by Casey Wyatt
Kyshmar downloaded from the cuff. She had the same regal bearing as Kyrene and Kasia. Solid and real, she walked across the floor and retrieved the white orb. At some point it had fallen from my pocket, and I hadn’t even noticed.
“Aryn. It’s time to go back where you belong.” Kyshmar raised the orb and waved her hand over it, giving it a soft white glow. “Aryn was their leader. I should have known she’d be the one to escape.”
“We will be freed! We are stronger than you!” Aryn shrieked. Before Kyshmar could contain it, the cloud re-formed into a solid body. Dark, compact and the same height as eight-year-old me, it resembled a photographic negative—there but not there. That couldn’t be good.
Aryn’s claw-tipped fingers cut into the energy field, snapping us apart. Kyshmar folded like a house of cards, the orb rolling from her limp hand.
Mother fell to the floor unconscious. I landed hard on my ass, then scrambled to stand. Kyshmar remained down for the count.
I tapped the cuff. “Recall her if you can.”
“I told you, you can’t stop us.” Aryn circled me, the negative image slowly forming into a copy of me. “I have a better plan. I don’t need you to be alive. Hasta la vista, baby!”
Power snapped toward me like a coiled snake aiming for a death strike. I evaded it, crouching when it blew a hole in the attic wall.
When I moved, Kyshmar was gone.
I needed to end this. The small explosion would not go unnoticed. I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.
Aryn grinned, a demonic version of me staring back. Not a pretty look. “Just bring it, girlie,” she said.
“Oh, yeah? Well, I’m just a girl standing in front of a monster. Ready to kick its ass.” Hey, if we were quoting movie lines, I was using a good one.
Grabbing the orb, I activated the cuff’s power again and charged. The ball sprang from my fingertips and flew toward Aryn.
“Caught it!” Aryn triumphantly brandished the orb. “So much for your petty rebellion.”
Sing, Cherry, Kyshmar commanded.
I didn’t need to be told twice. The “Star-Spangled Banner” sprang from my lips.
Hey, it was the first thing that came to mind.
At first, Aryn laughed. “What are you going to do, sing me to death? Besides, you’re a bit pitchy.”
“Pitchy? I don’t think so.” The orb popped, encasing Aryn in a single gulp.
I kept singing, unsure of when to stop. Aryn’s lips moved, angry words flooding from her mouth. I didn’t hear them because the orb muzzled her. She grew smaller, shrinking into nothing. The orb dropped to the floor with a solid clunk.
Silence rang in my ears. Was it over?
Exhaustion washed over me. I was only a child in this form. Even I had limited amounts of energy. But I couldn’t stay here.
Except, I was tapped out. The cuff rested inert against my wrist. Clutching the ball, I closed my eyes.
Voices hovered over me. Hands shoved under my limp body and raised me.
I had to escape this time and place. If I didn’t, I’d have to relive my life over.
The future pressed and pulled. Memories of the carnage, of the titanic machines destroying life on Earth. I had to return the orb to my own time. Before someone found it. Before Aryn could attempt to escape again.
Slipping my mind inward, I summoned the center of my power. Back when I had first acquired the cuff, Ian taught me a technique to control the Sire bond with my Family. The idea was to create a bubble of headspace. It could be anything. In my case, I used the memory of an amalgam of the stages I’d performed on over the decades.
The auditorium was vacant. The seats usually occupied by my vampire Family, empty. The balcony, where the last ruler of Mars, Queen Azaral, observed from above, was a dim spark. It would have to do.
Focusing on the light, I summoned my remaining strength. I rose off the stage. Energy rushed behind me. The time stream flowed nearby.
Not wasting another moment, I plunged inside.
Chapter Nineteen
There’s No Place Like Mars
I broke the energy’s surface, exiting the time stream’s wild current.
“Ah, you survived. I knew you would.” Jonathan stood before me, dressed in black slacks and a white dress shirt. His sleeves were rolled up like he’d had a hard day at the office. Sadness curved the corners of his mouth. An air of melancholy hung around him.
