by Cherry Adair
That was the bad news. The good news was that there was no blank rock face in front of him now. The wall flattened out into a plate of crystal that extended easily twenty feet to the roof and nearly as far across. His reflection looked sunken and hollowed out in the flashlight’s glow. Hell, it was probably more than just his reflection. It was how he felt inside. Without Sara, all of it was just a hollow imitation of living. He saw that now.
“I’m here, sweetheart.” So near and yet so far.
He peered closely at the mirror, looking for some seam, some spot that might indicate where they had gone. All that the Mag picked out was a single pair of footprints, nearly obliterated by a five-foot-wide swath of smooth earth. The track of a giant snake, he knew without a doubt.
Jack stared at his reflection in the mirror-smooth crystal. “None of it is going to matter if you don’t save the girl, asshole. So get over it.”
He jogged back a half dozen steps, then ran at the mirror, intending to break through it. His shoulder exploded into radiant pain as he bounced off the crystal and catapulted sideways into the rough wall.
“Not that way.” He looked around. “If not through the looking glass—then which way?”
Inside his head, a metronome ticked off the minutes.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sara’s world went sheer white, then eclipsed to dense black. They passed through the crystal portal into a cathedral-size cavern filled with mammoth crystals, some fifty or sixty feet long and twenty feet in diameter. The enormous crystals jutted from the walls, ceiling, and floor. Most were as clear as glass, while others glowed an eerie opaque white. The entire chamber seemed to pulse in time with Sara’s heartbeat.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Grant/Jack asked, pausing just inside, his chest—Jack’s chest—expanding with pride. Did he think that if he reassumed Jack’s form, she wouldn’t be able to kill him? No, Sara realized; the thought would never cross Grant’s mind. He considered himself invincible. But if necessary, she would use that arrogance to do just that. He wasn’t Jack. She had to remember that.
As dramatic as this new location was, the closed door behind them held more interest for her. How was she going … to … The hair on the back of Sara’s neck rose as she noticed the snakes. Every size and every color. They hung and swayed from the crystal beams thirty feet overhead. They slithered along the glittering floor by the thousands, making the floor undulate and move like a living thing.
Nobody could survive bites from multiple snakes. With a full-body shudder, she levitated three feet off the ground. Grant/Jack reached up and tugged on her hand. “Silly little Sara, nothing will hurt you here.”
Except you. “Right. Not like you haven’t lied to me before,” Sara said flatly. “I’ll just stay right—”
He tugged harder, and against her will, her feet touched the ground again. All her internal organs shrank as several sinewy black snakes slithered across her sock-covered foot. She wished she hadn’t left her damned ankle-high boots as clues for Jack to follow.
“Where are your shoes?” he asked with a puzzled frown.
“Let go.” Yanking her hand out of his, she shot him a fulminating look.
He smirked. “Left them for Slater to find? How naive you are. Aequitas are incapable of entering an Omnivatic portal. You should know that.”
“I must’ve missed that class.” She’d missed all the classes.
She didn’t know how to play Grant. For once in her life, she wished like hell she didn’t feel compelled to ponder a decision. She wanted to be like Jack—a quick choice and then live with it.
“My nest is half a million years old,” he told her proudly, using Jack’s face to smile.
Don’t do that, Sara thought fiercely. “Did you make all these?” She indicated the glittering beams, the stalactites and the stalagmites that were so clear, so luminous, they appeared extraterrestrial.
“Of course not—”
“Then it’s not exactly a matter of pride, is it?” Was she capable of doing a good enough acting job to convince Grant that she was willing to go along with this?
Or should she show her disgust and fight him all the way?
Come on, Sara Jeannette. Decide. Now.
She wasn’t a good actress.
Decision made.
“I can’t stomach looking at you pretending to be Jack. Are you incapable of being the real you, Grant? William, Harry, Sarulu—who or what are you?”
He smiled Jack’s smile. She resisted the urge to scratch that smile from his face with her fingernails.
“I’m whoever you can live with, Sara-mine.” The use of Jack’s special name for her was the last straw. He could try looking like Jack, sounding like Jack, smelling and tasting like Jack, but her heart knew differently. There was never going to be anyone like Jack Slater.
