Black Gate: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4 (22 page)

Which left her one person who would know what she needed to do next.

Ajax.

She had to find him again. The Gate would take her. No problem. But what if the Triscani were waiting?

She’d run. They wouldn’t have touched her if she hadn’t been so determined to stay and break Ajax free. She’d known they were coming. The dark served her well, and would do so again. If the darkness wanted her alive, it would help her run and hide.

Decision made, she downed the lasagna and hit the shower. Her designated guest room was well stocked with what she called her weekend warrior clothes. Mostly sweats and hoodies, but she had a couple spare uniforms here. One smart business suit and one set of black pants and gear. She considered both her soldier’s clothes. She went with black. It seemed to fit her mood just fine. She was in sorry enough shape. No sense adding high heels to inflict more torture.

She used her knife to cut out the tracking devices from her boots and vest and left them inside the dresser. Next she went to Matteo’s guest room, where she knew she’d find the biggest knife in the house, and strapped the thing to her hip. Matteo loved his knives as much as Seb loved his rifle. If she had to fight the Triscani, she wanted to be able to take a head or two.

Bed made, forest-green sheets tucked neatly beneath dark brown pillows, she left the doc a note.
Thanks. I’ll come back if I can
. It was the only promise she could give.

She replayed the day through her mind and stopped to examine it from the beginning. The underground caves. The mattress covering an obsidian platform. The memories that had crowded into her brain like unwanted passengers shoving their way into a subway car.

The memories that weren’t hers. Did they belong to the mystery D.N.A. donor? Genetic memory? Ajax? Could the memories belong to Ajax?

She refused to believe she’d been injected with Triscani nastiness. Refused.

Ajax was a prisoner. Whoever built that cage would have access to him. To his body tissue. To his D.N.A.

Katherine summoned the dark and it leapt like an eager three-year-old on Christmas morning. She focused her intention on finding Ajax. The dark was inside her bones, living and conscious of the new genetic material floating around in her system. She waited, patiently, for it to dissect her and lead her to her goal.

A strange sense of triumph leapt in her breast as the dark rose up within her, confident the work was done. The Gate had found what she sought and recognized the new D.N.A.’s taste. It’s flavor.

That was what she was to the Gate. Food. Sustenance. Power.

Take me to the source. Take me to him.

Yes.
A portal opened instantly and Katherine looked through it to see a man in chains on the other side. The dark waited, pleased with itself as Katherine was pleased with it.

Thank you. I will call you when I’m ready to come back
. She stepped through the portal into a metal box about eight feet square. An unconscious man was at her feet, lying prone on the metal floor.

The room was completely barren. No cot or blanket. No sink for running water or toilet to relieve himself. Nothing but smooth bare metal on all six surfaces. The man on the floor was barefoot and bare-chested and wearing an odd pair of black pants. Five chains as thick as her forearms were bolted to the walls and connected to manacles at the man’s ankles, wrists and neck.

She stepped forward to kneel beside him and sighed with relief when she saw his back rise and fall as he drew air into his lungs. He was alive and beautiful. His hair was a dark brown, almost black. His face was perfectly proportioned, his lips full, his brows arched, his skin flawless. He had no scars anywhere she could see, not even beneath the metal that encircled his neck and wrists.

And he looked peaceful, as if he slept in a soft bed with not a care in the world, not chained to a wall and lying on a cold, hard floor. Now she understood the doctor’s comment. No one this perfect could be human.

Even if he wasn’t human, how did anyone survive centuries of this?

“Ajax?”

Chapter Ten

“Gods be damned.” Bran cursed and held up his hands where Raiden could see them. “It’s not what you think.”

“Then what is it, exactly? Because from where I’m standing, I should just turn you both to ash, take Katherine, and get the hell out of here.”

