A bulky metal tank covered with chipped white paint landed in the corridor with a loud bang. Various hoses and black straps wrapped around it and lay about at odd angles. A plastic facemask hit the floor with a soft thud. Odd black flippers flipped through the air like flying discs, hit the wall, and plopped onto the floor.
His conscious self fought back to the surface and regained control. Curiosity pulled the blaster back to his side. Not Apolo. Not his men. Then who? And what was all that stuff? If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought it was a breathing tank and apparatus. But if it were, they were relics, antique and outdated. What fool would risk swimming down here in that?
She was tall. Nearly six Quillian lengths. Black hair fell in a braid halfway down her back. A stiff black and yellow suit covered her from ankle to chin and hid her body from view, but she moved with an athlete’s grace. Silently. Quickly. And her face... Hellsgate!
He knew that face.
She took off down the corridor away from him at a brisk jog. No doubt, she was off to explore the ship. He should stop her, challenge her presence here. But all he really wanted to ask her was how she found him, how she knew...
With great effort, he managed to ram his now shaking weapon back into its thigh holster and rest the back of his head against the golden triangle pattern on the wall. She was real!
The beauty who’d haunted him wasn’t just a figment of his dreams, or a by-product of too many cups of the brewsmith’s ale. She was real. She was here.
Or he was so close to death he was hallucinating.
No. He knew his body, knew his limits. The blood loss from his shoulder wound was making him weak, but it was nothing a good medical unit and a few days rest wouldn’t cure. So, the woman from his visions had arrived at last. But whose side was she on?
Chapter Two
Raiden sidled around the corner. His black knee-high boots were silent on the thick flooring. He gathered up her breathing gear and sealed it in a side room. If she were an enemy, only one of them was getting off this ship, and it wouldn’t be her. With that tank of air, he had a fighting chance to escape this waterlogged graveyard alive.
He stalked the barefoot woman through the corridors. Drifting behind her like a wraith, he became a ghostly presence on his own ship. The irony of the thought twisted his resistant mouth into a grin. A ghost, chasing a vision. His mother would think that hysterically funny. She was probably sitting in her lounge with her friends sipping citra juice and laughing at her pets right now.
Home. The need to protect it punched him in the stomach and nearly drove him to his knees.
With an effort, he forced himself to focus on his anger, on Apolo’s betrayal, on the need for revenge burning a hole in his heart. The thoughts sent power to his legs, and calm to his chaotic thoughts. Find out what the woman knows. Get off this ship alive. Complete his mission. Three things. That’s all.
She moved swiftly, straight for the med unit, as if she knew where to look. Her focus never drifted to the royal crests of pure gold lining the hallways, or the crystal art hanging from the ceiling at the juncture of every corridor. Every piece was worth a small fortune. And if his homeworld believed he was dead, they’d have the added macabre appeal of being Ghost Items. She could retire off of what one Ghost Item from the royal family would bring her on Qillius’ black market.
One thing for sure, she wasn’t a grave robber or a pirate. She didn’t spare the items even one glance.
Within minutes she hurried through the still open doorway of the med unit. Raiden followed and watched her from the corridor. Blood ran in a steady trickle from her foot onto the pristine silver floor of the room. He frowned. She was injured? The black flooring in the corridor had effectively hidden the fact from him before. Renewed rage growled like a beast inside his head. He fought it back down. It should matter not whether she was hurt. His upset over the idea made no sense. Patience must be his calling now. The woman was about to reveal herself!
The walls inside the med unit were a soothing teal green, designed to remind the sick of Qillius’ bright sky. Three of the seven silver beds were occupied. He’d completely covered the two dead men beneath matching teal sheets. The monitors above their heads were as cold and silent as the dead they kept watch over. She dismissed them with a glance and hurried to where his second in command, Gertack, was thrashing on another bed, losing his battle with the Trillian poison, and knelt beside him.
