A Twist in Time

Chapter 22

They were walking into the mouth of hell. At least that was what it felt like to Lucy. The lab doors opened. Leonardo’s time machine sat glittering on the platform of the two-story lab.

It was really beautiful.

“I’ll take that diamond,” Brad said through gritted teeth.

Galen held it out.

She wanted to shout that they should never have come, that this was all wrong. But it was no use now. Even as Brad snatched the huge diamond from Galen’s palm, a dozen men in military gear crashed into the lab behind them. Lucy whirled. They carried machine guns. She wished she’d told Galen about guns, how easy it was to kill from a distance. He mustn’t think his sword was any protection.

He didn’t move a muscle at the entrance of these ominous reinforcements. It was as though he wasn’t surprised.

Brad muttered to himself as he strode across the lab to the machine. He fitted the diamond into the newly repaired prongs at the head of the control lever. One of the lab-coated guys handed Brad what looked like a giant jeweler’s pliers. They must have been made specially, because they fit right over the diamond. He clenched the prongs tightly around the diamond.

He stepped back looking triumphant. Relief and anticipation coursed through the room.

Casey turned to Lucy and Galen. “Now, if you will give me your shoulder bag. That square outline means you’ve brought the book as well.” When Lucy hesitated, Casey gestured impatiently. “It’s not as though you have a choice here.”

She swung the bag over to him. He picked it up and fished out the book. That smile again. He glanced over to the machine. “Steadman, I have an urge to try it out. Just to see if your repair job worked. Ahhhh, but with whom? Our little bookseller isn’t trustworthy.”

This was it. This was her test of character. Could she embrace the tragedy for Galen’s sake? “Send Galen,” she said, her heart contracting. “He’s got to go back. The fact that he’s here has probably already changed things.” She refused to look at Galen. If she did, she’d cry.

Brad pushed past Casey, his eyes flashing. “You think I’m stupid? He takes it and brings it back to somewhere else in a month and you’ve got control of it again. If anybody is going to try the machine out, it’s me. It should have been me in the first place.”

Casey raised his brows at this outburst. “You didn’t have the guts the first time, Steadman. As I recall.”

Brad’s face was mobile with emotion.

“Not our Viking, either. I have some . . . questions for him.”

“Me, too.” Brad’s eyes were a little wild. “And I’d like to beat the answers out of him, twice a day, for a long time.”

“Steadman, you surprise me. You’re getting a backbone. A little late, maybe.”

Brad wheeled on Lucy. “And you, you slut—”

“Will you use the machine or nay?” Galen rumbled, cutting off Brad’s tirade.

“Okay, you.” Casey gestured to one of the assistants, a slight Hispanic guy. “You’re our lab rat.” The guy looked like a rat. A cornered rat. Panic surged into his eyes. He didn’t move.

“Casey, it’s got to be me. I want to go.” Brad looked to Lucy in triumph, as if that proved he was a better man than she was worth.

Casey looked disgusted. “You we need in case it doesn’t work. You’re the expert, the one who can fix it, remember?”

Brad stood, his chest heaving. His glance darted around the lab. Then he stilled. “Okay. Yeah.” He seemed to get some control back. “Get over here, Rodriguez.” Brad turned to face the machine. When the assistant didn’t move, Casey gestured to the military guys. Two moved up and pushed Rodriguez forward with the butts of their machine guns.

“This is going to change the world,” Brad said. “And I provided the power.” He knelt and flipped switches on the lunch box– sized power source. He didn’t seem to recall that it was Leonardo who built it. “Jensen never gave me credit for the quality of my research,” Brad muttered. “Fuck him. I’ll have his job.”

Brad stood in front of the machine. “Christ. I won’t need his job. I’ll have my own institute. ‘Multiphasic Research.’ That’s catchy.” He pulled the lever down. The machine began to whir. He grabbed Rodriguez. “Now where shall we send him?”

“You could see Alfred the Great change the world,” Galen suggested. The gems began to throw colored beams around the ceiling. Behind Lucy the military guys gasped.

Brad’s eyes lighted up. “The event that made us what we are today . . . the fall of the Danelaw to Alfred . . .” The machine seemed to pause. “Yeah, Rodriguez. Think about that.”

Casey tossed a gun he took from a holster under his jacket. “Just in case.”

Rodriguez didn’t catch it; Brad did. The assistant looked paralyzed with fright.

“Think of the twelfth day, fifth month of a.d. 912,” Galen called above the hum of power in the room. “The hill to the south of the plains outside Whitby.”

