It took me a few moments to absorb what I saw. It was the gate, only it wasn’t the gate as I knew it. I couldn’t see the room I’d been in only moments before. It was gone. Instead, I sat on a rocky cliff, a steep dropoff only twenty feet away. There was no sun or clouds, only gloom.
This wasn’t my world.
I rubbed my forehead to help clear the fog and focused on the individuals huddled together several feet away. They’d picked a spot in the shadow of an even greater rock face. They looked shocked, traumatized to their very bones, and they were pale and sallow.
“We have to go back through,” one of the men announced. He looked to be the bravest of the bunch, although that wasn’t saying much. “We’ve been here for two hours. We can’t continue to sit here.”
Another man, this one with blond hair and pale gray eyes, stirred. “We don’t know that we’ll survive if we go through the gate. In fact, we’ve been taught the exact opposite. The gate will kill us.”
“Obviously not,” the first man argued. “We’re on the other side of the gate right now. We survived the trip. Our instructors were clearly wrong. There’s no reason to believe we won’t survive the trip a second time.”
“Or we’re already dead,” a third man volunteered. He was young, in his early twenties, and yet his hairline was already receding. His eyes were filled with fear, the sort I’d seen only in my nightmares. And, well, a few well-acted horror movies. It was enough to make me shudder and look away.
“We’re not dead, Stan,” the first man snapped, making a face. “I mean ... check for yourself.” He pressed his fingers to his neck to feel for a pulse. “I feel my heart beating. That doesn’t happen when you’re dead.”
“How do you know?” Stan, obviously at his limit, didn’t fear a fight. “We’re out of our element here. Everything we thought was true isn’t. We could be dead ... or we could be unconscious. For all we know, this is a figment of our imagination.”
“He’s right.” Another man found his voice. He had black hair and a slightly darker skin tone, making me believe he was Hispanic. “We could be unconscious. This is probably a dream. We were most likely knocked out by the sound emanating from the gate. Now we’re unconscious and dreaming. We’ll wake soon.”
“And this is what, Manuel, a mass delusion?” The first man fancied himself in charge, but he was clearly facing a mutiny. I wanted to stop the arguments, but I couldn’t speak ... and they hadn’t as much as looked in my direction. That made me believe they didn’t see me, which was frightening for a different reason. I chose not to dwell on it. If I did, the fear might overwhelm me. I would never get out of this predicament if I allowed the fear to get a foothold.
“This could be happening in one person’s head.” Manuel refused to back down. “We should wait, Doug. We could wake up any second.”
“If this is a mass delusion, then there’s no reason not to walk back through the gate,” the man apparently named Doug pointed out. “In fact, that might be the thing that wakes us up. The gate is only dangerous if this is the real world, right? You seem to believe it’s not the real world.”
“I didn’t say that.” Manuel turned morose. “I don’t even know that I believe that. This being a product of one person’s imagination is better than the alternative.”
“And what’s the alternative?”
I was actually wondering that myself.
“The alternative is that we’re in purgatory,” Manuel replied, calm. “The alternative is that we’re really dead, and because they weren’t expecting us we’ll be forced to remain here until they figure out what to do with us.”
“Who is this ‘they’ that you’re referring to?” Doug challenged. “There’s no ‘they’ for us to worry about.”
“Isn’t there?” Manuel inclined his chin toward the trees on the far side of the small clearing. On that side of the expanse, there was what looked to be a dark and dank forest. It gave me chills just looking at it. There was no way I was going in there. “Can’t you hear them? They’re coming for us. They’ll be here soon.”
Everyone — including me — jerked their heads in that direction. Now that it had been pointed out, the unmistakable sound of footsteps was hard to ignore. I went cold all over.
What was going on here?
Just at the moment the footsteps reached the edge of the woods, my fingertips started tingling. I glanced down and found my vision had started to blur. Oh, well, this couldn’t be good.
As if to prove me right, my head suddenly felt as if it had doubled in size. It was too big to hold up. When I fell to the ground this time I was terrified I would never open my eyes again. This was it, I told myself. This was the end.
I WOKE TO BRADEN ABSOLUTELY melting down.
“Somebody call an ambulance right now! Right freaking now!”
I opened my eyes and found myself in the gate room, in the same spot I’d lost consciousness. Oliver and Cormack stared down at my face. Braden cradled me against his chest as he held me on the floor. My head hurt and I felt numb. I was alive, though. That was the important thing.
“What happened?” I rasped, relieved to find I had a voice.
“Oh, thank god.” Braden held me so tightly I feared he might smother me. “I thought you were dead.”
He wasn’t the only one. “I’m fine,” I reassured him, awkwardly patting his arm. “I just have a headache. I ... what happened?” I looked to Oliver for answers because he had yelled for me to stay away from the gate right before it happened.
“I’m not sure.” Oliver looked grave. “But that’s not the first time I’ve seen the gate act like that. It’s been sixty years, but ... I’ll never forget.”
As if testing him, the gate gurgled, causing every head in the room to turn in its direction. To my utter surprise, five bodies were spread on the platform in front of the shimmering opening.
