Parallel Attraction Page 21

  Thea appeared beside them, crouching low. "Recon located a nest of Antousians on the southern end of the lake." She rattled off coordinates, and then with a curt nod toward their commander asked, "How long will that take?"

  "He's getting her to open the chamber," Scott explained in a terse voice. "Talking her through it."

  Thea gave a nod of affirmation. "We have to get those codes out."

  "She's his lifemate, Thea," Scott said. "You know that. It's not just the data that's important to him."

  "You don't have to remind me," she snapped, rocking back on her heels.

  "When this night is done, just remember that things have changed," Scott cautioned, knowing that of everyone in the camp, Thea would have the hardest time supporting Jared's choice of a mate. "And be sure your judgment won't get clouded tonight. If you feel that it's compromised—"

  She waved him off. "I'm a soldier, first and foremost."

  "Good. That's what I wanted to hear," Scott said with a nod, and turned back to his watch over their king.

  Veckus himself had come. A surprise, but not wholly unexpected, given the importance of this particular mission, Marco thought, hiking down the back path away from the mitres' entrance. Jared's soldiers would soon be massing at the foot of the trail, laying down an encampment. But they would be far too late. The Antousians had been granted plenty of advance warning to assume their own positions, and this far into the backcountry of Yellowstone—a good twenty-five miles' hike up any of the trails that led here— no rangers would hear their exchange of weaponry. Or the screams of a dying rebel king. That thought caused Marco to shiver, and for a moment he pressed his eyes shut, lifting a dangling birch branch out of his way on the path.

  "About time you arrived," came Veckus's familiar rasping voice from out of the darkness. Even though he couldn't see the Antousian warlord, Marco sensed him hovering at the darkened edge of the trail.

  "I've had work to do," Marco responded, lifting his chin into the air. This was no time for attitude from his leader, not tonight. He was delivering a prize jewel, the king of Refaria himself—so he'd be damned if Veckus didn't show him a little more respect.

  "You arrived almost an hour ago," the alien hissed, reminding Marco of a reptile in his vocalizations. He always reminded Marco of a reptile: a reptile in human form.

  The shadows seemed to part, when in reality Veckus only took two steps forward into the clear shaft of moonlight limning the mountainous trail. The blond man sneered at him in greeting; truthfully, it was a delighted smile on the alien's face, but somehow, like all the other expressions he ever assumed, it looked wrong on his humanized face.

  "What took you so long, Marco?" The leader spoke in smooth Refarian; he was fluent in the language, which was common for Antousians like Veckus who'd been raised on Refaria.

  "I've been with the queen."

  This elicited a soft hissing sound from Veckus's lips. Even though he was an Antousian-human hybrid (which meant that his physical form was human), his voice patterns still reflected his natural Antousian genetics. Unlike so many other hybrids like him, Veckus clung to his Antousian heritage, even if he did have to live inside a human body. That's what he and all the other Antousians had done in order to survive the viral plague back home. They'd taken human hosts…or been wiped out.

  Veckus hissed again, his eyes narrowing to slits. "Do not refer to the rebel human as queen. Do not show her that honor."

  Marco inclined his head respectfully, but inside he wondered why Veckus even bothered. She was the queen—just as Jared was king—and whether Veckus honored the title or not hardly mattered when it came to logistics. Still, the warlord preferred to refer to Jared as "the rebel leader" or even, on his less generous days, as "that rebel idiot".

  "I believe we were clear on our mutual objectives," Veckus stated carefully, lifting his chin until he stared Marco in the eye. "Our plan is to lure the rebel leader into the open, and thereby end this insurgence once and for all."

  Although Marco's heart rate sped up crazily, he forced himself into a posture of steadiness. "Of course. Our mission has not changed."

  "Good. I wouldn't want to think that your Refarian . . .ways"—he spit the word with undisguised distaste—"had somehow obscured your judgment."

