Kiss Across Time (Kiss Across Time Series) (8 page)

“I had to, Taylor,” Veris said. “This manuscript was carried through history by us and can’t be accounted for in a way that humans will accept. I came to you to see if there was another way—
any
other way than using this book.” His hand lifted toward the ancient manuscript lying on the table.

“Why?”

“I want Inigo Domhnall accepted into human history as badly as you do. I want his works discovered and acknowledged. I want him and his descendants remembered.”

She lifted her head from his shoulder. There was something in his voice, a core of determination that she recognized. It was the steel of a man who would stop at nothing.

“What is Domhnall to you, Veris?” she asked. “You were the conqueror, the invader.”

Brody turned Taylor to look at him. “Inigo Domhnall was my father.”

Taylor felt her mouth open in a silent “oh!” as the unexplained motivations and behaviors of these two men fell into place with an almost audible click in her mind.

They were watching her now, to see what she would say. If it were possible for two large, strong men with little in the way of a human conscience to look sheepish, then she thought they carried a touch of guilt in their expressions too.

“And so,” a woman’s voice said from the far end of the long boardroom, “we have the beginnings of a conundrum that it seems I must step in to resolve. You two will forever vex me with your games, won’t you?”

As soon as she spoke, both Veris and Brody let Taylor go, straightened up at her side and bowed their heads low.

This must be the queen, then, Taylor realized.

As the queen continued to speak, she moved further down the room and the overhead spotlights illuminated her as she stepped into their radius. She was tall for a woman, about five feet nine, and slender to the point of skinny. But she did not look ill. She looked radiant. Her skin was olive colored and glowed. Her black hair was shoulder length and groomed in a fashionable straight bob. She was wearing a designer business suit. She had elongated, big, dark brown eyes that stared into Taylor’s in a way that made her feel like the queen was scooping out her thoughts wholesale.

“It has been a very long time since a human ventured inside these walls,” the queen said.
 
“Veris assures me the matter is a worthy one. I hope for his sake he is right. At first glance I can see why he believes you might be worth the fuss. You do me honor with your appearance, little one. Thank you.”

Taylor scrambled to process the meanings and secondary meanings behind the woman’s words, then gave up. Veris was going to have to explain to her afterward.

The queen had already moved on to Veris. “Now, how are we to clean up this mess you have created, hmmm?”

“What mess?” Taylor asked.

The queen turned and lifted a smooth brow. “You are unaware of the temporal loop they have created?”

Brody cleared his throat. “We hadn’t got that far, ma’am.”

She smiled, showing very white teeth. “Ah! I’m keen to see what a human woman would do to you when you impart such news. Go ahead.” She moved around the table and pulled out one of the chairs and sat. “Tell her,” she ordered with a wave of her hand.

Taylor turned to look at Brody and Veris, who were both showing distinct signs of discomfort now. Finally, Brody took a deep breath and rubbed his temple. “Taylor, twenty years ago, when you first heard about Domhnall. The man who was working with your father, who told you those tales and about Domhnall himself and about King Arthur…he left you with such a strong impression of those days, that you’ve basically spent your life trying to prove the existence of Domhnall and his manuscripts, yes?”

“Yes. And now I’ve been fired from my job, because I won’t give up.”

The queen gave a small laugh. “Oh dear,” she said softly.

“It was Brody,” Veris said, his voice low. “Brody was the man working with your father twenty years ago.”

Taylor stared at Brody, her heart creaking under the strain. “No…I would remember that. You don’t sound like him, you don’t look the same—of course you wouldn’t but… No, it can’t be.” She knew she sounded pathetically like she was in denial.

Brody shrugged. “Roanoake, Virginia, 1987 to 1989.” His voice changed to an Irish lilt. “Yer father was retooling the printing plant and brought in an Irish consultant for the new web press he bought, d’ye remember? I came over for dinner on more than one occasion and got to talk to his lovely little daughter Maggie Taylor Yates, who enjoyed a good story, nearly every night I was there.”

Taylor moaned as the lilt in his voice triggered a flood of memories, of the man with the dark eyes murmuring his stories as she drifted off to sleep, while her father was on the phone dealing with problems at the plant, as he always was.

Taylor found herself backing up, away from them, until her knees knocked into the chair Veris had thrust away from the table earlier.
 
She fell into the chair. “It
was
you,” she confirmed, clutching the arms of the chair.

