Edge Walkers

by Shannon Donnelly

  He realized that maybe she was looking after them both, giving him what he needed and keeping enough emotional distance to keep herself safe. A smart woman. But disappointment twisted low in his belly. Her hand closed over his.

  “Let me see you,” she said, her voice breaking on the last words, spilling out far more than she must have intended with rough, dark needs of her own. “I want this to be…for you.”

  He understood—and a tremor shook him. He’d be more than stripped bare. But she wanted to see him—really see him, and this was the fastest way to that. Her hand tightened over his, closed his finger and hers, and he stopped caring what anything meant.

  His hips jerked as he thrust into that interlaced touch. He turned his head and kissed the inside of her thigh, raked that softness with a shallow bite. Her arousal dampened his cheek, scented the bed with memories he’d thought forgotten—what long Sundays had once been like, and late nights under thick blankets, and how two bodies could merge into something more. He pushed into her hand, into his fingers which tangled with hers, and remembered how achingly sweet life could be.

  Sensation tightened in his lower back, and heat washed through him and into her touch. His shoulders pushed back and into her as he shuddered and the universe contracted and sent him falling.

  He came with an explosion of white behind his eyes.

  And the world cracked open.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Going through experiences I barely have theories to explain changed everything. I had to let go of trying to think things through and start praying like hell that my instincts were sound. — Excerpt Carrie Brody’s Journal

  Mouth dry, Carrie watched Gideon’s eyes close. Eyebrows pulling tight, lips parting, he let out a moan and a long breath. It sounded like pleasure and pain and something loosening in him that needed to be let go. His hips lifted and his body tensed—and he was warm and pulsing underneath their interlaced fingers. God, he was beautiful like this—muscles taut, face tensed and lax by turns, body taken in physical joy. She realized she’d needed to see him like this, alive and vibrant. She’d wanted to know what he liked, and she’d never been all that shy, but she hadn’t been able to frame the questions. Not with him. That set off the alarms in the back of her head. So did this craving for more of him.

  She wanted to lean over him and fit her mouth to his and swallow those sounds falling from his lips. She wanted to wrap herself around him and stay there. She wanted things her body ached for, things she hadn’t allowed herself to dream about while awake and aware. She wanted to hang onto the strength of him. God, they didn’t need the complexities of deepening a physical attraction, but everything seemed so pure and right when the world narrowed to skin and touch and this.

  Her body contracted in sympathetic pleasure, desire heavy and pulsing in her veins, and she tried to hang onto the science of it. Just chemicals, she told herself—her hormones released in reaction to his pheromones. But she tightened her fingers around him, closed her legs to wrap him close, and the old fears surged. What if she lost him?

  Hell, she would lose him—she knew that already. This wasn’t…they had no future and her throat tightened as memory stirred. This wasn’t like…ah, but it was. It was far too like another bedside vigil when she’d lost perspective, and had lost her temper, too, had let fears and too much caring rule her. She’d fought with her mother that last night. She’d failed her, had gone on to fail her father as well. She’d been an idiot, had failed on all the most basic levels—as a daughter, as…well everything, except as a scientist. She’d hung onto that because reason meant order and not a mess of a life.

  Putting one hand on Gideon’s chest, she pressed down. The points of his cross dug into her skin. She fought her emotions, gulped a breath, told herself this was for Gideon—to help him. Never mind that she loved holding him like this. Do not think about how good he feels.

  But she did. And she knew that tightness around her heart was a weakness neither of them could afford. Not here.

  Looking up and away from him, she tried not to feel him stir against her with the last of his pleasure loose in his limbs. She bit her lower lip and blinked away the sting blurring her eyes.

  Not…not…not…losing it. But maybe she was. Because she could smell ozone searing the air. And darkness split the ceiling.

  A jagged, blurred rip formed, big enough to fit a fist through. She focused on it because it was something to think about that wasn’t the yawning needs inside her. Think, observe—do what you do best.

