The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance (54 page)

“Harriet, what are you doing here?” Mary asked. “Tell me you’re not dead, too.” She stared at her surroundings, but there was only endless white, blinding her to all else.

“No, but I can’t say as I’m alive either. I’m only half-human and I move about when it suits me. You might consider me a fairy godmother of sorts.” Harriet’s smile widened as if she liked that idea. “And right now, I’m doing what I do best. Forcing the Daoine Sídhe to keep their promises.” She tossed the can of Coke at the small man. “Kevan, send her back. All she had to do was win his love and love him in return.” Harriet pinned her with a stare. “You do love him, don’t you, Mary?”

“Yes.”

“And he obviously loves her,” Harriet pronounced. “That’s all settled then. Kevan, you’ll keep your word, and, Mary, you’ll have no memories of the twenty-first century any more. We can’t have you inventing toilet paper before it’s supposed to happen. A slight case of amnesia will do the trick nicely.” She waved a hand and the veil between worlds parted.

From behind the veil, Mary saw Cian holding her lifeless body in his arms, his eyes filled with anguish. Then she saw the knife clenched in his hand. The blade gleamed, and Kevan smiled. He’d known Cian’s intent.

“Send me back now,” she ordered.
Let it not be too late.

A hand shoved his wrist away before he could plunge the blade into his chest. Cian jerked back when he saw Mary’s eyes open, her hands touching his. “Don’t!” she begged.

The knife clattered from his fingers, and he gripped her tightly. “My God. I thought you were dead. You weren’t breathing. I couldn’t hear your heart beating.”

Tears poured down Mary’s cheeks and she was shaking. “Kevan almost didn’t keep his word. But I convinced him of the truth.” Drawing back to look into his eyes, she said, “I thought a man like you would never love someone like me. I didn’t dare to hope for it. But I love you, Cian. I don’t care what your dreams tell you, or how many members of your clan left. I’m staying right here.”

He kissed her, thanking God he hadn’t taken his own life. To have her back, to hold her in his arms once more, was the greatest gift he’d been given. With every touch, he murmured words of love, promises he would keep.

But then, the world folded into a familiar blur. He stared off into the distance, afraid of the future he would see. Though he tried to keep it at bay, there was no denying the vision before him.

Mary caught his hand, whispering. “What is it? What did you see this time?”

He sent her a shaky smile. “Not death. A blessing.” Reaching out to her stomach, he rested it there, imagining his babe already growing inside her. “I dreamed of life.”

Her answering smile and understanding filled him up with a happiness he’d never expected. “Our family.”

As he led her back inside their home, Mary whispered, “Harriet was right. Wishes can come true.”

Colby Hodge

June 29 1886

Texas Ranger Rand Brock nudged the toe of his boot against the swollen mass at the bottom of the wash. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow before settling it back on his head. It was hot. The kind of hot that made you wonder if hell would be just as bad. Thinking about the heat wasn’t making this job any easier.

He’d seen men who’d been in the water a while. Just like cows they would bloat up and then the skin would burst beneath the hot West Texas sun but this . . . it looked as though the body had been chopped up, randomly stuck back together, and then cooked in a pot until it melted into an indistinguishable blob. And that was before it got caught up in the flash flood that carried it down the canyon and left it half buried in the sand.

He dropped down into a squat and gave it a closer look. Unfortunately for Rand, he recognized it, or maybe he should say a part of it. “Hell’s sweet heat!” His horse, Joe, twisted its ears at his curse and looked at him curiously.

The face, what was left of it, bore a distinct scar that ran from a missing ear to the corner of its mouth. He jumped back when a scorpion crawled out of the open mouth and quickly scuttered into the rocks that littered the riverbank. Joe pawed the ground behind him and tossed his head as he stretched his lower lip out and waggled it back and forth.

