Alex pulled the silver-handled knife out of the sheath behind the two magazines on the left side of his belt. He held it by the blade still stained with Jax’s blood and placed the handle with the House of Rahl symbol in the man’s hand. Cain looked down at the knife in his hand as Alex stood with his own hands in his pockets, waiting.
Cain finally gestured with the knife. “All right, if it will end this pathetic emotional drama, go ahead.”
“Alone,” Alex reminded him.
“Leave them be, Yuri.”
The greasy pirate moved away to stand beside Sedrick Vendis as the three of them watched Alex go up to where Jax, her hands tied behind her back, stood all by herself against the stone wall. She looked forlorn and resigned.
Vendis asked Cain something in a whisper. The men leaned in, discussing it among themselves as Alex stepped up close to Jax. Her chin trembled as she finally looked up at him.
“I’m so sorry, Alex.”
As he put his arms around her she put her face against his shoulder and started to cry.
“Don’t be sorry, Jax,” he whispered, “be strong.”
Alex placed his open pocketknife that he had palmed into her hands behind her back.
She went still when she realized what it was.
“The blade is razor-sharp,” he whispered into her ear. “Be careful when you cut the ropes. Keep your hands together as if they’re still tied and wait. You’ll know when.”
“Alex—”
“Jax, I’d rather die trying than let them have what they want. You can’t bargain with evil. You can’t appease it. You can’t compromise with it.
“Giving in to them will only lead to endless suffering and death in the long run. How long until they return here deciding they want more from this world and start to kill again to get it? I have to try to stop it now. You’re the one who came here to stop this evil. You came here to do a job. It’s not finished. Are you with me? Are you willing to try?”
He knew what he was asking of her. Yuri stood not far away leering hungrily at her. They both knew the consequences if they failed, not merely for her, but for everyone.
She nodded against him, putting on a show for the men watching. “You’re right. If we have any chance, we have to take it. I was so afraid for the people of your world, so afraid that I had come for your help only to end up causing harm, that I forgot who I was for a time. Dear spirits, can you ever forgive me for being so weak?”
He reached up and held her tight, smoothing her hair as he held her head to him. “That’s the Jax I love. You’re anything but weak. You’re the strongest person I know. In case this doesn’t work, just know that I love you more than anything.”
“You are a devious man, Alexander Rahl.” She kissed his neck. “I love you anyway.”
“I learned it from you.”
“Enough,” Cain growled.
Alex kissed her quickly, then turned to his task.
60
ALEX HELD HIS HAND OUT. “I need the knife.”
Radell Cain’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“To open the gateway.”
“And how is the knife going to do that?”
“Opening the gateway requires the person named by the Law of Nines. Right?”
Cain studied his face for a moment. “Go on.”
Alex spread his hands. “So how the hell is the gateway supposed to know it’s me, know I’m the one named by the Law of Nines? Do you think that because it’s me I can simply say ‘Open sesame’ and the gateway will recognize me as the one and open? There is no magic in this world, so how is the gateway to know that I’m the one that is able to open it?”
“I give up, how?” Cain asked with clear distaste for the game Alex was playing.
“Blood.”
“Blood?”
“Yes. It needs my blood to recognize that I’m the one who is able to open it.”
“Well,” Cain said, “now you have my interest.”
He handed the silver knife kept by the Daggett Society for a thousand years back to Alex, the one named by the Law of Nines as the only person who could open the gateway.
Alex drew the weapon across his forearm. As dull as it was, he was still able to cut himself enough to bleed liberally. In the back of his mind, Alex realized that the cut on his left forearm was very much the same place, direction, and length as the cut on Jax’s forearm from when the man who had infiltrated the Daggett Trust had attacked her.
Alex wiped the blade in the blood running down his arm. The cut stung, but he was already lost in his own world, in what he had to do. He turned the blade and wiped the other side until both sides of the steel were red and blood dripped from the tip.
Radell Cain seemed to be quite caught up in the ritual to open the gateway.
Alex went to the rock that had the flat spot with the petroglyph. He held the knife over the rock, slanting it down just a little. He let a few drops of blood drip off the tip into the slot.
With a thud to the air all around, a faint glow of light ignited over the sand.
Men watching oohed at the strange, charged feeling to the air and the light from nowhere shining before them. It was beautiful, entrancing, inviting.
“All right, I need some people to send through the gateway.”
“What for?” Cain asked with an angry frown.
“It doesn’t just open,” Alex insisted. “You can’t load cargo on the sand in the center and transport it. It needs people to work. It’s people that are the core of its function, so the gateway needs people to open.
The more people the better it works — the wider the gateway opens to accommodate them. In that way, the more things — the more supplies and cargo — the gateway will support going through it.”
Radell Cain thought it over. He seemed to understand that it made sense.
Everyone else stood staring in amazement at the slowly twisting shaft of light hovering over the sand before them.
“Well?” Alex asked. “You wanted the gateway opened. It’s opened. But to make it actually work, we need to send people through it.”
Radell Cain, finally grinning in triumph, gestured some of his men forward. “Come on, then. Let’s have some of you go tell them that we’ve succeeded.”
Half a dozen men rushed forward. Alex was surprised that they seemed so eager. He guessed that in their world they were used to such things and accepted them.
The men gathered out on the area of sand. They held their hands out as if showering in the light. By their reaction it appeared to tingle pleasantly. They all looked up into the sky as if looking up into the source of the warm light. Like kids about to go on an amusement-park ride, they all wore big grins.
Radell Cain stepped forward to the edge of the granite before the sand, fascinated by the light show and the way it began to sparkle with the presence of the men. Sedrick Vendis as well stepped up to get a closer look.
“All right,” Cain said to Alex, gesturing with an arm as if urging him to levitate the men, “go on, open it fully. Do it.”
Alex held the knife in his fist above the slot. “Ready?” he asked the men in the light.
They were all grins and nods.
Alex shoved the blade charged with his blood into the slot.
In an instant, the men were drawn upward without their feet leaving the sand, elongating them into columns of flesh ripping apart into an explosion of blood and gore that shot skyward. They never had time to scream, but the
