by Anna Durand
"I'll feel better when we take out Nkosi."
He damn well knew what she'd meant. Did he seriously want her to ask do feel more manly after rescuing the damsel in distress right here in front of their entourage? She doubted that, so she let it go. "The guy outside looked half dead. Nkosi's army isn't exactly the Mongol hordes bearing down on us."
He arched a brow. "How do you know what the man outside looks like?"
Oops. She'd assumed he noticed her presence, but clearly not. "I, well, kind of hitchhiked with you on your little expedition through the crossroads." His entire brow dropped, crinkling over his nose. She hunched her shoulders. "I didn't mean to, honey, it sort of happened unconsciously."
Her use of the endearment honey dissolved the confusion from his face. "That's how you knew when I wanted to manifest, and shot me up with more of your power."
Sean sniggered. "You guys a couple of druggies or what? She's shooting you up?"
David sighed. "I didn't mean it like that."
Someone behind her cleared his throat. Amador's voice wafted into the room like a spicy, but chilly, breeze. "Perhaps we should concentrate on locating Nkosi. If we stop him, his army will be headless."
David gave a sarcastic laugh. "Headless?"
"Yes, like a snake with its head cut off. No?"
Grace nudged David with a finger in his side, the only spot on his body that wasn't lined with hard muscle. "Amador's right. We need to track down Nkosi."
"I know. But how?"
Here came the part she dreaded. The thing she'd avoided since her last psychic debacle, and the one task that, at the mere thought of it, hardened frost on her from the inside. "There's only one way. He's too powerful for normal remote viewing to work." She clutched handfuls of his shirt, her fists balled over his chest. "I have to tap into the Gol — "
"No." He growled the word, but it was panic pinching his features. "You don't have to do that. We'll find another way."
"We don't have time." Willing her pulse to slow and her hands to uncurl, she lifted onto tiptoes to level their gazes. "This is the only way."
He pinned her against him with his muscular arms. His eyes, wide and wild, searched hers. His lips parted, but he did not speak.
She flattened her palms on his chest. "There's a catch, though. Since we're, um… bonded on a much deeper level now, I have no idea what this will do to you. The Golden Power might infect you too."
"I don't give a damn what it does to me. It's you I'm worried about."
Her heart stuttered and her gut twisted. She fought back a sob, wringing tears from her eyes. His hold slackened a bit, and her heels hit the floor. She longed to bury her face in the hollow of his shoulder, but she must remain strong, in this moment more than ever. Swiping the tears away with back of her hand, she touched his cheek. "I know you're worried. The Golden Power corrupts me, and I — "
"Shut up."
She tried to push away, but he grasped her hips. "Excuse me?"
"I said shut up." His gaze, concentrated on her, fired bolts of heat into her mind and body. "Nothing can corrupt you. I told you that before, and I haven't changed my mind. It's a fact."
"But you said you're concerned."
He held her face in both hands. "I worry because I know how much you hate using the Golden Power. But I still believe you are stronger than it is. If you can believe that, then there's nothing to worry about."
"David, I'm not that powerful." He grounded her, in mind and spirit, without doubt. Was their bond truly strong enough to overcome this?
He kissed her, hard and quick. "Can you believe it? Can you believe me?"
She studied his eyes, and the truth rippled through her. "Yes. I believe."
"Then do it."
Sean trotted up beside them. "Whoa, are you serious? You're gonna use the Golden Power, right here?"
Grace looked at him. "Maybe you guys should wait outside after all."
The kid stared at her for several seconds, and she could practically hear him chewing on the problem, weighing the risks. But then he nodded, swiveled on his heels, and marched out the door, shouting, "Come on, Gabe, let's go."
In the doorway, Amador was scowling, but whether at Sean's nickname for him or at the prospect being banished outdoors, she couldn't decide.
Alone again, she and David stood silent, face to face. There was nothing left to say. They both understood the stakes, and had made the decision together.
