Timestorm: A Tempest Novel (The Tempest Trilogy)

by Julie Cross

  My arms went around her back, sliding her toward the edge of the countertop, pressing us together again. I rested my forehead against hers, catching my breath before speaking. “Like here inside the force field? Or here inside this room?”

  “This room.” She kissed me again, gripping my face and holding it tight like she had when she woke me up this morning. “Like they’re trying to get us to do exactly this. Maybe it’s a gas or the lighting?”

  I closed my eyes and sighed, raising my head to the ceiling, letting Holly kiss my neck so hard she would probably leave a dozen hickies and I didn’t care, not even a little. “The lighting is nice … really nice…”

  The haziness in my mind cleared a little and I held Holly’s head in place and leaned back to look at her. “Oh, I get what you’re saying now. But it’s not like the room has magical powers or that reproduction is even possible with our pants still on…”

  Her eyebrows slowly lifted like she was considering all the absurd possibilities. “Right. Keep our pants on. Easy enough.”

  I smiled at her before letting my eyes close again, leaning in to kiss her. But a loud bang on the door stopped our mouths from making contact again. We stared at each other for a whole three seconds and then both of us dove to the floor, Holly crawling under the desk to retrieve her tank top and me snatching my T-shirt from the ground and pulling it on inside out.

  Both of us were standing by the time the doorknob began twisting, but Holly was caught in her sweatshirt. I yanked the bottom of it and her head emerged, hair tangled around her face. The door opened, directing our attention that way.

  “Shit!” Holly said when our eyes fell on her white bra lying at our feet.

  I snatched it from the ground, trying to stuff it in my pocket, but Dad was already inside the room, looking us over carefully, eyes scanning us head to toe, pausing at the bra dangling from my left hand.

  “Are you gonna wear that?” he asked me.

  Holly started laughing right before me and then neither of us could stop. Eventually, I shoved her out the door and followed her, yelling to Dad that the room was all his.

  When we got outside, I handed Holly her bra and watched as she skillfully put it back on without taking anything off again.

  “I need to avoid him for a few hours,” I said. “Should we go practice shooting?”

  Holly’s laughter faded. “I’ll shoot, you watch, and then maybe we should give your hand-to-hand combat skills a test run.”

  Nerves fluttered in my stomach, thinking about the tremor in my hand that had yet to go away. “Okay, and then we’ll talk to Blake. I have a few questions for him.”

  “Me, too,” Holly said, heading in the direction of the lake.

  As I followed her, I couldn’t help but wonder, what the hell had just happened?

  DAY 13. MIDDAY

  “What were you doing?” Grayson asked.

  Blood gushed from my nose and down the back of my throat at such a heavy rate, I couldn’t speak at all. I sank onto the bed I’d spent way too many days and hours in. Courtney sat beside me and rubbed my back with one hand and held a towel under my nose with the other.

  “He was just…” Holly stuttered from the other side of the room. The guilt on her face grew more intense as my blood loss increased. “We were fighting. The training kind of fighting. I might have kicked him in the face.”

  “It was an accident,” Courtney said, before I could attempt to answer.

  Grayson tilted my head up slightly, examining the bridge of my nose. “It doesn’t look broken.”

  Several big globs of blood flowed down the back of my throat, gagging me. Nausea swept over me and I couldn’t shake the image of having a pool of blood sloshing around in my stomach. Cold sweat trickled down my neck and back and I knew I was seconds away from getting sick.

  Courtney caught on quickly and reached for the basin beside the bed, holding it in front of me. My stomach spasmed and I tossed up the cups full of blood. Courtney turned her head quickly the second the sticky red liquid made its reappearance, and Grayson stepped back, out of the way. From the corner of my eye, I saw Holly close her eyes and shudder.

  The whole puking up blood concept just made me heave even more and it took a while to get it to stop.

  “Can’t you do something?” Courtney said to Grayson.

  I wiped my mouth with a clean towel while Courtney set the bloody basin out of sight.

