“The asshole you’re leaving me for. Where is he?”
Her puzzlement turned to fully fledged shock. Even her luscious lips parted as air pushed from her lungs in a gasp. “Leave you?” she repeated, her voice hoarse. “I have no intention of leaving you.”
Justin pulled the letter from an inner pocket and threw it onto the desk next to her hip. “You already did.”
* * * * *
The Agency Home Base – 2264 A.D. : “It’s bad,” Nayara agreed, “but I don’t think it’s quite as dire as you feel it is, Brenden.”
“Of course it’s dire!” Brenden lifted his foot and rested it on the bench in front of Nayara’s table. He crossed his arms, the muscles in his forearms and his biceps growing taut and rounder. “He has no idea what he’s doing back there. And this stupid git left him there!” He jerked his head toward Demyan.
“He’s only going to confront Deonne about the letter. He’s not going to speak to heads of government,” Nayara qualified.
“Tell her,” Brenden growled, glancing at Demyan.
Demyan had stood unmoving throughout Brenden’s tirade. Now he settled himself on the table in front of Nayara’s and put his boots on the bench beneath. “I followed the parallel time protocol we’ve been using for the folk in China.”
“So you went back to the time three days after Deonne left Sweden, as that was three days ago,” Nayara concluded.
“As best as we can narrow it down, the blanket bomb that goosed Justin into jumping is two weeks ahead of that time,” Brenden growled. “At the end of the month, not the middle, where he is.”
Nayara frowned. “We don’t know when she wrote the letter. It could be today in their time or it could be next year in their time.” She looked up at Demyan, who sat unmoving and unrepentant, then at Brenden, who was nodding in agreement.
“This is a mess,” Nayara said.
“Now you see it,” Brenden told her.
* * * * *
Liping Village, East Yunnan Province, China, 2054 A.D.: Deonne read the letter carefully and damn if her face didn’t grow pale. Her hands trembled as she held the letter, making the letter itself shake. She looked up at Justin. “This is my hand writing. It’s even phrases I would use but I didn’t write this. You have to believe me!”
Justin stared at her, wondering why she was trying such an obvious bluff. Then it occurred to him. She hadn’t written it yet.
“Oh fuck…” he breathed, horror washing over him.
Deonne stared at him with big eyes.
He sank down onto the end of the bed, trying to think it through, to guess at unknowable factors. There were too many horrible potential outcomes to even begin to figure out a way out of this.
“Justin?” Deonne asked, prompting him.
He looked up at her. “You didn’t write the letter,” he agreed. “But you will. I jumped too far back. Now…I have no idea what will happen. This is the sort of puzzle Brenden’s people figure out.”
She let go of one end of the letter and allowed it to fold up again, watching him. “This is from my future?” she asked, lifting it up.
Justin nodded.
“Who is Santiago?” she asked.
He laughed dryly. “I have no idea. This letter was a bolt from the blue.”
“You didn’t research him before you jumped here?”
“I was too busy panicking,” he told her.
Deonne dropped the letter onto the desk and sat on the bed next to him. “It has to be someone I’m going to meet. Someone in my future.” Her hand fell onto his thigh. “But now I’ve been warned, right? So I don’t write the letter, and I avoid this Santiago man when I do meet him.” Her fingers pressed into his flesh for emphasis. “If I even meet him, now. You jumping here and telling me about the letter has changed things, hasn’t it? Isn’t that how it works?”
Justin nodded. “Except, how much have things changed and have I made it worse?” He scrubbed at his hair. “Fuck, I can’t even begin to sort it out!”
Deonne shifted on the mattress so that she was facing him and wound her arms about his neck. “You came for me,” she murmured. Her expression was soft and warm…and lethal. Justin found himself reaching for her, and pulling her closer. The truth was beating at his chest and his mind, screaming to get out.
“It wasn’t just the letter,” he said, then mentally swore at himself.
“Something else? What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?”
One of the key principles of his basic traveler training, that they had drilled into him over and over was that telling anyone about their own future was a sure way to set up ripples, or even waves that would roar through time and make changes at critical decision points, altering the future and possibly jeopardizing your own existence.
Salathiel had gone back to Constantinople and created a time tsunami that had disintegrated the future almost completely until Nayara and Ryan had jumped back to where he was and neutralized the damage he had caused. Even then, there had been changes to their contemporary time period, although these had not been anything close to the lethal quality of Salathiel’s changes.
As a result of that near disaster, the Chronometric Conservation Agency had been formed to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again.
Just being back in the past was a risk, but telling someone their own future, which gave them the option of changing it, was a sure way of switching that risk to a certainty.
Justin recalled the descriptions he had read about the blanket bombing of this idyllic little village. Fear enveloped him once more.
He opened his mouth to speak, as Deonne sat patiently waiting for him to reply. Then he reconsidered the wisdom of giving her the truth.
Then he remembered that there had been survivors recorded in the reports and the words were suddenly emerging from his mouth, spilling out without his consent.
