Time Rider (Rise of the Skipworths)

by Mallory Kane

  He flexed his hands, the numbness of shock and nausea in his fingertips, and remembered the softness of her vulnerable nape with the damp hairs curling there. He needed time to figure out what was happening to him. He didn't have the luxury of time, though. Someone was trying to kill his angel-doctor, and he'd be damned if he'd let them take the pleasure of killing her away from him.

  A stray thought flitted across his brain too quick to catch. Just like the shadow of a thought that had emerged when the clinic exploded. The explosion. What the hell had happened at the clinic?

  All he could remember was his panic—the driving need to get out of there as fast as possible. He blessed the TAINCC for the training that had allowed him to overpower the two dogcatchers so easily. They'd looked strong, with their bulky muscles, but as he'd known it would, his agility and knowledge of leverage and balance had beaten their sheer strength.

  After all, when you've sparred with specially constructed robots for months, mere flesh and blood men were a piece of cake.

  He pulled his thoughts back to the seconds before the panic had sheared his breath and cramped his muscles. Where had that blinding urgency to get out of the building as fast as humanly possible come from? His nostrils twitched in remembrance.

  BeeDee! Of course. He had smelled that deadly chemical. Smart plastic. Rider knew a lot about it, him and his fellow trainees, for an excellent reason. They'd been forced to test it.

  Thank God he'd been involved in the beta testing, not the alpha.

  BeeDee was a binary plastic explosive that could be programmed by its mass. It had taken a lot of experimentation and more than a few blown off arms and legs in the alpha testing stages before they had gotten the pattern perfected. Once you mixed the two harmless components together, BeeDee was set to explode. The amount of malleable plastic determined the number of minutes, or in some cases seconds, before detonation, and the only problem with it was its characteristic odor.

  Yes, he knew a lot about BeeDee. Especially the fact that, by the time he was ready to go, BeeDee hadn't been stable enough to be trusted on a time-transfer.

  Yet there it was, in the clinic. And he'd been right about the odor, too. By the time its distinctive odor was that strong, it was within seconds of detonation.

  There was only one explanation for the presence of BeeDee in the Street Clinic today. Someone else from the future—from further in the future than his time—was trying to kill Kristen Skipworth.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rider felt her move. With only a shade of slowdown in his reflexes, he whirled and pinned her to the floor again. "Where you going, Doc?" he hissed.

  "I—feel sick," she muttered, avoiding his gaze. "I need some anti-nausea tablets."

  Somehow he knew she was lying, but the idea of tablets that might ease his engulfing sickness sounded very good. "Get me some, too," he said. "And don't get any cute ideas. I could —" He stopped when his brain warned him of the blinding nausea that still lurked in the back of his throat.

  "I know. Kill me," his angel doctor said wearily as she pulled herself to her feet.

  He forced himself upright with the determination born of long hours in the TAINCC. He grabbed her arm, as much to keep himself from collapsing as to turn her back around to face him. "That's right. You're catching on. But it's beginning to look like I'm not the only one."

  "What?" Her eyes widened in alarm, then quickly narrowed. "You mean somebody besides you wants to kill me?"

  "Cut the crap, Doc."

  She lifted her chin and gave him a chilling look. "There's no one in the world who would want to kill me."

  Not in this time, he started to say, but he just tightened his grip on her arm and whispered in her face. "Then what do you think happened to the clinic?"

  He watched with satisfaction as her haughty expression crumpled into a bewildered frown. "I don't—I don't know. Maybe a faulty gas line?"

  "Yeah? Then why didn't it keep burning?"

  The bewildered frown deepened, and Rider had the sudden inane thought that she was older than he'd estimated. She looked like such a waif, all wide eyes and pouting lower lip and the delicately curved cheek with its youthful roundness. But with her brow creased in worry, with her mouth turned down in puzzlement, he revised his thinking. She could be as old as thirty.

  Had they told him how old she would be? If they had, it was something else he didn't remember.

