‘‘The first transport seems to be having a malfunction, sir,’’ the controller advised Jared. He wished he could claim surprise. ‘‘According to their instrumentation, they have a fuel line leak and have to turn back now—or they won’t make it back.’’
Only moments before had the transport’s captain finally heard from Scott Dillon; the team was ready for pickup—and now, the craft couldn’t reach them. ‘‘How long ago did we launch the other transport?’’
‘‘It’s within ten minutes of the drop site, sir.’’
‘‘Ten minutes. Good.’’ Jared just prayed there weren’t any issues on the ground. Ten minutes was like an eternity in hell if you needed immediate pickup.
They were never going to make it out alive, not a one of them, if Scott didn’t come up with some sort of strategy in the next thirty seconds. Marco had Kelsey prone on the ground, beneath his body, firing off rounds at the exact same time. Thea crouched at Scott’s right side, pulse rifle gripped in both hands, letting loose quick, sputtering rounds without hesitation.
But it didn’t take a military genius to realize they were cornered and outflanked by a far superior force. They were only a small band of four; the guns turned on them had to belong to a force of ten or more soldiers.
Scott’s mind whirled, grasping at possibilities, and at last he arrived at the only workable strategy that just might save the others. ‘‘Thea,’’ he said, reloading as he talked, ‘‘you’re going to lead the others back up the trail, toward the other side of the chamber. I’ll cover you down here. There’s a flat area around the ledge, it’ll be tricky, but the transport can get you there.’’
Thea peppered the landscape with a shower of pulse fire, breathless, and then announced that she wasn’t about to leave him behind.
‘‘It’s the only way, Thea,’’ he insisted, sensing their attackers moving in closer. ‘‘They’re advancing on us. Do it now. That’s an order.’’
For a brief moment she stared at him, pain reflected in her familiar eyes, and then she nodded, crawling toward the others and issuing orders. Scott never looked at them again; he worked his way farther down the trail, intermittently firing rounds and crouching low for protection. He would either die or be captured, and deep in his heart, he’d always known it would come to this—there was no other way this scenario could end. But at least he would have protected his queen and his second in command and Marco in the process.
Stopping to reload, it seemed that the gunfire died down some. He wished he believed that was a good sign, he thought with a bitter laugh, but a lifetime of warfare had taught him better. Suddenly, from behind him, the long barrel of a machine gun jabbed him hard in the center of his back.
‘‘You. Drop the weapon,’’ shouted a deep, human voice. ‘‘Now! Now! Now!’’
He knew the tactic—subdue the enemy by being assertive and intimidating; hell, it was the same tactics they used when cornering an enemy. But he wasn’t intimidated, not for a moment; humans were easy compared to the Antousians’ genocidal ways. If he was indeed going to die at the hands of his captors, at least he had a prayer that it would be carried out decently.
Scott let his pulse rifle fall to the ground and shoved both hands into the air.
‘‘Identify yourself, soldier!’’
He said nothing.
‘‘Identify!’’
Scott remained silent.
A pair of rough hands gripped him from behind, shoving him face-first onto the frozen ground; someone else’s boot shoved between his shoulders; yet another soldier let loose a sneering laugh. Others joined in. ‘‘Fucking Nank,’’ someone muttered from behind him.
Nank. That’s what the human soldiers called any alien; why, he’d never known. But it wasn’t a compliment.
His mind drifted to the images he’d seen inside the mitres, of some other life he would supposedly live—or had lived, only he didn’t remember it. There was a woman with long golden hair and haunting gray eyes. But she’d been beautiful—and his. Wrestling for breath, he tried to hold onto that woman like he would a lifeline or a rare, fading sunset. The thought of her stilled his hammering heart just a little, made him breathe a bit easier. At least for a few seconds.
Another soldier dropped down to the ground, pushing his face close to Scott’s, his putrid breath overpowering Scott’s Antousian senses until for a moment he thought he might be sick. ‘‘Nank,’’ the foul-breathed soldier whispered against his face, almost like it was some kind of seduction, ‘‘you’re gonna fucking die tonight.’’
