Parallel Seduction (18 page)

Jake Tierny appeared stunned by Scott's sudden appearance, slowly releasing Hope from his grasp. But it was more than that: He seemed frightened somehow, his large green eyes wide and unbelieving. That was the last sensory detail that Scott noted before the world around them folded apart, rent from within, collapsing. An energy that Scott had never experienced drove him to his knees, tossing him forward as if he were nothing more substantial than a dream. Rushing winds, keening fathoms, the universe itself, all of these things erupted about him, and he could only clutch at the vanishing ground. Grope and pray, grope and pray: This was all that he could do.

The experience was ten times more powerful—a hundred, maybe—than anything he'd felt in the mitres chamber when they'd opened up the vortex. Time itself magnetized him to the earth below his body, and no matter how much he tried to move toward Hope—to save her from this enemy's clutches—he couldn't so much as work a limb.

"Hope!" His voice came out elongated. "Get away from him!"

She moved her hands, gesturing strangely and, like something from his very worst nightmares, began to climb the trail with his enemy.

Don't follow him!
he tried to call, but couldn't work his mouth. Over and over, she kept going with Jake Tierny. None of it made a bit of sense.
Stay with me! Stay, don't go with him another moment!

But nothing, not one damned word, came out of his mouth.

W
hat had happened to Scott?
Hope wondered in confusion. Jake kept pulling her up the trail, and she stumbled, barely finding her footing. One minute there'd been a bizarre, rushing wind, and now this moment: She was once again in the grasp of a man she hardly knew.

A man who claimed that if she loved Scott, then she naturally loved him, too.

"Hey! What are we doing?" She felt strengthened from the juice, ready to fight, and what she really wanted was to be back at Scott's side again. "Let me go; I need to go back to him."

Jake dragged her onward, toward the top of their climb. "That's what you think, but you don't have the whole picture."

She dug in her heels, refusing to take another step along the sliding, treacherous hike. "Right here, right now, you tell me everything." She jerked her arm out of Jake's grasp. "You tell me what just happened back there."

His breathing was heavy, uneven. "We're almost to the mitres; that's all that matters."

"No, see, that's not true. Scott's back down there, and I want to know why the universe fell apart when the two of you came together. What did you mean when you said that if I loved him, then I loved you, too? I won't take another step until you translate some of this shit for me, Tierny."

Hope blinked, trying to make out the terrain; below them, white openness spread in every direction. Somewhere down there Scott was chasing her, trying to save her, so why did she keep following in this strange man's wake?

He clasped her shoulder. "We're just a few feet away from the mitres; I'll tell you everything then."

"That's not good enough! I won't go on without understanding what happened back there. Without knowing what it is that links you and Scott together."

Jake strode away from her, stopping by a scrappy pine. He braced a hand against it—or at least, that was what it seemed like when interpreted through her piss-poor vision.

"Scott is someone whom I respect very deeply, even as I despise the man."

"I've gathered that much." She folded her arms about herself. "Now go on. Tell me the rest."

Jake never turned to face her, didn't so much as look her in the eye. "Like I said, you love him. And if you love him, Hope, then that means you love me." His voice was raw, lost … utterly abandoned.

She stepped toward him, into the certain abyss. "Why? Say why."

"Because, sweet Hope"—very slowly he turned to face her—"Scott Dillon and I are the same man. I
am
Scott Dillon, come from the future into your past."

"W
e cannot call your father."
Jared glanced at his bride, anxiety and frustration married together. "Why, by the gods, would you think that we should?"

She rubbed her abdomen, standing beside him in the hangar. He'd been called to inspect a new flight crew; he nodded and saluted his approval, talking sideways to Kelsey.

"Because he can help you." Her eyes widened. "It's not about the baby; you do realize that, don't you?"

He waved at the chief engineer, signaling his approval. "And yet our babe is the very reason you said we must call him."

"Because it's the final straw, Jared. I mean, really! He thinks I'm up in Canada on a research trip, when I'm actually part of all this." She gestured at the planes gathered in formation across the flight deck. "When I'm actually a queen, get that? And now I'm pregnant with an alien baby … a dual being, for crap's sake. It's time he knew at least something about what's happening in my life."

"Then it isn't about helping me." Jared glared irritably, wanting to spar with her and get her to admit the truth. Her need to contact her father wasn't about him: How could it possibly be?

"It's about the fact that he's friends with the vice president. I've told you as much before; he's a political consultant in D.C. and knows the president of the United States. You don't think that can help our cause?"

"I think you miss your family."

"Is that a problem?" She huffed out an angry breath, putting her profile to him. "Does that make you angry,
my king
?"

