The little iron balls clinked dully against each other as he eyed her with a cold dispassionate gaze.
She was sharply aware of the tears cold on her lashes.
Not long. And he knew it. It was in his eyes.
Miri looked to Ash and her heart wrenched.
He could look so intimidating, so fierce and he did now.
His stern handsome features were set, his mouth tight, his jaw clenched and his glowing eyes steady. His body was braced for the next assault, ready to endure the next stroke of the cat tails across his back, across the fragile membranes of his wings. Blood trickled over his ribs, along with his sweat, to drip to the floor. The sound of the droplets was surprising loud in the echoing silence.
Miri closed her eyes, but that terrible sound was still there.
She opened them again.
The muscles of Ash’s abdomen were drawn tight against the pain and the ones in his arms were taut. They flexed as he gripped the chains with his strong, long-fingered hands. Hands that had touched her, stroked her, held her safe. Ash had put himself between her and harm more than once already.
Could she do any less?
Another voice broke in unexpectedly, deep and almost inhumanly modulated.
“There’s no need for such crude methods of persuasion,” that voice said.
Somehow, those simple seemingly nonthreatening words cut through the haze of pain to send a frisson of alarm down Ash’s spine. He’d braced himself against the lash of pain but now he gripped the chains and drew himself up, fought the sudden inexplicable urge to wrench at them again, to try to rip them free.
It was Templeton’s companion. The third man.
The man smiled. At Miri. And walked toward her.
Ash’s blood ran cold.
Those dark eyes were empty, the man’s face expressionless.
Ash had the sudden sharp impression of a mask put on for those who observed, a cloak that concealed the man’s reality. He’d never seen anything like it.
Even with her clothing wrinkled and stained, to his eyes Miri was beautiful. Her hair glowed like fire in the cold light of the emergency lights and gas lanterns that were the only light in this place.
His heart caught to see it.
Despite her fear, her chin lifted as she faced the Stranger warily. She didn’t flinch, didn’t turn away from that terrible empty gaze, her ethereal eyes watchful, courage in every line of her lovely body.
It tore him apart. He should be there defending her. Protecting her.
His hands tightened reflexively on the chains, every muscle in his body locked as he pulled on them.
All eyes were on the two at the edge of the circle.
Suddenly he felt a familiar presence at his side. Warmth where warmth shouldn’t be.
Mal. Ash glanced over at where Ba’al had been lying. He was no longer there.
Relief took his breath away.
They might have a chance.
Closing his eyes, Ash bowed his head slightly to listen.
His voice low, his body invisible, Mal said, “Look around carefully.”
From the corner of his eye, Ash scanned the room.
There was a swift movement, nearly silent. Darkness enveloped one of the Guards, Daemonae hands and wings. Ba’al.
“Ba’al’s eliminating the guards,” Mal said. “I think he’s enjoying himself. Keep watching while I try to break these shackles.”
Every line of Ash’s body tensed even further. He nodded.
“Hurry,” he said, softly.
Whatever was going to happen would happen soon, he sensed it.
At his side, he felt Mal nod in return, his own tension evident in the tightness of his voice. “I know, I feel it, too.”
Watching, Ash saw the Stranger approach Miri.
If Miri had had hackles to rise, they would have risen as the man drew close. As it was, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Her stomach clenched.
With Templeton’s men ringed around them and nowhere to run even if she could flee, she was helpless and she knew it. After all, where could she go? Not that she would have abandoned Ash.
In one of those odd moments of awareness, she suddenly noticed that Ba’al no longer lay in the corner. He’d disappeared. And Mal?
Were it not for the Stranger stalking slowly toward her, she would have felt a breath of hope but instead for some reason she prayed they were somewhere else, that they wouldn’t try to attack this man to protect her.
She looked into the man’s eyes and something inside her shivered.
He wasn’t a man, not really, and not any longer. His eyes were empty. Hollow. He was a depthless void ready to swallow her up, to drown her in darkness, to drag her down into the shadows inside him. A voice deep inside her shrilled in terror.
She had no time to feel more than that flash of fear as he struck. His hand lashed out to close around her throat with speed that likened to Ash.
So fast. So stunningly fast.
To her astonishment, she felt her feet leave the ground. Power punched into her and she cried out as pain exploded through her.
“You see,” she heard him say, as if from down a long dark tunnel, “if she is the Doorway then I am the Key.”
