Brenden’s expression closed over. “Let the man speak for himself.”
Personal issues, Cáel realized. He’d stepped over the delicate line that divided general enquiry from probing in private concerns. He held up his hand in peace. “I’ll ask Rhydder. My apologies.”
Rhydder groaned deeply, his hand swinging up from the floor to press gently against his head. “Who let the fucking horses in?” he muttered. “Noisy bastards.”
Brenden stepped over to the side of the couch. “Fill that bowl there with water, Kieren. Let’s speed this up.”
Keiren’s smile was wolfish. “That’s the first good idea you’ve had today.”
Brenden scowled as Kieren moved to the sink and held the big bowl under the slow-running water.
“I don’t know how good this water is,” Kieren said over his shoulder. “It doesn’t smell too good.”
“Nothing in it will bother him for too long.” Brendan grabbed the back of Rhydder’s jacket and hauled him up.
Rhydder protested, grabbing at his head, as Brenden slammed him back on the sofa, this time on his butt. Dust puffed up into the air and slowly sank back down once more, the particles dancing in the sunlight that made it through the window.
Brenden clenched Rhydder’s jacket again, at the base of his neck, and held him upright as he tried to list to the left. “Over here,” he told Kieren.
“Coming.” He placed the bowl on the sofa beside Rhydder and crouched down next to the cushions, holding the bowl steady. “Ready.”
Brenden leaned Rhydder over and dunked his head, face-first, into the bowl.
Rhydder blew bubbles into the water and began to struggle.
“He blew out his air,” Kieren warned. “He’ll need a lungful in about twenty seconds.”
Cáel crept closer. “This will sober him up? I’ve never seen it done before.”
“It’s crude but effective,” Ryan said. “When he comes out of the water, he’ll breathe in deep. It forces oxygen into the brain, which he’s short on right now thanks to the alcohol. If he’s dumb enough to drink the water, he’ll rehydrate, too.”
Brenden pulled Rhydder’s head up. The water streamed down his front and he sucked in a deep, gasping breath. Then another. He hit out at Brenden, swinging his fist in a sideways arc, aiming for Brenden’s stomach.
Brenden just stepped out of the way, his long arms stretching to hold Rhydder in place.
Rhydder grabbed at his temple. “Fuck!” he cried, as pain caused by his wild swing at Brenden must have exploded in his head.
“That’s some hangover,” Cáel murmured.
“Not for much longer,” Brenden assured him, and thrust Rhydder’s head into the water once more, undeterred by the man’s struggling.
* * * * *
Liping Village, East Yunnan Province, China, 2054 A.D.: Justin caught up with Deonne before she was more than twenty meters along the path through the trees she had used earlier than night. He was moving fast.
“There are a lot of non-agency humans around here, you know,” Deonne warned him as he stepped alongside her and kept pace.
“Not within hearing distance,” Justin replied. “My hearing, that is.” He caught her arm with his hand. “Please stop.”
“So you can sweet talk me into whatever you want?” She shook her head and turned into the path that led toward the compound and the river.
“Stop, so I can talk at all. Be reasonable, Dee. I had no idea Daniel was Santiago.”
She halted. Just ahead, in the dark, she could hear the little rivulet that trickled underneath the miniature bridge. It would help protect them against listeners.
“You did jump back here again,” she conceded. “Despite the risk. Does the agency know you’re here?”
“Nayara does.” He caught her hand in his. His heat surprised her once more. “I would have jumped with or without her agreement, anyway. But I don’t give a damn about the agency right now. All I care about is that you’re walking away from me.” His fingers tightened about hers.
“I’m giving you and Santiago some time and privacy.”
“I don’t give a damn about Santiago, either,” Justin said roughly.
Deonne’s heart thudded and she didn’t know if she was feeling pleasure or pain. Everything was a hot, sour soup inside her. So she grasped at the facts.
“You do care about him, Justin. Don’t lie.”
There was a silence before Justin answered. “I cared about him once, a long time ago. It was straight after I was made, and I was vulnerable and easy prey.”
“Do you love him?” Deonne demanded.
He just stood there and in the dark, she couldn’t see his face or his expression. Tension seemed to zing all along his rigid body, though.
“Do you?” she prompted.
“I…did. Once.” His voice was very low.
“You still do,” she accused him. “I saw your face, Justin. You were shocked. Then your shock was replaced by…God, I don’t even know how to describe it. You wore a look that I’ve never seen on your face before. Not when you’re with me, anyway. You love him. Once, long ago, and again, now you’ve found him.”
Justin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “None of that matters. Not now.”
“How can you say that?” Deonne demanded, as the band around her chest seemed to constrict even tighter, making her hurt from her throat to her stomach. “How can you deny love?”
Justin swore and grabbed her shoulders. “If it keeps you in my life, Deonne, I will deny not just love, but that the planets circle the sun and that gravity works. I’m stating it now for the last time. I do not care about Adán. But you do.”
The breath she sucked in seemed to burn as it whistled along her throat. “No,” she said flatly. Simply. But her voice was pathetically weak.
