“Well, well—it appears that your attendant was successful in bringing you pleasure. A lot of pleasure—you nearly shouted the walls down! That is, when your mouth wasn’t too full for shouting.”
Lady Marlbussen sounded amused.
Harper jumped at the sound of the other woman’s voice.
Shad was cradling her in his lap after their final, emotional encounter and they were kissing, sharing each other’s flavor and reveling in the intimacy between them. Somehow, she’d completely forgotten anyone else was in the room.
She broke the kiss and looked up at the other woman, feeling suddenly naked all over again.
“No, no dear—don’t mind me.” Lady M waved a hand negligently. “By all means, finish what you started.”
“We are finished,” Shad growled. “I have seen to my Empress’s pleasure—now she should be able to go before She Who Alters without any other need to distract the Goddess’s attention.”
“Not before she’s gone through the Cleansing Waters.” Lady Marlbussen sounded slightly shocked. “You can’t just go into the presence of She Who Alters all sweaty from sex. You have to wash the exertion off—cleanse yourself of impurities before you can see her.”
“Lady Marlbussen is right.” The owlish bathing attendant popped up and Harper wondered where she’d been while she and Shad were giving each other pleasure. They’d been performing some pretty private acts—she really hoped the girl hadn’t been watching them the whole time.
“Okay,” she said, trying to rearrange the long fringes of her dress so that they somewhat covered her. She wasn’t very successful. They’d gotten pretty messed up during her activities with Shad and some of them had been torn off completely by his eager hands. “Um, so what’s next?” she asked.
“You must come with me,” the bathing attendant said, motioning at the door of the pleasure room. “We will go first into the steam baths to sweat impurities from your pores, then the showers to rinse away said impurities. Lastly you will enter the Cleansing Waters before you go before the Goddess.”
“All right—sounds fine to me.” Harper shrugged and looked at Lady Marlbussen. “Lead the way.”
“Oh no, hon—this is where I leave you.” The other woman smiled genially. “I only come here to use the sexual facilities. Whenever I have an itch that needs scratched.” She winked at Harper. “Which has been well and truly scratched today, I can tell you.”
“Oh, uh…well thank you for…for everything,” Harper said haltingly. It was hard to say exactly what the other woman had done for her. Well, except for goading her into teasing Shad until his iron self-control finally snapped.
In that case, I guess I really do have something to thank her for.
But should she thank her, Harper wondered. Should she thank her for pushing Shad and her together? Especially now that she realized once She Who Alters changed her so that the Hive could no longer use her, she would be back on the beach on Earth with no memory of the man she had come to love.
Because Harper did love the big Kindred—hopelessly, helplessly, and without reservation. She knew that now—felt connected to him in a way that she hadn’t before. She loved him and she was certain Shad loved her. But soon they would be parted forever…
Don’t think about it, she told herself. If you think about it you’ll cry. Don’t cry.
Pushing the disturbing emotions away, she lifted her chin and looked at the bathing attendant.
“I guess we’d better get going.”
“Indeed yes, Empress. If you would be so kind as to follow me…”
The owlish attendant with her wide, unblinking yellow eyes, led Harper and Shad out of the bathing room and into a long, dark, echoing corridor.
It had, Harper thought, a distinctly horror-movie type atmosphere. Wordlessly, she reached for Shad’s hand and felt instantly better when their fingers entwined.
As long as we’re together, we’ll be okay, she thought. And refused to think again of how soon they were going to be parted.
At last they stopped at a rounded black door with a foggy window set in the center of it.
“Here is the steam bath which will rid you of impurities, both emotional and physical,” the attendant said. “But first I fear you must undress.”
“Really?” Harper sighed and told herself it was no use feeling shy. After all, the thin fringes of her green dress didn’t really cover anything and anyway, Shad had just seen everything in the pleasure room. Still, she felt nervous about being absolutely naked, even though the big Kindred at her side was completely bare and didn’t seem to be bothered by it at all.
“It is the rule,” the attendant said firmly.
“Well…all right.” Harper fumbled at the back of the collar of the dress and finally managed to unfasten it. She pulled it off and held it in her arms like a shield across her breasts. “Where should I put it?”
“I will take it for you,” the attendant held out her hand. “All of your personal clothing and accoutrements will be waiting for you at the exit to She Who Alters’s audience chamber.”
Harper had a sudden thought.
“Oh—my cloak of thorns! I left it back in the pleasure room!” She felt immediately guilty. Though she had learned by reading on the Interweb that the cloak didn’t have to be fed or given any kind of liquid to live, she still felt like she was neglecting it and wondered if it thought she had abandoned it.
“I will bring it with your other things, Empress,” the bathing attendant assured her.
