Blood in the Fire (Timelaws Trilogy) Page 20

  “Keep going,” Anton said gently as he pushed me and Liz down the shaft.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Anton’s Crushing Words

  HMSS Ingeniur – November 2184

  Elizabeth

  The dark fog began to lift and I let out a soft groan. Severe heat bombarded my skin. Although my body was sore, it felt like my body. A wave of relief washed over me at the realization. I opened my eyes and noted the bright chemical lights above me. We weren’t on the bridge anymore. The alarm repeatedly faded to reveal sounds of straining metal then intensified again.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I pushed myself up. We were in a green, steel room with a series of large computer consoles against the front wall. It was the cargo bay adjacent to the engine room. Luke turned and saw I had regained consciousness. He helped me stand but didn’t answer. Anton was at the shaft door, peering through a small window.

  “Where’s Mark?” I asked. Luke dropped my arm as though it had just electrocuted him. Anton stared at me. Why?

  I turned to Luke. His expression made me sick. “Luke, where is Mark?” I asked again. Explosions from the above decks rattled the whole ship. This had to be the only safe room left, but there was nowhere for Mark to hide in here. “Luke?” Dread gripped my stomach.

  “I don’t… I don’t know,” he said. “We were running and the ceiling was falling...” His voice was raspy, like his throat was constricted and he was forcing the words out. “Mark shoved me. I would have been crushed.” He looked at me as if I were invisible, as though he were talking to the wall behind me. Please, dear God, don’t…no.

  Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to make Luke shut up, but he kept talking. “Anton was up ahead opening the door. I was carrying you. There… there was no time.”

  “Luke, no, please stop,” I begged while shaking my head. I backed up, thinking dumbly that it wouldn’t be true if Luke would just keep his mouth shut. “Don’t say it,” I demanded. Luke turned his gaze down to the floor. Why can’t he look at me?

  But Anton knew I needed to hear it. Still standing by the door behind me, he picked up where Luke left off. “An explosion filled the bridge the instant I closed the door,” his steady voice said from behind me. Please be quiet, I begged telepathically. I didn’t want to turn to him. I couldn’t bear to see the pain in his eyes, adding truth to his heavy words. “Mark wouldn’t have had more than a second,” he continued. “He’s gone.”

  I couldn’t breathe. My vision blurred. The walls around us screamed as heat and internal pressure forced the metal to yield. “Liz, I’m sorry,” Anton said. His compassion crushed me.

  “Why didn’t you shield him?” I yelled. “Anton, you should have saved him.” My body started shaking.

  In a few strides, Anton closed the gap between us. He reached out to pull me backwards into his arms, but I twisted out of his grasp. “I couldn’t in time,” he said.

  No. No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. Mark was alive. Mark had to be alive. Anton tried to come near me again, but I stepped away. My eyes searched his. Please tell me this is a joke. The pain in his expression pierced me like a sharp blade.

  Luke? My brother was frozen in place. Please forgive me, I whispered telepathically. He didn’t respond, just regarded the wall with stone-cold eyes and wrapped his hands into fists to keep them from shaking. I wanted to comfort him, but he couldn’t look at me.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Left Behind

  HMSS Ingeniur – November 2184

  Elizabeth

  Unable to bear Anton’s compassion or Luke’s regret for another second, I ran past Anton to look outside the small window in the door. Maybe I would look out and see Mark standing on the other side. There was nothing but a thin veil of smoke in the narrow shaft.

  “No!” I yelled as I shoved myself away from the door. “Not Mark. Do you hear me? The deal was—I save the universe for you—you save my brothers.” I looked up at the metallic ceiling as though I expected it to speak.

  “Shhh…” Anton said softly. He sounded like a vet trying to quite a crazy horse. But I kept yelling. “Answer me! The universe is safe. Now give me back Mark.” Tears streamed down my face. I brushed them away with a quivering hand. I could fight this.

