Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3) (37 page)

“Oh, God,” I breathed, stumbling into the back wall of the inner sanctuary. The stone beneath the plaster was warmer than the air, so I figured it was early in the night, the stone still retaining some of the day’s heat. Legs trembling, I turned around so my back was against the wall and sank down to the floor.

I’d made ten more century-long jumps over what I estimated was about a day. I was exhausted, and my head pounded. The bonding withdrawals were worsening, right on schedule.

I wrapped my arms around my knees, hugging them to my chest as I battled tears. Defeat stalked me, but I wasn’t giving up. I was just overwhelmed.

“Hello?” The voice was female and pleasant, and she spoke in the original tongue. The more snippets of time I spent in this temple, the more I suspected speaking in Nuin’s ancient language had gone from tradition to flat-out rule. My intermittent appearances necessitated it, and I’d never appreciated the ability to communicate thoroughly and completely more.

“I am here,” I called softly. “In the sanctuary.”

A girl appeared in the doorway, little more than a shadow while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. She wore the usual simple white linen shift that denoted her as a priestess of this temple, but she was the youngest I’d yet to encounter. She couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen years old.

“N—nobody was in here a moment ago,” she said, voice shaky. “I checked.”

“Oh?”

“Which means you—you must be
her
. . . the Golden One.”
Here we go again . . .

I nodded but realized a moment later that she probably couldn’t see the movement. “I am Hat-hur.” Twisting, I placed my palm against the plaster wall behind me and dragged myself up to my feet. “I need food and a bed—just for a few hours. Can you arrange that?”

She was quiet, staring at me with huge, shadowed eyes.

I sighed and pushed my hair out of my face, combing my fingers through the slightly greasy strands. “Or can you take me to someone else who can?”

The girl nodded, backing up a step when I moved forward. “Denai—” She took a few more backward steps as I approached the doorway. “She is just this way,” the girl said, turning and running down the ramp. When she paused to look back at me and found me slowly hobbling after her, she stopped to wait. “Denai is the head priestess. She says I will take her place one day, and her name. She says that it is my destiny.”

“Really?” I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The ramp was mud brick and had devious little cracks and divots.

“She says I have been chosen by the gods. On my twenty-third name day, I will begin to manifest into a Netjer-At.”

My steps faltered, and the young priestess rushed forward to catch me by my elbow.

“The nameless goddess stowed my mother away here when she was pregnant so the other Netjer-Ats would not know about me.” Side by side, we settled into a slow, creeping pace. “She knew my mother would not survive my birth and told Denai to raise me to be strong in my mother’s stead, like our goddess Hat—” The girl hesitated. “Well, like
you
.”

“Did she truly?” I stifled a smile. Aset, you flatterer.

The girl nodded. “But sometimes I fear that
they
will find me, and—” She took a deep breath. “I fear they will hurt me,” she said in a quieter voice. “Sometimes I think that something must be wrong with me. Why else would the nameless goddess have hidden me away here?”

We passed through a side doorway in the outer sanctuary and entered a dark, colonnaded hall. I’d been here so many times before, walked between these columns with so many different priestesses on my way to the living quarters. But this time felt different. It felt significant. This
girl
was important, and I needed to figure out why.

“Tell me,” I said, “what is your name?”

“Me? Oh, I am called Aramei,” the girl-priestess said. It was totally unhelpful; hers was a name I’d never heard before in reference to any Nejerette.

“Hmmm . . .” I frowned. “Did the ‘nameless goddess’ tell Denai anything else?”

“Just that she will be watching over me and—” Again, the young priestess and future Nejerette hesitated.

“And what?”

“It is the most serious of secrets.” And it was clear that she was dying to share it with someone—anyone. I feared she’d choose the wrong person. Any person would be the wrong person if there was any chance that the secret would be captured in the At. But
I
didn’t exist in the At . . . not yet, at least.

