The Hot Zone (A Rainshadow Novel Book 3) Page 4

  But the Guild wasn’t on the island to deal with the problems inside the Preserve. That was the job of the Rainshadow Foundation. The Foundation had brought in the Guild to do the one thing ghost hunters did best—neutralize the chaotic forces and assorted hazards that were always waiting down below in the catacombs.

  The maze of ancient tunnels on the island had only recently been discovered in the aftermath of some very powerful storms. Researchers and explorers from the corporate and academic worlds were eager to go into the Rainshadow Underworld to start collecting data. But that kind of expensive and dangerous—and potentially quite lucrative—fieldwork required security. For as long as anyone could remember, the Guilds had had a monopoly when it came to providing escort and protection services for those going underground.

  “I’m sure you’ll want space to set up a temporary office, Mr. Jones,” she said. “This morning when I saw your name in our files I called Anna Fuentes down at the Bay View Inn. She said she’s got a lovely two-room suite with a connecting door. It will be perfect for a field office. Very conveniently located to the center of Shadow Bay, I might add.”

  “I don’t need the extra room,” Cyrus said. “The Guild will be renting space from the owners of the Kane Gallery.”

  “I see.”

  She gave him her patented, no-room-at-this-inn smile and drummed her fingers on the counter. Fletcher Kane and Jasper Gilbert, both retired ghost hunters, owned the gallery. They would be only too happy to accommodate the new boss. Once a Guild man, always a Guild man.

  “Would you mind giving me my key?” Cyrus asked. “I’d like to unpack and get settled.”

  The amusement in his arresting green eyes told her that he was well aware he had won the battle of wills.

  She was saved from having to surrender the key by the roar of masculine shouts that erupted from the adjoining tavern.

  “I’ve got a hundred says you can’t toss him more than ten feet.”

  “You’re on. Make room, people, make room. We need some space here.”

  Chairs and tables scraped on the old wooden floor. There was some excited chortling.

  Alarm arced through Sedona. She stared across the lobby at the door that connected the tavern to the inn.

  “Good grief, they’ve got Lyle,” she said. “Damn it, I knew your hunters were going to be nothing but trouble.”

  She dashed out from behind the counter and raced across the lobby to the tavern entrance. She was aware of Cyrus following behind her but she ignored him.

  The shadowy tavern was crammed with hunters. Knox was behind the bar, polishing glassware with a white cloth. He was grizzled and rotund with the weathered face of a retired commercial fisherman. He peered over the rims of his reading glasses, clearly pleased with his customers’ revelry. Sedona knew exactly what he was thinking—the more the hunters drank, the more money they spent.

  The Guild men had pushed the tables and chairs aside to make room for two hunters who stood opposite each other. There was a distance of about ten feet separating the pair. One of the hunters was holding Lyle in both hands. Lyle was fully fluffed and chortling with excitement.

  As Sedona watched in horror, the hunter tossed Lyle toward the second man.

  “Stop that!” Sedona shouted.

  No one paid any attention. The second hunter deftly caught Lyle in both hands. Lyle chortled wildly, buzzed on dust bunny adrenaline.

  “One pace back,” the first hunter said.

  Both hunters stepped back, lengthening the distance between them.

  Sedona heard side bets going down around the room.

  “Five says Duke can’t catch the dust bunny.”

  “I’ve got twenty says Tanaka won’t be able to control the trajectory, not with the dust bunny wriggling like that.”

  “You’re on.”

  Tanaka, a lean, dark-haired hunter who wore his hair tied back with a strip of leather, prepared to launch Lyle into the air.

  “No, don’t you dare throw him,” Sedona shouted. She lunged toward Tanaka. “Give him to me.”

  But she was too late. Tanaka had already completed the toss. Lyle was airborne. He chittered exultantly as he sailed across the room.

  Moving with an unnerving quickness and, as far as Sedona could tell, almost no sound whatsoever, Cyrus was suddenly there in the flight path. Deftly he snagged Lyle out of midair and plopped him down on one shoulder.

