by Dan Glover
"Chester?"
When the tiger appeared at one end of the tunnel, Niall's heart skipped a beat. He knew large predators roamed old New York City but the only creature he'd ever seen the size of this beast was Chester, and he was back at Toulon.
Or was he?
"It is Chester!"
The sound of his name seemed to settle the big cat's skittishness as he ignored Niall and plodded toward Kirk. Chester took up the entire expanse of the tunnel with his girth as he seemed to be assuring himself that the thing standing in front of him was indeed an old friend.
For Kirk's part, he seemed to have turned to stone. Though Niall wanted to rush up to Chester and hug the big cat, something in Chester's demeanor kept him rooted to the floor.
When he was close enough to Kirk to graze the thing that used to be a man with his enormously long whiskers, something flashed across the tunnel so quickly that Niall didn’t have time to see what it was, much less warn Chester.
A gigantic blob that resembled both a huge tarantula and a massive scorpion engulfed the big cat in a cloud of fury. It dawned on Niall that Kirk had counted on this moment... that he had prepared for it, and now was unleashing his demons in a bid to subdue and conquer the big cat once and for all.
Without thinking, Niall leapt forward to embrace both Chester and the writhing mass that sought to smother the tiger. He heard rather than felt the snap of electricity as he found himself knee-deep in sand. A howl sounded behind him, a sound someone might make at discovering a loved one cold and dead in front of them.
"Stop! You're killing them!"
Kirk's voice raged like an iron ocean unleashed. Chester for his part shook off the now-inert monster that assailed him as if he was removing an unwanted article of clothing. Niall realized the horrendous form that descended upon the big cat was composed of billions of particles now forming a heap at his feet.
Free now from the onslaught the big cat padded through the dust that muffled his low growl as he approached what had once been a man. Kirk for his part still stood as a metal mallet turned to stone as a shimmering luster grew around his body as if every particle of his being grew alarmed at the prospect of a confrontation he knew he could not win.
Niall wasn’t certain what happened next. One moment he was watching as Chester towered over Kirk, his mouth open wide as if gauging whether or not to take one bite or two. The next second the luster that had heretofore affixed itself over Kirk like an eggshell ready to crack had leaped across the space separating them to encase Chester within its grasp.
The big cat seemed to slowly turn to glass beginning with his paws. Even though Chester kept up the struggle each movement brought the shimmering substance higher up his legs until it engulfed the whole of his body and then even his head.
When Niall tried to run to the big cat's aide once again, his feet would not move. Looking down, he discovered the dust had hardened into concrete anchoring his body to the floor of the tunnel. He watched in horror as he too was slowly overcome by the creeping quicksilver.
"At least I know who I can trust now."
Kirk's voice sounded hollow as if spoken from inside a drum. His face was a mask of both delight and revenge now achieved.
"You two deserve each other. You'll have to excuse me now while I make my way to the surface. I have pressing business with some people you might know, Niall. Don't worry... I'll send your regards to them when they're a part of us."
Chapter 26—Deserted
The castle was empty when she returned.
She hadn’t gone far, only out to the garden to pluck some herbs with which to season soup she planned on making later. Though she'd gotten distracted by watching a cloud of hummingbirds descend upon the zinnias and salvias in the flowerbeds adorning each side of the path she hadn’t been gone so long as to warrant a search.
At first, Natalia thought perhaps the Ladies had gone outside to look for her but a walk around the grounds soon disproved that conjecture. She wasn’t exactly upset that her lovers would leave so suddenly and without a warning but when the first subtle sign of nausea began to roil her stomach, Natalia realized she'd been feeling the touch of an oncoming illness for several minutes.
Though she had never experienced Lake Syndrome personally, she had seen enough of its symptoms to understand what was happening to her. She was in trouble. Unless she could locate the Ladies within a few hours, she would be dead.
Nate had given them one of his anti-gravity flying machines in order to make the trip to Lake Baikal and though she had ridden in it, she had never operated it. She couldn’t seem to think straight. Why would the Ladies abandon her here like they did?
"Lady Lily? Are you here? Lady Lauren?"
Her voice sounded frail, like a small mammal caught up in the jaws of death. This couldn’t be happening. She must be dreaming. All she had to do was to wake up and both her Ladies would be by her side soft and warm.
The cancer was back. She could feel its malignancy growing inside her like a sordid seed that had been biding its time, awaiting the chance to flourish once more and consume the life it meant to claim a thousand years ago.
Each breath rattled with agony. Her lungs were suddenly full of phlegm that she yearned to cough up but drawing a deep lungful of air to do so meant a dagger stabbing deep into the space between her shoulder blades.
Though she was covered in perspiration her body shivered. She felt an overwhelming urge to sit down or better yet to lie out on the floor but she knew she would never get up if she allowed herself that luxury.
She was in a tunnel or perhaps at the bottom of a well looking up at a world slowly receding away from her. As she reached out to grasp hold of the back of a chair with which to steady herself the room spun violently around causing her to lose her balance.