  With a start, she observed she was staring at the New Mexico high plains—at scrubby pinon, twisting cedar, endless sky and dark hills, and clumps of rabbit grass popping up from the rolling landscape.

  The edges of the tear wavered, contracted, expanded. It was like looking through shredded gauze and she bit her lower lip, narrowed her eyes. The perspective seemed wrong, as if she was looking through the lens of a camera on the ground—the rabbit grass seemed enormous. She took her hand off Gideon, reached out, touched the edge of the rip and watched her skin darken. Bright lines flowed from the tear, contracted around her.

  She gasped as energy tore into her, sizzled into her bones, pulled like a riptide. The drag moved from fingers to wrist, caught her arm. It wasn’t one of ‘them’—not a Walker. No edged balls of lightning fell from the Rift, no sense of any intelligence or malice bled into her as the energy wove into her. But she knew this.

  Oh, damn. The curses skittered in her head and she managed one thought, hell—why not just stick your hand in a garbage disposal instead. The tear tightened, jolted deeper into every cell of her body.

  She let out a cry, her body jerking in the current. Her fist closed by instinct, found something to grasp and she pulled against that grinding, ripping force. The tear started to telescope—she saw it closing, her hand still trapped. Heart battering her chest, eyes watering, she cried out words that didn’t make it past a strangled gurgle her throat. Something hard grabbed her wrist and yanked her backwards. A dull boom echoed with the heavy thud of a sonic wave.

  The sound smacked into her, took the rest of the air from her chest. She tried to rasp in a breath—the room stank of ozone, but with a hint of desert dryness. Around her, the world lay whole and quiet again. No rips danced in the air. Nothing had hold of her. The Rift had closed. She lay there shaking, terror shuddering over her in skittering heartbeats.

  Her hand and arm still ached and she knew she’d come close to losing them. Gideon was the warm solid thing next to her now, wrapped around her—and how had they gone from her holding him to the other way around? She turned, rolled in the bedding so she could stare at him.

  He sprawled on the bed next to her now, breathing hard, the cord around his neck twisted and turned backwards. His eyes held an echoing flare of the panic pounding through her. It really had been that close. That dangerous. He still had his jeans around his legs—she could feel the material brush her calves—but the rest of him pressing against her was nothing but hot skin. Unable to stop shaking, she curled into his heat.

  “What the—?” she started to ask, but she cut off the words when she heard the tremor in her voice.

  God, her father would have disowned her if he’d ever heard that tone from her. She wanted to disown that useless reaction as well, so she cleared her throat, but that came out too close to a sob. She went with what she knew would settle her—she’d make this about facts.

  Lifting her hand, she stared at it, at the closed fist she’d made. Her knuckles hurt and she had to force her fingers open. Dirt slid out of her hand and onto the bed in a slim stream. She stared at it before she looked back at Gideon, thoughts scrambled and her body aching.

  Frowning, he brushed the dirt off the bed, but he didn’t seem surprised. With a muttered curse, he kicked off his jeans and fit her against his body. She went with it because right now that was about the only way she’d stop shivering. She had to clench her teeth so they didn’t rattle.

  “Sor
ry,” he said, rubbing his cheek against her forehead as he tucked her even closer. “I meant to warn you, but…well, there hasn’t been much time. Even if you’ve been through it, it’s not easy to explain what it’s like to look into the Rift. Or reach into it.”

  Pulling back, she stared at him. “We were…looking across…realities? Like back at…with my lab?”

  He nodded and his hand pressed into the small of her back, big and solid. “From what I can tell, they tend to open within a set radius from where you crossed. They…well, the longer you’re here, the less often the openings happen. At least, that’s my experience.”

  “That’s going to happen again?” She bit down on the panic she could hear in her own voice.

  Gideon nodded.

  She blinked twice and her muscles spasmed at the thought of going through that again. Her hand opened and closed on nothing. He sounded so damn casual about something that put everything she knew about physics into a psychedelic spin. About something that seemed capable of killing.