  “I’m gonna have to do something.” Grayson dug through a cabinet, pulling out supplies. “I can’t stop the bleeding and he’s going to need transfusions. Soon.” He glanced at Holly. “Do you know your blood type?”

  I couldn’t hear what she said, but I saw Grayson shake his head and sigh in frustration.

  “I’m pretty sure we’ve got the same blood type,” Courtney pointed out.

  Grayson turned slowly to face both of us, holding some kind of plastic bag. “True…”

  “I’ll go get Dad,” Courtney said, knowing we needed him if this was going to involve both his kids.

  Holly held Courtney back before she reached the door. “Stay with your brother. I’ll get Agent Meyer.” She took off before anyone could object, not that they would have.

  “And Blake!” Grayson shouted after her.

  While we waited for Grayson to get whatever supplies he needed ready and for Holly to come back with Dad and Blake, I stood over the sink rinsing my mouth with the bottle of water Courtney had given me a few seconds ago. I swished and spat until the bright red turned to a lighter pink. Being careful to keep my head leaned far enough forward so the blood stopped running down my throat, I sat back down beside Courtney, who had taken over the job of pinching my nose closed with the towel again.

  “He looks pale,” she said, glancing at Grayson. “Really, really pale.”

  Grayson worked hard to get an IV in my arm, while I fought to stay conscious as Courtney tossed bloody towel after towel onto the floor and replaced it with a clean one.

  Eventually, I couldn’t hold on to consciousness and the last thought to drift through my mind was that Holly hadn’t even kicked me that hard. I just ducked a little too late in our hand-to-hand combat training and the bottom of her shoe made contact with my face but nothing too intense. It didn’t even hurt much.

  DAY 13. 1:30 P.M.

  When I woke up again, Courtney was asleep beside me, her hand resting on a stack of clean towels. Blake sat in a chair next to the bed. A dark red IV line traveled from his left arm to my right arm.

  “One of the benefits of looking like Thomas, huh?”

  He turned his head in my direction, looking up from the book he’d been reading. “Yeah, not just the Tempus gene thing but we have a closer-than-average genetic bond.”

  “Closer than me and Courtney?” I wiggled my nose a little. The inside burned really bad but it seemed to have stopped bleeding.

  Blake glanced wearily at the redheaded lump passed out beside me. “I’m not sure. I think Grayson thought it might be…” He blew out a breath, looking away from me. “I’m not sure.”

  Panic flapped its way around my insides. This had something to do with Courtney’s health, I was sure. Did Grayson think she needed all the blood her body could hold?

  “He had to cauterize some of your blood vessels,” Blake said. “It might hurt a little.”

  I felt my nose with my free hand and then shook my head. “I don’t even want to know what that means.” I pulled myself up to a sitting position, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.

  “I suffered a similar injury,” Blake said.

  “A girl kicked you in the nose, too?” I laughed, remembering how incredibly hot Holly looked when she went all bad-ass agent on me.

  “Not the nose thing,” Blake said. “I mean when I time-traveled to this year. That’s why I don’t have any memory files from my jump here. Grayson had to save me, too.”

  This was news to me. Why hadn’t anyone said anything before now? “But your hands work just fi
ne; does that mean the trembling I have will go away eventually?”

  “I don’t know.” Blake glanced at Courtney again, like he was checking to see if she was really asleep, then his eyes shot to the closed door. “That’s why I had Holly wake you up this morning to let you hear the rest. What happened to you … what happened to both of us…” He angled himself so he faced me now. “The damage is permanent. Grayson doesn’t know if our brains will survive any time jumps let alone multiple ones. It sounds like they may have agreed to let us risk the escape plan—”

  “Really?” I sat up straighter. “When did they decide this? You’re talking about Stewart’s plan, right?”

  “Yeah.” He leaned forward, closer to me, and I saw for the first time that intensity Holly had mentioned earlier about feeling compelled to save the world. “Once we get off Misfit Island, if we jump back right away, to wherever we go, that might be it for us. We aren’t going to be able to come back.”

