by Rebecca York
She clutched at that as he bent over her.
With his free hand, he ripped the tape off her mouth, and she bit back a scream of pain.
Dragging in a steadying breath, she let it out in a rush and began to speak—quickly, urgently, knowing that keeping Gwynn's attention was her only chance to do what Jack had asked her to do—to stay alive. "You can hold your ceremony. You can kill me, but you won't get what you want. The demon will kill himself—kill everyone within miles of here—before he lets you capture him."
She saw at once that she'd scored a point. He'd been looking like a man in total control of events. Now a flicker of uncertainty invaded his features.
"What do you think you know about it?" he demanded.
She forced herself to meet his gray eyes. "More than you want me to know. Have you read a book called Portal to Another Universe?"
"No."
"Pity," she said, hardly able to believe that she could talk coherently. She was naked, totally vulnerable, totally under this man's control. But she wasn't going to give up. Stay alive. Stay alive.
"I've heard of the work. It's been lost for centuries."
"You're wrong. My werewolf friend lent me a copy," she tossed off. "I was reading it last night."
"No. You're lying. What do you mean—your werewolf friend?"
"He's Jack's friend. He found your graveyard at Sugarloaf Mountain. And if you get out of this room alive, he'll find you and tear you to pieces."
JACK stood rigid on the other side of the door, his teeth clamped together to keep himself from screaming.
He'd silently turned the knob and pushed the barrier open a crack—then held back a curse as he took in the scene before his eyes. Neither of the people in the room knew he was there. They were too focused on each other.
Kathryn was naked, secured to a table. Gwynn was dressed in his black trousers, leaning over her.
It was all he could do to stop himself from bursting into the chamber and drilling the fucker. But not when he was holding his gun in his left hand. And not when Gwynn was standing over Kathryn with a knife.
Instead he strained his ears. They were talking, and he felt a surge of pride and gratitude. She was doing what he'd asked her to do. Keeping herself alive. Gwynn hadn't started the main part of the ceremony, but he could kill her if he thought he was cornered.
He saw Gwynn's hand move, and he almost leaped through the door, but he forced himself to hold back.
With a snarl of rage, the magician slapped her across the face.
She cried out, then, incredibly, started talking again.
"It won't do you any good to get angry with me. You should have read the book before you got into something too big for any man to handle. It tells about a magician who was trying to do what you're attempting.
"He died. So did a lot of other people. When the demon knew he would lose the struggle, he blew himself up. The description makes it sound rather like a thermonuclear explosion."
"No!"
KATHRYN kept her eyes focused on the magician's twisted face—knowing that some part of him believed her. "You don't have to take my word for it. Go ahead with what you're doing, and you'll find out."
"You can't stop me with your lies," he flung at her.
"I'm not lying. You're welcome to try it—if you think you know more than the last stupid bastard who made the attempt."
"Shut up. Just shut up," he shouted. Whirling away from her, he stood stiffly, chanting again, his voice rising, the tone no longer under his control.
The room seemed to shimmer with a blue light—everywhere except a large area near the top of the far wall, where it looked like a gray cloud had gathered.
She felt breathless, felt a terrible pressure against her chest. It was one of the sensations she had experienced in that place where the creature lived. The demon.
And something else was happening. In the air above her she saw dancing shapes, floating like motes of dust, only larger and shiny.
She stared at them, seeing moons and stars—like the moons and stars from her wand.
Despite everything, an exclamation of wonder welled in her throat, just as the door burst open, and she saw Jack step into the room. He had a gun in his hand.
"POLICE, freeze," Jack shouted.
Gwynn whirled toward him—his arms outstretched—and a tongue of fire that looked like it came from a flamethrower shot from his fingertips, hitting the gun, making it fly out of Jack's hands. The weapon landed on the floor, melted into a twisted shape.
Jack stared at the ruined weapon as he screamed out a curse and staggered back.
