Silvia Day (19 page)

“They took him,” Connor rumbled grimly. “I have no idea where.”

Lyssa stood stock-still, teary and feeling like a dumb ass. What the hell did she think she could do here? Aidan’s men were more than capable of saving their commanding officer. More than likely, she was just going to get in the way.

“I saw where.” Philip gestured to his men, who fell into a loose formation. “I watched on the control panel.”

“Fuck me,” Connor said suddenly, causing everyone to stare at him in confusion due to his low, wary tone.

Lifting her startled gaze to his, Lyssa then turned her head in the direction he was looking.

Revealed by the light cast off from the surrounding slipstreams, a smoky black stain encroached on them in a perfect circle. It widened rapidly, growing by the second.

“What is that?” she asked, her stomach roiling in dread.

“Nightmares.” Philip withdrew his glaive. “Thousands of them.”

Lyssa watched the writhing black shadows with wide-eyed horror. They were translucent, their shape no more than a misty fog. A strange noise came from them, a high-pitched squeal that struck her already stretched nerves like nails on a chalkboard. Random words could be heard amid the cacophony, but they were too jumbled to make any sense.

“What are they doing?” she asked, crouching so she could see through the legs of the giants who had formed a protective circle around her.

The men shifted restlessly on their feet.

“They’re not doing a damn thing,” Connor said.

She held her tongue, but as the minutes stretched out she finally asked, “Is something happening that I’m not seeing?”

“Nothing’s happening,” Philip muttered. “That’s the problem.”

She shouldered her way into getting a little better view. “Huh.” It was hard for her to reconcile the wake-up-in-a-
cold-sweat nightmares with these wispy puffs of smoke. She leaned closer. “Boo!”

They slithered back swiftly.

“Shit.” Connor stared at her with wide, wary eyes.

She made a face. “Sorry.”

Then she noted how all the men were gaping at her. She blew out her breath and retreated back to the center. Great. Her childish moment was witnessed by all.

“They’re attracted to her,” Connor said with awe in his tone, “but they’re afraid of her, too. I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t seeing it myself.”

“We really need to figure out what the hell she’s supposed to be capable of.” Philip turned to the side so he could watch her and the Nightmares at the same time. “I thought her presence would scare the Elders enough to give us a slight advantage. No way would I have guessed this would happen. In fact, I’d been worried about the opposite happening.”

“Did you learn anything in the control room?” Connor asked.

“Can we talk about this on the way to rescuing Aidan?” Lyssa’s foot tapped impatiently. “At this particular moment, I don’t care what it is I’m prophesied to do.”

“It’s extremely important to us,” Connor said, his Nordic blue eyes studying her carefully.

She sighed, chastened. “I know it is. Aidan told me he’d spent centuries looking for me, trying to figure out what it is I’m supposed to do. I appreciate what this legend means to you, and I promise, if you help me get Aidan back, I’ll help you figure out how I fit into all of this.”

“We need the captain here,” one of the men said, his
gaze remaining trained on the Nightmares. “We’ve never been defeated while he’s in command. What good will he be to us if he’s in your world?”

A murmur of agreement moved through the soldiers.

“I accept the likelihood of him remaining with you,” she assured them with her chin lifted stoically. She refused to cry in front of Aidan’s men. “But not like this—with half of him here, the other half with me.”

“Perhaps that’s it.” Connor stepped closer. “Maybe the gate you’ll open is not the one to the Nightmares, who clearly don’t know what to make of you. Maybe it’s the gate between the Twilight and your world.”

“No way.” Her arms crossed her chest. “Aidan told me your entire Elite force was created to prevent the spreading of Nightmares into my world. I would never jeopardize that.”

“Actually,” Philip said softly, “The Elite were created to kill you.”

She had no idea what to say to that.

“Let’s see if they’ll allow us to leave without a fight.” Connor sheathed his sword and withdrew the smaller blade at his thigh, before coming up behind her and wrapping a brawny arm around her waist. He pushed off gently, slowly levitating them. Lyssa clung to his arm with a death grip.

The Nightmares writhed in frenzy, the noises they made rising in volume, but they made no effort to attack them.

Philip rose, too, as did the men under his command. They continued to hold their swords at the ready until they were some distance in the air. Then Philip gave a com
mand she couldn’t understand, and they all returned their blades to their scabbards. “Just beyond the rise, there’s a lake.”