“Yeah,” Brad murmured. “Bet those cretins have never seen one of these.” The sound of his voice was almost lost in the hum. Whether he meant a time machine or a gun Lucy didn’t know. Galen took her hand. His calluses grounded her against what was about to happen here. Didn’t Casey see it? Brad was going back. Maybe he’d take Rodriguez with him, or maybe he’d shove the assistant out of the way at the last minute. But apparently everyone in the room was too ignorant of history to know that Alfred was already dead in 912. The battle between Alfred and the first King Guthrum was long won, and it had not eliminated the Danelaw, just controlled its spread. Brad was going back to the battle where Galen had fought Egil.

Suddenly the machine snapped into action. The gears all whirred into a blur. Casey darted forward, realizing Brad’s intent too late. Brad shoved Rodriguez, who stumbled back.

Brad and the machine both disappeared.

There was a long moment when the only sound in the room was the gasping of lungs and the click of weapons being readied against a foe that wasn’t corporeal but time itself.

Galen put his arm around Lucy’s shoulder. Casey looked around wildly. Rodriguez lay on the lab floor, gasping in relief.

“God damn it!” Casey yelled. “The fucking idiot.”

“What . . . what happens now, Colonel?” The lead military guy was lost.

“We wait,” Casey snapped.

They waited. If Brad was successful, he would be back within minutes, and even if—

The lights went out in the lab. What sounded like thunder boomed all around them, as if lightning had struck the building.

And then the machine was sitting on the platform once again.

Alone.

The lights blinked on. No Brad. But the machine’s bright surface was splashed in several places with red-brown. Lucy put her hand over her mouth.

Casey strode to the machine and examined it. “Looks like Steadman bought the farm.” Casey didn’t seem concerned.

Lucy’s imagination was working overtime. Brad set down in the middle of Galen’s battle. Slashing swords and swinging axes, the smell of blood and smoke—all as she remembered it. Brad would start shooting wildly. He’d kill people, but the clip would run out sooner or later. Then those left standing from both sides would fall on him. . . .

“At least it works,” Casey said, turning to them. “And Steadman was really no longer useful.” Casey’s pale blue eyes still roved over the glinting brass and jewels of the machine, possessively. “He was unreliable.”

Brad had just been a little insane. Casey was major insane, the cold kind, not the hot kind. He’d made a mistake, letting his chief scientist and bottle washer get killed, and now he was justifying it, making it seem as though it weren’t a mistake at all.

“So that’s the second man who died for this machine. The first one you killed.”

“Honey, I’ve killed more men than I can count.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Oh, you mean Lowell. Yeah.” He shrugged. “Guy had a bad heart. He sneaked out on our little party early. Knew it, too, the bastard. But we got the guy who did your IDs. He would have told us where he delivered them. Now we don’t need him, of course.”

Why did she think that meant the forger was a dead man, too? She glanced to Galen. He was tight, about to burst it seemed, maybe . . . waiting for something.

“And anyone can run the machine at this point. So,” Casey said, as if deciding. “Time for a little cleanup.” He picked up Lucy’s bag and rummaged around until he found the gun. He held it up. “Thought Lowell would make sure you had something like this. Glock nine. Bet you don’t even know how to use it.”

Casey snapped it up and put bullets in the foreheads of Rodriguez and the other lab assistant. Lucy gasped in shock. Galen jumped back, dragging her with him. The military guys behind them took a step forward, brandishing their guns as if to hold Galen and Lucy in place.

“What weapon spits fire and kills from a distance?” Galen muttered.

“A gun,” Lucy answered. “You saw them in the western and just didn’t know what they were.” She’d begun to tremble as she stared at the lab assistants, collapsed on the floor, gaping holes in their heads. Funny. There wasn’t much blood.

“Jake gave you this weapon?” Galen sounded outraged. “You had it always?”

“Sure beats a sword, doesn’t it?” Casey had turned the gun on them. Galen pulled Lucy behind his body.

“Come on out, honey. No use putting this off.” Casey motioned with the gun.

“Kill me,” Galen growled. “You let Lucy free.”

“No, no, no, no. You I want to keep for a while. I want to know how you can talk to animals like that. You might even know where some Viking hoards of silver are buried. She’s the expendable one.” He motioned to the guys wearing camo. Two came up and grabbed her while three tried to seize Galen. He twisted a gun out of the hands of the nearest soldier and used it as a club. The stock part of it came up and caught the guy under the jaw, dropping him in his tracks. Galen was already swinging for one of the guys who held her. She twisted away, but the soldier had her arm. For a minute, and then he went down, too.

