He could make noise. But what good did that do him? He was only scaring the little animals who lived in the underbrushoutside the cave. And he was sorry for that.
He closed his mouth, and the forest was silent again. He knew that shouting Quinn’s name was an exercise in futility. Like his whole existence since that fight with Aden.
He looked toward the rock wall. Quinn had been there, standing right in front of him. Then she had pushed forward—and she was simply gone.
Teeth clenched, he walked up to the solid barrier and pressed his hand to the exact spot that she had touched. But nothing happened.
Because her palm was solid. His was something else. Energy,he supposed. For years he had been nothing more than a transparent being of pure thought floating somewhere above the forest floor.
Then he had started to change, little by little. And the change had come stronger and faster when Quinn had stepped into the forest. He had sensed her and knew she sensed him. And as her awareness of him grew, so did his awareness of himself.
In some way he didn’t understand, she brought him back to himself. He didn’t have a physical body. But he was feelingthings he had forgotten about years ago.
The wind in his hair. The ground under his feet. The feel of her body under his hands and lips. That was the best part, the erotic contact with her that had become as important to him as . . .
He might have said breathing. But he didn’t breathe, althoughhe could imitate the sound.
Balling his hands into fists, he felt the pressure.
He had been like a radio program. Waves of energy went out from a tower and arrived at the receiver in a person’s home. But you couldn’t see the waves or feel them—or hear them until the radio captured them. He had been the energy waves, and she had been the radio.
“I need you,” he cried out.
But she was gone to a world where he could never follow. She had said she had a mission—to bring another woman back to his world. She could be lying, but he didn’t think so.
That meant she would return.
He should wait for her here. He could wait a long time. Her entire lifetime. But what good would that do him if she never came back?
Despair threatened to swamp him.
He wanted to howl. He wanted to tear the tops off the trees and scatter them around the forest.
He had caused a landslide—working slowly and patiently over many days, using his mind to dig away at the soil below a large boulder. Now he wanted to call a fork of lightning from the sky and strike the rock that hid the portal.
That was beyond his abilities. But from the depths of his desperation, something else emerged. For the first time in three quarters of a century he felt a hidden stirring inside himself. As frustration roiled through him, a line from the Celtic language stole into his head.
Taranis, Epona, Cerridwen
.
At first he didn’t even know what it was.
Taranis, Epona, Cerridwen?
As he focused on the strange syllables, memory flooded into him, like a weakened dam finally bursting.
The words were a Celtic chant. The chant his ancestors had said down through the ages that turned the Marshall clan from man to wolf.
Caught in the wonder of it, he remembered the first time he had said the whole thing. He had been sixteen. A boy facinga terrible rite of passage. His father had taken him to the forest, and they had both known that he might die a painful death in the next few minutes.
But he had taken off his clothes and stood shivering in the wind, his body rigid as he said the ancient words.
He remembered the pain. The twisting of muscles and tendons. The blinding agony that felt like the blood vessels in his head were bursting.
Somehow he had come through it. And when he came down on all fours, he knew that he had survived the change from boy to wolf. No—man to wolf. Because now he was a man, one of the Marshall men who stalked the earth as no human could.
He couldn’t tear the tops off trees or bring down lightning from the sky. But he could say those words—loud and clear— surprised at the way the syllables flowed off his tongue.
Taranis, Epona, Cerridwen.
It was like that first time, only different.
A rebirth.
He repeated the same phrase and went on to another.
Ga. Feart. Cleas. Duais. Aithriocht. Go gcumhdai is dtreorai na deithe thu.
And as the last syllable tumbled from his lips, something amazing happened. His energy body began to change. His jaw elongated. Fur sprouted on his ghost form.
He braced for pain. But in his phantom form, he didn’t have to make that payment. He only had to shift from man to wolf. His true self.
As a man, he would have taken off his clothing first. As a ghost, that wasn’t necessary.
Moments ago, he had felt nothing but despair. Suddenly, a kind of joy leaped inside him—a joy long denied him. He bent over and came down on all fours, a wolf standing in the forest.
His head swam. For a moment, he was unsteady on his legs and he scrabbled to hang on to consciousness. Then he gained his footing—and his equilibrium.
Suddenly, everything was different. He would have said that the blood pumped with new purpose through his veins. But he had no blood. No veins. He only knew that he had been made for this.
The wolf. The form he had not taken since that long ago fight with his cousin.
How could he have forgotten this? How could he have gone without this pleasure for so long?
Because he had been dead inside. And Quinn had changed everything.
She was gone now. Gone to that other place where he could never reach her. But he had this. And if she came back, he would show her the gift she had given him.
Because the pain of his longing for her had brought back the missing part of himself.
He raised his head and howled—the cry of the wolf set free after so many years. He forgot that he was a ghost. Forgotthat his life had been cut off just before his prime.
The spirit of the wolf seized him as no other power on earth could capture him. He sat up and raised his head for another joyful howl, letting the forest creatures know that he had returned to rule his territory. Then he bounded away from the place that Quinn called the portal. A ghost wolf claiming his heritage.
QUINN
brought herself up short. She shouldn’t be thinking about Caleb. She should be focused on getting to Sun Acres as quickly as she could. Well, quickly and safely, she amended. She could travel fast, but she must be constantly on guard for Baron’s soldiers.
She wished she could ask Draden a question. Was the trail between here and Sun Acres clear? Or maybe there was no point in asking. He might think it was clear, and the situation could have changed. She could walk right into a trap.
The land on Caleb’s side of the portal was wooded.
Caleb’s side. That was an interesting way to put it. She’d known him only a few days, and already she was thinking of it as
his
world, when she could just as easily have referenced Logan.
