Black Gate: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4 (7 page)

Chapter Three

“Too late for what?” Katherine looked up into Teagh’s eyes and he was struck by her beauty. Hair the color of black coffee was pulled back in a long braid that hung halfway down her long back. Her skin was flawless, the color of melted caramels. Her eyes were a rich brown so deep he could get lost in them. And her lips were full, soft, and ripe for kissing.

She didn’t look like a woman dying, she looked like a woman fresh from her lover’s bed, with a slight sheen of perspiration on her brow and wisps of hair framing her face.

“The Gate has already tasted you.” Teagh traced her bottom lip with his thumb and she allowed it, frozen in his arms like a deer in headlights. With a sigh, he commanded the Gate to close, and it did so, but not without struggling against his will like a four-year-old against its father. It closed the portal between worlds, so he wouldn’t have to worry about Triscani at his back, and settled back into its resting place, waiting to be called again. But it did not remove its attention from the room, from him, or from the woman in his arms. No, it closed the portal, but its power remained. The Gate had unfinished business with Katherine.

The female Celestina had sent him to kill.

Katherine didn’t struggle, she simply stared up at him, lost in the seductive flow of darkness and power that continued to slide through her veins with each pulse that sank to fill the empty places in her bones. He knew that ecstasy. It
was
too late for her. No human could survive this. The Gate had claimed her, all right. Given her a piece of itself, the same deadly energy he carried in his cells, the same darkness that had soaked into his very bones.

Dark power rose from her body like hot mist in a cool night until it was a black fog around them. She whimpered in pain and he stared down into her dark eyes and tried to ignore his screaming conscience. He wasn’t the one killing her. This was what Celestina insisted needed to happen. One mortal life sacrificed to save the world. All he had to do was hold her and wait for the inevitable.

He couldn’t do it.

“Are you a Timewalker, Katherine? Do you carry the Mark?”

She stared at him, surprise in her eyes. “Yes.”

Teagh wilted a little, the small spark of hope he hadn’t even realized he carried dying a quick, whimpering death. If her Mark had chosen him, branded him, he might have been able to save her. With her cooling flesh against his palms and no resulting burn of her Mark on his own skin, there was nothing he could do, even if he wanted to. He’d arrived too late. She didn’t belong to him. Wasn’t bonded to him or to his power.

She’d traversed the void. The Gate had already eaten away too many pieces of her soul, and it was ever hungry.

The Gate would obey him, open portals for him and allow him to transport himself and others to the dark realms, but he had no power over what or who it would choose to consume.

And the Timewalker descendant’s power tasted sweet indeed.

“I’m sorry, Katherine.” This was the future Celestina had seen for her, for all of them. In the seven hundred years he’d been trapped here, he’d seen many human deaths. None had felt like this, like his helplessness would cost him a piece of his soul. He could feel the Gate feeding on her soul like a dry sponge soaking up water. She tasted exquisite to his old soul, crisp and clean and bright, like a soft breeze coming in over the surf to tickle his senses.

No wonder the Gate wouldn’t stop.

“What is happening to me?” She was stiff in his embrace. Confusion swam behind her eyes as lethargy took over her limbs. She was not in pain, and he thanked the gods for that much, at least.

“The Black Gate is claiming you for itself.”

“What does it want?” She shifted in his arms, and her cool lips accidentally brushed the side of his neck, scalding his nerves like small darts from an open flame, before her head dropped back to face him again. So beautiful. So fucking beautiful. So weak.

He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t want to scare her either. “To taste you.” As he did.

“I can hear it talking to me.” She winced and her fingernails dug into his arms. “It’s killing me.” It was a statement made with complete calm.

“Yes.”

“Bloody hell.” She looked up at him, determination in the stiff lines around her eyes and mouth. “If I die, you have to promise to go back in there and save my men. Promise me.”

He started to shake his head, but she grabbed his chin with her hand and forced him to look at her. “You can do it. I can feel your power. I know you closed the Gate. It obeys you. You can save them.”

