The Man With No Name chuckled.
“Think I’m kidding?”
“Oh, I know you’re not, but, there’s no cause for any of—”
“Once I’m done with you, there won’t be any ‘cause’… period.”
The Man With No Name folded his arms, returning Black’s stare.
“Why and how… do you know so much about me? Who do you work for, and why do you interfere in everything I do?”
The Man With No Name shook his head. “You’re blind to the obvious. You can’t hide in shadows forever.”
“I would have found you eventually.”
“Don’t you get it? The dreams? The chase? All of it?”
Black returned to his desk, picked up his phone, and punched in a four-digit extension, still keeping his weapon trained on his guest — who turned to track him. “Get in here — now,” he said, and hung up.
“I guess we’ll see what makes you tick soon enough,” Black said.
The Man With No Name again sighed. “Perhaps.” The Man with No Name took in the office as he waited.
Within minutes, a four-man black-uniformed security detail rushed the office, armed with assault rifles and squawking radios. Two of the detail immediately and roughly restrained the Man With No Name.
“Is this really necessary?,” the Man With No Name asked, as he was jostled about.
“You tell me,” Black said. He came up alongside the Man With No Name and lowered his weapon; got right in the Man With No Name’s face.
“Take him away.”
3
Lizzie Gordon looked to the children who surrounded and tended to her. She was outside. It was night. The air was alive with the scent of pines and leaves riding wave upon wave of gentle breezes. She wasn’t in the Learjet any more, and though tired, wasn’t as exhausted as she thought she’d be. The torture, chase, and escape all seemed distant memories.
She’d returned to the amphitheater — and the children.
The pyre down in the center was lit, it’s glow muted, less than what it should be. There was just a hint of charcoal in the air. She studied it — and the surrounding area. Children were everywhere, and those attending to her were busily washing and cleaning her wounds.
Wounds?
“There’s been an accident,” a little red-headed girl with freckles said to Lizzie.
“Is everybody all right?” Lizzie asked.
“The pilots died… but are with us, now, and are okay,” said a dark-haired boy.
“Travis? The President?”
“They’re over there,” the boy answered, pointed, “also being attended to.”
Lizzie saw them, down just a little way from where she sat, on the cut granite steps.
“I don’t understand… what… what happened? Why are we — how—”
“Oh, he shot at the jet as you took off,” said a girl. “The evil man. The pilots did their best.”
“I need to know,” Lizzie said, reaching out to the girl, “who are you? Why are you always around? How come I can never figure out—”
“You’re our mother, Mom,” a little brown-haired boy said, smiling.
“That can’t be. I can’t have kids, let alone thousands.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re still our mother. Children never forget their mother — even before they’re born.”
“I still don’t—”
“You will.”
“Who’s your father?”
The children smiled. “You know that, too, Mommy.”
They giggled.
“But, I don’t. Who’s your father? Tell me…”
“Mom, you know. You’ve always known. It’s Dad. Your husband.”
“Dammit, I don’t have a husband, not—”
The children surrounding her giggled. The ones attending to her just gave reassuring smiles, as they tidied up what they’d been doing, then moved away, parting to show another who’d been sitting on the steps beside her, unnoticed.
“Joe?”
Joe smiled to her.
“Is that really you?”
“Of course it’s me, honey — the real me, this time — but you know that, now, don’t you? Really know.”
Lizzie went to him, throwing her arms around him. “I’m so very, very sorry!”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he said, tightly hugging her back.
“But I should have been able to foresee your death! Prevented it!”
“You did everything I could have ever wanted or needed. It had nothing to do with your abilities, hon. Black was the cause. It had nothing to do with you.”
Lizzie pushed away.
“How could he have had anything to do with this? I only just—”
“Oh,” Joe casually waved it off, “that has nothing to do with it. He’d engineered my death. He hasn’t done it yet, but he will. And I agreed to it.”
“Why on earth would you ever agree to such a thing?”
“I know it’s a bit off center… but in another lifetime, I’d been… well, less than savory… took his life. This was my way of experiencing the other side of the coin, I suppose. I hold nothing against him, though I see how you would. I get it. Especially after what he’d just put you through.”
“You killed him?”
Joe nodded. “Yeah… but you tortured him. Not that what I did was any less than what you did. You may not remember it, but back around 20 A.D., you were a Roman soldier. You didn’t think much of Black even then. You tortured him for days, keeping him just barely alive throughout the entire ordeal. It was pretty gruesome.”
“What — why?”
“Because of what he’d just done to you.”
“That makes no—”
“—linear sense. Remember, honey, we’re in-between Time, now.”
“But why would I have done such a thing?”
“Don’t you remember how you cursed him while he tortured you with images of Melissa and me? That one thought spun up that Roman experience. Once you leave physical experience, Time has no meaning, and emotions pack quite the wallop as they careen through the nonphysical.”
