“I agree that I haven’t gone rogue yet. But who knows how long I’ve got before some switch gets tripped at the paranormal end of my energy field? Now that I’ve got the lamp, I can’t waste any time. I told you, the damn thing has a habit of disappearing.”
She was never going to get him on a plane. That was obvious.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll get a room here in town. I’ll take a look at the lamp. If I feel comfortable trying to work it, I’ll go for it. But if I don’t think I can handle it—”
“You have to work it, Chloe. I told you, the only other dream readers I identified in the Arcane files are employed by the Society. Even if I could take the risk of contacting one of them it wouldn’t do any good. None of them are as strong as you.”
She exhaled slowly, out of arguments. “Aunt Phyllis always said that someday I’d find a man who didn’t have a problem with my talent.”
20
THE NEED TO GET THE LAMP OUT OF THE CRATE, TO TOUCH it, to find out if it could save him from whatever was happening to him was a heavy, intensifying pressure. He felt as if he was trying to resist a strong gravitational field. But he would not be ruled by the demands of his senses. He was still in control of the demon inside him, and he was going to stay in control. Even if it killed him.
When they got into the cab he instructed the driver to stop first at the nearest hardware store. He left Chloe sitting in the back, the meter running, while he went inside to pick up a crow bar and a screwdriver. He was back in the car within ten minutes.
“Downtown,” he said.
The driver looked at him in the rearview mirror. “Where, downtown?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
The driver shrugged and headed for the old section of the city. When you drove a cab in Vegas, you didn’t ask a lot of questions.
Chloe didn’t ask any questions, either. She said nothing when they bypassed the glittering high-rise resorts on the palm-studded Strip and headed for the grittier, seedier downtown. She had probably guessed that he would not give her any answers as long as they were sitting in the backseat of a cab where the driver could overhear.
He was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking. She had concluded that he was now in full-blown paranoid mode. She was right. As the old saying went, even paranoids had enemies, and when one of those enemies might turn out to be J&J, it was only common sense to take precautions. If the agency did come looking for him they would start with the big hotels on the Strip because that was where someone with his kind of money would stay.
Paranoid, for sure.
The cab exited I-15 and plunged into the streets of faded, two-story motels, dingy gentlemen’s clubs, storefront casinos and gaudy, drive-through wedding chapels that cluttered what was known as Old Town.
He told the driver to stop on a side street in front of an adult bookstore.
Chloe got out and stood beside him on the sidewalk. She grasped the handle of her carry-on in one hand and her satchel in the other. Together they watched the vehicle speed away, and then Chloe turned to survey the nearby pawnshop and neighboring tattoo parlor.
“The real Vegas,” she said drily.
“Nothing’s real in Vegas.” He adjusted the crate under his arm and gripped the computer case in his other hand. The computer was not the only thing in the case. His overnight kit and a full set of IDs for a man named John Stewart Carter was also inside. He started walking. “Let’s go.”
She hurried to keep up with him. “Where are we going?”
He contemplated a sun-bleached sign halfway down the street. “What would you say to one hour in a private hot tub at the Tropical Gardens Motel?”
“The word yuck comes to mind.”
“Okay, be that way. Forget the hot tub. We’ll just get a room. But don’t say I never take you anywhere.”
At the front desk of the Tropical Gardens, there was no need to bother with the Carter ID. He just gave a fake name and paid in cash. The Vegas Way.
The bored clerk handed him a key. “Enjoy your stay, Mr. and Mrs. Rivers.”
They went through the small, grimy lobby, past the two senior citizens perched on the stools in front of a pair of slot machines and climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor.
“I can feel it, too, you know,” Chloe said quietly.
He knew what she meant. “It’s not just that I’m picking up on the energy coming from the lamp. The weird part is that I recognize the vibes. They’re familiar. It’s like looking into a foggy mirror.”
They stopped in front of room twelve. He shoved the key into the lock. She followed him into the shabby room. The tang of stale smoke and bleach greeted them. Chloe wrinkled her nose, but she made no comment.
“That makes sense,” she said instead.
He closed the door behind her and locked it. “It makes sense that I would recognize the energy coming from the lamp?”
“Sure.” She put down her carry-on and the satchel. “You said the lamp was created by Nicholas Winters and was later used by at least one of his descendants, Griffin Winters.”
“Right.” He set the crate on the stained, threadbare rug.
“Both men would have left their psi prints on it. You’re related to them. It’s a genetic thing.”
He looked down at the wooden box. “Can you sense the age of whatever is in this crate?”
“I can’t be absolutely certain until I see it, but the dreamlight that’s leaking out is very strong and, yes, I think that the object inside could date from the late seventeenth century.”
“Stone was so sure it came out of a modern lab.”
She shook her head, frowning a little in concentration. He felt energy shift in the atmosphere and knew that she had just pushed her senses a couple of notches higher.
“No,” she said. “The object in that box is definitely not modern.”
He met her eyes. “Is it dangerous?”
