Blue Abyss: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3 (The Timewalker Chronicles) (25 page)

Complete darkness engulfed him and he grabbed at his waist for the artificial light that Tim had attached to his dive belt. He clicked it on and shined the narrow beam of light up and down the corridor. This door placed him on the ship’s mid-deck. His vessel was miniature, only three levels to the usual thirty or forty. His was a scout ship. Small, fast, deadly, and not meant to survive direct assault, as the Triscani attack had proven. Ships like his were built to dart in and out like a scorpion’s tail. He attacked from positions unseen, much like a great white shark rocketing up from the depths. He’d survived many missions protected by her shields. Seeing her broken and forgotten, invisible on the ocean floor, unsettled him, pained him, as if he’d lost an arm or leg.

This ship carried decades of memories and the bodies of his crew. Blood and sacrifice. His ship had survived it all, been there with him, held together for him. In the end, she’d been more reliable and trustworthy than his own blood, his own brother.

And now Mari was lost to her, wandering weightless through her narrow corridors and heading for disaster.

Mari?
Raiden didn’t waste time looking around. Now that he traversed the interior, his insides lit up like the Earthling’s radar screens. Two Triscani were here, guarding the stone, setting the trap for Mari. Their cloying evil sat with infinite patience, waiting to devour her.

No! They couldn’t have her. She belonged to him and no other. Mari needed protection. She was too damn headstrong, impulsive and courageous for her own good. She didn’t fully understand the horror she faced. But he knew…he knew, and there was no one else to save her.

A blockage filled the corridor. He’d barely squeeze through naked. He’d never make it with a tank on his back.

Raiden unbuckled his gear and slid it off his shoulders. One deep breath and he shoved the tank through ahead of him before squeezing through the narrow opening. It wasn’t far to the upper-level ladder. Trying to keep his heart rate under control, he pulled one of his blades free and slipped one arm through a strap to drag the air tank along as he swam for the tunnel that would take him up to his cabin. To her. And he’d exterminate every fucking Triscani who dared to threaten her, even if it destroyed him. The Triscani wanted the stone, and he’d hidden it too well. They would wait until she’d found it for them before they pounced on her, before they killed her.

Again.

Raiden doubled his speed and yanked himself up the ladder and into the air-filled space outside his cabin. The trail of water clearly marked where she’d come up out of the tunnel, emptied her lungs, and leaned against the wall. Wet footsteps led to his sleeping chamber. The door was open, but no light or sound escaped the space. Was he too late? Was the Triscani’s twisted power already eating away pieces of her soul?

No. There was no way she had the stone. That stone was protected by a blood seal. His blood alone would open the lock. He’d created the lock himself. She’d never find the chamber, let alone open it. He’d find her, retrieve the stone, and get them both off this ship alive. He only hoped he could stop the Triscani before they incapacitated him. And that Mari would be strong enough to heal him…again. If he attacked both of them, he could slow them down, get off the ship alive. But it would cost him. And Mari would pay the price.

When this was over, he’d leave her safe and sound with Tim and Sarah and find the Dark One on his own. Mari continually placed herself in danger on his behalf. She absorbed his wounds, healed him, and nearly killed herself doing it. She was not Immortal. The little human woman didn’t understand just how easily she could die. Worse, she didn’t seem to care about the risks.

No more. Not one more person was going to die for him. The corpses of his men, his friends, and their vengeful ghosts, likely haunted his ship. His men would still be on board where they died, every single one of them betrayed, murdered, and left to decay, a blight on his honor and on the beautiful blue of this alien ocean.

Once he took Mari off this ship, she was going to be as safe as a child in the womb. Protected. Cocooned. Safe from the Triscani, from the Immortals, and most of all, from the shadows that hunted him.

All he had to do was reach her first.

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Mari straightened her spine and walked forward, crossing the threshold into the small chamber. Raiden’s private quarters. The Triscani were here, she sensed their presence like a strange background hum in the otherwise silent ship. Somehow, they were hidden from sight, waiting to pounce.

