The Universe Parallel

by Traci Harding

  ‘Well, the Lord of the Otherworld saw good in him and he won’t remember this anyway.’ She shrugged, although Taren knew intention ran in both directions through time, so a little kindness now may still pay off in the past.

  ‘Best of luck,’ Ronan managed to say in the wake of Jazmay’s spiel, and it was difficult to tell if the sentiment was heartfelt or not.

  ‘Luck is a thing of the past, Ronan,’ Taren advised as she prepared to depart for her final leap into the past. ‘Intention rules destiny to bring vision into being.’

  Jazmay vanished from their midst.

  ‘So. I wish you good intention, Chief.’ Taren grinned in leaving. ‘For you are surely going to need it in the future.’

  Taren left her stupefied employer to return to a time when Yasper Ronan was alive, contented and sleeping blissfully in her bed.

  24

  TWO DAYS BEFORE …

  As Taren stirred and became semi-aware that she was naked and entangled in another warm body, she initially assumed it was Lucian.

  Her eyes opened to view the interior of her MSS-assigned apartment and Taren was suddenly acutely aware of where she was and what she was doing here.

  Don’t wake him, she thought upon realising the warm, naked body behind her belonged to Yasper Ronan. She carefully removed his hands from her person and, holding her breath, slid out of the bed. As the warmth of her body left him, Yasper stirred, grumbled, rolled over and went back to sleep, whereupon Taren gave a sigh of relief and willed her clothes back on her body.

  It was the crack of dawn; the sun would soon be rising over the city skyline beyond the huge windows of the high-rise in which she stood. Yasper and she were not required to report for work until this afternoon, although they would get a call later this morning requesting they meet with the chief before they departed on assignment. Taren still had a good four hours up her sleeve before Yasper would wake — plenty of time to get to Oceane and back. She looked back to her one-time lover sleeping contently, unaware of his fate, and her heart welled with joy to see him alive — it really was a dream come true.

  ‘Taren?’ whispered a voice from behind her.

  Taren’s hand was wrapped around the throat of her unexpected guest before she had time to realise it was Jazmay. ‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered her reprimand as she urged the taller woman backwards and out of Yasper’s earshot.

  ‘I had to see him for myself,’ Jazmay appealed, ‘it’s been so long, please?’

  Taren ceased her charge and let Jazmay go, knowing the man usually slept like a log — when he wasn’t on a mission.

  Jazmay moved past Taren and towards the bed where Yasper now lay flat on his back, tangled in a sheet. Her hands rose to cover her mouth and smother her shock as she looked to Taren, amazed.

  Taren nodded in response; in this case, Yasper’s resemblance to his Chosen incarnation back on Kila was truly remarkable. Taren had recognised Yasper in Jahan upon sighting him, and she knew Jazmay would have no trouble seeing the parallel either.

  Jazmay crept back over to where Taren stood. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she uttered, a huge smile on her face as she looked back to him, gripping her chest with both hands in utter delight. ‘Can I watch over him while you go to Oceane?’

  Taren’s eyes welled with tears unexpectedly, and she had to take a moment to come to grips with the situation.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Jazmay trailed Taren into her lounge room.

  ‘I just realised that the man for whom I have endured so much to see live again is no longer mine.’ Taren was more overwhelmed by that realisation than she’d expected.

  Jazmay conceded that might be a little crushing. ‘Your love is elsewhere today,’ she pointed out.

  ‘I know.’ Taren saw the reason in her argument. ‘I just never really got the chance to say goodbye to Yasper … it all ended so horribly —’

  ‘I understand,’ Jazmay allowed, and suggested a compromise. ‘I’ll watch over him while you are gone, and when you return I’ll leave you to talk as originally planned, fair enough?’

  Taren nodded to agree. ‘If he wakes, don’t tell him anything.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ she assured, and gave Taren a micro-wave to urge her departure and trust, whereupon Taren turned her thoughts to her wet little rock on the surface of Oceane.

