They burst through the last ranks of archers on the run and skidded to a stop. Facing them was a seemingly endless line of mounted horsemen, each outfitted more resplendently than the last.
“Which one is Qin?” Cassie panted.
She could almost hear Max’s teeth grinding in frustration. “Damned if I know. We’ll have to start at the—”
“Wait!”
She grabbed his arm and thrust it upward so the flickering torch illuminated a patch of ceiling. She’d assumed it had been painted a deep blue to represent a bright, daytime sky, but this portion showed stars picked out in glittering silver.
Not just stars, but constellations!
“Look, Max. There’s Capricorn.” She spun in a quick circle. “And Virgo. And…Oh, God! Those are the Pleiades!”
She whipped around again, shaking with excitement.
“Wu Jao said our piece of the medallion was Qin’s personal amulet. He carried it into every battle. Doesn’t it stand to reason he’d have that particular constellation painted above him as he led his army into the afterlife?”
Max was already on the run. Cassie had to scramble to keep up with him. She let out another whoop, this one of sheer joy, when Max skidded to a halt in front of the statue of a magnificent warhorse in full regalia. An imperial guard stood at rigid attention, gripping its reins, as if Qin himself were going to appear at any second and leap into the saddle.
And there, embedded in the bridle’s brow band, was an irregularly shaped piece of bronze. The piece of the medallion! They’d found it!
Cassie almost wept with relief. “Dig it out,” she urged Max. “Quick.”
Like the other figures, the warhorse was larger-than-life-size. Max’s head barely came up to the muzzle. The brow strap was out of reach.
“I need something to stand on. See if—”
Both he and Cassie froze as an ominous rumble echoed through the chamber. A half second later, the ground rolled under their feet.
“Take cover!”
Max tossed the makeshift torch aside and threw himself at Cassie. They went down, his body covering hers, as clay figures started to topple.
The guard holding the warhorse’s reins tipped over and cracked into a dozen pieces. The general mounted on a charger a few feet away suffered a similar fate. But when he fell, he fell sideways and hit the emperor’s warhorse.
The clay horse crashed down and shattered right on top of Cassie and Max. She lay flat, squashed under Max’s weight, his arms protecting her head, while more warriors toppled all around them.
Then there was silence. Utter, terrifying silence.
“Max?”
Again only silence.
“Max! Are you okay?”
Frantic, Cassie wiggled and squirmed out from under his dead weight. Professor Carswell’s last warning screamed through her mind as she kicked away the broken pottery shards and struggled to tip Max onto his back.
The professor could smooth over any “debris” Cassie and Max might leave behind, so there would be no trace of their impact on historical events. But that only applied to actual historical events. If either of them was killed, not even Athena Carswell could make them whole, because they were never really part of that history.
Fighting blind panic, Cassie tugged Max onto his back. Nausea welled hot and acrid in her throat as she brushed the dirt from his face with shaking hands.
“Max! Max, can you hear me?”
Not again. Dear God, please! Not again. Jerry Holland’s death had been hard enough to bear. This man she loved with every fiber of her being.
She scrabbled up onto her hands and knees, tugged back his wolf pelt and grabbed his hand. Slapping his palm over the quartz crystal set in his silver armband, she held it in place with a knee while she fumbled for her own ESC. While the quartz warmed under her palm, she chanted a furious mantra.
“You have to hear me, Max. You have to! I didn’t get to tell you that I love you, too. Do you hear me, Brody? I love you.”
Her crystal was getting hot to the touch when his lids fluttered up. Confusion clouded his gray eyes for a second or two before he blinked it away. He twisted his head and frowned down at his silver cuff before zinging a glance at the broken statues all around them. Enough light showed through new cracks in the earth to bring him to his feet.
“Tap the extraction code,” he called to Cassie over his shoulder. “I’ll get the medallion piece.”
Her hand shaking, she tapped an SOS on the quartz as Max grabbed the pottery shard with the embedded bronze piece.
