First Crossing (2 page)

Eve shook her head stubbornly. It was all moving much too
fast. “Where do you plan on taking me?”

Before Hunter could answer, her father finally found his
voice. And some backbone.

“Eve.” He sat upright and seized her arm in his strong
tradesman’s grip. His palm was rough against her skin. “I know this is beyond
strange, but you can trust Hunter. I was with him when he brought you across;
after I had spent time in the Otherworld - with your mother.”

Eve stared at him, unable to move a muscle.
The
Otherworld?
But then the questions in her mind were swamped by compassion.
The grief in his eyes was almost too much to bear. “Dad…”

“If I could go with you, I would,” he said passionately.
“But I can’t; I’ll draw them to you. It’s too easy for them to track a human.
Without me, you have a chance.” Tears spilled over, making tracks down his
weather-beaten brown face. “You
have
to go; they know you’re here now.
Oh, Evie. Evie.”

For several seconds, the room was silent except for the
hitch in her father’s breath as he struggled to control himself. Eve was still
frozen. What did he mean, without
him
she had a chance?
She
was
human too…

Wasn’t she?

You know you’re not,
her mind said.
You’ve always
known.

Hunter stood, restlessness in every muscle. “We must go.
Now
.”

Eve felt a nudge at the edges of her mind, then something
persuasive and foreign eased around her mental defenses. She suddenly felt a
powerful urge to get up and follow him; to get out of there as soon as
possible.

It took her about two seconds to realize that she was being
manipulated. She slapped away the urge to run and glared at Hunter. “If that
was you, then
quit it
. I’ll come when I’m ready.”

For a split second his eyes showed surprise, then he simply
inclined his head a fraction and waited.  

Eve put her hand on her father’s arm, not taking her eyes
from Hunter’s. “What about Dad? Is
he
going to be safe? If these…
creatures…
are that bad, I can’t just abandon him.”

“He’ll be safe. It’s you they want. We’ll leave a trail so
they know you’ve gone.”

She gave in to the inevitable and tried to think. “What do I
need?”

His gaze raked her from head to foot, from the ivory-framed
sunglasses perched on her head, to the comfortable white training shoes that
she habitually wore when she was going to be standing for hours working.
“Nothing. You can get anything you want when we get there.” Hunter’s enigmatic
green gaze moved between her and her father. “I’ll leave you to say your
goodbyes. Two minutes.” He stood and moved to the doorway, and Eve saw the
bulge of a weapon at his back, under the t-shirt. “I’ll be waiting out back.”

***

Eve took three minutes, not two. That wasn’t nearly enough
time to hug her father and say farewell after twenty-seven years. Especially
when she didn’t know when she would see him again.

Or
if
she would see him again.

Despite her resistance to Hunter’s orders, she knew that her
life didn’t rest here, with her father. She had known it on some deep level an
hour ago, when she was sitting her car in a concrete parking lot, wondering
about her life.

She was about to find out who or what she really was.

“Goodbye,” she whispered. “Love you. Take care.”

Having no words left, he hugged her fiercely to him, and
then pushed her away. “Go, Evie. Be safe.”

She nodded, knuckling the moisture from her eyes, and walked
through the back door and along the flagged path to the edge of the canyon
without looking back.

Hunter stood in the shadows of the Monterey pines at the end
of the yard with his back to her, watching a red-tailed eagle swooping down on
some hidden prey.  She knew he was aware of every step she took.

“They’re nearer than I had expected,” he said without
looking at her. “Follow me, and stay close.” He strode off, veering off to the
left, following a dirt track through tangled brush and around a sun-splashed
group of boulders. She knew the path; it led upward to a windswept hill, and
then down to a thick cluster of cypress, backed by rugged stone.

Not there, she thought, the fear growing. She
never
went that way.

Several times, as a child, she had ventured over the hill
and down to the dark shadows of that mass of trees, and every time was consumed
by a nameless terror so heavy and menacing that her body trembled for hours.
Each time, she had nightmares. She never told her father, ever. She had never
even
thought
of telling him.

