Sedona stood with Cyrus, Joe, and a small, handpicked group of ghost hunters that included Duke and Tanaka, the hunters who had recently engaged in a game of dust bunny tossing.
But no one was playing games now, not even Lyle. He was crouched on Sedona’s shoulder, alert and energized.
She was dressed for fieldwork in jeans, a long-sleeved pullover, and boots. Her hair was in a no-nonsense knot at the back of her head. Like everyone else on the team, she wore a small day pack filled with emergency supplies.
They all looked at the solid wall of gently radiant green quartz. There was no sign of a gate. But then, there rarely was any outward indication of one. Gates got discovered either by accident or by gatekeepers—those with a talent for working gate energy.
“You’re sure this is the place, Joe?” Cyrus asked.
“Yes, sir,” Joe said. He nodded toward a small pile of green quartz objects. “I marked it with those artifacts before I went aboveground to get help.”
Cyrus glanced at Sedona. “Well?”
She pulsed some energy through the tuned amber that she wore in her ring and got a whisper of heat in response. The green quartz wall shimmered faintly.
“There’s a gate here,” she said.
“Can you open it?” Joe demanded anxiously.
“Yes, I think so.” Sedona looked at Cyrus for direction.
“Go for it,” Cyrus said. He glanced at his team. “Flamers on standby until we know what we’re dealing with here.”
The flamers were simple, amber-fueled devices that fired short bursts of flame. They were new in the Underworld, an invention that had come out of the Sebastian labs. The range was limited to about fifteen or twenty feet at most, depending on the talent of the person rezzing the trigger. But they were one of the few weapons that worked in the catacombs besides knives. Even bows and arrows were undependable underground.
Not every ghost hunter had adopted the new technology with enthusiasm. Everyone knew that the real weapons in the tunnels were the energy ghosts that strong hunters could forge out of the ambient psi in the atmosphere. But when facing the unknown—a daily event underground—everyone liked to have some backup. Flamers were the latest experiment in defense weaponry.
Sedona set to work, trying to ignore the little rush of energy she had experienced when they had descended into the catacombs. It was good to be back, she thought; good to be working again. She had Cyrus to thank for that.
She pulsed more energy through the amber in her ring and got a clear, sharp focus. Charlotte Attridge, Slade’s wife and the owner of Looking Glass Antiques had done a beautifully nuanced job of tuning the currents of the stone to Sedona’s personal aura.
The section of the wall that had shimmered a moment ago quickly dissolved as Sedona applied more power. The green quartz gave way to reveal the gate—a raging storm of glacial blue psi.
One of the men whistled in astonishment. “Never saw anything like that before.”
The energy gate was large enough to accommodate a truck but Sedona knew that no vehicle designed and built by humans would be able to crash through the violent currents.
“I spent fifteen years in the tunnels and never saw anything like this,” Tanaka said.
“Same here.” Duke studied the portal. “This doesn’t look anything like the gates into the Rainforest. I’m thinking that there’s probably a damned good reason why this one is so hot.”
Joe stared at the gate and then he looked at Sedona. “My boy’s in there.”
“I understand,” she said.
Cyrus looked at Sedona. “Recognize the energy?”
“No, it’s new to me, too, but I’m sure I can unlock it. Piece of cake.” She smiled. “Okay, maybe not exactly a piece of cake, still, I can handle it.”
They were all watching her now.
This was it, she thought. The time had come to prove to herself and everyone else that she could still control gate energy.
She heightened her senses, slowly at first—getting a feel for the hot psi churning in the portal. The currents were unfamiliar but it did not take long to find the frequencies.
She got a fix and gently sent out pulses of counterpoint energy. The secret to handling the most powerful gate was to employ a delicate touch. It was an intuitive skill, one she had honed over the course of her career. She had met some gatekeepers who used raw power to break through a locked gate. That approach worked on less formidable portals. But when it came to dealing with Category Five gates, nuance was the key. Too much blunt force and the gate might literally explode, creating a lethal vortex that sucked in everything and everyone within range.
She went closer to the portal, probing cautiously with her talent. Lyle chortled and bounced a little. She understood. The sensation of controlling gate energy was always exhilarating, and this particular gate was the most powerful she had ever encountered.
She did not try to fight the currents. Instead, she allowed them to draw her deeper and deeper into the heart of the storm.
. . . And then she was there and in control. She went to work adjusting some of the frequencies.
A moment later the gate winked out of existence. The portal was open. Sedona stood on the threshold and looked into a dazzling crystal-and-quartz landscape. The energy in the atmosphere was strong enough to send shivers across her senses. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant, just disorienting. She had to concentrate to stay focused.