She felt Connor’s nod. “I know where it is. Let’s go.”

As they glided rapidly through the misty evening, Lyssa studied the landscape beneath them. This beautiful place was Aidan’s world. He had spent centuries defending it at great risk to his life. Here he was nearly immortal and he had the power to make things happen simply because he thought of them. Her eyes burned with tears. Earth was not the place for a man like Aidan, she realized. He would find a way back here, and he had warned her—once he left, he would not come back.

Connor’s voice was loud in her ear, “If Cross is being kept beneath the lake, there will be no way to approach the area cautiously.”

Philip glanced aside at Connor. “You’ve been there?”

“Not completely. I didn’t surface within the cavern. I couldn’t. From what I could tell, there’s only one entrance and no way to enter with any sort of stealth.”

“Damn.”

Lyssa winced at the frustration she heard in the lieutenant’s voice. “Once you free Captain Cross, what will happen to all of you? Won’t the Elders be mad?”

All the men looked grim. It was Connor who answered her. “We know the risks.”

“Will they kill me?” she asked, trying to steel herself for the confrontation ahead. Everything was a possibility. She wasn’t ruling anything out.

“I seriously doubt Cross will let anything happen to you,” he answered dryly.

“And you?” she asked. “And the lieutenant? None of you have any reason to trust me. Hell, I don’t even trust myself. I have no idea what it is I’m supposed to do. What if I sneeze and everything blows up?”

His arm tightened around her, which she appreciated immensely because they were really high up in the air. “Do you love him?”

“Desperately.”

“And if your existence jeopardizes his?”

“I expect you to take care of it.”

His chest rose and fell against her back. “You would die for him?”

“If that’s what it takes,” she said fervently, the rushing wind making her tears flow across her temple and into her hair. “He risked everything to come to me, Connor, knowing that even if he made it alive I wouldn’t remember him. We spent so little time together, but it was enough for him. He wanted me badly enough.”

“You want him the same way?”

“Oh yes.” She smiled, turning her head to face him, causing her hair to blow into both of their faces. She brushed it back impatiently, and suddenly found it contained by a rubber band. “Did you do that?”

He shook his head.

“Oh man.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Oh man.”

They were silent for a few moments, and then he said, “When we get to the lake, we’re going to dive straight in. The cavern is quite a ways down, and we need the velocity to get there. I’ll warn you when the time comes. Hold your breath and don’t struggle. Try to keep your body straight
and your limbs tucked in to minimize the resistance in the water.”

“Got it.”

“I have no idea what we’ll find down there. They’ll have the area well guarded, and they know we’re coming.”

“I understand. I’ll stay out of the way.”

“Good. I would have preferred to leave you behind, but you’re presently with the only people in the Twilight who have any desire to keep you alive.”

Lyssa’s lower lip quivered, and she bit on it. Everyone in this world wanted her dead.

They whizzed over a low mountain and bore down with stunning force toward the lake revealed on the other side. “Follow me,” he yelled to the others, then much lower, “Get ready.”

She took a deep breath, and instantly found it seized in her lungs as they plunged headfirst into the icy water. Trying not to struggle, Lyssa quickly grew dizzy, her lungs spasming from the unbelievable chill. It felt as if it should be slushy with ice. Just before she passed out, they lunged upward into warm, humid air.

Sputtering and gasping, she was hauled out of the water and thrust roughly aside. Lyssa wiped the water from her eyes and saw the melee their arrival had instigated. Her Elite guards fought with swords against a legion of gray-robed figures who also wielded deadly blades. The space was small and cramped, dominated by a circular computer console and a clear screen of rapidly flickering images. Depending on her angle, she could see right through to the room beyond, a space filled with wide beams of light like the one she had jumped out of earlier. Slipstreams.

The sight of the hallway on the other side of the cavern galvanized her into action. She leaped out of the way of an Elder who was retreating from an Elite sword. Dodging falling bodies and wicked blades, Lyssa crossed the space and made her escape, desperate to find Aidan.

Entering a hallway carved out of the rock, she took off at a run, pausing at each doorless archway to look inside. She heard footsteps behind her and turned, relieved to see that it was Philip sprinting after her. Before her was a seemingly endless row of doorways. Her feet squelched inside her wet shoes, and the loose pants, so light when they were dry, were now a heavy weight against her legs. She wished they were dry, but seemed unable to effect the change.

“Keep going,” Philip urged, taking over the task of looking in the rooms on the left. He, too, was still soaked.