Jared stormed away from her, approaching one of their new stealth craft. He ran his fingertips along the underbelly of the airplane, stroking back and forth, suddenly itching to take off. To take his wife and new baby with him, leaving his own people far behind. It was that old wanderlust, always burning bright within his DNA, that thing that often compelled him to run when everything about his life demanded that he stay.

Slowly he turned on his heel to face her. Her tight auburn curls were crazily askew: her blue eyes were wide and furious, but something in his heart softened the moment he met her human gaze. "I'm your family now, Kelse." He positioned one palm over his heart. "We are your family, this child and I."

She dropped her head, speechless, and for a long time neither of them spoke; there was only the background
hum
of machinery and engines rumbling loudly, the smell of fuel. At last she met his gaze again, tears filling her clear blue eyes. "That's true, but I still have a life outside of this compound. I may not have a big family, just my dad and a few cousins, but do you honestly think we can pretend I'm away on a science trip for the rest of our lives?"

"You contact your father, that puts you—and all of us—in danger," he told her sharply. He pointed at her stomach. "It puts that baby of ours in danger."

"You don't trust me enough to find a way to communicate with my dad safely? You don't believe that just like you, my father
loves
me and wouldn't do anything to harm me?"

"I don't know him, and that's the problem. I only know that he's, as you say, very high up in the American political structure, with many friends."

"He's just a political consultant, Jared." She smiled suddenly at his slight misunderstanding of her world. "He's not part of the political structure like you're thinking. He's just connected, really well connected, with people who listen to what he says."

Jared studied her, anger visible on his face. Well, but it wasn't exactly anger, she realized. His black eyebrows furrowed downward into a sharp V shape whenever he wrestled with fear and frustration.

"What scares you so much about this?" she asked him quietly.

A muscle in his jaw ticked. "I've let you into my innermost workings here, Kelse. I never thought I'd be having this discussion; when we got together, you knew how it would have to be."

"That I could never, not once, see my family again?" she shouted, the sound reverberating off the high ceiling of the hangar. "That you would keep me up here on this mountain like your very own Rapunzel for the rest of my life? Never!"

"Calm down, love." He glanced around at the startled faces of soldiers who were working around them. "Let's keep this to ourselves."

"Like you want to keep me? Huh? To
yourself
?"

The furrow between Jared's eyes faded, replaced instead by the twinkle of amusement in his black eyes. "I think you're behaving like a pregnant woman. I've been told to expect as much."

She lunged at him, slugging him hard in the chest, but he captured her, spinning her in his arms. "I'm your king, my lady. Surely you don't mean to punch me that way?"

Wrestling against him, she shook him off. "That was a totally sexist comment. About me being pregnant."

He held up both hands. "Is it not the true state of things? That you're emotional, and you've learned so much today about the nature of the babe inside of you?
It
makes much sense to me that you'd be feeling homesick. But it will pass."

She shook her head wearily. "Do you ever plan for me to see my dad again? Tell me the truth, Jared."

He folded both arms over his chest, staring at the floor between them. "I believe that in time our war will end, and yes, you will be able to see him then."

She waved him off, walking past him. "That tells me everything I need to know. Someday, maybe, one day," she shouted over her shoulder. "Come talk to me when you're ready to stop being a control freak."

Storming toward the hangar exit, she expected to hear him right behind her. But … nothing. Stealing a glance, feeling hurt and angry, she saw that Anika had accosted him, and they were in a heated conversation. Jared broke into a sprint, headed toward the control tower, but then veered in Kelsey's direction, slightly breathless.

"A skirmish has broken out at Mirror Lake," he told her hurriedly, leaning to kiss her cheek.
"I'll
keep you posted, okay?" He kept on going, jogging backward so he could still keep his eyes on her.

She gave him a wave, smiling faintly at him. He cupped a hand over his mouth, calling out to her, "I love you, Kelsey. It's going to be okay."

Nodding her head, she mouthed,
I
know
, but he barely saw it before
he spun and broke into a much faster gait.

She watched him swing up onto the ladder that led to the control tower. Wiping her eyes, she fretted that, once again, her lifemate was about to hurtle into some sort of danger; if not directly, then indirectly so. It amazed her that he was so intent on keeping her here and safe in his base area, when being in the thick of his war was probably the most dangerous place she could ever be.

The burning within her stomach suddenly increased, as if the baby itself had sensed her fears and anxieties, and she rubbed her belly, thinking soothing thoughts. At least, the best she could; somehow watching Jared's climb into the control room had given her a bad, unsettled feeling, as if all his fear and anxiety about her father were on-target somehow, just horribly misdirected regarding the true source of danger. For one thing, since when were there skirmishes in Yellowstone? Didn't that statement alone signal that their war was about to become much more public than it had been until now?

Mirror Lake
, she thought, turning slowly. Everything in their shared lives seemed to revolve around that place, and so much of it had always been sad or dangerous.

