“Can you jump there?”
“Sure.” Alannah’s arm tightened.
“Wait.” Marit thought quickly. “Movement draws the eye. The guards—whoever is watching the cameras—they might miss us if we’re standing perfectly still. We’re wearing black and it’s dim in there. Jump, look for the next place to jump, then jump there. Don’t move when we land. Got it?”
Alannah nodded. “I should look for somewhere tucked away, where the cameras won’t see us, right?”
“Right. Let’s go.”
Alannah flexed her knees and the world shifted. Dim, frigid air surrounded them. Marit kept still. She didn’t breath, in case the air fogged in front of her.
The station building was incredibly long. The roof soared overhead for two stories. Once, the building might have been elegant. Now is was a sad, faded place. That made it the perfect setting for the cages that sat in long lines down the length of the station house. Made of joined piping for structure and chicken wire for mesh, the cages were about ten feet in all dimensions. People were packed into them, most of them sitting or lying on the dirty floor. They were silent and almost unmoving.
Marit’s heart squeezed. There were kids in there, too, all of them as dirty and still as the adults.
Alannah’s arm tightened in warning just as Marit’s breath ran out. The world shifted again. Dim shadows reformed. A big crate sat next to them. Piles of cartons on their left. Marit looked up. The crate was maybe twelve feet high and new. The sharp smell of pine came off the yellow wood it was made of.
Only two feet of space lay between the crate and the cartons on the other side. An average adult would think they couldn’t squeeze in there. Alannah had landed them so they were facing the cartons, which gave them room. Just.
The cartons had lids that slid over them and holes in the side. The cardboard was dark and gleamed in the low light. Marit had seen that type of carton at the open air markets. Veggies and fruit were stashed in them. Maybe other stuff.
Alannah crept to the end of the crate. Ahead of them, through the two-foot-wide aperture, Marit could see the chicken wire of a cage, about ten feet away from the edge of the slit they were in. She moved up behind Alannah and peered over her shorter sister’s shoulder, scanning the cages.
There were hundreds of the cages, lined up end to end, in four rows. She counted the number of people crammed into the cage in front of her. There were fourteen people. The next cage had seventeen. If she averaged it out to fifteen, that meant there were thousands of people right here.
Marit pressed her hand to her belly. She felt sick. She had heard enough about Athair’s human life to know that no one deserved slavery.
Alannah shivered. It was cold in here. The prisoners were huddled together for warmth.
This was exactly what Sydney and Rafe and Alex meant when they talked about freeing people from the hidden world of slavery. Human trafficking was the third biggest criminal industry. Marit was looking at it.
Alannah pressed herself up against the crate and tugged Marit there, too. Marit heard the footsteps and low murmur of voices. There were guards, then.
The pair of guards had rifles over their shoulders. The rifles had the curved shell casings that meant they were semi-submachine guns. They looked modern and lethal.
For a moment, Marit considered the wisdom of looking any farther for Aran. They’d found the shipment. They should jump home and tell Athair and Far and let them take over.
Only neither of them, nor Taylor and not even Alex and Sydney and Rafe could jump as precisely as Alan could. She and Aran and Neven had practiced and worked at leap-frogging, until they had perfected it.
Neven wasn’t here and couldn’t be pulled out of the house where he was trying to be Kristijan to halt this thing. Aran was in the cages somewhere.
Marit leaned closer to Alannah and whispered in her ear. “Between the cages, where the guards and cameras won’t see us. Two at a time. Look for Aran, move onto the next. Don’t talk, don’t move. Look and jump. Got it?”
Alannah looked at her. Her face was pale, yet she nodded and held out her arm.
Marit stepped into it and they jumped.
* * * * *
It took more than a dozen jumps to find him. By then, the misery of the still people huddled together on the floor between the wire cage walls had worked its way into her head and Marit found her eyes were constantly leaking. She wiped them carefully, moving slowly, as she examine every face in every cage and the shape and size of every body that was turned away from her.
Aran was sitting with his knees drawn up, his arms around them for warmth. His back was against someone else’s. They were propping each other up.
Alannah gasped. That was all that was needed. Everyone in Aran’s cage and the cage behind them turned to look.
Aran jerked his head around the other way quickly, looking for guards. Then he got up and stepped over people and around them, moving fast. Marit and Alannah hurried to the cage.
“Don’t touch the wire!” Aran said softly, his voice hoarse. His face was dirty, except for two pale disks around his eyes, where he had wipe away the dirt. Had he been crying? Marit shelved the question, as she looked at the chicken wire more closely. It was new, shiny and clean.
Aran pointed to the corner of the cage. She saw what she had not noticed until now. An electrical cable joined the two cages. She let her gaze move along the corridor, checking each cage corner. They were all wired together.
“Two hundred and forty volts,” Aran whispered. “It’s lethal.”
Alannah put her hand over her mouth, smothering a moan.
“Jump out of there,” Marit whispered furiously. “You’re not tied down, or sealed in. There’s nothing stopping you from jumping.”
“Everyone would see,” Aran said.
“Who gives a shit about that?” Alan hissed back.
