Chapter 3
On the television mounted on the green-striped wall, a female reporter in a black pantsuit stood outside the Mana Glen Police Department in the pouring rain, giving her report while holding an umbrella above her tightly curled black hair. "We are live at the Mana Glen Police Department where the sheriff has finished a press conference confirming the identities of the two suspects wanted in connection with the November third rash of kidnappings and murders. The suspects are Mana Glen residents, nineteen-year-old Nikolas Valentino and seventeen-year-old Jackson Carter. Normally, the identity of a juvenile would be withheld, but they are considered armed and extremely dangerous. Sheriff Montgomery has been working alongside the Memphis police to bring these men to justice. To reiterate what was said, these two suspects are believed to be outside the state at this point and the FBI has been involved, investing the attacks as possibly either being terror-related or a sex trafficking crime gone wrong. If you see either of these suspects, you are urged not to approach or confront them. Call the police right away."
Jack stared at his school picture next to Niki's picture from his driver's license that were pasted on the screen with the words 'Armed and Dangerous' in bright red bolded text flashing below them. He picked up the remote control and switched the television off, leaving the modest house dark with only the sound of the rain pounding at the windows. When lightning flashed, sending the low rumbling echoing across the anxious town, Jack curled up in the corner of the leather sofa below the fuzzy blue blanket where he had been for the past few days.
Fast food wrappers still filled with partly eaten burgers and corn dogs were strewn across the coffee table, sticky from a spilt soda that Jack had no energy or the will to clean up. He wore the same pair of wrinkled boxers and tank top, unmotivated to even shower. All he could do in that quiet home was hold onto the bear charm from Ellie's bracelet, watch the endless coverage of the events in Mana Glen, and swallow ibuprofen tablets like candy for his headache that ravaged him.
After successfully returning to the present and fainting from exhaustion, Jack was taken to Niki's house and placed on the sofa where he stayed. He watched the rain on the grey brick path outside and counted the light oak slats of the ceiling in the muted sunlight that barely penetrated the storm clouds. Only the silver charm he twisted in his fingers gave him any joy. He felt isolated, hopeless, and meaningless. Nothing he ate had any taste, nothing he felt seemed real, and nothing could snap him out of his current state.
Jack sunk down against the pillow when the front door was unlocked from the outside. He wanted the world to leave him alone. Ellie was gone, Mr. Dawson was gone and possibly dead, all those innocent people from the lobby of his apartment building were dead, and his life was over. He could run, but either the police or the Zurvan Syndicate would eventually find him. If the police found him, he would serve life in prison or face lethal injection alongside Niki. If the Syndicate got to him first, there was no telling what they would do to him or his Time Knight. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. All he could do was sit there on the sofa and wait for the inevitable.
The door opened and Niki stepped inside, carrying a bag of salty-smelling food under one arm. He tossed his umbrella into the corner by the hat stand then wiped away the droplets of rainwater from his studded leather jacket. He sighed and flicked on the ceiling fan light, illuminating the sad clutter. "Nuh-uh. We're not doing this anymore, Jack. Getup and get a shower. You look like crap."
"Leave me alone."
"No. I can't let you sit there rotting and sulking. I just had to pick the lock to my own house because you wouldn't answer. I thought something had happened to you."
Jack wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth onto the blanket. "No, I'm here. I was just . . . thinking."
"Wallowing in your depression is what you were doing. You've been sitting there for four days. I swear, if you fuse with my couch, I'm gonna cut you out of it and shove the stuffing into a place the sun doesn't shine. Oh, come on. That was funny." Niki tossed the white paper bag onto the cluttered coffee table then sat down next to Jack. "Listen, bud, we gotta get you out of this house. At least take a shower. You still reek of sheep from being with the Mongols. I'm worried about you. You haven't been eating, so I went out to get you a few of your favorites. Carnitas from that new taco truck down the road, with a side of guacamole. Eat up."
Jack recoiled into the blanket. "I'm not hungry."
