The End?
Of course not! As you can see, Emmeline’s story is next. I never intended to write more about the Multiverse Timeline that started with this book, but sometimes a secondary character jumps out at me and demands his or her own story, which is what happened here.
Emmeline seems to me to be an incredibly strong girl—she’s been through a lot of adversity but now she needs help, both for her baby and herself. I think the warrior the Goddess will send her needs a little help of his own. Together they will navigate space and time through the Multiverse until they find what they are looking for. Be looking for Emmeline’s story, Time to Heal, coming out soon! And read on for the first chapter to get you excited. ; )
Time to Heal
Chapter One
“So how’s it going? See anything interesting lately?”
Caroline Vii looked up from her work, startled by the voice in her ear. It was Sophie, one of her new friends aboard the Kindred Mother Ship. The other girl gave her an apologetic smile.
“Oh sorry—didn’t mean to startle you. I was just curious about what other universes you’d been watching lately.”
It might have seemed a strange question to anyone else but Caroline was a scientist who had pioneered the study of the other layers of reality in what was known as the Multiverse. The idea that there might be more than one universe—that there might, in fact, be hundreds or thousands or even millions of universes and realities layered on top of each other like the rings of an onion had long been bandied around the scientific community. But Caroline had found a way to actually observe them.
Using a machine she had invented called PORTAL—short for Positronic Orbital Rotating Time/Space Allocating Locator—Caroline was actually able to peel back the layers of reality and observe other universes. Some people—the ones with doubles in other universes—were also able to travel between them, using the window that PORTAL created. Caroline had found that out the hard way, when she was sucked into another universe and forced to live the life of her own double in what was essentially Victorian England.
That had been a wild adventure and Caroline had barely escaped with her life several times over. She’d been drugged, shot at, attacked, and made to wear hoop-skirts and a corset laced so tightly she could barely breathe. But since she had also gotten her mate and husband, Richard, out of the deal, she considered the whole thing a success—not that she ever wanted to repeat it.
Now there was a clearly marked black line on the floor of her lab, exactly three feet from the large brass frame of PORTAL’s window generation unit. This was considered the minimum safe distance and whenever a different universe was showing in the large, rectangular frame, Caroline made certain that she and anyone else who came into her lab observed it carefully from behind the safety line.
She didn’t want anyone else getting sucked into another world and forced to live the life of their Multiverse doppelganger as she had. It was too damn dangers and crazy, trying to pass yourself off as a whole other person who might look exactly like you, but had a completely different personality and life. Having lived through that herself, Caroline wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Nor did she want to drag anyone from another universe through the PORTAL’s window into her own world…well, with one exception.
She wished desperately that she could bring Richard’s cousin, Emmeline, through. In fact, that was who she was watching in PORTAL’s window right now.
“Not really seeing anything new at the moment,” she told Sophie. “Mostly I’ve just been trying to keep an eye on Emmeline—though I don’t know what we could do if I saw something bad happening. Richard can’t go back to his old universe and I don’t think I can either.”
“Poor thing!” Sophie looked at the large brass frame, which showed a gray, overcast day in the other universe. The sky was an ominous shade of purple-blue and storm clouds were massing, clearly threatening to spit more snow to match the grayish mush that lined the cobbled streets of the Victorian-looking city.
It had been summer time when Caroline made her trip through the PORTAL but time had passed and it was winter now—a dull and dreary time in the other world. Not that it seemed to bother the girl they were watching.
Walking along the street, her chin lifted high, was Emmeline. She was a lovely girl with long, golden-brown hair, caught up in a fashionable chignon and held in place by a jaunty little emerald green hat pinned at the crown of her head. The hat set off her large green eyes and the long, bustled green gown she wore accentuated her plus-sized curves, which were apparently all the rage in her universe.