“But you have to be careful—it bites,” Harper told her anxiously. “It hates everyone but me. No one else can even touch it. It even bit Shad—I mean, my bodyguard.” She nodded at the big Kindred who also nodded.
“True. It has fucking sharp teeth when it wants to.”
“Have no fear, please Empress,” the attendant spoke serenely. “You are not the first to wear the royal cloth here. We have the necessary tools to handle your cloak of thorns safely. I promise it will be waiting when the Goddess is finished with you.”
“Well…all right,” Harper said reluctantly. She had removed her shoes back in the pleasure room she was now completely naked and there didn’t seem to be any other excuse to delay. “I guess…guess we’d better get on with it.”
“Yes, Empress,” the attendant nodded and drew back the rounded door revealing an echoing area of pitch blackness. A puff of strongly scented steam came out and wafted into Harper’s face, making her cough.
“Wait—you want me to go in there?” She peered into the blackness but couldn’t see a thing. “I’ll trip and kill myself. I can’t see in the dark!”
“I can.” Shad squeezed her fingers. “I’ll go with you, sweetheart.”
“Oh, no!” the attendant exclaimed, looking agitated. “Only the one who will stand in the presence of She Who Alters may enter.”
“I don’t care what you say,” Shad growled. “Anywhere Harper—I mean my Empress—goes, I go.”
“Oh dear, this is most irregular…” The attendant wrung her hands and even got excited enough to blink once or twice.
“We paid a lot to be here,” Shad reminded her. “And the social secretary did tell you to give us—to give the Empress—whatever she wants.”
“Yes…yes, that is true.” The bathing attendant calmed visibly. “Yes, if anything goes wrong, I can always remind her that she told me that. I also documented it, to be certain it is in the permanent record.”
“See? There you go—it’s in the permanent record,” Harper said soothingly. “So let Shad come in with me, all right? Because I really don’t want to go in there alone.” She looked into the dark, steamy room and shuddered.
“Very well.” The attendant nodded, still a bit hesitantly, Harper thought. “You may enter—both of you.”
“Come on, sweetheart.” Pulling her gently by the hand, Shad stepped across the threshold. Reluctantly, Harper followed him.
The door swung shut behind them, cutting off the last sliver of light. There was a metallic clicking sound, like a loudspeaker, and the attendant’s disembodied voice floated in to them, as though she was speaking over an intercom.
“Please make yourselves comfortable. I will release the mechanism and open the door once all extraneous impurities and emotions have been sweated out.”
“Ugh,” Harper muttered. She hated to sweat. Raising her voice she said to Shad, “Can you really see in here?” She shuffled forward in the dark behind him, keeping her free hand out in front of her to stop herself from hitting anything.
“Not as well as I can in broad daylight but enough to get around.” His deep voice echoed off the walls in a hollow-sounding way that made her think of a tiled area—a bathroom maybe or an indoor swimming pool.
“What’s in here? What are we supposed to do?” Harper asked, squeezing his hand tighter. The heat from the steamy room was already making her sweat and she didn’t like the feeling of clammy humidity.
“There are some wooden benches over here,” Shad grunted. “I guess we’re supposed to just sit and perspire.”
“Well…all right.” Carefully, Harper followed his lead. Once he was seated on a bench, he pulled her down beside him.
“There. That’s not so bad, right?” he asked, his deep voice low and intimate in her ear.
“It’s not so good either,” Harper pointed out. “I don’t like being all hot and sweaty and sticky. I might as well go back home to Florida if I wanted that.”
“You will go back home.” His voice was softer now…suddenly somber. “As soon as She Who Alters is finished with you we’ll reach the end of the loop and you’ll be transported instantly back.”
“What about you?” Harper had a difficult time speaking the words but somehow she forced them out. “Where…where will you go?”
Shad shrugged—she could feel the roll of his shoulder against her own in the darkness.
“I think I’ll go back to my own time. Back to a future where the Hive never blew up the Mother Ship or took over the Earth.”
“That will be nice,” Harper said but her voice came out flat. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I mean, all your people—your brothers and your friends and parents, they’ll all be back together again, right? All alive and healthy and happy.”
She told herself that alone was enough reason to be glad they were so close to the end of their quest. So many of Shad’s people had been killed and lost—it was wonderful to think of restoring them.
“Yes. It will be…perfect. Just as it should be.” His voice was flat too, quiet in the steamy darkness.
“And I guess by that time I’ll be in my fifties—if I’m still around,” Harper couldn’t help saying.
“I’ll come to you.” His voice was suddenly hoarse and fierce. “I don’t care about the age difference—I love you, Harper. I’ll find you as soon as I can—as soon as I’m of age.”
“But you’ll be eighteen and I’ll be something like forty-eight,” she objected. “And that's the best case scenario. What if the time loop puts you back to your time at the age you are now and I'm somewhere in my late fifties or early sixties? I can’t ask you to spend your youth with me when I’ll already be middle aged or older.”
