Time Rider (Rise of the Skipworths)

by Mallory Kane

  Rider's eyes blazed like topaz in his ashen face as he nodded. "Chicken eggs?"

  She laughed a little nervously. "Sure, chicken eggs. What do you have in the future, soy eggs?"

  His face didn't change.

  She shrugged, wincing as the movement hurt her sore shoulder. "Bad joke. How about if I scramble some eggs and make you a salad? I think the lettuce is still okay."

  "Fine."

  Kristen silently begged the drug to hurry and kick in. How long could it take? All she had to do was keep him happy until he got sleepy. Unfortunately, she wasn't a bit drowsy, and she'd taken the same dose as he had.

  She broke lettuce into a bowl and set it in front of him with a fork and some low fat salad dressing, but he ignored the dressing and ate the greens piece by piece with his fingers as he watched her. Then when she gave him the plate of eggs and toast and poured him a glass of water, he wolfed down the food so fast she was amazed he didn't immediately regurgitate it.

  She was yawning and his head was drooping by the time he'd finished. He grabbed her arm, sending the bitter taste of hatred and fear rippling through her. "Bedroom."

  Finally, he was getting sleepy. Maybe he'd lie down and she could call the police. "I need to do the dishes first."

  He gave her a disgusted look. "Knock it off, would you? Let's get this straight, okay. You stay with me. All the time. You don't do the dishes. You don't do anything. All you do is stay with me and do what I tell you. Got it?"

  Kristen made an involuntary noise of distress as he grabbed her arm roughly.

  "What did I say, Doc?"

  "I stay with you," she parroted hoarsely, tears burning her throat. It was ludicrous. He was debilitated, half-conscious, and he was threatening her and ordering her about. What was wrong with this picture?

  He dragged her into the bedroom while she fought to keep the hope and anticipation out of her face. Once she got him into bed, he wouldn't be able to stay awake, then she could get away.

  He let go of her arm. "Get undressed."

  Kristen stared at the man who thought he'd been sent back from the future to kill her. Her heart pounded and her temples throbbed with terror. What was he planning? Wasn't it enough that he'd threatened to kill her, almost broken her arm, kidnapped her? "No," she said resolutely.

  "No? Doc, did you forget the plan?"

  She shook her head, her chin high. His deadly quiet voice sent chills through her. She had to bite her lip to keep it from quivering. He sounded ruthless, like he would stop at nothing.

  She'd been afraid of him before, like one is afraid of the unknown. But now, he was coalescing into a very known danger. Now she was limp with a terror that she'd seen the other side of too often. She'd treated girls and women who'd been assaulted. She'd lived their nightmares.

  But in her arrogance, she'd always thought she was protected by the very empathy that made her understand their horror. She'd always thought no danger could get close to her without her knowing it. Now she realized the fallacy of her reasoning.

  She'd been somehow distracted by the feelings Rider evoked in her. She'd forgotten he was a crazy man who could harm her. For some reason, the things he threatened and the sensations she gleaned from inside him conflicted, and she'd made the mistake of believing what she felt, rather than what he and everyone else kept telling her. It was dangerous to pick up strays.

  And now, she had done it once too often. She'd let danger get too close. She'd invited it in, and now she was going to live—or die—to regret it.

  He pulled her up close to his face, which was dark with some dread emotion, rage or hatred, or who knew what. It took all her will to keep her gaze steady as the hot lava of his emotions washed through her, emanating from his hand on her arm.

  His lips stretched back against his teeth. "I said get undressed."

  "Please," she said, trying to keep the shakiness out of her voice. Trying not to sound like a victim who has already given up. Terror engulfed her. She could feel her body quivering with adrenaline response. What would she do if he raped her? She wasn't sure she could survive the physical and emotional assault of that ultimate violation.

  "I won't do anything, I promise," she whispered, unable to look away from his burning gaze. "Please don't hurt me."

  "Do it," he grated, swallowing hard.