  Lyle whooped with delight. The crowd of hunters, however, fell abruptly silent. Those who weren’t already on their feet slid off their bar stools and stood respectfully. No one actually saluted. The Guilds were technically not military organizations. But they operated in a quasi-military fashion in the Underworld, and they were subject to a strict chain of command. The new boss was in the room and everyone knew it.

  “Sorry to interrupt the game, gentlemen,” Cyrus said. “But the lady would rather you didn’t toss the dust bunny around like a beanbag.”

  “Understood, sir,” Duke said. “No dust bunny tossing. Welcome to Rainshadow, Mr. Jones. I’m Sergeant Duke Donovan, Special Underground Operations, sir.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Cyrus said. “As I’m sure you are all well aware, I’m here to establish the Rainshadow Guild, and you are going to help me do that. Each of you has been handpicked to participate in this project because of your high levels of talent and your experience. I look forward to working with you.”

  There was a chorus of “Yes, sir.”

  “Tomorrow morning I will be meeting with the local authorities to get a full briefing on what I understand are some unusual conditions here on the island,” Cyrus continued.

  “Yes, sir,” Duke said again. Excitement lit his eyes. “They’ve got monsters here on Rainshadow, boss. Real ones. Attridge, the local police chief, found the remains of a second carcass just inside the Preserve this morning. Word is, it looked like a giant snake covered in weird scales. No one has seen anything like it on the island, and they say that there’s nothing big enough inside the psi-fence that could take down a huge snake. But something took it down.”

  “The theory is that freaks of nature are coming out of the catacombs at night,” Tanaka added.

  “I read the initial reports,” Cyrus said. “We will deal with the problem. Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to finish checking in to my room. After my meeting with the authorities in the morning, I want to see the entire team in my office, which, I understand, is next door to the Kane Gallery.”

  “Right, boss,” Duke said. “I’ll make sure the team is notified.”

  “Thank you,” Cyrus said. “Now I would advise you gentlemen to get some sleep. We have a lot to do here on Rainshadow and we will start doing that work tomorrow.”

  There was another round of respectful “Yes, sir.”

  Cyrus turned his back on the crowd and walked across the room to where Sedona waited. He handed Lyle to her. Lyle chuffed contently a few times and settled down on her shoulder.

  “May I please have the key to my cottage now?” Cyrus said.

  Knox came out from behind the bar and made his way to where Sedona and Cyrus stood. “Give the man his room key, Sedona,” he said. He beamed at Cyrus and offered his hand. “Welcome to Rainshadow, Mr. Jones. Name’s Knox. I’m the owner of this here establishment. Proud to have you and your men amongst our clientele.”

  “Thanks,” Cyrus said, shaking his hand. “Call me Cyrus.”

  “You bet. We don’t stand on formality here on the island.” Knox peered at Sedona over the rims of his glasses. “Tell you what, why don’t you show Cyrus to Graveyard Cottage while I close down the bar? I can handle things here. Time you went home, anyway.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Jones can find the cottage by himself,” Sedona said. “He’s a Guild boss, after all. I’ll just aim him in the right direction.”

  Cyrus raised his
brows but he did not say anything.

  “Nah, it’s a little hard to find,” Knox said. He smiled broadly at Cyrus. “On account of it’s sort of hidden in the trees. We don’t use it much, but we got it cleaned up when we realized that there would be a lot of hunters descending on Rainshadow. Didn’t know Sedona had held it until it was the last available room, though. Tell you what, why don’t I have her shift a couple of the hunters around so that we can get you into one of the nicer cottages?”

  Cyrus looked at Sedona. “That won’t be necessary. Graveyard Cottage sounds like it will guarantee me some privacy.”

  “Oh, yeah, no problem with privacy out there at the cemetery,” Knox said. He looked at Sedona. “Get the man his key, honey. It’s a long, hard trip here to Rainshadow. Expect Mr. Jones wants to get some sleep tonight.”

  “Right,” Sedona said.