"Jack, I don't want to get mean with you, but I am duty-bound to keep you alive and well. Right now, you are the one standing in the way of me doing my job. I won't let you kill yourself or waste away into nothing. If I have to hold you down and force-feed you these damn tacos, then that's what I'll do."
"You won't hurt me. It's against your code or whatever."
"Is that what you think?" In a flash of force, Niki grabbed onto the front of Jack's tank top and slammed him against the arm rest. "You listen up and you listen well, Jackson Carter. Chronomancer or not, you are my friend, so I will make sure you stay around as long as I have a say in the matter. I don't care how sad you are, how lonely you feel, or how hopeless you've become. Don't do it for me. Do it for Ellie. She needs you, Jack. Are you going to give up before we've even started? Those Syndicate bastards could be torturing her right now for all you know. She's a girl, Jack. What do you think evil men will do to a pretty girl like her?"
Jack felt his mouth go dry. "Don't."
"Think about it. I want you to hear her screams. Hear her crying and begging them to stop." Niki shoved him down onto his back and pinned him down. He shook Jack's shoulders violently. "Are you going to ignore her calling your name while they hurt her?"
"No!" He yelped and thrashed, anything to make the memories go away. "Stop it!"
"Are you going to let them brutalize the girl you love?"
Jack struggled against Niki's weight until he twisted his arm out from his iron grasp. With a cry of anger, he slammed his fist into Niki's cheek, knocking his knight off of him and into the floor with a crash. Wrappers, napkins, and empty soda cans fell off around him. Jack stood over him, his heart pounding and his hands tightened into fists. "Don't you ever do that again."
Niki sat up and rubbed his face. "I was not expecting that reaction out of you. So, you do know how to punch."
"Shut up." He held onto the back of couch while he caught his breath and tried to erase the fear-filled images that ransacked his brain like a nightmare. "You don't get it. You couldn't get it. Just don't, Niki. Don't."
"Jack? I meant to get you riled up to go save her, not traumatize you."
"It's not you, okay?"
Niki's voice instantly became softer. "Oh! Oh, my God. Did someone hurt you? I didn't know. I'm so sorry."
"It wasn't me."
"Ellie?"
Jack shivered and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. "Drop it, Niki. Just drop it."
Niki cleared his throat. "I, uh, so . . . damn, I'm really sorry."
Jack ripped open the paper bag and unrolled the foil from his carnitas. He took a few bites until he realized how ravenous he had become. Then, no taco was safe. He shoved the seasoned meat, creamy guacamole, and fresh corn tortillas into mouth, moaning as he did. Whatever Niki had done to him certainly woke him up.
Niki leaned against the wall with his arms crossed on his leather jacket and a smug smirk on his lips. "Told you that you were hungry."
"You're an ass."
"But it worked."
Through his munching, Jack tried to cover the hidden feelings once again. "For the record, I don't love her. She's my friend. I've known her all my life. Anything else would be weird."
"All right. Whatever you say."
"I mean it, Niki. I'm not in love with her. Ellie is like a sister to me, just like she is to you."
He snickered. "Sure thing, bud."
"I mean, gross. What would give you such a twisted idea like that, anyway?"
"Hey, you're the one trying to make excu
ses and deny it. We both know the whole friends-only thing is a lie, but you do you, Jack. One day, you're either going to tell her how you feel or you're going to lose her. It's up to you."
"If she finds a man to love her, then good for her."
"The tensing muscle in your neck tells me that's a lie."
The thudding of footsteps approaching the door drew their attention. Jack went to look out of the window, but Niki shoved him down onto the floor. He drew his knees to his chest. "Niki, who is that? Lock the door!"
Niki leapt over the back of the sofa and took a serrated dagger from the bookcase. He threw himself against the door and turned the locks. He placed his finger over his lips. "Shh."
A key slid into the lock and the door budged, but Niki held it closed.
A familiar man's voice came from the other side. "Who's in there? Niki? Boys?"
Niki stepped away from the door, but kept the knife at the ready.
