by KC Klein
Quinn shrugged. “I don’t know. Not for sure anyways. The Prophesy is fulfilled by a woman. What better way to keep it from happening than to prevent the child from ever living?”
I gasped and wrapped my arms around my middle. I barely had time to acknowledge the life growing inside me, but a deep primal instinct to protect had already roared awake.
Quinn’s sad eyes found mine, and she patted my knee with her sun-spotted hand. “That’s only my theory. Most people, if they have any suspicions at all, think it’s a way for the Elders to keep control over society. What better way to keep men under control than by doling out females to only the obedient?”
I looked around at the camp. “It must be more than just a suspicion for all these men to become outlaws.”
Quinn nodded. “There is no more noble cause than safeguarding our children, fighting for the chance at a better life. The men heard of you and your band of rebels. Many came to pledge their loyalty.”
My heart quickened at the thought. My band of rebels?
“They thought the sacrifice was worth it,” Quinn said, her voice solemn, the rounding of her shoulders no longer casual. Her blue eyes found mine. “Kris, we all have sacrifices to make.”
I came to my feet. “What exactly are you saying, Quinn? I’ve made sacrifices. I’ve given plenty for a cause I wasn’t even sure existed.” How dare she? Quinn had no right to ask any more from me, and I was about to tell her where she could stick her damn Prophesy.
Then her irises darkened, and blackness invaded the white sclera like a poison. Her eyes clouded over and, I couldn’t help it, my body tensed in response.
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Her breathing slowed, barely discernable to the untrained eye. Her gaze fixed in the distance, the black of her eyes disturbingly gruesome against the white of her skin.
“You need to go back,” Quinn said, her voice monotone, almost trance like.
“Back?” I didn’t need to ask to where. The walls of my defenses locked into place, fortified with the steel of my spine. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Prophesy be damned. I made my own decisions.
Quinn’s eyes bled quickly back to simple blue. She shook her head while pink returned to her pale face. She turned away and stared out over the milling crowd a small distance away. “You won’t come unless you go back.”
I knew what she meant. The night before I came forward in time I was visited by me, but an edgier, harder, older me. I knew that my transformation had taken place. I was her now, gone forever was the young, pampered intern I’d once been.
“No,” I shook my head, “this is the cycle where I get it right. And by the look of your face, it seems like it couldn’t be quick enough.”
Quinn when I’d first met her was a young girl. Now, her age had fast-forwarded to old. Her hair was gray and the lines around her eyes had deepened.
My heart ached as I watched Quinn self-consciously smooth the wrinkles in her forehead. “I hoped. I really did, but if this was the end, then I wouldn’t still be getting older. I’m not sure if I’d go back to being a young woman or not, but the rapid aging should stop. This isn’t it. You need to go back and try again. Your daughter needs to live.”
Her words had me restraining myself from wrapping my hands around her throat and squeezing. How did she know I would have a girl? But I didn’t waste my question on what was now such a mundane issue. “Tell me everything you know about my daughter,” I asked, not willing to allow Quinn to play her cryptic card.
Quinn’s eyes saddened. “I had a vision. I’m so sorry, Kris.”
Emphatically, I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. You’ve lied before.”
She sighed. “Please, let me show you.”
I wanted to say no. Whatever she saw, she could bloody hell keep to herself, but I’d put naïveté away for good. I swallowed hard and nodded. Quinn reached out her hand and grasped my wrist in a vise-like grip. Her eyes fluttered closed as she began to hum.
Something slow and hot leached into my skin from our point of contact. Seconds passed and the heat grew until my muscles tightened in resistance. In my mind’s eye I saw black fill my veins like boiling tar creeping steadily toward my heart.
I gasped and used my other hand to clamp down on my upper arm, trying to prevent the spread. But the blackness wound itself forward, and inflamed my shoulder. I cried out as my knees buckled.
