“That wasn’t what I meant. I need you.”
Again, their eyes met and they were lost in each other’s gaze. Gabriel could stare into those strangely beautiful eyes of hers for an eternity.
Mister Mittens cleared his throat loudly, but Sam shoved him off her shoulder to shut him up and threw herself at Gabriel. Before he knew what was happening they were kissing passionately, the way movie actors did at the end of a long and grueling chick flick. Wild emotions and desires ran through him and he never wanted to let her go. She was the part of himself that he’d always been missing. All of the fear and the stress of their ordeal seemed to slough off of him and the entire world disappeared except for her.
He couldn’t feel the pain of his wounds, or smell the stink of his own body. There was nothing but her, and what he felt for her.
Grinding to an abrupt halt, the elevator jolted so hard that it knocked the two of them from their feet. The door opened with a ding and the music quit. Mister Mittens leapt onto Sam’s shoulder, grumbling something that sounded unflattering under his breath, lashing his tail in outrage. Standing, Gabriel offered Sam a hand, helping her up.
“I never kissed anyone like that before,” she sounded almost drunk. “Wow. Let’s do it again.”
“Let’s get somewhere safe first,” Gabriel said, grinning like an idiot.
Stepping out of the elevator, he found himself in a small shed. The door was
locked from the other side, but the wood shattered under a hefty kick. Outside was pandemonium. An air raid siren blared over the small town, and men were rushing through the streets in a flurry, like chickens with their heads cut off. One thing seemed common. They were all focused on getting the hell out of town as quickly as possible and everyone else be damned for getting in the way.
“Well, at least no one’s paying any attention to us,” Sam said with a shrug,
pointing. “North is that way.”
Unfastening the gun belt on his left hip, Gabriel handed it to Sam.
“You wear this one from now on. I don’t want this happening again.”
Taking the gun belt with an almost awed reverence, Sam examined it like the
greatest treasure she’d ever seen, before throwing it around her waist and buckling it on.
She adjusted the holster a bit and tied the rawhide cord at the bottom around her thigh to hold it in place.
“You remembered I’m left handed.”
“Can you shoot a gun?”
“People like me can go our whole lives without even seeing a gun, much less
holding one.”
“People like you?”
“You know, lowest of the low? Peasants. Only a step higher than the mutants in the grand scheme of things here in the Empire?”
“Right, sorry.”
Sam shook her head, her twin braids swaying with the motion.
“I’m not sorry for hitting you,” she said after a few seconds of consideration.
“Never call me Samantha again! Got it? That’s what she called me, and I never wanna hear it again!”
Gabriel smiled at the petulant grimace that flashed across her youthful features.
He gestured to the pistol and she drew it. It looked gigantic in her small hands.
“Pull back the hammer like this with your thumb to cock it,” Gabriel
demonstrated with his own pistol. “Then point it at what you want to die and pull the trigger. The recoil from the first shot will cock it for the next. There’s only six shots in it, so try not to waste them. If we don’t find my saddlebags it could be a while before we get more ammo. Maybe it would be best if you held it with both hands, that thing looks really huge, and it’ll kick hard when it fires.”
Laughing, Sam let the pistol fall to her side, looking up at him with a serious expression.
“Thanks for caring, Gabriel. Really. It means a lot to me. No one ever really cared what happened to me before. And I meant it when I said you’ve got a standing invitation. You earned that ten times over.”
“Not that I wouldn’t enjoy it,” Gabriel reached out and caressed her cheek. She leaned into his hand and closed her eyes. “But maybe you should have a little more respect for yourself than that?”
“I dunno what that’s supposed to mean, but it sounds kinda insulting.”
Giving her a wry grin, Gabriel shrugged.
“Don’t go,” Sam said, taking his hand in both of hers. “I don’t want you to leave me when we reach the Spires of Infinity.”
“If I go anywhere,” Gabriel smiled reassuringly, “you’re going with me. That’s a promise.”
Beaming so wide that her fangs showed, Sam nodded her understanding and
assent.
“In case you two forgot,” Mister Mittens broke in, “we really should be going
before one of these fleeing idiots sees our cathors and makes off with them.”
“Look,” Sam pointed. “You can see the Spires of Infinity from here. There, on the horizon.”
Following her finger, Gabriel saw that there were several sharp points just in view on the horizon. The largest of them seemed almost to be resting on its side, pointing to where the sun would rise once morning came. Their journey was almost at an end, and it couldn’t have come quickly enough. He was going to keep to his promise. If there was a way for him to get back to Earth, she was going with him.
Chapter 24: On the Edge
Dashing up the rocky slope toward the clash of swords, Kari’s exhaustion and
hunger seemed to be eating away at her from the inside out. Only adrenaline kept her on her feet. Following just behind her, Michael cursed continually out of the same exhaustion. They were paying the price for transforming to their beast forms.
Acrid smoke and sulfur filled the air, and the ground trembled with palpable
energy. The porous black rock beneath their feet bore no sign of vegetation or animal life. Stretching out below them was a spectacular view of blackened flatlands broken by glowing red rivers of lava and the occasional perfectly conical mountain. Every mountain spewed black smoke, and ash fell like snow from an angry, black sky. Heat beat downward at her as she scrambled up the slope toward where Jonathan and the Apostle were locked together in combat.
“We’re on a volcano,” Michael shouted. “We’ve gotta get outta here, now!”
“Not without our idiot brother.”
Stopping on a relatively level rocky outcropping, Kari strung her bow. Drawing his swords, Michael darted past her up the slope to join the fight. Drawing an arrow from her quiver, Kari knocked and pulled the fletching back to her cheek, waiting for a clear shot at the Apostle.
Dancing around each other, swords flashing in the dim light, Jonathan and the
Apostle were silhouetted against a column of smoke rising from the crater at the top of the volcano. Jonathan’s massive broadsword was a limited weapon in close quarters, but out in the open with freedom of movement, he was very skilled with it, swinging it around as if it weighed nothing. He’d been impressed by a traveler that visited their father before Kari was born, and from that day had always said that when he grew up he was going to carry as big a sword as he could handle, just like the visitor did.
Relying on her much greater speed, the Apostle darted around Jonathan, trying to feint and dodge, scoring occasional hits. She would rush in swinging her black-bladed rapier, then dart back out of his reach. He would then counter with a series of his own attacks, which she would easily dodge or turn aside. They seemed evenly matched, though the Apostle kept one hand pressed firmly to her right side and she was leaving splatters of blood wherever she went. That side wound had to be pretty serious to still be bleeding. If the Apostle was this fast with a serious wound, Kari couldn’t imagine having to fight her when she was in top condition.