by C. L. Roman
Wings pumping, chest heaving, he rose back to the cliff edge and was rewarded by the sight of Gwyneth's brother and sister, their feet scrabbling for purchase in the rank vegetation that clung to the precipice. Kefir stood with Ziva behind him on her knees, as he held Gant's sword shakily before him. Beyond them, fangs bared, sleek and terrifying in the afternoon sun, crouched a tiger.
With the barest whisper of feathers against the wind, Jotun rose behind the children, sword in hand, battle glow casting its severe light over the scene. Banishing the tiger was the work of moments and it was gone by the time Gwyneth burst through the trees.
As the children ran to her, a drop of water splashed out of the sky, wetting Jotun's cheek. He brushed at it, rubbing the liquid between his fingers as more drops fell. He stared at Gwyneth and the children. "We are out of time," he said.
The urgency in his tone snapped Gwyneth's attention from Kefir and Ziva. She stood, staring at him, and felt rain for the first time in her life.
Tipping his head back, Jotun yelled Gant's name and a distant shout answered. "Gant will take the children. I will carry you. Hopefully we can get back to the others before..." The wind howled behind a sharp crack of thunder. Lightening flashed from horizon to horizon, slashing open the sky and the storm broke. Rain pelted down in sheets, drowning his words.
Behind them Gant crashed out of the trees, sword drawn, eyes wild, in full battle glow.
"Take the children," Jotun shouted, and Gant sheathed his sword.
"We can't fly in this." Nevertheless, Gant gathered Kefir and Ziva to him as he spoke.
Jotun shook his head and pulled Gwyneth into his arms. "We have to try. There's no other way."
"What about the others?" Gwyneth struggled unsuccessfully to free herself from her husband's embrace.
Jotun kissed her forehead but held on tight, leaving it to Gant to answer in words. "There is no time Gwyneth."
"You can't leave them!" The three adults stared at Kefir. It was the first time he had spoken since Jotun had sent the tiger away and the sound of his voice, barely audible above the storm, was startling. "I hid them when the tiger came. I told them I would come back for them. I won't leave without them." The tears on his face blended with the rain, but the determination on his face was clear. Gant crouched down in front of him, carefully keeping Ziva close to his side and as sheltered as possible.
"There is no choice Kefir. We don't know where they are, and even if we did..."
The small face strained towards his. "I'll show you where they are. I promised!"
Gant shook his head, "In this?" He gestured to the rising carnage around them. "Even if we could find them, I can't carry all of you. I'll come back – try to find them, but we have to go now."
Kefir shoved at the wet mop of curls falling into his eyes, his face streaming with tears and rain. "How? You said you can't fly in this."
Gant stroked the boy's hair and hung his head, acknowledging the truth of his words. "Maybe not," he replied, "but we have to try and get you back to the village. There is no other choice."
Ziva leaned close and whispered in Gant's ear. "You could take us through the dark." He jerked back, staring.
"What dark," he asked.
"The strange dark out of time." She placed a gentle hand against his cheek and her eyes took on an otherworldly gleam. "Where the bad ones took us."
Gant looked up at Jotun, hope and doubt warring in his glance.
"Do you think she means the Shift?"
Jotun hesitated, "Maybe so, maybe not. I don't think we can risk it."
Gant disagreed. "I don't think there's any choice. If we try to fly in this, we'll never make it."
"Then we can..." Kefir's words were lost as the storm intensified.
With a tortured howl, the earth heaved and the cliff edge gave way. Trees, boulders and brush began to slide toward the ravine on a river of muck, picking up speed with every inch. A giant cedar crashed down in the middle of the group, forcing Jotun into the air, Gwyneth clasped tight against his chest. Even as he took wing, the wind and rain drove the couple down into the rapidly widening ravine. It was all he could do slow their fall and keep from tumbling end over end; hovering was out of the question, let alone actual flight.
"Gant!"
"Kefir — Ziva!" Their cries were thrown back into their faces by the wind, the water drowning their voices.
