Midnight Crystal (22 page)

Unlike the offices at Guild headquarters, this was a sparsely furnished space containing only a battered desk and a couple of chairs. She knew that as far as O’Conner and Drake were concerned, the most important amenity was a closet that concealed a staircase that led to a bolt-hole into the underworld. O’Conner often used it to come and go from his secret office on occasions when he did not want anyone in the neighborhood to see him. He had brought her with him a number of times. He liked to have sex down in the catacombs. A lot of hunters liked it that way. Something about the alien psi. She had secretly made a note of the coordinates.

An unnerving frisson shivered through her. She should leave.
Now
. She had packed her gym bag earlier, filling it with only the essentials: the collection of expensive amber and gold jewelry that Hubert had given her, the new ID that she had bought secretly online, the brown wig that she would use to cover her blonde hair, and the amber contacts that would darken her blue eyes. She’d hated leaving the gorgeous clothes and the lovely new crimson Siren behind, but, really, there was no other option. You couldn’t carry out a decent disappearing act when you were traveling with a half-dozen large, overstuffed suitcases and a flashy sports car.

Hurry,
she thought.
Do what you have to do and get out of here.

She went to the wall and felt for the concealed seam in the paneling. She found it quickly. A small section slid aside, revealing the safe.

She rezzed the code that O’Conner did not know that she had found, thanks to her intuitive talent. Her fingers trembled a little.

This was not the first time she had been obliged to end a relationship with a potentially dangerous lover. She was a pro. She had been planning for this day since the moment she had managed to engage Hubert O’Conner’s attention a year ago. Men like O’Conner—high-ranking Guild Councilmen—were excellent financial investments. They lavished their mistresses with the best of everything.

But such powerful men were also high-risk. At best they simply lost interest when a younger, more beautiful woman came along. Generally speaking, she accepted that possibility with a degree of equanimity, even good grace, if she did say so herself. Losing out to the competition occasionally came with the territory and now that she was getting older, it was bound to happen more frequently.

But there was a worst-case scenario when it came to terminating such relationships, and her talent told her that was what she was facing now. She had learned too many of O’Conner’s secrets, and recently she had discovered the most dangerous one of all. Powerful men got nervous when they realized that a mistress knew too much. Guild men like Hubert tended to be somewhat old-fashioned when it came to protecting themselves. O’Conner was quite capable of making certain that she really did disappear—straight into the tunnels or the rain forest.

Leaving town and changing her identity would not give her sufficient protection. She needed an insurance policy, leverage. The journal stored in the hidden safe would give her at least a fighting chance if O’Conner decided to send his goons after her.

She rezzed the lock, opened the safe, and took out the journal. She carried the volume back to the desk and opened it.

Reaching into her low-cut blouse, she took the tiny camera out of the pocket inside her bra. The pocket was designed to hold special pads to enhance cleavage. She did not need that kind of enhancement. Her very fine breasts had been expertly constructed by one of the best surgeons in the city. But the pockets in the bra were useful for concealing other items such as the camera and a little emergency backup amber. When you hung around Guild men, you learned to carry tuned amber.

She took several shots of the most recent pages in the journal, tucked the camera back into her bra, and replaced the volume inside the safe.

When she withdrew her hand, her fingers brushed against a hard, round object about half the size of her fist.
A crystal or stone of some kind,
she thought. The surface was faceted, but the object was much too large to be an item of jewelry. She groped around inside the safe and discovered two more crystals.

She did not need her intuitive talent to tell her that if O’Conner kept them in the safe, they were not only extremely valuable but very likely dangerous.

She knew she should leave, but she was unable to resist a closer look at the crystals. She picked up one of the stones and brought it out into the light.

In the green glow filtering through the window she could not make out the color of the crystal, but she sensed some kind of energy in it.

Briefly she contemplated the notion of taking one of the crystals with her. But again her talent stepped in, voting strongly against the idea. O’Conner would be certain to notice that it was missing. He would put that fact together with the fact that she had also disappeared and leap to the worst possible conclusion.

Decision made, she put the crystal back into the safe, secured the lock, and slid the concealing panel into place.

She crossed the room to the closet, intending to leave the same way she had arrived. But when she put her hand on the handle of the closet door, her intuition surged.

Don’t open the door
.

She released the handle as if it had seared her palm, took a quick step back, whirled, and started toward the only other exit from the room, the front door.

It opened before she was halfway across the office. One of Hubert’s men, a thug named Kirby, walked into the room. He had a mag-rez in his hand.

“Looks like Mr. O’Conner was right about you, Miss Ray,” he said. “He told me to keep an eye on you. Said you’d been acting a little different lately.”

“What are you talking about, Kirby?” she snapped.

“Mr. O’Conner figured you might be planning something, but personally, I never thought you’d be stupid enough to search his private office. Always figured the dumb blonde act was just that, an act.”

“You idiot,” she said, putting as much disdain as possible into her voice. “I’m here because Hubert asked me to meet him here tonight. If he finds out you pulled a gun on me, he’ll be furious.”

“I don’t think so,” Kirby said. He sounded oddly wistful. “Too bad things turned out this way. I sort of liked you. Of all the women Mr. O’Conner has had, you were the nicest to me and the other guys. You had class, y’know?”

“Listen, Kirby. This is all a misunderstanding. Just give me a minute, and I can explain everything.”

The closet door opened behind her. Hubert O’Conner walked out of the tunnel entrance.

“Kirby’s right, Gloria,” he said. “You had class. I’m going to miss you.”

