Bridal Jitters

Chapter 4

It felt as if one of the ancient stone corridors had caved in on top of her. Sam was no lightweight to begin with and, as she quickly discovered, he seemed to be built mostly of muscle and bone. There was no softness in him and there was none beneath her.

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place, Virginia thought.

She took a deep breath, braced her hands on Sam’s chest, and heaved upward with all of her strength. She managed to gain some wiggle room and, with another strong shove, she was finally able to slide out from underneath his inert body.

She sat up and got cautiously to her feet. There was something wrong with her knees. They were not quite steady. A tremor went through her. For the record, Adeline, everything you’veever heard about sex with a ghost-hunter in the midst of an afterburn is true.

Or maybe this was just the result of sex with Sam, she thought cheerfully. She didn’t have an extensive amount of experience to call upon when it came to this kind of thing, but it didn’t take a lot of experimentation to know what she’d just shared with Sam had been very special. At least she no longer entertained any doubts as to whether or not there were fires of passion burning somewhere inside Sam.

They were there, all right. Enough to set a whole forest ablaze.

Of course, his response to her could have been ignited simply by the legendary ghost-hunter buzz, she reminded herself. Her euphoric spirits sank as suddenly as they had risen. Anything in skirts might have had the same impact on him at that particular moment.

Reality returned with a jarring thud. With a sigh, she steadied herself and glanced around the gloom-filled room. The carved stone chest on which Sam slept was one of several in the chamber. There were also a variety of vases and urns set in softly glowing alcoves. The drenching shadows created a solemn but surprisingly tranquil effect. Perhaps this had once been a meditation room in a Harmonic home. Assuming the Harmonics had meditated.

Questions, questions.

She dressed quickly and picked up the little mag-rez gun. She checked the safety as Sam had demonstrated and then shoved it into her belt.

She glanced uncertainly at Sam. He certainly looked magnificent stretched out stark naked on the stone chest, and she knew he was not cold because the temperature in the catacombs was always the same, comfortable and dry, day and night, year in, year out. But the sight of him was more than a little distracting. The muscled, well-defined contours of his chest and shoulders sent a pleasant little shiver through her.

Their lovemaking had been fast and furious. There had been no time for her to indulge herself in an exploration of his body. She had been intensely aware of the thick, heavy size and weight of his erection, but she had not really seen him. Now, she could not stop gazing at him. He fascinated her, she thought. She had wanted to stroke him and touch him for weeks, but this was the first opportunity she'd had to satisfy her longing.

She examined the fierce planes of his face, relishing the determined angle of his jaw and the pleasing, masculine shape of his ears. His dark hair was seductively ruffled where she had run her fingers through it earlier. With his eyes closed he was all hard edges and tough, sleek male. But when his eyes were open you saw the intelligence and the self-control that defined his nature.

When Sam loved, she thought, his emotions would be as steady and as enduring as the glow of Harmonic quartz.

Unable to resist the temptation, she reached out very carefully and slowly closed her hand around the top of his muscled thigh. He was hard and warm beneath her fingers. She drew her palm slowly down to his knee, savoring the feel of him.

Sam shuddered and mumbled something in his sleep. Startled, she snatched her hand away and stepped back. But when he did not awaken, she reached out once more.

This time she traced a path upward toward his chest, curling her fingers in the crisp hair there. He shifted slightly, but she knew from the steadiness of his breathing that he was still sound asleep. A part of him was stirring, she noticed. She stared at his penis, fascinated to see that it appeared to be swelling in length and width once more. Apparently, the deep sleep of afterburn did not shut down all systems.

There was probably a law against looking at him like this, she thought. If there wasn't, there should have been. It was entirely too much fun.

On the other hand, she was going to marry him soon. Surely that gave her some rights.

"Enough with the voyeuristic fun and games," she muttered. "You're supposed to be standing guard."

She picked up Sam's discarded clothing and covered his torso with his shirt. Then she folded his trousers and placed them neatly beneath his head to serve as a pillow. She was already starting to feel quite wifely, she thought, amused.

With a last glance at him, she turned and walked out into the fountain room. The green energy continued to flow and splash in the small pool. It had no doubt been doing so for several thousand years.

She braced one hand on the thick edge of the doorway and looked around with professional interest. This room had the same somber, curiously reflective feel as the smaller antechamber in which Sam slept. She could not explain, even to herself, why these spaces felt safe while the countless little cubicles outside did not.