“Where is this place?” I turned in a slow circle as the child’s body grew into my adult, vampire form. We were in the shapeless nothing again. This time the walls and floor were gray like we’d landed inside a room-sized cube.
“Neither here nor there.”
“Do you want me to slug you?” My limit for weird, unexplained phenomena had been maxed out two time jumps earlier.
He sighed. “Fine. You’re at a crossroads. You need to choose the direction of the future. Not just for you but everyone around you. Please choose wisely. Terms and conditions apply, yada, yada, yada.”
“Are you serious?” I hadn’t traversed the time-stream only to be confronted by Jonathan in snark mode.
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Jonathan studied his fingernails.
“You are so aggravating. What do I need to do?”
He tutted. “Not so fast, missy. There’s something we need to discuss first. Or you shall not pass.”
I did a mental eye roll. Would the cheesy movie quotes ever stop?
“Is any of this real?”
“Yes.”
“And did I ruin the future?” They say don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to, but in this case I had to know.
“No. And don’t ask me how that’s possible.” Jonathan moved closer to me. “Aryn was quite clever. She infiltrated Enkil’s cuff, waiting for the right opportunity to enact her plan.”
“So, I can’t believe I’m saying this... Time did have its way.”
“In a fashion. They hijacked your mind and tricked you into believing the colony was in jeopardy. They tossed you into the past hoping to manipulate the future.”
“And anytime I began to suspect something was wrong, they threw a curveball my way.”
Jonathan nodded. “I knew you would outstubborn them.”
“This doesn’t mean you’re forgiven for messing with my memories.”
“I did what I had to, to keep you safe. As I always have.” He reached toward me, stopping short of touching me. “I’m sorry. Our time is almost over.”
“No! It nearly killed me watching you die. I can’t do that again.”
“My time hasn’t come yet.” He released a low sigh. “You won’t like this next part.”
A sinking suspicion dawned on me. “Oh, no.”
“Yes. You have to make the decision.”
“Why do I have to choose how this ends? And, let me guess, I won’t like what’s behind Door Number One or Door Number Two.” The Lady and The Tiger immediately came to mind.
“Am I right? Is this the Kobayashi Maru?”
“That depends on your memory of the no-win scenario.” He rocked on his heels, hands behind his back, seemingly confident I would make the right choice.
Thanks to Jay and his love of Star Trek, I knew how Kirk had solved the problem. By breaking the rules.
I removed the orb from my pocket and let it go. It levitated in front of me, bobbing with the ease of a floating bubble. A dozen scenarios ran through my mind. I needed to consider my steps carefully.
“If I lock them away again, will it be for good?”
Jonathan remained silent.
“Are you even here?” Cripes. Did it matter?
Tossing aside my irritation, I gathered the time stream, sifting through the various threads, studying the places I’d been, the people I’d seen, the knowledge I’d accrued. But like the whole of space and time, I couldn’t hope to contain a fraction of it. I had to consider the best way to break the rules without breaking the universe.
For a
moment, the enormity of what I was about to do scared me witless. Who was I to be trusted with this task?
Then again, if Aryn and her rebels had accepted their fate and not tried to interfere with my past, I wouldn’t be in this position.
Unlike them I needed to accept fate. The answer was so deceptively simple.
“Time will have its way,” I said to Jonathan.
He smiled. Which from him was like a gold star.
“See you on the other side. Let’s do this, Enkil.” The cuff hummed to life, happy to be acknowledged by name.
It lent me its power, so much energy my skin itched. I readied to touch the orb. If I didn’t have the hang of this space-time thing, I might permanently erase my existence.
“There’s no place like Mars.” My palm connected to the orb. Energy lanced upwards and inwards.
Then there was nothing.
Nothing . . .
Nothing . . .
Nothing—
“Is she dead?” Ian’s fear sliced into my consciousness with the force of a battering ram. “Damn you, Jay! Tell me.”
“Try waking her,” Jay suggested.
