The Hot Zone (A Rainshadow Novel Book 3) (3 page)

Buzzkill and Hulk stood still, breathing hard, and waited for the green ghost to come into contact with Sedona’s aura.

“Better not let it kill her,” Buzzkill said. “Remember, we need her.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hulk said.

But Sedona could see the feverish excitement in his eyes and hear it in his voice. He was at the edge of his control. That was never a good thing but it was always really bad when it happened with a ghost hunter. A Guild man who couldn’t control his talent was liable to do a lot of damage, especially down in the Underworld where there was so much energy.

She took a deep breath, rezzed the flicker, and simultaneously pulled hard on her senses.

Flames exploded in the atmosphere between her and the ghost. She fought to control the stormy currents of fire. This time it was easier. She had more control. Power swept through her. The flames obeyed her every command.

A heady sensation threatened to overwhelm her. She was strong—stronger than she had ever been in her entire life.

She marveled at her own creation. She’d possessed plenty of talent before that last job in the Underworld, but she’d never been able to do anything like this.

“Wow, Lyle. Very high-rez, huh?”

Lyle chortled and bounced a little on her shoulder.

“What’s she doing?” Buzzkill whispered hoarsely.

“Shit.” Hulk was clearly stunned. “She’s some kind of fire talent now. Everyone knows they’re psycho. I told you, she’s a total whackjob.”

“A whackjob with nothing left to lose,” Sedona warned. A terrible excitement was flaring inside her. “Watch and learn, gentlemen. Watch and learn.”

The firestorm she had created was in the direct path of the oncoming energy ghost. At any second the two would collide.

“Oh, man, this is not good,” Buzzkill said. “I can feel the energy levels rising in here. There’s going to be an explosion. Stop her, damn it.”

“I can’t stop her,” Hulk said. There was a panicky tightness in his voice. “That’s the biggest ghost I can pull. If you think you can do something, be my guest.”

“We’ve got to get out of here.” Buzzkill sprinted toward the door. “This place is going to blow.”

“What about the woman? You said yourself, we can’t lose her.”

“There’s nothing more we can do,” Buzzkill yelled. He did not pause on his charge toward the door. “Blankenship can find himself another research subject. Stay here if you want. I’m leaving.”

Sedona concluded that
nothing left to lose
had become her personal motto. She pulled more power. The firestorm surged.

“You stupid, crazy bitch,” Hulk shouted. “You’re going to die if you don’t shut down that storm.”

Sedona laughed.

“Those damn experiments turned you into a real freak,” Hulk gasped.

He gave up trying to control the ball of hot energy that he had generated. As soon as he stopped channeling his talent, the ghost fizzled and winked out of existence.

Sedona sent the leaping flames of her firestorm toward Hulk. But he was already on the run, pounding toward the doorway. He followed Buzzkill out into the glowing green hall and was gone.

Sedona waited a moment or two, savoring the exhilaration that had ignited her blood. She could have stood there for a long time, admiring the storm she had created. But Lyle chortled and reality slammed back.

Reluctantly, she lowered her senses. The firestorm dissipated. An eerie silence descended on the lab.

“Okay, that was a real rush,” she said softly.

Lyle chortled. He was once again fully fluffed but all four eyes were still open.

She opened her hand and stared at the shiny flicker. A shiver of dread replaced the fading euphoria.

“What did Blankenship do to me?” she whispered.

Lyle muttered, displaying some impatience.

“Right.” Sedona steadied herself. “I can worry about the details later. Time to vacate the premises.”

She crossed the room to the storage chest that held the few things she’d had on her when she was kidnapped. She found her pack. There wasn’t much inside it, just the usual emergency essentials that she always carried when she went down below into the tunnels on a job. There was also a cell phone but she knew it would not work until she got aboveground.

Two items were missing.

“They took my locator and my backup tuned amber,” she said to Lyle. “Bastards.”

She looked at Lyle.

“I’ll bet you know the way to the surface, don’t you?”

Lyle gave no indication that he understood the question but it was obvious that he was eager to leave. He bounced some more on her shoulder and made encouraging noises.

