Scott sighed. “There aren’t that many women in our time because of wars. It’s very sad. We don’t do relationships anymore the way that you do them here. A woman can have multiple permanent lovers if she so chooses.”
I couldn’t go there in my head right now. Maybe I’d care about specifics soon. But right now, I was still back in the ‘I could choose to go back with them and my mother didn’t remember she was from the future’ part. “How did you take her memory?”
“Well, we didn’t.” Matthew winced. “I mean, we’re only ten years older than you. When she did that, we were just in training. We couldn’t have taken her memory. It’s a pill they would have both taken. You can’t risk screwing up timelines. So the people who came back came back with the knowledge that they would never remember they’d done that. The whole purpose was to keep babies safe in safer times. Some people in this time, others in previous generations. There are some who are running around in the Renaissance.”
I put my head in my hands. I wished I could say this was just too much for me, but it wasn’t. When I was sixteen, I’d rushed home after encountering the masks, three men who should have frightened me but absolutely did not, and told my family about it. That year, my stepfather had thought I’d done drugs, but my mother had really been off for a while after I’d told my story. Stressed, anxious, crying all the time. I couldn’t figure out why beyond the fact that no one would believe me. It had gotten to where she avoided talking to me at all, and hadn’t visited me in my facility because she said she found the subject just too triggering.
Everyone was using that word about it—triggering. In my mother’s case at least, that would make sense. Maybe somewhere buried in her subconscious, she actually believed me.
I sunk down in my chair. “I wasn’t twenty when I found you, called you from the future or whatever. I was sixteen.”
“I know.” Robert grabbed a chair and pulled it closer to me. “That was wrong. I mean, I guess not wrong. You should have felt compelled by hearing the orb calling to you when you were twenty. Like a dog hears a whistle no one else could hear, you would have heard it, come to us, and we would have told you all of this.”
I swallowed. “But I came when I was sixteen.”
“And we weren’t really sure what to do.” Scott drummed his fingers on the table. “And it seems that things have gone very badly. The other thing is that our time hasn’t moved exactly like yours. For us, it’s been a matter of weeks.”
I got to my feet. “You want me to go back to this place where you don’t have animal products, people have to run away and hide in time to have children, and you have numbers instead of names?”
Matthew smirked. “Believe it or not, it’s getting better. Some people can’t wait to come with us—like it’s an adventure. And some people stay where they are.”
“People? Do you mean women?” I really wanted to understand what had happened here.
“No, some of the babies were male, who were born in whatever time they’re in.” Matthew finally sat down. He almost looked defeated. “And today, you can decide if you want to go with us, or if you want to go to that place where the people of this time have put you.”
Scott shot him a look I couldn’t decipher before he turned to me. “The thing is that we are attached to you. We’ve done this many times, and it hasn’t mattered to us, but for some reason, we are all concerned with you.”
“Concerned?” Matthew stared at the ceiling. “Come. She has to think. They always have to think. And who could blame them? It’s not like we’re inviting them to a utopia. Things are as bad where we live as they are here. Let’s go get her some food. Since I can’t cook.”
Scott perked up with that suggestion and jumped from his chair. “Is it true that New Orleans has wonderful food?”
“That is true. New Orleans has incredible food.” And yes, we should get some while I went and considered what they were saying. They wanted me to decide if I should come back to a place that my mother and father deliberately left, so that I could be safe? On that note, what was I supposed to do with my mother now?
My stepfather could go take a long walk off a short pier as far as I was concerned, but my mother was another matter. We were close at one point. I could distantly remember how it used to feel to laugh with her. She’d given up her whole life for me to come here. That made her a lot more selfless than I could possibly imagine. I’d never done a thing for someone else in my whole life that was that important.
“Can I bring my mother with me?”
Robert turned when I spoke those words. “I don’t think that’s ever happened. How does she seem when you bring us up? How does that go with her? We’ve never brought back a person who left. They forget about us. What would it do to them, S?”
Scott shook his head. “Could make a person really go nuts. That’s my professional opinion. Nuts.”
“Why do we bring you with us on these things?” Matthew laughed and reached for my hand before he stopped. We were practically out the door when it occurred to me there was a very big piece of information I still needed to know. “Why does it burn when you touch me?”
Matthew raised one eyebrow. “Does it?”
“Don’t be a jerk.” Scott pushed him. “You know it does. Is that how you flirt with her? It burns because there is part of you down on the cellular level that can feel that we are from another time. There are cellular changes that happen over time to a population. Three hundred years is a lot of years. There were plagues, radiation. Lots of things that happen between now and then. And you can feel it when I touch you. Or any of us touch you. It’s a weird thing. It will pass. If you were to come with us, in a week or so, you wouldn’t feel it anymore. It’s like some kind of sensitivity.”
I stared at him. “Are you a doctor? Is that why they ask you those questions?”
“No.” He winked. “But I’m a scientist. I am the time travel representative. We’re all off the grid. If the powers that be knew we were involved in this, they’d come and arrest us all. So…yeah. No, not a doctor of medicine. You have to know someone to do that.”
