CHAPTER ONE
January, Year of our Lord 1192
“Libby,” came the soft voice. “Wake up, sweetheart. Open your eyes and look at me.”
Libby. The name Kieran had given her because he thought her given name wasn’t suitable enough for her “comeliness”, as he had put it. Rory was somewhere between the fog of lucidity and the black depths of unconsciousness, hearing him call to her in the darkness. She could hear a familiar voice calling to her and, at some point, realized there were gentle taps against her cheek. Then someone had her by the shoulders and carefully shook her.
The buzz in her head lessened and she became more aware of her surroundings. But her brain was swimming, her heart pounding. When she tried to open her eyes, everything was spinning.
“Oh… God,” she gasped, trying to steady her breathing. “What… what happened?”
There was a brief silence. “I do not know.”
After a moment, Rory opened her eyes as the world started righting itself. The most brilliant night sky she had ever seen was staring down at her and she blinked, struggling to orient herself. A big face, handsome and granite-jawed with gem-like brown eyes, suddenly loomed in her vision.
“Are you well?” Kieran asked gently. “Do you hurt anywhere?”
Rory gazed up at him, his head backdropped by the blazing night. She reached up, touching his stubbled cheek as she struggled to orient herself.
“Kieran?” She labored to sit up, looking around as she did so. “What in the hell happened?”
He helped her to sit up, his clear brown eyes scanning their surroundings. “I can only surmise,” he said softly. “The last I recall, we were on the beach and a storm was upon us.”
“The beach,” Rory suddenly gasped, turning to him and trying to gain a look at his torso. “Oh, my God, you’re bleeding to death. Let me see….”
She fumbled around as he straightened up so that she could see his shirt. But he had already inspected his abdomen for the wound that had been draining his life away only minutes ago; it didn’t exist any longer. It was gone, he was whole, and he had awoken with a pounding head to the sound of surf. His sense of confusion was only matched by his sense of shock.
“Kieran, your wound.” Rory continued to hunt. She finally unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his magnificent chest and muscular form. Running her fingers along his taut stomach, she shook her head in shock and awe. “There’s nothing there. What happened to your wound?”
“I do not know.”
“What do you mean you do not know? We didn’t imagine it – you were bleeding to death just a few moments ago.” She looked back to his belly, frustrated and in disbelief. “But … where in the hell did it go?”
Kieran could only shake his head, his eyes still scanning their surroundings. He had the oddest sense of déjà vu and could not explain why. Rory, still clutching the open ends of his shirt, began to look around, too.
“Where is everybody?” she asked. “Where are Bud and David? And Darlow? Where did they go?”
Kieran rose from a seated position into a crouch. He could see a village in the distance, flames from fires and burning torches casting heavy smoke into the air. His heart began to pound, this time from excitement and apprehension. It occurred to him that he recognized the distant village. He recognized the watch towers rising out of the sand bluffs. He never thought he would see those sights again. It was almost too much to believe.
He turned to Rory. “What do you remember last?”
She blinked her brilliant hazel eyes, a color between green and golden-brown that both captivated and captured. A thick fringe of lashes and tilted ends gave her a very feminine and sexy expression. At the moment, however, those miraculous eyes were very muddled.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Precisely that; what do you remember last?”
She rubbed her forehead, irritated, sick. “I don’t know… probably the same thing you do. The beach, the storm, blood all over the damned place, and then… then.…” She sighed heavily, fear joining the other sensations she was experiencing. “Everybody seems to have vanished. Why did they just leave us here alone? And what in the hell happened to your wound?”
Kieran would not let her lose focus. “Think hard, Libby. Is that all you remember? Simply being on the beach outside of Nahariya?”
She nodded, not entirely sure what he was driving at. Then, her eyes flew open wide. “Wait a minute. There was a storm and a lightning strike. It was so close to us that I could feel the heat. I remember… I remember screaming because I thought we were going to get fried. But you blocked out the heat and then… wow, then I remember darkness.” She looked up at him imploringly. “What do you remember?”
He met her gaze, studying her beautiful face in the starlight. “I remember the same,” he said. “I tried to protect you from the lightning. I could feel the heat searing my back and I, too, thought we were dead. Then it was dark… and I awoke to a blanket of stars across the clear night sky.”
