Black Gate: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4
Read Black Gate: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4 Online
Authors: Michele Callahan
Tags: #Timewalker Chronicles Book 4, #sci-fi romance
About
BLACK GATE
Katherine Green is living a lie. She’s a top ranking paranormal commander for the Casper Project, a black ops program committed to tracking down aliens, alien artifacts and weaponry. She’s very, very good at what she does, which is lie. She’s a Timewalker descendant. She’s dedicated her life to helping others gifted with power to escape the claws of corrupt leaders who would use them for their own ends. But she’s also very, very good at tracking alien objects of power, and she’s just found the mother lode, a Black Gate, a transdimensional portal between worlds. What she doesn’t know is that the Gate has an agenda of its own, and an Immortal guardian who has been dispatched to kill her before she unwittingly unleashes a horde of evil Triscani Hunters on Earth.
Teagh’s been Guardian of the Gate, Darkwalker Lord, and the Dark One for centuries. He lives a solitary life hiding from both the Immortals on Itara and the human government here on Earth. He’s a guardian, not an assassin, but when he’s sent by an Immortal Seer to stop one human female from unleashing hell on Earth, he’s too late. She’s already on the other side, and the Gate no longer obeys him. Its allegiance has switched to the Timewalker female whose Mark burns through his blood. She Marked him, and now he aches to keep the dangerous female for himself.
But there’s a reason the Gate chose her, a reason the Triscani Hunters have been waiting to strike, and a reason the Lost King of Itara mysteriously vanished hundreds of years ago. Katherine and Teagh will fight their desire and each other as they uncover the truth about a dark future that could destroy them both.
Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4:
BLACK GATE
by Michele Callahan
Copyright © 2014 by Michele Callahan
All Rights Reserved
Dedication
This one’s for you, Dad.
You sat me on your knee and told me I could be anything.
And you meant it.
If only every girl in the world were so lucky.
Copyright
Black Gate, Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4
Cover design Copyright 2014 by RomCon® and Cynthia Woolf
Photo Copyright: BigStockPhotos -
© I T A L O
Photo Copyright: BigStockPhotos -
© ags andrew
First Edition. September 2014
Copyright 2014 by Michele Callahan
Published By Michele Callahan
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, people, places and events are completely a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4:
BLACK GATE
by Michele Callahan
Copyright 2014 by Michele Callahan
All Rights Reserved
Prologue
Tavanier, Florida Keys, five weeks earlier
Teagh stared out over the Atlantic, toes teased by the edge of the water. Raiden and Mari were most likely in his house now, doing the horizontal mambo. Or the vertical. Or the up-against-the-wall. He’d stopped at a beach a few miles from his home to think, and mourn the loss of possibilities. He’d been Marked for a matter of minutes.
It had felt like a miracle, right up until he’d had to walk away.
The sound of the waves always helped clear his head. He’d leave in a moment on his latest hunt for answers. He’d have to relocate now that the enemy had discovered his beachfront home. Relocate. Run.
All he ever did was hide. But one male against a thousand Triscani weren’t odds he was stupid enough to take. For seven hundred years he’d been hiding from the Triscani, ever since the final battle had cost the Itarans their King and Queen, and the fucking wormhole had brought the ship he was on here. To Earth. In the wrong damn time, over seven hundred years into the past.
Seven and a half centuries was a long time to be away from home.
Speaking of home, it was time. He pulled the communicator from his pocket and pressed the button that would summon Celestina. He didn’t wait long.
“Teagh.” He looked up with a start to see the bane of his half-brother’s miserable existence walking toward him. He bowed deep. He hadn’t seen the Seer, Celestina, in nearly two centuries. She was still beautiful. Still in pain. Trapped in this time, just like he was, along with the other twelve Archivers sitting at the council table up on her ship. He didn’t consider that orbiting vessel home any longer. He’d fled the twelve bastards, including his own half-brother, Bran, over two hundred years ago. Always fighting. Trying to control him, and tell him how to do his damn job. If it were anyone but Celestina walking toward him now, he’d open a portal and disappear. After just losing his connection to the Timewalker Marina, he didn’t have the heart to refuse the lovely Seer who approached him now. And he’d promised to deliver the Timewalker, Mari’s message.
