by Jayne Castle
As the proprietor of a new dream counseling business, the last thing she needed was a lot of unpleasant publicity. Bad press would lead potential clients to conclude that they should take their business elsewhere—say, the Wilson Parsons Talent Agency, for example.
Discretion was a prime virtue in her profession. Dreams were intensely personal matters and those who sought her services would want to keep them that way—personal. No one wanted an analyst who was known to report stuff to law enforcement.
Just having her name linked to the FBPI could prove disastrous. She had caught a break at Karen’s wedding when the authorities concluded that Leo Bellamy had suffered a burst aneurism. She might not be so lucky in a second encounter with the forces of law and order.
She studied the devices. Each was gracefully curved and about the size of a man’s hand. Like a lot of Alien relics, they looked like works of abstract art. The crystal was faintly green in color and utterly transparent. There was no chamber for bullets or any other sort of projectile, but she was certain that the artifacts were weapons. She could hear the music locked inside. Amid the harmonies that emanated from the green quartz chamber she could discern the darker notes that spoke of power and destruction.
Dread mingled with fascination. She had been able to detect Alien music since she had first come into her talent in her early teens, but she had never heard songs like these—songs of senses-dazzling chaos.
The thing about Alien machines was that very few people, including her, could activate them. She could hear the music in artifacts and she could generate counterpoint melodies, but she could not focus the power in the relics.
As Pete often said, it was a damn good thing that only a small number of highly specialized talents could channel Alien tech. There was no telling what sort of destructive forces might be unleashed accidentally or intentionally if an Alien weapon fell into the hands of someone who could unlock and focus the energy inside.
That fact, however, did not lessen the value of the relics on the black market. According to Pete, it actually made the artifacts all the more attractive to a certain category of obsessive collectors that included dangerous eccentrics, cult leaders, and mob bosses—not to mention the government.
Mere rumors of the discovery of an artifact that might be an example of Alien technology intrigued conspiracy theorists and others who lived paranoid lives on the fringe. Many were convinced that the government and its corporate contractors had already discovered some truly bizarre Alien machines and were busily conducting experiments on them in secret labs. The Curtain was filled with such stories every week.
Not that she read the Curtain—at least not in public.
She decided to leave the weapons where they were. Better that they disappear than that she be caught with them. She would go back to the surface and make a couple of discreet, anonymous phone calls to the FBPI.
“Well, isn’t this interesting. Who are you and how the hell did you find my little workshop?”
Chapter 3
The sharp masculine voice came from the entrance of the chamber. Panic flashed through her. She whirled around so quickly that she nearly lost her balance. Reflexively, she grabbed the edge of the workbench to steady herself.
A tall, distinguished man walked a few steps into the chamber and stopped. He assessed her with cold gray eyes. Everything about him, from his elegantly cut hair to his designer trousers, was smooth, polished, and sophisticated—everything except the flamer in his hand.
Her first irrational thought was that he didn’t look like a man who dealt illegal Alien tech. But with her talent flaring she could see the dreamlight energy in his aura and it told her the truth. The man was prepared to commit cold-blooded murder if necessary. Selling hot tech on the side would not be a problem for him.
“Who are you?” she asked, trying to establish some control.
“Allow me to introduce myself. Thomas Vickary.” He gave a short, mocking inclination of his head. “Maybe you’ve heard of me?”
“No. Why would I . . .” A belated jolt of disbelief shot through her. “Wait. You’re not going to tell me you’re Vickary of the Vickary Gallery.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Good grief. You’re one of the most respected antiquities dealers in the city-state.”
He raised his brows. “And you are?”
“Why should I give you my name?”
“One reason that comes to mind is that I’ll send you on a walkabout of the catacombs minus your amber if you don’t answer my questions.”
He had as much as told her that he would kill her if she did not give him answers. But she was very certain that he had no intention of allowing her to return to the surface alive under any circumstances. A man who was dealing dangerous relics like those on the workbench could not afford to let her live. She knew who he was and she knew his secrets. Those secrets could get him locked up for years in a federal prison.
She folded her arms and tried to appear calm and in command. “You were planning to test these devices on a bunch of innocent little dust bunnies. How many did you kill before I got here?”
“None, actually.” Vickary grimaced. “The little rats are damned hard to catch and even harder to keep inside a cage. The first batch escaped. I finally had to go with the glass reptile cages and some serious, old-fashioned padlocks, the kind that require a key.” He studied the cages. “What did you use on the glass, by the way? It was supposed to be shatterproof.”
She ignored the question. “How did you catch the dust bunnies?”
“That part wasn’t so hard. I put out some pizza laced with a heavy-duty sleeping drug in the tunnels beneath my shop.”
“Why did you choose dust bunnies for your horrible experiments?”
“Isn’t it obvious? They can survive in the catacombs. The animals from the Rainforest don’t last long outside that ecosphere, and the energy down here makes surface animals act in highly unpredictable ways. Even rats don’t venture down into the Underworld.” Vickary smiled a thin, humorless smile. “But I’m sure you know that. Common knowledge.”
