Galen pulled out his sword and sliced at another one, who clutched one hand to a spurting neck and fell to his knees. A gun went off in a short burst. It caught one of the remaining soldiers bailing into the melee. He bloomed with blood.
“Don’t fire in these close quarters, you idiots!” Casey shouted.
Another soldier hit Galen with a baton from behind. Galen managed to duck and spare his head, but the blow caught his shoulder. He staggered and then there were four of them hitting and hitting. He sank to his knees.
“Galen!” she cried, pulling her remaining captor off balance as she lunged toward Galen.
Another gun went off. A single shot. “Enough!” Casey yelled. All motion stopped. Two of the camo guys were groaning. One lay still in a pool of blood from his slashed neck. One of the guys still standing around Galen kicked his sword away. It spun toward Lucy and the guy who held her by both elbows from behind.
“Cuff him or tie him up or something,” Casey said, disgusted. “Before you let him cut you to pieces with that sword.” He walked over to Lucy. “You want to do her, or shall I?” he asked the guy who held her. He was a black guy, with dead eyes and a white scar on one cheek.
“Be my guest, Boss,” the black guy growled.
Galen had gone still, kneeling on the floor, his hands jerked behind his back. Casey came up and held Jake’s gun to Lucy’s head. The muzzle was cold at her temple.
“Say good-bye to your girlfriend, Viking.”
“You will freeze in Hel’s kingdom,” Galen growled. That wasn’t the only growl in the room. From a distance a powerful grinding sound thrummed up through the floor. It buzzed in her chest, coming closer.
“Shit,” one of the camo guys said. “I know that sound—”
But before he could say what it was, the whole place was shaking like Vandal shook Galen’s socks, sharp and fast. The men around her staggered.
“Earthquake!” one shouted.
Casey fell backward. The gun went off and skittered from his hand. Glass shattered and tinkled. The floor heaved like someone was shaking out a rug. Men scrambled toward the exit.
“Get out. Get out!”
Galen crawled toward her. Ceiling tiles crashed to the floor and broke over the gears of Leonardo’s machine. Galen covered her with his body as a rending sound squealed through the lab. A broken girder poked through the wall toward the machine.
Galen had recovered his sword. “Lucy, come away!” he shouted over the din.
They staggered to their feet, reeling. The grinding sound was passing on. “We can’t leave Casey with the machine!” she shouted.
They looked around and saw that Casey was staggering toward one of the abandoned machine guns just in front of the machine. Would he rather kill us than save himself? It was as though someone else from far away was thinking that. The west wall of the lab leaned slowly in.
And then it was still. The grinding sound was gone. The silence was deafening. Casey got to his feet. Galen shoved her behind him and readied his sword, his face grim. He’d be cut down by that machine gun.
But there was Jake’s gun. At her feet. The one she swore she’d never use because she wasn’t that person.
But she was all they had. She reached for it. Casey was turning, machine gun in hand, his face a mask of hatred and greed. She stepped out from behind Galen and brought Jake’s Glock up. She pulled the trigger again and again and again. She braced her feet against the kick, but it was so much more than she expected. Her shots went wild and high and then she wrestled the gun down again and—
Casey’s face disappeared. It just shattered in blood and white splinters of bone.
The machine gun clattered to the floor. Casey toppled forward.
Lucy was heaving sobs. She didn’t remember starting to cry. Galen held her, whispering soothing sounds.
“You are dor, Lucy. Brave.”
“I . . . I just killed a man.” She couldn’t get her breath. There was so much dust in the air.
An aftershock ripped through the lab. The west wall buckled. This whole place was going to come down. It might destroy the machine. Leonardo’s lifework. The key to time itself.
But what if it didn’t?
“Boss?” The camo guys were making their way back into the building.
She looked up at Galen. “We’ve got to get the machine out of here. And there’s only one way to do that.”
“It will gewend back here as it did for Brad.”
Debris crashed behind them. Casey’s men would be through the wreckage any minute.
“Yeah.” She chewed her lip. “Leonardo said it comes back to where it left because time is bent too far and bounces back into its track.” She looked up at Galen. “But what if you didn’t take it far in time? Just to the next second? But to a different place. Maybe it would stay where you took it.”
She picked up her bag with the book in it and ran to the machine without waiting for an answer. “Okay, okay,” she reassured herself. She flipped on the power. It whined up the scale.
She positioned herself in front of the lever. Galen came and put his arms around her. She pulled the diamond down.
Where to take it? Where was there room for fourteen feet of time machine, where no one would find it? The lights began to play across the wreckage, coloring motes of dust. The gears ground to a halt. In seconds they would slingshot forward.
“You okay, Boss?” More crashing from behind them. She couldn’t think. Where?
And then she knew. Why it should come to her like that she didn’t know. The Palace of Fine Arts. Her favorite place. The place she had shared picnics with Brad. In the empty, secret room they’d found under the Rotunda. Now it was sealed again. Would they be sealed in, too? But the Chronicle had said there was a passage into the Exploratorium.
She smiled up at Galen as the momentum of the machine threw them into the vortex.
Lucy sat up, coughing. Galen stirred beside her and shoved himself up to hands and knees. She felt the machine looming above them, though she couldn’t see it.
“Are you okay, Lucy?” He felt for her in the darkness. His hands skimmed her face. They were trembling.
“Yes. Yes.” She was just a little breathless. “And you?”
“I am sore from where they bateth me, no more.” He paused. “Where are we?”
“Under the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. No one will find the machine here.” He gathered her into his arms. “You knew the quake was coming, didn’t you? That’s what you meant when you said the earth would help us.”
“Ja. I can feel the earth, Lucy. I speak this to you before.”
“Your mother was right after all.” Lucy thought about his connection to animals. “I think you had it in you all along.” He could now be to his people what they expected of him. He could take his brother’s place. It was what Galen had wanted all his life. And she must not keep him from his happiness. This was his story, after all, not hers. She was just along for the ride.
She had never felt so small, so insignificant, so wrong.
“The Norns wove it,” he agreed softly.
She was glad she couldn’t see him. That meant he couldn’t see her. All she had to do was keep her voice steady and he’d never know that sending him back was like ripping out her intestines. “You can finally go back to your own time. The machine is safe. It will come back here now when you are done with it, where no one will find it.”
“Ja.”
One word. Flat. That was it then.
“But that would not be right,” he whispered.
She tried to breathe. Don’t push him. He’s not the kind of guy who can be pushed.
“I was thinking, Lucy, while we ride the horses. You came to my time because you thought the Norns wove that for you. You speak this to me. I remember. You name it ‘destiny.’ ”
She nodded.
“We both look for our fate. I think we have it, Lucy.”