Sadly, she didn’t even have to open her mouth and these things already knew she was lying. But she just needed to buy some time. She’d done it before, in her more successful dreams. She’d still died, but she was nothing if not an eternal optimist.
“To the ship.” Whose, she didn’t know. Surely they had a ship somewhere? And she hadn’t tried this line before in any of her dream world confrontations with them.
The one moving behind her chilled her spine. “We were not informed of this, Timewalker.”
They’d never called her that in any of her dreams before. Raiden gasped somewhere behind her. What the heck was a Timewalker and why did they think she was one?
“Silence.” The other moved forward until he towered above her. She forced her head way, way back, trying to make out a face. She couldn’t see beyond the shadows of his hood and cloak. If she hadn’t seen these creatures hundreds of times, had variations of this stupid conversation hundreds of times, she’d have been mindlessly screaming. Even with her knowledge, her practice, she barely held herself together.
“He would never send a free human to us, nor a Timewalker.”
The hair on the back of her neck buzzed to life as the cold, unknown energy of the one behind her got close enough to sniff her neck like a dog.
“He did send me. I am taking the prisoner to him personally.” Mari turned but the nasty behind her was fast, lightning fast. His black, clawed hands closed over her arms, sent a jolt of cold pain through her limbs like an electric current, one that held her in place, locked in the circuit of the creature’s cold stare.
“Why are you really here? How did you find us?” The thing in front of her moved closer and she struggled against the iron bands that secured her arms so she couldn’t raise her weapon and get off a shot.
A pinpoint of bright light appeared to her left, but the creatures didn’t seem to notice it. Instead, the one facing her raised his clawed fist above her as if to strike. His flesh darker than the creature who held her immobile, he looked made from obsidian. So black. So very hard.
“Release her!” Raiden came out of nowhere and grappled with the monster behind her. Her dive partner fired a steel dart into both creatures and threw his knife, imbedding it to the hilt in one of their backs. The creature let go of her arms and she fell to her knees on the cold stone floor.
Faster than her eyes could track, her dive partner was launched halfway across the room to collide with the cave walls. As he slid down she noticed that his neck was torqued at a weird angle and there was no life in his eyes. He was dead.
She heard her nightmare happen, heard Raiden’s battle cry as he attacked the beings again. There was no need to look when she knew the horror she’d see if she did…the monster nothing but ash and Raiden writhing on the ground in an agony of silence as his flesh turned black.
She’d failed. Just like last time, and what felt like a hundred times before that. He would turn into a monster, she would die in her sleep and wake gasping on her small bunk. She’d shiver and cry, and do it all again tomorrow night. And the next. And the freaking next.
If the thing in front of her had been blessed with a human face, she would’ve sworn he smiled right before he shoved his clawed appendage deep into her chest. The weapon shredded her flesh, cracked her ribs like toothpicks and pierced her still beating heart with black stone fingers as sharp as razor blades.
So cold.
She screamed. The blinding anguish paralyzed her and an oddly detached part of her brain painted the mental image of her dangling in midair with the creature’s hand buried in her chest. Human shish kabob. Numbness spread from the black ice inside her, a shard of deepest cold stealing all warmth, all hope. All life. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and stared up into the sightless mask of the monster towering over her as a heated balm spread over the skin of her chest and slid down inside her dive suit. Blood. More of her blood. Not much left now, but it was warm.
So warm...
Anger warred with apathy as she spied Raiden on the floor, thrashing like a wild animal as the darkness took over his body. Deep sadness weighed her down as she watched. God, she’d wanted it to be different this time. Just once, she wanted to save him…
A small light grew bigger to her left, large enough for angels to walk through.
This was new. Never seen that in the nightmare before. Of course, she’d never kissed him either.
Angels? Hmmm. A dying girl could hope, right?
The light flickered. Or was it her eyes failing? She couldn’t bear the thought, or the sight of the faceless creature standing over her for another moment. Murdered by aliens.
This was so not how she’d planned on going.
