One look at the glowing quartz staircase, and he understood why the old attraction had lost a few potential customers. The steps plunged downward, twisting and turning in a nightmarish version of a spiral staircase that was vaguely disorienting to human senses.
There was no banister. None of the staircases in the catacombs had been outfitted with them. Evidently the long-vanished aliens hadn’t worried about safety violations or liability insurance problems.
Luckily, in this instance, the sides of the stairwell were close enough to touch. Celinda flattened one palm against the quartz wall on her right and braced herself as she rushed down the strangely twisted steps. He did the same.
The intense paranormal energy that was always present in the catacombs hit his senses in a rush. The stuff had a mildly exhilarating effect on anyone who possessed even an average level of psi ability. For those like Celinda and himself with strong parapsych profiles, the effect was even more intoxicating.
He saw Celinda look up over her shoulder toward the entrance of the stairwell. He did the same. There was no noise from above now. That wasn’t surprising. The energy in the quartz walls had a dampening effect on sound.
“I don’t see anyone following us yet,” Celinda said.
“Keep moving,” he ordered.
She plunged down another twist in the stairwell and disappeared from sight.
He paused for an instant before following her and glanced up toward the entrance again. A figure loomed in the opening. As he watched, another man joined the first. They started down.
He rounded the next bend in the stairwell. When he looked back this time, he could no longer see the entrance or the men following them. Below him, Celinda was almost at the foot of the stairs.
He saw her stumble about three steps before the bottom. She managed to catch her balance by reaching out for both sides of the stairwell, but the action caused her to lose her grip on the tote.
The large bag sailed to the foot of the steps ahead of her, spilling its contents. Two clear plastic boxes containing leftover wedding cake and crackers topped with pink cream cheese tumbled out onto the quartz floor. The food was followed by a leather wallet, a package of tissues, a variety of feminine toiletries, including a brush and lipstick, a small note pad, a pen, and a pair of sunglasses.
“Oh, damn,” Celinda said.
She bent down and frantically began scooping up the fallen items.
“Forget it,” Davis said, reaching the last step. “We don’t have time.”
“But Araminta—”
“She either stays behind with the tote or she comes with us. Her choice. This isn’t negotiable, Celinda.”
Mercifully, she did not argue this time. She started to straighten. Then she froze.
“Davis.”
“What?”
She scooped up one of the objects that had fallen out of the tote. It was a familiar chunk of what looked like crimson plastic.
“Son of a bitch,” he said softly. “The relic.”
Chapter 25
“NO WONDER ARAMINTA WASN’T CONCERNED ABOUT leaving it behind in Cadence,” Celinda said. “She must have hidden it inside my tote before we left for Frequency. That’s why she wouldn’t let me leave the tote in the car a few minutes ago.”
“Let me have it.” Davis reached for it.
Araminta went wild, just as she had last time, bouncing up and down on Celinda’s shoulder and chortling fiercely.
“I think I’d better hang on to it,” Celinda said. “We don’t want Araminta racing off with this thing again. Once was enough.”
Davis studied Araminta, who looked adamant. “I think you’re right. Okay, let’s get going.”
Celinda looked around. Seven glowing tunnels, each marked with a high, vaulted entrance adorned with cryptic engravings, radiated away from the round chamber at the bottom of the staircase.
“Which way?” she said.
Davis indicated a tunnel that opened up behind the stairwell. “That one. Those guys will come out of the stairwell facing in this direction. I’ll be behind them. It will give me a small element of surprise.”
She turned back to him, dismayed. “I thought the plan was to hide in the tunnels until they leave.”
“They’re ghost hunters,” Davis said. “Have to assume they’ve got the new generation of amber-rez locators that will enable them to pick up any signals from tuned amber, whether or not they have the frequency. You and I are both carrying amber, and we can’t risk discarding it. If we got out of sight of that staircase, we might never find it again.”
She didn’t argue. The legends of people who lost their tuned amber and ended up wandering in the green maze until they died of thirst or went mad were familiar to everyone. To be without tuned amber underground was to be doomed.
Gripping the relic, she moved briskly ahead of him into the tunnel he indicated.
“How do you intend to deal with those men?” she asked.
“Carefully.”
“One against lord only knows how many doesn’t strike me as good odds. You need help, Davis.”
“I’ve got Max.”
“You’ve also got me and Araminta.”
He looked thoughtfully at Araminta. “She might be useful, especially if she thinks she’s protecting you.”
“Hey, I can be useful, too,” she said tightly.
“You can be useful by staying out of sight until this is over.”
She was suddenly furious and frustrated. He was right. What did she know about fighting a band of thugs?
He brought his mouth very close to her ear. “There isn’t any time left. I can hear them on the stairs. Stay here and swear to me you won’t panic, no matter what you think you see.”
He did not wait for her to respond to that strange order. Releasing her, he went toward the vaulted entrance with Max on his shoulder. There he stopped, flattening himself against the wall.
She realized that he was still holding the mag-rez gun, but it was reversed in his hand.
She could hear voices and heavy boots on the stairs.
