Gift From A God Ch. 08

I couldn’t control my stomach anymore. I pushed myself over the edge of the bed and threw up. The movement only made me sicker. It made me want to throw up more. There wasn’t a lot to get rid of. Dry heaves tore at my body, my strength waning with each convulsion. I could only lie there as my stomach spasmed. I was to weak to do anything else. My tears dripped off my cheeks and hit the floor, mingling with the remnants of my gut. No less then I deserved.

What was even worse is that I could feel her in me. Something He had done near the end when he bit her neck. When I bit her neck. I could feel her running down my veins and throbbing with the beat of my heart.

If I’d had a gun I would have shot myself. I couldn’t handle what I’d done. I sobbed and sobbed, moaning in anguish. I curled up into a fetal position and prayed for it to be over. All I wanted was to sink back into the abyss and die. The echoes of her screams haunted me. They rang in my ears and resounded in my head like death knells. I’d killed her; I knew I had. She was in me now. I’d sucked the life from her body and I was now slowly digesting her like a slab of rancid beef.

They must have come and found me bloody on the floor and she dead on the bed where I’d left her. That’s why I was handcuffed to the bed. You can’t risk a murderer getting loose, even if they are unconscious and bleeding from the nose and ears.

I didn’t even care anymore. Let the come and take me to jail. Did Arizona have the death penalty? I thought they did, but I wasn’t sure. If not I’d demand it. Because of what had been done to me I don’t think I could have died anyway. I could see the stunned prison officials now. They’d keep running the juice, pumping it through me and I’d just sit there screaming, my skin charring and cracking open, my eyeballs boiling in my head, but still alive. That would make them wonder. So what. I’d demand they do it again. Again and again and again until there was nothing left but ash. I curled up, cried and waited. My despair raised up to great me, it’s great maw black and all-consuming. I bared my throat to it.

“She is not dead.” A tender voice reached out to me in the darkness. I opened my swollen eyes and tried to see through the tears. Aphrodite was standing at the foot of the bed dressed in a nurse’s uniform, her face somber. She looked different then when I’d seen her in Gameworks. Her hair was shorter and blonde now, she was shorter physically and her breasts weren’t as big. It didn’t matter at all; she was still the most heartbreakingly beautiful woman I had ever seen. I recognized her aura, she could have made herself look like a man and I would still have recognized her. Strangely enough her eyes weren’t that shifting mosaic of color as I’d seen before. Instead they were just a deep, soulful brown. The warmth of her compassion washed over me and for the briefest moment I thought there might be hope still.

“You look different.”

She smiled gently. “I am love and love is ever-changing. Everyday you wake up in love that love is different then when you went to sleep. With the new day brings new aspects, new emotions to those feelings. I represent that. I don’t have to change if I don’t want to, but it’s always an adventure to see what I’ll look like in the morning.”

“Oh.” I stared at her for a moment. “You know, you’re not the one I imagined coming for me. The Greek god of death maybe, what’s his name?”

“Hades.”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Why would he come for you?”

“I killed someone. Hermes said that was against the rules. I figured my punishment was death.”

“But I told you she’s not dead.”

“I thought you were just trying to soften the blow. She’s really not dead? She’s alright?”

Aphrodite frowned. “She is alive, but she is not alright. It may be more of the machines they have her on then her own body that is keeping her alive at this point. It’s hard to live if you don’t have your soul.”

“Where is her soul?”

“You know the answer to that.”

I suddenly realized what was inside me; why it was like I could feel her. I’d sucked out her soul.

“Oh God! Get it out!” I sprung up, my head swimming sickeningly and tore at the sheets and gown, tugging at it, ripping it from me as if I could tear her soul out of me along with it.

“Please, get it out! I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know. He… made me. I didn’t want to hurt her, I swear I didn’t.” I was panicking. The gown was in tattered ruins and I began to claw at my flesh. Aphrodite was at my side, stilling my hands, her touch soothing.

“Shhh. Stephen, you must calm down. I’m going to try and help you. Please stop.”

Her touch more then anything relaxed me. It spread warmth through my body and I slumped back into the bed, to weak to fight her. My chest shuddered with sobs.

