Canyons of Night

by Jayne Castle

  “We’re in,” Slade said. He stopped and let go of her hand.

  She gazed at the incredible scene around her with a sense of awe and wonder. “This is absolutely amazing. You’re right. It’s so much stronger and more spectacular than it was fifteen years ago. It’s still an enchanted fairyland but it’s a much brighter version of the original. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

  “There are some places in the Underworld that rival this but none that I know of aboveground,” Slade said.

  “You know what?” she said softly. “This reminds me of some of Jasper Gilbert’s paintings.”

  “I had the same thought.”

  “Think he’s been in here?”

  “He and Kane are both retired ghost hunters, strong ones, I think. That means they have a talent for working amber and alien psi. It’s possible that is enough to get them through the fence.”

  The moonlit meadow and the small pond looked as if they had been painted with a brush dipped in silver light. The soft radiance that illuminated the landscape was clearly paranormal in nature. The ultralight given off by the grass and other foliage was not the only discernible energy. Charlotte realized she felt warmer now. It was as if someone had switched on the heat.

  “The bio-phosphorescent effect isn’t so obvious during the day,” Slade said. “The visible radiation from the sun tends to overwhelm it. But at night the paranormal energy really pops if you’ve got enough talent to see at least partway into the ultralight end of the spectrum.”

  “I can’t believe the Arcane researchers haven’t set up a lab here,” she said.

  “As far as I can tell, Arcane doesn’t even know this place exists,” Slade said. “Neither do any of the other big labs. The Rainshadow Foundation has done a very good job of keeping the Preserve secret. The question is, why?”

  “I wonder what those who can’t see far into the paranormal spectrum perceive when they look at scenes like this inside the Preserve.”

  “According to the few reports that exist from the old days, those with limited psychic senses who managed to get in and back out thought they were seeing ghosts. Phantoms and spirits. Flickering shadows at the edge of their vision.”

  “What about those canyons of night that you mentioned?”

  “I haven’t found any descriptions of them in the old records and, as I told you, I didn’t come across any fifteen years ago, either. I’m sure they’re new. Want to see one?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s one not far from here.”

  They set off across the meadow. Charlotte kept her senses heightened, entranced and fascinated by iridescent wildflowers and grass that flashed with eerie silver luminescence. Banks of radiant ferns surrounded a pond that gleamed obsidian dark.

  It wasn’t just the plant life that radiated bio-psi. Charlotte heard a small lizard skittering away into the foliage and caught a glimpse of a jeweled tail. Winged insects flitted and danced on the night air like so many sparkling fairy-sized flashlights.

  They circled around the pond. Charlotte saw that the surface was darkly, ominously luminous.

  “What in the world?” she whispered.

  “I have no idea,” Slade said. “What’s more, I don’t think it would be a good idea to put on a dive suit to find out why the pond seems to be glowing.”

  She shuddered. “I agree.”

  When they reached the trees Slade took Charlotte’s hand again.

  “The entrance to the canyon is just inside the tree line,” he said. “You probably won’t be able to see a thing. Don’t worry, I can. I won’t let you get lost.”

  They moved into the trees. The darkness closed in abruptly. Between one step and the next all of the enchanting fairy lights of the meadow winked out, plunging Charlotte into the deepest, densest night she had ever known. The first whispers of panic flickered through her. Instinctively she went into deep-breathing mode. Slade’s hand tightened on hers. She sensed his silent inquiry.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  Cautiously she pushed her talent a little higher. Two apparitions moved in the absolute darkness. She realized she was looking at Slade and Rex. A fierce rainbow formed around one of the shadows. Slade, she thought. She would know him even in the darkest place in the universe.

  “I understand what you mean by canyons of endless night,” she said.

  “Can you see anything at all?” he asked.

  “I can definitely sense the energy here. It’s dark and it’s scary. I can see your rainbow quite clearly. But you and Rex are just shadows within shadows.”

  “I think that’s more than most people, even those with talent, could see. There’s a lot of energy in the vicinity but most of the currents are coming from the farthest end of the spectrum, the dark ultralight end.”

  “What do you perceive?” she asked.

  “Infinite night. Like something out of a nightmare.”

  “What do you suppose is generating the heavy ultralight?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re worried?”

  “Power in large quantities is always a concern, and whatever is going on here involves a lot of energy. The changes inside the Preserve raise questions.”

  She smiled. “And you like answers.”

  “Yes.”

  “You said yourself that the Preserve has always been a dangerous place.”

  “True.” He guided her back out of the dense night to the edge of the glowing meadow. “But I think it’s becoming more so. The Foundation was right to strengthen the fence but I don’t think it’s going to be enough.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be working too well. We got in.”

  “If we got in, other strong talents can make it, too. But I doubt if most of them will have the ability to navigate it. GPS and compasses don’t work.”

  “What about the locator devices that ghost hunters use in the Underworld?”

  “I tried one. It doesn’t work, either. They’re designed to handle environments that generate a lot of alien psi. This is different. It’s nexus energy. And something else. I think.”

