by Unknown
That was as frightening as anything else. If he managed to tell her she had to leave, he’d only end up on a desperate search for her.
He started to get up from the computer, then stopped and clicked back from the migraine article to the Google screen, where he cleared away the subject query, hating himself for feeling the need to erase the evidence of his search. He didn’t think Kenna knew how to use the computer, but he still wasn’t taking any chances on her discovering that he was checking up on her.
In the hall, he listened for sounds from her room but heard none. Was she sleeping? Or was she lying low because she wanted to avoid him after what had happened?
She’d wanted to make love with him. There was no doubt in his mind about that, but as he thought back over the encounter, he sensed an inexperience beneath her passion.
When he’d first encountered her, he’d wondered if she’d run away because she’d been abused. That was still a possibility because it could be true, even if she had no experience making love.
He cursed in frustration, thinking that he was fixated on the woman. Turning on his heel, he walked out of the house and toward a secluded circle of pine trees where he changed to wolf form and set off into the woods. He knew the run would feel good, but it wouldn’t solve any of his problems.
ON the other side of the portal, Vandar sat very still, listening. Not with his ears, but with his mind. He had sensed something that disturbed him. His connection to the woman, Kenna, was much weaker than if she’d been in his universe. But he could tell that she had tried to break away from his control. As he’d felt her rebellion, his anger flared to fearsome proportions.
How dare the little bitch!
She thought that because she was out of his sight, she could defy him. Instead, the wards that he had wrapped around her mind had held her fast, with pain mechanisms and images that were already firmly in place.
At least he hoped so.
If he had been in his dragon form, his anger would have set his office on fire. Since he was still in the guise of a man, he had only his hands to work destruction. He picked up a priceless glass vase from his desk and hurled it across the room, where it crashed against the wall. Next to it was a pottery pitcher that came from a city in ancient Greece. When he had destroyed that, too, he was able to get some control over his anger.
Should he call the woman back to this world now and drain her blood? That would give him a few moments of satisfaction as he watched her die and fed on her fear, but it wouldn’t serve his primary goal. He still needed to collect information about the other universe, and if she was the best instrument for his purposes, she could live a while longer.
He thought back over the centuries he had lived among mankind. At first he hadn’t known how different he was from them.
He rarely pulled out his earliest recollections. But he did it now, going back to what he knew of his beginnings. A man and a woman had found him abandoned on a mountainside. A small boy wandering through the scrubby vegetation, lost and crying.
He’d had no memories of his own people, and no hint of what he might become.
Centuries later, he’d wondered if he came from another planet in the universe, a child born of aliens who had come to Earth long ago. That somehow he’d gotten lost, and they’d left without him. What kind of parents would have done that?
He’d cursed them. But back in his childhood, he’d had no clue about his beginnings. He still didn’t know anything for sure.
The human couple who found him had taken him to their humble home. They’d fed him, clothed him, and treated him with a degree of kindness, but they had also made him work for his keep. He’d subsisted on human food, which had given him a tenuous hold on life. But he’d managed to survive.
When he was about twelve in human years, the crops had failed, and the man and woman had been on the verge of starvation. With regret, they had sold him to a neighbor who wanted a slave.
That had been the worst period of his early life. Halendor, his new master, had worked him to exhaustion and beaten him when he could barely stagger up the hill with a load of sticks on his back. He had thought he was going to die.
Then had come the fateful day when his anger and frustration had flared up, and he’d lashed out in anger against his oppressor. He hadn’t struck Halendor with his fist or with a weapon, but the man had fallen to the ground, convulsing in pain. The young slave had thought he was lucky that his master was dead. He hadn’t known that he was the one responsible for the man’s destruction. But as he’d watched Halendor lying on the ground, something had compelled him to kneel beside him. He’d felt an unfamiliar sensation in his gums. Then he’d bent and sunk his teeth into the man’s neck.
Blood had flowed into his mouth. It had tasted wonderful, and he had swallowed it eagerly, until there was no more to suck from the body.
Feeling better than he could ever remember, he’d stood and wiped his lips, then started searching the man’s house and found his stash of gold. After stuffing it into a leather bag, he’d fled.
The money had helped transform his life. He’d found he was good at gambling games, often guessing what was in his opponent’s mind. He’d doubled his original stake, then doubled it again. The new wealth allowed him to live comfortably and gave him the luxury of time to rest and educate himself about the world and about himself, as well.
