The Man from Forever (5 page)

What did he see? Arms and legs, slender body, hair usually kept out of the way with a ponytail or braid, no makeup.

Rocking back on his heels, he again settled his hand on her shoulder. As before, lightning arched through her, and for a moment it took everything in her not to collapse. She opened her mouth, stood there with it hanging open, questions without words crowding what remained of her brain. She felt his fingers exploring, half panicked when his search brought his hand dangerously close to the swell of her breast.
When he pulled back, she let out a sigh of relief; still, the loss left her feeling empty. He placed his thumb against the base of her throat. When she swallowed, it was as if a part of him had slid into her.

“What…”
Run! Yell for help!

“You are part of him.”

“Wh-what?” she stammered. He'd been silent for so long, communicating on another and utterly primitive level, that she'd forgotten he was capable of speaking.

“General Canby. You are part of him.”

That, more than anything that had happened so far, chilled her. She fought the urge to slap his hand, fought to keep a grip on what little of her separate self remained. “What—I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You carry his blood in your veins.”

“Who told you that?”

“It is in your eyes and the beating of your heart.”

Shaking, she ordered herself to wrench out of his grip, but her body refused to obey. Or maybe the truth was, she needed to feel his fingers on her more than she needed freedom and sanity. “It can't—you can't possibly know—”

“That is why you stood so long at the white man's cross. And why your eyes said things better left hidden.”

“What things?”

“You are looking for a piece of yourself, Tory Kent. But you are wrong!” His grip increased. Then, before even more fear assaulted her, he relaxed his hold but still didn't free her. She felt wedded to him somehow, as if forces greater than both of them had determined that they would stand like this and say the things they were. “This man.” He jerked his head in the direction of the cross. “He knew nothing of the hearts of the Maklaks. He had no heart, not one that understood those whose land this was.”

“I—I don't know who you've been talking to or what they told you, but I don't appreciate how you're using a confidence.”

“Con-fidence?”

The way the word rolled off his tongue turned it beautiful, rich and tantalizing. But that might be a dangerous deception she didn't dare let herself get lost in.

He
had
to stop touching her. That was the trouble—a stranger was taking liberties with her, breaking through that invisible and yet necessary space that surrounds a person and is broached only when intimacy is wanted. Amazed by her perceptiveness in the face of this—this, whatever it was—she took a deliberate step backward. As before, he let her go. Relief flooded through her and yet she felt lost, as if she'd lost her rudder in life somehow. An avalanche of words boiled inside her, but she couldn't sort them out enough to string any of them together. Her thoughts snagged on the eagle she'd spotted a few minutes ago, veered off into a memory of the one that had bedeviled her at the stronghold yesterday, splintered and resettled themselves on his knife.

His knife. Why hadn't she paid closer attention to it before? She studied the dusty black, opaque weapon now; concentrating on it was easier than gazing into his ageless and yet ancient eyes or learning how he had knowledge of her that he couldn't possibly. Although some of the knife was hidden by the cord holding it in place against his warm flesh, she saw enough. No machine had made it; she was sure of that. Thin chunks had been sliced from it to create something long and deadly. It lacked visual symmetry and yet she had no doubt that it was perfectly balanced. She guessed it was possible that this man or whoever he was in cahoots with could have found a slab of obsidian and gone through the laborious task of turning rock into a knife, but there was no reason for them to go to that much trouble.

Unless, this ancient-looking weapon was what the man used to keep himself alive.

Cold sweat coated her body and forced her to concentrate on what he'd just told her about herself. “Look,” she began with less force than she wanted, “I don't know why you're doing what you are, but it's time for the joke to end. It's
good—believe me, you're very, very good.”
Too good.
“But—but I don't like it.”

“You came here looking for a part of yourself in the wind and rocks.”

What? How could he know…?

“He is dead. You cannot find him.” The warrior took a single, telling step toward her. “Leave me alone, Tory Kent. Your presence ended my forever sleep and I hate you for it. You had no right!”

He was saying that her coming here had brought him into the present? It was insane—insane and yet unshakable.

“This—this isn't fair,” she blurted. “Please, at least tell me your name.”

His features contorted, briefly revealing raw anguish. He glanced upward, and she wondered if he was looking for the eagle. Then, the gesture reluctant, he again settled his attention on her. “You are not Maklaks. You will not understand.”

But I want to. I need to.
“I'll try to pronounce it.” She stumbled through the words, only dimly aware that she was no longer trying to tell him that he couldn't possibly be who he said he was.