“Go ahead. Laugh it up, Joe.” Rand knelt back down to look at the body. “I’m sure Hank thinks it pretty funny.” There was no doubt in his mind that he was looking at Hank Miller, who was supposed to be on his way to the Federal Prison in Leavenworth along with two other prisoners. His partner, Tom, was their escort. He’d been on the trail of the entire group after the prison wagon turned up empty and burning at the bottom of a ravine. The driver had been alive, barely, and gasped out something about the attack coming from the sky before he’d died of his wounds, which were as big a mystery as his last words. He had a big round hole in the middle of his chest like someone or something had stuck a red hot poker clean through him.

Since the driver’s last words kind of went along with something a copper miner had said after stumbling into town a few days earlier, Rand had centred his search in this particular canyon. The miner reported strange lights at dusk, a boat that floated in the sky, scorpions made from steel and fire arrows. And that was all before he downed a bottle of whiskey.

This was not what he expected to find. Not at all. “What happened to you?” he said to the dead man before him. He took his hat off again and wiped the sweat away. The sun was merciless, the thunderstorms from the night before the forebears of extreme heat as if the lightning he’d watched from his shelter had boiled the air. He looked upstream. Whatever had killed Hank and left this mess had to have occurred up the canyon somewhere.

“Guess there’s nothing left to do but bury you, or what’s left of you.” He went to where Joe browsed among some gorse bushes and yanked the small shovel from his pack. He took his shirt off and hung it over the saddle as he loosened Joe’s bit. “Don’t get lazy on me.” The horse had been his faithful companion for many years. “This is the last trip for you and me. Once this is over and we get back to Laredo I promise it’s nothing but sweet grass and fat mares.”

Sweat dripped down his chest as he dug a hole far enough back from the river bed to keep Hank from washing out in the next flash flood. Finally he was content with the depth of the hole and went back to where the body lay. Another hour under the hot sun had not helped its condition one bit and Rand looked at it in distaste. Luckily he was wearing gloves and he finally reached down and grabbed the pulpy mass around what he thought could possibly be shoulders and pulled it from the sand.

What came with it made Rand jump back a good ten feet. There was another body. Or was it? What was between them was a twisted heap of . . . something . . . but beneath there was another part of a face.

“Tom!” Rand turned his head and heaved up the contents of his stomach. He wiped his mouth on his arm and covered his bile with some sand before turning once more to look at what was left of Texas Ranger Tom Jacks. Something protruded from his torso, something sharp and shiny, like the blade from a sword. Rand covered his mouth and swallowed hard as he pulled the piece of metal from his friend’s body.

It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before – about three feet long and hinged in the middle so that the piece flexed, like a knee or an elbow. Rand moved it up, then down and marvelled at the intricate craftsmanship of whatever it was. The tip of it was as sharp as a razor and sliced open the finger of his glove.

“Tarnation!” He started to fling the part away, then thought better of it and took it over to Joe, wrapped it in a piece of hide and stuffed it in his saddlebag. Then he grabbed the bodies and dragged them over to the hole and rolled them in. He shoved the dirt over the grave, packed it down with the flat side of the shovel and gathered as many rocks as he could find to place over it.

“Damn . . . Tom . . .” He stared upstream for a moment, then back down at the dirt. “I’ll find who done this. I swear.” Rand pushed the shovel into his pack, swung up on Joe’s back without bothering to put on his shirt and rode upstream. He’d had enough of that place.

April 27 2143

Shay McCoy studied the data on the screen as her handler, Topher, quantified the position of the quirks they’d discovered. Time had been fractured by some idiot who did not have a clue what he was dealing with. More of Wiley’s work no doubt. The escaped criminal was determined to corner the market on time travel by reinventing the wheel and had left traces of his attempts all over history. This meant she was often cleaning up after him instead of hunting for him. It was her fault he’d escaped and she’d be damned if someone else was going to run him down. It was her case, her problem and she would handle it, or die trying. She could do nothing less since she was a Five-one Captain of the Time Travel Enforcement Agency.

“I need it narrowed down, Topher.”

