by Jayne Castle
Virginia felt her jaw drop. She barely managed to conceal her shock. She was amazed by Sam’s casual response to Ewert’s announcement. They were going to have to de-rez a waterfall? She almost groaned aloud. Of all the bad luck. This was just what they did not need for their first time out as the new firm of Gage & Burch; a nearly impossible assignment. She was the one who had taken the call yesterday morning from Mac. He had certainly not mentioned anything about a waterfall.
She reminded herself that waterfalls fell into Sam’s area of expertise. She had to admire him for projecting an image of professional confidence, but she seriously doubted that he’d had any experience with waterfalls. Few people had.
She had read about them, of course. They were described in the textbooks as unique cascades of unstable dissonance-energy manifestations—ghosts—that could block entire corridors. Unlike most UDEMs, they did not drift aimlessly through the underground tunnels of the Dead City. Instead, they were anchored in one place, forming impenetrable walls of seething psi energy that could fry anyone dumb enough to get too close. Little was known about them because so few had been discovered. Those that had been found had been de-rezzed by teams of very expensive, highly specialized experts, not by small-time security consultants. Sam would be on his own with this one. Her name was now on the newly repainted door of the office, but that didn’t mean she could help him with the waterfall. This was a job for a ghost-hunter. A really, really good ghost-hunter. All she could do was cheer him on.
Ewert gave Sam a look of mingled desperation and aggressive demand. “Think you can handle it, Gage? This project is already running behind schedule. I’ve had one delay after another in the tunnels during the past month. I can’t afford any more.”
“I’ll take a look,” Sam said. “I can give you a firm answer as soon as I examine it.”
Ewert planted his hands on his desk and glanced at the khaki-and-leather clad man who lounged against the wall. “Leon, here, doesn’t think any single hunter can deactivate it. He tells me I’m going to have to contract with the guild for a team of specialists. Trouble is, my budget won’t stretch that far.”
“It’s big,” Leon drawled. “More ghost energy than I’ve ever seen in one place and I’ve been working underground for damn near fifteen years.”
Virginia glanced at him. Leon Drummond was the Ewert team’s ghost-hunter. He was working on a standard guild contract. He had made it clear that he resented having a private consultant brought in to handle the waterfall problem.
Leon was everything that gave ghost-hunters a bad name, as far as Virginia was concerned. He was arrogant, macho, ill-mannered, and he had poor taste in clothes. His oversized belt buckle was studded with so much amber that if he ever fell into the river, she was pretty sure that he would sink like a stone.
“Like I said, I can give you an answer after I’ve had a look at the waterfall,” Sam said calmly.
“Suit yourself,” Leon muttered.
Ewert leaned wearily back in his chair. “Leon will take you to the site. I can’t allow anyone else into that corridor until the waterfall is cleared. Too dangerous. For God’s sake, don’t do anything stupid. If you and Miss Burch can’t handle it, just say so. My insurance won’t cover any lawsuits.”
Sam nodded as he got to his feet. “We’ll keep that in mind. Ready, Virginia?”
If nothing else, this was going to be interesting, she thought. Not many people got an opportunity to see a real ghost-energy waterfall. In spite of her misgivings, anticipation rose within her.
“Ready,” she said.
With a shrug, Leon managed to straighten himself away from the office wall. He turned and sauntered out through the door without a word. Sam and Virginia followed him outside to where the utility vehicle waited.
The eerie green glow given off by the emerald-hued quartz that lined the alien catacombs always had the same effect on Virginia: It sent a tiny chill of dread and wonder down her spine. The sensation was not a thrill of fear exactly; more a deep, elemental response to that which was not human. She had grown up in the very shadow of the ancient ruins, and she had been aware of her own psychic response to the peculiar energy that resonated within its walls since childhood. But she did not think that she would ever be entirely comfortable in the mysterious tunnels. Some part of her would always feel like an intruder here.
