Authors: Unknown
When he took a step back, she made a small sound of distress. “Can you bring help?” she asked, knowing that he didn’t understand her and that he couldn’t answer.
To her surprise, he raised and lowered his head, like a man nodding, and his expression seemed to say,
Wait right there.
In the next moment he disappeared, leaving her alone and shivering in the rain and wondering if she had made up her unlikely visitor. Maybe she had gotten hit on the head, and her brain was serving up strange visions.
Like the light flickering off to her left.
She turned in that direction, wondering if she’d gotten turned around and misplaced the direction of the house.
Then the smell of smoke drifted toward her, and she realized that the lightning had started a fire in the forest.
Could it keep burning in this damp environment? She didn’t know, but she saw that the flames were coming closer to where she lay trapped.
When panic constricted her chest, she ordered herself to steadiness. Fear wasn’t going to help anything.
She could get out of this. She had to, because there was no alternative, and there was one thing in her favor. The rain was still falling, although more gently. Maybe it would put out the fire before it reached her.
Drifting smoke made her cough. Trying to ignore the distraction, she flexed her fingers and leaned forward, putting her hands on the heavy branch holding her fast. Eyes closed, she pressed her fingers against the bark and used her mind to extend the reach of her hand, sending her thoughts through the surface and into the living tissue beneath. She needed to learn the mass and weight. Learn how the branch was connected to the central tree trunk.
As the answers fell into place, she formed a plan of action. Pulling the branch up wasn’t enough. She had to rotate it as she lifted; otherwise the trunk would hold the limb down.
Opening her eyes, she saw the fire creeping closer, heard the hissing of the wet wood.
Terrible images leaped into her mind—of herself, surrounded by flames. In Breezewood, teams of adepts would have come to pull water from a nearby well and shoot it toward any fire that threatened the city. But she was the only one here, and she couldn’t stop a fire by herself.
Unable to hold back a whimper, she watched for a moment, then tore her gaze away and sent out her invisible energy, trying with every shred of power she had to make the branch shift.
Fear made her desperate as she poured out her psychic power. Despite the cold, sweat broke out on her forehead, and her muscles trembled. When the limb quivered under her fingers, she took hope and increased her efforts. To her dismay, the quivering was all she could accomplish—for now.
Unwilling to give up, she lay back, sucking in great drafts of air and shivering from the wet clothing plastered against her skin.
She’d been in this world less than an hour, and she was already in more trouble than she could have imagined.
Still, iron determination made her reach out again with her mind. Before she got very far into the process, she heard something moving rapidly through the forest—coming from the direction where the wolf had disappeared.
Was the animal circling back? This time to attack?
She tensed, probing the darkness. In the flickering light from the fire, she made out a dark shape hurrying toward her. A beam of light ran along in front of it, and as the figure drew closer, she saw it was a man holding a thing called a flashlight.
She’d seen it in a training exercise with Vandar’s adepts. And also long ago in one of her classrooms.
Her teacher had made each of the students try to turn it on with his or her mind. She’d been one of the few who could do it. Here she knew that something called batteries made it work.
“Are you all right?” a man called.
“I’m caught. And . . . and . . . the fire’s coming.”
“Yeah. I’ll take care of the fire.”
Despite the circumstances, a spurt of wonder leaped inside her. This was her first encounter with a person from the other side of the portal.
She listened to his voice. It was strong and confident, and his accent was different from the people she knew in her own world.
“Hang on. I’ve got a fire extinguisher.”
He backed away. As she listened to the sound of his footsteps receding, fear rose in her throat.
Then she heard a hissing sound, and the flames that had been lapping closer died away.
Moments later, he was back, clambering to her side and hunkering down.
“You put out the fire?” she whispered.
“I can’t be sure it’s dead. I’ll have to check it later.”
He kept the beam of his light out of her eyes as he studied her face, apparently as interested in her as she was in him. Up close, in the light from the flashlight, she saw that his hair and eyes were both dark and his features were hard-etched.
And he had a . . . knapsack over his shoulder. Squatting beside her, he took something from the carry bag. It was a small rectangle that unfolded into a surprisingly large blanket, which he spread over her.
The blessed warmth made her want to weep, but she held on to her emotions by force of will while he turned and played his light over the place where her leg disappeared under the branch.
“This is a nice mess,” he muttered. “You’re lucky your leg isn’t broken. Or is it?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, I’m not in pain.” Switching the subject, she asked. “How . . . how did you find me?”
“I was putting some things in my storage building. I saw the tree fall, and I thought I heard a scream. It took me a while to locate the tree.”
Her own situation had made her sensitive to half-truths. “What happened to the wolf?”
He tipped his head to the side, staring at her with a steady gaze. “What wolf?”
“He was here.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t see him.”
She nodded, wondering if she had made up the encounter with the beast. No. He had been too real. His animal smell. His wet fur. The intelligence in his yellow eyes.
The man brought her back to the present. Did he smell like the wolf? Or did the animal scent simply linger in the wet air?
“We have to get you out of here.”
“How?”
“I’ll lift the branch. You pull your leg out.”
She sighed. “I tried. It’s too heavy.”
“Of course it is,” he said, and she wondered if she’d made a mistake by revealing her attempt at escape. Without her telekinetic powers, lifting the thing would have been clearly impossible.
