Edge Walkers (28 page)

Walkers surged through in bursts of light, and in ragged, stumbling bodies. Carrie yelled a warning. She heard Jakes do the same, and Shoup cursed about a clear line of fire. Carrie staggered up and forward instead, because she’d seen David do the same. She grabbed for him, to drag him down to the floor. The Edge Walker got to him first.

It slammed into him from his back, a bright jagged ball, threw him into a wall and held him there as it burned and burrowed deep. David screamed, and she heard Gideon yell. Light flashed over and into David’s face, and something that wasn’t the man she’d known stared out from his eyes. The pain flared on her chest, taking her breath. She staggered back and fell into cables, and the thing that wasn’t David turned, light leaking from his eyes, from his mouth, from a fresh gash that split his throat.

A gun barked, and David’s eyes dulled. His body shuddered and she covered her face as she heard the sizzle lift. Two more shots echoed—the explosion shook the room as the Walker burst out of David’s corpse. Overhead, the Rift cracked open, split the ceiling in a thin dark line. Glancing up, Carrie saw the things that had been in David curl into sludgy smoke and lift into the Rift.

Movement pulled her stare from the Rift to the open doorway to Temple’s world, and the Walker that had once been Gideon’s wife stepped through.

Jill. But no longer Jill. They had needed Zeigler, or someone like him, to reopen the door. But the Walkers also needed an anchor to this world—Jill was to be what Temple’s son had been on that other side. Gideon’s wife was the Walkers’ anchor to this world.

The Walker inside Jill glanced down to where Carrie lay on the floor. Sharp, glowing eyes fixed on her. The thing reached down, and Carrie scrambled up, tried to get away, but the Walker reached for the wound on her chest and touched her.

Power flowed into Carrie in a searing jolt. She tried to cry out, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Things crawled into her mind, through her body. For an instant, she saw the world as they saw it—magnetic lines, flows and ebbs, a world of colors and currents.

The crystal glowed in her hand, focusing that energy. It pulled in the electromagnetic current from the Walker. Carrie could feel it pulse hot in her hand, throbbing like a living heart. The crystal was draining the energy from Carrie—and through her, from the Walker. A nimbus of energy swirled around Carrie and the Walker who held her.

The Walker pulled Carrie closer—and Carrie knew that Jill’s body didn’t host just one Walker. She could feel the others sizzle, saw them push through the splits of skin. And she knew Walkers were about to jump into her skin.

Carrie closed her fist on the crystal and struck.

She punched at the Walker with training her father had given her—she’d been taught how to fight. Around the crystal, the flow of lines and colors and shapes of the Walker’s light wavered.

The crystal sucked at the Walker’s energy.

Something else grabbed her and dragged her backwards by her shirt. She looked up and saw Gideon had hold of her. The shard of crystal—the remnants of Temple’s power absorbing device—that had been in her hand—now glittered from where she’d struck the Walker’s chest. The thing clawed at the crystal, focused for the moment on that bright glow pulsing in its chest.

Carrie rolled up to her knees. She looked over to see Gideon standing next to her, legs spread wide. Shoup stood back-to-back with him, one arm limp by his side. The crack of bone she’d heard had been his arm breaking—he’d been hit by something. Jakes lay on the floor next to her, his face pale and gleaming with sweat and his leg bent in way it shouldn’t be. But he pushed himself upright and pulled out a pistol. Carrie slammed out an arm and yelled at them to hold fire because Gideon had stepped between them and those damn Walkers.

Scrambling, she searched for another shard from Temple’s device—there had to be one. There had to be dozens left from the explosion that had thrown them back to this world, shattering the crystal pillar she had used to make the doorway work both ways. But she needed more than slivers. If she could get enough crystals into the Walker, this could create that focused explosion she needed.

But she could see the door to Temple’s world starting to fade and close. The Rift overhead wavered. She needed them both active for that open circuit she could overload—then she could slam it closed and seal tight. For an instant, hopeless desperation flooded her, stole into her like poison. She wanted to lie down and cry. She was out of time.

She thought of her father yelling at her—
Brodys don’t give up.

Well he had.

