Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (4 page)

“Yours?” the warrior asked slowly.

“Hers.” The man with the many-colored eyes nodded to Diana. “It moves through time.”

The warrior turned on Diana. He had paid her no more attention than the boy until now. His expression grew covetous. “To whom do you owe allegiance?” he asked sharply.

“Uh . . . nobody. I guess maybe to God.” She’d never been particularly religious, but she’d tried to live her life by a moral code that a just God might create. You had to make a choice and do the best you could. So, she did owe allegiance to God, if there was one.

“A priestess of the gods,” the warrior declared. “That is good.”

The man with the shifting eyes just smiled. His eyes were swirling gold now, bearing no resemblance to human eyes at all. The boy, his brows drawn together, looked up at his father.

The roar and snap of fire was growing louder. Actual tongues of flame could be seen as drafts swept them up the hill. Wind created tendrils of hair around Diana’s face. Somewhere, men shouted. Bodies crashed through the brush.

“Not much time,” the warrior said to the man with swirling eyes. “Do you stand with me?”

“You threaten me with your troops? Not wise.”

A flicker of fear flashed across the hard face of the warrior and was suppressed. “I am the future of Camelot, old man, if it is to have a future.”

“That may be, but not by my hand.” The man’s eyes went to brown and his voice was kind.

The warrior frowned while the crash of bodies grew closer.

“He’s here somewhere!” a voice shouted.

“He’ll be in the circle of stones!” another called.

Voices came from two directions.

The warrior turned to Diana. “If he will not stand by me, you will have to do.”

“Do what?” Diana trembled.

“Go back the way you came, young woman. You court disaster by staying.” The father’s eyes roiled with burgundy and orange now. Was that just the reflection of the fire?

“We’ve all got to get out of here,” Diana cried. “If the soldiers don’t get us, the flames will.” She pointed. Fire had circled two sides of the hill. The clearing wouldn’t save them.

“Well, then, your choice is clear,” the man with the swirling eyes said.

Okaaaay
. She wasn’t going to argue. She knelt beside
the machine and, though her hands shook, she finished the power sequence. She couldn’t hear the machine hum, but she could feel the heaviness of power in her lungs. She pulled the lever. The gears began to spin.

The warrior let out an amazed hiss. “Magic!”

A handful of soldiers crashed in a body through the edge of the forest, yelling, “We’ve got you now! Come with us!” The jewels began to send their sweeping beams of colored light in all directions. The soldiers fell to their knees, yelling in fear. The man with the swirling eyes hugged his son to his body. More warriors stumbled up from the left.

The hard-looking warrior yelled to the newcomers, “See what power I wield!”

The gears slowed. In the silence, Diana thought about March 10, 2010, San Francisco. She imagined the basement of the Rotunda. Behind her, soldiers staggered to their feet. Eyes rolled at the sight of the machine. But their attention turned back to the warrior, fierce and focused.

“You are a dead man,” one said. Warriors from each camp surged forward. The fierce-faced warrior had a sword, but they had a dozen.

“Come on!” she yelled to the warrior. “If you want to live.” What else could she do? She looked to the man with the many-colored eyes and his son, but the man shook his head. They weren’t coming, and didn’t seem concerned. Maybe the man’s magic could protect him and his son from the army. Even the warrior who was the soldiers’ target hesitated. She felt the gears begin to whir. The slingshot was pulling back. If he didn’t come soon, his fate was his own fault. They’d kill him for sure.

At the last possible moment, he lunged toward her. His arm grasped her waist.

His shriek blended with hers as they catapulted forward into the future.

*  *  *

Diana hit the ground with a thud. After a horrible, wrenching attempt to breathe, she finally managed to gasp a lungful of air. This time the feeling of dislocation was not unexpected. She managed to keep conscious. She breathed in the smell of damp and metal and dirt. Relief washed through her along with the familiar smells. She was back in a place and a time she knew. Had she dreamed the burning fort and the circle of stones, the strange-eyed man and his son, the fire about to engulf them, the bloodthirsty soldiers? It all seemed so impossible.

She opened her eyes on blackness, wishing for even the feeble LED light now. She felt around in her immediate vicinity, but no light materialized. Instead she encountered the soft leather of her shoulder bag around Leonardo’s large folio book.