  A pipe in the back wall exploded and burst into the room. Sticky green liquid began to pour in. It rapidly reached my shoes and started to seep up my dress.

  “Liz, we have to go,” Anton said. “I’m so sorry to have to ask this now. The wizards on the other ship: can they follow us?” His words didn’t make sense. “If we teleport now, will we be leading them back home?” he asked again.

  I stared at him. What was he saying? I remembered all those times my brother made me laugh, how he used jokes so I wouldn’t be scared or sad. Tornado threats were an opportunity for family games in the bathroom. Monsters under my bed transformed into comical creatures cowering in fear, afraid of little girls.

  Anton reached out and gently took my hand in his. Each muscle in my body tensed. I couldn’t go back to a home without Mark. Every movie he liked, his favorite foods, the diner, the jungle gym, the park, everything would be poisoned. I wouldn’t be able to move in that world. There would be no purpose to anything ever again. My stomach clenched at the horrifying thought that I might be able to leave this ship. I searched my heart, but there wasn’t the strength to let him go. I have to return to the bridge.

  An explosion in the next room rocked the entire vessel. I lost my balance and fell in the liquid. Anton’s hand slipped out of mine as he was thrown across the room. Everything went dark. The alarm disappeared. The rattling hum that had been coming from the engine was gone. I knew what had exploded, and without it, the ship was dead. Life support would shut down.

  A single dim emergency light buzzed to life above the door. I saw Anton reach for the handle and use it to pull himself out of the rising liquid. As quickly as he’d fallen, he found his way back to his feet and closed the distance between us. On his knees by my side, he picked me up out of the coolant and pulled me into his arms. This time, I didn’t fight him, just slumped down and sobbed into his shoulder.

  I thought about Luke and how he needed Mark. Luke lived to protect us. Every moment, his thoughts were consumed by concerns for our future and safety and schooling. Mark was the only interruption to that internal dialog that looped endlessly in Luke’s head. What little was left of Luke after Mom and Dad passed, his passion for economics, his love of chess, his excitement in the face of competition and his ability to laugh. It would be lost without Mark. I imagined the rest of Luke’s life. I imagined the rest of my life without Mark: no more of his pranks, no trying to help him over the phone with his calculus homework, no seeing him graduate or having him there at my graduation.

  “Life support is down,” Anton whispered into my ear. “You have to tell me if it’s safe to go home?”

  If I said yes, we would teleport away. The ship would disintegrate with Mark’s body on it, and he would be gone forever. My lips moved to say the word, but no sound came out. I couldn’t do it. Except that Anton and Luke will die if you don’t. I pulled away from Anton’s grip so I could look at him. Then I nodded.

  “Ye-Yes,” I choked. He pulled me right back into his embrace and held me tight as a new wave of sorrow wracked my body.

  I never heard Anton start the teleportation spell and I didn’t feel the usual numbness. Only when I heard the sound of a car driving by outside did I lift my head up to see that we were kneeling in my kitchen. Shards of shattered glass dusted our floor and counters. The dining table had somehow toppled over during the attack. It looked as if the house knew Mark was never coming back and it had torn itself apart with grief. What had I done?

  Chapter Forty

  The Empty Library

  Earth - June 1981

  Elizabeth

  “Wake up,” Luke demanded. His hand on my arm shook me out of a dreamless, vegetative sleep. I looked around. I’d dozed off
on a library bench again. It was one of the few places around town that didn’t have traces of Mark haunting me from the shadows. Fortunately for me, the librarian never locked the doors or shooed anyone out at closing. I guess the neighborhood thieves weren’t the literate kind.

  “It’s four in the morning,” Luke said. “Time to come home.”

  I hated home. Everything there assaulted me with memories of my brother: his dirty laundry, the beers in the fridge, his football waiting for him on the patio, his toothbrush that neither Luke nor I had the heart to remove, the dumb book on my nightstand that he’d pretended to read when I was sick. The list went on. And that was after Luke had closed the door to his room and locked up the garage where all his paintings and art supplies were still laid out.

