Shadows of the Night (Kingdom Key Book 2)

by TylerRose.

  From this distance, some 150 feet, he saw Shestna slumped over in front of the boulder. Tyler was not to be seen. Running up, he saw the blood on his brother. Phone in hand, getting Pisod, demanding to know where he was.

  “You were supposed to be on your way already. He told me not to come.”

  “Father kept me through the entire meeting. Shestna is dead. Tyler is missing.”

  Pisod appeared beside him, saw the apparent bullet splotches on Shestna’s chest. “Curse Nareeva!”

  “Shestna has been dead for at least half an hour,” Dorn said. “Blood on his shirt is dry.”

  Pisod called Julian. “Shestna has been assassinated. Tyler has been taken. Her wedding beads are all over the ground.”

  Within minutes, Julian had a team there to scan the sky for energy signatures. Station scanners were looking for ship trails around Voranian orbit as well. Nobody found anything. Five days, two weeks, four weeks, no one found any trace of her. They assumed it was Solomon, but no one could find any information on his whereabouts or recent activities.

  From the outside,Tyler looked like a stone. She sat motionless in the chair, staring straight ahead. Physical pain from the concussion and having lost her daughter were gone. The pain in her heart, however, raged like a berserking beast.

  Put the emotion in a box. Set it aside. The box was herself. She couldn’t set it aside, however. Rather, she used it to fuel an endless churning of thought from how she would exact her revenge on Solomon to how she would go back to the beginning of all this and fix it.

  She shed not a single tear, showed not a single emotion. Solomon tried to talk to her but she tuned him out. He didn’t dare touch her yet. The doctor he’d hired warned that she was not yet capable of the rigors of sexual activity of any kind. Her concussion had been quite serious. The loss of the baby had been dangerous. She could be seriously harmed if pushed into too much activity too quickly.

  She refused to eat. When feeding time came, Solomon turned up the mental chain so that the doctor could get near her to place the small nutrient transfer machine on her stomach and deposit food directly into her belly. Her hate grew stronger every time.

  She didn’t sleep, though Solomon forced her to the bed each night. She couldn’t sleep. The doctor injected her with numerous sedatives in increasing doses. Her hatred and her fury burned up the chemicals before they had a chance to complete a single circulation of her veins.

  She made sure to go to the toilet a few minutes after Solomon left the rooms so he wouldn’t be there to harass her. He was keeping her in his own suite to have her under his own supervision

  She silently questioned if she needed to eat at all. She didn’t feel like she did. She felt like she could live a thousand years and never eat another bite.

  The Puzzle: She had been given a ring to let her access Sanctuary. Given to her by a man whom she’d met later in her life but before he’d ever heard of Sanctuary. She’d been given this ring at the beginning of all this, on a space station nearly 500 years in the past. If he went back in time to give her the ring, then this was not the first time this timeline had played out. Would that be correct? It had to have all happened before for them to know she needed the ring. Right? If this was not the first time this timeline had played out, then it could be restarted.

  But how?

  She didn’t have the ability to travel back in time. She didn’t have the ability to leave her body and re-enter it…unless. Unless what? Another Widening to gain more abilities was out of the question. There was no way to know what would spark the event or exactly what abilities she would gain. Nothing about that was predictable. She could try to train to do travel in time, but not while under this mental chain. She had to escape him first. Better yet, she had to kill him and walk away. Then she could devote the rest of her life to training to leave her body.

  Energy wasn’t bound by time. Was it? If she left her body, she would be energy. Energy could go wherever it wanted. Couldn’t it? Of all the times to need someone to talk to.

  Her thumb stroked the underside of her pinkie finger. The ring was gone. Solomon had taken it again, and her grandmother’s ruby ring. He’d left it out in plain sight before. She would start looking around for it.

  The door behind her opened, the doctor coming into view with his feeding mechanism with a guard who held the control to the mental chain.

  “No,” she said, her own voice strange to her ears with the first word she’d uttered since waking up weeks back.

  The doctor blinked to hear her speak. “If you will not eat, I must do this.”

  “Gods don’t need to eat.”

  “You aren’t a god,” he said. “If you were, this mechanism wouldn’t stop you from using your abilities and you wouldn’t have this head injury.”

  “I’m still under construction.”

  “I don’t like having to do this to you, Miss. I don’t like anything about any of this.”

  “Then why are you here?” she asked.

  “I signed up to be a ship’s doctor. I didn’t know anything about any of this at the time. I’ve been on board for nearly three months and never knew this would be done. If I bring you food, will you please eat it so I don’t have to use the machine anymore? Please? For both our sakes?”

  He had asked nicely. Not demanded. Not ordered. Almost begged her to eat. A man of conscience and his was eating away at him over the things he was forced to do through her noncooperation. She nodded her agreement. The door opened again, ending their discussion.

  “Why aren’t you doing it?” Solomon’s voice came from behind her, sharp and hostile.

  Her fury reignited.

  “I think if you will let me bring regular food, she will eat it this time.”

  “If she does, will you clear her for physical activity?”

  She showed no emotion, though the doctor tried to find something in her face to help him decide what he should do..

