White Fire: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 5

by Michele Callahan

  Table of Contents

  About WHITE FIRE

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Books by Michele Callahan

  About WHITE FIRE

  Ajax, The Lost King of the Immortals, sacrificed everything but his memories. After the Time Crux, the loss of his beloved Queen, and a horrifying defeat at the hands of the Triscani horde in the war on Itara, Ajax’s loyal crew played a desperate gamble...to go back in time and try to change things. But they trusted the wrong man, and Ajax has spent the last seven hundred years locked in a prison with no key. The battle approaches at long last, yet he remains weak and tortured, a prisoner to his own dark power. He didn’t simply lose to the evil Triscani…he became one of them.

  The Triscani spent centuries searching for Emma Lawson's soul. Their evil Hunters did everything they could to destroy her family's bloodline before she was ever born. They know who she is, so they hunt her. They know the power she yields, and they fear her. They know The Lost King will do anything to save her, and they would use his love to destroy him.

  But Emma is human, not Immortal. She might be dangerously attracted to the newly freed Ajax, but her first priority is saving Earth from two warring Immortal races. Ajax believed himself in love with his Queen, but the woman he remembers no longer exists. This Timewalker will defy destiny, and she's not going to play by anyone's rules but her own.

  Timewalker Chronicles, Book 5:

  WHITE FIRE

  by Michele Callahan

  Copyright © 2014 by Michele Callahan

  All Rights Reserved

  Dedication

  Mom.

  There never was, and never will be another one like you. I miss you every day, and pray that you’re dancing with the angels. I was truly blessed because you were mine. You never said ‘NO’ when I wanted a book. You were my first and biggest fan, and that meant everything. Everything.

  Thank you would never be enough.

  I love you, mom. Always will.

  Copyright

  White Fire, Timewalker Chronicles, Book 5

  Cover design Copyright 2014 by RomCon® and Cynthia Woolf

  Photo Copyright: BigStockPhotos - © Netfalls

  First Edition. November 2014

  Copyright 2014 by Michele Callahan

  Published By Michele Callahan

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, people, places and events are completely a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Timewalker Chronicles, Book 5:

  WHITE FIRE

  by Michele Callahan

  Copyright 2014 by Michele Callahan

  All Rights Reserved

  Chapter One

  Emma Lawson looked up at the renovated garage turned karaoke bar and hurried inside, eager to escape the night that had settled over Portland like a dark cloak. A chill raced over her skin that had nothing to do with the slight drizzle of rain or the fifty-degree weather sneaking up her skirt. No. She knew that cold. I shouldn’t have come out tonight.

  She should already be racing down the highway, halfway to anywhere else. But she’d never been much good at running. Not from fear or duty. And not from the monsters that chased her.

  That cold meant a Triscani Hunter had found her. One of those scary alien creatures was in the city. Looking for her. Again.

  She always knew when one got close, the Timewalker Mark on her ankle was her personal Triscani radar detector. She should have stayed home and kept her head down. Thrown the few things she had in her duffel bags, tossed them in her car and driven south to Las Angeles or Dallas. New city. New job. New life.

  That would have been the smart thing to do. But she’d wanted one last night out with her new friends from the Daily Café in the Pearl, where she’d worked for the last couple of weeks. One more night of laughter and carefree fun as her innocent human friends partied and sang karaoke at one of Portland’s favorite bars. Her friends called it the Voicebox, and almost every night they gathered to drink, sing like tortured chickens, and laugh.

  “Hey, girl! You’re late! Get a drink and get in here.” The oldest and most experienced karaoke goddess from the Daily, Holly, grabbed her elbow as soon as she’d cleared the door. “Hurry up.” She pressed a ten-dollar bill into Emma’s hand. “Get me one while you’re up there and find out if that hot bartender is single.”

  “You’re married.” Holly and her husband were newlyweds, and so in love it made Emma’s heart hurt. Actually, most of the people who came in were older, settled, and just out for a good time. Which suited Emma just fine.

  “It’s not for me. It’s for Jen.” Holly laughed and headed back to the karaoke epicenter, her smiling face covered by circulating blue, red and white splashes of light coming from a disco ball that hung from the wood rafters that made up the ceiling. Jen was busy belting out a pop dance tune that she needed another octave of vocal range to cover. When she missed a particularly high note, with gusto, Emma grinned. Definitely worth coming. The Triscani Hunter had only been in town a few hours. They’d been arriving regularly since she’d arrived.

  She’d expected today to be her day off the Triscani schedule, but no such luck. Were they going to send one every day now? And did it matter? Not really, but it was dangerous to the unsuspecting people around her. She’d have to leave town tomorrow and start her own hunt for whoever had managed to trap her here.

