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

by Michele Callahan

  Hunting, always hunting. Never finding the one she sought.

  When she sent her consciousness along the strands, she was not a passive observer. She saw what they saw, felt that they felt, and had no control over when or how she would return to herself. She experienced everything they did, including death.

  This was her darkest secret. The true price of her gift. No one knew.

  How many times could a woman die and remain sane?

  Odds were that no one else on the ship would notice the shift in time. She was different, she knew. Her soul had made countless trips through time, watching and learning, changing the future and robbing the Triscani of their smallest victories whenever she could.

  But the past? Changing the past was tricky indeed.

  Every light blazed brightly in her rooms because she could no longer tolerate the dark. She knew her body paid the price for her obsession, her quest. Without doubt, she must look like a walking corpse. How long had it been since she’d seen her reflection in anything other than the ship’s glass display screens as she entered or checked the reports?

  A very long time.

  Long ago she’d been beautiful, quick to laugh and eager to dare just about anything. That was how she’d ended up here, on the one ship that had followed the Triscani through the black hole. The great battle, the Crux had been over, and the Itarans had tasted defeat at the hands of the Triscani. Ajax, the first King in over two thousand years had disappeared. His beautiful Queen, Angeline, turned to ash. And the victors, the Triscani, had somehow stolen one of the Itaran’s ships and opened a temporary wormhole, the theoretical black hole the human named Kerr had envisioned. The enemy ship disappeared, and Celestina had felt reality shift beneath her feet, her memories begin to drift and fade, to tangle.

  The other Seer on board had felt it, too. And in the last seconds before the wormhole closed, she had convinced the Archiver ship’s captain to follow the stolen vessel, to chase the Triscani ship wherever it was they had gone.

  Into the past, over seven hundred years into Earth’s past, where they’d remained locked in battle with their fellow time travelers trying to prevent whatever action had caused the Itarans to lose the battle.

  She’d dared to follow her heart when she’d signed a commission on the Archiver ship, when she’d decided to protect an ancient warrior who, even now, after hundreds of years, glared like an angry beast and barely tolerated her presence.

  Celestina knew, beyond all doubt, that keeping Bran at arm’s length was the only option she had. But borrowing a phrase from one of her many human visions, life was a bitch. She sighed, and clutched the blankets to her chin, shivering and afraid to close her eyes. No wonder Bran took his first opportunity to leave her alone. She could not explain what she was doing or why. Most of the time she barely understood it herself.

  With her blood chugging like half-frozen slush in her veins, Celestina wasn’t sure how long it would take her to recover this time. Her body shuddered, cramps rolling like waves through her torso and limbs. Seeking out her visions of the future, sending her spirit ahead in time to observe the streams of consciousness and experiences of those living below her on Earth, left her body feeling cold and hollow.

  She closed her eyes and held the warming blankets as tightly as her cramped hand allowed. How much more could her body take? Yes, she’d been altered by the trip through the black hole, they all had. Perhaps, one day, she would pray for death. But not yet. Not. Yet. She would endure. She would survive. She would see this through…

  As if from a great distance she heard the door to her room open, sensed the presence of another, and smelled…food? She was beyond caring, focused solely on enduring the pain laying waste to her body. She would live, the battle wasn’t over yet. She would not give in.

  “What have you done to yourself, Tina?” The voice was deep, and familiar. A dream to sustain her? Or to torment her with what she could never have?

  Unsure, she didn’t attempt to speak past her cramped jaw muscles, refused to open her eyes. If he was a dream, she didn’t want to wake up just yet. Even fiction was better than being alone in this.

  She barely noticed the tug on her blankets. She surrendered them easily, her hands unable to continue holding them in place. When had she become so feeble?

  Arms wrapped around her, pulled her shaking body close. With a sigh of relief, Celestina burrowed into his welcoming heat. The weight of the blankets settled over her, wrapping her in a cocoon of warmth.

