by Unknown
“Yes. We can have some fun down there.”
She gave him an apologetic look. “I can’t swim.”
“It’s not real hard. I’ll teach you. If you can’t float on your own, we’ll get you a noodle.”
Her brow wrinkled. “Like in chicken noodle soup?”
He laughed. “No. A long, thin plastic flotation device. You can pick the color. Do you want pink or purple or yellow?”
She smiled. “Any of those.”
“You rest your arms across it, and it holds you up.”
She nodded, then looked up at the forest. “Will you teach me the names of the trees?”
“Sure.” He pointed. “That’s a red oak. And that one’s a tulip poplar.”
“You tell by the shape of the leaves?”
“Right. And sometimes the bark, or special things.” He indicated a black locust. “That’s got thorns on the trunk and branches, so don’t try to climb it.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a lot I want to show you.”
“You already have.”
He was enjoying the relaxed conversation when he felt a jolt of tension go through her.
“What?”
“Great Mother!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Evil power,” she gasped.
As she spoke, she started running back the way they’d come. He was right behind her, catching up as she ran toward the house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AFRAID THAT SHE was too late already, Kenna pounded across the porch and into the living room, feeling the terrible power surging as she entered the confined space. She expected to find a bunch of people running away in all directions.
Instead, she saw something that confused her for a moment.
Everyone was gathered in a circle, holding hands, around something that glowed green and malevolent in the low light of the room.
The terrible energy Kenna felt was coming off the thing in waves.
Renata looked up as Kenna slammed into the room, followed by Talon.
“You’d better join us,” she said in a strangely calm voice.
“What the hell is that?” Talon shouted.
“The talisman,” Kenna gasped. “Vandar sent it here with me. You saw it in my knapsack. The green thing. Only now . . . it’s grown so much bigger.”
“Yes.”
“It’s going to explode,” Renata said in the same matter-of-fact voice. “Unless we stop it.”
“Run,” Kenna gasped. “Get out of here.”
“We can’t,” Renata answered. “We’re containing it, and we need you and Talon.”
Kenna glanced at him, wanting to order him out of the house. Maybe he saw that on her face because he stepped forward and reached for Rinna’s hand, clasping it tightly and leaving a space for Kenna.
Her chest was so tight she could hardly breathe as she stepped into the circle, between Logan and Talon.
When Talon clasped her hand, it helped ground her.
“He must have planned to destroy me if I somehow got free of the compulsion to do his bidding,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Renata answered. “Lucky for us, Antonia felt it stirring. She told us where to find it, and we dug it out of the knapsack.”
“Why did it wait so long?” Rinna murmured.
“Maybe it had to . . . build up enough energy.” Kenna swallowed hard.
“I don’t think we can stop it,” Renata said, “but I think you can get it out of here. You’re the one with the telekinetic powers.”
She gasped. “Move it—with my mind?”
“Yes.”
“It’s too . . . heavy,” she gasped, although she knew that wasn’t quite the right word. It wasn’t that large, but the power in its depth weighed it down.
“You don’t have to do it alone. We’ll help you,” Renata said.
Kenna wanted to scream that she couldn’t pick up the damn thing. Not with her mind. And now that she was in the room, she knew it sensed her. It was focusing on her, making her feel weak and helpless.
“That’s what he wants,” Renata said. “Don’t let him win.”
Kenna clenched her teeth. She had come so far and gained so much, and Vandar still wanted to take it all away from her.
Well, she wouldn’t let him win the fight. More importantly, she wouldn’t let him hurt all these other people who had come here to help her. If they died because of her, that would be the worst tragedy of all.
Renata gave her an encouraging look, and she felt strength pouring into her from everyone who surrounded the talisman, but she could feel it probing their defenses, preparing to break through.
It was like a bomb she had seen in a movie on television. Only it had a core of intelligence that Vandar had given it.
She had to get it out of here before it detonated. “Where should I put it?”
Talon supplied the answer. “The swimming hole.”
He looked around the group, then inclined his head toward the west. “It’s down the hill about an eighth of a mile.”
Pretending a calm she didn’t feel, Kenna closed her eyes, imagining that she was wrapping her hand around the green glowing talisman. Even though she wasn’t really holding it, she felt a burning pain in her palm and fingers, and she knew Talon felt it, too, because he winced.
When she pulled the imaginary hand back, he shook his head. “Do it!”