The magician whirled away from him, began a louder chant that filled the room, and Jack knew he had launched into the ceremony—hurrying through the preliminaries so he could reach the ending more quickly.
"No! You fool, you'll die with us," Jack shouted.
Gwynn ignored him, his words coming faster and louder as he stepped toward Kathryn, raising the knife above his head.
The air in the room pulsed and thickened, holding Jack in place. Making a tremendous effort, he shook himself free and charged toward Gwynn. Before he reached the magician, he hit the circle on the floor, hit an invisible barrier, and was flung back against the wall—sliding to the cold cement as searing pain reverberated through his shoulder and down his arm.
On the table, Kathryn screamed and struggled, desperate to escape. But she couldn't break free of her bonds.
Jack pushed himself up and somehow staggered to his feet, the clawing pain in his shoulder almost more than he could bear.
The rational part of his mind howled in despair. The magic circle had stopped him, flung him back. But some core of him refused to give up even in the face of what seemed like certain defeat.
Let me in! The words echoed in his head. Low and urgent, the creature's power flared in one last desperate command.
Jack went very still, his eyes fixed on the terrible scene unfolding before him. Gwynn was rapidly building to the climax of his ceremony. And there wasn't a damn thing Jack Thornton could do about it.
He had reached the point of desperation. There was no way he could save Kathryn, nothing left besides surrender to a force that had terrified him from the first moment he had considered the idea that he was no longer in control of his own destiny.
He had battled against that fear. And at the same time, he had fought for his free will with every fiber of his soul, of his body, of his intellect. Yet in this terrible moment of defeat, everything changed. With no other way to save Kathryn, he didn't hesitate to surrender his soul.
"Yes," he screamed, throwing aside his carefully marshaled defenses, inviting the one thing he had fought with strength born of primal dread.
For one moment of unimaginable fear, he was open and vulnerable to powers beyond human imagining. In the next, he felt as though shards of glass had lodged themselves in the tissues of his brain, filled the inside of his head, tearing at each cell with steel claws.
The shock of slicing pain was too great for any human to withstand, and he blacked out for several seconds, standing with his shoulders braced against the wall. Then his eyes blinked open, and he found that somehow he could endure the knives stabbing into his mind.
He saw the scene through a grainy, gray haze that wrapped itself around him. He felt his skin turn icy cold and, at the same time, hot as the fires of hell. Words came to his lips. Words in some ancient language he had never heard and didn't understand. His own magic chant giving him power that no human being had ever possessed or would ever possess again.
His voice rose in strength, filling the room. Gwynn whirled to face him, his features contorted in a mask of shock and rage, his lips moving in a frantic stream of words. But Jack could no longer hear the syllables above the screeching in his ears.
He was almost blind. Almost unable to stand against the tremendous force pressing down against his shoulders. When he tried to draw in a breath, he felt as though his lungs were filling with
water. And he knew this was what Kathryn had endured every time she entered one of the dreams.
But she had stood it. And so could he. It took a tremendous effort to raise his arm. Still, he managed it—pain tearing through his injured shoulder as he brought the wand into position. Into firing position.
He had no idea what would happen next. In amazement he watched a stream of molten flames flare from the tip of the plastic tube—like the flames that had come from the magician—only hotter, a mixture of blue and gold like the interior of the wand. As though there had never been a barrier, the flames arrowed past the protective circle, striking Gwynn in the chest.
The magician screamed in agony, his face a mask of rage and shock. For heartbeats, he stayed on his feet. Then he swayed sideways and toppled to the floor, his body lying in a crumpled heap.
The darkness in the room swelled and swirled, like a living, writhing presence. Jack gasped for breath, struggling to pull air into his lungs. Then a shock wave threw him to the ground, followed by a thunderclap that sounded as though the very fabric of time and space had been torn open.
The dark, swirling substance in the room rushed toward a jagged, gaping hole that opened in the air, tugging and pulling at him, so that he thought he would be swept along with it into a dark, airless place where no man could live.