Then they were both up and running.
Professor Carswell had slept at the lab throughout their time jump, waiting for their signal. But once she got it, she had to don the headpiece and focus her energy before she could bring them back. That might take thirty seconds. A minute. Two. Neither Max nor Cassie wanted to wait those precious seconds in an underground tomb while the earth trembled around them.
They leaped over tumbled archers and raced back to the piece of the roof Max had pried up. With every step, Cassie could sense a major tremor coming. Praying the professor would get them out in time, she scrambled through the opening and onto the roof. Max swung up behind her a moment later and craned his neck to gauge the distance to the hole Cassie had fallen through.
“Here,” he barked, linking his hands. “I’ll boost you up.”
Using his hands and a strong heave as a springboard, she flew upward, crawled out through the hole and flopped onto her stomach. She was stretching an arm down for Max when the earth shuddered under her belly.
“Max! Take my hand! Fast!”
He leaped up, caught her wrist and almost wrenched her arm from its socket. Cassie gritted her teeth against the agony as he used her arm as an anchor to walk up the dirt walls. Not until he was out did she realize the violent shudders under her belly were connected to the thunder behind them. She flopped over, swallowing a scream at the pain in her shoulder, and saw six horsemen charging straight at them.
Tai was in the lead, his powerful body hunched forward in the saddle and murder in his dark eyes. Inspector Li galloped at his side. His black cloak was flapping behind him like a vulture’s wings.
“Oh, hell!” With a resigned sigh, Max got to his feet and reached across his waist for his sword. His mouth twisted in disgust when he remembered it was lying amid the rubble below.
Suddenly a tingle raced across Cassie’s skin. The hair on her arms stood straight up. At the same instant, the ground rolled beneath her feet.
“This is it!” she shouted to Max.
He reached out, gripped her hand, squeezed hard. Then he disappeared right before her eyes.
Cassie’s last image before she, too, rode the waves, was Chief Eunuch Tai’s startled face as the earth opened under his horse’s hooves.
Chapter 13
Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
–Confucius
C assie blinked her eyes open and felt her pulse leap with wild elation.
They’d landed back in the twenty-first century looking exactly as they had when they’d zoomed out of it! She was in jeans and a fuzzy yellow sweater. Max…
She gulped, taking in his buzz-cut blond hair, thigh-hugging jeans and faded Air Force Academy sweatshirt. For a crazy instant she almost missed his wolf pelt and sexy Viking look.
Then he shook his head to clear the haze from their jump and raised his fist. In it was the pottery shard containing the embedded bronze piece.
“We did it, Jones!”
With a shout of triumph, he whipped his free hand around her waist and dragged her in for a long, hard kiss. A laughing, exultant Cassie returned it joyously.
When he raised his head, she had eyes only for him. His smile. His strong, square chin. His so very sexy and kissable mouth.
“About that unfinished conversation,” he growled.
“The one on our way to Qin’s tomb,” she asked breathlessly, “when you said you love me?”
/> “I was thinking more of the one inside the tomb, when you said you love me.”
“I didn’t think you heard me!”
“I did, babe. Every word.”
“Right.” She put her wildly churning emotions into a radiant smile. “About that…”
“Ahem.”
The discreet throat clearing echoed in Cassie’s ears like a thunderclap. She jumped out of Max’s arms, her face flaming as she took in the small crowd circling the glass transport capsule.
Professor Carswell was still wearing the crown-shaped headpiece she’d used to bring them back. General Ashton stood beside her. Her expression conveyed profound relief and amusement in equal proportions. Delia Sebastian had a broad smile on her face, while her jump partner, Captain Jake Tyler, gave Cassie a thumbs-up and Max a wry grin. The lab assistants and data techs were crowded around, as well, whooping and high-fiving.
Max and a thoroughly embarrassed Cassie stepped out of the capsule to a chorus of cheers. Max’s first order of business was to hand Professor Carswell the broken shard. Then he turned to General Ashton and rendered a sharp salute.