“Celestina.” He turned to face her and opened his arms.
“My friend. It’s been too long.”
“It has been many years, my lady.” Celestina walked right into his embrace and wrapped him in a hug. Some things never changed. Thank the gods.
“Too many.”
He held her for a full minute. Perhaps longer. It had been a very long time since he’d seen her or anyone else from that gods-forsaken ship. Not that he cared to see any of the others… “How is my brother?”
“Angry, full of secrets, stomping around the ship ordering everyone about, as always.”
Teagh would have laughed, but his brother, Bran, loved Celestina with a depth that was downright terrifying, not that is did his brother any good. Bran would’ve done anything for her. Kill kings. Destroy entire planets. Yet Bran kept her always at arm’s length. He had to.
Celestina appeared to be oblivious to his brother’s torment, which was just as well. Bran’s secrets were not his to tell. But Teagh knew the lady well, perhaps knew more about her than even his obsessed brother, yet he had no idea what drove her. The Seers, Celestina and Helene, were mysteries better left untouched. The only two females to come back on the battleship with them had both spent centuries riding the strands of time, searching. Always searching. For who or what, he never knew. But perhaps, now he did…and his suspicions were not reassuring.
The Immortal, Droghan, wouldn’t be idle prey. He was vicious and smart, and, as one of the true Itaran Immortals, damn near impossible to kill. When the bastard had shown up in his home hours ago, he’d been beyond shocked.
More than just surprised, he’d been worried that the Archivers and Seers who came through the worm hole with him seven hundred years ago might be up against a hell of a lot more than they’d bargained for. Droghan was legendary in both cruelty and power. And he was supposed to be dead, reduced to nothing by the Angel’s Fire of the Itaran Queen herself days before the final battle. A
future
battle.
Which meant Droghan would still be alive. Now. In this hellish version of Earth’s past.
Fuck.
He pulled back and held Celestina’s tiny hands in his giant ones. She cared for him, deeply. It was easy for him to read the emotions in her darkness. But friendship and compassion were all that lay between them. Events were spinning now, moving faster. The Immortals on her ship quickly approached the time of the final battle, when their present would finally catch up to the future they’d left behind.
If Droghan was here, the battle was even closer than he thought. He needed to know if his new suspicions were correct. How could a Seer as powerful as Celestina not know such a dangerous enemy was here, on Earth? That bastard, even alive, should have been on Itara. Not here, in his fucking living room.
“Droghan was here, in my home.”
“Droghan?” Celestina pulled back with a gasp, a frown on her face. So, she didn’t know. “That can’t be. He was destroyed.”
Teagh nodded. “Yes. In the future. A future that has not happened yet. But he was here, in my home, with the Triscani under his command. He claims to know where Ajax is being held prisoner.” Teagh had yet to confirm the bastard’s claims, but he would find out the truth soon enough. He just wasn’t sure what he could do about it.
Celestina whispered, so faint he barely caught the words. “The dream…” Pacing now, Celestina wrapped her arms around her waist, the flowing blue of her gown a perfect match for the sky above her, her tiny feet in delicate sandals that looked to be made of spun copper. “What did he say? What does he want? How is this possible?”
“He claims to know something about Ajax. And he hunts for a new Queen. A human Timewalker. Not Angeline.” He looked away from her, out over the crashing surf, avoided her astute Seer’s gaze.
She refused to allow him a moment to consider the ramifications of a human Queen, of a Queen that his King, Ajax, wouldn’t even know. “And?”
“And the Timewalker, Marina, asked me to give you two things. The first is this stone.” Teagh placed the soul stone with the Timewalker’s Mark in her hand, shocked when a flash of power nearly knocked Celestina from her feet.
“By the gods.” Celestina stared at the stone as if she’d just been struck by lightning. He wanted to ask what had just happened, but knew the question would be a waste of breath. “What is the second thing?”
“A message. She said to tell you that she was successful, and so you would not remember that there is a traitor on board your ship.”