“What the ... ?” I tried to climb to my feet despite Braden’s insistence on keeping me close. “Where did they come from?”
Oliver was so pale I could practically see through him. He worked his jaw but no sound came out. It was only the sound of someone clearing a throat near the door that led to the hallway that broke the spell that had settled over the room.
When I turned, I found a pretty brunette studying the scene with impassioned eyes. She had long dark hair, cheekbones so high they looked carved from granite, and a serious expression on her face. I recognized her from the application form she’d sent in.
Her name was Paris Princeton and she was my new assistant. This was one heckuva way for her to be introduced to her new job.
“Oh, um ... hey.” I felt like an idiot as I remained prone on the floor, Braden stroking my hair and his father and our resident vampire staring dumbly at the pile of bodies that had suddenly appeared in front of the gate. “You must be Paris. Um ... welcome.”
Cormack finally tore his eyes from the bodies and focused on our new guest. He looked dumbfounded and out of his element, two things I thought I could never say about him. “Did anyone see what happened?”
Paris nodded. “I did.” She raised her hand, as if in a classroom. “The gate flashed really brightly and knocked you down.” She lobbed a tight smile in my direction, one that was almost apologetic, as if she could’ve stopped what had happened. “I think I was protected because I was so far back. When it flashed a second time, there were five new people here ... and I think they came from the other side.”
“But ... how?” Cormack’s bewildered expression hurt my heart. “How could this have happened?”
“I don’t know,” Oliver replied, determinedly moving in the direction of the bodies. “I just ... I ... oh, my!” He dropped to his knees next to the first body, and when he turned the man over I almost jumped out of my skin. I recognized the face.
“I saw him,” I blurted out. “When I was on the other side, I saw him.”
Braden’s eyebrows practically flew off his forehead. “You were on the other side?”
<
br /> I swallowed and nodded. “I think so. I saw him ... and a few others. I think there were, like, fifteen of them.”
“Fourteen,” Oliver corrected absently. “There were fourteen.”
“How do you know that?” Cormack asked, moving toward another body. I recognized that one, too. As the lone Hispanic of the group, he was hard to forget.
“I was with them when they disappeared,” Oliver replied, forlorn. “There were fifteen of us and the gate malfunctioned. It flashed like it just did ... and when I came to I was the only one left. Well, me and the trainer. He was spared, but he was never the same.”
“I don’t understand.” Braden ran his hands over my arms, as if to warm me. Keeping contact was obviously important to him. I still felt weak, so I didn’t complain. There was no bettering this scenario for Paris’s benefit after all, so why bother? “What is going on?”
“That’s what I would like to know,” Renley announced as he strolled out of the library and took in the scene. “I think we’re going to need some help.”
That was an understatement if ever I’d heard one.
AN HOUR LATER WE HAD more questions than answers. Paramedics arrived and bundled the five men, strapping them to gurneys, and disappeared before any of them regained consciousness.
I didn’t know much. All five were apparently alive. They were breathing, although none had regained consciousness. Given the fact that he was present for the initial disappearance, Oliver was the one person who could identify them and fill in a few blanks. He seemed reticent about the latter, but I chalked that up to shock.
“Their names are Doug Dunning, Pat Hill, Manuel Ramirez, Stan Bodri and Hank Morgan,” he started, dragging a hand through his dark hair as he paced the area at the bottom of the gate platform. He seemed lost in thought. Heck, he seemed lost in time. I understood that. I had a feeling I’d witnessed the immediate aftermath of the gate malfunction myself, although I was still struggling to understand how. That’s why I kept my mouth shut about what I’d witnessed ... at least for now.
“And they were your classmates?” Cormack queried.
Oliver nodded. “We were training to be gatekeepers. Or, we were training to work on the island. Nobody knew what position they would get.”
Cormack explained how the training was different back then.
“And this was sixty years ago?” Braden was flummoxed. He’d finally allowed me to stand, but demanded the paramedics check me over despite my insistence to the contrary. They declared me fit, if a little dazed, and suggested I get a good night’s sleep. In Braden’s mind that meant he should take me to my apartment in the boathouse without further chitchat. When I balked, he grew frustrated. I ultimately won the argument and he continued fuming. He refused to leave my side.
“It was.” Oliver bobbed his head. “The gate burbled ... and screamed ... and flashed. I was knocked out, which was a new experience because it had never happened before. When I woke, the others were gone ... except for the trainer I mentioned. I was the only one left behind.”
Instinctively, I reached out and rubbed my hand over his shoulder. He wasn’t the demonstrative sort, though he rarely denied me when I graced him with a rare hug. Now he seemed almost grateful for the contact. “That had to be horrible.”
Despite the serious nature of the situation, he mustered a smile. “Actually, it was difficult ... although not for the reasons you assume. I didn’t feel guilty about being left behind, if that’s what you’re worried about. I was confused. I’m still confused.”
“It’s probably because you’re a vampire,” Braden supplied, thoughtful. “The gate took the others because they were human, alive. It might not have been able to recognize what you were because vampires rarely, if ever, go through the gate. It left you behind because it couldn’t identify you.”
