“Thank you,” she whispered.
I squeezed her shoulder and stood up. “You remember anything?”
She shook her head. “Zola filled me in, but I don’t remember it, not any of it. I think she ran out to get some pizza.” Her voice was weak and scratchy. “Your arm … I hurt you.”
“Is that why you’re moping around with your head in a bucket?”
She smiled as a thin trickle of tears washed down her cheeks.
“Stop it,” I waved my left arm in circles, grinned, and then flipped her off. “See? Everything works fine.”
She laughed then, quiet and small, but it was reassuring nonetheless. “Only you could work giving someone the finger into a pick me up.” She sighed and shifted back to lean on the headboard.
“Where’s Frank?” I said. “You didn’t puke him into that bucket, did you?”
A tiny smile crept over Sam’s face. “He went to get Vik a ferret.”
I couldn’t stop laughing.
The End
Books by Eric R. Asher
The Steamborn Series
Steamborn
Steamforged
Steamsworn
Vesik, The Series:
(Recommended for Ages 17+)
Days Gone Bad
Wolves and the River of Stone
Winter’s Demon
This Broken World
Destroyer Rising
About the Author
Eric is a former bookseller, guitarist, and comic seller currently living in Saint Louis, Missouri. A lifelong enthusiast of books, music, toys, and games, he discovered a love for the written word after being dragged to the library by his parents at a young age. When he is not writing, you can usually find him reading, gaming, or buried beneath a small avalanche of Transformers. For more about Eric, see www.daysgonebad.com.
THE TENTACLE AFFAIRE
A Slip Traveler Novel
Jeanne Adams
Praise for Jeanne Adams
Jeanne Adams delivers taut suspense with a blend of gripping action and rich characters for an edge-of-your-seat read
—Dianna Love, New York Times Bestselling Author
“Non-stop action! Jeanne Adams turns up the heat…it will leave you rapt and breathless.”
—Lisa Gardner, New York Times Bestselling Author
The Tentacle Affair by Jeanne Adams is spell-binding, action packed and chock full of passion. An outstanding read!
—BooksILoveALatte Reviews
Jeanne Adams tells “…a jewel of a story.”
—Sharon Sala, New York Times Bestselling Author
“Jeanne Adams’s work is…fast-paced, riveting”
—Carla Neggers, New York Times Bestselling Author
“One of the best Romantic Suspense novels of the year!”
—Romantic Times Magazine
(Deadly Little Secrets, 2011. Deadly Little Lies, 2012)
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No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Copyright © 2014 Jeanne Adams/Golden Gryphon Press
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions
Dedication & Acknowledgments
To my family, because they hold my heart.
To Donna Spring Gulick, www.DonnaSpringGulick.com for believing in me as a writer, long before I had the courage to believe it myself.
To C, NN, and DMac – Here’s to Avocat Noir, because good books don’t happen without it, or you.
To my Romance Bandits sisters www.RomanceBandits.com, The Triad, The Sultry Sisters, and my power-writing bestie, Sophia Nash, www.SophiaNash.com—You bolster my courage and crack the whips. Thank you!
To the fabulous Garden Witch, Ellen Dugan, www.EllenDugan.com for her thoughts about how to portray Aiden’s skills, THANK YOU! And YOU ROCK!
Thank you to the wonderful Lyndsey Lewellen, lyndseylewellen.wordpress.com for another spot-on cover.
Prologue
New York, New York
8:59 a.m.
No one left behind.
Not in the Marine Corps. Not now. Not on her watch.
Cait knew she probably looked calm, but her heart thundered in her ears and she felt the sweat of fear as she herded her people downward in the glow of the emergency lights. Thick dust and debris littered the stairs, and a massive chunk of concrete had fallen from a jagged crack in the wall.
The radio crackled at her belt. “Patten, you there?”
John’s voice. He was head of security in the other Tower.
“Here!” Cait responded, coughing in the dust. “Headed down.”
“Keep moving!” He detailed the incident in her ear. The plane had hit Cait’s building—The North Tower—at eight-forty-six. She’d gotten her people moving before eight-fifty. They were making good time. On other floors, people straggled into the stairwells.
Her frequent drills—the cause of much whining—were paying off.
This is what Donna saw. That thought kept pace with her heartbeat.
Her friend was a gifted psychic. She’d warned Cait about trouble. Smoke. Fire. Death. Donna had been seeing it for weeks.
As Vice President of Security for DeSalliano Investments, Cait only relied on hard, confirmable data. Off the record, and when she was feeling twitchy, she got her info in whatever way necessary to keep her people safe. If that meant consulting a psychic like Donna, then she was doing it. Had done it. Paid for it out of her own pocket.
And she’d still been twitchy as hell for days.
The oddest thing in Donna’s warning had been that despite her insistence that many people would die, Cait wasn’t one of them. Donna had been adamant that it wasn’t Cait’s time.
