Time Raiders: The Seeker

by Lindsay McKenna

  Jake watched her pace the perimeter of his apartment, anger clearly present in her eyes and the stubborn set of her chin. “I think so. But what do I have that he wants? Did he bring a prostitute here to…engage me? Again? Why?”

  Delia halted and turned. “Jake! Is your armband still on?”

  Frowning, he lifted his sleeve. “No!” he rasped, leaping to his feet.

  “Tullia stole it! And Kapaneus is a Centaurian.” Delia gulped, her eyes growing huge. “He must have put her up to stealing the band from you.”

  Delia began to search the apartment. She lifted blankets and threw them on the floor. Getting down on her hands and knees, she checked every shadowy corner.

  Jake’s head was hammering and it hurt to bend over. He hunted for the armband with Delia despite how awful he felt. They ended their search gazing at one another across the room. “Tullia took it,” Jake agreed.

  “Kapaneus must have paid her a hefty sum to come in here and lure you to bed, Jake.” Delia glared at him. “And like any man, you fell for the ruse, damn it.”

  Raising his hand, Jake said, “Hold on, Del. My mouth feels like crap. I remember Tullia giving me some wine.”

  “Wine? Maybe she drugged you and that’s why you’re feeling like this?” Delia tried to control her breathing. The only way Jake could get back to the present was if he was in physical contact with her when she pressed the button on her own armband. Otherwise he would remain stuck in this period. Losing the band was a critical, unforgiving error.

  “I think…she did. I remember…God, my mind is like fog, Del.” Jake rubbed his wrinkled brow. “I remember her handing me a goblet of wine.” Snapping his fingers, he groaned, “Yes! I drank mine but she didn’t drink hers. I remember that now. And I asked her why. She laughed and said she’d rather taste it off my lips.”

  Scowling, Delia muttered, “Great line. Save it and you can use it on the next bimbo you meet. So, how far did this go, Jake? Did you have sex with her?”

  He shook his head, flinching from the pain. “I don’t think so. I think I must’ve passed out right after I got my boots off.” Jake decided not to tell her that Tullia had been kissing his lower legs when he started losing consciousness. Noting Delia’s furious gaze, Jake didn’t want to add insult to injury. It amazed him she was so angry over Tullia coming to his bed. He realized then as never before that Delia cared a lot more for him than she’d ever admitted. Despite her fury and jealousy, it gave him hope for them.

  “This is bad, Jake,” Delia whispered. “Your missing armband could be in the scribe’s possession. If he is an alien, think what he could do with it. Track down Professor Carswell in the twenty-first century? Maybe we should go back now to warn her! Anyone pressing that crystal is going to show up at the lab. What if he does that? Our people in Flagstaff don’t know about the alien angle yet. We have no way to warn them except to go back and fill them in.”

  Jake sat down heavily. Holding his aching head between his hands, he tried to think. “Let’s see what we can find out about it first. We need to get to Tullia for some answers.”

  “She lives in a small house about four blocks from here,” Delia said. “And Jake, from now on you have to stay with me at all times. Without your band, you won’t be able to leave here.

  Raising his head, he met her gaze. “Yeah, I know that, Delia. We’re going to have to stick close to one another. The only way you could get me through a time jump is if we’re holding on to one another.”

  Giving him a dark look, Delia snapped, “Right now, I’d like to throw you into the Tiber River and let you live here the rest of your miserable life, Jake. Damn it, that scribe and prostitute tricked you! Sounds like they drugged you in order to steal the armband. And I’ll bet you anything that Kapaneus has it. If he does….”

  “First things first,” Jake muttered. “Let’s go over to Tullia’s house and see what we can get out of her. We can’t afford to overreact, Del. Take this one step at a time?”

  Glaring, she jerked his heavy winter cloak off a peg on the apartment wall and threw it at him. “Let’s get going. Right now, our lives and maybe the entire Time Raider program are in danger.”

  Chapter 16

  D elia was amazed how well her healed thigh felt. She was in great shape for what she knew was going to be a difficult mission.

