Now and for Never

by Lesley Livingston

  Clare staggered to her feet and lurched forward, still firing off camera flashes, but one of the shadow shapes turned and snarled, a beastly throaty sound that stopped her in her tracks. Clare locked eyes with whatever it was in the darkness, and then the thing leaped. She saw a flash of claws and teeth—and then a sudden arcing swath of flames. Someone was swinging a burning tree branch and roaring a full-throated challenge.

  And that someone, Clare realized in the light of another flash, was Stuart Morholt.

  Where on earth did he come from?!

  Wild-eyed and wilder-haired, his torn-up jumpsuit hanging loosely off him, Morholt swung for the head of another shadowy figure—a figure that was carrying Al—but it ducked with inhuman speed, leaped past Morholt, and disappeared into the night, followed by the others. In a moment they were all gone and, save for the crackling of Morholt’s flaming branch, the cave was silent again. By the time Clare managed to stagger outside to join Marcus, all she could see was … nothing. Rain and darkness.

  “Al!” Clare screamed. “Al!”

  Al didn’t respond. Or couldn’t.

  Clare took a step toward the path leading up the cliff face, but a fork of lightning, blinding bright, stabbed down into the ocean waves not thirty yards from where they stood. The thunder, immediate and bone-jarring, felt like someone had fired off a cannon. She glanced at Marcus, then together they ran back to the shelter of the cave before they’d be flash-fried by the island’s storm gods.

  Clare sank to the ground beside the fire pit, shedding rainwater in a puddle all around her. She felt fuzzy-brained and sluggish and jittery all at once, as if she’d pulled an all-nighter and overcompensated with too much caffeine. Marcus seemed to be feeling the same way, only worse. Since he’d been sleeping closest to the fire, he was affected the most by whatever the intruders had thrown on the flames that had produced the narcotic haze of smoke. But that didn’t matter— once he’d regained his faculties, he was apoplectic.

  Marcus blamed himself, cursing his idiocy and pacing back and forth at the cave mouth, just beyond the deluge going on outside. Having shrugged into the shirt of ringmail armour that was part of his gear, he shimmied and clinked like a can full of pennies.

  One step outside into the storm wearing that and ZOT! Clare thought.

  Strike after strike of lightning lit up the sky, magnesium-flare bright, illuminating the anguished frustration on Marcus’s face.

  “Oh relax, will you?” Morholt drawled, the first words he’d spoken since appearing out of nowhere to save Clare’s bacon. “You’d be a human lightning rod out there in all that metal.”

  Marcus fingered the edge of his ringmail sleeve as if about to throw it off and run out into the storm clad only in his linen tunic.

  “I wouldn’t do that either,” Morholt warned, pointing to a set of long parallel gouges—claw marks—in the hard-packed dirt at the mouth of the cave. “In case it escaped your notice, we’re not the only species on this lump of rock, and without all that tin you’re nothing more than a tasty snack.”

  “Allie’s out there somewhere,” Marcus snarled.

  “And most likely quite safe,” Morholt said. “I doubt whoever took her did it to harm her. They could have done that right here. They want her for something. Which means that, for the time being at least, she’s probably scared and uncomfortable but otherwise fine. Take it from a seasoned kidnapper.” He shot a sideways glare at Clare, who managed to glare back. “I know whereof I speak.”

  Clare looked back at Marcus and gave him a helpless shrug. Morholt had been kind of a crappy kidnapper, truth be told, but she knew he had a point. At least, she sure as hell hoped he did.

  “He’s right, Mark. We’ll never find Al in this weather at night. We’d only get ourselves lost, and, right now we have to stick together so that when the time comes we can help her.”

  “Sit tight,” Morholt added. “Wait out the storm. Cultivate patience. That’s what I’ve done,” he muttered darkly, “and it had better bloody pay off soon.”

  Marcus turned to glare out at the blackness as if he could bring the dawn through sheer force of will. Clare turned to Morholt where he’d hunkered down in front of the fire, burning bright and smokeless once more.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked abruptly.

  Morholt raised an eyebrow at her. “I thought that was obvious. I was trying to save your little friend’s bumperbashing hide. That would earn me a reprieve from your wretched sarcasm, I should think.”

