Illusion Town (12 page)

The dream-walking started again . . .

“What now?” the dreamer asked, annoyed by the interruption to what had been an otherwise luxuriously peaceful, dream-free sleep. It was the first time she had gone to sleep in a man's arms without suffering unfortunate repercussions.

But her doppelgänger refused to pay attention. She rose from the camp bed and looked down at the dreamer.

“Get up,” the doppelgänger said in the silent language of dreams.

The dreamer tried to resist.

“It's too quiet,” the doppelgänger said.

This was not an observation. It was a warning. The dreamer knew better than to ignore the urgent message her intuition was sending.

Reluctantly, the dreamer stirred. The doppelgänger returned to the cot. The metaphysical and the physical merged once more.

The shock brought Hannah fully awake, her heart pounding. Instinctively she tried to sit up but something heavy pinned her to the cot. In a wild panic now, she fought the weight.

“Easy,” Elias said. He spoke directly into her ear. “Hush.”

The weight was abruptly removed from her chest. She realized in a somewhat blurry fashion that it had been Elias's arm wrapped around her that had briefly trapped her. She took some deep breaths, trying to calm the rush of adrenaline and psi.

But there was another kind of weight in the atmosphere. It pressed on her, urging her to sink back into sleep. She struggled to resist it, automatically rezzing her talent.

The oppressive sensation receded.

Her first thought was that Elias had been wrong. His aura couldn't handle her dreamlight currents, after all. At least he hadn't awakened screaming. But then, this was Elias. It would take a lot to make him wake up in a raw panic.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, mortified. “I'm not used to sleeping with anyone.”

“Quiet.” He touched his fingers to her lips. “Feel the silence?”

She started to ask him what he meant. But the doppelgänger's words came back to her.
It's too quiet
.

It was as if the entire camp had been smothered in a senses-muffling fog. She had to use a lot of energy to resist the tug of a deep sleep.

“Yes,” she said. “I can feel it.”

Satisfied that she had received the message, Elias released her and sat up on the edge of the cot. She watched him pull on his trousers and boots with quick, efficient moves. He scooped up the flamer and went to the entrance of the tent. His broad shoulders were silhouetted against the soft glow of the amber lantern that burned at the entrance.

The stone in his ring glowed with a dark, paranormal fire. She knew then that he was using his talent to fend off the pressing weight of an unnatural sleep.

“Get dressed,” Elias ordered softly.

But she was already on her feet. She struggled into her panties and jeans, ignoring the bra. She yanked the pullover down over her head and shoved her feet into the ankle boots.

Elias unfastened the flap that sealed the entrance of the tent. Four eyes, two of them a predatory yellow-gold, stared into the interior.

Virgil blinked and scurried through the opening. Hannah caught him and plopped him on her shoulder. He was sleeked out, ready for the hunt. There was no welcoming chortle and no growl. Like all natural-born predators he was at his most dangerous when he went silent. She noticed that he still had his Arizona Snow doll.

Elias was moving quietly, too. He made almost no sound when he eased out of the tent. He paused a moment and then motioned for Hannah to follow him.

When she stepped through the opening she realized
that the heavy silence weighed like a shroud on the entire campsite. The amber lanterns still glowed, illuminating the scene, but nothing moved.

“There's no security,” Elias said, keeping his voice low. “Whoever did this probably took the guards down first.”

She wanted to ask him why he was so certain that the frightening silence had been induced by a human. There was, after all, a great deal of unknown energy drifting through the Rainforest. But this didn't seem like the right time to get into a technical discussion of the problem.

He led the way through the orderly rows of tents. No one stirred. When he reached the perimeter he stopped and crouched beside what appeared at first glance to be a lump of laundry. It took Hannah a couple of seconds to realize that it was a man dressed in the uniform of a security guard. She caught her breath, her pulse skidding wildly.

Elias touched the guard's throat and then tried shaking the man's shoulder. There was no response.

“He's alive,” Elias said quietly. “Just fast asleep. I don't think I can wake him.”

Hannah went closer and jacked up her talent. The dreamlight in the guard's aura was strong but dark.

“He's in a very deep sleep, more like a trance,” she said.

Elias looked around at the unnaturally still scene. “Someone put everyone under.”

“I'm not claiming a vast amount of experience in this sort of thing, but I do know a fair amount about dreamlight,” she said. “I think it's safe to say that a single talent could not have mustered the kind of energy it would take to put so many people into such a deep trance.”

“I agree. I'm not aware of any human-made para-tech that could do this, either. Even if some lab has come up with a device powerful enough to put a lot of people under simultaneously, it wouldn't function well in the Underworld. We can barely get amber lanterns and flamers to work down here.”

Hannah looked at him. “That leaves Alien tech, doesn't it?”

“That's the most logical conclusion. Looks like someone found a really interesting artifact and figured out how to use it.”

“So why aren't we sound asleep?”

“Got a hunch it was your talent that saved you,” Elias said. “Your ability to handle dreamlight probably gives you some natural immunity to whatever did this.”

“What about you?”

He held up his hand, displaying the dark fire in his ring. “This is my own private alarm system.”

“But why would someone do this to a camp full of people?”

“I don't know for sure yet, but my working hypothesis is that whoever is behind this is the same bastard who tried to trap nine people inside the ruins.”

“Pirates?”