“Steady pace everyone, we’re doing fine,” she encouraged. “Only five more floors.”
“Cait!”
The urgent shout from above her was barely audible.
She turned against the tide and made it back up as fast as the press of people would allow. Old scars from her combat wounds throbbed and the rods and pins in her damaged vertebrae felt superheated as she took the stairs two at a time.
“It’s just a flesh wound,” she muttered the old Monty Python joke as a sop to the stabbing discomfort.
Two flights up, she found a trembling, terrified Marni Waters. Pregnant and with a solid baby bump, Marni was sitting on a step, sobbing.
“It’s the baby,” Marni hiccupped. “Something’s wrong.”
Waiting for help wasn’t an option. Cait pulled Marni’s arm over her shoulder and lifted. They’d just started down when her radio roared back to life. A second plane, a second impact. The South Tower.
This is no accident. This is an attack.
Anger roared through her veins. Even before Cait had been trained as a marine, she’d been taught to stand up for those who couldn’t stand for themselves. Her parents had been adamant that you stood for, or in front of, those who were weaker, or hurt. That inner warrior sounded a battle cry now, wanting vengeance. But she
had to push it away.
Just get your people out. With Marni, it was two lives on the line.
Two floors down, Marni faltered. Ignoring her screaming spine, Cait got Marni onto her back, piggyback-style. She worried about the baby, but she had to get them out.
Panic pushed at her. No others came down the stairs. That wasn’t right. There were hundreds of workers above them. There should be a steady stream of people, even in this side stairwell.
“Cait, I’m having contractions,” Marni sobbed in Cait’s ear. “We’re not going to make it.”
“We are,” Cait insisted, willing it to be true. At only six months along, Marni shouldn’t be having contractions. They had to keep moving. Get to help. “Tell me what you’re going to name your son.”
“Matthew Robert, for Kyle’s dad. Or maybe John Elisha for my…brother,” Marni hissed the words through what was obviously a strong contraction.
An old man, seated on a step at the next flight down, bent double as a paroxysm of coughing wracked him.
“That’s Daniel,” Marni managed the name. “From the coffee shop.”
“Daniel, you okay?” Cait croaked, dust closing her throat. She clamped her lips down hard to keep from screaming as Marni’s weight shifted.
“Keep goin’ girls,” Daniel rasped. “Emphysema,” he added. “Can’t breathe.”
Marni was her priority, so Cait pressed on, down the last two flights.
“Cait!” Marni shrieked as Cait missed a step and lurched sideways. But they were there.
Cait slammed into the crash bar of the emergency exit, its shrill alarms joining the sirens, screams, and shouting of hundreds of people outside.
“Ohmigod, you did it,” Marni wailed. “Oh my God.”
They pushed into the light and Cait bent carefully to ease Marni into the arms of an incoming EMT.
Thank God.
“Ma’am, come with us,” the EMT shouted above the noise. Smoke and dust filled the air, and Cait smelled fire, just as Donna had foreseen.
“No, I have to get Daniel,” she yelled, wrenching her arm free. Her back twisted in a painful spasm, but she felt a hundred times lighter without Marni’s weight. She could do it.
Most of the first responders would go into the core of the tower, rather than these side stairs. She had to go back.
No one left behind.
The building’s superstructure creaked like an ancient sailing ship as she headed up. Dread surged as the walls groaned, yet she put one foot in front of the other. Her back was a burning agony.
Get Daniel. Get out.
Lungs laboring, she called, “Daniel? Start down! I’ll meet you!”
She strained for his reply, lifting her foot to the next riser. It cracked under her feet like the stairs in a funhouse.
The bones of the building were breaking.
The step exploded with a noise like cannon fire. Shards of concrete scored her face, slashing her cheek to the bone as she was flung against the wall. Pain shot red paths through her nerves and muscles.
Slapping a hand to her bleeding face, she thought she saw Daniel in front of her. A few more steps and she’d have him. They’d stitch her up when she got out.
The ceiling cracked, then sagged like a deflated balloon. Falling concrete hit her legs, knocking her sideways, pinning her. Trapping her.
“Not again! Not again!” she screamed it, over and over, the sound an empty counterpoint to the inexorable howl of the building’s collapse.
In between the agony was the odd, clear thought that for the first time, Donna had been wrong.
Cait was going to die.
A cold mist spiraled around her. The world disappeared in a whirl of white smoke, and utter silence.
* * *
“Has she awakened?” demanded the Kith’s ranking First Officer, Science, as he watched the Earth-human through the tinted glass. The female they’d pulled from the collapsing building lay pale and still under the golden heat-sheet the MedTeam habitually used.
“No, Sir.” The Second Officer, Medical, reported crisply saluting. The Second consulted her datapad, her polished claw making the lines of purple symbols and text roll up the screen.
