Dark Mirror 2 - Dark Passage (26 page)

Feeling vaguely foolish for conversing with an invisible magical space, she withdrew and headed off to explore other passages. One led to a small chamber with the pool of springwater they’d been using for drinking and washing. Others ended in blank stone or became too small to use.

Aware that it would be easy to get lost if she wasn’t careful, she tried one last branch. To her surprise, she saw a glimmer of light ahead as she traveled deeper into the hill. One of her friends was also exploring?

She reached the end and caught her breath. The water that had formed the cave had created a gallery of treasures. Stone pillars and curtains and lacy threads glimmered in the reflections of her mage light. She smiled in delight as she drifted among the stone icicles and frozen fountains and clutches of sparkling crystals.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Allarde’s deep voice was soft behind her.

She turned with a feeling of inevitability. Awareness caught fire between them as their gazes met.

Even in ill-fitting clothes and with dark bristles on his chin, Allarde was as handsome as a prince from legend as he moved toward her through the magical stone formations, his strong features and broad shoulders barely brushed by light. The sight of him would live in her heart forever.

She’d avoided being alone with him because she didn’t want to talk about their separation. Her head knew that she had done the right thing, but that knowledge was a frail barrier against the power of Allarde’s presence. Trying to be sensible, she said, “Let’s not speak of impossible things, Justin. Our world is too far away to worry about.”

“Indeed it is.” He reached Tory and put his arms around her. Before she could point out weakly that this was a bad idea, they were embracing and he was kissing her with crackling intensity.

Passion, magic, and need blazed between them, burning away all her reservations. The longing that had been building since Kemperton Hall shattered in a firestorm of heat and magic that flooded her senses and burned away the world. When they broke the kiss, she said dizzily, “When we kiss, it feels like I can move mountains. Literally.”

He laughed. “Small ones, perhaps.”

She gave him a crooked smile. “Are we kissing to increase our shared power? That will be useful on our raid, I think.”

“No.” Tenderly he brushed a strand of hair from her brow. “It’s because I don’t want to die without kissing you again.”

She froze. “Does your foretelling talent see disaster ahead?”

“Not exactly, but something unexpected will happen tomorrow night. A great complication that we haven’t anticipated.” He shook his head, frowning. “I’m not sure how much trouble we’ll be in. Because this concerns me so closely, I don’t have a clear sense of how it will work out.”

Guessing at what he wasn’t saying, she said, “But it could be bad.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But I think we must go ahead. Lives are at stake.”

“We have our magic. We can do things the Germans won’t expect.”

“That’s our greatest strength.” He kissed her again, his hands roaming in delicious ways. “
You
give me strength, Tory.”

“And you make me weak,” she said shakily. “Common sense goes out the window when you touch me. But you can’t choose me over Kemperton! Life is uncertain. What if I die? Then you’d have nothing. Choose Kemperton and it will be yours as long as you live.”

“So practical,” he murmured before he kissed her forehead. “But as you say, life is uncertain. One or both of us might die. We might become trapped in a time not our own. There are a thousand other possibilities beyond our imagination. Which is why I don’t want to waste what time we have to be together.”

She let her eyes drift shut as her head rested against his chest. “You make it very hard to be practical,” she sighed. “But I’ve thought of a solution. You can marry a girl with no magic and I’ll be your mistress.”

“That is nonsense in so many ways that I’ll ignore it,” he said firmly. “Now let us sit on that lovely stone formation that is rather like a bench, and we will discuss possibilities for our missions between kisses.”

Eyes bright, she took his hand and led him toward the stone bench. She suspected there would be more kissing than discussion. And that was fine with her.

*   *   *

A day of rest and mental preparation left the Irregulars as ready as they could be, but the journey to Castle Bouchard was silent even with six people. Jack’s storm was moving in. Though he was holding back the full fury, heavy wind and rain had already arrived. Cynthia offered to keep the rain off them, but was told to save her magic since it might be needed later.