Galen pulled out his sword and sliced at another one, who clutched one hand to a spurting neck and fell to his knees. A gun went off in a short burst. It caught one of the remaining soldiers bailing into the melee. He bloomed with blood.

“Don’t fire in these close quarters, you idiots!” Casey shouted.

Another soldier hit Galen with a baton from behind. Galen managed to duck and spare his head, but the blow caught his shoulder. He staggered and then there were four of them hitting and hitting. He sank to his knees.

“Galen!” she cried, pulling her remaining captor off balance as she lunged toward Galen.

Another gun went off. A single shot. “Enough!” Casey yelled. All motion stopped. Two of the camo guys were groaning. One lay still in a pool of blood from his slashed neck. One of the guys still standing around Galen kicked his sword away. It spun toward Lucy and the guy who held her by both elbows from behind.

“Cuff him or tie him up or something,” Casey said, disgusted. “Before you let him cut you to pieces with that sword.” He walked over to Lucy. “You want to do her, or shall I?” he asked the guy who held her. He was a black guy, with dead eyes and a white scar on one cheek.

“Be my guest, Boss,” the black guy growled.

Galen had gone still, kneeling on the floor, his hands jerked behind his back. Casey came up and held Jake’s gun to Lucy’s head. The muzzle was cold at her temple.

“Say good-bye to your girlfriend, Viking.”

“You will freeze in Hel’s kingdom,” Galen growled. That wasn’t the only growl in the room. From a distance a powerful grinding sound thrummed up through the floor. It buzzed in her chest, coming closer.

“Shit,” one of the camo guys said. “I know that sound—”

But before he could say what it was, the whole place was shaking like Vandal shook Galen’s socks, sharp and fast. The men around her staggered.

“Earthquake!” one shouted.

Casey fell backward. The gun went off and skittered from his hand. Glass shattered and tinkled. The floor heaved like someone was shaking out a rug. Men scrambled toward the exit.

“Get out. Get out!”

Galen crawled toward her. Ceiling tiles crashed to the floor and broke over the gears of Leonardo’s machine. Galen covered her with his body as a rending sound squealed through the lab. A broken girder poked through the wall toward the machine.

Galen had recovered his sword. “Lucy, come away!” he shouted over the din.

They staggered to their feet, reeling. The grinding sound was passing on. “We can’t leave Casey with the machine!” she shouted.

They looked around and saw that Casey was staggering toward one of the abandoned machine guns just in front of the machine. Would he rather kill us than save himself? It was as though someone else from far away was thinking that. The west wall of the lab leaned slowly in.

And then it was still. The grinding sound was gone. The silence was deafening. Casey got to his feet. Galen shoved her behind him and readied his sword, his face grim. He’d be cut down by that machine gun.

But there was Jake’s gun. At her feet. The one she swore she’d never use because she wasn’t that person.

But she was all they had. She reached for it. Casey was turning, machine gun in hand, his face a mask of hatred and greed. She stepped out from behind Galen and brought Jake’s Glock up. She pulled the trigger again and again and again. She braced her feet against the kick, but it was so much more than she expected. Her shots went wild and high and then she wrestled the gun down again and—

Casey’s face disappeared. It just shattered in blood and white splinters of bone.

The machine gun clattered to the floor. Casey toppled forward.

Lucy was heaving sobs. She didn’t remember starting to cry. Galen held her, whispering soothing sounds.

“You are dor, Lucy. Brave.”

“I . . . I just killed a man.” She couldn’t get her breath. There was so much dust in the air.

An aftershock ripped through the lab. The west wall buckled. This whole place was going to come down. It might destroy the machine. Leonardo’s lifework. The key to time itself.

But what if it didn’t?

“Boss?” The camo guys were making their way back into the building.

She looked up at Galen. “We’ve got to get the machine out of here. And there’s only one way to do that.”

“It will gewend back here as it did for Brad.”

Debris crashed behind them. Casey’s men would be through the wreckage any minute.

“Yeah.” She chewed her lip. “Leonardo said it comes back to where it left because time is bent too far and bounces back into its track.” She looked up at Galen. “But what if you didn’t take it far in time? Just to the next second? But to a different place. Maybe it would stay where you took it.”

She picked up her bag with the book in it and ran to the machine without waiting for an answer. “Okay, okay,” she reassured herself. She flipped on the power. It whined up the scale.