“Quinn?” I whimpered through clenched teeth. Lines of fire traveled across my clavicle, encircling the bone like a serpent, making my neck twitch in pain. I tried pulling from her grasp, but she held tight with a deathlike grip. My breath came hard and fast; lungs blazed. Quinn hummed louder and seemed to push. In one heartbeat the black flames engulfed my heart and burst through my whole body.
My vision erupted in crimson colors against the darkest sky. My eyes, open and wide, saw nothing of the camp full of men, but only what Quinn forced upon me.
It was night, but almost as light as full day. Fire ignited all around. The world burned. Trees exploded like bombs in the distance, carcasses of both man and beast littered the red-soaked ground.
ConRad’s body lay beside me. His head torqued at an odd angle and limbs twisted in a horrifying way. I wanted to go to him, but couldn’t. Two robed men pinned me down, one at each arm, while a third cut my shirt, exposing the huge swell of my pregnant belly.
I screamed, but I couldn’t be heard above the roar of the fire. A knife rose high and gleamed in the red light. The blade, poised in eternity, hovered with the tip aimed at my heart—then moved lower. With the precision of a surgeon, the blade pierced my womb and sliced in a downward motion.
I screamed as my flesh parted with sickly ease. Then loud sucking sounds as the fetus was ripped from me. With detached clarity, I witnessed the murder of my baby—saw the umbilical cord savagely cut, saw the wrinkled, wet body as my daughter was held high above my face.
She made no sound, no cries, didn’t even open her eyes. My daughter’s blue body was dead, before she even took her first breath. A grief, greater than any I had known, raged through my body. My heart crushed under the weight and with divine mercy, gave out.
The pain grew smaller and my vision clouded, folding in on itself. But there was one thing, one thought I needed to take with me, to stow down in my heart and never let go. I struggled to take my last inhale and strained my eyes to focus on the man who held my daughter and murdered my family.
Pale face, blood-red lips, Devil-black eyes—Syon.
I came to, screaming and sobbing on the ground, rocking myself in a fetal position. ConRad loomed above me, lips moving frantically, trying to get my attention. Then, as if a switch flipped, my hearing came back and his words filled my head.
“Kris! What’s wrong? Wake up! Damn it, answer me!” His hands were clamped around my shoulders shaking me. “What’s wrong with her? Quinn, what the hell did you do to her?”
There was no more breath left to scream. I launched myself into ConRad’s arms and sobbed into the crease of his neck.
He stroked the back of my head and murmured in my ear. “Shh baby, it’s okay. Tell me what I can do. How do I make it better?”
Shaken didn’t begin to touch what I felt. The vision was so real I still felt the burn across my belly, the pain of losing my husband, the devastating emptiness of a world without my daughter in it. “I need to go back. I’ll never be safe here.”
I felt his body stiffen. His breath shuddered, and he shook his head, but my mind was set. The vow I had made to ConRad as we knelt before each other on our wedding night tasted bitter in my mouth. Only truth between us, Kris. Forever.
My mother’s words came back to haunt me—tell the truth, baby girl, and shame the Devil.
“You can come with me. We’ll go together, be a family in my time.” My hand fluttered up to cover my face that burned with regret.
Or not.
Of all the sins I committed, I knew this one was unforgivable. May God s
ave me because ConRad never would again.
Chapter Thirty-three
The ground was red and cracked from the heat and the thin air, but still heavy with humidity. Sweat ran like a river stinging my eyes and tasting of salt as it ran into my mouth. It was so much harder to breathe on Dark Planet than it was back on Earth. I dropped to my knees, unable to go any further, even if my life depended on it. And it did—mine and everyone I loved.
ConRad collapsed to his knees beside me, panting in the paltry atmosphere. He let his heavy pack and gun fall to the ground beside him. We had timed our return to Dark Planet in accordance with the planet’s rotations. Every forty-eight hours there was a graying hour, when the planet’s moons came together and glowed enough to give off a dim glare similar to dusk on Earth.