Fury flooded her—at her father for giving up on her, on him letting go of his own life at the wrong end of his service revolver. At the Walkers for making this all wrong. Well, she wasn’t done. Not yet.

Turning, she yelled to Shoup and Jakes, “Explosives?”

They swapped a look and Shoup gave her a thumb up with his good hand. He knelt and started to dig into his pockets. Carrie turned back to where Gideon faced the thing that had once been his wife.

He stood with his feet braced, his knife glinting in his hand.

She yelled his name, and for a heartbeat she thought he wouldn’t listen. But he did. He half turned. She lifted a hand out to him, locking stares with him. His eyes had gone wild and unfocused. Zeigler’s blood stained his skin. He stood, body taut, looking ready for his own death.

She reached out her hand and willed him to touch her.

The shock of the gesture left him blinking, and he hesitated.

The Walker slammed into him.

It caught his chest in a ball of jagged light. Gideon went to the floor, and Carrie cried out and lunged for him. She grabbed the knife from his slack hand and yelled at him, “Gideon!”

Putting her hand on his chest, she covered his mouth with hers.

She tasted his blood, and the air from his lungs as he breathed out her name. Cupping his face, she kissed him, pushed everything away but this connection with him, this link that could open the Rift. The world crackled—and she willed it to rip wide. She put herself into Gideon and pulled his life into her.

With a screech, the Rift tore open overhead. She heard the shrill scream, like metal on metal, smelled the burn of it. The Rift clawed at them, started to pull both this reality and Temple’s world into a swirling vortex.

Cradling Gideon, Carried glanced up at it—at the wide tear overhead, the empty blackness as it cracked into a yawning gulf. Now…they had to do this now. Overload the Rift, slam everything shut by with an explosion that would collapse both doors. She turned to yell at Shoup. She never got the word out.

A fist slammed into her, something jerked her up and to her feet. The Walker—the thing that had been Gideon’s wife—dragged her from Gideon by the hair. Carrie screamed and struck out. The Walker dug into the wound on her chest, clawed in past bandages and skin. Pain drilled into Carrie, and a jagged light crawled down the arm that held her.

It was going to crawl into her.

Carrie bucked against it, her fist closing around the metal of Gideon’s knife. Light sparking bright, the Walker leaned over her. For an instant, the world flickered, glowed and she saw the world again as Walker saw it—energy fields flowing and curving, magnetic lines bight and sharp. The Walkers bled into her, feeding on her—remaking her into their anchor on this world. She knew one way out. Eyes closing, she whispered Gideon’s name—and she slashed his knife down her arm.

In that instant, she knew what her dad had done—he’d taken the way out he had to save others. He’d done this. It hadn’t been his Alzheimer’s he couldn’t face—it had been what it would do to his kids.

A sacrifice didn’t have to be giving up something—it was about holy rites, about making an offering with no conditions. And this wasn’t about giving up anything—but it damn well was going to be about going out with a grand gesture.

She lifted the knife.

The blade cut quick and clean, so sharp she didn’t feel anything but dark warmth blooming to run down her wrist. She slashed again, tried to cut deeper, but already the Walkers were gaining control, slowing her actions. The blood poured from her veins—her life, their energy.

She glanced at the Walker that had her, saw its glowing eyes darken. The body swayed. She could see the energy leaking from the Walker and into the crystal, soaked up and absorbed by what was left of Temple’s device. Carrie let go of the knife, twisted her body and slammed her palm down on the crystal, drove it into herself and deeper into the Walker.

Back arching, she screamed. The Rift tore at her, pulled at the Walker, dragged them apart. She looked up, saw light bloom bright in the blackness of the Rift. The world shook, tore apart—the Rift was closing, folding in on itself. She saw the Walkers—thick dark curls—lift into blackness, dragged from bodies torn apart. The Walker lifted out of Gideon, tried to hang onto him, but was pulled up and into the Rift. Carrie knew herself to be falling into it as well.

She opened her eyes to the world the Walkers saw—the energy lines she’d always wanted to see, the fields she’d worked with and had never fully understood. She reached out for those lines—life lines, she thought. But too late for her. Too late.

