Blue Abyss: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3 (The Timewalker Chronicles) (9 page)

Every limb expanded like a water balloon before the water traveled to her pores and rose up on her skin to run over her sensitive flesh like small streams of sweat. She was like a kitchen cloth being wrung out over the sink. Water flowed off her body and dripped onto the floor until her lungs were completely clear. Time to get what she came for.

Ruthlessly she squeezed her thumb to get enough blood to enter.

She didn’t waste time on the little prison cell that housed Raiden’s sleeping form. She felt a bit like she was jumping off a bridge. It was not something she wanted to stop and think about. She’d had a bungee cord tied around her feet and jumped off a bridge in New Zealand. They didn’t let her look over the edge until she was ready to jump. And once she was on the ledge they didn’t give her time to stop and think. Countdown. Leap. Thinking would have given her time to be scared, more scared.

“This time, you get to die. Alien assholes.” Mari leaned her forehead against the closed door, the door she knew the dark things hid behind, and whispered her vow. Killing these alien monsters was worse than jumping off a bridge. Much worse.

But, for the first time in two years, she actually believed she had a fighting chance to get out of here alive.

She squeezed her thumb again until she was sure she had enough blood to operate the crystal doorway, and opened it. As before, the two faceless beings rose to inspect her, surprised by her entrance. She didn’t pause to talk, or wait for them to speak to her, she simply raised her arm to the nearest one and fired a blast of light. The monsterdisintegrated before her eyes and fell like a cloud of dust to the floor.

Yes!

The other raced for her with inhuman speed. She immediately turned and fired again. The flash of light cleared and there was nothing left of the creatures but a faint dusting of black ash where the two aliens had been. Mari kicked at the pile with the toe of her dive bootie. The ash mixed with water and congealed between the threads. Mud under her shoe. Gross.

“Take that, you assholes.” Celestina promised her that this was the only weapon that could distort their molecules enough to banish them from this world. She hoped they were dead. Really, really dead, and not just banished to some other dimension waiting to pop back out at her, or travel through time to kill her again.

Not that it would matter. There were more of them somewhere, a whole society, if that was what she wanted to call it. And after a lifetime of nightmares, Mari had long ago resigned herself never to sleep peacefully again.

With the immediate threat gone, the blaring noise of hundreds of screens assaulted her ears. Radio chatter from military men speaking in English, Chinese, Russian and a handful of other languages she couldn’t recognize or understand flooded the room. She searched the perimeter of the room. It was a very plain room. Two chairs, hundreds of monitors and radios. No water, no food and nothing to indicate that any human had ever been here before. There were no creature comforts of any kind.

Then she saw something stuffed in the corner leaning against the wall. A small black stone with her new symbol, the Shen, engraved in its center. She had no idea what it was, or who it belonged to, but it was a Timewalker symbol, and these aliens had no right to it.

“I’ll just take that, thank you.” Mari stuffed the stone in a pocket and zipped the fabric around it. She looked around, relief making her shake like a leaf. She’d killed them. And thanks to Celestina, it had been easy.

The room left a bad taste in her mouth. Whoever built it was obviously using it to spy on governments the world over. Alien murderers did not need to know where the President was at any given time, or the leaders of any other country.

Celestina hadn’t said anything to her about destroying this place while she was down here, but those alien creatures were using it for something and whatever that something was, it wasn’t good. Decision made, Mari pulled her waterproof camera from her pocket and took at least fifty photos, every desk, map, chart and screen burned into digital data for inspection later. That done, Mari tucked the camera away and raised her hand. She fired at the hundreds of monitors lining the walls. She kept at it until she felt like her hand was on fire and there was nothing left but heaps of ash.

Smoke filled the room and she hurried back to the platform, choking on the acrid smell of burning plastic. As she waited for the door to close behind her she took a deep breath from Raiden’s rescue tank. Toxic smoke had filled her lungs and made her head spin. Maybe frying this place had been an emotional decision and not a rational one. Still, she couldn’t make herself regret it, smoke or no smoke. She was more worried about the small fires burning up all the oxygen down here.

