by Jayne Castle
“It’s okay. Harry is a professional,” Rachel said. “Not sure exactly what he’s going to do out there, but whatever it is, he’ll do it very, very well.”
Glass exploded in the bedroom. The sound of the shattered window stunned Rachel for an instant. Before she could recover from the shock, there was another explosion and then firelight flashed violently in the room at the end of the short hall.
Darwina hissed. She was fully sleeked out now, her fur flattened against her small body. Her tufted ears were exposed. She vibrated with urgency. It didn’t require a psychic link to know that she was all in favor of heading for the door.
Rachel scrambled to her feet, grabbed her leather jacket off the coat rack and ran toward the kitchen. Darwina’s claws dug into her shoulder.
The inferno gathered energy with a speed that indicated a powerful accelerant had been used in the firebomb. The roar of the flames leaping down the hallway was louder than the thunder of the storm, a great, insatiable beast that would not be satisfied until it had consumed everything in its path.
Darwina chittered wildly.
Rachel flew into the kitchen.
And collided with a solid dark shadow.
“Harry?”
“Change of plans,” he said.
There was something wrong, she thought. She knew he was there. She could hear him and feel the heavy currents of his energy swirling in the kitchen. But she could not see him. The small space was swathed in shadows, but the fire was racing down the hall now, throwing off enough light to reveal a portion of the stove, the counter, and the refrigerator. But she could not see Harry, who was right there in front of her.
But that was not the worst part of the disorienting experience. It was the terrifying chill that rattled her nerves, the icy sensation coalescing rapidly into a blood-curdling terror. Mindless panic threatened to overwhelm her. This was what it felt like when the monsters came out from under the bed. This was what it felt like when you were cornered by the creature from the depths of the Obsidian Lagoon. This was the sensation that overwhelmed you when you woke up inside the coffin, the sensation that destroyed sanity, the sensation that made you welcome death.…
“Rachel,” Harry said. “Trust me.”
It was an order.
This was no monster. This was Harry.
She pulled herself together with an act of will and focused a little talent through her bracelet. Harry’s fierce silver-and-midnight aura blazed reassuringly in the darkness. Her heart was still pounding, but the panic receded quickly. She took a deep breath.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”
His fingers clamped around her wrist and suddenly she could make him out more clearly.
“What did you do?” she whispered, stunned. “You were invisible except for your aura. And the cold sensation—”
“I’m still invisible and so are you as long as we stay in physical contact. The bastards outside will be watching both doors but they won’t be able to see us. Do exactly what I tell you.”
“Right.” She wanted to ask him who they were and how he even knew that there was more than one person waiting out there in the night, but it didn’t seem like a good time.
He opened the kitchen door. Rain and wind blasted into the space. Rachel glanced back and saw that the fire was already devouring the living room. There was something not quite normal about the flames. In the next instant she understood. The colors that burned in the heart of the inferno were from the paranormal end of the spectrum. The fierce oranges and white-hot yellows were streaked with a palette of violent shades of ultralight—magenta, blue, and crimson.
Before she could do more than wonder about the odd nature of the flames, Harry was pulling her through the kitchen door and out onto the porch.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go,” he said.
“I won’t,” she vowed.
At that moment, Harry’s steel-clad grip on her wrist and the feel of Darwina’s small claws digging into her shoulder seemed like the only real things in a night that was spiraling out of control.
Chapter 9
The flames from the burning cabin lit up the immediate vicinity in a hellish glare, the lightning and thunder adding to the nightmarish scene. Rachel could feel her own energy field sparking wildly. The wind lashed at her, clutching at her clothing and hair. The force of the driving rain soaked her to the skin within seconds. Darwina huddled close, no longer growling.
A figure dressed in a gray squall jacket, the hood pulled down low, stood watching the small house burn. Heedless of the pounding rain, he appeared entranced by the spectacle. He had an object clutched in both hands—a gun, Rachel realized. It was pointed at the kitchen door. She could not breathe. She and Harry had to be starkly silhouetted against the flames. But the figure in the slicker gave no indication that he saw them.
We really are invisible, Rachel thought. This is sort of cool. Very high-rez, as the kids would say.
“Vince, the kitchen door’s open,” the man in the squall shouted to his companion. “Looks like he’s trying to come out on this side of the house.”
The voice—shrill and edgy—told Rachel that he was a young male, maybe no more than eighteen or nineteen.
Vince charged around the corner of the house. “Whatever you do, don’t let him get into the woods or we’ll never find him.”
Like his companion, Vince, too, was clearly flying on a wave of adrenaline and nerves but he sounded a little older and maybe a tad more under control.
Harry drew Rachel swiftly down the back steps. The roar of the fire was as loud as the thunder now.
The two men with the guns kept the weapons aimed at the open door. Harry kept the great cloak of his talent swirling around Rachel, Darwina, and himself, wrapping the three of them in deep shadows.
At the bottom of the steps, he pulled Rachel to one side, out of the direct line of fire. But the attention of the two young gunmen did not shift. They kept their weapons aimed at the kitchen door.
