The men didn’t immediately obey. As they hesitated, their eyes still adjusting, Dolph switched his patch, so he could see with the eye already accustomed to darkness. The bridge below now clear and visible to him, he dropped soundlessly from the walkway above. He ignored the sharp ache in his leg as he landed on the leader, knocking him to the ground and plunging the sharp blade concealed in the end of his cane into the man’s calf. The man let out a scream like he was being burned alive.
That particular poison did have a tendency to sting.
As the leader continued to scream, Dolph turned to the next man, but he was already struggling against some unseen assailant. With a sudden jerk, he went still, his eyes wide as he slumped to the ground. Jianyu appeared, seemingly materializing out of the night, and gave Dolph a nod of acknowledgment as they turned together to face the third man.
The only one left seemed too paralyzed by fear to realize he’d be better off running. He was holding Leena in front of him like a shield.
“Leave me be or I’ll kill her,” he said, his voice cracking as he blinked into the dark.
Dolph stepped steadily toward them as Jianyu circled around the man’s other side.
“You were already dead the moment you touched her,” Dolph murmured when he was barely an arm’s reach away.
The man stumbled back, and Leena took the opportunity to struggle away from him. But he was too off-balance and his hold was too secure. Instead of letting her go, the man pulled her with him as he stumbled back, away from Dolph and toward the cold power of the Brink.
Without thought for his own safety, Dolph reached for them, but his fingers barely grasped the sleeve of the man’s coat. The fabric ripped, and the man—and Leena—fell backward into the Brink.
Dolph knew the moment she crossed it, because he felt her surprise and pain and desperation as keenly as if it were his own. The night around them lit from the magic coursing through her, draining from her. She screamed and writhed, her back arching at a painful-looking angle. Her arms and legs went stiff and shook with the terrible power that held her.
The man holding her screamed as well, but not from the Brink. When she began convulsing, he dropped her and ran, disappearing into the night of that other shore, where Dolph couldn’t follow.
But Dolph’s eyes were only for Leena. He watched in helpless horror as her body shook with the pain of her magic being ripped from her. He moved toward her, pushing past his own bone-deep fear of the Brink, but when his fingers brushed against the icy energy of it, he couldn’t make himself reach any farther.
“Leena!” he shouted. “Look at me!”
She slumped to the ground, drained but still moaning and twitching with pain. He could no longer feel her affinity.
“Leena!” he screamed, fury and terror mingling in his voice.
It was enough to distract her for a moment, and even as her face contorted, she tried to turn toward the sound of his voice.
“That’s it,” he said when their eyes finally met.
Her expression was wild with the pain and shock of the Brink’s devastating effect, but she wasn’t dead yet. As long as her heart beat, there was a chance, Dolph told himself, pushing away the truth.
People didn’t come back from the Brink.
Still, Leena was different, he told himself as she tried to focus on him. Dolph thought for a moment he saw her there, his own Leena, somewhere behind the agony twisting her features.
“I need you to come to me, Streghina. I need you to try,” he pleaded.
And because she was the strongest person he’d ever known, she did try. She forced herself to move, reaching for him, her limbs trembling with effort as she pulled herself back to safety.
“That’s it, my love. Just a little more,” he told her, struggling to keep his voice from breaking into the animal-like wail he felt building within him.
With the last of her strength, she inched along. Her face was drawn tight, but she kept going. His Leena. His own heart.
“You can make it. Just a little farther.”
But she looked up at him, her once-beautiful eyes now a lurid bloodred. Her expression was determined as she tried to whisper something, but before she could finish, she collapsed beyond his reach.
“No!” he screamed. “You can’t leave us. You can’t give up now.” He knelt as close to the Brink as he dared get, willing her to keep moving.
But Leena only blinked up at him, barely able to focus with her unbruised eye.
No, he thought wildly. He wouldn’t accept her fate. Couldn’t accept it. Not his Leena, who had stood by his side since they were children. Not the woman who had been his partner in every way, despite all the mistakes he had made. He couldn’t leave her there. No matter what it meant for him.
Dolph forced himself to reach out to Leena, to press through the searing cold bit by bit. To ignore the excruciating pain. Breaching the Brink was like putting your hand through glass and feeling the shards tear through skin and tendon. Or like dipping yourself in molten metal, if liquid steel could be colder than ice.
But even that pain didn’t compare to the thought of losing her.
Finally, he grabbed Leena’s hand. She blinked slowly, vacantly, at the pressure of his grasp, but with his fingers now wrapped securely around hers, he found that he didn’t have the strength to pull her back. The Brink was already wrapping its icy energy around his wrist, burrowing deep beneath his skin to seek out the heart of who and what he was.
Then, suddenly, he was moving. Jianyu had taken him by the legs and was pulling him and Leena both back, away from the invisible boundary. With the strength he had left, Dolph took Leena into his arms and settled her across his lap, barely aware of the numbness inside his own chest.
“I wasn’t fast enough,” Jianyu said. “I tried to get her before they took her, but . . .”
Dolph wasn’t even hearing him.
“No,” Dolph whispered, tracing the lines of her face. Her breath rattled weakly from her lungs as he clutched her to him, rocking and pleading for her to stay with him. “I can’t do this without you.”
But she didn’t respond.
“No!” he screamed when he realized her body had gone limp in his arms. “No!” Again and again, he wailed into the night, hatred and anguish hardening him, sealing him over, like a fossil of the man he’d once been.
A SLIP THROUGH TIME
December 1926—The Upper West Side
Esta froze as the blond trained the gun on her. His expression was a mixture of disgust and anticipation as he shifted his aim between her and Logan.
“I told you,” he growled at Schwab. “I warned you something like this would happen.”
“Jack!” Schwab yelled, grabbing for the man’s arm again. “Put that gun down!”
Jack shook him off. “You have no idea what they are, what they’re capable of.” He turned to Esta and Logan. “Who sent you? Tell me!” he screamed, his face red with fury as he continued to swing the gun back and forth, alternating between the two of them.
Esta glanced at Logan and noticed the dark stain creeping across the white shirt beneath his tuxedo jacket. His eyes flickered open and met hers. He didn’t look so cocky anymore.
“I won’t be ruined again,” the blond said as he cocked the hammer back again and steadied his aim at Logan. “Not this time.”