Jayne Castle - After Glow

As she watched a third man appeared, adding his energy to the flaring, whirling firestorm.

"Forget that." Emmett threw the truck into reverse, braced one hand on the back of the seat, and turned slightly in the seat to check the corridor behind the vehicle. He stomped hard on the accelerator. "The first two are simple rez-patterns. I could handle them without any trouble. But the third guy is good. I'd have to burn amber to get rid of his ghost plus the other two and we can't risk that yet."

She understood. Once Emmett used the kind of power that would melt amber the countdown would begin to the inevitable aftereffects. A bad case of lust would be the least of his problems. She knew that he could control that. But there was nothing he could do to hold off the desperate need for sleep that would soon overtake him. He could not afford such a severe expenditure of psi energy until they were in a location where it would be safe for him to crash.

At the next intersection, Emmett glanced at the locator, spun the wheel, and turned sharply to the right.

Alarmed shouts rang in the corridor. Greenies appeared. Two small ghosts flared. Emmett de-rezzed them, but instead of forcing the truck past the gathering crowd, he checked the gauges and made a left turn that took them down still another corridor.

They didn't get far. A fresh team was waiting in the next passage. Emmett slammed to a halt, reversed course again, and turned to the right.

This glowing corridor was empty but psi power surged in waves down the hall, flowing around them like the currents of an invisible river.

"Bad news," Lydia whispered. "This looks familiar."

"Yeah?"

"Herb brought me here." She turned her head, searching for reference points. "This is the corridor that leads to the chamber where that wall of illusion shadow is located. Once we're in there, we'll be trapped in more ways than one."

Emmett checked the rearview mirror. "Guess that explains a few things."

"Such as?"

"Why they left three kids to guard you instead of a couple of trained hunters. Hell, they're not trying to catch us. They're herding us in the direction they want you to go. Doubt if they were expecting me. I'm probably a complication they could have done without, but they wanted you to make an escape attempt."

She frowned. "Why would they do that?"

"So that they could block all the routes out of here except one," Emmett said.

Another memory shimmered and coalesced with startling clarity in her mind. "Just like last time."

"What?"

"Little creep."

"Who?"

"Herb." Fresh outrage flashed through her as more memories of her Lost Weekend came together. "I knew he was lying, I just wasn't sure which of the details he gave me were true and which were false. But now I recall that I didn't arrive in this sector by crashing through from Amatheon's tomb. I escaped that way."

"What the hell?"

"It's all coming back to me now. Never mind, I'll explain later. Keep going."

Someone yelled behind them.

Emmett checked the rearview mirror again. "Maybe it's time I gave those guys something else to think about."

He reached inside his robe and withdrew a dark, lethal-looking object.

She stared at the weapon in his hand. "That's a mag-rez gun. Where did you get it?"

"Supply cabinet."

"Oh, yeah? And just what supply cabinet contains illegal weapons like that?"

"The one Wyatt keeps in his office. Also known as his private wall safe."

"Guild bosses," she muttered. "What can you do with 'em?"

Emmett checked his mirror again. She saw his hand tighten on the gun. A new jolt of alarm went through her.

"Emmett, you can't use that thing in here. You know how dangerous it is to use any kind of firearms inside the catacombs. The bullets ricochet all over the place. What's more, the psi energy you use to rez the trigger is unpredictable inside the walls. It could easily summon a lot of wild ghost energy."

"All of which will cause some major distractions," he said coldly. "Which may be just what we need."

She heard a small rumble of protest and looked down to see that Fuzz was wriggling gently in her hands, trying to free himself. She realized that she was holding him very snugly. "Sorry, Fuzz. Guess I'm a little tense." She relaxed her grip.

Fuzz scrambled off her lap and perched on her shoulder. He was all sleeked out now, four eyes guttering with the ice and fire of a born predator. The same chilling heat burned in Emmett's eyes, she noticed.

By the time you see the teeth, it's too late.

She drew a deep breath. "Don't worry, we're going out of here the same way I did the last time. I'll untangle the trap that guards Vance's secret chamber."

"I thought you told Herb you couldn't remember how to de-rez that wall of shadow."

"He lied to me so I lied to him."

Emmett drove through the doorway of the antechamber and braked hard. With a few deft movements, he succeeded in parking the big vehicle so that it blocked the entrance.

Ghost light flared wildly in the entrance they had just driven through. The pulsing energy was so close that Lydia flinched. Emmett had summoned a large UDEM.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Setting up a roadblock. It won't hold them for long but it will buy us some time." He motioned her to get out of the cab. "End of the line, let's get moving."

Lydia scrambled out of the vehicle, Fuzz on her shoulder. Emmett followed swiftly.

She heard shouts and yells in the long hall behind them. The ghost Emmett had set effectively blocked the entrance. It would take time and skill to de-rez it.

They ran toward the great, crashing waves of psi energy that spilled and roiled along the far wall. Lydia thought she was prepared for the monster trap this time but the sight of that endlessly shifting darkness nevertheless made her mouth go dry.

Emmett surveyed the scene and whistled softly. "Okay, I'm impressed."

Fuzz growled softly.

"Herb said there was no record of any other trap like it in the official excavation records and on that point, I'm inclined to believe him," Lydia said. "It would have been worth an entire graduate seminar course in P-A school."

Emmett reached out to pluck Fuzz from her shoulder. "I'll take care of my buddy here while you do what you have to do." He glanced toward the entrance. "But whatever it is, please do it fast."

"Don't worry, now that we're in here, the Greenies will keep their distance until I do something with this thing." She moved slowly toward the cascading night.

"Guess the thought of being caught in this monster's backlash is what you might call a major deterrent."

"Yes." She shivered and turned quickly toward him. "Emmett, if I'm wrong about this, if I can't untangle it again, I honestly don't think anyone standing this close will survive. It would be best if you moved into one of those alcoves along a side wall. The quartz will block some of the energy."

"Forget it; Fuzz and I know you can handle this. But it would be nice if you hurried things up a bit."

"Right."

She turned back to face the trap and concentrated on the silent waterfall of dark energy in front of her. She probed gently, feeling for the patterns within the patterns of pulsing, seething psi-power. There was no way a single tangler working alone could possibly summon enough energy to de-rez the entire trap at once. Herb had told her that the Greenies had attempted to use two tanglers in tandem in one desperate experiment but the results had been disastrous. The effort had provoked dangerous, unpredictable changes in the complex rez patterns.

The answer was obvious, once you saw it, she thought. If you could not tear down a wall or go around it, you had to tunnel through it.