Black Gate: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4 (25 page)

Sometimes, Teagh was tempted anyway. No one should have to survive this…

“That was fast.” Raiden moved to the first set of chains where they were bolted into the floor below Ajax’s feet.

“Yes, but it won’t last long.” Bran knelt and released the chain bolted to the manacle around Ajax’s neck.

His brother was right. Teagh and Bran had used the Triscani poison to subdue Ajax more than once. Even at high doses, the King never stayed unconscious for more than an hour. “Let’s just get this done.”

The three worked in silence until they had removed all of Ajax’s chains.

“One. Two. Three.” Teagh counted off and they lifted the King’s unconscious body onto a soft blanket they could wrap him in to carry him through the portal without fear of accidentally touching his skin.

“Let’s go.” Raiden held the image in his mind so Bran could open the portal. Beyond it was nothing but complete and utter darkness. The half-blood looked at Bran as he turned on a flashlight clipped to his waist. “You did bring a power crystal?”

“Yes. It can power the pod for many years.” Bran turned on his own light and Teagh followed suit. It was dark where they were headed.

“We don’t have that long.” Teagh grunted as he lifted Ajax’s massive shoulders from the floor.

Bran joined him on the other side. “I know.”

Raiden lifted his feet. “Look on the bright side. If we don’t figure out how to save him, we’ll all be dead when he wakes up anyway. “True.”

They carried Ajax through the portal and stepped into a dark, silent cave.

“So, this is where Mari found you?” Teagh looked around the tiny space, intrigued.

“Yes. I spent two years here.” Raiden visibly shuddered as they approached the stasis pod with their cargo and Teagh felt sorry for the male. The clear hatch was still open, and dried blood dirtied one side of the reclining pad.

“Let’s get him in there.” Bran directed them as they maneuvered the Immortal King into the empty stasis pod and removed the blanket they’d wrapped around him. He barely fit in the capsule as it was.

Teagh stepped back and watched Raiden replace the old power crystal with the new one Bran had provided from the Archiver ship. The King would be safe here, and he wouldn’t suffer. He’d be unconscious, held in stasis until they could figure out a way to save him.

By the gods, they would come up with a solution. There wasn’t any other choice. But as Teagh watched the tiny flickering lights activate in the stasis pod’s computer crystals, and the protective dome come down over Ajax’s body, his old fears fought their way to the surface again. They’d had seven hundred years to figure something out.

How the hell were they going to come up with an answer in a matter of days?

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Teagh held Kate in his arms and waited patiently for her to wake. He’d sent Bran back to Celestina with an update an hour ago. Mari had healed the bite marks from her neck and shoulders, but taken one look at Kate’s blackened flesh and shaken her head. Nothing more the healer could do for her right now. He’d allowed Mari to help Katherine with a hot shower while he, Bran and Raiden took care of relocating Ajax.

He’d had to fight off the irrational need to bathe and care for Katherine himself. But one look in Kate’s eyes and he’d backed off, confident she wouldn’t run again. The defeated slump to her shoulders and the utter despair in her eyes had nearly broken him. He didn’t have the heart to argue with her when she’d asked for Mari’s help in the shower instead of his.

Thank the gods she’d come out of the bathroom, taken one look at him where he lay waiting for her on his bed, and come to him immediately. She’d snuggled into his side like it was the only place she’d ever wanted to be. Mari and Raiden had gone home for some much needed rest and he’d held Katherine close, trying to figure out what to say when she woke.

She’d fallen asleep almost instantly. He suspected it was more because her mind needed a break than because her body did. Mari was an exceptional healer. But he’d let her sleep, and he’d taken advantage of the opportunity to inspect her wounds. Even after Mari’s healing, Kate’s entire left shoulder and the left side of her back were both as black as the Triscani Hunter who’d slashed her open. She wasn’t sick or injured, she was changing…

But she lived. She breathed. And she’d slept for an hour curled up next to him like a cat. She was wearing nothing but his softest shirt, a ten-year-old Miami Dolphins T-shirt that had been washed so many times it was nearly falling apart.

