tunnel behind them darkened the further they went from the entrance. Although, she didn’t feel like she was in danger at all, Rebecca wasn’t about to let her guard down and the three of them walked cautiously but determinedly down the tunnel.

Gracus felt on edge and he tried to communicate with Grai through the Shengari’ but it only echoed back at him. He looked around at the strange mineral striations and wondered if there were a combination of metals disrupting the energy. Wondering at the reach of the disruption, he tried to speak to Rebecca’s mind.

“Stay alert,” he warned.

Rebecca snorted and turned around. “You really think your planet’s hero would lead us to danger? Or Grai and my grandfather?”

Gracus watched her turn back around and continue down the tunnel while he was left amazed that the path between worked fine, but he couldn’t reach anyone outside of this mountain. It left him more convinced than ever that something within the rock walls was disrupting the energy.

He pulled his comm out of his pocket and turned the device on, quickly finding out that the comm was completely useless. Even the screen was affected, displaying only strange lines of colors intermixed with numbers, letters and symbols.

He put it away and looked around at the tunnel. It was perfectly hewed out of the rock, at least eight feet wide and ten high. And the walls and floor were currently glowing, but there were no lights anywhere, the walls solid and uniform. It looked like an inch of the walls and floor were temporarily imbued with light.

Gracus could easily see the solid, unlit rock underneath the light at his feet and shook his head in wonder at how it was possible. Especially, during the time period that Fiorn had come here, which implied that it wasn’t being done through technology.

A light up ahead caused Rebecca and Gracus to look up and they saw Gibly standing in front of what appeared to be a metal door blocking the tunnel. Rebecca turned to look curiously at Gracus before she hurried to where Gibly was now pacing in front of the door.

Rebecca got there first and took a deep breath as she held her hands up in front of the door. She turned to grin at Gracus before she slapped her palms on the door, and looked around in confusion as no images appeared around them.

“What?” she said as she took her hands off the door and tried it again. Still nothing happened.

Gracus, who was standing beside her, looked at the bar on the door and he stepped forward and lifted it up, before pulling the handle. He grinned back at Rebecca as the door opened and looked into another tunnel.

“Smart ass,” Rebecca muttered as she walked past him through the door, following Gibly who was setting the lights off as he went.

Gracus chuckled as he shut the door behind him, noting the same kind of bar and handle on the other side of the door as well. Unsure if Grai would end up coming through the cave, he left the bar off before following Rebecca and Gibly down another empty tunnel.

They came across another door and this time there was a large room that looked like a comm center on the other side, with three more tunnels leading off from it. They stood in the now lit room and Gracus moved to the computer center and noted everything was blank and not operational.

He knew that this equipment couldn’t have been put here a thousand years ago by Fiorn and figured that someone had been updating the place pretty recently for it to be here. Yet strangely, none of it looked like it had been used in a while. At least not since Grai and Rebecca’s grandfather had found it.

Rebecca walked around the room touching everything, hoping to instigate another image that might give them more information. She still felt no fear, but was getting a little creeped out by the whole
abandoned cave
thing. It was a little too close to some of the horror movies she’d seen. She ended up standing in front of the three tunnels with Gibly and Gracus.

They stared at the tunnels in silence for a moment, unsure which one to take when Gibly shook himself. “I’ll be right back,” he said as he took off down the first tunnel on the right.

Rebecca was getting ready to charge after him, when Gracus grabbed her arm and stopped her. She turned surprised eyes to his and said, “Why can’t I follow him?”

Gracus let go of her arm and shook his head. “There’s no point. He can tell us what’s down each of the tunnels in half the time it would take all of us to go down one.” He wasn’t about to tell her that he couldn’t shake the bad feeling he had about the place.

Gibly let out a howl, followed by loud crashing sounds and without thinking about it Rebecca took off down the tunnel after him with Gracus right on her heels. They hadn’t gone far when they were forced to stop and carefully pick their way down the tunnel.

Rebecca looked around in disbelief as she called out, “Gibly, where are you?”

Gracus picked up a large sword rack that had been knocked over and put it back up against the wall, while Rebecca picked her way through the other weapons that were scattering the floor like debris.

“Under here.”

