Every Never After (20 page)

Ashbourne nodded graciously.

“But I swear—I
swear
to you—if something bad happens to Al? I will
not
be a happy little trowel monkey. I happen to be on speaking terms with a vengeful war goddess and I’m not above calling in a favour or two.” Okay, so that last bit was strictly for dramatic effect. Still. Whatever game Bloody Nicky and Goggles thought they were playing, Clare wasn’t about to go meekly along without
getting a few things straight first. Not when Al’s well-being was at stake. No freaking way.

“I’ve met those who are on more than just speaking terms with your goddess, Miss Reid,” Nicholas Ashbourne said. “Up close and personal.”

He stepped forward to tug the knapsack out from under Milo’s hand. Reaching in, he pulled out the skull and held the grisly artifact up in front of his face. Now it looked as if they were staring at each other. Clare’s stomach heaved a bit.

“This was an auspicious find,” Ashbourne remarked. “Well, not terribly auspicious for
him
, poor chap …”

“How d’you know it was a he?” Clare asked.

“Hm?” Bloody Nicky seemed awfully distracted all of a sudden. Just as he’d been in the tent, with the coins. He took a moment to process the question. “Oh … oh, I know. Definitely male. Early forties. In rugged good health right up until the moment of his death. A fine specimen, really. Don’t you just wonder what it was that made someone want to go and chop the dear fellow’s head clean off?”

Piper winced. Clare and Milo blinked at each other.

Clare turned back to the archaeologist. “How …?”

“Here. You see?” he said, pointing. “At the base of the skull near this opening, where the spinal column would have joined up with the medulla oblongata—the brain stem—you can see a very distinct mark below the occipital bun, which is that slight bony protrusion there. That mark, the scar on the bone, indicates a blow made by a blade. Clean, sharp. Excellent aim. Someone who’d been well trained in the art of war did the deed. Took this fellow’s head off in one fell swoop.”

“How do you know the blow came before and not after?” Milo asked. “I mean, the Celts thought the head was the seat of the soul, didn’t they? Couldn’t this have been a case of head hunting? Trophy gathering after a battle?”

Clare blinked over at Milo through the wooziness that was beginning to make her feel dizzy. She supposed it was only natural
that he’d done some in-depth reading on Celtic beliefs and practices. After all, as relatively normal as he seemed, Milo had spent several hours possessed by the disembodied soul of Connal the Druid back when they’d faced off against Boudicca. The experience had probably piqued his intellectual curiosity.

But Bloody Nicky dismissed Milo’s suggestion with a wave of his hand. “No. This was the killing blow.”

“So … you’re saying this was a sacrifice?” Clare asked. “Like a ritual?”

“More of an execution, really,” Ashbourne said with a trace of bitterness in his voice. “But I dare say it wound up serving the same purpose, ultimately.”

The archaeologist stared into the empty, shadowed eye sockets as if they stared right back at him. A good minute ticked by. Piper fidgeted, and then stood abruptly and went to fetch the silver hip flask she used to spike her tea. She set it down forcefully in front of Ashbourne, who blinked, grunted a word of thanks, and took a long swallow of the brandy.

“Wait …” Clare frowned. An uncomfortably morbid thought was assembling itself deep in her brain. “You said that thing belonged to you. Then how did it wind up out in that field? Did you lose it?”

“I did indeed,” the professor mused. “Almost two thousand years ago, when I ordered one of my own men to decapitate me on top of Glastonbury Tor.”

Clare glanced back and forth between the skull … and Ashbourne’s head. When he said he’d come to reclaim his skull, he meant he’d come to reclaim
his skull
. Suddenly, quite clearly, Clare could picture a handlebar moustache on the bone relic. The anonymous old skull wasn’t anonymous anymore.

In that instant, the fish and chips Milo had so thoughtfully provided rolled over violently in Clare’s stomach and she bolted for the shop’s back entrance, took a hard left in the alleyway, and threw up in the bushes.

15

M
arcus stared at Allie, and she could see the implications of what she’d just said sinking in. He turned and sat down heavily on a folding stool. “A … quarter of a century?” he asked.

She nodded. “Give or take.”

