Sizzle and Burn (22 page)

But the disconnect between the physical appearance of the attacker and what his senses were telling him created an instant of jangled chaos in his mind, slowing his reaction speed.

A second figure flew out of the doorway.

“Look out,” Raine shouted. “He’s got a knife.”

The real Raine.

She threw her purse at the attacker. It bounced off the fake Raine’s back and landed on the pavement. The blow couldn’t have done any real damage but it caused the phony Raine to glance back over a shoulder for a split second.

The distraction must have interfered with his control because for a couple of heartbeats the fake Raine wavered and disappeared. A familiar-looking figure in a black ski mask appeared.

Ski Mask dismissed the real Raine as a source of danger in the blink of an eye but that gave Zack time to get his gun out of his shoulder holster.

It was impossible to line up a clear shot, however. The hunter-illusionist was moving too fast. In addition, Raine was behind him. If the bullet missed its target, which it probably would under the circumstances, there was a chance it might strike her.

Ski Mask morphed back into Raine. He was only a couple of feet away now. Zack intuitively
knew
what he was going to do next and managed, just barely, to evade the lunge.

He reeled back behind the end of the steel container marked
GLASS
, reached inside and grabbed the first empty bottle he touched. Then he crouched low.

The fake Raine rounded the corner, black clutch purse extended. Too late the apparition realized that his target was no longer on his feet. He tried to adjust, slashing downward with the purse. The clutch purse changed into a knife in mid-thrust. Ski Mask was back but the transformation disturbed his balance for a second or two.

Zack seized the opening, going in low. He slashed the bottle against a black-clad leg. The blow shattered the glass. He was already rolling out of range. He didn’t have a chance to see if he had drawn blood because Ski Mask abruptly danced back out of reach. He was switching back and forth between the fake Raine and his ski mask persona so quickly now that Zack couldn’t focus long enough to get a clean shot.

It was obvious that the attacker had completely lost control.

“
No
,” Ski Mask/Raine wailed in a high, keening shriek of panic and rage.

He whirled. Still clutching his knife/purse, he fled toward the mouth of the alley.

Zack pounded after him, going straight past a stricken Raine. But it was hopeless. There was no way he could catch the fleeing man. Ski Mask might have lost control of the psychically induced illusion, but he still had a hunter’s speed.

The running figure raced out of the alley and onto the sidewalk. He turned left and vanished from sight, footsteps echoing in the night.

A heavy engine roared. Tires shrieked.

The getaway car was waiting for him.

But this time there was a sickening thud and then the sound of a highly revved engine.

Zack hesitated a few seconds at the mouth of the alley. There was no point running straight into an ambush. But when he risked a quick look around the building, there was no sign of the getaway car.

All he could see was the body sprawled on the pavement in the intersection.

Thirty-five

“T
he cops are calling it hit-and-run,” Zack said into the phone. “He was dead when I got to him. No ID. No one saw the car.”

“What about you?” Fallon asked.

“I didn’t see it, either.” He paced Raine’s serene living room, trying to work off some of the excess energy that was still pumping through him. Batman and Robin trotted at his heels, trying to figure out if this was a new game. “But it sounded like the same SUV that was waiting for him in the motel parking lot last night.”

“Are the police paying any attention to you and Raine?”

“Not at this stage. They read it as an attempted robbery gone bad. I told them I went to the restroom and then stepped outside to get some fresh air. The guy surprised me. Had a knife. He took off running when Raine came outside to see what was going on.”

“All true,” Fallon said.

He sounded satisfied. Everyone knew the Number One Rule.
Stick to the truth as much as possible but don’t try to explain the Arcane Society and its problems with Nightshade to the authorities.

On the whole, it was a good rule, Zack thought. There was just no way a conversation about the Society and Nightshade would go well with a cop.
See, Officer, I work for a psychic detective agency that’s on retainer to an organization devoted to paranormal research, and there’s this other crowd that stole a secret alchemical formula that can enhance a person’s psychic powers…

Yeah, right.

