Chapter 29
PRESENT DAY
“What the bloody hell do you mean they went back in time?” Damian demanded. The four-person group winced as a whole, and he dialed back his anger. It wasn’t their fault, but he’d damn well give Castor a tongue lashing when the fool returned.
And it wasn’t as if he didn’t know it had happened. Hell, the memories were merging faster than he could process them. But he didn’t have to love it.
He met the individual gaze of everyone present—Laszlo, Ebba, Ronan, and Alastair—before saying, “I apologize.”
“Papa?”
He shifted to acknowledge his disobedient daughter.
“Hello, Beastie. I see you’ve once again ignored my request to stay home in order to poke your nose into adult business.” There was no real heat in his words, and likely never would be. Sabrina was willful, and making her behave was next to impossible.
She grinned, and her pixieish visage morphed into pure deviltry. Whenever she got that look, he was reminded of a young Alex. Though polar opposite in appearance, they both loved to push the limits and, along with it, Damian’s buttons.
“What was so terribly urgent you needed to follow me?”
“Uncle Alex. He’s without his magic.”
Damian hung his head, recalling that significant detail as the new memory formed.
And wasn’t it just his luck? He pinched the bridge of his nose.
The struggle to overcome his fear was great.
Yes, Alex was as resourceful as a London alley cat, but without the ability to manipulate time or heal himself, he was at great risk.
“Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into, Ollie,” he muttered.
“Quoting Laurel and Hardy, Dethridge? How droll,” Alastair said with a chuckle. “Definitely fitting for our wayward friend, I’d say.”
“Did you know he was going back?”
“Not until it was done.” With a disapproving glance at Laszlo, he crossed the sidebar and poured himself a scotch. “Anyone else care to join me?”
Sabrina lit up. “I—”
“Not a chance, Beastie,” Damian cut in, forestalling her. With ping-ponging warning glares between his best friends, he said, “Put the word out, I’ll murder anyone who gives in to her wheedling.”
“Sure, and the wee beastie doesn’t need our help to get into trouble, Dethridge,” replied Ronan O’Connor, Guardian of his children and Sabrina particularly.
For a man standing at six-and-a-half feet, he was the biggest pushover known to humankind.
One pleading look from her, and Ronan was putty in her tiny hands.
“Okay, so how do we handle this?” Ebba asked. “Laszlo and I have been back to the mountain with Quentin and have found no trace.”
“How long has it been?”
“Two months.”
Two months? Impossible! In his newly formed memories of the events, they’d only been there a week at most.
“Time is unfolding there and in here”—he tapped his forehead—“simultaneously. I know what has happened, but not what will.” And wasn’t it frustrating as hell?
Alastair handed off a tumbler. “Which means Alex and Wilder sought you out at some point. What can you tell us?”
Damian sipped his scotch to buy a moment and reorganize his thoughts.
This had happened previously when the timeline was changed to save Ebba.
The new memories disconcerted him, and he always had to backtrack to make sure what he remembered of the past had happened correctly.
If the smallest thing were to change, it could mean vanquished enemies were still a threat.
“Abbie opened a portal to 1875. On the other side of the jump, she encountered a band of half-rate outlaws and a Native American Guide.”
“A guide, as in someone hired, or a Guide, as in a spirit walker?” Alastair asked, frowning slightly as if needing to sort it out for the story.
“Wait,” Ebba commanded. Turning to Laszlo, she asked, “Isn’t that technically what you are?”
“Yes and no. You could say I was until I became a Reaper.”
“But Stands-in-Shadow also had Seer abilities,” Damian explained. He gave them all a sardonic look. “May I continue?”
“Yes, Papa. Please do. This is so interesting. Don’t you find it interesting, Ronan?”
Sabrina was perched on the dining room table with her hands folded in her lap and her legs swinging to a rhythm only she heard.
“Aye,” Ronan agreed, but there was laughter in his voice.
It took everything Damian had not to roll his eyes. Thank goodness for centuries of control.
“Abbie and Shadow climbed the canyon to escape,” he said. “They were both wounded, however, and she fell. Draven Masters and Jonas Thorne arrived in time to save her.”
“Oh!” Hand in the air, Sabrina squirmed.
“What is it, Beastie? What can’t wait?”
“Draven. He’s like you, Papa. His new memories are forming right now, too.”
“Bloody hell, you’re right.” He glanced at Ronan. “We should call and loop him in.”
“Sure, and I’m on it.”
“If they saved her, why not send her back?” Ebba asked, sliding a fruit-and-cheese platter onto the table and lifting Sabrina down with a bop to the nose.
They all gathered round for the rest of the tale.
“Abbie’s memory was damaged in the fall, and though Nate—”
“Grandpa Nate was there?” his daughter squealed in delight.
“Sabrina Dethridge, if you don’t let me get through the telling of this story—”
The air around them grew thick, and a light flared in Ebba’s bedroom seconds before Draven and Ronan strolled out. Masters looked like a bear with a sore thumb.
“Et tu, Dethridge?”
“Yes,” Damian replied with a rueful grin. “I was about to tell them of Nate and Evie’s involvement.”
And so, together, he and Draven relayed the tale, with him ending his part in the saloon of the Globe.
“I infused Wilder with enough magic to teleport should he get into trouble while I was gone,” Damian concluded.
The Guardian appeared sickly suddenly.
“What is it?”
“Abbie, it seems she created another portal,” Masters said.
“And that’s not a good thing?” Laszlo asked, sharing a nervous glance with the others.
“No. Castor and Wilder were left behind. She made an entire cabin disappear, occupied by herself and two killers.”
