Something about the idea made me uneasy. I stared into the dense branching of the Mark on my skin and had the sense I was looking at something living—
My thoughts were cut short by a pounding on the door.
TEN
WHO?
I glanced through the open doorway at the clock on my nightstand. It was 7:45 in the morning. Who would be pounding on my door at this hour?
The pounding repeated, and I heard a muffled voice call out, “Dana!”
Jacob?
I grabbed a bathrobe and covered myself, running to the front door in bare feet. The knocking was insistent, and he sounded distressed. I tied my robe shut and checked myself over before reaching for the doorknob.
I only hesitated a moment as I realized that I was going to let someone into my home. The feeling of dread was so sudden and intense that, had it been anyone else on my threshold, I might not have opened the door.
But it was Jacob, so I turned the knob.
As soon as the door was unlatched, the door pushed open, and Jacob stormed in.
“Dana! What the hell are you trying to pull?”
I could suddenly see why his voice sounded so distressed. He was angry. No. He was furious. His face was flushed and pulled into a grimace that seemed painful.
I took a step back and asked, quietly, “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter?” He stormed into my home, every muscle tense, as if he wanted to hit something and was growing more and more frustrated when a target refused to present itself. “You know damn well what’s the matter!”
In his hand, I now saw he held a large evidence bag. I didn’t need a clear view of the blocky item it contained to realize what was inside it.
The other shoe had finally dropped.
I closed the door and followed Jacob into my sparse, sterile living room. A few nights ago, I was wondering what he would make of it when I finally invited him inside. Now he was here, and I don’t think he saw a damn thing.
He dropped the evidence bag on the empty coffee table. It hit the surface with the sound of a door slamming shut. Behind that door I saw myself and Jacob, the way things were before.
We were both silent for a few moments as we stared at the bag and the gun it contained. It laid between us, a solid manifestation of all the secrets I’d been keeping.
“You know what that is?”
I nodded. “It’s a .45 automatic belonging to Roscoe Kendal.”
“But not the one I saw you hiding in Asia FX.”
I looked up at him, and the betrayal in his face was too painful to look at. I turned away.
“Damn it, Dana. Is this why our arrest record is drawing the attention of the Justice Department? How much tainted evidence are you responsible for?”
“It was an accident—”
“An accident? An accident! How the fuck do you plant a murder weapon by accident?”
I shook my head, unable to speak for a moment.
“No, Dana, I don’t care how screwed up your life was. You don’t get to shut down on me now.”
“I’m not shutting down,” I whispered.
“I deserve some sort of explanation. I can’t get my head around what you did. Not only can’t I believe you’re dirty, I can’t figure out how you pulled this off. I mean, Kendal confessed. And in his apartment is the exact same cheap half-plastic Hi-Point 45ACP model you ‘found’ at the crime scene. You’re damn lucky that he did confess, or someone might have gone and cataloged this and realized that we have two guns, same model, same brand of ammo, same fucking serial number. How the hell did you fake that?”
“It wasn’t fake.”
“The hell you say? What were you doing, planting a duplicate of his gun?”
I turned on him. “I wasn’t planting it! No one was ever supposed to find that gun! I screwed up!” He backed up, and I realized that I had never raised my voice to him before. I grabbed his jacket to stop his retreat.
“Dana, what the hell’s going on?”
“The gun—it’s real, but it doesn’t belong here. I was pressed for time, trying to put it somewhere safe until I could dispose of it.”
“Dana? You aren’t making sense.”
I didn’t care. “I shouldn’t have tried to track him down while you were standing there. It was stupid. The damn tattoo place reminded me too much— She had lost her dad just like— My mom gone— And I was able to do it right then. I didn’t want to wait. Stupid!”
“Do what, Dana?” There might have been a touch of fear in his voice.
I stood there in front of him, knowing that everything I might say would sound insane. I was already raving. My hands were balled up in his jacket, and I could see in his eyes that the Dana he saw now was not the same Dana he knew.
The Dana he knew didn’t really exist.
“Do what?”
“This,” I told him as I pushed us both forward.
* * *
—
I had never tried taking someone with me when I used the Mark. I was so torn up with conflicting emotions that I didn’t much care. I had been hesitant and reflective showing him the Mark, but shoving him was an impulse that caught me up in it before I had even thought about what it was I was doing.
I gasped when I felt the invisible hand of my Mark touch me, pushing me with a force stronger than I’d experienced before. I felt the pressure moving me and Jacob from the top of my spine all the way down, forceful enough that I felt as if I should topple over. But the touch of the Mark wasn’t pushing me in a spatial direction.
I suddenly realized what I was doing.
I stopped moving, and the room around us plunged into the darkness of a sudden night. The lights were out in my living room; but it wasn’t my living room anymore. In the Venetian-slashed light from the streetlight outside I could see the blocky forms of an overstuffed sectional couch facing a huge entertainment center that was a couple of decades out of fashion. Massed on the shelves of the entertainment center, transfixed by long knives of light, ranks of porcelain clown figurines stared at us.