“I will not tell a soul,” I said, crossing my heart with my index finger. “Besides, what could it hurt? In a few hours, I shall be one hundred years in the future . . .”

Aramei pursed her lips, like that act alone might hold the secret in. It didn’t. The secret tumbled out in a rushed whisper. “The nameless goddess is my grandmother.”

I stumbled over nothing but sheer shock. This girl—this Aramei—was Aset’s granddaughter? That would mean she was Nik’s daughter. What did that make her? Would she be a regular Nejerette? Would she be like Nik, with a sheut? Or would she be
more
, like my lost twins?

“Are you alright?” Aramei tightened her hold on my arm.

“Yes, yes,” I said, patting her hand. “Exhausted and famished, but well enough. I must say, Aramei, that is quite the secret.” For millennia, the Council monitored the At in search of those they considered “abominations”—any Nejerets born of two Nejeret parents, like Nik. Long ago, Nuin set several unbreakable laws in place, the prohibition of such abominations chief among them. It was the reason the Kin had lived in secrecy for centuries, since their inception by Mei.

I considered holding my tongue, but didn’t. I couldn’t
not
warn this girl. “And I agree with A—the nameless goddess. You must not tell anyone else your secret. You must
never
tell anyone else. Not ever.”

***

“Aramei?” It was the first thing I said upon landing after my next hundred-year jump. It was still the Late Period in Egypt, and I was still in the inner sanctuary of the Hathor temple. After my next jump, I would be entering Ptolemaic Egypt, when the Greeks ruled over ancient Kemet. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, that would mean for the running of the temple.

“Aramei? Are you here?” I leaned against the frame of the doorway, staring out at the empty outer sanctuary. There were fewer offerings than usual scattered around the edges of the room and a general sense of abandonment about the place.

I heard the clack of hard wood against stone accompanied by the shuffle of footsteps. It was coming from the side doorway that led to the living quarters.

An elderly priestess appeared in the doorway, gray hair arranged in elaborate plaits and white linen shift baggy on her skinny, slightly hunched frame. She leaned heavily on a hooked, gold-plated walking stick.

“It has been ages since last I heard that name,” she said, voice raspy. “Are you she, then?”

“I am Hat-hur.”

“We have been expecting you.”

My eyebrows rose. “You have?”

The old priestess gave a single nod. “We keep records of when you visit. According to the stars, it has been time for a while now.” Cane arm shaking, she held out her free hand toward the doorway behind her. “Come, there is food prepared and a bed made up for you.”

I descended the ramp, head pounding but body slightly less exhausted than last time. I’d allowed myself a four-hour rest, a luxury I could hardly afford. This time would have to be briefer—one hour at most.

“And what of Aramei?” I asked the old woman as I approached. “Is she not the head priestess?”

She shook her head. “Aramei was head priestess when I first joined the order. She took over the running of this temple shortly after your last visit. She was a great woman—she took me in as a small child, called me daughter and groomed me to succeed her since she, herself, was barren. I had not yet bled for the first time when she disappeared, leaving a child in charge of the most important temple in the history of mankind.” There was bitterness in her voice.

I stopped before the elderly priestess. “Have you any idea what happened to her?”

She shook her head. “Only that she abandoned me . . . abandoned us.”

“And the nameless goddess—what does she say of Aramei’s disappearance?”

“She did not know. She claimed she could no longer sense Aramei, that she had ceased to be and therefore must be dead, but—”

“But what?”

The old priestess focused on my face with rheumy eyes. “I saw her once, years after she disappeared. I woke in the middle of the night to find her sitting at the foot of my bed. She smiled at me and told me—” Her voice caught. “She told me she was proud of me—so proud. And then I blinked, and she was gone.”

I frowned, brow furrowed. “Might it have been a dream?”

