The Dark Gate

by Pamela Palmer

  Probably the little punk who’d shot at him in Tony Jingles. She started to pull him toward the stairs but he stopped her.

  “Larsen, you’re not going up there. I want you outside where she can’t shoot you again.”

  “You don’t even know what you’re walking into.” There was fear in her eyes, he realized. Fear for him as well as herself. “At least let me wait in here. You may need me.”

  With a quick squeeze of her hand, he let her go. “All right. But stay here.” Jack quickly climbed the stained linoleum stairs, then paused outside the apartment door, heart thudding against his ribs. Be here, you white bastard.

  He took a deep breath, then with a swift, hard kick, broke down the door and swung inside, gun drawn.

  “Police!”

  Two women sat on the sofa watching an old I Love Lucy repeat, the smell of popcorn circling around them as the light in the darkened room flashed and changed with the television. Their backs were to the door, but neither so much as glanced behind at Jack’s shout. As if they hadn’t heard him.

  Unaware. Controlled.

  He heard something to his right and swung toward the sound, gun raised. Running toward him, knife in hand, was the little bald man from Jingles. Barely five feet tall, his lined and weathered face wore a look of cruel determination.

  “Freeze!” Jack aimed his gun at his chest but the man never slowed. “Stop or I’ll shoot.” But he might as well be talking to a shrub.

  Hell. If he shot the little devil, he’d never get any answers. Jack shoved his gun into his waistband and braced himself for the attack. As the small man lunged for him, Jack shot his hand in and under the knife, grabbing the man’s small wrist, immobilizing the deadly weapon.

  Stronger than he appeared, the little man kicked and struggled against Jack’s hold and it was all he could do to keep that knife from a lethal swipe.

  “Jack, watch out!” Larsen yelled from behind him.

  “Get out of here!” he shouted, but his gaze swung up in time to see a second assailant, the cancer girl, running for him in an awkward, loping run, a butcher knife held in both hands above her head. “Larsen, run!”

  Terror for her surged through him, lending him the added strength he needed to quell his small opponent. He clipped him hard under the chin, sending him sprawling, unconscious.

  Then Jack grabbed his gun and swung toward the girl, prepared to shoot her down before she hurt Larsen again. But the girl, her bald head glistening with sweat, seemed to be locked in some kind of invisible battle, her limbs jerking, her muscles corded with tension.

  “Flee!” she shouted, her cry anguished. “Flee or I must kill you.”

  “Stop right there. Drop the knife!”

  “I cannot. He orders me to kill you and I must obey.” She continued forward in that same awful gait. If she wasn’t fighting every step, she was a damned good actress. “You must flee. Or stop me.”

  “If I shoot, I’ll kill you.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Do what you must. I wish you no more harm.” Her gaze fixed on Larsen. “Forgive me. He bade me shoot you with my arrow.” A flash of rebellion tightened her mouth. “I shot you in the shoulder so you would not die, and tipped the arrow in healing dust so your wound would heal quickly.”

  Healing dust. Jack remembered his shock at how quickly Larsen’s shoulder had healed. Despite the girl’s protestations, she was still advancing with the knife, but after what he’d seen the past few days, he could too easily believe she was being controlled. He was going to have to stop her—without hurting her, if such a thing were possible.

  “Is Baleris here?”

  “Nay. He is with your guard. Your M.P.D.”

  The police station. “Are there any more of you? Anyone else who’s going to rush me with a knife or arrow?”

  “Nay.” She was almost upon him and the tears were running freely down her cheeks now. “You must stop me.”

  Jack shoved his gun into his waistband again, then circled behind her. With a single swift motion, he grabbed her arms and wrenched the knife out of her hands, then pinned her hard against him, absorbing her struggles.

  The voices in his head went berserk, screeching like banshees.

  “Damn.” Jack ground his teeth, struggling against the press of noise on the inside of his skull, half afraid the very bone would crack.