No one knew what the ancient Harmonics had looked like. No pictures or records of physical descriptions had ever been found. None of the art that had survived depicted the vanished beings who had created it. No one could even guess why Harmony’s original inhabitants had built these endless miles of catacombs, most of which had never been charted. But one thing was certain: The business of exploring, mapping, and excavating relics from the ruins was big. And the competition could be fierce.
Virginia sat next to Sam on the second bench of the small, open-sided utility truck. Leon Drummond took the wheel, piloting the vehicle through the maze of intersecting corridors with the aid of an amber-rez locator. He had remained sullenly silent since leaving Ewert’s office.
Sam had not had much to say, either. Virginia studied him out of the corner of her eye. He was playing it cool, she thought. But, then, Sam always played it cool. If he had any doubts about confronting a dangerous waterfall of unstable dissonant energy, he did not allow them to show.
Virginia wanted to ask him why he had not mentioned the illusion trap they had found on their doorstep that morning to Mac Ewert, but she was not about to bring up the subject in front of Leon Drummond.
There was another, more personal matter that she had not yet gotten around to this morning, either, she reminded herself: marriage. She had promised herself that she would tell Sam about her growing doubts, but then had come the business of the illusion trap, and after that they’d had to hurry in order to make the meeting with Ewert.
What with one thing and another, she had found excuses not to deal with the issue of their marriage.
She glanced at the glowing green maw of an intersecting corridor as Leon drove past. There was a warning sign posted at the entrance. Keep Out. Unmapped Zone. Sort of like her engagement, she thought. Another little chill went through her, but this time it had nothing to do with the alien catacombs. She would talk to Sam this evening, she promised herself. Right after they had finished this consulting project.
She could not put it off another day. Her nerves couldn’t take the stress.
She studied the quartz walls as the utility truck traveled along the corridor. The endless green stone passages were interrupted here and there by small, slightly less than human-sized openings that, she knew from experience, led to chambers. Most of the rooms and anterooms discovered in the underground regions of the ancient city were small, but some vast, exotic spaces had been found. Explorers had untrapped chambers so large and elegantly proportioned that many para-archaeologists assumed they had been used for ceremonial functions or royal tombs. But they could just as easily have been employed as underground aircraft hangers for all anyone knew.
Twenty minutes later, Leon slowed the cab and turned into the entrance of a branching tunnel. Virginia caught a glimpse of another warning sign. Keep Out: UDEM Ahead.
Leon brought the cab to a halt and finally deigned to speak. “’The waterfall is down that corridor on the right.”
The announcement was unnecessary. The pulsing, acid-green light of the unnaturally large concentration of ghost energy was already visible. It throbbed at the entrance of the corridor. Virginia gazed at it, amazed. She had never seen that much ghost light in one place in her entire career. She. could only guess at the size of the UDEM itself. It was still out of sight around the corner.
Beside her, Sam moved. He got out of the cab and walked toward the entrance of the branching corridor. His hard face was etched in lines of concentration and keen anticipation. He was looking forward to this, Virginia thought. Well, what else had she expected? He was a ghost-hunter, after all, and this was undoubtedly the most dangerous, m
ost challenging energy specter he had ever been called upon to de-rez. She would probably be feeling the same excitement if they were confronting a particularly complex illusion trap.
Sam paused at the entrance of the tunnel. He glanced back at her over his shoulder “Wait here. I’m going to take a closer look.”
Leon draped his arms on the steering wheel and watched Sam disappear around the corner into the pulsing green light. “This won’t take long. Once he sees the size of that thing, he’ll be back. He’d have to be a fool to try to tackle that sucker on his own.”
Virginia did not like his tone. The last thing she wanted to do was wait here with Leon.
“I’m going with him.” She hopped lightly down from the truck.
Leon scowled. “Are you a hunter, too?”
“No, I’m a tangler.”
“This ain’t no job for a tangler,” Leon said. “That’s a ghost in there, not some wimpy little illusion trap.”
