Free Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 02 by Evil Ascending Page A

The colors thickened, flooding over her and her companions. The bloody red ground curved up and the green sky down to capture her in a sphere. Where the two bowls met, little eddies swirled the colors together, locking the bowls together with a black line.
    What is this?She reached her hands out, and even though they did not seem to touch the inside of the sphere, she felt resistance at the black line. She tried to twirl her fingers in the direction opposite the swirls that had locked things down, but she could not get the line to separate again. I’m trapped.
    Above her, the green dome began to boil. As she looked up, a crystalline lattice with a curiously weblike design worked into it drilled down into the sphere. It glowed rhythmically with power. Needle-nosed and possessing a slender body, it slid into the sphere and left a gaping hole behind it. Rajani began to will herself toward the opening, but the crystal swerved toward her and sliced across the surface of her right thigh.
    She cried out in pain, but quickly recognized the agony as being well beyond physical. She broke through the wall of pain and for a second found herself eavesdropping on the thoughts of Fiddleback. No match! blasted into her Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    brain, then the crystal had passed on and took the pain with it.
    Rajani felt herself drawn along behind the crystal auger like a swimmer caught in the wake of a ship. Her first impulse was to resist it, but then it swooped down toward Dorothy and her brother. She let herself be pulled after it and reached out with her left hand to touch the aft end of the pulsing gray crystal.
    Again the pain hit her, but she steeled herself against it. « No match! » She shot into the matrix as it plunged in at the children. She felt the searching drone check itself and saw a tantalizingly brief glimpse of the search target. Not Jaeger/Coyote! the drone concluded and began to spin furiously.
    Rajani withdrew her hand, but let herself remain in position to draft off the crystal construct, it whirled through the sphere and broke out through the other side.
    The globe that had been her reality exploded like a balloon shot through with a bullet and she burst out through into a realm of darkness and twinkling starlight.
    Looking out, she saw other lights dip and dive through the dark. They shot in at glowing lights like moths attacking flames, and she realized these mobile lights were other searcher drones akin to the one she followed.
    They are searching for Jaeger/Coyote. Is it safe to assume he knows of Fiddleback’s defeat?
    “Safe assumption, but a dangerous game you play here.”
    Rajani felt a strong, firm hand on her right arm. She glanced down as the hand jerked her around and noticed a gold ring of a curious design on the ring finger of an utterly black hand. « Is ityou they seek?» She sent, then she realized the human silhouette was that of a man. “Who are you?”
    The man jerked her toward him, yanking her free of the crystalline probe. “What were you doing? Are you mad?”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Look at yourself!”
    She did so and realized why his voice carried as much Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    alarm in it as it did. A golden nimbus surrounded her. The gold lines running from the backs of her fingers up along her arms and shoulders radiated out through the fabric of the flight jacket she wore. Assuming for a moment that every light in the sky was another person, they were candles in comparison to her sun.
    Except him. He radiates nothing.
    “The drones are hunting Coyote but, even so, I am not anxious to make myself a target.”
    Rajani nodded sharply, then concentrated. She brought her mental defenses into play, neatly snuffing the glow surrounding her. “Who are you? What are you?”
    Again the man-thing ignored her questions. “You have to leave here. Your trick to deflect the