Once in a while the Arcane Society found itself in the pages of the tabloids right next to breaking news about new appearances by Elvis and innocent women getting impregnated by strange creatures from other planets. That was bad enough, as far as Fallon was concerned. He had no intention of compounding the problem by allowing J&J to become a joke among law enforcement agencies.

“The cops are, of course, very interested in the car that hit the robber,” Zack said.

“Even if they find it, I doubt it will lead them anywhere. Whoever took out Ski Mask will make sure of that. The way I see this, his handler inside Nightshade gave him one more chance to remove you from the equation. When he failed, they had a Plan B ready, just for him.”

“Any theories on what was going on with all that morphing?”

“Looks like he may have possessed two high-grade talents,” Fallon said. “But he couldn’t control them both.”

Raine walked in from the kitchen, carrying a bamboo tray that held a delicate pot and two fragile-looking cups. She had changed out of the sexy black dress into a white spa robe. Slippers had replaced the stiletto heels. Her hair was still up in a sultry twist but several silky tendrils had come loose during the excitement in the alley. They dangled around her ears and down the nape of her neck in an incredibly sexy way. Zack’s body, still abuzz with leftover adrenaline, reacted immediately.

“I thought the appearance of multiple high-level talents in any one individual was supposed to be impossible,” Zack said, unable to take his eyes off Raine. “The experts claim that one talent always becomes dominant.”

“Like everything else, there’s an exception to the rule,” Fallon growled. “The historical record indicates that there have been a few cases in which certain individuals displayed strong levels of more than one type of talent. But yes, the phenomenon is extremely rare. According to the experts, there is a logical explanation for why one talent is almost always dominant.”

“Something to do with overstimulation of the brain, right?”

“The brain is designed to process a vast amount of incoming data supplied by all the senses. It is also engineered to tune out unimportant or unnecessary information coming in from those senses. We call it the ability to focus. But if that ability is overridden, the brain can short-circuit, for want of a better term.”

“Information overload.”

“You yourself know that it’s hard enough to handle the stimuli provided by a level-ten psychic sensitivity,” Fallon said. “Takes a lot of willpower and self-control. Just imagine what it would be like to deal with two equally powerful talents.”

“The guy in the ski mask was definitely losing control. It was worse tonight than last night. He was blinking on and off like a bad neon sign.”

“I checked out every reference I could find,” Fallon said. “In each confirmed instance, and admittedly there were only a handful, the double-talents died at an early age. Probably nature’s way of ensuring that those folks don’t become super predators who, in turn, breed more super predators.”

“If you’re right, what are the odds that Nightshade came up with one of those extremely rare multitaskers who didn’t die young?”

“Slim to nothing,” Fallon said. “My gut tells me that Nightshade didn’t find a double-talent; they created one using some new variation of the formula.”

“Makes sense. But if they went to all that trouble to produce one, why destroy such an expensive tool?”

“Obviously because he proved unreliable,” Fallon said. “He went up against you twice and failed both times. Nightshade seems to be a very Darwinian organization. Only the strong and the successful survive and advance to the higher ranks.”

“Sure hope they don’t have a whole bunch of high-level double-talents lined up to fill that guy’s shoes.”

“Not likely.” Fallon sounded very certain. “Cost issues aside, the analysts assure me that, statistically speaking, there are very, very few people who possess the sort of parapsych profile that could be chemically stimulated to create a functioning double-talent.”

“Statistics wasn’t my favorite subject. Too many ways they can be manipulated.”

“Look on the bright side,” Fallon said, dourly cheerful. “You’re obviously making progress with the assignment. At least we now know that Lawrence Quinn is dead and that the double-talent you encountered tonight is probably the one who killed him.”

“We also know that Nightshade stole something from Quinn before taking him out. His computer, I think. The bartender at the club said he had one with him.”

