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Shehadn’thallucinated it, damn it.

She sat very straight in the seat. “All right.”

Gabriel didn’t wait for her to have second thoughts. He raised his voice slightly. “Change of plan, Joe. Take us to the Storm Zone district.”

Joe glanced into the rearview mirror. “You want to go there at night, Boss? I’ve heard it’s not a good place to visit after dark. They say the energy in that zone gets pretty intense.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a guide who knows her way around the zone.”

Chapter Eight

The ominous yellow light that was the hallmark of the Storm Zone during the day was now infused into the glary paranormal fog. The mist shrouded the Colonial-era buildings right up to the great Wall that had once protected the Dead City.

The paranormal radiation of the zone was stopped cold by the acid-green energy of the quartz that had been used to construct the Wall and protect the towers inside. Unlike the Storm Zone fog, the quartz light inside the ancient city was clear and powerful at night. The vast complex of the ruins outshone all of the casinos in Illusion Town.

A lot of erratic, unpredictable paranormal energy ebbed and flowed in the neighborhoods outside the eight walls that framed the ruins, but the territory on six sides was inhabitable. The Storm Zone and the Fire Zone were the exceptions.

Although the Storm Zone was accessible by day and had become a tourist attraction, it and the Fire Zone were considered off-limits afterdark. Only the most desperate criminals, crazy thrill-seekers, and a few idiots high on drugs dared to venture into the Dead City itself at night. Some were never seen again. Many of those who were rescued or managed to find their way out suffered varying degrees of psychic stress for days, weeks, months, or even years afterward.

The exceptions to the rules, as usual, were high-rez talents who could handle the violent paranormal energy. Even they were careful not to stay inside the walls for extended periods of time.

Joe brought the limo to a halt in the parking lot that served Storm Zone Adventure Tours.

“Is this close enough, Boss?” he asked.

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “We’ll walk from here.” He glanced at Lucy. “Ready to do this?”

“Yes, but it’s probably going to be a waste of time.”

“You never know. I’m good, especially after dark.”

A deep shiver of sensual awareness stirred her senses. She flashed on the searing kiss Gabriel had given her when he had carried her out of the chamber of hallucinations two months earlier. She thought about that kiss every night when she was alone in bed and sleepless because she knew there would be nightmares when she finally did fall asleep.

Did he ever think about that kiss? Probably not. He had told her at the time he had used it as a means of distracting her so that he could get her through the psychic barrier at the entrance. But was he subtly hinting at it now? Was he teasing her?

She was overthinking things. She opened her door and climbed out before Joe could extract himself from the front seat.

Excited by the promise of a new venture, Otis tumbled out of the car after her, waving his sequined dust bunny. His second set of eyes popped open. It was night; the energy in the area was hot. He was ready to hunt.

Gabriel opened his own door and got out. He walked around the big vehicle to join her. “Show me where you entered the ruins.”

“I used the first opening I could find. It’s not far from here.”

“Let’s go.”

She sensed energy shifting in the atmosphere and knew that, like her, he had heightened all of his senses. It brought back more annoying memories of the night they had hiked out of the tunnels. For the past two months, Gabriel had come and gone from her dreams in unpredictable ways. On two memorable occasions, she had awakened from nightmares, certain that he was in grave danger. On other nights, he hovered at the edge of her sleeping senses, whispering to her from the shadows. She wondered if she ever showed up in his dreams.

She led the way along a strip of the cracked pavement that wound through the abandoned Colonial-era buildings.

“Any idea why the founders of Illusion Town tried to establish a community in this zone?” Gabriel said. “It must have been obvious from the start that the energy storms were going to be a major hazard.”

“Initially, the appeal of the Storm Zone was that water was more readily available here,” Lucy explained. “That mattered because Illusion Town is in the middle of a desert.”

Gabriel smiled. “I noticed.”

“The First Generation colonists thought they could handle the energy in this zone with the high-tech construction materials and the technology they imported from Earth. That worked until the Curtain closed, stranding the colonists.”

“At which point all the Earth-based tech started to fail.”