Caroline had to admit that was one thing she had liked about the strange world called Terra, which corresponded to Earth, though it appeared to be about two hundred to three hundred years behind Earth’s timeline. Plus-sized women were considered beautiful there, though they were still forced into corsets to accentuate their curves.
“What’s she doing? Where is she going?” Sophie asked, breaking her train of thought.
“I don’t know,” Caroline said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say she’s on her way to Hastings Hall to try and see her baby again.”
“Oh, how is baby Jamie?” Sophie asked with interest. She and her sister, Liv and their friend, Kat, had been following Emmeline’s life with avid interest. Richard’s cousin had had a tumultuous existence ever since she’d been attacked by the only son of an Earl and had refused to marry him. Richard had called the man out and shot him dead in a duel, but Emmeline was still a ruined woman, according to her world’s standards. And when it became clear the rape had left her pregnant, her own mother, Lady Agatha Hastings, had turned her out of the house.
Emmeline had disappeared for a while and eventually surfaced in a very peculiar type of brothel—a Flagellation Bordello called Mother Griffith’s on Graves Street. There she had given birth to a son she had named James—Jamie for short—but after only a short time, she had been forced to give the baby up to her judgmental parents.
Lord and Lady Hastings had agreed to raise Jamie as their ward with the understanding that Emmeline would have only infrequent contact with the child and then only under approved circumstances. But it was clear the young mother longed to see her baby, who was weak and failing to thrive in the vast, stone mansion she herself had been raised in. Caroline had watched her go there over and over to see him, only to be turned away every time, sometimes with only a glimpse of her child through the open doorway.
“Baby Jamie isn’t doing too well,” she was forced to report to Sophie. “He seems weaker every time Emmeline goes to see him, poor thing.” She sighed. “It breaks my heart to see her begging to hold him and being told no over and over again—although the last time she went, the old butler had mercy on her and let her cuddle him for just a minute.”
“Did he? Oh, I wish I could have seen that!” Sophie exclaimed. “Did he finally stop crying?”
Poor baby Jamie put up a constant, weak wailing that echoed through the grand marble archways of Hastings Hall and was never silenced—at least as far as the watching Caroline could tell.
She nodded. “Yes—the minute they finally put him into her arms, he quieted for a little while. I swear, he knows she’s his mother and he doesn’t want anybody else. Especially that awful wet nurse they hired for him.”
“Oh, you mean Nurse Higgins?” Sophie asked. “She has such a sour look on her face, her breast milk probably tastes like lemon juice! Poor baby—he just wants his mama.”
“Well, maybe the butler will let her see him again this time,” Caroline said, as they watched Emmeline make her way down the street. There was a look of determination on her pretty face—a look that said she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I hope so,” Sophie said fervently. Though she had never met Emmeline, she and Liv and Kat all felt great sympathy for Richard’s younger cousin.
They watched as Emmeline marched down a long, graveled driveway leading to the imposing mansion called Hastings Hall. She had grown up there
and clearly she still felt at home—or at least she tried to project that image. She walked straight up the marble stairs and knocked on the great front double door which appeared to be made of mahogany.
After a moment the door swung slowly open and Caroline felt her heart start to pound.
“Here we go,” she said to Sophie. “If it’s the kind old butler, he might let her see baby Jamie again.”
“Oh, I hope she gets to hold him!” Sophie clasped her hands to her chest in anticipation.
But the person who appeared in the doorway wasn’t the kindly old butler who had probably helped to raise Emmeline. In fact, it wasn’t really a person at all. When the door swung all the way open it wasn’t the seamed and wrinkled face of Fritz that was revealed—instead, a shiny bronze face, molded in the shape of a stern and unyielding scowl—greeted Emmeline.
“Oh no!” Caroline exclaimed. “It’s one of those creepy Tick-Tock servants! I hate those things.”
As she had observed herself during her trip to Richard and Emmeline’s world, the Terran version of the Victorian Era was considerably more “steam-punk” than Earth’s had been. There were wind-up carriages that ran on clock-work and steamm as well as other inventions which were uniquely Terran. One of those was the creepy Tick-Tocks.
