“I can’t hurt you,” she cried. “Please…”
“Then we…will both…die…” he rasped, sinking to his knees.
Shaking her head, she moved quickly to stand in front of him, and then kneel before him. Trembling from pure, unadulterated fear, she stopped when at last she saw into his eyes. Tears streamed from her own.
“You must,” he said, but it came out barely above a whisper.
She opened the largest and sharpest knife until it clicked into place. She reached out, touching the point of it just below his right nipple. Squeezing her eyes shut, she thrust into him and wrenched downward with all her might, sobbing “Nooooo!”
They both lost consciousness.
* * *
There were so many stars. Too many to count. She blinked her eyes open and wondered why her arms and hands felt so dirty. All at once she remembered. Jane sat up and screamed. Looking down at her hands which were covered in blood, the tears began to flow.
He was gone.
She looked up as the glow of day appeared on the horizon.
He was gone!
Finding his shirt amongst the ruins of the campsite, she held it to her face and wept. His scent surrounded her and she knew. She knew. “Vasan,” she breathed into the fabric. “Oh, my God.” She looked up at the stars again and whispered, “Oh, my God.”
* * *
Silence filled the space in the midst of Sarawak that had been home to a palace built by slaves. It wasn’t from ancient times; no, this was a more recent build, having stood on this spot for twenty years. Only yesterday it had teemed with life. Slaves wearing very little to cover their modesty could be seen both within and without, scurrying to complete their tasks or risk the master’s wrath.
Only yesterday planes and helicopters were frequent visitors, taking off and landing at all hours. They brought supplies, scientists, new slaves, captured runaways, business associates. For the seventy-five meter diameter surrounding the grand structure that was kept clear and well-manicured, there were no lawnmowers or tillers in the gardens. Bunker entrances that led to an underground network of tunnels stood unguarded, as did every entrance of the palace he had built in homage to his own greatness.
Every stone that made the first layer of the building had been hand-cut from the Simunjan Granite Quarry in the western part of the province he called home. Portions of Sarawak were heavily populated, parts were industrial or farmland and then there were the hundreds of square kilometers that were still pristine tropical rainforest. Here, not far from the Rajang Baleh, even the wildlife had fallen silent, as if very well aware of the changes that had taken place.
His coffers stood nearly empty. The laboratories held no more ground-breaking research. One of the heavy Keranji wood doors hung half open. Most of the statues were missing; of those too heavy to carry, they lay on the floor either whole or broken. Artwork had disappeared from the walls, either in whole or by being cut out from their frames. At its far end, a dais of pure gold stood naked, surrounded by the remains of a beaded curtain.
Slaves’ quarters, both male and female, were a shambles. Not a stitch of what little clothing had been in their closets remained; indeed, each and every room that had housed the hundreds of individuals living in the palace was stripped clean. Even pieces of opulent carpeting from parts of the first two floors had been carted away. Anything at all that could be carried on the run, that could fetch a price on the black market, was gone save for the millions in precious metals and gems kept underground where only he had the key.
And deep within the basement dungeon, so large it covered the entire palace footprint, the ‘furnishings’ remained. Those too weak to travel on their own had been carried in makeshift litters by the strong. Uneaten bowls of mush were upended, their nonexistent nutritional value of no concern any longer to those intended for punishment. Not even a rat scurried across the floor.
On the palace’s main floor, far in the back was the sacrificial room. Made of simple concrete blocks and a painted floor, a smooth stone rectangular altar rose from its center. Many a life had been lost here. Lives that he never cared about, for they were gifts made to his demon princess and her Shadow Priestess. Atop the altar now, amidst the vacuum of this formerly lively yet deadly place, sat a figure.
Dried blood clung to his torso but no wound could be seen. Aside from that, he appeared to be fine. Yet he just lay there unmoving, eyes open but staring at nothing. He had let them go. He had let them all go. He didn’t care anymore. About anything.
But even that wasn’t true.
He did care. For the first time in a half-century, he had learned how to care. And just as suddenly as the gift had been given, she had stripped it away. The only thing he could reason was that they’d entered an alternate dimension where they had still met, but differently.
Upon his return to Malaysia he had gathered all his senior people in the main hall and explained what he wanted. They looked at one another incredulously. Slaves didn’t believe it at first; they were certain it was nothing but a setup whereby they would try to exit the palace and be killed for their efforts.
He had retreated to this room, listening to the sounds of jubilation, disbelief, and…freedom. Freedom. Something he had only just become familiar with himself, yet because of his stupidity so many years ago, because of the blackness he’d allowed so willingly into his soul, it was something he could never have. The last of those he once held prisoner had left hours ago, but still Vasan didn’t move.
He heard her footsteps long before she spoke.
“Tao Vasan, what have you done?”
“Leave me, Xyza.”
She raised an eyebrow as she approached. “Surely you do not mean to tell the Shadow Priestess what to do.”
“I don’t care what you do.”
Clucking her tongue, she came to stand over him. “So you are sacrificing yourself for your misdeeds, is that what this is? You are ready to take your place amongst them?”
He squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head. How had he not seen this before? Seen the utter foolishness of this association? Seen that he could never win? When you’re young, you think you’re invincible. You think you know everything. Sell your soul to the devil? Sure, why not? You’ll figure a way out of it. No. You won’t. He was fifty-three and now knew there was no way out.
Her laughter filled the room. “Ah, Tao, that is where you are quite wrong.”
He moved at last, turning his head to look at her. He’d momentarily forgotten she could read his every thought. “I’m not wrong,” he countered. “There is no way out.”
“But there is, Tao, there is! Why do you think she was angry enough to appear in the place you were, so far away from here, her home?”
His brow furrowed.
“Why do you think she was incensed to the point where she nearly broke her part of your pact and killed you by way of possession?”
Slowly he raised himself up to a sitting position and swung his legs over the side.
“Why do you think she contacted me? Why do you think I am here?”
“I assumed it was to take my life for breaking the pact. Or to be certain Jane never returns to the Tanners. I don’t know. I don’t care.”
“How did you break the pact, Tao?” she asked as though addressing a small child. “Tell me how.”
He could not trust her, and he knew it was so. But she was dangling a glimmer of hope before him. Without that, his life was over. At least this way…he had a chance.
“I forgot who my Mistress Demon was.”
“Willfully.”
“Yes.”
“Wantonly.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Why in the past has Jal’gonnoth not cared if you had sex with women? Or with men, for that matter?”
“Matter,” he repeated, looking into her eyes. “Because none of them mattered.”
“Exactly. But this one…she mattered, did she not? She made you feel, Tao.”
H
e felt a lump form in his throat.
“Her golden hair caught your attention and her manner captured your heart. You have loved her since you first encountered her when she was but a babe in her mother’s arms.”
Jaw dropping, he whirled on her, shock etched into his features. “What did you say?”
Half her mouth lifted in a mock smile. “You poor bastard. You’ve belonged to the Darkness for so long you don’t even know love when you’ve found it.”
His mind raced. Stuck, it kept repeating her words over and over and over but couldn’t comprehend them. He couldn’t even begin to understand what she meant, although on some level he recognized truth and honesty in what she told him.
“You were so young when your mother died. You probably don’t remember much of her love. But we were there, Jal’gonnoth and I. Why do you think your father killed your mother?”
“Because she enraged him.”
Nodding, Xyza gestured for him to continue.
“She enraged him because she was unfaithful.”
“No, no, no! That’s only what he told you!” she chided, clucking her tongue again. “That’s what he told everyone, to make sure he sounded like the big man, to make himself feel better. You, a vulnerable boy, watching your mother die at his hands…but Tao, Tao…they were not his hands.”
He opened his mouth, and then snapped it shut. That was what his father had told him. Yes. That was what he’d told everyone. Yes. Young and frightened, Vasan had watched his mother choked to death by his own father after the man had already murdered his aunt…Ibrahim’s mother.
He looked at her expectant face. Softly she began to hum. He looked away. The room was almost completely lost in the darkness now.
Lost in the darkness.
They were not his hands.
Why do you think your father killed your mother?
Slowly the answer began coming to him.
Why in the past has Jal’gonnoth not cared?
We were there, Jal’gonnoth and I.
He sank to the floor, head in his hands. “Oh, my God.”
She hummed louder. Ever louder.
Looking up, he rubbed a hand down his face. “I killed my father, so she took me. Jal’gonnoth was in him. She killed the twins…my aunt and my mother.”
Xyza smiled. “She was jealous. It was either she who had taken his heart, or him, and because your mother had a twin sister, she wanted to be certain your father’s attentions would not turn to her. He chose his own life, allowing her to work through him to take your aunt’s and then, your mother’s.”
Vasan turned and for only the second time in his life, found himself vomiting as though everything he’d eaten over the last month was coming back to haunt him. He was transported back, back to the moments in which his mother’s life had ebbed so slowly and yet so quickly away. Back to himself hiding, daring to peek out and seeing the twisted look upon his father’s face.
How many times…how many times had that same twisted look been upon his own countenance?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Xyza had found candles somewhere and placed them on the four corners of the altar, lighting the room enough to see.
Oh, God, it couldn’t be true…yet in the deepest recesses of his being, he knew it all was. Somehow, he’d always known, and yet it was a secret he’d locked far beneath the surface. To allow him to continue his delusion, he’d ignored the obvious for over forty years.
His body heaved, but there was nothing left to come up. Hanging his head between his hands, staring into a pool of stomach acid and not much else, he saw something fall into it and frowned. Then another thing plopping into the pool causing a small ripple. He shook his head and looked up where Xyza had come to stand next to him.
“I don’t believe it,” she said, truly surprised. She reached out and ran her finger up his cheek. It came away wet. Confused, he touched his other cheek and his own finger also came away wet. “Tao, you’re crying,” she whispered.
“But I…I cannot cry,” he responded, mystified. He tasted the wetness on his finger and found it to be salty. “These are tears,” he said. “Real tears.”
“Yes. Real tears.”