As he’d matured, he’d found that he had strong psychic talents and the ability to change his shape as the mood struck him, his power fueled by the blood he now drank on a regular basis.
He could have used his gifts for the good of humanity. But every year he lived with them reinforced his conviction that they were unworthy of help. They were greedy and immoral. Below his regard. He had been lonely among them, but his special talents gave him satisfaction. Now they were his chief solace.
As he had perfected his techniques, he had assured himself that none of that inferior race could stand up to his might. Until the terrible time of the psychic change at the end of the nineteenth century when a group of humans had suddenly acquired powers equal to his own.
They had recognized him for what he was and joined together to fight him. He had barely escaped with his life and had vowed to never again let himself be vulnerable to any of the humans who infested this planet.
Since then, he had vanquished all his enemies. Not always easily. But in the end, he had increased his power so that no one could challenge him. Certainly, not a mere woman with some telekinetic powers.
From this world, he had little direct control over her. But he could reach the main trigger he had placed inside her head. He could send her a message to come back. When she did, she would feel his wrath for defying him.
KENNA heard the front door open and close again. Earlier, she’d gone to the window and watched Talon clean up the mess she’d made with the barbeque grill. This time, she watched him walk purposefully off into the forest. It looked like he wasn’t coming back anytime soon, but she waited for several minutes to make sure. Then she got up and walked down the hall, stopping in his office because he’d left the light on, and she knew he had been there.
The computer was on, and she wondered what he’d been doing. Nothing that she could easily figure out. The machine was still a mystery to her, so she continued on to the kitchen.
She was hungry, but as she looked through the food that he’d bought since she arrived, she stopped herself before taking a small pizza out of the freezer.
Would he notice she’d eaten something? And would someone with a migraine headache want to eat? She didn’t know. She didn’t even know what a migraine was, exactly. But it had popped into her head, and it had seemed to satisfy Talon, or maybe he’d just let her think that he’d accepted the explanation.
Her jaw clenched. She hated going back over every little incident with him and trying to figure out if she had given too much away. But it seemed that she had no alternative.
After a few moments’ hesitation, she got
out the pizza, set it on a plate, and put it in the microwave. Progress in the ways of this world.
She wouldn’t let herself think in terms of progress with Talon, because she knew she’d messed things up with him. Because she was trying to tell him the truth—for all the good that had done her.
The bell on the microwave dinged, and she reached for the plate, testing the heat before picking it up.
As she chewed on the pizza, she listened for Talon. She was pretty sure he’d gone out because he didn’t want to run into her. Which meant that she’d be better off eating in her room.
Hating herself for the way she was making decisions, she stood, wiped off the counter, and took her simple meal back to the bedroom, along with a glass of cold water from the refrigerator.
Sitting in the chair by the window, she ate, then put the plate and glass in the dishwasher before going through the bedtime routine that she’d gotten used to.
In this world, people washed and changed their clothes every day. She liked the feeling of being clean and knew she wouldn’t like the reverse when she went back to Vandar’s cave.
That thought jolted her. Going back? She didn’t want to do that. But soon. She must do it soon.
Trying to put that idea out of her mind, she busied herself with brushing her teeth, washing her face, and changing into a fresh T-shirt.
Then she turned on the small television set on the bureau across from the bed. Flipping through the channels with the remote control, she came to Swift River, a television story about a town full of young people and their parents and grandparents.
The show came on every evening, and she was getting to know the characters, amazed that she was so involved in their lives when they weren’t even real people.
They were just actors in a story someone was telling, like in a play.
But watching them told her a lot about life here.
“Space cadet,” she repeated after one of the girls said it. Then “dumb blond joke.”
Strangely, she could click to another channel and watch an earlier time in their lives. Some days she did that. Tonight, the characters didn’t hold her interest for more than one episode.
She was still listening for Talon when she finally turned off the television and lay down, thinking it would be impossible to sleep. But she drifted off quickly, and for a time she was lost in blessed oblivion.
Until she plunged into a nightmare where a huge hand with long pointed nails reached out and grabbed at her hair.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AS KENNA WRENCHED away from the monster, she could feel her hair being torn out at the roots. Turning, she fled for her life. She was on a flat plain, littered with ruined buildings and dead trees, and she knew this was the badlands of her own universe. She had traveled through them with Vandar’s warriors on her way to his cave.