  As Taren departed, Jazmay thought she heard a noise in the bedroom and moved to investigate. She was rather excited by the prospect of finding Yasper awake, but was sadly disappointed to find that he had knocked an ornament off the bedside table as he slept. With an exhale of disappointment, Jazmay took a seat on a chair in the bedroom, where she could carry out her vigil with the object of her desire within her sights.

  Drenched and in darkness, Taren chipped away large, thick shards of rock to serve as amulets for herself and Jazmay. She would have cut one for Yasper as well, but he was not yet prepared to carry it. When Yasper was adept, Taren would return to Oceane again, just as she would return as often as needed to retrieve Juju stones to protect her ever-expanding psychic squad.

  But there was no deeply stirring spiritual experience nor a visitation awaiting Taren on Oceane this time, just the usual buzz of being surrounded by her soul essence.

  As Taren chipped away her pieces of rock in this instance, they were immediately imbued by the colourful gaseous essence of her guardian entity and she realised that the supply of Juju stones for her would be ongoing; the Grigori knew her mind and would aid her to protect their charges. Azazèl was making good on his word that she had protection whenever she asked for it.

  ‘Thank you,’ Taren called to the heavens, filled with gratitude once again, and was about to depart when Azazèl’s voice in her mind waylaid her.

  We foresee a problem with your plan, Taren-lennox.

  The comment made her stop still and listen.

  The device holding the evidence of the deal you have made will vanish from your timeline when you go back to change the past.

  ‘But I have already shifted back in time?’ She panicked.

  And we exist outside of time, which is an illusion, after all, he assured.

  ‘Do you have a solution?’ Taren asked; her entire plan hinged on being able to prove what she and Chief Ronan had agreed to.

  In this rare instance the Grigori can assist you by enclosing the couriers in an etheric bubble — this will effectively freeze them in time, as the time shift takes place around them, thus your evidence will remain intact.

  ‘How does one cast an etheric bubble?’ Taren was curious.

  With great difficulty, unless when functioning on this plane of demonstration you are entirely composed of ether.

  ‘I am so grateful,’ she said out loud, smiling — as she could not go forward in time and warn Zeven and her father that they were going to have a close encounter with the Grigori. ‘I should go, but I’ll be back,’ she advised, although no doubt Azazèl-mindos-coomra-dorchi and the Grigori were well aware of that already.

  A few minutes into her short vigil, Jazmay’s charge began to stir from his slumber and she felt it was her own want to hear his voice and be in his conscious presence that was disturbing his sleep.

  As Yasper awoke and spied her, he immediately sat upright; his first instinct was to be alarmed, but once he got a good look at her, he sounded more enchanted. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘A friend of Taren’s,’ she advised calmly, although her heart was doing back-flips to have his attention. ‘She asked me to watch over you until she gets back, which will be very shortly.’

  Yasper gave half a laugh, surprised on several counts. ‘Why, even if I wasn’t a trained killer, should I need watching over here in the centre of homeland security?’

  ‘Time is not an enemy you can kill,’ she advised, ‘nor one you can hide from in any place.’

  Yasper frowned, finding her answer most curious. ‘Where did Taren go?’

  ‘I’m right here.’ Taren walked in through the bedroom door. ‘Than
k you, Abi, I’ll take it from here.’

  Taren placed a Juju stone in Jazmay’s hand, as well as an armband in which to store and carry it; Taren was already wearing hers under her shirt.

  The Juju of the stone worked quickly and where she might have been fearful of leaving her royal highness with her love in this instance, Jazmay was infused with self-assurance and goodwill. ‘You know where I’ll be.’ Jazmay glanced back at Yasper briefly and then back to Taren, who smiled.

  ‘It’s all good,’ Taren assured her, as Jazmay moved into the lounge room, and as the door to the bedroom closed she drew a deep breath to steady her faith and return to her university accommodation to await Taren’s word.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Yasper was perplexed by her decision to leave a perfect stranger watching him while he slept.

  ‘I’ve been ten years into the future and back, to try and figure out how to prevent you being killed tomorrow,’ Taren said frankly.

  Yasper was stunned a moment, but being the no-panic, accepting kind of fellow he was, his first query was, ‘Did you figure it out?’