  Clare decided he had a point. “Deal. How did you get here?”

  Morholt paused to wring out the sleeves of his jumpsuit, which, Clare realized, was sopping wet with more than just rainwater. In fact, Morholt smelled rather potently of seaweed. “I should have thought that was rather obvious as well,” he said, sniffing his sleeve in distaste.

  “But … you were on Paulinus’s ship,” she said. “Unconscious. I thought he would have thrown you in the hold. Kept you prisoner like Llassar.”

  “I’m sure he would have,” Morholt said in the patronizing tone usually reserved for small children with annoying questions. “If I hadn’t escaped. You see, unlike most of those Romans all strapped tight inside their fancy, not particularly buoyant armour, I happen to be a fairly proficient swimmer. I played possum, bided my time until they were otherwise occupied … and then took a long walk off a short boat, if you get my meaning. I’d like to say the swim was invigorating, but it was just bloody damned cold.” He stood and turned, presenting his backside to the fire’s warmth. “When I finally reached the beach, I spotted that nefarious-looking bunch heading toward this cave and reckoned I’d follow to see what they were about. Logic dictated that if mischief was afoot, you ridiculous girls would be in the thick of it. I was right. Of course.”

  Clare was silent for a long moment. “You saved me. I find that …”

  “Awkward?” Morholt snorted in grim amusement.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it. I mean that sincerely. I have a reputation to uphold.” He sighed contentedly as the fire’s heat drew wisps of steam from his sodden suit.

  In her mind Clare started to question what she’d seen, and whether it made her a full-on lunatic.

  I mean, seriously. An attack bear?

  Then she wondered if, in her mad point-and-shoot efforts, she’d actually captured any images. She turned on the digital screen and scrolled through the pictures in view mode. Most were garbage shots, but then came a perfectly clear, frozenin-time image of Al wrapped in the arms of a snarling, dark-haired young man with uncanny glowing eyes and sharp teeth. Long, pointy, really sharp-looking teeth. And a pair of cougars crouched and ready to spring close behind him.

  “Cougars,” Clare murmured in disbelief. “What. The. Hell.”

  Marcus left his sentry post at the mouth of the cave and stalked over to see what she was looking at. He took the camera from her hands and peered at the picture for a long moment.

  “Look,” he said finally, pointing at the screen. “The belt he’s wearing. It looks like it’s made from the same kind of fur as those cats behind him.”

  “Ew!” Clare exclaimed in disgust. “The dude skins his pets for accessories?”

  “No …” Marcus said, his tone ominous. “I don’t think those are pets, Clare. I think they’re peers.”

  Clare frowned at him in confusion. “What?”

  Marcus scrolled back to a previous shot and handed it to Clare. At first she had a hard time making out what it was she was looking at. The picture seemed to be some kind of digital double exposure. It looked as if the guy was occupying the same space as … another cougar.

  “Skraeling …” Marcus murmured, looking at the picture over her shoulder.

  “Skray what?”

  “There are accounts of Viking voyages to the New World that talk of the Norse tangling with indigenous inhabitants called ‘skraeling.’ For years academics have debated what the word means. Some think that since ‘
skral’ in Icelandic meant ‘scrawny,’ these people were small in stature. But they managed to drive Eric the Red and his folk back to Greenland with the savagery of their attacks. Now, ‘skrá’ in Old Norse means ‘skin.’ I think the people the Vikings encountered were the same as these guys. And I think these guys … are skinwalkers.”

  Clare blinked.

  “Werewolves. Only not necessarily wolves. The belt he’s wearing is probably a talisman of some kind. The skin of the animal they wear is likely the kind of animal they can transform into. Like a totemic spirit.”

  “Werecougars?” she gaped at him. “You think Al was taken by werecougars? And … and … a werebear?”

  “Look at the picture, Clare.”

  He thrust the camera at her again. Now that she knew what she was looking at, she couldn’t argue. Marcus was right. Al had been kidnapped by mythical animals and Clare, being something of an impossibility herself, couldn’t find it in her heart to even try and deny it.

