In the darkness, Quinn fumbled with the latch. When it clicked, Griffin opened the door, then helped his wife out. She stood swaying on unsteady legs. The ride had been cramped and uncomfortable, and both women moved their arms and legs, trying to get their circulation back.
“Are you all right?” Griffin asked as he led his wife around the side of a ruined building where they would have some protection if anyone had tracked them from the city.
“Yes.”
Quinn followed more slowly, still shaking her legs and moving her arms, trying to prepare herself to walk or run the last few hundred feet to the portal.
She saw Zarah fling her arms around her husband’s neck and hold on tightly. Then she pulled his mouth down to hers for a frantic kiss.
The passion between them sizzled. And once again, Quinn looked away. She shouldn’t be here. None of them should have to be here. They should be back at Griffin’s grand house, going on with their lives. But she knew that it would be a while before life would get back to normal here. When Zarah and Quinn had arrived in Sun Acres, Griffin had been content to work behind the scenes. But still, Baron had seen Griffin was gathering power, and he’d wanted to eliminate a rival.
Maybe
that
was really the norm in Sun Acres, endless fighting for position among the nobles. Zarah had told her it was much the same in White Flint, where her father had been accused of robbing the treasury, convicted, and executed—all in a matter of weeks.
Quinn stared at the wagon, then beyond. They had traveledfor hours, and the light was almost gone. She could see they were far across the badlands, very close to the portal. It was only a few hundred feet to safety.
She moved a little way from the couple who held each other tightly, trying to give Zarah and Griffin some privacy. Then she heard a noise in the distance and looked up to see a cloud of dust sweeping toward them.
Horsemen, coming at them fast and furious.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Griffin had heard
the horses, too.
Quinn watched him lurch away from his wife. Snapping into command mode, he turned toward the soldiers who had escorted the party away from the city and began giving clipped orders to his men.
“Vaun, Camber, Robee, Franks, Shuman come with me. I’m taking the wagon and making it look like the women are inside. Marks and Paker, stay here and defend this position. Willis and Jordan, go with the women. Get them to the portal—at all cost.”
The well-trained force sprang into action.
Zarah tried to run back to Griffin, but he shook his head, his eyes blazing. “We have no time to spare. And they must not see you now. Wait here until the main party goes after me. Then make a run for the portal.”
“But . . .”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, and Quinn knew the words were automatic.He was taking a terrible risk to lead the soldiers away from his wife.
It was yet more proof of how important Zarah had becometo him.
Griffin jumped in the wagon, whipping at the horses as he started off, raising his own cloud of dust from the dry ground.
As he took off across the plain, she saw the large dust cloud that had come toward them veer off on an interception course toward the wagon.
But not all of the troops followed the fleeing vehicle. Some of the soldiers were still headed in the direction of the ruined building that hid Zarah from view.
Quinn calculated their chances of getting away. Griffin had said to stay here and let the soldiers defend them, but more of the enemy were coming this way than he’d thought. She counted six. What if Griffin’s troops couldn’t fight them off?
She turned to Zarah. “Can you run?”
“Yes.”
Quinn hoped it was true. She looked at the four remaining guards. “Do your best to keep them here,” she told them.
“Yes, miss.”
Zarah’s eyes were wide. “Which way?”
“Toward those rocks,” she pointed, then heard an arrow hit the ground right in back of her.
“Run,” she shouted.
Zarah started off strong, but her pregnant body quickly flagged. They had only twenty-five more yards to go, but that might as well have been miles.
Quinn stayed behind Zarah, guarding her back, praying that Griffin’s men could hold off the attackers.
When she looked behind her, she saw Paker go down. Marks, Willis, and Jordan were fighting four of the enemy.
Zarah was breathing hard and holding her belly when she reached the rocks.
Quinn took her hand and pulled her the last few yards into the cave, then toward the back, where she pressed her palm against the wall. As she focused on the psi mechanism, she could see the barrier between the worlds thinning, but she could also hear running feet pounding behind them outsidethe cave.