“It doesn’t matter who you pretend to be. I’m not having sex with you. Ever,” she told him flatly. “Get it, Snake-boy? No. Sex. You’re going to have to do without or find another half-breed to bear your snake-children. I’m not going to do it.”
“Sara, you misunderstand me. I want to make you a goddess. Mother to the leaders of a new world order.”
“Really? You have a funny way of showing it.”
He slid his fingers into her hair at her temples, the wrong side of too tight, making her wince. “You aren’t thinking clearly.” He tilted her face so she was forced to look at him. Sara unfocused her eyes so Jack’s face was a hazy blur. But his voice … “You’re half Omnivatic. You can’t change that. We are destined to be together. I will rule with you at my side. The Omnivatics will rise again.”
Grant kissed her, crushing her lips hard against her teeth as he forced his tongue into her mouth. He tasted like seaweed. Bile rose up the back of her throat, and she instinctively bit down on his tongue. He backhanded her so hard she crashed to the floor, sliding on her hip and shoulder until her back struck a crystal stalagmite with enough force to make her teeth rattle. Snakes scattered in every direction. Shaking, Sara turned enough to break off a small chunk of C-4 before staggering to her feet. Her face was hot and throbbing, but she reached behind her and stuffed the quarter-size piece of putty against the side of the crystal. A swipe of the back of her hand across her mouth left a streak of red blood.
“Stay the hell away from m-me.” Her voice shook.
He reached out, and a second later, she slammed into his body like a puppet on a string.
“Do not think that our past relationship gives you license to mess with me, little girl.”
Lightning-fast, he gripped her face with both hands, lifting her off her feet. “I can impregnate you conscious or unconscious, broken or unbroken. Makes no difference to me. Choose.”
“Put me down.”
He lowered her until her socked feet touched the sandy ground that sparkled like diamond dust. “Do that again, and I’ll break your spine.”
It wasn’t an idle threat. Her breath wheezed in and out in sheer, unadulterated terror as she stood paralyzed, not knowing what he’d do next. There was a chance, a faint, very faint chance, that Jack would swoop in in time to rescue her. But Sara knew that possibility was getting more minimal by the second. Even a powerful wizard couldn’t break into Grant’s nest without accessing the portal. A wizard without his powers had no chance at all. That was her grim reality.
Mere hours was all she had to figure out a way to kill Grant and get herself out of the cave. That was hardly any time at all. She tilted her wrist, then sucked in a horrified breath. Not hours. The hands on her watch had jumped forward in the process of traveling through the portal.
Twenty minutes.
Twenty miserly minutes before Ophidian’s comet passed closest to Earth. Twenty minutes that would change the course of her life forever.
She was scared down to her marrow. She wasn’t equipped to deal with any of this. She hated the feeling of helplessness that was preventing her from taking action. Breathe. Focus. Look for a weapon. Th
e smooth touch of Grant’s hand ran down her back, and she shuddered. It didn’t matter if he looked like Jack. He sure as hell didn’t feel like Jack.
“Show me the Grant I know,” she begged. Having Jack do what Grant intended somehow made this worse.
“You like this form. I know you do, Sara.”
“Then I want one thing in return.”
“Just one thing?” Jack’s familiar laugh made her throat ache. Sara knew unequivocally that she’d never see the real Jack again. ”You’re far easier than I imagined. What is it?”
He slipped his hands around her wrists, pinning them behind her back. Too late, Sara realized what she should have seen all along. Grant didn’t have a better side. His dark side was the only side he had.
“I want my baby back. Mine and Jack’s baby.”
He hissed at her.
There was almost a sense of relief knowing that she was on her own in this, a kind of finality that calmed her frayed nerves and shredded sense of self. She could go out with guns blazing, but she’d do it alone. The reality was, she’d always been alone, she just hadn’t known it. No one was going to save her. It was her against Grant. She weighed the odds, and the chances of her survival were nil.
But if she died, she’d make damn sure Grant died with her.