Rebecca and Gracus looked at one another when they heard Gibly’s muffled voice and looked over at what appeared to be cabinet that had been knocked over. They carefully picked their way past some realistic looking dummies dressed in battle gear from different Earth time periods until they reached the cabinet.

Rebecca and Gracus easily righted the cabinet and Gibly sprang out from underneath one of the open doors. He stood on one of the dummies, dressed in old Army fatigues, and shook himself.

Gracus looked around the weapons scattered floor and asked Gibly, “What happened?”

Rebecca kneeled down and picked up one of the wicked looking swords, knowing by its size alone that it must be what they called a broad sword. It certainly was one of the largest that was scattered across the floor.

Gracus saw her and warned, “Be careful, they may appear old, but they are very sharp and have been well maintained. By someone.”

Gibly huffed. “I come down here and didn’t expect to see the room off to the right. I thought the dummies were bad guys,” Gibly said with embarrassment tinging his voice.

Rebecca snorted. “If I’d turned the corner and seen some of these dummies dressed like that with weapons all over, I would have lost it. You did some serious damage though, Gibly. I wouldn’t want to tangle with you,” Rebecca said as she looked around.

She really was impressed that the cat had done this much damage to what appeared to be only a weapons room. With another metal door blocking the tunnel. Getting kind of irritated at the deserted mystery of the place, Rebecca placed her hands on the door, hoping that the images would appear and give them some freaking clue about the place.

She was stunned when an image of a lone woman that she hadn’t seen before, appeared in front of them, dressed in the same kind of pants and shirt that she’d seen in TV shows from the 50s.

Chapter Fourteen

Gracus and Gibly turned to Rebecca and the image of the woman that popped up beside her when she touched the door. Unlike the other images that they’d seen up to this point, this woman looked seriously pissed off.

“Fiorn! You can’t keep us locked away from the damn world, under the guise of protecting us! You’ve only created a different kind of prison!” the woman said angrily, before her image vanished.

Rebecca let go of the door and turned to Gracus curiously. He shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea what’s going on and I can’t get hold of Grai because this… place, is blocking my ability to use the Shengari’ with anyone outside. We need to find a way out of here,” Gracus said as he looked around.

He was more unsettled over the image of the woman than he wanted to admit. Fiorn was one of the strongest and most determined warriors on their planet. Gracus had no doubt the man could be overbearing if he thought he was protecting his people. That wasn’t what bothered him. It was this place.

It was something he and his beast agreed on. Neither was comfortable here. The place gave off a creepy, unsettled energy that was difficult to ignore. Yet, Clatz told him that Rebecca and her beast felt none of it. In fact, their energy was not only increasing, it was expanding into a bubble around her.

Gracus wasn’t sure what that meant, but it concerned him. As far as he knew, only the Tezarians could expand and contract their energy in order to use the particular talent of their house. Rebecca wasn’t a Tezarian and he had no idea if there were long term effects of maintaining that kind of an energy peak. He ordered Clatz to keep a close eye on her energy and to let him know if it gets any higher, then turned to Rebecca.

“Let’s go check out the other hallways before we open that door. We have enough to explore right now without getting turned around in this place and its endless doors,” he suggested as he held his hand out to her to help her through the weapon debris field around them.

Gibly hopped over the overturned guns, rifles, swords and other miscellaneous weapons and headed back down the hallway while Rebecca grinned at Gracus and accepted his hand. She picked her way over what would be a weapon museum’s dream and for some reason kept hold of Gracus’s hand once she stepped on uncluttered ground.

Gracus’s breath seemed to strangle in his throat when she turned her hand in his and threaded her fingers through his own, instead of pulling away as he expected. He couldn’t stop the wide smile that broke out over his face as he beamed down at her.

Rebecca smiled shyly before turning to watch Gibly as he trotted leisurely down the hallway, back to the main room. She had no idea why she suddenly felt like holding his hand, but now that she had, she was very glad that she did. The energy that was roaring through her veins was a lot calmer when she was touching him.

She was sure that it must be because she’d never really noticed the energy before that it just seemed like it was a bit too much to handle. Hell, this whole damn thing still felt like a strange dream, so it didn’t surprise her that feeling the energy was a little overwhelming.

Besides
, she assured herself,
wouldn’t the crazy parasite know if something was wrong? The damn thing was all up in the rest of her business, surely it would have said something. Wouldn’t it?
she wondered.

