Dissonance: An Echo Trilogy Novella (Echo Trilogy, #2.5)
Read Dissonance: An Echo Trilogy Novella (Echo Trilogy, #2.5) Online
Authors: Lindsey Fairleigh
Dissonance
ECHO TRILOGY, NOVELLA 2.5
By LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH
Copyright © 2016 by Lindsey Fairleigh
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. All
characters, organizations, and events are products of the author’s imaginations
or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person, living or dead, is
intended or should be inferred.
Editing by Sarah Kolb-Williams
MORE BOOKS BY LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH
1.5:
Resonance
2.5:
Dissonance
3:
Ricochet Through Time
(coming soon!)
0:
The Ending Beginnings Omnibus
World Before (coming soon!)
World After (coming soon!)
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH & THE ECHO
TRILOGY:
For Nicole, the
Rayanne
to my Angela, Dom to my Lex.
Thank you for being you,
and for always being there when I need you
most.
Hello, dear reader!
First off, thank you
so much for joining Lex on her adventures through time! After many,
many
requests I’ve decided to include a quick
and dirty little recaps of the previous books in the series. So…
Previously in the
Echo Trilogy…
In the first
book,
Echo in Time
(was
Echo Prophecy
)
Lex discovers she belongs to an ancient race
of people, the Nejerets, who can see the past, present, and future. She
discovers that she’s the central figure of an ancient prophecy, falls in love
with an enigmatic and gorgeous 5,000-year-old “god”, and is gifted the ability
to travel through time…so she can stop her evil father, Set, from destroying
the world. She also learns she has a half-sister (Kat) and half-brother (Dominic)
through that same evil father, and that her dead grandfather, Alexander, isn’t
so dead after all. Oh, and her childhood best friend and first “love” was
really Nuin, uber-god in disguise.
Plus
there’s
archaeology and an excavation, and Lex assists in destroying part of Hatshepsut’s
mortuary temple…by getting shot. Whoops! In the end, Lex and Marcus, in
possession of different parts of
Nuin’s
godly power,
defeat Set, who runs away to hide while he regathers his forces and plans his
retribution.
Then, in
Resonance
, the novella following
Echo in Time
,
Lex discovers a statue that Marcus has been
hiding in the
Galleria
dell'Accademia
in
Florence that just happens to look exactly like her. An attempted abduction of
Lex is thwarted, and Marcus kills a whole slew of Set’s people with nothing but
his bare hands. In the end, Lex and Marcus fight, make up, and Lex realizes the
statue’s uncanny likeness to her means she’s destined to travel at least back
to the Renaissance, maybe further.
And
then
,
in the second book,
Time Anomaly
(was
Echo Queen
),
Lex travels back thousands of years to Old
Kingdom Egypt, where she must learn to control her borrowed power over time
(and space, sort of), to keep it from destroying her. Also, she gets to fall in
love with Marcus (
Heru
, in ancient times) all over
again, tension and steaminess ensues, yada
yada
yada
… While she’s in the ancient past, Lex discovers that
Set isn’t actually evil, but is possessed by an “evil” being,
Apep
. She also learns that Nuin is similarly possessed by
Apep’s
less-evil counterpart, Re. She makes new friends (
Aset
,
Heru’s
not-so-dead twin
sister,
Nekure
,
Aset’s
son,
and some pretty cool priestesses who decide Lex is actually the goddess Hathor
and devote a whole ancient religion to her). She spends some time at the
ancient Nejeret homeland, the
Netjer
-At Oasis, almost
destroys it, saves
Heru’s
youngest daughter,
Tarset
, by freezing her in
At
, and
adopts a kitten,
Rus
—who she also freezes in At. Oh,
she also goes back even further in time to rescue
Aset
from an earlier incarnation of
Apep
, but not before
the evil
turdball
can violate and impregnate
Aset
with
Nekure
. Lex returns to
the future, gets knocked up with twins who are destined to be uber-gods fated
to restore ma’at, universal balance. The book ends with
Apep’s
soul trapped in a sphere of solidified
At
that looks an
awful lot like a snow globe.
