CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“HEY, brIE?” SAM LAID HER HAND on Brie’s shoulder.
The pain of the godawful leap and landing was finally receding. Brie’s temples still felt as if they’d been split open, and her body felt as if it had been in a really bad, really long game of Twister.
She lay on the floor of Nick’s office, curled up in a ball, her face wet from so many tears. Sam knelt beside her, still in her camouflage, smiling reassuringly at her. “You’ll be okay. Hey…you’re home.”
She didn’t want to be home! Brie somehow sat up, moaning. And then she saw Nick, standing by the huge window behind his desk, arms folded, stance braced, his back to her as he stared outside. It was raining.
“Damn you!” Brie cried, heaving to her feet. Sam kept her hand on Brie’s elbow to steady her. “Send me back! Send me back now!”
Nick turned. “What happened to you?”
“Aidan happened to me. You’ve even admitted it—he was turning back to us! I cannot let him hang.”
Sam put her arm around her.
Nick said, “It’s September 26, 2008, Brie. He was executed in 1502.” His stare was cold.
Brie’s heart stopped. He was telling her that even though a moment ago Aidan had been very much alive, he was currently very dead. “History is often wrong.”
“I don’t give a damn about history,” Nick snapped, “unless I’m hunting a coincidence. But Fate is Fate.” He picked up a folder from his desk and handed it to her. “You’ve got one hour to eat, shower, whatever. I need a complete debriefing.”
Brie was dismayed. “I am going back to save Aidan from execution!”
“If his hanging is meant to be, it will be. You’ve got one hour, kid. I suggest you look at the file.” Nick walked to his door, opened it and waited for them to leave.
Brie shook with rage. “I quit.”
His dark brows lifted. “Fine. And when you change your mind, I’ll rehire you. You’re damn good in the basement.”
Brie began shaking her head. Tears battled her eyelids.
“You’re still getting debriefed. Thoroughly. Your love life is not going to get in the way of what I do here at CDA.”
Brie decided to take the file and walk out of his office, the building, this life. She hoped never to lay eyes on Nick again.
Obviously he could read minds as well as any Master, because his smile was hard. “You’re not allowed out of the building, so don’t even think it.”
Brie cried out and stormed past him, fighting her terror for Aidan. Sam followed, putting her arm around her. “We can use my office,” she said, her gaze kind. “You’re acting like a thirteen-year-old.”
Brie looked at her as they slipped into a small, corner office on the other side of the building.
Sam was right. Ranting and raving wasn’t going to help.
Sam shut the door, removing her vest. She went to a small fridge and took out two bottles of water, handing one to Brie.
Brie had never seen her so kind. She was used to Sam being tough and angry, in warrior mode.
“He hired me the moment you vanished with Aidan,” Sam said, flopping in her desk chair. “Brie, you know him better than I do. The man can be a royal bastard, but he has loads of integrity.”
Brie sat down on the only other chair in Sam’s small, very sterile office. She realized she still clutched the file to her chest. She eased her grasp and finally breathed. “How does he go back in time?”
“I have no idea. Probably the way the Masters and demons do—a dash of otherworldly DNA.” Sam smiled.
Brie did not smile back. “I have to go back. How can I convince him to let me go?”
“Maybe after the debrief you can talk him into it. Look, Brie, truth is, Nick cares about you. I’m pretty sure that there are a few agents lost in time, and Nick has some personal issues going on here.”
Brie’s eyes widened.
“Maybe you should read that file. When he said an hour, he meant an hour. Burgers or pizza?”
Brie blinked. “Pizza. If I see red meat again, I’ll be sick.”
Sam smiled and lifted the phone.
Brie looked at the file and saw Aidan of Awe typed neatly on the index tab. Her heart lurched with dread. She opened it and her disbelief began.
The file was twenty-seven pages long. There were eighteen Sightings, all reported by CDA agents.
Brie began to tremble. In 1942 an agent had sighted Aidan in 1428 in London, where he’d destroyed a handful of demons; in 1818 an agent had sighted him in the northwestern Highlands in 1488, during a terrible clan war infested with demons and subs.
Aidan’s role had been unclear. Brie began to breathe hard.
He’d been a Master in the first Sighting, but she was pretty sure he’d been in his dark, angry-at-the-gods mode for the second one.
Her heart racing, she found another Sighting prior to 1502, and it was equally ambiguous.
There were six more Sightings, and in several, he had reportedly turned his back on the Innocent.
One fact was clear. CDA agents had been traveling through time for the past two hundred years. Nick was hardly the only one who could leap into the past.
