by Jayne Castle
He freed himself, tumbled her onto her back, and came down between her legs.
She laughed, and then he was back inside her, plunging deep, and laughter gave way to the sounds of hot, urgent need. The fever built swiftly within her. She clutched at his damp shoulders.
The tightness inside her came undone in shivery currents that flooded through her and through her aura.
He followed her over the edge with a hoarse shout of exultant release.
Chapter 22
SOME TIME LATER HE FELT HER STIR BESIDE HIM.
“Where are you going?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“I forgot to lock up Vincent’s paints,” Lyra said.
He opened one eye and watched her pull on a robe. “You’re afraid Vincent is going to get carried away?”
“Painting is just a game to him. Everything’s a potential canvas. That’s why I keep his brushes padlocked when I’m not around to supervise. One of these days, though, he’s going to figure out how to de-rez the lock the same way he discovered how to get the caps off the brushes.”
She disappeared through the sliding screens. A moment later a light came on in the kitchen. He heard a horrified wail.
“Vincent. What have you done? Do you realize how hard it’s going to be to get all this paint off the floor? If Mr. Ashwell sees this, we’ll be sleeping in the alley.”
A cupboard door opened.
“I just hope it hasn’t had a chance to dry completely,” Lyra said. “If that’s the case, I may be able to get most of it up with water. If I have to resort to paint remover, it will mean refinishing the floors. Do you know how much that will cost?”
Water ran in the kitchen sink.
Cruz got to his feet and pulled on his trousers. Force of habit made him pause to collect the knife sheath from under the bed and buckle it around his lower leg. Sweetwater men always felt naked when they were unarmed. There was an old saying in the family: talent is great, but never forget the backup.
Lyra was at the sink, speaking sternly to Vincent, who was sitting on the counter.
“We talked about this,” Lyra said. “You can’t just paint everything in sight.”
Vincent bounced up and down and made cheerful chittering noises, evidently unconcerned.
Lyra sighed. “I know, it’s my fault. I should have locked up the brushes.”
Cruz grinned. “Need some help cleaning up the new masterpiece?”
He was halfway across the room when he felt the dark energy whisper through him. He jacked up his senses. At the same instant Vincent sleeked out. His hunting eyes appeared.
“Hit the lights,” Cruz said quietly.
Lyra did not question the order.
Faint noises sounded from the balcony of the adjoining loft.
Cruz reached the kitchen in two strides. He put his mouth very close to Lyra’s ear. “You said the apartment next door was empty.”
“Yes,” she said, speaking just as quietly.
“There’s someone on that balcony. Stay down. Don’t move.”
He pushed her into a crouching position behind the counter and crossed the short distance to the sliding glass door. There he flattened himself against the wall and quietly unlocked the slider.
Vincent disappeared from the counter and reappeared on the floor near Cruz’s left foot. He crouched there on his hind legs, attention fixed on the balcony.
Together they waited.
There was a soft thud when a dark figure jumped from the neighboring balcony onto Lyra’s balcony. A few seconds later a second man landed.
Cruz slid open the window and moved outside. Vincent darted past him, going straight for one of the would-be intruder’s ankles.
The man yelped in shock and pain. He kicked out wildly. Vincent went flying through the air and landed nimbly on the railing.
“What the hell?” one of the men hissed. “What was that?”
The second man spotted Cruz.
“Shit,” he snarled. He raised a mag-rez.
Simultaneously, green fire flared on the balcony as the first man generated an energy ghost.
Cruz laid down a blanket of psi fog, more than enough to douse the intruders’ senses. The ghost went out immediately. This time, at least, Lyra was out of range.
Both men yelled in panic as their senses evaporated. They floundered wildly. Vincent, clearly unaffected by the fog, just like last time, leaped from the railing onto the shoulder of the nearest man, going for the throat.
“Vincent, no,” Cruz said. “I need them alive.”
Lyra appeared in the doorway. “My God, Cruz.”
