Twisted Fates (Dark Stars #2) - Danielle Rollins Page 0,95

coming faster.

Zora cut the engine on the Jet Ski and came to a stop, sending a spray of water between them and the anil. When the water settled and the growl of her motor died down, she jerked her chin. “See for yourself.”

An object sat in the water just before the time tunnel, rocking gently on the waves. Dimly, Dorothy registered that it was a boat. Ash’s boat. Something deep and red stained the water around it. Dorothy wouldn’t have seen it if they weren’t so close to the anil, the light of the time tunnel illuminating the blood.

There’s so much of it, she thought, horror rising inside of her. Everywhere she looked, there was red. It coated the water like a veil.

“He knew he was going to die like this,” Zora said, her voice strangely distant. “He’d seen it happen.”

Dorothy thought of Roman’s note.

I’ve been haunted by memories of my own death.

A chill moved through her.

“I didn’t do this,” she insisted. Her fingers curled into Zora’s shoulders, but Zora didn’t flinch. “Zora, I swear to you, I didn’t.”

Zora stared at the anil. Her dark eyes absorbed the otherworldly light and shone like an animal’s.

Finally, she spoke.

“But you will.”

LOG ENTRY—AUGUST 6, 2074

17:41 HOURS

THE WORKSHOP

I don’t know what I was expecting to find in Nikola’s notes, but this is beyond my wildest dreams.

Apparently, Nikola never got over his brush with time travel. Remember how I wrote that he was once shocked by a jolt of electricity coming off one of his coils? He’s always claimed that, at that moment, he “saw the Past, Present, and Future at the same time.”

After we talked about this, I was certain that what he saw was just a product of his brain short-circuiting. A near-death experience that he’s interpreted as time travel. Real time travel, as you know, requires three things:

The presence of an anil

Exotic matter

A vessel

Nikola had none of these things on him at the time that the jolt of electricity went through him so, despite my initial hopes, I had to eventually admit that he didn’t actually travel through time.

Now, though, I wonder.

Nikola’s greatest dream was to be able to prove that you could harness the electrical power of the earth and use it to create a kind of “free energy.” Now, over the years, that theory has been proven false. His theories about how the earth transmitted energy just weren’t true.

But the strange thing is that those very theories are true inside of an anil.

So what if he really was on to something? What if there’s a way to travel through time without an anil or exotic matter, or a vessel?

Tesla’s notes include very detailed information on how to do just that. All I’ll have to do is inject a tiny bit of the exotic matter directly into my person.

This sounds crazy . . . but someone has to test it.

Here goes nothing.

Part Four

The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.

—Nikola Tesla

58

Dorothy

JUNE 12, 1913, JUST OUTSIDE SEATTLE

Dorothy hesitated outside the closed office door, unsure of how to proceed. This was her house—or, well, it would’ve been her house, if she’d gone through with the wedding. Now she supposed it was only Avery’s house.

Should she just . . . knock? She didn’t want to interrupt anything. She didn’t know how genius worked, but it seemed entirely possible that the man inside this room was on the verge of some grand discovery and she was about to break his concentration. One knock could alter the entire future of the human race and, frankly, she’d done enough of that already.

Holding her breath, she lowered her hand to the doorknob and let herself in.

The man was hunched over Avery’s ornate, wooden writing desk, scribbling furiously. He didn’t look up as Dorothy swept across the room, stopping before the narrow table where Roman’s dagger sat on a stained and rumpled handkerchief.

Staring down at the dagger, Dorothy felt her stomach turn over. Ash’s blood still coated the thick blade and stained the white cloth. It’d been days, and yet she hadn’t been able to bring herself to clean it. She could still remember the feel of that dagger against her palm, the sudden give of skin and bone as she thrust it into Ash’s chest.

Fingers twitching, she picked it up.

“Dear?”

Dorothy’s eyes snapped back to the hunched-over man at the writing desk. He still hadn’t turned around, but now he lifted a hand, fingers held a few inches apart. “Do you know whether they’ve started making those little brownies yet? The fudgy chocolate ones with the nuts?”

Dorothy hurriedly wrapped her mother’s handkerchief around Roman’s dagger. “Brownies?” she asked, distracted.

“The Little—oh wait.” The man pinched his nose between two fingers, and said, almost to himself, “Little Debbie wasn’t founded until 1960, and then they only sold those awful oatmeal pies. One does forget these things.”

“I could bring you coffee?” Dorothy offered. Avery made good coffee, thick and rich. It was one of the few things he did well. “Or tea?”

“Coffee would be grand.” The man swiveled around in his chair. He had his back to the small desk lamp now, and it left his features bathed in shadow. Dorothy could only make out the bottom half of his nose, and his wide, bright smile.

When he saw the dagger clutched in Dorothy’s hands, the smile faded. He scratched his chin. “Aw, yes. I suppose it’s time to deal with that.”

Dorothy swallowed. “I’m sorry, did you want to—”

“No, no, dear, you’ve proven yourself quite adept.” He smiled, again, but this time it was tinged with sadness.

Dorothy began to turn toward the door.

“Wait,” the man said, and Dorothy hesitated, dread creeping up her skin.

The man cleared his throat. It seemed to take him a moment to work out what he wanted to say and, when he finally spoke, his words were hesitant.

“Does my . . . does my daughter know that I’m still alive?”

Dorothy closed her eyes. Her palms had grown clammy, and her heart was beating loud and fast in her ears. It embarrassed her, a little, that she was so nervous. She’d been expecting this question since she first brought the man here and, honestly, it came as something of a relief that he’d finally asked. But that didn’t make the answer any easier to give.

“No, Professor Walker,” she said, looking up. “Zora thinks that you died at Fort Hunter in 1980.”