Obsidian Prey

Chapter 6

FOUR HOURS LATER SHE DRESSED FOR HER HARMONIC Meditation class in the uniform that signified her beginner's status: baggy gray trousers and a loose-fitting, wide- sleeved gray shirt secured with a plain gray sash. She was still a little groggy in spite of two large mugs of strong coffee.

When she opened the door of her apartment, she woke up fast. Her own face stared back at her from the front page of the Herald. She was not alone in the photo. Vincent was on her shoulder, looking like an adorable ball of badly wrapped yarn in a red beret. Cruz was also in the picture. He looked like he always did, the chief hit man in charge.

"Looks like we're famous, again, Vincent. Just like the old days when we sued Amber Inc."

Vincent made chirpy sounds and peered out of the partially unzipped gym bag that she used to carry her meditation gear. He showed no interest in the newspaper.

She scanned the headline and read the story with a rising sense of unease.

CRISIS DRAWS NEW AI SECURITY CEO

An emergency at a recently discovered alien ruin in the underground rain forest brought the new CEO of Amber Inc.'s security division to the scene. Cruz Sweetwater was accompanied by Lyra Dore, who recently dropped a lawsuit she had brought against Amber Inc.

A spokesperson for AI indicated that Miss Dore was an antiquities consultant who catered to an exclusive clientele. He stated that she possessed the unique skills required to rescue five members of a research team who were trapped in the ruin known as the Amethyst Chamber. The precise nature of the problem was described as a "technical malfunction." The team emerged, unharmed.

Mr. Sweetwater and Miss Dore left the scene together, leading observers to question whether Dore's lawsuit had been dropped because the pair was involved in a personal relationship.

"Well, I suppose the speculation was inevitable," Lyra said to Vincent. "There will be a lot more of the same if I'm seen having dinner with Cruz tonight. But, hey, they called me an antiquities consultant who caters to an exclusive clientele. That's a step up from three months ago when the press implied that I was a low-end tuner who dabbled in the shady side of the relics trade."

She tossed the newspaper onto the hall table and continued downstairs. A glance at her watch informed her that she was going to have to hurry to get to the morning class on time. Fortunately, Master Quinn's studio was only a few blocks away.

The waking nightmare struck half a block later. Between one step and the next she suddenly found herself in a twisted, horribly distorted version of reality. The familiar street coiled like an infinitely long snake ahead of her, the head vanishing into dark infinity. The old Colonial-era buildings on either side of her loomed, impossibly high and strangely narrowed, over her head. Windows glittered like the eyes of great insects.

"Oh, damn," she whispered. "Not again."

She stopped, afraid to take another step because her sense of balance was almost gone. The world veered and teetered around her. Nausea stirred in her stomach.

And then the monsters began to emerge from the alleys.

She heard Vincent making anxious noises. She looked down and discovered that the gym bag had become the mouth of a strange beast. There was blood in the creature's mouth.

No, not blood. She was looking at Vincent's red beret.

Vincent rumbled again. He wasn't growling at her, she realized. He was trying to get her attention. But at that instant, one of the alley monsters started toward her. It was a strange, shambling, vaguely human thing that looked as though it had just arisen from a grave. Its eye sockets were empty. The skin was gone in several places, exposing bare bone.

I'm hallucinating again, she thought. She knew from experience that she had to stay focused on that one single bit of hard information. There's nothing real here.

Vincent made more urgent noises. The red beret bobbed up and down and side to side, making her even more dizzy than she already was. She tightened her grip on the gym bag, but Vincent was no longer inside. Panic slashed across her senses.

"Vincent. Where are you?"

When she realized that he was scuttling up her sleeve, she cried out with relief. He arrived on her shoulder, murmuring anxiously and huddled close. The physical contact steadied her. She dropped the bag and reached up to touch him.

The nightmare dissolved as swiftly as it had coalesced. Just like that, she was out of the dark Alice in Amberland world and back on a normal-looking street. Her pulse was racing, and her palms tingled. She was breathing much too quickly, and she still felt nauseous, but she was no longer hallucinating.

A retired hunter she saw frequently in the neighborhood peered at her with concern. Harvey Wilkens always took a morning walk at this time of day. He no longer looked as if had just arisen from a grave.

