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Book Two of the Campground Series

A Novel by JD Jones

Copyright 2013 by JD Jones

Smashwords Edition

License Notes:

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All characters, events and places in this novel are fictitious. This is purely a work of fiction, and as such, any resemblance to actual living persons or real places is unintentional.

Chapter One

Barbara Self was in pain. She tried to hide it but it was getting worse. She was not good with pain. She didn't like it at all. Not even a little pain. This pain had steadily grown worse through the weekend. She believed it was a punishment from God for her wild, promiscuous Friday night. She tried to convince herself she was being silly. God did not work like that. He did not chastise people with horrible pain to make them behave or simply because they had already misbehaved. But the pain was hard to overlook. And it had begun the morning after her tryst with that handsome guy, Joe. At least she thought he might be handsome. Truth was, she could barely remember the night. From the moment she had met him, it seemed as though everything went into slow motion, like a dream.

She remembered seeing the man across the room on a bar stool. Not her normal place for meeting men. But he had looked forlorn and inviting and needy and exciting all at the same time. He had triggered something in her that drew her outside of herself. She felt different around him. She felt like he looked at her as though she was exciting. At least she thought she remembered it that way. She hadn't got his number. She could not remember if she had given him hers. All she knew was his name was Joe. And that they had had a wild time in her bedroom.

She sat in the straight backed chair of the doctor's office and wished time would move ahead faster. She did not waste her time wishing for the doctor to hurry and get to her. That would be asking too much. Easier to move a planet than a doctor's schedule.

Every once in a while the pain doubled her over in her chair. The nurse behind the counter took note of Barbara's pain and monitored it for severity. She considered letting the doctor know they had an emergency in the waiting room. But that would make more paperwork for her. The doctor would certainly tell her to call an ambulance and then she would be on the phone with the hospital for the next half hour arranging things for the admission of the young woman now barely bearing up under the pain that was attacking her body. She decided to wait.

Two streets over, Iris Cunningham listened as the doctor explained that she was pregnant. How that could be, she had no idea. She was on the pill. She was careful about the men she was with. They used protection, too. And the doctor had said the baby was how old?

"How far along?"

"Six months." the doctor replied.

"That's impossible."

"Well, there is a small margin of error in the calculations, but not more than a week at this stage."

"Impossible," Iris repeated. "I have not been with a guy since a week ago and before that it has been almost a year."

And that week ago had been a one night stand with some guy named Joe. She didn't expect she would ever see him again. It wasn't that good. Although, she had to admit that something had attracted her to him so strongly that she could not let the night pass without trying him out. She remembered having to know. It was like she saw him and developed an addiction. She had to have him. Like he was some kind of chocolate. So, she had taken him home and unwrapped him and devoured him.

"I only know what the test shows us." The doctor stated.

"How can that be?"

Iris was concerned because she just suddenly started showing. Monday night nothing, the next morning a definite baby bump that she tried to ignore. By Tuesday afternoon she was feeling the pinch of her pants against her belly. Wednesday morning, she had to call in sick because none of her clothes fit except her sweats, which she could not wear to work. She took antacids, and vitamins and everything else in her medicine cabinet. She knew something was out of balance with her body. Thursday morning she had woke up and thrown up. Her belly was greatly expanded and that's when she made the doctor's appointment.

"Listen, Iris," Doctor Schwartz looked down at her patient. "I don't believe in miraculous conception, so I'm going to have to believe that you must have had sex somewhere in the past six months. This baby is definitely entering the third trimester."

"I know where I've been, Doc." Iris was adamant. "Eleven months ago, I broke off a long engagement with the only man I had sex with since high school. It was bad. I did not have sex again until last Friday night. I met a guy who swept me off my feet and romanced me out of my pants. Before that, nothing."

"You sound like you believe it, but that does not change the fact that you have a six month old baby inside you."

"This is impossible," was all Iris could think to say.

The doctor could only shrug.

Helen Norris waited on the gurney. She was scared but Gary had demanded she do this. He was already mad enough that she sometimes slept with other guys without asking for money. Hell, he had always liked it before they got married. And when he had started renting her out to other guys he had even allowed her some free time to herself. He knew she was a sex maniac. She couldn't help it. She loved sex. At no time did she ever feel so good about herself than when a guy was on top of her, grunting and really getting into it. She always knew that guys appreciated her for what she could do for them. She could do for guys what every guy wants. She loved knowing that.

Maybe she was a freak. She didn't care. She didn't mind most of the guys Gary farmed her out to either. Hell, she thought most guys were sexy. What bothered her was how he thought he owned her and could say who she could and couldn't screw. It was her body. She could do what she wanted with it. Like that Friday night a couple weeks back.

She had seen Joe in the bar before. She had always ignored him before because he acted like he was afraid to be alive. He just sat and drank. He never really lived it up. He hardly ever laughed. But that night he was laughing and living it up large. She had been immediately attracted to him and knew a few seconds later that she wanted to sleep with him. She never brought up the subject of paying even once. Gary could go screw himself. She wanted Joe for herself that night. It had been good, too. Not fireworks and rainbow good, but at least big city lights and carnival good. That was how she rated her partners, by the experience. Levels of light. That night Joe had put away his darkness and brought a little light into her life. She would always remember that.

That was two weeks ago. Things were a little tense with Gary after that night and then a couple days later she started showing and was obviously pregnant. Gary got mad about her personal philandering. After his screaming fit, he demanded she have the abortion and commit to only the guys he brought around. Then they had found out she was six months pregnant and no doctor would perform an abortion of a six month old fetus. So, Gary had found a doctor who would. He said she needed to get back to work for him. He could not have her lying around doing nothing. Besides, he was not taking care of some other guy's baby.

As she lay there on the gurney, waiting for the doctor to come in, Helen tried to hold back the tears. She had always wanted to have a baby. Gary didn't want kids. They had argued about it once. He got so mad, he threw the television out the window. She never brought the subject up again. She had always viewed her life as failure. Now she was going to kill the one good thing she had done with her life. She had no idea who the father was. There was no way to tell. But half the kid was hers. That was the thing that gripped her heart. Her child. Growing inside her. Living inside her.

She didn't want to kill it. She had just discovered she was pregnant a couple weeks ago. Part of her wished she had known about it the whole time. Six months. Wow! She thought she could have at least treasured that time before Gary made her abort it.

Suddenly she heard a loud commotion in the other room where Gary and the doctor and his nurse had gone out to confer. She figured Gary was paying the man up front. This was not exactly a legitimate doctor's office. That was obvious from the warehouse décor all around her. More like a storage shed than an office.

The noise grew louder and she could definitely hear crashing and screaming and groaning and yelling. Gary must be arguing with the doctor. He was a very violent man. She had learned that the hard way. The only reason she stayed with him was because he let her satisfy the urge to sleep with almost any man she saw and still stayed married to her. That pleased her mother. Her mother held marriage as sacred. That and the fact he had told her he'd kill her if she ever left him.

Several minutes dragged on and the screaming finally quit. She expected the doctor and his nurse to come in after the arrangements were completed. No one came. It was very quiet. Thirty minutes passed and Helen wondered what was happening. She was getting more nervous about this with every tick of the clock.

Finally she got off the gurney, pulling her gown closed behind her to ward off the cool air more than any attempt at modesty. She liked when men looked at her. Being wanted was her dream. Fulfilling a man's desire was her passion. Being modest was something those women with no sex life could afford. The rest of womanhood needed to show it off and attract more men. How else could they get their own needs met?

She opened the door to the outer room slowly in case the men were discussing things in a more quiet tone. She did not want to anger Gary for intruding. What met her eyes as the door swung open stopped her in her tracks. Blood. Everywhere she looked there was blood. The walls. The ceiling. The floor was like a big puddle of the sticky, smelly red fluid. And there was no way to identify the bodies. There were just pieces of torn flesh flung in every direction like a lawn mower had run over a cat. Or maybe a cow.

Helen started to scream. At least she thought she was. All that came out of her mouth was a small chirp. Then she felt her head spin and knew she was going to faint. She had never fainted before but she knew that was what was happening. As she fell to the floor, she felt someone catch her and gently lay her down. Darkness was closing in and taking her sight as well as her reason. But before she gave in to the unconsciousness of her shock, she could have sworn that she saw a very hairy man or a balding ape. And he had to be seven or more feet tall, too. Then all went dark.

Three weeks before, across town in another doctor's office, Carol Bennings had heard similar news from her doctor. A thin, wispy woman, her baby bump was exaggerated against her small frame. It had been four weeks since she had grown concerned about the added weight she was gaining. By the time her appointment had arrived, she was definitely showing all the signs of a pregnancy. Her discussion with the doctor then centered around the paternity testing she was doing for the time period in question. There were two candidates. Both men lived in her apartment building. She had divided her time between them that month. Not at the same time. One began the month as her partner. The other finished the month. She had her standards, after all. She would never allow a man she dated to sleep with other women. She would never do that to them either.

"What do you mean that neither of them is the father?" Carol asked for the third time.

"Neither of the men in question matched the DNA of your baby. There must be a third possibility."

"No way!" Carol was concerned. "Are you sure we have the time period down, right?"

"Within a week or two, I'd say."

"Which way?"

"Earlier, maybe."

"Can't be that."

"Why not?"

"I was in a kind of dry spell before that for almost three months. And it's the same guy after that up until a month ago."

"No one else? No...uh...one nighters?"

"Listen doc. It's been the same guy until a month ago and then only one since then and that was almost exactly four weeks ago."

Even that was just a guy she met at work named Joe. She had seen him around before but four weeks ago he had come into the office on a Saturday afternoon to do some work on a bathroom lock and she could think of nothing else all day until she got him home. He had seemed surprised that she paid him any attention at all since they traveled in different circles. But that night they had traveled in the same circle very closely all night long.

