Love Beyond Time

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Love Beyond Time Page 5

by Rebecca Royce


  in upstate New York?

  Isabelle groaned again, glad that no one else was in

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  the car to see her acting helpless and whiney. There was no

  choice, she was simply going to have to change the tire

  herself. She knew how, her brother and her father had done

  it on more than one occasion and had made sure she knew

  how to do it before she ever was even allowed to practice

  driving but she carried, and paid for, her auto club card so

  she wouldn't have to do it. At least, she thought, I don't

  have to stand by the side of the road and wait for someone

  to come along.

  Pulling her sunglasses out of her dark and

  annoyingly frizzy hair she placed them on her face. Time to

  face the music. When this was over, she was really going to

  take a nice weekend in a spa somewhere.

  The air had gotten cooler outside but still not cold

  enough to require a jacket and she was relieved about that.

  She walked quickly to the trunk. The rain had held off too,

  she realized. See Isabelle, lots of things to be grateful for,

  she thought, trying to sound pleasant even though she was

  the only one listening to her internal dialogue. She'd taken

  two steps when she realized she hadn't put on her hazard

  lights.

  Quickly, she ran back to the driver side of the car

  and pushed her emergency button to turn them on. There

  was no incline on the road so she didn't have to worry

  about the car rolling around on the road or worse, over her.

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  Inwardly she tried to recite the instructions she had been

  given over and over again about hubcaps, lug nuts, and

  jacks.

  She grinned at her feeling of know-how and got

  down to the job of changing the tire. After a while, her

  mind began to wander. She tried to imagine being married

  and coming home to her husband at the end of the day to

  tell him about this incident and laugh about this story. He

  would be angry and upset about her cell phone not working

  and maybe he would suggest to her that, given the fact that

  she was hearing voices talking cryptically in her head, it

  was time they take a romantic vacation together somewhere

  quiet just the two of them. They would ask her mother to

  watch the kids for a week…

  Ah kids. She sighed deeply. To have kids, several of

  them she hoped, would mean that they were actually having

  sex and if she was having sex that would mean that she

  would have to be married to her 'dream man' because

  truthfully, and at thirty years old she had to admit to her

  own delusions, she really only wanted to have sex with the

  dark stranger who appeared in her dreams almost nightly.

  Technically, he wasn't a stranger—she knew him

  intimately on every possible level. They practically shared

  one brain between the two of them. She could read his

  thoughts and he cared for her as though she were the most

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  precious thing he had ever laid eyes on in his entire life.

  Without her, he wandered the world aimlessly. Her body

  had been made for his body. There was just one little

  problem—in her dreams she never learned his name. She

  could never bring herself to ask him what it was. It was like

  there was some sort of blockade that didn't allow her to

  know that. She figured she wasn't alone in this. He never

  asked her what she was called either. In dreamland, they

  already knew each other.

  Isabelle knew this was insane.

  All evidence to the contrary, she was a fully

  functioning adult who could stick two feet on the ground

  and walk while she chewed gum. She tried to date,

  unsuccessfully, since she was sixteen years old. High

  school had been one teenage disaster after another with the

  worst ending at her best friend's house in East Hampton

  where they had all gone after prom to celebrate being

  seniors.

  Her father had to drive hours in traffic to come and

  get her after she had literally pushed her prom date out of

  the window of the hotel room she'd stayed in when his

  inexperienced kisses had made her skin crawl with disgust.

  He hadn't taken her protests very well and before she had

  even known what she was doing, she had pushed him out of

  the window. The room hadn't been very far up and he

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  hadn't been injured, well not seriously anyway, but she had

  been so horrified by her own behavior that she'd had to

  leave the party.

  Where had her need for such violence come from?

  The little jerk had told everyone that he had scored that

  night and that she was lousy at it, which had only added to

  her mortification.

  In college, she dated a little bit. There had never

  been a problem meeting men who were interested in her,

  she seemed to be a particular type that attracted certain

  men. It helped that she'd never wanted to be a tiny-waisted

  plastic doll and didn't mind that some guys thought she was

  too curvy, or the fact that some men thought she wasn't

  curvy enough. But after college things had gone awry.

