Timeless

by Teresa Reasor

  “I haven’t dreamed of Coira in days, Quinn. What do you think is happening there?”

  Regan’s expression was troubled, and her voice held a note of anguish he hated to hear.

  “I don’t know, lass.”

  “The love letter Argus shared with me today—I think it meant that they’ve been reliving the same set of circumstances over and over. Like they’re stuck in a loop.”

  Quinn climbed atop the plywood and, removing his glove, offered her a hand. “Well I can’t imagine them experiencing anything like this. Can you?”

  Regan braced a foot on the edge of the plywood, and he pulled her up.

  They both turned at the sound of footsteps on the stone stairs. Regan’s fingers tightened around his. They’d talked at length about MacBean and Lamont. The two were bound to try and eliminate them once Nicodemus was healed. And even if they couldn’t heal him. They knew too much.

  “It’s seven o’clock, Mr. Douglas.” Andrew Argus said from atop the stairs. “Mr. Nicodemus is here. I suggest we begin.”

  Nicodemus’s fragility had never been more apparent than when MacBean carried him down the stairs. MacBean’s broad, muscular frame dwarfed him. Lamont followed close behind with a wheelchair.

  Nicodemus cradled the oxygen bottle in his lap like a baby until MacBean sat him in the chair. Lamont slid the bottle into a leather pocket at the back of the chair.

  Quinn studied the man and, despite the threats Nicodemus had leveled against him and Regan, he was moved to pity.

  Nicodemus caught his eye and his gaze grew sharp. “The doctor has given me two weeks, Mr. Douglas. I don’t have any time to waste,” he rasped, his breathing labored.

  Quinn nodded. He gave Regan’s hand a squeeze. “You’re on, love.” He strode up the scaffold to a table set close to the stairs. On it rested the industrial circuit board he’d rigged. He snatched up the radio there and climbed to the top of the stairs. “ Turn her on,” he instructed the workman at the other end of the feed.

  Regan clasped her hands in a nervous gesture, but her expression remained neutral. “There is something beneath the stones. We don’t know what it is, but we believe it acts as a conductor between the monoliths. We’re attempting to duplicate what happens when they’re struck by lightning. Quinn has created a circuit board that will feed electricity to them a little at a time. We’ll be increasing the voltage slowly in case they need to acclimate themselves to it. We’re hoping to prime them and get them started.”

  Quinn jogged back down the stairs and reached for the main breaker and flipped it on. He motioned for Regan to join him. Her steps carefully measured, she walked to him. Quinn flipped on the first breaker, ten thousand volts. Though there was no sound, the air came alive with a low level vibration. Regan grabbed his arm her features tense, anxious.

  “MacBean has a gun,” she said, her voice soft.

  Quinn nodded, though his survival instinct leaped up a notch. He’d do whatever he had to get Regan and himself free of this place, this moment.

  “If he tries to shoot in here when the magnetic field is strong enough, it’s no telling what might happen,” she whispered. She strode forward.

  “Mr. MacBean, I’d suggest you leave your gun holstered. Should it discharge while the magnetic levels of the stones are in flux, the bullets may do any number of things.”

  MacBean narrowed his eyes at Regan.

  Quinn flipped the next breaker. The charge in the air increased.

  “I can feel the electricity in the air,” Nicodemus said. “Was this the same thing you felt?”

  “Yes,” Regan answered. She returned to Quinn’s side.

  “Twenty thousand volts, lass.” Twenty to thirty thousand volts could run a large factory machine. How much more could the stones take?

  If they fractured from the stress, it would send shrapnel flying in all directions and the roof would come down when the top half of the stones broke off. His heart thudded hard, and his breathing grew short.

  Regan’s gaze rose to meet his. Her face had grown pale, and the same concerns were written in her eyes. A pulse beat at the base of her throat.

  “One more?” Quinn asked.

  She nodded.

  Quinn threw the breaker. A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance at the same time. Regan started and gasped.

  The vibration in the air crawled across Quinn’s skin, and Regan rubbed at her arms and shivered. “We can’t go any higher.”