I tried to breathe through the stitch in my side, then gave up. I shot a glance at ConRad to see how he fared. The vision stilled my heart. His eyes brilliant blue spheres of color in his tanned, rugged face. Green army fatigues wet and dirty, bare chest peeking through an opened flack vest. Sweat poured down his face and neck, covered in a week’s worth of stubble, making him look like a Greek god just emerging from the sea. Determined, I etched the picture of him in my mind—my beautiful warrior.
Sweet lord, he was gorgeous. And MINE. But not for long.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said, voice calm and sure under pressure.
God, how could he even talk? I was beyond even swallowing.
His hand reached out and stroked my cheek. His eyes searched mine. The tenderness warmed the blue, softening him.
This was the first time we dared to stop since our mad dash across space and air. I told ConRad that Quinn had a vision of us traveling through time, back to the past to prevent the invasion of the aliens. I told him we’d be safe. I told him we’d both go through.
I lied.
But my lies worked like magic. Within a week we were ready, armed with a plan to pay off the guards at the portal and enough fire power to blow ten aliens to kingdom come. But something I hadn’t counted on went wrong—the Elders had been tipped off and an army of men loyal to the Way were after us.
When I had destroyed the passage from the compound to outside by throwing the grenade to stop the alien invasion, I thought I’d collapsed the only tun the onlnel to the outside. But ConRad had taken me the back way. Apparently the small crawl space behind the three pools was a little-known tunnel, barely big enough to walk through, which led to the outside.
But the Elders had dogs. And we hadn’t had the time to cover our scent.
ConRad’s fingers trailed across my lips and outlined the fullness of the bottom one. Tears welled up in my eyes despite the promise to myself not to cry until later—later I’d have plenty of time alone to weep my heart out. My stomach churned with a familiar sickness. I couldn’t believe I was going to go through with this.
“We’re going to make it,” he said, misreading my face.
Nodding quickly, breaking eye contact. I couldn’t afford for him to see too much. I pushed myself to my feet. “We’d better keep moving. They’re not far behind.”
We started off at a much slower pace, neither one of us able to maintain a run anymore. We traversed the rough landscape of shadowed holes and hidden obstacles much easier with the faint light of the twin moons. I was so caught up in trying to determine the landmarks of our previous desperate flight that we almost fell into the hole I had originally time traveled through. ConRad’s booted toes hovered over the edge as he lit his florescent light stick and peered in.
The hole was no bigger than a small swimming pool—and I was surprised to notice—only a few feet taller than ConRad, but in my mind I’d imagined such vastness. Terror had a way of playing with one’s perceptions.
“Are you ready?” He looked worried, his unease stemming from the unknown.
God, how I wished for the bliss of ignorance.
“Whatever we are going to face, we will face together,” he said, reaching over and squeezing my hand.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t help the tears that leaked from my eyes. I clamped my jaw shut to keep the sobs, piling up within me, from spilling out.
And then we jumped hand-in-hand . . . fell . . . and landed at the bottom of the hole.
“What happened? I didn’t feel anything,” ConRad said, as he looked around at the now familiar lava and rocky landscape. “This is the right place, the same place that you originally came through from?”
I nodded and wiped at my face with my free hand.
“Why didn’t it work?” ConRad asked. Confused, he glanced at me for answers. The tears turned into streams and dripped off my face. Shame ate at me like an acid as I cowardly turned away.
“What aren’t you telling me?” His voice cut with razor sharpness.
I shook my head, how could I speak when my whole life was ending? He dropped his weapon and grabbed my shoulders with both hands.
“What the hell aren’t you telling me?” He began to shake me, his frustration tightening his grasp on my arms. “Answer me, dammit! Answer me!”
I’d seen ConRad in life-or-death situations before, but I never heard his voice seared with such panic.
“We can’t go.” My voice broke.
His face was a mask of confusion trying to absorb what I told him, but not wanting to hear it. “What are you saying?” he whispered.
