by Неизвестный
When she took a step toward the door, Talon also stood and grabbed her arm, holding her in place. “Sweetheart, I think it’s the other way around. This is my house. They’re the ones who are going to leave.”
The words sounded like a challenge, and she thought from what Talon had said about his family relationships that he was protecting his territory.
Kenna looked from him to the rest of the group, seeing the sudden tension zinging back and forth among the Marshall men. Talon had told her that each werewolf was the head of his own pack. She hadn’t quite understood what he meant, but in this charged moment, she was seeing the theory in action. They couldn’t stop themselves from responding to the challenge.
The men all stood, their arms stiff, their hands balled into fists at their sides as they each looked at the others. She was sure they were evaluating their chances of a successful attack.
She tried to absorb what was happening. One minute they’d been part of a group. Now they were separate. And they looked like enemies.
A low growl came from one of them, and she wasn’t sure which, or if it was more than one reacting to the challenge Talon had thrown out.
But she sensed that if any of them did or said the wrong thing, they would be at each other’s throats.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AS KENNA WATCHED, the rest of the women also got to their feet, each of them stepping to the side of her mate and putting a restraining hand on his shoulder. Only Ross was alone among the men, but Kenna had already seen that he had the best control.
Apparently, the women had already agreed who would speak if they found themselves in this situation.
Rinna stepped forward. “Settle down,” she said in a voice that was commanding but low. “We don’t have time for a turf battle. Or for werewolf grandstanding. We all know this is Talon’s house, and we’ll leave if that’s what he really wants.”
She paused and looked around at the men. “But we’re facing a common enemy. Maybe more than one enemy. We know about Vandar on the other side of the portal. And there may be someone over here, too, who could hurt any of us.”
All the men looked at her. Her husband, Logan, shifted uncomfortably beside her.
When he cleared his throat, Kenna tensed, because she’d decided he was the one most likely to cause trouble.
But his words surprised her.
“I tend to get hyper,” he muttered, glancing at Kenna, then back to his wife. “But I know you’re right. I’m glad I have you to keep me in line.”
The tension in the room went down a couple of notches.
Grant also spoke. “Family is important.”
“Yes,” Antonia murmured, snuggling close to him.
Ross’s voice turned businesslike. “So let’s get back to the real problem. It’s not us, it’s a monster from the other universe. And maybe a monster here.”
After hearing the sobering words, they all sat down, but now Kenna hoped she wasn’t going to cause another flare-up.
“I created a bad situation for all of you by coming here,” she murmured.
Ross turned toward her. “You didn’t create anything bad. You warned us of something that’s going to happen—an invasion.”
She answered with a tight nod, not quite sure if she followed his logic.
He added, “The Marshall family has always been this way. Each of us wants to protect his own territory. But we’re learning to adapt to the modern world.”
Kenna hoped she could say the same thing.
“Can you find this man, or whatever he is?” Ross asked. “The one who’s living in our world.”
“He’s . . . you’d call it out West. I know he lives somewhere in the big mountains.”
Logan laughed. “That’s a lot of territory to cover. I think you have no idea how big the United States is.” He picked up his laptop computer from the floor beside his chair and typed on the keyboard, then turned the machine around. “Here’s a map of the United States.”
She’d seen hand-drawn maps that showed where Breezewood was in relationship to nearby cities, but she’d never seen anything like this before, and she stared at the colored patches on the screen, trying to make some sense of them.
“This is a map?”
When Talon heard her confusion, he said, “It’s the whole United States. There are no details—just a color for each state.”
“Um.” She had learned in her prep sessions that they were in the United States. She didn’t really know what that meant.
Logan tapped the screen. “We’re over here in Pennsylvania—this pink area along the East Coast. The Great Plains are in the middle of the country. The mountain states are over here—a couple of thousand miles away.” As he spoke, he swept his hand across to another area.
Talon looked from him to Kenna. “I don’t think that means too much to her.”
It didn’t.
“My point is, there’s a lot of territory between us and him,” Logan said.
“You think we’re safe because of distance?” Renata said.
“Maybe.”
“The demon always found me and Jacob. It didn’t matter where we were,” Renata said. “I don’t think we should just wait for this thing. We should meet him head-on.”
Kenna gave her a grateful look. “If we got closer, I think I could . . .” She lifted one shoulder. “I think if I used trial and error, I could find him.”
Logan laughed. “Sure.”
“Maybe we should test the theory. We could fly to Denver,” Ross suggested.
When everyone stared at him, he shrugged. “You want to stay here, like sitting ducks?”
“We’d be on his turf if we go to him,” Logan argued.
“Which will protect our homes from him,” Ross said.
Kenna felt her gratitude swell. She could have been in this alone. Ross was assuming that they would help her.
He turned to her. “Denver is a city on the plains, right at the edge of the mountains. A good staging area.” He stood. “I’ll see about chartering a plane, so we can fly there.”
