Chapter 11

The lead commando came running up. He spotted the giant snakes at almost the same moment he reached us. He quickly pulled Abby and Connor into a hug while at the same time asking, "How many snakes?"

"Just the two, Becker," replied Connor. As he was returning the hug, I could see his eyes remained fixed on the two still approaching men in civilian clothing, who were weighed down with large silver cases they had pulled from the bed of their truck.

Becker pulled back briefly and used hand gestures to direct his men. I was glad to see they were armed. I had never seen weapons quite like these before, but they were big, substantial, rifle-sized devices that simply looked a lot more powerful than handguns.

As I watched the men quickly and efficiently move to form a perimeter around the giant snakes, I heard Becker start to speak. From the tenor of his voice and his words, he had to be speaking to someone back at their base through the headset I saw all the commandos wearing.

"Jess, this is Becker. Abby and Connor have returned through this anomaly," he paused for a few seconds before continuing. "Yes, I said Abby and Connor. Ah, they have five others with them. Plus we have two giant prehistoric looking snakes about 1.5 meters in diameter by 17 meters in length. Please send a van for the people and a lorry for the snakes. Becker, out."

"Are any more snakes likely to come through before we get the anomaly locked?" asked Becker, still all business.

"No," replied Abby with a shake of her head. "The snakes are from the Paleocene Epoch, but this anomaly opens to 1692 Salem, Massachusetts. It's a long story. We'll explain later."

Becker nodded. "It is so good to have you back. We gave up all hope after the first year."

"How long have we been gone?" asked Connor in a surprisingly subdued tone. Then he appended, "And what is the date?"

"Two years," replied Becker.

I almost grinned. If we had overshot our destination by two years, this had to be 2011 instead of 2009. We weren't going to be stranded in London waiting to return to Mystic Falls. Then he continued speaking and my hopes were dashed.

"It is June 26, 2009."

"But that's not possible," stuttered Abby. "It was August 17, 2009 when we got trapped back in the Cretaceous."

"No," replied Becker, an uneasy expression starting to form on his handsome face. "It was September 6, 2007 when you disappeared through that anomaly."

Just then the two civilian men reached us. The older of the two, who looked fortyish with dark blond hair, dropped the heavy cases he had been lugging and swept Connor up in a hug. The younger man returned it so hard I thought he was going to crack a rib of the older man.

The younger civilian, who was taller and looked closer to thirty with a mop of thick brown hair, swept Abby up in his arms and then brusquely pulled her mouth to his. The kiss went on for several seconds and I could see fire in Connor's eyes. Connor and Abby had seemed like a couple ever since we had met them, was it really less than twenty-four hours earlier? But now I suddenly realized they might have only been a couple because of the circumstance of being stranded alone together back in the distant past. Of course, it was obvious from his expression Connor thought they were still a couple. I had this feeling things were about to become awkward at best or downright ugly, if we were unlucky.

"How is this possible?" asked Abby pulling back and then carefully extracting herself from the man's embrace. "Stephen, you were dead." She paused to glance over at the other civilian. "You and Cutter were both dead."

The three men from this present, Becker, Cutter, and Stephen all simply stared at her.

"Time ripple," said Connor in an almost dejected tone. He had looked so happy when the older man had first pulled him into the hug and I could understand it, if he thought these men had been dead but were now miraculously restored to life. But after the way Stephen and Abby had kissed, I wondered if he was quite as happy about it at this moment.

Should I admit I have always been more of a geek than most of my family and friends? Oh, I never belonged to the chess club or the computer club at school, but I liked to read. Perhaps that was why I had been so able to accept things when Stefan first told me he was a vampire and when Bonnie had demonstrated her witch abilities. And probably that was why I immediately grasped what Connor meant by a time ripple.

It was just like when Hermione had used the Time-Turner in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to go back and change events. Something in the past had changed and now Cutter and Stephen were alive when they hadn't been before and Abby and Connor had been lost in time in 2007 rather than 2009.

I wondered if it was related to the death of Reverend Cotton Mather back in Salem. If we hadn't shown up and the giant snakes hadn't shown up, he would have probably lived through the day and possibly have lived for many more years. Perhaps it was like that episode from the original Star Trek series where the Enterprise was thrown back to the 1960's and they had to return the fighter pilot they transported aboard because his unborn son would do something important in the future. Was Cotton Mather supposed to live on and later in life father some children or do something else of consequence?

But in our own version of history, Bonnie knew several of her ancestors had escaped the witch trials in Salem to settle in Mystic Falls. If we hadn't rescued the twins from the gallows, then how would they have escaped? They certainly would have been dead within the next couple of minutes without our intervention.

Then the other change we had made to the past came to mind. We had brought Rachel and Lexi forward through time. I didn't see how that would have changed the twins escaping, but removing Lexi, who had lived for three hundred years all over the world, could possibly impact a lot of lives, if we weren't able to return her. It could certainly impact things in Mystic Falls and especially Stefan. What if she hadn't been around to change his life at the pivotal moments? Would Stefan have even returned to Mystic Falls in 2009 for me to meet him? And if he had returned in 2009 would he have been the kind, gentle soul I had come to love or the Ripper from the stories Damon had told me about Stefan after he had left with Klaus?

Were my actions of bringing Rachel and Lexi forward in time responsible for everything?

End of Chapter 11

Author's Note:

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Duane