The P.J. Stone Gates Trilogy (#1-3) (95 page)

“President Bill Wexington has just signed a bill into office mandating the surrender of all shotguns and weapons of—” The young news anchor droned lackadaisically.

“What’s bothering you, my little Queen?” Khol asked softly as he slid onto the couch in our sitting area next to little Liam and myself.

I looked up at him and realized I had been scowling while watching the news. I reached for the remote and fumbled with it. “I don’t even know why I’m watching this crap.”

Khol steadied my hand and studied my face. “Talk to me.”

I huffed an exasperated sigh. “Nothing has changed. Doesn’t that bother anyone else? Doesn’t that bother you? I mean we removed the Riders and yet this world is still falling apart—why? If anything things seem like they’re getting worse.”

“Give it time.” Khol responded as he slid the remote from my hand and muted the T.V.

“Something’s still wrong, I can feel it.” There I’d finally said it.

“You worry too much.” Khol said as he ran his index finger over the crinkle in my forehead.

“Well duh! How can I not? This world is falling apart! The humans are still destroying everything without the help of the Riders!”

“We’re safe, you’re friends are safe. Things will work themselves out.” Khol began, but I didn’t let him finish.

“You’re not listening to me! Something’s wrong!” It was then that little Liam started to cry. “Oh, I’m sorry little Li-Li..” I murmured as I rocked him in my arms. “I didn’t mean to upset you. No I didn’t.” I cooed in my best baby friendly voice.

“We’ve done all we can do.” Khol’s large warm hand cupped the side of my face and forced me to look up at him.

I gnawed on my bottom lip as I met his illuminated green eyes. “I’m missing something. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

It was then that Khol glanced over my shoulder at the T.V. and he tensed. “What—” He cleared his throat and dropped his hand from me. “I’ll be back.” He disappeared before I had a chance to question him.

I set Liam down on the baby swing by the couch and picked up the remote again. I unmuted and rewound the latest news story for a clue as to what had made Khol suddenly tense up and pull a disappearing act. I listened to the same news anchor’s voice as a picture of plane wreckage appeared in the top left hand of the screen. “The hijackers seemed to have picked the planes at random. DL Flight 632 from Paris to Pittsburgh being one of—” White noise stole away the rest of what the anchor was saying. Jenna and Jeremy were scheduled to return today from their Paris honeymoon. They had booked a non-stop flight from Paris to Pittsburgh where they were going to have Khol bring them back to his lair from PIT. Jenna said the flight was half the fun because she wanted to try and become a member of the Mile High Club with Jeremy. Surely there was more than one non-stop flight from Paris to Pittsburgh. Right?

“Oh my God! Khol!” I cried out. “Khol!”

He appeared before me and before I could ask him anything his face told me everything I needed to know. It was if someone had reached into my chest and fisted my heart. It hurt to breath. “Nooo!” I wailed as I dropped to my knees. “Not Jenna! I can’t lose her too!” I clawed at the carpet. This had to be nightmare, or a premonition that was completely preventable. Jenna couldn’t be dead. She was like my sister … the last family I had left besides Khol and Liam. I just couldn’t lose her. Sure I would miss Jeremy, too, if something happened to him but Jenna—losing Jenna would crush me.

“Khol, please! There has to be … something … just something.” My mind had gone into hyper-drive running in circles, trying to find a solution but nothing was coming to me. “I just—nooo!” I screeched. “Tell me how to save her!” I gasped for air but it all seemed to have been sucked out of the room. My vision danced with specks of light as I struggled to think of a plan.

“It’s too late—”

I didn’t hear the rest of what Khol said, my Queenly powers had obviously heard my plea and were trying to find a solution to my problem. Thousands of different choices, different paths, different endings began playing across my mind. I was seeing the past, the present, and the future all at once … and somehow I was understanding it. If there was a way to save Jenna … I would see it. But in the end, no matter how it played out, all roads led to Jenna’s death. “Nooo!” I heard myself scream as if I was outside of my own body. “No! I don’t accept it! There has to be a way!”

