by Unknown
As it descended, fire shot out of its mouth, blasting the top of the vehicle, filling the interior of the SUV with sudden heat.
Talon cursed, leaning over the seat so that he could shield Kenna as best he could.
Beside him, Renata gasped. “Por Dios, what was that?”
As the beast wheeled around for another assault, Ross shouted, “Out of the car. Get behind those rocks.”
The doors opened, and the occupants of the SUV jumped out.
Everybody ran toward the rocks, everybody except Kenna, who rushed in the other direction. Right into the middle of the road where she was completely exposed to the creature.
Talon followed her. “Take cover.”
“No! I’m through running and hiding.”
His curse rang out across the mountains. When he grabbed her arm, she tried to shake him off. “Don’t distract me. Go with the others.”
He wanted to tell her she was crazy to try and fight this thing, but he wasn’t the one who had been a slave.
She stood defiantly, her feet planted on the gravel as she raised her arms toward the great beast that was coming back toward her.
Talon had no time to contemplate his own death. All he knew was that he had to defend his mate—to the end. That was the only thought in his head as he began to tear off his clothing and say the chant that changed him from man to wolf.
What chance did a wolf have against a dragon? A beast that was five times his size.
He didn’t know. But he would battle the thing with every ounce of strength and resolve he had.
He had never pushed through the change so quickly, willing his body to transform from man to wolf. The pain was blinding, but within seconds he came down on all fours and raised his head, looking for the monster.
To his horror, it had circled around to come arrowing down toward Kenna.
Talon stepped in front of his mate, baring his teeth in a snarl as the dragon plummeted toward them.
The sharp whistling sound of the monster’s descent filled Talon’s ears. Every self-protective instinct urged him to run for the cover of the rocks, but he stayed where he was in front of his mate as the thing dived.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
AS THE DRAGON shot down from the sky, Talon could see its red eyes focused on him and Kenna. Before the beast reached them, Ross, Jacob, and Grant came charging out from behind the rock, automatic pistols in their hands, firing at the dragon.
Talon saw bullets bouncing off the creature’s silver scales. He howled, trying to tell his cousins to go back, but they kept firing.
In response, the monster gave a great roar, raining fire down on the three werewolves.
“No!” Renata screamed, running toward her mate.
Jacob whirled and pelted back toward her, and Ross and Grant followed, dodging and weaving through the trees to keep from getting burned.
Reversing course, the dragon came at Talon and Kenna again, sending another blast of fire down from the sky, but this time it seemed to hit an invisible barrier above their heads and bounce back at the beast.
Kenna had put up a shield!
The creature roared again, circling them, but now it didn’t try to attack. It kept flying around them, flapping its great wings, and Talon thought it must be considering some other strategy.
Centuries passed as the thing circled them. Finally, it landed on the road, about twenty yards from where they waited.
It could have advanced toward them. Instead, it stood looking at them for a long moment, then backed away. Turning, it disappeared from view around an outcropping of rock opposite where the rest of the Marshalls and their life mates had taken cover.
Long seconds passed. Then, to Talon’s astonishment, a man wearing only a pair of jeans stepped out from behind the rocks. He was tall and well-built, with long dark hair, deep-set eyes, a strong chin, and well-shaped lips.
He kept his gaze fixed on Kenna. “I picked up from your mind that you come from somewhere else. Where is it?” he asked in a rough voice.
“From another universe. It runs parallel to this one.”
Instead of challenging her, he nodded thoughtfully. “There is a creature like me there, and he surrounds himself with slaves?”
“Yes.”
The man turned to Talon. “You showed great courage, standing with your mate. Go change. So you can join the conversation.”
Talon answered with a low growl.
“I won’t hurt her,” the man said. “She was talking to me, in her head. I could pick up a lot of it, but not all. We need to sort this out.”
Talon used his teeth to snatch up the pants he’d discarded. Dragging them across the ground, he disappeared behind a tree, where he silently said the chant that changed him from wolf to man. When he had transformed, he pulled on the pants and dashed back to the road, where he put himself between the man and Kenna.
“If you’re a shifter, where did you get a pair of jeans?”
The man laughed. “That’s your first question? I picked this place of confrontation. I left clothing here. My name is Ramsay Gallagher. Now. I’ve had a lot of names over the years.”
“Yeah. Well, you were going to kill us. Why did you break off the attack?”
Gallagher gestured toward Kenna. “She stopped me. Not by force, but when I read her thoughts, I knew I had to talk to you.”
