The storm lasted forever. Eventually, Wallace
regained his senses and fought his way to his feet. His head still rang
from the blow to the head. He put his hand to the site of the injury, but
no blood came away on his fingers. The blood he had seen had been
Melanie's. Lost in the gray downpour, he bellowed his helpless
rage and his panic. Melanie and Sasha would die while he wandered lost in
the storm.
His cries were answered by high-pitched howlings. They drew him to a nearby scene of carnage. Three cats lay strewn across
the ground, torn and broken and surrounded by grieving comrades moaning
their anguish to the gray skies. One of the older animals came sullenly
to Wallace and spoke to him in low growlings, then turned and led the way
through the mass of gray mist to the ridge.
There were more dead cats at the ridge, and dozens
more dangerously alert, angered animals surrounding Sasha's campsite. Sasha herself crouched in the open, dazed and emotionally devastated. Her
bow and arrows lay discarded at her feet.
The Carn had survived after all. He was naked, a reptIlean giant with the countenance of a predator more primal and
mindlessly savage than the world around them had known in a thousand
millennia. The beast squatted beneath the overhang of rock, hovering over
a pale creature that lay quivering at its feet.
"Melanie, no!"
He thought her dead, but his cry caused her breasts
to heave. She writhed, otherwise unable to move from the depth of shock.
The Carn had bitten Melanie's naked body from head to
foot. Approaching as closely as he dared, Wallace thought he could see
that the wounds were superficial, not meant to kill, but to taint the air
with the smell of blood. She would survive her injuries, but not the
content of Sasha's egg placed upon her body. The thing inside writhed
with an inhuman energy, eager to be freed into the world and feed.
Wallace gathered all the courage available to him. He had seen the behavior of the Saur in the presence of the Carn and could
expect no support from Sasha. The cats could hardly expect to bring down
a beast with scaled armor for hide, and a jaw that could sever the
backbone of one of their kind with a single bite. He doubted if Melanie
was even completely aware of the fate that had befallen her.
The Carn pointed a clawed finger. "I warned you,"
it growled at him in perfect English.
Wallace stumbled back, knowing that no Carn would
have bothered to learn a human tongue. The Carn had been possessed in
some manner by its god.
"I did not expect you to heed my warning,"
Maligoth growled at him, "so now watch this worm-skin die a death
befitting your kind and see for yourself the worthlessness of your Saur
tainted with human blood."
Sasha had carried the seed of their defeat within her
all along, just as she had feared. Had she been pregnant all this time by
a child fathered by the Carn? Maligoth had triumphed in the face of his
apparent defeat. Wallace was helpless to do anything but witness
Melanie's death, and Sasha's death, and then he, too, would die.
The egg sac split. The pink little body that emerged
crawled upon Melanie's body with the feral motor control of an animal. It
mewed desperate hunger, and Wallace lunged forward in a wild effort to
kick the creature away from Melanie.
Maligoth lashed out and caught him by the throat. A
fist larger than his head held him dangling by the neck. Maligoth grinned
and barked laughter. "Now witness the first blood spilled upon this,
the new world of the Carn!"
The hatchling exercised its jaw, but it paused with
its head raised high rather than attacking the warm flesh beneath it. It
crawled higher onto Melanie body and sniffed at her breasts as if in
recognition of the sustenance it offered, which was wrong. The Saur had
no breasts, and the hatchlings did not nurse.
Wallace gave a strangled cry of amazement. The
hatchling had no teeth! The little face that lifted into the cruel gray
day and cried its frustration was more human than Saur!
Puzzled by Wallace's cry of astonishment, Maligoth
looked down. His eyes widened and he bellowed his outrage.
"Blasphemy!" he roared. "It cannot be!"
