Guild Boss (Ghost Hunters #14)(39)

The otherworldly gale dissipated almost immediately.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Things got a little out of control.”

“I’ll say.” Gabriel studied her. “I’ve never known a weather channeler who could pull a storm like that. There was lightning. The real deal.”

“Yeah, well, there aren’t many of us who can do the lightning thing. Those of us who have the ability usually keep quiet about it. It’s not good for business. Clients get nervous if they think you can turn that kind of energy against them.” She cleared her throat. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“My nerves will survive.” He looked surprisingly satisfied, as if she had just confirmed something he had suspected all along. “You’re not just a strong talent, you’re an off-the-charts talent. No wonder finding out that I’m a dual talent didn’t worry you.”

He turned and walked toward the men sprawled on the ground. She watched him pat them down, removing flamers, knives, and other assorted gear. Otis joined him, watching the process with deep interest.

Ponytail and Sweat-Stink did not move. From where Lucy stood they did not appear to be breathing. A tide of dread descended on her, sluicing away the last of the euphoria.

She cleared her throat. “Are they—?”

“Alive?” Gabriel removed an energy bar from Ponytail’s cargo pocket and gave it to Otis. “Yes. Amazing, really, considering they were struck by paranormal lightning.”

Otis got very excited—his usual response to anything he considered a treat. He ripped open the wrapping of the energy bar. Gabriel continued with the pat-down.

Lucy took a deep breath. Okay, the good news was that she hadn’t actually killed anyone. Ponytail and Sweat-Stink were not nice guys, but she did not want to have the weight of their deaths on her conscience for the rest of her life. Punishing them was the job of the judicial system.

The bad news was that Gabriel now knew what she could do, given an intense paranormal environment. Most clients would be alarmed by the wild side of her talent. Anyone who wanted to employ a weather channeler because of her ability to generate a potentially lethal storm was probably not someone she wanted to work for. Generally speaking, there were no legal uses for killer storms.

“Sometimes I get a little carried away,” she ventured.

“I noticed.” Gabriel stood, removed his camera, and started taking photos. “I’d really like to talk to these two, but obviously they are not in a chatty frame of mind at the moment, and we don’t have time to hang around down here. One of them must have a portal key. As soon as I find it, I’ll cuff them and haul them into one of these chambers. With a little luck, they’ll still be here when the Coppersmith security team comes down to collect Croston’s body.”

Lucy became aware of a warm sensation between her breasts. She had felt it earlier, but she had been so busy channeling storm energy that she hadn’t paid any attention. The entire Underworld had seemed hot for a few minutes.

Alarmed, she hauled the chain out from under her shirt and stared at the amber pendant.

“Gabriel, look.”

She held up the pendant. The amber was no longer gray. It was glowing a deep, eerie blue.

“That’s the color it was when the fake doctor gave me the injection in the para-psych clinic,” she said. “It lit up when the other demon—I mean, creepy bad guy—came into the room. It’s the color of the pendants that the kidnappers wore. Maybe using my talent activated it. Or the energy in the doll’s eyes?”

“But you just now noticed it?”

“Yes. No. I think it started getting warm a few minutes ago, but I was distracted by those two guys with the flamers. And then there was that storm and the lightning and, well, I wasn’t paying close attention, if you see what I mean.”

“So you didn’t notice it until this pair showed up?”

“Right.”

Gabriel tugged the leather jacket off Sweat-Stink, exposing a stained khaki shirt that had seen better days. He opened the front of the shirt.

A portal key dangled from a chain around Sweat-Stink’s throat. So did something else: a crystal that glowed blue. Without a word, Gabriel moved to Ponytail and opened the man’s shirt. Lucy saw another pendant. It, too, radiated a blue light.

Gabriel snapped the chain that held Ponytail’s pendant. Gripping the stone in one hand, he walked several feet away from the unconscious men. The blue glow of the amber faded rapidly. He turned around and walked toward Lucy. The pendant brightened. So did the one that Lucy wore around her neck.

“The ambers are tuned to respond to each other,” Gabriel said. “Signal stones. Must be a form of identification for a gang.”

“Like a tattoo or a secret password.”

“Right.”

“Those three men who tried to grab you last night weren’t wearing blue crystals,” Lucy pointed out. “Neither was Croston.”

“No, which is interesting.”

“They took a big risk ambushing us down here.”

“No,” Gabriel said. “It’s the perfect spot for an ambush. Lethal accidents happen in the Ghost City. Searchers would have found my body, and it would have looked like I died of natural causes. I think you would have vanished.”

“It’s me they wanted, isn’t it? You were in the way, so they tried to take you out.”