It had been a fling, a random moment of passion and unwise thinking. Her rule was to never date guys from work, but she just had to break it that one time for Joe. She would never do it again. No future in Joe. But it was fun for the one night. But that was it. But even that was not far enough back to account for a pregnancy in its seventh month.

"I do not know what to tell you. If you think of anyone else to test, we'll be glad to run it for you, but neither of the ones submitted to date are the father of your child."

"I just don't know, Doctor."

"One thing you can think about is this. The guy probably is exotic. His DNA is nothing like normal American or European markers. It's very different. If you'd like we could have an expert look at the markers and maybe give you a better idea of who to look at."

"No use, Doctor." Carol was crestfallen. "There is no one else. I'm pretty careful about who I sleep with. Things being what they are. I have no idea who else this baby could belong to unless someone slipped into my house without being noticed and impregnated me in my sleep."

"Not likely, huh?" The doctor offered.

"Not likely, Doctor."

John Allen Corwin sat on the wooden deck of his camper at the back, northwest corner of the campground he and his wife owned and managed. The air was still warm, especially for late November. But no one was complaining. Cooler weather would come soon enough.

The light breeze tousled his short, brown hair slightly as he bent his head to the book he was reading. His brown eyes scanned the pages but he was not really reading any more. His mind kept drifting to elsewhere. Elsewhere being his campground business and the end of a great season. Deep satisfaction was his primary emotion at the moment.

He had set up the campground last winter and opened it up with the help of the community in time for the tourist season beginning in May. From the first week it had taken off and supported itself. He was proud that he had not had to dip into his cash reserves even once all summer long. The campground had supported itself from day one with the help of some locals steering campers his way.

A new business. A new community. A new wife. A whole new life was how he saw what had become of his existence. If there were unhappy people in the world, John was not one of them. He had never expected to have so much so young in life. Just out of college with a business degree, he had inherited some money, built a campground in a new community, saved his future wife from a demented, ghostly killer, married her and was now enjoying what they had built together.

He picked up the coffee cup at his left hand. The hot liquid felt good against the cool breeze drifting in off the ocean only a few miles to the south. A few birds were still around and singing in the trees. The squirrels were busy digging and hiding acorns everywhere. It had been a good season for the squirrels.

"Still reading?"

John's wife, Kathy, stepped out onto the deck. Her blond hair had grown longer over the summer. Longer than when John had first met her working behind the desk of the local police station. But the twinkle of quiet mischief in her deep, blue eyes was an ever present marvel to John. It was like she could think one thing and be doing another behind those eyes. He loved the sound of her voice as much as he enjoyed the shape of her body and the mannerisms of her youthful energy.

The two had been drawn together almost immediately from the moment they met. More than a mere physical attraction, they had shared something of a mental connection, a way of believing in life and all the mysteries it holds. Somehow they recognized it in each other over an inane meeting about John's problem with trespassers on his property. The meeting may be forgotten but the result of that meeting was the marriage they shared and the life they now lived out to its fullest every day together.

If love was the deepest emotion a human being could experience then John and Kathy were exploring the deepest levels of that emotion in an attempt to explore uncharted territory. Though they had been drawn together from their first meeting, John's sacrificial rescue of her against a spiritual enemy of demonic evil cemented her feelings for him in an unbreakable manner. And it was that rescue that pushed John to discover just how far he was willing to go for the woman he loved. Nothing. Nothing in this world or any spiritual realm could keep him from being with her and making sure she was happy and safe.

"Thinking more than reading," John replied.

"Like usual," Kathy smiled and took the chair on the other side of the small table where his coffee rested. John just looked up at her and smiled.

"With all the work mostly done for the season, there is not much else to do."

She laughed. Her musical tone and obvious happiness shined through her laughter. He fought off an incredible urge to reach out and pull her into his lap. With his love for her had come an unbearable desire for enjoying her body, too. He would never deny that. He might be a preacher's kid and someone labeled as a Christian in most sections of society but he was not a monk. Kathy and he enjoyed a rousing, exciting and very hot love life. It was so good that only his upbringing in the small churches where his father pastored kept him from shouting how great their sex life was to the world.

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

John grimaced.

"Don't be like that." She slapped his knee playfully.

"Okay. Okay."

John put his book on the small table beside his coffee cup. Kathy obviously had something on her mind. Besides the fact that if it was on her mind he wanted to know about it, she could be a considerable force to reckon with if he tried to ignore her. Not that he ever would. He found everything about her to be wonderful and amazing. He could not conceive of anything that she was involved in as being any less than fantastic just because she chose it. That's the way she made him feel about himself. But something about her let him know that if he ever did happen upon that one thing that might not be so great about her, it would be best for him to forget it and go back to rule number one. Everything about Kathy is fantastic.

"I know when you went into the Mist something happened between you and Marcie, the little girl." Kathy began. John had tried, as best he could, to help Kathy understand the events leading up to her rescue.

"Don't let Marcie hear you call her a little girl." John warned her. Every time he tried to remind the spirit from the Mist that she resembled a battered and beaten little girl, he was strongly rebuffed and reminded that she had been killed a hundred and thirty years ago. That made her older than his great grandmother would have been if she was alive.

"Well, you know who I mean," Kathy held her ground. The little girl's age was not her point. "I know something happened in the Mist between you two and I do not want to pry. I know you did whatever you did to save me and that is enough for me."

"Are you sure? Because this is, like, the fifth or sixth time you've brought it up." John dreaded the day he had to reveal all that had happened in the Mist. He wanted it to stay as just him passing a test to gain entrance to the world created by the Keeper of the Cabin, who had kidnapped Kathy to play out some fiendish plan he had for her life ever since she was a little girl.

"I know. I know." Kathy hesitated. She was not sure how to go on. She knew what she wanted to say and what she wanted to ask, but she was unsure how it would come out or in what light John would see her questioning. She didn't want to seem jealous of a ghost, or even concerned about it. John had done what was necessary and that was good enough for her. What she wanted to know was to what extent they could use this contact with the Mist to investigate other killings and evil plots that originated in a realm other than the one they lived.

"Let me put it like this," Kathy began. John felt his insides cringe at the coming onslaught. Part of him wondered if it was evil to pray that she suddenly be struck mute.

"I am interested in solving unsolved murders and kidnappings, especially of children."

John understood her interest in this since she had been a kidnap victim when she was a child. Still, he was not sure where she was going or what it had to do with his experience in the Mist. Kathy had talked about wanting to help parents and family members find closure for the cataclysmic events an untimely or violent death could unleash in a family's life. Her heart cried out for closure in her own case, which would never happen now. Not totally.

She was forever burdened with the knowledge that her own father had not only been a serial killer of children but had also targeted her when she was a young girl and again just this last winter. On top of that her father had been dead for five years. So the killer who had abducted her and caused John to come to her rescue was a ghost or spirit or whatever, himself. John understood there were a lot of mixed emotions and tumultuous thoughts ranging around in Kathy's head. He did not pretend he had any idea of their depth or impact on her, though.

John waited for her to go on.

"I believe the Mist can help. The people of the Mist have knowledge of the crimes and access to the victims in a way normal police do not have. If we can talk to the victims, follow the real events and uncover the evidence in our world, we can solve the cases and give the families closure."

"And Marcie?" John asked.

"Your relationship with Marcie is what will get us cooperation on the other side."

"How?"

"I don't know. I know she likes you and likes being around you and wants to do things for you."

"To me, is more like it." John muttered half to himself.

Kathy smiled. She had reasoned out that what had happened between Marcie and John when he came to rescue her had been something sexual or embarrassing at the least. She could not remember much of her own escape through the Mist as a little girl but she remembered a very nice ghost man laying down with her and being very gentle with her as he helped her share her energies or something with him. She did not know or care about it back then and never considered it important since. She would like to have asked John to ask Marcie about it for her but decided not to push things.

"I was just wondering if you would ask her about the possibility of us doing this," Kathy stated.

"I can ask," John looked up. "But I have no idea how they feel about such things or what it would cost to get their help in something like this."

Truth was, he had a good idea that Marcie would do pretty much anything for sex allowing her to accept the fluids and energies it released for her. That was part of his reticence. His embarrassment from their first meeting, as much as his male pride, kept him from trying to further the relationship with Marcie. He could not get over the fact that a little girl, ghost or no ghost, had forced him to have sex with her in order to get past the maze that was keeping him from rescuing Kathy from her crazy father, the ghost of Air. He reminded himself that she was a one hundred and thirty year old little girl ghost that faded back and forth between her little girl persona and her beautiful, adult persona. Still when he thought about the incident, it was the visage of the little girl riding him like a full fledged woman while he lay on his back that disturbed him.

"Could you at least ask?" Kathy gave him her best please-please-please look. He could not resist her. He would have dug a hole to China for her knowing it couldn't be done but believing he would be the first to do it if she asked.

"Yes, I could ask." John admitted.

"Will you?"

"Yes, I will." He promised.

Chapter Two

Joe Cranston was scared but he would let no one see it. Where he came from men did not get scared. At least that was his personal impression and long held belief. Scared men were victims and he would never be one of those. Victims were losers and he was a winner. That was what he told himself every day, all day. He was a winner.

What scared Joe Cranston was no ordinary threat upon his life or his livelihood. It took extraordinary to get Joe's attention and his current situation certainly qualified on that account. Joe's entire life had left the ordinary behind and entered a realm of extraordinary he had never believed existed before. It was greater than just being rich or famous, two of his favorite extraordinary fantasies. What Joe had gotten himself involved with was beyond the widest scope of ordinary. It was simply unbelievable. Except that he was living it.