  Taren nodded and her heavy heart was difficult to hide. ‘The answer is simple … we end our relationship, you live.’ She threw her hands up, sorry to announce that had to be the way of it.

  ‘Well, that solution might be simple for you,’ Yasper reached over onto the floor to retrieve his trousers, ‘since your love apparently lies elsewhere today?’ He put his trousers on and then jumped out of bed to confront her.

  Taren racked her brain trying to remember what else she’d said to Jazmay prior to leaving; Yasper had obviously been awake and listening in.

  ‘When did it all end horribly with me?’ he wanted to know. ‘Did I miss something between last night’s erotic episode and waking to a strange — but admittedly beautiful — woman in my room?’

  ‘It all ends horribly tomorrow,’ Taren impressed on him, ‘well, actually today, as technically the shit hits the fan this afternoon —’

  ‘Taren,’ Yasper appealed, ‘will you please say something that makes sense?’

  ‘In less than an hour we are going to get a call summoning us to a meeting with your father.’ Taren spoke slowly and succinctly, as she ran through the events that would lead to Yasper’s death on the morrow, and by the time she was done explaining she’d come back around to the same conclusion. ‘So you see, if we just agree to end it now, before your father demands it of us, he has no reason to take you off my team and you’ll never be sent on the fatal mission.’

  Yasper, bemused as he was by the news, was still alert enough to say, ‘But even if I’m not sent on that mission, that is not to say that death will not come for me anyway?’

  Taren nodded as this part of the theory was an unknown. ‘From my experience, it will be far more likely that death will take whatever poor bastard is sent in your place.’

  ‘And how much experience of time travel have you had?’ he asked, wanting to be accepting; but inside, Taren knew Yasper still had reservations about what he was being told.

  ‘This is my fifth and last trip into the past,’ she advised. ‘Once you are safe, I’m done with the MSS and time travel. I’ve moved into the field of quantum research and am dabbling in politics now.’

  ‘I feel like a coma victim,’ Yasper said, his eyes wide open, ‘… like I’ve slept for ten years and awoken to find the world just went on without me.’

  ‘No, it’s more like the world went into coma for ten years and I went on alone,’ Taren corrected.

  ‘That must suck,’ he said.

  ‘I was ignorant to it all until recently.’

  ‘When you met this other love of yours?’ Yasper prompted.

  ‘You were dead, Yasper. Not that I remembered, as the MSS wipe all my memory of you when I quit the service two days from now. The love affair in question,’ Taren shrugged and forced a grin, ‘at this point in time and space, has yet to happen.’

  ‘But it will, you hope?’ Yasper was starting to sound a little annoyed by his lot. ‘What about us?’

  ‘I also met the woman you are destined to love and it’s not me, Yasper,’ Taren informed before he started accusing her of being unfaithful.

  ‘How could you have done, if I was dead?’ Yasper reasoned and Taren gasped at the thought of trying to answer — the explanation was so absurd, she could only laugh. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘There is no way in the cosmos you are going to believe me on that count, and it’s a really long story, Yas.’ Taren could see he was not going to let her bow out. ‘Okay.’ She held up her hands in truce. ‘In short, I met an incarnation of you residing on a planet in the universe parallel to our own just after you had met the woman in question, and you were very much in love.’

  ‘Are you telling me that I have to travel to another universe to find this woman?’ Yasper was liking his lot less and less.

  ‘No,’ Taren assured him with a smile. ‘She will find you.’

  Yasper winced; it was all too much to accept right away. ‘You know, Taren, if you want to dump me, you really don’t have to go to such elaborate lengths to do it.’

  Taren shook her head. ‘That is not what is happening here.’

  ‘Well, it certainly seems like —’

  The communicator in Taren’s apartment sounded to alert her to an incoming agency transmission. ‘That will be Mr Norward, requesting our presence at the aforementioned meeting with the chief.’

  ‘If it is,’ Yasper wagered, ‘I’ll consider believing you.’

  Taren forced a grin and moved to answer the call.