Raiden was prepared for anything except the long shaking finger that caressed the mark on Gertack’s cheek. She traced the circular symbol reverently. Her gaze swept over the black uniform, the matching symbol stitched in gold on the sleeves. Gertack’s sweat drenched face jerked beneath her hand and her worried eyes returned to his friend’s face. His lips were completely blue now. The final stage of his poisoning had set in. Gertack, captain of his personal guard and his best friend, would be dead in moments.
“No, no, no, no.” She frantically dug at a slight bulge beneath the black suit on her right wrist.
There was nothing he could do but watch. He’d dressed his friend in his own royal garments, the only tribute he could bestow for Gertack’s loyalty and sacrifice. There was no antidote for Trillian poison. Raiden clenched his teeth and forced his gaze to remain on Gertack as convulsions raised his tortured body off the table, every grimace, every twisted moan strengthened his resolve.
“You can’t die now!” She pulled the zipper down on her suit and struggled like a caged animal against the material. Finally, she pulled her right shoulder free.
Fate delivered a mighty blow to his chest and he stumbled into the doorframe.
Blood ran down her nearly naked back to disappear beneath the rubbery suit now bunched at her waist. The sliding action of the suit over her shoulder had wiped it clean, like an eraser wiping chalk off of a blackboard. She had no visible injury, nothing to explain the blood that welled up in perfect tiny beads before coalescing to wander down her back. The red droplets formed within a symbol on her back before falling. The same shape that every member of his personal guard had tattooed onto their cheek when they took their vows. The sign that had mysteriously appeared on his right shoulder the night of his Farseeing ceremony.
The symbol that Apolo had buried his dagger in while trying to kill him.
The woman flipped open a small plastic case that was strapped to her wrist. Gertack’s body gave a final, quiet shudder. A fresh wave of pain stabbed behind his eyes and into his heart. Abruptly, Raiden’s eyelids were too heavy to hold open, the vision before him too agonizing to witness.
A keening scream of denial and rage filled his ears. Several moments passed before he realized the sound came from outside his own tortured mind. The silence that followed was so pronounced, the quiet click of the metal clasp closing on her wrist echoed through the makeshift morgue.
Opening his eyes, he discovered her head bowed in prayer.
“Rogan, I’m too late. May God forgive me.” Her whispered confession jolted him out of his paralysis and he stepped forward.
“What do you know of Rogan, the Dreamweaver?”
Gasping, she whirled around onto her feet to face him. Silent tears coursed down her cheeks. The sight shocked him. She looked over his common soldier’s garb and searched his face, clearly hoping to see the symbol again. Bone deep sadness and regret clouded her sea-green eyes when she did not find it. An urgent need to comfort her pushed one foot forward before he could get himself under control. Pulling his blaster pistol from his thigh holster, he pointed the weapon at her heart. He stubbornly ignored the pain in his shoulder. Weakness from his injury caused his hand to shake, but that failing dissipated beneath the onslaught of a fresh adrenaline surge. “I repeat, what do you know of Rogan?”
“Who are you?”
Raiden didn’t dare reveal himself to her. The lie left his lips before he thought to demand that she answer his questions first. Her presence, or the blood loss, had dazzled his mind into mush. “Gertack. I hand
le navigation and weapons.”
To his amazement, she waved her hand at him in annoyance. “Put that thing away.” Apparently once again in control of her emotions, she paced in front of him. A tapestry hanging on the wall would have garnered more attention than she paid him. He had been dismissed. Dismissed!
Wringing her hands together in front of her, she muttered to herself, then tucked stray strands of hair behind her ears. Every couple of seconds she would rotate her bleeding shoulder, as if to shrug off the pain she must feel there. How should he proceed? Without doubt, she was the most illogical being he’d ever run across. And she loved to talk to herself.
“Too late to save him. How can I stop the war?” Over and over the mantra left her lips while she paced the small space like a caged cat.
“What war? Who are you?”
Completely ignoring him, she continued to ramble to herself. “There must be some kind of proof. Where would it be?” She tapped three fingers against her forehead. “Where would it be?”
