Dockalfar
Page 65
Summoning his courage, he drew it into himself. It flowed easily, not minding the transfer from human to human. It had been harder for Azeral to take that earth bound power from Alex and merge it with his own fey magic.
A tingling sensation began in his fingertips and toes. It worked it way up his limbs with a not unpleasant quality.
His power was but a fraction of what gathered around her. It filled him to bursting, overwhelmed him with images and feelings of her. Victoria filled his mind. Her essence, her image, the sound of her voice, the feel of her body. Her loves. Her hates. God, she did love him. If he had ever doubted it was clear in what he felt from her now. But not him alone.
There was another essence that she kept deep down within herself, at the center of her being, that she treasured. He had had that same core of existence bonded with his own soul long enough to recognize Dusk. He almost cried out in rage as images of her physical bonding with the fey assassin fluttered across his mind. In retaliation he brought forth the memory of the first time he and Victoria had consummated their own relationship.
Moonlit night. On the grassy knoll overlooking the old airfield that he had hung around constantly as a kid. The place he had come to dream of flight. The place he had brought her to share in his fantasy and where she had given him a new dream to take promise in. They had spread a blanket and taken a basket dinner. The sky was open in all directions. To the east had been a small natural pond where ducks habitually made their home. There were trees beyond that and past them the sprawling urban mosaic that was Kansas City. You could see the lights at night from the knoll. They had lain there with the star light over their heads and the manmade lights of the city beneath them and made love. He threw that in the face of her memories of Dusk and the power surged.
The whole of the magic was sucked out of him, leaving him suddenly devoid of her essence and the buffeting force of her power. His vision spun, but he caught her face as she gasped, staring behind him.
He made to turn, but movement from the other direction caught his eyes. Riders burst out of the trees. He caught her around the waist and spun with her, throwing them both through the portal he knew he had created. The light of passage momentarily blinded him. His shoulder hit the grassy ground of the plains and he rolled, protecting her as best he could. He gave up all hold on the power and the rip in space and distance closed up, as if someone had just pulled up a zipper. Sight careened crazily and then grayed around the edges altogether.
~~~
The gulun found him, of course. He had half expected it from Bashru’s frustrated complaint over the ‘damned, horrible cat’. He did not welcome her presence for she was loud in her own manner and too youthfully exuberant to practice caution. He thought about putting his own skills to the test and avoiding her, keen nose and all. But the sight of the half-grown cub bounding towards him, her tufted ears pricked in delight, weakened the stonier side of his reserve and he crouched down to receive her. She barreled into him, as always, upsetting his balance, and covered half his face in one great sweep of her rough tongue. She had leaves aplenty in her fur. He took the time to swipe the majority of them off before setting off again, with her on his heels.
She trotted along, as obedient as any domesticated dog.
Then it hit him. Something inside him wrenched. He gasped at the unexpected shock of it. The force that drove him almost to his knees. Then it was gone and in its place was an emptiness. A void that he had never known, because he had never known his soul to be without what was now very clearly missing. He stumbled, put a hand out for support against a tree and slowly sank down to his knees. The gulun sniffed curiously at his face, whining plaintively over his distress. He stared at nothing, heard nothing, felt not a thing for too long a time. Finally blinked, aching at the emptiness, at the utter feeling of being alone. He felt sick and relieved at the same time. She was safe. Safe.
Drawing a shuddering breath, he felt wetness on his cheek. The gulun nuzzled her face close to his and licked it off. He put his arms around her thick neck and buried his face in her pelt.
“She’s gone,” he whispered. “Gone where he won’t dare to follow.”
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Epilogue
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Alex came to with grass under his cheek and cool night breeze on his skin.
He had awakened when something moved beside him. He blinked his gritty eyes open and got a good look at green grass and dandelions. He shifted his point of view up and saw Victoria sitting next to him. Her hair was gently lifted on the breeze, swept back from her face. He had never seen anything so lovely.
“We made it,” she said. Her voice sounded as dazed as he felt. It was a struggle to sit up next to her. He put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him.
“I told you.” He tried to sound light, but his voice still held a tell tale tremor.
