Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3) (39 page)

Mari stepped forward, the spear growing until the point almost touched him, just under his chin. “I don’t have to stab you. I don’t even have to break your skin. All I have to do is touch you with this and everything that you are, were, or might be will disappear. It’ll destroy Nik’s ba—I don’t know what it’ll do to your ren.” She rolled her shoulder. “Want to find out?”

Re’s daggers disappeared into wispy, rainbow smoke. Slowly, he raised Nik’s hands in surrender.

“Hands down,” Mari said. “Turn around, and don’t bother trying to hide behind your precious At. I’ll just surround it with anti-At, and then you’ll be stuck for good.” She inched her spear closer to him, and he leaned back. “You’re going to see the Council.”

Pale blue bled back into Nik’s irises, and he nodded. “He’s gone . . . retreated to the At for safety. I’ll go with you.” He turned away from us. “No struggle, I swear.”

We trudged back to the main house in relative silence, Nik in the lead, Mari following close behind him, her anti-At spear at the ready, and me bringing up the rear.

“Marcus!” I called out as soon as we were through the front door. “Something’s wrong with Re!”

“There’s nothing wrong with me, child.”

I sucked in a breath. So Re was back. Peachy.

“But you—you are a virus, eroding more and more of reality with every breath you take.” Re-Nik turned his head, letting me see his profile. “You were a sacrifice. Why couldn’t you just die?” He faced ahead once more.

I stood in the doorway, mouth hanging open and eyes stinging.

Marcus appeared at the top of the stairs, hands on his hips. “Explain. Now.”

“It’s Re,” I told him. “He’s lost his mind. He just tried to kill me.”

Marcus’s focus shifted to Re-Nik, though his expression remained the same—very much
not
amused.

Re-Nik bowed his head. “It’s true—he won’t shut up about it.”

And just like that, Nik was in control . . . for the moment.

“He’s snapped,” Nik said. “He won’t stop raving—everything with Mari and the Council deliberations over the Kin—none of it would have happened if Kat had died that day. The rogues and Kin would still be focusing on one another, and their feud would eventually wipe out both groups. He thinks—” Nik shuddered. “He thinks he can right things by killing her, even now. He sees her as an aberration, this person who not only doesn’t show up in the At anymore, but whose continued existence drives reality further and further from what’s reflected there.”

“But killing her now wouldn’t change anything,” Mari said, spear still held strong. “The Council’s decision has already been made; there’s already an agreement.”

Nik balled his hands into fists at his sides. “Trust me, he’s not listening to reason anymore.” Nik raised his head, looking at Marcus. “If Mari hadn’t been there when we came after Kat . . .” Another shudder racked his body. “He’s fighting me. I don’t have much time, but I think what happened to Apep after Re split his sheut from the rest of him is happening to Re now. His sanity is slipping; his logic is warped.”

“Can you control him?” Marcus asked. “Is there a way for you to keep him locked away within you?” The two men stared at one another, Marcus looking down on his nephew, on his creator.

Nik’s gaze slid over to me, and my heartbeat stumbled over itself. After a long moment, he nodded. “He’ll never try anything like this again, I swear it.”

“Very well.” Marcus stepped to the side, welcoming Nik up the stairs.

Nik ascended, and Mari and I followed. I’d just entered the conference-room-turned-council-chambers when there was a flash of rainbow smoke, and two figures appeared.

“I have returned to you the Meswett, Alexandra Larson,” one said—a woman. She was holding up her companion, who
could
have been Lex, but limp and head drooping like that, it was hard to tell. “Her sheut is badly damaged, and she is near death. I have been to the future. I know the one and only way to save her. Grant me amnesty and I’ll tell you.”

“Granted,” Marcus said, pushing up from his seat so hard and quickly that the chair slammed against the wall behind him, making the mounted monitors tremble. He hurried around the table, reaching the pair while I was still struggling to process what was going on.

“Mom?” Mari said.