  "I'll give you Jared Bennett," Marco vowed. And you'll give me a better future.

  "Yes, so you will keep the rebel whore inside the mitres until Jared is dead," Veckus said, his mouth pulling into an ugly mockery of a grin. "Then you'll bring her to me."

  "What are your intentions for Kelsey?"

  "Don't worry about that." Veckus's eyes narrowed, and the telltale odor of deception filled Marco's nostrils.

  "You promised she wouldn't be hurt," Marco cautioned, his voice rising slightly. "That she would be freed once Jared was dead."

  "You will have her in the end," Veckus promised. "Our plan remains in effect." The odor of betrayal grew rancid about them, the vilest possible stench. This Veckus didn't know all of Marco's myriad intuitive skills. "So are we still agreed?"

  "We are agreed," Marco said, and tried to ignore the sickening spasm that his stomach gave when he turned away from the alien.

  Bargaining with a devil, never a good idea, he thought furiously, and began his hike back to Kelsey's side.

  Marco entered the chamber and found Kelsey deep in a trance again, her hands clasping the coiling unit in the center of the chamber. One instance of connecting with Jared had been bad enough—two were unacceptable. The core energy inside the coil's tubing had already changed color, altering from its cool luminous blue to a bright golden orange. She was powering up the unit—obviously preparing to open a portal.

  "What," he roared, grabbing her by the upper arm, "are you doing?" She kept her hands locked about the cylinder, and so he jerked her harder, sending her sprawling onto the floor of the chamber. The tubing remained a golden-orange hue, indicating that the dimensional space around them was becoming unstable; a portal could be opened, but without her continued interaction with the unit, the energy inside would cool again eventually.

  Satisfied that he'd interrupted her in time, he rounded on her. "I trusted you," he hissed as she stirred on the floor beneath him, shaking her head as if in a daze. "I left you here unbound. And this is how you repay me? What did you think to accomplish?"

  "I was trying to escape, you imbecile."

  He folded his arms across his chest. "I see that my trust was misplaced."

  "Don't you dare talk to me about trust," she spit, slowly turning to gaze up at him. "You have violated every one of your vows. You're a stranger to me, and you betrayed us."

  There it was again: that gut-wrenching reminder of his treachery, and the beautiful, perfect relationship he had long ago shattered to bits. "I'm sorry," he mumbled before he caught himself.

  "Sorry?" She struggled to her knees and speared him with a cold gaze. "You kidnapped me and threatened to hurt us," she countered. "That is not a relationship based on trust. We don't trust you—I could never trust someone like you! You protected us once, and now look at what you've become. You're trying to destroy your own king."

  "J'Areshkadau Bnet D'Aravni," he hissed, pronouncing the leader's true Refarian name with slow and acid precision, "is not my king. He has not been my sovereign for more than four years."

  "Do they fire protectors?" She sneered. "They what, just rescind your vow? Tell me, Marco, exactly what the Refarians do with the likes of you."

  He brushed past her, refusing to succumb to memories and feelings of love that had never died for him, not in all these years. Those eyes. So blue he could spend forever in them, worship her by the simple act of gazing into the most unusual eyes he had ever seen. Not now; it was too late for such wrong, tortured emotions that had led him to such a wrong and dreadful end.

  "Exactly as I thought," she said with deadly intensity. "There's no place for you in any dimension. You're a traitor."

  "Stop it!" he roared, spinning to face
her. He wanted to cover his ears and silence her accusations. He wanted to proclaim his love for her, even after all these years. "Just stop it."

  She kept at him, though, accusing, needling, torturing, but somehow he used his power to block the words. Or maybe it was just that the truth of those words was so unbearable he couldn't even process them.

  He grasped her by the arm angrily, yanking her to her feet. "You're coming outside with me," he snarled with a glance back at the coiling unit. "The easy way. We'll let the weapon power down." The power still raged orange, indicating the possibility of a time portal opening. He'd deal with that later.

