Blue Abyss: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3 (The Timewalker Chronicles) (12 page)

The gigantic female sizing them up as a potential snack had the mass of a small truck, with a hell of a lot more teeth and cold black eyes. A predator’s gaze. Was it now his fate to be a shark’s version of breakfast?

To hell with Fate.

There was no land in open sight, so he swam back down to the rocks for a bit of cover. The underwater caves began about ten body lengths below the surface of the water. Not much in the way of protection, but at least they couldn’t glide up on him from hundreds of feet below. If the sharks decided to dine, there wasn’t much he could do to fight them off with Mari in his arms. If she couldn’t summon the Angel’s Fire, they were as good as dead.

Mari, wake up! We need your Angel’s Fire right now.

Mari barely stirred. Even if she regained consciousness he wasn’t sure she’d be strong enough to focus and use the weapon.

The shark did nothing but circle round and round, watching him as her clan joined her. Sharks everywhere. At least twenty. The males were smaller, and had the obvious different pelvic fins. The big alpha female appeared to be the leader of a large and very hungry family. Add the human males’ floating body parts and Mari’s blood scenting the water, and it was a wonder there weren’t a hundred sharks beneath them. Perhaps more were on the way. Wouldn’t that just be his luck?

Had Fate truly brought him here? Should he blame the heartless bitch who sat on the throne of Itara? His brother, the traitor? Or should he blame a woman he had yet to truly meet? He’d been a prince on his home world, yes, a bastard prince with no claim on the throne, but once his human stepmother had accepted him, welcomed him into her life, he’d become a respected member of the family. Since then he’d grown, become a warrior with more than a century of blood and dust under his boots. His father’s people knew he was a dead king’s bastard, a half-blood Immortal who fought for them, killed for them. He was a soldier. A leader in his people’s army. A beloved brother and great uncle. A man of worth who’d earned his place with decades of battle in this thrice-damned war.

No longer. He looked down on to the face of a woman he’d just met and realized that his past was all a lie. He was just a pawn. A pawn of the betrayer. A pawn played by Immortals. A pawn sent to war. An expendable piece on the game board.

Was this woman a pawn or a player? If his family had sent her, or his Immortal mother’s people, why the games? Why the subterfuge? Why wake him at all?

And what did they hope to gain with this laughable predicament he now found himself in? He held an unconscious female worth more on the black market than ten of his father’s best ships and floated helplessly in an ocean of water surrounded by hungry sharks?

The Triscani hadn’t found it. That was the only answer that made sense. If they’d tried to wake him, to torture him for information, he would have turned them to ash and drenched himself in evil until there were no memories left. They couldn’t force him to talk, and they couldn’t break into his mind. They needed him to lead them to Gerrick’s stone. They needed him to go of his own free will.

The woman in his arms was perfect for that role. Beautiful. Sacred healer. Lost tribe. Kings and killers alike would want to claim her, to offer her protection, luxury, and a place of honor both at their tables and in their beds.

Perhaps she’d already accepted just such an offer, and leading him like a lamb to slaughter was the price she’d agreed to pay. He wanted to trust her, to give in to the instincts raging that she was worthy. That he should claim her. His thoughts and emotions had never been so at odds with one another. Maybe the stasis chamber had scrambled his wits, or perhaps she had done something strange to him when she’d taken his wound. What telepathic skills did she possess? What knowledge? What power to hurt as well as heal? Who did she work for that could afford to bestow such a powerful weapon within her delicate hand?

That was the most disturbing question. The list of possible answers was short indeed, and none of them were good for him. Either she was in league with the Itaran Queen, or she worked with a traitor within the Queen’s own ranks. Only the First Circle wielded Angel’s Fire. The known females with this power numbered fewer than a hundred. Seemed betrayal was the game of choice these days.

He shook his head and watched the sharks’ shadows slice through the water. He needed to get back to land. He would need a boat and supplies to find his ship. Unless they’d removed it from the water and hidden it somewhere else.

No. His innate connection to that which he’d left behind said no. The horde would leave it somewhere deep, dark, and inaccessible to humans. But it would not be inaccessible to him, or the water-breather in his arms.

How very convenient.

And now they were stuck out here. He’d always been a strong swimmer, but there were limits, especially towing along his lovely savior.

It was unlikely he’d drown, but he wouldn’t survive being eaten alive by a shark. Last thing he needed was to drift at sea, waiting for someone to find them. He needed the woman in his arms to wake up and carry on with her plan for getting him the hell out of here. He had no doubt she’d have a way to not only find his ship, but to lead him straight to it, because that was where his enemies needed him to go.

Unfortunately, he’d be forced to oblige them. He must return and take his chances with the rest. The sharks circled, and stared, darting up every once in a while to finish of what little remained of her crew. Friends or enemies, he didn’t much care. Dead was dead. And had they been stooges for the Triscani, they’d deserved a much slower end.

What to do about the sharks? It would help if he knew where, exactly, he was on this backward planet. Troop positions. Distance to land…
Mari!
He gently shook her by the shoulders
. I need you to wake up!

Chapter Four

I need you…

Mari didn’t wake to lights, voices, or pain. She woke to the throb of a heartbeat not her own.

His.

Eyes closed, mind silent, her body was exhausted, or so disconnected that her limbs failed to respond to her demand that they move. Sounds came to her as though through a thick brick wall, muffled and impossible to understand. She heard nothing of interest, felt nothing, saw nothing. Her entire being focused on the pulsing rhythm of Raiden’s beating heart.

Raiden called to her again and the stubborn streak that had driven her mother to pull out her hair forced Mari’s body to respond. She stirred, the pain dulled to a constant ache in her bones.
He
was calling her.

