Time Eternal

by Lily Worthington

  Antonio gave her a solemn nod and led the way through the arched door. Before she moved out, a hand stopped her.

  “I won’t let you go to Fernando without protection.” It was Rei. She was surprised by the pleading tone in his commanding voice.

  She smiled up at him. “I know you won’t. It’s something I must do for myself, for Elizabeth.” Then she pulled his head lower, pressing her forehead against his. “You and your men will follow us. Wait outside and be ready, okay?”

  With much reluctance, Rei inhaled a deep breath and nodded in agreement with her. She held him closer for a moment longer and then walked out with her cousin.

  Chapter Thirty

  Antonio led Skyla into a room behind the grand staircase in the main house. It was spare, just like her holding room in the tower, a bed, a table with two chairs, and an oversized dresser. The only personal item in the room was a small picture frame, which Skyla couldn’t quite make out from afar.

  “Take off your combat clothes and gear and put this on.” He shoved a woolen cloak toward her. She hesitated for a long moment but understood the cloak could not possibly hide the sword, though it would cover the rest of her weapons. She made haste with her clothing and took the sword and scabbard off her back.

  “No tricks,” she said before handing her sword to him. She knew better than to trust him, yet she had no choice.

  The cloak felt soft on her skin; it was made of exquisitely fine yarn. Only noblemen in this time period could afford such luxury. So maybe her cousin hadn’t lied about Fernando keeping his promise of riches. And maybe her cousin was genuine about helping her and their fathers. Skyla sent out a silent prayer that it was true and that she would not have to kill her cousin. She absolutely would if she had to, but part of her still remembered how close they were as children and how much she had trusted him as her protector. Even though her uncle, his father, had never approved of her cousin’s choice of military career, nevertheless, Uncle Giovanni liked Antonio immensely, especially after Antonio’s mother died from childbirth. So it would seriously suck if she had to kill him.

  No time to dwell on what-ifs. “Ready.” She adjusted the cloak, making sure it completely concealed her.

  Antonio let her up the staircase to the far back of the mansion. The hallway was progressively getting dimmer. At the end of it, two guards were posted outside of a set double doors made of ornately carved wood. Light was coming from underneath the doors. As soon as the guards saw their approach, they reached to open the doors, which took both of them to push open. A heavy creaking noise echoed through the empty hallway.

  But as soon as Skyla stepped inside, she immediately knew why Fernando had used such heavy wood for the doors. His playroom was a BDSM fantasyland. Crops, whips, floggers, spreader bars, St. Andrew’s crosses, cuffs, ropes, chains, and all sorts of other toys were arranged in a classic dungeon setting. Skyla muted her gasp.

  “Welcome, Elizabeth.” Fernando smiled at her. He was shirtless, with only a pair of cotton trousers on. Two sets of five guards were lined along the walls on the side. They too were dressed like Fernando in thin cotton pants with nothing else except their swords.

  Her eyes narrowed, and then she stepped forward. “I’m here. Release my father and uncle.” A loud clunk sounded behind. She didn’t need to turn around to know the doors were firmly closed.

  Fernando’s smile deepened on his thin, pale face. That alone gave her the creeps already. And now he was beckoning her to come closer. Inside, Elizabeth recoiled from the sick lust shining in his eyes, but Skyla knew she had to play along to give Vivi and Gus the time to rescue her father and uncle. Taking a deep breath, she walked up to Fernando while Antonio kept pace with her from behind.

  Standing tall in front of Fernando, Skyla held out her chin. She would be damned if she would let him see that Elizabeth was trembling inside of her. She repeated. “I am here. Release my father and uncle.”

  The lecherous bastard had the nerve to hold out his bony hand, trying to caress her face. She wanted to crush his wrist for such audacity, for inflicting so much terror on countless young women before her. But she forced down her need for vengeance. She needed to buy time for her team.

