“IT HAS TO BE from us,” Brody said, his voice strident. “It mentions three specific names, one of them common only to this century. ‘Come back’ clearly means they must go back to when the manuscript was copied. It uses a cypher that just happens to be the first one Alex ever learned. That puts the odds far too high for simple coincidence.” He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, as far away from the table and the laptop as the room would allow.
Sydney wondered what it was that Brody felt threatened by.
“When was the manuscript dated to, Taylor?” Veris asked. He was standing at the head of the table, right behind where Marit was seated. His arms were crossed, too.
“Radiocarbon dating says the ninth or tenth century. The Anglo-Saxon experts at Oxford suggested early tenth.” Taylor got to her feet. “This is a discussion that could go on a while, so I’m going to take Marit home to bed.”
“But, Mom!” Marit cried in protest. “I could help!”
Veris rested his hand on her head. She lifted her chin and rolled her eyes up to look at him.
“You may very well be of help,” he said, “However, this is vampire business now. Remember the distinction?”
“I have to stay human as much as possible,” Marit said in monotone.
“As you are human,” Taylor said, holding out her hand. “And you need your sleep.” She pulled Marit to her feet and headed for the door.
“It’s not fair,” Marit grumbled.
“No, it’s not,” Brody agreed, coming over to them and giving Marit a kiss on the cheek. “Life isn’t fair, most of the time. It’s just life. Goodnight, darling daughter.”
“Night, Athair. Night, Far.”
She held her arms up and Veris picked her up off her feet and hugged her tightly, then kissed her cheek and put her back down.
Taylor gave both men a quick smile. “I’ll come back, after.”
Veris shut the door behind them and moved back to the head of the table and frowned down at the two offending pages. “Rafe, you said you were in Powys when the Vikings invaded. When was that? I don’t know Gronoyan history at all.”
“Nine hundred and seventeen,” Rafe said.
“Early tenth century,” Alex added. “Right when Taylor’s buddies at Oxford think this was written.” He was still sitting in front of the laptop, only now he was transcribing the old English narrative into a Word file.
“You’re not really thinking that we should jump back there, are you?” Sydney asked Veris.
Veris looked at her, his gaze sharp. “Someone went back there and planted this seal for us to find tonight. The seal says that you and Rafe must go there at once.”
“This is a joke or something! No one leaves messages in ancient manuscripts for people of the future to trip over. That’s just in the movies,” Sydney protested.
“It speaks your names, all three of you,” Brody said. He was back in his corner. “The original page was carbon dated and this copy is certified. The seal is as old as the rest of the manuscript. It’s not a joke.”
“I don’t care if it’s a joke or not,” Rafe said, his voice low. “I’m not saying I agree to this at all, but even if I were to consider doing what this seal says and jump back to Powys, there’s no way I’m leaving Alex behind.”
“You have to,” Alex said.
Rafe looked hurt. “You’re not buying into this, are you?”
Alex shrugged. “Nothing else fits the facts. If you accept that this is a viable, urgent message—”
“No, I don’t accept it at all!” Sydney interjected.
Alex reached out and grasped her hand, his cool fingers firmly around hers. “If we accept that this is a real message sent by one of us, then we must accept what the message says. One of you two went to a lot of trouble to find the monk and give him the lettering for the seal. Whatever those reasons, they drove you to this and you are insisting I stay here. I trust both of you, so I will stay.”
“There is a reason why you told him to remain behind,” Veris added. “We just don’t know what it is, yet.”
“You’re speaking as if this is locked in, that we’re really going to jump back!” Sydney cried. She jumped to her feet. There was no way she could remain sitting.
“Because you already have gone back,” Brody said. He didn’t speak very loudly, although he didn’t need to. “You can’t get around it, Sydney. The seal is on that page because you did go back. So you must go back.”
“Maybe we go back there somewhere in our future. We don’t have to go this very instant,” she pointed out.
“The seal says at once,” Veris pointed out. “There’s not a lot of space around the seal, just room for eight words and you used two of them to emphasize urgency. You can’t ignore that.”