Someone groaned.

Oh my God.
What was she thinking to bring back a guy from Dark Age Britain? Bring him back or condemn him to death, those were her choices. All those thoughts about a moral code and what a just God would require had fueled her foolish impulse. What if she’d changed history?

Was that really Camelot? If so, who was the man with his son? Who was the man she’d saved? Could it be Arthur? He’d said he would unite the Britons against the Saxons. Who else could do that but Arthur? But in that case, what soldiers would be bent on his death? Maybe Mordred’s. Her brain reeled. She pushed her confusion aside. They had to get out of here.

“Are you all right?” she asked, then realized she had spoken in modern English. She spoke again in the older language. The fact that she knew Brythonic Proto-Celtic was absolutely frightening. She couldn’t fit that fact into any kind of coherent whole at all.

She heard him push himself up with a grunt. “My head
thunders.” It was so strange that she didn’t know what he would say. Welcome, but strange.

“We will get you to a healer.” She reached toward the groan. Her hands encountered metal links. “Can you stand?”

“I am a warrior, woman. I can stand.” The voice was clipped and gruff. “Where are we?”

She settled for the location. Any other explanation would have to wait. “In a cave by a lake. My home is near.” She felt him getting his knees under himself. He rose gingerly.

She felt behind her and encountered the slick metal teeth of the time machine’s gears.
Okay.
She turned. The corridor must be straight ahead. She felt her way carefully forward. Her companion settled for following in her footsteps. Metal clanged on metal.

“You brought your sword?” she whispered.

“How not, woman?”

Great.
She couldn’t get him the medical help he would need if he was carrying a great big sword around. What they’d both get was arrested. “Best leave it here.”

He stopped following abruptly. “I will bring it.”

She blew out a breath. He was in a strange place where he probably felt embattled. Okay, they could put it in her trunk. “Bring it. But quietly!”

There was a slither as he sheathed it. Now she’d find out whether there was a way to open the door to the Exploratorium from this side. She extended her hand but felt nothing. That was actually good. She waved it from side to side and slapped the wall of the corridor. Halfway home. They were out of the maze. “This way,” she said.

The cool metal of the door met her hand. Carefully, she felt for a bar release. Nothing. Okay, a lock. What she encountered she didn’t understand at first. It was a narrow metal rod with a flat pad at the end. It took her a moment
to realize it was like the release on the inside of a walk-in freezer. She pushed at the pad and the door popped open.

After the utter darkness of the cave under the Rotunda, even the work lights of the Exploratorium were shocking. She squinted and held up her hand, peering around. No sign of Clancy. She checked her watch. Seven twenty-four. She’d left Clancy at three minutes after the hour. What with the time it took to start the machine, she’d probably disappeared at seven-twenty or so. The machine had come back to the second after it had left. She glanced back to her companion. He was a handsome man, she supposed. His nose was a sharp blade, his eyes the dark of a Celt. His hair was cropped short in the Roman style, reminding her that in the days of Camelot the Romans had only recently abandoned their outpost in Britannia. But her fifth-century guy didn’t look healthy. His complexion was sallow. Dark shadows hung under his eyes. He needed a doctor. He was staring around him with a furrowed brow.

“I’ll explain everything.” She shut the door and locked it with her master key. “But we have to go before the guard comes back.” She led the way past the gift shop and the information desk toward the glass doors. Her key in the box to the right silenced the alarm.

He touched the panes tentatively, running his palms over the glass. “What is this?” Glazed windows were unheard of in his time. He would have seen glass only in small bottles like the Romans made. There were wonders far more difficult ahead of him.

“Think of it as sorcery.”

His eyes widened, then gleamed for an instant. “Magic, then.”

She pushed open the doors and pulled her charge into the glare of the security lights over the parking lot. She
glanced around for Clancy. Was that his shadow making its way down the colonnade toward them?
Uh-oh.
The shadow didn’t have Clancy’s paunch. As she watched, the figure emerged into the light.

Her stomach fell. She knew this guy, at least by sight.