“Aye, ’twas,” Brody said softly. “I didn’t remember it was you until you spoke last night about the man telling you bedtime tales. You’ve changed of course…all except the eyes, now that I’ve recalled those times.” He gave a shrug, a tiny lift of the shoulders. “There are so many humans and they move through my life so fast and then they are…gone. I learned a long time ago not to try too hard to remember them all. I’m sorry.”

Veris was watching her, measuring her reaction to this telling revelation.

All she felt was sadness. She had never considered this side of immortality before. When you lived forever, what was it like watching those around you wither and die, knowing you would have to do so endlessly?

The queen sighed. “That wasn’t nearly the reaction I was expecting. Perhaps you don’t have the internal fortitude I expected of the one these two would mark, after all.” She stood up and stepped around the table again but neither Veris nor Brody looked at the queen. They were watching her, instead. For what? Waiting for her to explode? Fall in a heap?

She felt numb. Her whole life, her life’s work, was based on a…what? A lie? A mistake?

“This should never have happened,” the queen said. “Your bedtime stories have put into action a series of events that have very nearly affected the course of history. Veris’ attempts to have your father’s name recognized are honorable, Brody. But you have stirred up history itself with your poems.”

“They were just stories,” Brody muttered. “For a little girl who couldn’t sleep.”

“And now here we are,” the queen snapped. “Her life is essentially wasted because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut. Are you enjoying that despair on her face, Brody? Because you put it there.”

He swallowed.

“Stop it,” Taylor said. “Please, just stop.”

The queen turned on her heel to look at Taylor. “Excuse me?”

“He’s suffered enough,” Taylor said. “You don’t have to flay him with it. He’s the son of a poet and has the soul of a bard. Don’t you think he hasn’t already thought this through and figured out it out for himself, including all the possible consequences?”

She stood up. “Don’t you think Veris, the strategist and politician, didn’t already lay it out for him last night when he realized exactly how badly Brody had screwed up? They came straight to you this morning because they knew it had to stop and they brought me with them, because they knew it was that bad.”

Taylor stepped in front of Brody and turned to face the queen again. “You don’t have to paint the picture for Brody, ma’am, because he’s already imagined it twice as bad as you could ever possibly explain it to him. I know that, because I know he lay beside me all last night and imagined what it would be like if he’d never met me and what it would be like if, after today, I go back to my life and they go back to theirs and we never meet again. I know your race doesn’t sleep but Brody just went through one of the longest nights of his life, ma’am. You don’t need to add to it.”

Taylor heard Brody’s harsh exhalation. His hand came to rest on her shoulder, the tips brushing over the bite marks on her neck. She felt him trembling.

The queen stared at her for a long, long moment. Then she smiled. “Perhaps I was wrong about you. You may call me Tira.” She stepped back to the table and perched on the edge of it. “You are correct in your assessment, Maggie Taylor Yates. This is a very bad screw-up and it needs to be undone. Is there more to this tale that I have not yet heard? Veris’ message implied that there was.”

Veris nodded. “There is something strange that neither of us has ever experienced before. Waking dreams. Flashes of memories from our past that Taylor is experiencing with us.”

Tira’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

Veris explained quickly and frankly and Tira’s face became immobile as he spoke. Her gaze seemed to focus inward.

When he finished speaking she sat silently for nearly a minute. Then she stirred, sighed and smiled sadly. “I know of this thing that is happening to you,” she said softly. “For it once happened to me. Long ago. It does not happen often among us. I have not ever heard of it happening with a human, for their mind cannot usually cope with the span of history but your mate clearly has an extraordinary mind, capable of holding the leap of history and the chaos of centuries and languages without imploding upon itself.”

“I have been trained to deal with that sort of chaos,” Taylor said simply. “I have been training to deal with it since high school. That is one outcome of Brody’s accidental nudging. He pushed me in the direction of studying history, immersing myself in it.”

Tira nodded. “Fate has a way of ensuring these things happen as they should. Perhaps Brody’s interference in history wasn’t as ill-timed and unfortunate as we’re assuming—at least not for you three, anyway. I’m not so far removed from my own humanity that I’ve forgotten that side of my nature, for all that it was over three thousand years ago.” Tira smiled a little. “The waking dreams you are experiencing you should consider a gift from whatever gods still walk this earth and accept them for what they are.”

“What are they?” Taylor said bluntly.

Tira blinked. “You do not see it?”

“No.”

“Ah.” Tira put her hands together in her lap. “Brody and Veris have been together for a long time. You are aware of that, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And their lives, even before they met, stretched for many years longer than that of a human.”

“I know the circumstances of their raising. Both of them.”

“The sum total of their experiences is so vast, young human, that your little life is but a blink of an eye to them. Yet they have chosen to mark you. To make you theirs.”