“Not that.” He sounded angry. “My name has meaning the enemy cannot understand.”

The enemy. So that's what she was to him. “Try me,” she whispered. “At least give me something to call you.”

“Loka. I am Loka.”

She took his name into her through her pores. It settled uneasily, a word from another time and culture, part of a proud and defiant people. “Loka.” She still couldn't bring her voice above a whisper. “Is that all?”

“It is enough.”

Yes, it was. Although the syllables felt harsh on her tongue, she found something solid and right about it. The whites of her great-great-grandfather's time had called the Modocs such things as Curly Headed Doctor, Hooker Jim,
Captain Jack. She'd thought those tags both sad and obscene, was glad this man had escaped the demeaning labels.

“Loka.” His name crawled even farther inside her. “Did your father call you that after you had your vision quest? Is that how those things were done?”

Although she'd asked as gently as she knew how, his body instantly became tense and hard and remote. “You know nothing of the Maklaks. How can you stand on our land as if you have a right?”

“I'm—I'm trying to learn.”

“You cannot! Go. Now!”

But she couldn't. Something as old and permanent as the rocks themselves held her here. “Why do you hate me?”

“Why? You are part of the man who put an end to the Maklaks.”

“No, he didn't!” She felt on the edge of losing self-control and couldn't think how to change that. “Your people killed him. Murdered a man of peace. That's why he was here, don't you understand that? He came to this awful place because his job was to try to put an end to the war. He didn't want any more killing. Do you think he wanted to jeopardize the lives of the young men under him? To be responsible for sons and sweethearts and fathers—he was doing everything he possibly could to keep things from getting any worse. And what happened? Some hothead—”

“Enough!”

The single word stripped her of the anger she didn't know she had until he'd unleashed it. Although she wanted to tell him that she hadn't said enough yet and might never fully expel her anger at a good and dedicated man's untimely death, Loka had leaned closer, and his eyes—his unbelievable eyes—were a tunnel to his soul.

“Were you here?” she asked, her voice so calm that it had to belong to someone else. “Did you kill him?”

S
ilence spread between them like a slow-moving river. Tory stared up at this man from the past, thinking not of his role in history, but of the way the sun caressed his ebony hair. His eyes were morning and darkness, danger and challenge, and yet she wanted to experience everything about him. Yesterday she'd wished she was behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle because, maybe, that would kill the energy eating away at her.

Today he was what she needed.

No!
The denial reverberated throughout her, coating everything except the truth about her emotions.

“Loka. Did you kill him?”

He hadn't taken his eyes off her, making her think there was no way he couldn't know what was going on inside her. She felt surrounded by him, but although she should want to run from his impact, the thought barely flitted through her before fading into nothing. “No,” he said.

“No?” she repeated dumbly.

“My chief ended him.”

My chief.
“Were you there?”

“Yes.”

Yes.
The word had a life and strength of its own. It bore its way into her, but she gave no thought to trying to fight it. “Where?” she asked as if that mattered. “Where were you?”

Instead of pointing at the spot where she understood the peace tent had been, he indicated a rocky bluff maybe a quarter of a mile away. “The army said we were to stay in our camps, but we didn't.”

What did you see, Loka? On that spring morning in 1873, what did you hear?
Instead of giving voice to the questions pounding at her, she waited him out. It seemed as if he were drawing into himself, looking for the memory so he could spread it out in front of them. Looking up at him with the vast sky behind him and the wind and birds the only sounds in this universe they shared, she felt herself losing whatever grip she still had on the world she'd always known.

“The warmth felt good on my back. Cho-ocks and Keintepoos said that soon we would be able to move into the mountains because the snow was almost gone. I'd come with my brother and father and two cousins. We hid behind the rocks—the army men were too stupid to know where to look for us.”

With every word, his voice sounded less raw and unused. There was music to it, a deep drumbeat that pulsed around and into her. She held on to the sound, the words, knew nothing except him and what he was telling her.

“Keintepoos came armed to the peace talk. He and Ha-kar-Jim had already decided what they were to do.”

“Keintepoos? Ha-kar-Jim?”

“My chief and the brave your ancestor knew as Hooker Jim.”

The Modoc chief. The man who'd killed her great-great-grandfather.
She remembered a little about Hooker Jim, enough to know that the young Modoc had been almost single-handedly responsible for turning a tense situation into
war. “Your chief listened to Hook—to Ha-kar-Jim? Loka, he was a killer. He murdered innocent settlers.”

