by Ted Striker
“Oh!” said the blonde sympathetically. “No, you come in. I’m Nancy Todd. I’m a nurse. Let me look at your feet.” She led Bryan into the bathroom, where she made him sit on the edge of her bathtub with his feet inside. “It looks as if you’ve walked through glass. I’m going to rinse your feet and try to clean the wounds.” Nancy washed and dried his feet, then bandaged them. As she bent over his feet, Bryan couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her loose t-shirt. After a moment he averted his eyes gallantly. He thought he saw a little smile flicker across Nancy’s face out of the corner of his eye.
“Thanks,” he said as she finished. “I’ll have to find some extra-large shoes to fit over these, but it’s great.”
Nancy frowned, a little wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. “My ex-husband left some clothes. He wore size twelve’s.” She went and got them.
Bryan tried them on. He normally wore ten’s, but with the bandages, the twelve’s fit almost comfortably. He shifted his weight to see if they would slide, but the bandages wedged the shoes tightly enough that they didn’t budge. He still felt as if he was wearing clown shoes, but at least his feet were protected. “Thanks,” he said simply.
The smile dimpled her face again and Nancy said, “Taking care of you is a pleasure, A rún mo chroí. And there’s no need for you to run off; why don’t you stay here?” She led him toward the living room couch.
An inexplicable thrill ran through Bryan; the words were Celtic, he was sure. The sound was both alien and hauntingly familiar at the same time. He also felt a physical reaction to Nancy’s nearness, but caution reared its cold-shower head. James Bond may have gotten laid in dangerous situations, but in real life it was a great way to end up dead. Bryan unobtrusively checked that his pistols were ready. Nancy smiled again, as if she could read his thoughts. Something in that wickedly inviting smile reawakened his initial lust tenfold; his pants were suddenly way too tight. Nancy smiled even wider. She did not have to be a mind reader to know what Bryan was thinking and feeling. “You see?” she said mischievously, “You’re feeling better already!”
Bryan tried to keep his mind on target. “I should go,” he said.
“You should stay, Mr. . . . Ryan, was it?” she said, putting her hand on his arm. “Best to stay off those feet, don’t you think?”
He got the feeling that she was mocking him. In a snap decision, he opted for partial honesty. “I lied about being mugged, Nancy. People are chasing me, very dangerous and very ruthless people. They wouldn’t think twice about harming you.” He stood.
Nancy’s smile got brighter and somehow sharper. All the mischief disappeared and something very different replaced it. Another, much scarier shiver travelled Bryan’s spine. “You needn’t worry yourself about me,” said Nancy. “Nor will I allow anyone to harm you.” Her expression softened. “Listen now, and understand.” It was a command, a compulsion. He sat down again, obedient and attentive. “You were meant to come here, Bryan. You came to this house not by pure chance, nor by coercion, but drawn by the bond between us. Your senses, your feelings – these all guided you here after you fled Perkunas, Perkins, he calls himself here. You are bound to him as well, my treasure, but not in the way that he thinks.”
“How do you know who I am? How do you know about Perkins?” Bryan looked at Nancy, suddenly suspicious. Instead of being a random innocent drawn into the web Bryan found himself in, she was somehow a part of the whole thing.
“Perkins and I have history together, as you might say,” Nancy answered with a smile. “Mythology, even.” Her eyes twinkled with sudden humor. “But my plans for you are a bit different from his.” She moved closer to him.
His hand crept once more toward the pistols at his back.
“You won’t need your weapons here, at least, not against me.” With a single lithe move, Nancy stripped off her sweatshirt. He’d seen rightly; she wore nothing beneath.
“I—I really don’t think—” Bryan found, in fact, that he couldn’t think. He could barely breathe, he suddenly wanted her so badly. A tidal wave of desire propelled him toward Nancy’s body, but what little surviving common sense he had held him back. “Listen, I’m not sure we should –”
Suddenly the front window shattered and a cylinder bounced along the floor trailing smoke. The last intelligent part of Bryan’s lust-fogged brain recognized the flash-bang, and he flipped the ottoman on top of it, muffling the deafening explosion and the flash. The fiber stuffing inside the piece of furniture began to burn, releasing an acrid black smoke that quickly filled the room. Bryan’s instinct and training were already turning him away from the distraction of the grenade and toward the kitchen hallway, both Glocks coming up.
