by TylerRose.
Too Long
a
Soldier
By
TylerRose.
© 1987, 2014, 2016 TylerRose.
All Rights Reserved
No part of this work may be reproduced in any fashion
except with express written permission of the author.
Buying a copy does not give you that right.
Made in the USA
Produced by:
TylerRose.
P.O. Box 4341
Sunnyside, NY 11104
Other Books Available
Fiction
Peeper
Peeper Ascendant
Peeper of Gloriana
Peeper Resplendent
The Healer
Arlyn the Deliverer
Evil’s Heart/The Cottage
Last Holy Woman of Mida
Culpation League
Searching for the Kingdom Key
Shadows of the Night
Non-Fictions
Auntie Tyler’s Crochet Garden
Tao Teh Ching for the Family
69 Shades of Crimson
Beleagrrred Sadist
50 Shades of OH SH*T
50 Shades Sh*ttier
The Complete Award-Winning 50 Shades of OH SH*T
Another 50 Shades of OH SH*T
~ NOTICE ~
Any persons attempting to find
a motive or metaphor in this narrative
will be caned by a Singapore judiciary specialist.
And you will NOT like it.
Persons attempting to find a moral in it
will be flogged with a Russian knout.
And you will not like it!
Persons attempting to find an analogy
will be trussed up in half a mile of razor wire
and hanged by their toenails
in the nearest dungeon.
AND YOU WILL NOT LIKE IT!
By order of the Author, per Mark Twain.
In other words,
this is a
Work of Fiction!
Please enjoy it as such.
My Ultimate Appreciation and Respect
for The Ancients
I have trusted your guidance
For Eons.
Thank you to Kelly and Candee
for your feedback and help proofreading.
Thank you Voluptuary
For your help proofreading
and with continuity.
And for tolerating my crazy.
Thank you to John and Abby
For the home roasted coffee.
MOAR COFFEE = MOAR TYPING!
Thank you Chriss A.
For your help typing this up
from my handwritten manuscript.
And extra special thank you to
High Impact Covers
www.highimpactcovers.com
For a spectacular cover.
It looks great!
Chapter One
Jerome turned away from the rack of video cassette cases and smacked into a solid body. A sizzling hot jolt electrified his skin, crawling over his scalp and down his back at lightning speed. It stole his breath and made his balls clench. He looked down, catching a glimpse of her as she fled. Spectacular ginger red curls, like molten lava, she was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Then she was gone, vanished into thin air.
There, but cannot be touched. Looked for, she cannot be seen.
Jerome jarred awake in a cold sweat, his dreams haunted by her image night after night for the last week. He got out of bed and started a hard Wing Chung workout to burn off the intense vision and the emotions that came with it. Deep concern, burning curiosity. Strike after strike to the dummy, so fast his hands and forearms were a blur while his feet were planted to the floor.
Rather than thinking of her, he envisioned the man who had destroyed his family a decade earlier. He imagined every hit smashed Honcho’s face and broke Honcho’s arms. He struck harder and faster with each new round of the form until he couldn’t go any faster or any harder and momentarily wore himself out.
Unsatisfied, unable to shake the sensation that his soul had been touched, he holed himself up in his room for the day. A freshly rolled joint and his computer for companions, he kept an eye on the security cameras. Mind too filled with her image, he played a card game and rolled more joints to distract himself.
A sidelong glance to the security screens early into the afternoon and there she was staring hard at him. Red hair, spiral curls, intense green eyes, skin so pale she almost looked like a China doll. She winked at him.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he blurted to no one, and smashed between calloused finger tips the joint he was smoking.
He was out of his bedroom, running through the hall to the stairs at the other end of the second floor. She’d looked square into the camera, knew he was there. He had to get to her before she left, foregoing the elevator to leap in one bound down the twenty five steps to the first floor. He ran to the front of the building, to the rear door of the video store, stopping himself there to be cool about it.
“Where’s the red head?” he asked the kid behind the register.
Pointed up the long glass window, Jerome checked himself. He slowed to a walk. Be cool, stupid. Don’t scare her off.
What to say? How to open most the most important conversation of his life?
He saw her standing at the windows. Damn she was beautiful. Long red spiral curls… “The Lady in Red” By Chris DeBurgh was playing overhead. The blonde version had nearly pin-straight hair. She looked just as young. Seventeen, eighteen…but her eyes…they were even more different than before. Eyes that held the wisdom and knowledge of the Ancients as she stared over the field of summer flowers beyond the parking lot.
Knowing her telepathic abilities, if he believed Landra Ahr’s descriptions, he wondered what she was really seeing.
Jerome Tiberius Black, holder of the energy and power of the Sacred Staff of the Black Feet tribe, realized he was nervous to say hello to a teenage girl. He released the tension in a quick hot breath and said what came most natural.
“Hey there, gorgeous.”
