by Amber Lynn
Realizing who the second person he was talking about was, Krinla rolled her head to the side to look up at the man holding her. Before she got a good look at him to make sure the picture in her mind of his face hadn’t changed, the man’s face got closer to her as he settled his lips on hers. Krinla was so shocked by the move that she didn’t know what else to do other than mimic the movements she felt against her lips.
Chapter Twelve
Krinla could hear the throat clearing coming from above them, but she was more interested in the kiss. Another person’s lips had never touched hers, and she found it surprising how soft they were. She hadn’t studied the man long enough to tell if he had cracks or lines on his lips, but touching them up close told her there wasn’t any.
She was trying to figure out exactly what flavor to classify him. She wasn’t drinking his blood, but his lips tasted of something. She’d expected him to taste like he smelled, but it was different. The sweet smell almost made her think of something feminine, where his lips were totally masculine.
“I was under the impression your relationship hadn’t advanced to face eating.”
Krinton had plenty of humor in his words, but they reiterated that there were more people in the room and Krinla needed to have some questions answered. The man’s lips curled up as his tongue brushed against her lips and his head moved a little away from her. His blue eyes looked alive as he laughed.
“Hi, I’m Hunter.”
Krinla chuckled. It wasn’t the right time to feel light and free, but something about being in the man’s arms made it so the worries in her world didn’t seem to matter as much. Krinla didn’t have every memory of every second of her life, but she doubted she ever felt exactly like she did at that moment.
“I’m Krinla.”
Hunter’s eyes turned slightly more serious and his smile lost a little of its brilliance. “Are you okay? When I said I wanted to meet you today, I wasn’t expecting you to show up dead.”
Even with the reality of things coming back to the front, it was hard for the melancholy that should’ve been there to bring Krinla down. She hadn’t assessed the situation, something she should’ve done the second she opened her eyes. She could feel and hear fourteen hearts beating in the room, with the one next to her head doing its best to drown out the rest.
“It’s been a busy cycle.”
Krinla wanted to tell him everything, but she wasn’t sure how much she should say. The fact that they weren’t alone limited what was possible.
“But you’re okay? They said you did it to yourself. Did you want to die?”
The hand on top of her body moved to pull her scarred wrist closer while his fingers rubbed the wound gently. It was as healed as it would ever get, and that bothered Krinla. She didn’t think it would, but she didn’t like the idea of carrying a scar Hulin had left.
“Like the wound in my side, my wrist was cut by the man you saved us from. What I did, was simply stab my chest so all the blood running through my body would leak out. Since you’re not a Dracul, I don’t expect you to understand how that works, but I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”
She wanted to explain further and show him her healed chest to prove her point, but it didn’t seem like the right time. It was clear he would’ve liked to hear more as his fingers left her wrist momentarily to move up her torso and settle between her breasts. Krinla’s right hand moved to join his and moved it up slightly to where the knife had once stuck out of her.
“It sounds like your fiancé has stabbed you twice. Is that a Dracul custom?”
The word fiancé caused Krinla’s brow to furrow, but given the context of the rest of the sentence, she was able to figure out he was talking about Hulin.
“We have some strange customs, I’m sure, but that isn’t one of them. I’d prefer not to talk about Hulin right now, if that’s okay. As my father can tell you, I’m kind of inquisitive, and there seems to be a lot going on that I don’t understand.”
Both Krinton and Rya laughed at the comment. Krinla didn’t want to look away from Hunter, but she did take a second to make sure both of her traveling companions were okay. Since Krinla had ended up with a knife in her side, there was a chance they had been injured at some point during their journey, but she didn’t see any immediate evidence.
“Yes, I would love to do some explaining and ask questions of my own,” Krinton started, “but I will have to insist that’s done in a smaller group. There are obviously things we need to tread lightly about to not mess around with some future events, but I think we can all learn a lot from each other.”
Krinla didn’t understand the whole future events deal. The concept that they were possibly back in time wasn’t one she could grasp. There were works of fiction that mentioned the concept of time travel, but they were just books kids read when they were young.
“I agree,” Noah chimed in.
What would happen seemed to be between the two men, so Krinla tuned the conversation that they started out as she concentrated on Hunter. Negotiations about how many of the soldiers would stay didn’t concern her. Hunter seemed to have the same idea.
“You know, I spent all day after we met trying to figure out how I was going to explain who I was. I’m not supposed to talk to anyone, and I’m definitely not supposed to tell them the truth about who I am, but I was going to tell you.”
His hand drifted up so his fingers could run through Krinla’s hair. Between all the running and collapsing, the black strands were going every direction.
“Who are you?”
She knew his name, but she didn’t know anything about him other than what he looked like, that he smelled like sugar and that his lips felt divine against hers.
“I think part of that information is what they’re debating now. Most of what I want to say is private, so maybe we can find some time a little later to talk without everyone else listening in.”
