Spires of Infinity (28 page)

“Oh no,” the Chosen One gasped. “
No
!
Stop
!”

Looking down, Gabriel saw the boy scrabbling at his chest as if trying to open his skin like a close fitting jacket. There was a flashing red light under his flesh.

“Initiative six six six has been activated,” a mechanically feminine voice blared over a loudspeaker. “Purge of main facility begins in thirty seconds.”

She began counting down from thirty like the self-destruct timer on any number of generic sci-fi shows he’d seen as a child.

“You idiot,” the Chosen One cried. “You triggered the device with your boot!”

“What’s happening,” Sam asked, looking up at the source of the voice. “What’s initiative six six six? Is that the gas the kid was talking about?”

“Probably.”

“We have to get out of here,” the Chosen One cried. “We’re all going to die if we don’t get out of here.”

“You heard the kid,” Gabriel gestured toward the elevator with his pistol before holstering it.

Sam rushed to it, closely followed by Gabriel. He pressed the button marked

ground level and the doors began to close.

“Wait for me,” the Chosen one cried, dashing toward them.

“I don’t think so,” Sam kicked the boy savagely in the chest, knocking him

backward into his throne. “You can stay down here and rot like you deserve!”

The doors to the elevator closed and it lurched into motion in short bursts with a grinding sound between. Wincing at each one, Gabriel expected the cables to snap at any moment, dropping them to their deaths. The motion of the elevator was highly at odds with the soothing tones playing over the speaker in the ceiling.

Looking to Sam, he could see that her jaw was set so hard the muscles were

standing out.

“You’re a man so you can’t understand what it’s like to be locked up in the cold and dark waiting to be raped,” she said in answer to his look. “You can’t understand the
fear
it puts into you. You don’t know what it’s like to know that you’re completely and utterly helpless to stop a man having his way with you, no matter how hard you fight. I was terrified out of my mind!
Terrified
! It’s no more than that brat deserves. I hope he takes hours to die!”

Wiping angry tears from her eyes, Sam kicked the metal wall of the elevator,

yelling something unintelligible.

“They
all
deserve to die, and I’m glad I did what I did!”

Looking at Sam, Gabriel could only see her profile, as she’d turned away from

him so he couldn’t see her tears. Though she had some features that made her look much younger than she really was, her eyes gave away her age. He was surprised he’d never noticed it before. Despite her youthful appearance, her dirty and scruffy looks, her foul mouth and even fouler way of thinking, and the fact that her hands still smelled of urine, she was beautiful. In fact, the way she seemed not to care about her appearance, not prettying herself up at every opportunity like other women, spoke to how truly beautiful she really was.

Putting an arm around Sam, Gabriel pulled her into an embrace. She fought a bit at first, but then she leaned into him and began to sob. At first, he’d only thought of her as a sex crazed child, but the more he learned about how horrible her life had been, the more her behavior and appearance made sense, and the more he fell in love with her. She was so strong to have come so far alone, and he’d always admired real strength.

“I was so afraid,” Sam bawled. “I thought you were dead, and I knew I was

gonna spend the rest of my life getting rammed by every disgusting mutant the Children of the Chosen could produce. I can’t believe you actually
came
for me. No one’s ever cared enough about me to do something like that. I knew I had to find my own way out, because no one cares about me, not even my own mother.”

“I need you,” Gabriel replied simply.

“Of course,” Sam said, pulling away and wiping at her tears. “You’re completely lost without me, aren’t you?”

“That wasn’t what I meant. I
need
you.”

Again, their eyes met and they were lost in each other’s gaze. Gabriel could stare into those strangely beautiful eyes of hers for an eternity.

Mister Mittens cleared his throat loudly, but Sam shoved him off her shoulder to shut him up and threw herself at Gabriel. Before he knew what was happening they were kissing passionately, the way movie actors did at the end of a long and grueling chick flick. Wild emotions and desires ran through him and he never wanted to let her go. She was the part of himself that he’d always been missing. All of the fear and the stress of their ordeal seemed to slough off of him and the entire world disappeared except for her.

