Power of Three

  When they got everyone settled, Elain grabbed her phone and headed for her bedroom. “No one come in, please.” She locked the bedroom door, made sure the sliders to the lanai were also locked, then went and locked herself in the master bathroom.

  Then she poofed herself to fricking Bolivia, into Marston’s kitchen.

  He was sitting in the living room and sat up, startled. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s fuc-hreaking wrong is I wanted to see the little puppykins, that’s what’s wrong!” Elain had changed tone mid-sentence and forced a smile because there next to Marston, holding on to her father’s knee, stood Colleen.

  She gave Elain a toothy grin and pointed at her with a happy squeal. “Auntie Wain!”

  “Hey, baby girl.” Elain walked over and scooped her up, still trying to get her pulse to settle into something resembling normal before the shakes started. “How you doing?”

  Colleen held a toy car that she’d been playing with and showed it to Elain, babbling at her in toddlerese that apparently Marston could understand but Elain, despite her experience with BettLynn and the Beasts, couldn’t decipher.

  Elain finally reached out and grabbed Marston’s wrist, maybe a little harder than she meant to, and stared into his eyes.

  “I need to talk to you. Now. Alone.”

  He nodded. She released him and he stood, reaching for Colleen. “Sweetheart, Daddy needs to talk to Auntie Elain for a moment. I’m going to take you down to Auntie Rosa, and she’s going to make your snack for you, Okay?”

  “’Kay!”

  He cast a worried glance over his shoulder at Elain as he headed out the door.

  Elain collapsed onto the sofa. There was no way she’d believe Marston was involved in setting off a nuclear bomb.

  No. Way.

  But that was absolutely what Mai had been screaming.

  When he returned moments later, he locked the door behind him. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  There was no easy way to go through it other than to tell him. By the time she finished, he looked equal parts horrified and confused.

  “Wait. That can’t be right,” he said. “You know who I am now. I would never, ever do something like that.”

  “Not even to save Colleen’s life?”

  His jaw snapped shut. He finally shook his head. “Would you, even to save your children’s lives, sacrifice thousands or more of innocent people? I might want to kill myself immediately after, but no, even I would never stoop to that level of evil.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “Touché.”

  “There has to be another answer.” He headed down the hall.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get my laptop.”

  He returned a moment later and set it up on the counter. They crowded around it. “You said you were seeing license plates from three different states, correct?”

  “Yeah?”

  “And you were running south, toward the cloud?”

  “Yeah, but we lost it at the river. The cloud was to the south and west of us as we stood at the river bank.”

  He pulled up Google Maps and Elain felt both relieved and like an absolute fucking idiot when she saw what he pointed at after only a few seconds of scanning the map of the United States.

  “I present to you Marston, Missouri.” He turned the laptop to face her.

  Before she realized what she was doing, she had him engulfed in a bone-crushing hug. “Oh. My. God! Thank you!” She even kissed him on the cheek before coming to her senses and releasing him, stepping back.

  “Um, I mean, uh, thanks. That’s helpful. Thank you.”

  He smirked. “Believe me, you are not a fraction as relieved as I am.”

  Elain leaned in again to read the screen. “And that totally fits, because we saw the cloud to the south and west of where we were.” She zoomed in. “We were actually in New Madrid, then.” She changed the orientation of the map so she could zoom in to street level. “There. That’s where we were. I remember those buildings.”

  He slumped onto a barstool at the counter. “Please convince Lina I don’t need any extra killing?”

  “You betcha, buddy. Trust me, it makes both our lives easier. Let me get back there real fast before they get suspicious.”

  He reached out to touch her arm before she could leave. “Did you really believe I was involved in this?”

  Elain gave herself time to take a deep breath to collect her thoughts. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to, let’s put it that way. Just a freaky, weird coincidence.” She looked at the screen again. “Now I have to figure out what’s so damn important about that particular area that someone wants to turn it into a radioactive sea of molten glass.”

  “The Mississippi River is an important waterway.”

