“You’re you.”
He swallowed with the intensity of that simple statement.
She eased her stare and looked away: “I know you don’t believe most of it.”
“I do,” he was emphatic. “I truly do.” He did, and he needed her to get it. “Maybe I don’t remember as much as you, but I believe.”
Hesitation; then she was looking at him again and putting a hand to his cheek, the first sign of tenderness, and he absorbed it. Unsure if the moment was right, he leaned in and gave her a soft kiss. He pulled back to continue looking into her eyes.
“Maybe some of what we’re doing is for purposes we don’t even yet realize,” he said. “Something must be pushing us, right?”
She was quiet.
“I mean,” he said, “look at you. You’ve fought your way back to fulfill your own Prophecy, and most of the time you didn’t even know what you were doing. It’s almost like the subconscious, or whatever lies beneath—us, who we really are—has been driving events.
“Maybe I became a Kazerai because I knew it would be needed. I feel like maybe I did. Even then I had this eerie determination, to use those powers for something greater. To achieve something greater. Maybe that was just my conscious view of this deeper impulse, this ancient purpose.”
As he lay there talking about these things, feeling the force of her being—Jessica’s power was tangible—as he lay there with her …
His head began to spin. At first only a little, then …
A rush of panic. It hit him suddenly and with full clarity, the reality that a huge stretch of time had passed and they had done this before and here they were doing it again; all the things he’d been simply telling himself were real and suddenly they was all very real and it hit him with force and it was true, all of it, and …
How would he find his way to the next existence?
How would he find her?
We’re going to die. The panic gripped tighter. One day we’ll die. He needed to move. What then? It was a sudden, irrational impulse and he almost jumped straight up out of bed but caught himself, knowing how alarming that would be. Instead he made himself pause, gave Jess another soft kiss, sat up slowly, pretending to be in control, turned to the edge of the bed and stood.
For a terrifying flash he had no idea what to do next. Everything felt so disconnected. All he really wanted was to get out of there; go take a walk or something. Run.
He cast about for anything, a way to explain his unexpected action, heart beating fast, saw Jessica’s watch on the dresser and went to it. He picked it up and pretended to check the time. He could feel her staring at him.
“What time are we meeting tomorrow?” he kept his back to her. By now it was dark outside. Streetlights had come on, casting their feeble light through the window.
He heard her roll to her back on the bed. “Noon,” she said, voice aiming up. He turned and she was lying flat, staring up at the ceiling in the gloom. He could see her clearly, of course, and it looked as if her ponderous thoughts had, for the moment, faded.
He took a deep, centering breath, forced away the irrational fear, put down the watch, went over to the foot of the bed and stood looking down on her.
“You should take your mind off things,” he said, needing to do the same thing. The sharpness of the panic was fading. He took her feet and gently pulled her toes, getting a few to pop. She lay there, ignoring him. He gathered his calm. Rubbed her soles, then vigorously, along the curve of her arches and around her heels, over her ankles, looking up and down the length of her naked body, absolutely captivated. How she could be so perfect, so desirable … Was it just his own, blind infatuation? Did others think her this beautiful? Surely they must.
Slowly he bent and kissed the tops of her feet, pausing to look up as he did. She remained staring at the ceiling. Determined to turn her mood he squatted and kissed the bottoms, little butterfly kisses until finally she giggled. A reluctant giggle and she kicked a little and made him stop.
At least she was responding.
“Or,” he said, rising and moving to her legs, kissing slowly up her thighs, “you could put your mind on other things.” He went to the side of the bed, leaned over and kissed her lips. She kept staring vacantly up. He kissed her again; then her cheek, here and there, knowing his beard tickled, kissing her again and again, and he could see she tried not to laugh, turning away with a weak, half-effort, trying to maintain her distant anguish. Clinging to it. He kissed her cheeks, more, her head, her nose and her chin, her lips, her squinting eyes, her forehead, her neck, her ears—all over her face, over and over until finally she settled the battle within and pushed him away.
“Zac, please.” Anguish won the day. “Not now.”
“Why not?”
“I’m sad.”
“No you’re not.” He came back in for a few more.
“I am.”
“Then don’t be.”
“Zac!” now she twisted and put distance between them. She pushed herself to her elbows and stared at him.
He sat slowly on the edge of the bed.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why?”
“There’s always something to be sad about,” he reasoned. “There always will be. But not now. Not right now. Don’t you see? Now is not the time to be sad.”
She kept staring at him.
“I’m here,” he said. “You’re here. We’re here. Do you know how incredible that is? We’re together.” He shook his head. “Think of everything we just said. A thousand years and now here we are again. Everything this time around, everything we’ve been through to end up in this room, together, separated by entire worlds and yet … we’re here. We’re here Jessica. And when we’re together … we should never waste one second being anything else. Not one second being anything but. Together. Not sad. Not angry. Not anything. You’re going away, I’m going away … no matter anything that might be coming, it’s not here now. Right now we’re here.” He slid a little closer. “I love you,” he paused. “I love you so much. Don’t you see? Being with you is pure joy. And as much as I agonized when you were gone? As much as I despaired? There’s no way I’m wasting a single second being sad when I’m with you. My time for that is over. You’re right here! Right in front of me. And I’m going to be sad? I’m going to let you be sad? Waste this time we have? I don’t think so. Save it for later. Another time. Not now. Not here. From this moment on I vow never to waste a single instant when I’m with you. Our time is too precious.
