Time Jacker by Aaron Crash (nonfiction book recommendations .TXT) 📕

the air, and before he knew it, he was floating with the angel down to the ground on the other side of the log wall and into a pine forest that covered the ground between the logs and a rough yellow structure.

Bailey stood in an open glade. The demon was visibly shaken. In the clearing around her lay broken pots, a few broken arrows, and a splintered bow. A few pelts and leather tunics were scattered on the pine needles.

“So this is a forest where I don’t want to be,” the demon said miserably.

Jack bent and picked up a pot with writing on one side. “What language is that?”

Gabby shrugged. “We’re in the Cast Away, Gone Astray. There’s no telling what this is.”

“Let’s just keep going.” Bailey’s brow was wrinkled with worry. “I want to survive this scary shit to see if I survive the Clockwatcher’s surprising and inevitable betrayal.”

The Clockwatcher was someone they had to take seriously—he’d completely altered the way Jack accessed his power. Also, he could apparently tattoo people by pointing at them. Jack didn’t want to spend eternity with a dick inked on his forehead or something because he’d pissed the Clockwatcher off.

Gabby frowned. “Let me see if I can fly us to the tower.” She flew off and came back, landing back in the forest and pulling her wings in tight. “It’s no use. The tower is sealed. There has to be another way in.”

Jack led the way through the trees. On the other side of the pine forest was a yellow wall, only it wasn’t a wall, not really. It was animal skins glued together and then shellacked with some crystalline goo. Jack tapped it with the barrel of his shotgun.

Bailey struck it with her pick, but she couldn’t pierce it. “Okay, this is horrible. Remember, guys, I’m a sex demon. I’m not heroic unless it comes to making someone come. How do we get through this? According to Feathers, we can’t fly.”

“We can’t,” Gabby agreed.

Jack found a piece of leather acting as a flap. He drew it up. In the end, the yellow structure was just a big tent. Inside, skeletons sat against the wall of the structure. They wore clothes similar to the leather tunics that were outside in the pine forest.

He moved into the tent, only it was the size of a building, with a hole at the top showing more of the space junk above.

Bailey fell in behind him with Gabby following closely.

Walking across the tent, Jack saw the skeletons had bows, arrows, stone knives, and stone axes.

There was another tent flap on the other side. In the next room—actually, it was more like the next building—the walls were made of red adobe. There were more skeletons sitting around, only these had iron tools and wore wool tunics. A wooden door was set in the far adobe wall. Like in the tent, the adobe building had blackened fire pits and other debris scattered across the floor.

The next room was a medieval feasting hall—tapestries on the stone walls, lead-lined windows framed by velvet curtains, and an empty fireplace. The skeletons wore silks and furs, as well as wool and some other kind of fabric. The skeletons in this section of the complex sat at a table, the food long turned to dust. Their jewel-encrusted golden goblets were empty.

Real gold? Real jewels? Jack hoped so. He wasn’t about to leave without taking those goblets. He had money problems back in the normal flow of time, two worlds removed.

He pulled a velvet curtain off the wall—the window showed the black pebble plain, and again, Jack thought he saw something crawling underneath the ground. He ripped the curtain into a square, then used a window sash to create a bag, and that was where he dumped the twelve goblets. It was a good, even number.

Bailey grinned. “Why you lovely thieving asshole.”

“You can’t take those.” Gabby was beautiful even when she frowned.

“The original owners don’t mind,” Jack said. “And while I have no idea how to sell them, I have a friend who might.” He approached the angel. “Look, I didn’t ransack Preston Tarrington’s mansion. And I didn’t try his office, where he would have cash. I know it. I’m taking the goblets instead. Dead people can’t drink wine.”

“And they obviously don’t give a shit,” Bailey added. “Death makes people completely apathetic.”

“I’ll come back for these.” Jack left the bag of goblets by the wooden door to the adobe room.

“That seems oddly optimistic,” Bailey breathed.

“Hope springs eternal,” Jack replied.

That made Gabby squeal happily.

They exited through a big ironbound door and into some kind of palatial room, maybe from the French Revolution. Everything from the clocks to the legs of the sofa had curls and gold and all kinds of filigree. The skeletons here wore white powdered wigs and ridiculously lacy outfits.

Jack saw the pattern. “We’re going through history. From hunter-gatherers, to farmers in adobe huts, through the Middle Ages, and into the Age of Enlightenment.”

Through a fine door, he pushed into the small, cramped rooms of a Victorian manor—lots of small rooms, again with skeletons and dead fireplaces.

Small tract houses were next, like something from suburban Baltimore in the 1950s. Now the skeletons had denim, at least on the male bones. The female skeletons wore yellow dresses or blouses made from a flowery print.

“The Cast Away, Gone Astray,” Jack muttered to himself. He figured he could’ve ransacked the rooms to find cash, but there was no time. He checked his Kairos, and he was down to about half. It seemed keeping time stopped while world-hopping really taxed his abilities.

They walked into a bigger suburban home, from the 1990s, and the rooms led him to something more in the future, with lots of sleek designs and no clutter. It seemed even in the future, denim was still going to be popular because the skeletons in the future all wore jeans.

Bailey was sweating from fear. Gabby simply seemed focused on finding the Eternity Cannon and getting out