“Son of a ghost,” Duke said. “Thought I’d seen everything down here.”
“Welcome to Wonderland,” Cyrus said.
It took a lot to stun a team of experienced ghost hunters, Sedona thought. Heck, it took a lot to dazzle her. She and the others had seen many strange marvels in the course of their work in the Underworld. But she had never encountered anything like the scene on the other side of the portal. Judging by the low-voiced expressions of awe and amazement behind her, none of the others had ever seen anything like it, either.
The hidden world on the other side of the portal was a vast realm of glacial blue and mirror-bright quartz and crystal. It was a landscape illuminated by an eerie azure radiance that came from the ultralight end of the spectrum.
A stream of what looked like frozen mirror-quartz—the surface flashing sparks of blue sunlight—wound through a forest of glittering crystal blue trees studded with sapphire leaves.
Cyrus moved to stand beside Sedona in the opening. The others crowded closer.
“What in green hell is this place?” one of the men asked.
“It’s another underground world constructed by the Aliens,” Sedona said. “But unlike the Rainforest, which is alive with a thriving, balanced ecosystem, this place feels as if it’s frozen.”
“But it’s not cold,” Tanaka said. He came to stand in the opening and extended one arm over the threshold. “The temperature feels the same as it does everywhere else in the catacombs.”
“This place isn’t frozen,” Cyrus said. “Not literally. It just looks that way because everything seems to be made of quartz and crystal.” Experimentally he kicked at the glittering pebbles that covered the ground. The blue gems scattered, revealing hard blue rock. “There will be time enough to study it later. We’re here on an S-and-R job.” He looked at Joe. “You said your son is wearing an amber locator?”
“Right.” Joe moved forward, stiffening a little when the hot atmosphere hit him. “A Sebastian model seven-point-oh. The latest on the market.”
Cyrus unclipped his own locater. “Give me Henderson’s code.”
Joe rattled off a string of digits. Cyrus plugged them into the device and nodded once, satisfied.
“Got a location,” he said. “He’s not far away. Looks like he was smart enough to stay near his entry point.”
For the first time, Joe’s expression lightened with something that might have been hope.
“He’s still alive,” he said.
Cyrus glanced at Sedona. Neither of them spoke. Everyone on the small team knew that all the signal meant was that the locator was still functioning. It did not mean the person it belonged to was still alive. Joe knew that, too, Sedona thought. But he had a right to nourish his hopes.
“Try calling him,” Cyrus said to Joe.
Joe cupped his mouth with one hand and shouted into the unnatural silence.
“Henderson.”
The name rang from the crystal trees and echoed for seemingly endless moments. But finally there was silence.
Then they heard the answering shout.
“Pa. I’m here. Hurt my leg. Trapped. Can’t get out.”
Joe’s face glowed. “He’s alive.”
“Tell him we’re coming to get him,” Cyrus said.
Joe relayed the message. When the crystal forest finally stopped ringing, Cyrus turned to one of the hunters.
“Dinkins, run a ghost check.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dinkins, a burly man who looked like he’d seen plenty of action in the catacombs, moved through the doorway. Like Joe, he winced a little when the currents of psi hit him. But he got himself under control immediately.
He concentrated for a moment. Sedona’s senses were sparking in response to the high levels of energy so she was aware of the subtle tension building in Dinkins’s aura. She knew that he had heightened his talent in an effort to pull a ghost.
Dinkins lowered his talent and looked at Cyrus. “No luck, sir. The energy in this place isn’t the same as the stuff in the catacombs and the Rainforest.”
“No surprise there,” Cyrus said. “Everyone back into the tunnel.”
Sedona and the others obeyed. Cyrus waited until they were safe on the other side of the gate before aiming his flamer through the portal at the nearest crystal rock and rezzing the trigger. Flame leaped in a long, narrow beam. The blue stone was undamaged but there was no explosion.
“All right, we know the flamers work in this atmosphere,” Cyrus said. “Keep them out and in your hands. Duke, Tanaka, and Gibbons, you’ll come with me. Everyone else will stay inside the tunnel. When we find Henderson we’ll assess the situation.”
“I’m coming with you,” Joe said. “You got to let me come, too.”
Cyrus hesitated and then nodded once. “All right.”
No one argued. The boss had spoken. Sedona got the underlying message. Cyrus was not about to risk any more of his team than necessary. But she could hear chimes clashing in some other dimension.
“Cyrus,” she said, “I think I should go with you. I can sense energy building in the atmosphere. Feels a little like a river. You might need someone with my kind of talent.”