  Before they left for Tullia’s home, she checked with the head slave to find out if Servilia needed them in the next two hours. He said no.

  Grabbing her armor and putting on her sword belt, Delia met Jake in the atrium. The sky was once again dark and heavy with clouds. The chill and dampness leaked through her thick wool cloak as they walked to the stable.

  In a matter of minutes they were out in the traffic, picking their way among the hawkers, the vendors, the people buying food and other goods. It was impossible to ride abreast of Jake in the congestion. Wagons drawn by horses, donkeys or oxen, and much swifter chariots claimed right-of-way in the seething, ceaseless flow.

  Turning down another street far narrower than the original one, they found the going much easier. Jake rode up beside Delia.

  “Tullia’s domus is down there on the left,” he said, pointing toward a group of reddish colored, two-story stucco buildings.

  “Red,” Delia muttered, frowning. “That’s a real symbolic color for her and her kind.”

  “Don’t be too judgmental,” Jake counseled.

  Delia knew that women in the past had been dealt bad hands time and again. Someone like Tullia, who was beautiful and gifted, with a sense of politics and guile, could use her body to upgrade her situation in life. The same went for Servilia, who had been married, but later in life had become Caesar’s mistress.

  Dismounting, they saw a slave in the street near the apartments. Jake asked him where Tullia lived. The brown-skinned, black-haired youth was crying as he bowed to them.

  “My mistress is dead!” he sobbed. Bowing again, he sniffed, “I am sorry, master, but we just found out Mistress Tullia was run over by a chariot not more than two streets away from here.”

  Scowling, Jake growled, “Dead? Tullia is dead?”

  Delia walked inside the arched brick entrance. She could hear several women wailing from the second floor of the beautiful home. Mouth tightening, she walked back to where the two men stood with the horses.

  Jake looked at Delia, then handed her the reins of her gelding. “She was struck by chariots on the main street we took to get here.”

  “When did it happen?” Delia asked, mounting her horse.

  Jake followed suit. “No more than an hour ago.”

  “Where’s her body?”

  “Taken to a funeral shop not far from where she was killed, apparently.”

  “We need to look at her. Maybe she’s got the armband on her.”

  Nodding, Jake touched his heels to his gelding. They began to gallop down the street, the clatter sharp and urgent as they moved through the scattering pedestrians. At the corner, Jake slowed his mount to a trot. Rounding the corner, he headed toward the establishment where people were prepared for burial.

  The mortuary was a nondescript building set apart from all the rest. After they dismounted, a red-haired slave with blue eyes, a boy about ten years old, took charge of their horses, bowed and gestured for them to enter. Jake thought the child looked Celtic, but said nothing. Julius Caesar had brought many slaves back from Britain.

  Pushing open the door, Jake entered the darkened room. The stench of rotting corpses struck him immediately, and he breathed through his mouth to better handle the sickening odors. The thin light from mica windows at the front revealed the owner sitting at a wooden table. The short man, in his forties, wore a long-sleeved tunic, his legs wrapped in cloth, with thin strips of leather to keep the material in place. His face was round, his well-kept black beard making it look even broader.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked, lifting his head from the parchment he was writing on.

  “We’re look
ing for Tullia. Is her body here?” Delia demanded, coming up to the table.

  “Yes, she is. Are you kin?”

  “We are,” Delia lied, her voice hoarse as she swallowed convulsively to stop from gagging at the smell.

  “She was struck and run over by chariots,” the man said in a monotone.

  Delia didn’t notice any regret in his face or voice. As an embalmer, he must be used to dealing with death every day. Why should Tullia’s demise be any different from the hundreds of others? “And she is where?” Delia managed to rasp.

  He lifted his thumb. “On a table in the back room. Go take a look if you must. I warn you, she’s broken up. She’s next to be wrapped in linen, and then my grave diggers will take her to be buried.”

  Jake didn’t wait for any more talk. He grunted and pushed the dark linen curtain aside. The odor grew worse as they made their way around several tables where bloated bodies were lying stiffly. Some had linen fabric laid across them. Others, the poor ones, lay as they’d died, without being straightened. The whole scene was grotesque and nightmarish to Jake.

