Black Knight (31 page)

“How long were you in this future?” I ask.

“Long enough,” he says.

“See anything interesting?” I ask.

Syn and Kendor exchange a look that chills me to the bone.

“The question is why we are moving through time at all,” Syn says. “It is an extraordinary event. It makes sense that there should be a profound reason behind it. But today, and the day we saw you last, all we did was wait for you to arrive so we could train you to survive in the Field.”

“Not that the Field is not important,” Kendor says. “But it seems someone wants to give you an edge.”

“Someone wants you to survive,” Syn adds.

I nod. “There may be some truth to that. The training you gave me with the sword, the telekinesis you helped activate—it’s already saved me from a ton of grief.”

“We are grateful we have been of some help,” Syn says. “Yet you seem as puzzled as us why we are here.”

“All I know is what I’ve told you,” I say.

“Did you know that we are dead in this time?” Syn asks.

I hesitate. “Yes.”

“Why did you lie the other day?” Kendor asks.

“I didn’t want to upset you by telling you such shocking news.”

Syn never takes her eyes off me. “Was there another reason?”

“I was there when you both died.”

“Were you responsible?” Syn asks sharply.

I feel a sudden wave of anger. It catches me off guard but it’s real, and very powerful. “No, you were responsible,” I snap.

Syn tenses, as if she’s ready to stand, to strike even. She fights for control. Taking a deep breath, she shakes her head. “I do not believe it,” she says.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Kendor asks.

“I’d rather not,” I say.

“Why not?” Syn demands.

“Before you died, you and I were friends,” I tell Kendor. “You told me all about your life. How you fell in an icy lake as a young man and were saved by the Alchemist. How you helped Caesar defeat the Gauls at the Battle of Alesia. How you first saw Syn in a Roman crowd and fell in love with her. You also told me you had vague visions, only you didn’t know at the time what you were seeing. But these visions, they were of now, which tells me that everything that happens between us in this house—you will forget it when you return to your time.” I pause to catch my breath. “That’s why there’s no point in explaining everything to you.”

There’s a long silence in the room.

“Were we friends?” Syn finally asks.

“No,” I say.

Syn smiles faintly. “That I can well believe.”

“Perhaps we should concentrate on the task at hand,” Kendor says, taking my remark about them forgetting everything to heart. He asks me to tell them what’s been happening in the Field.

So for the third time that day I recount my adventures on the island. Syn and Kendor have never heard of Sam and Kyle but listen patiently as I describe them in detail. Like Cleo, they don’t appear to trust either of them.

“They know the rules as well as you do,” Kendor says when I finish. “It is natural they should approach you and suggest an alliance, especially after seeing what Viper and Nordra are capable of. But never forget that all alliances in the Field are temporary.”

“I don’t believe that,” I reply. “Kyle’s a wild card, it’s true, but Sam genuinely seems to care. I feel I can trust him.”

“There are witches who can make you fall in love with them,” Syn warns. “Take a person born with the powers of magnetism—or what you probably call ‘cloaking’—and telepathy. Once his abilities become active, they feed off each other, making him almost impossible to resist. He could tell you to jump off a cliff and you would do it.”

“You’re exaggerating,” I say.

“She is not,” Kendor says. “That combination of abilities is rare but we have seen it. Such a person could appear to do almost nothing and yet control the entire Field.” He pauses. “Whose idea was it to climb to the top of the volcano?”

“Kyle’s,” I say before stopping to consider. “Well, it was Sam who told us how it was either the wall or the cave that held the key to escaping the island. But . . .” My voice trails off.

“But you are not sure why you are hiking to the top of the volcano,” Syn says, finishing for me.

They have made their point.

Obviously, I don’t know how to answer.

Like the man I used to know, Kendor tires of talking and wants to dive back into training. Taking me out to the backyard, he tests what he taught me the previous day. He uses the length of the grass to throw spears at my chest. However, today he orders me to deflect them with my mind. His methodology is intense; there’s no room for error. If I fail to block a spear I’ll die.