To Jack's relief, Mr. Allen entered the house, looking worn-down and tired. The teacher had a black eye and dark bruises around his wrists that peeked out from the sleeves of his soaked tweed jacket. Mr. Allen left his loafers by the door then moved into the kitchen where he took a bottle of cinnamon vodka from a top cabinet shelf above the antique stove.
"Dad! You're okay." Niki locked the door securely. "We thought you had been arrested."
Mr. Allen paused for a moment, his bushy eyebrows raised, before taking a sip of the sweet alcohol. "I was, son. How long have you boys been back?"
"Four days. Jack's not doing good."
Jack rolled his eyes. "I'm fine."
Mr. Allen shook his head. "Which means you're not."
"What about you?" Niki asked. "What did they do to you? Did you escape?"
"They let me go. After the police interrogated me in a basement, I was thrown into a cage like an animal. I tried to call my lawyer, but they wouldn't let me. I don't know what made them finally let me out, but my lawyer showed up this morning and told me the police didn't have enough evidence to hold me. A week and a half of daily interrogations and being locked inside a cell that was little more than a cage with no sunlight would have been enough to break another man."
"Did you break?" Niki asked. "Did you tell them anything?"
"Hell no. You are the most important things in my life, boys. No torture they could put me through would make me give you up. No, my lawyer finally got my bail paid and the police realized they had little evidence to bring charges against me. I don't see returning to teaching anytime soon, though. It's just too risky with the cops all over the school. One slip-up on my part and I'll end up handcuffed to a chair in a dark basement again."
Niki touched his stepfather's arm where the purple bruise on his right wrist was bleeding in the middle. "They hurt you."
"It was nothing I couldn't handle. I had worse when I traveled with your father, Jack."
Jack perked up at the mention of the man he always wanted to know more about. "You traveled with my dad? I knew you were friends, but not that close."
"We were as close as friends can be, just like you and Niki are."
Did he mean what Jack thought he meant? "Just like us? You mean . . . you traveled with my dad through time? Was he-"
"He was a Chronomancer and a high-ranking officer in the Zurvan Syndicate. I was his Time Knight. I have weak Avelayan blood, a lot more diluted than Niki, but just enough to make it work. That's how I knew what to teach Niki in his training, because I had been there before."
Niki's face lit up. He bounced excitedly on his toes as he unleashed a bombardment of questions. "You're Avelayan like me? Why didn't you tell me? What training did you have? How many people have you killed? Where and when did you go with him? What weapons did you use? What kind of-"
"What was he like?" Jack's soft question cut off the stream of Niki's chaotic interrogation. It was the only one he truly wanted the answer to. "I never knew him. I haven't heard much about my dad, only the few details you've told me before. Please, Mr. Allen. What was he like?"
"Now, that is a question with a long answer, but one you need to know, nonetheless." Mr. Allen dropped into one of the wooden dining chairs. "Samuel Carter was, in a single word, honorable. He had a moral compass like none other and he would stop at nothing to make sure he maintained his sense of honor and do what was right in his eyes."
"Honor? But he was one of them."
"He was. Samuel was a Chronomancer who worked for the Zurvan Syndicate for many years, until they changed the way they ran things. Normally, we would be sent into the past to do research. It was simple observation and nothing was changed, no one got hurt. But then the council wanted to save people. They wanted to change things in the past to make the world a better place in the present. Sounds great, right? However, even sparing lives in the past requires other lives to be snuffed out or never created to begin with. That is where your father drew the line. He left the Syndicate."
Jack needed answers. He was a sponge, soaking up anything that had to do with his family. "When?"
"About two years before you were born. We had to go into hiding because they couldn't just let Samuel leave with all the information and secrets he knew. When he got your mother pregnant, he decided to blend in and be a normal family, leaving time travel behind him."
"But then they found him and killed him."
Mr. Allen picked at the peeling label on the vodka bottle. "And your mother and your grandparents who knew what he was. They were innocents caught up in a world they shouldn't have known about. They had no idea of the dangers they faced. Only your grandmother Tina was spared because she didn't know. Her world travels kept her out of touch."
