The Law of Nines

20

ALEX PULLED THE PHONE out of his pocket. “I’d better call the police.”

With his thumb he flipped it open. Jax snatched his wrist before he could dial. She used the tip of the bloody knife in her other hand to flip the phone closed.

“You’re not going to alert anyone. The last thing we need is the authorities giving us trouble. We already have enough trouble. We need to get out of here, and we need to get out now.”

He tried not to take too deep a breath, because the smell of blood was gagging him. “But the body is going to be found sooner or later. When it is, the police are going to think that I murdered her. I’ve got her blood all over me.”

With a finger and thumb, as if to prove his point, he lifted his blood-soaked shirt away from his body for her to see. He wanted the sodden shirt off of him. He needed to change it. He needed a shower.

“If I run it will only make me look guilty. Attractive women who end up dead are usually killed by their husband or some other man in their life. The police will naturally think that I murdered her.”

Jax glanced down at the body. “Did you really think she was attractive?”

“Yes — no—” Alex raked his fingers back through his hair. “Yes, she was obviously attractive, but no, I wasn’t attracted to her.”

“Calm down, Alex.”

As he gathered his thoughts he realized that she was right. Calling the police would be a problem. What was he going to tell them? How could he possibly explain it?

“How in the world are we going to get rid of her body — and not be found out?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Jax said.

“There’s blood everywhere!” He swung his arm around at the room. “You can’t possibly clean up all this mess. The police have ways of finding even the tiniest speck of blood. They have technology that makes blood glow in the dark so that they’ll still find the tiniest specks of blood that you miss no matter how well you clean it up.”

“They’re not going to find any blood, even with their technology.”

Alex didn’t think that she grasped how good technology could be or the way it was going to look to the police. He had dated Bethany. People had seen them together. She had been killed in his bedroom. She was naked. What else were the police going to think? He certainly couldn’t tell them the truth, and lying would only get him in deeper trouble.

“Jax, they will find traces of blood, and then what am I going to tell them? That she was from another world? That she wanted to have sex with me so that I would get her pregnant with my Rahl heir and then she was going to kill me? They’ll never believe me. I’d be lucky if they thought I was crazy, but they won’t. They’ll think I murdered her.”

Jax gripped his arm. “Calm down, Alex. Let me handle it. I know what I’m doing.”

“Let you handle it? In five minutes you’re liable to vanish again.” How could he tell her how much he feared being locked up? “You’ll be gone again and I’ll be left here alone to handle it.”

“Not this time,” she said in a somewhat haunted voice.

Alex looked up. “What do you mean?”

She gazed into his eyes for a long moment. “If I hadn’t gotten here in time you would have been lost.”

“Lost? You mean I would have been killed when she was finished?”

“Yes. I had to get here as fast as possible. I wasn’t able to take certain. . precautions.”

“Precautions?”

“I had to forgo the procedures I used before.”

“What procedures?”

“I didn’t have time to establish a lifeline this time.”

“A lifeline. .” Alex paused a moment. “Do you mean that you can’t get back to your world?”

Her gaze broke away. “Not for now.”

He suddenly realized the magnitude of what she had done in order to save his life. His worry about everything else evaporated in his sudden concern for her. “When will you be able to get back to your home?”

“You let me worry about that. For now I’m stuck here.”

“For how long?”

“Maybe a day or two.”

“But maybe longer?”

She swallowed. “Maybe forever.”

The lightning died out again, plunging the room into gloom lit only by the faint glow of streetlights, but it was enough to see the worry in her eyes.

“It’s all right, Jax. You won’t be alone. I’ll help you.”

She gestured with her knife to the still body on the floor. When lightning crackled again a flickering rectangle of light coming in the window fell across the curve of Bethany’s naked hip. “Yes, I can see that you have everything well in hand.”

Despite everything, Alex was able to smile just a little.

“Do you think your friends will send anyone to help you?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Because right now I’m the only one able to undertake such a journey. We’re on our own.”

