Timeless(29)

Mindy opened the back door and put the box of groceries on the back seat, then slid in behind the steering wheel, closing the door behind her. "You okay?"

Andrew continued to stare at his hands curled into tight fists in his lap and shook his head. "What's going on with me?" he asked, looking up into Mindy's concerned eyes. "Am I losing my friggin' mind? Is that what's going on here, because my grandmother—" He looked back down at his hands, then over his shoulder at the groceries in the back seat. "Is there anything in there I can eat? I'm so hungry my stomach hurts."

Mindy reached over into the back of the car, found a bag of bread rolls, and handed them to him. "Help yourself, and I can assure you, you're not going mad."

He tore the bag open and devoured half a bread roll in two bites. "How can you be so sure?" he mumbled, his mouth full of bread.

Mindy turned the key in the ignition and backed out into the street. "Because you've been hexed by a Bloodthorn witch."

Andrew's head shot up to look at Mindy. "How do you know?"

"Because you stink of deepsleep, a concoction made from the bloodthorn vine and Jimson weed. Deepsleep is well known for its ability to wipe the memories of its victims, then put them to sleep." She looked at the half-empty bag of bread rolls in Andrew's lap. "An overwhelming urge to eat is also a well-known side effect of deepsleep."

Andrew stopped chewing and looked at the half-eaten bread roll in his hand.

"Don't panic. Eating is a healthy antidote."

Andrew nodded, taking another bite. "Thank God. Because I don't think I could stop even if I wanted to."

"Tell me," Mindy said. "Can you remember anything? Can you remember leaving the supermarket? Anything?"

Andrew shook his head, wiping crumbs off his t-shirt. "Nothing. Not a thing, but I suspect this has happened more times than I like to admit. I just don't know why."

Mindy studied Andrew's face, softly bathed in the silver glow of the moonlight filtering through the windscreen, then turned back to watch the road stretching out ahead of them. "I think I do," she said. "I just wonder how much you've told her."





Chapter 13 – Hands On Me.





The whirling portal sucked Alexandria and D'Artagnan into its blinding white center, then just as quickly shot them out like a stone ball fired out of a cannon, depositing them shakily on their feet in a long, dark hallway barely lighted with occasional burning torches hanging along the wall at various intervals in either direction. The tunnel was about eight feet wide, with arched ceilings, which were roughly the same distance high. The air smelled musty, like an old pair of damp boots that had been left sitting in a garden shed all winter.

D'Artagnan reached out and took hold of her elbow to steady her. "You okay?" he asked, looking at her with great concern. "You've never done this before, have you?"

Alexandria shook her head, waiting for her eyes to adjust to sudden darkness. "First time," she whispered apprehensively, wondering if she had made a huge mistake. She blinked, studying her new surroundings for a long moment, then turned to look at her companion. "Have you done this before?" she asked, glad she had not come alone.

"As a matter of fact, quite a few times," D'Artagnan said, letting her go. He looked up and down the length of the dark hall and unsheathed his sword. It made a sizzling sound, like a long kitchen blade along a sharpening stone.

"Are you sure you're going to need that?" Alexandria asked, taking a hasty step backward from the gleaming sword. She felt the cold, damp wall press into her back through the thin fabric of her dress, and shuddered. "It doesn't smell very nice in here," she murmured, grateful that she wasn't claustrophobic.

"Never hurts to be prepared. It is an unpredictable time in which we live and, I think you mean, down here," he said, correcting her.

"Down here?" she asked, growing more nervous as each word she uttered echoed off the stone walls encircling her. "Is there a phobia for being afraid of being underground?" she asked.

"Like being buried alive?" he asked. "I had a cousin once that—"

"Never mind," Alexandria said. "You can tell me about it another time."

D'Artagnan nodded. "I'd say we're in the tunnels under a manor house of some kind. Wealthy family estates quite often had tunnels running underground to avoid capture during wartime, then later, they were used for lovers' trysts. They could secretly go from one estate to another without discovery. All very naughty and clandestine," he said chuckling, as though drawing on a personal memory, then continued. "When you have been in as many tunnels as I have, well, they all start to look the same." He glanced around, studying the walls as though looking for a sign to inform him of their whereabouts. "So, then, which way?" he asked, turning back to Alexandria, who was frantically brushing a bug off her arm. "Can you still hear the girl?"