The next threshold she paused at revealed a man in a cylindrical glass chamber. She gasped, hope rising, then she realized the dark-haired man inside wasn’t big enough to be Aidan. Moving on, she found more men in more glass tubes. They all looked to be asleep. Or dead. “What is this place?”

“Hell.” Philip’s hand fisted with white-knuckled force around the hilt of his weapon.

They kept going.

Finally she found him, his black garments a stark contrast to the white outfits the other poor blokes were wearing. “Oh my god,” she breathed, her stomach churning dangerously. His head hung low, his chin to his chest, his body held upright by no discernible device. Lyssa ran to the chamber and banged on it, trying to find a door or some way to open it. “Aidan! Aidan, answer me!”

The thought that he might be dead made her so ill, the room spun around her.

“Watch out!” Philip grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the way.

A flash of movement in her peripheral vision was her only clue to Philip’s distress until a blade whizzed past her, almost severing her arm.

“Christ!” She feinted to the left as the Elder lunged toward her again.

“Kill her, Lieutenant,” the Elder ordered, just before he stumbled back from Philip’s parrying sword with such force that his hood fell to his shoulders. “What are you doing?” he cried.

Philip thrust her behind him and fought back. “How do I get the captain out of there?”

“He is sequestered for the benefit of all.”

Lyssa gaped, horrified by the sight of the man inside the robe. He looked like a corpse, his skin papery thin and wrinkled, his hair a shocking white. He glared at her with pale eyes, and she knew, without a doubt, that he wanted nothing more than to murder her.

“I’ll ask you again, Elder,” Philip said, nearly catching his opponent with a swipe to the abdomen. “How can we free Captain Cross?”

“I’ll never tell you!” the Elder promised viciously.

Lyssa watched in stunned amazement as the two men, so different in appearance—one youthfully virile, the other risen from the grave—clashed in a show of skill that she couldn’t help but admire. She retreated step by step as the battle continued, finally coming to a halt with her hips pressed up against the edge of a counter. Risking a glance
at what she was up against, Lyssa saw a computer console similar to the one she had seen in the cavern, but a great deal smaller. The writing on the touch panel was foreign, but the rounded slot for a key was unmistakable.

Okay.
Taking a deep breath, she ignored the shivers that wracked her body and tried to imagine what type of key she should be looking for. Then she felt it.

Looking down, she was startled to find a rounded key hung from a chain in the center of her palm.

“Holy shit,” she breathed, awed at her power in Aidan’s world. No need to hunt things down, apparently. A quick check with the lock proved that she had the right key. Now she just had to help Philip get rid of the Elder.

“Got it!” She grinned as she imagined a pitcher with a handle, and it appeared in her hand. Fat at the bottom with a narrowed lip for pouring, it looked exactly like the Kool-Aid mascot. She waited until the perfect moment, then leaped into action, bashing the Elder on the head when he came close enough.

The glass shattered; he made a gurgling noise and then collapsed at her feet, his sword clattering to the ground. Left with a pitcherless handle, Lyssa tossed it aside and dusted off her hands on her wet pants legs.

“Whoa,” Philip said, his swinging arm stilling in midair.

“Here.” She tossed Philip the key, and he caught it in his free hand. “Get Aidan out of that tube.”

He moved over to the console. “I’m on it.”

Philip powered up the touch pad. A moment later, a loud hiss of air signaled the opening of the chamber, and Lyssa hurried to it just in time to catch a stumbling Aidan.

“Baby,” she murmured, her legs spread wide in an effort to bear his weight.

He clutched her tightly to him, straightening, his cheek nuzzling against hers. “You’re wet,” he noted in a slurred whisper. “And not for the reason I’d like.”

“Sex fiend,” she retorted, her throat tight with relief. Part of her had been terrified to see him so helpless, this man who was larger than life. Even when he was asleep, there was a taut alertness about him that never let anyone forget how dangerous he was. He had lacked that in the tube. “Are you okay?”

His large hands cupped either side of her spine, pulling her hard to his body until there was no space between them. He held her like that for a long moment, then she felt his head lift and his frame stiffen as he processed their surroundings.

“No, I’m not okay. I’m pissed and freaked out. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Saving you.”

“Fuck.”

“Can you stop thinking about sex?”

Aidan’s reluctant chuckle rumbled against her chest. “Hot Stuff, you drive me crazy.”