Compulsion blew across the room, fluttering my eyelids wide open. They flopped down again while I got my bearings. A terrible ache throbbed at the base of my skull.
“A bit more gently would have been nice,” Jay grumbled.
A baby cried in the distance.
Thank you, God.
Thank you, Universe.
Thank you, annoying Jonathan.
I could feel the orb’s weight fisted in my left hand. There was still time to set things right.
Opening my eyes, Ian’s worried face filled my vision. I sensed I’d be apologizing in the near future.
“Hey,” I said taking in my surroundings. I was prone on a metal table in Jay’s lab. Discarded juice pouches and IV tubing rested in a pile. A bassinet was tucked in the corner by the ugly recliner. Louis was perched nearby like a worried mother hen.
“Vala?” I asked, wanting more than anything to hold her. But there was no time.
“She’s fine. Quite a trick you pulled, luv,” he said before kissing me. “Are you trying to scare the remainder of my years out of me?”
I zeroed in on Jay and Ian. “Why the hell didn’t you mention that I was under some kind of Ancient mind control? It could have saved me a ton of time!”
“We thought they might fry your brain if they knew we had caught on. We couldn’t risk it,” Jay said.
“Fair enough.” I touched the metal band circling my forehead. “Did you probe me or something?”
“Not exactly,” said Jay, looking a bit sheepish. “Though I may have had to take samples. Loads of samples.”
He sounded excited about that. Probably would have danced too, if Ian and I weren’t glaring at him.
“You can explain on the way.” I propped upright on my elbows. When my head didn’t spin, I moved to sit up.
“Hold on there.” Ian moved to stop me. “You need to rest.”
“No. I’ve rested enough.” I retrieved the orb. “See this? We need to go to the control room.”
“No way,” Jay said. “We found you under attack there. Something was trying to take over your mind. Joan and Nina barely escaped with you in time. We’ve been trying to wake you ever since.”
“When did this happen?”
“Before the naming ceremony. I woke up and you were gone.” Ian clutched my hand. “I nearly beat Herne senseless. I found him wandering the halls muttering about the Pall and someone named Aryn.”
Poor Edwin. “Is he okay?”
“He helped us find you in time. I owe him a great debt.” Ian’s guilt was easy to read.
“And the chamber?” I asked, swinging my legs around.
“Harmony and I had a hell of a time, but we managed to seal it.” Ian crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Vala sleeping. The desire to hold her nearly stopped me. She wasn’t safe. Not yet. None of us were.
“Well, unless you want everyone on this colony to be body snatched, we need to get a move on.” I didn’t need to say it twice.
After leaving Vala in Louis’ capable hands, we arrived at the chamber’s access tunnel. The Rogues were on guard duty along with a contingent of Herne’s space revenants.
“I’ll explain later,” Ian said before guiding me past them. “Herne has been extremely accommodating.”
“We need him here. He’s part of this too.” I had no time to fill them in on everything yet. They got the news brief version.
After we dealt with the ancient prisoners, I’d tell them everything. Once I sorted out what was real and what had been good old-fashioned mind manipulation.
Like Herne. Was he really Edwin? Part of me worried that I wanted my baby brother so badly I believed what I’d seen.
“I’ll fetch him,” Philip said in a tone that suggested if Herne didn’t cooperate, there would be pain.
The door to the chamber was blocked with the same material we used to build the surface domes. A strange mix of Ancient technology and undead ingenuity. It resembled flimsy fabric but was in fact as sturdy as a few feet of concrete. Nina and Joan were pacing in front of the makeshift door.
Relief flooded Nina’s face. She rushed toward me and threw her arms around me. “Thank God! You’re awake. I could feel it when you returned to us. We’ve all been so worried.”
I returned the hug, happy. Last time I’d “seen” her, she’d been wasting away from an alien disease. “Thank you for holding the Family together.”
“How did you know?” Awe filled her voice.
“Someday, you’ll make a great Sire.” I squeezed her hand. “Can we open this?”
