was different from hers. He just told it telepathically to fuck off, and the thing actually seemed to cringe. Certainly it blasted back toward her as she continued to force its particles apart. She’d never encountered a paranormal being that so repelled her, and it was all she could do to hold her ground and concentrate. She stood in its way, and every time it tried to escape, Blair was there before it. It even tried to de-form, to vanish into the atmosphere where it normally lurked in the hours of daylight, but Sera wouldn’t let it. She needed it to stay put to blast it into hell or whatever afterlife was prepared to accommodate it.
But its fury increased with its panic, and it fought her all the way, refusing to give up. Which was no doubt why Adam had had to kill Killearn in the first place. The arsehole just didn’t know when he was beaten.
And he was. She could feel it now. It backed much more slowly toward Blair, a rippling of malevolent air. Sera gathered her strength for the final attack. And a shadow moved beside Blair.
Barely seen, barely even there for the tiniest instant, its presence chilled her far more than the poltergeist’s. Because it stood behind Blair, and for that tiny instant, her terror for him overcame everything else. Blair’s chill of awareness made it all worse. She gasped, trying to reground herself, and the poltergeist, soaking up her fear like some gleeful sponge, whooshed past her ear and vanished.
Sera stumbled toward Blair. “You saw…?”
“I saw,” he said grimly.
“What does he want? Is he protecting the poltergeist?”
“Of course not. Come on, let’s find it.”
Sera grabbed his arm. “If that’s the Founder, if he’s a vampire, how can he disappear like that? Is it magic?”
“Maybe. Some of it. But basically, he’s just moving faster than you can see. Like I do, only more so.”
Then it surely had to be the Founder himself and no watching servant as Blair had originally implied. Or hoped.
“Is he interfering, Blair? Because it’ll take everything I have to blast this thing.”
Blair was moving out of the sitting room, his eyes darting. “He’s just watching you in action. Your strength will have surprised him.”
“Shite. Is that bad?”
“I don’t know,” Blair said honestly. “Our best bet is to ignore him unless he chooses to introduce himself. Which I don’t think he will. But look on the bright side, if he is still here, he’ll totally freak the poltergeist.”
“Damn it, I don’t want the bloody thing to go back into hiding…” she began in frustration, just as something crashed onto the floor above their heads.
“I don’t think it’s hiding,” Blair observed, running for the front hall and the gallery stairs.
“Which room?” Sera panted as she leapt up the steps two at a time, Blair at her side.
He didn’t need to answer. The door of Dale’s study banged shut twice.
“Ready?” Blair said as they stood on either side of the doorway. She nodded, and Blair shoved the door in with enough force to send him flying across the room.
Dale’s large desk was slammed against the wall. One of the computer monitors was on the floor, another on its face on the desk. Objects—Sera made out several pens, sheaves of paper, books, a calculator, an entire printer, and two small pictures from the wall—flew through the air, hurling themselves in a continuous stream at the open door to the testing lab.
“Fuck,” Sera said wonderingly. “Does it sense Adam in there when we couldn’t?”
“Looks like it. Only why would it suddenly feel him now and not before?”
“And why doesn’t it just go in?” Sera wondered as a picture flew back past her ear and almost immediately forward again, bouncing in through the doorway to shatter on the other side.
“It can’t,” Blair said softly. “It’s tied to the parts of the house it knew when it was alive. Killearn might have cased the rest of the house, but he’d never have got in there.”
“And that’s really hacking it off,” Sera agreed, ducking to avoid the whizzing laptop. “Shit, Dale’s going to be so pissed off about this…”
But the flying objects were slowing. Instead, Sera could actually hear the rushing of air like a howl as the poltergeist threw everything it had at the doorway like some invisible, rhythmically wielded pickax. Worse, the air began to shimmer.
“It’s getting in,” Sera said in panic. “And Jilly’s in there!” God knew what would happen to her if the controls were shattered