  Fernando’s cold, clammy hand brushed her cheek lightly, as if he were examining a rare antique. She stood still, accepting his unwelcome touches stoically. Obviously not satisfied with her reaction, he stroked his hand down to her neck. It started as a light caress, and then he abruptly tightened his hold, choking her. Her body tensed up immediately. Her instinct was to fight back, but again she forced herself to relax, to give the appearance of submission. Out of the corner of her eye, Antonio almost took a step forward but stopped himself immediately. He too understood the need to stall for time.

  Fernando’s smile was cold, yet his eyes were dancing with excitement. “Elizabeth, you don’t know how long I’ve waited for you here in my domain.” He leaned forward and ran his slimy tongue along her cheek. Gross! Still Skyla forced herself to remain still, remain submissive.

  “I told you, you could be either my wife or my whore. I guess you’ve chosen to be my whore. I could have executed your papa and uncle right then and there, but my spies found out about your uncle’s time machine and how you didn’t die in the fire but used the time machine to escape me.” He yanked her forward and pushed his hard-on against her, wanting to shock her as he had done to Elizabeth. Skyla knew his game, and she also knew in order to win, she could not show him any reaction. So she schooled her expression to be as blank as possible, as bored as possible. And it worked. Now anger was blazing across Fernando’s face. He was not getting his fix from seeing terror in his prey’s eyes. His lips curled into a hideous glower.

  “Elizabeth, it doesn’t matter who you think you’ve become, I will break you, and you will submit to me.” He raised his hand. Just as she was debating whether she should take the blow to give Vivi and Gus more time or deflect it as her training demanded, the doors crashed open, and the two guards were thrown into the room. Their lifeless bodies landed on the floor at Fernando’s feet.

  •●•

  Rei and his men quietly followed Skyla and Antonio up the stairs, using the dim torchlights and shadows to hide their movements. As they were rounding yet another turn of the hallway, the loud creaking noise alerted him a heavy door was opened ahead. His held up his fisted arm and signaled his men stop, while he gave another signal to Tory and Constantin to scout ahead of them.

  His young warriors moved along the wall stealthily, coming behind the two guards and efficiently breaking the guards’ necks in one lethal, precise twist. They immediately caught the dead guards’ falling bodies. With a few more checks, they waved back at Rei. He and his men stepped out of the shadows and walked to the doors. Light was coming underneath the doors, but no sound was coming through it. He bent down and looked through the keyhole. Fernando had his hand on Skyla’s throat and was saying something to her. Even though her face remained impassive, her body was rigid, her hands clenching at her sides. Rei wanted to take down the door and slay the bastard once and for all for daring to put his hands on Skyla, on Elizabeth again. But he understood that Skyla was trying to buy time for her team to rescue her father and uncle.

  Rei held up two fingers, and Victor, one of his men, immediately handed him a listening device. It was an old-fashioned one, a mere cone-shaped device that amplified sound as clearly as any modern day gadgets that he had come across in the twenty-first century. He pressed it against the wooden door, and Fernando’s laughing came through loud and clear, along with his sickening declaration of how Skyla had chosen to be his whore instead. He had to summon his well-honed focus so he wouldn’t be bursting through the doors right now, at least not yet. He needed to know what they were up against behind these doors first. As soon as he lowered his eye to look through the keyhole, his restraint was gone. The bastard had the nerve to touch what was his. Fernando was licking the side of Skyla’s face like she was his favorite treat. He w
as smiling and sneering at her at the same time “…you will submit to me…” That was it. Rei sprang into action.

  He discarded the listening device hastily and grabbed the two lifeless guards off the floor, using their dead weights to push through the heavy doors with a roar. Rei had hoped that the door crashing down with the two dead guards’ bodies would create a distraction to Fernando and his elite guards, but he was wrong. Before the doors were fully crashed open, the elite guards were already charging up to the front of the chamber, ready to defend their master. Rei’s men also had their weapons drawn in battle stance. Stalemate.

  “Fernando.” It was an uncivilized growl. “Let go of her.” He was holding back the rage that had built up for centuries.

