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

They’d keep her safe. They had her back.

The Weasel’s voice cackled in her ear, giving orders to the entire team.. “Search the room. Find it now. You have twenty minutes before shit gets critical.”

“Yes, Sir.” Twenty minutes until the owner of this house returned with his usual small army of personal guards. Katherine glanced at the men surrounding her. Frank. Matteo. Andrew. Ryan. Seb. They weren’t moving now, weren’t tearing apart the cabinets and the shelves. They weren’t interested in the computers. She was sure those had already been hacked remotely and dissected by the cyber teams. Andrew stood in the doorway, keeping an eye on the corridors. The rest stared at her and simply waited.

“Give me a minute.” A shudder racked her tall frame and she crouched down on the floor to hide it. She surveyed the bed, the dark cherry dresser and the beautiful stained glass window mounted in the side of the cave wall. How could a bedroom so far belowground be so picturesque and dreamy? So perfect.

Such a lie.

The visions swelled, dark monsters, the Triscani, lost sons. Death. Betrayal. Pain. She pressed her palm to the cold stone floor in front of her to keep her balance.

No.
Not real. Not real. Not real.
She silently chanted the phrase while her men stood guard like stone statues, waiting for her to tell them what to do, guarding her back while she was off on some la-la-land psychedelic head trip. Everything was normal. They had no idea the magnitude of the turmoil in her mind, or that it grew every day. Katherine began to wonder if there was, in fact, another consciousness trying to take her over. She couldn’t worry about that now. She needed that tranquilizer and a couple days of unconscious bliss to get her head back on straight, and she needed it soon. Tonight. Doc Hansen had warned her about going on this mission, had warned the Rear Admiral as well. Neither had listened to him. The artifact in this room, whatever it might be, was too powerful. The Weasel wanted it in the hands of the Casper Project immediately. She wanted it gone. Destroyed. Finished…before she lost the very small thread of sanity that remained inside her royally screwed-up head.

She’d been different after Chicago. She’d never told her cousin, Sarah, what that night had cost her. Sarah and Tim had been battling something not of this world, and they’d called on every single Timewalker and descendant alive to harness their collective power. Katherine had been close, so close to them that night. She’d answered the call and piggy-backed a ride to the dark side.

Part of her had never come back.

Since Chicago, Katherine had become weak. Broken. Controlling her power had become harder every day. She’d been recovering, slowly, until about a week after the battle. Sarah and Tim were safely deposited on their island paradise and she’d gone back to work. Protecting her mother’s network of Timewalker descendants had become more important than ever. So, Katherine had meekly gone back into the fold, back into the Casper Project, and tried to recover so she could go back to her routine. Schedules. Missions. Planning. That was her life.

But it couldn’t stop the darkness spreading inside her. Desperate for some peace, she’d allowed Doc Hansen to sedate her. She’d been exhausted beyond caring and needed the rest. Frankly, at that point, she hadn’t cared if he’d killed her with an overdose.

But after that, the visions started. They showed her things she couldn’t possibly know. She remembered things that had never happened.

Sleep? What the hell was sleep? Unless the Doc shot her full of sedatives, she never slept more than an hour or two these days. She hung on to sanity by her fingernails, and her whole team knew it. They didn’t know she had another being’s memories slowly filling up her mind. They didn’t know that most mornings, when she did wake from her nightmares, it took a few moments to remember that she was Katherine Higgins, daughter of Margaret, descendant of the Timewalker Anne, and cousin to the Timewalker Sarah, an amazing woman who could fling lightning bolts like toothpicks.

She was Katherine. She had two last names, two identities, the one her mother gave her, and the one the Rear Admiral believed in. The woman who belonged to the Casper Project, to these men, had a history. Their Katherine was powerful. Loyal. A patriot who’d kill to protect her people.

They were right about that, at least.

She’d played her part perfectly, done everything in her power to protect both her mother and the others like herself from the Casper Project’s control. Kill or control. That was the Rear Admiral’s motto. If he found out the truth…

Still crouching, Katherine raised her eyes to study the walls. They were covered with tapestries, like a castle of old. Gorgeous tapestries with scenes of angels fighting demons, and three-headed beasts. Chimera battled Pegasus and Bellerophone in a giant scene that hung on the wall above the headboard.

Except this time the monster, Chimera, was winning.

Interesting. Why would the owner of this room choose to juxtaposition a classic tale of Greek mythology?

No sooner had she asked than the answer was given to her, supplied by those memories that weren’t her own. The picture was a reminder to be cautious. A reminder of how quickly the tide could turn.

A warning that had not been heeded. And now it was too late…

“Katherine? You with us?” Frank nudged her shoulder and she shook her head to clear it.

“I’m fine.” The lie tasted sour on her tongue, but she spit it out anyway. “Give me a minute. It’s here.”

Frank squeezed her shoulder and stepped back. The Rear Admiral’s voice invaded her eardrums through their comm. “Frank, keep your team together. I’m sending down another team to back you up. Stay with her. I have a bad feeling about this one.”

“Yes, Sir.” Frank took up his usual position about four feet off her right shoulder. Matteo mirrored him on the left. The other three, Ryan, Andrew, and Sebastian watched their backs and the door. Everything was normal.

Time to find this thing and figure out a way to destroy it.

Frank raised an eyebrow and gave her the space she’d requested. “We’re running low on time here. Find the damn thing before more guns get here. I don’t want to be trapped inside this rock.”

“I know.” Katherine nodded and turned toward the bed once again. “Can you guys lift that mattress off?”

Seb and Ryan had it thrown to the side in seconds to reveal a solid black stone base. Shit.

“Is that onyx?” Ryan whistled. “Damn. I feel sorry for the movers.”