It began five weeks ago. It seemed like ages to him now. His former life all but forgotten since he embarked on this new direction. Each morning, as he shaved and looked at himself in the mirror, he could barely recognize the man he had become. Not different on the outside, but definitely a changed man inside.

Gol had done that to him. When he had first met Gol, he believed the man was a normal guy, just a lot taller and stronger than average. A good friend to have in a scrape. And Gol had seemed like a friendly sort who was just looking for a way to get ahead in life like Joe.

Then they had spent the night drinking over at Shady Sam's. Five weeks ago. That didn't seem possible. How had one night of drinking with a pal changed his life so much? But it had. And there was no going back. That was certain.

Gol never drank beer. Too weak, was his explanation. He had convinced Joe that he didn't want to be weak, either. Joe rarely drank the hard stuff. He was mostly a local beer man. But that night he had let Gol show him a better way. Before the night was over, he had also let the giant of a man draw him into an intrigue of epic proportions that now swallowed up his former life like it never existed.

Every day he thought about that night. Sometimes he was mad. Sometimes he was glad. Mostly he was still in awe of how fast a life changes. One decision. One choice. That's all it takes. That's all it took for him five weeks ago. Now he had to live with it.

Gol had offered him a deal. It seemed impossible at first. No one had the power to give what Gol was offering. That was what attracted him to the giant's proposal. It was impossible. Joe was always on the lookout for a proposal that seemed impossible with even the slightest hint of being provable. That was how a good con man lived his life. Always in search of the next big thing.

The offer had appeared to be genuine, if a bit impossible to comprehend the how it worked part. Gol came across as not only believable but also the real deal. He carried himself like he was the authority in everything. No one challenged him. No one Joe had ever met. No one cheated him. No one alive. Joe had heard the rumors. For the last five weeks he had thought of little else except Gol and his Alliance.

Since then, the Alliance had consumed his life. His every waking hour was about carrying out the needs of the Alliance. He had sold out his former life to embrace the duties assigned to him by the Alliance.

It was a simple deal. Do whatever we ask and we will give you whatever you ask.

Simple. Joe had suggested that what he might ask for would be worth more than anything the Alliance could get from him. Gol assured Joe that nothing was more important or worth more than the tasks Joe would be carrying out for the Alliance. Joe believed him when he looked into those dark eyes and saw the fire burning there. Gol was one scary dude.

Joe advised Gol he would require more than money for such a bargain. Gol said that whatever he wanted was available. Joe joked that he would want protection from certain individuals as he operated. Joe believed Gol would have no problem in the area of protection. Gol said protection was given to all who worked for him.

Joe asked about the tasks he would be performing. Gol had told him that everything would be supplied and there was no chance of anyone getting in Joe's way while he worked for the Alliance. Joe liked that. Too often his deals went south because one party or another got in the way and turned his deals sour.

Joe admitted he was not always law abiding in his businesses but wanted to know whether what he would be asked to do would break the law. Gol said that the only laws that got broken would be the laws of nature. When Joe asked how that could be, Gol laughed.

Then they had started drinking heavily. Gol was pouring and Joe was drinking and the next thing he knew, Joe was shaking hands with that huge paw of Gol's. It happened that quick. Joe remembered Gol telling him that he would become the most desirable man in the room when he carried the product of the Alliance for delivery. Gol also promised Joe that women would become extremely attracted to him after he began working for them. Joe had been kind of on a losing streak with the ladies lately. Having women become attracted to him would be a nice change. He wasn't sure but he thought he had agreed to work for the Alliance because Gol offered to make him popular with the ladies. It embarrassed him to be that desperate and that easy.

After that night he had not seen Gol for a couple days. It was Wednesday night when Gol showed up at his apartment. He did not remember telling Gol where he had lived, but there he was. Bigger than life standing at his door. Hell, where Gol was concerned, he was bigger than everything.

Gol had come in and told him that they would start that Friday night. He had come to apprise Joe of the details of the Alliance business he had opted into. Gol had made him swear to keep everything confidential. Then he made Joe three promises. The first was that if Joe shared any of the Alliance business with anyone, the Alliance would know and that would terminate their contract. The second was a promise that the only way to terminate the contract with the Alliance was to die.

The third promise was designed to make the first two palatable. If Joe did the bidding of the Alliance, no one would touch him and everything he did would succeed. The third promise is the only one that Joe actually considered. The first was an ordinary clause in most of his deals. Confidentiality. The second was a product of either an overactive imagination, which he did not believe Gol capable of, or a truly genuine acknowledgment of the only way out of their relationship. Joe was aware that some illegal businesses operated on such a level of secrecy that the only way out was to die or be killed by the bosses. Joe was not afraid of such a contract. In fact, he had always wanted to operate at that level and roam freely through those secretive circles. He had believed that he was entering into some arm of organized crime. He had thought that his career had finally taken a turn for the better.

His thoughts had changed a lot since then.

Gol explained about a different plane of existence. One more real than the one he currently lived in. Joe had merely listened. He allowed that Gol might be a little eccentric. Didn't matter to him. Long as the money was good.

As Gol talked, Joe learned that the three most important things in life were blood, fluids, and spirit. Blood was easy to understand. Humans and most breathing things had blood. Fluids were the sexual carriers of the procreation energies inherent in living, breathing creatures. But spirit energy was an illusive concept for Joe. He understood what energy was, like electricity and human get up and go. But unlike blood and the fluids, he did not understand how the Alliance collected the spirit or its energies.

Gol's explanation had taken him deep into the night of that Wednesday and well into the morning of Thursday. Little by little Joe had come to understand that his job was to meet young women and get them pregnant. He liked that job. Didn't fully understand it but liked it all the same.

The problem was that before the impregnating he had to kill five people. Never one to back down from a challenge, Joe only gave slight consideration to the killing part. Until Gol told him who the targets were.

Children.

Joe had asked why children expecting some answer about sending a message to their families or something. Gol never went there. Instead, he had explained the energy thing. The energy of a child is powerful and full of all the opportunity their young lives represent. Taking and absorbing that energy was crucial to the work of the Alliance. Five killings, sacrificed for the Alliance, would be necessary to initialize their procreation.

Five children.

Still, Joe had not been scared off. His mind kept going back to the fact that he was in if he did their bidding. He imagined his life was set from that moment on. It consumed him. It warped his view of the young lives required for the Alliance work. It also kept him from asking too many questions.

So he had done it beginning that weekend, he had followed Gol's directions to the letter and driven the four hundred miles necessary to reach all the victims. Like a hit man for a nursery school, he had carried out the first part of the Alliance request with greater ease than he had thought himself capable of. That fact only made him more convinced of the idea that he was made for this business.

Five children had died that weekend as he followed the plan Gol had laid out for him. Anonymous, silent, unseen. He had completed the operation in two days and was back in his own bed by Sunday night. Five families were devastated and torn apart but that was not his concern. He didn't even watch any of the news coverage on TV. This was not about being famous. This was about creating a secure life for himself. Him. If a few children had to die to make that happen, so be it. And no one was questioning him or mentioning his car being in the vicinity. He was free and clear. Gol had said he would be. Gol had kept his word.

For Joe it was a simple initiation into an exclusive club. He was willing to make the sacrifice for his future. It was the next weekend when things had gotten strange. And strange for Joe was way out of the normal range.

Gol had shown up at his apartment on Thursday night. He announced that they would now begin the second phase of the operation. Gol had chuckled in a mirthless way and asked Joe if he was ready to become catnip for the ladies. Joe was all for that. It meant he was in.

Gol explained that in order to carry out the second phase of the Alliance plan he would have to make deliveries for the membership. Joe was eager to get started. Gol laughed and told him that the package he was delivering was unlike any package he had ever heard of before. Then he described the process whereby the Alliance would impregnate Joe and send him off to impregnate some unsuspecting woman.

Joe was incredulous. He had to get pregnant? That was a foreign idea to him. Men pregnant? He had asked Gol if he was joking. Gol did not have a funny side. Gol assured him it was the way the Alliance operated and, Yes, it was out of the norm. He had reminded Joe that he had been told that Alliance business was different. Yes, Gol had not told him exactly how different but that was because no one outside the Alliance business could be made privy to the details of Alliance business. Then Gol had reminded Joe that there was still only one way out of the Alliance once he was in. Joe got the message.

Then Joe had gotten the package for delivery. That had been degrading. If anyone had told him what he was going to have to do to get the package he might have opted for getting out instead of accepting the delivery. Gol had brought in one of his brothers, Ish. Ish was as tall and wide as Gol. Two giants in one city. Joe was impressed by the family genes the two must have shared. He was not impressed by the delivery method of the pregnancy.

When Gol had told him to drop his pants and bend over, he had thought briefly about refusing. Looking at the two giants and thinking about how easily they could tear him apart, Joe had done as they commanded, gritting his teeth the whole way.

It was bad enough that he had to be assaulted in such a manner but their huge size was obviously proportional. Joe knew that he would be a long time waiting to walk normal again after the delivery assault. And the pain of the necessary injection made him wonder if the women he had been with felt a similar discomfort whenever he had similarly used them.

After the delivery had been made to him, he was warned that the seed inside him was powerful and would attract the first woman he encountered because he was not strong enough to control it. He was also warned that the seed would make him uncomfortable until it was planted in a receptive female where it could begin to grow properly. It could not properly grow inside a man. That was part of the process. Inside a man, the seed started to die. Just a little. But that little bit made it safe to implant in a woman.

The power of the seed was based on the desire a woman had to be a mother. Some women may not have any desire in that area and the seed would hold no power over them. He was told to wait until a woman sought him out so that he would know that the seed had done its work. He was also told to wait twenty four hours before getting near a woman. Before that the seed would be too strong for the woman's system to handle. And, too strong for Joe to hold it back.