She took her hand off the wall and made her way across the fountain room to the outer door. She gazed into the narrow aisle that separated this block of cells from the one across the way and listened intently with both her physical and para senses.

Nothing. No indication that the unusual trap that guarded the main entrance to this weird complex had been breached. No voices or footsteps echoed on the paths that intersected the ranks of cubicle-laced buildings. She detected nothing that indicated that anyone who might be looking for them had discovered the zoo chamber.

She waited quietly in the fountain room for a while longer, uncomfortably aware of the weight of the mag-rez gun on her hip. Gradually, boredom set in. Professional curiosity followed closely on its heels. Whatever this place was, it constituted a spectacular new find. She had a degree in para-archaeology, and she was diligent about keeping up with the research on the subject. She was quite certain that nothing remotely resembling this nest of tiny, illusion-trapped cubicles had ever been written up in the academic literature.

She stepped cautiously out into the shadowy lane, visions of an article in the Journal of Para-Archaeology with her name on it as author dancing in her head. That kind of pub- licity would do wonders for the reputation of the new firm of Gage & Burch.

She walked slowly along the gloom-filled path and paused in front of the first of the small cells that lined the little alley. She examined the dense shadow that glinted just at the edge of her vision. The human eye could detect the stuff that the Harmonics had used to weave their dangerous snares, but it could not focus directly on the nearly invisible psi energy.

She crouched down, concentrating with her para senses, and probed the pattern. As she had concluded earlier, there was nothing particularly complex about the design. She could undo it easily enough. But the sense of wrongness was deeply disturbing. Everything within her resisted the notion of untangling the trap.

With a shock, it occurred to her that perhaps it was not the trap itself that was dangerous. Maybe the true threat existed— or had once existed—inside the little room. Perhaps the trap was just a warning.

Maybe this place had once been a Harmonic hotel and all of these little traps were nothing more than ordinary Do Not Disturb signs hung on doorknobs to keep the maid from entering unexpectedly.

She contemplated that possibility for a moment and then returned to her zoo theory. She liked it much better. The traps might have functioned as fences to keep dangerous creatures locked inside or to keep curious visitors from getting too close to the beasts inside the cages.

She straightened and walked a few more feet to examine some of the other illusion-darkened entrances. Every single one of them gave off the same clear psychic warnings.

After a while, she returned to the fountain room. A quick check on Sam showed that he was still totally out of it.

She sat down on a glowing quartz bench facing the untrapped doorway and took the mag-rez gun out of her belt.

She wondered how long Sam would sleep.

Sam came awake with a sense of urgency, as if someone had just yelled fire. He sat up quickly, memory returning in a heated rush. But there was nothing to indicate that the situation had changed while he had slept off the worst effects of the afterburn. If any of Leon Drummond's pals had burst through the doorway, he would have awakened with his hands and feet bound in duct tape, if he had awakened at all.

Relief swept through him. Something soft slid off his chest and fell to the floor. He looked down and saw his shirt. Virginia must have covered him with it after he had nodded off, which had been right after he had taken her with all the finesse of a specter-cat in full rut.

Virginia. He briefly closed his eyes as the images cascaded through him, burning more intensely than ghost fire. For a few seconds he savored them. Then reality closed in. He knew that his recollection of her passionate response might be nothing more than an illusion concocted by his singed senses; some sort of weird para-psych rationalization for what he had done to her.

Yet he could still feel the softness of the skin on the insides of her thighs and the damp, clinging clasp of her body. Just remembering made his insides tighten all over again.

He had wanted her more than he had ever thought it possible to want any woman. But no more so because of the buzz from the afterburn. The truth was, he had been wanting her just as badly for weeks. The only difference was that two hours ago he had lost control.

The flash of relief he had experienced after waking evaporated. In its place was a bottomless pool of dread. He had to face the grim truth: After weeks of being so cautious, so careful, there was a damn good chance that he had destroyed the glowing future he had worked so hard to build.

He had no one to blame but himself.

Virginia had had a bad case of bridal jitters before they embarked on this venture. After what he had done to her here in this room, she no doubt despised him. It would be a miracle if he hadn't scared the living daylights out of her. She was probably making plans this very minute not only to call off their marriage but their business partnership as well.

He picked up his shirt and got to his feet. Anger washed through him. He was furious with himself. The loss of control had been inexcusable. He could only pray that he had not hurt her.

