Midnight Crystal (33 page)

The lovemaking seared his senses. They rolled together across the quilt. She ended up astride his thighs and watched him through the veil of hair falling in front of her face as she rode him to her climax. Her eyes burned with passion and psi. It was the most erotic sight he had ever seen.

He put her on her back before she had stopped shivering and sank himself deep into her body. She tightened around him, cried out, and convulsed again.

This time he came with her. Endlessly.

 

 

THE INSISTENT RINGING OF HIS PHONE WOKE HIM. HE discovered that he and Marlowe had fallen asleep lying across the bed. Automatically, he glanced at his watch. Three in the morning.

Beside him, Marlowe stirred and opened her eyes. “What’s that racket?”

“Phone,” he explained. He sat up, trying to orient himself. “Don’t know where I left it.”

“On the floor, I think.”

“Oh, yeah. It all comes back to me now.”

He extricated himself from her warm body, crawled to the edge of the bed, and reached over the side. He found the phone and got it open.

“Winters.”

“This is Galendez. Fifteen minutes ago Drake and O’Conner went into their Old Quarter office. They didn’t come back out. Couple of minutes ago there was an explosion inside. The building is in flames.”

“I’ll be there in ten.”

He closed the phone and reached for his trousers.

Marlowe levered herself up on one elbow. “What happened?”

“I’ve got a team watching the building in the Quarter that Drake and O’Conner use as an office. One of the men just called. Said there’d been an explosion and a fire.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Had a feeling you were going to say that.”

“THAT WAS ONE EXTREMELY HOT FIRE,” MARLOWE said. “I doubt very much that the arson investigators will call it accidental.”

“No,” Adam agreed. “Probably won’t find much in the way of evidence, though. The question is, how did it start?”

They stood on the sidewalk across from the charred and blackened building. The two Bureau agents who had been assigned to watch the office were with them. Adam had introduced them only as Galendez and Treiger.

The power in the agents’ dreamprints was impressive, but you’d never know that they were high-rez talents to look at them, Marlowe thought. Both were dressed in the shabby clothes of homeless men. Their hair was scruffy and untrimmed. They reeked of alcohol, but she knew that neither of them had been drinking. Undercover.

The flashing globes of the fire trucks and emergency vehicles added a disorienting, strobelike aspect to the natural illumination from the Dead City wall. There was a lot of water and foam in the street. Smoke still billowed, and Marlowe could see flames deep inside the three-story building, but the fire department had things under control. The outer walls still stood, although the windows had all shattered.

Most of the two-hundred-year-old structures in the Quarter had been built of high-tech, fireproof materials imported from Earth. But the majority had been remodeled a number of times over the years after the closing of the Curtain. Later architects and contractors had been obliged to use far less exotic materials. The result was that, in the case of major fires in the Quarter, the walls survived, but the interiors were often totally destroyed.

That was the case tonight, Marlowe thought.

“The firemen are assuming some kind of accelerant was used,” Galendez said. “When things cool down in a few days, they’ll go in to look for it.”

“They won’t find anything,” Treiger warned. “That was ghost fire.”

“Go through it again for me,” Adam ordered.

“Right,” Galendez said. “Not much to tell, though. I was at my post.” He angled his chin up toward a broken window in the abandoned warehouse behind Marlowe. “Treiger was in the alley. Drake and O’Conner entered through the front door.”

“No one came through the alley,” Treiger said. “No one left that way, either. Drake and O’Conner didn’t rez the office lights.”

“Is that part of their pattern?” Marlowe asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Galendez said. “Don’t really need lights here in the Quarter this close to the wall unless you’re trying to read a newspaper.”

“That’s true,” she said.

“Figured it was just another late-night meeting,” Treiger said. “But naturally we didn’t hear anything because there aren’t any bugs inside.”

Marlowe understood. “Sophisticated listening devices don’t work well in the Quarter, especially this close to the wall. The psi levels cause too much interference.”

Treiger nodded. “Next thing we know, we hear the explosion. The fire started immediately.”

“The blinds covering the office windows went fast,” Galendez said. “I had a clear view into the room, but I couldn’t see much. The place was engulfed in ghost fire. I could feel the energy of it all the way across the street. Didn’t last long, but by the time it de-rezzed, the whole building was in flames.”

“Figure O’Conner and Drake set the fire and got out of the building through their hole-in-the-wall.” Treiger said. “That’s the only other exit, and it’s the one place we can’t post a watch.”

“Looks like O’Conner and Drake decided to close down the office,” Adam said. “They wanted to make sure that there was nothing left in the way of evidence.”

“Fire like that will do the trick,” Galendez said. “But who could pull that much alien psi? I know Drake and O’Conner are both strong, but I’ve never heard of any ghost hunter who is that powerful, not outside the tunnels.”

Adam exchanged a glance with Marlowe. She knew what he was thinking. A couple of strong Guild men like O’Conner and Drake, working with the crystals, could have generated the kind of psi required to ignite a fire aboveground.

“We can’t go into the building,” Adam said. “But we can check out the hole-in-the-wall. Doubt if we’ll find anything useful, but you never know.”

