“I can’t. The energy isn’t answering me.”
“Try.” Raiden was in a near panic. “You Marked Teagh. Pull power from him. Or take what you need from me.”
Mari actually smiled, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. “‘Do or do not, there is no try.’ Don’t you know the rules?”
Teagh smiled back at her, a very male spark of interest in the other man’s gaze. “Yoda is not, and never will be, my master.”
Mari laughed, then choked, the sound a horrible gurgle. Teagh rose, cradling the stone and Raiden saw, to his amazement and relief that the faint Mark that had been on Teagh’s shoulder was fading.
Perhaps the soul she carried had made the Mark. Not fate or the gods, or any other entity he had no chance of fighting against. Teagh had been Marked by her because somehow, she’d touched his soul. Now the bastard could damn well give it back.
But why was his own Mark gone?
Hellsfire. Fuck that. He’d go get inked and keep her anyway. She. Was. His. His to protect. His to heal. His to love. And he did love her. Too damn much.
Shaking, he lifted a hand to her cheek and held her face to his chest. Her chest was a gaping hole. Blood everywhere. Her heartbeat so faint, so slow he could no longer hear it despite his Immortal mother’s enhanced senses. And she was cold. Too cold. “Heal yourself, Marina. Take anything you want from me. Take my life, if that’s what is required. I don’t care. Just heal yourself. Now.”
Pain crept into her gaze and she finally, finally looked at him. Looked through him. Saw his soul as only a healer could, a woman with the power to hold souls in her hands and roll them around and inspect them, mold them like clay. “I love you. No regrets.”
“Stay with me.” Raiden imagined the Shen reappearing on his body, willed it to return, and envisioned it burning into his flesh.
Nothing.
“Teagh, you must tell Celestina and Bran there is a traitor on her ship. She gave me a disk to summon her.” Mari closed her eyes with a sigh, a sad smile on her face as she looked up at Raiden. “Tell him about Katherine.”
“You tell him.”
“No. Too tired. Chasing dreams. And the Triscani in me? That bitch you call a Queen? Part of her should die here.” The bond, the thin thread she’d used to heal him didn’t snap or rip from his soul, it faded away like smoke drifting on a breeze, insubstantial and weak, it slipped through his grasp, took her heat and her heart with it.
Reaching for her in his mind, he tried to talk to her. To feed her the will to fight. To live. He couldn’t connect. And why would she fight to stay with him now? He’d never once fought for her. He’d been selfish and blind, too absorbed in his own pain to see hers. And now she wasn’t there. There. Was. Nothing. “Mari!”If she would just let him in, connect them once more, he could heal her. He would heal her. By the gods, if Tim could borrow lightning from Sarah, he could find a way to use Mari’s power to heal her.
No pulse.
She was gone.
Teagh stood over him now. “You’ve got less than three minutes to get your shit together or she’s gone forever.”
“Can you heal her? Yes or no?” Raiden thought of Tim, of the lightning in his eyes. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
“If she carried a piece of my soul, I could have found her anywhere. I could have bound her soul in the Dark. I might have been able to keep her, make the soul Mark permanent. But I am not a healer.”
“She’s the healer.”
“Yes. A very powerful one. Borrow that power. You are hers. You carry her Mark.”
“I did. Not anymore.”
“Idiot. Give her to me. I have been tracking her soul in the Dark since her heart stopped beating. I will try to carry her Mark once more, call her back from the Gates.”
Raiden saw red. He looked up from Mari’s delicate features to watch Teagh remove his shirt and turn away. There, on Teagh’s left shoulder, was the faint outline, the bare traces, of a Mark. Mari’s Mark? A soul Mark? Carry her Mark? Belong to Mari forever?
“No.”
“Give her to me. Once I fully bond to her, I will borrow her power and heal her completely.” Teagh squatted down beside them and held out his arms. “Give her to me. Skin-to-skin contact aids in the energy transfer. I’ll need you to help me remove her clothing.”
No. He couldn’t allow it. Raiden shoved Teagh’s hands away. “Touch her again and I’ll end you.”
