Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(82)

The tiger-cub Carling would make such a delectable morsel for some dark vengeful thing to devour.

What if she simply disappeared?

Could the universe flex in such a way to accept Carling’s death, and absorb all that that might change? Might he turn around one day to discover that she had vanished like she had never existed? If that happened, no one would know she was gone—no one except perhaps him, since he still remembered how cruelly Carling had been whipped in the first timeline.

Or maybe, if she died and the past was changed to that profound extent, he would not remember her either. He might become oblivious Rune, living out his life in New York. He would never see her walking naked out of the glimmering river, the droplets of water sparkling like diamonds on her nude body. He would never give her that first sizzling kiss, or hear her rusty, surprised laugh, or take her on the floor with such savage need she would scream into his mouth and claw at him as she took him too.

Gods have mercy.

“We’ve got to stop these episodes from happening,” she said, so clearly her thoughts had run along a similar vein to all the possible consequences of what they had done.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “But before we do, Carling, I’ve got to go back again one more time.”

“Why?”

He opened his eyes to find her looking at him as if he were a madman. He didn’t blame her. He felt like a madman. “If I can get through to your past, something else might be able to get through too. The younger Carling doesn’t know to protect herself. She has to be warned.”

A prickling chill ran down her spine. Her mind raced as she tried to find fault with his logic, but she couldn’t.

What a dangerous game we are playing, you and I, she thought as she stared at his tense face. We are meddling in the past and with each other, and I think I barely have an understanding of all the things we may have set in motion.

She set her jaw. “All right,” she said. “You go back, one more time to see if you can warn me. If I’m too young to understand, you’ll have to go back again until I’m not. But you can’t change anything else, do you hear me? If you see something happening that makes you uncomfortable, walk away.”

“I might change you again just by talking to you,” he said.

You’ve already changed me in the most profound way possible, she thought, and the change has nothing to do with traveling in time.

“I accept that risk,” she said. “And I take responsibility for it.”

“You may not remember that.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You may not remember any of this.”

Her expression held steady. In his imagination, he could see her wearing that same expression as she sent thousands of men to die in battle. “If it comes to it,” she said, “then we will have to accept that too.”

Rune tossed back a hotel-sized bottle of Glenlivet and moodily spun his iPhone in circles on the coffee table as he watched CNN on mute in the suite living room. Closed captioning ran underneath scenes of Egypt’s famous pyramids, telling the tale of a sudden earthquake that cracked the foundation of Djoser’s temple at the one true gate to the funeral complex. Accompanying scenes showed the gaping hole that ran into the earth. The dust still hung over the site, and the surrounding ancient structure was reduced to rubble. Rune thought of all the warning tales of Djinn offering favors, and the horror short story “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs. Be careful what you wish for, because the consequences can be a freak-out bitch. Fuck, yeah.

The knife sat on the coffee table in front of him, beside the cell phone. He picked it up and played with it, trying to pry open the various blades. The straight blade snapped off, but he got the pliers out partially.

He told himself he wasn’t surprised. He had been telling himself that since the Djinn dropped the knife off, and it was even true in a way. Then he looked at the scenes on CNN and the knife in his hands, and he felt his own kind of internal earthquake again.

He unscrewed another hotel bottle of liquor, a pretty blue bottle of SKYY vodka this time, and drank it down. He listened absently as Carling made the phone calls she needed to make from the bedroom. First she called Duncan to tell him a truncated version of recent events. She refrained from mentioning any of the more dangerous details and just simply said that she and Rune were following up on research leads on a possible cure. She also told Duncan she had let Rhoswen go, and while Rhoswen could still have access to the account Carling had set up for her, she was no longer authorized to act on Carling’s behalf.

Then Carling called Julian.

That was the phone call Rune had been waiting to overhear. He stopped playing with the knife as he pictured Julian Regillus on the other end of the phone line. Julian had been turned at the height of the Roman Empire. Serving under the Emperor Hadrian, he had been a distinguished general in a military culture that had once been described as quite like the Marines “but much nastier.” The Vampyre’s Power had a sharp potency that was characteristic of all aged Vampyres. There was nothing pretty or soft about him. His scarred six-foot-tall frame was packed with the heavy muscles of a man who had spent his life at war. He had short black hair with a sprinkle of salt at the temples and a face that carried forcefulness like a bullet, coupled with the kind of sharp intelligence needed to pull the trigger.

Rune thought of the times he had seen Carling and Julian together. Their relationship had been a matter of idle speculation over the years. Rune thought they had probably been lovers once, perhaps as long ago as when Carling had turned Julian, but that was a guess based purely on the intimacy that was often created between Vampyre and progeny, not based on any evidence he had seen. Whether or not they had been lovers, any embers from that pairing had died out long ago. Now Carling and Julian treated each other with the cool courtesy of business associates.