How long had he been out? He glanced at his watch. Two hours. Long enough to restore some but not all of his depleted psi energy. He needed more sleep to function at full capacity but he could manage with what he had regained during the nap.

He grabbed his trousers and pulled them on. The only thing he could do to make amends to Virginia was to get her safely back to the surface.

A shadow moved in the doorway that separated the antechamber from the fountain room. Not illusion-shadow, but it might as well have been, given the hopelessness of his situation.

"Sam." Virginia hovered anxiously in the doorway. "You're awake. Everything okay?"

"Good enough." He realized with a jolt that he did not want to meet her eyes. He did not want to see the accusation and the wariness that he knew he would find there. "Nothing new outside?"

"We're still alone in this place. I'm beginning to think I was right when I suggested it might have once been a zoo. Something about the nature of the traps makes me think they were set to keep visitors away from whatever used to live in all these little apartments or cages."

"Whoever or whatever once lived in the cells is long gone." He reached for his boots. He did not remember removing them. His jaw tightened. "Got the mag-rez?"

"Right here." She took a few steps into the room to hand it to him. "Sam, are you really okay?"

"Don't worry, I'll be able to get us out of here." He took the narrow little gun from her and shoved it back into his belt. "There's probably another exit around here somewhere, but 1 think our best bet is to go back out the way we came."

She halted. "Back through the waterfall?"

"Yeah. It's the last thing Drummond would expect. Especially after all this time has passed. By now he'll have reported us officially missing, probably killed by an explosion of dissonance energy. I doubt if we'll find him hanging around on the other side waiting for us. But just in case, I'll have the mag-rez in my hand when we go through the waterfall."

"All right. Whatever you think best. You're the expert on ghost-energy."

He glanced down and realized that he was dressed. He could find no more excuses for avoiding her eyes. Time to act like a man. He turned slowly around to face her. "Virginia—"

"Sam—"

They both broke off, staring at each other. In the gloom it was impossible for him to read the expression in her eyes. If she was frightened of him, she was hiding it well, he thought.

He braced himself and tried again. "I'm sorry for what happened," he said evenly. "I don't know what else to say. I could promise you that it won't ever happen again, but I don't know if I can keep that promise."

She did not pretend to misunderstand. "I see."

He drew a deep breath. "I realize that you're probably having second thoughts about our business arrangement as well as our marriage. I don't blame you. I've been doing some thinking about it, too."

"You have?"

He glanced around the tranquil little room. "This is not the time or place to talk about how we're going to terminate our business futures."

"No, it's not." There was an unsettling, flat note in her voice.

"Yeah, well, let's save that conversation for later." He started toward the door, aware that even in the depths of the disaster, he was still trying to buy himself some time. The odds were strongly against him coming up with a way to talk her into going through with the marriage after what had happened, but he could not give up without a fight.

She looked at him as he went past her. "Sam, do you really regret what happened?"

"Hell, yes, I regret it." He planted one hand against the green stone doorway and turned to face her. "Making love to you was the last thing I wanted to do."

She stiffened. "I realize that you were rezzed up because of the afterburn."

"That was no excuse."

"Just tell me one thing. Would anything in skirts have worked for you two hours ago?"

He frowned at her trousers. "You aren't wearing skirts." She narrowed her eyes. "That was a figure of speech."

"It's never smart to use figures of speech when you're talking to a hunter who's still recovering from an afterburn. We tend to be literal, even on our good days."

"For heaven's sake, this is no time for wisecracks. We're talking about our future."

"I thought we just got through deciding to talk about it later." He took his hand off the wall and stalked into the fountain room.

"Damn it," she called out behind him, "don't you dare walk out on me when I'm talking to you. Come back here, Sam Gage."

"What the hell do you want from me?" He felt his temper ignite. "I said I'm sorry. I don't usually lose control, not even during an afterburn. But things got out of hand this time." She swept out her palm to indicate the quartz chest on which they had made love. "Didn't what happened in here mean anything to you?"

"Of course it did. It meant I screwed up everything. But what's done is done."

She raised her chin, eyes glittering with anger. "Would you undo it if you could?

"Didn't I just get through saying that I—" He broke off abruptly. There was no point lying about it. The damage was done. He set his back teeth. "I wish it had happened under other circumstances. I wish I had done things differently. I wish I hadn't scared the hell out of you."

"But you aren't really, truly sorry that you made love to me?"

He hesitated. "Well—"

"Just say it."

