Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3) by Lindsey Fairleigh Read Free Book Online Page B

and redoubled her efforts. “I swear, Kat! I had no idea!”
    “Now, Lex!” Nik took hold of my arm, practically dragging me to the basement door.
    “What’s going on?” Panic threaded through my words. I didn’t fight against Nik, but I couldn’t help but stare back at Marcus as I passed him. “Is this it? Is it Apep? Is it time?”
    Someone banged on the front door hard enough to rattle it on its sturdy hinges, and I had my answer. Nik had enshrouded the entire house and its immediate grounds in a shell of solidified At, and the only way anyone would’ve been able to get to the door would have been through the At.
    “Yes,” Marcus said, pushing me after Nik. “Now go!” As we’d talked strategy over the past week, Marcus had revealed that it seemed to take the twins’ innate defense mechanism a little while to warm up, especially earlier on in my pregnancy. Our first priority was to buy them time once we knew Apep was here, his threat to me—to the twins—imminent.
    I watched, wide-eyed and gaping, as the shimmering iridescence of At crept across the surface of the door like the deepest of freezes, transforming it into the otherworldly material. A moment later, the entire door dissolved into a glittering dust that floated away in the warm, midday air.
    Carson stood in the open doorway, my old grad school peer. My academic competitor. The adorable, goofy, sweet young man who’d tricked me into believing he was my friend. The Nejeret who’d been in a healing trance just days ago. The one actual living person who I blamed for this entire, hopeless situation.
    When his eyes met mine, an all-too-familiar inky darkness churned just below the surface, and my knees gave out.
    “No . . .”
    Nik shoved me behind himself, though I would’ve gone willingly. Hell, I was going willingly, but my foot tangled with Kat’s, and we both stumbled to the floor.
    Carson—or rather, Apep—twisted his lips into a cruel sneer, his bright blue eyes laughing at us. At me. “Hello, Mother .”
    “M—mother?” My stomach twisted, and I pressed my palm against my belly to stave off a rush of nausea. Was I looking at some time-traveling version of my grown-up unborn son?
    Some distant, less dumbfounded part of my brain puzzled out his meaning. Carson wasn’t my son. And he wasn’t here to kill me, or to kill my children. He wanted to possess them—to ooze into their still-forming bodies, eject their emerging souls, and hoard their sheuts, their power, for himself. He wanted to become my child. To become the most powerful being in all the universe. And I would be his mother.
    The prospect was more terrifying than death.
    I was on my knees and pulling Kat up with me when a strange, butterfly-like sensation tickled me from deep within. It was closely followed by a gut-twisting cramp. I doubled over but didn’t give up the retreat. I crawled toward the basement door, Kat pushing my rear to propel me ahead.
    Behind me, Kat yelped, and a moment later, the grunts of a scuffle give way to heavy breathing and a whole lot of nothing else. I risked a backward glance, daring to hope it was over and that Apep-Carson had somehow been subdued. Damn hope gets me every time.
    Wearing what appeared to be a glimmering, almost transparent suit of armor, Apep-Carson stood before a trembling Kat. He was holding a pistol, the nozzle pressed against her forehead. Marcus stood just out of arm’s reach of Kat, hands upraised in surrender, Nik stood a few feet away from me, and Dominic lay sprawled on the ground near the missing front door, framed by a seeping puddle of blood.
    I slapped a hand over my mouth.
    Dominic wasn’t moving. I couldn’t even be sure he was still breathing, and with all that blood . . .
    And Kat—this was the second time Carson had held her at gunpoint. It didn’t matter that he was possessed by Apep this time. I could only imagine how terrified she was.
    “Let me pass or I’ll kill sweet little Kat here,”