52

Alex stared at Kendra.  His pupils dilated enough to darken the hazel of his eyes--the reflex of a hunter, the better to take in all possible visual elements.  He was quiet so long that she felt a bit unnerved when he spoke.

“Have you walked in my thoughts without my knowledge?  You cannot have learned that name in any other way.”

She sat up.  “I did not learn that name in this time.  Akhom will force us both to do his bidding in the future.”

Alex drew back, but not much.  “You are a witch,” he said.  “I did not think such creatures truly existed, yet--”

“I am not a witch,” Kendra said.  “I am a scientist.  As I told you, I study the stars.  I have traveled here from four hundred years in the future.  I live across the Atlantic Ocean, in…”  

Alex buried his face in his hands.  

She waited for him to look up.  When he did, Kendra thought her heart might burst.  Alex looked like a man whose world had collapsed and left him on the brink of insanity.  He slumped and looked at the floor.  So it is true.  Some people do have a hard time with the concept of time travel.  Kendra had not expected Alex to be one of them.

“Hey,” she took his hand in hers.  “You, too, are a scientist when we meet in my time, and a better mathematician than I.”  

His shoulders seemed a bit less hunched.  

“Think of it this way,” Kendra pulled her legs out from under the blankets, a task made difficult by Alex’s unmoving hulk, seated on the bed at the level of her hip.  When free of the sheets, she sat beside him and put one arm around his waist.  She tried not to shiver as the chill of his body sucked the warmth of sleep out of her arm.  “You’ve been alive for over a thousand years, correct?”

“More than two thousand,” he whispered.  “Your manner of speech has changed.”

“Yes,” Kendra said flatly.  “I suppose that as I think of my time, its language fills my consciousness.”

Alex shook his head, as if to rid himself of an unpleasant sensation.

“I can try…” she said gently, “I will endeavor to make my words suit this time.  I have not made a study of it, though I have read a few of Shakespeare’s plays.” 

“Plays?” Alex asked with more strength in his voice.  “The upstart Crow?  I did hear some verse read when in London last, and ’twas said to be writ by the hand of Will Shakespeare.  I thought the rhyme and meter well done, but the sentiment confounded the sense of the thing.”  He shook his head.  “I have not returned.  The Plague swept London soon thereafter, and troubles us still.”  He looked at her with confusion, but no longer seemed distressed.  “I cannot think that the day will come when a poet may master the stage.”  

“Ah,” said Kendra, who made a mental note to have herself checked for plague at the first sign of illness.  “He will write plays in iambic pentameter.  Everyone in my world reads at least one in his or her lifetime.  That brings me back to my point--” she paused, realizing that she spoke again in a modern style.  “Oh,” she said, frustrated, “let me just spit this out, and then we can fix it, okay?”

He frowned, brow wrinkled in confusion.

“You’ve been alive…I mean, you’re existed for two thousand years.  The language has changed, has it not?”

Alex nodded.

“The science has evolved.  You know that the Earth is round now, true?”

“Those among us who read or are of a thoughtful nature agree that it is so.”

“Science, language, and fashion--everything about life continues to change and evolve.  In the future we understand more, enough that I can come back here.”

“Each word you speak sounds intelligible, yet my thought balks like a frightened horse when I would drive it forward to meet the meaning of the whole.”

“Alex, I am sorry to tell you this, but I need your help,” Kendra pushed forward gently.  “Akhom has threatened to bind Regis and his whole community in the sun until they are dead.”

“You have met my father?”  Alex turned so fast to face her that Kendra felt the friction warm her chilled arm a fraction.  She drew it from around his waist, and waited for the slow return of heat from the rest of her body.  

“Yes.  You rescued me from American Missile, the industrial spies who held me against my will--”

“What are ‘industrial spies’?”

“Henchman for powerful businessmen--shopkeepers--who want to know how to travel in time,” Kendra explained.  “In my time, I am the only one who can do it.”

Alex drew a deep breath.  Kendra suppressed a smile.  She’d learned that breathing was a means of expression rather than a physiological need for a vampire.  

“Regis, as I know him, is not given to kidnapping,” he said.

“I believe that Regis had no other choice.  He treated both of us kindly.”  

Kendra went on to explain what she knew about American Missile’s intent to wipe out vampires and Akhom’s intent to subjugate humanity.  When she’d finished, Alex paced.  He pulled his hair and moaned.

“I can do nothing.  My father, my brothers, some not even made yet…and you…” He stopped his pacing and faced her from across the room.  “I have no science or witchcraft to offer.”

Kendra’s thoughts swirled, torn between a desire to comfort him and a need to elicit his help.   Most uncharacteristically, her mind focused on Alex rather than the problem.  I’m not the comforting type.  Phil Rosenburg probably would want her to think about why.  Because I always think of myself first.  In a flash, Kendra felt like the most selfish person on Earth.  She wanted to cry.  If only she could go back to Stamford, and back to counseling--

“Kendra?”  Alex looked at her with concern.  “Have you fallen ill?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“I have called your name many times.”

“I am not thinking well.”  She remembered how hungry she’d been before she’d fallen asleep.  The candle she had brought upstairs with her flared as the last bit of wax burned, then it went out.  “I have not eaten in…a day?  What time is it?”  

“The dawn approaches.  Come, you must eat.”  He stood and offered his arm.

Dawn--England was nine hours ahead of California.  Had it been twenty-four hours since her last meal, or not?  Was it daylight savings time?  She hated time conversion.  Her stomach rumbled.  Alex was right.  It was time to eat.

Alex waited outside her room while she pulled on her first skirt, headscarf, and tunic.  She left the stinking top layer in a heap on the floor.  When she joined him at the head of the stairs, Alex gave her his candlestick, and led the way down the stairs to the kitchen.  He lit a lamp, then sliced two apples and some bread for her.  “I have kept some provisions of the sort a mortal might eat since you left.”

Kendra stuffed a thick slice of apple into her mouth, and tried not to think of the hot breakfast Rich would have prepared.  “How long has it been since I was here?  I tried to arrive a month after that.”

“Three moons have passed, and half a fortnight more.”

“Seven weeks,” Kendra mumbled, her mouth full.  He must have bought fresh food every few days.  She was touched.  “The bread’s not even moldy--I mean, thank you.”  She blushed.