“You believe him? You believe that monster over me?”
“I don’t think any one of us is a monster here. They died years ago, Quinten. Instead of blaming the first stitched who walks into our house, I’d like to find out who really did it.”
I kept my hand around his wrist. He wasn’t pulling against me, but that was no guarantee that he wouldn’t lunge at Abraham the first chance he got.
“Who killed them?” I asked Abraham. “Do you know?”
“The order to stop that caravan didn’t go through Coal and Ice,” he said. “The roadside attacks were never vetted with Binek.”
“Who’s Binek?” At this rate, even I was getting tired of how many questions I still didn’t have answers to.
“The man who runs Coal and Ice,” Abraham said.
“The man who sends mercenaries out on jobs for the Houses?”
“Jobs for anyone who can pay,” Abraham said. “Yes.”
“Then who do you think was staging the road attacks?”
“Slater,” Foster breathed.
“Bullshit,” Quinten said. “How convenient that the man who wants our head—the man you were recently working for, I’ll remind you—is the one you want us to think killed our parents. Our friends.”
“Do you have proof?” I asked.
Abraham took a breath. The look he gave Foster was pointed. I didn’t think he had wanted Foster to call Slater out by name.
Interesting. So Abraham and Foster might have another angle on this game, maybe even another reason for wanting to go with Quinten and me to House Earth.
It was starting to be very difficult to decide just who I should really trust in this world.
But my gut said Abraham wasn’t playing us, or at least he wasn’t playing us with an intent to harm us. Of course, that could just be old love getting in the way of my logical mind.
“Proof?” I asked again.
Abraham shook his head. “Nothing you’d believe. Nothing on me. But it is true. I give you my word, Matilda Case. Slater culled those caravans, and the people he pulled out of them have never been heard from again.”
“Only House Earth people?”
He hesitated just slightly. “Yes.”
Something wasn’t lining up, but I didn’t know what it was. “Okay, here’s the deal. I still want Slater dead. More dead if he really was the one who killed my parents and the people in House Earth. You,” I said to Quinten, “need to decide how you’re going to deal with this. Either we travel with Abraham and Foster and use their connections, like you told me you wanted to, or we cut here and go our separate ways.”
“I don’t have to do what you—”
“You do,” I interrupted. “You have to do what I tell you to do. This is not a democracy, brother. I’m taking over. At least until we get to House Earth. You need to tell me if you can keep your fists and bullets to yourself for the rest of this trip.”
“Why,” he bit off, “should I?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Is it worth the information you want them to give to you?”
Quinten’s eyes narrowed. I watched as the gloss of rage slipped sideways into something that might not quite be sanity, but could be sanity adjacent.
He nodded. “There are . . . things that only a galvanized connected to Coal and Ice would know. Things that would help us destroy Slater.”
I held eye contact with him, watching to see if the crazy came creeping back. “Then we travel together. And leave the past in the past.”
“I can’t do that. I won’t.”
“I don’t care. You have to, at least temporarily.” I released his arm, then walked toward Abraham.
Neds, who had been uncharacteristically quiet through this exchange, his back toward me and Quinten as he stood in front of Abraham, had a gun in his hand.
“Neds,” I said. “I appreciate you not firing on them while I worked this out. Am I going to get flak from you about me calling the shots?”
“Near as I can tell, you’re just doing what we’d planned on anyway,” Right Ned said. “Isn’t that right, Quinten Case?” he called back over his shoulder.
Quinten dragged his hand up into his hair and tugged on it. Then he walked stiffly toward us. “That is correct. We have a long way to go,” he said, looking only at me. “We should leave.”
“Abraham, Foster,” I said, “are we settled, then? Or would you like us to drop you off somewhere suitable between here and House Earth?”
“There is no place suitable,” Abraham said. He was watching me again, like he thought I might not be someone he should trust, which was weird, since I’d just stood up to my brother to keep him from being accused of something he said he didn’t do.
“What I told your brother is the truth,” Abraham said. “I didn’t kill your parents.”
“I’m willing to let that question lay fallow for a while, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t say I believed you.”
“You didn’t say you didn’t.”
“Then it’s settled. You’re with us for the ride. Please keep your hands to yourself. Both of you,” I said, with a nod toward Foster.
Foster lifted his chin. He jerked his head to scan the road down the way we’d come.
Abraham sucked in a quick breath, gaze intent in the same direction. Both men stood as if someone had just cranked their spines tight as catgut on a guitar.
“What?” I asked.
“Engines,” Foster breathed.
I held my breath. Listened. Heard nothing. “I thought you said the mercenaries would return to Coal and Ice and stop hunting us.”
“One thing you should know about mercenaries, Matilda,” Abraham said. “None of us follow rules.”
“Get on the bus,” I said. “Neds, are we fueled up?”
“We’re good to go. Backup tanks too.”
“Then let’s get moving.” I got three steps toward the bus.
