Highland Shapeshifter (17 page)

Lenore thought she was going to break apart, piece by piece. Her teeth rattled in her skull.

Then it was gone.

Everything abruptly stopped.

The roaring, the sensation of pulling apart… Everything but the taste. The horrible taste in her mouth was still there.

No, that wasn’t quite right. There was still noise. Loud. Like an avalanche exploding down a mountain. An external pulsation outside of herself.

And wind.

Inside Charity’s apartment. Two days in their past.

She spun to face the roar, toward the small kitchen and her heart jolted.

The sorcerer’s time rift was already opened and growing in size. It was huge, larger than she’d imagined a rift to be.

Her sister was stretched out on the floor, hands clamped around the wrists of the sorcerer, his long body hidden behind the counter. His long ebony hair pulled to the side in a hurricane force twisting wind. He looked so much like Col, Lenore thought at first he’d already leapt into the fray—and the thought paralyzed her.

Knowing he planned to do just that and believing it had already happened were two entirely different things.

She couldn’t let him do it. There had to be another way.

“Charity!” she called though the noise snatched her cries away.

“No, let her go.” Bekah caught her arm.

The wind circled harder and harder, a whipping cyclone that swept the appliances off the counters. The floor buckled beneath them, tossing them off their feet. The cabinet doors pulled from the cupboards, bending the metal hinges. Everything was being sucked up in the vacuum of the whirlwind.

Charity and Toren lifted from the floor, caught in the whirlpool of air, clawing to hang onto each other.

Col lunged up. Now. He was ready to go now.

The couch lifted, flew across the apartment, landing across the arched doorway between living room and kitchen, groaning and buckling against the walls, baring her view of her sister and what was happening on the other side.

Lenore pulled up to her feet, swaying with the movement of the bucking, breaking building. Plaster fell from the ceiling. Upstairs neighbors were going to love that.

And
puff, puff-puff-puff
. Tiny explosions of dusty air clouded the room, dispersing little smoke in the raging wind to reveal Sifts. Another appeared. And another. Coming through their own time portals to stop them.

Startled, but not stupid, Lenore pulled the 9mm out and shot the closest in the stomach. The next bullet went in its head. Blue light whizzed past her, nailing another.

Col was suddenly there, swirling behind her, one of his blades carving a vee straight down a Morlock’s head. Well, that was another way to get to the brain. Rictus gray blood sprayed the churning air like spinach spaghetti. She’d never cared for that healthy pasta anyway and wouldn’t be eating it any time soon. Or ever.

Bekah revolved close, stabbed another in the chest, but it leapt up to the ceiling where Lenore shot at it. Missed when it dropped on Col, dragging him to the floor. Again, the beasts were concentrating their effort on him.

Fury, fear, adrenaline, or all three, stroked through Lenore. Screaming, she kicked the Sift off Col, pressed the muzzle to its jaw and fired three rounds.

The guns were good for a distraction, getting lucky when they could close to any cavity in the head, but between their blades, Col and Bekah were doing some serious damage.

Blood, guts, and who knew what else splattered them. Col whipped two knives from a Sift’s underbelly. She hadn’t even seen him stab the thing—and grinned devilishly up at her.

“How’d they know we’d be here?” She smacked another clip into the handle of her gun.

Bekah’s face was fierce. “They ate Matthew,” she growled and ducked out of the way of slashing claws.

Blue light pulsed into the veiny chest and Luke laughed, enjoying the fight. The Sift spasmed and fell flat. “The Sifts eat you, they know your innermost concerns.”

And Matthew would have been worried about losing the Squids they had taken off him and Bekah. “That’s how they knew about your plan to come back to my time and help Col get back to his.”

Luke shot several bolts into a Morlock that just didn’t want to go down. A stinging blade from Col in its ear did the trick. Lenore shot the Sift pouncing over his shoulder, sending the beast smacking into the wall. He, or the bullet coming out the other side, must have hit an electrical wire behind the sheetrock because the wall started sparking, sending eerie glows through the monster’s skin like sparklers.

“They have insatiable appetites.” Bekah impaled another beast, ducking under a claw. She already sported bloody tears down her shoulder. “Hard to keep things a secret. Col, go now. The rift is closing.”

Lenore jerked her head toward the kitchen. The sofa upended and twirled in the raging vortex.

Charity and Toren were
 
nowhere in sight.

And now Col was leaving her too.

The beast pinned against the wall exploded in flame. Bloated skin bubbled and peeled. Fire blew outward, catching on billowing curtains and trailed down to the carpet.

Blue light zinged around them from Luke’s gun.

Col gave Lenore a frantic look. “Lass, if the circumstances were…”

She grabbed his arm, the 9mm heavy in her other hand. “I know.” She swallowed, fighting back emotions pounding to release. She couldn’t lose him. “I know. Go.” Dense smoke coated the air.