She had to get Sleeping Beauty out of here. She couldn’t get him out of this hell-hole fast enough. She needed fresh air. Humans. A hamburger. Something normal.

Mari opened the next door and saw her perfect prince waiting for her in the glass coffin. No man should be that gorgeous. It just wasn’t fair. It really wasn’t.

And she wanted to kiss him again. But this time, he’d remember. This time, neither one of them was going to die.

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Raiden came back to life in stages and focused on pulling air into his lungs for what felt an eternity. The poison coursing through his veins caused everything to ache, but not with the debilitating pain he remembered. Had it been metabolized by his body during the long sleep? Dried blood pulled and tugged on the sensitive skin of his back, reminding him of the traitor’s attack and the reason he’d locked himself in the deathless sleep.

The shredded tissue of his shoulder ached briefly before fading away, replaced by a soothing warmth that radiated from his left shoulder and spread throughout his body. Strength coursed through him to banish his despair. Not for the first time, he thanked his Immortal mother, whoever she was, for making him
more
.

Rage burned anew, but not the hot forge of emotion that had pushed him to this stasis chamber. He’d been driven to take a desperate gamble, and survived. The fire was banked, replaced with icy resolve. Nothing would sway him. He would complete his mission, but not the mission the Queen had given him. She would brand him a traitor, but he no longer cared about her rules or her struggle to maintain power. Too many had died already, not just his friends on the ship, but millions of souls on both worlds.

He’d slain countless enemies. He need only survive one more…

He sensed the presence of another and opened his eyes. A goddess looked down on him, with eyes the color of Earthen whiskey, thick black hair and deeply tanned skin that looked softer than liquid silk. Her hand rested on his shoulder and was the source of the unnatural heat that coursed through him.

“Time to wake up, Raiden.” A healer. A very powerful healer.

Gods she was beautiful.

He clenched his fists at his sides, the desire to touch her was strong. A fixed suit of some kind impeded his view of her form, and her eyes locked on to his with both confusion and desire in their depths.

Was she a dream? A figment of his imagination? Did it matter?

“Thank you, healer.”

She smiled and he saw pain in the lines around her eyes. The hurt turned her pupils dark and brought lines of strain to her flawless face. Physical pain. Not a spirit then, but flesh and blood.

She grinned despite her pain, relief and some unnamed emotion flashing through her eyes before he could catalog it. In a moment, he’d be healed, thanks to her touch. He only wished he could feel the soft caress of her palm against his bare skin. Perhaps that would make him feel something other than the bitter necessity for vengeance.

The thought stirred him, made him wish for things that would never be. Intellectually, he knew that he’d been asleep for a long time. His memory claimed that he’d lain down in this chamber just moments ago. But his spirit knew better, had been simmering with hopeless despair and white-hot rage for endless days. He'd been alone, utterly and completely alone in his mind, for a long, long time.

Yes, since the Crux, the loss of the Itaran King and Queen, and the beginning of a war with the Triscani that had ruled his life for well over a hundred years.

He’d been twenty-three years old when the world went mad. Over a hundred and fifty years of hunting and killing.

As if to affirm his ominous thoughts, her smile faded and she slid from view, her hand trailing blood on his sleeve as she collapsed to the floor.

Adrenaline flooded his system and he yanked the injection tubes from beneath his collarbone where they had burrowed into his veins. With haste, he pushed the button that would release him completely from his crystalline coffin and sat up, expecting to be weak, dizzy, and nauseous.

Nothing. He felt rested, strong, ready to go into battle with his mortal enemy. Never before had he felt this good from a single healer’s touch. If he’d known of her, he would have summoned her to his unit, regenerated under her care after more than one battlefield injury, no matter the cost. Gods, a healer of her skill would be courted and coveted, fought over and prized. How the hell had she ended up on this primitive planet…alone with him? None but the Queen had known where he headed. The Queen and his brother, his enemy, but that bastard had been right under his nose.