  “I’m sorry,” I replied. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  “Third time this week,” Luke said. He didn’t used to care if I stayed out late when it wasn’t a school night. Before, I just had to tell him where I was and when I’d be home. Things had changed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again and flipped closed the heavy binder resting on my lap.

  “What were you reading?” he asked.

  The question froze me in mid-motion. “Nothing useful,” I replied quickly as I stood up to shove the binder into my backpack. He grabbed my wrist and held it there.

  “Let me see that,” he commanded.

  I hesitated. “It’s nothing Luke. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Because the text is not written in English?” He grabbed my report and looked at the cover. Seeing the foreign characters in boldface print solidified his suspicions. With a flick of his arm, my report slammed back onto the bench. “What did I tell you about that stuff?” Luke asked. “What part of ‘no more missions’ don’t you understand?”

  “Not everything in our language has to do with missions,” I replied. “We write novels, fiction and poetry. It’s not all danger and…” I trailed off. The word death hung off my lips.

  “And that?” Luke persisted. “Is that a poetry collection?”

  I looked away from him and deeper into the library. Rows and rows of wooden shelves, stacked high with dusty books seemed to stretch forever. It was the perfect setting for a nightmare or a ghost movie. The binder contained everything there was to know about the Timelaws spell. It was a report on implications, execution, known limitations and theories on interpretations and applications. Somewhere in there had to be the solution to bringing Mark back.

  “Well?” Luke insisted.

  “It’s just a report, Luke,” I replied. “Please, let’s not argue over nothing.”

  “Okay, then how about we argue over the fact that you disappeared for two hours yesterday. Five hours the day before that.” His voice grew louder. I was grateful we were the only people in this section. “I looked all over for you.”

  My eyes searched Luke’s tired face for any hint of what the right answer might be. If Mark were here, he would have known how to calm Luke down. My stomach clenched. “Yesterday, I was just up in the station reading. I swear I wasn’t doing anything dangerous,” I told him.

  “And the day before?” he asked.

  “There was an emergency.”

  “I knew it!” he exclaimed. “Liz, you’re grounded. You don’t leave the house unless I say so.” His fist wrapped around my elbow and started pulling me toward the door. I didn’t resist, but my free hand reached for the binder. Luke used his grip to twist me around as he went for the report himself.

  “Give it back,” I demanded. Luke and I had argued several times since we got back from the ship. The last one was because I’d missed Mark’s funeral.

  “This? You’re joking right?” He held the report above his head with disdain. “I think this family has had more than enough of this,” he said.

  “Luke, please,” I demanded quietly. “I need that.”

  “What you needed is a good scolding. Maybe if I had reined you in better from the start…”

  There it was. Why couldn’t either of us bring ourselves to say it?

  “I wouldn’t have gotten involved with magic, and Mark wouldn’t be dead,” I finished for him.

  Luke stared at me as though I’d just dumped a bucket of ice water on his head. For a moment, we both regarded each other. It had been obvious from the start that Luke blamed me. Maybe if he would just say it, we could stop pretending that my relationship with my older brother would ever be the same again.

  “Mom and Dad wouldn’t have let it happen,” he said at last. Huh?

  “Luke, no,” I objected. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t have done a single thing differently. They couldn’t stop death any more then you could.” Shakily, I reached out and rested my hand on his arm. Luke and I had not comforted each other since it happened. It felt foreign to be interacting with him in some way that wasn’t fighting or silence.

  Luke met my eyes with a sheepish smile. “I guess that’s true,” he said. “All that power they had, and in the end, they were run over by a train.”

  I dropped my gaze. “That’s not what happened,” I said under my breath. “A wizard killed them.”

  “What?” Luke asked. I remained silent as he absorbed the news. “Even after that, you still kept doing this?” he accused. And we were back to fighting. At least it was familiar.

