Rafe nodded. “Yes,” he added firmly. “I’d have been dead for thousands of years, in that case. That’s just one moment. Who knows where timelines have split off? I don’t. Neither do you, Neven. Why are you trying to second-guess time itself?”
Neven curled his hands into fists, on the smooth wood of the table. “I don’t like him.”
“None of us have much respect for him,” Rafe said. “I’ve read all Jovan’s files, too. It’s all about choices. Think about it. Veris and Brody could so easily be terrifying. I’ve seen them in a pinch, with the odds against them. They’re as ruthless as Kristijan and scary as shit. They just have nicer motives. They choose to care about positive things, like protecting the people they love.”
Marit’s smile grew warmer.
Neven was sitting on the opposite side of the narrow table from Rafe, so he could see through the big window over the kitchen sink. Brody and Veris and Taylor were on their feet now. As Neven looked, Veris dropped his arm over Taylor’s shoulder and grabbed Brody’s neck and kissed him. They were talking as they moved towards the house, Taylor and Brody with a blanket each over their arms. Veris was laughing. Then he kissed Taylor’s temple.
The warmth and love between the three was almost tangible, an aura that enclosed them like a bubble in their own private little world.
Neven’s chest tightened. I want that. It was a silent whisper in his mind, making his chest ache even more.
“Neven?” Rafe prompted.
Neven pulled his attention back to Rafe. “Brody and Veris are terrifying most of the time.”
Marit laughed. “That’s what they’d like to think.”
The three walking towards the house moved out of sight of the windows. Neven looked away again.
Rafe grinned. “They just don’t like to show their soft underbellies until they trust you.”
“Which they don’t, yet,” Neven finished. “Trust me, I mean.”
“You jumping to Serbia every second day isn’t helping,” Marit said.
He wanted to protest that he didn’t go there that often. In fact, Marit was probably right. He usually didn’t think about it too much. He didn’t let himself think about it.
Rafe sat back. “Have you put any thought into what you’re going to do with yourself, Neven?”
“It’s not as though I can run out and get a job,” Neven pointed out.
“You have a new ID,” Rafe said. “You could if you wanted to.”
“And do what? He has my life. He’s living in Serbia.”
“You want to live there so bad?” Rafe asked.
“Or is it that you don’t want to live here?” Marit asked, her voice soft.
Rafe glanced at her, then raised his brow at Neven.
“And what are you doing with your life, exactly?” Neven shot back.
“Helping people like you,” Rafe said instantly. “And raising a daughter that has Sydney’s drive and Alex’s smarts and scares the crap out of me with her adventures.”
Marit grinned.
“That’s not the point,” Rafe added. “We just hit one of your buttons, Neven. I can see the steam rising from you.”
Neven drew in a breath and glanced at Marit. “I don’t object to living here, Marit. Everyone in this house is wonderful and no one has ever made me feel as if I’m intruding, even Veris. It’s just that…”
“You don’t have a choice,” Marit finished, putting her finger on the sore spot. “You’re stuck here, until you figure out where you go next.”
Neven rubbed his temple. “That sounds incredibly ungrateful, but yes. That’s it exactly. A day job, Rafe, would be meaningless, when I can jump anywhere in an instant, see any time in the past. I can jump to the Antarctic and stand at the South Pole—something most people who have ever lived will never get to do.”
“Probably just as well you can do that,” Rafe shot back. “Normal people have to use a boat to get there.”
Neven drew in a sharp breath as his memory invoked the sensations of cold, dank water around him, filling his nose and mouth, silencing his screams. The bite of rope around his wrists and ankles as he struggled….
He shuddered. “Yes, it’s just as well,” he admitted, keeping his voice low, so the tremor didn’t register. “That’s what I mean, Rafe. I can go anywhere. Any time. How do I settle down behind a desk from nine to five doing some meaningless paperwork?”
Rafe sighed. “You don’t,” he said flatly. “You can’t. You’ll go crazy inside a month. I’m not saying you have to find a job. No one is. Not even for the money—Veris is loaded. He’d never even notice the dent. Although, you do have to start figuring out what you are going to do with this life you’ve been handed. You have to find a purpose, Neven, or you’re going to go mad with the pointlessness of it all.”
