WHERE IS IT? He was out of control. Flying past the brink of insanity by way of rage. GIVE IT TO ME!
I felt myself slipping away. Felt my self, my spirit, my awareness, melting into mush. Everything I saw and heard and felt swirling into a disjointed scramble. Game over. Thousands of years as a human, billions of years as a world, and I was finally fading away.
Then, suddenly, I heard a voice. A familiar voice, coming in crystal clear over the din in the vortex.
"Gaia, my friend." It was a woman's voice, soft and serene. "I've brought you something."
Laurel. It was Laurel.
"A gift," said Laurel. "Can you feel it?"
Even as she spoke, I felt myself growing stronger. Power rushed into me from all sides like fire through a forest, setting me aflame from within.
"Atlantis drew all my power down here when he killed me," said Laurel. "Unknowingly, he brought my soul with it. And my soul still has a hold on that power."
The charge within me built faster with each passing heartbeat. Even with Atlantis still rooting around in my skull, I got back my clarity of thought.
"So now, I can give you one last gift," said Laurel. "I can give you the power to take back your destiny."
I took deep breaths and hardened my heart. Soaked up every last drop of Laurel's power and got ready to use it.
"Goodbye, Gaia," said Laurel. "I love you, my friend."
"Goodbye, Laurel." I said it through bruised and bloodied lips. "I love you, too."
What was that? said Atlantis. What did you say?
I smiled as the power growled and crouched within me, baring its fangs. "I said, go fuck yourself." And then I let it out of its cage.
*****
Chapter 64
At first, I had the element of surprise on my side. I tore his claws out of me and cast him aside in a lightning-swift strike. When he tried to get back in, I repelled him with such force, it left him stunned and staggered.
I went after him Atlantis-style, wearing him down with a flurry of blasts, then raking his mind with the psychic equivalent of a backhoe. In no time, he was reeling and wounded, heading down for the count.
At least, I thought he was down for the count. Next thing I knew, he was charging again, back to full god-king barbarian asshole mode.
His mind and mine smashed together like colliding planets. The two of us spun in a brutal clinch, twisting and grappling and pressing for the slightest advantage. Each one taking an inch, losing it, taking it back, losing it again.
Then, he found an opening and let me have it. Hurled me off through the vortex like a line drive, soaring and shell-shocked.
But I wasn't down yet and didn't plan to be. Swinging around, I used my momentum to hurtle back through the heart of him, frenziedly slashing with knives of pure thought. Butchering him the way he'd hacked into me, indiscriminately slicing and dicing.
Atlantis screamed, but it gave me no satisfaction. I was a force of nature now, on a single-minded mission. Revenge was no longer part of the equation. All I wanted was to save humankind and save the world. Which meant taking back what was mine.
As Atlantis howled and churned in pain, I pierced his shields and reached into him. Searching for the things that didn't belong to him.
NO! GET OUT! His mind thrashed violently, flinging me away—but not far. The closer I came to my stolen power, my stolen self, the stronger I got.
Steeling myself, I dove back in, combing the chaos for my prize. It wasn't hard to find. Atlantis had rolled all his power and defenses around it, walling it in. I felt an echo of recognition when I reached for it, throbbing behind those walls. Waiting for me.
STAY AWAY! said Atlantis. I WON'T LET YOU HAVE IT!
But it didn't matter what he said or did anymore. Thanks to Laurel, his fate was out of his hands. He was no longer the driving force.
Without a word, I gathered all my power around me. Wrapped myself in armor of pure light and thought and purpose. Armed myself with sword and shield of unstoppable will.
I thought of Aggie, smiling and waving. I thought of Duke and Laurel and Phaola. I thought of Briar, remembered the touch of his lips against mine. The pounding of my heart. The heat and light that had filled me.
And then I charged. Flew full-bore into the barricades, lashing out in all directions.
Atlantis resisted. Fought like a maniac, like a cornered wolverine. Poured everything he had into holding the line and forcing me back.
