Searching for the Kingdom Key

by TylerRose.

“I know who might know. What are you going to do for her?”

  “I’ve injected her with the healing accelerant and sedative. I’ll keep her here for two days while it does its job. It’s important she not overexert for at least the first day.”

  “The only way you’ll keep her from getting out of bed will be to keep her sedated in bed. Call me before you tell her she can get up. I’ll bring someone to look at the explosive soon as they can get here.”

  “I’ll get her well. You defuse her,” Dr. Dheez said, and left.

  A team of three attendants came in to transfer her to a rolling bed and move her to the secured room. Normally used as a containment cell for prisoners, it was the safest place for her and the station.

  Julian pulled up a chair to sit with her, trying to figure out how he was going to tell Shestna. Voranians were not known for taking such news well.

  His phone rang as he was about to make a call to an explosives expert. Shestna, of course, impatient for news.

  “She’s there?”

  “Yes, I have her. She’s going to sleep for a while and you are going to be furious. You know it’s not Pisod’s fault. He was basically dumped off the ship.”

  “Yes, I know. He is beside himself with anger and guilt. I’ve lodged my complaints with Earnol, for all the good that will do. How is she?”

  He couldn’t say it, didn’t have the nerve.

  “Julian?” said more expectantly. “Tell me. Now.”

  “She has five cracked ribs and about a hundred impact bruises likely from a fist.”

  Dead silence.

  “I did not hear you correctly.”

  “I think you did,” Julian said, and explained about the carbon monoxide.

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “No, don’t,” Julian rushed. “Seriously, she’s asleep and will be for a full day while she heals some. Leave her to me for now. She won’t like people hawking over her and you know that. She’ll run and hide somewhere and we won’t see her for weeks. Give me time.”

  Silence. Hard and heavy, with too much not spoken.

  “What has she said?” Shestna asked.

  “Nothing. Give her space. Give her time. If you really want to help her, find Solomon and bring his dead body for her to mutilate.”

  “If I could find him, he would already be dead. There are too many trails from too many ships to run them all down.”

  Shestna ended the call and informed his father and Pisod of the situation and the carbon monoxide.

  “If you’d been there, you would have been rendered unconscious as well,” he concluded to Pisod. “Likely killed to get you out of the way.”

  That didn’t help Pisod’s conscience. “The Captain was in on the whole thing, wasn’t he?” he spat, more furious than ever.

  “A Sistarian Truth-Seeker was used on him,” Shestna assured his young brother. “I was there for the inquiries. He knew nothing. No one on board knew anything about it. They didn’t like the duty of shuttling a diplomat, but they had nothing to do with her abduction. There were several other ships in the convoy. None of them saw any suspicious ships. It had to have been outside of scanner range or cloaked somehow. The Captain said Tyler had been in her room from the beginning of the journey, had shut herself away. Since she had a food machine, no one thought to check on her. They figured she was working and wanted to be left alone, so they did. No one knew she was missing until the Captain went to her cabin to inform her they were about to enter the runway channel.”

  “Meaning she could have been gone from the first night,” Pisod said. “Ten days of being abused. Next time they can threaten me with anything they want. I will not leave her alone.”

  “I know you won’t,” Shestna said with a strong hand on his brother’s shoulder. “She will not blame you, so don’t blame yourself. I am not angry with you either.”

  “There are times, Royal Brother, when orders must be ignored in favor of my own better judgement. I let them convince me against my better judgment. My lesson was learned at her expense. Never again.”

  He stalked off to go kill a workout dummy or five.

  “So you were correct about the dangers to her,” Emperor Encito said, having watched the entire exchange.

  “We underestimated Solomon’s determination. He doesn’t want to kill her. He likes the game of it. She is his toy to be played with when it interests him, for as long as it interests him.”

  “Go be with her, son. Be the friend she needs.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  Shestna teleported to the ship now kept in stationary orbit behind the Congressional moon. From there, he was flown into the station itself. By the time he arrived in the infirmary, two men in blast suits were rolling a machine into her room.

  “What is happening?”

  “I didn’t tell you about something,” Julian said.

  They went into an empty room. He explained about the device in her back and the team of technicians in the room.

  “The Balnaatrus have dealt with this thing before. It’s an Unsig penitentiary device, only to be used on telepathic prisoners on Unsig. It’s implanted on arrival at the prison and removed two days before release.”

  “How did he get one and how did he know how to insert it?” Shestna asked.

  “He stole it or he bought it. That doesn’t really matter right now. I’m sure he had someone skilled in implanting the thing, either by payment or gunpoint. What’s important is that the Balnaatrus can get it out.”

  “Why not have the Unsig do it? If it is their device?”

  “The Balnaatrus were already here, working on a new section of the station,” Julian informed him.

  Shestna let it go to stand at the door and watch the procedure.

  A delicate operation it was. First, a three sided slit to fold back the skin over the control panel. Then a flat spatula was slid underneath and lifted enough for the isolation field to surround the device. Then the medical teleporter could remove the tubules to an explosive-proof container. Last, the control panel was teleported to its container. Separated, the two parts were inert. The flap was put back into place and sealed. The entire procedure took about an hour and the containers were put into a portable disposal unit brought with them.