* * *
My gut twisted. Dizziness washed over me, bringing the stench of roses. No. Not now. I didn’t have time for this now.
The world whisked away, taking the bus, my brother, farmhand, and galvanized with it.
I stood in front of a concrete building that looked like a storage shed. There was no road, though I could hear the hum of cars moving along a highway in the distance, and saw the glint of the local speed tube in the sunlight.
“Where is it?” Slater demanded.
I turned on my bootheel.
He wore the same dark blue suit with a black shirt beneath that he’d been wearing the last time the world had spun and he’d threatened me. He strode my way, a gun in his hand, pointed at me.
Holy shit.
I backed up, my hands out to the side.
“Where is the machine?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“The Wings of Mercury. You have it. You’ve hidden it,” he shouted. “You or your brother. You Cases,” he spat, “will not control time. Only I will live forever. Not you. Not any of you!”
Raging madman with a gun. Apparently, Slater was an asshole in every timeway.
“Slater,” I said, “listen to me. I don’t control time. I don’t have the machine. It was destroyed back in the 1900s. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Time,” Slater said as if that explained everything. “These timeways are not random. And you are in every one of them. Something must be controlling it. A piece of the machine . . . It’s impossible, but the Wings of Mercury must still exist. What part of it did you keep? How did you keep it?” he yelled. “Is it your brother? Does he have a piece of the machine? I can kill him, you know. In every timeway. And I will.”
“We don’t have anything,” I said. “I?
??m not controlling this. Quinten doesn’t even know about the machine. You can’t kill him in this timeway. He’s already dead.”
He shook the gun to include the world around us. “I will stop this. I will break this. I will crush you into dust, Matilda Case.”
He squeezed the trigger.
I screamed as the red-hot pain of a bullet slammed through me just below my left collarbone.
Pain flashed through my muscles and nerves, hitting so hard, I couldn’t breathe.
Then the world stuttered and swirled away from beneath my feet into the scent of roses and the distant hum of a bell.
* * *
I inhaled on a sharp breath, swallowing air against a second scream.
Slater was gone. The storage shed was gone. I drew my fingers up to my chest. There was no blood, no hole, no bullet.
I wasn’t in that timeway, and I wasn’t wounded.
Shit. Shitshitshit.
I bit my lip to keep the panic behind my teeth. Switching times wasn’t making any of this easier.
“Hurry.” Left Ned jogged past me and quickly climbed behind the driver’s seat.
I looked around, trying to ground myself in this now. Still on the rise. Still outside our vehicle. Still had mercenaries coming after us.
Foster and Abraham strode up and into the vehicle, Foster pressing his huge hand on my shoulder in comfort as he passed.
We had to get going. Now.
I glanced back, suddenly afraid my brother wouldn’t be there behind me.
My heart thumped hard, then settled into a more normal rhythm. He stood there, whole and alive.
“Quinten,” I said, finally getting my brain in the right gear. “We need to go. Right now.”
He dropped the binoculars and strode toward the bus, not looking at me. “Take the south fork,” he said to Neds. “There should be decent cover if we’re followed. Unless you’d rather pick our way across the countryside too, Matilda?”
What was his problem? Oh, right. I’d just told him I was making the decisions.
“We don’t have time for your hurt feelings,” I said, following him into the bus. “If you say the south fork is the way to go, then that’s good enough for me. Neds, go.”
I closed the side door behind me. Neds started the engine, which coughed and died and sputtered, and made me wonder if I should take up praying.
Then the engine caught and smoothed out. He released the clutch and got us back on the road, rolling down the other side of Cooper’s Ridge.
“Can we tap into the radio towers?” I asked.
I sat a couple seats behind Neds, and Quinten sat across from me. Abraham had walked into the back of the vehicle and was standing there, watching the road behind us out the small double windows. Foster was sitting near the back. He had pulled a heavy leather duffel out from under one of the seats and was methodically withdrawing weapons from it.
I was pretty sure he was humming a song about the harvest moon shining on a pair of young lovers.
“Tap in?” Quinten asked.
“Do you have a battery? A mobile radio unit that can tap the towers?”
“If we had to, yes,” he said. “But there’s no one out here. Not for the next hundred miles.”
“But if we needed help?”
“Matilda,” he said, and tugged his hair, then wiped his hand down his face. “Right now if we called for help, the only folk who would answer are the Grubens. And by the time they got out here, whatever we needed help with would be over.”
“They’ve made us,” Abraham said.
The pop of gunfire was echoed by the sharp pinging of the metal siding of our vehicle taking the hit.
“Get down! Get down!” I waved at Quinten, but he was not getting down.
So much for me being the boss.
“How many?” he yelled back to Abraham.
“Four I can see.”
“Weapons?” I asked.
Another rattle of bullets peppered the vehicle.
“Guns,” Abraham said unnecessarily.
I strode back to where Abraham was assembling a long-range rifle and scope that Foster had handed him.
“Are there rules about mercenaries not killing their fellow mercenaries?” I asked.
