The Gathering Dark (37 page)

Keira landed hard on her hip and began to slide down the scree. She heard Walker’s shout above her but it was too late. The rock moved around her, slipping into new shapes as her weight pushed against it. Loose bits of gravel pinged past her, and Keira closed her eyes against them as she tumbled to the bottom of the hill.

The thud of her body hitting one of the boulders that littered the mountain’s base rang through the range like some sort of strange thunder. It stopped her fall and her breathing,
simultaneously. Keira’s lungs burned for the want of air, but she was unable to draw it in. The wind had been knocked out of her. She gave a ragged, painful gasp and suddenly she was breathing again.

“Keira! Are you okay?” Walker was at the bottom of the hill and running toward her.

She lay there, thinking about it. Her ribs and hip were sore, but not unbearably so. Her ankle still throbbed with a steady drumbeat of pain, but it didn’t seem any worse. Carefully, she sat up.

“I’m okay,” she answered, her voice shaking.

“Holy—” Walker stopped, letting out a long breath. “Don’t do that again, okay?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Keira said, “but it worked, didn’t it? I made it to the bottom of the hill.” Her face itched and she reached up to scratch it. When her hand came away from her temple, it was coated in Darkside dust. It was like being covered in the prickly bits of hair that drifted down during a haircut.

“Here,” Walker said. He lifted the hem of his shirt and wiped the mess from Keira’s face. She swallowed hard at the sight of his bare skin. There was nothing stopping her from touching him—nothing but the time that ticked away. They’d been Darkside long enough that the guards would have noticed the new rip. She knew the longer they were out in the open, the more likely they were to get caught.

Still, the temptation to run her hands over the smooth skin
above his waistband was almost too much to bear. When he dropped his shirt, slapping the dust from it, Keira had to shake herself.

He gave her a quizzical look, his eyes becoming heavy-lidded as he took in her expression. “What’re
you
thinking about?” he asked. The honey in his voice said that he had a pretty good guess.

Keira matched his smolder. She had nothing to lose and nothing to prove and no reason to pretend she didn’t want him terribly. “Just remembering why I’m doing this,” she said. “About all the things I’ll be able to do if—
when
—I find a way around this death sentence.”

The last two words sucked all the heat out of the moment, leaving a desperate cold in its wake. The truth—the deadly seriousness of the situation—was too close to the surface to ignore.

Walker pulled her arm around his shoulder and lifted her gently to her feet.

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” he said. “And I mean that very, very literally.” Keira heard the innuendo in his voice, the tantalizing taunt he’d mastered, but there was more beneath it. Something deep and aching that made Keira have to wait until her heart was steadier in her chest before she could speak.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I think I can walk if I lean on you.”

“I won’t let you fall,” he said, brushing a kiss across her temple. “We’ll take it a step at a time.”

•  •  •

Slowly they made their way over to the crags. Keira’s ankle hurt with every step. The ridges that rippled across the ground were smooth enough that it was hard to keep her footing, even with Walker supporting her.

Keira struggled to keep herself upright, clutching Walker’s shoulder. Darkside itself was as delicate and slippery as a soap bubble. It took all the focus she could muster to keep from bursting through it.

Step by step, they picked their way across the landscape of boulders. The silence that surrounded them was nearly unbearable. It waited, huge and ominous, like it was hiding something.

By the time the rock started to incline again, Keira’s forehead was damp with sweat. The effort of walking, the pain that swept up her leg, the thud of the headache she had developed from keeping her world out of view—it was exhausting.

Walker stopped near a small rock formation that had an unusual vein of stone, like luminous quartz, running through it. His breathing was labored.

“Okay, I think we need to stop here for a minute,” he said. Carefully he helped Keira sit on a flat bit of the stone. She whimpered with the relief of being off her feet and propped her bad ankle on another rock.

The mountains rose behind them like a protective curtain and the boulders shielded them in front. They wouldn’t be able to see anyone coming for them, but then again, it was unlikely that they could be seen.

Standing next to her, Walker rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. The fabric of his shirt was damp and wrinkled where she’d been gripping it.

