Blue Abyss: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3 (The Timewalker Chronicles) (28 page)

Not human. Not Immortal. Triscani. “Fire or knife, Mari. Pleassse. End it.”

“What if I can’t do it?” Her whispered question hurt him in places he thought already dead.

“You mussst. Or I will be one of them forever.” Perhaps he asked too much. What were his alternatives? If he left this place, left her side, the hunger would grab hold and he’d have no more reason to fight it. Honor would not hold it at bay. Courage would not defeat it. The hunger was insidious and insistent, crawling through him even now, demanding to be fed. No, if she left his side, he would be lost to the yawning emptiness that had claimed his brother.

It was the Immortals dirty little secret. All of the Triscani were of his bloodline. The Queen’s bloodline, forbidden sons. Perhaps men he knew, brothers and cousins now lived in their dark realm? For over a hundred years he’d battled them, fought them, feared them. And it was all a lie, a lie told to protect the Immortals’ precious Queen and her family. A horrible secret the Immortals kept from humanity and the other races. The Triscani belonged to them, were their blood, their family. Their fucking sons. He and Ryu were irrefutable proof.

Son of Sora.
That was what his twin, Ryu, had claimed. Sora was of the Circle of Judgement. She was an Angelus Mortis. An infamous and feared Death Dealer for Immortals that broke their laws. And she’d been Queen of all Itara over a thousand years ago, gone for hundreds, ashed by her own son. Sora could not be his mother, his grandmother perhaps.

The royal females in that family only birthed daughters. It was a well known and publicly touted fact.

A lie that cost millions of lives. A lie that started a brutal hundred and fifty year war. A lie that would now cost both him and his brother their lives.

Hesitant fingertips winged their way across his back before settling into a firmer touch on his shoulder blade. The Shen blazed to hot life on his shoulder, but it wouldn’t be enough. He couldn’t allow it. He’d take her with him, kill her, drain her dry faster than the Remnant bastard already eating away pieces of her soul.

Silence, then a featherlight kiss on the back of his neck, on his inhuman obsidian flesh, on the very place he’d told her to stab him, to kill him and the twisted corpse his body’s metamorphosis would eventually produce.

Mari?

No. I won’t do it. I can’t.

Raiden relaxed into her touch, unable to deny himself this last, small moment of pleasure at having her near. Knowing that she cared, at least a little, enough to want him to live, was a balm he’d hold to. The knowledge would strengthen him for what came next.

Too late he realized he wanted more than that…he wanted her love. He didn’t deserve it, he hadn’t earned it, but the selfish bastard that he was, he wanted it anyway. He’d never had a woman’s heart for his own. He discovered in that last moment that he was selfish, greedy for it.

Raiden knew it was past time for regrets. When he’d left on this mission he never would have foreseen meeting her. Turning his brother to ash. Discovering the truth about his lineage and joining the ranks of the Triscani. Tormenting the one woman he might have loved with endless pain. Becoming a monster. Asking a healer to kill him, even though it went against the core nature of who and what she was. She was an angel. He was a demon. There was no middle ground for either of them.

But he could spare her this. He could set her free.

Mari, amata mea, it’s all right.
Her soft sobs hurt him more than the blade he pulled from his other pocket ever could.
It’s over. Hush now. It’s over.

Wrapped in her arms, he plunged the sharp blade into his own chest.

A moment of searing pain. One heartbeat. Two.

Raiden closed his eyes and set her free.

Mari knelt on the floor, Raiden in her arms, and fought back a scream as the dark emptiness of the Triscani crawled beneath Raiden’s skin, staining his muscular back like a spilled cup of black ink on a white marble floor. And it spread, encasing his hands, his face, every ounce of flesh until even his voice was unfamiliar. Tinny and mechanical. Hissing and inhuman.

Like theirs.

He’d defeated the others, killing to protect her. And now he paid the price, the price for her failure, for her indecision when she could’ve taken the shot on the Triscani bastards, even if Raiden had been behind them, beneath them, covered completely in their dark stench.

She should’ve taken the risk. Anything would’ve been better than this…

God, she’d tried to protect him, to recover the stone and face the Triscani alone. He was more important than she was. Earth needed him alive. Celestina had moved her through time to save his life. And now he begged to die. Because of her. This stupid stone had been his. All of this was his. His mission. His ship. His life. She’d given up everything to find him, to save him. And pulled a dumb-ass move trying to play the hero.

She could not lose him like this, not because she’d been an idiot. She couldn’t. There had to be another way.

She kissed his back again, hoping he’d feel her apology, her regret in the soft press of her lips to his blackened flesh.

He had to live. Celestina had told her so from the beginning. If he died, the future was “too terrible to be borne”.

Raiden would live, and not like this, not as one of the charcoaled, faceless corpses. He would be strong. It was his destiny.

Her destiny was to love a man who would never know what she felt for him. Her destiny was to heal him. Again.

She knew the moment his heart stopped beating, she felt it as if the blade had been plunged into her own chest. The moment he died, the very second his life-force was switched to “off”, the darkness stopped moving, stopped growing. There was nothing left for it to feed on, no heat, no power, no emotion or strength of will.

Nothing.

Mari stripped her suit down to the waist in seconds and lay back down behind Raiden. She wiggled her arms around his exposed torso, hugged his waist on the inside of the dive suit and placed her cheek flat to his back. Reverently, she moved her palm to cover the mark on his shoulder, the Mark that meant he belonged to her.

If he was hers, truly hers, then she could save him.

Closing her eyes, she drew his scent into her lungs and closed her mind to everything but him, his body, his smile, his kiss. The fire in his eyes when he looked at her. The annoyed slant of his mouth when Tim talked to him. The way his lips felt pressed to her neck. The hard span of his chest beneath her cheek as she slept. His heartbeat.