She had no memory of falling yet finding herself upon the hard stone floor in the kitchen Natalia realized she must have passed out for a brief moment. Her head was turned sideways and it was strange that the sun no longer shone through the windows and even more odd that when she attempted to sit she could not move.
An odor insulting her nostrils informed her that she was lying face down in a puddle of her own vomit. Her head seemed somehow attached to the floor with tiny metal screws that kept drilling into her cheekbone with a slow sort of suffering that she had always thought should be reserved for a special sort of hell.
They weren’t hummingbirds.
The inspiration burst through her befuddled and tormented mind. She had marveled at the sight of them but now she realized they weren’t birds at all. They were something far more sinister. While she stood enchanted at the wonder of so many tiny bundles of wonder hovering about her, the world as she knew it was being altered, paths redrawn, and roads shifted.
She was no longer at Orchardton Hall. Somehow, she had either walked or been brought some five kilometers to the old village of Kurgan. What she thought was the castle was in fact a burnt out shell of a limestone-walled church where in years past she had often gone with her Ladies to watch the full moon rising over the ever-restless ocean.
It had been centuries since they visited the old church. She had no recall of leaving Orchardton Hall or of the walk to the decrepit building. Once again, she told herself she was having a nightmare, the kind of which had afflicted her while riding that terrible train across Europe after learning she had a terminal illness.
Terminal illness... she could still hear the words of the doctor as he tried hard not to smirk and yet failed. His mouth moved like a dead thing as his jowls quivered and he kept nodding at her as if assuring her she was fully cured of the disease he was charged with healing.
Would they come looking for her?
A screech breaking the night startled her. Whatever made the noise was closer than she would have liked. It sounded like a mournful woman screaming at the sight of her insides were being slowly torn out and left for scavengers to feast upon.
They must have noticed she was gone. Lau
ren had asked her to give them a little time alone and though it hurt her to realize there were secrets to which she would never be privy, Natalia had done as her Lady requested.
"Where are you, my darling Lily? Can you not hear me calling to you?"
She spoke to a night of terror so full of noise that it was difficult to pick out any one individual cry in the myriad of them. The screaming woman had not repeated her plaintive peal yet Natalia sensed something closing in up her, something hungry, something wild.
Her whole life had been spent doing what was required. Now, she supposed, it was required that she die. She wondered if she should close her eyes. She hated to think of birds pecking at them and even though she knew she'd be dead by then it still bothered her vanity.
She was always told how she had such beautiful eyes. Even when the cancer was ravaging her body, her eyes were unaffected, dark and full of knowing. That day on the train in old France... when she first met Lady Lily... she was sure it was her eyes that had drawn her lover to her side.
Yet it had always been Lauren who invariably ended up stealing her heart. Anguish greater than knowing she was dying grew in her chest... to think she would never see her Ladies again meant the end of everything she had ever cherished. How could she have been so stupid as to wander away from Orchardton Hall? What had she been thinking?
The nightmare... the recurring pangs of fear had been invading even her waking moments for some time now. The boy Kirk was not a boy at all. He had arrived at Orchardton Hall with a purpose that he believed was his own but in actuality was part of a larger more sinister scheme hatched inside a metal mind thousands of years in the future.
The dream made no rational sense and so Natalia couldn’t share it even with those closest to her... the Ladies of the Lake. Somehow time had twisted about on itself bringing with it a horror that had been banished in the far off future. As she lay dying the nightmare returned, weaving its sultry silhouette about her like one of the pleasing costumes she had one worn as a girl while traveling with her Gypsy parents town to town.
All she had to do was to call out to him and she would be saved... but at what cost?
Kirk had lied about everything. Marilyn hadn’t been the instigator of the coup against the Ladies and Natalia by extension... Kirk had arranged it all. He had impregnated Marilyn's willing mind with ideas contrary to her nature, or perhaps simply appealing on some dark level.
She had to warn the others of the danger looming over them but she hadn’t the strength to move even so much as a finger. Her breathing had all but ceased... the short brutal gasps did little more than tell her how close death was hovering. Though she wished she could close her eyes the reality was they were wedged open.
Natalia felt herself being lifted bodily off the cold stone floor of the church by the back of her collar. The screeching beast of the night had apparent found its quarry and had come to carry her off.
As she was dragged outside and through grass damp with dew she saw a moon cut in half skipping over cotton ball clouds. She hoped she would draw her last breath before the feast began but that no longer seemed to matter quite as much as it once did. A night breeze caressed her face as she descended into nothingness.
Chapter 27—Footprints
He had no idea where he was.
So far as he knew, the day began like any day with a damp sea breeze blowing in from the southern hills portending rain. There must have been a reason why he had come this way but wracking his memory for answers did no good.
He knew his name, or at least he thought he did this morning. Now, however, he wasn’t so sure. Dust had been getting in his eyes though it seemed more like the same kind of sand being blown in from the beach where he once lived.
He kept having the strangest of thoughts but when he tried to focus on them, they slipped away. He purposely sat down with his back to a large flat stone and practiced his breathing until the cascade of images became slower and then came to a halt.
As his mind became blank his memory returned bit by bit.