Tanaka squinted into the glittering forest. “She’s right, boss, something’s happening in here. Feels like a storm brewing.”
Cyrus looked grim. “I can feel it, too. Come on in, Sedona. Stay close. Visual contact at all times.”
She went back through the portal, into the crystal forest. Lyle rumbled softly and opened all four eyes.
The small group moved cautiously into the shimmering, glittering blue forest. Quartz pebbles and crystals in a million shades of ultralight blue crunched and skittered beneath their boots.
“Watch your footing,” Cyrus said. “We don’t want anyone going down in this sea of quartz.”
“Be a real hard landing,” Duke said.
Lyle got distracted by a small, glowing blue gem. He bounded down from Sedona’s shoulder, retrieved his find, and offered it to Sedona with a cheery chortle. The stone looked like all of the others scattered about the floor of the strange forest but she bent down to take it. A little murky energy sparkled through her when her fingers came in contact with the rock.
“It’s amber,” she said, amazed. “Blue amber. It’s beautiful.”
She tucked the gem into a side pocket on her pack. Lyle appeared much gratified with the reception of his gift. He sped on ahead, pausing here and there to examine other small pebbles. Sedona watched him for a moment, wondering what qualified some of the stones as gift-worthy.
When he disappeared from view behind the blue trunks of a stand of trees, she reached out to touch one of the sapphire leaves on a low-hanging branch. The leaf was perfect in every detail but it was solid stone. Experimentally, she tried to snap it off the branch. The stem looked as fragile as the stem of a champagne flute but she discovered that she could not break it.
“Hard as a rock,” she said. She looked around, fascinated. “What happened here?”
“I don’t know,” Cyrus said. “But I’m starting to wonder if this was the Aliens’ first attempt at bioengineering a world they could comfortably inhabit.”
“If so, I’d say that something went horribly awry,” Sedona said. “Nothing we’ve seen is alive. It’s like everything has been turned to stone.” She caught her breath. “Petrified.”
“Yeah, petrified,” Tanaka said. He looked around. “That fits.”
“One thing we’ve learned is that when it comes to Alien science and technology, there’s a hell of a lot we don’t know,” Cyrus warned.
He stopped and turned in a slow arc. When he halted again he was looking toward a jumble of glacial-blue, boulder-sized crystals in front of the entrance of a cave. The interior of the cavern glowed with a strange blue radiance.
“Got him,” he said. “He’s inside that cave.”
Joe lurched forward, skidding recklessly on blue stones.
“Henderson.”
“I’m here, Pa.”
Tanaka, Duke, and Gibbons followed Joe through the tumbled boulders.
A moment later Duke emerged.
“The kid’s okay, sir. Scared half out of his wits and his leg is broken but he’ll live.”
“Rig up a sling and let’s get him out of there,” Cyrus said. “I don’t want to hang around here any longer than necessary.”
He clipped the locator to his belt and went toward the entrance of the cave. Sedona started to follow but a subtle shift in the atmosphere stopped her.
Ominous energy whispered across the nape of her neck. Not gate energy or the familiar currents of a psi river, she thought. An ancient, Old World quote from a play she had watched when she was in boarding school flitted through her mind. Something wicked this way comes.
She had worked in the Underworld long enough to pay attention to her intuition. Automatically she looked at Lyle.
He hopped up onto a nearby rock and made the low, rumbling sound that she had learned to interpret as a growl of warning. But he was still fully fluffed and only his blue eyes were open.
She went to stand closer to him and jacked up her senses a little.
“What is it?” she asked softly.
She did not get an answer from Lyle but there was no need for one because her own senses were registering another shift in the atmosphere. This time she recognized what was happening.
She went to the tumble of blue quartz boulders and saw that the men had rigged a sling to carry the victim. Henderson was a thin, gawky young man of about eighteen or nineteen. His narrow features were twisted in pain and fear. His eyes were closed and he was mumbling.
“. . . Monsters. Hurry. They may come back. . . .”
“He’s hallucinating,” Joe said. “I think it’s the pain or maybe he’s been psi-burned. We’ve gotta get him out of here.”
Duke looked at Cyrus. “He’s ready to transport, sir.”
“Good,” Cyrus said. “You four handle the sling. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. Henderson may or may not be hallucinating. I’ll walk point. Sedona will cover our backs.”
It took some willpower, but Sedona managed to conceal her astonishment. Cyrus had just tasked her with a crucial responsibility. She was supposed to cover the rescuers’ exit.
There was no time to contemplate the fact that he trusted her to such an extent. She had a mission to execute. Henderson had used the word monsters. She was not at all certain that he was hallucinating.