Brody’s fingers tightened against her flesh.

“We had experienced the dreams before they marked me,” Taylor pointed out.

“It’s a chicken and egg thing,” Tira responded, nodding. “Don’t get caught up in trying to resolve that issue. You never will, believe me, young one.” Tira waved the point away with a flick of her slender hand. “These waking dreams, these experiences, are so real because they are as close to time travel as we will ever get. While you are in the dream, you can walk around that time and place and touch, feel and taste, hear and smell everything as it was. You already know that you can make love there, eat and drink. Be warned, all of you, that I believe it is possible that you can die there too. You can be run through with a sword, or shot with a gun. You can be harmed, just as you can do harm.”

“But
why
?” Taylor insisted.

“Because a bond is forming between you and your lives are being pooled,” Tira said simply. “This is how the sharing is taking place for you. Instead of talking and sharing memories, like humans do and like vampires normally do, for you three, you actually experience each other’s memories. They’re distorted because the act of a second person experiencing your memory will change it. Even inside your memory Einstein’s general theory of relativity remains constant.” Tira smiled at Taylor. “The more this happens, the more you will begin to feel like you have lived for centuries, just as these two have. You will have shared their lives as symbiotically as they have shared each other’s. You get to play catch up in a very real way.”

Tira slid off the table and stood up. “All that remains to be resolved is the mess left over by Brody’s meddling. What are we going to do about Domhnall being out there and a public name? He would never have been known if you had not woven your fairytales twenty years ago, Brody.”

Taylor realized that Veris was suddenly standing closer to them. A
lot
closer. His shoulder was almost blocking her view of Tira. Was he shielding her from the queen?

“Taylor has lost her job at the university, ma’am,” Veris said evenly. “That aspect is no longer a threat.”

Threat
. Taylor focused on the word. He
was
protecting her. Her heart began to race. After all this talk of bonding, would the queen really kill her to put history to rights?

“True,” Tira agreed easily. “But her research is on file. How long before someone else becomes curious and goes digging?

“I’m a laughing stock at the university, ma’am. I doubt anyone in their right minds will seriously consider following in my footsteps.” Taylor didn’t have to embroider the truth to make it sound bad enough. “I was an embarrassment to them. That’s why I was fired. I refused to change my thesis despite pressure from the dean. He thought I was insane. They’ve probably buried my research in a deep dark hole and hope it’ll never be found again.”

“Do you intend to resurrect your research at another campus?” Tira asked.

“I can’t,” Taylor said simply. “The only proof I’ve ever found is in this room or originating from the book in this room, so I can’t use it. The only reason I ever began the quest to prove the existence of Inigo Domhnall was because of the stories Brody told me as a child. Now I know that every influence and source connected with Domhnall is vampiric. It’s a closed circuit.” She grimaced. “It explains why I was never able to get any closer to the man using human sources. There aren’t any.”

“Not anymore,” Brody said. “Veris’ people burned them all as they came through the town. That book is the only thing I was able to pull out of the monastery library before the roof caved in from the fire the Saxons set. I buried it in a box in a cave in the mountains nearby, where it stayed for the next fifteen years, because I was caught coming down out of the mountains.”

“Caught?” Taylor asked. Then she recalled from her own researched what that might mean. “Oh, Brody, you mean…”

“I imagine he means enslaved,” Tira said, her voice without inflection. “Slavery was still the coin of the realm then.”

Veris’ shoulders lifted and settled heavily. A sigh.

“When I returned to claim the box once more, I was a vampire,” Brody said. “Slavery is not an easy path for most. I made it harder for myself because I would not yield as often as they wanted me to. But I lasted twelve years in irons. Longer than they wagered I would.”

Taylor looked at Veris, her eyes stinging with tears.

“Don’t blame him, young one,” Tira said, her voice harsh. “The Saxons were no meaner or softer than any other conquering race in any other land. They needed land to farm for food to feed their young. It was the way of survival and slavery was part of it. We knew no better then. Besides, four hundred years later, Veris’ people became the whipped underdogs when the Normans took their lands and treated them like diseased vermin. History is an interesting cycle of patterns, if you live long enough to watch for them.”

Veris smiled grimly. “So all Taylor’s proof is unreachable as far as she is concerned. That ends her thesis. It also ends my quest too. Domhnall’s name can disappear.”

“That just leaves the matter of your mate,” Tira replied.
 
“A human who
does
know of Domhnall.”

Taylor could feel Brody standing at her back.
 
He was so close, his jacket was brushing her flesh.
 