The heavily muscled form that burst out of the hall was . . . not right, somehow; it was grossly asymmetrical. It had two arms and two legs, was dressed in gray camouflage fatigues and carried an MP5, but it ran hunched over, and its face stretched the balaclava it wore into an odd, elongated shape. Bryan recognized it as the same type of creature that had been at the black site. His reflexes didn’t care as much as his brain did about the weirdness of the intruder and he put two rounds into it, one through each of its glaring red eyes. The thing fell back, tangling the legs of its partner who was running close behind, causing that creature to stumble. It loosed half a dozen rounds from its MP5 into the floor as Bryan’s pistols again bucked in his hands, finishing the second monster before it could get back up.
Nancy grabbed his arm in a surprisingly strong grip and tugged him toward the bathroom. “This way!” she snapped. She held a weapon of her own in the other hand, a type of pistol unknown to Bryan that she had produced from who knows where, and she pointed it past him at another hunched-over gun… thing that was jumping through the shattered front window. There was a rushing whoof! sound like a gas explosion and the thing was torn almost in two, flaming bits splashing against the walls. Those flames began to spread, joining the fire that was now rapidly consuming the ottoman. The air inside the room became clogged with smoke, forcing them to crouch in order to breathe fresher air.
Bryan followed Nancy into the bathroom and shut the door. He noticed that it seemed a little heavier than the usual bathroom door. The air was still clear in here, but he could see no other exits. “We could be trapped here,” he protested.
“I think not,” said Nancy. She pushed against the toilet and it slid smoothly back into its alcove, revealing an opening with a set of steps leading down. “This will get us away from here. Just follow the tunnel.”
The other end of the tunnel was two blocks up the street. This end was blocked by another heavy door of gray-painted metal. As they emerged, Nancy shut the steel door and locked it. She took a key from a pocket in her shorts and opened a gray metal box on the wall beside the door. Inside the box was a big red button like the emergency shutoff button at a gas station. She pushed it and a series of muffled thumps! sounded in the tunnel. A spurt of dust shot out from beneath the closed door to plume up into the cool still air of the basement room. “That will keep them from following.” She said, relaxing. She set her pistol on a shelf by the door, and Bryan saw that it was no pistol at all, but a polished gold-colored rod, curved like an old muzzle-loading horse pistol. “This way,” she invited and moved through a second doorway to another small room that held a small bed, a refrigerator, a cupboard, and an electric stove.
Bryan followed her. “I’ve seen those gray guys before,” he said. “What were they?” he asked. “What were they after?”
“Strange looking creatures, to be sure,” she said. Nancy turned to him, put her hands on his chest. “They are called Erych, and are enemies to all that is good. As to what they wanted, dearest, the answer is, they wanted you. You see, you are very important in the scheme of things. Right now, you are very important to me in another way.” She slid her hands up and around his neck and pressed against him, kissing him gently. Her soft lips tasted like honey and cinnamon.
�
�I don’t understand,” said Bryan, pulling away with enormous effort. “Why would I be important?” He put his own hands on her waist, intending to push her back. He found that he had pulled her closer instead. He told himself that at least part of the desire he was feeling was adrenaline and survivor reaction. Part of it was that strangely compelling lust that had possessed him before, and he could feel it taking him over once more, no matter how hard he struggled against the feeling.
He tried to return to operational mode: “One minute I’m just another guy on the government’s payroll,” he said, “and the next I’m wanted by everybody from my own people to those weird lumpy gray guys to Perkins. . . to you. What do you all know that I don’t?”