Joan, hair frazzled into a fluffy gold halo around her head, nodded. “Yes. But once we blast it, we won’t be able to rebuild it quickly.”
So basically, if I didn’t succeed the colony was screwed in real time and space. “Understood.”
“You all might want to back up,” Joan said, shuffling us down the corridor.
There was a muffled blast followed by a dust cloud racing in our direction. Not waiting, I rushed forward. I wasn’t taking any chances.
Ian remained close behind me along with Jay. Joan and Nina remained outside, constructing a new plaster to use.
“No matter what they say, don’t believe them.” I retrieved the orb. When I let go, it floated. “Oh, and I have to sing.”
Again. I guess dead girls do sing once in a while. I cleared my throat and sang “After the Ball.”
The orb pulsed and Kyshmar appeared.
“Holy triplets,” Jay said under his breath.
Kyshmar stared at him, her gaze assessing him. She smiled. “Hello, Jay. We meet again.”
“You and Jay can play catch up later.” I turned to Ian. “This is where it gets tricky. This is the control room for a prison the Ancients created before the end came. Near as I can figure, the cuff is their Get out of Jail Card. That’s why they tricked me. One of their kind managed to escape using my cuff, then hitched a ride into the time stream and waited for a chance to free the others.”
“I was skeptical at first,”Jay said. “Everyone knows actual time travel is impossible. But—”
Herne entered the room. “But the Ancients had technology that allowed them to travel the consciousness’ of their past selves.”
Ian nodded to Herne. They must have worked out their issues while I was away. “We can marvel at their genius later.”
I couldn’t agree more. I nodded to Kyshmar. “You ready?”
“Yes. Remember, you are not alone in this battle.” Kyshmar stepped forward and touched the orb.
Aryn materialized in front of me, a wicked leer on her face. She no longer looked like me. It was far worse. She wore my mother’s face again.
Herne hissed in a sharp breath. “No!”
Aryn studied him, before switching her attention to me. “How nice of you to bring the strongest to us.”
“Shut it. You lost.” I moved to the wall panel that I first used to activate the chamber. This time, with Kyshmar’s guidance, Aryn would be joining them.
“Did you really think it would be so easy? Don’t you want to free your brother?” Aryn said.
I hesitated. “I don’t need you.”
“You can’t escape our trap.” Spittle flew from her lips. Her speech sounded rubbery. “We have you.”
“Nope. Because I know where I am. And when I am. More importantly, so do they.” I thumbed my finger behind me.
“No! They have no power here.” Aryn’s eyes widened to twice their size. Her head expanded while her body shrank, like she couldn’t hold her form together.
Kasia and Kyrene stepped forward. They stretched their arms, forming a circle with Kyshmar, trapping Aryn in the center. A blue disc appeared under Aryn’s feet, similar to the conveyors used on the floor in the Grand Hall. Like all the Ancients’ technology, it appeared when needed and worked as designed, even if it wasn’t always immediately obvious to us.
“You cannot do this to me!” Aryn searched for an opening but was blocked at every turn. “I wasn’t like the others.”
“You were worse. Your actions caused us more harm than any other. Your lies, your refusal to see the truth, doomed us all,” Kasia said.
“Your imprisonment is eternal, traitor,” said Kyrene.
“Let the sentence stand.” Kyshmar beckoned me and Ian to the circle. “The Queen and the King have spoken.”
“The King’s cuff was destroyed,” Aryn stated.
Ian raised his wrist, brandishing the King’s cuff. “Wrong.”
Aryn stared at Ian with horror. “No. I destroyed the King myself.”
Ian slid his fingers into mine, holding my hand. His left arm rose to point at Aryn as my right arm rose in unison. The disc elongated into a tube, encasing Aryn, silencing her protests.
Kasia turned away from the circle and placed two fingers on my forehead, her touch solid and warm. “We’ve got this. Your Family is waiting for you.”
Blinding light pierced my vision. When I blinked the spots away, I stood inside Harmony’s dome.
Ian, Jay, Nina, and Jay were with me, equally baffled.
“How did—” Jay started.