Teagh stared at the ceiling and waited for her to wake up and tell him what had happened to her. When the Gate’s power had finally returned to him and filled him with the knowledge of where she was, he’d nearly wept in relief. He’d been searching for hours with no sign of her, desperate and angry that she’d run away again, raging at the Gate for denying him its power, and cursing himself a hundred different kinds of fool for not taking what she’d offered him. If he’d slept with her, claimed her, made her his, maybe she would have told him what was going on, instead of running off alone and nearly getting herself killed.

Maybe he had made a mistake, not trusting her with the truth about Ajax’s condition. But he and Bran had been keeping that secret for hundreds of years, from everyone. Even their own people. They’d been hoping a solution would be found. They’d been hoping for a damn miracle. His entire life was about keeping secrets. And old habits die hard.

Kate’s warm, pliant body stiffened against him and he knew she was awake. Kitten to tigress in three seconds flat. “Hush, Kate. Put away your claws. You know I’m not going to hurt you.”

She sighed and relaxed, but still lifted her head from his chest to look up at him with sad brown eyes. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

“I will always come for you.” The vow left him easily, and he knew it was true. No more running for him, either. He liked having her in his bedroom, with morning sunlight filtering through the white curtains. He liked watching the light pour over her delectable body. Liked the sight of her curled up in his king-sized bed as if she belonged there.

Apparently, she still wasn’t convinced. “Why didn’t you tell me about Ajax? Why didn’t you tell Raiden? Or Celestina?” She scowled at him in anger. “Why? I thought they were your friends? Your family? If I’d known what he was, I never would have gone after him.”

Teagh placed his index finger over her lips to stop her. “That is a lie, Kate. You would have demanded to see his condition for yourself.”

She lifted her hand to wrap around his wrist and pull his touch from her lips. “True. But I would have let you take me and show me yourself.”

“I am sorry. Bran and I have been keeping his secret for hundreds of years. We both believe that we are destined to lose the coming battle with the Triscani if he doesn’t fight beside us.” He slid his hand down to rest in hers and squeezed, held it pressed above his heart. “We have been searching and hoping for a miracle. We feared that if the Triscani found out about his condition, they’d invade Earth’s plane immediately. They would turn all their resources to finding and releasing him, use him to break the Gates wide open. Revealing the truth, to anyone, was a risk we couldn’t afford to take.”

“Why do they need him to open the Gates for the Triscani? Why would they need me?”

“Our Archivers can open a portal through time and space, but most only have the strength to transport one, perhaps two people through it. Even then, it drains them, can take them days to recover. But Ajax could hold a gate for thousands.”

“Oh, my God. That’s why…” The horror in her eyes was coldly calculating, and all too real.

“What is it?”

“I found out that the Casper Project genetically enhanced me so I’d be able to control the Gate. They used Ajax’s D.N.A. to do it.”

“That’s impossible.” Teagh rolled onto his side to face her, his nose inches from hers. A mistake. He had to refocus his thoughts enough to speak when all he wanted to do was kiss her. “They’d have no way to access him. No source of genetic material.”

“Well, they figured something out, because I used the D.N.A. in my own body to find him. It’s what I used to track him and find him in the dark. I just asked the Gate to take me to its exact match.” She shuddered and moved her free hand from beneath her cheek to her neck, checking for the wounds Mari had healed. “But that didn’t exactly work out like I planned.”

“What happened to you? Who bit you? Ajax?” Teagh would go back to his King’s prison and pull every single tooth out of his mouth.

“No. Ajax couldn’t even get up off the bed. Not with all the chains and that dagger through his heart.” She shuddered and pulled her hand from his, stared at the shiny black skin as she wiggled her fingers. “No. His brother bit me. And I did
this
to myself. Put my hand on Ajax’s chest so I could shove the dagger back in.”

Teagh’s heart skipped a beat and he raised his hand to cup her face, turned her head to face him. “His brother? Aron?”

Kate shrugged. “I don’t know his name.”

“Where was this?”