Alex got to his feet and pulled her into his arms and she let him comfort her. His arms around her were strong, as always. “I know you’re afraid,” he said and she could hear his voice rumbling in his chest, against her ear. “I am, too. Yet this must be done.”
“That makes three of us who are afraid,” Rafe said. He was sitting on one of the dining chairs, pulled out from the table. He was leaning his elbows on his knees and his hands were gripped together tightly. “There’s a reason I’ve never talked about Gronoya before.”
Veris cocked his head. “It was very bad?”
Rafe nodded. “Powys had the strongest army in all the British kingdoms and they had rebuffed three separate Viking attacks, working with the other kingdoms. Brycheiniog, Deheubarth and Gwynedd were all strong allies, although they didn’t match Powys for military strength. Then Powys marched on Mercia in retaliation for the Lady Aethelfreda taking the wife of the king of Brycheiniog. Llewelyn sent every able-bodied man, because Mercia was so strong. He even took me and I was just a scribe. That’s when the Vikings attacked, when there was no one left behind to defend Mathrafel.”
The bitterness in his voice was deep.
Sydney stared at him. The emotion in his face and the way he was speaking, the old names from times in history…it was startling to consider that Rafe really had been there and seen it all.
“Did someone tip them off?” Brody asked from his corner.
Rafe jerked, as if he had been touched by a live wire. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “The timing was remarkable.”
“Invasions are always brutal and bloody,” Veris said. He glanced at Brody, who grimaced.
It reminded Sydney that both Brody and Veris had lived through an invasion of their own and that Veris had been the invader.
“We’ll protect your bodies here while you’re back there,” Veris added. “You are going to have to go back.”
Alex’s arms tightened around her even more and Sydney turned her face into his shoulder and closed her eyes.
* * * * *
“I don’t know how I can do this,” Sydney whispered into the dark.
Alex settled himself more firmly against her back and Rafe stroked her temple. They were all resting on Sydney’s big bed. None of them had been able to do more than that. For once, sex had not ended her evening and she barely noticed the absence.
“You’re the most courageous person I’ve ever met,” Alex said softly.
“I don’t mean I’m scared I’ll get hurt. I mean, I don’t know how I can do this to you, Rafe.”
Rafe’s hand stopped touching her. He lifted himself up and in the low light creeping in from the partially closed door, she could see that he was propping his head on his hand, studying her. “Are you worried that I won’t be able to take care of myself?” he asked. He sounded amused.
“If you put it like that,” she said, “then it sounds condescending and that’s not what I meant at all. I saw your face, earlier, Rafe. You have bad memories of that time.”
“You’ve been listening to Veris and Brody too closely,” Alex said gently. “They both jumped back to times in their past that were hard for them to deal with because they hadn’t dealt with the personal issues those times had thrown up. That’s why they went back there—they were pulled there by their unresolved feelings. So the jump back was stress-filled and difficult for them. That doesn’t apply here.”
“Really.” She didn’t make it a question. “How much do you know about Rafe’s life in that time? How much has he told you?”
Alex hesitated. “I suppose he just hasn’t got around to telling us about Gronoya.”
“Because he doesn’t want to,” Sydney said gently.
“Hello? Right here, remember?” Rafe said. He sat up. “I don’t talk about Gronoya because I don’t talk about any of my previous lives. Neither does Alex. It’s the way of it.”
“Bullshit.” Sydney sat up, too. That made Alex also lift himself into his favorite cross-legged sitting position. At the same time he turned on the lamp, so the room was filled with the soft orange glow and now she could see them.
Alex was looking troubled, although it was Rafe she was watching more closely. There was a pinched look around his eyes that she recognized. He was stressed and hiding it.
“You don’t deliberately sit down and tell stories about your past lives, yet you talk about them all the time,” she assured them. “Alex always talks about patients he’s tended and how different modern medicine is from what he first learned and when he does that he doesn’t talk about Jordan. He talks about countries and cities that don’t exist anymore. Or he’s talking about events that I only know as history. The siege of Acre. The rebuilding of the library in Toledo when he spent fifteen years translating texts. Every time he makes one of those comments, it tells me a little bit more about him. And you, Rafe, you like to laugh about things that happened so long ago I can’t even find those places on a map anymore. Such as that man who used you to run a crooked dice game, for instance, and how Veris came along and cheated him out of his slave.”
