Thirty-five
The van's doors opened upon a brighter dawn light.
Wallace grunted satisfaction. The few minutes of sleep he had caught felt
good. He yearned for more, hours and hours of welcomed oblivion.
He climbed out of the van and took a moment to survey
his surroundings. They were parked next to a side entrance of an
abandoned elementary school in a community close to Dale City. Armed
guards let the group inside the building.
A regal, middle-aged man with white hair and wearing
the uniform of an Army General confronted the group of three Saur and two
humans with an expression of utter amazement. Armed guards on all sides
slowly backed away from the colorful humanoids.
"The Saur are allies," Sasha said to the general.
"They can permanently close the portals."
The general's nametag read Rathburn. Rathburn
turned to Melanie. "I need you and Wallace mentally and physically
alert. Catch some sleep while I deal with this. Sasha, what are your
requirements and the requirements of your friends?"
"Time to adapt and ask questions," Sasha said
quietly. "Three hours, perhaps, after which we shall state our respective
positions and expectations of one another and negotiate a plan for mutual
cooperation."
"Toward the defeat of the forces invading our world?"
Rathburn said hopefully.
"In part, yes."
Rathburn stepped aside. "We've thrown together some
temporary living quarters here. Melanie, Wallace, go with my men. Sasha,
please bring your friends and follow me."
Wallace opened his mouth to protest the separation of
the group. Melanie squeezed his arm. "We need to sleep and General
Rathburn needs time to study the Saur and convince Washington that the ASG
is best qualified to handle the crisis."
Wallace had only to evaluate the extent of his
fatigue to decide his best course of action. "I give up. Lead the way to
somewhere soft, please."
Three confused and nervous Guardsmen showed Melanie
and Wallace to a classroom divided into partitioned sleeping stalls, each
equipped with a bed and dresser. When the Guardsman left, Wallace
retained no memory of having crawled into one of the beds. He awoke to
partial consciousness later and rolled over in the cool, clean sheets with
a grin of infinite satisfaction.
He awoke again with Melanie sitting at his side and
holding a hot cup of coffee. "Light with sugar?" she said.
His head still swam with fatigue. "Don't you ever
sleep?"
"I’ll catch up on sleep when I grow old and die.”
"How long have I been sleeping?"
"Not long enough. Sasha had some kind of nervous
breakdown. She collapsed and went into convulsions. We sedated her and
moved her to your old apartment in Harthmore. We'd like you there when
she awakens."
Wallace sat up quickly. "What about the Saur?"
Melanie forced the coffee into his hands. "Rathburn
showed them recordings of you and Sasha in bed. The Saur seem to
understand that she'll be in good hands. They went back to watching
television."
"Television?"
"They're sampling food and watching nature videos.
Birds, bees, whales, what have you. And travel documentaries."
Wallace looked around for a clock.
"It's about noon. Things are quiet."
Wallace sipped his coffee and studied the girl. She
looked tired.
"Be careful with Sasha,” Melanie said. “I can't
imagine how she's managed to retain her sanity. Her and Qualin both. We
don't know anything about Qualin. Maybe Maligoth isn't as stupid as
Ghaedor thinks. He may have chosen her for a reason. She may be
dangerous."
Wallace nodded acknowledgment, but secretly
considered Qualin to be the least of their problems. He couldn't shake
memory of the grotesque Carn from his thoughts. Even with Qualin's help,
how were they expected to defeat such monsters and their advanced
technology?
"You can shower and change clothes and maybe catch
some more sleep at the apartment," Melanie said. "Sasha won't be awake
before midnight, but she's got to be back here translating for Rathburn
and the Saurs by dawn. There haven't been any more portal openings
reported, but that only means the Carn are making changes in their plans
to deal with us."
Wallace was suddenly reluctant to part company with
the girl. Melanie correctly deciphered his alarmed expression. "Don't
worry about me. I'll be okay."
Melanie disappeared while Wallace was dressing. Two
sinister-looking Guardsmen wearing sidearms escorted him into the cold
afternoon and drove him in a Humvee to Harthmore. The town looked
unaffected by the drama in progress a few miles away, although there
seemed to be fewer people about and no young people at all. He remembered
the violence of the explosion and suspected that much of the area had been
evacuated. As well, he figured ground zero was probably more crowded with
scientists and military personnel than the town had ever been populated by
students.
