Fired Up

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  With luck he would be out for a few hours. When he awoke Hulsey and Nash would realize that the experiment had failed. But she could not think of anything else to do. She needed to secure as much time as she could in order to give Jack a chance to find her.

  Hulsey peered at the monitors on the wall. “Excellent, my dear. He is quite stable now. Precisely the effect I had hoped to achieve.”

  Not quite, she thought. She glanced at the lamp. It still glowed faintly from the initial burst of energy she had used to ignite it, but it was dimming rapidly.

  “Working the lamp creates a heavy psi drain,” she said. She did not have to fake the weariness in her words. “I’ve got to rest now. I’m ill.”

  Hulsey gave her an approving look. “Yes, of course, my dear. I do hope you appreciate what I have accomplished here today. I have pushed the boundaries of para-biophysics beyond even what Sylvester and Nicholas dreamed of doing.”

  “I’m thrilled for you.” She really did need to lie down and maybe take some aspirin. The feverish sensation was getting worse.

  Nash frowned. “How many doses has she had?” he said to Hulsey.

  “Just one,” Hulsey said absently. He was busy making notes. “But it was the new, experimental version. Quite potent. I gave it to her immediately after they brought her here. She was still unconscious. I’ll give her another in two hours.”

  Chloe thought about the sore place on her upper arm. Panic slammed through her. “You injected me with the formula?”

  “Yes, of course,” Hulsey said, not looking up from his notes. “Mr. Nash, here, was afraid that you might not cooperate otherwise. I agreed with him. We wanted to make certain you were committed to the organization, as it were. From now on, you will need to take a dose twice a day. The good news is that after the first week you can switch to the tablets.”

  In the doorway, Nash smiled his reptilian smile. “Welcome to Nightshade, Miss Harper.”

  51

  “YOU CAN’T GO IN ALONE,” FALLON JONES SAID. “ALL I’VE GOT available are the two auras watching the gym. They’re not trained for this kind of thing. Give me time to scramble some backup.”

  “Even if you manage to come up with a couple of hunters, it won’t do any good,” Jack said. “Your people would be outnumbered by the Nightshade freaks.”

  “I know you’re something more than a strat now,” Fallon said urgently. “But you’re still just one man. What makes you think you can do this?”

  “Power of positive thinking.”

  “How do you know they’ve got Chloe inside that gym? The auras haven’t reported seeing any unusual activity in the alley or in front of the building.”

  “She’s in there. Those bastards aren’t the CIA or the FBI, either. They don’t have unlimited resources any more than J&J does.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Fallon said reluctantly.

  “They could have smuggled her in through an underground entrance. Hell, maybe that’s how they got me inside.”

  “It’s a possibility. What exactly are you, Jack?”

  “According to Chloe I’m still just a strat. But I’m a really strong strat. I’m turning off the phone now, Fallon. I don’t want it ringing at the wrong time.”

  “No, wait, don’t hang up—”

  Jack cut the connection and hit the off key. He dropped the phone into his pocket, crossed the street and went down the alley behind the old brick building that housed the gym. It was only six o’clock, but at this time of the year it was already full dark.

  There was a guard outside the rear entrance, but he was easily distracted by a wave of panic that had him staring, wide-eyed toward the opposite end of the ally. By the time he realized that the attack was coming from the other direction, it was too late. He swung around when he heard Jack behind him, reaching into his jacket with hunter-enhanced speed.

  But there was no way even the strongest of hunters could move faster than a current of energy. Jack hit him with another sluicing wave of terror. The guard’s mind could not handle the nightmare that engulfed him. He crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

  Jack dragged him behind the nearby metal trash container and stripped him of his clothes, gun and keys.

  Two minutes later, dressed in the guard’s clothes, cap pulled down low over his eyes, he used the keys to enter the back of the gym. He generated small pulses of fear to make sure that the two burly-looking hunters he passed in the hall were distracted, unnerved and looking the other way when he went by.

  There wasn’t a large staff in the building. He hadn’t expected to encounter a lot of people. As he had pointed out to Fallon, Nightshade was forced to work with many of the same limitations that applied to J&J. In addition, maintaining a low profile was Job One for any self-respecting conspiracy that wanted to survive.

  He found the stairwell and went down into the basement, emerging in a familiar corridor. This was the reverse of the route he had followed the night he had escaped, he thought.

  He found the room where he had been held with no difficulty. Being a strat meant that you never had to stop and ask for directions.

  There was a guard outside the door again, a strong indicator that Chloe was locked inside. He refused to let himself think of what the bastards might have done to her. That way lay madness. He had to stay focused, or he would be of no use to her.

  52

  SHE WAS LYING ON THE GURNEY, SHIVERING WITH FEVER WHEN she heard the key in the lock. A few seconds later Jack came through the door. He was dressed in the style of clothing worn by the guards, right down to the cap, but she would have recognized him anywhere. He dragged the unconscious body of the guard into the room and closed the door.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, coming toward her.