  She’d relocated to Portland three weeks ago. Other than when she was very small, before she’d learned how to jump through time and space, it was the longest she’d ever been in one place. And what happened? The Triscani had found her and forced her hand. The evil creature she could sense getting closer wasn’t the first Hunter they’d sent after her in the last three weeks, nor would it be the last.

  Growing up in a house with seven younger brothers, and one precious, little sister, meant she was used to noise and chaos. The Archiver, Bran, had relocated her parents to Itara before she was born, supposedly to protect her. Her entire family had lived in a small town far from the nearest city. Bran wanted to keep her hidden from the Immortals that ruled there. And for as long as she could remember, the Archiver had spent at least one day a month with her as she was growing up.

  He’d taken her back to Earth and shown her the cities, the vehicles, taught her how to get by and blend in. At home, he spent hours tutoring her on Itaran and Earthen history, political systems and rules. He taught her how to control her power to create portals and how to find her way back to any one point in time by finding the nearest
anchor point, or by creating one of her own, which he’d told her was an extremely rare gift.

  Bran had taught her many, many things, but the most important thing continued to elude her. He’d never been able to teach her to stop dreaming of a different life. She didn’t want the destiny he insisted was hers. Being the Marked Mate of a hot Immortal sounded okay, but she had no desire to be a Queen. She was human. A Timewalker, not an Immortal. The thought of ruling the Immortals on Itara was laughable at best, and terrifying at worst. But Bran insisted that being Queen was her fate. And he had remained true for many years as her personal tutor, mentor, and all around pain in her ass.

  The man had more rules than a stack of law books and no sense of humor when it came to her. Zero.

  Unfortunately for the oh-so-serious half-blood, she’d been young, powerful, and full of herself. She hadn’t truly understood the risks until it was too late. Way too late.

  And now she was trapped here, on Earth, her home world that didn’t feel like home, and hunted by monsters. Bran was here, somewhere. She knew that. She’d had his Earthen cell phone number memorized since she was three years old. His smart phone looked like everyone else’s. She didn’t know exactly how his phone worked, but knew it was laced with Itaran technology, could highjack any carrier’s service, including piggybacking on satellite signals, and somehow, reached him on his ship. Whenever she’d explored Earth with him, he’d given her one to carry as well. She assumed all Itarans from the Archiver’s ship had the devices. She, however, did not. Not on this forbidden trip.

  She should just call him. But she didn’t want to. She was taking care of herself for the first time in her life. No rules. No expectations. No bullshit time loop, Immortal war, Triscani time Crux scenarios. Just life, and coffee, laughing with friends her age and singing karaoke on Friday nights. She didn’t want to go home yet.

  Someday? Yes. Someday she’d straighten her spine and do her duty. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter. But not yet. She could handle this Triscani Hunter. She’d done it before. She’d do it again. She’d take care of it, and then she’d leave to protect her friends. She was human, a Timewalker, and protecting humans was exactly what her mother’s people did.

  Emma took off her rain jacket, folded it and hung it by the door with the other wet coats. Her knee-high leather boots gleamed, her black skirt fell just above her knees and showed just enough leg to tease, and the soft, hunter-green sweater she wore hugged every curve.

  The shoulder-length brown hair of the wig she wore, colored contacts, and the diamond ring on her left hand would make sure no one would know who she really was.

  It bad been years since she’d walked around in public without a wig. No one at the Daily knew she was a redhead. Her dark auburn hair was too memorable. It made people notice her. So, Bran had taught her to cover it up when she visited Earth. And since she was more interested in survival than in one-night stands with strangers, she’d bought a diamond ring at a jeweler and made up a story about a husband in the military who was serving overseas. No one even blinked.

  Emma’s latest jump to Earth from her adopted home on Itara had been almost a month ago. She’d jumped here from the future, from her home, from her parents and her mischievous but adorable younger siblings, to take a look around, to see what there was to see, to defy her parents, and that meddling Archiver, Bran, who acted like he’d owned her life since before she was even born. She jumped because she was tired of waiting like a good little girl for the axe to fall and take off her head. She’d jumped, and for the first time in hundreds of jumps, thousands of jumps, she couldn’t get home. Her jumper, as she thought of it, was broken. Not only could she not get home, she couldn’t jump ten feet.

  Something held her in place like a chain around her ankle. She had no idea what, but suspected it was a legendary Itaran soul stone. It was the only thing she could think of that was powerful enough for someone to use as an anchor designed to keep her in one place and time long enough for the Triscani Hunters to kill her. But, according to Bran, the soul stones were basically nonexistent, the few that existed had been locked up in a vault by the Itaran Queen, reserved for the royals’ personal use. Not to mention that whoever created it would have had to have access to her blood to tie it to her in the first place. Which seemed not just unlikely, but impossible.