"Why spare me, though?" Jack asked, joining his teacher at the table.
"Do you know how it happened?"
All he knew was what he had been told in passing by his grandmother. "I was with part of my family on an airplane, right?"
"You were with your paternal grandparents and father on a trip through the Alps. You were on a private plane, on your way to the airport to come home, when Syndicate agents shot the pilot in the head with a sniper rifle. The aircraft crashed in the mountains. When the rescuers found the wreckage, everyone was dead . . . except for you. You were a tiny thing, barely a year old. They found you wrapped in a blanket that was partially burnt at the edges, and tucked safely between the bodies of your grandparents as if they had been sheltering you on impact."
His stomach dropped. "So I lived by sheer chance?"
"I don't believe so. If the Zurvan Syndicate wanted you dead, they would have found the crash site and finished you off. At the very least, they would have killed you in that car accident that took your mother and maternal grandfather, but you lived through that horrific event as well. Both times, you were found unharmed and in the most protective spot you could have been in. Some called it a miracle. I called it the Syndicate having plans for you when you grew up."
"And now they want me to join them?"
"It's highly likely." Mr. Allen took another drink. "And before you ask, no, I don't know why they left me alive. Maybe because they needed me here to tend to you."
Niki cracked open a can of root beer from where he was brooding in the corner by the kitchen. "You keep all these secrets from me and you wonder why we're not closer, Allen. What, did you think I was too stupid to understand?"
"Son, I kept things from you in order to keep you safe. The less you knew, the better."
"But you trained me. You forced me to obey and do drills every day of my life, even when I was sick. You wanted me to become the best Time Knight I could, but you wouldn't give me answers about anything. I think we deserve them now."
"And I agree, but first, I need to know what has been going on this past week and a half. Niki, report."
As if it was an activation phrase, Niki stood at attention and faced his stepfather. "Yes, sir. The Zurvan Syndicate showed up and began killing Mongols."
"Mongols, you say?" Mr. Allen as
ked, one of his bushy brows arching. "Where and when were you?"
"We were on the Asian Steppe with the Golden Horde."
"Did you catch the khan's name, Niki?"
"Berdi Beg."
He chuckled. "Ah. So around 1357. Yes, I know of Berdi Beg. He was killed by his own brother in 1359, a man named Qulpa. After that, the Golden Horde crumbled. What happened? Did he take you two in?"
"Yes. We left our clothing behind and approached their encampment. I was able to communicate with them in Chinese. He spoke a different dialect and some words were altered, but we understood each other well enough. He clothed us and fed us. While we were in his yurt, they brought in a female Syndicate agent, a Chronomancer named Olivia Morningstar. Before they could kill her, she warped away to another time. Not long after, we were attacked by more agents who were defeated, but who also killed some Mongols."
"I see."
Niki relaxed and hopped up to sit on the grey granite counter. "We did get some useful information from Olivia, though. We know how to determine when and where we will end up when Jack uses his magic. He writes it in blood."
"I knew there was a way, but Samuel kept things like that to himself and I had no reason to ask. I did as he ordered, nothing more. I knew my place. Niki, you will do well to learn yours as well."
Niki scowled. "If Jack wants me to be a submissive dog, he'll let me know. Until then, I'm still gonna do my own thing while keeping him safe. I'm not a damn robot."
"There is honor in serving your Chronomancer, son."
"And I'll find honor in serving him the way I choose."
Mr. Allen patted Jack's arm and looked him in the eyes. "Jack, if Niki gets out of line or if he ever lays a hand on you, you are well within your rights as a Chronomancer to punish him as you see fit."
The words brushed like sandpaper across his tongue. "Punish him? How?"
"Samuel would discipline me in the strict traditions of the old world Iskaydrians. If I talked back to him or questioned his authority on things, I would go without food for a period of time. For more serious infractions, he had a thick belt that I felt the sting of more than once. He did it because I was an unruly young man who thought no one could know things better than me."
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