The two-day old infant gurgled sleepily in her arms.
“I’m going to put him down for his nap.”
Sitting at the kitchen table in Col and Lenore’s townhouse, Charity’s smile at her grandmother faded.
Lenore reached over and took her hand. “Don’t worry, they’ll figure it out. With the information Luke has of the future, Grandpa says they’re close to figuring out how to duplicate the Squid and they still have that frozen Sift DNA.” Lenore leaned in close, her violet gaze steady. “You won’t be raising that boy without his father.”
Charity squeezed her sister’s hand, hanging onto that thought. She couldn’t get the image of Aldreth imprisoning Toren in her dungeon again, torturing him, out of her head. She’d tried to dream trail to see him again, find out what was happening in the past, but he never came to her in her sleep.
“And until we get Toren back,” Lenore offered, “you have Col and I.”
As though summoned by her words, tires squealed on pavement out front, followed by the bang of trashcans scraping across the gutters, slamming doors, and some spicy Gaelic cursing.
Rolling her eyes, Lenore stood to look out the window. “Maybe just don’t let Col drive when the baby’s in the car. Oh…”
Charity felt it even as Lenore gasped.
Warm tingles exploded in her chest and she was moving before she realized she’d even stood up, damn the episiotomy soreness from recently giving birth. Large brawny Highlanders made large-headed babies.
She stood before the door, heart pounding, the strength of his presence drawing her.
He was here. She knew it.
Taking a steadying breath, so afraid she’d be wrong, she pulled the door open.
And there he stood, tall and proud on the lawn in tattered jeans and a too-snug shirt.
She flew out the door. His head jerked toward her and his tight expression loosened, filling with relief and love.
He caught her up, crushing her against him. Charity barely saw Shaw, Bekah and Col behind him before Toren’s mouth was covering hers, kissing her like she was as vital as breathing.
She pulled back. “How did you get here? The Sift?”
“Aye, the second Sift. We captured it.” Toren grinned adoringly at her. “And Shaw.”
“Shaw?”
“Once his magic was freed from Aldreth’s, once he replenished, he just needed to touch the Sift’s magic to feel how a time rift is opened by their kind, by his kind. He had the ability all along.” His palm splayed on her flat stomach, well, flatter stomach, his brows colliding over worried eyes.
“It’s okay,” she assured him, emotions rasping her vocal cords. “It’s okay. I had the baby and he’s fine. He’s beautiful.”
“He?” The blue of his eyes lightened with wonder.
She nodded and entwined her fingers with his, guiding him toward the house.
The door opened. Lenore stepped out, carrying a tiny blanket-wrapped bundle. She walked right up to Toren and craned her neck back to look him in the eye. “Hi. I’m Charity’s sister—“
“Lenore,” Toren finished for her, smiling, before his intent gaze sought what she carried.
“Yes.” She pulled the blanket back a bit to reveal a tuft of dark hair. “I think it’s time you met your son.”
“Aye,” Toren breathed. “’Tis time.”
He glanced at Charity, hesitant, before letting Lenore place the small bundle in his arms.
If Charity hadn’t already loved him with everything she was, the look on his face as he gazed adoringly at their son would have pushed her over that edge.
The others crowded around them.
All but Bekah. The young woman hung back around the fringes, her gaze locked on the baby, brows furrowed.
January 24, 1944 Off the Coast of Africa, Hospital Ship SS St. David
“We cannot leave them,” Edeen cried.
“There’s no more we can do,” Roque shouted over the noise, back in his human form. As a dragon he had plucked several people out of the torpedoed lower holds and gotten them into the lifeboats and water ambulances. His green scales gleamed in the night sky while enemy planes shot at him. Edeen watched him dive, trying to find anyone caught below when another torpedo hit and the ocean rushed in below decks. It had been less than five minutes and the stern was already submerged. There was no more time.