“You wrote a letter that lies somewhere in your future,” Justin told her. “You said you loved him and he loved you. He offered to turn you. Is that what made you love him?”
“I don’t love him,” she said helplessly. “I don’t want to love him, either. Aren’t you changing that future just by being here?”
He let go of her shoulders, his arms dropping to hang rigidly by his sides. “There wasn’t a time wave when I went back last time. I don’t know for sure…but I think I’m supposed to be here.”
“No wave? But…that would mean…” Deonne licked her lips as the many scary possibilities and meanings occurred to her. “What about the village…the blanket bomb?”
Justin drew in a breath that made his shoulders lift. “If I’m meant to be here, then nothing I do will stop the future from forming as it was supposed to.”
“So the village will be destroyed?” she whispered, thinking about all the people hiding here from the future. Forty-two humans…
“The village will be destroyed…and you will fall in love with Santiago and write that letter.”
“No, Justin! No! I won’t allow it to happen. It cannot….”
His arms came around her and pulled her up against him and Deonne rested her head against his chest.
“And so the riddle is fully revealed at last.” It was Santiago’s voice, coming from behind her.
Deonne stepped away from Justin and turned to face Santiago. In the dark, he was just a shadow, standing in the middle of the path. “I told you all of it,” she reminded him.
“The facts, yes. A letter, an attack on the village. But it is the details that make the story a real one. The details explain your fear of me.”
Justin stepped to her side. “Then, if you understand that much, you should agree that the best thing you can do is leave the village. Go back to wherever you came from and stay there.”
“I do not believe that would be a wise course, given my already decreed future.” Deonne saw him shift on his feet. He was facing her directly now. “You and I are to be lovers, Deonne.”
“I don’t want you,” Deonne told him. But a hot wave rolled through her bo
dy, making her shudder.
“To deny us is to put the future in jeopardy.”
“Good,” Deonne said flatly.
“You would risk your own future…your friends and family?” Santiago asked.
Deonne hesitated. What changes would she make to the future if she asked Justin to take her away from the village and Santiago? Was Santiago a key person in history, one whose smallest decision affected massively more change than if someone else had changed their mind? Was he another Salathiel?
“Why are you insisting upon this, Danny?” Justin asked. “You’ve only just learned that time travel is fact, yet you are speaking like one of the agency travelers. Why are you so concerned about a future you know nothing about?”
Santiago took a moment to answer. “This place is not conducive to reason,” he said. “The dark cannot be helping Deonne relax, or you, Justin, for you cannot see like I can right now. We need to step back and consider this in a sane, careful and rational way.”
Justin shook his head. “No. No considering. This isn’t something you hack out on paper.”
“I was thinking it would be over coffee and food. Both of you must be hungry.”
“No food. No drink. No putting us at our ease.”
Deonne’s stomach cramped and gave out an empty ping. She rested her hand over her abdomen as both men looked at her. “Sorry,” she whispered to Justin.
He rested his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get you food,” he said quietly.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Liping Village, East Yunnan Province, China, 2054 A.D.: There was a house halfway between the compound and Deonne’s apartment that, in the evening, would open up the front room to customers and serve coffee and treats. It was a low key, rural version of a coffee shop, tucked inside a grove of trees and bushes. They did not advertise in any way. There was no neon and no signage. But Deonne had learned of the shop in the first week she had been in the village and every time she had been there, the front room with its tiny tables and small divans had been almost fully occupied.
It was the same this time, when the three of them stepped inside. The low light was just enough for them to see that nearly all the seating was occupied by people bent over their conversations and coffee, heads together as they spoke. It was not noisy in the room. Like the entire village, the shop encouraged tranquility.
As they hesitated, a woman glided up to them, hurrying despite her poise. She beckoned and Deonne followed curiously, the two men behind her, as the woman led them around a beautiful traditionally painted rice paper room divider. There was a small divan, a low, rectangular table, and a barrel chair sitting on the other side, facing the divan.
Without discussing it, Deonne and Justin sat on the divan beside each other, while Santiago took the chair. The business of ordering coffee and cakes took up several minutes, then the woman glided away with a small smile.
Santiago leaned forward in his chair, his hand curled into a loose fist and his forearm laying along the chair’s arm. “We have a conundrum on our hands, don’t we?” he asked softly.
“One that would be solved very simply if you left the village,” Deonne pointed out.
“And destroy my future and who knows how many other people’s futures, too?” Santiago shook his head. “If even one additional death occurs because I choose a different path, then the price is too high.”
“Technically, most of them wouldn’t be deaths. They would simply not be born,” Justin said.
Santiago rolled his eyes at Justin. “Semantics. It is the same end result either way and I won’t have that on my conscience.”
Justin leaned forward as Santiago was. It forced Deonne to lean forward as well. It brought their heads close together and Justin dropped his volume to barely above a whisper. “Let’s go back to the beginning. Let me sum this up. You, Adán, won’t change what you do know about your future. Deonne doesn’t want the future she knows is coming. Neither do I. But neither of us wants to risk changing it, because we both know how bad things can get if you try.”
“How bad?” Santiago asked.
“End of the world bad,” Deonne told him. “I grew up hearing stories about Salathiel and Justin lived through those times.”