  I shrugged. “I can live with that.”

  Blake shook his head fiercely. “No, you can’t. This could be our only chance to do something about Project Eyewall. If you and I tell everyone we’re jumping back and then we let them go and we make the trek to headquarters and then we…”

  “What?” I asked, leaning forward, hanging on his words.

  His mouth formed a thin line as if to say he was already a hundred percent sure of his course of action, it was just a matter of changing mine. “We destroy it. It will take them another twenty years to rebuild, assuming we aren’t able to take Thomas and Dr. Ludwig down with the building.”

  My heart was already racing just from hearing this plan. Did I have the same fight in me that Blake had? I imagined Dad’s and Courtney’s reactions if I stayed here without telling them.

  And it was like Blake plucked the thought right from my brain. “If we do everything right, we can get you back to where you came from, we could even time it so it’s only seconds after the others get back and they won’t even know.”

  “Won’t know what?” Courtney stirred beside me and rolled on her back, examining me. “You look much better.”

  Blake’s face returned to the impassive look he had talked about in his memory files. “I think my job is done here. I won’t have to give him all my blood.”

  Blake skillfully disconnected the IV from his arm, pressing a piece of gauze to it. Then he did the same with mine, and I wondered when he’d had time to learn this somewhat-more-than-basic medical procedure.

  The past two years, I guess.

  “I’m going to go help Grayson,” Blake said. “He and your dad had to rush out to fix the power in the technology building.”

  The second he was out the door, Courtney turned sharply toward me. “I know what you guys were talking about.”

  I swallowed the dry prickliness in the back of my throat. “Courtney…”

  “The dots.” My stare must have been completely blank because she let out a frustrated breath and explained in more detail. “The dots on the map. The one Grayson showed us. I know what they mean. I figured it out last night.”

  “You did…?” I said slowly, still totally clueless as to what the hell she was talking about but at least she hadn’t actually heard my conversation with Blake. We should have never been discussing Blake’s memory files anywhere near Courtney, sleeping or not.

  “People,” she said firmly. “Lots of people. I want to know why we’ve been kept away from them or why they haven’t wandered over here to us.”

  “The dots are people…” I mumbled, pulling the image up in my head. “What kind of people?”

  “That’s what we need to find out.” Courtney reached out and pulled my bloody T-shirt away from my skin. “I brought you some clean clothes.”

  “Great.” I stood up and waited a full ten seconds before the room stopped spinning. “I think I’m going to have to scrub myself from head to toe. There’s dried blood almost everywhere.”

  She stretched her arms and yawned before standing and handing me a stack of clothes and toiletries. “Go shower. I’ll see how Dad is doing and ask Grayson what you’re supposed to do now that you’re almost normal again.”

  I took my time under the water, forcing soap into every crevice of my body despite the cold temperature. Then I spent a good five minutes brushing my teeth and my entire mouth to wash out all traces of blood. My lips were probably blue by the time I came out of the bathroom wearing jeans that were a little too long and drying my hair with a towel.

  Holly was standing near the bed, holding a large cup filled with some kind of orange liquid in one hand and the shirt I must have dropped in the other. I stopped several feet away from her, frozen with the memories of this morning.

  Her eyebrows lifted as she held out the cup and looked me over. “I’m supposed to stay and make sure you drink all of this.”

  I took the cup from her hand. Her fingers brushed mine and heat crawled through my veins instantly. I examined the light orange drink and then chugged it quickly. The salty taste was pretty revolting but not so bad that I couldn’t keep it down. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Nasty … what is that stuff?”

  Holly shrugged. “Something they give babies when they have diarrhea.”

  I decided not to ask any more questions about the drink since it was already in my stomach and obviously Grayson wanted it to stay there for whatever reason. “So…” I said, returning to rubbing my hair with the towel.

  “So…” Holly picked at her fingernail before glancing up at me again. “I’m going to get a new training partner. I need someone who won’t bleed to death after a tiny little kick in the face.”

  I felt myself smiling. “Really? Like who?”