Maligoth reached down to snatch the newborn from the
body of what he had thought would be the meal of living flesh to stir the
genes of the Carn to life. Somehow, Maligoth's bid for renewal of the
Carn species had been thwarted, but Wallace's conviction of their imminent
doom held fast. His heart sank as he realized that even the innocent
hatchling would now die, his baby, his and Sasha's firstborn son.
Maligoth grasped the infant in his free hand as
Wallace dangled from his left, suffocating. Wallace heard the familiar
twang of a taut arrow released from a drawn bow at the same instant. He
did not immediately connect the sound to Maligoth's grunt in surprise. The Carn released both Wallace and the infant, his arm descending to the
ground and his massive hands opening and releasing their content. Wallace
grabbed for the slick, squirming infant even as it fell free, clutched
its tiny body and rolling the both of them to safety.
Maligoth bolted upright, his mouth agape in surprise,
an arrow embedded in his neck. Wallace looked around in time to see Sasha
calmly notch a second arrow, draw the bow, and calmly send the second
arrow to bury itself in scaled hide alongside the first.
The cats then attacked with shrieks of rage, bowling
Maligoth over backward in gouts of blood and torn flesh.
Sasha, who was, after all, half human, dropped her
bow and arrows and rushed to him to gently pry the baby from Wallace's
arms, freeing Wallace to drag Melanie to safety from the frenzied
bloodbath of cats tearing the flesh from the bones of the dying invader.
Wallace risked moving her several hundred feet from
the scene of the carnage. The rain abated and the sky cleared overhead,
letting in a brilliant shaft of warming sunlight. He cradled Melanie in
his arms, helpless to provide medical aid of any kind. She would survive
her wounds, or she would not.
Sasha joined him, crouching at his side with the
wailing infant held against her atrophied breasts. The dark eyes of the
newborn flickered about, taking in the world in which it had been born as
if in confusion.
The Carn had fallen silent forever. Dozens of the
cats approached one by one, some of them bloodied, keeping at a respectful
distance and sinking to the ground to watch what the newcomers would do
next.
Melanie stared into the blue sky, her face twitching
with pain and the remnants of her panic.
"Wallace," Sasha said.
He glanced at her warning tone of voice. She nodded
to something happening in the trees. He looked around in time to see a
blue-rimmed portal flare into existence.
Wallace rose to his feet, enthralled. Beyond lay his
childhood grotto, alive with the flowers and dense vegetation of early
summer. Still trembling and bleeding from numerous bite marks and
scratches, Melanie clutched at his arms to pull herself to her feet and
weave an unsteady path to the phenomenon.
Sasha stayed put, staring straight ahead without
expression. "I cannot go home," she said quietly.
Wallace thought about what awaited him on the other
side of the portal. If it was the world of their origin, Willington was
gone, his attic apartment, Aunt Bernice. The pretty young Arabian girl who
had danced in her bedroom for him was here, in this exotic world.
Wallace turned away despairingly and lifted Sasha to
her feet. "Don’t worry,” he said calmly and without remorse. “We're
already home. Everything I need is here."
Melanie glanced back at him in surprise, and
Wallace's heart sank at the thought of losing her. She looked horrified
by the prospect of leaving him. Wallace didn't know what else she could
do.
Melanie dipped her head. Tears flowed freely. She
looked up again at the portal.
"Melanie, no!" Sasha cried, her voice clear and
strong in the silence. "The baby will die!"
Melanie glanced back in confusion and alarm.
Sasha held the mewing infant out to her. "The child
is Wallace's. It is a human child, and I have no breasts with
which to feed it!"
Melanie just stared at her in astonishment.
"Please! Wallace loves you, too! I know he does!"
"Sasha, she can't." Wallace looked to Melanie for
conformation. "You can't, can you? Don't you have to have a baby..." He
gestured in embarrassment. Did a woman have to have a baby of her own to
nurse?
Something moved on the other side of the portal.
Melanie leaped back with a shriek of fright.
A human figure moved to the center of the grotto and
turned to face them. His eyes widened in astonishment and he took
unthinking steps backward until he struck the low outcropping of shale and
stopped.
