Читать книгу: «Prince of Time»

Chapter One

One moment she was exhilarated, excited, trembling on the brink of discovery. In the next, an ominous rumble on the mountain far above her told Cassandra Devereaux she was going to die.

Glen Fielding, her Alaskan guide, was already running.

Early this morning he’d landed his float plane on a clear blue lake a hundred miles northwest of Denali National Park. And Cassie had been awed by the rugged peaks and endless green of the Douglas firs as she and Glen paddled his canoe to shore and hiked a couple of miles through the wilderness to this remote slope.

Glen was twenty feet below her and on the right, but it was already too late for either of them to escape.

Cassandra screamed as several tons of last winter’s snow came rumbling down the mountain like a glacier broken loose from its moorings. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not in summer.

She gasped Glen’s name as he disappeared under a blanket of white. Lumps of ice pelted her head and shoulders before she ducked under the shelter of a protective ledge. The mountain shook like a fortress under aerial bombardment, and she waited for the tumbling snow and boulders to sweep her away.

As suddenly as the avalanche had started, it stopped, leaving Cassie crouched in eerie silence. Cautiously, she moved her arms and legs. The worst pain she detected was in her right arm, but it was bearable.

“Glen? Glen?”

He didn’t answer.

She tried to struggle forward, tried to get to the spot where he’d disappeared. But she was trapped by a solid wall of white.

A choking sensation clogged Cassie’s throat. Ignoring it, she found her pack under a rock and scrabbled through the contents, cursing when she remembered that Glen had taken the trench shovel. Grimly, she set a flashlight on a pile of snow and started digging. But after a few minutes, her fingers stiff from the cold, she could see that her efforts only brought more snow down on her head.

Breathing hard, she snatched up the light and searched the pack again, looking for the two-way radio. The case was broken. When she twisted the dials, there wasn’t even a crackle of static.

Cassie hugged her shoulders and leaned back against the rock wall of her prison. At least she was alive, she told herself. For now.

But what about Glen, she wondered with a stab of guilt. She had a pilot’s license. She could have flown here herself. But she’d wanted to look like nothing more than a travel agent, so she’d paid well for Glen’s services. She hadn’t told him she was on a highly classified assignment from the government. Instead she’d used the cover story she and her sister, Marissa, found so convenient—that they specialized in scouting out adventure locales. And she’d been hired by a millionaire sportsman in the lower forty-eight who wanted to climb a mountain nobody else had tackled.

As she and Glen had approached the Alaskan range, her special instruments had confirmed that there was something strange on the east slope of one of the peaks.

“Never taken anyone here before,” her guide had remarked as he set the plane down on the water with a gentle touch.

“That’s what my client wants,” Cassie had replied cheerfully, trying to mask the excitement in her voice. This expedition was important to her, more important than she was willing to admit.

Now look what she’d gotten herself into, she thought as she fought panic. Nobody knew where she was. No one was going to come rescue her the way Jed Prentiss had saved her sister a few months ago. With a fleeting smile, she thought about Jed and Marci, taking comfort from the knowledge that her sister was well and happy. At least one of the Devereaux sisters had escaped the ravages of their childhood.

But that childhood had also made them both fighters. And Cassie wasn’t going to give up so easily. Pulling out her flashlight, she started inching along the ledge, squeezing around a boulder that had crashed against the rock. Behind it was a large indentation and, on the ground, shards of what might have been basalt. Only they looked too jagged.

Cassie picked one up, running her thumb cautiously along the edge. It felt more like plastic than stone. Turning, she realized that light emanated from the hole the boulder had made. When she shouldered the cracked surface, it gave with a groaning sound, and she stumbled through—into some sort of manmade corridor. The walls were cold metal, but they radiated a gentle amber glow like an old computer screen.

Dear heaven! It looked as if the boulder had crashed into an escape hatch for a secret military post. The irony made her laugh, the sound echoing hollowly off the tunnel walls. So much for the FCC’s little mystery! They were going to be angry about spending the money to send her up here.

Cassandra expected to hear alarms ring and see guards with machine guns. But there was no intruder alert, only the insistent hum of equipment deep in the earth.

“Anybody home?”

Only the hollow echo of her own voice answered. Maybe this was an automated facility. Replacing her flashlight in her pack, she crept forward, aware that the humming was getting louder as she descended into the mountain. Several feet ahead of her, the passage was dark. But as she moved forward, the glow kept pace, imparting an eerie sense of being ushered onward.

Yet she couldn’t detect the video cameras that must be marking her progress. And she found herself fighting a growing sense that she’d stepped into a science-fiction movie. The very air smelled as if it had been scrubbed by special purification equipment and recycled for centuries.

