Closer: Bay City Paranormal Investigation, Book 4

Sam’s face with stinging force. He brought his free hand up to shield his face as he went.
Sam turned the next corner of the pentagon without finding any sign of Bo. He stopped, playing his light around to survey the stretch of land ahead of him. The fence continued along the inside of the sea wall where the land curved and the Gulf met Mobile Bay. On this side, the fort stood with its feet practically in the water of the bay. The floodlights lining the top of the wall all pointed toward the interior of the fort, lending only a faint illumination to the outside. Enough to see by, barely. A rock jetty ran some way out into the water, sheltering the fort from the waves rolling in from the Gulf. The narrow space between the fence and the fort’s outer wall was a jumble of rocks, all slick surfaces and sharp edges. The air was heavy with the smell of salt, fish and wet earth.
Turning to his left, Sam squinted through the rain and mist at the low hump of land just barely visible on the other side of the bay. A few scattered lights winked in the dark. Mobile was too far north for Sam to see, but he knew where it lay. He wished he and Bo were over there right now, safe and warm and dry in their cozy apartment.
When I find him, we’re going straight home. No more Fort Medina, no more beach house. We’ll finish our vacation at home.
Thus resolved, Sam switched his light to his left hand, put his right hand on the wall to steady himself and started picking his way across the jumble of rocks. It would have been tough going in any conditions, but the low light, the rain and the wind made it downright dangerous. Sam fought off the urge to hurry and forced himself to take his time. The last thing any of them needed was for him to fall and injure himself.
He was about halfway along that leg of the rampart when a movement behind the parapet at the top caught the corner of his eye. Heart pounding, he stopped and peered upward. A figure stood there, a smoky blackness in the yellow glow of the floodlights inside the fort.
“Bo?” Sam called, though something told him he was looking at one of the fort’s many ghosts. “Bo, are you there?”
Moving faster than Sam would have believed possible, the apparition shot off toward the interior of the fort and disappeared. Sam didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Turning his attention away from the parapet, he started making his way along the rocks once again.
He’d barely resumed his journey when a sudden wave of purposeful menace struck him like a hammer. Staggering under the psychic blow, he fell to his hands and knees. He lost his grip on the flashlight. It bounced on the rocks and went out.
Sam climbed to his feet. He hardly noticed the searing pain in his right knee, or the burn which told him his palms had been scraped raw. His entire being was focused on the alien thoughts pulsing through his brain.
He recognized the feeling of cold, malicious intelligence invading his mind. Somewhere nearby, a portal had just opened. And he hadn’t done it.
Bo. Fuck.
Heedless of the danger of falling, Sam ran.
Chapter Thirteen
    The portal was nearby. Sam could feel it. But he couldn’t see it. He ran on, slipping along the rocks in the near-dark.
    “Bo! Can you hear me?” His voice was almost lost in the howl of the wind and the pounding of rain on stone, but he kept yelling every few seconds anyway, hoping Bo would hear him.
    He heard the sound he’d been dreading just as the end of the sea wall came into sight. A deep rasp almost below the level of hearing, accompanied by a flood of strange images and shades of meaning Sam couldn’t quite grasp. Following the thread of alien energy in his head and the crackle of electricity in the air, he turned to peer into the dense shadows beneath the pines crowding near the next corner of the fort.
    Bo stood on a rounded hump of rock a few feet from the spot where the sea wall gave way to grass. The floodlights atop this corner of the wall pointed outward, bathing Bo in a harsh glow. He had his back to Sam, and he was wearing only the shorts he’d had on earlier in the day. Not fifteen feet from him, beneath the spreading boughs of a gnarled old pine tree, crouched a shadowy, nebulous shape—one of the things which still haunted Sam’s nightmares. The air around it swirled and sparked. That, plus the dense, pulsing darkness around it, told Sam he was looking at a newly activated portal.
    For a heartbeat, Sam stood frozen. Then