Ice packs and compression bandages would help reduce the bruising. Other than that, there was very little modern western medicine could do. There were a few home remedies he had learned over the years and he catalogued them in his mind. Comfrey, vinegar, parsley, St. John’s wort, even simple black tea, would all help. He had already asked Taylor to pick and process parsley from the garden and brew tea.
“Alex,” Brody murmured.
Alex looked up.
Brody nodded toward something behind Alex, then went back to settling an icepack against Sydney’s hip.
Alex turned.
Rafe was standing in the middle of the corridor between the beds. His gaze was on Sydney, on her exposed torso and the telling bruises. The horror in his eyes made Alex feel sick.
There was nothing he could say. There was no explanation he could offer. Nothing would reduce the terrible fact.
Rafe was breathing hard. His head swiveled and he looked at Alex. The movement was slow, as if he could only move with great difficulty. “What did you do to her?” he breathed.
It was an echo of what Alex had been whispering to himself for the last few hours, yet to hear it spoken aloud in that way…it felt like a kick to the chest.
Alex sank onto the stool and covered his face with his hands. The pain ripped through his chest and his head, making him moan.
This was his fault. He didn’t know what was happening in his past, yet he knew he was involved. He had not prevented this. He had not protected Sydney. Even now, with the history of medicine at his disposal, he could do nothing to help but relieve her pain.
And wait.
The agony he felt was fully deserved.
“Hey…” Rafe said. He was there, next to Alex. His hand rested on Alex’s shoulder. That made it worse. Alex choked into his hands. No one should be gentle with him, especially not Rafe.
“Hey,” Rafe said again. This time, he pulled Alex’s hands away from his face. “Don’t.”
Alex blinked. His vision blurred and he could feel moisture on his cheeks. Then he realized. He was crying.
It was the last straw. Alex turned his face away. He was pathetic. Weak. Useless.
“You stupid, stupid fool,” Rafe said roughly. He pulled Alex against him and held him.
Alex hid his face against Rafe’s shoulder. “You don’t hate me.”
“Idiot. Fucking idiot,” Rafe said. “I should hate you. Only, you’re doing enough of it for both of us.”
Alex remembered that Brody was watching all of this. He pulled back, deep embarrassment creeping through him.
Brody had gone.
“You scared him away,” Rafe told him, with a weak smile. He took Alex’s face in his hands and shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re doing to her back there. I want to…I have to believe you’re trying to help her.”
Alex closed his eyes. “Me, too.” His voice was hoarse. “God, Rafe…I can’t stand it!”
Rafe kissed him. “Don’t, then,” he breathed against his lips. “Stop fighting it. Lean in to it. Let it pass through. I’ve got you.”
Alex did what he said. He gave up and let himself sink down into the black depths of despair and misery. He slipped his starved imagination loose and contemplated the very worst and most terrible things that his old self would allow to happen to Sydney, back in time. All the harm he might stand calmly by and watch her go through because of his ignorance. The lives he had taken! The casual slaughter of anyone who got in his way, anyone who was not like him. He had been his brother’s greatest weapon, a killing machine that had inspired the troop. They had written songs about him.
Alex didn’t have to work hard to imagine how bad it could get. He had been heartless, taking joy only in his books and the hints of far-off places they held. He thought of Sydney trying to deal with that bewildering, ruthless world and let the terror take him. As it tore his soul to shreds, he could feel Rafe’s arms and hear the slow, steady beat of his heart and knew he was not totally lost, after all.
* * * * *
Veris shoved the pair of them out of the basement with curt orders not to come back for another twelve hours, as Brody and Taylor carried in trays of ingredients and took over Sydney’s care.
So Rafe pushed Alex into the passenger seat of his GTA Spano and drove through Granada and up into the mountains. Through the two-hour drive, neither of them spoke and the tight, hard knot in Alex’s chest eased.
Rafe pulled the purring sports car into a turnout on the Cumbres Verdes that had a view of Granada and a glimpse of the ocean, far to the south. He turned off the engine.