He felt cornered. Despair, anger, and frustration boiled together, a dangerous stew spiced with emotions he knew he did not handle well. "You want the truth? The truth is what I said to you just before I tossed you down onto that damned stone chest. The truth is that I've been wanting to make love to you since the first day I saw you."

A short, intense silence gripped the chamber.

Virginia's brows bristled in a ferocious scowl. "Good. Because that's pretty much how I've felt from the first moment I saw you, too."

He felt as if he'd just been struck by lightning. For a few seconds he was too stunned to do anything more than stare at her. "It is?

"Yes." She glared at him. "But you seemed so distant and cool. So businesslike. You kept talking about how many new clients we would attract working as a team. You went on and on about how much money we'd both make once we sold the house to developers."

He finally managed to unfreeze himself. He took a step toward her. "I never wanted to sell the house in the first place. I came up with the idea because I thought it would be a good way to talk you into a marriage-of-convenience. I figured if I—" He stopped. "Hell, I don't know what I was thinking."

She cleared her throat. "We're both adults. We're single. There's no reason we can't simply admit that we're attracted to each other. Marriages-of-convenience are designed for just this sort of situation."

"A legal, socially acceptable, two-year affair."

"Exactly." She shrugged. "If it's just passion, it will probably burn itself out in that length of time."

"Yeah. Sure." Never in a million years. How could he possibly let go of her in two years? Better not to go there in the first place if he knew that he would eventually lose her. But how could he not take what she offered, given the lonely alternative. "Virginia—"

"That's what you wanted, wasn't it? That was the deal. A two-year MC." She smiled a little too brightly. "And I agreed."

She was acting weird, and it made him more uneasy than ever. What the hell was the matter with him? He had gotten exactly what he'd asked for, what he'd wished for when he'd concocted the plan in the first place.

"You know, you were right when you said that this was not the time or place to discuss this sort of thing," Virginia said briskly. "We'd better get going."

He moved toward her. "Is sex all you want out of this?

"Isn't that what you want out of it?"

"Sex is good. Great." Anger pulsed in him. "I can work with sex."

Her face tightened in renewed concern. "You know, you really don't look normal yet, Sam. You could still be suffering from afterburn. Maybe you'd better get some more sleep before we attempt to go back through that waterfall."

"You're right about one thing. I'm not feeling real normal."

Her eyes widened as he closed the distance between them. "Now hold on just one damn minute. If you think we're going to have sex every time you claim to be in the throes of an afterburn buzz, you can think again. I'll admit it's interesting, but—"

She stopped talking abruptly when he caught her wrists and pinned her to the wall.

"You just got through telling me that you were in this deal for the sex," he reminded her.

"I've got nothing against sex." Her voice was tight with anger. "But the next time we do it, I want to make sure it's for real. Not just the result of a bad burn buzz. Don't you get it?"

"No." He leaned in closer. "Explain it to me in short words."

"I want to be sure it's me you want. I want to be absolutely certain that not just any female would do."

"Trust me, no one else will do."

There was a short, tense silence. Then she cleared her throat and wriggled her fingers in his grasp. "In that case, stop acting like some macho jerk hunter."

He kept her wrists anchored against the wall. "But I am a macho jerk hunter."

"No, you are not," she muttered, seriously disgruntled now. "Stop talking like that."

"You've as good as said I behaved like a macho jerk hunter a couple of hours ago when I made love to you just before I crashed. What happens the next time we get into this kind of situation? Am I going to have to listen to a lot of accusations about how anything in skirts would do? When it's over, will I have to explain that I knew it was you I was having sex with?"

"Just because I wanted to be sure you knew it was me—"

"Believe me. I knew it was you. Just like I know it's you now."

He kissed her, hard and deliberately, letting her feel the frustration and temper she had aroused in him, letting her know that this time he knew full well that she was the woman he had pinned against the glowing quartz wall.

She went rigid. Despair knifed through him.

"Virginia." He released her wrists and caught her head between his hands. "Damn it, Virginia. I want you so much."

She gave a muffled cry and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him feverishly. "I didn't mean to call you a stupid, macho jerk hunter."

"Don't worry about it." Relief surged through him. "Sometimes I am a macho jerk hunter."

"No." She clenched her fingers in his hair. "Never. I knew from the first day that you weren't a macho jerk hunter."

"Yeah?" He took her tender earlobe between his teeth and nibbled hungrily. "What was your first clue?"

