She drummed her fingers on the car seat. "You really want to know how I found that ruin? I'll tell you. Vincent led me to it."

He shot her a quick, searching glance. "Are you serious?"

"Dead serious. I think he somehow sensed that I could work amethyst amber. In his little bunny brain, he probably figured that the ruin and the stones would make pretty toys for me. Dust bunnies are big on toys and games."

"You opened your own gate. How did you manage that?"

She moved one hand slightly. "Turns out those of us who can work amethyst are good at opening jungle gates." She paused a beat before adding, "Guess you could say it's an aspect of our talent. Not quite as interesting as the Sweet.w.a.ter instinct for s.e.x, of course, nevertheless-"

"When did you find out that you could resonate with amethyst?" he asked.

"When I was fourteen. My grandfather had a small sample of it. He thought it was just a pretty specimen. But one day he let me hold it, and we both realized that I could work it the way other people work standard amber. Trouble was, there didn't seem to be any practical application."

"Until you found the chamber and the relics inside."

"Yes."

"What's your theory about the artifacts that you found in the ruin?"

"Believe it or not, I already told you the truth. I really do think that those stones are nothing more than some kind of alien psi art. When I tune them to an individual, the way I did that one for you, the person can experience the art with his or her paranormal senses. But that's it. There's no big secret to discover in your lab."

He was silent for a while.

"Okay," he said. This time his voice was a little too neutral.

She stilled. "Okay?"

"You're not ready to trust me. I can handle that. For now."

Oh, d.a.m.n. He knows. No, more likely he had made a calculated guess. Either way, he suspected her of holding out on him.

"Look, Cruz, I'm telling you-"

"Time to change the subject again."

"We seem to be doing that a lot tonight."

"Yes," he said. "We do."

He brought the car to a halt in front of her apartment building. This time she waited in her seat until he came around to the pa.s.senger side to open the door. She needed the few seconds alone to think about what had just gone down between them. There could no longer be any doubt. Cruz not only wanted her cooperation at the lab, he was certain that she had concealed some of the artifacts that she had found in the ruin. So much for Nancy's romantic imaginings and all that talk about the Sweet.w.a.ter instinct for true love.

Now what?

Before she could come up with an answer, Cruz opened the door. She got out and walked with him toward the entrance.

She was digging into her little handbag for her key when two b.a.l.l.s of violent green ghost fire exploded on the sidewalk, trapping both her and Cruz against the wall of the building.

There was nothing supernatural about ghost energy. Technically, energy ghosts were known as UDEMs-unstable dissonance energy manifestations. They were essentially small storms of chaotic alien psi.

Even a brush with the flaring green fires could fry the victim's para-senses, sometimes beyond recovery. A sustained encounter could kill.

Wild energy ghosts were a common problem in the catacombs, but they did not exist aboveground unless generated by someone who could work ghost energy: a ghost hunter. Two ghosts meant two Guild men were in the vicinity. Rogue hunters were known to use their talents to commit street crimes. Having a ghost shoved in your face was as intimidating as having a mag-rez gun pointed at you.

"Oh, geez, we're going to get mugged," Lyra said. "Talk about the perfect ending to the evening."

Cruz did not respond. He was watching two men move out of the fog-bound shadows of an alley. The fierce glow of the raging green energy ghosts gleamed on the highly illegal mag-rez guns in their hands. The weapons were aimed at Cruz.

"Get him," one of the men said. "But don't hurt the woman."

Lyra had only an instant to comprehend the fact that this was no routine street robbery, that the thugs intended to murder Cruz.

And then all the light went out of the night.

Between one panicky heartbeat and the next, she was plunged into a nightmare of absolute darkness and terrifying silence.

There should be gunshots, she thought. Why don't I hear the gunshots?

They say you never hear the shot that gets you.

Maybe this state of utter oblivion was death.

Chapter 13.

CRUZ SAW LYRA COLLAPSE TO THE PAVEMENT BESIDE him, but there was nothing he could do for her now. There would be time for explanations later, he thought. First things first. Priorities.

He continued to focus energy through the obsidian amber in his ring, trapping his prey in a disorienting no-man's-land of featureless psi fog.

He could not s.h.i.+eld Lyra. The talent did not work that way. It was linked to his aura. When he was generating this much power, everyone in a radius of twelve to fifteen feet around him was enveloped in the mist. Except for him.

In this eerie state he was the ultimate predator, because only he could use his senses. The others had gone night blind in the most extreme manner imaginable, all of their normal senses shut down.

The nasty energy ghosts the two thugs had generated guttered and went out like candles extinguished in the rain as the attackers lost their ability to hold a focus. The men yelled in panic and floundered. Their guns clattered on the pavement.

The dark thrill of impending violence swept through Cruz. He went swiftly toward the first man.

NOTHING MADE SENSE. THE DISORIENTATION WAS COMPLETE. The world as she knew it had vanished. It was as if she had been plucked from the street and dropped into the deepest ocean abyss. Even the eternal glow cast by the Dead City wall disappeared. The b.a.l.l.s of ghost fire vanished. There were no headlights in the street. Nothing.

All of her normal senses were affected. In addition to not being able to see or hear, she could no longer orient herself physically. Up and down had no meaning. The only reason she knew she had fallen to the sidewalk was because of the pain that jolted through her.

The shock of the fall was oddly rea.s.suring. If she could feel normal pain, she probably wasn't dead.

