Spires of Infinity (56 page)

She was there one second, and gone the next. How could she just be
gone
! She had to be somewhere. She couldn’t have been completely
erased
, could she? It seemed impossible that someone as real, and full of life and personality as Sam could simply be
gone
!

“
Gabriel
,” Sam’s voice echoed, getting louder as though she was moving toward him.

Materializing as if through the surface of an illusion, Sam’s hand thrust out and grabbed onto his. The second she touched him the humming from his crystal seemed to increase in intensity and the light brightened. The rest of Sam’s body faded back into existence and he pulled her to him, throwing his arms around her to keep her safe, to keep her from fading away again.

He felt the solidity of her body against his, and that she was squeezing him even tighter than he was holding her.

“Oh thank god,” Gabriel breathed over and over again into her hair as he held her to him, afraid to let go lest she fade away again. He’d come so very close to losing her forever, and even worse, because of something he’d done. His heart pounded against his ribs about four times faster than seemed normal, and he could feel her heart thudding in her chest as she pressed against him.

Gabriel couldn’t say how long they stood in each other’s arms. He never wanted to let her go. He loved her. He loved the feel of her body against his, and the unnatural heat of her flesh seeping into him. He loved her smell filling his nose. He loved her arms squeezing tightly around him. Holding her, knowing that she was safe, was his entire universe. He paid little mind to the world changing around them, or the terrified cries and howls of the mutant army as it faded from existence. Sam was safe. Sam was alive. That was all that mattered to him in the whole of creation.

“Would you look at that,” one of the twins said after an eternity.

“It’s over,” Kari said with wonder.

Opening his eyes, Gabriel looked up. They were in a small clearing in a thick jungle. Heat and humidity pressed down on him like a wet blanket and moisture immediately began to condense on his face.

Sam struggled against his chest and he realized that he was smothering her. He hurriedly loosened his grip and she pulled back, taking a deep breath. Hesitating for only a second before pulling his hands from her arms, she gave a satisfied nod when she did not begin fading away again.

Sharing a look with her brothers, Kari held up her crystal. “Maybe your shard of the Gate somehow stabilized her against being erased like the others?”

Fixing Allie with what was probably the fiercest, heart-stopping stare that Gabriel had ever seen, Sam bared her fangs and growled at the solid hologram. “Eighty percent chance no one will disappear huh?”

“Sorry. My bad.”

“Your bad? I oughta—“

A flash of lightning from above and a loud boom of thunder drowned out

whatever Sam thought she ought to do. Cringing at the sound, her wolflike ears first perked forward then slowly laid back as she hunched lower and lower under the rolling boom. Her tail curled up between her legs and she hugged herself tightly.

“What was that,” she cried, fearfully looking up at the storm clouds fast

approaching them. “What made that sound!”

More lightning flashed, followed by thunder and Sam shrieked in fear, covering her ears with her hands and hunching lower still as the first raindrops began to fall.

“Why is there water falling out of the sky,” Sam cried. “What are those things floating up there! What’s making that noise!”

“Hey,” Gabriel said soothingly, putting his arms around her, she trembled hard against him. “It’s just a rainstorm. You can’t tell me you’ve never seen a thunderstorm before.”

“Rain,” Sam asked, pronouncing the word strangely as though she’d never spoken it before. “What’s that?”

“She wouldn’t know,” Allie explained. “After the nuclear winter it never rained again.”

“Hey,” Gabriel said, lifting her chin with his hand so that the rain fell on her face.

“It’s nothing to be afraid of. See, just water. It’s completely normal. The thunder and lightning are just flashes of light and noise. It can’t hurt you.”

Feeling extremely stupid, Gabriel gave her a grin. Those were things that a parent told to a young child frightened by a rainstorm, not a grown woman.

As fast as the storm had come, it blew on past them, leaving clear skies behind, and increased humidity.

“Why is the air so heavy,” Sam asked, wiping rainwater from her face and arms.

“It’s called humidity,” Gabriel explained. “There’s a lot of water in the air.”