“No more.”
It wasn’t his most eloquent speech, he was never very eloquent, but he could see that, where his words may not have been as moving as intended, the raw emotion behind them was. She felt his passion; he could see her resistance waver … then the dam broke and she was up and grabbing him around the neck, squeezing him tight. He reached his arms all the way around her and pulled her close.
For her the sadness still needed to be vanquished. It washed through her in force, a purge, nothing more, the needed discard of negative emotions and the tears flowed and it passed quickly, bringing with it relief and, at length, calm. Then, at last, a few quiet smiles at the truth of it. Zac felt the turn. Jess was there.
And they were together.
In the wake of that came the unshakable reality of who they were, and they both felt it.
They were together.
And that should never be wasted.
CHAPTER 22: ENGAGING THE MILITIA
Cee Ranok had been in that cramped space too long. So far the Bok archives had yielded many points of interest—it was fascinating to lay hands on so many examples of what were, in fact, direct documentation by their own Kel ancestors, buried underground, forgotten on a human world that was never officially part of the Combine. Fascinating as all that was, however, so far they were finding little more than a lesson in history.
“My queen,” her bishop got her attention as he entered the room. He came in from the hall, a tray in hand with
drinks. He brought her one and she took the tall, thin, metal flute. As her bishop set aside the tray she tilted it back and took a sip.
There was more here to evaluate, of course. They weren’t through all of it yet. But her specialists were making a good rate of progress and, so far, it did not look promising.
“Secondary elements are enroute,” her bishop reported. “They will be on station within the day.”
Additional warships, ordered by her. In some ways the additional forces were little more than an imposition of her will. There was no need to bolster the fleet that was here. Earth posed no threat. But she’d been seeking to flex her command, having been oppressed in so many small yet significant ways by Voltan, such that her call for more firepower was mostly in response to that.
Absently she wondered how long Kang would suffer this pace. The beast was above ground at that moment, directly above the Bok catacombs, brooding, as had become his habit when waiting for her to conduct business, and she feared he would not long maintain that false patience forever. Had he a plan with form or substance she was sure he would act on it.
For so many reasons she needed a breakthrough.
“We near the final documents,” her bishop noted, turning his attention to the specialists around the room, working in silence as they took down the disparate selection of binders and sheaves of aged paper, metal tablets and other recorded forms, placing them in scanners and making conversions. Other specialists, in turn, worked on translations.
“The Bok know more,” said Cee, idly twirling the contents of the flute. “They’re holding something back. We must get them to divulge it.”
Her bishop nodded. “It seems Lorenzo hands us what he believes will pacify us.”
“Did he not know we would discover this to be useless?” Cee looked around the underwhelming room.
Her bishop shrugged. “Perhaps.” He took a sip from his own flute. “My guess is that he truly thought these archives would yield useful knowledge. He and his Bok did not know how to read them, and so they could only assume they held vast mysteries. I believe he thought something here would lead to another world. He knows that is our collective desire. No doubt he thought he, too, could gain from what we discovered.
“Even with that, I feel as you do. This archive was Lorenzo’s sacrifice. Something he, though he could not understand it, knew was not the item of value. I suspect there is something else. An even more guarded archive, perhaps, which I also suspect he also does not understand. One which he recognizes as far more important. Something he himself desperately wants.”
Cee took another drink.
“Threats may not produce it,” she said. Aggravated that was true. They would likely have to coerce Lorenzo. A prospect she did not look forward to. She did not want to give him any more sense of power.
“Finish here,” she said. “See if we yet produce anything useful. There is more to be done.
“Then we will determine how best to squeeze the rest from our dear Lorenzo.”
**
Jess was tired. It had been a restless night, fraught with strange dreams and frequent awakenings, worries about Zac, finding him each time she awoke sitting quietly in the chair across the room or standing by the window, watching her or staring into space, waiting for morning to come. She knew how he struggled to keep himself awake. She’d seen it, the effort. The simultaneous concern for him as he fought it, her heart going out to him, wanting so badly to be able to help, to find a way to allay his fears, combined with the very real understanding of what these changes signaled, had made for almost no real sleep. Throughout the night she kept wanting to get up and have him lay his head in her lap, to let him let go with confidence and she would be there and watch him and if he had nightmares she would wake him, but, exhausted as she was, that impulse never made it to action. And so she tossed and turned, waking often, worried for him.
