Repairer of the Breach (Stones of Fire Book 4)

by Sarah Ashwood

  Ellie breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Much better. Makes me feel like we’re not so alone here.”

  “Don’t say that,” Carter chuckled, feeling better himself. Having a light source, weak as it was, made the entire ordeal a little less worrisome.

  “Why not?”

  “At this point, I kind of want to be alone, don’t you? Better to be alone than risk anything else that might be out there.”

  She quirked a smile. “True. Alright, now that we have light, let me see if I can find us something to eat.”

  While she did that, Carter closed and fastened the wooden shutters over the window, not wanting their lamp to draw unwelcome attention. Also, the gathering storm was finally breaking. Raindrops pattered on the stones outside the cottage. Thunder rumbled gently, echoing off the surrounding mountains. The effect might have been cozy—shut inside the small home with Ellie, the storm outside—if not for the circumstances.

  Carter wasn’t too keen on eating food in this weird place, but as soon as Ellie mentioned eating his stomach roared to life, reminding him it had been hours since he’d eaten anything. Ellie spread out some of the food the angel—if that’s what it was—had left for her. By further searching in the house, she supplemented the meal with dried fruit and some kind of chewy, hard meat, like jerky.

  “I hope this isn’t human,” Carter said grimly, as she took a seat next to him on the floor, the meal in front of them on a cloth.

  “Human? Gross. Give me a break. You are being such a pessimist right now.”

  “What’s to be optimistic about? We’re in a crazy world with who knows what kind of occupants and rules. We’ve been lucky so far, but we’re liable to run up against something we can’t handle at any point.”

  “Something we can’t handle? You’re the Talos. You can handle anything. More than that, you’re Carter. I haven’t seen anything yet you haven’t been able to figure out. Except maybe me,” she goaded.

  She put her hand on his thigh, smiling up at him as she spoke. The red-orange glow of the lamp reflected off the corner of her glasses. Carter stared down at her upturned face, feeling his chest constrict. All joking aside, she was dead serious. She meant it. She’d come full circle from the young woman who was terrified of him when they’d first met to looking at him with the kind of trust that said she was relying on him implicitly, and absolutely believed he could get her through this.

  Such blind faith both terrified and energized him. Made him realize how huge his role as her partner, her protector was, but also steeled his spine to fulfill it. She was right. He hadn’t backed down yet, even last night when it came to potentially dying for her. He wasn’t going to back down now. No matter what this world threw at them.

  “Thanks, Ellie,” he said, his voice sounding rough in his own ears from the force of his emotions. Before he could stop to think otherwise, he leaned down to kiss her in a move that felt as natural, as right as breathing.

  He wasn’t prepared for the bonfire that leapt to life at the touch of her mouth under his, at her soft moan as she leaned into him, returning the gesture. She wasn’t shying away. In fact, she wasn’t being shy at all. Her lips parted under his, welcoming him in, and that was it. The world outside be damned. The chaos of magical Stones and his unique shifter blood and Nosizwe and Sean’s longstanding feud a parallel universe away be damned. Everything be damned except right now, this moment, with her, Ellie, his wife, alone in the semi-darkness.

  He slid a hand behind her back, drawing her against him. She tilted her head, deepening the kiss even as she reached up and took off her glasses, setting them aside so they were no longer in the way. Then her hands were on his shoulders, pulling him even closer—as if they could possibly be any closer. They could, but only in one way. And the next thing Carter knew, it seemed as if she was leading him towards that one way. The hands on his shoulders were pulling him down on top of her even as she lay back on the blanket on the floor.

  His mind was on fire, savoring the feel of her body beneath his while simultaneously trying to determine if she really knew what she was doing, and, if so, if she truly wanted this. She seemed to. She was arching up towards him, breathing heavily, continuing to kiss him. Her hands fumbled at his shirt, tugging at it, until he half sat up and let her draw it off over his head. Then her hands were tracing his chest, his stomach, fluttering across his back as she drew him back down.

  “Carter…” she whispered.

  “Ellie.” Before she could urge his mouth back to hers, he stopped her. “Are you sure you want this?”

  “Why, don’t you?”

  Her chest was heaving with the force of her heavy breaths. Carter tried not to notice that. Tried not to think of how close it was, how tempting it was, in case he had to pull back and put a stop to this.

  “Are you kidding? Have you missed all my insinuations? I’ve been wanting this from the beginning. Hell, I could have done you the first night I met you.”

  Especially after seeing her wearing only his t-shirt, soaked and clinging to her. A memory he’d never forgotten.

  She breathed a laugh. “Yeah, right. You didn’t want to have sex with me that first night.”

  “The hell I didn’t. Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

  She shook her head against the blanket on the floor, her lips pressed together to hide a grin. “You didn’t even like me. You said that yourself.”

  “That’s the funny thing about men. We could do somebody hot that we don’t like. We’re kind of stupid that way.”

  For the first time, her passion seemed to abate a bit. Her smiles turned to a quizzical frown as she traced the lines of his face with her fingertips.

  “But this is more than sex, right? It isn’t just sex. You said you loved me. You said it was my decision what I wanted to do about—about our marriage.”