I let out a breath I’d been holding. “Are you three sure you want to go back? Are you sure you don’t want to stay here?”
“We can’t.” Robert sighed. “The orb, the masks that you touched to bring us here will drag us back in twenty-four hours. You can come with us or stay here, but not anything else, unfortunately.”
Twenty-four hours. Okay. So Halloween would end and November first would come. I had to make a decision before then. What was crazy was that I was actually considering this. Could I just leave everything and go with them to a time that was so bad, things here were actually better?
This was utter lunacy. But my whole life had felt like one strange occurrence after another.
I was still the same Chaney I’d been when I woke up this morning, but now there was this whole possibility in front of me that had never been there before. The future…
My mother had run from it. Why on Earth would I go back to it?
The sounds of the street greeted us again as the door opened. The party hadn’t lessened and wasn’t likely to until the sun came out the next morning. Still, I knew where we could all grab a hamburger, assuming they ate them.
I turned back toward Matthew. “Could we bring hamburgers with us to the future?”
His smile was huge, and then it faded. “You were kidding, right?”
I was. But now I was wondering if I should have been serious. “What would I be eating if I came with you?”
He touched my cheek, and it burned. “I don’t care if I shouldn’t make skin-to-skin contact with you. You know what it is now. I don’t have to hide it. I don’t know why you called us four years early, and I don’t know why the world punished you for doing so. I just know that as soon as I saw you, I was sure I was done spending my life evading authority. I want to bring you home, and I want to imagine a new future with you. Think about it. Nothing here sounds l
ike it has been all that great with you.”
Someone puked on the ground next to us, breaking the moment. Matthew jumped back, pulling me with him and moving us before anything else gross happened. I hated puke. It was a top ten yucky thing for me, and I was glad not to have it on my shoes.
Matthew rolled his eyes. “Some things are the same in every time. Drunk people puke on street corners.”
That was good to know.
I scurried along as quickly as I could, since we’d reached the drunk-people-were-puking portion of the night. But then abruptly stopped, turning to Matthew. “Did you say you’ve seen aliens?”
“I have, but what’s more interesting is you have seen them too. You just haven’t known it. They’re here in this time, checking us out. Hidden, so they look human. Can’t differentiate them right now. In our time, you can tell them apart because some very smart people developed an eye tool. There is an ongoing war. They come, it flares up, we beat them back. It leaves.”
I stared at him. They were battling aliens? My stomach turned. They wanted me to come to this place? Scott leaned against Matthew’s side. “Well done, genius. Next she’s going to wonder how she can be sure we’re not aliens since you just told her that in this time they look like humans.”
Well actually, my head hadn’t gotten there yet. But now that he’d said it, I had to give pause. “That’s a good point.”
Matthew shook his head. “Thanks, S.”
“Welcome.” He winked at me “Not aliens. They don’t like women, keep their ladies locked away and naked. I assure you. We do not.”
So they said. Robert put his hand on my shoulder. “You’ve had the instinct to trust us from the beginning. That’s because you were drawn to find us, early as it was. I don’t really understand why, and I don’t care. You did. It’s given us days with you that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. We don’t get that with other people we’ve brought or left. We get one day when they’re twenty. I’ve never wandered the streets of New Orleans looking for food before with anyone. You were a teenager, and you were braver than any of them have ever been.” He waved his hand. “We’re not aliens. Scott used to be on the front lines killing them for several years. It’s not pretty. And we’re so not convincing you that you should be joining us.”
We started walking again. “Are you supposed to convince me? Sell me on it? Do you get paid more if you bring me back with you?”
“No. It’s more like…I would like you to come back. I’d like you to live in a time that, while it is incredibly not perfect, no one would lock you away for speaking truth. Even if that truth sounds insane.”
Technically, they’d locked me away for being violent. The one time I had resisted being taken away. But I liked his speech. I was keeping that to myself.
I pointed past him. “Let’s get the food in there.”
Three
The hamburger was delicious until it wasn’t. I had to quit eating about halfway through. Food had become an issue for me with the medicines they had me on. I was either starving but couldn’t taste my food, or I couldn’t eat at all. I pushed it aside. The guys were eating heartedly.
I tried not to smile watching them. It was always uncomfortable for me if I was cognizant that people were watching me eat. “So no meat for you guys?”
Matthew took a long sip of his water. They’d all shaken their heads at the idea of carbonated beverages and didn’t drink when they were working. When he swallowed, he answered me. “It’s getting better. We started trading with another colony. We have more fabric, they have more meat. We traded. The colonies that don’t adhere to the authority of the empire are on their own. But we think it’s worth it. For example, you wouldn’t be here. They’d rather we live or die in housing complexes where more babies don’t make it than do. They take the babies from their parents. Anyway, you wouldn’t be living in the empire. Unless you wanted to. Other than coming back, you have self-determination in your life.”
I thought about this. Why was I so inclined to just go with them? “I can’t go anywhere without seeing my mom.”