It was then that I heard Bryn’s voice whisper in my ear. “Break the stone in your bracelet. Now is the time Peej.”

I didn’t stop to question that I was hearing Bryn or what he was asking me, I just did what he said. I reached over and crushed the tiny purple stone embedded in my bracelet. The knowledge of the Rider’s origins flooded through my consciousness, along with the memory of my meeting with my grandfather. Power like I’d never experienced flooded my system and I screamed. The air shimmered around my body and a door appeared in front of me. It looked like an everyday run of the mill door but hovering right in the middle of the room. When it swung open Bryn stood there, his large frame illuminated by a bright white light shining from beyond the door. My first instinct was to run to him, and my feet hastened my choice.

My grandfather, at least an older version of what I’d first seen appeared in front of Bryn.

“Choose.” He said. “But quickly, my magic will only hold us here for so long.”

“You would still choose him over me?” Khol growled from behind me.

“No—you don’t understand!” I heard myself croak with desperation. “I still love him but—”

Khol grabbed my arm and swiveled me around to face him. His face was a mixture of torment and anger. “If you go through that door it’s over between us.”

“What?” I gasped. “You’re my Anam Cara—it can’t be—it won’t be over between us.”

“Clearly even that bond, the most sacred of them all for our kind, can’t keep you from him.” Khol spat the last word at me. He seemingly was unable to bring himself to utter Bryn’s name.

Something inside me called to me to go through that door. Inside, I instinctively knew were the answers … and the solutions. With how connected Khol was to my emotions, how was he so blinded just because of Bryn? “It’s not like that. Try to understand.” I grated.

“You need to hurry.” My grandfather said with urgency laced into his voice.

“Don’t leave me again.” Khol whispered, vulnerability like I’d never seen was plain for all to see on his face. “And what about Liam? Our son?”

I glanced back at my grandfather and Bryn, and then at Khol again. “I need to go. But I’ll be back. I’m not abandoning you—or our son. You’re my Anam Cara and I love you.”

“But not as much as him. I’ll never be able to claim your heart the way he has.” Khol stated with despair. “You’ll never love me as much as him.”

“We don’t have time for this.” My grandfather growled. “If you’re coming then we need to go.”

I realized in that moment that Khol was going to have to learn how to trust me. We might have bonded but he obviously didn’t trust my heart enough. If we had any hope for the future, then he’d have to let me go in order to keep me. “I’m coming back to you. Trust me.” I whispered as I turned to leave. Just before I stepped through the door I registered Khol’s shocked face, with baby Liam in his arms crying.

“Where are we?” I asked as I took in my surroundings. I stood in the center of a room with doors everywhere. It reminded me of something I saw once in an Alice in Wonderland movie. They were of all shapes, sizes, and colors and went on for as far as the eye could see.

“This is how Brown Dragons travel.” My grandfather explained with a bemused smile. “I’m not really sure why it looks this way, but I have a feeling that the first Brown Dragon had a hand in it and obviously had an odd sense of humor.”

“Peej.” Bryn rumbled as he took me into his arms in a much too tight bear hug. “I never thought I’d get hold you in my arms again.”

“Bryn,” I murmured into his massive chest. “I missed you so much.” And what about Khol? My mind whispered, causing me to pull away from Bryn.

Bryn eyed me with his dragon blue eyes, the sea storm color raging. “You truly have chosen him, haven’t you?”

My face crumpled up and I bit my lower lip. “Yes. And he’s the father of my son. What we had—you and me—it was so different than what I have with Khol. He doesn’t just make me want to be a better person like you did but he—” I paused while I tried to collect my thoughts. “He understands who I’ve become, the darkness inside of me, and he helps me embrace myself so it’s not crippling. He balances me and—and he’s exactly what I’ve always needed and wanted but was afraid to accept. I love him beyond reason—beyond—”

“Me.” Bryn finished for me.

