Fired Up

  Automatically she opened her senses and examined the heavy layer of psi prints in the room. Some of the tracks of dream psi were decades old. Footsteps on the carpet glowed faintly with the usual mix of human emotions—love, anger, excitement, yearning, sadness and loss. But none of the prints burned with the eerie heat that indicated powerful psychic ability. There was no sign of the disturbing acid-hued smoke that she had come to recognize as the hallmark of formula-enhanced talent.

  The fact that she was even looking for evidence of Nightshade here in the home of an old client told her that her nerves and her senses were still on edge. She tried to relax and prepared to go to work.

  “I don’t see the yacht,” she remarked.

  “It went to my son and his wife,” Barbara said. “But none of my children want the antiquities.”

  “Estate sales are often difficult,” Chloe said gently. This was not the first time she had dealt with grieving spouses who felt guilty about selling off a collection of valuable objects that had been acquired by the dear departed.

  “Please sit down, Miss Harper.” Barbara gestured to a glass-and-beige-stone coffee table where two pots and two delicate china cups and saucers had been laid out.

  Chloe sank down on one of the off- white chairs. She set her satchel on the floor at her feet.

  Barbara indicated the gleaming silver pots. “Tea or coffee?”

  “Tea, thank you.”

  Barbara picked up one of the pots. “As you know, George collected the antiquities over a number of years. I think he intended to leave them to a museum, but he never got around to making the arrangements. My son and daughter are encouraging me to sell the artifacts. But before I make any decisions I want to get some idea of the value of the various pieces. George trusted you. He said you were very reliable. Milk or sugar?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Barbara handed her the cup and saucer. Then she poured some coffee for herself. “I suppose I shall have to think about selling the house now, as well. It’s too big for one person. But I hate the thought of moving. This was our home for forty years.”

  “I understand,” Chloe said.

  She sipped some tea. In situations like this clients needed time to talk. She listened politely and tried not to glance at her watch.

  Eventually, however, she set her cup down with a firm little clink of china on china.

  “Shall we look at the collection, Mrs. Rollins?”

  “Yes, of course. The gallery is at the back of the house.”

  Barbara put down her coffee cup and got to her feet. She led the way along a hall and stopped at a door that could have doubled as a bank vault. She punched in a code.

  “George had this gallery built especially for the collection. State-of-the-art security all the way.”

  “I remember,” Chloe said.

  Barbara opened the heavy door and stood back graciously.

  Chloe moved into the shadowed room. The space was filled with glass cases crammed with objects. A number of stone statues dotted the gallery. She set her satchel on a nearby table and started to open it. There was something wrong with the leather buckle. She could not seem to grasp it properly. A wave of dizziness hit her. She tried to focus, but the room was spinning and nothing made sense.

  Tentacles of darkness reached out, wrapped around her and dragged her down into the depths.

  47

  “LET’S GO BACK TO THE START OF THIS THING,” FALLON SAID. “How did they drug you?”

  “I don’t know. I went out for a couple of beers with an old friend and client,” Jack said. “Jerry Bergstrom. That’s all I remember.”

  “Eat anything?”

  “No.”

  “Given the timing, whatever they used to knock you out had to be in the beer,” Fallon said.

  “I know what you’re thinking. But I just can’t see Jerry getting involved with Nightshade.”

  “The enhancement formula causes some major personality changes. None of them are good, trust me.”

  “He was the same old Jerry. He seemed genuinely worried about me.”

  “There’s a para-hypnotist mixed up in this thing,” Fallon reminded him. “The woman who showed up at Drake Stone’s house in Vegas.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” He went to stand at the window of the office. “It’s possible that she got to Jerry. Maybe she gave him the drug and hypnotized him into using it on me. I’ll have Chloe talk to him, see if she can pull up any lost memories the way she did with Stone.”

  “Do it,” Fallon said. “Meanwhile, I think you’re on to something here with this chain of gyms. The question now is, what do we do about it?”

  “Shut them down?”

  “Why am I always having to remind people that we’re not the cops or the FBI.”

  “You didn’t hesitate to put those five Nightshade labs out of business a while back.”

  “We had no choice,” Fallon growled. “Zack and the Council agreed that with five labs running there was just too much of the formula being produced. We had to cut off at least some of the supply. We managed to make it look like accidental fires in all five cases. It helped that the labs were widely scattered up and down the West Coast and shared no obvious connection. But if three gyms here in the Northwest that just happen to be owned by the same private corporation go up in smoke someone will ask questions.”

  “Nightshade will guess it was Arcane,” Jack said. “But do you care?”

  “It’s not Nightshade I’m worried about. They’ve got to know we’re the folks who took down those labs. The problem with burning down the gyms would be arson investigators. We do not need that kind of attention from the authorities.”

  “The drawback to being a clandestine organization. Okay, so what are you going to do?”

  “I’m thinking about that,” Fallon said. “At this point Nightshade doesn’t know that we’ve identified three of their recruiting centers. They haven’t even closed down the one on Capitol Hill where they held you for twenty-four hours.”