“Perhaps,” the old priestess said, wiping her free hand over her wrinkled cheek. “But it did not have the feel of a dream.” She coughed a laugh, a rattling, phlegmy sound. “Oh, but listen to me going on about the long-dead past. Come, eat and rest.” She ushered me through the doorway into the colonnaded hall. “My bones are tired and my journey is nearly at an end. But yours, I gather, is far from over.”

***

I left my purse of gold with the elderly priestess, hoping it might help the temple navigate what I suspected were difficult times, then made the next seven jumps in quick succession. The rapidly worsening bonding withdrawals urged me onward despite my mounting exhaustion. I could feel my sheut’s power draining even as I felt time slipping away. How much longer did I have left until the withdrawals incapacitated me? A day? Less?

I allowed myself a luxurious hour-and-a-half nap in the fourth century CE but stuck to strict half-hour rests between my next five jumps. I barely made the last one, blacking out upon entry into ninth-century Egypt.

I woke in a bed, head resting on a flat pillow and room flooded with golden light streaking in through the openings near the top of one wall. I was in the temple living quarters, and I had no idea how long I’d been there. My only point of reference was the splitting headache. It was hours worse. But how many? How much time had I lost to sleep?

It didn’t matter. Only one thing did—I was still alive. The bonding withdrawals hadn’t killed me yet, which meant I still had a chance to get home to my babies. To Marcus.

I sat up, a single truth becoming abundantly clear. Next time would be worse. Next time the exhaustion might knock me out until the withdrawals
did
kill me. Which meant my next jump had to be the final jump.

I turned, dangling my legs over the side of the bed and stretching in a vain attempt to alleviate the throbbing ache in my joints. I stood and hobbled over to the small table that had been set up with fruits, breads, and cheeses and alternated between shoving food into my mouth and getting myself ready for the next jump. The final jump.

I was just buckling my sword harness when a young woman in the usual white linen priestess shift entered the room. “You are awake,” she said.

I glanced up, then continued adjusting the leather straps into a comfortable position. “I am.”

“And—you are leaving?”

“I am.” Finished with the buckle, I took a deep breath and looked at the priestess. “I will not return for hundreds of years. The nameless goddess will guide you when the time comes. You will tell your sisters this?”

She nodded.

“Good. And tell them thank you,” I added. “For everything.” I dropped to one knee, placed my hand on the floor, and bowed my head, willing the power within my sheut to well one last time. I’d been limiting myself to hundred-year jumps; I had no idea how far my reach truly was. Hopefully far enough. The power within me became a tumbling snowball, something too great and powerful to stop. My jump was imminent, my children and Marcus and
home
preeminent in my mind.

“Lex! Wait!”

I looked up just in time to see the most unlikely of faces behind the priestess—Aramei, full Nejerette now, but easily recognizable. She pushed the priestess out of the way and lunged across the room toward me. But she was too late.

I was already gone.

Sometimes when I’m falling asleep, I jerk awake, certain I’ve fallen out of my bed. It’s one of the most disorienting sensations, especially when I wake to find that I’m still safe and snug in my bed. I know it’s not unique to me, and I suppose it might even be the reason we say “falling asleep.” Who knows . . .

But I woke like that, in some unknown time and place. I jerked upright, slimy muck beneath me and a brilliant sun shining in the clear blue sky overhead. I squinted against the glare, groaning at the brain-shattering pounding in my head that resulted from opening my eyes. My stomach lurched at the onslaught of pain, and I leaned to the side, hands against a grassy slope, and vomited.

“Ugh . . .” I wiped the back of one hand over my mouth. Dizzy and aching, I forced myself to look first to the left, then to right. The world tilted this way and that, totally unpredictably, but I was coherent enough to tell that I was beside a paved road that curved around a hillside . . . and that I was in a ditch. I had, quite literally, passed out in a ditch somewhere.

“What would you think of me now, Mom?” I wondered aloud, my voice tight with pain.

