Triple Infinity
A Flame Moon Novel, Volume II
K.J. Jackson
Copyright © K.J. Jackson, 2013
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any forms, or by any means, ele
ctronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
First Edition: April 2013
ISBN: 978-1-940149-01-1
http://www.kjjackson.com
Dedication
~ For my favorite Ks
.
~ For my parents,
who have always been,
and continue to be,
a shining example of love
and all it entails
{ Triple Infinity }
They were born with extraordinary powers, Panthenites and Malefics.
And then man made them into gods.
Time passed, as did their favor as gods.
But they never disappeared. They never lost their powers.
And occasionally, a flame moon would befall, and they were asked to prove their worth on earth, once again.
{ Prelude }
The knock came on the door.
Aiden had only left an hour ago. After he had stopped by Hotel Auric to speak with the elders, he had come right to her. To warn her.
He had honestly answered their questions about the engagement ceasing to exist—it was over. And as much as Charlotte twinged at the loss of her security net, she knew that the twenty-plus year engagement had to end at some point.
Charlotte picked up an orange from the quartz counter in her kitchen, and began to peel it.
Besides, Aiden was so clearly different since Skye had come to town. He had purpose. Triaten had recognized it right away in him. He was falling in love with her. And good for him. He needed the peace that love could provide. She had been blessed with it once, and it had changed her forever.
She wished nothing less for her friend.
A second knock burst through her thoughts. They weren’t going away. Ignoring them wasn’t going to work. Charlotte was actually surprised it had taken them this long to show at her door.
She walked out of her kitchen, through her living room, and opened the door, half-peeled orange in her hand. Helen stood there, an errant hair from her silver bob blowing straight up in the wind. The elder smoothed it down and looked down her nose at Charlotte, even though Charlotte stood a good half-head taller.
“Yes, Helen?”
“We have just spoken to Aiden. The engagement is off?”
“Yes.”
Helen harrumphed. “Disappointing.”
“Are you just here to verify, Helen?”
“No. Since Aiden is no longer an option, we have five appropriate males ready, willing.”
Charlotte closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the spring air, trying to ignore the cracking of her soul. She pulled herself tall, and opened her eyes to Helen. “It has been an hour, Helen, and you already have five?”
She looked down at her orange, and started to peel it again.
“We can arrange to have this done quickly. They can be here in the morning and then you can choose.”
Charlotte didn’t look up from her orange. Slowly, she dug her thumb under the skin, stalling as she unfurled the outer layer.
Her eyes stayed down when she finally spoke. “It is not yet time.”
“The choice is a luxury we’ve bestowed on you, Charlotte.” Helen’s voice pinched. “Don’t make us take away that choice. Your time will soon become short.”
Charlotte looked up at her sharply. “Goodbye, Helen.”
She grabbed the door and shut it in Helen’s face.
Turning, Charlotte leaned her back against the door, and the orange dropped from her hand. Crushing. The failure on her shoulders crushed. She had always needed to be something more. Had worked every waking minute in her life for that. To prove her worth beyond what they had determined for her.
Her hand slipped to the back of her neck, caressing the bumps. The reminders.
It was all she would ever be to them.
A womb. Nothing more.
{ Chapter 1 }
Two days and one time shift before the flame moon...
It was too much.
Now the damn soap packet was beating her. Charlotte had been struggling for five minutes, and with no mercy, the soap slipped an eighth time from her fingers into the cracked motel sink.
Blood and puss had put a slime so thick onto the plastic, the little piece of terror was impossible to open.
She plucked it out from its dance under the running water, steam boiling onto her fingers. Her red-encrusted nails tweezed the edges of the plastic. Tearing. Slipping. Not making any progress.
“Bastard,” she hissed under her breath, seething through her exhaustion, “who the hell makes these things?”
She ran her hands and the soap packet under the boiling water. But the extra water just made the bloody mess on her hands more impossible, and the plastic-wrapped oval slipped from her hands, taunting her.
Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut, trying to stop the sudden sway of her body as images from an hour ago flashed, intruding and unwanted, through her mind. Flashes of silver sinking into Aiden. Blades slicing Triaten’s skin.
The sounds of cutting flesh reverberated in her ears. As a healer, it was amplified for her, that singular squishy sound of a blade tearing through muscle. She had become so efficient at killing, because it was usually the only sound she could hear in battle. She abhorred the sound. And wanted it over as quickly as possible.
She tried to force them out, but the memory of the sounds pierced through her brain. Aiden and Triaten’s were the worst. In the last hundred years of fighting together, she had never told either of them that the sound of their tearing flesh was so potent. Above all others, theirs was agony in her ears. Not that telling them would help — what could they do? Figure out a way to silently cut and kill Malefics? Wasn’t going happen. They could, however, try to limit the amount of blades sinking into their own bodies. That, they could do. Maybe she should tell them to work on that.
The image of the blade that almost nicked Aiden’s heart tonight, the steel burying into his chest, hit Charlotte again, taking her back to that instant. And the gut punch that accompanied it.
