Parallel Heat (17 page)

You are not alone, my sweet lady.
She stiffened instantly. Marco had whispered within her mind, she was certain of it! Behind her, he took another step closer, until hardly any distance separated them at all. He moved his hand from her shoulder, slowly roaming his fingers to her neck, caressing her.
I wouldn’t let you be alone.

They weren’t bonded, but it had to be Marco. She trembled beneath his touch, unable to stop the tears.

How are you doing this?
she asked, but no reply came. There was only Marco—towering, proud, beautiful Marco—standing behind her like her very own Madjin. Which he was. He was her protector in every way.

With both palms extended, she reached toward the unit again, ready to feel its surface. Scott moved to stop her, but much to her surprise Marco caught his arm. ‘‘Let her, Lieutenant,’’ he urged. ‘‘She needs to do this.’’

‘‘We have no way of knowing if it’s safe or not,’’ Scott argued, his voice rising.

‘‘It is safe,’’ Marco told them evenly. ‘‘I sense it.’’

Thea spun to face him, but still he kept his hand firmly on her shoulder. ‘‘You’re intuitive?’’ She thought of the night before, the way he’d wooed and calmed her. Such a strange gift the man possessed!

‘‘Something like.’’ He gave her a cocky, proud grin.

‘‘Something like . . . what?’’ Scott pressed. ‘‘We need to know.’’

Marco dropped his hand from her shoulder, and seemed to think for a long moment. ‘‘The best way to explain my gift—in a way that will make sense to you—is that, yes, I’m intuitive.’’

‘‘So you’re sure the coiling unit is safe to touch?’’ Thea pressed, feeling her entire body burn.

Marco nodded toward it. ‘‘Go on.’’

She swallowed hard, felt Dillon tense at her side, but reached with both hands as she might have reached toward a treasured doll as a little girl. Gently—ever so gently—she closed both hands around its surface.

And felt nothing. No spark, no awareness. Just . . . nothing. Her earlier tears turned to genuine sobs and she sank to the floor, still holding on, desperate for the slightest quiver of energy inside her soul. She was aware of the others around her, but she didn’t care. She pressed her face flat against the glass and cried. For her lost ancestor; for her dead parents; for everyone who had died in this damnable, bloody war. And she cried for Jared; that she had managed to lose the one person on the entire face of the planet who was anything like her.

A strong arm slipped about her shoulder. ‘‘Thea,’’ Scott whispered. ‘‘Come on. It’s okay.’’

She shook her head. What had she really expected? She was a military leader, she had to pull it together. ‘‘I-I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’’ she said, leaning her forehead against the tube, but letting her arms fall to her sides.

‘‘The journey through the portal exhausted you,’’ Marco volunteered. ‘‘Look at our queen. She’s still asleep.’’ Our queen.
Why does he have to call her that?
Thea thought. While linked with the human her antipathy toward the woman had faded; she’d felt compassion, understanding. Even kinship. Staring at her from across the room now, it was still surprisingly easy to resent her once again. Thea doubted she would ever accept Kelsey as her true queen.

Thea rocked back on her heels, wiped her eyes, and said, ‘‘We need to wake her up. We have work to do.’’ All soldier once again, she rose to her feet and brushed her knees off.

From across the room Kelsey suddenly stirred, bolting upright, wild-eyed. ‘‘I’m awake,’’ she declared, and at that precise moment—not one second sooner, not a millisecond later—a powerful hum began in the center of the chamber.

Beside her, Marco’s entire body tensed as he spun first one way, then another.

‘‘What in All’s name is that?’’ Scott hissed.

But the hum—that eerie, otherworldly sound—grew louder until it seemed the entire chamber shuddered and lurched. It was at that precise moment that Prince Arienn’s energy began to brighten.

Thea raced to the giant cylinder. ‘‘My gods,’’ she whispered, feeling her heart thunder so hard it seemed she’d never breathe. ‘‘His energy!’’

‘‘Whose energy?’’ Kelsey asked, staggering unsteadily toward the mitres center.

Thea reached once again to touch the cool surface of the tube; this time it had grown warm. But it was only when Kelsey reached her side, just in front of the tube, that the energy turned a warm, glowing orange.

‘‘It’s responding to the queen,’’ Marco said, taking position between them all. ‘‘Here, my lady, reach toward it, just as Thea is doing.’’