  “Never again.” His vow alarmed her, but she was too desperate for his touch to argue, too relieved to stem the flow of silent tears she knew soaked him to the skin beneath her cheek. He whispered to her, words she was too far gone to comprehend. Her iron will focused on one simple fact, she’d heal, and she’d do what must be done.

  Feeling safe for the first time in recent memory, Celestina clutched Bran as tightly as she dared and submitted to the call of slumber, to dreams.

  Celestina opened her eyes slowly, like a year’s worth of sleep held them weighted down. She was not in her own bed, not her quarters, not her body…

  She was dreaming, seeing through the eyes of a male.

  A male chained to a stone table. Burning liquid coursed continually through his veins from a human I.V. that was taped to his scalp, out of reach. Chains held his forehead, neck, chest and limbs to a thin mattress atop a stone base. Rage poured through her body, rage and madness and pain.

  Celestina knew that the faint green fluid dripped in a steady flow, never-ending, as it had for decades. Centuries?

  Poison? To keep him trapped here. Weak.

  Escape.

  The need beat inside the male body, more than desire, more than instinct.

  Elemental.

  Struggling to breathe, each rise and fall of his chest wall took an act of will. Eventually, it became an act of self-preservation. Refusing to breathe simply caused more pain. Could. Not. Die. Not from this. Not without a Mater Mortis and his willing consent.

  He was a true Immortal. A king.

  Seeking calm, the Immortal stilled, listened intently. Intrigued, Celestina’s spirit listened as well. Someone was close by, might discover this place, might set him free.

  Then the noise faded and he was alone, again. Forever... The Immortal screamed with anguish. His helpless rage suffused Celestina as well, and she knew her actual physical body responded, heart speeding to dangerous levels. The call of her own flesh threatened to send her home too soon, before she understood what was happening here.

  Trapped in the Immortal’s body, Celestina became aware, as he did, of a portal opening within the dark space. The Betrayer stood over him, just out of sight, out of range…gloating like a fat pig.

  “I just wanted to kill you again, just like I killed her…”

  The Immortal body raged, desperate to kill him, to punish him even as his heart shattered like broken glass. This bastard had turned his Queen to ash. This betrayer had cost him everything.

  The Betrayer laughed and plunged a poisoned dagger into the center of the Immortal’s chest. Agony ripped through hisody. His heart surged, undying, the force of the movement driving the blade deeper into muscle. The slice of that blade was nothing to the pain in his soul. He’d lost her. He’d failed. He’d failed his people and his friends, forced them to imprison him. He’d lost the war, and worse, he’d become one of them…

  No death would come to free him, there would be no release. The poison would fade from his system, and the heart inside this body would continue to beat around the sharp edge of the blade, every pulse an agony as the muscle cut itself open along the diamond tip, stuttered to a stop, then was cursed to beat again. Over and over until the dagger finally worked its way out. Forever.

  Hate welled within. And grief.

  His heart beat slowed to near nothing, the agony of the blade too much to endure with his grief so fresh. The Immortal lay still, resigned to wait, to heal.

  He began the count of the da
mned…

  “Celestina!” Bran shook the female in his arms, panicked. A moment ago she’d been warm, peacefully dozing in his arms. Her shaking had ceased and she’d snuggled into his embrace like a dark fantasy come true.

  Then her heart stopped.

  No!

  Bran drew a deep breath, shouted at the ship’s sentience to summon aide, a healer, a miracle, even though he knew it would take them precious minutes to reach the suite. To reach her.

  The ship’s systems didn’t respond. No lights. No alarms. Nothing.

  He’d have to carry her himself.

  Lifting her in his arms, he refused to accept her death. He’d will her to live if he had to. He cradled her to his chest and took two steps toward the door.

  Trembling and soft, her hand moved to wrap around his neck. A soft sigh left her lips. Her heart beat once. Twice. Thundered in her chest like a herd of wild horses.

  The touch froze him in place and he looked down in time to see her eyelids flutter, then open.