He bruised me, battered me, wounded me. Turned every centimeter into all-out war. No holds barred, no quarter given.
But I never lost ground again. I pressed forward relentlessly, an angel of doom gliding out of the night, irreversible. Like a continent shifting on its plate, like a billion years passing. A planet happening.
And then, there was only one thin layer of shielding in my way. Little more than a pane of glass, gleaming and transparent.
Don't do it. Atlantis' voice sounded weak now, exhausted. Please don't do it.
"Go away," I said, and then I punched my fist through the last barrier. It shattered in a billion pieces. They floated before me, drifting and turning, never falling.
I pushed aside the shimmering curtain and stepped through.
The blazing red light of the vortex turned gold. There was a sound like the soft chiming of bells.
A warm wind fluttered my hair and caressed my face. I heard a voice.
My own voice. "What took you so long?"
Someone who looked just like me stepped out of thin air. Radiant, wise, majestic, ideal. Smiling serenely.
So perfect, I cried just to see her. To see myself, the way I was meant to be.
"Welcome back," she said, and then she stretched out her arms.
Everything started flowing back to me in that moment. Memories, dreams, feelings, power. All the long life I'd lived and forgotten.
Pyramids gleaming bone-white in the desert sun. A sailing ship in a raging torrent, bucking waves as high as mountains. Dark-skinned children running for their lives from a lion. A horse-drawn wagon crossing an endless prairie. All of it rushed back to me...not just the moments from my visions, but the full stories behind them. The lives containing them.
Eskimos butchering a whale on a glittering ice floe. Japanese lanterns and wind chimes shivering in moonlit gardens. Ancient soldiers riding elephants through a mountain pass. Vast crowds cheering under red flags adorned with the yellow hammer and sickle.
Atlantis making love to me in a room by the sea, in the summer. My heart pinched at that one.
"It'll be all right." My other self, my perfect self, stepped toward me. "Come here."
In the end, I was afraid. I held back, wondering where this would lead. What else I would find.
"Come on." She gestured for me to come closer. "You can do it."
I shivered and wiped away a tear. "Can I?"
"Yes, silly." Smiling, she took another step. "You're the world. There's nothing you can't do."
I laughed nervously. The tears were still falling. "Okay." I shrugged. "What the hell."
With that, I walked into her outstretched arms. Fell into her embrace like a long-lost friend.
And the vortex melted around us.
*****
I rose up out of the pit, gliding on currents of gravity and electromagnetism. Naked on the outside yet more full on the inside than I had been in ages. A different person, yet somehow still the same.
Drifting up, I surveyed the cavern around me. Saw that the battle was over. No more gunfire, no more fighting in any corner. Just National Guardsmen and cops rounding up Crossbreeds and Groundswellers in the haze of smoke and settling dust.
My heart skipped a beat. Trapped and cut off in the timeless vortex, I'd had no idea how the battle had gone. No clue until that very moment that our side had won and humankind had survived.
With Atlantis' power pulled out from under them, the Crossbreeds looked listless and wrecked. The Groundswellers looked utterly lost and hope
less. The swarm of once-airborne cubes was stacked on the floor, motionless.
The cavern itself showed the effects of the god-king's downfall. Great slabs of the walls and ceiling had collapsed, leaving gaping craters open to the morning sky. Reaching out with my senses, so much enhanced since I'd reclaimed my power, I realized the mountain was back on its base. Without Atlantis to propel it, it had fallen. So much for the juggernaut.
One thing wasn't immediately obvious, though—the answer to a question that to me was just as important as whether humankind had prevailed: Had Briar and Duke lived through the battle?
I peered through the smoke and dust as I glided through the cavern, looking for my people. My family. Ignoring the goggle-eyed stares of National Guardsmen, cops, and Groundswellers alike as I passed them. Instantly dismissing anyone who wasn't Duke or Briar.
