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  I swallowed against the sour taste of bile at the back of my throat. No, they couldn’t —

  Hypodermic held up against the dim overhead lights, Raymond commented, “The spray delivery system works very well, but this method is a bit more convenient, as well as being less wasteful of precious supplies. You see, while it would be easy enough to make you disappear, people would ask questions. And since you were foolish enough to contact Tyler Russo, who might begin to put two and two together, it seemed expedient to simply make sure you would no longer be in a position to ask questions, or disrupt our activities.” He smiled then, a horrific shark-grimace. “Very soon, you’ll be doing everything in your power to help us.”

  More muffled sounds from Paul as he struggled against the hybrids. Somehow I seemed to have lost all strength in my own muscles. I could only stand there, staring at that hypodermic, knowing inside it was a poison that would destroy everything I was, everything I had ever cared about. The hybrid guard’s hand tightened further around my arm. Behind me, the agent stood, unmoving. I couldn’t see his face, of course. Not that it would have done me any good. He had thrown in his lot with the aliens. Any appeals to his humanity would have only been wasted effort.

  Raymond stepped closer, so close that I could practically feel the heat of his breath against my cheek, smell whatever aftershave still clung to the clothing the alien-infected body wore. “We look forward to having you join us,” he said. And he lifted the hypodermic and drove the point of it into the side of my neck.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Heat radiated outward from that stinging spot on my neck, a cascading wave of pain, as if every cell in my body seemed to be cresting some agonizing tide. I heard myself cry out, but it was if that sound had come from an entirely different body, as if I were listening to someone standing far across the room.

  Slumping, I dropped to my knees. The hybrid and the agent both stepped away from me. All I could do was bend over, body folded over itself as the pain continued to radiate through every nerve. With it came darkness, a rushing black I knew would soon swallow my awareness.

  Fight it! I heard someone call out to me. It could have been Otto’s voice.

  It could have been mine.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. The Raymond/alien, the hybrids, even Paul — I couldn’t think of anything at that moment, but only of those microscopic carriers of soul death coursing through my veins.

  You were the one chosen for this moment.

  I had to believe that. Had to believe somewhere within me lay the power to fight this thing.

  Heat then, but not the searing pain of the nano-invaders. No, this surged out from somewhere deep within my core, soothing and yet inexorable as the early-summer sun, warming my body. With the warmth came light, pure white, flowing through my veins, overriding the sickly yellow glow of the alien virus. The light washed over me, surrounded me in a shell of pulsing luminosity.

  I opened my eyes then, but I did not see the dim conference room, or the shapes of the men who encircled me. Instead there was only the white light, but now I perceived that whiteness had millions of pale ghost colors flickering in it, opalescent and more beautiful than anything I had ever seen before. And in the center of that light stood a man.

  Only I knew he wasn’t a man. No man could have features that perfect, that unearthly calm. I had never seen him before, and yet, paradoxically, there was something familiar about him, about the dark eyes that met mine frankly.

  When he spoke, his voice was instantly recognizable. “Welcome, Persephone.”

  “Otto?” Somehow I had a difficult time reconciling that baritone with the figure of perfection from which it emerged, but I would have known those rounded tones anywhere. “More possession?”

  He smiled. “Not at all. What you see now is my true form.”

  “So you — you’re not the spirit of a dead sixteenth-century eunuch?”

  “My apologies for the deception. It was decided that it would be best if I came to you in such a guise.”

  “Decided?” I paused, mind racing. Some psychic I was…I’d never even seen through the false face Otto had assumed. Then again, it wasn’t as if I could have asked him for his driver’s license. I forced myself to put that aside for the moment. So many questions, and yet in the back of all of them was the most basic, and so the one I decided I should ask first. “Am I still…me?”

  “Of course you are, or you wouldn’t be able to even ask that question.” With a wave of his hand, a section of the luminous shell around us seemed to part, and it was as if I floated above the conference room and gazed down on its occupants. But they were frozen in some sort of tableau, the Raymond/alien staring down at my doubled-over figure with a gloating expression on his face, Paul still straining against the grasp of the guards who held him.

  “Time is not constant, of course. Rather, it can be perceived differently, depending on where you are. But here, now, with me, you are still you. Your spirit is free.”

  “But down there…?” I trailed off, not sure I cared for this new perspective on the world. While some psychics counted astral project as among their repertoire, it wasn’t anything I had ever experienced before. Dreams and visions, yes. Watching my own body as if it belonged to someone else…not so much.

  “Down there — although you realize that ‘down’ is not exactly the precise word — your body is milliseconds away from succumbing to the alien virus. The question is, do you want to fight it?”

  “Do I want to — ” I broke off and stared at this new and improved Otto, incredulous that he would even ask such a question. “Of course I want to fight it — I have more now to live for than ever!”

  “Ah, yes.” He appeared to consider the little group in the conference room. “This Paul Oliver. We had hoped this would come to pass, but even we can’t always predict the future.”

  “No kidding,” I remarked, “or my last few sessions would have gone a lot more smoothly.”

