Dark Light

by Randy Wayne White

  “Who got to Jenner?” Sierra demanded.

  He looked at her over his shoulder. “We don’t know. But the fact that someone took the risk of murdering a former Guild boss told us that the conspiracy was a bigger problem than we had assumed.”

  “How much of a risk was there? He was a former boss, after all.”

  “Jenner still had his secrets. I wanted them.”

  “Wait a second, you think his fellow conspirators murdered him in order to keep him from betraying them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any idea who those folks might be?” she asked quickly.

  “I have a hunch about one of them, but there may be more. At the moment I can’t prove a damn thing.”

  “What about you?” she asked. “Is your position as the new Guild boss somewhat, uh, untenable, too?”

  “I think it’s unlikely that I’ll get hit by a truck this afternoon, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Why not?”

  He turned to face her. “This isn’t the first time there’s been a problem deep inside one of the Guilds.”

  “Imagine that.”

  The sarcasm was starting to irritate him, but he told himself he was big enough to overlook it, at least for the moment.

  “There are procedures in place to deal with this kind of thing,” he said. “Given the power a Guild commander wields, the potential for misuse of that power is always present. The leaders of the organizations recognized that fact from the beginning. That’s why the Chamber was established.”

  Chamber was short for the far more unwieldy Chamber of the Joint Council of Dissonance Energy Para-resonator Guilds, the overarching governing organization of the Guilds.

  “I’m well aware of the existence of the Chamber, but everyone knows that the Guilds function autonomously,” Sierra said. “Individual chiefs respect each other’s territory.”

  “That’s true unless a problem arises that might impact the safety and well-being of the city for which a particular Guild is responsible. I know you don’t appreciate the role of the Guilds in society, Miss McIntyre, but the truth is, their main job is to protect you and everyone else, not only from the natural hazards underground but from would-be tyrants like Vincent Lee Vance.”

  She blew that off with a wave of her hand. “I did my time in fourth grade, just like everyone else. Trust me, I know that decades ago ghost hunters saved the city-states from Vance and his followers. The Guilds aren’t likely to ever let us forget it. I’m also aware of the old saying that the Guilds police their own. But I certainly didn’t know that the Chamber sometimes gets involved when there’s trouble in one of the organizations.”

  “For the most part, individual Guilds are expected to take care of their own problems. But when that doesn’t work, the Chamber steps in.”

  “How?” She sounded skeptical.

  “The Chamber maintains an investigative office.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Officially it’s called the Bureau of Internal Affairs, but unofficially it’s just known as the Bureau.”

  “Why haven’t I ever heard of this Bureau?”

  “Probably because the Chamber prefers to keep quiet about it.”

  “Right. Yet another Guild secret. So why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I think I can trust you, Miss McIntyre. And because I need your help. Forty-eight hours ago I met with the other Guild chiefs in a secret emergency session of the Chamber. I explained what was going on here in Crystal and how I planned to clean up the mess. They offered backup and assistance if I need it, but everyone would prefer that I take care of the problem on my own as quietly as possible.”

  She looked startled. “The other Guild bosses know that you’ve got a situation on your hands?”

  “They do now. Trust me, they all want answers, not only about the drug operation but more critically about the possibility that something very important has been discovered in the rain forest and that the find has been concealed.”

  She thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “Okay, I can see where the other Guilds might want you to fix your own problems here in Crystal as fast and as quietly as possible. Does having the other bosses involved buy you some protection from whoever took out Jenner?”

  “You’re the one I’m worried about.”

  She started so violently that she almost knocked over Elvis’s coffee mug.

  “Me?” she gasped.

  “Ever been underground, Miss McIntyre?”

  “Once on a school field trip.” She shuddered. “I hated it. I’m claustrophobic. And the way the catacombs branch out in a thousand different directions like a maze, it’s downright weird.”

  “It’s not for everyone,” he agreed. “But aside from the alien nature of the design and the fact that it’s easy to get lost underground, there are two basic kinds of hazards: the energy ghosts and illusion traps.”

  “Everyone knows that.”

  “When you started your series of investigations into the workings of the local Guild, you began playing with a very nasty illusion trap,” he said. He put a lot of quiet emphasis on the last two words. “There’s a good chance you might trigger it.”

  Her eyes widened behind the lenses of her glasses. He knew she got the metaphor. When one of the ancient traps was accidentally triggered, the victim was instantly plunged into an alien nightmare. The feverish images were too bizarre for the human mind to cope with. The experience did not last long because unconsciousness and, in extreme cases, coma and death, soon followed.

  She swallowed hard and clutched the arms of her chair. “Do you really think that someone inside the Guild might try to kill me?”

  “I’m not going to try to sweeten this, Miss McIntyre. The answer is maybe.”

  “Nothing like a solid maybe to reassure a person.”

  “You could try packing your bags and leaving town—”

  “No. I can’t leave now. I’ve got to find out what happened to those missing men.”

  “I thought you’d say that. I’m not sure leaving Crystal would keep you safe anyway. You’ve gone too far. I’m the only one who can offer you some protection.”