And that brings
us to this novella,
Dissonance
.
Continue on, dear
reader, to see where Lex’s journey takes her next…
Hopes & Fears
“I’ll be right back,” I called through Denny Hall’s closing glass
door and hurried down the steep stairs on my way to get coffee, careful not to
slip. I hugged myself to fend off the damp chill as I made my way along the slick
paved pathway. I was antsy and fidgety, so much so that I’d completely forgotten
to retrieve my jacket before rushing outside, and a brisk walk through the
seemingly constant Seattle drizzle would do my frayed nerves good.
It had just been a nightmare—or
day
mare
, I told myself.
It had all been in my head. But I couldn’t help stopping on the sidewalk by the
scene of the imaginary crime and staring down at the spot on the asphalt where
Dr. Ramirez’s lifeless body had lain what felt like only moments ago.
I blinked, squeezing my eyelids shut in an attempt to block out a
memory from a dream that had felt far too real. When I opened my eyes again, my
heartbeat tripped over itself, and I screamed, “NO!”
Dr. Ramirez was there. He shouldn’t have been; I’d just left him
in the lobby of Denny Hall. He was supposed to be inside the old building, safe
and sound and
not here.
Not in
danger. This couldn’t be happening.
He’d just stepped onto the street and was jogging across. At
hearing my shout, he paused to look back at me, and not a second later, a
speeding station wagon slammed into him.
Dr. Ramirez’s body rolled up onto the hood, his head hitting the
windshield with a sickening crack before he slid back down and was dumped on
the asphalt. His arm flopped out to the side, landing in a grimy puddle.
“Oh my God! Dr. Ramirez!” I stumbled across the sidewalk and onto
the university’s main drag. But I already knew it was too late. I already knew,
because I’d dreamed about almost this exact, horrific thing happening mere
minutes ago.
I already knew that Dr. Ramirez was dead.
***
“But there are no guarantees,
Meswett
.”
Dr. Julian Sands, veterinarian to the Nejeret stars, stared down at
Rus
, the tiny, still-as-stone kitten curled up in
near-eternal slumber beside Marcus’s ancient little girl,
Tarset
.
Both were frozen in time, appearing to be statues carved from quartz—
Tarset
, to prevent her body from giving in to the effects
of a lethal poison, and
Rus
, because it was the only
way to bring him with me into the future. “Not in cases like this,” Dr. Sands
continued, “because, well, there aren’t any other cases like this.”
“I see.” I crossed my arms and cleared my throat. Disturbed as I’d
been all morning by the third recurrence of the unsettling dream about my
former graduate advisor being hit by a car—it was a near-exact replay of the
first echo I’d ever witnessed, though thankfully it had never truly come to
pass—I’d managed to pay attention to the highly esteemed and even more highly
recommended vet pretty damn well.
Dr. Sands reached across the corner of the bed of solidified
At
and touched my shoulder. I made a small, unobtrusive hand
gesture by my thigh—a preemptive attempt to keep Nik from taking offence at
what he would no doubt perceive as an inappropriate and potentially threatening
touch. I caught only the slightest movement from him in my periphery, but his
heavy exhale told me he wasn’t pleased that Dr. Sand’s hand was on my shoulder.
Sometimes Nik could be so overprotective that he made Marcus’s
efforts to keep me safe look negligent in comparison. Considering my current
delicate
condition—that I was carrying
unborn twins who were fated to restore balance to the universe, otherwise known
as ma’at to the Nejerets’ godlier ancestors, and that I was almost constantly
on the verge of having a full-on freak-out breakdown worthy of my very own
padded room because of said current condition—I didn’t mind so much.
“I’m not suggesting we don’t move forward with little
Rus’s
transition,” Dr. Sands said, “I’m just saying we
should proceed with extreme
caution .
