The words crushed her heart into a bloody pulp, but she met his glare with one of her own. “Fine. Go. Go kill things all by yourself.” She picked up a pillow and threw it across the room at his back. “But you’re wrong. You do need me there. You need me.”
He blinked slowly, like a mountain lion about to pounce.
She reined in her temper and calmly crossed the distance to where he stood. On tiptoe, she kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear. “You’re wrong, you know. I’m not a liability. I’m not the cage. I’m not your prison. The hell you live in is all yours, sweetie. Your power is your prison, and without me, the darkness will swallow you whole.”
He walked away and left her standing there like a broken-hearted fool, barefoot and alone.
Aron moved silently down the hallway. He’d never dreamt a pillow could hurt him, but it had. Leaving Zoey behind was painful, but necessary. What remained of her home was a ticking time bomb, a lure. But those Triscani were expecting to reel in a small helpless female, not an Immortal shark, one of their own.
The doctor didn’t look up from his desk as Aron entered the library, simply waved his hand at the chair and told Aron to close the door. Aron did, and sat facing the man on whom he’d pinned all of his hopes for humanity, a man who had no idea of the enormous burden Aron was about to lay on his shoulders. By the gods, Aron hope the little human doctor was made of steel.
The doctor clicked his mouse a few times and shut down the computer, unplugged it from the wall. He looked at Aron. “Cell phone?”
“No.”
“Good. Good.” Doctor Hansen leaned back in his black leather chair and looked over the tops of his reading glasses. “You’re leaving us?”
“Yes. I must hunt the Triscani and discover who destroyed Zoey’s home. It won’t be safe for her until I do.” Aron rubbed his sticky palms on the smooth leather of his pants. Why did he suddenly feel like a chastised boy awaiting a lecture from his father?
“Mmm-hmm.” The doctor’s shrewd blue eyes missed nothing. “Are you going to tell my why you sought me out? The real reason you’re here?”
Just as he’d suspected, the old man didn’t miss much. The thought gave him hope. “I need to give you some knowledge. It’s nothing I can put to paper, or explain to you. I will have to download the data directly into your mind, as if the knowledge and memories were your own.”
“You can do that?” The doctor looked intrigued.
Aron nodded, but held the man’s interested gaze. “Among other things.”
“What kind of data?”
Here is where things got tricky. “The kind that will put a giant target on your back. Every Triad member on Earth will want you dead.”
The doctor actually smiled. “That good, huh?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What is the nature of the knowledge? Why would they want me dead?” The doctor walked around to the front of his desk to stand within arm’s reach. He took his reading glasses off and tossed them, forgotten, onto the stacks of paper and journals littering his desktop. “Why me?”
That was the real question.
Aron held the man’s gaze. Now was the time for honesty. If the doctor couldn’t handle the task, he’d wasted precious time here. He’d need to find another. He’d have to survive the hunt with his sanity intact, and he wasn’t sure that was possible without Zoey there to bleed away the darkness. But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t risk her life tonight.
“I chose you because Katherine trusts you. She believes you are courageous and honorable, that you will do absolutely anything to ensure humanity’s survival.” Aron stood, his shoulders dwarfing the lean little doctor like a giant oak standing over a sapling. “Anything.”
The doctor tilted his head back, but didn’t flinch or look away. “She’s right.”
“Good.” Aron held out his hand and the doctor placed his own in Aron’s gentle grip. “Hold on, Doc. It might be a bumpy ride.”
That was the only warning he gave before thrusting his mind and memories into the doctor’s head. The elderly man was healthy and strong, well educated in the field and brilliant, but the mental onslaught was too much for him, too fast, and his knees collapsed. Aron caught him and placed him in the chair. Knowledge and memories, some his own, most stolen, flowed like a river through his mind into the doctor’s. Genetics. Microbiology. Experiments gone right…and wrong. The males who’d come to torture him over the centuries had a long and twisted interest in human D.N.A. Aron hadn’t figured out why they were so obsessed with a species that was believed to be physically and mentally weaker, a species that was mortal. But he’d seen much when they touched him, oblivious to his power. He’d learned of the Timewalkers, the Descendants, and the Triads.
