New Moon (7 page)

Rinna's reaction was quite different, Beside him, she drew in a sharp breath.

"What?"

"So many people gathered together in one place," she murmured, her voice hushed.

He also kept his voice low. "You don't do that?"

"It's dangerous."

"Why? Does it spread disease?"

"Someone could attack. Or something."

"What do you mean, something?"

"A Sucker could have found this place. One of the mind vampires."

A connection suddenly clicked in his head. "A mind vampire?" He stared at her. "You were there when we fought Boralas, weren't you."

"Yes."

He studied her with new understanding. "I didn't get a good look at you. And your hair was shorter."

"Yes. Falcone had it cut—to punish me." She stopped short, looking like she wished she hadn't shared that bit of information.

He didn't press her on that. "Why didn't you tell me we'd… met."

"We didn't. Not really." She lifted her chin. "Was it important?"

"You know it was." He kept his arms at his sides, when he wanted to reach for her. "You've learned not to trust anyone."

"I trust Haig," she shot back.

"But not me?"

"I hardly know you."

"But you saved my life. You could have left me in that trap. At the river, you could have flown away."

"I couldn't leave you to die. Not when that trap was meant for me in the first place."

"Like when you were under attack, and I stopped the soldiers from shooting. Does that count for something?"

She swallowed. "Yes."

"But?"

"Trust is hard for me."

"Then I'll earn it," he promised.

He reached for her hand, and felt her give a little start as he knit his fingers with hers.

When she tried to pull away, he kept her hand in his grasp. "If it's dangerous here, we must stay together."

She stopped arguing and he cast her a sideways glance as he led her toward the back of the building. He didn't mind the view of her naked body, but he suspected she hated the situation.

At the rear of the structure, he found a flight of stone stairs leading to the basement.

"We might as well go down."

"We could get trapped."

"But you can walk through walls."

She snorted. "You mean at the cave?"

He nodded.

"That's not exactly what it seemed. Haig set up a field that looked like a stone wall. It wasn't really solid."

"Haig did it?"

"He has a lot of talents," she said with a hitch in her voice. "And he would have stayed with me—if he could."

Changing the subject, he said, "What about the portal? You said they closed it."

"We may be able to find another one," she said, but she didn't sound too hopeful.

"Explain the portals to me."

She sighed. "I don't understand it well myself. I think there are some naturally weak places in the plates between the worlds. If you find one, it's not too hard to open, with the right powers. With more power, you can open a portal almost anyplace. Theoretically," she added.

"Theoretically?"

"It wouldn't take a lot of energy. From more than one adept."

"So you can't do it by yourself?"

"No."

"If we can't get through a portal, we need to find a place to hole up," he said.

She nodded, and he held the lamp high as they went down, then stopped short when he saw mud on the floor. "Somebody's been down here."

He took a quick look through some of the empty rooms and saw nothing, but it was obvious that there were too many chambers to search quickly.

Rinna looked around nervously. "I want to make sure there's another way out."

"Yeah."

He led her along the hallway, his senses on alert. When he saw another flight of steps going up, he stopped.

"We'll go-up and make sure we can get out, then come-back and find a place to camp out," he said.

"Okay."

As they hurried up the stairs, he turned to see her following him, the light from her lamp showing the strain on her face.

His chest tightened. Maybe she wouldn't be in trouble at all if she hadn't stopped to get him out of that trap.

At the landing, he turned and walked a few steps across the room and found a closed door, it led to a hallway and a door to the outside, much like the entrance where they'd first come into the building. Which meant that they had two ways to get out. They went back down.

He thought Rinna was right behind him. But when he turned, she wasn't there.

CHAPTER TEN

LOGAN'S HEART STOPPED, then started to pound in double time.

He wanted to call out to Rinna—but if someone had grabbed her, that would give him away.

Or maybe she'd found that getting close to him too threatening and had fled.

Because he didn't know if someone was going to jump out of the shadows at him, he divided his attention between the area at mid-level and the floor. When he spotted Rinna's footprints leading toward another doorway, he breathed out a sigh.

But just before he reached the entrance, he heard her make a strangled sound.

Heedless of what might be on the other side, he charged through the door and found Rinna standing in front of a closet, perhaps where the priests had hung their robes. Instead of religious garments, he found something else—men's clothing, neatly folded or draped over hangers.

He riffled through the garments, seeing sweaters, jeans, loafers, cowboy boots, work shirts, khakis. The normal clothing of everyday life in the world where he came from.

In addition to clothing, he found money—good old U.S. currency.

"What the hell is this?" he growled. "Have you been playing some kind of trick on me? Are we really in some part of the United States."

"No," she whispered.

"Then what?"

"I… don't know," she answered, her voice quavering.

"I think you do. But you're clamming up, as usual." He made a sound of frustration. "Well, with all this clothing here, I'm damned if I'm going to stand around naked."