“Don’t fucking touch her.” Teagh fought to keep his temper in check before he did something stupid. Raiden wasn’t most opponents. He was a forbidden son of the Mater Mortis on Itara, the Queen’s bloodline. He could walk freely in the dark, just like the Triscani. Raiden was one of the few men alive who could actually kill an Immortal by sucking the energy from them, body and soul, and leaving behind a pile of pungent ash. Teagh had seen it a hundred times, and never wanted to see it again.

“The only reason you’re alive right now is because you saved Mari’s life. So start talking, and it better be good.” Raiden lifted his right hand and squeezed it into a fist in midair. Bran staggered to his knees on the sand, clutching his chest as Raiden pulled on his Marked Mate’s power. Mari was a powerful healer, a truly compassionate spirit who would never be able to use her gifts with the body to do harm. Raiden had no such qualms.

“Damn it, Raiden. That fucking hurts.” Bran braced himself with one arm and looked pissed.

“Start talking.”

“I’ll cut of your head.”

“You’ll be dead before you get close enough to do it.”

“Both of you shut the fuck up.” Teagh had heard enough. Right now Mari was in his house trying to steal Katherine out from under his nose. He didn’t have time for this. “Yes. We know where Ajax is. We did what we had to do. We’re trying to help him.”

“This better be good.” Raiden release his hold on Bran’s heart and his poor brother sat in the sand breathing like he’d just run a marathon.

“Ajax was King when you were a boy?”

“Yes.”

“What do you remember of him? What did you know of his history?”

Raiden tilted his head back, considering. “Not much. I didn’t run with the Itaran royal family.”

“No, but you’re one of them.”

“A half-blood bastard.”

“Ajax is not a half blood. He is a full-blooded royal, who single-handedly defeated a hundred and thirteen Triscani Hunters at the Crux…and then lost his Marked Mate.” Teagh let the implication simmer for a minute, waited for Raiden to connect the dots. It didn’t take long.

“Shit.”

“Not exactly the word we used, but it’ll do.” Bran struggled to his feet and Raiden hung his head.

Teagh retrieved Raiden’s blades from the sand and offered them, hilt first, to the Itaran prince. Raiden returned the blades to their secret places and nodded at Teagh. “How bad is he?”

“Bad as it gets.” Teagh sighed and thought of the purge he’d just completed. Seven hundred years of siphoning the malevolent souls from his King’s tormented body and, as far as he could tell by the still constant buildup of evil in his soul, he’d hardly made a dent. How long would it take to bleed out the collective energy of over a hundred evil Immortals,
and
all the souls they’d consumed before they’d turned? “Bran and I both took a blood oath to serve him, and we’ve been slowly draining the evil from him for centuries, but we’ve hardly made a dent. We visit him, read to him, try to remind him that he’s not a monster. But he’s too far gone. There’s no way he will be sane before the battle. And now we have to move him, because we fear his prison has been found.”

“By who?”

“Droghan. He claimed know where Ajax is being held. It may be a lie, but it may not. And our hands are tied.” Bran’s voice wasn’t much more than an angry growl. “Even if we decide to relocate him, there is nowhere safe to take him. Nowhere he won’t be a danger to the world. Droghan might hurt him in the dark, but if we move him to Earth’s plane, he would wreak havoc with his telepathic abilities alone. He could summon humans and kill them, or call upon one of the Triad members who would set him free. And if he actually escaped, I don’t think there’s anyone alive who could stop him.”

“So you two locked him in the dark, on the other side of the Gate? How did you do it? He’s a forbidden son. He can summon portals.”

“We’ve been keeping him sedated and weak with Triscani poison.”

“Fucking unbelievable.” Raiden paced on the beach, visibly shaken. “And there’s no hope? Nothing to be done?” Raiden shoved his hands through his odd silver-and-black hair. “Maybe Mari could help him.”

“I wouldn’t risk her.” Teagh shook his head.

“She pulled several of those bastards’ souls out of me, and the Queen’s Remnant. All in one day.” Raiden looked up at the house, tension in his jaw. “We need him alive and well. Soon. The Crux is in a couple of weeks. Maybe she could do the same for him, a few at a time.”