Kendor is worse than a drill sergeant. After a continuous thirty-minute barrage, I feel my mental grip begin to waver and swipe away a spear with my hand. The next one I manage to deflect with telekinesis, but the one after that I have to knock away with my other hand. I feel myself weakening and fear Kendor will step up his assault. But he suddenly stops and congratulates me.

“I have never seen anyone use that ability for so long,” he says.

“Even Syn?”

“Even Syn. Have you tried lifting your body into the air?”

“Not since you threw me off the cliff.”

“Have any of your opponents levitated?”

“No.”

“Viper?” Kendor presses.

“Her ability to hit us with lava is killing us. That and her invisibility. I wish there was some way to see through her cloak.”

“There is a reason the power is referred to as ‘cloaking.’ The person is still there, no witch can ever be totally invisible. The key is to be attentive to what is around you.” Kendor pauses and gives a sly grin. “Darling?”

Suddenly I’m aware we’re not alone. I feel a presence off to my right, six feet away. As I turn in that direction Syn appears and laughs at me.

“I did not make a sound. Good work,” she says.

I shake my head. “I wouldn’t have become aware of you if Kendor hadn’t given me that hint.”

“Perhaps,” Syn says. “You might have better luck with Viper if you improve your own ability to cloak. I understand you can mimic the appearance of others?”

“It’s one of my strengths.”

Syn is unconvinced. “It is one thing to fool a human. It is another to fool a witch.” She turns to her husband. “I will take over her training for now.”

Syn leads me into the house, to the bedroom where they appear to sleep. There’s a floor-to-ceiling mirror, and like when Herme—her son, ironically—gave me my first instructions in cloaking, Syn leads me through a series of grueling steps designed to fool even her.

What I find fascinating is how much her lessons on cloaking remind me of the problems special-effects experts run into while creating realistic scenes on a computer. I’ve always been fascinated by CGI and I’ve studied it on the Internet.

For example, Syn orders me to mimic her face, with her standing beside me, and I get everything right except for her hair. When I turn my head and toss
her
hair, it refuses to flow naturally. Syn being Syn, she scolds me that I’m not trying hard enough.

Pointing out that CGI experts have the same problem fails to illicit her sympathy, possibly because she’s never seen a movie before, but more likely because basically she’s a tough bitch. Yes, her husband did throw me off a cliff to teach me a lesson, but at least with Kendor I had fun. With Syn work is work, she is all business.

Yet after spending several hours in her company, I finally put on a face that even she has to admit is flawless. The trick, she teaches, is not how well I mold my features but how strong my belief is. Herme taught me something similar but his mother’s standards are far more stringent.

“Believe you are who you pretend to be and no one will question your identity,” Syn says, summing up her philosophy.

I nod. “I’m grateful for the time you’ve given me. But I’m puzzled why you haven’t let me try to turn invisible.”

Syn acts as if my complaint is childish. “Because you’re incapable of doing that right now. But more important, you have not been listening to what we have been trying to teach you. You need to reflect on what we told you earlier.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” I say.

“That is why you need to reflect on it.”

“All right, if it’s reflection you want, then answer this. When you and Kendor spoke about being shuffled in time, you went out of your way to say you had been in
my
future, not simply in
the
future. Was that a slip of the tongue or were you trying to tell me something?”

“What does ‘slip of the tongue’ mean?”

“What were you trying to tell me?” I demand.

For the first time since I have met her—in this time frame and when I knew her in Las Vegas—Syn appears flustered. It takes me a moment to figure out why.

“You’re worried about me!” I gasp.

Syn shrugs. “Naturally we are concerned for your safety. The Field is a dangerous testing ground.”

“No, it’s something else, something you saw when you went into the future. What did you see? My dead body?”

Syn hesitates. “Not exactly.”

“Damnit! What did you see?”

Syn gazes into my eyes. No one knows better than I do how easily she can cloak her expression, but clearly she feels the time for disguise has passed.

“Before I answer your question, tell me why you fear me.”

Like me, she’s asking for the truth. A blunt answer isn’t hard to find. “Because you change as you grow older. You become a monster.”

