by Jayne Castle
Vincent muttered happily and tumbled down to the floor. He headed immediately toward the kitchen. Lyra turned toward Cruz. She gave him a wan smile.
"Thanks for an interesting evening," she said.
She started to step back. He put the toe of his boot just over the threshold, making it impossible to shut the door. From where he stood, he could see the vase of purple orchids.
"I want another chance, Lyra," he said.
She shook her head wearily. "I'll admit I've had a few revenge fantasies over the past three months, but tonight was a reality check. I understand that you need someone who can rez those amethyst stones, but I won't let you seduce me into doing it. Don't worry; I'm sure there are other people out there who can work purple amber. Try placing an ad in the newspapers."
"I'm not talking about the damn rocks in the lab. I'm talking about us. You and me."
She folded her arms and lounged against the doorjamb. "If you'd been serious about a relationship, you wouldn't have waited this long to ask for another chance. To be more specific, you wouldn't have waited until you found out you needed me to reopen that chamber."
"You're the one who threw me out of your life, and then you filed a lawsuit against me. What the hell was I supposed to do?" He paused, searching for the right words. "I figured you needed time."
"Is that so?" She raised her brows. "Tell me, if you hadn't had a crisis down there at the ruin tonight, when, exactly, would you have come back?"
"You probably won't believe this, but I've been planning to call you."
"You're right. I don't believe you."
"Do you really think I'm lying to you?"
"How would I know? You fooled me last time."
"I was conducting a security investigation three months ago. It's called working undercover. You were in danger because you were trying to conceal that ruin. If one of the antiquities gangs had discovered the location of the chamber first, you would have ended up as jungle compost, and you know it."
She exhaled deeply. "I've already said that I understand that, as far as you were concerned, you were just doing your job, fulfilling your responsibilities to your company and your family. But please don't tell me that you were doing it for my own good, okay? When I hear that, I see red."
"It's the truth. Look, we were both keeping secrets from each other back then. We both had our own agendas. You were skirting the law, trying to protect your find. Believe it or not, I was trying to protect you."
"Well, the end result is that we got off on the wrong foot, and now it's too late."
He braced one hand against the wall beside the door. "It doesn't have to be too late. You know, you're overlooking one very critical detail here."
"What's that?"
"We've got something important going on between us, some good energy. You can't deny it."
"It's called physical attraction. I'm told it happens between men and women once in a while. Don't worry, it'll pass."
"No," he said, very sure of his ground now. "It's more than physical attraction, at least on my side."
"Well, I do realize there are all those attractive amethyst artifacts sitting in your lab that you'd like rezzed."
"Forget the rocks. I don't care if you never activate a single one of them. This is about you and me. What the hell do I have to do to prove that I'm interested only in you, not your talent?"
Something in his voice seemed to catch her off guard. She frowned.
"Good question," she said finally. "Darned if I know. See, that's the thing about getting off on the wrong foot in a relationship the way we did. I'm not sure there's any way to get back on track."
"Let's find out."
He leaned into the doorway a little. She did not step back. He took that as a good sign. She waited for the kiss, brows slightly crinkled, as though awaiting the outcome of a scientific experiment. Dubious of the results but not resisting. She was willing to allow the test, but if he failed, he was doomed.
He wouldn't fail. That option wasn't even on the table. Not for a Sweetwater; not when it came to something this important.
He kissed her slowly, deliberately; a real first date kind of kiss.
She responded cautiously, but she did respond. Relief followed by a flash of exultation heated his blood and his senses.
Her mouth softened under his. She put her hands on his shoulders. For a few worrisome seconds he thought she was going to push him away. But he could sense the rising heat of her arousal. Knowing that she still responded to him physically gave him an advantage that he fully intended to exploit. He came from a long line of hunters, after all, although his talents were quite different from those of the para-resonators called ghost hunters who joined the Guilds.