It took my withdrawal-rattled brain seconds to catch up to the enormity of being in a ditch beside a paved road. People didn’t start paving roads like this until the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. Which meant I was home, or damn near close to it.

An engine rumbled, but my view of the vehicle was obscured by the grassy hillside. I watched it round the corner, raising my hand to block the sun. My eyes were having a hard time focusing on anything beyond a few yards away, but my heart beat merrily in my chest and relief flooded my body. I was
home
. My children . . . Marcus . . . they were so close.

The car came to a skidding halt a short way past me, and I was finally able to focus on it. My excitement evaporated. The vehicle looked more like a horseless carriage than any kind of car I was used to. It was old—like, Model T old—and even more disconcerting, it looked brand-new. Either the driver was coming from an antique car show, or . . .

“Lass?” The driver left his car door open and approached me cautiously. “Are you alright, lass?” He was Scottish, male, and dressed in a brown tweed suit, but I couldn’t tell more than that. Just like the car, I was having a hard time focusing on him as he moved closer. “Lass?”

“I—I am fine,” I said, stumbling over the English words. It had been so long since I used them. “I’ll be fine.”

The man crouched at the edge of the road, elbows on his knees. “Might there be somewhere I can drop you off?”

“Where am I?” I asked. “What year is it?” I needed to find Marcus. It was the only way to alleviate the pain, and doing that was quickly becoming all I could think about.

“You’re in Scone . . . in Scotland,” the man said with a frown. “And the year is 1909. Please, lass, where can I take you? Surely you’ve got people wondering where you’ve gone.”

There were people waiting for me, likely wondering where I’d gone and if I would ever make it home, but I couldn’t get to them, not in my current state. The bonding withdrawals were so bad I wasn’t even confident I would be able to stand. Jumping forward one last time was out of the question . . . unless I could find my bond-mate and absorb some of his pheromones . . .

I racked my addled brain for any information I’d tucked away about Marcus during this time period. He’d lived in Scotland with the majority of his line, having established Clan Heru what must have been shortly after I left him here in the tenth century. He’d returned throughout the years, as his lack of aging necessitated both reclusiveness and relocation every few decades, and he’d spent the first third of the twentieth century with his clan here in Scone. I might not have made it all the way home, but I’d made it to him. Close enough for now.

“Clan Heru,” I said slowly. “The castle is nearby.”

“Aye,” the man said. “I know well enough the location of Castle Uaireigin.” He squinted down at me. “Are you one of them, then? ’Tis hard enough to tell through the mud.”

I wasn’t sure if he was asking if I was Nejeret or if I was a member of Clan Heru. I wasn’t sure it mattered. “Please, sir, I was out walking and must have hit my head. If you could just bring me to the castle, or near to the castle, I can manage the rest.”

“Aye, I’ll bring you to the gate of Castle Uaireigin, but the rest is up to you.” He extended his hand down to me. “I’d prefer to remain a stranger to Clan Heru.”

I nodded, accepting his hand and relying heavily on his strength to hoist me up and out of the ditch. Once I was standing, he released my hand and gave me a quick once-over. “Felt the need to go for a walk in your dressing gown, did you, lass?”

“I—” Swaying a little, I wrapped my arms around the front of my body, doing what I could to cover my chest. The linen shift wasn’t transparent, but it wasn’t substantial enough to hide everything. “I am not sure . . .”

The driver’s expression darkened. “Perhaps more has befallen you than a mere bump on the head . . .”

It took me a moment to capture his meaning. Finally, I shook my head. “I do not know, sir,” I said lamely.

He studied my face for a moment, and when he spoke, I had the feeling he’d been considering saying something else entirely. “Come along, lass.” He held his arm out to the car maybe a dozen yards away. I stumbled, but he caught my arm. “Careful . . .”

“Thanks,” I said breathily.

“Please do not think me rude for not introducing myself or inquiring about your name,” he said as he situated me in the front passenger seat. “With Clan Heru, well . . . it’s just safer this way.”

