Kiss Across Tomorrow (Kiss Across Time Book 8)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  She put the book aside, as he eased himself onto the cushion. “For what?” she asked. “Because of us, you have gone through…I don’t know what. My imagination sheers off every time I wonder.”

  Sebastian, who had shepherded Nial downstairs, sat beside him.

  Nial shook his head. “You jumped back to see Winter and Sebastian, weeks after you had stopped looking for Brody. You gave them hope.”

  “I thought I had impaled them with what I thought was the truth,” Taylor said softly.

  Sebastian grinned. “You did. Yet it was an answer of sorts, something we badly needed. It started us thinking. When you came back to tell us about Brody’s car and bring us here, we were braced for whatever came next. Which ended up being a roller-coaster through hell.”

  “You didn’t give up on us,” Nial said. “That is my definition of a good friend.”

  Taylor was warmly pleased by the compliment. “Sebastian and Winter were so sure of you, it made me doubt, too. Because of them, we didn’t dismiss the burned-out car as just another mystery.”

  Nial’s smile grew warmer. He glanced at Sebastian. “I think we’ve all learned something, with this.”

  “Will you stay?” Taylor asked. “At least until Nayara returns and provides her explanation.”

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t move off this couch if you paid me, right now. Two flights of stairs and I’m exhausted.”

  Two days later, long past midnight, Veris came to find her. He picked up Taylor’s hand and took her to the surgery. The house was still and silent, for even the vampires were resting.

  In the surgery itself, Winter was lying on the top of the counter by the door, her head on her arm, deeply asleep.

  Alex smiled at Taylor. “I’ll put Winter on a bed somewhere and leave you alone.” He lifted Winter and carried her back into the house.

  Taylor’s gaze moved to the occupied bed.

  Brody was sitting up…and it was the Brody she remembered. His body had filled in, the wasting reversed. His face was almost the same, except his cheeks were still hollow. His eyes were…wary.

  She hurried to the bed. She wanted to throw herself into his arms but hesitated.

  “Christos, please hug me,” he said softly.

  Taylor kissed his cheek, instead. Her heart slipped loose and thudded. “When you’re on your feet again, perhaps,” she said carefully. “I don’t want to impede your recovery in any way.”

  “You sound just like Veris,” Brody said. “He won’t switch off from full doctor mode. Absolutely relentless.”

  Veris stood on the other side of the bed. He had his arms crossed. “You don’t realize how close it was. Neither of us will do anything which might jeopardize you again.”

  “We,” Brody muttered and smoothed the cover beside his hip.

  Taylor glanced at Veris. His eyes met hers. Unhappiness curled through her.

  “He told me about you, you know,” Brody added. “About what you were going through. What I did to you.”

  Taylor flinched. “Everything?”

  “He liked telling me. About your melt down in a coffee shop, Taylor. How you stopped talking to each other.” His gaze dropped away again. “Then, how you were happy again. Together.”

  Veris’ in drawn breath was harsh. “You gave up,” he breathed. “That’s why you stopped talking to Nial.”

  Brody smoothed the cover with rhythmic movements. “I knew what I had done,” he said softly.

  Horror curled through her. Taylor felt ill. It was nothing to do with her symbiot. This was a purely mental nausea. “Oh, Brody…” she whispered.

  Veris came around the bed and rested his hand on her shoulder. “No, not now,” he said quietly. “He’s already trembling. Look.”

  She looked. Brody was shaking. This was testing his endurance.

  Guilt was a hot wash through her middle.

  Veris moved up to the top of the bed. “We’ll bring the twins and Marit to see you tomorrow, when they’re awake. For now, you must rest.”

  “I’ve rested enough,” Brody muttered, as Veris shifted him on the bed, so he was horizontal.

  “Tomorrow,” Veris said shortly. He hesitated. “There will be a tomorrow for you, Brody. You nearly lost that. Enjoy the prospect.”

  Then he turned and gathered Taylor in his arms and led her away.

