Triple Infinity (22 page)

Surprised
, Charlotte looked up from her lap to Triaten. “You did?” Utter confusion filled her words.

“J
ust because we’re in a crazy place, doesn’t mean I can’t still take care of you.”

Charlotte nodded silently, not having a clue what was going through Triaten’s mind.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

She
looked away, out the window, but gave a half-nod. “I will.”

She o
pened the door and cool air rushed into the jeep, sending goose bumps across her bare arms. Still dressed in her battle gear, the black tank top did nothing against the bitter air. One foot out the door, Charlotte stopped and looked back at Triaten. She opened and closed her mouth several times before she let words out.

“It took me a long time to get to this point, Tri. To let the past be
the past. And now that I’m here...I want you. I want us. I want you to take me inside. To touch me. To prove how right we can be together, instead of how wrong. But if you’re not ready...” Her voice trailed.

“Char –”

She forced a bright smile that cut him off, the one word telling her all she needed to know. “It’s okay. I will wait. I don’t have much choice.”

Triaten slapped th
e face again, hitting cheekbone and sending blood droplets flying across the room. This was way easier than going up to the ranch. He wasn’t quite sure how he was going to face Shiv at the moment — hell — he didn’t even want to be in his own mind right now.

So instead, he bent down, his face in front of the one eyeball that wasn’t forced shut under a bloody, swollen mess of skin. “It’s time,
DeLisio. This can go on all day. Or you can tell me what Genevieve knew about the attacks in Africa. What you knew.”

DeLisio
spit blood out of his mouth, just missing Triaten’s chest. The spray splattered onto his lap, leaving a string of spittle left dangling down his chin.

Triaten glanced up at Aiden,
leaning against the wall, and then back down at DeLisio, tied to the chair in front of him. Edmund, hands clasped under his chin per usual, sat in a chair at the corner opposite Aiden. Edmund was the one elder that rarely missed an interrogation. They’d been at this for two hours, and Triaten was getting annoyed. He almost always had more patience than Aiden did for this work, but he realized from Aiden’s casual stance, that he himself was suddenly the impatient one. And it annoyed him even further.

He reached out and wrapped his fingers around
DeLisio’s throat. “She knew what was going to happen. Which means that you did too.” His tightened the clamp against DeLisio’s throbbing vein. “Thousands died, DeLisio. Thousands. And you are going to pay for those lives one way or another.”

Aiden cleared his throat, and Triaten released his grip.
DeLisio’s head dropped to the side. Triaten straightened, stood for a moment looking down at the still form, and then he gave DeLisio’s cheek a slap. DeLisio’s eye opened.

His look focused on
Triaten. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t matter now that she’s gone.” DeLisio’s words tumbled out low, jumbled from the broken jaw.

“What doesn’t matter now that she’s gone?”

DeLisio shook his head. A powerful man, beaten. “She was going to give me the one thing I could never have.”

Triaten crossed his arms across his chest. “What’s the one thing? What does a
billionaire need?”

“All this money. And I’m
still going to die.” His one open eyeball traced up to Triaten’s face. “She was going to make me immortal.”

“I
mmortal? What do you mean? What did you think she could do to you?”

DeLisio
took a dramatic sigh.

“Start talking.” Triaten demanded.

“It wasn’t me, but it was to be my legacy. It was the child she was carrying. My child. My son was to be a god.”

Aiden’s eyebrow rose, but he remained leaning against the wall. 

“What the hell are you talking about, DeLisio?”

“You may be older than me, but you are a boy,”
DeLisio spat out. “You do not understand what getting old does. How you have to grab. Grab at anything that will help you hold on. Grab at anything that will make you live beyond your grave. And I’m getting old, so what is my legacy? If I’m going to die, what do I leave?”

“And you think your child will be a god?
” Triaten questioned. “That’s the ultimate goal for you? How do you think that’s going to happen?”

