Page 41 of City of Love

She’s fading.

“Gideon!” she yelled, her voice coming at him as if through water.

“No. It’s not time yet, it’s not even close!” he yelled back to her wavering, ghostly image.

He didn’t need to look at her timer. She had plenty of time left, even if he hadn’t refilled her tank. This was caused by something else.

The last thing he saw was the horror in her sapphire eyes as she winked out of existence.

“Lexi!” he shouted, the arms that had been squeezing her now passing each other as they dropped through the empty air.

This isn’t right. Not here, not now…

Then his spine turned to ice and he knew. Someone’s done this.

“Lexi!” Like a blind man, his hands slashed and clawed wildly at nothing, as if somehow she was just out of reach, just on the other side of nothingness. As if he could simply reach into the abyss and pull her back.

He spun around looking back towards the house, the heels of his hands pressed to the sides of his head. What had he done by bringing her here on this day?

Choices. Paths. Fate.

He had no control at all. Probably never had. It had always been nothing more than one, big, fucking illusion.

His hands fisted at his sides as a growl rose from someplace low in his gut, the sound rising up through his body and the volume increasing to a thunderous note. Guttural and painful. A wounded animal.

Right behind that, like an explosion going off somewhere deep down in his ocean of fear, a blast of energy issued out of his every pore with a sonic crack, all the closest trees bending at their trunks, a nearby picnic table going airborne. The grass in the meadow flattened.

And in the silence that followed, one could hear the sound of the horses in the distant corral. They were stampeding.

CHAPTER 17

Off-balance from the unexpected transition and the sudden loss of Gideon’s arms around her waist, Lexi stumbled and fell onto the asphalt beneath her feet. Standing back up and brushing the dirt from her hands and knees, she tried to get her bearings.

The first thing she saw was a flamingo. In fact, a freaking flock of flamingos.

What the…?

She stepped back and spun around, scanning left and right. Toddlers with sticky faces munching on cotton candy. Adults chasing after toddlers who were feeding cotton candy to the flamingos. Throngs of happy people moving along paved walkways or stopping to point at a jungle scene through a high fence.

The zoo.

A vendor cart sat thirty feet away, selling red, white, and blue t-shirts with the park’s logo.

Fourth of July at the Philadelphia Zoo.

When she thought about where they had traveled to get to Julian’s ranch, it made sense. They’d ridden northwest out of Old City and crossed the Schuylkill River. She’d been located near what in her world would be Fairmount Park.

Okay, so she was in one piece and in a fairly safe spot. Could be worse. No one was staring at her and screaming, so apparently she’d materialized unwitnessed. But what happened? She glanced at her timer. With more than three hours left, she shouldn’t have faded back. But that didn’t solve the fact that she had no money, identification, or cell phone, and was dressed more for a polo match than a summer holiday.

“Nice outfit,” said a forty-something man wearing khakis and a Phillies fan jersey with the first baseman’s name on it. On the surface, he looked like every other father in the zoo, but the military crew cut, hard expression, and all-business attitude told her he was something else altogether. “Did you just... er… pop over from a Fourth of July party? Maybe a rather unusual party?” A snide grin pulling at his mouth.

“I thought we were expecting a big, dark-blond dude, not a chick,” said a second man wearing almost the identical outfit, except that his fan jersey sported the name of the current Phillies pitcher.

Something was wrong. Way wrong. And not just because the Phillies were currently tied for last place in their division.

“Gideon? Are you there?” She reached out with her mind, but there was no response.

“She’s wearing the timer, she’s got to be the target. Maybe they just sent someone else over instead of that Gideon guy,” said the first baseman. “If he pops over too, one of the other teams will grab him.”

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