“He’s right.” Another man found his voice. He had black hair and a slightly darker skin tone, making me believe he was Hispanic. “We could be unconscious. This is probably a dream. We were most likely knocked out by the sound emanating from the gate. Now we’re unconscious and dreaming. We’ll wake soon.”
“And this is what, Manuel, a mass delusion?” The first man fancied himself in charge, but he was clearly facing a mutiny. I wanted to stop the arguments, but I couldn’t speak ... and they hadn’t as much as looked in my direction. That made me believe they didn’t see me, which was frightening for a different reason. I chose not to dwell on it. If I did, the fear might overwhelm me. I would never get out of this predicament if I allowed the fear to get a foothold.
“This could be happening in one person’s head.” Manuel refused to back down. “We should wait, Doug. We could wake up any second.”
“If this is a mass delusion, then there’s no reason not to walk back through the gate,” the man apparently named Doug pointed out. “In fact, that might be the thing that wakes us up. The gate is only dangerous if this is the real world, right? You seem to believe it’s not the real world.”
“I didn’t say that.” Manuel turned morose. “I don’t even know that I believe that. This being a product of one person’s imagination is better than the alternative.”
“And what’s the alternative?”
I was actually wondering that myself.
“The alternative is that we’re in purgatory,” Manuel replied, calm. “The alternative is that we’re really dead, and because they weren’t expecting us we’ll be forced to remain here until they figure out what to do with us.”
“Who is this ‘they’ that you’re referring to?” Doug challenged. “There’s no ‘they’ for us to worry about.”
“Isn’t there?” Manuel inclined his chin toward the trees on the far side of the small clearing. On that side of the expanse, there was what looked to be a dark and dank forest. It gave me chills just looking at it. There was no way I was going in there. “Can’t you hear them? They’re coming for us. They’ll be here soon.”
Everyone — including me — jerked their heads in that direction. Now that it had been pointed out, the unmistakable sound of footsteps was hard to ignore. I went cold all over.
What was going on here?
Just at the moment the footsteps reached the edge of the woods, my fingertips started tingling. I glanced down and found my vision had started to blur. Oh, well, this couldn’t be good.
As if to prove me right, my head suddenly felt as if it had doubled in size. It was too big to hold up. When I fell to the ground this time I was terrified I would never open my eyes again. This was it, I told myself. This was the end.
I WOKE TO BRADEN ABSOLUTELY melting down.
“Somebody call an ambulance right now! Right freaking now!”
I opened my eyes and found myself in the gate room, in the same spot I’d lost consciousness. Oliver and Cormack stared down at my face. Braden cradled me against his chest as he held me on the floor. My head hurt and I felt numb. I was alive, though. That was the important thing.
“What happened?” I rasped, relieved to find I had a voice.
“Oh, thank god.” Braden held me so tightly I feared he might smother me. “I thought you were dead.”
He wasn’t the only one. “I’m fine,” I reassured him, awkwardly patting his arm. “I just have a headache. I ... what happened?” I looked to Oliver for answers because he had yelled for me to stay away from the gate right before it happened.
“I’m not sure.” Oliver looked grave. “But that’s not the first time I’ve seen the gate act like that. It’s been sixty years, but ... I’ll never forget.”
As if testing him, the gate gurgled, causing every head in the room to turn in its direction. To my utter surprise, five bodies were spread on the platform in front of the shimmering opening.
“What the ... ?” I tried to climb to my feet despite Braden’s insistence on keeping me close. “Where did they come from?”
Oliver was so pale I could practically see through him. He worked his jaw but no sound came out. It was only the sound of someone clearing a throat near the door that led to the hallway that broke the spell that had settled over the room.
When I turned, I found a pretty brunette studying the scene with impassioned eyes. She had long dark hair, cheekbones so high they looked carved from granite, and a serious expression on her face. I recognized her from the application form she’d sent in.
Her name was Paris Princeton and she was my new assistant. This was one heckuva way for her to be introduced to her new job.
“Oh, um ... hey.” I felt like an idiot as I remained prone on the floor, Braden stroking my hair and his father and our resident vampire staring dumbly at the pile of bodies that had suddenly appeared in front of the gate. “You must be Paris. Um ... welcome.”
Cormack finally tore his eyes from the bodies and focused on our new guest. He looked dumbfounded and out of his element, two things I thought I could never say about him. “Did anyone see what happened?”
Paris nodded. “I did.” She raised her hand, as if in a classroom. “The gate flashed really brightly and knocked you down.” She lobbed a tight smile in my direction, one that was almost apologetic, as if she could’ve stopped what had happened. “I think I was protected because I was so far back. When it flashed a second time, there were five new people here ... and I think they came from the other side.”
“But ... how?” Cormack’s bewildered expression hurt my heart. “How could this have happened?”
“I don’t know,” Oliver replied, determinedly moving in the direction of the bodies. “I just ... I ... oh, my!” He dropped to his knees next to the first body, and when he turned the man over I almost jumped out of my skin. I recognized the face.
“I saw him,” I blurted out. “When I was on the other side, I saw him.”
Braden’s eyebrows practically flew off his forehead. “You were on the other side?”
I swallowed and nodded. “I think so. I saw him ... and a few others. I think there were, like, fifteen of them.”
“Fourteen,” Oliver corrected absently. “There were fourteen.”
“How do you know that?” Cormack asked, moving toward another body. I recognized that one, too. As the lone Hispanic of the group, he was hard to forget.
“I was with them when they disappeared,” Oliver replied, forlorn. “There were fifteen of us and the gate malfunctioned. It flashed like it just did ... and when I came to I was the only one left. Well, me and the trainer. He was spared, but he was never the same.”
“I don’t understand.” Braden ran his hands over my arms, as if to warm me. Keeping contact was obviously important to him. I still felt weak, so I didn’t complain. There was no bettering this scenario for Paris’s benefit after all, so why bother? “What is going on?”
“That’s what I would like to know,” Renley announced as he strolled out of the library and took in the scene. “I think we’re going to need some help.”