“Where is he?” Vince stopped a few feet away from Gray Jacket. “I don’t see him.”
“The door opened a few seconds ago but he never came out.” Gray Jacket sounded suddenly uncertain. “Maybe the fire got him. Shit. What a way to go. Burned alive.”
“Okay. All right.” The taller youth used one hand to wipe rain away from his face. He sounded unnerved but determined. “That was the plan, remember? It worked the way it was supposed to work.”
“Shit,” Gray Jacket said again. “We’ve got to get out of here before the fire department comes.”
“Are you crazy? Nobody is going to report this fire tonight. No one lives close enough to see it. The fire won’t spread beyond the house anyway, not in this rain.”
“Freakin’ weird, isn’t it?” Gray Jacket stared at the blaze. “Never saw a fire burn like that.”
“Yeah, real high-rez, huh?”
Rachel looked at the faces of the two gunmen as Harry drew her past them. The pair stood only a few yards away, oblivious to anything except the fire. In the glare of the flames it was plain to see that both appeared astonished by what they had done.
Gray Jacket jerked and spun around in a tight circle, as if searching for an enemy.
“Did you feel that?” he asked.
“What?” Vince turned quickly, searching the shadows. “What happened?”
“Forget it,” Gray jacket said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Harry came to an abrupt halt. Rachel, her attention on the firebombers, stumbled into him. Darwina scrambled to keep her balance.
“Don’t move,” he said. “You’re very close to the psi-fence. With all the hot energy bouncing around tonight, you could accidently stumble into the Preserve. If that happens, it might take me hours to find you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised. “But what about you?”
“I’ll be right back.”
He released her and promptly vanished. The frightening cold sensati
on returned, but now that she knew what was causing it, she could suppress it. Darwina muttered darkly in her ear.
The gatekeeper’s cabin was fully engulfed now. The roof had fallen in and the walls were crumbling. The stone fireplace was the only thing still standing. The fire beast was consuming its prey, flesh and bone.
Rachel reached up to touch Darwina, seeking comfort. “It’s okay, I told you, he’s a professional. This is what he does.”
But she knew that it was herself she was trying to reassure. Harry was a powerful talent but he was going up against two mag-rez guns.
Chapter 10
Harry kicked up his senses and went swiftly back across the clearing. His talent cloaked him in shadows at any distance because it enveloped him. But he knew from hard experience that others did not feel the shock waves of black ice that he projected when he went into the shadows until he was within a radius of about five to fifteen feet, depending on the sensitivity of the target.
Gray Jacket reacted first. A visible spasm of alarm arced through him. He jerked like a puppet on a string and staggered around in a small circle, searching the darkness.
“There it is again,” he shouted above the roar of the fire and thunder.
“What?” Vince shouted back.
“There’s something out there. You heard the talk in town, all that stuff about monsters in that place they call the Preserve.”
“Just stories for kids,” Vince said. “Come on, we’re finished here. I want to get out of this rain. Got a long walk ahead of us back to the buggy.”
“I’m telling you, there’s something out there.” Terror shivered in Gray Jacket’s voice. “Can’t you feel it?”
“Stop talking like that. Are you going crazy on me?”
“The cold. Don’t you feel it?”
“It’s not cold tonight,” Vince said. “You’re losin’ it, man. Come on, we need to leave now.”
Harry was close enough to Vince to catch the frequencies that linked directly to his darkest dreams, the place where his nightmares originated.
Gray Jacket screamed, a high-pitched keening cry of fear. He stumbled backward, flailing wildly, whirled, and started to run blindly toward the fire.
That was the problem with hitting an individual’s nightmare button, Harry thought. The results were unpredictable. Some people simply fainted. Others, like Gray Jacket, lost all touch with reality and did something stupid like run into a burning building.
Harry went after him. The kid ran like a demon was on his heels but he couldn’t outrun the surge of dark energy that Harry slammed into him. This time the icy tide overwhelmed him. The kid fell to his knees and then sprawled, unconscious, in the wet grass.
Vince lurched toward his comrade and then stopped a short distance away.
“What’s wrong, man? Get up. We gotta get out of here.”
“Your turn,” Harry said quietly.
Vince screamed and tried to flee the unseen wave of darkness that swept over him. He got two shaky steps before he fell to his knees.
Harry dissolved the cloak of shadows he had used to conceal himself. Vince stared up at him in stupefied horror.
“No, you’re dead. You’re dead. You just burned up in that house.”
Evidently watching his intended victim materialize out of the night was the last straw. Vince’s eyes rolled back in his head. He crumpled, unconscious, to the ground.
Nothing like having a talent for becoming someone else’s worst nightmare, Harry thought. Hell of a career path. But that was nothing compared to what it did to a guy’s love life.
He sensed the first stirring of the fever when he leaned down to collect the guns. The rush of unnatural awareness and the rising heat in his aura caught him unaware, blindsiding him. It shouldn’t be happening. He hadn’t used that much energy to take down the two firebombers.
