15
I don’t remember screaming, but I must have, since it was a scream that brought Connor to the kitchen. In retrospect, a scream would have been a perfectly normal reaction to the fact that ninety pounds of vicious Doberman was so close that I could, very briefly, smell him and feel his breath, warm against the skin of my arm. After a moment had passed without teeth again puncturing my skin, I tentatively opened my eyes. I looked around the dark kitchen and then sank to the floor, pulling in ragged breaths and wrapping my arms around my chest in an effort to calm down.
Connor and Daphne were in the doorway a few seconds later. “What in God’s name have you done, Kate?”
I gave Connor a weak smile as Daphne came over to nuzzle me. “Remember that book you wanted from the library?” I pulled the Book of Prophecy out from beneath my shirt. “Turns out the Cyrists release the hounds on you if you don’t have a library card.”
I could tell from his eyes that he was very happy to see the book, but the sentiment didn’t reach the rest of his face. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Why on earth would you take such a chance just to get that? You’re bleeding all over the damned floor.”
He was right. It wasn’t a major injury—I’d had one cut that was nearly this bad back when I was just learning to shave my legs. There were, however, twin two-inch furrows in my leg, just above the knee. A dark stain on the leg of my jeans was growing, and blood was dripping into a small puddle on the marble floor.
“I’m just glad Katherine didn’t hear you—fortunately, once her meds kick in, she sleeps through anything,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll get the bandages. You stay there,” he added forcefully, and rather unnecessarily, since I was highly unlikely to be traipsing off on another adventure with a bleeding leg.
I waited, my face buried in Daphne’s ruff, until Connor returned with a pair of scissors, a washcloth, antiseptic ointment, several gauze bandages, and a roll of medical tape. He pulled me up onto one of the kitchen chairs, cut away the leg of my pants, and began to clean the wounds.
“Ow!” I said, flinching from the washcloth, which he had apparently dipped in alcohol.
“Stay still. You’re lucky this isn’t worse than it is, Kate.”
I shuddered as my mind flashed back to the image of the Doberman flying toward me. Connor didn’t realize exactly how lucky I was, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to give him the gory details. He didn’t speak again, just finished cleaning the cuts and applying the ointment and bandage.
When he was done wiping the blood from the floor, he pulled up a chair and stared at me for several seconds. “So?”
I gave him a brief overview of my past few hours. When I was finished, I pushed the book toward him. “The book isn’t why I went. I just had the opportunity to take it, so I did. I went to see Charlayne. I’m all on board with changing this timeline—I want my parents back—but, as far as the rest of it goes… well, the Cyrists have been around forever based on my memories. I guess I wanted to know if the Cyrists are really as… I don’t know, diabolical… as you and Katherine seem to think.”
“And are they?”
“Probably.” I shrugged. “Fine, yes, they are. I think they’re planning something big—or rather, Saul is. I don’t suppose you can really pin it on the rank and file who think this is all predestined. You know the Creed, right? ‘We choose The Way, so… ’”
He nodded, and I continued. “Well, they take it a lot more seriously and more literally than I would have thought.”
“Not surprising,” he said. “The few Cyrists I’ve encountered, even in previous timelines, clearly drank the full cup of Kool-Aid.”
“This one guy,” I said, “he was an Acolyte, one of their youth members, and he was talking about the Chosen being saved. Not from punishment in the afterlife, but from some sort of disaster. He said that the Chosen would live, when everyone else died. That the Chosen would be the future…”
Connor was silent for a moment, staring down at the cover of the book, and then looked back up. “So—you jumped back here. Where’s Trey?”
“Right this minute, he’s asleep at home, with his alarm set so that he can pick me up at seven, at the Lincoln Memorial.” I took in a deep breath. “But if you’re asking about this afternoon, I think he got out. I don’t know for sure. I told him to run, that I was going to jump back here—there was no way we could have made it otherwise. But when he heard me scream, when the dog bit me, he was running back toward me.”
My lip was shaking and then tears started. “I made a mistake, a big one. We shouldn’t have gone. And Connor—they know who I am. For one thing, I’m almost a carbon copy of Prudence. There are pictures of her—stained-glass windows—everywhere. And… I think they’re watching the house.” I thought back to what Trey’s dad had said about Cyrists having friends in high places. “If they know we’re here, that Katherine is training me, then I don’t understand why they haven’t just stormed the place. The Cyrist Templars clearly do whatever Saul and Prudence tell them to do, and we’re just…”
He nodded. “I’ve wondered that myself. We have a security system, and it’s not a cheap one. Daphne’s also pretty good at warning about intruders, at least for people coming and going in the conventional fashion,” he added, narrowing his eyes at me. “But it would be child’s play for someone who was determined, who had money and skill on his side, to get in here.”