I looked at her, then back at the pair.

So much happened all at once. I didn’t know what to do, so I just scooted out of the way and pressed my back against the wall. Mari joined me.

Marcus helped Mei ease Lex down to the floor.

“You,” Mei said, pointing to Nik. “Come. You must turn her into At for the time being. It will be years until we have the means to save her.”

I looked at Nik. He stood behind a chair on the opposite side of the table from me, utterly immobile. His eyes were locked open and focused on Lex, but the irises were flickering, pale blue one second, opalescent white the next.

“Nik!” I shouted. “Help her!”

He looked at me with those disturbing, flickering eyes, and I sucked in a breath. It was wrong, whatever was going on inside him. So very wrong.

Mei’s calm, collected countenance broke. “Father! Please . . .”

And then he blinked, and it stopped. His irises settled, one blue, one white. He stood taller, his head held high. “We will do this thing you ask of us, Daughter.” He didn’t sound like Nik
or
Re, but some eerie combination of the two. “It will be a fitting final act . . .”

I didn’t have the time or wherewithal to consider his—their—words. I just stared at Lex, now lying stretched out on the floor, unconscious or . . . or worse. Mei had backed away, and Marcus knelt beside Lex’s body, alternating between pumping her chest and blowing into her mouth.

“Heru,” the strange combination of Re and Nik said, taking a single step toward the heartbreaking scene. “Stop.” He knelt on the opposite side of Lex’s body.

“No!” Pump. Pump. Pump. “She’ll die!”

“She is already dead.”

A soft, collective gasp cascaded through the room, followed by the silence of held breath. The silence of expectation, and of dread. Mari’s hand found mine, and I gripped her fingers tightly.

“Her ba is badly damaged. If you manage to revive her now, her body will only give out once more. You must let us preserve her in At, as our daughter said. When the twins are old enough and have mastery over their power, they should be able to repair the damage to her ba.” The
thing
that had once been Nik took hold of Marcus’s wrists and pulled them from Lex’s chest. “Do not touch her again, unless you, too, wish to be transformed into At.”

Almost as soon as he released Marcus, his hands were on Lex, one on her forehead, the other on the middle of her chest. It happened slowly, like ice crystals creeping across a window. Too slow to see the change, but fast enough that within minutes, she no longer looked like a flesh-and-blood person, but a pristine statue carved of quartz.

“It is done,” he—they—said, removing his hands from Lex. A moment later, Nik’s body went limp, and he fell to the side.

“I’m here.” Aset’s quick footsteps rushed up the hallway. “What hap—” Her words died when she reached the doorway.

“Attend to your son,” Marcus said, fingers tracing over Lex’s stone-like face. “There is nothing more we can do for her now.”

Blinking, I swallowed, my mouth feeling incredibly dry. I looked at Mei. “Did you say ‘father’?”

***

I’d been walking for hours, wandering along the trails winding all around the compound. When I reached the beach, I was ready for a nice, peaceful rest sitting on a piece of driftwood, lavishing in the serenity of the Puget Sound. Except the beach was already occupied.

I paused at the mouth of the trail, watching Mari and her mother, Mei. They sat side by side on some driftwood, not speaking. Just being. It was a beautiful scene, and I was struck with a surge of jealousy. Mari had her mom back, but I never would.

Mei had explained to us all in the quiet after the chaos of her and Lex’s arrival that she’d stepped out of time just a few seconds before her death—an event which she would be returning to at some point because, according to the natural progression of the timeline, it already happened. Someday, when she had tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands more years under her belt, she would return to that moment, and she would die.

But not yet. Apparently, she still had much to do. She seemed to know everything, or at least all that would happen in the next couple decades, so long as we continued down her “one true path.” The twins would grow up and learn to control their Netjer powers and, in time, be able to revive Lex. Nik, too, she claimed would be restored to full health, minus the soul of one ailing god. Apep would remain locked away in his sphere of At in the safe Marcus had buried somewhere here within the compound’s walls, the rogues would be hunted down and dispatched, and we’d all hold hands, sing “Kumbaya,” and toast marshmallows around a campfire. At least, that’s what she claimed. Well, maybe not that last bit.