She positioned herself in front of the lever. Galen came and put his arms around her. She pulled the diamond down.

Where to take it? Where was there room for fourteen feet of time machine, where no one would find it? The lights began to play across the wreckage, coloring motes of dust. The gears ground to a halt. In seconds they would slingshot forward.

“You okay, Boss?” More crashing from behind them. She couldn’t think. Where?

And then she knew. Why it should come to her like that she didn’t know. The Palace of Fine Arts. Her favorite place. The place she had shared picnics with Brad. In the empty, secret room they’d found under the Rotunda. Now it was sealed again. Would they be sealed in, too? But the Chronicle had said there was a passage into the Exploratorium.

She smiled up at Galen as the momentum of the machine threw them into the vortex.

Lucy sat up, coughing. Galen stirred beside her and shoved himself up to hands and knees. She felt the machine looming above them, though she couldn’t see it.

“Are you okay, Lucy?” He felt for her in the darkness. His hands skimmed her face. They were trembling.

“Yes. Yes.” She was just a little breathless. “And you?”

“I am sore from where they bateth me, no more.” He paused. “Where are we?”

“Under the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. No one will find the machine here.” He gathered her into his arms. “You knew the quake was coming, didn’t you? That’s what you meant when you said the earth would help us.”

“Ja. I can feel the earth, Lucy. I speak this to you before.”

“Your mother was right after all.” Lucy thought about his connection to animals. “I think you had it in you all along.” He could now be to his people what they expected of him. He could take his brother’s place. It was what Galen had wanted all his life. And she must not keep him from his happiness. This was his story, after all, not hers. She was just along for the ride.

She had never felt so small, so insignificant, so wrong.

“The Norns wove it,” he agreed softly.

She was glad she couldn’t see him. That meant he couldn’t see her. All she had to do was keep her voice steady and he’d never know that sending him back was like ripping out her intestines. “You can finally go back to your own time. The machine is safe. It will come back here now when you are done with it, where no one will find it.”

“Ja.”

One word. Flat. That was it then.

“But that would not be right,” he whispered.

She tried to breathe. Don’t push him. He’s not the kind of guy who can be pushed.

“I was thinking, Lucy, while we ride the horses. You came to my time because you thought the Norns wove that for you. You speak this to me. I remember. You name it ‘destiny.’ ”

She nodded.

“We both look for our fate. I think we have it, Lucy.”

“You . . . you certainly found yours.”

“Both. Did we not both lust until we were mad with it? Did we not lust under the moon of the vernal equinox? It was then that I hear the land and water and air.”

“So use your gift. Be what your people need.”

“But the land and the water, they were not sick in my time. They are sick now. I think my destiny is here, with you and your time.” His words came out of the dark, hesitant. “The land and water need protection.”

She wanted nothing more than for him to stay, whether he loved her or not, whether he was constant or not, difficult or not. But what did she contribute? “You may be right.”

The silence hung between them.

“Lucy?” His voice had gotten even more tentative.

She cleared her throat and tried to sound brisk. “It sounds to me like your powers come from a connection with something the Greeks called Gaia. They thought the world was a living being. Not like a god or goddess, more like a person. It breathes and thinks and plans.”

“Ja. That is how it is to me.”

He wasn’t touching her. That was good. If he touched her, she might break into tiny shards like the glass in the lab.

The silence stretched.

“If we aren’t going to use the machine, I . . . I guess we should go.” Go where? Do what? She shoved herself up.

He grabbed for her hand. “Lucy,” he said, his voice raw. “I hear what you say not. Know this. I cannot do this thing without you. You think you are not enough, Lucy, like I did. I know not who told you this. My brother spoke from his grave to me. But it is not true. We are enough.”

“You are . . . wonderful,” she managed, though he had hold of her wrist and that thing was happening where jolts shot to her loins. “Magic, even. But what do I bring?”

“You jest with me.” His brows drew together like they did in those first days when he was in pain.

“I’m not jesting. You need help with the language for about another week. I know you’re disappointed that a sword is not the weapon of choice here, but you’ll be a charter member of the NRA in no time. You’ve got all the money you need, assuming the boat is still anchored off Pescadero Point. I . . . I’ll just be a drag on you.”

He got enough of that speech to get the drift. “You drive carts. You sail. You killed a man. You saved the machine, Lucy. You are brave and strong. You are so beautiful a man’s eyes are sore. And you have mildness in your heart for man and dog. How is this not enough? At first, when I come here, I yearn for a time when I do not need you. Is this the way to be a man, to need a woman for everything? But I need you, Lucy. And now that feels right and true. How can I use what the gods give me when I know nothing of this world? You will know how to use what I am. Together we are wonderful. Without you, I can do nothing. The world is lost.”