  “Jack?” Larsen looked at him with worry in her eyes. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m okay.” Hell, no, he wasn’t okay. It was as if the voices were pressing their mouths to his ear, blasting him with everything they had. He could hardly hear through the screaming. Could hardly think. He had…to…get…control. With everything he had, he fought the noise, pushing at the voices with his mind until he could…almost…think again.

  “Jack, you’re hurting her.”

  “What?” He focused on Larsen, saw her staring at the girl he still held. The girl’s gasps for breath reached his ears.

  Hell. He was crushing her. Jack loosened his grip, but not enough to let her escape, and handed Larsen the knife.

  “If the little man wakes up, kill him. This one and I are going to take a look around.”

  “Tarrys,” his captive said, struggling against his hold.

  “What?”

  “I am called Tarrys. I am slave to Baleris, but that one—” She spat in the direction of the man lying prone on the carpet.

  “Yuillin serves our master willingly.”

  “All right then, Tarrys. Let’s you and me have a look around.” He half carried her, half pushed her around the sofa until he could see the two women clearly. Recognition kicked him in the chest.

  “It’s them.” His gaze met Larsen’s. “The two congressional interns kidnapped from the pharmacy.”

  Larsen’s eyes went wide. “We’ve got to get them out of here.”

  “See if you can move them while…Tarrys and I finish our tour.”

  He lifted the small woman off the ground, tucking her still-struggling body beneath his left arm. She weighed next to nothing, but the roaring in his head was going to crush him.

  “You are in danger,” the girl said as he carried her down the short hallway. “Your people. You cannot let him return to Esria with the Lost Stone.”

  A memory poked through the screams that filled his head as he checked the bathroom. “The Stone of Ezrie?”

  “Aye.”

  “What’s the Stone of Ezrie?” Larsen asked behind them.

  “I thought you were going to get the women out of here.”

  “They won’t budge. I couldn’t even drag them away.”

  “I’ll have to carry them out.” He grunted as Tarrys’s elbow slammed into his gut. “The Stone of Ezrie was the name of the artifact stolen from the Smithsonian the morning of the first rape,” he told Larsen.

  “Baleris stole it,” the girl said. “’Twas what called him through the gate. The stone has great power. You must not let him take it.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Baleris wears it around his neck.”

  As he approached the bedroom he heard a sound and raised his gun. “I thought you said there were no more of you.”

  “She is controlled. ’Tis her home.”

  He eased into the bedroom where a thirty-something Hispanic female sat on the overstuffed chair in the corner, staring straight ahead as if heavily drugged. A quick search of the room assured him there was no one else.

  “Is she in danger?” he asked his captive.

  “I feed her and the other females. Baleris has not harmed any of them.”

  “Yet,” Larsen said.

  Jack met her gaze. “We’ve got to get them out of here.” He set the still-struggling girl on her feet and turned her to face him, his hands clamped on her shoulders to keep her still. “How does he control them?”

  She looked at him as if she didn’t understand the question. “He is Esri,” she said as if that explained it all.

  The Stone of Ezrie.
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br />   His hands convulsed on her shoulders as the screams tore apart his brain. “What is Esri?”

  The girl winced. “Do you not know? They were much feared by humans in the old days before the worlds were sealed from one another. They stole into your world at midnight to enchant your virgins and steal your children. The humans once called them elf. Or faerie.”

  “Are you kidding?” Larsen whispered, wide-eyed beside him.

  Jack scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s not a damned elf.”

  “Nay, I am not.” She squirmed in his grasp, still fighting him. “Baleris is Esri. I am Marceil.”

  Jack shoved her against the wall. “I want the truth!”

  “Jack, you’re hurting her.”

  Larsen grabbed his arm, blessedly ending the scream fest between his ears until her fingers slipped away and the banshees once again took up residence.

  “She’s playing us for fools.”

  “Why?” Those dark, coal-rimmed eyes of hers snapped with excitement. “Maybe this is the answer we’ve been looking for—the reason he’s so much more powerful than he should be.”

