Dark Light

by Randy Wayne White

  “Yes, sir. He wants my help in the investigation. I’m asking you to trust me.”

  “Not a problem.” Runtley’s eyes glittered with the familiar feverish excitement that always came over him when the prospect of a real scoop involving the Guilds or alien relics arose. “Are you sure you can trust Fontana?”

  She thought about that, checking in again with her intuition. “Not exactly. He’s keeping secrets. But he agrees that there is some sort of conspiracy within the Guild and that it is linked to the juice dealing and maybe to the disappearances. I believe him when he says he wants to get to the bottom of whatever is going on.”

  “Huh.” Runtley did not bother to conceal his skepticism.

  She looked at Elvis. He was sitting on the corner of her desk, munching on the peanut butter and banana sandwich she had made him. The coffee mug the newsroom staff had presented to him a few weeks ago was nearby. It featured a photo of an ancient Earth singing icon. The name Elvis was spelled out in glow-in-the-dark letters.

  “Elvis liked Fontana,” she said. “He’s a pretty good judge of character.”

  “Forget the bunny. I don’t give diddly-squat about what he thinks. What about you? You’re the one with the mega-rez intuition. What was your take on Fontana?”

  She hesitated. Runtley was one of the very few people who knew about her odd talent and actually believed in it. Like the others in her family who possessed various unusual paranormal abilities that did not depend on amber, she had learned long ago not to confide in others. When she did try to talk about her intuition, she usually got one of two unpleasant reactions. Most people simply didn’t believe her and laughed off the claim. Such cases could prove socially awkward but not particularly devastating.

  It was those in the second group—the people who actually believed her—whom she had to watch out for. They frequently concluded that she could be useful. What business executive, stockbroker, or gambler couldn’t use an assistant or, better yet, a wife endowed with extremely accurate intuitive talents? She had learned her lesson with Jonathan Pemberley. She had no intention of repeating it.

  She had never actually told Runtley that her intuitive powers were off the charts or that she didn’t need amber to access them, but he had guessed the truth during her interview. She strongly suspected that his own intuition was well above normal.

  “I didn’t get any bad vibes from Fontana,” she said. “I wouldn’t have even considered this MC if I had.”

  “But he’s a Guild boss. What’s more, judging by what you just told me, he took out Jenner.”

  “I didn’t say Fontana wouldn’t be dangerous under some circumstances; I just said I think I’ll be safe with him. At least for the moment.” She moved one hand in a small gesture. “He needs me.”

  The door of the newsroom slammed open. Kay Alcantara stood in the opening. Phil Trager and Matt Delaney were directly behind her.

  Kay planted a hand over her heart and gave Sierra an anguished glare.

  “Say it isn’t so,” Kay pleaded. “Say you aren’t actually planning to marry the new head of the Crystal Guild and that you forgot to tell your very best friend in the entire world that you had been dating him in secret for lord knows how long.”

  Kay was Sierra’s age, a tall, vivacious woman with a long mane of discreetly enhanced red hair and an Amazonian body.

  Sierra felt herself turning pink. “Well, it isn’t quite like that.”

  Kay grinned. “Of course it isn’t. As if you would actually marry anyone connected to the Guild. The rumor will make a great scoop for the Curtain tomorrow, though.”

  “Hot damn,” Matt said. He rubbed his hands together and looked hopefully at Runtley. “Can I write the story, boss? Please. I’ll do you proud, I promise.”

  “Hey, I’ve got the perfect headline,” Phil announced. “ ‘Guild Boss Weds Mystery Woman in Secret Ceremony.’ ”

  Sierra glowered. “There’s nothing secret about it. We’re due at the registrar’s office at five this afternoon, and by the way, this is my story.”

  “You can’t write it,” Runtley said, unequivocal. “You’re the subject.”

  “Not fair.” Sierra shot to her feet. “I’m the one who is sacrificing her, uh, whatever, for this story. I deserve to write it.”