“Take it out! Fix her. You’ve got to help me. She’s in my head screaming. She hurts so much. I don’t want her to hurt anymore. Just…Fix her. I don’t care…don’t care what happens to me.

“Shhh. I will try. Come with me.”

Aphrodite folded me in her arms and I felt her warmth grow and encompass me. As gentle as a feather on a breeze we floated away. This was much smoother then how I teleported. It was like falling asleep in one place and waking up in another. When the warmth receded I was laying in a large bed covered in red silk. Aphrodite was standing beside the bed, looking down gently at me. I couldn’t see outside the space of the bed, thick curtains of layered silk hung down and simmered in a breeze from an unseen source. The air was heavy with the sent of lilacs.

“She is here.”

I turned my head and next to me was Amber. She was naked, like me, and her skin an unnatural shade of pale and her cheeks hollow. Dark circles had formed under her eyes and her breathing was almost non-existent. I quested for her mind –it was almost a habit at this point- and tried to see how she was doing. It was like the floor suddenly dropped out from under me. It was totally quite. She wasn’t even dreaming.

“I thought you said she would die if they took her off the machines.”

“Your doctors call it brain death. Without her soul to give life to her body it will cease to function. I can sustain her for a short time here, but if we cannot put her soul back where it belongs then yes, she will certainly die.”

“Can you do that?” I reached out and took Amber’s hand in mine. It was cold and lifeless. I could see the veins beneath the surface.

“I’ve been given permission to try. How successful I’ll be, I don’t know.”

I turned to look over at her. “Why would you even need permission? What’s there to talk about? If you can do it, do it.”

“Zeus wanted to just let things happen as they would. I had to ask for a special intervention for you.”

“Permission to save her life? Why would you even have to ask?”

“Stephen, you must understand,” she said patiently, “we have been witness to more human death then you can possibly imagine. To us, she is no one special. That may sound cold to you, but that is our reality. We live much too long to place the value on life that you humans do. Your lives are finite; so terribly short. Life is much more precious to you.”

I couldn’t argue with her logic, even as much as I wanted to. She was right.

“Why did you ask for a special intervention?”

“Because I think you are worth the trouble, despite what you are becoming.”

“What I’m becoming? What’s happening to me? It’s why I did this, isn’t it? Tell me what it was in my head that made me do this to her. You know, I can feel it. ”

Her face went still, but I wasn’t bluffing. I could feel her holding something back. Everything I needed to know, all of my questions about all of this she could answer. “We don’t have much time, Stephen. If you want to save her, we need to do so quickly.”

I met her gaze, probing at her, somehow not afraid to do so. I didn’t go so far as to try to read her thoughts, but I got the impression that had I tried, I might not have failed. I put that aside for now though, Amber was more important.

“Okay, do what you have to do.”

She stepped up on the bed with me and kneeled down, placing herself between Amber and I. Her nurse’s uniform was gone; she was covered in a thin layer of sheer material that had no seams, straps or buttons. It looked like it sprung into existence on her body. I could see the outline of her nipples and the shadow of her sex between her legs. If I hadn’t been laying there feeling like hammered shit I might have had the presence of mind to be excited.

“Take my hand.”

I slipped my fingers around her silken skin. I felt a rush and my heart quickened in my chest. Despite my best intentions my dick pulsed to life. I don’t think she even noticed. She took Amber’s hand in hers and I felt a sort of spike in the energy flowing between us.

“This is going to be difficult for you, but I need you to find her soul in you. You must link with her mind and once you have her soul you must try to push it back. I can’t do it on my own.”

“What will you be doing?”

“Don’t worry about me, you just do as I’ve told you. Whatever you do, do not stop. Once you have it you must see it through to the end, until her soul is back in her body. If you do, if you falter or stop, she will die. Her soul will be lost and she will never wake up. Do you understand? ”

Her voice was trembling. If I didn’t know better I’d say she was afraid.

“Are you okay?”

Her voice cracked like a whip. “I said do you understand!”

“Yes. I do. I won’t stop, I promise. Do you want me to tell you when I’ve found her.”

She snorted in weary resignation and lowered her head to her chest, taking a deep breath.. “You’ll be lucky if you can scream, let alone speak, mortal. Don’t worry, I will know. Whenever you’re ready you can begin, but it had better be soon.”