Nancy put a slim finger on his lips, shushing him. “You have good senses, my dear one. No sluggard, you. Yes, you are very important. Important to Perkins, important to me, and important to Perkins’ enemies. Perkins wishes to use you for his own purposes. His foes wish to destroy you, to deny him that use.” She smiled, her hands now unzipping, unbuttoning, pushing and pulling at his clothing. “And, for now,” she said throatily, “I just want you.” She stood on tiptoes to kiss him again. Bryan drank in her kiss and returned it passionately. He suddenly couldn’t get enough of her honeyed smell, her taste, the feel of her. He felt the last shred of his common sense flee as she hooked one leg behind his and pulled closer. Her perfume might have been Chanel or just her own musk, but it intoxicated him to madness. He crushed her to him. She guided him to the only cot in the basement room, and they fell together.
An hour later found Bryan staring at Nancy, his vision tinged with red and black, seeing her as if through twisted glass. Suddenly she wasn’t Nancy. Somehow her short wheat-colored hair had grown into an enormous golden mane. Her green eyes shone like emeralds. She smiled indulgently at him, her face glowing with an otherworldly light. He was gasping for breath like a marathon runner at the end of the race. He felt the world tilt and began to slide toward Nancy’s emerald eyes. “I still don’t understand,” he wheezed. “What’s happening?”
“Peata, of course you don’t understand.” Nancy’s voice, suddenly deeper, huskier, her Irish accent thicker now, seemed to reverberate inside his head. “You’ve been cast far from your roots, grown in this sterile society without any knowledge of your history. How could you understand? But you will, trust me. We are linked now, and I will protect you, against Perkunas and all others, until you learn to protect yourself. I love you, my son!” He felt her strong embrace once more, and they went together down into the waiting darkness.
Chapter 4
Bryan awoke alone and muzzy-headed, but as his mind cleared he found that he wasn’t on the cot anymore; he probably wasn’t even in the same room. He was tied to some sort of frame that held him securely upright. An ominous-looking sword lay across a pedestal in front of him. He jerked at the sight of it; he had never seen anything like it before. The blade was the deepest black he had ever seen, with an almost invisible purplish glow that seemed to pulse menacingly in time to his heartbeat. It felt as if the thing was watching him, sizing him up. That black sword terrified him, somehow. Panic surged around him like a rip tide, yet a strange calming presence inside his head soothed him, a reassuring hand at the back of his mind that smelled of honey and cinnamon.
Perkins walked around from behind him and picked up the weapon. Definitely not the same room, then. He held it at the ready just in front of his left shoulder, point up. “You will find that even your prowess for escape will not avail you today, young one.” The man wasn’t gloating. His voice was matter-of-fact, almost kind. “I have to tell you, I’ve been extremely pleased with your progress throughout your life,” he continued. “I have watched you grow step by step into a fine man, a faithful soldier, a great fighter. You have kept faith with your government employers, even though you have begun to see that they themselves are faithless and self-serving. I’ve seen the doubts grow in your mind, seen your feelings that you were destined for something greater.”
How he could have seen those things Bryan did not know, for he had never had a sense that Perkins was near. But Perkins was right about his thoughts and feelings. “You praise me, yet you feel the need to tie me up like a steer for slaughter,” Bryan grated through a suddenly dry throat. He looked again at the black sword.
“The portal is almost ready,” The thick voice of Tamoth came from behind Bryan. “You had better finish things here, the Duergar are never patient at the best of times.”
“For what we are paying them, they can wait a bit.” said Perkins. “So, Bryan West, we are here at the cusp of our journey. This is the place where we will be joined forever.” The older man glanced at the sword he held, waggled the tip. “I noticed the dread that this thing engenders in you. No wonder; this sword is sentient, you see, a self-aware artifact of enormous power. The Soul Sword was wrought with powerful magic ages ago,” he said, then paused. “I say, magic, because the technology used to make this instrument is so different from any technology understood here that magic is probably the best word for it.
“The Soul Sword siphons the life force from the victim into the wielder, making him that much more powerful in conquest. I took it from an enemy many ages ago, and have not needed its services until now.”
“So you’re going to stab me with this and it’s going to suck the life out of me?” said Bryan disbelievingly.
