I experienced the intense heat of time travel, along with the sensation I was being torn apart and rebuilt at the molecular level as I journeyed backward in time, away from my family, my babies. God, I didn’t miss this shit at all!

When the light and heat wore off, I was left at the center of a crater created when my travel through time ripped apart the fabric of reality. I didn’t move for a long moment, allowing my mind and body to adjust. Opening my eyes, I squinted, not expecting to touch down during daylight. I had landed in all other three eras during the middle of the night.

Moldavite glowed green-black around me in chunks that were quickly turning solid after the heat of my landing.

Lazy waves rolled onto a beach nearby before returning to the ocean. The flavorful scent of the sea was in the air. The sky was radiant blue, the air humid, the sun warm.

My senses absorbed everything – and nothing at all. I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, couldn’t comprehend what Asvald had done.

My children were gone.

Forever.

I screamed.

I screamed and screamed and screamed until I tasted blood in my mouth and my voice was gone. And then I wept, helpless as the agony wracked my body. When my tears were gone, I lay still and prayed for death. I didn’t want to live in any world without my children.

“It took seven hundred iterations, even with the quantum computer I built, to bring you to this point,” said an unfamiliar voice. “I watched you die seven hundred and one times. Each time, I determined what to do to keep you alive during the next round.” A pause, and then a stricken, “You can’t know what that’s like.”

I listened, not caring about anything.

“You’ve never made it this far,” he added. “It’s ironic really. For all my planning, it was a mystic playing with time who made this possible. I finally understand what didn’t work every other time. From Tombstone to here. Seven hundred and one times.” This last sentence was quiet, frustrated. “It’s time you learn why I’ve done all this.”

It dawned on me who the speaker was: the very man I had to blame for wrenching me away from my children, who had un-created Taylor and torn me away from Batu. Who murdered those around me, forced me to hurt people just by being around them, who had destroyed sweet Asvald by manipulating him into betraying me. I couldn’t list the amount of horrible deeds Carter had committed in his twisted game.

No Viking woman went anywhere without at least one knife on her. I reached down and drew the blade at my waist and pushed myself up onto all fours. Temporal displacement threatened to drop me to the ground, and I gritted my teeth, pushing through it with the years of fury that had been building inside me.

I stood. I’d landed on a beach next to pristine, blue-green Mediterranean shallows. In the distance, white, blocky dwellings rose up along the edges of an archipelago. A cool sea breeze swept over me.

The son of a bitch who did this to me, to my children, husbands and friends, stood a short distance away, facing the sea, his back to me and dark hair mussed by the wind. Rage was not a strong enough word for what I experienced. My anguish and sorrow disappeared the moment the red-hot fury flooded me.

Climbing out of the crater, I paused, panting and dizzy, before straightening. I’d envisioned this day many, many times without ever believing I’d have the chance to confront the evil mastermind.

“Carter, this ends now!” I shouted hoarsely.

My tormentor faced me.

My breath caught in my throat. The knife dropped from my hand, and I uttered a noise that didn’t sound human.

I’d recognize those eyes anywhere, in any time.

Suddenly, I understood why a man I’d met for all of an hour – more than seven years ago! – had made tormenting me his sole purpose in life.

“Hey, mom,” my son said softly. “Sorry it took this long to build a bridge to the moon. I finally got it right.”

* * *