Okay. So, wake him up, keep going and drag him along. Odds were, if someone had her sleeping prince down here, locked up in a room unconscious, they would prefer to keep him that way. Perhaps he would know how to operate the controls to the magical cave. Hey, maybe they had a Star Trek-style transporter down here that could just zap themback to her boat. The thought cheered her. And it would be a heck of a lot easier than trying to give him a crash course in deep cave diving. She’d throw the back-up tank on him, show him how to breathe, and pray he didn’t panic before she could get him to the surface. A slim chance in hell was better than no chance at all.
Shoving with all her might, she tried to open his pod. It didn’t budge. She could smash it with her tank, but that was probably the worst idea she’d ever had. Wasn’t there some über-scientific protocol for waking someone up from a stasis chamber? Sheesh. She should’ve watched Avatar a few more times for clues.
“Give me a break, here. There’s got to be something.” The pulsing crystal caught her eye. Could it be that easy? Her blood had opened the door…
She pulled out her knife and wedged the sharp edge into the wound on her finger. It hurt like hell, but blood welled up instantly. She knelt on the floor beside him and sighed as she smeared her blood over the crystal. Nerves tingling through her now, she rocked back on her heels and waited for a flicker of lights, sound, movement of any kind. Some Sleeping Beauty. He wasn’t supposed to need blood to wake up. “A kiss would’ve been much better, hot stuff.”
He didn’t respond, but the pod did. The air caught in her throat as the cover slid silently to the side, disappearing into the base of the unit. A dusky rose color crept into his perfectly chiseled lips.
“A kiss would’ve been much, much better.” She whispered the protest and waited, every second he remained unmoving like an eternity of silence.
His eyes twitched behind closed lids. Desperate to see, to discover if her dreams lied, she rose onto tiptoes and leaned a hip against the bed. Her dive suit rubbed against the fine black silkiness of his shirt and she leaned over his head, left hand braced near his shoulder and her right next to his opposite hip so she could get closer without falling on top of him. Tilting her head to the side, she got her ear as close to his face as possible, listening for even a hint of sound, a moan, a murmur, a sigh.
“Come on.” Nothing. She pulled back just far enough to face him, and found smoke-gray eyes staring directly into her own. Holy hell, they were every bit as sexy as she’d dreamt, framed in jet-black lashes and gleaming with pain.
“Hi.” Great introduction, but she had no idea what the proper protocol was when meeting a smoking-hot alien. And he had to be from somewhere else. His hair. His eyes. This damn space pod. Nothing else made any sense at all.
Warmth crept around the edges of her palm where it rested near his shoulder. She tore her gaze from his to discover the source. Wet, warm, blood. His blood. It was then she noticed the dried blood on his hands. How long had that been there? Since before he placed himself in this pod? A slicing pain shot up her arm as his fresh blood coated her fingers. The pain traveled straight to her left shoulder. Empathy? Remembered pain from too many dreams? It didn’t matter.
He was hurt, badly. Way to go, Mari. Wake him up so he can bleed to death. Freaking brilliant.
“Hold still. You’re bleeding.” She looked around the room for anything she could use to put pressure on the wound, but found nothing. She called out to her dive partner. “You got any first-aid supplies.”
“Negative. If he needs a medic, he’ll have to wait until we figure out a way to get him back to the boat.”
There was another room. Maybe she’d find something in there, because she had a big fat zero in medical supplies handy.
“No.” Her alien grabbed the side of her dive suit and halted her slide from the tiny pod. His eyes burned now, demanded she stay at his side.
“Shh. It’ll be okay.” She stared down into those dark eyes and let the grin tugging at her heart out, just a bit, a crinkle of her lips at the corners. If they were unlucky enough to die now, after she’d searched all over the planet for him, been laughed at, ridiculed, and tormented by dreams no one should have to endure, she was going to get a kiss first.
“What’s your name?” Leaning down, she paused just before their noses would have touched, waiting anxiously for his answer.