Raiden. She whimpered with the gut-clenching ache in her soul at the thought of the man she would leave behind, the man she’d failed. His scent, his kiss, lingered on her lips, a sweet torment she knew she’d repeat tomorrow night, and the next.
She’d have to watch him die again. And now she knew his name. His taste.
And she had to leave him alone with the monsters.
Chapter Two
Celestina opened her eyes with a gasp of horror and clutched her chest where the Triscani’s freakish claws had sliced through flesh and bone to her heart. Well, not her heart, the human, Marina’s, but she’d felt it all the same. Her gaze darted around her tiny living space, the space she’d occupied on the Archiver’s ship for centuries, and searched every shadow for one of the Triscani Hunters. She rolled onto her side and sighed.
Alone, as always.
Longing threatened to crush her soul but she brutally pushed it away. There was no time for weakness, or want. No time for regrets. No time to mourn the past. No time.
The thought would’ve made her laugh, if she weren’t doubled over in pain from her lingering vision. The human female. Something wasn’t right…
Perhaps she should log her vision into the ship’s systems, should report the girl’s death to the Archivers so they could formulate a plan and recruit a Timewalker to travel through time and save her.
Except she couldn’t. Not anymore. In her original vision, the woman found the cave, went inside, and discovered the male and the maps, dates, and vital information that Celestina needed to win this war. Those Triscani were not supposed to be there. The human woman, Marina, was not destined to die in that cave. And neither was the forbidden son she’d awakened.
But reality had changed, the future had been altered, and there could be only one explanation, there was a traitor on board the ship, someone who had full access to her reports. That narrowed it down to one of the twelve on the Archiver council, or to the other Seer. Either possibility would spell disaster for Earth, and for her plans.
Still shaking, Celestina slid off her padded reclining chair and hurried to the data station. She quickly signed in and pulled up her vision journal. The ship’s systems kept track of everything. It would show her who had logged into her records.
The entry she sought regarding Marina’s dive was gone. Erased. Didn’t exist.
To suspect was one thing, but knowing there was a traitor on board made her limbs numb and her head too heavy to hold up. Gods, she had fought so hard, had sacrificed so much to save their world and to save the Earth. She had paid for her mistakes a hundredfold. For over seven hundred years she’d been stuck in this brutal time loop, fighting the Triscani, trying to ensure humanity’s survival. To ensure the survival of her people. To absolve herself of her sins.
This was too much. And heaven help her, she didn’t know who the traitor was. The Archiver Council was made up of six men and six women, all sacred beings. All trusted. All above reproach or suspicion. They could all open the time portals, but as far as she knew, on this ship, only she and Helene, the other Seer, could walk the strands. Most Seers on Itara had a three- to four-day window in time where could see into a probable future. Celestina used her skill to try to head off the Triscani attacks.
But Celestina was di
fferent. More powerful. More dangerous. Celestina saw things she could neither understand or explain, often decades into the future.. She was famous on Itara, and had been since she was a small child, nearly two thousand years ago. Even after all this time on Earth stuck on this ship, neither she, Helene, nor the Archiver council had discovered what the Triscani objective was. It appeared, generally, that they simply wanted to murder as many humans as possible. And sometimes, despite her and Helene’s best efforts, and the efforts of the Timewalkers sent to stop them, that was exactly what they did, by the millions. Bubonic plague. Influenza. World wars and famines.
But that had all changed a few months ago. First, the Timewalker Alexa had thwarted them in Texas and prevented the release of the Red Death. Then, the scourge had changed tactics completely, confusing her further. The Triscani attack on Chicago was too concentrated, too small. They were hunting someone or something, and Celestina had spent most of the last few weeks in a trance trying to figure out what, or who, they were after.
She’d had no luck. But she now knew there was a betrayer on the council, someone who had seen her vision log and taken action to kill the Timewalker descendant, Marina, before she could heal the Itaran male dying of Triscani poison.