“I don’t give a damn for any of that.” He put his arms around her and drew her close. “I love you, Harper. I always have. I’ll never stop.”
“Oh, Shad…” She felt tears rising in her eyes at his impassioned declaration and tried to blink them back. “I…I love you too,” she admitted, sniffing. “God, I wish we didn’t have to end like this. I mean, I know why we do but I don’t…don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t. I told you—I’ll seek you out,” he promised.
Harper didn’t have the heart to tell him that if she didn’t remember him and everything they’d been though, things probably wouldn’t work out between them in the future. She couldn’t see herself dating an eighteen year old at the age she was now—let alone eighteen or twenty years down the road. She would feel like a cradle-robber and besides, it wouldn’t be right to tie him to her when he was so young and she was…well, not anymore.
She leaned into his embrace instead and repeated, “I love you.”
“Kallana,” he whispered and the choked sound of his voice made her think he might be close to crying, though she could hardly imagine such a thing. But when she put a hand to her face, she found that she was crying herself.
What was going on with the both of them? Why after days of dancing around each other had they finally admitted their true emotions? And why were their feelings so close to the surface? Every minute she sat in this weird sauna she felt more and more emotional—closer to losing it entirely when she thought about leaving Shad and never seeing him again. Or at least, not recognizing him and what he meant to her when she did see him.
She became aware that the room was no longer pitch black. Instead, a dull red glow had begun to suffuse the enclosed space. Harper couldn’t see where it was coming from and it didn’t really do much for visibility. All she could see were clouds of steam and the indistinct outlines of Shad’s big, naked form in the semi-darkness.
“It’s getting light in here, can…can you tell?” she whispered, but her words came out in a sob. “Oh, Shad…” Suddenly she was in his arms—in his lap—and he was holding her close. Both of them were slippery and tears were streaming down Harper’s cheeks. She felt the big Kindred’s shoulders shake and knew that he was crying too.
“Harper…Kallana…” He held her to him tightly and they cried in each others’ arms—weeping for the pain of their impending loss, knowing there was nothing they could do about it…
“I love you,” she whispered. “I guess I always have, I just didn’t know it.”
“You are my heart.” He pressed his face to her neck and Harper felt him inhale, as though he was trying to breathe in her fragrance and imprint it on his memory forever. “I don’t want to let you go. I don’t want to lose you.”
Harper didn’t know how long it lasted. Long enough for both of them to cry themselves out, she supposed. Shad finished before she did and simply held her while she sobbed. He stroked her shoulders and back and whispered soothingly in her ear until a feeling of calm despair came over her, replacing the raging emotions that had torn through her.
“Oh,” she whispered hopelessly. “Oh, Shad. I guess there’s nothing we can do, is there?”
“Nothing,” he rumbled. “Nothing but go on. I’m sorry, Harper.”
“It’s all right,” she said softly.
She thought of the Earth in his future world—of how ravaged and dark and broken it was with the Hive in control and the people—what few there were left—in hiding. Everything was a mess in that time line—and only going forward and finishing their quest, getting to the end of the loop, as Shad said—would fix it.
“This is the way things have to be,” she murmured. “Not just for your people—for mine too.”
“Yes.” He sighed heavily in agreement. “Yes, this is the way things have to be.”
Suddenly Harper heard a ding which sounded almost like an oven timer going off. Then the red light suffusing the room turned blue, bathing the room in cool, eerie shadows. There was a metallic click and the bathing attendant’s voice came over the intercom.
“Emotional purging complete. Sequence is over.”
Then the door creaked open, revealing a sliver of light from the hallway outside.
“You can come out now,” the owlish attendant said. “It’s time for your shower before you can enter the Cleansing Waters.”
“Wait a minute…” Harper cleared her throat, which was sore from crying. “Did you just…manipulate our emotions in there?”
“It is necessary to purge all strong emotions before you see the Goddess,” the attendant explained patiently. “The sensory steam enables intense and troubling feelings to come to the surface so that you can feel them consciously and work through them. In this way you are cleansed of emotional impurities.”
Harper thought she ought to be angry at the way she’d been manipulated but when she thought about it, she was kind of glad, in a way. She might not have admitted out loud how much she loved Shad or how she dreaded to lose him if they hadn’t gone into the steam-room/emotional-pressure-cooker together. It had hurt to feel all that—but it was good to have it out in the open too. Casting a side-long glance at the big Kindred, she wondered if he felt the same way.
Shad’s chiseled features were stoic now, but she couldn’t help noticing that his eyes were red-rimmed, proving that she hadn’t imagined his tears. When he saw her looking, he simply took her hand and squeezed it.
“This way,” said the attendant, and they followed her down the echoing hallway again.