Time thief, p.3
Time Thief, page 3
A snarl curled her lips. “I’m not here to play with you, Nash.”
“Sure.” He tilted his head. “This isn’t you playing.”
“I hadn’t even noticed you were here.”
“I told you not to make a scene again. The Prophet won’t be happy.”
Her gaze wandered down him, her lips forming a pout. “You’ll take care of him for me, won’t you?”
I raised my brows.
Nash shook his head. “What are you up to?”
“I heard about all the fun you’re about to have with the Flatlanders and your captives. Couldn’t miss it.”
If the Prophet wanted her to be discreet, why had she put on this big show?
“This is taking it too far, Flare. We can talk in private.”
She backed away. “Well, I’m really not here for you. Calm down.”
When Flare turned, her eyes locked on mine through the gaps in the crowd. The flames of her stare burned through me. A little smirk crossed her face. My heart froze.
Then she moved on, waltzing straight through the smoke toward the temple.
I couldn’t move. Did she know who I was? What I was? Was that why she’d put on this big performance? She wanted to get my attention. Tell me I couldn’t hide, even. Maybe it was a threat to reveal the truth about me. Or she was calling me weak for not having my power when she pranced about openly using hers.
I wouldn’t let her insult me, much less threaten me. “Calm down,” I whispered to myself, touching my chest. My thoughts swam. I had to find out more about her, immediately.
Huffing, I cut through the last of the crowd for Nash. He watched Flare as she ascended the temple stairs.
“You have interesting friends,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm. Alienating him wouldn’t benefit me.
“She stops by from time to time, usually in the shadows.”
“The Prophet rendezvousing with a demon. Imagine that.”
“Officially, the Prophet executes every demon he gets his hands on.” Nash lowered his voice. “But he shows mercy to our spies.”
Anger rose within me. Of course. The demons were his spies. If they were adept at suppressing their power, they would be able to hide among normal people like me. They could be anywhere. No telling how long they had been doing this work for the Prophet. That didn’t explain why Flare was flaunting her presence, though. “Doesn’t seem like a good idea to make the boss mad.”
“Flare is unpredictable.”
He knew more. I could see it in his eyes. He understood why she would do something that seemed to make no sense.
I narrowed my eyes at Nash. A woman with power who worked for a demon-hunting Prophet was about as low as a person could get on my list. And Nash seemed to be the only one in the courtyard who knew Flare. He was involved in the Prophet’s shady dealings somehow. Maybe even helped capture my people.
This man was dangerous.
“Unknown,” I said, voice as icy as Flare was bright.
His gaze turned serious, full attention on me.
“Don’t play games with a Sharpshooter.” I eased closer so the others wouldn’t hear my threat. “There’s nothing more dangerous you could do.”
“I already told you.” He leaned in, too, voice so quiet I could hardly hear him. “I know better than to lie to you.”
“What you should know is I’m not easy prey.” My lips curled in anger. “I’m the fucking hunter.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
What was that supposed to mean?
I backed away, eyes narrowed to slits. I felt trapped.
Flare hadn’t picked me out of the crowd by accident. She saw through me. What I was choosing to hold back. Nash saw something in me, too. What if they both knew my secret? My plan felt impossible as it was. Failure wasn’t an option. I couldn’t let the Prophet kill our innocents.
Heat flashed through my palms. Had to calm down. Had to before I slipped. The air around me turned cooler, thinner, like a fall day back on the mountain. My breathing came in short spurts. The harder I tried to catch myself, the more I lost myself.
Hands gripped my shoulders. A voice in my ear. Leif. “Lean on me.” He held me up. “You’re having another spell. It’s okay, Max. I’m here.”
What if I slipped to the eclipse again? A timeless, inescapable prison.
The heat zipped down my spine and Leif slipped through my fingers. It all slipped through my fingers. The Prophet’s village melted from my sight and then my memory.