  She turned off her camera and, as if in a dream, got up and held her cold hands out to the fire. Good old-fashioned non-magical fire. The warmth and light gave her a small measure of comfort, but it couldn’t quite drive away the dread that had seeped into her bones at the thought of Allie held captive by … by skraeling. A small fluttering panic told her she had to do something. But there was nothing to do but wait. Wait until morning and a chance to find Al in daylight.

  And rescue her from the monsters.

  17

  The storm raged, the night stretched out, and Al failed to reappear. Forcing herself to do nothing, to wait, to be patient, was the hardest thing Clare had ever done. Marcus had stopped pacing and simply stood frozen and facing into the darkness. He looked to Clare like one of the classical marble statues in her aunt’s museum back in London. In the silence broken only by the crackling of the flames, Clare felt Morholt staring at her.

  “Why didn’t you just run once you’d escaped?” she asked. “Why come find me and Al? I have a tough time buying that it’s because you felt the need to rescue us.”

  “I felt the need to rescue myself,” he corrected her. “And, as much as it pains me to say it, I need you two.” Beneath the tangle of Morholt’s overgrown beard, his mouth’s sour twist stretched into a mirthless grin. “Then again … you need me even more.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do too.”

  “What are you, twelve?”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “That’s it. I’m done.”

  Clare made a move to stand and walk away, but then Morholt started to laugh, a low chuckle in the back of his throat that, strangely enough, made him sound completely sane. Clare turned and peered at him in the firelight.

  “What?” she asked warily.

  “You’re not done with me, Clarinet Reid. Because you’re not done with this.” He reached into a cargo pouch on the outside of a pant leg and drew forth a painfully familiar object. The gleaming gold neck ring that Clare knew as the Great Snettisham Torc. Nowhere near Snettisham, as they’d all suspected, and in the hands of her irritating nemesis.

  “An uneasy alliance,” he said, still chuckling. “Don’t you think?”

  “Where did you get that?” Marcus demanded. “Paulinus kept it locked in a chest in the captain’s tent.”

  “Yes … well. They were a bit occupied getting all the injured legionnaires settled back on their ship. I came to face down on the deck beside the tent, and since no one was paying me much attention, I crawled under the canvas wall, picked the rather primitive lock on that box—Master Thief and all, helloo—and helped myself.” Morholt grinned like a kid at a birthday party.

  Clare played it poker face, biting the inside of her cheek so as not to betray her turmoil. “Okay,” she said, “so you’ve got the torc. Whoop-dee-do. What do I care?”

  “What do you care about the one thing that is the horrible, beautiful, awe-inspiring key to all of this?” He circled his finger in the air.

  Clare remained silent and cheek-bitey.

  “I know you better than that, Miss Reid,” he continued. “Better than you think. And I know your aunt Magda. Between the two of you, and with the help of your nerdy little pals, I reckoned there’d be just enough brainpower to deduce that the torc must wind up back in the hole where it belongs. Back in Snettisham.”

  Clare blinked. So Stu had figured it out, too. Imagine that.

  “And here I thought you were opposed to that notion,” she said. “On account of wanting to hang on to the thing yourself.”

  “The torc does send out a siren song.” Morholt shrugged and put it back in his pocket, looking over at Marcus where he stood glaring. “But having seen just how much booty young Marky-Marcus had stashed away in those bags, I decided I could quite content myself with marginally inferior pieces. Especially if it meant the world as I knew—and rather liked— it would still exist when I got back. And I’ll still be rich. So there.” He turned his gaze back to Clare. “I deserve some form of recompense for your letting go of the torc and stranding me here in the first place.”

  “I only let go of it in the first place because you bit me!” Clare exclaimed.

  “I only bit you because you wouldn’t let go!” Morholt exclaimed right back. “I was trying to stop the blasted shimmering. How was I to know I’d get stuck back here in this godawful time?”

  Clare felt a wave of guilt wash over her. For weeks, ever since the days of the first Shenanigans, a nagging voice would pipe up every so often—usually when she was trying to fall asleep—and wonder about those moments. The strange seconds in the museum when Clare and Morholt had both grasped the torc and the temporal gateway had opened. The voice would ask her if she’d really, really had to let go in that moment. Or had she, as the voice suspected, actually stranded another human being—as reprehensible and awful and borderline downright nasty a human being as he was—two thousand years in the past with a pretty good chance of not surviving.

