Alastor and Stella both so carefullydidn’tlook at Rita.He supposed it was nice of them to try.But really?For two such supposedly bright people—he shook his head.
He turned the weapon in Rita’s direction.“Give it to me.”
“I told you it’s broken!”Alastor said.
Rita met John’s gaze for a long moment, the calm he saw there disconcerting.For a moment his sense of being in total control lessened—he stiffened his spine and his face.
“Give it to me.”
She pulled it out of a pocket, looked down at it for a few seconds.
“It is broken,” she said.She lifted the cover, showing him the cracked center.
“Set it down on that bench.”She’d always made him uneasy, he realized, annoyed at her for that.She was inexplicable, puzzling, and surprisingly hard to kill.
Rita did as she was told, and then back carefully away, her gaze not leaving him.He wanted to tell her to quit looking at him, but even he knew that was a teen move.He’d moved on from being a teen a long time ago.And several life times.
He noticed that she didn’t get close to the others, but she wasn’t so distant from them it worried him.He just thought it odd, but that was Rita all over.
“It will be a wasted effort to kill you all here and now,” he said, his fingers closing around the device.“I know where to find you.”
Rita made a scoffing sound.
Apparently it didn’t help to soften the blow of what’s coming.
“Okay, you are going to die here, but it won’t be because of this.”He moved the gun.“This bubble of time will disappear with you in it as soon as I get control of this.”Now he held up the device.
Rita made a face, as if objecting, but didn’t speak.He felt the hand holding the device tremble.If only she’d quit looking at him.Well, he knew how to end that.
He knew as much about it as they did, maybe more.They’d let him move so freely through time.It might be damaged, but it wasn’t broken.There was just enough energy left to get him somewhere he could work on it.
Rita had obligingly left the cover open.He quickly shoved the gun into its holster and touched the device in the center of the screen, where the small glow of light remained.
A mass of butterflies seemed to come right out of the ground and swirled around him in tighter and tighter circles.He swatted at them, but his hands passed through them.
Then why did it feel as if they were choking him?He couldn’t breathe.
The device began to heat up in his hand.
He dropped it with a curse.
The butterflies began to flow down into it, away from him, leaving him standing there—
She hit him in his mid-section and they both went down.
He struggled to get the gun.
He’d taught her a little too well, he thought grimly, but I’m still bigger than she is.
Then he heard what sounded like a plane or helicopter maybe and a shout.
Other hands grasped him and pulled him to his feet, his arms twisted behind his back.
“I told you it was broken,” Rita said, dusting herself off and grinning.Her gaze finally wasn’t on John, but it wasn’t the relief he’d hoped for.“I see you got it fixed.Good on you.I was hoping you had.”
John managed to twist just enough to see a strange looking craft sitting on an open place on the dead grass.
The hatch was open, but he couldn’t see who held him.He just knew they’d come from inside it, whatever it was.