Molded entirely of brass, the mechanical servants had glowing yellow eyes and a large key embedded in their backs, which enabled them to be wound up and set in motion for service. One of the weirdest things about them was that they all had the same, high, tinny voice which issued from a speaker-plate in their chests. They were completely loyal to their masters—and completely lacking in any kind of reason or compassion.
“Yes? How may I help you?” the Tick-Tock butler asked Emmeline, who was staring at him with a dismayed expression on her pretty face.
“I…I…” She licked her lips nervously and then lifted her chin higher. Clearly she wasn’t giving up on her quest to see her baby. “I am Emmeline Hastings—daughter of Lord and Lady Hastings,” she told the mechanical butler. “I am here to visit my son, James Henry Terrence Hastings. Let me in.”
The butler seemed to consider this for a moment, it’s yellow, lamp-like eyes flashing as it thought. After a moment, it answered.
“Negative. I have specific instructions not to allow Emmeline Hastings into the house.”
“What? Who told you that?” Emmeline demanded.
The butler paused again. “Instructions given by Lady Hastings herself. Such instructions can only be overridden by Lord Hastings, who has not addressed the matter. So the order stands. Emmeline Hastings is not to enter the house.”
An angry, stubborn look came over Emmeline’s delicate features.
“I used to live here and you have my son in there—let me in!” she exclaimed and attempted to push past the butler, who was blocking the doorway.
But she might as well have tried to push past a stone wall. The Tick-Tock butler was completely unmoving and its broad brass shoulders left no room for her to squeeze past.
“Please!” Emmeline begged, giving up her attempt to force her way in. “Please, if I could just see him for a moment.”
As though to punctuate her plea, a thin, wailing suddenly came drifting out the open doorway. It sounded as though someone had opened the nursery door and now baby Jamie could be heard, crying inconsolably.
“That’s him! I can hear him and he sounds sick!” Emmeline exclaimed. “Please—please just let me see him for a moment!”
But her passionate pleas fell on deaf ears.
“Negative,” the Tick-Tock butler said. “Emmeline Hastings is not to enter the house under any circumstances. Good day.”
Then it shut the door in Emmeline’s face, cutting off the thin wailing of her baby abruptly.
For a moment, Emmeline just stood there looking at the door as though she couldn’t believe what had happened. Then she turned abruptly away, but not before Caroline saw the brightness of unshed tears in her big green eyes.
“Oh, poor thing! How dare they turn her away like that? It’s her baby!” Sophie exclaimed indignantly.
“I know, but she gave up the rights to him in order that he could be raised in Hastings Hall as the ward of a Viscount instead of in a brothel as the son of a prostitute,” Caroline said sadly. “I think she felt it was a trade that would benefit her baby in the long run, but right now it looks like she’s regretting her choice.”
“Poor thing,” Sophie said again. “She looks like her heart is breaking!”
Indeed, Emmeline’s shoulders were shaking as she covered her face with her daintily gloved hands. For a moment Caroline was afraid she was going to have a break-down right there at the door of her former house.
And who could blame her if she did? She was a young mother who was being refused access to her own child. A child she could hear crying in the background and who might be ill. It was a terrible situation.
“Where is the protector the Goddess promised her?” Caroline demanded, impotent rage over poor Emmeline’s plight filling her. “Richard said that was why he wasn’t allowed to go back to his own world and take care of Emmeline himself because the Goddess was sending someone else. So where is he?”
“I don’t kn—” Sophie began but just then both women gave a low gasp because the scene on PORTAL’s window had abruptly changed.
Like a TV switching channels, Emmeline’s world disappeared and a whole new one took its place.
