Edge Walkers Read online

  Think, dammit. Pull it together—you don’t even know what you’re remembering.

  Patting shaking hands over herself, she took inventory. Torn lab coat, ruined shirt, a body that trembled as if she’d been struck hard and left ringing. She found empty pockets in her trousers and nothing leaking out, just more tears that didn’t want to stop. It was shock, she knew, scrambling her nerve endings, her body chemistry shaken like a cocktail. Shock and she wasn’t sure what else.

  She swiped at the wet streaks on her face, brushed at the rest of the damage on her body. Dust rose and bruises encouraged her to move careful, but move before stiffening muscles froze her like a plaster saint.

  Oh, god, she was on the edge of losing it.

  Pulling in another breath, she let it out in a slow exhale. She wrapped her arms around herself to stop the shaking. What, did they keep butchered meat here? That wasn’t a good thought. Rubbing her arms against the freezer-burn cold, she looked around.

  She needed an answer about where she was—where was anyone? She sure as hell was not in a secure lab with an experiment running. Had it gone really bad and she was out cold and dreaming? That seemed possible. But it was hard to tell, particularly in a church by moonlight.

  Please let this be me unconscious and lost in hallucination.

  Only that didn’t seem a good option either.

  It seemed as if it was night and it was cold enough to be the desert in winter after sundown. But she’d been at work during the day. Right? She bit down on her lip, and drew in a long breath, and tried to pull together thoughts that kept unraveling and scattering.

  Where the hell was everyone?

  She stopped the next question before it could start because she had a feeling she wasn’t going to want to hear the answer to that one. She wasn’t ready for the full truth. Not with her head pounding and memory half fractured. Better to just collect data. Let the auto-pilot of rational, analytic training take over. That was almost safe. So she looked up.

  Something lit the dark sky, a sky left open due to large holes in a roof that was more empty space than covering. Bits hung loose and looked ready to crumble before they hit ground. Above the roof, whatever turned the sky that sludgy murk-purple wasn’t a something bright enough to be the sun. She managed to put that together under the dull thud of her aching body and the spin-cycle of threatening nausea. She tried for more—scientific observation had always been her lifeboat.

  Leaves lay scattered like ash across the floor. The stone construction looked as if it went back a few centuries, but the damp mold that crept out from the dark corners lent an atmospheric stench of decay which you never got in a horror flick. Something else smelled even worse and her mind skittered past any level of identification.

  Okay, not doing smell, just visual.

  Stone. Gray stone. Blacker inky stone, so dark in the shadows that obsidian would look bright due to its ability to reflect the filtering light. She wished for stainless steel tables, or laptops blinking reassurance and logic. Or for a few security cameras.

  The intrusion of constant observation had always stirred resentment before, but she could have gone for just one camera now. And someone on the other end who could see her. But there was just a ruin to see, not even a chunk of glass in the thin, narrow, arched crumbling masonry that had once been windows and seemed about to qualify as skinny doorways. Nothing on that stone ledge of an altar. Except one thing behind the stubby remnants of what should have been a railing that looked hacked off at the base. The something lay flat and left her thinking about sacrifices.

  But it was just cloth on the floor, spread out, tattered, and so dirtied by age that color had ghosted to a generic grunge. The cloth seemed like a body, raised as it was. She decided it had to be more like a bed. Not a great one, but a place to lie, with the black rubble of a fire before it.

  She edged closer, because it was something to think about other than her missing people—or maybe she was the one missing. How had she made it from sterile military lab to this…this church with a bed?

  And dolls that stood in a line behind the sackcloth.

  No, not dolls. Too ugly, with more of that tattered colorless cloth wrapped into crude bodies. Arms and legs stuck out in a stiffness she could feel, the faces and the drawings of hair had been made by black smudges. They stood in a row, six of them, almost looking treasured, tucked against what should be holy of holy ground.

