The Isis Knot (17 page)

“Oh fuck. Oh God.” Throwing one leg gracelessly over the saddle, she slid to the mud and staggered to him. She turned him over, gagging at the crimson puddle his body had become.

“Jesus, William, she shot you. She
shot
you.” She flung Viv’s bag away and bent over William.

The braided woman wailed in loss, but Sera’s fear was all her own. This man’s life leaked out in rivers of red, and it was all her fault.

“Why did you do that? Why did you jump in front of me?” It came out angrier than she intended, angrier than he deserved.

He started to cough, little flecks of blood dotting his lips. His body convulsed, death shuddering through his limbs. Then his eyes opened, connecting with hers. She took his face in her hands.

It was Viv all over again.

The magic, those undeniable powers, ballooned inside Sera, hot and consuming. The images came, layering translucent over William’s limp body.

The woman nursing a babe.

The star-outlined hunter and his dog.

The Isis knot.

She knew what they meant now. What they wanted her to do: She could
heal
William.

She hadn’t done it for Viv, but she would do it now.

She shoved her fingers into William’s hair, thumbs on his jaw. Leaning down she touched her forehead to his, trying to dampen the flood of rising panic. Eyes closed, she imagined herself kneeling before a beautifully carved statue of a woman with braids and jeweled robes. She imagined herself praying. Pleading. Laying bread at the beautiful woman’s feet.

Please help him.

She hoped it would be enough, that plea, so she kept repeating it, over and over again.

And then the magic responded.

There was no tunnel vision this time, only a great soaring of emotion. It was a sprint toward the edge of a cliff and the joyous dive from the top. She fell and fell, surrounded by hope and colors and magic. A pool of warm water cradled her at the bottom.

He began to heave. She pulled back but kept her hands on him, one sliding down to the warm, wet wound in his side.

“William. Will. Stay with me.”

Convulsions arched his back high off the dirt. She refused to let him go. One arm snaked around his neck and she pressed her cheek to the sticky blood on his chest.

Please help him. Don’t let him leave me.

She gave him everything—opened up her soul, let all that unknown swoop in and take over. She didn’t question, didn’t close herself off. And in doing that, a great, heavy door in her mind opened up, too. All that she hadn’t been able to remember, all that had been shut away from her ever since she’d awakened on the hard ground of 1819 New South Wales, was revealed.

She remembered it
all
.

Her whole life came back to her, turned back on like a replacement lightbulb. Too bright. Too sudden. All the horrid details of her rough childhood in Vegas. How her mother had taught her to steal and con. How she’d finally fled Las Vegas for Seattle to try for a new, honest life. The circumstances surrounding the surprise letter from her birth father. Egypt. How it felt to kill someone.

Holy fuck, she’d killed someone. An innocent someone. Done at the command of Malik Elsayed after he’d sent her into the cave and she’d come out holding the powers of life and death in her bare hands…

A final shudder beneath her cheek, then William’s body went still. She clung to him even tighter, forcing the memories of Egypt away. Defeat pummeled her. An immeasurable sorrow lodged in her heart.

Then his hot breath tickled the hair on top of her head.

She snapped up, arms braced on either side of his shoulders, and searched his face. He slowly opened his eyes. She tugged a bloody, sweaty lock of hair off his forehead.

He winced, teeth clenching, as his hand groped for his side. Rolling over, he pushed himself to his knees and looked at her, panting. “What did you do?”

The enormity of what she’d just done—and its fantastic nature—came crashing down. She’d felt it before, of course, with Viv. But actually doing it, actually using the magic that had been unwittingly given to her, was an entirely different thing. She covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh my God.”

He clawed at his chest, ripping open the blood-soaked shirt to run his fingers over the puckered, sealed flesh underneath. One hand went to his chest as it rose and fell with his deep breaths. He made a strange, gargling noise in his throat. “What did you
do
?”

He scrambled to his feet, away from her.

“I…I don’t really know.” It was the truth, in a way.

“Yes, you do.” His eyes were crazy wide. “I was shot. I was about to die. I could feel it coming. You
healed
me.”

As she nodded, a vision of the braided woman came to mind. The woman smiled at Sera, opened her arms, then faded into smoke.

“How?” A million emotions tortured his face. Fear. Confusion. Gratefulness. Awe.

She rocked to her feet, her body heavy as rock.

“How did you heal me?”

She took several deep breaths. All that had been revealed to her during William’s healing rolled about in her brain and in her mind’s eye. “You said you wanted to know my half of the story.” She removed Viv’s coat and shoved up her shirt sleeve, letting the sun catch the cuff. “Well, here it is.”

“You told me you didn’t remember much.”

She touched her forehead, frowning. “I do…now. Healing you brought it back. Brought it all back.”

A rustle in the nearby bushes made her swivel, her heart pounding. A barrel-chested white-and-gray bird peered at them from a branch with sharp black eyes. It fluffed itself up like a cat then took to the air, its tiger-striped tail spreading into a fan. The cackle that came from its throat sounded evil. Like an alarm. Just a bird, but enough to warn her they wouldn’t be alone for long.

“We have to get out of here,” she said.

“No. You have things you need to tell me. A story. Your story.”

That she did, but she was jumpy and nervous about being discovered or captured or who knew what else before she could ever voice it.

“Tell me.” He took her arms. The smell of his blood was still pungent. The connection between them pulled taut.

“I will. I promise. But she’ll find me if we don’t find a place to hide. Now.”

He frowned. “She?”

“Elizabeth. The crazy woman from town. She may have shot you, but she was aiming for me. She knew this cuff, too. I don’t know how or why, but she recognized it. And she wants it. She wants me.” Sera nodded toward Parramatta. “A blind man could follow your trail of blood. Your shirt is still dripping. Take if off. Leave it here.”

