The Psionic Thief Page 9

  MURPHY IS A STUPID DUMMY

  I let the empty tube drop to the ground and tried to think of something else I could do. I couldn’t help but grin as I thought of something extremely fun for ‘bonus points’ on tonight’s mission.

  I left the safety of my tree and headed into the woods. It took a bit of searching, but using my mind instead of my normal senses made it possible. Once I found what I was looking for, I grabbed it and went back toward the house.

  Everything still looked quiet, so I went closer and hid in my tree again while I fiddled around with the locked door. I had gotten quite good at unlocking deadbolts, so it only took a few seconds before the door swung open.

  I only opened it wide enough to move the skunk inside before quickly but quietly closing it again. I was having a lot of fun getting even and I didn’t want to leave, but I knew it would be better if I saved some stuff for another day.

  Leaving my hiding spot, I quickly went back to the forest where I knew I would be safe. I kept my eyes peeled and only once I was sure nobody followed me did I begin to relax. I pulled out my water bottle and sat down to mull over my next move.

  My plan of attack wasn’t to do massive amounts of damage or steal millions from the guy; I just wanted to make sure he knew not to mess with us. As such, I figured that nailing multiple targets all in a row would be more effective than hitting one target hard; not only that, but mass chaos was funner.

  It wasn’t long before I felt rested enough to continue. Keeping to the cover of the forest, I made my way over to the far end of town. If everything went the way I hoped, I should be able to stay hidden and safe for almost the entire time.

  I spent the next hour opening locks on the doors of various shops and businesses. It wouldn’t take long for people to rush there when I opened them and the security alarms went off, so I wanted to make sure I could get lots of them open before I needed to run away.

  I considered spending another hour on it, but rejected it quickly; I would have my hands full once I started, and I had plenty to work with. Nervousness started to replace excitement, but not fully; I was eager to begin.

  “Enough dilly-dallying girl, it’s time to get to work,” I murmured.

  With that, I began my run. I wanted to relock all the doors I was opening to create more confusion, so things went a little slower than I would have liked. It wasn’t hard, but my haste was making me mess up and take even longer on each door.

  At the fourth one, I deliberately slowed myself down and wound up moving along faster as a result. That got me a rhythm going and let me finish off my run in short order. There was lots of activity around my targets by now and I was glad to get moving away from there before someone thought to search the woods.

  I started heading back in the direction of my cave, but kept close to town this time; I had one more stop to make before calling it a night. With probably half the town over at the chaos I created, I wasn’t too worried about being spotted at Murphy’s superette. I was also mad as hell, so I just knocked out the front window to get the stuff I wanted.

  I got my towel and bar of soap.

  ***

  I wish I coulda saw the look on his face when he found the skunk in his garage.

  My next project was Joey’s idea. It was a little meaner and meant a lot more work on my part, but was doable as long as I was willing to cover a lot of ground. When I finally found what I was looking for, I was disgusted that it was only about a hundred yards away from his house.

  I wasted half a day combing the forest, but having it close to his house would make the next part easier. Keeping my distance, I carefully pulled down the biggest hornets’ nest I’ve ever seen and gently moved it over to Murphy’s front porch.

  From my pocket I pulled out two sticks I had grabbed earlier and carved one end into a thin wedge. I managed to jam them in the little gap at the top of his door and once I was sure they were stable, I softly placed the nest on top. I let out the breath I didn’t even know I was holding as the nest stayed put and I was able to relax my concentration.

  Boy, will he ever be surprised when he opens his door to get his morning paper. This was another one I wish I could be a fly on the wall for. It was just barely dark and I had all night to make more chaos, but I planned on taking it easy; Joey suggested that being unpredictable would help avoid getting caught.

  Keeping with that plan meant I would have to avoid his house for a few days before coming back to deliver a full days’ worth of garbage from his restaurant. That was Billy’s idea and would be another fun one, and I wondered if I could manage to get it inside his car.

  My friends started a friendly competition over who could come up with the best trick and boy, were they ever getting creative. I don’t know how they came up with this stuff, but I’m sure glad they did.

  I think DC was the winner with his idea to drop five gallons of cow dung down his chimney. I planned on saving that one for a special occasion. All in all, I wasn’t sure if we were making any headway on our goals, but I’m sure Sam would be proud of us.

  I bet he’d be laughing his ass off.

  Chapter 15

  Linda: First Contact

  My eyes snapped open.

  I was confused about where I was for a moment, but then I recognized Mark and Carl standing next to me, leaning over and looking concerned. As clarity returned, I realized I was on my favorite lounge chair.

  “Are you all right?” Mark asked.

  “What happened?” Carl asked at the same time.

  I took a moment to gather my thoughts before answering. “I’m fine, I just happened to stumble onto something absolutely amazing. I touched the right spot on the back of the codex and got transported into a vision of the night they created a node, attuned a new shaman to it, and wrote the hidden glyphs.”

  The stunned look on their faces was almost comical.

  “Who wants to get me a glass of water so I can wet my throat enough to tell the tale?”