The silence felt stiff and awkward.
“Don’t do that,” Rafe said shortly.
“Do what?”
“You’re going all macho and embarrassed. You’re writhing with shame, because the great Alexander Karim broke down and cried.”
Alex looked at him, astonished. “I don’t…I’m not…” He shook his head. “Brody and Veris are the great ones. I’m just…” He looked away. “Me,” he finished.
Rafe laughed. “You’ve got more pride and dignity in your little finger than those two put together. They’re shameless. You’re the one who gets bent out of shape about propriety.”
Alex blinked. “I do?”
“You open the door for Sydney, without fail. You put a saucer under her teacup. You think kissing in public is rude, even if it’s Sydney you’re kissing. You actually blush if I talk about love where anyone but Sydney can hear us.” Rafe’s smile faded. “That’s what gives me hope.”
Alex’s heart stirred. “Yesterday you said all that is just affectation and I’m still the barbarian I was, underneath it all.”
“Christ, Alex, I was angry!” Rafe flared. He held up a hand. “No, this has to stay civil.” He dropped his hand. “I was afraid,” he said quietly. “I’m still fucking terrified. Only, so are you and that…well, it helps. Which makes me just as uncivilized as you for benefiting from your pain.”
“Thanks, I think,” Alex said dryly.
Rafe scratched at the weft of his jeans with his thumbnail, concentrating on it. “I wanna believe you’ve changed, Alex. You never would tell us what you were like, when you were human. I have to fill that blank spot with every cliché I’ve ever heard about Bedouins and harems and…well, it’s not a pretty picture.”
“The Bedouins were hundreds of years later,” Alex said stiffly.
“Yeah, well, you’ve never educated us to think any differently,” Rafe shot back. “The history books are wild guesses at best, while you lived through it.” He shook his head. “I only have to read what the historians think life was like in Iberia in the fifth century to know how wrong they can get it. The accuracy of Muslim histories not written by Muslim experts is probably worse.”
“There’s very little that is accurate,” Alex said in agreement.
“There you are, then,” Rafe said. “You won’t tell. History can’t tell. That’s why I have video from every Hollywood sand and sandal epic running through my brain instead. If I shift that picture, if I take out the westernized and romanticized elements, then it’s not a nice place…and that’s what Sydney is stuck in right now.”
Alex sighed. “What do you want from me, Rafe? You want me to confess and tell you how truly terrible I was? Would that make you feel better?”
Rafe rolled his head back. “I don’t care what you were! Fuck, Alex! We’ve all been someone else!”
Alex stayed silent, genuinely confused.
“I want to know what you are now. I want to know that you’ve really, truly changed. That you’re not that person anymore.”
“You have to ask?”
“I have to know real change is possible,” Rafe said. He went back to running his thumb over the grain of his jeans. “If you have changed, then there’s hope for me, you see.”
Alex grew still. Even his heart halted. He stared at Rafe, feeling mental ground shift around him. “This isn’t really about me at all, is it?”
Rafe frowned, his gaze on his jeans.
“What’s going on, Rafe?” Alex demanded. “Is it something to do with that photo you keep staring at?”
Rafe sighed and rested his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. “We’ve been here four years, this coming May. You’ve been so involved in your work at the university I didn’t want to…well, I don’t think I really realized myself until I saw that photo.”
Alex held still. Rafe was working his way to the point. He’d learned to let him take his time, to walk around it.
“It’s about the family,” Rafe added.
“Yours?”
“My fake family,” Rafe agreed.
“You’re being harsh. Family is family, regardless of the DNA. Veris would argue that a group who considers itself family is closer and tighter than a group who is legally considered family because of shared genes. And if you suggested to him that he’s not your brother because you don’t have similar alleles, he’d slug you.”
Rafe smiled. It was a weak expression. “That’s different. It’s really family. That’s just it, Alex—I’ve propped up my life for…forever, with wives and kids and cousins—thousands of cousins. Now, suddenly, I don’t have them.” His face shifted and shadowed. “I can’t adapt to not having kids,” he whispered and looked away. “To never having them,” he added.