  “I applied a healing accelerant,” the surgeon told Julian. “She should have minimal or no scars in a few weeks.”

  “Thank you,” Shestna said. “Send the bill to the Emperor of Voran III.”

  He went in to sit with her until she woke, smiling gently when her eyes opened hours later.

  “Femina. I missed you.”

  “Tell Pi not to be mad at himself. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I already have told him exactly that. I knew you would not blame him.”

  “I blame myself for allowing him to be separated from me. I could have said he was my employee. I didn’t think to. Now I have this thing in me.”

  “You do not. It was removed some hours ago,” he informed her.

  She gasped a breath of relief and struggled to control her emotions and prevent the tears from falling this time.

  “I wish I’d been consulted first. He’s going to do worse to me next time, since it was removed.”

  “You can’t possibly think we would leave that thing inside you.”

  “Maybe I was willing to live with it if it meant I wouldn’t get a beating that would leave me bloodied and with broken bones,” she said.

  “You accept that he’s going to kidnap you again?”

  “I would have agreed to almost anything to get him to stop and let me go, Sta.”

  She sat up, turned her legs over the edge of the bed and saw her clothes on a shelf.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting up.”

  “The doctor says you are to remain still for at least twenty four hours. It has been six.”

  “I can remain still in my own room,” she said, at the shelf and pulling on her pants first and then h
er shirt.

  He put his hand around her upper arm and she reacted with a violence he’d never seen from her. Arm strikes he blocked with his forearms, shoves, and then a mighty slam of psychokinesis and he was against the wall.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Said as calm as could be and she walked out. Julian stared first at her and then into the room to see Shestna on his ass on the floor.

  “What the hell?”

  “I’m fine. Go with her,” Shestna said, getting to his feet.

  Julian ran to catch up with her at the transport hub. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Leave me alone, Julian.”

  “Leaving you alone is how this happened in the first place.”

  “I’m not going to spend my life with a constant companion.”

  She teleported. His watched showed a security breach in her room. Before he could get there, a second alert sounded. Teleportation out of her room and off the station.

  He called Adelaide. “This is Julian. Is Tyler there with you?”

  “No. Should she be?”

  “Yes. If she’s not, then I don’t know where she’s gone.”

  “You are tied to her by an invisible energy thread, nephew. Find a place of quiet and you will locate her,” Adelaide reminded him, and ended the call.

  He did just that, sitting in silence in his living room, and found her in Odin’s house in the hills of California. She had gone home, more or less, and he could not follow her there. His father would never allow it.

  Odin felt her arrive in her room, so did Thor. Both looked up to the ceiling in that direction and Thor moved his chess piece.

  “Check.”

  “Something’s not right,” Odin said. “She’s surrounded by a darkness that wasn’t there before. You’d better go. I still don’t want her to know about you.” He moved a piece. “Checkmate.”

  Thor grumbled his defeat and put out his thin Sistarian whiskey cigar. He went back to Sistair without a word, going about his unexpectedly open evening.

  Odin went up the stairs, turning right at the top to head down the corridor. Her room was opposite his. He didn’t knock, opening the door to find her already in bed with the blanket pulled up and around herself. The drape on the far side of the bed was pulled over two feet to block the light from the balcony door and picture window.

  “Tyler?”

  “Leave me alone, Thomas.”

  “Like hell.”

  He stripped down to his boxers in a minute and got into bed with her. Under the blanket and up close behind her. His hand around her chest, feeling her tense and stiffen, her chaos of emotions, the churning of energies around her.

  “Something bad happened. What is it, Love?”

  She said nothing, falling asleep in her still half-drugged state. Within a moment, Hades came in through the closed picture window to perch on the end of the bed.

  “What are you doing here?” Odin asked.

  [My job.]

  He stayed, still as a statue and invisible to the human eye, until dawn. He left before she woke. She turned in Odin’s arms and began to kiss him. He wasn’t going to refuse her.

  “What happened?” he asked quietly.

  “Later, Thomas. Right now I need gentle attention because I am horny as all fuckin’ hell.”

  She pulled her shirt off, reached beneath the blanket to remove the stretch pants. She didn’t hurt nearly so much after her solid sleep. He took position and was as slow and gentle as she wanted him to be…until she no longer wanted slow and gentle.

  She came as hard as ever, was as insatiable as ever, was in as great a need as he’d known from her. He let her rest a moment before reaching two fingers into the top of her labia to find that swollen clitoris. One touch and it pulsed under his finger pads and she clenched in near orgasm.

  “Do you want this?” he asked, stroking slowly in that way that teased her more.

  “Yes, please,” she gasped, one hand gripping his forearm and the other under his arm and around his shoulder.

  “Then take it.”

  Firm press and rub up and down, just how she liked it, and he popped her a good one. She stiffened from top to bottom, fingers digging painfully into his shoulder, into his forearm. Mouth open, a little grunt coming out, and he kept going until her hand ripped his away from her.

  “STOP!” she blurted.

  The cloud of darkness dissipated in that instant.

