Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (9 page)

Her stalker plunked down the plate with his doughnuts and his Styrofoam cup of coffee on the counter. He was so much bigger than Diana, just his presence was intimidating. And there was something else. He was very male. It was having an effect on her, just like in her dreams.

No big deal.
She’d read all about pheromones and how there was an immediate effect on the opposite sex, stronger if their genetic makeup was such that they would make a good mating pair. But she’d never felt that effect before. Good. This was good. A writer should experience what she wrote about. But did it have to be with him?

Great to know what it was, too. Just pheromones. Because otherwise she’d have thought it was plain old lust taking over when she should be frightened for her life. Which she was. But the feelings of lust and fear were all mixed up and making her confused. She felt like she knew this guy, that she’d always known him. Like . . .
Like she’d always longed for him in just this desperate, pitiful way. He felt . . . familiar.

“Just call if you need anything.” Mrs. Kim waved as she went into the back to help her husband produce the many dozen doughnuts they’d need to make it through the rush.

Oh, boy. They were pretty much alone. But clearly visible through the glass walls of the shop from the street outside. And Mr. and Mrs. Kim were a shout away.
Not a dangerous situation,
she told herself. Why was he
doing
this?

“What do you want?” She was ashamed that her voice wasn’t stronger.

“Just to talk to you.” He reached for cream to put in his coffee. And Equal. She thought she was the only one who bothered to use Equal at a doughnut shop.

He just wanted to talk to her? Right. All stalkers probably said that. And maybe it started out that way. But it ended with knives, and scars. If you lived.

“I don’t want to talk to you.” She reached for her coffee and realized her hand was shaking, so she grabbed her doughnut instead and took a bite.

“Yes, you do. Remember?” He looked at her then. How had she thought his eyes were blue-gray? They were definitely pure gray and very resolved.

She
did
want to talk to him. The need to talk to him was so basic it seemed like she’d been born with it. Okay. She’d talk to him.

“What is a guy who looks like you doing stalking a girl like me?” There it was. That was the niggling problem she’d had with all of this all along. This guy could get anybody he wanted just by asking. Why would he bother to stalk her?

“I realized that might be how it seemed. I had some
time to think about it out under the streetlight. I’m not stalking you.”

Great.
He was going to deny everything. “If this isn’t stalking, I don’t know what it is.”

“I . . . I was supposed to protect you.” His lovely mouth was rueful.

That made her mad. “Did you or did you not try to shoot me last night?” It had to be him.

“I would never shoot you.” He sounded outraged.

Oh. Right.
He’d been shooting at Medraut. And if the officer was right and it was due to jealous rage, this guy was far along in the “stalking obsession” business. She could just ask him why he’d shot at Medraut, but why get bad news? She bit her lip, wondering what to say.

“You brought him back, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“You went back to the fifth century somehow and brought him back. I thought maybe my father sent him forward. But he wouldn’t have done it, not for him.”

Diana tried to get her breath. He
knew
. He knew about the machine. But no. He couldn’t. Because he didn’t know
how
she’d gone back, just that she had. She mustn’t admit there was such a thing as a time machine to a guy who was crazy. That seemed like a bad idea all around.

“Maybe he forced my father to do it.” The guy looked pensive. “But my father would have died rather than loose him on an unsuspecting century.”

Oh, this guy was a loon all right. But something about what he said was tickling her brain. She couldn’t quite . . .

He had decided something. “You don’t have to admit it, but I know you brought him here somehow. And there’s no getting him to go back once he’s seen the glories of this century. That leaves one choice.”

Oh, this was great. He’d keep trying to kill Medraut.

But wait a minute. This guy from the twenty-first century
thought he
knew
Medraut. How could he? Maybe her stalker was creating a fantasy out of his obvious mental illness. Maybe they were both crazy as bedbugs.

“And who . . . who do you think the man I was with last night really is?”

Her stalker glared at her. “Don’t use that patronizing tone with me. You, of anyone, know he’s from another time.” Then his face softened right before her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know this must be hard for you. You never knew him, but he’s why you went back, isn’t he?”

