Time Untime
Authors: Sherrilyn Kenyon
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.
For my husband, for too many reasons to count.
For my boys, who make me laugh and fill my life with joy.
For my friends, who keep me sane.
And for my readers.
Thank you all for being a part of my life and for filling my heart with love.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
In the distant, unrecorded past
It wasn’t fun being the gatekeeper to hell. The only thing worse was being evil’s bitch, and Makah’Alay Omawaya had been that, too.
Willingly.
A tic beat in his sculpted jaw as the harsh winds whipped his long black hair, flogging him while he stood on top of a high precipice, his muscled body and sheathed weapons silhouetted by the Hunter’s Moon. Soul-sick and weary, he surveyed the red canyon that was awash with moonlight and dancing shadows that reminded him of his past.
How could one man ruin so many lives?
No, not ruin.
Destroy
.
He no longer had a right to live. Not after all the blood he’d greedily spilled with his knife and arrows. Not after all the atrocities he’d committed. Yet here he stood. Alone.
Ashamed.
Undead.
A twice-designated guardian to a world he’d done his damnedest to annihilate. Yeah, it didn’t make sense to him either. The spirits were ever a mystery. He couldn’t even begin to fathom their reasoning in allowing him to return here.
But then the one lesson he’d learned through all of this was the truth in the old saying—
man has responsibility, not power
. After all these years, he finally understood what that meant.
I will not fail them.
Or himself.
I am resolute.…
He lived his current life by conscious decision, not random chance. The spirits hadn’t chosen him for this task. He’d volunteered. With no more excuses to blind and impede him, he would make changes for the better.
This time, he would be motivated to excellence and not manipulated by evil. He would be useful and not used. Excel rather than compete. From this moment forward, he would trust his own inner wisdom and ignore the counsel and opinions of others. His worthless self-pity finally spent, he would endeavor to learn self-esteem.
To live the life of honor he should have had all along.
His gaze skimmed the deep cavern below where he’d once battled a powerful immortal for a year and a day. He still didn’t know how or where he’d found the strength for the fight. But then his adrenaline and years of a humiliating past that still stuck in the craw of his throat had kept him from feeling any pain. It had kept him from feeling any fatigue or injury. That unleashing of decades of caged fury had succored him better than mother’s milk.
If only he had that solace now. But with the fight done and the blood on his hands, he felt tired and sick. Disgusted. He wanted to blame someone else. Anyone else. Yet in the end, he couldn’t run from the one simple truth.
He, alone, had done this to himself. He’d made the decision and allowed his thoughts to be controlled by another.
Now it was time to make amends.
You’re not free, Makah’Alay. You will never be free of my service. And now I have you for
all
eternity.
“No, you don’t,”
he shot back in his mind loud enough for it to carry from this realm into the West Land where the Grizzly Spirit was imprisoned.
Hopefully for all time.
The Grizzly Spirit had owned Makah’Alay Omawaya.
“Makah’Alay Omawaya is dead
.” Killed by his own brother’s trickery. And that, too, had been justified.
Now he was reborn as Ren Waya—the treacherous wolf—and his soul was in the hands of an immortal from a faraway land.
Art-uh-miss. She had spun the magic that had brought him back into this realm. And he’d sworn himself to protect this world from her brother’s creatures, who preyed on the souls of mankind. The symmetry and irony of that wasn’t lost on him.
But then his people had always believed in cycles and circles—
Be kind to all, for you will meet each other again.
It was why his clan didn’t believe in ever saying good-bye. People were ever the same, but circumstances did change.
And Artemis owning his soul after all he’d done seemed right. Not to mention, it allowed him to watch over his own brother to make sure that Coyote didn’t scar the land even more than Ren had when he’d been its overseer.
Even so, he couldn’t deny that while the Grizzly Spirit was trapped in the West Land, that bastard still possessed a part of him that was forever corrupted.
A part he hoped was sealed as tight as the gate that held the Grizzly Spirit.
Yet deep inside with the powers Ren had cursed since the hour of his birth, he saw what was to come. Those gates would be weakened. And while he was strong, a man, even an undead one, only had so much strength within. Grandfather Time was ever marching forward and as he spiraled across the lands, he forever changed them.
His strong hands molded and shaped this earth.
Like Ren, he scarred it.
One day, Grandfather Time would come for him and demand an accounting for all he’d done.
For all he
hadn’t
done.
May the good spirits of the earth help them all when that day came. Change was never without dread and sacrifice. And while he knew his strengths, he also knew his weaknesses.
So did the Grizzly Spirit and his handmaiden Windseer. They had already claimed him once as their own.