Funny, I wouldn’t have had thought that earlier. But now that I knew she’d done this huge thing to guarantee me a life free from the stress that these guys wanted me to go back to, I had to see her again.
“Is that safe?” Scott asked me. “For you to go there. Aren’t we avoiding your stepfather?”
“If he’s looking for me, he’s probably not there.” I hoped I wasn’t being stupid about this. I wouldn’t go in if his car were in the driveway. Not to mention, it was getting quite late. My mother had probably been asleep for a long time. She was an “early to bed and still sleep in” kind of a person. My mom didn’t like being awake.
Robert rose, pushing aside his burger. “How do we get there?”
Were they done eating? “I’m not trying to rush you.”
“If I eat any more, I’ll spend the rest of the time here sick to my stomach.” Scott winked at me. “We’re fine. Don’t imagine we’re not well-fed. Although it wouldn’t have been our choice to give up meat, we’ve all been doing very well with vegetarian options. Where we live is very fertile land. We grow a lot of food.”
They just must not have cows. “Did the people you traded with give you animals or just the meat itself?”
I didn’t remember the last time I’d thought about the means of food. It was just always there in the supermarket. But I’d been locked away for a while. Whatever I used to think about I mostly just tried to get through my days without getting whacked in the head by someone having a triggering event around me. Margot, my roommate, lost touch with reality a lot. She was always fighting some battle. That meant I had to be careful and avoid featuring as an enemy she needed to kill.
The staff did their best to handle it, but it certainly did keep the days interesting.
“Both, actually. Some of our people are figuring things out. The trick is to stay small enough the empire doesn’t care what we do. So if we get too big, too successful, we’ll garner too much attention. We have to break apart to avoid that because we don’t have the interest in fighting them. Leaving the empire meant leaving their military.” Robert shot Scott a look, but I didn’t see any particular response from the other man. If he were bothered by what was said, he didn’t indicate it. “Matthew and I came to the colony early on in our lives, but Scott came later.”
He nodded and then winked at me again. “Much later.”
That was so interesting. Scott had always seemed the most jovial of all three. But they were telling me that he had a hard past of some kind. How people came to be who they were had always fascinated me.
“Chaney?” Matthew caught my attention. “Robert asked, and we do need to know, how do we get to your parents?”
I got to my feet, pushing away from the table. “We’re going to have to get on a streetcar.” A ride share would be better, but I had no phone to call one, and I didn’t know the likelihood that we’d be able to find a taxi on Halloween night. If I happened to see one, that was a different thing altogether.
Two men started to fight across the street, and Scott was quickly on his feet, but they bobbed and stumbled, and he eventually sat back in the chair. Their vigilance made me realize how we were sitting out where anyone could see us. I suddenly felt exposed.
Matthew watched me, his serious eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
My stomach roiled, and I swallowed hard. Someone with a noisemaker blew their horn a foot away, and I jumped. Everything was getting too bright. Too loud. But they’d asked me a question. “What did you say?”
Matthew glanced at Scott. “I asked how we get to your parents.”
Right. Actually, Robert had asked that question first, hadn’t he? I rubbed my hand over my forehead. God, I’d forgotten how hot it could be, even in the evening. The air was heavy with humidity, and sweat dripped down my back. The masks looked like cool cucumbers, though. Matthew’s gaze was positively glacial, while Robert, with that long, dar
k hair, was the epitome of at ease. I touched my hair, trying to swipe it behind my ear, but my fingers caught in the frizzy strands.
A trolley bell dinged, and I pointed. “The streetcars are that way. They go by my house.”
Robert waved down a waiter, slipped cash into his hand, and stood. “Take my hand.”
I didn’t even hesitate. I slid my palm over his and linked our fingers. Prickly tendrils of iciness kissed my skin, like I’d held an ice cube too long. “I’m not feeling well.”
Robert moved fast. He let go of my hand and slid his arm around my waist, taking most of my weight without making it obvious. To the rest of the world, I might look like a girl who’d had a little too much to drink and not one who was going on twelve hours without psychotropic medications.
“Just lean on me,” he whispered, his breath cool against my overheated skin. My face was flushed, hot, and my clothes stuck to me.
I walked out of the restaurant and down the street toward the streetcars. Scott walked in front of us, while Matthew moved next to me. Essentially, the three guys shielded me from anyone who might look at us a little too closely.
It was hard to focus, but somehow, I got us where we needed to go and we ended up standing in front of my house, staring at the wrought iron balconies. “It’s beautiful,” Scott said.
It was. It was a piece of history. People took tours and stopped in front of our house to take pictures of the vines creeping up the brick and the whitewashed scrolling ironwork. But inside it was ugly, because the family who lived there was ugly.
My mouth was so dry, it was hard to speak. “I just have to enter the code. Or else the alarm will go off.” It was hard to press the buttons when my fingers trembled.
A warm hand touched the small of my back. “You can do this.” I glanced over to find Matthew staring at me, the smallest of encouraging smiles on his lips. “When we’re inside, we’ll fix this.”
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 3