Guardians of the Portals (29 page)

"When your old man left, I figured you'd be out too but that didn't happen." He hitched a hip on a crate, settling in for a monologue. Short of shooting him, there wasn't much you could do when he got on a roll.

"Kinda surprised all of us when he blabbed to the papers." Kieran cringed. He knew where this was going. "Sending you after him seemed stupid to me. I mean, he's your dad after all. Did they think he'd just roll over because you're his kid?"

"Something like that." In truth, it was nothing like that.

They're manipulating you, boy. Got you so hopped up on God only knows what kind of shit, you don't know your own name half the time. I didn't bring you in to take over for me just to have them turn you into a drugged out merc. You think you earned that spot, think you're management? Bullshit. You're a puppet, disposable. Just like me. They'll use you up and throw you away.

"So, what happened? Kier?"

"Nothing." Three bullets worth of nothing, three bullets shy of putting the man he could never live up to into the ground. Then he'd run and his life had been a whole lot of nothing for a very long time.

Zack had finally taken the hint, sitting with a thin-lipped pout.

Kieran hated to interrupt the silence but they needed to scout the area. "You want to help me or are you just gonna stare off into space?"

"Uh, sorry, Kier. Just thinking on something."

"I'm going to the other side. There's more brush there than here. Keep stacking and make a roof as best you can."

"Kier?"

"What?"

"This ain't for shade, is it?"

Kieran grimaced and turned away. He mumbled, "No," and limped toward the pond. He had a good idea what they were up against. Falcon had spilled his guts one night when they'd gotten high and gone on a three-day bender on one of their rare down times. As wasted as he was that night, he remembered enough that even those fuzzy recollections twisted his gut in a knot. They needed to work fast because all the weapons in the universe weren't going to protect them from a full scale attack. He thought again,
if I get out of this, that fucker's gonna have a lot of explaining to do.

Kieran felt rather than heard the whisper, almost subvocal, a residual energy signature. It reverbed weakly, fading as the sun slipped imperceptibly toward the edge of the monolith. If even half of what the Falcon said was true, they were in deep shit. Night would come slowly and last forever, bringing with it unimagined, prehistoric horrors.

Caitlin.
Why wouldn't Falcon talk about her? What had happened to them? Between them. From what little he'd overheard, Falcon had been exonerated in her death. That fuck-up could be laid at the Althings' doorstep, or so the rumor went. No matter. The man grieved, silent and alone. Losing Caitlin had left a hole in all their hearts, shells with no purpose. The only difference between himself and his friend was that the Falcon was a dead man walking, a powder keg ready to detonate and he didn't give a shit who was in the blast radius.

Kieran snorted and muttered, "I wish I was that lucky." He'd give anything to not care, anything to numb the pain and emptiness. He'd need to find his backpack soon. If the night was as long as Falcon claimed, he wasn't going through it without some fortification.

Kieran handed Zack the pile of charred branches, then looked at his clothes and hands with disgust. He might have to get over his distaste for the pond's contents. As he moved into the tangle of stumps, he cautioned Zack to make the roof as tight as possible.

Zack nodded and asked, "Where ya going?"

"Have you seen my backpack?"

He looked around and shrugged. "Might have gone flying, being lighter."

"Yeah, my thought. Stay here and watch the sky. Sun's going down."

"What am I looking for anyways?"

"Not exactly sure but they'll come out of the sky when it's dark."

"I'll pull nightscopes."

"Yeah, you do that." Kieran knew that wasn't going to help but if it gave Zack comfort who was he to say different? He had his own answer to their dilemma.

He really needed to find that backpack.

****

T
rey struggled against the awkward swaying motion, his shoulders and pelvis screaming in agony as he hung, trussed like a deer, off a rough-hewn log attached to some wheeled device being pulled or pushed through the dense growth. The reeds stood taller than the indigenes moving silently past the stiff stalks. He caught a glimpse of the night sky but mostly he kept his eyes closed, concentrating on direction and speed of travel. He tried to recall how far the nearest settlement had been to the outcrop, but his brain refused to function at optimum. He fought desperately against the stasis, preferring the unrelenting pain to the blank nothingness.