“Raiden.”
Raiden. The Japanese thunder god, Mortal Kombat bad ass. It fit him. Heaven or hell, god or demon, she wanted a kiss. Would he mind if she kissed him now? Did she care?
Nope.
She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his as stabbing pain pierced her shoulder. No. No time to care. She had no idea how or why, but she was pretty damn sure being this close to him was killing her.
Was he poisonous? Was the air down here a mix of toxic chemicals that were making her bleed internally? Too nitrogen rich? Messing with her mind? Causing hallucinations? Pain? Did it matter when her instincts demanded she do anything to save him?
Honestly, death would be a reprieve from her obsession with hunting for him, from the horror of her dreams…
“Hold still, Raiden.” But none of her dreams had ever been so seductive. A soft glide of skin on skin, she rubbed her cheek against his, reveled in the slightest scratch of stubble against her lips as she trailed them across his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. She kissed him, a soft sigh of surrender escaping in a rush the moment before she pressed her lips to his, sweetly, reverently, wishing she knew him, wishing his arms were wrapped around her, wishing there was more to this kiss than dreams.
His arm came up around her, buried in her braided hair and held her in place so he could kiss her back. He moaned, and she opened to his tongue’s eager exploration as the kiss deepened. He took more, clung to her as a drowning man might hold on to a rope. Except she was the one drowning, in lust. In pain. In blood…
Blood. God, the blood was everywhere now, pooling beneath her hand to run in a steady drip down the side of his metallic coffin.
“Come on. We’ve got to get you out of here.” The room spun as Mari pulled away from him to sit up. She stood, her knees weak, the muscles in her thighs trembling like she’d just spent an hour hiking stairs. She’d have to help him through the tunnels. She’d give him her backup tank and use the Inspo. How far they’d get was anyone’s guess. If they could figure out a way to open the door and reflood the landing platform, it was less than twenty feet to the next cave. Her dive partner could help her drag him along if necessary. Assuming their ear drums didn’t explode as soon as the water hit them. They were deep. The pressure could be a problem. And how long should Raiden decompress after two years at this depth? Was the air in this cave regulated to surface concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen? Or would she get him near the surface and watch him die from the bends? She’d only been down about thirty minutes. With decompression time, she’d be fine. But Raiden? Maybe he was a super-alien and it wouldn’t matter. Then again, his blood coating her palm made that seem like a false hope.
“God damn it.” She couldn’t quit now. She was damn stubborn, but the warmth of her own blood now heated the small of her back and her left side inside her dive suit. Blood dripped from her fingertips to the floor. When had she started bleeding? Why? And just how much blood could she lose and keep going…?
“Who are you? How did you find me?” Raiden grabbed her bleeding arm and forced her to look back at him.
“I’m Mari. I’m human, born in Sante Fe, New Mexico. A diver.” Admitting that she’d dreamt about him every night for two years seemed a bit much. Especially since the guy was thunder-god hot, a total eleven. A little lie of omission to Mr. Chiseled Chin with the perfect lips wouldn’t hurt anything.
“A diver? A human S.C.U.B.A. diver? Where am I? This is not my ship.” Raiden swung his legs over the edge and Mari stepped to his side, wrapped an arm around his waist and offered him her right shoulder. Even hurting, she was in margina
lly better shape than he was. He closed his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it.
“In a cave about fifty meters underwater.” Taking a deep breath, Mari pulled him to his feet and bit her lip to stop the cry of pain from escaping her. Agony sliced through her spine. But at least she fit perfectly under his shoulder. He was taller than she’d expected. Heavier, too. “Come on. I have to get you out of here right now.” She looked up to find her dive partner eyeing them both. “A little help here?”
“He’s coming with us?”
“He’s the reason we’re here.”
“Fine. But there’s movement on the other side of that door. Get him the hell out of there and let’s go. He can use one of our tanks. I’ll swim out on the back up.”