Santiago looked at Justin, puzzled.
“Salathiel is a long subject. Another time,” Justin said. “Just know that because of him, neither of us is eager to try to change what we know is going to happen, as much as we don’t want it.”
Santiago lifted his hand from the chair arm and placed it on the table in front of them, palm flat and fingers spread. It was like he was making a declaration. “Neither of you have asked whether the future that has been laid out for me is something I want.”
Deonne stared at him, surprised, and unable to ask the question. She feared the answer.
“You want the village to be destroyed?” Justin asked, his voice even lower.
Santiago shook his head. “That, I do not want. But Deonne…yes.”
Deonne’s whole body seemed to come to a silent, silvery halt. She drew in a sharp breath.
Justin’s fingers curled around hers and she gripped his hand. Hard.
Santiago wasn’t looking at her though. He was watching Justin. “I have only known Deonne for just over a day and I already know that she is someone I want in my life.” His gaze shifted to her. “Even before I knew you were from the future, I was drawn to you. You are a riddle, wrapped up in a puzzle, inside a Chinese puzzle box. You think you have told me everything now, but you raise questions in my mind every time you speak. It has been a long time since I found anything quite as novel and interesting as you. The future you come from is just a bonus. Your future says I will love you. I believe your future. Falling in love with you would be easy, I suspect.” His dark-eyed gaze held her still. “But I don’t take unwilling women,” he added, his voice low. His gaze shifted back to Justin. “And I won’t risk losing your friendship, Justin. Not now I’ve found you again.”
The silence that gripped the table in reaction to Santiago’s declaration was thick with tension. Deonne could feel it beating at her. “Then we’re nowhere,” she said tiredly.
“We all know each other’s minds. That’s more than we had before,” Justin said reasonably. “Plus, there’s one course of action we’ve all overlooked.”
Santiago raised his brow. “I did?”
“We all did,” Justin assured him.
“There is no other option. Not that I can see,” Deonne said.
“There’s just one,” Justin said. “We do nothing.”
Invisible fingers tripped down Deonne’s spine, making her shudder.
Santiago snorted. “That’s not action. That’s giving up.”
“No, it’s deliberately acknowledging the future we know might happen and embracing it. Come what may. We don’t fight it. We don’t try to change it – not consciously, anyway. We stay here and we live our lives and—”
“Enjoy them,” Santiago finished. “Live them large and swallow them whole while we can.” He sat back, a small smile playing on his full lips. “That, I can do. Deonne?”
She jumped. “You want me to agree? To what?”
“We let this play out with no pressure to change anything,” Justin explained. “No negative contemplation about what the future might bring. We forget about the future and just…enjoy.”
There would be no pressure to do anything she didn’t want to do. “But…the blanket bomb,” she said, dropping her voice very low. “We might…we could die.”
“We may,” Santiago agreed. “Or we may not. Justin Edward, there, is one of the most relentless people I have known, when it comes to survival. He is in a class of his own and even though I made him, I found I still had much to learn from him. If Justin is by your side, your chances of living through whatever the future brings are considerably greater because he never surrenders.”
Justin rubbed at the back of his neck. “Where I come from, that’s just called being a righ
t stubborn bastard.”
Santiago grinned and looked at Deonne again. “Do you agree?”
“Justin?” she asked.
“It was my idea. I’ve already agreed,” Justin told her. “Now you know the risks, it’s your turn to agree.”
She swallowed. “I can’t see that there’s any other way to play this,” she conceded. “You are staying here, aren’t you?”
The corner of Justin’s mouth lifted in a small smile. “I wouldn’t miss this.”
“Then we are agreed,” Santiago said, sitting back. He lifted his hand and cracked the knuckles between his other fingers, in a ‘let’s get to business’ way.
Deonne’s breath caught. The mannerism was almost a replica of the same gesture Justin used occasionally—the gesture he copied to make himself look more human.
Santiago’s action brought home to Deonne the fact of their previous association in a way no words or other actions had managed. The knowledge had been intellectual. A fact without meaning or emotion. Now she understood with her body and heart. They had loved one another. They had been lovers.
Would they be lovers again?
* * * * *
Detroit-Rocktown Supercity, 2264 A.D.: After five minutes of being submerged in the water in regular repetitions, Rhydder spluttered as he came up for air and lifted his hand. “Enough,” he growled. “I’m as sober as I’m going to get without food and coffee.”
Brenden hesitated and looked at Kieren, his brow lifting.
“He looks awake enough,” Kieren judged and lifted the bowl away, carrying it to the old and chipped sink.
Ryan tossed Rhydder a cloth that had been lying on the counter. It was ragged and unhemmed, but looked like it had been serving as a drying cloth. The apartment didn’t provide dish recycling.
Rhydder wiped off his face and upper chest, while Brenden pulled the single chair up close to the sofa and directly in front of Rhydder’s leather-encased knees. “Now you’re going to tell us where your contemporary self is, right now.”
Rhydder lowered the towel slowly, staring at Brenden as if he was a particularly odd but fascinating species. “That’s why you dragged me away from my party?”
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