  He watched her mentally catalogue the possible explanations for the explosion, her mobile face reflecting her every thought. Rider's fingers twitched to wipe the furrows away from her forehead, to smooth the lines, lines he was helping to deepen. His gaze strayed to her mouth and he almost lifted a hand to push the frown into a smile, but there was nothing he could give her to smile about.

  She stared at him, chin lifted, and his heart constricted again in admiration. She'd been threatened, almost blown up, and still she faced him defiantly. He thought, as he had before, that either she was the bravest person he'd ever known, or the stupidest. Or maybe there was a third possibility. Maybe those brilliantly colored eyes could see inside him. He shuddered at that thought. Maybe she knew something about him he didn't even know himself.

  He dragged his thoughts away from their disturbing turn with an effort. He couldn't think of her as anything but the target. The target he would eliminate. "I asked you a question," he said quietly. "Why do you think the clinic blew up?"

  She shrugged, then moaned at the movement of her shoulder. "Short in an electrical wire? A smoldering cigarette? A—a—what?" she shouted when he laughed.

  "Lots of reasons, huh? Lots of reasons the clinic would just blow up. You don't buy it. I can see it in your damned Deviant eyes."

  She twisted her arm out of his grasp. He could have held on, could have broken her arm rather than let her go, but he relented, and stifled the thought of why he would worry about breaking her arm even as it surfaced.

  "Why are you calling me that?"

  "Because that's what you are. You're the Mother of All the Deviants, and your descendents are trying to take over the world."

  Kristen stared at him, trying to suppress a sudden urge to laugh. He sounded like a bad B movie. "Me? Mother of all the deviants? Oh—" she chuckled. "Oh, you are crazy."

  "Don't laugh," he growled. "That explosion wasn't a figment of my imagination."

  "So tell me," she said. "What did cause the clinic to blow up?" She looked at him, frowning again. "Did you blow it up? Are you that crazy?" Panic distorted her expression.

  He gleaned a modicum of triumph from her question. Maybe if he could convince her he was telling the truth, he could—He stopped, confused by his thoughts. What did he want to do? His only job was to kill her.

  The ache started to grow again in his gut, and this time it was all tied up in a sadness he couldn't explain to himself. Gritting his teeth, he forced the thoughts away—he didn't have time for self-pity. He concentrated instead on how the BeeDee had gotten planted in the clinic. He felt better immediately. Any thoughts of protecting his angel-doctor played hell with his conditioning and brought on the searing nausea that accompanied any thought counter to the TAINCC's mission. His mission.

  "Well, did you?" Kristen asked again.

  Rider focused on her face. "No, Doc. I didn't plant the explosive. But somebody did. Somebody who had access to a weapon that hasn't been invented yet."

  Her wide eyes appraised him unblinkingly. "Hasn't been invented yet? What are you talking about?" Then her eyes narrowed. "Oh, yes, excuse me for forgetting. You're from the future," she said sarcastically. "So you're saying there's someone else from the future after me, too?"

  Nodding curtly, he grabbed her again and dragged her over to the kitchen counter. He dropped heavily onto a counter stool without relaxing his hold.

  She laughed shakily. "I do declare," she drawled in a strange, broad accent. "How in the dickens did I get to be so popular? Why, just the other day I was saying to Sue Ellen, 'Sue Ellen,' I said, ‘
there’s just no excitement around here whatsoever’ and now I’ve got all kinds of strange folks trying to kill—" She grunted as he twisted her arm.

  "Anybody ever tell you you're a pain in the ass, Doc? Now where are those anti-nausea tablets you mentioned?"

  "I've got some in my purse—oh no!" she exclaimed before she thought. Her purse was still in the clinic—or in the rubble of the clinic. Not only did it have her money and her identification, but it also held her cell phone. She'd wanted to get to her purse to use her cell and call the police, but now she'd have to try to use the land line.

  "Oh no what? You're out of anti-nausea tablets?"

  "What? Oh, there are some in the bathroom." She looked pointedly at her arm, which was encased in his fingers. "If you could let me go—"

  "Why don't we get them togeth—Shit!" he exploded as the cat jumped at Kristen's chest. He barely checked himself in time to avoid breaking the animal in two, and possibly the Doc as well.