If Riaden didn’t move, she’d bleed out and he’d be stuck. She knew her boy, and he’d leave this alien behind if he needed to to save her. Raiden would never find his way through the caves without her. He’d never find the spool line on his own. And if he showed up alone, God only knew what her other dive partners would do to him.
“Thank you, healer Mari.”
“I’m not a healer. I’m a diver. And if we don’t get out of here soon, we’ll both die down here.”
Raiden stopped after two steps and turned her to face him. “Who sent you? Human military? The Triads? The Queen? Does my brother know about you? The Council?”
“No one sent me.” Mari stared up into his gray eyes and felt herself drowning. He was beautiful. Raiden looked so regal, so strong that she fought the urge to press her cheek to his chest and just let him take over. It was illogical. Stupid, really. But she could still taste him on her tongue and her body didn’t seem capable of walking at the moment, let alone leading a hulking alien warrior through several hundred meters of pitch-black sea cave.
And his questions shook her to the core. She was in way over her head. Triads? The Queen? As in the Queen of what? England? No way he was British. Number one, his accent was too strange. Number two, he looked like he might be part Asian, not northern European. And number three? No way in hell she’d believe she’d spent the last two years of her life hunting for a normal, everyday human man. Humans didn’t survive in stasis pods or psychically summon girls from New Mexico to come save their asses. And they didn’t have silver hair tipped in black, or eyes that swirled black in gray like moving marble.
“What year is it?”
Mari frowned. Of course he’d want to know. Just how long had he been in that glass coffin?
Raiden’s eyes narrowed when she told him. “Earth’s calendar?”
“Yes.” Yep. Not human. Mari tilted backward like a teetering bowling pin and he wrapped strong hands around her biceps to steady her. Just who was rescuing whom here?
“Impossible…”
“Sorry.” Not sure what she was apologizing for, Mari did it anyway. He seemed distressed by her answer. Her head buzzed and she knew she was about to faint. Fat lot of good she’d do him after that. She tugged on his hands and angled her head toward the door. “Come on. We’ve got an air tank for you. You’ll have to follow me out. It’s dark and we’ve got to swim through a couple hundred meters of cave to get back to open water.”
“They always did like the deep, dark places.”
“Who?”
Raiden didn’t answer, just turned her in his arms and stepped up to her side. He draped one of her arms over his shoulders and held it in place. His free arm went around her waist. He had to stoop to help her walk, but she felt oddly numb about the whole thing. She knew what happened next in this dream, and it wasn’t hot sex, declarations of love at first sight, or any other desirable event.
In this dream, he turned into a monster and she died. That was what came next.
Every freaking time.
Whatever. She’d have to donate more blood to get the exit door opened again. Her finger still hurt, but the slight pain was hardly noticeable now compared to the rest of it. Was she breathing acid down here? If so, it was too damn late. She hurt too much to pick up her tanks. She’d have to sit down and try to wiggle into her gear without the crotch harness.
She had no choice but to keep going. She couldn’t abandon him, because balancing every nightmare there was bliss, dreams of him holding her, caressing her. Loving her. She’d been in love with this version of him for months. He had no idea who she was, but she’d spent every night for two years with him while she slept. She had to help him escape. Her very own Sleeping Beauty. She was human. Expendable.
She had no idea how she knew it, but he was neither.
Knife up. Dive light on. Mari and Raiden were on the landing platform with her dive partner watching the other door when it slid open behind them. Mari turned around to face a brightly lit room full of blaring television broadcasts in multiple languages from all over the world. Military radio chatter was going on in the background as two dark things rose to a tower over her average height. Shaking, she waited for them to move, to speak, to do something, anything but stand there in silence and scare the shit out of her.
They had horribly twisted features, not much humanity remained in their faces for her to read. They looked like they’d been normal once, before they’d transformed into these creatures. Raiden said nothing, but he didn’t let her go. And neither man with her panicked. Her S.E.A.L., she expected it. Bonus points for the alien hero. She barely held back a scream.