“Probably—with the help of someone on the inside.”

“You're sure of that?”

“It's the only explanation that makes sense. I'm going to try to wake Hank Richman.”

“If he's locked in a trance like this guard, I might be able to bring him out of it.”

“And the others?”

“I think so, but it will take time and a lot of energy.”

“Richman, first; he's the head of security,” Elias said.

He led the way to one of the private tents at the edge of the clearing. The waterproof plastic flap that served as a door was closed but unsealed. Elias pushed it aside and aimed a flashlight into the interior.

“Richman is gone,” he said. “What the hell happened here?”

“Want me to take a look? If I get a fix on his psi-prints inside the tent, I can probably follow them to see where he went.”

“You can make out psi-prints in this environment?”

She knew he was referring to the heavy atmosphere of the Rainforest.

“If he went into the jungle I won't be able to track him,” she said. “It's an ocean of paranormal energy. But if he's still here in the clearing, I should be able to see his prints, particularly if he was in the grip of some strong emotion—fear or anxiety or alarm.”

“Take a look.”

Hannah cautiously rezzed her senses and focused on the interior of the tent. Hot, disturbed energy swirled on everything that the occupant had touched—the floor, the bed, the pack in the corner.

She got a fix and looked down at the glowing prints on the bare ground outside the tent.

“Richman was really jacked,” she said. “I think I can follow his trail, at least through the camp.”

“All right.” Elias started to let the flap fall back over
the entrance but he paused to give the interior another survey. “I don't see the flamer or his jungle knife. He took both with him.”

“It's hard to determine specific emotions in psi-prints,” Hannah said. “But I'm pretty sure that Richman was scared and excited.”

“Richman is a hunter-talent. Maybe he was able to sense the disturbance of the trance energy, just as we did, and used his talent to resist it. Probably got up to see what was wrong.”

“Maybe.”

She concentrated on Richman's prints. It wasn't easy because there were a lot of hot tracks on the ground. In the last twenty-four hours, Richman and several other members of the team had spent a great deal of time anxiously milling around the clearing, waiting for the rescue of their trapped colleagues. In the process they had laid down a lot of tracks.

But tonight Richman's fresh prints burned with something very close to panic.

She was so intent on reading the dreamlight that she did not notice where she was until Elias caught her gently by the arm.

“That's far enough,” he said. “Take a look.”

She caught her breath when she saw that they were standing in front of the de-rezzed dreamlight gate. Richman had gone through it and into the cave.

“He's in there,” she said. “And there's no sign that he came back out.”

Elias studied the glowing entrance of the cavern. “You're sure he's still inside?”

“Positive. Why would he go in there?”

“Good question.”

“He may be in trouble,” Hannah said. She glanced at Elias. In the paranormal radiance of the cave energy his profile looked hard and grim. “You want to go inside and look for him, don't you?”

“Yes. But I don't want to leave you alone, not until we figure out what happened out here.”

She suppressed the flicker of dread that iced her insides. She hated doing missing-persons work. In her experience things never ended well. Either the missing person in question did not want to be found or the person commissioning the search did not like what awaited at the conclusion of the search.

But Elias needed her help. And like it or not, she was good at this kind of search.

“I'll go with you,” she said. “You're going to need my help finding him once you're inside.”

Elias hesitated. “Any indication that he followed someone else into the cave?”

She stopped focusing on Richman's prints and studied the layers of dreamlight tracks at the entrance of the cavern.

“I don't think so. There were nine people trapped in here for several hours and they were all very anxious, so there are a lot of hot prints scattered around. But the only fresh tracks I can make out heading directly into the cavern are Richman's.”

Elias gave the silent camp one last considering look. Then he turned back.

“All right,” he said. “But stick close. There's a lot we don't know about the energy inside this cave or the Ghost City on the other side of the portal.”

“Don't worry. I don't plan to wander off on my own and get lost.”

They walked through the open gate, following the path of psi-prints. Virgil was still sleeked out and uncharacteristically quiet.

Once inside the vast cavern, the paranormal illumination seemed much more intense. The rocky walls glowed with a pale, grayish light. The floor seethed with energy, too, making it harder, but not impossible, to follow Richman's prints.

“He walked through the cavern,” she said. “Straight to that tunnel on the right.”

“That leads to the portal ruins,” Elias said. “What the hell is he doing here tonight?”

They walked deeper into the cavern, following the hot prints through a glowing tunnel. It seemed to Hannah that there was something ominous about the energy inside the cavern. It stirred her senses, but not in a good way. Unlike the Rainforest and the green-quartz catacombs, it didn't give her a pleasant buzz. It was as if, with each step they took, they were being warned off.

Automatically she reached up to touch Virgil. He muttered in her ear. It was clear he was still on high alert. Like Elias, she thought.

“What is this place?” she asked softly.

“At this point, all we know for certain is that it serves as an entrance to the Ghost City,” Elias said. “My brother discovered another portal a while back but it is red-hot because of a major psi-firestorm in the ruins. Rafe can get through it and a handful of very strong talents can navigate the storm. But there was no way we could take a working crew inside.”

“How did you find this entrance?”

“Rafe got me through the storm to the first portal. I was able to gather a fair amount of data. Armed with that information, the lab techs and I were able to come up with a way of detecting the unique energy of a portal. After that, we did things the old-fashioned way: we went prospecting.”