Love Beyond Time Read online

Rebecca Royce

  Nathan, one a real estate broker in Atlanta, and the other a

  doctor in Des Moines, had better luck with the fish but had

  still not caught anything today.

  "Need some help, bud?" He didn't want to wound

  Doug's ego but he also wanted to eat dinner in the not too

  distant future. It wouldn't do to be the one to catch their

  meal for the third day in a row. That would be pushing

  things, or at least he was sure that's what Veli would say.

  "I'm fine, Mister Reporter." Doug wiped sweat off

  of his brow.

  They had all been calling him that during the whole

  vacation. He rolled his eyes. He'd recently been getting a

  lot of publicity as his career seemed to finally be taking off.

  Given the current state of things in the world, he was never

  out of work. He had also been told his dark good looks

  played well in front of the camera. He wasn't sure what that

  meant and he wasn't particularly interested in it.

  Leonardo had felt it was dangerous to be so out in

  the open, contenting himself with research and spells to

  find their missing kinsmen whilst he worked as a teacher

  and he earned his doctorate in history and ancient cultures.

  But in the thirty years since they had arrived on Veli's

  floor, it was only Charma who had located anyone—

  Marina, she had called herself, five years old and sitting on

  the floor of a Russian orphanage. Charma had seen her in a

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  dream and woken up insisting that Veli take them there.

  Under-fed and not properly stimulated, Marina had

  taken longer to come into her powers. Even today she was

  quiet and dreamy, preferring to assist Veli with his tasks in

  searching for others rather than to venture out on her own.

  Kal couldn't blame her. He had been one of the lucky ones,

  found and guarded till he had grown old enough. What

  must it be like for his lost family connections to have no

  one to communicate with telepathically? Sometimes he

  thought he could hear them in his dreams.

  Charma, or Char as they called her, had been their

  rock. She was a healer, in the best sense of the word.

  Unaware of her special abilities, people flocked to her

  home in Manhattan hourly to have her make them tea and

  listen to their problems. Somehow they simply felt better

  when they left her, unaware that she had probed their minds

  and eased their pain, unaware that every time she did it, it

  ate a little of her soul up. He wasn't sure she slept at all

  anymore.

  In his own way he helped, putting himself amongst

  the public, traveling to the war torn places and daring the

  people who did the dirty work for the Evil One to come out

  and get him. It kept everyone else off of the radar. He knew

  he was silently hunted and normally he would invite the

  fight. Two would-be assassins had lost their lives trying to

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  trifle with him when he was a teenager. But nothing

  happened in the presence of his college buddies. He saw to

  it. No matter what he felt or who he encountered, he didn't

  engage in front of the people who mattered. He wouldn't

  risk them. A shiver travelled through Kal's body. At least

  so far.

  "Hey guys," Kal cut into their conversation. He

  thought they had been discussing a girl that James felt was

  "the one." James felt that a girl was "the one" every other

  week. "I think we need to get moving. The weather is

  changing."

  "It's been nice all day," Nathan interrupted, pulling

  out his personal digital assistant. "The weather report is

  good all week."

  "Don't believe everything the weathermen tell you,"

  Kal replied quietly, manipulating the clouds above them, a

  power every Outsider had but that he was only moderately

  good at attempting. "It looks like rain to me."

  "Let's not argue with Mister Reporter." Doug

  laughed, obviously happy to be off the hook from fishing.

  "He's lived all over the world with that weird uncle of his.

  He can probably sense these things."

  His friend had no idea how close he was to the

  truth.

  "Very funny." Kal laughed. "Let's go." Mentally he

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  tried to compel them to listen, a power he tried very hard to

  not use on friends and not surprisingly they complied with

  his wishes. How did you know if your friends really liked

  you if you were always pushing away their free wills to

  follow your orders? In his deepest soul, he believed that

  mortal human beings had the right to make decisions that

  might screw up their lives and on frequent occasions he let

  his friends destroy themselves if they wanted to. But in this

  case he had a feeling what was coming for them wouldn't

  be anywhere near here if it weren't for his very unique

  presence in the world. Pushing again, he kept moving

  everyone forward.