  “Kay writes up the wedding,” Runtley said. “And that’s final.”

  “Thanks, boss,” Kay said, face alight with anticipation. “Can’t wait to get back to my computer.”

  “You can’t write the story yet,” Sierra said. She glanced at her watch. “I’m not going to get married for another two hours.”

  Kay laughed. “Since when has a little detail like a timeline ever stopped an intrepid reporter for the Curtain? After all, I’m going to get the background directly from you, right? Of course, I’ll want a detailed account of the wedding night, too, but that can wait until tomorrow, I guess.”

  It could wait forever, Sierra thought, because there wasn’t going to be a wedding night.

  “Holy dust bunny,” Phil said, patting Elvis. “This is going to be the biggest story since we broke the news that you somehow made it through the Curtain, King.”

  Elvis chortled happily and ate another bite of his sandwich.

  Kay sat down on a corner of Sierra’s desk and crossed her long legs. “Tell me everything. How long have you been secretly dating Fontana?”

  “Not very long,” Sierra said quickly.

  “How the hell did you two meet?” Matt demanded.

  “In the course of my investigation,” Sierra said with what she thought was commendable cool. “He was a powerful member of the Council, as you know, and I wanted some answers from him.”

  “Well?” Phil wiggled his brows. “Get any?”

  Everyone glowered at him.

  “Answers, I mean,” Phil said hastily.

  Sierra folded her hands on the desk. “Let’s just say that I am convinced that Fontana is no Brock Jenner. He will run a very different Guild.”

  There was a short, startled silence. Phil, Matt, and Kay looked at each other. Then they turned to Runtley, who merely shrugged his heavy shoulders.

  Kay stared at Sierra with an expression of dawning wonder.

  “Damn, you’re serious, aren’t you?” she said. “This isn’t some kind of joke. You’re actually going to marry Fontana?”

  “Yes,” Sierra said.

  Matt whistled softly. “Somebody catch me. I think I’m going to swoon.”

  Kay frowned. “No offense, but why would Fontana marry you, Sierra? You’ve been a thorn in the side of the Guild for the past six months.”

  “Maybe he thinks he can keep her quiet,” Phil offered, sounding more than a little concerned. “After all, once she’s a Guild wife, she’ll be expected to keep Guild secrets.”

  Matt nodded uneasily. “Yeah, I can see why he might want her locked into an MC while he gets control of things. Besides, Guild bosses are almost always married. Something to do with one of their traditions.”

  Sierra felt her temper flare. “Let’s get one thing clear. Fontana is not marrying me because he thinks he can silence me that way.”

  “Okay, okay.” Matt held up both hands, palms out. “Just a working theory.”

  “Try another hypothesis.”

  Phil gave her a quick, head-to-toe inspection. “Well, one thing’s for sure.”

  “What?” Sierra snapped.

  “Evidently you’re going to be on the cover of tomorrow’s edition of the Curtain. That means you need to go home and change.”

  She glanced down at her businesslike skirted suit and pumps. “What’s wrong with these clothes?”

  “They’re too boring for a secret mistress who is about to become the wife of the new chief of the Guild,” Kay explained.

  “She’s right,” Runtley decreed. “Go back to your apartment and put on something sexy. We can sell a lot of copies if we get a good shot.”

  “Make sure whatever you wear is real short and low-cut,”
Phil said. “We need cleavage.”

  “I’ll go home and change,” Sierra said. “But forget the cleavage thing. I love the Curtain, but I refuse to humiliate myself on the front cover.”

  “Spoilsport,” Kay said.

  Chapter 4

  “WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT SIERRA MCINTYRE?” COOPER Boone asked on the other end of the phone.

  Fontana walked to the window, phone to his ear, and looked out over the ruins while he thought about the question.

  Cooper, the head of the Aurora Springs Guild, was one of his few close friends. The bond between them had been established years earlier when, because of their unusual talents, they had found themselves doing some highly unorthodox jobs for the Bureau.

