The Law Of Nines Part 14

With his thumb he flipped it open. Jax s.n.a.t.c.hed his wrist before he could dial. She used the tip of the b.l.o.o.d.y 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 s.h.i.+rt away from his body for her to see. He wanted the sodden s.h.i.+rt 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 s.e.x 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 rehea.r.s.ed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.u.mped 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 s.h.i.+rt. 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.