“Okay, buddy, I’m depending on you. Anything is better than hanging around here waiting for Dr. Blankenship and his pals to come back.”

She slipped the strap of the pack over one shoulder and started toward the doorway.

The sight of the glass-and-steel strongbox sitting on a workbench stopped her. She shuddered, nightmarish memories slithering and coiling through her mind.

“Hang on,” she said. “Something I want to do before we leave.”

She went down an aisle formed by two long, steel lab benches to the strongbox. For a moment she studied the container, wondering if there was any way to destroy it and the contents. The thick glass glinted malevolently in the paranormal light. The steel was heavy gauge. The whole thing probably weighed nearly a hundred pounds.

There was a lock on the strongbox, but, like the lock on the cell door, it was a simple, old-fashioned padlock. She could not open it without a key. Not that she wanted to even touch the contents, let alone steal them. But she did not want Blankenship using the serum on some other hapless research subject. The crystal seemed to be important to the drug-making process.

There was no way to destroy the box or the strange gem inside. She did not have the time or the upper-body strength required to carry the container away from the lab and conceal it somewhere in the catacombs. The only option she had was to lock the strongbox so tightly that no one else could ever unlock it.

Setting a small gate lock on the box was easy enough. Setting one that no other gatekeeper could unlock took some concentration but the job was done in a matter of minutes. When she was finished there was a fine, eerie radiance around the strongbox. Anyone who touched it would get a scorching psi-burn. Anyone foolish enough to try to open her lock would trigger an explosion that would likely prove fatal to whoever was in the vicinity. With luck such an explosion would be strong enough to destroy the jewel.

“Done,” she announced to Lyle. “Now we can leave. I’ll lock the door on the way out.”

She was halfway back down the aisle of lab benches when a gleaming steel test tube holder caught her eye. There were six glass tubes filled with the serum set in the holder.

Another wave of anger washed through her. She reached out and swept the metal holder to the floor. The glass test tubes shattered, spilling the contents across the green quartz.

She was about to move on when she noticed a small plate bolted to the test tube rack. She paused and took a closer look at the lettering.
PROPERTY OF AMBER CREST HOSPITAL.

She glanced at the other instruments on the bench. The little amber burner and the microscope bore the same label.

There was no time to dwell on the implications. She kept moving.

Outside in the gently illuminated hallway she paused again to rez her senses. In an instant, hot energy blazed in the vaulted doorway. She created a gate and then wove an intricate lock into the oscillating currents.

When she was satisfied that no other gatekeeper could unlock the gate, she stepped back and studied her surroundings.

She was in a vast green quartz rotunda that must have been at least three stories high. A dozen arched doorways opened off the circular chamber, all of them glowing with psi.

“Okay, Lyle, it’s up to you now. Take me back to the surface, pal. If you don’t, I’m going to die trying to find my way out.”

Lyle chortled, unconcerned, and peeled the wrapper off the energy bar he had acquired along the way.

Tentatively she started toward one of the tunnels. Lyle didn’t stop munching but he made a rumbling sound that she took for disapproval. She changed direction and went toward another arched doorway. Lyle took another bite and rumbled again.

Then, evidently concluding she was no good at navigation, he finished the energy bar and bounded down to the floor. He trotted off toward a third hallway.

Sedona followed him into the maze. Nothing left to lose.

Ten steps later she glanced back over her shoulder. She could no longer see the rotunda. She was well and truly lost.

She followed Lyle through the sense-dazzling catacombs, questions circling endlessly in her mind.

If she did survive she would have to confront the reality of her new talent. Individuals with more than one kind of talent were extremely rare. Everyone knew they were inherently unstable. The experts had determined that the human mind simply could not handle the heightened level of stimulation that occurred when a second or third talent developed. Multi-talents almost always went mad. If they did not die young, they ended up in locked para-psych wards and were kept under heavy sedation.

Her life had taken a very weird turn.

