Every Never After

  “Oh, for the love of— Get up. If anyone finds you out here you’ll be in a lot of trouble. And so will I.”

  Allie hesitated.

  “Come on.”

  Allie reached up reluctantly and took his offered hand. Marcus lifted her effortlessly, one-armed, with enough muscle behind the assist to propel her a few inches airborne. And then to land really—way too—close to him. Eye level with his collarbones, which glistened with water droplets in the sun. It was like he sparkled or something, and who knew that could actually be sexy on a guy? But it was. Without all that armour encasing him—without much of anything encasing him—he seemed less of a pompous jerk. Without the harsh lines of his helmet framing his face, his cheekbones and jaw seemed less severe. His straight dark brows less frowning. And after his bath in the river, his short black hair was as tousled as it was likely to get and Allie kind of wanted to run her fingers through it, shaking off the water that beaded on it like rain.

  But she just stood there looking up at him as he stared back down at her with his clear hazel eyes. To cover her tongue-tiedness, Allie tried to shrug casually and utter a disarming laugh. But instead what she did was jerk her hand out of his grasp and snort in disdain.

  Marcus shook his head. The frown returned to his face with some gusto. The spark in his eyes turned flinty and his lip curled up in a shadow of a sneer. “Where in hell did you think you’d go once you left the camp?”

  “I—”

  “The countryside is lousy with hostiles where it isn’t treacherous swampland.”

  “I—”

  “Seriously. What’s wrong with you?”

  That was it. She cracked.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she half-shouted, gaping at him in astonishment. To think for a moment that she’d almost … that she’d thought he was … She smacked him on his broad, damp chest with the flat of her palm. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Marcus was so astonished that he actually took a half step back.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. “You know, I’m starting to think that maybe Clare’s right about you guys. All of you. You’ve been here for so many years, living this way for so long, that it’s who you are now. A soldier. A killer. A conqueror.”

  “And you expected—what?” he snapped back at her. “That some kind of sensitive nerd-o linguist was still trapped inside my hardened exterior?”

  It certainly is a hardened exterior— Oh, will you stop?!

  “You thought I’d just go all melty and forgo my obligations to the Legion at the prospect of a glorious return to the twentieth century and stuffy academia?”

  “It’s the twenty-first century now.”

  “Right. Where I’m a castoff. And I’m supposed to thank you for showing up to rescue me from a life of noble service to a greater cause?”

  Allie snorted. “And don’t forget all that fresh air and exercise you get invading the locals and grinding them under your hobnailed sandal! How exactly is that noble?”

  That stopped him cold. For a moment. His anger seemed to dissipate a little and he sighed. “Allie … these men …” He waved a hand in the vague direction of the camp. “They’re good men. Most of them. They’re soldiers, yeah, but they’re not slavering kill machines and psycho berserkers.”

  “Tell that to Boudicca’s tribe.”

  “Boudicca?” He barked a harsh laugh. “Are you kidding me? The most enthusiastic killing machine around? She butchered her own people, Allie. Just for wanting to live peaceably with the Romans. And yeah, I know.” He put up a hand to keep her from interrupting. “Maybe they shouldn’t be here. In Britain. The whole conquering thing … I know. I struggle with that one, too. But they do a lot of good. Roads, water, technological advancements. Things that, more often than not, have meant more prosperity to the lands they occupy. Better crops. Better water supplies. Trade. Longer, fuller lives for the common people.”

  “God. You sound like a recruiting brochure.”

  He made an exasperated sound. “I have to get back to camp. And you’re coming with me. But first I have to get dressed. You can either stand there and get an eyeful or turn around and wait.”

  Trying desperately to cover her disappointment and look nonchalant and uncaring, Allie rolled her eyes and did a one-eighty. She thought she might have heard Marcus chuckling behind her and was glad he couldn’t see her face, which she could feel had turned a vibrant shade of pink.

  “What if I don’t want to go with you?” she asked, listening to the sounds of him shrugging into his linen tunic and strapping on his various and sundry bits of leather and armour.