  “That’s because they’re depending on the amnesia drug they gave me to keep my memories suppressed.”

  “Lucky for us. I’ve got a couple of low- end auras watching the gym there in Seattle. We’ll see what turns up.”

  “Are you going to try to get someone inside?”

  “That’s not an option,” Fallon said, flat and unequivocal. “In order to do that an agent would have to subject himself to the formula. I can’t allow anyone to take that risk.”

  “Maybe you can turn one of the Nightshade agents.”

  “Even if that were possible, he or she wouldn’t be reliable. Like I said, there are serious personality changes with the drug. But with luck we’ll get something useful from plain, old-fashioned surveillance on the gyms. The problem with surveillance is that it takes people, a lot of people. I don’t have an unlimited number of agents to throw at this thing. Look, I’ve got to make some calls. Get back to me after you and Chloe have talked to your friend, Jerry.”

  “Sure.” He waited for Fallon to end the connection with his customary abruptness. Instead there was silence on the other end.

  “Fallon? Still there?”

  “Yeah. I was just thinking.”

  “About?”

  “About how long it’s been since you and I went out for a beer. Maybe when this is over you and Chloe might want to take a little vacation. A long weekend or something.”

  “What does taking a vacation have to do with you and me going out for a beer?”

  “You two could spend a couple of days here in Scargill Cove. Very picturesque place. You’d like it here. Weather’s just like Seattle. Gray.”

  The phone went dead. Jack took it away from his ear and looked at it, wondering if he’d heard correctly. Had Fallon just invited him for a visit?

  He shelved the question for another time and went back to contemplating the leaden sky. The tension within him was drawing tighter. He recognized it now because he’d experien
ced a similar sensation once before. It was the same restless, uneasy feeling that had hit him the night that Chloe had conducted the stakeout at Fletcher Monroe’s house.

  48

  SHE AWAKENED TO THE MUFFLED CLANK AND THUD OF MACHINERY and a low moan. The latter was not a cry for help. It was the quiet anguish of a man who has given up all hope and longs only for death. The pitiful sound drew her up out of the darkness.

  She opened her eyes and immediately closed them against the blinding glare of fluorescent lights.

  “Ah, you’re awake, Miss Harper. Excellent.”

  Cautiously she opened her eyes again but only partway this time. A thin, bony man in a rumpled white lab coat was leaning over her, studying her through a pair of black- framed glasses. The thick lenses gave his eyes an unpleasant, faceted look. His bald head gleamed like an exoskeleton in the harsh light.

  “Who are you?” she whispered. Her voice sounded slurred, as if she’d had too much to drink.

  “Doctor Humphrey Hulsey,” he said. His insectoid eyes glittered with excitement. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Harper.”

  Squinting against the glary light she looked around the windowless room. White walls, the gleam of stainless-steel trays and counters, a guy in a lab coat and she was lying on a gurney. She knew this scene. It was straight out of Jack’s memories of the place where he had been held prisoner.

  Her head was clearing, but she felt uncomfortably warm. Her skin was so sensitive that the sheet that covered her was a source of pain. It dawned on her that she was running a fever. So much for the flu shot she had taken last month.

  “Not a hospital,” she whispered.

  “No, Miss Harper,” Hulsey said. “You’re not in a hospital. You’re in a research facility.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Must be a pretty low-rent research facility. Smells like a basement.”

  “Yes, well, sometimes those of us on the cutting edge of science must make do with less than state-of-the-art equipment and technology. Funding is always a problem, you see.”

  Another weak moan rumbled through the wall behind her. The pain in the cry roiled her senses.

  “Who is that?” she managed.

  “His name is Larry Brown, I believe. I think of him as Subject A.”

  “What on earth is wrong with him?”

  “I’m afraid that he’s feeling some of the side effects of his treatment. I’ve made several modifications to the formula in recent months, but it is still quite unpredictable, especially when used in the higher doses required to induce additional talents.”

  “The formula.” Anger surged through her, giving her strength. She pushed herself up on her elbows, vaguely surprised to discover that she was still wearing the clothes that she had worn to meet with Barbara Rollins. She was not shackled to the gurney. Evidently no one considered her potentially dangerous or likely to escape. “You’ve pumped him full of the founder’s drug.”

  “It wasn’t as if someone held him down and forced him to take the drug, I assure you,” Hulsey said. “Subject A was a volunteer. That is the wonderful thing about my research projects. There is no lack of individuals who will do just about anything in exchange for a drug that will give them genuine psychic talents or enhance the ones they already have.”

  Larry Brown groaned again. She shuddered and then couldn’t seem to stop shivering.

  “And you call yourself a doctor,” she said, disgusted. “So much for the first do-no-harm rule.”

  Hulsey was clearly affronted. “I am a research scientist. I come from a long line of talents endowed with a gift for science that can only be described as preternatural.”

  “Oh, right, that makes it okay to poison people.” Her upper arm ached. Whoever had dumped her on the gurney had not been gentle.