  Fernando did not seem to be too concerned about them crashing his private party. That’s not a good sign at all. Before Rei could give his men the order to attack, the sound of heavy boots thundered up the hall right behind him. Within seconds, another contingent of the elite guards appeared, cutting off their way out. There were a good fifty guards massed behind them. His men immediately turned to the new threats. And that’s when two motionless bodies were dropped on the floor. Gus and Vivi. Shit. Then Skyla’s father and uncle, with their hands bound and their mouths gagged, were shoved to the front. Double shit. They had no more moves. They needed an escape plan fast.

  “Vivi! Gus!”

  Rei turned back to the chamber, and there was Skyla, trying to get past the wall of elite guards. She’d already shed her cloak and had her daggers out, ready to fight her way through.

  “If you want them to die, go ahead, Elizabeth.” Fernando’s icy tone froze Skyla in her tracks. Immediately the guards outside the door had the old men’s throats. Their eyes were widened in fear and incredulity.

  “And that means all of them, including your team and your lover.” Fernando sneered. His guards leveled their swords and stepped up, surrounding Rei and his small team.

  Fernando’s cruel, thin lips kicked up, smirking at them. “Take her.” He signaled Antonio, who was already disarming Skyla of her hidden weapons before pushing her back farther into the room.

  Rei could tell from Skyla’s stiffening posture that she wanted to fight, but she knew she had no choice, again, but to let Fernando play his sick game with her and her loved ones. She let Antonio back her up to the wall where manacles were hanging. Snap, snap. Skyla was chained against the wall. Before Antonio stepped away from her, she head-butted her cousin. A loud crack echoed through the chamber. Antonio was actually knocked back a few steps from the severity of the blow. “I told you I’d you kill you myself if you betrayed me again.” She yanked on the chains. “And what’s with you people and the chain fetish. It’s so medieval, you know? And I thought we were from the Renaissance, the enlightened period.”

  With Skyla’s scolding providing a distraction, Rei slowly moved his hand to his back, silently signaling his men to be ready. On a count of three, he dealt a death blow with his sword at the closest guard in front of him. His bold, calculated move gave his men the split second they needed to take on an offensive formation. He heard battle cries and metallic crashes around him, but he paid no attention to any of it. He trusted his men were already securing Gus, Vivi, and Skyla’s father and uncle from the enemy.

  Rei shut out all sounds and tunneled his vision on his path to Skyla, which consisted of a double column of guards, looking fiercely at him, waiting for him to make the first move. And there he went, letting loose of his control, charging forward like a berserker, hacking his way through the wall of guards. These guards were the crème de la crème of Fernando’s elite guards. Within moments, they were surrounding him, cutting the path off to Skyla.

  Clenching both of his hands on the hilt of his saber, he let out a cry and charged forward. Each blow he dealt and deflected vibrated through his arms and organs. The lethal strength and skill of these men were truly incomparable considering Rei himself had trained in the most unforgiving environment since he was a boy.

  He methodically cut down the guards one by one with the help of his men who were guarding his back. They had already deflected several near-fatal blows for him while he remained focused on getting to Skyla. Then there were the last three guards holding out their swords, standing in front of him, guarding their master and his treasure.

  Tory stepped up next to him. “We’ve got the Magini and the TSCAA agents. They’re safe.”

  That was when Rei noticed the sudden quiet. No metal jangling, no battle cries, just the fire crackling from the torches lining the walls. His lips curled, savoring the fear on Fernando’s pale face. “Good.” Then he charged at the remaining guards, with his men following from behind.

  The final dying grunt from the last remaining guard was music to Rei’s ear. Now he could deal with Fernando and Antonio once and for all. When he looked to the back wall, it was empty.

  No! Desperate, cold fear coursed through his body like an untamed beast.

  •●•

  Yanking hard on the chains around her wrists again, Skyla spat at Antonio. “Is it worth it? Is all the gold Fernando gave you worth the lives of your father and mine?”

  Her cousin didn’t respond to her digs. Instead he remained standing slightly in front of her, watching the severe fighting between Rei’s men and Fernando’s elite guards, who were steadily losing ground. And Fernando, standing on her other side, was looking greener by the second.