Did she somehow know, even then, that this moment would
come? That he, too, had closely-guarded secrets?

Now Hunter was leading her to that very place. Despite the
recurring thought
They’re hunting me, they’re hunting me,
Eve’s steps
slowed. They were down there…

He pivoted, came back to her and seized her wrist. “Eve, you
must hurry.” His eyes burned into hers with a deep green fire. “I know what you
are feeling, but far worse awaits if they arrive before we go through to the
Otherworld.”

Far worse? She shook her head, trying
not
to think of
what that could mean, and quickened her pace to match his. There was a whole
lot of background he owed her, but she was practical enough to know that this
was not the time. If they made it safely to wherever the hell he was taking
her, he was going to have some explaining to do.

They crested the hill and broke into a jog to go downhill.
In front of them, the cypress trees loomed. Every leaf was still, despite the
brisk afternoon breeze.

Running easily beside her, not even out of breath, Hunter
continuously checked the terrain and the skies. Eve matched him step for step,
used to cross-country training runs along the canyon.  Her competitive streak
came to the fore.
You’re not out-running me, Hunter Man,
she thought
.

He barked out a short laugh. “If I wished to, I could be
miles from you in seconds.”

Startled, Eve shot him a sideways look of annoyance. “What,
you can read
my thoughts as well as get into my mind
?”

“When you send them that strongly, yes. You might as well be
shouting.” He turned his head to look at her while he leaped over a gnarled
tree root. “Surely you can read people too?”

Piece of cake, she thought. With most people, anyway. Even
if she couldn’t read their thoughts, she could sense their intentions – like
when the Marriott brothers had been plotting to waylay her on the way home from
high school. The tree branch that almost took their heads off soon changed
their minds about that idea. They had no idea it was Eve who had engineered
that little ‘accident’, but her grandmother did. She knew even before Eve
called in to see her.

“So, you’re psychokinetic too,” Nana Alice told Eve, looking
at her with more concern than anything else. And yeah… maybe a little pride.
“Best not to let anyone know about that. And make sure you control it.”

The trouble was, Eve had no idea
how
to control it,
so she just followed her instincts and set up shields so that her mind was
encased in the equivalent of psychic titanium. Before sending any more tree
branches flying people’s way she’d have do something similar to cracking a
safe.

In front of her, Hunter stopped: they had reached the edge
of the trees. Immediately, the same razor-edge of fear that she’d felt earlier
lanced into Eve’s heart. She stopped in front of a tall, dark trunk and closed
her eyes.

Terror. Sending her weak at the knees.
No
. NO.

“There is a reason you have always feared this place,”
Hunter told her, his voice surprisingly gentle. “Your mother took care to guard
the passage to the Otherworld with a protective spell. She couldn’t risk your
coming through. If you feared it, you would stay away.”

A protective spell.

She turned to face him, shaking her head. “Look, I’ll do
whatever you say. This is obviously bad shit. But just tell me, what
is
my mother – a witch? An enchantress? Is that what all this is about – she’s
pissed off somebody and so now they’re after me?”

“She is fae,” he said, “and so are you.” With that, he urged
her in front of him, forward into a dark tunnel that wound through the looming
trees. He turned her around, but kept a hand on her shoulder. “This is a portal
to the Otherworld. I will protect you, but prepare for anything.”

Eve was barely listening. Fae…? She was
fae
. Oh, how
weird was that.

No, only
part-
fae, because her father was
one-hundred-percent human …

Steel-like fingers propelled her forward, so she had no
choice but to move ahead.
Prepare for anything. Right
. This morning
she’d been a human working in a medical complex helping people with makeup; now
she was –

Before she had time to finish the thought, the trees closed
in and dark energy pulsed around her, and her whole life changed.

***

Eve blinked. She had expected to be sucked into some kind of
tunnel and be spat out the other side into Fairyland, but it still looked like
San Mateo County to her. She was standing in the middle of a dirt trail,
eye-to-eye with a startled jackrabbit that abruptly skittered away into the
scrub. Nausea roiled in her stomach and her knees threatened to give way.

