Illusion Town

by Jayne Castle

  She reached up to touch Virgil, expecting a reassuring chortle in response. Instead he rumbled in her ear and hunkered down on her shoulder. She turned her head to look at him and was startled to see that all four of his eyes were open.

  You knew you were in trouble when a dust bunny got serious, Hannah thought.

  Belatedly, she remembered she had a job to do. She pulled hard on her talent, pushing back against the endless waves of fog, and looked at the gray quartz street. A familiar set of hot psi-prints glowed in the strange mist.

  “He went down this street and turned to the right,” she said. “He was in a hurry. Running, I think.”

  “Let’s go,” Elias said.

  They walked the street side by side, their flamers at the ready. The trail led through a narrow canyon formed by the looming quartz structures. Every so often they passed a doorway sealed with some mirrorlike energy.

  It was hard work pressing forward, demanding physical as well as mental energy because the seething energy in the atmosphere was unrelenting. It just kept coming in seemingly endless waves. At this rate they would be exhausted by the time they reached the pirate’s portal. On the plus side, the pirate would probably be tired, too.

  “What’s behind the doors?” she asked at one point, more for the sake of hearing Elias’s voice than for anything else.

  “Only tried a couple so far,” Elias said. “Nearly got psi-fried both times. We’re working on a better strategy.”

  “Meanwhile, don’t open any doors, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What if the pirate opened one?”

  “We’ll face that question if it arises.”

  The trail led deeper and deeper into the fogbound city. Every few steps, Elias called a halt to check the key stone. Hannah wondered if he was afraid it would fail because of the heavy psi they were encountering. The keys were prototypes, after all.

  The prints wound around a narrow curve in the street and came to an abrupt halt at a doorway sealed with quicksilver energy. It looked exactly like all the other doors they had passed but Virgil growled a warning and sleeked out completely.

  Hannah stopped abruptly. “What?” Elias asked.

  “The killer went through that door. Virgil is concerned. And when he gets concerned—”

  “We all get concerned. Move back. I’ll try the door. Whatever you do, stay out of the way. If I have to retreat, I’ll be doing it really fast.”

  “Right.”

  He paused to slip the chain holding the key stone over his head. He put it around her neck.

  “If anything happens to me, use the key stone to get back to the Coppersmith portal. It’s set to the coordinates. Just get a fix on the vibe and follow it. If something goes wrong do not try to come after me. Got that? Go back to the portal and get help. Do not follow me through that door unless I tell you it’s safe.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t intend to abandon him if the situation went to hell. They were a team. She had a flamer and she had her talent. She was better backup than anyone they had left behind at the jobsite. And she was a lot closer.

  But she did not bother to give the lecture because she knew he didn’t want to hear it.

  “Understood,” she said instead. Which was the truth. Pretty much.

  Elias started toward the door.

  A sudden, shocking stillness gripped the street. A moment ago the Ghost City had been seething with unrelenting waves of energy but now the currents had receded.

  Virgil growled a fierce warning.

  “Elias,” she said, “wait. We may have a bigger problem than finding the pirate. Something is wrong. Feel the change in the atmosphere?”

  Elias surveyed the narrow passageway in which they were standing. She knew he was running hot, trying to identify the source of the strange stillness.

  “Wave dynamics,” he said. “This is what happens before a tsunami hits land. There is a drawback of the water from the shore. The deeper the drawback, the bigger the wave that’s coming at you.”

  Virgil was very agitated now. Hannah could feel him urging her to move.

  “Something is coming all right,” she said. “We’re going to be trapped out here in the open if we don’t move.”

  The atmosphere was shifting again. She could sense a roaring wave of dark psi gathering energy. Somehow she knew that when it struck, nothing human could stand against such a violent force. She looked at Elias and realized that he, too, sensed impending doom.

  “There’s no time to retreat,” Elias said. “We’re going through the door.”

  He grabbed her hand. She saw his ring flash with energy, felt Virgil’s little claws dig into her shirt. Arizona Snow glowed.

  Elias went through the door first, moving fast, flamer out in front. He hauled Hannah and Virgil in his wake.

  The quicksilver gate shimmered faintly, resisting at first, and then it gave way. Hannah stumbled but managed to stay on her feet. Virgil snarled but he was still more or less securely perched on her shoulder.

  They stumbled to a halt inside the chamber.

  Elias released her immediately.

  “Down,” Elias ordered. “Stay there.”

  She did as ordered, sprawling awkwardly on the stone floor. Virgil adroitly leaped off her shoulder.

  Elias swung around in a swift, tight arc, sweeping the chamber with the flamer. No one leaped out of the shadows. That was a good thing, Hannah told herself. A very good thing.

  She twisted to look back through the doorway and watched in horror as a great tide of intense darkness engulfed the lane. She knew with every fiber of her being that the roaring wave of psi would have crushed all three of them.

  The quicksilver door became a solid, mirror-bright gate once again, sealing them inside the chamber.

  Chapter 20

  Elias slowly lowered the barrel of the flamer. The room was empty except for the three of them. There was no way to know how long that situation would last, but for now they could catch their breaths.