“They belong to the dark now.” The humans, if set free, would simply find a way to come back to this place and try to reopen the Gate. Her men were too dangerous to be freed, they knew too much. They were soldiers. They knew the risks. And bringing them back from the dark would risk the lives of every human on the planet. If they knew what was at stake, and had any honor at all, they’d choose to die an honorable death.

“No. They belong to me.” She was fierce, the devotion in her eyes nearly irresistible. Such loyalty. How could he be envious of a handful of doomed human males? It hurt so much his side burned just below his heart, like she’d wrapped a burning hand around the useless organ and tried to remove it from his chest.

An odd gleam entered her eyes and she lifted her palm to his cheek. She smiled, and he nearly stopped breathing. “Let me go.”

She released her hold on his cheek and he immediately missed the warmth of her touch, but she pressed down on his forearms until he reluctantly released her and she stood before him on her own two feet. She turned, stepped to the platform once again and sank to her knees before it. The Gate hummed to life, ripples of awareness moving like he’d thrown a handful of rocks into a still, black pond. It wanted her. All of her.

“No. Don’t touch it.”

“I’m dying here.” She spoke the truth. What little he could see of her flesh around the fatigues, T-shirt and bulletproof vest, was turning black. The darkness had reached the base of her neck and was filling her up like an upside-down hourglass full of black sand. Her hands, forearms, and face were still clear. “Maybe I can talk to it.”

“You don’t have much time.”

“I know.”

He watched, fascinated as she reached out to touch the living entity before her with flattened palms. Perhaps she could convince it to allow her to live. Perhaps they could do it together. Any option was preferable to standing around like a helpless child and watching her die.

He knelt beside her and reached for the Gate.

She screamed, back bowed as the darkness flowed up from her hands to her shoulders like a raging river. Her heart struggled to beat, he could hear its valiant efforts with the acute senses he’d inherited from his Immortal mother, the sound a slow sloshing coming from her chest. Then it stopped. Her lips were black. Her eyes closed and lines of pain spread from the corners of her eyes to her temples.

Teagh knelt beside her and gathered her into his arms, determined to dive into the dark with her and see if there was any reasoning at all with an ageless, immortal entity that thought no more of one human life than an elephant thought of a single ant. With every ounce of will he possessed, he pulled the dark from her flesh, wrestled with its hunger for her and forced it into himself.

Cheek to cheek now, he focused on the soft skin of her face, the scent of flowery shampoo and female fire. And it was working. His limbs grew heavy with darkness, but Katherine took a shuddering breath. Her heart restarted, thumped with effort behind her ribs. She was fighting, too. Fighting to live.

The dark demanded that he taste her, and he found he had no will to resist the temptation to obey. He pressed his lips to hers and kissed her, willed her to live. She kissed him back, opening to him in a sizzling wave of raw, uninhibited hunger, tasting and exploring him with her tongue and teeth.

Gods be damned, had any woman ever been this fucking sexy? Or this dangerous?

No. And no.

He’d kissed her because the darkness inside him required it. He kissed her to break the Gate’s hold on her soul. He kissed her to connect with her essence and draw the darkness from her body into his own. But now he was the one trapped, drowning in hunger and heat. He had to end it and get her out of here to deal with this situation, which was already fucked up six ways to Sunday. He needed time to think.

He didn’t get it.

“Contain the situation, Katherine.” The Rear Admiral gave her a direct order from about ten paces away. His barking voice forced Teagh to break contact with the woman’s sin-scorched kiss. Teagh recognized the man, he and his brother, the Archiver Bran, been researching this unit for over a month. He knew them all, their names, their histories, and what the Casper Project was created to do…hunt his people. These men lived because Celestina had asked him to leave them untouched and he’d complied with the Itaran Seer’s wishes. That was all.

