After Dark

by Jayne Castle

  But what if Ryan and the shrinks and everyone else were right? What if she really had lost some of her ability to tune into the psi frequencies?

  Stop it, she told herself. You de-rezzed that little illusion trap in the dreamstone jar. That was delicate work. If you could handle that, you’re okay.

  She reached up to touch Fuzz, who was perched on her shoulder. He did not rumble in response as he usually did when she petted him. She sensed his heightened state of alertness and knew that all four of his eyes were open.

  Emmett did not click on the penlight until they reached Matthews’s office. Lydia left him to the task of rummaging through the desk drawers. She opened up all of her own senses, physical and paranormal, searching for the invisible traces of ephemeral energy that indicated an illusion trap.

  It was never easy sorting out psi sensations this close to the Dead City wall. The overwhelming psychic weight of so much alien antiquity masked frequencies that would have been clearer in another section of town.

  She was vaguely aware of Emmett moving around the office, but she concentrated on her job. Quietly she walked back to the door of the interior office and listened. The amber in her bracelet warmed gently against her skin.

  Nothing.

  As if aware of her tension, Fuzz stirred restlessly. She started to reach up to soothe him and froze. Her amber was heating up.

  “There,” she whispered.

  Emmett paused to watch her intently. He said nothing

  Feathery tendrils of dark psi energy swirled in the invisible currents of the air. Easy to miss amid all the other traces of leaked energy in the vicinity, but she had a fix on the trap now.

  “Got it,” she said, her self-confidence returning quickly.

  Emmett closed the drawer he had been investigating and walked toward her. “A stray leak?”

  “Don’t think so. A nice, steady frequency. Or at least as steady as ephemeral energy can be.” She turned on her heel, orienting herself. “Over there, near that other door.”

  “The storage closet.”

  Emmett snapped off the penlight and led the way out of the small office. He walked to the closet door and tried the knob. It did not turn in his hands.

  “Guess that would have been a little too easy,” Lydia said.

  “Guess so.” Emmett took out the small metal tool he had used to get them into the front door. His palm closed over the amber in the handle.

  “There we go,” he said after a moment. “Very sophisticated. Not your ordinary mag-rez lock, even though it looked like one.”

  Urgency swept through Lydia. “Be careful when you open that door.”

  In the dim recesses she could not see the arrogant disgust on Emmett’s face, but she certainly sensed it. He obviously didn’t like having his skills questioned any more than she did.

  “Not real likely there’s an illusion trap inside the closet,” he said coolly. “For one thing, there would be nothing to anchor it.”

  “Don’t forget that jar Chester found. The trap inside was a nasty one. Dreamstone seems to function as an anchor even outside the wall.”

  “Who would leave a priceless piece of dreamstone in a storage closet?”

  Nevertheless, he opened the door with obvious caution. Lydia breathed a little easier when she felt no increase in the intensity of the illusion trap energy.

  Emmett opened the door wider and shone the light inside.

  Fuzz tensed on Lydia’s shoulder; he did not seem to be unduly alarmed, just very alert and watchful. He was in full hunting mode, she thought. So was Emmett.

  For that matter, so was she.

  Emmett’s light revealed several filing cabinets, a couple of cartons of business stationery, and a stack of annual reports.

  Lydia moved into the large closet. “Watch out for the shadows. It’s easy to conceal a trap in them.”

  “I’ve been out of the field for a while, but I’m not a novice at this, Lydia.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Forget it. Feel anything?”

  She moved slowly, staring intently into the patches of darkness between the filing cabinets. The unique psi-energy waves produced by illusion dark were definitely stronger in here, but whenever Emmett aimed the light beam at a suspicious shadow, it vanished.

  She put out a hand and brushed her fingertips along the nearest wall. There was no increase in the resonating frequency. She circled the room, touching each wall in turn. When she came to the east wall, she went still.

