Shadows of the Night (Kingdom Key Book 2)

by TylerRose.

  “Create my own nursery,” she said.

  “Yeah. You’ll keep your memories, right?”

  “Hopefully. Some things I may forget.”

  “Can you give it all to someone, to give back to you when you need it?” he asked.

  “See, this is why I need you. You think outside the pre-determined crap and come up with real solutions.”

  “Take us outside again. I like being the only people on the planet,” he said.

  The grass in the shade of the mountain was wonderfully cool.

  “You didn’t create mosquitos here, did you?” he asked.

  “Hell no!”

  “So, I was asking if you have someone you can give all your memories to. Someone who can give them back to you when needed,” he reminded.

  [Julian?]

  He appeared in front of them, saw them naked on the ground. “Oh hell!” He turned his back.

  “I would think having appeared in the rain would teach you not to do that,” she teased. “I know what we’ll do. I know how we’ll do it.”

  “Great. Cover up, damn it.”

  A towel appeared over Jerome’s waist and a t-shirt on herself.

  “This is as good as it gets,” she said. “For having the variety of lovers you’ve had across the species of humanoid, you’re remarkably prudish.”

  He turned around. “So how about you go lick some twat?”

  “Eww, no.”

  “HA!” he pointed at her with a grin.

  She equaled his expression, having always enjoyed their teasing back and forth.

  “What is your plan?” he asked.

  “You will go to Ercoli and all the other planets that have a manned, dedicated Temple of the Immaculate,” she said, getting down to business. “You will gather the best men to occupy my rock there. I’m going to make a village down here, to be raised in. The village needs people too. People to grow food for everyone. Craftspeople. Men and women, families. I need children to grow up with. They may need to be here for a long time, so it needs to be self-sustaining. No one associated with the Doyen Confederacy, your father, the Tao or the Dautan.”

  “I didn’t know you knew those terms,” Julian said, disquieted.

  “I did not before. I do now.”

  “Let me get going. What about you two? What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll stay here to get the temple started,” Jerome said. “Teach them our way of fighting. I’ll live a long time but I am not immortal. I’ll be gone before you come back for the end game, I’m sure.”

  Tyler nodded her agreement. “You’ll be the first…whatever you name the highest person.”

  “I think Sifu works well enough,” Jerome said.

  “I should not be here when they start to arrive,” Tyler realized. “I have to leave. Tie up my loose ends.”

  “I’ll give you a day before I bring anyone,” Julian said.

  “No. Give us a year,” Jerome told him. “She’s not nearly ready.”

  Julian didn’t question it. He left to begin gathering a new nursery team. A much larger one.

  “Why’d you say that?” she asked Jerome.

  “I heard it in your voice, babe. Felt it in your energy. You’re not ready to walk away from me yet. You have to prepare for that day. For once. You aren’t nearly as angry here as when you came to me. You need more time to not be angry.”

  Her smile was genuine, spontaneous, but wavered. He knew what she needed when she didn’t. He wasn’t trying to change her. He accepted her as she was and tried to help in ways that had real impact.

  “We finally found each other,” he said. “Maybe I want to enjoy it for a while before I live the life of a celibate monk for a hundred years.”

  He turned over her, putting her onto her back and ripping her shirt off at the same time. She giggled a sound he loved to hear, one that tickled him low in his belly.

  “You should always be naked,” he said, filling her and ending the giggles.

  Over the coming days, she created dwellings on a meandering path. Simple three and four room houses, communal gathering halls under thatch-topped sheds. Jerome would have Julian bring anything else that was needed. He would bring engineers to install electricity and sewers, water systems.

  While he explored the area immediately around the mountain, she meditated and worked on expelling grief. She was able to let go of memories of her mother. She let go of Nails. Try as she might, she could not let go of Shestna, their daughter, or Taylor.

  “Maybe you’re not able to do that because you shouldn’t,” Jerome said as they lay resting together on the grass.

  Her soft fingertip traced the scars of the tiger on his left forearm. He had the scars of the Shaolin Master.

  “I thought the crystal power healed damage,” she said.

  “It does. But those were already fully healed when I absorbed the staff. I hadn’t absorbed it our night together. I just wore it under my jacket. I didn’t take the charge until January. It wasn’t enough time to learn to use it and be prepared.”

  “So you need to do that sooner,” she said. “And I need to expel grief.”

  “Babe, let that one be. You don’t regret. Okay fine. You got rid of fear and self-doubt, and together they took a bunch of related emotions. Good. You’re right. A goddess shouldn’t regret what she has to do. She shouldn’t fear anything or doubt herself. But grief? Why shouldn’t she feel sadness for a loss?”

  Feeling that same sensation in her heart and gut, she turned onto her side away from him, pulled up into a ball. He turned as well, spooned in with her to share in her sadness.

