Dark Light

seemed quite right. Compounding the problem was the fact that the energy that emanated from the quartz had a subtle effect on the normal as well as the paranormal senses. His hunter para-rez talents gave him an advantage over people like Sierra, who lacked the ability to resonate with alien psi, but that didn't mean things ever felt normal down here. That, of course, was one of the big attractions for him.

Sierra followed him through the doorway. She looked around, her eyes a little haunted. He hated having to put her through this, but there was no alternative.

Elvis showed no qualms at all. He leaned forward eagerly, fully fluffed again.

The thick, mag-steel door closed with an ominous, reverberating clang. Sierra jumped a little and looked back over her shoulder.

'This way,' Fontana said. He moved through the hole-in-the-wall into the tunnel. 'I keep a utility sled down here. We'll use it to get to the nearest exit.'

'Sounds like a good plan.'

Something in her voice made him look back at her. She was clearly very tense, but she didn't look like she was going to faint. Still, he did not like the dread in her eyes.

'Don't worry,' he said, trying to project a little reassurance. 'I've spent a lot of time down here. I know my way around, and I've got plenty of amber and a compass. We won't get lost.'

'Glad to hear that.'

He realized now what was wrong with her voice. It was flat, almost a monotone. It was as if she was righting to keep all emotion out of it. She was hanging on to her self-control with willpower alone, he thought. Good thing she had a lot of it. Dealing with her unusual talent all these years had probably gone a long way toward developing that core of inner strength.

The sled was right where he had left it. He got behind the wheel. Sierra climbed quickly up onto the bench seat beside him. He rezzed the simple, amber-based motor, one of the few kinds of low-tech mechanical devices that worked underground.

Sierra gripped the edge of the bench seat very tightly on either side of her thighs and stared straight ahead. Elvis muttered into her ear, as though he, too, was trying to assure her that everything would be okay.

'How far is the next exit?' she asked in that too-even tone.

'The nearest official gate operated by the Guild is only about a mile away from the mansion aboveground, but down here it would take us a couple of hours. These sleds are slow. Top speed is just a little faster than the average person can run. The real problem is that there are no direct routes between any of the entrances.'

'We're going to be down here for the next two hours?'

'Take it easy,' he said. 'I know another hole-in-the-wall. It's only about twenty minutes away. It opens under an old, unused warehouse.'

She nodded once, but she did not relax her grip on the edge of the seat.

'How's the claustrophobia?' he asked.

'Is my face the same color as the tunnel wall?'

'Not quite.'

'Take that as a good sign. I should be okay as long as we're in motion.'

'I'm not planning to hang around down here for any length of time, believe me.'

She seemed to relax a little. 'I trust you won't tell any of your Guild pals about my little problem. It's embarrassing to be married to the boss and not be able to go underground without having a panic attack.'

He smiled. 'Don't worry. It'll be our little secret.'

He punched the coordinates of the hole-in-the-wall into the amber-rez locater. Out of long habit, he also checked his compass. You couldn't be too careful underground.

He steered the sled down one of the hallways. The locater flashed. He made another turn.

'Good heavens, this place really is a maze, isn't it? ' Sierra whispered. 'I wonder how the aliens navigated it.'

'We'll probably never know, but it must have had something to do with their paranormal natures. They obviously needed a psi-heavy environment in which to live, so they must have had a lot of ways to manipulate that kind of energy.'

'Compared to them, we humans barely dabble our toes in psychic waters,' she said softly. 'We live mostly through our normal senses, not our para-senses.'

'On the other hand, we're still here, and they aren't.'

'Good point. We must be doing something right.'

'I'm not sure that's the explanation,' he said. 'The thing humans have going for them is that they are just flat-out stubborn when it comes to stuff like surviving.'

That got a tiny smile from her. 'I believe the experts refer to it as an ability to adapt to changing conditions.'

'Right.' He nodded. 'Stubborn. Like I said.'

The heavy push of raw dissonance energy struck hard an instant later. He eased his foot off the sled's accelerator.

Sierra reacted immediately, stiffening.

'What's wrong?' she asked tightly. 'Why are we slowing down?'

'Ghost coming up. Big one.'

She gave him an anxious glance. 'You can de-rez it, I assume?'

'Let's review. What do I do for a living?'

'Oh, right.' She drew a breath. 'Sorry. I'm a little tense.'

The tunnel curved sharply to the left. He slowed the sled to a crawl. The last thing he wanted to do was blunder into a ball of ghost fire.

But it wasn't the familiar acid-green of normal ghost light that confronted them. Instead, a hot barrier of tightly seething ultraviolet energy blocked the corridor.

Two shadowy figures with bulbous heads were just barely visible on the other side of the wide beam.

'They found us,' Sierra said without inflection.

He brought the sled to a halt and studied the rippling, pulsing barrier of ultraviolet light. 'How the hell can they keep dissonance energy so symmetrical? The stuff is inherently unstable.'

'It's so strong that even I can feel it,' Sierra whispered, amazed. 'It's like a psychic storm.'

He glanced at her and saw that her hair was lifting and stirring in response to the energy in the atmosphere. Elvis's fur was sticking straight out in a spiky halo. The dust bunny gazed straight ahead at the wall of light, watchful and cautious, just as they were.

'Oh, jeez,' Sierra whispered. 'The beam is moving. They're coming toward us.'

'We've got a problem,' he said.

'You can deal with that thing, right?'

'Maybe. Assuming it responds to dark light the way regular ghost light does.'

'That is not reassuring, Fontana.'

'The problem is that even if I can de-rez it, I'd have to pull a hell of a lot of psi to do it.'

'So?'

'So, I won't have much in the way of reserves left afterward to deal with whoever they'll have waiting for us in the warehouse.'

'How did they know that we would come this way?' she whispered.

'Good question. But this isn't the time to answer it.' He turned the sled around and started back the way they had come. 'Sorry, but there's no choice now. We're going to have to head for the official Guild gate. It's a two-hour run. Can you handle it?'

She reached up to touch Elvis. 'I'm a Guild boss's wife. I can handle anything.'

'Right answer.'

She twisted in the seat to look back the way they had come. 'The energy beam is picking up speed. The two Riders just climbed into a sled.'

'Can you tell how many of them there are?'

'Just the two of them, I think, but I can't be absolutely certain. It's like trying to look through a waterfall.'