“Jack Winters,” Jack said. “You stole a couple of things that belong to me. I’m taking both of them.”
“Son of a bitch,” Nash snarled. “You’re not taking anything from me. You’re a dead man.”
A terrible blast of mind-searing energy crackled in the atmosphere of the hallway. Although Jack was the target, Chloe got caught in the backwash of power. It was as though the entire world had been set afire. White-hot psi consumed the corridor, blinding all of her senses. She reeled and fetched up hard against the wall. Consciousness started to slip away. She could not move, let alone try to flee.
She had guessed right, she thought. Nash did, indeed, possess a lethal talent. He was able to generate a killing shockwave of psychic energy.
Her vision blurred. Tears scalded her eyes. Jack was a dark figure silhouetted against the waterfall of energy. He had tried to rescue her, and he was going to die for his trouble. She had drawn him to his death, and there was nothing she could do.
The storm evaporated as suddenly as it had begun. She clawed at the wall in an attempt to stay on her feet. There was another kind of energy twisting and curling and pounding in the atmosphere now. She caught only fleeting impressions of nameless specters and heart-crushing fears, but it was enough to know that her avenging angel was exacting retribution and meting out punishment.
Someone was screaming, but it wasn’t her. She did not have the strength. The screaming went on endlessly. Somewhere a man was sinking into hell.
Her badly fried senses began to clear. The screaming ceased abruptly.
She opened her eyes and saw Jack. He was still standing in the corridor, energy whipping around him. His eyes glowed like emerald coals.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes.” She swallowed hard and managed to push herself away from the wall. “Yes. I’m all right. I think. You?”
“Yes. But one of them got away. There’s another door at the back of the room.”
She looked down and saw Nash. He lay in a dead man’s sprawl on the floor of the office. His face was frozen in a mask of abject horror. His eyes stared sightlessly into nothing.
“Hulsey,” she whispered. “He’s the one that got away. The man on the floor is Nash. He seemed to be in charge. I think he said something about coming from Portland for the experiment.”
Jack stepped over the body. He grabbed the lamp and came back to the doorway.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Psi energy stirred within the lamp. As Chloe watched, the metal rapidly became opaque.
“Jack, you’ve lit the lamp,” she whispered.
“We may need it.”
“Why?”
“Remember you said that you were pretty sure the energy in this thing was meant to do something besides stabilize my dream psi?”
“Yes.”
“I think you’re right. I think I know what Nicholas created when he put the second set of crystals into the lamp. Why he went back to see Eleanor Fleming the third time.”
She drew a deep, steadying breath. “Okay,” she said. She pulled a little more psi to steady herself. “I assume we’re going out the back way?”
“No, they’ll have sealed off the alley. We’ll go out the front door. They won’t be expecting us to do that. Once we’re outside in front of the building they can’t touch us. It’s only a little after six in the evening. There will still be people on the street. Too many witnesses.”
“Everything has happened so fast. Maybe the guards don’t know about us yet.”
He glanced up. She followed his gaze and saw the security camera in the ceiling. Anyone watching would have realized by now that something odd had just gone down here in the basement. It was obvious that Nash was in a very bad way.
“Jack, I’m not sure I can do this,” she whispered. “You’ve got a better chance on your own.”
He smiled, as if genuinely amused. “Do you really think I’d leave you here?”
She almost smiled, too. “No.”
“I came for you. I’m not leaving without you.” He handed her the glowing lamp. “Here, hold this.”
Reflexively she wrapped both hands around the heavy lamp. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can walk and carry this thing at the same time.”
“You’re not walking.”
He picked her up in his arms and went forward, moving swiftly along the corridor. His powerful aura enveloped her. She drew some strength from him and clutched the lamp tightly. The relic was practically transparent now. The stones were heating with the colors of dreamlight.
He carried her to the stairwell. Holding the lamp in one arm, she reached down and opened the door. He climbed the two flights of stairs. She opened another door and they moved into a hallway marked Restrooms.
They went down the hall and into the main room of the gym.
There was a hushed, waiting stillness in the vast space. The overhead lights were off, but there was enough ambient street light filtering in through the glass doors at the front to reveal a band of heavily muscled men. They stood in a semicircle, blocking the route to the exit.
Chloe counted six bulked-up guards. Two more slithered out of the shadows behind one of the workout machines. Drug- tainted psi prints glistened evilly on the floor and fluoresced on the steel equipment.
Hunters, she thought. They would be as fast and as ruthless as a pack of wolves. Jack could not possibly have much energy left after what had happened downstairs in the basement.
“Don’t hurt the woman,” one of the men snapped. “She’s valuable.”
The hunters moved forward in a ring. Chloe watched them. If she could just make physical contact with one or two she might be of some use in the coming battle.
“Put me down,” she whispered.
“No,” Jack said. “We’ll do this together.”
“What do you mean?”
He didn’t respond, but she was suddenly aware of the lamp growing warmer in her hands. Energy stirred and flashed as the alchemical metal shifted from translucent to crystal clear. The stones blazed with dreamlight.
Her feverish senses stirred. Intuitively she understood what Jack needed from her. She held the artifact aloft in both hands, summoned her waning reserves of psi and pulsed energy into the lamp, holding the currents of dreamlight steady for Jack. She understood then that he could somehow turn the lamp into a weapon, but he could not do it without her help.
All but one of the crystals ignited. Only the strange dark stone remained opaque. A rainbow of fire swept across the gym, drowning the hunters in a maelstrom of energy.