Instinctively, they both looked upward, studying the dense dusting of stars across the blackness. Rory still rubbed her aching head, struggling against the pain and disorientation.
“My God,” she whispered, again looking to their surroundings. “Do… do you think that we are dead? I mean, do you think that lightning killed us and this is some kind of afterlife?”
He looked back over his shoulder to the village in the distance. “From what I believe, there is no pain or suffering in the afterlife. And my head aches something fierce.”
“Mine, too,” she agreed, noticing what he was looking at. “I always thought Heaven was a place of angels and pearly gates. That doesn’t look like Heaven over there.”
He lifted an ironic eyebrow. “Nay, it does not.”
She suddenly grabbed him fearfully. “Kieran, what if we didn’t go to Heaven. What if that… that’s Hell over there?”
The last words were hissed as if she had just uncovered the most hideous truth. She fell back onto the rock, her hands over her face as Kieran tried to keep her from smashing her skull against the stone. She wasn’t feeling well or thinking clearly; that much was certain. He was feeling moderately better and believed he had all of his faculties, which made the conclusion he was swiftly reaching that much more amazing.
“Calm yourself, Lib,” he said steadily. “I do not believe that is Hell. In fact, I do believe I recognize it.”
Her hands came away from her face. “Recognize it?”
“Aye.”
She sat back up again, weaving unsteadily even in a seated position. Her gaze fell on the village in the distance. “How in the hell would you recognize that?”
He wasn’t quite sure how to tell her. “Because that is Nahariya.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It is. I know this to be true.”
Rory looked at him as if he had just lost his mind. “That’s not Nahariya.”
He nodded slowly. “It is the Nahariya I remember.” He turned to look at her, noting how pale her lovely face was. A weak smile creased his lips. “It is the Nahariya I know, not the city you are familiar with.”
She just stared at him, unsure how to reply. Something akin to panic was welling in her chest, magnified by her pounding head and lurching stomach. She was ill, disoriented and now frightened. She pushed away from him and struggled to stand up.
“I’ve got to get to a phone,” she muttered. “I need to call Bud to come and get us. I just don’t understand why he would leave us out here like this.”
Kieran could see the flicker of terror in her eyes. He grabbed on to her arms, holding her fast.
“Lib,” he said firmly, gently. “I do not believe you will find a phone.”
She yanked an arm out of his grasp. “I’m going to kick Bud’s ass for leaving us out here like this. What in the hell was he thinking?”
Kieran grabbed her free arm and held tightly as her struggles increase. “Rory, listen to me.” It was rare that he called her by her given name, but he needed to get her attention. “I believe something miraculous has happened and I need your calm head. Be still and listen to me, sweetheart. Please.”
She was beginning to cry. “No,” she struggled furiously to break free. “I want to go back to camp. I need to get my stuff and we need to get the crown back to England.” She suddenly froze. “The crown; do you still have it?”
Kieran didn’t even know. He looked around them, spying the familiar box just a foot or so away. It was upended on its side, as if it had been haphazardly thrown there. But it was intact.
He sighed with relief. “It is here.”
Rory saw it, too. “Thank God,” she mumbled. “With everything we went through for that thing, thank God we still have it.”
Kieran still had a good grip on her, but now his enormous hands were caressing rather than restraining. He fixed her in the eye, studying her expression, her senses for as much as he could determine them. He knew she wasn’t feeling well but he needed her to focus. She had always been the more sensible between the two of them. He was depending on that sensibility to help determine what had really happened to them.
“Lib,” he said softly. “I need your level head. I need for you to help reason out what has occurred. Can you do this?”
She sighed heavily, her panic waning. As long as Kieran was with her, whole and sound, she reckoned she could deal with anything. Or at least try to. It wasn’t as if she had a lot of choice at the moment.
“I think so.”
He was pleased to see that she was at least willing to try, no matter how upset she was. “Do you remember telling me that a miracle happened when I was brought back to life in your time?”
“I remember.”
“And do you remember when I awoke in the morgue how upset you were?”