Thea shook her head dazedly. It couldn’t be! If the prince’s energy was reacting at all, it had to be to her own core nature as a D’Ashani. Not to the human.

Kelsey took a bold step closer and spread both palms against the surface, trembling as she did so. Again, the cauldron of luminance reacted, turning a blazing reddish gold. ‘‘Wh-what’s happening?’’ Kelsey asked in awe. ‘‘Tell me, please.’’ She cut her eyes sideways, never dropping her hands. ‘‘Thea, please explain this to me. I’m lost here.’’

Thea closed her eyes, almost unable to bear the reality of the situation. ‘‘My ancestor’s energy is contained inside the cylinder,’’ she explained numbly. ‘‘It’s . . . reacting to you, Kelsey. It somehow—he—his essence—recognizes you, I think.’’

‘‘Recognizes me?’’ Kelsey repeated, shivering visibly. ‘‘Recognizes me as what?’’

It was Marco who spoke next, his dusky features glowing in the light of the powerful energy. Dropping to both knees he said, ‘‘Recognizes you as our true queen.’’

 
‘‘That’s energy inside there,’’ Kelsey told them, never releasing her grip on the large coiling unit. ‘‘How could it know who I am?’’

Marco rose to his feet again. ‘‘Because you bear the mark of the D’Aravni. You are the true queen. That has to be significant in some way.’’

‘‘No, that’s not it.’’ Thea walked briskly to the other side of the circular room. Marco watched as she moved, aware as always of the lieutenant’s sleek grace, and erotic beauty. Every motion of her body, every simple gesture electrified him, even at high-tension moments such as this one. He shook his head, struggling to center his thoughts.

Beside him Kelsey stood, eyes trained on the glowing cauldron of power. It seemed she was riveted to the spot, unable to break contact. The thought concerned him for her safety on one level, but on the other hand he knew this moment was crucial. Reaching with his intuition he sensed no danger to his queen, so he didn’t try to pull her away.

Across the room Thea worked with the data collector, her blond eyebrows drawn into a tight frown of concentration. ‘‘It’s not possible,’’ she announced. ‘‘Damn it all! This is
not
possible!’’

‘‘What’s happening here, Haven?’’ Scott demanded. ‘‘You lost me a while ago.’’

Thea cursed rapidly in low Refarian, studying the data collector within her hands. ‘‘Outside’’—she paused, shaking her head in disbelief—‘‘I had it. I had the mitres data downloaded into this collector. Now, it’s . . . gone. As if I never captured it at all.’’

‘‘Let me see that damnable thing,’’ Scott said, yanking it from her hands. After a few moments of fiddling with buttons and staring at it, he slowly raised his eyes to meet Thea’s. ‘‘Empty. Completely empty.’’

‘‘And the data was
in
there!’’ Thea shouted, seizing the instrument from Scott once again. ‘‘I don’t understand. How could it have been in here while we were exterior to the chamber and then just—’’

‘‘It’s still inside me,’’ Kelsey announced calmly, sweeping her gaze around the room. ‘‘The data never left my mind.’’

‘‘What makes you so sure of that?’’ Thea demanded.

Kelsey slowly dropped her hands to her sides and immediately the luminance cooled, turning a softer dull orange. ‘‘Because that’s why the energy reacted to me. Not because I’m the queen. It’s the data inside of me. Somehow this device reacted to those codes in my mind.’’

‘‘Kelsey, do you understand how serious this is?’’ Thea asked her, obviously trying to soften her tone. ‘‘It means that . . . I wasn’t able to remove the data from your mind.’’

‘‘You made a temporary upload,’’ Kelsey explained evenly. ‘‘In order for us to traverse the portal. That’s all.’’

‘‘But how do you
know
that?’’ Thea insisted.

Kelsey glanced about the group of them. ‘‘It’s nuts, but I have absolutely no idea.’’ She laughed, tugging thoughtfully at the end of her braid. ‘‘But I know I’m right.’’

‘‘Let’s try again,’’ Thea suggested. ‘‘Let me link with you again—’’

‘‘Thea, I’m telling you that it won’t work,’’ Kelsey said. ‘‘I know that it won’t, just like I know the data is still inside me. I never had any kind of feeling about this whole situation before. It was just an abstract idea, knowing the data was inside my mind. I never would have had a clue about it if Jared hadn’t told me. But now’’—she swept her arm in a circular arc, indicating the chamber—‘‘now that I’m in here? I feel it. I feel it deep, in my bones. It’s like it’s burning inside of me, same as that energy is glowing.’’