  “Nothing that would jostle her head,” he decided to say.

  “What is the delay? It has been nearly five weeks,” Solomon objected.

  “Yes, it has. These types of head injuries can take months to fully heal. You don’t seem to understand the severity of the concussion she was given. Five weeks is barely beginning her recovery. If she is shaken about too harshly, you could cause her permanent neurological damage. She needs weeks more for the skull and brain to recover. If you want her to do whatever it is you want her to do for you, then you need to be patient and give her the time she needs to heal. In losing the baby, her body still went through the entire process of giving birth. That needs more time as well.”

  Solomon didn’t say another word. He left the room, dissatisfied that he could not have his way.

  “I can’t hold him off forever,” the doctor warned. “What would you like to eat?”

  “Nothing. But I will eat Deek’Traiian egg salad sandwich solely to appease you.”

  The crewman guard remained in place while the doctor went into the kitchen area to get the meal. He set it on the small dining table.

  “Will you please come to the table to eat it?”

  Only because he asked nicely. She eased to her feet, breathing out the unpleasant swirling in her head. Eyes sweeping to every flat surface she could see without turning her head, she saw no rings. The doctor sat with her at the table, sipping hot tea while she ate bite after methodical bite.

  “If you want to talk about—“

  “No,” she cut him off. “There is nothing to say.”

  “You lost a child.”

  “I’ve been here before. The guard will repeat every word to fuckhead twatmouth. Better we discuss nothing.”

  His eyes raised to look sideways toward the guard just out of sight. He knew she was right.

  “There is nothing you can do but stay out of the way,” she told him.

  The plate was empty. She took herself to the toilet and returned to the chair to stare into space and think. The doctor left, the guard
remained.

  How could she readily move from one segment of time to another and permanently reside there? She would need a body on the other end. Sure, she could invade anyone, but that would be stealing a life from an innocent. She could invade her own body in her mother’s womb and go through everything all over again. But would that actually work if she was still tied to this end of the time line?

  She would have to be dead. Not only dead, but she would have to maintain cohesion as an entity, as a consciousness. She had lived before. The energy entity had remained, but she had not kept her consciousness. She had lost all information about previous lives.

  Well, most information. She’d had a recurring dream in her childhood, of a bee on her hand, stinging and then blackness. She had died that way in a previous life, she was sure of it. That one memory, so traumatic, had stayed with her. Nothing else had.

  So…She had to die but maintain her sense of self. Could that be done? It was said the Dalai Lama and his physician had both been reincarnated in repetitious cycles. While they were apparently “found” over and over, they did not carry forth the memories of previous lives. Was there any story of someone wholly reincarnated? She couldn’t think of any, but her knowledge of such things was severely limited.

  There had to be a way.

  The door opened again, Fuckhead Twatface returning from whatever illegal activities he was up to. There was no clock in his rooms, no way for her to keep track of the time other than his comings and goings. Up in the morning, he had breakfast, dressed and left. He came back to look in on her a couple times, then supper and eventually bed.

  Today was different. He dismissed the guard and turned up the mental chain to more easily coerce her into walking to the bedroom. Robe unzipped, the large garment fell from her to the floor. He put her onto her side on the bed and undressed. He was going to ignore the doctor and have her and she could not do anything about it. The mental chain was up high enough to prevent her from fighting. She had little control over her arms, her legs were heavy. She tried to overcome it, getting nowhere.

  He crawled into the bed, ordered the lights on low, and began to paw at her crotch.

  “He said no jostling, so I will be gentle. He said you’d given birth. But you don’t give birth through your ass.”

  Not just an ass fucking, but one lubricated only by whatever rubbed off onto his cock when he slid it over her vaginal opening.

  “I like when you whimper like that,” he said, driving into her from behind. “I’m not waiting for you any longer. When I want a piece of you, I’ll just fuck your ass. I will get you so used to it that you’ll automatically lift your ass for me.”

  Not likely, she thought, quelling the whimper of discomfort.

  She made no more sound other than the rush of her breath.

  “I don’t care how much you hate me. I don’t care the names you call me behind my back. I know you well enough to know how to do this.”

  His first two fingers landed on her clitoris. The motion of his hips moved her clit under the finger pads and he forced her to have an orgasm as he was ready to have his.

  “Hate me all you want, my cuntslave. You still love to fuck,” he said with a smack to her ass. “I won’t be letting you go this time, so get used to being here. You’re going to start obeying or I will start punishing.”

  She felt the heaviness of the mental chain increase, taking away what little arm and leg movement she had. He rolled over and went to sleep. She, on the other hand, could not fall asleep. Her mind continued to churn the puzzles over and over.

  The only way to go back and fix anything would be to die, maintain psychic cohesiveness, and intentionally enter a vessel. If she went into her own self, inside her mother Mary, then she’d have to do all that same stuff all over again. School, stepfather…No. She didn’t want to have to relive all that. Her new existence should focus solely on learning everything she needed to know to defeat Adamantine and bring Earnol to proper justice.