At least until a white quad roared to a stop below, and the rider hauled off her helmet and shouted up at me. "Hey, Lady Godiva! Nice bod!"
Snapping out of my focused daze, I drifted down to her. "Rusty! I'm so glad you're all right!"
"Likewise," said Rusty, "but what's with the Emperor's New Clothes deal? Did you save the human race by playing strip poker or something?"
"Oh, right." Reaching out with my power, I drew dirt from the cave walls and floor and pulled it toward me. Wrapped it around me like an ankle-length fur coat, leaving only my hands and feet and shoulders bare. "Thanks for the tip."
"Minor fashion faux pas." Rusty grinned and shrugged. "I can't tell you how many times I've walked out of the house without any clothes on."
"Roy's okay?" I said, looking around for him.
"Just a flesh wound," said Rusty. "Caught a round in the ass. Milking it for all it's worth, of course."
"What about Duke and Briar?" I knew I sounded worried, but I couldn't help it. "Where are they?"
"Last I knew, they were on their way to the pit." Rusty pointed at the middle of the cavern. "Said something about going in after you."
I was gone before she'd finished her sentence. Tearing across the cavern like a missile.
Back at the pit, I looked frantically for them. Overturned pieces of rubble at the rim like poker chips, flipping them into the abyss. Then tapped into my new wellspring of power, a planet's worth of power, and just turned all the rubble to dust at once.
And I saw them, sprawled near the rim. Motionless.
Dive-bombing down, I landed between them. My heart jackhammered in my chest as I crouched beside Briar, reaching for him. Longing to touch him and afraid to touch him at the same time. Afraid to find out.
"Oh, please no." Stomach twisting, I pressed my fingers against his throat. Felt a weak pulse there...and then it stopped. "No! God, no!"
Pushing past the panic, I started CPR on him. Cleared his airway, forced breath in his lungs, did chest compressions. Checked his pulse—still nothing. Did it all again.
Live! More breath, more compressions. You've got to live! Still nothing when I checked his pulse.
"Come on!" I kept working on him, fighting to bring him back, digging deeper. "Come back, Briar! I love you!"
Then, suddenly, as I was repeating the compressions, a rush of power flowed out of my hands. I felt it leave me, saw his chest light up with a brilliant flash.
His body twitched. Then stopped moving again.
"Come on!" I ducked back down for more mouth-to-mouth, pressing our lips together and blowing the breath of life into him. Once, then twice.
And then, he kissed me.
I broke away, and his eyes flew open. His chest rose and fell on its own. He coughed, and then he reached for me.
"Hey...Earth Angel." It was the first time he'd called me that. "I'm back."
Now that Briar was alive, I spun in Duke's direction, ready to leap into action. But Duke was already sitting up on his own. I should've known; it's tough killing someone like him, a creature of the earth.
"Don't mind me, Satin Doll." Duke chuckled and waved me off. "I'm fine. I think your other patient could use some good medicine, though."
"Absolutely right." Briar tugged on my arm. "You need to finish that mouth-to-mouth."
I smiled. Wiped a tear of joy from my cheek. So happy that this much hadn't changed, that I still felt the way I wanted to about him.
I let him pull me down to him, and we kissed. Spirits winding like grapevines as our lips melted together. As we became what we should have been all along.
"Hey." He broke the kiss to tell me something. "I heard what you said when you were doing CPR on me."
"Did you?" I gazed into his eyes, stroked the rough stubble on his cheek.
He popped up and kissed me on the nose. "I liked it," he said, and then he kissed me on the lips again.
And though, for me, the world would never really go away again, it felt like it did for a little while.
*****
Chapter 65
One Week Later
When I opened the front door of Cruel World Travel, the ring tone played "Caravan" loud and clear. Just like old times.
There was a lot of that going around these days, as I got back to my old routine. Same old ring tone, same old office, same old Duke tinkering around on the same old electronic keyboard. Same old smell of perfect coffee in the air. Just like old times.
