by Jayne Castle
A scream rang out, so high and shrill, Celinda was amazed it didn’t shatter the glass in the chandeliers. It emanated from the female member of the hotel staff.
“What are those things?” the woman shrieked. She dropped her tray and leaped back from the table. “There’s one in the cake. Oh my God, there’s another one in the champagne fountain.”
The other staff member stared first at the cake and then at the fountain. “What the hell? They look like dust bunnies.”
“I’ll go get the manager,” the woman yelped. “I don’t get paid enough to deal with stuff like this.”
She set out at a dead run, heading toward a set of swinging doors at the far end of the room.
Celinda got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She looked at the buffet table. “Uh-oh.”
“Hang on,” Walker said, pulling out a small flash-rez camera. “I want to get a picture of this. Too bad Rachel and Josh missed it.”
On the buffet table Araminta was deep into what remained of the four-tiered pink and white wedding cake. She was nibbling on a pink icing rose. There was more pink and white icing matted on her fur.
Max was perched on the edge of the multilevel glass fountain that had been used to display and serve the pink champagne. He seemed to be wobbling a little. As Celinda watched in horror, he swayed back and forth and then went headfirst into the fountain bowl, splashing champagne everywhere. He started swimming.
“Little guy can’t hold his liquor,” Davis explained.
Chapter 23
“I GUESS ARAMINTA RAN OUT OF ROOM SERVICE FOOD,” Celinda said. “I should have checked on her a couple of hours ago to see if she needed more.”
“Look on the bright side,” Davis said. He kept his eyes on the night-shrouded highway. “They didn’t stage their surgical strike on the buffet table until after the bride and groom had left. No harm was done to the Great Pink Wedding. After a while you’ll laugh about it.”
“Araminta ruined that beautiful cake.”
“It had already served its purpose.”
“But Rachel wanted to keep the top tier as a souvenir. The hotel staff was supposed to box it up and freeze it. That’s the tier Araminta went after first.”
“Look, if you’re that worried about it, we can pay to have another cake made,” he said soothingly. “Just that one tier. The baker can box it up and freeze it, and it will be waiting for your sister when she and Josh get back from their honeymoon.”
Celinda looked dubious. “It would be expensive.”
“So what? We’ll put it on the Guild’s tab.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her mouth twitch a little.
“The bill you plan to send to Mercer Wyatt when this is over is going to be very interesting,” she said. “I assume you itemize?”
“Sure.”
“I can see it now. One single-tier wedding cake decorated with pink roses and, oh, by the way, there’s a para-sociopath member of the Frequency Guild Council after your relic.”
“Wyatt’s been around awhile. He takes these things in stride.”
“You know him well enough to be sure of that?”
“I’ve worked for him before. He won’t complain as long as I hand over the relic along with the bill.”
Her wry little smile faded. She leaned her head against the back of the seat and appeared to sink into a state of deeper gloom. “I wonder what the odds of that happening are?”
“We’ll get it back.”
She turned her head to look at him, her face lit a pale gold by the amber lights of the dashboard. “You really think Wyatt will take care of Benson Landry?”
“Landry is ghost bait. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
She seemed to brighten a little at that.
Night lay heavily on the vast swath of lonely desert between Frequency and Cadence. Silver moonlight gave the landscape an eerie luminescence that was as mysterious and exotic as the glow of alien quartz. He could see one other vehicle in the rearview mirror. Occasionally they passed cars coming from the opposite direction. But mostly they had the road to themselves.
He liked being out here in the desert at night, he thought; he liked being alone with Celinda. And the dust bunnies, of course.
The departure from the hotel had been somewhat delayed due to Celinda’s insistence on taking both dust bunnies upstairs to rinse them off in the bathroom sink. By the time Araminta and Max were clean and fluff-dried and the overnight bags, together with the infamous pink bridesmaid’s dress, had been packed into the trunk of the Phantom, it was close to nine o’clock. But he figured that if he pushed things a little, they would still be back in Cadence by midnight.
The two miscreants were napping. Araminta, stuffed with wedding cake, was stretched out on Celinda’s lap, four eyes closed. Max was on his back on the narrow deck beneath the rear windshield. He was sound asleep, all six legs projecting straight up out of his fur. Whenever Davis checked the rearview mirror he could just make out the shapes of six small paws silhouetted against the headlights of the vehicle behind the Phantom.
Celinda looked back at Max, worried. “Do you think he’ll suffer any ill effects from the champagne?”
“No. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten rezzed up on booze. He’ll be fine. Dust bunny metabolism seems to be fairly efficient.”
Celinda made a face. “I guess it was sort of funny when you think about it.”
He laughed. “Glad your brother got the pictures. Twenty years from now, those are going to be everyone’s favorite shots of the wedding.”
The headlights of the Phantom picked up a faded billboard advertising one of the old roadside attractions they had passed on the trip to Frequency: Only Ten Miles to the Haunted Alien Ruins.
“Dad used to stop there sometimes when we were kids,” Celinda said. “It broke up the long drive. Ever seen it?”
“No. I’ve explored some outpost ruins near Crystal City, though.”