"You okay, Miss Dore?" he asked.

"Yes. Yes, I am. Thanks, Harvey. I didn't get much sleep last night. Guess I'm a little jumpy this morning."

Harvey nodded. "Heard how you went down to the jungle to rescue that AI team."

"You saw the morning papers?"

"Nah. I never read the papers. Papers lie. I heard the rumors on the streets."

"Already?"

"There were a couple of hunters trapped in that ruin," Harvey said "Word travels fast in the Guild. Also heard that you and the new CEO of Amber Inc. Security have patched things up. Glad to hear it. Sweetwater is Guild, you know."

She went cold. "No, I didn't know that. I knew that the Sweetwaters maintained close relationships with the Guilds, but I was not aware they were a Guild family."

"Sort of depends on how you define Guild."

"I define it by whether or not some or all of the men in a family are ghost hunters," she said very carefully.

"Yeah, well, it gets complicated when it comes to the Sweetwaters," Harvey said. "But I can tell you this much. There were Sweetwaters fighting side by side with the Guilds back during the Era of Discord."

"Have you ever noticed, Harvey, that the farther away we get from the Era of Discord, the more people claim they had family members present at the various battles?"

"This ain't no made-up family legend, I can tell you that much. Sweetwaters was there."

"So were Dores," she said with a flash of pride.

"Right. I'm just trying to tell you that the Sweetwaters' connection to the Guilds goes back all the way to the founding of the organizations. But that family likes to keep a real low profile. Word is, they've got some unusual talents in that line."

Now, that was interesting, she thought. The Sweetwaters made no secret of the fact that there were a lot of powerful talents in the family. But they were supposedly all amber talents, like hers. Being an amber talent was not considered weird or threatening. It simply meant that you had a highly developed affinity for amber. That ability was useful for discovering and tuning amber but not much else. But if Cruz and his relatives possessed other kinds of paranormal abilities—especially if those abilities were powerful—it would explain why the family had a reputation for secrecy.

It was true that a variety of talents were appearing more and more frequently in the population, but social attitudes toward the paranormal changed more slowly. It was one thing to have a common, socially accepted talent such as the ability to work ghost energy or illusion traps or tune standard amber. It was another thing altogether to possess a rare or dangerous ability. Such talents made others nervous.

Her grandfather had explained the facts of life to her as they applied to those who possessed nonstandard talents. He'd followed the brief lecture with an even briefer piece of advice: "You're one of them, girl. Keep your head down. Let 'em think the only thing you can do is tune amber."

As it turned out, the advice had been of little use. She might be a very strong talent, but tuning amber and prospecting had proved to be the only practical application of that ability. At least, it had been the only application until she had found the amethyst chamber.

"Is that so?" she said politely.

"Yes, ma'am, lot of stories about Sweetwaters," Harvey said with a knowing air.

"Really? I was under the impression that the only talent the Sweetwaters possessed was an affinity for amber. That's not so unusual."

Harvey gave her a conspiratorial wink. "Right you are, Miss Dore. Just an affinity for amber. Nothing unusual about Cruz Sweetwater or anyone else in that family. No, siree. Absolutely not. Don't you worry, I know how to keep a secret. I'm a Guild man, after all."

"I think we've got something of a misunderstanding here," she said.

"Don't worry, I can take a hint. I won't say a word about the Sweetwaters to anyone else. The only reason I mentioned their talents is because I figure you already know all about 'em, what with you and Cruz Sweetwater being so close and all." Harvey chuckled and gave Vincent a friendly pat. "You and the little varmint have a good day now. See you later."

"Bye, Harvey."

Harvey moved off briskly. She watched him until he turned the corner at the end of the block. When he was gone, she went warily on her way, every muscle and nerve tensed in case the sidewalk started to twist and heave beneath her feet again.

To date, she had never had more than one of the hallucinatory nightmares in a twenty-four-hour period, but there was no way to know when that pattern might change. The lawsuit had taken her bank account so low that she could no longer afford flash-rock tune-ups and routine maintenance for her car. But even if she had been able to drive, she would not have dared to get behind the wheel for fear that one of the dreams would strike.