The sound of his voice, that sexy, aristocratic, no-nonsense voice whispering along the walls inside her mind, whirling around inside of her soul. That voice was a piece of her, a piece she would not surrender to the darkness.

Mari?

A question. Awareness. It was enough. She locked on to him, on to the part of him that had yet to yield to death, and pulled. She pulled with every ounce of will and stubborn female strength her father had ever accused her of possessing. She pulled until she felt the flow of the darkness waken, reach toward her, and she swallowed it whole.

Mari? No!

“Yesss.” She heard her own voice and smiled. It was working. She would take this from him. She clutched the soul stone more tightly in her fist and willed the Triscani energy to travel into a new home.

The evil clung more tightly to her than ever. “Raiden, I’m sssorry. I can’t get the them into the ssstone.”

She wasn’t sure he heard her, but he shuddered in her arms and heated to her touch. Ice flowed from his soul to hers, and she welcomed it, opened herself to the flow of the dark power and rolled in the shocking cold. The pain was fleeting, like dipping a twisted ankle in an ice bath. It hurt for a bit, but the affected part quickly went numb.

Thank God. That was what she was now, numb. And happy. She felt him try to stop her, try to command the direction the energy took between them, but he wasn’t the healer, she was. And she was stronger than she’d ever dared dream.

Mari pulled the blade free of his flesh and held the image of him whole and perfect in her mind as she siphoned death from his body to her own. She nearly had it all now, Ryu and the souls he carried, and older souls that had been with Raiden for years, no longer as strong, but just as dark, just as lost. How he’d carried this burden she’d never comprehend, but if he could do it, so could she.

And the female? The insistent and cold voice of the Immortal Queen that demanded she cease? That bitch could go to hell and get the fuck out of her man.

She’d take them all away from him. Once she did, she’d force their souls into the damn stone or figure out a way to carry the burden. There was no other option. She refused to let him die.

Boom!

A shudder rocked the small craft and she actually smiled. The sharks weren’t happy.

Boom! The great white bumped the side of the ship again, trying to get to her. Now that calm acceptance had replaced her frazzled state of fear and distraction, Mari could feel the giant alpha female circling the ship. She could feel them all moving above her. She felt the ocean currents and the pulse of Earth’s core. Way cool. Nearly worth the pain for that alone. Add in Mr. Rock Star, and it was a done deal.

Mari?
Frantic, Sarah’s voice filled her head.

Sarah?

You find it?

Mari looked at Raiden’s back, relieved to see his flesh returned to its normal delicious tan.
Yes.

Are you throwing a shark party down there or what? Hurry up! Your friends are making us nervous.

Boom.

Sarah, I’m in trouble…

Raiden felt alarm flare in Sarah, then Tim’s voice filled his head.
Raiden, what’s your status? What the hell is going on down there?

We were attacked. Three Triscani and an Immortal. The Triscani are dead and Mari has been poisoned by a Remnant.

Sarah’s shocked voice barged into the conversation.
What can we do?

Terror nearly froze Raiden in place when he rolled in Mari’s arms and saw the dark swirls of Triscani power flowing just beneath the surface of her skin. “Gods be damned, Mari. What the hell were you thinking?”

He kissed her, hard and fast on the mouth, but didn’t hesitate in making a decision.
We’ve got to get Mari out of here and track down Teagh, the Dark One. She’ll be dead in a week of we don’t find him.

Tim’s answer was composed, but not happy. The human didn’t lose his cool. He’d be good in a fight.
Got it. Get her to the entrance of the ship. Get her to the entrance and I’ll pull you both out
.

No! Don’t get in the water. My friends will eat you for lunch. Was that satisfaction he heard in Mari’s voice? Relief flooded him that she was still listening, still thinking. Still trying to save them all. Stubborn woman.

Sarah was undeterred.
Not when I fry their little electrical shark brains.

“No,” Mari whispered, despair in her tone as she struggled to release him. Her cold hands slid from his body and she went limp in his arms.

Stay where you are, Tim. I will get her to the surface
. Raiden opened his eyes, shocked that he could move so easily. His flesh returned to normal. Years of agony erased in a matter of minutes.

No, not erased. Transferred to her. Her eyes were closed but the tight lines around her beautiful mouth and eyes revealed her pain even more effectively than the dark swirls travelling through her body like newly birthed eels through water.

She suffered, yet his skin was whole and healthy. His head clear. The blade he’d plunged into his heart lay on the floor beside him, covered in blood, but his heart still beat.

Tim answered him.
Make it quick, or I’m going to tell Sarah she can fry the sharks so I can get down there
.

Raiden rolled over and pushed up on his elbows. Mari lay beside him, her cheeks sunken, and her eyes covered in a milky haze like an old dog with cataracts. Gods damn her, she wasn’t recovering. There was no tug on his Mark, no flow of energy between them. He tried to get to her telepathically, but after her final communication with Sarah, she’d locked him out of her head. Protecting him.

Saving him. Again.

There might have been a chance if he’d bonded with her. Claimed her. But he hadn’t made love to her when he’d had the chance, hadn’t made her completely his, hadn’t allowed himself to love her. Tim was right. He’d fucked her. Taken her body but kept his heart out of the equation. She needed him, needed his strength, needed his Immortal blood to keep her heart beating. And now it was too late.
She is injured. I will get her out, but she’s…

He couldn’t finish the thought.

Understood. I threw down an anchor rope. Just get clear, grab the rope and we’ll pull you up
. Tim’s regret and his calculating acceptance of the situation came through loud and clear. If there was an “I told you so” in there, Raiden didn’t sense it.