  “It can’t just be that.” She patted his shoulder. “I’ll let you know.”

  And…like that, she returned to Florida.

  She took an extra moment to use the bathroom and wash her face. As she stared at herself in the mirror, she also wondered about the fact that she’d really hoped they were wrong about Marston.

  And how relieved she felt to realize they were.

  She also changed her shirt, just in case. By the time she returned to the kitchen, Zack was turning on his laptop.

  “I have the answer,” Elain said, taking it from him.

  “Where Marston Hill is so I can fry him right now?” Lina darkly asked.

  “No, and chill out. Literally. It’s not him. It’s nothing to do with him. It’s just a freaky coinkydink.”

  “What?” they all asked, including Ain, who was standing there with Connor in his arms.

  “Who did you call?” Mai asked.

  Elain was more than glad it’d been Mai and not Ain who’d asked her. “Researcher I used to work with. Marston isn’t a person. It’s a place.” She pulled up Google Maps and showed them.

  Two birds, one lie. Hallelujah.

  Lina sat up straighter. “Huh. Son of a bitch.”

  Mai gently swatted Lina’s shoulder. “And you would have made a smoking crater out of the guy and not solved anything.”

  “Well, wouldn’t say that,” Lina said. “Would have solved my anger at him over a lot of shit the scumbag’s pulled.”

  “Focus,” Elain scolded, wanting their discussion off Marston the man and on Marston the place. “The question is we know where, and we know approximately when, within a few months. We need to have Zack and Kael go through the video and work up a spreadsheet of expiration dates we saw on the license plates. Maybe that will help us narrow down the timeline.”

  Elain reached over and changed the display from map view to earth view. “This is now our problem. What the hell is so important about a place that isn’t much more than a traffic light and a truck stop? And why did the vision have us in New Madrid and not in Marston to start with?”

  “That’s all farmland around there, anyway,” Zack said. “Just look at it there. You can see all the fields. There’s no power plant or military base right there. No population center. I mean, I could see if it was New York, or Chicago, or Philly. Yeah, okay, set off a bomb by the Mississippi River and you’ll have the radioactive pollution. It’s relatively close to St. Louis, but depending on the wind’s direction, the fallout might not even reach them. I don’t get it.”

  “Are there any cockatrice nests around there?” Ain asked. “Kitty said they like to build meth cooking operations. Middle of a field where someone can’t smell them cooking seems like a good hiding place.”

  “We still don’t know for sure it’s a cockatrice doing it,” Lina said. “I mean, that’s the impression we had from Baba Yaga, but no telling if that’s right or not. That’s a pretty long stretch from running a meth lab to detonating a nuclear weapon.”

  “That’s not just a dirty bomb someone slapped together,” Elain said. “That’s a full-on textbook mushroom cloud, and the way the blast blew out, at that distance, it was a device with some
punch. Some sort of military warhead. Or, at the very least, a lab-built device with a lot of power.”

  They stared at the screen.

  “It involves several states, due to the locale,” Mai finally said. “Maybe that’s it? To create a diversion? You have emergency response from not just the federal level, but tie up several states’ agencies? Maybe it’s a distraction for something bigger?”

  Lina stared at her. “Bigger than a damn nuke?”

  “I don’t know,” Elain said. She chewed on her thumbnail for a moment. “It didn’t feel like that. It felt like this is the headline act, not the opening number. I just don’t get…why. I mean, even if it was Tampa, there’s a port and population center, not to mention MacDill and TIA. Or Miami. Orlando and how many hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists? Dallas or Houston. Los Angeles. New York. Las Vegas. Why the hell Marston, Missouri, of all places?”

  “Maybe he’s taking credit for it,” Lina said, her tone slipping into dark territory again.

  Elain looked at her. “Honey, I know this is hard to do, but please stop focusing on him right now and drop it. Focus on this.”

