Then with a snap of his fingers, the Rogues pounced.
I may have been a match for one very exhausted, skinny man, but I was no match for six well-trained organized criminals. They forced me to the ground, tying me back up. The bonds were more elaborate this time, and much tighter. When I was all tied up and completely defenseless, Lee waved everyone off and stepped up beside my body laying at his feet.
And then he pulled out a gun and pointed it at my head.
Chapter 20
Formidable
Markus
I’d reached the main exit of the Rogue airship before freezing in place. Something deep inside me stopped me from stepping forward even one more foot, rooted in place at the threshold. I was early; the Rogues wouldn’t meet me for another twenty minutes.
I stood in the open doorway, looking out at the snowy forest and spiked mountain peaks along the horizon. Cold air bit at my cheeks and I breathed in the fresh air I’d known since childhood. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was actually home in my original timeline.
My body, ruled by the subconscious need to reunite with the familiar, wanted to make that final step out into the snow. But something in my head, mirrored by something in my heart, stopped me.
I knew I wasn’t going to do it.
I no longer felt pulled toward the violent ends I’d dreamed of for my family. The sight of Ellen’s empty bedroom had spurred me into action, tugging me halfway out of the airship, away from anything that would cause me to accept the light that stirred within me. But I couldn’t bring myself to follow through.
Something was pulling me. My senses tingled, and it was almost as if an invisible tether was trying to wrench me away from the exit and back into the depths of the airship.
Something was wrong.
It wasn’t just the ruined timeline we were in. Nor was it the strange silence of the ship, which was usually teeming with noise and activity in the launch of the dark tourists’ ventures.
A strange ache settled deep in my chest. A sense of longing, mixed with undeniable worry.
Ellen.
I had a bad feeling. Something inside me told me that she hadn’t just gone for a simple stroll when she’d woken up and found I disappeared in the early hours of the morning. That wasn’t like her. Somehow, I knew that someone had taken her. And it couldn’t have been just anyone.
No, the person who had taken her at the beginning. The person who had always seen her as his, as a toy that was taken away from him when it was discovered that she was time lost.
Zik had finally made a move.
The darkness inside me, which was nothing compared to the darkness within him, and yet still similar in a way, knew that he wanted to repossess Ellen. I could tell that, ever since she was pulled away from him on that first day, he would become obsessed with her.
I cursed and immediately jumped into action.
Ignoring the temptation of the open door and the possibilities for revenge beyond it, I flew across the ship. I paused only briefly at Ellen’s door, which had been left swinging open on its hinges since I’d stopped by in my insane need to slip back into her sheets before she even noticed I was gone in the first place.
Hurrying onward down the hall, I noticed the heavy iron door that had remained closed for almost every minute of the past week was open.
I knew what that door led to, though I wasn’t certain what I would see beyond the threshold.
The first person I saw was Loretta, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. The sounds of struggle came from within and I heard Lee’s muffled voice.
Loretta quirked an eyebrow at me. “There you are,” she said. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”
Her words were odd and confusing, but I didn’t bother to spare them a second thought as a gasp of surprise sounded at the same time the click of a gun being cocked reached my ears.
I shoved past Loretta, who remained strangely calm, and hurried into the room.
Six Rogues stood around Ellen’s body, which had been tied to a series of metals rings bolted to the floor. Around them, nine other bodies lay, dead.
No. Ten bodies.
Zik’s mangled face, dead as dirt, gazed up at me from behind Lee’s boots.
It almost looked as if the Rogues were planning on torturing Ellen the way that Zik would have, but I knew what was going on. Ellen had been the one to kill Zik, that much was clear. She, always the survivor, had found a way to use his own weapon against him. It was the only explanation for his…condition.
The Rogues weren’t going to torture Ellen. Lee had a gun aimed at her head. He would be quick and efficient about it and burn her body along with the others.
They all looked up at my entrance, but I only had eyes for Ellen. Our gaze met across the room, and in that single second, I swore I could see the invisible tether pulling us together, as if the universe had been fighting to connect us all along, but the threads had always just been too tangled.
And then I saw Lee’s finger tense on the trigger of the gun.
I lost control.
They say the Alin dragons are among the most powerful in the universe. They say that the darkness in their veins allows them to shift more quickly than any others like them in the known world and that they are so formidable that they are never to be crossed.
I knew my father could see I was the strongest of my siblings, and that the thought unnerved him. Strength was better suited to the eldest heirs; it was useless in the hands of a Prince who would never be King.
But, at that moment, my strength was not useless.
With an animal shout, I allowed the massive leather wings burst and unfurl from my back. The world turned into shades of red, like a film had been placed over my eyes, and I knew that they were glowing scarlet. My fingernails became talons, and my teeth became fangs.
Finally, finally, I’d transformed into my true dragon self. I’d been saving it for the moment I killed my family, but now was an even better opportunity to give in to the monster I was.
In seconds, the deadly claws that protruded like razors from the edges of my wings took out three of the Rogues, their bloodied corpses joining the others.
