Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  “I would have you understand one thing,” Dom said. “There is no way for us to guarantee that the Council will not imprison you or use you to draw out the remainder of the Kin.”

  She slid her fist down the length of her sleek black ponytail. “You know, we haven’t just been twiddling our thumbs in that shithole, my people and I. We’ve been collecting data and documentation. If my people don’t hear from me by the end of the day today, they’ll release a file containing irrefutable evidence proving the existence of Nejerets.” Her gaze was steady on Dom. “The whole world will know about us, for better or for worse, and the fallout will be chaos—for us, for you, and for the rogues.” She pressed her lips together in a grim smile. “I’ll give you one guess as to which side is more likely to survive in that scenario.”

  “You wouldn’t,” said on my exhale.

  Mari’s gaze shifted to me, her green eyes diamond hard. “People depend on me—their lives are my responsibility. I will do what has to be done.”

  I held my hands up, like that motion of surrender alone might appease her. Tread carefully, I reminded myself. It might’ve seemed like we had a lot in common, but clearly we were very different people.

  “Warning noted,” Dom said, not sounding the least bit surprised.

  I stared at him, frowning.

  “I shall make sure the Council of Seven is aware of your conditions before we arrive. Before we leave here, you may use the landline to alert your people that you are all right. I only ask that you keep us aware of any changes to your contingency plan so we don’t accidentally trigger your people into doing something they will regret.”

  I realized my mouth was hanging open, and closed it.

  “Do we have an agreement?” Dom asked.

  Mari nodded.

  Slowly, Nik raised his head off the table. I checked his eyes first—pale blue—then scanned the rest of his face. Not too strained, too tensed … almost peaceful. Until his jaw twitched. He was barely holding it together.

  Reading the question in my eyes, he forced a razor-thin smile. “I’m fine, Kitty Kat.” He shivered, the jerky motion making the table shake. “For the moment.”

  36

  Susie & Syris

  “Are you even listening?” Why, oh why, couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut?

  Marcus crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head infinitesimally.

  A quick sweep of the other Council members, especially the ones on the video screens, told me that Marcus was the least offended by my outburst—at least, besides my “dad,” Set. He seemed to be trying to hide a smile.

  I exchanged a look with Mari, who didn’t seem surprised by the Council’s reaction to her conditions. I, however, was flabbergasted.

  After another quick scan of the Council members, I settled my stare on cold, hard Ivan. How he was related to Alexander—or Lex, Alice, or Jenny—was beyond me, but he was. “You’re kidding, right? This is a joke. You’re not seriously willing to gamble that Mari’s people don’t actually have the documentation to back up their threat, are you?” I made an ugly, guttural noise deep in my throat. “How are you even still talking about this?” Oh my God, why was I still talking? “You should be doing something. Just listen to her and stop being so damn closed-minded!”

  Ivan’s gaze slid past me, landing on Marcus. “I do not understand the reason for this one’s continued presence.” This one being me.

  Honestly, neither did I. It had been one of Mari’s initial conditions that I remain with her when she visited the Council. She’d said she trusted me, that we shared a bond none of them would understand. She’d claimed she wanted me as her Council liaison and that she would only work with them, talk to them, if I was with her. That was almost a month ago, thus my exasperation. The Council are a bunch of slugs.

  “Katarina tracked down the leader of the Kin before we found even a single member,” Marcus said. “As General of our people, I say she has earned a position at our wartime council. If you disagree, speak now.” Or shut up was left unsaid.

  There was silence all around. Hell, I was tempted to “speak now” because it was so obvious to me that I didn’t belong there, but … I wanted to be there. You know, watch history happen and all that. So I kept my stupid mouth shut.

  “Wonderful,” Marcus said. “Now, perhaps if Mari were willing to produce the documents she claims to have, the Council could move past this matter and onto actual negotiations.”

