Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(24)

“Oh-kay,” said Rune. He pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. “Let’s go carefully here.”

He stepped toward the door and pushed it wider open slowly, watching to make sure that none of the light he saw—or thought he saw—spilled directly onto Rhoswen. The hallway brightened further as the door opened. It still looked like sunlight to him, and it felt saturated with magic.

He drew a line through the air with a finger. “This is where the light that I see ends. I want you to cross that with just the tip of your finger.”

Now she looked at him as if she suspected he was crazy, but she did as he asked and extended her forefinger until it crossed the demarcation he had shown her. They both stared at her finger, which remained unburned.

“Do you still see the light?” Rhoswen asked.

“As plain as day,” he told her. “But at least it doesn’t appear you are in any danger of burning from it. We should still go carefully.” He gazed at her as he considered. “Do you have Power or magic ability?”

She shook her head. “I have only what every Vampyre has, which is enough for telepathy or making a crossover to an Other land. It’s a by-product of the virus. When I was human, I was a complete dead-head.”

A dead-head, when used the way Rhoswen meant it, referred to someone who had no Power or magic ability whatsoever. It did not refer to a Grateful Dead fan. If Rhoswen didn’t have much magical ability, then she didn’t have many magical defenses. Rune shook his head. “Right. Well, magic is spilling out of that room, just like sunlight, and I’m not inclined to trust any of it. I want you to stay here.”

The Vampyre’s chin firmed. “Carling might need me.”

He refrained from rolling his eyes. It wasn’t his responsibility if Rhoswen chose to risk her life, and who knew, maybe she was right and Carling would need her. He said, “Fine, but I’m going in first.”

Rhoswen stayed behind him as he stepped into the doorway, into both magic and light. The soles of his boots landed on something shifting and pliable. He looked down. That looked like sand. It felt like sand.

If it walked, talked and quacked like a duck, if it tasted like a duck when he caught and ate it . . .

He took another step, and another. The barest outline of a shadowed room surrounded him. Superimposed upon the room was a brighter, hotter reality. He looked up and squinted into a pale blue, cloudless sky that held a burning yellow-white sun.

“Sentinel?” Rhoswen called him again. This time she sounded panicked. “Rune! You’re fading.”

He could just see her. She was a pale, insubstantial ghostlike sketch, as was the rest of the room. He called back, “I’m here. Can you hear me?”

“Barely,” she shouted. She sounded far away. “You’re disappearing right in front of me. What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” he shouted back. “I’m going to look around and see what I can find out. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

“I’d much rather you didn’t,” she called. “I would like for you to come back now, please.”

But the mystery that lay spread out all around him was too compelling to ignore. Ahead of him was desert, and greenery, and the blinding glint of sunshine on distant water. Behind him was Rhoswen, the doorway and the island.

Son of a bitch, this kinda felt like a crossover to an Other land. Crossovers were the dimensional passageways that lay between Earth and Other lands. They had been formed when the Earth had been formed, when time and space had buckled. Crossover passageways followed physical faults in the landscape. The crossover passage that led to the island was part of a fissure at the ocean’s bed. He had never before heard of one existing in a manmade structure, such as in a second-story bedroom in a house.

But this also felt different somehow than a normal crossover. He fumbled for a way to describe it to himself, to understand what he was sensing. It felt . . . bent, as if it turned a corner that other crossover passages didn’t. And if this was a crossover point, why didn’t Rhoswen sense it and cross over as well? Was it because of her lack of Power? Carling had a hell of a lot of Power. He would have thought she would have noticed by now if there was a dimensional passageway in the middle of her bedroom and considered it worthy of some mention. If it was a crossover passage, where did it cross over to? Or was he caught in some kind of elaborate illusion?

And where, in all of this mystery, was Carling?

He rubbed the back of his neck. He had always thought he was more of a Cheshire Cat than an Alice, but this really was curiouser and curiouser.

There was only one way to try to understand it.

He strode forward, into the full light of a scorching desert day.

At first he heard nothing but the vast, lonely howl of the wind as it sang its eternal song. Then the harsh, wordless cry of a bird sounded overhead. Heat hammered down and sand blasted him in the face. He paused to pick three landmarks to triangulate his position so he could return to this point if it really was a crossover passageway and the area ended up being his only route back to the house.

He put at his twelve o’clock a sere, squat bluff that rose above the rest of the landscape. That put the silvery glimmer of water at ten o’clock, a little too close to the bluff for the best triangulation, but it would have to do. He looked over his right shoulder, and saw nothing but desert dunes. He picked the tallest dune, at five o’clock. The dune would be useless for long-term navigation, of course, since the wind and the dunes would shift over time, but hopefully it would do for his purposes. He didn’t plan on staying . . . wherever here was . . . for very long.