Neven forced himself to uncurl his fingers and lay them flat on the table. “I know,” he said heavily. “It’s just…hard.”
Rafe nodded. “You have time, at least. As long as you keep moving towards sorting it out, then even an inch of progress is fine. You just can’t shelve the decision forever. If you try, time will make the decision for you and you’ll end up with a default life not of your choosing.”
Like the one I currently have, Neven thought. He held it in.
Rafe leaned closer. “We’ve all had to go through this,” he said softly. “Even Veris. Ask him about the First Crusade, one day. About how helpless he felt, back then.”
Neven considered Rafe, shocked. “Veris? Felt helpless? He wasn’t even human then. He would have been a vampire for…” He calculated quickly. “Seven decades! And he felt helpless, even then?”
“Far was under the control of a bitch woman who nearly destroyed him,” Marit said. “Another vampire. Mom killed her.”
Neven wove his fingers together and squeezed. “We all go through it,” he repeated, staring at Marit.
She nodded. “Except for me. I’ve been locked into this since I was four.”
“Into what?” Rafe asked curiously.
“Time,” Marit said flatly. “Living out loops, one after another.”
“You know the future?” Neven asked curiously, for Marit was being unusually candid about how she experienced the timescape. Her abilities were far superior to Neven’s and he suspected it was because she had been exposed to time at such a young age. Generally, Marit preferred to be treated as if she was a normal twenty-year-old, as impossible as that was.
“It’s different for each of us,” Rafe added. “We’re all unique and have far different pasts and histories. And none of us is normal, so that adds complexity.”
“Which came first, though?” Marit asked.
“Time exposure warped us? Or we’re warped and that’s why we are able to access time?” Rafe grinned. “It’s a good question.”
Footsteps sounded in the doorway. Taylor appeared. “We have a visitor,” she announced. “Hello, Rafe,” she added, not showing a speck of surprise to see him sitting in her kitchen, when he actually lived in Spain, on the other side of the globe from Martha’s Vineyard. “You should maybe sit in on this, too.”
Rafe got to his feet. “Should I call Sydney and Alex here, then?”
“We can do that later, if we need to,” Taylor said. “There’s no need to disturb them right now. She’s only asking to speak to Neven.”
“Me?” Neven asked, surprised. “I don’t know anyone here on the island that you don’t know.”
“I didn’t hear anyone approaching the house, either,” Rafe added.
“She didn’t come to the house,” Taylor said. “She jumped here.”
“From somewhere else?” Neven asked, surprised.
Taylor smiled. “I suppose you could say that. She says she’s from the future.”
Chapter Three
Everyone moved into the open, light-filled living room, where Brody and Veris were already waiting.
Alannah came into the room from the other wing of the house, where all the bedroom suites were, pushi
ng her phone into the back pocket of her jeans. “What’s up?” she asked Veris.
“Visitor,” he said softly, nodding towards the woman standing at the rock fireplace that had been turned on. Flames silently licked the faux logs.
The woman standing there turned from watching the fire.
Neven came to a halt, as coldness washed over him, stealing his breath and stopping his heart.
Black hair. Gray eyes. Red lips. She lifted her chin as everyone looked at her, just the way Neven remembered. He sucked in a deep breath. “Elle!”
She gave him a small smile. “Hello, Neven.”
Neven gripped the back of the wingchair, his fingers digging in. It was hard to breathe.
“You know each other?” Brody asked. He was standing on one side of Elle. Veris was on the other. Neven knew they would keep her bracketed until they knew enough about her to relax.
Elle nodded. “We do.”
Neven made himself move, just far enough to drop into the wingchair. “Elle taught me how to time travel. How to cross timelines, how to navigate the time continuum. She trained me, eighteen years ago.”
“From your perspective. From my perspective, that was less than an hour ago,” Elle said.
Veris crossed his arms, frowning. “You said that someone trained you, Neven. You never said she was from the future.”
