Blue Abyss: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3 (The Timewalker Chronicles) (16 page)

She did recall that Bran had come to her room and laid her on her bed when she proved too weak to stand. He’d pulled her blanket up to her chin and walked out without a word, as always. Her silent warrior. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

The tears refused to come. There was nothing left of herself to give. Bran owned every tiny piece of her heart, but another had trapped her soul long ago. An evil manipulator and a liar. A monster among men. That bastard was the reason she must refuse Bran, must protect him at all costs. The monster could force her to live in isolation, but he couldn’t stop her from finishing this.

No one would stop her.

After seven centuries of battle on the Earth plane, in this timeline, the endgame was near. Urgency beat at her, demanding that she continually search her visions for answers. After almost half a millennia, time was running out. But how were the Timewalkers defeated? How had the Crux occurred? What event had she so desparately needed to avert that she’d sacrificed a piece of her sanity to see it done?

Perhaps she’d find out. Perhaps not. Gods above, if she didn’t know, no one did. She was one of the most gifted among her people. She saw more than anyone else dared dream. And she still had no idea what the Triscani were up to, who or what they now hunted. Their tactics, their goal, had definitely changed. For many centuries before now, they’d been targeting the masses of humanity with plagues, famine and warfare. Now they acted like bloodhounds chasing a single fox.

She hoped the fox was wily and very difficult to catch. Whatever they hunted, it would be bad for Earth and the other worlds if they captured the prize. Very bad.

Her stomach clenched in pain, but she had no will to rise and eat, wasn’t sure her legs would support her even if she did. She just wanted to rest, desperate for sleep without pain, without the memories of hundreds of mortal humans meeting their deaths hovering behind her eyelids. Sleep had eluded her for days. Weeks? Every time she closed her eyes, any one of a myriad of nightmares would revisit her. Not simply dreams, but memories, things she’d experienced in visions. Suffering and dying, over and over again.

Hunting, always hunting. Never finding the one she sought.

When she sent her consciousness along the strands, she was not a passive observer. She saw what they saw, felt that they felt, and had no control over when or how she would return to herself. She experienced everything they did, including death.

This was her darkest secret. The true price of her gift. No one knew.

How many times could a woman die and remain sane?

Odds were that no one else on the ship would notice the shift in time. She was different, she knew. Her soul had made countless trips through time, watching and learning, changing the future and robbing the Triscani of their smallest victories whenever she could.

But the past? Changing the past was tricky indeed.

Every light blazed brightly in her rooms because she could no longer tolerate the dark. She knew her body paid the price for her obsession, her quest. Without doubt, she must look like a walking corpse. How long had it been since she’d seen her reflection in anything other than the ship’s glass display screens as she entered or checked the reports?

A very long time.

Long ago she’d been beautiful, quick to laugh and eager to dare just about anything. That was how she’d ended up here, on the one ship that had followed the Triscani through the black hole. The great battle, the Crux had been over, and the Itarans had tasted defeat at the hands of the Triscani. Ajax, the first King in over two thousand years had disappeared. His beautiful Queen, Angeline, turned to ash. And the victors, the Triscani, had somehow stolen one of the Itaran’s ships and opened a temporary wormhole, the theoretical black hole the human named Kerr had envisioned. The enemy ship disappeared, and Celestina had felt reality shift beneath her feet, her memories begin to drift and fade, to tangle.

The other Seer on board had felt it, too. And in the last seconds before the wormhole closed, she had convinced the Archiver ship’s captain to follow the stolen vessel, to chase the Triscani ship wherever it was they had gone.

Into the past, over seven hundred years into Earth’s past, where they’d remained locked in battle with their fellow time travelers trying to prevent whatever action had caused the Itarans to lose the battle.

She’d dared to follow her heart when she’d signed a commission on the Archiver ship, when she’d decided to protect an ancient warrior who, even now, after hundreds of years, glared like an angry beast and barely tolerated her presence.

Celestina knew, beyond all doubt, that keeping Bran at arm’s length was the only option she had. But borrowing a phrase from one of her many human visions, life was a bitch. She sighed, and clutched the blankets to her chin, shivering and afraid to close her eyes. No wonder Bran took his first opportunity to leave her alone. She could not explain what she was doing or why. Most of the time she barely understood it herself.

With her blood chugging like half-frozen slush in her veins, Celestina wasn’t sure how long it would take her to recover this time. Her body shuddered, cramps rolling like waves through her torso and limbs. Seeking out her visions of the future, sending her spirit ahead in time to observe the streams of consciousness and experiences of those living below her on Earth, left her body feeling cold and hollow.

She closed her eyes and held the warming blankets as tightly as her cramped hand allowed. How much more could her body take? Yes, she’d been altered by the trip through the black hole, they all had. Perhaps, one day, she would pray for death. But not yet. Not. Yet. She would endure. She would survive. She would see this through…

As if from a great distance she heard the door to her room open, sensed the presence of another, and smelled…food? She was beyond caring, focused solely on enduring the pain laying waste to her body. She would live, the battle wasn’t over yet. She would not give in.

“What have you done to yourself, Tina?” The voice was deep, and familiar. A dream to sustain her? Or to torment her with what she could never have?

Unsure, she didn’t attempt to speak past her cramped jaw muscles, refused to open her eyes. If he was a dream, she didn’t want to wake up just yet. Even fiction was better than being alone in this.

She barely noticed the tug on her blankets. She surrendered them easily, her hands unable to continue holding them in place. When had she become so feeble?