  Andrew Argus strode to the table. His face was white, his eyes wide with fear. “Is it dangerous? This has to be dangerous.”

  A tiny dot of light appeared between the monoliths. Quinn blinked. Was it just some weird reflection? The dot grew into a small pulsating circle.

  Lamont shifted closer to the steps. “Is this normal?”

  “How the hell should we know what’s normal?” Quinn asked.

  “It’s happening. It’s going to happen. Take me closer, MacBean,” Nicodemus demanded. He attempted to push himself forward in the chair but hadn’t the strength.

  “We need to wait. Let one of them go closer,” MacBean demanded thrusting his chin in Quinn and Regan’s direction.

  Quinn threw the next breaker. Forty thousand volts hit the stones. A high-pitched squeal assaulted his eardrums, painful and intense. All of them cried out and covered their ears. The smell of burnt ozone and baking mud filled the air.

  The light expanded to reveal the chamber mirroring the one in which they stood. Coira, as he had seen her in a hundred dreams, as similar to Regan as a twin sister, yet different, stood before the passage. She twisted around, her face pale and startled in the golden glow that pulsed and undulated before her. Wisps of curly dark hair had escaped her long braid, and danced around her face as though a high wind blew against her. The bulge of her pregnancy lay outlined beneath the roughly woven cloth of her dress.

  “My God,” Andrew Argus breathed, his voice shaky. His gaze moved from Regan to Coira and then back. “She’s you.”

  *****

  “Take me closer, MacBean. You have to take me closer.” Nicodemus wiggled helplessly in the chair.

  MacBean drew his gun and pointed it at Regan. “You— go to the light.”

  Regan stared into the barrel of the revolver, and her insides turned to liquid. “You can’t shoot that in here. The magnetic pull might explode the bullet in midair and pepper us all with shrapnel.”

  “If you don’t move, we’ll find out what will happen.” He jiggled the gun, pointing it toward the monoliths.

  “I’ll go,” Quinn said.

  “No,” Regan protested. The man couldn’t threaten them both if she was at one end of the scaffold and Quinn at the other.

  MacBean cocked the weapon, “No, you won’t. She’s going to go.”

  “I’ll be all right, Quinn.” She shuffled from behind the table, but her legs felt weak and her steps slowed as she walked toward the field. The closer she got to the field, the closer Coira approached. Joy and relief clogged Regan’s throat. She was like a long lost sister she’d been parted from for a lifetime. She longed to touch her.

  “Greetings, sister,” Regan said in Gaelic.

  Coira’s reply was lost in the rumble of thunder that struck and the brightening of the field.

  Regan jerked back. She had to warn her before it was too late. The Gaelic translation came hard. “You must keep Braden close to you.”

  Coira nodded and answered. “Braden is here with me.”

  The next translation came easier. “Don’t allow him to leave. It’s important for him to stay close until the bairn is born.”

  The pressure of the gun barrel pushed against her head stole the words from Regan’s mind.

  “We’re not here for you to visit with your sister. We’ve more pressing things to take care of. Put your hand into the light.”

  With Coira standing so close, would the field suck her through as it had tried to do before? Regan motioned for Coira to move back.

  Sh
e nodded and backed away.

  Regan’s breathing grew ragged as she raised her hand. Warmth projected onto her skin before she made contact with the field. She ran her palm over the transparent surface as though it were a solid object. The light swirled beneath the pressure like liquid.

  MacBean shoved the gun into its holster and withdrew something else. Regan cried out as the blade flicked out, and he grabbed her wrist. He dragged the edge across her palm so quickly she had no time to struggle. The pain was sharp and deep, and she yelped.

  A crash came from behind her. Quinn yelled her name. The sound of a struggle and of blows being struck carried to her. Regan jerked around concerned for Quinn even as blood streamed from her hand. But MacBean held her arm so tight, his fingers dug into her flesh.

  Fear lay like an anchor upon her chest, smothering her. Her gaze swung in Coira’s direction. The woman was gone.

  MacBean thrust Regan’s hand into the heart of the beam and held it there. One second, then two. Liquid heat spread up her arm to her shoulder. The pain receded to a dull ache, then to nothing.