“Enough.” He fired a blast into the floor a few feet in front of her.
She stopped dead in her tracks, raised the coldest, most calculating eyes he’d ever seen to his face, and said, “I wouldn’t recommend doing that again.”
He shoved the pistol into the holster atop his black soldier’s pants and advanced on her. “Hellsgate, woman! You sneak onto my ship, which happens to be buried at the bottom of the sea, walk straight to the med unit like you’re familiar with her layout, and have the audacity to ignore me after I threaten you with a blaster!”
Unsure what her reaction would be, he stopped just out of arm’s reach. He wouldn’t be as fast on his feet with his shoulder injury. Though, he realized with a start, since she’d come aboard, he’d been feeling much stronger.
Still, the last thing he expected was to have the wind knocked out of him by her smile.
“I apologize.” Mairi studied the man before her with renewed hope. He was dressed in black from head to toe, the material stretched tightly across his muscular chest and thighs. Knee high boots would have looked foolish on most of the men she knew, but on him they looked... perfect. And, for the first time in her life, she actually had to look up at a man to address him, to see the secrets swimming in his eyes. And he’d said my ship. “Tell me your real name.”
“Raiden.”
Thunder God. “It suits you.” Relief washed through her in a powerful flood. She swallowed the very undignified urge to giggle. He was the prince! He was still alive! Very much alive! Shoulder length golden hair flowed away from his face in waves. Piercing amber eyes studied her as if she’d lost her mind. And perhaps she had. The steady and intense agony in her shoulder was wearing on her. She was running out of time if she wanted to get the prince off this ship in one piece.
She spared a quick glance to the marked man on the table, the man who should have been hers. The man for whom she could never feel anything but regret. “Who was he?”
“Gertack. My second in command, and a good friend.”
The floor spun beneath her feet, but she focused her attention on the dead man and stumbled to where he lay. She had to say goodbye. Heart heavy, she bent over and placed a kiss over the mark on his cheek. She laid her forehead against his and whispered, “I’m sorry I was too late.”
“There was nothing you could’ve done. It was Trillian poison.”
Mairi looked at the dead man’s bright blue lips and pinked skin, both sure signs of the wicked killer. “I could’ve saved him.”
“Impossible.”
Mairi straightened to her full height and grabbed onto the table with her right hand for balance. “Never use that word.” The room spun. Her shoulder was on fire. “I found you, didn’t I?” Her left hand lifted across her body to rub the ache from her shoulder. She frowned. Warm liquid doused her fingers. Impatiently, she held her soaked fingers up for inspection.
Blood covered her fingers and palm. Curious and detached, she studied the bright red fluid. When had she started bleeding? Her knees buckled beneath her and she sank to the silver floor. “What’s happening to me?”
Raiden raced to her side. Strong hands wrapped around her waist and pulled her to her feet.
Mairi couldn’t tear her gaze from the face of the dead man next to her, couldn’t stop the slight flutter of fear that rose in her throat and cut off her air. Her mother said the Shen would serve as a link between them. He was dead. Did that mean...
The blond prince pulled her to another med table and forced her to lie down. She grabbed his hand in hers and squeezed as hard as she could. With great effort, she raised her head up off the table to drink in the sight of him. He wasn’t hers, but God, his rugged face, the hard set to his eyes, made him the sexiest man she’d ever seen. True vigor emanated from him. He was strong enough to survive. She had to warn him, now, before it was too late. “Listen to me. You have to get off this ship. I brought an air tank for you. Swim straight up until you’re about three body lengths from the surface and stay there for as long as you can. If you don’t, you’ll die.”
“Hush. The ship’s med-tech will help you.”
Mairi smiled at the obvious lie and looked once more at Gertack’s lifeless shell. “I don’t think anything can save me now.” Her head fell back against the table with a soft thud. “If you don’t make it back, your world will be pulled into full-scale war with Herhma. Both planets, and your whole family get wiped out. The Calchus family takes control of the throne. Most of your people will die.”
“Calchus?”
