Spires of Infinity (39 page)

Chapter 34: Gate Jump

“Stand there and touch nothing,” Allie said in stereo, the one in Gabriel’s head a split second slower, and he could feel her frustration over it.

Folding his arms, Gabriel watched and waited, feeling Sam’s eyes trying to drill holes in him. She could glare all she wanted to. She was
not
going with him.

Crowding in with keen interest, Alain watched the console closely as Allie’s

holographic hand moved over it. Gabriel could understand his wanting to know how a legend worked. There was something strange in his eyes though, an emptiness that spoke of the lights being on, but no one being home. His recent ordeals seemed to have taken a lot out of him.

“The keyboard can sense the touch of a hologram,” Allie explained in his ear.

“That is how I—
she
—can use it.”

Suddenly at his side, Sam clamped onto his arm with both hands.

“Here we go,” the hologram pointed to a clear area just outside the tower.

A blinding flash of light caused Gabriel to squint as a bolt of lightning seven feet high formed, crackling and spitting sparks. Splitting vertically, the lightning rapidly formed into a doorframe. The framed space looked almost like a reflective heat haze.

Nearby soldiers backed away in surprise, bringing their weapons around to bear on the Gate with uneasy shouts until Alain raised a hand and waved them away.

Gesturing to the shimmering patch framed by lightning Allie bowed deeply like a stage performer.

“Step through and next stop, six hundred years ago. You should arrive shortly before activation. There will then be thirty minutes until the black hole is created.”

Nodding, Gabriel stepped toward the gateway, but Sam held him.

“Don’t go. I’ll never see you again!”

“I have to,” Gabriel pried her hands from his arm, keenly aware of how many

people were watching.

Looking up at him, Sam seemed on the verge of tears. Her ears were laid back, and her lip trembled as anguish churned across her features.

“You’re never coming back. I know it!”

Turning, she tried to run, but he caught her arm and pulled her against him,

putting his arms around her. Struggling, she cursed and tried to knee him in the groin.

With a hand under her chin, he jerked her face upward and kissed her roughly. Her struggling weakened and she leaned into him. He could feel her trembling.

Gabriel thought that if he could live in this one moment for the rest of his life, he’d found what heaven was like. He didn’t want to leave her. He just wanted to be with her, to feel the heat of her body against his, to have the smell of her in his nose. But he had to go, because he was the only one that could, and he had almost lost her once. He couldn’t stand to see her in danger again.

Stepping away from Sam, Gabriel left her swaying. A shiver ran through her

right to the tip of her tail and she looked at him with a forlorn expression. Tears began leaking from the corners of her eyes and she made no move to wipe them away.

“I’ll come back to you. There’s nothing that can keep me from coming back to

you. I promise. Understand?”

Nodding, Sam stepped back, scrubbing tears from her eyes.

“I promise,” Gabriel repeated as he walked toward the gate.

“You might want to draw your pistol,” Allie said in his ear. “Who knows where you might come out.”

Too late. The second his hand brushed against the surface of the lightning-framed shimmer, he was sucked in. Everything went dark and bright flashes of color beat at him as he fell dizzily through nothing, feeling as though he’d fallen into icy water.

Consciousness was ripped brutally away from him and everything faded away into distant darkness.

*****

Leaning against the railing atop the wall with her back to the Apostle’s army, Kari watched as Gabriel kissed Sam within an inch of her life. Sighing, she turned away, unable to watch anymore. As a child she’d often fantasized about what it would be like to meet the perfect man with her adopted sister Mera. Gabriel even looked like what she imagined her future husband would. It was almost as though he’d stepped right out of her fantasies to sweep some other girl off her feet to a picture perfect happily ever after, leaving Kari behind to stew in jealousy.

A hand fell heavily on her shoulder and she looked up to see Jonathan smiling

insolently.

“Any more sighs outta you and I’d almost begin to think you’re in love,” he

laughed.

With a sniff, Kari turned away, his comment hitting too close for comfort.