“Look.” His sympathy annoyed her. “His name is Jim Medraut. That’s all I know.”

“Well, the Jim part you probably made up together. But one of his names
is
Medraut of Orkney.” He examined her face. “You really don’t know, do you?” He paused and took a breath. “Medraut is called Mordred in the history books.”

Mordred?
Her gaze flitted over his face. The killer of Arthur? The man who ended the dream of Camelot and single-handedly brought on the Dark Ages? It took almost a thousand years for England to claw its way up to the Renaissance. This guy knew that Medraut called himself Medraut of Orkney. Did that mean he was right about him being Mordred, too?

He blew out his breath. “Yeah, that Mordred,” he muttered. “So you didn’t know.”

She shook her head. Her throat had such a big lump in it she couldn’t say anything for a long moment. After pressing her so hard, now he gave her space to think. He sipped his steaming coffee and took a hefty bite of his doughnut. She watched the muscles in his throat work.

“How . . . how do you know him?” she finally asked. And then, like a series of falling dominoes, it all fell into place. “Wait.” She turned to him. “Look at me.” As he glanced up from his doughnut, a lock of hair flopped over
onto his forehead. “You’re the boy I saw back there.” She could hardly get her breath. “You were with your father. And your father’s eyes . . .”

Changed color
.

His eyes, now riveted on her, swirled for a moment and went a light, clear brown. He frowned. “I don’t remember seeing you when you came back. Were you in a crowd perhaps?”

She snorted. “Not unless you count a bunch of soldiers. I was the only woman there. And . . .” But she shut her mouth. He would have noticed a fourteen-foot machine of bronze interlocking gears and giant jewels. He wouldn’t have forgotten that. What did it mean that he didn’t remember seeing her?

He shook himself. “It doesn’t matter. Our problem is Mordred. He must be eliminated.”

“I’d say we could send him back, but he doesn’t want to go back and, anyway, that would be condemning him to death. He was about to be killed.”

“That is his destiny.” The stalker’s voice was soft. “Arthur and Mordred slew each other at the Battle of Camlan. So it doesn’t matter if I kill him now. We cannot risk a man like Mordred in this time.” He looked at her quizzically. “He’s already learned the language, hasn’t he? And he works the modern appliances and seems to understand the culture?”

“How did you know? He says it’s his gift.”

“He’s an Adapter.” He looked at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to say something.

“He said his mother was a witch.” Her eyes widened. “Morgan le Fey?”

Her stalker nodded. “Arthur’s half sister. In that time they called her Morgause. So if you think he can make no trouble in this time you’re wrong. He can make very big trouble.”

“By adapting quickly?” Diana kept her voice low. “That hardly seems sinister.”

“He wants power at any cost.” The guy’s eyes were hard. “His gift just makes it easier for him to get it. He adapts himself to what men want to hear in their souls and they follow him. He raised an army against the best king Britain had ever seen in just that way.” His eyes searched hers and must have seen she didn’t believe him. “How else did he get you to take him home? Don’t tell me you were afraid at first and then suddenly you weren’t.”

Oh my God.
He was right. Medraut said exactly the right thing at the right time to earn her trust, even when he almost lost it by making a pass at her. The bell on the shop door tinkled as a man in a suit pushed inside. Mrs. Kim came out from the back. The customer began ordering as he surveyed the neat racks of sugared treats.

She saw her stalker’s chest heave as he sucked in air and turned back to her. “I have to kill him, Diana,” he said, his voice low, his eyes now a very serious, clear blue. “I am the only one who knows what he is. So I must do it. Or die in the effort.”

He was obviously insane, with his wild theories about what Medraut could do. He was contemplating murder, for God’s sake, and all she could think about was the riddles that surrounded him. He was the boy she had seen in the fifth century. “How did you get here?”

“My father sent me.”

“The man with the eyes who changed color?”
Like yours.

“You know him as Merlin.” He rose, looming over her.

The bottom dropped out of Diana’s stomach. Had she seen
Merlin
? But of course—the sparkling light. A thousand thoughts ran through her head, caroming off belief and doubt. Whatever the truth, asking how his father sent him forward in time when he insisted his father was
Merlin seemed foolish. But there was something else. . . . “
Why?
Why did he send you?”

