Midnight Crystal (24 page)

“Does it scare you more than this maze?” she asked.

He thought about it. “Maybe about the same.”

She knew then that he was experiencing the same rush that was heating her blood.

She smiled at him. He leaned forward a little and brushed his mouth against hers. When he pulled back, she saw that his eyes were very green; psi green.

And then, in a heartbeat, he was all business, all Guild boss. He wrapped a long length of leather around her waist.

“Listen up, Jones,” he said, his voice hard and flat, the voice of the man in command. “Going into the maze is like going into an alien house of mirrors. Two steps inside the door, and you’ll start feeling disoriented. Ten feet inside, you won’t be able to find the entrance.”

“Just like the catacombs and the jungle.”

“No. Most people can navigate the tunnels and the rain forest, provided they have good amber and a little training. This place is different. Standard rez amber isn’t enough. The only thing we know for certain that works is full-spectrum and tuned mirror quartz. Whatever you do, hang on to the chunk that Nyland gave you.”

She touched the quartz pendant that she wore on a chain around her neck. “Don’t worry, I will.”

“Even with tuned quartz, most people can’t handle the interior of this maze.”

“I see what you mean.” She studied the endless waves of seething energy flooding her senses. “I think that only someone whose talent comes from the dark end of the spectrum could get through this stuff.”

He finished securing the strap to her and then wrapped the other end around his own waist and tied an elaborate knot. There was no more than six feet of slack in the strip of leather that bound them together.

“I feel like I’m on a leash,” she said.

“Good.” He hoisted the gym bag and started toward the entrance. “I want to make damn sure you don’t get out of my sight.”

She thought about what had happened to his sister. “Understood.”

Neither of them turned to wave good-bye to their audience. Side by side they walked through the glittering entrance into a world of midnight mirrors.

Marlowe felt the rapid increase in the intensity of the dreamlight psi as they moved into the maze, but it was the dark infinity of reflections that truly disturbed her senses. Everywhere she looked, up and down and on every side, she was confronted with endlessly repeating images of Adam, Gibson, and herself.

The not-quite-right proportions of the interior architecture compounded the disorienting sensations. It was incredibly difficult just to make out various twists and corners in the maze. More than once she blundered into a mirrored surface. After the first encounter with solid quartz, she walked with one hand extended in front of herself.

“You were right,” she said. “This is freaky.”

“The trick is to try to ignore what you see in the mirrors and concentrate on the underlying energy patterns,” Adam said. “We’re following the currents that are slightly distorted.”

“Got it.” She narrowed her eyes in an attempt to cut down some of the visual special effects and reached up to touch Gibson. He chattered in response and hunkered down on her shoulder. She wondered if he, too, was disturbed by the infinity of scenes that surrounded them, or if he was able to tune them out.

She quickly realized that Adam was right. The faint disturbance in the currents acted like a subtle beacon. Once she started to concentrate on the unstable oscillations and ignore some of the other feedback that her normal senses were receiving, her stomach settled down and her head stopped spinning.

They moved still deeper into the twisting maze. Marlowe decided that the structure was not unlike the catacombs in that there appeared to be endless corridors, chambers, and rooms. But it was, as Adam had warned, vastly more bewildering to the senses.

“The out-of-sync currents are definitely getting stronger now,” she said.

A hundred thousand Adams turned their heads to look back at her. “The warp in the patterns has increased significantly just since the last time I was in here.”

“Any idea how much farther we have to go?”

“Distances are hard to measure in this place, but in terms of time, we should arrive at the chamber in about twenty minutes if we keep walking at this pace and if we don’t take any wrong turns,” he said.

They kept moving. The thin currents of distorted energy got sharper and more distinct with every step.

Adam went around one last corner and stopped.

“This is it,” he said. “If I’m right, the disturbance is emanating from this chamber.”

They walked through a high, narrow opening and stopped in the middle of the room. Marlowe looked around. The mirrored chamber was identical to many of the others they had passed along the way, but the energy in it was wildly distorted.

She closed her eyes and concentrated only on her para-senses. The source of the disturbed energy was suddenly clear. She opened her eyes and looked at the troubled mirror. The infinity of Marlowes and Gibsons gazing back at her were as visually out of sync as the currents were psychically.

“There is definitely something wrong here,” she said. “I think you’re right, the problem is confined to that one chunk of mirror quartz. There just might be enough energy in the Burning Lamp to handle one or two bad lightbulbs.”

“Good to hear,” Adam said.

He set the gym bag on the floor, leaned down, and started to unzip it. He stopped halfway, staring at the bag. Marlowe followed his gaze.

“Oh, geez,” she whispered.

A familiar pale light spilled out of the bag.

“Looks like just walking through all this dreamlight energy with our senses on high was more than enough to light the damn thing,” Adam said.

He finished unzipping the bag and reached into it for the lamp. Marlowe saw him tense. His jaw clenched. She knew that a jolt of energy had just snapped across his senses.

He straightened and held up the lamp. Untold thousands of repeating images of the illuminated artifact appeared in the mirrored surfaces of the chamber.

In Adam’s hands, the lamp grew brighter. As Marlowe watched, the relic became translucent

“This is not good,” she said. “We need to get control of that thing, and fast.”

“Yes,” Adam said.