. . take
it slow. Pathogens are tricky, and they evolve quickly—it would be impossible
to predict what will and won’t harm him. Any immunity he’s developed so far
will be irrelevant. He’ll have to start over from scratch.”
I swallowed, and it sounded obscenely loud in the barren, sterile
room. Again, I said, “I see.”
We were underground, in the basement of the main house in the
Heru
compound, in a small room on the periphery of
Neffe’s
intricate home-lab setup, where she and
Aset
were leading up a team hard at work trying to find a
solution to the
Tarset
problem—how to revive a little
girl who’d been poisoned thousands of years ago and frozen in time ever since.
Tarset
and
Rus
had been down in
this room since we’d returned from the Nejeret Oasis in the Sahara a week
earlier. It was a cold space, hardly ideal for a child, and we were all eager
to restore Marcus’s little girl—and me my ten-week-going-on-five-thousand-year-old
kitten—to life as soon as possible. Or, rather, as soon as was safe.
Dr. Sands was renowned throughout the Nejeret community for being
the most experienced and knowledgeable practitioner of animal medicine alive
today. He had over a millennium of caring for Nejeret pets under his belt, and
he’d traveled halfway across the world to Bainbridge Island to help me with my
tiny, out-of-time kitten situation. If anyone would be able to help
Rus
survive the transition into the modern world, it was
this man.
Dr. Sands withdrew his hand from my shoulder and ran his fingers
through his dirty blond hair. “Give me a couple days to draw up a plan and put
together a full series of vaccinations,
Meswett
.” He
flashed me a brilliant smile, belying the mild uncertainty in his eyes. “I’m
confident we’ll have little
Rus
running around and
bothering Thora in no time.”
At the thought of
Rus
catting around
with my older tabby, Thora, I actually managed to return the veterinarian’s
smile. I nodded and held my arm out toward the open doorway, where Nik and Dominic
stood sentry and Carlisle, Marcus’s “man,” waited with his ever-present
smartphone in hand. “Please, make yourself at home in the lab. Neffe won’t
mind.”
Dominic snorted.
“Much,” I added. “And just let Carlisle know what you need, and
he’ll help make the arrangements.”
“Wonderful,” Dr. Sands said. He started toward Carlisle and the
guarded doorway to the lab, but he paused midway and looked at me over his
shoulder. “It will be the same for the girl, you
know .
. .
the adjustment to modern pathogens.”
With a slow blink, I redirected my focus to
Tarset’s
opalescent cherubic face and felt a single tear sneak over the brim of my
eyelid and glide down my cheek.
Tarset
had been
poisoned over five thousand years ago, and not only did we not know
what
Apep-Ankhesenpepi
had used to poison the Oasis’s water
supply, we didn’t even know if an antidote could be created or if the damage
the poison had caused to
Tarset’s
young body could be
reversed. Her suspended state was the only thing keeping her from death. Once
we unfroze her, the ancient little girl would be lucky if she survived long
enough to worry about modern pathogens. Which was precisely why Neffe had
hunted down the best and brightest scientifically minded Nejerets to assist her
and
Aset
in finding a way to save Marcus’s little
girl.
“That’s the least of her problems,” I said quietly.
“Aren’t you finished with your consult yet?” Neffe said, brusque
as ever. I turned in time to see her brushing past Carlisle and Dr. Sands on
her way into the room, what appeared to be a small insulated lunchbox slung
over her shoulder. “My team can’t do anything more until we have our samples.”
She strode toward me, stopped beside the
At
bed, and
set the insulated container down next to
Rus
, then
met my eyes and winked. “Which means I need your help right now, Nik, so I can
get
my samples.”
I suppressed a grin. For whatever reason, Neffe loved being a pain
in ass. It had taken me a while to pick up on it, but once it became obvious to
Neffe that I was on to her, she started to find little ways to let me in on the
joke. So far as I could tell, she simply liked to see how far she could push
people. Probably because she was bored. Living for several millennia tended to
do that to a person.