He slid one hand around the exquisitely sensitive, incredibly soft skin at the nape of Lyra's neck and drew his thumb along the delicate line of her jaw. She trembled.
Unlike most people on Harmony whose latent psychic talents were evolving rapidly, thanks to something in the environment, the men of the Sweetwater family traced their abilities back to their ancestors on Earth. He had been born to hunt human prey, not alien energy ghosts. But that was not all his talent allowed him to hunt. Sweetwater men recognized their true mates with the same certainty they recognized their true prey. He had known Lyra for who she was the moment he met her—the woman he had been waiting for all of his life. He was a Sweetwater. He would do whatever he had to do in order to make her his own.
For the moment, his senses told him more clearly than words that she still wanted him, at least physically. He could work with that. The trick was to remain in full control of himself and his passions.
Her fingers sank into the fabric of his shirt, tightening. Without warning, a shuddering thrill whipped through him. Memories of all the long nights he had spent working late or restlessly prowling the empty streets of the Old Quarter in an effort to distract himself from thoughts of Lyra slammed through him.
She was in his arms again. That was all that mattered now.
He had been semi-aroused all night, and now he was consumed with a sense of rising urgency. The kiss was unleashing the full force of his own need. It was all he could do not to push through the door and drag Lyra into the bedroom.
The only thing holding him back was the hunter in him. Strategy was everything.
He felt the hot little shivery chills going through her and took another chance. He deepened the kiss, silently willing her to remember how it had been between them. Energy flashed and spiked in the atmosphere. Their auras sparked invisibly around them, testing, teasing, enticing, challenging. He and Lyra were dancing through a warm, iridescent shower of psychic rain.
He heard a low, urgent groan and realized somewhat vaguely that it had come from his own throat. Probably time to stop. He could not afford to lose it, not at this juncture.
Releasing her was the hardest thing he had ever done. All of his instincts were urging him to seize the opportunity to imprint himself on her forever.
But he managed, somehow, to let her go. He took a step back out into the hall. For a moment she just looked at him, her eyes sultry and a little unfocused with desire. Her lips were full and slightly parted. She blinked a couple of times, and then she was back in command of herself and the situation.
"You always were a really good kisser," she said softly.
He was not sure how to take that, but he could not afford to be choosy. Any kind of wanting on her part was better than total rejection.
"Will you let me take you out to dinner tonight?" he said. "We'll make it an early evening, since you're not going to get much sleep this morning."
"I'll think about it. I'm too tired to make a decision now. Call me this afternoon."
She closed the door very gently but firmly in his face.
He stood looking at the closed door for a while, wondering if she was setting him up for a refusal later. When he realized he could not decide, he went back downstairs and headed home.
Ch
apter 6
FOUR HOURS LATER SHE DRESSED FOR HER HARMONIC Meditation class in the uniform that signified her beginner's status: baggy gray trousers and a loose-fitting, wide- sleeved gray shirt secured with a plain gray sash. She was still a little groggy in spite of two large mugs of strong coffee.
When she opened the door of her apartment, she woke up fast. Her own face stared back at her from the front page of the Herald. She was not alone in the photo. Vincent was on her shoulder, looking like an adorable ball of badly wrapped yarn in a red beret. Cruz was also in the picture. He looked like he always did, the chief hit man in charge.
"Looks like we're famous, again, Vincent. Just like the old days when we sued Amber Inc."
Vincent made chirpy sounds and peered out of the partially unzipped gym bag that she used to carry her meditation gear. He showed no interest in the newspaper.
She scanned the headline and read the story with a rising sense of unease.
CRISIS DRAWS NEW AI SECURITY CEO
An emergency at a recently discovered alien ruin in the underground rain forest brought the new CEO of Amber Inc.'s security division to the scene. Cruz Sweetwater was accompanied by Lyra Dore, who recently dropped a lawsuit she had brought against Amber Inc.