Thea sat in Jared’s chambers, whiskey in hand—he’d insisted that she drink some of his favored human liquid—and trembled from head to toe. Kelsey sat beside her on the floor, staring into the fire, silent, but somehow oddly . . . was comforting. Marco braced both hands on the mantel, clearly upset. He felt as if he’d failed them all, she sensed it. Jared had led them to his chambers rather than into the meeting room because Scott Dillon’s capture was going to rock the very foundations of the resistance. The men and women within Jared’s army were unfailingly loyal and devoted to the Antousian lieutenant, and followed him with almost mythical dedication.
Tears burned Thea’s eyes. If she’d done something different, if she’d not listened to him, if she had chosen to stay and fight . . .
They would all be in enemy hands at the moment.
She took another swig of the burning whiskey, her hands trembling so badly that the ice cubes rattled in the glass.
Kelsey turned to look at her and said, ‘‘Thank you. You saved my life out there.’’
‘‘No, I didn’t.’’ Thea shook her head. ‘‘Scott did.’’
‘‘You carried out his order,’’ Kelsey answered softly. ‘‘I owe you my life.’’
‘‘Just . . . don’t,’’ she countered bitterly. ‘‘Please, just don’t.’’
Jared crouched low to the ground—he’d been pacing the room, questioning them about the mission—and took Thea by the shoulder. ‘‘Lieutenant, it wasn’t your fault.’’
Marco cleared his throat and slowly turned to face them all. ‘‘No,’’ he said in a strangely hushed voice. ‘‘It was mine.’’
Jared rose to his full height and swept his gaze among them all. ‘‘Stop it. Now,’’ he fairly roared. ‘‘The assignments of blame get us nowhere. It happened. It was a risk, and Dillon knew it—we all knew it—going in. You came under enemy fire and were outflanked and out-manned. If we’re assigning blame, then let it be with me. I sent you in without sufficient backup.’’
‘‘No, sir—’’ Thea began, but Jared lifted an authoritative and silencing hand.
‘‘Enough.’’ He glanced around the room, his eyes shining with power. ‘‘Enough. What we need now is to focus on getting the lieutenant back. That, and removing this data from Kelsey’s mind since—apparently—it’s proving a hell of a lot more difficult than we’d hoped. Those are the top priorities right now. If either of you’d been captured out there tonight, Kelsey would have fallen into our enemy’s hands—right along with the data. This is not acceptable that it simply . . . fused with her. We must find a way to dislodge it from her mind.’’
‘‘Jared, you weren’t there,’’ Kelsey whispered, staring into the fire with an almost trancelike stare. ‘‘You have no idea. The mitres reacted to me.’’
‘‘She’s right, sir,’’ Marco agreed. ‘‘And when it began to power up, what we experienced . . .’’ Marco’s deep voice trailed to nothing. Thea gazed up at him, wondering what he was thinking. There was a deeply troubled expression on his face; his black eyes narrowed to catlike slits. She knew what she had seen tonight, but now she wondered what had confronted Marco in the slipstream.
‘‘Tell me more,’’ Jared urged, taking a position by the hearth near Marco. ‘‘Marco, tell me everything that you experienced.’’
‘‘My lord, I can’t.’’
‘‘You can’t?’’ Jared turned on him, surprised and a bit angry.
&
nbsp; Marco inclined his head respectfully. ‘‘It . . . is impossible to describe, sir.’’
Thea had the definite sense that Marco was holding back. Had it been images of their other life together? That other timeline where they’d been the worst kind of lovers?
Her commander turned to face her. ‘‘What of you, Lieutenant Haven? What did you see? Or can’t you describe it either?’’
Briefly, almost imperceptibly, her eyes and Marco’s locked. She swore she heard him speak within her mind: I saw my true, dangerous nature.
She quickly shifted her gaze to meet Jared’s. ‘‘Sir, I experienced my own memories,’’ she explained, speaking formally with her cousin as she always did when they were not in private. ‘‘Some of them from the past, but some of them . . . were not known to me. They seemed like memories that belonged to someone else.’’
Jared turned to Marco again. ‘‘Madjin, tell me,’’ he questioned, ‘‘is this what happened to you?’’
