Midnight Crystal (36 page)
Authors: Jayne Castle
But he was astonishingly strong, not just physically but psychically as well. A true Cerberus, she thought. What had made her think that she might be able to suppress his dreamlight patterns long enough to escape?
She fought desperately, sending wave after wave of energy into the storm of power that Fortner was generating, trying to disrupt the pattern. But it was like pounding her fists against a green quartz wall.
She pulled more energy from the depths of her being and reached up, clawing for Fortner’s eyes.
Fortner screamed and released her. She staggered toward the entrance of the chamber.
“Bitch.” He followed her. “I’ll kill you this time.”
Her only chance was to get lost in the catacombs. He had destroyed her amber. That meant he would not be able to track her. All she had to do was get through the doorway. Two more steps.
But she knew she was not going to make it. He was reaching out to grab her again.
A wave of nightmare energy slammed into the room, shocking her senses. But it was not focused on her. She was getting slapped by the backwash.
Adam had arrived.
He moved into the room, riding a powerful crest of psi that Marlowe knew must have crashed against Fortner’s senses with the force of an explosion.
Gibson shot through the doorway, going for Fortner’s leg. Fortner lashed out with one booted foot, forcing Gibson to dodge. The savage kick was accompanied by a small shock wave of energy. It probably amounted to little more than a swat as far as Fortner was concerned, but Gibson reeled from the blow.
“No.”
Marlowe scooped up Gibson and clutched him tightly against her chest. “He’s too strong.”
Marlowe scooped up Gibson and clutched him tightly against her chest. “He’s too strong.”
Fortner ignored them both. He whirled to confront Adam.
“I knew that someday I’d have to kill you,” he said. “Should have done it a long time ago.”
“You couldn’t because you needed me,” Adam said. “I made you look good at the Bureau.”
“I sure as hell don’t need you any longer,” Fortner roared.
Blue ghost fire blazed in the emerald chamber, a whirlpool of violent sapphire energy that forced Adam to retreat toward the back wall. The Cerberus had unleashed another one of his three talents.
Marlowe had never seen blue ghost light before, but she recognized it from the descriptions in the old files. It was deadly. Stronger and more easily manipulated that standard ghost energy, it could be wielded like some demonic flaming sword. In certain quarters it was called assassin’s fire.
Adam responded with a second wave of raw power. The whirlpool of blue ghost light weakened, but it did not disappear. Infuriated, Fortner forged sapphire lightning bolts and sent them hurtling toward Adam.
The bolts splintered and sparked against the invisible barrier of dreamlight that Adam had erected around himself. Marlowe knew that the self-defense tactic, while astonishingly effective, had cost him dearly in terms of energy.
When the last shaft of lightning disintegrated against the dreamlight shield, Adam did not even try to pull another wave of power from the ultradark end of the spectrum. Instead, he launched himself across the chamber.
It was clear immediately that a straightforward physical attack was the last thing Fortner had expected. He had relied on his paranormal talents for so long that he had forgotten there were other, more primitive ways that a man could be attacked, Marlowe thought.
“Stay away from me,” Fortner shouted.
He scrambled to evade Adam’s rush. Marlowe realized that the shock of the assault had distracted him for a couple of precious seconds. Before he could pull himself together and concentrate hard enough to focus his talent, Adam slammed into him.
Both men fell hard on the unforgiving quartz. Fierce energy flared again in the atmosphere. Marlowe knew that by now the men had to be pulling on the last of their reserves. The pair rolled across the floor of the chamber and came up hard against the wall. Fortner landed on top, but he suddenly stiffened.
His eyes opened wide. He stared down at Adam with an unholy mix of fury and disbelief.
“Not you,” he got out. “No. I’m the true Cerberus.”
He screamed once. The horrifying sound ended abruptly. He crumpled. Marlowe watched his dreamlight fade to a weak glow. It winked out altogether.
A crystalline silence gripped the chamber.
Adam moved, pushing the body aside. He got to his feet. The knife in his hand dripped blood on the psi green floor.
He leaned down to check for a pulse. Marlowe knew that he would not find one.
He stood and turned to her, his eyes still hot with psi.
“Marlowe,” he said.
He did not say anything else. There was no need. It was all there in that one word, her name. She sensed the anguished fear and the rage that had driven him; sensed, too, the mag-steel control he had used to focus and channel his energy so that he could get to her.
She managed a shaky smile. “I love you, too. Why didn’t you answer your phone? You said you always answer your private line.”
“I didn’t get your call because I was underground interrogating Joey the broker when you tried to get hold of me. No reception in the tunnels. Joey told me the identity of the client who had commissioned the crystal guns.”
Marlowe glanced at the body on the floor. “Did the news come as a big surprise?”
“No. I’d come to the conclusion that Fortner had to be involved. It was the only explanation for the leaks. When I got back to the surface, Fortner called me himself, telling me that he had you.”
“How did you find me? Gibson?”
“When I got to your office, Gibson was still unconscious,” Adam said. “He didn’t wake up until a few minutes ago. I couldn’t afford to wait. I knew where Fortner’s bolt-hole was. It gave me a starting point. So I called in backup to help track the two of you through the tunnels.”
“Backup?”
Adam looked toward the doorway. Marlowe turned and saw Charlotte Deene. Tucker and Keith were with her.
“Of course,” Marlowe said. “You called in a strong dreamlight talent. Good thinking, Guild boss.”
“This family owed you,” Charlotte said. “You may not approve of the way we make our living, but we have our rules, just like the Joneses and the Winters do. We always pay our debts.”
“You know,” Marlowe said, “the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that J&J really could use the three of you. Why don’t you come to my office soon? We’ll talk.”
Charlotte, Tucker, and Keith looked at each other. None of them spoke, but they seemed to come to a silent consensus.