Chin tilted she looked up at him sideways, looked into his real eye instead of the glass one. Green eyes instead of the deep blue they had been before. Rich and clear as emeralds. Fathomless. He saw an entire universe in them.
“Hey there, handsome.”
A voice like music.
“Care to go for a drive?” he asked. “Lot better weather than last time.”
The first time they’d met, in a near blizzard last March 5th. That was three months ago for him, and the lifespan of Earth for her. He likely would not know that part yet. She must not fault him for things he could not know, she reminded herself.
He reached his right hand toward her, and instead his wrist was in hers, being turned to get a look at the underside of the forearm. Her small fingertip stroking over the meat was the softest touch he’d ever known and seared itself into flesh and memory. A touch that burned itself deep into the Chi center at the pit of his gut and took his breath away.
“You absorbed the crystal’s energy but did not perform the Shaolin urn ceremony first.”
Said so quietly he needed his genetically enhanced auditory ability to hear her.
“We didn’t know I should have,” he said in equal tone. “The burns were gone in half an hour. But I did perform the ceremony.”
She looked up to him, a foot shorter than he, eyes pinched in distress and still holding his meaty wrist between her fine hands.
“I’m in the wrong timeline. Chen had it right in mine. Dammit!”
&n
bsp; She let go, taking a step to rush by him. Trying to run away.
“Oh no you don’t!” he bit, catching her wrist in a darting stab and flash of motion. “You’re not running away from me this time, little girl.”
She halted, his physical strength far superior. She did not react to fight, held to the spot. He didn’t know that she couldn’t fight him.
“You’re here,” he said. “Right or wrong, this is where you ended up. It’s still going to happen here, just as it would in any other timeline. So let’s go talk about how to save a few million lives. You can go to another time line and fix it there too if you still need to.”
She was tense, in flight mode and nearly single minded in her mission. She could teleport away and never come back and they both knew it.
“I know a place where we won’t be bothered,” he said.
Final seconds of decision, posture unchanging.
“Please. Will you stay and help us?”
Not just a request, but a firm command. He looked and sounded exactly like the Jerome she’d spent a year alone with on her private planet. Final two seconds of decision. Stay or go time. Her entire aura changed, tension melting.
He’d made an appropriate request, she realized. That she could not refuse from anyone.
Not waiting for her verbal answer, he took her through the building to the garage. Everything was exactly the same as it had been during the blizzard. Even the tools on the wall were the same, each section meticulously organized, cleaned and put away, bench clear of clutter.
He opened the car door for her. Same bench seat and seat belts, but he hit the button to open the garage door on getting in. Back in March, he had started the car first. Same key pad. Same code sequence for unlocking the ignition. Same sound as the engine roared awake, but not quite as loud since the garage door was already up to let the sound go somewhere. The matte black Torino eased out into the bright afternoon sun.
Expecting to go around the building, she glared over at him as the car idled across the cement of the basketball court in the corner by the car shed. He gave it a little gas and the car rolled into the middle of the field to the rear of the property.
“We’re here!” he announced, pleased with himself to have gotten her this far.
“You’re joking, right?” she said.
“Nope. Come on.”
They got out and he flipped a blanket open beside the car. Reaching inside, popping up a panel, he brought out a cold wine cooler and a beer.
“I only have strawberry right now,” he apologized, cracking it open for her. “How ya been?”
He sat on a 90 degree angle from her rather than directly across, and tried not to laugh at her expression as she sipped. She didn’t like the taste of the wine cooler.
“Dead,” she replied, and drank half of it in a series of swallows that would rival his own guzzle.
“Okay, before that?” he said trying to keep it light for now.
“Persecuted endlessly for existing,” she said, and belched without apology. “You?”
“I got aliens living in my house an’ they say this other alien asshole is coming for the energy I took from a piece of quartz. They also tell me I’m the only guy in the entire fucking world who can stop him.”
“Sounds like fun. He’ll be here in February,” she confirmed.
“Landra Ahr was saying March.”
“He’s wrong.”
Jerome counted months on his fingers. “Seven. Man, that don’t seem like a lot of time.”
“It’s not,” she agreed. “The closer Adamantine gets to Earth, the more he wants your crystal power. This is one of the most populated planets, and it has big-ass fuckin’ factories. He’ll use it to replenish his Rhutvak army if we fail. Once he realizes the possibilities here, he’ll stop invading other planets in his path. He’ll come directly here.”
“Gotcha. Where you staying?” he asked.
“Somewhere safe.”
“Where?” he insisted.
“Let it go, J. I stay where I know I’m safe. I have to stay hidden. That’s all you need to know for now.”
“Why?”
“Dude, if the Administrator up there on the Celestial Congress knew I was here, I’d simply disappear. Gone. His guards would snatch me in the middle of the night and you’d never find me. I have to be where I feel safe. End of story.”
A spark of unexpected emotion and passion that he stripped back to a bottom line of his own.