She had no idea how much time passed before Lyle led her up an ancient green-quartz staircase and out into the ruins of an Alien outpost. It was nighttime. The strange, ethereal towers of the dead town glowed with luminous energy. The windowless structures had been abandoned centuries earlier but they showed no evidence of weathering.

When she went through the gate of the high quartz wall that surrounded the ruins she discovered that they were in a stand of trees. She could hear the sounds of traffic in the distance.

“Thanks, Lyle,” she said. “You are hereby designated my best friend in the whole world.”

Lyle chortled and bounded up onto her shoulder.

She took her phone out of her pack and was not surprised to see that there was no charge left on the amber battery.

“Probably couldn’t get a signal out here, anyway,” she said to Lyle. “So much for calling Brock to let him know I’m okay. He must be worried sick. Probably has a privately financed search-and-rescue team combing the Underworld, looking for me.”

The thought that her new husband was searching for her night and day warmed her as nothing else could have done. She had to let him know as soon as possible that she was alive and well. Okay, maybe not entirely well, but definitely alive.

She followed the sound of traffic to a road. A short time later a trucker stopped for her. She climbed up into the cab and sat down with Lyle in her lap.

“I really appreciate this,” she said.

“Sure.” The trucker eyed Lyle. “Is that a dust bunny?”

“Yes.” She patted Lyle. “He’s sort of adopted me.”

“Heard they were dangerous. They say that by the time you see the teeth, it’s too late.”

“Lyle won’t hurt you, I promise.”

Lyle chortled and blinked his baby blues a couple of times.

The trucker smiled and pulled back onto the road. “He’s real cute. Where you two headed?”

“The nearest town.”

“First stop is Crystal City.”

Crystal City was the home of her father’s family. There would be no help for her there.

“Where do you go after Crystal?” she asked.

“Should be in Resonance City sometime before dawn.”

She brightened. “That works. That’s where I live. I’ve got some cash on me. I’ll buy you breakfast.”

“Fair enough.” The trucker gave her another searching glance and then concentrated on his driving.

“What day is this?” she asked after a moment.

“Wednesday,” the trucker said.

“No, I mean what is the date? I’ve lost track of time.”

The trucker glanced at her, brows elevated. “It’s the second of October.”

“Oh.” She swallowed hard.

“How long have you been gone?”

She nearly stopped breathing.

“Just a couple of days,” she lied.

She had left on the last contract assignment more than three weeks earlier. Brock would be beyond worried.

A short time later the lights of an isolated set of buildings glittered amid the trees at the end of a long, private drive. There was a gate and a guardhouse at the entrance. She caught a fleeting glimpse of a discreet sign at the junction of the road and the drive.
AMBER CREST PARA-PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL.

“What is that place?” she whispered.

“Para-psych hospital,” the trucker said. “Run by the Gold Creek Guild. Supposedly it’s where they treat the really bad psi-burn cases. But rumor has it, that’s where the big Guilds house the worst of the worst—the monsters and freaks. It’s a high-security facility. Had to make a delivery there once. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to go in and out. We’re talking armed guards, hot fences, and cameras everywhere.”

Sedona shuddered. Lyle cuddled closer, as if trying to reassure her. She patted his tatty fur and watched the darkened road come up in the truck’s headlights.

Amber Crest treated the monsters and freaks.
What had she become?

They pulled off at a truck stop diner for breakfast at three in the morning. Sedona paid the tab. An hour before dawn the truck rolled into Resonance City.

“You can drop me anywhere,” Sedona said. “I’ve got enough money left for cab fare.”

“You sure you’re going to be okay?” the trucker asked.

“Oh, yeah. I’ve been looking after myself for quite a while now.”

“Not doing a real good job of that, if you ask me. Getting lost out there in the woods and all.”

“I’ll be okay,” she promised. “My husband will be waiting for me.”

The trucker got a troubled expression. “You’re married?”

“Yes,” she said.

There was no reason to add that her freshly minted marriage to Brock Prescott was only a Marriage of Convenience, not a true Covenant Marriage. MCs had some legal standing but the reality was that they could be cancelled by either party with no legal or financial hassles. A lot of people took an old-fashioned attitude toward MCs, deeming the institution a polite fiction designed to paper over an affair. That was true, Sedona thought. Nevertheless, it was a commitment of sorts.