There was something unreal about the fact that she was heading off to war. She, Lady Cynthia Stanton, the most beautiful debutante of the season she’d never had! Though she’d refused the trousers, she had traveled through the portal wearing a plain warm dress and her best pair of half boots for walking.

She did wear the coat Jack had brought for her. Old and comfortably worn, it was broad of shoulder and fell past her hips. It also carried the irresistible scent and feel of Jack, not that she’d tell him that.

As they walked, much of her attention was on the weather as she gradually gathered the wild lightning energy. She had her hands full with it, too. It was good she and Jack were both here, since controlling the storm and so much lightning would have been difficult for one person.

They crested the hill opposite the escarpment and Cynthia, Jack, and Elspeth got their first view of the castle and the military camp. Cynthia’s pulse accelerated and she lost hold of a lightning bolt when she saw the great height and sheer cliff face. No wonder the castle was considered impregnable!

If she and Jack hadn’t rescued Comte du Bouchard and learned of the tunnel, they could never have attempted this mission. She gave private thanks that she was a member of the laboratory team. She’d let Tory and Elspeth scale the castle heights from within.

Allarde studied the scene with narrowed eyes. “I can use that tall elm to take down the fence near the church. There aren’t any trees near the laboratory, but I should be able to roll that motor vehicle through the fence.”

“With luck, we’ll be at the cave with the Weisses in a couple of hours and back in Lackland by morning,” Nick said cheerfully, but Cynthia suspected he was less confident than he sounded.

“Are we ready to go our separate ways?” Tory asked. “Allarde and I can communicate emotions well enough to synchronize the actions of our two groups.”

“One last thing.” Jack stepped up to Cynthia, took hold of her upper arms, and gave her a kiss that should have made the rain steam.

She clung to him, knees weak, heart hammering, and brain stunned. He was
outrageous
! But …
but
 …

Her arms slid around his neck as she dizzily kissed him back. The embrace under the mistletoe had startled her with its intensity, yet by comparison, that had been a mere breeze. This kiss was hurricane force, with wind and lightning and rain going sideways.

She might have fallen when he ended the kiss if he hadn’t held her steady. She managed a strangled “What was
that
for?”

“I didn’t want to head off into danger without giving you a proper kiss,” he explained.

Cynthia slapped him hard on the check. “Don’t you dare talk about getting killed!” She glared at him, on the edge of tears. “You need to survive so I can torment you about your utter lack of manners.”

He grinned, unabashed despite the mark of her hand on his cheek. “I’d like that.”

The others had been watching in fascination. “Now that that has been taken care of,” Nick said, “shall we carry on with our mission?”

Allarde said quietly, “Be careful, Tory.”

“We will,” she replied in a steady voice.

Cynthia realized that the two of them had been holding hands. So much more genteel than Jack. She smiled involuntarily. Though Jack was outrageous, he did keep her intrigued.

The two groups split and headed in opposite directions. Nick and the other girls disappeared almost immediately in the rain and darkness. Allarde led the way toward the laboratory since he’d been here before.

Cynthia had underestimated the difficulty of walking on rough ground in the dark and increasingly heavy rain. When she stumbled going down the hill, Jack caught her arm. “Hold my hand,” he said. “The ground is only going to get worse.”

“I’m going to make an exception to my usual rule and actually do what you suggest,” she returned, trying to sound flippant. Heaven forbid he realize how much she welcomed the excuse to hold on to him.

Not only for help in walking, though that was much appreciated. She also needed him to bolster her fraying nerves. From the top of the hill, she had seen the barbed-wire fence, the massive motor vehicles. Men with rifles patrolled the compound. She should have stuck to her original plan and stayed safe at home.

But she had wanted to be with Jack, who made so many things seem possible.

Since they were holding hands, she felt him marshalling his magic to bring the storm in at exactly the right time. As they neared the compound, he said under the sound of approaching thunder, “Do you have enough lightning, Cynthia?”

“As much as I can handle. I need to use it before I lose control.”

They reached the place of concealment near the fence. As spotlights hunted back and forth, turning the perimeter from night to day, Allarde said, “The laboratory is that long, light-colored building.”