She knew this, and still continued forward. The soul stone was louder than any warnings in her head, louder than logic or even her own, apparently irrelevant, survival instinct. Nothing mattered but setting that soul free.

Determined, she flared the light in her hand to blazing brightness, chasing the shadows from the room so she could see the destruction. Every panel had been yanked from the wall and smashed into pieces. The bed was shredded and torn to bits, down to bare metal and pieces of padding no larger than a cotton ball. The room looked like a bad scene from a movie, the one where the heroine comes home to find the interior of her house completely shredded, topsy-turvy demolished by the bad guys.

Except Raiden’s private space was a lot like him, efficient, void of common comforts beyond the basics of a bed, one chair, which was lying on its side, and a writing desk. There was a small nook built into one of the walls. The doors to that compartment were bent in half and on the floor, as if a giant had pulled them from their hinges and crinkled them up like a used soda can. Not much here for the Triscani thieves to toss around. They must have been pretty frustrated to shred his bed into so many little pieces. The pieces littered the floor, which appeared to be one solid sheet of metal.

The desk interested her momentarily, as a likely place for a hidden compartment. She’d seen enough movies to know that was the most likely place a man in power would hide his secret stash.

But then, Raiden was no ordinary man.

The stone’s presence overwhelmed her senses here. The power was literally
everywhere.
She’d really thought she’d walk in and hone in on it like a shark sensing its prey. No such luck. The whole place pulsed with power, so much power that she could no longer pinpoint the Triscani’s presence on the ship. Maybe they’d crawled back into whatever hellhole they’d come from.

That was a cruel joke mixed in with a whole lot of wishful thinking. They were here all right, and waiting for her to solve the puzzle so they could steal the prize.

Dream on, assholes.

She couldn’t kill them until she could see them and actually aim. So, she’d have to figure out where the stone was, draw them out, and then kill them. Right. All within this room that was probably about the size of her high school bedroom. Double bed, desk, and just enough room on the floor to lie on the carpet, chat on the phone and spread out her homework. For a ship, the space was quite large. Well, for any ship she’d ever been on. But he was the captain, right? And they usually got the best space.

Find the crystal, draw out the bad guys, kill the bad guys, leave with the stone. Simple list. Simple, simple list.

Now that she’d stood here for a full minute, she was confident the Triscani wouldn’t make a move until they tried to take the soul stone from her. That meant she had to risk ignoring them while she found it.

Okay. Ignore scary, heart-stabbing bastards that hovered somewhere out of sight. Focus on the stone. Only the stone and the wretched, painful pulse that insisted a piece of herself was missing. Crying out. Tormented. Dying.

Mari closed her eyes and sank to her knees to listen, to feel, and opened herself up to the pain. The Shen burned like her flesh was being branded with ice, but an answering fire burned its way into her consciousness on the wall. The energy also revealed the location of the enemy. Both Triscani hovered above her, inside the ceiling of the room, as if they were partially fused with the material.

She ignored them and centered her attention on the flame that called to her. It rested within the wall, buried
inside
the solid metal of the wall to her left. It would have been kept safe above Raiden’s head while he slept. It was not in a hidden compartment, behind a sliding wall, or even in a blank space someone could break through to get to. It was inside the wall, held suspended inside the metal like ore within a mine. It was part of the wall itself.

So, how the hell had Raiden placed it there, and how was she going to get it out? Standing there would place her back to the Triscani that floated unseen above her.

Maybe her hand could get them anyway.

Mari opened her eyes to study the ceiling. In the light from her hand, it gleamed silver like one solid metal sheet stretched the length of the room. Exactly like the floor. But the material used to build Raiden’s ship seemed lighter somehow, more like aluminum foil than solid iron would be. She lowered her eyes to study her palm, the fine lines and soft skin. So innocuous and so deadly.

