Silver Master (20 page)

She moved up close behind Davis, planted her hands against his back, and started pushing. He didn't say anything, but with the added support he was able move a little faster.

His weight grew heavier as they made their way up the staircase. At one point she nearly despaired. Max looked as worried as a dust bunny could get. He chortled encouragingly in Davis's ear.

At last the tower entrance came into view.

Davis paused, chest heaving. He handed the mag-rez to her.

“Just in case they had the sense to leave a guard outside,” he said. “If we need this, you'll have to be the one to use it. In this condition I couldn't hit the broad side of a Dead City wall.”

“All right.” She took the gun from him. It was lighter than her own older model, but she could see that the mechanism was the same.

“You okay?” he asked hoarsely.

“Don't worry. I'm saving my panic attack for some other time.”

“I'm glad to hear that, because you're the only one who can get us out of here before some of those bastards down there come to or someone comes looking for them.”

She shuddered. “Rest assured, I've got the big picture here.”

A moment later, they emerged from the stairwell. Celinda's pulse was pounding, not just from the physical effort of shoving Davis up the last few stairs but from the fear that someone else was going to jump out at them. She gripped the mag-rez very tightly in her right hand and prayed.

No one accosted them when they left the tower.

“Idiots,” Davis muttered. “Should have left a man on guard up here.”

“Just be grateful they didn't. I certainly am.”

“No problem with gratitude here, either.”

He was starting to slur his words, a sign of the physical exhaustion that was rolling over him. But it was the psychic fatigue dampening his senses that worried her the most. The afterburn had not struck him nearly this hard the other evening when he had de-rezzed the doppelganger ghosts in the Old Quarter of Cadence. Whatever he had done to make himself invisible had sapped every ounce of psi power he possessed.

She managed to wedge him into the passenger seat of the Phantom and belted him in place.

Max and Araminta tumbled in after him. Davis leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. Max made anxious little noises.

“Don't worry, Max,” Celinda said. “He'll be okay. He just needs to sleep.”

Max did not appear reassured. Araminta cuddled close to him, offering silent comfort.

Celinda got behind the wheel, rezzed the high-powered engine, and drove out of the old parking lot, skirting the heavy Oscillators that Landry's men had used.

She worked her way gingerly back toward the highway, afraid of jostling Davis any more than necessary. When she hit an especially high bump a little too hard, she glanced at him quickly. He didn't open his eyes, but in the amber glow of the dashboard lights she was pretty sure she saw him wince.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It's not me I'm worried about.”

“Oh. Right. The car. Well, look on the bright side. If you need a new one when this is all over, you can just put it on the Guild's tab.”

“There is that. Celinda, I want you to listen closely to what I'm going to tell you.”

She did not take her eyes off the battered old road. “Okay.”

“I'm going to go under before we reach Cadence.”

“The burn and crash. Yes, I understand.”

“Not like the other night. This will be a major crash. As in, I may not come back out of it.”

“What?”
Horrified, she jerked her eyes off the road long enough to cast him a quick, searching look. “What are you talking about?”

“The last time this happened, I ended up in a parapsych hospital for nearly two months.”

“You're starting to scare me here.”

“Whatever you do, promise me you won't take me to an emergency room. Call Trig as soon as you can. He'll know what to do.”

She could hardly breathe. A fine tremor swept through her. She reminded herself that she had postponed the panic attack. She had to stay calm and in control.

“All right,” she said quietly.

“Tell Trig everything. Make sure he knows we've got the relic. He'll take it from there. I want that damn thing back in Mercer Wyatt's hands tonight.”

The last few words were so weighted down with exhaustion that she could barely comprehend them.

“You're going to be okay, Davis,” she said firmly.

He did not respond. When she gave him another fleeting glance, she saw that his eyes were closed. That was normal, she told herself. But something about his energy patterns didn't feel at all normal. Max huddled closer to him.

It took forever to get to the highway. When she reached it, she pointed the Phantom in the direction of Cadence City and gave the powerful vehicle its head. The reflective white lines on the pavement became a blur.

Ten miles later she realized that Davis was shivering violently. She took one hand off the wheel and touched his forehead. He was frighteningly cold.

His psi energy waves had faded to almost nothing. He wasn't sleeping, she realized. He was sinking into something that felt much deeper and darker: a coma.

WHATEVER WAS HAPPENING TO DAVIS, HER INTUITION
told her that it did not fall into the admittedly flexible category labeled “normal,” not even for a hunter.

She was making excellent time, but she was still a good hour away from Cadence. All her instincts were shrieking that she had to do something now to stop Davis's slide into psychic oblivion.