“Hubert, this is ridiculous. What’s going on? I got your message telling me to meet you here.”

“We both know I never sent you a message,” he said.

She worked up some convincing outrage. “Well, someone sure as hell did. Whoever made that phone call to me an hour ago must have been trying to set me up.”

“Why would anyone go to the trouble?” O’Conner asked. “You’re just a whore.”

“The idea was to distract you, of course. Make you look in another direction. Hubert, listen to me. We both know you’ve got enemies. Someone is plotting against you. Whoever it is wants you to think that you can’t trust me.”

O’Conner ignored her. He went to the wall, opened the panel, and unlocked the safe. He took out a small flashlight and examined the interior.

“Nothing’s missing,” he said to Kirby. “Get her amber. I don’t think any of it is tuned, but no point taking chances.”

“Yes, sir.” Kirby holstered his weapon and moved forward. “Sorry about this, Miss Ray. You going to hand over your amber, or do you want me to take it the hard way?”

“You’re making a mistake, Hubert,” Gloria said quietly. She stripped off her amber ring and removed her amber earrings. “A very big mistake. Whoever set me up will laugh when he finds out how easily he made a fool out of you.”

“Shut up,” O’Conner growled. “Are you finished, Kirby?”

“Yes, Mr. O’Conner. Got her amber.”

“Take her down into the tunnels.”

Gloria’s heart was pounding now. She could scarcely breathe. Kirby had not found the small piece of tuned amber that she kept in her bra pocket. As soon as Kirby released her down in the catacombs, she would use the tuned stone to find a way out. But meanwhile, she had to make this look good.

“Please, Hubert,” she whispered. “After all we’ve meant to each other, surely you aren’t going to send me underground to die.”

He jerked a thumb toward the closet. “Get rid of her.”

“Yes, Mr. O’Conner.” Kirby started to wrap thick fingers around Gloria’s arm.

“Wait,” Hubert ordered. “You’re right, Kirby, Gloria, here, isn’t as dumb as she looks. I think I’d better take one more precaution.” He reached under his overcoat and unclipped a small case from his belt.

Gloria watched, her senses screaming. Hubert opened the case. He took a chunk of what looked like pale pink quartz out of the pocket of his coat.

“Hubert?” she said. “What’s going on here?”

“Just a little insurance in case you’ve got some amber tucked under all that blonde hair. Stand out of the way, Kirby.”

Kirby quickly moved aside.

O’Conner held the quartz in the palm of his hand and concentrated. The quartz brightened. Gloria sensed energy heightening in the atmosphere, but nothing happened as far as she could tell. A few seconds later, the quartz lost its pale glow.

“That will take care of your backup amber,” Hubert said.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “Kirby just took my amber.”

“Maybe he got it all, maybe he didn’t. It doesn’t matter now.” O’Conner held up the pink quartz. “This stuff destroys tuned amber. If you’ve got any left, it just went dead.”

Her mouth went dry. “That’s not possible.”

He was genuinely amused now. “You’ll see when you start running. That’s the thing about the catacombs, you know. Put people down there without good amber, and sooner or later they always start running. Makes people crazy, they say. Get rid of her, Kirby.”

THE HEART OF THE UNDERWORLD WAS A VAST FROZEN lake of searing, seething, quicksilver psi.

“It’s incredible,” Marlowe whispered.

She stood with Adam on the rim of the canyon and looked down at the solid sheet of flashing, sparking mirror quartz that filled the valley below. It was hard to look directly at the impossibly brilliant energy for more than a few seconds at a time.

She took out her sunglasses and put them on. The heavily tinted lenses reduced but did not eliminate all of the glare as far as her normal vision was concerned. The glasses did nothing at all to dampen the dazzling effect on her other senses.

“That’s just the surface of the maze,” Adam said. “The real action is inside.”

Perched on Marlowe’s shoulder, Gibson grumbled uneasily. He had become increasingly alert for the past two hours as they made their way through the jungle toward the maze. She reached up to touch him. He huddled closer as though he needed to be reassured.

The three of them were not alone. There was a lot of scurrying in the underbrush and rustling in the leafy canopy. Dust bunnies.

Almost immediately after they had entered the jungle, Marlowe and Adam had become aware of the small creatures trailing them through the underworld. There had been only a handful at first, but the number had increased steadily during the hours it had taken to reach the canyon. Marlowe estimated that there had to be dozens of dust bunnies concealed in the undergrowth now, possibly hundreds. Occasionally she heard them calling to each other. Sometimes Gibson chattered with their unseen companions. But for the most part the bunnies remained eerily quiet, as though sensing that something of great import was happening, something that would affect them.

The sounds of other denizens of the rain forest had grown less frequent as they had neared their destination. Marlowe hadn’t heard a birdcall or seen one of the ubiquitous iridescent lizards for the past hour.

It had taken longer than anticipated to arrive at their destination because they’d been forced to detour around two deadly ghost rivers and one psi storm.

“They weren’t here the last time I came this way,” Adam had said. “Got a feeling that the deteriorating resonance pattern in the maze is generating a lot of unstable energy throughout the jungle. The situation is getting worse.”

Marlowe looked down at the shimmering quicksilver surface of the maze. Bracing herself, she opened her senses cautiously. The shock was both thrilling and energizing. There was an enormous amount of power coming at her in invisible, pulsing currents. It was as if she had taken a hit of an astonishingly potent drug. Everything inside her stirred wildly. She had to fight for control.

She felt Adam’s talent quicken and knew that he was also responding to the energy rolling off the quicksilver lake in a steady tide.