“No!” said Perkins. “Quite the opposite. The sword is not for you, it is for me. Perhaps this will help you feel better.” The older man put the hilt into Bryan’s hand, which locked around it in a death grip of its own accord. He tried to open his fingers, to let the sword clatter to the concrete floor, but his hand would not obey his will. Bryan found that holding the sword did make him feel more confident, but the dread almost-whispers that he had felt when he first saw it now came more strongly to him.“A dangerous thing to put into an enemy’s hands,” he said softly. Since he couldn’t drop it, maybe he could cut his bonds… but the wraps around his wrist were so tight that he couldn’t swivel the sword. All he could do was hold it up like a stupid torch. Shit!
Perkins nodded. If he noticed Bryan’s attempts to free himself, he didn’t bother to mention it. “Indeed it is. But you are not my enemy, and you are the one who will wield the sword when it transfers my life force to you.” He laughed at the disbelief that flashed across Bryan’s face. “If you think that incredible, young one, you will be a thousand times less believing of the full tale. I had thought to leave you in ignorance until the deed was done, but my companion Tamoth” – The giant grunted in acknowledgement – “convinced me that you should know the importance of the sacrifice you are about to make.
“I was not born the man Perkins. In fact, I was born in another place altogether, quite some time ago. The world you know is but half of what it once was. Over the eons, it has been divided and then reunited, my world, the world of so-called ‘magic’ and ‘myth,’ leaving this stolid earth behind only to come back every ten millennia or so. About sixteen thousand years ago, the two worlds began to separate, connected each year by fewer and fewer points, creating what I call the Curtain of Darkness, a Veil that separates the two realities. I and my companions were hailed by men as gods in that older, fuller world, before the Veil descended fully and our worlds were torn asunder.”
Perkins grinned reminiscently, the gesture taking years from his face. “Those were epic times, poorly related by the likes of Homer and the bards of the North. By the time that only a few points connected our worlds, I had become known as Zeus to the Greeks and Thor to the Norse. Perkunas or Perkuns was my name to the ancestors of the Lithuanians, hence ‘Perkins’ when I finally needed to hide myself among men.”
Bryan was speechless. He knew that he was in shock; he felt as if a giant hand was squeezing his head. He fought to breathe. His intellect rejected everything Perkins was saying, but something inside him attested to the truth of the words he was hearing. Perkins certainly believed th
e whole crazy story, that much was obvious.
Perkins studied Bryan’s face intently. He grinned at the blatant disbelief he saw, but he continued the story anyway. “Disaster struck some eight thousand years ago, and factions formed among the pantheons of those your ancestors knew as Gods. My enemies became powerful, and I was forced to seek refuge on this side of the Curtain. At great cost, I obtained the help of the Duergar, who guard the few permanent passageways through the Veil, and came over. Here I have fought against evil as best I could throughout the ages of Man.”
“We have too little time for the whole tale,” he said, waving one hand to indicate the huge expanse of the story. “Perhaps we will share consciousness for a short while when my life forces, my spirit, if you will, inhabit your body, and I can tell you the story then.”
“You seem sure of the outcome,” said Bryan.
“As my spirit is the older, the more powerful, it will dominate yours and eventually absorb it. I created you for this, Bryan West. Your DNA is almost a perfect match to mine; you are very powerful, for you are my offspring as well as my descendant. Before I begat you on your mother, I mated with her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother and beyond, for more than twenty generations, all with a view to bring you forth, a Human who is as close to the Divine as possible. You are a powerful being, almost as powerful as me, but I expect that after my spirit enters your body, very little time will pass before you are merely a part of my essence.”
Perkins glanced up from under his bushy brows again, to see how Bryan was taking this information. “That is your noble sacrifice, my son. Now let me tell you the prize it will buy: The new cycle is almost complete, and the era of man’s solitude is ending. Your world and mine are rejoining, point by point, coming back into phase. The Curtain of Darkness will withdraw and our worlds will become one world of mixed technology and ‘magic.’ It will mean an end to this world as men know it, just as the Mayans predicted.”