  “The dirt?” she asked, not even sure what she was asking.

  If it hadn’t been for the dirt, she could have convinced herself she’d hallucinated; you want to see home, you create the illusion of a way back. Like the doorway she’d seen with the lab, only this time nothing had been blocking her. Heart thudding hard, she took long breaths, held onto fraying thought. Think. Don’t remember how it felt. Analyze. Some sort of field had to be dampened or blocking the energy from her lab. That had to be the case because she’d just had a door open for her that worked both ways. Or had she somehow created energy that flowed one-way in her lab—was that why it stayed open? She didn’t know, but that tugging, tearing, cutting spark, and the sensation of being torn apart pushed into her thoughts. And she had closed her hand on the dirt of her world.

  “You can bring things across—things as well as people,” Gideon said, muttered the words as he rubbed his cheek against hers. He brushed his thumb over her knuckles. She flinched and glanced down. Red lines marked her skin where the sparks had danced.

  Wetting dry lips, she asked, “Then this could be a way back? Can we trigger an opening? Maybe push it wider? Dammit, there had to be a way to control—”

  She broke off her questions, shook her head.

  She’d touched enough hot wires as a kid doing stupid things, like redoing the electrical in her brothers’ junker cars back before…well, before. She knew the sear of raw current. Electromagnetic, she’d guess. But there was so much more she needed to know. She needed a laptop or at least a library and something to write with and on.

  She also needed to stop shaking inside as if she’d been dipped into freezing water for a few hours. She needed…well, right now, she just needed. Gideon seemed to know it, too, since he wasn’t letting go of her.

  Taking her hand, he lifted it into the golden light of the lamps. “You really want to try to squeeze though one of those after it did this?”

  She glanced at the lines on her skin—raw, red crisscrossing lines slowly fading to white. She frowned at them, wondered what scars had been left on the inside. Gideon pulled her hand to his mouth, kissed her palm and tucked her hand between them and against his chest.

  Glancing at him, she said, “We need a better doorway. So far we’ve had two bad ones out of two.”

  “Yeah, much better. And, well, once across is bad—those…I think the universe tries to fit you back to where you belong, but not in a good way. And there’s no pattern. Openings to the Rift happen, then taper off. Or maybe it’s that I’m...”

  “Fitting in better here?” she said, finishing the thought for him. She pulled in a breath and realized there was more of him fitting against her than she would have expected, given that they’d done before the Rift opened. She couldn’t stop her answering burst of desire. Instinct, just primal reactions. But she put her hand on his chest, lifted her eyes and her eyebrows to him in question and she hoped he wouldn’t take that wrong.

  “Physical proximity,” he muttered, and pulled her close again. His lips brushed her temple and his hand moved over her skin. “Sorry.”

  Untangling herself from his arms, she propped herself on one elbow. The shivering had faded. The mind tended to blank out the memory of pain, shoved it into a box and that’s where she wanted it right now.

  “That wasn’t a few seconds, was it? Not if you’re—” She gestured at his body, and let the words trail. She pressed her fingers to her forehead and rubbed, but her headache was gone. Or maybe it had been overwhelmed by the ache lingering in her arm, by the awakening need for Gideon. She shifted her hips, and asked, “How long do those…openings last?”

  He ran a fingertip from her collar bone to her breast, left her shivering for other reasons. “Honestly, I don’t…” He let his words and his touch fade. “I tried to time it a few times, early on, but I couldn’t get any kind of accuracy. The experience seems to last seconds, but what really happens once it opens seems to be unrelated to everything else.”

  Falling back on the bed, she put her arm over her eyes. “Distorting time as well as space? I really should have taken more theoretical physics in college.” She pulled her arm away and looked at the back of her hand. The sensation of having her arm sliced into pieces had faded, but the lines etched into her skin stood out. Turning, she picked up Gideon’s hand and studied the network of white, intersecting scars marking him.

  “How many times have you been through this?” she asked. He shrugged and looked away. Reaching up, she turned his face back to hers. “It gets harder, doesn’t it? Each time? To try a crossing?”