He couldn’t feel the pain of his wounds, or smell the stink of his own body. There was nothing but her, and what he felt for her.

Grinding to an abrupt halt, the elevator jolted so hard that it knocked the two of them from their feet. The door opened with a ding and the music quit. Mister Mittens leapt onto Sam’s shoulder, grumbling something that sounded unflattering under his breath, lashing his tail in outrage. Standing, Gabriel offered Sam a hand, helping her up.

“I never kissed anyone like
that
before,” she sounded almost drunk. “
Wow
. Let’s do it again.”

“Let’s get somewhere safe first,” Gabriel said, grinning like an idiot.

Stepping out of the elevator, he found himself in a small shed. The door was

locked from the other side, but the wood shattered under a hefty kick. Outside was pandemonium. An air raid siren blared over the small town, and men were rushing through the streets in a flurry, like chickens with their heads cut off. One thing seemed common. They were all focused on getting the hell out of town as quickly as possible and everyone else be damned for getting in the way.

“Well, at least no one’s paying any attention to us,” Sam said with a shrug,

pointing. “North is that way.”

Unfastening the gun belt on his left hip, Gabriel handed it to Sam.

“You wear this one from now on. I don’t want this happening again.”

Taking the gun belt with an almost awed reverence, Sam examined it like the

greatest treasure she’d ever seen, before throwing it around her waist and buckling it on.

She adjusted the holster a bit and tied the rawhide cord at the bottom around her thigh to hold it in place.

“You remembered I’m left handed.”

“Can you shoot a gun?”

“People like me can go our whole lives without even seeing a gun, much less

holding one.”

“People like you?”

“You know, lowest of the low? Peasants. Only a step higher than the mutants in the grand scheme of things here in the Empire?”

“Right, sorry.”

Sam shook her head, her twin braids swaying with the motion.

“I’m
not
sorry for hitting you,” she said after a few seconds of consideration.

“Never call me Samantha again! Got it? That’s what
she
called me, and I never wanna hear it again!”

Gabriel smiled at the petulant grimace that flashed across her youthful features.

He gestured to the pistol and she drew it. It looked gigantic in her small hands.

“Pull back the hammer like this with your thumb to cock it,” Gabriel

demonstrated with his own pistol. “Then point it at what you want to die and pull the trigger. The recoil from the first shot will cock it for the next. There’s only six shots in it, so try not to waste them. If we don’t find my saddlebags it could be a while before we get more ammo. Maybe it would be best if you held it with both hands, that thing looks really huge, and it’ll kick hard when it fires.”

Laughing, Sam let the pistol fall to her side, looking up at him with a serious expression.

“Thanks for caring, Gabriel. Really. It means a lot to me. No one ever really cared what happened to me before. And I meant it when I said you’ve got a standing invitation. You earned that ten times over.”

“Not that I wouldn’t enjoy it,” Gabriel reached out and caressed her cheek. She leaned into his hand and closed her eyes. “But maybe you should have a little more respect for yourself than that?”

“I dunno what that’s supposed to mean, but it sounds kinda insulting.”

Giving her a wry grin, Gabriel shrugged.

“Don’t go,” Sam said, taking his hand in both of hers. “I don’t want you to leave me when we reach the Spires of Infinity.”

“If I go anywhere,” Gabriel smiled reassuringly, “you’re going with me. That’s a promise.”

Beaming so wide that her fangs showed, Sam nodded her understanding and

assent.

“In case you two forgot,” Mister Mittens broke in, “we really should be going

before one of these fleeing idiots sees our cathors and makes off with them.”

“Look,” Sam pointed. “You can see the Spires of Infinity from here. There, on the horizon.”

Following her finger, Gabriel saw that there were several sharp points just in view on the horizon. The largest of them seemed almost to be resting on its side, pointing to where the sun would rise once morning came. Their journey was almost at an end, and it couldn’t have come quickly enough. He was going to keep to his promise. If there was a way for him to get back to Earth, she was going with him.