  “You aren’t sure?”

  “I’m certain that the nexus forces are involved but they may simply be enhancing whatever is really going on here,” he said.

  “You’re not having any problem staying oriented.”

  “I told you, something about my version of hunter-talent allows me to navigate the Preserve.”

  “Well, I’m thoroughly lost at the moment,” she said. “If you weren’t with me I could probably make it across the meadow, but once inside the trees I’d be completely disoriented again. I don’t even want to think about what it would be like to blunder into one of those night canyons. A person could wander in circles forever.”

  He led her back out of the trees into the twinkling fairyland meadow. She looked around, searching for a small scruffy shadow carrying a clutch. She didn’t see one.

  “Where’s Rex?” she asked.

  “Probably got bored and decided to go hunting. I told you he disappears a lot at night. It was the same way back in Resonance City. There he used to go down into the Underworld to meet his buddies.”

  “Perhaps there are other dust bunnies here in the Preserve. Maybe he’s hoping to meet a girlfriend.” She thought about the clutch purse. “Or a boyfriend.”

  “There’s enough uncharted territory here in the Preserve to conceal a whole herd of dust bunnies.”

  Charlotte stopped to drink in the luminous landscape. “This place really is extraordinary. Make my night, lie to me and tell me that you never brought any other girl here fifteen years ago.”

  “No.”

  She sighed. “I should have known better than to ask a former FBPI agent to lie.”

  “No, I never brought anyone else here,” he said very steadily. “Just you.”

  She turned quickly. “Really?”

  “Only you.”

  She looked into his heated eyes.

  “Tiger,
tiger, burning bright,” she quoted in a whisper.

  “What’s a tiger?” Slade asked.

  “Old World beast of prey. Something like a specter-cat, I think. The line is from an ancient poem.”

  “I remind you of a beast of prey?”

  “No,” she said. She touched the side of his sternly etched face. “But I have always known that you were born to guard and protect. I am quite sure that you could be as fierce and relentless as a tiger or a specter-cat if it proved necessary to defend those who are weaker than you.”

  He reached up and caught her wrist. Very deliberately he turned his head and kissed her palm. A great longing rose deep inside her, a longing that she knew had been there all along, unacknowledged, for the past fifteen years.

  Slade looked at her with all the fierceness she knew was locked inside him.

  “I don’t know what you saw in my aura rainbow that made you think I would regret making love to you,” he said. “But whatever it was you were wrong.”

  “Was I?”

  “I want you, and I don’t give a damn what it costs me.”

  “There shouldn’t be a price to be paid,” she said.

  “There is always a price. I want you to understand that I am willing to pay it.”

  He let the pack slide off his shoulder and then he drew her close, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her with all the dark fire that she had seen blazing in his aura rainbow. Instinctively she started to touch the pendant at her throat but she stopped just before her fingers brushed the silver mirror. Perhaps it was the energy in the atmosphere around them. Or maybe it was simply that she did not want to screw up again and miss the experience she had been yearning for all these years. Whatever the explanation, she knew that this time she would try very hard not to view his rainbow.

  He said he was willing to pay the price. She would take him at his word. Because she knew now that there would be a price for her as well, and she, too, was willing to pay it.

  Her hand fell away from the pendant. She gripped his shoulders, savoring the sleek power she could feel there, and returned the kiss with a passion she hardly recognized as her own.

  The kiss was desperate and all consuming; a kiss unlike anything she had ever experienced. She was suddenly shivering but not because of a panic attack; rather from the force of raw physical desire. Everything about Slade was hard, demanding, implacable, and relentless.

  He wrenched his mouth away from hers and imprisoned her head gently between his two powerful hands.

  “This is about you and me tonight,” he said. “Nothing else matters.”

  “Nothing else,” she agreed.

  He used his grip to bring her hard against him and kissed her again. She wound her arms around his neck and clung to him to keep from drowning in the sparkling, effervescent whirlpool. But she fell deeper and deeper into the churning energy. Slade groaned and crushed her lower body against his own.

  He did not try to hide his hunger for her. He was hot and aroused and he obviously wanted her to know it. Liquid heat and a tight, urgent tension built deep inside her. He got her jacket open. She found the buckle of his leather belt. And then his hands were gliding up her body beneath her top. When he got her bra unfastened he closed his palms over her nipples. She was so sensitive now that she gave a small, startled cry.

  He kissed her throat. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes.” She fumbled with the zipper of his trousers. “I’m not that delicate.”

  “Ah.” He sucked in a sharp breath and pulled back. “I’ll get the zipper.”

  Appalled, she went very still. “Did I hurt you?”

  His laugh was half groan. “No. But timing is everything.”

  She freed herself from her boots while he unzipped his trousers and got out of his own boots.

  He reached into the pack and pulled out a plastic pouch. He tore open the bag and removed a thin emergency blanket. When he spread it out on the ground the tarp proved to be surprisingly large.

