Anubis Nights Read Online Free Page B

balanced, it does us no good.” He pushed away from me.
    “Not true,” Sharon said.
    “What do you mean?” he asked.
    “He isn’t affected by direct magic, but Kelly and his friends are.”
    “I don’t follow,” he said, which was exactly what I was going to say.
    “We create a link between his friends, send one after each of Winslow’s three aspects, and make sure Jonathan goes back with one of them. If we use a magically infused implant, it will take him back as long as he’s in direct contact with the living flesh of one of his friends.”
    “Tuning the implant to his friends and them to one another?”
    “In order.”
    “That could work.”
    “You guys are speaking English,” I said, “but I’ll be damned if I understand what you’re saying.”
    Sharon stared at me a moment then nodded. “We need you to go back in time to stop three sorcerers who are one. You’ve managed time travel on your own. That’s why I didn’t go to help you that day on the bridge. You needed to do that. You needed to know you could change history.”
    “The remote viewing and spiritual travel was a one-time thing. There are things in the ether, and they’ll rip me apart if I ever try anything like that again. And fuck you for not helping me. You got my friends killed.”
    “You saved them.”
    “No thanks to you.”
    “And here we are again, back to the point. I can’t help you with this either. We need you to go back because the magic wielded by the three versions of Winslow won’t affect you. That means you are the only person who can stop them. Unfortunately the aspects fled into history, and if they succeed in altering things, none of what you’ve known will have ever existed.”
    “Um,” I said. “I may not be the smartest guy on the block, but if they went back and changed things, why are we still here?”
    The old man held up his pocket watch. “Because I am Chronos, and I stepped out of the time stream when they went back. I am still holding the gateway to the past open right here. I can keep it open for another—” He looked into the universe inside the watch. “—two hours, three minutes, and twenty-three seconds. We need to send someone back by then or all of this”—he gestured at the ground, the sky, the buildings—“will be gone. Erased from time as if it never existed.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    JONATHAN SHADE
     
    I stood in front of the dojo staring at Chronos and let his words sink in. “So it won’t be an alternate timeline like in the Back to the Future movies?”
    “Alas, no.”
    “Damn. I like those movies.”
    Sharon didn’t smile. She simply stared at me. “You and your friends need to go back and stop these sorcerers.”
    “These sorcerers who are one? Why can’t you do it?” I asked. “Father Time here has the gate to history open; send back the Time Police or whatever, and stop those guys.”
    “We have already lived through those times, so we can’t go.” She gestured at Chronos and herself. “We can’t physically enter the time stream at any point where we exist.”
    “Tell him the rest,” Chronos said.
    Sharon took a deep breath. “You have to succeed. You’ll have to defeat each of Winslow’s aspects in turn, and if you don’t . . . Well, if you don’t, I suspect none of us will exist.”
    “Obviously I’m not going to be able to say no here because if I do, I won’t exist either. Is that what you’re thinking?”
    “That’s right.”
    “What about the creatures in the ether who want to kill me?”
    “We’re using a physical portal, not the ether, for the initial trip. When you move forward, you’ll pass through the ether, but you’ll be moving so fast, no one will be able to touch you. Also, you went back in spiritual form rather than physical form before. That, too, will make a difference.”
    “In that case you might want to kick-start time again. I’ll get everyone here, and you two can tell us what the job