Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

could best overhear all that was said. It was as though they'd always known it. Emma and Nina slowly dropped their hands from their aching heads, and Emma glared at Diana.
    "You might have warned us."
    "Would it have helped? I've also placed powerful esp-blocking mechanisms in your heads, for your own protection. Natural ones, not artificial. The uber-espers won't know you're there, unless you're dumb enough to attract attention to yourselves. Best of luck, my dears. You're going to need it."
    And she was gone, as though she'd never been there. And perhaps she hadn't. Emma and Nina looked at each other.
    "You don't have to come with me," said Emma. "This is going to be incredibly dangerous. We make one wrong step, and someone else will be coming home in our bodies."
    "Are you kidding?" Nina looked at the notepad in her hand, then tossed it aside and grabbed her camera again. "We are talking story of the century! This is beyond an exclusive, this is a scoop! This is my own byline, maybe even my own show! In the future they'll name awards after me. Nina Malapert, demon girl reporter! Now, let's go, before I start hyperventilating."
    It took Emma and Nina several hours of surreptitious traveling to work their way through the warren of maintenance tunnels under the House of Parliament, and then down and down through hidden doors and unexpected tunnels to caverns excavated from solid stone, to the meeting place of the uber-espers. The map Diana Vertue had forced into their heads led them deep into the bedrock the Parade of the Endless was built on, through narrow corridors of stone that showed no signs of being worked by mortal hands.
    A pale diffuse glow filled the still air, from no obvious source. Emma and Nina padded quietly through the tunnels, guns in their hands, constantly on the alert for booby traps or unexpected guards, but they encountered nothing and no one. The uber-espers were confident in their secrets.
    The more Emma thought about it, the more sense the location made. The House's security teams had
    never been willing to admit espers to their ranks, and MPs with far too much to hide had secretly encouraged the ban. And anyway, only a major-league presence from the oversoul would have been able to detect the uber-espers behind the kind of shields they were capable of projecting. On top of all that, the sheer clutter and bedlam of thoughts and emotions generated by the House every day would easily hide any stray thoughts that might drift up from underground. Emma wasn't blind to the symbolism either: the official masters of the Empire aboveground, and the unofficial below. Or perhaps the ego above, and the id below. She sniffed unhappily, and moved stealthily on through the relentlessly descending tunnels, with Nina so close behind her she was almost treading on Emma's heels. The stone walls were closing in as the corridors narrowed, until the stone walls brushed menacingly against their shoulders on both sides.
    It was cold now, deathly cold. Their breath fogged on the air before them. There was something up ahead now, something bad. They could both feel it. A sense of something spoiled and awful, and only partly human. Emma and Nina pressed on, trusting Diana's esp-blockers to protect them. Whether she was Diana Vertue or Jenny Psycho, being dead for over a century didn't seem to have slowed her down much.
    The last tunnel finally came to an end in a rusted metal grille. Emma peered through first, while Nina fought stubbornly to squeeze in beside her, before finally admitting defeat and pressing her camera right against the grille. Beyond and below was a great stone chamber, hundreds of feet in diameter. Stalactites and stalagmites thrust down and up. Emma looked at the camera, and then back at Nina, who nodded quickly and silently breathed the word Recording. Emma settled herself in before the grille, ready for a long wait.
    She had to admit, it was a great location to eavesdrop from, set right up by the high roof of the cavern.
    In Emma's experience, even the most paranoid people rarely looked up—even powerful uber-espers. So as long as the esp-blockers held out… Emma took in a sharp breath and pressed her face flat against the rusted metal grille as the first of the uber-espers appeared, teleportmg into the great stone chamber.
    More arrived, forcing reality aside to make room for them. Their combined presence was spiritually disturbing, on an almost primal level. Emma and Nina could feel each