Jotun clutched his wife tighter as they plummeted earthward, unable to stop their fall. Gant had been right. There was no choice. He put his lips as close to her ear as he could and shouted, "Close your eyes, hold on tight and whatever happens, don't let go, not even for a second."
She gripped his tunic with desperate hands and buried her face in his chest. Working frantically to steady himself, he fanned his wings, brought them down in a mighty thrust.
Just a moment, an instant of equilibrium, he thought, just enough for a single step. He thrust again, straining to tread air. The wind shoved at him, wild as any beast, intent on smashing him into the sliding cliff face. The rain pummeled his already soaked feathers and the heavier they grew the more difficult it was to stay upright. They were going to hit bottom, there was no way for him to stop it.
Please Sabaoth, please, for her sake.
The wind gathered its breath and in that flash of calm, Jotun stepped through air into the Shift.
CHAPTER TWO
Gwyneth shivered, clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from clattering in the sudden, intense cold. Jotun pulled her closer, trying to share his warmth, but he was as drenched as she was. The darkness pressed frigid fingers against their skin. In the distance, pinpricks of white glimmered.
"Where are they?" Gwyneth looked into the teeming black and saw no one but her husband.
"Gant has them. He will keep them safe."
Something in Jotun's voice worried her, but she put it aside, trusting him. "Now what?" She asked. Frost was forming in her hair.
"I don't know. I can get us back to the village, but..." he trailed off.
"Danae said the flood would cover the entire Earth. Do you think she and the others are here as well?"
She felt the movement as he shrugged. "Perhaps, but the Shift is endless. Unless you enter together, meeting is unlikely."
Something tightened under her breast bone. "That's why Gant and the children aren't here with us," she said and heard the same combination of fear and helplessness in her own voice that had bothered her in his.
A dim rectangular glow rotated out of the darkness and in its ambient light she could see worry edging toward resignation in his face. She jerked her eyes away, staring into the moving picture inside the rectangle. In a huge room, hundreds of people stared at thin, big-eyed women who stalked down a narrow aisle in the strangest clothes she had ever seen. They wore shoes that pushed them up onto their toes and walked as if their feet weighed several pounds each.
The cold was less intense now and the ice on her clothes and hair was melting. The lights were drifting closer.
"Jotun, where can we go?"
"Not back the way we came."
"We should try. Maybe Fomor figured something out."
His mouth twisted. "There is nothing to figure out. Sabaoth's intent was to wipe the Earth clean and begin anew. He chose those who would be part of that renewal. We were not among them."
"But he told Danae."
"Not in time."
"There has to be a way."
"There isn't." His voice was ragged, and he turned from her. "I'm sorry Gwyneth. I am supposed to protect you, but from this..."
The heat rose around them and their clothes steamed. Gwyneth's hair, dry now, lifted around her face in a red-gold halo. The lights had moved into position, surrounding them in an ever tightening circle. A hum vibrated through the air, getting louder as the lights closed. The spaces between narrowed moment by moment until only a sliver of darkness remained between. She reached for him and then stopped, ears tingling as another voice sounded.
"Choose," it said.
She spun around, staring into the unbroken ring of light. "Choose what?" she shouted.
Sweat trickled from her hairline as the coruscating circle tightened.
Jotun's shoulders hunched. "We have no choices."
"Choose now," the voice demanded.
"I don't know how," Gwyneth said, but somehow, she was moving forward, extending her hand toward a place in the incandescent wall that seemed to her brighter than the rest.
"There is nothing..." Jotun said and turned to face her. "Gwyneth, no!" he shouted and started after her, stretching his arms to catch her, pull her back. She never heard him.
She was half way through the light when he put his hand on her shoulder and the light that engulfed her raced over him as well. In the same heartbeat, another light invaded his wingtip, sprinting toward his center.
Two opposing sheets of radiance raced across his body. The warring lights rushed toward each other, meeting at his chest in a blinding flash, and everywhere they touched, he burned.
