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

by Michele Callahan

  He carried Mari around the small wooden dock and stepped out onto the sand. He waited for Sarah to finish rinsing her hands, then walked waist deep in the water where Mari could float in his arms, her body lifting and falling gently with the ebb and flow of the waves coming into the shore.

  With as much care as he could muster in his scarred hands, he cupped the back of her head, holding her face above water as the rest of her body floated weightless in his loose embrace. Schools of fish flashed in the water beneath her, then were gone. Silver. Green. Gold. Curious and quick, they darted around investigating Mari, then disappearing as swiftly as they had come.

  Mari’s cheeks were pink. Raiden sighed in relief as the massive sea surrounding them washed away the remnants of poison past the point of any danger. With her head securely resting against his arm, well out of the water, he turned her slightly to inspect her back and the Mark near the top of her arm.

  His gaze traveled from her hands to elbow, elbow to neck, as if he were actually afraid to look. Perhaps he was. But was it fear that he’d once again see the Mark? Or fear that it would be gone?

  A wild tangle of black hair obstructed his view. With a shaking hand. He gathered the mass of tangled wet silk and pushed it aside.

  Her skin wa beautiful and soft to the touch. The healing capabilities of the water clans had once been legendary. But even he was astonished at her ability to process the Triscani poison.

  She was much more than a simple human. The Mark on her left shoulder called him like a beacon. The conscious decision made, he reverently traced the extinct symbol, the design that was somehow embedded in her petal-soft skin, with his fingertips. His own shoulder tingled at the contact. He drew a quick breath at the shockwave of energy that traveled through his fingertips, up his arm, to light his shoulder up with the now familiar burn.

  His wound. His poison. The stasis chamber had not given his body time to heal. She had saved him. Absorbed his wounds and saved him. Frustration built inside him with the mountain of unanswered questions. He rolled her onto her back in the water, eager to see her eyes focus on him again. Even more impatient to hear her voice and have his questions answered. But she slept on, like a princess under the spell of an evil fairy-tale witch. Still beyond his reach, haunting him.

  Sarah called to him from the beach. “Did you rinse off all the poison?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will it be safe to touch her now?” Sarah tilted her head as if she could see under the water to inspect Mari’s wound. “Her lips aren’t green anymore. That’s good.”

  “Do you always state the obvious?”

  “Watch it, Prince Charming.” Tim’s warning grated from where he stood on the dock, but Raiden ignored it. The woman, Sarah, was suspect until proven otherwise. They both were. Still, he had no other options, so he’d better play along.

  “My apologies, Sarah.”

  The tall nymph smiled at him. “No problem. I get it. You’re grumpy when you worry.” She nodded toward Tim. “He’s the same way. It’s cute.”

  “I am not cute.” Tim paced the beach along the edge, inches beyond the water’s reach. He was a huge man with scars covering half of his head and neck. Raiden had to agree with him. He looked like a battle-hardened warrior. Definitely not cute. Tim flicked his wrist at them to come back to shore. “If you’re done, let’s get out here. I don’t like being out in the open. We’re too exposed here.”

  <><><>

  Mari’s head bumped against a hard shoulder and she groaned. The rocking motion made her stomach heave. Her head already felt like a bomb had gone off inside her skull. Raiden carried her in his arms while the man from the beach walked ahead and his freckle-faced girlfriend walked alongside her. Sarah peeked at Mari’s face every few steps, a worried frown on her face.

  Mari blacked out. When she woke, Raiden carried her through a small dive shop to a cute little bungalow out back. Wicker furniture and floral designs on the pillows. Paintings of sailboats and beaches on the walls. Thick rugs and a cozy blue, green and tan beach motif decorated the entire house, dolphins, birds, and turtles peeking out from wallpaper and trinkets scattered around. This must be where the two lovebirds nested. She’d bet a hundred dollars that Tim hadn’t helped out with the interior decorating.

  Raiden carried her inside their small living area, placed her gently on a couch, and crouched near her head, blocking her body from their hosts.