  Carl practically sprinted for the fridge.

  “Are you sure you’re ok, hon?”

  “I’m fine now, but it was a shock when the vision kicked in. It almost felt like I stuck my finger into an electrical socket when I touched the spot that triggered it.”

  Carl returned with a bottle of water and they both pulled up chairs beside me to hear my story. I gave them a straight run through of it, brooking no interruptions on the first pass. Only once I made it through the whole thing did I allow them to question parts of it and pull out more details.

  An argument over interpretation of the details started immediately, of course.

  “Ok, let’s go back and cover what they did during the ritual,” Carl said.

  “They obviously knew how to fly,” I began.

  “Yes, telekinesis seems to be an easy one for people to figure out,” Mark agreed.

  “I don’t think telekinesis had much to do with the actual ritual itself, other than as a test for the young psionic they were trying to attune.”

  “I disagree,” Mark countered. “The pyrokinesis fire shield had to have a heavy telekinetic element in order to form that shape and hold it.”

  “You may be right on that,” Carl grudgingly agreed. “Those would have to be some bad-ass shields to contain the power they were working with. Can you make a pyro-shield like that?”

  “I’m not sure, but you can count on me giving it a try.”

  “Ok, we’re agreed on that part, but what about the ‘spirit’ shaman?”

  “It looked like astral projection to me,” I said.

  “It sounded like it, but I thought you guys said you couldn’t interact while projecting yourselves?”

  “We can’t… yet,” Mark agreed. “But we know there’s still more to learn about it, since Linda got that telepathic message while astral.”

  “True, I forgot about that in tonight’s excitement.”

  “Now for the big one,” Mark began. “How the heck did they manage the lightning strike tha
t formed the node?”

  “It seems like the lightning can attune someone, which we knew, but can also be called on and controlled. It sort of makes sense since we determined that psionic powers are basically electrical in nature.”

  “That’s one heck of a voltage upgrade, though.”

  “Yeah, but it might follow along the same lines as pyrokinesis. A little power leveraged by your mind can amplify the output by several orders of magnitude.”

  “If my translation is right, then the massive amount of power they generated all went into the sorcerer, not a psionic shaman. That means the power amplification is even more massive,” I said, a little awed at the vast amounts of power we were so casually discussing.

  “It seems to me they used blood to help with the power boost like Sara did,” Carl added. “I wonder if it’s really needed, or if they were just weaker than you two.”

  “I found that part to be more than a little disgusting, but not nearly as bad as a death sacrifice would’ve been.” Something started nagging at me and I began replaying the scene through my mind.

  “Wait a minute… I just remembered that when the high priest went astral, he had killed his chosen one. I think I subconsciously tuned it out, but I definitely remember seeing the corpse now.”

  “Theoretically speaking, a death sacrifice would have one hell of a lot more power released than the simpler blood sacrifices,” Carl opined. “If that much power is needed, then it could be potentially problematic for us.”

  “’Potentially problematic’, he says,” I muttered in disgust. “The blood part was bad enough, but if it’s absolutely needed we could go ‘borrow’ a few pints from the local blood bank… or harvest some of our own. Human sacrifice can’t even be considered, though.”

  “One major unknown is how our power levels compare to that of the ancient priests. I think we’ll need to experiment with the various abilities they used and see how hard they really are for us,” Mark said.

  “I don’t want any fire near my new home, but we can use the pool at my favorite waterfall for any pyro experiments. It should be a lot safer there from prying eyes as well.”

  “I’ll give the pyro-shield a try if you want to work on astral abilities.”

  “Sure… maybe I’ll even run into our little thief again.”

  “Well, we do need one more psionicist for the ritual,” Carl said with a smirk. “But you’ll need a lot of luck recruiting her, since I doubt a petty thief would be very altruistic or sympathetic to our needs.”

  “Probably not, but that’ll be a project for another day. For now, I’m going to bed; I’m completely wiped out.”

  “We’ll put the codex away and then I’ll join you. I think we can all use a good long sleep tonight so we can be full of energy when we try this new stuff tomorrow.”

  I just grunted my acknowledgment as I got up and made my way to bed. We learned a lot today, and hopefully practice and experimentation over the next few days would start to make sense out of things. I fell asleep with visions of a temple in the rainforest flashing through my head.

  ***

  The morning came sooner than I would have liked, but the sunlight making its way through my curtains promised a clear and sunny day for us to work in. I was sure the boys wanted to get an early start on things, but I was equally sure they could keep themselves busy while I lounged around in bed a little longer.

  A little while turned out to be more like three hours, but sleeping in was awesome and I needed it after last night. I decided to keep with my lazy morning trend and took an extra-long shower, timing my entrance to the outside world just as lunch was being served. Life was good.

  “Heya boys,” I said, as I slipped onto the back deck. “What’s for lunch?”

  “It walks! It talks!” Carl exclaimed.

  “Morning, hon,” Mark said, giving me a little kiss. “Or should I say afternoon?”