“I’ll bet the FBPI is closing in on you as we speak. I made a phone call before I came here. You’d better run while you can.”
It sounded weak, even to her.
“No.” Vickary shook his head with grave certainty. “You didn’t call anyone. If you had, the FBPI or the Guild would have arrived by now. They sure as hell wouldn’t have allowed you to come here on your own. Which brings me back to my questions. How did you find this chamber and what the hell did you do to my glass cages?”
“You’re going to kill me regardless. I can see it in your—” She stopped herself before she blurted out the word aura. “In your eyes.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. I just want answers.”
“Liar,” Ella said. But she said it very quietly because she was focusing her talent, getting ready to sing, and that required concentration.
Normally, she needed physical contact to manipulate the dream currents in a person’s aura with psychic music, but down in the psi-hot tunnels almost anything could serve as a conductor of paranormal energy, including the glowing quartz walls and the floor on which she and Vickary stood.
“You want to know how I melted the glass cages?” she asked softly. “I’ll show you.”
A sudden chittering sounded from the doorway, breaking her concentration. Her dust bunny client had returned. It sleeked out, showing all four eyes, six paws, and a lot of teeth, and leaped at Vickary’s trouser leg, scampering up toward his throat.
“Shit,” Vickary yelled. Caught off guard, he instinctively jumped back, swiping wildly at the dust bunny with the flamer.
The dust bunny narrowly avoided the weapon and vaulted nimbly to the floor. Vickary aimed the flamer at it and rezzed the trigger.
“No,” Ella shouted, horrified.
The dust bunny made it safely out through the doorway just before a volt of fire seared the atmosphere over its head.
Ella pulled hard on her talent and focused again on Vickary’s aura. The bells on her bracelet shivered with the dark music of endless sleep. Energy burned between her and her target, traveling through the psi-infused quartz floor like electricity through water or a wire.
Vickary jerked violently when the full force of her song slashed through his aura, overwhelming the dreamlight currents in powerful waves of darkness.
His mouth opened. He stared at her with shocked eyes. “What the hell are you doing?”
He could barely get the words out. His eyes started to roll back in his head.
He tried to retreat, staggering backward, but as long as his feet were in contact with the floor there was no escape. The thin leather soles of his designer shoes blunted some of the hot energy she was directing into his aura but they were not a significant barrier.
Infuriated by the attack on the dust bunny, Ella hurled wave after wave of fierce energy at her target, drowning Vickary’s dreamlight in irresistible songs of oblivion.
The results were devastating. Dreamlight was, after all, the conduit between the normal and the paranormal. Any assault on those currents had serious repercussions on all of the senses.
Vickary tried to rez the flamer but he could not summon the energy. The weapon fell from his nerveless hand. He crumpled to his knees.
“No,” he whispered. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you a private concert,” Ella said.
He managed to lift his head one last time. He stared at her, horror and comprehension sparking briefly in his dazed eyes.
“Siren,” he whispered.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Impossible.” Vickary folded up and collapsed on the floor. His eyes closed. “You don’t exist.”
He sprawled on the green stone, unconscious.
Ella abruptly cut her talent. She stared at the stricken figure on the floor.
“I get that a lot,” she said.
That was not, strictly speaking, true. The exact nature of her talent was a deep, dark family secret, the kind of secret that could destroy her career as a dream consultant and put her on an FBPI watch list.
But she had just sung a very powerful song and she was buzzed. Her voice was shivering and so was she. It wasn’t panic or fear that was causing the reaction now—her inner Siren was flying. Using her talent at full power had that effect. It unleashed a volatile cocktail of bio-psi chemicals. Later she would pay a price for such a heavy expenditure of psychic energy, but for now she was definitely in high-rez mode.
The dust bunny reappeared in the doorway, still sleeked out. Ella laughed. “Are we a great team or what?”
The dust bunny fluffed up and chortled.
“Right.” Ella took a deep breath and pulled her dazzled senses together. “Okay, I need to act like a responsible citizen now.”
She crouched beside Vickary to check for a pulse, more than a little afraid of what she would discover. She was not certain of her control when she was pulling the darker harmonies. The problem was that it was impossible to practice without putting someone at risk. She had nearly killed Leo Bellamy, and a few weeks ago she’d put a Wilson Parsons client into a deep sleep that had lasted nearly two days. The client had survived and recovered with no clear memory of the events leading up to his unexpectedly long nap, but if she accidentally murdered a leading antiquities dealer, her life might get very complicated, very fast.
It occurred to her that this was the third time she had used her talent to such devastating effect in the past few months.
“Getting to be a bad habit,” she said to the dust bunny.
She breathed a small sigh of relief when she discovered Vickary’s pulse. It was slow, indicating a state of deep unconsciousness, but it was detectable. The depth of his dreamstate was a good thing, she told herself. The odds were excellent that he would not remember her, at least not with any clarity. She would become a fragment of a dream to him.