  He did the same thing to Marcus, remember? she told the little voice.

  Sure. But Clare hadn’t known that at the time. And even if she had? What difference did that make?

  Do you actually want to be the same kind of person as Stuart Morholt?

  Gah! No!

  Was that really what she was in danger of becoming? Clare took a long look at the man. Half his face was painted in deep shadow, the other half lit with a sullen orange glow. She could see his first-century memories twisting and moving in the depths of his gaze. Whatever his experiences had been, however much they’d put hairline cracks (or maybe gaping chasms) in his sanity, he’d made it through. Whatever impetus had driven him—base survival, arrogance, desperation, or a sheer bloody-minded desire to find a way back to the present (and possibly a driving need to exact revenge on her and Al)— he’d survived.

  Just as Mark O’Donnell had. And it had changed Morholt. Revealed hidden strengths that he probably didn’t know he had. Clare had to give him that. She’d been stuck in the past for only a matter of hours at most. Al? A few days. Morholt had been there a lot longer. Long enough to, well, grow that beard, for one thing. But also long enough to formulate his whole crazy plan with the diary and the Druid priestess relations. His plotting mind had devised ways for him to endure. But it wouldn’t have had to if Clare hadn’t stranded him there in the first place.

  Morholt had been scratching so furiously at his beard— and at the matted hair sprouting like tangled kudzu from his head—that it looked like he might start to dig trenches in his face and scalp. Clare dug around in her bag for her makeup mirror before remembering she’d left it back in Goggles’s shop. She did manage to find a small comb in a side pocket, and handed it over. Morholt, looking as if he couldn’t remember what to do with such a thing, plucked a bit at his beard with it. Marcus rolled his eyes, rummaged through his Legion pack, and pulled out a tightly rolled leather bundle that he opened on the ground in front of Morholt. It contained a Legion-issue shaving kit, complete wit
h bronze razor. Morholt’s suspicious glare slowly dissolved into an expression of watery gratitude.

  “There’s a spring pool and some candle-like thingies near the back of the cave.” Clare hooked a thumb in that direction.

  “Um. Well. Yes, thank you. Both of you …” Morholt mumbled as he plucked up the kit and a smouldering bit of kindling and shuffled off.

  Clare dozed, Marcus paced, and Morholt finally returned.

  Shorn of beard and with his hair combed free of twigs and dirt (and likely a nesting possum or two), he very nearly resembled the man Clare had first met when he’d held a (fake—hey! How was she to know?) gun to her head. To her great surprise, Clare realized that she’d actually kind of missed that guy. At least it looked as if some of his sanity had returned. He went to return her comb but she held up a hand.

  “Er … keep it,” she said.

  He shrugged and then sank down by the fire.

  “Storm’s lifting,” Marcus said, an edge of anticipation in his voice.

  Clare walked over to stand beside him. The rain curtain was definitely letting up; morning might not be too far off. When two shadowy shapes suddenly loomed up before them, Clare yelped and Marcus took a step in front of her, his sword appearing in his hand as if by magic.

  “Whoa!” She lunged and grabbed his arm as he lifted the weapon. “Friendlies!”

  Marcus pulled the blade back and Connal and Comorra, shrouded in hooded cloaks, stepped out of the rain, their wraithlike outlines suddenly solid. Comorra threw her cloak back over her shoulders and greeted Clare with a warm hug. Connal pushed back his own hood and wiped the rain from his face.

  “It is a night for beasts,” he said, “not men.”

  When Clare made a distressed bleat, he frowned and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “What?” he said. His glance flicked from her to Marcus to Morholt—eyes narrowing at the sight—and then through the rest of the cave, where Al clearly wasn’t. He glanced back down at Clare. “What has happened?”

  She blurted out the details—insofar as she could make sense of them—of the “beasts, not men” attack and Al’s abduction. But judging from their shared glances, Connal and Comorra didn’t seem exactly bowled over with shock.