Guild Boss (Ghost Hunters #14)(5)

The hallucinations flickered. An instant later they were vaporized. Gone.

Gabriel raised his head. She came out of the trance and discovered that she was outside the chamber looking back at the quartz throne and the fountain.

Gabriel had carried her through the doorway on a rush of heat that was stronger than the psychic barrier.

He set her on her feet and watched as if waiting to see if she was going to lose it altogether. As far as she could tell, he was completely unaffected by the kiss. He had delivered it as a form of shock therapy. Nothing personal. Just doing his job.

She took a couple of deep breaths, found her balance, and managed to dredge up some attitude.

“Thanks,” she said. “Obviously I needed that.”

“Sometimes distraction works in these situations.”

“Right. Distraction.” She frowned at the doorway. “Do you think I could have escaped if I’d been strong enough to force myself to crash through the barrier?”

Am I that weak now? she wondered. It was an unnerving thought.

Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t think you could have made it through as long as you were drinking that water. There’s a good chance you would have ended up unconscious in the doorway. If that happened, the forces that were being generated would have hit you every time you started to awaken. Eventually you might have gone insane or died.”

She shuddered. “Which was probably why my intuition warned me not to try that tactic. I wonder what the chamber was designed for?”

“Who knows? That thronelike chair and the water are unusual features. I’ve never seen an underworld chamber like it. Maybe it was a place for royalty or religious ceremonies. It could have been designed to enhance dreaming or meditation. There’s just no way to know.”

“One more Underworld mystery.”

“Ready to go home?” Gabriel asked.

“Oh, yes, please.”

They followed Otis down a corridor that appeared slightly warped to the human eye.

“I’m impressed that you trusted a dust bunny to lead you through these tunnels,” Lucy said.

“A dust bunny wearing your necklace and carrying a box of pizza.” Gabriel smiled. “I figured the worst-case scenario was that I would have pizza for dinner.”





CHAPTER TWO





An hour later they climbed a glowing spiral staircase to the surface and moved out into the ruins of the Dead City. Lucy was so relieved to see the night sky studded with stars that it was all she could do not to sob in relief. Once again she summoned some attitude. She was exhausted and still seeing fragments of the drug-induced hallucinations, but her head was clearing.

She paused to slip on her stilettos. Unlike the maze of tunnels belowground, the aboveground ruins of the Dead City were littered with green quartz rubble.

Evidently satisfied that she and Gabriel could make it out of the Dead City on their own, Otis scampered off to investigate the ragged chunks of the ruins inside the Great Wall. He was soon lost to view in the green shadows.

Lucy watched him go, aware of a sense of loss.

“I’m going to miss him,” she said wistfully. “Now that I’m safe he’ll probably disappear.”

“Not if he’s bonded to you,” Gabriel said. “Sometimes dust bunnies form strong connections with humans. One of my cousins, Marlowe Jones, has a dust bunny pal named Gibson. There’s definitely some sort of psychic link between them.”

“One thing I’ve learned is that dust bunnies love hide-and-seek games. Finding me may have been nothing more than a game to Otis.”

“We’ll see.”

The stilettos proved hazardous in her still-unsteady mental state. When she tripped over a quartz pillar that had fallen centuries earlier, Gabriel caught her and scooped her up in his arms again.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

He carried her out of the Dead City and into the ominous yellow fog that blanketed the abandoned buildings of the Colonial-era town. It wasn’t far to the invisible border of the Storm Zone. The paranormal mist thinned out quickly and dissipated altogether when they reached the edge.

Gabriel walked through the last of the fog—and straight into a blaze of blinding camera lights. A hoard of journalists and a crowd of onlookers were waiting just outside the Zone.

Lucy groaned. “This is so embarrassing.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gabriel said. He strode through the crowd with Lucy in his arms. “It’ll blow over within twenty-four hours. A one-day story.”

“You can put me down now.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Gabriel set her down carefully on her stilettos.

“Lucy, Lucy, are you okay?”

Lucy looked at the young man running toward her. He was dressed in a leather jacket, jeans, and sneakers. He had a rez-bike helmet under one arm.

“Hey, Runner,” she said. “I’m okay.”

“Me and my crew looked everywhere for you in the Dark Zone. Thought you might have gotten disoriented on the way home.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I ended up in the tunnels. Mr. Jones found me, as you can see.”

Runner switched his attention to Gabriel. “Name’s Runner, Mr. Jones. I operate a delivery service over in the Dark Zone. Lucy’s from the neighborhood. She’s a regular customer. Thanks for saving her.”