“I think, given the course of recent events, that your odds of recovering the second relic are much better than mine,” Kennington said.
“Why?”
“A variety of reasons. First, the person who knows the location of the other relic is currently in Frequency City. That is your town. As a Guild Councilman you can operate freely without inviting unwanted scrutiny. And last, but certainly not least, you have an intimate acquaintance with Celinda Ingram.”
The old rage welled up out of the dark pit inside Benson.
“How does that bitch come into this?”
“I do not believe that she currently has the relic in her possession, because if that were true, the Cadence Guild would have forced her to return it. But it appears that she knows where it is.”
Should have killed her when I had the chance. Four months ago he had realized that Celinda had somehow sensed the deep well of darkness that was the source of his power; sensed it and feared it. For years he had been able to conceal the churning black pit from the rest of the world, but when she had refused to take him on as a client, he had known that she was aware of his secret. There was no other explanation for her actions. He was a member of the Guild Council, after all, the most powerful ghost hunter in town. No one turned him down.
But getting rid of her permanently four months ago would have been too risky, he reminded himself. The murder of the most exclusive matchmaker in Frequency would have launched a high-profile investigation. The police would have demanded Guild cooperation, and that old fool Harold Taylor would not have protected him.
“Let’s say I agree to recover the second relic for you,” he said. “Why would I give it to you? If it has some valuable properties, as you claim, I’d want to keep it for myself.”
“You are, of course, free to do so,” Kennington said in that same smooth, annoyingly urbane tone. “But it won’t do you any good. Even assuming you understood its unique properties, you would not be able to rez it.”
“Why not?”
“It requires a special type of psi talent: my kind. But in exchange for the recovery of the artifact, I will agree to employ the device on your behalf.”
“You really think you can use it to make sure I become the next boss of the Frequency Guild?”
“And everything else you want, Mr. Landry.” Kennington was practically purring. “Everything else. I trust that you will think of this arrangement as a mutually beneficial one. In your position as a man of increasing power and influence, you can help me in many ways. I, in turn, will use the device to take you as high as you wish to go. Do we have an agreement?”
“First I’ll need to see what the relic can do.”
“Of course. I suggest we perform the demonstration immediately. You may choose the venue. There is just one stipulation.”
“What’s that?”
“Like ghost light, the power of the relic is quite weak unless it is accessed underground or close to a source of alien psi.”
“My office is in the Old Quarter,” he said. He was getting jacked up. His instincts told him he was onto something important. “It sits directly over a hole-in-the wall.”
“That should do it. Also, for purposes of this demonstration, we will need an experimental subject.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter to me. One of your men, perhaps, or a member of your household staff.”
“Hang on.” Benson rezzed the bedside security intercom.
The guard at the gate answered immediately.
“Yes, Mr. Landry?”
“Has the woman left yet?”
“Miss Stowe? She’s here now. One of the men is getting ready to drive her home.”
“Bring her back to the house. I’m not quite finished with her after all.”
Chapter 18
“GOT NEWS FOR YOU, I AM TAKING IT PERSONALLY.” Davis gazed up at the ceiling. He was screwed. It had been too much to hope that she wouldn’t wake up when he carried her into the other room, too much to hope that she might not have a problem with the fact that he wanted to sleep alone.
He didn’t want to sleep alone. He wanted to spend the rest of the night with her curled tightly against him. He wanted to wake up in the morning and find her in his arms.
But he didn’t dare take that risk.
It was a long time before he fell asleep. When he did, he dreamed.
He held the child tightly in his arms. The kidnappers were not far behind. They were still invisible in the maze of catacombs, but it wouldn’t be long now before they closed in. They were homing in on the frequency of the amber he wore in his watch.
He had just ditched the watch in a nearby tunnel. He had backup amber set at a different frequency, but he could not risk using it yet. It would not take the men who were following them long to pick up the second signal and realize that he had switched amber.
There was only one chance left.
“Close your eyes and don’t move, Mary Beth. I promise you that if we both stay absolutely still for the next few minutes, the bad men won’t even see us.”
“Okay,” Mary Beth whispered.
She clung to him, one arm wrapped around his neck, and regarded him with the solemn trust that only a six-year-old child could give. It was a miracle that she had any confidence in him at all after what she’d been through. She had never met him before in her life. But forty-five minutes ago he had rescued her from the kidnappers, and she had believed him when he told her that he had come to take her home.
The sounds of the approaching men were closer now. They were using a sled. There was no way a man carrying a six-year-old kid could outrun one.
Not much longer, he thought. Maybe thirty seconds. He had to get the timing right, or he and Mary Beth would never make it out of this chamber.
Mary Beth closed her eyes and pressed her face against his chest, a child trying to hide from the monsters under the bed.
The sled was very close now. He could hear the sound of the simple amber-drive motor. Only the most primitive kinds of engines worked underground.
“He’s close,” one of the men said, excited. “We’ve got him. Can’t be more than a hundred feet away.”