“Baradaeus,” Alex murmured.
“Exactly,” Sydney said. “Alex remembers him, because you’ve spoken of him before. I know that you were a slave in the Byzantine Empire, then you travelled to Britain. You’ve never said so directly, but I’m pretty sure you travelled there with Brody, because he’s mentioned before that he returned to England when he left Constantinople. And I know you went back to Iberia for a while, too. Only, that was later, because you spoke about the Caliphate, so that was when the Muslims were controlling the peninsula.”
“It was,” Rafe said quietly.
“You’ve told me about the wars you’ve been in and taverns and inns across Europe. How you were asked to come to America by more senior vampires and you didn’t say so, yet I know the vampires who asked you to do that were on the Council.”
Rafe’s gaze flicked away from her.
“I’m not prying. I’ve never pried,” Sydney said quickly. “I don’t have to. You tell me about your lives all the time. Both of you.”
Rafe and Alex exchanged glances.
“She was an expert interrogator,” Alex said, the corner of his mouth lifting.
Rafe looked at her, his black eyes steady. “I don’t mind you knowing this about me. Not you.”
Sydney rested her hand on his knee and looked at Alex. “Did you know that Rafe was in Gronoya in the tenth century?”
“I didn’t. Although, to be reasonable, I also don’t know where he was in many other centuries, either.”
Sydney sighed. “You’re both as slippery as fish on a dock. This is why I don’t ask you direct questions about your history. You’re right, Alex. None of us knows each of our personal pasts in great detail. We haven’t been together for a thousand years the way Veris and Brody have been—”
“We will be, eventually,” Alex said softly.
Sydney caught her breath as her middle seemed to drop away inside her.
Alex stroked her cheek. “Don’t look so terrified. A thousand years passes in no time at all. I know it doesn’t seem that way to you now. Your grasp of time will adjust eventually.”
“You’re assuming that I will be turned,” she said flatly.
Alex’s gaze was steady. “It’s not an assumption. It’s simply the only alternative I can bear to consider.” He shifted his gaze to Rafe. “Sydney is right. In all our talk of the past, when we relax enough to think of it, you have never spoken of Powys, or Mercia. Not once.”
Rafe plucked at the sheet by his thigh, concentrating on it. “It wasn’t deliberate,” he said at last.
“Will you not at least warn me of what to expect?” Sydney asked softly. “I’m going back there, too.”
Rafe looked up at them both, startled.
“He can’t give you specifics,” Alex said quietly. “If he did, it would change your behavior when you get there.”
“If I do not know the history, how will I know what I cannot change?” she asked. “Gods, this is impossible!”
Rafe picked up her fist, eased open her fingers and stroked her palm. “We’ll be together,” he told her quietly. “And I remember what happened. Far too well.”
Alex caught their joined hands between both of his and held them still. “Rafe will protect you,” he said quietly. “Because you are going back into time with him is the only reason I can let you do it. He will know what to do.”
Sydney bit her lip. “And who protects Rafe?” she asked.
Alex sighed and let their hands go.
Rafe reached up and held Alex’s face in his hands. “I’ll be fine,” he said, his voice low. “I survived it once already. I’ll be braced, this time.”
“No, I don’t think you will,” Alex replied. “I listen to Brody and Veris, too. It isn’t easier, the second time around. It’s harder, because this time, you know what is going to happen.”
“And knowing that, you will still stay behind?” Rafe said.
“I have to. Because I did.” Alex gave him a weak smile. “Time is the only force in nature you can’t argue with.”
“Not the only one,” Sydney said softly.
Rafe nodded. “There’s love, too,” he said. “If you doubt me, trust that I love Sydney and will keep her safe no matter what happens and that I love you and I will return.”