  He took a closer look at the gray quartz room. It was circular. The ceiling was approximately two stories high. There were no windows.

  There was, however, an arched opening in the wall. He could see the beginning of a corridor that curved away out of sight.

  All of it glowed with the murky gray light of the quartz.

  Virgil was grumbling and he still had all four eyes open but he was fully fluffed. He scuttled across the floor to Hannah. She sat up, bracing herself on her arms, and looked at the doll he clutched in one paw.

  “Oh, good,” she said. “Arizona Snow survived in one piece. No surprise, I guess. She was one tough lady.”

  Virgil chortled happily. Hannah looked at Elias.

  “What was that stuff?” she asked.

  “Psi wave of some kind,” he said. “But not like any I’ve ever experienced or read about.”

  “A tsunami of psi.” Hannah scrambled to her feet. “Do you think it will recede like a regular ocean wave now that it has spent its energy?”

  “Good question. The only way to find out is to open that door and that is definitely not a good idea at this time.”

  She shuddered. “You’re right. It’s still flooding the street. I can feel it.”

  “No way to know how long that hot energy will hang around. We need to find another way out. Can you see the killer’s prints?”

  He felt her raise her senses again and knew she was regaining her focus.

  “Yes,” she said. She looked at the arched opening. “They go down that corridor.”

  “Figured you were going to say that.”

  “The plan was to find the pirate’s portal, wasn’t it?”

  “Plan A,” he said, “was to locate the portal, get the coordinates, and then go back the way we came. But we have a new p
roblem.”

  She groaned. “Oh, really? What could possibly go wrong?”

  “The key you’re wearing is starting to lose power.”

  “What?” Shocked, she looked down at the gray key stone. It was no longer illuminated. “Crap. What happened to it?”

  “The onset of that psi wave must have shattered the quartz. I told you, all five keys are still in the development phase. There are a few bugs left to work out.”

  She swallowed hard. “How much longer will it last?”

  “I don’t know. Let me have it.”

  “Have we got a Plan B?” she asked as she handed it to him. “Because even if the tsunami disappears, I’ve got a feeling that it will have buried our psi-prints and those of the pirate as well. We probably won’t be able to follow him back to the Coppersmith portal.”

  “There’s always a Plan B,” Elias said. He kicked up his talent a little, seeking the frequency of the fading key stone. “The good news is that there’s a little juice left in this thing. I think I can push some energy through it using my ring.”

  She managed a shaky little smile. “Good to know. And don’t forget we’ve got Virgil. Among other things, he’s a terrific alarm system.”

  Virgil chortled and vaulted up onto his favorite perch on her shoulder.

  Elias looked at Hannah for a couple of beats. Her smile and the gritty determination in her eyes did something to his insides in the vicinity of his heart. He knew some strong women, he thought—the men in his family were attracted to the type—but Hannah West was in a class by herself.

  “So,” she prompted. “Plan B?”

  “Right,” he said. “Plan B. We get out through the pirate’s portal before the key stone fails altogether, and we hope like hell the pirate is gone. It makes sense that he’d head back to the surface now that he got what he came for.”

  “Assuming pirates operate on the same logic that engineers use.”

  “Assuming that,” he agreed. “Check the charge on your flamer and let me know if Virgil goes into combat mode. From now on try not to make any noise. Sound doesn’t carry well in this atmosphere but there’s no sense taking any more chances than absolutely necessary.”

  She nodded and started toward the entrance to the ghostly corridor. He fell into step beside her, covering her so that she could concentrate on the psi-prints. He kept one eye on Virgil. The dust bunny appeared alert but not frantic as he had been just before the tsunami hit. Maybe he, too, understood that this was the only way out.

  The spectral radiance cast by the gray crystal walls, ceiling, and floor of the corridor played tricks on the human eye. Ominous paranormal shadows appeared and disappeared in the translucent walls. Strange silhouettes materialized and vanished between one step and the next. Elias kept his senses fully rezzed and his finger on the flamer button. He knew that Hannah was doing the same.

  They reached the end of the corridor and stopped at the arched entrance. In the chamber beyond the doorway was a familiar-looking gray quartz rotunda, complete with a quicksilver portal pool.

  As he had anticipated, there were no pirates guarding this side of the portal.

  Hannah motioned toward the pool, indicating the psi-prints halted at the top of the steps.

  “We can talk now,” Elias said. “Sound doesn’t pass through the portal. If someone comes through from the other side, we’ll get a warning. The portal energy will start to change.”

  “So, whoever is on the other side will get a warning if we try to go through?”

  “Sure, if they happen to be in the portal chamber on that side but we’ve got two advantages. The first is that they won’t be expecting us. I doubt very much if the killer allowed for the possibility that someone might be able to track him through the city.”

  “What’s the second advantage?”

  “This.” He held up his hand, showing her the hot crystal in his ring. “It seems to be working fine in this environment.”

  “That sounds nice, but how is that going to be helpful in our current situation?”