  I looked at Mari, eyebrows raised. I honestly didn’t know if she had the stuff to back up her claims. I figured she did, because that would be one hell of a bluff—hard, documented evidence of our kind compiled into a neat, transmittable, broadcastable file.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to ask,” Mari said. She reached into her pocket and produced a small, neon green thumb drive, which she set on the table. “I keep a copy of the folder and files with me at all times—all of my people do. We also keep backups on various clouds … secured, of course,” she said with a small smile. With the tip of her pointer finger, she slid the thumb drive across the table to Marcus. “Go ahead, check the files. Take as long as you need. For the sake of my people’s safety and livelihood, I’m eager to move forward with negotiations when you’re ready.”

  “I move that we close Council chamber doors during review to all but active Council members,” Ivan said.

  Marcus nodded. “Very well, we’ll—”

  Chaos erupted on the conference room table in the form of multicolored smoke that cleared to reveal two plump, pink, naked newborn babies.

  Everybody sitting around the table—me, Mari, Nik, Set, Heru, Dom—stood to some degree or another at the sudden arrival of the two infants. Eyes were opened wide, jaws had dropped, and shock had stolen our voices.

  One of the babies—the girl—hiccupped and started fussing quietly. The boy just kept on sleeping.

  I gulped a breath of air, heart still racing. “Is that—”

  “The twins,” Nik said, cutting my question off. It was the first time he’d spoken to me in nearly a month. “Yes.”

  After a few more seconds of stunned silence and staring, Mari, of all people, leaned forward and gathered the little girl in her arms, cradling her against her chest and cooing softly. She gave me a pointed look, her eyes shifting between me and the baby boy.

  I held up my hands defensively. “I wouldn’t even know where to start,” I told her. I looked to Marcus for help—he’d raised lots of kids. Surely he knew what to do … or at least how to hold it—the baby. After all, the kid was his.

  But Marcus wasn’t looking at the lonely little boy snoring softly on the table. He was staring at Nik.

  Dominic took care of the neglected baby situation by carefully slipping his hands under the boy’s head and bottom and sliding him closer until he was cradling the little guy close, almost an exact mimic of Mari.

  “Where’s Lex?” Marcus’s voice was quiet, his words precise.

  I turned my head, looking from him to Nik. It was a damn good question, because her babies were here, but Lex was nowhere in sight.

  Nik blinked, his eyes fading from pale blue to shimmering white. “I cannot say, because I do not know.” Suddenly, he was glaring at me. “Because the At is now permanently misaligned … because Katarina refused to die.”

  PART THREE: OUT OF TIME

  Lex

  37

  Ghosts & Memories

  I lay on the polished At floor of Nuin’s tomb until the last, hidden vestiges of my survival instincts awakened within me. Delivery had been bloody and damaging enough to my body to trigger my reactivated regenerative abilities, and after a long nap, I barely ached at all anymore. I also looked like I’d dropped about twenty pounds—from my pre-baby weight. Regeneration was a gift with a hefty price.

  Driven by desperate hunger, I sought out the food stored in my satchel. I wolfed down the first loaf of molasses bread like it wasn’t some dense, slightly sticky thing akin to a protein bar. It eased th
e hunger pains, if only a little.

  I’d never truly understood what it felt like to be starving. It’s something I used to stay all the time—I’m starving. I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. If I don’t eat something soon, I might die. I understood it now.

  I attacked the wheel of cheese next, not even bothering to peel off any part of the rind. I figured it probably wasn’t poisonous, and even if it was, I was really only delaying the inevitable right now. Best-case scenario, the rind gave me more calories, a little more time to wallow in self-pity, thinking about my babies and all the things I wouldn’t get to experience, wouldn’t get to see, as I wasted away in this underground tomb.

  The bitterest disappointment came from knowing I wouldn’t get to raise my children. I hadn’t failed. The twins had been born, whole and healthy, and, so far as I knew, had returned to their native timeline. To my native timeline. I didn’t even blame them for leaving me behind. They were just babies; they hadn’t known any better.

