Timeless (The Cartographer Book 3) (35 page)

She leaned in and kissed me. Her soft lips were a stark contrast to her hands. She smelled faintly like lilac and her lips were like velvet being pressed against mine. When she pulled away, it looked like she had applied lipstick using my blood. She brushed a sweaty piece of hair from my forehead. “Thank you, Nathan.”

“For what?” I rasped.

She smiled, which caused my blood to run from her lips to the floor in large drops. “For showing me how to love someone again.”

I heard a commotion in the background as people gathered around us. It didn't matter, though. I had accepted my destiny to Vanth's delight, no matter how short-lived it was. I closed my eyes.

“Nathan?” Lianne shook me.

The cycle of life has only one ending…death.
Mortem's words ebbed and flowed from my consciousness like the ocean tide. There was only one thing left to do.

I died.

Test Results

Did he pass?
A female voice echoed.

Yes
, a male voice responded.
He did everything asked of him. We can ask no more.

Nathan?
It was the female again. Her name was just out of reach of my memory. Leah? Lee? Lou-Anne?
So I assume the planet has been approved?

The male responded.
Yes.

Nathan?
It was a different man's voice this time. Actually, it sounded more like a boy. A hand fell on my shoulder and gently rocked back and forth. Go away strange hand, I just want to sleep.

NATHAN!
The voice was louder, more forceful. The rocking became more rigorous. The disembodied voice started to piss me off. Couldn't he tell I was trying to sleep? Wait a minute…sleep? I should be dead, Shouldn't I? I could have sworn I died. Wait a minute…what killed me? Where was I?

When I opened my eyes, I found myself blinded by a bright beam of light. Was this heaven? The light stung my eyes and I forced my eyes closed.

“NATHAN!”

“Move the light away from eyes, sweet Jesus!” I roared “I can't see a damn thing.”

The light moved away and my eyes adjusted to the surrounding gloom. Sam's pale face peered at me through the shadows like a Guy Fawkes mask. It was New Mexico Sam: Sam the teenager.

Wait…wasn't he older?

I felt tightness across my chest and I pressed my hand against it to find the
(stab wound)
rope which bound us together. My flashlight had been tossed in the corner of the cave, shining its beam on the collapsed wall.

Wait a minute, there was an opening in this wall, wasn't there?

“What happened?” I muttered groggily. The dull throbbing in my chest continued and my wrist itched as if a thousand fire ants crawled across it. Something was tickling my forehead. I placed my hand there and grimaced when I pulled it back sticky with blood.

“I think you hit your head on the rocks,” he explained. “Your rope went tight and I felt like I was being reeled in like a fish, but then it suddenly, went slack, like you were no longer there. I grabbed my flashlight and ran in here as fast as I could.”

I stood on rubbery legs and went to the wall. The stone was solid. I passed my hand over the rocks and came across some recesses, but there was no opening to be seen. I picked up my flashlight and pointed the beam at the wall.

“No opening,” I murmured.

“No opening?” Sam parroted. “There wasn't one the last time we were here, why would there be one now?” His worried look told me he was most likely contemplating whether or not I suffered a serious concussion.

I drew in a deep breath.
Am I going crazy?
“Was it all a dream?” I whispered.

“Hey, I don't know about your dreams buddy, but my mom is gonna have a conniption if I don't get home in time to go grocery shopping.” He untied the rope from around my waist and did the same for himself. After shoving it into his pack, he picked up my rock hammer and flashlight and handed them to me. “Grocery shopping is like a damn ritual in my house. She is such a pain in the ass.”

I shoved the rock hammer in my belt loop and followed him out of the cave in a trance. I could not stop thinking that things were not right. The setting sun cast gloomy shadows over the jagged rocks and dusty hills of Carlsbad Caverns. Sam and I said our goodbyes before I picked up my bike and made the voyage home.

I pulled up to my house just as the sun settled over the mountains on the horizon. My mother's Toyota was parked in the driveway, but my father's Range Rover was not. That in itself was not unusual for this time of day, but I still couldn't shake the feeling that something was not right. I dropped my bike next to the garage and stepped over to the garden hose. I let the cool water run through my fingers as I tried my best to wash the blood from my face. The last thing I needed was my mother having a meltdown and calling EMS, the police, and FEMA over a cut. When I was convinced I had washed most of it off, I opened the front door. When I stepped inside, the odor of pasta sauce cooking on the kitchen stove bombarded me. The TV in the living room was not on, but the table lamp was. The remote sat on the recliner where I had left it.

“Mom?” I called.

She emerged from the kitchen with her hand buried under a dish towel. Her white kitchen apron was stained red with sauce. The saying on the front read, “Your opinion wasn't in the recipe”. I hated that apron, which was probably the reason she wore it. I also hated spaghetti. I bet my entire allowance it was boiling on the stove at that moment.

She looked at me and frowned. “You have been out at the Caverns again, haven't you?” It was more of a statement than a question.

I rolled my eyes. I forgot to remove my rock hammer before coming in the house and of course, she picked right up on it. “Yeah, mom,” I groaned.

She looked at me disapprovingly. “Go upstairs and wash up, dinner will be done in a few minutes.”

I trudged up the stairs and into the bathroom. I frowned when I saw my reflection in the mirror. It looked as if I had aged five years. Sprouts of hair grew from my chin and I rubbed my hand through it slowly. It felt like a wire brush and I grimaced.
Why didn't my mother notice this?
The itchiness on my wrist became almost unbearable and I rolled up my sleeve to see the cause. When I saw the angry scar encircling my wrist I nearly panicked. I flexed my fingers, but they appeared to work okay. There seemed to be no residual damage of any kind as a result of the injury.

