Tommy Nightmare(107)

The plane jostled her up and down as it shot along the runway, and her teeth chattered together. Then the wheels left the ground and the ride became smooth, though it felt dangerously steep to her. Jenny’s heart kicked as she watched the ground drop away below. There was nothing holding them up now. It was like magic.

She watched out the window as the lights of Charleston dropped away on one side. She could see a lot of flickering blue lights there, and a column of National Guard unpacking from their trucks, but they were soon too small and distant to discern.

“Can we really just go to Mexico?” Jenny asked. “Don’t we have to show our passports or something?”

“That is the law,” Alexander said. “But there are plenty of ways around it, usually involving cash. Or a new black Denali, like the one I just left somebody as a gift.”

“Flying isn’t so bad.” Jenny gazed out over the moonlit ocean. “I think I liked the lift-off part, too.”

“It’s a perfect night for flying,” he said. “The Gulf’s calm, the moon’s out…”

She looked at him. “What else do you remember about the past?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Do you remember me?”

“I remember you more than anything. Hundreds of lifetimes together. We’re always drawn back to each other. Our powers do that.” He touched her arm through a huge gash the mob had torn in her sleeve, and she felt the dark sizzle of electricity between them. “We make each other stronger.”

“But Seth is my opposite,” Jenny said. She was feeling a little confused. Maybe the pain drugs were already kicking in. “Right? That’s how we always thought of it.”

“He is. And opposites create a powerful charge between them. But our connection is greater. Our powers are complementary.”

“What does that mean?”

“You enhance me. And I enhance you. We can only become the greatest, most godlike versions of ourselves when we’re together. And I sensed you had been born, somewhere, but I couldn’t find you until you flared up bright as the sun a few weeks ago. Then I knew where you were, and I came to find you.”

“To increase your power?”

“I have loved you across many lives.” He pulled his hand back, and she already missed his electrifying touch. “But we only just met, this time around. And you don’t have my curse of remembering.”

“You think it’s a curse?”

“Every lifetime has its share of suffering.” Alexander looked out the windshield at the galaxies of stars. “Forgetting is a gift.”

Jenny wasn’t sure what to say. She tried not to think of ancient Athens and the diseased bodies heaped everywhere, the smoldering funeral pyres outside the temples. The smell of misery and death. After a while, she asked, “What about me and Seth?”

“You’ve spent a few lifetimes together, just recently, but your oldest and deepest relationship is with me.” He laughed. “Well, that’s getting a little weird for the first hour of conversation. You asked, though.”

“I did ask.” Jenny bit her lip. “You sent me to destroy Athens.”

“It was a war. A long time ago.”

“And to kill Pericles.”

Alexander laughed and brushed his fingers along the back of her head, through her hair, and she felt that dark sizzle of energy again. Again, she felt disappointed when he drew his hand back.

“My strategy was foolish,” Alexander said. “Empire is always systemic, Jenny, but we pin it on individual men, all the blame and revulsion and glory. I made that mistake, too. His death only brought us Cleon and many more years of war.”

“But if that was Seth, then the Jenny pox wouldn’t have hurt him.”

“The Jenny pox?” He grinned, lighting up his dark, magnetic eyes. “You are so cute this lifetime.”

“But I’m right. And history says he died of the plague.”

“Or, just possibly, somebody poisoned him and made it look like plague. Pretty believable, when everyone else is dying of it, especially if you get the body to the pyre fast enough. Somebody who wanted to clear the road for another politician. Someone ruthless and clever.”

“Ashleigh?” Jenny asked. “Ashleigh killed Seth to make way for Cleon?”

“That’s where I’m putting my bet. Sounds like her, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“Of course, it’s all ancient history now,” Alexander said. “But the more you use your gift, the more you’ll remember.”

“It’s not a gift,” Jenny whispered. “And I don’t want to use it.”