He ignored the human male. Teagh wrapped his fist around a thick braid of hair the color of a strong cup of black coffee. The weight felt perfect in his hands and he tugged, pulled her head back to expose her neck. Her lips opened on a gasp, and thank the gods, they were pink, not black. Her skin was smooth as alabaster and once again the color of milky caramels. Her soft brown eyes were glazed. Her heart pounded in her chest and he could hear the blood once more flowing freely in her veins.

The dark had surrendered her to him, for now. He wanted her. And he would have her.

Mine.
The primordial thought rose from the deepest place within, like a jolt of electric current to his system, but he didn’t argue with his primitive self as a few more humans with guns and various other ineffective weaponry filed into the room, surrounding them. The guns, the knives and the typical military response to his presence was just more human bullshit. There were two people of concern, the woman in his arms, and the other, a young male who tasted of the Gate’s power, a human that the commander kept out of sight in the corridor beyond the room. Teagh’s senses flared out to search the rest of the grounds, found a flood of humans fighting and bleeding above them. A battle for control of the property and the Gate.

It mattered little to him who won the playground fight between the Rear Admiral’s men and the criminal element that had occupied the home. None of the humans could use the Gate. And if they tried? They died.

“Release her now!” The Rear Admiral continued to glare as his pitiful crew of beaten dogs stood, rifles raised, behind their leader.

He ignored them all and used the pad of his thumb to trace Katherine’s bottom lip. She hadn’t wandered for long on the other side of that portal. He’d felt her presence like a bonfire lighting up a starless night. But what had she found? What had she done?

Invited the dark to dwell in her very human bones, that was what. A human had never survived the process before. Many had tried to absorb and control the Gate’s power. All had perished. He did not want the agony of that death for Katherine.

More soldiers filed into the room, guns drawn and pointed at them both. If she weren’t kneeling before him, staring up at him like he was some kind of fantasy lover, their visitors probably would’ve shot at him already. A human shield.

Never.

He shifted Katherine, placing her behind him. He stood so he could address the arrogant fool responsible for the entire debacle. “You were foolish to bring your Casper Project here, Rear Admiral. I have been watching you and your soldiers. ‘Contain or kill.’ Isn’t that your motto when dealing with us, Walter?”

“Release Katherine and we’ll talk.” The mortal was still trying to issue orders. Ahhh. Realization dawned. The Rear Admiral wasn’t ordering a kill shot because he wanted to take Teagh alive. The arrogant male thought to capture him.

Teagh raised an eyebrow. “I see no reason to do so.”

“If we shoot, we shoot to kill.” The Rear Admiral didn’t back down. Apparently, he truly believed he had the upper hand. Teagh debated options. Back through the Gate, which Katherine may or may not survive? Or continue to deal with the pompous peacock and his train flair? Teagh sighed, resigned to dealing with the peafowl, and waited for the Rear Admiral’s next move.

“Katherine?” The Rear Admiral called out to her but Teagh retained his hold on the dark. The power still inhabited her cells and gave Teagh the ability to keep her physical body locked in place. So easy to use his mastery of the darkness within her body to freeze her at his side. Anger wafted up from her, but Teagh ignored that as well. There was no room for anger or regret here. No room for lust either, but he was already screwed in that department. Worst of all, the thought of this power-hungry male idiot ordering Katherine about like a slave made his blood boil. He’d kill the bastard before he’d allow Katherine to return to the human’s command.

“You would do well never to return to this place, human. If you persist in this hunt for power, none of your kind will survive the consequences.” Teagh kept his tone even and cold, despite the rock-hard erection that still filled his shorts. He held perfectly still and met the gaze of each man in the room individually with the promise of truth, and death, in his eyes.

The Rear Admiral’s disbelief was clear to see. But Teagh had spoken to Celestina many times the last few days, the most accurate and revered Seer among his people. She had been watching the human Casper Project for some time, but so far, nothing had required intervention. Dogs chasing their tails, fighting over scraps, she’d said. She’d allowed the humans to run themselves ragged until this vision, until Celestina saw Katherine touch the darkness.