  Arm slipped around her belly, he held her close while she breathed hard and out of control, heart pounding hard against her chest, and slowly calmed to fall asleep again. Only a nap this time, she awoke in an hour.

  “What was that about?” he asked.

  “I spent a few days as someone’s nonconsensual sex slave and punching bag. I needed orgasms, dammit, and to sleep naturally.”

  “Nonconsensual sex slave and punching bag? What happened?”

  “What do those words usually mean, Thomas? I was beaten and fucked repeatedly, whether I wanted it or not and not in the fun way. I was largely denied orgasms. He only hit my face a couple times.”

  “You spent several days being raped and beaten and immediately came here to have sex?” he questioned.

  “Not immediately. I left when people wouldn’t leave me the hell alone. I don’t want to talk about it. What day is it?”

  “The second week of June. Monday the seventh.”

  “Good. I could use a swim.”

  She teleported from the bed, leaving him there. He got up and looked out in time to see her dive in to swim the long way. He stood there and watched her for several laps before calling down to the kitchen and ordering breakfast at the pool.

  “Did this man not feed you?” he asked, already waiting for her when she thrust herself up and onto the edge of the pool. “You lost weight.”

  “He tried to feed me,” she said, sitting at the table. “I refused to eat most of the time and he let me starve myself. So pardon me if I make a pig of myself right now.”

  Pig she did, with a mountain of bacon, an omelet and waffle made tableside by a chef who couldn’t care less that Mr. Thomas’ breakfast guest was naked as a jay bird. She ate every bite with a glass of orange juice and three cups of coffee, and sighed in satisfaction when she had cleared her plate.

  “How long do I have you for?” Thomas asked, walking with her back to the house.

  “Couple days.”

  “Okay, let’s go to Paris,” he suggested.

  “We’ve been to Paris. More than once. How about someplace new. I’ve never been to Naples. Or Venice. Spain, maybe?”

  “Okay, we’ll go to Venice. I own a nice hotel with a canal view.”

  “You do? When did that happen?” she asked.

  “Today,” he smiled. “I’ll make a phone call. We’ll leave for the airport in an hour.”

  They split off at the entry. She went up to shower, dress, and pack the suitcase while he made phone calls. One to the pilot, to get the plane fueled up and ready; one to the kitchen to tell Chef Kuai to pack a bag and be ready to leave; then one to his office to get the purchase finished before he got to the hotel.

  “I want to be the owner when I walk in the door. While you’re at it, make sure I have a suite ready for me to stay in and a room for Kuai. I’ll be there about sixteen hours from now,” he concluded, and hung up.

  They spent half an hour in the airport, waiting for their plane to be ready. Walking by a music store, she spotted a familiar face on a cd. Pat Benatar, Gravity’s Rainbow. She broke off from Thomas and made directly for the endcap. Cd in hand, she went around the store and picked out another five cds that she’d been intending to purchase.

  They spent half of the long flight in the bed not sleeping. Thomas kept her nude the entire flight. He insisted during their first rest period, and she told him more details of what happened. When he was on the phone, she listened to her new music, particularly the Benatar.

  Gravity’s Rainbow seemed to be about those horrible events
in February. From the sudden crash of piano in the intro, to pages turning and a city burning. Then she got to a song called Kingdom Key and was stuck on it for the next hour. Playing it over and over, this one song spoke to her in a way that few did. The music, the words, they spoke directly to her soul. She was dying to learn to sing the entire album, and set to memorizing through lip synch.

  Kuai cooked a meal that was eaten and cleaned away before they landed at JFK to refuel. They would make one more stop in England to fuel up. With the time change, they would arrive in Venice about 2pm Tuesday.

  Kuai and their suitcases went to the hotel in a taxi. He was given a room and time off until they got onto the plane again. Thomas would call him the day before they decided to leave. Whatever day that might be, they would fly at noon and get back to Los Angeles by eight that night.

  Going through customs, Thomas grabbed up several sightseeing brochures and gave them to her.

  “You decide what we do.”

  She looked, quickly finding the Doge’s palace. A helicopter he’d already booked took them from the airport to Venice, dropping them off on a rooftop a few blocks from St. Mark’s Square. They did the hour and a half tour, looked into the Basilica, and she did her best to keep back the souls inhabiting the buildings. All the buildings. The city itself was ancient and full of spirits who could not leave.

  “Don’t you want to feed the pigeons?” he asked in the sunny square. “Hold and pet them?”

  “Feed the filthy flying rats that have something like sixty different diseases they can kill you with? No thanks.”

  “How about a fancy opera show?”

  She had to grin. “Anything to get me naked to change clothes?”

  “If I told you to strip right here, right now, would you?” he asked.

  “No. I may have agreed to be naked during the flight, but I’m not yours to command.”

  “Then we have to go to the hotel to change clothes.”

  Which meant a gondola ride through the neighborhood to the main canal. A peaceful ride, though she could hear thousands of souls calling to each other across the canals through the eons.

  Their hotel was near the Rialta bridge, room overlooking the Grand Canal. Not merely a room, it was a color coordinated suite of sitting area, bed, dining table, fancy 1700s furniture with a four poster bed.