Season of Passage, The (65 page)

'You know,' she continued. 'I've been wearing this sil y ring for a long time. It can always wait. But you're thirsty. You're hot. You need a cool drink.'

Again she touched the glass to his lips. Saliva col ected in his mouth. The wine smel ed like an ambrosia a hedonist would order before the Grim

Reaper came for him. 'Go ahead,' she crooned. 'Just a little sip. And I promise I'l give you a long...' She squeezed his penis and licked her lips.

'You know.'

'What is in this wine?' he panted.

She continued to caress him even as her eyes bored into his soul. 'Just a little sip and you'l see. It's such a smal thing.' She leaned over and

whispered in his ear. 'Then I'l be yours forever.'

'But you're a...' He could not get the word out. It didn't catch in his throat, though. It caught lower. Al he could think of was down there, where the

nasty kids played.

'I'm your lover,' she said. 'Drink. Now.'

'Go ahead, Janier, and I wil let you go. It's such a smal thing.'

'No!' he cried, shoving her hand away. It was another trick. She was a liar. She was evil.

'No?' she asked, mocking.

He turned away and zipped up his pants. 'I've got to go, Lauren,' he mumbled. He tried to stand. She held him on the couch with one finger.

'Of course you don't want to leave. Surely you know you can't.'

He swal owed. 'I have to.'

She shook her head. 'I'm sorry.'

'But I have decided to go,' he said, pleading.

She threw back her head and laughed, coarse and throaty. 'You have decided. I'm afraid leaving is not one of your choices. Indeed, your choices

are rapidly dwindling. Fool! With your rosary around your neck. Do you know who/am?'

Terry froze. He didn't want to get into an argument with her. He had no magical powers. He was not Chaneen. He didn't even have his gun with him.

He was doomed.

Stil chuckling, she reached a powerful hand under his shirt and grabbed his rosary. She twisted the beads slowly tighter until he was choking.

'You wil be my lover, if only for tonight,' she said. 'Your seed is necessary - the same seed as before, alive but slipping into sweetness.' She tugged

at the rosary. He was yanked forward and his air was completely cut off. 'Yes?'

In a lifetime of nightmares, Terry could not have conceived of anything more horrible than the way in which she was smothering him. His heart

shrieked in his chest, threatening to rupture. Stil he managed to shake his head.

Her smile crumbled as if it had been made of aged plaster. She grabbed the other wineglass and shattered the crystal on the table, and held the

jagged edge to his throat.

'You wil love me,' she said. 'For here is your jugular, and here is your carotid.' She scratched him. Warm drops of blood trickled down his neck. Stil

she did not give him the chance to breathe. She dug into his skin with the glass. 'A fraction more pressure and your blood wil soak this couch.'

'No,' he gasped.

Her smile returned, gloating. 'Do you love me?' She throttled him, yet gave him a little air. 'Answer me!'

Tears burned his eyes. 'I love Lauren.'

She was suddenly angry. 'Say that you love me!'

'Lauren...'

'Is dead! Is rotting! You are beaten! Al of you are!'

But Terry knew it was only another lie. He was getting kind of sick of them. Didn't she know that he had already read the chronicle of the Sastra?

I won't forget you. Although I am far away, I wil always watch over you... And when the threat of the enemy awakens, I wil be there. It is Chaneen who

promises you this:

Using the last drop of his strength, Terry slipped a finger under the biting rosary and whispered in defiance, 'Chaneen wil destroy you.'

The monster hissed. 'She!'

And from seemingly light-years away there came an answer to his cal , an answer to the vampire's raving. It came in a soft voice, clear and kind. Yet

it was a powerful voice, a voice of one capable of bringing the fire.

'Yes,' said the one.

The monster's attention whipped to the doorway. An expression of pure terror cracked her face. Her suffocating hold dropped from his throat. She

scampered to her feet like a giant insect, standing poised, ready to use her stinger. Terry, momentarily stunned, tried to stand too. He wondered

who was at the door. But his foe obviously did not want another player in this contest. She lashed out with a hammer-like claw. The blow smashed

the side of his head, and brought a rain of stars. He hit the wal with incredible force and col apsed to the floor. Except for the

yel ow space surrounding a solitary candle, everything went black.