A spokesperson for AI indicated that Miss Dore was an antiquities consultant who catered to an exclusive clientele. He stated that she possessed the unique skills required to rescue five members of a research team who were trapped in the ruin known as the Amethyst Chamber. The precise nature of the problem was described as a "technical malfunction." The team emerged, unharmed.
Mr. Sweetwater and Miss Dore left the scene together, leading observers to question whether Dore's lawsuit had been dropped because the pair was involved in a personal relationship.
"Well, I suppose the speculation was inevitable," Lyra said to Vincent. "There will be a lot more of the same if I'm seen having dinner with Cruz tonight. But, hey, they called me an antiquities consultant who caters to an exclusive clientele. That's a step up from three months ago when the press implied that I was a low-end tuner who dabbled in the shady side of the relics trade."
She tossed the newspaper onto the hall table and continued downstairs. A glance at her watch informed her that she was going to have to hurry to get to the morning class on time. Fortunately, Master Quinn's studio was only a few blocks away.
The waking nightmare struck half a block later. Between one step and the next she suddenly found herself in a twisted, horribly distorted version of reality. The familiar street coiled like an infinitely long snake ahead of her, the head vanishing into dark infinity. The old Colonial-era buildings on either side of her loomed, impossibly high and strangely narrowed, over her head. Windows glittered like the eyes of great insects.
"Oh, damn," she whispered. "Not again."
She stopped, afraid to take another step because her sense of balance was almost gone. The world veered and teetered around her. Nausea stirred in her stomach.
And then the monsters began to emerge from the alleys.
She heard Vincent making anxious noises. She looked down and discovered that the gym bag had become the mouth of a strange beast. There was blood in the creature's mouth.
No, not blood. She was looking at Vincent's red beret.
Vincent rumbled again. He wasn't growling at her, she realized. He was trying to get her attention. But at that instant, one of the alley monsters started toward her. It was a strange, shambling, vaguely human thing that looked as though it had just arisen from a grave. Its eye sockets were empty. The skin was gone in several places, exposing bare bone.
I'm hallucinating again, she thought. She knew from experience that she had to stay focused on that one single bit of hard information. There's nothing real here.
Vincent made more urgent noises. The red beret bobbed up and down and side to side, making her even more dizzy than she already was. She tightened her grip on the gym bag, but Vincent was no longer inside. Panic slashed across her senses.
"Vincent. Where are you?"
When she realized that he was scuttling up her sleeve, she cried out with relief. He arrived on her shoulder, murmuring anxiously and huddled close. The physical contact steadied her. She dropped the bag and reached up to touch him.
The nightmare dissolved as swiftly as it had coalesced. Just like that, she was out of the dark Alice in Amberland world and back on a normal-looking street. Her pulse was racing, and her palms tingled. She was breathing much too quickly, and she still felt nauseous, but she was no longer hallucinating.
A retired hunter she saw frequently in the neighborhood peered at her with concern. Harvey Wilkens always took a morning walk at this time of day. He no longer looked as if had just arisen from a grave.
"You okay, Miss Dore?" he asked.
"Yes. Yes, I am. Thanks, Harvey. I didn't get much sleep last night. Guess I'm a little jumpy this morning."
Harvey nodded. "Heard how you went down to the jungle to rescue that AI team."
"You saw the morning papers?"
"Nah. I never read the papers. Papers lie. I heard the rumors on the streets."
"Already?"
"There were a couple of hunters trapped in that ruin," Harvey said "Word travels fast in the Guild. Also heard that you and the new CEO of Amber Inc. Security have patched things up. Glad to hear it. Sweetwater is Guild, you know."
She went cold. "No, I didn't know that. I knew that the Sweetwaters maintained close relationships with the Guilds, but I was not aware they were a Guild family."
"Sort of depends on how you define Guild."
"I define it by whether or not some or all of the men in a family are ghost hunters," she said very carefully.