“Somewhere ahead of here – I don’t know when, because the reports are inaccurate – but sometime not long from now, this entire village is destroyed. Wiped clean of anything with flesh and DNA.”
Deonne sat very still for what felt like a very long time. “Constantine’s Curse?” she asked softly.
He realized that he had opened the gate, now. Every question about the future she asked him would be leading her further astray from her own future. What changes had he already made?
She was going to tell Santiago to go to hell, instead of falling in love with him. She wouldn’t write the letter that was lying on the desk, the polymerized folds making the ends stand up like accusatory exclamation marks.
How would that change things?
Had he changed it enough so that she would not be a victim of the attack?
“Why are you so silent?” Deonne asked. “It’s not like you to just sit there, like this.”
Justin sighed. “Every answer I give you that deals with the future is changing that future,” he explained.
She drew in a slow breath, considering it. “Haven’t you already done that by giving me the letter?”
“Yes, but perhaps the change is minimal. Livable.” He stood up, unable to stay still, and turned to face her where she sat primly on the bed. “The more I tell you, the less likely it’ll be that the changes are minor.”
She stood up, too. “Then you need to leave. Now. It will minimize any shifts.”
He moved to the window and looked out over the placid view. The apartments each had a view – so said the discreet notice board at the front of the complex. Deonne’s view was of the river and willows on the other side of the bank, leaning down to dip fronds into the water. There was an ancient-looking bridge spanning the river just upstream a small way, its angles and curves and dragon statues proclaiming this was China more than anything else Justin had noticed in his agitated state as he’d walked here.
Liping was a bedroom village, built purely to entice harried executives into buying apartments and houses, to take advantage of the serenity and beauty of the place, afte
r hours.
The first g-train circuit ever built connected northern Asia to Europe in a ten hour loop. Once the world focused on secondary manufacturing instead of primary exports like energy, China had been no longer able to compete with the flood of cheap consumer items everyone else had learned to produce to keep their economies viable. So China had exploited the one commodity no one else could replicate: Its history and its rural areas, which had resisted modernization with passive stubbornness. Now that archaic quality became an asset.
There were villages and towns like Liping all over western China, huddled close by the two primary stops the g-trains made in the provinces.
Why would anyone want to destroy this place? he wondered.
“Destroy it? You mean—it was a deliberate attack?” Deonne asked, behind him.
He had spoken aloud. Justin winced and turned around. Deonne had surprise written all over her face…and growing fear.
“Damn,” he said.
She shook her head. “You can’t stop now. You’ve said too much. Tell me the rest. Do I…die? Is that why you jumped back?”
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “There’s very little detail. The archival nets weren’t put in place until about twenty years from now, so all we have to go on is hearsay and implication from the few sources that covered this time. The bombing was such a small matter compared to world arena events. Barely anyone noticed.”
Deonne grimaced. “That’s good for the ego,” she said dryly. Then she gave him a small smile and touched the letter on the desk. “This made you research the village and you found out about the bombing. You jumped back here to stop it, didn’t you?”
Justin felt the distinct sensation of having been caught. He fought to ignore the feeling. “I don’t want you dead. I can’t stand you being back here out of my reach as it is.”
She moved closer a slow step at a time. “Careful, Kelly. That came very close to a confession.”
Suddenly, he was tired of it all. Weary of all the games and circling and wariness. “Fuck it,” he growled, reaching for her and pulling her up against him. Hard. “You know what? I bloody well love you and I don’t care anymore if you like it or not.”
Deonne grew still against him, all but her eyes, which studied him carefully. “You’re not just saying that because of the letter, are you?”
“The only thing the letter did was make me not care about telling you. I’ve loved you a good long time and if I had my way, I’d take you back home with me and guard the fortress I’d put you in myself. Just so I could keep you close.”
Her soft gasp was reward enough. She wasn’t pushing him away. She wasn’t screaming in horror. She looked up at him with those incredible blue eyes and smiled softly. “I would have lost the bet, if I’d put money on it.”
Justin felt laughter rising up inside and he let it out, in a low chuckle. “That you’d have to excavate that out of me with a knife?”
“That I’d be the first to say it.”
She brought her lips up against his, so they were brushing against him like the softest caress. With her in his arms, Deonne’s scent washed over him like a spicy wave of warm air. His body tightened in response.
“I love you, Justin Edward Kelly. You drive me crazy and I don’t know how we’re going to work this out, but I love you all the same.”
Her body was pliant against him, her breasts firm mounds against his chest. Her allure, and the need to have her had not diminished by a millimeter since the day he had met her.
Justin groaned and kissed her. “I’m not going back until I’m done with you,” he muttered and reached for the fastening on her dress as he drew her to the bed.
Chapter Sixteen
Liping Village, East Yunnan Province, China, 2054 A.D.: Deonne’s naked body lying against his was hot in contrast to his skin temperature. Justin kept her tucked up against him, wildly reluctant to let this moment of deep contentment end despite his satiated need.
Deonne kept her arms around him and every now and again, she would touch her mouth to him, caressing his shoulders, neck and lips.