“You do not carry her Mark. You cannot bond to her. You cannot save her. You would choose death for her?”
By the gods, Teagh was right. Tim was right. Mari was right. He was a selfish bastard, because watching Teagh touch her would hurt almost as much as watching her die. Almost.
Teagh shook his head. “No. Don’t answer that. Right now, I only care about Marina. Don’t make me kill you, half-blood. I’ve shared a soul bond with her for the last few hours. I felt her pain. I assume, from the look on your face when you saw her Mark on my shoulder, that you’re the source of her anguish.”
“I was a fool.” How could he argue with the man when Mari’s Mark was on Teagh’s flesh now, and not his own? But Teagh’s Shen wasn’t dark, couldn’t be permanent. Mari hadn’t chosen Teagh, the soul stone had forged a temporary connection. It wasn’t destiny. And the Immortal bastard didn’t know Mari at all, had never even met her. Teagh didn’t love her. Didn’t know how brave and stubborn she was. Had never tasted her kiss.
And yet, they wasted precious time arguing while Mari’s heart and soul drifted farther and farther out of reach.
“Obviously. Young, stupid mortals. Never appreciate the true value of what they’re given. I’ve been alone for ten centuries. Now I carry her Mark. I would not be so foolish as you.” Teagh rose and walked to a sliding glass door. “Fine. I’ll return her Mark. Bring her outside, half-blood. Let’s ask her mother to heal her, as she ought. And then the healer can decide.”
Raiden wasn’t sure what Teagh meant by that, but he rose and carried Mari out of the house to a rocky beach. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Mari, he’d always wanted her. “I love her, but I was carrying the souls of several Triscani and the Queen’s Remnant. That’s why I couldn’t accept her Mark.”
Teagh looked back over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “You were Marked by the most powerful healer I’ve ever encountered, a master of the stones, and you didn’t think to simply ask her to remove the Remnant’s soul from you? She could move them all to another stone, lock them away.” Teagh’s expression let Raiden know he was not just a fool, he was a monumental idiot. “She could rip that Remnant from your soul like a child tearing the wings off a butterfly.”
Tim had asked what he would do to keep Mari safe. Anything. He’d do anything to heal her, but was he strong enough to give her up, to watch her find pleasure and peace in another man’s arms? Did the Mark on Teagh’s arm mean that Mari would be better off with the Immortal, with a male who knew how her power worked? A mate who could teach her more about her place in the world?
“Carry her to the water.” Teagh issued the order like a king to a cockroach, but Raiden didn’t care. The moment his bare skin hit the water he knew this was the right decision, the right place for Mari to be. In the water. In the arms of Mother Earth, with the energy of her home world filling her up, flowing through her. Singing to her soul.
He could hear the pulse of the planet. “Mother Earth” the humans called their home world.
And She sang to him, too.
Calf deep in the lapping waves he knelt in the sand and placed Mari on her back so the water could flow up and around her. He knew what needed to be done now. He looked up to find Teach watching him, arms crossed. Curiosity, not alarm on his face. Nor lust. Nor desire to take what was his.
What did the bastard know that Raiden did not? Why wasn’t he screaming with urgency? Why wasn’t Teagh raging against the fates that would threaten to take Mari from them?
Because Mari wasn’t Teagh’s to protect, or worry about, or make love to.
She wasn’t Teagh’s to live or die for. She was his.
“I’m keeping her.”
“I can see that. Good luck.”
Raiden pulled Mari deeper into the water so she floated in his arms. The waves hummed with energy up to his chest and he cradled her head on his shoulder, fanning her black hair out into the water like a fairy-tale mermaid’s. Gods, she was so fucking beautiful. So perfect. So dead.
He glared at Teagh, who hadn’t moved from the beach. “There’s an envelope in my bag. Inside is a photograph of a woman named Katherine. If she dies, the Black Gate falls. A human Seer, a Timewalker, had the vision. You must find her soon. Use my telephone to call Tim. He’s a Timewalker’s Marked and trusted friend. He’ll help you to locate her. That’s all I know.”
