by Tonya Nagle
Brin yawned and for the first time they saw the triple rows of small sharp teeth.
He stretched out along the opposite wall and pulled his wife on top of him. Within minutes their silver white skins expanded over each other until any features, limbs, or clothing was absorbed into one oblong egg. It shimmered, moved, sighed, and chuckled.
"Ick. What just happened?" Laura asked David.
"Um." He raised an eyebrow. "I think they're fusing or melding. Sort of their version of making love."
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Laura's eyes went wide. Then shaking her head, she reclined close to the wall, as far away from them as possible.
David draped his black coat over them both. Actually you know that's not a bad idea.
Laura gazed into his eyes with amusement. What?
Would you like to fuse? His lips brushed over hers.
Aw, David, I'm too worried about my father. She rolled over.
He embraced her from behind and nuzzled her neck. She could see their reflections in the wall. He kissed her cheek. My darling, I promise you we'll get your father back.
You cannot make such a promise.
I can. I will not leave this world without Donovan. One hand moved from her waist to fondle that part of her breast revealed at the top of the strapless gown. The other hand was unzipping the gown then slowly pulling it down. With more and more of her uncovered, Laura felt his passion invading her mind. She chuckled.
Laura, I want you. The gown was off. Then the panties. His fingers kneaded her breasts. She bit her lower lip. His mouth planted tender kisses up and down her neck.
She moaned. Then he stopped, his eyes meeting hers in the reflection. One hand dropped down to cup her between the legs. Laura quivered pressing back against him, his strong furry chest, his hard manhood eager for her. His fingers began again, each fondling her in different ways. She cried out, happily helpless in his arms. Every part of her ached for more and more of his attention. He slid inside her, and she gasped then pressed against him. He stopped kissing her neck with a smile.
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So you want more? He withdrew and drove into her. He pulled almost out and then plunged in, repeating this until she whimpered in protest. She matched his movements arching her back into him and meeting every push with a push of her own.
She tightened squeezing him and he groaned. Then everything sped up. Breathless.
Panting. Gasping. They reached and collapsed. Laura felt herself fading into the bliss, that black warm contentment. Her last sight was of David's arms around her, his hand on her shoulder, his eyes closed.
***
Laura woke to the "white mountain" world. It reminded her of the perfection of a peony with all its many petals, each layer a new discovery in beauty.
Safe in David's arms, Laura closed her eyes again. Her thoughts wandered. She regretted Adam's death. She could still see his face, that awful moment of shock before he disappeared in a pile of Keres. She shivered. In his sleep, David instinctively hugged her more tightly and growled at whoever might be threatening her.
A dream consumed her. She saw a dungeon. The cells, carved hollows of stone, cruelly held each prisoner with spiked metal gates. Huddled in the cold dark of a cell so small a man could only sit, Laura saw her father sleeping. He used her large black coat both for bedding and a blanket. He moved, and she saw the burn marks on his arms.
"Papa," she cried out trying to touch him with her thoughts.
He didn't hear her.
Keres came into the dungeon and took her father from his cell, dragging him up a dark corridor. Laura screamed his name.
Then she woke and gazed into David's worried face. "What is it, Laura?"
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"The Keres have my father. They're torturing him." She sobbed into David's chest.
"Oh, merciful one!" exclaimed Brinna in alarm.
"What?" asked both vampires.
"What is that?" She pointed to the translucent stone wall they leaned against.
They turned. Rain drizzled its coolness down the outside wall, in long stripes of fleeting colors of blue and gray.
"What are those lines sliding down the face of the stone?"
"It's just rain," said Laura, tears still on her face.
Brin looked confused. "What's rain?"
David explained, "You know, water that falls from the sky."
Brin shook his head. "Here water comes from deep within the mountains."
Laura turned and touched the wall, looking out with deep sadness. The four continued along the interior skyline. Giant, golden birds seemingly baffled by the rain huddled over their nests on nearby peaks. Laura dried her eyes, and the rain stopped.
They climbed higher finally reaching the inside view of the tallest peak in the land.
Then a stream of light burst through the gray. It shimmered right through the wall onto Laura. David, in his panic, threw his coat over her. Now he was exposed to the light. Nothing happened. There was no pain or burning flesh. Nothing happened at all, and David stood there bewildered. In those seconds, they discovered a wonderful freedom. Laughing, he danced in the sunshine, and Laura threw off the coat to join him.
Brin stood puzzled. "Why are you excited? It's only a door opening."
They both asked at once, "Can you take us to that door?"
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Brinna shook her head. "That's not possible. The door is in the sky. The light appears when someone is born or someone dies. The light shines when the door between worlds is open. It's not a door you can climb to."
"But you can fly to it?" asked David.
Brin looked to Brinna. "I'm not sure about that."