His name was Nate. He was here looking for Niall. His troubles had started when he flew through a cloud of dust billowing over the ocean on his approach to old New York City. The dust seemed to move of its own accord and though he told himself it was updrafts that caused eddies and swirls in the clouds that resembled animals and faces he half suspected a malevolent intelligence hid behind the veneer of dirt.
The dust cloud was alive with electricity. It had unsettled the warp field that allowed the anti-gravity craft to stay aloft causing it to veer uncontrollably off course until he finally managed to wrest control of it back from the effects of the storm.
H had set down on what looked to be the top of an old skyscraper now mired deep in a bed of dark sludge that rippled and writhed as if it was alive. He suspected he must be close to his destination although he no longer recognized the changed landscape.
From what he could see before he was forced to land the old City had vanished beneath a sea of green and gray. Few buildings still stood and those were fast succumbing to the ravages of both time and neglect.
"You promised me you'd bring Kirk home, Grandfather Nate. I trusted you and so did he. How can you live with yourself?"
He'd been wondering much the same thing. He had put off coming here for a thousand years and if he had a chance another thousand would have passed him by without a thought.
Returning to the Isle of Skye should have been a homecoming of sorts but when Luciana confronted him he realized his error. He should have gone anywhere but here. Her anger was still raging even long after everyone else had ceased to speak of his malfeasance.
Though he hoped it wasn’t so he wondered if they'd grown used to his dishonesty and his lies. No one other than Lily had ever been direct enough with him to tell Nate like it was. They instead told him what he wanted to hear. He knew it and so did they but that didn’t keep it from occurring over and over again until he came not only to expect it but to crave it.
This was the last place he wanted to be. He could hear devils in the wind and the stinging sand seemed to be working its way under his skin diving deep into his body in search of something he dared not think about.
"He knew the risks, my darling Luciana. I never forced Kirk to do anything. He came along of his own accord."
"Don't do that, Grandfather Nate... don't you dare use those terms of endearment with me. Everyone else may think you're the best thing since indoor plumbing but to me, you're an ingrate and a liar. I'll never forgive you for what you've done to my family. Kirk may have only been a man but he was a better and a more loving person than you've ever been or you'll ever be. You gave up on him and left him behind. He was your friend."
He could have left the Isle of Skye—bid adieu to Luciana and her excessive mourning—and gone anywhere in the world. Though he suspected they'd shun him, he even thought of going back to Amanda and Ginger, beg their forgiveness, and live forever in the south of old France under a friendly sun and beside the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Instead, he went back to the one place he dreaded most of all.
He told himself Luciana was wrong. He had done all he could. It wasn’t his fault that Kirk chose to push him away and absorb the brunt of the attack. He had done everything he could to save the man. Damn the girl for blaming him for not seeing the unforeseeable.
"Go home, lovely Nate... you don't belong here at Orchardton Hall. I'm your mother and I love you unconditionally but you've outstayed your welcome with the Ladies. Lauren is talking of leaving Orchardton Hall and going elsewhere to live if you stay on here. Please go home to your family."
Images of his mother came rushing back to him. He couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that Natalia was in trouble yet he had left Orchardton Hall anyhow. Her words hadn’t angered him so much as they brought a sense of shame. She was right. He had no business with the Ladies. Lily had made her desires known yet he hadn’t listened.
At the Isle of Skye, Ena seemed subtl
y disappointed in him although she was too polite to speak as plainly as his mother. Once she had done all she could to show them how to model a star ship after the anti-gravity craft she created, she had left Nate and the scientists there while she traveled to the south of old France.
"Don't forget about your promise, Grandfather Nate."
They were the last words she spoke to him before taking leave of her old home. He didn’t have to ask what promise she was referring to. After spending another century with Pete and Karen on the Isle of Skye perfecting the workings of the new warp drive, Nate was finally compelled to go west to old America.
He knew what he'd find. Kirk would no doubt be a desiccated metal corpse by now, if the creatures of the wild didn’t make their way into the tunnel and carry off his body. The whole city was probably gone by now. He'd never find Cornell University, much less the outbuilding that concealed the old delivery tunnel.
Though he was fearful of being swallowed up in the sludge, he discovered it wasn’t as deep as he thought, plus it left clearly definable footprints so that he could find his way back. Walking towards the south—although his directional indicator seemed to be under some sort of attack and whirled about uselessly—he soon heard waves breaking on an invisible shore somewhere close by.
"Cornell University is just off the shoreline, darling Nate. It's easy to spot if you follow the coast."
Karen had no difficulties pointing the way, but that was centuries ago. The old City was still somewhat distinguishable from the encroaching forests. Now, what the gray sludge had not engulfed the jungle had.
Though the sky was obscured by clouds it was clear that daylight wouldn’t last much longer. He considered going back to the anti-gravity craft and flying to a more hospitable location to spend the night but when he turned around he noticed his tracks had inexplicably vanished.
The blood rushed to his head as he realized he was lost. Though he'd tried to walk in a straight line he had to maneuver around various obstacles so he no longer knew which direction was north, or back to his landing craft.