  Energy pulsed, stronger here. Dark, illusion energy. She stared at the row of file cabinets that lined the wall.

  “I think the source is behind one of the cabinets, Emmett.”

  He did not question her verdict. “All right. Probably one of the lightly loaded ones. No one wants to shove a heavy file cabinet out of the way every time he goes through a door. Open some drawers and see if you can find one that’s half empty.”

  Lydia pulled out the nearest drawer. It was stuffed with files. She grasped the handle of the next one in line and hauled it toward her. The drawer was filled with aging files. Heavy files.

  “Here we go,” Emmett said softly.

  She looked up to see him standing in front of the last file cabinet. He was gazing thoughtfully into what appeared to be an empty drawer.

  She hurried toward him. “Illusion shadow?”

  He aimed the light inside it. “Doesn’t seem so.”

  She came to a halt and glanced into the darkness of the drawer. “It’s okay.” She concentrated, felt amber warm on her wrist. “The vibes are coming from the wall behind it.”

  “Give me a hand.”

  Fuzz hopped off Lydia’s shoulder and perched on the top of the nearest cabinet to supervise.

  It came away from the wall with unnerving ease. There was nothing behind it. Just more paneling.

  Emmett reached out and traced an almost invisible seam in the cheap wood. Excitement rose again within Lydia, dissolving some of her uneasiness.

  “Oh, boy,” she said.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Emmett replied.

  He pushed on the section of wall. The door swung inward on well-oiled hinges.

  Impenetrable, endless darkness clogged the opening. Emmett played the light across it. The shadows did not disappear. If anything, they seemed to deepen.

  “Stand aside,” Lydia said softly. “This is where I earn the big bucks.”

  Emmett stepped back. “Be my guest.”

  There was no hint of doubt or concern in his voice even though they could both see that the trap was large. She moved forward.

  Her natural ability to resonate with the peculiar wavelengths of illusion energy had been honed by academic training and practical experience. All of her senses went into high rez as she readied herself to tackle the task of untangling the trap.

  With her paranormal instincts she probed the swirling layers of ephemeral energy that concealed the main resonating frequency of the trap. She looked into it with that part of her that saw beyond the normal spectrum of sensation and viewed colors that had no names, felt harmonic pulses that existed on another plane.

  The trap was very ancient. One of the oldest she had ever encountered. It must have been set and de-rezzed any number of times by whoever was using this tunnel entrance, but it did not appear to have lost much of its brute force.

  She found the frequency and began to resonate with it, deliberately sending back the vibrations that would dampen the invisible psychic wave motion. This was the most dangerous part. If she made a mistake, the energy pulses would rebound on her, swamping her senses, sucking her into an alien nightmare.

  Seconds ticked past, but she lost track of the time. The trap was more complex than she had realized. It resisted her dampening efforts. At the same time it seemed to invite a quick, summary action on her part that would derez it instantly. She refused the temptation to rush through the process. More than one trap tangler had been ambushed that way.

  Intuition, skill,
and a delicate touch were the hallmarks of a good tangler.

  She fine-tuned the frequency one more time. And felt the energy of the trap abate.

  “Nice work,” Emmett said.

  The alien darkness was now gone from the tunnel mouth. A flight of glowing green quartz steps descended into the catacombs.

  “A hole-in-the-wall gate, all right,” Emmett said.

  “The wall of the Transverse Wave Youth Shelter must have been built right up against the Dead City wall,” Lydia said.

  “Some ruin rat probably put up the building years ago to conceal the hidden gate.” Emmett started down the stairs. “My guess is that someone else rediscovered it sometime within the past year.”

  Lydia held out her arm to Fuzz. The dust-bunny scampered up her sleeve to her shoulder, and they followed Emmett down the steps.

  When they reached the bottom, Emmett switched off the flashlight. They stood together in silence as their eyes adjusted to the eerie green glow that emanated from the ancient walls. Underground, the green quartz gave off a strange light that had evidently been illuminating the catacombs for millennia.