Joe had stayed in bed that next Friday until time to go out at night. Gol's suggestion. Besides, the point of the injection hurt and his ego was even more inflamed. But come nightfall, he had done as he knew he would. He did not come this far to quit now. He drove to his favorite watering hole and waited at a table in the back. Women came in and left all night, most with other guys. Joe would have been happy to sleep with any of them. They were the usual good time, party girls he saw in there. None approached Joe. By the end of the night Joe was convinced that Gol had just given him a line so that Gol's brother Ish could assault him. He drove back home, alone, and went to bed believing he had to be the biggest chump on the planet, or in this dimension or plane or whatever Gol had called it.

Saturday morning he had a job to do for a friend who owned a small business. When he got to the place, he immediately met the receptionist, Carol Bennings. The woman had been helpful to the point of asking him repeatedly if there was anything else she could do for him. By the end of the day, the two of them were joined at the hip. Carol had invited him home for dinner and he had accepted gratefully.

Carol was a beautiful brunette with a shapely figure. She was at least two categories above the type of woman he usually attracted. Joe knew at that moment that the seed was working its magic or whatever. He could also feel a stirring in his belly that had nothing to do with his own manhood or that great dinner he shared with Carol. He had since come to recognize that the seed wanted out of his body as much as he wanted it out.

He had shared Carol's bed that night at her insistence. She wanted him to come to her and she did not care that he was not going to use a condom. She just wanted him to take her. And he had. At the moment of transfer he had felt a huge pain in his own manhood as the seed made its way out of him and into the woman. She had felt the injection of the seed, too. Joe had watched as her eyes grew wide and then shuddered closed with the onset of a fantastic orgasm the seed created to mask its own arrival.

The night had ended with Carol thanking him over and over for a fantastic time. Joe had never had that happen before. He liked the feeling of a woman thanking him for servicing her.

The next three succeeding Thursday nights had brought Gol's other three brothers to his apartment with similar impregnations. Helen Norris, Iris Cunningham, and then Barbara Self all fell under his spell. All three had been similarly impregnated by the seed of the Alliance. Each of them had been so complimentary of Joe's performance that Joe was beginning to enjoy the time he spent with the ladies despite the awful inconvenience of the method to achieve the attraction and power of the seed.

And now it was Thursday night again. Joe was beginning to wonder how many brothers Gol had and when they would get to the next phase of the Alliance plan. Part of him wondered what the next phase was. Gol alluded to there being a next phase, just not what it was. He wondered if it was as uncomfortable as this phase or maybe if it was more rewarding with the ladies somehow. He let his mind race forward and think about all the ways he could think to be rewarded by the ladies. The knock at his door brought him out of his thoughts and back to reality.

It was Gol.

"One last night of impregnation, Joe."

Gol spoke in a deeply resonant voice that rumbled like thunder and rolled like a large ocean wave across the room. He stood two feet taller than Joe and had to stoop considerably to get in under the doorway. Once in the room, the eight foot ceilings were scraped as Gol walked to the living room.

"Thank god," Joe whispered, half under his breath.

"What?" Gol asked and turned on Joe.

"Nothing. I'm just glad to get through this phase. It's not...uh...exactly my favorite part of our association, thus far."

Gol chuckled at Joe's embarrassment.

"Well, one last time and we'll move on with our plans."

"That's music to my ears."

"Thought it might be." Gol chuckled again. It sounded more like someone trying to start a chain saw.

"What brother is it tonight?"

"No brother," Gol stated. "Tonight it's me. Bend over, Joe."

Chapter Three

John walked through the Mist with the same wonder and awe of his first time. The sparkling flashes of energy that danced and whirled around his slowly moving arms were always a source of great interest to him. They held his attention much more than the first time since he now understood exactly what they were. The Mist was responding to his caressing movements as he walked through it. The response was miniscule sparks of light flashing with the energy of the shared caresses of the walker and the Mist.

This was no ordinary mist. Once John had believed it was a very thick, extraordinary mist but he had since learned differently. The Mist was alive. It was composed of once physically, living entities from many planes of existence. He had stumbled into the Mist when he was searching for his then girlfriend, Kathy. He had called upon the help of the Mist to save her and now he was a member of the Mist.

It was a short history with a lot of experiences packed into a small period of time. Not only had John learned of the existence of other planes of existence, he had also learned that when people die they choose where they will spend eternity. Not the simple, easy to recognize version he had learned in church. It was far more complicated and took place on a scale more conducive to a big god than any church goer ever dreamed.

The Mist was also where he had met Marcie. Marcie was a little girl when she was killed in a heinous, deplorable way. This violent death had caused her ghost or spiritual entity to maintain its little girl form after her death instead of allowing her to be seen as her grown up self. That was the little girl John had met in the Mist. Her form kept oscillating between the little girl body and that of the little girl's grown up, beautiful form. John had been forced by circumstance to have sex with the little girl and her adult version before he was allowed to pass through the Mist to save Kathy. That experience had played itself out in his mind so many times that he was embarrassed to admit he could not get over it. He was a good church boy at heart. Having sex outside of marriage may not have been a foreign idea to him but having sex with a little girl definitely rated as way out of his comfort zone.

That experience, defined by Marcie as a one hundred and thirty year old ghost with a young man, still haunted John. He could not get the vision of that little girl with the dark, hurting eyes out of his head. Although Marcie had assured him in too much detail about how much she had enjoyed his sacrifice of fluids to her, he could not help feeling like he had somehow added to the little girl's pain and suffering. He knew it was just him but he was embarrassed to be around Marcie. That was why he had gone so long without contacting her.

After the experience and the rescue of Kathy, John had tried to return to a normal life. What he and Kathy discovered was that their lives had been irrevocably changed by the incident and nothing would ever seem normal again. What they had learned about the universe they lived in had forever altered their perspective of life. And John's attachment to the Mist through that experience with Marcie was a lingering reminder of it all.

Kathy had been young, only seven, when she had sacrificed her fluids to the Mist in order to escape the man who was trying to kill her. Hers had been a dream experience. She barely remembered the experience and could only remember the fact that she had gotten back home. Though she was attached to the Mist in a similar manner as John, she had been so young that she had not absorbed the ideas in her mind and it had eventually just faded away for her. Not until John had rescued her from the ghost of her father had she been brought back to the full awareness of the Mist and her walk through it many years before. Although she was technically of the Mist, because of her young age at the time of sacrifice, she was not fully committed because she had not yet reached the age of understanding back then.

That was why John was walking in the Mist now. Kathy had asked him to do something for her. And John loved her so much that he would swim across the ocean in a storm if she asked him to.

John walked leisurely through the dampness of the Mist remembering his first time back in the Winter. He had not been leisurely then. He had been on a mission to rescue Kathy. He was once again going into the Mist because of Kathy. She wanted to find out if they could utilize the information contained in the lives of the Mist to solve cases the police had given up on. Her own background in police work and her desire to rescue others who went through what she did, or worse, drove her to press him. John harbored a suspicion that part of it had to do with making amends for her father's horrible hand in the serial killings of so many young children.

Kathy had her own demons to exorcise. Not the kind that made good theater or a great novel. The kind that made people rethink their life choices and desire to help others get whatever they feel is missing in their own lives. In Kathy's case it was closure.

Kathy could never get closure because the person who had kidnapped her as a child was not only her father but he had found a way to live on in the plane of Air as an evil spiritual force. John had made a deal to send him away from them in order to rescue Kathy. He knew a part of her was grateful for that deal. He also knew another part regretted that she would never have closure. He would always be out there doing gruesome things to living, breathing humans. Worse yet, there was nothing she could do to stop him.

In her own way, Kathy was dealing with her own situation by raising up a desire to help others with similar problems. Because of their relationship with those of the Mist, especially John's new friend Marcie, Kathy believed they could uncover and use evidence that was unavailable to normal police procedure. Of course, they would still have to find the physical evidence that linked the guilty persons to the crimes, but she believed that would be easier if they knew exactly what to look for and where to look. John could not fault her logic or the good that it might do. His concern was for his own peace of mind.

His own history with Marcie was marked by a stark sexual reality that embarrassed him. He hated to admit it. It shamed him at a level so deep it hurt. He had been aroused by a little girl. It made him wonder if he was some kind of pervert. That's why he avoided her, not because he was afraid of the Mist or anything else. Truth be known, he was excited about knowing this other plane existed. He had been there and experienced it. He only wished the experience had not colored his own feelings about himself so badly.

After about thirty steps into the woods through the Mist, John stopped and spoke out loud.

"Marcie?" with his physical voice.

Then again with his mental voice, thinking the name and the process of calling out for her in his mind.

"Marcie?"

"Right here." The answer was almost immediate. Her voice was in his head. Clear and filled with a sense that she might laugh at any minute, like always.

"Where?"

"Oh, you want to see me?"

He knew what she meant. The last time they had talked, he had made it clear that her little girl visage made him uncomfortable because of his memory of her and what they had done together.

"Yes." He spoke the words in his head but he lowered his head in embarrassment just the same.

"Right behind you," Marcie spoke. He would have to turn toward her if he wanted to see her. His choice. She had her pride, too.

He chose to turn around.

"I need to ask a question." John wanted to get this over with.

"Sure, John."

Marcie smiled up at him with her battered, small, child like body. The smile was made sad by the beaten shape her body had been in when she died. Her voice sounded clear and child like. Happy. A contrast to what John saw. And just as he was getting used to seeing her small, battered child body, she transformed before his eyes into the beautiful, tall, slender visage of her womanly form. That long, dirty blond mane swirling almost like a painting around her face which now held a sardonic smile and sported a small, pointed noise. Still, those sad, hurt eyes pulled at him, drawing him in like the first time he had met her. Pools of dark, deep hurt that invited him to search her soul for the happiness someone had stolen from her.

