Cronin's Key III (8 page)

Alec
couldn’t help but wonder if they’d been buried ten thousand years
ago for a very good reason.

The nine
stones, intermittently spaced in the main pit, lined the walls
where they’d been dug out. Each one was twenty feet high but
standing in a deliberate formation. Whomever, or whatever, had put
them there, did so with great purpose. And given their age and the
tools and skill available in that era, they did so very
well.

Archeologists were right to assume it was one of the most
critical finds in anthropology. These stones were
old
. They were the oldest known artifacts, not just in the
study of henges and stone monuments, but in human
history.

If it were humans that created them,
that is. And Alec didn’t think it was.

Each stone
must have weighed twenty tons, and the only living creatures able
to maneuver such a thing into a pit couldn’t have been human. Each
pillar was carved with animal engravings: depictions of dog-like
and lizard-like creatures.

Zoan.

Creatures that resembled wolves and
dragons etched into these stones could not have been a
coincidence.

Alec ran his
fingers along the cold etchings in the first stone, feeling the
rough and crumbling texture of the limestone. “If the portal opened
here, would it be right to assume this is where it has to be
reopened?”

Cronin shot him a look.
“Reopened?”

“
For them to leave,” Alec explained. “If this is the door
they came through, then would they not leave the same
way?”

Cronin looked thoughtful. “Possibly.
Or we can just kill them.”

Alec shrugged. “It would be helpful if
we knew how.”

“
True.” Cronin jumped down
into the pit and inspected another stone. “Can you see or feel
anything here?”

Alec closed his eyes and kept his hand
on the stone. He took a deep breath and searched the vast expanse
of his mind. “Nothing. Not even a hum of energy.”

Jodis inspected a stone at the mouth
of the pit. “From the research I could find, this pit was filled in
in the Stone Age.”

“
For good reason, I’d imagine,” Alec repeated his own
thought from earlier. “Whoever filled it in ten thousand years ago,
must not have wanted a repeat performance of whatever came out of
it.”

Eiji nodded.
“It is eerie, no?”

Cronin
agreed. “Yes. Göbekli Tepe translated means potbelly hill, so I can
only assume those who named it believed the creatures lived in and
escaped from the belly of the mountain.”

“
I’m half tempted to send
a quake through this place,” Alec said lowly. “To make sure nothing
else comes out of it. But I can’t if we need to send them back
through here.”

Then Alec
glanced at Eiji, something Cronin didn’t miss. “What was that?”
Cronin asked him. “He thought something that surprised
you.”

Alec nodded.
“Tell them, Eiji.”

“
It was just an errant thought,” Eiji said. “This is a hill
or a mound, yes? I couldn’t help but wonder if, ten thousand years
ago when it was built, if it was a pyramid.”

Cronin stared at him, then at Alec and
Jodis too. “There are no bodies buried here. It’s a portal, is it
not?”

“
Well yes,” Jodis agreed.
“But you recall when we fought Keket and we searched under the
Sphinx for the body of Ra, there was a circular room with stone
pillars. They even call it the Egyptian Circular
Temple.”

“
And under Mount Li where
we met Genghis Khan,” Eiji added. “What was he standing
on?”

“
A stone platform,” Cronin answered. “A
circular
stone platform.”

“
What do the stone circles mean?” Alec asked. “I became a
vampire in a stone circle. It gave the energy needed, the power,
along with the elements of wood, fire, water, metal, the sun, and
the moon. All of those things combined is what it took for me to
change.”

“
Wait,” Cronin said. “How
many other circle pits are believed to be at this site?”

“
Nine,” Jodis said. “There
are nine smaller circular pits.”

Cronin smiled. “An orthocentric
system.”

“
A what?” Alec blinked. He could see a network of geometry
in Cronin’s mind, a triangle and nine circles, all turning within
each other, sliding and rotating, yet keeping the same space. “What
the hell is that? I might have an untold depth of knowledge and use
of many languages, but even so, I cannot speak
Pythagorian.”

Jodis smiled
at him. “A nine-point circle can be constructed for any given
triangle. It is named so because it passes through nine significant
concyclic points defined from the triangle: the foot of each
altitude, the midpoint of each side of the triangle, and the
midpoint of the line segment from each vertex of the triangle to
the orthocenter.”

Alec blinked again. He could see the
diagrams in his mind, the mathematical equations that directed the
conclusions, but what it meant to him, he had no clue. “Yep, still
got nothing.”

Jodis
tried again.
“The theory is that the circle which passes through the feet of the
altitudes of a triangle is tangent to all four circles, which in
turn are tangent to the three sides of the triangle, giving nine
points.”

Alec stared at her, then looked at
Eiji and Cronin. “Okay, Jodis is speaking in tongues.”

Eiji laughed, but Cronin simplified the nine point circle
thing.
Thank
God
. “Each circle
circumference has nine points which, given geometrical and
mathematical methods, form a triangle.”

“
Okaaaaay,” Alec said cautiously.

“
The nine points in the
circumference are not equal, like a pizza,” Eiji said with a smile.
“Imagine a pizza cut with uneven slices.”

Alec nodded.
That
he understood.
“Nine-point circles with pepperoni, that I understand.”

Eiji and Cronin laughed, and even Alec
laughed at his own joke. Jodis sighed at them, but turned around
and looked at the nine standing stones in the main pit. “There are
nine. I am certain if we could see a bird’s eye view of this area,
each stone would mark one of the nine points that made the
pyramidal mound we’re standing on.”

Cronin nodded. “It’s very
interesting.”

“
Yes,” Alec cried. “But
what does it mean?”