We had no way of knowing if she spoke the truth, because—thanks to me—the At was no longer an accurate reflection of reality. As Re had said while raving, the echoes showed a world in which I’d died in that tent city. It was awesome. I’d been hoping for one more thing to set me apart from the rest of the damn world.

Not wishing to disturb Mei and Mari’s mother–daughter moment, I started to turn around to head back up the trail, but a twig snapped under my boot.

Both Mei and Mari turned their heads to look at me.

I lifted a hand to wave. “Sorry.”

Mei smiled. It was warm and motherly and clawed at my heart. “Please, Kat, come join us. There’s something I must tell you both.”

Frowning, I shrugged and started down the beach toward them. Once I was sitting on the driftwood beside Mari, Mei stood and faced us, hands clasped before her. She was supposedly Nik’s daughter—his only one, Aset claimed—born to a woman both he and Re had fallen in love with two millennia ago. Their daughter, Aramei, had been hidden away in an ancient Hathor temple—Lex’s temple—until, one day, she vanished. There was no sign of her in reality or in the At. Because she was a woman out of time. She’d never showed up in the At again. Kind of like me.

Now, standing there before us with the gray-blue water of the Sound stretching out beyond her, I thought I could see the resemblance between her and Nik. It made my heart hurt. I missed him.

“I hope you like the sword,” Mei said to me with a kind smile.

“The sword?” I shook my head, confused. But then I understood, and my eyes widened. “You left it on the counter for me?” I’d thought it had been Nik.

Mei nodded. “It was with Lex, when I found her.”

Still, I shook my head. “But why did you bring it to me?”

“Because you needed it,” she said. “Because the
one true path
needed you to have it.”

I stared at her, dumbfounded.

“And now there is a task the one true path requires the two of you to complete.” Her gaze fixed on me, a hard glint in her gray eyes. “You’ll need your sword.”

Groaning, I swallowed with some difficulty; my throat was so dry. I cleared it and peeled my eyelids open. My eyes felt crusty and grainy, scratching as they opened. The light in the room was blinding, gleaming off sterile white walls and forcing my eyes shut once more. The upper half of me was propped up, either by pillows or a hospital bed, I wasn’t sure. Near my left hip, something warm and vibrating restricted my arm’s movement. On my right side, someone was holding my hand, my fingers fully enclosed in a sure, two-handed grip.

Once more, I forced my eyes open. It was Marcus’s hands holding mine, his shaved head bowed and his broad shoulders hunched. He looked slighter than usual. But then, I had no idea what he’d been through during my travels in time.

“Marcus?” My voice was a mere rasp, barely audible.

He raised his head.

I blinked, my eyes opening wide despite the bright light. “You’re not—” I cleared my throat once more, hoping that if I did it enough times, my voice might eventually return to normal. “You’re not Marcus.”

I stared at the young man. His eyes were strange, his irises a glowing, seething mass of blues and purples and reds with hints of golds and greens in the depths, not to mention streaks of opalescent white and inky blackness. They were the eyes of a Netjer. The eyes of a god.

Except the only Netjers currently in existence in our universe were my children, and they were still babies. It had only been a matter of weeks since I gave birth to them.

“Who are you?”

“I know this must be a shock, but—”

“Lex?” My head snapped to the right. Marcus stood beyond the foot of the bed in an open doorway, his usual gray slacks and white button-down shirt looking unusually wrinkled. There was a stain on his shirt, down near his belt buckle, that looked an awful lot like coffee. He stood in that doorway and stared at me, his lips parted and eyes guarded.

