Too Long a Soldier (Kingdom Key Book 3)

by TylerRose.

  He stopped, knowing he was on the verge of rambling, and opened the bouquet. As he always did, he removed the rubber band and pulled out a lily and a rose with some baby’s breath and laid them down together.

  “I’m never going to come back.”

  He rose to stand, looking down a moment, feeling almost nothing.

  “Goodbye, Monica.”

  Turning around, there was his family. Mother, father, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather. Three generations of the Black family in a neat row. He laid a flower on each, remembered burying every single one of them.

  “I understand why you all had to go, too,” he said to his grandfather at the end of the row. “I don’t like it; but I accept it. I’m not angry about it anymore. I have to let go of all of you before I can go on with my life. I hadn’t realized how much my fury was holding me back. I’ve got something worth living for. I’m going to hold onto it until my dying breath. That means I can no longer hold onto you. I’ve taken care of Lara. I’ve taken care of all of you too. I won’t ever come back.”

  Standing again, looking up the row, the weight of pain was gone from his heart. He looked on the stones without any emotion for the first time. His heart was no longer wounded by their deaths.

  “Goodbye.”

  Getting into the car, he drove to the oldest part of the cemetery. Walking among the 200 plus year old stones, placing a flower on the grave of an infant. Forgotten to the ages, no one knew who he had been or who he could have become. No one ever came to this part of the cemetery. He’d been paying for its upkeep for years. It, too, was taken care of. Warren had set up a trust specifically to pay for the care of these graves.

  The Forgotten.

  The Ancients.

  He placed his last flower and last bit of greenery on a grave. “You are not forgotten.” And looked up to the stone.

  Chen Ping Chang

  1761 – 1864

  Beloved Sifu

  Jerome blinked and read again. How had he never seen this grave in all the years he’d been leaving flowers for the Forgotten? He punched his right fist hard into his left palm, bowing low in a reflexive action. When he stood, he saw a tiny Chinese man in traditional black ghi bow in return.

  “The powers of the Universe, which you know as the Ancients, chose you and your partner for the work you must perform, and for each other. There can be no great love without great pain. There can be no peace without deepest strife. You have both known the greatest pains and strife of the Universe. You can do nothing about warring countries and people who cannot tolerate each other. It is you who are not safe on this planet. Your woman knows her tasks. Follow the stars and free people who cannot free themselves. Spread the teachings of the Tao when you can. In this you will find purpose and fulfillment.”

  “I’m a fighter, not a teacher,” Jerome said.

  “Buddha was a Prince of India before he became the Buddha. The Ancients recognize your Mastery over yourself and the lessons of the Tao. You are the Grandest Master in our eyes. You will teach the Tao of the Dragon.”

  He thrust his arms up out of the silk sleeves that fell to his elbows, revealing the scars burned into his forearms. He took Jerome’s hands, bent his arms up and pressed forearm to forearm. A burning, searing, intense heat engulfed Jerome’s arms.

  At once the man was gone and Jerome fell to his knees, dizzy and weak. His mind cleared and he looked down to his still bent and very numb forearms. On the left was a reversed dragon, on the right a reversed tiger, both deeply burned into his flesh.

  He struggled back to the car, struggled to stay awake long enough to get home in this strange and heavy exhaustion. He used the elevator to go up for the first time in months, mumbled something to Roc in passing and collapsed into the chair in his room. Cigarette lit, he sat there numb and motionless for several minutes.

  Tyler appeared in front of him. “What’s going on?”

  “Not a whole lot,” he replied.

  “Mmmhm. What happened?” she asked, tapping an ashtray to the underside of his cigarette to knock off the two inch long ash. “And don’t tell me nothing ‘cause I felt it.”

  His hand came up to take the cigarette from his lips and she saw the fresh dragon burn on the underside of his forearm. She picked up his other hand to see the tiger.

  “Apparently I was chosen by the Ancients,” he said.

