Silver Master gh-5 Page 18

  “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.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, because you’re the only one who can get us out of here before some of those bastards down there come to or someone comes looking for them.”

  She shuddered. “Rest assured, I’ve got the big picture here.”

  A moment later, they emerged from the stairwell. Celinda’s pulse was pounding, not just from the physical effort of shoving Davis up the last few stairs but from the fear that someone else was going to jump out at them. She gripped the mag-rez very tightly in her right hand and prayed.

  No one accosted them when they left the tower.

  “Idiots,” Davis muttered. “Should have left a man on guard up here.”

  “Just be grateful they didn’t. I certainly am.”

  “No problem with gratitude here, either.”

  He was starting to slur his words, a sign of the physical exhaustion that was rolling over him. But it was the psychic fatigue dampening his senses that worried her the most. The afterburn had not struck him nearly this hard the other evening when he had de-rezzed the doppelganger ghosts in the Old Quarter of Cadence. Whatever he had done to make himself invisible had sapped every ounce of psi power he possessed.

  She managed to wedge him into the passenger seat of the Phantom and belted him in place.

  Max and Araminta tumbled in after him. Davis leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. Max made anxious little noises.

  “Don’t worry, Max,” Celinda said. “He’ll be okay. He just needs to sleep.”

  Max did not appear reassured. Araminta cuddled close to him, offering silent comfort.

  Celinda got behind the wheel, rezzed the high-powered engine, and drove out of the old parking lot, skirting the heavy Oscillators that Landry’s men had used.

  She worked her way gingerly back toward the highway, afraid of jostling Davis any more than necessary. When she hit an especially high bump a little too hard, she glanced at him quickly. He didn’t open his eyes, but in the amber glow of the dashboard lights she was pretty sure she saw him wince.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

  “Oh. Right. The car. Well, look on the bright side. If you need a new one when this is all over, you can just put it on the Guild’s tab.”

  “There is that. Celinda, I want you to listen closely to what I’m going to tell you.”

  She did not take her eyes off the battered old road. “Okay.”

  “I’m going to go under before we reach Cadence.”

  “The burn and crash. Yes, I understand.”

  “Not like the other night. This will be a major crash. As in, I may not come back out of it.”

  “What?” Horrified, she jerked her eyes off the road long enough to cast him a quick, searching look. “What are you talking about?”

  “The last time this happened, I ended up in a parapsych hospital for nearly two months.”

  “You’re starting to scare me here.”

  “Whatever you do, promise me you won’t take me to an emergency room. Call Trig as soon as you can. He’ll know what to do.”

  She could hardly breathe. A fine tremor swept through her. She reminded herself that she had postponed the panic attack. She had to stay calm and in control.

  “All right,” she said quietly.

  “Tell Trig everything. Make sure he knows we’ve got the relic. He’ll take it from there. I want that damn thing back in Mercer Wyatt’s hands tonight.”

  The last few words were so weighted down with exhaustion that she could barely comprehend them.

  “You’re going to be okay, Davis,” she said firmly.

  He did not respond. When she gave him another fleeting glance, she saw that his eyes were closed. That was normal, she told herself. But something about his energy patterns didn’t feel at all normal. Max huddled closer to him.

  It took forever to get to the highway. When she reached it, she pointed the Phantom in the direction of Cadence City and gave the powerful vehicle its head. The reflective white lines on the pavement became a blur.

  Ten miles later she realized that Davis was shivering violently. She took one hand off the wheel and touched his forehead. He was frighteningly cold.

  His psi energy waves had faded to almost nothing. He wasn’t sleeping, she realized. He was sinking into something that felt much deeper and darker: a coma.

  Chapter 26

  WHATEVER WAS HAPPENING TO DAVIS, HER INTUITION told her that it did not fall into the admittedly flexible category labeled “normal,” not even for a hunter.

  She was making excellent time, but she was still a good hour away from Cadence. All her instincts were shrieking that she had to do something now to stop Davis’s slide into psychic oblivion.

  Max looked dreadful. He was crouched forlornly on Davis’s shoulder, muttering. Araminta was perched on the back of the seat. She hadn’t eaten a thing in the past hour.

  “Davis?” Celinda said, glancing across at him. “Can you hear me?”