I sat up the rest of the way, pulling my hand free of the stranger’s grip and waking up one of the two tabby cats sleeping on the bed. It stared at me with guarded eyes, just like Marcus. I returned its stare, not quite sure I understood what I was seeing. The cat looked like Rus . . . but fully grown.

I looked at Marcus. “What’s going on? How—” I shook my head, pleading with my eyes for him to make everything I’d seen in the moments since waking make sense. “Who’s he?” I asked, pointing to the stranger with my chin.

“Lex,” Marcus said, stepping into the room, “that’s Syris . . . your son.” After two more steps, I raised my hand for him to stop.

I looked from Marcus to the stranger and back, once again shaking my head. “No, that’s not possible. It’s only been weeks.” I licked my lips with a sandpaper tongue. “I was
just
pregnant. I just gave birth. I was just holding my babies in my arms . . .” I looked at the stranger once more, my throat constricting and heart thudding.

His resemblance to Marcus was impossible to ignore, but I thought I could also see pieces of myself in him, in the tilt of his eyes and in the slope of his nose. With recognition, reality started to sink in, and I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head.

“Lex . . .” Marcus’s voice was a soft hush.

My chin trembled, and though I felt like parting my lips would be playing with fire where tempting tears was concerned, I had to know. I had to ask. “How?”

“You’ve been frozen in At for the past sixteen years,” Marcus said, taking another step toward the bed.

“No. Just stop. I can’t . . .” I gestured for him to stay put with my hand, then looked at the stranger. Syris. My son. “You grew up,” I said, voice trembling. Tears escaped, gliding down my cheeks. “You grew up without me.”

“They had to, Lex.” Marcus closed the distance to the bed. He sat on the edge, displacing the cats, and wrapped his arms around me. He pulled me close, rubbing my back. “It was the only way to save you.”

I sobbed against his shoulder, a brutal, guttural sound torn from my chest.
My babies . . .

Syris took hold of my hand once more, his strong fingers cradling mine delicately, almost like he thought they might break in his grip. “We were just babies when you first returned. You’d nearly exhausted one of your sheuts and, in doing so, had badly damaged your ba. You were dying—well, you were technically dead. And we were too little; we couldn’t do anything to help you, so they had to freeze you in At. But me and my sister—we’ve been practicing controlling our powers practically since we could walk. We knew, even then, what we had to do. We just couldn’t do it until, well—until yesterday.”

I turned my head so my cheek was pressed against Marcus’s shoulder and I could see Syris. My son. I wondered how long it would take for that to sink in.

“I’m still me, Mother.” He offered me a tentative smile. “I sat with you every day.” His nostrils flared. “I told you all of my problems . . . all of my fears and worries—”

“Oh my God!” a young woman cried, launching herself onto the bed almost as soon as she entered the room. “I can’t believe you’re really awake.” Her voice broke as the words tumbled out. “After all these years, Mother, we finally got you back.” Her face was sandwiched somewhere between my neck and Marcus’s chest, muffling her voice. She was a teenager, but she became a little girl once again, just for a moment.
My
little girl, and I didn’t even know her name.

My sense of hearing spiked all of a sudden, my sight dimming from that brilliant, almost overwhelming sensitivity to something slightly manageable. I picked up on one side of a conversation that was happening far from this room, somewhere else in the . . . well, wherever we were. It was Dominic’s voice, talking to someone else I couldn’t hear.

“. . . think it’s past time you returned.” He must’ve been talking on the phone. “Even more reason to give up the fight.” There was a pause, and then he said, “Good. Let me know when you’re scheduled to arrive. I’ll have a car waiting.”

“Who—” I sniffled. “Who’s Dom talking to?”

“It’s Kat,” Marcus said against my hair. He was still rubbing my back with one hand, though his other arm had found its way around our daughter’s shoulders. “She’s been . . . away for quite some time now.”

I sniffled again, hoping somebody had a tissue nearby, because I was definitely going to need one. “Away? Where? Why?”

Marcus sighed. “It’s a long story.”