Visions exploded through her, a thousand possible outcomes from this moment in time, from the decisions made here in this moment.
Pain ripped through her as the ethereal planes burst open from within her.
There was a brilliant flash, blue-white, the stinging smell of ozone and then every hair on her body stood on end.
With a sharp crack, Miri suddenly found herself blown free of him, sliding backwards along the marble floor. She scrambled to her knees, feeling something odd quiver beneath one hand.
Looking up, she froze.
The Stranger, the man she now knew had once been named Daniel, stood looking furiously at his blackened, burned and shriveled hand.
Ash’s magic, another gift of the venom. His lightning.
So long as Ash lived, the Stranger couldn’t touch her. She couldn’t direct it, but he couldn’t touch her.
She looked at Ash. His golden eyes burned with fury.
Mine
, his mental voice roared.
She swallowed hard and prayed the Stranger couldn’t guess, wouldn’t understand as she looked at the pure, cold and dark fury that crossed his face. If he did he’d kill Ash without a second thought.
Her mouth went dry.
Darkness shimmered beneath the Stranger’s skin much as Ash’s golden glimmers did, as visible evidence of the truth of him, as rifts in his surface.
Those dark eyes lifted to look at her.
Her breath froze in her throat at what she saw in that flat gaze.
In the back of her mind, those visions replayed, the ones from the brief moment when the Stranger, the creature who had once been a boy named Daniel, had touched her. Once, he’d been like her. When he’d been Daniel. Now he was the Stranger and it had taken the explosion to set him free.
Visions flashed through her mind of death, destruction and darkness. A thousand different outcomes that all depended on what happened, on what was done, in these next few moments.
She could see all the myriad possibilities.
If she failed.
And only one if she succeeded.
Like a snake shedding its skin, this oddly urbane man – Daniel the Stranger – stood. His skin sloughed off, peeled away as what lay within broke free of its constraining human form.
This was the true reflection of itself on the other planes, vaguely reptilian, vaguely insectoid. Its faceted eyes reflected the cold emergency lights like gemstones. Its skin was mottled, thick, in places it was almost a carapace. Yet the features, weirdly, remained the same, oddly and coldly handsome.
Looking at her it extended its hands. Its eyes glittered and it smiled.
“Perhaps I was wrong,” he hissed. “Perhaps cruder methods are required.”
Claws extended into talons. Long, curved scimitars of bone and nail. His faceted eyes narrowed, focused. On her.
A coldness swept through her.
How long would it be before he realized that he had only to kill Ash and her protection. whatever protection Ash and his love offered her, would be gone?
Not long.
Her eyes went to him, to the sharp lines of his beloved face, his amber eyes glowing as his gaze met hers.
One look and the harsh lines of Ash’s face softened even as his hands on the chains tightened.
Her heart wrenched.
She could sense his rage at his helplessness, his furious determination to help her.
He was everything to her. She couldn’t imagine a life, a future, without him.
In the floor beneath her hand, something…echoed… That something called to her from another plane. It was something she knew, something she recognized and although she’d never touched it herself, it sang to her.
The note was pure, sure.
She would have only one chance. Only one.
In a flash, she was on her feet.
The ethereal planes opened before her as she flung out her hands to scatter them like a magician fanning his cards.
Most of those in the room around them had seen only a brief glimpse, a glimmer when the Stranger had touched her.
Now the ethereal planes opened up in all their brilliant glory. Like the glow of a thousand rainbows or the shimmer of the northern lights it was heartbreakingly beautiful.
They spread and flowed around the room in thousands of shimmering, impossibly thin panes of future paths in a great looping Mobius strip that wound around itself. They shifted and flowed in a great lazy figure eight, the symbol of eternity.
Coruscating light flickered over and illuminated the fissures there.
Ash had only seen something like it once before, long ago, when Zefir’s true mate had opened the ethereal planes to them, giving them a refuge from those who persecuted them, a place to escape before she died.
A home, a refuge, for her son, for all of them..
Fear blossomed inside him, sank its talons deep at the memory.
That glorious light illuminated his Miri, too. It washed over her pale skin, turned her hair to fire and her eyes brilliant. They glowed like his, an ethereal light.
No.
One of the panes shifted.
Miri. No
.
She looked at him, her beautiful eyes bright.
I love you.
Hargrove’s hands went slack at the sight before him. Once more she ripped her chain free.
Spinning on her toes, her hair streaming like fire, Miri ran toward what she’d conjured.