  Quinn was there in a rush. “You fucking bastard,” Quinn snarled, his body tensed in rage. MacBean whipped out the gun and cocked it.

  “Are you all right, Regan?” Andrew Argus asked, stepping between Quinn and the gun.

  “Have you lost your mind, old man?” MacBean exclaimed.

  “We made a deal with these people. We will stand by it,” Argus said, his thin face taut.

  Regan’s throat worked as she swallowed. She stared at her hand. Her palm was unmarked and the blood gone.

  Quinn wrapped an arm around her waist and guided her up the scaffold. Halfway up Lamont lay prone and motionless.

  “He isn’t—”

  “Just knocked out.” Quinn urged her past. “We’re done here, Regan.”

  She nodded.

  Nicodemus reached out and grasped her arm as they passed. His gaze moved over her palm, and a smile ran across his face. “It worked.” His wheezed a bark of laughter.

  Regan jerked her arm free, and she burrowed closer to Quinn. They mounted the steps.

  MacBean called out for them to stop. Nicodemus’s voice followed. “Let them go.”

  Relief spread bone deep through Regan, and her steps quickened to match Quinn’s pace. A shadow rose up before them, and she tilted her head back.

  Henry stood above them.

  Instant concern gave her voice a sharp edge. “You have to leave, Henry. No one is supposed to be here.”

  His face appeared flushed, and his smile just short of a grimace. “You’re wrong, Regan. I don’t have to leave. And you’re not going anywhere either.” He raised his hand and pointed a gun at them.

  CHAPTER 49

  Lightning flickered overhead and Regan caught her breath. If lightning struck the monoliths—

  Quinn’s arm tightened around her.

  “Why won’t you let us go, Henry?” Regan asked as they sat at the bottom of the steps.

  “Because I don’t want you to. Not yet.” He paced the narrow scaffold, his movements agitated.

  “You must calm down, Henry,” Andrew Argus said, his tone soothing.

  Henry turned on him, sharp, quick, his face deep red with anger. “Don’t tell me to calm down. I’ve waited forever for this, and you kept it from me. You bastards.”

  Argus flinched. “As soon as he’s himself, Mr. Nicodemus will make it up to you, Henry.”

  Behind him, MacBean lifted Nicodemus from his wheelchair and carried him to the magnetic field. When he hesitated, Nicodemus urged him forward. “I’ll be healed, Ben.”

  The big man stepped forward as though wading through mud, and shoved into the heart of the field.

  Lamont, having recovered from his fight with Quinn, stood nearby with both his and MacBean’s guns in hand. His gaze shifted from Quinn to Henry and back again, assessing who was the biggest threat.

  “Did they tell you I was the one who found the henge?”

  Regan dragged her attention from the two men held within the stream. “No,” Regan shook her head.

  “We were vacationing here on Loch Maree. My scuba class had arranged to come down and do a dive. We divided up into threes, two boys and one adult. I found the first stone. And I touched it.” He shook his head. “The most amazing thing happened. I could see things about the stones, about the people who once lived here. My father found me there on top of one of them and he towed me to the surface.”

  Regan’s hand tightened around Quinn’s and her gaze sought his.

  “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? It happened to you, too.” His pale green eyes scorched her with a combination of jealousy and hatred.

  Quinn’s fingers pressed into her waist, his body tensing.

  Nicodemus cried out, and Regan stared toward the monoliths. He’s body shook and MacBean staggered and fell to the platform with him still cradled in his arms.

  “Fucking look at me, not him,” Henry screamed. He pushed the gun into her face.

  Regan jerked back. Her arms and legs trembled with the anxious tension. “I’m listening, Henry.”

  “You always dismiss me as though I’m not important.”

  Had she done that? She flinched from the thought. “I’m sorry, Henry. I haven’t meant to.”

  “Every summer if I wasn’t diving here, I was at the archives building studying, searching. Learning how to translate the Latin. My senior year in high school, I found the first journal. The one you discovered at the archives. It led me to another.”