“I just sense power, Jack. Energy in and of itself is neutral. You know that.”
He studied the crate. “Just raw power?”
“A lot of it. And not all of it is masculine. Some of it is feminine.”
He looked up again at that. “Dream energy has a gender?”
“Probably not but people who leave traces of it behind certainly do. I can’t always perceive it distinctly because that kind of energy often gets muddled, but in this case some of it is very clear. At least two women of talent have handled that lamp.”
He thought about that. “Eleanor Fleming was the woman who worked the lamp for Nicholas. Adelaide Pyne was the one who worked it for Griffin Winters.”
Chloe smiled faintly. “They must have been very interesting women.”
Like you, he thought. Not just interesting. Fascinating.
“According to the records and the legends, they were,” he said instead. “It’s a fact that Eleanor worked the lamp to give Old Nick his second talent. Later she deliberately fried his para-senses with it. Figured destroying his talent would be the ultimate revenge.”
“Why did she want revenge?”
“You don’t know the tale?” he asked.
“Hey, until I met you I assumed the Burning Lamp was just another Arcane Society myth. You know, like Sylvester and his talent-enhancing formula.”
“Right, the formula. Just another legend. Okay, here’s what I know about the curse. Nicholas and Sylvester started out as friends. They were both alchemists, both strong sensitives, and both were convinced that they could not only enhance their talents but also develop additional powers by using the secrets of alchemy.”
“I do remember that much of the story,” she said. “Sylvester took the chemical approach. He studied herbs and plants looking for a drug that would do the job.”
“Nicholas took the engineering approach. Alchemists were notorious for trying to transmute metals with fire.”
“Ah, yes,” Chloe said. “The ancient dream of turning lead into gold.”
“Old Nick took it a step further. His goal was to forge a device that would produce powerful waves of dreamlight that could force open the channels between the dreamstate and the waking state and keep them open. Figured that would allow him to access the additional paranormal energy available along the dream spectrum.”
“Bad idea. That way lies madness.” She raised her brows. “Or so the Arcane experts believe. Just too much energy and stimulation for the human mind to handle all at once. The dreamstate and the waking state are separate for a reason.”
“Yeah, well, Nick was an alchemist. They were all a little mad. He also had an ego problem. He was sure that he was strong enough to handle the additional psi.”
“So he constructed the lamp. Then what happened?”
“Even though he was the one who created the lamp, he discovered that his own talent did not allow him to work it in the way required to open his own channels. He concluded that he needed a dreamlight reader.”
“Someone like me,” Chloe said.
He smiled at that. “I doubt if there is anyone else quite like you, Chloe Harper. But, yes, he needed someone with your talent and for whatever reason he was convinced the person had to be female. Or maybe he just assumed it would be easier to manipulate a woman. Took him a while, but he finally located a dreamlight reader in a small village outside London. Eleanor Fleming. She agreed to work the lamp for him, but the price was high.”
“How high?”
“She demanded marriage. Old Nick agreed to the bargain.”
“No wonder the legend had a bad outcome,” Chloe said.
“Eleanor worked the lamp. Afterward Nick took her straight to bed.”
“Poor Eleanor probably thought it would be okay to sleep with him because he was going to marry her.”
“Evidently. Shortly afterward Nick began developing his second talent.”
“Was it like yours?”
“The legend is unclear about the specific nature of his talent. No two are exactly the same, anyway. But whatever Nick got, it was definitely dangerous. He recorded in his journal that the initial indications that something was happening to his senses were the nightmares and hallucinations.”
“Is there any record that he experienced the blackouts and the sleepwalking episodes that you say you’re having?”
“No. But the side effects probably vary with each individual, just as the talent does.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “There just isn’t much information to go on because so few in my line have been born with the curse.”
She glared. “Stop calling it a curse.”
He looked at her. “Got a better word?”
“Never mind. What happened between Nick and Eleanor?”
“By all accounts the affair continued, but Nick was spending most of his time back in his laboratory. That’s when the rumors began. The people who worked on his estate reported seeing demons and monsters on the grounds.”
“Oh, geez. He was running experiments on them.”
“Apparently. The local villagers became terrified of Nick, and the stories just got worse over time.”
“That’s what happens with a legend,” she said.
“Meanwhile, Nick was still plagued with the hallucinations and nightmares. He concluded that Eleanor might be able to fix the problem with the lamp. She was pregnant by then.”
“And no doubt busily planning her wedding,” Chloe said.
“You guessed it. She worked the lamp energy a second time and managed to stop the nightmares and hallucinations. That was when Nick told her that he had no intention of marrying her.”
“Bastard.”
“He explained that it was impossible for a man of his rank and station to marry the daughter of a poor tradesman, but he was quite willing to carry on with her as his mistress and to provide for the child.”
“Big of him,” Chloe muttered.
“Eleanor told him to get lost.”
“Good for her.”
“He disappeared back into his lab for a few months and started to work on new crystals for the lamp.”