I crossed my arms on the table and laid my head down for a moment, overwhelmed by the enormity of what we were facing and how little we knew. And there was a huge gnawing sensation in my stomach, fear that Trey might be in trouble and I wasn’t—or rather, wouldn’t be—there to help him.
“Connor, should I go back and fix it? Stop myself from going? Tell Trey not to meet me? I know what Katherine said about trying to juggle two different realities, but maybe…”
“No. We can’t risk that, Kate. First, it wouldn’t just be you juggling two sets of memories. It would be anyone in contact with a medallion during this time. Katherine would be okay, since she’s been sleeping, but Daphne and I have both been here for what, fifteen or twenty minutes? And how long would it be for you—five hours? Six?”
His expression was still stern, but he squeezed my hand. “No. I know it’s tough, but you’re just going to have to wait. If you call him, it could change something—especially if he can tell you’re upset or that you’re hurt. He’s a big guy and you say he was near the door—he’ll be okay.”
Connor stood up and walked over to the cabinet where Katherine kept most of her medicines. He hunted about for a few minutes, finally opening a prescription bottle. He filled a glass with water from the fridge and then handed it to me, along with a small red capsule. “Take this. It will help with the pain in your leg and should help you sleep. And,” he added, “I’m not inclined to tell Katherine unless we have to… I don’t want to worry her. So you’re going to need to come up with some logical excuse for that injury.”
I hadn’t looked forward to telling Katherine that I’d been stupid enough to waltz right in to the lion’s den just to assuage my curiosity about the Cyrists, so I was very happy that Connor was willing to keep my secret.
“That should be easy enough,” I said. “Slipped in the shower, cut myself with the razor. It’s all bandaged up now, so she won’t be able to tell the difference. But…” I nodded toward the Book of Prophecy. “She will need to know about this, won’t she?”
“I’ll remove the cover and stash it with the other diaries we’ve collected, after I download the contents to our computers.”
“But won’t she wonder how you got the information?” I asked. “I know you’ve been trying to get this for a while…”
“It’s just amazing what you can find at WikiLeaks,” he said, with a totally straight face. “I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me to look there earlier. She’ll believe me, Kate—I’ll make it convincing. And once we’re finished analyzing all of this data”—he grinned—“WikiLeaks may well be where this little book winds up.”
Connor went upstairs to the library, presumably to work his magic on the Book of Prophecy. I took the little red pill he had given me and then I went up the other staircase to my room, carrying the rest of the bandages.
The pain medicine did begin to numb the throbbing in my leg after about half an hour—in fact, I felt a bit numb all over—but it was still a while before I could sleep. I kept hearing Trey’s voice calling my name and seeing sharp white teeth flying toward me. And the chair hitting Eve’s head, in slo-mo and vivid color. Despite her generally nasty attitude, I felt a bit guilty about that and hoped she was okay.
I woke a bit before ten and ran a hot bath, easing myself into it in deference to the wounds on my leg. The area around the cuts was beginning to turn blue from the impact of the dog’s muzzle, and it was annoying to think that the mongrel was probably relaxing in the sun right now in that little garden, several blissful hours away from our encounter. I consoled myself with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be feeling all that good by this afternoon—I was pretty sure that the one kick I’d landed to his chest would leave a much bigger bruise than the one he left on my leg.
It was hard to comprehend that Trey and I were, this very minute, chatting with his dad and Estella. Despite the rumbling in this version of my stomach, which hadn’t eaten for about ten hours, the other version of me was being stuffed to the gills with huevos divorciados, tortillas, and buñuelos. That thought made me even hungrier, so I reluctantly pulled myself out of the tub, rebandaged my leg, and dressed to go in search of breakfast.
I let Daphne in from the yard, happy to have some company while I ate my Cheerios. Judging from the dishes in the sink and the fact that I had to reheat the last bit of coffee in the pot, Katherine and Connor had eaten several hours ago.
They were probably already poring over the documents that Connor had miraculously located online, and I didn’t look forward to joining them in the library. My ability to lie convincingly was already taxed to the limit; pretending to be surprised at Connor’s discovery while simultaneously pretending not to be worried sick about Trey seemed a rather gargantuan task. The alternative, however—sitting by myself and thinking about Trey and this totally screwed-up day for the next two or three hours—was even less appealing.
As I had expected, they were both in the library. Katherine rose from a chair by the windows when I entered. She had one of the diaries in her hand, and I strongly suspected that it had, until last night, borne a cover reading Book of Prophecy. “Happy birthday, Kate! Connor has a—oh my goodness, Kate! Whatever did you do to your leg?”