Bad Blood (Book 4 of The Warden series) (12 page)

“Doubtful. It’s too late for me now anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why were you asking if we had spoken before this?” He turned his head back to see her in his peripheral.

“I’ve been doing some time jumping. I keep meeting up with you in a different timeline, or maybe the same timeline, just a different part, I don’t know.”

“And we spoke in one of these timelines?” he asked forgoing the usual look of WTF that she might have expected.

“Yeah, you are sort of helping me. I think you might have even just saved me in one of them,” she admitted. She expected him to make a snide comment, but he just turned a little more to catch her eye. For once, he didn’t look mad, bitter, or cocksure.

He looked forlorn.

“Well, maybe in the next timeline you can save me.”

“Stand down!” A voice boomed on the other side of Efrat. Cori peeked around and saw an olive uniform with stars on the collar. The beret on his head didn’t quite match the hard face. He glared at her over Efrat’s shoulder and she suddenly realized he was talking to her.

“Stand down!”

She jumped from the second command, and holstered her gun before backing away. She would have been annoyed by his imperious attitude—if she weren’t too busy debating how many pushups it would take to appease him.

Danato came from behind the four-star general and swept her to the side of the room. She was relieved to be manhandled away from the scene, even if it did make her look more like an underling.

The General had a beer belly gut that was only acceptable for high-ranking military officers. He, no doubt, would claim that he was just as fit as his younger counterparts, but it would only be his intimidation that kept anyone from the challenge, not his physique.

“Cori,” Danato pulled her along further trying to leave the room.

“I warned you about escaping, Efrat. You just had to fight me to the very end, didn’t you?” The General bellowed through a red face. “I told you not to push me. Looks like your risk has finally outweighed your potential.” Without another word, the General pulled his handgun and shot Efrat in the face. The back of his head exploded in a shower of blood, brain, and skull.

Cori squealed and buried her head in Danato’s shoulder. She had never seen anyone shot, let alone been close enough to feel the spray of blood. It didn’t matter who it was. It was still a horrific sight and her hyperventilating tears were as much for her shattered vision of humanity, as for Efrat.

“Shhh.” Was all she heard as a hand pushed her head from the warm shoulder. “Quiet,” Efrat whispered from below her. He was still alive, for now.

23

“Efrat?” A few crocodile tears spilled on to his t-shirt, soaking into the fabric. The prop room was dark, but she could see him clearly beneath her. Her fingers were wrapped around his neck paused in strangulation.

She touched his face to see if it was real. His chin pulled down into his neck as if he was searching for the hidden weapon she was distracting him from.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“They shot you,” she whispered. His forehead was pinched so tight, he had developed a uni-brow.

It must have been a strange turn of events from his perspective. Moments earlier, in the heat of their argument and his assaulting slap, she had tried to shoot him. Now she was crying because someone else had shot him.

“Who shot me?”

“The General just shot you.” She drifted her hand to the back of his head to search for damage. She knew she wouldn’t find any, but she had to alleviate the pressure of the embedded memory in her mind. It was too real not to physically disprove.

“Oh,” was all he said before laying his head back on the floor. She was aware that her body was on top of him, but for the moment, she was too distracted to care.

“Why would he do that?” Her eyes started to water and she pressed her forehead into his chest, trying to rid herself of the instant replay in her head. “How could he do that? Point blank…” She shivered.

He lifted her head to look at him. “You really do live in a fairytale world don’t you?”

Her eyes flickered over his. She was offended, but she soon realized that he might be right. “If a fairytale world means I don’t ever have to see a man’s brains explode, then yes, sign me up for more.” She lost a few more tears and he frowned before he pushed her to sit up with him. She was aware of the stinging from his hands, but it wasn’t painful.

She wiped away her tears, starting to see the futility of expressing emotion to this man. Her cheek felt bruised from his earlier slap, but the anger from that had since dampened. “I’m not a moron. I know bad things happen. I just assumed that there was a protocol for stuff like this. Danato would never execute a prisoner.” Cori did know of one time that he had, but she also knew how mad he was at having to do it. She knew Danato would never outright execute a prisoner.

“General Clark isn’t interested in protocol. He has one job. Keep us contained. If he can’t…” He ended his sentence with a hand gesture of a gun shooting. The innocent gesture roiled her stomach more than the actual shooting did. She covered her mouth in case she threw up. He watched her curiously, not attempting to comfort her.

She uncovered her mouth. “You’re a complete bastard and I think I really do hate you, but I don’t want you to die.” She could feel his eyes on her. He was as suspicious of her as she was him. “I think I need your help to get me out of this. Unfortunately, my hero is somewhere in France, being seduced by my archenemy, so neither one of those positions is available. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind taking the good-bad guy role. At least until I know Belus is safe and no one else is dead.”

Efrat leaned back against a pile of junk that might have been a dining room table on its side. For the briefest of moments, Cori wondered what trouble a dining room table could get into.

Dinner couldn’t have been that bad.
Ba-dum-dum-ching.

“Would you have tried to stop it?” He mumbled. “If you knew he was going to kill me, would you have tried to stop him?”

“I’ve already helped you escape once so far. Got my arm shot doing it.”

His brow dipped temporarily. “Someone shot at you?”

“I think they were aiming for you. I was apparently “rescuing” you.” She air quoted.

“I don’t really need rescuing from bullets.”

“Could have fooled me?” Cori said straight faced. Efrat held her gaze for a moment before he looked away as if he couldn’t stand to continue this line of conversation. “Why have I relived this same morning three times?” she asked happy to get back on track.