  “Is that right?” she asked coolly.

  “Believe it or not, people usually think twice about murdering a Guild boss’s wife.”

  “Because it would attract the attention of the other bosses?”

  “The Chamber tends to frown on that sort of thing,” he said gently.

  “Oh, jeez.” She gripped the arms of her chair again. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Very. In addition to the implied threat, there’s another reason why marrying me will buy you some protection.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Most people, including everyone in the Crystal Guild, will assume that I married you to shut you up.”

  She bristled. “You mean they’ll assume you’re doing what you have to do to keep Guild secrets, is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “If you think for one minute that you can keep me quiet once I’m your wife—”

  “That’s not the objective.”

  “Really? Then what is the goal?”

  “The idea is to join forces, Miss McIntyre. I’ve got my sources inside the Guild. You’ve obviously got a few of your own outside the organization. We need each other’s help to conduct this investigation, and we need to work together covertly.”

  She slumped back into her chair, bewildered now, rather than angry.

  “I don’t understand. Jenner mocked my reports. None of the other mainstream media picked up my stories, so I never got any traction with them. No one’s afraid of me.”

  “Jenner paid more attention than you knew. Now that he’s gone, I think we should assume that the others involved in the cover-up may also consider you to be a problem.”

  Excitement and determination lit her expressive face. “So, there really is something big going on.”

  “Yes.”

 
She leaned forward a little and lowered her voice, although there was no one around to overhear.

  “Is it a conspiracy to conceal the discovery of an alien lab?” she asked.

  “To tell you the truth, Miss McIntyre, I don’t know what the hell is being covered up beyond the drug running. What I know for sure is that there have been at least a couple of suspicious deaths, including the PI hired by the Council, and Jenner himself. At this point, there are very, very few people I can trust within the higher ranks of the organization.”

  “What makes you think you can trust me?”

  He smiled slowly. “Once you know what someone wants, you know whether you can trust that person. You also know how far you can trust him or her.”

  She searched his face, intrigued. “You think you know what I want?”

  “You want answers. So do I. That means we can work together.”

  She drew a long, steadying breath. “Okay, in spite of some opinions to the contrary, I’m not an idiot. If you think I’m in danger, I want all the protection I can get. And you’re right. I want to find out what happened to those missing men.”

  He could feel the currents of energy that shimmered invisibly around her. She was definitely a woman of power. The question was, what kind?

  She didn’t wear amber, so she probably was not a standard para-rez talent. But there had always been stories of other kinds of talents, the sort that had nothing to do with alien psi and did not require amber, talents that occurred naturally in some people. Such psychic abilities were said to have existed since time immemorial, long before humans had gone through the Curtain.

  “I made an appointment for us to pick up a Marriage of Convenience license at the registrar’s office this afternoon at five o’clock,” he said.

  She looked as if she might fall off her chair. “You were that sure I’d cooperate?”

  “Like I said, I know what you want. My job was to convince you that marrying me was the best way to get it.”

  She shook her head, amazed. “No wonder you became the new chief of the Guild. You’re good.”

  “Just think, you’ll be going back to your office with the scoop of the week. ‘New Guild Boss Weds Reporter.’”

  She wrinkled her nose. “That’s a little tame for the Curtain. I’m sure my editor will come up with something more exciting.”

  “I don’t care how the headline reads so long as you don’t leave me standing alone at the registrar’s office this afternoon.”

  “My colleagues at the paper and my friends are going to have a lot of questions.”

  “One thing I should make clear,” he said evenly, “this arrangement will work best if we convince people it’s for real.”

  For the first time, she looked amused. “You expect me to imply to everyone I know that you and I have been secretly involved for some time and just now decided to get married?”

  “I think that would be the simplest approach, yes.”

  “Get real.”

  “No one will think it strange that we kept the relationship secret until now. It’s a little awkward for a Council member to admit that he’s dating a journalist who specializes in exposés of the Guild.”

  She blinked and then frowned a little. “Okay, I can see that.”

  “Given your opinions of the organization, I’m sure your colleagues won’t be the least bit amazed that you kept quiet about dating me, as well.”

  She contemplated that for a moment and then shook her head. “I’ll do my best, but I’d better warn you that I doubt very much that I’ll be able to fool my editor. Ivor Runtley has great instincts when it comes to sensing a story.”

  “If you have to tell Runtley the truth, try to make him see the importance of keeping quiet.”

  “Okay, I’ll give it a shot. He’ll do just about anything if the story is worth it.” She got to her feet and slung her purse over one shoulder. “I hope you know what we’re both doing.” She glanced at Elvis. “Time to go, pal.”

  Elvis hopped down from the windowsill. He drifted across the floor and vaulted up onto the back of the chair. Sierra held out her wrist to him. He leaped aboard and bounded up to perch on her shoulder.

  “I’ll meet you at the registrar’s office at a quarter to five,” Fontana said. “Did you drive?”

  “No, I took a cab.”

  He opened the door and looked at the anxious young man seated at the smaller of the two desks. Dray Levine was the new second assistant to the new chief executive assistant, Harlan Ostendorf. A week ago Dray had been a clerk in the records department. He was still adjusting to the rarified atmosphere of the executive suite.

