Obsidian Prey

Chapter 15

THE FEATURELESS, SOUNDLESS VOID OF THE DREAMSCAPE was terrifying. She had to escape. Instinctively she pushed energy through the charms on her bracelet. .

The nightmare broke up into fragments.

She came awake on a surge of adrenaline that left her damp and shivering. She sat up quickly, breathless, pulse racing.

The first thing that struck her was that she was alone in the bed. Cruz was gone. Everything inside her went cold.

Vincent drifted across the quilt toward her. He huddled close, making anxious little chittering noises. She picked him up and cuddled him, taking comfort from his furry little frame.

"I'm not alone, am I?" she whispered. "I've got you, pal."

"Are you okay?" Cruz asked from somewhere near the window.

Shocked, she turned her head and saw him silhouetted against the pale green night light spilling through the window. The lines of his sleek, powerful shoulders and back were sharply etched, but his face was hidden in the shadows. Suddenly she was warm again.

Of course he was here, she thought. She would have known if he had left in the middle of the night. She had been so disoriented—so panicked—by the nightmare that she had not been paying attention to her senses.

"Bad dream," she explained. "I've been having them a lot lately." She hesitated. "But not usually at night. This one was different."

"You have dreams while you're awake?" he asked.

She drew a breath and let it out slowly. "More like hallucinations, I'm afraid. I know, I should probably see a para-shrink. I've been thinking about it. The thing is, most of the time I feel so damn normal. I can't bring myself to believe I'm going crazy."

"You're not crazy, Lyra."

"Something's going on, that's for sure. I've been telling myself that it's just stress. But after what happened tonight, I have to face the fact that the waking nightmares are getting worse."

"Tell me about them."

"Don't be ridiculous." She swung her legs over the side of the bed and got to her feet. "There's nothing more boring than listening to someone else's dreams."

He came around the foot of the bed, reaching her just as she was pulling on her robe. She saw that he was back in his trousers.

"Getting ready to leave?" she asked, managing somehow to keep the pain out of her voice. "There's no need to sneak out. I won't be filing any lawsuits this time."

"I wasn't leaving. I was thinking." He tipped her chin up with one finger. "I've discovered that when I'm around you, I think better with my pants on."

From the beginning he'd had a way of making her feel like the sexiest woman alive. She allowed herself to relax a little.

"That's an interesting observation," she said.

"Tell me about the dreams."

She tried to see his expression more clearly, but in the shadowy room his face was all hard planes and angles.

"You're serious?" she asked. "You really want to hear about my weird dreams?"

He stroked his thumb along her bottom lip. His eyes were pools of fathomless darkness.

"Yes," he said. "Start with the one that just woke you up."

She swallowed uneasily. "That's the one that was different. Actually, it was more or less a repeat of the hallucination that hit me earlier tonight when those two men attacked us. It was as if my senses had been muffled. I couldn't see or hear anything. There was no up or down, just this endless thick fog."

He cupped her face in his hands. "That was me, Lyra. I did that to you."

"What?"

"You asked me about my talent earlier. Well, that's part of it. Makes it easier to hunt."

"I don't understand."

"Various kinds of psychic talents have run through the Sweetwater family for generations, most of them related to the senses that happen to be very useful when it comes to hunting."

"Good grief."

"Things have taken a few twists for us here on Harmony. We've discovered we can use various kinds of amber to enhance our natural talents. I happen to have an affinity for obsidian amber."

She glanced at his ring. Green fire danced in the depths of the obsidian.

"Black amber," she whispered. "Most tuners believe that it is only a legend."

"It's rare, but it exists. Others in my family work different varieties of amber, but obsidian is the one I resonate with the best. What I'm trying to tell you is that when those two men attacked us tonight, I used my talent to deaden their normal senses: vision, sound, smell, touch, balance. I knocked out everything. Unfortunately, you got caught in the net because you were so close."

"Okay, that's weird."

"There's no way I can direct the effect toward a specific target. The energy is generated by my aura, and it sweeps out in a field all around me for a radius of about fifteen feet."

"You're saying it wasn't one of my waking nightmares?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by a waking nightmare, but I can guarantee you that you weren't hallucinating tonight."