He squeezed her fingers and was gone, leaping into the haze.

~~~

The sound of the cyclone rift was drowned by the thunder of fire. Lenore’s lungs constricted. The heat baked her skin. She couldn’t see Col, didn’t see his final jump into the rift. Just as well. She didn’t want that etched in her memory. She couldn’t see Bekah either. Or Luke for that matter. Or any of the Sifts.

Where was the door?

There was nothing but bright flames behind the boiling haze of smoke.

She bent low, coughing. Her lungs burned.

Puff, puff, puff
. She felt the concussions of air opening up, the Sifts making their escape to who knows when. She thumped against a chair, felt around the edges, found a rounded shoulder low to the floor.

“Lenore!” Bekah’s face swam in her line of sight.

“Come on.” She dragged the girl up.

The hot flames bent, danced around them, pulling sideways toward…toward what? The cyclone. The rift was still open, pulling in the heat. A Sift screamed, somewhere close. Apparently all the beasts had not exited the building.

No material substance could travel through a sorcerer’s rift. Could fire? Was the fire keeping the rift open? Though she’d never seen a time rift before, no one in this century head, she knew this one wasn’t normal. Something was wrong.

A window shattered, giving Lenore bearings toward where she thought the door might be. Nearly on their hands and knees, she guided Bekah, coughing and sputtering that way.

She tasted heat and ashes, scorching her airways.

They had to get out.

The door crashed open. A crouching silhouette coughed within the smoke boiling over him. Luke. “Over here.” His arm was thrown up over his head.

They were going to make it…until the ceiling crashed, wedging a chunk between them and escape. Smoke poured over the plaster.

Bekah and Lenore clung to each other, low to the floor, coughing in the hungry greedy blaze.

“Nooo!” Lenore was suddenly lifted, Bekah also, prodded forward. Col’s wide hands gripped around her forearm. She’d know him anywhere. He didn’t make it into the rift?

“No,” Bekah screamed. “You have to go.”

“As soon as yer safe.”

“There’s no time.” Bekah wrenched away. Col grabbed for her to snatch her back, but she was quick, gone, running in the wrong direction.

Stunned and more than a little half out of it, fighting for breath through ever-tightening lungs, draped in two with Col’s arm keeping her upright, well, as upright as she was going to get folded over like that, she glimpsed Bekah’s lithe form run into the swirling vortex and get snatched away.

She’d been right. There was no more time.

A grating whine, impossibly louder than the screeching blaze, screamed around them, vibrating across the heat.

The rift flared outward, the shuddering of air throwing Lenore and Col off their feet, then sucked inward, closing off with a giant clap like lightning, sweeping the fire away with it.

Everything went abruptly silent. Smoke clouded the air, but the fire had been snuffed out by the vacuum power of the time rift closing.

Dully, the buzz of fire alarms broke through the cotton surrounding her ears.

Col hauled her to her feet, shouting about getting out. Everything was gray with ash and smoke.

They stumbled outside. Luke caught her other arm, guiding them across the wet pavement.

It was raining again. Several people were in the parking lot, watching the fire. She wanted to tell them it was okay now, the fire was gone.

So was her sister.

They’d failed.

“Get her in the car.”

Grandma?

Lenore was pulled into the backseat of her grandmother’s undamaged Lexus. Of course, the windows hadn’t been broken yet by running over Morlocks. They hadn’t even driven the car over here yet. Grandma must have driven it over. They’d gone back in time a few days.

Lenore sat between Col and Luke, trying to make sense of what they were saying as Grandma sped through the wet streets and the colors started seeping back into reality.

“Grandma, what are you doing here?” she managed to croak out through her burned throat.

“We’ve got to get you off the streets,” was her only answer as the car pulled into the drop-off bay of one of Seattle’s finer hotels. “Inside, all of you, quick.”

They spilled out of the car, coated in soot and ash, skin red and burned, hurting. Grandma would take care of that soon, Lenore knew she would.

Grandma handed the keys off to a valet attendant and hurried them inside, bypassing the check-in desk and heading across the lavish lobby to the row of shiny elevators. Grandma’s heels clicked in precise cadence on the large tiles.

Once inside, the quiet purr grounded Lenore as they rode up. Col’s heartbeat was a steady thump against her back as she leaned into him, his arms locked around her waist keeping her on her feet.

Grandma was tense, more than she’d ever seen her. “You have to stay in the room where no one can see you. You came back in time without a spell or a rift. You understand what that means?”

Luke grasped it. “Our other selves from this timeline are out there.”

“Yes, there are now two of each of you in this time. You can’t meet. Not until your other selves have completed exactly what you have just done.”

Clarity slammed all the fuzziness away. “Wait.” Lenore straightened. “If our other selves are out there, we—they—still have a chance to fix this.”

“Oh, honey.” Grandma curled her palms over Lenore’s shoulders. “Two of you can’t exist at the same time. It’s unnatural and time will right itself. The moment you come face-to-face with yourself, time will splice you into a whole. You have to stay here in the hotel until you’ve achieved what needs to be done, then I’ll bring your other selves here and you’ll be restored.”