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Chapter one

A Hole In The Sky

R ifts in the fabric of time and space were becoming a real nuisance.

I stared up at the swirling black hole and grimaced. It warped the surrounding air, shifting and contorting so that the starlight of the night sky shimmered. The lights of the Aurora Borealis weaved in and out of this world, dancing in a way that was entirely new and utterly terrifying.

I breathed out, watching as the tiny molecules of carbon dioxide exiting my body condensed into an icy mist before my very eyes. It was cold here; the climate bordering on inhospitable. Even my two thick coats, one of wool and one of fur, and thick, woolen socks weren’t keeping the chill from reaching my bones. My teeth chattered as a familiar voice spoke from beside me, shouting to be heard over the cacophony of the fissure, the long, guttural wail it was making, like the world was crying out to us as it ripped itself apart.

“Professor Belling,” Wyn Kendrick shrieked.

I turned toward a man who I could only describe as supremely average. Average build, average height, average light brown hair and dull gray eyes. Ridiculous wire-rimmed spectacles sat perched upon his nose, sliding ever downwards so that he had developed the habitual tick of pushing them back up again. The only difference in his appearance between here and the grim desk job he occupied in a nondescript government facility far away was the skepticism in his eyes and the little line of frost along his jaw.

“Every attempt we’ve made to close the rift has only resulted in ripping it open even further.”

I frowned, turning my attention back to the breach, considering.

“If we could reverse the polarity—” I began, already knowing he would have a reason we could not. That was always the first attempt they made.

“It’s too strong, too big,” he told me. “Our machines can’t generate enough power even in a more accommodating environment. But out here…”

“Right. Yes, I understand.”

I narrowed my gaze, staring into the swirling mass as if it would reveal itself to me. As if it would gift me some epiphany, some solution to this celestial conundrum.

“It isn’t behaving like a normal black hole,” he said then. “Not that there is a normal black hole, to be certain. But what I mean is, it isn’t exhibiting the sort of properties that one might expect from the astrophysical anomaly that you and I have spent our lives studying.”

That he had spent his life studying. Men like Wyn studied the black holes, the celestial bodies, the stars and their alignments. I studied beyond those things. I studied past and present and future. I studied connectivity and meaning. I did not research black holes because I wanted to know how they formed or where they had come from. I studied them because I wanted to know where they would lead. And it was merely fortunate that my studies coincided with a point in history in which these anomalies had apparently decided to materialize in our own skies.

“You mean it isn’t devouring every bit of matter surrounding it,” I replied, raising a brow to remind Mr. Kendrick that I wasn’t a fool.

If this were a true black hole, it would have created a field of gravitational pull so powerful that nothing could evade it. Not even light. Hence the name “black hole”. And yet, soldiers milled about below it, glancing uncertainly upward from time to time as if waiting for a threat that they could actually shoot to present itself. Unanchored crates and equipment lay scattered around tents and snowdrifts. Scientists who were more concerned about marking themselves as intellectuals and distinguishing themselves from the common servicemen flitted from instrument to instrument in their flimsy lab coats.

“Precisely,” Wyn answered with a nod, adjusting those accursed spectacles and ignoring my look of displeasure at being patronized, yet again, by a man in my field. “It’s behaving just like the last three except even more erratically.”

“How so?”

“The pattern of the swirls is different, more intense. Just like the last three, it seems to be moving quite a bit within itself but even more so. It’s… tumultuous.”

“Tumultuous,” I repeated, turning back to the mass of inky black stained against the night sky. It was an apt word. Wyn and I had dispatched the last two of these ourselves without a problem but this one was different. I couldn’t define how I knew. Just that I felt it. It wasn’t just the sheer size of the anomaly. In fact, it almost seemed even larger than it was, like there was an even bigger aura surrounding it, a darkness we couldn’t see, and it felt… angry.

“I should return to the university,” I started, turning my attention away from the rift and back to Wyn. He was already nodding as I explained myself. “The Dean should be informed and I will reach out to my contacts in the world of academia. If they have any suggestions—”

“I don’t have to remind you to keep this out of the press’ hands this time, I assume,” Wyn interrupted me, his tone changing from friendly scientific collaboration to authoritative warning. “We don’t want a repeat of last time.”

“The people had a right to know,” I snapped, bristling at his insinuation.

“We cannot trust the people to regulate their emotional response to such news,” he barked back at me. Sensing his own rising fury, as well as mine, he took a breath and sighed, trying to relieve some of the tension. But his eyes were still as cold as the frigid landscape around us when he added, “Not every anomaly is apocalyptic, Seren.”

Perhaps it was the condescending insinuation that I couldn’t tell the difference between a new avenue of scientific study and the end of the world, perhaps it was his assumption that he had any right to command me at all, or perhaps it was the use of my given name rather than the one he knew I preferred. But I saw red as the rage welled up within me and I prepared to set it loose on my disgruntled colleague.

Before I could tell Wyn Kendrick how I really felt about working with him, a booming roar of fury that shook the very mountains themselves interrupted us.

Wyn and I ducked, on instinct, and turned toward the only phenomena that could have made such an unnatural sound. We both stared up at the roiling black hole just as a full sized minotaur tumbled from the sky.