She decided not to mention that Brock was probably the only one who would have been searching for her the past three weeks. She was the offspring of an illegitimate union. Her parents were dead and her blood relations on both sides had officially disowned her as soon as they were legally allowed to do so. She had gotten the papers informing her that she had no claim on either of her birth families the day she turned eighteen.

She climbed out of the truck at another all-night diner, intending to call Brock. It was four o’clock in the morning but he wouldn’t care about the time once he heard her voice.

The waitress allowed her to use the house phone but when she dialed Brock’s number she got tossed into voicemail. She called a cab instead.

A short time later she emerged from the cab in front of Brock’s elegant town house. She had moved in with him the week before her last assignment.

Rain was falling heavily. She hurried up the walk, but by the time she got to the front door she and Lyle were both drenched.

Clutching Lyle in the crook of her arm, she leaned on the doorbell.

“Home, at last,” she said to Lyle.

Lyle chortled.

After a moment lights came on somewhere inside the town house. An almost overpowering sense of relief swept through Sedona. Soon she would be throwing herself into Brock’s arms.

“He’s going to be so surprised,” she said to Lyle.

The door opened. It wasn’t Brock who stood in the hall.

“Sedona?” Diana Easton, Brock’s administrative assistant, stared at Sedona in shock. “Good grief, you’re a mess. What in the world are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question.” Sedona took in Diana’s dainty robe and filmy nightgown. “But I think I already know the answer.”

Lyle growled at Diana.

“Is that a rat?” Diana asked.

Sedona ignored her.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

“Diana?” Brock called. “Who is it?”

His rich, well-modulated voice reflected his social status. Brock Singleton Prescott was wealthy, well-educated, and very well-connected. His family moved in the highest social circles of Crystal City. Two years ago he had become the CEO of the family empire, Prescott Industries.

“You’ll never guess,” Diana said a little too sweetly.

Lyle growled again.

Brock emerged into view, still tying the sash of his robe. He was tall, with chiseled features, a toned body, and an innate sense of style that enabled him to look just as good in a bathrobe as he did in one of his hand-tailored business suits. He stared at Sedona, stunned.

“The Gold Creek Guild authorities told us that you were lost and presumed missing,” Brock said, sputtering a little in shock.

“My life has gotten complicated,” Sedona said.

“Yeah, well, I, uh, filed the divorce papers two and a half weeks ago.”

So much for throwing herself into his arms, Sedona thought.

Lyle rumbled darkly.

“It’s okay,” she whispered to Lyle. “We’ll be fine.”

Brock frowned. “What the hell happened to you, Sedona?”

“Long story,” she said tightly. “What about my stuff?”

“It’s in storage,” Brock said, evidently trying to be helpful. “Isn’t that right, Diana?”

Diana smiled again. “Old Quarter Storage Facility. I’ll get the key.”

She vanished into the depths of the town house. Sedona was left looking at Brock.

“Just one question,” she said.

“What?” he asked uneasily.

“Did you ever look for me?”

“I told you, I was informed that you had gone missing on your last job and that you were in all probability dead.”

Sedona nodded. “So you didn’t even bother to search for me.”

“The Guild boss who hired you for that last mission assured me that a team had been sent out but that it found no trace.”

“Right. Here’s a tip going forward. Next time a Guild boss tells you something, don’t assume he’s giving you the truth. A Guild boss has no trouble lying through his teeth if it suits him.”

Diana reappeared with a key and a business card. “Here’s the address of the storage facility.”

Sedona took the key and the card. Without a word she turned and went down the front steps.

“Sedona?” Brock said behind her. “Do you need some money for a cab or a hotel?”

She stopped and turned around. Somehow she managed an ice-bright smile.

“Go to hell, Brock.”

She turned back, tucked Lyle more securely under her arm, and walked into the rainy night.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, Lyle,” she said.

Lyle chortled.

“Nothing left to lose.”