H
ope rubbed at her eyes,
staring at the absolute giant of a man. What he claimed couldn't possibly be true, not with the way Scott's lean body and fair skin were such an utter contrast to the overly large, dark figure standing before her. "How tall are you?" she whispered. "Six-foot-three? Four?"

"I'm six-foot-four."

"Scott's barely more than six feet, I can tell. And your skin is olive, very dark, when Scott's is so naturally fair."

"This body doesn't belong to me. I wasn't born into it."

Jake watched her face, her intelligent eyes darting. He could practically trace the progression of her full understanding just by watching her.

He kept his voice even, continuing with the sordid explanation of how he was, in fact, the man she had married, and whose child she'd carried inside of her belly for nine long months. How he was the man who had grieved after her death, and the man who had borne that grief like a mantle—firing him in his warfare, driving him to the edge—but not until it had all but killed him in the process.

"You're an Antousian, and you're telling me you used your ability—the thing Scott's told me about where you can take a human host—and you … what? Jumped bodies? Took this guy's body?" She pressed a hand to her temple. "Scott would never have done that. Never. He despises that about your people. There's no way you can be him. I don't care what you're telling me."

He kept his voice as calm as he could, stepping near
her.
"I killed a man by stealing this body from him. I did it out of anger, grief; I did it so
that
man, Jake Tierny, would have to pay for his crimes. With his life, he had to pay."

"Scott would never have taken a human's body or life."

"Scott takes lives all the time in this war. He's a soldier." It wasn't the right argument at this juncture, but nevertheless it was a point he felt should be made.

"When he's in battle." She shook her head adamantly.

Jake's rage and grief overtook him in the space of a heartbeat, and he clasped her roughly by both shoulders. Bending down into her face, he hissed, "It was
battle!
It was battle, and that human killed
you
!
You, my love." Tears stung his eyes; he tightened his grasp on Hope. "You were pregnant, weak and ready to deliver. I went for one of the medics, and when I returned Jake was bent over you, your blood all over him. I drew my weapon, but it wasn't enough—my blind fury was too much. I murdered him … because he had murdered you."

She slumped against him, physically drained. "I never had her, our little girl." Her voice was small, devastated. He would have done anything to save her so much pain.

Jake tried to find his voice, but his throat was too
tight.
"We had named her Leisa," he managed at last.

"After your mother."

He smiled wistfully, nodding. "You kept insisting that we should call her Louisa—"

"So she'd have more of an Earth name. I know. I've seen all of this. Just not the end."

"I wanted to shield you from what happened."

She staggered backward and out of his grasp, leaning against the frozen rocks. It was as if she'd just been stabbed in the gut, as if her life were being stolen, here, now. Not in some distant, remote future. "I've even dreamed I'm in labor before, of you kissing my stomach and soothing me … but
never
the end."

"Thank All for that," he said fiercely.

"It's funny, but they say if you ever dream you die, then you really do die in your sleep. I guess I should've known it wasn't a good thing that I never once dreamed of holding our little girl."

Jake made a pained cry, putting his back to her, and the sound drew her back to what he had to be feeling. What this man—who she now truly believed was Scott come back from the future—had lived. "And so that's why the universe implodes if you and Scott get too close together."

"It creates a time-space disturbance."

"Because you
are
Scott Dillon, at least, your soul and your spirit are. You're just in a different body."

"That's one way of putting it," he said darkly. "Although just 'being in a different body' makes it sound like changing snowmobiles or clothes. I killed Jake Tierny; make no mistake about it. And now I have to look into his eyes, the eyes of the man who murdered you … every time I gaze into the mirror. It seems a fitting fate to me."

"How can you say that, Jake?" She took a few cautious steps toward where he stood, and knew she would always have to call him Jake or Jakob, not Scott. They were two entirely different men to her, even now, separated by fathomless depths of time and space and history. It was equally obvious that, deep down, Jake believed they were two different men as well.

He took hold of her arm. "We've gotta keep climbing. Scott's going to catch up with us if we don't, and he'd as soon put a pulse pistol to my head as hear my side of the story."

"You don't know that for sure."

"Yeah? Well, I know that half-breed bastard a lot better than you do, don't I?"

And for some reason, the absolute surreal insanity of his statement made her burst out laughing.

S
cott plunged upward along
the trail, Anna right at his heels. Once the wind and crazy universe tilting had ceased, he'd begun his pursuit once again. Nurse Tyler's words were echoing through his head, her speculation that Jake was trying to get back to his own time. Everything within him witnessed to that opinion, because the man loved her, just like he did; he'd gotten that much from his spirit slipping of Hope's dreams. Obviously in their indeterminate future, he and Jake Tierny had battled it out for her affections, and Scott had come up on the losing end of things.