  There was no response. His head hung forward. The only thing that held him upright was the seat belt.

  “Davis, wake up,” she said, infusing a tone of sharp command into her voice. “Talk to me.”

  Silence. Davis’s psi waves pulsed more weakly.

  She thought about the relic in the tote and then she thought about what she had been able to do with it during the fight in the underground chamber. One thing was certain, she couldn’t run any psychic experiments while speeding along the highway at thirty miles over the speed limit.

  Another badly weathered billboard came up in the headlights. It promised Cold Drinks & Snacks Next Exit.

  She slammed the brakes, slowing the Phantom abruptly, and swung off the highway onto the side road. Her headlights picked up the looming shape of a sagging, unlit building. The old roadside snack stand had been closed for a long time.

  She drove around behind the deserted stand and shut off the headlights. If any of Landry’s men had managed to climb back out of the alien ruins and give chase, they wouldn’t be able to see the Phantom parked behind the tumbledown snack stand.

  She grabbed the tote from behind the seat, reached inside, and found the relic. The energy emanating from it was reduced to a trickle again. The powerful sensation she had experienced holding it underground was gone.

  But energy was energy, and now, thanks to her experience in the alien chamber, she had a sense of how to employ it.

  She unbuckled her belt, climbed over the gearshift, and wrapped herself around Davis, trying for as much physical contact as possible. Max retreated to the back of the seat, making way for her. He seemed to understand that she was trying to help.

  Davis was shivering violently now. He stirred slightly when she put her leg over his thighs and slipped an arm behind his neck. She sensed that on some level he was aware of her presence.

  She gripped the ruby amber relic and hugged him tightly to warm him physically while she concentrated on his cooling psi energy.

  The patterns snapped into focus immediately, not as brilliantly clear and distinct as when she was underground but far more so than when she read psi waves with only her innate talent.

  She saw that Davis’s rhythms were not only weakening rapidly, the waves were losing their elegantly controlled pattern. The normally strong, steady pulses were increasingly erratic. Hot and cold light flashed across the spectrum.

  Desperate, she selected the strongest band of pulsing energy she could perceive and then sent her own psi through the ruby amber artifact.

  For a few heart-stopping seconds she feared that nothing was happening. Then the ragged band of energy began to resonate with her psi waves in a rhythm that reinforced Davis’s normal pattern. The waves became stronger and more regular.

  She urged a little more po
wer through the ruby amber, selecting another point on the spectrum. Those wavelengths also began to steady. She shifted to a new point and repeated the process.

  The steadying of one or two bands seemed to have a restorative effect on the others. The remaining waves emanating from across the psychic spectrum rapidly strengthened and became regular.

  Davis grew warmer to the touch.

  Max chortled excitedly.

  Davis groaned, raised his lashes a little, and looked up at her with eyes that no longer burned like over-rezzed flash-rock.

  “Are we there yet?” he asked.

  He still sounded very, very tired, but now it felt like a normal exhaustion.

  She was so relieved she almost cried. “Not quite. Another hour or so.”

  “I feel like I just fell off a cliff into a deep ocean and had to swim back to the surface,” he muttered.

  “That’s probably a pretty accurate description.”

  He watched her very steadily through half-closed lids. “I didn’t get back under my own power. You were there. I could feel you.”

  “We can talk about it later. I think it’s time you got some real sleep. You need it.”

  He closed his eyes. She waited a tense moment or two, afraid that he might start to slip away from her again. But his psi rhythms, although slowed and gentled by deep slumber, remained steady and strong across the spectrum.

  She scrambled back behind the wheel, set the relic on the dash, and rezzed the engine. When she reached the highway, she turned toward Cadence for the second time that night. She called Trig as soon as she could get a signal. He answered on the first ring.

  “How was the wedding?” he asked.

  “Pink.” She glanced at the dashboard clock. “But things got really complicated afterward. I’ll be at my place in about an hour, maybe less, depending on traffic.”

  “You’re driving?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Phantom?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He chuckled. “I’m impressed. I don’t think Davis ever let anyone except his brother and me get behind the wheel, and we only got to drive it around the block.”

  “He didn’t have a lot of choice tonight. Can you meet me at my apartment? I’m going to need a little help getting your boss upstairs.”