He enfolded her in his arms, and she nestled her head on his shoulder, against his neck. The feel of his sturdy body against hers calmed the noise inside. She relaxed, shutting her eyes. Her mind shook free of her body, rose up into the crossroads, and higher still, beyond the limits of normal psychic power and into the heart of the darkest energy.
She dove into the Golden Power.
Nkosi's voice vibrated in her mind.
You've come home, Grace, and you will never leave me again.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
David scudded along in Grace's wake, the tail to her flaming comet. For the first time, he was traveling into the crossroads with another psychic. He hadn't known it was possible, but with Grace, every barrier he'd believed existed crumbled into dust. He could neither see nor hear her voice, yet the glowing essence of her ferried him higher and higher into the star field that comprised the psychic crossroads.
A wall. Up ahead.
The pressure constricted his mind, stabbing pains through his metaphysical form. He struggled to draw back from the barrier, but Grace rocketed both of them toward it. They collided with the wall. If he'd had a voice, he would've screamed.
The strain sprang loose.
He hovered somewhere near Grace, bathed in the glow of her energy. Beyond her fire, a darkness gaped its maw, hungry for the power it sniffed out in her. Alien thoughts bombarded him.
You've come home, Grace, and you will never leave me again.
Nkosi's astral voice. They must've breached the hideaway of the Golden Power.
He shouldn't have allowed Grace to do this. What kind of coward made his fiancée fight the ultimate battle alone? He was here, sure, but how could he aid her? Liberating her from the facility, and then from Nkosi's puppet man, depleted his metaphysical reserves. She must feel that.
Did she let him tag along out of pity?
The darkness closed in around them.
Oily energy slithered through him, seeking cracks and holes in his psyche, avenues by which to sneak inside and break him apart bit by bit. The power would consume Grace. As for him…
It would annihilate him.
Maybe she's better off without me.
He didn't mean it, didn't believe it, but the fleeting thought split open a hairline fracture somewhere inside him. The Golden Power clawed at his soul, pried open the crack, wormed itself into the gap, into him. Slimy, viscous, and putrid, it crept inside.
If it took him, Grace would fall next.
A glistening, incandescent outpouring of love shot down the connection from Grace into him. His own words, the ones he'd admonished her with, echoed in his mind. Stop being afraid.
The time had come to take his own advice.
He threw open the gates of his heart and soul, and embraced the essence of her. Hope and anguish. Passion and trust. An aching loneliness, at last quenched by his vow to value her above all else. I won't let you down this time, Grace. He would sacrifice his very soul for her.
And it was time to live up to the promise.
Summoning all the power he harbored in his core, he lashed out at the invading entity that was the Golden Power. Slashing. Goring. Spraying black energy into the ether, and lapping it up with a ravenous thirst.
Gorged on the ultimate power, he hesitated.
This time, Grace didn't need to taint herself. He'd absorbed the brunt of it for her. And the
unbridled knowledge whirling into his mind bestowed on him the one ability he'd failed to master before. The power to deliver her from her darkest fears.
He knew where to find Nkosi.
A wave of anxiety streaked into him from Grace. She sensed the change in him. Her panic begged him to stop. It was too late.
He raced toward Nkosi.
Grace hurtled after David, still bound to him by the psychic tether of their connection. Her mind bucked and scraped across barriers she could neither see nor touch, but that scuffed her raw anyway. The stinging and constriction of repressed sobs wracked her astral body.
Stop, David, please.
What had he done? One second, the Golden Power pawed at her, with Nkosi's thoughts injected into her mind. The next second, the pressure let go with a dizzying abruptness and a silence deeper than the vacuum of space deafened her. David's energy, once warm and comforting, devolved into a writhing, oily mass of —
No. It couldn't be.
She reached out to caress him with the psychic equivalent of fingers — and plunged into the viscous morass. The amorphous thing smothered him, burrowing deeper with each second.