God, he felt shaky. He had never felt this bad after passing a portal before. Then again he had never opened one himself.
There was darkness ahead of them. They were sitting on an incline leading down.
Neither could think of much to say. Both were content to recover from the jarring passage through his portal.
Then below, something twinkled. A light appeared. In the pitch darkness of the night, it might have been an exceptionally bright sprite, hovering in place. But then another and another blinked on after the first. All said and done thirty or more of the stationary lights graced the darkness in strict formation. Two lines of them, straight as arrows that lit up the night. He stared at it, befuddled. Then came a drone that he had never heard in Elkhavah before. Whiny and high pitched, it broke the silence of the night. Victoria clutched his arm, just as startled.
The sound grew louder and louder until it was deafening. And just when he was ready to cover his ears, something huge and darker than the night passed over their heads, disturbing the air in its wake.
He gaped after it, seeing lights on the flying thing. Lights that for a moment he could not connect to any logical thing, because the logical world as he knew it had ceased to exist. Then it occurred to him. The utter familiarity of what he was seeing.
It was a landing strip and what had passed over them was a plane.
Uncontrollable excitement ran the circuit of his body. He leapt to his feet, surging out of Victoria’s grasp.
“My God. My God,” he cried, and spun, knowing what he would find on the other side of the hill. A thousand lights winked back at him. A wash of white pinpoints that spoke of more than sprites playing in a fey wood. It was a city. A great city sprawled out before them.
Kansas City. And this was their hill. The one overlooking the airstrip he had loved as a boy.
“We’re home!” He reached down and hauled her up, spinning her around and around.
“How? How?” she cried, breathless in the grip of his enthusiasm.
“I don’t know. I pictured the plains – and I was thinking of this place. Victoria, we had enough power between us to open a portal home.”
“God,” she shared his sentiments to their deity, but there was something in her tone that hinted at less than overjoyed relief. He stopped and looked at her, squinting in the wan light of the stars.
Reflexively he tried to read her thoughts, her emotions and came up with nothing.
No spark of power. He tried to soar outwards and see the city of his youth and remained rooted to his mortal body. The power was gone. Gone with the fey land it had taken root in. Something inside him mourned the loss. Mourned the ability of flight without wings or the benefit of a metal machine.
“How dare you?” Her whispered accusation cut through his own distraction.
He turned to her in surprise.
“How dare you take me here without my consent?” The whisper turned to a cry of rage. Her fist slammed into his chest.
He took a startled step backwards, eyes wide. She slapped him then and the crack of that blow brought her to her senses. She turne
d away from him, shaking, holding her hands before her as if they might attack him again of their own accord. Her shoulders shook. Bitterly he wondered what she mourned the most. The power she had left behind, or the fey lover.
“He’s the one that told us to go. Don’t you remember? He told us to go where they couldn’t follow. They can’t come here.”
She said nothing. He did not know what to do. He felt lost and helpless in a place he had once felt most comfortable in.
“It’s larger,” she finally whispered and he turned back to her, desperate for anything from her.
“What?”
“The lights. They’re not the same. They spread farther than they ever did before. How could the city grow so much while we were gone?”
He walked to her side, afraid to touch her, and stared down at the vista of Kansas City. It was larger. It used to be that from this knoll the lights of the city took up no more than the space of his two hands end to end. Now he could spread his arms and not encompass the mass of the haphazard lights. It scared him.
Terrified him utterly. He took a step down the hill and his foot hit something light and metallic sounding. There was a discarded can at his feet. He bent down and picked it up. It was half crumpled, made of pliable, light metal. He looked at it, bemused, half recognizing the name spaced between the wavering red bands decorating the can.
Coca Cola. In an aluminum can.
Ridiculous. He tossed the can away and turned back to the airfield. They could get help there. At the very least, information.
He told Victoria his plans and she said nothing. But when he started down the slope towards the strip he heard her following.
Coke in a can. A city as wide as his arms. He was afraid of what he would find at the old air field. But he had to find out. Sooner or later they had to know what world they had returned to.
And somewhere very far away, a dark lord screamed in frustration.
The End