She grabbed the faucet, attaching herself to something solid before she fell over. The blade in Aiden’s chest hadn’t slowed his rampage against the Malefics in the slightest, but the sight of it had frozen Charlotte in the thick of the battle. She was fortunate Triaten had her back, as he always did, for a Malefic blade had been coming down on her own head in that moment.
“Dammit all —” she slammed her fist into the bathroom wall, cracking a dirty tile. Two ceramic pieces fell, crashing onto the vanity.
The outburst was vicious, and over in an instant. She took a deep breath. She hated the flashes of weakness in herself. She hated that Aiden was trying to kill himself. She hated that she and Triaten couldn’t make him stop. She hated that the three of them were being sucked into this vortex of no control.
Her arm went to her mouth to muffle a choke, and she fought the urge to crumple up into a ball on the floor. Lungs heaving, she threw her arms out wide and grasped the dirty edge of the vanity, leaning over the sink. She stared down at the steaming water, unopened soap packet still bobbing under the rush in the collecting pool.
“Charlotte, what’s going on?” Triaten appeared in the bathroom only seconds after she smashed the tile, muscles taut and
posed for battle, regardless that he was just wearing boxers.
“I thought you were asleep.” She didn’t look up at him, just nodded her head at the swimming soap packet.
Triaten plucked it out of the water. “Tricky little buggers.” He gripped it in his teeth and pulled the plastic open, paying no mind to the bloody muck touching his mouth. He held the soap out to her and leaned against the counter, watching her carefully. “Now, what’s really up?”
Charlotte grabbed the soap from him without meeting his eyes. Nor did she reply. She set about to scrubbing the layers of blood from her hands. Blood — Aiden’s, Triaten’s, hers, too many Malefic’s to count — the blood all looked the same. And it was all on her hands.
It only took moments for the scrubbing to turn manic. “God, Tri — I don’t even know whose blood is on my hands anymore.”
She could feel him studying her, as the muscles in her arms flexed and shook with the force of the cleaning. Tiny droplets of red-tinged water flew, landing on her bare thighs, just below her black underwear. He was silent.
“It’s just all turning so badly. We were all good...peaceful...the three of us, the elders, even with Skye coming. And now it’s just...all gone so horrible.” Her words petered out, exhausted, except for the frenzied jerking of her arms that added a clip to her voice. “I thought — hell — I don’t know how many times tonight at that warehouse I thought I almost lost you or Aiden. It’s too much.”
“We’re fine –”
“Barely.” She looked up with a sharp glare.
“Which is what counts.” Triaten crossed his arms across his broad chest, wounds from the day, sliced skin and bruised muscles, still evident.
"Triaten, there were nineteen in the warehouse tonight — nineteen. Malefics never used to converge like that.” Her bottom lip curled out as she blew a strand of hair off her eyelashes. “Sure, three or four together — tops. Something is really wrong — they're hanging out in larger and larger groups, something is wrong with the balance. With how they operate.”
Triaten shrugged. “Maybe. But we caused this mess — with Aiden and Skye — we turned her over to the Malefics. And we got her back damaged.”
“We didn’t know we wouldn’t be able to find her, and save her right away.” Hair fell back down into her eyes.
Triaten’s jaw set hard. “We should have. It was a mistake, and Aiden was right, it was a stupid plan. And now we have to clean it up as best we can. And that means keeping him alive.”
Charlotte tried to brush the offending piece of blond hair from her eye, with the one dry spot on her right bicep. “I know,” she said, disgusted, but resigned. “I still can’t believe we let Skye convince us to give her to them. Of all the idiotic plans we’ve set forth, that was gold medal.”
The hair stayed up for a moment, and then fell in front of her eye again. She blew at it, frustrated, and her voice reflected it. “And now look at us. She left him, and we’re stuck just trying to keep Aiden alive. And I’m pretty sure he could care less how that turns out. Or even if he takes us down with him. It’s like he doesn’t even see us or hear us. Only as far as we help him kill.”
She stopped scrubbing. Her arms were clean, but her fingers were still tinted red. She forced them under the steaming water, and her chin went to her chest, trying to hold in the swelling panic. Her arm jerked up to move the nagging hair again.
“It’s the killing, then?” Triaten asked softly.
Charlotte didn’t look up, she couldn’t if she was going to hold onto her last shred of control. She exhaled the words, “I haven’t killed in so long, Tri. Not until…Mary.”
Mary’s kill had been haunting her. Not the fact Charlotte had sunk a blade into her evil heart. No, Mary deserved to die. What haunted Charlotte was that she hadn’t taken a minute, not even a moment, to demand answers from Mary. How did Mary kill Thomas? Was it quick? Did he say anything? Did he even realize Mary was betraying him? Charlotte slipped into the black pit of berating herself — if she had only stopped before killing Mary. Stopped to ask. Thomas deserved more, and now he was constantly in her mind again.
Head still down, Charlotte could feel Triaten move behind her in the cramped space. He began to pull her blond hair back, gently grabbing all of the offending strands around her forehead and securing them into a crisp ponytail. He wrapped the hair with the elastic binder that had been teetering on the edge of the sink.