A thick mist covered his eyes. But it was not so horrible.

He knew Chaneen was by his side.

EPILOGUE

THE PRINCESS

The spel was cunning. It was a hurricane of invisible confusion, violent at the perimeter, silent in the center. But within the eye of the storm stood the

enemy itself; therein lay the true threat. The body of the enemy needed no spel . It needed only fear.

Jennifer Wagner hurried along the shore of the lake, fol owing in the moonlight the footprints of the man who had recently walked before her.

Jennifer was sixteen years old, tal er and more fair than when she had left the known world behind, perhaps the most beautiful girl ever to walk the

Earth. Her dress was long and blue. The hem brushed the cool sand beside her bare feet as she hurried. Her hair was a bright shade of sunlight. It

twisted and curled in the warm night breeze. Secured over her left shoulder was Jim's canteen of water, taken from the ancient place. In her right

hand was Daniel's crossbow, his wooden stake in place of an arrow. She was nearing the stream where the enemy should have been blocked.

Earlier, when the approaching enemy had veered towards the city, she had sent out Daniel. She had seen the enemy's destination clearly, for it had

swept its path with

terror, reckless and proud, giving no thought to concealment. But only Lauren's lingering memories had brought it into the mountains of Wyoming,

even though it believed it was fulfil ing an ancient desire to possess fertile lands. In , many ways the enemy was a puppet of the body it possessed.

Yet it was capable of mastering any ordinary human being.

Because this one wore the ring, it was very easily marked in her own mind. Unfortunately the spel of peace the enemy had set over the forest had

confused even her. Worse, the person whose steps she was retracing had arrived unexpectedly, and was therefore in grave danger. It must be

Terry, she thought. He had read her story and had met the enemy. He must have recognized it.

Jennifer reached the stream. She was too late. The enemy had been stopped by the running water, but had somehow tricked Terry into carrying it

across. A cunning spel , indeed. Terry would have been wary, but alas, greatly overmatched. Jennifer studied the footprints. They led into the forest

toward the cabin, rather than back along the shore. Turning, she hurried down the beach; it was faster that way. Within minutes she reached the

clearing where the cabin stood, the place she had lived for the last year and a half. In al that time, Terry had never come once.

Fortunately.

Her apparent death had been vital to the world. She knew it would give the enemy a false sense of security. They would attack savagely, openly,

without employing the more subtle powers at their command. They would be easy to find and destroy. They would be ignorant of their danger.

The il usion of her death had been difficult to cast. Terry knew of the young girl who had drowned in the lake two

years ago. Although she had attempted to persuade him otherwise, he had remained confident in his information. Fortunately, however, he did not

closely examine the body that she and Daniel had dug up out of the local cemetery, the body they had burned. The ring on the dead girl's finger, the

coloring and curling of her hair, and Daniel's acting - al these elements had worked to create the deception. Throughout the ordeal, Daniel was the

only one she had entrusted with the complete truth. Daniel, who now lay in a hospital, broken beneath the blow of the enemy.

Jennifer moved to the stump where she used to read. There she found a single white rose. She had a good view of the inside of the cabin. Terry sat

on the couch with the enemy. The age-old temptation was being reenacted. The enemy had final y realized that a spark of life was necessary to

create life, to complete the ultimate goal of the curse, to bring Kratine ful y back to life, in a new physical form that would take nine months to

develop, deep under the ground. Jennifer knew the gestation would consume Lauren's body entirely. The process would transform the flesh into

something immortal that stank constantly of decay. Yet the final product would be able to look and smel as it wished. It would have the ful power of

il usion. It would have complete power over mankind. It would be the Master of its offspring, and their offspring, and so on, until the Garden was

forever ruined.

So the enemy needed Terry, his seed, alive but crossing over into death. But false affection had failed to win the seed. So had lust. Now it was

employing the threat of death, the fear that fil ed its own heart, the threat that had caused Janier to weaken.

