Read Online The Touch Of Twilight by Vicki Pettersson - Free Book Online

the Shadows could check them, and kill us. Although it’d been daylight on this side of the portal, the sun had flipped around on itself on the other side of that supernatural gateway, and I walked into a replica of the street I’d left, but for the darkness blanketing the earth while the heavens were spotlit by the sun. The alternate reality was colorless, with a silver-gray haze reducing everything to a shadowy line drawing. It had also been bitingly cold…unbearable to a desert rat like myself, and the whole experience had totally creeped me out.
    Yet I was the one who spotted our first portal marker positioned above a planked-over window, and I veered to it. I’d already ripped the wood from the casing when I felt the woman’s cold hand on my back, causing me to jolt. It reminded me of that alternate reality, and I shuddered.
    “Not this one,” she said, her phosphorescent features shifting with eerie undulations, like breath over the surface of a bubble that wouldn’t break. “Too close.”
    I wasn’t sure why that mattered, as no one could follow once the portal closed behind us, but she was already moving away, so I followed. Maybe she was a part of that reality, I thought as I hurried to keep up, because her touch—never mind her look—wasn’t human. And maybe she’d been in the threshold of a nearby portal when she heard my frantic prayer, fighting boundaries and barriers to come to my rescue. I couldn’t imagine how many laws
that
would be breaking.
    “Need to get back immediately?” she asked, whirling on me suddenly. I backed up two paces, nodding. Warren and the others would be worried. She inclined her head like she’d expected that and turned away, motioning for me to follow again. Normally I didn’t do passive, but after my rescue I was inclined to let her take the lead.
    “Thank you,” I blurted out, speed walking to keep pace as the image of Vincent roiling helplessly in space replayed itself in my mind. “It’s not enough, but I don’t know what else to say. You saved me, you outplayed the Tulpa. I’ve never seen a black hole before, so I wouldn’t know how to escape it…and how’d you do that flying—?”
    “Dear, you’re babbling.” Shimmering, she cut me off with a slanted look, and I took a deep breath, not caring if she could scent my relief, my shock, and my exhaustion on the exhale. One side of her gleaming mouth quirked, but she kept those sharp teeth hidden as she jerked her head to the left.
    “Sorry. I’ve never been rescued by an angel before,” I said, as I sniffed at the air. Warren left a trail like a skunk…deliberately, though. He knew I’d recognize it and head in his direction, and right now it smelled like he’d moved to the nearby outlet mall where he liked to window shop after a long day of panhandling. I started that way, but paused when the woman doubled over in her tracks. Laughter caused her to literally froth at the mouth, spume also slinging from the ends of her constantly rejuvenating hair with every jerk of her tiny body.
    I smiled uncertainly, then ducked my head as she motioned for me to keep heading forward, though I remained aware of her behind me—the angle of her body, the pressure of that cold palm on my back again—as we hiked along Charleston Boulevard. I thought about blowing a breath in the direction of the shops to let the troop know I was coming, but didn’t in case the Tulpa was still in the vicinity.
    “Who are you?” I said, when the woman had finally sobered. She was still smiling, those teeth like dazzling white stones, her marble eyes catching the streetlights to dance.
    “Do I look like a ‘who’ to you?” She glanced away as she scoffed, then did a double-take at a run-down auto shop. “Oh, look,” she said casually. “There’s our portal.”
    I glanced at the dilapidated building, seeing nothing but chipped paint, rusting roll-doors, and a pile of stripped tires breeding black widows in the side lot.