DarkRevenge (15 page)

In the taxi, the four of them remained silent, though Tory
wondered if Jezar was carrying on a conversation with Alex.

Kera’s home was near the edge of the capital city tucked
away in a small grove of giant trees. She met them at the door.

“Tory! I am so glad to see you’re alive. I tried to get a
message to warn you but I was too late.” His old friend clasped his hands. “You
must come in. Time is running out. You’re going to have to save us all.”

Chapter Eleven

Jealousy wasn’t an emotion Alex was too familiar with. This
churning, pointless anger directed at a person she didn’t even know felt
uncomfortable and new. But Kera was stunning. Tall and willowy with big breasts
and a slender waist, she was every woman’s nightmare and every man’s wet dream.
Her long, blonde hair drifted down her back like a silk nightie and her dainty
feet were hugged by an expensive-looking pair of ridiculously high heels.

And the hands that clasped Tory’s were perfectly shaped and
manicured.

Difficult not to hate a gorgeous bitch like that. Especially
since she and Tory seemed so…close.

They are old friends.
Jezar informed her.

La-di-fucking-da. She needs to get her hands off him.
Now.

The woman’s gaze met hers, a faint smile on her perfect lips
and her green eyes bright. Alex took a deep breath and sought calm. Five years
was a long time. Did she think he’d been a monk? But still, she didn’t want to
run into his old lovers.

“Kera, this is my mate, Commander Alex Zeerah,” Tory said
and he placed a possessive hand on her shoulder.

The assessing glance of the woman held no trace of jealousy
or competition. In fact— Alex blinked. It couldn’t be.

Let’s just say Tory has more to worry about than you do.
Jezar’s
amused tone confirmed what she’d been thinking. Kera didn’t lean Tory’s way.
And the way she was stripping Alex with her gaze was a bit uncomfortable. Alex
shivered. The woman had a seductive power Alex couldn’t deny. If Tory weren’t
her mate…

Why the hell didn’t he just tell me?
She fumed.

Perhaps he thought he was being discreet. Though Kera
wears her sexuality on her sleeve, I think Tory may have thought she might want
some privacy about it.

And let me think he was fucking her?

If you believed it, he would not betray a friend to
convince you otherwise. He told you she was a friend. To him, that explained
it.
Jezar’s tone was amused.
I didn’t say it was smart.

Tory cleared his throat. “You know why we’re here.”

Kera’s gaze lingered on Alex for a moment longer and she
sighed. “Yes.” The woman’s gaze slid to Tesia. The same seductive perusal Kera
had given Alex made the engineer flush bright red. “Norlan contacted me. The
box is contained in a level-five security laboratory.” Her green eyes hardened
into small glass chips. “Would you like to know what I’ve seen?”

“No,” Tory answered immediately. “But we don’t have a
choice. We can’t fly blind anymore. It’s too dangerous.”

The woman nodded and waved them inside her spacious home. As
if Kera weren’t sexy enough, her home was a visual assault on the senses. It
seemed to celebrate the female form. A statue of a well-endowed naked woman
with her hands raised to the ceiling in supplication dominated the hallway.
There was no place to look in the entryway or the living area where they
finally sat down that wasn’t profoundly distracting.

Alex found her attention caught by a painting of a woman’s
vagina, open, glistening, clearly aroused. Somehow the artist had captured a
powerful moment in the female body and, instead of it being a clinical
depiction, it was beautiful.

She shot a glance at Tory. How could any man be in this
house and not be aroused?

He can’t.
Jezar answered her unspoken question, his
mental tone smooth and silky. His own excitement spoke clearly in his voice
inside her head.

“The bridge is the best way,” Kera said out loud.

“You could just tell us.” Tory’s reluctance was in every
syllable.

What the hell was a bridge? Whatever it was, Tory didn’t
want to do it. “What is the bridge?” Alex asked.

“Kera would join the minds as one. She can only bridge
between two other minds, but for a short time, those two minds would be joined
with each other and with hers,” Jezar answered.

A muscle in Tory’s jaw jumped and Alex could tell he didn’t
like it. “Joined? How?”