“Her condition?” Had they saved the creature in time? His thoughts bounced from the Earth-human to running scenarios of how to retrieve the second option should this one cease to be viable.
“Moving from critical to merely serious,” the Second said calmly. “This depth of sleep is normal for most beings healing from a major trauma. The damage was considerable. Earlier, poorly healed wounds inhibited our efforts.”
“Head trauma?”
“No,” the Second, Medical replied. “Retrieval was initiated before she was crushed. But a few fractions faster,” she added with some asperity, “would have been better.”
“They pick the Moment,” he replied automatically. Retrieval was a chancy business, but it had made the Kith Nation wealthy. Because it had, no one questioned how or when the Sh’Aitan Seers picked the Moment, or who they retrieved. Especially from a Rim planet like Earth. And no one questioned how the Retrieval techs did their job.
“Best that it was a Retrieval,” the First stated when he realized the Second, Medical was watching him, “rather than a surface event. If this one doesn’t agree to The Choice, to be this planet’s guardian Slip Traveler, then the Seers’ other option is farther afield.”
“Mmmm.” Second flicked him a glance. “Yes. The Rim has lost a citizen, but has hopefully gained a protector.”
“You’ll revive her at twenty-seven bells, then?” he asked. “If so, then she will make her Choice and we’ll know if our mission is complete.”
“Yes, sir. Twenty-seven bells will be sufficient time for her to get to the first full stage of healing.”
“Notify me if anything changes,” he said.
The Second, Medical, watched the senior officer leave. His well-muscled, feline form was pleasing, and his neck stripes indicated a high-ledge family. He had significant battle scars and a long, thickly furred tail as well. She let a purr of appreciation hum in her throat.
A changing-level chime brought her back to her duties. She adjusted two nutrients and the female Earth-human stabilized. If the human chose life, it was up to the higher ranked Kith and the Sh’Aitan to see her made a Slip Traveler.
“A long journey,” the Second murmured, staring at the woman behind the glass. “But well begun.”
Chapter One
Thirteen Years Later
Washington, DC, Present Day
Aiden eased out of the car, hissing in pain as he shrugged the long trench coat over his shoulders. The coat was overkill for the October weather, even in the cool, predawn breeze, but it covered the blood and grime on his clothes and the gauze wrapping the deep cut on his right forearm.
He put his computer bag’s strap on his shoulder, positioning it carefully as he locked the car. He was beat to hell, and he felt every one of the injuries he’d gotten helping out his fellow magical adept in Richmond.
Robert was sick—and getting sicker—and lately he’d relied on Aiden’s being close enough to reach him when the magical shit hit the fan.
So did every other weaker or less experienced adept within driving distance, and sometimes flying distance.
Go figure.
Aiden had been sent to Washington, DC to recover, to regain his strength because DC was a pansy-ass job for an Enforcer of his skill and power. There was hardly any high-level magical or supernatural activity in DC. Bullshit and politics yes, demons and even succubae?
Nope. Nary a one.
So, now that he’d recovered, he ended up double-timing it, garnering a nice array of speeding tickets, hustling to other cities when friends needed help.
It should be funny, all the bouncing around, but it just…wasn’t.
Aiden groaned as he started up the stairs from the garage to the lobby. He felt like he was a hundred and ten.
The computer bag bumped his b
ruised hip and he stifled a gasp. Robert’s emergency call had come after a nearly thirty-hour software install Aiden had done for one of his clients. But when another adept called for help, you went, no questions asked.
First, because he owed them. His mentor—another Adept Enforcer—had saved his life long ago, and then, in Atlanta…
He owed them all.
And there were too few adepts, much less Adept Enforcers at his power level, as it was. If he could help, he was going, no matter what the Council thought of it.
So when Robert called, Aiden had tossed his computer in the car and gone. He’d burned down I-95 from DC to Richmond in record time, without stopping for sleep.
Together, they’d handled the problem—a fire-starting poltergeist—but not before it had attracted some other deadly entities into its sphere. Aiden had kept the nasties off his friend’s back, at the expense of his own.
Then again, it had only been twelve stitches this time. Aiden huffed out a humorless laugh. These days, a few stitches were a walk in the park.
After Atlanta, just surviving was the benchmark.
The Council argued the point, but he was back to full strength. However, after three years in the relative quiet in DC, even small fights seemed to drain him more than they should.
Not that he’d tell the Council that.
He climbed the last few steps from the garage and pushed open the lobby door. A sigh of relief escaped as the building’s magical shields closed around him with reassuring ease. Holy gods, he was glad to be home. Now he could relax his personal shields and let the building’s wards do the work. The built-in reservoirs of power would speed his healing too.
DC was a busy, demanding city, and his contracts with government agencies, corporations, and those who served them were lucrative, rife with tension and filled to overflowing with gossip and deceit. Software was the warp and weft of his business, but the schmoozing and selling was driven by who you knew and who you didn’t. That part, he hated.
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