Virginia ignored him. She went quickly toward the tunnel entrance. When she rounded the corner, she was nearly blinded by the fierce, oddly cold glare. She narrowed her eyes against the intense glow and saw Sam. He was silhouetted in front of a cascading wall of pure green energy the waterfall.
It was an astonishing sight. Light tumbled, swirled, and flowed in oceanlike waves that poured in an endlessly circulating fountain from ceiling to floor and back again. The wall of churning energy blocked the entire corridor, which was narrower than most. The interior dimensions were much smaller than those of the outer tunnel where Leon Drummond waited in the truck.
For some reason, the silence of the waterfall struck Virginia as strange, even though she had seen enough ghosts in her time to know that there was rarely much noise associated with them. A few pops and crackles and the occasional hiss of the ice-cold energy constituted the usual range of the sound effects. “It really does look like a waterfall,” she exclaimed as she went forward to join Sam. “You’d almost expect to see a river or a pool of psi energy forming at the bottom.”
Sam frowned at her. “I thought I told you to wait in the truck.”
“Not a chance.” She gazed at the tumbling green waves. “We’re a team, remember?”
“This isn’t illusion energy.”
“Right. You’re the expert on this stuff. I’ll just supervise.”
He hesitated. “I’ve always worked alone.”
“Not anymore.” She turned toward him. “It was your idea to merge our businesses, remember?”
He gave her an odd look. “Yeah. I remember.”
She turned back to the cascades of green fire. “Well? What’s your professional opinion, Mr. Ghost-Hunter? Can you handle it?”
Sam did not answer immediately, but his eyes gleamed in the reflected glow. His mouth curved slightly.
“Does amber resonate?” he asked with just a hint of old-fashioned ghost-hunter arrogance. “Yeah, I can handle it. But I’ll have to de-rezz it one section at a time.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not really one large ghost. It’s composed of a number of smaller UDEMs that have been linked to create the waterfall effect.”
“Aha. That makes sense. Whoever did this also figured out how to anchor it in place, too, like an illusion trap. I’ve never heard of a ghost that didn’t just drift aimlessly.”
Sam moved a little closer to the waterfall. “It’s old. Very, very old. Probably been here for eons.”
“I can believe it.” Virginia shivered. “I’m sure the ancients knew a lot of Halloween tricks that we humans will uncover the hard way.”
“Might as well get to work.” Sam walked slowly across the width of the tunnel, as though measuring the breadth of the waterfall. He came to a halt at one side.
Virginia felt the invisible rush of human psi energy. A lot of it. She had seen Sam work before but never on a project that demanded so much para-talent. She took a respectful step back, not wanting to get in his way or disturb his concentration. De-rezzing this monster ghost was going to take a great deal of focused psi power.
Silence hummed for a few minutes.
Waterfall light flared, glinting off Sam’s strong cheekbones. The green glare transformed the hard planes and angles of his face into an eerie, menacing mask. He gazed, seemingly riveted by the waterfall.
It was probably because he was concentrating so intently on the job at hand that she was the one who heard the high-pitched whine of the utility truck’s engine first. She glanced back over her shoulder, surprised to see that Leon had braved the corridor, after all.
The small truck barreled toward where she stood with Sam in front of the waterfall. It was moving quickly; too quickly. She put up a hand to warn Leon to halt.
Then she realized that Leon was not at the wheel. No one was in the open-sided truck. Someone had rezzed the engine, slammed it into gear, and sent it hurtling down the narrow corridor toward Sam and her. It was a tight fit. Assuming the vehicle continued to travel in a straight line, there would be only a foot of clearance on either side. With a sickening sensation in the pit of her stomach, she realized that even if they could flatten themselves into that small space, it would do them no good. When the truck slammed into the energy waterfall, there would be an explosion. The flashback of ghost energy would crash over them. If they survived the experience, the tide of raw alien energy would fry their brains. She and Sam would not be able to do much more than sit in front of a rez-screen watching sitcoms twenty-four hours a day for the rest of their lives.
If they survived. And that was a very big if.
“Sam.”
He swung around, taking in the situation in a single glance.