Rebecca heard the sigh in her mind and knew the nosy creature had listened in on her private thoughts when it spoke to her. “I do know that something is happening to our energy. I am trying to figure out what is causing it to continue increasing.”

Rebecca was a little pissed off. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”

Lanze wasn’t real happy with her attitude and snapped back, “I didn’t want to worry your puny little head with such complicated matters.”

“Look, you single celled, annoying prick! This crap where you get to spy on every damn thought I have, but hide things from me, is going to end now. If you knew there was a damn problem with our energy, you should have said something. Hell, maybe Gracus knows what the hell is wrong! Did you ever think of that?” she asked with a huff, before she realized that Gracus was staring at her in surprise while Gibly snickered.

“What is wrong with your energy?” Gracus asked, concern etched in his voice.

Rebecca shook her head. “It’s nothing. We just have a lot more than normal running through me,” she said offhandedly.

Gracus wasn’t going to be deterred and asked his own beast to assess Rebecca and Lanze to see if they were alright. He’d noticed at the touch of her hand that her energy was running high, it was flowing freely into him and deepening the bond between them, the energy strands becoming tighter and stronger. But, he hadn’t realized that it was something that was also concerning her beast.

“Hey, let’s just follow Gibly this time. It was stupid to just stand there and wait for him to come back,” Rebecca said when they reached the main area.

Gracus nodded and followed her as she pulled him after Gibly down the middle hallway. He was a little frustrated when they came to an area that looked like it was used to triage patients. There were beds, cabinets filled with glass jars containing cotton balls and bandages and other medical equipment. It looked like a collection that spanned at least a hundred years. And another damn door.

Rebecca grinned as she pulled Gracus to the door and put her hand on it. An image popped up of a man, his shirt soaked in blood. He was leaning against the door, one hand clutching his chest while the other reached out. The pain in his voice when he spoke rattled Rebecca to her core.

“Mary! Mary, don’t leave me! Mary, live for me!”

Rebecca jerked her hand back and Gracus pulled her close to him. He was also a little disturbed by the images that Rebecca was revealing from the past, from the energy of the events that had played out here. At this point it was hard to tell if Fiorn had gone insane and imprisoned everyone, or if this place had been attacked…

Clatz interrupted his thoughts. “There are a dozen other less dramatic reasons for it as well.”

“I wasn’t done thinking of different reasons, but yes those are the top two at the moment,” Gracus replied before he let Rebecca pull him down the last hallway, on the far left.

Rebecca felt giddy and a little light headed from all the energy and had to stop herself from skipping down the tunnel after Gibly. This time it opened up on a dining center. One big enough to hold at least ten people.

Rebecca couldn’t stop herself from opening up a few cabinets and was a little surprised to find everything from MREs, to canned foods and food bars. There was a working stove,
so there was electricity running through this place somehow
, she thought as she turned one of the knobs and the burner began to heat up.

As with the other rooms, there were canned foods from companies that Rebecca had never heard of and she assumed had gone out of business. Plates and cutlery were obviously mismatched from many years past. She figured they were the only survivors of the full sets they must have once been, the others breaking over the years.

She turned and grinned at another door. This time when she tried to pull Gracus towards the door so she could touch it, he refused to move. Rebecca looked at him curiously and he sighed before allowing her to pull him towards it.

There was Fiorn standing against the door with two other men. All three looked beaten and worn out, but they all held up various glasses and bottles and grinned broadly.

“To Fiorn! And the incredibly amazing people around us who made it all happen!” the man to the right of Fiorn said.

Fiorn cleared his throat. “No, we do not drink to me. We drink to those who fell so we could be safe!” Fiorn said with a hearty shout and Rebecca could almost feel the vibration of the cheers it probably invoked in his weary people.

She let go of the door and looked around the room for a second before she yanked up the bar and pulled the handle. Gibly raced through the door and they found themselves in another hallway, this one with many doors and hallways leading off from it.

Rebecca looked to her right and nodded. “I bet it leads to the other doors in the other tunnels,” she said, knowing somehow that she was right.

By his own calculations, Gracus knew that she was right and just nodded his head as he turned back to look at all the doors. He was not thrilled at the prospect of opening them all and doing a full search of the facility, but they really didn’t have a choice if they wanted to find a way out. And he wanted out of here.

