Black Gate: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4 (5 page)

Shock filled her as she felt the pull, then fell backward, away from the platform. But she was still connected. The darkness stretched like warm taffy to span the distance.

“Cut it. Try to cut it.” Frank gave the order but Sebastian already had his knife out. He slashed down, a look of grim determination on his face. One strand snapped and she whimpered. Matteo pulled out a knife, followed by Ryan.

“Stop.” She pleaded with them, but they wouldn’t listen as Matteo slashed from her other side. They cut the darkness away from her with brutal efficiency. “Stop. Please.”

She was bleeding out. Not blood. Power poured out of her body from each shredded end, lost and abandoned, it turned the room into a storm of whirling, crackling lightning. Her lightning. Her power. Her life flowed from the dark ends like a fire hose opened up full blast.

“I think you’re pissing it off.” Andrew’s calm voice froze them all in place. She whimpered in pain and the darkness rose. Katherine needed, it answered. A black fog rose from the platform, flowing over flesh and into her lungs.

The boost of energy allowed her to grab Seb’s wrist, to speak. “Seb, stop. Stop. Trust me. You’re going to kill us all.”

Two thin threads of black stretched from her shoulder back to the darkness, two thin strands that stood between the men and the full fury of whatever this entity was. Sebastian froze, looked into her eyes and held his knife at the ready. “LT?” He glanced behind her to where Frank crouched.

Katherine tried to twist around to face Frank. She was technically in charge once the freak show started, but she was compromised and they all knew it. Frank’s call. “Please, Frank. Don’t. This thing will kill all of you if you cut me loose.”

“But not you? Is that it? Not you?”

Katherine nodded. “It’s alive, Frank. It’s alive. Trust me on this one, I’m begging you.”

“And if we leave you to it? We live and you die instead? Is that it?” Frank studied her for a moment, then glanced at each of her team members to gauge their reaction. They were a group of men who each walked his own path. There was no absolute law in a group like this. Too much experience and respect for that.

Seb stood and put his knife away. “She’s been right before. It’s her ass covered in black goo. Let’s see what happens.”

Matteo’s eyes drifted over her neck and chin, down her body to her waist, inspected every inch still covered in rippling black energy. “This is bad, Kitty-Kat. No good. I say we cut her loose and run.”

Katherine closed her eyes and shook her head as Matteo rested his knife against the strand. No pressure, just ready. “No.” The darkness didn’t like his blade. A wave of power roamed the room and pushed Matteo back from her, and it, like an invisible fist punching him in the gut.

“What the fuck?” Ryan flipped his knife around in his palm like a spinning top. “This thing really is alive?”

Frank had remained silent up to this point. “I don’t like it.”

“I fucking hate it.” Matteo rubbed his chest and stepped forward. “It wants to swallow her whole.”

Andrew stood across the room, once again covering their backs. His blue eyes were glacier cold and they searched hers, looking for something. Whatever he was looking for, he must have found it. She watched the wheels turn on in his mind, calculating their odds, calculating
her odds
of survival. “Less than ten minutes to clear the area unless we want a hell of a fight on the way out of here. I’m with Katherine. Should be her call.”

“I say cut it.” Their lieutenant, Frank, had the final vote. Andrew shrugged and resumed guard duty.

Ryan cursed but knelt down beside her. “Sorry. Cut-and-run vote wins.”

Katherine tried to twist away from them, but the weight of the substance was too much. She was stuck like an elephant in mud.

“Damn, Kitty-Kat. Sorry, but we’ve got to go.” Seb crouched down beside her and Ryan placed his blade ready on the opposite side, the two a hairsbreadth away from slicing the remaining strands. “On three.”

“No!” Katherine tried to raise her arms, to shift her position, to escape their plan, but the sheer weight of the mass covering her now held her in place like a two hundred pound straight jacket. “No, Seb. Listen to me. It will kill you.”

“It can try, but it can’t have you.” Sebastian counted to three and they slashed the remaining two links.

