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  Published By: The Hartwood Publishing Group, LLC,

  400 Gilead Road, #1617, Huntersville, NC 28070

  www.hartwoodpublishing.com

  Time Eternal

  Copyright © 2014 by Lily Worthington

  Digital Release: October 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62916-084-9

  Cover Artist: James Caldwell

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Time ETernal by Lily Worthington

  Time Eternal is the story of Skyla Gray, a TSCAA agent in the present day, and Rei Dusan, the crown prince of the sixteenth-century Serbian Empire, who has traded his soul to the gods so he can travel through time to find his one true love, Elizabeth Magini.

  The story opens with Agent Gray time-ported to an underground bank vault. Her mission is to retrieve a device, but someone else has gotten there first. More maddening is that she recognizes this man’s voice even though she cannot remember ever having met him before. Sent back to the present day by this stranger, she finds the life she knew slowly beginning to unravel…and learns that the stranger is not the only one who has been looking for her these past five centuries.

  At the Last Battle, Rei Dusan lay dying alongside his father, his brothers, and his countrymen, when a handmaiden from the gods offered him a bargain: his soul and his eternal pledge to do the gods’ bidding in exchange for immortality. With his life, he will avenge his family, his country, and his beloved Elizabeth, who sacrificed her life to save his. He accepted the bargain with the gods only to later discover Elizabeth did not perish in the fire.

  Will Skyla remember who she really is? What Rei meant to her—to Elizabeth? Will she accept Rei in her present life, where she is no longer a helpless young girl needing rescue from an evil Medici lord, but an ass-kicking agent fighting terrorists for a living? And how will Rei answer to the gods when they find out he has defied their orders? Will there be a happily ever after for Rei and Skyla?

  Time Eternal is the first book of the Time series, which tells the story of the men and women who are part of a secret government agency, fighting not garden-variety terrorists but the gods and their enemies, who are facing off in a final showdown. Should their wars not be contained, the world will go up in flames—literally.

  Dedication

  To Rory for introducing me to Georgia. To Georgia, my humble thank you for your endless, kind encouragement and advice.

  To Beth and Curt, my inspirations for this first book of the Series. Thanks for bringing me smiles and sunshine.

  Acknowledgements

  A shout out to everyone at Hartwood Publishing. Thank you for being patient with me, a newbie in the publishing business. A special thank you to Lacey Thacker, my editor, and Georgia and Lisa, two of the most hard working and funniest ladies who keep me in line and motivate me throughout this exciting journey.

  Last, but not least, thank you my readers. I hope you will love the story of Elizabeth/Skyla and Rei as much as I have. And maybe perhaps shred a few tears along the way.

  Love,

  Lily

  Chapter One

  Skyla Gray rolled away from the explosion just in time. The blast was so powerful that she was thrown at least ten feet away. She instinctively threw her arms over her head and curled into a tight ball when she hit the concrete floor while the chunky pieces of debris rained down like a hail storm. It took a few moments for the explosion’s aftermath to die down. She lifted her arms a little and looked to the direction of the vault. Both the door and the wall were completely ripped open. The file prepared by the intelligence officer on her team said the vault door was made of steel-reinforced concrete, the standard fare for early twentieth-century craftsmanship. Yet the explosive power was ten times more than necessary, almost as if the bomber intended to destroy the entire vault along with its contents.

  As she slowly pushed herself up, she muttered, “Kill Gus when you get back to headquarters.” Gus, a former commander of the Spanish ETA—Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, a.k.a. Basque Homeland and Freedom—was the intelligence officer for this mission. She and Gus belonged to Team M, short for Team Mu. They worked for TSCAA, or simply the Agency. The TSCAA, Time Space Continuum Anti-terrorism Agency, was an ultra-secret government agency that possessed time-traveling technology. Its mission was to combat terrorism in the past that could alter history and the present day. Three special field teams and scores of scientists and analysts made up the Agency. Her team, Team Mu, was “the middle” in Latin. The other two teams were Team A and Team O, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Together, they signified the time-space continuum; they were the sole defenders of mankind in this new territory where time was no longer just a linear equation.

  And as it turned out, her government was not the only one that held the key to time travel. During the decade since the Agency was founded, other time-traveling players had emerged. One in particular proved the most elusive. He had only been sighted a few times before, and each time, the agent who had come in contact with him could never quite recall his exact features; hence, the Agency dubbed him “Mr. X.”

  Today, Skyla’s little breaking-and-entering mission was from the Agency’s intel suggesting Mr. X might be behind the acquisition of the steel box in the vault. She had, however, expected to complete her mission within minutes. Gus had already scouted out the floor layout of the underground vault a few days ago and lifted the vault security combination codes from the Agency’s extensive historical database. But now, after this explosion, there was no chance she would finish the mission in record time. And dammit. She had bet with the other two teams about how fast she could get in and out of the vault after they teased her about getting an easy assignment.

