Her gaze bore into Colt. “Throw it! Now!”
Colt hesitated for a moment, frowned, then twisted his body and released the Book of Legend, catapulting it end over end toward the Gates of Nyx. Pages fluttered as it shooshed toward the opening. A collective gasp rose up from the Darkin hordes.
China rushed forward trying to put the remaining guardians in place but was blown back off her feet by an invisible barrier. Rathe levitated and caught the Book in his hand. He made a mocking tsking sound and shook his head at Colt as he came back down to rest on the ground. “A nice throw, but hardly the stuff of legend.” The Darkin cheered.
But the Book had come close enough to the Gates to change the Darkin flames, or perhaps it was because they were all united now, each of the Chosen with his mate. China wasn’t sure which, but it didn’t matter. The Gates creaked shut, sealing the Darkin portal between their world and Rathe’s realm.
Now, instead of a wall of green, a blue vortex, twenty feet tall, swirled before the closed Gates. Was it the passage to other dimensions Marley had warned them about? There hadn’t been time to put the remaining guardians in place before Colt threw the Book.
A fire wraith fell before Rathe at his feet. “Master! The Gates have sealed. What will we do?”
Rathe squeezed his hand into a fist, and the fire wraith toppled to the ground, struggling against an invisible force suffocating the life from it. The flames faded from its form, leaving nothing but a dried husk of ash behind. “Impertinent fool. The object was never to open the Gates permanently, but to open ourselves to even greater powers.” He lifted his hands high into the air, and the blue light of the vortex pulsed like a heartbeat.
The brand on China’s lower back began to throb and then burn. She arched forward, grasping at it with both hands, and screamed against the searing pain that ricocheted through her body, setting all her nerves on fire. Remington caught her as her knees buckled. “China, listen to me. We have to get you away from here. Away from Rathe.”
Her whole body shook, racked by the pain, but she stood up, her hands balled into hard, whitened fists. She would not let him win this time. “No!”
China took the pain; she stuffed it down. It was how she had survived before; it was how she would survive now. She let the terrible pain create a burning fire within her, then focused that fire and let the transition take her. Remington backed away as her body morphed and changed into that of a giant hellhound. She was bigger than a locomotive, more powerful and pissed as hell.
The smug look on Rathe’s face faded, the slash in his face falling into a grim line. “So is that how it is to be, daughter? You would use the power I gave you, what I made you, against me? I created you, you filthy half-Darkin bitch, and now I will do what I should have done long ago and destroy you, and the Chosen.”
She relied on her mental communication with Remington to speak within this form. I will kill him. Now. You, Winchester, and the ladies must leave.
She reached down deep inside and pulled what energy she could and tried to transport Winchester and Remington back to the Circe. But in her current state it was too much of a draw. She couldn’t maintain her hellhound form and transport the two of them.
She bellowed out an anguished howl of frustration and lowered her head, squaring her massive shoulders. She’d head butt that sadistic bastard into the next dimension. She charged at Rathe, and he dissipated into a curl of dark particles, leaving her to skid to a stop before she barreled straight through toward the vortex.
“I could have told you that wouldn’t work,” Winchester called out. “That’s how the bastard made sure I shot our mother.”
Both Colt and Remington stared in disbelief at Winchester. “You shot Ma?” Colt sputtered. Lilly gasped.
Winchester’s brows drew together. “Not intentionally. I was young, inexperienced, and aiming for him. We’ll talk about it later, if we get out of here.”
Remington gripped his shoulder in a show of support. It didn’t matter what had passed. They were still family. No matter what had happened. He wanted to know, but it could wait. “When we get out of here,” he shot back. Winchester glanced at Colt, and Colt nodded an affirmative.
Rathe reappeared, floating in midair as if he were seated on a chair, his legs crossed. “How touching, to see such family unity.” He glanced in China’s direction. “Nothing like our family, is it my darling?”
China roared, and chunks of rock from the rim of the volcano came loose and tumbled to the ground. Behind Rathe the Gates shook, and the vortex grew larger, the ominous blue swirls spinning faster and faster.
Fine. If the only way the Book would go through the Gates was if she took Rathe in too, so be it. She lowered her head, ready to charge, then started running.
“China, stop!”
At the sound of Remington’s voice, she slid to a stop. ZZZoott! The blue bolt of electricity that came shooting out of the Blaster missed her hellhound nose by mere inches, slamming into Rathe. He went flying backward, carried by the blast into the vortex, clutching the Book of Legend in his hands, his mouth an open scream. The vortex exploded outward in a giant wave of electrical discharge as he disappeared.
The resulting shockwave blew them flat on their backs.
Winchester rotated his head and glared at Colt who was holding the smoking Blaster. “Why didn’t the vortex disappear? Marley said throw the Book at it and it would shut!”
“We weren’t able to put the guardians in place. They must have been what would prevent the rift from happening when the Gates shut!” Colt snapped.
The ground shook. Remington sat up, and so did the others. “I don’t know, but something tells me we’d better not stick around to find out.”
