The Neon Graveyard by Vicki Pettersson

Author:Vicki Pettersson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction.Contemporary, Contemporary, General, Romance, Fantasy, Adventure, fiction
ISBN: 9780061456794
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

15

Arriving home, if that’s where I was, was painful. My palms and knees took most of my landing, the shock of my weight a fiery bolt that had me face-planting on a surface that was, by contrast, shockingly cold. But whether prone or standing, hot or cold, my mind had not stopped fleeing. Or, for that matter, released the hope that I was so close, so very close, to saving Hunter.

To touching him. Hearing his breath. Knowing he was safe.

I rose to my feet, which alone jarred my bones, and turned my head upward, lifting my hands to the sky. To the darkness. To him.

The sound I made then was half scream, half growl, and nothing human. Carlos shifted and was on me fast, hand over my mouth, gaze boring into mine, mouth moving as he shook his head fast. But I couldn’t hear him. Blood roared in my ears. So he pulled me to his chest roughly, less to steady me than silence me, which ultimately worked. I couldn’t scream if I couldn’t breathe.

Letting me pull back marginally, he stroked my hair, cupping the back of my head as I shook uncontrollably. “Hunter—” I finally managed.

I’d seen him. I’d been so close. And now he was alone, literally, in that world with her. “Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .”

Carlos’s voice gradually returned and, as if someone had switched on a radio, muttered endearments in Spanish flowed around me like a river. I dropped my arms and melted into it, exhausted from the flight, the beating I’d taken, the loss of hope. Carlos finally pulled back, wincing in pain as he caught my face in his hands, and when I finally looked at him, I winced as well. The gem that had replaced his eye was still in place, sparking with light, though tears had washed most of the blood away. The sight of it momentarily shocked me from my mourning.

“It’s a sunstone,” Carlos said, either scenting my horror, or simply reading it in my face. “She said the red-gold platelets would complement my complexion.”

I didn’t laugh. “Does it—”

“Hurt?” he finished, when I couldn’t. He shook his head. “Not anymore. Though I confess, my leg has felt better.”

“Oh God! I’m sorry!” I looped his arm over my shoulders, then turned to do what grief had kept me from doing immediately, squinting into the room around us. Narrow windows lay slitted against a wall in front of me, casting cubes of dim light on what my face-plant had already told me was a marble floor. So it was dark outside of . . . wherever we were. Were we even in Las Vegas? Or in a different part of Midheaven?

Or, possibly, one of the places the old viewing room had once shown agents entering tunnel systems from around the world?

“So you must have been feeling nostalgic when you jumped into that black hole.”

“What?” I said, my voice scratchy from screaming.

“Look around. You, of anyone, should recognize this place.”

Despite

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