He was right. It wasn’t a major injury—I’d had one cut that was nearly this bad back when I was just learning to shave my legs. There were, however, twin two-inch furrows in my leg, just above the knee. A dark stain on the leg of my jeans was growing, and blood was dripping into a small puddle on the marble floor.
“I’m just glad Katherine didn’t hear you—fortunately, once her meds kick in, she sleeps through anything,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll get the bandages. You stay there,” he added forcefully, and rather unnecessarily, since I was highly unlikely to be traipsing off on another adventure with a bleeding leg.
I waited, my face buried in Daphne’s ruff, until Connor returned with a pair of scissors, a washcloth, antiseptic ointment, several gauze bandages, and a roll of medical tape. He pulled me up onto one of the kitchen chairs, cut away the leg of my pants, and began to clean the wounds.
“Ow!” I said, flinching from the washcloth, which he had apparently dipped in alcohol.
“Stay still. You’re lucky this isn’t worse than it is, Kate.”
I shuddered as my mind flashed back to the image of the Doberman flying toward me. Connor didn’t realize exactly how lucky I was, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to give him the gory details. He didn’t speak again, just finished cleaning the cuts and applying the ointment and bandage.
When he was done wiping the blood from the floor, he pulled up a chair and stared at me for several seconds. “So?”
I gave him a brief overview of my past few hours. When I was finished, I pushed the book toward him. “The book isn’t why I went. I just had the opportunity to take it, so I did. I went to see Charlayne. I’m all on board with changing this timeline—I want my parents back—but, as far as the rest of it goes… well, the Cyrists have been around forever based on my memories. I guess I wanted to know if the Cyrists are really as… I don’t know, diabolical… as you and Katherine seem to think.”
“And are they?”
“Probably.” I shrugged. “Fine, yes, they are. I think they’re planning something big—or rather, Saul is. I don’t suppose you can really pin it on the rank and file who think this is all predestined. You know the Creed, right? ‘We choose The Way, so… ’”
He nodded, and I continued. “Well, they take it a lot more seriously and more literally than I would have thought.”
“Not surprising,” he said. “The few Cyrists I’ve encountered, even in previous timelines, clearly drank the full cup of Kool-Aid.”
“This one guy,” I said, “he was an Acolyte, one of their youth members, and he was talking about the Chosen being saved. Not from punishment in the afterlife, but from some sort of disaster. He said that the Chosen would live, when everyone else died. That the Chosen would be the future…”
Connor was silent for a moment, staring down at the cover of the book, and then looked back up. “So—you jumped back here. Where’s Trey?”
“Right this minute, he’s asleep at home, with his alarm set so that he can pick me up at seven, at the Lincoln Memorial.” I took in a deep breath. “But if you’re asking about this afternoon, I think he got out. I don’t know for sure. I told him to run, that I was going to jump back here—there was no way we could have made it otherwise. But when he heard me scream, when the dog bit me, he was running back toward me.”
My lip was shaking and then tears started. “I made a mistake, a big one. We shouldn’t have gone. And Connor—they know who I am. For one thing, I’m almost a carbon copy of Prudence. There are pictures of her—stained-glass windows—everywhere. And… I think they’re watching the house.” I thought back to what Trey’s dad had said about Cyrists having friends in high places. “If they know we’re here, that Katherine is training me, then I don’t understand why they haven’t just stormed the place. The Cyrist Templars clearly do whatever Saul and Prudence tell them to do, and we’re just…”
He nodded. “I’ve wondered that myself. We have a security system, and it’s not a cheap one. Daphne’s also pretty good at warning about intruders, at least for people coming and going in the conventional fashion,” he added, narrowing his eyes at me. “But it would be child’s play for someone who was determined, who had money and skill on his side, to get in here.”
I crossed my arms on the table and laid my head down for a moment, overwhelmed by the enormity of what we were facing and how little we knew. And there was a huge gnawing sensation in my stomach, fear that Trey might be in trouble and I wasn’t—or rather, wouldn’t be—there to help him.