Every Never After (24 page)

W
hat the hell was Marcus doing in the river? He was supposed to be yukking it up in the mess hall with his returned-from-the-dead praefect. If he’d wanted to tidy up first, there were dozens of places along the riverbank he could have chosen. Places that weren’t directly in the path of Allie’s escape route.

Seriously. This guy is easily the most infuriating human being I have ever met.

Also, very possibly the most … stunningly handsome and … sculpted …

Allie clapped a hand over her eyes as Marcus, with his back to her, suddenly stood in the shallow water and waded ashore just downstream of where she crouched, hidden from view, in a stand of long grass. But she wasn’t quite fast enough, and the image of his naked, muscled torso and legs, not to mention his ridiculously chiselled backside, was already burned into her brain. She thought of the one and only time she’d seen male buttocks that hadn’t belonged to a toddler—when her brothers had thrown her into the guys’ locker room at school after football practice for a joke—but, really? No comparison. None.

Somehow her fingers slipped and she accidentally snuck another peek.

Now
that
is what I call a tight end
, she thought.

And then felt herself blushing furiously at the pun. This was why Clare was dead set against puns. They were inappropriate.
The whole situation was inappropriate. Allie groaned inwardly and wrapped her arms around her head. This was not happening. NOT.

For one thing, she was not suddenly having
those
kinds of thoughts about Marcus Donatus. Or whatever he wanted to call himself. She was getting out of there and she was leaving him. Behind. And
not
thinking up cheesy puns about it, present circumstances notwithstanding. So … what then? One accidental glimpse of Legionnaire Gluteus Maximus in the altogether and … what? She wanted to date him suddenly? No. No, no. He was arrogant. And annoying. And bossy. He wore armour and he spoke Latin ten times better than she did. With a really stupid, stupidly sexy accent.

Those last two things are not contraindicative of relationship potential, McAllister,
she chided herself.
Try harder.

Okay. He was a soldier in the Roman army in
AD
61. And it looked like that’s how he was going to stay. So, by that logic, he’d already been dead for almost two thousand years by the time she was born. Talk about dating older men.

No,
don’t
talk about it! We’re
not
talking about i
—

“Allie? What in hell are you doing out here?”

Allie cringed and opened her eyes.

“Are you trying to
escape
?”

Marcus’s bare feet were planted on the ground in front of her. Her gaze travelled up his lean legs to the short length of linen he’d wrapped around his waist like a bath towel and held bunched in one fist. Just below the hollowed curve of his hip bone …

This was a guy who once wore a skinny leather tie,
she thought.
How?

“Are you okay?” he asked, frowning.

Allie’s mouth worked soundlessly. She kept trying to say things to make him go away but nothing was coming out. He held out his free hand to help her stand.

“Oh, for the love of— Get up. If anyone finds you out here you’ll be in a lot of trouble. And so will I.”

Allie hesitated.

“Come
on
.”

Allie reached up reluctantly and took his offered hand. Marcus lifted her effortlessly, one-armed, with enough muscle behind the assist to propel her a few inches airborne. And then to land really—
way too
—close to him. Eye level with his collarbones, which glistened with water droplets in the sun. It was like he sparkled or something, and who knew that could actually be sexy on a guy? But it was. Without all that armour encasing him—without much of
anything
encasing him—he seemed less of a pompous jerk. Without the harsh lines of his helmet framing his face, his cheekbones and jaw seemed less severe. His straight dark brows less frowning. And after his bath in the river, his short black hair was as tousled as it was likely to get and Allie kind of wanted to run her fingers through it, shaking off the water that beaded on it like rain.

But she just stood there looking up at him as he stared back down at her with his clear hazel eyes. To cover her tongue-tiedness, Allie tried to shrug casually and utter a disarming laugh. But instead what she did was jerk her hand out of his grasp and snort in disdain.

Marcus shook his head. The frown returned to his face with some gusto. The spark in his eyes turned flinty and his lip curled up in a shadow of a sneer. “Where in hell did you think you’d go once you left the camp?”

“I—”

“The countryside is lousy with hostiles where it isn’t treacherous swampland.”

“I—”

“Seriously. What’s
wrong
with you?”