He played his flashlight beam over the bough, inspecting it. “If I can’t get the branch off you, I’ll go back for a chain saw. But that will mean you’ll be out here for a lot longer.”
Bending over the limb, he wrapped his hands around the circumference, giving an experimental tug before looking back at her. “Get ready to pull your foot out if I can lift this damn thing.”
“Okay,” she said.
“My name is Talon Marshall.”
An exchange of names. Another test.
“Kenna,” she said, then remembered an important fact from her training. People here had more than one name. The last name told what family you belonged to. Vandar’s men had picked a last name for her that was very common, in case anyone started trying to figure out where she had come from. “Kenna Thomas,” she supplied.
“Sorry to be meeting you like this.”
With a murmur of agreement, she braced for more questions. Instead, he silently grasped the branch again. As he strained to pull upward, she sent her telekinetic energy to the tree limb, giving him a jolt of assistance.
Feeling the pressure ease off her ankle, she kept up her energy burst while she yanked her foot out, then tumbled backwards at her sudden release.
He made a startled exclamation, his voice uncertain as he said, “It suddenly got lighter, then heavier again.”
She only shook her head, unable to tell him that it had been her lifting and that the extra weight had piled on the branch when she’d run out of energy.
She was free!
Finally.
He was talking again, and she struggled to focus on his words.
“Can you stand?”
“I think so.” Quickly, she pulled off the blanket he’d draped over her and pushed herself up. But she had been in one cramped position for too long, and when she stood on wobbly legs, one knee gave way and she started to fall back into the tangle of branches where she’d been lying.
Talon Marshall darted forward, catching her before she could go down. As the two of them swayed on the uneven surface, she came to rest in his arms with her head on his shoulder and her wobbly legs wedged against his solid ones.
She felt herself trembling, from the cold and from her reaction to him.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m lucky you found me.”
“You’re lucky the trunk, or a major branch, didn’t smack you in the back or hit you on the head.”
His arms were strong. And his body was warm and comforting. She’d been virtually alone in a crowd of people for months. It was hard to remember a time when anyone had held her, comforted her. Unable to stop herself, she let her head nestle against his shoulder as she raised her arms to grip him.
He cradled her in his embrace, and she wanted to burrow further into his warmth.
“How did you get here?” he asked as his hands stroked over her back and shoulders.
The question brought a knot of tension back to her middle. This was the real start of her assignment. The story she would have to tell. She wanted to confess everything to him and get herself out of the terrible situation she’d been thrust into. But confession was not an option. Not when she was under Vandar’s compulsion.
“I guess I got lost,” she managed to say.
He could have let her go, but instead, he kept his arms around her. “You were very brave. With the tree and the fire.”
“What else could I do?”
“Yeah.” He laughed. Then his voice turned sober again. “You’re wet and cold. We’d better get you inside.”
“Inside where?”
“My lodge.”
The assurance in his voice brought back the enormity of her situation. This man had found her trapped under a tree limb. He’d freed her. Now she was going to repay him with lies.
To her horror, she began to cry.
In response, his arms tightened around her. “It’s okay. You’ve been through a lot.”
She shook her head against his shoulder. She wasn’t crying about what had happened with the tree. Instead, her thoughts were racing forward into the future and the situation that had already spun out of her control.
CHAPTER SIX
MILES AWAY, A man named Ramsay Gallagher brushed back a lock of dark hair from his forehead as he stared out the reinforced glass window of his mountain chalet. He was searching for something he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to see. Not yet.
From a distance his house looked like the vacation home of a millionaire who enjoyed indulging his whims.
In reality, it was a well-fortified stronghold, perched at the top of a Colorado mountain that he’d had the foresight to purchase years ago. It was an excellent location for a man who valued his privacy.
Only one winding gravel track led up from the highway. There were no guardrails, and a driver required nerves of steel to make it to the top of his mountain, where access to the house was blocked by a stout metal gate and sheer cliffs.
You had to want to come here. And you had to know how to get past the barriers he’d erected—unless, of course, you could fly.
He smiled as he thought of a helicopter circling his property, the pilot trying to figure out where to land. He’d be out of luck. And if men came down a rope ladder, Ramsay could nail them before they reached the patio outside his bedroom.
He grimaced.
Don’t go looking for problems. You’re not expecting an attack. Not today.
Yet a change in the fabric of the universe had put him on alert, and he had learned to trust his instincts.
Some major element had shifted in a way that he didn’t understand yet, but he would. And if trouble came his way, he was prepared to deal with it.
His fingers played over the leather of his easy chair, appreciating the soft, smooth texture. He liked his comfort, and he valued fine things, but now he was distracted by the sensations drifting toward him from far away.
Too restless to sit, he climbed out of the chair, strode to the window, and studied the mountain scenery. He could have lived anywhere in the world, but he had chosen this place because it suited him so well. Not just the grandeur of the craggy peaks, the pine forests, and the animals that inhabited them. He liked the isolation.
He had other houses, as well. One along the California coast where he could watch the waves crashing on the rocks twenty yards below. Another outside Washington, D.C., in Potomac, Maryland, where he was close to the center of world power. One on Lake Como in Italy. He was rich enough to own property around the world. And he traveled to his other abodes when he wanted a change of scenery.