“Are you really human?”
Krinla remembered hearing the word, but the concept was as confusing as time travel. Humans didn’t exist in the world she was from. They were nothing more than a distant memory.
Hunter nodded. “I am guilty of that. I don’t know how much you know about us, but we’re not all that bad.”
There was very little said about humans, other than they weren’t strong enough to survive the virus that wiped out their population early in the twenty-first century. Knowing that, Krinla finally got a hint of the melancholy she was missing from her reaction to the situation.
“Obviously you know what we’re trying to prevent. I like to think it’s still early in the battle, but we’re losing people by the hundreds of thousands each day it seems, maybe even millions at this point.”
He didn’t lose his smile, but the edges of his eyes turned down slightly. There weren’t even tens of thousands of people still alive in Krinla’s time, so she couldn’t imagine the amount of people he claimed were dying.
“How much have you figured out from your trips to my time?”
Pretending they weren’t at least two hundred years in the past wasn’t possible with his admissions. It made Krinla want to reach down and make sure her body was all in one piece after going through whatever process they had to bring them to wherever they were. She didn’t feel like body parts had shifted, but she hadn’t had a chance to take inventory.
“I haven’t been able to explore much since I’ve had to watch out for you following me, but I’ve gotten a sense for the various groups still around. If there are humans, I haven’t found any.”
For the first time, Krinla wondered if there were some out there back in her time. She’d always been told there weren’t, but she didn’t wander the edges of Oblivion. There could’ve been humans somewhere out there. The stories they were told as kids said there weren’t, but that didn’t mean the stories were right.
“I can’t say there have been any humans other than you around my home, but they could be out there somewhere.”
Hunt
er shook his head in response to her words. “When I travel to your time, I’m supposed to land right where we’re standing. All I see when I get there is trees that are at least a hundred years old. There’s no sign of foundations or chunks of concrete where this building once stood. There’s no signs of the roads that surround here. If humans were still around, there’d be more than that dark forest we met in. There’d be signs of our civilization.”
Krinla hadn’t looked around the room to take in how civilized they were, but she had noticed various noises she’d never heard before. There were multiple little beeping sounds from a range of different directions. If she’d been dropped in the room by herself and didn’t feel the need to try to focus all her attention on Hunter, she was sure she would’ve been more confused about what was going on.
For some reason, she trusted that he’d explain things and make sure she wasn’t harmed. The only other person she’d ever felt that with was her father, but she’d found out he’d left a lot of things in secret that she should’ve known.
“Are you sure our fortress isn’t part of this building? Maybe we used it to build our homes.”
His scent had never drifted close to the fortress, but he could’ve climbed some of the hills throughout the forest and seen at least part of it from a distance. There was a chance he had seen it and didn’t recognize the stone.
“There’s not only this building, Krinla. We’re in the capital of the United States. There are over a million people who live, or did live, in this general area. We’re talking thousands of homes, businesses, schools, churches, all gone. At first, I thought maybe we miscalculated and I was in a forest that existed in this time. So, we did the logical thing and buried something outside to see if it’d still be there in the future.”
“And it was,” Krinla finished for him in just a whisper. It was the obvious continuation for where he was going and the reality of it finally made the smile disappear from his face.
“The only thing I can think of is a nuclear device of some kind wiping it all out. I’ve been trying to pick up readings that indicate changes to the soil and air, but everything other than the structures seems the same. I was supposed to try to go somewhere different today to see if any other cities were still standing, but I promised to meet you, so I couldn’t very well take a trip to New York.”
Krinla had never heard of the places he was talking about, and she couldn’t imagine living around as many people as he claimed there were around them. She wasn’t stretching out her senses to try to find them either. Just having the number of people they already had in the room with beating hearts was bad enough.
She had vaguely sensed while they talked that some of the hearts grew more distant, but there were still five of them in the room. She somehow knew Liam was one of the soldiers that had stayed behind, which she was happy about because she wanted to see the man and tell him to his face he was a jerk.
“How about we back up a few steps and jump back to some better introductions. I believe I missed the little one’s name if it was shared and I may have left a few things out on our end.”
Hunter scoffed at his dad’s words. “Don’t worry, your information won’t be any less exciting as what you’ve already missed. Krinton’s a king.”
Hunter winked down at Krinla as he said the last word. She wasn’t sure what the gesture meant, but she hoped it would eventually be explained.
Chapter Thirteen
“Well, my title isn’t as lofty, but I suppose we’re equals. There are kings in this time, but around these parts the head of the people is called a president. Sadly after all the deaths around here lately, that title has fallen upon me.”
Like many things she’d heard, Krinla didn’t know the word president. It didn’t sound like a position Noah was happy about.
“But you’re also the one who invented this device?” Krinton held up a small circular object in his hand where Krinla could see it out of her peripheral vision.
