Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(62)

She whispered, “You don’t fool me.”

He gave her his slow, famous, heart-stopping, rock star smile. “You think too much. Where do you want your dog?”

She took Rasputin, wrapped him in Rune’s ruined T-shirt, and tucked him gently into the waterproof container. Rune rubbed the back of his neck and winced as he watched. She said, “You know, he’s perfectly safe traveling this way.”

“I get it,” he said. “He doesn’t need to breathe right now. It just looks disturbing.”

“Short of a little scuba mask, I couldn’t think of any way to get him through the passageway.” She stroked the dog’s soft ear. “And this way he isn’t distressed by the journey. It’s like taking a nap on a car ride. He just goes to sleep and wakes up somewhere else.”

Rune’s face softened. “You love him.”

She kept her head down as she secured the fastening. “I don’t know. I suppose.”

“You totally love him. He’s your widdle snookums.”

She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, I guess he is.”

“Who kept him when you and Rhoswen traveled to Adriyel?” Rune took the container by its strap and slung it over one shoulder.

“My household staff looks after him when I travel. I don’t think it’s fair to ask that of them all the time, though, which is why I had asked Rhoswen to hire someone to look after him. I think we should drop him off at the town house for now, though, when we get back to the city.”

“I agree. It will free us up to do whatever needs to be done.” He held his free hand out to her. She hesitated only a moment. Then she put her hand in his and they walked into the ocean together.

The water was cold enough it would have sent an unprotected human into hypothermia within minutes. Rune found it just as refreshing as he thought he would. Better than a cold shower. He estimated the crossover passage that ran along a fissure on the ocean floor to be at a depth of around six hundred feet. It was very dark, but the crossover blazed clearly ahead in his mind’s eye.

He mulled the experience over as they swam the passage. It was utterly familiar. Underwater or on land, he had crossed over passageways like this countless times before. And it was almost exactly like the crossover experience he had had during Carling’s episodes, except for that bent feeling, that sense of turning a corner.

Or maybe it was more like folding a piece of paper. For such a dramatic event, the image was rather boring and prosaic. But still there was something to it, an intuitive fit that appealed to him. The two portions of the folded paper existed side by side so close they touched. One portion of the paper was the present. When he crossed to Carling’s past, he was traveling around that tiny, tight fold to stand on the other side.

Only the analogy broke down almost immediately, because there would have to be a countless number of potential folds in the paper to account for every moment in time. But still there was something to the concept of traveling around a bend that was so impossibly small and tight it took up absolutely no space at all. It made sense to him in a way, because . . .

. . . because the concept felt like it might be a direction he could actually follow.

If he hadn’t already been doing so, he would have held his breath.

That feeling could very well be an illusion. He had nothing at all to base it on. He could just as well take a flying leap off a strange cliff into absolute darkness; it felt that dangerous. But he would be very interested to take that feeling into Carling’s next episode.

He realized he was starting to believe that he really was interacting with the past, the actual past, not just what had happened to Carling in her own mind. He was looking forward to finding out what that damn Djinn discovered when Carling set him on the task of finding Rune’s knife.

Either Carling sensed he was deep in thought, or she was preoccupied with thoughts of her own, for they made the trip in almost complete silence. After following the underwater fissure and completing the passage, they kicked upward. On the other side, daylight rippled along the water’s surface. Rune’s lungs had begun to burn by the time they broke the surface on a pale, chill fog-enshrouded day.

They treaded water as they gathered their bearings. Rune asked, “How do other Vampyres make that crossing safely when you never know what time it is going to be on the other side? Rhoswen’s face, hands and part of her feet were exposed.”

Carling shoved her soaking hair out of her eyes. She started to swim, and Rune kicked along beside her. “They can take precautions and dress so they are completely covered before they make the swim,” Carling said. “There is also an underwater tunnel here, and a cave on the other side. When they are coming up from the passageway, they have plenty of time to see whether or not it’s daylight. Then they can stay underwater and swim to either the tunnel or the cave. On this side, the tunnel is part of an old city sewage system.”

“I’ve heard stories about old secret tunnels under San Francisco,” Rune said. “There’re supposed to be Vampyre and opium hangouts.”

“Most people think the stories are an urban legend, but they’re real. They’re not safe and it’s not just because of Vampyres and drug addicts—dangerous creatures live in those tunnels.”

“Coolio,” said Rune. “Sounds like a fun vacation spot.”

Carling shook her head. He was irrepressible. She said, “The particular tunnel I’m talking about is straightforward enough. It leads up to a street-level building with the windows blocked out. Most of the Vampyres don’t take the chance that something might happen in the water and leave them floating exposed to the surface, so they take extra precautions and wrap up from head to toe anyway.”