Black Gate: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4 (6 page)

The dark ones couldn’t find them first. They belonged to her.

The Gate offered itself to her, its pulsing power erupting from within her very bones, it offered her immortality and knowledge so that she might fight the enemy. It offered her command of its strength. It offered her a way to retrieve her men.

Katherine hesitated, even as the incessant pain in her head melted away, evaporated like ice in a hot oven. If she agreed, there’d be no more Katherine. She’d be one with the Gate. Forever.

She floated toward the gate, body lit up with power. She didn’t need to walk. The molecules of air beneath her answered her call. The once invisible outline of the opening was pure energy, dark matter, foreign and unseen by humanity for eons. Behind it, on the other side, waves of power rolled and twisted in the space like a million snakes in a pit, each distinct and unique, together a writhing whole, a mass of animation dotted with tiny pinpricks of light.

And what was the light? Tiny bulbs like those on her Christmas tree? Stars in a dark sky? No.

The Gate answered her question.
Souls.

They were souls. The souls that anchored the darkness, that held the world together, that not only created this world, but held it in place. Safe. Solid. Real.

She sensed that Sarah was one of those stars. So was Tim. There was a shining light somewhere in there that represented her mother as well. There were hundreds of them, thousands. Too many to count. And they all stood between humanity and the darkness.

Those souls. And this Gate.

And now her will, forged in fire and unyielding. She had to be strong to walk in the darkness, or it would devour her, seduce her. The Gate shared information with her as easily as downloading data to a flash drive, but the data storage just happened to be inside her skull. There was more, infinite knowledge. But she couldn’t hold it. It would scramble her mind if she tried.

So, she took what the Gate gave her and tried to shut out the rest. She had to get in there. She had to get her men.

One wriggling tendril reached through the gate toward her, hovered and danced in midair just like a snake hypnotized by a pungi. She moved closer and reached out, her hand shook so fast the nervous movement was like a hummingbird’s wings, nearly impossible to see. The energy coiled and slid to wrap around her wrist. Holding her gently, like a lover, it fed her energy, slid along her skin up to her shoulder and wrapped around her neck and up one side of her head.

She should have screamed. Instead her physical body stood still, forehead pressing up against the cool barrier, eyes closed. She smiled and soaked in the rich vitality. She’d been starving before. Starving, every cell hungry for this touch, for this power. For the darkness.

Throwing her head back, Katherine allowed the tendril to pull her into the portal, toward the deep darkness, toward the roiling mass of energy on the other side. She wanted it. Needed it. Craved it. And, if she could get through to the other side, if she could control the dark, she could set her men free. She could save them.

But not from here. Not from this side.

The tendril tugged harder and she glided forward, left the known world behind and moved through the cold opening into nothing. Stopped. Stood on wisps of dark fog and empty space. Energy flowed around her in a river of movement, wound around her legs, caressed her breasts, and danced like ice feathers along her cheek. She felt every touch and glide as if a new lover softly explored her flesh.

A shout pierced the darkness. The mass of writhing energies pulsed out and in, reacting to the noise.

Her team.

Good God.
Focus, Kate. Focus.

Katherine withdrew into her mind and eliminated all thoughts that were not about finding her men. They were here, somewhere. They were alive. She could feel their hearts beating like sonar pinging against her skull.

There! No sooner had she shifted her attention to her team than she hurtled toward them, a bullet of energy in the dark. She came to a stop before a barrier of solid space, thick as a rock-walled canyon. Immobile. Unforgiving. Was this the cage that held her men captive? If she could break it, she could get them out. Lead them out of here.

Yes. She could still
feel
the portal, the Gate that she’d stepped through to enter this strange place. It hummed somewhere behind her. The physical world tugged at her awareness like a persistent child, demanding she return soon. And she would return. She could lead her team back to the Gate. Get them out of here. Get them home safe.

Just had to break through this bloody wall first.

She reached out with her hands and flattened her palms against the dark surface. All around her stars floated in darkness. There were no floors. No walls. Infinite space lay open to her, and her movement was controlled by a thought, by her intention.

And her
intention
was to break this jail’s walls into a million tiny pieces and free her men. She pushed a bit, allowed the smooth cold to permeate her very being. She welcomed it, learned its flavor, its texture and weaknesses. And this wall most definitely had a weakness. It was tied to a single man’s thoughts. One man’s will.

She would pulverize him, crush his soul into dust.

Katherine pushed against the wall, felt it shudder but hold. An Immortal man had tied his will to this place. The one who had created this place was strong. Determined. And wanted to keep his prisoner hidden at all costs.

Not her men then, but a man just the same. Someone who needed help.

Ajax
. The name erupted in her consciousness like fireworks. It came from the being trapped inside and exploded in a burst of light, then fell away, fading to smoke.

Ajax. Who the hell was Ajax? And where were her men? She fixed her intent to punch a hole in the wall. Stopped. A tidal wave of anger moved over and through here, and its source was getting closer. Damn it!

Something big moved in the dark. Massive power rolled over her like a tank crushing tender tulips. Perturbed, the dark strand of awareness that had been holding her wrist let go and pulled away, back to its home and the endless night where it had been born. Still the larger entity moved toward her, steady as an arrow.

She stepped back from the wall as the Gate shuddered and flared to life where it remained, her one and only anchor in this darkness. The Gate rejoiced, a reaction to the being coming toward her, with an inhuman sound of metal wrenching against metal, of shredding and breaking. And yet, it was akin to a trained dog’s welcome for a returning master.

She was so screwed.