When he saw her trying to make out what it was, Hunter moved the arm underneath her so she could sit up. She was unsure about the move at first, but it allowed her better access to see around the room. She hadn’t noticed how bright everything was. She didn’t see any windows, but the light from above their head seemed to make it even brighter than it was outside when the sun was up.
Krinla reached down and touched her left hand to her right to verify the light wasn’t hurting her. Her skin felt normal and was its usual shade of white, so the new light didn’t appear to be an issue. She looked back up at it in question, wondering where its power came from.
“I suppose there are lots of things I’ll need to show you while you’re here. First, though, I was going to show you this, so you didn’t have to strain to see the one your father has.” Hunter turned her right hand over and dropped a circular object in it. “For all of our safety, it’s best you don’t press the button right now, but take a look.”
“Are we safe here?”
No one had asked the question, but with the topic of safety being mentioned, Krinla thought it was a good idea to verify. Hulin couldn’t have followed them, at least she was fairly certain of that, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other threats waiting for them in the past.
While she waited for a response, she looked at the metallic object in her hand. It only filled a small portion of the center of her palm, yet it could jump them to different times. The concept of that much power being inside something so small seemed wrong.
She turned it over gently, careful not to depress the bump that was on the side that originally faced up. There were no words or pictures on the item, just the button that made it work.
“That depends on what you want to be safe from. We like to think the Doomsday Virus can’t make it in here, but I won’t promise anything along those lines.”
Noah paused for a second while he looked between Krinla and Krinton, who was blocking Rya from anyone else’s vision. Krinla wasn’t sure if the little girl was hiding, but either she or Krinton seemed to be making her appearance less known.
“I assume whatever chased you here won’t follow you, so I can guarantee your safety from that, but I do have to ask why you think I created the devices you and your daughter hold.”
All eyes turned towards Krinton, at least the eyes that Krinla was concerned about. She hadn’t acknowledged the soldiers in the room existed. If there was a threat to them, it was most likely from them.
“You said your name was Noah Burnett. Most of us haven’t heard much about your time, but your name is mentioned.”
That was news to Krinla. She thought she’d read every book and heard every story they had access to, but she’d never heard the man’s name. Remembering the children stories she read when she was little, the only time she could recall reading about time travel, nothing from those stories popped out as being relevant to their current situation.
All those stories talked about people getting into large machines that took them from time to time and place to place. Krinla still hadn’t done a thorough search of the room they were in, but she was pretty sure there wasn’t a giant time machine around.
“I hope it doesn’t say I’m the last president ever because I totally failed my species. That’s not the way I want to be remembered, but as you overheard Hunter talking about, it doesn’t seem we have a very positive future ahead of us.”
Noah tried to keep things light, even painting a smile on his face, but the sigh he let out after he finished speaking said otherwise. Krinla had heard the same sigh from her father before, like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. She always wanted to help him take some of that weight off, but Krinton was quick to shut her out of his problems.
“No one has shared an exact date for this time, but my father was alive when the virus broke out and he told me many stories about what happened. I won’t share exactly what he told me, but one day you’ll meet him, and unlike a lot of your kind, you’ll see him for what he is. Someone who
wants to help.”
Krinla was enthralled with what Krinton was saying. She’d never heard stories about his father. The Elder King, as many people still called him, had died before she was born and Krinton rarely spoke of him. All she knew was that he was over five hundred when he finally decided to have a child and he died when Krinton was in his forties.
“I guess there are some mysteries worth waiting for.” A friendly smile reappeared on Noah’s face. “So, you’ve obviously met my son, Hunter, and I’ve heard your name and Krinla’s, but I don’t think I caught the name of the little one behind you. I assume she’s another daughter.”
“Rya, would you like to come out and introduce yourself? I know why you’ve gone quiet, so maybe you’d like to explain it.”
Krinton looked behind him and held out his arm to usher Rya forward. Krinla hadn’t spent much time with the girl, but it seemed odd that she had to be told to come out. She hadn’t been a bit shy when she tried to command Krinton and Krinla around. The humans were different, which may have explained the hesitation when she slowly moved around so she could be seen.
“I think there are more important things to talk about than something you said I could tell her when I was ready.”
There was no confidence in the girl’s voice. Her words made Krinla tilt her head to the side. She didn’t know what to make of the statement. Clearly, it had something to do with her, but she had no idea what Rya could be hinting at.
“You’re right. For now, we’ll leave it at this is Rya, someone who has been instrumental over the years at keeping an eye on my enemies.”
“How old are you?” Noah asked.
Krinla didn’t have any comprehension of how humans aged, but she imagined it was hard to understand how someone that small had been recruited as a spy. Krinla had trouble believing Krinton had even tried to recruit the daughter of someone who was in the group of enemies he named.
“I’m ten,” Rya said softly.
The bottom of Krinla’s jaw dropped down when she heard the number. She had assumed Rya was half that age, and it was clear from Noah’s response it wasn’t what he expected either.