  Good. She couldn’t wait to get her hands on both Fernando and her lying scumbag of a cousin. All she needed right now was to get herself free from these wretched cuffs. But the juggling noise from her careful movements around the chains swiftly brought Fernando’s attention to her. He reached over to the chains and yanked them roughly, scraping her wrists. It would have been a perfect opening for her to escape if she could time it right. But Fernando was smarter than she’d given him credit for. Before he unlocked the chains, he pressed a sharp knife directly on her left breast, right above her heart.

  “Move and you die.” His eyes were wild with anger and fear.

  A pinpricking sensation was pooling around where his knife was pressing against her. The bastard had broken her skin, and he had purposely drawn blood as a stern warning to her. She had to bite her lips from saying something to provoke Fernando even more, even though she wanted to so very much.

  He tilted his head slightly to the side, and her cousin stepped up to unlock the chains. As soon as they were dropped on the stone floor, Skyla swept her foot out at both their legs while her hands were still bound by the iron manacles. Her move succeeded in knocking Fernando down but not her cousin. The next thing she knew, the room was hanging upside down. Antonio must have simply picked her up and thrown her over his shoulder as if she were a sack of potatoes.

  She pounded her bound fists against his back. “Put me down. How could you do this again to your family?” Her cousin didn’t stop. He used one hand to secure the back of her shoulder against his muscular back and the other hand to hold her ankles together so she couldn’t kick him. He led the way through some sort of darkened doorway, with Fernando falling on their heels. He looked more furious and insane than when they were in the chamber.

  The fighting noises behind them were fading slowly as they moved deeper into the tunnel. She bet Rei and his men were so focused on disposing of the last three guards that they didn’t see her being taken away. Skyla would have called out to Rei, but the fighting was too fierce. She didn’t want to risk any distraction to him. She remembered too well when Rei was ambushed by Antonio’s men while she was bargaining for his life. Nope, not going to make the same mistake twice. So she quietly let them take her away without further struggling, without raising any alert, because Skyla would do it again, her life for Rei’s.

  •●•

  Rei kept his fear at bay while urgently searching along the walls inside the chamber not once but twice, yet there was no visible door leading outside. His heart was beating frantically. Waving his han
d to his men, he ordered, “Fan out and look for any hidden door! There has to be one.” He muttered the last part to himself angrily. How could he have let Fernando take her without him seeing it happen? How could he let history repeat itself again?

  After a few minutes, his men had still found nothing. Frustrated, he knew time was running out, and Fernando was getting farther away from him. He was about to order his men to demolish all the walls when Knox walked in. It dawned on him that he hadn’t seen the two agents since they were transported back to this time period. After they had arrived outside of the tower where Skyla was held, Knox and Butch went off separately; Rei had been too worried for Skyla’s safety to ask where they were going. Now they showed up.

  “Where have you been?” Rei was so angry, his fisted hands were literally shaking. He wanted to hit something or someone.

  Knox ignored his demand and went to check on his twin sister and Gus immediately. Both were still unconscious. Elizabeth’s father spoke up nervously, tilting his chin to their unmoving forms on the ground. “They are alive. The guards were waiting for them in our dungeon. As soon as they walked in, the guards shot them with darts laced with oleum dulce vitrioli.”

  Rei knew his Latin well. “An opium-based sedative.”

  The old man nodded, confirming Rei’s translation. “Was that Elizabeth we saw?” His voice was trembling with hope.

  “Yes. It’s Elizabeth,” Rei answered quietly. “Her name is Skyla Gray now.”

  The old man staggered against his brother Giovanni, whispering, “She’s survived the time traveling. She really is alive.”

  Rei wanted to tell them more about where she had been all these years and who she had become, but he had to find Skyla before he lost Fernando’s trail. He turned to his men. “Take down all the walls in here. Constantin, scout all the basement and subbasement levels. Tory, check the surrounding land for tunnels and hidden pathways.”