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  Silent now, the raven moved even closer, and Caroline began to worry. Was there something wrong with it? She’d always heard that wild animals that got close had rabies, but she didn’t know about birds. Maybe they got rabies, too. Maybe she’d be pecked by that hard black bill and wind up having a series of painful and expensive shots.

  Okay, enough of this freaking herself out. She dashed the little that remained in the glass on the ground behind her and stood. The bird moved too, but instead of taking off into the air, it began to shimmer and fade.

  Caroline’s heart started to pound. Something was wrong, dreadfully wrong. She tried to yell for help, but her throat was so dry from fear that all she managed was a soft syllable that no one could possibly hear. Before she could swallow and try again, the possession started. She closed her eyes against the eerie feeling, her stomach clenching as deep gasps emanated from her. Unable to fight whatever was taking her over, she fell to the ground, making herself small as her own senses and sensibilities were pushed back and she was taken.

  This woman was strong, Rhori realized as he pushed himself up and flexed his arms and legs. She was healthy, too, without the hidden sickness he’d felt in the vessel he so recently abandoned.

  Moving with care as he adjusted to this new shell, he poked into Caroline’s mind, seeking a connection to the woman Odin desired. He found none. But he found memories of the warrior who protected her. Smiling, Rhori walked around the diner and found the metal box the last vessel had come to this place in. He called on the residual memories of being inside Mick to start the engine, back up the truck and roll out onto the street. He knew what people on this plane did not: that once a deep connection was made between people, it never went away. Calling on her connection to the warrior, he slid a mental wedge into the man’s mind and saw the cave, the green glow on its floor and Odin’s Valkyrie.

  The smile on the borrowed face was wide as he made a U-turn and headed east. Tonight, he would rejoin Odin, his mission successful, and join his comrades in Valhalla.

  Chapter Twelve

  “You psychic? Creed asked.

  “You mean like ESP, mind reading and all of that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “Yes, I’m positive.” Chiana tempered her irritation. They’d been in this hole in the ground for a couple of hours, hardly talking, and now he wanted parlor games.

  “I was tested when I joined the agency, like everyone else,” she said. “You know, they hold up a blank card and you tell ‘em what’s on the other side. I didn’t get a single one right.”

  “So you can’t give this joker a shout to come on and get this over with? I’m sick of this place.”

  “Tell me about it.” Chiana had shifted positions frequently in the last half hour, trying to find some way to sit that didn’t either put her butt to sleep or feel like she was sitting on, well, rock.

  “Maybe we can find a better waiting place.”

  Creed stood and began to gather the glow sticks. They cast an eerie light on his face, giving his features a slightly demonic appearance. Chiana hid a shiver as she grabbed the glowing tubes closest to her. He was the good guy. She had to remember that.

  Okay, he was only “good” in comparison to her dogged pursuer. Still, it was a whole lot better than being on her own. Not, of course, that she would have ever thought of hiding in a cave in the supposed geomagnetic center of the hemisphere.

  She followed, holding onto the tail of Creed’s shirt when the path got narrow. The damp rock pressing on all sides made her desperately long to see sunlight and open spaces again.

  “Watch out!” Creed said sharply, waving both hands above his head. Before Chiana could ask if he was having a seizure or if something was wrong, she heard a rustling, fluttering sound and forgot to breathe.

  Bats. Dozens of the nasty things flapping their wings, aiming right for her, she realized in horror. She squatted down on the floor and wrapped her arms around her head as they swarmed above her.

  “Chiana, it’s all right.” Creed dropped beside her, his pack falling off. “They’re not going to hurt you. You’re bigger than them; they’re probably afraid of you.”

  “I’m not going to give them rabies,” she retorted, her voice muffled against her chest.

  Good point.

  This wasn’t the time to point out the virtues of bats, like how they eat millions of mosquitoes, or remind her the bats lived here and they were the intruders. He wrapped his arms around Chiana, folding her against him and placing his cheek against the top of her head to offer as much protection as possible.