She rose, stepped back quickly, and looked at the dust bunny.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m getting out of here,” she said. “The last thing I need is to get caught in a room full of Alien tech with this guy.”
“Too late.” The voice from the doorway was male and freighted with the kind of power and authority that usually was accompanied by a badge and a mag-rez gun. “It looks like you do have a room full of Alien tech and a body to explain.”
Chapter 4
She stared at the man in the doorway, stunned. His collar-length, night-dark hair was brushed straight back from a sharp widow’s peak on his high forehead. He had a hard profile, a lean, tough, broad-shouldered build, and a raptor’s eyes. But it was the invisible shock wave of dark energy that infused the atmosphere around him that riveted her senses. It was as if he had brought an invisible thunderstorm into the chamber.
The sound of bells clashing discordantly made her realize that her talent was still sparking and flaring, no doubt intensifying the impact the newcomer was making on her overheated senses.
Deliberately, she reined in her talent. Not much changed. The man in the doorway remained a force of nature with the power to dazzle her senses.
Get a grip. You’re still riding the rush. You need to settle down and think clearly. He might be working for the good guys, but that did not make him any less dangerous.
Ella heard a small chortle. She glanced down just in time to see the dust bunny vanish out into the hall. She was on her own.
She looked at the man in the doorway.
He held a flamer somewhat too casually in his right hand. It was the easy, sure grip of someone who’d had a lot of experience with the weapon.
She finally managed to breathe. “Let me guess—you’re Vickary’s client?”
“Not exactly.” He flashed a badge with his free hand. “Rafe Coppersmith, consultant for the FBPI and Guild task force that has been planning to take down Vickary’s operation for the past five months.”
So much for making a couple of discreet, anonymous phone calls to the authorities.
She cleared her throat. “I can explain this situation.”
“That will be interesting. Who are you?”
“Ella Morgan. I’m just a dream counselor. I’m not running Alien tech. I’m not involved in this operation, I swear it.”
“You can explain the rest later. One thing I do know, you’re not the client Vickary was expecting today, so we need to get you out of here before he arrives. Go. Now.”
He glided into the room and moved the flamer in a small arc, urging her toward the corridor.
As a rule she was not big on taking orders, but in this instance there did not seem to be any reason to refuse. She started toward the door.
But it was too late. Three men barred her path. One was dressed in an expensively tailored business suit. He would have looked like any other high-powered executive if it were not for the two men at his side. They were built like bulldozers and their eyes were pitiless.
Enforcers, Ella thought. The one in the business suit was no doubt the boss.
“Trent,” Rafe said. “Fancy meeting you here. I’m afraid there’s been a change of plans.”
Trent glanced down at Vickary and then looked at Rafe. “Who the hell are you?”
“Let’s just say that I’m taking Vickary’s place. Are you still in the market for Alien tech?”
Ella realized that Rafe was improvising. He was literally making up the script on the fly.
“Depends.” Trent looked at Ella. “Who is she?”
“My assistant,” Rafe said without missing a beat.
“Yeah?” Trent looked amused. “What kind of assistant would she be?”
“She does odd jobs for me,” Rafe said. He smiled a knife-sharp smile. “Like taking care of Vickary, for example.”
Ella froze. Rafe had just told a mob boss that she was his personal hit woman. Visions of her future as a top-flight dream counselor were going to go up in smoke if the situation did
not improve.
Trent raised his brows and gave Ella an appraising look, one that held a measure of curiosity as well as a hint of respect. “You’re that good at assisting?”
Ella shot Rafe a veiled glance. She had no idea where the script was going, but it was clear he had just given her a part to play.
“I’m very, very good,” she said with what she hoped was the right degree of professional-hit-woman cool. After all, she reminded herself, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have a talent that would have taken her far in that particular field—assuming she had been a total sociopath.
In spite of her best efforts, she knew she hadn’t done a terrific acting job because one of the enforcers snorted in disbelief. But the other one contemplated Vickary’s prone body with a thoughtful expression. When he turned back she thought she saw a little wariness in his eyes.
“You want to go through with the buy or not, Trent?” Rafe asked. “Because if you’re no longer interested, I’ve got a long list of clients who will be happy to take your place.”
“I definitely want the artifacts,” Trent said. He gave Rafe a considering look. “I was hoping to establish a long-term business arrangement with Vickary but it looks like he’s out of the picture. And as it happens, I’m not in the mood to negotiate.” He spoke to the enforcers without looking at either of them. “Burn ’em and dump ’em in the tunnels.”
The thugs responded immediately. Two violent balls of green energy coalesced in the chamber, charging the atmosphere. Ella’s hair was suddenly standing on end.
Ghost fire. The small storms of lethal energy that drifted randomly through the catacombs were one of the many hazards underground. There was nothing supernatural about them. They weren’t real ghosts. But the early settlers had bestowed the nickname on them two hundred years before and it had stuck.
The technical name was UDEM: Unstable Dissonance Energy Manifestation. Only those with a unique talent could summon a ghost or control it. Flamers were useless against a UDEM.