She readied her flamer and took up a position at the rear of the small procession. Lyle bounded up onto her shoulder and sleeked out. It occurred to her that the dust bunny might not believe that Henderson was hallucinating, either.
Her senses were already jacked but she kicked them up another notch. The atmosphere stirred around her and brightened with ice-blue psi. The trees became a more intense shade of blue. The sapphire leaves glittered and flashed in the strange light. Every pebble beneath her foot glowed like the rarest of gems.
Joe, Tanaka, Gibbons, and Duke hoisted the sling with Henderson on board and hauled it out of the cave, carefully negotiating the heap of quartz boulders at the entrance. With Cyrus in the lead, the small procession wound a path back through the forest toward the gate.
It started as a faint flutelike tingle along her senses; fairy music played on exquisite, delicate instruments. Sedona’s first instinct was to stop and listen. But the chimes of her intuition overrode the gentle music. They clashed loudly, discordantly, forcing her to pay attention.
“Does anyone else hear the music?” she asked. She kept her voice very soft, but contrasted with the delicate psi music, the words sounded harsh and off-key to her ears.
Lyle hissed softly.
The four men carrying the sling glanced back at her. She saw the uncertainty in their eyes. She knew her question had alarmed them. They were wondering if she was starting to lose it.
“I don’t hear any music,” Duke announced a little too forcefully. He looked over his shoulder. “Creepy place, though.”
Cyrus looked back at Sedona. “I hear music. Where is it coming from?”
Henderson stirred in the blanket sling. His eyes fluttered open and then closed. “The monsters sensed you. They’re coming back.”
Joe tightened his grip on the blanket. “We gotta hurry.”
No one argued. Sedona knew that Cyrus was moving as swiftly as possible, his attention shifting between the locator screen and his surroundings.
The sweet, gentle music grew louder, tugging at Sedona’s senses, urging her to stop and listen more closely.
Up ahead, Duke stopped, forcing Joe, Gibbons, and Tanaka to halt also.
“What in green hell?” Duke rasped. “I’m hearing it, too. Where is that music coming from?”
“Auditory hallucination?” Tanaka suggested, looking around.
Sedona felt energy shift in the atmosphere and knew that Duke was pushing his talent higher. The others were doing the same. It was a natural response in a crisis. All of the senses—normal and paranormal—responded automatically by rezzing swiftly to high alert.
“Duke,” Cyrus snapped. “Move, man.”
“Yes, sir,” Duke said.
He shook his head, as if trying to get rid of the music and lumbered forward with dogged determination. The others were forced to move with him.
Joe clapped his free hand over one ear.
Cyrus managed to keep the small group moving forward but his face was a mask of grim determination. He was employing raw willpower to make himself and the others stumble on toward the gate and the safety of the catacombs.
The glorious, thrilling fairy music fascinated and enthralled, summoning the listeners with irresistible currents.
Experimentally, Sedona lowered her talent a couple of notches. The fragile, elegant sound faded a little.
“Everyone, lower your talent,” she said. “Hurry. It’s using our para-senses to track us.”
“She’s right,” Cyrus said. “Go normal. Now.”
Duke opened his mouth to protest the order.
“Do it,” Cyrus said.
Duke obeyed. The others did the same. Sedona was close enough to feel the energy around the men shift to a lower level as they fell back into their normal senses.
There was a moment of silence. Then Joe nodded.
“Sedona is right,” he said. “I can still hear that damn music but it’s not as loud now.”
Duke shot Sedona a quick, searching look. “Yeah, it’s a little better this way.”
“The thing is,” Sedona said, “I think that whatever is tracking us got a fix on our location. It may not need to hypnotize us to find us now.”
Joe flinched. “Shit. Is that what it was doing? Hypnotizing us with that damn music?”
“Your son is right,” Sedona said. “There are predators in this place and they’re hunting us.”
“With music?” Gibbons said. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t think it’s actually making music, at least not the way we think of doing that,” Sedona said. “Our minds are interpreting its psychic lures that way. Probably similar to how certain kinds of deepwater fish use bio-phosphorescence to draw prey.”
“Monsters,” Henderson gasped through gritted teeth. “Try to sing you to your death. Only reason they didn’t get me was the energy in that cave. Once I got inside, I couldn’t hear the music.”
“I read about some creatures that can do that,” Cyrus said. “The story was in a book on Old World mythology. I think the singing monsters were called Sirens. The trick for evading them was to plug your ears. But since this music has a paranormal vibe, all we can do is shut down our senses.”
“I can still hear it a little and it’s getting louder again,” Joe said. “They’re closing in on us. How much farther?”
