Edge Walkers (6 page)

She shivered again and Gideon stirred, pulled her closer. She gave up trying to stay alert and aware. His body gave off relaxed heat, and she wanted to pull more of that over her because a chill had settled on her face and her hands and any part not covered by Gideon. She didn’t think she could sleep. But she did.

She woke with a start, unpleasant dreams echoing—Thompson’s scream and Chand’s skin sparking. She shuddered and deep breaths brought her back to the moment. One hip ached from the pressure of too much stone. Her body had thinned the padding of whatever springy stuff they lay on—it wasn’t leaves or anything like a real mattress. But she’d take the physical aches over the emotional ones. She was also going to keep telling herself that someone from her team
had to
have survived. And she thought about the Voodoo doll that looked like Chand—the dolls Gideon had said were for the dead. Her hand closed and tightened on Gideon’s arm, where the blood pulsed in even, slow beats.

Gideon hadn’t loosened his hold. He lay heavy across her, as if claimed by exhaustion. It was oddly comforting. There wasn’t much else that was. She let him sleep and watched day break around them.

Faint light drifted in through the holes in the roof. Blinking, she squinted into the gloom. She was glad to have anyone’s arm around when a long shaft of light fell over the guy sitting a couple of meters in front of the altar.

Cross-legged on the floor, large and dark, he tilted his head to watch them. Or he was watching Gideon sleep—he was watching her stare back at him now. The guy shifted and she gave an involuntary gasp and that woke Gideon.

Rolling upright, Gideon’s leg jerked her ankle at the tie. But he stayed close enough that she felt the tension ease from him. Standing, Gideon stretched, joints popping. Sleep blurred his words as he made introductions as if this was the usual start to any day.

“Ah, Temple. This is...what did you say...oh, Carrie. This is Carrie.”

Temple said nothing. He kept staring at her with inky dark eyes. Did he get his name from this place, or from looking about as big as these stone pillars?

With him sitting, she couldn’t judge his exact height, but everything looked epic. Muscular chest and arms under an open robe like Gideon’s; a lot of skin showing, all of it about the same shade as a good French Roast coffee. More of the dirt-cloth wrapped his waist and legs in something that could be ragged pants. A muddy-green pouch, big as a messenger bag, lay at his hip, slung across his chest by a wide strap.

He watched her from under a tangle of black dreads that cascaded over wide shoulders, and his face reminded her of Olmec statues from Central America; high cheekbones, a prominent nose and lips, a few centuries worn into his expression. Going by the look in his eyes, she’d guess he’d seen a lot, not much of it pleasant.

What did you say to someone like that? ‘Hi, nice to meet you?’ It wasn’t, so she twisted and glanced up at Gideon. “Now what?”

Gideon looked down at her. He almost smiled again—at least the lines around his eyes crinkled, and she remembered the weight of his body and how good he’d felt. She started to want him wrapped around her again. She also started to wish this was a church—confession sounded necessary to save her soul about now. But maybe it was better to just shut the memory of sin into a lockbox where she’d buried so much of her past.

Looking away, she pretended a yawn. Gideon hunkered next to her.

Reaching down to his calf, he pulled out a knife from some sort of sheath where it had been tucked. He took hold of the ties around her wrists and a neat snick later he’d sliced the cloth. She stared at the curved steel on display, noted the blade wasn’t anything to be found on a civilized table. Okay, so if he’d wanted her dead, he could have done that last night. That was almost the best news she’d come by to date.

Despite circumstances and clothes and sleep-rumpled hair, Gideon looked good enough for her to have picked up in a bar last night, if she ever got out for that these days. He moved down her body to cut the cloth between their ankles, his hand traveling over her hip and thigh, an unconscious, possessive gesture. He frowned as he worked. In the light, she could see faint lines of fatigue still framing his mouth, and a fine network of white scarring covered both well-muscled arms.

His fingers skimmed her skin at the ankle, and she touched his shoulder with the tip of one finger, just enough to make him look at her.

