by Jayne Castle
“Wake me,” he ordered. He gathered some thick leaves from a tree and headed into the cave.
“Adam?”
He dumped the leaves on the floor of the cave and sat down yawning. “Yeah?”
“What’s the rule about a wife?”
“What?” He checked his watch again. He was so tired now that he could not make out the time.
“A few minutes ago you said that if you didn’t show up in your office fairly soon people would assume that you were either dead or looking for a wife. You said it was a Guild boss thing.”
“Old Guild tradition.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Civilians,” he muttered.
“I think we’ve established that my family is not Guild,” she said. Frost gleamed on each word.
He yawned again. “Haven’t you ever noticed that almost all of the heads of the Guilds in just about every city or town are either married when they take the job or get married soon afterward?”
“Hadn’t thought about it,” she admitted. “But now that you mention it, yes. Generally speaking, they do all seem to have wives. And they often enter formal Covenant Marriages, at that.”
“You sound surprised.” He lay down on the leafy pallet. “You think marriage within the Guilds is any different than marriage outside the organizations?”
“Well—” She paused a beat. “I’m sure there are certain similarities.”
The doubt in her too-polite tone annoyed him.
“I know you folks in Arcane are real big on the Society’s matchmakers,” he said. “For your information, Guild families use professionals, too.”
“I’ve always heard that at the top of the Guild marriages are more in the nature of business and social alliances. Love and compatibility are not the primary considerations.”
“Are you going to tell me that it’s different at the highest levels of Arcane or society in general?”
“No,” she conceded. “But it’s different in my family. The Joneses have always been very traditional when it comes to marriage.”
The rigid social and legal codes set in place by the First Generation colonists had been intended to ensure the stability of the basic building block of the social structure, the family unit. Laws and customs had relaxed somewhat during the two hundred years since the closing of the Curtain, but not all that much. Family was everything on Harmony. Love ’em or hate ’em, you were stuck with your relatives. If you entered a Covenant Marriage, you were also stuck with your spouse.
The loophole for couples who weren’t ready to commit was the Marriage of Convenience, otherwise known as shacking up. The arrangements had legal standing, but they were really nothing more than affairs. MCs could be terminated at any time by either party unless there was offspring. A baby changed everything, automatically converting an MC into a full, very permanent Covenant Marriage.
Not everyone approved of MCs. Marlowe’s family, for example, Adam thought, along with most of the membership of Arcane. Guild men were infamous for going through a string of Marriages of Convenience before their family and social pressure pushed them into a Covenant Marriage. After that, they settled for a string of mistresses.
“For some reason, I’m really not in the mood to explain Guild marriage traditions,” he said. “I’m going to get some sleep.”
He closed his eyes and stopped fighting the exhaustion. His last conscious thought was that the sleep that was about to overtake him would be deep and profound. With luck there would be no nightmares.
Chapter 5
MARLOWE SAT ON THE EDGE OF THE GROTTO POOL, eating a round green fruit that tasted of psi sunshine, and watched Gibson surf the grotto pool.
She had found the large piece of deadwood at the edge of the pool and tossed it into the water. After removing Gibson’s studded collar so that it wouldn’t drag him under, she had plunked him down onto the make-shift raft. He had taken to sailing with his usual exuberance and enthusiasm, just as he did every new game.
After drifting around the pool for a while he had discovered that he could get more speed out of the craft if he caught one of the small waves generated by the splashing waters. Half the time the churning waves toppled him off his surf board, but he evidently considered the dunking part of the game. Each time he went under he came up chortling.
Marlowe took another bite of the fruit and tossed the remains into the undergrowth. She heard a brief flutter and scurry as something small leaped upon the unexpected meal.
She had removed her leather jacket and chaps in an effort to stay cool, but the heat and humidity were becoming oppressive. She was hot and sticky. Nevertheless, she was feeling better than she had in weeks. The pressure of the prowling restlessness that had plagued her for the past month seemed to have lifted. She felt focused once again. It was as if she had been searching for something and now, at last, she was on the right trail. Maybe all she had needed was an interesting case.
She glanced at Adam sprawled in the shadows on the floor of the cave several feet away. He was asleep, and he was dreaming. She was sitting just beyond the range of the strongest currents of his energy field. In addition, she was taking great care to keep her own senses shut down as tightly as possible.
She never liked to be near a sleeper. Everyone dreamed, and the energy generated in the dream state was intense and disturbingly intimate. She was forced to keep her senses tightly closed down in order to avoid the currents that always surrounded a dreamer.
Dreams were the ultimate personal and private experience, not meant to be shared. Brushing up against another person’s dreamlight was always deeply unpleasant for someone who had a strong affinity for that kind of energy.
Adam had been asleep for an hour, but she sensed that the short rest he’d had so far hadn’t even begun to take the edge off the underlying layers of exhaustion. Two hours wasn’t going to be nearly enough, either. He was seriously sleep-deprived. What rest he had been getting lately had obviously not been sound.