  She knew it was time to lose her virginity, most of

  her friends had, and she started to feel left out of some sort

  of sexually active club that she couldn't participate in.

  Things had not gone as she had hoped. She just couldn't

  seem to bear being touched by any of the guys, some of

  them very good looking, who she tried to be intimate with.

  Even counseling had not helped. No one could seem to find

  an underlying reason for her total lack of sexual response to

  any of the men she was involved with. It wasn't that she

  was interested in women, clearly she preferred men, and

  lately she'd been wondering if she was just a-sexual or if

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  something had happened to her as a child to make her feel

  this way.

  She had not told her counselors about her secret

  'dream man'. She wanted to but every time she thought to

  open up about it she found herself unwilling, or better put,

  unable, to share him with anyone. So she contented herself

  with good friends and the love she had with her family plus

  the pleasure she took from doing her work. But lately, it

  hadn't been enough. She wanted babies. She wanted his

  babies.

  But he was just some sort of fantasy she had made

  up to get her through her sexual issues and make her life

  bearable.

  Get up, Isabelle.

  She blew a hair strand out of her eyes. There was

  that voice again. Why was it telling her to get up? What

  was going on? Isabelle put down her bolts and glanced

  around. She was about halfway through changing her tire

  and if she hurried she was pretty sure
she could still beat

  the rain. The wind picked up again, matching her mood and

  making her feel even more nervous.

  There were no other cars around and to her right

  stood a dark, ominous-looking forest that brought to mind

  teenage horror movies where you just begged the heroine to

  stay out of the woods, no matter the danger. Biting hard on

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  her bottom lip, she realized suddenly how exposed she

  really was. Anyone could be watching her. Anyone could

  step out of the woods and grab her and she wouldn't be

  aware that it was happening until it was too late to protect

  herself.

  Obeying the internal voice that didn't sound like her

  own but that was clearly coming from inside her own head,

  she stood up and tried to scan the area around her. Nothing

  seemed amiss, however she couldn't see very well into the

  woods around her.

  Safety.

  No, she answered her unknown voice, that is not the

  word I would use to describe whatever is out there in those

  woods.

  In fact, the giant trees that stood before her blocking

  her view of the distance ahead brought out vividly all of the

  movies she shouldn't let herself watch at midnight.

  As if conjured from her imagination, a man stepped

  out of the woods in front of her. He was tall. That was the

  only impression Isabelle let herself take of the man as she

  took off running.

  She didn't know what drove her forward. He hadn't

  done anything threatening; maybe he had seen her and had

  wanted to help her change her tire. It didn't matter because

  she was running as if her life depended on it. To make

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  matters worse, he hadn't uttered a word to her but he chased

  after her and the faster she ran, the faster he did too.

  Could she outrun someone of that size? He was

  going to overtake her any second, she was sure of it and yet

  she couldn't give up. Her breaths came in short gasps and

  she cursed herself for not going to the gym more regularly.

  The forest was as dense as she'd earlier imagined

  and she had no idea where she was going except she felt

  she was being pushed in a certain direction. Where she

  would end up, she had no idea.

  Branches, leaves, rocks, and giant tree trucks laid

  out before her, snagging her shirt, cutting her face, and

  covering her in dirt as she sprinted—not caring that she was

  only going further and further into an unknown area. Her

  breath came in and out of her lungs quickly and her legs

  burned but she felt no compulsion to stop running.

  He's there. He's waiting for you. It's time. Keep

  running.

  She didn't know who this he was but he had to be

  better than whoever it was that silently chased her. So she

  sprinted and hoped that her strange internal voice wasn't as

  crazy as she was.

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  Chapter Three

  "Help!"

  A woman's shout dashed through the trees, drawing

  Kal's attention from internal speculation to a very real,

  present danger heading their way. "Please help me. There is

  some psychopath chasing me through the woods!" The

  woman rammed right into the stunned Kal and he struggled

  to keep her upright and keep his footing at the same time.

  His senses told him the second person had dropped

  back, he assumed, suddenly aware of the presence of the

  other people. What was going on? This was not what he

  had been prepared for. Fighting bad guys, yes, he had been

  ready to do that and had done before.