“Why should we trust you not to kill us when you get what you want?” Talon demanded.
The man turned his hands palm up. “I could have killed you already. You and your friends.”
“Kenna put up a shield.”
His expression hardened. “Do you think that would have stopped me if I’d wanted to blast you?”
The other men had come out from behind the rocks. They were still holding their guns, pointed at Gallagher.
He flicked his gaze toward them. “You might as well put your weapons away. They won’t hurt me.”
“You could be bluffing,” Logan challenged.
Gallagher shrugged. “Go ahead and shoot if you think it will do any good.”
Logan raised his automatic.
“Put that down, you fool!” Talon shouted.
Logan glared at him. “He just challenged me.”
“And you don’t know if he’s got some kind of shield, or if he’s going to hurl a thunderbolt at you.”
“Let’s try to stay calm,” Ross said.
Logan lowered the gun.
“We should get off the road,” Gallagher said. “Why don’t you all come to my house?”
“Where is it?”
Gallagher gestured toward the nearby mountain, where Talon had seen the chalet perched on the side of a cliff.
“If we go up there, we’ll be trapped,” he said.
“I think we’re going to have to trust each other,” the dragon-shifter said.
“Easy for you to say, when bullets bounce off your scales.”
“What can I do to prove my good faith?”
“Let me see inside your mind,” Kenna answered. “Let me find out who you are.”
His gaze shot to her. “That could be dangerous.”
“What can I do to you?”
“I don’t know.”
The tension pulled taut as they stared at each other. Then Gallagher lifted one shoulder. “See what you can do.”
“Can I touch you?”
When she took a step forward, Talon put a hand on her arm. “Stay away from him!”
“Whatever he can do, he can do it from there. I’m the one who doesn’t have enough power to bridge the distance between us.”
“You can get the other women to help you.”
Rinna must have heard. From the corner of his eye, Talon saw her step out from behind the rock.
Logan growled deep in his throat. “I want the other women to stay where they are.”
Talon nodded, knowing that his cousin was within his rights to insist on protection for his mate. If it was protection. Gallagher could probably re
ach them from where he was standing.
While all that was going through Talon’s mind, Kenna stepped forward. It was all Talon could do to stay where he was.
There was an awkward moment when she must have been trying to decide where to touch Gallagher. Finally, she put her hands on either side of his face.
Somehow Talon stayed where he was as his mate pressed her hands to the monster’s cheeks.
How she could stand to touch him was beyond Talon, but he watched in silence as she closed her eyes, breathing deeply.
Gallagher also closed his eyes, and Talon tried to imagine what was going on between them. They were two enemies trying to reach some kind of agreement. Or were they? Did their psychic abilities give them something that he and Kenna could never share?
Maybe she heard that thought in her head, because she opened her eyes and looked at him.
“This has nothing to do with us,” she murmured.
He answered with a tight nod.
“Let me do my job.”
He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. She was right; the sooner she could finish with this Vulcan mind-meld, the sooner they could settle things with Gallagher.
Talon folded his arms. He might have turned away, but he found he couldn’t take his eyes off the sight of his mate touching another man so intimately.
No, not a man. A monster, he reminded himself, then struggled to put his mind into neutral so as not to interfere with what Kenna was doing.
Time seemed to stretch as she stood very still, her fingers moving on Gallagher’s face, pressing a little.
Suddenly, she gasped, and her eyes snapped open. Gallagher’s eyes opened, too, and they stared at each other with an intensity that made Talon’s insides churn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“IT’S A TRICK. You’re him.” Kenna lowered her hands and stumbled backwards into Talon’s arms. She was breathing hard, and he could feel her whole body trembling as he wrapped his arms protectively around her.
“I’m sorry. So sorry,” she whispered, twisting to look at Talon, then back at Gallagher. Talon could feel her struggling to steady herself. Still her voice was high and strained when she said, “He’s Vandar. Somehow he’s Vandar—here. He was trying to fool me, but I figured it out.”
“Christ!” Talon looked toward the rocks, wondering what their chances were of making it to shelter. And then what?
The dragon-shifter shook his head. “That’s wrong. I’ve been here all along. In this universe. This is my home. I’ve never heard of this Vandar thing, until I picked him up in your mind.” He gestured toward the chalet. “I live up there. I’ve lived there for fifty years.”
Kenna had stiffened her legs. “But you could go back and forth. Vandar sent me here. And he called me back again.”
Gallagher kept his voice even. “Whatever you think, I’m not him. You lived with Vandar for months. Has he disappeared for long periods of time?”