  Voodoo sprang to mind and ancient religions that made the Old Testament seem yesterday’s fresh print. That started the edge of hysteria again, a choked, crying laugh. She slammed down on it because she also heard the scrape of a step behind her.

  She spun.

  Bad move.

  She went down on her butt with a whump that took her breath. She couldn’t see anyone. Just those damned shadows.

  “Chand? Thompson?” she called, willing them to answer. They didn’t. Instead, a stranger moved from no light to the light of whatever moon or streetlight hung over this place, spilling gloom.

  “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. You’re safe.”

  It didn’t feel safe, but that voice did. His words echoed soft and low, and almost kind. Odd to think that, with a concussion still pounding in her head and dried blood on her skin. Trustable, if that was even a word, and she knew she was in worse shape than she’d thought when the shaking hysteria popped up from where it was lurking under the nonsense rambling.

  “Where…? What…?” She couldn’t get the words pulled together, and she rubbed her fingertips over her forehead, tried to pull her mind together.

  She grabbed another deep breath, braced her hands and her feet flat on the floor because that felt like balance where she sat cornered, and she took in the robes that hung open, off this guy’s wide shoulders.

  Robes?

  You didn’t see that every day. But he wasn’t a priest, or any kind of monk, not in tattered robes and jeans, faded and torn and fitted to long legs. The robes were more of that hundred-year cloth, the fabric so worn it had become second skin, something he didn’t think about. The cloth bared a muscular arm here, showed a flash of rib there, and looked so mended it wouldn’t last another round with a needle.

  And blood stained it.

  She got that in one—only chocolate or blood made that soul deep smear, and this didn’t look the kind of place that would have much chocolate around. It could use it.

  So could she right now.

  Dragging in another short, sharp breath, she went over her limited options. At least this guy didn’t have a knife or a gun. Not in his hands.

  The only metal in sight was the faint flicker off a silver cross hung from his neck by a thin dark cord over what might have once been a black t-shirt. Not the usual cross, but one with all the points reaching the same length. A cross to go with those Voodoo dolls?

  Wetting dry, cracked lips again, she forced the words out, because she had to know. “Where are they? The others?”

  He shook his head and glanced away. She decided he looked as if he lived on the streets, with his pale skin, and his hair spiked and short as if he cut it with a knife and his own hand. He looked a fighter, a warrior, and she’d never had much use for that. On that cheerful thought, he took a step toward her.

  He was barefoot, his feet grubby and dusted.

  She blinked as she took that in. She wondered if she needed to reevaluate him—or maybe everything.

  His face seemed younger than the muscle on a body that looked honed as if he’d been working on sharpening it. But the eyes could pass for as old as these stones and held something that looked about as ruined. With his face half in shadows he almost could be one of the angels who should have been on stained glass here, and maybe he’d stepped out from the shattering.

  Or could be he was one of the ones who’d fallen because of great sin.

  He stepped closer and went down to one knee, genuflecting, she thought for the absurd fragment of a second, but his head didn’t bow. And now his eyes
were at the same level as her.

  He put his hand out, palm up. “It’s okay. You’ll feel disoriented and confused for a time. That’s normal.”

  “Normal?” The question sputtered out. “What does this place have to do with anything normal?”

  God, it felt good to get a coherent sentence out. It surged strength into her arms and legs, make her stop shaking like an EM needle over graphite-laden shears. She uncurled her body, pushed up against the pillar and back to her feet. He rose as well, his eyes tracking her as she stood, his hand falling back to his side again. He was only a few inches taller than she was. Most guys weren’t.

  “Just where am I? Who are you? How’d I get here? Where’s the rest of my staff?” Ah, good—a list of questions. But her teeth chattered, and she could hear her control faltering in the too fast words. Pushing back her shoulders, she thought of how the Old Man would have been yelling at her at this point to “buck up.” Thank god he wasn’t here to see her like this, a quivering wreck.

  She pulled in a breath and started slower. “What happened to me? What happened to my team?”