I stood outside my dorm in the Sacred School on the Mountain of the Gods.
CHAPTER FOUR
One day, I would leave this place and never look back. I picked at the gunky residue on my temple from the electrodes. My head ached from the solid hour the technicians made me spend pushing rocks through obstacle courses with my mind. The harsh lights in the all-white testing room made it hard to focus. At least I was done for the weekend.
I walked past the door to my dorm and continued to the glass door at the end of the hall, trailing my fingers along the pale blue wall. The color was supposed to make it feel like a home. Like children lived here. None of us had been children for a long time. As much as I hated the all-white room, I preferred its bright walls to this lie.
I’d been here since Dad died. Almost five years already. I’d sworn I’d make it out by now.
One day …
I sighed and walked out into the courtyard.
“Up here!”
Piercey. I bit down my smile and looked up to the tree branch where he sat twenty feet up.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked.
I looked at the trunk. No low branches to climb. “I’m tired. They had me doing puzzles today.”
“Ch-ch-chicken.”
I jolted forward, focused the warmth inside me on the muscles in my legs. I jumped higher than I expected and faltered when my foot hit the trunk. I crashed to the ground. “Ouch …”
“Weak,” Piercey said. “You can do better than that, Max.”
I tried again but didn’t make it halfway to where I had before. On my third try, I kicked off the tree and grazed the closest branch with my fingers.
“Come on!” I ran for the tree, jumped, kicked off, and caught the branch with both hands this time. Grinning, I focused on my arms and heightened my natural strength as I pulled myself up.
Piercey caught my arm to help me the rest of the way. “I was starting to worry you wouldn’t make it.”
“Is this your sly way of telling me I need to train more before Monday?”
“Not sure it’s sly, but yeah.” He nudged me with his elbow. “We can’t win our competition without you. You must be ready. If our class wins, we get out of cleaning duty for a month.”
“What about you? Why does it all have to be on my shoulders?”
Piercey rolled his eyes. “You know why. You just want to hear me say it.”
I grinned and wiggled my legs dangling off the branch. “Come on.”
A side-eyed glance and then he muttered the words. “You’re better at combat than me.”
“That’s right, I am.” I patted his back. “But you’re basically a healing prodigy, so don’t feel too bad.”
“Gods. Your ego …” He took an apple from his pocket. “Saved one for you. It’s the sweet kind. Not the nasty ones that taste like nothing.”
“Cool.” Juice pooled in my mouth when I bit into it. “Mmm.”
“If the instructors hear you picking up slang from your shows, they won’t let you watch them.”
“The instructors can kiss my ass.”
He sighed. “You should stop watching so much TV and train more.” His voice quieted. “I’m tired of seeing you get hurt.”
“Please. The better we get, the more pain they throw at us. Besides, I love to train. I get sick of doing it alone.”
“Well, you’re in luck, because I’m ready to be your partner today.” Piercey pulled his bag off his back and took out his tablet.
I squirmed. “No. I said I would train, not study.”
“Studying is training. You won’t get good with heights until you understand the concept enough to manipulate it. Like what we were learning about gravity—”
I crossed my arms. “I’m not in the mood to play school. I’m sick of the instructors cramming their shit down our throats.”
“You’re talented. Smart. There’s no reason you can’t do this. You just don’t want to take anything from the gods, even their knowledge.”
I wanted to say that I’d take any resources from the gods if he would agree to escape with me. Piercey had been here two years longer than me. He should have been breaking the walls down. The mountain guard had killed everyone who ever tried to leave without approval. Piercey had panic attacks just talking about it. He didn’t see that together, we could do anything.
“They’re not gods, Piercey.”
“This again.”
The words burned on my lips. I wanted to plead with him to leave. Sure, we all ended up here for a reason. Our power had hurt people and we needed help controlling it. But they weren’t controlling our power. They were controlling us. I didn’t think I would like who they wanted me to become.