The trek sloped downward. Laura and David walked in the light for the few minutes that it shone. Then it was gone as if some great being had turned off a light switch. David put the black coat over Laura, as they descended into the gray and she began to shiver. Vampires don't feel cold, but in her sadness she did. If only they could reach her father before he was tortured to death.
Brin asked, "Are you afraid of death?"
"Of course not," replied David. "A vampire is dead in most respects. In others, a vampire is beyond death, undead."
"I'm afraid of not existing anywhere." Laura gazed out over the sharp cliffs below. They were like hungry teeth. She didn't know this about herself until she said it.
"To not exist anywhere would mean life didn't matter."
David pulled her into a tight embrace and brushed his lips over hers. Then gazing deeply into the eyes, he declared, "There's existence after death."
"How do you know?"
He grinned. "Vampires exist after death. After our end, there will just be another form."
"But how do you know?"
"Because God isn't cruel after all."
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That was the strangest thing Laura ever heard David say. "Why did you think God was cruel?"
"I was alone. Then everything changed and I wasn't anymore." He gave her a squeeze.
***
The lower they descended, the more her anxiety increased. Her anger flared.
Laura didn't know where these emotions came from. Her fangs expanded to attack. She did everything to hold in the rage.
The clouds filled in creating a thick fog, and the tree line broke through the gloom like clawing hands. It was a long way down. Then they climbed up again along a stretch of cliff beside a dark hostile sea. The wind howled through the crags and crevices.
Clearly it was a sound their guides had never heard before, as they cowered on the floor trying to sleep. Water streaked the raw cut cliffs, as the sea slammed into the mountain. David held Laura as they sat on the floor admiring the view. It reminded Laura of the shiny black of her city fresh with rain. Then the pain started ripping through her again. She tried to suppress it, but a shiver escaped.
What's wrong, Laura?
I don't know. I'm frightened. My control is slipping away. I feel like biting someone.
Brinn
a and Brin had made themselves into that egg again and slept peacefully across from them.
It's this place, David replied. It rips pieces out of you. It steals your soul and loses it in the mist, taunting you to find yourself. We'll both feel better once we leave it.
Just hold onto me and we'll get through this.
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Laura held on fast to her husband. His hands had changed to claws.
By the time their guides awoke, Laura and David were relieved to be back to normal again. The descent took them for a long stretch of mountain face against deep jungle. Plants rose up from the murky jungle floor with spikes and dark feathery growth. Even the stone wall could not protect them from the unbearable cacophony of screeching, retching, and tittering voices that rose and fell from the victims in their view.
A huge millipede crawled across the wall's exterior.
Laura hated those insects, and her experience had only been with their tiny cousins. After swallowing hard, she said, "Please, we must move on."
Brin didn't move. Brinna whimpered behind him.
Laura took the two by the hand. "Look at me," she said firmly.
Brin turned. Brinna clutched her mate's arm, squeezing her eyes closed.
"Good. Now, let's go. Look only at me." He faced away from the wall, always looking at Laura, as they walked past web funnels with screaming victims. The multi-legged creatures chewed parts off their struggling prey. Laura kept Brin turned in her direction, so he wouldn't see the faces, and there were so many. Brinna stumbled along, always with her eyes closed. Laura knew that in her nightmares she would forever see the small ones with bright eyes and delicate features, the large ones with pyramidal eyes and beaks, and those with no eyes only open gaping, pleading mouths. Some of the creatures looked like Brin's people, some like the Mach, while others were more like large insects with stingers and large grasping appendages. With all their ferocious flailing, they couldn't escape the monster millipedes.
Suddenly the huge millipedes fled into the undergrowth. A dark thick beast with the thundering bulk of a mammoth, the jaws and eyes of a saber-toothed tiger, and a 237
slashing black scorpion tail towered over the survivors of the carnage. Laura's mouth dropped. The creature appeared to look straight through the wall at her.
Brin turned to see. Screeching, he ran up the corridor. His mate fell to the floor, paralyzed by fear. David rushed after Brin, throwing himself into the air and coming down on him. Hysterical, Brin whimpered deliriously on the ground.
Laura hugged Brinna to her, advising her to "just keep your eyes closed no matter what." Their progress down the corridor was slow.
"It will eat us. It will kill us. Don't let it kill us." Brin screamed.
David shook him. "Stop. We're inside the mountain, remember? It can't reach us in here. You're safe."
Laura looked at David. No one is safe.
Well, don't tell him that, he snapped back.
Brin's face regained some composure when he saw his mate. He struggled to his feet and embraced her. She slapped him soundly, and then in a shrieking language that reverberated off the walls, Brinna proceeded to berate him. At least, that was what Laura thought she was doing by the expressions of each. It was probably for his abandonment of her, when he ran off in fear. David took Laura by the arm and pulled her away from the scene and further down the hall.
"They need to be alone for a while. They have some issues to work out."
