Midnight Crystal (2 page)

Dear Reader:

 

Welcome to my other world, Harmony, and the conclusion of the Dreamlight Trilogy.

The legend of the Burning Lamp goes back to the earliest days of the Arcane Society. Nicholas Winters and Sylvester Jones started out as friends and eventually became deadly adversaries. Each sought the same goal: a way to enhance psychic talents. Sylvester chose the path of chemistry and plunged into illicit experiments with strange herbs and plants. Ultimately he concocted the flawed formula that bedevils the Society to this day.

Nicholas took the engineering approach and forged the Burning Lamp, a device with unknown powers. Radiation from the lamp produced a twist in his DNA, creating a psychic genetic “curse” destined to be passed down through the males of his bloodline.

The Winters Curse strikes very rarely, but when it does, the Arcane Society has good reason for grave concern. It is said that the Winters man who inherits Nicholas’s genetically altered talent is destined to become a Cerberus—Arcane slang for an insane psychic who possesses multiple lethal abilities. Jones & Jones and the Governing Council are convinced that such human monsters must be hunted down and terminated as swiftly as possible.

There is only one hope for the men of the Burning Lamp. Each must find the artifact and a woman who can work the dreamlight energy that the relic generates in order to reverse the dangerous psychic changes brought on by the curse.

Some of the secrets of the artifact were revealed in the first two books of the trilogy,
Fired Up
and
Burning Lamp
. Now, far in the future, on a world called Harmony, the lamp’s final mystery—the secret of the Midnight Crystal—will be revealed. The destinies of both the Jones and the Winters families hang in the balance.

I hope you enjoy the trilogy.

 

Sincerely,

Jayne

 

 

THE LADY FROM JONES & JONES LOOKED VERY GOOD in black leather.

Adam Winters waited for Marlowe Jones in the shadows of the ancient ruins. He had heard the trademark growl of the big Raleigh-Stark motorcycle for almost a full minute before the bike rounded the last curve of the narrow, winding road. Sound carried in the mountains.

The nightmares and hallucinations that had struck a few weeks ago had destroyed his sleep. He was living on the edge of exhaustion these days, fighting off the worst of the effects with short bouts of edgy rest, a lot of caffeine, and a little psi. But in spite of the toll the change had taken on him, a surge of exhilaration coursed through him when the newly appointed director of the Frequency City offices of J&J brought the bike to a stop and de-rezzed the engine.

She was close enough now for him to feel the power in her aura. Her energy sang a siren song to his senses. Too bad she was a Jones. He would just have to work around that awkward fact.

She kicked down the stand with a leg clad in leather chaps, planted one booted foot on the ground, and raised the faceplate of the gleaming black helmet.

“Adam Winters,” she said.

It was not a question. He was the new boss of the Frequency City Ghost Hunter Guild. Anyone who had bothered to glance at a newspaper or watch the evening news in the past month could recognize him.

“You’re late, Miss Jones,” he said. He did not move out of the quartz doorway.

“I made a few detours.” She unfastened the helmet and removed it. Her hair was the color of dark amber. It was caught in a ponytail at the nape of her neck and secured with a black leather band. “Wanted to be sure I wasn’t followed.”

He watched her, trying to conceal his fascination. Objectively speaking, she certainly qualified as attractive, but she lacked the bland symmetry of real beauty. Marlowe Jones did not need a cover model’s looks to rivet the eye, however. She was striking. There was no other word to describe the strength, intelligence, and passion that illuminated her features. Her eyes were a deep, mysterious shade of blue, almost violet.
The color of midnight,
he thought.
Midnight and dreams
.

And just where in hell had that poetic image come from? He really needed to get more sleep.

She was watching him now with those enthralling, knowing eyes. Energy shivered in the atmosphere. He knew that she was checking him out with her talent. Everything inside him got a little hotter in response to the stimulation of her psi.

When she had called him that morning to request the clandestine meeting, she had explained, in passing, that she was a dreamlight reader. She had no way of knowing just how much that information had stunned him.