“This is one of those circumstances where survival outweighs secrecy,” Marit told him.
Aran nodded. “You’re right. I still can’t leave, though. Not yet.”
Marit’s heart gave out an extra heavy beat. “Why not?”
“There’s a girl here.” Aran swallowed. “They took her because she was with me. I haven’t seen her since, but I know she’s here because…” His face crumpled and worked. Then he got control of himself. “I heard her screaming, Mar. You know what that means. I know you do.”
Marit sucked in a deep breath. She was under no illusions that the guards watching these modern slaves were not taking full advantage of the possibilities.
“It’s my fault she’s here,” Aran added. “I can’t leave until I find her and get her out.”
Oh, this was impossible. Marit stared at him, at a loss to know what to do next. She hadn’t considered beyond finding him. After that, the hazy idea that he would be able to jump back with them had sustained her. It wasn’t until this moment she had thought to wonder why Aran had not jumped home from here, any time since he had been captured. Now she knew why.
Alannah tugged her sleeve. She pointed towards the far distant end of the corridor. Guards were moving there.
Marit glanced at Aran again. His chin was squared and determined, just like Brody’s got when he reached a point he would not move from.
“We’ll come back,” she said quickly. “Now we know where you are. Stay safe.”
Aran nodded. “I’m working on it,” he said grimly. The tone, the words…Aran seemed a lot older than his seventeen years. Sadly, Marit realized that this experience was squeezing the boy out of him.
Alannah tugged again, harder and more urgently.
“Soon,” she promised and stepped into Alan’s waiting arm. She watched Aran’s face until it disappeared, her heart hurting.
Chapter Sixteen
They ended up eating breakfast in the kitchen. London dragged in two fold-up stools that were stashed in the butler’s pantry and set them up next to the counter where Neven was cooking pancakes on the portable hotpla
te, instead of the big commercial range against the wall. He had acquired a taste for the North American breakfast, especially with true maple syrup. London found a can of Canadian syrup in the pantry, which she decanted into a small gravy boat.
The big kitchen felt foreign to Neven, as if he was a guest snooping around a camp kitchen, looking for snacks. London, though, would feel even more uncomfortable eating at the dining table, so he settled on the stool she put out for him and put the stack of pancakes between them. London put a cup of coffee in front of him. “Black, I’m guessing.”
“Yes, thanks. You’re not having any?”
She drew a small teapot towards her. “I found the Irish Breakfast tea.”
They ate, while the silence built up around them. Neven could smell her perfume, this close. Her body heat, too.
He drained the coffee with a convulsive jerk of his wrist. “You should make a jump of your own,” he declared. “If you get the first one over with, it will help if you get caught by an unexpected jump, later.”
London put her cup down. The fine china clinked against the saucer. “Yes,” she said. “I want to. Only…how do I not jump back to my personal past? How do I get to somewhere else, as you did yesterday?”
“You may never be able to do that,” Neven warned her. “It’s…advanced.”
“You were showing off?” Her smile was warm.
Neven stood up. “I was proving time travel is real, remember?”
Her smile faded. London got up and folded up the stool. “Very well,” she said quietly. “Where do I jump to and how?”
“You don’t want to go back into your personal history. However, those linear time jumps are the easiest. They’re the ones almost everyone makes, first time. Only, you’ll end up in your own body that exists in that time. I’m going to show you how to step out of the time stream and then back into it, instead of just navigating down the stream.”
“And that means, in English?” she asked, with a polite tone.
“It means you take your body with you. It’s how you cross timelines. You don’t just send your consciousness back to the body that is already there. You take all of you.”
She shook her head, lost.
“Never mind,” he said. “Showing is usually quicker than explaining. I’ll get you to the timescape. You can look around, see how it feels. When you’re there, you may find that there is a hotspot on the timescape. I call them bookmarks. Places that tug at you and want you to go to them. If there is one, let yourself go there.”
London pressed her full lips together for a moment. “Won’t that leave us here, as it did yesterday?”
“Not when you deliberately cross the timescape.” He hesitated, then held out his arm. “Come here. I’ll show you.”
London licked her lips. Then she stepped into his arm. Neven deliberately kept them side by side instead of facing each other as they had yesterday. Even so, his body seemed to pulse as he felt her warm, soft back against his arm. Her hair brushed his wrist, making his flesh tingle and his nerves to fizz.
He cleared his mind and reached for the nothingness that held all of time, then leapt.
The blackness enclosed them. He couldn’t feel his body—he never could.
London?
He heard/felt her sigh. I think I understand…so much, now!
It was usually that way. It had been that way for him, when Elle had shown him the timescape in this same way. A burst of sudden understanding, that days and days of discussion could never have explained in the same way. It all made sense, once he had breached the timescape.
Look for somewhere that calls you.
There are so many! Which one do I pick?
Your bookmarks are not the same as mine. The choice is yours alone.
This, too, was as Elle had taught him, encouraging him to dig into his own past and sample it, as a way of getting used to jumping.
There!
Go there, Neven encouraged her. Lean towards it, then dive down to it.