The flames, he thought. There had been some kind of paranormal energy in the damn fire. It had stirred up his talent, making it harder to control. He had used more energy than was necessary and now he was going to pay the price.
It promised to be a very bad night.
“Just what I needed.”
He focused on the two things he had to do before the psi-fever took him.
Chapter 11
“What do you mean, you’re going to leave me here and come back for me in the morning?” Rachel demanded. “Are you crazy?”
They were standing in the clearing at the back of what was left of the house. The fierce fire was rapidly burning itself out. The rain was still coming down in heavy sheets, drowning what was left of the blaze. Harry was grim-faced and his eyes were psi-hot.
He had secured the two gunmen, hand and foot, and stashed them in the old woodshed. The small windowless outbuilding at the edge of the clearing had not been touched by the fire.
“It’s better this way,” he said. “Trust me.”
“I am not going to spend the rest of the night alone in your car,” she said.
“I don’t have time to explain, Rachel. Hell, I don’t even know how to explain. All I can tell you is that what’s happening to me is a side effect of my talent. It will wear off in a few hours. Now get into the damn car and stop arguing. I don’t have much time left.”
“You’re experiencing some major after-burn, that’s all. It happens sometimes when a dark-end talent goes too far out on the spectrum. This can’t be the first time you’ve been through this.”
“No, but it shouldn’t have happened this time. The fact that it’s kicking in so hard makes me think it’s going to be worse than usual. You do not want to be anywhere in the vicinity when the burn peaks, believe me.”
“If you think I’m going to let you wander around in the woods in this condition and in this weather, with the Preserve only a few yards away, you really are out of your mind. We will both spend the night in the SUV.”
“No.” There was a flat finality in his voice. “I need to find a place to wait out the fever. You’ll be safe inside the car. I won’t be far away. I’ll keep an eye on you.”
Rachel jacked up her senses and took another look at the heat in his aura. The silver lightning and the shadows were hot and getting hotter, but there was no instability.
“What are you so worried about?” she asked. “Psi-fever isn’t contagious.”
“My kind of post-burn fever is different. I’m not worried that you’ll catch anything from me. That’s not the problem.”
“The problem is that we’re standing out here in the rain, arguing. We can finish this conversation inside the SUV.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.”
“Oh, yes, there is.” She raised one arm and aimed a finger at the SUV. “You’re going to get into the damn car.”
“No.”
“Yes. Harry, listen to me. I can deal with your fever. Balancing auras is what I do, remember?”
“My aura is different,” he growled. “That’s why my fever is different.”
“Powerful, yes, and there are some unusual currents coming from the far end of the spectrum, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“How?”
“I’d really rather do this somewhere out of the rain, but since you’re going to be stubborn—”
She heightened her talent so that she could view the whole spectrum of his aura. The currents were hot and blazing, but she was quite certain she could deal with the over-rezzed frequencies.
Bracing herself for the jolt she knew was coming, she pushed a little energy through her charms, reached out, and took Harry’s hand. He flinched, as if the shock of physical contact had jarred him more than it did her. She didn’t know what he was experiencing but she found herself warding off waves of glacial-cold energy. For a few heartbeats she was completely disoriented. The horrible, mindless panic she had experienced earlier threatened to return, but she steadied her senses quickly and went to work.
She was vaguely aware of Darwina chortling a cheerful farewell. The dust bunny bounded down to the
ground with Amberella and disappeared into the trees.
Rachel pulled hard on her talent and her Academy training and pulsed the necessary counterpoint waves into the flood tide of Harry’s graveyard-cold energy. The charms on her bracelet brightened like molten silver. The crystals glowed, creating a sparkling rainbow of ultralight.
The flood tide of coffin ice receded quickly and resumed its normal pattern.
Harry’s fingers tightened convulsively around hers. He stared at her with eyes that were still a little hot.
“What the hell did you just do to me?” he asked. His voice was rough and a little hoarse.
“What I was trained to do,” she said. “I rebalanced your aura. You should start feeling more in control now.”
He looked down at their clasped fingers, uncomprehending.
“Yes,” he said.
“Now can we get into the car?”
He took a deep breath and scrubbed rain off his face. “Will the effects last?”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “All I did was push a psychic reset button to return your frequencies to normal. You would have gotten there on your own in time but I speeded up the cooling process. Does this kind of thing happen to you a lot?”
“No, not unless I go a lot deeper into the zone and stay there for a while.”
“As you said, it was probably the result of all the wild energy blowing around out here tonight. We can discuss the para-biophysics of recent events if you like but I’d rather not do that while we’re standing out here in the rain waiting to get struck by lightning.”
“Lightning. Good point.” Harry wrapped one hand around her wrist and started toward the SUV. “Can’t risk trying to drive you home until this storm is over. There will be trees and branches down everywhere. We’ll wait it out in the car.”
They went quickly through the downpour toward the big vehicle parked in the drive. Harry opened the front passenger door. Clutching her jacket in one hand, Rachel grasped one of the handholds and started to hop up into the cab. She paused, one foot inside the SUV, the other dangling in midair, looked toward the dark woods.