He had forgotten her nakedness in his own embarrassment of their former experiences. It seemed he could only remember her as a child, not the woman she was destined to be. He could not make himself believe he had performed their intimate act with the woman side of Marcie's presence. In his mind, Marcie was the little girl who had been killed. He had knowledge of her age and her destiny to become this beautiful woman he now viewed before him. Still, he could not get over the fact he had had sex with a child and was aroused enough to complete the act with her. If there had been a shrink who could have understood all this, he would have been glad to get the help he believed he needed to move on. As it was, he would never be able to tell this story to anyone. Even Kathy only knew the basics. He was too embarrassed to reveal to her the depth of his feelings of perversion over his apparent arousal at the hands of a child.

The worst part was that he took out his inability to deal with his own problems on Marcie. He knew she wanted to help him and be his friend. But being her friend seemed like a continuation of the very perversion he was trying to avoid. What if he could not control himself and it happened again? Marcie had made it very clear that she would welcome the chance to repeat it. It was how she collected the life forces necessary to sustain life at her level.

"Kathy was wondering," John began. "If there was a way for you in the Mist and maybe with the help of others wherever you may have access, to help her... uh... us, solve unsolved crimes in this plane?"

"First, let me say hello, John." Marcie made the statement with the throaty, husky voice of her fully formed adult version standing unclothed before him.

"Yes. Hello." John observed the amenities. "Sorry." He knew Marcie liked relationship as much as anything else. Saying hello was important to her.

"Now, for your question." The form of the woman flickered and the battered child in the tattered clothes replaced her.

"If you mean, Can we help find clues or something like that, I suppose it's possible. Why?"

"Because Kathy has this idea to help people in this plane by solving unsolved cases. The problem is that the cases are at dead ends and need some other clues to jump start it."

"I see." The child's smile grew wide and looked like it might crack the dirty, bruised face of the little girl. The irony of joy on the beaten face was not lost on John.

"She asked me to inquire as to what would be necessary for us to get this help." John continued.

"Why does she not ask herself?" Marcie asked point blank.

"She says that I have a better relationship with you because we are current and it was so long ago that she even contacted the Mist.

"Do we, John?"

"Do we what?" John asked.

"Do we have a better relationship? Do we have a relationship at all?"

A long pause filled the stillness of the swirling Mist around John and his small friend. The form flickered again and the little girl was replaced with the form of the naked woman again.

"Yes, we have a relationship, Marcie." He forced himself to say her name. It was not her fault he could not handle what they had done together. She was the well adjusted one who did exactly what was supposed to be done in her existence. He was the one who struggled with the teachings of his upbringing and the necessity that had made him abandon those teachings.

"What kind of relationship, John? I feel like you would prefer we did not have a relationship at times."

The frankness of her words and the beauty of her very womanly, naked body always shocked John. His mind considered her a little girl despite all her pleadings that he would see her as a woman. He thought it was some trick of his mind to torture him for his departure from his upbringing.

"The most intimate of relationships." John answered carefully.

"It was at one time," Marcie agreed. "Since then, it has been rather strained. Don't you think?"

"I've explained that, Marcie." John did not want to get into it again. He always came out sounding like a little boy who refused to grow up.

"Yes, John. And I have explained how silly your reticence is. Still, you persist in your desire to inject pain into the relationship in order to cleanse your own soul."

"It's not that bad."

John had to smile. Marcie had a very negative view of the impact of religion upon the human race. Not that it was wrong. Just that it was so stringently applied in such a watered down, narrow view that she could not understand anyone ever coming to know the Creator of Life through it.

"It is if it keeps us from talking and visiting, John."

He knew she was right. He wanted to talk. He wanted to visit. It was that other thing she wanted to do that scared him. He loved Kathy. Kathy was his wife, now. Not that Kathy had complained or even said the first word against what he had done to open the way so he could find her and rescue her. It was all him. All his own neuroses.

"Sorry." John said it again. He did not know what else to say.

"Okay." the little girl was back and she seemed genuinely pleased to accept his apology. "Friends again?"

"Friends." John acknowledged.

"Great! Want to have some sex, now?" Marcie squealed with delight as she asked the question that always made John cringe.

John did indeed cringe.

"Only kidding, John." Marcie laughed. Her little girl visage lit up by the humor that had no place on that battered, grime smeared face.

"Well, only halfway kidding," she amended. "Whenever you're ready again, I'm ready." She laughed again.

"Please, Marcie." John pleaded for mercy.

"Okay you party pooper," Marcie giggled. Her form flickered back to that of the woman. The giggle became a sexy chuckle.

"What about the help with the crimes?" John steered her back to his purpose for this visit.

"Sure. We can do that. Others have tapped into the spiritual planes to answer unanswerable questions before, you know?"

"No. I didn't know."

"Sure. All kinds of tricks and stories. But the reality is that somehow they accessed information on another plane and used that information to answer the questions they had."

"You mean like psychics?"

"Not all spiritual entities are evil, John?"

"I know." He meant her.

"If not all spiritual entities are evil then it stands to reason that some of those entities can also be helpful if they are somehow brought into this plane or someone from this plane goes to them, right?"

"I follow." He felt she was trying to teach him about her existence again. Curiously, that was one thing about her he really did want to have a relationship about.

"Well, in order to help you, because your relationship is so much stronger than most, because of our history, we can actually confer and relate to one another on a level that allows you to ask and us to answer."

"That's good. Exactly what Kathy was hoping."

"We can do more, though."

"How?"

"Several ways. One, we can help with any investigation from our side while you do what needs to be done on yours."

"And?" John wanted the other ways spelled out, too.

"Kathy can have her own connection with the Mist."

"I thought she was connected already."

"She is, but not the same as you." The form flickered back to the little girl. "Her connection began when she was a child, before the age of understanding. Her mind could not fully engage or commit back then. She can make a new connection now that she is old enough and enjoy the same full relationship that you and I do."

"You mean she can make another sacrifice, now?"

"Yes," Marcie answered.

"I...uh...I'm not...uh," John stuttered. He had no idea how to answer that.

"Listen, John," Marcie began. "If we are going to have a relationship, let's get one thing straight. I want to help you in whatever you do. I am not ever going to hurt you. Nothing I would say or do would ever be designed to hurt you or Kathy, who in your plane, are the same person to us. Unlike the human condition, our plane of existence does not need deceit or pain to exist. We are adjusted by the presence of the Creator of Life, himself. We have no desire to replace him or triumph over him. Therefore, when we talk, you need to understand that what I say and do is for things to be good between you and I. I am always trying to help."

The form flickered back to the woman.

John nodded. He said nothing.

"If Kathy was inside the Mist with us as you are, there would be a better connection between the two of you."

"Better?"

"Always available to talk to each other no matter where you were. And the three of us could talk together without you relating my words to her and vice versa."

"Really?"

John was truly impressed with the idea of improving communications and also in letting Marcie and Kathy talk without him being in the middle. This was way off the normal track of the human experience, but since he had met Marcie in that Mist, his entire life had been way off track. Still, he was struggling with Kathy making a new sacrifice to enter into this relationship more fully. Part of him wanted it to happen. Part of him wanted to protect Kathy from any further involvement. Besides, sacrifice meant she would have to have sex with someone in the Mist. Either that or let out her blood and give up her spirit energy, which were not good choices if she wanted to go on living in the human plane.

It struck John as funny that he was thinking about how strange his life had become as he stood in a living Mist talking with a little girl ghost.

"Woman." Marcie injected into his thoughts. He forgot that she could hear him think.

John laughed out loud, physically. His life really was strange.

"Who would Kathy have to sacrifice with?" John asked the inevitable question.

"Actually, there is a young man here who asked if she ever came into the Mist."

"You mean he is..." John did not finish the sentence.

"Yes, John. He was hitting on your wife from our side. We are dead to the human plane but not blind."

"You mean, you guys think about getting with the living?'

"Come on, John." The little girl form flickered back. "You know that for those of us in the Mist fluids is the life we most seek out. We offer a place to those lost in violent death but most of our life forces come from sex. Between those who are among us and those who are on other planes."

"I am still getting used to that."

"I know, John. But sex in our plane is not like sex in your physical existence. There, it is a matter of procreation. There is no procreation here. Sex here is for enjoyment and fulfilling of the life commitment. Your commitment is to another human there. Ours is to enjoy life in all its fullness and never take it for granted here. Two very different things. That's why you have such trouble comprehending our sacrifices. We only call them sacrifices when they come from your plane to ours because we know what you have to give up to offer yourselves up to us. Here we just call it sharing."

"I know," John answered her. "I'm trying."

"Yes, you are, John." Marcie giggled again at her small joke.

"So, what's this Romeo's name? Maybe they should meet." John tried to sound convinced of his decision to press on with this inquiry.

"His name is Emil."

"Nice name."

"Nice guy, too." Marcie spoke as if she knew. Of course she did. John harbored no thought that Marcie was waiting on him to have sex again. He sure wasn't waiting on another experience with her.

"Let me talk to Kathy and we'll get back to you."

"Sure, John. You know, you don't have to come out here to the Mist to talk to me."

"I know," John said. "I really wanted to walk through the energy again. Thought I might need the stimulation to remind me of our relationship again."

"Did it work?" The woman flickered back.

"I think so."

"I can't wait for the day you can think of me kindly without the stimulation of the Mist." Forthright as ever.

"You know, me too." John tried to sound upbeat. Over his problem. He wasn't but he wanted to sound that way. He wanted to be that way.

"You'll get there, John."

"I hope so."

Chapter Four

When Gol left Joe's apartment building he turned left and walked quickly to the closest alley. A quick look into the alley showed him it was still empty just like when he had come in. He looked ahead and behind him to make sure he was not being watched. It was late and few people were out. Satisfied, he ducked into the alley and moved swiftly through the darkness of the deep shadows there. As he walked his form faded and eventually disappeared from the plane of the humans.

