CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Cael?"
Cael paused as he heard Acheron's voice behind him. He turned around on the sidewalk to see him walking through the night's mist. There was something really spooky about Acheron. There always had been.
He'd first met Acheron on September 15, 904, on a cool night much like this one in Cornwall. Cael had been covered in the blood of an entire raiding party of Vikings that night. The fires he'd started had singed his hair and blistered his skin.
But he hadn't cared. All that had mattered had been avenging his wife, brother, mother, and sister who had been slain by the Vikings.
Even after all these centuries, he could still see Morag's beautiful freckled face, hear the gentle lilt of her voice as she called out his name. With hair redder than the sun and a smile every bit as radiant, she had been his entire world.
Her and his baby sister who'd been on the brink of adulthood.
Corynna had held eyes so blue they rivaled the sky and a laugh so musical that it should have belonged to a songbird.
And his father had sold them all into slavery to save his own life. But the Vikings hadn't wanted slaves. They'd wanted victims to practice on. Bound in chains, Cael had watched helplessly as every one of them had been tortured and killed for fun while their cries of pain and pleas for death had echoed in his ears.
Not even his own death had been able to silence their agonized voices. It hadn't erased the sight of them being beaten and dismembered. There were times even now when he came awake, shaking from the memory of it.
Acheron had appeared to him after he'd taken his vengeance on those who'd preyed on his family, and had shown him, a simple peasant bastard, how to fight the Daimons and how to live again when he had nothing in this world worth living for.
He owed everything to the Atlantean leader of the Dark-Hunters. Had Acheron not shown him how to put the past behind him and go forward with his life, he'd have never made it to this time and place.
Never made it to Amaranda.
Through her, he'd found the one thing he'd thought was lost to him forever.
Love.
Most of all, she gave him solace, peace, and acceptance. She was his haven in a harsh life that had been nothing but violence and fighting until the day she'd entered it. And he would do anything to hold on to that and to her.
Except hurt Acheron. Cael was nothing if not loyal, and he hated being torn between the two people he loved most in this world.
He offered Acheron a lopsided grin and used a greeting from one of Acheron's favorite cartoons. "Greetings, O Great Gazoo. How nice of you to join us here on planet Earth again."
Ash rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Barney. How's Betty and Bam Bam doing?"
"Great, if I could only get them away from Wilma and Pebbles. Those women are nothing but trouble."
"Nah, they're good women. It's the ones in red who are always the downfall of good men."
Laughing, Cael extended his hand to Acheron. "Ain't it the truth, my braither?"
Ash reached out and took his hand. Cael went to clap him on the back, only to have him move out of reach.
Cael didn't miss the grimace Acheron quickly hid. "You okay?"
Acheron shrugged his shoulders as if trying to alleviate something uncomfortable. "I hurt my back earlier. It'll be all right though."
Cael nodded. "It's good to be immortal, huh?"
"Some days, anyway."
They grew silent as they stood out on the open street, in front of a small coffee shop where a group of college students were lolling about, studying and talking while music filtered out of the store. Cael wasn't far from home, but he had no intention of taking Ash there. He'd always kept as much distance as possible between his boss and his wife.
Acheron knew things that no one had a right to know and it always chilled him.
"Did you need something?" Cael asked.
Ash didn't speak as a thousand thoughts went through his mind. He wanted to warn this man and knew that if he did so, he'd change so many more fates than just Cael's. The endless chain of change was playing out in his mind.
A thousand lives rewritten because of one spoken word...
Don't speak.
That was so much easier said than done. How he hated knowing what was to come and being constricted by a human conscience from preventing it. Then again, if not for that conscience, it wouldn't matter what happened to Cael one way or another. He wouldn't care about anything except himself.
He'd become Savitar...
Ash winced at the thought. Recovering himself before Cael realized what he was doing, Ash rubbed his cheek. "No, I just wanted to wish you a good night. "
By Cael's face he could tell the Celt didn't believe him. "Yeah, okay. I'll catch you later." He turned and started heading for his home.
Ash stood on the street, watching him walk away. Every part of him wanted to call Cael back and warn him.
And every part of him knew why he couldn't. He didn't know if he should curse or thank Artemis for this gift.
But then the only thing worse than knowing the future was not knowing it, which happened whenever the future involved him or someone whose future directly influenced his.
"Hi there, cutie."
He turned his head to find an extremely attractive college student by his side. With black curly hair, she was dressed in jeans and a tight green top that displayed her curves to perfection. "Hi."
"You want to go inside for a drink? It's on me."
Ash paused as he saw her past, present, and future simultaneously in his mind. Her name was Tracy Phillips. A political science major, she was going to end up at Harvard Med School and then be one of the leading researchers to help isolate a mutated genome that the human race didn't even know existed yet.
The discovery of that genome would save the life of her youngest daughter and cause her daughter to go on to medical school herself. That daughter, with the help and guidance of her mother, would one day lobby for medical reforms that would change the way the medical world and governments treated health care. The two of them would shape generations of doctors and save thousands of lives by allowing people to have groundbreaking medical treatments that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to afford.
And right now, all Tracy could think about was how cute his ass was in leather pants, and how much she'd like to peel them off him.
In a few seconds, she'd head into the coffee shop and meet a waitress named Gina Torres. Gina's dream was to go to college herself to be a doctor and save the lives of the working poor who couldn't afford health care, but because of family problems she wasn't able to take classes this year. Still Gina would tell Tracy how she planned to go next year on a scholarship.
Late tonight, after most of the college students were headed off, the two of them would be chatting about Gina's plans and dreams.
And a month from now, Gina would be dead from a freak car accident that Tracy would see on the news. That one tragic event combined with the happenstance meeting tonight would lead Tracy to her destiny. In one instant, she'd realize how shallow her life had been, and she'd seek to change that and be more aware of the people around her and of their needs. Her youngest daughter would be named Gina Tory in honor of the Gina who was currently busy wiping down tables while she imagined a better life for everyone.