“Even when an Ardasian touches your mind, Alex, we are only
picking through thoughts on the surface of your mind, those thoughts you
consciously think.” Jezar kept his gaze on Kera. “With the bridge, an Ardasian
facilitates a connection that goes deeper. It’s a quick way, a better way, to
pass information. Especially something as complicated as a vision of the
future.”

Alex wanted to ask Tory why he was afraid to do this thing.
Maybe afraid wasn’t the word. She stared at him. “Tory?” A million questions in
one word.

He met her gaze. “It gives you no place to hide, Alex. And
it’s temporary, but it’s designed to be…addictive.”

“You’ve done this before?” Had he done this with someone
before? The idea made her feel depressed.

“No,” he said slowly. “But I’ve seen others who have.
It…changes things.” He seemed to be groping for words. Alex wasn’t sure what to
think.

“Are you afraid I’ll know some secrets you don’t want me to
know?” That’s what it had to be. He didn’t want her to know him. It hurt and her
chest tightened.

Surprisingly, his blue eyes blazed and he placed his hands
on her shoulders. “I’m afraid that you’ll misinterpret what you see there. We
aren’t Ardasians, used to the background noise, the bits of information that
leak from us all the time.”

Her chin rose. “I can handle it.”

He sighed. “I don’t know if I can.”

She stared at him. “You’re not afraid of me finding
something. You’re afraid of what I’m thinking.”

He dropped his hands and turned his back. “Yes.”

That decided her. She glanced at Kera. “Do it.”

Tory’s fists were clenched but he turned to face Kera, side
by side with Alex. Kera reached out and put a long, slender hand on the side of
their necks, her fingers warm. Sparks of electricity crackled along Alex’s
nerves. Her eyes closed and a whirl of thoughts and feelings spun around her
mind.

First, connect with Tory. Once the bridge is completed, I
can share the vision with both of you.
Kera’s sexy voice was even more
seductive in Alex’s mind. Dangerous, that’s what Kera was. The woman’s chuckle
only increased Alex’s discomfort.

The connection with Tory was an odd thing, like walking in a
dimly lit forest, shapes and colors muted and hard to see. It slowly began to
get a little brighter and soon she was hearing thoughts that weren’t her own.

Lines of tightly wound thoughts tempted her like passageways
in a fascinating maze. Tory’s mind was orderly, straightforward. His thoughts
followed straight lines, all categorized and filed. Only one tangled skein
seemed to twist and bend. Of course, that’s the one she wanted to delve into.

With her mind, she reached out and touched the tangled mass
of thoughts. It flooded her with warmth, fear, desire. In the background was a
mass of snippets all about her. Tory constantly thought of her, her physical
beauty, her courage—all the things he admired about her. For the first time,
Alex saw herself the way he saw her. It wasn’t just a mirror image, but a
painting filled with color and emotion. In the tangles lay the pain of
rejection, the years of anguish he spent alone, drifting, without her. The
anger was there too, a red, raw wound of pain covered by resentment. The rage
at her willingness to believe him a traitor, the anger at her sense of duty and
honor that overrode her feelings.

The thoughts swirled around her, brushing her like strands
of seaweed. It took a moment to get the hang of it, but Alex figured out how to
move the strings, separating them, focusing on one at a time until they were
unraveled. She untangled the strings one by one until she reached the one in
the center, the straight one, the one that the others wrapped around.

She touched it and emotion slammed into her like a freight
train.

Love.

He loved her. Beyond reason, beyond the anger, beyond the
pain. He loved her. And he risked anything and everything to save her, even
from himself. The thought was clear—he felt she wouldn’t return his feelings,
not like this.

How wrong he was.

But fear struck her. What if he didn’t find the same thing
in her? Her love wasn’t like this, was it? Tenuous and fragile, her love for
him had never been straightforward or clear. Would he be disappointed?

She touched the skein again. Such a precious gift. The other
strands wrapped around her, each with a little bit of Tory in it. Memories of
men he’d lost, women he’d sought mindless comfort with, all swirled around her
now.

None of the women he’d slept with had made much of an
impression. The loneliness, the emotional wasteland, of those five years was
fresh and strong. When he’d said there was no other woman he’d wanted, he had
been telling her the truth.