Teagh opened his mouth, his lips moved, formed words, but Raiden wasn’t listening. More. There was more he needed to say. “Nanos burrowed into my skull behind my right ear. It has my recorded history of the first battle, and the Crux that cost the Timewalkers their victory over the Triscani. The Gates will open for the first time in a few weeks. I came from over a hundred years in your future. A future of war and death and Triscani victory on Earth. You can prevent that. You’ll find details about the war, and the battle that brought me here. If the Timewalkers are going to win this time, they’re going to need access to that data. If I don’t come back, cut it out. Give it to Tim. Help him find some tech to read it.”
Teagh nodded as Raiden gave him the access code, in sequence. Raiden made the male repeat it back to him. Done. Teagh kept talking, his hands moving to emphasize his words, but Raiden could no longer hear him.After a few seconds Teagh scowled in silence, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d shouted. Raiden heard nothing but the waves, and the wind, and the pulse of Earth’s core.
He stared down at Mari’s face, the soft curve of her pink lips, the delicate arch of her black brows, her creamy skin and elegant jaw. She was truly beautiful, and worth any sacrifice. Any. Sacrifice.
He’d always thought of his humanity as a weakness. He’d believed it was the reason he and his twin brother were abandoned by their Immortal mother, left with his father after birth. It was the reason he bled, the reason he would eventually die. It made him feel things he didn’t want to feel. Pain. Despair. Fear. It made him crave touch, and love.
Love.
He’d rejected his human side long ago, locked it away. Hated himself. Hated the weakness. The vulnerability.
Only now did he realize the truth. The Timewalkers knew. Tim and Sarah? Mari? They all had something neither he, nor Teagh, nor Droghan had ever understood.
Their humanity was the reason they could win the war.
This was the reason. This…
Teagh stood beside him in the water, but the male was a blurry outline of form in Raiden’s peripheral vision. Everything faded, surrounded by a fog, dimmed as his awareness left them behind. They belonged to another time, another life. He had one last mission to complete. One. And he would not fail.
One thing remained crystal clear in his mind’s eye. Just one.
Mari.
Mark or no Mark, he loved her. Could taste her tears. Hear her voice whispering to him in the dark. Feel the warmth of her touch. The scent of her skin lingered in his nose. The soft glide of silk filled his palms as he held her head and pulled her close for a kiss. One. Last. Kiss.
A goddess. He held a goddess in his arms. And she deserved so much better than what he had to offer her. So much better. But his life was the only thing he had to give her.
Without her? He was nothing. “A dead man walking,” Tim had said.
He’d rather be dead.
Raiden kissed Mari’s brow and pressed his cheek to hers, his whispered promise the most sacred vow he’d ever uttered. “I will find you.”
Immortals could wish for death, pray for death, imagine a thousand creative ways to incinerate, decapitate, stab, poison, maim, and attempt to die.
Without Angel’s Fire, they lived anyway. And so, dreaming about death became a sick game for some, for others, something forgotten entirely, not worth considering.
But Raiden had always been a half-breed. He’d had to face things they did not, decisions they did not. Risks. Yes, he would live a long life. Hundreds of years, perhaps longer. But ultimately he would die.
But humanity brought with it a gift so powerful most Immortals feared to consider the possibility. A mortal, a human, could choose to leave his body behind. A mortal could will himself to die.Raiden did. He would find her where her spirit walked. He would bring her back, or he would follow wherever she led. She didn’t belong to him. He understood that now. He belonged to her. Body and soul. And she damn sure wasn’t going to leave him behind.
Chapter Fifteen
Mari hovered in the air. Dead. She was dead. She knew that, but couldn’t figure out why she was still here, in Teagh’s house, staring at a damn rock. It hypnotized her and she couldn’t look away, couldn’t leave. Ridiculous. She was dead, and her soul was stuck to this rock like a paperclip to a magnet. She could not move away.