Marco nodded slowly, but said nothing.
‘‘What is your hesitation, Madjin?’’
Marco’s black eyebrows drew together in a scowl. At first it seemed to Thea that he would never answer, but after a long, thoughtful moment he replied, ‘‘I didn’t like what I saw, my lord. Of myself. It was disturbing.’’
‘‘Disturbing how?’’ Jared pressed, slipping a hand onto Marco’s shoulder. ‘‘Tell us.’’
Thea interjected, ‘‘Commander, Prince Arienn wrote about this same experience in his journals. He told how powering up the mitres seemed to initiate some sort of parallel universe to the one he lived in. After his experience in the chamber, he was forever haunted by images from another life—one he did not live.’’
‘‘And you believe you saw that, Lieutenant? Images and memories that belonged to another version of yourself.’’
‘‘Yes, my lord.’’
Once again—unrelenting—Jared turned back to face Marco. She knew her cousin well, and there was something he was after from the man. Something he was determined to learn. ‘‘Again, protector, I ask what you saw in the mitres. I command you to tell me.’’
Marco nodded his head, his naturally dark face growing pale in the firelight. ‘‘I saw that in that other universe,’’ he admitted quietly, ‘‘I was your enemy.’’
Kelsey lay on the far side of the room, fast asleep. The queen had only gotten a few hours’ rest, and the experience in the mitres had clearly exhausted her. Jared stood beside the bed, gazing down at his new wife, a look of such unabashed love and adoration on his face that Marco experienced a pang of jealousy. Not because he felt sensual love for his queen—as his other self apparently had, or did—but rather because he longed to tuck Thea into his own bed. To stare down at her beautiful, peaceful face and know that she belonged to only one man in all the universe. Himself.
Quietly, Jared crossed the room to where Marco sat on giant throw pillows in front of the fire. It was the custom with their people, to sit on the floor rather than on sofas or chairs. Marco, of course, had been raised for most of his life on Earth and preferred a slouchy easy chair over the floor, but his king had no such furniture in his chambers.
Jared poured himself a straight whiskey; no ice or water, just a few shots of the liquid. It was the breakfast hour, but for the past day time had assumed an endless, suspended quality that had worked a dark spell over all of them. Jared extended a glass toward Marco, but he shook his head. He had no doubt that his king had kept him here in his chambers after dismissing Thea and urging Kelsey into bed for one purpose, and one purpose only—to interrogate him. But if that were the case, Marco planned to have his full wits about himself during the process.
Jared slowly dropped to the floor, spreading his socked feet before the fire. It was an intimate moment, just the two of them quietly sitting together—Jared with his whiskey, Marco cross-legged beside him. All his life Marco had anticipated a moment with his king just like this one; it was a disconcerting experience to live it as his current reality.
They were silent together for a while, the crackling fire and Kelsey’s soft breathing the only noises between them. Occasionally Jared would sip from the whiskey and comment on its taste, but otherwise neither man spoke for quite some time. That silence began to make Marco nervous; he feared the questions that would soon come—if indeed they would come at all, although he felt certain they would. His presence in the king’s chamber seemed far too pointed and deliberate otherwise.
‘‘Tell me of your life here on Earth,’’ Jared said at last, draining the remains of his Scotch.
Marco drew in a breath, staring at the flames. ‘‘There’s not much to talk about, sir. I’ve been here since I was eight, always training and preparing for this day.’’
‘‘I’m told you saved Kelsey’s life tonight—that you covered her body with your own.’’
Marco turned to him in surprise. ‘‘How did you—’’
‘‘Thea told me when you first arrived.’’
‘‘I didn’t have any other alternative, my lord.’’
‘‘A brave choice, nonetheless.’’
‘‘I’m her Madjin,’’ he replied matter-of-factly. ‘‘It wasn’t a choice—it was my only option.’’
Jared nodded, growing thoughtful. ‘‘Why wouldn’t you tell me what you saw there in the mitres? Did you fear my judgment?’’
Marco swallowed hard. He hadn’t expected such a direct question—and had been fairly sure his earlier answer had proved satisfactory. But Jared’s question hit the truth like a poison arrow to a bull’s-eye. ‘‘Yes, my lord,’’ he answered simply.
