“No, we won’t. Which … uh, cactus did I come through?”

“I’ve no bloody idea, and those spines are poisonous, so good luck poking around at them.”

Damn. Onto plan B, which was basically a wing and a prayer.

I began to remove the black pouch from my waistband, preparing to uncover the stones. Would they return us to the Hall, where we could choose the next portal together? Who knew? Who cared? Anything was better than this. He would die here and so would I.

I rolled close to Christian and pressed against him.

“Och, and now you flirt me up, lass,” he said weakly, with a shadow of that killer smile. “When I canna do a thing about it.”

“Wrap your arms and legs around me, Christian. Don’t let go. No matter what happens, don’t let go.” Sweat was pouring down my face, dripping from beneath my MacHalo, into my eyes, pooling between my breasts. I was wearing too many clothes, a bike helmet, and a leather coat in a desert.

He didn’t question me. Just wrapped his legs around my hips and locked his hands in the small of my back. I prayed he had enough strength to keep his grip. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I didn’t expect it to be gentle.

I slid the pouch from between us, loosened the drawstring, and uncovered the tips of the stones. They flared to life, pulsing with blue-black fire.

The terrain responded instantly and violently, just as the pink tunnel did.

The desert began to undulate, and the air was filled with a high-pitched whine that quickly turned into a metallic-sounding scream. Sand whipped up, stinging my hands and face.

“Are you crazy? What the—” The rest of Christian’s words were lost in the howling wind.

The atomic-white sky darkened to blue-black, in dramatic, quick increments. I looked up. The suns were being eclipsed, one by one.

The sand shuddered beneath us. Swells rose, dips formed. Christian and I rolled, down, down, deep into a sandy valley that was still forming as we tumbled. I felt brackets snapping off my MacHalo. I was suddenly afraid the desert would swallow us alive, but the desert didn’t want us. That was the whole point, although I didn’t know it then.

I struggled to keep my grip on the pouch, clutched it tightly to my chest. Christian’s legs were steel around my hips, his hands locked. The temperature dropped sharply.

The desert began to tremble. The tremble became a rumble. The rumble became an earthquake, and, just when I thought we might be shaken to pieces, the ground beneath us sank abruptly, then gave a single gigantic heave and flung us straight up into the air.

As we went soaring into the dark sky, I muttered an apology to Christian. He sort of laughed and muttered back in my ear that he preferred a quick death by falling, with crushed bones and all, to a slow death by dehydration, and at least it was nice and cool finally but maybe, since it seemed the stones had triggered the cataclysmic reaction, I might try covering them back up and see what happened?

I shoved them in the pouch and crammed it down the waistband of my pants.

We fell.

I braced for impact.

We splashed down into icy water.

I plunged deep. Kicking hard, I surfaced and inhaled greedily. I blinked water from my eyes and saw that we’d fallen into a stone quarry. How lucky. That must mean a terrifying monster with razor-sharp teeth was in the water beneath me, about to snap my legs off, because the gods didn’t smile on me—at least not lately or that I was aware of.

And Christian wasn’t as bad off as I’d thought, because he was swimming toward shore.

I narrowed my eyes. Toward shore, leaving me to my own devices that, as far as he knew, might involve drowning.

I checked to make sure the pouch was still in my waistband and kicked into a breaststroke. I’m a strong swimmer, and I pulled myself out of the quarry just a few seconds after he did. He collapsed hard on the grass-covered bank and closed his eyes.

“Thanks for sticking around to make sure I wasn’t drowning.” Then I murmured, “Oh, Christian.” I touched his blistered face, made sure he was breathing, took his pulse. He was unconscious. It had taken the last ounce of energy he possessed to get himself out of the quarry.

First things first: Were we safe here?

I scanned our surroundings. The quarry was large and deep, overflowing here and there into smaller ponds and pools. It occupied a small corner of a huge valley. Miles and miles of grassy plain were surrounded by moderate mountains with ice-capped crowns. The valley was peaceful and calm. At the opposite edge, animals grazed serenely.

It looked like we were safe, at least for now. I heaved a sigh of relief and struggled out of my wet leather coat. I slipped the pouch containing the stones from my waistband and set it aside. There was no doubt about it: Removing the stones from the spelled pouch made dimensions shift for some reason, but while uncovered, they seem to wreak total havoc on the world around them. The next time we used them, I’d flash them quickly, and maybe we’d get to skip the whole violent expulsion motif and glide at a gentle tempo into the next world.

After a brief hesitation, I stripped down to bra and panties, grateful for the moderate climate. Wet leather sucks. I draped my clothing on nearby rocks to dry in the sun, hoping the leather wouldn’t shrink to ridiculous sizes.

Next concern: what to do for Christian. He was breathing shallowly and his pulse was erratic. He’d passed out in the sun, where his burn would deepen. The blisters on his face were crusted and seeping blood. How long had he been in that hellish desert? When had he last eaten? There was no way I could move him. I couldn’t even get him out of his wet clothes. I could cut them off, but he’d need them again. Who knew what we might have to face next? He was more heavily muscled than last I’d seen him and, unconscious, he was deadweight. Had he been fighting his way through dimension after dimension since Halloween? Did time pass the same way where he’d been?