  “I see that.”

  “This little Chinese dude appeared in front of me at the cemetery. He told me a few things and put his forearms to mine and it huuuuuuuurrt like nothing I’ve felt before. I’m pretty sure these are gonna be permanent.”

  “I would think so, yes.”

  “I can feel my healing trying to fix it but it’s not working.”

  “Chen told you you were ready,” she said.

  Stretching his arms out, twisting them to see. “They’re reversed.”

  She smiled at him. “You mirror the Ancients.”

  He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her onto his lap. “I’m feeling rather potent at the moment,” he said, and mauled her lips with his.

  She was just as greedy for him.

  “What did you and Mickey talk about?” he thought to ask when he let her lips go.

  “The story of how he’s my biological father and part of a group that’s been around me, trying to protect me since before I was born. Nails is one of them,” she said as he stood up to walk her to the bed. “There’s an Iron Knaves gig Sunday. I will talk to him about it then.”

  He tossed her onto it and had her pants off in one pull.

  “You’re getting good at that. I’m going to have to go back to wearing jeans.”

  “Don’t you dare,” he said, thrusting deep and intending to use her long and hard. “It’s nice to have a woman who likes to fuck as hard as I do.”

  “Ditto,” she managed.

  Unfortunately his ejaculation was only a moment in arriving, and so intense he all but collapsed over her.

  “Gimme a few minutes and I’ll be ready again,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m the one has to wait now, huh? Some stamina you got,” she teased, and got herself hauled over his lap for a long, hard spanking instead.

  Fifteen solid minutes of his big, calloused palm landing like he wanted to break a board while she screeched and shrieked and loved every second of it. His cock raged to erection and he threw her onto her back to have her again. She bit his lip a little too hard, prompting him to grasp her by the front of her throat with his own teeth to keep her head tilted back and mouth out of range.

  She gave a new kind of guttural moan that somehow spoke to his soul.

  He slowed his motion. “You need this?”

  “I need you,” she breathed, not resisting him.

  “You are mine?”

  “I’m yours, Sifu.”

  “Everything about you is mine?”

  “Yes, Sifu.”

  The need to be hard on her left him and he was infinitely tender.

  “Don’t say anything,” he whispered. “I love you.”

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  [I am ready for you] came Julian’s voice into her head. [Council & Guardians are all present.]

  [I’ll be there in five minutes] she replied, dropping her pen onto the open Rose and Vine journal.

  She changed clothes and took the braid out of her hair, all the while trying to figure out how to tell the Guardians of Time that the leader who was supposed to fix the things screwed up by others had, in fact, been using his post to alter events in time so they would conclude as he wanted.

  Ready, she teleported to Jerome’s door.

  “Where are you going this time?” he asked, seeing how she was dressed.

  “To confront Earnol.”

  “What? Already?”

  “Everyone is in session. It’s time,” he said.

  “Can you take Roc with you?” he asked, knowing better than to try and talk her out of going. “Or Landra? I just don’t want you alone
on that station.”

  “I will take Landra. Think I can do it now. He can keep an irrefutable record.”

  “Landra!” Jerome called, passing her to enter the next door. “You need to go with Tyler. Time for that thing neither of us likes. Anything happens to her, it’s your ass.”

  “Nothing is going to happen to me,” she said, performing a brief energy gathering Chi Kung to accommodate Landra Ahr’s mass during teleportation.

  Focusing hard, seeing through Julian’s eyes the layout of the room and who was sitting where, she teleported to arrive directly behind him. That meant directly opposite Earnol, who stared open-mouthed across the round table at her.

  “I have a new topic for the meeting,” she said. “How Earnol tried to kill an entire planet. A thousand times.”

  “How can you be here? You are dead,” Earnol said as guards summoned by a silent proximity alarm filed in.

  Julian and Shestna waved them back.

  “She is expected and welcome,” Shestna told them and the Council. “Speak your piece, Tyler.”

