Noah. Jacquelyn Frank

      The wail of a child penetrated Noah’s mind, triggering the autonomic response to draw a breath. He gasped, coughed violently, and struggled to rapidly stagger to his feet. His eyes were burning. From what, he couldn’t fathom. He instinctively reached toward the cry of the Enforcers’ child, dragging Leah to himself as his balance failed and he fell back down to a single knee. Blindly, he ran hands over the warm little body of his charge, all the while forcing himself to breathe in a semblance of a regular rhythm. He felt Leah’s pajamas were intact, as were her hair and lashes, both of which would’ve been damaged if the inexplicable flames he’d seen billowing into the room had singed or burned her.

      He was grateful to realize she was more frightened than anything else, and he cuddled her closely, shushing and swaying with her as he tried to rub clarity into his burning eyes. He was impervious to fire, so he couldn’t understand why he felt as if he’d been burned. He would never have thought that the ritual to find his mate would in any way be capable of causing harm to anyone. It was inconceivable. He was still struggling with denial and unanswered questions as he groped into the smears of light and dark in search of Corrine.

      “Hush, Leah, you’re safe,” he rasped soothingly to the child, somehow managing to sound far more convincing than he felt. Suddenly his hand hit silky soft curls, his fingers weaving into the red strands that came into focus as he leaned closer to them. Everything seemed so loud, hurting his ears. Everything smelled so harsh and tasted so bitter. But it all seemed to calm down just a little when he finally touched the cool, clammy skin of Corrine’s face.

      He heard her cough, and she jerked beneath his touch.

      “It is all right,” he reassured her as she rasped and gagged for breath. He blindly pulled her against him, instinctively bringing both females into the circle of his safeguard. He might be sightless and disoriented, but he’d be damned if he was going to let either one of them move a millimeter away from his protection.

      Noah turned his face to the right when he abruptly realized something very important.

      Sunlight.

      There was no mistaking the sensation of sunlight. Especially after being taxed by whatever ordeal it was that they had just been churned through, there could be no other cause for the unmistakable lethargy that meant pure sunlight was shining down on them.

      “It is dusk,” he argued out loud. “It is night!”

      Corrine went rigid against him as she realized why he was in conflict over that point.

      “We’re still indoors,” she said with a whisper, her hands brushing over the floor beneath her knees. She recognized by touch bits of the things belonging to her sanctum, until she swept her fingers to the left toward Noah and touched carpeting that was unmistakably deep with pile.

      The floor to the sanctum beneath the pillows was only bare, polished wood.

      Noah couldn’t remain on his knees a moment longer. He hauled both of his charges up with him as he gained his feet, bracing his legs apart. He closed his eyes to discontinue the reflexive need to visually identify his surroundings. He took a deep, cleansing breath and reached for the power that centered everything that he was. It cast out of him like a net, a wholly different sensory network that blanketed the entire area. He sensed the pure energy of the sunlight, the life forces of a few animals and a dense population of humans.

      Kane and Corrine lived in solitude, their closest neighbors all Demons themselves for the most part, and even they were a good mile away. At first it felt no different than anything else he had always sensed with ease and an almost careless ability, but the information Noah’s power was giving to him made no sense. It felt as though he were standing on the edge of a city. A human city.

      That was the moment his vision finally decided to cooperate and join his other senses. He hadn’t even realized he’d opened his eyes until they focused on something in front of him.

      A room, large and expansive, carpeted from wall to windows. Windows that looked down on an enormous metropolis. It only took him a moment to recognize enough buildings to identify it as Chicago.

      And yet…

      When he turned his head to the right, he was still in Corrine’s particularly designed sanctum. He focused down at his feet, trying to make sense of the trick of his eyes.

      There, as if spliced together, was the line where two drastically different floors met and fused, polished oak and halves of pillows meeting up with plush carpets and pristine barrenness. He stood between this unlikely meshing of rooms, a foot on either side, holding Corrine to his right fully in the room he knew, and Leah on his left, fully in the room that was foreign to him.

      For a moment, it felt as if he’d been frozen still in the middle of one of his sister’s teleportations. When a Mind Demon teleported someone else from one point to another, those two points appeared to squeeze together, making it seem as if you could step from the origination to the destination instantaneously. However, Noah knew this wasn’t the case. When the two places of a teleport met, it was in a queer distortion of shapes and sounds and visuals. Nothing was clearly definable until you stepped fully in one direction or another, and the effect of the transport washed away a moment later.

      So how had these two places connected in this Escher-like fashion? Modern metropolis suite looking down on a city from on high, and peaceful country setting in rural England?

      He didn’t have time to contemplate it any further. The sound of voices slowly faded in around him, echoing everywhere, disjointed as he looked for the people they should have been coming from. Instinctively, the Demon King stepped toward the side of the split that he knew best, the one without apparent variables that could threaten their safety. As he did so, the foreign room seemed to flicker with a strange pattern of sunlight. He glanced toward the expansive windows. He drew in a sharp breath as he realized the clouds and the weather were changing, as well as the position of the sun.

      More specifically, it all seemed to be running backward, from west to east across the sky. It only took twenty seconds for it to stop at a point that seemed to be shortly after dawn. As the light faded out to that warm half-light of a bright, promising sun and the remnants of the very last touches of a rose and violet dawn, the voices came closer and people suddenly took their positions in the room.

      A woman and a man, one seated on a couch, the other standing almost a hand’s reach away from Noah as she gazed appreciatively at a painting hanging on the wall. Since the painting was partially cut off by the spliced nature of the joined rooms, Noah came to understand that this effect was only being seen by those who had apparently caused it.

      Which, of course, meant nothing when the woman spoke clearly for the first time, and a whole new recognition set in.

      Noah’s breath caught as she stepped back, turning away from her appraisal of the painting, giving him the full picture of her tall, athletic figure, the curves and shape of which he knew purely by heart, and the saucy swing of a pristine white braid of hair.

      She crossed the room with refined movement, a well-practiced gait that had clearly been learned, covering up the more natural slink of her body as he watched the line of her spine and hips. Noah barely heard her conversation with the man whose nervous energy was grating over his senses. He was too astounded, realizing he was actually looking on the fully focused face and figure of the woman he had dreamed of so incessantly.

      “Whoa.”

      Corrine whispered the word in