CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lucy had been running hot, concentrating on reading the weather ahead as well as keeping track of the indicator lights on the locator. The man had struck like a snake, wrapping his arm around her throat before she realized what was happening. He stank of adrenaline-fueled sweat. The vibe of his aura was spiked with blood-chilling violence. Psychopath.

“Now put the doll down, Jones,” the man with the ponytail ordered.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lucy caught a glimpse of her attacker’s belt buckle. Ostentatious, to say the least, she decided.

“Sure,” Gabriel said. He lowered the doll so that it was standing upright, deadly eyes pointed at Ponytail. “I take it you paid Croston to steal the queen. Did you kill him?”

“We were going to get rid of him, but the doll saved us the trouble,” Ponytail said. “Somehow the machine got activated. We didn’t want to get near it. We knew you and the weather channeler were on the way, so we decided to wait and let you do the hard work for us. The client thought you might be able to deal with it.”

Otis appeared, racing around the corner. He was sleeked out. Lucy knew he was going to go straight for the throat of Sweat-Stink.

“It’s a fucking dust bunny,” Ponytail muttered. He aimed the flamer at Otis.

“No,” Lucy said quickly. “Please. Don’t hurt him.”

“Stop that rat or I’ll burn it,” Ponytail ordered.

“Otis,” Lucy said quietly, “it’s okay. I’ve got this.”

Otis stopped, but he did not take his four eyes off Sweat-Stink.

Gabriel looked at Lucy. “Do you have it?”

“No problem,” she said. “Tons of energy down here to work with.”

Ponytail glanced at her and scowled. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Just chatting,” Lucy said.

She rezzed her talent to the max and went to work. A glorious exultation swept through her. She summoned the energy that was infused into the atmosphere and channeled it.

Ghosts whispered in the lane. The whispers swiftly turned to shrieks and wails. The silvery fog thickened rapidly. Thunder boomed.

“Shit,” Ponytail muttered. “Storm. Big one. We need to get inside. Leave Jones and the woman out here. The weather will take care of them for us.”

“What about the doll?” Sweat-Stink said.

“Forget it.” Ponytail headed for a nearby door. He kept the flamer aimed at Gabriel. “It’s lasted this long. It will probably survive the storm.”

Sweat-Stink released Lucy and hurried after his pal.

Flashes of energy sparked. Lightning shattered the atmosphere. A senses-dazzling bolt struck Ponytail when he was a foot away from a silvery door. He stiffened, his face twisted into a monstrous mask.

Sweat-Stink collided with him. Another bolt flashed in the fog. For a moment both men looked as if they had been cast in a tableau straight out of a horror film. In the next instant they crumpled to the ground.

The thrill of raw power blazed through Lucy’s veins. So much energy. And she was channeling it. She was in control, a goddess unleashing lightning.

“Lucy,” Gabriel said quietly.

She laughed, because his hair was standing on end. So was Otis’s fur. She turned in a circle, savoring the wild storm she had created.

“Lucy,” Gabriel said again. Louder this time.

He walked toward her.

“Don’t you just love a good storm?” she said.

“Some other time, maybe,” he said. “You need to come down, Lucy.”

“Why? I’m flying.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Gabriel smiled. “You’re high on psi, Lucy. Time to come back to the real world.”

“I feel real.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “You’re real, too, aren’t you?”

“I think so.”

A fierce excitement flashed through her.

“The first time I saw you I thought you were a hallucination,” she said.

“Did you?”

“But you’re not. You’re my very own Lord of the Underworld.”

“Uh, Lucy—”

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him with all the energy flooding her body. He went very still.

“Damn it,” he said against her lips. “Wrong time. Wrong place.”

But he kissed her back, hard and fierce, and there was so much energy in the physical connection that she knew they were both flying. They stood in the eye of the magnificent storm that whirled around them.

Gabriel abruptly set her aside. “Lucy. Stop. Now.”

She took a deep breath. He was right. Wrong time, wrong place. Reluctantly she lowered her senses.

The otherworldly gale dissipated almost immediately.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Things got a little out of control.”

“I’ll say.” Gabriel studied her. “I’ve never known a weather channeler who could pull a storm like that. There was lightning. The real deal.”