  “You got sloppy and you got cocky. You underestimated how far along I’d already come. I just didn’t know it,” she said to Earnol, then addressed the Council. “He left hints and nudges and intentionally brought Adamantine to Earth so Adamantine would destroy it for him and get rid of the team that arrived with this station. He has done this in over a thousand timelines. He has tried to prevent me from becoming an Eminent Doyen by telling the Doyen Confederacy not to help me. Also by keeping me away from the people who were on Earth to protect and guide me. By his actions, many millions of people have died. In most of those timelines, he succeeded.”

  “You have no right to be here or to accuse me of anything,” he countered.

  “I have every right,” she shot back. “I’m the only one who knows what you’ve done. I am the Witness. In bringing you down, I do a great service to the entire galaxy. As a child of Sistair, a child of Earth, as an agent of Sanctuary,” she showed him the ring on her pinkie finger. “As someone who lives outside the flow of time just as you do, I am the only person alive who can accuse you.”

  “I am not responsible for what happens in any other timeline,” he denied.

  “You can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to play god in all of them, you’re guilty in all of them. Living outside the flow of time means that you know what happens in those others and the Sanctarians need to convict you only once.”

  “Solomon should have killed you when I told him to,” he seethed admitting he had directly ordered her death without the proof of payment rendered.

  Her fury erupted and he flew backwards to the wall. She pinned him there, psionically choking the life out of him.

  “Jiogaard,” she called, and the Sanctarian appeared with Rengaard beside him. “It would give me great satisfaction to kill you myself, but I am not your judge or your executioner. Sanctuary is. If you arrive alive, you are not guilty. If you arrive dead, you are guilty.”

  She teleported the two of them, Jiogaard and Rengaard following half a second behind. She arrived hot with anger and Earnol was dead at her feet. As she knew he would be. She gave him one good kick to the gut.

  “Fucker.”

  “Advocate Tyler, Sanctuary thanks you for your action in this matter. You are relieved of all restrictions previously placed on you,” Jiogaard said.

  She took off her ring and gave it to him. “Give this to my son. If he wishes to meet, I would welcome the opportunity.”

  She returned to the Council Chamber. Shestna offered her his seat. “Sit, Femina,” he said quietly, and reached for his untouched cup of water. “We should discuss the happenings on Earth. Earnol knew and kept hidden from this Council that a K’Tran ship had been stolen, as had a supply of Rovan. Both are on Earth. The drug is being distributed. Still he would do nothing.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us these things sooner?” Baener asked him, eyes darting constantly back and forth between him and Tyler.

  “I could not risk Earnol finding out about her before she could come to confront him. Many times he had threatened her in her own timeline. He had tried to imprison her for finding out these truths. You heard from his own mouth that he ordered a man to murder her.”

  He sat next to her in the extra seat Julian brought over.

  “It is time we get Advocate Tyler off Earth and safely living somewhere more hospitable,” Julian said, taking his seat again.

  “Two Congressional forces will be going to Earth to deal with the stolen ship and the drugs,” Shestna said. “Immediately thereafter, she and her friends will come here to regroup for several days. Plans are in motion. This is going to happen. There will be no vote and no committees.”

  “I nominate Julian to take the seat of Administrator of the Celestial Congress station,” Baener said.

  “Seconded,” Shestna said.

  “All in favor?”

  The remaining Councilmen said AYE, the two Guardians said Nay.

  “Motion carried. What do you need us to do, Administrator Julian?” Baener asked.

  “For now? Cooperate,” Julian said. “For once I would like this station and this Celestial body to be of help to her rather than a hindrance.”

  “Agreed,” Baener put in. “We have been too long under a dictatorship. Lady Tyler deserves our gratitude for doing what none of us was ever able to accomplish: The removal of a cruel tyrant. Lady Tyler, you can count on all the planets of Deek’Trai to be your allies.”