She lifted a well-shaped eyebrow. “I think upset is putting it mildly. I was completely freaked out. Here you were, a corpse I had excavated from a grave in Israel, and suddenly you came alive before my very eyes.”
He smiled at her animated response. It told him she wasn’t completely out of her mind with fear. “But you came to accept that I wasn’t a walking corpse and that I had been in some kind of suspended state as a result of an alchemist’s potion.”
She nodded vaguely. “You were wounded by assassins and you went to the guy thinking he was a physic. But he wasn’t.”
“Nay, he was not.”
“He gave you a potion that put you into suspended animation so that your body could heal itself.”
He nodded faintly. “Something like that,” he murmured, his gaze moving to the distant city once again. “Would you like to know what I think?”
She emitted a blustery sigh. “Probably not, but go ahead anyway.”
“I believe we have another miracle on our hands.”
She closed her eyes briefly, tightly, as if to ward off his words. “Oh, God, Kieran…,” she moaned. Then she steeled herself. “Look, don’t get me wrong. For the fact that you haven’t bled to death in front of me, I am more thankful than you can possibly know. I almost don’t even care what happened to your wound as long as you are all right. But I just want to know where we are and what happened to us. Did the lightning somehow knock us out or do something to our memories? I just don’t get it. What’s happened?”
He pulled her into his massive embrace. It was like being swallowed by a mound of warm, firm, deliciously masculine flesh. There was nothing on earth more comforting. At six and a half feet and somewhere around two hundred fifty pounds, Kieran was an enormous man of enormous depth with a perfectly sculptured body of flesh, bone and powerful muscles.
“You, of all people, should understand that things happen that you simply cannot explain,” he murmured against the top of her head. “You and I were born eight hundred years apart, yet we are together in the flesh. God knows we belong together ’else he would not have allowed such an anomaly. You and I were destined for one another, no matter what the time.”
She burrowed into him, inhaling his distinctive musk that was so desperately attractive and comforting. “I know,” she whispered, her face in his chest. “But that still does not explain what has happened.”
He sighed faintly, holding her tightly and stroking her arms. He had a sense of being calm and centered at the moment, far more than she did. He recognized everything about where they were; the smell, the feeling, the smoke of the torches in the distance. He was in his comfort zone, the sights and scents of his time. He didn’t know how he knew everything so clearly, but he did.
“Do you believe in miracles, Lib?”
She sighed against him. “You know I do. You’re a living miracle.”
“Then understand well what I am about to tell you. I believe I know what has happened.”
She pulled her face out of his chest, gazing up at him. “What?”
He drew in a long breath, collecting his thoughts as his gaze continued to move over the distant town. “We have already discussed the happenstance of Fate,” he began. “When you uncovered my suspended corpse and awoke me from my eternal sleep, it was something that had been preordained since the beginning of Time. I was meant to be wounded by assassins and put in stasis by an alchemist so that you could dig my body up at the appropriate time and awaken me. It was simply meant to be.”
She was watching him as he spoke. “I know that. But it still does not explain why…”
He put his finger over her lush lips so that he could continue. “You were searching for something when you uncovered me.”
“Right. I was searching for the Crown of Thorns that Christ wore on the cross, the artifact right over there in that box.”
“Correct. It was in my possession. You had manuscripts written by a fifteenth century monk that described where the crown was buried. But instead of the crown, you found me.”
She nodded patiently. “But you knew where the crown was. The journal I dug up with you alluded to it.”
“Alluded to, but did not describe the exact spot. To know the exact spot, you had to ask me.”
“And so I did when I kissed your corpse and awoke you from a drug-induced, catatonic state.”
He smiled at her. “The alchemist who tried to save my life after assassins had wounded me told me that only the strongest human emotion would rouse me from the potion he forced me to ingest. It suspended all of my bodily functions so that I would not bleed to death, allowing my body to heal itself with the gift of time.”
“I know.”
“Only a kiss of true love was powerful enough to awaken me.”
She reached up, touching his cheek where deep dimples carved canyons from his cheekbones to his jaw. He had an incredibly handsome face. She kissed him softly on his chin.