That was it. She cracked.

“What’s wrong with
me
?” she half-shouted, gaping at him in astonishment. To think for a moment that she’d almost … that she’d thought he was … She smacked him on his broad, damp chest with the flat of her palm. “What’s wrong with
me
?”

Marcus was so astonished that he actually took a half step back.

“What the hell is wrong with
you
?” Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. “You know, I’m starting to think that maybe Clare’s right about you guys. All of you. You’ve been here for so many years, living this way for so long, that it’s who you are now. A soldier. A killer. A conqueror.”

“And you expected—what?” he snapped back at her. “That some kind of sensitive nerd-o linguist was still trapped inside my hardened exterior?”

It certainly is a hardened exterior— Oh, will you stop?!

“You thought I’d just go all melty and forgo my obligations to the Legion at the prospect of a glorious return to the twentieth century and stuffy academia?”

“It’s the twenty-
first
century now.”

“Right. Where I’m a castoff. And I’m supposed to thank you for showing up to rescue me from a life of noble service to a greater cause?”

Allie snorted. “And don’t forget all that fresh air and exercise you get invading the locals and grinding them under your hobnailed sandal! How exactly is that
noble
?”

That stopped him cold. For a moment. His anger seemed to dissipate a little and he sighed. “Allie … these men …” He waved a hand in the vague direction of the camp. “They’re good men. Most of them. They’re soldiers, yeah, but they’re not slavering kill machines and psycho berserkers.”

“Tell that to Boudicca’s tribe.”

“Boudicca?” He barked a harsh laugh. “Are you kidding me? The most enthusiastic killing machine around? She butchered her own people, Allie. Just for wanting to live peaceably with the Romans. And yeah, I know.” He put up a hand to keep her from interrupting. “Maybe they shouldn’t be here. In Britain. The whole conquering thing … I know. I struggle with that one, too. But they do a lot of good. Roads, water, technological advancements. Things that, more often than not, have meant more prosperity to
the lands they occupy. Better crops. Better water supplies. Trade. Longer, fuller lives for the common people.”

“God. You sound like a recruiting brochure.”

He made an exasperated sound. “I have to get back to camp. And you’re coming with me. But first I have to get dressed. You can either stand there and get an eyeful or turn around and wait.”

Trying desperately to cover her disappointment and look nonchalant and uncaring, Allie rolled her eyes and did a one-eighty. She thought she might have heard Marcus chuckling behind her and was glad he couldn’t see her face, which she could feel had turned a vibrant shade of pink.

“What if I don’t want to go with you?” she asked, listening to the sounds of him shrugging into his linen tunic and strapping on his various and sundry bits of leather and armour.

“Suit yourself,” he grunted. “It’s marshland on all sides of this forsaken hill as far as the eye can see. And what the eye
can’t
see, hiding in that marshland, will most likely make a quick and brutal end of you inside twenty-four hours. Have fun.”

All right, fine,
said the rebellious voice in her head.
I will …

And so, as Marcus was busy getting dressed, she made a break for it.

In a flat-out sprint, she got maybe fifty yards away from him when the air suddenly shivered like a heat wave and Allie experienced a sensation akin to her launch into the past: a moment of strange disorientation followed by an abrupt shift from bright sunny day to deepest night. With a full moon hanging overhead.

“What the—”

Ululating cries sounded from somewhere close behind, and glancing back, Allie saw red eyes coming at her in the darkness. Then a small voice in the back of her head said …
Run!

She poured on a burst of speed as Marcus suddenly appeared at her side, half-dressed in his Legion gear and running just as hard.

“What the hell are those things?” she cried out.

“Scathach!” he said, arms and legs pumping.

There’s that word again …

“Crazed Druidess warriors!” he elaborated, ducking to one side as a trio of short, black-feathered arrows peppered the ground between them. “They’re fuelled by blood magic and they live only for the destruction of their enemies—if they catch us they’ll tear us limb from limb. Run! Do
not
stop—no matter what happens!”

No matter what happens,
Allie thought wildly.
Easier said than done!

The rapid, muted slap of Mark’s legionnaire sandals on the soft earth of the goat track suddenly became snare-drum thwacks of leather on a hard surface. Allie stumbled and almost fell when the ground beneath them transformed into a ribbon of fresh-paved asphalt, coal black in the wan blue light of a crescent moon.