  The Otto I had known before, the pudgy-faced eunuch who floated in my living room and dispensed pithy comments about my personal life, might have taken offense. This new serene Otto, however, appeared not to notice my acerbic tone. “I realize a great deal has happened at once. My question to you is this, however — are you willing to fight, not merely here and now, but on into the future, in order to prevent this darkness from taking over your world?”

  “Yes,” I said without thinking, as if the word had come from somewhere deep within me. It was something true and unhesitating, like my feelings for Paul. All the platitudes I’d mouthed to my clients over the years about knowing when something was right seemed suddenly confirmed. I hesitated for a few seconds, then decided I might as well ask. “But — couldn’t you fight? You, and others like you?”

  “We have, as much as we can,” Otto replied. His gaze seemed shuttered for a moment, and he went on, “This is not our world, Persephone, and we try to avoid interfering when we can. But when the balance is upset — when other powers in the universe attempt to manipulate things to their own ends — then we will step in. Just a little, and only when no other methods will work. We saw in you a fulcrum, a tipping point. There is a power in you that can change all things.”

  Oh, great, more of that “chosen one” crap. I shook my head. “Otto, I’m just a mediocre psychic. I wouldn’t exactly call me a game-changer.”

  His expression did not change — or maybe because his features were so perfect, I had a more difficult time getting a read on him than I would with someone else. And of course I could decipher nothing of his emotions. I guessed a being such as he wouldn’t have too much trouble blocking himself off when necessary.

  “You call yourself mediocre because your strengths lie elsewhere than in merely telling fortunes for people with more money than sense. Did you ever wonder why I was your only spirit guide, when many of the other psychics you encountered were in contact with a variety of entities?”

  Only a few hundred times. Mentioning that, h
owever, would probably make it sound as if I was blaming him for my shortcomings. “I just figured it was because I wasn’t a very good psychic.”

  For some reason I had thought that might make him chuckle a bit — the Otto I had known before would have — but he only shook his head. “No, it was because we knew we had to shelter you, keep you from outside influences. Not all of those on the other planes can be trusted to keep their own counsel, and we knew you had to be protected against this day, so you could follow the path that would lead you to where you are now.”

  “And yet you still keep saying I have free will. Seems like you did everything in your power to make sure I ended up right here, right now.”

  “No, that’s not it at all.” For the first time I noticed a shift in his expression, a creasing of the level, expressive brows. “We can see trends, and we can see the most likely flow of temporal events. But every second relies on input from you — or any other living being. Because you are who you are, it seemed more likely than not that you would come to this place. But there was always also a chance that you’d say the hell with it and run off to hide in Mexico.”

  His tone sounded almost rueful, and I fought back a smile. “Okay, so I’m here because I want to be. I find that difficult to believe, but the last few days have been so insane that I’m willing to roll with it. So what next?”

  “You save the world.”

  I’ll get right on that, I wanted to say, but Otto’s expression showed he was not joking. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  He stepped toward me, reached out, and laid one long, pale hand against my forehead. “You trust what’s in here,” he replied. With his other hand, he touched me lightly against my chest, his hand centered over my heart. “And in here. Think of all you have to live for.”

  And then I was falling, dropping out of that bright cloud and back into my body. Flesh surrounded me, closing in on all sides, my heart thundering and the blood thrumming in my veins. Even though my eyes were shut, I saw Paul’s face clearly, every line and shadow as if it were reflected in a mirror, from the bruise around his left eye to the dark traces of stubble along his jaw.

  I had to save him.

  Save myself.

  Save them all.

  The white light returned, but instead of ascending with it, I breathed in and sent it along every twisting vein and artery, the heatless energy surging over the nano-driven alien virus and swallowing it as if it had never been. No trace left, and I opened my eyes into Raymond Lampson’s altered face.

  He stared at me, still smiling, but the smile began to fade as I rose. The aliens were telepaths, I knew now, who sensed without speaking who was one of theirs and who was still human.

  Human…and possessing a power they had always feared.

  Without thinking I raised my hand and smacked the palm flat against his forehead, just like a preacher in one of those cheesy revival shows. I didn’t cry out “Heal!” — but I might as well have.

  Raymond stumbled backward, both hands going to his head. A screech that didn’t sound as if it could have emerged from a human throat tore out of him, a keening wail that ripped at my ear drums. And then he collapsed, falling in a heap like a marionette that had just had its strings cut.

  The guards surged forward, moving toward me. They, unfortunately, were not possessed; their wrongness had been bred into them. I knew I couldn’t defeat them the way I had the alien entity living inside Raymond’s body.

  Luckily, I didn’t have to. Paul lunged forward, wrapping his arms around the legs of the guard nearest him, bringing the hybrid to his knees. So fast I didn’t see exactly how it had happened, he pulled the service revolver out of the guard’s holster and shot him neatly in the back of the head. The other guard reached for his own gun, but Paul popped off another bullet, which went directly into the hybrid’s hand. Human enough to wince, the guard lost a precious second, and that was all it took. His body fell on top of his fallen comrade’s.

