Bannockburn Binding (Beloved Bloody Time) (8 page)

“Not the facts, no. They still remain a mystery, but the truth—that I know. I know who ye are puts you in a dilemma you’ve spent a week trying to sort out in ye mind.”

She drew very still. “You know that?” she whispered weakly.

“I’d be the fool if I dinna notice what’s before my eyes.” His fingertips swept across her brow. “I’m not as foolish as all that.”

The prickling in her eyes turned to hard, searing tears. “There is no future for us,” she whispered. “None.”

Rob sat up and cupped her face with his hands. “Hush, my lover.” His lips touched hers. “D’ye know nothing of the Scots? We’ve been fighting against the longest odds this blasted world could throw at us for generations. Ye think a little thing like ye heritage could keep me from ye?”

Her tears fell, scalding her cheeks. “Rob, you don’t know…you can’t fight this, what I am.”

Rob brushed her tears away. “I don’t care what ye are, who ye are, where ye came from. I have ye now. I’ll fight any man to keep ye.” He held up his wrist, the one with the rope binding it. “I’ll fight this…whatever this is, that ye won’t tell me yet.” He kissed her. “Ye
will
tell me, Tally. Soon. I see it in yer eyes when ye think I’m not looking.”

Tally sat, unable to find anything to say. Rob’s observations were so uncannily accurate, she shivered in fear.

“You can’t fight it,” she said at last, and her voice sounded pathetically weak after Rob’s firm pronouncement. “You really can’t fight this.”

He shook his head. “There’s always a way, Tally.”

Tally pressed her lips together.
Not always
, she whispered mentally.

* * * * *

Tinker made lining up with an object hurtling through space at fifty metres a second seem extraordinarily easy.

The streamlined, elongated space station they approached housed the Chronometric Conservation Agency and the headquarters for Chronologic Touring Inc., the commercial arm of the Agency. It was a huge building, sprawling as only buildings in space can spread. Charbonneau watched the construction overshadow their tiny vessel as they slipped alongside it, matching speed.

There were navigation lights all along the side, flashing for Tinker’s guidance. He nodded, pleased. “‘kay, final approach,” he murmured.

“This is the fun bit,” Justin told Charbonneau, as the craft began a slow roll, the nose dipping “down” in relationship to the station. The ship rolled right through one hundred and eighty degrees until it was facing the opposite direction, although to Charbonneau’s senses, it was the station that had turned, while he had remained still.

“Speed still matches,” Justin said to Tinker. “Well done.”

“There’s a reason you pay me big bucks,” Tinker said off-handedly, studying his monitors. “Thirty metres. Twenty. Ten.”

Charbonneau realized the station was looming larger beside them. The ship shuddered and a dull ‘thunk’ sounded. He knew without being told they had arrived. The sound had been docking clamps.

“Squared away, done for the day,” Tinker sang and hopped out of his chair to land two-footed on the deck. Artificial gravity had returned. The boy grinned. “Wish I were a fly on the wall for your welcome.”

Justin cuffed him lightly across the head. “Stop stirring trouble where there is none.” He glanced at Charbonneau. “Ignore him. Tinker is always looking for ways to upset vampires.”

“Coz you can’t, moron,” Tinker said, writing rapidly and confidently on a hard copy board, as he glanced at dials—the good captain recording his flight properly. That gave Charbonneau more confidence than anything since he’d stepped onto the beanstalk. Tinker, despite his youth and brashness, was skilled and responsible. So far, the Agency had impressed him with the calibre of its people and the thought put into everything they did.

Even though he had expected nothing else, the confirmation was reassuring.

Justin glared at Tinker, then unlocked the pressure door and shoved hard with his shoulder. The door swung open and more hands grabbed the edge from the other side and pulled it all the way open.

Beyond was a small room with a few chairs, a low table and reading boards. A typical, mind-numbing waiting room. “After you,” Justin said, waving Charbonneau forward.