“He was in a weird metal box. In chains, just like Ajax. He was unconscious, but he looked normal. Beautiful.” Her eyes lost their focus on him momentarily as she pulled up the memory. “He even apologized for biting me, said he thought I was an attacker. I had to leave him there. I promised to send someone back for him later. I thought that if I could find Ajax and free him, he could go save his brother.”

Kate’s gaze returned to his and she slid her blackened palm up his forearm until her hand rested on top of his, over her cheek. “Thank God you had that knife in his chest. I thought it was extremely cruel when I first saw it, but I don’t think I would have made it out alive if you hadn’t. I used it to break his connection to me.”

Teagh’s slid his thumb over the soft pink swell of her lower lip. “I did not place a dagger in the King’s chest. I would never do such a thing. Bran and I swore a blood oath to Ajax long ago, when we were both boys. We swore to protect him with our lives, and that is what we still do.”

“If you didn’t do it, then who did?”

“Droghan.” That Immortal bastard had boasted of knowing Ajax’s location when he’d invaded Teagh’s home a few weeks ago. When he’d first met Mari and Raiden.

“Who is Droghan?”

“Another Immortal. He claimed to know where Ajax was hidden, but I did not believe him at the time. He is pure evil, and I thought he was simply attempting to manipulate me with his lies. Ajax suffered for my arrogance. Until the dagger, Droghan left no sign that he had ever been there and Ajax did not speak of it. I did not believe anyone would be able to find Ajax in the dark, but I was wrong.”

Kate tilted her head at him and licked her bottom lip. “I don’t have room in my life for any more Immortal men. Save that story for later.”

“Gladly.” He didn’t want any other men in her life, Immortal or otherwise. He supposed he’d have to learn to deal with her human soldiers. But they’d be dead soon, a few decades at most. He could wait them out and keep Kate happy. Kate had the Gate’s power now. He wondered when she would realize that the Gate’s power made her Immortal. He debated telling her, then decided it could wait. She’d had enough shocks to her system for one day.

“Why don’t you just kill Ajax and put him out of his misery? There’s got to be a way.”

“We can’t. We need him if we’re going to win the war.”

“How can he help you win a war if he’s locked away?”

Teagh sighed. “We are trying to reverse the process. Bran and I both draw the evil energy from him constantly through our blood bond. I have to continually purge it or the dark whispers start to drive me mad. We can’t become Triscani, because we are not forbidden sons, but we can lose ourselves to the darkness.”

“How long has he been like that?”

“A Triscani?”

“Yes.”

“Centuries.” Teagh released his hold on her cheek to slide his hand up over her shoulder and down her back to her rib cage, to her Mark. She gasped as heat swamped both of them. “Either Bran or I visit him almost every day. We read to him, bring him food. We play movies and show him images from our home world. But he never changes. He is not getting any better. He is still insane. Still evil.”

“God. I’m so sorry.”

Teagh couldn’t take his eyes from her lips, but he kept talking, revealing his heart to her. “I didn’t make love with you, Kate, because I did not want to expose a woman to the evil I am forced to carry. I believed accepting your Mark would hurt you in two ways. First, you’d be bonded to my fate, and mine is tied to Ajax. Second, I knew you were hell bent on going on off your own. A bond between us would have made you powerful enough to leave me behind forever. Neither option was acceptable to me.”

“I did it anyway.”

“I know.” Teagh kissed her brow and massaged the Mark through his T-shirt. “I underestimated how stubborn you are. I won’t make that mistake again.”

She humphed at him as he kissed her other brow, but didn’t turn away. “Kill him. You can get a new King. You want to change the future anyway. Find a new King to win the war.”

He kissed the tip of her nose and nudged her jaw so he could begin a slow exploration of her neck. He told her the rest between kisses. “We owed Ajax our lives and vowed to protect him long ago. A blood oath made to an Immortal is no small thing. If Ajax dies, he will take Bran and me with him. Even more importantly, if Ajax dies, Celestina believes we will not win the coming fight with the Triscani. The Itaran Queen will send her warships then, and wipe out any remaining life on Earth.”