China let the transition warp through her system, shrinking and pulling her body back into its normal shape and size. And there was Remington, holding her up as her knees wobbled.
“How did they get here?” she murmured.
“Marley got us here. He has some evaporative transponder machine he used to get Colt into Hell. He reconfigured it to take us to wherever Rathe was.”
“Can you use it to get back?”
Colt shook his head. “Nope. One-way ticket in.”
“Then how do we get them out?” she muttered, then looked up into Remington’s face. “I don’t know if I have the ability to transport all of us.”
“Looks like we have bigger problems than getting off this rock,” Colt muttered. The Darkin masses had closed in around the six of them. There were no more coming through the Gates, but there were too many for them to fight alone and survive.
Remington set China on her feet and stood slightly in front of her. “If you want her, you’ll have to go through me first.”
“And me,” Colt added.
“And me,” Winchester said as the three of them stood shoulder to shoulder, a wall in front of the women.
China got up on tiptoe and looked over their massive shoulders. A werewolf came forward, ears pinned submissively against his head, tail between his legs, and knelt before them. “Sire, we only want to pledge our allegiance to our new queen.”
“New queen?” Colt muttered.
China shoved between Remington and Colt and looked down at the werewolf and then out at the crowd of Darkin that covered the island. Like a wave washing across the Darkin, they all sank to their knees and bowed their heads. “What is your will, Your Majesty?” the werewolf asked, baring his neck in a sign of submission. The ground beneath their feet shook and rumbled.
“I’ll be damned,” Colt murmured. “She’s their queen now that Rathe’s gone.”
“Whatever you are going to order, you better make it quick,” Remington said softly.
China lifted her head and took a regal stance. “Darkin, you are ordered to live in peace with the mortals and to disperse from this place.” Like a forest fire, the air filled with hazy smoke as they began to twist and dissipate into dark particles.
Remington gazed at her with tot
al confidence and kissed her hard. China let the welcome tingling sensation of it seep all the way to her toes, wiping away her pain, her doubts, and her fears. “Have I told you lately that I love you?” he said.
She smiled at him. “No, but I like the sound of that.” He kissed her again for good measure.
“Do what you can. Get them back first, and we’ll live with the rest.” The trembling grew worse, and a loud cracking sound ricocheted off the stones as threads of red began to crack the surface of the molten rock beneath their feet.
“Colt, have you ever transported anyone before with your Darkin powers?”
He gave her a smug grin. “How hard can it be if you can do it?”
That sounded like Colt. “Good. You transport Winchester and Lilly, and I’ll take Remington and the contessa.” She pulled all her power together at her core and grabbed hold of Remington and the contessa. A renewed level of power sang and hummed in her veins. She was stronger than she’d been before, more powerful than she’d ever been. “Close your eyes; it’ll help.”
Remington laid a kiss on China’s lips as they twisted apart into a spin of dark particles. When they came back together, they collapsed in a heap on the deck of the Circe.
The explosion, with the sound of a thousand cannons firing at once, rocked the ship backward several hundred feet on a blast of hot, sulfuric wind. Remington groaned and scrambled to his feet, then staggered to the ship’s railing to peer out across the ocean. A black mushroom-shaped cloud billowed out of the heart of the volcano, glowing red lava covering what was left of the island, visible for miles even in the darkness. Most of the land mass was gone, and a rain of burning fire, brimstone, ash, and pumice fell from the sky. The searing heat of the air, the suffocating stench of sulfur stung his eyes, nose, and throat. The black spread out, devouring everything in its path.
Remington turned. “Captain! If you want to live, get us the hell out of here! Fast!”
The whop whop whop of the Circe’s engines grew faster, whipwhipwhipwhip, until the deck below them hummed and vibrated with their power. The sulfurous wind cut across the deck, buffeting them with gale force, so that they had to cling to anything they could to prevent getting blown overboard.
“Jumpin’ Jehosophat. Did you hear that thing blow?” Winchester yelled, hair blowing wildly about his head as he staggered to the rail to join the others.
“I think the whole world heard it,” Remington replied.
Colt, shirt billowing and hair whipping around his head, came up alongside them. “Do you think the vortex closed?”
“What?” Marley asked from behind them. “The Gates of Nyx didn’t close?”
They all turned. He was worrying his hands, muttering to himself something that sounded like calculations.
Colt pulled off his hat and clutched it in his hand to keep it from blowing away. “The Gates closed. We threw the Book in, just like you said. But we couldn’t get the guardians in place in time.”
“What do you mean? Are the Gates still there?” Marley asked, his gaze bouncing back and forth between the six of them.
“There was an odd swirling kind of blue spot between them,” China offered. “Like a whirlpool of energy.”
Marley frowned, his white hair waving about manically in the wind. “How big?”
“About twenty feet in diameter,” Remington told him. It might have been larger, but he’d been too damned worried about China to pay that much attention. He looked at her, loving the smudges on her face and the triumphant glow about her.
“Twenty feet? Twenty feet!” Marley threaded his fingers through his already wild hair, making it stand askew even more.
Octavia tugged on Marley’s sleeve. “It could very well be a time rift!”