“Put the mag-rez away, you damn idiot,” one of the hunters said angrily. “We’re underground now. You’re more likely to kill yourself or one of us than you are to nail Oakes.”
“Remember, whatever happens, we need the woman alive,” a second man growled. “If she goes down, Landry will be furious.”
“She won’t be a problem,” the first man said. “Oakes is the only one we need to worry about. You heard Landry, he’s no ordinary hunter, but he is some kind of nonstandard freak who can de-rez a ghost without using ghost heat.”
“He may be a freak,” a third man observed coolly, “but there are five of us. No way he can take down five ghosts at a time. No one can do that, not without melting amber. Once his amber is shot, he’s ghost bait.”
So it was five against one, Celinda thought. It was definitely not going to be a fair fight. Davis needed help.
“I’m getting a reading,” one of the hunters said. “Tuned amber. Less than twenty feet away. They’re hiding inside one of these tunnels.”
Another raised his voice. “This is over, Oakes. We all know that. Give us the woman, and you’re free to go. We don’t give a damn about you. Just send her out here. Landry isn’t going to hurt her. He just wants some information from her. This doesn’t involve you. This is Guild business.”
Rage shot through Celinda. Guild business. The universal excuse for anyone connected to the Guilds.
She looked at Davis, who was still positioned flat against the glowing green wall, gripping the barrel of the mag-rez gun. Surely he didn’t intend to use it, she thought. But perhaps he was desperate enough to take the risk.
She sensed his psi energy pulse in a sudden surge of power.
An instant later, Davis and Max both disappeared.
She stared at the entrance of the tunnel, unable to believe her eyes. The pair had vanished. Literally. Not as in moving so quickly she hadn’t been able t
o follow them. They were both simply gone.
Except Davis wasn’t gone. She could still sense his psi pattern resonating as strongly as ever.
She realized that she was having trouble focusing on the place where he had been standing with Max on his shoulder only a second ago. The air seemed to waver and shimmer a little.
The patch of air that was not quite in focus suddenly moved, flowing out into the stairwell chamber. If she had not been looking directly at the slight distortion at the entrance of the tunnel, she would never have seen it.
That was when it dawned on her. Davis had just made himself and Max invisible.
Impossible.
Before she could wrap her brain around the mixed messages her senses were receiving, Araminta uttered a low, rumbling growl and tumbled from her shoulder to the floor of the tunnel.
The dust bunny raced after the silvery, shimmering patch of air. As she ran, she went into full hunting mode, all eyes and teeth.
Celinda hurried after her.
Shouts of anger and surprise went up in the outer room.
“What the fuck?”
“What happened to Reynolds?”
Celinda reached the tunnel entrance in time to see one of the khaki-and-leather-clad hunters crumple to the floor. He sprawled there, unmoving. The other four stared at him, dumbfounded.
She was still several feet away from them; nevertheless, she could perceive their violently pulsing psi energies quite clearly. Her senses were naturally a lot stronger underground.
“Maybe he had a heart attack or something,” one of the hunters said uneasily. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
“We came here to get the woman,” another hunter growled. “We’re not leaving without her.”
The man who had been speaking jerked violently and fell to his knees, groaning. His head snapped forward, as if from a blow. This time he crumpled flat on his face. His psychic energy still pulsed, but it was as if everything had suddenly been thrown into neutral. He was alive, she realized, but unconscious.
“What’s happening?” one of the hunters shouted. “What’s going on here?”
She shivered. Welcome to the haunted alien ruins, folks. Step right up. You’re going to get your money’s worth today. There’s a real live ghost in the chamber with you.
For the first time it struck her that Davis, Max, and Araminta might, indeed, be able to handle all five hunters by themselves.
The three men still on their feet were looking around uneasily. One of them was checking a device in his hand.
She retreated a step, putting her back against the wall.
“I’m getting two readings,” the hunter said. “Shit. One is right here in the chamber.”
“There’s no one here but us, you idiot,” one of the others barked. “You’re probably picking up my amber or Greg’s.”
A piercing shriek rent the tense atmosphere in the outer chamber. It came from the hunter who had been trying to sort out the readings on his locating device.
Celinda peered around the opening in time to see that Max had rematerialized. As she watched, he launched himself up the pants leg of one of the hunters. Araminta was right behind him, going for the other leg.
The man screamed again and began swiping madly at the front of his trousers.
“Get them off me! Get them off me!”
Max reached the man’s waist, heading for the throat.
The terrified hunter swung wildly at Max and managed to connect. Max went flying but not before drawing blood.
The hunter yelled again and batted at Araminta. She leaped away from his khaki-clad leg, but Celinda saw that the fabric was already damp and darkening rapidly.
“Something bit me!” The hunter staggered back, cradling his bleeding hand against his side. Looking haunted, he produced a knife, threw up an energy ghost as a shield, and started to retreat toward the staircase.
The air behind him shimmered. He jerked, but he did not go down. He whirled to confront the unseen menace behind him, knife slicing wildly at the air.