They used the rip in the wall beneath the empty warehouse to enter the catacombs. Although their goal was just across the street, the journey underground was, as always, convoluted. They walked for a good fifteen minutes through the tunnels before arriving at another jagged hole in the quartz.

“This is it,” Galendez said.

Adam looked through the opening. “Fire’s still smoldering in the basement. It’s going to stay hot for a while, probably a lot longer than a couple of days.”

Marlowe studied the view through the ripped quartz. She could see only a profound darkness lit here and there by flames. She could not smell the thick smoke on the other side of the tunnel entrance, but no ash drifted into the catacombs. The heavy psi prevented the tainted air from drifting into the underworld.

Adam turned toward her. “What do you see?”

She rezzed her senses cautiously and examined the layers of strong dreamprints that seethed on the floor near the hole-in-the-wall.

“O’Conner and Drake have used this entrance on several occasions over the years. Both sets of tracks show signs of crystal use.”

“They knew that the Bureau was closing in on them,” Adam said. “They came here tonight to destroy the place to make sure that there was no evidence left that could be turned over to a Chamber tribunal.”

“Not exactly,” she said, examining the prints very closely.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“They have certainly come and gone this way many times,” she said. “But they did not leave through this exit tonight.”

There was a moment of sharp silence.

Adam cast a speculative glance at the portion of smoldering basement that could be seen through the ripped quartz.

“Well, that’s interesting,” he said.

Galendez frowned. “No offense, but are you sure they both didn’t get out of the building through this hole, Miss Jones?”

“Positive,” she said quietly. “I think that when the fire investigators are finally able to access the scene, they’re going to find the bodies of both O’Conner and Drake in the rubble.”

Adam looked at her. “See any other prints?”

“Yes,” she said. “A couple of other people besides Drake and O’Conner have come this way recently, but one set of prints in particular worries me. They’re only a day or two old. They belong to a woman.”

“One of O’Conner’s mistresses,” Treiger offered. “Or maybe one of Drake’s women.”

Marlowe hesitated. “Whoever she was, she was terrified.”

“Maybe she saw something she shouldn’t have seen,” Adam said.

“There was someone with her.” Marlowe tracked the prints around the corner. “Not O’Conner or Drake. Whoever he was, he took her this way.”

Adam and the two Bureau agents followed her. Marlowe kept walking, following the trail of seething dreamlight.

“This stuff is boiling,” she said. “I think he meant to kill her. That’s why she was so scared. It also explains why his prints are so hot. He was anticipating the kill. There is a return set of prints, as well. His, but not hers.”

“Probably didn’t murder her outright,” Adam said. “More likely, he stripped her of her amber and sent her into the tunnels.”

“She wouldn’t be the first inconvenient Councilman’s mistress to disappear that way,” Treiger said.

“If they sent her into the rain forest, I’ll never find her,” Marlowe said. “It’s impossible to track dreamlight in the jungle.”

“O’Conner and Drake are old-school,” Adam said. “Traditionalists. They aren’t comfortable in the rain forest. They don’t know the rules there. They would have stuck with the tunnels for this kind of business.”

The flat certainty in his words sent a shiver through her. She remembered what he had said about keeping his enemies close. He had studied Drake and O’Conner. He knew them well enough to predict their actions.

She paused to take another look at some of the pooling dreamlight. “She’s alone now. He left her here and went back to the office. She was still alive at this point. Maybe we’re not too late.”

“She probably started running,” Galendez warned. “People always run when they end up underground without good amber. They panic. Start to hallucinate. Sooner or later, they blunder into a ghost or a trap, and it’s all over.”

Marlowe stopped in front of a vaulted opening and looked into the vast rotunda beyond. A dozen glowing passageways opened off the circular space.

There was a woman on the floor in the center of the rotunda. She sat with her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, her head down, rocking gently. The dreamlight on the floor around her shimmered with despair.

“Gloria Ray,” Treiger said. “Drake’s latest mistress.”

Marlowe hurried forward. “It’s all right, Gloria. You’re safe now.”

Gloria raised her head. Disbelief and uncertainty flashed across her tear-stained face. “Are you real?”

“Yes,” Marlowe said. She reached down and helped Gloria to her feet. “We’re real.”

“I started seeing things,” Gloria whispered. Her voice shook. “They say that happens down here in the tunnels when your amber doesn’t work and you’re all alone and you know you can’t find your way out. The psi gets to you. They say first you start seeing things, and then you panic and you start running.”

“You didn’t panic, and you didn’t run,” Marlowe said.

“I almost did,” Gloria said. “Lost count of how many times I thought about doing that.”

“What stopped you?” Adam asked.

Gloria turned to look at him. “You’re the new Guild boss.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I didn’t run because I didn’t freak out completely,” Gloria said. “Even without amber, I’ve still got a little talent. I’m intuitive, you see. Had a feeling that if I just stayed put, someone might find me.”

“GLORIA IS STILL FRACTURED,” ADAM SAID ON THE other end of the phone. “She was down there in that green hell for nearly two days.”

“Long enough to fray anyone’s nerves.” Marlowe lounged back in the big desk chair and absently swiveled from side to side. The springs squeaked rhythmically.