Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (3 page)

Her green eyes softened and her expression shifted from rage to confusion in an instant.

“What do you mean?”  She asked.

I lifted my other hand so that I could hold her by her shoulders.  “Helena, you were pregnant.  You were sick.  There were complications and James… James…”

I trailed off, finally remembering the morbid truth behind what laid upon the table, wrapped in rags.  But it didn’t seem to register with Helena.  There she stood, seemingly strong and healthy, although I knew she should still be recovering after the emergency C-section that had saved her life, but not the life of the son she and Jacob had conceived.

Her eyes narrowed and her lips parted as she seemed to concentrate, her face angled toward the ground, but I could still see her eyes flitting left and right, searching the ground as though she would find her thoughts there.  Suddenly, she lifted her head so that she could look at me and as our eyes met, her lower lip started to quiver, and I knew she finally remembered.

Together, we looked at the table that held her son, but before I had the chance to offer her any comfort, she dropped to her knees, bringing me down with her as her hands clung to my clothes.  And that’s when she started to wail, tears of horrendous pain and grief pouring from her eyes. She wrapped her arms around me and threatened to drag me down to the floor, but I used all my strength to keep her on her knees. I wasn’t sure if she thought of me as anything more than a stake in the ground for her to wrap herself around, but I pulled her in close as well as I could as she wept over the loss of her son.

“Shhh… Helena,” I soothed as I rocked her.  “Everything’s going to be all right.”

But I wasn’t sure everything was going to be all right at all.

Jacob was gone.  Possessed by an ancient, evil power, he was being manipulated by a seductress with great ambition.  I didn’t think Helena knew anything about that yet, and I wasn’t sure how she would react when she did.  She’d already lost the boy who would become the most important man in her life, and I wasn’t sure how she would react when she learned that she had already lost the other.

I wasn’t sure anything would ever be all right again.

Part One

I

Aftermath

Central Britain

March, 44 A.D.

Diana Hunter

The minutes that followed were full of tears and the inaudible sound of hearts breaking.  I tried to be strong for Helena, but I was certain most of the tears were my own, not hers, and I was ready to shed even more when Helena suddenly went limp in my arms.  I struggled to hold her upright, but she was heavier than she looked and I did all I could to gently lower her to the ground.

She went down harder than I would have liked, but she remained asleep, maybe unconscious, even after her head hit the hard dirt beneath her.  I let out a frustrated sigh as my tears dried up seconds later, too tired to grieve for the moment.  Blowing a bit of hair off of my face, I reached down and pressed a hand against Helena’s own boyishly short hair, the result of her own frustration at Jacob’s actions not long ago.

I wiped away a few tears and turned to my left, seeing James continuing to work on John, who laid on the table completely motionless.  I felt my heart leap into my throat at the sight of our medic performing what could very possibly be lifesaving surgery on my closest friend here in antiquity, but I forced it down and distracted myself by turning back to Helena and carefully shifting her head so that it sat more comfortably in my lap.  Once she was settled, I looked around, hoping to find some kind of blanket to drape across her body, but had to settle for James’ jacket, which he had discarded earlier.

I tugged it over Helena’s body haphazardly, accidently lifting the shirt she wore and exposing her stomach just slightly.  I reached down to cover her up again, but then I thought of something that had been waiting expectantly in the back of my mind for something to bring it to the forefront.

James had performed a C-section on Helena only hours earlier.  I hadn’t been there, but I knew what such a procedure entailed. Back home the surgery was dangerous, and I had to assume it was even worse here in Ancient Rome, even when performed by a skilled healer like James.  It also required a lengthy recovery time, but Helena had been on her feet and running only hours after the procedure.  Not just running, but sprinting, and she’d picked up John as easily as it would be for her to pick
me
up.

It didn’t make sense and had plagued my mind since she’d carried John here, so I carefully lifted her shirt and peeked at the incision James had made below her stomach. The bandage was blood-soaked, but when I peeled it back, I found her wound was almost completely healed, nothing left but a long scar puckered by the stiches that had held her closed.

It didn’t make any sense.