Wallace drew closer, eyes narrowed with disbelief.
"Nick is that you?"
Nick Waldenski cried out in astonishment. "I don't
believe it! What the hell are you doing in there?"
Wallace ran to the portal. He stopped short of it,
fearful that if he passed through, it would collapse and leave Melanie and
Sasha stranded.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Wallace said
with a grin of sheer joy.
Nick shook his head, amused by his own confusion. "I
don't know! I was thinking about you! I had this urge to come here one
last time and look around!"
"What's happening over there?"
Wallace said.
"Nothing." Nick's eyes darted wildly about the scenery on
Wallace's side of the portal. His gaze kept returning again and again to
Melanie and Sasha standing naked, dirty and bleeding in the background. "Nothing's happening here. Something is sure as hell happening there."
"We had a bad time. A Carn got
through." He didn't want to try to explain about Maligoth. "It's dead
now."
"Well, what the hell are you standing there for." Nick gestured frantically. "Come on through, kid! Hurry up!"
Sasha cried out, terrified that Wallace might fall
prey to temptation and abandon her. Wallace shook his head adamantly. "She can't go back. It’s not her world anymore. She’d never fit in."
"What do you mean she can't come back?" Nick cried
out in confusion and what remained of his fear. "What's with you guys?"
Wallace chuckled nervously. "Why don't you come on
through and give me a hand?"
Nick's lower jaw dropped. He looked again at Sasha
and then Melanie and shook his head frantically. "No way, kid. You come
over here where you belong."
"I don't belong there
anymore. I don't have anything to go back to. I can't leave
Sasha." He looked back at Melanie. Melanie grimly shook her head. "We're all staying," he said, satisfied that it was a final decision for
all of them.
Nick frowned and thought about it. "Is there anybody
else there with you?"
"Just the three of us."
"I'll be a son of a bitch!" Nick pointed to the baby
mewing in Sasha's arms. "You crazy bastard! Look at what you went and
done!" A grin transformed into a more thoughtful smile. "Look at what
you went and done. Way to go, Wallace."
Nick grew suddenly moody. "So what do we do?"
Wallace, for one, understood. "This is our chance to
decide what has to be done, I guess a chance for you to let the world know
what happened, how things turned out. Nick, this place is incredible. You'd love it."
"Yeah, I might." He pursed his lips nervously. He
shook his head. "Three's company, kid. Four's a crowd."
"But..."
Wallace looked around and saw that Sasha and Melanie
had crept protectively closer to him. Sasha slipped in at his side
cradling the mewing baby. Melanie put her hand on his arm.
Wallace grinned sheepishly.
Nick looked concerned. "You're really going to stay,
kid?"
Wallace thought about what it would take to give up
their paradise world of the white birds that sang like angels and the
gentle cats. "We'll stay. Thanks for the help, Nick."
Nick gave him a casual salute. "It's been one hell
of an adventure, kid."
And with that, the portal closed in a flash. Within
the glare, briefly, Wallace saw Ghaedor's dim image.
Wallace had only one question left to resolve. "How?" he said in complete confidence that Ghaedor would understand what
he needed to know.
Ghaedor's voice buzzed, the first and last time it
would be heard in this world. "Qualin was with child as you
suspected. Maligoth planned for this time, engineered the pregnancy
before he returned her to you. He did not know that we terminated that
pregnancy. The child is yours, and in some small measure, the Saur have
survived and can reproduce. Live your lives in peace. Maligoth will
intercede no more."
Ghaedor made a curiously familiar gesture with one
limb, a thumb’s up, and then he grew in size and
became one of the original vaporous figures with the eyes like burning
stars. The one figure split into seven that surrounded him, and then the
seven slowly faded from view.
Wallace turned back to his astonished family.
"Show's over. Let's go home."
Novels by
William G. Tedford