  “Dray, please see my fiancée downstairs and into a Guild limo.”

  Dray stared, clearly dumbfounded. His throat worked.

  “Fiancée, sir?” he finally managed.

  “That’s right.” Fontana smiled. “Miss McIntyre and I are getting married today.”

  “Uh, congratulations, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Fontana said.

  “A limo isn’t necessary, really,” Sierra said.

  Fontana smiled. “Sure it is. I’m not sending my future bride home in a taxi when there’s a fleet of perfectly good limos sitting downstairs in the garage.”

  Dray’s stunned expression finally smoothed out into his more customary anxious-to-please look. He jumped to his feet.

  “I’ll be happy to escort Miss McIntyre downstairs, sir,” he said. “Will there be anything else?”

  “Yes.” Fontana looked at the empty desk. “When does Harlan get back?”

  Dray glanced at the clock. “Mr. Ostendorf took an early lunch. He’s due back in about ten minutes.”

  “Good. When he returns, please tell him I want to see him immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fontana studied Dray’s ill-concealed astonishment. Rumors and gossip flowed rapidly through the Guild. The news of his marriage would be common knowledge within the organization in less than an hour. He smiled, satisfied.

  “My work here is done,” he said.

  He closed the door, went back to his desk, and sat down. Dray wasn’t the only one who was still a little stunned.

  He had never intended to suggest a marriage contract to Sierra. The original plan had been to offer her a full-time bodyguard and around-the-clock protection until he had cleaned up the mess.

  But he had revised the strategy in a heartbeat when she walked through his door. The result was that at five o’clock today, he would have himself a bride.

  He’d never had one of those before. There had never been time for anything other than brief affairs. He’d been too busy. Surviving his career at the Bureau and the lightning-fast climb up through the ranks of the Crystal Guild that had followed had required his full attention.

  Tonight he would go to bed a married man. True, it was only a Marriage of Convenience, which was, admittedly, barely a step up from having an affair. He also knew that his new bride viewed the move as purely a business arrangement.

  Nevertheless, it felt real.

  Chapter 3

  “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, SIERRA?” IVOR RUNTLEY, better known to his staff, behind his back, as the Runt, flattened his big hands on Sierra’s desk and loomed over her. “And don’t try to tell me that you’ve been dating Fontana in secret for months, because I’m not buying it.”

  Sierra glanced quickly around. Fortunately, it was lunchtime. They had the newsroom to themselves.

  Runtley was anything but a runt. Sixty-one years old and as bald as a golf ball, he was built like a two-ton boulder. His sheer mass often caused people to make the mistake of thinking that he was as dumb as a rock. It was a serious misconception.

  Once upon a time Runtley had been an investigative journalist. He had worked for a mainstream paper, the Crystal Herald. But somewhere along the line he had become obsessed with the mysteries left behind by the aliens. Rumor had it that he had gotten badly fried by a ghost while investigating a story. He had blamed
the Guild, claiming it had tried to silence him. Whatever the truth of the matter, the experience had left him with an illogical fixation that had led him to file increasingly bizarre and unsubstantiated stories at the Herald. He had eventually been fired.

  His response had been to scrape together enough money to buy the Curtain, a nearly moribund little weekly that had been about to go out of business altogether. Within months he had transformed it into a sensational, moneymaking tabloid that now published daily. Sierra knew he didn’t give a damn about the celebrity gossip or the scandals that were the lifeblood of the paper. All he cared about was having the opportunity to print what he considered the truth about alien and Guild secrets.

  Like everyone else at the Curtain, Sierra was pretty sure Runtley was crazy when it came to the subject of the long-vanished aliens, but she liked him, anyway. He had given her a job, after all, even though she’d come to him with absolutely no journalism credentials whatsoever. All she’d had six months ago was a growing conviction that something was very wrong on the streets of the city’s Old Quarter and that the Guild was involved. Runtley had hired her instantly. When it came to the subject of the Guild, they shared a mutual distrust that some felt bordered on paranoia.

  Her boss wasn’t the only person she liked here at the paper. After a depressingly checkered career in a variety of jobs, she was finally in a position that felt right; maybe not perfect but, then, what job was perfect? Perhaps she felt at home here because her colleagues in the newsroom, from Runtley on down, were also misfits in their own way. Certainly none of them had started out looking forward to careers as tabloid reporters. They had all landed at the Curtain after erratic and eccentric paths.

  Together they faced the disdain of their colleagues in the mainstream media and shared stories about their perennially embarrassed families. Where does your daughter work? Oh, she’s a journalist? What newspaper? The Curtain? Isn’t that one of those sleazy tabloids?

  She sat back in her chair. “I warned Fontana that I wouldn’t be able to fool you, sir.”

  Runtley leaned farther over the desk. Even though there was no one around to hear him, he lowered his usually booming voice to a low rumble. “This sudden decision to sign an MC with Fontana is connected to your investigation of the Guild’s cover-up of the alien lab, isn’t it?”