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“So far. Down here you don't make too many assumptions.” He kicked the bedroll open and stretched out, yawning. “I'll wake up in about three, maybe four hours.”

She was as safe as he could make her for now. He sprawled on the bedroll, turned on his side, and let the weight of sleep take him.

 

 

THE HUMIDITY WAS INCREASING EVEN AS THE LUMINOUS green sky darkened with ominous peridot clouds. The long-sleeved turtleneck Fontana had pulled out of the closet and told her to put on before they escaped the mansion had proved to be an exceptionally bad fashion choice. She was so hot in it that she began to worry that she might suffer from heatstroke. To be fair, Fontana had never intended to take her into a jungle tonight.

She opened one of the supply kits. There was a variety of neatly packed items inside, including some energy bars and what looked like one of Fontana's shirts. The shirt was typical Guild boss black with amber buttons. There were also several chunks of amber in the bag. All of it tuned, no doubt.

She started to remove the suffocating turtleneck and then paused self-consciously to make sure Fontana wasn't awake. But he was sound asleep on the bedroll, his back to her.

Hurriedly she removed the garment and tossed it aside. After a moment's thought, she took off her perspiration-dampened bra as well. Constricting undergarments were not comfortable in the jungle.

The shirt was much too big. It hung to her knees and kept sliding off her shoulder, but when she rolled up the sleeves, she was pleased with the result.

“Much cooler,” she said to Elvis. “Here, let me take off your cape. It can't be very comfortable in this heat.”

He didn't pay any attention when she slipped the rhinestone cape off over his head. He was too busy checking out the contents of the supply kit.

She folded the little cape and tucked it into her purse.

“Hungry?” she asked.

He rumbled.

She removed one of the energy bars, unwrapped it, and handed it to Elvis. “It's no peanut butter and banana sandwich, but it's all we've got.”

He took it eagerly and crunched the bar with evident enjoyment.

She unwrapped a second bar and tried it warily. It wasn't bad.

“Not very tasty, but definitely edible,” she declared.

She surveyed her surroundings while they ate. The first thing she noticed was that, unlike the tunnels, the rain forest was a noisy place. Birdcalls echoed endlessly through the leafy canopy. There were occasional flutterings and skittering sounds in the undergrowth. Each time she heard something, she glanced at Elvis to see if he looked alarmed. He remained fully fluffed.

She looked at the stream Fontana had indicated earlier. It emanated from a small, plant-choked grotto. Water bubbled out of a rocky green pool and flowed away, disappearing into the undergrowth.

“Wonder what this place looks like at night,” she said to Elvis. “Sure hope we don't have to find out.”

On the positive side, the oppressive sense of claustrophobia was gone. The tunnel walls were no longer closing in on her. There was one thing to be said about the jungle: it was big; so big that if she hadn't known she was underground, she could easily have believed that she was in a real tropical rain forest. Except for the green-tinted artificial sunlight, of course. That was just plain alien-weird.

No one knew how far the jungle extended. Exploration had barely begun, but the most popular theory at the moment was that the eerie, underworld rain forest linked all four of the dead cities that had thus far been discovered and the ruins of the smaller outposts as well. Unable to live in the aboveground environment, the aliens had been forced to construct an underground ecosystem that could sustain them.

They had done an impressive job. Their bioengineering work had survived and was still flourishing long after the builders themselves had vanished.

A sharp, shrill shriek somewhere nearby startled her so badly she dropped what was left of her energy bar. She looked at Elvis, who showed no indication of going on alert status. Instead, he scampered across the clear stone floor, picked up the uneaten portion of her energy bar, and finished it off.

“Guess the five-second rule applies here as well as anywhere else.”

She folded the wrappers from the two energy bars very neatly and stashed them in the supply kit.

There was no sound from Fontana. After a while, she got a little worried. She rose and leaned over his still form to check on him. He was sleeping deeply, but his breathing sounded normal, slow and even.

She absolutely had to stretch her legs. Cautiously she stepped off the strange floor and onto the ground.

Elvis chattered excitedly, sensing a new game.

“You're my early warning system,” she reminded him. “I'm counting on you to let me know if there's trouble in the vicinity.”

He fluttered off the circular floor and bounced up onto an emerald green rock near the stream. He began to investigate a vine full of green orchids that hung from a tree limb.

She wandered over to a nearby palm and availed herself of the privacy offered by the broad, fluted fronds. Fontana might be out like a light, but it was the principle of the thing. She hardly knew the man. Sure, they were married and he had just saved her life and the sexual chemistry between them worked both ways and she was definitely falling headfirst into love. Still, you just didn't pee in front of a man you had only known a couple of days.

When she was finished, she washed her hands in the little stream and went to join Elvis on his rock. She leaned forward and plucked one of the emerald orchids.

“It's gorgeous,” she said.

In fact, now that she'd had a chance to grow accustomed to the sights and sounds, she was beginning to relax and take in the sheer, otherworldly beauty of the rain forest.

“It's not so bad,” she said to Elvis. “Magical, in fact.”

He clutched the dangling vine in all six paws and pushed himself off the edge of the rock. The makeshift swing carried him out over the grotto pool in a graceful arc. When the return arc brought him back within reach, Sierra caught him, much to his delight.

Laughing, she launched him into another swing. He chortled gleefully.

“When we get out of here, I'll ask Jake to build you your very own swing,” she said. Then she stopped. Jake was gone, possibly dead. Why was she suddenly thinking about him?

In fact, now that his name had popped into her mind, she could not
stop
thinking about him. A little rush of intense awareness shot through her. She knew this edgy sensation well. It was her intuition kicking in, warning her to pay attention. There was something Jake had said . . .