The fact that he had been able to function at all, let alone take control of the notoriously corrupt Frequency City Guild, was a testament to his power and will. Even so, it was clear that he had literally been running on psi, and no one, no matter how strong, could keep that up for long.
She had time for a swim, she decided. She tugged off her boots and was starting to unbutton her shirt when the first, faint frisson of dark nightmare energy whispered across her senses.
She winced. Her own nightmares were bad enough. Her instinct was to put more distance between herself and the cave where Adam was sleeping, to get out of range of the dark currents lapping at her own aura.
But the very fact that she could sense Adam’s dark dream from several feet away with her senses lowered told her just how terrible the nightmare was. Something truly dreadful had clawed its way into his dreamscape. She could not leave him to these private terrors, not when it was within her power to remedy the situation.
“Out of the water, Gibson.” She got to her feet and brushed some leafy debris off the back of her jeans. “Time to go to work.”
Gibson knew that tone of voice. They had a new mission. He hopped off his surfboard, swam to the edge of the pool, and scampered up onto the rocky rim. Pausing briefly on the rocks, he gave himself a quick shake to fluff out his fur. Then he collected his studded collar and hurried toward her, ready to work.
“I have a feeling that Guild boss dreams are not what anyone would call sweet,” Marlowe said. “Understandable, I suppose. The bosses aren’t known for being nice guys, after all. Then again, a nice guy would never make it to the top of one of the Guilds.”
Together she and Gibson made their way through a mini jungle of exotic, psi-green ferns. By the time they reached the cave, Adam was groaning in response to the scenes of his dreamscape. His muscles were tensed. Sweat beaded his forehead and dampened his shirt. He looked like a man in the grip of a raging fever.
Gibson fluttered close to one clenched hand and mad
e a low, crooning noise. Marlowe braced herself and opened her senses cautiously. The violent energy of the nightmare came at her in relentless waves fueled by the full force of Adam’s astonishingly powerful talent. She could perceive his entire dreamlight spectrum now that he was asleep and fully engaged in the nightmare. He was even stronger than she had realized.
She prepared to touch him. Physical contact always enhanced the connection between herself and a dreamer.
She could not actually see another person’s dreams. No one could do that, just as no one could read another’s thoughts. But her talent, which was directly linked to her intuition, translated the dreamer’s energy into images that conveyed the emotional reality of the dream. The result was a disconcertingly accurate impression of what the dreamer experienced.
She put her fingertips on Adam’s hot forehead. Midnight lightning lanced across her senses. Adam was lost . . .
. . . lost in an endless maze of mirrors, his senses short-circuited by the violent energy flashing and sparking off the brilliant surfaces. He had to get to her. He was the only one who could save her. The knowledge that he was doomed to fail only served to drive him harder. He was responsible, the man in charge. He could not leave her behind . . .
“Vickie,” he mumbled.
The simplest approach would be to awaken him, Marlowe thought. But she was not sure that was possible under the circumstances. He wasn’t just asleep; he was almost unconscious because of the psi-burn. It would be another hour, at least, before he could be safely awakened. Even if she succeeded in pulling him to the surface now, he would likely explode out of the druglike sleep, disoriented. People in the grip of a nightmare often reacted violently if they were awakened too quickly. That was especially true of those who were trained to react swiftly to physical and psychical threats. Guild men, for example.
The best option, she concluded, was to dampen the wavelengths of the nightmare.
She set her teeth against the howling gale of nightmare energy and went to work, easing her own currents into the storm.
She was no longer simply aware that Adam was fighting his way through a blaze of brilliant energy in an effort to rescue someone named Vickie. She was in the raging tempest with him.
The disorientation and dread were palpable forces, but Adam’s grim determination to get to Vickie was even stronger. He would find her or die trying.
Cautiously Marlowe searched for the pattern in the currents of pounding dreamlight. When she found it, she did not try to alter it or suppress it with the sheer force of her own talent as she would have done with a weaker dreamer. Instead, she applied a gentle counterpoint.
It took a moment, but after a few seconds the hot, dark dreamlight eased into the patterns that she had learned to associate with normal dreaming. Adam stopped groaning. His hand unclenched. His fingers sank into Gibson’s thick fur.
Marlowe and Gibson sat quietly for a time, waiting. When Marlowe was certain that the pattern of the dreamlight was stable and calm, she collected Gibson and left the cave.
“He’s going to be out for a few more hours,” she said to Gibson. “Time for a swim.”
Chapter 6
HE CAME AWAKE QUICKLY AND FULLY, THE WAY HE always did underground. That much seemed normal. But something was different this time. He opened his eyes and looked up at the roof of the quartz cave.
What’s wrong with this picture?
He felt more rested than he had in weeks. The ghostly images of the nightmare hovered at the fringes of his awareness, but they were already fading just as dreams were meant to fade when the dreamer awakened. The real-world memory of what had happened in the maze of mirrors would never disappear, but that was another issue altogether.
Something was wrong, all right.
He sat up and checked his watch.
“Damn.”
Six hours had passed since he’d slid into the deep afterburn sleep state. Six hours.