Escape. Survive. Fight on home turf and pray her boys were strong enough to last a bit longer. Katherine raced back to the portal, rushed through and collapsed onto the floor in the house where this whole debacle had started. She hoped leaving the dark would be enough to evade whatever chased her. She was too shaken to put up much of a fight if something nasty followed her back to Earth. Shaken. Vulnerable. Exhausted.

She lay on the floor and crawled away from the Gate as power built on the other side. The Gate’s master continued to pursue her. She could feel the pressure pushing at her until her entire body felt like an eardrum that desperately needed to pop. It hurt.

She opened her eyes. Waited.

One shuddering breath. Two.

Three.

A man stepped through the Gate and looked down at her, his face an unreadable mask, his power suffocating. He was over six feet tall. Muscled like a boxer, eyes the color of deep, dark chocolate. He had delicious deeply bronzed skin with not a trace of whiskers or imperfection, soft, kissable lips and a face like a god.

Somehow she knew…no male that beautiful could be human.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, woman?” He strode toward her, grabbed her arm and forced her to her feet. He was danger incarnate, a caged tiger in a man’s clothing, a wild beast pretending to be civilized.

“What?” Her arm tingled and burned where he held her. She couldn’t move, but he wasn’t hurting her. Yet.

“I asked you a question.”

She wanted to answer, but she couldn’t stop staring. And burning. The warmth from his hand spread through her entire body. Her brain reacted by shutting down completely. Might as well have a box of rocks up there. Hello? She spoke four languages, but staring into his eyes, she couldn’t remember her own name.

He grabbed her other arm and pulled her close, facing him. His chest brushed her breasts and she whimpered, not in fear…in need.

His fierce expression softened a bit. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just tell me what you were doing in the dark.” The Gate sparked to life behind him, and she felt it was eager to answer his question. Yet, it waited…waited for her to give it permission.

The Gate would keep her secrets. The knowledge cleared the fog of lust and power from her mind. She drew a deep breath and tried to think with the heat of his male perfection glued to her front and the warmth of his touch still flooding every inch of her body.

She’d never reacted to a man this way. Ever. He stared across the short distance between their eyes as their breaths mingled. She was nearly as tall as he. In the past, she’d alternately hated and loved her five-foot-ten-inch frame. Right now, she reveled in it. The idea of pressing every long inch of feverish skin to his was…decadent. The more skin the better.

“What were you doing in there? Damn it. How did you cross the threshold?” Anger sparked in his eyes at her apparent inability to answer.

“I don’t know. It was an accident.” The lie tasted like nails on her tongue, but she forced the words out and hoped he would believe her. She knew nothing about this man. Good or evil? Whose side was he on? Descendant? Triscani? Timewalker or something else? Was he worth trusting? She trusted no man with the truth, and the few she trusted with her life were on the other side of that damn Gate.

He could be a foreign agent working against the Casper Project. He could kill her team as easily as help her rescue them.

“Tell me what happened. How did you open the Gate?” His full lips looked so soft as he spoke. So close. But what the hell was he wearing? Covered head to toe in island gear, he looked ready for a summer cruise to the Bahamas, not like he’d just walked through an alternate dimension.

Leather sandals wrapped his bare feet, chocolate-brown shorts and a white button-down shirt showed just enough chest to remind her that she hadn’t seen any action in over a year. He looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of a men’s magazine. So freaking sexy. He had the strong jaw and focused gaze of a man that made her
want…

Kisses. Hot sex. More of both…

He looked human. He talked human. He held her like a man who knew just how much pressure should be applied to every ounce of her flesh. But he definitely wasn’t human. The Gate supplied the information to her, confirmed her suspicions. He was more…

The power from the Gate continued to sing to her, to fill her cells and make her feel whole again. She felt good. Alive. Free.

Aroused…

“Damn it. Stop before you kill us all.” Her knees gave out and he caught her, held her up with two hot hands wrapped around her waist. His thick arms brushed the outsides of her overly sensitive breasts.

Stop? Stop what? Talking to the Gate? Stop the gradual flood of energy that filled her starving cells?

Or stop wanting him? “I can’t.” That was the truth. She couldn’t stop any of it. And she wanted to ask a hundred questions. She wanted to rub against him like a cat. She wanted to run. She really, really wanted a kiss.

But even more than that, she wanted to go back into the dark…

The thought filled her legs with strength. She should go back. Save her men. Feast on the power. Conquer it. Control it. Use it to save them all, all those people who depended on her, who were still in hiding…

Katherine strained against his hold. She turned her head, dismissing him from her mind as the Gate summoned her home. The warmth faded from her limbs. Her mind focused on one goal, only one, to get back to the dark, to be complete and one with it at long last. Heaven help her, she’d swear she’d been waiting her entire life for this one chance to be whole. “Let me go.”

“No.” He turned her in his arms and tilted his head to cut off her view of the Gate. “Look at me.”

“Let go.”

“Look. At. Me.” She recognized the command in his voice, but refused to respond to it. He had no hold on her now. No one would ever be able to stop her again.

“My men are trapped. I need to go back.” She summoned the cold, and it rose from her bones like a dutiful soldier. It was hers now. Always would be. No one would control her. She’d never hide again. Never run. Never fight back fear.

The muscles in her legs turned to ice, to living stone, and she knew if she could see them beneath her black fatigues, her skin would look like obsidian, the exact color of the Gate. And it was spreading.

“Damn it.” Heat seared through her cheeks as he moved his hands from her waist to her face. He turned her face up, forced her gaze to lock with his. He studied her at length, a frown marring his perfect forehead. “It’s too late.”