  Grimly aware that she was flushing an unbecoming shade of pink, she crossed the lobby. Rounding the counter, she snagged the last key off the hook on the board, and bent down to retrieve two flashlights from under the computer. She straightened and tossed one of the flashlights in Cyrus’s general direction. He caught it as easily as he had snagged Lyle out of midair a short time earlier.

  Cyrus examined the flashlight with interest. “I’m going to need one of these to find my way home at night?”

  She did not like the casual manner in which he used the word home. It made it sound like he would be hanging around for a while. Which was certainly true, she reminded herself. Like it or not, there was now an official Guild presence on the island and it wasn’t going to go away. But with luck, Cyrus would soon find himself permanent housing.

  “There aren’t any streetlights out by the cemetery,” Knox explained. “Actually, we’ve only got a couple on the island. One is over at the police station and the other is down at the marina.”

  “I won’t need your flashlight,” Cyrus said. He put the one Sedona had given him on the counter and unclipped the one on his belt. “I’ve got my own.”

  Knox chuckled. “That’s a Guild man for you. Always prepared.”

  Cyrus gave Sedona a thoughtful look. “So, no streetlights and a view of the graveyard. Sounds perfect for me.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She managed another sparkling smile. “I’m sure you’ll find Graveyard Cottage a delightful, luxurious retreat from the stress of your daily routine.”

  Chapter 4

  Cyrus aimed the flashlight at the weathered sign over the stone gates that guarded the graveyard. SHADOW BAY CEMETERY. An old-fashioned wrought-iron fence surrounded an assortment of weed-studded, overgrown grave markers.

  One of the gravesites was fenced off with what looked like a mag-steel cage. It was deep inside the cemetery grounds, but he could have sworn he felt a whisper of Alien psi leaking out of it.

  “Is that Graveyard Cottage?” Cyrus asked. “Am I going to be sleeping in an open grave?”

  “I did try to warn you that the accommodations were a little rough,” Sedona said.

  Amused by her excruciatingly polite tone, he jacked up his senses a little. For a couple of heartbeats he allowed himself to indulge in the dangerous, reckless, intensely sexual thrill he got just from being so close to her.

  He had been damned curious to meet her but he had not anticipated the hot vibe of sensual awareness that had ripped through him the moment he entered the lobby of Knox’s Resort & Tavern. The rush was much more powerful now that she was standing within arm’s reach.

  Probably just the raw heat of attraction, he warned himself, jacked up by the fact that she was a strong talent of some kind. Add the factors of night, a nearly full moon, and the edgy vibes that emanated from the very heart of the island, and you got a mix that was highly combustible—at least on his end of the connection. All he had detected from Sedona thus far was a cool, wary watchfulness, however.

  It was her possible para-psych profile that he had been warned about, but now that he was close to her he could not summon up any serious degree of caution. Just the opposite, he thought. He wanted to take risks with Sedona Snow.

  There was a photo of her in the file that he had read before leaving for Rainshadow. The picture had failed utterly to capture the mysterious aura and the possibly dangerous allure of the woman, Cyrus thought. She wore her shoulder-length near-black hair in a severely elegant knot at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were the color of molten amber, hinting at the talent beneath the surface. Her delicate features were etched by intelligence, a fierce independence, and bone-deep determination—not cookie-cutter, fashion-runway beauty. This was a woman who came to a man on her own terms—if she came to him at all.

  The dust bunny on her shoulder somehow went with the total package, he thought. He was walking through the night with a very interesting little witch and her familiar. A man was entitled to a few fantasies. It was Halloween Week after all.

  “Relax, Mr. Jones, no need to sleep in a grave,” Sedona said. “You’ll have a real bed. Your cottage is over there in the woods.”

  He glanced back through the cemetery gates. “I assume that steel cage is protecting the entrance to the Underworld?”

  “Yep, that’s the gravesite of an early resident of the island, William Bainbridge. At least, everyone assumed it was his grave until a couple of months ago when it turned out that it was actually a hole-in-the-wall entrance to the catacombs. The Rainshadow Foundation installed a new, high-tech psi-and-steel fence to keep people from trying to go below.”