  Sweat popped out on his brow, and she felt the sickness in him again. It gave her a thread of hope. She gathered every vestige of her doctor's imperious voice she could find, hoping he wouldn't hear the quaver she knew she couldn't completely squelch. "You need to sleep. I'll just be in the other room."

  He grinned again, sending freshly honed shards of terror through her diaphragm. "Like hell you will. Get undressed. I hope you don't think, even if you do think I'm crazy, that I'm dumb enough to go to sleep and leave you to run away?" He laughed, a harsh sound that grated on Kristen's nerves as painfully as his sore ribs punished her side. "Take off your clothes. Now!"

  She shuddered at the cold threat in his voice and despite her determination, she sobbed aloud.

  His eyes flickered downward, over her body. "Look," his voice was soft and strained. "I'm not going to hurt you. I could have killed you already. And believe me, I'm in no condition for anything else."

  His voice had changed, softened, and against her judgment, despite her fear, Kristen had a strange urge to believe him.

  "Now, come on," he whispered soothingly, as if he were talking to a child. "Get undressed. Otherwise I'll have to tie you up."

  That decided her. She wouldn't have a chance if he tied her up.

  With shaky hands Kristen unbuttoned her jeans and slid them down her legs. Then she slid her knit shirt over her head. Once or twice she glanced at Rider, but he was purposefully keeping his eyes averted.

  Once she was down to bra and panties, he said, "Get into bed. No, not on the side near the door. The other side." She climbed into the bed, hovering in the far corner. He lay down on top of the covers without taking off anything, not even his shoes.

  She prayed he'd been telling the truth when he'd said he couldn't do anything. "Move closer, not much. I don't particularly want that lovely little body touching me any more than you do. It's—distracting. But come on." He reached over and grasped the nape of her neck and pulled, gently but firmly, until she was forced to scoot toward him. He stopped the pressure when her torso was about three inches from his.

  He relaxed, but he didn't loose his hold on her nape. His forearm rested against her neck as she lay on her side, facing him. It wasn't terribly comfortable, but it wasn't unbearable, either, so she finally relaxed a bit.

  He lay, eyes closed, half on his side and half on his stomach. Kristen let her gaze roam over him. The white flesh of his arm and shoulder rippled with long, steel-corded muscles, just like his chest and belly. The weight of his forearm against her neck and jaw were at once strangely soothing and disturbing. She didn't like the conflicting emotions his touch evoked in her, the fear and the compassion, the mistrust and the urge to believe him. She didn't like knowing how angry he was, how much he hated her, how badly he hurt deep inside himself. She didn't like feeling his fear.

  Kristen couldn't ignore the battle within her own heart. She couldn't reconcile her reaction to this crazy bum. The sensations he evoked in her were a mixture of attraction and revulsion.

  His essence, so open to her, was a return of the link she had shared with Skipper and had thought she'd never experience again. But this link was with a psychopath who wanted to kill her.

  And there was another problem, too. Why did this maniac kidnapper stir feelings inside her she barely recognized? Feelings she'd never before experienced?

  Why, when he was probably the most dangerous man she'd ever encountered, was she so compelled to trust him, to believe in his outlandish lies?

  Why was his touch, even as it threatened her, so deliciously disturbing to her senses?

  "You might as well settle down," he said without opening his eyes. "Ev
en asleep I'll be able to feel you tense up before you make a move, and these fingers can snap your neck in two seconds." As he spoke, his fingers tightened on her neck, and she felt the nausea that welled in the back of his throat. Then, the fingers relaxed into what she might have imagined was a caress, were it not for his ominous words.

  The caress continued though, after the echo of his words had faded. His fingers moved in a circular motion on her nape, massaging out the knots of tension, rubbing the soreness created by the past hours of fear. Kristen relaxed against her will, soothed by his gentle touch.

  "You can relax, Doc. I swear I won't hurt you," he whispered, then grimaced in pain. "Not yet."

  What was the matter with her? A psychotic had made her a promise and she was willing to stake her life on it. His agony was so real, his sadness palpable.