He tried to call Kathryn's name. But once more he lost consciousness.
For long moments, there was only blessed nothingness. When he came back to himself, Kathryn was calling his name.
He opened his eyes, turned his head toward her, blinking as he took in the scene.
"Jack, oh God, Jack. Are you all right? Jack, answer me!"
He pushed himself to a sitting position, staring across at her. She was naked, her cheeks streaked with tears. "Kathryn."
He got to his feet, teetered unsteadily as he crossed the room—crossed the circle that had stopped him moments earlier. First he knelt to check Gwynn, finding no pulse in his neck. Then he staggered to Kathryn.
Leaning over, he delicately touched her hair, pressed his cheek to hers, then turned his head and kissed her on the lips, relief and gratitude surging through him.
"Jack. Thank you for saving me."
"It wasn't just me," he said in a low voice. "The demon led me here. The demon worked that trick with the wand."
"And now he's gone," she said.
"Yes," he answered, realizing as he said the word that it was true. They'd been entwined with the creature for days. Now there was a void where the presence had been.
He let that knowledge sink in as he worked awkwardly to free Kathryn from her bonds, "Did Gwynn… hurt you?"
"No," she murmured. "I'm fine—now."
When he'd freed one of her hands, she helped him with the other side.
Once he'd freed her, he kissed her again, then pulled down some of the black drapery and spread it over her naked body, hugging her to him.
Finally, he turned to look around the room. The first thing he saw was the gun. He'd seen it melt. Now it was intact again. And when he picked it up and checked the clip, he found that one round had been fired.
"Jesus!"
Kathryn sat up, clutching the curtain around her. "What?"
"Did you see my gun lying in a melted heap on the floor?"
"Yes."
Quickly he crossed to Gwynn and rolled the magician over. Instead of a burn mark on his front, there was a bullet hole in his chest. A perfect shot to the heart.
"It looks like I shot him," he muttered as he came back to Kathryn. "Is that what you saw?"
"I… I saw fire shoot out of the wand."
"Yeah," he answered, picking up the gun and shoving it back into his waistband. He pulled out the wand and looked at it. It was unblemished, the beveled plastic clear and bright, the stars and moons swirling in their blue liquid.
"You said the demon did that?" she asked. "How?"
"I let him into my mind, and he killed Gwynn."
She stared at him. "You let him in? Lord—that must have been…" She fumbled for the right word.
"Scary," he supplied. "But it was the only way I could save you—save us."
"Oh, Jack!" She pressed her cheek against his middle, and he stroked his fingers through her hair.
In the distance he heard sirens. He hadn't told Granger where he was going. He hadn't even known. But it sounded like somebody had called the police.
Kathryn pushed herself off the table, swaying on her feet as she pulled the curtain around her like a toga. He steadied her, held her to him.
"We'd better get our stories straight," he said quickly. "I mean—you saw me shoot Gwynn. Because that's the only way anybody's going to believe us."
"Yes." She turned her head. "And how did you find me?"
He ran a hand through his hair, at a complete loss. "Jesus. I don't know."
"You'd looked through records to see what other property Gwynn owns?"
"Yeah. Right. Let's hope he owns this place."
His arm slung around her, they climbed the steps. "We'd better go out," he said. "Before they come in here with guns blazing."
The rain had stopped, and the sun was fighting its way past the clouds as they staggered together onto the porch. Jack slung his good arm around Kathryn as two police cruisers roared into the yard.
Granger jumped out of the unmarked, looking them both over. "I see I missed the excitement," he said.
"Gwynn's down in his ceremonial chamber—dead. I shot him." He pulled out his Sig. "You want this, I assume."
"Yeah."
Granger bagged the gun. and two uniforms entered the house.
"He shot him to save my life," Kathryn said. "He was going to kill me in one of his ceremonies. Like he killed Heather. He cut off my clothing and he was going to stab me in the heart."
