by Nora Roberts
black leather bikini in a way that gratified every young boy’s comic book fantasies—leap on him out of nowhere was a really nice plus. Just the sort of happy birthday surprise a man who’d reached the point of no return on the path to adulthood could appreciate.
But having that erotic armful hold a knife to his throat wasn’t part of the acceptable package.
And where the hell had she come from? he wondered as she stood there eyeing his gun. There was nothing but simple curiosity and avid interest on that sharp-boned siren’s face.
Had he been so drunk he’d forgotten to lock his door? It was a possibility—a remote one, but a possibility. But she’d called him by name. No way she was from the neighborhood. He was a trained observer, and even if he’d been a myopic accountant rather than a private investigator he would have noticed a six-foot brunette with legs that went to eternity.
“Jake.” The solution trickled through his suffering brain. Though he relaxed a little, he held the gun steady. “Jake put you up to this, didn’t he? Some weird-ass birthday surprise. Jake’s who sent you.”
“I am sent by Rhee, the sorceress. How is it that a harper has such a weapon? Have you killed many demons?”
“Look, it’s too early in the morning for Dungeons and Dragons. Show’s over, sister.”
“I am not your sister,” she began as he eased out of bed. Then her eyebrows shot up. He was naked, but that neither surprised nor shocked her. Her instant and elemental attraction did.
He was taller than she by nearly a full hand, broader in the chest and shoulders, with fine, sleek muscles.
Reevaluating, she pursed her lips. His hair was the deep brown of oak bark, and though unkempt by sleep, it created a good frame for a strong face. His eyes were the bold blue of the marsh bells, his nose slightly crooked, which told her it had weathered a break. His mouth was firm, as was his jaw. Though his skin was pale, like a scholar’s who closeted himself with scrolls, she began to see possibilities.
“You have a fine build for a harper,” she told him.
“Yeah?” Amused now, though still cautious, he reached for the jeans he’d peeled off the night before. “How much did Jake pay you for the gig?”
“I know no Jake. I do not take payment for slaying. It is my destiny. Do you require payment?”
“Depends.” How the hell was he going to get into his jeans and hold the gun at the same time?
“The knowledge was given me that these have value in your world.” She tugged the bag of stones from her belt, tossed them on the bed. “Take what you need, then dress. We must begin the hunt.”
“Look, I appreciate a joke as much as the next guy. But I’m naked and hungover, and it irritates me to wake up with a knife to my throat. I want coffee, a barrel of aspirin, and a shower.”
“Very well. If you will not hunt, show me how to use your weapon.”
“You’re a piece of work.” He gestured toward the bedroom door with the Glock. “Out. Back to Central Casting, or Amazons R Us, or wherever the hell—”
She moved so fast that all he saw was a blur of limbs and leather and flying hair. She leaped, executed a handspring off the bed, and some part of her—boot, elbow, fist—connected with his jaw.
An entire galaxy of stars exploded in his head. By the time they novaed and died, he was flat on his back, with her standing astride him turning the Glock over in her hands.
“It has good weight,” she said conversationally. “How is the missile . . .” She trailed off when with a twitch of her finger she fired. Her eyes widened with something like lust when through the open bathroom door, she saw the corner of his vanity sheared off.
“It is faster than an arrow,” she commented, very pleased.
Not Jake, he corrected. Jake might have a weird sense of the ridiculous, but his old college friend wouldn’t have sent him a lunatic who liked to play with guns. “Who the hell are you?”
“I am Kadra.” She nearly sighed with the repetition—perhaps the harper was loose in the brains. With some sympathy she offered a hand to help him up. “Slayer of Demons. I have come to hunt, to fulfill my destiny. Though it does not please either of us, you are obliged to assist.”
“Give me the gun, Kadra.”
“It is a good weapon.”
“Yeah, it’s a good weapon. It belongs to me.”
Her lips moved into a pout, then her face brightened again. “I will fight you for it.”
“I’m at a disadvantage at the moment.” He got to his feet, very slowly, kept his voice mild and easy. “You know, naked, hungover.”
“Hung over what?”
“Maybe we could fight later, after we clear up a few points.”
“Very well. I will give you the weapon, and you will give me your word that you will help me hunt the Bok.”
“Helping people’s what I do.” Maybe she was in trouble, he thought. Not that he intended to get involved, but he could at least listen before he called the guys in the white coats. “Is that why you’re here?” Gently, he nudged her gun hand aside so he wouldn’t end up with a bullet in the belly. “You need help?”