His jaw set, he put down his lamp and began riffling through the stacks of pants and found a pair of jeans his size. Then he pulled a button-down shirt off a hanger and jammed his arms into the sleeves. Finally he grabbed socks and a pair of size nine running shoes.

When he looked up, Rinna had pulled on a T-shirt. It was much too large, but probably she could get away with the baggy look.

As she began searching for pants that would fit her, he pulled out several and held them up. They were all too big, but she stepped into one, then tried to drag the zipper up. After watching her yank fruitlessly at the tab, he reached for her hand.

When she felt his touch, she jumped.

"Let me show you how to do it."

She gave a little nod.

"Like this."

He leaned over and held the bottom of the fabric to stabilize the zipper, then slowly pulled up the tab. He was just helping her dress—like he'd help a little kid. But he felt her hold her breath as his hand traveled over her center.

He made an effort not to press against her. But it was impossible to avoid all contact. He concentrated hard on the simple task because he wanted to show her he could touch her so intimately without getting aroused. He was only partially successful.

She started to step away and tripped over the pants legs pooling around her feet.

His hand shot out to steady her. "We need to roll those up."

Again she gave her assent with a nod, and he hunkered down in front of her, keeping his head bent as he folded up one pants leg and then the other.

When she swayed on her feet, she reached out a hand to his shoulder to steady herself. He wanted to press his face against her middle, but he kept methodically working, evening out the cuffs of the jeans as though her life depended on the exercise. And perhaps it did, he suddenly realized.

"Maybe this isn't such a good idea," he said.

"Why not?"

"You're not used to wearing this clothing are you?"

"No."

"Will it get in your way if you have to fight?"

"I don't know." She whirled away from him, moving her hands in the air, making some impressive martial arts moves.

He watched her focus on the drill, watched her graceful moves, knowing she was using the exercise to distance herself from him.

"You need shoes. But none of them are going to fit."

He searched through the shelves and found some running shoes in a mens seven and a half. With a thick pair of socks, they stayed on her feet.

He let her move around in them for a few minutes, then stopped her with a gruff order. "Enough."

Her head jerked toward him.

"Tell me what all this stuff is doing here."

She swallowed. "I don't know for sure. Anything I tell you will be… speculation."

"Let's have your best guess."

"Falcone is planning an invasion," she said, speaking very fast as though she wanted to get the words out before she lost her nerve.

He wedged his fists against his hips. "An invasion of what?"

"Your world," she said in a barely audible voice.

"Maybe you'd better explain that."

She made a broad sweeping motion with her hand. "This place is a mess. I don't mean this room. I mean this whole…" She gave a little shrug. "This whole universe. It's a lot like where you come from," she went on. "You can breathe the air. You can eat the food. We even speak your language. But there are things that are very different between the two worlds. I found some of your history books. You have something called the atomic bomb, don't you?"

"Yes," he said, still trying to grasp where this conversation was going.

"We don't have that kind of science. Something happened here to make us develop differently."

"What?"

"I can't give you a history lesson right now. The important point is that a lot of people have more psychic powers than in your world. Some of us have… psychic jobs."

"Like what?"

"Like running machinery. The way Haig did with that oven. But psychic powers are also used as weapons. That's how everything turned into such a mess. People like Falcone wanted to rule, so they got groups of psychics together to fight each other."

She stopped abruptly, watching his face. "That's the truth. But it looks like you don't believe me."

"It's hard to take in. You said something about a change. Are you saying there's a specific time when your world changed?"

"After 1893," she said promptly.

"Jesus! You have the same dates we do?"

"Yes."

"And you can pinpoint it that accurately?"

She nodded. "Our historians can."

"What happened in 1893?"

"Eric Carfoli started the psychic revolution."

"Okay," he answered, since there was. no way to prove the assertion either way. He was sure as hell going to dig up more information about this Eric Carfoli. But the present was more important at the moment. "I haven't seen any evidence of… psychic wars," he challenged. "The soldiers who have come after us seem like ordinary guys."

"A lot of the psychics killed each other off. Which is why most of the fighting is done by conventional troops these days. The men you saw are Falcone's private army. A few of them would have talents, though. Like communications officers who can relay messages over long distances. Or men who could sense the presence of an enemy."

He looked from her to the store of clothing. "And Falcone is bringing them into my world?"

"Yes. Haig never wanted to believe that there were portals to other worlds. But I read a lot about it… in the vaults at Sun Acres. Scholars debated about it, and I wanted to believe it. I looked for ways to prove it. And I found them. First we saw the monster, Boralas, in your world. Then I showed Haig that there were ways for people to cross from one… time continuum… to the other."

"What were you doing in my world when you found me in the trap?" he asked.

He saw her features tighten. "I was looking for a place to hide from Falcone. I thought he didn't know how to open a portal. But he must have figured it out. Or, more likely, one of his advisers did—maybe Avery. Falcone knows this is a horrible place to live. He's thinking he can set up an outpost in your world, then conquer your people and enslave them."

"Aren't you making a lot of assumptions?"

"I've known him for a long time. I never underestimate his power—or his greed."