Resentment sharpened my voice. “They abandoned our world while they live in a utopia. So, no, I don’t want the scraps they toss at us. I don’t want to pay the price that comes with it. I’m my own person.” I smacked my chest. “Mine. I don’t belong to them.”
Piercey tapped the base of my skull. “Your implant does.”
My nostrils flared. “Watch yourself, Piercey.”
“This power isn’t magic, Max. It’s science. You’re wasting your potential if you refuse to study, whatever your reasons are. It’s a shame to not become all you could be out of spite.”
“Send the stupid research to me if it’ll shut you up.”
His voice was quiet now. Hurt. “I want to help, Max.”
“I didn’t ask for it.” I met his eyes. “But you’re still by far the best person on this mountain. Okay?”
He chewed his lip.
“Piercey, come on.” I poked his ribs. “I’m sorry.”
He swatted me away, but I poked him again.
“Let me see.” I grabbed the tablet from him. “Quantum mechanics and the conscious mind … A key to the potential of the neural implant.” I lowered it. “I’m falling asleep already.”
“Keep reading. This one is good. It talks about how consciousness can affect particles in the superimposed state, and how we can even manipulate gravity with our implant. That’s your problem. You strengthen your muscles, but you need to learn how to bend gravity to your will instead.”
“I’ll read it and practice. I promise.”
He smiled but it looked tense. “You know, Max, I’m sucking this place dry for everything I can learn. It pisses me off that it’ll be me soaring past you one day, when you could get there twice as easily.”
I hated losing. Normally the suggestion would enrage me; only Piercey was different. He didn’t see it, but he was better at fighting the gods, even though I wanted it more. I settled my hand on his knee, my voice soft. “You’re more than you see. You deserve it more than I do.”
His eyes fell to my hand. I tensed inside. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes the way he looked at me changed. Normally, it started like this. A touch. Getting too close. Why did I do it when I wasn’t sure how I felt about the look that followed? I started to shift away from him when dizziness nearly knocked me from the tree. I grabbed Piercey for balance.
Everything around me flashed to twilight. I gasped, my eyes opening wide. It was night. Night even though it’d been day. A crowd surrounded me, dressed for battle, and a man held me tight.
Pain exploded through my arm and my back. Lights flashed.
Blue sky opened over my head like someone had turned the sun back on. I was lying on the ground in the courtyard.
“Max …” Piercey pushed my hair back, eyes wide. “Say something.”
“I’m okay …” I groaned and looked at my crooked arm. “But I think I broke something.”
“I’ll take you to get healed.”
“Kelvin is going to be so mad. He healed me last week.”
“It’s okay.” Piercey carefully helped me to sit up, supporting my arm. “I’ve got you, Max.”
“I slipped again.”
“I saw,” he said.
“No … like, I was in a different place again. A different time. A courtyard somewhere. I can’t remember the rest.”
“You need to talk to Kelvin about this. I haven’t heard of that happening to someone before.”
I shook my head. “Don’t say anything. Please.”
“Your power is messing with time and space. Doesn’t that scare you?”
“Everything scares me.” I looked down at my arm. “I’ve been scared so much in my life; I can’t feel it anymore.”
A film fell over my world, thickening until the grass beneath me faded to stone. Again, already? I tried to hold on to the world around me, but I couldn’t grasp it. Piercey’s arms blurred into those of the man; his voice mingled with the other.
“Max.” Both of them spoke at once. The boy and the man. Piercey and …
“Leif?” I touched my head. My world came crashing back down.
“It’s okay.” He kissed the top of my head. “You were only out for a minute. Our people covered you.”
It’d been a long time since I’d slipped like that. An even longer time since I’d gone back to the mountain. At least I hadn’t traveled to any of the bad times there. Every time I traveled there, the feeling of unrealness would linger with me and I had to remind myself that even though nothing in my world was as it seemed, we still mattered. I normally managed to not think about it and would have to fight it off now.