  “I feel it too, you know. I’ve lost a baby. I’ve lost my life partner. I’ve lost my mother and father. I’ve lost everything; all my family except for one sister. I’m pissed at her. She fuckin’ sent me a note and it arrived the day before the battle. I was so upset that I went for a jog out Route 2 the next day. I was almost to Davis Besse when Adamantine sent his forces down. They surprised us. We didn’t have any warning; didn’t know what day they’d be arriving. I had to run all the way back. So much damage was already done. So many people had already died. I will carry that sadness for the rest of my life.”

  “You didn’t know what day? No, that’s right. They hid behind planets until the very last moment and then sped forward to Earth,” she remembered. “How long do you want? I’m going back to change it, so how much advance notice do you want?”

  “We guessed late February to early March, just not the exact day. A couple months to know the exact date would be nice. So we could gear up for it properly.”

  “Okay. I’ll make contact sometime in Julyish and get preparations going. Do you think we could pull together the Droghers and the Iron Knaves into a grassroots force to be down there and ready?”

  He laughed. “That’ll be the day! Their rivalry is legendary. But if there’s one thing that would make them put all that aside, this would be it. I know…well, I knew Nails. I’d been to his house a few times. He was my attorney. Got me probation rather than twenty years in jail. He introduced me to Chen. I hung with the Droghers more, though. Dicer was the one who started using my middle name rather than my first and it stuck. So they called me Tiberius.”

  She said nothing about having been the singer on stage more than a few times when he’d been at a pool party at Nails’ house or in the Droghers’ clubhouse.

  “Do you know who else is supposed to be in the pentagon?” he asked.

  “A few, but some will come and go over the years. You, of course. Nails. Shestna is a maybe. Depends on when I evolve and how long he lives. His brother Dorn is pretty definite. Just depends on how things work out and when he takes a place. Their brother Pisod may or may not be a bottom tier escort guard. Other than that…I have no idea. This could take five thousand years to happen. Hundreds of men may come and go for all I know.”

  “Take us to our bed.”

  They were on the comfortable surface in the cave, in the same positio
ns. His strong hand under her face lifted until he could kiss her cheek and look into her eyes.

  “I love you,” he said for the first time. “I’ll love you from the start even if I don’t say it.”

  “Same here. What if neither of us ever says it?” she asked.

  “We don’t have to say it to know we both feel it.” He put his hand on her chest, to feel her heart beating. “It’s right here and we both will know it.”

  She blinked up at him, eyes visually growing moist. “You’re the only man who never wanted anything from me. You wanted to help not knowing anything about me except that I was in a shitty situation. Not knowing who I was supposed to become. You didn’t have an agenda. You helped out of a genuine compulsion to assist someone in need.”

  He watched her face grow pink with tears she tried to hold back.

  “Babe, don’t do that. Go on and cry. You have to let all that out. You have too much of it bottled up.”

  “Doesn’t it get annoying? Tiresome? A chick who cries at the drop of a hat?” she asked.

  “Maybe from others, when they try to manipulate me. You don’t. Your emotions are genuine, every time. I know that. You’ve thrown out some intense emotions. It stands to reason that ones that are left would become more intense. If you need to cry, you just do it. You don’t have to squash it. You don’t have to hide it from me. Come to me. Okay?”

  She nodded, but the urge to cry had faded away with his acceptance of her need. The brief storm had passed.

  “Will you allow me to do something?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Nails taught me to do it and I haven’t in so long. It’s very comforting.”

  “What is it?” he restated.

  “It starts with a blow job and ends with me falling asleep latched on.”

  An image that piqued his interest.

  “He enjoyed it immensely,” she smiled.

  “You know I’m not him, right?”

  “In so many ways, my love,” she replied, and slinked down his torso until her mouth sucked his softness in.

  She latched onto him with a pressure unprecedented and he struggled at first. He became aware of her hand in his, eased his grip and worked consciously to relax into this intense pleasure. He could feel her suckling, a small working of her mouth and throat. He could not harden in the strong hold between tongue and palate. Ancients help him, it was so beyond good.

  As he calmed and eased, so did she. He felt the moment when her energy drifted into slumber. He remained still and let her sleep until he could no longer be still. He realized that if he’d had the Staff power, she’d have been sucking it from him. Feeding from the energy?

  His thumb between her teeth, atop the back of her tongue, he broke the suction and withdrew. She did not notice. Getting up, sitting on one of the foot posts, he watched over her and continued to write in the journal she’d given him.

  She woke near sunset and sat up, stretching her arms, and chuckled to see him sitting atop the platform with the small book closed on his thigh.

  “I need some duct tape,” he said.

  She produced a roll in front of him. He peeled the end and adhered it in the middle of the cover to wrap around the short way. Wrapped three times, he ripped it and smoothed the edge over itself.

  “You are not to read this,” he said. “Period. Not ever. Promise.”

  “I will not ever read it. Promise.”

  “Don’t even ask about it or what’s in it.”

  “I won’t.”

  He leapt down to put it on a shelf in the wall.

  “When you’re ready to go back, I’ll give it to you to leave somewhere for me to find,” he said, returning to her to make love again.

  He could not have enough of her. His love for her was the cup that could never be filled. As soon as he was quenched and sated, he grew thirsty and hungry for her again.