Frank stepped up onto it while Katherine studied it. No seams. No cracks. It was a piece of solid rock melded into the stone floor, almost as if it had risen in a volcanic eruption of black lava and cooled in the shape of a bed. Bizarre.

Sebastian cracked his neck and shifted his rifle. “I don’t want to be here when whoever did that gets home.” His dark chocolate eyes bored into hers. “Come on, Kitty-Kat. Find whatever it is we’re here to find and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Katherine ignored the nickname and spread her palms flat on the platform’s surface. “Frank, get off.”

Frank hopped to the side and nodded at Ryan to shoot some high-resolution video. Everything the boys said or did now would be fed through to the Rear Admiral, but Katherine had burned through every transmitter they’d ever placed on her body except for basic radio after a few minutes. After replacing her ninth set of gear, the Weasel had finally given up and given her the old-fashioned headset, which had been her goal all along. She allowed the boys to record video as long as there was nothing she needed to hide.

The whole team had a history of burned-out video feed. The Weasel knew it was her fault, but blamed it on her lack of control.

Frank knew better, but never said a word.

“Stand back.” A burst of air rushed past her throat as the stone base flooded her hands with vibrating energy. Small tendrils of dark hair that had escaped her braid lifted from her neck and face, charged with the current.

“Shit. It moved.” Seb wedged himself between the stone and the wall, watching her face. He took a step closer and shuddered. Katherine barely spared him a glance before training her eyes on the smooth surface in front of her. The black surface rippled now, like she’s just dropped a rock into a still pond of water.

“What the hell?” Ryan took his place a couple paces from Sebastian and held up the camera to make sure he got the angle.

“Sir, are you getting this?” Frank’s serious tone cut through the nervous twitters in her stomach like a blade, cut her off from all feeling, all fear. This was not the time for fear. Panic would get them all killed. And she knew this because the darkness spoke to her now. It knew her name.

She reached out to touch it.

It had always known her name.

Chapter Two

“We can’t see a damn thing.” Power flooded Katherine’s body as the Rear Admiral’s voice filled her ears. She threw her head back and screamed with ecstasy as the missing pieces all clicked into place inside her. This was her destiny. This was what she was.

Her eyes were closed but she could feel every member of her team, hear their hearts beating, see them in her mind. She knew how they were standing, and which muscles were tensed. She knew Frank’s blood pressure was spiking even though his heartbeat wasn’t racing yet. She knew Ryan’s heart was fast as hummingbird wings, but his muscles were relaxed. Matteo was excited, embracing the adrenaline rush. Andrew, cool, collected Andrew. No heart palpitations. No fear. Just his brain working so fast it sparked like the motherboard in a computer. Sebastian? Her on-again, off-again flirtation? He was ice cold, like stone inside and out, as if he’d always walked with one foot in the grave and no longer bothered to think about trivialities like death.

Suddenly, she was glad she’d never slept with him. She was not the woman to melt the ice in his soul.

The black stone burned her insides like a bonfire. She took the smallest trickle of energy to blow out Ryan’s camera, for some inexplicable reason she felt extremely protective of this power, this place. The Rear Admiral didn’t need to see this. No one did. Power pulsed through her, filled her up for the first time since Chicago. She had no idea what this thing was, but she knew the darkness belonged to her now. It would answer her call…

“What are you?” The question was a whisper of sound that flowed over her lips like a caress. Not what is it…
what are you
, as if it were alive. Sentient.

Perhaps it was, because the dark pool rose in a small wave in response to her voice. The wave moved toward her like a miniature tsunami to envelop her hands and wrists in cool black liquid thick as tar, connecting her to the platform.

“No! Katherine, no!” Frank reached for her shoulders with both hands, but never made contact. A blast like a small bomb blew him back eight feet to land on his ass. Not from her, from
IT.

“Holy shit.” Matteo circled to her left with Ryan and Sebastian still to her right.

“What the hell is going on in here?” Andrew knelt beside Frank, helped him to his feet.

“Our Kitty-Kat has gone to the dark side, bro.” Matteo leaned in closer, but didn’t try to touch her. Which was a good thing. The whole team would cry if he wasn’t around to make his grandmother’s famous homemade meatballs. Italian to his core, Matteo worked hard, played hard, and could have filled in as a chef in any restaurant in the world. “You still in there, Kitty-Kat?”

Some small part of her wanted to answer him, wanted to reassure them all that everything was going to be all right. Every cell in her body tingled with joy and welcome. Every damn cell. So cold. So right. Her head stopped aching. Her vision cleared and focused to a level she’d never had before, acute and sharp enough to zero in on a single black eyelash on Matteo’s worried face. Power flowed into her muscles, her body a lightning rod for the flow of energy rising from the dark.

“Get back on the door, Andrew. We got this.” Frank issued the order and Andrew left her vision. She ignored them all.

At the base of her rib cage on her left, just below her breast, a circle of skin blazed to life, a burn of affirmation she knew would be in the shape of a Shen. A circle resting on straight ends, it was an ancient Egyptian symbol. They’d believed the symbol meant eternity and protection. It was the mark of her brethren, the mark of a true Timewalker. She was one of them now. There would be no going back to the Casper Project, into the clutches of the Rear Admiral to be studied or experimented on, her power abused.

Such power. The black liquid stone flowed up over her shoulders, down her chest and back, covering her breasts and spine. It rose too, flowing up her neck like a lover’s touch, branding her forever and stopping at the base of her lower lip.

Matteo threw a rope over her shoulders to try to yank her from the phenomenon. His rope disappeared beneath the darkness. She lowered her chin and waited for the process to finish. She had no interest in leaving now. The relief immense as every cell in her body, starved for the long months since Chicago, ceased hungering.

This thing would swallow her whole.

She went willingly.

“God damn it, get her out of there!” Frank screamed at her team. Matteo tugged on the rope.