In his own plane, Gol materialized as he walked forward into the room. The room was a dark cave inhabited by himself and his four brothers, Ish, Saph, Lah and Tos. They were waiting for him.

"How did it go?" Tos wanted to know.

"As planned." Gol informed them. "The human still does not know what he is doing. In his greed, he still wants to serve us."

"Excellent," Lah laughed. "Humans are so stupid sometimes."

"Maybe," Gol answered. "But we need him. When the Creator of Life vanquished all of our living bodies from this plane, he made it impossible for us to live in this plane again. Only he creates life in this plane."

"Until now," Ish chuckled.

"True." Gol nodded. "We have planted the seeds of bodies the Creator of Life did not create. When they are born, we can move into them and they will become us in a physical sense in this plane. Once again, we will rule among the humans."

"And none too soon, either," Saph added. "It is becoming harder and harder for us to come together and generate enough energy to send one of us into the human's plane."

"That's true." Gol looked at all of them. "In another ninety days, the first child will be born to the woman. Then we will begin the process of going through and becoming born into this plane."

They all nodded in agreement. Ninety days.

Joe awoke Friday morning with the now familiar pain in his belly. The seed planted there by Gol, like his brothers before him, was not comfortable inside a male host. It sought out a female host and forced him to carry it to such a transfer point as was appropriate. But he had to hold it for twenty four hours, according to Gol's instructions, because it was too powerful for any human woman to contain at its earliest stages.

When this had all begun, Joe assumed he was getting involved with some organized crime types who would introduce him around and thereby increase his stature and position in the crime community. Since then, he had learned that Gol and his organization, the Alliance, was not of any earthly substance. At first he had been afraid but Gol quickly assuaged his fears with assurances of Joe's importance to them and their mission on earth. Now Joe saw himself as the facilitator of some spiritual intrigue that he neither understood or wanted to understand. Instead, he was content to accept that somehow Gol and his Alliance could improve his personal abilities to succeed at things. He definitely needed help in that area. Recent events had not been kind to him.

Joe slipped carefully out of bed and padded barefoot across the floor to his bathroom. He washed his hair in the tub and shaved at the sink. Both activities required him to bend over significantly and the action brought back in vivid detail the events of Gol's seed planting the previous night. Many times he shifted his weight, adjusted his hips and rebalanced his legs trying to find a comfortable stance. Nothing alleviated the discomfort he felt to his hind parts.

Joe had nothing against homosexuals. He didn't even know any. Since his affiliation with the Alliance and their rather odd way of transferring the seed he had given the homosexual situation some thought. He was convinced it was not for him but he could not understand what it was that attracted those who were in that life style. Must be something he could not see.

Pulling the towel across his fresh shaved, smooth face one last time, Joe heard the door to his apartment opening. His gun was in the bedside table. Too far away to do him any good. He was only wearing his boxers, which made him feel vulnerable in another way. Quietly, he moved to his door and looked out into the room to see who had come into his apartment.

It was his mother.

"Mom, what are you doing here? You're not supposed to come clean until Sunday." He referred to his normal routine of being busy on Sundays and his mom's insistence on coming in to clean his place. She always said he was a man who needed a woman to keep him straight. She constantly asked him when he was getting married.

"I'm going away for the weekend. So, I thought I would clean up today and be done with it, instead of skipping it altogether."

"Oh." He never knew what to say to her.

"How come you're not out on a job or something?" She asked in that voice that said she disapproved of him being idle on a weekday.

"Taking a day off," he lied.

Her question brought back his discomfort and the memory of why he really was still at home. Gol had told him to avoid all females until the twenty four hour period was finished. Then to go out and find a suitable host for giving birth to the children of the Alliance. Something about the seed being too strong until twenty four hours was up. Gol had said that only a male host could carry a seed from the Alliance for any length of time prior to the twenty four hour period because the male was not a suitable host for causing growth in the seed. Inside a woman, the seed would find suitable growth stimulus and begin the process. Before a twenty four hour waiting period, the strength of the seed would be so great that it would consume the woman in a matter of days, instead of working with her body to accelerate the process for a suitable birth result.

These thoughts worried Joe, now. He had purposely stayed in the apartment the previous four Fridays so that he did not come into contact with any females. Gol had been serious about the warning and very firm. Although he had no idea what it all really meant, he knew enough about the big man to believe him and follow his instructions to the letter.

Now his mom was intruding in his life and making him aware of what a rotten turn his life had taken. Like many of his recent ventures, he had hoped to come out of this terrible situation with some kind of success that he could turn into something respectable and thereby achieve respectable success that he would not be embarrassed about. And he was not about to explain his strange arrangement with Gol to his mom.

He walked out into the living room and headed for his bedroom to get dressed. His mom watched him walk across the floor in his bare feet and boxers. Joe felt the familiar twinge in his stomach. Like a punch from the inside. He tried to ignore it as he had the previous times and reached for his clothes. The twinge increased in fervor and intensity. It doubled him over.

Joe's mom saw him double over and called out to him.

"What's wrong, Joe?"

"Nothing, Mom." Joe managed between biting gasps of breath as the thing inside him compelled him to bend over further to get his attention.

"Doesn't look like nothing." She said and came up behind him, pulling him sideways to sit in the bed before her.

Joe tried to resist her pull but the pain in his belly took all the fight out of him and he gave in to what seemed to him her considerable strength. She pushed him back onto the bed.

"Let me have a look at you." She smiled her best mom smile.

"Really, it's okay," Joe tried to get up.

She easily pushed him back down. That was when she noticed the huge bulge in his shorts. It intrigued her at first, still a mother at heart trying to understand her boy's pain. Then she felt a twinge of her own. It tugged at her heart, clouded her mind and reached itself between her legs arousing her in a manner she had not felt in a long time. What was excited in her was the most primal level of arousal she could have ever imagined. It was close to life and death itself. If she did not acknowledge it, her species would end. She was the hope for her species.

At that moment Joe's mom felt like she was the only mother in the world. If she refused to be the mother, the species would end. She would not give in to that. She had a duty. She would be the mother. And Joe beckoned to her with his very presence. A male of the species. They had to continue the species. They could not let it end here. There was no familial consideration given. Only the need to continue the line. Her line.

She reached forward and pushed Joe back, pulling at his shorts with a ferocity that assumed those shorts were trying to cancel the species from existence. With two hard yanks she ripped away the material and pulled the garment from Joe's body leaving red welts where the material had strained to keep its hold against his skin.

"What are you doing, Mother?" Joe shouted in a manner designed to shock her back to reality. Along with the pain in his belly there was a new fear rising up in his throat. Her hands tossed his shorts aside. He tried vainly to resist her hands groping at him but the pain in his belly doubled him up again and he lost the will to fight her off in order to concentrate on escaping the pain.

"Mother! Mother!"

Joe shouted as she lifted her skirt and ripped her panties out of the way with one hand while holding him down with the other. Joe felt too weak to defend himself. The pain in his belly was siphoning off his strength. With a speed Joe never associated with his mother or her desire for sex, she climbed up on him and forced him flat on his back as she mounted him in an overt sexual manner. He tried to resist.

"Mom! Mom!" His eyes were wide with the fear of what she was attempting to do. Somewhere deep inside him there was still a spark of hope that believed she would come to her senses before she completed this assault on her son.

"Stop! Mom! Mom! Stop!"

His screams could have been heard several apartments away had anyone been home to hear him. The fear and shrieking clamor he put up as his mom wrestled him into position beneath her could have raised the dead. She must have lost her mind. He was her son. She was his mother. She was crazy. Joe had no idea what was going through her mind right then, only that it had something to do with the hold the seed inside him had over women. A hold it was now exercising on his mother.

Feeling a desire unlike any other desire she had ever felt, Joe's mom assaulted her son with a couple good slaps to the head to get him to cooperate as she struggled to save the species. She knew she was the only one who could do it and he was not going to stop her even if he was her son. She had raised him better than that. She would have no stingy son of hers condemning the species to annihilation.

"Lie still, Joe," she commanded. Her voice told him it was an "or else" command. Her eyes were wide and wild with a strange red tint around the edges, like she had been awake too many hours. Joe had no desire to find out what the or else was.

Unable to resist or fight the woman who was straddling him, Joe's sense of self worth and pride refused to give in to the woman. Her assault became more fierce and determined as she drew closer to the source of her desire. Joe fought all the more against the pain in his belly and the fear in his heart as his mom descended upon him. It was a losing battle but he refused to quit because of that. He was Joe Cranston. He was persistent if nothing else.

He felt the helpless position of the rape victim he had often imagined some of his so called girlfriends had felt underneath his own feverish attentions. He had never hit a woman but he had employed a threat of violence more than once to get the young lady to acquiesce to his request. He raised his hand to hit his mother and drive her off him as he felt her making contact. With his hand poised to slap her, he felt her fist slam against the side of his head.

"Don't raise your hand to your mother, Joe!" She shouted as she pushed herself down on him.

He could not believe this was happening to him. His entire world was imploding and becoming a nightmare. First Gol and his brothers assaulting him weekly and now his mother treating him like some Boy Toy. His indignation was only overridden by the pain in his belly and the now growing fire in his groin. The seed was doing its magic or whatever it did when it got ready to leave him. But this time, he could feel it had a whole new strength about it.