Her eyes widened. “Isn’t that something expensive?”
“Yes, but we’re in a hurry. And I don’t want to waste time.” He looked around the room. “Anyone who doesn’t want to go is free to stay here, or go home.”
The werewolves looked at their life mates.
“I don’t want to drop out now,” Rinna said. The other women agreed. And nobody ended up backing out.
Ross walked down the hall and disappeared into one of the bedrooms. He was back in only a few minutes to say that the trip was arranged, and they could leave from Altoona Blair County Airport.
It was all happening so fast that Kenna’s mind was spinning. She’d told them about a man—or a monster—who lived in some vague area called “the West,” and they were going there. She’d told them she could find him if she were closer, but had she just been grasping at a straw?
Talon took her to the bedroom, where he helped her pack some clothing and other things she would need, like her toothbrush. She wanted to grab him and hold on tight, but she knew that they didn’t have a lot of time, so she simply followed his suggestions.
When they came back, she saw two of the vehicles called SUVs pulled up to the door. They divided up and climbed into the cars. Ross drove one. Grant and Antonia sat in the back. And she and Talon took the middle seat, where he helped her buckle her seat belt. As she tried to relax, she thought about how limited her experience was in this universe. She had been here for over two weeks, with an interruption when she’d gone back home, but this was the first time she had ridden in one of these machines. And the first time she had been out of the immediate area where Talon lived.
“It’s about a forty-minute ride,” Ross said over his shoulder as he turned from the small road that led to Talon’s house onto a bigger one.
She gripped Talon’s hand as the vehicle speeded up. He turned his head toward her and squeezed back. When another car roared past
them, she cringed.
They reached a larger road, and the number of cars increased, all going very fast, even at night.
“Does everybody have a car?” she asked.
“Just about everyone. And most people have more than one.”
She tried to relax as they picked up speed on a wider road, with many cars whizzing by.
Talon lived in the woods, but his location had given her a false picture of this society. Outside the woods, there were huge buildings that were nothing like anything she had ever seen. It was early in the morning, and many of them were brightly lighted, telling her there was plenty of energy.
In other places, she saw acres of individual houses, and she realized that she’d had no idea how many people lived here. She was sure Vandar didn’t know either. Would that make a difference when he tried to invade?
There were big green signs above the roadway, announcing what she assumed were the names of various towns and cities. When they came to a sign for the airport, Ross took that road.
“We’ve got a private plane,” he said over his shoulder again. “That means we don’t have to go through security. And we can fly directly to Denver.”
They pulled up in a place where a lot of cars were parked, then got out, and walked toward a waiting airplane.
Kenna felt like she was being swept along into the unknown. The plane was a lot bigger than the SUV.
“That can fly?” she whispered to Talon.
“Yes. Don’t worry.”
She wanted to back away. Instead, she climbed up the short flight of stairs and dropped into one of the seats where Talon helped her with the seat belt again. Looking around, she saw that all the Marshall men and their life mates fit in easily. And there were seats left over in the back.
She sat with her heart pounding, listening to people around her talking, making plans for what happened when they encountered the being they were flying to meet.
“There’s a bathroom in the back,” Talon said. “But you can’t get up and use it until they turn off the seat belt sign.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t be scared. People in this world take flying for granted.”
She laughed. “It’s like a fairy story. About a magic carpet. Or a girl who rides off on a huge bird—or a flying horse.”
He covered her hand with his. “Just relax.”
The conversation faded into the background because her ears were ringing as the plane began to move, then picked up speed until it was racing down a black strip, like a highway.
When she realized it had it lifted off the ground, she grabbed the arms of her seat as she looked down at the land falling away below them. All the buildings got smaller and smaller, and it was almost impossible to see the cars.
Then she gasped.
“What?”
“The clouds. They’re under us.”
“Yeah. It’s normal.”
She sat gripping the seat arms, thinking that at least she could no longer see the ground so far below. Which was a mercy, because she feared they could drop out of the sky at any moment.
“We have reached our cruising altitude,” a disembodied voice said. “You are free to get up and move about the cabin.”
Instead of getting up, she leaned toward Talon so that her head was resting on his shoulder.
He clasped her hand, and his touch helped her relax.
“Imagine you’re drifting on the clouds—and go to sleep.”
She closed her eyes, sure she was too tense for that.
But maybe she did drift off, because the next thing she knew, a sharp bump made her realize they were on the ground again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
RAMSAY GALLAGHER FELT the presence of the woman. He had planned to go looking for her. Now he didn’t have to do it. She had come across the country to him. Not just her. Other men and women. Well, they weren’t quite here yet, but they would be.
If he wanted to, he could hide himself from her, from them. But was that the best thing to do? He had a connection to the woman. He could lead her and the rest of them to him and make her think she was the one doing it.