  His stance was protective, and she was grateful not to be alone with people that she didn’t really know. Sarah seemed sweet, but she was a six-foot-tall waif with lines of strain around her eyes and a frown on her face. And Mari didn’t know her from Adam. “Do you remember me? I’m Sarah.”

  Names were nice, but if Mari was going to work up the energy to talk, she’d make it count. “Water.”

  Mari blacked out again. When she woke this time she’d been stripped to her swim suit, dried off, wrapped in a blanket and moved to a bed. She was propped up against pillows and Raiden held a water bottle to her lips, dribbling water into her mouth.

  Thank God.

  Mari reached for the bottle and drained it. Tim and Sarah watched every move she made like hawks. “More.”

  Great manners, Mari. Way to make a great first impression.

  Sarah didn’t even blink, just opened another bottle of water and placed it in Raiden’s hand. He smelled it first, then handed it to her. Five bottles later, Mari felt her body’s metabolism shift. Sweat beaded everywhere, pushing the excess salt from her system. In a matter of minutes the blanket she lay wrapped in was soaked with salt water and she was cold. Again.

  Sarah noticed her shivers, and the wet blanket. Without a word she disappeared into another room and came back with a giant quilt. “Here.”

  Mari tried to lift herself off the soaked bedding, but couldn’t. Mari tried again, then sighed in frustration when her arms and legs still refused to work properly. “Sorry.”

  “Rest, healer. I will tend you.” Raiden gently lifted Mari off the bed and removed the wet blanket. He settled her on the pillows and tucked the new blanket around her like he might a child at bedtime. If this guy was some kind of super-alien-slayer, Timewalker, badass, royal alien prince, he had a strange way of showing it.

  Snug as a bug…

  She sighed in relief and rested back into the feather-soft padding at her back. Maybe now she could get warm and think…

  What the hell was she going to do? Did they dare trust a couple of strangers just because they had a weird tattoo on their necks? Did she have a choice? She was out of cash, out of time, and out of Navy S.E.A.L.S. to drag along. Her boat had been destroyed, along with the poor men she’d talked into accompanying her. She could get more money, buy another boat, but it would take time she was afraid they didn’t have. Correction, make that time she was afraid Raiden didn’t have.

  She felt the darkness crouching inside him. She’d faced that darkness in her dreams, knew it’s flavor and texture. Raiden was fighting a losing battle and she wasn’t at all sure how to help him. Celestina told her to help him find his ship, so that was what she’d do first. She just hoped that something on board was going to help him hang on to the small spark of light still shining in his soul.

  Mari had never healed anyone before. Never in a million years would she have guessed how personal an act it was. She’d seen his soul, had almost felt like she could reach out and touch it. She’d wanted to touch it, to chase the darkness away and bask in his strength.

  Raiden’s hand rested on her ankle, the weight comforting her through the thick quilt. If she were very still, she could feel the pull of Raiden’s heartbeat. He was so close now that instead of the faint echo that had helped her find him, his pulse was like a maraca inside her ear. Was the rapid staccato beat caused by nerves? Anger? Fear?

  She was too tired to figure out his emotional state when his face could have been ca rved from granite. Here she was, barely conscious and stripped to her swim suit… “Where’s the stone?
And the disk? Where did you put them?” She struggled to rise.

  “Here, Mari. I kept them safe.” Raiden shoved the marked stone into Mari’s hands and gently pushed her back onto the bed with a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. He sat beside her, his hip a blaze of heat against her left arm and shoulder. She didn’t know him, but was comforted by the wall of hard male between her and their two hosts. She felt safe, and she never felt safe, not since she was too young to talk, not since the dreams started. She’d had them her whole life. Dreams of monsters, demons that hunted and preyed on humanity. She’d been miserable as a child. And even though she tried to put on a good show, her mother knew the truth. That she was miserable, and scared, and haunted. Her mother had tried everything, but nothing had helped. Medication had made things worse, not better, and her father had finally put his foot down, taken an eleven-year-old child aside, and told her she was just going to have to learn how to deal with it for the rest of her life, that it was most likely never going to go away..

