Time Anomaly: A Time Travel Romance (Echo Trilogy, #2)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  I let out a nervous laugh. “Honestly? I’m scared shitless. I mean, they’re going to be gods, like real, honest-to-God gods. That’s insane. And horrible. And wonderful. And terrifying. And . . .” I shook my head.

  Marcus smiled, and I thought it might have been to hide a frown. So I kissed him, deeply, and when I broke the kiss, I added, “But I’m also kind of ecstatic.” And I meant it.

  47

  Beginning & End

  The entire time that Marcus and I were walking toward Nuin’s palace, Dominic, Nekure, and Aset behind us and the harsh glow of artificial light all around us, my mind was occupied by two things—worrying about my impending reunion with my very human family, and noticing how things under the At dome had changed and how they’d stayed the same. But mostly I just worried.

  And the moment I walked through the high, arched entryway into Nuin’s palace and into a huge room at the front that had been transformed into some sort of a communal dining hall, with an eclectic mixture of mismatching At tables and chairs, my eyes honed in on my mom, and I nearly lost it. Like, full-on, five-year-old-girl-who-just-skinned-her-knee lost it. It had been just over seven months since I’d seen her, a month of which had been spent in a time during which she didn’t even exist, and I missed her desperately.

  She was sitting at a rectangular table with my dad, Jenny, Grandma Suse, and Alexander, and she hadn’t noticed me yet. It took the room falling quiet for me to notice that there were even any other people in there, scattered among the various tables. A quick, cursory scan told me they were all Nejerets, and many were faces I recognized. They stared, and then they stood, and then they fell to their knees in supplication.

  I really hated that part of being the Meswett.

  Only those who were members of my guard remained on their feet, and they rushed toward us. Marcus, Nekure, Aset, Dominic, and I were surrounded by a wall of Nejerets of every size and skin and hair color within seconds. But I couldn’t focus on any of them. Not while I could hear her voice.

  “Lex?” my mom called. “Lex? Let me through!” she demanded.

  “Let her pass,” I said.

  Vali and Sandra, the heads of my guard, parted, and my mom rushed into the ring of deadly Nejerets. The rest of my family followed her, but she was the one who practically attacked me. Her arms were around me in an instant, and I was suddenly crying, though I didn’t know why I was crying other than that I was happy to be in my mom’s arms. Maybe that was reason enough.

  Minutes passed before she pulled away with a “Well now, let me get a look at you.” She scanned my face quickly, her eyes widening to saucers when they met mine. “Your eyes, Lex . . . sweetie . . .” She shook her head slowly, and there was a hint of something—fear, or maybe disgust, I wasn’t sure—on her face. “I didn’t really believe until now, but you really have changed . . . you really are one of them, aren’t you?”

  Tears welled anew in my eyes. My mom had just referred to me as “one of them,” as something not the same as her . . . as something other.

  I swiped my fingers under my eyes angrily, refusing to shed tears for what I was, especially when I was only that because of genes she’d passed onto me. Being a Nejerette was nothing to be ashamed of; it was a great gift and a great curse, and it was what I was. I wouldn’t have changed it if I could.

  I stood taller. “Yeah, Mom, I’m one of them . . . but I’m also still me.”

  My mom’s mouth opened. Shut. She arched her eyebrows. “Like I don’t know who you are? Don’t be ridiculous, Alexandra Marie Larson. I am your mother, and you couldn’t even bother to call me when you first became engaged with that man”—she waved haphazardly at Marcus—“who we’d never met, I might add.”

  My shoulders sagged in relief, and I couldn’t help but smile. Her reaction was so her.

  She eyed Marcus. “I hope there’s some actual affection here, and it’s not just physical—”

  “Mom!” I grabbed her arm. “Oh my God, seriously? If you had any idea, any clue of what we’ve been through together—”

  “But I don’t, do I?” she said, her sharp tone one that only an irritated mother could achieve. “And whose fault is that, hmmm . . . ?”

  And now I felt guilty. I sighed. “Mom . . .”

