Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3) (6 page)

When I came to, I found that I was lying on a forest floor, an unkempt older fellow peering down at me, his face barely a foot from mine. Beyond him, pine trees stretched high overhead, their needles glowing emeralds in the bright sunlight. It looked like home. Aside from the guy standing over me.

I drew back, as much from his stench as from the surprise, and smacked the side of my head against a tree trunk. I sat up and scurried backward a few feet through the overgrown underbrush. My hair caught in the rough bark, and I lost a good chunk out of my ponytail in the process.

“Ouch!” I yelped when I felt a string of sharp stings in my palm. I halted my retreat, yanking my hand from the ground and settling on my butt. I glanced down at the line of tiny, bloody pearls beaded on my palm. Damn blackberry vines . . . they were everywhere, hidden among the ferns and bushes.

“I thought you was dead,” the stranger said.

Forgetting about my stinging palm, I looked at the man crouching a few yards away.

He wore buckskin from neck to toe, the outfit boasting more fringe than a neo-hippie would know what to do with, and had a long, bushy salt-and-pepper beard. A leather satchel crossed his body, and I could’ve sworn he was wearing an entire raccoon on his head. The thing went far beyond an iconic coonskin cap; the fur of the entire critter was on his head, from the fluffy ringed tail pulled over his shoulder to the pointy little black nose sticking down his forehead and almost reaching his bushy eyebrows. Little forelegs dangled on either side of his face, clawed feet and all.

There was no doubt in my mind that I was in the past. Still in the Pacific Northwest, though, from the looks of the forest. And if the stranger’s garb was anything to go by, he was a fur trapper. That placed me in the late eighteenth or nineteenth century, well before the small battle that was taking place in my time in Marcus’s foyer. If it was even still going on. If any of them were even still alive.

I stared at the trapper’s hat, focusing on the raccoon’s little claws.

Genevieve was dead, that was a sad certainty. Possibly Dominic, too—there’d been so much blood. And the others? Marcus and Kat? Nik? Aset and Neffe? There was no way to know. The horrifying possibilities surrounded me, blocking out where I was.
When
I was. Blocking out the stranger standing nearby. Blocking out everything except for the terrible prospect that they were all dead.

The trapper touched his hat, his eyes sliding down to the underbrush. “My summer cap . . .” His eyes met mine, almost defiantly. “I got me a coyote I wear when the weather turns. Shot and skinned the beast myself.”

“I—” Barely a crack of sound came out. I cleared my throat. “I have no doubt,” I said cautiously. “You look like a very formidable man.” Something to keep in mind when I let my thoughts stray into the land of ifs and could-bes, when I felt the numbness of shock threatening to creep over me. They might very well all be dead. But they might not be. I simply didn’t know. I
wouldn’t
know until I made it back to them, however the hell I was supposed to manage that. But their fate wasn’t the most urgent matter right now. My kids were—my kids, and the very real threat this fur trapper could be.

The trapper narrowed his eyes. “You got a strange way of talkin’.” His eyes slid down the length of my body with only a hint of lechery. “And a strange way of lookin’.”

“I, um . . .” I shot a quick glance down at myself. Jeans and a T-shirt—how to explain jeans and a T-shirt to a fur trapper from the Western frontier?

“You escape from the Indians? Or are you some kind of wandering whore?” His eyes narrowed, drawing the raccoon’s nose down along with his eyebrows. He snapped his fingers, his face lighting up. “I got it—you’re one of them Mercer Girls, ain’t you? I heard tell some of them’ve got a wild way about ’em.”

“I, um . . .”
Mercer Girls
—the term was familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. My mind kept circling back to that foyer . . . to the blood . . . “Yes!” I said when it finally clicked.

The Mercer Girls had been transported to Seattle from the East Coast in the 1860s by one of the founders of the University of Washington to help balance out the population of settlers by bringing in single,
reputable
young women of a marriageable age.

“I . . . wanted to explore a bit,” I said. “Get out of Seattle and experience the true Wild West, so . . .” I gestured around me with my bleeding hand. “Here I am.”