“We’ll think about it,” Charlotte said.
Chapter 42
THEY GATHERED IN MARLOWE’S OFFICE THE FOLLOWING afternoon. She sat behind her desk, Gibson perched on the back of her chair. The Burning Lamp stood on the desk in front of her.
Adam lounged against the window ledge, arms folded across his chest. The others occupied the two office chairs and the folding chairs that Rick had magically produced.
They had all come to the debriefing: her parents, Ben and Elizabeth; her uncle Zeke; together with Diana and Sam Winters. Vickie Winters was also present. She looked surprisingly rested, given what she had been through, Marlowe thought. Like the Joneses, the Winters family was resilient.
Marlowe sat forward. The chair squeaked. She folded her hands on her desk and tried to look like a professional investigator.
“Everything started to go wrong for Elliott Fortner after the Chamber voted to put Adam in charge of cleaning up the Frequency Guild,” she said. “As the head of the Bureau, Fortner could have argued against the decision, but he didn’t dare.”
“Adam was the obvious choice,” Sam said. “Fortner knew that if he made any objection, there would be too many questions from the powerful Guild chiefs who rule the Chamber.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Fortner had a very good reason for not wanting the Frequency Guild cleaned up. He was raking in a fortune from various illegal operations, all Guild-related, all managed by Hubert O’Conner and Douglas Drake.”
Adam looked at the group. “Afraid of having his business activities exposed by the kind of sweeping investigation he knew I would conduct, Fortner devised a plan with Drake and O’Conner to get rid of me. But just as it was all coming together, I discovered the mirror maze.”
“Adam went straight to Fortner with the news, of course,” Marlowe said. “He also told Fortner that he thought the artifact known as the Burning Lamp might be the key to fixing the dissonance energy in the maze. But first he had to find the lamp.”
Ben frowned. “Fortner must have been stunned.”
“He knew the legend,” Elizabeth said. “The lamp is said to have the power to save a man who was in danger of becoming a true Cerberus.”
“And as it happened,” Marlowe continued, “Fortner had just begun to fear that he might be deteriorating psychically. He had been able to handle his three talents surprisingly well until recently, thanks to the genetic advantages of having been born on Harmony. But his condition had always been extremely fragile.”
Vickie looked thoughtful. “Using the crystal guns that Keith had forged was probably what pushed him over the edge.”
“Yes,” Marlowe said.
“He hadn’t made the connection with the crystal guns,” Adam said. “But he was starting to realize that he was failing. He was getting scared. When I told him that I was going after the Burning Lamp, it dawned on him that if I found it, he might be able to use it to save himself.”
There was a squeak as Marlowe leaned back in her chair. Gibson fluttered briefly, adjusting to the lurch.
“Fortner tried to call off O’Conner and Drake, but that proved impossible,” Marlowe said. “In the end, he took care of both of them, himself. Among other things, Fortner was a chameleon talent. He left the prints of one of O’Conner’s men at the scene of the fire.”
“Did he know that the lamp in the Arcane Museum was a fake?” Ben asked.
“Yes,” Adam said. “Because I told him.”
“But no one told the Deene triplets,” Marlowe added. “So when Keith became seriously ill a few weeks ago, Charlotte and Tucker hatched the idea to find and steal the lamp. They located the fake and went after it.”
Zeke got a knowing expression. “That, of course, set you on a collision course with Adam. Once you two teamed up, you were able to find the lamp and work it.”
Marlowe cleared her throat. “To save the underworld,” she said very deliberately. “We were able to work it to save the underworld.”
Diana smiled. “And to fix Adam’s little dreamlight pattern problems. We understand.”
“Just to clarify, Adam didn’t have any serious dreamlight issues,” Marlowe said.
Adam was amused. “It’s all right, Marlowe. My family knows, and yours, obviously, has figured it out as well. No need to play any games.”
Marlowe glared at her small audience. “Adam does not possess multiple talents. I have reviewed the historical archives and his dreamlight patterns. He has a single, very powerful talent that developed in stages.”
Zeke snorted. “The Cerberus part of the Burning Lamp legend is just another Arcane Society myth, along with that nonsense about Nicholas having somehow infused the Midnight Crystal with a dangerous hypnotic command.”
Ben nodded. “Obviously, the fact that Adam brought Marlowe safely out of the mirror maze and we are all sitting around chatting is proof that he was not overcome with a sudden urge to kill off the entire Jones line.”
Zeke made a face. “I’m a chaos-theory talent. Hell, I was born to see conspiracies everywhere, and even I never believed that part of the legend.”
Adam looked at Marlowe. “You see? No need for any secrets in this room.”
“That’s good to know,” she said. She returned his smile.
In that moment she knew that neither of them was ever going to mention that the psychical hypnotic command infused in the Midnight Crystal had functioned precisely as Nicholas Winters had intended.
“No one is concerned with the Midnight Crystal,” Elizabeth said. “But what about the Deenes’ decision to steal the fake lamp, the action that we all agree threw you and Adam together so that you could save the underworld? Was that pure coincidence?”
Zeke scowled. “There are no coincidences. I’ve told Marlowe that a thousand times.”
“Hmm,” Marlowe said.
Everyone looked at her.
Marlowe looked at the Burning Lamp. “I’m no crystal talent expert, and for obvious reasons I won’t be handing the lamp over to the Arcane labs. But it’s clear that the artifact has a long history of drawing together the Winters male who needs it and a dreamlight talent strong enough to work the energy in it.”
“Surely you don’t believe that the artifact has some supernatural influence,” Vickie scoffed. “No one in Arcane believes in magic.”
“No magic involved here,” Marlowe said. “Just the laws of para-physics. I think that when a man of the Winters bloodline starts to develop the second stage of his talent, the violent energy of the change activates the lamp.”
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