  “Has it worked?” Cyrus asked.

  “About as well as any fence works. You know how it is. There are always thrill-seekers, treasure-hunters, and kids who can’t resist a Keep Out sign. The theory that there may be genuine monsters wandering around down in the catacombs has proven to be a more effective deterrent than the cage.”

  “I saw the photos of the two half-eaten carcasses.”

  “The research team from the Foundation has concluded that something new has been added to the ecological mix inside the Preserve,” she said. “But they haven’t been able to figure out what’s going on. The only viable explanation so far is that the recent violent storms here on Rainshadow opened up another entrance into the Underworld somewhere deep inside the fence. The creatures certainly haven’t been using Bainbridge’s grave. Someone would have noticed, trust me.”

  “But there have been no reliable sightings of live monsters according to the file.”

  “No,” Sedona said. “The researchers have a theory about that, too. They think that the creatures can emerge only at night when the psi levels are highest inside the Preserve. The experts don’t think that the monsters can handle daylight, not even inside the psi-fence. They were obviously evolved to live in a heavy-psi environment. Everyone seems fairly certain that the creatures can’t come out of the Preserve, either.”

  “It’s always dangerous to make assumptions when it comes to things that go bump in the night in the Underworld.”

  “Tell me about it,” Sedona said.

  Each word was etched in ice, Cyrus noted. Interesting.

  “As I understand it, all the researchers have to go on so far are two half-gnawed carcasses,” he said.

  “Right. The Foundation people managed to retrieve them. They’d both been pretty well mangled, first by whatever killed them and then by the critters that live inside the Preserve.”

  “And everyone is sure that there were never any sightings before the recent storm activity here on Rainshadow?”

  “Well, that is a matter of opinion,” Sedona said. “The thing is, people have been seeing things inside the Preserve ever since the first explorers landed on the island. For years people who manage to crash through the fence have stumbled back out—if they got back out at all—in a dazed, disoriented condition. Some of them have sworn they saw monsters, but most people think the survivors were hallucinating wildly.”

 
She led the way around the far side of the cemetery fence and stopped in front of a weathered, single-story cabin. Moonlight glinted on the obsidian-dark windows.

  “Quaint,” Cyrus said.

  “We like to think so,” Sedona said. She went up the front steps and crossed the small porch to the door. “Welcome to Graveyard Cottage, your new home away from home.”

  He followed her up the steps. “I’m guessing there’s no room service.”

  “No, but breakfast is included.” She used the key to rez the lock and then pushed open the door. “It’s served in the tavern from five thirty until seven thirty in the mornings. Judging by the amount of food your hunters have been consuming, I would suggest that you show up early if you want to eat.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Anytime.”

  She stepped through the doorway and rezzed a wall switch. Lyle chortled. He bounced down off her shoulder and scuttled around the place, exploring. Cyrus dropped his duffel on the scarred hardwood floor and examined his surroundings.

  A couple of lamps glowed, revealing a spare, rustic space furnished with an ancient sofa, a rather battered table, and a couple of rickety-looking chairs. There was a well-worn area rug in front of the fireplace and faded curtains on the windows. All of the pieces looked as if they had been picked up at a low-rent yard sale. There was also a small kitchenette. Through a darkened doorway he could make out a tiny bedroom.

  Sedona watched him. “Like I said, they’ve got a very nice two-room suite at the Bay View Inn. Great view of the marina.”

  He had to give her credit. She didn’t give up easily.

  “This will do nicely,” he said. “Lots of rustic charm.”

  “Yeah, right. Well, if you change your mind, let me know. There’s a supply of firewood in a shed out back. Here’s your key.”

  Her fingers brushed against his when she handed him the key. He had already braced himself for what he anticipated would be a few sparks of pure energy. He was not disappointed. Small flashes of lightning crackled across his senses. Everything inside him tightened.