Sparks exploded from a rip in the air and the giant fell through, his wings retracting as he lost consciousness. Jotun's roar of agony as they exited the Shift was not as frightening to Gwyneth as his sudden, complete collapse. A woman screamed and a shiny blue box on small, black wheels swerved into a metallic hut on the corner. The air, stinking to begin with, was abruptly, overwhelmingly redolent of boiled pork. Gwyneth fell to her knees beside her husband, stroking his hair as lights flashed all around her and the world shoved against her in a frenzied wall of sound.
"Jotun!" she said. "Wake up, please!" She glanced up at the strangely dressed crowd and her eyes widened as the noise of the city broke over her in a cacophonous wave. A small man shoved his way through the crowd; a column of six gold disks on his front glinted in the afternoon sun.
He barked what sounded like a question, but the words were incomprehensible.
She gripped Jotun's shoulder and shook him. "Jotun!"
The man repeated his question and knelt beside her. With a firm nod, he grabbed Jotun's tunic and helped roll him onto his back. Using two fingers, he felt under Jotun's jaw and Gwyneth remembered her sister's instruction as to where the heart beat might be felt. She tensed, watching the man's face. After a moment he nodded and put a hand on her arm.
"Yuawrite?" he asked.
She stared at him and then at her husband. She pressed her fingers against his neck and felt the strong beat of his heart. She let loose a gust of pent up air and relaxed muscles she hadn't known were knotted. Then she leaned over, pushing her face close the Jotun's until they were nose to nose.
"Wake up," she shouted.
"Heernow," the man said, and gripped her arm.
She flung him off and patted Jotun's face, tears streaming down her cheeks as she pled with Sabaoth to restore him. The angel's tunic was scorched in a dozen places and his jaw still showed the rapidly fading abrasion sustained when he hit the ground. She checked his pulse again and stifled the urge to shake him awake.
Gold Discs was talking again, his words an unintelligible garble of sound. He gestured toward the blue metal box. It was still smoking and she saw that the black ground was some kind of thoroughfare, stuffed side to side with rows of metal boxes inching past the accident site, squealing like ill-mannered pigs.
A crowd of people pressed in around her and Jotun. They held small metallic squares up to their eyes, setting off miniature explosions of light, dazzling her strained eyes. Gold Discs and several others dressed just like him kept the crowd back, but the noise and the smell was horrific. Around them towered the largest, ugliest buildings Gwyneth had ever seen, huge monoliths studded with gleaming black rectangles. At ground level the rectangles were shiny and see-through, showing the building's insides to be nearly as confusing as the outside. In the distance she could hear a high pitched keening.
The man seemed to hear it too and he smiled at her and patted her arm. "Halpscumin."
"What, in the name of mercy, are you saying?” she asked in her own language, and shook her head at him. "I don't understand."
"Salrite," he replied, and patted her arm again. "Halpscumin."
"Please, my husband needs a healer."
He frowned at her and shook his head. A long spate of words spilled from his lips, by the tone, much of it questions, but none of it comprehensible.
"I don't know," she said, and felt hot tears press against her lids. "I need a healer. My husband is sick, he needs help. Can no one here speak anything other than gibberish?"
A diminutive woman pushed her way to the front of the crowd and stood, her head tilted to one side like a curious, exceedingly fat, chicken. "Healer?" she said.
Gwyneth's head snapped around. "Yes, yes! A healer. Please!"
The woman turned her bright black eyes on the man and spoke to him in his own language for a few moments, the words flying fast and impenetrable between them. Gold Discs seemed to understand though and he smiled at her again before nodding to the woman.
The bird-like woman stepped into the circle and said something to Gwyneth, obviously expecting her to understand, but her speech was not much clearer than the man's. The woman paused and Gwyneth shook her head.
Taking a deep breath, the woman tried again, pressing gentle fingers against Gwyneth's chin to make her turn her head and look up the street. The keening wail she had been hearing was louder now and a huge cube of red metal careened around the corner, its black wheels screeching as it jerked to a halt beside them. Gwyneth threw herself over her unconscious husband and screamed, but the woman patted her on the shoulder and said the one word Gwyneth was able to understand. "Healers."