  With a silent sigh, Skyla carefully pulled herself up on her hands and knees. Even with such deliberate movement, her body felt like a train had just run her over. Pain shot through every limb and joint. She leaned against the wall for leverage and hauled herself up, but found herself on uneven footing. She looked down at the ground. “Great. There go my shoes again.” Growling, she reached down and plucked off her red suede handmade Italian ankle boots. The pair she had just bought at Barney’s New York Co-Op sale a month ago. “Gus is so going to buy me a new pair for this little intel oversight.”

  She did a quick check of her body, making sure there was no major injury. A few scrapes and bruises, yes, but those came with her line of work, and she didn’t really mind, at least not while she was still mourning the loss of her pretty new boots. On most days, Skyla loved her job. Her parents had wanted her to go to law school after college so she could take over her dad’s law practice in upstate New York. But nope, she was never the studious, desk-job type even though she double-majored in physics and art history at Columbia University. She supposed if she had listened to her parents, her wardrobe wouldn’t need replacing so often. But that was neither here nor there.

  Focusing her
attention back to the inside of the vault, she caught a quick movement. A shadowy figure materialized right next to the steel box. Skyla silently ran across the floor and activated her signal code at the same time so that her team back in the twenty-first century knew she was about to engage a potential threat.

  Raising her period-appropriate SIG, which was still her weapon of choice from her Secret Service days, she stepped inside the vault cautiously, counting on the shadows and the smoke in the underground space to give her some coverage. No such luck today, apparently.

  A deep baritone voice sounded to her left. “Hello, there.”

  She immediately whirled around and pointed her gun in the direction of the sound where a masculine figure stood not ten feet away from her. “Don’t move,” Skyla said in an icy tone as she trained the SIG at the man’s head. “Put your arms up and step into the light.” She could only see an outline of him, definitely a male—very male, judging by his size and shape. Her inner alarm was already telling her that whoever this man was, he was very, very bad news. During her time at the Secret Service and now with the Agency, she had come across plenty of ruthless figures, but never once had she felt such a strong survival instinct pulling at her. Flight instead of fight. This man frightened her like she had never experienced before except in her childhood nightmares. Not going there.

  Skyla took a deep breath, steadying her nerves. The man was obviously ignoring both her SIG and her demand; she could sense that he was smirking. She almost rolled her eyes. Men from the past, whether decades or centuries ago, always underestimated women.

  Not bothering to repeat her demand, she squeezed off two warning shots to the right of his head. “I will not repeat myself again.”

  The shadowy figure did not even flinch. Instead, he replied calmly, “Or what, my lady?” His tone was laced with amusement, and she found it odd that he chose to address her in a way that was old-fashioned even for this era—the early 1930s.

  But more striking was his voice. Sudden recognition flashed through her mind, but she could not place where she had heard it before. The voice was deep and rich, like a well-aged scotch—with a hint of something else. In her line of work, something else was always bad news. Something else meant unknown. Unknown meant danger because one could not prepare for the unknown. Readiness and preparation were the cornerstones of an agent’s ability to survive in the field, especially in another place and time.

  In a blink of the eyes, the shadowy figure disappeared. Before she even registered what had happened, a pair of corded, muscular arms seized her from behind. She immediately switched to a defensive stance and tried to jab her right elbow into his solar plexus, but he was simply too strong. There was not even a millimeter of room for her body to take advantage of. And all the while, he kept her immobilized with no effort at all.

  As if they were long-time lovers, her captor bent his head lower, inhaling her scent before whispering in her ear, “Gotcha.”

  Judging from the angle that he bent his head, he was at least a head taller than her five feet six-inch frame. That would put him at about six feet four inches tall. Besides having size as an advantage over her, he was agile and strong too. Skyla was the first in her class at the Secret Service. She excelled in all physical combat training, so the fact that her captor could so easily immobilize her spoke volumes about his skills. And the worst part was not that the mission was now shot to hell but that the Agency’s intel hadn’t identified any potential threat beforehand. The Agency had always been meticulous about gathering intel prior to any mission. The only two logical conclusions were either that Gus got sloppy all of a sudden—highly unlikely—or that her captor had somehow cloaked his presence outside of Gus’s research parameters. That had never happened before in the Agency’s history. Definitely very bad news.

  She hissed at him, "What do you want?" The bastard was smiling, face pressed into her hair in an intimate gesture, and for some odd reason it felt almost as if she had done this a million times before—been held by the shadow figure. Now that she was this close to him, his scent aroused unexpected familiarity inside her. It was a blend of clean linen and sandalwood. This threw her off, just as his voice did. Instead of doing what any agent worth her salt should be doing, maintaining a defensive stance while looking for a way to break free, a whimper almost broke free before she swallowed it back. Her traitorous body also began softening against his. Whoa. This was beyond bad news.

  "Ah, the age old question. What does one want?" There was complete silence for a few heartbeats. Finally, her captor said, "Don't travel back in time again because the next time we meet, I may not be able to let you go."

