Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] by The Mists of Time Read Free Book Online Page B

street in the darkness. He stood in front of the door to the apartment building, ignoring the keypad. He laid his palms flat on the glass and willed his center to stillness. His eyes went unfocused and his breathing slowed.
    Mist. I am mist and darkness,
he sang to himself.
I am fog.
    He felt himself dissipating. His center would not hold. His molecules fanned out in infinitesimal thinness. He slid between the door and the jamb, the lock irrelevant.
    Inside, he gathered himself, molecule by molecule, in a whirling mist that grew more solid by the second. Warmth caressed his coalescing body like heat lightning.
    He was in. The experience of dissipating always left him a little weak and breathless. He took a moment to gather himself before he slid silently up the stairs and down her corridor to hover outside the door. He listened. They were talking and eating. Everyday. Ordinary.
    “You can sleep there. I will sleep in my bedroom.”
    That was a relief. She was not taking this stranger to her bed. The very thought had a green monster choking his throat and then, as he imagined her lying in her bed, the quilt pulled up over her breasts, her beautiful hair splayed over the white linen of her pillow, his body reacted almost violently, just as it had the first time he saw her.
    He flushed.
How pure are you?
he taunted himself, willing the painful reaction to subside. Not effective. Inside the apartment, he heard the man agreeing to the sleeping arrangements. Well, whoever this man was, she was in no immediate danger. But he would stay near, in the street, in case something went wrong and she cried out. That also left him near enough to enter her dreams and prepare her to trust him. He trotted silently down the stairs.
    Why hadn’t she recognized him? Surely she wouldtrust him once she knew who he was. But in several encounters she hadn’t.
    No need for dissipation this time. He simply walked out the front door.
    He stood under the streetlight and saw her come and stand, silhouetted, against the light in her window. She looked down at him. Her gaze locked with his.
It is I!
he wanted to shout. But she twitched the draperies shut. Did she know him and yet push him out of her life?
    It didn’t matter. He leaned against the lamppost. He was here for the duration.
    She was walking down the colonnade of the Palace of Fine Arts next to the Exploratorium. Fog drifted in among the giant columns until she could hardly see the huge angels that hovered at the capitals. Dusk was deepening into night and she was alone. Maybe. Or maybe someone or something was lurking in the fog. It swirled around her feet, coming in fast off the bay in a way that hardly seemed natural. She glanced behind her, but the columns disappeared into a wall of gray. She hurried forward, passing columns in the mist. They seemed to go on and on.
    What was that noise? A scraping sound . . . a chink. She looked down. There was a golden bracelet on her hand, covered with what looked like primitive runes. From the bracelet hung a delicate golden chain that disappeared into the fog behind her. Where had that bracelet come from? It was rather like a handcuff, what with the chain. The chain scraped across the asphalt of the path. She pulled and it puddled at her feet. She tugged again but met resistance. It was fastened to something.
    She wanted to run through the fog to her car, but she couldn’t because of the chain. Fear circled around her, though she felt it from somewhere far away. What sherefused to do was walk back into the fog toward whatever was at the other end of the chain.
    She heard a step behind her. The fog magnified all sound. It was a solid wall of swirling night gray that circled her. The chain went slack. More steps. Something was coming toward her down the path between the columns.
    Damn it all.
She wasn’t going to be afraid. Not everything you couldn’t understand was bad. Maybe what was at the end of the chain was her parents, still tied to their