Her nightmare had come to life in full, 3-D reality. They were so screwed.
“Who are you, human?” The voice grated on her nerves, like Freddy Krueger’s blades on the chalkboard. Raiden stiffened beside her, but she ignored him for now. She heard the fiend’s words, but the voice was deep, metallic and echoed with the voices of many, like a computer synthesizer from hell.
Maybe she could bluff their way out of this. Mari felt her heart speed in a rapid staccato under her ribs. She hoped these things couldn’t hear it. What the hell was she supposed to do now? These monsters would kill them both. They made the core of her bones cold with dread. Whoever they were, whatever they were, every cell in her body was screaming in terror.
They waited, like giant spiders, for her to answer.
“Prisoner transport.” What the heck? It worked for Luke and Han.
Mari ignored the scalding pain of acid in her bloodstream. Terror made her stronger, lent stability to her legs. If she faltered here, they were all dead for sure. She stepped away from Raiden’s arms to halt in the doorway and block both men from their view. It was the only direction she could go. She had to stall them, give Raiden enough time to escape. She motioned behind her back, pointing at the dive tanks, hoped they’d take the hint before it was too late. The agony of fire in her veins and the sharp, stabbing pain in her shoulder were enemies now, enemies that would kill her as surely as these two creatures straight from her darkest visions.
“Enter.” One of the creatures walked to the far end of the room to a monitor of some kind, completely dismissing her. Mari couldn’t see what he, it, was doing. She turned to her dive partner and shook her head when he tried to block her way. Mari tilted her temple toward Raiden and their gear, then leaned up on tiptoe to whisper to him.
“Get ready. We have to get him out of here. I’ll stall these things.” She wiped her hand on his, sure to transfer some blood. “My blood opens the door. Flood these bastards out.”
The televisions and radios were even louder once she entered the room, nearly deafening her with hundreds of voices speaking at once, in a multitude of languages.
She shook her head in an effort to clear some of the noise. After the quiet of the dive, her eardrums felt like they were going to explode. Chancing one quick peek over her shoulder, she mouthed one word to Raiden before turning back around. “Go.”
Creepy Number One continued to face her, unmoving, simply observing her as she skirted the walls trying to keep his attention focused on her. She studied everything she could, looking for a control switch she could throw that would open the cave
back up, or get them the hell out of here. She had her pistol, but something told her neither the gun’s steel darts nor her dive knife would be enough to slow these things down, let alone stop them. She palmed the weapons anyway, one finger wrapped around the trigger, and her other hand clenched around the knife handle.
Time. They needed time.
Anything useful would be good at this point. Even if it only gave them a few seconds head start.
The volume increased but she resisted the urge to cover her ears. The being closer to her raised his arm and the volume decreased to near silence.
Except it wasn’t quiet. Their bodies hummed with an eerie vibration that felt wrong to her, like a violin constantly missing its note. Just. Not. Right.
The sound of their bodies was much worse than the previous cacophony of human radio chatter.
“Where do you think you are taking our prisssoner?” The two creatures closed in on her, one in front, and one behind.
Mari frantically searched the screens, her mind racing to find something they might believe. But she’d always been a terrible liar. Terrible. Which was why, when someone asked her if she believed in aliens, she said “yes” no matter who did the asking or how much ridicule she knew her answer would bring. Terrible liar, obsessed with aliens. It was the double knock-out punch and the reason every boyfriend she’d ever had had dumped her. Rational men couldn’t deal with her personal brand of crazy, and she couldn’t deal with the obsessive natures of the conspiracy chasers who would. There was crazy…and then there was crazy.
She was a freaking hypocrite and she knew it. Still, none of the men she met had ever been able to compete with Raiden in her mind. He’d been what she wanted, even when he wasn’t real…
Blue Abyss: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3 (The Timewalker Chronicles) Page 3