His mind went to all the terrible places he could imagine Gol's warning taking him. The truth was, in his wildest imagination, he had no idea of the terror he was unleashing on his own mother. His own ignorance allowed him to face his indignity with a displaced apathy, taking solace in the fact he had not arranged this. Fate had made this happen. He told himself this over and over as his mother rode high above him with a lascivious and peaceful look on her face. He did not know what Gol wanted with these children but he tried to tell himself that maybe having one of them as his brother or sister would not be such a bad thing. He just hoped his mom could handle it all the morning after. Not just the thing with her son. That was bad enough. But the thing with being pregnant would tear her up. He hoped she could handle that.

John had spent the better part of an hour explaining Marcie's offer to Kathy. At first Kathy was interested in the offer and getting a personal inside look into the world of Mist. Then, as John explained the requirements, Kathy began to have second thoughts about the process of sacrificing to the Mist.

"What do you think?" Kathy asked him for the tenth time.

"It's totally up to you, Kathy." John was adamant.

He had explained that the decision was totally hers. He admitted the benefits of the process adding to their experience with the Mist and its inhabitants as well as their own ability to communicate through the avenue the Mist afforded them as members of the community. He went over all the benefits with her and then explained the process that would allow her to sacrifice her fluids to the Mist in order to enter in. He had described Emil, the young man from the Mist who had offered to act as her liaison and the partner with which she would exchange the fluids of their sex.

That was when Kathy started backpedaling. The thought was no the problem. It was the experience itself. Because of her background with being taken as a child, she had lived with the threat of violent, deviant sexual conduct over her head her whole life. It had been a shadow over every relationship she ever had because the people in her town all knew of the incident. It was not until John had come along that she felt she had a chance to outrun the past. Her attraction to him had been partly because he was an outsider, partly because she felt a magnetic pull from her heart. Now, confronted with the information of how she could enter into a full relationship with the Mist, she was unsure.

Part of her unsure feeling was because she was married. It struck her as funny that she thought John's refusal to give in to Marcie was bordering on being mean, while she thought of any similar relationship of her own like that would be cheating on John. For the first time she put herself in John's place and felt an even greater love for him because he was so adamant about maintaining their personal relationship with such integrity. After all, Marcie was a ghost and no real threat to their relationship. That was why she had not understood John's reticence and avoidance of the little girl ghost. She had heard John's explanation of the little girl angle but had also understood Marcie's explanation of her age. It was funny and now, not so funny.

"It was your idea to ask her about this detective thing," John reminded her.

"So, you think I should do it?" she asked again.

"I do not want you to put this off on me. This is a decision only you can make because you will have to deal with it. If you are worried that I will think you are cheating on me, then let me say that is not the case."

"What if Emil turns out to be a hunk?" Kathy joked.

"He's still a ghost." John reminded her.

"What if he's a well endowed ghost?" Kathy kept pushing.

"Then what have you got to lose? Your husband has given you permission to fool around with the handsome, young, well endowed ghost." John laughed as he said it. "Now, I feel like a pimp or something."

"What's that make me?" Kathy smiled one of her great smiles.

It had been what first attracted him to her. Well, maybe not the first thing, but it had been a reason to expect a warm reception from the young woman he had met. John shook his head.

"I have never had such weird conversations before I met you," he told her.

"Meaning?" She was still thinking about her decision.

"Meaning I have been involved in some pretty strange things since I met you."

"Good or bad?" She was still thinking things out.

"Good, I guess. Never really thought about it before. My life has completely changed since I met you."

"It's not all me," Kathy reminded him. "Some of it is Marcie's fault."

"It's no one's fault," John replied. "It's just that things have completely changed. My life. My view of life. The world I live in. Everything."

"Okay." Kathy answered. "I'll do it. I want to be part of the world you are in. I want to see everything you see. I want us to be together in everything. If that means I have to have sex with a ghost and sacrifice my fluids, then so be it. Doesn't hurt, does it?"

"Okay," John nodded his head. Then he shook his head, no. "It doesn't hurt." Not in a physical way, he felt like adding but he left that out. He had assumed that yes would have been an easy answer for Kathy. He was a little surprised to find that she had needed to talk about it. She had seemed so eager for him to continue his relationship with Marcie that he assumed the sexual aspect of life with the Mist was not a problem to her. Apparently he did not know all that he thought he knew about his wife. He loved that. More of her to discover.

"I'll let Marcie know," John said.

"Let's do it tonight," Kathy was eager to get this going. The detective thing, not the sacrificing of fluids thing. She was afraid she would lose her nerve if she thought about it too much. For all her bravery in facing what John had done, it was still what someone else had done, not her. It's always easier to help someone else be brave about something. Now she needed some help. Some reassurance.

"Soon," she added as much to get past it as to get it going.

John smiled.

"I don't believe time is an issue in the Mist. Whatever time you want will probably be okay."

Alicia Cranston sat alone in her apartment across town from where she had assaulted her own son only hours before. There was a tugging in her heart that reminded her she had done something wrong. The more she thought about it and reasoned away the action by assigning it a lesser importance than the result, the clearer her life became. She was Mother now. That was all that counted. Joe counted no more. He was the son of her past. For the briefest of moments she had thought him the father of the future but as soon as she had received the seed and knew its presence, she had known the truth. Joe was only a vessel. It had not been a matter of having sex with her son. It had been an action to open the vessel that carried the seed. She had opened up the vessel to receive the seed for the future. Now she carried that seed. That was what mattered. Not her. Not Joe. Only the future. She carried the future.

She sat back on her couch and slid her shirt up above her ample breasts. Slowly she rubbed her bared belly with both hands imagining the baby that rested there. Without thinking, she began singing to the unborn child.

"Soon, little baby, soon. Soon you will go forth and replenish the world with our kind."

She giggled as she felt the baby respond to her words. She felt like a young mother again as she continued to massage the area she was imagining the young fetus would be in.

"Don't make Momma wait, now." She giggled again.

Darkness settled over the campground early as the waning Summer sun gave up its seasonal domination to the approaching control of the Fall and Winter. John and Kathy finished their supper and gave each other plenty of room. She to contemplate the huge step she was making. He to allow Kathy the freedom to make a decision he could not hope to make for her.

Their lives had gone down unnatural paths from the moment they had met. Now, with Kathy's decision to sacrifice more fully to the Mist, they would be drawn even deeper into the mysteries of the spiritual planes of existence.

As the son of a minister, John had often wished that he had a better picture of how all the life after death stuff worked. His father had always seemed so sure while he himself had many questions that regular religion seemed unable or unwilling to answer. It had always bothered him that his father could be so sure of things and he could not see it. Maybe it had been a part of his father's calling. Maybe God made things more clear to those he called to spread the word. But John could not live with maybes. He needed something more. That was why he had walked away from a church calling so many tried to say rested on him. He would not follow in the footsteps of his father who had worked himself to death in small and medium sized churches trying to help others who seemed mostly unwilling and unable to help his father or even appreciate the help they received. Truth was, most people seemed to resent those that helped them afterward. John did not want that life.

Thankless. That was how he saw ministry work in America. Thousands of good men and women sacrificing their own comforts and dreams for the work of creating a bastion of hope for others. Mostly ignoring their own families to care for the families of others. Teaching their own children to set aside their dreams and ambitions to allow some other child to have their place. All in the name of piety and sacrifice. The way John saw religion in America, every convert would be better off to die right after conversion so they could get to the reward and skip the pain of life on earth. Not that any self respecting church goer would say such a thing. But the truth was as John saw it. Undeniable. Misery accompanied most religion. Not joy. Not celebration. Pain. Wasting. Misery.

Kathy had been the daughter of a struggling fisherman who doted on his daughter until the day she was kidnapped and consequently rescued. Then their relationship headed down dark roads of distance and wondering about the days that once were when he made her feel like she was his whole world. Then, after she met John, she discovered her father had been a murderous child kidnapper and killer who had hidden among the community and performed his evil deeds in the quiet of the woods that now was their campground.

She had struggled for the past several months to realign her life with the facts that now presented themselves. This struggle was made worse by the fact that she and John had chosen to not say anything about her father being a serial killer or that he had found a way to carry on his murderous task after death by way of making deals with the elements of the spiritual planes to share the life forces of the blood, fluids and spirits of the victims with the elements.

Now, as she prepared to make a giant step forward into a realm of life she could only imagine, Kathy was unsure of her own place in the cosmos. She had never before considered her presence in the universe as anything more than just a girl, growing into a woman in her small community. Now, with her experience in the underground realm of the spiritual plane of the Cabin, where John had come to her rescue, she was forced to consider her place. She was no longer a part of only the plane of existence known as earth or the natural. The Mist had saved her life years before when she had spiritually sacrificed herself to the life force that was the Mist. Now, years later, the Mist had once again played a large part in allowing her new husband, John, to get through the maze of the Mist and enter the Cabin to rescue her.

She was not the same Kathy who had gone into the Mist to find John that fateful day. Everything had changed the minute a spiritual force of evil that was her departed father took her prisoner. Whether she had been sacrificed for her father's world or rescued as John's wife, Kathy was destined for change. She had felt it as surely as she had gone into that Mist. Her life had called to her. She sensed it more than heard it. And hearing John's description of what had happened to him in the Mist had brought her senses to full alert. Something in his experience called to her inner being. Something more than whatever she had at the moment. Something greater.

She had to explore it. She knew John was probably thinking she was being flippant or uncaring about suggesting he explore his relationship with Marcie, further. But she had method for her madness. If John got closer to the source of the mystery of the Mist, maybe he would share them with her and she would discover in a vicarious way what was drawing on her so unceasingly. For she felt that something was calling to her from another plane. She just could not hear it clearly or understand it fully. It felt far away.

Now John had come with a proposal for her to enter into an agreement that allowed her to explore the mysteries of the Mist for herself. Her plan of sneaking up on whatever was calling her was not going to happen. It was forward, into the Mist now. She would have to screw up whatever courage remained in her and go forth with an adventurous spirit of her own. John had promised to be there with her the entire way, but the sacrifice had to be hers and hers alone. He was going to walk with her but the first step had to be hers.