“Probably contained his research notes or whatever information he intended to sell to Nightshade,” Fallon mused. “But something must have gone wrong. The folks who arranged to kill Quinn and steal the computer didn’t get whatever it was they expected to find so they’re back in Oriana. And Raine Tallentyre is the only lead we’ve got. Whatever you do, don’t let her out of your sight.”

Zack heard a click and realized he was holding a handful of dead air. He clipped the phone back on his belt, stopped pacing and looked at Raine. She was seated on the sofa, pouring tea with a sensual grace that made the breath catch heavily in his chest. Everything deep inside went tight and hard.

Get a grip, Jones. It’s just the aftermath. You’ve been here before and survived.

Raine set the pot down on the tray and looked at him with a shadowed expression. “What did Fallon have to say?”

He forced himself to concentrate and managed to give her a quick summary of Fallon’s comments.

The cats, having concluded that the pacing game was over, wandered over to the sofa and hopped up onto the cushions on either side of Raine.

Zack shoved his fingers through his hair, trying to concentrate. “One good thing. Fallon doesn’t think we need to be worried about another double-talent hanging around the vicinity of Oriana.”

Raine used both hands to raise the tiny cup to her lips. “What about the person who just murdered the one we did have?”

“Him, we probably should worry about.” He realized he was staring at her mouth.
Focus, Jones
. He started moving again, prowling the room. “But maybe not for a while.”

She paused before taking a sip of the herbal concoction. “Why do you say that?”

“Fallon may be right. Maybe Nightshade did remove their double-talent because he failed to get rid of me. But there’s another possibility. Maybe the real reason for the termination was that Ski Mask slipped out of control and became a problem.”

She pondered that briefly.

“You mean you don’t think he was ordered to make another attempt to kill you tonight? You believe he was acting on his own?”

“He was running very, very hot. It’s hard to explain but I sensed that he wanted to kill me for his own, personal reasons. He just didn’t have the kind of detachment that a pro is supposed to have. Fallon thinks they were giving him some variation of the formula. It may have affected his sanity.”

She shuddered. “From what you’ve said, the founder’s formula has a long history of driving users crazy.”

“Yes.”

“It’s hard to believe that my father was secretly working on something so dangerous.”

“Raine—”

She put the little cup down very carefully. “No wonder the Council expelled my family from the Society and sent J&J to burn down the lab.”

He crossed the room and halted in front of her on the opposite side of the coffee table.

“I thought I made it clear, the Council kicked your father out of the Society,” he said quietly. “It didn’t expel you or your aunt. Remember that.”

She shrugged. “Not like either of us had much choice after that night when J&J destroyed everything.”

“You didn’t have a choice because you were too young. But your aunt did. She’s the one who made the decision to raise you outside the Society and to deny you your heritage.”

“In her place, I would have done the same thing. She didn’t have a lot of reason to trust the Society or J&J.”

He moved around the end of the coffee table, reached down and wrapped his hands around her wrists. He pulled her up off the sofa.

“What about you?” he said.

“I have no reason to trust the Society or J&J, either. They’ve got their own agendas.”

“And you have yours.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t trust the Society and you don’t trust J&J,” he said. “What about me?”

She searched his face. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” he said. He could hear the rough, gritty edges in his own voice but there was nothing he could do to soften them. “It matters.”

“I trust you,” she said. She looked as if the statement surprised her but she didn’t back away from it. “You have been honest with me since the start of this thing.”

He felt something deep inside him ease.

“Okay,” he said. He made himself release her wrists. “Okay, thanks.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” He answered without even thinking about it.

“Even though you know I’ve got my own reasons for helping you find out what Nightshade is after?”

“I know where you’re coming from. Not like you’ve kept it a secret. You’ve been honest from the beginning.”

“So have you.” She sank back down onto the sofa. “I’ll pour you some of my special tea. We’ll play some cards.”

He did not want to sit down. He wanted to keep moving. Tea and solitaire weren’t going to cut it tonight. The images of Lawrence Quinn’s last seconds on earth were still too vivid, too intense. The attack by Ski Mask had compounded the usual problems of the aftermath.