  The guy turned away, angled his body from her last question as if he wanted to walk from it but couldn’t. She stared at the profile of a straight nose and strong chin, at angles made sharp by what looked like existence living. And she knew with a jolting certainty whose blood covered her hands.

  “Oh God,” she said. Eyes stinging, she gulped a breath through her mouth—no, no, no! She repeated the word in her head, but she knew the truth. Knew it bone deep.

  Dammit! Not Thompson. He had a baby due in three weeks. And Chand—why couldn’t he have been spared because he was out sneaking a cigarette? He didn’t think anyone knew about his habit, even though he took breaks every two hours and came back with tobacco acrid on his clothes. And what about Zeigler, or the new tech whose name she couldn’t remember? She gulped down another aching breath.

  Well, she’d just mapped something new—grief and terror could fracture in you like a vibrant sunset with the edges of darkness falling fast.

  Some part of her catalogued the adrenal burst pouring through her—elevated pulse and quickened breath to oxygenate the blood, trembling to loosen muscles. She thought about the Tai-Bo she’d taken up last year to try and fight off the pounds that came from working too hard and not eating right. The fad was already past, but she’d always been off any normal trend—and it fit well with the self-defense her father had taught her as if he’d intended her for a military career.

  Straightening, she made her next question very clear, dropping each word like a stone into water six times. “What did you do to them?”

  Please—just say you left them in the next room.

  His gaze lifted, fixed on her. The light was enough for her to see sorrow so dark she had to swallow the tightness that wrapped around her throat. He knew what had happened.

  It hadn’t been anything good.

  He shook his head and asked, “Would you like some water? You should have some. I think we can risk a fire, then I’ll explain.”

  “No. Thanks. I’ll take the explanation now.” She’d take it like she’d been taught to take everything, starting at twelve with her mother’s cancer—head on and eyes open and braced for it.

  He shook his head again, as if she’d made a bad choice, or maybe it was because he didn’t want to do what he was about to do. Her glance slid to those dolls, and was it just a trick of the shadows, or did one of them look like Chand?

  She looked back at the guy, at the angel who wasn’t really one but seemed to be passing. Who the hell was he—good guy, or not? She hadn’t missed that he was six foot of male muscle and that put her on the down side of any fight that might happen. Still, her fists clenched and she wondered if he needed ritual, if his Voodoo dolls required it, for anything bad? But had he really done something? Or was he just picking up the pieces of her disaster?

  He gestured for her to sit on that sacrificial bed. When she didn’t move, he folded his arms and started talking in that beautiful soft voice. “I’m sorry about your friends. I couldn’t do...they were, well...I’m sorry, this is...I’ve never had to explain this to someone. But, ummm, it’s complicated.”

  Nodding, she swallowed again, or tried to—something hard and tight had lodged in her throat. “I’m smart. Or so I’ve been told.” Mouthy, too, she thought, pushing herself into a hazy distance from the scrambled emotions trapped in her chest and banging around in her head.

  He had a mouth on him, too. A fraction of smile lifted it and she wondered if serial killers always had those kinds of mouths—or was she wrong about him? His lower lip looked pillowed for kisses, the upper one carved for ascetics—sinner and saint. But her head still had trouble fitting that face and that voice to any kind of violence. Not when he glanced at her, looking almost apologetic, a man carrying too much guilt.

  He lifted a hand and said, “I’m not sure where to start.”

  “How about with a name—as in yours?”

  “Uh, Gideon.”

  “You have to think about it?” she asked, the question startled out.

  He lifted one shoulder. “It’s been a while since I’ve had someone to give my name to.”

  He smiled again, that brief flicker of humor that died before it could really be born. Could any murderer have a sense of ironic self-awareness?

  Somehow the insanity of taking life didn’t seem to match with the salvation of dry humor. But she was a geophysicist, not a psychologist, and she still didn’t know where she was or what the hell was going on, so she kept talking. Maybe words could get them through this.

  “Okay, Gideon. I’m Carrie.”