They may as well have cut off her legs. She screamed, the agony of losing a limb filled her head until she was no more than a mindless, writhing sack of bones lying on the floor.

“Let’s roll! Now!” Frank barked orders and her team lifted her off the ground, stone and all.

“Mother fu…she must weigh three hundred pounds. We’re not getting her out of here like this.” Sebastian grunted under the strain of lifting her. He was the biggest, strongest man on the team. At six-three and well over two hundred pounds, he was built like a tank, not an ounce of fat on him. “Sorry, Kat, but you’re going on a stone-free diet when we get back to base.”

“Get her out of there.” The Rear Admiral’s voice barked in her ear and Katherine felt a tear slip from her eye to slide down her cheek. Something horrible rose within her, something dark and determined, something so strong she’d never control it. And it was hurting. Angry.

Her power rose inside her like a caged beast finally set free after years of neglect and denial. “I’m sorry.” She should have refused to come. She should have asked Doc Hansen to sedate her.

She should have died in Chicago.

“Hush, Kitty-Kat. We’re getting you out of here.” Matteo shouted ahead. “We got a gurney? Office chair? Anything with wheels?”

“On it.” Ryan wheeled the chair that had been in front of the computers into the bedroom. “This should work.”

“Let’s get her on it. Now.”

Andrew delivered a reality check from his post near the door. “Eight minutes.”

“Put me back.” They ignored her. Andrew kept his eye and his gun on the door, Frank monitored the writhing mass of darkness they would leave behind, and the other three hefted her onto the leather chair.

“Chair’s going to break.”

“If it gets us thirty feet, I’ll take it.”

“Amen. How’s the Doc going to get her out of that?”

“With a chisel.”

The words blurred in her mind. Her brothers. Her team. And IT wanted to kill them all. The only reason it hadn’t already? For her. Because she loved them. But if they tried to leave with her…

“Take me back!” Katherine kicked and screamed at them. “Leave me here or it will kill you all!”

They ignored her.

“Move! Move! Move!” Frank shouted and raced to them. “It’s moving! Go! Go! Go!”

Katherine felt the dark stone rise like the blob from her late-night horror movie binges. But it wasn’t gelatinous. It was solid energy. There would be no burning it. No shooting it. Nothing they could do would stop it now. It rose up in the center like a monster rising from hell. She expected it to flow off the bed like a predator and follow them.

“We need to take the house, Sir.” Frank’s voice filled the silence with absolute determination as they wheeled her toward the computers. “We can’t leave this thing behind.”

“Understood.” The Rear Admiral started barking orders, calling for backup. Helos. More men. More guns. Phase two of the plan. The three-story mansion home would belong to the Casper Project now, no matter how bloody the fighting or how bad the cover-up story they had to feed the press.

The darkness didn’t flow over the ground, it floated in the air above the bed like a giant black globe and began to spin.

“Holy shit.” Matteo grunted as he shoved her farther away from it.

“Damn you all. I tried to tell you.” Katherine glared at Sebastian, at his mocha skin covered in sweat and at the full lips she’d kissed once and instantly regretted. His dark eyes blazed with strain as he tried to move her. He was beautiful, but hard headed. “Seb, listen to me. Get me back over there. I think I can stop it.”

“No!” The Rear Admiral’s voice shouted the order, but her boys, her team, ignored him now that she was calm.

“Talk to me, Kate.” Frank’s demand hung in the air and she gathered every ounce of will she possessed to think clearly and answer him.

“I can feel it, even influence it. I think I can stop it.” Another tear slid across the bridge of her nose and found its way into her mouth. Salt and terror melted onto her tongue. “We’re all dead if I can’t. We’ll never make it out of here before it finishes you off.” She met Frank’s serious gaze, and held it, trying to force him to believe her.

