Soulless (Maiden of Time Book 2) (17 page)

Thirty-Four

The Sands of Time

Dizziness sent Alexia’s head spinning. A tear slipped down her cheek. It
was
too late. She had failed.

Kiren would not have failed. He would have found a way, but she was not like him. She was weak. And short sighted.

There was no way to make it better. The girl was lost. Alexia could only use her gift to benefit herself.

Turning back toward the inn, she trudged forward.

Why could she only slow time? If she could go back in time—only a few seconds the girl would be saved! The Soulless believed she was capable.

And why can’t I go back in time
?

The world fractured about her into particles, like sands. She swam through them, using all the strength in her arms and legs as they shifted around her, stubbornly, focused on that moment when she had broken free from the Soulless, when only a single creature clung to the child’s skirt. It was like grabbing a fist full of water that solidified as her fingers wrapped around it.

Nothingness washed before her eyes and she blinked them open. Her very essence ripped from her chest, like a fish who’d been gutted. She blinked her eyes and stumbled, head throbbing, gasping for breath.

Something was different.

Something had changed.

The girl hung behind her, frozen, skirt gripped by one of the creatures.

She had done it! She’d reversed time!

Alexia grabbed the girl’s hands, pulled forward with all her might, released her hold on time, and shot forward.

Material tore. The child flew with the force of Alexia’s time-altered yank. They crossed over the safety line, right past someone, and Alexia caught the girl, cushioning her as her back slammed into the inn. She slid to the ground.

Mae. Mae stood on the brink, arms crossed.

Alexia’s head felt like a pillow full of down, a soft buzzing in her ears, the taste of sulfur at the back of her tongue. “The Soulless—” she warned.

A wicked smile crept over Mae’s face, her blind eyes crinkling at the corners. “I can hear them.” She stepped over the line of white blossoms.

The grass reached for her foot—like iron shavings drawn to a magnet. The stretching plants shriveled and blackened, desiccating and writhing into the dirt. Deadness bled out from the innkeeper across the foliage, spreading like the black fingers of an inky night, but halting along the perimeter Kiren had marked. Like a giant sucking breath, an invisible force drew the color and life out of the earth, pulling it into Mae’s body. Her eyes closed, nostrils flared, chest lifting as though she were breathing for the first time. Death ringed her foot, extending twice the woman’s height in all directions and growing while her skin gleamed and brightened.

A shriek rent the air. The creature nearest Mae collapsed. Those on either side dropped. A fourth and fifth toppled.

Hesitating, Mae retreated back over the line. “Go away. The girl is under my protection.”

The one still standing trembled and disappeared in a blinding blur of motion. A wide berth of shriveled nothingness remained, five immobile lumps littering the ground, not a whisper of life stirring them. Mae turned and faced Alexia, her innocence a halo of light against a backdrop of devastation.

“She is so powerful,” the small girl whispered at Alexia’s side.

Alexia blinked at the child, fighting to find the strength to merely open her mouth. “You should go inside.”

The girl nodded demurely and disappeared through the door.

Alexia felt as though her body had been bled dry, a limp shell, but something was different. Her muscles buzzed as if they’d been aching for use and had finally seen exertion. Warmth seeped through her, an unexpected high lifting her from the devastating exhaustion.

“Are they dead?” Alexia asked Mae and shoved up onto her knees, the world spinning.

“Soulless cannot be killed.” The woman stepped around her and started back to the inn. Alexia knew differently. She had slain one once.

“These will not be harming anyone anytime soon,” Mae said.

“We are going to leave them there?”

“Their friends will retrieve them. Not to worry.”

John stood in the doorway, mouth a tight line.

Alexia stumbled to her feet, certain the power of gravity had doubled in the last hour. “And what about the enemy within?”

Mae paused. “Who do you think alerted me to the situation?” A smile lifted the corners of her lips. “John is my friend and guest, just as you are. I have provided him safe haven on moonless nights to stave his hunger, and while he is on these grounds he can taint no Passionate—intentionally or otherwise.”

John cleared his throat. “Unintentionally. It has never been my desire to harm my fellows, as you fully know.”

Or so he’d professed. Alexia scowled. “And yet you chased me toward them.”

He shrugged. “You ran. None of my kind can resist the chase.”

Kiren could not possibly have known the devil resided here, but Mae did. How could she not have warned them?

Mae shuffled toward the entrance. “He is awfully brave to stay here in my presence. Is that not so, John?”

“You are a woman to be feared and honored.” He half bowed and stepped back for them to enter.

Alexia plodded after them, catching herself on the wall to steady her trembling knees. Propping herself on the doorframe, she crossed her arms and shot John a glare. “You would rid yourself of him if you had witnessed what I have. Was there no harm in raping Sarah of her gifts, in robbing her of the life she should have known?”

John stiffened. “Sarah is the only one I...”

Mae touched his shoulder, and his head bowed. “We all do things we regret.” Her blank gaze lifted. “Except for those of us who are able to change the past.”

Alexia tensed. What did Mae know? Could she see despite her blindness? Had she witnessed Alexia altering the child’s fate?

John stepped forward, offering Alexia a chair. “Perhaps you would hate me less if you knew my story?”

She scowled but took a seat, gratefully. Mae bustled about the kitchen, a comforting presence to counter his.

“Before all this,” he motioned down his form, “I was like you—raised among humans, oblivious to our differences. I had a family—a wife, sons, even a daughter, all human, or mostly so.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “
He
did not find me until well after I came of age, for I did not possess enough of the blood to be noticed. What I did have was a gift for healing—not as strong as his, mind you. It started as a talent for seeing what was wrong, and thus an ability to prescribe the correct treatment.” He dropped into a chair across from her, elbows landing on his knees. “I served a small community as their doctor.” A sad smile tugged at his cheeks, eyes far away. “In Wilhamshire.”