  The alarm on his watch beeped. He woke enough to turn it off, rolled over toward her to push her down onto her belly. Knees pushing her legs open wide, his hand parted her buttocks. His cock began to slide up and back over her anus in a slow motion he maintained for a long time. Warm hardness between her buttocks, ridges and bumps, the contours of his cock against her sensitive flesh. Much as she hated him, it did feel good. She pretended he was Nails, and slowly relaxed under him.

  The mental chain eased an increment or two now and then, until she was able put her arms into a more comfortable position.

  “I am so going to enjoy you,” he said, penetrating to fuck her ass with more vigor than the previous night.

  He was much harder on her and despite herself, she came several times. No sooner was he done than he ordered her into his shower to wash him. He kept the mental chain high enough that lifting her arms to his shoulders was an effort. On her knees under the spray of water was easier, for washing his legs. Until he urinated on her. Warm yellow water streamed onto her head from where he stood, ran down her hair to fall into the bottom of the shower stall.

  He was so going to die at her earliest convenience.

  He pulled her to her feet with a hand around her arm, turned her to face the water stream and held her there to rinse her down. Arms trapped behind her back, chin forced far upward, she had to hold her breath to avoid breathing water in through her nose.

  “I love how much you hate me,” he said. “I love how tightly you tense when you hate what I’m doing to you.”

  He put her chest to the wall and slipped his cock head up into her anus again. His aim wasn’t to ejaculate, but to assert his dominance and ownership. He remained still, making her feel his presence inside her.

  “You’re mine and I will do with you want I want. You will be my slave until I choose to end your life. I suggest you not do anything to make me want to kill you too soon.”

  “Like call you shorty?” she said.

  Height was a sore spot with any Deek’Traiian who wasn’t at least average height. Solomon, she had learned, was nearly half a foot shorter than average. By the standards of his home planet, he was diminutive indeed.

  With that insult, gentle time was over. He rammed hard into her his full length used his leg strength to lift her up onto the balls of her feet with every thrust. Her face was pressed against the wall hard enough to leave a bruise on her cheekbone before he was through. A cursory wipe down with a towel and he took her by the arm back to the bed.

  The cuffs and chains came out. He attached them to all for corners, and secured her. He pulled the chains short to stretch her so she could barely move her hips, and locked the chains in place with padlocks.

  “I told you I would start punishing,” he said, and whipped the bottoms of her feet with a piece of coated wire looped in his hand.

  She could not contain herself, screaming into the mattress with nearly every strike.

  “I spent some time in Betlast, on Gethis,” he told her. “The Masters there are known for their penchant for giving pain. This?...is nothing.”

  He dressed and left her there, the guard coming in to keep watch over her. There would be no more camera surveillance. He would have eyes on her every minute. Eyes that would either make a mistake or would soften and switch sides. Either way, she would take advantage of the opportunity.

  Held down, trapped in place, the mental chain higher again, her mind finally ceased its intense work and let her sleep. Blank space of sleep without dreams, she woke to Solomon’s fingers invading her vagina, followed immediately by his cock. An involuntary cry leapt from her throat with the sharp pain of the first postnatal insertion.

  “Enough sleeping, slavecunt.”

  Her left ankle was no longer restrained, knee bent to open her up and give him access. Her left arm had been moved to the middle of the head bars of the bed and she was more toward the right hand side. He always did prefer the left side of the bed. Her feet did not hurt. There was a band around her ne
ck, another around the top of her right thigh at the joint.

  Soon as he was off her, he locked the wrist cuffs together and unclipped them from the chains. Then let her foot off its chain.

  “Use the toilet. We’re going planet side.”

  Fresh air, real gravity, bright sunshine, and he immediately locked her wrist cuffs to a ring on the wall of the sitting room. The blasted mental chain was kept high enough to keep her relatively docile but he would take no chances that she would try to run away. She kicked at him as hard as she could manage under the heavy mental chain and got her ankles locked together and a whipping up and down her legs with that thin wire. It was thick enough to have heft but thin enough to sting like a mother fucker. He covered her legs in curved welts. Grabbing the short bar between her ankles, he lifted her feet high and whipped them as well.

  “Scream as loud as you want. No one on this planet gives a shit,” he told her, and dropped her feet.

  They landed hard and uncontrolled on the wood floor and he strung the wire through the ring on the front of her collar. A half knot secured it in place for the next time.

  The band around her thigh was an electroshock device. When she displeased him, which she managed to do numerous times a day, he zapped her leg out from under her and the bottoms of her feet got another whipping.

  Over the course of the days to come, sole whippings became bodily beatings. Backhands, punches, kicks to thighs. Anytime he let the mental chain down enough, she fought and punched and wrestled and made him earn every fuck. He only chuckled, the fighting turning him on more than he already was. Fuckin’ horndog. At least he wasn’t so stupid as to put his cock into her mouth.

  The same guard watched over her whenever Solomon had to leave on whatever business it was he was conducting this time. Every time he left, she was chained to the metal loop in one room or another with her ankles locked together. Every room had a loop, even the shower stall. Solomon put a stiff muzzle over her mouth so she couldn’t talk to the guard. He always made a point of showing her the control to the mental chain before increasing it a notch and putting it into his pocket.