Precious Time

by W. J. May

Luke nodded thoughtfully, then cocked his head to the side. “Did he know what a trunk show was?”

  The others laughed as Molly shook her head with a nostalgic grin. “No. I don’t think he did.”

  There was a slight pause before Beth shook her head, a smile on her face. Her eyes had locked on the gravestone with great tenderness. As if she didn’t see the stone, but the man. “That was Andrew. There wasn’t a single problem he couldn’t solve.” Her arms wrapped tightly around her chest. “And there wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t do to solve them.”

  The rest of them nodded. Each remembering in their own way.

  “He knew I was always jealous of your gift,” Devon said suddenly, turning with sudden fondness to his best friend. “I think that’s why he paired us up together in the beginning. Thought it might teach me a little humility.”

  Julian stared at him in shock. “Jealous? Dev, you can…you can basically fly.” He laughed at the absurdity of it all. “You can’t possibly be jealous of clairvoyance.”

  But Devon merely shrugged with a little smile. “Are you kidding? Jules, I can run really fast. Jump really high. You? You can see the freakin’ future. Your mind can do things that I can’t…I can’t even begin to imagine.” He shook his head in honest amazement. “What does it matter to be good at fighting if you can see ahead and stop the fight from happening altogether?”

  Simon looked up sharply, a sudden intensity dilating his eyes.

  “He saved my life,” Gabriel said quietly. The inherent responsibility in the words was written all over his face. But, for once, he didn’t look like he was fighting it. Quite the contrary. The longer he stood there, the more he seemed to rise to the challenge. “It’s something I’ll not soon forget.”

  He and Rae stared at each other for a long moment before she turned her eyes to the grave.

  “He touched us all. Saved us all. The least we can do is make it count.”

  Without another word, the gathering abruptly ended. One by one, the people gathered reached out to touch the icy stone before heading back to their cars. Beth actually knelt down to kiss it, and Devon helped her up and led her slowly back to the car.

  In the end, only Rae remained.

  The wind blew gently around her as she stared down at the stone. Unable to stay. Unable to ever fully leave. The rest of them were clear on the other side of the field, but they were in no rush. Nor were they in earshot. Rae watched them for a moment before turning back to the grave.

  “We’re really scared this time,” she said softly. “All of us. I don’t know how to explain it, but this one feels different from the rest. It feels…final.”

  A chill swept over her, and she pulled in a deep breath.

  “One way or another, we’re going to make you proud. And Mom will be fine. Don’t you worry about that. She’s stronger than I ever imagined.” A fleeting smile danced across her face. “You should’ve seen Devon the other day. Shouting out drills like we were back at Guilder. I swear, he sounded just like you…”

  She trailed off, staring hard at the stone.

  “We’re ready. I know that we’re ready.”

  If only that were enough.

  “But I wish you were here.”

  That bird started singing again. Quieter this time. Sweeter. Rae glanced up at it, staring out across the grass at her friends. “I wish you could see the people they’ve all become. So determined. So…good. No matter how many things beat them down, they keep getting up again. Just like you taught us. Fighting the good fight. Protecting each other. Reaching for a future we might never get to have…”

  A single tear slipped down her face as she looked down with a smile. Resting a hand against her belly. Closing her eyes as she whispered the world a silent goodbye.

  “I wish we could have had more time. I wish you could have met your grandchild.”

  Time seemed to stop when she opened her eyes and froze.

  What the freakin’ heck?!

  She froze. They all froze. Everything…froze.

  Chapter 14

  Simon whirled around in astonishment, unable to believe his eyes.

  The wind stopped. The snow stopped. The people standing by the cars stopped moving. It was as if the entire world had been put on pause, fixed in a state of peaceful suspension.

  With extreme hesitation, he took a step forward. Then another. Staring around the cemetery with wide, unblinking eyes.

  His first thought had been that his daughter was controlling it. That she’d somehow intuited he had been listening in secret behind her—and was preparing to blow him away once and for all with some final wave of power.

  But Rae was frozen with all the rest of them.

  It’s me. I’m the one doing it.

  A wave of shock crashed over him and, reverting back to old habits, he glanced reflexively at the warlock tatùed on his arm. It stared back up at him with the same enigmatic expression that it had since he was sixteen. Since it first appeared on his skin and started all this trouble.

  He had memorized it within the first week. Could sketch it to perfection every day since. And yet, he had never placed any significance on a tiny detail until that very moment.

  The warlock was holding a clock.

  Half my father. Half my mother. A hybrid.

  His eyes widened as he slowly pieced the mystery together. The part of his past that he had never been able to understand.

  The ability to mimic. And…the ability to control time?

  It had to be. There was no other explanation.

  With a wave of almost blinding excitement, he moved forward and waved his hand back and forth in front of Rae’s eyes, waiting with bated breath. She didn’t blink. Didn’t even flinch. A look of peaceful surrender was frozen on her beautiful face; for a moment Simon actually forgot about the tatù, and all he could do was stare.

  “You’re going to be an amazing mother.”

  He said the words aloud. A beaming smile stretching proudly across his face.

  If you ever get the chance.