  Less than forty-eight hours later, Brody walked down to the sunroom unaided. He moved as slowly as Nial had done and sat heavily once he was there. Everyone in the room at the time—which was nearly everyone in the house right then—paused what they were doing. Even the TV was switched off. In silence, they watched Brody.

  “Just don’t ask me to tango,” he said, his voice strained.

  Taylor looked at Veris, who had followed him down. Veris’ gaze was unreadable.

  Two hours later, Nayara appeared in front of the fireplace, her arms around a man of clear Greek descent. “This is Càel Stelios,” she told everyone. “Càel is the head of the Agency, which is why I brought him today. Brody, Nial, it is good to see you on your feet. Shall we finish this story? Everyone has been patient long enough.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  All the jumpers scattered across the globe to collect everyone else and bring them back to the house. Even though they could jump across the world instantly, it took time at the other end for everyone to detach from their affairs and prepare to jump back.

  Slowly, the sunroom filled. More chairs were brought from the kitchen. The twins sprawled on the rug in front of the loveseat, where Veris had settled beside Taylor. Brody watched them arrange themselves, with a tight expression which hid his true reaction, before turning in the armchair to face the fireplace, where Nayara waited.

  When at last everyone was settled and waiting, there were nineteen people in the room.

  Nayara looked around the room. “Càel wanted to see this moment,” she said. “You do not realize it but all of you here are the core members of the golden age of time travel. You are living that moment right now. This is the single time in history when natural time travelers were most active. What you have been learning and discovering will shape the future in ways you cannot begin to imagine.

  “In my time, when we learned of your activities, the historians and the time experts, the scientists, all wanted to study the period and the formation of your laws, which you have passed on to future generations. We set up research grants and took a select few of the primary investigators back to these times—spread across the handful of decades before you were forced underground.”

  “We’re a research project?” Remi said, offended.

  Nayara smiled. “I imagine, somewhere far in my future, I am the subject of someone else’s research. It is how we learn, Remi.”

  Remi scowled.

  “One of our researchers was an Agency member, a vampire called Rufus Shore,” Càel Stelios said. “He is one of the social historians. Politics is not his forte, though. He studies the connections between people and how they influence history. He spent years building maps of the interconnections between all of you.”

  “Why didn’t he just ask Veris?” Taylor said. “Veris is alive in your future.”

  “The subject is subjective,” Càel said. “Veris could provide markers—what you call bookmarks. He left the objective analysis to Shore. That’s where things got messy. We didn’t know until recently, though.” He grimaced. “We spend our lives ensuring history is not damaged yet continue to be amazed by the novel ways in which it gets screwed up. This one…well, Nayara investigated. I’ll let her explain.”

  Nayara nodded. “Taylor, you have always been fascinated by the mythology of Inigo Domhnall.”

  Taylor jumped. “Brody’s father? Yes. Although I didn’t know it was Brody’s father when I was…well, researching him. They were simply stories I’d heard when I was a kid and they led me to Brody…”

  “Yes, we know the story,” Nayara said, with a smile. “Of course, you are not the only version of you
across the timescape who wanted to know more about Domhnall. Do you remember asking Brody to navigate you back there, so you could meet his father?”

  Taylor nodded. “We decided against it, in the end. Brody would have been too young a child and linear jumps are so damn tricky.”

  “It was a nexus decision,” Nayara said. “In the alternative world, you decided, instead, to jump to a different, yet associated world, so you could keep your corporal bodies and leave the child Brody intact. In fact, that version of you and Veris and Brody jumped to this world, in the fifth century. They stayed for nearly a week.”

  “Wait,” Veris said shortly, frowning. “Brody, do you remember this? You should, if they were here.”

  Brody frowned.

  “You were about eight, as far as we can tell,” Nayara said. “Your brother Dara was a young man.”

  Brody rubbed his temple. “The human memories are cranky at best. There’s something…a tall man. A woman who smelled good.”

  Veris gave a soft laugh.

  “And a big man. Him, I remember. He was a giant. He gave me…something.” Brody’s face cleared. “A kite, which he made from waxed cloth. It was the wonder of the village and it was mine. I remember that. Every other kid hated my guts, which was a nice change.” His gaze shifted to Veris. “It was you.”