“Move it,” another man said. “If he gets out of here with the girl, we’re all dead.”
“Stay very, very still, Mary Beth,” he whispered. She froze in his arms.
He pulled silver light. A lot of it.
The sled hummed loudly. It rolled out of one of the ten vaulted entrances of the underground chamber. And then the driver brought the damn thing to a halt, right in the middle of the room.
“Check the frequency,” the driver snapped.
He held his breath and his focus, counting the seconds.
One minute.
The second man on the sled studied the amber-rez locator. “Straight ahead.”
Two minutes.
“You sure?” the driver demanded, looking at the nine other doorways.
“Positive. I’m telling you, I’ve got a solid reading.”
“I don’t like this,” the third man said uneasily. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
Three minutes. The men continued to argue. Mary Beth did not stir, although he could feel her little body shivering with fear.
Four minutes.
“All right, let’s go,” the driver said, making the executive decision.
The bastard finally rezzed the sled’s engine. The little vehicle shot across the chamber. It made straight for the vaulted doorway, zeroing in on the frequency of the amber watch that lay on the quartz floor just inside.
The sled passed within a yard of where he stood with Mary Beth pressed tightly against his chest.
Five minutes. An eternity.
“Ghost-shit,” the driver howled. “That’s his damned watch. He tricked us.”
But it was too late. The driver couldn’t stop the sled in time. It plowed straight through the faint shadows cloaking the vaulted entrance of the tunnel, triggering th
e alien illusion trap.
The men screamed when they were plunged into the trap’s psychically generated alien nightmares, but not for long. No human could stay conscious for more than a few seconds under those conditions. Mary Beth jerked at the sounds.
He stopped working silver light. He was breathing hard and already starting to shake. He didn’t need to test his amber to know that he had melted it. Luckily he now had a fresh supply.
“It’s okay, Mary Beth,” he said. “The bad men can’t hurt you now.”
She raised her head and looked at him with big, amazed eyes. “They went right past us, but they didn’t even see us.”
“No,” he said. “They didn’t.”
He had to move quickly. The clock was ticking. He had maybe fifteen minutes at most to get back to the rendezvous point and turn Mary Beth over to the team. At least they now had the sled. With the illusion trap triggered, it was safe to go through the doorway to get it.
“It was like we were invisible,” Mary Beth whispered, watching him kick the three unconscious men off the sled.
“Yeah.” He checked the slab’s amber-rez locator. It was functioning. “Like we were invisible.”
He made the rendezvous point. The last thing he remembered was the face of the hunter who took the girl out of his arms. Then the cold chills swept over him, and everything faded to black.
FIVE DAYS LATER HE AWOKE TO DISCOVER THAT HE was trapped in a living hell named the Glenfield Institute, dimly aware of what was going on around him but utterly unable to communicate. He could smell the coffee the doctors drank and hear their grim diagnosis.
“Psi coma. He may never come out of it. Even if he does surface, he’s going to be a total burnout case. He’ll spend the rest of his life in a parapsych ward.”
Chapter 19
TITUS KENNINGTON LOOKED AROUND BENSON LANDRY’S office with amused disdain. Talk about clinging to the past, he thought. Unlike the Cadence Guild headquarters, which under Mercer Wyatt’s command had been moved into a gleaming downtown office tower, the Frequency Guild was still located in its original compound in the Old Quarter of the city.
The decision to move the Cadence Guild headquarters downtown had been a public relations bid designed to make the organization appear more mainstream. Here in Frequency, however, the local authorities were apparently not overconcerned with public opinion. The very fact that a man like Benson Landry had risen to such a prominent position in the Guild was proof that the local organization was not all that determined to modernize.
Landry was unstable and very dangerous. The dark energy emanating from him was similar to other para-sociopaths Titus had encountered in the course of his professional career. In addition, the man was obviously clinging to sanity by his fingertips. When this was over, he would have to be dealt with. But right now he was the only tool available for the job at hand.
Landry’s office had been built in the period following the Era of Discord when the status and power of the Guilds had been at their height. The room was paneled in spectrum wood and elaborately inlaid with yellow amber. A variety of alien antiquities, including an array of unusual-looking green quartz vases, were arranged around the room. The top of Landry’s desk was a smooth slab of quartz. The walls of the Dead City rose right outside the window. At night the office would be suffused with a radiant green light.
Power resonated throughout the room, not just the symbolic power associated with status and authority that one expected to encounter in the domain of a Guild Council member, but the very real paranormal power that emanated from the catacombs below.
Landry looked at him. “I brought Miss Stowe because I thought she would find this interesting.”
“Yes, of course.” Titus gave the blonde his soothing, Trust me, I’m a doctor smile. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Stowe.”
She smiled back, looking baffled but not frightened. She was clearly making an effort to show polite interest, a professional call girl who was accustomed to satisfying the whims of her clients.
“Benson tells me that you want to demonstrate an alien artifact to him,” she said.