  “Hey.” To stop her talking, to ease her fears, he lowered more of his weight onto her as he ducked his head to claim her mouth with a reassuring kiss. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re the only woman in this world—in either world, in any world for me, Ellie. You know I love you. And if we have sex and you want to stay together and try to figure out being married, that’s what we’ll do.”

  He caught her hand, threading her fingers through his.

  “It’s a little late to ask you to marry me, so let me ask you this instead.” He paused, studying her face in the flickering lamplight, every line, every freckle, every mark and feature. Her hazel eyes and dark blonde hair. The sweet shape her mouth, begging him to kiss her, firing temptation that was nearly impossible to put on hold, even for a moment.

  “Will you be my wife, Ellie?”

  She blinked once, absorbing the question, recognizing the distinction between what he was saying and an ordinary marriage proposal. Slowly, that smile reappeared, breaking across her face like the sun rising over the horizon.

  “Yes,” she whispered, looking almost a little shy. “We’ve come this far together. I can’t imagine most couples go through more than we already have. If we’ve survived everything up to this point, I think I can survive living with you for the rest of my life.”

  “Cooking me dinner, picking up my dirty socks off the floor, bringing me my pipe and slippers…”

  “In your dreams.”

  “Hey, I’ll take you whatever way I can have you.”

  “Well, you’ve got me now.” She freed her hand and slid it around the back of his head, angling her mouth up to meet his. “In real life too, not just a dream. So you better shut up and take advantage of that.”

  Chapter Seven

  Maybe they were crazy. It wasn’t an idyllic setting. It wasn’t the 5-star hotel with rose petals on the bed and champagne in the ice bucket that Ellie had once mentioned. Not even close. But it was the two of them together, with the storm and the outside world—whichever world it was—temporarily shut away. With how life had gone lately, that was about as good as it got for them.

  It was
also celebrating the fact that they’d survived so far. It was Ellie and him and all of the passion and frustration and attraction Carter had found in her during the past months. Maybe in the back of both their minds was the knowledge that either one of them could still die pretty easily in this strange world. In either world. It was a now or never event. Maybe it wasn’t a great time to be having sex, but, then again, when was it not a great time to have sex?

  Rationalize it all he wanted, there wasn’t any rationalization about the explosion of emotions that went through Carter while they made love. There was this stereotype that sex was supposed to be more impersonal for a man. That he was supposed to be able to do a girl and walk away and have it mean nothing. That might have been true in the past, but it wasn’t true now. Ellie had changed him. She’d changed a lot of things. She’d changed herself since they’d first met and she’d indicated the idea of sex with him was disgusting until he’d called her hand on it.

  Boy, had she changed.

  Beauty and the beast. That’s what he’d called them then, but the beast was tamed for now. In fact, Ellie was the one who seemed to want things to progress faster until Carter finally told her, half-jokingly, to slow down.

  “I’m just afraid,” she admitted. “Afraid that something’s going to happen to ruin this. That this might be our only chance to—”

  He got it. There’d been lots of the unexpected lately. However, if it was their one chance he sure as hell didn’t want to rush it, and he told her that.

  “I get one chance to make your first time right, so let me do my thing, okay?”

  She laughed, but she didn’t argue anymore. They found a pace to suit them both, and when all was said and done and they were lying there skin to skin, Carter felt nothing but relief that they’d made it this far, overcoming the obstacles, the odds. No interference from the outside world, either. For a brief time, he’d managed to forget about shapeshifters and portals and the Stones of Fire and his own role in all of it. For a brief time, Carter had been able to forget everything except his wife and himself.

  Now, as she drifted quietly off to sleep, he lay next to her, awake, his mind beginning to churn. He should have been the one knocked out, considering how long it had been since the last time he’d had sex. Which was quite a while. Instead, he felt energized, possibly with the realization that Ellie was now well and truly his wife. No more talk of annulments or divorce. Ellie wouldn’t have done this if she wasn’t intent on staying. This was it. She was his forever, which meant he had to find a way out of here. She’d done her part while he was unconscious back on the beach. He had to do his.

  Once she’d drifted into a deep sleep, Carter carefully eased away from her and stood to get dressed. He draped her with another blanket he found on a shelf. She didn’t stir. She didn’t stir afterward when, after getting dressed, he started prowling around the home’s small space—only two rooms—examining every hole, every corner, every cupboard, every basket and jar, every shelf for anything that might explain the mystery of where they were and why.

  Clues were hard to come by. He didn’t find a single thing to help clear up the quandary. What he did find appeared to be ordinary belongings of a way of life from long ago. Something teased at the edge of his consciousness, though. Something flickered at the edge of his brain. The closest comparison he could make was seeing something out of the corner of his eye: there, but not quite there. Or was it there? It was too insubstantial, too ethereal to be certain. In fact, the longer he prowled around the home, restless, feeling the drive to do something, to act, but held captive by the tiny space’s walls, the stronger his sense grew that something was around besides Ellie and himself. He kept jerking his head to the side, trying to capture if somebody truly was in the edge of his vision. There never was, but the sensation remained, overwhelming him.