She was too close, Cruz thought. She should have been swamped with the psi fog. But she was on her feet.
Deprived of their senses, the two men continued to reel about. One stumbled and collapsed. The other groped for the railing, missed, and nearly went over the edge. Cruz grabbed him just in time.
“I need something to secure them,” Cruz said. “Get your jungle pack. There’s some rope inside.”
“Right,” Lyra said. She turned to hurry toward the bedroom.
She should have been reeling and flailing.
“How are you doing that?” he demanded.
“Turns out amethyst is good for a few things besides making jewelry. It just took me a couple of tries to figure out how to use it to counter the effects of your talent on my aura.”
She disappeared back into the loft.
He wanted to demand more of an explanation. She was, after all, the only person he had ever met who could resist the effects of the senses-numbing fog. But he had priorities.
He moved in on the first man, but before he could strike the blow that would have rendered the attacker unconscious, the nightmare struck.
The world suddenly warped around him. He was plunged into a bizarre dreamscape.
The buildings and rooftops of the Quarter came alive, twisting into strange, unnatural shapes that melted and folded in on themselves. Some rose to impossible heights. Others shrank and wavered out of existence. The familiar glow of the Dead City wall grew more intense, illuminating the world with ultraspectrum hues that pulsed in eerie patterns. The ethereal towers inside the wall acquired ever more fantastical and distorted shapes. The balcony undulated like a churning ocean. He staggered to his feet and grabbed for the railing. He missed and went down hard on one knee.
His hand brushed against the mag-rez. Instinctively he swiped at it. He could not use it in his current state, but he had to keep it out of the hands of the attackers. He heard the gun skid across the tiles, but he could not tell if it had gone over the side of the balcony as he had intended.
The next thing he knew, he was staring at the stars, seeing them as he had never before. The twin moons were too bright, too close, threatening to sear his senses. He turned his head to the side to avoid the intense light and found himself looking through the bars of Lyra’s balcony straight across to the balcony of the adjoining apartment.
Something moved on the other balcony, a creature unlike anything he had ever seen. Whatever it was, it melted and re-formed and melted again.
Aliens, he thought. They have finally come back. Maybe they have been here all along.
“Ghost shit,” one of the attackers whispered, awed. “He’s down.”
The strange being on the other balcony spoke, its voice echoing darkly as though it came from the depths of a crypt.
“Destroy him,” the voice ordered. “Get the woman.”
Two distorted forms loomed over Cruz, blocking his view of the alien on the other balcony.
“You deal with him,” one of the men said. “I’ll grab the woman.”
“Shit, there’s that rat again. It bit me once. I’m probably gonna need shots.”
“Shoot it. Shoot it.”
“I can’t. The gun’s gone. The SOB pushed it over the side of the balcony.”
“Cruz.” Lyra’s voice rose in a scream of fear and rage. “What did you do to him, you bastards?�
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“Forget the rat,” one of the men said. “Drop the SOB over the side. I’ll get her.”
The second figure started toward Cruz. He halted abruptly. “Watch out. She’s got something in her hands. A lamp.”
Glass exploded.
Forget the alien, Cruz told himself. The two men were trying to grab Lyra. He had to stay focused here. Time to prioritize.
Ignoring the nightmarish shapes and images around him, he rezzed all the psi he could summon and pushed it through the black amber of his ring. Somehow he knew, with his hunter’s intuition, that the only hope he had of protecting Lyra was to push back the strange energy that was being used to keep him locked in the eerie hallucination.
“Let me go,” Lyra shrieked.
“The rat is back,” the first man yelled. “It bit me.”
“Hell with the rat, the woman just bit me.”
Cruz pulled more energy, reaching for his limits and those of the obsidian.
The nightmare landscape wavered and suddenly dissolved. The world came back into focus. The creature on the balcony fled back into the adjoining apartment and disappeared.
Cruz knew the precise instant when the obsidian shattered into myriad shards. He shut down his senses, cutting off the rush of heavy energy as fast as possible, but he was a heartbeat too late, and he knew it.