  “Whatever,” I replied. I spied a pitcher of juice on the table and poured myself a glass before grabbing a chair.

  I knew they were gonna rip on me for sleeping so late, but it was worth it and I was willing to take my lumps. It wound up not being as be as bad as I thought, since I didn’t let them get to me and they got bored rather quickly with my lack of a response. After a nice breakfast/lunch of a chef salad with grilled ham we got down to business.

  “Ok, boys,” I began, trying to keep a straight face. “Did y’all manage to get anything done this morning, or did ya just lounge around without me to supervise?”

  “Ha ha, how droll,” Carl said. “As a matter of fact, we’ve been trying to figure out how to tune in to the electrical aspect of psionics. We figured that would be a good one to try here at the node rather than up at the waterfall.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Not so far,” Mark answered, sounding a bit frustrated.

  “Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither were our psionic powers. I’m sure we’ll get it.”

  “Yeah, I was just hoping we’d get lucky with it.”

  “I’ve been working on cryokinesis, and I’m starting to get good at it, at least with small items,” Carl said, cracking a beer and regaining his seat.

  “Oh?” I asked, puzzled. “I don’t remember any cryo usage in the ritual.”

  “It’s not exactly in the ritual, but more like a preparatory measure. I can’t use my limited psionics if I’m too tense, so a beer or two actually helps my output. Using cryokinesis, I can now get a room temperature beer down to about forty degrees in under a minute.”

  “You should have seen his first attempt,” Mark snickered. “He got a little too energetic and wound up wearing it.”

  “You said you were going to keep that a secret.”

  “I lied.”

  I had to laugh; things were back to normal.

  “Ok, let’s get back to business. Are we sticking with the plan and heading up to the waterfall area?”

  “I think so,” Mark replied, serious once again. “What about you?”

  “Going astral during the day is a little tough, so I figured I would join you boys up there for a while, and then head back home when I have a better shot at it. I can help with the pyro experiment or maybe try the electrical thing myself.”

  “That sounds like it’ll work, plus you’ll be better company than mister beer-o-kinesis over there.”

  Carl just stuck out his tongue at us, and went inside to pack up some food and drink for the day. I followed him in to both help and to make sure there was something else to drink besides beer. Mark got some folding chairs and tied them together for ease of carrying.

  After taking a good look around to make sure nobody could see us, I lifted up our gear, Mark lifted Carl, and we took off toward the waterfall. It had been quite a while since I made the trip up the steep hill to my favorite little pond and I was really looking forward to it.

  The little stream we followed seemed bigger than I remembered, but that was probably due to all the rain we had earlier this week. After studying it for a few minutes I decided I liked it even better now; the extra little falls and rills were pretty cool.

  We arrived at the pool before I knew it. A myriad of trickles came together to form a nice deep pool before falling off the edge to make the stream we followed here. My thoughts turned dark for a moment as I remembered the last time all of us came flying this way and we almost got killed by one of Sid’s traps.

  It only lasted a moment, though, since the day was too beautiful to dwell on the past, especially in such tranquil surroundings. The area was pretty rocky and the ground uneven, but there was one spot on the west side that was flat enough to set up our stuff.

  I had never bothered with chairs up here before, but it made sense to get comfortable for a long psionic session. Once we got settled, Mark turned straight to the business at hand.

  “Ok, hon, this is what we’ve got so far. Based on the way you described the pyro-shield, we figure the pyro part is sandwiched in between regular shields to ke
ep it in the proper shape. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Based on what I saw, it might be right. It’s all guesswork at this point, since the point of view I saw it from was as an observer of an observer.”

  “We know, but we have to start somewhere, so we’re gonna run with it for now until we either figure it out, or come up with a better plan.”

  “It sounds good to me,” I agreed, nodding my head. “The only question I can think of right off the bat, is what do we heat to make the pyro part?”

  “That’s the main thing we need to figure out today. We haven’t been able to come up with any ideas that would produce the massive amount of flames you described.”

  “Dawn did something like it when we had our showdown in the mountains. Do what she did… minus the psychotic murderer stuff.”

  “She used an unstable feedback loop to boost the power she got from the node,” Carl said. “I got a glimpse of how she did it and I would not recommend trying it. That being said, we shouldn’t need that much wild and out of control power.”

  “You’re right,” Mark added. “She used the node power to form something like a shield and then ignited it. We can try using a throw-away shield in our middle layer and use the power that built it as our ignition source.”

  “Less talking and more doing,” Carl added, obviously eager to begin.

  “Ok, I’ll build the shields right above the surface of the pond and I’ll use that big boulder next to the cliff as my heat sink.”

  “Good choice… it’s the size of a moving van and should have enough thermal mass for any experiment we want to try.”

  “Linda, keep an eye open for any sign of trouble and get ready to grab up a sphere of water for firefighting if it’s needed.”

  I gave him both thumbs up and started forming a spherical shield underwater. I had a feeling that if airborne fecal matter encountered the rapidly whirling blades, we would need it ready to go in an instant.