  Retrieving the remote unit from his jacket pocket, he depressed a button and the gateway to the chamber's exterior opened. He glimpsed the darkened outside world open before them: the lake below, the rocks, the shards of moonlight reflecting in the creeping mist. A whole new world awaited them all, it seemed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kelsey sat shivering on the smooth rocks outside the mitres, tucked neatly into a cleft of the cliff face where none of Jared's soldiers could possibly see her. She considered leaping to her feet and waving her arms wildly, since Marco would have to kill her if she did that. And she knew Marco didn't want to kill her. In fact, she suspected he just might be having serious doubts about this entire kidnapping plot of his. He squatted beside her, studying the winding path below them through some kind of night-vision binoculars. She'd never seen anything remotely like them before—tiny and compact, they apparently enabled him to see long distances.

  They also enabled him to track the assent of Jared and his team, and she wanted to snatch them right out of his hands and send them careening over the cliff ledge. Still, as she studied Marco in silence, she couldn't shake the strangest, most inexplicable sensation: that as much as Marco frightened her, and as much as she'd just argued to the contrary, she might actually be able to trust him. She even felt the slightest bit of kinship with the man, sitting beside him in the dark.

  She shifted position on the rocks. "Where is everyone else you said would be waiting for us out here?"

  "Around," he answered coolly.

  "So, Jared is going to get here and then you're just going to"—she stared at the strange metallic weapon holstered at his side—"what?"

  He remained silent, his eyes hidden behind the glasses. She rubbed her arms, trying to warm herself. She wore only jeans and a sweater; their hasty departure hadn't allowed her to find her jacket.

  Marco rocked back on his heels, dropping the glasses away from his eyes. Apart from when he'd taken her through the slipstream, this was the closest she'd been to him physically. She wished it weren't the dead of night— how late was it anyway? Two a.m.? Three? She had no idea. And she wished the moonlight weren't blocked by the scraggly tree branches overhead. Knobby pines sprouted out from cracks in the rock face, growing tall despite the unforgiving terrain. Kelsey leaned forward, wanting to see Marco's eyes. For some reason, she felt it was important that she get a genuine look at him.

  He seemed to know what she was doing, and dropped his gaze to his hands. "We will stay here for now," was all he said, his voice stern.

  She decided to try a new tack. "What's going to happen to me? I get that you're out to destroy Jared, that you have some master plan and all that. But what about me, huh? Where do I figure in?"

  He glanced sideways at her, his eyes hooded and dark. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, looking across to Mirror Lake, shimmering in the moonlight below them. It was hard to believe that the farthest shore of that large lake was where she'd first seen Jared's light, and known for the first time his true magnificence. She would die before she let Marco or any of his gathered conspirators hurt Jared.

  She sat up taller on the rocks. "You're just going to ignore my questions, huh?"

  "Kelsey." He sighed heavily, his eyes trained on the path below. "I can't answer these things. You know that."

  Maybe if she could distract him then that would buy some time. "How about other, less complicated questions?"

  "Such as?"

  "Like, are you planning to use the mitres? Is that why we're really here?"

  "No, apparently"—he rose to his feet, peering through the night vision glasses and around the large wall of rock— "I should leave that maneuver in your extremely capable hands."

  "I wasn't trying to use the weapon." When he made no further reply, she attempted another angle with the man. "Tell me more about what you were saying, about my being—what did you call it? The Beloved of Refaria?"

  For that question she got nothing but stony silence, his face an inscrutable mask of indifference.

  If she could only find a way to distract him, or to somehow appeal to Marco's ingrained sense of loyalty. "So, you won't answer that either," she said.

