“I took the genetic material from someone we trusted at the time. The Rear Admiral trusted him. He had the entire chain of command eating from the palm of his hand.” The doctor shook his head. “I took it from him, and I used it to enhance Katherine’s abilities. Robert’s too. I didn’t know she was a Timewalker at the time. I had no idea what she was, or how many others she kept hidden. It was stupid and reckless, but I confess, I wanted to know what it would do, what she’d be capable of. I’m sorry. I have no idea where it came from or how to help you find your brother.”
“And this man who gave it to you? Do you know his name? Where I can find him?”
“I will tell you everything I know about him, even let you search my mind for yourself. But he disappeared after Katherine defeated him. No one knows who he is. The only man in the project who knew how to contact him is dead.”
Zoey wanted to cry. A dead end. Damn and double damn. Perhaps the human Timewalkers would know something? But how were they supposed to find one? And how did she know they could be trusted? She needed more information about these Timewalkers that Aron said she was related to. When Aron had mentioned them before, she’d been too busy having orgasms to fully interrogate him. Big mistake. She hated being out of the loop.
The doctor wasn’t finished. “I’ll tell you what I do know. He’s not human. And he’s being hunted by a good many people, human, Timewalker and Immortal. Even the Itaran Seer, Celestina, has made it a top priority to find him.”
Aron paced for a few minutes, the silence heavy as he processed the new information. Zoey had no idea what would happen next, but her heart hurt for him, for the pain radiating from his soul. Aron loved his brother and feared for him. She hated to even think it, but perhaps his beloved brother, Ajax, suffered somewhere in a cage of his own.
The doctor waited patiently until Aron spoke.
“What of the Triads?” Aron’s gaze burned with rage. “What do you know of them?”
The doctor looked confused. “What Triads? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“By the gods. Are all humans this blind?” He met her gaze and she shrugged. She’d heard of the Triads on the black web message boards, the Immortal assholes that ruled Earth from behind closed doors. Of course, most of the world had never heard of them, and the ones who had, who tried, like she did, to sound the alarm, were viewed as psychotic, paranoid nutjobs. Or, they disappeared. Murdered like her sister.
“Yes. Most of them are worse. Why do you think I started the blog?”
“What blog?” The doctor looked at her with new interest.
“IPYNBTT.” The name had seemed tongue-in-cheek when she’d created the blog. I Promise You Nothing But The Truth. But her real intel and investigative skills had earned her a loyal following, a few very dangerous and highly anonymous informants, and more enemies than she could track.
“My God. They’ve been hunting you for months.” His eyes rounded in shock, then he burst out laughing. “Oh, how perfect. Outsmarted by a child.”
“I’m twenty-five years old.”
“Exactly.” Suddenly serious, he leaned forward to take her hand. “Be careful. The top brass has the world’s best cyber spies on your trail, with the high-level assets right behind them. They don’t like you leaking photos of their operatives or their equipment. They want the Casper Project and the Gates kept secret. One slip, and you’ll be dead within a few hours.”
“I know.” She did, and before Aron, exposing the truth had seemed worth the risk. But then she hadn’t really worried much about whether she lived or died. Now? Now she cared and it was damn inconvenient.
“No one will harm a hair on her head, not while I live.” Aron’s scowl was enough to scare the dead.
She smiled and let her appreciation shine right at him. “I know that, too.”
The doctor stood and looked at each of them in turn. “The satellite will be on top of us for a bit longer. Why don’t you two stay for dinner and we can talk about the genetic material, Ajax, and these Triads you seem so worried about?”
Zoey looked to Aron for an answer. She was hungry, and the doctor seemed legit. But it was up to Aron. She could take the doc, or leave him. Aron was the only one in the room that mattered to her.
“All right, Doctor.”
Zoey’s cell phone buzzed. Only two people on the planet had this number, and they both knew it was for emergencies only. Her hand shook as an image of a raging fire burst to life on the backs of her eyelids, then vanished. She picked up the phone and forced her eyes open, and the vision away.
“George? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, thank God you’re alive! I was worried sick. Wherever you are, stay there. You can’t come home.” George sounded frantic, more upset than she’d ever heard him, worse even than the day they’d knocked on his door to tell him his son was dead.
“Why? What happened? What are you talking about?” George’s panic was seeping into her through the phone line. Aron was beside her in an instant and removed the phone from her stiff hand.
“George. Tell me.”
“I can’t stay on the line. They’re already watching me. Just turn on the news. And whatever you do, don’t bring her home!”
The line went dead.
Chapter 7
Aron held Zoey close to his side and settled deeper into the plush sofa in the doctor’s private living quarters. Apparently, rich humans kept two separate spaces in their homes, one for visitors and the public, and one where they actually lived.
This space felt more like a home. The ridiculous cache of breakable crystal and collector’s china were gone. No high-dollar rugs or extremely uncomfortable antique furniture filled the room. Here everything was designed for comfort. Big television, soft sofa and two recliners, all lined with pillows and soft blankets.
Zoey had calmed down, but clung to him with tears in her eyes as they watched her home burn on television. There wasn’t much left but a concrete slab and ash.