He’d stolen it from their minds as easily as taking candy from a baby, and now he gave it all to a human doctor, a genius among his kind.
The doctor’s head snapped back and Aron withdrew his hand. A slight trickle of blood ran from the doctor’s right nostril. The doctor looked frail and frightened as he wiped it away with his hand. “Good Lord, boy. That was painful.”
“But do you retain the knowledge. Do you have access to it?” Aron leaned down until his nose was inches from the doctor’s and looked him in the eye. “Do you understand it?”
“Yes.” Doctor Hansen nodded his head and closed his eyes. “Yes, but I wish I didn’t.” Exhaustion weighed down his shoulders, but he opened his eyes and Aron saw the wheels spinning, calculating, already formulating ideas and plans. “Fascinating. But what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Be very, very careful. Should you give this power to the wrong person, you’ll just create more monsters.”
“True. True.” The doctor rubbed his temple for a moment. “And I don’t have a source.”
“Yes, you do.” Aron pulled his jacket off and laid it across the doctor’s desk. His shirt followed. He stood, bare chested and resigned. “Take my blood, Doc. Cut me. Whatever you want. As much as you need. Just be quick about it.”
Doctor Hansen’s eyes rounded in shock but he recovered quickly and shrewdly assessed the physical specimen before him. “Let me get my bag.”
Two hours later, Aron took off in a borrowed car and headed for the remains of Zoey’s house. He could have used a Dark Gate to travel, he was strong enough now, but he didn’t want the Triscani to know he was coming.
The doctor had taken at least twenty glass vials of blood, swabbed his mouth, and cut Aron’s hair. In the end, Aron had cut strips from his own flesh and offered them to an old man who’d been reluctant to ask.
Some bullshit about Aron already suffering enough. Nice sentiment, but that was all it was. Humanity didn’t need sentiment from the doctor, it needed results.
Hands tight on the steering wheel, Aron saw red seep through the bandages. He was still bleeding from a few of the more aggressive samplings, but he’d survived much worse. With that done, Aron could go into battle with a clear conscience. The Triads weren’t his problem anymore. He’d done what he could. Now it was up to the doctor, Zoey, and people like them. After today, it would be up to the humans to save themselves.
He had bigger problems.
*.*.*
Zoey was going to kill him.
Fucking coward.
Oh, men were all the same. Make a girl fall in love with them, then traipse off to battle alone.
God help her, she did love him. As angry as she was, she couldn’t help but admire his strength, not just of body, but of will. What other man could survive what he had and remain sane? Who could go through that torture and come out of it with his sense of honor and justice intact? What man could suffer as Aron had, and yet touch her with a lover’s hands? Hands that made her writhe and plead and beg for more.
She wanted more. And damn it, she intended to get it.
Aron planned on fighting the Triscani alone, leading them away from George and from her. He’d have to suck them dry to kill them. She knew what that di
d to him before, she’d felt the evil tormentors ripping at his soul from the inside. They would destroy him at last. He would allow it.
For her. To protect her.
Bullshit.
If they hadn’t met, he would be fighting to survive, not risking himself like some noble guard dog. She was nothing, a mortal who’d be dead in a few years.
He was everything. The world needed him to live. How else was humanity supposed to survive?
How was she going to survive?
There had to be another way. An answer. A means of destroying those things without losing the man she loved. Who to ask? Aron had been in a cage for centuries. He could steal knowledge, but not friends. He wouldn’t know anyone on the outside, anyone who might help. There had to be others like him, other Immortals who were not evil bastards, who knew how to win against the Triscani. Immortals lived practically forever, right? Well, unless they were ashed, as Aron put it. But the Itarans like Aron were fast and strong and damn hard to kill. So, there must be someone alive who would remember him or his mother? Someone who could help?
