“You did.”
“And spent the next eight centuries watching you grieve for her. There is always a catch.”
Marcus wasn’t sure he should ask the question that hung on the tip of his tongue but couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Did you try to go back in time to save your wife and children?”
Seth’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in a hard swallow. “Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I failed.” He shook his head. “Or rather I was not allowed to succeed. Someone… intervened,” he added with a bitter twist to his lips.
“But you were allowed to take Bethany back in time?”
“Yes, much to my surprise.”
“Why?”
He shook his head. “To this day I don’t know. I can only surmise that Bethany’s presence in the past was viewed as having inconsequential effects on the future. Either that or traveling back in time was always her fate. I did, after all, know with a peculiar certainty that she belonged with Robert.”
Silence wrapped itself around them.
Marcus looked at Ami, listened to her soft breaths for several long minutes. “I need to ask a favor of you, Seth.”
He felt Seth’s heavy gaze. “Marcus…”
“If anything happens to Ami during the delivery—”
“It won’t.”
He shook his head. “None of us know what will happen, especially since women on her planet have such difficulty carrying babies to term and delivering them safely.”
“Nothing is going to happen to her,” Seth insisted with savage determination. “David and I won’t let it. Ami’s body has incredible regenerative capabilities. And David and I are both powerful enough to reattach severed limbs. We can carry her through childbirth.”
“You don’t know that with certainty.”
“Yes, I do.” The elder immortal closed his eyes and clamped his lips together. After a minute, he shook his head as though warring with himself. “I’ve seen the future.”
Marcus turned his head. “What?”
Opening his eyes, Seth stared at Ami. “I’ve seen the future. Ami will live. I saw the two of you together.”
Ami will live.
But Seth had said nothing of their daughter. “Was the baby with us?”
Seth hesitated. “No.”
Marcus looked away. His throat thickened as his eyes began to burn and his chest to ache. Despair suffused him.
“It doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
Marcus shook his head, unable to speak.
“When I saw you, the two of you were fighting vampires. You wouldn’t take a toddler into battle with you.”
Marcus had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Seth, if the baby doesn’t make it…”
“Marcus,” Seth rasped.
“If the baby doesn’t make it,” he doggedly continued, forcing the words out, “I want you to open whatever dimensional doorway you must, go back to the night you assigned Ami to be my Second, and—”
“I won’t do it,” Seth interrupted. “Don’t ask it of me, Marcus. Ami wouldn’t want it and—”
“I’m asking you for Ami,” he insisted. “You know what losing the baby will do to her. The whole reason she came to Earth in the first place was because births are practically nonexistent on her planet now. She had never even seen a pregnant woman before she came here. Getting pregnant herself was nothing short of a miracle. Losing the baby…” His throat closed off for a moment. Marcus shook his head. “You have to go back and—”
“I won’t assign her to someone else!” Seth said, loud enough that Marcus glanced at the bed to ensure he hadn’t woken Ami.
When she didn’t stir, he frowned at Seth. “What?”
“I’m not going to go back and assign her to another immortal.”
“Good. I don’t want you to,” Marcus blurted, hackles rising at the thought of Ami being assigned to someone else, of her living with someone else. Had she not been ordered to serve as Marcus’s Second, she never would’ve fallen in love with him.
Seth frowned. “Then what were you—?”
“I was going to ask you to go back in time and tell me to use a fucking condom.”
Seth blinked. “Oh.”
Marcus relaxed. “I love Ami. More than I’ve ever loved anyone. I would do anything to make her happy. And anything to spare her grief.”
Sobering, Seth nodded. “As would I.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
Seth returned his gaze to Ami.
“You, more than anyone, know how much she has suffered since coming here.” Thoughts of the many things that could go wrong and rob them of their baby’s life once more thickened Marcus’s throat. Moisture welled in his eyes, blurring her form. “Would you have her suffer more?”
Seth shook his head slowly. “I’ll do it. For both of you. I’ve no wish to see you suffer either.”
“Thank you,” he whispered.
The two spent the rest of the day sitting on the floor, watching over Ami and ensuring she rested peacefully until sunset.
3
In the first draft, Cliff wasn’t the only one who volunteered to tag a vampire with a tracking device at the meeting in David’s home in chapter 11.
“Cliff,” Seth said.
The young vampire’s eyebrows flew up. “Yes, sir?”
“Have you had any luck recruiting the vampires with whom you’ve been rubbing elbows?”
“None so far. The ones I’ve encountered are either so far gone they would be too dangerous to recruit or are recently turned and so high on using their new strength and speed to kill that they think themselves invincible. Any suggestion otherwise, any insinuation that they would be better off joining you guys, usually results in mockery, hostility, and my coming dangerously close to getting my ass kicked. I can’t seem to find any middle ground, any vampires who are beyond that first burst of power but not yet to the he-could-snap-at-any-minute stage.”
“Have you encountered any of this new breed of vampire?” David asked.
“No, sir. Not yet. Should I…?” Cliff looked back and forth at the elders. “If I do encounter one, should I try to infiltrate the group? Try to join them and gather whatever—?”
“No,” Bastien interrupted. “It’s too dangerous.”
Cliff contemplated the immortals seated around the table. “No offense, but you don’t seem to have a lot of avenues open to you right now. No stone should go unturned, remember? If I come across one of these badass vamps and feign interest in his cause—whatever the hell it is—then I could find out faster than anyone else whom exactly you’re dealing with.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Bastien repeated.
Cliff shrugged. “I don’t have that much to lose.”
Melanie reached past Bastien and touched Cliff’s arm. “Please don’t say that, Cliff.”
“Look,” he continued, resolute, “the Immortal Guardians have been good to me. You all helped me hold my shit together a lot longer than I would have if I’d been left to fend for myself. If I’m gonna go out—and we all know it’s gonna happen some day in the not-too-distant future—then being taken out while helping you conquer the enemy wouldn’t be such a bad way to go.”