“This one doesn’t even qualify as an outpost. It was probably more like a restroom stop for the aliens. Whatever artifacts were there originally were carted off years ago by ruin rats. But it was fun to visit.”
She fell silent. Davis checked the rearview mirror again. The lights of the following car were closer now. He could make out the distinctive grill of a powerful Oscillator 600.
The more traditional Guild men favored Oscillators.
As he watched, another big vehicle appeared behind the Oscillator.
An icy tingle of awareness disturbed the intimacy that he had been savoring for the past hundred and forty miles. Experimentally, he rezzed the accelerator.
The two vehicles behind the Phantom fell back for a few seconds. But a moment later they regained the lost ground and then some.
He fed a little more power to the Phantom’s finely tuned engine. The car picked up more speed. The two sets of lights in the rearview mirror kept pace.
“Looks like we may have a problem,” he said quietly.
“What’s wrong?” Celinda said. She saw that he was watching the rearview mirror and turned in her seat to look back. “You’re worried about that car behind us?”
“It’s been following us since we left Frequency. Now there’s a second car.”
“What’s so strange about that? This is the main highway to Cadence.”
“I noticed the Oscillator a few miles outside of Frequency when the traffic thinned out. But it didn’t close the distance between us until a few minutes ago. Now the second vehicle has and is moving in fast.”
She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You think it might be Landry, don’t you?”
“More likely some of his men. I doubt that he’d want to risk being directly involved.”
“In what?”
“Getting rid of me and grabbing you.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.” She turned back around in her seat and watched the highway very steadily through the windshield. “But this snazzy car of
yours can outrun them, right?”
“Sure. Problem is, I think this is probably going to be a pincer move. That’s the way I’d set it up if I were Landry.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“See the two vehicles coming toward us?”
“Yes.”
“They just appeared a few minutes ago. Got a hunch they’ve been sitting out here in the desert, waiting for us.”
She looked at the advancing headlights. “You mean they’re trying to ambush us right here on a public highway?”
“I think that’s the plan. It’s not a bad one, either. Got to give Landry credit for strategy.”
“I hate to ask this, but have we got one?”
“A plan?” He watched another faded billboard come up in the headlights: Last Chance to See the Haunted Alien Ruins. “We do now.”
“What are we going to do?”
“What everyone does on a long road trip. We’re going to visit a roadside attraction. Hang on.”
He rezzed the brakes, cranked the wheel, and sent the Phantom into a screaming, smoking turn. They shot down a pitted and pocked dirt road toward the ruin site. The Phantom bounced and jolted violently. Celinda clutched Araminta with one hand and used her other hand to brace herself against the dash.
Max awoke with a start when he was jolted down off the rear deck. He disappeared from view for a few seconds. The next thing Davis knew, he had scrambled up onto the back of the driver’s seat to take in the action.
Araminta wriggled free of Celinda’s restraining hand and fluttered up behind her. Both dust bunnies suddenly looked very excited. Born hunters, he thought.
“We’ve got a couple of little adrenaline junkies with us,” Celinda said, glancing at the bunnies.
“When you get right down to it, they’re predators.” Davis maneuvered to avoid a particularly deep crack in the pavement. “Goes with the territory.”
The road was bad. The Phantom was catching a little air at the top of some of the higher ruts. He had no choice but to decrease his speed somewhat.
Up ahead, maybe a couple of miles or more, he could just make out a faint green glow in the night.
“Looks like someone left the lights on for us,” he said.
Celinda twisted around in her seat to look through the back window again. “Those four cars are all stopped on the highway. Maybe they won’t try to follow us. No, wait, one of them is making the turn. Damn, they’re all coming after us.”
“Those vehicles are a lot heavier than the Phantom. With luck they’ll have to slow down more than we will in order to deal with this road.”
“We’re headed for the old ruins?”
“Yes. Got a feeling the folks behind us are going to be armed with those illegal mag-rezes that evidently anyone with enough cash can buy on the streets these days. We’ve only got one between us. Bad odds.”
“I should have brought mine.”
“In hindsight that would have been a good idea, yes. Next time we go to a wedding, we’ll have to remember to pack it.”
She ignored that. “We’re headed for the ruins so that we can use the quartz wall as a barricade, right?”
“No.” Forced to slow down a little more, he reluctantly put the Phantom into a lower gear. “We’re heading for the ruins because we need to get underground before the shooting starts.”
“What good will that do?”
“Mag-rezes, like most high-tech gadgets that use magnetic resonating technology don’t work very well underground. The heavy psi down below screws up their mechanisms. It makes the guns just as dangerous to whoever is rezzing the trigger as they are to the target. That’s why ghost hunters don’t carry them.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “Come to think of it, I believe the little guy who sold me my gun did say something about not trying to use it underground. He told me it might explode in my hand.”
“Any chance that once we get inside the wall at the site you’ll remember where the entrance to the catacombs is?”
“Yes.” She kept her attention on the lethal parade of headlights behind the Phantom. “It’s inside the tower. There’s a staircase that seems to go down forever, and there are a lot of twists and turns in it. When you stand at the top, you can’t see the bottom. Really spooky. I think that’s why the attraction never made a lot of money for the two men who ran it.”