  She couldn't shake her conviction that he was a decent, honest man. If she'd ever been right in her life, she knew she was right about this. There was no rational explanation for his bizarre behavior, no way his outlandish story could be true, yet all that was inside him was sincere.

  Despite her fear, despite the danger, she wanted to help him, protect him, heal him of the wrenching pains that racked him. And that wasn't all she wanted. There was something else, something that was growing with each hour she was forced to be with this obviously demented man. Something she'd only read of, dreamed of, fantasized about.

  Deep inside her, a sleeping beast was stirring. A dear beast. A sweet, savage beast that terrorized her in ways that this real man, with all his threats, never could.

  Rationally, she knew what was happening. Her doctor's mind diagnosed her reaction easily. But the diagnosis was so alien, so frightening, that her conscious mind fought it with all the weapons at its disposal: logic, rationality, determination.

  Logically, she couldn't be sexually attracted to a man who threatened to kill her. Rationally, she knew he was crazy, his claims of coming from the future couldn't possibly be true. It was probably the Stockholm Syndrome — the inclination of kidnap victims to become infatuated with and dependent on their kidnappers. It was a known phenomenon, although she'd never heard of it beginning this quickly. Well, she would just have to stay calm and rational, and avoid the syndrome until she was rescued.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "So where in the future do you think—do you come from, Rider?" Kristen said, her voice straining with tension.

  He'd almost been asleep. She could tell by the soft, even breaths that escaped through his slightly parted lips. When she spoke, his eyelids twitched open and he smiled.

  He'd frowned, he'd smirked, he'd grinned that awful demonic grin, but this was the first time he'd smiled. Logic, rationality and determination fled when Kristen saw that smile. His eyes, as cold and hard as glacial ice, melted into warm tropical pools, surrounded by soft brown ferns of lashes. His mouth turned from grim lines into the most inviting lips Kristen had ever seen, and the lines in his face vanished as if they'd never been there.

  Once again she thought she caught a glimpse of the man underneath the pain and craziness—the man he might have been. The man who had lost his wife to people he called by her name, the man who had told her he could kill her and had saved her life instead. She thought inanely that she could love that man.

  How strange, when all her life she'd been repelled by safe, normal men whose thoughts and emotions revealed insincerity and duplicity. She'd never been able to ignore those inner sensations enough to date, much less fall in love with any of them. But now she was actually admitting to herself that she could love this psychotic self-acclaimed murderer because he felt safe? She was beginning to fear for her own sanity.

  His gaze was on her lips as she licked them nervously. "Well?" she said, more harshly than she had intended as she pushed away her strange thoughts.

  "Where in the future?" A few of the lines returned to his face and the smile faded, leaving a pale ghost of it behind. "A long way, Doc. Several lifetimes away. Why?" The azure eyes narrowed. "You trying to believe me?"

  "Tell me about it."

  His eyes widened and his brow furrowed.

  What the hell was she doing? If she’d just shut up, he'd be asleep in minutes. But her heart argued with her logical mind. She really did want to know what he thought. She wanted to hear him talk about traveling through time.

  It would help her understand his psychosis, she reasoned, arguing with herself about the stupidity of talking to him when what she wanted was for him to go to sleep so she could escape. It would be useful for her practice—if she lived to practice. "What did it feel like? Did you have a time machine?"

  He closed his eyes and a bitter smile twisted his mouth. "Time machine? Not exactly. I was in the TAINCC, all trussed up as usual, and the next thing I knew I was falling down a dark well." He shuddered. "Then I slammed into a brick wall, literally."

  Kristen watched him, lulled by the warmth of his fingers on her nape, soothed by the gentle calm that seeped out of him through his touch. She had never experienced anything as comforting as his fingers caressing her neck. When had he become so calm? When had she?

  “How did they do it, send you back in time?” she murmured.

  "I don't know, Doc. I'm just the weapon. If they could have sent the robots, they would have."

  "Robots?" she gulped. Her heart fluttered. Now he really was beginning to sound crazy—as if he hadn't before.