Alex picked his next words with care. “Can’t? Or don’t want to?”
“I’ve tried,” Rafe said. “God, even just saying this aloud makes me feel sick. I loathe myself for even thinking it. I looked Sydney in the eye and told her it didn’t matter she couldn’t have kids and now I feel as if I’m betraying her. That’s why I have to know change is possible. If I can stop feeling this way, if I could just…change, then she never has to know.”
“There are ways to have children. It doesn’t have to be your DNA. You just finished saying that,” Alex pointed out.
“Then why did you tell Veris and Brody and Taylor you wanted kids but wouldn’t adopt because it wasn’t the same?” Rafe demanded.
“How did you know I told them that?”
“Sydney told me.”
Alex sighed. “I would have preferred she never learn about that. Taylor must have told her.” He shifted awkwardly in the narrow seat. “It wasn’t what I said, anyway. I said I wanted the kids and an adopted child would be the same as my own. That’s not all I wanted, though. I wanted what they had. All of it. The three of them, the time travel, the life…the love.” He made himself look Rafe in the eye as he said it.
Rafe looked steadily back. “Now you have all of it, except the children.”
“I can’t ask Sydney for that,” Alex said slowly. “She will see it as evidence that she alone is not enough, that she has failed because she can’t have children…and that isn’t true.”
Rafe rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Fuck!” he breathed.
“This is Sydney’s personal nightmare. Right here. This moment,” Alex said. “She has feared we would come to this. The longer we put off turning her, the more certain she grew that it would happen.”
“It was the damn photo,” Rafe whispered miserably. “I was alone. Utterly and completely alone in the world. Then Veris came along and everything changed. I watched him and Taylor work to save Brody, to fight to keep them together in the future, and finally understood what family really meant. I made my own family, after that. It stopped me from going back to being alone. I’m afraid, Alex.” He turned his head to look at him. “I’m afraid for Sydney, who might not come back and that would kill me. On top of that, I’m afraid that if she is lost, then I would lose you, too. I’d go back to being alone, to being that spineless, terrified slave.”
Alex picked up his hand, the one scratching at his jeans. He held it still between his own. “I don’t know how to prove it. I don’t know how to convince you that things can change, that you can too, that there’s even a way out of it. I can barely think beyond getting Sydney back right now. I think all either of us can do is just hang on and hope. We’ll fix it later. There is always a later.”
Rafe sighed. “We’re pathetic. You know that, right? Sydney would have fixed everything by now and balanced the books besides. She would be pissed at both of us.”
“I won’t tell her, if you don’t.”
“Deal.”
Alex pulled Rafe closer. “Come here.”
“Careful. This stick shift is in just the wrong place.”
“Let’s fix that, then,” Alex said, pulling him over the console.
* * * * *
When they returned to the house, it was fully dark. Veris and Taylor were still in the basement. Brody and Marit were in the family room. Marit was eating a bowl of ice-cream and giving Brody licks off the spoon.
Neven Zoric was using Brody’s laptop. As Alex passed around behind him, he glanced at the screen. Neven was reading about his double, Kristijan Zoric. Alex understood his interest. It would be difficult to stop wondering how someone who was supposed to be him could be that different.
Rafe walked over to the little sitting room the twins used and tapped on the door and leaned in. “Come and listen,” he said. “Family conference.”
Brody looked up. “Oh? Should I get Veris?”
Alex shook his head. “You can fill him and Taylor in later. I’d rather they watch Sydney.”
Brody settled back and crossed his arms. It was an echo of Veris’ “I’m thinking” posture.
The twins dropped onto the end of Brody’s sofa. Alan crossed her legs. Neven closed the laptop.
“We’ve been thinking, Rafe and I,” Alex said. “We want to go back and get Sydney.”