“Only after the army burned our winter village.”

They weren't going to get anywhere arguing over who carried the greatest blame. “I'm sorry that happened,” she whispered.

“So am I.”

His tone carried a deep regret, making her wonder if he understood that that single act had eventually brought about his people's defeat. “The killing that took place here… Why didn't you try to stop it?” she asked.

“Stop? It was my chief's decision. I would not argue with him.”

“But you knew he was wrong, didn't you? I mean, it's insane to think that killing a general would make the army scatter.”

“Insane?” He frowned, then looked away as if tired of this conversation. “I tell you this, Tory Kent. Our children's bellies were empty. Our women cried themselves to sleep. A warrior does not close his ears to those cries. Cho-ocks said that an army without its leader will leave. We believed because we had nothing else to believe in.”

Swayed by the force of his speech, she swore she could hear those despairing women, see the look of hunger in children's eyes. “Cho-ocks? Who was he?” she asked when it didn't really matter.”

“Our shaman.”

Curly Headed Doctor, at least that's what the soldiers and settlers had called him. “I—I read that he tried to protect the stronghold with a red rope. Did you really think that would stop an army?”

“You do not understand,” he said forcefully. “Cho-ocks was a powerful shaman.”

Not powerful enough,
she thought, but didn't risk his anger by saying anything. How could she be arguing religious theory with a primitive? With someone who couldn't possibly exist, or be who he said he was? She wanted to look over at
her car and assure herself that she hadn't fallen into some kind of a time warp, but would gazing at a hunk of metal make any difference?

“You do not believe me. You think Cho-ocks was like your leaders—weak. But you are wrong.”

“I didn't say—what's happening here? Damn it, what's going on?”

He laughed at her outburst, the sound hard and filled with something that might be hate, but she thought went further, deeper. Frightened by the intensity of his emotions, she took a backward step with the half-formed thought that she needed to run.

He stopped her by planting himself between her and freedom. He'd done that before, and she remembered the mix of fear and anticipation that had filled her. The same emotions coursed through her, leaving her without the strength to do anything except fight them—and him.

“What are you?” he demanded. “Are you a shaman? Why did you end my forever sleep? Why?”

“Forever sleep? What are you talking about?”

Without doing more than shifting his weight from his left hip to his right, he put an end to her outburst. She waited, not wanting to hear what he had to say but sensing that this was why he'd approached her. “I do not belong here. This is not my time. But you walked onto this land, and somehow you reached me.”

“Not—your time?”

“I do not want to be here. I want back my forever sleep.”

A deep-felt melancholy rode his words. Irrationally, she wanted to fling it away and gift him with something to make him smile. “But you have destroyed that,” he continued before she could think what she possibly might say. “And now I know why.”

“You—you're not saying you were dead? Please don't try to make me believe that.”

“How little you know! Death or life. That is all your peo
ple understand. But there is more. The magic of a great shaman.”

Insane. Insane.
But no matter how many times the words echoed inside her, she knew she'd never say them. Unbelievably aware of his presence, she waited for him to continue. “I was undead but not part of this time. I slept, the endless sleep of one who has taken the midnight medicine. It was what I wanted.”

“Midnight medicine? What—”

“And then you came.” Although the day was rapidly growing brighter, his eyes seemed to be getting even darker than they'd been at the beginning. “With
his
blood flowing in your veins, you stepped on Maklaks land and robbed me of my peace.”

He'd been in some kind of suspended animation; was that what he was trying to tell her? The logical part of her mind screamed at her to tell him he was crazy for saying this, but she had no explanation for what and who he was—none that made any more sense than the explanation he'd just given her. Despite her undiminished fear of him, excitement began building inside her. It left her both weak and unbelievably strong. She was an anthropologist, a trained professional dedicated to unveiling the mysteries of the past.

This morning she stood face-to-face with the past.

She didn't realize her mouth had gaped open until he pressed the flat of his hand against it. “Stop! You will not laugh at me!”

“I'm not laughing,” she said around the hard, warm prison. “I—Loka, I don't know what to think. To say.”

He blinked. If he'd done that before, she hadn't been aware of the gesture. By the time he'd focused again, it seemed to her that he'd lost some of the anger that had nearly overwhelmed him. His hand dropped back by his side, briefly taking her attention to his knife—his ancient knife.

Nothing of today's world had touched him; that's what she couldn't deny.