“Neven didn’t know,” Elle said. “This is the middle loop of a double loop in time.” Elle looked at Marit. “Marit…yes?”
Marit nodded.
“You understand double loops, yes?” Elle said.
“In theory. I’ve never been in one.”
“Leap frogs,” Neven said. His voice was hoarse. His heart was beating again. Every beat hurt. “You had to go back to train me, then come to this time to…what?”
“I’ll get to that,” Elle said. “I need to sort this out for all of you, as you’ll be involved in this, so you must understand.”
“All of what?” Taylor prompted. “This end of the double loop?”
Elle shook her head. “The Neven I trained was not even from my timeline. I was from his future and from an alternative time. This timeline.”
“He just coincidentally picked this one to jump to, when he left his?” Rafe asked.
“It’s because I jumped here that this version of Elle went back to train me,” Neven said. Thinking in inverted cause-consequence sequences came easier to him than to others. “It set up the loop.”
Veris still had his arms crossed. “Because he came here, this version of you went back to his past and taught him all about time travel?”
“Oh, Neven had already learned about time travel by himself. His first jump was…traumatic.” Elle smiled at Neven.
He swallowed. He’d never told her about that first jump, so how did Elle know? Was it another time paradox? He’d have to wait and see.
“I just finished off his training so that Neven could survive long enough to make it here. Most jumpers, especially male jumpers, tend to kill themselves through lack of experience, quite early on.”
Brody curled his mouth down. “We’ve managed fine,” he said shortly.
“You’re not a jumper,” Elle said apologetically. “And you already had immense survival skills. Neven was only seventeen when he discovered time.” She shook her head. “You’ll just have to take this part of the loop as a given for now. It will all make sense in a minute, I promise.” She looked around the room. Everyone was silent. Everyone watched her.
Neven had learned to appreciate this quality in Veris’ and Alex’s families. They had the ability to focus when needed. They were all concentrating now, listening actively.
Elle spoke to him. “I trained you, then I came here, because now I have to send you off to do the thing you must. It is the reason I trained you.”
Invisible fingers rippled up Neven’s spine. It was almost as if she had been listening to him and Rafe, a few minutes ago. Rafe caught his gaze and raised his brow, just a little bit. He was thinking the same thing.
Elle smiled. “You’re wondering if I overheard you, a few moments ago,” she said.
Neven let out a shaky breath. Veris and Brody, Taylor and Marit were all looking at him now. Rafe was studying Elle, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“I didn’t hear what you were saying, Neven,” she said softly. “You will tell me about the conversation, sometime in your future. You told me just so I can relate it to you now, to let me prove to you I am who I say I am. I am from your future and yes, I am about to give you a purpose. A mission that you must complete.” Her gaze was steady.
“What mission?” Veris asked. He sounded amused, yet no joviality showed in his expression.
Elle stirred. She looked around the room, at everyone in it, including Alannah, who had her phone out once more and was flipping it over and over between her fingers and tapping it against her knee.
“Neven was forced to jump here because he was dying. His timeline was already doomed,” Elle said. “It destroyed itself. Gronoya was too aggressive and in the effort to contain Gronoya, the balance of the world’s powers had to use too much force. Life as we know it ceased to exist on that timeline.” Elle paused. Her gaze roamed the room. “What you don’t know is that this timeline is just as doomed.”
The silence was rich. Endless.
Veris cleared his throat. “We’re listening,” he assured Elle.
She nodded. “Realism is so refreshing.” She paused again. “In Russia, right now, there is a mobster called Arkady Usenko—”
“I know that name,” Brody said shortly, frowning.
“Yes, you have heard it before, only the significance of Usenko’s future actions is not known to you,” Elle assured him. “In about a month from now, Usenko will receive a shipment of humans, sent to him from Europe. That single, solitary shipment sets up Usenko as a powerhouse in Russia. Further shipments create a demand for the commodity he supplies—”
“They’re slaves, not a commodity,” Rafe growled. Anger was making him vibrate.