Her first coherent thought was that two men were intending to gun down Cruz, and she was unable to do anything to help him because she had been struck by one of her waking nightmares. Panic and rage surged through her. Not now, d.a.m.n it. He couldn't die. He had just come back to her. She would not let him go again, even if he was trying to manipulate her.

Her physical senses were deadened, but perhaps her para-senses were not as badly affected. Desperately she concentrated on pus.h.i.+ng energy through her amethyst charms, willing the world to snap back into focus around her.

The street scene rushed back, but because she was viewing it with only her other senses, it had a strange, surreal quality. The colors of objects were all in the paranormal range. The street sign glowed ultraviolet. The wet pavement gleamed ultragreen. The lights of an upstairs window across the street appeared as an aurora of ultra-yellow.

She had never before been forced to rely only on her para-senses. They usually worked naturally with a person's normal senses. But in this strange state, all of the stimuli came to her from only the paranormal end of the spectrum.

She heard sound, but she perceived it differently. There was, however, no mistaking the thuds, grunts and-most unnerving of all-the shriek of a man crying out in shock and pain.

She turned her head and saw two shadowy figures. It was impossible to see their physical features, because each was surrounded by a spiking aura. One man staggered around in a circle, arms flailing. The other moved in on him, gliding forward in a frighteningly graceful dance that promised to end in violence. A third man was motionless on the ground.

She had no doubt as to the ident.i.ty of the man who was closing in for what looked like the kill. She would know him anywhere.

"Cruz," she whispered.

In this para-dimension, her voice echoed weirdly. She could not hear herself the way she did when she was using her regular senses. The lack of familiar auditory feedback added to the hallucinatory atmosphere.

A small creature, its aura glowing brightly, dashed out of the darkness and charged for the man Cruz was about to take down.

"Vincent," Lyra said. "No, wait. Come here."

Vincent, fur sleeked back, ignored her. He dashed in to nip at his target's heels.

The thug screeched. "Get away from me. Get away."

But Cruz was also moving in, lightning fast. He made a quick, chopping motion with one hand. The ghost hunter went down, crumpling on the pavement beside his partner.

The world jolted back. Lyra's normal senses kicked in with jarring suddenness. Vincent leaped up into her arms, rumbling with concern. She gathered him close and watched Cruz scoop up the mag-rez guns.

"Are you all right?" she whispered. Her voice sounded tense but normal once again.

He came toward her, still moving with that disturbingly lethal grace. She sensed that he was startled to see her on her feet.

"I'm fine," he said. "What about you?"

"I'm okay. I'm . . . a little shaken up, I guess."

"Sorry about that."

"Yeah, well, it's not exactly your fault."

"We'll talk about it later. Right now we have to deal with this pair."

"Okay."

Vincent was once again fully fluffed, hunting eyes closed. He chortled his customary cheerful greeting to Lyra, as though nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.

Cruz took a phone from his pocket. "I'll have someone pick up these guys."

"Someone?" She frowned. "You mean the police, right? Please tell me you're calling the cops."

"Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"I'm calling the Guild's security people."

"d.a.m.n it, Cruz, the police are supposed to handle this sort of thing."

"Those two are ghost hunters and, like they say, the Guild polices its own. Besides, I need answers, and I'm a lot more likely to get them faster out of my friends at Guild security than I am from the Frequency PD."

There was no point arguing with him. She subsided, fuming. It was just one more example of the arrogance of both Amber Inc. and the local Guild. But she also knew that Cruz was right. When it came to rogue ghost hunters, the Frequency cops took the old-fas.h.i.+oned view. They, too, preferred to let the Guild take care of its own problems.

Cruz spoke briefly to someone on the phone and then cut the connection. He looked at Lyra again.

"Take Vincent upstairs," he said. "I'll wait here until Guild security collects these two, and then I'll be up. We need to talk."

"About what?" she asked.

"About what just happened here."

She searched his face. "It was an attempted mugging. A street robbery."

"Maybe." He dropped the phone into his pocket and crossed to the nearest of the two unconscious men.

A fresh wave of alarm shot through her. "What do you mean?"

Crouching, he went swiftly, methodically, through the hunter's pockets. "I don't think that these two were just a pair of opportunists. They were waiting for us."

"How do you know that?"

"Got a talent for this kind of thing."

Chapter 14.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER HE GOT INTO THE ELEVATOR and rode it to the fourth floor. The gunmen had been taken away in the back of a black-windowed Guild car, but he was still feeling the intense aftereffects that always followed the use of a lot of psi.

He was in control-he was always in control. With a talent like his, it was a necessity. But he knew from previous experience that willpower alone did not protect him from the afterburn. In some primitive part of his brain, he was the hunter returning from a successful kill. And tonight the sensation was a thousand times more charged, because his mate was waiting for him.

Except that Lyra did not yet get that part of things, he thought.

She must have heard him coming down the hall, because the door of the apartment opened just as he reached it. Lyra stood in the little entryway, her eyes dark with anxiety. A white robe and a pair of slippers had replaced the black dinner dress and s.e.xy heels. Her hair was down and a little tousled. Vincent was on her shoulder, looking cheerful as usual. Of the three of them, he was the only one who was unconcerned, Cruz thought. Dust bunnies lived in the moment.

"Are they gone?" Lyra asked, peering out into the hall as though fearful that the thugs had followed him.