DeLisio
coughed, and more blood snot dripped down his chin. “I know all about your kind. Panthenites.” He spit the word out in disgust. “Genevieve was Malefic. Our child would have been Malefic. And there are Malefics all around the world that think it’s time to put the god back into the species.”

“Put the god back in the species? What is that
supposed to mean?”

“Why do you think they coordinated attacks, boy? For fun? Killed thousands for no reason?
They’re not that stupid. They’re taking control. Killing as many as they can. Every death they dole out is worth a thousand times the destruction in fear created. The fear becomes exponential. And fear is what makes gods. It’s what makes power. It always has been.”

Triaten took a step back from
DeLisio, horrified and not bothering to hide it. “The Malefics want to be worshipped as gods again?”

“They haven’t been successful at destroying mankind, so they’re trying a new tactic
— going back to the old ways.”

“One where they’re gods?

DeLisio chuckled through a cough. “And there are plenty of Panthenites that want that same thing.”

“No.”

“Don’t be ignorant, boy. We are all wired to want control. Man, Malefic, Panthenite. All of us. And expand that power. We get some, we want more. So why not make the Panthenites and Malefics into gods once more? Why not have man serve you again? And why would I not want a piece of that?”

“What
Panthenites? Who?” Triaten held his fist tight to his thigh, somehow managing not to beat DeLisio even further.

DeLisio
laughed again and shook his head.

Triaten advanced at him, punching his good eye.
DeLisio’s head snapped back, then fell off to the side. A whimpered groan gave evidence he remained conscious.

Triaten gripped his grey
hair, lifting his head up. “Which Panthenites? Give me names, DeLisio. Now.”

A half-smile curved into DeLisio’s mangled cheek.
“Take a look around, boy. Who’s not in the room?”

Triaten looked up, meeting Aiden’s eyes, and then Edmund
’s. Beyond those two, the room was empty. He shoved DeLisio’s head as he released his grip.

He strode over to the door and flung it open, looking up and down the hallway just outside the back room. Aiden
followed at his heels.

Triaten went to the adjacent rooms, opening and closing doors as he checked in them. There were a set of six back room
s behind the main parlor in Hotel Auric. The rooms were all used by the Panthenites for purposes such as this. Triaten ducked into one last door, the one that led to the main parlor, and then came back to the center of the hallway where Aiden was waiting.

“He’s not here?” Aiden asked.

Triaten shook his head.

Edmund stepped out of
DeLisio’s room and shuffled over to the two. “Horace is gone, isn’t he?”

“It doesn’t mean a thing, Edmund,” Aiden reasoned.

“Doesn’t it? I had suspected something. He has wanted more power for too long. And now there’s proof.” He focused on Triaten. “Your father is playing for the wrong side, Triaten. And you will have to admit it and renounce him.”

Triaten’s jaw
set hard as he shook his head. “I don’t believe you, Edmund. Nor do I believe DeLisio. Horace wouldn’t join forces with the Malefics. Not after everything he has done — has helped to build with the Panthenites. Not after he helped save our species from extinction.”

Splotches
of red dotted Edmund’s face as his voice turned harsh. “You don’t believe he’s involved, or is it that you don’t want to believe me? Don’t you forget that I saved the Panthenites as well. I’m not about to let Horace take anything over.”

Triaten’s eyes narrowed at Edmund. “And maybe that’s why you’re so quick to blame him, Edmund.”

“Do you have any other reason for why your father slipped out?”