She kept her eyes squeezed tight as she reached out and grasped the evil thing again. As she did, she could feel the others pouring power into her. It was a warming sensation, one she had never experienced before, not even when she had been in school. A team of friends around her all working for a common cause.
But were they strong enough?
Yes, a voice whispered in her mind, and she knew it was Renata, urging her on.
Kenna felt something inside her swell as she wrapped an invisible shield tightly around the talisman. Yet at the same time, she felt the thing churning up energy within itself, burning her flesh as it struggled to burst through the container she had created.
She knew she had to hurry and get it out of the room before it was too late, but at the same time she knew that if she acted too quickly, she wouldn’t have the energy she needed from the group.
With a prayer to the Great Mother, she struggled to judge the right moment.
The talisman decided the issue for her. She felt it flare up, and she realized that if she delayed, it would blow up in the middle of the circle.
Ignoring the burning sensation, she tightened her mental grip on the wicked object.
“Now!” she shouted as she tugged on the talisman, pulling it closer to herself, seeing it actually move across the table. The heat surged, and she almost lost her grip. But they were all dead if she let go. Like the baseball pitchers she had seen on television, she wound up the invisible arm that held the thing and hurled it away from her into the darkness outside the house. As she did, in her mind’s eye, she focused on the place where the river widened and deepened.
Kenna’s vision was filled with bright splotches that made it almost impossible to see the circle of faces staring at her. The buzzing in her ears blocked out sound. And she felt her body trembling violently with the effort to control the power that the others gave her.
But through it all, her mind was steady as she pictured the talisman hurtling through the air, then landing with a tremendous splash in the deepest part of the river where it sank below the surface.
Was that reality or only what she hoped to accomplish?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE LODGE SHOOK as a tremendous explosion rocked the ground outside.
Dropping Logan’s and Talon’s hands, Kenna ran toward the door.
He grabbed for her, but she darted past him and down the hall. Outside, the night was black, but she could see a green glowing plume of water shooting into the air. It fell back to the river, and then there was silence.
“What happened?” she whispere
d as the others clustered around her.
“You did it,” Renata said in a voice that rang above the buzzing in Kenna’s ears.
She opened her mouth to speak, but she was drowned out by the voices of the others congratulating her.
“I . . . I didn’t know what I was doing,” she stammered as she thought back over the past few minutes.
Rinna laughed, dispelling the nervous energy. “That doesn’t matter. You got that blasted thing away from us before it killed everyone.”
Kenna sucked in a sharp breath, nodding. As she pictured that green jet of water again, her legs wouldn’t hold her up, and she was grateful that Talon caught her arm and helped her back down the hall to a sofa.
Sitting beside her, he turned her toward him and held her tightly, stroking his hands over her back and shoulders as she struggled to control her trembling.
“You were magnificent,” he murmured.
ON the other side of the portal, Vandar felt an icy knife of alarm stab into his chest.
Something had happened. Although he couldn’t be sure exactly what, it left him cursing and shaking as he tried to probe for information.
He’d made Kenna think that he had an open connection with her from this side of the portal. That was only partly true. He had little direct control over her, but he had planted strong wards inside her head so that she would behave as he wished while she was in the other universe.
On her previous trip, when he’d sensed her struggling to break away, he had been able to call her back by activating one of his wards.
While she’d been here, he’d doubled the automatic triggers in her mind. And he’d been satisfied with his control.
But now . . .
He knew something was wrong.
Had she actually broken away?
He gnashed his teeth.
If she’d severed her tie with him, then his fail-safe mechanism, the talisman, had done its work, and she was dead. She wouldn’t have known what was happening until it was too late. There was no way for her to save herself.
But was she really dead? Or was she simply beyond his reach?
He wanted to believe that the talisman had killed her, and she was no threat to him.
Still, he had lived too long and coped with too many emergencies to bet everything on that assumption.
After wiping away any visible trace of his uncertainty, he sent out a mental call to Swee, Wendon, and Barthime.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on his door.
“Come in.”
His three key men stepped into the chamber. “Yes, master?” Swee asked, his voice obsequious.
Vandar wanted to smack the fawning expression off the man’s face, but he kept his emotions under control. He had worked with Swee for years. The man was strong, but he was loyal because he’d long ago had the power to resist driven out of him.
“I want the soldiers’ quarters moved near the portal.”
“Sir?”
“I want the entrance to the other universe under constant guard.”