I leaned in to examine the scar more closely when a gust of wind alerted me to the presence of someone else entering the tent.  I quickly lowered her shirt and turned, seeing Jeanne standing in the threshold, surveying the room with sharp eyes.  He saw me seconds later and then bounded straight to where I sat with two long strides.  He glanced at me, then the body of Jacob and Helena’s little son on the table, understanding seeming to come to him almost instantly.  Without a word, he gestured for me move so he could kneel down and pick Helena up.  I pulled away and stood, and then moved to pick up my nephew’s body from the table.  Bordeaux placed Helena there instead, and moved off to find a pillow and some blankets to ward off the chilly early morning air.

I considered placing my nephew beside her, thinking that she might want to at least see him when she woke up, but then wasn’t so sure.  The table wasn’t very wide and Helena might move unintentionally while she recovered.  Instead, I passed him off to Jeanne after he’d returned with the bedding for Helena.

“Here,” I said, handing the small child to him, which he took with well-practiced and gentle hands.  “Take him to where Vincent is.  I think that’s best.”

Jeanne nodded and reached out to hold my arm for a moment before leaving.  I watched him go, then turned my attention to James and John, the realization of what was happening there finally setting in as well.  After losing my nephew, watching Jacob succumb to addiction and madness, and witnessing the torrent of grief that had overcome Helena moments ago, I couldn’t bear to lose John, too.

He was… an interesting person.

From the moment I’d met him, I’d known there was something… special about him.

It was difficult to describe, just as
he
was difficult to describe.  He was as much of a walking paradox as a time traveler living through a grandfather paradox.  While he was perhaps the most arrogant, self-centered, macho, chauvinistic man I’d ever met, he could also be the most humble, unselfish, caring, and understanding one as well. 

He’d reminded me so much of Jacob that I’d quickly become comfortable around him, and it didn’t hurt that he was more than just a little attractive.  I’d always loved a man with scars, especially when he owned them.  I still didn’t know whether he actually liked me at all, although I suspected that if he did it was just a part of his endless ploy to annoy Jacob.  But there seemed to be something there, although he seemed about as outwardly interested in me as a thirteen year old boy.

Perhaps one day it would be more.

Suddenly, the sound of a man slumping to the ground shook me from my thoughts, and I turned to see James on ground beside John’s table. Every single thought in my mind evaporated as he fell, my concern for John’s condition taking priority over everything else. Even so, I rushed to check on James first, and while I certainly didn’t have a background in medicine, I was able to find his pulse and heard rhythmic breathing.

Relieved, but not placated, I stood up and turned my attention to John, but my all my concerns were gone when I found him lying shirtless on the table, a neat bandage covering a small wound in his lower, right abdomen.  I checked for a pulse, and finding it steady and consistent, I let out a long sigh of relief.  I used the back of my knuckles to lightly brush John’s cheek and smiled, but didn’t linger; fatigue was already setting in at a drastic rate.  Moving to Helena’s table, I grabbed two extra blankets Jeanne had brought and covered John with one, James with the other.  Since he was too heavy for me to lift on my own, I left him as he was on the ground.

Everyone seemed comfortable except me, but with no additional blankets available and John’s table too small for me to lay on with him, I huddled in a corner of the tent, pulled my parka around myself tightly, and waited.  I closed my eyes and rested my head on my shoulder, but instead of feeling a strong desire to fall asleep, all I wanted to do was cry again.

None of this was supposed to have happened.

I shouldn’t even be here and Jacob and Helena and all the others shouldn’t have had to suffer as they had in recent months.  All this could have been avoided had we simply left well enough alone.  Everything could have been different if I hadn’t agreed to participate in a rescue mission to defy all rescue missions.

It didn’t seem like all that long ago when Jacob and his team had disappeared completely – that is, the Jacob and his team that had existed back home, in my version of the year 2021 – and a team had been sent to find them.

All they’d found was a cargo container, a notebook, the orb, and… his body.

Jacob’s body. 

All evidentiary procedures had confirmed it, even my own when I’d confirmed the broken leg Jacob had suffered when he’d fallen out of a tree when we were kids.  But it hadn’t been Jacob, not my Jacob, not the Jacob I’d known and the one I’d grown up with.  Everything in the journal from the prose style, the handwriting, and the ridiculously-Jacob sense of humor had indicated it had been him, but the carbon dating had put the body at just around two thousand years old and the context of his story hadn’t made any sense.

It had been Jacob.  A two thousand-year-old Jacob.  A Jacob who had died, withered for two thousand years, and left behind a story that had confounded everyone.

But it hadn’t been
my
Jacob.

