Guardian

Green sparks danced across the sets of gashes that marred the Demon’s body. The wounds closed with breathtaking speed.

The sparks flew faster, brighter. Flared suddenly with a searing intensity. The Xerans cursed, blinded by the glare.

With the light vanished, the Victor swore in a rolling growl of rage that made His priests drop to their bellies in obeisance.

The wolf trailed the thief who’d stolen his child, following the traitor’s scent into a familiar room full of tables and people and the rich smell of food.

His enemy sat at a table with the wolf’s friends. The child thief had fooled them all, and that made the wolf’s simmering rage leap even higher.

He moved across the room in a low, rapid slink, his eyes fixed on the child thief’s smug face. The wolf could almost taste the traitor’s blood.

He heard one of his friends call his name, but he had no way to answer. And didn’t care. All that mattered was killing the child thief.

The wolf did not bother walking around the table. He simply leaped across it, his powerful muscles clearing its width in one easy bound. He slammed into the child thief’s chest with his full weight. The thief screamed like a rabbit as his chair went over, dumping him on the floor as the wolf went for his throat.

The thief’s arm blocked the way, and the wolf bit. Bone snapped, and the taste of hated blood filled his mouth. Another rabbit scream. People shouted, bellowed the wolf’s name. He ignored them and lunged for the child thief’s throat again.

Just before his teeth closed, strong hands closed in his ruff and lifted him like a puppy. Threw him halfway across the room. He landed, kept his feet, skidded on the slick floor, then found traction and charged forward again.

Tattooed not-Baran man blocked his way, shouted his name. Must have been the one who’d thrown him. Must have denied him the child thief’s life. The wolf lowered his head and snarled a warning.

A hundred kilos of pissed-off wolf slammed into Alerio’s chest. The Warlord fought not to go down, instead burying his hands in the big beast’s ruff. He barely managed to keep those snapping teeth from his throat. “Frieka, back off, dammit! Stop!”

The wolf’s only answer was a ripping snarl, another lunge, and the castanet snap of teeth. Alerio barely forced the wolf’s jaws away from his throat.

Galar and three other Enforcers tackled Frieka and helped Alerio wrestle him to the floor. The huge animal twisted, snapping, claws ripping through the thin fabric of their uniforms as he scrabbled to escape them.

“Fuck, Chief!” Galar bellowed, slinging a leg across the wolf’s back so he could sit on him. “Frieka’s vocalizer is off!”

“I noticed!” And according to Alerio’s sensors, so was the wolf’s computer. Which meant all that was left was instinct, rage, and a whole lot of teeth and claws with no interest in listening to reason.

Alerio, who’d gone to riaat, managed to get both hands around the wolf’s muzzle and force the snapping jaws closed. “Chogan!” he shouted over his com unit. “Bring a regenerator tube to the mess—and enough tranq to take Frieka down. He just tried to kill Corydon. And he’s not very happy with the rest of us either.”

“How’s Corydon?” Alerio yelled, straddling Frieka’s neck as he struggled to control the wolf’s head.

“Easily!” Alerio gritted back, struggling with the wolf. He was seriously tempted to let go and watch Frieka take another chunk out of the investigator.

Two endless minutes later, Chogan raced in, a medtech team at her heels towing the regenerator. They headed for Corydon.

“You’re the boss.” Chogan snaked an arm in past Alerio’s hand and shoved a pressure injector against a throbbing vein in the wolf’s neck. Five seconds later, the big animal went limp.

Chogan caught his forearm before he could start toward the moaning human. “You need that regenerator worse than Corydon,” the doctor told him. “How many times did Frieka bite you anyway?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t feel it.” Alerio stalked toward the Senior Investigator, who lurched to his feet, his expression panicky.

“Tell me when he lies,” the Chief told his comp. Aloud he asked Corydon, “Why did Frieka go after you, Corydon?”

“The same reason he attacked you,” the human retorted, cradling his broken arm. “Obviously he went mad.”

The man’s eyes widened and flickered in panic. “Of course not! I’m a Senior Investigator with Counterintelligence. How could you even make such an accusation?”

“Wrong. He’s lying like a rug. I can see it on his face.” Aloud the Chief said, “Outpost power system, code omega sixty-eight fifty-four, Alerio authorization.”

Indicator lights began going dark around the room as the Outpost mainframe started shutting itself down.

Galar sighed. “Considering that son of a bitch was lying like a rug and my comp said he wasn’t—yeah, it’s obvious.”

“I most certainly am not lying! You are all leaping to conclusions.” Corydon backed away as Alerio turned toward him. Sweat had broken out on his forehead, and he supported his broken arm with the other hand. “Doctor, give me something for pain, and I can clear this up.”

Chogan gave him a toothy smile and twisted something on the tube of her injector. “I’d be happy to—except I’ve had to deactivate my injector’s pharmcom. I don’t dare inject drugs when the whole system’s been infected with a virus.”

The investigator’s jaw dropped as he stared at her in horror. “This . . . You can’t! This is a violation of my rights!”

Alerio gave him a vicious grin as Enforcers began surrounding the human like wolves. “Oh, I haven’t even gotten started yet.”

One minute Nick and Riane were standing in the cave. The next, a swirling green mist flooded in around them.

“My comp says Earth. Twenty-first century.” Riane looked around them, frowning. “More or less exactly when we left, except we’re about two hundred miles to the north and west of our motel. Huh.”

“Yeah, the Outpost was located in these mountains in the fifteenth century. Not here now, though. Population density probably got too high.”

“Yeah, but the Outpost is located in the past. It’s a central point. Easier to Jump through time from there.”

The Stone picked that moment to hit him with an unpleasant jolt of heat. Prodded, Nick started in the direction of the psychic tug. “Come on. We’ve got somewhere to be.”

Riane and Nick moved quickly through the woods, leaves crackling and rustling underfoot. “At least your wounds healed,” she observed.

He grunted, lengthening his stride. Before he quite knew what he was doing, he was running, spurred on by the sense of urgency clawing at the back of his brain.

She was right. He could hear the sound of a steady chopping in the distance, then a ringing bang, as of a hammer striking something metallic.

His imagination began to spin scenarios, each more grim than the last. An axe murderer attacking a Boy Scout camp? What the hell could be going on out here in the middle of nowhere?

Riane slid to a stop, yelling something, he didn’t quite hear what, just as the ground dropped out from under his feet. Nick plunged twenty feet straight down.

Nick glanced around warily. He seemed to have landed squarely in the middle of an RV park, though what it was doing out here miles from any visible road was a very good question. About thirty of the vehicles were parked under the trees, ranging from camper trailers to things the approximate length of yachts. Campfires crackled merrily between them, surrounded by various people of assorted ages.

Laughter and conversation died as they turned to stare at him. They were a thoroughly ordinary crowd, garbed in T-shirts and jeans or shorts on this pleasant spring day. They all seemed to be involved in some kind of arts or crafts. One man used a hammer and chisel on a half-completed wooden sculpture. A woman looked up from massaging a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel. Several others worked at easels or looms, while a metalworker hovered over the anvil on which she’d been hammering something.

Yet each and every one of them stopped what he or she was doing to start toward Nick, expressions of fascination on their faces. A rising murmur ran over the group, something in a language he didn’t understand. It sounded a lot like astonished delight.

“Nick,” Riane said suddenly, her voice urgent as she scrambled down the cliff to join him. “I don’t think they’re what they appear to be.”

Right on cue, his vision wavered, misted, as if from a fading dream. Nick blinked hard, then took a startled step back.