“We don’t know where she is,” Brody said. “I mean, I’m not saying no, but do you really want to start hopping about history looking for her? A single jump tends to upset time. Dozens of them…” He shook his head.
“Marit,” Alex said. “Do you think you could find her? I mean, would there be a marker, or something?”
“A bookmark, you mean?” Neven asked. “If you went back to get her, then there would be a bookmark you can find, not Marit. If there’s no bookmark, you didn’t go back there.”
Rafe pushed his hand through his hair, ruffling it. “My brain just twisted on its stalk. You mean, if we do go back, that will create the bookmark we use to get there?”
“On the time-plane, time has no meaning,” Neven said. “What you will do can have consequences that change what you’ve already done. Or not. There are no natural laws there.”
Alex watched Marit. She had put the bowl of ice-cream aside. Now she sat twisting her fingers together. Her face was a calm, neutral mask.
“Can you do it?” Alex asked her. “Can you get us back there?”
“Everyone?” Alan asked, hope lifting her voice.
“We’ll figure that out later,” Brody said firmly. “First things, first. Should we even try to get her?”
Rafe spluttered. “Of course we fucking should! You saw her down there!”
Brody waved a calming hand. “Pretend Veris is here. You know what he would say. We can’t ignore the consequences of jumping back. We’ve theorized that Sydney jumped into the time-plane to get away from Tira, then followed a personal bookmark back to somewhere that Marit thinks might be eleventh century North Africa. Which is why Alex is having hourly embolisms, because he’s back there and knows that time-and-place. Think about it. If it was that bad—and from Sydney’s physical state, we can assume that something unpleasant is going down—then why hasn’t she jumped back here to get away from it?”
Neven spread his hands. “She can’t…or won’t.”
Rafe glared at him.
Brody, though, nodded. “There are plenty of reasons why she might have to stay and sort something out. She’s smart, capable and knows how fragile history is. She knows your personal history backward, Alex. If she’s in Africa and it’s the eleventh century, then it’s before you cross over to Jerusalem
. Maybe she’s staying put to make sure you do that.”
“It’s a critical junction point?” Neven asked politely.
Marit spoke. “If Alex doesn’t go to Jerusalem and convert, then he won’t meet Far and Athair and Mom. Then he won’t wander across Europe looking for the supernatural creatures he’s pretty sure exist because of what they let slip while they were there. Then he won’t be turned and he won’t be here.”
Neven nodded. “Critical, then.”
“If that got messed up somehow,” Aran said, “then how come Uncle Alex is still standing there? Why doesn’t he disappear or something?”
“Because the changes don’t kick in until Sydney leaves and whatever changes she has made are set and can ripple down the timeline,” Neven said.
“If Aunt Sydney messes with history then jumps back here, as soon as she arrives, does Alex disappear?” Alannah asked.
“She might not arrive here at all,” Neven told her. “If Alex does not live the life we all know, then Sydney and Rafe would not meet. She would be living a different life altogether and that is the one she will return to.”
Brody leaned forward. “Here’s another thought for you two. If Alex doesn’t make it to Jerusalem, then there’s a good chance your mother would have died there, because he won’t be there to treat her wounds.”
Even Alannah looked upset.
Brody blew out a breath and looked at Alex. “My point,” he said softly, “is that if we jump back there, we may complicate whatever problem Sydney is dealing with. If you jump back there, you most certainly will screw things up.”
“Why?” Aran asked sharply.
“Because he jumps back into his younger self,” Neven said quietly. “The younger version of himself is right in the middle of whatever issues Sydney is dealing with.”
Alex swallowed. “It’s a chance I have to take,” he said flatly and Rafe sent him a grateful look. “This version of me understands what is happening. I will be able to smooth Sydney’s path, help her fix whatever it is.”
“You’ll behave like a twenty-first century human,” Brody replied, “which will get you killed quicker than your younger self behaving as he should. You know how quickly things go awry. You might have lived through it once, but you’re not that person anymore. You’re not even human anymore and that colors everything you do.”
Kiss Across Seas Page 11