Desperate to escape, she ran in the other direction. At least, she hoped it was the other direction. In the dream, she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and the tennis shoes that Talon had brought home from the store for her.
The shoes helped her run across the dry ground, and for a time she thought she could get away.
Vandar was in his human shape, and she heard the sound of his breath, hissing in and out behind her, but it was getting farther away.
Then, suddenly, he was a huge dragon, flying in the air above her. He circled around her before arrowing down, making straight for her. Instead of catching her, he hit her with a blast of his fiery breath, searing her skin and making her cry out in pain.
As he flew lower, his great talons caught the skin of her back, ripping through her flesh. Blood dripped down her back and his tongue flicked out to lap at it. When she stumbled, he shoved her to the ground
“No!”
Again she screamed, then felt hands on her shoulders, holding her to the bed.
“Kenna!”
Desperately, she tried to break free, flailing out with her arms, hitting him with her fists.
“Kenna.”
It filtered into her mind that it wasn’t Vandar holding her or speaking. When her eyes blinked open, she found herself staring into Talon’s tense face.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice urgent.
“Yes.” She looked from him to her raised fists, knowing she had struck him. “I hurt you.”
“It’s okay. You were having a bad dream.”
She nodded, remembering her terror. “He had me. He was tearing me apart.”
“Who?”
Somehow, perhaps because she was still half awake, his name passed her lips. “Vandar.”
Talon’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “The man who hurt you?”
“He’s not . . .” As she tried to explain, pain seared the inside of her head, and she clamped her lips together.
Talon’s expression grew urgent. “What’s happening? Another headache?”
“No. Just a nightmare.”
He stared down at her, his dark eyes clouded with worry.
Panic gripped her. Panic and the knowledge that she must not let this moment pass. Talon was here again. In her bedroom.
She reached for him, pulling his head down.
“Don’t.”
Ignoring him, she kept up the pressure, and when his lips touched hers, she felt a jolt of sensation.
“Please,” she murmured into his mouth. “I want the same thing you do. Don’t run away this time,” she managed to say, her lips moving against his, inviting him to take anything he desired from her.
“I didn’t run away,” he growled. “I thought it was best for you to stop.”
She knew that was only part of the truth. “For me? Or for you?” she asked, astonished at her own audacity. Or was it desperation?
Where she came from, no woman would challenge a man so boldly. But her short time in this world had changed her. Partly it was seeing the way the people on Swift River acted. And partly it was living with Talon. She had compared him to a noble back in Breezewood, but really she had never met anyone like him at home.
Yet he was a man, and she knew that women had ways of getting what they wanted from the opposite sex.
He didn’t answer, but they were still mouth to mouth.
In invitation, her lips began to make little sliding, nibbling motions. He stayed where he was, and her heart began to pound as she waited for him to make a decision. Then a sound welled up from deep in his throat as his lips began to move over hers, like a starving man invited to a feast.
At the same time, his hands traveled over her, stroking down her arms to the backs of her hands, his palms pressing against her and his fingers knitting with hers, raising goose bumps on her skin.
It was what she wanted—so much. For this space of time, if that was all she was allowed. She was only a visitor in this world, and she couldn’t have him to keep, but she longed for these moments with him, longed to make memories to warm her when she was alone again, and afraid.
She had gone to bed in only a T-shirt, and she had kicked the covers away when she’d struggled in the dream.
Talon stared down at her, his gaze traveling from her face, slowly down her body, and back up again.
“Come here,” she whispered.
She smiled as he lay down beside her, gathering her close, rocking her in his arms, his hair-roughened leg sliding against hers, his body naked except for the thin shorts she knew were his underwear.
She sighed and stroked her hands over his strong arms and wide shoulders.
“You feel so good, especially after that dream.”
“It was bad?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And you’re using me to drive it out of your mind.” When he started to pull away, she gripped him tighter. “I want to be here with you. That’s the truth.”
“Part of the truth. What’s the rest of it?” he asked in a tight voice.
“This is the most important part.” Clasping the back of his head, she brought his mouth back to hers and kissed him w
ith a desperation that welled from deep inside her.
When he finally lifted his mouth, they were both breathing hard, yet his dark gaze questioned her.
“Tell me why we should do this.”
“Because there’s something between us that neither of us can explain.”
“You sense that?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Yes. And you do, too.”
Before he could challenge her or ask her any more questions, she kissed him again, feeling the intensity spiral between them.