  “Another me,” Veris said gently. “Clearly, a version of me with more patience for bratty kids.”

  Aran laughed. Veris pushed his foot into Aran’s side.

  Brody’s smile faded. He looked back at Nayara. “They were there. What of it?”

  “Your brother Dara. You never mentioned him to Taylor and Veris, or anyone. Why not?” Nayara asked.

  “Because there was nothing to say. Dara was a domineering big brother, the son of my father’s first wife. Dara disappeared…it wasn’t long after the kite thing. Then, only a few years later, Arthur’s court imploded through treachery, the Saxons came pouring into Britain, and I was enslaved.” Brody shrugged. “Everyone was lost to me, then, although I didn’t have time to notice. I was too busy surviving. Why do you ask?”

  “Rufus Shore was the one who came up with the theory that the alternative Veris had visited you as a child,” Nayara said. “He wondered if it influenced you in some way, later in your life. He went back to when he thought the meeting might have happened, where he met Dara. Dara remembered the Northman clearly but could remember less about the other two. It wasn’t enough to confirm the theory, so Shore did something which goes against every tenant and rule and policy the Agency has.” Nayara grimaced. “He brought Dara forward to this time period. He had him observe you and Veris and Taylor, to confirm you were the three he had seen a few years ago in his personal timeline.”

  “Jesus wept…” Veris breathed, his voice strained. “How long ago was this?”

  “He picked the year he knew for certain the three of you were together—the first year you met,” Càel said.

  Brody sighed. “That’s what Dara said—he had been watching us for twenty-five years. He wasn’t killed when I was a kid. He came here.”

  “You mean, this Shore idiot left him here?” Alex said, stunned.

  Nayara shook her head. “Dara was a man of his time. Uneducated and narrow-minded. Brody was, too. You all were, those of you who have come through from such periods. You adapted, though. Your minds were stretched. You learned wisdom and tolerance, morals and values. Dara did not have the benefit of that wisdom. He landed here in what was the twentieth century. To his fifth century sensibilities, this world was a fantasy land of wonders and privilege. It was full of riches which every single person received, not just the nobility. Then he saw Brody, his little brother whom he had resented, living in this world—happy, rich and immortal. It ate at him. His resentment grew even more.”

  “He ran away from Shore,” Càel Stelios added. “He took all Shore’s equipment, including the weapons you encountered in the caverns. The survival instinct which has allowed Brody to live through fifteen hundred years was as strong in Dara. He learned quickly. We’re still putting together what happened. I suspect Brody can tell us most of what Dara did for the next twenty-five years, because Dara would have told him.”

  “In Technicolor detail,” Brody said. “He crowed about it. He found the gangs in L.A., who put him to work. He barely knew what drugs were for and didn’t care about them. He did know how to fight and became one of their best soldiers. He moved up the ranks until he was a senior capo for the Columbian cartel which supplied the gangs. Then he killed the head of the cartel and took over for himself. He became king of his own little fiefdom in Columbia. All so he could keep watching us and stew over the injustice of it all.” Brody held up his hand. “His fury over his aging body, when I still looked like this…it drove him on, kept him obsessed, for all those years.”

  “Why didn’t Rufus Shore find him again and boot him back to the fifth century?” Aran demanded. “Instead of letting him fuck up my father’s life?”

  Càel gave Aran’s question sober attention. “Because unlike your fathers and mother, Aran, some people are weak. They know they are weak. Rufus Shore is one of them. He was forced to return to his personal timeline—our time—because his symbiot had to recover. When he returned, he told no one what had happened. He hoped it would sort itself out. He also waited for a time wave to come through—a seismic shift in history which would ripple down from the changes Shore had made and any changes Dara would make while he was here.”

  “The time wave didn’t arrive. We’re still not sure why,” Nayara said. “When no major changes in history registered, Rufus Shore figured he was off the hook. He thought that perhaps Dara, a fifth-century man, had perished through his own ignorance here in the twenty-first century, which can be just as perilous as older periods. So Shore went back to his work and told no one about any of this.”