Instead of the blushish-purple skies of Terra, Caroline and Sophie were suddenly staring at a vast, dim cavern. In the center of the cavern, was a large oval table, big enough to seat at least fifty people, Caroline estimated. And that was about the number seated there—only they weren’t seated, they were up and shouting at each other.
In the middle of the table, glowing with a sickly greenish light, was a huge crystal that looked to be almost as tall as a man. Looking at it closely, Caroline saw that it had a large crack, running down the middle of it and parts of it had chipped away. Was that what all the strange people were arguing about?
“Who are those people? Some kind of barbarians?” Sophie breathed in her ear.
“I don’t know,” Caroline answered, but she had to admit that was exactly what they looked like.
There were both men and women at the table and all of them dressed in leather skins. Some of the men had war-paint on their faces and the women—who were every bit as big and muscular as the men—had feathers and beads woven into their long hair.
After studying them for a moment, Caroline saw that they appeared to be divided into several obvious factions. The women kept together in one group, and then there was a group of males who appeared to have long, dagger-like fangs, rather like a sabertooth tiger. Another group had deep, velvety brown skin and slitted golden eyes like a cat’s. A fourth group appeared to have scars all over their bodies, as though they had all been in terrible fights. They—
“There—that’s him!” Sophie exclaimed excitedly, pointing at PORTAL’s window. “That’s the one the Goddess showed us!”
“What? Who? What are you talking about?” Caroline asked eagerly.
“That guy there—sitting beside the really old man with the long gray hair and the staff.” Sophie went a little closer, though she was careful to stay behind the black safety line, and pointed. “That’s the guy the Goddess showed us when she promised to send a protector to Emmeline!”
Caroline looked where she was pointing and saw a tall, muscular warrior with scars all over his body—it was easy to see them, since his broad chest was bare and he was only wearing a leather loincloth wrapped around his lean hips. They were large, jagged, and prominent—silver-white lines that crossed his dark tan skin like streaks of lightning. One bisected his face diagonally, marching from the right side of his forehead across the bridge of his nose and crossing his left cheek just under the eye.
And speaking of his eyes, it was difficult to tell because of the dim lighting, but they almost seemed to glow.
Were his pupils white instead of black? Caroline couldn’t tell, but it certainly looked like it. The light pupils gave his gaze a piercing, foreboding look that sent a shiver down her spine.
But his eyes and his scars weren’t the only thing that was frightening about him. The warrior also had a five sided sword as long as his body strapped to his back. When one of the fanged warriors leaned across the table and shouted in his face, he drew it with a ringing sound of metal-on-metal and held it easily between them, as though in silent threat.
“Look at that thing,” Sophie muttered. “It must weight fifty or sixty pounds but he’s holding it like it’s as light as an ice cream cone.”
“Well I’m pretty sure that particular ice cream cone would slice your tongue in half if you tried to lick it,” Caroline murmured back. “Bad idea.”
“Shhh—the old guy is talking!” Sophie exclaimed.
Indeed, the gray-haired man seated beside the huge, scarred warrior suddenly stood and banged his staff on the floor, creating a booming sound.
“Enough!” he announced in a surprisingly strong voice for a man who looked to be in his eighties or nineties. “As Speaker and Shaman for the Esk’hara Kindred, I must protest this threat of violence. Skahr,” he told the scarred warrior standing beside him. “Put your great-sword away. We will have no bloodshed at this Council.”
“I do not know what besides bloodshed will settle these conflicts,” one of the cat-eyed warriors purred in a deep, silky voice. “We appear to have difficulties which can no longer be settled by talking, Old One.”
“If the male clans would stop invading our territory, we would be well content,” one of the women exclaimed. “How many times must we say that we wish no contact with you?”
“Your lands are flush against ours,” the saber-toothed warrior replied. “How can we help it if our flocks sometimes cross over into your valley? Have you no tolerance at all?”
“Not for males!” the woman, who had long red hair braided with feathers, snapped back. “You must not—”
Trapped in Time Page 33