Chapter 24: On the Edge

Dashing up the rocky slope toward the clash of swords, Kari’s exhaustion and

hunger seemed to be eating away at her from the inside out. Only adrenaline kept her on her feet. Following just behind her, Michael cursed continually out of the same exhaustion. They were paying the price for transforming to their beast forms.

Acrid smoke and sulfur filled the air, and the ground trembled with palpable

energy. The porous black rock beneath their feet bore no sign of vegetation or animal life. Stretching out below them was a spectacular view of blackened flatlands broken by glowing red rivers of lava and the occasional perfectly conical mountain. Every mountain spewed black smoke, and ash fell like snow from an angry, black sky. Heat beat downward at her as she scrambled up the slope toward where Jonathan and the Apostle were locked together in combat.

“We’re on a volcano,” Michael shouted. “We’ve gotta get outta here,
now
!”

“Not without our idiot brother.”

Stopping on a relatively level rocky outcropping, Kari strung her bow. Drawing his swords, Michael darted past her up the slope to join the fight. Drawing an arrow from her quiver, Kari knocked and pulled the fletching back to her cheek, waiting for a clear shot at the Apostle.

Dancing around each other, swords flashing in the dim light, Jonathan and the

Apostle were silhouetted against a column of smoke rising from the crater at the top of the volcano. Jonathan’s massive broadsword was a limited weapon in close quarters, but out in the open with freedom of movement, he was very skilled with it, swinging it around as if it weighed nothing. He’d been impressed by a traveler that visited their father before Kari was born, and from that day had always said that when he grew up he was going to carry as big a sword as he could handle, just like the visitor did.

Relying on her much greater speed, the Apostle darted around Jonathan, trying to feint and dodge, scoring occasional hits. She would rush in swinging her black-bladed rapier, then dart back out of his reach. He would then counter with a series of his own attacks, which she would easily dodge or turn aside. They seemed evenly matched, though the Apostle kept one hand pressed firmly to her right side and she was leaving splatters of blood wherever she went. That side wound had to be pretty serious to still be bleeding. If the Apostle was this fast with a serious wound, Kari couldn’t imagine having to fight her when she was in top condition.

Eyes tracking the Apostle, Kari tried to aim, but she never stood still, and

Jonathan kept jumping in. She couldn’t get a clear shot at anywhere vital or crippling.

Growing deeply, she swiped sweat from her brow.

“Stop this,” Jonathan yelled. “You’re gonna bleed to death. Just give yourself up. I promise you won’t be hurt.”

“Never,” the Apostle hissed.

Growling in frustration, Jonathan lunged forward again, his attacks obviously

meant to disarm rather than kill. At least he had half a brain in his head when it mattered.

They needed to question the Apostle about where she’d come from, how she

communicated with Cain, and how she even knew of him in the first place. They could find some way to send her to their father, and he could deal with her. Teach him to say the matter was dealt with just because they left home and happened across the Apostle!

Joining the fight, Michael flipped over the Apostle and came down on her injured right side. She barely managed to dodge his slash, and his blade sliced through her black cloak, cleaving a large piece of it away, revealing her bushy wolflike tail with chestnut fur. She snarled and redoubled her efforts against Jonathan, practically ignoring the threat of Michael.

Drifting on heat currents the piece of her cloak sailed away, but not before

something that sparkled in the light dropped and tumbled down the slope to land at Kari’s feet. It was a purple crystal on a leather cord, the Apostle’s shard of the Gate! Without it she would be unable to escape. Scooping up the crystal, Kari dropped it into her quiver for safekeeping before returning to her search for a clear shot.

Extremely skilled and blindingly fast, the Apostle held her own against her two opponents for a time. Seeming to have eyes on the back of her head, she blocked attacks that she could not possibly have seen coming. In the end the blood loss and pain of her wound began to wear her down. Her movements slowed, and a few attacks made it through her defenses. Most of them slid off her armor, but one or two slashes struck flesh, drawing blood.

Not daring to blink lest she miss a chance for a shot, Kari kept her bow drawn.

Sweat rolled down her face and began to soak through her clothes. Gritting her teeth against the heat, she did not allow the drops of sweat sliding down her body distract her.