  Carter couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to get out or he’d go crazy. Thankfully the rain had stopped, the storm moving on. Staring down at Ellie, he considered waking her up, but this was her first chance to rest in a long time. She’d done all the initial work while he was passed out. Besides, he didn’t want to scare her, and he wouldn’t be gone long. Taking the lamp, he slipped outside into the city streets, closing the door behind him.

  Carter didn’t make it far before the perception of a presence, a life, many lives, slammed him like a fist to the face. He found himself standing in the middle of the roadway, breathing heavily. Sweat broke out on his temples. He looked this way and that, turned his head every direction possible. Turned actual circles in place. There—there, in the edge of his vision he thought he caught a glimpse of someone. No, that was nuts. When he looked again, he saw nobody. But it happened again. And again. And again. All around him, never anything he could directly see with his physical senses, but something he detected just the same. Presences. Life.

  He clapped a hand to his face, covering it, trying to block out the overwhelming impression. The noises started next, and he heard himself groan aloud.

  What the hell was happening here?

  A whisper here or there. That was how it started. But soon the whispers were a soft roar, then a cacophony of sound, the spaces between voices filled in with the sounds of animals and movement, of creaking carts and wagons. Of the wind sighing between buildings, down alleyways, around eaves. The sum of the noises, the sounds, was of the city either waking back up or thriving around him.

  Only…when he studied the scene before him with physical eyes, Carter saw nothing in the weak, flickering lamplight and the pale glow of the moon except emptiness. Desertion. There was nobody here. No one but Ellie and himself.

  “This place is haunted,” he muttered to himself. The apparent tranquility forbade speaking aloud. Maybe it would wake the ghosts.

  He snorted.

  Ghosts.

  On the surface, it was a ridiculous idea. However, the ever-loudening dissonance proved that it actually wasn’t ridiculous. Something was going on.

  As if to challenge the ghosts, or the vision, or the hallucination brought on by a possible unknown head injury, Carter spoke again. Out loud. Loudly.

  “There’s no one here,” he said. His voice rang in the stillness, against the pavement. “No one,” he repeated.

  When he spoke, the sounds swirling around him hushed a bit and the blurs at the edge of his vision slowed.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, even louder now, defying whatever forces controlled this freaky place, “but I’m not some puppet whose strings you can pull. Leave me alone. Take your damned prophecies and predictions and find somebody else. I don’t believe in this crap anyway,” he added, as if whoever, whatever was there, cared.

  “Perhaps you don’t, but the prophecies and predictions believe in you.”

  The voice came from behind him. It wasn’t Ellie’s, and she should be the only person speaking to him. Carter whirled, his hand automatically reaching for his gun. The gun he didn’t have.

  Someone stood there. A creature, taller than himself. Pretty ordinary looking, except for the wings. Some sort of shifter he hadn’t seen before. Not that that meant much. The world was full of shifters he hadn’t encountered. They were as broad and varied as the Earth itself.

  “You are unarmed,” the visitor observed. How had it snuck up on him like that? Normally, his senses were on better alert. Nobody snuck up on him back home. Either this place had seriously thrown him off, or the shifter was that good. “Where is your sword?” he went on. “You should not be without it.”

  This irritated Carter.

  “What am I supposed to do with a damn sword?” he growled. “I’m no swordsman. Why don’t you give me a weapon I can use? Like a SIG?”

  The newcomer didn’t flinch.

  “Some weapons are useless in the face of peculiar conflicts,” he answered mysteriously. “Carry the sword, Repairer of the Breach. You know not when you’ll need it.”

  The title irritated Carter further. In fact, it made him ang
ry.

  “Stop calling me that,” he growled. “It’s idiotic. I don’t know what breach you’re talking about or what I’m supposed to repair.”

  “But you will.” The winged shifter’s equanimity never faded. “You sense them, do you not?” it went on smoothly. “They have lives. They live. You do not see them, but what does that matter? You know they are there. It is your task to join the life you once lived with the life you live now.”

  Mute, Carter stared at the other shifter, jaw clamped as he tried to think of something to say. Something besides “Piss off” or “go back to wherever you came from” or “mind your own damned business.” Something that might actually be useful instead of livid, which was how he felt. Carter hated nonsense. And this was nothing but sheer nonsense.

  Finally, he was able to grind out, “And how, exactly, am I supposed to do that?”

  The creature’s eyes bore deep into his. “You will know,” was all he said. More mysteries. More riddles. “You will know,” he repeated. “There was a purpose to your being chosen.”

  Before Carter could frame a response, the other shifter went on to say, “Collect your wife, Repairer. It is time for you to return to your current home. Take her with you. She does not belong here.”

  “Big surprise,” he retorted drily. “She doesn’t, and neither do I.”

  The unknown shifter stared at him. “Do you not? She is human. A mere human should not be capable of passing between times and worlds, as she has done. It was permitted because you brought her.”

  “Not to hear her tell it,” Carter objected. “She pushed me through the portal trying to save my life.”

  “Yes…” the creature intoned. “She did save your life. Which is why she has been accepted, even helped. However, her time here is at an end, and you must go with her.”