Max looked dreadful. He was crouched forlornly on Davis's shoulder, muttering. Araminta was perched on the back of the seat. She hadn't eaten a thing in the past hour.

“Davis?” Celinda said, glancing across at him. “Can you hear me?”

There was no response. His head hung forward. The only thing that held him upright was the seat belt.

“Davis, wake up,” she said, infusing a tone of sharp command into her voice. “Talk to me.”

Silence. Davis's psi waves pulsed more weakly.

She thought about the relic in the tote and then she thought about what she had been able to do with it during the fight in the underground chamber. One thing was certain, she couldn't run any psychic experiments while speeding along the highway at thirty miles over the speed limit.

Another badly weathered billboard came up in the headlights. It promised Cold Drinks & Snacks Next Exit.

She slammed the brakes, slowing the Phantom abruptly, and swung off the highway onto the side road. Her headlights picked up the looming shape of a sagging, unlit building. The old roadside snack stand had been closed for a long time.

She drove around behind the deserted stand and shut off the headlights. If any of Landry's men had managed to climb back out of the alien ruins and give chase, they wouldn't be able to see the Phantom parked behind the tumbledown snack stand.

She grabbed the tote from behind the seat, reached inside, and found the relic. The energy emanating from it was reduced to a trickle again. The powerful sensation she had experienced holding it underground was gone.

But energy was energy, and now, thanks to her experience in the alien chamber, she had a sense of how to employ it.

She unbuckled her belt, climbed over the gearshift, and wrapped herself around Davis, trying for as much physical contact as possible. Max retreated to the back of the seat, making way for her. He seemed to understand that she was trying to help.

Davis was shivering violently now. He stirred slightly when she put her leg over his thighs and slipped an arm behind his neck. She sensed that on some level he was aware of her presence.

She gripped the ruby amber relic and hugged him tightly to warm him physically while she concentrated on his cooling psi energy.

The patterns snapped into focus immediately, not as brilliantly clear and distinct as when she was underground but far more so than when she read psi waves with only her innate talent.

She saw that Davis's rhythms were not only weakening rapidly, the waves were losing their elegantly controlled pattern. The normally strong, steady pulses were increasingly erratic. Hot and cold light flashed across the spectrum.

Desperate, she selected the strongest band of pulsing energy she could perceive and then sent her own psi through the ruby amber artifact.

For a few heart-stopping seconds she feared that nothing was happening. Then the ragged band of energy began to resonate with her psi waves in a rhythm that reinforced Davis's normal pattern. The waves became stronger and more regular.

She urged a little more power through the ruby amber, selecting another point on the spectrum. Those wavelengths also began to steady. She shifted to a new point and repeated the process.

The steadying of one or two bands seemed to have a restorative effect on the others. The remaining waves emanating from across the psychic spectrum rapidly strengthened and became regular.

Davis grew warmer to the touch.

Max chortled excitedly.

Davis groaned, raised his lashes a little, and looked up at her with eyes that no longer burned like over-rezzed flash-rock.

“Are we there yet?” he asked.

He still sounded very, very tired, but now it felt like a normal exhaustion.

She was so relieved she almost cried. “Not quite. Another hour or so.”

“I feel like I just fell off a cliff into a deep ocean and had to swim back to the surface,” he muttered.

“That's probably a pretty accurate description.”

He watched her very steadily through half-closed lids. “I didn't get back under my own power. You were there. I could feel you.”

“We can talk about it later. I think it's time you got some real sleep. You need it.”

He closed his eyes. She waited a tense moment or two, afraid that he might start to slip away from her again. But his psi rhythms, although slowed and gentled by deep slumber, remained steady and strong across the spectrum.

She scrambled back behind the wheel, set the relic on the dash, and rezzed the engine. When she reached the highway, she turned toward Cadence for the second time that night. She called Trig as soon as she could get a signal. He answered on the first ring.

“How was the wedding?” he asked.

“Pink.” She glanced at the dashboard clock. “But things got really complicated afterward. I'll be at my place in about an hour, maybe less, depending on traffic.”

“You're driving?”

“Yes.”

“The Phantom?”

“Uh-huh.”

He chuckled. “I'm impressed. I don't think Davis ever let anyone except his brother and me get behind the wheel, and we only got to drive it around the block.”

“He didn't have a lot of choice tonight. Can you meet me at my apartment? I'm going to need a little help getting your boss upstairs.”

“Why?” Trig's gravelly voice sharpened with concern. “What's happened?”

“A lot. I'll tell you the details when I see you.” She glanced at the ruby amber artifact on the dash. “The most important thing is that we have the relic.”

“That's great news.”

“Trig?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you get to chapter four of my book yet? The part that talks about how important it is for two people to communicate?”