  The agent who had been standing behind me launched himself at Paul, but I stuck out a foot and he stumbled, losing his balance even as he scrabbled for the gun tucked into his belt. Paul didn’t even blink, but got off another shot, and the man went down as well.

  “Wow,” I said, as I shakily surveyed the carnage. “I didn’t know you were a crack shot, too.”

  He tucked the gun into his belt, then reached up to tear away the duct tape from his mouth. “You grow up on a ranch, shooting cans off fences, you get pretty good.” His expression sobered as he stared across the dead men at me. “Are you all right?”

  “Never been better,” I said cheerfully.

  “But he — you — that is — ”

  “I know.” I reached up to the place on my neck where Raymond had hit me with the syringe, but there wasn’t even a sore spot. “Let’s just say that didn’t work out quite as they’d planned.”

  “I’ll say.” Paul glanced from me to Raymond’s prone form. “What did you do to him?”

  “Same thing I did to myself — call it clearing out the plumbing. He should come around in a little bit.”

  Since I thought I’d better be sure, I crossed the few steps to the spot where Raymond lay, then knelt down next to him and carefully turned him over. His glassy eyes stared up at the rock ceiling overhead.

  “Raymond? Raymond!”

  Nothing. I peered down at him and hoped the situation wouldn’t require me giving him mouth-to-mouth.

  But then I saw his eyelids flutter, and his eyes snapped open, staring straight up at me. “Wha — what happened?”

  “The Persephone O’Brien version of an exorcism,” Paul said, coming to stand next to me. “How are you feeling?”

  Raymond appeared to consider. “Hung over.”

  “Could be worse.” Paul reached out a hand, and after a few seconds of hesitation, Raymond took it and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet.

  Once upright, he stood rooted in place, blinking blearily at the dead guards and the dead agent on the floor. “Where am I?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked. Maybe once he’d been under the control of the alien intelligence, his own consciousness had been completely submerged.

  Blinking again, he frowned, as if trying to remember. “The lab…the sample…accidentally splashed some on my skin. Then…” He lifted his shoulders. “Where are we?”

  “Secret Canyon, just outside Sedona, Arizona,” I told him. “And a few hundred feet below it.”

  A silence as he appeared to take that in. Then an improbable smile spread across his face. “Cool.”

  “If you say so.” I turned to Paul. “What next?”

  “I should probably be asking you that question.”

  I supposed he had a point. “Key cards,” I said, and went over to the dead guards and rifled their pockets, then took the card off the agent as well, just in case he had a higher security clearance than they did.

  “Right, for the elevators,” Paul said, the approval clear in his tone.

  If only it were that easy. Because the realization came to me as I looked up into his face that I had only taken the first step. True, I had freed him and released Raymond and even managed to save my own skin, but there were so many more still in jeopardy.

  “We need to stop them altogether,” I said. “If we don’t, then they’ll just keep taking over more people. The plot has to stop here.”

  “Okay.” Paul didn’t appear overly fazed by my words, but he did frown slightly. “Any idea how exactly we’re supposed to do that?”

  I realized then that I did. Whether the insight had been beamed down to me from Otto and his cohorts, or whether it had bubbled up from the same unknown well of power within me that had released Raymond, didn’t really matter. All that mattered was whether it would work.

  Turning back toward Raymond, I asked, “Do you have any idea what happened to Jeff?”

  “Jeff?” Raymond echoed. He scratched the thinning hair at the back of his head. “D
id they bring Jeff here, too?”

  I had to hope they did. “We need Jeff for this to work. Unless either of you is good at hacking computers.”

  Both Paul and Raymond shook their heads. I guess it was a little bit much to ask for. After all, Paul could drive like a fiend and shoot like James Bond…and could probably do differential equations in his head. I guessed I shouldn’t press my luck.

  “Wait,” Paul said, and went back to the agent, this time going to the inside breast pocket of his jacket. I always tended to forget those things existed. He pulled out something that looked a little bit like a miniature tablet computer. “We’re in luck.”

  “You think the information we need might be on there?”

  “Only one way to find out.” He pushed a button, then grinned a little as a login screen appeared. “Thank God for biometric security.” And he pressed the dead agent’s thumb against the screen.

  At once it flickered into life, showing what looked like a series of file folders. Paul appeared to scan them quickly, pushing one, then another. On the third try he said, “Got it — Jeff appears to be held up on the detention level. Guess we’ll have to go fetch him.”

  While I wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the prospect of having to retrieve Jeff Makowski from the same security area I’d just broken Paul out of less than forty-eight hours earlier, I also knew we needed him. Besides, having that previous victory under my belt could only help, right?

  “Let’s get going,” I said. Odd pricklings at the edges of my consciousness told me that other aliens were on the move elsewhere in the facility. Maybe they’d felt the forcible ejection of one of their own from Raymond’s body. At any rate, it would probably be a good idea if we were long gone by the time they came to investigate.

  “Got it.”

  The three of us went back to the elevator, where I swiped one of the key cards I’d taken off a hybrid. At least the reader glowed green and allowed us to push the button for Level 8. So far so good.