by Rebecca York
Spread before her was a scene that could have been filmed in the Colorado Rockies. Only this was no movie. It was real. And she was viewing it from the vantage point of a high ledge cut from the native rock.
She could see a valley far below her, with a river of very blue water. Jagged peaks and sheer rock faces surrounded the sheltered valley. Above her, the sky was an impossibly crystal blue.
The air felt different. The light was different. And how had they gotten up so high without flying?
She had never seen this place before, but she was certain it was nowhere near the state of Maryland, where they’d been before they’d wound up in the cave.
Underfoot, the rock was slick with ice, and the man beside her tightened his grip on her hand. For several heartbeats, the scene held steady. Then it wavered, and Olivia tried to catch her breath again. They were hundreds of feet in the air. If she lost her footing, she was a dead woman.
Chapter 7
“Close your eyes,” the man beside Olivia advised as he tightened his hold on her hand.
She gulped. She was cold. But Luke must be colder, since his ruined shirt was back in the cave.
She clung to him with every shred of strength she possessed. She hated being frightened, but this was so beyond her experience that she had no reference point.
As they stood on the high plateau, she felt a change in the texture of the air. It was thicker and less pure. Then a car horn blasted somewhere nearby.
Her eyes blinked open, and she saw they were back in the Hanovers’ house.
“We’re home!” she whispered. “Thank God.”
He turned to look at her. “You thought we couldn’t return to your own time?”
“I didn’t know. I don’t have any experience with . . . time travel.” She turned her questioning gaze toward him. “How did we do that?”
“The Moon Priests lent me some of their . . . I guess you’d call it magic.”
“Magic. Right.”
“We will not speak of that again,” he clipped out, and she knew that discussion was finished. “We must focus on my primary mission—returning the box to the Moon Priests.”
“How come I never heard of them before today?”
He turned his free hand palm up. “They don’t go around advertising their presence.”
“You’re sure they still exist in my time? You’re sure you haven’t taken possession of a box you can’t return?”
“Yes!”
“How do you know?”
“I feel the vibrations of their presence.”
He said it very casually, and she looked down at the toes of her shoes, then found her gaze traveling to his naked chest.
He saw her studying him and said. “I should get dressed.”
“Your friends won’t mind?”
“We’re running a tab.”
He led Olivia up the stairs, down the hall past a home office, and into one of the bedrooms where he began opening drawers. When he found a pile of tee shirts, he took a black one out, running his fingers over the soft fabric before putting it on.
“Maybe I should change shirts, too,” she murmured, turning to the closet and taking out an apricot colored blouse. “You’re sure it’s okay to use this?”
“Yes.” Ginny will understand, when I tell her we were being chased by psychotic killers.”
She made a strangled sound, then stepped into the bathroom to take off her ruined shirt and drop it in the trash can before pulling on the tee shirt.
Through the door Luke said, “You don’t believe in . . . vibrations?”
She opened the door. “Not usually. That’s New Age stuff.”
“New Age! It is very old, actually.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “The world is more than the things you can know through your five senses. It is a mistake not to include the invisible world in your . . . . calculations.”
“Um hum,” she answered. Then keeping her gaze on him, she said, “This is a conversation I never would have expected to have with Luke. Where is he?”
“I’m here.” After a pause, he added, “We’re getting more integrated.” The phrasing and the voice sounded more like the computer man, and she knew the comment had come from Luke.
She studied the way his face looked. Luke’s visage had been that of a modern man. The features were the same, but now there was a subtle difference. This person’s face was harder, more determined. More savage.
“Is that good?” she asked. “I mean—integration.”
“It’s less confusing for me.”
“Not to me.”
“Think of us as one person.”
“Okay, but Zabastian is in control?” she asked.
He sighed. “Sometimes.”
She nodded. “How do you know the Moon Cult is here—aside from vibrations?”
He shot her an annoyed look. “Not just vibrations. I know because your world is still here. But it is in grave danger.”
oOo
Carl Peterbalm had decided on the direct approach. He pulled into the parking lot in front of Olivia’s building and looked around. Her apartment was in the far corner of a low-rise garden complex in Baltimore County. He’d never been here before, but he’d looked up her address in the company records.
He wanted to know what was going on. But he didn’t want to speak to her over the phone and leave a record.
So he got out and looked around, taking in details. In the illumination from several overhead lights, he saw that Olivia’s building wasn’t exactly the garden spot of the county. It bordered a patch of scraggly woods dotted with trash. The lawn was crisscrossed by footpaths. Someone had neglected to clean up after a large dog. And kids had doodled in chalk all over the sidewalk.
It was getting dark, and the lights were on in some of the apartments. Probably the complex looked worse during the day.
Couldn’t she afford anything better?
He barked out a laugh. Well, maybe not on what he was paying her. So had she gotten mixed up with the mob or something? Had they come after her for a gambling debt—and somehow his office had gotten wrecked.