Memories of her torture flooded back — her impassioned oath.
“Oh, my God—”
“Honey, no one’s perfect. It’s all a learning experience, and, hopefully, we know what not to do next time around.”
Lizzie sat, stunned.
“I thought… thought I was better than that.”
“You mean, you honestly never had any idea?”
“I’d always thought—”
“Your actions then were so horrendous to you, you blocked them out in this life. Understandable. Not to mention, they wouldn’t have made sense, since—”
“Since I hadn’t yet gone through my — that — current experience. I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. You’ve spent many other lives more than ‘making up’ for that one — not that you ever needed to. I’m not saying what Black is doing is anything to be ignored — he has to be stopped. We need to set him straight, end all this. But at least, now — maybe — you can understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s an angry soul, and if things are not corrected — and quickly — he’ll upset a lot more lives in ways that just don’t need to be, nor should be. There are other ways to grow, other ways that are much more preferable to his current approach. But he has to be stopped.”
“How are Travis and Jack?”
“They’re getting similar attention.”
“Will I ever see you again?”
“Of course you will! Don’t let your emotions get the best of you, honey. I’ve never really been separated from you. You know all those times you questioned whether or not the emotions you were feeling were yours — or mine? They were mine. I kept trying to reach you, to reassure you I was okay, but Black kept redirecting my efforts. Messing with you. But emotions are powerful things, and they always get through. Always. There’s a part of each other in each other. Forever. That can never
be blocked. You did good, hon.”
Lizzie teared up. Joe bear-hugged her.
“Now,” Joe said, wiping away tears from Lizzie’s face, “while you’re recovering, we’re going to take the time to clear up a few other things… set a few other… effects… into motion.”
“Like what?”
“Come along. The children and I will show you.”
Lizzie and Joe got to their feet, and, along with Jack and Travis, made their way down toward the center of the amphitheater where, clustered around the burning pyre, sat more children.
Waiting.
4
Victor Black watched in livid anger and hatred as the Union forces rammed into their lines.
He was there.
He didn’t have a name, but knew he was to finally meet — come face to face with his destiny.
Black shoved aside and slayed others in blue, cutting a swath to the one he knew he must meet on this battlefield. Black saw him — and recognized him — as the man removed his bayonet from one of his own South Carolina comrades. Images of another battlefield — on faraway soil — entered his mind. They wore armor, his opponent wearing that of the Roman army, while he wore barbarian leather. He was wounded, captured, and taken on a long march. Torture, and, finally, death were in his future at the hands of yet two others tied to this man…
Black shook the bewildering images from his mind, images that only further fueled his rage and again focused in on the man he was meant to meet and kill.
Kill!
Black’s frustration grew as he tried to get to his target.
There was much confusion, the fighting thick and furious. The noise deafening, the air charged with death, and choked with the smell of black powder and blood. Black tried to reload, but the fighting had become hand to hand, so Black jabbed and butted the enemy with his empty musket instead, used his elbows and knees and fists. Black saw his opponent-to-be still using his bayoneted rifle — when it was knocked from grip. He watched as this man deftly sidestepped the attack, then lunged for his attacker with bare hands, grabbing his opponent by the throat. Black watched him viciously throttle the man until his neck snapped. There was something about this man… an intensity that he knew would have been better used as an ally.
Sensing an opening, Black made his move and charged. His opponent quickly snatched up his rifle and turned toward him. A musket’s length apart, the two eyed each other.
Instant, unspoken recognition.
Before Black could react, his opponent in the Irish brigade broke free, having to react to another attacker from behind. The soldier jabbed his rifle rearward into his attacker’s stomach and quickly followed through with another jab to his attacker’s face, splitting open his head before he collapsed to the bloodied earth. The Yankee was now too far away to lunge after with his musket, so Black reached for one of his knives. He watched as his opponent also shot a hand to a scabbard, withdrawing his own blade. Black’s fingers fumbled across his body for…
Where was it?
Bodies rammed into him, and a pistol went off beside his head, sending an intense ringing through his skull. In the flash of an instant, Black’s opponent whipped his blade at him. Twisting his body, Black tried to deflect the blade with his musket, but failed, and the blade buried itself into his chest. Black steadied himself, grunted, and flung himself forward, his musket held out before him like a pike. Black felt the knife grind into bone, but before he could make contact with his opponent, another Union soldier got in his way and Black’s musket ended up hitting and collapsing that man before he could gain ground on his intended victim.
Continually jostled, Black staggered in a painful haze, ears ringing, fumbled for the knife in his chest. Tore it free. Holding the knife out before him, he stared at it. A blade
(knives…)
fresh from his attacker’s own hand. It felt familiar, somehow right…
(knives)
Blinking from dripping sweat and beginning to gray out, Black looked up just in time to see the pointy end of a Springfield rifle’s bayonet intently forced neatly into his side. As the blade was twisted within him, Black lost consciousness and began the long spiral toward…
Jerking awake, Black found himself sitting at a desk.