  “Ready?” Emmett drew an amber-rimmed resonating compass out of one pocket.

  “Ready.”

  Euphoria bounced high inside her, a combination of adrenaline and relief. She was back underground. She had her own compass. And she was okay.

  The curious ambience of the Harmonic catacombs had not changed. Everything felt normal, from the heaviness of sheer age that seemed to seep from the quartz itself to the dim green glow.

  “Screw Ryan and screw the psi-shrinks,” she muttered.

  “Is that your way of assuring me that you aren’t going to crack up?”

  “Yep.”

  “Didn’t think you would,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Looks like we won’t need the compasses,” Emmett said after a while.

  He was right, Lydia thought. There was enough debris, old and new, in the cleared catacomb tunnel to mark a freeway route. She spotted candy wrappers, empty Curtain Cola bottles, and discarded pizza boxes.

  “Very unprofessional,” she sniffed.

  “They’re using kids, remember? Kids eat. A lot.”

  The passageway was a narrow one, unlike some of the larger branches of the catacombs that Lydia had worked during her career with the university teams. In places there was barely room for her and Emmett to walk side by side. As with all of the mysterious underground tunnels, it was impossible to know why the original builders had designed and built them.

  This particular stretch was relatively straightforward in construction. It turned and twisted a couple of times, and there were numerous side branches, but it was easy to stay on the well-beaten, candy-wrapper-strewn path.

  “They probably work as many hours of the day as possible,” Emmett said. “And they’re trying to get the job done as quickly as possible. Every time you reset a trap, you have to have someone untangle it the next time you come through.”

  “Time-consuming. And dangerous with amateurs involved.”

  They moved deeper into the glowing green passage. Their soft-soled boots made no sound on the hard quartz. Occasionally Emmett glanced at Fuzz.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “He’ll give us plenty of warning if he senses anyone coming down the corridor.”

  “If you say so.” Emmett studied another bend in the tunnel. “I’ve never worked with a dust-bunny before.”

  “Fuzz is now a permanent part of my team. One of these days I’ll tell you how he got me out of the catacombs after my Lost Weekend—” She broke off abruptly as she heard Fuzz rumble in her ear. “Uh-oh.”

  Emmett halted. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “I think Fuzz does. Maybe he senses a ghost.”

  “I won’t argue with him. Both of you stay behind me.”

  “Damn it, Emmett—”

  “I’m the ghost-hunter here, remember? You did your job, let me do mine.”

  He had a point. Nevertheless, she reached up for Fuzz and settled him on Emmett’s shoulder. “Take him. The two of you have something in common.”

  “Like what?”

  She smiled. “By the time you see the teeth it’s too late.”

  Emmett raised his eyebrows but said nothing. He turned and, with Fuzz straining forward eagerly from his shoulder perch, rounded the bend in the tunnel.

  Lydia followed, but not too closely. Let the man do his job, she told herself. He let you do yours.

  A moment later Emmett’s voice drifted back around the corner. “Well, hell!”

  Lydia rushed forward. But when she rounded the bend she encountered no ghost light. Instead she saw Emmett standing in front of a large patch of suspicious shadow.

  “Can you get rid of it?” he asked urgently.

  “Sure.” She was getting downright cocky now, she thought. That was not good. She forced herself back into her most professional mode.

  She dealt with the trap quickly. When the shadows vanished, she and Emmett stood looking into a small alcove. A lean young man and a woman with long, filthy hair were stretched out on a dirty mattress, sound asleep. The were both clad in stained, ripped clothing that looked as if it had not been washed in a very long time. Next to them were bottles of Curtain Cola and empty sandwich wrappers. A small dreamstone vase stood at the entrance, visible now that the nightmare trap it had anchored had been de-rezzed.

  Emmett started forward.

  The young man on the floor stirred and opened his eyes. He sat up slowly and blinked several times in groggy disbelief.