Marley glanced at her. “I think you may be right!”
Winchester cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t know if it makes any difference, but Rathe and the Book got blasted right into it.”
Marley looked a bit startled. “I thought you threw the Book into the Gates?”
“They closed because of the unbreakable bond. The Book went through the vortex because Rathe just happened to be holding it at the time,” Remington explained with a grin.
Marley mumbled. “Most intriguing. This could require further research.”
Remington looked over his shoulder at the red glow that lit up the sky from the island. “I don’t think there’s anything left, Marley.”
“What heading, Mr. Jackson?” Captain Le Renaud asked.
“Take us home, Captain.” He had never really thought of Tombstone as home; home was not anywhere really. But things were different now. He was different. The idea of putting down roots in one place without the constant threat of Darkin appealed to him.
China leaned on the ship’s rail, staring out at the chaos on the horizon as it became smaller and smaller. He walked to her and she slid her fingers into his and gifted him with a smile that could break a man’s heart. The wind caught her blond hair and sent it spiraling out behind her head like a golden sail.
He used his hold on her to pull her into his arms and clasped her lightly about the waist. “You make one impressive hellhound, and an even more impressive Darkin Queen.”
A bubble of laughter welled up from inside her. “Don’t you forget it.”
He kissed her lightly, just a brush of his lips over the silk of hers, but it made him remember just how spectacular making love to China could be. “I thought you were in love with my brother.”
“So did I. Once.” She brushed her fingers gingerly through the hair at his temple. “But I realized it was only a silly competition between us—who could best the other, who could win.”
Remington flinched. “I don’t like to lose. You know that, right?”
She offered him a sly, knowing smile. “But that’s just it. With us it isn’t a competition. It’s a joining of forces. We’re stronger together than we are apart.”
“Two halves of the same whole?”
She laughed and kissed him. “See, we’re even beginning to share a brain.”
“Oh, don’t ever accuse me of that. I can’t hope to understand the way you think.”
Her gray eyes turned misty and soft and full of love as she laid a hand tenderly against his cheek. “But you at least try. That’s more than anyone has ever done for me.”
Remington brushed his thumb over her bottom lip, marveling at the softness of it, at how this woman could be so tough and resilient and yet still had the biggest heart he’d ever known. She was smart, strong, and sexy, and she brought out the best in him. “It’s because you’re special, China McGee. There isn’t a woman on the planet like you.”
“I know.”
He laughed. “You’re part of us now, you know, this crazy, mixed-up family of mine. Are you sure you’re up for the challenge?”
She glanced at Colt who was holding Lilly about the waist, his hands fisted in her flaming hair, and at Winchester who whispered things into the contessa’s ear, and at Marley who had his arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “Yes, we are a family, aren’t we? A crazy, mixed-up family. But you know me, I’m always up for a challenge.”
Remington hugged her close, and he never planned to let go. “That’s my girl.”
“I am yours. All yours.”
“I know.”
Author’s Note
In every bit of fiction there’s hidden a kernel of truth. In the case of the Chosen, submarines were in use far before 1883 during the Civil War. While my version is a little more advanced (taking on some qualities of those built a bit later during 1914), the basics, including pressurization under water at depth, air scrubbers, and more were already in use before my story would have happened. If you’d like to know more, check out www.navyandmarine.org/ondeck/1862submarines.htm
And while they didn’t have a name at the time for the psychological difficulties China endures in respect to her relationship with her father, Rathe, where an abused individual identifies
and can even defend his or her abuser, we know it today as Stockholm Syndrome.
The Temple of Niches aka the Temple of El Tajin, where I have the last piece of the Book of Legend hidden, is in fact a real place, once occupied by natives who were eventually subdued by the Aztecs. These natives did help the Spanish conquistadors in a plan to bring down the Aztecs, which ultimately failed before their culture was overtaken. For more, start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Tajin
And there are many, many accounts of the explosion of the now famous Krakatoa on August 26–27, 1883, which killed more than 36,000 people and was at the time the loudest explosion ever heard, with about 13,000 times the nuclear power of the Little Boy bomb that annihilated Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II. I imagined if I were going to make something seem like the end of the world at that time, this would have been the closest thing to it.
Keep reading for THE INVENTOR,
a bonus novella
previously available only as an eBook.
Sir Marley Turlock doesn’t normally bother with flirtation. He’s an inventor, a scientist, not a gadabout. And the floor of the inaugural London Aeronautical Exhibition, just before he presents his groundbreaking new device to the Queen herself, is not the place to change his habits toward the fairer sex.
But Lady Persephone Hargrieve has her delicate fingers engaged in the innards of his device before Marley can catch his breath at her beauty. He’s never met a woman like her—with a fiery intelligence to match his own, a genius for mechanics, and more secrets than he can guess.
Of course, Sephie’s secrets aren’t all innocuous tricks to make the gears spin smoother. It’s no coincidence that she’s turned up to investigate Marley’s machines—if they’re good enough, if he can be trusted enough, they might save the country. Even if along the way she ends up losing her heart . . .
The Chosen Page 30
