“We’d be evacuating,” Lucas said. “We still may. We’ll know more in the morning.”
Karina hugged her shoulders. “Lucas, where are we?”
He was looking directly at her. “We’re on base.”
“Where is this base? I’ve seen those birds. There are no birds like that in North America.”
Lucas examined her face for a long breath. “You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
He grimaced. “You asked for it. As the planet rotates, fluctuations between the forces of gravity and nuclear reactions on the subleptron and subquark level cause a ripple effect in reality, where time and space are not constant but dynamic. Parts of space-time become incompatible with the current reality and are discarded. In essence, Earth continuously sheds chunks of itself. They linger for a time and dissipate, some slower, some faster. We’re in one such chunk—we call them fragments. It was shed sometime during the late Pliocene, approximately two and a half million years ago in what is now Texas. This pocket is stable and shouldn’t begin to dissipate for another couple thousand years. Can you make cubed steak?”
“What?” Karina stared at him, sure she had misheard.
“I asked if you can cook cubed steak. I just realized I’d really like some.”
“Yes, I can. You’re not joking?”
“About the steak?”
“About the fragments.”
Lucas shook his head.
This was just insane. “So we’re in an alternate reality? Like in a parallel dimension? Like in Star Trek?”
“No. A mirror dimension is a self-contained, complete reality. We’re in a dimensional fragment.” Lucas leaned back against the wall. “Okay, think of an onion. The inner layers are white, and the outer layer is brown. Suppose the outer layer rots. The onion makes a replacement layer, identical to this outer one, and sheds the rotten layer in bits and pieces, some big, some tiny. We are in a piece of that rotten layer.”
She stared at him. If he wasn’t lying, they weren’t anywhere near Oklahoma. They weren’t even on the same planet. Escape was impossible.
“Don’t think about it too much,” Lucas said. “Subquantum mechanics will drive you insane.”
“Can we get back? To normal Earth?”
“It depends on how close the layer is to its reality. The motel where you were attacked was in a layer that had barely begun to separate, so we could cross in and out easily. But this pocket has peeled much too far away for you and I to exit on our own. We need someone to rip it. To open a gateway.” Lucas pushed off from the wall.
“But we can go back?” Surely they had to go back occasionally. Their clothes had tags; their plates had Corelle stamped on the back. Microwaves and refrigerators didn’t sprout on prehistoric trees, which meant the people of Daryon had to pop back and forth from the normal Earth to here and back on a whim.
Lucas leaned toward her. His gaze fixed on her. Suddenly he was occupying too much space. She took a step back, her spine pressing against the wall.
A slow smile curved Lucas’s lips. “Yes. You can go back. But never without me. If you ever try, I will find you and bring you back.” His smile grew wider. “And then all bets are off.”
He was looking at her with an open sexual hunger, so intense, for a second she didn’t think it could be sincere. She froze, terrified. And then a small part of her responded to it. For a second, Karina wondered what it would be like to cross the distance between them, laugh right into that stare, and walk away, leaving him standing there like an idiot. But as long as he controlled Emily, she could do nothing.
He leaned forward a quarter inch, like a predatory cat about to pounce.
In her mind, Karina gulped and fled down the hallway, her heart hammering too fast and too loud. But showing weakness wasn’t an option. Lucas had told her before that he was a predator. If she ran, the predator would chase.
She raised her face toward him. “If I do go back without you, don’t find me.”
He turned his head to the side, like a dog, studying her. “Or?”
“Or I will kill you.”
He laughed, a low rich sound that sent shivers of alarm down her spine. “How?”
“I’ll think of something.”
She turned her back to him and forced herself to walk slowly toward the kitchen.
Lucas tilted his head and watched Karina retreat down the hallway. The look in her eyes, the angle of her face, the way she stood, everything communicated defiance. She challenged him. She had no idea how exciting this made her. He wanted to pin her against the wall, until she acknowledged that he was strong enough and powerful enough for her. He wanted to kiss and taste and grind and own. Different standards, he reminded himself. For him it would be flirting. For her, it would be a prelude to rape.
Lucas looked at the ceiling. He knew exactly where this violent impulse was coming from. It was an evolutionary echo, the same echo that told him to murder every other male in the house and then hunt her until she gave in. He made a choice to reject it daily. Strangely, it wasn’t getting any easier.