The shards of fractured obsidian had already had a chance to act as individual psychic mirrors, reflecting his own energy back at his aura in chaotic waves that were already starting to inundate his senses. He’d been warned of the theoretical risks involved with pushing obsidian too far. Now he was going to find out the hard way if the experts were right.
But first he had to save Lyra.
He staggered to his feet and saw the two men trying to maneuver a wildly struggling Lyra toward the front door of the loft. One of them had a hand over her mouth. They were both using their boots to try to fend off Vincent.
Cruz jacked up what was left of his exhausted senses, hoping for one last surge of adrenaline to help him push more energy through the backup amber in his watch. Nothing happened. He knew then that he had five, maybe ten minutes left before he went unconscious.
He yanked the knife out of his ankle sheath and went forward.
“I don’t believe it,” one of the attackers snarled. “The son of a bitch is back on his feet. Something went wrong. He was supposed to stay down.”
“Shit, he’s got a—”
Cruz reached the first man before he could finish the sentence. He drove the knife deep, aware even as he struck that his aim was off. The aftereffects of the psi drain were already hitting him, playing havoc with his coordination and strength.
There was, nevertheless, a satisfying grunt of pain and fear. He jerked the knife out. Blood flowed over his hands. The man collapsed.
The second man dropped Lyra and ran for the door, Vincent on his heels.
“Vincent, come back,” Lyra shouted. “Let him go.”
Cruz was vaguely aware of the sound of the front door slamming open. He heard heavy boots pounding down the stairs. The second intruder was gone.
He sank slowly to his knees, the bloody knife still gripped in his hand. The green-hued shadows of the loft started to turn gray.
“Cruz.” Lyra crouched beside him. “Oh, my God, you’re hurt. What happened? Did they shoot you? I didn’t hear a gun. Cruz, stay with me, here. I’m calling an ambulance.”
There was a familiar chittering sound in his ear. Vincent sounded anxious. Cruz forced himself to concentrate. There was one more thing he had to do, something important; the most important thing he had ever done in his life.
“No ambulance,” he whispered. “Call Jeff.”
“But Cruz, you’re bleeding.”
“Not my blood. The other guy’s. Call Jeff. Tell him I shattered obsidian. Tell him to take you to Amber Island.”
“I can’t go to your family’s compound.”
“Yes,” he said, “you can and you will. I need to know you’re safe, and that’s the only place I can be sure you will be. Get your phone.”
He heard the soft, melodic clash of the charms on her bracelet as she hurried across the room. A moment later she was back. She gripped his hand.
“Got it,” she said. “But let’s get something clear here. I’m staying with you. If we go anywhere, we go together. Do you hear me, Cruz Sweetwater?”
He thought he felt a gentle surge of energy through her hand; her energy, not his own. For a few more precious seconds the darkness retreated. He was probably hallucinating again.
“Call Jeff,” he repeated.
“I’m calling Jeff.” With her free hand, she fumbled with the phone. “But whatever you do, don’t let go. Do you hear me, Sweetwater?”
“I hear you.” He closed his eyes. “Nag, nag, nag.”
“I’ve got a talent for it.”
The night engulfed him. The anxious chittering of a dust bunny and the sound of Lyra’s charms followed him into the darkness.
Chapter 23
MOMENTS AFTER SHE MADE THE CALL TO JEFF, LYRA HAD a front-row seat from which to observe the dazzlingly efficient and astonishingly powerful machinery of the Sweetwater empire in action.
Jeff burst through the open front door of her apartment ten minutes after she called. He was not alone. He had a phalanx of Amber Inc. Security operatives with him.
“Hurry,” Lyra said. She was still crouched beside Cruz, gripping his hand.
“Got another man down over here,” someone said. “Still alive.”
“That’s one of the bad guys,” Lyra said. “The other one got away. Cruz is the one who needs help.”