“What’s wrong,” Jonathan’s grin slipped audibly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kari leaned against the railing with her back to Gabriel and Sam, looking out into the flat, sandy wasteland. Her tails hung over the rail into open space.

“If you say so,” he shrugged, joining her in watching the approaching army.

“What are those things?”

Scanning the cloud of dust, Kari occasionally made out the malformed shape of

something that didn’t even vaguely resemble any living thing that she’d ever seen. They would soon be fighting monsters most horrible.

“These people call them mutations caused by radiation in the air, but I don’t think that’s the only cause,” Kari answered. “It seems more like something is intentionally rewriting genetic coding to force those creatures into existence. If what Gabriel says about a paradox having already started in the distant past, perhaps it is actively twisting the people of this world as it tries to rewrite history.”

“I can sense the Apostle. She’s right up front and center.”

“What do you feel for her? And is it going to make you hesitate?”

Frowning, Jonathan folded his arms and looked away from her.

“Pity mostly. I think something horrible happened to her, and the reason she

wants to travel through time is to prevent it.”

“Cain is clearly exploiting her desires,” Kari sighed. “This is very bad.

Everything depends on stopping her.”

“So you said,” Jonathan nodded. “You’re too smart for your own good, little

sister.”

“You could be smart too if you weren’t so lazy,” Kari grinned at him.

He grinned back. “But why would I want to give up my lazy ways when I have

you to take care of me?”

Kari looked at her feet.

“I’ve known you all your life,” Jonathan placed a hand on her shoulder. “Hell, who do you think named you? That was all me, thank you very much. I know when something’s bothering you. Come on, sis, spill it.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Kari mumbled.

“Try me.”

“Fine. I realized something when you were taken. I’ve spent so much of my life trying to control yours that it’s all I am. My life is completely defined by my reactions to you and Michael, nothing more. There isn’t anything more to me than being your minder. I’ve been thinking that I don’t really know who I am, or what I want in life.

Who am I? What am I? Why do I go on? What are my goals in life? I don’t know.”

“You’ve come to the right person,” Jonathan reached out and turned her head

toward him with a gentle finger to the side of her chin. Flashing her a small grin, he nodded. “There’s no one in the entire universe that understands that sort of thing like a twin.”

Kari blinked at him.

“No one ever thinks of me as an individual,” Jonathan explained, pushing away

from the railing and pacing in front of her as he ticked points off on his fingers. “No one can tell me apart from my brother. No one bothers to keep track of which one I am. No one even
cares
which one I am. I’m never an individual, only one of a pair. People always call us ‘the twins’ instead of by our names. And you know what the
really
infuriating thing is? He’s
smarter
than me. By a lot, too. I’ve been living in his shadow my entire life. Anyway, I know what it’s like not to really know who you are or why you even exist at all.”

“So what should I do about it,” Kari realized she was biting her lip, a childhood nervous habit that she’d been sure she’d kicked long ago.

Shrugging, Jonathan spread his hands.

“You don’t know! What help are you, then? I thought you said I came to the

right person!”

“Look, sis,” Jonathan said. “I can’t tell you who you are. I can tell you how
I
see you, but not who you really are on the inside. That’s something that you need to find for yourself. Why do you go on? What motivates you? Who are you? These are things that you decide on your own, not things that I can tell you. What would be the point if I told you everything important like that? What would you have learned? I can point you in the right direction, though. Just try to find the one thing in your life that’s most important to you, and everything else will fall into place around it.”

“And you say
he’s
the smart one,” Kari raised an eyebrow.

“Trust me, he is
way
smarter than he lets on. He hides it because he’s also infinitely more lazy than I am and he thinks if people realize how smart he is he’ll actually have to do something resembling work.”

Looking out at the approaching army, Kari knew the truth of his words. No one could tell her who she was and what motivated her. No one could give her the reasons why she put one foot in front of the other. She had to find those things in herself, and when she did, she would know who she was.

“You like that Gabriel guy, don’t you,” Jonathan asked, changing the subject with all the deftness of a child trying to play the piano wearing mittens.

Flushing deeply, Kari stood, ready to protest vehemently, but it rushed out of her and she slumped back onto the railing, feeling like she was deflating.

