The Bloodgate Warrior Read Online Free Page A

want to wake up alone again. I don’t want this if I can’t have you living and breathing in my world.”
    “Then bring me through, Cassandra. Open the gate and call me forth. I will come to you with all haste using every otherworldly power I’m able to retain through the passage.”
    “I don’t know how!”
    I cringed at the shrill desperation in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. I needed him so badly, even if this was only a sad dream created by my desperately lonely heart after nearly dying. The disillusion in the morning would kill me. The doubt. I didn’t want to be crazy, but if it meant I could believe in him…
    The damned quetzal started screeching again. My ears rang with the sound, and his world suddenly wavered, thin and insubstantial. I clutched him desperately, slipping further away, fighting to stay in the dream. Sleek hair slid through my fingers, and I tore brilliant feathers loose in my effort to stay with him.
    “Bring me back to life.” He whispered inside my head, but I couldn’t feel him any longer. I couldn’t smell his tropical scent, but I could still taste him. I’d never be able to eat another guava or passion fruit without remembering, aching for him. “Wake me. Call me to your side. Not even Alvarado himself could keep me from you once the gate is open.”
    I screamed, hoping he could still hear me. “You can call me Cassie!”
    * * *
    I jerked upright in bed, my heart hammering so loudly that it took me a moment to hear the alarm. I could still taste him. I still ached for him. A dream .
    Furious at the crushing disappointment that made me want to roll over and pull the blankets over my head, I slammed my fist down on the clock. It’d been my idea to get an early start today, so I couldn’t even blame Natalie for dragging me up at such an ungodly hour. Even on vacation I’d drawn up a detailed itinerary that filled every waking moment with scheduled tours and stops. If I wasn’t careful, Nat would probably toss my phone with all its timers and lists into Lake Atitlán just so she could sleep in one morning.
    If I’d had just another half hour of dream time with him, I wouldn’t be so pissed off.
    I slid my hand down into my panties and I was sopping wet. It only took a few strokes of my finger to send me over the edge, and then I did cry, because it wasn’t the same. I wanted him . His body, his big hands holding me down, dragging me where he wanted, his powerful body slamming me into the mattress.
    Throwing the blankets back, I started to get up, but a turquoise feather lay beside me. Over two feet long and slightly curved, it had to be a quetzal feather. If I’d found it on the floor or on top of the bed, I could have tried to reason with myself that it’d surely just fallen into my bed by accident. But under the blankets?
    It hadn’t been there last night when I came to bed. Natalie had laughed at my nightly ritual of throwing back all the blankets and sheets to make sure no creepy-crawlies waited to snuggle with me…until she found a massive cricket humping her leg one night.
    The windows were shut. My door locked. So how had this phantom feather made its way into my bed?
    I stroked the feather through my fingers and held it up to my nose. Closing my eyes, I tried to concentrate, to separate out my insane longing for a dream man from reality. Real quetzals didn’t smell like coconut oil, did they? I’d have to ask Natalie if she smelled anything unusual about the feather.
    My fingers shook. A sign. It had to be a sign that he was real. Técun .
    Even though I knew the maid would come in later, I made the bed, smoothing the sheets until they were crisp and perfectly flat. I had to find his gate, but where the hell was it? How had I opened his gate in Missouri without a clue, but now that I desperately wanted to find him, I had no idea what to do?
    As I showered, I ran through everything he’d said in our dream last night. Water, and my blood. That’s why I’d