  Denial shot through him, sharp and hot. No way was he believing in elves. He already had one foot caught in the quicksand of madness. He wasn’t about to shove the other in there, as well.

  “Wrong.” He glared at the girl. “You said the worlds were sealed, yet here you are.”

  Despite his rough treatment, the girl showed no fear, but looked at him with eyes that seemed somehow old and infinitely sad.

  “Baleris stumbled upon a threshold, hitherto unknown, deep in the Banished Lands. One that had never been sealed. If the Lost Stone is returned to Esria as Baleris intends, all the seals will open and the humans will be at the mercy of the Esri once more.”

  She was talking nonsense. Fairy tales. But the cop in him demanded answers. “Where is this threshold?”

  “I…do not know. It was dark. I did not see.”

  “Convenient.”

  Larsen grabbed his arm again. “Do you hear that?”

  Silence. Silence suddenly overlaid by the chilling sound of sirens. Police.

  He met Larsen’s wide-eyed gaze, his pulse suddenly pounding. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “What about the interns?” Larsen lifted her hand from his arm and the noise roared back, nearly buckling his knees.

  The sirens came to a screeching halt out front.

  “No time.”

  “You must hit me like you did Yuillin,” Tarrys cried. “Or I will be forced to follow you until I kill you.”

  Jack balled his fist, then stopped, a sudden thought exploding through the screams in his head. David. Henry’s son.

  “What did you do to the boy when you tried to get in my apartment?”

  “The brown boy?”

  “Yes.” He shook her. “Tell me what you did to him.”

  “Yuillin shot him with…elfshot. ’Twill turn him to stone from the inside out. Without a cure, he will die.”

  “What’s the cure? What do I have to do to save him?”

  “I do not know. There were once humans with the gift for healing. You must find one.”

  More sirens came to a halt outside.

  “Jack, we’ve got to go.”

  He needed answers, dammit! But they were out of time.

  With a swift upper cut, he clipped the girl under the chin, then lowered her, unconscious, to the floor. The moment he released her, the screams turned back into voices. Loud, frantic, excited voices, but just voices.

  He grabbed Larsen’s hand and the noise ceased altogether. “We’re going out the window.”

  She threw him a wide-eyed stare. “It’s the second story!”

  “You want a broken leg or three rounds through the chest?”

  Her jaw dropped, then snapped closed. “Good point.”

  As the sound of pounding feet filled the downstairs entry to the apartment building, Jack wrenched open the bedroom window, swung out until he was hanging from the sill, then dropped onto the grass with a bone-jarring impact. When he looked up, Larsen was crawling out the window, an expression of terror on her face.

  Come on, angel. His heart thudded in his chest. Any second, the cops would burst into that bedroom, guns blasting. He shouldn’t have left her behind, but he’d wanted to get on the ground first, to break her fall.

  She glanced at him and he held out his hands. Jump, he mouthed. He couldn’t shout, couldn’t take a chance on alerting the police they were escaping. With a grimace, Larsen nodded and eased herself out until she was hanging from the ledge.

  Come on, Larsen.

  Finally she let go and he caught her as she reached the ground, breaking her landing, pulling her hard against him.

  “Are you okay?” he demanded.

  “Yes,” she said breathlessly.

  “Then let’s get out of here.”

  But as they ran for the car, his head spun with the girl’s—Tarrys’s—words. Elves. What kind of idiot did she take him for? Elves were little dwarflike people. Fairies were little more than insects. Baleris sure as hell wasn’t either. He was a man. Just a man. Nothing more.

  They jumped in the car and took off before the cops saw them.

  The son of a bitch had to be a man. Because if he wasn’t, if he honestly had magical abilities…they were in deep trouble.

  Chapter 10

  “It’s bull,” Jack said from behind her.

  Larsen stood at the window of the borrowed apartment, watching the early afternoon sun flicker and flash off passing cars on the street below. They’d made a clean getaway, but she couldn’t shake the fear that the cops were coming anyway. She couldn’t bring herself to abandon her lookout position.