  Holding his nose, he spotted Tullia’s twisted form. “There,” he croaked, moving between the tables.

  Delia choked, and her eyes watered as she pressed her fingers to her nostrils. Blinking several times, she hurried toward the table closest to the wall.

  Tullia’s body was badly mangled. Delia could see by the way her spine was distorted that she’d probably died swiftly from a broken back. Her once beautiful face was bloody and battered. Delia watched as Jake quickly rummaged through her bloody garments, then checked her limbs for any sign of the armband.

  “Nothing,” he growled. Holding his breath, he rolled her stiffening body on its side and carefully checked the rest of her garments.

  Delia stepped closer. “Don’t you think if there was any jewelry on her body the owner would have stolen it?”

  Nodding, Jake gently deposited Tullia on her back once more, his hands bloody from the exercise. “Let’s get out front,” he grunted.

  Delia pushed the curtain aside. She spotted a pail of water near the owner’s table. Jake saw it, too, and washed his hands. Straightening, he wiped them on the sides of his tunic.

  “Did you take anything from Tullia’s body?” Jake demanded of the owner, who was eyeing them cautiously.

  “No…no, I didn’t. Two men, merchants from up the street where she was run over, brought her in here.” He glared at Jake. “If something is missing I suggest you talk to them. One is the baker, the other a farrier.”

  Delia dived out the door of the building. Coughing, she held her throat, afraid she was going to heave. Then she felt Jake’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Hang in there.”

  Trying to shake off the odor that now clung to her clothes and her hair, Delia quickly mounted her horse. “God, what an awful place!” Wheeling her mount, she quickly caught up with Jake.

  The street was busy and they had to watch where they rode. Most people knew to get out of the way of horses. “Helluva place,” Jake muttered, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

  “How can that guy work in there?” Delia wondered, hoping the crisp February air would rid her hair of the smell of death.

  Shrugging, Jake said, “He’s used to it. He probably stopped smelling dead bodies a long time ago.”

  “What a job to have!”

  “Makes living in the twenty-first century look good in comparison, doesn’t it?”

  Shaking her head, Delia remained close to Jake as the crowds parted in front of them. “No contest,” she agreed grimly.

  They turned the corner and went up the busier street. In no time they’d located the bakery by the wonderful fragrance of bread in the oven. Delia held the reins of Jake’s horse after he dismounted and went to talk to the owner, who had blood on his tunic, likely from carrying Tullia’s body to the undertaker. The stout man frowned as Jake began to question him, and Delia saw distrust in his narrowed hazel eyes. When he pointed to the farrier across the street, she saw Jake nod and turn away.

  Walking past her, Jake growled, “Nothing. Bring the horses over to the livery. I’ll talk to that big guy with the black curls.”

  Leading Jake’s horse, Delia saw a short, burly man who was massively muscled. He was outside in the courtyard, standing near a fire, while a young slave boy pushed bellows to keep the flames hot. The man hammered relentlessly on an iron shoe for a horse that stood nearby, bridles held by another slave.

  Jake approached the blacksmith as he plunged the red-hot iron into a leather bucket filled with water. Steam spat, then billowed upward in a roiling white cloud. Soon the farrier was deep in conversation with Jake. He pointed to an alley next to the bakery and then shook his head, a remorseful expression on his bearded face.

  Jake came over to Delia and said, “The smithy witnessed a gang of children swarming Tullia’s body seconds after she’d been hit, apparently. He said he saw a tall blond kid, who seemed to be the leader, grab a silver bracelet out of Tullia’s pouch.” Jake studied the lane next to the bakery. “The guy said the children ran off that way.”

  “Great,” Delia muttered. “Did he know where these kids live?”

  Jake mounted. “The farrier referred to them as ‘the rats of Rome.’” Swinging his horse around, he paused next to her. “The runaway children of slaves, they steal to survive. Roman soldiers try to capture them, but there are so many and they move around so much, it’s impossible to catch all of them.”