“
The source of power is what opened the portal, Alec,”
Cronin said. “The geometrical studies of how a nine-point circle
related to a triangle was only discovered by mankind in the
nineteenth century. This”—he waved his hand around the dirt
pit—“was built using that exact theorem over ten thousand years
ago.”

Alec took a
deep breath as he realized what this meant. “So, twelve thousand
years ago, someone or some
thing
, was building a geometrical
energy source to create portals for strange creatures to
use?”

Cronin gave a hard nod.
“Yes.”

Alec ran his hand through
his hair. “Willem said these Zoan creatures must be old for them to
use the oldest portal. But twelve thousand years…. How the hell can
we beat something that has ten millennia of intelligence on
us?”

No one
answered.

Alec sighed.
“All geometry and talk of energy sources to open portals aside,” he
said, “the bottom line is, if
they’ve been killed before, we can kill them again. We need
to find out how.”

Eiji clapped his hands together and did a weird kind of
dance. “Yes! And
we have
ourselves another mystery to solve.”

“
Settle down Scooby Doo,” Alec deadpanned. “This one kinda
feels bigger than the others.”

Alec could see in Eiji’s mind that he had no idea who
Scooby Doo was, but he
still
smiled. “I seem to recall you saying the same thing last
time.”

Cronin firmly put both arms around Alec and a growly-purr
rumbled in his chest.
“If no
one objects, I’d like some more time alone with Alec.”

Of course no one
did,
though Eiji rolled his eyes.

“
Alec, can you leap them back to New York?” Cronin
asked.

“
Of course.”

Alec saw flashes of Cronin’s intentions in his
mind
, and with a chuckle, he
waggled his eyebrows to Eiji, and they disappeared.

* * * *

Alec found himself on his back in a strange, plush
hotel
bed with Cronin lying
over him, nestled between his legs. It was an executive suite of
some fancy hotel that wasn’t in use. The doors were locked; the
voices he heard beyond them were speaking Italian.
“Venice?”

Cronin smiled down at him. “It is a beautiful
city.
”

“
Don’t you think we should
be back in New York, helping with research or
something?”

Cronin shook his head slowly and pushed Alec’s hair from
his forehead. “The talk of wars reminds me of what is important.
And that is you. It might be selfish and unfair to the others, but
I want time with you,
fear-cèile
.”

My husband
.

“
I love it when you call
me that,” Alec whispered, his heart too big for his chest.
“M’cridhe.”

“
My husband, my heart,”
Cronin repeated, the words barely a murmur. He leaned down and
kissed Alec then. His hands cradled Alec’s face and he moaned into
his mouth.

Not breaking the kiss, Alec wrapped his arms around him and
opened his legs
wider. Still
fully clothed, they held each other tight and made out like
desperate teenagers.

Using his empathic powers, Alec expanded the love and
desire he felt into Cronin. Cronin broke the kiss to gasp back a
breath, and Alec traced his fingertips
along his cheek. “That is how much I love
you.”

Cronin’s
whole body writhed as Alec’s words sank through to his bones, and
when he looked back down at Alec, his eyes were blackened pools of
desire. “Can I have you?” Cronin asked huskily. “I want to be
inside you.”

Using his ability to leap object
s or people to him, in his mind he sought out the half
bottle of lube from their bedside drawer and made it appear on the
bed beside them.

Cronin smiled, showing his fangs, which sent a jolt of
desire straight to Alec’s cock.
“I want you inside me.” Alec breathed the words. “Your cock
in my ass. Your teeth in my neck.”

Cronin’s eyes
bloomed
with want, and he kissed Alec harder this time. They were careful
with their clothes; things tended to rip to ribbons when Alec
didn’t concentrate on his new vampire strength. When they were
finally naked, Alec lay back on the bed, spread his legs, and
slowly stroked his cock.

Cronin’s nostrils flared.

I want you
,
Cronin
. Alec’s words wisped
through Cronin’s mind like sensual smoke.
Remind me that I am yours.

Cronin
crawled over the bed to be between Alec’s legs. He smeared lube
over his cock and over Alec’s entrance and aligned himself. He
leaned over Alec so he could kiss him, and Alec gripped his face so
he could see it in Cronin’s eyes as he pushed into him.

He saw every flicker of emotion in
Cronin’s eyes and in his mind. The sensations were so
intense and pure. Alec felt every sensation, every emotion,
two-fold—both Cronin’s and his own—and he fed it to Cronin so he
could feel it too.

It was so intoxicating. It was ten times better than the
sex they’d had when Alec was human
, a pleasure Alec couldn’t have even dreamed of. But it was
different now. They were so in tune with each other, made for each
other.

Alec cupped Cronin’s face as Cronin
thrust in and out of him, their eyes never closing, never blinking
until Alec craned his neck in invitation. Cronin licked Alec’s
throat before he scraped his fangs over the skin.

“
Cronin, please.” Alec moaned.
He wanted to be impaled at both ends, to be owned,
without doubt. He wanted to give himself completely. And the way
Cronin held him and pushed into him, it was like he was trying to
crawl inside him, trying to become one with him.

Cronin sank his teeth into Alec’s neck as he came deep
inside him. Cronin’s pleasure induced Alec’s
response and he followed at the same
time.

Cronin
licked the punctured skin on Alec’s neck and kissed up his jaw. He
put his hands to either side of Alec’s face, pushing his hair off
his forehead and softly kissed him as they simmered
down.

Eventually
Alec
rolled them over so Cronin was on his back, and he cleaned them up
a little. He kissed his chin, the hollow at his throat, and finally
the silver scar on his chest. “Thank you,” Alec whispered. “For
knowing what I need.”