“Twenty yards,” Cyrus said. “Use the flamers if anything so much as moves.”
Sedona followed the others, casting frequent glances over her shoulder. Joe was right. The music was starting to grow louder. She hated operating in extreme conditions without her senses at full throttle. She felt half-blind. Lyle hunkered down on her shoulder, rumbling a continuous warning.
A few steps later she realized that the sense of oppressive energy in the atmosphere had become stronger. It reminded her of the dark weight of an impending thunderstorm. She could have sworn that the atmosphere was getting hazy.
The ice-blue sunlight started to dim.
“Now what?” Tanaka muttered.
“There’s a storm coming,” Duke said. “Not like any energy storm I’ve ever seen.”
Before anyone could respond, they emerged from the crystal forest and found themselves confronting a wall of dazzling white energy.
“Son of a bitch,” Joe said. “The damn gate closed.”
The locked gate was nothing compared to the paranormal hurricane that was closing in on them but Sedona did not see any reason to point that out. The only thing she could do for the team was open the gate and that meant rezzing her talent again.
She hurried around the men and stopped in front of the blank wall of energy. Lyle muttered.
“Yes, I know,” she whispered. “I’m working as fast as I can.”
She jacked up her talent.
. . . And the storm exploded around her. Glacial-blue psi raged in the atmosphere, swirling like a blizzard amid the crystal trees.
She realized the terrible, beautiful music had stopped.
One good thing had come out of the coalescing energy storm, she thought. Evidently the predators were no match for it, either. But the hurricane-force winds of paranormal ice were so strong it would not be long before they overwhelmed all of their senses. She had to get the gate open and she had to do it fast.
She fought her way through the turbulent currents. The interference from the storm was so intense now that she had to put one hand on the gate and establish physical contact in order to find the frequencies. The amber in her ring burned in the dazzling blue light.
Relief slammed through her when she got the focus. She pulled hard on her talent, seeking the delicate counterpoint currents that would unlock the gate.
The wall of blue quartz started to shimmer. Slowly it became transparent. She caught a glimpse of the men waiting on the other side. She pushed her talent higher, concentrating fiercely as the currents of the storm threatened to disrupt the gate mechanism. If she lost control, the gate would slam shut. She could not let that happen. She was rapidly exhausting her psychic senses. She knew she would not be able to open the gate again.
A narrow opening appeared. She pulled on the last of her reserves, fighting the storm as well as the seething gate energy.
“Go,” she shouted.
Joe, Duke, Gibbons, and Tanaka needed no urging. They rushed through the slim opening and carried Henderson into the safety of the tunnel. Grimly, Sedona kept one palm flattened on the gate, holding it open with sheer determination and the last of her energy reserves. The shock of physical contact with the gate scorched her senses. She knew that she was taking a bad psi-burn but there was no other option.
Cyrus looked at Sedona.
“Inside,” he ordered.
“I can’t,” she said. “It will close as soon as I lose contact and I’m not going to be able to hold it open any longer. Get through while you can.”
Another blast of hurricane psi struck with blinding force, searing her senses. She could no longer see Cyrus or the others inside the portal. She lost contact with the gate. It slammed closed and locked into a solid wall of stone, trapping her in a world of ice-blue energy.
She could barely make out her hand in front of her face. She was vaguely aware of Lyle hunkered down on her shoulder, claws dug into her leather jacket.
There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from the monster psi-storm. All she could do was huddle in on herself and try to survive the onslaught.
She was about to sink to the ground when she felt a strong hand close around her arm.
“I’ve got you,” Cyrus said.
Despair shafted through her. He had not made it through the gate. She had failed to save the whole team.
“No,” she whispered. “You were supposed to go through with the others.”
“I don’t leave people behind.”
There was no time to contemplate the disaster. The raging psi-storm overwhelmed her. She knew that if she lived, she would be badly burned—again—probably permanently this time. And Cyrus would likely suffer the same fate. No talent could stand against such violent energy.
Cyrus’s arms closed around her, lifting her. She was dimly aware of Lyle hopping from her shoulder to Cyrus’s. But in the next instant an eerie silence fell. The acid fire of panic seared her.
“Damn it,” she gasped.
“It’s okay,” Cyrus said. “It’s just me.”
The strange hush grew more intense. Unnerved, she opened her eyes. She realized that Cyrus was carrying her forward into the jaws of the storm but it was as if they were enveloped in a protected sphere, a murky, gray ghost world that extended for a radius of about ten feet around them.
The sphere of unnatural silence moved with them. It dawned on her that Cyrus was using his talent to shield them.
“Now you know why they call me Dead Zone Jones,” he said.