by Jayne Castle
Chapter 24
MARLOWE REALIZED THAT HER BACK WAS STILL PLASTERED against the cold wall and her legs were still wrapped around Adam’s waist. He was leaning over her, supporting both of them, his hands flattened against the concrete behind her.
In the glow of the tunnel radiation she could see that his forehead was damp with perspiration. His eyes were closed, and his dark hair was mussed from her fingers. She listened as his ragged breathing quickly returned to normal.
She let her legs slide bonelessly back down to the floor. When her bare feet touched the concrete, she discovered that the muscles of her inner thighs were trembling. She had to keep her back against the wall in order to stay vertical.
Adam raised his dark lashes and looked at her. His eyes still burned.
“This probably would have been even better if we’d made it upstairs to bed,” he said.
“Hard to imagine how it could have been improved.”
“Maybe with a comfortable mattress and a couple of pillows instead of a concrete wall. It’s the little things that add an element of romance to a relationship.”
“I’ll remember that.”
He did a small push-up against the wall that brought him close enough to kiss her again. It was a lazy, sensual kiss of pure masculine satisfaction this time, not the hot and heavy kiss that had started the encounter.
“Maybe we should consider a do-over upstairs,” Adam suggested, nuzzling her throat. “For comparison purposes.”
And then he would fall asleep and start dreaming, and her pleasant little fantasy would be destroyed, she thought. Better to end it now.
“Sounds tempting,” she said brightly. She made a show of checking her watch. “But look at the time. It’s nearly two in the morning. I don’t know what kind of hours you keep at the Guild, but J&J opens at eight.”
He nibbled on her earlobe. “You’re the boss. You get to set your own hours.”
“Uncle Zeke always told me that the boss has to set the example.”
He watched her very steadily, eyes faintly narrowed. “This isn’t about the rules at J&J. It’s about not being able to sleep with me. About being gone by dawn.”
“It’s better this way, trust me.”
“Not so sure about that.” He fastened his trousers.
She realized that her panties were still draped around one ankle. A wave of heat rose in her cheeks. Ridiculous, really, after the wild parking garage sex, she thought. But she felt frazzled and unsure of herself. Fortunately, the deep shadows hid the blush.
She stepped hastily into the panties and shimmied into her jeans. She was fastening the waistband when she noticed the lamp. She stilled.
“Adam,” she whispered.
“What?”
“The lamp,” she said. “Look at it.”
He turned to follow her riveted gaze. They both stared at the black bundle lying on the floor of the garage. A pale, paranormal light was seeping through the folds of black silk.
“What the hell?” He started toward the artifact.
“I think you lit it,” she said. “Or maybe we did just now when we . . . Oh, damn. Maybe there is some truth to that part of the legend. Sex produces a lot of strong energy.”
He stood over the black bundle. “Son of a ghost,” he said softly.
“We’ve got to shut it down.”
“Why?” He picked up the bundle. At his touch, the bundle glowed brighter. “The whole point of this exercise is to figure out how this thing works. Looks like we’ve made a good start.”
“We don’t know what we’re doing here,” she reminded him. “I need time to study the artifact. Time to do some research.”
He began to unwrap the silk cloth. “Time is one commodity we don’t have.”
“I really don’t think it would be a good idea to mess around with that thing tonight. We should come up with some sort of strategy before we tackle this project.”
“According to the records, we have to rely on our intuition, not research and strategy.”
He pulled away the last of the cloth. She saw the shudder that jolted through him when his hands came in direct contact with the artifact.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“You should feel the power in this thing. It’s incredible.”
The lamp no longer appeared solid. The strange, gold-toned metal was becoming translucent. Currents of psi shifted in the relic.
“I can feel the forces in it,” she said quietly. “I think it’s getting stronger. It’s responding to your own currents.”
“Yes.” His eyes were heating again.
“There’s too much power in that thing for one person to control,” she warned. “We know that much. You can’t do this alone.”
He held the lamp in his hands and looked at her. In the rising glow of the artifact he looked like some ancient alchemist gazing into its fires, like Nicholas Winters.
“I know I can’t handle the energy in this thing alone,” he said. “That’s why I need you. Now. Tonight.”
His voice was once again shaded with lust, but she realized that it was not sexual desire that drove him this time, rather a bone-deep hunger to control the power of the lamp. The need to manipulate the energy of the artifact was, quite literally, in his genes.
She knew then that nothing she said would convince him to try to de-rez the lamp tonight. Perhaps there was no way to stop what had been started. There was only one thing she could do now, and that was to help Adam control the device.
She crossed the short space that separated them. He used both hands to hold the lamp by its base.
“It would probably be best to have physical contact,” she said.
He said nothing, waiting for her to make the next move.
She covered one of his hands with her left palm and gripped the rim of the artifact with her right hand.
Energy slammed through her. Psychic flames flashed across her senses. The shock stole her breath for a few heartbeats, but she did not pull away.