‘‘How was it that you were not good?’’ Jared asked, turning to face him. ‘‘I must know this for you to serve me here, in close proximity to my wife. It is only fair that you reveal the facts to me.’’
Marco raked a desperate hand through his hair, feeling cornered. All the years he’d imagined serving his king, never once had he dreamed that their first interaction alone would come to this. But he needed to confess the truth, as much for his own conscience as for the man who asked it of him. ‘‘I . . . betrayed you. In that other life.’’
‘‘I see,’’ Jared answered simply, but asked nothing more, almost as if he weren’t surprised by the revelation. Marco waited, poised on the brink, anticipating his next question, the one that would bring everything crashing down: How did you betray me? But, strangely, it never came. Jared had to be curious, but there was a certain respect conveyed in his leaving the question unasked. A kind of trust extended. After several long moments, Marco began to breathe easier.
‘‘My whole life I’ve waited for this—serving you, and now my queen,’’ Marco said. ‘‘I never pictured anything else. Whatever happened in that other world, the one I saw . . . it’s not me.’’
‘‘I believe that.’’
Marco turned to him, shocked. ‘‘How can you be so sure?’’
‘‘Because Sabrina raised me as her son, and even with everything that has happened over the years, I still trust her with my life,’’ he explained somberly. ‘‘And she trusts you. Therefore, so do I. It’s fairly simple, really.’’
Marco inclined his head, releasing a sigh. ‘‘Thank you, my lord.’’
‘‘I wouldn’t have sent you tonight if I didn’t trust you—you do realize that?’’
Marco nodded; he’d already considered that point. But he’d also viewed it as a sort of test. It appeared that, the mitres visions be damned, he had passed this first trial. That was a very good thing because Marco had an idea in mind, something that would help both Jared and Kelsey—but especially his queen.
‘‘Sir, I’m glad to know that you trust me,’’ he began, sounding far more tentative than he would have liked. He cleared his throat, continuing, ‘‘Because I have an idea that could really resolve the issue with the mitres data.’’
Jared nodded. ‘‘Go on—I’m listening.’’
‘‘I can help you develop your intuition. Hel
p you extract the information from Kelsey’s mind—and upload it into the mitres.’’
‘‘What makes you so certain?’’
‘‘Because my gift is unique—and because my duty is to guide you in your own gifts. It’s part of why I’m here. You know the role of the Madjin throughout history. We train and teach—not just protect.’’ Marco lifted his chin proudly, but despite his outer calm, he was shaking inside. It took a serious set of balls to tell Jared—his king and a man two years older than he was—that he was here to train him.
And yet Jared didn’t flinch; he turned to him seriously. ‘‘What are you suggesting?’’
‘‘That I work with you both—begin a series of training sessions—and help you master your own intuition, my lord. You’ve got the ability, you’ve just resisted it.’’
Jared stared at him, mouth open, and then, much to Marco’s surprise, he began to laugh. ‘‘How do you know that? Thea I’m used to knowing my mind, but she’s fought beside me for years—’’
‘‘Because I’m intuitive—same as you. And I can teach you how to know things the exact same way. But only if you’re willing.’’
Jared rose suddenly, pacing the room with the tightly constrained energy of a wildcat—first in one direction, then another—until at last he spun to face Marco. ‘‘Yes,’’ he said. ‘‘Yes, this is what is needed. I am willing indeed. I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to protect my people . . . and to save my wife.’’
Chapter Fourteen
Scott Dillon’s mouth was dry and his body sore; he was relatively sure they broken some of his ribs when they worked him over upon his capture. He’d been airlifted to an unknown location, camouflaged in an Air Force uniform before armed military escorts had driven him into an underground facility. After that, he’d passed out cold. Drugs had been administered to him, no doubt. And he’d been manacled and bound ever since. Was it daytime? Night? He couldn’t be certain at all. Stirring on the concrete floor of a small, dark room, he tried to lift his head, only to discover that they had him trussed up like a prize bird. Hands bound behind his back, feet chained to a small desk.
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