  “I have no idea. But as we engineers like to say, the more power you’ve got, the better.”

  He walked to the edge of the pool and looked down. “I’ll go first. Stay close.”

  Another shuddering wave of tsunami energy reverberated down the corridor. Virgil growled. Hannah reached up to touch him.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Virgil and I are not going to hang around this place any longer than absolutely necessary.”

  He nodded once, jacked up his senses and went swiftly down the steps. The energy field of the portal engulfed him in its weird, dreamlike atmosphere. He felt the line that linked him to Hannah grow taut and then loosen. She was right behind him.

  The key stone was fading but he was able to get a little more energy out of it by easing psi through his ring. Nevertheless, the key was almost dead by the time they stepped through the portal into another quartz rotunda.

  He did a quick sweep of the chamber. Empty.

  Hannah emerged from the pool, flamer in hand. Virgil clung to her shoulder, all four eyes wide.

  “It’s all right,” Elias said. “We’re alone in here.” He looked around. “Another cave system. Fresh air is coming from that direction.” He motioned with the flamer. “Probably still in the Rainforest. Wait here while I look around outside.”

  “Take Virgil,” Hannah urged. “Like I said, he’s a great alarm system.”

  Virgil chortled when he was transferred to Elias’s shoulder.

  Elias followed the scent of fresh rain and vibrant growing things down a tunnel and emerged into a small cavern. At the entrance he could see part of a clearing. Beyond that was the rich, paranormal green foliage of the underground jungle.

  He paused at the mouth of the cave, listening with all of his senses.

  He could hear the normal sounds of the Rainforest but no human voices.

  He went out into the clearing. A quick survey turned up the one sure indication that humans had recently been present—energy bar wrappers, empty water bottles, and other assorted litter. The Aliens had left behind some amazing, almost indestructible ruins, he thought. But humans always seemed to leave a lot of garbage around.

  He was about to go back into the portal chamber to let Hannah know the area was safe, but he stopped when he caught sight of a booted foot sticking out of the undergrowth.

  He changed course to take a look. The booted foot was attached to the body of a man dressed in Rainforest gear. He was sprawled facedown. The back of his jacket was saturated with rapidly drying blood.

  The second body was a few feet away. The throat had been cut.

  Small insects were already starting to feast on the remains.

  One person’s garbage was another creature’s take-out dinner, Elias thought.

  Chapter 21

  Hannah stood a short distance away and watched Elias search the bodies and gather up the dead men’s gear.

  “It looks like there were three of them,” he said. “Someone concluded that a one-way split of the profits was preferable to a three-way split.”

  “He figured the jungle would dispose of the bodies and any crime-scene evidence,” she said.

  “It was a reasonable assumption. If we hadn’t been close behind the killer, these two would have disappeared without a trace.”

  “Are we going to try to haul the bodies out of here?” she asked. “That’s not going to be easy. We can’t go back the way we came, so we’ll be walking out through the Rainforest.”

  “We’ll take some of their gear and leave the bodies behind,” Elias said.

  She watched him get to his feet. “Did you find anything that will help the cops identify the killer?”

  “No Vortex tattoos. But there may be some leads. The killer was in a hurry. He took their wallets and locators but he didn�
�t bother with the rest of the gear. Probably didn’t want to be bothered hauling it out of the jungle. With luck, there will be something useful in their packs.”

  Hannah looked at the bodies. “What is going on here?”

  “Can’t be positive yet, but here’s a scenario. Someone found another portal and figured out how to make a device that could be used to navigate the Ghost City. But for whatever reason he figured the devices engineered in the Coppersmith labs were superior. That individual set up Hank Richman and this pair. Last night Richman used the trance artifact to put the camp into a deep sleep. One of the pirates used the inferior navigational device to enter the Ghost City through this portal and meet Richman at the Coppersmith portal.”

  “Richman gave him the two Coppersmith lab key stones and then got murdered by the pirate.”

  “Got a hunch the plan was to steal all four of the remaining keys but for whatever reason, Richman got nervous. Or maybe he was holding out for a bigger share of the profits on the grounds that he was taking the biggest risk.”

  “So instead of delivering all of the prototypes, he only took two into the portal cave last night,” Hannah suggested. “He wanted to cut a different deal.”

  “Maybe they argued. Maybe Richman threatened to expose the scheme if he didn’t get what he wanted. Whatever the case, the pirate murdered him. The killer now has two keys, both of which are worth a fortune on the black market.”

  “So this is a classic case of no honor among thieves?”

  “Whoever the fourth pirate is, I doubt that he ever planned to split the profits. Richman and these guys were playing out of their league. They never stood a chance.”

  A sudden rustling sound sparked a jolt of alarm through Hannah. She turned quickly, flamer at the ready, and saw a large grocery sack tipped on its side. It was gyrating wildly.

  Virgil emerged from the sack dragging a bag of potato chips. He chortled excitedly and ripped into the bag.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Virgil,” she said. “That’s probably evidence.”

  “Or at least a snack we could have eaten on the hike out of here,” Elias said.