  “So, we’re going to try and hunt down this blond kid?” Delia asked, feeling sorry for such children. “Because if he presses that crystal, he’s going to get transported back to Flagstaff and the lab. Imagine Professor Carswell’s surprise.”

  Jake grimaced. “I know. I’m not happy about this, either.” His head ached from the drug that had been used to knock him out. “But there’s nothing we can do until tonight, anyway,” he murmured as he urged his horse across the street.

  “You mean steal the relic at the temple?”

  “Yes.”

  Their legs brushed from time to time as they walked their horses down the narrow alley. On either side were gray stucco buildings, some two-story.

  The lane was paved with cobblestones, smooth and well-worn from much foot traffic over time. A chariot could never squeeze through here and many people utilized it as a walkway. Delia spotted a beggar down on the left peeing against one of the stucco walls. A woman was squatted and defecating farther down on the right. It seemed no one was even mildly embarrassed about such things. Delia realized that for most of the Earth’s inhabitants, the great outdoors had always been their toilet. Did humans in the twenty-first century realize how fortunate they were? Time traveling had taught her to be far more appreciative of modern conveniences.

  Jake spotted a group of children in ragged-looking clothes. “Hey!” he said, and set his heels to his horse.

  Delia saw a tall, thin young man with blond hair at the end of the alley. Seven children of varying ages were attacking a one-armed beggar, who was trying to fend them off with his crutch made from a gnarled olive limb.

  Jake jumped out of the saddle as his horse slid to a stop. His focus was the leader, the youth with the blond hair. He was probably in his mid-teens, and on his arm was the bracelet.

  Jake lunged forward, hand outstretched. He grabbed the kid’s shoulder and ripped at the thin material of his tunic.

  With a cry, the blond lurched sideways, off balance, arms pumping like windmills.

  Jake felt more than saw the rest of the pack disappear. He heard Delia yelling at them. Gripping the boy, he took him down. The youth’s narrow face was drawn in rage, and he swung his balled fists with lethal intent.

  “No you don’t,” Jake grunted. He planted his knee on the youth’s thin chest and pinned him there. “Don’t move!” he growled, and reached for the band. Taking it, he settled it back on his own arm, hiding it from view beneath his sleeve.

  “I got it
,” Jake said, hearing Delia’s horse pull up behind him. He eased off the ruffian, who was glaring at him. The boy’s teeth were yellow, the front ones missing. “Get up and get out of here,” Jake growled at him.

  Scrambling to his feet, the youth took off at a run, disappearing around the corner. Jake looked at the beggar, who was lying against the building, his nose bleeding. Picking up his crutch, Jake took it over to him.

  “Thank you, strangers,” the man said. Squinting up at them, he whined, “They took my coins.” Opening his hand, which had two fingers missing, he pleaded, “Can you give an old soldier a few coins?”

  After digging into his pouch, Jake pressed some into the man’s hand. “Here, take these and stay out of this alley. Those children will be back.”

  Getting to his feet, the bearded beggar hobbled away, the coins clenched in his hand. “My thanks to you. May Aries bless you.”

  Jake remounted and shot Delia a look of triumph. “We’re back on track.”

  “We got lucky,” she countered gruffly. They rode down the alley toward the street. It was time to get back to Servilia’s.

  “The kid obviously didn’t know what he had,” Jake said as they rode. “Unless that crystal is pressed hard, it won’t trigger the jump sequence.”

  “Professor Carswell designed it like that on purpose.” Flexing her mouth, Delia said, “I’m not going to stay upset about this, Jake. I’m just glad we got it back. Without it, we were vulnerable.”

  Jake nodded, knowing how tricky it would be, getting back to the future without his armband. Remaining behind in ancient Rome was not a pleasant prospect. “I’m not the first to lose an armband,” he said defensively. “Others have, too.”

  “Yeah,” she snorted, giving him a dark look, “but no one had it stolen by a prostitute. Only you, Tyler.”

  “I was drugged.”

  “So you say.”

  Nostrils flaring, Jake turned his horse into the busy traffic of the street. “Damn it, I would never have invited that woman into my bed. I was targeted and drugged. She knew exactly what she was doing.”