He almost regretted sending his men through the makeshift Portal. He'd catapulted them to certain death if he couldn't extricate himself and make it back to Wyoming, and the un-catalogued jump point he and Caitlin had used to escape everyone.

Damn his abilities. She'd still be alive if he could have created a Portal. Instead they'd suffered through a living hell because he was unable to find or create vortices that would have saved them, saved her from the torment he forced on her. Even a lifetime of 'sorry' would never have been enough. But what ate at his soul was never having the chance to say goodbye.

Now Kieran waited in the same deathtrap and the only way to get to him was to haul ass to Wyoming and go through that gate, just like he'd done with Caitlin.

As he zoned in and out of consciousness he thought,
look how well that ended. Now I've got her brother's life on my conscience. And Zack, though I'm not sure why I should care. It's the O'Brien family I've fucked. I owe them. For a mother. For a daughter. A sister. A wife. It's a blood debt. My last one.

Then I'll be free to join Caitlin, my mate, on the other side.

––––––––

C
aitlin paused at the "Y" in the barely discernible trail. To the left, it angled along the shelf, heading roughly southwest, the ambient lightening on the horizon indicating fewer trees and a probable drop-off. She'd always had good night vision, and her internment in the alien dimension had somehow augmented her natural abilities.

The snow had been coming through in bands, heavy and interspersed with icy showers. They were still in the warm sector, the Nor'easter moving up the coast and stalling off the Jersey shore. The worst was yet to come—wrap around winds with blowing and drifting snow would be the order of the day. She'd been a flatlander, living near the Maryland shore, no stranger to how nature refashioned a typical summer tropical storm into an icy event of stunning beauty and danger. They'd hunkered down like all rural folk, content to wait it out. The plows and salt trucks would keep roads passable, kids would revel in a day or two off from school, and the neighbors would check on the old and infirm.

Caitlin snickered at the odd memories. She'd painted a mental picture of community, of shared closeness, when the truth was that she and her family had been isolated and alone. They'd been aware of their own differences, acutely so, and it informed everything they did and said—though her brother had breached that unspoken barrier once he'd hit his stride. Popularity remained alien to her, though she never resented her brother's moving into the golden circles, nor did she think it strange that he excluded her deliberately. Kieran was simply Kieran, selfish and self-absorbed, except when it came to her. It had taken a long time but she finally realized that he had protected her—from himself, from his indulgences—and she'd loved him all the more for that.

Snow shifted on branches higher up in the stand of maples under which she sheltered from the icy pellets. The snow's surface had taken on a glazed appearance as warm, upper level winds dumped bands of rain that froze on contact at the surface. It would make traversing the woods nearly impossible on the slopes as everything would quickly coat with a thin layer of rime.

Caitlin realized she had made a bad decision venturing into the woods. She'd wanted to clear her head and come to terms with the out-of-control energies consuming, and confusing, her system. Instead she should have focused on the task at hand, using the Althing and Eirik's resources to assist her father since she was convinced he'd rejoined Greyfalcon with a single objective—to rescue Kieran. She needed her powers available at her command, not on some intermittent catch-as-catch-can basis. And she needed to keep her identity secret. If either Kieran or Jake knew she were alive, it would derail all her planning.

She took an exploratory step, using her heel to punch through the glaze. The effort sent her sliding against a scraggly pine, releasing a deluge of wet snow onto her shoulders and down the back of her neck. Earlier she might have giggled and relished the chill damp, but now she recognized it for what it was—an invitation to hypothermia or worse. Getting back to the cabin meant retracing her steps downhill along an almost non-existent trail. Right now that seemed even more foolhardy than the frivolous need for solitude that had sent her on a fool's quest.

Does he think of me? Do they know I'm gone? Will he come for me, or just assume I'm getting what I deserve? I could just be in my room. Sleeping. They might not miss me until the morning. By then it will be too late.