  “Suit yourself,” he grunted. “It’s marshland on all sides of this forsaken hill as far as the eye can see. And what the eye can’t see, hiding in that marshland, will most likely make a quick and brutal end of you inside twenty-four hours. Have fun.”

  All right, fine, said the rebellious voice in her head. I will …

  And so, as Marcus was busy getting dressed, she made a break for it.

  In a flat-out sprint, she got maybe fifty yards away from him when the air suddenly shivered like a heat wave and Allie experienced a sensation akin to her launch into the past: a moment of strange disorientation followed by an abrupt shift from bright sunny day to deepest night. With a full moon hanging overhead.

  “What the—”

  Ululating cries sounded from somewhere close behind, and glancing back, Allie saw red eyes coming at her in the darkness. Then a small voice in the back of her head said … Run!

  She poured on a burst of speed as Marcus suddenly appeared at her side, half-dressed in his Legion gear and running just as hard.

  “What the hell are those things?” she cried out.

  “Scathach!” he said, arms and legs pumping.

  There’s that word again …

  “Crazed Druidess warriors!” he elaborated, ducking to one side as a trio of short, black-feathered arrows peppered the ground between them. “They’re fuelled by blood magic and they live only for the destruction of their enemies—if they catch us they’ll tear us limb from limb. Run! Do not stop—no matter what happens!”

  No matter what happens, Allie thought wildly. Easier said than done!

  The rapid, muted slap of Mark’s legionnaire sandals on the soft earth of the goat track suddenly became snare-drum thwacks of leather on a hard surface. Allie stumbled and almost fell when the ground beneath them transformed into a ribbon of fresh-paved asphalt, coal black in the wan blue light of a crescent moon.

  “The hell?!” she exclaimed. The ancient Britons hadn’t exactly been known for having paved roads.

  Then the ribbon of road was gone again and soft, marshy ground sucked at Allie’s feet. She stumbled and would have landed on her face if it hadn’t been for Marcus’s strong hands gripping her by the shoulders and hauling her forward, her feet windmilling through the air before the soles of her boots found purchase again. The sky above was bright blue and dotted with fluffy white clouds.

  “This way!” Marcus said, dragging her through a gap in a stand of trees—which turned into a gap in a farm-field hedgerow when they were out the other side.

  Something that looked an awful lot like a utility pole appeared directly in front of Allie. She dodged to one side, narrowly avoiding an astonished-looking black-woolled sheep that—she could have sworn—hadn’t been there a second ago. A thatch-roofed hut appeared in the distance and, off to the left, a group of horsemen on massive chargers went thundering by swinging longswords, brocade cloaks flying behind them.

  Dark night descended once more with dizzying swiftness and Allie screamed again as they dove through another hedge gap and into the path of a pair of blazing white lights barrelling down on them—the eyes of a monster. Or maybe a blue Honda mini-van, beeping its horn and swerving crazily to avoid running them down.

  It vanished before her eyes and another stand of trees sprang up in its place. Allie could hear the howling
of the warrior women. Closer this time. She poured on another burst of panic-speed and made for a street edged with a row of shops that suddenly glimmered into view. She recognized the cheese shop and the antiques store they always passed on the way to the Rifleman. A little further down the way …

  “Hey! That’s my bed and breakfast!”

  Allie glanced up at the darkened corner window on the third floor as she ran past. But with the scathach probably still hot on their heels they dared not stop.

  “Help! Clare! Me! Somebody …” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Help! Help!”

  “Don’t stop!”

  Marcus almost pulled her arm out of its socket as the scenery shifted again and a hard-flung flaming spear flew through the space between them—just above their joined hands.

  Allie whimpered as she kept on running. She thought she might have seen a light flicker to life in the bedroom window. Not that it mattered—another glance over her shoulder as she ran showed her that the B&B was gone. She would have wept if she hadn’t been so busy dodging impossible things.