But who would try to stop Marina? And, even more importantly, why? Who was Raiden? As a Forbidden Son, he had to be born of the Itaran Queen’s lineage. But who was his mother? Why was he on Earth? And why did the Triscani want him?
Celestina rested her cold forehead against the even colder glass of the vid screen. She ordered her pounding heart to cease its overzealous attempts to leap straight out of her chest.
The girl must live and she must save the man in stasis. Earth’s survival depended on it. She had a day or two at most before Marina made that dive. She’d have to watch the human, and be ready. She didn’t have the luxury of using Helene’s skill with looking into the past. If she waited for that, Marina would already be dead.
No. She’d have to wait, time everything perfectly, and take Marina at the moment of her future death. Celestina didn’t bother trying to analyze the certainty that clutched her, that made her palms sweat and her temples ache. The knowing was part of her gift and she’d long ago learned to trust it.
Among these people she was a Seer, an orchid in a hot house, coddled, patronized, and feared. Celestina could easily see three or four days ahead, into the most probable future. Her counterpart, Helene, looked into the past, identified the Timewalkers who were destined to die, who could be taken and reassigned without disrupting the present.
Helene had been building genealogy charts, lists of Timewalker candidates, for centuries. Still, there weren’t enough Timewalkers to do everything that needed to be done, nor enough Archivers to move them around in time. It was up to Celestina to report the future, and up to the council on board the ship to decide if or when they would intervene.
No one on board touched the Seers, even after seven hundred years in close quarters. She understood. She avoided Helene like the plague. She had too many secrets to risk Helene’s touch.
Just as no one looked her in the eye, or spoke to her, unless it was absolutely necessary. Normally, that suited her purposes and her plan perfectly.
But this time she needed help. She needed someone who could open the portal for her and hold it, not just for herself, but for two. She would be able to walk the strands. This she knew. The cold webs of time and destiny were nearly as familiar to her, and perhaps more real, than this fabricated, bird-in-a-cage life she led aboard this ship.
Whom to trust? That was the bigger problem. There were twelve who could open a portal for her, but only one man she would trust with her life and with her suspicions. Bran was the one man she’d trust with her very heart and soul, but neither were hers to give. Another had stolen them from the foolish young girl she’d been a very, very long time ago.
She swallowed the despair that was her constant companion. No regrets. She would hunt. She would right her wrongs and save them all. Only then could she come out of hiding and reveal her true self.
Celestina made a cup of green tea and forced herself to consume a meal bar. She hadn’t eaten in over thirty hours, too obsessed with her hunt to bother with such trivial things as food and water. She’d lost weight, knew that black circles formed under her eyes and exhaustion clouded her gaze. Still, she pushed on. She feared that she was no longer truly Immortal, that even she had her limits. Facing Bran in her current frazzled state might just push her over the edge. She couldn’t afford to crack, to reveal the truth to him. Which might be a problem since she hadn’t been able to stop shaking since waking from her vision.
She settled back in her chair and adjusted the heat settings to their highest level. Searching the strands of time made her miserably cold, despite the fact that her mind alone, and not her physical body, made the journey.
Praying for calm, she slid down a much too familiar path in her mind, found his presence, and lightly tapped his consciousness with her own, asking permission to speak to him.
You deign to speak to me? Bran’s enormous mental strength poured into her with his voice and she knew she’d made the right decision, the only decision she could.
I need your help. There is a traitor on board.
I see.
A wall of icy silence surrounded her and Celestina trembled in her chair. He was frightening. He walked in shadows. He could kill mortals and half-bloods with his little finger. But he was honorable. He would not bend. This was one truth she’d learned the hard way. It was the one truth she counted on now.
A plan took shape in her mind and she would require his help. She waited, not hiding her desperation, her distress. Her fear. She laid her need at his feet, bare for him after two centuries of silence.
Please. One word, a word she’d never before spoken to him, and she knew he’d come. By the gods, it wasn’t right or fair, but she’d long ago accepted the price she would pay. He wouldn’t be happy that she summoned him, but he would come.
He answered, began walking to her quarters.