  His senses became more aware and he could hear

  someone running towards them. Footsteps sounded in his

  eardrums as if they were right next to him instead of a

  distance away. Two people were in a chase.

  This was it—this was what he'd been waiting to

  happen all day long. Whatever, or whoever, was up ahead

  ran fast, putting a distance between himself and the person

  behind them. This left Kal no time to make everyone go

  away. He had no choice but to handle it in front of his

  friends and hope that Char could fix it later. He turned to

  meet his destiny, knowing there would be more than one

  person to handle. He raised his hand, ready to call down

  electricity as his first defense.

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  Chapter Two

  Earlier that same day

  Isabelle Listora stood in front of the creepiest cabin

  she had ever seen. It didn't look deserted, not really, but it

  didn't look lived in either. It hadn't been occupied for at

  least several days, she was sure about that. The door hung

  open and it looked like the local wildlife had taken what

  was left of the food from the cupboards. At the very least,

  Isabelle was relatively sure that she wasn't going to be

  finding any neglected children occupying the cabin today.

  If they were there—and her instincts told her they were

  not—then they were well hidden and not likely to come out

  just because she asked.

  Everything about what had happened since she had

  woken up this morning had seemed so bizarre to her. Why

  was she being sent out into the woods to investigate child

  abuse? Where was the local agency and why were they not

  looking into what was happening? She had, in fact, asked

  her boss those same questions several times before heading

  off into the middle of nowhere, driving four hours from

  home to an unknown destination where she would ha
ve no

  police help or known local resources to call upon in case of

  an emergency. Once again, inwardly, she groaned at the

  absurdity of the whole thing.

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  Her boss had smiled the strange bland smile that no

  longer reached his eyes and told her that because of budget

  cuts they were all being asked to stretch their legs a little

  bit. She had wanted to scream that this was more than

  stretching her legs, this was running a marathon, but she

  kept those feelings to herself. She really didn't want to get

  fired and so she didn't point out that she hated the woods

  and everything to do with nature; that the most outdoorsy

  she ever got was heading into the sporting goods store to

  purchase fleece from their ski department.

  Truth was, she would travel to the ends of the earth

  to help a child in need and the file she had been handed had

  certainly shown a child in need. It was rumored that the

  father had kept his son tied to a chair for up to a week

  before releasing him and letting him go back to school. She

  was going to have to go and find the teacher now, which

  would mean finding her way to the town and given that her

  GPS system didn't even know this little town existed on the

  map, she was going to have to rely on her nonexistent sense

  of direction.

  Hurry up Isabelle, it's time to leave. It's finally time

  to begin the journey you were born to take.

  Isabelle spun around quickly, grabbing the door for

  support as she tried to find the person behind the voice she

  had just heard.

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  "Hello?" she shouted. "Is someone there?"

  No one responded and Isabelle quickly tried to scan

  the area with her eyes to see if she could see anything. She

  couldn't make out anything, but she noticed the clouds

  above her were starting to look ominous. The last thing she

  wanted was to get caught out in the rain. She ran quickly

  back to her car, her baby since she had bought the thing a

  year earlier. Both she, and the car, were getting pampered

  when they got back to civilization.

  Some of Isabelle's girlfriends had made fun of her

  near compulsive need to care for her car. Most of them

  used their cars like a substitute garbage can and/or closet,

  leaving them dirty with all kinds of odd and disgusting

  things that varied from old lipsticks to guiltily eaten fast

  food wrappers, but Isabelle really treasured her car. It was

  midsize and not anything that would cause a commotion in

  the auto industry, but she loved owning it. Not once had

  she found herself broken down on the side of the road

  calling for help. It got her where she needed to go and she

  was hugely grateful for it. It wasn't like she was spending

  her money on other lavish things. Her closet was filled with

  comfortable clothes that she had picked up quickly when

  she had a need for them—work clothes mostly, fitting for a

  person working in her type of profession. Mixed in on them

  were jeans, sweaters, and exercise outfits that admittedly

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  she didn't pull out enough, preferring to sleep in on

  Saturdays and read after work.

  Of course, she couldn't forget about the back of the

  closet that held the seven bridesmaid dresses she had worn

  in the last year. They ranged in color from a respectable

  lilac to an obscene marmalade color that she still cringed

  looking at six months later, both from the memory of how

  terrible she had looked in the dress to what it said about her

  personal life that she had worn seven bridesmaid dresses in

  the last year and had gone out on exactly three dates.