Shivering, she tried to put aside such fantasies. This place couldn’t have been here for centuries. It had almost certainly been built as part of our Soviet surveillance network.

Her progress stopped abruptly at a flat metal door with no handle. Now what? She didn’t have a key card. And there was no way her retinal patterns or handprints were in the computer. Trying the old-fashioned method, she banged on the door. When nothing happened, she began to look for a control panel. Maybe she’d find a phone, and she could call for help. There had to be something! She couldn’t have come so far only to be shut out.

Doggedly, she went over every inch of the metal walls, pressing and feeling for invisible seams. She wasn’t sure which random motion had the desired effect, but a sudden whooshing noise made her look up to see twin panels glide out of the way like the doors on the starship Enterprise.

Beyond was a yawning, profound blackness, alive with the pulsing sound she’d been hearing since she’d entered the tunnel. The unknown waited for her inside, and she was afraid. But in the end, there was really no choice. Gathering her courage, she crossed the threshold.

As before, the lights came up, and she saw that she was in what looked like a control room, surrounded by banks of futuristic computers and other equipment she couldn’t identify. In the center of the room was a tall chamber about the size of a telephone booth.

Curiosity—or perhaps a feeling of compulsion—drew Cassie toward the enclosed space. Its walls were opaque and shot through with streaks of color like mother-of-pearl. Afraid, yet fascinated, Cassie watched as they began to glow and change, becoming translucent—the transformation coming from the top down.

The humming of the equipment increased, rising to a crescendo around her, but she hardly heard. All her attention was focused on the compartment before her. Someone was inside. She saw the eyes first. Was transfixed by the laser intensity that held her captive, compelling her to take a step forward and then another to meet her destiny.

Blood pounding in her ears, she stood immobile as the walls of the chamber went through a final metamorphosis. Before her motionless gaze, they turned transparent as glass. And she found herself staring in shock at a naked man.

He didn’t respond to her sharp intake of breath, and she realized with stunned certainty and a degree of relief that those probing eyes were not looking at her. In fact, although she stood only six feet away, he didn’t seem aware that anyone else was in the room. Was it possible that only she could see him through the transparent surface separating them? The supposition gave her a measure of reassurance as anger flashed across his rigid features, anger that rolled from him in an almost physical wave, penetrating the chamber, crashing against the walls and ceiling of the small room.

Cassie wanted to turn and run. Get away from him before he shattered the walls of the capsule, charged out and blocked her escape. But some almost supernatural force kept her from turning away from the threat he represented. In that moment she was sure that he had compelled her to this place. But her mind couldn’t cope with such an outlandish assumption, and she dismissed it.

She worried her lip and wiped her damp palms on the legs of her jogging pants as she stood and watched him. His face was strong, the features pleasing and vaguely exotic. Cassie studied the slight slant of his eyes, the exaggerated thrust of his chin, the wide mouth, wondering if he came from some tribe of Native Americans that barely interacted with the outside world. Was that it? Did his people live up here in the Alaskan wilds? Had they built this place? If so, why was he imprisoned?

His posture was erect and still as a statue, and she had an even wilder thought—that he was a prince from another time and place thrown into a trance by an evil sorcerer. He’d been under this mountain for centuries, waiting. And she was the woman sent to wake him with a kiss.

The fantasy was getting personal again. She shook her head to banish it. But still, she couldn’t tug her gaze from him. She watched as he drew in a shuddering breath, filling his lungs greedily and then exhaling with more control. Slowly, he raised his hand and flexed the fingers, looking at them with a slightly bemused expression. Raising the hand farther, he flattened the palm against his chest, pressing it over his heart as if needing reassurance that life was surging through his veins. He let out a deep sigh. Then his face changed, the features taking on a sudden wrenching vulnerability that made her own heart contract.

Transfixed, she watched as his palm slid across his chest, across skin that was a light copper and covered with a mat of curly hair that was almost black. Before she had time to reflect on the strangeness of the combination, the hand moved, sweeping lower down. Her gaze was compelled to follow as he briefly touched his flat stomach, narrow waist, strong thighs and finally the male part of him. With a swallow, Cassie silently acknowledged that he would have drawn appreciative stares on a nude beach.

The observation jerked her befuddled brain back to reality. He wasn’t on some California beach. This guy was standing buck-naked in the middle of a secret government facility. Or was it an asylum for the criminally insane with him as the star inmate? She didn’t know what she’d walked into—but she was getting the heck out.

She took a step back. Before she could turn to run, his eyes caught the movement, and she knew without doubt that the capsule was as transparent from inside as well as out. At first he’d been absorbed with himself, like a sleeper awakening in a strange place. Now his gaze locked with hers, and she realized he was suddenly aware that he wasn’t alone in the room.