In the eerie radiation produced by the room and the artifact, his hard face was etched in the paranormal light of a nightmarish dreamscape. Gibson muttered, the way he did in a therapy session.

Marlowe moved closer to Adam, took a deep breath, and put her fingertips on the rim of the lamp.

Energy flashed through her, shocking her senses. She gasped and struggled to regain control. She knew that Adam was fighting the same battle. Gibson rumbled and went into full hunting mode. He sleeked out, and all four eyes appeared.

“It feels even stronger than it did the first time,” Adam said. He sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth.

“I think that’s because the energy in this room is resonating with it,” Marlowe managed. “Augmenting and enhancing the currents. But in a way, that proves your theory. We need to work quickly, though. If the energy in the lamp gets out of control—”

She did not finish the sentence. There was no need. Adam could surely sense the danger, just as she had.

Gibson hissed softly. His hind paws tightened on Marlowe’s shoulder.

The lamp shifted from opaque to translucent and then became transparent. Marlowe could see the dark storm swirling inside it now. All but one of the crystals in the rim began to heat.

An instant later, a blazing, senses-dazzling, paranormal rainbow lit up the chamber of mirrors. The energy of the stones sparked and flashed on the glittering surfaces.

She clenched her fingers around the rim of the lamp. She must not lose control. When she looked at Adam, she saw that he was working equally hard to handle the forces they had unleashed.

She found the core pattern of the lamp’s currents and eased into it. She did not try to fight for control. That would have been impossible. Instead, she set about weaving tendrils of her own power into the surging waves.

“Like riding Dream,” she whispered.

Adam said nothing. He watched her steadily with his fierce green eyes.

“Okay, I’ve got it,” she said after a few seconds of concentration. “But I don’t know how long I can hold the center. Do what you have to do, Adam.”

He focused the energy of the lamp with a sudden rush of power. She held on for dear life. Gibson’s hind paws gripped her shoulder more securely. The psychic winds buffeted them in all directions. The rainbow of psi grew hotter.

No human was ever meant to channel this much energy, she thought. But she and Adam had no choice. They either rode the storm to the end, or they died there in the chamber. She knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

She also knew that she needed more power to control the lamp. She willed it from the depths of her being.

Then, in some way she would never be able to explain, she sensed that Gibson was adding his own psi to hers. He was just a small dust bunny, but all living things gave off energy across the spectrum. She and Gibson shared an animal-human bond that was intensely strong in its own way. They had worked together in the parapsych ward at the Arcane clinic, and they were working together now.

She felt the precise instant when Adam seized the vast forces roiling in the lamp and sent them hurtling into the distorted currents of the chamber. Again and again he sent strong, stable waves soaring into the glittering quartz. She realized that he was relying on the mirrored surfaces of the room to enhance and intensify the lamp’s power.

Within seconds the dark mirrors began to reflect the stable currents of dreamlight, forcing the erratic pulses back into a steady rhythm. Gradually the chamber began to settle. There was no way to know what normal was for this place, Marlowe thought, but it was simple enough for a dreamlight talent like her to recognize stable energy when she saw it.

She looked at Adam, triumph sweeping through her.
“We did it.”

On her shoulder, Gibson returned to full-fluff mode and bounced a little, chortling.

Adam did not speak. He was staring at the lamp.

“Adam?” She realized that the artifact was still fully illuminated, still running hot. “We need to shut it down now.”

“The Midnight Crystal,” Adam said. “Look at it. The damn thing is supposed to be dead.”

Gibson muttered, uneasy again.

Marlowe glanced down at the ring of crystals set in the rim of the lamp. The stone that had remained dark the first time they had activated the lamp was on now, on fire with all the colors of midnight.

“Shut it down,” she whispered.

“I can’t.”

“We have to stop this,” she cried.

The nightmare roared out of the mirrors, engulfing them all.

THE SHOCK OF THE PSYCHIC IMAGES THAT HAD BEEN locked in the Midnight Crystal slammed through Adam. The dark dreamscape took on form and substance in the mirrored room.

It was like any other nightmare, he thought, borne on the waves of dreamlight energy that came from the darkest end of the spectrum. But he retained enough awareness to know that this was not his dream. Not Marlowe’s either.

“Nicholas Winters,” Marlowe said. She looked around at the rapidly coalescing dreamscape. “This is his work. Somehow he managed to infuse the Midnight Crystal with these images. When we rezzed it just now, we released the dream.”

“And maybe the psychic hypnotic command that he embedded in that stone.”

“According to the files, that’s just a myth.”

“Like the lamp and founder’s formula? We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

“Good grief, surely you don’t think Nicholas was able to actually infuse that stone with some kind of hypnotic command? He died centuries ago.”

Gibson growled.

Marlowe broke off, staring at the figure that was materializing in the mirrors.

Adam watched as an all-too-familiar face looked out at them with demon-green eyes. It was the face he saw in the mirror every morning. The only difference was that the man in the mirror was dressed in an archaic fashion characteristic of the late seventeenth century on Earth.

“Let’s go.” Adam gripped Marlowe’s upper arm, intending to propel her toward the doorway of the chamber. “Move.”

She did not argue. But even with the aid of their para-senses, they dared not run. They had to move cautiously or risk crashing into one of the mirrored walls.

Two feet from the door, the surge of rage and madness and raw power hit Adam like a closed fist. He lost his hold on Marlowe and staggered back into the center of the room.