  “Bran?” Celestina lay passively in his arms, looking up with confusion. “What are you doing here?”

  Did she remember nothing? She’d summoned him, pleaded for his help, reached out to him after nearly two hundred years of painful silence. He’d come to her rooms and found her barely conscious.

  “You were cold, Tina.” As if that answered everything. For him, it did.

  “I am always cold.”

  This woman would be the death of him. His little Seer had dabbled in the past. Dangerous in the extreme, but he could not claim innocence in that arena. They both took calculated risks and hoped for the best.Her eyes clouded with pain, and he longed to know what she was thinking, what secrets she denied him, had denied him for centuries. Watching her for the slightest reaction, he continued. “You died in my arms. Your heart stopped, and the ship ignored my call for aid.”

  He’d expected shock or fear to cloud her eyes. Was that shame on her face? Guilt? She looked away.

  “I disabled the medical alarms in my suite.”

  “Why?” he asked, but was afraid he already knew the answer. She didn’t reply, just shook her head and rested in his arms. Too exhausted to fight him? Too defeated to show the pride and stubborn strength that had near driven him to madness for hundreds of years. “No more secrets, Tina. Every time? Tell me.”

  “Yes. Every time.”

  He fought a brutal urge to shake some sense into her. How many times had this happened to her? How often had she woken alone and freezing? How many times had she experienced death?

  “The Timewalker, Marina. When you told me of your vision of her future, you said the Triscani stabbed her though the heart?”

  “Yes.” Celestina shuddered as she whispered the affirmation, the pain that was etched into the lines around her eyes more than enough of an answer to his question.

  Bran choked back helpless anger, more determined than ever to end this war. It was time. Celestina was perfect, loving, beautiful, and so far beyond his reach he’d hated himself for desiring her. His soul was stained too black to touch her beauty. Celestina was not his to protect, she had never offered him her Mark, but he no longer cared. No excuse was worthy of what Celestina suffered alone.

  Mark or no Mark, he would not walk away from her again. She would suffer no more while he lived. No more. The depth of his conviction made his muscles tremble and Celestina shifted in his arms.

  The hand at his neck caressed him like a lover’s. Her lips opened on a sigh. Hot and aching, his body hardened for her. He was tempted to kiss her. But he couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t tie her fate to his. He would protect her, he could stay close and care for her, but she deserved better than the destiny that patiently waited to claim him. Fate was cruel.

  Her silken hair wrapped around his arm, her scent teased him like the sweetest ice treat. Her eyes darkened to a deep blue with desire. A moan of agonized pain escaped before he could censure it and he buried his face in the hollow of her shoulder, tortured himself with the soft brush of his lips over her skin.

  One kiss? He didn’t dare. One would never be enough.

  He walked to her bed slowly, savoring every moment of contact, knowing it would end as soon as they reached it. Warm blankets. A soft bed. She’d be safe here until he could find Teagh, The Dark One, The Guardian of the Gate, and end this nightmare. Teagh would open the Gate for him once more, help him retrieve what they’d hidden, or Bran would rip him to pieces with his bare hands.

  Half-brother or no.

  Simple as that.

  <><><>

  Raiden held Mari gently in his arms as the boat raced along the coast of the island. Tim steered with a steady hand. The woman, Sarah, shifted constantly, a bundle of nervous energy that made a circuit. First she scanned the horizon, then checked on her husband, then eyes back to Raiden. Repeat. Sarah’s gaze avoided Mari and he wondered why.

  He should be asking questions, should be interrogating the people who had somehow managed to find them. Not just ask questions, but demand answers.

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth just yet, not when the fantasy he held in his arms, the fantasy of both survival and healing was so fresh and powerful in his mind. He was also unwilling to reveal his ignorance. So, he didn’t speak a single word the entire trip around the island. His tongue was trapped in his mouth by both the strategic demands of his mind and unnamed emotions for a woman he did not know, a woman whose stories his war-hardened heart refused to believe.