Before she could speak again a vision rose from within, a memory not her own. Swift and terrible, she saw a portal just like this one wide open. The enemy, the Triscani her cousin Sarah had battled in Chicago, pouring into this world unchecked. They were humanoid in appearance, but what might have once been faces were smudged, like partially melted wax figures, and black as tar. They were tall, wearing dark coats and evil grins. They oozed power like a festering wound oozes puss. And they were coming through the portal faster than she could count. Immortal. Evil. Lost…

Katherine blinked the vision away. “It’s a portal, Frank. If we don’t stop it, we’ll have a full-on invasion.”

“Holy shit.” Frank blinked like a man waking from a coma and staggered, falling to one knee. “What were those things?”

“You saw it, too?” Katherine watched him try to form the lie. So, he had a gift he’d been hiding. Secrets, secrets, secrets. The Casper Project was full of them.

“What were they?” Frank’s face paled to a pasty gray and his entire body shook. “God help us all, what was that?” He stared at her, took in her calm, and obviously expected her to know the answer. She did.

“The real enemy.” Now that he knew the truth, the Rear Admiral would have a hell of a time controlling him. Assuming he lived.

The rest of the team froze at their byplay, unsure what to do. “Somebody start talking. Fast.” Ryan whacked Frank on the shoulder to snap him out of his horrified daze. “Shit, LT Can’t be that bad.”

“Yes, it can.” Katherine suddenly felt a thousand years old.

“Move. Get her as close as possible.” Frank came to with a jerk, like he’d been poked with a cattle prod. He threw his gun on the ground and raced for her chair. “Do it! Now!”

Andrew abandoned his watch on the door. “Ah, hell. I knew we were going to get stuck in this damn hole.”

“It won’t matter.” Frank bent down and wedged his shoulder into the back of the chair. “Move her!”

Nobody asked questions. Ryan and Sebastian grabbed the arms of the chair, Matteo held up her feet and Andrew put his shoulder into place next to Frank. The rolled her to the base of the platform. She was an arm’s length away.

Nothing changed. The black spinning increased in speed and a whirlwind of screeching sound, like metal striking metal, reverberated through the room.

Katherine tried to roll, but she was too heavy. “Get me closer! Under it. Touching it!”

“I hope you’re right about this.” Sebastian groaned under her weight as they all lifted her onto the near edge of the platform and shoved at her from the side until she lay positioned directly beneath the spinning portal. And that was what this thing was, a portal to hell.

“Me, too.” She whispered the words but none of them heard her.

The darkness didn’t reach for her as she’d hoped. No. She’d broken the connection, removed its leash.

It was free.

Out of control.

Ravenous…

Dark tendrils as thick as her thigh poked out of the spinning dark, like curious children. They honed in on the men in the room instantly, and Katherine felt their cold curiosity.

She tried to scream a warning, but there was no time. The strands moved fast as lightning, nothing more than a flash of shadow flickering across the room, and the strands enveloped her team and they vanished, pulled back through the portal.

Katherine tuned out her terror, her rage, and called on her power. She went cold, bone deep and searing, cold as the darkness spinning above her head, cold as the stone encasing her. She became one with the liquid stone that clung to her body, focused all her will on it until she could move it with her mind, until it responded as readily as her hand, until it felt like a part of her.

The substance covering her arms and shoulders sank into her flesh, into her bones, melded with her until the blackness she’d carried fused with her cells. This was forever. She could taste infinity on her tongue. The Gate pulsed with dark power, and that power sang to her, seduced her. It called her name and named her one with it, one being. One soul. This was what the Gate had wanted all along. It had been searching for her…

She could hear the dark things moving on the other side of the gate. They slithered, subzero and sterile. Inhuman.

Enemy.

The enemy. The Gate shared its purpose with her, but had become weak, unable to control the dark ones who sought to use it. Starved. It was created with a purpose. Protection. Control. The Gate was a buffer between worlds, for the places not meant to cross paths, places where there was no light, no warmth, no love.

Shuddering now, she focused on the life force coming from her men on the other side. They were still alive, but trapped. In limbo? In pain? She didn’t know. She couldn’t think about that now. She just had to get to them. Get them back.