Dark hair, fair skin, bulky shoulders. She might have been mistaken when she’d seen him across the lake as she came out these very doors the other day. He could just have been someone who looked like the guy who had pushed past her in the corner liquor store near her apartment.

But this time there was no doubt. It was the same guy all right. If he got closer, she’d see the gray eyes (or maybe green?) and classic features she’d glimpsed in the liquor store. Was he stalking her?
You can’t stalk somebody if you look like the cover model for a romance novel!
she wanted to shout.
People notice a guy like you!
Women anyway. And while she might not be someone guys ever noticed, she was still a woman. In the liquor store, as his whatever-colored eyes had met hers, she’d experienced some thrill of . . . well, of the sort she only wrote about. Spooky, really. You couldn’t be attracted to a man you didn’t even know. Not like
that.
But it meant you’d recognize him when you saw him again.

A thrill of fear found its way into her stomach as she stood, frozen, in the parking lot. Why would any man be stalking someone like her? Romance writers occasionally acquired stalkers. The guys who wrote all those fan letters from prison sometimes got out. But she wasn’t a big name or anything. She wasn’t rich, and she wasn’t beautiful. He just stood there at the entrance to the colonnade, the huge columns and the angels who crowned them dwarfing him. He looked . . . well, he looked as shocked as she did—even more than he did at the liquor store.

And he looked . . . familiar, somehow. She couldn’t know him . . . and yet . . . it felt like she knew him more intimately than three sightings would suggest.

Get hold of yourself,
she thought, panic layering on top of panic.
And get out of here.

“Now is the time to show your courage,” she said to her warrior as she tugged him toward the car. “This . . . This wagon is powerful magic I control.” No word for “car” in Proto-Celtic. She fumbled for her keys and opened the door. “Inside.” She glanced to the colonnade, but her stalker had disappeared. Had she imagined him? She raced around to the driver’s side and jerked open the door. Scooting behind the wheel, she pulled the door shut and stabbed the key into the ignition. “An enemy is coming. In!” she ordered.

He examined her face for one long instant before he folded himself into the passenger seat and tucked his sword beside his feet. Its hilt was jammed against the roof of the car. The engine roared to life. He pressed himself back against the seat in fear and she thought he was going to dive out the door again. “Hold on,” she said through gritted teeth. “We go.” She threw the transmission into reverse and the Honda shot backward out of the parking space. The door banged open. Her passenger grabbed for the dash.

“Stop!” he yelled. She spun the wheel and gave it gas. The passenger door slammed shut. She swung left onto Bay and took two rights to get out to the light at Richardson. Luck was with them; the light was green. Glancing to her passenger, she saw him hanging on to the door with one hand and the dash with the other, his teeth gritted. But he wasn’t yelling anymore. She checked the rearview mirror every few seconds, expecting to see flashing lights. A car honked as she changed lanes and cut him off.
Get a grip, Diana.
She forced herself to slow as Richardson
turned into Lombard Street going through Cow Hollow. This part of Lombard was actually Route 101 through the city. There was too much traffic to be reckless. She scanned her rearview mirror again. No pursuit she could see. She turned right off Lombard onto Laguna, a much smaller street. Easier to see anyone following them. It climbed the steep hill up into the gracious houses of Pacific Heights.

She calmed her breathing and peered over at her passenger in the light of the street lamps. His eyes were big as he stared out at the brick houses, the apartments with bay windows that overlooked the Golden Gate behind them, the stoplights and the storefronts. What must this be like for him? He looked like he might faint, in spite of the grim set of his mouth that indicated his determination not to do so. Or possibly he was trying not to throw up in her car.

He
was
bleeding all over it. She could see the slick dark ooze over his chain mail.

Damn.
He might die bleeding to death in the twenty-first century rather than be hacked to death in the fifth. She looked around her, trying to remember where the nearest hospital was. Pacific Heights. She was just passing Broadway. Pacific Medical Center was only a block over and a few blocks down. She hung a left on Washington, right on Buchanan. The hospital took up a couple of square blocks, if you included parking. A green sign signaled the emergency room, but she turned into a multistory parking structure across the street instead. Her guest couldn’t show up in bloody chain mail. She parked at the back where the lights were dim. Her fifth-century companion sighed in relief as the car stopped.