“We can’t go . . . just me.”
“No,” he yelled. “I won’t do it. That’s not what we planned. I won’t allow it.”
“ConRad, please. You have to listen to me. This is the only way.” I swallowed hard. “This is the only way The Prophesy can be fulfilled.”
“Hell no, if you think I am going to let you travel through space and time, to hopefully the right place, but who the hell really knows, by yourself. Think again. It’s not happening.”
“ConRad, please, please listen. We don’t have much time.” I begged, I’d given up pride long ago. I couldn’t leave him like this, not this way. “You can’t come with me. It won’t allow you to.”
“Then we’ll fight. I have enough ammo. I’ll hold them off and you can run . . .”
My finger came gently to his lips cutting lips cu off his words. “No, my love, that’s not how this will end.”
“End? My God, you knew this all along. You knew what you were going to do the whole time, didn’t you?” He flung my arm off and pushed away. “You lied to me . . . again! After all that we’ve been through, our vow, you lied to me anyway.”
His words pierced my soul. I was amazed I could still stand—still give the appearance of being whole. “You have to understand there was no other way.”
“No.”
“Do you think for a second you’d let me get this far if you didn’t think you could come with me? Come and protect me?”
“Then let me protect you now.” His fists clenched at his sides. “You don’t have to go.” His back was to the wall literally and figuratively. He would plead with the Devil himself to keep me with him.
I knew this would be hard. I knew I needed to believe in The Prophesy enough for both of us. But was it enough? Was I willing to give up ConRad’s and my happiness based on a mere vision? Was I really a bloody martyr?
I wrapped my arms around my middle and squeezed. If I held on tight enough, maybe I could keep myself from exploding. “If I thought in the heart of selfish hearts that I could have it all, I would. But you and I both know you’d never let them take me if there was breath left in your body. And I know I can’t watch you die. You can still make it back to the compound if you’re by yourself.”
“That’s my decision, not yours.”
“No.” Calm settled in my voice. My palm cradled my stomach. I had to do this. The decision was the right one. “This is my choice. You have no control over this. I am so sorry.”
ConRad turned and slammed his hand into the packed earth. Dust and rocks fell. A moment passed, then he placed his forehead
against the impassive rock.
Silence settled around us. The barking of dogs whispered in the distance, the euphoric braying of hounds on the hunt.
ConRad didn’t seem to notice. “This can’t be happening.”
A sliver of panic sliced through my despair. My sacrifice would be too great if I knew that ConRad wasn’t saf wasn’e.
“ConRad, you need to leave. You can still make it. You’ll be faster without me. I have to go back to my time and send myself forward. I’ll get it right this time.” But even as I said the words I doubted the truth of them. How many more times did I have? I knew my time was running out.
He didn’t move. Neither one of us did.
“You’re The One, aren’t you?” He looked up to the sky and shook his head, as if saying that the gods were cruel and unjust. “You’ve been The One. This whole time I fell in love, this impossible love. A love that went against all laws of God and nature, because I fell in love with The One.”
He turned around and finally let me see him. Tears rolled down his cheeks, his face a portrait of anguish and despair . . . hopelessness dulled his eyes. “No matter what I say or what I do, you have to go back. Neither of us is in control. It was destined that I would love you before I even found you.”
My shoulders shook with the effort of holding myself erect. My sniffles were quiet against the increasing backdrop of howling dogs.
He pulled me into his arms, then shifted and cradled my face between his palms. His lips caught the rain of tears streaming down my cheeks and soothed them away. He whispered reverent, prayerful things against my cheek. I strained to hear his words, wanting his voice to be the last thing I heard before I left. “You’re The One. You can change all this, make all of this go away. You have the power to change the past, to save mankind.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t true. I wanted to tell him that was part of the lie, but I couldn’t find my voice.
Then he smiled. That devastating smile that would make some other woman go weak in the knees. Another woman, because I wouldn’t be here with him.