“I’m working on it . . . got it . . . 1886 . . . somewhere in . . . West Texas.”

“Please tell me it’s not the middle of summer.” Shay hated the desert with a passion. Nothing but scorpions, rattlesnakes and dry heat that made it impossible to draw a breath.

“Give me a minute,” Topher replied.

Shay shook her head in aggravation. Minutes were valuable, especially when some idiot was screwing around with them. The window for correction was short but luckily the damage in West Texas in the late nineteenth century should be minimal. There weren’t that many people around the area in that time, if the data was accurate. It should be. The world’s history had been carefully mapped and archived just in case something like this happened.

She checked her supplies while Topher studied the screen. Her armband, which stretched from wrist to elbow, was synchronized with Topher’s computer and spewed out data just a millisecond after he relayed it to her. Her weapon, the PR37, was fully charged. It hung on her hip from a belt that also carried a back-up charge, a sanitation bag, a med kit and a pair of goggles. She stuck a small vial of sunscreen into the med kit. No need to take any chances, even though she expected to be back before daybreak.

“Third of June 1886; 10.17 p.m.,” Topher said. “I’ve already ordered a costume set up.”

“Not going to need it,” Shay said. “It’s the middle of nowhere and I’m going in at night. No one will see me. I’ll be out in six, well before dawn.” She picked up the pack that held enough explosives to implode a small city. “This is all I need right here.”

“You’re the boss.” Topher punched the coordinates into the console.

Shay checked the charge on her weapon. “So they tell me.” She stepped on to the transporter and shimmered out of existence.

The sun had just dipped behind the canyon ridge when Rand made camp. The sky was cloudless, with yellows and pinks streaking out from the sunset into the deep violet of the east yet he saw lightning in the north, at the head of the wash.

He made camp behind a large rock that formed a shelter close to the wall of the canyon. He gave Joe a small ration of feed, stripped him down and gave him a good rub before turning him loose to forage along the river bank. Then he shucked his pants and boots and waded into the river. He waded out until the water reached his thighs and shivered, despite the heat that still hung heavy in the air. The vision of whatever had happened to Tom and Hank still hung in his mind and twisted his gut. The bottle of whiskey he carried with him should help with that. He hoped.

“Here’s to you, Tom.” Rand pointed the bottle towards the sky and took a long draw. He watched as night closed in and stars popped out in a sky as dark as velvet. The full moon hung clear and close enough to touch right over the lip of the canyon. It was a beautiful night, the kind you could only see in West Texas. Looking at the beauty of the night made the horror he’d seen that much more disgusting, and that much more intense.

It was bright enough that he could keep on travelling if he wanted to but he was bone weary from his days on the trail, and knew Joe, who was old, would have to feel just as bad if not worse. Upstream, to the north, he saw the flashes of light that meant another thunderstorm would come in the night yet there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. He could only hope that it wouldn’t be enough to flood the canyon again and wash another mystery up at his feet.

“I hope I find the son of a bitch who did that to you, Tom.” Rand took another draw from the bottle, stuck the cork back in and sunk below the surface. He felt the water gently wash over him and marvelled at the peacefulness of the river, compared to the raging torrent that must have carried his friend downstream. Finally, out of breath, he stood in one powerful motion, slinging water from his head in a big arc. At the same instant, he felt something slam into him, with a white flash of light. Rand staggered back and fell once more beneath the surface of the water.

Shay felt her body falling and spun her arms wildly to catch herself but there was nothing to grab on to. Whatever happened had to have occurred while she was in transit and it had knocked her off course. How far and how much was yet to be determined. She landed face first in the sand and quickly pushed herself up, coughing and gagging as the sand got in her mouth and nose. She instantly realized she was not alone and drew her weapon. A horse stumbled up from the sand and shook itself clean.

Shay quickly checked her arm display. She’d been caught in a time current, the very thing she’d come here to stop. She was off course by nearly a month, too late to stop the beginning of the rift they’d discovered.