She glanced toward the dark maw of tunnel. She would rather face it, even if her own death waited inside, than the hot accusation in his eyes. "If you are unable to do what must be done, go back now. I will go on alone."

"He asked for help. He was scared. I saw the fear." Now all Harper could see was a blackened skeleton. "And he never had a chance." Sickened, Harper got to his feet. "We'll finish it together."

"This is the way. I smell blood, some still fresh." She walked deeper into the tunnel.

Chapter 8

Contents - Prev | Next

They moved in the dark, guided by the thin beam of Harper's penlight and Kadra's instincts. And they moved in silence.

She had killed a man—and to Harper the charred remains they had left behind in the tunnel were still a man. She had done so with the same cold efficiency she had used to destroy the hideous little two-headed monster in A'Dair.

In the zoo he'd found her brutal focus fascinating, admirable. Even sexy. But there they had fought beasts—savage and hungry and alien despite their form.

This had been a man. How could she be so certain that his lunge forward had been an attack instead of a plea?

"You said it takes time for the transformation," Harper began.

"In my world." She snapped the words out. "I can't know—no one can know—how the change happens in yours. No demon has ever traveled from my world to yours until now. In A'Dair, the demon carries his victim off, into a lair. For twelve hours the human sleeps, a changing sleep that is like death. Only during this period is there any hope of being saved, and even that hope is small. Once the demon wakes, it is too late. The change is irreversible even if he is not complete. He is demon. And he feeds."

"If there's a different time frame here, maybe there's a different structure to the change."

"He waked. He walked. He would have fed on you if he had not been stopped. The blood was already mixed, Harper. His death was a mercy. What was still human inside knew."

She hadn't known love could be painful. She hadn't known that when your heart lay open to another it could be so easily wounded. But hers was, and the hurt ran down to the bone: he had looked at her as if she were the monster.

She didn't want to speak of it. She wished to push it aside and do only what she had come to do. But the ache in her heart was a distraction.

"Every human death is a death inside me." She spoke quietly, without looking at him. "I cannot save them all. I would give my life if that would make it otherwise."

"I know that." But they both heard the doubt in his voice.

The pain of it sliced through her, made her careless, made her vulnerable to what leaped at her out of the dark.