“Goddamn.” He clutched at his side, grunting in pain and bowed forward. “Damn it.”
He was alone.
He straightened up, trying to loosen his shoulder and side from the still excruciating pain. These slippages in time had become more and more frequent and annoying. He had to… hadn’t he been on his way to interrogate someone? Someone he’d captured?
The time warps were really messing with his head.
Who? Who’d he captured?
He stared blankly into the darkness of his office.
The Man With No Name.
Had he really captured him? The man from his nightmares? That mystery man who’d constantly tormented his waking and sleeping existences near his entire adult life? It seemed too good to be true—
Could he still be dreaming?
Yes… the man had actually walked into his office — and how he’d gotten through all his security was another matter — then simply…
Presented himself.
Offered himself up.
Just like that. Here I am, take me!
After all these years, why so easily give up? It was far too simple.
He had to be missing something.
But Black also had other pressing issues to which he had to attend — like where the hell had that Learjet gone? And after having just wiped out some of the best minds on the planet, there were going to be a lot of pissed off agencies out there.
Repercussions. Serious ones.
He’d have to get moving and find things out the old-fashioned way. There were few who could touch him, but if certain agencies decided they wanted him… it’d only be a matter of time.
Perhaps it was time to disappear. Change a few things and find that damned Learjet.
Things were supposed to get easier when you killed off your problems, goddammit.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
1
One way or the other, Victor Black mused, Lizzie Gordon had to go.
He no longer needed her, now that he had this… Man With No Name… and she knew too much about him. So, Victor Black decided, he would do what he was good at: he’d kill her before he’d ever met her. He needed to be rid of her; he knew she knew something she was somehow hiding from him, and she was somehow tied to this Man Without A Name without a doubt.
It was time to cut bait and bail.
Maybe now, with this Mystery Man in his custody (and why did that feel so strange?), he could continue his work without any further interference — start from a contradictory clean slate, as it were.
Victor Black locked his door, turned down the lights, and sat down behind his desk, focusing on his newest task:
Kill Elizabeth Gordon before ever meeting her.
2
On the morning of his death, Joe Gordon had awoken troubled.
He’d had a most disturbing dream, one in which his wonderful wife had come out to see him at the construction site (as she occasionally did), but had been killed in an industrial accident. An I-beam had swung out of control and struck her, killing her instantly. Joe wasn’t much into dreams (except for that one notable exception that’d predicted their meeting each other), in fact, rarely remembered anything about them, and if he did, usually ignored them. But this one was different. It involved his wife, had been nasty, and had been very, very, disturbingly real.
After lying in bed for several minutes, staring into the above-bed darkness of their bedroom, and wondering just where the hell he was — as in whether or not he was still dreaming — the dream eventually wore off, and he quietly slipped out from beneath the blankets and downstairs to make coffee and fetch the morning paper. As much as he’d tried to discount — even forget — the dream, as much as he tried to get into his normal m
orning routine before heading out for work, he just couldn’t shake the disturbing images.
Construction site.
Lizzie.
Kiss and talk.
Boom!
As Joe sat down to read the paper, the Metro section fell into his lap, and there, on the first page, in big, bold letters, was:
Woman Killed in Freak Industrial Accident
Scanning the article, his blood ran cold just as his Mr. Coffee began making its gurgling, clicking sounds in the kitchen.
A lady, a passer-by, had walked past an under-construction building, when a section of wall collapsed on her, because a worker on the other side had inadvertently swung his bucket loader into it. What the woman had been doing so close to a construction site was not clear.
Joe opened the Metro section for the rest of the article, but before he found it, his eyes had fallen upon an ad for a funeral parlor.
Schwartz Mortuary.
Shivering from another chill, he threw down the paper and went to the still brewing coffee. He liked his coffee—
Black.
He impatiently scolded the machine for not yet having completed its cycle, nor having yet filled the pot enough for him to pour. He paced the kitchen and grabbed at the spoon he’d laid out beside his coffee mug, but, instead, knocked it off the counter. Bending over to retrieve it, he stood back up — and rammed his head into an open cabinet door above, catching the door on its edge.
He cursed quietly to keep from waking Lizzie and rubbed his head at the point of impact, still uttering restrained expletives. Growling, he quietly slammed shut the cabinet door. As he rubbed at the wound, he looked up to the cabinet door.
He hadn’t remembered opening it.
Grinding his knuckles in and around the wound, the pain finally abated.
His coffee ready, Joe snatched the carafe from its warming station, spilling some as he poured it into his cup, then eagerly sipped it before replacing the carafe back into its nook.
Joe went to the La-Z-Boy to resume reading the paper, when his eyes landed on the words “eye beam.” Blinking, he looked back down and found he’d mentally combined the words “eye surgery” and “laser beam,” from a Lasik surgery article.
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