  Before Skyla could form a retort to his egomaniacal order, she was falling into a bottomless pit, the same sensation she had felt many times before when she traveled in time, except this time she hadn’t activated the portal device on her utility belt.

  "No!"

  In less than a heartbeat, the falling sensation stopped. She opened her eyes and there she was, back to the headquarters located 200 feet below Times Square in New York City. She was not in the Portal Room with the bustling technicians and various equipment. Instead, she was standing under the sterile, soft white light in the hallway outside of her team squadron room. Knox and Vivienne, two members of Team M, were rushing toward her down the normally quiet hallway.

  "Skyla, are you all right? We got your potential threat signal. Butch and Gus are suiting up in the Portal Room as we speak." While Knox was holding a scanner and checking her vitals, Vivienne pressed a micro com against her neck, firing rapid commands to the portal techs. “Abort, abort. Skyla’s returned. Standby for further instructions. Do you copy? Abort, abort.” A muffled affirmation, “Copy that,” could be heard from Vivienne’s ear piece.

  Skyla brushed Knox’s ministrations aside and said quickly, "I didn’t come back by choice. We have a serious problem. Someone or something packed enough explosive power to bring down the entire building and blew up the vault. Not only was he after the steel box, he just sent me back through time without so much as blinking his eyes." Both Knox and Vivienne stopped what they were doing and looked at her. Their expressions reflected her thoughts—trouble, big, big trouble.

  Before explaining further, Skyla ran to the elevator bank, heading toward Level 5, the restricted area, to see their boss.

  Knox kept pace with her. "Wait, I need to do a more thorough scan on you since you didn’t come back through time using our protocol. There could be complications, you know."

  She nodded at him and swiftly stepped into the elevator. “There is no time now. I’ll come by after I debrief the director. Something just happened or is happening in the past. The director needs to know now.”

  Chapter Two

  It was one of the colder winters in the 1930s. Rei stood on the balcony of his three-story townhouse overlooking Central Park. He only had a thin burgundy cashmere sweater and a pair of charcoal-gray wool pants on. The frosty air didn’t bother him one bit. He was used to much harsher weather than this. Compared to the long and bitterly brutal winters in his homeland, New York City winter was refreshing.

  He took in a deep breath of the early morning air and slowly exhaled. Puffs of mist formed immediately. He repeated the exercise a dozen times to calm his mind from his chaotic, exhilarating thoughts. Had he finally found Elizabeth after half a millennium? The female agent he had encountered inside the bank vault, barely an hour ago, looked so much like his Elizabeth. Similar height, lovely high cheekbones, oval face. And those big, luminous brown eyes were intense and as rich a brown as her chestnut hair, Elizabeth’s chestnut hair. She was Elizabeth, he was almost certain of it, because his body reacted to her immediately. What made him doubt his sanity now was that she looked at him with no hint of recognition.

  He was pretty sure she was a government agent from a future time. The weapon she carried was a modified .357 SIG, a signature weapon for the United States Secret Service in the late twentieth and early twenty-firs
t century. Beyond the striking physical resemblance, the woman in the vault had nothing else in common with Elizabeth. Instead of brimming with warmth and compassion, the female agent’s eyes flashed coldly, calculating the best way to subdue him. Very much like what he would have done if he were in her shoes.

  From the precision of her two warning shots, just a couple of millimeters away from blowing his head off, she was a trained killer, again very much like he was. And her attempt to fight him off was lethal, giving no quarter.

  Rei took in another deep breath of the refreshing, frigid air. She couldn’t be Elizabeth. His Elizabeth was nothing like the female agent. Most importantly, his Elizabeth would have recognized him. Recognized them.

  A long ago past blurred his sight—the memory of the lecture hall in Florence, 1856. Rei had arrived in the city not long before. He was intrigued by the whispers of the possibility of time traveling advocated by a local Renaissance master. As soon as he stepped inside the lecture hall, he saw her. She was standing among an all-male audience, eagerly waiting for the lecture to start. Her beauty was incomparable—smooth, creamy soft skin with a hint of rosy tone on her face. Those big brown eyes sparkled with so much joy and intelligence. Her thick chestnut hair was braided, reaching down to her shapely, firm ass. He was hooked like an addict immediately and needed to see more of her, to feel her, to possess her.

  It was like a gravitational pull. He couldn’t stop himself even if he wanted to. His feet took him in front of the beauty and her uncle, the Renaissance master. Up close, he was surprised by how young she was, a mere girl, sixteen or seventeen at the most. He should have been ashamed of having such a strong physical attraction to such a young girl. God Almighty, he was a good ten years older than she was. Mine. It was all he could think at that moment. Mine to possess, to love and cherish. If he were honorable, he would have hastily retreated. Just as he was about to turn around, away from her, she looked at him and smiled. Her open, innocent smile sang to him like a mystical siren song. Before he knew it, he took hold of her delicate, small hands and introduced himself to her and her uncle.