Syn sucks in a painful breath. “Why?”

“Grief. Pain over the loss of those you love.”

“I have already lost my son.”

“You will lose others.” I pause. “I’m sorry.”

She sighs. “So am I, Jessica.”

I don’t speak, I can’t. I wait.

Finally, Syn answers my question.

“A month from now, Kendor and I were at your memorial service,” she says.

* * *

Without saying good-bye to either of them, I flee the house, jumping in my car and driving aimlessly. When I finally stop, I realize I have driven to the jagged part of the coast where Kendor threw me off the cliff. Getting out of the car, I step to the edge and stare out at the sea. My confusion is as deep as the ocean is vast. Two questions torment me. . . .

Did they attend my funeral in the real world or witch world?

Can the fact that I know the future allow me to change it?

If I die in the real world, where the Field is taking place, then it’s possible I’ll still be alive in witch world. Jimmy died from an overdose of drugs in the real world and I still see him every other day in witch world. Yet, to me, with the exception of missing Jimmy and Lara, the real world is where I feel most comfortable and if I should perish in the Field, then at best I’ll go on living half a life.

However, it’s possible the Alchemist gave Syn and Kendor a glimpse of my future so they could alert me to alter my course. But how exactly am I supposed to do that?

Kendor had gone out of his way to warn me that all alliances in the Field are temporary, while Syn had said that I still wasn’t hearing what they were trying to teach me. Were the two trying to give me hints as to how to alter my future? Were they saying I absolutely had to stop trusting Sam and Kyle? If I did that, I’d be essentially alone on the island, with no one to help me fight off Viper and Nordra. And Marc . . . he would almost certainly be killed.

“The Field will not change who I am!” I shout at the sea. The words just explode out of me but I feel they must have originated deep inside. Because I know they are true.

I’m not going to become a perverted and plotting beast in order to survive the Field. If I do that, if I betray everything I believe in and everyone who is counting on me to protect them—just to save my own skin—then my life will hardly be worth living, in either world. Because then I’ll become what Syn is destined to become.

I’ll become the monster.

My hands shake. I take my cell out of my pocket and dial Marc’s number. His voice sounds thick when he answers and I suspect I’ve woken him from a nap. With his other half wounded and suffering in the Field, he might be feeling more tired than usual, I don’t know.

“Still want to meet?” I ask.

“I haven’t thought about anything else all day.”

“When and where?”

He chuckles. “You know where I live?”

“I told you I did.”

“Then come over now.”

By the time I get there, Marc has spruced up for me. He has on a nice pair of beige slacks, an apricot shirt, and a brown sports coat he paid good money for—unless he stole it. Not many guys can get away with apricot anything—it’s too close to pink—but on Marc it works. Or maybe the clothes have nothing to do with it.

I feel like a slob. I haven’t changed from my training, and a few of Kendor’s spears nicked me. As a result I’ve got bloodstains on my bare arms and pants. Marc raises an eyebrow when he answers the door.

“What’s wrong with you witches? You don’t take showers when you move from one world to the other? Too busy waxing down your broomsticks?”

“Cute. Don’t tell me you’re a surfer?”

“I’m world class and I’ll teach you if you explain why you’re covered in blood.”

“It’s just a few drops.” He’s not buying it. “I just came from practicing how to kill the bad guys in that other world.”

“Is that your blood or your trainers’?”

“Mine,” I admit.

“You don’t have a scratch on you.”

“Told you, I heal fast. Are you going to invite me in or what?”

He’s amused. “I was going to take you to my favorite restaurant but they won’t let you in dressed like that.”

“So take me to that mall where you park your extra cars. Buy me a new outfit, I know you can afford it.”

“Whoa! You sprang for the tab last night. I would never have figured you for an expensive date.”

I smile. “You have no idea.”

He lets me take a quick shower at his place then we go to the mall, where I pick out a tight pair of black slacks that show off my butt, a silk blouse that matches the color of his shirt, and a black leather jacket that’s both chic and country at the same time. Marc insists on a pair of brown boots that catch his eye, and make me four inches taller.