  “You don’t understand, I had him right—”

  “No, I do understand,” Elain said, forcing herself to keep her tone gentle and steady, “but right now, I am literally scared shitless over what I just saw. If we want to stop it, and keep thousands or tens of thousands of people from dying, we need to focus on it and not on one guy. We can figure out Marston Hill later. Okay?”

  Lina pouted. “Fine.”

  “Try saying it like you mean it, goddess girl,” Zack snarked.

  Lina flipped him off.

  Mai looked at Elain. “What is so important about New Madrid that we end up there for the vision if the bomb goes off in Marston? That’s important. It has to be. If we can solve that problem, we might be able to figure out the rest of it.”

  “How far away are the two towns?” Ain asked.

  Zack shrugged. “Couple of miles, maybe. Not far.”

  “How far exactly?” Elain asked.

  He pulled up Google Earth and measured it. “Six and a half miles on the nose.”

  Ain stepped closer. Connor had finished his bottle and was now dozing on Ain’s shoulder. “And how far would the blast radius extend if the bomb went off in Marston?”

  “Well, that’s going to take a lot of guesswork since we don’t know what size nuke it is.”

  “But we saw damage in New Madrid,” Mai pointed out. “That means it’ll have a blast radius of at least six and a half miles, minimum.”

  Zack pulled up another browser window and started utilizing his Google-Fu skills.

  “Hiroshima and Nagasaki had complete destruction within a one-mile radius, serious damage at three miles, glass broken up to twelve miles. And Nagasaki was surrounded by hills that restricted some of the blast effects to a certain area. But they were very small yield weapons compared to modern nukes.”

  “So let’s say a bigger bomb, in a relatively flat, open area, went off,” Ain said. “Is it fair to estimate that areas farther out than New Madrid would feel the effects like they saw in their vision?”

  Zack swallowed hard. “I’m no Manhattan Project scientist, but yeah, probably. I would imagine so.”

  “How far is it from St. Louis? To New Madrid and Marston, I mean?”

  He clicked back into Google Earth. “Hundred and fifty miles.”

  Ain moved so he could look over Zack’s shoulder at the screen. “Nashville?”

  “Almost a hundred and sixty miles. There’s literally nothing there. Doesn’t even look like there’s a McDonald’s in Marston. Not even a flipping Waffle House. You know that’s a backwater. Just a stupid bend in the river, farmland, and a few nature preserves.”

  “Why is that bend like that?” Ain asked.

  “It’s a river,” Zack said. “It floods and cuts new channels. That’s why a lot of those towns have the levee system in place.”

  Elain watched Ain’s face. “What are you thinking?”

  “That’s just it.” He met her gaze. “I’m not. I can’t. I don’t know, either. I was hoping maybe we’d see something.”

  “Maybe it goes off accidentally?” Mai suggested. “Maybe the military was transporting it and there was an accident?”

  “I wish,” Lina said. “Not the way Baba Yaga is worried about it. It’s deliberately detonated. Accidentally wouldn’t be within her realm of influence. Neither would a wholly human ‘accident.’ So what’s the connection between New Madrid and Marston?”

  Zack leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know, goddess girl, but that’s the million-dollar question at this point.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Elain’s energy tanked. Instead of trying another séance, they spent the rest of the afternoon brainstorming. Elain even retreated to the bedroom and called Ryan Ausar to let him know what they’d discovered.

  The fact that he was even more clueless than them concerned her.

  “I will look into it on my end,” he said, “but as far as I know, there is no special meaning to that area.”

  “Well, shoot. I was kind of hoping you were going to tell me it was a temporal rift, or a hell mouth, or something like that. A ton of sea salt, a few bushels of sage, couple of barrels of holy water, and problem solved.”

  He chuckled. “Not quite. Stop watching so much Torchwood and Buffy.” She heard the smile in his voice. “I know Jack Harkness and Spike are hot, but really, my dear.”

  “We’re scared,” she admitted. “We now know the where, but not the who, the why, or the exact when, although we’re narrowing the time down.”