  “There’s no such thing as elves,” Jack said vehemently. Since she wasn’t arguing the point one way or the other, she could only assume he was still struggling with the idea, trying to convince himself.

  She glanced at him, at where he sat on the sofa, his fingers digging into his hair. He wore a pair of jeans and a dark red polo he’d borrowed from Charlie’s closet.

  He looked good. He always looked good.

  Not a minute went by that part of her wasn’t remembering the way she felt when he kissed her, the way heat moved through her like warm lava, weakening her limbs. Or the cataclysm of coming apart in his arms.

  The intense attraction wore at her. She couldn’t figure out a way to shut it off. Leaving him again was out of the question, so her only choice was to suck it up and ignore it. And try to keep Jack from realizing just how attracted to him she really was.

  If he knew what he did to her, she’d never be able to maintain the distance she needed. She couldn’t let him get that close to her again, close enough to see too much, to learn the secrets she couldn’t share. To see the strangeness, the evil deep inside her, the devil’s sight she was cursed with.

  “Maybe Tarrys was telling the truth.”

  “There’s no such thing as elves.”

  “Why isn’t it possible?”

  He looked up, his expression incredulous. “You can’t honestly tell me you believe that crock.”

  She shrugged and stepped away from the window. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. The albino does things he shouldn’t be able to do, Jack. His being nonhuman actually makes some sense.”

  “It makes no sense.” Jack scowled. “All you have to do is to look at him to know he’s no elf. Elves are—” he held his hand out, palm down “—little dwarflike people. And they don’t exist.”

  “Maybe they’re not elves. What if elves aren’t real…but the Esri are?” She tapped her fingers on her thighs. “I wish I had my computer.”

  “There’s one in the bedroom.”

  Larsen’s eyebrows lifted with interest. As one, they headed for the bedroom.

  The room looked like a college dorm room…before the students moved in. Other than the computer and the dark green fitted sheet that covered the mattress, there wasn’t a
thing in sight that said an actual person laid claim to the space. An old dresser, an equally decrepit desk and a mattress and springs were all the furniture in the room. The walls were white and bare of pictures. The windows covered only by cheap shades.

  As Jack turned on the computer, Larsen raised the shades. “I can’t believe anyone really lives here.”

  “Charlie’s a spook,” Jack said. “Or maybe special ops. I’d bet money on it. Either way, he probably only needs a place to stay for a few days at a time when he’s between missions and an address to collect mail.”

  “What are we going to do if he shows up suddenly?”

  The computer screen lit and Jack began typing. “We’re going to hope that doesn’t happen.”

  “Maybe we should hope it does.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Larsen sat on the end of the bed, her knees brushing the back of Jack’s desk chair. “Because Harrison and both his kids were immune from the albino’s control. Maybe it runs in his family.”

  The clack of the computer keyboard ceased abruptly. Jack turned sideways in his chair and looked at her. His eyes narrowed, his brows pulling down in thought. “Maybe, but it doesn’t always work that way. The woman I saved at Tony Jingles was there with her daughter. The girl was controlled.”

  “Maybe she was adopted. Or just didn’t inherit whatever gene we seem to possess in common. The gene that makes us immune to mind control.”

  Jack pursed his mouth. “You’re right. If Charlie is a spook, we could use his help no matter what. Maybe Harrison can get word to him. It’s worth a try.”

  As Jack pulled out his phone, Larsen nudged him from the desk chair and took his place. Jack left Harrison the message while Larsen typed.

  Esri. Nothing. Elves. Too much and most of it garbage.

  “Anything?” Jack asked, coming to stand behind her. She could feel his presence like a living thing wrapping around her from behind.

  “I’ve got a list of cures and protections against enchantment.”

  “Enchantment?” Jack scoffed.

  But a chill skimmed down Larsen’s spine. “Mind control. That’s exactly what he’s doing, Jack.” She read the few things on the list she recognized. “Salt, holy water, iron, four leaf clovers and holly branches are all supposed to protect against elf mischief.”