He’d written of a world so unlike the one he should have known, the one I’d known, and he’d described a device capable of sending individuals through time.  No one had believed it at first, but the evidence was irrefutable: a parallel version of Jacob Hunter had existed.  Those in the military who had far too much power than they had any right to have agreed that this Jacob came from a world that was similar to our own but distinguishably different, but, more importantly, was also in possession of the means to travel through time, a technology they had every intention of obtaining, reengineering, or stealing.

Everything since had been insanity.  No one had said anything about ancient wizards or magical orbs capable of destroying an individual’s mind or empresses of long forgotten empires who had far too much ambition and the bloodthirsty nature needed to take everything she wanted.  All I’d wanted was my brother back, but nothing was ever that simple.

I may have found him, but then he’d been taken from me again.

Only this time I couldn’t just go after him.

That wayward desire to sleep was finally beginning to settle in as such dour thoughts circulated through my mind, but just before it took hold of me completely, I felt myself being shaken roughly.  My eyes flew open and I saw myself looking into the face of Paul Archer, a man I immediately wished was in a coma like the rest of them.

“Paul…” I muttered, pulling my jacket tighter and trying to ignore him, “… now isn’t the time.  I’m exhaust…”

He didn’t interrupt me, which was odd enough to convince me that I should talk to him.  I opened my eyes again and gave him a more serious look, and jerked myself backward at what I saw.  Archer’s face had been pummeled.  Someone had seriously damaged the man, leaving his face black and blue and puffy in all the wrong places.  His once handsome face that I had loved so much – but no more – had been turned to mush.

“What happened to you?”  I asked, oddly concerned.

Again he didn’t answer, his head swaying side to side like he was punch-drunk.

“Who did this to you?”  I pressed

“My fault…” he mumbled.  “All my fault.”

“Paul!”  I snapped, and he jerked himself into focus.  “Who did this to you?  What are you talking about?”

“Jacob…” he said quietly.  “Jacob did this.”

“Why?”  I asked.

“I tried to stop him,” he said, his voice sad.  “Felt responsible for…”

“For what?”  I asked.

His head tilted upward, his eyes harrowed.  “I gave him the orb, Artie.”

My eyes narrowed.  “You what?”

“Aboard the ship heading to Alexandria,” he continued.  “I gave it to him.  I had… orders.  They wanted to see what it could really do.  Wanted to see the extent of its damaging effects.  And they didn’t want him interfering.  Jacob was… expendable.”

“You…
what?
”  I asked, beyond angry.

“I was under orders!”  Archer retorted.  “They told me to do it.  They knew you could use the orb and didn’t want Jacob getting in the way.  I had to do it!”

“You… you didn’t have to do anything, Paul!”  I yelled, amazed that I could say anything at all.  “You knew what could happen!  You knew
this
would happen.  You drove Jacob insane!”

“I know!”  He shot back angrily, causing me to jerk back again.  “I know.  That’s… that’s why I brought this.  We can go back.  Change it.”

He lifted his hand, showing what he held within: a blue orb.

I flung myself back even further, knowing that what it had done to Jacob could just as easily happen to me.  I scuttled backward until I came into contact with the wall of the canvas tent.  I held up a hand as though that would help ward off the orb’s power.

“What are you doing?”  I said, too scared to be angry.  “Where did you get that?  Helena destroyed it.”

He shook his head.  “No, we didn’t.  She brought both of them to me because she thought I’d be the last person to let Jacob have them.  We faked it.  It was her idea not to destroy either orb, not mine.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she’s military, Diana,” he said, a surge of confidence entering his voice.  “Redundancy is crucial.  Two is one, one is none.  A million things could have happened that would make us regret the loss of the orb if we’d already destroyed the other.”

I shook my head, unable to answer.

“Use it, Diana,” he urged.  “Fix this.  Don’t let me give the other one to Jacob.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said.  “You know that!”

“Do it!”  He said angrily, shoving the orb closer to me.

“I can’t!”

“You have t…”

He started to lunge for me but was unexpectedly arrested mid-motion, almost as if he’d been somehow frozen in time.  In fact, that was my first assumption because of the orb’s presence, but then he started to squirm, and I realized what had happened.  Jeanne had returned, probably having heard our argument, and had literally caught Archer in midair.

Jeanne pulled his arms back and flung Archer to the ground, causing him to slide and hit the table John was lying on.  The big man followed, reached down and picked him up, a fist ready to be thrown at him.