  They were both technically hunters, meaning they could manipulate dissonance energy, but neither of them worked traditional green ghost light. The teams that went underground tended to be traditionalists. Hunters who worked light from other places on the spectrum were not welcome on the exploration ventures. Exotic hunters tended to follow one of two career paths. They either became criminals or they got hired by the Bureau. Once in a while, however, like Cooper and himself, they wound up at the top of one of the organizations.

  “What do I know about Sierra?” Fontana repeated. “Well, I think it’s safe to say that I’m marrying up.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She’s the daughter of Jason McIntyre.”

  There was a short pause on the other end of the line.

  “Any connection to McIntyre Industries in Resonance?” Cooper finally asked.

  “She’s Jason McIntyre’s youngest daughter.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m getting married in two hours. Trust me, I’m not in a joking mood.”

  “What the hell is a McIntyre doing working for a low-rent tabloid like the Curtain? Women like her sit on the boards of charitable foundations and eat lunch at their clubs.”

  “I did a little checking. She comes from a long line of women who do things in addition to the usual charitable foundation and luncheon gigs.”

  “Such as?” Cooper asked.

  “Her mother teaches philosophy at Resonance College. One of her grandmothers is a doctor. The other one ran a successful architectural design business for several years before she retired. There’s an aunt who paints and another aunt who writes. And then there’s the male side of the family tree.”

  “I know something about them. Father is CEO of McIntyre Industries. Two of her brothers work in the business. The other teaches, I think.”

  “Mathematics.”

  Cooper roared with laughter. “Sounds like you’re marrying into a family of overachievers. Serves you right, seeing as how you qualify as one yourself. Congratulations.”

  “You can save the congratulations. I doubt that the marriage will last very long after Sierra’s relatives discover that she’s married to a Guild chief who also happens to be a genuine bastard.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Cooper advised. “From what I’ve heard, the McIntyres as a clan resonate to a different frequency.”

  “I don’t care how independent-minded they are. People that rich and that influential don’t let their daughters marry outside their social circles, let alone marry bastards.”

  There was no need for either of them to comment further, Fontana thought. Although the laws theoretically protected children born out of wedlock and were designed to try to ensure that both parents took equal responsibility for their illegitimate offspring, there was no avoiding the fact that being born a bastard still carried a stigma. In a society that placed a massive emphasis on marriage and family ties, there was little room for someone like him.

  His story was one of the oldest in the book. His mother had been a cocktail waitress. His father had been a wealthy man in a Covenant Marriage who had been looking for a little fun.

  “Sierra agreed to cooperate with your investigation?” Cooper asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So this MC is purely a business arrangement?”

  “Right.”

  “She must be very hungry for the story if she’s willing to marry for it,” Cooper said thoughtfully. “Any idea what triggered her interest in Jenner and the drug operation in the first place?”

  “It started with some negative pieces she did on the Guild. There were a lot of stories about how many retired Guild men were living on the streets of Crystal and how the Guild ignored their plight.”

  Guild men tended to begin their careers early, usually in their late teens; not surprising since dissonance energy para-rez talent was strongly correlated to testosterone and other male hormones. That basic biological fact also went a long way toward explaining the very small number of female hunters in the ranks, although it was considered politically incorrect to point out the connection.

  Pensions and so-called “fry pay”—disability benefits—were of vital importance in the Guild organizations. Hunters not only started out early, they usually ended their careers within twenty years; many quit long before that. It was no secret that frying ghosts for a living provided limited long-term career options. In addition, the work took a psychic toll. Guild men who hung around the catacombs too long lost their edge and got careless. Getting careless underground could not only get you badly burned, it put the clients in jeopardy. That was not good for the organization’s image.

  The end result was that if a hunter did not move up into management within the Guild, he usually retired before the age of forty. That meant that a lot of used-up hunters found themselves unemployed with no useful work skills. The retirement benefit plans were generous, but ex-hunters had a bad habit of blowing their monthly checks on the same traditional vices they had enjoyed during their working years: women, gambling, and booze. And now, here in Crystal, on juice.