She looked up at Sam. “This isn’t helpful.”
“Keep going.”
She had reached the second half of the file.
He’d been sighted—and photographed—in Rome in 2007, Madrid in 2005 and London in 2004.
There were Sightings in Milan, London, New York and Beverly Hills.
Every single one was after the millennium.
Photos were clipped to each report. Brie stared at Aidan, clad in the Gucci leather jacket she had found in his chamber and tight, faded Levi’s.
He had never looked so good. She ignored the fact that there was a woman hanging on his arm in every photo. There were a dozen in all.
She thought she would die from the heartbreak of their separation and her fear for his life. But didn’t this mean he’d survived?
She realized Sam was watching her. A box of Kleenex appeared by her right hand. Brie took a tissue and wiped her tearing eyes, then looked up. “He makes it, doesn’t he? Look at these photos of him in the twenty-first century!” But she looked again and saw how carefree his face was.
She was looking at Aidan before his fall.
“You didn’t read the reports, or you didn’t read them carefully,” Sam said quietly.
Brie flinched and met her serious gaze.
“All the Highland Sightings end in 1502. After that year, he is never seen in the Highlands again.”
Brie was afraid. “What are you trying to tell me?”
Sam was grim. “In those reports, the agents are clear. Aidan is dressed in modern clothes, but he is a medieval man visiting the future, having come from the past. I think in every postmillennium Sighting, he came from a period within several years of his induction into the Brotherhood—which we think was in 1421.”
Brie’s hands began to shake. Aidan had brought Allie home last year and they’d traveled from 1430. Allie had told them so.
That had been before Ian’s murder, before his fall.
Brie threw the files at Sam, standing. “So he is hanged in 1502? That’s what you think?”
“It’s what I think, Brie. I mean, there’s a tomb at Awe with his effigy on it. That’s in the case file, too. It’s a big deal for the locals. He is a huge local myth—the Wolf of Awe, a man who ruthlessly destroyed his enemies and met an equally ruthless end.”
“He isn’t ruthless,” Brie said.
“If this is his Fate, it is not fair,” Sam said. “I can see how much you’ve changed. I hardly recognize you. But you cannot change the execution, no matter what you want to think or plan, not if it is written.”
Brie stared furiously at her.
Sam looked at her watch as a buzzer on her phone went off. “Pizza’s here, and you have twenty-six minutes.”
“And what if it’s not written? What if I am meant to stop this?”
“Then we need to get our asses in gear.”
brIE STUMBLED OUT OF CDA AFTER dark, with armed escorts that included Sam and two HCU field agents.
It was really late, and she was sick with exhaustion.
The debriefing had taken eight and a half hours.
Not only did Nick know every detail of her time in the past, he knew everything she had learned about the Masters, the Brotherhood and demons in the Middle Ages.
They slid into Sam’s car, a black Lexus sedan, and Sam waved the agents off.
As she drove the few blocks to Brie’s loft, Brie stared out of the window listlessly.
She finally said, “I am going to find a way to get back. I intend to go to work tomorrow and start looking for an agent who can time-travel. If Nick won’t send me, I’ll bribe, extort, threaten or seduce an agent who can. ”
“Wow,” Sam said. “I still can’t believe how tough you’ve become. Hey, if you start working out and get in shape, the leaps will be easier.” She flashed a smile. “I learned that during my CDA physical.”
“I don’t intend to stick around here long enough to get in shape,” Brie said, and she thought about the way Aidan had made love to her. He had liked her body just the way it was. Grief ripped at her heart.
“Maybe Tabby can help,” Sam said softly, pulling into the underground garage.
“Damn it,” Brie gasped, because the car began to tilt and then spin.
Filled with dread, Brie seized the dashboard, aware of a vision coming on.
For the first time in her life, she wanted to fight her gift.
But she gave herself over, slumping in the seat, head back, the car spinning… . and then it went still.
Malcolm held Claire, and he was crying.
Aidan twirled from the hangman’s noose, head down, lifeless.
It was a gray day, the ground covered with snow.
Vaguely Brie knew she had already seen this and she was confused, until the vision changed.
He hung from a crenellated stone wall, beyond which was a deserted inner ward. Inside the castle, a small, dark chamber was lit by a solitary candle. There was a bed, a small table and nothing else at all.
Brie tensed. The image sharpened. A man lay on the bed, hands folded, eyes open, but he was as still as a corpse. It was Aidan’s demonic father, Moray.
Brie gasped and sat up, sweat pouring down her face. Had she just seen Moray dead?