  His hand moved in small circles on her back, an automatic gesture of comfort. Eyes closed, he kept a tight hold even after the air grew silent again. The bats were gone; her strong reaction wasn’t.

  Creed suspected the bats were a trigger for the emotions jumbled inside her. Like him, she carved order from chaos and had a deep-seated need for things to go however her brain told her they should. She was foundering in a sea of can’t-knows, lost without the personal compass she’d created to help her find her way through a life no one else had experienced.

  At least no one she knew, he corrected himself. Her mother might have been the only woman freed to live in this plane with the man she loved, or maybe not. There could be more.

  The thought gave him chills. He was wandering in a strange land where nothing was as it seemed. The man Chiana trusted most, her partner, had become an enemy. The job she loved, protecting other people from the very scenario she was enduring, had been abandoned. Worst of all, she had no one to lean on but him, the very last human being anyone would want as a crusader or comforter.

  “Better now?” he whispered, lifting his head and tipping her face so he looked into her eyes.

  “I had one get tangled in my hair when I was a kid. They’ve given me the willies every since,” she said.

  The glow sticks, scattered among the rocks surrounding them, gave her blue eyes an unusual cast, making them appear almost as cats’ eyes. They shimmered as if she’d been crying.

  Creed lowered his face, driven by a need to reassure her. Her lips were soft, salty with the taste of tears, and offered no resistance when he coaxed them open with his tongue. He cradled her neck with his hand; she wound her arms around his neck and pressed closer to him. Desire soared through him, made more desperate when she sighed and slipped her hand under the back of his shirt.

  Her hand was soft and small, tracing along his spine and to his hip. Her lips moved to suck on his ear lobe; he moaned with pleasure when she pressed closer to him. He wanted her naked under him, to feel, touch and taste every inch. He longed for her beneath him, thighs spread to take him in, to welcome him.

  “Shh,” he said to her small mew of protest when he broke the contact between them. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Good.”

  She swayed toward him as he yanked open the buttons on his shirt and tossed it down, leaving only the short fabric of her shirt between them. Settling back against the rock in what was almost a natural chair, he pulled her onto his lap facing him and kissed her again, the way he’d wanted to last night and the night before.

  His hand slid across her stomach and to her breasts. She gasped, a sharp intake of breath, when his fingers closed on one round nipple, teasing it. She sank her hands in his hair when his mouth took the place of his fingers, tasting one breast then the other.

  “Too much,” she moaned. When he started to pull away, she whispered, “Clothing. Too much clothing.”

  “Not yet.” He stilled her fingers which were fumbling with the zipper of his jeans. “We have to stop. I shouldn’t have let it get this far.”

  “I don’t want to stop.” The words came from her in a desperate, breathy whisper.

  “Do you think I do?” He moved his hands down her arms, caught her elbows, lifted her from him. “We’ll have all the time we need after. Once we get out of here.”


  “What if we don’t get out?” The words came in a rush, as if she had to say them immediately or she’d never be able to speak them. “What if this is all we have, these few minutes until that thing finds us?”

  “I won’t let that happen,” Creed promised. He took her face gently in his hands, stared into her beautiful, trusting eyes. “I swear on my own life that you will not die here.”

  He stood and walked a few feet away, turning his back while he fought the white-hot urge to do what she wanted, to make love to her just in case the worst happened. He concentrated on the oath he’d taken when he joined Guardian. Duty came first, duty and his sworn promise to protect his fellow agents, no matter the cost.

  Chiana was beautiful, she was sexy and their desire was definitely mutual—and she was a senior agent. One moment’s distraction was all it might take for her to be taken. For all he knew, the warrior could drift in like smoke and take human form to kill him and take Chiana. Or maybe in an ectoplasmic state, the bastard could slip inside her head and convince him life with Odin would be peachy-keen.

  “Creed?” Chiana called in a thin, wavering voice. “It might be a good idea to give me a shot right about now.”