She clutched Zarah’s hand and urged her forward.
“I’m afraid.”
Wishing she had explained what it was like when they’d had time to talk, she said, “It feels strange, but it won’t hurt you. Just follow me.”
She plunged into the space between the worlds, feeling the familiar resistance. At the strange sensation, Zarah tried to pull back.
Quinn yanked at her hand, forcing her through, and they almost lost their footing as they tumbled onto the other side of the portal.
“Thank the Great Mother,” she whispered as she led Zarah out of the cave and into the moonlit forest.
“We made it,” Zarah said in a hushed voice.
“Yes.” But when Quinn looked behind her, her blood froze. Before the portal had closed, two of Baron’s soldiers had also come through.
She could see them standing at the cave entrance, looking around in wonder at the unexpected surroundings.
“Two of them are here,” Quinn whispered. She took Zarah’s hand and led her behind a tree, then another, moving farther and farther from the cave, praying they wouldn’t be spotted.
Her friend’s breath was coming in great gasps. “I can’t. You go on.”
“No! I came to save you. I’m not going to leave you here.” She gripped the knife with one hand.
“You go on. I’ll hold them off.”
“No.”
“Over there,” a voice shouted, and she knew the soldiers had spotted them.
All she could do was drag Zarah toward a tangle of underbrush,hoping they could hide in the dimming light.
But the men were closing on them fast. “Don’t kill the slim one. She knows how to get out of here.”
Oh, great.
But maybe that gave her an advantage. She could fight them, and they wouldn’t strike a killing blow.
She thrust Zarah behind her, then rounded on the men, the knife held along her leg where it couldn’t be seen. She’d let one of them get in close, then bring her arm up and get him.
The first one came toward her with confidence, thinking that a small woman was no match for his masculine might. She brought the knife up, chopping into his shoulder. As she did, Zarah lunged forward, catching him in the back of the neck and plunging her knife in.
Quinn heard bone crack. He screamed and went down in a limp heap, leaving them facing one man. She liked those odds better.
The other soldier dropped back, regarding them with cautionnow—and glancing nervously toward the trees behind them before his gaze flicked back to Quinn.
What was he looking at?
He reached into the pack he carried and pulled out a rounded blue stone, with carvings on the surface, which he held up, facing the woods. And she knew what it was. A talismanfrom her world. A talisman designed to banish spirits.
CALEB
knew Quinn was in trouble. He was rushing to help her when the thing in the man’s hand stopped him cold. Literally.
He felt an icy, numbing wave plowing toward him like a nor’easter sweeping up the coastline to wrack the land.
As the freezing wind hit him, he understood that whateverthe man held could turn him to vapor.
But Quinn was fighting for her life. She needed his help now, and he would do what it took to save her, even if he winked out of existence.
His commitment to her startled him. And that was a good feeling, too.
In the short time he had known her, she had changed him. He had been in a kind of stupor, sometimes awake but more often drifting through the days like a leaf floating in a stream, swept along by the current.
But she had brought him back to life. Well, not life, but to a keen awareness of the world around him.
He had to help her. At any cost.
THERE
was only one spirit Quinn had met around here. Caleb.
Fear leaped inside her. Fear for him. Had the man seen the ghost? Could he wipe him off the face of the earth with that thing?
She couldn’t risk a glance in back of her, not when the soldier was facing her and could attack at any minute. And for all she knew, he was using the stone as a distraction.
“Stay back.” He held up the talisman like a warning, then to Quinn’s shock, he threw it at her. It hit her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. As she doubled over, she dropped her knife and went down. The soldier sprinted towardZarah.
Gasping, Quinn rolled to her side, seeing her friend back up, then stumble over a tree root and drop to the ground.
The man looked from Zarah to Quinn and back again.
“If you kill her, Griffin will hunt you down and cut you in pieces—slowly,” Quinn gasped out.