Then he toppled sideways, landing on the floor with a jolting thud. The blood from his wounded hand ran onto the green quartz. The ghost he had rezzed winked out.
Celinda looked anxiously at Max. He had landed adroitly and was already back on his feet, evidently unharmed.
More ghost light flared. The two hunters who were still on their feet had managed to regroup sufficiently to put their backs to each other. They had generated two large, violently pulsing balls of energy to protect themselves and were retreating toward the foot of the staircase. Both had drawn their knives.
Dark, disturbing energy poured off them in sickening waves. Fear, Celinda thought. The stuff was so strong it threatened to drown her own senses.
Her first impulse was to try to dampen the psi-based energy before it overwhelmed her. Her fingers tightened convulsively around the ruby amber relic in her hand. Power tingled in her palm.
Suddenly she knew in a way that she could not explain that she had a choice. She could, indeed, suppress the men’s fear, or she could enhance it. If she chose the latter, she was also very certain that she could block the intensity of the waves so that she would not be swamped by them.
Acting on instinct, she pushed her own para-rez power through the ruby amber. Working gingerly at first but with growing confidence, she sent pulses of resonating energy designed to augment the frequency of the waves the men were generating.
The hunters’ fear metamorphosed into unholy terror. They both started screaming. The ghosts they were attempting to manipulate ebbed and flared in a pattern that even to her inexperienced eyes looked increasingly feeble and disorganized.
She barely managed to pulse enough additional psi through the ruby amber to protect her own senses from the onslaught. But her mental barricades held, muting the impact of the hunters’ over-rezzed response.
On the floor, the leather vest worn by one of the fallen men seemed to open of its own accord, revealing a chunk of amber hanging on a metallic necklace. As she watched, the amber disappeared into thin air.
She realized that Davis was probably close to melting his own amber. He had just confiscated some backup.
Araminta and Max circled the wobbling energy ghosts warily, searching for openings.
The air in front of one of the UDEMs shimmered. The rapidly weakening ghost winked out. A heartbeat later, the second ghost disappeared.
“What’s happening?” one of the men shouted.
“How in green hell should I know? Maybe this place really is haunted. Let’s get out of here.”
“What about Landry?” the first man insisted.
“Screw Landry. We can’t fight what we can’t see.”
Knives in hand, the men fled toward the staircase.
The first hunter stumbled over some unseen object and went down. His head jerked to the side. He lay still.
The second one shrieked and kept on shrieking. Max and Araminta were scampering up his pants leg. He swiped at them with his knife, dancing on one foot.
His legs went out from under him. He fell to his knees and sprawled on the floor.
A deathly silence filled the chamber. Celinda looked at the figures of the fallen men. She sensed psi energy from all five. They were alive, but all were unconscious.
The air shimmered again, bright and silvery.
Davis appeared, standing amid the sprawled hunters. He was breathing hard. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face and saturated his shirt.
He still held the mag-rez in one hand. She knew then that he had used the butt of the gun as a club during the combat.
He looked at her, eyes as hot as a mirror struck by sunlight.
“We need to get out of here,” he said. “Now.”
“Are you all right?” she asked, too shaken to demand an explanation.
“Yes, but I won’t be for long. I only pushed it this far once before. The burn isn’t going to last very long. I can feel it fading already.
The crash is going to be bad.”
“You melted amber?”
“Three times, but that’s not the problem. Move.”
He was deadly serious. She snatched up her tote, dropped her wallet, the plastic containers of food, and the relic inside, and held her hand out to Araminta.
They followed Davis and Max up the spiral staircase.
“You’ll have to drive,” Davis said.
“I sort of figured that.”
“Ever driven a twin-mag shift?”
“Yes. I learned on Walker’s Specter.”
Davis was climbing slowly but steadily. It didn’t take psychic senses to realize that he was moving forward on willpower alone. “The burn isn’t going to last very long. I can feel it fading already.” It was obvious that he was not experiencing the high-rez rush before the crash that hunters normally got when they melted amber. Something was very wrong here.
Panic sliced through her. If he collapsed in the stairwell, she would not be able to haul him out on her own. The personal phones wouldn’t work out here in the middle of the desert, so she would not be able to call for help. They would be trapped until Davis recovered. That could take hours. At least some of the men down below in the chamber were bound to regain consciousness before that happened.
She moved up close behind Davis, planted her hands against his back, and started pushing. He didn’t say anything, but with the added support he was able move a little faster.
His weight grew heavier as they made their way up the staircase. At one point she nearly despaired. Max looked as worried as a dust bunny could get. He chortled encouragingly in Davis’s ear.
At last the tower entrance came into view.
Davis paused, chest heaving. He handed the mag-rez to her.
“Just in case they had the sense to leave a guard outside,” he said. “If we need this, you’ll have to be the one to use it. In this condition I couldn’t hit the broad side of a Dead City wall.”
“All right.” She took the gun from him. It was lighter than her own older model, but she could see that the mechanism was the same.
“You okay?” he asked hoarsely.
“Don’t worry. I’m saving my panic attack for some other time.”