The trapper stared at me without speaking a while longer. “You shouldn’t be out here. Where’s your things?” His focus shifted to my hand. “You’re gonna need to clean that, lest it get inflamed. Ain’t no doctors out here.”

“My things—” I shook my head. “I don’t—they’re gone. Someone took them . . . after I set up camp last night. I was . . . washing up on the beach, and . . .”

My companion grunted. “Unsavory folks have been known to hide out in these here parts. Not many are too keen to make the trip onto the island—’cept for the Indians and a couple other trappers. We got a ‘live and let live’ deal here, we do, so it ain’t likely to be any of them that done took your possessions . . .” He coughed and spit something dark and slimy. “What’s your name?”

I stood there, mouth open but silent for several seconds. “My, uh, name is Alexandra,” I said. “Larson,” I added. “Of Boston.” I was fairly certain that was where the Mercer Girls had originated.

“Yeah, well, I’m Tex,” my companion said. “Of Texas.”

I gave a small bow of my head. “Nice to meet you, Tex,” I said, hoping decent manners might decrease the likelihood that Tex would assault, rape, or murder me. Of course, if he intended to do any of those things, I figured he’d have done it while I was unconscious.

“Why don’t you let old Tex here fix up that hand for you,” Tex said, taking a step toward me. He extended one arm as though to calm a skittish critter. “Then we’ll get you somewhere safe.”

I held my hand to my chest, curling my fingers over the injury. My palm throbbed in protest. “It’s just a few scratches.” And had my pregnancy not suppressed my Nejeret regenerative abilities, I’d have been well on my way to being healed by now. But I wasn’t, which was a frightening reminder of my current rather fragile state.

“Inflammation don’t care a thing about that,” Tex said. “A scratch is all it takes.” He took another step toward me while reaching through the front opening of his buckskin jacket. “But if we give it a good wash with this,” he said, pulling out a gourd canteen small enough to be considered a flask, “I think you’ll survive.”

I uncurled my fingers enough that I could see the four angry, red punctures seeping blood onto my palm. They were small, but the thorns had gone in deep, and just that small motion of moving my fingers increased the throbbing pain. “What’s in there?” I asked, pointing to the flask with my chin. If it would prevent infection, I wouldn’t say no to his offer.

Tex blinked, and his beard shimmied as he worked his mouth. “Why, whiskey, of course.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. The sky is blue. Fish live in the water. There’s whiskey in the flask.

I cringed. Whiskey would sting like a bitch.

Tex pulled the cork with his teeth and spat it out to take a swig. The cork dangled by a thin leather cord. “Well . . .” He cleared his throat roughly. “What’s it gonna be?”

I extended my hand, trembling not from fear of pain but from the force of my bottled-up emotions. “Alright, go ahead.” I yanked my hand away almost as soon as the liquid touched my skin, burning worse than fire. My eyes watered, and I gritted my teeth. The deed was done.

Tex’s soulful brown eyes shone with mirth. “I reckon you’ve had just about enough of adventuring and exploring right about now.”

I nodded. He had no idea just how tired I was of all of my “adventuring.” I just wanted to settle down with Marcus
in my own time
and raise our kids together to be the ma’at-balancing gods they were destined to be. Maybe spend a few months each year in Egypt or Italy, uncovering the past the old-fashioned way—with a trowel, brushes, and dental tools—rather than viewing it in the echoes.

Now, I didn’t know if any of that would ever be a possibility, and thinking about it opened up the doors for all the other things that could’ve been but now might never be. My chest ached, and my eyes stung.
If Marcus is dead . . .

“Well, now . . .” Tex patted my arm. “This ain’t no place for tears.” He handed me the flask. “Best bolster your resolve. Go on”—he flicked his fingers at the flask—“take a drink.”

I nodded and brought the flask to my lips.

You’re pregnant!

I froze. With shaking fingers, I recorked the flask and handed it back to Tex. “I appreciate the offer, I really do, but I shouldn’t. Spirits go straight to my head.” I flashed him a weak smile.