He checked the address once more, wishing he could turn around and leave. This place gave him the creeps.
But he needed to find Olivia, so he scanned the mailboxes and found her name, then went to apartment 3A, on the ground floor.
Not a very secure location. He pounded on the door and waited. Then pounded again. No answer.
He called out her name, but she was still silent.
When he rapped louder, the door across the hall opened and a large man stepped out. He was wearing sweatpants and a tee shirt that barely covered his bulging belly.
“Cut the racket,” he said.
“Have you seen Olivia Weston?”
“Naw. She usually comes home around 6:00, but I ain’t seen her.”
The man eyed Carl for a few more seconds, then ducked back into his apartment and shut the door—none too gently.
Carl might have kicked Olivia’s door—except that he didn’t want to tangle with the neighbor again.
As he turned to leave, he heard a car door slam and looked up. In the light from the street lamp, he saw three short, dark-skinned men standing on the sidewalk. Looking like they were all controlled by the same game box, they turned and marched up the walk to the apartment building. They might be wearing business suits, but they looked like mob enforcers or something worse. Hired assassins? And they were heading for the same building that he’d entered.
Were they the guys who had wrecked the office? They certainly looked like they were capable of violence.
Maybe they hadn’t seen him, since he was in shadow in the stairwell, and they were under the streetlight.
He scrambled frantically for an escape plan. Olivia’s apartment was on the ground floor. If he went back down there, would he be trapped? Or was there another way out? He’d seen a door. Did it lead to the outside?
He didn’t know. But he was pretty sure he didn’t want t
o tangle with those guys. He debated just walking past them like he was a resident of the building. But his hands were shaking so badly that he knew he looked guilty of something.
Quickly he turned and headed down the stairs, praying that he wasn’t going to end up hiding under the steps.
oOo
Olivia felt an icy chill skitter over her skin. “What is that supposed to mean? What danger? You told me before that the box could be like a bomb. Do you mean something else? Like a terrorist attack? Do you have some inside information?”
“Your world. Isn’t it in chaos? Wars? Diseases? And the terrorists you spoke of?”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“It is the honor and the privilege of the Moon Priests to watch over the world of men.”
Olivia tipped her head to the side. “Then why are we in such bad shape?”
“Because they have lost some of their power, and they can no longer guard you effectively.”
“Wait a minute. Are you telling me that they lost the box a long time ago?”
“Yes,” he answered, the syllable coming out hard and clipped.
“But you’re supposed to be protecting it. Why didn’t you come out of it and bring it back—like you’re doing now?”
“Because there was no one suitable to help me. My body wasn’t in the box. Just my spirit. And I cannot simply possess the air. I sensed a quality in Luke that would make him receptive to me.”
“Receptive?”
“He has . . .” He fumbled for a word. “Latent psychic powers. And I thought he was strong enough to take my essence without dying.”
She gasped as she caught the magnitude of that last statement.
“You leaped into Luke’s body, knowing you could have killed him? Thanks a lot!”
“It was a calculated risk, but I was very confident in him. Not like that weakling—Peterbalm. He was afraid the moment he got near the box.”
“Right, but I was afraid, too.”
“You are a woman. I would never take the body of a woman.”
“You male chauvinist piece of work!”
“We were talking about Luke. If he did not have a strong mind, he would never have worked the puzzle.”
“Oh great,” Luke muttered. The two of them might be “integrated,” but he was still capable of joining the conversation on his own, if his feelings were strong enough. “Thanks for telling me.”
“You are a good partner,” Zabastian said, and Olivia knew he was still talking to Luke.
He fell silent, and she stared at him. She had the feeling the two men inside Luke’s body were still talking to each other, only now the exchange was completely silent, so they had cut her out of the conversation.
Zabastian finally turned to her and gave her a sharp look. “You tried to call your friend. Can I trust you not to make any more calls?”
His voice was none too gentle. Not like the way Luke had always treated her.
But everything had changed this evening.
She licked her lips. Not long ago, this man had been her lover—one of the most skilled and considerate lovers she had ever met. But she still didn’t know if something real had happened between them. Or whether she could trust him.
She heaved in a sigh and let it out. At least she knew he wanted her to stay with him, and that meant he was prepared to protect her.
Was Decorah Security a better bet? Luke hadn’t called them. But maybe the warrior was keeping him from doing it.
At least for now. She’d tried to call her friends. But maybe she owed it to Zabastian to show some trust.
Zabastian. She’d used that name. Shouldn’t she be calling him Luke?
He was going to be Luke again, wasn’t he? Or was having Zabastian inside his mind a recipe for disaster?
She wished she knew which way to jump. But she figured that, for the time being, they were safe in this house.
oOo
With his heart blocking his windpipe, Carl dashed through the door and into a hallway. On one side was a laundry room. And at the end of the hall, he found a door to the outside of the building.