  Julian came to visit periodically, working out details for projects that would need to be done as soon as people were brought.

  “Or before they get here,” he said. “Water system is an important thing. It should be done before anyone gets here.”

  “What do you suggest?” she asked.

  “The Balnaatrus. But they’re not cheap.”

  “I have money.” A bank card appeared in her hand. “Transfer it all into another account in some name you make up. Do what you have to do here to make it properly habitable. I can make a building. I can’t make sewer systems and waste handling facilities.”

  “How much money is there?” he asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me, so go see for yourself. If I come back into this time line, I’ll need that money, so don’t blow it all. Convert what you can to gold and store it somewhere in the mountain. If I end up in the wrong timeline, that money will be gone.”

  “But if you don’t came back into the correct timeline, then nothing will be done here,” Julian pointed out.

  “Wrong. This planet is at the junction of all of my personal timelines. Something done here remains.” She held her hand up, flat, moving horizontally. “The timelines pass through Sanctuary.” She made her other hand into a fist, touched leading edge of hand to the ball. “Then they come out and timelines I’m in angle off.” She tilted her hand downward. “They intersect here.” She lowered her other hand to make a fist again. “What we do right now will remain regardless what timeline I end up in. This planet becomes my version of Sanctuary when I bring my own galaxy into being. It is already apart from the flow of time in that regard.”

  “You’re sure of that?” he asked. “You’re sure it stays?”

  “I know for a fact that it does. Get them here as soon as possible. I can stay up top while they’re down here or inside the mountain. They don’t ever need to know I’m there. There’s nothing to be done inside the cave itself.”

  “Or if there is, I can have it done after she leaves,” Jerome said.

  She looked at him with a silent question.

  “Just because you don’t think anything needs doing doesn’t mean I don’t think so,” he told her. “We’ll talk about it after she goes, Julian.”

  A wall hit her. She’d done as much as she could do.

  “I should go now. Get the ball rolling on my end. I have something I have to finish up. It’ll take a few months maybe.”

  “That fast?” Jerome asked.

  She nodded. “There’s nothing more for me to do here. It’s all on you now until Chen brings me here as a baby.”

  He was on his feet, walking away.

  “That was rather abrupt, Tyler,” Julian chastised.

  “No, it’s okay,” Jerome said, returning. “She’s right. We were never going to be forever. We’ve had our time together. We’ve enjoyed each other. Now I have to pass her off to the next one in line, and that’s Chen. It’s not like I don’t trust the man. Just do me one favor?” he concluded to her, helping her up to stand.

  “What?” she asked, hands on his chest while he held her close one last time.

  “Tell the Jerome you end up with that he better know what a lucky fuck he is.”

  She laughed a genuine sound he adored. One more close hug, one last kiss.

  “Go knock the galaxy on its ass, babe,” he whispered so only she could hear.

  She stepped backwards and teleported herself and Julian to the attic of the hunting lodge. First thing, she put on a pair of her soft stretch pants and a shirt. He helped her pack her belongings, leaving the room empty. She brought things from Louisiana, from her psionic vault. Everything would go with him back to the cave on the mountain. She left her supply of gold rings and bars in her psionic vault, along with a few of her more personal items.

  “I guess I’ll see you on the other side,” he said, with a final hug. “Don’t take too long.”

  “I won’t. I need to see one more movie. It’s tonight. The videos will be released for Christmas. Then I’ll be ready.”

  He was gone, her boxes, stereo, and book
case with him. She went at once to the mall to have supper and walk around until the movie started. Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Alone in a crowd of three hundred people, she sat like a stone and watched Anakin fulfill the worst story, the destruction of the Jedi order. Not just the Jedi Knights, but the younglings as well.

  No, Anakin, no, was all she could think, helpless to stop what must be, forced to watch as he went up the steps with an army at his back.

  Finally, a burned figure became the Darth Vader the world had already known. Numb, she returned to the attic to lie down and think. She needed to process the lessons she saw. Undressed and under a sheet, she found her thoughts going to Jerome rather than the movie.

  Knocking on the other side of the door. Thomas. He was alone. Only one other man was in the house. Dalton. The other two were in cabins out on the property, keeping a perimeter.

  “What?” she asked.

  “May I come in, please?”

  “Yes.”

  He teleported past the door, needing a moment to adjust to the light from the three quarter moon.

  “Are you well?” he asked, approaching the bed. He sat on the edge near her.

  “Well enough. I’m finishing up here. I know how I will fix it.”

  “How?”

  “I’m going to go back in time and re-enter a few months before Adamantine happens. I’ll fix that first and then we’ll see what happens.”

  He sighed hard, displeased. “I see. I can’t say I’m not disappointed. When will you leave?”

  “Tomorrow I go forward a few months to pick something up. Then I take care of my last loose end.”

  Shoes kicked off, he turned to lie on his side facing her and held her hand.

  “I do wish you could see how much I can help you,” he said.

  “I don’t know if you will or won’t be Apogee in the end, Thomas. What I know is that this isn’t the time or the place.”

  “Do you have no bond with me at all?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” she replied.