  "Sure. You’ve heard of robots, haven’t you?"

  Kristen nodded, moving her head against his fingers. "Well, yes," she said skeptically. "I've seen science fiction movies and read books. So why wouldn't they send—robots? It would make sense, wouldn't it? They'd be almost indestructible."

  Rider sighed, and Kristen remembered how tired and sore he was.

  "Yes. It would make a lot more sense. There's only one problem," he said lazily. "Metal won't travel through time. It acts like gold in a microwave. Flash and burn."

  Kristen stared at Rider, trying to absorb what he was telling her. He looked like a man—a beautiful, battered man—but just a man. And he was telling her things no rational person should believe. He was telling her about the future.

  "How many years?" she asked, closing her eyes as his fingers found a sore spot of tension in her neck.

  "Five hundred."

  "Five hundred? Years?" A rumble rippled through him, as if he'd laughed. Her eyes flew open. He watched her warily, a ghost of amusement still touching his mouth.

  Five hundred years! Five hundred years ago, Columbus had just landed in the new world. Five hundred years ago a lot of people thought the earth was flat. What did people five hundred years from now think?

  She looked at Rider, seeing him for the first time as a man who could have been alive five hundred years in the future. Science fiction stories notwithstanding, he didn't look any different from men today. Unless she considered that his face and body were far more attractive to her than any man she knew in the present. Her face burned as she remembered touching him.

  Then a flicker of amusement rippled through her. She was considering his outlandish story as true. She was held hostage by a crazy man who thought he'd traveled through time, and they were lying in her bed discussing it calmly.

  Still, it was an appealing thought, to talk to someone who knew what it would be like five centuries from now.

  "Tell me about it. What's there? Do we find a cure for cancer? Is the world still as mixed up as it is now?" Kristen actually began to get excited. It was all a game, sure, humoring him, but what a concept! What if you really could look into the future? A pang of regret and grief stabbed her heart. If you could see into the future, could you change it? She thought of Skipper. If she had known ahead of time, could she have saved him?

  "Cancer?" He shook his head. "Not all. Prostate and most all leukemia. They've made a lot of progress with lung cancer. No cure for the common flu either." He closed his eyes, his fingers still making their lazy circles on her neck. "The world wi
ll probably always be mixed up. It's really not that much different."

  She watched him, seeing his mobile face across a landscape of white sheets, feeling the sincerity and honesty that beat within him like his heart.

  It was new to her, this total communion with another person, this certainty that, whoever he was, wherever he'd come from, Rider was honorable and good. And he believed in himself. He believed what he was saying.

  "You're not telling me much," she whispered. "Why don't you eat meat?"

  His eyes flew open in real shock. "Seriously? Do you have any idea how many acres of grain it takes to support one cow? How many people could live off what you people feed one cow so you could eat its flesh and drink its milk?" He coughed and swallowed hard.

  "You don't have milk?"

  "We have kudzu milk. It's ennutriated, like everything else."

  "Well, you still have to feed the cows, don't you? What do you do with them?"

  He laughed. "There are a few in zoological preserves. Like horses and chickens—and pigs." He shot her an amused glance. "And I guess if you were warped enough, and had enough credit, you could eat their flesh, or have real chicken eggs every day. But it's too expensive. The world's too crowded to raise animals for food."

  His voice buzzed with drowsiness and the fingers on her neck slowed. "Did you convince yourself, Doc?" he whispered. "Am I for real?" His heavy lidded eyes caressed her face like his fingers caressed her neck. His mouth was quirked in a quizzical smile.

  "I don't know," she said, licking her lips. His eyes flickered downward and she sensed desire welling up within him. She moved her hand to cover the exposed tops of her breasts even as her nipples hardened just from his glance. Her face burned and panic lanced through her. She tried desperately to think of something to distract his gaze from her nearly naked body.

  "Why do you want to kill me?" Her voice cracked on the incredible words.

  His face changed like a light going out and his fingers tightened ominously on her neck, sending faint cramping waves through her muscles.