“Too spooky?”
“No. Too many steps. Customers realized that once you got down to the bottom, you had to climb all the way back up in order to get out. It was a very long climb. I remember a lot of people taking one look at that staircase and then demanding their money back.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and that’s just what those guys back there will do,” he said, going for a little positive thinking.
“We probably shouldn’t count on that.”
“No,” he agreed, “probably shouldn’t. I’m assuming that because it was once a tourist attraction, the stairwell and the adjacent tunnels are clear of illusion traps?”
“They certainly were when it was operating as an attraction,” she said. “I can’t see any reason why anyone would have reset a trap.”
He thought about that. Only someone who possessed a special kind of psi talent—an ephemeral-energy para-resonator, otherwise known as a tangler—could de-rez or reset a trap. Neither he nor Celinda could deal with one.
“We’ll have to take our chances,” he said. “Not like we have a lot of choice here.”
“I couldn’t de-rez a trap,” she said. “But I can detect them, which means we should be able to avoid any that we come across.”
He thought about the night he had taken Mary Beth from the kidnappers. “I’ve got some ability to sense them, too. Between the two of us, we can do this.”
Chapter 24
THE GLOW OF THE QUARTZ WALL THAT SURROUNDED THE ancient outpost grew brighter as they drew near. Davis was aware of the ambient psi energy leaking out of the ruins now. He knew that Celinda sensed it, too.
“Is your talent like that of other hunters?” she asked. “Does it get stronger when it’s enhanced by alien psi?”
“Yes.”
The wall was coming up fast now. He could see the remains of an old human-made parking lot. Recklessly he increased the speed of the Phantom again.
“They’re falling back a little,” Celinda assured him. “You’re right, they can’t take this road as fast as we can.”
He concentrated, trying to anticipate problems.
“Did the people who ran the ruins as a concession put up a gate of any kind?” he asked.
“I remember a makeshift wooden gate that they opened for you after you bought the ticket.”
“With luck it won’t be locked.”
“I doubt it. The place has been abandoned for years.”
The Phantom slammed to a stop in the parking lot. A badly weathered sign heralded the entrance: Welcome to the Haunted Alien Ruins. Beneath the sign a large wooden gate hung limply on its hinges.
“Gate’s unlocked,” Davis said. “One less thing to deal with.” He killed the engine and the headlights. “Everybody out. Now.”
Celinda already had her seat belt undone. She grabbed Araminta with one hand and opened the passenger-side door with the other.
Davis got out on the other side and stretched an arm back into the interior of the vehicle. Max immediately hopped down onto the offered perch and bounced up onto Davis’s shoulder.
The four vehicles were still some distance away down the road, but they were closing fast. Headlights jumped and bounced in the night.
Davis yanked the mag-rez out of his ankle holster.
“Go,” he ordered.
Celinda was already moving, running toward the entrance. Suddenly she ground to a halt.
“What?” Davis snapped
“I don’t know. Something’s wrong. Araminta is upset.”
“This isn’t the time to worry about her feelings. Move.”
Celinda started running a
gain. Davis saw the shadow on her shoulder tumble down to the ground.
“Oh, damn,” Celinda wailed. “She’s going back to the car. I can’t leave her.”
“She’ll be fine. She can take care of herself.”
“No, Davis, I think she wants something from the car.”
Celinda rushed after Araminta.
Davis looked at the fast-approaching cars. “Damn.”
But it was too late to stop Celinda. She had reached the Phantom. Araminta was on the ground beside the passenger door, jumping up and down and chattering wildly.
Celinda opened the door. Araminta disappeared inside. Celinda reached in after her.
“Come on, Celinda.” For the first time Davis felt a tendril of real panic. If Celinda would not obey, they were doomed. He started back for her. “Get over here. Now.”
She had already extricated herself from the car. She whirled and ran toward him. He saw that she had her oversized tote in one hand. Araminta was on her shoulder, seemingly content.
They ran, flat-out, toward the entrance.
“She wouldn’t come without the tote,” Celinda explained, breathless.
They raced through the opening created by the sagging gate. The interior of the walled compound was illuminated by the glowing quartz that surrounded it. A handful of ancient spires and domed structures loomed, eternally alien and mysterious in their fantastical, ethereal design.
Old, hand-painted, human-made signs loomed over tumbledown concession stands.
Snacks and Sodas.
Get Your Souvenir Photo Here.
It was the last sign that caught his eye. It was posted outside the entrance to an airy, radiant, green quartz spire.
Prepare to Descend into the Underworld.
“That’s where the staircase is,” Celinda said.
Brakes and tires squealed. He glanced back over his shoulder. The first of the four cars was just pulling into the parking lot. The other three were right behind it.
Celinda dashed through the vaulted entrance of the ruin. He followed.
One look at the glowing quartz staircase, and he understood why the old attraction had lost a few potential customers. The steps plunged downward, twisting and turning in a nightmarish version of a spiral staircase that was vaguely disorienting to human senses.