Thank the gods. She couldn’t fail now. She had much yet to atone for. Too much.
Cursing her weakness and her small, pain-racked body, she shivered in the dark and waited for him, hardly daring to breathe.
<><><>
Completely numb, Mari thought she’d be dead by now, but somehow wasn’t. She opened her eyes to see that the light became bigger and brighter until a thin, pale woman in a blue robe stepped through to stand beside her. She was eerily beautiful. The stranger held out her hand. “Come, Marina. Come with me.”
In the deepest well of her heart she knew she had a choice, she could feel it. If she said no, the woman would disappear and leave her here with Raiden dying on the floor and the monster’s claw piercing her chest.
No brainer.
“Yes.” A blinding flash of light, like a lightning strike, flashed around them and Mari lost all sense of time and place. With a terrible wrenching, she was pulled out of her body like dirt sucked down a vacuum hose. She couldn’t fight it or control where she went, but at least the pain was gone. The woman somehow held her together and pulled her through a tangled space of white strands, bitter cold, and darkness. She imagined this must be what a beam of light felt like traveling down a fiber optic line. In January. In the freaking Arctic. If this was heaven, she was screwed. She’d never be warm again.
Then she slammed into flesh once more. Her mind screamed in silent agony. Every heartbeat was a blade plunging through her chest. Her skin was on fire, burning and twitching in reaction to the cold that bit into her bones with giant teeth of solid ice. If this was life now, maybe she should have stayed down there with the aliens. At least she’d been going blissfully numb.
“She’s injured and in shock. We must summon the healer.” A deep voice wrapped around her, strangely comforting. He reminded her of Dad. Deep, baritone, solid.
“No. No one can know. I will tend to her.” The answer was femini
ne, but unyielding. No doctor for the mortally wounded diver girl murdered by aliens. Mari tried to open her eyes, but they burned as if she’d rubbed a teaspoon of cayenne pepper into each unsuspecting orb. She moaned and curled into a ball. Something jabbed her in the neck, then the behind, and they both felt like needles the size of ball-point pens.
The deep voice grunted, but didn’t argue. The woman continued. “Can you lift her into the tank for me? I need to know if the DNA graft will hold. The warm water should help her heal.”
Mari felt iron bands lift her, then slide her limp body into what felt like a nice, hot bath. “How long?”
The woman answered. “At least twelve hours. Then I need you to take her back.”
Confused, Mari tried to listen, but their voices faded into a blur of ups and downs and then she heard nothing more.
<><><>
When she could think again, she realized she was underwater. Trapped. Like a fish in a tank, she floated in a clear enclosure, minus the bubbling treasure chest and plastic plants. She kicked for the surface, but her head bumped into an invisible solid barrier. There was no air under the barrier, not even the smallest of spaces for her to draw an ounce of oxygen, a hint of breath.
Her previous drugged-out fog deserted her to be replaced with a horrible panic, a mind-crushing, sense-stealing, wild drive to beat her body against the walls. She clawed at the tank, swam from side to side, pounded her body and fists against the barrier in a blind rage, desperate to escape, hoping to crack the thick bluish material that looked like glass but was abnormally warm beneath her fists.
Come on, Mari. Divers don’t panic. Panic kills.
Mari felt wet heat in her throat, in her lungs, and realized she was breathing water, and it felt normal, like air but thicker. Warmer. She relaxed and let her body do what it wanted to do…inhale. The glide of liquid down her throat and into her lungs was like a carress sent to heal and soothe her body from the inside out.
One more insane experience to add to her collection of very bizarre dreams. She calmed down and regulated her breathing, noticed that she could see without a mask, like a fish. Bringing her hand up in front of her face, relief flooded her when she saw her own five, very un-fish-like fingers. No fins. No webbed fingers. Mostly normal, then. Other than the strange slide of water down her throat, she felt wonderful. Strong. Tingly and buzzing with excess energy.
Blue Abyss: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3 (The Timewalker Chronicles) Page 4