“Great. I’m the practical one.”

“Ja. You feel when things are sooth like me. The earth calls to you, too. No scalds will sing our story each by each. We are only enough together, Lucy. My destiny. Your destiny also.”

He was saying that his story was her story. But he offered a business partnership that came with a haze of marvelous sex. Valhalla, where sex and feasting and drinking were supposed to be enough to satisfy you. Did they?

And he was wrong about her being the strong one. That was just the problem. Jake, too, had believed she was a person she was not.

Yet, she would never have believed she could find the courage to go back in time to look for a different kind of life or that she could lie to the police or pull stitches out of a Viking’s flesh or kill Casey. Maybe she was that person Jake and Galen thought her.

“Faugh,” Galen said into the dark and her considering silence. “You demand yet more from me. You would tear out a man’s heart to see it beat? Then hear this. You. You are my fate, as much as the gift. I will wed you, Lucy, if you would have a warrior with no weapon of value, a man who has no time, one who needs you. I am little enough to protect you. But I will give my life trying. You want equal partners. I will try. This I vow. Can you ask more, woman?”

The disgust in his voice was so . . . Galen. And the declaration was Galen, too. He did not make it lightly. He made it with the power of his heart, and the honor in his soul. No woman could want more.

She had gone back to find a time where magic was still possible. Who said that magic wasn’t possible in this time? Galen thought cars and elevators and zippers were magic. Maybe they were. Maybe we missed the magic that happened all around us every day. Maybe the real magic was the work you had to do to make yourself into the person who could push and shove the world forward. No easy answers. No eating all you want to lose weight. Galen had a gift that could only be called magic, and it was not like to be an easy answer for him. His way in this time would be hard. But she couldn’t deny her world could use a man who heard what was right for the earth. And maybe there was another kind of magic at work here, the magic a man and woman made between them. Lord, that wasn’t any kind of an easy answer. But she had felt the rightness. She could understand him, as perhaps no other woman could.

“I cannot ask more.”

She felt him holding his breath. What was he waiting for? Ahhh. She had not matched his vow. “I will love you, Galen Valgarssen, until the day I die. Don’t you dare break my heart.”

He took her into his arms in a crushing embrace. His scent engulfed her. She would know that scent until the day she died as well. Her heart beat against his, not in unison but in delightful counterpoint. It seemed right and true.

“If I wound your heart, I wound my own,” he breathed into her hair.

They stayed like that, feeling the rightness wash over them. Lucy listened to their hearts and felt another presence there. She squeezed her eyes shut. A woman couldn’t know she was pregnant after only two days. Or maybe she was different from other women now. . . .

“Come,” he said after a moment. “Know you the way out of this darkness? We must go for dog and boat before I can fulfill my vow.”

“There is a passage.” The Chronicle article better be right, or they were going to die a slow death. But she didn’t believe that. “Help me feel for the door.” She scrambled to her feet and put her hands out in front of her. Taking cautious steps, she felt her way around the girders that now supported the Rotunda floor. He went in the opposite direction. They made their way toward each other around the outside wall. She was the one who found the passage. An empty space turned out to be a long corridor.

“Door,” Galen grunted as they reached the end of the corridor. A bar crossed the door to open it. Pray it wasn’t locked or they’d starve here. The bar did nothing. Uh-oh. Maybe there was a bolt lock that worked by hand from the inside. She felt around. What she found was a large button about chest height, like the kind on the inside of walk-in freezers to prevent people from getting locked in. She pressed it in relief.

The door swung open. Lucy sucked in fresh air. Work lights glowed from somewhere. The exhibits of the Exploratorium loomed in the shadows. Now she saw her way. She turned and pushed the door shut on the time machine. The lock clicked into place. A large sign plastered across the door said: Danger. No admittance. Unsafe conditions. Excellent.

Now they’d find a night watchman, plead that they’d gotten locked in after hours, and get him to let them out.

“Lucy,” Galen said, putting a hand on her arm. “In one thing you must submit to me.”

She raised her brows. He was glowering, an expression she found strangely comforting. “So much for equal partners. What is it?”

“I want no condom on my weapon when I swive you.”

She tried to make her mouth serious. “It will mean making a lytling.” It already had.

“Good,” he grunted. “Mayhaps he will come on Sahmain midnight like my brother.”