“Yes, and I agree absolutely,” Trig said, very earnest now. “I underlined several paragraphs in that chapter.”

“You might want to mention to your boss that he ought to read that chapter.”

Trig heaved a heavy sigh. “I know he isn't always a first-rate communicator. But he's a guy. You gotta give him some leeway.”

“I don't think this comes under the heading of a little leeway.”

“How did he screw up this time?”

Given what she had observed about the relationship between the two men, she was fairly certain that Trig was aware of Davis's odd talent.

“It would have been useful if he had mentioned some of his small, personal quirks,” she said.

“Quirks?”

“Turns out my date for the wedding is the Invisible Man.”

There was a short, shocked pause.

“Green hell,” Trig whispered. “He went invisible?”

“Yes.” She gave him a quick rundown of the events in the alien chamber.

“How long did he stay vanished?” Trig's voice was tense and urgent.

“Not long. Maybe four or five minutes.”

“Five minutes?”

“That's an estimate. I wasn't looking at a watch.”

“You're sure it wasn't just a couple of minutes?”

“No, it was definitely longer than that. There were five of them, you see. And they had knives. They all pulled ghosts, of course. We were underground, so they were big ghosts.”

“This is bad,” Trig said grimly.

“I think Davis is okay. He told me that he was all right, and I can sense his energy waves. They feel normal again.”

“He's not okay. Not if he burned silver light for more than a couple of minutes. The last time he went over that limit he ended up in a weird coma. They used all sorts of drugs on him to try to bring him out of it. He spent nearly two months in the hospital. Afterward everyone said he was lucky to be alive, let alone function normally again.”

“He's okay, Trig. I'm monitoring him.”

“I don't get it. How did he avoid the big sink this time?”

“I used the relic on him.”

“That ruby amber thing? How did you do that?”

“It's hard to explain.” She paused. “Trig?”

“Yeah?”

“I think that's what the relic does. It allows a person to manipulate someone else's psychic energy waves. It may have been some sort of alien medical device.”

“Weird.”

“Not so weird when you think about it. The aliens were obviously heavily into psi energy. Figures they would have needed some therapeutic technologies to deal with various kinds of psychic trauma. Look how much medical research we're doing in that field because of how rapidly psychic talents are developing in humans.”

“Do you realize what you're saying? If that relic really can be used to treat human parapsych trauma, it would be a genuine medical miracle.”

“The problem is,” she said quietly, “I've got a nasty feeling that this is one of those good news–bad news situations.”

“What do you mean?”

“The relic is pretty impressive, Trig. I think it holds out great hope for treating a whole range of psi trauma.”

“I'm sensing a ‘but' here.”

“But I got a strong hunch that in the wrong hands it could be used as a form of mind control.”

“Huh. Okay, that doesn't sound so good.”

“No, it's not. Trig, Davis wants the relic to go back to Mercer Wyatt tonight.”

“He's right. The sooner the relic is out of your hands and back in the Guild vault, the safer everyone will be. Wyatt can handle Landry.”

“I understand, but I've had some time to think about this, and I've come to a conclusion that Davis and Mercer Wyatt probably won't like.”

Trig groaned. “Please don't tell me that you tossed that damned relic out into the desert on the theory that the device is too dangerous for mere humans to use.”

“No. It is dangerous, but so is a lot of medical technology. I'm going on the theory that the possible benefit is too great to ignore. Besides, what if another one turns up someday? This one needs to be studied.”

“Absolutely,” Trig said quickly. “All the more reason to keep the device under lock and key in a secure place like the Guild vault.”

She almost smiled. “I agree. And that's why I've decided to turn it over to a reputable medical research lab.”

“Damn. You don't trust the Guild to handle the device, do you?”

“In a word, no.”

There was another long pause.

“Does Davis know about this?”

“Not yet,” she said. “He's still asleep. I intend to talk to him about my plan as soon as he recovers from the afterburn.”

“You won't do anything without discussing it with him first, will you?” Trig sounded very worried.

“No.”

“All right. I'll be waiting at your apartment when you get here. You'll need some security tonight, anyway. I doubt very much that Landry would try anything in Cadence. This is Mercer Wyatt's town, after all. But whoever searched your apartment the other night and then raised those twin ghosts is still running around.”

“Any luck with that angle?”

“I've got one good possibility,” Trig said. “I was waiting for Davis to get back before chasing it down, though. Figured he'd want to handle it himself. Listen, about this plan of yours to turn the relic over to a research lab.”

“Yes?”

“Think the dust bunny will go along with it?”

She looked at Araminta, who was munching on a cracker topped with pink cream cheese. “I have no idea.”