Granger nodded, then turned to Jack. "Why didn't you tell me where the hell you were?"
"The phone went dead! I guess you found this place the same way I did—by checking other properties he owned."
"Right," Granger agreed, then looked toward Kathryn. "Do you need medical attention?"
"No." She looked down with distaste at the black curtain. "Do you have anything I can put on?"
"I'd give you my shirt, but getting out of it is a major effort," Jack said.
"I've got some clean gym clothes in the back of my unmarked. If you don't mind a guy's sweats," Granger offered.
"No. That would be fine."
He brought her the clothing, and she disappeared into the bathroom.
While she was gone, the two uniforms emerged, their eyes wide as they reported on the ceremonial chamber and the table where Kathryn had been tied down naked.
Staying on his feet had become too much effort for Jack. He sat down heavily on the damp steps. When Kathryn returned, she sat down beside him, locking her fingers with his good hand.
"He should be back in the hospital," she said, raising her eyes to Granger.
"An ambulance is on the way." The captain scuffed his foot against the gravel of the driveway. "I'm sorry," he said in a low voice. "You were right about this case. I was wrong."
Jack gave a tight nod.
Kathryn raised her chin. "We figured out it was Gwynn who turned in that complaint on us. He was driving past my house, getting ready to kidnap me. But he saw Jack there, and he took an opportunity to try and get Jack off his back."
Granger muttered his agreement with her scenario.
Afraid that Kathryn was going to push the captain harder, Jack tightened his grip on her hand.
She picked up on the signal, looked toward him, then pressed her lips together. And he thought she was going to make a very good cop's wife.
"BEDTIME," Jack said.
"I want to stay up with Kathryn," Lily protested.
"I know. But we're practicing listening to what adults tell us."
Lily gave a little nod, her gaze fixed on Kathryn. "But she'll still be here in the morning."
"Yes
," Jack said, feeling the thickness in his throat. He'd been torn. He'd never thought that a man with children should move his fiancée into the house. But the thought of her alone in her duplex had made his stomach knot. Intellectually, he knew the danger was over from Swinton, from Gwynn, and from the dreams. Yet he simply couldn't allow her out of his sight. So he'd insisted she move in with the family.
Things were working out pretty well. Emily had volunteered to find a new position. He'd convinced her that the family needed her. And Kathryn had added her voice to the warm assurances, telling the housekeeper how wonderful it was to move into a smoothly running home. But Emily could have some more time to herself now. So the women were working out their relationship. As were the kids and their soon-to-be stepmom.
Craig was a little prickly. Probably because he felt he had to keep the memory of his real mother alive. But Kathryn was dealing with that, too.
"Let's go up, and you can tell me what story you want me to read," Kathryn said to Lily.
"The King's Stilts."
"Okay. And tomorrow after school, we can get some more books out of the library. I'll pick you up, and we'll go right there."
Lily's eyes sparkled. She was sucking up the attention that this new woman in her life seemed to love lavishing on her.
"We can call you when we're ready," Kathryn said to Jack.
"I'll come up with you," he answered, heaving himself off the sofa. He'd reinjured the shoulder in the fight with Gwynn and set back his recovery. But he'd also learned what was important in life.
He wasn't going to miss the moments with his family. So while Kathryn supervised Lily's bath, he stepped into Craig's room and made sure his son's homework was finished, then talked about the Orioles game they were going to attend.
He was coming back down the hall when the conversation in his daughter's room stopped him in his tracks.
"And the same bad man that kidnapped me, kidnapped you," Lily was saying.
"Yes."
"Were you scared?"
"Yes. But I kept thinking your daddy would come rescue me."
"Me, too."
Jack's chest was so tight he could barely breathe. They'd agreed it was better not to tell Lily why Kathryn had ended up in Gwynn's clutches. Maybe when his daughter was older, he'd explain that her stepmom had saved her life. Right now, that was too much of a burden for her slender shoulders to bear.