“Morcant,” Sabrina whispered. “He’s back, Papa.”
There weren’t many things able to frighten Damian, but the return of his most evil and hated enemy was one.
“Where?”
She turned her pale face up to his.
“Where, Beastie? Tell me now.”
“You can’t go to the top, Papa. If you do, he won’t be sent back.”
There was a but coming. There was always a but when it came to the Arcane Devourer.
“And if I don’t go?”
“Mr. Royal won’t live, and he needs to save Abbie.”
Draven swore, using every French word in his arsenal and adding some English phrases to boot.
“My sentiments exactly, Masters,” Damian said.
The wind on the peak was cutting, whipping the falling snow into a frenzy. Whether caused by predicted conditions or her magical portal, Abbie didn’t know, but it was brutal. Worse than the day she’d fallen.
Thirty feet from her, a half-buried body rested. For a brief instant, she thought maybe something had happened to Wilder, and she’d dreamed her entire time travel in a delirium. As if perhaps they had reached the summit during their climb, but were on the verge of death.
The wind kicked up, shifting the snow and revealing blond hair—not brown—and a strong jawline.
Royal.
Fighting the blinding blizzard, she trudged to him.
His skin was pale, leaning toward gray. How long had he been here? Had the portal staggered their arrivals again?
Kneeling, she sought a pulse, and finding none, she hung her head. He hadn’t deserved to die like he had. Despite doing what he needed to survive in the past, he was a good man, deep down.
“You can save him.”
She spun, falling back against Royal’s body.
Silas was huddled by a rock outcrop, tucked away from the worst of the storm. His fingers and nose were a dark purple, and she suspected frostbite had set in.
Did he retain his gun? If so, he was still a threat.
“I don’t know how,” she confessed. “My magic was latent until the day I fell two years ago. Then a Guardian bound it.”
He nodded. “I suspected the disturbance was you. It was the only thing that made sense.”
A sob caught her throat as guilt rushed in. “I didn’t mean to kill Julia. I swear, Silas, I—”
“You may not have meant to, but you did.”
Wishing she could make up for all the death and destruction she’d caused, Abbie nodded and swiped at the ice forming on her lashes. “I know, and I have to live with that forever. I’m so sorry, Silas.”
“It’s not enough! You were responsible for murdering the woman I love,” he hammered.
He wasn’t wrong, and if she didn’t fear freezing to death, she’d likely have wallowed in the misery of his truth.
Hoping to divert him to survival, she asked, “Where’s Morcunt?”
Although his mouth tightened, he didn’t respond. Instead, he cupped his hands and blew on them.
“But think about it, Abbie. If you were able to transport us here, you can get us off this damned peak. Maybe send us back before the last jump. Before Morcant killed my brother.”
“You know it wasn’t me?”
An emotion flickered in his eyes, giving him away.
“You think I did it,” she said. “You think I’d hurt the only person in your group who was kind to me?”
A frown appeared before he dropped his head on his folded arms. “I don’t know.”
Regardless of his belief, she had to save him if she could. He was the only person able to help her if Morcant returned.
“Abbie.”
Draven’s voice drifted to her as she was halfway to Silas, and she couldn’t quite understand how. She spun in a slow circle, searching for the source.
“Abbie.”
The ring!
She touched it and opened her mind to the static she now recognized as voices.
“Draven?”
“Hello, chér.”
The tight band of tension around her ribs snapped, leaving her shaky with relief.
“Where are you?”
“A base camp, with Ronan and Damian.”
“Can you help us? Silas is with me—”
She was almost to him when Draven cut through.
“No, chér. Silas’s body is here, with us.”
She lifted her head and met Silas’s glowing eyes. Terror paralyzed her as Morcant’s glamour fell away.
“Abbie?”
His ghastly, evil smile widened as he stalked her backward steps.
“It’s Morcant, posing as Silas.” Even in her mind, her voice squeaked.
“We know,” Damian replied. “Please do exactly as I say.”
“Okay.”
“Visualize the base camp here, where we are. Do you remember it?”
“The cabin just off the parking area?”
“That’s the one,” he replied approvingly. “The parking area is empty. No one is about. Picture yourself here, and do it now.”
Morcant was closing in fast, but she couldn’t leave Royal to the elements and forgotten like yesterday’s garbage.
Turning, she retraced the fading holes she’d made, running as fast as she could.
Morcant’s evil energy was a pulsing, living thing.
A maniacal killer-monkey on her back. She’d always hated it when victims in slasher flicks glanced over their shoulders to see where the killer was.
The move was stupid and always resulted in a fall, leading to their death.
But damned if she didn’t do the same thing!
He was less than twenty feet away, and he’d done the same as her, using her footprints to gain ground.
The hair along her skin lifted as he raised his arms, and a blue light, similar to lightning, cracked between his fingers.
He intended to use the same move he’d done in the cabin!
“Oh, fuck!”
She dropped beside Royal, pulling his body half atop hers with a strength she didn’t know she possessed.
The bolt struck him, arching his back and traveling through him to her.
The high-powered jolt was like acid in her veins, and she screamed her agony. Less than three feet away, Morcant threw back his head and laughed as he recharged for another blast.
“Fuck you, motherfucker!” she shouted, hugging Royal to her as she closed her eyes and visualized the parking area below. Her cells already coursed with liquid fire, and the teleport took all of a second.
When she lifted her lids, it was to find herself surrounded by four magical saviors, two of whom she didn’t know.
But she didn’t need them this time.
She knew precisely what she had to do.