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“Please, don’t make me go,” I cried.
“You...must,” he said, swallowing hard. “Go. Please.”
Bryant closed his eyes, his head lolling to the side. I screamed as I shook him and felt his neck and listened to his chest.
There was nothing.
And he was gone.
“No! Please, no,” I cried, kissing his face, pressing my cheek to his still chest.
Voices echoed from the woods, snapping my head up.
I had no time to weep or mourn for Bryant. Not yet. I had to fight these monsters by fleeing.
He made me promise.
With one final kiss on the still warm lips of the only man I would ever truly love, I jumped to my feet and ran for the cave entrance.
* * *
The tunnel was pitch black, and I literally couldn’t see the hand in front of my face as I felt along the craggy walls, picking my way forward, faltering and stumbling every step of the way.
I mentally kicked myself for not having my penlight handy that would have helped guide my way, but it was safely stashed on the fireplace mantle.
Would anyone ever find it in the abandoned cabin?
It didn’t matter, not now.
The only thing that did was to find my way to the cave room before Wilkens reached it, then stop the man from jumping into another time period.
On and on I trudged and stumbled until finally I came to the fork in the tunnel where I turned to the right. For a moment I was terrified that I had taken the wrong turn, then I heard the rattling and felt the static vibrations raise the hairs on the back of my neck when I reached the mouth of the room.
I didn’t need my flashlight to see the sunburst and sickle symbols that illuminated a bright yellow-green. Running up to them, I sucked in a sharp breath to see the fresh smear of blood along their edge.
Wilkens had been here then.
And now he was not.
He had gone through then. He had time jumped. When he would surface, in the past or future, I had no way of knowing. All I could hope for would be that the symbols themselves would lead me to the same time path in order to stop him.
I picked up a loose rock and nicked my palm, then slid the bloody scratch across the glowing, pulsating symbols.
Nothing.
I squeezed out more blood. Smeared the sunburst and sickle moon again. Then again. Waited.
No noise. No rumbling. No earthshattering quake that spun me from one century to another.
“Work, damn you! Take me!”
But it didn’t. Nothing I did yanked me from this time period to another.
I had failed then. Bryant had died for nothing, and he and his people might soon disappear from existence, because I had failed to stop the Arcans’ twisted scheme to annihilate their race.
What do I do now?
A bad habit. A nervous fidget.
