“Let’s go,” Alli said grimly. “I just want to get to the bottom of all this and put it behind me.”
“Come on then.” And Sophie led the way.
Thirty-Seven
Dr. Caroline Lambert was a plump, pretty woman with wild, fly-away golden-red curls and a shy smile that Alli liked at once. When she found out who Alli was, her pretty face broke into a huge grin of relief.
“Oh, you don’t know how worried we’ve all been!” she exclaimed, wringing Alli’s hand enthusiastically. “I was so afraid that awful warrior from another universe that Sophie was telling me you dreamed about had somehow used my PORTAL to get in here and steal you away!”
“I can assure you, nobody stole me away anywhere,” Alli said dryly. But even as she spoke, her temples started to throb again.
“Can Alli have a look at the PORTAL?” Sophie asked Caroline. “From a safe distance of course,” she added quickly.
“Of course! I have a guardrail installed now,” Caroline answered. “It reminds people where to stand since they just seem drawn to it when we fire it up.”
She walked them to the back of her laboratory where the machine was. The PORTAL had a shiny, brass rectangular frame and looked a little like an oversized mirror but with no glass in it.
“Hmm,” Alli studied it, but the machine which supposedly allowed one to look into other Universes—and sometimes to travel in them—didn’t ring any bells.
“Does it jog your memory at all?” Sophie asked anxiously.
Alli shook her head.
“Not a bit, actually.”
“Maybe if I start it up,” Caroline suggested. “Though of course, even if you were sucked into the universe with the Kru’ell Ones in it, the chances of you seeing that particular world are pretty slim.”
“Still, it can’t hurt to look, I suppose,” Sophie said.
“Of course.” Caroline went over to the PORTAL’s controls. She pushed a button and turned a shiny brass wheel.
At once the empty brass rectangle filled with a field of stars.
Alli started to object that all she could see was space when a new object came into view. It looked like a dot and then, as it rushed forward, it grew and grew until it was clearly a planet. A blue-green planet wreathed in clouds.
“That’s Earth,” Sophie murmured. “But it’s almost hard to tell because of all the cloud cover. Those are way more clouds than our Earth usually has.”
Alli’s temples gave a warning twinge, signaling the onset of a headache but she found she couldn’t look away as the cloud-covered Earth got bigger.
You’ve seen this view before, whispered a little voice in her head. Back when you went to the feast.
Alli frowned. What feast? She had a brief mental image of herself dressed in a long, sheer black gown and a royal blue cloak but when she tried to chase it, the picture evaporated like smoke.
But now the view on the PORTAL was getting more detailed. They were past the atmosphere of Earth now and hovering over the White House in DC. But…was it the White House? For someone had painted it black—or at least, very dark gray and there was a high black fence all around it.
“What in the world?” Sophie murmured beside her. “I wonder what’s going on in this world?”
“Look at the armed guards out front,” Caroline said. “They look like Kindred—don’t they?”
“In a way. But look at those eyes—black and silver like mirrors!” Sophie shivered.
He had mirrored eyes but at the very last, you saw into his soul, whispered the voice in Alli’s head. Her temples gave another, stronger twinge—the warning of a truly awful headache brewing on the horizon.
Still she watched.
They were rushing into the White House now, speeding down a hallway to a room that seemed somehow familiar.
That’s where the feast was, the voice informed her. But the long, low table with its black and red cushions had been pushed to the side. Sitting at the far end of the room in a golden, throne-like chair, was a Kindred warrior so huge he dwarfed even the guards around him. He had a thick, bushy black beard that had been braided with a bone at the end of it and he was wearing a cloak made of coarse black fur that was almost the same color as his hair. Instead of black and silver, like the eyes of the warriors around him, his eyes gleamed a deadly black and red.
“The Overlord,” Alli breathed and then wondered why she had said it. She didn’t know this man—did she?
“What’s that?” Sophie and Caroline both turned to her, looking concerned.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” Alli rubbed her temples again. God, her head was throbbing. And still she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the PORTAL.
At that moment, another man walked into the scene they were watching. He was tall, with black hair shaved close to his scalp, and the same mirrored eyes as the other warriors. To Alli, he looked strangely familiar.