  Post office! Duck …

  Sudden, massive oak tree! Dodge …

  Dead Roman soldier! Hurdle …

  Thirty yards ahead a soaring cathedral shimmered into view right out of thin air. Allie could see rainbow light shining from the prisms of the tall stained-glass panels—scenes of angels and demons—and then, in the blink of an eye … only a crumbled shell. A few ragged stone curtain-walls reached toward the sky, roofless and cradling empty air, overgrown grass growing where once there was polished flagstone.

  “Allie! Look out!”

  “Ow—!” Al’s shoulder had slammed into a metal mailbox on the side of the road—neither having existed a moment earlier— and she spun sharply sideways, her hand ripped out of Marcus’s grip. He hurtled past her, carried by his own momentum, and— right in front of her eyes—he vanished. Allie tripped over her own feet, tumbled for another several yards, and fell senseless to the ground. She lay there, pain blooming out from her shoulder in waves of fiery agony.

  The sound of Marcus’s voice still echoed in the misty night.

  It drifted away and silence descended on Allie McAllister like a blanket of new-fallen snow. She couldn’t even hear the sound of her own heart and she couldn’t make herself stop holding her breath. And then, just at the edge of her awareness, she heard something. For a long moment, she couldn’t think what it was. Then it dawned on her … the distant drone, carried on the still air, was the sound of an airplane engine, coming from high overhead. She was home. Or was she? She almost didn’t dare hope.

  For a brief, shining instant, she thought she heard Clare calling her name.

  But then, as she lay there, the dark/dusk/dawn sky seemed to fade back to a solid, normal, afternoon blue. The very same sky that had domed the world in the moments before everything had gone haywire. Back on the riverbank with Marcus. The howls of the scathach faded too, quickly replaced with another, single voice. Marcus’s voice again, ragged with the harshness of his breathing, as he fell to his knees beside her and gathered her in his arms.

  “Allie … Allie!” he called. “Oh, shit … Say something. Please be okay! Allie …”

  So close. She’d been so close to going home. The bitter taste of that nearness made her throat ache and she felt a single tear slide out from under her closed eyelid.

  “Oh, thank god …” she heard Marcus sigh in relief. “You’re alive.”

  “What makes you think that?” she murmured through the pain.

  “Corpses don’t cry.”

  Carefully, he took his arm from around her torso as Allie struggled to sit up under her own power. It felt almost as though she’d dislocated her shoulder, but she could still move it, so she knew she’d be fine. At least they seemed to have outrun the scathach.

  “Weren’t you listening when I said you’d never survive out here?” Marcus asked, exasperation soaking his every word. “I told you there were things that would try to kill you.”

  “What happened?” She glanced around. “That was crazy. It was like multiple shimmer doors opening one right after the other …”

  “They’re like … waves,” Marcus said, sitting back on his heels. “Bands of temporal distortion. I’ve experienced them before. Most of the soldiers in the Second Augusta have. It’s one of the reasons they all think this place is haunted. The anomalies appear without warning, but usually they’re barely even tangible. Not like these. And certainly not like the one that sent me—and, I’m guessing, you—here.”

  “Um, yeah …” Allie kept glancing around, but the distortions had vanished like heat waves after the sun goes down. “That was close, but not, obviously, the same. Because I’m still here. With you.”

  “Try not to sound so excited,” he said dryly.

  Allie just wiped the dampness of the tear from her cheek and rolled an eye at him.

  “Right. Anyway. You walk through one, or one washes over you, and you come out the other side,” Marcus continued. “Back where—when—you started. It’s just that there are pockets of weak temporal displacement. I think they emanate from the Tor itself. They’re a nuisance, but usually if you just stay in one place, they’re harmless. Unless, of course, you happen to step into the path of an oncoming war band or a beer delivery truck. Like you just did. Uh—repeatedly.” He shook his head. “You either have the best or the worst luck I’ve ever seen.”

  “Thanks.” Allie shifted and groaned in pain.

  “Can you stand?”

  “Do you care?”

  His expression was unreadable.