  He was ablaze with psi. Energy swirled in the atmosphere around him. The heat in his eyes could have ignited a fire. The only thing he lacked was a flaming sword.

  Avenging angel. In spite of the fever, she smiled.

  “I knew you’d come for me,” she whispered. She pulled some of her own psi and used it to sit up on the edge of the gurney. “We’re leaving now, I assume?”

  “Yes.” He stopped in front of her, cupping her face between his palms. “You’re running a fever.”

  “I know. Fine time to come down with the flu, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I’m running a little psi to counteract the effects.” This was not the moment to tell him that she had been injected with the drug. There was no knowing how he would react, and right now it was vital that he be able to focus.

  “We’ll talk later,” he said. He took her hand and led her quickly toward the door. “We need to get out of here.”

  “I like a man who can prioritize.”

  He glanced down at her hand in his. “You’re burning up.”

  “The psi on top of the flu. Has that effect.”

  “It’s not the flu. They shot you up with that sedative they used on me, didn’t they?”

  “Something like that, but I’ll be okay.”

  She could see that he wasn’t buying her story, but she also knew that he was strat enough to realize that there was not a thing he could do about the fever.

  “I’ll go first,” he said.

  He released her hand, opened the door and moved cautiously out into the hall. She felt energy pulse a little higher around him and knew that he had just made someone out in the corridor very nervous.

  “Okay,” he said. “Walk ahead of me. Make it look like I’m escorting you to some other room.”

  She peered out into the hall. “Which way?”

  “Left.”

  She took a deep breath and walked forward with what she hoped looked like weary reluctance. She didn’t have to fake the weary part. Jack stayed close behind her.

  At the intersection she stopped again.

  “Right,” Jack said quietly.

  A door opened to her left just as she turned the corner to the right. Nash appeared. He had one hand on the knob, preparing to step ou
t into the hall. He did not see her immediately because he was looking back into the room and speaking to someone else in low, tense tones. She could feel the disturbing energy of the lamp seeping out of the opening.

  She halted and took a step back. But there was nowhere to run and no time. Nash was already swiveling toward her.

  “After Brown wakes up and we’ve confirmed the success of the experiment, we’re going back to Portland,” Nash said to the other person in the room. “I want to make a few more trial runs before I let the Harper woman use that lamp on me.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand,” Hulsey said impatiently.

  Nash saw Chloe. Rage twisted his features.

  “Who let you out of your room?” he snarled.

  Jack came around the corner. “I did.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Nash’s fury was too sudden and definitely over the top, Chloe thought. It was as if he had skipped the more natural, preliminary stages of confusion and annoyed authority entirely and gone straight to irrational loss of temper. The Nightshade drug was affecting more than just his senses.

  “Jack Winters,” Jack said. “You stole a couple of things that belong to me. I’m taking both of them.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Nash snarled. “You’re not taking anything from me. You’re a dead man.”

  A terrible blast of mind-searing energy crackled in the atmosphere of the hallway. Although Jack was the target, Chloe got caught in the backwash of power. It was as though the entire world had been set afire. White-hot psi consumed the corridor, blinding all of her senses. She reeled and fetched up hard against the wall. Consciousness started to slip away. She could not move, let alone try to flee.

  She had guessed right, she thought. Nash did, indeed, possess a lethal talent. He was able to generate a killing shockwave of psychic energy.

  Her vision blurred. Tears scalded her eyes. Jack was a dark figure silhouetted against the waterfall of energy. He had tried to rescue her, and he was going to die for his trouble. She had drawn him to his death, and there was nothing she could do.

  The storm evaporated as suddenly as it had begun. She clawed at the wall in an attempt to stay on her feet. There was another kind of energy twisting and curling and pounding in the atmosphere now. She caught only fleeting impressions of nameless specters and heart-crushing fears, but it was enough to know that her avenging angel was exacting retribution and meting out punishment.

  Someone was screaming, but it wasn’t her. She did not have the strength. The screaming went on endlessly. Somewhere a man was sinking into hell.

  Her badly fried senses began to clear. The screaming ceased abruptly.

  She opened her eyes and saw Jack. He was still standing in the corridor, energy whipping around him. His eyes glowed like emerald coals.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She swallowed hard and managed to push herself away from the wall. “Yes. I’m all right. I think. You?”

  “Yes. But one of them got away. There’s another door at the back of the room.”

  She looked down and saw Nash. He lay in a dead man’s sprawl on the floor of the office. His face was frozen in a mask of abject horror. His eyes stared sightlessly into nothing.

  “Hulsey,” she whispered. “He’s the one that got away. The man on the floor is Nash. He seemed to be in charge. I think he said something about coming from Portland for the experiment.”

  Jack stepped over the body. He grabbed the lamp and came back to the doorway.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  Psi energy stirred within the lamp. As Chloe watched, the metal rapidly became opaque.

  “Jack, you’ve lit the lamp,” she whispered.

  “We may need it.”

  “Why?”

  “Remember you said that you were pretty sure the energy in this thing was meant to do something besides stabilize my dream psi?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you’re right. I think I know what Nicholas created when he put the second set of crystals into the lamp. Why he went back to see Eleanor Fleming the third time.”