She lay quietly in his arms and let him hold her for a moment longer. Cheek pressed to the heat of a densely muscled chest, she leaned into his strength as flashes of her boat blowing into little-bitty pieces played out behind her closed eyelids. His arms held her tightly to him, offering her a sense of comfort despite her pain.

No boat. She shook her head. They were twelve miles from the main island and every bone in her body felt crushed by a tank. She really didn’t do damsel in distress very well, but every girl had her limits. She was way past hers. And in forbidden water. There were a lot of military operations out here. Top secret stuff. The U.S. Navy and British boys would not be happy with her trespassing in their turf. Especially now that stuff was blowing up. No doubt their sonar had picked up the Triscani blasts.

Swim twelve miles while injured, steal a new boat, dodge the military, dodge the scary aliens, and help a drop-dead-gorgeous prince save the world. No biggie. She’d worked up the courage to go face those things and kill them. She’d woken Sleeping Beauty. And now what? Shark food? She could literally feel the energy of each ocean hunter as it swam around them. All this work for what? Swallowed whole and eaten alive by the Atlantic and her natural predators?

Thanks, Celestina. Was this in the contract I signed? Where’s my agent?

She could almost hear her dad’s voice, “
Never wait for the cavalry, honey. Sometimes they don’t show up.”

If only her dad were still alive…

She missed him terribly. Her mom, too. They’d both died in a car accident when she was twenty-two. A surgeon and a dancer. Love at first sight. Both gone. No family. No friendships had been strong enough to survive her obsession. Conspiracy theories and nightmares kept her company these days.

And sharks.

Mari did her best to ignore the man holding her and opened her eyes to assess the predators. The clan of sharks continued to swim in and out of her view, obviously here to investigate the disturbance. The clan’s alpha was massive, her jaws wider than Mari’s shoulders, and her eyes, those frightening black discs, appeared to miss nothing.

The female was at least eighteen feet long and had to weigh several thousand pounds. Her family consisted of three juveniles, her mate, and her…sister? The rest were not family. Not of her blood. But they answered to her just the same.

How did Mari know this? The sharks rose and struck, biting several objects out of curiosity, looking for anything else they could eat. Satisfaction hummed in the water, satisfaction and a no-nonsense brutality of fact that erased Mari’s sense of horror and disgust at their current dietary choice…her friends. Well not friends exactly, but decent men who didn’t deserve their brutal end.

Oh, well. That was that. Now she’d think like a shark instead of mourning the loss of life.

Hungry. Food. Eat.

Simple and honest. Unlike the creatures who had blown up her boat in the first place.

The alpha female did not like those creatures, their electrical field was wrong. Their presence made her and her family sick.

What
? How did Mari know this?

The gigantic creature swam straight at her, then turned to silently inspect Mari with her monstrous black eye as she swam by one terrifying inch at a time. Raiden’s arms tensed around her waist, but she squeezed his wrist and reached for him with her thoughts.

Raiden. She knew I was here. The sharks followed me
… Raiden’s arms tightened their hold further but he said nothing, waited for her to figure this out.

Sharks were extremely sensitive to electrical fields. They could sense one billionth of a volt of electrical current in the water. This giant would
feel
her heart beating in the water… Feel her mind thinking. Feel the wrongness of the invaders’ energy.

Enemy
. The shark’s thought wasn’t a word so much as a feeling of hatred and alarm. Aggression and fear. And unwanted familiarity. The Triscani came to this place often…

The alpha and her clan of apex predators weren’t sure what to do about the new threat and had lost her sister’s mate to the dark creatures. They thought to leave this area for good.

Shocked, but quick to adapt to her new skill, Mari search the sharks feelings, reminding her that lean meals with too much bone gave her a stomach ache for days. Then she projected an image of her bones and her thin layer of protein-dense muscle all wrapped up in the rubber and plastic of her dive suit. The shark was not impressed.

Thank God.

Luckily for Mari, they weren’t that hungry and were chasing a group of fat seals around the islands.

The alpha female decided that they didn’t need to eat the small bony creatures. While her clan continued to bite and explore the wreckage, the female circled toward Mari once more.

Taking a chance, fascinated despite her fear, Mari pushed away from Raiden’s hold and summoned every ounce of stubborn determination she had to keep herself conscious. She didn’t have time to be weak or to break down when talking to a shark.

The shark nudged her with an exploratory bump. Mari shoved back with her bare hands and touched the great white’s side. The second their flesh connected, their minds did as well. Images in understanding passed between them. The female showed Mari the Triscani enemy and one human heartbeat that returned to this place with the cycle of the tides. They came with low tides, and they came often. The sharks always felt their arrival. The energy in this entire section of ocean shifted to “other”.

Confused, Mari tried to request more information. Highly intelligent, the shark responded immediately, sharing her sense of the Earth with Mari. The Earth had a distinct energy field, a pulse from the planet’s core that the shark recognized and accepted as part of her. The Triscani were…“other”. Their energy…wrong.

Alien.

Mari’s revulsion for the Triscani flared to life and the shark readily agreed. Mari sent images to the shark of the Triscani she had eliminated. She focused on the visual memory of them disintegrating in front of her.

The shark grew excited, and Mari sensed the shark wanted more.
Kill. Protect.

Yes!
She and this giant predator were in complete agreement. Next she sent the shark a plea for help, envisioned herself hanging on to the female’s fin as they headed back toward the islands, toward humans. She tried to communicate her need to head to a shallow beach where she could find other people. Then Mari could hunt the “others”, their common enemy.

Hunt.
This was something the shark understood.