Her face was splashed across the news like a criminal’s. They were looking for her. Someone was definitely looking for her.
Or thought to use her to find him.
She sobbed, her face buried in his chest and he had no idea how to comfort her. So, he simply held her and stroked her back. He had nothing to give her that would make it better. Well, he had one thing. “We’ll kill those fuckers when we find them, Zoey.”
She laughed, and lifted her bloodshot eyes to look at him. “Yes. We will, won’t we?”
The doctor walked back into the room with a tray of sandwiches and iced tea. “I made a couple calls. It wasn’t the Casper boys.”
Zoey wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of one hand. “Then who was it.”
“The Hunters.” Aron clenched his teeth and fought down the swirling darkness bubbling up from inside. They’d tracked the metal from his manacles. His bonds weren’t from this world, had been forged by one of their own, infused with the maker’s will. The smith who’d forged them would have felt their destruction, and been able to track their remains. “Did George leave the metal in your garage?”
Zoey thought for a minute, reliving the previous night’s events. “Yes. You offered it to him, but he told me he couldn’t accept. Didn’t want that kind of karma in his house, so I brought them back while you were in the shower. I thought maybe you could figure out how to destroy them for good.”
“The will of the one who made them was broken when George cut them from me. He would have felt it, Zoey. And tracked them. That’s how they found your house.” Aron dropped his forehead to hers. There was no way he could make up for this. “I’m so sorry, Zoey. I didn’t think. At first, all I could think about was getting them off. And then…”
The blush riding her pretty pink cheeks told him she knew exactly how that sentence ended. She reached up, wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and laced her fingers through his hair, touching him because she needed to. “It’s okay. My laptop’s in the truck and
the important stuff, the things I couldn’t stand to lose, are in a safety deposit box under George’s name. After Jiselle, I took precautions.”
She kissed him, softly, as if all had already been forgiven. “I have you, now. People matter. Everything else can be replaced.”
The doctor cleared his throat, the spell was broken and reality rushed in around him.
“I’m sorry about your place, Zoey. You two can stay here for a couple of days. I don’t report back to the Project until next week. The Sat schedule is posted by the garage door. You can borrow one of my cars. The Casper Project will have every camera in the city set to track the plates on your truck. So, unless they change things up, you’ll know when the house is being watched from above. And my boys will take care of any surveillance issues on the ground. They control every camera within a three-mile radius of the house. They can also get you intel, supplies, anything you need.”
“And just who are your boys?” Aron asked the question, but Zoey leaned around him, waiting for the answer.
“Katherine’s team at the CP. They walked in the dark with her, and when they came back…well, let’s just say they’ve got their own agenda these days. Any enemy of the Triscani is a friend of ours.”
Aron wrapped his arm around Zoey and pulled her close. His plan had seemed so simple before. Find the doctor, do what he had to, then hunt Triscani scum until he turned all their bodies to ash…or one of the Hunters did the same to him.
But now? Now everything had changed. Ajax was missing, most likely in a box somewhere being tortured to the very edge of insanity. The doctor and his human team were chasing their tails at this Casper Project. The ignorant humans didn’t even know the Triads existed, let alone have the courage to fight them. Most likely, the Casper Project itself was run by one of the Triads and none of the human soldiers knew the truth. One did not give an assault rifle to a child. How could he give his weapon to these humans when they were blind to the presence of such a foul enemy? An enemy much worse than the Triscani, an enemy that lived and walked among them, that pulled their strings like puppeteers and slaughtered humanity for sport.
And he had Zoey to think about, to protect. He’d assumed that she would be safer if he led the Hunters away from her. One beautiful, delicate flower lost in the ocean of almost seven billion humans on the planet.
He’d been wrong. Her internet alias and her blog made her the target of every Triscani, every Triad member, and, if the doctor was to be believed, every assassin within her own government. The list of powerful, dangerous beings who wanted her dead was long, and impressive.
It scared the hell out of him. He could never leave her alone. He was the most dangerous man alive, more deadly than all save his siblings, and more powerful than this Teagh, the Darkwalker Lord and Guardian of the Gates. Teagh, was part human. He had to be. To guard Earth’s Gates, he must have human D.N.A. Aron was not human, but he was more than a simple Itaran Prince. He was the Dark One of prophecy, the second born of three, the reincarnation of the original Triad, the rulers of all Itara before the new Queens took power and hunted his lineage. His will and power fed the Gates themselves, held the dark dimension together, filled the shadowed spaces between the light. Who better to keep Zoey safe from the dark than the monsters’ own prophesied king?
Dinner went by in a flash as Zoey and the doctor chatted and laughed, their banter easy in the way of old friends. Aron’s hands lifted food to his mouth and he ate without tasting, his mind busy calculating his next move, figuring the odds of a woman as beautiful and perfect a creature as Zoey choosing to stay with him willingly.
Sure, he’d pleasured her in bed, but now her home was gone. Her sister was dead. Her life had been destroyed by his people, by the other forbidden sons lost and exiled to the dark dimension. How could she trust him or want him in her life when it was his own kin who murdered Jiselle and brought death to millions of humans? Was he simply fodder for her blog? Was she using him to get information, using his mind and his ignorance of her world as a weapon?
