Page 77 of It takes a Psychic

He swung around, intending to dive for the door, but it was too late.

The explosion made no audible sound but the radiation enveloped him in a shower of senses-dazzling, silently screaming nightmares.

One crystal-clear thought hit him before he began to lose consciousness. He had the answer to the question he had been asking since he had picked up the fake Bluestone document at the Thacker mansion. He now knew why he had been lured to Lost Creek.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The certainty that Oliver wasin terrible danger came out of nowhere, icing her senses between one step and the next. For an eternity that must have lasted only a couple of seconds, she could not move. Could not breathe.

Roxy growled. Leona looked down and saw that the dust bunny was sleeked out. All four eyes and some teeth were showing. Nimbly, she vaulted to the floor and raced to the door, fascinator ribbons flying.

Leona tore herself out of the panicky paralysis and lurched toward the door. Oliver was in trouble. She had never been more sure of anything in her life.

She yanked open the door and flew out into the hall, Roxy at her feet. Together they raced to the door of room 204.

It was locked.

She steeled her nerves, concentrated, and caught the vibe of the lock. It was simple enough—it was just an old amber-rez room key in an oldinn. No problem. She tweaked the vibe of her own key, essentially turning it into a passkey, and opened the door.

A storm of disorienting energy struck her senses. Vision, hearing, touch, balance—they all began to shut down in response to the sensory overload. Somewhere in the distance she heard Roxy rumble in a way that made it clear she was also affected by the silent, screaming gale. She scrambled up to Leona’s shoulder and hunkered down. Two auras were stronger than one.

A single, coherent thought surfaced above the chaos. Leona grabbed on to it and held tight. This was Alien energy and it was coming from somewhere nearby. She focused through the yellow crystal pendant around her neck, seeking the source of the psi storm.

She found it almost immediately. At first glance, there was nothing extraordinary or alarming about the small crystal bowl on the bed. But she had handled objects like it while being held hostage by the pirates. It was from the newly discovered Glass House sector, and everything in those Underworld ruins was potentially dangerous.

She concentrated, found a path through the whirlwind, and worked her way to the source of the currents. When she was as certain as she could be that she had found what she was looking for, she sent back a neutralizing pulse with the goal of flatlining the energy of the bowl.

And then she held her breath because she was dealing with Alien energy, and the one truism about working with artifacts was that they were unpredictable. No one knew for sure what the ancients had intended when they tuned their objects. The crystal bowl on the bed could have been a medical device or a lethal weapon.

Roxy’s paws tightened on her shoulder.

The bowl shut down just like any other engine that had been de-rezzed. Leona allowed herself to breathe again.

Oliver was on the floor at the foot of the bed. Motionless. His glasses had fallen beside him. His hands were clenched and his eyes were shuttight. His muscles were locked as though he were in mortal combat with unseen forces.

She rushed forward and crouched beside him. Roxy, apparently satisfied that the situation was under some semblance of control, hopped down to the floor and fluffed out. But all four eyes were still open.

“Oliver.” Leona put a hand on his shoulder. It was like touching a tightly coiled spring.

His eyes opened halfway. He stared at her as if trying to bring her into focus. “Run. Find Starkey. He’ll help you.”

“I’m not running anywhere,” she said. “Not without you.”

“Go. Now.”

She wanted to ask questions, a lot of them, starting withWhat the hell just happened to you?But this was not the time. The good news was that his pulse was strong and there was no sign of blood or physical injury that she could see. She had shut down the psychic weapon but damage had been done. Oliver was still battling invisible demons. He needed backup.

She tightened her grip on his shoulder and cautiously rezzed her talent. There were serious risks in deliberately attempting to interfere with another person’s aura, especially if the target’s energy field was as powerful as Oliver’s. That went double when the target was in psychic combat mode.Talk about unpredictable,she thought.

Roxy muttered and pressed against her leg, offering the support of her sturdy little aura.

“Thanks,” Leona whispered.

She opened her senses…

…and nearly drowned in a tsunami of chaos.

Her throat closed. Her chest tightened. The shadowed room began to dissolve into a foggy dreamscape. It was a wonder that Oliver was not in a coma or dead. On some deep level he was sane, and he was in a mortal battle to stay that way.

---