“That will be easy,” Jack remarked. “Where is the generator shed?”

“On the other side of the compound. Can you see it, Cynthia? There’s a tall pole running up above.”

She followed the direction of Allarde’s pointing hand. “That small gray building? That shouldn’t be much of a problem. Is it time?”

“The other team has farther to walk and they aren’t in position yet,” Allarde said. “Another few minutes.”

Cynthia asked, “Can you and Tory read each other’s thoughts?”

“Not thoughts, but we can sense each other’s emotions,” Allarde explained. “When Tory and the others are in place, she’ll send a feeling of readiness. Completion.”

“Amazing.” Cynthia wondered what it would be like to have that connection with J … with a male. “Are you two back together? You seem to be.”

Allarde gave her a freezing look that made it clear the subject was not open for discussion. Turning his gaze back to the compound, he said, “They’re almost in place. Loose your winds, Jack!”

Like Cynthia, Jack had been working hard to control the storm so it would worsen at exactly the right time. Now she felt his exhilaration as he slammed together the powerful winds he’d been holding separate.

Within moments, hurricane-strength winds roared between the escarpment and the hill behind them. Cynthia was almost knocked from her feet and a tree crashed behind them with no help from Allarde.

Allarde was too busy concentrating to notice. A vehicle that had been parked on the other side of the fence flipped over with a crash and continued rolling with the sounds of crunching metal until it smashed both fences flat. He turned left, his concentration palpable. A huge tree crashed with a boom audible over the storm.

“Now, Cynthia!” Jack’s grip numbed her hand.

She gazed at the roof of the generator shed. Coordinating lightning wasn’t easy, but she almost had it. Almost …

Blinding white light illuminated the sky as an annihilating bolt slashed downward. The shed exploded and sparks blazed halfway up the escarpment. Every light in the camp vanished, plunging the compound into suffocating darkness.
Yes!
She felt exultant. A pity the camp was too wet to burn.

“Now!” Allarde ordered. “We need to cross the gap in the fence and get inside the laboratory while they’re still shouting and running into each other.”

Allarde focused a barely visible mage light at the ground in front of him and sprinted toward the flattened fence. Jack and Cynthia followed a little more slowly over the sodden ground, still holding hands.

She was glad she’d decided to go to the laboratory with her companions rather than stay alone outside. Underneath her excitement she was tired—herding lightning was hard work—but everything was falling into place just as they’d planned. Now she understood how sharing danger strengthened bonds between comrades.

They jumped over the barbed wire flattened by the weight of the truck, crossed the ground between fences and leaped over that as well. It took less than two minutes to reach the entrance to the laboratory. Shouts and curses came from the direction of the generator shed, but there didn’t seem to be any Germans near the laboratory.

Allarde opened the door so smoothly that she barely saw how he unlocked it. Then they were inside dripping on the tiled floor and listening hard. There were no sounds of life in the building.

When Allarde judged they were safe, he strengthened the mage light a little and headed down the corridor. Double doors, more corridor, a turn before he stopped in front of a door. Once more he unlocked it and motioned Cynthia and Jack inside.

When the door was closed behind them, he brightened the light. “Dr. Weiss, we’ve returned,” he said quietly. “Are you ready to escape?”

The lean, dark man on the narrow cot awakened immediately and swung his feet to the floor. He’d been sleeping in wrinkled trousers and shirt and socks, Cynthia noted. “Have you freed my wife and children?” he asked urgently in French-accented English. He frowned. “Where is the other boy, the one who made all the promises?”

“Nick is even now leading a team to the castle to rescue your wife and children,” Allarde replied. “His ability to find people was needed there, which is why I’ve come here with two other friends.”

“It is truly possible to free them from that place?” the scientist said with narrowed eyes. “You aren’t merely saying that to placate me so I’ll come with you?”

“We located an ancient tunnel that runs up through the rock from the base of the escarpment to the castle cellar,” Allarde explained. “Nick and the others will be rescuing your family within minutes. Now it’s time for us to go.”