Deceiver's Bond: Book Two of A Clairvoyant's Complicated Life (39 page)

“Kieran,” I murmured, voice quavering and nearly breathless, “We need to be quiet. We’re in trouble here. Big, big trouble.” I stroked the side of his head. “Kieran? Hey, you awake?” I tucked my chin, trying to get a glimpse of his face without dislodging him.

A massive vibration shook the structure, shaking bits of debris loose to sprinkle the floor in a cascade of dust.

I jostled his arm. “Please, wake up. Please.”

We had to get out before the creature found us, but every exit had been plastered over.

“Lire,” Kieran croaked, voice so whisper-thin, I almost mistook it for a tormented sigh.

“Thank God,” I blurted, managing to keep my voice low in spite of my agitation. I anxiously rubbed his back. “You’re awake. Are you? God, please, tell me you’re awake.”

“Poi … son,” he muttered, his voice less than a whisper. “Out … side … tried … to … warn …” He grunted and exhaled heavily.

“I figured that out. I washed the stuff from your neck. You’re going to be okay.” I stroked the back of his head.

Again, the ground trembled.

I gasped before I got a grip on myself.

“Leave … me,” he croaked.

His request punched me in the gut, a cold fist that left me feeling as if I’d swallowed a glacier. I clutched him tight and replied in a savage whisper, “No. Don’t waste your energy on asinine suggestions. We’re both getting out of here.”

Not wanting to draw attention to our location, but having little choice, I drew on my magic and threw open the back door. Like the hole in the roof, a tangle of foul, black strands had blockaded the opening. I narrowed my TK to a point and drove my power into the center of the mass, but it was like trying to stab a sheet of rubber with a butter knife.

Knife!

“Right,” I snarled. “Let’s carve this mother a new one.”

I spied a knife block near the sink and plucked the largest handle I could find, a ten-inch Wüsthof chef knife. Kim and Jackie didn’t skimp on their kitchen implements.

I levitated the imposing blade, whisked it through the air, and plunged it into the center of the woven barricade up to the hilt. I sliced upward, but as quickly as I could carve a slit, the wound behind sealed shut.

I continued to cut and applied my telekinesis as a wedge to keep the slit open. No dice. No matter how hard I tried, the tentacles slipped around my cleat, interweaving before I could force an effective opening.

Several tentacles whipped from the surface to twine around the blade, halting my progress.

“Shit!” I fought to pull the knife away to little avail.

One of the thicker limbs snaked its way up the handle, following the invisible line of my magic toward me. Gasping, I relinquished the knife and lashed out with my pyrokinesis. The sinuous appendage burst into flames and fell to the floor, exuding a thick, choking cloud of malodorous smoke.

From the front of the house, a deep, guttural laugh vibrated the air.

Eyes burning, I held my breath and launched Kieran and myself to the far corner, as far from the noxious fumes as I could get without leaving the room. On the floor by the back door, the charred tendril shriveled, turning to ash.
Damn.
If I didn’t think Kieran and I would succumb to the fumes, fire might have been a viable if not potentially destructive option.

Cutting an exit was a bust. Ditto for burning our way out. The only thing left was cold.

Thermal
pops
and
cracks
echoed through the kitchen as I siphoned energy from the woven barricade. I was careful to disperse the extracted heat to the other rooms in the house. But, even as I plied my magic, I had no idea whether I could lower the temperature enough to accomplish what I had in mind—I’d only seen it done on a small scale, in experiments on television.

When no discernible heat remained in the barrier, I hovered with Kieran to the side of the blocked doorway, ready to slip through. I levitated a kitchen chair and smashed it against the frozen mass. The corrupted curtain shattered like a rose dipped in liquid nitrogen, but the tendrils outside had already responded to the threat, adding layer upon layer to the exterior as the frozen one disintegrated.

“Damn it,” I growled.

Shards of frozen stalks rained down, some bouncing off the protective shield I’d erected around Kieran and myself. Before any of the nasty bits could reanimate and make a grab for us, I again retreated to the kitchen’s farthest corner, poised to incinerate them if they made any nefarious movements. Actually, keeping them frozen was a better choice.