“I need to go home,” she said. She almost hated to say it, but it was the truth. She had responsibilities—she had to find out what had happened to the others. If they were dead…well, she’d deal with whatever she found. She had to figure out if she’d screwed something up, if this mess was her responsibility. What had she missed? She needed a lifetime of answers.

Gideon stood, looked away, and didn’t say a word.

She pressed her lips tight, scooted around so she was sitting with her knees up and her butt still on the makeshift bed.

It was past time to put everything into objective analysis. Admittedly, the information she had was entirely subjective. She’d give a lot for something that could use to measure this and prove conclusions. All she had, however, were her senses and what they told her. So she’d have to go for the hope that she could rely on them.

“I remembered some things last night,” she said. And she had—in shattering dream images that wrapped her chest, tight as razor wire. Gideon glanced at Temple before he looked at her, doubt dark in his eyes. She swallowed the knot in her throat and added, “More than a few.”

She didn’t say that what she had were disjointed flashes—men screaming and the splash of Thompson’s blood. Lightning falling and Zeigler seeming to burn up from the inside out, falling to the ground, his mouth cracked open in an agonized scream. Static had stood her hair on end and the world had seemed to flip, to shrink and expand. Chand had batted at something with his hands, something crawling into him. He had turned...

Her memory failed at that point—it all had gone white.

But too much truth had always been her personal siren’s lure, as well as her biggest flaw when it came to any kind of relationship. She always had to know—even if it would be better for everyone to pretend otherwise. The need for facts dragged at her now. She had to collect the pieces and fit them into a pattern that made sense. It would be the only way she’d ever find any peace again.

“I remembered…before. It looked like ball lightning in the lab.”

“It wasn’t,” Gideon said.

She sat up straighter. “How do you know that?”

Gideon shook his head. “They don’t call them Edge Walkers just because they come from…well, the edges between realities. They’re made of edges, or they…well, they look like that. Like lightning wrapped up in a ball but with those edges sticking out. When they’re…well, if you make any kind of hole they’ll come through. They’re good at that.”

She stared at him and thought about how little she knew of this world and the wreckage outside this structure. She thought of her experiment with fluctuating EM fields and amplified power. There had to be cause and effect and...
Come through?
Oh, god—she
had
done this. She shook her head. She was leaping ahead for what might have been the cause. She didn’t have enough data. Not yet.

“Look, I need to see where you found me. I need to start there. There’s got to be some residual evidence of what—” Gideon was shaking his head and she broke off, changed her approach, went for giving him something so she could see what he might give back in trade. “I know quantum theory postulates an infinite number of realities—that every possibility spawns a possible reality.”

Gideon’s face tightened. “Little past theoretical here.”

She sucked in a breath. She’d known that since last night when she’d looked out those doors. But it still shook her to hear utter confirmation. The implications at having proof for science that had only been speculation kicked her pulse to an excitement under thickening guilt.

Digging a thumb into a stain on her lab coat, pushing at it, she said, “The work I was doing—I triggered something didn’t I?”

Gideon glanced at Temple. Eyes dark, Temple’s expression said pretty much everything about sympathy and understanding. A heavy share of the same remorse haunted his eyes.

She lifted her chin as she took that in. “God, you did the same thing.”

Turning away, Gideon hid his expression and asked, his voice sharp, “Hungry?”

“Dammit! I can’t sit here! “

Gideon turned to her, reached out a hand, but he didn’t reach far enough to touch. “I’m sorry, but—well I’m—I’m sorry.”

Climbing to her feet, she put herself in front of him. “Sorry as in you don’t know how to get me back, or sorry as in you won’t?”

He glanced at Temple and she wished he’d stop that. It was almost as if he was checking with the other guy about things, but neither man had said a word to the other. Gideon looked at her again and he spread his hands, palms up and empty. The color of his eyes shifted from a darker blue to pale, like water icing, and he dropped his hands to his side. With a shake of his head, he said, “I’ll get some food.”

He headed out through a narrow doorway cut into the wall just beyond the altar. For a moment, she wondered if she should try leaving again, now that it was lighter. She slid a glance over to Temple.