“No.” Teagh had felt the depths of the King’s darkness. Even Mari wouldn’t be able to touch it. “Mari loved you, she had my help, and she had a soul stone, a place to lock the energy away.”

“So get more soul stones. You’re the Guardian of the Gate. You have direct access to the source of the stones. Go get some more. As many as it takes.” Raiden was adamant.

“I can’t do that.” Teagh shook his head. “The Gate does not give pieces of itself without demanding a price.”

“So we’ll pay it.” Bran stood beside him and looked Teagh in the eye. “What’s it going to take?” He turned to Raiden before Teagh could answer. “How many souls can Mari lock in one stone?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to ask her. I’m not sure exactly how she did it with me.”

“This won’t work. As much as I want it to.” Teagh grabbed Bran’s shoulder and spun him around. “Don’t you think if the answer had been this simple, I wouldn’t have dumped a truckload of the damn stones in your lap centuries ago?”

Bran and Raiden waited in silence for him to continue.

“The soul stones are pieces of the Gate itself. They were created for a specific purpose. I am called many things. Guardian of the Gate. The Dark One. Darkwalker Lord.” He paused for emphasis. “But do either of you remember what a Darkwalker is?”

Bran answered. “They’re legend. Nothing more. They haven’t existed in millennia.”

“No. They haven’t, because the Itaran Queens made their own bargain with the Gate a long, long time ago.” Teagh scowled. “But they failed to keep their word, and now the Gate is hungry.”

Bran looked at Raiden, the male who, until a couple years ago, had actually been on their home world. “You have any idea what ‘bargain’ he’s talking about?”

“No.” Raiden shrugged. “But I am less than two centuries old, and history was my least favorite subject in school.”

Bran snorted. “Well, I’m old. And I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never heard tales of any Queen’s bargain.”

“A thousand sons.” Teagh answered their question. “The bargain was for a thousand sons.”

“What?” Bran’s disbelief was written all over his face. “You must be mistaken.”

“The Queen of Old, Sora herself, promised the Gate a thousand Itaran sons would be offered in service to carry soul stones and sustain it.”

“Sons of Sora.” Raiden swore. “The Triscani that Mari and I faced called me a Son of Sora.” He squinted at the stars, as if trying to count them, then cursed. “It can’t be true. I’ve fought the Triscani for years. There are a lot more than a thousand of those bastards.”

“The Triscani were the result of the bargain, but not what the Gate was promised.”

Bran’s hand caressed the hilt of his sword. “If the Queens of Old agreed to give their sons to the Gate, which they obviously did, and the Triscani walk around in the Dark, on the other side of the Gate, then what’s the problem? How did they not keep their word?”

“The promised sons were to be Darkwalkers, not the lost creatures we refer to as Triscani. They were meant to be whole and walk the Earth, hunting evil and feeding recycled energy to the Gates. The Triscani destroy life and retain the energy in their own greedy bodies. Meanwhile, the Gates between worlds are starving.”

“So let it starve. Let it die. Then we don’t have to worry about the Triscani attacking Itara.” Raiden looked at Bran for agreement.

Teagh held up his hand. “We can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Bran turned to him. “Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.”

“Because the Gates weren’t created to hold the Triscani. They were created as a barrier between this reality and another. The Itarans and another Immortal race had been at war for thousands of years. They were on the brink of destroying each other when the Gates were created.”

“The Thousand Year War.” Bran confirmed.

“Yes.”

“And the Triscani home world?” Raiden asked.

“Isn’t a world at all. They have been forced to find a way to survive in the space between worlds.” Teagh rolled his shoulders, anxious to return to the house and check on Katherine.

Bran sighed. “That’s why it wants Katherine? It wants to make another deal? Or find a way to feed from her?”

“Yes. I believe so.”

“Why doesn’t anyone know of this? I’ve never heard this story, and in my time, all of Itara had been at war with the Triscani for over a hundred years. I hate history lessons, but I did study my enemy. None of this is in the Hall Of Records.” Raiden looked disgusted.