“You’re my priority now, Treasure. I’m getting you off this ship.” A shimmering halo limned his naked body, beginning his transformation back into the green dragon. The change took her breath away every time, even now as the ship tilted, and the deck sloped as the gurgling ocean surged up to devour them.
Roque smiled. “We’ll be all right,” he shouted over the noise of the raging water and fragmenting wood, his vocal cords already gruff, changing with his transformation.
Warmth spread through her at his reassurance until a sharp groan of splintering metal pealed through the noise. One of the large metal anchoring moors broke off and spun across the deck, hitting Roque and halting his transformation before it really even began. The hit sent him tumbling into the railing, out cold and sliding across the slanted deck toward the climbing ocean.
“No!” Edeen lunged for him, catching him about the shoulders to stop his slide down the sloping deck. No! She braced her feet against the railing. He was too heavy. “Wake up, Roque!” she screamed against his cheek, her arms locked around him. He had to wake up to transform and get them out of here. Unwilling to release her hold beneath his armpits, she pinched his skin. “Wake up!”
Behind her there was another concussion of air—an explosion or another part of the ship sinking? “Roque!” Water splashed up, swallowing Roque’s legs. There was nowhere to go. She clung to him tighter, knowing the force of the ocean would rip them apart.
He was slipping from her grasp. Her fingers clawed into his skin. Without clothes, there was nothing to hang on to.
From behind her, arms stretched across her shoulder and grabbed onto Roque, looping an elbow beneath his shoulder.
“I have him, Edeen. Let Shaw pull you up.”
Stunned, Edeen whipped her face toward Toren even as another pair of arms looped around her own waist and hauled her backwards out of the lapping ocean.
“Timing is a wee bit off.” Holding her tightly, Shaw scowled at Col who had one hand around the creaking rail and his other arm locked around Toren’s naked waist, anchoring him while Toren pulled Roque up. A swirling slash in the air remained open behind Col.
Grinning, he lowered his voice. “Come with me if you want to live.”
Three sets of eyebrows rose.
Col’s lips twisted. “Once we are back, we are sitting down and watching a movie together.”
Edeen turned in Shaw’s arms, grabbing onto him fiercely. “I thought ye were dead. I thought—“ She buried her face into his naked chest.
“Let us be gone from here,” Toren said and Edeen spun around again though Shaw kept ahold of her. Toren had Roque in front of him, blood dripping from a gash in his lolling head.
“Is he?”
“Unconscious,” Toren supplied. “He will be fine. But not if we tarry.” As punctuation for the situation, the water rushed upon them.
Shaw passed Edeen up to Col on the slanting deck and reached down to help Toren with Roque.
Feeling Col whole and alive nearly buckled her knees. This was all too much. She thought she’d lost him, believed him dead. “Col.” His name burst out on a sob at the same moment his arms swept around her, the ocean rose around them, burying the ship in a whoosh of ear-shattering squeals, and they fell back into the shimmering swirling center of a hurricane.
2051 Michigan
Aldreth screamed against the contracting pain. This baby was tearing her apart even as magic flowed around her, bolstering her against the onslaught. Shaw’s magic. He had thrown everything he had into her and it was now truly hers.
His last gift? Mayhap he had known they’d be separated. Mayhap
he had loved her truly while she had been so horrible to him, pining for his brother all these years when Shaw had always been devoted to her.
Nay, he hated her, tried to hurt her. They all had, the entire Limont clan.
She would go back and destroy them all.
Another labor pain tore through her, ripping down her spine and she threw her head back, screaming. She felt the head crowning between her thighs. Diabhal it hurt! She wanted this baby out now. Had she a knife, she would carve it out herself.
The monster crouched near the wall, knuckles of the long clawed hands scraping back and forth upon the dirt-covered floor, waiting. It had carried her here over its shoulder when the pains proved too much, past hardened streets and strange metal carriages that moved without horses and swerved out of their way, while people stepped out of them to gape at the beast carrying her away.