She had the man’s attention. While he looked at her, she picked up a handful of dirt and flung it into his face.
Coughing and spitting dirt, he lunged at Quinn again, grabbing her by the hair and pulling her down. When she fought him, they rolled across the ground, each struggling to get the advantage.
AS
Caleb strained to reach Quinn and the man, he fought the coldness snuffing out his senses. He felt like his chest was being crushed by some invisible force. And his vision was so dim that he was close to blindness.
Just as he was about to stumble to his knees, the other woman—the one who had fallen—crawled forward. She must be Zarah, the friend Quinn had brought to safety here. Only they were hardly safe.
The woman snatched up the blue stone from the ground, then backed quickly away, out of the field of battle.
Some of the pressure lifted from Caleb’s energy body, and he dragged himself a few paces forward. His attention was on Quinn, but from the corner of his eye he saw Zarah fumble with the pack she wore and pull out something that looked to him like the gravy boat his mother had used at Thanksgiving.
Then she turned away, and he couldn’t see what she was doing—until a flame flared up, blue and startling, shooting toward the sky like the shaft of a sword.
As the flame surged, the cold and crushing sensation evaporated from his energy body, and he charged toward Quinn and the man, howling his rage.
A ghost wolf hunting his prey.
He clamped his teeth on an exposed shoulder, and the man screamed, then turned and stared at him, terror in his eyes. Scrambling to his feet, he ran.
Caleb came after him, growling as he steered his quarry toward a steep cliff above a fast-running river.
They kept going, Caleb nipping at the fellow’s ankles. He must have felt the ghost teeth because he moaned in terror as he tried to escape from the phantom wolf who drove him fartherand farther from the women.
The man crashed through the underbrush, then went headlongover the cliff edge, screaming as he plunged into water a hundred feet below.
QUINN
stared at the spot where the soldier and the ghost wolf had disappeared.
“He’s gone.”
“Yes.” Zarah sat up and pushed her blond hair back. “I felt something. I couldn’t see it, but I knew the man was trying to ward off a ghost. He must have some talent to see specters.”
“And you used
your
talent with the flame to destroy his talisman,” Quinn finished for her.
“Yes. I have more power now that I’m pregnant.”
“Still, you could have gotten hurt. Or killed.”
“It was a calculated risk. We needed help. And a ghost seemed willing to aid us. But he couldn’t do it with the talismansapping the strength out of him.”
Quinn nodded in acknowledgment.
Zarah stared at her. “I couldn’t see him, but I felt . . . a ghost . . . werewolf.”
Quinn swallowed. “Yes.”
“Isn’t that something rare in this world?”
“Yes.”
Zarah kept her gaze on her friend. “One thing I sensed very strongly. He came to help
you.
How do you know him?”
“I met him the last time I came through the portal to this world.”
The ghost in question trotted into the clearing and stopped a few feet from where they stood
Quinn squinted in the moonlight, trying to see him clearly. “He’s back,” she said to Zarah.
“I . . . can’t see him. Only sense him.”
Speaking to Caleb she said, “Thank you.” Then she felt compelled to say the same thing she had said to Zarah. “You could have gotten hurt. Or killed.”
He laughed. “I can’t be killed. I’m already dead.”
“But that talisman could have . . . hurt you . . . or . . .”
He cut her sentence off. “You were in trouble. I couldn’t let him do something bad to you.” He looked toward Zarah. “Or the friend you brought here.”
“Yes, thank you so much,” she repeated. “So you changed to wolf form—and came to help us.”
“I was already in wolf form. I . . . changed after you went through . . . the portal.”
She stared at the wolf. She could see him better now. He was a handsome animal, as compelling as in his human shape. “I haven’t seen you like this before.”
“It was . . . new for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hadn’t done it since . . .” His voice hitched. “Since I died. I think I forgot how—until you reminded me.”
“How did I do that?”