“Come now, as much as I enjoy your fighting, time is growing short. The comet is coming, and when it passes, I must be inside you. It is your destiny.” He wrapped his arms around her. For a moment, just a moment, Sara let her head fall on Jack’s broad chest. He squeezed her so hard she couldn’t breathe, and his erection jabbed between her legs, hard and insistent. She wriggled and squirmed until she could get both arms between them, then shoved as hard as she could.
Then she braced herself to be knocked across the room again.
He shoved her aside. “I don’t have time to play rough right now. But I’ll entertain you later. There’s no way out. A quick fuck, and you can spend the rest of your life—”
“There won’t be a rest of my life,” she cut in. “Once a child is born, if that’s even possible, you’ll have no use for me. None. You’ll kill me.”
His eyes glittered. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ll put a child in you every hundred days until I build my dynasty.”
“I’d rather die.”
He grabbed her chin and turned her to face him. Face Jack. “I can make you wish you were dead.”
“I wished I was dead when you killed my baby, you sick fuck.” She wanted to lash out and tell him nothing he could do to her now could hurt as badly as that had. But, of course, that was ridiculous—he could hurt her very badly indeed. He could hurt her so she begged him to kill her.
“You miserable coward. Can’t you face me as who you are instead of who you’d like to be? Jack is everything you wish you were, Grant. He’s—”
“I can be anything to you. I can be everything to you. You don’t need Jack Slater. You need me.” The impostor Jack leaned forward, his firm lips looking oh-so-kissable as if it were the real Jack who held her. But as their lips were about to touch, a long, thin, dark tongue darted out, the forked end flickering along her cheek in a mock caress that left a glistening trail. OhGodohGodohGod.
She wanted to vomit.
Golden eyes with elliptical pupils flashed. “Ccccease talking, woman.” He’d morphed into Sarulu—man-size, but a snake with iridescent black skin. He pulled her to him, his scales rasping against her clothing, the pressure around her body unbearable as he wrapped her with his coils.
She tried the only thing she could think of.
“Grant, stop. You’re crushing me.”
The pressure eased slightly, and a long tongue, now thicker and multihued, reached out to stroke over her mouth, across her cheek, and down her neck, flicking and feathering a damp trail into her cleavage.
“Fear tastes good on you, Sssara.”
She twisted her face away, refusing to meet those yellow eyes.
“Welcome to my nessst. Now you will sssee real power, the kind of power that will dominate the world. And you will be my gateway to that power. My offssspring will be invincccible.”
“I’m not willing!”
“That’sss no way to greet your mate, my little Sssara.”
She shoved, hard. The broad chest was now like a wall of iron, cool and smooth and totally unyielding.
“Go—” Hard to breathe. Lights danced before her eyes as the enormous snake grew and grew. Ten feet. Twenty feet. Thirty feet. More. He swung her twenty feet off the floor, squeezing the breath out of her body. The giant crystals overhead weaved and spun as he slithered across the glittering floor. “Go—to h-hell.”
She called fire to him. Hot. Hotter. Supernova fire.
With a sibilant laugh, he dangled her upside down over an enormous black-draped bed sunk deep within a circle of glittering, ten-foot-high crystal shards. If he let her go over them, she’d be impaled before she had time to kiss her ass good-bye.
The flames danced over his glossy coils, amplifying the colors. The heat made her eyes burn and her lungs stutter as she tried not to cough, but the fire had no impact on him. None at all.
The flames winked out.
And so did her hope.
It was all she had. Fire was her power to call. She’d given it everything she knew how.
“We mussst be in sssnake form to rejuvenate, but fire issss a gift of the Omnivatic. Fire issss both desssstroyer and creator.” His gold eyes flashed red. “Time to create, little Ssssara.”
Struggling was useless. The snake twisted her this way and that as he slithered, making the cavern reel and shimmer. Her ears filled with the sibilant whispers of thousands of snakes as they converged on the bed from every nook and cranny.
Darkness crowded Sara’s vision.
Her bravery had been a delusion of her own making.