But that was last night. Now it was afternoon and they were at the pub and all was, for the moment, right with the world. Zac was up at the bar getting another pint—his fourth or fifth, she’d lost count—and she sat in the cozy window booth they’d claimed upon entering, nursing her own beer and working to lose herself in the completely mundane. Feeling impossibly exposed, like her whole ruse would become transparent any second and everyone would see her for who she was; Pandora herself, Eve, out among the people, the one who had unleashed holy hell on the world, an innocent series of actions that exploded into pain and suffering for all, and yet there she sat, drinking quietly like any of them, feeling the weight of the burdens that might crush her at any instant.
Friends and the setting helped. The beer helped. As she watched Zac laughing at the bar she cast her gaze now and again around the cozy interior of the pub, further helping to allay her troubles. Wood everything (the Naked Lady was a veritable study in wood), not great lighting, the meager afternoon sun shining through smudged windows, dreary people on a dreary day, old neon signs, the musty smell of beer and tasteless food.
It was the most wonderful thing.
Zac had been right. So right, what he said last night, and as he’d sat there on the bed in the gloom, that moving moment burned into her vision, his words, so beautiful, so true, pouring out his feelings, so strong in all ways, so completely in love with her … it hit like a tidal wave and she knew.
He was right.
They should never waste one second of their time together.
So precious, just as he said. Each and every instant. One day it would be over, for everyone there was always an end; for them maybe tomorrow, maybe in a year, maybe in a dozen or fifty or who knew? All anyone ever had was “now”, that was the truth of it, and she knew it, and there was no time for anything else and she vowed to live by that.
Life was in them today. And they were making their tomorrow.
With a longing sigh her gaze found its way back to him. Today, as with all days, she couldn’t keep her eyes from him. Up at the bar, laughing with the bartender as the man tapped the next round, getting the perfect head on a foamy stout. A sturdy, balding, Scottish man, laughing right along as Zac spoke, making jokes. One of the patrons at the bar had joined in, smiling with them. Jess couldn’t hear them over the mild hubbub of the sparse afternoon crowd, the jukebox playing at low volume in the background, but Zac was once again the life of the party. He’d never met a stranger, it seemed, loving everything and everyone, always interested in others, and maybe it was that, his vast and abiding interest in what they were doing, who they were, that made them, in turn, so vastly interested in him.
She took a long pull of her beer, sat the glass down but kept her hand on it. Absently she wiped the back of her other hand across her moist lips.
Beer didn’t affect Zac but it was definitely giving her a comfortable buzz. Why he drank it when it did nothing for him … but he really liked it. In fact he loved beer, telling anyone who would listen. Beer was apparently an acquired taste, and the bitter Scottish ale available here was not making that acquisition easy for her. Zac, on the other hand, kept going back for more. She cast her gaze further around the full interior of the pub, searching for the waitress. The woman had come once when they sat down and hadn’t been back since. After that they’d had to take care of themselves.
Everything in that little place moved slow.
Then Zac was on his way back, two glasses in hand. On the way he passed the others of their small group; Drake, Willet, Cooper and Heath, key personnel only, there to meet with their chosen militia leader, the local group that would help execute portions of the daring plan. The guys were setting up another round of darts and Drake commented on the beers as Zac passed. Heath cracked some joke about how if Zac got pass-out drunk he was just going to leave him there. No one was carrying his big ass home. More friendly comments; Zac, being Zac, making everyone smile, and he reached the booth and slid in beside her.
“I got an extra so I don’t have to keep getting up,” he said and put the two beers on the rough wooden t
able in front of him. “Maybe the waitress will come back by the time you’re done with yours.”
The service in the pub pretty much sucked.
Jess eyed her own glass, still half full, took another pull, put it down and leaned all the way into him, relaxing. Absorbing Zac’s presence.
“These Scottish accents are a riot,” he commented, eyes on the small group of fellow conspirators playing darts. Cooper and Heath were trying to teach Willet how to calculate scoring in cricket. They were all in their civvies, she and Zac too, blending with the locals. Cooper was stuffy as always and, curiously, the biggest sore thumb among them. Ironic, as he was the one that should’ve fit in the most. It was a weird sort of reality check: Zac was a Kazerai, super-warrior from another world, Willet a Spec Ops solider from the same world, Drake the once-director of an ultra-secret black budget project belonging to the greatest nation on Earth, Heath a high-end Spec Ops warrior, American, Delta force or something, yet Cooper, the actual Brit—with the accent and all—stood out most among them. The rest looked normal. Cooper looked, and acted, totally like what he was: a military colonel getting ready for a mission.
She smiled.
It probably didn’t matter much.
At the board Willet was getting the knack. The group was close enough to overhear and, apparently, there was a similar pastime on Anitra. Throwing darts at a target, but the layout and games were all different. Willet did okay with his first throws, but the scoring was eluding him. It was a classic cork board with metal darts, not one of the plastic and electronic ones that took care of it for you. A well-worn chalkboard hung to the side.
Willet finished his throws, went and pulled out the darts and looked invitingly toward she and Zac.
“Want to play?”
Jess didn’t really. She was too comfortable.
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 27