  Fear was such a constant in her life that she barely paid it any attention after that. She was always afraid. When she began to see things she couldn’t explain when she was awake, Mari kept her mouth shut and ignored everything. That was how she’d survived high school and college. Feigned ignorance. And it had worked wonderfully, until Raiden had crash landed in that spaceship two years ago.

  Mari still had no explanation for all of the things she’d seen, but she’d gotten a crash course in what was possible over the last few hours, and things were starting to sort themselves out in her mind. Triscani. Timewalkers. Aliens.

  Sarah cleared her throat, obviously ready to chat. She was a shockingly tall, slender woman who looked all of nineteen years old with her hair in a ponytail, flip-flops on her feet, and a spray of freckles over her nose and cheeks.

  “I don’t know what you remember. My name is Sarah. This is my husband, Tim.” Tattooed, biker boy’s name was Timothy? Quaint.

  “I’m Mari.” She looked at Raiden and he shook his head again, the movement so slight no one else would have noticed it. She’d already told them their names on the beach. So, what did he want her to do? Keep secrets? That might be possible if she actually knew anything about anything. “This is my friend, Ryan.”

  “We found you two on the beach.”

  Duh… Mari simply stared, waiting to see where this would go.

  Their tall hostesscontinued. “We weren’t sure where you were staying, so we brought you home.”

  Now what? Hell. Mari had no idea what to say. What could she say? Hi, your freaky husband’s scar made me think I could trust you? Somehow, she didn’t think that would go over too well. “Thank you for your help, but why bring us home with you? Why not just call for an ambulance? What do you want?” It came out hostile, but Mari didn’t take it back.

  “We want to help you, Mari.”

  Mari shook her head. Help them find Raiden’s lost ship? Did they have a boat? Money? Gear? And even if they did, did she dare trust them? “I don’t know if you can.” She wasn’t quite ready to trust these two, no matter the marks on their necks. Apparently Raiden felt the same because he didn’t say a word, just stared and kept his hands wrapped around a glint of metal Mari could see at his wrists. Weapons? He’d somehow smuggled weapons off the boat? Had he been hiding knives the entire time he was in stasis? That would explain the unforgiving hardness of his arms as he’d carried her. Knives strapped to his forearms. The thought calmed her almost as much as the tense muscles in Raiden’s back and legs. He was ready to spring at the first sign of danger.

  Sarah closed her eyes as her large, intimidating husband walked up behind her and wrapped his left hand around her side, a gold band unmistakably on display on his ring finger. So, bald guy really was her husband? Mari wasn’t sure if that helped or not. Eyes still closed, Sarah spoke. “A storm is coming. But you have bigger problems, don’t you, Mari?”

  Sarah’s eyes popped open and there was more than a hint of mischief in them as she continued. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with the power surges and the Triscani I felt blow up earlier this morning, would you?”

  Mari shrugged. Sarah knew the name of their enemy. That didn’t mean she was someone to trust.

  Tim finally chimed in. “Nice. How the hell did you do it? I didn’t know we could actually kill the bastards.”

  “You’ve fought them before?” Mari couldn’t believe it and the words left her mouth before she thought better of it.

  Sarah answered. “Unfortunately, yes.” She shuddered and Tim hugged her closer. “Chicago. Few months ago. We ran into a lot of trouble. And we were told to watch for you on the beach today. She said you’d need our help.”

  “Who did?”

  “My gran. She was a Seer, I guess. Could see the future, or possible futures anyway.”

  “A Seer?” Mari couldn’t “see” anything. She excelled at having very vivid nightmares, but no visions, nothing specific, nothing that would give her a date and time to pick up a stranded woman on the beach. “Are you a Seer, too?”

  “No, Mari. I’m a Timewalker, like you.”

  Tim grinned and rested his hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “Yeah, and you’ll always be a couple decades older than me.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes but smiled. “And wiser.”