“That’s so weird,” Sam said. She gasped, pointing up at the sky. “Look at the sun! Gabriel. Look, it worked!”

Looking up, Gabriel saw that the sun was yellow, and much smaller in the sky

amidst the scattering of moons and the large gas giant. Though he had nearly lost the only thing he had that was of any importance to him, his crazy, impossible plan had actually worked. His father could not have been more wrong about him. He’d had what it took, and now a world that would otherwise have died lived on, and a universe that might have collapsed because of the Apostle was no longer in danger. He’d won, and he had a feeling he’d never hear that horrible voice in his head again.

“Look over there,” Jonathan said, pointing.

As Gabriel turned to look, he noticed that none of them were covered with blood from the battle any longer. The mutants had never existed to bleed on them so the blood was simply gone.

Through the thick jungle, he could just make out the remnants of the Spires of Infinity. Thick, verdant vines were strangling what remained of the huge towers. The central spire was nowhere to be found, and in its place was a deep bowl in the ground like half a sphere.

“Well, I guess we’re done here,” Gabriel said, looking around to the others.

“Thanks a lot, all of you. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“Pity we’ll never be able to tell anyone how heroic we all are,” Mister Mittens said dejectedly. “No one would believe us, because it technically never happened, right?

There was this pretty little kitty back in Mearon that would likely have been extremely impressed with tales of my exploits saving the world and all.”

“I did
not
need to hear that,” Sam muttered.

“Oh there’ll be other kitties,” Gabriel soothed. “I’m sure your stories will hook one of them.”

“You obviously don’t know female cats very well,” Mister Mittens sighed.

“There’s not much other than themselves, and maybe a ball of string, that will impress them.”

“It’s the same for females of every species, my good cat,” Jonathan said. Gabriel noticed that he’d moved conveniently out of his sister’s reach before opening his mouth on the subject.

“What now, sis,” Michael asked Kari.

“I guess we move on,” Kari shrugged. “Oh yeah, what happened to the Apostle?”

Gabriel smiled. “She saved us all, I think.”

Three sets of beastlike eyes set in human faces widened and stared at him

incredulously.

“She was being controlled,” Gabriel explained. “Cain was actually inside her

head, controlling her actions like a puppet on a string. She’d nearly killed me, and was about to smash the console so the containment field couldn’t be lowered. In the end she fought against Cain, and threw off his control long enough to lower the field for me.”

“She’s dead,” Jonathan asked.

Gabriel shrugged. “Last I saw of her she was jumping into the black hole with her sword raised like she could fight against death itself. I don’t see how she could have survived.”

“Then she must be dead,” Kari said. “No matter what she did in the end, it

doesn’t make up for what she’s done in the past. There are still a lot of worlds out there that she could have touched and tainted. It’s going to take a lot of work to undo the damage she’s done.”

Gabriel nodded. It seemed like an important and worthy job for his newfound

friends.

“Marce was right,” Kari said quietly to herself. “The sacrifice of a Heretic we met in our travels stopped Cain’s flood of darkness spreading across the universe.

Strange that it should be the same one that was spreading the darkness to begin with.”

“Hey sis, c’mere a sec,” Michael said, grabbing onto the tip of one of her foxlike ears and yanking it gently.

“Stop it,” Kari cried as she allowed herself to be pulled aside by her brother.

“You
know
I hate that! Let go!”

The twins forced Kari into a huddle and they began debating in fierce tones that were too low for Gabriel to hear. Whatever they were discussing, Kari seemed to be unable to convince the boys that her side was the better. Whether or not she actually won the argument, the twins would lose either way. Arguing with a woman was like trying to jump into a lake without getting wet, completely futile. Even when you win, you still lose.

At last a decision was made and the three of them turned back to Gabriel and

Sam.

“So, we were thinking,” Jonathan said.

“A new experience for us,” Michael added, drawing a disgusted look from his

sister.

“I hate when they finish each other’s sentences like this,” Kari muttered. “
So
annoying!”

“Well, as we were saying, you’re great in a fight, for a human.”