  “Stewart, probably.” She reached out and pulled the towel from my hands, then I watched her calves flex as she stood on her toes, laying her hands in my hair and smoothing it down. I closed my eyes for a second, wanting so badly to hold myself in this exact spot for as long as possible.

  “Holly,” I mumbled, as my brain scrambled for ways to ask what the hell we were doing and if she liked it as much as I did.

  Her fingers tangled into my hair and then she pulled her mouth to mine. I barely noticed her walking backwards, still kissing me as we moved toward the door. She rested her back against it and reached up with one hand, fumbling to find the lock and turn it. It was just like this morning—reckless and hot, our hands all over each other with no hesitancy.

  But somewhere in the middle of Holly’s shirt falling to the floor for the second time today, the words cheap thrill drifted to my frontal lobe. It wasn’t a cheap thrill for me, though, at least it didn’t feel that way. But what about her? Was it just a random desperate hookup for Holly? Was this physical gratification enough for me?

  Stop thinking so hard!

  As her fingers touched my lower back, pulling me into her, our bodies and mouths pressed tightly together, my mind wandered far from this moment, remembering lying in the grass in Central Park with 007 Holly. I could practically smell the scent of burning wood and fall air that I’d inhaled that morning. The weight pressing against my heart was so heavy as I remembered what it felt like to lie next to her, nothing but our fingers touching and feeling so complete and perfect, if only for a few minutes. But still, she had opened herself up to me. And when that happened, it was like nothing I’d ever, experienced before. Or maybe Holly had always been an open book and it was me that had been closed off?

  Slowly, my mind returned to the present, feeling the pressure of Holly’s lips against mine and my fingers in her hair. She looked as beautiful as ever, but no amount of physical contact would break down that wall between us. Holly was damaged and I was an asshole for ignoring that fact.

  And I wanted that feeling back again, the lying-in-the-grass-with-only-our-fingers-touching-and-yet-closer-than-ever feeling.

  With great effort, I pulled my mouth from Holly’s, closing my eyes and resting my forehead against hers as my speeding-train pu
lse tried to slow down.

  “What?” Holly said, breathless and confused.

  I exhaled and opened my eyes, staring into hers, searching for some kind of connection. I lifted my hand to her face, gently moving my thumb across her cheek. Her body stiffened immediately and she pressed harder against the wall. Her eyes were wide and still swimming with confusion.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why did you—”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. I rested my other hand on her other cheek and touched my mouth to her forehead. She stiffened even more, her muscles flexing like she was ready to pounce on something or someone. “Nothing’s wrong … I just … I don’t … I don’t want to…”

  “What?” she demanded, squeezing her eyes shut tight.

  It was obvious I’d made her uncomfortable so I dropped my hands from her face and stepped back, putting a small distance between us. “Maybe we should talk about this, or at least figure out what’s going on? I thought you hated me.”

  Okay, maybe I should have left out that last part.

  I reached for her hand and held it between mine. This seemed to make her squirm and her eyes looked anywhere but right at me. Suddenly, more memories flooded back to me. Memories of a conversation right before we got stuck here. My heart started racing all over again, but this time it was from anger and fear as words formed in my head. Words Agent Carter, one of Holly’s superiors in Eyewall, had said the night he, Holly, and I had had a showdown in the NYU Library. The night he accused Holly of being a double agent. I’d shot him. Killed him in an instant, not just because I knew he would have killed Holly but because of what he’d said, what I’d thought he had done to her. How did this memory get forced so far back in my head?

  “You know that little game we play in our division?” Carter had said. “The point system?”

  “Cut the bullshit, Carter,” Holly had said. “I know the point system. And I know what you’re going to tell me. So, which is worth more? Turning in a double agent or killing a weak trainee?”

  “You know what got me the most points so far?” A sly grin had spread across his face. “Nailing a virgin spy. Apparently it’s off the charts. Easiest points I ever got. Poor Flynn, your best friend’s dead. Need a shoulder to cry on? How about a few drinks, too?”