He stepped through the door into the waiting room, where two men in armoralls were already disappearing through a side service door, their job done.

Charbonneau glanced back at Justin, looking for guidance on where to go. That was when he saw the view beyond the air lock.

The ferry lay alongside the station, for the airlock was perpendicular to the walls. The wall of the waiting room on the other side of the lock was pure window, and the view took Charbonneau’s breath away.

He gazed upon Earth at night. They were too high up for individual lights to be seen, but where man gathered, there were glowing masses of light. On the right-hand edge of the globe, sunlight danced, but did not quite lift itself over the curve. Unlike Halfway station, this view was unobstructed.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Justin murmured, by his side. He pointed. “That dark mass in the middle is the Pacific Ocean.” He moved his hand to the left, where orange glowed brightly. “Australia coming up.” To the right, where more light glistened. “South America leaving. We’re in solar-synchronous orbit, always on the dark side of the earth. Half-way Station passes us every twenty-four hours, as it is in geo-synchronous orbit.”

“And this is the hard way to get here?” Charbonneau murmured, staring in wonder at the planet hanging over him.

“Oh, not harder. Just longer.” Justin grinned. “Ready?”

“What’s next?”

“Time to meet your new employer.”

Chapter Six

“The situation isn’t even classified as urgent yet,” Nayara added, as Christian adjusted a complicated double belt around his waist and re-settled the sword at his hip, underneath the big cloak over his shoulders. The belts sat over a robe that ended just above soft leather boots. Nayara could see a linen shirt peeking beneath the robe. Everything was embroidered and embellished and glowed with wealth.

“You don’t know that time at all,” Nayara ventured.

“I’ve been there,” Christian replied. “How do you think I got the marker from her?”

“Demyan knows the time much better. He travels there frequently, he knows the language—”

Christian rattled off a short sentence in a language Nayara didn’t recognize. “I don’t know much Gaelic,” he added. “But Scots will serve me everywhere but the remote highlands.”

Christian the linguist. Nayara sighed, her last argument defeated.

Brenden, their security chief, strode over from his glassed-in office and dropped a reading board down on the desk next to Christian. “Tally is just overdue, man. You know how this goes. If you don’t give her time to sort things out for herself, you might make it worse.”

Christian looked up from adjusting his clothing. “It’s already worse.”

“What, you know that in your gut?” Brenden curled the corner of his mouth up in distaste. His opinion of travellers who used gut-instinct was well-known. Brenden relied on data, facts and information even if those facts were slender and the data scanty. Brenden believed a vampire lost any sense of true instinct when they lost their humanity. All they were left with was an ability to guess…and guess wrong. So he never guessed and he crucified travellers who did so on his watch.

Christian’s jaw flexed and tightened. “Tally has been travelling for how long, Brenden? Thirty years? More?”

Brenden frowned. “Thirty-three, next month.”

“Has she ever, in those thirty-three years, once been late to return?”

Brenden’s frown deepened. “I’d have to look it up.”

“Don’t bother,” Christian said, picking up the reading board. “The answer is no. Despite some hair-raising disasters and tourists gone astray, Tally has coped.” He glanced at the board. “She’s been in 1314 for nearly five weeks when it was supposed to be a day trip.” He looked at Brenden, then at Nayara. “If someone of Tally’s calibre hasn’t returned after five weeks, you can be certain there’s something seriously wrong.”

Nayara nodded at Brenden, who crossed his arms over his great chest and glared at Christian. “We should be sending an issues expert in,” he growled.

“By all means, send them if you wish,” Christian replied, with a graceful nod of his head. He turned and headed for the arrival chambers. “Tell them they can catch up with me.”

Brenden swore softly as he watched Christian walk away.

Nayara patted his arm. “Leave it be,” she told him. “Christian is good at his job. He’ll get her out, Brenden.”