She closed her eyes. The bustling town reared up in her mind, the winding streets and shop fronts, the tavern where she’d once weathered a night after Miles saved her and Sarah from the Soulless, the house on the hill where Kiren had imprisoned Bellezza—Haunted House of Stark.

“My given name is John Stark, after my father, and after his father.”

Alexia gasped and sat back.

His brows scrunched down. “I met
him
over a patient one day. He observed my treatment and informed me I had rare gifts. I belonged to a secret race. To prove his point, he healed the child I had been treating, and proceeded over the next many weeks to teach me how.

“His home had been discovered by the Soulless, and he had been forced to vacate. While passing through Wilhamshire, he heard stories of my successes, and came to investigate. For a time, he resided in my home, until he was able to establish a new residence I have yet to discover. He became my…my children’s godparent.”

His fingers clasped into his knees. “But one day, after spending the night at a patient’s sickbed, I returned home to find my wife and children murdered in a most brutal manner.” His eyes darted from one wall to the other, cheek twitching. “The Soulless had come in search of
him
.” He met Alexia’s gaze. “My entire life was gone.”

She shivered. It couldn’t be true. John’s family had not been massacred because of Kiren, had they?

“I went after them.
He
told me not to,” his head shook, “but I was determined to have my revenge.”

She straightened up, but couldn’t look at the man, the person who had lost everything because he showed kindness to a vagabond.

John mimicked her. “He spared my life even after I became one of the Soulless, and we have danced the dance ever since.”

Mae placed a hand on Alexia’s shoulder. “John is a good soul.”

He rose and extended a hand of truce. “We are family now, whether you like it or not, and I will not make the same mistake twice. I protect my own.”

She glared at his offering. “Is that what you did to Sarah?”

His brow scrunched.

Her fists balled. “You destroyed her.”

He bowed his head. “While at your father’s home, I chained myself in the cellar on moonless nights, but the child sabotaged my restraints and set me free.”

Alexia’s teeth ground together. Bellezza and her selfish whims!

“I had only enough time to warn Sarah and flee, but before I could escape, your fiancé arrived. The standoff ate my final moments of sanity. Desperate to escape, I shot a blind bullet and the next thing I consciously recall, Sarah lay in my arms, her transformation complete.”

Her fury gave way to trembling. Again he had lost, because of Kiren. No, because of her. She did this to Sarah. To John.

Her chest felt hollow.

“Forgive me, Alexia.” His extended hand dropped to his side. “You know how dearly I love her.”

She gave a stiff nod. She had watched their relationship develop, the first truly healthy romance she’d observed.

Mae delivered a meal to John and shooed him below. He went with an exhalation of thanks and a few brief exchanges.

John and Sarah both suffered because of Kiren, because of her. Her eyes stung with waiting tears. She had done this to them both.

Mae settled across from her, silently waiting. Alexia brushed a sleeve across her cheeks. She just wanted to sleep, to let all this settle, and to really understand what she’d done only a few moments ago.

“I felt the shift.” Mae’s voice startled her. “Maiden of Time.”

Thirty-Five

Fall Out

Kiren pulled his hands through his hair, working again to process Ethel’s report.

Bellezza had escaped.

With Charles’s assistance.

This was just one more headache he didn’t have time to process. What was he supposed to do about Bellezza—especially now that the Soulless had knowledge of the Passionate’s hiding places?

Ethel’s head was bowed. Lester scrubbed a hand over his face. Miles was seated, picking at the grass between his feet, teeth grating back and forth silently enough no one else could hear it, but it set Kiren’s nerves on end.

“I can go after her.” Ethel straightened up.

“We cannot spare you,” Kiren said. “Not with this new threat.”

Lester nodded. “Agreed. We have to warn the others o’ what’s comin’.”

Miles pounded the ground. “The only safe place is scorched earth, and we can’t possibly bring everyone there.”

“Or across the great waters.” Lester cocked his head.

Kiren let out a heavy sigh. “We must again unite our kind and pray our unified strength will be enough to repel the enemy.”

“But what about them Breeders?” Lester grated. “They ain’t be willin’ fer to join forces.”

“Elizabeth North was,” Kiren reminded. He didn’t mention that she’d fought him every step of the way until he revealed the identity of her father, a man who had been most anxious to reunite with her. Edward had never dreamed his daughter would know him, and Kiren had granted them some time to bond, even amid the crisis.

Tight expressions and worry filled each face.

“If they recognize the direness of the situation,” Kiren continued, “perhaps they will cooperate peacefully. Last night, terrible as it was, may have been the very incident we needed to persuade them.”

Miles shoved to his feet. “And if they decide to fight us instead?”

“You will know it.” Kiren nodded. As much as he hated placing so great a responsibility on the lad’s shoulders, it was what he’d been groomed for. Kiren had only hoped he could shelter Miles a few more years.

Ethel wrung her hands. “I do not like it.”

“Aye,” Lester agreed. “But it be time.”

They all turned to the elder, Ethel’s face a mix of terror and shock. Miles’s brows tweaked, his mouth a tight frown. 

Kiren blew out the breath he’d been holding. He’d been worried Lester might disagree, and as the oldest of them, his opinion carried the most weight.

Ethel pushed her sleeves up. “Then let us be to our business.”

Miles tugged a hand through his hair, shuddering. Pity tightened Kiren’s gut. Oh that he could spare the boy!

Kiren rolled his shoulders back. “Lester, Ethel, gather them in. We will converge at the inn and make our plans with equal say among the factions, see if we cannot unite as a nation.”

Those words remained in his ears.
A nation
. Had the Passionate ever been fully united since the crusades? And would they welcome another war with humanity by coming together in their strength? He prayed not.

“Gather them in.”