Better give it the good ol’ college try and hope she could fry the Triscani without flooding the room. Not that it mattered to her if the space filled with water. Unfortunately, she doubted it would slow the Triscani down either.

“
Do or do not. There is no try.”

“Oh, shut it, Yoda.” Frowning, she knelt on the floor and raised her arm, palm facing out. She aimed at one of the dark places where she could feel the Triscani, but not see it. She built the image in her mine of light shooting from her hand and frying the Triscani into little pieces of black dust. Just like last time.

Come on, just like last time.

Light exploded from her palm and hit the ceiling exactly where she’d aimed. The metal turned orange, then reddish, but nothing else happened. No bounce. No fire. No Triscani asshole screaming in agony and floating like dust moats through sunlight to litter the floor.

“Damn.” Not going to work. Which left her with the lovely prize behind door number two—try to grab the stone, lure them into the open, and then survive on the fly.

Door number two scared the hell out of her.

With a sigh, she ended the laser-like flow of white light and waited for retribution, hoping they’d fly at her now, attack now. No such luck. The ceiling had melted, and was fried a nice, crispy black, like burnt barbeque. But no Triscani. No hole burned through. Nothing.

She lowered her hand’s flare to a sweet, romantic, moonlit glow and hoped that if they hadn’t been burned, they wouldn’t know about the weapon. She stood and moved to Raiden’s bed. She crawled over the now empty platform. Without the soft mattress to cushion her knees, the ice-cold metal hurt as she pulled herself up to face the wall. How to open this up? That was the million-dollar question.

And as soon as she thought it, the answer popped into her mind, almost as if the crystal were talking to her.

Blood.
Of course. Always with these alien freaks, it was blood. But would her blood work? She knew it shouldn’t. This ship was from another planet, and, if Raiden were to be believed, from another time. How would it recognize her? How could this possibly work?

She didn’t have a clue. But deep down, she knew it would. Somehow, she was connected to these events. The cave. Raiden. The Triscani. Celestina. Tim and Sarah and Sarah’s Granny T, a Seer who gave them instructions to rescue her via a twenty-five-year-old diary. Somehow, standing here, this moment was the fulcrum of it all. The delicious red cherry on top of an alien double-danger, triple-chocolate sundae with a smattering of alien ash sprinkles, blood sauce, and white lightning whipped topping.

Yum. Anybody got a spoon?

Whatever. God, sometimes she was utterly ridiculous.

Mari ran her hands along the wall, searching for the smallest crack, a tiny seam, a bump, a sliver. Anything.

Nada. Big fat zero.

“Shit.” Here goes nothing. Mari searched the floor and found a small piece of shattered crystal or glass and used it to make a small incision in the palm of her right hand. Not too deep, but deep enough to hurt like hell and bleed like she sucked down half bottle of aspirin every morning.

With a circular motion, she smeared her blood all over the wall, covering a space the size of dinner plate.

Nothing. Mari banged at the wall with her fists. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!” Fighting back tears, Mari braced her forearm against the wall and leaned her head against it. She was tired, scared, and one hot mess. Now what was she supposed to do? Sing it out of the wall? Dance? She stared at the smooth surface, mind numb, and still…the stone cried for her.

And then she saw it. No bigger than her pinkie toenail, a tiny speck revealed itself just below her arm. It was in the shape of a blade, shaped just like the ones Raiden liked to hide inside his clothes. He thought she was ignorant of his little toys. She wasn’t. Of course that would be his mark, and the mark glowed with a faint red glimmer from inside the wall. Her blood must have activated it. Why or how, she didn’t care.

Moving slowly, hoping not to alert the Triscani to the change, she slid her arm a hand’s length to her right, stopping when her fingers were over the mark. Once she touched it, the stone would somehow be revealed, she just knew it. Which meant she’d have about a second to grab it, turn, and kill the nasties.