  “As in Firestarter or Fisher?” The smile came out to play again, almost made it to his eyes before evaporating this time. “Ah—that was a joke. Not the time or...sorry, I’m out of practice. And...well, parents can be perverse.”

  He sounded as if he spoke from experience, but he still wasn’t making sense, so she asked, “Story? Place? Are we going to get into all of that?”

  “Oh, yes—uh, here...actually, I’m not sure what you would call here. It’s uh, sort of the other side of...well, it’s...”

  “Complicated. Got that. So maybe you could tell me just how did I get to this...here?”

  “From where you were?” He lifted his arms, out and around them. “I brought you. From, uh, where you were.”

  Her temper started to edge out everything else. It felt good, hot in her veins, warming. She hung onto it since it was better than the twisting sorrow burrowing deep. Wiping a sweating palm on her leg, she was not going to think of how it felt slick as fresh blood.

  “What is this? Twenty questions to get one answer?” she asked, sounding so much like her old man had that she winced and wished she’d never learned how to mimic that hard-ass edge of his.

  Gideon blinked again as if she’d slapped him, and he asked, “I’m not doing this right, am I?”

  “The explanations? Or your bringing me here to…help out?” She shivered and rubbed her arms. “You are helping, right? The folks I work with are—” She stopped because she couldn’t get out the word “dead.” Wet stung her cheeks. She shook her head. Maybe the way he had of not addressing topics head-on might be a good idea right now. Maybe everyone was fine—she wanted to hang onto that prayer. Maybe she was wrong about all of this and she really was unconscious and dreaming.

  Yeah, and maybe I can click my heels three times to get home.

  She put out a hand and said, “I really, really need to know what’s going on. Please?”

  He nodded and said, “What killed your friends—those things you saw. Here, they call them Edge Walkers.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  They call them ‘Edge Walkers’ on the other side of the Rift—oh, hell, that sounds like I know what they are, what I’m talking about. But I know just enough to survive—on a good day. The bad days? Well, you try not to think about them because that’s when…when you lose someon
e. Or more than a few. But what they are? God knows. Monsters maybe. Something science hasn’t charted. I just know they’re not from around here. But they’d like to be. — Excerpt Gideon Chant Interview

  The words hadn’t come out right, Gideon knew, because now she was staring at him as if he was more than deranged, eyes so wide they dominated her face, sharpening the elfin chin and leaving her bone structure fragile.

  “Edge Walkers? Things? What are you talking about?” She put up a hand to brush her forehead. Her fingers shook and she clenched them tight to hide that betrayal. He wanted to do something to help, like touch her, but she also looked braced to come out swinging at him.

  He understood the feeling. He really understood. Crossing the Rift did that. It wasn’t just that your body had been pulled apart like so much taffy as it was spread thin between worlds—your mind was almost pulled apart, too. It left you scrambled inside and out.

  “I’m sorry. It’s been so long since I’ve spoken to someone like this. Not that I’ve ever been much at light conversation. Not that this is light. I was always better with books and research and lectures about things that never existed—or never should exist. But, dealing with attractive women? Not good there. Except...well, never mind that, and I’m going on assumption for some of the attraction here.”

  “Right. I think we just lost the topic again.”

  He nodded, glanced away and shrugged. He was going on assumptions. But he’d had his hands on her waist and knew how it curved because he’d had her pressed against him as he’d carried her. She hadn’t been heavy but she had long legs, so she’d been awkward. He’d been aware of that, very aware how her breasts flattened against him when he held her limp body. Every time her lab coat had parted, he’d also gotten a distracting glimpse of lace on a white bra under the torn collar of her shirt. But he shouldn’t be noticing those things. She didn’t need that right now.

  He didn’t either. He could at least keep telling himself that.

  He put his stare on her angular face and the high cheekbones under the rumpled short pale hair, and on eyes that glittered with grief. And intelligence. That would work against her. Here, instinct served better. But, like most bad habits, over-thinking a problem was almost impossible to give up.