“The hell?!” she exclaimed. The ancient Britons hadn’t exactly been known for having paved roads.

Then the ribbon of road was gone again and soft, marshy ground sucked at Allie’s feet. She stumbled and would have landed on her face if it hadn’t been for Marcus’s strong hands gripping her by the shoulders and hauling her forward, her feet windmilling through the air before the soles of her boots found purchase again. The sky above was bright blue and dotted with fluffy white clouds.

“This way!” Marcus said, dragging her through a gap in a stand of trees—which turned into a gap in a farm-field hedgerow when they were out the other side.

Something that looked an awful lot like a utility pole appeared directly in front of Allie. She dodged to one side, narrowly avoiding an astonished-looking black-woolled sheep that—she could have
sworn
—hadn’t been there a second ago. A thatch-roofed hut appeared in the distance and, off to the left, a group of horsemen on massive chargers went thundering by swinging longswords, brocade cloaks flying behind them.

Dark night descended once more with dizzying swiftness and Allie screamed again as they dove through another hedge gap and into the path of a pair of blazing white lights barrelling down on them—the eyes of a monster. Or maybe a blue Honda mini-van,
beeping its horn and swerving crazily to avoid running them down.

It vanished before her eyes and another stand of trees sprang up in its place. Allie could hear the howling of the warrior women. Closer this time. She poured on another burst of panic-speed and made for a street edged with a row of shops that suddenly glimmered into view. She recognized the cheese shop and the antiques store they always passed on the way to the Rifleman. A little further down the way …

“Hey! That’s my bed and breakfast!”

Allie glanced up at the darkened corner window on the third floor as she ran past. But with the scathach probably still hot on their heels they dared not stop.

“Help! Clare!
Me!
Somebody …” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Help!
Help!
”

“Don’t stop!”

Marcus almost pulled her arm out of its socket as the scenery shifted again and a hard-flung flaming spear flew through the space between them—just above their joined hands.

Allie whimpered as she kept on running. She thought she might have seen a light flicker to life in the bedroom window. Not that it mattered—another glance over her shoulder as she ran showed her that the B&B was gone. She would have wept if she hadn’t been so busy dodging impossible things.

Post office!
Duck
…

Sudden, massive oak tree!
Dodge
…

Dead Roman soldier!
Hurdle
…

Thirty yards ahead a soaring cathedral shimmered into view right out of thin air. Allie could see rainbow light shining from the prisms of the tall stained-glass panels—scenes of angels and demons—and then, in the blink of an eye … only a crumbled shell. A few ragged stone curtain-walls reached toward the sky, roofless and cradling empty air, overgrown grass growing where once there was polished flagstone.

“Allie! Look out!”

“Ow—!” Al’s shoulder had slammed into a metal mailbox on the side of the road—neither having existed a moment earlier— and she spun sharply sideways, her hand ripped out of Marcus’s grip. He hurtled past her, carried by his own momentum, and— right in front of her eyes—he vanished. Allie tripped over her own feet, tumbled for another several yards, and fell senseless to the ground. She lay there, pain blooming out from her shoulder in waves of fiery agony.

The sound of Marcus’s voice still echoed in the misty night.

It drifted away and silence descended on Allie McAllister like a blanket of new-fallen snow. She couldn’t even hear the sound of her own heart and she couldn’t make herself stop holding her breath. And then, just at the edge of her awareness, she heard something. For a long moment, she couldn’t think what it was. Then it dawned on her … the distant drone, carried on the still air, was the sound of an airplane engine, coming from high overhead. She was home. Or was she? She almost didn’t dare hope.

For a brief, shining instant, she thought she heard Clare calling her name.

But then, as she lay there, the dark/dusk/dawn sky seemed to fade back to a solid, normal, afternoon blue. The very same sky that had domed the world in the moments before everything had gone haywire. Back on the riverbank with Marcus. The howls of the scathach faded too, quickly replaced with another, single voice. Marcus’s voice again, ragged with the harshness of his breathing, as he fell to his knees beside her and gathered her in his arms.