He took a deep breath, bracing himself. “Deonne, you should know—”
But she covered his mouth with her fingers and shook her head slightly. “No, I don’t have to know,” she told him. “I was wrong to demand you let me in, in Sweden. I didn’t understand how your personal history is so closed off and contained.”
“Mine?”
“All of you. Vampires.”
He picked up a lock of her hair and let it slide through his fingers. It was so incredibly soft and fine, he found it difficult to stop stroking it once he’d started. “Who told you that?”
“I think I was starting to realize how significant the past is to you, but Mariana really put it into focus for me.”
He grinned. “I thought you hated her.”
“I hate her clothes sense and the waste of her potential – that awe shucks manner of hers drives me crazy.” Deonne frowned. “The worst of it is that she’s got a mind like a light drive. I know she’s smarter than me and I think she could give Christian a run for his money.”
It was a compliment. Christian was one of the most intelligent people Justin had ever met. Ryan had been pleased when Christian had joined the agency, bringing with him a breadth of experience and expertise that outmatched nearly everyone already there.
“I don’t hate her,” Deonne finished. “But I do mind the way she makes me feel foolish every day or so.” She gave Justin a rueful grin. “It makes me feel like a teenager again and that just reminds me of how long it has been since I was a teenager. That’s a reminder I don’t like.”
Laughter rippled through him, but Justin kept it contained. “I see,” he said judiciously. “You hooked up with me because I’m at least older than you.”
She kissed him. “I hooked up with you because I had a temporary mental aberration and it turned out to be a pretty good idea, after all.” Her mouth lingered by his, so Justin took the offered second kiss, letting go of all his thoughts, worries and hopes and instead just enjoying the moment. Enjoying Deonne.
Then he reluctantly lifted her and placed her back on the mattress. “It’s time to go,” he told her. “Brenden will impale me or something like it, so I should probably get it over with.”
“Just remember that I love you,” Deonne told him as he began to dress.
The assurance did make him feel better. Coming here had been the right thing to do.
Now he just had to find out how much he had fucked up history.
* * * * *
Universal Warden Headquarters, San Francisco, 2264 A.D.: The average lay person didn’t know the Wardens had a dress uniform…or a uniform at all. During active assignments, Wardens were required to choose clothing that would let them stay in the background and not draw the eye. That could be anything from a white tie and tails to bathing trunks—if the warden could figure out where to stash his weapons unobtrusively.
Most wardens defaulted to black, form-fitting garments made of flexible armor plastic, which suited most occasions.
A Warden in full dress uniform was impressive. The trousers, shirt and jacket were all the signature black of the organization. The trousers had narrow double stripes of black satin down the side of each leg, and the stripe was repeated on the sleeve of the jacket.
The shirt, which was a stylized design that resembled the classic dress shirt of centuries before, was closed at the neck with a pin made of extruded gold, worked into the symbol of the wardens—an elongated shield with a sword lying over the top of it.
Even a small group of wardens in dress uniform was a startling sight. A large assembly of them could drop jaws and widen eyes. So Keiren’s surprise was upgraded to shock when he reported to Douglas’ office at the requested time and stepped through the opening door to find five wardens standing at attention, in full dress uniform.
Waiting for him.
One of them was Douglas, who did not meet Keire
n’s eyes. He kept his head rigidly facing forward, his chin up.
Kieren stopped just inside the door. He took in the silent, still men ranged behind Douglas’ desk. “I see that my fate has been decided and executed already,” Kieren told them. “Thank you for letting me speak in my own defense.”
The man on the far left was John. He was the base commander and Kieren had only ever spoken to him once, the day he joined the wardens’ junior cohort. It had been his fifteenth birthday only two days before.
John was the one who spoke, now. Like Douglas, he didn’t look directly at Kieren. “The events of the last two days have been reviewed by your peers. Your actions have been judged and are considered to be those of a liar and a coward.”
Cowardice – the worst crime a warden could commit. Keiren’s gut cramped painfully, and he could feel heat rushing up from his toes. Adrenaline, his well-trained mind whispered. Action burns it off.
But there would be no action here.
“Accordingly,” John continued, “You have been declared unworthy of a place among wardens. You will be escorted from the base immediately and your personal possessions delivered to any address you provide.”
Kieren swallowed. His mouth was full of spit. Nausea, he analyzed.
He realized he was using the tools of discipline and self-control that the wardens had drilled into him as a prop, a shield to duck behind so he wouldn’t have to directly deal with what was happening here.
A summary judgment by the senior wardens was irreversible. There was no avenue for appeal. His life as a warden had ended the minute he stepped into the room.
Kieren breathed steadily through his nose, damping the rising panic. “I expect my financial situation to be unaffected.”
For the first time, one of them showed a reaction. Douglas’ eyes widened in surprise. But that was all.
“You will be more than adequately compensated for what contributions you have made,” John said, his voice the same even, unaffected monotone. “You will have no cause for complaint.”
They were buying his silence, Kieren realized. If he attempted to protest or dispute his severance from the wardens, the money would disappear. Not just the bonus they were implying, but everything.
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