  “Uncle Emmett?” His gaze cleared rapidly. Relief transformed his face. “I knew you’d come looking for me.”

  “You took my cabinet.” Emmett reached down to haul the young man to his feet. “What the hell else was I going to do, Quinn?”

  27

  LYDIA GAVE EMMETT a withering glare. He got the message. She thought he was being callous.

  “For heaven’s sake,” she snapped, “this is no time to lecture your nephew about that stupid cabinet.” She turned to Quinn. “Are you all right?”

  Quinn looked slightly baffled by her interference. But he nodded quickly. “Yeah, sure. I’m okay.”

  “Quinn?” The young woman stirred and sat up slowly. “What’s going on? Who are these people?”

  “Meet Uncle Emmett, Sylvia. I told you he’d show up sooner or later.” Quinn helped her to her feet. “Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

  Lydia glanced around. “Anyone else in here besides you two?”

  “No, not at this hour,” Quinn exclaimed angrily. “They keep Sylvia and me locked up with traps when they’re gone. But the others come and go on a schedule. They’re really into the whole thing, y’know? Like to wear little chains with three wavy lines around their necks like scout badges or something. The idiots think they’re going to get rich.”

  “What about guards?” Emmett asked.

  “Couple of hunters right now. There was another one when I first got here, but he got fried and wandered off into a tunnel. Never saw him again. They haven’t had much luck recruiting anyone else.”

  “Probably figured they didn’t need to leave guards to watch us,” Sylvia said, rubbing her arms. “The trap was more than enough to keep us inside that chamber while they were gone.” She looked at Lydia. “You must be a very good tangler.”

  “The best,” Emmett said before Lydia could respond. “What about your amber, Quinn?”

  “Are you kidding? They take it away from us during rest periods. The main entrance is the only branch of the catacomb that’s been pretty well cleared. You can’t move ten feet down any of the side passages without amber.”

  “Where’s the dreamstone?” Lydia asked curiously.

  “Whenever they dig a piece out, they store it in a chamber located in one of the other passages,” Sylvia said. “Except for a couple of places like this one that they use to trap this entrance and the one at the top of the stai
rs.”

  Emmett did not like the dangerous professional interest he saw in Lydia’s eyes. “Forget the dreamstone. We don’t have time to look at it now. We’ll come back for it.”

  “Sure.” She looked briefly wistful, but she did not argue.

  Emmett turned back to Sylvia and Quinn. “Either of you know of another way out of here besides the stairs that lead up into the shelter office?”

  Quinn shook his head. “No. Like I said, the side passages are clogged with traps and ghosts. They haven’t bothered to clear any of the other passages, let alone explore them. All they care about is getting the dreamstone out.”

  Sylvia bit her lip. “They’re almost finished. Quinn and I have been working as slowly as possible, but we weren’t going to be able to stall much longer.”

  “Really glad to see you guys.” Quinn sounded relieved. “We knew they wouldn’t have any more use for us once we finished excavating the site.”

  Emmett put his hand on Quinn’s arm. “You did good, kid. Come on, we’re getting you out of here. Lydia, neither of them has amber, so we’ll put them between us. I’ll take the lead with Fuzz. Got it?”

  “Got it.” She moved into position behind Sylvia and Quinn. “If Fuzz seems to tense or if he sort of growls, be careful.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll pay attention.”

  Emmett started back along the corridor, conscious of the weight of the dust-bunny on his shoulder. Ahead of him nothing moved in the dimly glowing quartz hallway. There were no inexplicable shadows or shimmers in the air. Fuzz seemed alert but not alarmed.

  Emmett was starting to believe they just might make it out of the catacombs without incident when Fuzz froze. Simultaneously he felt the faint tingle of energy.

  “Damn.” He slapped his arm out to the side to make sure none of the other three blundered past him. Quinn stumbled, then caught his balance.

  “What the…?” Quinn began.