Lee, quick on his feet, flipped the gun so it was pointed at me, but a dragon’s skin was thicker than he knew. The bullet practically bounced off, and I knew that it would become nothing more than a bruise over my heart.
For the first time, I noticed panic erupt in Lee’s normally cool demeanor. He ducked behind his cronies and used them as shields, while one of them grabbed a sharp tool from Zik’s arsenal of torture devices. I dodged the attack as if I were doing nothing more than turning around a corner. The Rogue, perplexed, watched as his own weapon flew back at him, swift, unstoppable.
Five remaining Rogues shot at me, five pairs of eyes watched in disbelief as a dozen bullets bounced off, five screaming voices echoed in the room when they saw the skin of my right wing repair itself after one bullet grazed it. I was used to eliciting those emotions. Denial came first, then fear, then, finally, acceptance. It all happened too fast.
As I stood over Lee’s cowering body, I tried to resist the urge to make him suffer. I had to get Ellen out of there. He fixed on me with his usual cold glare, made a little bow and lunged forward, knife in hand, trying to reach my eyes. I ducked as his body passed next to mine, his face red in rage, the blades of my talons going through his body. Lee collapsed onto the floor. The room fell silent.
They were all dead.
I took a moment to calm my hammering heart; a high like that would be difficult to come down from, but I still had lives to save.
Never had I been concerned with saving lives.
My wings returned to their place, melting into my skin. The remnants of my shirt, which had ripped off during my transformation, fluttered away as I knelt beside Ellen and shredded her bonds. My eyes blinked rapidly as the world changed from red to gray, and then back to its normal colors.
Ellen was
staring at me, but not in fear. I didn’t have the space in my mind to decode exactly what was in her eyes as she took in the sight of me, but I could sense that it wasn’t damning.
“Come on,” barked Loretta. “We’re on a tight schedule.”
I still had no idea what she was talking about, but I nodded and scooped Ellen up into my arms. Loretta clearly didn’t answer to Lee, otherwise she would have tried to stop me along with the other Rogues. It became clear to me, as we ran out of the torture chamber and through the twisting hallways of the ship, that Loretta had goals of her own.
Maybe she always had.
Under our feet, the airship rumbled to life. The other Rogues in the command center must have seen what just happened and were probably trying to prevent our escape.
I steered us toward the port where I’d docked my personal ship, cradling Ellen in my arms. She was light as a feather, curled up and clutching onto my neck like her life depended on it. To be honest, it probably did.
Shouts sounded out behind us and I quickly threw open the door to my ship. Loretta hurried in, taking over Ellen’s wellbeing as I set her down in a seat and then turned to the controls. With nimble fingers, I undid the controls that connected my small, personal ship to the main power line of the Rogue ship so that they couldn’t prevent us from taking off. The Rogue ship was lifting up and away from the ruined timeline’s version of my planet, dragging us along with them.
With a grunt, I flipped all the necessary switches. I turned gears, pressed buttons and did all the things I’d known how to do since I was just a teenage boy and had wanted nothing more than to know how to fly an airship so that I could escape from home whenever I wanted, without having to bother with the inconvenience of chauffeurs or chaperones.
Finally, after several pained, anxiety-fueled minutes, I managed to tear my ship away from the Rogue vessel. The two ships spiraled out away from each other as gravity loosened and we slipped out of the timeline. I held on to the sides of the cabin and gritted my teeth, watching the Rogue ship get further and further away. I expected them to pursue us, but they clearly seemed more concerned with disappearing and never being seen again.
“Markus,” snapped Loretta. I still didn’t know how she’d managed to become a part of this escape mission, but something in me told me that she was trustworthy. I assumed it was light-influenced instincts kicking in. All this time around Ellen and her survival skills had attuned my mind to another person’s specific vibes. I knew that Loretta wasn’t here to hurt us.
She was here to hurt someone else. Something else.
“She needs you,” Loretta said, nodding toward Ellen, who was slumped in a seat with her head lolling onto her chest, her eyelids barely flickering open. “Let me drive. We need to go after them.”
“Are you insane?” I snapped, blocking the controls.
Loretta glared at me, and then reached into her pocket.
She pulled out an official Time Agent badge.
“I’ve been undercover for a long time, Prince Markus,” she muttered. I froze at the sight of the intergalactic government’s formal seal. “I’m not about to let everything I’ve worked for slip through my fingers. Lee may be dead, but the Rogues will live on if you don’t let me take control of this ship right now.”
The look in her eyes, coupled with the authority her badge offered, told me it wouldn’t be wise to argue any further. So I moved out of her way and went to Ellen’s side.
“Markus,” Ellen moaned, leaning into my body as I took her back into my arms.
“Shh,” I whispered. “I’m here. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she murmured before slipping into unconsciousness.
Chapter 21
Explosion
Ellen
All the adrenaline that had coursed through my body for the past couple of hours drained out of me the moment that Markus’ ship disengaged from the massive Rogue airship. It was like a sigh of relief, though I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t quite finished yet.
Through my drooping eyelids, I could see Loretta at the controls of the tiny space vehicle and tried to make sense of it. There had always been something decidedly not-Rogue about her, whether it was the way she tended to glare at Lee almost as venomously as I did, or the fact that she always maintained an oddly formal set of mannerisms, despite the Rogues’ tendencies to be colloquial and, admittedly, crude.