  Rescuing lost women being pursued by unknown

  stalkers, this was something very different. Careful what

  you wish for, he thought, remembering his earlier musings

  about damsels in distress.

  The other three men circled around him. They

  might not have had his powers but none of them were

  going to let this woman, whoever she was, get hurt by a

  potential threat. Kal took a second to examine the

  exhausted body he was currently keeping upright in his

  arms. She was dark haired and small in stature with legs

  that seemed to take up most of her body and curves in all

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  the right places. Her shirt had slid off of one shoulder,

  exposing a black bra strap underneath.

  Her hands, which clutched onto his arms, had the

  softest skin he had ever felt. It was the kind of softness you

  expected to find on babies, not grown women out in the

  woods who were also covered in mud and dirt. The eyes

  that looked up at him were crystal blue. Her face was

  stunning and there was simply no other way to describe it.

  The word seemed to have been invented to describe her.

  Her lips seemed to beg to be kissed, even covered in dirt as

  they currently were. More than any of that, Kal would

  swear an oath that he knew her from somewhere, although

  he knew he had not met her before.

  She belongs to you, and I leave her in your care,

  Kal.

  The thought came from nowhere and he quickly

  pushed it away. Kal had no time for anything else that

  could be construed as strange at that moment. She was not

  his, she was human and she was, at the very least, pushing

  every protective urge in his body. He had to be careful or

  he might start howling at the sky.

  "Whoever chased you has left."

  Whispering, the woman jerked when she answered,

  "How do you know?"

  "Yeah, Kal" Doug shrugged. "How do you know?"

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  "Didn't you guys hear him? He was making a

  racket." Over the years, Kal had become an excellent liar.

  He knew they'd never be able to tell now. "Anyway, that's

  not important. What is your name, kiddo?" Kal put on a

  smile. Women usually responded to his flirtations and at

  the very least it would distract his friends from the blunder

  he had just made in announcing the pursuer's departure.

  The dark-haired beauty stared up at him a second,

  trying to catch her breath. It was then Kal saw it in her

  eyes. She had recognized him too. In his arms, he felt her

  start to shake. After a moment, she pulled free of his

  embrace and he felt strangely bereft.

  Holding the woman had brought back a strange

  memory for Kal and he wasn't sure where it had come

  from. It felt like she had been stamped on his soul. His

  mind flashed back to a time he couldn't pinpoint, a time

  where he had been more aware of the sounds of voices than

  the faces of the people who were speaking. Two women

  and two men were having a conversation and to him they

  seemed deeply troubled.

  "I just don't think it's ever going to be safe; it was a

  mistake to leave the group. I don't know what we can
all

  hope to accomplish out here on our own." The female voice

  that was speaking was dear to him and gave him a sense of

  peace and wellbeing.

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  "I agree." A second female voice that he was less

  familiar with chimed in. "It's the children who are

  important now. Our time has ended. It's our own fault."

  Kal's eyes flew open and he caught the gaze of another

  baby looking back at him. In those eyes he could see his

  own hopes and fears echoed back at him, things no two

  babies should ever have known but the two of them, he and

  the female baby, were not normal infants and even if their

  parents were still unaware of how different their children

  were, the two babies staring at each other knew quite well.

  He could even remember the time before he was born,

  before he was conceived into his mother's body.

  They were old souls and they had been sent here for

  a reason. They had been born to fight a battle that raged

  since the beginning of time and so far they were losing it.

  Too small to tell the adults what they should be doing, they

  were left only to stare at one another in silence, aching for

  each other. She was his to care for in whatever plane of

  existence they found themselves in. They'd always been

  together.

  He knew that she needed him like he needed her. He

  was glad that their parents had all traveled together

  because to be without her would have been to truly know

  loneliness. Anything else he could abide but life without her

  would be unbearable.

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  "I'm Isabelle." She sounded cautious and it brought

  him back to the present, to the woods, and the sight of her

  crystal blue eyes staring at him. "Isabelle Listora. My car

  got a flat about two miles from here and when I pulled over

 

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