  Allie pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. “How come you never tried to use one of those things to get back home?”

  “You think I didn’t? Every time we came up this way on patrols over the last four years I’ve tried to find one. But I never could. They’re unpredictable. And like I said … it used to be you just walked through and came out the other side. But what just happened: that was weird. I’ve never seen that many at once. And the sensations have never been so corporeal.” He shook his head. “Something’s changed … and I don’t think it’s for the better.”

  “It could be my friends,” Allie said, a glimmer of hope stirring. Maybe they’re trying to get me back home.”

  “Yeah?” Marcus’s lip quirked up in an irritating half-sneer. “That’s great. Mine never did.”

  Allie looked down. He was definitely bitter.

  But then, maybe realizing how upset she really was, Mark gave her a sad smile. “Here’s hoping they don’t get us both killed in the process, yeah?”

  “Maybe … maybe if you could keep pace with one of the distortions for long enough—”

  “Forget it, Allie. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Right. The scathach.” She glanced around nervously.

  “No,” Marcus said. “I mean in general. The scathach attack the camp itself only after the sun goes down.”

  “Only?”

  “So far. Thankfully. But when we actually send out a patrol they appear out of nowhere and wreak bloody havoc, day or night. We can be out on a wide-open moor and then … wham. Surrounded in the blink of an eye. It’s like evil magic. We can’t leave. If we stay hunkered down inside the walls, at least the men have the daylight hours to recuperate and regroup after the attacks. But it also means very little sleep, and the stress is starting to wear the men down.” He stood and held out a hand to her. “Can you stand?”

  She could. And she did. Wordlessly and without any help. And she absolutely would not let him see how much it hurt.

  He huffed a sigh at her stubbornness. “Great. Can you walk?”

  “Of course I can walk.”

  “Then follow me. And I mean it this time. Because if you don’t, I won’t run after you again. Next time you bolt, you’re on your own.” Marcus stalked past, heading back in the direction of the encampment. Ten feet in front of Allie he stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. “So what’
ll it be? Should I say goodbye and good luck now? Or are you going to be a good girl and let me save your life? Again.”

  She gritted her teeth, biting back the retort she knew would just get her abandoned. Marcus was pretty obviously at the end of his tether where she was concerned. Moment of tender panic when he thought she might be dead—what the hell was that about, anyway?—notwithstanding. In all honesty, Allie was hard-pressed to find the fault in him for that. Running away had been a pretty bone-headed thing to do. Temporal whammy waves or no. Her chances of survival out in the Somerset marshes would have been slim to none under normal circumstances.

  “Fine,” Allie muttered. “Whatever. ‘Lead on, Macduff.’”

  He grinned (a bit evilly), and set off at a brisk pace.

  Trailing behind as Marcus stalked sure-footed over the uneven ground, Allie got a good look at the lean, defined muscles of his legs—at the way the straps of his armoured leather kilt slapped against his thighs and how the laces of his sandals tightened against his sinewy calves with every stride. Marcus Donatus had muscles on his muscles.

  Thews, Allie thought. This is what all those romance novelists mean when they talk about the hero’s “thews.” Muscles.

  There was simply no denying the fact that, irritating personality or no, the guy was positively ripped. Not in a bulgy, pumpingiron kind of way. More like in the not-an-ounce-of-fat, nicely defined, ridiculously manly kind of way. One thing was certain: Marcus Donatus wasn’t Maggie’s Mark O’Donnell. And if he ever had been? He sure as heck wasn’t anymore.

  This Marcus was Allie’s very own—

  Okay, wait. Stop right there.

  Allie shook her head sharply to dispel any such random, unfortunately worded thoughts. Whoever this guy was, he was not “hers.” He had nothing to do with her. Other than the fact that he’d taken her captive. He’d made her a prisoner of the Roman Legion, for crying out loud! Unacceptable. It didn’t matter how sexy his accent—either of his accents—was. Were. Or how tanned and chiselled his features. Again: he was a ruthless Roman killing machine.