Black Gate: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4 Read Free Page A

her with both longing and dread? It summoned her now. A siren’s song that she couldn’t ignore.
    “Move it, Katherine. We’re short on time.” Frank spoke in a clipped and precise voice through her earpiece.
    “I’m at the top of the stairs.” Katherine spoke up so they wouldn’t shoot her and moved silently over the polished hardwood floors, past the flower-filled vases and strategically placed art. She loved these guys, but she didn’t do what she did for her boys, for the Rear Admiral, or for her country. There were monsters out there. Real monsters. Religious and political rhetoric were lost on her. She’d been to the dark side and it sucked.
    “Katherine.” The bark of the Reader Admiral’s voice in her earpiece brought her to a complete stop. What the hell was he doing here? He was a man who believed that what he did was right. That he protected his country and his men. That every source of power in the world needed to be investigated and pursued. Controlled.
    He was a very dangerous kind of fool, but she needed him, needed his resources and his men, and so she played a very dangerous game of cat and mouse with the system, the military, and the spooks. She worked her ass off and she kept her secrets.
    “Yes, Sir?” She purposely relaxed her body and continued to move silently down the darkened concrete stairwell. Despite her earlier chill, her dark French braid was soaked with sweat and stuck to the back of her neck before its long tail fell to hit her squarely between the shoulder blades.
    “Be careful.Thecareful. The others can feel it now, too.””
    “Understood.” A cold sense of dread squeezed her throat nearly closed. The others the Rear Admiral referred to were the lower level psychics embedded with each team outside. They had good instincts and helped make their missions successful, but none of them could touch her level of telepathy or her power to manipulate energy. Normally, she was the critical member on any retrieval. Today? As much as she hated to admit it, she was nothing but bad news. She needed a tranquilizer shot big enough to knock out a horse and about three days of unconsciousness to calm her nerve endings into some semblance of normalcy. She shouldn’t even be here and he knew it. She knew it. Hell, her whole team knew it.
    “Be very, very careful..” The Rear Admiral’s voice was gruff and more clipped than usual. The rest of her team remained silent, listening. Assessing and adapting, as they always did. Was it fear in his voice? Worry?
    No. Resignation. He knew she was a mess, and still he sent her in after it…whatever it was. He was an ass, but he wouldn’t risk her if he didn’t desperately want whatever was hidden here. And she was the one who had led him right to it, demanded that they load the airplane and move. Today. Now.
    Palms cold and clammy with fear, Katherine passed through the doorway at the base of the stairs. It led belowground, into the hidden caves that hid secrets beneath the house. “Any luck with the scans? Have you located the object, Sir?”
    “No, but it’s down there. You are to find it, assess and advise. Nothing more. Do not touch it yourself. Is that understood?” The Rear Admiral’s voice drifted through her earpiece, but she wasn’t really listening anymore.
    “Yes, Sir.” She lied easily. The thing she hunted was closer. It tugged on her mind, filled her body with renewed energy. She wanted it. Needed it.
    Damn the man for ordering Frank to take the hit. Her team was, as far as she knew, very, very human. They were tough, brilliant soldiers, but they weren’t supernatural. They didn’t go anywhere without her. They didn’t touch alien artifacts. And they sure as hell didn’t mess around with unknown power sources so strong they caused her to bow up out of a dead sleep, screaming.
    “I mean it, Katherine. Touch nothing. Frank’s on it. Once you’ve located the object, he will retrieve it. Is. That. Clear?” The Rear