  I astounded myself with the ferocity with which I devoured the wheel of cheese, moving on to the second loaf of molasses bread once it, too, was nothing but a fond memory. I forced myself to take my time, reducing the loaf to just a corner chunk and crumbs in a luxurious several minutes.

  Sighing, I stared at the last bit of bread, wishing it would sprout a whole other loaf. All I had left now was that small nugget and the packet of dried boar meat sitting on the floor beyond my knee. I opened the oilcloth. Six strips. I picked one up, tearing off half with my teeth and chewing methodically. I was aiming for efficiency; I couldn’t afford any wasted energy. When the boar meat had gone the way of the cheese, I polished off the last bit of the molasses bread.

  I no longer felt starving, but I was far from sated. The water filling my waterskin was lukewarm but still refreshing, and it mimicked the sensation of a full belly for a blissful moment. But soon that, too, was gone.

  I sat on the floor for several minutes, staring at my bag and wondering if tales of boiled leather soup had been true and whether or not leather needed to be boiled at all in order to be edible. My stomach growled.

  Frustrated, I stood on shaky legs and wandered into the large, arch-ceilinged chamber directly beyond Nuin’s tomb. It was the first addition I’d made to the underground structure when I’d expanded upon it some unknown years ago, creating my sanctuary. I’d inscribed countless words on the walls, communicating with Marcus across the chasm of time in the only way I could.

  I started reading from one wall at random, hating the words because they’d been written by a version of me who still had a future, who still had things to look forward to. These words had been written by me in a time when I didn’t know that this was how I would end.

  But does it have to be?

  I didn’t want to die here. I wanted anything besides me dying here, underground and alone while my children grew up, motherless. My body would remain in here, locked away until Marcus opened the tomb in several thousand years.

  Wait a minute …

  That never happened. Or wouldn’t happen. The future had already been written—because it was my past. And one single certainty about that future-past shed a glowing beam of hope straight into my heart.

  Marcus hadn’t found my body in this tomb. Marcus hadn’t found any body in here except for Nuin’s. Especially not mine.

  Which meant there was a way out. I just had to find it.

  ***

  I must have done at least seven circuits around the complex of underground chambers, each more frantic than the last. There were thirty-three rooms, each unique, and each lacking even the faintest hint of a way out. Which I’d already known, because I’d built almost the whole damn place and I hadn’t included any sort of a hidden escape tunnel.

  But I hadn’t built the whole place; the entry chamber—Nuin’s actual tomb—had been built by him untold eons ago. That fact made laps around my mind as I returned to the entry chamber.

  “It has to be something in here.” I stood in the central doorway set in the wall opposite the steep stairs leading up to the one and only exit. I’d sealed the exit myself, keying the solidified At barrier to the unique combination of Marcus’s and my bonding pheromones. If I’d had a vial containing some of his pheromones—like he had of mine—then I’d have no problem leaving. The door would dissolve as soon as I touched it, and that would be that. Would be. If I had a vial of his pheromones …

  I scanned the glowing, pearlescent walls, seeing the symbols etched into the surface and looking for any outliers. Anything that stood out as a possible button or latch or keyhole or anything. When the visual scan proved fruitless, I switched to a more tactile approach, running my hands up and down the wall’s surface. I made sure to feel around and within the engraved depression of each and every symbol.

  Nothing.

  With the tips of my fingers, I traced the seam where wall met floor all the way around the room.

  Nothing.

  Desperate, exhausted, and a little dizzy, I examined every inch of the rectangular dais displaying Nuin’s perfectly preserved body at the center of the room. “Come on … come on … come on …” I repeated the words over and over, a mantra keeping me going in spite of the yawning ache in my belly and the weakness settling into my limbs and the fog invading my mind as my energy stores depleted.

  But still, I found nothing. No way out. No clue. Not a damn thing.