“I told you…you’re jumping through time.”

“Danato says that’s impossible.”

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t know everything!” He barked at her offering her a glare that made her pursue her gun. Her fingers dragged the floor until she felt the metal muzzle. When her hands latched on to it, she remembered that he still had her bullets. He took notice of her hand gripping the weapon again. “You should have killed me this morning when you had the chance.” He grabbed her shoulders. The tingling prickling pain of his power entered her body making the muscles in her back arch uncontrollably. “I could still kill you with one bolt,” he said through gritted teeth.

She wasn’t entirely sure how the timeline was going, but she was almost sure that he couldn’t kill her at this point. She took the risk and called his bluff. “Get on with it then, so I don’t have to listen to you crow.” His energy released enough to make talking easier. “I don’t have time for this Efrat. I need to know what you know. I’m operating blind here. Why did I bring you into this?”

He let her go and she fell back against her pile of junk, which prompted something to fall in her lap. She raised her hands not wanting to touch it. “Oh crap, what is it this time?”

“A snow globe,” Efrat said disinterested after he peeked at it. Cori carefully placed the globe off to one side.

“Seriously, why do we keep this shit here?” Cori snarled. She intended to make a very serious argument on removal or organization of the props as soon as she wasn’t saving Belus, Efrat, or herself, from bullet holes. “Okay, Efrat, let’s do the time warp again. When was the first time you saw me this morning?”

“When you jammed your gun in my back and threatened to
not
kill me, but sever my spinal cord.” He glared as if she were directly to blame for that threat, which apparently she was.

“I got the drop on you when you came into the bubble room?”

“No, I bolted you. You got off a shot, but you missed. I thought you were out for a good number of hours, but when I turned away you jumped me.”

“Interesting, you bolting me was part of my first morning memory, but I’ve had several memories of this morning since then. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s been overwritten. What did I tell you?”

“You told me that we had two hours to save Belus, save me, and stop you from jumping through time.”

“How do we do all that?”

“You weren’t exactly forthcoming with all the information. Either you didn’t know, or you didn’t want me to know.”

“Or I didn’t want me to know,” Cori mumbled as she scratched her fingers and twisted her gold rings to massage the blanched tissue beneath. They didn’t seem to react well with Efrat’s electricity. She couldn’t remember whether gold conducted electricity or not. “So, what are we doing in here?” She motioned all around.

“Hiding. We sort of got caught together negotiating our alliance. By now Danato knows I’m out, and he knows that you are with me.” Cori’s mouth gaped as she tried to think of how Danato would react to finding out that she was harboring a fugitive. Why did this keep happening to her? The minute she started to earn points with anyone for good behavior, she was forced to do something stupid. “Despite what the guard saw, I’m sure Danato thinks I’m the one kidnapping you,” Efrat added as if he could sense her concern.

“It doesn’t matter. He’s going to be pissed no matter how this ends. My luck never allows for easy endings. Hell, I’ve already gotten shot, and I haven’t even finished the morning. If I can stop Belus and you from being shot, it will likely be at the cost of me breaking an arm or a leg at least.”

“Why do you do this job? Why don’t you just leave?” His voice wasn’t asking so much as accusing. The glare embedded in his face would not be satisfied by her love story with Ethan. He was too cynical to believe love could make someone become an indentured servant.

“I did once, but…” She trailed off thinking about a hundred things at once, from the smell of Paris, to her last moments with Vince, and her first kiss with Ethan.

“But?” He ushered with a softer tone.

“You can’t hide from your family. Danato has given me so much. I know it sounds strange to you, but I feel more at home here with a family of no blood relation, than I ever did with my father, or my aunt.”

Cori couldn’t tell if he disapproved of what she said or just disappointed. For a moment, he looked like he might make a biting comment about how pathetic she was. “What about your mother?”

She cringed, thinking of her mother. She was the exception. Her mother was everything to her, but she was long since gone. “My mother isn’t my home, she is my foundation. She’s with me, wherever I go.”

He frowned and looked away. He apparently didn’t much like this conversation either.

The air stilled and she was aware of the vacuous silence. She wondered if she should ask more questions. Did he even know any more? Part of her still wondered if he was the one who had shot Belus. Was she simply leading the event into fruition by dragging him around with her?

“Efrat,” she said when she felt the silence become claustrophobic. He looked at her with the same disapproval he had before. “I wish I knew—“

His hand flew over to her mouth and covered it. She couldn’t move to get away from him, except to further push herself into whatever sharp object was making its home in the small of her back. He shook his head and pointed at the lamp.

A pair of ghostly eyes surrounded by mist, appeared over the lamp. They looked around and caught sight of the two of them staring at it. The eyes widened and disappeared into oblivion.

Efrat leaned back releasing her mouth. She shook her head. “Thanks. I don’t need another entanglement.” Cori shifted to feel what was bothering her back. Something fell between her legs.

She picked up the fallen object, a folded piece of white paper. She decided it must have been on the bottom of the snow globe that fell in her lap. She unfolded it and read it. She smiled recognizing her own handwriting. It was strange to hear from one’s future self, especially, when the future self was here prior to the current self. Her future-past-self had horrible handwriting. She could barely make out the words.

“Hey,” she stood up and held out her hand to Efrat. He looked at her outstretched palm like it was a snake that might potentially bite him. “Get up. We need to go.”

He didn’t take her hand, but he did stand up and make his way through the maze of clutter toward the door. “Where are we going?”