“He shouldn’t be going anywhere near her!” Brenden growled. He curled his hand into a fist. “I wish someone would get around to explaining how vampires still manage to fuck up their lives over matters of hormones when they don’t have any hormones left in their systems that still work.”

“You know that’s not why he’s going back—”

“Bullshit,” Brenden interjected.

“What’s bullshit?” Ryan asked, from behind them.

Nayara stepped aside to include Ryan in their conversation and explained where Christian was going.

Ryan rubbed his temple thoughtfully. “Nayara is right,” he told Brenden. “Christian has all the right skills. He can get Tally out of just about anything and he can call for help if he needs it.
Why
he’s doing it is irrelevant.”

Brenden scowled.

Ryan patted the big man’s shoulder. “If it helps, think of what Tally will do to Christian when she realizes that he has come to her rescue.”

Brenden grinned. “She’ll scrag him,” he said dreamily. “Or worse.”

“Exactly,” Ryan replied. “So relax, big guy.”

Brenden went back to his office, his head high, happy.

Nayara picked up the reading board and handed it to Ryan. “What was it you didn’t say to Brenden?”

Ryan blinked. “You caught that?”

“You held something back. A thought occurred to you that you nearly spoke aloud, but you changed your mind and spoke about Christian’s skills instead.”

Ryan nodded. He glanced toward Brenden’s office, then the workstations surrounding them. Some were occupied, but none of them near enough to hear him. He lowered his voice anyway. “It occurred to me that Demyan, who would be the most obvious one to send back for Tally, has spent nearly all his life passing as some sort of fighter. Military, para-military, mercenary. He would find a way to extract Tally from her situation, I have no doubt. But Christian has other skills and if she has been in 1314 for five weeks, unable to jump back, then he might be more useful.”

“What skills?”

Ryan grimaced. “In at least three centuries of his life, he’s been a medical doctor.”

* * * * *

Tally held her hand out so the sunlight spilling in from the opening of the tent illuminated the back of it and examined the flesh carefully. It looked healthy, soft and unmarked. No liver spots. No wrinkles.

“Whatever are ye doing, Tally?” Rob asked, his arm sliding around her waist from behind. As she wore only her kirtle and was bare beneath that, she could feel every inch of him pressed against her. She tried to harden her heart before the warmth spilled through her.

“Wondering when you are going to let me go, Rob MacKenzie, so I can collect my manservant and plague you no more.”

“And now ye’re lying to me.” He turned her around in his arms and lifted her chin to make her look at him.

Damn it, but when he held her like this, she could barely think. Barely breathe. “I’ve not lied to you,” she protested.

“There’s the small matter of a basket of mushrooms,” he reminded her.

“Which has probably gone to dust by now. It’s been weeks, Rob. The English are coming and you must be ready for war. You need to let me go.”

“And then ye’ll be gone for good, won’t ye?” he said softly.

She tamped down the childish wail that built inside her every time she considered this matter. “I have to. I must. It is my duty and there’s no way around it.”

“Yer duty,” he repeated in a tone filled with disbelief. “A maiden’s duty is to marry well and I don’t know a father in this land that would protest a match with me.”

“Hush. For god’s sake, hush, Rob. Have you not figured out that maidenly concerns long since passed me by?”

He grinned and pressed her hips into his. “I’d suspected some of it.”

She pushed against his shoulder. “I mean it. Do you not understand that there are some things you cannot resolve, that you cannot fix for me? There are some things that will stop you from keeping me.”

“Tell me those things. I’ll remove them.”

She sighed. “I can’t do this anymore, Rob.”

His smile faded. “There’s no ‘can’t’. I’m keeping ye here. I’m keeping ye safe and I’ll fight the whole blighted world to a standstill to make it so.”

“There’s more than the world against you this time,” she whispered.

Finally, her dread seemed to communicate itself to him. “Who are ye?” he asked gently. “I love every inch of ye, but I know not who ye are.”