She forced down the queasiness and raised her face to the
thin rays of sun coming through oak leaves above her. The air around her felt
different, though. It was lighter, more insubstantial. And there was a promise
of… things, just out of reach.

Really, she had no words to describe what she was feeling
right now.

Hunter’s warm hand left her shoulder, and he moved to face
her, his face inscrutable. “How do you feel?”

“I’ll be okay in a minute.” Gradually, stability returned.
Taking slow, even breaths, she regarded him curiously; he was subtly different,
too. She now had a sense of layers within this man; more than she had been able
to feel back home. “Where are we, exactly? It looks the same as the San
Francisco area, but it can’t be.”

“You’re still near where you live. You’ve just moved to a
different dimension. The place we left was earth-bound.” The whole time he
spoke, his eyes checked the perimeter, and she could tell his senses were on
high alert. But she was sure he had relaxed fractionally, too – probably
because whatever was hunting her hadn’t been standing there waiting for them.

“Is this the same time and year and everything as where we
left?”

“At the moment, although time shifts in strange ways in the
faerie world. It would be quicker to move through time to where we want to go,
but you can’t yet move through time and dimensions concurrently. We have to use
faerie portals to take you where you’ll be safe.”

Her eyes moved over his very human-looking body, trying to
imagine him dematerializing and appearing in some other time. No. Too weird.
Her thoughts turned again to that the one amazing, inescapable fact that she
kept repeating to herself: her mother was alive. The word ‘mother’ sounded so
foreign. Her emotions were all over the place; she wasn’t sure whether she
wanted to meet her, or damn her to hell for ignoring her daughter for nearly
three decades.

“Am I…” she cleared her throat. “Am I going to meet my, um,
mother?”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. They will be monitoring her
in all kinds of ways to try to get to you. “ He looked at her assessingly. “I
know you can run for some distance, but we have to move fast. I need to lay a
false trail for a few miles, cloak us both, and then slip through SF Gate 2.”

SF Gate 2? It sounded more like a terminal at San Francisco
airport than a gateway to another world. She shook her head. “Fine.” Actually,
it wasn’t fine at all. She had a thousand questions, but he was clearly anxious
to be moving. Okay: she would go along with what he wanted  – for a while. But
once they stopped, she was going to pin him down about where she was going and
who was after her. She gestured at the path ahead. “Let’s go, then.”

He didn’t move. “Before we do, it’s best if I establish a psi-link
so I can monitor you more easily. If I feel you’re getting tired, I’ll just
slow the pace.”

“A psi-link?”

“A connection between our minds.”

Eve stared at him, wishing she could read his thoughts. He
seemed to have shields in place – just as she did. But hers were for a
different reason.  Did she want him to know the extent of her powers? If only
she could be certain that she could trust him.

Someone else in her mind? No thank you. She set her jaw.
“That won’t be necessary. I won’t get tired.”

The look he gave her made her feel like a stubborn
two-year-old. “A psi-link means that I will also be able to sense an imminent
attack on you. I need to be able to react immediately.”

She cast a nervous glance around.
Attacked. Right.
“Is this going to feel the same as what you did back at the house? When I could
feel you coming into my mind?”

“More or less. It will help if you don’t fight it this
time.”

She gritted her teeth and reluctantly allowed him
superficial entry, while automatically shoring up the long-established barriers
to the deeper layers of her mind. She
so
did not like this. She didn’t
know this guy. Who knew what he might be able to do once he was in?

***

 Hunter eased into her mind as gently as he could, teasing
his way along unfamiliar pathways. It took less than ten seconds to go in deep
enough to find anchor points, but ten seconds was unheard of with most of the
people he encountered. It was usually instantaneous.

Even though she was permitting him to enter the outer
layers, he could feel her resistance. None of them had realized she was this
strong; she was, after all, only one quarter fae. Their surveillance over the
years had shown her to be a highly skilled empath and healer, building a career
path on Mortal Earth with psychokinetic abilities handed down from her
EarthStar grandfather – of whom she knew nothing. He was aware that she thought
her powers all came from her grandmother, Alice.