The thought made his vision go hazy, but he forced the anger down and leashed it within. Later. He climbed from the stasis chamber to where the woman lay huddled on her side, curled into the fetal position, eyes glazed and disoriented.

Where was he? This room with its bare walls and stark coloring was not on his ship.

She mumbled about the end of the world.
Rock star. Smoke. Triscani…

The last word caused his heart to stutter. Triscani. Pure evil. What did this beauty know of his true enemy? Healers were kept far from danger, they were too rare and much too valuable to lose.

Afraid to hurt her, he rolled her onto her back and slid his hand beneath her head and into the thick wet mass of her hair. It awakened his tactile senses as nothing else could have. Had he been a pureblood, without the weakness his mortal father had given him, it would’ve been nothing. Instead, the thick tug of her hair seared him to his toes. His weak human half craved touch, needed sensation like a drug addict needed his next fix, and he’d gone so very long without. Oh, how he missed the feel of a blade wrapped in his hand, a lover’s skin beneath his fingertips, the burn of muscles fighting exhaustion, or the satisfaction of cold black dust pouring from his cupped hands.

Wet heat and hot silk. She was soaked through, a thick, ugly brown-and-black suit covered her curves. He had assumed its purpose was to protect her from the cold depths of the water where his ship had gone down…but they weren’t on his ship. The smell of smoke clung to her and a smear of blood crossed her cheek.

“Where are we? Are the Triscani here? Hunting you?” He willed her to look at him and to answer his questions. She closed her eyes with a sigh and appeared to gather her strength. A brittle laugh escaped her delicate throat but there was no humor in the sound.

“They already killed me once.” Long delicate fingers wrapped around his forearms, pulling him close to her, while he tried to make sense of her statement. She must be badly hurt. Confused. She opened her eyes and all traces of confusion were gone. She was focused, controlled, beautiful beyond words…and in pain. “I killed them this time.”

Raiden held his breath, not daring to believe that he had been removed from his ship and that she’d somehow found him on her own, and killed Triscani. She was no Mater Mortis. She was human. He’d bet his life on it. “How did you find me? Where are we? Where is my ship?”

“Bermuda. I don’t know where your ship is.” She coughed and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. She struggled to rise but winced in pain and settled back into his hold. She pointed toward a zippered pocket on her suit, then at the exit. “You have to get out of here. Take the air tank and go. Go do your thing. Save the world.”

Raiden turned where she’d indicated to find a primitive underwater air tank system, but only one. So, he was still underwater. Not surprising. The Triscani liked to hide in deep, dark places. “How deep are we?”

She shrugged, then winced. “Deep enough. My dive team will be waiting around fifteen feet. Stay with them. Trust them. Decompress for as long as you can.”

“Decompress?”

“Stay underwater and just breathe. Get the nitrogen out of your blood so it doesn’t bubble up and kill you when you get to the surface.”

Raiden wanted to laugh. “It will take more than a few bubbles in my blood to kill me.” What exactly was her plan? To save his life and then nobly sacrifice herself while he simply swam away and left her to bleed to death in this place?

Stupid woman. He’d not leave an injured female behind to die. What did she think he was? Triscani horde? If she hadn’t just saved him, he’d berate her for the insult to his honor. “Who are you? How did you find me?”

“I’m Mari.”

Blood trickled from beneath her suit through her hair and pooled in his palm where he held her head. Why wasn’t she mending? Every healer he’d ever heard tales of could heal themselves as well as others. But then, he doubted any had absorbed so many wounds so quickly before. The stab wound and the poison she’d taken from him would kill any mortal. She was not Itaran, yet she lived, breathed, insulted his honor. She must have Immortal blood. His family must have sent her to him. No healer would dare take on his injuries all at once unless under a royal command to do so. It was tantamount to suicide. “Mari, who sent you? My father?”