“What does this mean?” he demanded, rising to his feet and holding his hand out toward her. “Xyza, tell me, what does this mean?”
“You made love to her. Didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
Made…love? To Jane? He closed his eyes and remembered how he had felt, how he had wanted so badly to please her, how closely he paid attention to her every movement, every sound she made. How he had felt every moment in the moment. She had no idea who she really was, of course, but that hadn’t mattered to him. His glamour spell had worked and she just knew herself as the role she’d played. They had joined, they had…he felt a smile.
“Why did I not see this? Of course you did. Of course you made love. That is why you can cry, Tao.”
He opened his eyes, the smile disappearing from his face. “Explain.”
“She, this…Jane…she is the one person who has the potential to break your curse, Vasan Naran. You knew this. That’s why you brought her here.”
“I was never told of a way to break it, only that she was the key!”
Xyza shook her head, knowing she had said too much. He lunged at her, hands around her throat. “Tell me now or the very next breath you take will be your last!” he seethed.
“She must be willing in every way,” the woman choked out. She grasped his fingers and pried them away from her throat. Rubbing it with one hand, she steadied herself on the altar with the other. “She must know everything and still feel the same way that she felt with you that night.”
He paced away, then back toward her, and was satisfied when she cringed and took a step back. “But why her? I just came upon her in the middle of nowhere!”
“Because she is pure, Tao. Not as in virginal, but as in spirit. She is untouched by Evil, by Darkness. She loves with her whole heart, with all of her being. Your Mistress Demon cannot penetrate such purity of soul. This is the only thing which can defeat any demon. But if you do it, you will return to the very moment at which you made the pact.”
“You mean to tell me I will go back in time?”
“Yes and no,” she sighed. “You will return to that moment; it will be as though it never happened. You will have a chance to make it all right. But you risk being stuck back there in your past forever. Not as a child, but as the man you are now.”
“Tell me how,” he said. When she didn’t speak, he went for her again. “Tell me how!”
She screeched and scurried around the altar, putting it between them. “I cannot. It would violate my oath as a Shadow Priestess.”
“Then violate the goddamn oath or you won’t have to worry about any oath by the time I am finished with you!”
Sinking to the floor in defeat, she told him.
He turned and ran from the palace. Her screams of terror and agony followed him into the rainforest. He barely heard them. And he didn’t look back.
Being reborn isn’t much help when you know you’re being hunted. And Tao Vasan Naran was being hunted.
It had been three weeks since he’d abandoned his palace and left Xyza to face her fate for betraying her oath. Yet another in a long line of human lives he was responsible for taking. He had eaten little and slept even less. As hours turned into days, and days into unending weeks, he began to despair of ever seeing Jane again.
First he’d returned to the Grand Canyon; or at least, gone to his dimension’s Grand Canyon. Every day for months he wandered the southern wall of it for five meters in each direction from where the campsite had been in their alternate meeting. He knew he wouldn’t find her there. But somehow he’d felt closer to her.
Then he’d gone to her apartment, only to find it empty. After that, he didn’t know where to look and his demon was keeping it from him. For Jal’gonnoth knew, and unlike here on the surface of the Earth, she from far below coul
d easily find the one who had caused him to betray the pact. Perhaps even now she was being terrorized wherever she lived; her apartment sealed by police due to the bloodbath found inside. Screams and cries for help coming from her house. Maybe she lived in a trailer, or even a mobile home. A houseboat? He knew nothing about where she’d gone.
And so he’d decided to travel to the Grand Canyon in her dimension. He couldn’t explain why, but he also couldn’t ignore its siren song. How far away did she live from this spot, this once magical and terrifying spot, where he now stood? The sun hung low on the sky. What day was it? Thursday? Friday? He no longer had any concept of time. Dark circles framed eyes that no longer sparkled. He couldn’t use the powers that were only his because Jal’gonnoth had made it so. She had blocked his abilities but as yet had been unable to possess him. Why, he did not know. Toeing the dirt where the campfire had once been, he chided himself for this lunacy.
Even if he did somehow find her again, she would probably run screaming in the other direction. And rightfully so, he concluded. He had to tell her everything; just from what she had seen, he doubted she would even listen to him. If she did, she wouldn’t want to help him. Not if it meant risking her own life. They were complete strangers to one another thanks to his spell. It was too much to ask. Too much to hope for.
There was another possibility, one which had only occurred to him yesterday. But could he even fathom that his cousin would care? After all, she was Ibrahim’s daughter, and Vasan couldn’t imagine him being open to anything where he was concerned. The things he had done to him, and to those he loved. How he had pursued them for so long, what he’d done to his wife and child so many years ago. The child he’d now slept with more than once. Whom he was keeping with him in this place and time specifically to undo what he’d claimed to Xyza he didn’t know could be undone.
The one thing that Jal’gonnoth had never been able to get for him was John Tanner’s wealth and inventions. He sat down in the sand and contemplated that single truth. Why? Why had he been able to take anything and everything else in the world that he wanted but them? Why had she not been able to defeat them?
Dimensions Page 23