"You were reading the Journal of Para-Archaeology instead of the latest issue of Sex-Starved Psychic Playmates."

"Lucky for me my subscription ran out three months ago," he said very fervently against her throat. "I never got around to renewing it."

She laughed softly. Her head tipped back against his arm. "Oh, Sam, do you really think this will work?"

"We'll make it work." Two years. He had two full years to make it work. He touched the edge of his tongue to the soft skin beneath the collar of her shirt.

She stiffened.

"Sam?"

"It's okay. Even without the skirts, I'm positive I'm dealing with the right lady here."

"No, wait." She planted her palms against his shoulders and pushed him away from her.

He stilled, aware that something was wrong. "What is it?

"Psi energy. I can feel it. Someone is trying to take down the big trap at the entrance to this zoo."

"Drummond's friends. So they did come looking, after all." The charge of sexual anticipation that had been arcing through him instantly transmuted itself into another kind of high-rez buzz.

"Wait here." He turned and went swiftly across the fountain room. He halted in the outer doorway and listened intently. Sound carried underground. So did the feel of psi energy.

He heard voices reverberating in the distance. They came from the vicinity of the entrance to the vast zoo chamber.

"… waste of time. Don't care what Drummond says. No way the S.O.B. could made it through that waterfall with the little lady tangler. No small-time security guy could be that good. Even if he was that good and even if he did make it through with her, he'd have one hell of an afterburn. He'll be wasted for at least another hour or two."

"We're working for Fairbanks, not Drummond. He said not to take any chances, and he's the one paying us. The orders were to check out every possibility in this damned corridor, so that's what we're gonna do. Now, shut up and untangle this trap."

"Okay, okay. Give me a minute. It's a big sucker."

Sam left the doorway and went to where Virginia stood waiting.

"Let's go." He took her arm.

"Where?"

"Up." He took her arm and started toward the emerald staircase. "It's easier to hunt when you've got the high ground."

"Whatever you say."

She followed him up the narrow, twisting steps to the next level. He saw the gloom-shrouded entrance to another chamber similar to the one below. An energy fountain cascaded silently in the center. Several more ornately carved chests were arranged in an artful manner around the room.

But the thing that interested him the most was the narrow window. He hesitated before he crossed the threshold and glanced at Virginia.

"Trapped?

She shook her head, frowning intently. "No. This room is clear. Maybe this was the zoo's souvenir shop."

"Or the visitors' room in the prison." He went to the window, braced one hand on the wide ledge, and looked down into the lane. "This will work. If they bother to search this far, I'll have a clear shot."

". . Got it. We're in."

"Shit. What the hell is this place? Look at all those little rooms. Some kinda cheap hotel, d'ya think?"

Virginia stirred hesitantly in the doorway. Then she walked slowly into the room, careful to keep a respectful distance from the energy fountain. "I don't like this."

"Don't worry. I've got a hunch that once they get a good look at all these little cubicles and realize how long it will take to search this place, they'll figure out something else to do. If they do get this far, I can handle them."

"I know that." She folded her arms very tightly beneath her breasts. "Sam, I'm afraid that tangler will try to de-rez some of the traps."

He sank deeper into the gloom and watched the lane. "So?"

"I told you, I don't think they should be touched. If he starts fooling around with some of them, looking for us—"

She broke off.

He gazed at her. "You're really worried about the nature of those illusion traps, aren't you?"

"Yes." Her mouth tightened. "I told you, there's something very, very strange about them. One way or another, they all seem to spell out Do Not Disturb in great big capital letters.

"Whatever didn't want to be disturbed is long gone, Virginia."

"I know, but it just doesn't feel right."

He shrugged. "Maybe that tangler down there will come to the same conclusion, and he and his hunter pal will leave us in peace."

"… Gonna take a couple of hours to go through this place room by room. Must be hundreds of little cubicles in here. And they're all trapped, I'm telling you."

"If they got this far, neither one of 'em would be in great shape. Gage will have crashed, and the tangler will be scared out of her wits. I'll bet they would have picked one of these little cubbyholes near the entrance. Start working, man. I'd rather find the bastard before he recovers from the crash. Easier to handle that way."

"Uh, Drake, I don't like the looks of these traps."

"I don't give a damn how they look to you. Start takin' 'em apart."

"There's something real weird—"

"Shut up and get to work, Chaz. Unless you wanna explain things to Fairbanks."

"Sure. Okay. I'm workin' on it."