Neven remembered that Rafe had been a slave himself, once. So had Brody. Brody was standing quite still, although his fingers were curled into tight fists, making his knuckles whiten, which was significant for a vampire with no blood flow to speak of.
Elle inclined her head. “I am speaking of the people he buys and sells as Usenko refers to them. The term is a measure of the man and his business practices. Usenko will quickly rise as a man of influence in Russia. He will build a new empire, with a legitimate front. Eventually, he will become President of the Russian Republic. Then he will shut down the borders to stop the flow of global-warming refugees into Russia.”
“The legitimate ones,” Veris said thoughtfully.
“He will stop the unofficial refugees with the use of force,” Elle replied calmly. “Russia still possesses the world’s largest cache of napalm.”
“Oh, wow….” Alannah murmured, her eyes wide.
“Slaves will prop up the Russian economy,” Elle added.
Rafe sank onto the coffee table, holding himself up with his hands on his knees. Taylor moved over to Brody’s side and held his arm.
“Because the indentured class—which is what Russians will call the slaves—because they take the burden of work away from normal Russians, the new leisure class will turn to education and entertainment to fill their time. One of them, a biologist called Korzeniowski, will spend his time enhancing aspects of viruses. He will accidentally invent a meta-smallpox, that will kill him before he has time to develop an antidote. The version of smallpox that Korzeniowski invents has a ninety-nine percent communicability and a three percent recovery rate. It also crosses species lines. Mammals—all mammals—will be dead inside six weeks, which will collapse the food chain and cause massive extinctions of all other species.”
The whole room was silent. Outside, leaves stirred on the gravel, emphasizing the loaded pause.
Neven swallowed. “You want me to change this? Chang
e the future?”
Elle shook her head. “If you make any changes, it will merely shunt this timeline off in a new direction—one that has a future. The timeline I jump back to is doomed. There is nothing that can be done for it, because all the decisions that led to that doom have already been made and locked in. However, everyone here and now—all of you—can change your futures and you must.”
“What has Neven got to do with Usenko?” Veris asked. Even Veris’ voice was strained.
“Nothing,” Elle said flatly. “Kristijan Zoran, the one that belongs to this timeline, has everything to do with it, though. The shipment of people to Usenko, the original one...it was sent by Kristijan Zoric.”
Neven moaned and hung his head. He felt weak. Sick.
“Lean forward,” Marit whispered, her hand on his shoulder. “Breathe.”
“That’s where I’ve heard Usenko’s name before,” Brody said. His voice sounded distant. “When I was originally researching Kristijan Zoric, before Jovan took over.”
Neven breathed. His head was pounding. “I did this…” he whispered.
“Kristijan does it,” Elle said. “Or he would have if he had survived.”
Neven jerked his head up, making it thud. “He’s dead?”
“Records are blank on that. I believe, though, he died about two weeks ago from this time reference,” Elle said.
Rafe got to his feet, pulling out his phone. “I can see where this is going. I’m getting Alex and Sydney. Just hang on a second.” He moved away, dialing. “Sydney, my love. I’m sorry. I’m going to have to ask you to come back again. Bring Alex with you, this time…No, better wait until you get here to ask…” He moved into the kitchen.
Veris shifted on his feet. “You want Neven to be Kristijan?”
Elle nodded. “Without Kristijan, the slave trade through the Balkans to the Black Sea and into Russia…it goes wild. Kristijan Zoric is a horrible man. He was descending in to deeper darkness with every passing year. I’m quite sure that ten years ago, Kristijan Zoric would not have considered getting into bed with Usenko. As bad as Kristijan became, though, Usenko is far, far worse.” Elle’s mouth turned down. “Now that Kristijan is dead, or at the least, out of reach, Usenko will step in and take over Kristijan Zoric’s fiefdom in Southern Serbia, which will give him full control over the slave pipeline into Russia. Kristijan started the trade deal with the Russians. He is the only one who can halt it.” She looked at Neven again. “Only you can stop the train, now. This is the only time alternative where there are two of you.”
Kiss Across Worlds (Kiss Across Time Book 7) Page 4