Except for the part about me being the personification of Mother Earth, anyway. That part was nothing but new.
"Hey, Duke." I swung my purse from my shoulder and plunked it on a desk. Then plunked myself behind the desk and switched on the computer. "Sounds good."
Duke tickled some high notes, then hit a chord. "It's something new," he said. "Something for you."
"Really?" I looked up from the computer screen. "You haven't written anything new in ages."
"You've inspired me." He ran a few more notes, then changed keys and ran some more. "I'm calling it the Earth Suite."
I listened as he played a section. "I love it, Duke. I've always loved your work."
He smiled over his shoulder at me. "You were always my biggest fan. It's why you made me your moon. Why you gave me another life when the first one ended."
"That's right." I smiled, remembering the moment in my past life when I created him. When I brought that golem alive with the soul of the just-departed maestro, because I adored him. Because I could think of no one I trusted and admired more than Mr. Duke Ellington.
That was one of the advantages of my new condition—being able to remember past lives. It was also one of the drawbacks. My head was overflowing with thousands of years' worth of memories...billions, if you counted my pre-human existence. Most of the memories were jumbled, even incomprehensible; sorting them out and making sense of them was turning out to be a nightmare. I couldn't even understand the languages in a lot of them.
Fortunately, help was close at hand. "So, Gaia." Duke kept playing while he spoke. "Are we doing some more memory work this morning?"
"Not today," I said. "I have to take care of some things."
"Well, you know where to find me." Duke proceeded to hum along with the tune he was playing.
I hated to cancel our session. Duke was really helping me wade through my overloaded past. He and I shared a special bond, maybe because he was made of earth and I was the Earth. He had even managed to link directly to my mind in some cases, tapping into certain memories that were especially confusing, troubling, or remarkable. One thing was clear from the work we'd done so far: in all my many lifetimes, I'd been through a hell of a lot.
And now it was back to business as usual.
"By the way." Duke sang the words along with the tune he was playing. "Minthe and Nephelae just got back from the Peruvian Andes. They loved it."
"Good to hear, Duke." It seemed like it had been a lifetime since we'd set up the Peru trip for the two nymphs. Two of our best customers.
But did I even still care about customers? They didn't seem as important in the grand scheme of things anymore. Neither did Cruel World Travel,
for that matter.
With a few clicks of the mouse, I opened my e-mail program...and let out a heavy sigh. There were over three hundred messages in my inbox. Some spam, some business, some personal. The fallout of a life put on hold.
I closed the e-mail program, switched off the computer, and stared at my reflection in the darkened screen. Part of me wanted to go back to the way things had been before Aggie's disappearance; part of me wanted to keep running Cruel World and busting small-time bad guys on the side in the same small town.
But the rest of me wanted something else. I was so much more than before, just like I'd seen in the vision when I'd been trapped and near death in Cousin Canyon. I was truly so much more now; didn't it make sense that I would want more out of life? Didn't it come with the territory when I literally had the weight of the world on my shoulders?
But if this place and this life weren't enough, what exactly did I want? And why couldn't I figure it out more easily? In my prophetic vision in Cousin Canyon, I had risen from the Earth, smiling serenely. So beautiful and majestic and wise. So where was that wisdom when I needed it? Why wasn't everything just magically falling together?
So far, being the world made flesh wasn't what it was cracked up to be.
Suddenly, Duke planted a steaming mug of coffee in front of me, and I jumped. Snapped right out of my self-obsessed reverie...which, knowing Duke, was exactly what he'd wanted to do.
"Drink up, Earth Angel." Smiling, he eased himself onto the corner of the desk beside me. "It's good for what ails you."
"Thanks." I lifted the cup, and...wow. He wasn't kidding. It had been so long since I'd had a cup of his special brew, I'd almost forgotten how great it tasted. Instantly, the stress flowed out of me.
Duke nodded. "Things are going to work out, you know." His fingers fluttered as if he were playing an invisible piano. "As long as you don't forget who your friends are."
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