More importantly, when had her love become more important to him than his people? Than his own survival? He’d been free of one cage a matter of hours. Did he now willingly walk into another one? Did she truly care for him, or did the Mark on his hip blind him to reality? Was she playing him for a fool? Using him for her own personal gain? A body guard with benefits? Was her presence on that mountain an elaborate ruse to trap him?
Were his enemies that smart? That patient?
Yes, they were.
He watched her move. She was fit, strong, but her bones were small. Her body petite and feminine. She was no warrior. No killer. How had she stayed alive this long without a protector?
Was she so desperate to expose the Triscani and the Itaran-led Triads that she’d sleep with the enemy for information? Was she as innocent, as unaware, as she seemed? Or were his years in the cage blinding him to the possibilities? Did she already know who the Triads really were? Why they were here? And if she did not know, could she love him when his brothers were Triscani scum and the mothers on Itara sent their criminals to Earth? Thanks to the House of Judgment’s negligence, those criminals ruled Earth’s people via a system of Triads. Monsters hungry for death on one side of his family tree and power-hungry Immortals on the other who, once exiled to Earth, lived centuries manipulating and enslaving the entire human race.
He was a real catch, definite mate material.
She’d have to be a fool to love him, and Zoey was no fool. She could be anyone. A thief. A liar. Seductress. Spy.
Her laughter moved through his blood stream like bubbling Champagne. He threw his fork down with a clang. He couldn’t breathe in here. This house, with its magnetic walls and reflective glass, was just a bigger box. Another cage. He still wasn’t free.
Chapter 8
“I have to go, Zoey. I will return at dawn.” Aron had changed into black leather gear supplied by the doctor. He looked like one of those stupid vampire slayers from the movies, dressed all in black and dripping with sharp-edged weapons. Vampires? If only. She’d take a freaking vampire right now, with a side of zombie and a dash of werewolf for extra spice.
“No.” Zoey shook her head. She didn’t want to hear it. She’d known that Aron would take the destruction of her home as a personal challenge. Hell, she wanted to go hunt for the stupid Triscani herself. But not tonight. Not now. She wasn’t ready. She’d be no help in a fight, and she didn’t want to lose him.
“The Triscani stalk their prey from the shadows. They would have hidden in your home and waited like fat spiders for you to return. They did not burn your home. But someone did. And whoever it was, they are either very foolish, or they were trying to send you a message.”
“That they wanted me dead? That they hate my guts?” She paced and clenched her hands at her sides. “What?”
He stopped her in mid stride and held her face in his hands. “A warning not to go home. They may have saved your life and the lives of anyone who lived near you.”
“George.”
“Yes.” He placed a chaste kiss on her lips and walked to the chair near the window. They were in one of the doctor’s spare bedrooms. The suite was larger than the main floor of her entire house. A large-screen television hung on the wall opposite a king-sized bed covered in plush sheets and a down duvet. The whole room was decorated in soft greens and browns, a calm and soothing retreat from the world. It was peaceful. Perfect. And hers for as long as she needed to stay…doctor’s orders.
With Aron gone it would feel like solitary confinement.
Aron pulled on his new boots with a grunt and laced them up, not looking at her. “I have to find the Hunters who were at your home and destroy them before they can track you here. They won’t have gone far. They’ll be watching your house, watching your friends, hoping you return.”
“No. Let it go. It’s all ashes. I don’t care.” She pulled at her hair, on the verge of tears. How could she tell him what she felt? That sh
e knew what was going on in that macho-man head of his. She’d felt him panic at dinner, shared his perceptions, the feeling of walls closing in on him, of being back in a cage. Trapped. That was what he’d felt when he looked at her. Not lust or love or even desire. Trapped.
But he was wrong. She didn’t want to cage him. If he wanted to run, she’d let him. But not into battle with an unknown number of nasty Immortal killers, and not using her stupid old house as an excuse. “I don’t need a protector, Aron. I don’t need you to fight my battles. I don’t want you to risk your life for me. Do you understand?”
He refused to look at her, but his anger and irritation became a palpable force floating in the air between them.
“I must eliminate the Hunters, Zoey. They are tracking me, and now you. They will kill a great many innocents. They’re worse than bloodhounds. They’ll never stop. They don’t need to eat or sleep. They don’t have a conscience. They don’t make love. They don’t listen to reason. They hunt and they devour human souls. It’s all they do.” With a sharp tug on the laces, he stood and shrugged into a lightweight leather jacket.
“Let me help you? You can use me as bait.”
“No.”
“I’ll distract them and you can take them out.”
“I said, no.” He headed for the door and paused with one hand on the open door’s frame. He turned to look at her over his shoulder and death was in his eyes. “I will hunt tonight. I will kill them all, suck their souls dry and turn them to dust. I don’t want you there, Zoey. Stay here, where I know you’ll be safe. I don’t want you there, in danger. You’re a liability that I can’t afford tonight.”