Nik let out a heavy sigh. “I just don’t know if I’m up to it
today.” Due to his unusual circumstances of birth—being born of two
Nejerets—Nik had his own minor
sheut
that, much like
the borrowed
sheut
I’d been carrying for the past
couple months, gave him certain powers beyond the normal Nejeret. In Nik’s
case, he could manipulate the very fabric of the
At
,
giving it physical form or, as Neffe needed him to do, reverting At particles
to their original molecular structure—Nejeret flesh and bone.
I glanced at Nik, taking in his bored expression, his usual hint
of a smirk, but I didn’t miss the sparkle of amusement in his too-pale blue
eyes. My attention returned to Neffe just in time to catch the tail end of what
appeared to be a rather pleased grin.
Carlisle escorted a somewhat confused Dr. Sands out of the room,
leaving Nik, Dominic, Neffe, and myself behind.
“If you do not do what she wants, she’ll go out of her way to make
your life difficult until you give in,” Dominic said, his French accent making
the words sound like even more of a warning. “Trust me, I know.”
Neffe gave me a look that said, “Yeah, he’s probably right,” as
well as words ever could.
With a sigh, Nik pushed away from the wall and made his way to the
bedside, feet dragging just a bit. “My
sheut
is at
your disposal,
princess
.”
Neffe closed her eyes for a moment, collecting herself. True, she
liked acting the haughty, irritable vixen for fun, but she genuinely had a
quicksilver disposition, and Nik’s new favorite nickname for her—princess—was one
of her triggers. It didn’t matter that she’d grown up a princess in Middle
Kingdom Egypt, the daughter of Queen Hatshepsut, or that her father had been
the Nejeret equivalent to a king but had abdicated the figurative throne during
Neffe’s
adolescence. She
hated
being called
“princess.”
“If you call me that one more time,” Neffe said through clenched
teeth, “I will tear that ridiculous ring out of your eyebrow.”
Nik leaned in close to Neffe and whispered, “Promise?”
I could practically see the shiver work its way over her body,
could all but sense her sudden discomfort as she sidled closer to me. Nik had
that effect on people—whether it was the array of tattoos covering his body
from the neck down in various shades of fading gray, his standoffish attitude,
or the fact that Re, the godly being who’d once been the father of our kind,
resided within his body, most people found him disturbing, Nejeret and human
alike. Me? I just liked to think of him as
unique
.
Nik tossed me a shit-eating grin. He knew the effect he had on
Neffe and pretty much everyone else. He
liked
it.
“So,
um .
. .” I looked
from Nik to Neffe and back. “Should we get started? I know Marcus wanted to
catch the ten o’clock ferry, and it’s got to be nearly
nine .
. .”
“It’s a quarter till,” Dominic offered. I glanced at him, still
standing sentry by the doorway, and offered him a small smile and a nod.
“Yes, yes, very well.” Neffe pointed to
Tarset’s
arm, shrouded in a thin but impervious and unmovable blanket. “Nik, I need you
to restore her elbow area, maybe an inch above and an inch below. Then her
mouth, just for a moment. That will give me blood, tissue, and saliva samples,”
she said, ticking each off on her fingers. “Which will have to be good enough.
We can’t risk restoring her vital organs, not even for a second, so
be
careful
.”
Surprised by the sudden heat in her voice, I glanced at
Neffe’s
face. Her caramel eyes burned with an intensity I’d
only seen a time or two before. And then it struck me—this wasn’t just some
little girl we were trying to revive, this was her sister. Though Neffe had
never actually met
Tarset
, having been born over a
thousand years later, they
were
sisters. I hadn’t met any of Marcus’s other children in modern times. Honestly,
I wasn’t sure if there were any others still living; his past families were a
touchy subject for Marcus, and though I’d unearthed a fair bit of his humanity
under the stony wall built up by millennia of life and death and love and loss,
I still had a colossal amount of chiseling to do. In some ways, Marcus was
almost as ensconced in time as little
Tarset
.