“Yeah, well, there aren’t many of us who can do the lightning thing. Those of us who have the ability usually keep quiet about it. It’s not good for business. Clients get nervous if they think you can turn that kind of energy against them.” She cleared her throat. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“My nerves will survive.” He looked surprisingly satisfied, as if she had just confirmed something he had suspected all along. “You’re not just a strong talent, you’re an off-the-charts talent. No wonder finding out that I’m a dual talent didn’t worry you.”

He turned and walked toward the men sprawled on the ground. She watched him pat them down, removing flamers, knives, and other assorted gear. Otis joined him, watching the process with deep interest.

Ponytail and Sweat-Stink did not move. From where Lucy stood they did not appear to be breathing. A tide of dread descended on her, sluicing away the last of the euphoria.

She cleared her throat. “Are they—?”

“Alive?” Gabriel removed an energy bar from Ponytail’s cargo pocket and gave it to Otis. “Yes. Amazing, really, considering they were struck by paranormal lightning.”

Otis got very excited—his usual response to anything he considered a treat. He ripped open the wrapping of the energy bar. Gabriel continued with the pat-down.

Lucy took a deep breath. Okay, the good news was that she hadn’t actually killed anyone. Ponytail and Sweat-Stink were not nice guys, but she did not want to have the weight of their deaths on her conscience for the rest of her life. Punishing them was the job of the judicial system.

The bad news was that Gabriel now knew what she could do, given an intense paranormal environment. Most clients would be alarmed by the wild side of her talent. Anyone who wanted to employ a weather channeler because of her ability to generate a potentially lethal storm was probably not someone she wanted to work for. Generally speaking, there were no legal uses for killer storms.

“Sometimes I get a little carried away,” she ventured.

“I noticed.” Gabriel stood, removed his camera, and started taking photos. “I’d really like to talk to these two, but obviously they are not in a chatty frame of mind at the moment, and we don’t have time to hang around down here. One of them must have a portal key. As soon as I find it, I’ll cuff them and haul them into one of these chambers. With a little luck, they’ll still be here when the Coppersmith security team comes down to collect Croston’s body.”

Lucy became aware of a warm sensation between her breasts. She had felt it earlier, but she had been so busy channeling storm energy that she hadn’t paid any attention. The entire Underworld had seemed hot for a few minutes.

Alarmed, she hauled the chain out from under her shirt and stared at the amber pendant.

“Gabriel, look.”

She held up the pendant. The amber was no longer gray. It was glowing a deep, eerie blue.

“That’s the color it was when the fake doctor gave me the injection in the para-psych clinic,” she said. “It lit up when the other demon—I mean, creepy bad guy—came into the room. It’s the color of the pendants that the kidnappers wore. Maybe using my talent activated it. Or the energy in the doll’s eyes?”

“But you just now noticed it?”

“Yes. No. I think it started getting warm a few minutes ago, but I was distracted by those two guys with the flamers. And then there was that storm and the lightning and, well, I wasn’t paying close attention, if you see what I mean.”

“So you didn’t notice it until this pair showed up?”

“Right.”

Gabriel tugged the leather jacket off Sweat-Stink, exposing a stained khaki shirt that had seen better days. He opened the front of the shirt.

A portal key dangled from a chain around Sweat-Stink’s throat. So did something else: a crystal that glowed blue. Without a word, Gabriel moved to Ponytail and opened the man’s shirt. Lucy saw another pendant. It, too, radiated a blue light.

Gabriel snapped the chain that held Ponytail’s pendant. Gripping the stone in one hand, he walked several feet away from the unconscious men. The blue glow of the amber faded rapidly. He turned around and walked toward Lucy. The pendant brightened. So did the one that Lucy wore around her neck.

“The ambers are tuned to respond to each other,” Gabriel said. “Signal stones. Must be a form of identification for a gang.”

“Like a tattoo or a secret password.”

“Right.”

“Those three men who tried to grab you last night weren’t wearing blue crystals,” Lucy pointed out. “Neither was Croston.”

“No, which is interesting.”

“They took a big risk ambushing us down here.”

“No,” Gabriel said. “It’s the perfect spot for an ambush. Lethal accidents happen in the Ghost City. Searchers would have found my body, and it would have looked like I died of natural causes. I think you would have vanished.”

“It’s me they wanted, isn’t it? You were in the way, so they tried to take you out.”

“That’s what this looks like.”

“And to think I always wanted to be one of the popular A-list kids back in boarding school.”