My head was filled with questions but I was too scared to ask them. I got the impression that this was not going to be pleasant. I put my head back and closed my eyes and tried to find her.

It was better that I realize now that it was better that I didn’t know what was coming. If I had any idea I would never have been able to go through with it.

Finding her wasn’t all that different then when I had been searching for her when I was inside her head. I could feel her all through me, but trying to track down the source wasn’t so simple. I had to listen. I searched for the hum of her soul. I found it trapped deep inside myself. A swirling nexus of silver and gold, it pulsed with radiant energy. Her voice hammered at me. A thousand million bits and pieces of words, her life, her spirit, her essence, all contained in this metallic fire and all of it hating and fearing and screaming at me. She recognized me; she understood what had happened and, seeing her own demise she vowed to take me down with her. Defiant to the end.

That I had tried to rob her of such a powerful life unlived made me even sicker. Maybe that’s what drew Him to her. Maybe this is what he sensed; her will to live. It was easy for me to feel it, standing before it like this. It was humbling.

“Amber?”

A foghorn of anger and fear blasted forth from her, threatening to obliterate my mind. It seared my synapses and made it feel like my brain was shaking itself to a soupy bowl of Jell-O. I was dimly aware of my body somewhere in the distance seizing up under the assault. Despite Aphrodite’s warnings, for a moment I hesitated. It was pain unlike anything I had ever felt just standing before her, and I had to try and wrangle her back into her body with her fighting me the entire time.

[You must hurry Stephen.]

Aphrodite’s voice carried across the landscape of my mind. It was strained, she sounded like she was under intense pressure. I squared up with her and set my mind to the task.

“Amber, I’m so sorry for what I did, I truly am.”

A tentacle of light shot from her like a vengeful solar flare and curled around me, trying to squeeze the life from me. It burned. Oh god how it burned. Her sorrow threatened to pull me under. It overran my senses until I thought I might forget who I was. Her presence infiltrated my mind and grabbed a hold of my guilt and gave it life.

I deserved death. I saw it all now. The things I had done to her, the things I would surely do again, because I was a monster. The reptilian thing that had raided her mind, that wasn’t him, it had been me all along. If I didn’t surrender now, stop fighting her and let her snuff out my life like so many embers doused in water, then I would surely do it again. I would just let her burn me away. She was the one who was sent to kill me, my own sins sent to back to have their vengeance. Vengeance that was rightfully hers. Who was I do deny her after what I had done. She deserved life and I deserved death, but I had taken that from her so I must pay with my own. All I had to do was stop fighting her and it would be over. Her pain, my pain, just let death come…

[Stephen!]

Aphrodite’s voice was an eruption of light and sound across my consciousness. It shook me free of the complacency and ambivalence that had quelled my instinct to survive. She brought me back to myself. The terror of how close I had come to dying sent ice through my veins. I pushed her back and inch by horrible inch she fought me and inch by hard-fought inch I won back my self from her grasp.

“Amber stop! Please let me help.”

I reached for her, and drew her essence into my arms. She flashed like a thousand nuclear explosions. Tendrils light stabbed into me seeking to rip me apart. It came to me then that she was like a drowning swimmer. So complete is the swimmers fear that they resist the person sent to save them. If you’re not strong you will get pulled down right along with them.

I tried to ignore the pain of her wrath and sought the link with Aphrodite but she kept pulling me away. It wasn’t so much as words she screamed at me as emotion. So much pain and fear and anger. I would reach for her body and her soul slapped me away. The closer I got the harder she fought, dragging up every bad thing I ever did or imagined I did. She threw it at me as evidence of the bastard I was, trying to wear away my will to live. The weight of her in my arms grew. She was infinitely heavy. Why should I fight so hard anyway? We were all going to die at some point and my life wasn’t worth living anymore.

“No!”

With a mental lunge I threw myself at the link. Yes! It was there like a golden highway, and at the other side, Amber. I pushed. With all the force I could muster I shoved her down the link and into her own body. She built momentum as she went so it became easier. She still fought me the entire way but as we traveled I didn’t have to push so hard.

And then suddenly she was gone. The pain of her attacks on me vanished. I realized how very quite it was in my mind. She’d been there screaming since I woke up in the hospital. The pain in my head was gone as well. It had all been her. Slowly I eased myself back to the world.