This wasn’t good.
“I haven’t had one in nearly a year …” My skin tingled with pain. The time slips always burned so badly. I squeezed my eyes shut. “My medicine. I haven’t thought about it once.”
“That’s because you only think of others. Never yourself.” Leif’s voice was hard, but his expression, his eyes, couldn’t have been softer.
“We should have thought of it for you,” Wren said. “It got left behind when we were captured, didn’t it?”
I nodded. “I didn’t realize I felt this bad. I was pushing it off.”
Wren took my hand, lacing her fingers with mine, her presence as loud as Leif’s tendency to shout at me when he wanted to help me.
I hated this weakness of mine. I drew back from them, my arm still aching from the living memory of breaking it. “If I stay calm, it won’t happen.”
“It’s okay, Max. We’re with you.”
I glanced around. That couldn’t happen again. Not with that demon picking me out of the crowd. I breathed in deeply and relaxed my muscles, willing calm into my body.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Prophet’s horses kicked up a cloud of dust as scouts took off to survey the battlefield. They’d chosen a massive field half a day’s ride from the nearest village. From here, the distant mountains loomed over the Valley from all sides. The tallest peak looked like clouds swelling on the horizon, frosted white against the blue sky.
Leif and Wren stood on either side of me, ready to catch me if I had another slip. The spell hadn’t lasted long the night before, and I’d told them I was fine. But they didn’t listen. Truth was, I wasn’t. The longer I went without my medicine, the worse this would get.
When my anxiety was treated, I felt unbreakable. That assurance was just who I was. Without my medicine, my thoughts slipped from my control. Made me shaky inside, like I wasn’t even myself. Piercey had created the treatment back in the Sacred School after he’d studied anxiety. The day I’d escaped, he whispered to me to check the massive hollow of our tree, the one just outside the barrier of the Mountain of the Gods. He whispered it as I begged him to come with me and he promised to always love me.
Every year I found the bags of pills waiting for me. It was how I knew he was still alive. Still on the mountain. Still keeping his promise to love me. I’d never asked for any promises from him, but then, I hadn’t asked Leif or Wren either. If Piercey had escaped with me, he would be a part of our circle, too. He was still in my heart.
The hurt tingled in my chest.
Leif drew his sword and inspected it. “This is not the blood my sword thirsts for.” He snarled as his eyes tracked the Prophet’s people mingling with us as if we were one and the same.
“Don’t think about it,” Wren said.
I took a tin of black war paint from the pouch on my side and brushed it beneath Leif’s eyes like I did before every battle. When I clasped his shoulder and pressed my forearm to his chest, he grabbed my wrist. Settled his forehead against mine.
“My flesh,” I said.
“My blood.”
I smacked his chest. “This is for Rune and Arn. Remember that.”
His eyes misted and tears thickened his voice, but he still roared his words as he always did before battle. “Give them hell, Sharpshooter.”
We both shouted as we pushed away, knocking against our group of twenty warriors. They all joined in, our cries ringing out, swallowing the sounds of galloping hooves and the warriors preparing for battle. We belonged to one another, the same flesh and blood, because that was what we’d vowed to one another.
I clasped the head of one of our commanders, Beast. “My blood!”
He held my forearm against himself. “My flesh!”
Wheeling around, I raised my fist and thrust my arm against a hard chest. “My—”
Nash stared into my eyes, war paint absent from beneath his eyes. My people were the only ones left in the Valley who still donned it from the days before the Prophet had conquered the Valley.
I drew back.
“My blade is yours today.” He cast a look over our small group. “All of yours.” His eyes paused on Chief Kaid’s and then turned to mine.
My comrades watched Nash silently. We couldn’t be fooled by his well-wishes. Still, I raised my shield in response. If there was any chance I could get him on my side, I’d take that victory, no matter how sick I felt from the worry that he might have helped capture my people. It was only all the more reason to pull him close.
