A Warrior s Desire - By Pamela Palmer Page 0,8

both high and low.

He hoped to God they were merely insects and not something that might decide to put him on the dinner menu.

A chill slid down his spine, part excitement, part reaction to the total unknown.

What dangers lurked in this place that he might never know existed until too late? With a start, he realized the flowers had disappeared.

All that remained beneath his feet was a tuft of orange-and-gold grass.

Jesus.

He looked around, trying to get his bearings, needing to figure out which way to go.

Where was the gate? His gut clenched with the sharp realization that it didn't matter.

Even if he stayed here and waited for the gate to open in a month, he couldn't get through.

Not without help.

There was no turning back.

The only way he'd ever get home was hand in hand with the princess herself.

Anything less and he'd never see home again.

Which was precisely the reason he wouldn't fail.

Determination surged into the flow of adrenaline firing his body and he grinned.

God, he loved a challenge.

But as he looked for his first landmark, the twin peaks of the red mountains, a sound reached his ears, beneath the clicks and squeals of the night creatures, that had ice forming in his blood.

The sound of voices.

Human voices.

No, not human. Esri.
Chapter 3
Charlie tensed, his mind scrambling as he listened to the low, unintelligible voices drawing nearer.

Esri voices.

From the sound of them, they were just below the rise, less than twenty yards away.

Three Esri, he'd guess.

Maybe four.

By the time he knew for sure, they'd be able to see him.

And he couldn't kill them, unfortunately.

He might be able to outrun them, but a human-looking Royal Guard running from the gate was going to look damned suspicious.

No, the only thing to do was hide and pray none of them possessed a gift that would sense him.

He scanned the area and spied a nearby thicket of low, bloodred bushes that might do the trick.

It would have to.

Using skills honed as a SEAL, he ran across the hard-packed dirt to the bushes without making a sound.

As he ducked low within the center of the soft, fuzzy branches, a flurry of winged insects took to the air, like a spray of raindrops flying skyward.

Wishing for some red camouflage paint, Charlie took a deep breath and concentrated on quieting his thudding heart.

Calm.

Steady.

He looked back the way he'd come and nearly had a heart attack.

A narrow path of that same thick rust-and-gold grass led straight to him.

Grass that hadn't been there a moment ago, as if it had followed him.

It was going to lead them right to him! The grass disappeared.

Charlie blinked.

Shit.

Nothing remained of the grass except the tuft beneath his feet.

He reached down to feel the stuff and had gotten nothing more than the fleeting impression that it felt like the grass at home when the grass disappeared and he once more found himself on a bed of tiny pink flowers.

Charlie's skin raced with goose bumps.

Kade had warned him that the two worlds didn't follow the same laws of nature.

He'd laugh at the understatement if he weren't quite so shaken.

The nearing voices pulled his attention away from the insta- garden beneath his feet and again he prayed none of the Esri possessed the ability to sense his energy.

While every Esri had certain baseline abilities, each had unique gifts as well.

Hell, most of their human descendants...the Sitheen... did too, with the unfortunate exception of his own line.

Neither he nor Harrison had any special talents except for the inability to be enchanted which, all things considered, was really all that mattered.

Still, it would have been nice to have had some magic at his disposal.

Larsen foresaw death.

Jack could speak with his Sitheen ancestors.

Myrtle was a healer of prodigious skill.

The Esri, Baleris, had been able to smell the power stones.

And Zander, the Esri Kade had killed, had been able to sense power in others.

If any of the approaching Esri possessed that ability, he was in trouble.

Because if they could smell power, even the low-level power of a human's life force, they'd know he was here.

Pale heads broke the level of the rise.

Charlie watched, barely breathing, as three male Esri wearing the same silver tunics and black cloaks he himself wore came fully into view.

One of the three possessed the startling whiteness of both hair and skin that he'd come to associate with true Esri, but the other two just looked deathly pale.

All three were fairly tall with lanky, rangy builds.

Their hair varied in shade from stark white to white- blond.

Though the air