  Around the table it went, each planet represented pledging its support. Until they reached the two Guardians. They stood up and walked out.

  “Thank you,” she managed to say before teleporting herself and Landra Ah back home.

  Arriving in the hallway, her legs went weak and she had to sit on the steps. She’d done it. Earnol was gone forever. The removal of every restraint placed on her. Every condition was gone, freeing her in ways she’d not known she’d been bound. The immense relief of it brought forth a purge of emotions she was powerless to stop or even control.

  When she at last calmed enough to open her eyes and lift her head, Jerome was sitting on the floor in front of her, handkerchief at the ready.

  “When you wanna cry, there’s no stopping you.”

  She took it, wiped her face dry and blew her nose.

  “While you were crying your eyes out, Landra showed us the video. You were pretty phenomenal up there.”

  She smiled, not trusting her voice yet.

  “So now what?”

  She took a huge breath in to sigh out the last remnants of emotion. “We kick some K’Tran ass and blow this shithole planet. We free Taverages, and every other planet Adamantine took captive, and never look back. From now on I do what I please, when I please, and there’s no one to tell me I can’t.”

  “Sounds like a plan. When do you want to go?” he asked.

  “Lemme get through tonight first. I’m a little overwhelmed.”

  He smiled and stood and took her hand to draw her up into a gentle embrace. He could feel the tremble in her bones and her knees buckle, and swept her up to carry to his bedroom. He laid her on the bed and lifted a foot to remove the boot.

  “I don’t know why I’m so weak,” she said, voice abnormally strained.

  “So it’s every day that every constraint you’ve lived under for the last forty million and nineteenish years is lifted?” he teased.

  “It’s been so long since I could live my own life that I don’t know what to do.”

  “You’re not going to do anything,” he said quietly, opening her jeans and pulling them under her bottom. “You’re going to lie here in the quiet and let the mud settle again until you can see clearly.”

  “Careful there, you’re sounding seasoned again,” she teased back.

  He grinned down on her and pulled his shirt from her. He left the tank top on her, however, taking off his instead. Lying on his side, he pressed his length against hers and extended his Staff
Power. At once the voices of the people pleading for help, the random thoughts and hopeless cries were silent. He lived for that burst sigh she always gave. That sound of a deep relief she found only with him.

  “What are they going to do with Earnol?”

  “It’s already done. He died when I took him to Sanctuary, and ceased to exist in every timeline he was guilty in.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. That’s how Sanctuary works.”

  He smiled and killed the light.

  “I love you,” she sighed.

  He kissed her forehead. “I like to hear you say that.”

  Her face turned up to him for more kisses and he made gentle love to her in the quiet cocoon of Staff Power, continued to keep her surrounded afterward while she slept. He did much thinking in the silence, coming to terms with the idea of leaving the planet.

  They were actually going to do it.

  Monica came to his mind and he was able to remember her without pain. When he had enough of remembering, he sent her away. She went, leaving him in peace.

  Two knocks on the door barely audible to the human ear. That could only be Landra Ahr. Jerome slipped off the bed, keeping his Staff Power around her as long as possible. With great focus, he found he could keep her covered with a thin veil and reach the door. He cracked it open two inches.

  “What?”

  “Shestna is here to see Tyler.”

  “She’s sleeping. What does he want?”

  “He cannot feel her presence and she did not respond when he called.”

  “I’m keeping her covered with Staff Power to let her have some peace. It’s a habit so he’d better get used to it,” Jerome said, looking beyond to see Shestna pacing in the open area by the stairs.

  “I am merely checking to be sure she is well and there has been no trickery to steal her away,” Shestna said, stepping closer. “Earnol is known to have such contingencies.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s fine. She’s exhausted. If you want to see her, I suggest you make an appointment.”

  Shestna withheld a biting remark. “I did not mean to intrude on your privacy. Of course she is well-protected here. I will see her tomorrow. Good night to you.”