He had absorbed the Golden Power.
Why, why, why?
A sick feeling infiltrated her. She knew why. He did it for her.
To save her. To free her. But instead of unchaining her from the tainted lure of the Golden Power, he was dragging her down with him. She'd follow him into Hell, if necessary, but not at the expense of losing him. And she would lose him. Forever. He'd ingested too much of the supreme and insatiable power source, granting it unfettered access to another human body and mind.
This was her fault. He wouldn't have sunk to this level if she hadn't made him feel unworthy. Her nagging, her accusations, drove him to this.
She was going to save him, dammit.
Light exploded around her. She plummeted out into the world, whirling and whirling, without form or focus. David's energy — the warm, sharp energy of him and only him — shielded her from the onslaught. It calmed every nerve and anchored her to the world around them. His arms caught her as she struggled to sort out what she saw.
Trees towered all around them, sentinels that penned them inside a claustrophobic clearing. Green moss squished under her feet. The sun blazed behind the treetops, its rays puncturing the shadows below. A frozen sliver of realization pierced her heart. She'd visited this place before. This was where her vision unfolded. David died here.
His fingers cinched tight, cutting into her flesh.
She hissed. "Ow."
His fingers dug in deeper.
Grace pulled out of his grasp. Her gaze journeyed up to his, and her heart stopped beating.
His eyes. They flared a bright white, the pupils and irises overwhelmed by the terrifying glow that radiated from within. The brilliance expanded, inch by inch, to engulf his body in a sterile aura composed of raw power. The force of it battered her mind. If not for the psychic firewall she'd built, the Golden Power would be breaking through to pillage her mind. The energy roiling out of David prickled her flesh, inciting a hard shiver.
Her skin. She felt it. His hands had grasped her.
They had manifested. He manufactured bodies for both of them.
"No David." The grief rending her heart bled through in her voice. She reached for him, but a wave of sickening power punched into her from him, and she yanked her hand away. "No. David, no, you have to let it go. Please, for us, scrub it out of you and come back to me."
His eyes flashed brighter, tiny stars about to go supernova. The power in him distended, hot and thick and vile, rising toward an outburst of galactic proportions.
She dived into the power envelope barricading him. It scorched her skin, scraped at her body and mind, desperate to drag her back into its clutches. No, dammit, never again, you will never take me and you can't have David. She seized his face with both hands. Energy seared her flesh and coiled around her wrists, like wires ratcheting tighter. Pain shot up her arms. She bit back a cry and pulled his face to hers.
"It can't have you." Her voice growled, as if a feral animal possessed her. Yet it was her voice, her fury infusing her tone and hardening her resolve. "David, goddammit, you listen to me. The Golden Power can't take you unless you give in. Fight it. Scratch and scream and thrash until it lets go." She jerked his head down, their lips touching, her hands so tight on his face her nails dug into his cheekbones. "You're stronger than Nkosi. You can conquer this power and come back to me."
His lips twitched against hers. His body tensed. And in his eyes, a glimmer of blue broke through the screen of white-hot fire.
"That's it," she said, tears running down her cheeks. "That's it, keep fighting. You're mine, remember? Nothing else can claim you." On her next words, the fierceness of her voice reverberated in her soul. "You are mine."
The blue glittered and swelled, annihilating the white brilliance one spark at a time. The darkness seething into her from him weakened. Her heart pounded at the sight of blue fire overtaking the nuclear glow. What else could she say to rouse him, to drive out the alien power?
Nothing. Words were over.
The memory of what he'd done for her surged to the surface.
Eyes locked on his, she crushed her mouth to his, delved her tongue inside, branding him as hers with each swipe and swirl. At first, he held still, his mouth open to her but his entire being oblivious to her wanton assault. Then, with devastating swiftness, the inhuman facade imploded and avid passion combusted between them, ricocheting up and down their connection, until she couldn't distinguish his fervor from hers. The whiteness evaporated from his eyes, cast out by the blue bonfire in his irises. The blinding aura around him snuffed out. When his arms clamped his arms around her, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth, demanding more while giving it in return, she let her eyelids shut and basked in the euphoria of their bodies fused.