“Well, be that as it may,” Tex said, tucking the flask away in his jacket and giving the panel a soft pat, “you know where find this if you decide your resolve is in need of some bolsterin’.”

“Thanks.” My eyes met his. “Really, Tex, thank you. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t found me.”

“Aw, well . . .” Tex hunched his shoulders and made a rough noise in his throat. “I may not be a gentleman, but I know a lady when I see one, I do. You’ve got a kindly way about you, Miss Larson, and with a sweet face like that, well . . . you don’t belong out here.”

“Trust me, Tex,” I said, brushing off the back of my jeans with my good hand, “I couldn’t agree with you more.” I just wanted to go home. I needed to
know
.

“Well then, let’s get you up to Port Madison—traders come in and out of there every couple of days. One of them is sure to be willing to escort you back to civilization.”

Port Madison—that was the reservation just across the Agate Passage from the northern tip of Bainbridge Island. You could see the shore from the beach just outside the compound’s walls. If we were near Port Madison, then I was closer to home than I’d thought. The realization spurred a surge of excitement, followed by a deluge of grief. Being “home” wouldn’t do me any good. It was just about the worst case of right-place-wrong-time imaginable.

Regardless, I had to start looking for Marcus—
this
time’s Marcus—somewhere. I only had a matter of days before the bonding withdrawals would set in, and based on the almost-nothing Marcus had told me about my pending travels through time, I
would
find him, each and every time. I figured I might as well start looking in Port Madison.

I bowed my head to Tex. “I’d appreciate that.”

He turned and started picking his way through the underbrush.

“You don’t, by any chance, know of any prominent men in the area with the name Bahur?” I ventured as I followed, making about three times as much noise as him. “Or Horus?”

“I can’t rightly say I do,” he said over his shoulder. “You hunting for someone? That what brought you all the way out here, Miss Larson?”

“No, I—well, yes, I suppose I am.” Crouching down, I picked up a several-foot-long stick, intending to use it to push bushes out of my way as we trailblazed. I don’t recommend tromping through the woods in sandals. “How about Heru?”

Tex’s head tilted to the side, and he looked at me sidelong. “What sort of a name is ‘Heru’?”

I pressed down a blackberry vine as thick as my thumb. “Egyptian.” The plump berries bunched together along the vine were a deep purple, practically falling off with their ripeness. They filled the forest with their sweet aroma, mixing with the scent of decaying pine needles in the most intoxicating way.

Tex whistled. “Can’t say as I’ve ever met an Egyptian. But seeing as they’re supposed to have darker skin like the Indians, I reckon they must be related in some way.” He nodded to himself.

“I suppose,” I said, not wanting to start a debate about evolution, human migration, and the origin of the human species. I really wasn’t in the mood.

“So what are you tracking this feller down for? A matter of the heart?” For a rustic old trapper, Tex sure was a chatty guy.

“It’s more of a matter of life and death,” I said with appropriate gravitas. Once the bonding withdrawals started, it would be only a matter of days until they actually killed me. I placed my hand on my abdomen. Not just me. “I have to find him.”

“Is that so? Well then, we best hurry.” Tex sort of hopped-leapt over a waist-high fallen log, then turned and held his hand out to help me over.

We’d reached a beach, the sparkling Puget Sound stretching out beyond the rocky shore, the tide line strewn with driftwood, seafoam, and kelp. Two seagulls swooped low overhead, calling out to one another.

Across the water some ways, a mass of vibrant evergreens grew out of the sea, several thick plumes of smoke steadily climbing among the dense trees. Before them, a massive wooden longhouse stretched along the top of the beach. I had to be looking at the Port Madison Indian Reservation, a Squamish settlement so unobtrusive in this time that it was barely visible from across the Agate Passage.

I stopped and stared out across the water, dumbfounded. So far as I could tell, I’d landed exactly where I’d been on the northwest tip of Bainbridge Island, just a hundred and fifty years in the past. I’d walked this beach dozens of times. I’d been closer to home than I’d thought; I’d been right on top of it.