“That sure didn’t work,” I grumbled.

The house shuddered, accompanied by the sound of crunching glass. It wasn’t hard to imagine that something ponderous had just stepped into the ravaged living room. A second equally-jarring footstep shook the house a moment later.

As soon as it entered the house, I knew it was a demon. There was no disguising evil of that magnitude. It heralded an oppressive stench that assaulted my mind as well as my senses—the viscous, rotting smell of unadulterated depravity.

I coiled my magic inside my core and tried not to squeeze Kieran senseless, the urge to protect him burning my insides and strengthening me for the coming fight. “Shit. I’m out of ideas.” I pressed my body against the wall, as if I might find refuge by squeezing between the surface’s molecules.

Okay. If we couldn’t escape, what about hiding?

I whispered into Kieran’s ear, “Do you have anything in you? Can you veil us?”

“Suh … so … rry,” he forced out, his head rising briefly from my shoulder before settling back with a thump. His frustrated exhale fluttered over the tender skin of my neck, giving me the chills.

I looked around the small kitchen, even though I knew there was no place to hide where the demon wouldn’t find us.
Crap.
Where could we go? The living room was occupied. This exit was blocked. The whole fucking house was barricaded. Why did I agree to this? Why wasn’t I at home in the safety of my building under the djinn’s watchful protection?

Hoping like hell inspiration would strike, I pulled Kieran tighter against me and berated myself for flinching as each weighty footfall drew closer to the kitchen. Somehow, Kieran mustered the energy to settle his hand on my right hip. Hungry for the comfort, I pressed my hand over the top of his.

What I wouldn’t give for the djinn’s abilities! Blipping into another dimension, far removed, sounded freaking awesome right about now. It had been so easy for Maya to shift Michael and me to that strange place.

Now that I considered it, the sensation had felt eerily similar to navigating the Between—that nauseating feeling of movement without any physical explanation.

Distantly, I thought I sensed the djinn’s excited encouragement.

I straightened, eyes going wide. I tightened my grip on Kieran’s hand.

It was like navigating the Between!

But more complicated because I had to move not just my essence but my body too … all those molecules, every single one, using my TK.

And not just
my
body.

Our
bodies.

I’d never remotely consider leaving Kieran.

Okay. Yes. I could do this.

Our closeness had already made me intimately aware of him. My TK encompassed his body as we floated just above the floor. And his cheek, his skin next to mine, honed my perception. Until now, I’d separated myself from this sensation as much as possible. But when I gave myself permission to focus on him, I became aware of every nuance—every muscle, hair, fingernail—every glorious cell that made up the man clutched in my arms. He resonated uniquely, a precious song among billions and billions that I could discern and master, if I set my mind to it—if I channeled my inner Jimi Hendrix. I almost giggled at the thought as I slipped my magic over his body. I memorized him, caressed him, breathed him, until I knew I could single out the tune of his essence even if I lost him in the infinite vastness of the Between.

But that wasn’t where we were headed.

Filled with the intimate knowledge of him, I recalled the pitch and resonance of that other place and slid everything

… one

… breathless

… scintilla

… to the side.

The room blurred and warped, shrinking down to a convex panorama. My stomach clenched at the strange yet familiar sensation. I swallowed my nausea, too astonished to even consider throwing up.

When my vision cleared, I goggled at our surroundings, momentarily forgetting everything else, including maintaining my magic.

It … worked?

I managed one disbelieving gasp before we fell to the ground.

Kieran’s body landed across my thighs and abdomen, driving the wind out of me. I had the sense to cradle his head against my chest, at least, narrowly averting another head injury. Still clutching him, I wheezed and tried to recover my breath.

“Holy sh-shit,” I stuttered.

The freakishly shrunken yet elongated landscape of Kim and Jackie’s shattered kitchen surrounded us in every direction, appearing far from where we stood but somehow still recognizable. I closed my eyes in an effort to stave off vertigo.

“What?” Kieran choked out. He fought to lift his head and torso, raising himself away from my body for a few seconds, but probably saw little more than my rumpled jacket before issuing an angry grunt and falling back against me.