"Oh, damn," Virginia whispered. "He's going to do it."

Sam took his eyes off the lane long enough to look at her. The stark alarm in her voice worried him. She was scared, he thought. Genuinely, thoroughly, deep-down scared.

"What is it with you and these traps?" he started to ask.

"Sam. ' Her eyes widened in sudden alarm. "Get down. Now."

"Take it easy, honey, I've got to keep watch—"

"He's got it. He's undone the first trap. I can feel it."

"It's okay—"

"No, it's not okay." She flew toward him across the room and seized his arm. "Get away from the window."

Automatically, he started to resist the tug of her fingers. But the urgency in her was not to be ignored. He reminded himself that traps fell into her area of expertise. They were partners. He had to respect her instincts.

He allowed himself to be drawn away from the window. She pulled him deeper into the room.

"Down," she whispered, dragging him down behind a large quartz chest. "Hurry."

He crouched beside her, the mag-rez gun in hand. "I hope you know what the hell you're doing."

Before she could respond, an inhuman shriek of mingled rage and despair rent the gloom of the alien zoo. It echoed endlessly off the walls. Sam froze, his hand tightening convulsively around the gun. Beside him, Virginia shuddered.

"What in the name of Old Earth…?" Sam whispered.

A very human shout went up, a high, keening cry of terror.

"There's something in there."

Chaz, the tangler, Sam thought.

"… Get outa here…"

Another alien scream rose, joining the crescendoing wail of the first. And then a torrent of screeches, shrieks, howls, and dreadful cries arose. There was a hellishly mournful quality to the unnatural sounds, as though whatever had once inhabited the small cells had been aroused from their centuries-deep sleep to protest the disturbance. The cacophony of otherworldly cries drowned out the screams of Chaz and Drake.

The vast zoo room began to darken. The green gloom seemed to thicken and grow dense. Sam followed Virginia's gaze. They both looked out the narrow window. It was like looking into the depths of an alien sea.

"Dear heaven." Virginia said in amazement.

He knew what was going through her mind. There was no such thing as night and day in the ruins. The glow of the quartz was always steady. True, there had been more than the usual number of shadows in the zoo chamber, but there had been light, and it had remained at a constant level.

Until now.

Only the chamber in which they crouched remained luminous.

Jagged shards of green lightning flashed outside the narrow opening, shattering the heavy darkness that enveloped the zoo. The alien shrieks grew louder.

More lightning sizzled. As Sam watched, an acid-hued bolt of energy illuminated some thing that floated in midair outside the window. He caught a glimpse of a green phantom so gossamer thin and transparent that he could see straight through it to the opposite wall. As he watched, another specter joined the first.

"UDEMs," Virginia whispered. "When Chaz untangled the trap he must have disturbed some."

"Whatever the hell those two things are, they aren't standard-issue energy ghosts." Sam probed cautiously, feeling for the telltale trace of psi energy emitted by normal unstable dissonance energy manifestations. What he picked up with his para senses felt wrong. He cut off the probe immediately. He did not want to draw the attention of the strange specters.

"If they're not UDEMs, what are they?" she asked very softly.

"They're energy ghosts of some kind but not like any I've ever dealt with. Look at the way they move."

"As if—" Virginia hesitated. "As if they're headed somewhere."

"Yeah. Right toward Chaz and Drake."

"But that's impossible."

"Uh-huh."

She was right, of course. UDEMs were not sentient beings. They certainly weren't the ghosts of long-dead aliens, although more than one or two hucksters and con men had tried to convince the gullible of that over the years.

Technically speaking, UDEMS were nothing more than balls of residual psi energy left behind by whatever had once powered Harmonic technology. The only reason they were called ghosts was because they tended to drift through the ancient corridors like ghosts.

Green lightning zigzagged through the misty darkness outside the window. More ghosts drifted past the opening, streaming toward the entrance of the zoo chamber.

"Damn," Sam said. "What the devil is going on out there?"

"I don't know, but I can tell you that this is Chaz's fault," Virginia said grimly. "He set them off. I knew there was something strange about those traps."

The hideous wails continued to rise and fall in the unnatural night.

"Sounds like a reunion of lost souls," Virginia whispered. "I can't even hear Chaz and Drake now. Wonder what's happened to them?"

"Maybe we don't want to know."

"Maybe you're right."

Virginia huddled close, but Sam noticed that she was careful not to impede his gun hand. Not that the mag-rez would be effective against whatever was out there, he thought. If one of the things changed course and drifted through the window, their only hope would be his psi-talent.