  That smile was quick to fade. Replaced instead with a look of profound sadness.

  A strange tingling started rising up his body, from his feet to his palms. It wasn’t long before it overtook him completely. Centering him with an unfamiliar focus. Grounding him with a bizarre calmness. It was an understanding—a realization—that had never occurred to him before. It was over in a few seconds. Gone before he could pull in a full breath. And yet, he instinctively knew it was the moment he’d been waiting for all his life.

  For the first time, Simon didn’t care about the powerful ink emblazed upon his arm. He didn’t care about the impossible power that had suddenly come into his grasp, or the unlimited possibilities that came with it.

  He cared only about the future.

  The future that his daughter, and his beautiful Beth, so desperately deserved. The future they longed for with every waking breath. The future that they could only have if…

  All at once, Simon knew what he had to do.

  * * *

  Despite the complexity of the ink, the premise was rather simple. If Simon could stop time from moving forward then, surely, he could force it to move backwards as well.

  His feet crashed down upon the grass with the strength of a nova, soliciting a soft gasp as he slowly straightened and looked around him.

  Winter was gone. Summer was here. But not the summer the world had been expecting. It was a summer that had already happened. Just two years in the past.

  Simon gazed up at the side wall of a house. A house he had never seen before, though he instinctively knew where it was. Who it belonged to. After years of studying them, his old case files were burned permanently into his mind. Flashing fresh in his mind’s eye.

  This house belonged to a certain telepath he had once tortured, to the point of complete mental collapse. After Elias died, it didn’t go to the state. It transferred possession to his daughter.

  Simon’s feet didn’t make a sou
nd as he walked over the shimmering glass and peered inside the living room window. Samantha was sitting by herself on the couch. Sullen and bored. Watching a program on the TV. A half-eaten bag of chips lay beside her; judging by the slightly glazed look about her adolescent eyes, she had long since lost sight of the outside world.

  Simon took a step closer, reaching into his pocket at the same time. His fingers closed around a cold, metal grip. And in the brilliance of the early evening sun, he pulled out a gun.

  One last terrible thing.

  He fired two shots in quick succession. Aiming for the back of her head. She never saw it coming. Never had a chance to be afraid. She simply slumped forward onto the sofa, slipping to the floor as a burst of canned audience laughter roared from the television set.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, stepping back into the light. “You didn’t deserve this. But trust me, you would not have liked what you become.”

  One last terrible thing.

  He slipped the gun back into his pocket. Pulling in a final breath of the sunlit air.

  And one good thing as well.

  A rush of air exploded in his ears as he was tugged out of the light by a power far greater than himself. His eyes snapped shut as the sensation of falling lifted his limbs into the air.

  When he crashed down again, it was different than before. Not only was he inside, but the world was cold. Cold and dark as hell.

  His eyes flashed to the stone ceiling above him as a series of shouts and screams echoed distantly in the air. There was an explosion of what sounded like gunfire coming from up above, followed by an explosion that shook the very ground beneath his feet.

  There were footsteps racing towards him, faster than he could believe. His head snapped up, and the world cleared into sudden focus as he found himself face to face with a man he never expected to see again.

  “Simon?” Carter screeched to a halt, staring as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Is that…”

  There was a crash behind him as bits of plaster and dust fell from the walls. More screams came from up ahead, and a wave of panic lit his eyes.

  “How can this—”

  Simon knocked him to the ground with a single punch. Shoving him protectively into the wall as he turned towards the screams coming from the room at the end of the hall. “Sorry, old friend, but this is something I have to do myself.”

  With only the power of the warlock to help him, with only the instincts of a father to guide him, Simon took off running down the hall. The door had already burst open, and it took him a fraction of a second to make sense of what he saw.

  His son, Kraigan, battered and broken, locked in a deadly battle against his greatest foe. His future son-in-law at death’s doorstep, bleeding out in the floor. His beloved daughter, looking like her heart was being ripped straight out of her body. A look of abject terror on her face.

  And Jonathon Cromfield pointing a gun at Gabriel’s chest.

  Simon didn’t hesitate.

  Nor did he regret a single moment.

  He’d seen a glimpse of the future on his daughter’s beautiful face. Seen the bright promise of tomorrow shining in her eyes.

  It was a promise he intended to keep.

  With a burst of speed, he threw himself straight into the path of the bullet. Absorbing it into his own body. Shoving Gabriel aside.

  The two of them locked eyes for a suspended moment, staring in shock as something passed between them that neither one would ever understand.

  Gabriel would never believe it. Simon would never get the chance.

  Chapter 15

  “Well…this is thrilling.”

  A burst of sparkling laughter echoed in the air as Devon joined Rae at the end of a long stone hallway. They had been at it for several hours now, clearing the factory, checking the cells, and his lovely fiancée was at the end of her rapidly fraying rope.

  “Relax, turbo. We’re here.”

  He stepped back as another member of their party held up a breaking bar, but Rae beat him to the punch. With a look hovering dangerously on the edge of boredom she took a step back, and kicked the metal door with every bit of her not inconsiderable might.

  An explosion of dust and grime clouded up in the air around them, and they took a step back.

