Promise touched them down tenderly, as if afraid to waken the golem in the Chevy’s cargo bay. She spun out of her chair, then paused, looking down at Aubry. He sat unmoving, seeming not to breathe, or even realize that they had landed. “Come on,” she said. There was no reply.
The skimmer door sighed open.
The first woman across the threshold had Promise’s height and bone structure, but was more slender through the hips. Her breasts were flatter and harder. Her natural skin tones were lighter, but tanned deeply enough to affect the same general shade. Her eyes were tilted by the same Asian caste. Whereas Promise had carefully, deliberately cultivated her sensuality as a weapon, refined it to the degree that it was no longer possible to turn it completely off, this woman seemed to have diverted the same sensual appetite, the same physical grace, into lethality. She was Promise’s sister Jenna, combat mistress of Ephesus.
They embraced warmly. Jenna’s gaze flickered to Aubry. “Is he all right?”
“He will be. I’ve seen this before.”
There was motion and sound in the hold behind them, as workers struggled to move the coffin out. Six of them groaned beneath its weight, bending in respect to the flesh if not the spirit. Promise solemnly removed Mira’s rectangular brass urn.
Jenna clambered in and sat quietly next to Aubry. He was still motionless in the copilot’s seat. For a while neither spoke; then she laid her hand upon his.
“Aubry?”
He nodded. His fingers traced a circle against the window. He stared off to the east, across a deeply shadowed stand of trees. Soon, the sun would be rising. He ached to see it.
“It’s good to have you back.” She paused. “Leslie is fine.”
This, finally, brought a smile to his lips. Aubry heaved himself up from the chair. “Leslie. I need to see Leslie.”
He looked down at Jenna. Her nails and auburn hair were cut short. No makeup, no artifice, nothing in her face but concern and integrity. Nothing but love for him and for her half-sister, Promise. A ray of light brushed Aubry’s heart for a second. Then the clouds closed, and darkness returned.
He tried to brush past her, to hurry from a suddenly confining cockpit, but she moved against him. As lightly as feathers her arms settled on his shoulders, and she pressed her cheek against his chest.
Through the windows of the skimmer he could see the buildings beyond the landing pad. Two steel-frame three-storied medical facilities, the cubical brick structure of the library, the wood and glass arch of the research and conference facility. All were set in a U-shaped clearing framed by hundreds of thousands of towering trees. All about him was the scent of life and love, and Aubry should have felt at home.
But what was home? Was it the towers and spires, the metal and concrete forest that civilized man had rooted in the earth, and then raised to heaven? Or was home the calm center within him, found only in confrontations with death?
Or perhaps home was here, this place nestled in the Oregonian woods, where he was surrounded by people who loved him, who had nurtured him, and who accepted him fangs and all?
Or was home somewhere else…?
Jenna leaned back from him, and looked up, smiling impishly. Her nose was pugged, slightly askew, as if it had been broken once too often. He found it endearing. She kissed the corner of his mouth. Her lips were soft, her breath scented cinnamon.
She pulled back, winked, and then linked her arm in his. She walked him back through the cargo hold, to the door. “Leslie tells me that you’ve been trying the Ludovico gambit.”
“What?”
“King’s pawn variations, favoring queen’s knight.”
“Oh.” He was momentarily confused, torn. His moroseness struggled against Jenna’s bright, questioning presence. And lost.
Tricky little twit. “I’m just trying to get through the damned middle game without that brat stripping away my pawn cover.”
She laughed. “You’re too aggressive. You don’t leave enough defense. You have to refine your defensive structures, and stop trusting your damned invulnerability to protect you.”
He rolled his shoulders. “I’m not feeling so damned invulnerable these days.” He laughed lamely. “Father Time …”
“Is absurdly fond of you.”
Promise handed Mira’s urn to a burial crew, then joined Aubry and Jenna. She managed a wan smile. “All right. Where is she?”
“He,” Aubry said automatically.
Jenna giggled. “That would be telling.”
Aubry scanned the trees and the rocks as they left the skimmer. Within the next few minutes there would be an ambush. He was determined not to be caught off guard.
Without warning, the earth to his right rippled and cracked. Aubry barely had time to recognize the rectangle of tarp, comprehend the eruption of dirt, before Leslie’s wiry body sprang from the ground. Five feet of half-naked, grinning child pounced onto Aubry’s chest knees-first.
“Whoof!” Aubry staggered back, flailing at air. Leslie scrambled around him like a cat spiraling up a tree.
Leslie stood atop Aubry’s shoulders, balancing there effortlessly, tiny fists clenched and raised to the clouds. The clouds, ever diplomatic, declined to comment.
“Taa-daah!” Leslie rode his thighs around Aubry’s neck and hugged him, smearing dirt, giving his father a big, wet, dusty kiss.
The workers applauded and laughed.
“Gotcha!” Leslie chortled.
“Yeah …” Aubry pulled him around into a cradle position, gazing into Leslie’s huge, beautiful eyes. How close had he come to losing this wonderful creature? Something inside him chilled at the thought.
“Daddy.” Leslie laid his head contentedly against Aubry’s massive chest.
Aubry crushed him in his arms and kept walking, not saying anything, afraid to say anything. For just that instant his heart went cold, certain that if he spoke the bubble would burst and he would awaken from a dream. And in awakening, he would find himself kneeling on a hydraulic stage in Los Angeles, shrouded with blood and brains and viscera, by the hearts and minds of the only family he had ever known.