  His mouth grew taut with anger again. “I’m not the goofy fuck-up you think I am.”

  Regan shook her head. Had she really given him that impression? Though his exterior appearance screamed dork, she’d always known he was brilliant. “I’ve never thought of you like that. ”

  “Yes, you have.” He looked away, his jaw tensing. “I found the third journal last summer. It seems old Nathrach was a prolific writer. And though he had sworn to keep the secret, he couldn’t control the need to record it before he died.”

  A third journal? Regan’s gaze moved to Argus then back to Henry. “They only showed me one.”

  He smiled. “I went to a great deal of trouble to keep them all from you. But that damn fool at the archives building—” he shrugged. “The third one, I couldn’t leave it in the archives for just anyone to see. I had to have it. Or rather Nicodemus did, once I’d called his attention to it.”

  “By then he was sick. When I first contacted him, he ignored me, until I sent him a copy of my translation of the third journal.”

  “Why Nicodemus, Henry?” Quinn asked.

  “I saw him in my vision when I first found the stones. It had to be him. It took me as long to find him as it did the journals.”

  “He’s your nephew, isn’t he, Mr. Argus? And MacBean is his son,” she said.

  “How do you know that?” Argus demanded.

  “Why else would MacBean be willing to risk his life and go inside the field with him?” Regan focused on the two men held within the stream. MacBean rolled onto his back, and his hand flopped dangerously close to one of the stones. “You have to get them out of there. They won’t be able to escape the field without help.”

  Argus motioned to Lamont, and the two men rushed down the scaffold.

  Quinn shifted his weight. Henry lunged forward to rest the barrel of the gun against his forehead. “You make a move, and I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”

  Regan’s heart rose into her throat. Desperate to distract him, she asked, “Why did you hurt Dr. Reinhart, Henry?”

  He turned the gun away from Quinn though his eyes never left him. “She wouldn’t answer my questions. She was afraid of being perceived as crazy as her patients.”

  She couldn’t forget that at one time he had been her friend. Or she had believed he was. “Oh, Henry.” Grief gripped her throat. All that he could be, all that he had been was lost when he’d killed the woman.

  He s
tudied her, his eyes narrowed. “You should be feeling sorry for yourself, Regan, not me.” He stepped back. “Get up, both of you.”

  Quinn’s hand gripped hers as they got to their feet.

  “You don’t have to hurt anyone else, Henry,” she said. “You’re better than this. Better than Nicodemus and his men.”

  His features assumed a blank look of resolve more frightening than the gun.

  “I’ve thought of the stones as mine ever since I found them, Regan. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  Her throat closed around the word. “Yes.”

  “All the discoveries I made.” He shook his head. “I’ve been cheated of all the credit because we had to keep them secret. I won’t be cheated of anything else. Walk down the scaffold,” he said.

  Lamont had thrust his hand into the field and grasped Nicodemus’s arm. He slowly dragged the man free of the light. Nicodemus’s high-pitched laughter seemed grotesque in light of the threat they faced.

  “You must do whatever it takes to survive, Regan,” Quinn said, his voice just above a whisper.

  “Please don’t do anything. I couldn’t bear — “ She couldn’t think about it. “I might be able to talk him down.”

  Quinn shook his head, the movement minute. “If I yell run, you must do it, lass.”

  She shook her head. “I love you. I won’t leave you. If we go, we go together.”

  Lamont lifted Nicodemus from the scaffold and placed him into his wheelchair. The greenish cast had faded from his skin, the whites of his eyes looked clear, and though his body remained thin, it no longer bowed forward as though in pain.

  Argus tugged at MacBean and helped him to his feet. The man staggered and crumbled to the scaffold next to Nicodemus’s chair.

  Nicodemus laid a hand on MacBean’s shoulder and squeezed. “Thank you, Benjamin.” He smiled at Henry. “We have the key, Henry. Regan has discovered—”

  Henry raised the gun and shot Nicodemus four times in quick succession. The sound of the reports rang off the stone walls, deafening, horrifying. Red circles bloomed on his white shirt, and his body jerked with each hit.