A small chortling sound distracted him. For the first time he noticed the passenger on the bike. A small, scruffy-looking creature studied him from the leather saddlebag with a pair of deceptively innocent baby blue eyes. A studded leather collar was draped around its neck, half buried in the fluffy, spiky, cotton-candy fur.

“You brought a dust bunny?” Adam asked.

“This is Gibson,” Marlowe said. She held out her arm to the dust bunny.

Gibson chortled again and bounced out of the saddlebag and up the length of her arm to perch on the shoulder of her leather jacket. He blinked his baby blues at Adam.

“Didn’t know they made good pets,” Adam said.

“They don’t. Gibson and I are a team. Different relationship altogether.”

“Looks like you’ve got a collar on him.”

“The folks at the gear shop where I buy my leathers made it for him. Gibson likes studs. He takes it off when he wants to play with it.”

People, even smart, savvy people like Marlowe Jones, could be downright weird about their pets, Adam reminded himself. Then again, being a Jones, she was bound to be a little different anyway. Not that he had any room to criticize. During the past few weeks he had become pretty damn weird, himself.
Always nice to start off with something in common,
he thought.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “So, you were worried about being followed?”

“I thought it best not to take any chances,” she said, very serious.

He got the feeling that she did very serious a lot. For some reason that amused him. “Sounds like you’re as paranoid as all the other Joneses who ever ran a branch of J&J.”

“It’s a job requirement. But I prefer to think of it as being careful.”

Her voice was rich, assured, and infused with a slightly husky quality that heated his senses like a shot of good brandy. The edgy thrill of anticipation that he had experienced when he’d taken her call early that morning became crystalline certainty.

She’s the one,
he thought.

This was the first time he had met Marlowe Jones in person, but something deep inside him recognized and responded to her. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the woman he had been searching for these past few weeks.

As fate would have it, in the end, she had found him. That was probably not a good sign. She was potentially a lot more dangerous than the people who had been trying to kill him lately. But somehow that did not seem to matter much at the moment. Maybe a few weeks of sleep deprivation had started to impact his powers of logic and common sense.

“I wasn’t criticizing the paranoia,” he said. “I’m a Guild boss. I consider paranoia to be a sterling virtue.”

“Right up there with frequent hand washing?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of obsessive suspicion and a chronic inability to trust.”

“Which explains why you got here early,” she said. She surveyed the heavily wooded forest that surrounded them. “You wanted to check out the terrain. Make sure you weren’t walking into a trap.”

“It seemed a reasonable precaution under the circumstances. I have to admit, I got nervous after I discovered that these ruins are situated over a vortex.”

She looked skeptical. “Can’t picture you nervous.”

“Everyone knows standard resonating amber doesn’t work underground in the vicinity of vortex energy. Even the strongest ghost hunter can’t pull any ghost fire when he’s standing on top of that kind of storm.”

“I am well aware that Guild men don’t like to go anywhere near a vortex,” she said.

“It’s like asking a cop to leave his gun at the door. After I arrived, it struck me that if I were inclined to take out a ghost hunter, I’d sure like to lure him to a vortex site.”

“If you were really that worried, you wouldn’t have stuck around.”

He smiled. “Guess I’m more trusting than I look.”

She eyed his smile with a dubious expression. “Somehow I doubt that.”

At that moment Gibson chattered enthusiastically and tumbled down from Marlowe’s shoulder to the ground. He hopped up on the toe of Adam’s boot and stood on his hind paws. There was more chortling.

“He wants you to pick him up,” Marlowe said. “He likes you. That’s a good sign.”

“Yeah? Of what?”

She gave a small, graceful shrug. “Never mind. Just a figure of speech.”

Like hell,
he thought. The dust bunny’s reaction to him was important to her. When he leaned down to scoop up Gibson, the hair on the nape of his neck stirred. The heightening of energy in the atmosphere was unmistakable.

“See anything interesting?” he asked, straightening.

Marlowe blinked, frowning a little, as though she did not like the fact that he had realized that she was using her talent.

“How did you know?” she asked.

He plopped the dust bunny on his shoulder. “When it comes to talent, it takes one to know one.”

She walked toward him, her boots crunching on the rough ground. “When I spoke with you this morning, I explained that I’m a dreamlight reader.”