A spatter of bullet popped out again, and Abraham turned his back toward the fire. He simultaneously reached out and pulled me closer to his chest, using the width of his body to block the bullets.
I breathed in the scent of him, copper and smoke and leather. His arms tightened against my back; the rifle pressed down my spine, a cold counter to his heat. For a moment, no longer than a heartbeat, I turned my cheek against his chest and closed my eyes tight, wishing I could hold him forever.
The bullets paused and I released Abraham, though his arms were slow to loosen from around me.
I was trying to step away when the bus jerked. I grabbed hold of his waist and shoulder to keep my footing, my fingers curving around his neck, brushing stitches and skin . . .
He inhaled sharply and exhaled on a slight moan.
My touch, skin to skin, made him feel. And right now he felt me, the curve of my thigh braced inside his, my hips pressed against his groin. And I knew he wasn’t feeling pain.
“Sorry,” I said, stepping back. I wasn’t sorry for touching him. Wasn’t sorry he wanted me physically, just like I wanted him. But there wasn’t any time for that. There wasn’t any time for us.
His hazel eyes searched my face, burning with a hunger that plunged into deep shadow. He licked his lips and briefly closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were flat, cold, and empty of emotion.
“Mercenaries don’t follow rules,” he said, answering my previous question. He released me and drew his gun, turning to tug open the hinged window, the rifle tucked against his shoulder. He set his stance wide to take the buck and sway of the vehicle. The back of his jacket was ripped. Bullets, or maybe just shrapnel from the shots. He’d been shot. While trying to protect me. That hadn’t just been pleasure he’d felt at my touch.
“Matilda,” Quinten called out. “Get down!”
I crouched. Quinten bent low between the seats, his gun out the side window, returning fire. Which meant the mercenaries weren’t just behind us anymore. Foster strode up the length of the bus to the door. He shoved it open, then hung on to an overhead bar with one hand and leaned out. The ammunition belt was draped over his shoulder as he held a machine gun that must weigh a hundred pounds in one hand.
Left Ned swore up a storm over the noise, gripping the wheel tight, while Right Ned kept one eye on the rearview mirrors.
I drew my gun and slid on my knees into the seat behind Quinten, just as Foster let loose a deafening spray of bullets.
Quinten and I ducked as casings littered the floor of the bus, rolling and clattering between the seats.
My quick glance out the window had given me a glimpse of two men and a woman on motorcycles, driving through the scrub and rough of the rise to our left, while we careened down the twists and turns of the ragged concrete and dirt road.
Foster leaned back inside to reload, and I sat up and popped open the window.
“Matilda,” Quinten said, “don’t!”
I took aim and fired on the rider nearest us, who was about half a car length to the rear. Hit something—maybe his leg, maybe the tire—sending him veering off to the right. His bike bucked and flipped end over end, taking him along with it in a tangle of metal and bones.
The other riders didn’t pause to worry about their buddy. They fired at us.
I ducked back in and down between seats again.
“Nothing laser guided?” I asked Quinten.
“What?”
“Their guns? Do they have trackers? Laser-guidance systems?”
“They have anger and skill and wan
t to get paid. They don’t need anything else.”
“Shit!” Left Ned yelled. “Hold on.”
The vehicle leaned hard, throwing me out from between the seats. I thumped my head into the seat across the aisle, and everything lurched the other way. Then an explosion pounded through the bus, knocking the world sideways hard.
Too much happened at once. The world went upside down. I was thrown like laundry in a washing machine, hit everything, and tasted blood as the vehicle lurched and flipped, rolling with an enormous amount of noise down the hillside.
It took forever.
It took an instant that never ended.
And then the crashing, grinding, tumbling pain stopped.
8
There’s something causing these rifts in time. If I can find that, track these ripples, maybe I can find you, Matilda. Before he kills you.
—W.Y.
The first thought that ran through my head was that I was alive. The bus had fallen off the side of a cliff, and yet I was still breathing.
I inhaled, moaned a little at all the parts of me that hurt. My head especially. I could feel the matted, sticky warmth of blood in my hair, and yet a corresponding cold on the rest of my skin, like someone had just dunked me in freezing water.
The second thought that went through my head was Quinten.
Was he alive? Neds, Abraham, Foster? I opened my mouth to say something, but the only thing that came out was a choked cough.
“I’ve got you,” Abraham’s voice filtered down from the light spearing through shadows above me. I blinked to try to make sense of . . . well, everything. Didn’t do me any good.
His hand stretched toward me, and I reached up for him. He grunted a little at the impact, but carefully, and gently, considering the circumstances, lifted me up out from where I’d landed behind a set of seats that had come unbolted from the floor.
He pulled me against him, and I could feel his muscles bunching as he wrapped his arms down beneath my butt and carried me across a space that I still couldn’t piece together, his breathing a little hard, his body warm against mine.
“I’m going to lift you up to Foster,” he said.
“Quinten?”
“Haven’t found him yet. But I will.”