“That’s right.” Titus looked at Landry. “Any chance we can do this down in the catacombs? There’s a fair amount of ambient psi in here, but the more the better for our purposes.”
Landry shrugged. He crossed the room and rezzed a hidden lock. A section of the wall opened up, revealing a flight of steep stone steps that led down into darkness.
Invisible waves of energy flowed up the steps into the room. They were, Titus knew, a sure sign that somewhere down below there was an opening into the catacombs.
“This way,” Landry said, picking up a flashlight. “Watch your head.”
He rezzed the flashlight and led the way down the steps. The blonde went next. Titus followed.
The staircase ended in a dank, heavily timbered basement that dated from the Colonial era. Landry played the beam of the flashlight on one wall, revealing a modern, mag-steel door secured with a sturdy lock.
Titus watched him rez the lock, wondering how many bodies had disappeared through the door and into the maze of catacombs over the years. There had always been rumors about that sort of thing, especially in the old days. Titus did not doubt the stories and legends associated with them. He was certain that at various times, all of the Guilds had found the endless, largely uncharted alien tunnels convenient dumping grounds. Once a body disappeared into an unexplored section of the ancient underground maze, it was unlikely ever to be found.
The heavy door swung open on near-silent hinges, revealing a scene illuminated in the acid-green glow of alien energy. Titus found himself looking through a jagged opening in a green quartz wall. Beyond was another staircase. The steps, like the endless maze of tunnels and chambers beyond, were constructed of green quartz. They had been designed for feet that were not quite human.
The green quartz that the aliens had used to build everything from urns and vases to the most ethereal aboveground spires and towers was virtually indestructible. Certainly no tool yet fashioned by humans was able to make a dent in the stuff.
The experts did not know what forces had been powerful enough to create the rips and tears in the tunnel walls, but there was no shortage of them beneath all of the Dead City ruins. Some researchers speculated that great earthquakes had, over the years, created the openings. Others suspected that the holes in the walls had been fashioned by the aliens themselves—possibly criminals, rebels, or others who had found the openings useful and who’d had access to the powerful tools that had been used to construct the catacombs.
Over the years the main entrances to the vast underground realm had been excavated by licensed, authorized explorers and researchers. The Guilds controlled access, because they were the only ones who could provide protection from the energy ghosts that drifted at random through the tunnels.
But ever since the arrival of the human colonists, uncharted holes in the walls had been exploited by a wide assortment of people who, for one reason or another, had a reason to go underground without professional protection. Licensed and unlicensed small-time antiquities collectors, entrepreneurs engaged in the manufacture and distribution of illegal substances, criminals fleeing the law, and risk-takers attracted to the adventure of unauthorized exploration all made use of the openings.
A short distance into the glowing green tunnel, Landry came to a halt and looked back at Titus.
“Will this do?” he asked.
“Yes,” Titus said. “This will do nicely.” He withdrew the ruby amber artifact from his pocket and smiled at Miss Stowe. “This is what I intend to demonstrate.”
She glanced at it without much interest. “It’s not made out of green quartz. It looks like red plastic.”
“Believe me when I tell you that this is no human-made plastic.”
He focused on her psi patterns, rezzing energy through the ruby amber. He possessed a great deal of natural talent, enough to read her psi waves and even exert a
limited and very temporary influence over them. With the aid of the ruby amber, however, his own power was enhanced to an astonishing degree.
Working swiftly, he pulsed psi through the device, dampening and neutralizing the woman’s own paranormal wave pattern. Her eyes widened slightly in shock. She shook her head once and started to step back, as though to flee.
Then she froze, an expression of total blankness on her beautiful features. She stood, unmoving, staring blindly into the middle distance.
Landry frowned. “What the hell did you do to her?”
“I put her into an instant trance by temporarily neutralizing her psi rhythms.”
“Huh.”
Landry walked slowly around the blonde. He paused behind her and clapped his hands very suddenly. The woman did not flinch. He continued walking until he was back in front of her. He waved one hand before her eyes. She did not blink. There was no sign that she was aware of him.
“Okay, so you can put her into a trance,” he said. “What good is that?”
“This is not just any trance,” Titus said, assuming a lecturing tone. “With the aid of this relic I have placed her in what is essentially a blank dreamscape.”
“She’s dreaming?”
“Not yet. She is prepared to dream, however.”
“Explain,” Landry ordered.
“As you may or may not know, scientific research has confirmed that the dreaming state is the only state in which our psychic senses interact freely with our other five senses without distinction. When we dream, our natural ability to distinguish between the normal and the paranormal disappears.”
“So?”
“Most people have had the experience of going to bed with a problem on their minds and awakening the next morning with a solution or at least a new way of approaching the problem. They will tell you that the answer came to them in their dreams. They are correct. During the dreaming state the mind is free to work on the problem with both psi and normal senses in a unique and extremely creative manner that cannot be duplicated in the waking state.”