He let out a deep breath. “Jax, I need you to know how sorry I am for the way I treated you the last time.” He discarded the speech, the excuses, that he’d rehearsed in his mind a few hundred times. “You came to help me and I didn’t listen. I didn’t mean to belittle what you and others have done. I just didn’t understand. It was so hard to—”

She lifted a hand to keep him from going on. “When I went back the last time I told people about some of the things I saw here, some of the technology I saw. They reacted much the same way as you. They didn’t believe me, didn’t believe that I had succeeded in coming to this world. Many of them thought I was making it up to cover failure.

“It made me realize just how hard it had to be for you. I suspect that were the situation reversed and were it you who had come to my world instead, I wouldn’t have believed you, either.

“For now let’s both try to be a little more understanding of the gulf between us. We need to help each other if we’re to survive what is coming.”

Alex didn’t know what was coming, but he nodded. It felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, a weight that he’d been carrying since she’d left the last time.

Still, it was profoundly difficult to get his mind around the idea that this woman had actually come from another world.

“Where is this world of yours? Your home? Is it across the universe? In another universe? Through some wormhole in space that allows you to step out of your world and into mine?”

“I can only tell you that the place I come from is on the other side of darkness, on the other side of nothing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We don’t either.” She lifted a hand in a helpless gesture and then let it drop to her side. “There’s a lot I can’t explain. All I know for sure is that they are very different places, but at the same time they are very much the same. Right now, though, that’s not our problem. Right now, our problem is that if we’re going to find answers we first of all need to stay alive and to do that we need to get out of here.”

Alex nodded. “What are we going to do with Bethany’s body?”

“Send her back to my world,” Jax said as she squatted down beside the dead woman.

When next the lightning flashed Alex was shocked to see Jax using the tip of her knife to cut strange symbols in Bethany’s forehead. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sending her back to my world.”

“But before you said this is a world without magic. How do you expect to do such a thing if there’s no magic here?”

“She came here with a lifeline, the same as I did the two previous times. I’m merely activating it.”

He gestured to the bed. “Jax, there’s blood everywhere — it’s all over me. Even if you get rid of Bethany’s body, her blood is still going to be everywhere just waiting to be discovered.”

Working at the grisly task, Jax spoke without looking up. “The blood is hers and not from this world. It will return with her.” She looked up and grinned. “I wish I could be there to see their faces when I send their queen back to them like this.”

As lightning flashed, the room lit for a moment in its harsh glare only to plunge back into shadows as a cracking boom of thunder shook the house. Outside, branches clattered together in the wind. Rain beat steadily against the windows.

Jax swiftly cut two more mysterious symbols. Despite Bethany being dead, blood oozed from the strange network of lines. Alex couldn’t help taking in the design with an artistic eye, seeing the sense of movement in the lines’ composition.

“There,” Jax said to herself as she stood.

“There what?” In the harsh illumination of another flash of lightning he peered down at the dead woman. “What’s supposed to happen?”

Bethany might have been beautiful in life, but in death, with the way the wound across her neck gaped open, she was grotesque. The sight turned his stomach. In the next flash of lightning he noticed a stab wound in her lower back. Jax’s blade had been bloody when he’d first seen it. It dawned on him that she must have stabbed Bethany first to disable her.

As Jax stood, the flickers of lightning died out and the room again went dark. Rain thrumming against the window made the darkness feel altogether creepy.

When the lightning crackled again, there was nothing at their feet. No body, no blood.

Alex blinked in surprise and disbelief. Bethany was gone.

Just. . gone.

“There,” Jax said. “Feel better?”

“How did you do that?” he asked in shock, pointing at the empty place on the floor.

“I told you. I activated her lifeline to pull her back.”

Unable to believe his own eyes, Alex backed up until he bumped into the bed. “No, I mean, really. How did you do that?”