  He turned. She was huddled inside her jacket, sweat dotting her forehead even though her teeth chattered like she’d been locked in a walk-in freezer. Shivers wracked her. He pulled the bag from his pocket, tapped the needle to get rid of air bubbles and plunged it into the soft flesh of her belly.

  “Uh.” That single sound echoed as she rocked back and forth, like a junkie shooting up. Creed was torn between consoling Chiana and being afraid to touch her. Her reaction to each shot had been slightly different. If she became belligerent, he had to keep his distance.

  With a sudden wordless cry, she collapsed, her head tipping forward to touch the stone beneath her. Creed hurried to her. She’d passed out. He felt her throat, where her pulse was strong, and laid a hand on her chest to gauge her breathing.

  Damn. He missed Doc, almost as much as he missed a cell phone signal. One call to the medicos at the agency…no. No one knew what was in those shots but the good doctor, and he’d warned Creed to keep his distance after he gave one.

  Backing up until he bumped into the wall, Creed hunched down and watched Chiana, hoping like hell she’d be herself when she woke up, not the fighter and definitely not the siren.

  * * * *

  Trapped inside her own body by the thing that had possessed her, Caroline had only a dim awareness of the world around her. She sat numbly behind the steering wheel of the strange truck as she tried to remember what to do next. Finally, she spotted the keys in the ignition and managed to start the car. She drove out of the parking lot and on the street, directed by an internal GPS dictated by the spirit warrior inside her.

  Submission seemed natural to her as she opened her mind and let her knowledge of Creed pour out. Everything she’d heard about him, everything she’d experienced while partnered with him was laid bare for the intruder to study. Caroline experienced his probing into her memories, good and bad, as a tiny vibration, odd to feel but nothing alarming.

  He had underestimated the warrior, Rhori decided, as he studied what Caroline held in her mind. He had not known that this plane had such a man, whose dedication to his own gods was as great as Rhori’s own for Odin. From Caroline’s memories, he learned Creed’s methods, his stealth in stalking an alien entity, his ability to quickly make the right decision to preserve his own life and those he was charged to protect.

  This man would be a formidable enemy. Yet Rhori was certain his foe’s need for victory wasn’t as strong as his. This man did not have the capacity for blind obedience, to do what must be done despite his own moral code and beliefs.

  This, then, was how Rhori would strike. He would use the vessel that housed him now to weaken the man she called Creed. The woman would say what he wished, do as he would have done, and the warrior would not suspect Rhori’s presence in her.

  He settled back in the seat, studying the world around him through Caroline’s eyes, well pleased with what was to come.

  The memories Caroline had so carefully tamped down were set free with Rhori’s probing. The car continued down the highway as if controlled by a remote operator while Caroline’s unconscious mind brought back the horrors of Haiti, took her back to the dark streets and evil that she barely escaped.

  It began with the earthquake. The world news showed images of destroyed buildings, homeless families, ruin and rubble. What no photographer captured on film, what no reporter was able to interview, were the things released by the earth’s upheaval. Supernatural creatures teemed through the landscape of humanity, preying on the dying to harvest their souls and striking down the strong to add to their own strength.

  She and Creed had entered the country on passports certifying them as humanitarian workers. That wasn’t exactly a lie; what they did helped not only to preserve humanity but kept them in the dark about what shared the world with them. Creed was there as a killer; she was there as a seeker.

  “You gotta stay tough,” Creed told her as they picked their way through rubble-filled lots looking for places where the earth had opened deep enough for hell creatures to escape. “The real rescue workers will take care of these people. We have to make sure they stay alive or unpossessed long enough for that to happen.”

  That, Caroline realized immediately, was easier said than done. She’d had the standard agency training. She could hit a vampire’s heart with a metal stake from thirty feet away, and she’d memorized the chant that would stop a wereanimal in its tracks. But no amount of training could stifle her natural ability. It seemed as though everywhere she looked, she saw people—young and old—wearing the colors of death.