“So it was,” she said. “And then you came awake in my time.”
He returned her soft kisses. “Came awake, aye; but without my crown. And I had started a mission eight hundred years before that I was required to finish. So we returned for the crown.”
She pursed her lips ironically. “Not without a series of adventures that nearly killed us.”
He snorted loudly. “Indeed.” He sobered. “But the fact remains that I collected my crown. And I still must finish my mission.”
“I know that,” she said patiently. “That was where we were going when Corbin and his goons came after us.”
Kieran was silent a moment, listening to the waves crash, shifting his body and trying to protect Rory from the cold sea breeze. “Corbin was my former friend, Simon, reincarnated. He tried to kill me for the crown in my time. He was still trying to kill me in yours.”
“But he didn’t, not in either time. Whatever he threw at you, you managed to survive.”
Kieran paused pensively. “Perhaps… perhaps all of that happened for a reason.”
“Corbin tried to kill you for some greater reason?”
He shook his head. “I did not mean that. What I meant was that, perhaps, we were prevented from returning to England with the crown in your time for a reason. My mission had nothing to do with your time, Lib. It has everything to do with my time and the armies who are dependent upon me. Perhaps, we were corralled to the beach for that very reason; because I was not meant to return the crown to England in your time. I am meant to return it in mine.”
She was staring up at him, somewhat perplexed. “Are you saying that, somehow, some way, we’re back where you started?”
He nodded slowly. “God has had a very strange hand in our lives. He has brought us together, to help and to love one another, but He has made it clear that I must not return the crown to England in your time. So many things prevented us from doing so. Do you not see all of the obstacles that were in our way?”
She thought back on the cops, the chases, and the trail of bad luck that seemed to follow them everywhere they went. From the moment Kieran had awoken in that cold morgue in London, everything had been against them. Every possible obstacle had been thrown at them. A light of understanding suddenly went on in her head.
“What if…,” she began, gaining steam as she went. “What if you are supposed to return the crown in your time? What if this is a second chance to change the course of the Crusade and, consequently, the course of history? Kieran, no one gets a second chance like this. How many people hope and pray for such a thing and it never happens? You didn’t even ask for a second chance. You just wanted to finish what you started. What if this is a second chance to do that?”
He nodded, seeing that she understood what he was driving at.
“Exactly,” he said softly. “That bolt of lightning did something to us, Lib. We’re on the same beach, with the crown, but Bud and David and Corbin and Darlow are gone. And in the distance is a village I recognize. Somehow, in some way, I have been given a second chance to complete what I was entrusted with. I have been given a second chance to bring peace to millions and end this siege.”
Rory couldn’t believe it was possible but, in a way, nothing could have made more sense. A miracle had already happened once when Kieran had come to life in the twenty-first century. Now, perhaps lightning had, indeed, struck twice. She had come back to his time.
“If that’s true,” she said, “then why am I here? I don’t have a mission to complete. This is your deal, not mine.”
He smiled at her. “For a brilliant woman, there are times when you are most dense. This crown is as much yours as it is mine. This is something we were meant to do together, Lib. I had the crown; you went searching for it and found me instead. Then we recovered it together. It belongs to us as surely as we belong to each other. And perhaps… perhaps the reason you have returned with me is to ensure my success. The first time, I nearly perished in my quest. With my second attempt, the difference shall be you.”
She smiled timidly at him, eyeing the village in the distance. “Are you sure about all of this?”
He followed her gaze, the gem-clear brown eyes lingering on the smoking bonfires and thatched huts. “There is one way to find out.”
“But how do we know that your old friend, Simon, isn’t out there, waiting to stab you again? How do we know when, exactly, this is? Is it the day before you were wounded? A week before?”
“I think I will be able to deduce that in little time.”
“How?”
“By returning to Hut’s hostel. In theory, if it is somewhat close to the time I was wounded, all of my possessions will be there, including my armor and weapons.”
“I have to tell you that I’m really scared.”
“Just as I was when I awoke in your time.”
“But you’re braver than I am.”
He lifted an eyebrow at her, letting her know just how ridiculous he thought her statement was. He picked up the box that contained the crown.
“Not hardly.”