“Sorry,” I said and strained to push us upright. Focusing on him took the edge off our surroundings and helped quell my nausea.

“Take it easy. Here.” I levitated him to a sitting position and then arranged my legs on either side of his so he could lean his back against me. I plunked my chin on his shoulder and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I can’t believe—” I swallowed and tightened my arms around him, as much to reassure myself as him, and stammered, “Somehow, I … I guess I moved us. We’re safe.”

“You … moved us. Where? What … have you … done?” he demanded, speaking between shallow grunts of effort. I felt the muscles of his back and abdomen tense as he took in the scene around us. I guessed my quavering, half-stupefied explanation hadn’t left him feeling reassured. Go figure.

Judging distance was impossible. Our surroundings, skewed and warped in all directions, elicited no distinguishable horizon, yet there was a sense of up and down, left and right. Gravity kept us grounded. Darkness hovered somewhere near, just out of view, as if we skirted the edge of a vast emptiness too far removed to see but close enough to feel.

I answered, “I don’t know, exactly. I think it might be a parallel dimension.”

“You …
sidestepped
?” In spite of his raspy voice, his astonishment was easy to hear.

“Well, uh, I guess you could call it that. The djinn brought Michael and I here, a few days ago, when we needed privacy. When Maya moved us, I remembered thinking the feeling was just like how it felt to navigate in the Between.” I yawned and rested my chin on his shoulder again, still clutching him tightly. “I figured trying to shift us over here was better than just waiting for the demon to come eat our faces.”

I think he snorted, but in his weakened state, it was hard to be sure. “And … are you … confident you can … return us?”

I was relieved to hear him speak in more than one word sentences, even if his voice wasn’t much more than a series of strained whispers. I hadn’t realized how worried I’d been that he might die or be crippled by the poison’s effects.

“Confident might be too strong a term,” I admitted.

“And
if
we … return … what then?”

“As long as we don’t move, we’ll be back in Kim and Jackie’s house, right where we were when we left. And we’re not moving from this spot. I don’t want to accidentally bring us back buried halfway into a wall or a tree.” I shivered at the thought. “I’m not sure if that can happen or not. I mean I can see where we are, sort of, but I’m not sure what will happen if we try to move around. Until I know how this all works, I don’t want to risk doing something stupid.”

The lighting around us flickered and then shadow engulfed our wonky fish-eyed view. I sucked in my breath. The demon had entered the room. Now that it was actually
inside
the kitchen, undoubtedly intent on capturing, torturing, and then murdering us, I couldn’t stop from dredging up Evan McLean’s thoughts. This was undoubtedly the same demon he’d summoned to kill the emissaries. The one that used its razor sharp talons to …

I shuddered and clutched at Kieran, pulling him against my body and burying my forehead into the crook of his neck, desperate for his warmth and his contact, to smother those horrifying memories. He responded by covering my arms with his own, weakly hugging them closer to his tensed abdomen, offering me what little comfort he could provide.

Even though the creature appeared inky and incomprehensible, I worried that it might somehow detect us, and if it could detect us, perhaps it had the ability to follow. Shadows, indistinct and dreadful, fluctuated around the distorted kitchen, distant but no less oppressive. Unable to do anything but stare, I waited for the demon to go away or, worse, spiral closer as it pursued our trail.

But it didn’t.

After a minute, which only
seemed
to border on forever, the ominous shadow receded, leaving me dizzy and squeezing Kieran so hard no doubt he had difficulty drawing breath. I collapsed against him. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t been unduly affected by the demon’s presence, maybe because he was still under the effects of the poison. Or perhaps he was just braver than me.

I fought for breath and murmured, “Thank God.”

When I’d calmed enough to breathe normally, Kieran asked, “What of … Kim and … Jackie?”

I mentioned Jackie’s portal and their escape. “I told them I’d find you and then we’d meet back at my apartment building. Just before the truck crashed into the living room, I’d felt you stumble into the kitchen. I knew something was wrong when you didn’t come find us.”

When he didn’t respond, I leaned to the side to view his face. From this angle, I could see little more than his profile. The muscles of his jaw clenched.