“I am a stranger here, and require a guide.” She reached out, squeezed his biceps. “You are strong. But slow.” With no little regret, she returned the Glock. “Can you make more of the gun?”
“Maybe.” She’d threatened him with a knife, with a sword. She’d knocked him on his ass and disarmed him.
Damn if he didn’t respect her for it.
In any case, she’d made his first morning as a thirty-year-old man interesting. He hadn’t become a PI because he liked the boring.
Added to that, there was something . . . something about her that pulled at him. Her looks were enough to knock a man flat. But it wasn’t that—or not only that. You couldn’t find the answers, he reminded himself, unless you asked the questions.
“I’m going to put my pants on,” he told her. “I want you to step back and keep your hands away from that sword.”
She stepped back. “I have no wish to harm you, or any of your people. You have my word as a slayer.”
“Good to know.” When she was at a safe distance, he tugged on his jeans, then snugged the gun in the waistband. “Now, I’m going to make coffee, and we’ll talk about all this.”
“Coffee. This is a stimulant consumed in liquid form.”
“There you go. In the kitchen,” he added, gesturing toward the door.
She strode out ahead of him. Whatever shape he might have been in, Harper thought, however baffled he might be, a man who didn’t admire and appreciate that view was a sorry specimen.
Still, he glanced at the front door of his apartment as he passed. It was locked, bolted, chained.
So she’d locked up after she’d come in, he decided. He looked back to see her stop and gape out the living room window. Like a kid might, he mused, at her first eyeful of Disneyland.
So high, she thought in wonder. She had never been in a hut where the ground was so far below and so many people swarmed beneath. Their costumes were strange to her, strange and fascinating. But fascination turned to awe when she watched a cab zip to the curb, saw the woman leap out.
“She rose out of the belly of the yellow beast! How is this done?”
“You pay the fare, they let you out. Where the hell are you from?”
“I am from A’Dair. In my world, we have no beasts with round legs. I don’t—wait.” She closed her eyes, searched through the knowledge Rhee had given her. “Cars!” Those brilliant eyes opened again, smiled into his. “They are machines called cars and are for transportation. That is wonderful.”
“Try to find one in the rain. Honey—”
“Yes, I would like honey, and bread. I am hungry.”
“Right.” He shook his head. “Coffee. Coffee first, then all questions can be faced. Come with me. I want you where I can see you.”
She followed him into his tiny galley kitchen. While he measured coffee, she ran her fingers over the surface
of the counter, over the refrigerator and stove. “So much magic,” she said softly. “You must have great wealth.”
“Yeah, rolling in it.” He made a reasonable living, Harper thought. But he was what you could call between active cases at the moment. Maybe he could hold off on the guys in the white coats, see if she needed an investigator, and had enough to pay his retainer. “Jake didn’t send you, did he?”
“I do not know this Jake.” She peered at the side of the toaster, delighted with her own odd reflection. “I know no one in this world, save you.”
“How did you get here, to my place?”
“Through the portal. It is . . .” She straightened, trying to decipher the knowledge, then to express it. “There are many dimensions. Yours and mine are two. The Bok stole a key and have entered yours. I have another.” She drew the clear globe out of her pouch. “So I have followed. To hunt, to kill so that our worlds will be safe. You are to help me in this quest.”
Poor kid, he thought. She was definitely a few fries short of a Happy Meal. “You can’t just kill people in this world. They lock you up for that.”
“You have no slayers to fight against evil here?”
He dragged a hand through his hair, then rooted out some Extra-Strength Excedrin. Isn’t that what his father had done? And what he himself had wanted to do as long as he could remember? To go after the bad guys, on his own terms?
“Yeah, I guess we do.”
The woman was definitely in some sort of jam, even if it came out of her own oddball imagination. He would just keep her calm, ask some questions, see if he could dig out the problem. When he’d done what he could, he would make a few calls and have her taken someplace where she could get some help.
It would be the first good deed of his new decade.
“So, you come from another dimension, and you’re here to hunt down some demons.”
“The king of demons and three of his warriors have entered your world. They will need to feed. First, they will hunt for animals, the easy kill, to gather strength. Where are your farms?”
“We’re a little short on farms on Second Avenue. So what do you do back in—where was it?”
“A’Dair.”
He could run a search on the name on his computer, see if he could pinpoint where she’d come from. She didn’t have a discernible accent, but the cadence, the rhythm of her speech sure as hell didn’t say New York.
“What do you do back in A’Dair besides slay demons?”