Triaten’s lips tightened. “I will find him. There is a reason for this.”

~~~

“
Cronus
.”

Skye jumped as the word was whispered into her ear. She looked up to see Helen next to her. “I’m sorry?”

Helen looked down her bird-nose at Skye as she sidled up next to her, slipping onto a tall, black-leather chair adjacent to Skye’s. Helen leaned back in the chair as though walking over to the bar was exhausting. Skye became immediately uncomfortable. The leather and gold surrounding her in the Panthenite parlor at Hotel Auric made her uneasy, even sitting at the bar. And now Helen’s presence. There were a million places she could have waited, and how she let Aiden leave her stranded here, she didn’t know.

It had been hours since Aiden and Triaten had
disappeared out through a back door in the parlor. Aiden insisted this was the safest place for her to wait. And for whatever reason, Aiden didn’t want her to have anything to do with what they had vanished to do. More secrets.

She was longing for the warm comfort of Joe’s, nursing a tumbler of neat scotch, when Helen
had suddenly appeared. Skye’s stomach churned.

“Cronus
.” Helen repeated. “That’s your lineage. We never bothered to track your mother’s lineage, because her powers were so weak, as were her mother’s. It’s why we never slated her for breeding. I am actually befuddled that any power made it through to you.”

Skye looked at
the elderly Panthenite like she was talking Latin. She didn’t have a clue what Helen was telling her. “What is Cronus?”

An idiot-
look shot out of Helen’s eyes at Skye. “It is not a ‘what.’ It is a ‘who’ is Cronus.”

“Okay,” Skye said slowly. She
wasn’t looking to get a verbal beat-down by Helen, but she did want this conversation to end as quickly as possible. She looked over her shoulder at the door Aiden had left through. Still no sign of him, and all she wanted after the battle in Africa, and the plane ride back, was a hot bath and to curl up on Aiden’s bare chest. And to talk to Shiv. Skye took a deep breath. “So, who is Cronus?”

“You really know so little, don’t you.”
A reprimand, not a question. Helen’s eyes narrowed at her. “You’re a descendent of Cronus, an original Panthenite. Cronus controlled time. It was one of the original powers.”

“So I have an original power?”

“Don’t get vain. It is too soon to tell. But you do have the closest thing I have ever seen to an original power. In the timeline of the Panthenites, original powers were lost. They morphed, they combined, but they are never as pure as they were when the original Panthenites had them.”

Skye took a drink of her scotch. “Interesting.” She managed
the word when Helen paused, waiting for a response. Skye squelched the urge to mutter
“so I have an original power, so what?”
Clearly this meant a lot to Helen, even if it didn’t to Skye.

H
elen looked even further down her nose at Skye. Skye had forgotten Helen was a mind reader. She hoped Helen missed what she was just thinking.

“Here is why you need to care, chit.”

Okay, Skye thought, so she did just catch that thought.

Helen continued. “There have been instances, where lost original powers have resurfaced, pure in their form. It has happened before major battles bet
ween good and evil. Only a few times in history. Before my time. When they have surfaced, they have coincided with the flame moons.”

“So if it’s true that I have this original power, then yay
— good for the good guys?”

Helen shook her head. “It is not that easy. History tells us that both sides gain an original power.”

Skye closed her eyes with a sigh. She was so tired of being a Panthenite, and she’d only been one for a few months. “Of course. So there’s a Malefic out there with an original power too — one of them can also change time?”

“The Malefic won’t have your same power. Something different, but just as powerful because it’s true to its origins.”

Skye rubbed her forehead. “So why are telling me this?” She looked over her shoulder, scanning the room. Her eyes landed on Helen. “Edmund and Horace aren’t in the room. So I’m guessing the sharing of this information isn’t sanctioned by them?”

“No, it isn’t. I think you have a right to know. That is all.”

Helen abruptly stood. That was all she was going to say. With a curt nod to Skye, she turned and left the bar area.

Just as Helen took her leave and Skye swallowed the rest of her scotch, the back door opened and Aiden and Triaten stepped through. The presence of the two of them managed to fill the
enormous room. Triaten didn’t stop; he walked across and out the main parlor door. Aiden veered over to Skye at the bar.

He grabbed her hand and slid her off the tall chair. “I know you want to stay on the mountain for spell, but we’re on the move again.”

Skye groaned. “Really? We can’t stay for a day?”

He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “Last one was for Charlotte. This one is for Triaten. We have time to stop at home
, shower, and for you to say hi to Shiv.”