“My friends. My … family …” His mouth twisted in a bitter grimace and he shook his head slowly. “They must think I’m dead. Disappeared. Some of
them
are probably dead …”

“I’m really sorry.” Allie didn’t know what else to say.

“And you …” His gaze, full of dawning realization and dull hurt, drifted back to her face. “Who
are
you? And after all this time, why have you come only now to find me?”

“If you want the honest truth, I
didn’t
come here for you. I didn’t actually mean to come here at all.” She shrugged apologetically and the manacles around her wrists clanked. “It was an accident. I hadn’t meant to find you. But … now that I have … maybe together we can find a way to go back.”

“Back? Back to what?” he scoffed. “To a world I never really fit into in the first place and probably wouldn’t even recognize—let alone find a place for myself in—now? I’d be a walking anachronism. Obsolete. At least here, I belong. I
have
a place here. For as long as I’m likely to stay alive, that is. Which—with the way things have been going lately—should be another few weeks at least …”

Allie felt her lower lip start to tremble again and, as hard as she tried, she couldn’t seem to keep the tears from welling in her eyes. Suddenly it hit her: she really
hadn’t
wanted this. And all that time she’d spent thinking she might be a tiny bit jealous of Clare and her adventures in the past …

How stupid was
that
?

The past was cold. It was uncomfortable. It was very possibly lethal. And all Allie wanted in that moment was to be home. Seeing how Marcus had reacted made her want it more than anything. She wanted to get the hell back to her own time and she didn’t care how she had to do it. She didn’t care if it meant leaving Mark O’Donnell behind.

I don’t know him. I don’t
owe
him anything.

He seemed perfectly, grimly happy to stay right where and when he was. If there was some way she could convince him to come along if—no,
when
—she made her return, then fine. Otherwise, Legionnaire Donatus was on his own. Of course, she wasn’t at all sure how it would come to pass. Especially since Marcus Donatus didn’t even seem particularly inclined to unchain her from the tent pole. Allie would have to play to his sympathetic side. Win him over. She decided to gamble on a tactic she thought might work.

“You know … you
wouldn’t
be totally alone if you went back,” she said. “I mean … Maggie’s there. And she will totally lose her mind when she finds out you’re still alive—”

His head snapped back as if she’d just slapped him.

“Maggie …”
he said, his mouth moving around the word as if he found it almost impossible to say. “Do you mean … Magda? Magda Wallace?”

“Yes!” Allie nodded excitedly. “She’s … well, she’s been really upset about it. For years. She … um …”

Allie stammered to a halt as she watched Mark/Marcus’s expression turn hard and cold. And angry. Then she remembered that Maggie and Stuart Morholt had been some kind of an item back in
the day. It was entirely possible that Mark held her partly responsible for what had happened to him—

“That bitch.”

Okaaay … maybe not possible. Maybe definite.

“Um,” Allie said again and swallowed nervously.

As he glared at her, she found herself asking—out loud—just what the hell had happened to him to change him so much. To make him so cold. When he turned away from her she knew she’d pushed him one step too far. The question was barely out of Allie’s mouth before he was across the tent’s dirt floor and almost nose to nose with her. His teeth were bared again in that frightening grimace and the breath heaved in his lungs.

“What happened to me?” he snarled between clenched teeth. “What
happened
to me? Look around you. This war happened to me. In
this
time, in
this
place. Those …
things
—demons—out there happened to me. I was fifteen years old. A child. I was ripped from my world, thrown into this one, and I almost died. I found myself in a place of savagery and sorcery and I. Almost.
Died.
” He spat the words. “And Magda Wallace stood by and let it happen and did nothing.”

“I’m sorry …”

“No more sorry than I am,” he said in a voice rough with emotion. “If she’s the kind of company you keep in your own time, then I don’t know that I want anything to do with you in mine.” He spun around and headed toward the tent flap.

“Wait!” Allie couldn’t handle being left alone again, regardless of how terrible the present company was. “Maggie’s sorry, too. I
know
she’s sorry.”

Marcus uttered a short, brutal laugh. “I’m sure she is. Did Stuart make her run all his errands for him after I disappeared? It must have been a great hardship.”