  A dull headache thrummed in the base of my skull, reminding me not-so-subtly that I’d gone too long without food and water. I rested my forehead against the transparent At barrier encasing Nuin’s body and closed my eyes. “How?” I said, voice cracking. “How do I get out?”

  I opened my eyes and stared at Nuin’s familiar, peaceful features. He looked so much like Marcus, and my mind was so weary that it was easy to confuse who was actually lying there, lifeless perfection taunting me. Tricking me. Fooling me that it was Marcus instead of Nuin.

  “How do I get back to you?” I whispered. Tears welled as I stared at his face. As I missed his touch. As I started to accept that this was it for me. This was how I would die.

  “How?” This time the word was barely understandable, dripping as it was with misery and self-pity. I would never get to hold my babies again. I would never see them grow up. I would never witness the wonder that was them. With a sob, I sank down to my knees. “How …”

  “Courage, dear Lex.”

  My spine stiffened, and my breath lodged in my chest. That voice—it was an impossible voice. It was a voice that no longer existed. It was the voice of the dead. The gone.

  Slowly, I lifted my head and looked through the transparent sarcophagus. Nuin still rested within in his sleeplike death. So how had I heard his voice?

  Neck frozen in place, I peered out of the corner of my eye, searching for the speaker. Searching for a ghost.

  He stood halfway up the stairway, hands clasped behind his back and resplendent robe shimmering with brilliant colors.

  “Nuin?” I clambered to my feet, focus shifting from the very real body mere inches from me to the same man standing on the stairs. “How—are you real?”

  He smiled his kind, familiar smile and started down the stairs. Once his descent was complete, he paused and held his arms out at his sides. “I am here.”

  I couldn’t tear my eyes from him. “But you’re also in here.” I patted the top of the sarcophagus. “So how can you be real?”

  He raised his eyebrows, steepling his fingers under his chin. “Reality is such a fluid idea, don’t you think?”

  I licked my lips. “I don’t—” I shook my head. My brain wasn’t capable of making sense of what I was seeing.

  “Real … unreal …” Nuin clasped his fingers together and lowered his hands. “Does it truly matter?”

  He’d talk me in circles if I let him, and I didn’t have time for that. “I guess not.” I eyed him. “Why are you here?”

  His face broke into a genuine, heartwarming smile. “To help you
, of course.”

  I blinked, opened my mouth, then shut it again.

  “You are stuck, dearest one. You feel you have no way out. You are giving up.” His smile turned sly. “But you should not. There is something you are missing.”

  I shook my head and took a step toward him. “But I’ve looked everywhere. Literally. If you know of something I missed … I’m all ears.”

  “I’m all ears,” he repeated, laughing under his breath. “English is such a funny language.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Nuin … ?”

  He shook his head, still chuckling. “The answer is not out here,” he said, closing the distance between us. He raised his hand, resting his palm over my heart. “But in here.”

  I searched his rainbow eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  He lowered his hand. “Think about it, my Alexandra. There are no doors … no passageways or tunnels. The solidified At is just as impenetrable as ever, and you don’t have any of Heru’s bonding pheromone to trigger the release …” His eyes locked with mine. “What is the only possible way in or out?”

  Yet again, I shook my head.

  Nuin frowned, the expression thoughtful. “Let me rephrase—what would a person need in order to get in or out of here?”

  I drew my lower lip between my teeth, eyes narrowing. “My and Heru’s bonding pheromones …”

  “Besides that. What else might someone possess that would allow them passage out of here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, head aching and exasperation and hunger wearing down my patience. “I guess Nik would be able to get in here.” My eyes widened as Nuin’s coaxing smile spread into a grin. “Because he has a sheut,” I added. “The only other way in or out of here is with a sheut.”

  Slowly, Nuin nodded, and I mirrored the motion. “Indeed, it is.”

  My shoulders slumped. “But I don’t have a sheut.”