“Yes, master.”
“Half of the men will be on duty at all times. The rest will be sleeping nearby.”
“Yes, master.”
Before the adepts could leave, he stood and walked toward them, placing a hand on each of their foreheads in turn, checking their ties to him and giving them new instructions.
“YOU are very strong,” Antonia said to Kenna.
“No, I . . .”
“You don’t have to be modest about it. You were strong to survive your time with the monster. No one else has ever escaped from him.”
Kenna didn’t know how the other woman had come up with that assessment, but it sounded true.
“It’s hard to imagine so many slaves doing his bidding,” Renata muttered.
“Many of them are adepts—some much stronger than I am. Swee, Barthime, and Wendon are his three chief men,” Kenna answered. “He’ll use them and the others to fight us with their powers at the same time his soldiers are attacking us.”
“But he can’t be all-powerful,” Ross said. “Tell us his weaknesses.”
She shuddered. “I spent months with him, and I couldn’t see any.”
“Because he made sure his slaves never saw anything but his strength,” Talon muttered. “And if he didn’t like something his slaves did, he killed them. No wonder you were scared. Anyone would be.”
Hating the whole conversation, Kenna looked down at her hands. “Don’t make excuses for me,” she whispered.
“Don’t beat yourself up!” Ross replied. “It was an impossible situation for you. Maybe if you share your experiences with us, you’ll say something that we’ll interpret differently.”
Before she could speak, Talon jumped into the conversation. “I have shared her experiences,” he said. “When the women helped her free herself from Vandar, I was inside her head, and I saw Vandar up close and personal in a way Kenna can’t convey with narrative. He’s more ruthless and more powerful than any of you can imagine.”
“Yeah, then it sounds like we’re stuck,” Logan muttered.
Conversation swirled around her as Talon tried to explain the problem they’d face if they went up against Vandar and his adepts.
Kenna hardly listened. Something else was tugging at her, something that she’d been too busy to focus on until now.
When she shifted in her seat, Talon looked at her questioningly. “What?”
She swallowed hard. “Now that I have a little breathing space, I realize there’s something I haven’t told you about.”
“Oh yeah?”
She hated the edge she heard in his voice and hated the way everyone was suddenly staring at her, but she said, “I think there may be . . .” She broke off, wondering how to tell them the news. It could be good or bad. She wished she knew which. “Another . . . factor.”
“What?” Logan asked.
“Another being of power.”
“Jesus!” Logan shot back.
“I don’t know his name, but I’ve felt him.” She dragged in a breath and let it out as she looked around the room, hoping that this group of people was open to what she had to say. And hoping again that she hadn’t brought another disaster on them.
Starting again, she said, “Or, it’s more like he sensed me after I came through the portal. He’s the one who made the connection. I felt him, but I didn’t know what he was. Now it’s getting . . . more specific.”
Renata gave her a sharp look. “You’re not talking about someone from your world. You mean someone who’s already on this side of the portal?”
“Yes.”
“A man?”
She shuddered. “I’m not sure. I can’t tell.”
Renata stood up and walked to the window, then turned and faced them. “Jacob and I were stalked by a being of great power. A demon. He came after us time and again, down through the ages, every time we were reborn. Over and over, he destroyed us. Is this being you sense something like that?”
Kenna gave her a helpless look. “I don’t know!”
Jacob leaned forward. “You’re willing to trust this thing?” he pressed.
“Of course not!” She flapped her free hand in frustration. “He may be out for himself. He may be evil. He may be good, for all I can tell. The only thing I know for sure is that he found me—somehow. And he reacted to my thoughts about Vandar.”
“We may be in worse trouble if we contact it,” Logan muttered.
Kenna didn’t want to say what she was thinking, but she knew that she had to be totally honest with these people who had broken Vandar’s hold on her.
“I don’t think we have any choice,” she said in a barely audible voice. She swallowed. “Or maybe I should say, I don’t have any choice.”
“How so?” Ross asked.
“I think he’s trying to find me, and I believe he will, because we’re tied together in some way. Maybe through Vandar.”
“How is that possible?” Talo
n pressed.
Her voice rose in frustration. “I don’t know!”
Letting go of his hand, she stood. “I’m sorry. I know you were trying to help. And you did. But apparently I’ve gotten you all into more trouble than you bargained for. I’d better leave. Because if he finds me—he’ll find you.”