As she started for the horse, he stepped in front of her. “That woman was insane. So are a great many female convicts. She saw gold, she wanted it, there happened to be a gun nearby. If Samuel Oliver took the cuff from Egypt and gave it to a family member, how would she know about it?”

She directed a pointed look at the pucker of healed flesh below his ribs. “I don’t think either one of us is in the position to claim what is sane and what isn’t.” She waved the cuff in front of his face. “That look in your eyes when you recognized this thing? I saw it on her face, too. Somehow she knows it. More importantly, she knows
what
it is and she will do anything to get it. I felt it. I can’t explain that any more, but I know that she’ll hunt me.”

Grabbing her hand, he turned her wrist to stare at the Isis knot. Running a thumb over the symbol, he murmured, “So this is more than a piece of ancient jewelry?”

She stared at the hard line of his mouth, the severe furrow of his brow. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

“Hell and damn.” He released her hand, dragging his fingers through hers and leaving tremors in their wake. “I have an idea where we can go.”

She looked into his blood-streaked face and knew that yes, there definitely was a “we.” There was freedom in that kind of acceptance, however far-fetched it might be. “Where?”

“Back to Sydney. There’s a man there, a lieutenant. He’s meant a lot to me over the years and he offered to help me once I got here. I hope I can convince him to offer again.”

She glanced at Viv’s bag where it lay on the ground. One of the bottles had broken sometime during their flight from Parramatta and had leaked through the canvas. She realized she not only reeked of blood and fear, but of rum. “I still have to go back to Viv first.”

“I’ll come with you, but it’s got to be a short stop if that chemist with the gun knew you.” He grabbed a hunk of hair at his temple and blew out a breath. “Ah, fucking hell.”

“What?”

“Jem. The other someone I mentioned. I have to go back for him, make sure he’s all right. I left him on the other side of Parramatta.”

Another imminent separation. Now that all this had transpired—the healing, the threat from Elizabeth, the remembering—it was even more important she and William not lose each other. She swallowed hard, her thirst even more apparent. “All right. You take the horse. It scares me. I recognize those landmarks in the distance. I can find my way.”

He considered her, then moved to the animal. He spun it back around, slapped it on the rump, and it trotted off, riderless, back toward Parramatta. “It’s easier to cover tracks on foot.”

She bent for the bag of rum bottles, broken glass crunching inside. Viv’s hat had been lost somewhere between Parramatta and here, and it made her terribly sorry.

“Remember.” Her voice cracked. “The hill with the twisted tree.”

Eyes firmly on hers, William dipped his chin. Then he stripped off his shirt and left it on the ground. His suspenders made dark loops around his hips and thighs.

They stood ten feet apart, silent as the world around them. Then Sera turned around and jogged away, before either of them allowed themselves to question the future. Or the past.

CHAPTER 12

Viv sat on the edge of his cot, clutching his mug of rum like a child with a new toy. He grinned at Sera between sips. It might have been funny if it weren’t so sad. An old man trapped in this life, in this place, attached to nothing but sheep and drink.

“God bless,” he muttered. “God bless you, girl.”

He never mentioned God unless he had a cup at his lips.

It’d been a long time since anyone had called her a girl. Even longer since she’d felt like one. Viv seemed to consider it, too, and squinted.

“How old are you, wife?”

Negative two hundred-ish
. “Twenty-eight.”

Viv clucked his tongue. “And no one’s claimed you before? Shame. Well, you’re mine now.”

She knew he didn’t say it to be possessive, to actually claim her. He was chuckling at the irony of it, while the sadness in his eyes said he wished that Sera were Mary. She imagined him back in England before his sentence, the kind of man who enjoyed his pub stool and a good tale. She hoped he and his Mary used to laugh a lot.

Sera would give him his illusions today, let him see her however he wished. Because she was about to leave him.

She’d arrived back at the homestead in early afternoon to find him able and walking around, but still a little shaky. She’d started to concoct a long, apologetic story about being delayed by the storm and losing his hat, but he’d waved her off, eyes intent on the brown-bottled prize. He didn’t even ask why she was covered in dried blood.

Now, with the stars glinting in the puddles outside, she shuffled around in front of the intimidating stove, throwing whatever she could into a pot for soup. She’d spent the afternoon waiting nervously for William and scrubbing the blood-stained clothes she’d borrowed from Viv. For a moment she considered throwing on her old clothes, the ones from the twenty-first century, but ended up burning them instead. She had no idea what the future held and was scared to carry them with her. She also wanted no evidence of her presence here. It felt safer that way.

She opened the doors and windows of the shack under pretense of letting in the cool peace of the moonlit night, when really her eyes couldn’t stop straying to the barnyard. Waiting. Anxious. Worrying.

As Viv sat drinking bland soup and mashing gooey vegetables between his gums, she told him, “There was a little trouble in town.”

He grunted. “There usually is.”

“I mean with me. There’s a chance someone might come looking for me, and not for a good reason.”

That made him pause. She wasn’t sure how much more to say, but she knew he imagined the worst.

Just then, the faint sound of splashing, mud-sucking footsteps came from outside next to the barn. She jumped to her feet, her heart thudding in anticipation.

Through the open door, she could see two silhouettes just beyond the fence. One was unmistakably William. The light wind blew his wild hair around his head, and his lean, shirtless body moved through the patchy grass with grace. The other person stood at least five inches taller, a walking tree with bone-thin legs and arms, and poor posture. While William ducked between the fence slats to enter Viv’s farmyard, the other threw his long legs over the top.

“Bolters? Rain always brings ’em out. Like worms.” Viv picked at a piece of stringy meat between his teeth. He took her silence as a yes. “Let ’em take a sheep, then they’ll be on their way. Not worth the trouble.”