His voice almost broke as he yelled, “What the hell did you just do?”
I knew from my own experience that the change in time of day could be much more disorienting than the sudden change in the surroundings. Jacob stepped back and nearly fell over an end table that hadn’t been there before. A tall lamp fell over with a crash. His back was to the window, so I couldn’t see his expression in his silhouette.
“What the hell did you do?”
A light came on behind me, by the stairs up to the bedroom, and I saw his face. His eyes widened as he saw my changed living room in all its clown-infected glory. Above, an old woman’s voice called down to us. “I have a gun!”
Jacob repeated himself, but his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, as if he couldn’t take in enough air to form the words. “What did you do?”
Above us, the clown lady said, “I’m calling 911!”
I grabbed for Jacob again, and he tried to avoid my touch. But I was quicker than he was. My hands made contact with his chest, and I pushed both of us just a step and a half, and this time I paid attention to the shifting environment around us as versions of my living room flashed in and out of existence around us.
I felt the press of the Mark against both of us. I had him in a half grapple, half embrace, and my robe had come partly open against him. My cheek touched his as I pushed him away from the clown lady’s house.
I stopped pushing in another room only an hour removed from the clown lady, but this one was empty, unoccupied except for a small folding table.
Jacob tripped and fell backward across the table, scattering business cards stamped with logos from a half dozen realty companies. He landed flat on the table, and the front legs buckled under him, sliding him back toward me to land si
tting on the floor, facing me.
I pulled my robe shut.
There were no lights on here, but no Venetian blinds covered the window, so the streetlamp illuminated the whole empty room. Enough that I could see his face in the reflected light.
“Are you all right?” I asked him. My legs felt a little rubbery after using the Mark.
He laughed without much humor. “You’re kidding, right?” He pushed himself up with a grunt. “What did you do? Drug me?”
“No, I wouldn’t do that.”
“How do I know what you won’t do?” He looked around the room. “I give up, where are we?”
“My house,” I said quietly.
“Bullshit.”
I gestured toward the streetlight. “Look outside. You’ll see the same street.”
He stared at me, and almost reluctantly walked over to the window and looked outside. He stared at the street, shaking his head. “What kind of trick are you pulling?” He turned around and faced me. There was anger in his face, and my heart sank because I was certain then that I had lost him.
“No trick.”
“So you took me to a neighboring townhouse. The floor plans—”
“Jacob, that isn’t it.”
“What is it, then?”
“We’re in the same place. It’s a different time.”
“A different time?”
Of course, he wouldn’t believe me. It was insane. How long did it take me to understand what was happening when I used the Mark? “We’re in my living room, about fourteen hours after we started, in a world where it’s vacant.”
“Dana, that’s insane.”
I know. This is why I never told you, or anyone. . . .
I was so wrapped up in thinking of a way to make him understand what had happened that I barely paid attention to the sensation of a ghost hand almost touching my Mark. How could I make him understand? How did I first understand?
“You have your cell phone?” I asked him.
“Yes . . .” He said it very slowly, as if he was trying to talk down an armed psychopath, not a woman he’d known for three years.
“Do you have a land line at home?”
“Yes.”
“Call yourself.”
“Dana?”
“Please, I’m trying to get you to understand.”
He stepped away from the window and shook his head. “Okay, I’ll humor you.”
He walked past me and dialed a number on his cell phone. He stood there listening to the phone ring for what seemed like several minutes. This was probably going to turn out to be a bad idea. The Jacob that lived in this world was probably not home, or would let the call go into voice mail, or had a different phone number.
I became aware that I was feeling phantom hands hovering over my Mark. The almost-touch was familiar. It was the same feeling I had felt when facing the armored man who killed John Doe.
“Hello?” Jacob said finally. “Who is this?” His voice had a tone of accusation to it.
The touch was growing stronger. It was coming.
“I don’t care what time it is. Who am I talking to?” Jacob’s expression was turning from shock to anger. “Who are you? Why did Dana put you up to this?”
I started turning around, trying to figure out where the sensation was coming from. I didn’t pay any more attention to Jacob’s conversation, I felt as if the thing would arrive any moment.
“Jacob—”
He looked up at me and snapped, “What the hell are you—”
“Something’s coming,” I whispered.
ELEVEN
HE LOWERED THE cell phone and glared at me. At the same time there was a distortion of the air behind him. The light from the streetlight outside rippled in the air as something solid twisted into existence behind him, falling forward through a dimension I couldn’t name.
I grabbed Jacob, shoving my left hand into his jacket to grab the gun in his shoulder holster. He shouted, “Hey,” as I pushed him to the side, away from between me and the already coalesced image. The gun slid out into my hand as he fell, and I took a step back, bringing the weapon up to brace my shot two-handed.
