The Hot Zone (A Harmony Novel, Band 12) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jayne Castle is a pseudonym for Jayne Ann Krentz, the author of more than fifty New York Times bestsellers. She writes futuristic romance novels under the Castle name, contemporary romantic suspense novels under the Krentz name, and historical romance novels under the pseudonym Amanda Quick. There are more than 35 million copies of her books in print.

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Chapter 1

The dust bunny was back.

Sedona heard the soft, muffled chortle and rushed to the barred door of the small, windowless chamber. The lab was deserted for the night but there was ample illumination. The Aliens had vanished a few thousand years ago but they had built their maze of underworld catacombs to last. And they had left the lights on. The quartz walls of the small cell and the chamber that housed Dr. Blankenship’s research equipment glowed with an acid-green radiance.

Because of the constant light it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night up on the surface, but she was pretty sure it was night because Blankenship’s two seriously bulked-up assistants had left a while ago, talking about dinner. The pair had names but she had privately decided to call the one with the short, razor-cut hair Buzzkill. The other man had completely shaved his head. She had nicknamed him Hulk.

They wore a lot of khaki and leather, but even without the clothing cues she would have known that they were ghost hunters. She had worked with Guild men often enough to recognize them when she saw them. One big clue was that they were obsessive about their amber. They wore amber in every conceivable way—in their belt buckles, in their earring studs, in the hilts of their knives. She knew they probably carried more amber as backup in their boots. No self-respecting Guild man ever went down into the catacombs without plenty of amber, and all of it was tuned. Good amber set to the correct frequencies was the only way to navigate in the heavy currents of senses-distorting psi that flooded the Alien tunnels. Lose your amber and you were lost forever.

She heard another muffled chortle. This time it came from beneath one of the lab workbenches. There was a flash of motion near the floor. The dust bunny scurried out from under the bench and fluttered across the room to the door of the cell. He looked like a large ball of fuzzy dryer lint studded with a pair of baby blue eyes. There were six paws and a couple of ears but they were nearly invisible in the fluff of his fur.

At some point she had decided to call him Lyle. She wasn’t sure why. The name just seemed to fit, and giving the dust bunny a name served to make him seem more real. She needed all the solid, tangible links to reality that she could get. Last night when Lyle had first appeared she had still been fighting her way up through the thick layers of the drugs that Blankenship used to keep her heavily sedated in a waking dreamstate. She had no idea how long she had been held prisoner. Her days and nights were filled with nightmares and disturbing visions.

At first she had assumed that the dust bunny was just one more hallucination, albeit a comforting one. She had wondered if it was a sign that Blankenship’s experiments had finally pushed her over the precarious border between sanity and chaos.

Lyle had appeared thrilled with the energy bar that she had given him from the stash in the cell. He had squeezed easily through the bars in the door and hopped up onto the cot. He had chattered at her with increasing urgency until she finally realized that he was trying to get her to leave.

“I can’t go anywhere,” she had explained. “The door’s locked.”

She had sat beside him for a long time, taking comfort from him. He had departed shortly before Buzzkill and Hulk returned. There had followed another horrible day of Blankenship’s experiments. It had taken every ounce of willpower she had to fake the waking dreamstate. What she really wanted to do was scream her rage and claw Blankenship’s eyes out of his head.

That night she had despaired of ever seeing Lyle again. But he was here. Her spirits soared.

“Hi,” she whispered. She crouched and reached through the bars to pat Lyle. “Good to see you again, buddy.”

Lyle rumbled. He had a small, shiny metallic object about an inch and a half long clutched in one paw. He fluttered through the bars, bounced up onto the cot, and waved the bright thing at her.

“A gift in exchange for the energy bar?” she said. “Thank you.”

When she took the present she saw that it was a small emergency firestarter. They were known as flickers and they were standard-issue emergency equipment for Guild men. Fire was one of the few useful sources of energy that worked in heavy psi environments because it could be made to burn across the spectrum from the normal into the paranormal. Sophisticated, high-tech gear like guns or computers either failed to function at all or else exploded in your hands.

She considered the little flicker. A plan quickly formed in her head. It wasn’t much of a plan but when you were desperate, any sort of plan held a certain appeal. At most the flicker would generate only a spark of a flame. Still, that might be enough for her purposes.

“Hmm.”

Lyle muttered impatiently and bounced some more.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “Time to get out of here. I don’t think I can get through another day pretending to be in a dreamstate.”

When she had finally begun to drag herself out of the oppressive nightmare landscape she had intuitively known that she had to conceal her recovery. If Dr. Blankenship realized that she had awakened, he would very likely double the dose of whatever hallucinogen he was using on her.

She considered her options. She had comprehended two facts yesterday during the course of the experiments. First, for whatever reason, Blankenship and his men were extremely wary around her. They evidently considered her dangerous. That was a good thing, she told herself, probably the only thing that had kept Buzzkill and Hulk from molesting her while she was in the dreamstate. But she dared not give them any reason to use physical restraints as well as medication to keep her under control.

The second discovery she had made was that the experiments Blankenship was conducting had something to do with her talent. She had no idea what had been done to her but she was sure she still had her ability to open and close the paranormal gates of the Underworld. Unfortunately her ability to work the energy gates was of no obvious use when it came to escaping the lab.

Lyle growled, impatient with her failure to get with the program.

“I would like to come with you,” she whispered. “But I can’t fit through the bars of this cell.”

She had been contemplating that problem since she had awakened. The first obstacle was the lock on the cell door. It was an old-fashioned padlock. A key was required to open it.

Buzzkill and Hulk had keys.

Even if she succeeded in escaping the cell and getting past the two bulked-up assistants, she would still face the challenge of getting out of the tunnels. Without tuned amber she would never find her way back to the surface.

There was plenty of amber embedded in the lab apparatus but it was all tuned to operate the simple instruments that were designed to function in the heavy psi atmosphere—not for navigation.

Lyle rumbled softly again. She could feel his small frame vibrating with a sense of urgency.

“We need a distraction,” she said. “I’ve got a sort of plan but it’s one of those ideas that had better work the first time because I’ll only get one shot at it.”

If she failed, Blankenship would overwhelm her with his ghastly dreamstate drugs.

“Here goes nothing, Lyle.”

He blinked and sleeked out, his tatty fur plastering against his little body. He opened his second set of eyes, the ones he used for hunting. They burned molten amber. He vaulted up onto her shoulder.

“Right,” she said....