  She leveled an even stare on me. “You could’ve told me, Lex. You could’ve told me you were a . . . I don’t know, a vampire or something insane like that, and I would’ve believed you—”

  “You would not have!”

  She rolled her eyes. “Okay, no, I wouldn’t have believed you, but I would have listened . . . and I would’ve loved you anyway.”

  “You know now,” Marcus said simply, earning both my mom’s and my glances. “Is that not enough?”

  I held my breath. Her response mattered more than I was willing to admit, even to myself.

  “Of course it is,” she said in a rush. “I just wish you’d told me you were going through all this . . . that you’d fallen in love, that’s all.”

  I rubbed my hand over my face and, of all things, started laughing. “I’m in love,” I said between laughs. Again, I glanced at Marcus, sending him a questioning look. “And engaged.”

  He shrugged. I made a note to ask him about everything that had happened with my family and about our apparent impending “wedding.” Like we could ever be wedded together any more completely than we already were . . .

  My mom moved aside so the rest of my family could greet me. It was hardly dignified, and filled with a chorus of sniffles and a rainstorm of tears and loads of murmured nonsense, but Grandma Suse’s reaction to my eyes was my favorite.

  “Well, would you get a look at those peepers . . .” She glanced back at Alexander, who was standing just behind her, reminding me so much of Heru with Bunefer—which only made me choke back less happy tears. “Alexandra Larson, I think there’s an entire sun living in your head!”

  I laughed. “That’s the least of my problems, Grandma . . .”

  But before Grandma Suse or anyone else had a chance to interrogate me, Neffe pushed through the ring of guards, making our inner circle that much more crowded.

  “So it’s true,” she said, her caramel eyes meeting mine. She bowed her head gracefully. “I’m so glad you have returned . . . and that you knew how to save my father. For that, I can never thank you enough.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Neffe . . . seriously?”

  She raised her eyes to mine and grinned, and I couldn’t help but return her smile.

  “You are so full of it.”

  Her eyes sparkled.

  My grin faded as I remember why I’d been so eager to see her. “Tarset . . .” I glanced at Marcus. “Did you tell her about what I did to Tarsi . . . about the poison and me freezing her in time?”

  He shook his head. “We’d yet to transcribe that from your writings, and without my memory . . .” He turned an irritated look on Aset and Nekure, who were still behind me. “Someone could’ve apprised me of the situation, or at least let me know that Tarset is still alive.”

  Aset tsked. “Don’t be ridiculous. You had enough to deal with, dear brother, and Tarsi is fine as she is for now. Once things settle, we’ll move her to the Cairo palace, Lex can unfreeze her, and Neffe and I will treat her.”

  She was right; at the moment, we didn’t have time to take care of Tarset, who would be fine in her frozen state—or to unfreeze Rus either—because Apep-Set was on his way . . . drawn to me, and now likely to Marcus as well, because of the sheuts that were finally whole within us.

  I turned to Marcus. “I need to speak to everyone. Can you get their attention?” I glanced around at the guards still encircling us. “And is this really necessary? Pretty much everyone here is sworn to me . . . I doubt any of them are going to harm me.”

  Looking over my head, Marcus nodded at someone. A quick glance over my shoulder told me it was Vali, the enormous, blond, image-of-an-ideal-Viking of a man. As the guards spread out behind me and around the high-ceilinged room
, Marcus helped me step onto a rather plain At chair, and then onto a small, round table.

  Murmuring and whispers filled the room, quieting as soon as I held my hand up in front of me. I cleared my throat, but it did nothing for the herd of horses galloping around in my chest. “I, uh . . .” I glanced at Marcus, who smiled encouragingly and nodded as he joined me on the table. Taking a deep breath, I tried again. “This last month, I’ve been living over four thousand years in the past, during the time of the Great Father’s death.”

  Stunned silence filled the room.

  “I traveled into the past so I could learn to use the power Nuin bestowed upon me—and upon Marcus and Set—to resolve an issue that has been thousands and thousands of years in the making. Ma’at, universal balance, is deteriorating, and if it goes unchecked for too long, then the universe and everything in it will unravel into raw, unbridled chaos.” I glanced at Nekure, whose eyes still shimmered with Re’s opalescence.