A man and a woman, both short, both wearing similar close fitted leggings and tunics, jumped from the red cube and bounded across the hard ground. In their hands they carried evil looking black boxes. They scooted Gwyneth aside and knelt beside Jotun. The woman stared at Jotun, her eyes widening as her gazed traveled the long distance from his feet to his head and back again. She pointed at him, and then at Gwyneth, and spoke rapidly. The man shrugged and handed her something. She took it and pried the handle apart with one hand, revealing a two bladed knife, hinged in the middle. She took hold of Jotun's shirt and the knife flashed.
"No! What are you doing?" Gwyneth lurched forward and knocked the blades out of the woman's hand, sending her sprawling backward with a hard shove.
The man grabbed Gwyneth's arms, pinning them to her side and with a scream she shoved to her feet, lifting him with her as she rose. The crowd gave a collective gasp and scrambled backward.
The bird-like woman was hopping up and down, her face anxious as she spouted, "Healer, healer," and a stream of other, incomprehensible, sounds. Gwyneth was only vaguely aware of the supposed healer scrabbling in her black box as Gwyneth faced off against the man and several angry gold disc men. She barely felt the stab of the thin blade the woman slid into her flank.
With a shriek she spun, lashing out to catch the woman on the arm and knock the blade away, but it was too late. Gwyneth felt the numbness slide up her back until it reached her shoulders. Felt the sensation pause and then slide around her chest, pushing a wave of deep blue peace up her neck and over her eyes as she fell to her knees. She turned her head and reached for her husband. "Jotun," she sighed, and toppled to the ground.
"Is there any way I can get someone to stitch me up before I bleed to death?" Cole Delaney leaned over the registration desk and fixed the charge nurse with what he hoped was a pity inducing stare.
"Mr. Delaney, you are not in any danger and you know it. The answer is the same as it was fifteen minutes ago. We will get to you as quickly as we are able."
"But my show starts in..." he flipped his good hand over and pressed the wake button on his cell. "Two hours. Do you have any idea the havoc Xavier is probably wreaking with my line while I'm here waiting for four measly stitches?"
"About as much as you are wreaking on my patience," the nurse said with a
gritty smile. "You need to go back to your treatment area. For all you know, the orderly is already there, waiting for you. And he won't wait long."
Cole glanced at the curtain behind which he was supposed to be waiting. He turned a morose gaze back to the nurse. "Fine, but on your head be it if my entire line is ruined and my genius remains undiscovered." He trudged toward the curtain, whipped it aside and flopped onto the waiting gurney.
Peeling back the make-shift bandage of hot pink Indian cotton, he peaked at the gash in his palm and sighed. It was only seeping now, certainly not enough to warrant any urgency on the part of the overworked ER staff, but sufficient to keep him here waiting on stitches.
"Won't be able to hold the scissors properly for a month, I'll bet," he muttered to himself. "Damn Xavier, always waving those lavender trimmed talons of his around..." his voice trailed off as a crash resounded from the entryway. Cole jumped to his feet and edged the curtain aside.
A gurney was being wheeled through the automatic doors. On it lay a male figure, his legs hanging over one end, bent at the knee, while at the other his head hung off the edge, supported by the EMT's cupped hands. Cole's hand reached automatically for the bracelet on his wrist, but the medallion remained cool to the touch.
A second gurney rolled in behind the first, this one holding the most exquisitely beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was also the tallest, only a few of feet shorter than the giant on the first conveyance. Thick skeins of auburn hair tumbled over the white sheets. Her skin was the color of warm honey. Fine, brown lashes fluttered against her cheeks and then lifted briefly, revealing a flash of blue so intense that Cole took a half step back before he could stop himself.
She's perfect.
Her eyes closed again and the two gurneys rolled down the hall into a pair of adjoining treatment rooms.
Cole stepped into the hall and noticed the police officer trailing behind them. "Officer, hey," he said, and put out a hand to stop the man.