  He drew her onto the blanket and then he went down on his knees in front of her. He pulled her down with him. She pushed her hands inside his shirt and let the heat of his body warm her. She was about to unfasten her jeans when he stopped her.

  “Let me,” he said, his voice low and dark.

  He eased the zipper down and worked the jeans over her hips. When he could not get them any farther he pushed her gently onto her back and peeled the denim all the way off. Her panties went with the jeans.

  For a moment he knelt beside her, studying her with burning eyes as though he had never seen anything quite like her before, as if he did not want to forget a single detail. With his strong shoulders silhouetted against the night sky, his features starkly etched in psi-light, he could have walked straight out of her most intense fantasies.

  He put one hand on her thigh and moved his warm palm upward until he cupped the full, damp place between her legs. Her body reacted instantly to the intimate touch. She lifted her hips, straining against him. He stroked her slowly until she was as tightly coiled as a spring, until she was trembling with the force of the urgent need inside her.

  She seized his wrist and pulled him down alongside her. He rolled onto his back, taking her with him. She tumbled across his granite-hard body. His rigid erection pressed against her bare thigh.

  He arranged her so that she straddled him and then he worked her with his hand until she was almost screaming with need.

  He gripped her hips and pushed himself slowly inside her. As badly as she wanted him, her body resisted at first. He was too big. She hesitated, not knowing if it was going to work.

  He felt her go still and he stilled, too. She did not need to view his rainbow to know that he was fighting for his control. The heat of his body and the sweat on his chest told her very clearly. She also sensed that he would not lose the battle. Slade was always in control.

  “Okay?” he got out hoarsely.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Tentatively she allowed him to go deeper. Her body slowly opened to accept him but the steady invasion caused the tension inside her to heighten to a level that was almost unbearable.

  “Yes,” she said. She tightened around him. “Yes.”

  He locked his hands around her hips and started to move, driving in and out of her in a powerful, relentless rhythm.

  In the end, she could not resist temptation. She had to know the truth. She touched her pendant with her fingertips and opened her senses to the fullest extent.

  Slade’s dark rainbow blazed in the night. She knew then that he was not holding anything back this time. He had told her the truth. He wanted her and he did not give a damn about the consequences, whatever they were.

  But her intuition told her that he still expected to pay a heavy price.

  There was no time to second-guess what was happening and she had promised herself she would not ruin things by trying to analyze him. She took her fingers off the pendant.

  “Slade.”

  In the next moment the tension inside her was released in wave after wave of deep, satisfying currents. She was flung into the heart of the glorious storm.

  Slade’s fingers tightened around her thighs. He thrust one last time. With a hoarse, husky growl, he came in a surging, pounding climax.

  The silver meadow blazed around them.

  Chapter 16

  HE FELT CHARLOTTE STIR BESIDE HIM. HE OPENED HIS eyes and his senses to the night and watched her sit up on the blanket. She reached for her panties and jeans. Her hair had come free. In the otherworldly glow of the meadow she looked magical, mysterious, and incredibly sexy. He could have looked at her for the rest of the night, the rest of his life.

  Something twisted deep inside him. How much longer would he be able to see her like this, with all of his senses? Whatever happened, he would never forget this night. He wondered if she would remember him in the years ahead.

  He pushed the dark thoughts aside. He had made his decision and he was
content. He would not destroy what was left of the night with questions that had no answer.

  He levered himself up on one elbow. “Hey there, gorgeous.”

  She paused in the act of wriggling into the jeans and looked at him over her shoulder. Her eyes were still gently luminous.

  “Hey there, yourself, handsome,” she said.

  Her voice had a sexy, throaty quality that stirred the embers all over again. He tried to come up with something clever in the way of postcoital conversation but nothing occurred to him. He did not want to chat. He wanted to drag her back down onto the blanket and make love to her again and again before he lost his talent forever.

  But for all its heat-retention and waterproof capabilities, the sheet of high-tech plastic did nothing to soften the ground underneath it.

  He watched her shimmy partway into her jeans. Then she got to her knees in order to pull the pants up over her hips.

  “It’s getting late,” she said. She stood and adjusted her top and the jacket. “We both have to go to work in the morning.”

  He sat up reluctantly. The plastic crinkled under him.

  Charlotte watched him close his jeans.

  “I’d like to hear the story,” she said.

  “What story?” He leaned down to pick up the blanket. It dawned on him that he felt incredibly relaxed, better than he had in months. Maybe better than he ever had in his entire life.

  “Earlier you said that some doctors at a clinic had slapped you with the ‘delicate’ label. I asked you why. You said it was a long story. We have a long walk out of here. I thought it would be a good time to tell me the tale.”

  “Damn. Should have seen this coming.” Talking about his problems was the last thing he wanted to do.

  Charlotte stiffened. “Don’t ask.” Her voice had gone very cool.

  He concentrated on folding the blanket into a small square. “Don’t ask what?”

  “Why women always want to chat after sex. Speaking personally, I don’t. Not usually. In my experience it invariably leads to a bad outcome. But, then, all my dates end badly.”

  “At least you’re consistent.”