  “The only reason we learned of it,” Càel continued, “is because we got to know the members of David’s natural jumpers cohort. Veris mentioned in passing the loss of his long-term partners, back in the twenty-first century.” Càel sighed. “I didn’t want to pry—it was still clearly a painful memory for him. I asked Rufus Shore about it, instead, as he was studying everyone in this time. Rufus looked as though he might have an embolism on the spot. Nayara and our security chief, Rob, are good at squeezing a subject. They got to work on Shore.”

  “We didn’t have to try hard,” Nayara admitted. “He cracked, and it all came pouring out.” She paused. “You have no idea the horror we felt at the changes we had introduced. Our ignorance was not an excuse. We have—everyone at the Agency—we have not stopped working on righting this. For a long time, the solution to fixing it evaded us. That was when I came here and befriended Taylor to learn every detail in hope we might find a solution. It quickly became clear to us that Brody had so damaged Veris and Taylor with his departure that simple nudging would not do. So I came here to disclose myself and discovered you had found a way forward, after all.”

  She smiled at Taylor. “It was not all manipulation and lies. Some of the most peaceful and pleasant hours of my life lately have been in your company.”

  Taylor shifted uncomfortably. “Was there ever an Irishman?” she asked.

  Nayara’s smile faded. “His name was Ryan. We were together for nearly nine hundred years.”

  Càel’s expression shifted. Taylor saw Nayara’s pain mirrored there and realized they had been a threesome, once.

  Nayara looked at Veris. “Do you understand now why returning Dara to his own time would have been the most painful punishment we could have delivered?”

  Veris let out a gusty breath. “He would have imploded with the unfairness of it all.”

  Taylor lifted her hand. “There’s something I still don’t understand. We could never find Brody—or Nial—on the timescape. They disappeared. We thought they had done it deliberately, so we couldn’t find them.”

  Brody winced.

  “I don’t think Dara coul
d have figured out how to shield them,” Taylor added. “Did Shore do that, too?”

  Nayara glanced at Veris. “I suspect you already have the answer.”

  Veris’ brows came together. “The lodestone,” he said softly. “Electro-magnetism.”

  Nayara nodded. “The finger rock—the monolith—is an iron core wrapped in calcimine, in a region which suffers through more lightning strikes than anywhere else in the world. The monolith has been struck repeatedly. The lodestone core is magnetized—a fact the cartel used to shield them from radar and other electronic surveillance…and Dara’s two prisoners from the timescape.”

  “Shielding,” Veris said, shooting a glance at Sydney.

  Sydney raised a brow at him, looking puzzled.

  “You said I built the shield which stopped us from jumping out of the building, when we met you in the future,” Veris told her. “I think I just learned the core principles for building it.”

  “Check the timescape, Mom,” Marit murmured. “There’s a bookmark there now—a huge one.”

  “Why wasn’t there a bookmark before?” Taylor demanded.

  “If I understand your form of jumping properly,” Nayara said, “then the bookmark didn’t form until the time loop was complete.”

  “Veris had to come back here for the second time,” Sydney said, her tone one of understanding.

  Nayara nodded. “There only remains one last unanswered question in my mind. Dara watched the three of you for years—which I can understand. Brody fueled his anger, which gave his life meaning. With each passing year, as you thrived and built an intimate circle of friends and prospered, then had children to add to the insult…I am sure his obsession grew. Only, why did he take you, Brody? That is what he did, isn’t it?”

  Brody scratched at the arm of the chair with his thumbnail. “He confronted me in Edgartown, not long after we brought Nial here for the first time. He told me to leave—leave Veris and Taylor. He wanted me to come with him. I told him to fuck off.” Brody looked around the room, his gaze skittering, not looking at anyone directly, especially Taylor and Veris. “I wanted to dismiss him as a crackpot. He was human and couldn’t have survived the centuries. The real Dara was long dead. Only, he knew what I was. He knew about time travel. He knew I had a brother I had never told a living soul about. And we have seen some strange things over the years, so maybe….” He shrugged.