The initial flash diminished quickly. In the next instant she was in the currents, soaring on the waves of raw power. There was no more pain, just an exhilarating sense of certainty. She knew how to do this.
Adam watched her with hot, knowing eyes.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Like the sex we just had.”
The sensation was, indeed, unnervingly akin to what she had experienced during their heated sexual encounter.
The base and body of the lamp were still undergoing some kind of alchemical change. As they watched, the gold metal became translucent. Energy built higher in the atmosphere and inside the artifact.
In another moment the lamp was abruptly transparent, as though it were made of the purest crystal. A seething storm of ultradark light flared and roiled inside the artifact.
All but one of the murky crystals set into the rim heated with paranormal fire. Each displayed a different color of the dreamlight spectrum. Without warning, a rainbow of psi lanced out from the circle of stones and splashed against the walls of the garage.
“So much power,” Adam whispered. “I understand now. I can channel it, but only if you hold the center.”
“Yes,” she said.
Probing gently, she found the rhythm of the heavy, shifting waves of raw dreamlight. The pulses and oscillations of the storm infused into the lamp were almost but not quite identical to Adam’s. His own wavelengths were astonishingly strong, but here and there she sensed a slight lack of harmony in the currents.
“I think I’ve found the source of your nightmares and hallucinations,” she said. “I should fix the problem before we run any experiments on the lamp. We don’t want to take any chances with this much energy.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Some of your currents are a little out of sync. I’ll just make a few minor adjustments.”
She went to work with a sense of certainty, easing her own energy into the storm brewing inside the lamp. O
beying her intuition, she tuned Adam’s patterns so that his dreamlight currents resonated with those of the artifact.
She finished the last bit of repair work with a great deal of satisfaction. Just like turning a key in a lock and opening the right door, she thought. She started to tell Adam that the small task was completed and that they could now proceed to explore the potential of the lamp.
Like turning a key in a lock.
The old words that Nicholas Winters had written in his journal slammed through her.
“Grave risk attends the onset of the third and final power. Those of my line who would survive must find the Burning Lamp and a woman who can work dreamlight energy. Only she can turn the key in the lock that opens the door to the last talent.”
What had she done?
There was no time to contemplate the enormity of the step she and Adam had just taken. A blaze of energy erupted from the lamp. The psi rainbow became blindingly brilliant, illuminating the darkened garage in all the colors of the darkest end of the spectrum. Ultraviolets, ultragreens, ultrareds, and ultrayellows blazed across cold concrete.
Adam’s body went rigid, his head flung back, face twisted in a mask of mortal agony.
He dropped the lamp. The artifact landed with a thud, barely missing Marlowe’s bare toes. It went dark immediately. Adam collapsed, unconscious, beside the lamp.
Chapter 25
HE CAME AWAKE TO A REALM OF DARKNESS LIT ONLY by a long shaft of underworld light. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was lying on the floor of the garage. There was a blanket underneath him and one over him. A pillow cushioned his head.
“What the hell?”
A cheery chortling sound made him look to the side. He saw Gibson sitting nearby. The dust bunny was munching on a cracker. The cracker looked familiar, Adam decided. It looked like it had come from the stash upstairs in his kitchen.
“Good morning to you, too.” He pushed himself to a sitting position and checked his watch. Five o’clock. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any coffee to go with that cracker?”
The elevator doors hissed open. Marlowe walked out, a mug in her hand.
“I’m the one with the coffee,” she said. She came toward him through the shadows. “When I checked your dreamlight a few minutes ago, it looked like you were about to wake up. How do you feel?”
He thought about the question. “Good. Very good.” He pushed aside the blanket, got to his feet, and took the coffee from her. “Okay, maybe a little stiff from sleeping on the garage floor, but all in all, I feel a hell of a lot better than I have in a month.”
“Sorry about leaving you down here in the garage all night. After you crashed I couldn’t wake you. There was no way I could get you upstairs, so I brought the blankets and pillows down here.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
She moved through the angled light from the catacombs. He saw that she was wearing the jeans, turtleneck, and boots she had worn last night. Her hair was scraped back into a knot. The shadows under her eyes told the story.
“You didn’t sleep, did you?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sure how the lamp had affected you. I thought it best to keep an eye on you until you woke up.”
The realization that she’d felt obliged to stand guard annoyed him.
“You spent the night watching me sleep?” he said.
“I wanted to be sure you were okay. It’s just a little after five. You were only out for three hours. I did go upstairs to make some coffee at one point.”
He swallowed some of the coffee and couldn’t remember the last time anything had tasted that good. Because she had made it for him, he realized.
“Thanks,” he said. He sounded surly, even to his own ears. He couldn’t help it. He’d passed out last night. He didn’t like knowing that she had seen him in such a weak, helpless state.
She smiled. “It’s okay. I went to sleep on you the night before last.”
“Right.” It wasn’t the same thing at all, but he decided there wasn’t much room to argue. “Where’s the lamp?”
“Over there.”