Gracus squeezed Rebecca’s hand to get her attention and loved the way she looked up at him with a beautiful smile on her face, as if she was enjoying herself. Although, he couldn’t figure out what she could like about this place. It was creepy, he thought.

“We need to do a full search, room by room, and see if anyone is here. Gibly, stay on the other side of the hall and be ready to attack if needed,” Gracus said.

Gibly nodded his head and Gracus turned to Rebecca. “I need you to stay behind me, but be prepared to shoot. Just not me,” he added with a smile.

Rebecca grinned and nodded her head. “I’ve seen cop shows on TV. I’m pretty sure I can avoid hitting you,” Rebecca said, knowing that Gracus was teasing her. He’d seen the perfect heart shots she’d made in the dark one and knew she could handle a gun.

Gracus grinned broadly when Rebecca still didn’t let go of his hand. Although he hated to do it, he pulled her hand to his mouth and tenderly placed several kisses to the back of it, before pulling his hand from hers and grabbing his weapon.

Rebecca frowned and nodded her head as she pulled her own gun from the back of her pants. She followed Gracus to the first door in the hallway and positioned herself behind him while Gibly crossed to the other side of the hallway, next to another door.

Several hours later, they’d investigated every room, hallway and tunnel in the place and still hadn’t found a way out. Instead, they sat in a dining center and sipped some water while they waited for their dinner to heat.

They had learned that the place could easily be a permanent home for at least a hundred people. There were even enough supplies laid in to feed and care for that many for at least an equivalent of days. But they hadn’t found anyone or even a clue to where they may have gone. Or how to get out.

They hadn’t found any other heavy metal doors, like they had discovered in the tunnels that had led here. He’d seen something that looked like a portal room, but like the outer and inner comm centers that they’d found, there was no power and they’d found no way to turn the equipment on.

Gracus had kept Rebecca from touching everything, afraid that maybe the images she was summoning from the past were contributing to her escalating energy and had noted that her levels had stabilized since leaving things alone.

He was a little worried that they may need her to touch things, in order to figure out how the hell to get out of the place. That worried him a lot. Instead, he’d decided that they would essentially camp out in the inner community area and wait for Grai and the others to get there. As an option, it wasn’t his favorite, but he didn’t see any better choice at the moment.

Gracus pasted a smile on his face when Rebecca came to the table with a tray laden with food. He had no desire to frighten or worry her and decided to keep his concerns to himself.

Rebecca laid the tray on the table and began putting bowls and plates in front of him, to the side and in front of herself. Gracus was a little surprised at what she’d been able to create in such a short time.

“Gibly, come eat,” Rebecca said as she laid out a bowl of water and several plates on the table for the cat.

Gibly looked at her with his head tilted to the side, black eyes glittering strangely. Rebecca looked up and saw that he was still sitting on the tabletop near the door, where he could see the hallway.

“Gibly, we need all team members well fed and hydrated. So get your butt over here and eat something. It’s not like there are small critters in here that you can catch. This place is really clean. Considering we’re in a mountain,” Rebecca said with a happy grin.

Gibly continued to look at her oddly for a moment before he jumped down from the table and padded over to her and sat on the floor near her feet.

Rebecca and Gracus had already begun to dig in to the stew and biscuits that Rebecca had heated and it took her a moment to realize that Gibly still hadn’t come up to eat. Wondering if he thought it undignified to jump on the dinner table, Rebecca used her foot to push the chair out that was in front of his plates and bowl.

“Here Gibly, just jump up on the chair to get to the table,” Rebecca said with a smile as she looked down at him.

Gibly cocked his head to the side. “You want Gibly to eat at the table with you?” he asked, his eyes glittering.

Rebecca looked at Gracus, the question in her eyes and when he just shrugged, she turned back to look at the cat. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to offend you. I just thought… well… we’re kind of a group. A team. Like when I take people on the river. We always eat together…,” Rebecca said, wondering if she was supposed to put his food on the floor or something. It didn’t feel right to her to do that though. 

Gibly jumped up on the chair and sat tall enough to lean his head into the bowl and drink the water, and eat the cans of tuna that Rebecca had put onto a plate for him.