Markus was beside me with a damp cloth, pulled from somewhere in the back of the ship. He dabbed at my face and arms, washing away Zik’s blood from my skin. He worked silently, fingers gentle as they floated over my body.
“Where are you hurt?” He murmured, his voice low as Loretta drove. Her back was to us, but I could tell she was doing her best to pay close attention to us while she drove. If she really was a Time Agent, that kind of behavior made sense; it was similar to the survival instincts that had been drilled into me since I was a child. Both of us knew to be prepared for anything.
I swallowed hard and gestured to the cut on my stomach. Markus lifted my shirt up and over my head to clean the wound. I breathed a relieved sigh when I saw that it was just as shallow as it felt. Zik had definitely been the one who fared worse in our altercation. Other than the cut, a few smaller scrapes and bruises were the only injuries I maintained, alongside the rope burns around my wrists. The Rogues had not been gentle when they’d tied me up on the floor of that room.
A chill ran down my spine at the memory and Markus paused in his methodical motions.
“You’re safe,” he whispered. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you ever again.”
My immediate reaction to his words was to tell him not to make promises he couldn’t keep, but something inside me told me that, maybe this time, I could truly be safe with him. Something felt right about this moment, the two of us free and together, drifting through space and time.
However, the time for heartfelt confessions and romantic declarations hadn’t presented itself yet. There were still countless loose ends that needed clarifying before I could truly relax in Markus’ arms.
I turned to Loretta, who stood at the controls and was acutely focused on a small red dot on the radar screen, which I assumed was the Rogue ship. She adjusted the steering wheel so that we could continue following them from a distance and then pulled out a tablet.
It was a very familiar tablet; the same one that housed access to the Time Agency’s Quantum Drive, and the same one that I had been trained on.
I cleared my throat, wincing as I sat up and shifted my body to face Loretta.
“Hey,” I said as sharply as I dared. “Explain yourself.”
Markus grew still beside me, clearly just as interested in what Loretta had to say for herself as I was. Was she really a Time Agent? Or was she truly a Rogue, and this whole thing was an elaborate, well thought-out scheme put in place as some kind of contingency by the horrible, and now dead, Lee?
Loretta paused. For a moment, I wondered if she would simply ignore me, but then she flicked on a switch that I assumed was some kind of autopilot and then turned to face us.
“I’ve been working as a Time Agent for just over a decade,” she began. “I was in Lee’s inaugural class, in fact. I knew him well, though we weren’t friends back then. Lee doesn’t have friends, after all.”
I watched her face for any signs of lying, but detected nothing. She was either being truthful or she was highly trained in fibbing. For our sake, I sincerely hoped it was the former, rather than the latter.
“Lee left the Agency about a year into his first assignment. Our supervisors had always suspected that he had nefarious intentions and wouldn’t last very long as a Time Agent. Our goal, after all, is to maintain the delicate balance of the time and space continuum. Not to exploit it.”
My eyes flickered to Markus. He swallowed nervously. I realized then that he could be in serious trouble. He’d broken the law by becoming a dark tourist, and active
ly participated in the evil doings of Lee, who had clearly been a most-wanted criminal for several years. Now, faced with a real representative from intergalactic law enforcement, Loretta could very easily arrest Markus. Maybe his Prince status or his family’s money would save him from prison, but I had no idea how serious the Time Agents were about those who broke time laws. Until very recently, I’d had no idea such an elaborate system even existed.
But Loretta’s main concern was obviously not to turn Markus in. Her mission was much bigger than that.
She continued her explanation and I sat listening with rapt attention. “Not long after Lee left the Agency, we started to get reports of suspicious activity in timelines set for destruction, and the rise of an underground organization that referred to themselves as Rogues. Over the years, the Time Agents have sent countless people after Lee, but none have been successful. I’ve been working with him for two years, convincing him to trust me by declaring that I share the same anarchic ideals as him. I can assure you, I do not. My main goal is to put an end to Lee and his organization.”
Loretta sighed and met Markus’ gaze. “Truly, I would have preferred to arrest him, but I suppose it’s fine that he’s dead. He was an awful creep.”
A wash of relief overwhelmed me. I’d always sensed that Loretta didn’t like him. Part of me thought it was something more to do with competitive colleagues and the hierarchy of the organization, but to learn that Loretta had been plotting his downfall all along brought an incredibly strong sense of satisfaction to me.
“So, what about all the dark tourists that have paid Lee for his services for the past decade?” Markus asked. It was a gutsy question, that was for sure. I didn’t think I wanted to know the answer.
Loretta pursed her lips. “Obviously, the Time Agency doesn’t quite like that there have been thousands of individuals participating in Lee’s criminal activity, but it’s actually been quite useful in rooting out dangers to society. Zik, for example, will not be missed. In fact, the Time Agency will be very grateful to learn you’ve done away with him; we don’t believe a person like that should be allowed to live, in prison or not.”
A Wife for the Torturer Page 13