“Sonofabitch.” He scooped her up in his arms. “Hang on. Tight.”
She wanted to argue, but there didn’t seem to be much point. There was no place to run. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his chest, filling her senses with the scent of him one last time. If they were going to go, she couldn’t think of anyone she would rather go with than Sam.
“I love you,” she whispered into his shirt.
But she knew that he had not heard her. For one thing, the utility truck was almost upon them now. The fully rezzed engine was screaming too loudly to make even normal levels of conversation possible.
The second thing that made a dramatic farewell impossible was that Sam was projecting an enormous amount of psi energy. She could feel it enveloping her as he held her tightly against his chest. So much power required the use of all of his internal resources, both physical and paranormal. The last thing he could do at that moment was pay attention to what she had muttered into his shirt. It was a wonder he had the strength to hold her in his arms.
She heard the whine of the swiftly advancing truck, felt Sam tighten his arms fiercely around her, and then, impossibly, she was suddenly aware of being surrounded by a rushing sea of alien energy. Ghost energy.
She realized that Sam had chosen to escape the utility truck by leaping through the waterfall with her in his arms.
The acid-green waterfall washed over her in a giant wave. She braced herself for the searing mind burn but, incredibly, the energy did not touch her. She could feel the weight of it pressing on her from all sides, sensed the raw power that seethed in the cascade, but it did not touch her. It was as if she was protected by an invisible envelope.
The world whirled on its axis. She felt a jarring thud that took her breath. She heard Sam grunt and then she felt the cool green quartz beneath her. She realized that they had both landed on the floor of the corridor—on the other side of the waterfall.
Sam rolled with her in his arms, carrying her to the edge of the tunnel. They came up hard against the quartz wall.
Sam released her and got to his feet. He swung around to face the cascade of green energy. Dazed, Virginia sat up slowly, pushing hair out of her eyes. She stared at the waterfall. Sam had carried her through that mass of alien energy. Without a scratch.
Unles
s, of course, this was how you felt after your brain got fried. Maybe her mind hadn’t yet assimilated the fact of its own destruction. Perhaps a lifetime of sitcoms still awaited her. Heaven help her, maybe she would actually enjoy them.
Before she could mention that awful possibility to Sam, she heard the explosion on the other side of the UDEM waterfall. She knew what had happened because she had seen similar events, albeit on a far smaller scale. The utility truck had slammed into the energy wall and been bounced back like a rubber ball. The inevitable blast that accompanied the meeting of an immovable object and an unstoppable vehicle had taken place at the point of impact on the other side of the waterfall.
Here on the back side of the energy cascade, it was business as usual. There was no backwash of energy.
A stunning silence descended. Nothing broke it except the occasional hiss and crackle produced by the tumbling fountain of ghost energy.
“You did it.” Virginia tore her gaze off the waterfall and looked at Sam. “You got us through it in one piece. How in the name of Old Earth did you manage it?”
“I didn’t try to de-rez the whole damn waterfall. Just neutralized a section big enough to allow us to pass through for about thirty seconds.” He spoke absently, as if his thoughts were on something else that was far more important. “Couldn’t hold it any longer than that. At least not while I—” He broke off.
“You mean, you couldn’t de-rez it for more than a few seconds and carry me through it at the same time,” she said. “You don’t have to spell it out. I know how much psi power that little leap through the waterfall must have cost you. I must have felt as heavy as that damn truck in your arms.”
His brows rose. “A gentleman never calls attention to a lady’s weight.”
“I appreciate that.” She frowned. “You must have melted your amber.”
He glanced at his ring. “Yeah, it’s fused. I’ve got a backup chunk, but I won’t be able to use it for a while.”
She looked around warily. The section of corridor in which they stood looked very much like the section on the other side of the waterfall. The same pale, luminous green glow infused the impermeable quartz. Here and there she caught the telltale trace of illusion shadow that marked the concealed door to a hidden room or antechamber. The dizzying maze of intersecting tunnels stretched out ahead as far as she could see.