There was a moment of hesitation, of awe, as every person gathered in the camp stopped what they were doing to stare at the mythical beast that had just dropped down among them. My jaw slackened as my mind hurled itself into oblivion, trying desperately to understand the signals that my eyes were sending to my brain. A minotaur, exactly as described in ancient Greek legend, with the body of a giant, muscled man and the head and tail of a bull. It roared again and the sound filled my ears as I blinked away my shock. It was real.

The soldiers broke the spell first, shouting and running for their guns, taking up position all along the mountainside. They aimed the shaking barrels of their rifles at the fabled monster and waited for the command to shoot. The minotaur wasted no time either. It brandished the biggest axe I’d ever seen, raising it over its head and roaring so loud the mountain beneath our feet trembled. Wyn ducked but I remained standing, my eyes planted firmly on that axe.

Who was arming Minotaurs?

It lunged forward, swinging wildly at the gunmen on its left. Someone cried out and a hail of bullets rained down on the charging creature. The minotaur paused, raising gargantuan paws to shield itself, and then roared again, foaming saliva spattering the line of soldiers lined against the mountainside.

It charged, they ran. The minotaur scooped one of the soldiers up out of the snowdrift where he had fallen. I averted my eyes just in time to hear the clear crack of bone echo along the ridge.

“You have to get out of here Professor,” Wyn gasped, grabbing my elbow and leading me backwards, away from the camp and toward the helicopter already preparing for flight, its blades rotating, creating a haze of dusty snow all around it. I squinted to see my things already being loaded on, soldiers shouting orders at one another to retrieve me. I yanked myself out of Wyn’s grasp.

“I held my own in Belgium. Give me a gun.”

Wyn stared at me for a moment, blinking incredulously through those frozen spectacles. Then he merely shook his head and headed for the helicopter with the rest of the fleeing scientists. I growled, turning and prowling through the camp until I found what I was looking for.

Muttering under my breath that this was what happened when you put the army in charge of astrophysics and natural phenomena, I jammed a magazine into the handgun I’d found, slung an ammunition belt over my shoulder, and strapped a pack of C4 to my thigh. Then I exited the abandoned tent to join the fray beyond.

The minotaur was lashing out blindly now. It was bleeding deeply from a cut in its left side, a long bloody gash that ran from its abdomen around its back. It reached out with its enormous hands and crushed anyone and anything it found beneath them. It roared, again and again, in agony, in pain, in brutal intimidation.

It was an animal, I reminded myself, just an animal. Like a boar or a bear. A carnivorous, ferocious beast that wants nothing more than to kill you.

But the truth was, I’d never had the stomach for killing. Not even when it saved my own life. Not even when it saved my uncle’s. But I would do it, if I had to, and then I would turn my anger towards whoever had created the situation in which I had to. There were several to blame for this one. I’d get to them.

I took my chance when the beast was distracted by another line of gunmen shooting at him under precise directives. I rolled my eyes and darted quickly across the snow, staying low so as not to draw the creature’s attention too soon.

I loaded the forgotten machine gun with the ammunition belt I’d brought along and then took aim.

The first round of my bullets struck home. The beast bellowed and reared back, dropping the man he had been holding fifteen feet in the air. The soldier screamed as his leg cracked against the cold, gray stone. I kept my focus and loosed another round.

The minotaur whirled around, predatory eyes narrowed as it sought me out, making me its new prime target. It saw me a moment later and, as it charged, I shouted for the men to get down and then let the machine gun do its thing. Bullets sprayed wildly without direction as I stepped away from the gun. The minotaur ducked and hurtled, snorting viciously as it lowered to all fours and rushed toward me. I waited patiently, fingers twitching over the handgun and the bomb.

When the creature was close enough, I ran for it myself, tucking and rolling at the last second so that I slid deftly between its legs. It growled in anger; the rumble causing the surrounding snow to shake loose, to slide down, down. It pivoted again to face me, prowling forward. I waited as it came closer.

Men were screaming again, surrounding us, but I didn’t dare to look away from the beast as it reached me, sniffing once, twice.

It stilled.

The minotaur blinked at me, that enraged panic giving way to a strange calm. I could feel its uncertainty. It looked at me almost as if confused. My heart beat faster than it even had during the attack, faster than it had in a very long time. Because the way it was looking at me was something I recognized. Reverence. It had stopped attacking me because it thought it might serve me.

My hands were shaking. How had it known?

But then it became aware of something else as well. Cocking its head to the side, it glanced down to where I had attached the block of C4 on the underside of its upper thigh. It snarled and lunged.

I felt the heat on my face first, singing my skin just moments before the blast threw me off of my feet. I went careening into one of the nearby tents, arms splayed out in an effort to cushion my fall, reaching for nothing, for everything. My back hit something hard and a sharp pain shot up my spine. I winced as my legs twitched beneath me.

Blood rained down on the camp, on the soldiers, on the equipment, on me. My furry white coat turned red with it. The minotaur’s guts landed on the wooden box beside me, the one labeled property of Hadley University. More screams and the distinct sound of vomiting emanated from the camp but I hardly heard them. My eyes were already closing. As soot and ash filled the sky around us and the mountain below began to rumble, I fought to remain alert, conscious.

But it was a losing battle. And the last thing I heard, as I drifted into the world of dreams, was a lone, terrified voice, screaming one word.

“Avalanche!”