“You don’t consider Landra Ahr’s security systems to be safe? You can come live here.”
“Not nearly so soon,” she said. “Moving into an unknown situation causes the energies around me to become a jumble. Give it time and we’ll see.”
She reached out to a Monarch butterfly and it flew to perch on her finger. A big Monarch.
“Hello beautiful,” she said to it. “Going on a long trip, are you? Fly safe.”
She lifted her arm and it flew away, heading south on the breeze. Something inside Jerome changed. He was in love. Hit him like a million tons of bricks. Stole his breath and made him shake. He thought fast through what Landra Ahr had told him. What could he do to not lose her again?”
“Take one of our phones,” he said quickly. “That way you can call if there’s a problem. Please?”
She saw he had to have something concrete, and nodded her agreement. His own phone in hand in two seconds, he called Landra Ahr.
“Bring me a phone. Put my number in it. And yours. Nothing else.”
Call ended, he eyed her a minute. Far away eyes. A billion miles away.
“There’s a bedroom ready for you whenever you need it, Ty. Not my bedroom. Your own. I won’t assume anything on that score.”
Her eyes met his, questioning him with their blankness.
“I mean it,” he said. “It’s there right now for you if you want it. I’ll never turn you away again. I regret that so much it makes me ill to remember.”
No expression, but her blinking eyes said she wanted to believe him.
“Can I ask a question?” he asked.
“You’re asking a lot of questions,” she replied. “What’s one more?”
“I was wondering where that smart mouth was,” he smiled. “In your timeline, did we have the night we had in this one?”
“Probably not.”
“I took her home about two in the morning,” he told her.
“You gentleman you.”
Smoldering eyes and a dark tone that about stopped her breathing. “I’m not that much of a gentleman. She freaked out for no reason. Said her skin felt like it was on fire.”
“That’s about right. I found it a tremendous turn on. Your counter-part took me home about five in the morning after fucking me several times.”
“And you promptly got on a bus and ran away to California,” he accused.
“You did not offer to bring me here. If you had, things would have been very different for us all. It hurt that you couldn’t trust me,” she said.
“Yea, there’s a ditto on that one. I’m sorry, Ty. For both timelines”
“Me too,” she said.
He realized they may as well have been looking at each other from opposite sides of the Grand Canyon.
“There’s gonna be this canyon between us, ain’t there?” he spoke it. “It’s like a physical barrier. I actually feel it.”
“You all keep doing what you’re doing. You need to train more intensely. Learn every dirty trick you can. This is going to be as no rules as it gets, J. If you fail, millions will die. So no pressure. The rest will happen as it needs to and when I’m ready.”
“What about you?”
“I’m gonna lay low and try to figure things out.”
“What things?” he asked.
“Everything,” she smirked, then leaned back against the door of his car. “It’s the wrong fucking timeline. How the hell did that happen?”
“What difference does it make? This one or that one, people live.
”
“It’s far more than that to me. There’s a lot more at stake for me,” she said irritably.
“Like what?”
Her shut down was stalled as Chen came around the car.
“Hey Sifu. Look what I found,” Jerome said, and blinked in surprise as Tyler moved from her bottom to her knees and put her right fist in her left open palm. Salute of the Book and the Warrior.
Chen smiled softly at her, left palm cupping her cheek. “I am pleased to see you here, daughter.” He put a phone in her hand. “Landra Ahr says this is for you.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“Okay,” Jerome drawled. “I didn’t know you two knew each other.”
“I requested he be brought to me on Sanctuary. He spent some time teaching me everything you know.”
“Everything?” he questioned Chen.
“The only things you have on her are your genetically enhanced senses, strength, and reflexes. She performed the urn ceremony.”
“Really? Wait a minute. If this is the wrong timeline, then how come he was wherever you were?” Jerome asked.
“The universe contains many wonders, Disciple,” Chen said to him. “I will see you at the usual time.”
He left them alone and Tyler eased back to sit.
“Anything else go on between you two?” Jerome asked, and instantly knew by the burn of her glare, he’d said the wrong thing.
“I can’t believe you fucking said that.” She hopped to her feet. “Did you not hear him call me daughter and hear me call him father? He was the only good father figure I ever had! You at least had your grandfather. Keep your fucking phone!”
She threw it at him—hard—and turned to head for the trees to port away. He caught the phone, jumped to his feet and had her wrist in hand, in that unbreakable iron grip.
“I’m sorry. Please don’t go. Not like this, Tyler. Not again.”
“You may be second in command of that group in there, but you’re not in command of me. No one is.”
She yanked her wrist from his hand with a psychokinetic jolt, hooked his knee and dropped him in half a second. He reacted, feet locking hers up. She went down too. He hopped to his feet while she rolled backwards and popped up off the ground. He grabbed for her arm to grapple Wing Chung style. She met him block for block, surprising him with her proficiency and force.