  She drew a deep, steadying breath. “Okay,” she said. She pulled a little more psi to steady herself. “I assume we’re going out the back way?”

  “No, they’ll have sealed off the alley. We’ll go out the front door. They won’t be expecting us to do that. Once we’re outside in front of the building they can’t touch us. It’s only a little after six in the evening. There will still be people on the street. Too many witnesses.”

  “Everything has happened so fast. Maybe the guards don’t know about us yet.”

  He glanced up. She followed his gaze and saw the security camera in the ceiling. Anyone watching would have realized by now that something odd had just gone down here in the basement. It was obvious that Nash was in a very bad way.

  “Jack, I’m not sure I can do this,” she whispered. “You’ve got a better chance on your own.”

  He smiled, as if genuinely amused. “Do you really think I’d leave you here?”

  She almost smiled, too. “No.”

  “I came for you. I’m not leaving without you.” He handed her the glowing lamp. “Here, hold this.”

  Reflexively she wrapped both hands around the heavy lamp. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can walk and carry this thing at the same time.”

  “You’re not walking.”

  He picked her up in his arms and went forward, moving swiftly along the corridor. His powerful aura enveloped her. She drew some strength from him and clutched the lamp tightly. The relic was practically transparent now. The stones were heating with the colors of dreamlight.

  He carried her to the stairwell. Holding the lamp in one arm, she reached down and opened the door. He climbed the two flights of stairs. She opened another door and they moved into a hallway marked Restrooms.

  They went down the hall and into the main room of the gym.

  There was a hushed, waiting stillness in the vast space. The overhead lights were off, but there was enough ambient street light filtering in through the glass doors at the front to reveal a band of heavily muscled men. They stood in a semicircle, blocking the route to the exit.

  Chloe counted six bulked-up guards. Two more slithered out of the shadows behind one of the workout machines. Drug- tainted psi prints glistened evilly on the floor and fluoresced on the steel equipment.

  Hunters, she thought. They would be as fast and as ruthless as a pack of wolves. Jack could not possibly have much energy left after what had happened downstairs in the basement.

  “Don’t hurt the woman,” one of the men snapped. “She’s valuable.”

  The hunters moved forward in a ring. Chloe watched them. If she could just make physical contact with one or two she might be of some use in the coming battle.

  “Put me down,” she whispered.

  “No,” Jack said. “We’ll do this together.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He didn’t respond, but she was suddenly aware of the lamp growing warmer in her hands. Energy stirred and flashed as the alchemical metal shifted from translucent to crystal clear. The stones blazed with dreamlight.

  Her feverish senses stirred. Intuitively she understood what Jack needed from her. She held the artifact aloft in both hands, summoned her waning reserves of psi and pulsed energy into the lamp, holding the currents of dreamlight steady for Jack. She understood then that he could somehow turn the lamp into a weapon, but he could not do it without her help.

  All but one of the crystals ignited. Only the strange dark stone remained opaque. A rainbow of fire swept across the gym, drowning the hunters in a maelstrom of energy.

  Jack’s power did not crackle and pulse through the room—it roared silently through the space. And suddenly she understood. This was what she had done when she had worked the lamp for him in Las Vegas. She remembered the sense of a psychic key turning in a lock. She had unsealed Jack’s ability to transform
the lamp into a powerful weapon. In military terms the artifact was a force multiplier.

  The third talent.

  The hunters screamed. Their bodies jerked wildly in the intense ultralight cast by the stones in the lamp. One by one, they collapsed, unmoving.

  Jack carried her through the tangle of bodies and the forest of gleaming stainless-steel machines out into the night.

  “Avenging angel,” she whispered. Darkness and fever started to claim her, but there was something she needed to say. “Promise me one thing.”

  His arms tightened around her. “Anything.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t let Arcane give me the antidote.”

  “Those bastards injected you with the formula?”

  She could hardly talk now. “Yes. But don’t tell anyone.”

  “Chloe.”

  “Just say I collapsed because of the heavy psi drain.”

  “You can’t ask that of me. I won’t lose you because you refuse the antidote.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m immune. Just like you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’ll explain later. All I need is a little time to fight off the effects of the drug. Just as you did. Promise me you won’t let Arcane know what happened. If they give me the antidote, I might lose my para-senses for good.”

  “But how can you know you’re immune to the formula?”

  “I’m a dream-psi reader. I get my talent from the dreamlight end of the spectrum, same as you. I’m pretty sure that all of us who have an affinity for that kind of energy are naturally immune.”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Okay, very sure. Makes sense when you think about it.”

  “How does it make sense?”

  “Later.” She could no longer keep her eyes open. “Right now I need you to trust me. Promise me you won’t let anyone give me the antidote.”

  He hesitated. “Only if you promise me that you won’t die.”

  “I’ll be fine. Trust me, Jack.”

  “All right,” he said. “No antidote.”

  “One more thing.”

  “You’re real chatty for someone who is running a sky-high fever.”