  “The good news is, you have some time, right? Time to change events and prevent it from happening. So try to take a deep breath and regroup. Nothing good will come of you all beating your heads against a proverbial wall. If I find out anything I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks.”

  She returned to the kitchen and related the conversation to the others. Then Lina glanced at the time and looked at the living room.

  The Beasts were asleep, sprawled out on a blanket, as was BettLynn.

  Lina and Mai looked at each other. “Go! Go! Go!” Lina whispered to Mai.

  With the precision of a military operation, Mai bolted into the living room, carefully scooped up BettLynn, and ran for Elain’s front door without awakening the little girl, who was still in two-legged form.

  “I’ll get our gear,” Kael whispered. “You two grab the boys and run.” Lina and Zack rushed over to the blanket, picked up the sleeping, drooling, snoring baby dragon boys, and hurried out the back sliders toward the gate in the fence that would lead to their place.

  “Wow,” Elain said. “That was like SWAT team stuff.”

  Kael packed up the laptop. “Separating the three of them usually is. Metaphorically speaking. Since we don’t have a house big enough for all of us to comfortably live in, we’ll have to suffer through them getting old enough to not throw temper tantrums when we separate them, and to understand they will get to see each other again soon.”

  “Ah.”

  He paused. “It’s kind of sweet, even though I have mixed feelings about it.”

  “Me, too.”

  “About Baba Yaga joining them?” Ain asked.

  “Yeah,” Elain said. She stared at her son resting on his father’s shoulder, a little tiny string of drool dripping onto the burp pad, and thought about how there might be a damned good chance Connor would one day fall in love with Blackie and Callie’s daughter, considering who she’d been in a former life.

  “The three of them aren’t free to pick a mate,” Elain said. “Not really. I mean, sure, they could in theory, but chances are they won’t. They’ve been picked for each other. But they picked each other in the past, so hopefully, it balances out.” She stroked Connor’s back. “So now the next battle must be waged.”

  “Figuring out how and why cockatrice are going to set off a nuke,”
Kael said.

  She snorted. “Nope. Telling Brodey we have to make a trip to Maine for a mega-Clan Council meeting.”

  “I think I’d rather take the nukes,” Ain grumbled.

  * * * *

  Brodey dropped his head to the table. “Nooo,” he softly moaned.

  Elain playfully swatted his shoulder. “Stop it, you big baby.” Cail and Brodey had returned to the house about an hour after everyone else had left. Elain had managed to sneak a nap, and she’d opted to wait until after dinner to break the news to Brodey and Cail.

  Brighton had eaten out somewhere and upon his return had said he was tired and turning in early.

  Elain was relieved to hear that. It meant less aggravation for her.

  “Seems something can make Brodey quake with fear,” Cail teased.

  He didn’t lift his head from the table. “Every time we go to Maine, something bad happens.”

  “Not true,” Elain said. “When we went for a recognition for the babies a couple of months ago, it was fine. If you want to label a place trouble, give that title to Yellowstone.”

  “Why do we have to go?” Brodey finally lifted his head and stared at Ain. “Why can’t Elain and I and the kids stay here, huh?”

  “Because I’m on the mega-Clan council, and Elain’s our Clan’s Seer,” Ain said. “We all need to go. Jan and Rick agreed to stay behind and watch the ranch. They need the practice. Dad will stay behind and help them, and so will Micah and Jim.”

  “What about Mom? And Mai and Lina?”

  Elain reached out and cradled his chin in her hands. “Just us and the little ones this time,” she said. “Clan Seer business. You can stay here if you—”

  “Fuck that noise,” Brodey grumbled, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her close, resting his head against her tummy. “If you go, I go.”

  “We’re all going,” Ain said. “We’ll actually have the big guest cabin to ourselves this time around. And we’re flying.”

  She frowned. “But the poofy thing—”

  “Flying,” Ain edicted. “In a commercial airliner run by a commercial airline licensed by the FAA to actually operate within the United States.”