Their manifestations disintegrated. As one, their minds soared back across the metaphysical distance to their bodies, uncoupling at the last second.
Sean slouched on the desk, perched on its edge. "Back already?"
David pushed away from her, his posture casual, yet with a coiled tension beneath the surface. "I know where Tesler is. Let's go."
His resolve, steel hard and impenetrable, brooked no argument. She would've tried anyway, but she knew it would do no good. The battle was imminent, and he would not be dissuaded from his goal.
Resigned, she let him lead her out to the Jeep.
Grace eyed the massive pine tree and repressed a shudder. They'd arrived here, in the clearing where her vision took place, a few minutes ago. No sign of Tesler, or Nkosi. Those facts did nothing to disperse the chill that kept rushing through her every time she looked at the tree.
David kicked the pine's truck. "He was here, I know it."
"Maybe you were wrong," she said. "We didn't see Tesler when we RV'd this place. You might've been, I don't know, channeling my vision."
"No. He was here."
She grasped his shoulders and turned her toward him. Angry lines carved into his features. Ordering him to chill out, or even begging him, wouldn't work. So she seized handfuls of his shirt and yanked him in for a fiery lip-lock. He resisted at first, stubborn in his righteous fury, but the longer she demanded a response, with every slant of her mouth over his, the more he melted into the kiss.
Ka-chunk.
The mechanical noise arrested their passion. David broke the kiss, his eyes scanning the forest. "I know that sound."
An electric shiver dislodged the heat of desire. She recognized the sound too. It was a round being chambered into a gun.
She tore her body away from his and searched the shadows between the trees.
"You won't see them," said a voice colored by a familiar accent. "Not until I command them to reveal their presenc
e."
Nkosi strode out of the trees.
Tesler lurched out behind him, eyes as wild as his gray hair, his cheeks splotched with red.
"Over there," Nkosi told Tesler, nodding toward a thick pine tree.
The world seemed to skid to a halt, and the air caught in her lungs. The tree. In her vision, that was where Tesler murdered David.
She latched onto his hand. He was focused on Nkosi, his lips compressed, his eyes narrowed. She tugged his hand.
He turned his head, brow furrowed.
"Please get us out of here," she said. "This is where it happened."
His brow knit tighter.
"My vision." She wound her fingers through his and gripped with all her strength. "This is where my premonition took place."
He didn't ask if she was sure. He didn't need to. Their link, no longer poisoned with the Golden Power, told him all he needed to know.
The wrinkles ironed out of his brow, and his expression went stoic. "We changed things. It won't happen the way you saw."
"Please, David. Let's un-manifest and get the hell out of here."
"No." He shook free of her hand. "Tesler and Nkosi must be stopped."
"David." The sharpness in her tone resonated, loud and unmistakable. All heads jerked in her direction.
Nkosi chuckled. The sound chilled her to the core and reverberated off the trees. "A lover's tiff? I will gladly give you a moment to mend the rift, before I rip the brains out of your heads."
David swelled taller somehow, his stance wide, every muscle tensed and ready for battle. His blond hair glistened in the sunshine, and his eyes glinted with a purpose she'd never witnessed before. Her warrior angel. Her hero.
In that moment, she loved him more than she'd imagined possible.
He hurled himself at Nkosi. A snarl ripped out of him as he tackled the other man and their bodies tumbled to the ground in a blur of motion. They rolled, kicked, clobbered, bellowed. Nkosi's eyes glared white. His lips peeled back, and crooked teeth sank into David's shoulder. David rammed his knee into Nkosi's gut. The other man convulsed, his face contorted with pain.