“That’s not fair. I mean, yeah, Morholt’s like a complete tool, but it was Dr. Jenkins that set the whole thing up.”

“Doctor …?”

“Mags was just kind of along for the ride.” Allie kept talking, kept trying to explain. “And Stu is
way
too much of a doofus to actually make anything happen. Really. I mean, the guy’s a lame ass. And Maggie was devastated when you disappeared. She’s come back to Glastonbury every year. Just to mark the occasion. Even after all this time. She hasn’t forgotten you and—”

Marcus silenced her with a smouldering glare. She was about to tell him he was more than welcome to take it out on Morholt— who was in the tent just down the way—but then she wondered if he even knew that. It didn’t seem as if he did. Allie’s brain whirled furiously, stacking up the pros and cons of telling Marcus that his hated former classman, the one he obviously blamed for his temporal misfortunes (no doubt rightfully so), was sitting in a filthy huddle not fifty yards away.

But then a commotion erupted outside the tent. Allie could hear soldiers running and yelling and the centurion’s voice, braying like a mule, above it all.

Suddenly the tent flap flew wide and the centurion’s helmeted head appeared in the opening. “He’s back,” he said to Marcus. “Postumus is awake! The wily old bastard is alive and well and back on his feet again.”

The relief on Marcus’s face was palpable. And as the tension seemed to flow like water from him, Allie realized that it wasn’t just her presence in the camp that had set the young soldier’s nerves jangling. It was everything else that was happening, too. She could hardly blame him for being on hair-trigger response. The fact that he’d been only fifteen when he was thrust back in time—and an awkward, sheltered bookworm, by all accounts— was part of it too, but as he stood there beside the centurion, all leather and armour and hardened muscle, she could barely imagine him as that boy.

Marcus grinned widely at the other man. “An hour ago you were calling him a coward.”

The centurion grinned back. “An hour ago I thought he was as good as dead!”

Marcus crossed to the wooden stand and reached for his helmet and sword belt. “Where is he?”

“Headed straight for the mess tent. It’s nothing short of amazing—he’s full of fire. Wants to address the troops, assure the men, all that. And the cooks are setting a welcome table for him. You coming?”

Marcus glanced back at Allie. “Go on. I’ll follow you shortly. I want to get cleaned up before I face the praefect again.”

“Well. Don’t dawdle. You’ll miss all the best inspirational speeches.” Junius rolled his eyes and ducked back out of the tent.

Marcus stalked back over to Allie and gazed at her intently, a wealth of unspoken emotions swimming behind his eyes. His gaze fixed upon the manacles circling her slender wrists. Allie had to bite her tongue from mentioning that she was only two years older than the “boy” he’d been when he’d gotten stuck back in this awful place …

Girls mature faster than boys,
she thought sourly.
Just don’t tell
him
that …

When he finally spoke again, the sharpness was gone from his tone.

“Listen to me,” he said. “The praefect will want to question you at some point.”

“You mean interrogate me.”

Marcus hesitated. “Just … remember what I told you. He’ll need me to interpret for you, and I’ll try to help you as much as I can. But for heaven’s sake, don’t let on that you can understand him. Or that you can speak his language. All right? It’s the only way I’ll be able to keep you safe.”

Allie nodded and kept her expression as neutral as possible.
Like you actually care about my safety …

“I’ll return soon.”

Good for you,
she thought.
I won’t be here when you get back.

The impromptu camp assembly was just the opportunity Allie had been waiting for. It had always kind of galled her that, despite a deeply female need to accessorize her techno-ninja style with
black and silver bangles, her wrists were just way too skinny to accommodate that need. Clare could wear bracelets. She could stack them to her elbows. But everything just kind of slid off Allie’s hands. And yet that had proved quite useful growing up: every time her brothers would gang up on Allie and tie her to the apple tree in the backyard during one of their stupid games of cowboys and Indians, she’d let them lash her with their hemp rope, wait five minutes after they’d gone in search of more captives, and then wriggle her skinny little hands free and scamper away to Clare’s house three blocks over. It never mattered how tight the McAllister boys tied the knots; she’d always pull a daring escape, and her brothers could never figure out how she did it.