Twenty-four
The phone rang at dawn. Wallace rolled to his feet
and pulled on his pants. He sat on the couch and lifted the receiver.
Sasha watched him from the bed with the sheets pulled to her chin. Her
dark eyes were bright with fear in the morning light.
"Is everything okay?" Melanie asked breathlessly.
"We're okay."
"Nobody saw Sasha enter the apartment, Wallace.
There were people watching."
"She didn't come in through the door," Wallace said.
"There was a portal in the bedroom."
Melanie was silent for a moment, and then her voice
sounded cold. "Wallace, it has been suggested to me that it may be best
if Nick takes over from this point. There's too much potential for
personal conflict between the three of us."
Wallace thought it over. "She'll be more comfortable with
you. Melanie, I need you to help me with her."
"Sasha will have to agree to the arrangement,"
Melanie said tersely.
"She will when she understands what is happening.
She doesn't remember anything. I don't think she knows what happened to
Willington."
Melanie fell silent for a moment. "We have people
who can help. Will she cooperate?"
"I'll discuss it with her."
"It's imperative that we not burden her with more
than she can handle, but we need to know anything she may be able to tell
us. I'll be over right away."
Wallace put the phone down.
"There was a girl in your bed last night," Sasha
said, sensing that he had been talking to a woman, someone he cared for.
"The girl is Melanie Cass,"
Wallace said. "She works for the
government. She's helping to investigate the thing that happened at
Willington. She's a friend."
"She didn’t have any clothes on, Wallace."
“Sasha, you’ve been gone for months. I thought you
were gone forever.”
She threw her legs to one side and sat on the edge of
the bed. “What happened?" she asked without looking at him, as if he
might answer questions with difficult answers if they did not look one
another in the eye. "Is my mother okay?”
He didn’t want her to know too soon how much had gone
wrong, but his tears forewarned her, and she came to him dragging a sheet
with her. She knelt at his feet with tears of her own. "I don't want her
here. I want us to be alone."
"We've got to work with someone. We're in real
trouble."
She looked suddenly startled by an unexpected
thought. "Wallace, did I do something bad?"
He embraced her furiously, not wanting her to think
about how she had come to be here, but she began to tremble as the
implications of her damaged memory began to sink in. She kept glancing at
the window, puzzled by the change of seasons that had taken place.
"Where have I been? Why don't I remember anything?"
Nobody would have any ready answers to her
questions. Wallace dared not try to explain on his own. If Melanie’s
people couldn’t help, she was in serious trouble.
Footsteps pounded on the stairs. Sasha curled up
against him on the couch and moaned in terror.
Melanie opened the door cautiously, dressed in
pressed slacks and a loose silk blouse.
"Introduce us, Wallace," she said from across the
loft.
Wallace did so, mumbling hardly more than an exchange
of names. Sasha rose to her feet with her sheet wound about her breasts
and nodded a curt but curious greeting to the unwelcomed intruder.
"I explained to Sasha that you've been helping me,"
Wallace said. "She needs to understand how much we need one another, the
three of us, and your friends."
"A great deal of historic importance has happened
since you've been away," Melanie said to Sasha. "Thousands of lives have
been affected, and the danger is nowhere near ended. Wallace has been
important to us because he was exposed to so much of what happened in
Willington. You are even more important to us for the same reason."
"Because of the mushrooms?" Sasha said with growing
unrest. "I spit it out. I never swallowed it."
"We can help with that," Melanie said sternly.
"Wallace and I have been a team, but the three of us will be an even
better team. Will you let us help you?"
Sasha thought it over, then looked down at herself.
"Yes, but I don't have any clothes," she said in soft confusion.
Melanie seemed startled as well by her oversight.
Sasha had appeared from nowhere as naked as the day she was born. Both
women glanced at Wallace as if expecting an explanation.
"Don't look at me," Wallace said. "Neither one of
you gave me a chance to try to explain what was happening last night."
"It would have been difficult," Melanie confessed
bluntly. “This is awkward. Can we deal with it?
"Yes. Thanks for being so level-headed about it. I
owe you."
"I was warned not to let my personal feelings
interfere,” Melanie said. “I got what I deserved."
Melanie turned to Sasha. "I'll get you some
clothes. I'll be back in a short while and we'll get things taken care of
right away."
Sasha ventured a nervous smile. Wallace felt a
twinge of envy, knowing that Sasha had responded to Melanie's air of
competence as guilelessly as had he himself.
Melanie hurried off. When the door at the bottom of
the stairs slammed shut, Sasha let the sheet slip from her shoulders. She
crawled back into bed and curled up into a ball. Wallace sat at her side,
his hands knotted into fists, hoping she could hold up under the pressure.
She reached for his hand after a time. Wallace
assumed she just wanted reassurance, but she pulled him down upon her and
wrapped him in her arms and legs around him and kissed him ardently and
with mounting passion.
Wallace had consummated their lovemaking a dozen
times during the course of the night, and Sasha's obsessive behavior had
begun to make him nervous. Even when he had exhausted himself still one
more time, she moved against him relentlessly, caressing him in the ways
she knew would renew his passion.
He cried out in unexpected pain the next time her
supple body tried to arouse him beyond his capacity to respond. Wallace
pushed away with a gasp for air. He turned over and drew his knees to his
chest, shuddering in reaction to the mass of agony in his groin.
Wordlessly, Sasha fitted herself flush with his back, kneading the muscles
of his shoulders with her hands.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm just so..."
Wallace's eyes flew wide.
Hungry.
She was going to say that she was so hungry. He
could feel it, a hunger she could not satisfy, if not the horrible
mutation that would change her into a ravenous monster, then some other
terrifying need burning deep in her damaged psyche.
Melanie arrived a few minutes later carrying a small
suitcase, and Wallace put the crisis on a back burner. She put the
suitcase on an end table and opened it, ignoring the evidence of what had
been going on between the two of them.
Sasha gathered the sheet about her and went over to
look through Melanie's offerings. She then tossed the blanket carelessly
aside and took her choice of clothing into the partitioned bathroom. The
hissing of the shower began.
Melanie sat on the edge of the bed at Wallace's side
looking lost and bewildered. "How is she doing?"
Wallace was still in bed with nothing more than a
pillow as a barrier between them. "I don't know."
"Wallace, where did she come from?"
Wallace told her of his experience during the night,
daring her to disbelieve his story about the portal, Maligoth's offering
and threat, and Ghaedor's second appearance.
Melanie grew tense and somber. "Things are rolling
right along."
"Rolling right over us, you mean."
"There are other state and federal agencies snooping
about who have no understanding of what's happening. If you and Sasha
fall into their hands, you'd be lost to us. Will she cooperate?"
"I think so."
Wallace had no way of knowing for sure.
The shower stopped. Sasha emerged from the bathroom
dressed in the same dark slacks and a white, silk blouse that Melanie
wore. Melanie gave Wallace an apologetic smile. "It's something of a
uniform among us female field operatives."
She held out a hand to Sasha. "There's a car waiting
for us downstairs."
Sasha took Melanie Cass' offered hand and left
without looking back. Once they were gone, Wallace couldn't stop a
pervasive and deep-seated fear begin to take root and spread like a
cancer. It set his heart to pounding.
He had defied a god, and his threats of retribution.
How could he hope to stop Maligoth from following through on his threat?