Someone threw the lights. Lyra saw a lot of blood on the hardwood floor. She wondered, in a distant way, if it would be harder to remove than Vincent’s paint.
A stoutly built woman with short, spiky blonde hair went down on one knee beside Cruz and took out a stethoscope. A stretcher appeared. Within seconds there were so many people in the small loft that Lyra was afraid Vincent would get squashed beneath an Amber Inc. Security boot. With her free hand she picked him up and plopped him on her shoulder. His red beret had evidently come off during the battle with the intruders. He clutched it tightly in one paw.
“How is the boss?” Jeff said. His face was grim. “Is he still alive?”
Lyra realized that he was speaking to the woman holding the stethoscope to Cruz’s chest. Alarm zapped through her.
“Of course Cruz is alive,” she said before the med tech could respond. “Why wouldn’t he be? He’s going through some kind of burn-and-crash syndrome just like ghost hunters do when they melt amber. He needs some time to recover, that’s all.”
“The boss didn’t just melt amber,” Jeff said, his voice unnaturally flat. “When you called me you told me that he had shattered obsidian.”
“That’s what he said to tell you, but I assumed that meant he had melted his obsidian amber.”
“He told you that he uses black amber?” Jeff said, sounding startled.
“I’m a Dore. I know amber.”
“Sure,” Jeff said. “That figures. Thing is, black amber is so rare most people don’t recognize it. When they see it, they assume it’s some other gemstone.”
“What’s the problem here?” she asked tightly.
“Maybe you don’t know as much about obsidian as you think,” Jeff said. “You don’t melt it when you over rez it. You shatter it.”
“What do you mean?” She looked down at the black stone in Cruz’s ring. “There are no fractures in the obsidian.”
“Never mind; I’ll explain later. We’ve got to get him to the clinic.”
“You mean an emergency room,” Lyra said.
The med tech looked up. “No, a regular ER won’t know what to do with this kind of situation. The Arcane Society runs a private clinic. The doctors there are his best chance.”
Lyra tightened her grip on Cruz’s hand and pulsed a little more energy through her f
ingers.
“Okay, you’re starting to scare me,” she whispered. “The clinic sounds like a good idea. But I’ll warn you, Cruz was adamant about both of us going to your family’s compound on Amber Island, Jeff. When he wakes up and finds out that he’s somewhere else, he’s liable to be pissed.”
“Hell.” Jeff hesitated but only for a fraction of a second. “He must have been really worried about you.”
“Yes, well, those two men were trying to kidnap me,” she said quietly.
“In that case you are definitely going to Amber Island. We’ll take the boss to the clinic.”
“Sorry,” Lyra indicated the hand she was using to hang on to Cruz. “Where he goes, I go. Take your pick, Amber Island or the clinic, but either way, we stick together, at least until he wakes up.”
The med tech sat back on her heels. Lyra could see her name tag. Benson.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Benson said. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but Mr. Sweetwater appears to be stable. I vote we don’t disrupt the situation. If you take them both to Amber Island, the clinic can send a team to meet you there.”
“Right,” Jeff said. “Amber Island it is.”
The med tech who was crouched beside the fallen attacker spoke. “What do you want us to do with this guy? He’s alive. I’ve got the bleeding stopped. He’ll probably make it if he gets to an ER.”
“He goes to the Guild clinic,” Jeff decreed. “They can handle him without having to notify the cops.”
He continued giving orders with a precision and speed that would have done credit to a professional Federal Bureau of Psi Investigation agent.
There was one more skirmish a short time later when Lyra got into the back of the unmarked ambulance with Vincent on her shoulder.
“Sorry, ma’am, I can’t let any animals ride back here with the patient,” one of the techs said.
“The bunny’s with me, and I’m with Sweetwater,” Lyra said.
The tech opened his mouth to argue, but Benson shook her head.
“It’s okay,” Benson said.
“Yes, ma’am.” The tech stood back.
Benson got in and went to work slapping monitors on Cruz.