Arms wrapped around her, pulled her shaking body close. With a sigh of relief, Celestina burrowed into his welcoming heat. The weight of the blankets settled over her, wrapping her in a cocoon of warmth.

“Never again.” His vow alarmed her, but she was too desperate for his touch to argue, too relieved to stem the flow of silent tears she knew soaked him to the skin beneath her cheek. He whispered to her, words she was too far gone to comprehend. Her iron will focused on one simple fact, she’d heal, and she’d do what must be done.

Feeling safe for the first time in recent memory, Celestina clutched Bran as tightly as she dared and submitted to the call of slumber, to dreams.

Celestina opened her eyes slowly, like a year’s worth of sleep held them weighted down. She was not in her own bed, not her quarters, not her body…

She was dreaming, seeing through the eyes of a male.

A male chained to a stone table. Burning liquid coursed continually through his veins from a human I.V. that was taped to his scalp, out of reach. Chains held his forehead, neck, chest and limbs to a thin mattress atop a stone base. Rage poured through her body, rage and madness and pain.

Celestina knew that the faint green fluid dripped in a steady flow, never-ending, as it had for decades. Centuries?

Poison? To keep him trapped here. Weak.

Escape.

The need beat inside the male body, more than desire, more than instinct.

Elemental.

Struggling to breathe, each rise and fall of his chest wall took an act of will. Eventually, it became an act of self-preservation. Refusing to breathe simply caused more pain. Could. Not. Die. Not from this. Not without a Mater Mortis and his willing consent.

He was a true Immortal. A king.

Seeking calm, the Immortal stilled, listened intently. Intrigued, Celestina’s spirit listened as well. Someone was close by, might discover this place, might set him free.

Then the noise faded and he was alone, again. Forever... The Immortal screamed with anguish. His helpless rage suffused Celestina as well, and she knew her actual physical body responded, heart speeding to dangerous levels. The call of her own flesh threatened to send her home too soon, before she understood what was happening here.

Trapped in the Immortal’s body, Celestina became aware, as he did, of a portal opening within the dark space. The Betrayer stood over him, just out of sight, out of range…gloating like a fat pig.

“I just wanted to kill you again, just like I killed her…”

The Immortal body raged, desperate to kill him, to punish him even as his heart shattered like broken glass. This bastard had turned his Queen to ash. This betrayer had cost him everything.

The Betrayer laughed and plunged a poisoned dagger into the center of the Immortal’s chest. Agony ripped through hisody. His heart surged, undying, the force of the movement driving the blade deeper into muscle. The slice of that blade was nothing to the pain in his soul. He’d lost her. He’d failed. He’d failed his people and his friends, forced them to imprison him. He’d lost the war, and worse, he’d become one of
them…

No death would come to free him, there would be no release. The poison would fade from his system, and the heart inside this body would continue to beat around the sharp edge of the blade, every pulse an agony as the muscle cut itself open along the diamond tip, stuttered to a stop, then was cursed to beat again. Over and over until the dagger finally worked its way out. Forever.

Hate welled within. And grief.

His heart beat slowed to near nothing, the agony of the blade too much to endure with his grief so fresh. The Immortal lay still, resigned to wait, to heal.

He began the count of the damned…

“Celestina!” Bran shook the female in his arms, panicked. A moment ago she’d been warm, peacefully dozing in his arms. Her shaking had ceased and she’d snuggled into his embrace like a dark fantasy come true.

Then her heart stopped.

No!

Bran drew a deep breath, shouted at the ship’s sentience to summon aide, a healer, a miracle, even though he knew it would take them precious minutes to reach the suite. To reach her.

The ship’s systems didn’t respond. No lights. No alarms. Nothing.

He’d have to carry her himself.

Lifting her in his arms, he refused to accept her death. He’d will her to live if he had to. He cradled her to his chest and took two steps toward the door.

Trembling and soft, her hand moved to wrap around his neck. A soft sigh left her lips. Her heart beat once. Twice. Thundered in her chest like a herd of wild horses.

The touch froze him in place and he looked down in time to see her eyelids flutter, then open.

“Bran?” Celestina lay passively in his arms, looking up with confusion. “What are you doing here?”

Did she remember nothing? She’d summoned him, pleaded for his help, reached out to him after nearly two hundred years of painful silence. He’d come to her rooms and found her barely conscious.

“You were cold, Tina.” As if that answered everything. For him, it did.

“I am always cold.”

This woman would be the death of him. His little Seer had dabbled in the past. Dangerous in the extreme, but he could not claim innocence in that arena. They both took calculated risks and hoped for the best.Her eyes clouded with pain, and he longed to know what she was thinking, what secrets she denied him, had denied him for centuries. Watching her for the slightest reaction, he continued. “You died in my arms. Your heart stopped, and the ship ignored my call for aid.”

He’d expected shock or fear to cloud her eyes. Was that shame on her face? Guilt? She looked away.

“I disabled the medical alarms in my suite.”

“Why?” he asked, but was afraid he already knew the answer. She didn’t reply, just shook her head and rested in his arms. Too exhausted to fight him? Too defeated to show the pride and stubborn strength that had near driven him to madness for hundreds of years. “No more secrets, Tina. Every time? Tell me.”

“Yes. Every time.”

He fought a brutal urge to shake some sense into her. How many times had this happened to her? How often had she woken alone and freezing? How many times had she experienced death?

“The Timewalker, Marina. When you told me of your vision of her future, you said the Triscani stabbed her though the heart?”

“Yes.” Celestina shuddered as she whispered the affirmation, the pain that was etched into the lines around her eyes more than enough of an answer to his question.