Relief crashed through her, leaving her a little jittery. She sank slowly back down onto the bed, hugging Vincent close.

"That's it?" she asked, incredulous. "That's your family's secret talent?"

"Well, it's my version of it. Like I said, the men in my family are all hunters of one kind or another, but no two talents are ever identical."

"But you still need amber to focus your psi, right?"

"No. Our talent has been in the family for generations. There were Sweetwater hunters on the Old World long before the Curtain opened. But here on Harmony, it turns out that certain forms of nonstandard amber can be used to enhance our natural abilities."

"You say you're hunters but not ghost hunters?" she asked.

"In the old days they called us para-hunters. We don't use the term anymore. We think of ourselves as amber talents. Sounds a little more modern, you know?"

She looked at him. "A little less scary, you mean? A tad more politically correct?"

"Yeah, that, too." He sat down beside her.

"Who called you para-hunters back on Earth?"

He shrugged. "It's the label that was used to describe people like me in the historical records of the Arcane Society."

"What in the world is the Arcane Society?"

"An organization that was founded by an alchemist several centuries ago, Old Earth time. Its members were all psychically talented people. The group was devoted to the study of the paranormal. The Society maintained a very low profile back on the home world."

"Why?"

"The paranormal was never really accepted as normal back on Earth."

She gripped the lapels of her robe with one hand. "In some ways, it still isn't. People get nervous around those who have strong or unusual kinds of talents."

He threaded his fingers through hers. "And that's why the Society still exists in the shadows."

"You're saying this Arcane Society exists here on Harmony?"

"A lot of registered members came through the Curtain, just like everyone else. When it became obvious that something in the environment here on Harmony was encouraging the development of latent psychic talents of all kinds, those in the Society thought things would be better here. But it turns out that being different is still not a good thing."

"The definition of what is normal may shift but not the pressure to fit the definition."

His smile held no trace of humor. "That's even truer when your brand of talent just happens to be really useful for pursuing and taking down a certain kind of prey."

"What kind would that be?" she asked warily.

"Human."

She swallowed hard. "I see. Had a feeling you were going to say that. I saw the way you handled those two men tonight."

"For generations on Earth, my family made a good living working for the Arcane Society and occasionally certain clandestine government agencies."

"Tracking criminals?"

"Not just any kind of criminals. On Earth, the Sweetwaters hunted down psychic sociopaths, the kind of bad guys regular law enforcement couldn't handle."

She cleared her throat. "So you were the good guys?"

"We like to think so. But not everyone saw it that way. The thing is, we did it for the money. A lot of money."

"I see."

"When someone called in a Sweetwater, it meant that all other alternatives had been exhausted. You didn't resort to hiring one of us unless you were convinced that the only option left was to terminate."

Her mouth went dry. "Your ancestors were assassins for hire?"

"I know. Talk about politically incorrect. We tried to be selective when it came to employers, but, yes, the Sweetwaters did the dirty work for those who couldn't or wouldn't get their own hands dirty." He paused. "We were good at it, too."

She cleared her throat. "Please tell me that your family is no longer in that profession."

There was a short pause.

"Mostly we're in amber today," he said finally.

"Excuse me, but your job title is CEO of Amber Inc. Security. You, personally, are not exactly in amber, Cruz."

"AI Security is a legitimate private security firm," he said flatly. "A division of Amber Inc. We are no longer Murder Inc. My grandfather saw to that fifty years ago. He changed everything for us. That's what it was all about, you see."

"What do you mean?"

"The Radiance Springs mine claim that he won in that poker game he played with Arthur Dore. Big Jake's new mining company was in a life-and-death struggle for survival against Erasmus Revere's RezStone. Big Jake needed the Radiance Springs mine in order to keep from going under."

"So he stole it from my grandfather."

"He won it in a card game."

"Yeah, right." She took a breath. "So you're telling me that up until that point your family was still in the old business?"

He exhaled deeply and with a lot of control. "I think we've talked about this enough tonight."

"Conversation closed?"

"For now."

"Somehow I get the feeling that you don't tell every woman you date about your family history."

"No." He tightened his grip on her hand. "You're the first one I've ever told."

"Boy, howdy, why does that make me nervous?"

"Relax. You're going to be family soon."