"You
think?"
He laughed. "You didn’t even flinch at the sight of that beast, but back home you scream when there's a tiny spider in the bathtub."
She giggled. "I just don't like icky little things, and I have my big, strong vampire to protect me." She gushed at him, and he ate it up.
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"I wonder how long they'll be fighting." He winked at her, pulling her further and further down the hall.
***
Hours later, they passed the jungle on the other side of the wall and were treated to breathtaking heights. David felt satisfied from head to toe and winked at his wife.
Laura giggled. Brin stopped shaking, but Brinna still had a mean look on her face.
"Didn't you see those people?" he said with wide horrified eyes. "I have been this way before and never seen such horrors. We should have saved them. We should have done something."
David tried to ignore the man's whimpering, but Laura radiated kindness. That was her nature.
"There was nothing we could do to help them. I thought of creating a storm in the passageway, but then I would have destroyed your hidden tunnel, leaving you and your people vulnerable to outside attack. So you see there was nothing. Sometimes we are placed as witnesses to terrible things for a reason."
"What was the reason?" asked Brin.
"I'm only a vampire. I'm not all wise. Perhaps Brinna could ask that question of the library walls. Besides, I thought you studied all kinds of dark creatures."
"I have, just not about the King Vorin. I know very little about it. We have only stories."
"The King Vorin?"
"Yes, the creature that frightened off the Many Runners."
"How do you know the stories?" David asked.
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"From the few that have survived their jaws of death, of course." Brin shivered.
He continued to lead the way, and Brinna ambled along behind him.
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Chapter 22
"No, this doesn't make sense," screamed Brinna touching the sealed wall in front of him.
"Do we go back?" asked David. "Is there another turn we could take that would lead us to Eosh Tower?"
The librarian shook her head.
"Why did the lilith seal us off?" Laura examined the wall for herself. "Something must be wrong. You said that the lilith shuts evil out."
"Yes." The librarian shook violently and fell to the floor. "We are all doomed."
Brin rushed to hold his wife. Her gold eyes went white and closed. Her seizure stopped, but she was still and silent. He wept hugging her to him. "I’m sorry, Brinna.
I'm sorry I wasn't good enough."
Laura moved to her side. "What's wrong with her?"
"She's dying. It's the condition she's had since she was small. It helps her commune with the lilith, but always it takes the librarians early."
"May I help?"
His eyes went wide with fear. "No, do not make her a vampire!"
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Laura smiled gently, her body radiating compassion. She knew he could feel this.
"No. We, vampires, have a way of healing."
After a moment, Brin nodded. Laura lifted Brinna's right arm and slid up the fabric of her robe. Brinna's body was growing cold, her pulse fading. Laura's hand became a claw. With one swift movement, she made a slice in the woman's arm and it bled.
"No," protested Brin.
Before he could say another word, she licked the wound and it closed. "Now we wait."
Laura moved back and sat with David, who cuddled her against him.
Brin stared down as his beloved, lost in pain. The wound was a thin line scar. In a little while that would disappear too.
Brinna twitched and moaned. "I thought vampires only destroyed. I did not know they could heal." Her eyes fluttered open. Brin helped her sit up.
"It's best we sit for a while to let your body recover. This is as good a place to rest as any," suggested David.
Laura closed her eyes and leaned her face into David's neck. He folded the black coat over them both. David wasn't sleepy. He could feel Laura's exhaustion from healing the Latt. For some reason, healing Brinna had taken an enormous amount of Laura's energy.
They're Latts? The people the Mach were running to for help? Why didn't they tell us?
David patted his wife's hair. They're afraid of us. Even after the gift you've just given, they are suspicious of us.
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They can't get past us being vampires? She moaned.
> I’m afraid so, my darling. He caressed her hair, which soothed her and she drifted into sleep.
Again Laura returned to that lonely cell in her dreams. Her father was sleeping.
It seemed to her that he'd grown pallid. His breath wheezed. Time was running out.
***
Hours passed before Brinna was able to stand. David shook Laura and she stood easily.
The librarian passed her hands over the wall and sighed.
"What is it?" David had begun to lose patience.
"The King Vorin lies beyond the wall. That's why the lilith sealed it off. Somehow the creature broke through."
"Where are we supposed to go now?" Just as Laura uttered these words, a hole opened up in the floor and they fell through. The Latt screamed. David grabbed Brinna, and Laura caught Brin, slowing their descent as they floated down into a dimly lit chamber filled with strange, crystal boxes. David accidentally leaned against one, and the box lit up revealing a body. The woman inside was perfectly preserved. Her face was a soft pink with small, red lips. Her black, curly hair framed her sleeping face like a porcelain doll. She wore a red velvet gown with a gold brooch between her breasts. A pale yellow stone like a citrine or amber was the only adornment on the pin.