  You gotta stay tough.

  Those words ran through her head over and over, a refrain she clung to as they pushed further into an insane world. She’d thought she was prepared, but she wasn’t. Superstition walked hand in hand with rationality here, women with crucifixes around their neck giving what little they had to a voodoo priest to keep their family safe or help them find a loved one. Banishing an evil troll was child’s play next to what she and Creed had been assigned to do here.

  Three days in, they’d sent a handful of creatures back to hell, persuaded a few ghosts to go quietly into the light instead of hanging around to frighten people and even dispatched a nest of soul collectors with an ancient spell and a liberal dousing with holy water. Creed seemed unchanged by the experience, but Caroline felt as if she was losing her own soul, bit by bit.

  And then she saw the woman and unwittingly created her own hell on earth.

  The sights, sounds and smells of Haiti faded as Rhori resumed control of her inner being. Her hands turned the wheel, her foot alternated from the gas pedal to the brake, but their destination was controlled by the thing inside her. A weak thought came to Caroline, a nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right. It faded as she steered the sedan down the highway at eighty miles an hour, taking advantage of the newly repaved road and light traffic.

  “Buckeye state,” she murmured as they passed the sign welcoming them to Ohio.

  Her mind was becoming a blanker slate with each passing mile. As if someone had pressed a button to send her memories to a recycling bin, Rhori’s increasing control suppressed them more and more. He could sense the Valkyrie’s presence, knew they were drawing ever nearer, but linking to her was near impossible. What had she done to shut him out?

  Rhori wasn’t used to this kind of war, where men hid instead of giving a banshee scream and hurling onto the field of battle. Silence didn’t suit him. He was accustomed to the crash of metal as swords met, the grunts and groans as men fought and the swell of pride when another victory for Odin was accomplished.

  Pushing his concern and discontent away, he concentrated on his task. Reaching out mentally, he found a slim connection with Odin’s choice and thickened it, enlarged it, until he felt cold beneath him
and dark around him. A dungeon? No! A place beneath the ground. The warrior that protected her believed it offered safety. He underestimated Rhori’s talents and his need to go home at last. As long as the thinnest thread connected him to the woman, he would find them, and he would take her to his god.

  For a moment, Rhori allowed himself to dream of his next life, an eternity spent with his brothers-at-arms in the halls of paradise. Never again would a sword burn his blood as it plunged into his mortal flesh; all he wanted would be given from an endless supply. He could almost taste the sweet flavor of mead on his tongue, could nearly appreciate the savory flavor as he bit into a chunk of boar’s flesh taken hot from the fire.

  “You will not keep her,” he muttered aloud in Caroline’s voice, his bitterness growing as he remembered how close he had come to having her. Marked in their first account, she should have longed to join him, refused to remain in this world of dark and madness any longer. Yet the warrior who protected her had found a way to turn her from him.

  “Odin, give me strength,” he whispered as he tightened the thread between them, his mind reaching out to hers.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “The bastard’s coming!”

  Creed jumped up as Chiana’s shout echoed in the small place. Her eyes were wide open, yet unfocused; her hands clenched into tight fists. When she shivered, he wondered whether it was from anticipation or fear. Or if the shakes were one more side effect of the damn serum, giving her enhanced mental abilities right after she’d insisted she wasn’t the least bit psychic.

  Creed studied her, applying the standards he’d learned through the agency. She might be beautiful; she might have the courage of a lion, but her mother had been a supernatural. The directive he followed, the one drummed into every agent’s head, was simple: Kill to eliminate the threat.

  Yeah, Guardian would lose a good agent, but training a recruit was a hell of a lot easier than slamming shut the portal if Odin figured out how to jump between worlds. That, Creed figured, was what the god was after. If all he wanted was her spirit, the force he’d sent to get her could probably yank that out, tuck it in its figurative pocket and head for home. No, Odin wanted all of Chiana, body and soul.