“Yes.” I breathed. “And I’m sorry.”

Not wanting to talk about it any further I turned to face my grandfather again who had been standing silently while observing Bryn’s and my interaction. “Where am I and what’s happening? How is Bryn here?”

“We are beyond time here. So therefore Bryn is both alive and dead in this moment. His spirit is … more here. But only here.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “Here we go again.” I muttered to myself.

“Your powers helped to open the doors here in combination with mine. The key to all of this lies in your blood.”

“How do I bring Jenna back? I mean that’s what triggered all of this—her death, right?” I choked back a sob. Jenna was dead. Bryn was dead. My two best friends were both dead and I didn’t know where I stood with Khol at the moment.

Bryn’s voice held all the sadness in the world. “She can’t be brought back. It’s against the rules.”

Instead of looking at him I kept my focus on my grandfather. “Then why am I here? Why?” I beseeched.

“Time isn’t a straight line like most would like to think. It bends and curves and sometimes even forms a circle.”

“I don’t care!” Huge tears spilled out of my eyes and raced down my face. “I just want my friends back! My world back!”

“I’ll give you your choice then. A choice only you can make, and one that only can be carried out by you—only you because of your combined genetics and therefore it’s your destiny to make. Everything—absolutely everything that has happened since the first moment when the first White Dragon Queen created the Riders has been moving towards bringing you here—to this moment.”

“Just tell me!” I croaked. “This all needs to end—now.”

My grandfather waved his hand in the air and it shimmered like heat rising off of the pavement. “This will be your world if you do nothing.” Images of war-ravaged lands assaulted my eyes. My world destroyed. “Things cannot remain, the Riders have done their damage, and it cannot be undone.” I stood perfectly still in utter silence waiting for what he would say next. “Or you can change everything.”

“How? Tell me what I have to do!”

“You must make a choice. You—”

“You keep saying that! Just tell me!” I couldn’t take it anymore—I couldn’t wait one more moment to know what I needed to do.

“I have enough power, that combined with your blood, can send you … and only you, back into your consciousness to the time when you first saw the aliens emerging through the Gates—back to your first vision. But your memories will be wiped clean. You won’t remember any of this. It would be like a do over—as you might call it.”

I shook my head. “But things still might turn out the same—in fact they most likely will. I’ve looked at everything with my powers, nothing will work out the way I want —at least not for Jenna, and Bryn, and Jeremy and all of our families.”

“That leaves you with choice number two, your only other option.” I inhaled and waited, every nerve ending in my body anticipating what he would say. “I can send you and only you back to when the Riders first breeched the Gates. You can stop them from ever re-entering this world.”

“Yes! That’s what I’ll do! There really isn’t a choice there.”

“Oh, but there is.” My grandfather stared at me intently. “There will be consequences.”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Such as?”

“It will change everything. If the Riders never enter our world, then your mother will never send Drago to impregnate the mother that raised you. You will be the one who is murdered in your crib.”

“But why wouldn’t my birth mother see that and stop it? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Because magic always tries to balance things out. Only one of you can exist at a time. If you—if the you, you are now, travels to that version of time then the other you must die.”

“But then won’t I—” I clutched at my chest. “The me I am now will cease to exist? Like in Back to the Future or something?”

My grandfather smiled faintly. “I know of which human film you refer, it was quite entertaining, but completely fictional when it comes to how time works.” I nodded for him to continue. “The present you will live but you will be stuck in that time as you are now. Not a huge change.”

“That doesn’t seem so bad. All things considered.” I bit my lower lip as I thought about it.

“There’s more.” Of course there is. “Jenna will live. Bryn will live. Jeremy will live, along with all of your families, but none of them will ever know you.” My heart sped up with his words. “It will be as if you never existed—you and the Riders both. You are connected to them in some way—through your blood and without them—there will be no you in a sense. You will exist outside of that bubble of time, distinctly separate.”