"Yeah, well, it gets complicated when it comes to the Sweetwaters," Harvey said. "But I can tell you this much. There were Sweetwaters fighting side by side with the Guilds back during the Era of Discord."
"Have you ever noticed, Harvey, that the farther away we get from the Era of Discord, the more people claim they had family members present at the various battles?"
"This ain't no made-up family legend, I can tell you that much. Sweetwaters was there."
"So were Dores," she said with a flash of pride.
"Right. I'm just trying to tell you that the Sweetwaters' connection to the Guilds goes back all the way to the founding of the organizations. But that family likes to keep a real low profile. Word is, they've got some unusual talents in that line."
Now, that was interesting, she thought. The Sweetwaters made no secret of the fact that there were a lot of powerful talents in the family. But they were supposedly all amber talents, like hers. Being an amber talent was not considered weird or threatening. It simply meant that you had a highly developed affinity for amber. That ability was useful for discovering and tuning amber but not much else. But if Cruz and his relatives possessed other kinds of paranormal abilities—especially if those abilities were powerful—it would explain why the family had a reputation for secrecy.
It was true that a variety of talents were appearing more and more frequently in the population, but social attitudes toward the paranormal changed more slowly. It was one thing to have a common, socially accepted talent such as the ability to work ghost energy or illusion traps or tune standard amber. It was another thing altogether to possess a rare or dangerous ability. Such talents made others nervous.
Her grandfather had explained the facts of life to her as they applied to those who possessed nonstandard talents. He'd followed the brief lecture with an even briefer piece of advice: "You're one of them, girl. Keep your head down. Let 'em think the only thing you can do is tune amber."
As it turned out, the advice had been of little use. She might be a very strong talent, but tuning amber and prospecting had proved to be the only practical application of that ability. At least, it had been the only application until she had found the amethyst chamber.
"Is that so?" she said politely.
"Yes, ma'am, lot
of stories about Sweetwaters," Harvey said with a knowing air.
"Really? I was under the impression that the only talent the Sweetwaters possessed was an affinity for amber. That's not so unusual."
Harvey gave her a conspiratorial wink. "Right you are, Miss Dore. Just an affinity for amber. Nothing unusual about Cruz Sweetwater or anyone else in that family. No, siree. Absolutely not. Don't you worry, I know how to keep a secret. I'm a Guild man, after all."
"I think we've got something of a misunderstanding here," she said.
"Don't worry, I can take a hint. I won't say a word about the Sweetwaters to anyone else. The only reason I mentioned their talents is because I figure you already know all about 'em, what with you and Cruz Sweetwater being so close and all." Harvey chuckled and gave Vincent a friendly pat. "You and the little varmint have a good day now. See you later."
"Bye, Harvey."
Harvey moved off briskly. She watched him until he turned the corner at the end of the block. When he was gone, she went warily on her way, every muscle and nerve tensed in case the sidewalk started to twist and heave beneath her feet again.
To date, she had never had more than one of the hallucinatory nightmares in a twenty-four-hour period, but there was no way to know when that pattern might change. The lawsuit had taken her bank account so low that she could no longer afford flash-rock tune-ups and routine maintenance for her car. But even if she had been able to drive, she would not have dared to get behind the wheel for fear that one of the dreams would strike.
"They're affecting my quality of life, Vincent," she said. "I think that's when you're supposed to get help. But how can I explain the dreams to a para-shrink? Any decent doctor will assume I'm suffering psychotic episodes and blame it on some kind of psi trauma. Then I'd have to explain that my senses aren't entirely normal to begin with, and it will be all downhill from there."
Vincent mumbled encouragingly.
"Thanks, pal. I knew you'd understand."
Two blocks later she halted in front of the Hole in the Wall, a small restaurant that occupied the ground floor of the building that housed the Harmonic Meditation Institute. She pushed open the door and was greeted with the fragrance of warm muffins and strong coffee.