“Mission accomplished, ma’am.”
“Good work, you two.” The general’s blue eyes were warm with approval. “Judging by the vibes Athena picked up, it seemed to get hairy there at the end.”
“A little,” Cassie admitted with magnificent understatement.
“Well, we’re all glad you’re back. Things have gotten a little dicey here, too. I’ll brief you after you’ve rested and Athena deciphers the message encoded in this piece of the medallion.” She checked her watch. “Let’s reconvene at fifteen hundred hours in the conference room. You can give us a full report then and we’ll fill you in on what’s been happening on this end.”
Cassie started to protest that she didn’t need rest, but Max preempted her. Looking the general straight in the eye, he nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Fifteen hundred hours.”
Ashton gave him a bland smile. “That should be enough time for you two to finish your…conversation.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Cassie’s cheeks were hot again when Max hustled her out of the launch facility and down a long corridor toward the crew quarters.
“We’ve got six hours before we reconvene,” she protested. “Shouldn’t we, uh, get a motel room or something?”
“Six hours isn’t anywhere near enough time for what I have in mind, Jones. I don’t want to waste any of it looking for a room.”
Okay! That wiped out Cassie’s embarrassment and sent her pulse leaping in anticipation. As eager now as he was, she stood aside so he could yank open the door to one of the crew rooms.
“Hell! This one’s occupied.”
“Looks like Jake’s got it,” Cassie muttered, eyeing the U.S. Army Special Forces sweatshirt draped over a chair.
“Yeah, it does.” Max scraped a palm over his chin. “Hang loose a moment.”
He disappeared into the bathroom and returned a moment later with a black shaving kit.
“Tyler won’t mind,” he assured Cassie as he slammed the door to that crew room and tried another. This one opened onto a room showing only neatly made twin beds and a bare bureau.
The moment Cassie stepped inside, Max tossed the shaving kit on the nearest available surface, hit the lock and backed her against the door. His arms caged her. His eyes smiled down at her.
“Now, Spring Leaf, you were saying…?”
All Cassie had to do was look up at him to know with absolute certainty. No doubts. No questions. No hesitation. Her instincts regarding this man were true and sound.
She curved a hand over his cheek. The golden bristles that had led him to appropriate a shaving kit tickled her palm as she opened her heart.
“I love you, Bro-dai the Barbarian. I don’t know when it happened. Sometime after you kissed me in the rain, I think.”
“I know exactly when it happened for me,” he said smugly.
“You do?”
“Yep. That morning you jumped out of bed with those brown spots on your gown. Took me a while to get past that bit about ground-up antler fuzz. Once I did, though, all I could think about was what was under those spots.”
He bent and brushed her mouth with his.
“I wanted you so bad I hurt with it, Cassie. Almost as much as I want you now.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. Obviously, he didn’t need the stimulant of ground-up antler fuzz to send blood to his jade stalk. He was already rigid and hard behind the zipper of his jeans.
Cassie could feel his erection against her stomach. The muscles low in her belly tightened in response, sending erotic ripples throughout her body as she hooked her arms around his neck. Hip to hip, mouth to mouth, they released a hunger that soon consumed them.
They tore their clothes off minutes later. Or maybe it was hours. Whatever! Leaving a trail of jeans and shoes and underwear, they waltzed their way to one of the beds. Max ripped down the spread and stretched her out on the sheets. Her breasts aching from his rough-and-tender kisses, Cassie felt wet, damp heat gush between her thighs, and reached for him.
“Hold on a sec.”
He backed away and went for the shaving kit.
“Max!” Groaning, Cassie raised up on one elbow. “Don’t shave now. I can take the bristles.”
“Shave, hell.”
He rooted around inside the kit and dug out a fistful of shrink-wrapped condoms.
“Ya gotta love those Special Forces,” he said with a wicked glint in his eyes. “No oiled rice paper or pig’s bladder sheath for them.”