When next they battled, Ren would fight with everything he had. But he knew it wouldn’t be enough.
They would have him again, and then …
Ren winced at his visions of the future and what awaited this hapless world that had no idea about the things men like him kept at bay.
It didn’t matter and it changed nothing. He would fight for good even harder than he’d fought for evil. If he won, all would be well. And if he lost …
Death wasn’t without its benefits.
1
December 10, 2012
Las Vegas, Nevada
3:00
A.M.
“The feathers are forming in the heavens and the Cold Moon is almost upon us. Soon Father Snake will open his eyes, and with them, the seven gates.”
Ren tilted his head down as he heard Choo Co La Tah’s deep proper British accent disturbing the solemn darkness where he sat, listening to the silence around him. Those feathers were the crown on the head of the Snake constellation that ruled their ancient calendar. When the feathers were in full plumage and the winter solstice aligned, the gates between this world and others would open. And into this world would spill all the evil that had been driven out by not only his people, but those from the other six continents as well.
Eleven days.
12/21/12. 11:11
A.M.
At that precise instant the heart of the universe would cross through the tree of life. The head, heart, and body would be aligned for the first time in centuries.
How perfect was that? If anyone had ever doubted the balance and cycles of the universe, that should be proof enough to convince them that while everything might seem random, it wasn’t. No one, except the Great Creator, could have timed this so perfectly.
Eleven days to the Reset.
Ren could hear the clock ticking. Every heartbeat brought them closer to the inevitable. Closer to all hell busting loose.
Be a good time to call in sick to work
.
If only. But such luxuries belonged to humans, not to immortals such as he. For creatures like him, there was never a sick day or even a lazy one. Win, lose, or draw, they would fight to the bitterest end and take as many of their enemies with them as they could.
United we stand.
United we die.
And for an immortal, death was much scarier than it was for a human. When you died without a soul, it was utter agony for all eternity.
Hell had nothing on the existence that would become his should he fall.
Ren inclined his head respectfully to Choo Co La Tah. “I’ve been watching the signs.” During which he’d had a vision that still haunted him. Even with his eyes wide open, he saw her clearly. Felt her presence as if she were here, right now.
But he had no idea who
she
was. A mere slip of a woman with the courage of the cliff ogre, she’d come to him through the darkness. Dressed in yellow buckskin, she’d twisted up her dark brown hair and laced it with white feathers. Like the goddess who’d taken his soul, she’d knelt by his side while he lay wounded on the ground. Her sweet voice had soothed him as she sang in a language he hadn’t heard a woman speak in over two thousand years.
Death had held him tight until she’d laid her tiny hand to his bloody cheek. Leaning forward, she’d continued to sing, her breath falling against his skin. Her kind touch and soothing voice had driven away his pain until he felt nothing except the heat of her flesh against his. Her gaze had held his as she brushed a kiss to his lips. One so light, it felt like the wings of a hummingbird.
“I’m here for you,” she’d whispered an instant before she stabbed him straight through his heart. As the pain seared him, she’d laughed, then left him there to die alone.
He’d barely finished that vision before Choo Co La Tah had appeared in his backyard. For the last half hour, he’d been in solemn observance of the sky above, watching for something to belie what he knew was coming for them.
No one can stop a train.
The best they could do was bleed on the cattle scoop and tracks.
Ren stood up slowly in the middle of his backyard, then turned to face the ancient immortal. Centuries ago, they had been in the same clan together. Choo Co La Tah had once been his brother’s most trusted friend and advisor.
But things changed. And so did people. Too often you woke up to find that the person you were the closest to was the one you knew the least about. And as Ren had learned firsthand, the friend saturated with evil was the one thing to fear the most. While enemies could wound your body, an evil friend wounded the heart and mind—two things that could prove fatal.
“There’s no sign of the Keeper.” Choo Co La Tah glanced up at the Pleiades above them to where the first gate lay. The same stars Ren had been focused on. And the ones that held a special place in his heart. “What if she’s dead already?”
“A good friend once told me not to dread the future. One way or another, it would come. The trick was to meet it with open arms so that when it ran me over, it wouldn’t break anything.”
Choo smiled. “I was much younger and far more flexible in those days.”
Ren laughed at the ancient who physically appeared to be a well-muscled man in his early thirties. Dressed in a tan buckskin coat and jeans, Choo wore his long black hair braided down his back—the same style as Ren’s. And each of his eight fingers bore a silver ring that protected a sacred stone. Like him, Choo had once been the best of their clan’s warriors. They had gone to war together and they had fought against each other. Ironically, Ren had been the only one to ever defeat Choo Co La Tah.