  He nodded.

  I took a deep breath. Then another. And then I shared some of what I’d learned from Nuin about the long, complicated history of the universe—of Re and Apep and how Re had taken Apep’s power and been reborn as Nuin to prevent Apep from unmaking everything.

  I scanned the assembled crowd of Nejerets. “But this was only a bandage on the wound, and ma’at was still slowly failing, which is how we find ourselves to be in the situation we’re in today.” Glancing at Marcus, I reached for his hand. “Marcus and I can restore ma’at, thanks to Nuin and everything he taught me, but there’s one more hurdle we have to jump over before we can begin the process.” I paused, taking a deep, calming breath. “Apep is on his way here, now, by means of Set’s body.”

  Murmurs and whispers broke out, and when Marcus’s “Silence!” failed, I did the only thing I could think of; I shifted to a table in the center of the room. It was pushing the limits of what I could manage, sheut-wise, at the moment, but it was enough. When I reformed, there was absolute, complete silence, and all eyes were on me.

  I stared around the cavernous room, packed with amazed Nejerets sitting and standing in nearly every available space. “When Set arrives, he must not be killed. We’ll trap him and hold Apep prisoner in his body until the process of restoring ma’at is complete, and then we’ll let ma’at deal with Apep in whatever way is necessary to retain universal balance.” I paused. Waited. Let my words sink in. “But first, we have to trap him.”

  “Do you hear that?” someone whispered. Then another. And another. “It sounds like . . . helicopters.”

  They were right; I could hear it, too, now that I was paying attention—the steady thrum-thrum-thrum of far-off helicopter blades.

  I spun around, staring wide-eyed at Marcus. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  Marcus nodded, his face grim, and strode across the room toward the table I was standing on.

  Why I’d assumed Apep-Set would come in a cars, that it would take him hours to get to the underground Oasis, was beyond me. But I had, and now we were out of time.

  A minute frown curved Marcus’s lips downward, and a crease appeared between his eyebrows. “You’re bleeding.” He touched my shin, and his fingertips brought a tiny sting.

  I glanced down to see a miniscule cut. “Huh . . . I didn’t even notice.” And then I frowned, too. “A cut that small should’ve healed already.”

  Marcus pulled his hand away, his fingertip stained with a smudge of crimson. “Unless your regeneration is being suppressed because you’ve already reached the bonding pheromone saturation point.” He frowned. “Which would mean you’re now fertile.”

  I nodded slowly. Nuin had claimed as much, but I’d hadn’t known for sure. “I guess I thought it would be more climactic . . .”

  Marcus grinned. “I can’t imagine anything being more climactic.” His expression sobered, and he brushed the backs of his fingers down the side of my leg. Concern shone in the multihued depths of his eyes. “You must be careful now, Little Ivanov. Do not injure yourself, because you won’t regenerate.”

  I swallowed roughly, suddenly feeling both fragile and vulnerable.

  He turned away abruptly and held his hand up to help me down from the table. “Come, Alexandra. I will take you somewhere safe, somewhere where Set will not find you while I deal with him once and for all.”

  I started to reach for his hand, but drew back before our fingers touched. Marcus never called me “Alexandra.” My stomach dropped into a pool of dread. The last time his lips had uttered those syllables, he’d been possessed by Apep. It’s not possible . . .

  “Lex!” Dominic shouted.

  I turned around to see him rush into the dining hall between two sleek columns, his arm outstretched and a cell phone in his hand.

  “Get away from Marcus! Now!”

  I spun around to stare at Marcus. His irises still shimmered with vibrant colors, but there was something else, something new. Mixed with the blues and violets and greens was a sickeningly familiar, inky darkness.

  48

  Deception & Conception

  No matter how impossible it seemed, no matter how much I didn’t want to believe it, Apep had somehow found a way into Marcus’s body.

  Without warning, the world froze around us, and not by my hand. Apep had stopped time, using the sheut within Marcus.