“It’s fine.” I offered him as much of a smile as I could manage. It was a valiant attempt with pathetic results. “I prefer anonymity as well.”

“Lovely.” He settled in the driver’s seat. “Shall we be off, then?”

I nodded, head spinning and feeling like it was about to explode. I couldn’t get to Castle Uaireigin—to Marcus—fast enough.

#

Leaning against the stone wall beside the tall iron gate blocking off the driveway to Castle Uaireigin, I watched my knight in a shining automobile drive away. The car was out of sight, hidden by bends in the road and tall, leafy trees, far before the sound faded.

“Lex.” The voice was husky and almost familiar. I spun around, lightheaded and world lurching, and found I recognized the woman standing a dozen feet away. Or rather, the Nejerette.

“Aramei?” I held onto one of the gate’s iron bars with a death grip. It was either that or fall down. Aramei was older now, just as I’d seen her during the brief glimpse this last time in the Hathor temple. She was about my height and lanky, much like her father, and her dark hair was pulled back into a sporty ponytail. She was wearing boot-cut jeans and a fitted, button-down plaid shirt—not really era-appropriate attire.

She nodded once. “But please, call me Mei.”

I blinked, dumbfounded. “I guess that explains why you’re dressed like that,” I said. My own dress was out of date, but from the other end. “How—” I started to ask, but stopped myself. She was a time traveler . . . and the leader of the Kin. She was also supposedly Nik’s daughter—Aset’s granddaughter. And she was dead, in my time. But I couldn’t tell her that. I settled on asking, “Why are you here?”

“To stop you.” Mei’s smile was kind, almost sad. “You can’t do this, Lex. If you go in there and find Heru, you’ll change everything. You’ll
ruin
everything we both worked so hard for.”

My head pounded, and all I could think about was getting closer to Marcus. The pain was all-encompassing, driving logic from my brain. “But the withdrawals . . . I’m dying . . .”

Mei took a step toward me. “As you are now, yes, you’re dying. But that won’t change by seeing him. You’ll only delay the inevitable. You’ll still die—a slow unraveling of your threads in the timeline—and then you’ll cease to be. Your children will
cease to be
.”

“My children . . .” I leaned my head against the gate, the smell of the iron filling my nostrils. “I’m so tired, and I hurt so much.”

Mei touched my arm. “I know.”

“How did you find me?”

“I felt the ripples of what you were about to do. Desperation can drive us to distraction, and I fear that is what it is doing to you.”

“So what, I should just lie down and die?” I laughed bitterly. “After everything?”

I knew she was right, that I couldn’t go see Marcus, that I couldn’t go be near him and absorb however much of his bonding pheromone I needed to regain my strength so I could make this final jump home. Marcus would remember me; it would change the timeline from this point forward. I knew she was right, somewhere deep within the far recesses of my brain, in the logical, reasonable areas that had been locked away, imprisoned by the pain. By the desperation.

“You could,” Mei said. “You could die, here and now, and it wouldn’t matter. Universal balance would remain restored, thanks to the continued existence of your children.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “But you saved my life once, a very long time ago. I didn’t understand it until I was older and learned of what I could do—of what it truly meant to be a Nejerette out of time—but you saved my life that day you visited the temple. You appeared out of nowhere, a true goddess to my child’s brain, and scared me into keeping my promise. I never told another soul about my lineage . . . I never spoke of it aloud again. There was no way for anyone to know that I was like my father. My silence was the only reason I survived.

“You
could
die here.” She rested the side of her head against the gate, mirroring me, and smiled. “But you don’t have to—not here, maybe not at all. I can jump through time with you. I can take you home. Your children are waiting for you.”

I watched dark spots move in all around me, giving me tunnel vision until all I could see was Mei’s smooth Nejerette features.
My children . . .
Deep in the far recesses of my mind, from that prison cell of pain, a coherent thought swam free. “Do it.”