His lips moved urgently. He appeared to be shouting at her, but she could hear nothing. At the quick shake of her head, his mouth formed a harsh line. Then he closed his eyes as his fingers felt rapidly along the sides of his prison, doubtless searching for a release latch. Thankfully, Cassie couldn’t see one. She wanted him safe on the other side of that transparent barrier. Her relief was short-lived. He touched some hidden mechanism she hadn’t spotted, and the front panel of his isolation booth slid silently open.

She gasped as the invisible wall disappeared. She gasped again as he stepped out of the compartment. There was no hesitation. She was his quarry. Freed, he closed the distance between them with such speed that his movements were almost a blur. His hand shot out and circled her wrist, his fingers rigid as a steel manacle.

“Don’t hurt me.” Her mouth was so dry she could hardly force the words out. Why hadn’t she gotten out of this place when the getting was good?

Up close, his eyes were a startling blue. As he studied her, they turned the color of frost, making her fear shoot up several degrees. He answered her plea with a short burst of syllables that would have been melodious if his voice hadn’t sounded like broken glass. She didn’t know the language—and she’d studied half a dozen in college and graduate school. Yet she recognized from the inflection that he was asking a question. And that he was angry—as if she were somehow to blame for imprisoning him in that strange tube.

She shook her head, all the while struggling to wrench from his grasp. But it was as futile as trying to fight a force of nature.

She moved as far away as the extension of her arm would allow, her eyes never leaving his. She was grateful that he didn’t pull her closer.

Speaking slowly and distinctly as though addressing a child, he repeated the string of syllables. The speed of the delivery, however, did nothing for her level of comprehension. There was absolutely nothing she recognized.

“I—I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

His eyes narrowed, and she felt the physical force of his pent-up anger and frustration. He spoke again, and she could tell that he was demanding an answer, perhaps even threatening her if she didn’t cooperate. Yet at the same time she sensed he’d given up hope of commanding her cooperation.

“I’m sorry. Please—”

“Klat!” The ugly syllable erupted from him. She didn’t know what it meant, but she recognized a curse when she heard it.

Cassie sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Now it was her turn. “Who are you?” she asked, repeating the question as slowly as he had spoken—in Spanish, German, French, Russian and slightly shaky Japanese. Too bad she didn’t know Klingon.

Not even a flicker of recognition crossed his strong features. His answer was as unintelligible as his prior attempt at communication. Still clasping her wrist, he stepped closer, taking in details the way she had done so recently. Only now he wasn’t separated from her by a barrier.

He was dynamic—and very naked—and standing so near that she could smell the masculine scent of his body and take in the fine lines radiating from the corners of his eyes. His scrutiny almost shattered her carefully forged composure.

She swallowed. At least his closeness meant she didn’t have to keep her gaze from wandering to certain parts of his anatomy. All she could see was his naked arms. His naked chest. But she remembered the rest. Very well.

She stood as still as a deer in the forest, telling herself that if he’d wanted to hurt her, he could have done it when he’d first bounded out of his prison. Yet her pulse pounded in her ears, making her light-headed.

The man of steel had a surprisingly gentle touch when he wanted it. Still, she stiffened as he grazed her blond hair with his free hand, murmuring something unintelligible.

The brush of his fingertips on her neck sent a shiver down her spine. Or perhaps it was the way his blue eyes skimmed each of her features as if committing them to memory. Tension crackled between them. They might not be able to understand each other’s language, but they were communicating on a level that hardly required words.

His tight focus on her was arresting, almost mesmerizing. He made another low comment as his fingers skimmed her cheek, her nose. When they reached her lips, she closed her eyes and swayed toward him, acknowledging some deep, primal level of connection between them. Then she blinked and pulled back sharply, astonished that she had permitted that kind of intimacy.

Perhaps he uttered an apology. She was in no position to know. She didn’t breathe when his hand dropped to her shoulder and traced the open front of her bright pink parka, handling the soft fabric with the same concentration that he’d given her hair.

He asked another one of his questions—probably whether she’d gotten it at Bloomingdales or Saks.

“Neither. It’s from Hudson Outfitters,” she answered gravely.

He laughed, a rumble from deep in his chest.

Her gaze flew to his. Had he understood her joke? Then she realized he was simply responding to the terrible absurdity of the situation. The laugh transformed his face. Until now, his expression had wavered between grim and grave. Her heart gave a little lurch as she caught the promise of warmth. And an undefinable charm that made her insides melt. To cover her confusion, she put her hand to her mouth and gave a little cough. But she sensed that he wasn’t fooled.