The unnatural time rift opened by the culmination of hers and Shaw’s battling magic in the keep’s yard had swept her and the monster far forward into time, farther than any witch had ever traveled. Moon Sifter magic; ‘twas more powerful than a sorcerer’s. And she had it now.
She must have passed out, only coming to within this dirty hovel when the birthing pains reawakened her.
She did not want to do this alone. She wanted Toren. She wanted Shaw. He had held her when she lost the other child. He was good to her. He loved her.
She wanted him. She hated him. She would make him pay.
“Shaw!” His name came out like a punch, prolonged with the final push as the baby’s head broke past her birthing canal, flowing loose and boneless to plop on the floor.
Panting like an animal, her muscles trembling from exertion, Aldreth stared at the wee pale purplish body and the soft transparent fold of skin covering the eyes.
‘Twas deformed…monstrous. Blinded, the angular face long, and the hands warped and misshapen.
Her gaze snapped to the beast, waiting near the wall, its face turned toward her sniffing the air, leaning in toward the child on the ground. Monster.
Motherrrr.
Beautiful
Brimming with magic. Sifter magic. Her child. Shaw’s child, reformed with the magic of moonlight.
‘Twas a miracle.
‘Twas her redemption.
She carried his magic now within her and she would bear more children, surely there were plenty of women with child in this time.
Her body shuddered at the thought, and screamed as another contraction repulsed the afterbirth from between her thighs. Tears wet her cheeks. Her body was damp with blood and sweat, filthy with grime.
Mayhap she would allow the mothers she found to keep the babes in their wombs, let them go through this horrible labor, while she strengthened them—created them—with the gift of Shaw’s magic as he had done for her.
The child cried, loud and guttural. ‘Twas strong.
He was the first. With him, she would recreate the legacy stolen from her grandsire. Burnes Alduein would have his Guardians.
She was meant to do this.
All she had endured for three centuries had brought her to this point.
Achingly, she picked up the writhing squealing babe, her beautiful strong lad, and cradled him close, crying out when he instinctively latched onto her breast, small dagger teeth piercing tender flesh.
Blood and milk. He would feed on her. Aldreth wept, joy overcoming the ache.
“Grandsire,” she whispered. “I kept my promise.”
2083 California
Alexander pushed back from his worktable, shoving both hands back through his short dark hair. His calculations were right. They had to be.
There were only two ways this could go. He just needed one key ingredient. A vital necessary ingredient.
Huffing out a frustrated sigh, he spun his back on the careful graphs and charts. He didn’t want to look at his laptop again.
Patience had never been a virtue of his. That’s why he took a sling-shot ride into the future, rather than wait for the future to greet him as an old man.
He could fix this, but it had to happen at this precise crossroads in time. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t stop what happened before this precise year, but from here, the human race either went extinct or they fought back.
With his help.
Those were the only two scenarios.
He ran the calculations, schematics, and probabilities a hundred times. And a million times more.
This was it. He’d done what he could, but now…for now it was out of his hands.
He whistled through his teeth. He had to get out of this kitchen-turned-lab, the walls were closing in on him.
Spinning on his heel, he ran out onto the second floor porch of the lighthouse keeper’s cottage and glanced up to the stars behind the web of crossbars and growth of camouflaging vines. Number one on the Sifts hit list, humankind’s survivors, his small army, deemed him too valuable to risk, so he lived inside a cage, albeit a safety cage of his own making, but blame him, just one night he’d like to go out to the beach below the rundown lighthouse they were using and curl his toes in the soft white sand.
Energy built behind him. As a sorcerer, he felt the subtle twist of it in his bones, felt the undulating time rift open between him and the kitchen doorway he’d just stepped through. Between him and the pulsar he left on the table. So no weapon to hand, except for what rested unused inside him.
He was a scientist by choice, a High Sorcerer by birth, the culmination of intellect and magic, the first of his kind.
The force of the spreading rift tugged at his hair, pulled at his stomach. He braced as six figures spilled through the vortex, tumbling naked onto the porch.
