Jayne Castle - Dark Light

So much for her brilliant plan to lose him. Her only hope now was to keep running. He was older than she was. Maybe he would tire sooner.

Unfortunately, Harlan appeared to be in excellent physical condition. She turned several more corners but always, always , the ultraviolet beam followed a short time later.

She almost missed the faint shadow in the doorway. It was barely perceptible. But it rezzed an alarm somewhere in her brain. What was it Fontana had said? The ambient psi light in the tunnels creates no natural shadows .

She stopped, gasping for air and stared at the doorway. The slight shift in the light could easily have been a trick of her imagination, but her intuition told her otherwise. She was looking at an illusion trap.

There was only one way to lure Harlan into the snare. She hurled her purse, the ring inside, through the entrance into the chamber beyond. She was now without amber. If she lost sight of the purse, she was doomed.

Never taking her eyes off the leather shoulder bag, she stepped back into the opening of a room directly behind her.

She heard Harlan's hard breathing and the soft thud of his shoes. Then the beam of ultraviolet appeared.

"You bitch," Harlan gasped. "You crazy, interfering, stupid bitch of a woman."

He came into view. He had the generator in one hand and a locater in the other. His attention was fixed on the locater's screen. If he looked up and to his right, he would see her standing in the doorway. But if he followed the locater, he would look to the left and see her purse on the floor just inside the chamber.

Harlan looked to the left.

She did not know what he was thinking at that moment, but it was obvious that he was winded and desperate. He was not paying attention to small details like faint shadows where there should not be any. Whatever the case, he was unable to resist the bait.

He went through the chamber doorway, triggering the trap. Sierra did not see anything; the energy released by the illusion snare was invisible to the naked eye. But Harlan stiffened violently as though he had stumbled into a ghost.

She knew that the sound of his horrified scream would follow her into her nightmares for a long time to come. She clamped her hands over her ears and continued to stare hard at her purse.

A few seconds later the high, keening wail of anguish ended abruptly. Harlan fell, unconscious, to the floor.

She waited a few tense seconds and then stepped over him to collect the handbag. She reached inside, took out the black and amber ring, and clutched it tightly in her fingers.

Then she started to shake.

A SHORT TIME LATER SHE WAS STILL ON HER FEET, WALKING tensely back and forth in front of the chamber, hugging herself and concentrating on her breathing, when Elvis appeared.

He scuttled toward her down the glowing corridor, white cape flying. She heard the faint, familiar whine of a sled engine behind him. The vehicle rounded the corner a few seconds later. Fontana was at the wheel. Ray was in the passenger seat.

" Elvis ." She swept him up into her arms and buried her face in his tatty fur. "I thought you guys would never get here."

Fontana brought the sled to a stop, vaulted out, and came toward her with long, swift strides.

"Are you all right?" he demanded.

The harshness of his voice made her smile a little. She understood. This was the way it had been when they had fled into the rain forest, and he had forced himself to remain on his feet until he got her to safety. A successful Guild boss had to know how to clamp a mag-steel lid on his emotions so that he could prioritize.

"Yes." She blinked back the tears of relief that filled her eyes. "I'm fine now that you're here."

"You scared the living ghost light out of me," he said. "Promise me you won't ever do anything like that again."

"Wasn't planning to make a habit of it."

He caught her in his arms and pulled her hard against him. Elvis, squashed between the two of them, squeaked in protest, wriggled free, and scurried up to sit on Sierra's shoulder. Satisfied that all was well, he preened his ruffled fur.

"I was so damned afraid," Fontana said into her hair.

"How did you find Elvis?"

"He found us down here in the tunnels. We were all headed in the same direction. He must have some kind of psychic link with you."

Ray prodded Harlan's body. "What happened to Ostendorf?"

She turned in the circle of Fontana's arm and looked down at Harlan. "I was running from him. He was using a locater to track me. I saw a shadow in a doorway and remembered what Fontana had told me about illusion traps. I had the ring in my purse."

Fontana's hand tightened on her shoulder. "You threw your purse into that chamber to lure him inside, didn't you?"

"Yes."

His jaw tensed. "You tossed away your only amber? Damn it, Sierra, if you had lost sight of it—"

"Take it easy," Ray said to Fontana. "It's an old hunter trick, and you know it. Sure, it's risky, but it wasn't like she had another option, now, was it?"

Fontana pulled Sierra more snugly against his side. "No, it's not."

Ray grinned. "Looks like the Crystal Guild has a brand-new legend, and the Curtain has another scoop."

"HOW DID YOU HANDLE IT?" FONTANA ASKED QUIETLY.

She knew what he meant. "The claustrophobia?"

"Must have been bad."

They were on her apartment balcony overlooking the Green Gate Tavern, glasses of wine in hand. Elvis perched on the railing, munching on the remains of the pizza they had all shared earlier. He still wore his white cape and dark glasses.

Sierra drank some of her wine, thinking back to the sensations she had experienced that afternoon. "Running from Harlan's ultragenerator was certainly a distraction. But later, after he triggered the illusion trap, I couldn't seem to stop shaking. So I just kept walking up and down that hall past the chamber. I knew it wouldn't be long before you came for me. That's what I kept telling myself." She paused. "That's how I got through it."

"It was my fault. Should have figured out sooner that Ostendorf was involved."

She rounded on him, outraged. "That's ridiculous. You moved amazingly fast as it was, taking down the drug operation and cornering Patterson within days of getting into the executive suite. Harlan Ostendorf covered his tracks well. It's amazing that you figured out what he was up to at all, let alone realized that he had kidnapped me today. I think you must have a pretty strong streak of intuition, yourself."

"I should have understood immediately that he was the only one who could have known about the sector chart in the journal."

"Listen up, Mr. Guild Boss. If you intend to make it in the business, you're going to have to learn when to beat yourself up over a perceived failure and when not to beat yourself up over one. What happened today was not your fault. Get over it."

He went still for a moment. Then his mouth twitched.

"Maybe you've got a future as an executive career coach," he said.

She wrinkled her nose. "No, that wouldn't be any fun. I've met a few executives, and let me tell you, none of them take direction well. You're a perfect example."

"You're probably right. Stick to the do-gooder gig." He rested both forearms on the railing, wineglass cradled between his hands. "It's definitely your forte."

"What about the six ultragenerators that you recovered?"

"They are going straight into the vault at the research lab."

The old, familiar irritation spiked within her. "In other words, they have become official, classified Guild secrets."

"Damn straight. What's more, if I see so much as a word about those generators on the front page of the Curtain , I am going to be one very pissed-off Guild boss."