Read Time Everlastin' Book 5 for Free Online Page A

the rock. Snatching it up, she
unzipped the sack with her free hand, flung the annoyance inside,
and closed the opening. She stood and nearly pitched forward when
ground tremors engaged beneath her feet. They rapidly swept ahead
of her, spanning most of the runway, and came to an abrupt stop
before reaching the cairn.
    "Oh... crap," she breathed as the ground in
front of her parted into a ten-foot wide, forty-foot long opening.
It was several seconds before she could bring herself to step
toward the gap. Two feet from the edge, she gaped at stone steps
the width of the opening, and extending a good three feet in depth.
Sweeping her tongue along the moisture on her lips, she knelt in
wet, spongy earth and hesitantly touched the top step. It was
solid, the texture rough as if imbedded with granules of
sand.
    Fear told her to close her
eyes and wish the damn portal away. Common sense told her to run.
Her curiosity, though, was far stronger.
    Taryn was in the process of
securing her knapsack on her back when the rain ceased, the clouds
moved on at the horizon, and the gloaming returned to breathe its
ethereal luminance across the land.
    She scanned the site,
chanting in a whisper, "I love me, I love me not. I love me, I love
me—dammit, just get on with it!"
    She sucked in a breath and
determinedly planted her feet on the step. Heat and coldness swept
through her with equal force. She gulped in time to stop her gorge
from rising into her throat. It popped into her mind to say a
prayer. She would if she knew one.
    Instead, she sang low and
off key:
    "Three six nine, the goose
drank wine
    the monkey chewed tobacco in
a street car line.
    The line broke, the
monkey—the idiot —got choked,
    and they all went to heaven
in a little row boat.”
    Or is it...they all went to
hell in a little fire float?
    Even the sound of her voice
held an unsettling quality. Hollow. Metallic like the loch. She
could almost swear she heard a whispering breeze from far below, a
zephyrous voice urging, "Come meet your destiny. Come."
    Taryn realized she had
descended several steps, her chin ground level. Her heart leapt
into a frantic tattoo, her lungs unable to hold much
air.
    "Use your head this time!"
she chided in a whisper. "No story is worth—"
    "I tell ye, I heard
somethin' up ahead!"
    Taryn recognized Gil's
voice, and by his tone, he was in a foul mood. She spied him and
Flan between the north arm of the cross and the end of the stone
wall. They walked briskly in her direction, their heads held low as
if afraid of seeing something they would rather not.
    She descended five more
stairs, but stopped when she stepped into the blackest shadow she
had ever encountered. She could see nothing below. Above ground,
rapid footfalls warned the men were approaching the central
menhir.
    A tremor took her by
surprise and she collapsed on one of the steps. Two male voices
squawked, conveying their own alarm at the quaking of the ground.
The shaking continued far longer than it had the first two times.
She kept her eyes squeezed shut and clung to the contours of the
upper stair. When the motion at last ceased, she opened her
eyes.
    For several seconds, she
thought her eyelids had frozen shut, for she saw nothing but pitch
darkness. Blinking verified they were indeed opened.
    "Oh, no," she whimpered,
staring upward into infinite blackness. The ground had sealed above
her. It was that or the sun, moon, and stars had been sucked into a
black hole.
    She inched up the steps on
her backside, one arm raised above her head. She had no sense of
existence. This world she had propelled herself into had no depth,
no planes, no anything. For all she knew, each side of the stairs
dropped off into nothingness. Perhaps it was a short
fall.
    How deep a dugout could this
be?
    Taryn's raised hand struck
something solid. She remained motionless for a time, her mind
reeling. When she dragged her fingertips along the surface, the
coarse texture confused her all the more.
    Rock? How