The Guardsmen dropped him off at the curb in front of
the mansion and drove away with a whine of the gear box. Wallace looked
about the neighborhood, knowing that the ASG had to be nearby, watching,
probably en masse. They would never have turned Sasha loose so casually.
Wallace turned to face the mansion and the garage out
back, tempted to just walk off down the sidewalk and never look back. Not
that he believed that he could run far enough to escape the Carn. Neither
did he have any real desire to abandon Sasha, or Melanie.
He went up to the loft apartment. The doors were
unlocked and the apartment cloaked in shadow. He turned on the light over
the couch area to confirm Sasha's presence in his bed. He locked the door
behind him and went in search of a change of pajamas, then showered and
sat on the couch in his robe, watching Sasha sleep and wondering what to
do. Despite Melanie's assurance that Sasha would sleep until midnight,
she opened her eyes after a time. When she noticed his presence, she
rolled onto her back and held her hand out to him.
Wallace sat by her side. Despite the distance
between him, he could feel the incredible heat of her new metabolism. He
resisted the temptation to reach out and feel her shiny skin.
"Qualin thinks we're strange," Sasha said. "The Saur
think like the falling rain, and I think like the slow-moving clouds. She
says we're passive, like cattle. She finds it odd that we have no
predators in our world to take advantage of our weakness."
Despite the changes in her body, Sasha was still a
child at heart, naive and excited by the world around her. She still
radiated that air of ingenuousness. "What is Qualin like?" he asked.
Sasha's smile faded. "She's afraid all the time.
She knew more about her world than I know about mine. She's older than I
am, I think."
Sasha gazed at him. "Are you afraid of us?"
Wallace cut short his denial, thinking that she'd
catch him in his lie and put an even greater barrier between them.
"Everything is so strange," was all he said.
Sasha wet her lips nervously. "Nice strange, not bad
strange. Qualin is thinking about the last time we made love, how often
we did it, and how good it felt. It's not the same with her kind."
She reached for him. Wallace let her guide him
alongside her on the bed. She then held him gently against the incredible
heat of her body. Her skin was smooth, dry, and slick, and he could only
feel three fingers and an opposed thumb kneading the muscle of his back.
Her breath against the side of his face was the sigh of an electric
heater, and it had the strange aroma of an unfamiliar living thing.
"Qua li aesal del entra, ki dessi," she murmured, and
the body instantly became a stranger in his arms.
Wallace tensed.
"Don't be afraid," Sasha whispered. “This is so
wonderful to her.”
She tugged at the robe still draped about his
shoulder, pushing it off his arms and kicking it off the bed in disdain.
Wallace had an erection despite himself. They were both awkward in one
another's arms, but Wallace couldn't resist the offer, even knowing the
ASG was probably watching. Even his fatigue wasn't strong enough to deny
her.
Sasha lay quivering beneath him when he penetrated.
He lay quietly inside her when she went rigid, wondering what was wrong
that the act itself was no longer enough to consummate their love-making
as it once had. She stirred expectantly when he kissed the side of her
neck. She gasped a shuddering breath when his lips brushed her skin.
Understanding came with a cold chill. He could sense
Qualin's relationship with the horrific Carn through Sasha's subtle body
language. To test his terrible suspicion, or to hopefully reject it
entirely, he nipped her gently.
Sasha climaxed beneath him, quietly and violently.
Her reaction reignited his own passion despite his horror. It was over
quickly for both of them, and Sasha turned her head aside and blinked away
her tears in the dim overhead light.
"I'm sorry," Wallace whispered to her.
"It's not you," she whispered. "If she was devoured
by the Carn in an act of mating, she would die with pleasure. How can she
ever hope to be free of those horrible monsters?"
Sasha sniffed back her tears and stared at the
ceiling. "Now she is thinking that we are like creatures of light, full
of love and harmony. It doesn't seem so terrible that we are slow."
"Things will work themselves out in the end," Wallace
said.
"We will all die in the end," Sasha said. "Only
Maligoth is eternal."
"Maligoth committed a wrong. Maligoth has enemies
who are angered by his intrusion into this world."
"We know that great evil has been committed," Sasha
said softly. She fell quiet for a time, then said in a voice heavy with
Qualin’s language, "and the evil is omnipotent and will be the agent of
our destruction."
