Music soundtrack:
“Distance to the Sun” – Spock’s Beard
“The Last Angel” – Pallas
I took a deep breath before I rounded the corner and steadied myself, trying to will my body to stop shivering. It felt like this hand was for the whole pot and I was playing against the house. And I know the house usually wins. Emma realized I’d stopped walking and looked back. I hoped my concentration face looked like I was preparing myself to talk to the Savior and not making last minute calculations for how to win. She merely watched me for a moment, then went on around to where I knew Gabriel was waiting for us.
After another steadying breath, and clenching and unclenching my hands a few times, I slowly rounded the corner.
Emma was kneeling at his feet again, and he was petting her hair like she was a dog. He leaned over her, paying no attention to me at all, and murmured something quiet that I couldn’t hear. She looked up at him with adoration like a child. It turned my stomach to see her like that. My Emma, my strong, beautiful, leader and fighter... she had been turned into a simpering little pet at the knee of her master.
My vision blurred and it felt like I was about to cry tears of blood, my ears ringing and my heart pounding. I cleared it just in time to see her hand him something shiny. It glinted in the faint light of the night sky, the failing city lights reflected off the clouds that blew past, and I could see what it was—the crystal prism we had held together so long ago.
Gabriel caressed her face, and then stood up as if he’d only just noticed I was there. I could see that he was finely dressed in a well-tailored sharkskin suit. Strangely out of place for meeting with a group of refugees in the middle of the wilderness while the lights went out in Los Angeles below. A black wool overcoat was draped over one arm of the “throne” he’d just left.
“What is it you want?” he asked me. I looked at Emma, and she looked back... almost. She couldn’t quite meet my gaze.
“You know why I’m here,” I replied, still looking at Emma. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”
He approached me, one hand out, and I felt strangely rooted to the spot. I think if I’d tried to run, my knees would have folded up and I would have fallen on my face again. He reached out and time seemed to slow down as I realized he was going to touch me, but before I could flinch out of the way, I felt his hand on my shoulder. It was strong and warm, and it was almost as if something passed from him to me through the contact. My hands stopped shaking.
“Walk with me, David,” he commanded, and I found myself matching his stride, any weakness in my legs suddenly gone. He left his hand where it was as we climbed over a low rise and then disappeared down the other side, leaving his throne and followers and Emma behind.
“Poor Mr. Blunt,” he murmured in that slippery voice of his. “Always playing hide and seek. You’re obsessed, you know. You’re never going to have her. You’ll die first.”
“Shut up,” I growled at him.
“Oh, I don’t mean it in a cruel way,” he said, finally releasing my shoulder. It felt as though I were a puppet and someone had just cut a few of my strings. Not all of them, but just enough that I couldn’t walk straight anymore. “I’m simply being factual. The comic relief never gets the girl. Don’t you watch old movies, David?”
“Shut up!” I rasped at him through gritted teeth. Why did it feel like I was inside a slowly closing trap?
“I’ve seen you. In dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these lives. You fail all the tests. Do you want my advice?”
“No.” My voice was shaking now, along with the rest of me.
“My advice is that you stop this, David. Go home, to your own universe, and live out your days with some weird girl who likes comic books and looks like Bettie Page and has a dozen tattoos and collects antique radios. Go home before you get yourself killed. Have you looked in a mirror lately? You look like you pissed off a gypsy.”
He laughed at his own joke and stared at me, and something in his eyes forced me to stare back. There was something in them. Something not right. I couldn’t look away. I started to feel something shift inside me, but I recognized it. It was a jump coming.
“NO!” I shouted and forced myself to look away. My head swam and I almost hit the ground, but somehow I managed to stay up. I swallowed back some bile, willed myself to stay on that godforsaken windy hill full of bushes and hate, and I looked back at him.
He seemed genuinely surprised that I was still there. I think I was almost as surprised.
“Why do you want me out of here so badly? So you can have Emma all to yourself?”
Gabriel blinked at me, then burst out laughing. Much less musical this time.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega. And you, David Blunt, are the biggest wrench in my machine. Well, not you. The other you. The meat suit you’re currently borrowing.”
“I won’t let you have her.”
“Oh really?” His brows lifted and he seemed to actually see me for the first time since I’d jumped into this body. Before he had just looked at me. Now he was really looking.
“No. She deserves better.”
He laughed again. Each time it got less musical and more sinister.
“Oh, and I suppose you think that’s you? I can offer her anything. Everything. Even her life. I can choose that she gets to live. I can save the world for her, if I want to. Can you do that?”
Choose that she gets to live?
“Ah, there’s that dumbfounded look I’ve come to know,” he continued, running one finger along my cheek. “I’ve grown accustomed to your face. Unfortunately, this is where you get off. I’m throwing you under the bus, my dear stooge.”
Determined to finish my scheme, I only paid attention to half of what he’d said and plowed on like the idiot I am.
“Fine, if you don’t want me here, then tell me how to get back to my world. To my own Emma. Tell me what to do to get home.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To get rid of me. Like you said.”
He grinned at me with those shark teeth. “I have a better idea, actually. If I keep you here, I can set you up as a traitor, and then be rid of both you and the David that you’ve replaced at the same time. Win/win.”
The only win/win I could see was in his favor. A cold feeling radiated out from my stomach and up my spine. My hands tingled and I looked to see if he had a weapon.
“Oh, I won’t kill you myself directly. Emma would be horrified. She thinks I’m something special. And she’s right, but she has no idea what I really am.”
“And what’s that?” I choked out. The tingling was spreading up my arms.
Just then, a flash of yellow that dimmed to orange as it boiled up into the sky, somewhere down below in the city, caught my eye. Then another. After a few more seconds, one more. Then, a distant rumble as the sound waves finally started to reach our hilltop. Then another. After a delay, the third one. I could almost feel the pressure inside me, creeping up my arms and out of my stomach and chest. My feet started to go numb.
“I’ve already told you,” said Gabriel, leaning in close to my face. “The Alpha and the Omega. Emma is right. I can save them all. Because I control it all.”
I was torn, then. I should try and force myself to stay, to risk my life and tell Emma what was really going on, so that she could take her people and run. Fight. Whatever they needed to do.
But she wasn’t mine. Gabriel owned this one. He owned it all. Just like always.
He always seemed to be at least one step ahead of me. Hell, even the other David, or maybe Davids, were ahead of me. But not back home. Not where I came from. If I could just get home and find Emma there, tell her everything, and get her to help me, then I still had a chance to beat them all.
I slowly looked up into his eyes. Then I smiled darkly.
“Good luck with that, fucker.”
Then I let the creeping tingling numb pressure take me over. And I was gone.
* * *
A/N from Willow:
Hello all. It has been my pleasure and delight to write for this
project, and I'm sorry it's coming to an end. In this form, at least.
I love The Karada and all its iterations and worlds and ideas, and I
fervently hope that it's picked up in the near future as a television
series. It has so much potential, and you, the readers, have proven by
sheer numbers that this story is wanted and should be allowed to be
bigger than just a written format.
Together, let's create that 3D full-color live-action universe so that
maybe, just maybe, David can get his Emma someday after all....
Well, probably not, but I feel sorry for the guy, and we all know that
as a TV show, this would kick ass even if he doesn't. ;)
Follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/WillowPolson) and friend me
on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/willowpolson) to see where I've
been and follow where I'm going next...