  Still, it was either that, or she couldn’t get home because the future she’d come from didn’t exist anymore.

  That thought process carried too much pain, so she ignored it, like she’d done a thousand times, and scanned the dance floor and the corners for tall, dark shadows as she made her way to the bar.

  She’d never been stuck on Earth with her jumper broken before. She’d considered traveling, crossing the country, sleeping in a new place every night.

  But she knew that wandering wouldn’t stop the Triscani from finding her. But not having a home, a place that she knew, a place that was familiar, would be a huge disadvantage. She had no bolt-holes, no vantage points, and no idea if the flow of people on a street, or the energy of a place was good or bad. So she’d come to Oregon, to her mother’s home state, to make a place for herself. She didn’t feel so alone in the city, knowing that her mother’s family were around here, somewhere.

  For a long time after her arrival she’d felt an odd ache in her chest. But that pain had been soft and distant, like a lost echo at the bottom of the ocean. She’d ignored it completely until a few days ago, when that soft whisper had turned into a roar, and it had come for her. He had come for her.

  He was here now. Somewhere in Portland messing with her mojo and the new life she’d made for herself. He was here. A Triscani more powerful, more patient, than any of the Hunters she’d encountered before. He was after her. And the way her ankle was pinging her system with painful jolts of get-the-hell-out-of-here, he wasn’t alone.

  “Shit.” She was in trouble. Emma sat at the corner of the bar counter and waited for her soda and Holly’s favorite microbrew. She sat with her back to the wall, tucked behind the shelves of alcohol on her right and a large group of corporate work buddies on her left. The emergency exit was just a few steps away but a last resort. Hard to sneak around with a door alarm blaring.

  She scanned the crowd and rubbed her ankle against the other inside her boots, trying to take the irritation down a notch. The sensation was like an itch, not a little tickle, more like a scorpion crawling around in her boot. And she knew, when they got close enough, it would sting like hell.

  The Triscani Hunters were closing in on her location. Maybe they were already here, outside the bar, waiting to ambush her with their captain, as she’d begun to call him in her mind. So close she could practically smell the ash. She’d have to go outside eventually, so she could kill them. Then she’d carve three more small marks in the side of her boot heel with the knives her Timewalker mother, Alexa, had given her. That would bring the tally to fourteen.

  But she’d never taken on three at once. Before tonight, it had only ever been one at a time. And even that was tricky, it hurt like hell, and she passed out for a few minutes after. Which was why, if she were brutally honest with herself, she was still sitting here waiting for the drinks she’d ordered, and hiding like a coward.

  Maybe she could sneak past them. They knew she had red hair and blue eyes. They knew about the Mark on her ankle. But they wouldn’t be able to see any of that.

  “How you doing, beautiful? Need anything else?” The bartender slid the two drinks onto the bar and took her money. He was young and flirtatious. She liked his happy-go-lucky smile and long dark hair. But he didn’t make her want. Didn’t stir her desire or slay the never-ending loneliness she’d carried with her since she’d arrived on this stupid planet…hell, since she’d been born and promised to a dark King she’d never met.

  “No, thanks. I’m good.” Her mother and father had both vowed to her, since birth, that her home world was beautiful and full of life. She’d expected to love it here, to fe
el like she belonged somewhere. Finally. But all she’d felt when she’d jumped into this time and been stranded, was lost. Home world? What a joke. It felt more like a prison.

  The bartender smiled and moved on to a feast of young ladies squirming to get their tits up on the bar and flirt with him. She didn’t blame him. She was shit for company.

  Emma shivered and pulled her short leather jacket tight around her waist. The power in the air kept building, like this bar was a pressure cooker and she was the only one who could feel the heat. It was making her sick and she was beginning to believe that taking on not one, but three Triscani at once, wasn’t just reckless, it was suicidal.

  Maybe she should find a nice young man to take her out of here. Maybe if she left with someone, she could wiggle out of here right under the stupid Triscani Hunters’ noses.

  She watched the bartender finish up with the ladies, who’d each ordered a shot. A petite blonde slipped the bartender a ten-dollar bill for a tip, with her phone number written on it in bright red marker. The man grinned at her and slid the money into the pocket of his pants before turning back to her. The smile in his eyes died.

  Well, she’d just have to fix that.

  She slipped her wedding ring into her pocket and smiled at him, her come-and-get-me smile, and leaned forward. He took the bait.

  “You sure you’re okay down there?”

  “Actually, I think I’ll have one of whatever they were having.” Emma tilted her head to the side and flipped the dark ends of her wig off her shoulder, darted the tip of her tongue out just enough to lick the underside of her upper lip and resisted the urge to smile when he took a step closer.