  He had seen the women’s Mark, the Shen on both of them, the Timewalkers’ Mark. On the male, Tim, as well, which unsettled him in ways he didn’t want to examine too closely. But the Timewalkers had all vanished over a century ago.

  Could he hope to believe these people were exactly what they seemed to be, independent and unknown Timewalkers who had miraculously escaped the Queen’s attention? Women with the incredible power to create storms and breathe water? Women of old, who fought to pull the world back from the razor’s edge of destruction? Women who could walk the strands of time and change things?

  Raiden studied Mari’s features. Her straight black hair promised to be as smooth and glossy as silk beneath the salt and cave silt tangled in it. Her skin? Soft to the touch beneath the faint coating of white poweder. She had an inch-long scar on her right temple and a small birthmark in front her left ear. He longed to kiss them both. Her full lips, still tinged green, would be pink, and lush, and ripe for exploration. For now, she remained unconscious, a slight frown her only sign of awareness when the boat would jump or swerve suddenly.

  He held her gently and absorbed the shocks and jolts to her body the best he could. Sarah had given him a soft yellow towel, and he used it to wipe away dried salt from her cheeks. When her face was as clean as he could get it, he pressed the towel to her back where it absorbed the deadly green poison from her wound. He needed her to wake so he could discover the truth of what had happened to her before she woke him. Had the Triscani attacked her? Held her prisoner in the cave as well? Where was her family? Who were the men on her boat? Had she loved one of them? Was she already claimed, already mother to another generation of powerful healers?

  The bitter smell of Triscani ashes still haunted him. How had she defeated them? Who had given her the Angel’s Fire? How had she found him in the first place? Dreams she said? Just dreams? That didn’t make any sense.

  Gerrick’s words came back to him. “Stay alive. She’ll find you. Mark you.”

  How had an Itaran Seer known what would occur? It had been much, much longer than three days since Gerrick had been given both the soul stone and his apparent foreknowledge of the Timewalker who would find Raiden and Mark him. They’d been on the ship for longer than that even before his brother, Ryu’s attack. The Seer would have had to give Gerrick both the soul stone and the message weeks before his brother’s attack, and two years before Mari had actually found him.

  How could a Seer on Itara have known what would happen to him? Everyon
e knew that the Seers usually had a very brief window in which to view the future and directly alter a time line. A few days at most, except for the legendary Seer of old. Celestina. And if it were Celestina that Gerrick had spoken to, how had she made contact with Gerrick from one of his father’s prison cells?

  Raiden glanced up when the engine finally silenced. They were at a very small dock with a handful of fishing boats. No tourists here. The tiny cove was obviously very private. “Where are we?”

  Tim threw a rope to Sarah who had jumped onto the dock. “We’re north of Tuckers Town. Our house isn’t far. We’ll regroup there.” Tim leaned over and reached out his fingers, obviously intending to check Mari’s wound.

  “Don’t risk it.” Raiden turned, taking Mari’s shoulder far from the other man’s reach. “The poison will kill you in a matter of hours, even a small amount.”

  Sarah jumped back on board.

  “Is the wound healed? Or is she still oozing?”

  Raiden lifted the towel to see smooth, unbroken skin. Her lips were no longer green and the poison was no longer seeping from her body, but her skin was still covered in half dried blood and poison. “Her wound is healed, but she still has poison on her skin.”

  “Then get her off the boat and rinse off the poison in the water while we clean up.”

  Tim shook his head. “Sarah, get away from them and go rinse off first. I don’t want you anywhere near that stuff.”

  Sarah leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. “Yes, sir, Mr. Overprotective.”

  Tim wrapped her up in a quick but thorough kiss. “Damn right.”

  Raiden did his best to ignore the intimate byplay. He didn’t need to like these people, nor trust them. The only thing he needed was to take care of the mysterious woman lying in his arms. He stood, then lifted Mari once again. Time to get back into the water and rinse the poison away. Sarah was right. That was as good an idea as any.