  Mari’s confusion must have shown on her face because Sarah took mercy on her unasked question. “I was struck by lightning and the Archiver sent me twenty-five years into the future to save Chicago. How far did you travel in time?”

  “A few hours.”

  “Did you die first?” Did Tim sound hopeful?

  Sarah swatted her husband’s hands. “Sorry, he’s working on a theory that we have to actually die before they can move us around the time line. You’d be number three.”

  Mari shuddered, remembering the icy black blade that had shredded her ribs like paper. “Yes. The Triscani soldier stabbed me through the heart.”

  Sarah gasped while Raiden grabbed hold of Mari’s cold, clammy hand. Despite her determination to stay strong, the memory of that pain was too much for her. She clung to Raiden’s hand like a frightened child, found it necessary in that moment to lean on him, even though she called herself a fool. It had been one hell of a day.

  “I’m so sorry. Did you say they stabbed you?” They’re here? In the flesh? Sarah’s eyes filled with dread, with terror, and Mari knew without doubt that this woman truly had seen the monsters. The horror in Sarah’s eyes was a reflection of what she felt herself. Was the telepathic question a test?

  Mari balled her free hand into a fist on her lap, but answered in kind. Yes. They are here, in the flesh, if that’s what you want to call it.

  “What do they look like here?” Tim grabbed Sarah by the shoulders and pulled her to stand with her back against his chest. He’d gone from relaxed to scary-eyed-guy in less than a second.

  “Here?” Mari was confused.

  “Yes.” Sarah closed her eyes. “We’ve only seen them in the other dimension.”

  “What other dimension?”

  Raiden answered. “Their home world lies locked near the Black Gate, in the dark worlds.”

  Tim snorted. “You could call it that.”

  “Don’t worry. You’d never mistake them for human.” Mari really didn’t want to relive that memory in vivid detail, but what was one more nightmare after a thousand? “Basketball player tall, sunken shadows where their faces should be, like their features kind of melted together. They look like they started off human, but they’re jet black, like tar. They have strong, clawed hands like reptiles made of glass and they move faster than any human ever could. Their voices sound like recordings played back through a techno synthesizer. I don’t know what the rest of their bodies look like, but they are very strong. They were both dressed in black clothes and trench coats with hoodies underneath to hide their heads.”

  “They talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “They speak English?�
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  “Yes.”

  The couple digested the information. A buzz of energy brushed along Mari’s mind and she knew they were talking to each other on some private level she could feel but not hear.

  “How did you kill them? And how did you end up on the beach?” Tim, she could tell, was the tactician.

  Oh, this was going to be fun. “Celestina gave me a weapon that I used to kill them, but it was destroyed when I blew up their lab. And the beach? That’s where the great white clan dropped us off.”

  Sarah’s brows knitted. “Great white sharks?”

  “Yes.”

  “They helped you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow.” Sarah smiled. “Totally cool super power. Can you talk to other animals, too?”

  Mari thought back to the fish flashing beneath her in the water. “Yes. I think so. But I haven’t really tried it out yet.”

  “No dive gear?” Tim tilted his head, one eyebrow raised.

  Mari shook her head. “Don’t need it anymore. I can breathe the water.”

  “You can breathe water and talk to sharks?” Sarah practically danced around with glee. “That’s completely amazing! You’re like a Timewalker Mermaid. What are the sharks like? Are they intelligent? Did you have trouble understanding them? Do they hate humans? Why did they agree to help you? Did they—?”

  Tim interrupted, a deep scowl on his face as he gestured toward Raiden. “This man is yours? Is he Marked? Can we trust him?”

  Mari shrugged. In her dreams he played equal parts hero and villain, depending on the night. A shudder chilled her to the bone as she stole a quick glance at his face then looked away. No one had ever been able to protect her, not even when she was a kid. Her parents had insisted she fight her own battles, deal with the demonic nightmares on her own. No reason to expect help now, right, Dad?

  “He’s not mine, he’s my mission. I have to find his ship. The Triscani shot it down over the Bermuda Triangle and it sank to the bottom of the sea. There’s something on board we need to find…”