Where was she supposed to go? Was she supposed to do something now? Were Celestina and her big warrior going to swoop in and try to save her again? Most likely not. She’d done her job, found Teagh, rescued Raiden, and killed a few bad guys along the way. Game over. Sure, there were more caves to explore, more bad guys to hunt, but Tim and Sarah could blast them with lightning. Raiden could find some Immortals and hop a space ship back to wherever it was he came from. She’d done her job. They didn’t need her anymore, and she was tired of the pain.
She’d felt the fire on her shoulder when Teagh touched her, but the heat and the pain of her injures together had failed to drown out the pleasure of being in Raiden’s arms again, even if she were bleeding out at the time. He’d come for her. He’d held her. He’d acted like he cared.
Perhaps he’d learned to love her, maybe a little bit. It was a fantasy she’d cling to for eternity…wherever the hell that was. And just exactly when was this afterlife she’d heard about supposed to start? Staring at a brilliant crystal was intriguing, but not what she’d envisioned in Sunday school. The flashing rays of light trapped her, held her mind and spirit captive more effectively than steel bars. It was like the stone was actually imbedded within her, feeding off her spirit like a leech sucks blood from its host.
How long could she stay like this? How much time would pass before the stone destroyed her? Until there was nothing left? How much time had already passed? There was no sense of time here. It could have been a few minutes, or a few years. All she knew was the light within that crystal never went out and her aching heart never stopped loving a man who’d been destined to walk away from her.
Perhaps she should fight the stone’s hypnotic power. But it was so beautiful, so serene and perfect, that she had trouble holding the thought.
Until fire stabbed through her shoulder. Not the mild heat of Teagh’s presence, but a smoldering blade of sizzling energy pierced the veil of fog over her mind. A shadow stepped between her and the stone, the outline of the man she had loved and lost, the man who’d made it clear he would never be hers, didn’t want to be hers.
What was he doing here? Mari shifted her awareness from the stone to the male before her. Was he injured? Dead? After everything she’d gone through to save him, was he dead now, too? Would God be that cruel to her? Did she have a voice to ask?
Yes. She discovered that she did, and the tone of her voice here echoed through the area around her like a perfectly tuned wind chime. Her voice hummed with energy and power. “Raiden? Is that you?”
“Mari.” The shadow solidified into her heart’s desire. Silvery-gray hair tipped with black. Those eyes. The chest she’d slept snuggled against. The lips she’d kissed. So, had she made it to some version of heaven after all? Or was this hell? Would he continue to tempt her, touch her, and break her heart over and over, forever?
She couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do
it.
“Raiden, I’m dead.”
“Not yet, Mari. Even now, Mother Earth heals your broken body.” He stepped closer, this ghost that shouldn’t be here in her afterlife, and traced the outline of her face with a butterfly soft touch of warm fingertips. She didn’t want to lean into his touch but her soul didn’t listen. It yearned. It needed. It simply hungered for him. How could she feel his touch here, when she had no body? How could he seduce her so easily when she was nothing but a spirit? Damn it all, why did she ache for him so completely that she’d have been sobbing if she’d had eyes? She. Was. Dead.
“No. I won’t do this anymore, Raiden. Go. Fight your war. Hunt the monsters. Do your duty. Leave me in peace.”
“I can’t.” Raiden’s fingertips trailed from her cheek down her neck, across her shoulder and down her arm until he held her hand. “I can’t go back without you.”
Mari shook her head.
Raiden wrapped his free arm around her and pulled her tightly to him. “I don’t want to go back without you, Mari.”
Mari gave in to temptation and pretended this phantom spoke from the heart, that his words were true. She wrapped her arms around his waist, placed her cheek against his chest. Why the hell not? She was dead already. Her heart lay shattered and in pieces. Broken. What else could possibly happen…? “Raiden? Why isn’t your heart beating?”
“Where you go, I go.” Raiden locked his arms around her until they felt like steel beams encircling her. Unbreakable. “This life or the next.”
“No.” Mari shook her head and pulled back just enough to look up into a pair of deathly serious eyes. He meant it. He would follow her to the other side, wherever that was. Or stay here with her forever, trapped and staring at the pretty stone… “No.”
Blue Abyss: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3 (The Timewalker Chronicles) Page 26