"They're affecting my quality of life, Vincent," she said. "I think that's when you're supposed to get help. But how can I explain the dreams to a para-shrink? Any decent doctor will assume I'm suffering psychotic episodes and blame it on some kind of psi trauma. Then I'd have to explain that my senses aren't entirely normal to begin with, and it will be all downhill from there."

Vincent mumbled encouragingly.

"Thanks, pal. I knew you'd understand."

Two blocks later she halted in front of the Hole in the Wall, a small restaurant that occupied the ground floor of the building that housed the Harmonic Meditation Institute. She pushed open the door and was greeted with the fragrance of warm muffins and strong coffee.

"Good morning, everyone," she said.

There was a round of "Hey, there, you made the morning papers," and "What's up with you and Sweetwater?" and "You two back together?" from the regulars.

The early crowd in the Hole was a mix of small-time, independent tunnel and jungle treasure hunters and local shopkeepers who catered to the low end of the alien relics trade. They had welcomed Lyra into their midst three years earlier right after she had moved into the neighborhood and fired up Dore Tuning & Consulting.

"For the record, there is nothing between Cruz Sweetwater and me except a little business," Lyra said firmly. "One of his teams got into trouble at my ruin last night, and he had to come to me to get them out of the trap."

Someone snorted. "Hope you made Amber Inc. pay big-time."

"I intend to," Lyra said.

"The papers implied that you and Cruz Sweetwater are an item again," Josie Taylor, the proprietor of Taylor's Relics, said.

"Don't believe everything you read in the papers." Lyra glanced at her watch and then smiled at the grizzled cook. "I'm on my way upstairs to class. Okay if I leave Vincent down here with you as usual, Adele?"

"You bet." Adele waved her spatula. "I've got a muffin with his name on it."

Vincent chortled with his customary enthusiasm. After three years, he knew the routine. He fluttered down from Lyra's shoulder, drifted across the floor, and tumbled up onto one of the vacant stools. Ben Symmington, owner of Symmington's Colonial Collectibles, was seated on the neighboring stool. He grinned.

"Howdy, little guy," he said. He patted the top of Vincent's beret and then looked at Lyra. "You two are running late this morning."

"We didn't get back from underground until nearly four," Lyra explained. She patted away a yawn. "Adele, just put Vincent's muffin on my tab. See you in an hour."

"I'll have your coffee ready," Adele promised.

Lyra smiled. "Now, Addy, you know I'm not supposed to drink coffee after my meditation class. Master Quinn says that caffeine is bad for the senses."

Adele made a face. "It's what keeps mine working."

"Mine, too," Lyra admitted. "Later, all."

She went out the front door, turned right, and entered the main lobby of the building. A flight of stairs led to the floor where the Institute's headquarters was located. When she walked through the door of the studio a short time later, she saw immediately that she was the last one to arrive. The other fourteen students, already seated cross-legged on their mats, turned to look at her with reproachful gazes.

"Sorry I'm late," she said, embarrassed. Students were expected to be on time. Coming into class late was a sign of a lack of harmonic balance.

Master Quinn, seated on a mat at the front of the room, nodded solemnly. His head was shaved, a style that emphasized his ascetic features and deep, insightful eyes. He wore long, flowing amber robes and several strands of amber beads. Lyra thought that he was probably in his late thirties or early forties.

"Welcome, Lyra," he said in his calm, serene tones.

"Good morning, Master Quinn," she said.

She gave him a formal, if somewhat perfunctory, bow and then quickly pulled her mat out of the gym bag and sat down.

"Let us begin," Quinn said. "Breathe deeply. Open your inner window and listen to your senses. Find the harmonic balance within."

Lyra closed her eyes and concentrated intently on following the instructions. Unfortunately, she had been unable to get the knack of meditating. Sadly, the harder she tried to sink into the tranquil mental state that the other students achieved so easily, the more difficult the process became.

An unpleasant restlessness descended on her in class, making her edgy instead of calm. She found herself consciously trying to suppress the sensation. Master Quinn had urged her to stop fighting the agitation, explaining that the key to harmonic balance was to let go of the illusion of control. But that, she had learned, was easier said than done.

"Pay attention to the whispers of your senses," Master Quinn intoned. "All the answers are there, within you. ."