  "Get that thing the hell away from me!" he shouted, backing away from Kristen as she cradled the creature in her arms.

  She clutched the cat to her, watching him with narrowed eyes. Her gaze darted between him and the cat, and he could almost read her mind. She was considering how much time she would have if she threw the cat at him. It was written plainly on her face.

  "Don't even think about it, Doc," he hissed. "I don't like cats, but I could damned sure kill it and you before you could get out the door."

  She threw the cat at him.

  The animal yowled as he stiff-armed it and dove blindly for Kristen, groaning at the pain in his side. His wrist brushed her leg and he groped in the air until his fist closed around her ankle. She fell with a thud.

  Rider jumped up and wrapped his fingers around her neck, drawing her upright. Her eyes were huge and wet with panicked tears. She took a shaky, sobbing breath.

  "I told you not to do that," he whispered, tightening his fingers around her neck, but as he did, his hand began to shake and the nausea returned as visions assaulted him. Visions of a spacious, bright apartment, with a vidscreen and a portable comlink and an old transistor-type radio. Visions of a pale, worried face framed with dark blonde hair. Visions of a cat—

  "Why are you so afraid of cats?" she asked in a small, quivery voice.

  He realized he'd loosened his grip on her neck. Tightening it again, he shook her slightly. "Would you shut up about the cat?" His voice cracked. "God! Why did she have to go back after the damned cat." Where had that come from? He had a flashing vision of a gray cat, stretching lazily.

  Mari reaching to pick the kitten up as a ribbon of green light shot toward it, leaving a smoking lump of flesh—

  All this, all the pain, was because of Kristen Skipworth. His fingers twitched on her soft, vulnerable nape, but a fluttering of nausea in his throat made him stop and take a huge breath.

  Not just yet. He wouldn't kill her yet. He wrenched his gaze away from her neck, concentrating on her eyes instead—those unmistakable golden eyes that identified a Deviant. Another disturbing thought tickled at the edge of his brain, but he lost it as Kristen spoke.

  "Who went back after the cat, Rider?" Her voice was soft, compelling.

  He glared at her, terror shearing his breath. "You damned Deviant! Stop getting inside my head!" He suddenly couldn't stand to touch her any more. He gritted his teeth and dragged her back toward the kitchen counter, away from the door.

  "I didn't! I can't. You said it." Her eyes reflected a bewildered apprehension.

  He stared at her. Had he said the words aloud? He wasn’t sure. "Yeah, well. Just stay out of my head, understand?"

  A frown creased her forehead. "What are you saying?" she asked softly. "You think I can read your mind?"

  Her eyes were wide. She appeared genuinely puzzled. Did she really not know what he was talking about?

  "That's what skipworths do," he grated.

  Her eyes widened even more and a look of real horror crept into their depths. "Skipworths?"

  "Yeah. Skipworths. Deviants."

  "The people you call Deviants are people with my name?" She backed up against the counter like a cornered victim, her hands behind her.

  "Yeah, Doc. I already told you this?" He sighed and closed his eyes wearily. "Five hundred years from now, your descendants are trying to take over the world with their perverted mind invasion. It's filthy, disgusting." He clenched his jaw against the pain of memory. "And it was skipworths that murdered my wife."

  "She died when she went back after the cat," Kristen said softly.

  He could choke the life out of her right now, squeeze her throat until her hurtful words stopped evoking the horrible images—images of burning flesh lit by green light, images of Mari crumpling in his arms. The sensations were overwhelming, and he wanted to give her some of them, wanted to transfer as much of the pain and horror to her as he could.

  "Yeah," he said, forcing his mouth into a slow, deadly grin. When he did her gaze dropped to his mouth and she shuddered. She was afraid of him. That was good. He was glad he wasn't the only one afraid here.

  "She died, the cat died, and very soon, Doc, you're going to die." Even as he said the words, he realized he didn't quite believe them. His heart pounded and his breath caught at the thought of killing her. He doubled over, clutching his gut, coughing and gagging. He was sicker than he'd ever been, sicker than death.