With a sigh of relief, he rushed through and out into the night, then stopped to drag in huge drafts of air. When he no longer looked and felt like demons were after him, he started for the side of the building, then slipped into the woods, brambles tearing at his pants legs as he worked his way around toward his car. He had almost reached the front of the building when the sound of breaking glass made him stop in his tracks. While he’d been in the basement, the men had come around the side of the apartment. And they were on a patio. One of them had picked up a paving stone and heaved it through the sliding glass door.
It was safety glass, and once they’d broken through, rounded chips began falling out of the hole and dropping to the ground.
Carl watched from behind a tree trunk large enough to conceal his girth. He should slip away before they saw him, but his legs simply wouldn’t work. He stayed where he was, gripping the tree bark to keep from slipping to the ground.
One of the men must have been wearing gloves because he reached toward the window and began enlarging the hole. When a considerable amount of the glass had been removed, the three men slipped into the apartment and disappeared.
Carl breathed out a sigh. Whatever was happening with Olivia was getting out of control.
This couldn’t be about the shipment of antiques. Could it?
A stray thought struck him, and he cringed. What if some of the antiques belonged to them. And they were just trying to get their property back.
He cursed under his breath. He’d hate for these guys to be in the right. And even if they were, they were dangerous. He should call the cops.
But he couldn’t do it from his cell phone because they’d trace the call back to him. And he didn’t want to seem like he was involved. He’d better wait until he could get to a pay phone.
Teeth clenched, he pushed away from the tree, swaying on unsteady legs for a moment. When he thought he could move, he ran as fast as he could through the woods and emerged on the sidewalk.
He made a strangled sound when he saw the nosy neighbor standing in front of his car, taking down his license number.
Lord, no!
Without thinking about what he was doing, he leaped forward, knocking the piece of paper and pencil out of the man’s hand.
“Hey!”
The man spun around, gave Carl a murderous look and lunged. “You!”
Carl had never been particularly quick on his feet, but he was able to dance back, barely avoiding a blow. “You don’t want me! You want the guys who are robbing her apartment,” he shouted.
“What?”
“They broke the sliding glass door. They’re in there. Call the cops.”
The man blinked. “Huh?”
Carl snatched up the paper with the license number, praying that the guy wasn’t smart enough to remember a string of letters and numbers. Damn, he should have smeared mud on the plate. But it was too late for that now.
He was in over his head. And the only thing he could think to do was get out of there.
The nosy neighbor started back toward the apartment. Was the poor jerk walking into a death trap? Carl didn’t know. But at the moment, the important thing was saving his own bacon.
So he jumped in his car and backed out of the space, just as the three men came around the side of the apartment, their expressions angry.
Carl hit the accelerator and sped out of the parking lot, praying that the men couldn’t get to their car in time to catch him and ask if he’d been spying on them.
oOo
Luke wanted to scream at the bastard inside his head to leave him the hell alone. He’d damn well had enough of this performance art or whatever it was. He could see Olivia was wondering whether to trust him. And he wanted to take her in his arms and use some gentle persuasion.
He’d finally connected with her, and despite the smug warrior’s assumptions, making love with
her had had as much to do with Luke Garner as Zabastian. He knew how to satisfy a woman, even if he didn’t know some of the warrior’s fancy moves.
Okay, you had as much to do with it as I did.
Shut up.
I’m acknowledging your contribution.
Shut up.
I will. We can have this discussion later. We have to find the Master of the Moon.
And how are we going to do it?
I need your help.
Luke sighed. Oh yeah? What kind of help?
As soon as I understood something of the computer, I knew you would be an asset.
Luke looked back at Olivia. Okay. I’ll do a Web search, if that’s what you want. But let me talk to Olivia first. She’s got to be wondering why I’m blowing hot and cold with her.
Later. You can manage your love life later.
Not just my love life. You’re pretty wound up with her.
But she cannot be my greatest concern. I am pledged to defend the box.
The box. Yeah.
Luke sighed. He was stuck. And the faster he did what the big Z wanted, the faster he was going to square things with Olivia.
Right, the warrior’s confirmation echoed in his head.
You’re not going to screw me up?
Just sit down at the computer and do your job.
oOo
Carl barreled down the road, then slowed so he wouldn’t get stopped by a cop. At a nearby gas station, he found a phone and reported the break-in, then hung up without giving his name.
He drove a few blocks away, continuing down a residential street as he considered what to do. He’d gone looking for Olivia and hadn’t found her. Maybe she was at Luke’s office.
He didn’t know where the guy worked, exactly. But the office must be in the phone book. What the hell was it called?
He thought for long moments and came up with Marathon. Yeah, that was it.
Would those guys in the business suits go there?
He tried to reason his way through the logic of the situation—which wasn’t his strong suit. The men had gone to Olivia’s apartment, and they’d been able to figure out who she was because she worked for him. But if they didn’t have Luke’s name, it would be okay to try his office.
Or was that safe?