He felt them moving, then falling. Ahead, he felt/saw bookmarks of his own, a long line of them, like pearls on a string…
…and blinked as daylight formed around them. The fresh scent of spring, warm air and the rustle of trees overhead. The green smell of mown lawn, the chirp of crickets. A bell sounded, in three short dings, that was so distinct, Neven knew exactly where they were. The park was in London and a double-decker bus had just pulled away from the bus stop at the edge of it.
It was broad daylight. Had anyone seem them appear?
“Which park is this?” Neven asked London.
She was looking around. “St. James,” she said distantly. “Mid-week. A Thursday, I think.”
There were not as many people here as he would have expected. A couple stood under the next plane tree, just as he and London were, only the couple were arm in arm, intent only upon themselves.
Neven couldn’t shift his gaze from the couple under the tree. “That’s…Kristijan. And you.”
London was staring at them. Her face was pale. “This is the day we met. He used the table I was sitting at, in the café. We started talking…then kept on talking.” She swallowed. “Why did he even need a café?” she whispered.
“Maybe he was blending in. Or maybe he saw you through the window,” Neven told her. “I know I would want a second, closer look, if I saw you.”
She glanced up. No amusement showed on her face. “He’s going to kiss me,” she whispered. “How can I stop it?”
Neven sighed. “You can’t,” he said heavily. “It would change things.”
Her eyes grew shiny. “This is what you meant, isn’t it? About the dangers of messing with history. I just didn’t think…” She looked at the couple under the tree. The man who looked just like Neven was pushing her hair out of her face, his fingers lingering. Exploring. The younger London was looking up at him expectantly. “I didn’t think it would hurt to see such things,” London said. Her voice was strained.
Neven pulled her against him and looked around for witnesses. The warm weekday afternoon was keeping most people away from the park. He gathered himself and jumped back, bringing London with him.
They returned to the silent kitchen, almost to the same spot they had been in when they left. London bent over the counter, propping herself up on it. She closed her eyes, breathing hard.
Neven hesitated, then rested his hand on her shoulder. “Are you alright?” It came out stiff and formal.
London turned and hugged him. She was trembling and she turned her head and rested it against his shoulder.
Neven understood she did it purely for comfort. He held her and waited for the trembling to subside.
After a while, she said softly, “If it had been a linear jump I had made, it would have been me under the tree with him, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes.” Neven was pleased. She had grasped the difference between the types of jumps that were possible.
“It would have been me he tried to kiss.”
Tried.
“You would have had to let him kiss you, too,” Neven told her.
“To preserve a future I don’t want.”
“You don’t know what lays ahead,” Neven explained. “Just what lies between that beginning and where you stand now. You have to go through those times, to reach the future you don’t know. If you change anything, that future is lost.”
“Maybe it should be lost. Maybe he should be lost, too.”
Neven let her go, so he could see her face. “London, you can’t think that way. It’s dangerous. Changes cascade and grow bigger as they move down the timeline, like ripples on water. I know he was cruel and I know you wish you’d never met him, only you did. You can’t change that.” He pushed his jacket and shirt sleeves as far up his arms as he could, so that she could see the red weals and scars about his wrist. “There are things in my past I would change, given the choice.”
London touched the scars with a fingertip, hesitantly, as if her touch wou
ld damage him. “Is this…rope?” she asked.
“Weighted rope. It kept me at the bottom of the lake quite nicely.”
Horror touched her face. She slid her fingers over the scars, hiding them. “Neven…” she whispered, then lifted her lips to his and kissed him.
Neven couldn’t resist kissing her back. It was too sweet, too powerful, to deny. He pulled her back into his arms and held her head steady and deepened the kiss. No guilt surfaced to tell him he shouldn’t. It was too perfect for that.
His body gathered, more than ready. It was as if the minor relief he’d got yesterday had not happened at all. He was back to aching with need.
He governed himself, still wary. London had spoken his name, only what was driving her to kissing him? She had just seen Kristijan. She was upset. She still may be confusing him with Kristijan.
London pulled away from him. “You don’t want this, do you?” she asked. Her voice was low, even sultry.
Neven cast about for an answer that wouldn’t hurt her. “I do,” he admitted honestly. “I’m just not sure it’s me that you want.”
Her lips parted in surprise. Her sweet lips. “How can you say that? After everything you’ve learned about him?”
“I saw you in the park, too, London. I saw you together. I saw how much you wanted him, then. The heart is a strange beast. It wants what it wants.”
She took a step back. A tiny furrow puckered her brow. “Why do you care what I want?” she said. “Why does it even matter?”
He took a deep breath. “To me, it does matter. A great deal.”
Her laugh seemed to take even her by surprise. It was not a happy sound and she pressed her fingertips over her mouth, holding the rest of it in. Her eyes were wide and filled with pain.
Neven silently cursed. He’d hurt her anyway.
“London…” he began.
She shook her head. Then she turned and left, her stilettos clicking on the kitchen tile.
* * * * *
Remi was sprawled in the wing chair when Neven headed for the office. He sat up as Neven crossed the drawing room.
“Do you have the figures that Dragović said he would get?” Neven asked curtly.
Kiss Across Worlds (Kiss Across Time Book 7) Page 18