Marlowe appeared at the entrance of the cave. He was pissed, but for some reason that did nothing to stop his senses from stirring at the sight of her. She had removed all the leather she’d had on earlier, stripping down to her white shirt and jeans. Her hair was still in a ponytail, but it was wet. He realized she had taken a dip in the grotto pool. He would have given a great deal to have witnessed her nude swim, he thought. The gliding movement of her breasts beneath the shirt made it clear that she had not put her bra back on after getting out of the water. It occurred to him that a bra would probably be uncomfortable in the humid heat of the jungle.
“Are you all right?” she asked. Her eyes were shadowed with concern.
He reminded himself that he was seriously annoyed. He rolled to his feet.
“I told you to wake me after two hours,” he said.
“You needed the rest.” Her voice was cool, firm, authoritative, the voice of a woman who was very sure of herself.
“That was not your decision to make.” He walked out of the cave and halted directly in front of her. “We’ve lost a lot of time, thanks to you. We’ll be lucky to get back to the city by dawn.”
She did not retreat. “Are you always this grouchy when you wake up?”
“Let’s get something straight here, Marlowe Jones. You may be the boss at Jones & Jones, but down here in the underworld, I’m the one who gives the orders.”
“You needed the sleep.”
“I did not need six hours of it. What’s more, I didn’t need you screwing around with my dream state.”
Her eyes widened a little. “You know?”
“I remember having nightmares, and I’ve had enough of them lately to know that they don’t go away on their own. You did something to stop them, didn’t you?”
“I just eased the currents a tad. You were having a very bad dream. What was I supposed to do?”
“Believe it or not, I can deal with a few bad dreams.”
“That’s the real reason you’re angry, isn’t it? You don’t like the idea that I witnessed you in the grip of a nightmare and that I pulled you out of the dreamscape.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t like it at all. My dreams are my business. Stay the hell out of them.”
“What about the hallucinations? Handling those just fine on your own, too?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re lying.”
She was right. Usually he was good enough not to get caught at it, though. Clearly his skill set was failing him with this woman.
“From now on, stay out of my dreams,” he repeated, mostly because he couldn’t come up with anything more brilliant.
He unsnapped the leather case on his belt and took out the collapsible canteens. He stepped around her, heading toward the waterfall.
She turned on her heel, tracking him with a sizzling intensity that sent a thrill of awareness through him.
“You need me, Adam Winters. And I need you.”
That stopped him in his tracks. He turned to face her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The Burning Lamp. You’re searching for it. So am I. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking during the past six hours. According to the old legend, you require a strong dreamlight reader to find the real artifact. That would be me.”
“Even if what you say is true, why would I want to form a partnership with the head of J&J? You’d be the one in charge of hunting me down if I did turn into a damn Cerberus.”
“You are not going rogue,” she said. “If that was happening to you, I’d be able to see it in your dreamprints. I’m a profiler, remember? I know what crazy looks like.”
He went over his options silently. There were not a lot of them. She was right. He needed a strong dreamlight reader, and she fit the bill. In addition, she could access the full resources of Arcane. That might prove useful.
“Something you should know before we leap into this so-called partnership,” he said. “I am looking for the lamp, but not because I need it to prevent myself from turnin
g into some kind of psychic monster.”
That was very probably a lie. He was changing in ways that could only be explained by the legend. It was entirely possible that the old tales were true. But he had a job to do. He would worry about his own future after he had completed the mission. He had to stay focused.
Marlowe frowned. “If you’re not concerned that you might be turning into a Cerberus, why are you so anxious to find the lamp?”
“It’s a long story.” He checked his watch again. “We sure as hell don’t have time to go through it here. I’ll tell you on the way to the surface.”
A SHORT TIME LATER, EQUIPPED WITH A COUPLE OF canteens filled with water, Gibson riding shotgun on his shoulder, Adam rezzed the gate. Marlowe followed him out into the glowing corridor. She was back in her leathers.
He paused, closed the opening in the wall, took another reading on the full-spectrum amber, and started along the passageway.
Marlowe had to hurry a little to keep up with him. It dawned on him that he had a lot more energy now than he’d had six hours ago. Okay, maybe he had needed the sleep.
“Let’s have the whole story,” Marlowe said. “Can I assume we’re about to talk Guild secrets?”
“Chamber secrets,” he said. “Which translates into Bureau secrets. And the Bureau is handling it on a need-to-know basis. A month ago I found something extraordinary in the jungle, even by alien ruin standards.”
“What did you find?”
“A vast maze constructed entirely of highly reflective quartz. Imagine walking through these catacombs with every surface covered in mirrors, and you’d have some idea of what it’s like.”
“I sensed something about mirrors in your dream.”
“Damn it to green hell. You can actually see my dreams?”
“Take it easy,” she said. “It wasn’t a lot of fun for me, either, trust me. And, no, I can’t see your dreams, not in the literal sense. But if I have physical contact, my talent allows me to interpret the energy you generate when you are in the dream state. I knew that you were dealing with reflections of some kind. Thousands of them. Everything was too bright. Your senses were blinded. You were searching for someone named Vickie. You called her name.”