  Why was he reacting this way? He wanted to kill her. Needed to kill her, but his fingers wouldn't do it. His brain wouldn't even contemplate it. What had happened to him? He was a tank. He had no feelings. Where was the cold determination that was supposed to sustain him? Another wave of sickness flowed over him. He cringed, gagged again, unable to get a breath, gasping, searching in vain for the icy nothingness.

  Kristen the doctor, the paragon of professionalism, couldn't move. Her hands were frozen on the edge of the counter. She clenched her jaw while sweat drenched her pain-racked body, knowing all the while that her torment was only an echo of his, and the compassion she'd tried so hard to tamp down came welling up into her throat, almost choking her.

  He was psychotic, delusional, and he believed he'd been sent from the future to kill her. He had the strange notion that people called skipworths had murdered his wife. He was one for the textbooks all right, so what kind of twisted logic made her feel sorry for him? She should grab a frying pan and knock him unconscious, then call the police, or just run as fast as she could to get away from him.

  With a huge effort, she peeled her fingers off the counter and backed toward the cabinet where she kept the pots and pans.

  "Don't—even think about it," he grunted, startling her.

  She glanced at him. He was still doubled over. Had she been that transparent? It was almost as if he'd read her thoughts.

  He dragged himself upright, using the counter as a support. Kristen backed away, but once again he pulled strength from some bottomless storehouse inside him and sprang at her, too quick to avoid.

  "Let's get some medicine, Doc," he said, grabbing her arm and twisting it behind her.

  She gasped in pain. "Couldn't you work on—the other shoulder—for a while?" she muttered through clenched teeth, wanting to scream in frustration. She was being held hostage by a man who could barely stand. Threatened by a man so sick he was turning shocky. She strained against his hold on her arm, but he just laughed. That laugh was worse than his pain. It made him look like a demon from hell.

  "This is a very efficient hold, Doc, and it works better the second or third or tenth time, when the tendons are swollen and sore. If you move against me, you'll break your shoulder." Her breath caught as his fingers tightened around her wrist.

  "Okay," she said quickly. "Sorry."

  In the bathroom, he let go of her arm and she sobbed when she tried to move it. Flexing it gingerly, she found the anti-nausea tablets and opened them.

  "You first," he muttered, and he didn't take his eyes off her as she swallowed two of t
he tablets.

  She knew they would make her sleepy, but they'd work the same on him, and maybe, just maybe, she could stay awake longer.

  "Let me see it," he said, gesturing toward the bottle.

  She put it in his hand, visualizing the directions as he read them aloud.

  "One or two tablets every six hours for nausea and vomiting." He gave her a searching look, then took the pills and swallowed them without water.

  "You should probably take three," she said, "given your larger frame."

  He shot her a disgusted look. "Right. I think I'll stick with two, like you. After all, you're the doctor."

  Kristen sighed, resigned. It would take about ten minutes for the drug to kick in. Then, in his exhausted and debilitated condition, he'd surely fall right to sleep and she'd have no trouble sneaking into the living room to call the police and the hospital.

  He knotted a fist against his stomach and groaned. "Could we get some food now?"

  "Sure." They went back to the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator, her rigid apprehension dissipating into anticipation. Maybe she could play on Rider's peculiar sickness. She hadn't been able to figure out what was causing it, but she thought she had a pretty good idea of what might aggravate it.

  "Let's see," she said casually. I've got ham—" She turned to look at him innocently.

  "Ham?" His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  "Sure. You know, aged, cured pig."

  His pale face turned positively green and he emitted a choked groan.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," she cooed, her diaphragm fluttering with swallowed laughter. "I forgot you don't like flesh. How dumb of me." She'd better be careful though. After everything that had happened, she could easily become hysterical, and she didn't think her captor would like her roaring with laughter at his expense. She bit her lip and composed her face into a mask of feigned innocence.

  "Doc," he croaked. "I'm not doing real well, but I'll bet I've got enough strength to wipe that simpering little smirk off your face."

  His deadly quiet voice sent terror racing through Kristen's veins. "Sorry," she said meekly. She would probably do well to avoid provoking him until the he fell asleep. "There's some eggs. Can you eat eggs?"