He turned and in the next flash of lightning saw that the sheets were pristine white. There was no blood. Not a speck. He looked down at himself, then ran his hand over his clean shirt. There was no blood on it.

It was as if Bethany had never been there.

Jax leaned in. “Are you all right?”

Alex nodded dumbly. “It’s impossible, but I saw it.”

“I’ve told you every word true, Alexander.”

He could only nod.

She let out a sigh. “This must all be hard for you, Alex. Later on maybe I can help you understand it better, but right now we have to get out of here.” She cast him a suspicious look. “By the way, what happened to that fellow out in the other room, out near the door?”

“What—” Alex remembered then. “Oh, him. I broke his neck.”

“Really?” Jax arched an eyebrow. “Well done, Alex. Well done.”

“There were two. After I broke his neck the other one tied me to the bed. Then Bethany sent him out to wait until she was finished with me. He’ll be out there in the rain somewhere, waiting.”

Jax looked unconcerned. “I already took him out and sent him back. I need to send back the one you killed; then we can get out of here.”

“Well, if the threat has been removed, maybe we don’t—”

She gripped his arm. “Alex, we need to get out of here.”

“You think Bethany’s people might send others after us?”

“That, too.”

He wondered what she meant. “How long will we have to be gone?”

She gave him a heated look, then relented a little, her expression softening. “Alex, you need to listen to me.

“Dangerous people have been coming here, to this world, for some time now. While I know some of what’s going on, I’m in the dark about much of it. I don’t think, though, that they’re coming here for a holiday.

“Many innocent people have already died. This is a matter of survival for us. A matter of life and death.

“But that’s my world, not yours. You enjoy peace here in your world. You have your own life. We believe that it’s each person’s right to choose to live their own life as they see fit. You have no obligation to help us.

“But if that’s your choice then please tell me now. I don’t have any time to waste.

“Someone from my world killed your grandfather and tried to kill you tonight. Your family has probably long been involved, possibly even been a target, though they’ve been unaware of it. Prophecy from my world suggests that you’re involved in this. The Law of Nines confirms it.

“You can choose to ignore my warning. You can choose not to believe that prophecy from my world applies to you. You can choose to do nothing and see what will happen, to stay out of it and just worry about keeping yourself safe.

“You are free to run and hide, if you so wish.

“But when they come after you, and I believe they will, you will have to face it alone. I can’t wait for you. I won’t.

“You have to make a choice, not because I say so, but because of the things that are happening. No matter what you choose to do, nothing is ever going to be the same — not for you, not for me.

“I will respect whatever choice you make, Alexander, but I will not come back for you again. You will be on your own.

“If you choose to come with me, then you must understand that we’re fighting people who don’t belong in this world, and those people are killers. Make no mistake, if you choose to come with me, then you are choosing to fight them. The man you killed tonight will likely not be the last.”

“But maybe we could get help, get the authorities to understand and to help us—”

“No. Their involvement would only end up costing more lives. Remember the two officers who detained those men when I first came here? Those officers ended up with their necks broken. If we call authorities to help us, those two will hardly be the last. I don’t know who is here from my world, or even if some from your world might be involved.”

He hadn’t even considered that. “You think people in this world might be cooperating with those who have come here?”

“We can’t ignore the possibility. Evil people, and those willing to help them, exist everywhere. We can’t risk being betrayed. Our only safety lies in no one knowing about us.

“The authorities in this world wouldn’t believe that there are people from another world among them. I don’t have the time to try to convince them, and besides, I don’t have any way to do so. I can’t do magic here. I’ve already used precious time convincing you.”

“But maybe I could help convince people—”

“No one will believe you. You have insanity in your family. They will assume you’re crazy, too.”

Alex knew that she was right. How many times had he questioned his own sanity since first meeting Jax?

“Your grandfather was one who knew that sometimes the best way to fight is a small covert force, not a big battle involving a lot of men.”

“How do you know that?”