Chloe folded her arms and frowned. “Why new crystals?”
“That’s another part of the story that is very unclear. The assumption is that he hoped he could use the lamp to develop a third talent.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. Idiot.”
“Yeah, well, he was a really brilliant idiot. What is known is that he created some new stones in his alchemical furnace and inserted them into the lamp. And then he went back to see Eleanor a third time.”
Chloe sighed. “By now she had a son, right?”
“Old Nick did have some interest in the boy. Like Sylvester, he was curious to see if his offspring would inherit his talent. I don’t think he ever wanted the encumbrance of a wife, but he had run out of money to finance his experiments. To shore up his finances he had contracted a marriage with the daughter of a wealthy landowner.”
“Eleanor knew about the engagement, I assume?”
“Yes. When Nick showed up on her doorstep again it was too much. She agreed to work the lamp for him one more time. And she did. But instead of using it to provide him with a third talent, she took her revenge by frying all of his senses with it.”
“What happened?” Chloe asked.
“There was a struggle. Nick survived. Eleanor did not.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “He killed her?”
“It’s not clear. One theory is that the radiation that Eleanor unleashed affected her as well as Nick. She died at the scene, that much is known. Nick lived, but not long afterward his psychic talents began to fail. He realized what had happened and went crazy with rage. He was convinced that his old friend, Sylvester, had paid Eleanor to erase his new powers.”
“So that’s why he tried to murder Sylvester,” Chloe said.
“Yes. But before the final confrontation he went back into his laboratory one last time. He had enough talent left to finish forging one more stone to insert into the lamp. He called it the Midnight Crystal. He believed it had some extraordinary properties and that somehow it would ensure that one of his descendants would use the lamp to destroy the descendants of Sylvester Jones.”
“Then he confronted Jones?”
“Right. He didn’t expect to survive the encounter. But he wanted Sylvester to know that he had prepared his revenge and that it was a dish that would be served ice cold. There is no record of exactly what happened that day. All we know is that when the final meeting between the two men was over, Nicholas was dead.”
“What about Eleanor’s son?” Chloe asked.
“You don’t know that part of the story, either?”
“No.”
“Sylvester took the boy and gave him to one of his three mistresses to raise.”
Chloe looked stunned. “Sylvester adopted Nicholas’s son?”
“Not formally. He didn’t make the boy a Jones. But he saw to it that he was cared for and educated.”
“Hmm.” Chloe pursed her lips. “Sylvester was never known for being kindhearted.”
“I doubt that kindness had anything to do with it. It’s possible that he was curious to see if Nicholas’s son would inherit his father’s first and second talents. More likely he wanted to keep an eye on the boy to make certain he didn’t show any signs of becoming the anti-Jones.”
“In other words, the Winters boy was just another lab experiment to Sylvester.”
“Neither Nicholas nor Sylvester went down in the historical record as good fathers.”
21
THE PULL CORD THAT WORKED THE YELLOWED CURTAINS COVERING the small window was broken. She used both hands to drag the tattered fabric across the grimy glass, cutting off the view of the aging casino and the adjoining café across the street.
“Do you really think that J&J is watching you?” she asked.
“When it comes to Fallon Jones, paranoia is the only intelligent response,” Jack said. He was crouched on the floor beside the
crate, crowbar in hand. “Now that I’ve got the lamp, I intend to keep the lowest possible profile until I find out if you can work it.”
“And if I can’t work it?”
“Then my profile is going to get a hell of a lot lower.”
She chilled. “But where will you go?”
“For your own sake, it’s better if you don’t know anything more than that.”
She sighed. “Well, this place certainly qualifies as low profile. I have a feeling the rooms usually rent by the hour, not the night. No telling when the sheets were last changed.”
“Got a hunch you’re right.”
There was a metallic groan of steel and wood. A couple of nails popped free. She slipped into her other sight and studied the ultralight wavelengths seeping out of the crate. Dark energy swirled in the atmosphere.
“If things do work out as planned, how are you going to get the lamp back to Seattle?” she asked.
“As a carry-on,” Jack said. “How did you think I was going to get it back?”
Two more nails popped free.
“That might not be such a good idea,” she said. “The energy leaking out of that thing will probably make the passengers sitting around us a little edgy.”
“A lot of people get uneasy when they fly. I’m sure as hell not going to check the lamp and risk having it wind up in St. Louis or Acapulco.”
The last nail came free. Jack put down the crowbar. For a few seconds he just looked at the crate. Then he raised the lid, slowly, deliberately. As if it were a coffin lid, she thought.
More energy from the dark end of the spectrum swirled into the room. Her senses were still wide open. She could see icy ultrablues, strange purples, eerie greens and countless shades of black. A midnight rainbow from a very dark dream.
The object inside the crate was encased in a sack made of worn black velvet. Jack picked it up, stood and carried it to the small table. Slowly he untied the cord that secured the sack. The psi radiation got stronger, the hues more intense. Fascinated, she moved closer to the lamp.