  ‘Mr Norward,’ she greeted the chief’s second-in-command, ‘to what do I owe this dubious honour?’ Taren looked to Yasper, as Norward requested the said meeting, and Yasper paled as he realised he may well be a dead man walking.

  Showered and dressed, Yasper felt ready to present himself to his father, although he was clearly uncomfortable in his own skin right now.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Weird … did you have to tell me that I die tomorrow?’ he grumbled. ‘Couldn’t you have just sugar-coated that a little?’

  ‘Telling the truth is my new manifesto,’ she said, ‘despite the shock factor to others. Besides, forewarned is forearmed.’

  Yasper’s resolve to endure stiffened and he nodded to concur. ‘I believe I’m ready to go face the chief.’

  ‘You are not coming with me to face the chief.’ Taren stunned him yet again. ‘You’re going AWOL for forty-eight hours.’

  ‘What? No way!’ Yasper objected as predicted. ‘There is nowhere on this planet that the MSS will not find me within that time!’ He laughed off her plan.

  ‘That’s why I’m sending you to Frujia.’

  ‘Frujia!’ Yasper was smiling and scoffing at once. ‘As much as I would love to spend a few days there, may I point out that Frujia is several weeks’ travel from here.’

  ‘In the reality, time and space I once knew you in, that was true,’ Taren admitted, ‘but I and a few close associates of mine have changed all that.’

  ‘Just what did you get up to while I was deceased?’ Yasper was grinning now and Taren grinned back.

  ‘This is where my associate, Abi, comes in,’ Taren enlightened and Yasper gave an ‘Ah’, as the plot thickened.

  ‘You trust this woman?’ Yasper assumed. ‘Why?’

  ‘She is the one who aided me to get my memory back,’ Taren told him honestly. ‘I owe her, big time! So, it is not so much a matter of me trusting her, as her trusting me. She is Phemorian, you realise?’

  ‘Yes, that fact did not escape my attention.’ He grinned, as the race of females were so mysterious, deathly beautiful and psychic — all qualities that Yasper found alluring.

  ‘I’m sure it didn’t.’ Taren suppressed her amusement so as not to give away too much. ‘Well, as she is of a race who despise men and trust them less, for her to agree to aid me to save your life, was quite a tall ask.’

  ‘Loathsome a
s my company is,’ Yasper said, making jest of the insult.

  ‘Not at all.’ Taren rejected the suggestion. ‘I expect you shall be a perfect gentleman and follow her instruction without question.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Yasper wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that.

  ‘Your life depends on it,’ Taren reminded him and Yasper ceased objecting.

  It was impossible for Jazmay to relax; she was so excited, nervous and apprehensive. Yasper truly was Jahan, minus the long blond locks and plus a whole lot of body muscle; having met him in person Jazmay was convinced of that now. Even from across the room she had felt that electric connection she’d made with Jahan dancing between her light body and Yasper’s.

  What is taking so long? Was Taren making love to Yasper in a last fond farewell? Jazmay sure hoped not. In fact, deep inside, she knew it was only her overactive imagination and earthbound fear of loss that made her think such things. Taren did love Yasper, but she was in love with Lucian Gervaise, and carrying Taren’s DNA blueprint in her psyche as Jazmay was, she need only draw on that memory to know that no man in this world or the next was going to sway her devotion to Lucian. Quite apart from that, she considered the princess to be the only true friend, apart from Jahan, that she’d ever had; and Taren would be the first person to tell her that a true friend would never betray her in such a fashion as she was imagining.

  It felt like an age that she’d been gazing out the window, her anticipation made every second seem like it was minutes long. The idea that she could ever feel this affiliated with a man brought an ironic smile to her face and made her realise that, in life, there was truly nothing that was impossible. Jazmay’s main concern was, would Yasper feel the same inexplicable connection to her?

  ‘Abi?’ Taren announced their arrival and when Jazmay saw Yasper in her company, it was hard to prevent her eyes welling with tears of relief.

  ‘I can’t believe you just did that!’ Yasper was staggering about in the wake of being teleported. ‘You weren’t kidding about learning a few new tricks!’