“To protect you,” her stalker said simply. “Poor job that I’ve done of it.” He chewed a lip and looked out the glass windows at the street. His gaze grew distant, as though he were already gone. “If I don’t come for you in an hour, leave town. Go to a big city. Get a new name and lose yourself in the crowds.”

“Wait a minute!” she called. “I didn’t know Merlin had children. What’s your name?”

He heaved a breath. “Gawain. My name is Gawain.”

He pronounced it “Gah-wen”—like as in the hero of the book she couldn’t write? The Gawain said to be pure of heart and with the strength of ten? She felt her mouth hanging open and snapped it shut. “
That
Gawain?”

He gave that rueful smile. “Sorry. Yeah.” Then he turned and left her sitting on the stool in Moon Donuts as he walked out into the dawn. Camelot and Mordred and Merlin and Gawain swirled in her head like a carousel with too many lights and too much music. She couldn’t think clearly. What should she do about the fact that a murder was about to be committed?

Too stunned to know what to do, Diana watched people line up for Mr. and Mrs. Kim’s fresh doughnuts. Slowly her brain began to function again.

You couldn’t just kill a person in cold blood without . . . without a trial or something. No matter who he was. What if Medraut (Mordred?) had rebelled against Arthur justifiably? Maybe the history books were wrong about Mordred and Arthur and Camelot. It sure hadn’t looked like any place you could have a shining moment. What if everything she knew about Arthur was as fictitious as the made-up, perfect knight Lancelot? And even if Medraut
were
ambitious and treacherous in the past, maybe he would use this change to turn over a new leaf. They had to at least give him that chance, didn’t they? They couldn’t play God.

She’d already played God. Deus ex machina. That was she. Why had she gotten herself into this mess? She’d taken the time machine back to the past and plucked Medraut out of his awful situation and brought him to the twenty-first century. And now she was just sitting by while her stalker killed him? She only had her stalker’s word that he was Gawain, honorable knight par excellence. What did she really know about him, other than
the feeling of familiarity and . . . longing? Longing or not, standing by while someone was killed was as good as doing it yourself.

She pushed herself up from the stool.

She’d talk Gawain out of it. She’d ask Medraugt to go back, maybe. To a different moment when he wouldn’t be killed by the soldiers. She could get out of this mess yet.

She slapped a twenty on the counter to cover both their breakfasts and pushed out past the tubby office workers here to grab a fresh dozen for the break room. She ran the three blocks to her apartment building, fumbled, panting, at the keypad that let her in. The stalker hadn’t asked for the combination to get into her apartment building to confront Medraut. Or a key to her apartment. Frightening thought.

Hope to God I’m not too late
. The stairs were at the end of the hall. Too far. She raced into the creaky little elevator, punched
4,
and then hit the
CLOSE DOOR
button about twenty times.
Come on. Come on. Come on.
From the elevator lobby she could see her apartment door standing open. She thundered down the hall and then wavered to a halt just outside. It was too quiet. Somebody was probably already dead, either Medraut—Mordred?—or the stalker.

“Hello?” she called softly as she pushed the door open to reveal the entire room. Mordred’s quilt was strewn over the carpet. No sign of a body. No blood. The sword still leaned against the desk. She moved silently to the bedroom. A channel of light leaked from the door ajar. She pushed it open with her fingertips.

Gawain, or whoever he was, was sitting on the bed, head in hands. As she entered he looked up. “He’s gone.” His expression was bleak. His eyes were gray again in the light from the lamp by her bed.

She breathed a sigh of relief. No murders today. “He was asleep when I left.”

Gawain scooted forward on the bed. The quilt shifted to reveal a very disturbing knife. It looked like something Rambo might have come up with, or Crocodile Dundee. She stiffened.

He picked up the knife as he stood and slid it into a kind of a shoulder holster under his quilted vest. She could hardly get her breath. He’d been wearing that horrible knife all the time they were eating doughnuts. Was this it? Would he kill her?