  I shook my head, denying the information my eyes showed me was truth. Apep was possessing Marcus, absolutely and completely. Apep had full access to his power. And the only way to get him out of Marcus’s body, the only way to give the universe any kind of a chance, was to kill Marcus. My stomach twisted, and my heart sank.

  “How . . . ?” The word was barely a whisper.

  “Such a useless query, but I think I shall satisfy your curiousity anyway,” Apep said, speaking with Marcus’s lips and tongue, but sounding completely different from the man I loved. “When you reunited the two fractured pieces of my sheut during your little dalliance earlier, the power Set held wasn’t the only thing you pulled into your lover’s body.” Apep-Marcus bowed his head to me. “I thank you for the rather sudden relocation.” He ran his hands down the front of Marcus’s body. “I do very much enjoy the way this one fits . . . and the power.” He closed his eyes and groaned. “To feel my sheut again, whole and throbbing with barely contained energy . . .”

  I licked my lips, scanning the statue-like people all around me like one of them might hold the key to regaining access to the exhausted sheut within me, but all I found were faces locked in expressions of confusion and horror and shock, and the power remained unusable.

  Apep-Marcus disappeared in an explosion of misty colors. Before I could suck in a breath, before I could react at all, he reappeared behind me on the table.

  I spun around and stumbled backward, twisting my ankle as I slipped off the edge of the table. I landed in a heap on the floor and scrambled away from him.

  Grinning, he jumped off the table and stalked after me, his shoes silent on the polished floor. “It really is a pity that tearing Re’s sheut out of you will destroy your body . . . I would have enjoyed playing with it.” He sighed, and I continued to flee, running into immovable chairs and table legs and people.

  Vines of At burst up from the floor, wrapping around my legs and ankles, working their way up my limbs.

  “But now that the process has begun and you are fertile, we can’t risk—”

  His eyes opened wide, and his words cut off abruptly at the exact same time as what felt like a vacuous gravitational field burst to life in my middle. It pulled at the sheut so inextricably wound throughout my ba, tearing it away and consuming the power. I felt like I’d been doused in liquid nitrogen and was being shattered, and then I was on fire, flames consuming me from the inside out. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t find my breath.

  At first, I thought it was Apep, ripping the sheut out of my body, killing me in the most painful way possible—eviscerating my soul. But when Apep-Marcus dropped to his knees before me, threw his head b
ack, and roared in agony, I wasn’t so sure.

  Around us, time stuttered, then resumed its usual passing with a thunderous explosion of sound. People were suddenly moving all around us. But the pain continued to sear through me. Somehow, I managed to suck in a breath. And finally, I screamed.

  Without warning, the agony ceased. I curled into the fetal position on the floor a few feet away from Marcus’s body.

  Apep-Marcus was no longer crying out. He was no longer moving. He was no longer breathing at all.

  “No, no, no, no, no . . .” I crawled closer to him and shook him by the shoulder, gently at first, then using more and more force as his chest refused to rise and fall, as his heart refused to beat, as his body refused to live.

  “Neffe!” I yelled. “Aset! Help him!”

  I could hear people moving around me, heard Neffe curse at them as she pushed her way through the crowd of Nejerets, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Marcus’s face. It was absolutely devoid of any expression. Because he was gone. Dead.

  Someone grasped my shoulder and started pulling me backward.

  I twisted around to shove them away, and found Re-Nekure’s opalescent eyes only inches from my own.

  “You must get away from him, Alexandra,” he said. “Now.”

  “No!” I yanked my shoulder out of his hold and turned back to Marcus’s body just as an inky darkness started oozing out of his nose and mouth and ears. It headed straight toward me.

  A shimmering barrier of At appeared right in front of my face, and not a second too late. Apep slammed into it, spreading in a writhing mass like he was searching for the barrier’s edge, for a way around so he could get to me.

  Except there were no edges. As the last of the inky darkness left Marcus’s body, Re-Nekure surrounded Apep completely with the At barrier, creating a floating, spherical prison large enough to hold several people and strong enough to contain the soul of a god. Slowly, the sphere shrunk, condensing the darkness inside. It grew deeper, denser, until an orb about the size of a baseball floated a few inches from my face, seeming to suck in the light around it.