Twisted: Brides of the Kindred 23 Read online

  “I see it. Heading there now,” Malik said grimly. He maneuvered the ship into position and they dropped neatly onto the designated landing area.

  “All right, now what?” Nikki murmured, looking around.

  “Now we get ready.” Malik rose from the controls. “Come on, we have a few things to bring with us.”

  Back in the living area of the ship—which was extensive and luxurious—he found a hidden panel located in the elaborately carved headboard of the plush bed. Pressing some of the carvings in a certain combination caused a small space to pop open. As Nikki watched, he reached inside and drew out several items.

  One was a silvery shard of milky-white crystal, about as long as her hand and shot through with rainbow colored veins in every imaginable shade of red, yellow, blue, green, purple, orange and every shade in between. The second was a tiny figurine that looked a little like a fertility goddess carved by an ancient tribe from some rough black stone.

  “Which one is the Shannom-rah?” she asked, looking at the two objects cradled in Malik’s big palm.

  “This one.” He handled the crystal shard carefully. “There are trillions of complete personalities encrypted into this one device— it’s priceless.”

  “Wow…”Nikki touched the shard carefully and noticed that its surface was extremely rough. “It looks so small to hold so much,” she said. “What kind of crystal is it? I mean, what kind of mineral is it made up of?”

  “It’s not a natural crystal at all—it was bio-engineered by the Jai’linm from a crystal on their home world that was already extremely porous. The secret to making it has been lost but according to my old mistress, despite the number of personalities already captured here, trillions more could fit.” He nodded at the crystal. “She even added her own personality to it—for posterity, she said,” he added dryly.

  “That’s amazing and also kind of creepy—to think that so many people are stored in one place.” Nikki shook her head.

  “Not really people—just a complete recording of their personalities,” Malik corrected her. “In fact, I believe that some of them might even be from Earth, your home world.”

  “Really?” Nikki eyed the crystal with even more surprise. “How?”

  “Remember you told me about people from your planet who claimed to have been taken by aliens?” Malik asked. “Well, according to my old Mistress, after they had recorded all the personalities of their own planet, the Jai’linm roamed far and wide searching for more to add to the Shannom-rah. And I believe they were supposed to have spent considerable time in your sector of space.”

  “Okay, that is too weird. I don’t want to think about it.” Nikki shuddered, thinking of the tales of alien abduction she had heard. “The idea of all those poor people actually being kidnapped and scanned or whatever and then put back down on Earth and nobody ever believing them about such a traumatic experience is just sad.”

  “No one believed them?” Malik frowned. “Why?”

  “Because before the Scourge and the Kindred came to Earth, we had never made contact with an extraterrestrial people,” Nikki explained. “We thought we were alone in the universe…boy, were we wrong.”

  “You certainly were,” Malik said dryly. “There are trillions of other species in the universe—though admittedly only a small percentage of them are sentient and only an even smaller percentage have developed space flight. But still, your people were never alone.”

  “We know that now.” Nikki pointed at the crude female figure with its pendulous breasts and full belly carved from the rough black rock. “So what’s this?”

  “This appears to be a dominance token—one carved by the ancestors of the original Yonnites,” Malik explained. “Many Mistresses carry them as a symbol of their culture and beliefs. So it won’t seem strange for you to bring it with you as Mistress Hellenix.”

  “What is it really, though?” Nikki asked in a low voice.

  “The device given to me by the Time Warden. This…this is going to change everything.” He handed the tiny figure reverently.

  “You said that before—but how?” Nikki asked.

  “It acts as a time-reverser,” Malik explained. “It will take me back ten years into the past, just before the Knower deployed its first attack and then act as an incendiary device that blows its main core and destroys it utterly by erasing its central code.” He frowned. “Of course this is going to cause a planet-wide crisis for a while since the Knower controlled all of the communications systems by that time. But it will prevent the gas attacks from happening and my people will live instead of being wiped out.”

  “But if you’re changing the past, that will also change the future,” Nikki pointed out. “What’s going to happen in the here and now? Will I suddenly find myself on an inhabited planet instead of an empty one? Where will you be?”

  “To be honest, I might be trapped in the past,” Malik admitted. “Or, what’s much more likely is that I will dissolve. My past self will remain, but he will have no memory of what happened—the Time Warden wasn’t completely clear on those details.”

  “He wasn’t? Don’t you think it’s kind of important what happens to you?” Nikki demanded.

  “Not as long as my people and my planet survive and are restored,” Malik said quietly. “But I don’t want you to worry about your fate, Nikki. According to the Time Warden, anyone who is with me during the moment the device is deployed will be placed back in their own timeline automatically.”

  “What does that mean, though?” Nikki asked. “Will I suddenly be back on Earth and nothing will have happened?”

  “Not exactly.” Malik frowned. “You’ll be back on the ship, I believe, but there will be a different slave with you.”

  “There will? I don’t understand? How will that work?” Nicole shook her head, frowning.

  “The way the Time Warden explained it to me, changing time at a particular place is like dropping a rock into a pond,” Malik said. “At the point of impact—in this case, Uriel Two—the ripples will be intense. They will affect every single person native to the planet. But as the ripples widen out, they make less and less of a splash.”

  “Okay.” Nikki nodded. “I’m with you so far.”

  She supposed that a few days ago she would have thought the things he was saying sounded like the plot of a science fiction movie. But so many strange things had happened to her in the past forty-eight hours—including being dragged across the universe and switching places with an alien dominatrix—that anything seemed possible.

  “So how will it affect anyone not native to Uriel Two?” she asked Malik.

  “Your own home planet, Earth, is far from here. So the time-reversal won’t affect you nearly as much,” he said. “You and Mistress Hellenix will still switch places because of the E’lo stones but a different slave will help you get back to your own world. The events of the past two days will still happen but I will be taken out of the equation completely.”

  “You will?” Nikki put a hand to her throat. “But that means…”

  “You and I…” Malik cleared his throat. “We will have never met, Nicole.” He took her hands in his. “I’m sorry—more sorry than I can say for that.”

  “Oh…” Nikki felt like someone had punched her in the gut. “Will…will I remember you?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He shook his head. “The Time Warden did allow for the possibility of time-echoes—shadow memories from the time-line which no longer exists—but only for the people most affected. I might remember you—if I even still exist. But you will almost certainly forget me completely—because you will have never met me.”

  “Oh.” Nikki felt like she was going to cry. Her throat was tight and her eyes stung. But she couldn’t cry—couldn’t put that guilt on him, she told herself. This should be a happy occasion for Malik—he was going to get his planet back and he was sacrificing everything—maybe even his own life—to do it. How incredibly selfish would it be if she told him she didn’t