While in fact, he was luring them to their destruction.
They were unusual. All of them. He sensed abilities that most of their race did not possess.
Well, none of that would do them any good. He would kill them—up in the mountains where nobody could see the scene of destruction. Then he would hide the evidence. When he was finished with them, the danger would be over, and he could go on with the life he had chosen for himself in his isolated mountain stronghold.
“WE have to go that way,” Kenna said, pointing toward the mountains rising like a massive, jagged wall of rock in the west.
Ross, who had been conferring with Logan, stepped up to her. “You know where to find the thing?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly.”
“So what are we going to do, just drive around hoping to see something?” Talon inquired, unable to keep the edge out of his voice.
She gave him an understanding look and closed her hand around his arm before turning back to Ross. “I think . . . if you let me sit beside you, I can tell you which way to drive.”
When she climbed into the front seat next to Ross, Talon was stuck in the seat behind her, with Renata beside him and Jacob in the back. The rest of the contingent took the second vehicle.
He couldn’t see Kenna’s face, only hear the strained sound of her voice as she gave Ross directions.
They stopped at a fast food restaurant for a quick meal, then drove down Route 70 toward a place called Grand Junction. He’d never been in this part of the country before, and he felt the weight of the mountains around him. They were so much taller and steeper than the eastern ranges he was familiar with.
If they’d been in this majestic country for some other reason, he would have enjoyed the trip. He loved the natural environment, and this landscape was much different from the forests and rivers of the East where he took clients on wilderness expeditions.
It wasn’t simply the scale of the mountains. The vegetation was different, too. The deciduous trees he saw were small and slender, and the pines were very tall and straight. As he looked out at the mountains, he saw what he knew was the timberline, the place where the altitude became too high for trees to grow.
Kenna interrupted his thoughts with another direction to Ross. “That way.”
His cousin took a turn off the interstate onto a secondary road, toward Granby.
The late morning sky was very blue, clear of clouds. They were climbing into the mountains, and the air was thinner than he was used to.
Each time they came to a road that crossed the one they were on, Ross stopped and gave Kenna a chance to tell him which direction to take. As the day progressed, the roads became narrower and less well maintained, and finally turned to gravel.
By late afternoon, they were in what looked like virgin forest.
Ross stopped again at a road that was barely visible through what had become dense forest.
“Up there,” Kenna murmured, pointing.
Talon followed her outstretched arm and saw a house built like a Swiss chalet perched on the edge of a bluff.
Ross was starting to make the turn when a flash of something above them in the sky made Talon’s head jerk around. Craning his neck, he saw what looked like a great bird in the distance. It flew high in the late afternoon sky, and Talon’s gaze fixed on it.
He was an expert in bird identification because his clients appreciated it when he pointed out the wildlife in an area. But he had never seen anything quite like the thing that was speeding toward them as though it had known where to find them all along and was simply waiting for them to drive into its territory.
He kept his gaze fixed on the monster. The wings were extraordinary, more like a bat. As it came closer he knew that no bat could have that wingspan.
The neck was long. The body was covered by scales that glinted silver in
the afternoon sky.
As he watched, it filled the sky, then suddenly swooped down at them.
Jesus! It struck him all at once what he was seeing—a dragon from an ancient nightmare! A dragon like the monster Kenna had revealed when he’d shared her memories of the other universe.
As it descended, fire shot out of its mouth, blasting the top of the vehicle, filling the interior of the SUV with sudden heat.
Talon cursed, leaning over the seat so that he could shield Kenna as best he could.
Beside him, Renata gasped. “Por Dios, what was that?”
As the beast wheeled around for another assault, Ross shouted, “Out of the car. Get behind those rocks.”
The doors opened, and the occupants of the SUV jumped out.
Everybody ran toward the rocks, everybody except Kenna, who rushed in the other direction. Right into the middle of the road where she was completely exposed to the creature.
Talon followed her. “Take cover.”
“No! I’m through running and hiding.”
His curse rang out across the mountains. When he grabbed her arm, she tried to shake him off. “Don’t distract me. Go with the others.”
He wanted to tell her she was crazy to try and fight this thing, but he wasn’t the one who had been a slave.
She stood defiantly, her feet planted on the gravel as she raised her arms toward the great beast that was coming back toward her.
Talon had no time to contemplate his own death. All he knew was that he had to defend his mate—to the end. That was the only thought in his head as he began to tear off his clothing and say the chant that changed him from man to wolf.
What chance did a wolf have against a dragon? A beast that was five times his size.
He didn’t know. But he would battle the thing with every ounce of strength and resolve he had.
He had never pushed through the change so quickly, willing his body to transform from man to wolf. The pain was blinding, but within seconds he came down on all fours and raised his head, looking for the monster.
To his horror, it had circled around to come arrowing down toward Kenna.