“Yes. Apolo becomes king in your stead. Rogan said he’s your cousin.”
Raiden smoothed the hair off her forehead and spoke to his ship. “Raelle, scan.” Then he turned those warm honey eyes back to her. “Rogan? The Dreamweaver?”
She was so tired, talking was almost too great an effort. “No. The Archiver.” Med scanners of some sort were whirring over her head in a soothing rhythm. Warmth penetrated her skin where light from the machine touched her. His hand probed behind her shoulder. Fingers jabbed into her flesh like hot pokers. Mairi focused on his face, the cut of his jaw, anything to keep from dishonoring herself. It was only pain. Pain was nothing in the face of her mission.
“Archiver?”
“Leave me.” She tried to roll away from him, but his other hand pinned her to the table.
“Hold still.”
A growl rumbled from her throat in warning. “Listen to me, you idiot. When you get to the surface, you’ll see my boat. Take it. Summon your people. Go home.”
He ignored her, adjusted something above her head. He held a strange object to her neck and she felt a foreign liquid push through her skin and enter her bloodstream in a hot spreading rush. Immediately, her pain lessened and a warm rush of serenity bathed her mind. A sigh escaped her lips and she relaxed completely into the soft padding beneath her on the med table. “Thank you.”
The prince still hovered over her.
“Raiden, you’re a damn fool. Get out of here. I did my job. Now go do yours. Save your world.”
Raiden opened his mouth to reply. Before he could speak she raised three fingers to cover his lips. “I’m dying, Raiden. Just go.”
“I can help you.”
“No, you can’t. I’m a Walker.” Mairi closed her eyes and tried to conjure a vision of Gertack’s face. Raiden’s noble features quickly filled her mind’s eye instead. The heat of his lips beneath her fingertips was bliss. At the realization, a strange sense of betrayal to the man she would never know, never love, settled in her chest. “I’m a Walker, and my mate is dead.”
Raiden brushed her cheek with the back side of his fingers, but didn’t respond to her revelation. “Raelle, report.”
The ship’s voice spoke matter-of-factly. “Level four stab wound, right shoulder.”
Raiden’s hand froze on her cheek. The report continued. “Blood loss, twenty percent and increasing. Blood pressure ninety over fifty and falling. Recommend immediate cauter
ization and tissue repair.”
“Raelle, cauterize the wound and repair her tissue.”
Mairi couldn’t help but smile when the ship answered. She’d guess he wasn’t having a good day when it came to women obeying him. “Unable to initiate tissue repair. Complete systems failure in five minutes.”
“Raelle, cauterize the wound, now!”
Mairi felt the lights dance over her skin again, then a burning sensation. She guessed the bleeding had stopped, for now. But she was still too weak to move, let alone swim for the surface. “Get out of here, Raiden.”
“I’m not leaving you here.” Another injection filled her with a strange heat, and she felt a semblance of her energy returning. He rolled his shoulders, as if testing their power, then lifted her from the bed like a small child and carried her out of the room.
If she had more strength, she’d hit him. “Leave me! Don’t you understand? I’m linked to Gertack through the Shen. He’s dead. Now I’m dying, too.” Even as she said the words, she laid her cheek down against his chest and nestled into the heat of his shoulder. He smelled like the sea, and Nivra Ale, and man.
Not a bad way to go...
“You’re not dying.” The words were gruff, insistent. She almost believed him. Almost. Her weakened physical state was much more convincing than his pretty promises. And his future, the future of his world, was much more important than the honor driving him to try to save her.
“Please, you’re much more important than I am. It’s not worth your life to try to save mine!” All her life she’d held sacred the great responsibility of being a Timewalker. Self-sacrifice. Duty. Honor. With her remaining strength she shoved her arms into his chest and tried to escape the safe harbor of his hold. “Just go! Stop the war!”
“Hold still!”
The bark in his voice froze her instantly and he stopped walking.
“You aren’t linked to Gertack.”
Timewalkers 2: Mairi Page 2