Zoey finished dressing in her own black garb and stomped through the house until she found the doctor in his office. Perhaps it was a library, or a study. Whatever. It had a big desk, lots of books, and the clichéd fireplace along one wall. It was like a classic Alfred Hitchcock movie, complete with the mad scientist covered in blood.
“What the hell are you doing?” Zoey frowned at the little man, who didn’t even bother to look up from the tweezers and strip of what looked like bloody meat he dangled over a long glass tube. Another fresh strip of flesh lay on a board, cut into pieces with small containers labeled and laid out beside them waiting to be filled. She counted twenty vials of blood, all different tops, which lay nestled in a case.
It wasn’t until she saw the hair, three bundles about the size of her ring finger, tied and placed in the case, that she made the connection. That was Aron’s hair, his luscious black locks. Cut.
And the meat? The blood? “What the hell have you done?”
“Calm down, Zoey. He offered. Cut the samples from his own forearms.” Doctor Hansen didn’t look up from his work, just dropped the strip of red meat into the glass and screwed on a lid.
“Bullshit. What have you done with him? Don’t you know what he’s been through? Hasn’t he suffered enough for you people?” A red haze covered her eyes and she advanced. She’d kill him with her bare hands. Right now.
“Back off, little sister.” The cold, hard barrel of a gun pressed to the base of her skull and she froze. “The doc and Aron had an agreement. If you don’t like the terms, take it up with your boyfriend.”
“Aron is not my boyfriend.” Zoey watched in silence as the doctor divided and categorized all of his samples. Some went into a warmer, some into chemicals, some frozen. “What are you doing with all of that?”
The doctor screwed the lid on a liquid nitrogen canister and grinned. “Saving the world.”
Okaaay. But she still had a gun pressed to her head. She addressed the man behind her. “You often shoot unarmed women in the back?”
“Never.”
The cold metal was removed and she turned around to see a gorgeous soldier, about twenty-six, with caramel-brown hair and hazel eyes. A hint of a memory nudged her mind. He looked familiar, but he had one of those boy-next-door faces that blended in anywhere. Still….
“Who are you?”
“The first guinea pig.” The man smiled and put his gun away before holding out his hand. “I’m Ryan.”
“Zoey.” She shook his hand and froze in shock as an image of a mountain lion screaming flashed into her mind, then was gone. She really didn’t have time to figure out one of her weird premonitions right now.
She took back her hand and looked over her shoulder at the doc. His old eyes were filled with glee. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning, not a scheming killer. All the bravado left her as she realized Aron could have eaten both of these guys for lunch. If the doc had all this blood and…flesh, it was because Aron had given it to him. Which brought her full circle.
“Look, this is tons of fun, but Aron is on his way to fight some Triscani. Alone.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at both men in turn when they said nothing. “And we are going to help him, whether he asked or not.”
“He specifically instructed that we mere mortals were to stay out of it.” The doctor loaded the samples into a secret compartment behind the wall of the room. If she hadn’t been so irritated, she would’ve been intrigued by the odd collection of items she glimpsed.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what he told you to do. He needs help. If he takes their souls, it will destroy him. He’ll become one of them.” Here was where she jumped off the cliff from a little nuts to completely insane. But she knew what she’d seen in his mind. Aron had believed their connection was one sided, but she’d seen things in his memories she hadn’t been ready to deal with. The time for running scared was over. “They tried to break him for eight hundred years. They failed. But today, if we let him do this alone, they’ll win. The Triscani will celebrate by wiping out everything and everyone on this planet. They won’t stop until they’ve killed every human and Itaran they can find.”
The Doctor studied her. “Continue.”
Zoey sighed and went for broke. “According to Aron, the Itarans will destroy Earth if they have to, to stop a Triscani invasion of their homeworld. We’re the buffer. If we let Aron go, the Triscani will be unstoppable. They’ll finally have what they’ve wanted for a millennia.”
Ryan crossed his arms. “And what would that be?”
“Aron.”