Sarulu released her. For a moment, Sara hung suspended, twenty feet off the bed; then she dropped like a stone.
HIS MAGIC DIDN’T WORK worth shit. He’d known it wouldn’t, but fool that he was, Jack kept trying. He blasted the rock face—nothing. Feeling impotent, scared, and pissed off, he tried again, all the while searching the crystal mirror for a hinge, a handle, a fucking way in. “Hang on, sweetheart. Just hang on. I’m coming. You did a great job leaving me clues; I’m here. Just a few more …” Fuck. Who was he kidding? This might be the portal, but so far, he was stymied. Would he be able to follow the lead she’d left him?
He took out the Sig, held the muzzle flush to the reflective surface, and pulled the trigger. The spent bullet—hotter than hell—dropped onto his booted foot. “Shit.” He tried again; same damn result. Holstering the gun, he pulled out the big-ass Ka-Bar knife. Jack wasted precious seconds digging around the perimeter seeking a chink, a crack. The carbon-steel knife, factory-tested to a strength of HRC-61, was pretty much indestructible; yet all he got for his pains was a broken tip.
Sweat ran into his eyes, and he impatiently swiped his face with his sleeve. Explosives hadn’t worked. A gun, fired point-blank, didn’t work. A Ka-Bar didn’t work.
Pounding the portal uselessly with his fist, Jack thumped his head on the mirrored surface, squeezing his eyes shut on a prayer. “Sara.”
SARA’S FREEFALL HAD HER screaming all the way down. She hit the hard surface of the bed, then bounced as if it were a trampoline before landing flat on her back, which knocked what little air she had left out of her lungs; she lay there stunned.
Sarulu’s pink-white mouth opened in a semblance of a smile as he hovered over her. His enormous triangular head dipped to confront her face to face. “Sssssaraaaa.” For a second, she saw Grant’s devious expression transposed over the reptile’s, and a sharp pain hit her between the brows.
She struggled up on her elbows, fighting to draw a sip of air into her starving lungs. The crystal rim of the bed was covered with snakes, all of them staring unblinkingly at her. Sarulu’s triple-forked tongue lashed around her throat. One fork held
her still; another slithered beneath the neck of her T-shirt, inside the cups of her bra, and curled around her breasts. The third slid between her legs.
“They know I’m here,” she said unevenly as her lungs struggled to fill. “The Council will find you. But Jack will kill you.”
“Exxxcellent. If we are to have an audienccce, you ssshould be more presssentable.”
Between one breath and the next, her hands and feet were spread wide and tightly bound. Her clothes vanished, cool air washing over her sweat-damp skin. Sara screamed with shock and loathing. Terror pulsed inside her, black and absolute. Incapable of moving more than a few inches, she bucked and struggled, powerless to free herself.
Sarulu twisted her body, flipping her face-down like a freaking pancake on a griddle. Snakes slithered down the crystals en masse. They wriggled and writhed all over the black bed in a mass of flailing bodies, making it impossible to distinguish heads from tails.
OhGodohGodohGodohGod.
Through glazed eyes she watched them slither over her, her heart palpitating impossibly fast as they crawled over her wrists, her arms, her bare legs, through her hair. She noticed in a dulled part of her mind that the bedcovering wasn’t lamé or silk but a giant swath of black, iridescent snakeskin that had crystallized into the jagged shards along the edges.
Sarulu’s shape transmogrified again into a more manlike form with arms and legs; its fingers and toes elongated, becoming thin, wriggling, tail-like probes. She wanted to close her eyes. Even though her vision was impaired by the way she was lying, she saw enough. Her heart couldn’t pound any faster.
A dozen thin, slick tongues caressed her body from behind. One slid between her chest and the mattress to curve around her breasts, clamping down painfully on her nipples. A leathery tongue slithered down the crease of her ass. A rubbery, wet, forked tongue glided up her spine.
She gasped at the invasion, twisting and bucking. Her movement sent dozens of smaller snakes arching into the air before they landed on the sheet nearby. The larger, heavier ones clung to her tenaciously, their forked tongues darting out to taste her, their beady eyes dark and malevolent.