In the confined space of the living room, the mechanical armor seemed much bigger than it had outside—even though I had seen the old man next to it and knew that it was half again as big as he had been, and he had not been a small man.
I had Jacob’s gun braced and pointed at the thing’s faceplate, and long habit made me yell, “Freeze!”
It took a step with the whirr of gears and a hiss of steam, its sword half-raised preparing to strike at me or Jacob. A sound came from inside it, and before I realized it was language—a heavy accent saying, “Do not—” my finger was closing the trigger.
Like before, I was firing police hollow-points at serious metal armor, but this time I was at close range, almost close enough for the muzzle flash to touch the thing’s faceplate. The armored skull snapped back, but the sword continued to rise.
I wasn’t used to Jacob’s gun, which was heavier and had a worse kick than my Jericho, and my next shot clipped the joint in the thing’s right shoulder. It wasn’t where I was aiming, but it was a lucky shot, sparking off the joint and releasing a jet of steam.
I had to scramble back as it moved forward, raising the sword. I no longer had time to brace, I just started pumping .45 ACP rounds into the armor’s upper body as I backed into the kitchen. It made a wild swing with the sword, the arm trembling slightly, and I dodged deeper into the kitchen as the sword came down on the stove. It hit with enough force that the glass cooktop shattered, sending black shards everywhere in the kitchen. It caved in the oven and bent the door in half.
I did not want to think about the force behind that blow.
I fired again, another wild shot that clipped its left hip, releasing more steam and dripping black fluid. It ignored the damage as it tried to free its weapon from the stove. I took the moment of its distraction to brace and aim, since, back to the refrigerator, I had no retreat left. I was about to place another group of rounds into its face when I saw Jacob clear the doorway behind the thing.
“Jacob, no! Take cover!”
While I was focused on Jacob, the thing pulled its sword free with an inhuman heave that tore the remains of the stove free from the wall and sent it rolling down the kitchen aisle at me. I had nowhere to dodge as the side of the stove slammed into me. Jacob’s gun went flying as the breath was knocked out of me.
It only had to take one step to be on the other side of the stove from me. I tried to push the stove away, and it moved just a quarter inch before slamming into a pair of armored legs. My arms vibrated with the effort of pushing against the stove, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
The air was hazy from the steam venting from the armor’s shoulder and hip. Backlit by the streetlight outside, it looked like the black knight from some medieval fairy tale. The thing’s sword came down to point at my neck. Again, the voice came from inside the armor, with a heavy Russian accent, “You will now surrender and return with me.”
As it spoke, Jacob darted in behind it, ducking into the space where the stove used to be. He grabbed something and shoved it into the armor’s left hip, where steam and fluids were leaking.
A bright blue spark arced from the armor with a sound something like fabric tearing and smelling of burning tinfoil. An incomprehensible monosyllable gurgled from inside as every joint in the armor went rigid. The sword fell from its grasp, and it fell backward into the kitchen aisleway, landing on its back, arm still outstretched.
Jacob held the black and smoldering end of the stove’s power cord in his hand, still plugged into the 220 line in the wall behind where the stove had been. He stared down at the frozen armor as if he didn’t quite see it.
I vaulted over the stove, now that there wasn’t a sword in my w
ay. My thighs were bruised, but I’d managed to avoid getting badly hurt. I tried to be careful landing, but it was dark, and I still managed to get a few painful cuts on my bare feet landing on the fragments of the stovetop.
The first thing I did was scoop up Jacob’s gun and hand it to him. “You need to reload,” I told him.
He looked up from the armor and said, “What the hell is that thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I don’t have a fucking clue! Take the damn gun!”
He took the weapon from me, and I bent down to look at my armored adversary. The metal was peppered with dents where bullets had struck it. The joints were no longer venting steam, just oil and other fluids, pooling into a slippery mess on the floor.
The armor looked less medieval and more industrial the closer I examined it. If anything, the engraving seemed Victorian to me, the segmented plates held on by bolts and screws. After a moment of thinking what the occupant could reach to remove the helmet in an emergency, I found two bolts with wide wing-shaped tops just forward of the shoulders. I twisted both of them, and they moved freely with the ease of something that had been meticulously machined.
The helmet clam-shelled open under its own hydraulic impulse once I released the screws dogging it shut. Inside, an unconscious young man faced me, a nasty black knot on his left temple. I reached down and felt along his neck, and I was relieved to find the pulse steady and strong. He was breathing well, too, despite a trickle of blood coming from a nose that looked freshly broken.
“Let the EMTs do that,” Jacob said.
“If I do, he’ll just disappear again.”
Who are you?
The man inside the armor was handsome, in his mid-twenties at the oldest. His face was pale where it was unbruised, and he had a Scandinavian look to him, with close-cropped hair that was blonder than mine.
“What are you talking about?” Jacob asked. The way he held the gun now, he could have been covering me rather than the man in the armor. “Disappear again?”
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