I awoke to see Aphrodite collapsed between us, her face towards me and her breathing ragged. Lines of strain creased her face, making her look ten or fifteen years older than when I’d closed my eyes a moment before.

“Aphrodite?”

“You must take her back to the hospital. She’s not out of the woods yet, as they say.”

Her voice was a whisper. I noticed then how dim her aura was. It flickered weakly like broken Christmas lights.

“Shit. What about you, you need help.”

“No, I’ll be fine. I just need…I just need to rest. My paladin will take you back. He knows the way. Just go.”

“But I had questions. I have to know what’s happening to me.”

“Please, Stephen…” Her voice faded out to nothing.

I felt a massive hand grab the back of my neck and pull me from the bed like a rag doll. I was set down roughly, but without injury. I spun around and was looking at a chest like a goddamn redwood tree. He was huge, at least seven feet tall if he was an inch, and a face like a stone slab. His skin was a deep tan color and stretched tight over unnaturally large muscles. He was the kind of big you only see in comic books. Beady black eyes bore down at me. Not intelligent, but not stupid either.

“We go now. My mistress must rest.” The deep timber of his voice shook my insides. He walked around the other side of the bed and went to pick Amber up. Remembering his rough treatment of me I jumped in.

“No, no, I’ll get her.” I slipped her into my arms, cradling her head on my chest and looked to him. Feeling her warmth against me, feeling her life that I had nearly stolen, it was almost to much to take. My guilt threatened to take me to my knees.

“Come.”

His voice shook me from my pain. I cast one last tear-stained look at Aphrodite before following him through the veil of fabric.

If I was expecting to see an opulent bedchamber befitting the Goddess of Love, I was sorely disappointed. I felt things shifting around me as I went through the silk. When I finally emerged from it’s impossible thickness, I was walking down a long corridor behind King Kong’s stalking form. There were doors spaced at random intervals that went to who knows where, and Kong didn’t pay them any attention so I didn’t worry to much about them either. He would glance back occasionally, checking to see that I was still following. Maybe he was worried that I would walk through one of these other doors by mistake. No chance of that.

He stopped suddenly and so big was his stride that it took me four or five steps just to catch up with him. We were facing a door that looked remarkably like a door you’d see at a hospital. He rapped his massive hand around the door latch and pushed it open and desert sun came shining through. He squeezed his massive shape through the door, which I thought was pretty damned impressive and waited for me on the other side. I turned myself sideways and stepped though. There was a tingle as I crossed the threshold, but other then that, nothing. I was in her hospital room. Outside her window I could see downtown Phoenix.

“Put her back on the bed.” Right to the point this guy was.

I laid her down and he gave me a hospital gown that he’d pulled from somewhere and I fit it over her nude form as gently as I could. I adjusted her on the bed and pulled the sheets up around her. I took a moment to study her and brushed the hair from her placid face. Some color had already returned to her face and her breathing sounded much healthier. I probed gently at her mind and was greeted by activity. Not much, she was deep, deep asleep. About six feet above a coma it felt like, but she was alive. Her soul was back where it belonged.

“I’m so sorry Amber.” My eyes burned and the acid tears of my sorrow failed to wash it away. Even though her soul was in her body the memory of her screams echoed in my mind. They still do.

“Move.”

I backed up before he stepped on me and he went about reconnecting her to all the equipment. He was surprisingly nimble with those sausage-like fingers. If you see hands like that you think of him grinding bones to make his bread, not inserting an IV with the skill of a surgeon. He even reset some of the monitors. I could only gawk at him. It’s the most perfect example of contrast I have ever seen.

He stepped away and it almost looked like he was admiring his handiwork. He gave a satisfied grunt and then turned back to me.

“Now you go home.”

“No, I want to stay with her until she wakes up. I’m not leaving yet.”

“Mistress said to bring you here and leave her and send you home. You can not stay.”

“What about the doctors and the police. They’ll be looking for me. You don’t handcuff someone to a bed and then just forget about them.”

“Mistress took care of that before she brought you. Now you go home.”

“What if…what if that thing comes back. I don’t suppose you know what it was, do you?”