Silver Master

Chapter 26

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.”