More lightning sparked violently. Again and again it shattered the night. But there was no accompanying roll of thunder, Sam noticed. For some reason that only made the energy flashes seem all the more bizarre.

"It's like there's a storm going on out there," Virginia muttered.

"Maybe that's exactly what it is," Sam said, thinking about it. "An energy storm triggered by the untangling of the first trap."

"But to what purpose?"

"Who knows? We're talking about the Harmonics here. No one has a clue about why they did anything. If the place was a zoo or a prison, it's possible those in charge installed some unusual security measures. Maybe we're witnessing some kind of system meant to round up the escapees.

"Sam. ' Virginia touched his arm, her eyes fixed on the window."Look."

"I see it."

One of the phantoms had halted in front of the opening. Sam told himself that it was just a mindless UDEM, but it was all too easy to imagine that it was peering into this room as if it sensed prey.

He readied himself, not wanting to use psi energy unless there was no alternative, because he could not be sure that his talent would work against this stuff.

The ghost hovered. The brightest portion of it was at least three feet in length, but its aura flared out in a much wider band of acid green.

It drifted through the window.

"Damn."

Beside him, Virginia sucked in a deep breath, but she said nothing.

Decision time, Sam thought. He could either try to prod it back out the window or he could attempt to clobber it. He opted for the gentle nudge.

He sent out a pulse of psi-talent, gently summoning energy from the quartz walls, ceiling, and floor. A small ball of glowing green fire took shape in the center of the room. He propelled it gently toward the intruder.

The strange UDEM that had drifted through the window paused as though confused. Then, to Sam's enormous relief, it retreated from the smaller ghost.

It wafted back out through the window and disappeared in the wake of the school of phantoms roaming through the streets of the zoo.

Virginia exhaled on a long, soft sigh. "Nice. Very nice."

He could almost taste his own relief. For the first time, he realized that his shirt was stuck to his back. "Don't ever say I don't know how to show a lady a fun time on Halloween."

"A lot of hunters would have tried to blast it to smithereens," she said very seriously. "For some reason, I don't think that tactic would have worked."

"No," he said, "I don't think it would have."

The storm crackled and blazed. An endless parade of desolate-sounding specters and phantoms flitted past the window.

The tempest seemed to rage for hours, but when at last it began to abate, Sam looked at his watch. He was startled to see that only twenty-three minutes had passed.

"I think it's ending," Virginia said.

Gradually, the unholy wails receded. The flashes of lightning grew pale, then ceased altogether. As if some invisible hand had flipped a switch, the familiar green glow seeped back into the atmosphere. The strange darkness retreated into the pooling shadows from which it had come.

"Must have seemed like an eternity to Chaz and Drake," Virginia whispered.

"It may have turned out to be just that."

"Are you saying you don't think they survived it?"

"I don't know what was going on out there, but whatever it was, they were caught out in the open." Sam smiled slightly. "Thanks to you, we were safe in this room."

He got cautiously to his feet and went to the window. When he looked out he saw that everything looked very much as it had just before the tempest had been triggered.

Virginia stood slowly behind the chest. "Now what?"

"Now we get the heck out of here before someone else sets off another storm." He moved swiftly back toward her. "Ready?"

"If you're waiting for me, you're backing up."

They found Chaz and Drake lying on the floor near the main gate into the zoo. It was obvious that the two desperate men had tried to flee back through it, but something had caused the illusion trap there to reset itself. The energy storm had caught up with the pair before Chaz could untangle the trap a second time.

Virginia hesitated and then went down beside one of the men and checked for a pulse. She looked up in surprise. "He's unconscious, but alive."

"Same here." Sam rifled through the pockets of the man dressed in leather and khaki until he found a guild license and an amber-powered grid locator. "This is all we need. The locator shows three exits in this sector. We won't have to go back through the waterfall, after all."

"What are you going to do with that man's guild license?"

"I'll give it to Mercer Wyatt. He can take it from there." Sam got to his feet. "The guild polices its own."

Virginia gave him an odd look. "You're, uh, friends with the head of Hunter's Guild?"

"Let's just say that Wyatt and I have a nodding acquaintance. He owes me a couple of favors." Sam studied the illusion trap that guarded the exit. "Go ahead and de-rez it. I'll drag these two out of here. We'll leave them in the corridor. Wyatt can send one of his staff to clean up this mess."