“What the hell?” I blurted.

That was when I remembered the dull throbbing in my chest. It subsided a bit since I returned from the cave and so I thought it was simply a result of the rope being too tight. When I still felt pressure radiating from the (
Stab wound
) I removed my shirt and my eyes widened.

A three inch vertical scar ran from the top of my abdomen to the bottom of my chest. I ran my finger over it and although it was rough to the touch, I didn't feel any pain.

I died.

I threw my shirt on and turned the faucet on. I splashed some cool water on my face and wiped it off with a nearby towel. When I was done, I looked a bit more presentable and a lot less like I had just crawled from a grave. I hung the towel on the rack, but froze when the doorbell rang. Who could have been calling at this hour? Sam was, most likely, well on the way to his grocery adventure. Downstairs, I heard the creak of the door hinge as my mother opened the door. I wrung the towel into a knot and moved closer to the bathroom door. The sound of voices drifted upstairs, but I could not make them out, I could only tell that one was my mother and the other was a male.

“Nathan, it's for you!” she shouted up the stairs.

I panicked and dropped the towel.
Do assassins ring doorbells?
I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself. Perhaps Sam didn't go out with his mother, but instead came by to pick up his copy of Call of Duty. I left the towel where I dropped it and descended the stairs. I took each stair slowly and it was an eternity before I reached the bottom.

My mother stood next to the open doorway, rubbing sauce into her apron with a frown. Standing in the doorway was a middle-aged man with fiery red hair tied back in a ponytail. He wore a dark colored suit and a red tie. A sudden feeling of Déjà vu overwhelmed me. I recognized him from somewhere. No matter how much I concentrated, I could not remember where I had seen him. The hairs on my arms were standing at attention.

Stranger danger.

“Nathan, I'm sure you know this person?” my mother asked. When I shook my head and stared dumbly at the two of them, her frown deepened. “This is Cal, your high school guidance counselor. He says he needs to talk to you.” She finished wiping her hands on her apron, which was now stained scarlet with sauce. She officially looked like the dude from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. She tossed him a sour look. “I asked him why he was coming around now, since school doesn't start for another month and a half, but he insisted it was a personal matter.” She pointed a finger at me. “You're not in trouble are you? You could be the only person on the planet to get in trouble with the school system during the summer break, young man!”

“Ma, I'm not in trouble.” I looked at Cal with uncertainty. “At least, I don't think so.”

Cal flashed a smile full of perfectly white teeth. “I can assure you that you are not in trouble.”

I have seen that smile somewhere before.
Despite my apprehension and my internal alarms blaring DEFCON 1 at me, I stepped outside with him. He shut the door in my mother's face and I heard her cussing on the other side. I dropped in one of the two rocking chairs on the front porch while he slid into the other.

“Are you new at the school?” I asked. “Mr. Thompson is the school's guidance counselor and I have never seen you before.”

His smile never wavered. “You could say that, Nathan.”

I gripped the sides of the rocking chair, ready to bolt at a moment's notice. “So why are you here?”

He crossed his legs and rocked the chair gently back and forth. “As your new guidance counselor, I am here to talk about your future.” His eyes drifted to my wrist and he stopped rocking.

“Um…shouldn't this wait until the school year starts or something?” A breeze kicked up a tumbleweed and tossed it across our front lawn.

The child has passed the test. Earth has been accepted. Let us begin.

I heard the words, but they didn't come from Cal. It was as if the breeze carried them across our lawn. I looked around to see if anyone else lurked in the shadows, but we were alone.

“Let's just say, I wanted to get an early start on your career.” His smile never faltered. “As your guidance counselor…” he stopped and let out a dry cough before continuing. “It is my duty to make sure you are on the correct path to success.”

Traitor. Murderer.

Again the words originated from the wind. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples as I felt one doozy of a headache coming.
They are coming. Be ready.
The voices were beginning to drive me insane. I stood up briskly and went to the door. “I'm sorry, I'm not feeling well and you caught me at a bad time. Can we talk about this some other time?”

Cal stood and nodded. “I understand, but before I go, I wanted to show you something. Judging by your school records, I noticed you take a keen interest in astronomy. I thought you would get a kick out of this.” He looked up and pointed toward the sky.

I stepped out of the doorway and followed his gaze. The sun was behind the mountains, which allowed a clear view of stars as they began to appear in the night sky. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. “What about it?”

“Sometimes, we look, but we don't
see
,” he remarked mysteriously. “Don't you see it? It is just to the left of the Big Dipper.”

I strained my eyes and tried my best to follow where he pointed. Eventually, I saw it. What I thought at first was a twinkling star was actually something else. Although it was twinkling, the colors were not right. Instead of a white light fading in and out, it intermittently changed from blue to a pale green color in a pattern not unlike a vehicle's turn signal.

“That's no moon, it's a space station,” I muttered.

Cal lowered his finger and a puzzled look came over his face. “I'm sorry, what was that?”

I didn't respond. Instead I continued watching while the light increased in intensity and size. “What is it?”

Cal chuckled and stepped off the porch. “Make sure you check out the news tonight.” He started toward the driveway, but stopped abruptly. “Oh, I almost forgot this.” He pulled a folded manila envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. It had no marks or writing on the outside.

“What is this?” I asked.

Cal offered me another smile. “Open it when you get inside, but make sure to check the news first.” He wandered down the driveway and disappeared among the shadows.

I bounced the envelope up and down in my hand. It felt empty and I wondered if he was playing a trick on me.
Look at him with his empty envelope, ha-ha-h April Fools!
I stepped inside the house and stared at the remote on the recliner.