  But there was no time to dwell on all of the sad,

  albeit tragically silly, aspects of her life. She might hate

  standing out in the woods waiting for a rainfall but there

  were children's lives at stake and that she took very

  seriously.

  She opened the car door up and the wind blew her

  black hair off of her shoulders. She closed her eyes. Where

  had the rain come from and why did it feel like it had been

  sent just for her? A shiver ran through her, up her arms and

  down her spine. Goose bumps appeared on her flesh and

  she was suddenly very cold. Opening her eyes, she got into

  the car and quickly put it in drive, pushing down harder

  than she intended to on the accelerator and hearing the tires

  screech. There was no more denying the internal tension

  she held. Isabelle just didn't make driving mistakes.

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  Breathe, she told herself. She wasn't used to being

  in the middle of nowhere. Everything about this day drove

  her crazy. She shouldn't be driving away in the car like a

  lunatic when she had been sent to investigate living

  conditions and potential neglect. The door to the house was

  left wide open. She should be snooping inside and taking

  her time to look things over. Any other day of the week,

  that is exactly how she would be behaving but instead she

  was hightailing it out of the countryside as fast as she could

  without looking back.

  The driveway, as she had noted on the way in, was

  surprisingly long and curvy, which was exactly what you

  would want if you had to hide child abuse from the

  neighbors. Trees, most slightly falling over, drooped down

  on top of it, adding to its unkempt feeling. How was it

  possible that someone could travel such a short distance in

  the state of New York and encounter such a varying degree

  of living situations, she wondered out loud to kill the

  silence in the car.

  Drive, he'll be there.

  Oh man, now she was really cracking up. As soon

  as she got home she was making an appointment to have

  her head examined. She had always heard that there was a

  large burnout rate in her career path but she had assumed

  that one day she would just find herself compelled to go

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  into private practice or back to school. She never could

  have predicted that she would start to show signs of

  schizophrenia. Whose voice was that? Once again she

  pushed down on the accelerator.

  Turning left, she was on what they would refer to

  now as a State Highway. The road was bigger but still

  surprisingly empty without the signs and lights that were

  usually present on the Interstates.

  She turned on her radio and the CD that she had

  been listening to on the way upstate came through the

  speakers. She might not have been raised in Manhattan, but

  almost everyone who had lived within a twenty-mile radius

  of it was a closeted Broadway musical fan. Isabelle just

  wore her obsession a little bit more out in the open than

  most of her friends. Mus
ic from one of her favorite shows

  filled the air around her and she took a deep breath. How

  bad could a trip be if she got to imagine she was sitting in a

  dark theater being transported to another time while she

  took it? Her father had taken her to see that show for her

  twentieth birthday. She had loved every second of it and

  even if she knew her dad preferred sitting around listening

  to the bands from the sixties and seventies to the belting

  sounds of Broadway stars, he had loved watching her enjoy

  it.

  She needed to remember to thank him more often

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  for the small things that he did for her. Even if she never

  found the person she was searching for, she knew real love

  existed, she needed only look at the way her parents loved

  each other to see it.

  Isabelle's anxiety reprieve was brought short by the

  sound of a clunk and a hissing noise that could only mean

  one thing. She had blown a tire. How was it even possible?

  Hadn't she just been musing on the greatness of her car?

  Was fate playing tricks on her? She sighed; maybe it was a

  good thing that the road was strangely quiet today. She

  wouldn't have to worry about the other cars not seeing her

  and slamming into her as she attempted to change her tire.

  Or better yet, she thought suddenly, she would use her auto

  club card.

  She pulled out her cell phone at the same time as

  she took out her wallet. Taking a deep breath, she

  composed herself so that she wouldn't sound like a lunatic

  to the man on the other end of the phone but she never even

  got that far. Out of range, how could that be? She wasn't

  even in roaming range? She wasn't in Nepal; this was the

  United States of America. Shouldn't she have cell service?

  Shouldn't the fact that she paid a way too large monthly fee

  for her unlimited nationwide calling have given her service