  My mind searched through the words that would explain to Luke why his family was so dedicated to the wizard war, despite the great losses. It was at that same moment that I received a telepathic message broadcast to all Darks within range: a distress signal. “Luke, I have to go,” I said. “Keep that binder safe for me. The information inside is confidential.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he protested. Too late. I’d already begun the teleportation spell. In the last moments, as I was fading away from beneath his grip, I repeated once again the same two meaningless words that seemed to make their way into every one of our conversations: “I’m sorry.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Savior

  Earth - June 1981

  Elizabeth

  Kneeling down by the trunk of a tree, I took a heavy breath and stared at the corpse lying face up in the tall grass. The moonlight illuminated his deadpan face so that he looked like a stunned ghost: frozen with his eyes wide and his mouth agape. Please don’t let him be a father, I prayed. It was always harder to break the news when there were kids involved. I wondered why. Mark’s death wasn’t any less painful than my parents passing had been. In fact, it was worse.

  I turned away from the cadaver and crawled through the grass to the next tree over. My mind was just so tired of thinking about Mark. Could this man’s death have been prevented? I perched myself against the trunk so I faced the Caribbean beach. He must have died within seconds of sending out the distress call. It didn’t take me long to get here, but apparently the time to recite a teleportation spell was more than he had.

  “Liz?” someone asked.

  I looked into the forest and saw a shadow heading toward me.

  “I’m here,” I told Anton. He pushed his way through the vegetation, but paused when he caught sight of the body. “The danger’s over,” I confirmed. “You didn’t need to come.”

  “Luke called Tamer,” Anton replied as he walked around the man and lowered himself next to me. “Your brother worried when you disappeared.”

  “Geez, I barely left,” I complained. “He’s changed.”

  “So have you,” Anton countered gently. “You know you’re not supposed to respond to calls until you’ve been psychiatrically cleared.”

  “Yeah, well, talk to Tamer about that. He refused to even consider approving me for missions for at least another month.”

  Anton smiled. “You know he’s right,” he whispered into my ear. I shifted again so that Anton could lean against the tree while I rested on his chest. We sat there and watched the distant waves crashing against the sand.

  Anton was the first to break the silence. “Luke told me
you’ve been disappearing almost every day,” he said. I didn’t respond. Did they really expect me to just sit at home?

  “Did you get Naimi back to Francis,” I asked at last.

  Anton nodded. “Yes, she’s safe now,” he said. Then a smile entered his voice. “Francis gave me an earful about you turning her into a turtle, though. It took us a while to figure out how to change her back.”

  “Us?” I asked. Anton knew how to undo a shape-shift.

  “Well, it was funny,” he offered mischievously. “I guess I didn’t care to be too helpful.”

  I started to chuckle, but sharp pain between my ribs stopped me mid-breath.

  “Are you okay?” Anton asked. His eyes examined me and stopped when he saw the dark spot on my green tank-top. “Liz, you’re hurt.” He started to reach for my shirt so he could see the wound, but I grabbed his wrist.

  “I’ll get to a medical center soon,” I told him. “I just want to stay here a little longer. It’s peaceful.”

  “Medical center. You can’t heal it yourself?” Anton frowned, “How serious is it?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Just a little tricky to get the heal right.”

  Anton hesitated, as though he was considering arguing the matter, but after a moment, I felt the muscles in his arm relax. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Not much,” I said. “A wizard and I fought. I won.”

  “You should have called for help,” Anton reproached. “I would have come.”

  “There was no need. I had him.”

  “He got through your shield,” Anton countered. “You should have called me.”

  “He didn’t get through my shield,” I protested. “I never put it up. And calling for reinforcements would have defeated the point.” Only after I said the words did I realize how counterproductive they were. Anton slipped out from behind me and came around to look at me. His brow furrowed with anger and disapproval.