“We learned a little about him, that long ago he served with such shadow forces. Did he tell you some of it?”

Alex nodded. He stood in the darkness for a time listening to the storm rage all around, thinking about Ben’s lessons.

“And if I choose to come with you, what then?” he asked.

“If you come with me you might have to face dangers I can’t begin to guess. In my world I would know what to expect, but in this world I don’t. We will have no help. Whatever comes we will be facing it alone. We very well might die.”

“You make it sound pretty hopeless.”

“I can promise you only one thing,” she said with grim intensity. “If you come with me I will protect you with my life.”

Alex blinked in surprise. “Why would you do that?”

“This is not the time to get into it, but know that I will lay down my life before yours is lost.”

She had already saved his life. Her solemn oath seemed like a portent of some grim future lurking in the darkness waiting to envelop him.

“I could really use your help to try to figure this out,” she finally said, “but I have to know that if you come with me you won’t be a liability. A lot of people, a lot of lives, are depending on me. I won’t risk my life lugging along dead weight. I need to know that if you come with me I can count on you.”

He had protected her life the first time he’d seen her. He couldn’t imagine ever allowing harm to visit her.

“This may not be a choice you want to make, Alex, but it is the choice you face. We have spent too long here already. Are you coming with me or not?”

She leaned closer in the darkness. “Decide.”

Alex gazed into her eyes, feeling as if he could see into her soul. He had always had the vague feeling that he never really knew who he was. It had always seemed like he had been waiting for something. It seemed now like he had been waiting his whole life for this moment.

“I knew from the first instant I saw you tonight — when I saw that you had come back — that I’m in this with you. Something is going on, something I don’t understand, but something deadly. This involves me. Somehow we’ve been thrown together from worlds apart. I can’t turn away. I won’t. I’m in this.”

A small smile softened her expression. She reached out and gently grasped his arm, giving it a squeeze as if in sympathy for all the trouble that had found him, trouble she couldn’t shelter him from.

Her voice turned intimate and gentle. “Let’s go, then.”

“Wait a second,” he said as he hurriedly knelt down and threw the bedcovers back out of the way.

He reached under the bed, letting his fingers settle into the four tabs of the gun safe bolted to the floor. He pressed the proper sequence and the door popped open.

He reached in and pulled out the gun and all six spare magazines.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A Glock 17.”

Jax frowned. “A weapon made with technology?”

“Yes, technology that will help protect us.”

In the dark, he ran his index finger over the tab behind the ejection port, making sure that it was raised, indicating that a round was chambered. He always kept the gun loaded, but this was no time to find out otherwise.

“What makes the three dots glow?”

“Tritium. The sights are made with it so you can aim better in low light.”

“In my world I can make a substance that glows much like that.” He noticed that she paid close attention to the weapon. He recalled how well she handled a knife. This was a woman who knew the value of weapons in staying alive. He retrieved the molded polymer paddle holster and pushed it down over his waistband. When he holstered the gun, the retention lock clicked into place. He threw on a light jacket to hide the gun, then took several boxes of hollow-point ammunition from a drawer and put them in the jacket pockets along with the loaded magazines.

He retrieved all the cash he had in the safe and stuffed most of it in his pockets. He handed some to Jax. She looked at it as if she were seeing some otherworldly secret.

“It’s money,” he told her. “We’ll need money. You should have some on you just in case.”

Without questioning, she folded the cash and slipped it into a pocket at her waist.

“We’re going to need to get you some clothes.”

“I’m wearing clothes,” she said.

“Yes, but you kind of stand out in that black dress and cloak. If we’re trying not to be found, then I think it would be best for you not to stand out. We need to blend in, be invisible among people.”

She smiled. “Good thinking. Hurry, now. It would be bad if we were trapped here.”

The whole idea of people from another world chasing them seemed like some crazy waking nightmare to him. At the same time, it felt more real than anything in his life had ever felt.

“Do you know who is after us?” Alex asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Pirates.”