Her breathing slowed, and she was halfway to calm again when she glanced at Triaten in the grungy mirror. This wasn’t the cleanest motel, but it was available and discreet, as most of its hourly clientele demanded. She stopped and watched him for a moment, struck by the tenderness with which he gathered her hair — a juxtaposition of his hard muscles and large hands.
His eyes caught hers in the reflection. “I wish I could make this easier for you, Char.”
“If only we knew where Skye was — if she could see what her leaving has done to Aiden. I can’t believe she’d want this for him, broken soul or not.”
Triaten’s eyes shifted downward as he shrugged. He set his hands on her shoulders. “Aiden will get to a point where he stops — he has to. He can’t keep up this pace forever, and he’s going to run out of handy Malefics to kill.”
“But not before he starts a war,” she said, digging out the blood from under her fingernails. “You saw who he’s killed. And he’s getting worse and worse in his rage — and harder and harder to heal,” she nodded her head to the adjoining motel room. Aiden was recovering in there from a horrific set of blade wounds she had healed only minutes ago.
“I thought once he killed a couple Malefics, he’d get it out of his system, but his rampage has only exploded — he’s not going to stop. He’s not going to stop until someone stops him.” Charlotte shut off the water and turned to face Triaten in the tight quarters, her backside against the sink counter. Triaten’s arms went down to his sides.
The slump in her shoulders echoed the weariness in her face, her blue eyes, every muscle in her body. Water dripped down from her fingertips. Her eyes crawled up to Triaten. “It’s all just slipping out of control…all that we had...the three of us were all so...right, before Skye came. Life was so even...and now this...”
Her breathing became rapid again, and Triaten’s wide chest, inches from her, beckoned her. She let herself crumple into him. His arms went about her immediately, holding her against cracking.
Triaten stroked the ponytail on her neck. “I know, Char. We’ll get it all back. We just have to stay...” he paused for a long while, “...steady.”
Charlotte’s still wet hands slid up his chest. They stumbled in their rise, sliding over several deep gashes in his skin. “Tri, I should heal these.”
She began to pull back, but Triaten’s arms kept her cheek on his skin. “No, Char. I’ll be fine. They’re already healing.”
She turned her head, resting her forehead over his heart. She talked into his chest, voice soft. “This is so hard, and I can’t get out of my mind — I don’t — god, I just don’t know how. I just I need something to hold onto...something to ground me in the good with all this death.”
Triaten’s heart pulsed, solid and even under her skin. Solid and even, just as he always was. There wasn’t a lot in life that could make Triaten’s pulse quicken.
Her eyes travelled upward to him, pleading, desperate. There was no control over the words that came out of her mouth. “Just give me something to hold onto, Tri. Please?”
~~~
Somehow, the hands under his boxers didn’t surprise Triaten. Nor did Charlotte’s lips suddenly trailing up his bare chest, finding their way to his mouth. He didn’t fight her. Didn’t step away. Even though he knew he should.
This was Charlotte. And he was going to give her anything she needed. He always had.
His arms went slowly around her body, tentative in their strength. He wondered when the moment would come that she pulled away, good sense back about her. He waited, her lip
s on his, but she didn’t pause, didn’t waver. And then, to Triaten’s alarm, she grabbed him fully under his boxers, and pushed the fabric down. Her other hand slid up and around his neck, dragging him down into her. There was none of the earlier weariness in her grip.
Her feet started to move, turning and backing the both of them out of the bathroom, and into the small floor space in front of the flower-clad bed. Her lips were on his neck, assaulting his hard muscles, along with the damage and bruising that hadn’t had time to heal. God it felt good. Lips of an angel on his skin. Stopping wasn’t going to be an option in a moment.
He’d known Charlotte for more than a hundred years, had slept in the same bed, shared life, soul, laughter, and tears, but they had never — not this. For the thousands of times he had held her, it was never like this. Never on the verge of what was about to happen.
If he let it.
Triaten didn’t step away from her, but did straighten, arms loosening off her body. His voice came out low, almost a whisper. “Char, we shouldn’t.”
Charlotte looked up at him, commanding in her softest voice, a voice she usually reserved for the dying. “Just give me this, Tri. Without thinking. By either of us. Please. Just give it to me.”
Triaten wasn’t going to ask again. When his arms went around her this time, he meant it. His hand slipped under her ponytail, carving around her neck, demanding her head meet his as he descended on her, taking her mouth fully onto his. His left hand slid down her back, then pulled her tight blue tank upward, their lips only breaking for it to slip over her head.
She backed up, her calves hitting the bed, and went down, back arched, pulling Triaten with her. Her left leg slipped up about his waist, clasping his body hard into hers. He buried his head in her neck with the arch, taking full advantage of skin open to him. The antiseptic smell of the cheap soap on Charlotte’s arms warred with the true essence of her, sweet and salty. A set of moans, soft but begging in intensity, escaped from deep in her chest, vibrating under his mouth.
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