Alayna Williams - Dark Oracle

Dr. Magnusson is very important
to the balance of power, Tara.

The powers he is working with are truly immense... gravity, time, the void... technology beyond imagination. And this power would be very, very dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. The Pythia thinks

I dont care what the Pythia thinks, Tara snapped.

The Pythia thinks this technology could be misused and result in vast devastation, even global war. He must be found.

Tara leaned back in her chair. She wanted no part of this. Sophia, I...

Sophia looked down at her hands. I would not ask this lightly. We would have asked your mother for her assistance.

Tara bristled.

Sophia continued, But she is gone, and you are the only one left in her line who has her particular knack for finding people.

Tara glanced down at the picture of the scientist. Even if I wanted to, Im so far out of practice, I would be of very little use.

Sophia grinned at her. No one ever falls out of practice in your art.

I cant.

Sophia slid the file across the table to her. No one will make you, and I wont come knocking again. All I ask is that you think about it.

Tara could not refuse her that much.

Alayna Williams

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Laura Mailloux

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Designed by Jacquelynne Hudson
Cover illustration by Chad Michael Ward

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-4391-8279-6
ISBN 978-1-4391-8282-6 (ebook)

THANKS to the ladies of the Ohio Writers Network for their unflinching support: Michelle, Linda, Rachel, Melissa, Emily, and Faith.

Thank you to the folks at National Novel Writing Month, who continue to celebrate literary abandon.

Thanks to my husband, Jason, who has suffered through my fetish with commas.

And thanks to my editor, Paula Guran, for the opportunity and guidance.

THE AIR seethed, like a living thing disturbed.

Dust settled from the sky as the roar of the explosion rolled away into the desert. Gradually, the sky cleared, revealing stars. In the sandy haze of dust, a building had blistered open, like an empty shell too weak to hold a great and terrible seed. Chunks of concrete littered the ground, illuminated by weak sparks and fizzles from the severed legs of ruined machinery.

Swimming through the wreckage, dozens of tiny lights milled like fireflies, winking in and out. Unlike fireflies, they burned dark violet, wandering in wayward paths. Undisturbed by the remnants of walls, they glided through twisted I beams as easily as smoke. In bright flashes of light, some flickered out. Others swarmed together, levitating before they vanished with the rushing sound of air, leaving spirals of dust in their wake.

They came from the machine. The hull of the massive mechanism lay open in the darkness. Its skin ripped open by the force of the explosion, wires dangled in heavy tentacles over ruined copper tubing warped into blossoms by the sound. A solenoid switch clicked on and off, on and off, with no circuit to complete. The violet particles rimmed the interior skin of the machine, seething over the steel like the surface of an indigo sun. The machine was like an egg cracked open, pouring life into the night.

But it was not life. The particles drifted away, blazed out, sucking bits of air and time as they disappeared. The faint light illuminated a trace of human wreckage in the debris: a silver watch.

Its face gleamed smooth and unbroken, but the time its hands had measured had stopped. There was no trace of its owner, the man who had keyed the last operating procedure into this apparatus.

No life; no life, at all.

Yet, something more than life. Dim violet sparks crept out into the darkness toward the sounds of distant sirens.

TARA HAD ONCE BEEN ACCUSTOMED TO AWAKENING TO STACCATO knocks on her door in the middle of the night. She had always answered that summons to roll out of bed in razor-sharp readiness back then. She could dress and launch herself beyond the door in less than ten minutes, her case full of notebooks, guns, and more arcane tools of her trade. Sometimes, she could even squeeze feeding the cat into those preparations.

That was a long time ago, but old habits never really went away.

This knock was different, softer. Tara rolled over in bed, her bare feet skimming the floor. Automatically, she reached for the holstered .38 revolver hung behind the headboard, just out of sight, but close at hand. The cat leaped down from the pillow beside her to hide under the bed.

Found. Here. How? Taras brow wrinkled. Shed never been disturbed in this place by anything but her own dreams.

The shadows of tree branches stained the floor in abstract chiaroscuro shapes. Melting snow rattled through the forest beyond the exterior walls of the cabin. Tara had hoped to feel the thaw in her bones for weeks now, had watched the ice slip and break under the late-winter sun. Though it was nearly March, the ice would be treacherous to most visitors, and would dissuade them from traveling the hidden dirt road to Taras sanctuary. There wasnt even mail delivery this distant from civilization. For all intents and purposes, the little cabin didnt exist, forgotten in the buzz and shuffle of the outside world. Tara had hoped some of that forgetting extended to her.

Tara walked noiselessly over the pine floorboards. She knew the location of each squeak, sidestepping them in the dark as expertly as a dancer with an invisible partner. She crossed the cabins living area, illuminated only by dull embers in the fireplace worming into the sweet-smelling apple wood.

Again, the knock. Tara touched the door, feeling the vibration echo through the surface. She could close her eyes to it, crawl back into bed. She could pretend she wasnt here, had never been here, that she hadnt heard.

But the knock rang with a quiet authority that could not be ignored.

Tara slid back the dead bolt and cracked the door open as far as the chain would allow. She held the gun in her left hand, behind the door, invisible to the caller. She thumbed back the well-oiled hammer with an echoing click. In the dark, the ratchet of a shotgun would have been a more effective deterrent to unwanted visitors, but the sound was still unmistakable. Her hand sweated against the rubber grips, her index finger grazing the stainless steel trigger guard.