Caitlin listened intently. The weather morphed from the din of rain pinging the branches to the icy clatter of sleet, followed by the soothing blankness of heavy flakes blanketing and deadening all sound. She peeled the watch cap away from her ears but only her rasping breath and chatter of teeth penetrated the dead zone where she crouched. She debated simply waiting for help to come, as uncertain as that prospect seemed, or she could take charge of her situation and find her way down the mountain. Somewhere, off to the right, the sand road awaited. It too would be treacherous to navigate, but much less so than the uncertain footing and the chance of taking a wrong turn and missing the cabin altogether.

In any case, her knight-in-shining-armor was likely poking away at his bits of wood, not giving her a thought. She settled the cap about her ears and lunged away from the pine branches into a stand of thick brush and deadfall. Using her gloved palms to scrap away the snow, she found a downed branch long enough to serve as a walking stick. The cracks resounded as she broke off smaller branches, echoing eerily in the confined space.

Caitlin turned right. She wasn't happy that this direction seemed to head into even denser and steeper terrain. Her instincts directed her to head downhill, along the ledge, toward what appeared to be an open area. There was no way to know how the road actually angled up the hill—she'd never driven to the top of the mountain, to the Owens' place—so it was pure conjecture on her part that she'd find the road at all. None of her choices appealed and the increasing numbness in her hands and feet added a level of urgency she hadn't felt earlier. She couldn't conveniently shut down in stasis the way Trey had done to conserve his energy. And her shifting wasn't going to help protect her from the elements, not unless she could conjure a fur coat.

She gave that a hard thought. If she could do gills, and that had been a purely automatic response when her body determined she was doing the death-by-drowning routine, then why not some other protective 'device'? The only problem was ... the gills had left semi-permanent alterations in her biochemistry and physical structure, changes that kept her from fully oxygenating her blood and keeping her thin and in a seriously weakened state. Who knew what turning herself into a bear rug would do to her fragile system. As dire as her situation seemed, now wasn't a good time for experimentation.

"Well, my friend. I guess you are seriously laughing your ass off now. Perhaps you could get down off your high horse and lend a little assistance here. I've provided you with a quest. How about keeping me alive long enough to take that journey with you?"

Caitlin smiled. The nice thing about talking to Revenge was he kept his own counsel most of the time. She wondered how long it would be before her body took over and forced her to change into something more survival worthy. The bear rug image had been a joke, but one she couldn't get out of her head. She'd created the mental template. It was already too late.

Cautiously punching through the drifts with her makeshift pole, Caitlin forced her way through the trees, her pace slow but steady.

****

"D
amnation, where is everyone?" Eirik stomped down the stairs and called out again, "Caitlin! Wolf?"

He made his way to the front door and peered out onto the landing. Even covered, the porch sat under a deep mantle of snow, undisturbed. He could see past the drifted banks to where swirls of mini-vortices spun wickedly, the downdrafts from the densely packed wall of trees lifting and spinning the lighter surface coating. He flicked on the outside light switch but nothing happened. Cursing, he reached for the interior recessed flood switch, but again ... nothing. This was not a good time to be without electricity. He'd need to get Wolf to start up the generator.

Eirik used the pale yellow glow from the Vermont stove to guide him past the clutter of furniture. He opened the door and poked at the remains of the logs. He figured he must have dozed for several hours. Wolf had added two sturdy logs earlier in the afternoon. Given it was pitch dark that meant it was well past five o'clock. He should smell dinner cooking and his stomach grumbled noisily at the thought of food.

"Wolf! We need the generator. Wolf?"

Using his cane to find his way into the kitchen, he rustled around the drawers seeking flashlights but only came up with a few candles and matches kept for emergencies. Muttering, "Damn birthday candles," he inserted the narrow decorative tapers into the glass votive holders, the weak light barely illuminating the counter.

The flame flickered and danced as he did a slow sweep of the laundry room, noting that Wolf's jacket and Caitlin's boots and other clothing items were missing. A quick look down the darkened walkway confirmed that they'd forgotten to bring the new generator in from the garage. He sighed with disgust. He'd brought Wolf in for bodyguard duties, not as a glorified maintenance man, so he had only himself to blame for their current level of unpreparedness. But without the generator he wasn't able to run his computers, let alone the lights. They were fortunate to have the wood stove for heat. Without it, they'd be shoveling their way to the bottom of the mountain. It looked too deep even for four-wheel drive.