“This is my purpose. I was born a slayer, trained, educated. It is what I do.”
“Friends, family?”
“I have no family. She who raised me was killed by a tribe of Bok.”
Mother killed, he thought. Trauma, role playing. “I’m sorry.”
“She was a fine warrior. Clud, sire of Sorak, took her life, and I have taken his. So there is balance. I have learned that she who bore me was another. Rhee, the sorceress. Her blood is in me. I think I am here, able to be here, because of that blood.” She sniffed the air. “This is coffee?”
“That’s right.”
“It has a good scent.”
He poured two mugs, offered one. She sniffed again, sipped, then frowned. “Bitter, but good.”
To his surprise, she downed the entire mug in one swallow, then swiped a hand over her mouth. “I like this coffee. Dress now, Harper Doyle.”
“How do you know my name?”
“It was told to me. We will hunt the Bok together.”
“Sure. We’ll get to that in a little while.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe. You think I’m loose in the brain. You waste my time with too many questions when we should act.”
“Part of what I do in my little world is ask questions. Nobody’s calling you a liar here. Why shouldn’t I believe you’re a demon slayer from an alternate universe? I’m always getting clients from other dimensions.”
She paced up and down the narrow room to work out the logic. He was mocking her, and this was not proper. Lesser warriors were not permitted to show a slayer disrespect.
Yet, she admired him for it even as she found his demeanor frustrating.
This was his world, Kadra reminded herself, one of wonders far beyond her ken. So her world would be beyond his. If she were in his place, she would not believe without proof.
“You must be shown. I cannot blame you for doubt. You would be weak and foolish if you didn’t question, and the weak and foolish would be of no use to me.”
“Darling, keep up that sweet talk and you’ll turn my head.”
She didn’t have to understand the words to recognize the sarcasm dripping from them. A little impatient, a little intrigued, she held one hand up, and the other, with the globe in its palm, out.
“My blood is of the sorceress and the warrior. My blood is the blood of the slayer. I hold the power of the key.”
She drew her mind down to the globe, drew the power of the globe into her mind.
Harper’s kitchen wall dissolved as though it were a painting left out in the rain. Through it, he saw not the apartment next door but a thick, green jungle, a curving white ribbon, and a sky the color of pale blood under a fierce red sun.
“Holy shit,” he managed before he was sucked into it.
3
THE heat was enormous, a drenching, dripping wall of steaming water. It was a shock, even after the jolt of pain, the blast of blinding light. Even so, his bones felt frozen under his skin as he stared out at the tangle of towering green.
New York was gone, it seemed. And so was he.
Not a hangover, he thought, but some sort of psychotic event brought on, no doubt, by too much liquor and too many loose women.
As he watched, dumbfounded, a snake with a body as thick as his thigh slithered off into the high, damp grass.
“We can stay only a short time,” Kadra told him, and her voice was dim, tinny, light-years away. “This is the west jungle of A’Dair, near the coast of the Great Sea. This is my world, which exists beyond yours. And the knowledge says, in balance with it.”
“I’ve been drugged.”
“This is not so.” Annoyed now, she clamped her hands over his arms. “You can see, you can hear and feel. My world is as real as yours, and as much in peril.”
“Alternate universe.” The words felt foolish on his tongue. “That’s pure science fiction.”
“Is your world so perfect, so important, that you believe it stands alone in the vastness of time and space? Harper Doyle, can you have lived and still believe you are alone? My heart.” She pressed his hand to her breast. “It beats as yours. I am, as you are.”
How could he dismiss what he saw with his own eyes. What he felt, touched—and somehow knew. Just, he thought, as he had somehow known her the instant their eyes had met. “Why?”
She nearly smiled. “Why not?”
“I recognized you,” he managed. “I pushed that aside, clicked back into what made sense so I could deny it. But I recognized you, somehow, the minute I saw you.”
“Yes.” She kept her hand on his a moment longer. It felt right there, like a link. “It was the same for me. This is not something I understand, but only feel. I do not know the meaning.”
And in some secret chamber of her warrior’s heart, she feared the meaning.
“I’m standing her sweating in a jungle in some Twilight Zone, and it doesn’t feel half as strange as it should. It doesn’t feel half as strange as what’s going on inside me, about you.”
“You begin to believe.”
“I’m beginning to something. I’m going to need a little time to process all the—”
She whirled, the sword streaking into her hand like a lightning bolt. A creature, no more than three feet high, with snapping teeth in both its mouths, shot out of the brush and leaped for Harper’s