“And your crazy idea worked beautifully here. Not to mention that you seem to understand what computer girl over there is saying when we don’t have a clue most of the time.”

“And we’re wondering if whatever other great ideas there might be floating

around in your head might not come in handy sometime in the future.”

“So we were wondering if you’d like to come with us,” they said together.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Kari said in a resigned tone. Apparently she’d been the one arguing
against
the invitation. “We don’t know how many worlds that the Apostle has visited, or how long she’s been visiting them. We need to find them and try to undo any damage she might have done. Cain can’t be allowed to keep even a minimal amount of power outside of his prison.”

“No,” Sam growled. “He’s staying here with me! We’re gonna be married, and

have about fifty or so kids, and live happily ever after, damn it! We’ve earned it after all we’ve been through!”

Gabriel blinked at her.

“If I might,” Allie said, raising a hand for attention.

Gabriel nodded.

“You no longer belong in this world,” Allie said to Sam, including Mister Mittens with a nod. “Your NVM was a result of the radiation, which never poisoned this world, so you’re likely the only one in the entire world that has a tail and animal ears.”

“So what,” Sam asked defensively, clinging to Gabriel’s arm.

“So, now you belong here as much as I do,” Gabriel sighed, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “You can’t stay here but I don’t know if I can take you with me if I leave.”

“You can’t,” Michael said. “Each of these pendants only works for one person.”

There was something in Gabriel’s pocket. He felt it with his hand and his eyes popped. It couldn’t be! He wasn’t
that
lucky.

“Then we’ll stay out here, and build a house in a place where no people ever go,”

Sam said, looking pleadingly at Gabriel. “We don’t need anyone else! We’ve got each other, right?
Right
!”

Gabriel pulled his hand out of his pocket and grinned widely at what he found.

“Or maybe you could come with us.”

In his hand was another purple crystal on a leather cord, and a small leather collar with a purple crystal dangling from it.

Everyone stared at the collar and necklace in his hand.

“You mean, with that I could go with you? And Mittens too?”

“That’s
Mister
Mittens,” the cat said as if by rote, but his heart didn’t seem in it.

“That you can,” Gabriel held the crystals out to her. “I can’t go home to my

world, and you can’t stay in yours. What do you say we find a new one together where we can both be happy?”

Reaching for them hesitantly, Sam looked up at the sky.

“We fixed the sun,” she said after a long pause. “We fixed the radiation. The world is the way it should have been without the Spires of Infinity to mess it up. I wanna see my own world now, and see what it’s like. I wanna see the way things coulda been, the way things
shoulda
been. We got everything fixed, and you just wanna leave without even seeing what you did?”

Looking to her brothers for a second, Kari stepped forward, offering her hand.

“The two of us got off to a bad start. How about we start again like we just met.”

Sam eyed the hand suspiciously, but took it and nodded reluctantly, shooting a look at Gabriel that was oozing with jealousy.

“As for seeing your world,” Kari said. “We’ve been chasing after the Apostle for a pretty long time. I think it’s time for a well-deserved break. We all need time to recover from recent events, I think. How about a little sight seeing before we leave?

This looks like a beautiful place, and I’d like to see more of it. I’ve never seen a sky so spectacular.”

“I think that’s the best idea you’ve had in a long time, sis,” Jonathan grinned widely showing his bestial teeth.

Considering for a long moment, Sam hesitantly took the crystals from Gabriel's hand, placing the necklace around her neck and the collar around Mister Mittens’.

Turning away from everyone, she looked at the sky for a very long time, as if trying to make it stick in her memory forever.

Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly, and Gabriel could see how truly hard the decision was in the way she held herself. “All right. Let’s do it. I wanna see my world the way it shoulda been, and then we can go chasing after the Apostle’s back trail.

There were legends and stories of other worlds than this one, but I never actually thought I was gonna see any of them. I dunno how much help I’ll be, but I’ll do my best.”

“And of course,” Mister Mittens said. “You’ll want my considerable intellect at your disposal.”