Laughing, Cassie fell back on the sheets. “Or us, apparently.”
“Or us.”
He ripped one of the packages open with strong, white teeth and rolled on the condom. When he joined Cassie on the narrow bed, she welcomed him joyously into her body and her heart.
They went through half of Jake Tyler’s private stash before rejoining the team.
Showered, shaved and looking very pleased with himself, Max ushered Cassie into the conference room at exactly fifteen hundred hours. She sported freshly washed hair and one heck of a whisker burn on her throat. She covered it up by burying her chin in the cowl-neck of her sweater.
When she entered the conference room, her eyes went instantly to the digitized image projected on the wall-size screen.
“It fits!”
There was their piece, connecting to those brought back by previous Time Raiders. Altogether, they constituted a third of the medallion.
Eight pieces yet to find, Cassie thought with a rush of excitement. Who would go look for them? What time period would they land in?
Eager to hear whether Professor Carswell had deciphered the code embedded in the fourth piece, she dropped into the seat reserved for her. Max took the one beside her. At General Ashton’s nod, one of the techs switched on a digital voice synthesizer.
“We’ll start with your report. Give us the highlights. You can dictate a more detailed one later.”
Cassie took the lead. Succinctly, she related the key events from their landing at the Great Wall to their frantic rush to escape being entombed with the terra-cotta warriors. Max downplayed her description of how he’d saved the empress from a razor-tipped arrow, choosing instead to credit Cassie’s psychic ability to sense the weather as the key factor in the success of their quest.
“What about Centaurians?” the general asked when they’d finished their report. “Did you encounter any?”
“None that identified themselves as such,” Cassie replied. “But…”
“There was one,” Max said flatly when she hesitated. “A palace eunuch who tried to put his hands on Cassie in a way no eunuch should want to.”
As embarrassing as it was to admit, Cassie felt compelled to relate how Tai had seemed to invade her mind as well as her body.
“There appears to be a lot of that going around,” General Ashton said dryly when she finished. “Tess Marconi said it happened just like that wi
th Lord Rustam. And I, ah, had a somewhat similar experience.”
Cassie jolted upright. “Omigod! The Centaurians are here? In Flagstaff?”
“One of them is,” the general drawled, “in the shape of my swishy neighbor. I’ve been waiting to confront him until you two were safely back.”
Her voice took on a hard edge. Her blue eyes glittered.
“Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, Allen Parker’s alter ego is going down.”
Epilogue
I t was a battle of epic proportions. Kentar came to it unprepared but fueled by rage.
His command center had just advised him that they’d failed to make contact with Hunter Third Rank Taikin after repeated attempts. The possibility that another piece of the medallion might have slipped through his fingers infuriated Kentar to such an extent that the coarse hair at the base of his neck bristled and his blood ran hot with the primal urge to dominate and subdue all rivals. Beginning with Beverly Ashton. He’d toyed with her—and she with him!—long enough.
She met him at the door, invited him in. His blood was up, his sex heavy between his legs. With an arrogant smile, he threw off the absurd persona he’d assumed.
“I am Kentar of the Fifth Nebula, leader of all Centaurians. And you,” he said, his eyes ravaging her, “are mine to do with as I will.”
“In your dreams, pal.”
Nostrils flaring, he concentrated his force and hurled it at her. She staggered, hit by the dark, undulating waves. Then, incredibly, she turned them back at him.
No! Not her, but the star navigator who emerged from the other room. Small and slender, she didn’t look powerful enough to bend a reed. Yet she deflected every sizzling bolt Kentar threw at her. Like lightning gone wild, the crackling energy ricocheted off the walls, sparked across the ceiling, lit the window with brilliant blue light.
He couldn’t bend her, couldn’t defeat her. Her power was as great as his, made even more immutable by the indomitable strength of Beverly Ashton. “Who are you?” he raged.
“Athena Carswell. Feeling the heat, Kentar of the Fifth Nebula?”
“No!”
Time Raiders: The Protector Page 13