“I thought they wanted to kill him?” The doctor frowned at her, lines of confusion marring his brow.
“No. He’s stronger than they are. More powerful. They want him to be their king.”
“Shit.” Ryan cracked his neck. “Their fucking king.”
“Yes.” Zoey felt like she might be betraying secrets, but since Aron had already given the doc the skin off his bones, she figured she might as well give them the bad news. “Aron’s birth was part of a prophecy. He has an identical twin brother and a sister. They were triplets. An Itaran Seer foretold of their birth. She said one son would rule the Triscani, one would rule Earth, and the girl would be Queen of Itara. It would mean a complete power shift everywhere. The Itaran Queen tried to have them killed before they were even born. “
Silence fell on the room as if the shadows themselves were listening and holding their breaths. Finally, Ryan’s eyes glanced to the doctor and she sensed more than saw the elderly man nod his head. Permission granted, Ryan looked back at her and tilted his head in a little bow. “I’ll go make a call.”
Ryan turned to leave and she let him go. Once he was out of hearing, the doctor winked at her and put his finger to his lips, asking her to keep a secret. She nodded and he turned to retrieve a cell phone from the safe. He turned it on, dialed. She heard a woman’s voice on the other end of the line and then the doctor spoke.
“Celestina. We have a problem.”
Zoey heard the woman speak and the doctor took a quick look at her. Celestina? The Itaran Seer? The woman who foretold of the triplets birth and forced Aron’s mother into exile on Earth? The Seer responsible for getting Aron’s mother killed?
“Yes, she’s wearing your clothes. But I’ve got a problem here.” As the doctor talked to Celestina, Zoey walked up to the desk to inspect Aron’s offerings. His body. His flesh. The only thing he could give mankind. Like blood-red, living night crawlers, the strips wiggled and writhed on the board when she reached out to touch one, straining to reach her. It was bizarre, and creepy, and made tears well up in her eyes. Was this all that Aron believed he was worth? Meat on a cutting board?
The bizarre symbol on her hip stung like someone had snapped a wet towel against it. Cold seeped into her spine as if someone poured icy water from a pitcher above her head directly into the hollow space running the
length of her vertebrae.
The doctor turned back around to face her and froze, a look of absolute terror clouding his eyes. The woman spoke in his ear and his confusion turned to resolve as he terminated the call.
A hand of black ice settled on her shoulder and the hiss of a Triscani soldier filled the room. “Take them both to the massster. And take everything the Princcce gave them. Do not leave a sssingle cccel.”
Zoey wanted to scream, kick, and fight. But she may as well have been a frozen block of ice for all the control she had of her limbs. The doctor’s face faded from her vision as the Triscani wrapped her in a heavy cloak of some kind and tossed her around like she were an eight-pound baby. A swirling black doorway blinked into life next to them all. They carried her through and she lost herself for a few minutes, mind clouded with horror, and cold, and darkness.
When she could see again, she opened her eyes to find that the Triscani had dumped her on the floor of a metallic box. About eight foot square, there was no visible door and no light but the faint glow of the walls themselves. It was dark, depressing, and all too familiar. One of her ankles was shackled to the wall with the metal she recognized well.
No. Not like this. They couldn’t win like this.
The room still smelled of him. After eight hundred years, his very essence had seeped into cold metal beneath her cheek. His scent mixed with the smell of her blood. The manacle cut into her ankle, shredded her skin like a cheese grater.
God help her, she knew this place from Aron’s memories. She recognized the sterile walls, the fetid energy of her guards outside, and the hopeless sense of the inevitable.
Zoey lay her head back down, her cheek pressed to the smooth surface where she knew Aron had lain for hundreds of years, and let the tears fall. This was where his body had been, where his breath had fogged the gleaming silver and his heart had beat out its slow, steady rhythm. She closed her eyes, drew his scent into her lungs, and sobbed for all he had suffered.
Her one comfort? At least she was mortal. Unlike her lover, they couldn’t keep her here forever.