Henry’s light steps approached him. “Physical assault is probably not the best way to go,” Henry murmured.
Sometimes Lucas could swear the man could read thoughts, even though every Mind Bender Lucas had ever met maintained it was impossible. “Playing in my head?”
“Of course not.” Henry smiled at him. “Your fists are clenched and it’s written all over your face.”
He’d figured as much. “She’s beginning to ask questions.”
“That’s a little faster than I expected.” Henry frowned. “I wiped almost twelve hours of severe pain from her. Usually a wipe of that extent leaves people inert longer. You’re pacing the explanations?”
Lucas nodded. “Not my first time.”
He’d helped bring people over a few times before. A human mind could only accept so much. If he flooded her with the information contradicting her view of reality, the impact of it, combined with her physical trauma, would cause her to snap under the pressure. Her body was at its limits already, fighting the poison and coping with his venom and its consequences, which would soon follow.
Lucas started down the hallway. He needed a shower and some time away from everyone to soothe the excitement rushing through his veins.
“Lucas?” Henry called.
Lucas turned.
His cousin looked at him for a long moment. “Be kind.”
An hour later Karina put the dinner on the table. The encounter in the hallway kept replaying in her head and she couldn’t decide if she’d botched it or handled it well. Emily still slept. Henry had said the fatigue was normal, but she worried all the same.
“Cubed steak.” Henry slid into his seat. “ ‘Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.’ ”
Karina took her seat. Lucas sat to the right of her. Too close. She should have served the dinner in the dining room instead of the kitchen. The bigger table would’ve given her more space.
Lucas crowded her, drinking in her anxiety. Karina swallowed, unable to help herself. He was simply too large and he watched her constantly. Even when she couldn’t see him, she couldn’t get rid of the pressure his gaze brought. He leaned toward her, emanating menace, and she shrank from him out of sheer self-defense.
His lips stretched and Lucas showed her his teeth, large and sharp. “Am I scary?”
She met his stare. “Yes,” she said. “But you know that already. Making me admit it makes you cruel. Corn or beans?”
He drew back. His eyes widened and for a moment the burden of his presence eased. “Corn.”
She passed the dish of corn to him.
Daniel sauntered into the room. While Henry migrated from place to place and Lucas stalked, his steps soundless and full of fierce grace, Daniel strode as if his feet did the ground a great favor. He didn’t walk but floated, devastating in his beauty and perfectly aware of it.
Daniel took a seat directly opposite her. He speared a steak and dropped it on his plate. “Are you going to do this every day? Cook the dinner, be the dinner?”
“Yes,” Karina said with a calm she didn’t feel.
“Why? Are you totally spineless? What do you think sucking up will earn you? Look at him.” Daniel pointed at Lucas. “He doesn’t care.”
“I’m not doing it for him.”
“Then why?”
“Here we go.” Henry rolled his eyes.
Daniel pushed off from the table, balancing his chair on its back legs, and crossed his arms. “No, I want her to enlighten me. How deeply has Stockholm syndrome set in?”
Karina put down her fork. Her instinct told her that whatever she said next would define her place in this house. The idea of some flattering subterfuge crossed her mind and died. She wondered if she should say nothing at all. In the end, she decided on honesty.
“I understand that I can die at any moment. Lucas’s cousin died at the last Christmas dinner. For all I know, Lucas might die tomorrow, killed by your enemies or by your family members. Without Lucas I have no worth. My daughter is here because of me. If I’m no longer needed, I expect that neither will she be. I’ve seen enough of your family to realize we won’t be allowed to leave. You will dispose of us as if we never existed. I have to find some way to make myself valued beyond Lucas. Then, if he dies, both my daughter and I might survive.”
“And you do this by becoming our housekeeper?” Daniel grinned. “Cooking, cleaning up after us? Tell me, how low will you stoop? If I leave some shit in the bathroom for you, will you clean it up?”
“No,” Karina said. “You’ll clean your own shit. Unless you’re sitting in a pile of it right now, you must know how to aim for the toilet and wipe your own ass.”
The amusement in Daniel’s eyes crystallized into anger. “If you want to ingratiate yourself, there’s a much easier way of doing it. You can come over here right now and suck my cock. That will put you into my good graces much faster than scrubbing the sink.”