He followed her gesture and saw a dark lump in the shadows.
“Why did you put it way over there?” he asked.
“It gives off a lot of disturbing energy, even when it isn’t lit. I thought it might interrupt your sleep.”
He crossed the garage and picked up the lamp. For a moment or two he contemplated it. Marlowe waited quietly. After a while he looked at her.
“Think I came into my third talent last night?” he asked.
She glanced at the garage floor beneath his feet. He knew she was reading his prints.
“You came into the third level of your talent,” she said deliberately. “You are no Cerberus.”
He looked back down at the lamp. “You’re certain?”
“Absolutely. Trust me; I would know.”
She sounded very sure. He exhaled slowly.
“Did you notice that one of the crystals remained dark?” she asked.
“Can’t say that I was paying close attention,” he admitted. “But according to the old records, every time the lamp has been lit, one crystal has always stayed dark.”
“The Midnight Crystal.”
“That’s what Nicholas Winters called it. The family concluded centuries ago that it was dead. The theory is that Nicholas was already going insane and losing his talents when he forged it. All he cared about was vengeance. He deceived himself into believing that he had infused the last crystal with some kind of psychic command.”
“Which is, technically speaking, impossible,” Marlowe said.
“Yes. But it leaves us with the next question.” He looked at her. “Will I be able to work this thing to stop the dissonance in the maze?”
“I can’t answer that. But I can tell you that you don’t have a chance of channeling the energy in the artifact without me.”
He smiled faintly. “Still partners?”
“Someone’s got to save the underworld.”
“That would be us,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs and get some breakfast, partner.”
HIS PHONE RANG AS HE FOLLOWED MARLOWE OUT of the elevator into his living room. He glanced at the code. Adrenaline spiked.
“It’s Fortner.” He opened the phone. “Winters. Did that pair I sent to you last night wake up?”
“The two hunters are still unconscious.” Elliot said. He sounded grim and weary, as if he, too, had spent the night keeping watch. “The parapsych doc says that even if they do wake up, they won’t have much in the way of coherent memory. But we ID’d them. Couple of hunters who moonlight as hired muscle.”
“Working for O’Conner and Drake?”
Elliott snorted. “You must be psychic. They’re free-lancers but, yes, as it happens they have done some odd jobs for O’Conner and Drake.”
Marlowe stopped in the middle of the room, listening. Gibson wriggled out of the crook of her arm and tumbled to the floor. With what appeared to be unerring instinct, he headed toward the kitchen.
“What about that flashlight weapon?” Adam said into the phone. “Anything on it yet?”
“Not much. There is a crystal of some kind inside, but the lab techs tell me they’ve never seen anything like it. Their instruments say that it’s dead, though. No energy left in it at all.”
“Alien technology?”
“Certainly a possibility. Wouldn’t be the first artifacts of power to come out of the jungle.” Elliott paused. “You said there was only one of these devices at the scene?”
Adam met Marlowe’s eyes. “Right. You’re thinking there may be more?”
“Who the hell knows?” Elliott exhaled heavily. “Like I told you, watch your back.”
“Any word from Galendez and Treiger?”
“Last report was that O’Conner and Drake come and go from their office, but there are no signs of any unusual activity. Are you sure you don’t want to move on them? This is your call, but after wh
at happened last night—”
“Not yet,” Adam said. “I need to know what they’re up to before we take them down. That goes double now that we know about the crystal weapon. Talk to you later.”
He closed the phone, aware that Marlowe was watching him with an interested expression.
“Nothing on the flashlight?” she asked.
“Lab techs think it might be alien technology. But whatever it is, it’s gone dark. They don’t think it’s capable of generating any energy now.”
She unzipped her small leather backpack and took out the flashlight she had commandeered. She contemplated it for a moment.
“I’ll bet this one is dead, too. I think we can attribute that to your second talent.”
He cocked a brow.
“I mean the second aspect of your talent,” she corrected hurriedly. She dropped the flashlight into the backpack. “When you hit those men with that crushing wave of nightmare energy, they were both fully rezzed. You scrambled their senses while they were both running hot and focusing through the flashlights. Got a hunch the power surge probably blew out the crystals.”
“Like melting amber?”
“Yes. The crystals most likely need to be tuned to function, just like amber. Finely tuned instruments or machines of any kind are always delicate. Doesn’t take a lot to throw them out of whack or destroy them.”
He headed for the kitchen. “Which means your lab techs probably won’t find anything helpful when they examine that one.”
“Maybe not. Adam?”
He picked up the coffeepot and turned on the faucet. “Yeah?”
“You lied to your boss about last night,” she said.
“Elliott’s not my boss. Not any longer.”
“You lied to him from start to finish. He doesn’t know that I have the second flashlight. He doesn’t even know that you have the lamp, does he?”
“It’s better this way. I told you, I think he’s got a leak in the Bureau. Best bet is that O’Conner and Drake have someone inside, close to Fortner. Someone he trusts.”