  “If it is any consolation,” Hulsey said, “my interest in the formula has been peripheral until recently. I saw it, as my predecessors did, primarily as an adjunct to the main focus of my interests.”

  “Is that right? What are your interests?”

  “Dream psi.” Hulsey rocked a little on his heels and assumed a lecturing air. “Given your own talent, I’m sure you’ll find what I am about to tell you quite fascinating.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  He ignored the derisive tone. “Like a number of my ancestors, including the brilliant Basil Hulsey back in the Victorian era, I have long been consumed with a passion for solving the mysteries of dream energy. You see, Miss Harper, the dream-psi spectrum is still unknown territory. To this day no one can explain the act of dreaming to the satisfaction of any scientist. It is evident that the energy involved in dreaming is almost entirely paranormal in nature. Yet it remains virtually inaccessible in the waking state.”

  “Your goal is to tap into that energy?”

  “Not only to access it but to study it and learn its secrets. The possibilities are endless.” Hulsey sighed. “But one must pay the bills, eh? So, in exchange for providing me with the funding and the facilities that I require to conduct my research I have been obliged to contract with various groups and individuals over the years.”

  “Nightshade.”

  “I am currently involved with Nightshade, yes. But when I was much younger I worked for a clandestine government agency for a while. That was when I managed to re-create Sylvester Jones’s formula with the help of Basil Hulsey’s notebooks. After that department was closed down somewhat abruptly, I was obliged to form an alliance with William Craigmore. Does that name ring any bells?”

  She struggled to concentrate. “The guy who founded Nightshade?”

  “Indeed. I was his director of research. I still hold the position within the organization. Generally speaking, I begrudge the time I am forced to devote to perfecting Sylvester’s drug. Nightshade cares only about enhancing certain talents. Really, it is like working for the government again. Until recently no one in the organization had exhibited any true appreciation for the science involved.”

  “That changed, huh?”

  “A few months ago I was approached by an individual who made me an extraordinary offer, Miss Knight. She had in her possession the journal of one Adelaide Pyne.”

  Fighting the waves of feverish heat, she shoved herself to a sitting position and swung her legs over the edge of the gurney.

  “The woman who worked the Burning Lamp for Griffin Winters back in the Victorian era,” she said.

  “Precisely. After I read the journal I realized that the lamp might be the key I had been searching for all these years, the device that could force open the channels between the dreamstate and the waking state and keep them open permanently in a stable fashion. I was very excited as I’m sure you can imagine. But Miss Knight informed me that there was a problem.”

  “The lamp had disappeared.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. She explained to me that she was trying to find it and that when she did locate it she would make it available to me for my research. In exchange, I agreed to run an experiment on a certain individual for her.”

  The incessant murmurs of pain coming through the wall were growing more anguished. She wanted to cover her ears with her palms to block out the terrible sounds, but she couldn’t seem to muster the strength. She was shivering so hard now it took everything she had just to keep from falling off the gurney.

  “Knight wanted you to run an experiment on that poor man in the other room?” she whispered.

  “Not Subject A,” Hulsey said impatiently. “Jack Winters.”

  She stilled. “You’re the one responsible for kidnapping Jack. But why? What did you do to him?”

  “Verified one of my associate’s theories, of course. There was no point proceeding along that path if the first assumption proved false.”

  “What theory are you talking about?”

  Hulsey frowned. “Why, that the men in the Winters line are immune to the side effects of Sylvester’s formula.”

  She looked at him, appalled. “You injected Jack with
the drug.”

  “Four times over the course of a twenty- four-hour period. Very high doses each time. He received more than enough of the drug to ensure a successful experiment. I had intended to keep him here another day or two to monitor the results, but he somehow managed to escape. No harm done, however. Miss Knight and I are both quite satisfied.”

  “You son of a bitch,” she whispered. “I thought you said you only used volunteers.”

  “Come now, Miss Harper, we both know that it was highly unlikely that Jack Winters would cooperate. It all had to be handled very delicately given his high profile not only within Arcane but also within the business community. I was careful to use a strong, amnesia-inducing sedative so that he would not remember anything of the experience. I assured Miss Knight that if he survived, any memories that might come back would seem no more than fragments of an unpleasant dream.”

  She hugged herself against the fever chills. “Bastard. You could have killed Jack or driven him mad with that awful formula.”

  “I am happy to report that the experiment was, all in all, a complete success. Winters seems to have done very well after being cut off the drug. Miss Knight is not the only one who is pleased.” Hulsey grimaced. “So is my current employer.”

  “What made Knight think that Jack could tolerate the formula?”

  “Allow me to explain,” Hulsey said, waxing enthusiastic. “The formula works by tapping into the latent power of dream energy. That’s how it enhances talents. It opens up the channels between the normal and the paranormal, allowing access to the reserves of energy available at the far end of the spectrum. But those channels are extremely narrow and very fragile. Furthermore, once open, only continuous doses of the drug can keep the channels functional. If the individual misses even a couple of doses of the drug an irreversible instability sets in. The result is insanity and death within a very short period of time.”