She delved deeper, oblivious to the outside world, wanting
to explore this internal landscape. Twisted among the strands were his
fantasies, his darkest sexual desires. There she saw visions that both disturbed
her and excited her. In these mental pictures, she was restrained, hung on a
rack like the one in his quarters. She wore nipple clamps and Tory held a
wicked-looking whip that sliced through the air and hit her skin. She shuddered
with anticipation.

Like flickers of light, the pictures clicked to the
forefront and then disappeared to be replaced by another. She could see in them
a dark, sexual need that she’d only glimpsed in Tory. Needs that didn’t appall
her or offend her but filled her with shivering excitement. Her physical body
responded, her pulse pounding.

Alexandra?
Tory’s voice, strong and clear, snapped
her away from the sensual slide show.

Tory. I…did what you find disappoint you?

I was…surprised
.
She caught the vision of what
he’d found. To him, instead of lines and strands, he found whirlwinds and waves
of her thoughts that were difficult to catch, to understand. But, just as she
had, he found the foundation, the rock of emotion that fueled all the rest.
Though surrounded by doubt, depicted by an ocean of water, her love for him was
solid and calm.

I was too. Tory, there’s so much—

We do not have time, my dears.
Kera’s voice intruded
on them.

Show us, Kera.
Tory’s mind wrapped around hers and
they merged to accept the visions Kera would show them.

An explosion of color in her mind rocked her and she winced.
Light, bright light, stung her eyes for a minute and she squinted, trying to
see. Then she wished she hadn’t.

Again, the moment in the shuttle bay appeared just as the
Judge of Light had shown her. This time, Alex didn’t fire on Tory, didn’t kill
him as she had in the vision she’d seen. This time, Darius fired on her. She
felt the impact, the stunned, shattered expression on Tory’s face, the cold
hand of death. The vision shifted and she had a view of Teran Two, desolate and
empty, dead bodies everywhere. She had a vision of Teran Four burning and
destroyed, bodies littering the streets. A vision of Teran One, her home,
people screaming, human beings changed into flesh-eating monsters, explosions
and destruction everywhere. The wails of the dying screeched through her mind
and she clasped her hands over her ears.

She saw Ardasia empty of life, the great Olani Falls fouled
by dead flesh. Tears streamed down her face and she gasped for breath. So much
death and destruction.

Arms wrapped around her and she pressed her face against the
solid wall of Tory’s chest. He held her close and her hands clutched at him to
hang on, to stop the screaming in her head.

The visions were gone.

She lifted her gaze and stared into Tory’s face, his brow
wrinkled with worry. “I can’t feel you anymore.” It was like a piece of her
missing.

“The bridge is temporary, held by Kera’s connection to us.
She’s passed on the vision.”

“How do we stop it? We have to stop it.” Her voice rose,
panic bubbling in her stomach.

“I don’t know,” Tory said.

Kera broke in, her features tight and her color drained.
“There are several fulcrums on which the future hinges.” Her gaze met Alex’s.
“Like the vision of the hangar that the Judge of Light showed you, the future
can be shifted and changed.”

“It’s that moment in the shuttle bay that changes
everything,” Alex said. In the first vision, Darius had killed Tory after she
stunned him. In this vision, Darius killed her. “Why was that moment so important?”

Kera’s gaze focused on Alex. “The outcome from your death or
Tory’s death meant the end of Teran One, possibly the end of all the Teran
planets. The vision you saw now is only possible if one of you dies.”

Tesia, who had said nothing since they entered Kera’s home,
asked, “What exactly did you see?”

Jezar met her gaze. “Would you like to see it?”

A wary expression shuttered Tesia’s eyes. “How?”

“I can share it.” His tone revealed nothing, but Alex caught
something between them she couldn’t grasp. She shot a glance at Tory, who
shrugged.

Tesia’s lips tightened. “I don’t like it.”

The way Jezar’s lids drooped over his eyes seemed to show he
was offended by Tesia’s doubt. “Kera has expended too much energy to create
another bridge. It is better if I do it.”

The engineer took a deep breath and nodded. Jezar’s fingers
brushed Tesia’s neck and the woman stiffened, her eyes closed. A few minutes
later, she jerked away from his touch and turned her back.