Veris was standing almost in front of her and she knew it wasn’t her imagination that he was shielding her.
 
Both of them were.

Her heart squeezed and thudded unhappily.

Tira gave a small smile.
 
“This could be resolved quite simply if she were not human.”

“No,” Veris said flatly.
 
Instantly.

Tira’s head tilted as she studied him.
 
Her eyes narrowed.

From the corner of Taylor’s vision, she saw Brody’s hand lifted to press against the back of Veris’ shoulder in warning.
 
Or perhaps in support.
 
It was a gesture that was hidden from the queen.

Veris drew in a breath.
 
“Your idea has merit, my queen, but Taylor has a long
human
life ahead of her and too many influential associates who would notice her change.
 
She has lost her job and been removed from further harm and she is ethical – her word and our monitoring of her activities should suffice.”

“It’s not the same guarantee that turning her would give me.” Tira crossed her arms.

“With all due respect, ma’am,” Brody said softly, “there’s no such thing as a certainty in this world.
 
Not even turning her would give you the peace of mind you’re looking for.”

“You don’t know Taylor, my queen.
 
You’re just as likely to make her rebel if you forced her turning,” Veris added.

Tira’s brow lifted as she looked at Taylor.
 
“Is that so?
 
A stubborn human woman.
 
I begin to understand your attraction to her.
 
I wish you well, the pair of you.
 
You will find life a merry hell if you insist on keeping her human.”
 
She waved them away.
 
“Go.
 
Monitor her.
 
Keep Domhnall out of the history books and the news and I will be satisfied.”

“My queen,” Veris intoned with a low bow.

Brody picked up their coats and shepherded Taylor out of the room. Both men were hurrying even though they didn’t appear to be walking fast at all.
 
Taylor could barely keep up with them.

* * * * *

The limousine had been moving for three minutes and complete silence gripped the interior. Taylor stayed in her corner, the faux fur wrapped up under her chin, opposite Veris, who brooded behind his mirror glasses in the other.

Brody was on the opposite seat, his arm along the back of it, his boot on the cushion, his knee cocked. She couldn’t read his eyes behind the wraparounds, either.

Finally, he looked over at Veris. “I’m sorry,” he said simply.

Veris shrugged. “It was the only way we were going to get her off our backs.”

“It’s not like I wanted the old bastard recorded in the annals of history anyway,” Brody added. “I never did get why you were so set on it.”

“Because we wiped your fucking people off the face of the Earth! For Christ’s sake, Brody!” Veris sat up, pulling off his glasses. “People don’t even know if Arthur really existed! We did such a great fucking job of it, they call it the
dark
ages!” He stopped and took a breath and Taylor was shocked to see that his hands were shaking. “You think I don’t still remember them screaming as we herded them back into their huts?”
 
He pointed to Taylor.
 
“Or Taylor’s expression back in the boardroom when she realized it was my people that sent you into slavery?”

He thumped the cushions. “One key.
One
piece of proof. They’re not stupid. That’s all humans need to unravel history and figure it out. Domhnall could have been the key. He wrote about it all. Arthur, Saxons, Celts, the life at court, the life of peasants, everything. It was in all of his plays, all his poems, the lot. If I gave humans that, I could…” He stopped. Took a breath. “I could give them back what we took.” He looked away. “Fuck,” he muttered.

Taylor started to move toward him but Brody was there first. He tore his glasses off, knelt in front of the other man and held his face. “You cannot be the conscience of a whole race. It doesn’t work that way.”

There was pain in Veris’ eyes. “For something like this, I’m happy to give up the role.”

Brody kissed him, his lips hard and firm and Taylor caught her breath at the sight of the two men sharing such an intimate expression. Veris thrust his hand into Brody’s hair, keeping his head steady so that he could return the kiss properly. When Brody moaned and snagged Veris’ coat in his fist and dragged the man closer, Taylor drew in a ragged breath, her own excitement fizzing hot and fast in her veins. It was suddenly warm in the car. Too warm. Too bright.

She shrugged off the coat and glanced at the dividing window. It was closed up, locking them away from the driver, thank goodness.

Her attention was dragged back to the two men locked together in an erotic dance of lips and hands. She couldn’t look away.

When they separated, they both turned to look at her. She licked her lips. “I’m sorry… I couldn’t help but watch.”

“You liked it,” Brody said, his voice flat, thick with growing lust. It wasn’t a question.

She nodded. She could feel her face heat but her clit throbbed even as she gave the positive answer, for both of them were looking at her with feral, hungry expressions.