  He nodded and lifted one shoulder. “I didn’t…I can’t really say I’ve tried to go back. Not yet. But…well, I...”

  He let the words drift and she let out a breath. “We have to find a better way. There has to be a way to take down the barrier to my lab.”

  “That place is a death trap now.”

  “This entire world’s a death trap. Besides, there are answers back in my lab. Or, actually, they’re within the Rift.”

  Taking up her hand, he held it loosely in his grip. Shadows danced over his face. “I’m not going to help you kill yourself.”

  “I’m not asking that.”

  “You sure?”

  She heard the tension in his words, the fear. She had the same emotion lurking in dark corners. He had something else to say, but wasn’t saying it. She didn’t know if she should ask. If she said anything right now, it’d probably be the wrong thing. That’s how it usually went with her. Watching him, she waited.

  He kept his stare on her fingers and she found herself caught by the light on his skin, the exposed soft curve of his throat, the sharp line of his jaw. A twist deep in her chest took her breath, caught her by surprise. She given up on this happening—and to have this happen here? No, it wasn’t possible and wasn’t sensible. This was just physical attraction. Nothing more. But that twist in her chest dug deeper, settled. It was taking root. She was going to call it affection, however, because anything more risked far too much. Even so, she reached out to him, had to touch him, had to make that connection with him real and solid. Cupping his face, she brushed her thumb over where the pulse jumped hard and fast in his throat.

  He was everything she’d never thought to ask for.

  “Gideon—?”

  He put his fingers on her lips, stopped her words. Staring at her, he seemed to see things inside her, to find far more than what she thought she was offering.

  “Don’t,” he said. “I’ll do what I can. But…you might want to rethink…well, the first time I tried to get something back here from there, it didn’t go well.” He held up his hand and she saw he was missing the tip of his little finger. It looked as if it had been sheared off with something sharp.

  She glanced at him, saw wary shadows deep in his eyes. So she took his hand, kissed that old injury. Reaching up, she pulled him close so she could brush her lips across his—a companionable kiss, nothing more. But it deepene
d, and she let it. When she finished, she leaned back.

  “Not a way home, but a way to get Doritos if the Rift opens to the right place and you’re careful?”

  He smiled, really smiled and a dimple showed up on his right cheek. “Temple figured out you could grab things. You have to watch how much. And you need to learn the warning signs for when the Rift’s closing.”

  Thinking about that bone-crushing pressure, she put her face against his chest. “Don’t think I’ll forget that—but there’s got to be a way to expand the size and duration of the openings. The one in my lab is stuck open—and it’s big.” His fingers brushed over her back, started a slow, rhythmic stroke that she didn’t want to end. Eyes closing, she asked, “Does this place have anything like books? Electronics stores?”

  “Not everything is possible, Carrie.”

  Eyes opening, she pulled away, reluctant to move and stop his whispering touches. “No, pretty much everything is—even temporal distortions and spatial shifts and dimensional tears, it seems. But not everything is practical. And I’m going to need equipment.”

  “Won’t be easy.”

  Twisting a smile into place, she asked, “Is anything ever?”

  He smiled again. She put up a finger to trace his lips, to touch the stubble that had starting to thicken into a light beard. And she told him, “I asked lots of questions as a kid. My mother...” she broke off, had to swallow the knot in her throat before she wet her lips and tried again. “My mom didn’t mind—she was a teacher. Drove my dad and brothers crazy. Questions get us places. But right now…I don’t know even know how to frame anything that doesn’t sound…well, semi-delusional.”

  She heard the frustration in her voice, so he must as well. But his only answer was to follow the strap of her bra with his fingers as if he couldn’t keep from touching her. His hand kept moving downwards until his palm lay flat on her stomach. His touch pulled her out of tangled thoughts and back to the sensation of the rough calluses at the base of his fingers. Aching awareness lifted inside her. She swallowed utter dryness in her throat.