Chapter Fourteen
Addie watched the stranger warily. There was something monumental about him, not just in his appearance but in his very existence, something that she just knew was going to change the course of her life. For better or for worse, though? That was what she didn’t know.
“We’ll only have a few seconds,” he told her as he placed his phone back in his suit coat pocket and moved toward her. “You’re going to have to once again trust me. Find the dog, grab him, and step back into the portal. I’ll run interference.”
“You’re going to change the portal’s course while it’s still open,” said the woman in the room. Addie had no idea who these people were, but they were the same couple who’d been with the stranger in the elevator earlier.
The stranger nodded his beautiful head. “We don’t have time to close and re-open.”
The woman blew out a quick sigh. “Okay. I’ll open it and Andros can hold it open, then. You need to save what strength you can until it’s fully returned. You can direct the portal since you know where we’re going.”
Portal? thought Addie. The universe was laughing at her.
“If you want to save Hastings, we need to go now,” the stranger told her, offering her his hand. His gaze deepened, singling her out. “Come closer.”
“Um….”
“Addie,” he said, this time using her nickname. “Now.”
The word was powerful. It got into her head and repeated there, sinking into her brain, her neurons, and her blood, and before she knew it, her legs were moving. When she was close enough, the stranger reached behind her, placing his hand to the small of her back.
“Nicholas, get ready,” said the woman.
Nicholas is his name.
Nicholas let his arm slide around her waist, sending goose bumps up her spine, then drew her tight against his side. He was like a tall rock beside her, hard, unyielding, and warm. Hot, even. She felt dizzy. Her stomach was heating up, her legs getting weak.
“Go,” he said, nodding at the woman.
She raised her hands and lowered her head, speaking something in a language Adelaide didn’t recognize. Suddenly, Addie had a lightning-brief vision of swirling lights, a long, endless tunnel of light and iridescence, and a rather rough landing.
And then everything she’d just seen in her split-second premonition was happening.
The air around them lightened to glow white, giving Adelaide the impression that she was losing consciousness. When the white light faded, Addie found herself in that exact tunnel she’d just imagined. They seemed to stand still as the tunnel sped past them, like they were human starships moving at warp speed. In a few seconds, the space at the end of the tunnel parted like the mouth of a worm. The hole grew wider, and she could make out the aspects of a room beyond. There was furniture, four walls, and a dog.
“Hastings!” she cried.
But the dog wasn’t alone. In fact, the puppy was being held by a man in a dark suit. There were three other suits with him. One was knelt before the chest of drawers in the main room, opening the empty drawers – because Addie’s luggage was God knew where. Another was in the bathroom, apparently taking samples of her hair from her hair brush. And a third was standing beside the windows, looking out. In his right hand was a radio.
All four of them turned and looked up when the portal opened up in the middle of the room, directly atop the queen-sized bed. They gawked in surprise. Hastings gave an excited bark and wagged his tail.
The woman going through the empty chest of drawers was the first to straighten and go for her gun, tucking her hand quickly beneath her suit coat. Red hot fear speared through Addie. This kind of thing went on in movies all the time. It happened in books, it happened in video games. But when you were standing in front of a person who was literally drawing a deadly weapon on you with full intent to shoot, it was different. It was so very different.
She’d felt it before, though. The first time it happened, she’d been paralyzed, wrapped in a cold and hard reality that momentarily froze her in place. She was lucky to have survived.
But this time, she moved. Practice, instinct, and something stronger than both of those forced her to lunge forward head first. She dove on the bed and rolled toward the son-of-a-bitch who had her dog.
Nicholas moved too. He rushed from the portal like a blurred hurricane. When Addie came to a stop and looked up from the bed, the woman in the suit hit the opposite wall. Nicholas raised his hand palm-out, and the gun the woman held went flying from her grip into his as if he’d used the Force.
Out of self preservation, Addie prioritized. This was all frankly impossible, and she was going to need either heavy explanations or heavy medications or she would go insane, but right now she shoved that way back on a mental backburner and looked up at the man holding her dog. “Give him to me!” she demanded with a warning gaze. The man, who’d been stunned by what was happening around him, simply dropped Hastings. Adelaide knew he would do it, and she caught the dog easily.
“Get back into the portal!” Nicholas commanded. He turned around, his other arm raised toward the suit coming out of the bathroom. The agent’s gun was already drawn, but Nicholas made quick work of that one too. The gun went flying from the woman’s grip to go sailing across the room and through the window on the opposite end, shattering the glass like a crystalline firework.
The explosion was an incredible distraction. Addie used it to hug Hastings tight to her chest, get to her feet on the bed, and sprint clumsily toward the portal. Nicholas’s two friends waited inside the swirling, bright tunnel. When she was almost there, the man stepped out, grabbed her by the backs of her arms, and yanked her toward him, pulling her the rest of the way in.
Addie stumbled a little, but he steadied her. “Thank you!” she said as she turned in place to watch what was still happening in the room. It was like watching a scene from a movie: The avenging angel stood at the center of a handful of “bad guys” whose only real job was to be shut down by the larger-than-life “good guy” with magical powers.
Nicholas only had to raise his hand. A flick of his wrist, a glance in someone’s direction, and that person went flying. Or the object they were holding melted. Or it blew up. Or it was sent hurling across the room to smash into a thousand bits against the opposite wall. As he worked this calm and easy magic, his silver eyes glowed. There was a presence around him, an aura of such unimaginable power, it was like watching the formation of a black hole. It sucked light into it, and a darkness around him swirled, moved, and breathed. That darkness was as much a living, breathing thing as he was.
Beautiful men, swirling transportation portals, strangers who knew her name, magic powers… Adelaide had no idea what she’d stumbled into. She had no idea what she was dealing with. But she had zero doubt that whatever it was, it was hell and gone from human.
Nicholas stepped back into the portal, his back to Addie. His eyes were trained on the unmoving bodies around the room. They were unconscious and probably concussed, but from what she could tell, they were alive. For some reason, that impressed her. It was important.
“Close it,” he commanded. The portal closed in front of him. Nicholas lowered his head. The colors of the portal changed, there was a shift in the magnetic aura around them that felt like batteries pulling against Addie, and she somehow knew they were headed somewhere new.
“Where are we going?” she asked, clutching Hastings tight like Dorothy with Toto.
Nicholas turned around. His flashing silver eyes locked on to hers, and Addie felt a wave of something wash over her. It’s magic, she thought. She could have drowned in it. Hell, she almost wanted to. It was like invisible pleasure, thick and warm.
He smiled at her. “To my realm,” he said in his sexy, accented voice.
“Our realm,” the woman beside Addie corrected softly. Addie would have turned toward her, but she couldn’t look away. Nick’s eyes were magnetic in and of themselves. “Typical male ego,” the woman chuckled.
“But Nicholas is our king,” the other man said. “So it’s no surprise he calls it his.”
“I’ll explain everything on the way,” Nicholas said softly, as if speaking only to her.
Okay, she thought. That would be good.