However, the laugh had a more practical effect, as well. It freed her from her trance. Her brain began to function on a more normal level, and she decided she was tired of having him control the situation. Especially when he could be arrested for indecent exposure.

“I wish you’d put something on,” she said. She took off her jacket, disregarding its size, and thrust it toward him.

He looked at the garment, unmoving. Then, releasing her hand, he turned and strode toward a row of doors along the wall. Behind the first was a room made entirely of some low-luster metal. But she couldn’t tell its function.

He left the door ajar and tried several others, all of which appeared to enclose supply cabinets. From the third, he pulled out a white lab coat of a slightly odd design, shook it open and slipped his arms nonchalantly through the sleeves. Then he closed the opening with what looked like a Velcro strip.

“Thanks. I guess you could tell all that tanned skin and rippling muscles were making me nervous,” Cassie quipped in a conversational tone. At least there was one advantage to her situation. She could make any damn smart comment she wanted.

He answered in the language she didn’t understand. Maybe with his own sarcastic rejoinder.

She couldn’t take more of this. Seized by an overwhelming need to reach him on some meaningful level, she thumped her chest. “My name is Cassie. Cassie Devereaux. Maybe we can start with that.”

He raised an eyebrow.

She realized she’d said too much. “I’m Cassie,” she repeated and pointed to herself again. “Cassie.”

“Cassie?”

On his lips, the syllables were warm and richly exotic.

She nodded.

He tried it out again, looking pleased. “Cassie Devereaux.”

“Yes. And you?” She pointed toward him.

He hesitated for a moment. “Thorn.”

“Thorn what?”

“Thorn.”

“All right,” she conceded. “It’s just Thorn.”

* * *

“ALL RIGHT. It’s just Thorn,” he parroted back. He had no understanding of what he was saying. Except for his name, he thought with frustration. He was a trained linguist, but he didn’t know what tongue she was trying to teach him. It didn’t have any root he could identify, but at least shades of meaning didn’t seem to depend on guttural clicks. The stresses were unusual, however, and he was having trouble wrapping his mouth around the unfamiliar j sounds. And the grammar eluded him.

Cassie was waiting. Watching. For an unguarded moment, he wanted to touch her again, feel the incredible softness of her cheek, her lips, lose himself in the honesty of physical sensations.

As he focused on her face, he had the strong conviction he’d met her before. Or had he only dreamed of her? When he tried to analyze the thought, it evaporated like mist from the surface of a deep mountain lake.

He didn’t know who she was. Or where she’d come from. Or exactly where they were playing out this drama. And when.

The last observation sent an icy chill sweeping across his skin. Panic threatened to engulf him. Underlying it was a profound sadness. He stifled both emotions with the force of his will.

The woman’s eyes continued to question him. Before he started shouting out answers, he turned and strode toward the grooming alcove. Stepping across the threshold, he slammed the barrier behind him, hoping the mores of her culture would respect his privacy. After using the facilities, he leaned over the washing basin and splashed cold water on his face. His reflection in the three-dimensional mirror mocked him.

He looked sick.

That was the cue for a wave of nausea to rise in his throat. Swaying over the basin, he grasped the cold metal and retched up stomach acid. Grimacing, he opened a compartment and pulled out a tube of mouth refresher.

The spicy flavor swept away the nasty taste and made him feel a little better, but he knew the reprieve might be temporary. He’d been running on adrenaline, reacting from moment to moment since he stepped out of the delta cylinder—and his energy reserves were just about drained.

Dizzy, Thorn gripped the edge of the basin and forced himself to recall his last memories. They were from yesterday evening. Lodar and Darnot arriving at his quarters to continue the argument they’d been having for weeks. He remembered the older man coming up behind him and then a stinging sensation in his shoulder. The rest was a blur. Except for the part where Lodar was leaning over him, his face very close—telling him he was going to get what he deserved.

A cold sweat beaded his forehead. He risked another look in the mirror and saw his skin was the color of moldy mush.

It was the symptom his fuzzy brain had been unconsciously searching for. His system was going into a toxic reaction to the delta capsule. He’d seen it happen a couple of times after inadequate preparation. If he didn’t get some ribenazine in the next few minutes, he was going to be on the floor, kicking and screaming and wishing he were dead. He wouldn’t have long to wait. The next phases were irreversible coma and death.

As he lurched out of the grooming alcove, the woman looked at him in alarm and asked an urgent question he couldn’t comprehend.

Sparing her a quick arm gesture, he commanded himself to stay conscious a few minutes longer as he staggered across the room to the cabinet marked with the symbol for healing. Inside he rummaged through small vials of liquid until his fingers closed around the one he needed. With fingers that felt thick and clumsy, he pulled at the seal. Too late. His formidable will lost the battle with his body and he crumpled to the floor.