She saw a flicker of something. A light that reached for her—not Walkers, but something warm and steady. She grabbed for it and held on as the Rift took her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It’s not so much that I’ve made choices I have to live with—it’s how the choices have re-made me. — Excerpt Carrie Brody’s Journal

Carrie knew the feel of stone—unyielding hardness on her back, rough on her palms, and pulling the warmth from her body. She lay still, unable to do more, her head throbbing dull, muscles limp, and a deeper ache in her bones as if everything had been snapped and left in pieces. She was a doll with the stuffing removed. A computer with its circuits scrambled. A low voice echoed, a low murmur that vibrated in her chest, tickled with almost recognition.

Temple?

But, no, he had no voice, none that she’d heard, so why would she think it was him talking. Another voice added to the mix, a low growl that had to be Jakes. And Shoup maybe? Was he here as well? Or was she dead and in hell?

Where was Gideon—dammit, why did she keep losing him?

A hand lay over hers with warm comfort, but lethargy weighed her down. Much easier to drift into dreams of his touch that they couldn’t have because they’d open the Rift again. So much easier to welcome darkness...

She woke again, this time to softness under her back. For an instant, she was back in the hall on a stretcher and bad things were yet to happen. She stiffened, panic firing her veins. Ropes creaked and Gideon’s soft voice broke over her. “Easy. Easy. Here, take a sip of water. Just a sip. You’re not done healing. Temple’s...”

She lost the rest of what Temple was doing, wet her lips on water from the bowl held to her mouth. She slid back into the swirling magnetic flow around her body that she could see, had seen, with the eyes of a Walker.

Ah, she was a Walker now—but how could that be if she was also still Carrie? She knew she should worry about that, but she didn’t have the energy, so she let it go and let herself drift again.

She woke at last to pale light slanting across her eyes. Butter yellow sunlight, cool with morning, soft with promise. Something held her down, but she could twitch her fingers. She pulled in a breath and her chest lifted. She tried to grab for the fading flow of magnetic fields that glimmered at the edge of her vision—they were too beautiful to give up—but they faded anyway. Dragging her eyes open, she managed to turn her head.

She lay in the ruins of a church.

This had to be a dream—she knew this place, this sanctuary, but it was different. The embers of a fire lay nearby. She could hear the smiles of children, ducking in from the ruined windows, dodging out and back again, but that wasn’t right. You didn’t hear smiles. But she could.

Pushing up, she let out a groan. Gideon was there before she did more. He put an arm under her shoulders, and she put a shaking hand to his face. A new scar cut his right cheek, still red and ragged and not fully healed. Desire for him washed into her—hot and bright and she wrapped her hand around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss before she remembered she couldn’t do that.

But she could.

He kept his kisses gentle light touches. She opened her mouth to him, wanted to drink him in, but he pulled back, and left her wanting more.

A flood of images hit.

They rocked into her, rifled past too fast to be understood. She closed her eyes, shut her mind to them. So many dead—poor David and Zeigler, and all the others. So many. Cold washed over her that she could shut the images off—and that they were in her mind in the first place.

You’ll get used to them
, Gideon said.
It’s like the rings.

Except he hadn’t said anything. She blinked her eyes open to stare at him. She looked at her arm, the one she’d sliced open to drain the life out of her and from the Walkers.

Her own scars were still pink, as fresh as Gideon’s. The network of white lines from crossing the Rift yet again made an intricate pattern underneath the other scars. She held out a hand to Gideon and he helped her to sit. He kept her back propped against his chest once she was upright, and it was a wonderful thing to feel his heart beating. Twisting, she looked up, waited for the Rift to open.

Gideon pulled her closer. This time his words brushed her cheek. “It’s done. Closed. For good.”

“Temple?” she said, croaking out the word. She swallowed, and Gideon took up an alabaster bowl from beside her bed, helped her drink crisp water. It trickled into her empty stomach, and she pressed a hand there. And, dammit, she still wanted Gideon. She wanted his skin against hers, needed him with an urgency that wasn’t sane or reasonable—and she thought of how Gideon had once come back to life needing more than water and the next breath. It was part of Temple’s healing, he’d said. Which meant Temple must have healed her as well.