She was about to say more when they both heard a noise on the upper level.

Rinna sucked in a sharp breath. "They found us."

He wanted to deny it, but as troops crossed the floor above, he was pretty sure she was right.

"There are two ways out," he reminded her, but even as he spoke, he was afraid that wasn't going to do them any good because he could hear footsteps coming from both directions, "I'm sorry. I trapped you," he bit out, wondering how long they had before the bad guys came down here.

"Maybe not. Maybe he closed that other portal because he knew there was another one here. If he's stockpiled supplies for an invasions, this is the logical place for him to go through."

She looked wildly around, then moved quickly to the wall, running her hand along the rough stones.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"How?"

"When I was in the cave, I felt the entrance, like a tingling against my skin."

"Okay. Yes. Search for that," she said hurriedly as she moved from one section of the wall to another.

He stepped into the next room, braced for the soldiers to pounce on them at any moment.

Moving to a dark corner, he pressed his palms against the rock and felt nothing besides cold stone.

Unbearable tension coursed through him. He had to find the opening. But at the same time, he had to be prepared to whip around and fight off an attack from trained soldiers. He would have to kill again. But he had come to realize that this was war.

He thought about changing to wolf form. That was a better fight mode for him. But he had learned when they fought Boralas that, a wolf didn't have all the same abilities and vulnerabilities as a man. In that fight, the monster had been able to reach into human minds, but the wolves had been immune.

That made him think he might need to be human to sense the hidden doorway. So he kept working—all the time listening for the sounds of the soldiers bursting through the doorway.

Methodically, he moved around trie room, until he felt that strange tingling sensation that he had experienced when he'd leaned against the hidden opening in the cave.

Because he couldn't risk a shout to Rinna, he darted back to her and closed a hand over her shoulder.

She whirled, ready to attack, then saw it was him.

"I think I found it," he told her in a harsh whisper, then heard men coming down the stairs.

Quickly they both turned and rushed back to the place where he'd been searching.

He stared at the rough walls and fought panic when it all looked the same.

Damn
! He should have marked the spot.

But Rinna began sliding her palm against the stone, then stopped and gave him a quick, grateful look.

"Here," she whispered.

When she'd brought him from his world to hers, he'd been too sick to watch what she was doing. Now he tried to follow the steps, but it looked like she was working mumbo jumbo.

He listened to the footsteps coming closer, wanting to yell at her to hurry.

But he knew he'd only distract her—and alert the bad guys.

Finally, after what felt like centuries, a portion of the wall began to waver. What he saw on the other side made him blink, and he tried to figure out where it was. Not out in the woods.

"How do you know it's my world?" he demanded.

"I don't. Not for sure. But I think that's what it is."

When the wall disappeared, Rinna grabbed his arm, urging him through but kept in back of him.

"Do you have some idea of staying here?" he growled, turning to hold on to her so that he could pull her through with him.

She didn't protest, and he suspected she'd only been trying to get him to safety first. Damn the woman.

Once they stepped through, she turned to reverse the process. He also turned. Through the doorway, he saw a man's arm and leg coming around the corner of the wall.

The breath froze in his lungs, and he tensed for another battle. Hell, it seemed like very time he turned around in this world, he was fighting someone off.

What would it be like to grow up in such an environment?

To his vast relief, the wall solidified before the soldier came around the corner. Or at least Logan hoped that was what had happened.

Agonizing seconds ticked by. When the wall stayed solid, Logan breamed out a sigh. They were back in the United States of America—he hoped.

IN the basement of the old cathedral, Calag studied the marks in the dust. The man and woman he sought had been here. They'd walked around on the ground level, then come down the stairs, probably looking for a hiding place.

But they'd come up again so that the trail was messed up.

His men were searching now. Twelve trained fighters and two with extra talents—Balfer and Darnet. He'd kept those two with him while the others spread out.

When he stood still and concentrated, he was pretty sure that the fugitives were no longer in the area. But his psychic powers were minimal, which was why he was leading a group of Falcone's soldiers rather than sitting with him at the dining room table like that old fart Avery.

Still, Balfer and Darnet had qualified at the second level of training. Not a great recommendation, but maybe good enough for his purposes.

He looked at the two men. "I think they're not here. But see if you can tell me where they went."

They both saluted, then stood still for several seconds, looking like they were listening. Darnet walked to the shelves of clothing and began fingering the garments, trying to get an impression from something one of the fugitives had touched. Balfer walked into the other room.

Calag watched him retreat, wanting to give more specific directions. But he'd learned not to interfere. He could break the man's train of thought, and some twinge of information he might have picked up might be gone.

So Calag crossed his arms and stood rigidly to keep from tapping his foot in impatience, staring at the oil lamps the fugitives had left on the shelves.

He didn't have one of those things you wore on your wrist to tell time. But he had been taught about seconds ticking by. And he had learned to count silently in his head.

He reckoned that about five minutes passed before Balfer returned. His face was tense.