“Déithe, Shaw, can ye not manage a less hazardous landing?” Col grumbled from his back on the floor and Alexander’s legs turned rubber.
They’d come.
Bekah got off the floor first, lunging at him, heedless of her nudity. The punch to his jaw rocked him back a step into the edge of the lattice worked railing.
Her eyes blazed. “You sonofabit—no, I’ve met your mother, you son of a…” Her teeth gritted. “You knew what would happen before you sent me back to Seattle. You knew! Did you know Matthew would die? The Sifts ate him. Did you know that, you bast—”
Feet pounded from the stairwell outside the kitchen/lab, the door banged open, hitting the wall.
Alexander’s shoulders slumped. He knew losing some of them was a probable path. “I didn’t know the outcome. I’d hoped…”
He looked beyond the still escalating time rift to the men behind it, pulsars drawn, and lifting his hands, he called out. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Stand down. It’s my family.”
Pulling his worn sweater over his head he offered it to Bekah, though she made no move to accept it. If he squinted, he could probably make out the steam rising off her head.
Behind her, Shaw reached around to take it and bunched it to pull over her head. Bekah might be too angry to care about standing there naked, but Shaw cared for her.
As Shaw’s concentration left the humming rift, it swirled out of existence, pulling at Alexander’s stomach with the same sensation as falling off a building.
Behind them, Roque’s cultured English lilt barked at the soldiers. “Shirts. Now.” He extended his arm back expecting to be obeyed.
A wave of nostalgia tugged within Alexander’s chest. His kin did not know him, but he remembered them all, had missed them keenly. At this point in their lives though, they would not have experienced their time together yet.
His hold-out soldiers looked to him, only taking off their shirts when he gave them a nod. These men were brave, good fighting men who had survived where most hadn’t, and seen horrors no one should have to, yet he couldn’t help wondering what they’d think if they knew they were feet away from a vampire who could change into a dragon at whim. Then there was Col…
He’d have to ease his men into this new age he was bringing about of magic verses monsters. Ma
gic and science.
Once her own borrowed shirt was buttoned, Aunt Lenore came to him, taking his hands in hers, eyes shining. “You look like your dad.”
Alexander jolted at that, his heart clenching more than it should at the absence of his parents. He’d known they wouldn’t be among his uncles and aunts when they arrived. They never would have left him—his infant self—in the past. Nor would they have brought him here to this mess of a future.
“Alexander?” Lenore squeezed his hands. “What you sent Bekah back to do, to stop Shaw, it didn’t work. He didn’t create the monster, he couldn’t have…yet the Sifts are still here. We know because our timeline didn’t change, the Sifts still came to Seattle…” She looked back at Col and Alexander felt the unspoken “thank the gods” behind her look. If Bekah had succeeded in killing Shaw, everything would have changed for all of them. None of them would have found each other, his parents included. Tiny lines formed between Lenore’s velvet eyes. “When our timeline remained the same, we knew the Sifts still must have destroyed most of the human race in this time. We came to help.”
He smiled down at her. “I know. I always knew Bekah wouldn’t kill Shaw. That was never the plan. Or the solution.”
“But I…” Shaw’s frown creased his forehead. “I didna create the Sifts. I never…”
“Not physically.” Alexander took pity on him. This would not be easy to hear. “Your magic…”
Shaw jerked. His eyes squeezed shut as he put it all together. “The babe Aldreth stole. I gave Aldreth my magic.” He scraped a hand down his face. “I had wondered…”
“It was the first Sift.”
Bekah slipped her hand into Shaw’s, her fingers grazing the shirt he had looped around his waist to hang over his hips, a silent display of support he’d witnessed countless times between them before. Seeing them like this was like looking into his past childhood. There’d been so many times when he’d first met Bekah here in this time, he wanted to tell her the truth of everything, but he couldn’t risk her foreknowledge changing everything, changing the way she felt about Shaw.
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