“You okay?” Keira asked, acutely aware that he’d half carried her the entire way.

“Fine,” he brushed away the question. “Just stretching.” Walker crossed his arms and looked up at the mountains looming above them. “Darkside is thinner here than anywhere else in the whole mountain range. If your father’s still here, he’s probably not that far away.” He frowned. “Still. I didn’t realize there were so
many
caves.”

“He must have picked one that he thought I could find, right?” Keira offered. She looked hopefully at the lowest, biggest cave openings.

“Yeah, but he would have wanted to make sure he was hidden if anyone else came poking around,” Walker countered.

Keira frowned. Which of these caves would stand out to her but not to the guards? The headache thrumming behind her eyes made it hard to sort out her tangled thoughts.

The headache.

The headache that she had because she could see both worlds at once, which the guards couldn’t.

“Oh.”
She looked up at the mountains. “I bet one of these lines up with something on the other side,” she murmured.

Carefully, she let her vision double. The pain behind her eyes spiked suddenly as the murky ocean swept into view. The
dawn light didn’t penetrate that far down, but Keira could see rocky outcroppings pushing up from the ocean floor, reaching for the watery light.

A fish swam past her and the surprise of it shifted Keira’s focus.

In an instant, she was no longer Darkside. She was home.

Home, and thirty feet beneath the ocean swells.

Terrified, Keira opened her mouth and it immediately filled with the salty seawater. She held on to the last breath she’d taken as the current slammed into her, carrying her away. Frantic, she stared around, looking for the Darkside mountains, trying to see the strange, swirling stars overhead instead of the eddies of murky water.

Her lungs screamed in her chest.

The cold, dark water buffeted her, dragging her toward a rocky mound with an opening in it like a vacant, staring eye. Fighting the force of the current, Keira spun, her hair and clothes tangling around her. She caught sight of Walker, standing on the Darkside ground, panicked and helpless, his arms outstretched.

His reaching hands shot through her memory. The feel of them, cupping her ribs as he helped her across the rocks, was stronger than the chill of the dark ocean, stronger than the press of the water against her.

She slid through the barrier into Darkside and lay gasping on the blissfully dry ground.

Her mouth tasted like the sea and Keira pushed the thought out of her mind. She wanted nothing to remind her of the world she knew—nothing to risk sending her back.

Walker dropped beside her.

“You are impossible!
Impossible!
” His voice was as rough as the mountain peaks above her. “We can’t keep the Reformers from killing you if you kill
yourself
first.”

“Sorry! I was just trying to see if any of the caves lined up with something on the other side—something only you and I would be able to see,” she said, sitting up. Her clothes and hair were nearly dry. The water was evaporating much too quickly. She should have been sodden.

“Where’s the water going?” she asked.

Walker shook his head. “It’s baryonic matter, like everything else over there. Remember? It only came over because it had a bit of your dark matter in it. Like your clothes. Only it’s even less stable, so it’s already fading—disintegrating.” He waved his hand like it didn’t matter. “Did you see anything, at least?” he asked.

Keira stood, turning to face the direction that the current had been dragging her. She gingerly put a bit of weight on her ankle and was stunned when it didn’t hurt anymore. She’d been so shocked over her near-drowning that it hadn’t occurred to her that she was no longer in pain. There was nothing but sweet, quiet relief.

Of course. She’d crossed over. Automatic genetic reset.

At least something good had come of her slipping back into her world.

Two good things, actually,
she thought, facing the mountains. There was a small opening about a quarter of the way up the rock face. It was narrow and short, crammed between a ragged outcrop of stone and a smoother, sheared-off looking bit on the other side of the cave’s mouth.

But Keira was pretty sure it lined up perfectly with the opening she’d glimpsed in the sea stone.

“I think that cave up there is in the same spot as something I saw underwater.” She crossed her arms tight, shivering. “But I’d need to look at it again, to be sure.”

Walker wrapped his arms around her. “I don’t think we can both look, or we’re likely to slip over again. Do you want me to give it a shot? Or do you want to see while I try to hold you here?”