“If you laugh at me, I swear to god I’ll rip your ears off.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jonathan paused for a second before adding, “not with that look on your face anyway. You’re
really
scary sometimes, sis.”

“When I was little I used to imagine being swept away by someone just like him, rugged, handsome, smart, willing to do what’s right no matter the cost. It’s a girl thing. I think I fell in love the second I saw him, but he obviously loves Sam. He stepped right out of my childhood fantasies, and he was already taken before I ever even saw him.”

“Ouch,” Jonathan leaned against the railing beside her, placing his arm around her shoulders. “I suppose it’s a good thing for him, though. I like him, but it’s the solemn duty of every big brother to brutally murder any man that sets his eyes on his younger sister. Hell, it’s even a law of nature, I think. I’d
have
to kill him.”

“You’re terrible,” Kari sighed. “Never change. You’re prefect the way you are.”

“I’ll remember you said that the next time you’re yelling at me for something

stupid.”

“You know, Jonathan, I feel sorry for the Apostle. She doesn’t even realize what she’s doing, and I doubt she’ll ever listen to reason.”

“If it comes to it, I’ll kill her. But I sure would like to talk some sense into her instead.”

“Aren’t we the sorry pair,” Kari looked at him. “Both in love with people we’ll never have a chance with.”

“Hey now,” Jonathan protested. “Mine may be the servant of the most evil being in the universe, but she’s still single. I’ve still got a chance.”

Kari pushed him playfully, and almost fell backward off the wall when a loud

siren startled her, sounding through the facility followed by a sharp tone over a loudspeaker.

“Commencing shield activation,” the strangely human, hologram Allie announced

over a loudspeaker. “All personnel take caution.”

With a bright flash, shimmering energy began cascading downward like a rush of water to create a luminescent dome over the Spires of Infinity, bathing everything in an odd blue glow. Objects viewed through the dome were distorted as if viewed through water. It enclosed all of the land within a quarter mile of the wall.

“Wall cannons armed,” Allie said. “Testing targeting and firing systems.”

The wall beneath Kari’s feet shook, and as she stepped forward to look down.

They were standing right above one of the massive cannons mounted on the wall and it was turning to bear on the approaching army. There was a concussion that seemed to push the air from her lungs as twenty sickly green beams of energy lanced through the air.

Passing through the shield like a rock tossed into a lake, the beams sent ripples outward from where they penetrated it. Not all of the cannons fired. One of them exploded, sending a gout of flame up the side of the wall. The beams struck random places on the ground outside the shield to no visible effect.

“Targeting system failure,” Allie said. “Manual targeting required. Imperial soldiers please take up position at the manual targeting computers located above each cannon.”

“Excuse me,” a young soldier with bunny ears and a cotton ball tail said to Kari.

“I need to get at that computer.”

Looking down, Kari realized that she was leaning over a console and quickly

moved out of the way.

“Fire at will,” Allie said.

Green bolts of fire began to spear away from the wall cannons irregularly as the soldiers opened fire. Most of the bolts pierced the approaching dust storm, vaporizing strange tunnels of clear air deep into the cloud. Twisted nightmare beasts unrecognizable as human, came apart under the barrage. Any living being struck with the energy went stiff and melted into a messy, bloody sludge.

Kari looked away.

“That’s
disgusting
,” Jonathan cried excitedly, leaning forward for a better look.

Another cannon exploded, sending a soldier hurtling into the courtyard below in flames. Looking over her shoulder, Kari found him spread on the pavement with an awkward twist to his back in an expanding pool of blood.

“I hope the shield is more reliable than the cannons are,” Jonathan muttered.

Kari nodded her agreement.

*****

Sitting atop her cathor, the Apostle of Cain examined the walls behind the energy shield protecting the Spires of Infinity. Running her tongue up and down one of her fangs, she compared the shape to the black towers ahead, curving inward toward the needle shaped central Spire. Locked vertically to remain within the shield, it was the tallest manmade structure she had ever seen, including the World Tower.