Marco thought for a long moment, trying to figure out what his queen really meant. It seemed that somehow, by the simple act of entering the mitres, she had activated the codes inside of herself. That deep within her core self the data had come . . . alive. And that meant only one thing: It had fused with her mind and consciousness.

Kelsey and the mitres data had become one.

Chapter Twelve

Scott paced the circular perimeter of the mitres chamber. All his life he’d lived in awe of this place, wondered if it even truly existed. His scientist parents had been leaders in the movement to unseal the chambers. From the time the mitres were installed here on Earth, no one had ever entered again; only as the war had escalated—a war with his own traitorous people—had his parents begun to lobby for the chambers to be opened. The balance of energy and weaponry within the mitres had always been viewed as a delicate thing. But they’d also been placed on Earth as a protection for the Refarian people, for times of hardship or warfare. Scott just couldn’t believe that it had turned out to be his own race that had made that war on a people he loved so dearly. On a king he served so wholeheartedly.

If Kelsey was right about the mitres data being locked inside of her, they would have to find a way to resolve the issue. None of them could afford to have the data at such risk—nor could their queen become that priceless a commodity. Being the keeper of such technology would put a price on her head—one so high that she could never take a step without worrying about assassination. Jared would never be able to live with himself for that.

At the moment Kelsey stood in front of the central cylinder—the coiling unit, as he knew it was called because he’d studied the schematics with his parents as a boy. When she drew close to the thing, the energy inside grew brighter and hotter. When she stepped back, it seemed to calm back down again. It was spooky as hell, all that stuff Thea had told them about Prince Arienn. He was almost beginning to wonder if she was wrong, if maybe the prince didn’t somehow
know
they were inside the chamber.

Again he took a turn about the large circular room, studying all the machinery and technology. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to see, or what he was looking for precisely, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his parents were trying to tell him something from beyond the grave. Not literally, but just this itchy sort of feeling that if he gazed long enough and hard enough, then he would see the one element in this room that would help them download the data from Kelsey and into the data collector. Permanently.

He swept his glance in a wide arc. He was a gazer—it was what he’d always been. It was the one special gift All had given him at birth. Sometimes he gazed people, other times objects or rooms. Right now, he was gazing for the truth. For revelation. It had to be here somewhere.

 
‘‘Okay, so we’re going to try again,’’ Thea pronounced calmly, gazing up into Kelsey’s blue eyes. ‘‘Maybe it had to be done from inside the chamber. Maybe the first time was just for the opening of the portal. This is where the data needs to upload anyway.’’ She tapped on the large central console that stood beside the coiling unit. ‘‘We want to store it in here where it belongs.’’

‘‘What about the codes that created the portal to begin with?’’ Kelsey asked. ‘‘That’s how we got in this place, right?’’

‘‘I was going to keep a copy on the collector while uploading it into the main console, but’’—Thea stared down at the empty data unit in her hand—‘‘it just didn’t work that way. The first time. So let’s try again.’’ Thea sat down on the floor, right in front of the coiling unit, still awed by the way Arienn’s energy reacted to Kelsey. Or the data. Or whatever it was that was happening. She couldn’t figure out which theory she fully believed, but Kelsey clearly seemed convinced that it wasn’t Arienn’s energy reacting to her, but the mitres itself.

Kelsey took the position facing her, each of them sitting cross-legged. Just past Kelsey stood Marco, his keen black eyes trained on her. Thea tried to forget he was there, tried to dismiss him from her mind, but it was an impossible task. She reached for Kelsey’s left hand, her right hand grasping the data collector. She would link into Kelsey’s brain, locate their technology, and then create a psychic connection with the collector. Essentially, Thea would act as a conductor between Kelsey and the unit.

Closing her eyes, she tried to focus anew, but instead all she saw, like an afterimage from staring at the sun, was Marco McKinley watching her. She allowed her eyes to flutter open and met his intense, penetrating gaze. ‘‘I’m sorry, but’’—she waved toward the right, making a shooing motion—‘‘could you move in that direction?’’

He appeared surprised, then a slow, languid smile formed on his lips, and he ambled out of her line of vision. And that just annoyed her to pieces. He was the biggest flirt she’d ever met, and the last thing she needed these days—and right now, in particular—was a distraction.