She didn’t like the implications. But she couldn’t focus on that now. She had to tune her mind and her senses to the dangers of her own world, if she wanted to get to Sun Acres in one piece.
She faced a vast plain of ruined houses and larger buildings.It was a depressing landscape, but at least it gave her some cover. And Griffin had showed her the best way to get from the portal to the city.
She moved quickly, stopping to sniff the air and listen for movement. As she approached the city from the south, she couldn’t help remembering the first time she had come here. She and Zarah had both been slaves, chained together and forced to walk all the way from White Flint. That had been Zarah’s home city. Quinn had been born free in the Preserve at Eden Brook. But it had been raided by soldiers from HammondTown who had captured Quinn and carried her off. Her life would have been one of drudgery, but the elders of Hammond Town discovered her psychic talents and sent her to school to develop her abilities. Then Hammond Town had been raided by White Flint, and her fortunes had changed again.
That was how this world worked. City-states vying against each other for power and material possessions, including slaves. It was different on Caleb’s—no, on Logan’s side of the portal. The political units were much bigger. And althoughshe knew that there were some parts of Logan’s world that were at war, society in the United States was stable. Not like this place where you could start your life in one city as a freeborn citizen and end up a slave in another and another.
She made good time as she ran across the badlands, stoppingto hide once when she spotted a contingent of soldiers hurrying on some mission. She couldn’t tell if they were Griffin’s troops, or Baron’s, but she knew it was better to stay out of their way.
She stopped at the last bit of shelter before the city, the half-standing side of a ruined house. The hundred yards betweenherself and the city wall had been swept of debris, giving the lookouts on the parapet a clear view of anyone crossing the open space. That made the approach dangerous. But she had the safe passage that Griffin had given her, a bronze disk with a wolf’s image hanging on a chain around her neck. It was his symbol, because he was a werewolf— like Caleb. Well, not exactly like Caleb. There were more werewolves here than on the other side of the portal.
She shaded her eyes from the sun. Usually there was a lot of traffic in and out of the city. But this morning the gate was closed, and she was the only person approaching from the badlands.
Other travelers and merchants must know about the turmoilinside, and they were keeping their distance until order was restored.
She watched the gate for several minutes. No one came out either, and she didn’t know how to interpret that. Had the guards from one faction or the other forbidden anyone to pass?
Looking up to the open spaces in the crenellation at the top of the wall, she caught flashes of body armor.
Soldiers were up there, ready to fire on anyone who approachedthe gate. She hoped they were Griffin’s men, but she had no way of knowing which side controlled the outer circle of the city.
Her hand went to her throat, and she clutched the charm, holding it up so that the light glinted off it.
She was sorry now that she hadn’t brought the fanny pack with the gun. Nobody here would be expecting to get shot with a bullet. But on the other hand, they wouldn’t know that it was a deadly weapon until she used it.
With a feeling of resignation, she started toward the gate. She had taken only a few steps when movement caught the corner of her eye. She tried to duck back behind the wall. But it was already too late. Men had been hiding in the shadowsof another wrecked building, waiting to see who approachedthe city.
CHAPTER SIX
“
WHO ARE YOU?”
a gruff voice demanded.
She looked at the man who had spoken and his two companions.They were roughly dressed and holding knives.
Not military knives. The knives of thugs who took their chances out in the badlands.
Great Mother, she was trapped by men who had no rules and no code of honor. And they could do anything with her that they wanted.
Her eyes flicked to the city wall; it might as well be a millionmiles away. The soldiers up there could see her, but why should they risk themselves to help her?
One of the thugs was barrel-chested, with a greasy blond hair. The other two were shorter, but with well-muscled bodies.One wore a cap. The other had dark hair.
“Who are you?” the blond demanded.
She considered her answer, trying to determine the safest course.
Raising her chin, she said, “I am on an important mission for Griffin—one of the chief council members of the city. If you hurt me, you will answer to him.”
Both of them stared at her with narrowed eyes. “Prove it,” the speaker said.
“Draden sent for me.” She saw the man recognized the name. “And I have a talisman from Griffin. Under my shirt.”
“Let’s see it,” the blond demanded.
She considered it a good sign that he didn’t reach betweenher breasts to feel it but let her pull it out.
She turned the charm so that the wolf winked in the sun.
“That’s his safe passage,” the one with the cap said.
“Maybe she stole it.”
“They told us to expect a woman,” the blond answered.
She tried to follow the conversation and felt her head spinning. Who had told them to expect a woman?
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“Griffin’s soldiers. We were sent to meet you, but we couldn’t reveal ourselves too soon.”
“I could have attacked you,” she snapped.
The blond laughed. “And done what?”
She heard the confidence in his voice. He was a trained fighter, and she would have been seriously injured if she’d tried to defend herself.
Too bad Griffin hadn’t warned her about this reception committee. But there had been no way to get the message to her.
“Why are you dressed like slavers?”
“It’s safer out here if you blend in. This is a dangerous stretch of ground. We have to be careful about who passes. They could have sent a woman spy,” the one in the cap said.
“Have things gotten that bad?”
“Worse.” He raised his hand and signaled toward the wall. “I am called Dorber,” he said. He gestured toward the man with the cap. “This is Gred.”
“And I am Tolan,” the dark-haired one added.
“I’m glad to meet you,” she managed. They might not be outlaws, but they were still rough and dangerous.
Gred kept his eyes on the gate. Dorber looked toward his right and his left. And Tolan kept turning to make sure no dangers were behind them.
It was the longest walk of Quinn’s life. Relief flooded through her as they reached the shadow of the wall.