  “After the attacks on the Guild’s failure to look after their retirees, Sierra started doing pieces on the ghost juice problem,” Fontana continued. “She pointed out that most of the addicts were ex-hunters. Then came the stories about the disappearances. The headlines in the Curtain claimed that men were being kidnapped off the streets by aliens. Fortunately, the mainstream media ignored the reports.”

  “You have to admit it’s hard to take that kind of tabloid nonsense seriously,” Cooper said.

  “I did a little checking. Sierra’s reporting was accurate, at least up to a point. Nearly a dozen ex-hunters, maybe more, have vanished in the past six months. They were all juice heads living in alleys or in abandoned buildings in the Quarter. Not the kind of upstanding citizens who get noticed when they disappear.”

  “They sure as hell weren’t kidnapped by aliens,” Cooper said.

  “No, but something happened to them. They’re my men now. I’m responsible for them.”

  “Understood.” Cooper was quiet for a moment. “You really think Sierra McIntyre can help you find out what’s going on over there in Crystal?”

  “She’s getting her information from somewhere. I’m pretty sure that she’s got contacts on the streets that I don’t have. And there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “She’s just about the only person besides Ray that I can trust here in Crystal at the moment.”

  Ray Takashima was one of them, another former Bureau employee. The bonds between all of them had been forged in ghost fire and would never be broken.

  “You and Ray always made a good team,” Cooper said. “But if I were you, I’d keep a close eye on your new bride. You don’t really know that much about her. Sounds like getting the scoop and bashing the Guild are her top priorities, not playing Guild wife.”

  “If I thought I could convince her to walk away from the story, I would. But she’s sunk her teeth into it, and I can tell she’s not the type to let go. My only other option is to try to protect her by throwing the mantle of the Chamber around her.”

  “Sounds like a solid foundation for a marriage, if ever there was one,” Cooper said
. “Can’t wait to see the cover of tomorrow’s edition of the Curtain. Don’t forget the ring.”

  Chapter 5

  THE UNNERVING WHISPER OF ENERGY FEATHERED THE FINE hair on the nape of Sierra’s neck the moment she parked her battered little Float at the curb. The fog had lightened somewhat in the afternoon, but the Quarter was still wrapped in a ragged gray blanket. She could see only as far as the intersection.

  She got out cautiously, Elvis perched on her shoulder. He muttered a little.

  “You sense it, too, don’t you?” she asked softly.

  Elvis seemed alert but not unduly alarmed. His calm response reassured her. If there had been an imminent threat, he would no longer look like something that had come out of the inside of a vacuum cleaner. He would be sleeked out in full battle-ready mode, his second set of eyes, the ones he used for hunting, wide open.

  She stood on the curb for a moment, surveying the narrow street. There was the usual ambient alien psi that permeated the Quarter, but it was a pleasant, lightly stimulating sensation. That wasn’t what was ruffling her intuitive senses. What she was experiencing was the same sensation that had made it impossible to sleep last night; the creepy feeling that she was being observed from the shadows.

  She looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. By day Jade Street was always imbued with a slightly seedy, down-at-the-heels atmosphere. The impression was magnified this afternoon because of the ominous gloom of the relentless fog. Nevertheless, this was not a dangerous section of the Quarter.

  The two-hundred-year-old Colonial-era buildings that loomed on either side housed a mix of what the newspaper ads like to call “affordable” apartments, such as the one she lived in, a number of low-end antiquities shops that specialized in alien and First Generation relics, a convenience store, and a tavern called the Green Gate.

  Unlike some of the other streets in the Quarter, there was no obvious drug dealing going on in the doorways, and no hookers lounged or strolled beneath the old-fashioned streetlights. The women of the night preferred the sleazier neighborhoods on the east and west side of the towering green wall that enclosed the ruins.