“I want to understand,” she whispered. “You don't—
maybe this means nothing to you, but I'm an anthropologist.” When he gave no indication that he had even heard the word, she shrugged, dismissing six years of college and another six years spent exploring and documenting extinct cultures. Loka wasn't extinct; that was all that mattered. “I want—” She pressed a less-than-steady hand to her forehead. “You're the key. Loka, you're the key to the past.”

“Let me go.” When he sucked in a deep breath, his chest expanded until there seemed to be no end to it. “That is what I want of you. The only thing I want. Let me return to my son.”

“Your son?”

His nostrils flared and she sensed he regretted telling her that. Fighting the cloud now swirling around her, she groped for him, touched her fingertips to his chest, pressed until his body's warmth became hers. While in college, a field project had taken her onto the empty land east of the Four Corners area. Through binoculars she'd watched a doe giving birth. For those few minutes the rest of the world had ceased to exist, and she'd never forgotten that she'd been privy to one of nature's wonders.

Loka was a wonder.

Although she'd already removed her hand from him, she had no idea how she could diminish the impact of that brief contact.

“I don't understand any of this. It's impossible. Impossible. And yet—” She had to stop while the need to touch him again raged through her. “If you're who you say you are— What's locked inside you? What do you know of your people's legacy? Their legends and stories? I…” A million fragmented thoughts continued to bombard her, but she couldn't make sense of any of them. She might be looking history in the face, and yet this man was no dry history lesson. He'd watched her great-great-grandfather being killed and celebrated his death. He'd listened to Modoc children crying from hunger, must have felt despair and hate beyond anything she
could ever comprehend. “You—you say I had something to do with your being here? How can—”

“Silence! You do not know how to accept. You throw out stupid questions while I face the truth. I am here. I do not want to be. You have done this to me.”

“No.” She shook her head until she felt dizzy. “I didn't. I had nothing—”

“You carry his blood!”

As if that was all the explanation needed, he whirled away from her and stalked to a slight rise before turning around. “You are my enemy.”

 

Tory had no idea how long she'd been driving, but if her gas gauge was any indication, she must have been behind the wheel for hours. Relying on instinct, she pulled into the parking area closest to the path leading to her cabin and cut the motor. Although there were a number of people about, she was aware of little except for a succession of dust devils being kicked up by an erratic and playful breeze. The hot afternoon made her feel lethargic, but she didn't dare stretch out on a bed because if she fell asleep, the questions she'd been battling might overwhelm her.

Loka.

A man who couldn't be and yet was. Who had become an integral part of her.

Feeling both vulnerable and charged with energy, she slipped out of the car. Thanks to the land's natural dips and curves, she couldn't see the park headquarters or campground. Yes, she shared the parking lot with a number of other vehicles, but it was all too easy to dismiss them and concentrate on the landscape.

It wasn't lifeless land. She'd learned that in a way no one else here possibly could. Because she was related to General Canby? Because, somehow, her presence last winter had awakened Loka?

Of course not! What was she thinking?

Hoax. The greatest hoax of all time.

But he'd known about her heritage, and his eyes had carried a message about a once-proud and now-defeated people.

When she heard her name being called, for a moment she thought that Loka had somehow overtaken her. Determined to take her back to his time, he would wrap his powerful arms around her and she'd be stripped of a will of her own.

Instead, the voice belonged to Fenton. “I've been looking all over for you,” he said breathlessly. “Just got back from your cabin. I don't know why they built that thing way off in the sticks like that, or why anyone would want to stay there.” He took another deep and slightly shaky breath. “I hate to say this, but you look as if you've been on a hard run.”

She wasn't at all surprised by that. The last time she'd glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror, she'd caught an image of too-bright cheeks and a too-pale mouth. She wondered if her eyes gave away anything of her turmoil and what she could possibly say if he brought that up. “Hopefully I'm smarter than that,” she said with what she hoped was a convincing smile. “I'm afraid that if I went jogging this afternoon, I'd wind up giving myself heatstroke. It sure is hot. What were you looking for me for?”

“You got a phone call. The way he talked, I knew it was important. That's why I've been trying to find you. His voice isn't as deep as I thought it would be. A man with that much prestige—well, I guess I've given him a larger-than-life image. Don't tell him I said anything, will you? I thought I handled myself pretty—”

“Dr. Grossnickle left a message for me?” she broke in when it looked as if Fenton would never run down.

“About an hour ago, maybe a little more. The connection wasn't that good. Anyway—” Fenton pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her “—here's the number. Maybe you have it already.”