“That’s the same conclusion I came to,” Oliver confirmed. “I assumed the rest were taken in a mishap and probably died on the other side. Now, though ... they looked the same.”
The conversational shift threw me. “What?”
“They looked the same,” he repeated. “They didn’t age. That’s how they looked when they went through the gate. They’re humans. Most of them were in their twenties when they went through. That means they should’ve been in their eighties coming back. They weren’t.”
“They were young men,” Cormack mused. “You’re right. They didn’t age. That is ... interesting.”
I could think of a few other words to describe it. “What’s going to happen to them? I mean ... I know they were unconscious and needed medical attention, but what’s going to happen to them after that?”
“I have no idea.” Cormack bit his lower lip. “They’ll have questions to answer. The reaper council will want to know where they’ve been, what they’ve gone through. This could be the biggest thing that’s ever happened to our ranks. They’ve actually been on the other side of the gate. Nobody other than an errant wraith or two could ever say that before this happened.”
“That’s probably why Renley took off the way he did,” Braden volunteered. “He was on his phone the entire time the paramedics worked on them, and then he bolted. Did he even say goodbye?”
“He said I was to remain here until the scene was under control,” Cormack replied. “After that, I’m expected at reaper headquarters. If they think I’m going to have answers, they’re going to be sadly disappointed.”
“No one will have answers until those men wake,” Oliver pointed out. “In fact ... perhaps I should be at the hospital with them.” He looked uncomfortable with the suggestion, but barreled forward. “They’re in a new world. I mean ... this might’ve been the place they lived sixty years ago, but it’s like an alien planet now.
“Their families will have changed,” he continued. “Their parents will be gone, wives either dead or moved on. Children who are not only adults, but are now older than them. My face is the same. They might react better to me than a stranger.”
Cormack agreed. “That’s not a bad idea. Maybe you should come with me to the main office. You’ll be of invaluable assistance thanks to your knowledge of the men. You should definitely be part of this.”
Annoyance bubbled up. I absolutely hated being left out. “I might be of assistance, too.” I made up my mind on the spot. No matter how hard it was to explain, the vision of what the men went through not long after being transported to the other side had been shown to me for a reason. I couldn’t simply hide the information. “I saw something when I was knocked out cold.”
“You saw something?”
I nodded. “I was confused at the time, but I think I understand now. It was a memory fragment of what those men saw in the hours right after they were transported to the other side. I was there for part of it and tried to interact with them. I couldn’t, but that’s because the memory was already formed. I was meant only to see, not interact or change anything that had already happened.”
“You saw the other side of the gate?” Oliver was intrigued. “I forgot you mentioned that right after you woke up. I figured you were confused or had a dream. You seem adamant that’s not the case. What did you see?”
“It was a cliff. I ... it was just a cliff.” I wasn’t sure what answer he was looking for and I didn’t have time to think it over. “There was no pearly gate, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I never expected there to be a pearly gate ... especially that close to the gate. That is nobody’s final resting place. It’s a waiting room.”
“It’s more like a clearing on a top of a mountain,” I corrected. “There were woods ... and there was something coming through the trees for them. I’m certain I recognized a few of the faces. I was definitely with them ... and something definitely happened.”
“It’s our job to find out what,” Cormack agreed, rubbing his forehead. “Okay, you’re part of the team, too. We’ll head to the reaper headquarters and see what we can find out. There’s always a chance Izzy can read them
if they remain unconscious.”
That sounded like a plan. When I turned, though, I found Paris watching the conversation with unveiled interest.
“Oh, well ... .” Crap. I had responsibilities as a boss, too.
“You don’t have to worry about me.” Paris was oddly unflustered, which made me respect her even more. “I get that this is a big deal. I was just here for a tour anyway. My first day isn’t until tomorrow. How about we hold off until then?”
I was beyond grateful. “That doesn’t upset you?”
“No, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to spend a little time in that library researching the gate. There must be some precedent for what just happened.”
“There isn’t.” Cormack was firm. “If there were, someone would’ve found it by now.”
“I still think it’s worth checking out.”
“If you want to waste your time, go ahead. I guarantee you won’t find anything.”
“Never say never.”
Yup. I definitely liked her. She was going to turn out to be a good choice. I could feel it.
Three
I had been to reaper council headquarters only a handful of times, including when I interviewed for my job. I wasn’t familiar with the layout, so I trailed behind Cormack, my mind busy with a thousand possibilities, and exhaled heavily as we navigated the labyrinthine hallways.
“I didn’t even know they had a hospital wing here,” I admitted.
To my surprise, Braden quietly reached over and linked his fingers with mine rather than verbally respond. When I spared him a look, I found his handsome face lined with concentration. He seemed distracted.
“We’re on the job,” I reminded him, pulling my hand away.
He scowled. “You’re just trying to punish me,” he muttered.
I almost laughed at his morose expression. “Actually, I’m not.” I studied him for a long beat. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong? If you blame me for this ... well ... I don’t know what to tell you. It’s not as if I caused it.”
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