He sat on the floor, still watching her. She wasn’t about to see if he’d be interested in running her down. Thankfully, Gideon came back with his boots on, his robe gone, and distraction in the form of two bags of Doritos.

The garish orange and yellows looked odd in this world, where color seemed to have been bled away. Even Temple seemed washed over by gray, wrapped as he was in that colorless cloth. But when Gideon offered, Temple took one of the bags, ripped it open and scarffed down a handful of cheese-flavored chips as if he was settling in for Sunday’s big game.

Okay, this was surreal—eating Doritos in another world after seeing her co-workers die. She glanced at the bag. “They have these here?”

Gideon’s almost smile appeared. He shook his head and held out the chips. “No, but—well, we didn’t grab much the last time—last time before you, that is. Not that you ever get much. But I thought you’d like something familiar, and what they have here…you get used to it, but not right away. It’s an acquired taste.”

She nodded and added a few more questions to a list that was starting to get ridiculously long. She remembered a fracture of blackness—something she’d seen in the lab, a flash of memory that didn’t seem possible. “This…tear between realities…you can go both ways through it?”

Gideon rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “I don’t…hard science wasn’t my field.”

“What was?” she asked, and chewed on a chip. She knew herself to be hungry but she had to choke down that single bite because she kept thinking about her guys and how she’d brought them bagels yesterday—was it only yesterday? And wasn’t that a stupid thing to think about right now.

“Myths,” Gideon said with a shrug. “Legends. I had a grant for shamanic heritage studies of spirit paths in early North American settlements, along ley lines and magnetic hot spots. And...I taught.”

“You’re an English professor?”

He shook his head, looked away, and she realized she’d startled a memory from him of something he couldn’t bear to recall.
Oh, hell.
Well, she knew about that. She wanted suddenly to be back where she had equipment to measure a rational world. Setting down the bag of chips, she got to her feet. She started to reach for him, to touch his shoulder, but she caught back the gesture, turned it into an awkward smoothing of her clothes. She cursed herself for being too damn unsure of herself. She never was when it came to interactions with others. She let out a breath. Her body urged relief for a full bladder. Washing wouldn’t be bad, either.

Brushing orange chip-dust from her fingers, she asked, “Didn’t you say something about facilities last night?”

Gideon looked at her and his lips lifted. A faint dimple showed on the left side of his mouth. God, in this gray light, he looked like a guy who’d been through a lot but hadn’t forgotten that once he’d liked kittens and soft things and kindness.

Without a word, he held out his hand. It seemed silly—a chivalrous gesture. But his touch grounded her. She tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed. He led her through the side door he had used earlier and into another room.

This room was small. Another one opened off from it. She glanced around. Three more bags of Doritos huddled in a corner, along with a stack of cans and a carton of something. Vague guilt stirred that she’d taken anything from him when he had so little. But Gideon only pointed at the other door. “Through there. I’ll bring you some water.”

He left her and she thought about sitting down and giving into a good long, hard cry. Tears lurked, a weight on her breastbone, a burn at the back of her eyes. She shook them off, let practicality take hold—any kind of breakdown would have to wait for time and solitude.

Rubbing a hand over her face, she turned. She stepped through the other door into another room. The dark spot on the floor seemed to be a hole. Facing the doorway, a long, broken mirror stood against the wall, its top a jagged edge. She glanced at it, and went to use the hole. She had tissues in her pocket, so she used them after. By the time she had her clothes back in order, Gideon stood in the doorway.

Using both hands, he lifted the alabaster bowl, set it down on the floor, and she thought of priests and offerings. When he straightened, he hesitated and stared at her, his lips parted. Some deeper feeling had blown his pupils wide again, but she couldn’t read what it was. But he only turned and left. Walking to the water, she picked it up and stood before the mirror.

Far more than a wreck stared back. A splash of water wasn’t going to fix anything. She stared at the dried blood on her—whose? Chand or Thompson? She’d pushed the tech down, right? He must have been okay, right? So was it Zeigler? Nothing she could do for any of them, not until she got moving. She drank half the water, patted the rest across her face, washed most of the stains from her skin, and dried her cheeks with the tail of her lab coat. She looked at her reflection again.