  “There,” she said with finality. “Done.”

  The men behind her chuckled and Devon shook his head, wearing a twinkling smile.

  “Did you even check inside?”

  A playful grin flashed across her face, and she doubled back with exaggerated patience.

  “I was just getting to that part.” She stuck her head inside the darkened room, glancing this way and that as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. It was smaller than she’d expected. Smaller than the rest of them had been. Other than that, it was entirely unremarkable.

  Except…

  As she turned to go, some quiet instinct made her pull back. Her hands wrapped around the iron bars as she gazed into the darkness, struck with the strangest notion she’d been there before.

  “So how about it?” Devon called, just as eager to get back into the outside world as she was herself. “Find any monsters in there?”

  The moment passed and she turned away from the shadows. It was like someone had one been there. Someone her tatù seemed to know. And yet, it was a wisp of a thought, fleeting and gone before she could figure it out. “Nope. Let’s go home.”

  The two shared a smile as they left the darkness behind them. Walking back into the light.

  Epilogue

  Rae watched as the flames danced higher and higher into the sky—the flickering reflection burning deep in her eyes. A cloud of smoke was soon to follow, threatening to engulf everything around it. She stood there for a moment, staring, then continued to set the table.

  “Devon!” she called, placing silverware neatly onto napkins. “The food’s going to burn!”

  Her husband glanced up, then hurried across the lawn to tend to the grill. It had seemed so easy when they’d first envisioned it. A family celebration right there in the backyard. No pressure, no fuss. The execution, however, left a little to be desired.

  “Don’t you wish you’d followed my advice and gone with the caterers?” Molly asked smugly, handing off a pitcher of lemonade before settling down at the table. “Saves loads of time.”

  “It’s a barbeque, Molls.” Rae shook her head with a grin. “I’m not going to hire a team of caterers to help us make burgers and fries.”

  Molly shrugged daintily, then squinted up at the smoke. “I at least hope you guys got this place insured…”

  Rae swatted her with a napkin, and returned to her work with a smile.

  Despite the very real possibility that they would probably end up ordering pizza, she couldn’t have asked for a better day. It had been one of those crystal-clear summer mornings, which had cooled into a gorgeous afternoon before sinking peacefully into a glowing, golden dusk.

  She had been woken by a gentle kiss from her adoring husband. She had then been assaulted by the over-enthusiastic puppy they’d adopted just a year or so back. And just when she thought her heart couldn’t get any fuller, the hallway echoed with the pitter-patter of little feet…

  “Aria!” she called as a tiny dark-haired girl darted past her. “What did I tell you about running so close to the grill?”

  The girl screeched to a stop, a pair of enormous guilty eyes staring up. Every inch of her nymph-like body seemed to quiver in excitement as she tried her best to hold back a grim. “You said…I should do it carefully?”

  Molly snorted into her hand, and Rae pursed her lips to hide a smile.

  “Try again, monster.”

  The girl blushed with a little giggle. “You said not to. Sorry, Momma.”

  Rae gave her a little wink before waving a hand at the yard. “Off with you!”

  She darted away without a moment’s pause, grasping onto the hand of the little boy who was running beside her. A little boy with
flaming red hair.

  “You’re trying to stop Devon’s daughter from running around?” Molly asked, her blue eyes sparkling with a wicked smile. “Good luck.”

  “I’m trying to stop my daughter from playing with fire,” Rae answered with a rueful grin. “If for no other reason than to avoid the inescapable irony.”

  Molly snorted again, stretching back against the table. “Like I said: Good luck.”

  The yard suddenly exploded with little squeals of delight as the swinging gate opened and a handsome man walked inside. He was holding the hand of a woman just as lovely. A woman who looked like she was just weeks away from having a baby of her own.

  “Uncle Julian!”

  Aria blurred across the lawn and leapt into his arms. The little boy, Benjamin, was fast on her heels. Julian scooped her up with a grin, then stood there with unending patience as she painted a giant daisy on the side of his face.

  When she was finished, he glanced at the reflection in the kitchen window. “Looks like you inherited your artistic talent from your mother.”

  Rae shot him a secret grin, while her daughter beamed with pride. “Do you think I should do one for Auntie Angel?”

  Julian kissed her cheek. “Not unless you want Auntie Angel to freeze you.”

  Aria erupted in a fit of giggles as Benjamin tugged Julian’s coat impatiently. The little man had no time for daisies or other such trivial nonsense. They had serious business to attend to.

  “Do the weird eye thing!” he begged as Julian set Aria back on the ground. “Please?!”

  With that same unending patience, Julian bent down and looked at the children very seriously. Both were waiting on pins and needles, and both jumped a mile high when his eyes flashed prophetic white. Aria clapped her hands together delightedly, and Benjamin jumped up and down.

  “What did you see?! What did you see?!” he squealed.

  As usual, he was as frightened as he was impressed.

  Julian ruffled his hair with a smile. “I saw you asking again in five minutes.”

  Before the either child could say a word, he caught them suddenly in his arms. Biting playfully at their little arms, he took turns throwing them high into the air. Their screams of delight echoed in the yard. Breathless with excitement as they flew higher and higher.