  Resting one forearm on an outcropping of rock, he bowed his head and remained quiet for a long moment. At last he turned his head sideways and met her gaze in the darkness. His black eyes, so empty and lifeless before, practically blazed with energy. "In our future you were worshiped, Kelsey. By the Refarians, because they yearned for a queen, and by Jared because . . ." His voice trailed off, and he just shook his head, saying nothing for what felt an eternity. Finally he whispered, "We all worshiped you, Kelsey." His voice had become hoarse. Choked. Full of emotion. "We all loved you," he added softly. "How could we not?"

  He didn't wait for her to answer, but quickly looked away, shuttering his features. "Don't speak to me again of that world," he warned, and she was happy to fall into silence herself.

  How ironic to think she was learning these things now, at a time when her only thought was for Jared's very life.

  Jared's life.

  Her heart thundered within her chest, and it was hard to suppress her mounting sense of panic. Her palms were sweating, and she could hear the sound of blood rushing in her ears. What am I supposed to do? They all needed her to think of something—and now. She took deep breaths, trying to get her equilibrium back in check, and in response an excruciating pain hammered in her head. It had begun when she'd traveled through the slipstream, and been there vaguely ever since, intensifying when Marco had invaded her thoughts earlier in the mitres.

  What a weird sensation that had been: painful, like something being sucked right out of her. In its wake, a dull throbbing had intensified to what was now a blinding headache. She rubbed her eyes, trying to still the pain.

  Then she had the oddest memory. And she knew it was a memory, something that had actually happened, not a fleeting impression.

  "What if he doesn't come back, Marco? What if this is it?"

  "He'll be here, Kelsey." His voice, strong and reassuring, soothed her.

  They were sitting on a rocky outcropping. Not here, somewhere else. Nighttime . . . and he was surveying the landscape with the same binoculars.

  "I can't feel him. Not at all," she cried quietly.

  He looked at her and pressed his hand over hers. "He'll be here. He will always come back for you, Kelsey."

  Those words, and Marco's calm touch, had steadied her. He'd been her center, too; not just Jared. It had been different, of course, but Marco had been a compass point of his own in her world.

  Tears stung her eyes, even though the reaction didn't make sense. But that didn't make her sudden rush of emotion any less true. "I can trust you," she announced quietly.

  Marco dropped the glasses, staring at her dumbfounded for a full five seconds.

  "Please tell me I'm not wrong," she implored.

  "I am your enemy," Marco insisted, straightening himself where he sat. "Make no mistake about that fact."

  "No." She shook her head with conviction. "I don't believe you."

  His voice rose. "You need to believe it, Kelsey."

  "You might, but I don't, not anymore. It goes against everything that you are."

  "You have no idea what kind of man I am." He laughed brutally. "What I'm capable of." She realized those words were fam
iliar, though it took her a moment to place them. And then it hit her—Jared! He had used almost those identical words to describe himself earlier that evening.

  "I know that there was a time when you would have done anything for us," she said softly. "Both of us."

  "Once." His voice seemed broken, lost.

  "Whatever Jared did ... to make you turn from him—" His angry glare cut off her plea, his eyes flashing with fire, and then he stood suddenly. He grabbed her arm, jerking her roughly to her feet. At that exact moment Kelsey heard a rustling behind them. Marco glanced quickly in that direction, shoving her ahead of him.

  "I want you back here. Now." He dragged her toward the concealed mitres entry, and this time he did bind both her hands and her feet so there would be no hope of escaping.

  Marco stood with Veckus at the highest point of the trail, obscured from the Refarian soldiers advancing below them. They'd ascended a hidden back path, hoping to go unnoticed, but Marco had been observing Jared's soldiers from the very beginning.

  "They're almost here," Marco stated calmly, studying Veckus's features. Unbelievable—here it was ten years earlier, and Veckus looked exactly the same as he did in the future. He stood with two other men—Antousians, no doubt—whom Marco had never seen before. All three observed the path below.

  "Well, well, Jared will be very surprised to see how the tables have turned," Veckus sneered. "The mitres and the fallen king, all in one day. Not bad work."

  Marco bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment. "I am only following your future orders."