Jennifer crept soundlessly to the porch. The wind had put out her candle. She relit it without a match. The candle

in her left hand, the crossbow in her right, she crouched at the door and peered through the screen. The situation was desperate. The enemy now

had a jagged blade at Terry's throat. He was bleeding. She could not destroy it without, risking him. If only al her old powers had returned!

Time was short. Soon there would be two. Brave though Terry was, he was weakening. The fear went back to the beginning of time for her children.

To die and fade into oblivion.

Yet Jennifer hesitated. She listened.

'Do you love me? Answer me!'

'I love Lauren.'

'Say you love me!'

'Lauren...' *

'Is dead! Is rotting! You are beaten! Al of you are!'

I won't forget you. I wil be there.'

'Chaneen wil destroy you.'

'She!'

Hearing her ancient name spoken aloud, and moved by Terry's trust and devotion, Jennifer rose to the chal enge. She stepped inside the cabin.

'Yes,' she said.

The enemy's reaction was instantaneous. Its reflexes were tremendous, at least the match of her own. It sprang to its feet and in a cutting motion hit

Terry in the head and knocked him against the wal . It skirted the couch and coiled to descend upon her. But Jennifer had not been idle. She was

now pointing the suspended stake directly at its cold heart. She held her candle aloft. The enemy halted and eyed the crossbow, the tiny flame, and

most of al her.

I see you brought the fire.

Jennifer went completely stil . It seemed so like Lauren, the way she used to stand, the way her eyes blinked beneath her long bangs. Jennifer

realized she should have released

the arrow already, that there was no other choice. Yet she hesitated again. She could sense a remnant of her sister existing deep inside, cold and

smothering, praying for release. Yet this part of Lauren was also afraid. It trembled before the wooden stake that would destroy the body that had

once been hers alone. What was left of Lauren was afraid to forsake the thin thread of her life that remained. But it was with this thread that the

curse was ironical y woven. It was this that blocked her release.

The enemy interpreted her hesitation as her ancient weakness, newly exposed, ready to be taken advantage of.

'Jenny,' it said. The smile, the voice, the warmth - it was al Lauren. 'Jenny, you're alive! They said you were dead. Oh, let me hold you!'

It took a step closer. Jennifer shook the crossbow. It halted. Jennifer realized it was using Lauren, letting her surface briefly. The joy on Lauren's

face was genuine, and if Jennifer loosed the stake that joy would die and Lauren would die again. Of course, that was the eternal paradox -how to

preserve the joy of one without kil ing the joy of another. The natural order was seemingly without purpose at times. The price now asked was

beyond measure. If only to see Lauren again ... As indeed she saw her now.

'No, Jenny!' Lauren cried when she saw Jennifer's finger reach the crossbow's trigger. Her eyes flooded with tears. 'I'm your sister. I'm not one of

them. I need you. I need to touch you.'

Lauren took another step forward.

Jennifer put pressure on the trigger. Lauren stopped once more. In Jennifer's eyes, Lauren was clearly visible as a thin border of bluish-green light,

shining forth from a colorless pit of agony. Memories stirred within Jennifer: Rankar's severed finger; the dying warriors; Janier sent on a mission

beyond her strength; Lauren traveling to Mars

ignorant of the curse. She was being cal ed upon to make the same decision al over again!

But also in Jennifer's vision was a black heart that opened like a hole into an abyss. She knew the entire world , could slip through that hole, and

vanish.

Lauren wept. 'Please don't kil me. Help me! Help me get away from them.'

Jennifer heard the echo of the pain of mankind's childhood. She began to shake. Lauren moved slowly closer.

'No,' Jennifer whispered. 'You're not my sister. You're not my sister!'

That was not true. She was Lauren, in a way. The most cunning spel of al was the one that used the truth.

'You're the only one who can understand, Jenny,' it said. 'I didn't want this. I didn't ask for it.' Lauren's tears sparkled in the candlelight. 'I know if you