And then the storm broke. Green lightning flashed. The rain hit. She grabbed Elvis and hurried back into the crystal gazebo.

FONTANA CAME AWAKE TO THE FAMILIAR LOW ROAR OF A jungle downpour. He sat up abruptly and shoved his fingers through his hair. He contemplated the rain with grim resignation.

The warm deluge was coming down the way it always did in the jungle, in a relentless torrent. The atmosphere bordered on steamy. He couldn't see more than a couple of feet beyond the edge of the gazebo.

“Figures,” he said. “Given my luck lately.”

“You're awake.” Sierra came toward him, holding out an energy bar. “How do you feel? Are you hungry?”

She had put on his shirt. It looked good on her. Not that she wouldn't look good in anything or, preferably, nothing at all, but the fact that it was
his
shirt that she was wearing gave him a sense of satisfaction. His woman in his shirt. And he was stuck here with her in the crystal ruin while the rain forest did its thing. Maybe his luck wasn't so bad after all.

“Starved,” he said. He took the energy bar, ripped off the wrapper, and ate almost half of it in one bite. “I'm always hungry after a heavy burn,” he explained around the mouthful.

Elvis chortled a greeting and scampered over to say hello. Fontana patted him in the vicinity of what should have been the top of his head. “How's it going, King?”

Elvis bounced a little.

Fontana popped the last of the energy bar into his mouth, got to his feet, and stretched.

“How long has it been raining?” he asked.

“An hour, maybe longer,” Sierra said.

“Well, one thing's for sure. We're going to be here for a while. You can't move in the jungle in these conditions. The really bad news is that by the time the rain lets up, it will probably be night. We sure as hell aren't going to try traveling after dark.”

“But it was nearly three AM when we left your house. It's late morning now.”

“Not down here, it isn't. This place is on a different, artificial schedule. I'll be right back,” he added, stepping off the platform into the rain.

“Wait, where are you going?” she asked anxiously.

“Where do you think I'm going? I need to take a leak.”

She turned pink. “But you'll get soaked. You're already soaked.”

“I'll dry off fast once I'm back in the gazebo.”

He didn't have to go far to find the privacy he thought he probably needed, not for his sake, but for hers. You just didn't take a leak in front of a woman you had only known a couple of days, especially a classy lady like Sierra.

When he returned a moment later, she was sitting cross-legged on the second bedroll, a can of Curtain Cola in her hands. She had poured some of the cola into a cup for Elvis.

“Want some?” she asked. She held up a second can. “It's the only caffeine I could find.”

“Underground you can't keep a fire going long enough to heat water for coffee,” he explained. “Another side effect of the heavy psi.”

He stepped up onto the platform and took the can of cola she offered. By the time he was halfway through with it, his clothes were almost dry.

“Wow.” Sierra watched the process with amazement. “I don't believe it. A minute ago you were drenched to the skin. Now your shirt isn't even damp.”

“Another weird effect of the quartz,” he explained.

He sat beside her. Together they watched the rain come down in sheets. An unfamiliar sensation settled softly on him. He had to search for the word, but when he found it, he knew instantly that it was the right one:
contentment
. He could not recall ever having felt content before in his entire life. It was a strange but surprisingly pleasant feeling. Wholly unwarranted, too, he reminded himself. He still had a drug ring to take down, a bunch of guys in motorcycle leathers had tried to roast them alive in his own house tonight, and there were at least two seriously dangerous alien devices floating around that could generate controlled beams of ultraviolet dissonance energy.

Still, sitting here with Sierra, watching the rain, he felt a soul-satisfying sense of contentment. He could stay here with her forever, he thought.

“How did you find this place?” Sierra asked.

“After I bought the house, I started spending as much of my spare time as possible down in the catacombs. The former owner was obsessed with charting the sector near his personal hole-in-the-wall. He left maps in his journal. He was a tangler, so he had already cleared the illusion traps. That meant I didn't have to bring one in to do the job.”

She nodded. “I have a friend who is a tangler. She's a para-archaeologist. She loves going down into the tunnels.”

Tangler
was the common term for an ephemeral-energy para-resonator, a person who possessed the psychic ability to resonate and control ephemeral energy.

Ephemeral energy was another form of alien psi. It was found in the catacombs in the form of illusion traps. For reasons known only to themselves, the aliens had set dangerous psychic snares throughout the tunnels. The shadow traps were frequently found in doorways and the entrances to chambers.

“The experts think the traps were intended as security devices,” Fontana said. “If you don't have a natural talent for sensing them the way a tangler can, they're damn hard to spot. The only visible evidence is a faint shadow.”

“That's all?”

“It's usually enough, if you know what you're doing. The ambient psi light in the tunnels creates no natural shadows.”

“So if you see one, beware?”

He nodded and drank more cola. “The problem is that shadows in the catacombs are easily missed, because we're all so accustomed to seeing them aboveground. People tend not to notice them in the underworld environment.”

She looked out at the driving rain. “Are there any illusion traps in the jungle?”

“None have been found so far. Good thing, too, given that it would be impossible to spot them visually. The jungle is full of shadows.”

“You said you found the rain forest gate a few weeks ago. When did you discover this ruin?”

“I stumbled across it a few days later while exploring,” he said.

She gave him one of her deep, knowing looks. “This place is very special to you, isn't it? That's why you haven't told anyone, not even Ray, about it.”

“I don't want to give it up to the para-archaeologists,” he admitted.

“It's a place of retreat for you.”

He thought about that. “In a way, yes.”

“I think that's what it was for the aliens, too.”

Something in her tone made him look at her. “Is that guesswork or your intuition?”

“Intuition.”

“I thought that only worked with people.”

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “Sometimes it also works in spaces in which people have invested a lot of emotion.”