Kenna swallowed. When she spoke, doubt crept into her voice. “I . . . don’t know. I suppose it’s possible. I just did the job he assigned me—preserving books. I didn’t see him on a regular basis. Except for the ceremonies where he killed one of us.”
Talon looked from the dragon-shifter to Kenna and back again. “Why do you think he’s Vandar?”
She shuddered in his arms. “Vandar told me about his early life. Gallagher’s life is the same. He was the slave of a man named Halendor when he was a boy. So was Vandar. I mean, there was just one slave, not two.”
Renata stepped out from behind the rock. Jacob was right behind her, gun in hand.
“Maybe both of you are right,” she said in a voice that cut through the thickening atmosphere.
“How?” Gallagher demanded.
“I’m from this world,” she told him. “But I’m the reincarnation of an ancient goddess who came back to the world over and over. You don’t know it, but the timeline split in 1893.” Quickly, she related the story of the Chicago World’s Fair and how Eric Carfoli had thrown the world into chaos by giving people psychic powers. She turned her hand palm up. “This is the confusing part. I was reincarnated in both universes until Carfoli changed that other world. Then I was only here. So, if you’re the same . . . being . . . who was alive in 1893, there would be two versions of you now. One here and one there.”
Kenna made a wheezing sound.
Gallagher tipped his head to the side, staring at Renata with an all-consuming focus.
“You’re saying that there are two of me, one in each universe?” he asked, emotions seething under the calm of his voice.
“I can’t say for sure. But it would make sense. If both of you had the same early life.”
His gaze turned inward. “In 1893, I met someone who . . . affected my life.”
“Maybe Vandar didn’t. Or maybe he did. And it came out differently.”
He nodded. “We should get out of the middle of the road. Come up to the chalet and talk about it.”
Talon gave him a questioning look. “You mean where you can take us prisoner?”
“Yeah, why should we trust you?” Logan asked.
Gallagher looked at the two werewolves who had challenged him. “Because I think we need to sort this out.”
Renata looked at the other women. “What do you think?”
They all gathered together, holding hands, and Kenna could sense power surging among them. The sensation awed her. Since they’d first joined together, she could feel their group power building. Enough power to fight off Ramsay Gallagher? She didn’t know, but she had never felt anything like that among Vandar’s slaves.
One by one, they nodded.
The men stared at them.
“You have to be sure it’s safe to go with him!” Logan said.
“How can we be?” Renata asked.
Ross cleared his throat. “We need to set some ground rules. Like we agree that we’re all on the same side.”
Talon laughed. “That will last until we have a disagreement.”
Kenna jumped back into the conversation, addressing her mate and also Gallagher. “From what Renata said, I believe you’re not him. And since that’s true, we are on the same side. Vandar is planning to invade this world. If he establishes a base here, he’ll come looking for you.”
“And if you aren’t as ruthless as he is, he’ll destroy you.” Logan said.
Gallagher nodded. “If what you say is true.”
“It is!” Kenna insisted.
Far above them, a jet plane cut across the sky, reminding everyone that they were still part of the modern world.
“Come inside,” Gallagher said. “I’ll be waiting for you at the chalet.” He turned and walked behind the rocks. A few moments later, the dragon leaped into the air, flying back to the chalet.
“You trust him?” Talon asked Ross.
“Yes. To a certain extent. He needs us.”
“And when we’ve destroyed Vandar?”
“From Kenna’s description of him, we can’t do that by ourselves. Not if we hope to fight his adepts at the same time. I think we need Gallagher. So let’s hope he’s honorable.”
“You think he’s not a killer?” Logan demanded.
Ross turned to him. “I think he’s dangerous when cornered. I’m sure he’s killed to protect himself.” He looked at the other werewolves, each in turn. “We’d do the same. It’s part of our nature.”
There was a moment of tension before the other men nodded.
“I think he doesn’t kill for pleasure,” Ross continued, “or to assert his power over others.”
“What makes you think so?” Logan demanded.
“Instinct. And he could have already gotten us, if he’d wanted to.”
“He wants information.”
“And our help. Maybe he even wants to be friends. I’m guessing he’s been alone for a long time.”
“If you’re wrong, we’re in trouble,” Logan muttered.
Ross turned back
to him. “Any way you look at it, we’re in trouble. Apparently, he discovered Kenna long before we got here. He knows about all of us now. He could come after us if he wanted, but I don’t think that’s how he operates. So we might as well try to set the ground rules for the relationship. While we still have some bargaining power.”