Keira knew that he was better at keeping himself in one world or another than she was. But if Walker crossed, she wasn’t sure she could pull him back. The thought of the dark water taking Walker made her quiver.

“Can you swim?” Keira asked.

A sheepish expression crept across Walker’s features. “Um, not exactly,” he admitted. “But I
can
hold my breath.”

Keira rubbed a hand across her eyes. It was her father they were looking for. It was her life they were trying to save.

“I’ll do it,” she said. She faced the cave, craning her neck so that she could see the opening.

Walker kept his arms around her and she looked for the looming rocks that lurked beneath the ocean. As the water shimmered into view, she felt the touch of Walker’s lips on her neck, reminding her where she was. Keeping her grounded. His mouth traced a path toward her shoulder, and Keira let her guard down the smallest bit, seeing the light of the rising sun bounce off the water. Walker reached up and tugged her shirt to one side. He hooked a finger beneath the straps of her bra and cami, sliding them down her arm, baring her skin to his mouth. Above her, the rock formation appeared, the round opening lining up exactly with the black slash in the side of the Darkside mountain.

“I see it,” she said, her voice breathy as Walker’s other hand slid beneath her cami, tracing the curve of her waist. “It’s right there.”

In spite of Walker’s touch, her internal balance wavered and Keira felt herself slip, hovering between the two realities for a horrifying moment. The weight of the sea crashed over her, yanking her away from Walker—carrying her out of Darkside.

Without letting go of her, Walker spun her around and crushed his mouth against hers. One of his hands cupped the back of her neck, pulling her tight into his kiss. The other, splayed against the skin of her back, held her against him tightly enough that she could feel the button of his jeans pressing into the bared skin of her stomach.

He was all she could feel, all she could smell, all she could
taste. The places where their skin touched burned and Keira melted into them, wanting more. Walker was everywhere and everything and she was with him, completely. The ocean slipped away like an outgoing tide, leaving only Darkside in its wake.

Keira whimpered with desire and relief. Walker broke the kiss, slid his hands up to cup her face, and leaned his forehead against hers.

“I felt you slip. Is it gone?” he asked. “What did you see?”

“It’s gone.” She closed her eyes, breathing in the mineral, almost metallic smell of the rock around them. “And yes, the cave mouths line up. I think it must be the place.”

Something thundered through the air, beating against Keira’s eardrums like a shock wave—noiseless but unbearable, a sound she felt rather than heard. She clapped her hands over her ears, trying to block out the pulsing that rolled across the Darkside landscape.

“What
is
that?” she asked, wincing as the aural assault battered her hearing again and again.

Walker’s lips pressed into a grim line. “It’s the alarm,” he said. “They only trigger it during large-scale emergencies. Everyone’s supposed to stay where they are until they can be accounted for. Only the Reformers’ guards can travel.”

Keira struggled to think beneath the soundless wailing of the alarm.

She had crossed over. Multiple times. Enough to cause a rip that would most certainly be noticed.

“The alarm is for us, isn’t it?” she asked.

“I think so, yes. I think they’ve realized where we are.”

“Then why not just come for us without setting off an alarm?” Keira lifted her hand from her ear to wave toward the reverberating sound. It was a mistake to leave her ear unprotected—her brain itself seemed to pulse with the alarm.

Walker grimaced. “I don’t know. But I think we’d better start climbing, and fast. It won’t take the guards long to get here.” He looked at her, a question glowing in his eyes. “Unless you want to double back? We can get to the beach near where we parked the car if we go that way—”

She interrupted him.

“No! What are you talking about? If we leave now, we can never come back—you know that. They’ll search for us and what about my father? If they find him . . . ” Keira shook her head, unable to finish the sentence.

The soundless waves came to a sudden stop. Keira’s eardrums thrummed in relief. With her head feeling clearer, she looked Walker in the eyes. “It’s too late for me to turn back now.”

He stared at her for a long moment before nodding. “Then it’s a good thing your ankle’s healed.”