And time was coming for the step. Her step. Her sacrifice. When she had been a child, the sacrifice was one of spiritual commitment since she had been too young physically to offer the Mist anything but her dream energy. However, to enter the Mist and know the Mist as John did, she would have to make a sacrifice now that was in a physical commitment plane as well as a spiritual commitment plane. Her time. Her sacrifice. What a step, she sighed to herself.

Chapter Five

Gol sat around the table with his brothers. The darkness of the warehouse closed in around them in the quiet of the deserted location. They sat close together so loud voices were unnecessary. They could have used their spiritual voices but that would have alerted anyone hunting them from the spiritual planes to their whereabouts in the earthly plane. Some may have guessed they were here in the earthly plane, but none knew exactly where they were or what exactly their plan was.

The insemination of Joe's mother, Alicia Cranston, was not a part of their plan. The seed had been released too soon. They had to decide their next course of action. All but Gol thought that action was simple. Since it was Gol's seed, he was less determined to deal with the errant insemination than the others.

"It has to be done, brother," Ish repeated the consensus they had been discussing for the last ten minutes.

"We can not risk the detection of the other inseminations because of this one." Tos stated flatly.

"I understand, brothers," Gol was trying to think of a way to save his seed. None came to mind.

It was plain. The errant insemination would have to be terminated. Of course, termination of the seed would require ending the life of the host. Alicia Cranston would have to die to keep their secret. Until they were ready, keeping the secret was paramount.

"I'll make the necessary arrangements," Gol gave in to the counsel of his brothers. He could not risk their seeds just because his had gone astray.

Joe was miserable. The more he thought about it the more he regretted ever getting involved with Gol and the Alliance. Now it was all wrong. He had imagined a great ending with himself being promoted to some kind of a success story. Now, no matter how he looked at it, he had involved his mother and changed the plans of the Alliance by doing so without really meaning it. Gol was furious. He guessed it was about the seed being implanted wrongly or at least not optimally.

He also had his own problem. Releasing the seed prematurely had its complications for him also. The pain of the transferal was not going away. Usually it subsided after a few minutes and things got back to normal. This time it was obvious to him that something was really wrong. It felt like there was a branch still twisting around inside of him. It extended all the way into his stomach, too. Like maybe the seed had torn a bad path getting out of him. It was the only explanation he could come up with. And there was blood this time, too. There never was blood before. Only an uncomfortable feeling. The blood worried him. It had been six hours and it still was not stopping.

Packing a white t-shirt into his pants, he zipped up and put on his shirt and shoes. He had made a decision. He had to go to the emergency room. As embarrassing as it might be, he had to get some help. He couldn't sit there and just bleed to death. Whether what he did was right or wrong, he needed help now. Joe made his way downstairs to his car. He had no idea what story he was going to give the doctors. He hoped something would come to him on the way to the hospital. Either way, story or no story, he had to get some help. He was bleeding to death.

Kathy stepped into the Mist. John held her hand until she made the final step to leave him behind and enter the floating, hovering moisture particles. Marcie had already let John know that they were ready for her. Kathy had only to make the final decision. Go or no go. Giving John her bravest smile, she released his hand, stepped away and disappeared inside the Mist.

Kathy had walked in the Mist with John before and was always amused by the sparkling play of the Mist around her slowly moving arms as she made her way. Slowly she let her arms play in the dampness of the Mist as she walked. John had said it was like foreplay to the entities of the Mist. The sparks were excited energies being exchanged between the Mist and herself. She felt the energizing effect of the encounter even as she remembered John explaining how the Mist enjoyed the stimulation even as they enjoyed stimulating the one walking through.

She smelled the salt of the Mist and the acrid, metallic taste of the wetness as it fell upon her lips. Blood, fluid and spirit. That was how John had described the sacrifice. She was there to engage in the sacrifice of fluids. Sex was the method in the plane of existence beyond the gravity of earth. Marcie had explained it all to John and John had explained it to her. Now she was there to partake of it. To join the Mist and become part of it from her natural existence on earth.

"Hello, Kathy."

A form materialized out of the Mist before her and walked out of the wall of Mist that gathered quickly back about ten feet from her. She had not even noticed that the Mist itself was backing off and separating itself from her, so lost was she in her own situation and thoughts.

"Uh...Hello," Kathy ventured.

"Don't be afraid." The form spoke in a young man's voice.

"I'm...I'm not." Kathy lied. "I'm just apprehensive about taking a step I know nothing about. Not the sacrifice part. The joining part."

"Oh." A young man's form sharpened and came into view before her only a few feet away.

He was gorgeous. Tall and handsome with a squared jaw and athletic musculature, which Kathy had the complete view of because he was also completely naked. She did not avert her eyes. The young man seemed totally at ease with her looking at him, so she looked. She also took note that he would have been considered well endowed by any woman in any plane of existence. Kathy felt a flush of embarrassment at recognizing this attribute of her perspective partner.

"Forgive me." She felt the need to allow the young man to lead the way and not get ahead of herself, even if she was only looking.

"No problem." The young man took full flesh form and stood engagingly before her. "I like being looked at. When I died, I was broken and mangled and this body..." He motioned to his naked form. "...is so much better than the old one anyway."

"Very nice." Kathy did not know what else to say.

"My name is Emil."

"Nice to meet you, Emil."

"Are you ready?" The young man asked.

"Uh...yeah...I guess." Kathy hesitated.

"Unsure of having sex with a ghostly persona or about the cheating on your husband part?"

"Both, I guess," Kathy admitted.

"First, it is not cheating. I can not come into your world without your permission and invitation so I am no threat to your husband. I exist in the Mist and you must come to me. It's not cheating because he is aware of it and the two of you have talked it out and decided it is what you want. To be joined in the Mist. It is a far more spiritual connection than even the one you can achieve in your plane of existence. So, it is not cheating because the two of you are going forward together. Think of it more like two people sharing a home and splitting the bills. This is a process you have to engage in to pay your half of the bill to be part of the Mist."

Emil smiled gallantly and shrugged.

"Not a great explanation but a simple one. As far as the sex with a ghost or whatever you choose to call me, that is no different than with any male in your plane. Maybe you will enjoy it a little more because in our plane, giving pleasure is a large part of the exchanging of energies."

"It's just...that...well...John was my first lover." Kathy blurted out. "Not a lot of prospects in a small town for a girl with a past like mine."

"That's okay," Emil smiled with a wide spread of his sensuous lips. The black curl of his hair falling across his forehead gave him an impish look with a slight hint of mischief in the background. He was indeed a charmer, Kathy noted. At least he was not some old guy with a fat belly and bad breath. Still, she was apprehensive of performing like this with a stranger. Somehow, John had never been a stranger. It was like she had known him forever the first time she met him.

"I'm sorry," Kathy apologized again.

"It's okay," Emil assured her. "You were also the first time for John, if that helps any. Marcie was his second, making the Mist your second, too. Something else the two of you will share."

Kathy nodded. They needed to get on with this. The more they talked the more she was wanting to back out of it. She needed a reason to just get it over with.

"How do we do this?" Kathy asked to move things forward.

"Any way that makes you comfortable." Emil offered. "You can just lie back and allow me to control the scene or I can lie down and allow you to control the action. It is all up to you."

"Maybe you should lie down first," Kathy decided. She wanted to be able to have some control of the performance. She did not want to be totally under anyone's control except John.

"As you wish," Emil moved backward onto some soft pine needles behind him. He smiled up at Kathy as he reclined backwards and laid out flat for her to see.

Kathy noticed his manhood was already at full flag. Quite impressive, too. Part of her wanted to enjoy this. Another part wanted her to suffer and feel guilty about it.

"In your plane," Emil looked up at her hesitation. "It is necessary to create commitment in the husband and wife relationship because of the freedom of choice given to your species by the Creator of Life and the ability to choose the wrong things and practice getting them right later. This commitment has been consummated through the act of sex so it is understandable that any action that causes you to stray from that commitment would cause some stress. You must understand that in the other planes the consummation through sex does not exist. We do not lie so our word is our bond. We do not marry so we are free to be committed only to the Creator of Life and the worlds of pleasure He has created for us all. Sex is not a commitment to us in the manner you have come to know it. It is merely a tool of pleasure and a way to gather energy."

"You make it sound so easy," Kathy tried to joke, hoping to alleviate some of her own tension.

"It's still the same work to pleasure each other, though," Emil smiled and beckoned for her to come to him with his hand.

Kathy sighed, smiled and moved toward the gorgeous young man lying before her. She told herself that she should be happy about this freebie and that John was okay with it, too. She straddled him and lifted her dress. She had not worn any panties. She had joked with John that they would not be necessary tonight. She had even told him she was a woman on the prowl. She regretted that now. She was not prowling. All she wanted was John. Sure, this young man was enticing and beautiful to look at. But John was the real deal. He would be the one holding her tight later as she drifted off to sleep. As she squatted down over her young, ghostly lover of the Mist, she could not help but think of John.

"I love you, John." She whispered under her breath as she lowered herself.

Joe was in pain. Not only had the doctor had to cause more pain to stop the bleeding but he had offered up the opinion that Joe may have some physical damage that was not repairable. Joe was in a real snit. Gol had done this. That giant rat had put him in this position and now he was maybe damaged for life. What kind of deal was that? He was supposed to come out of this with a better life, not a worse one. What kind of life would he have if he could not perform with the ladies?

Walking up the stairs to his apartment, Joe limped a little in the places where no one could see him. He did not want to explain his problem to anyone. No one would understand. Hell, he did not understand fully himself. Things were supposed to be going good for him. Instead, he was feeling worse and worse by the minute.

He was still a failure. Now he had no manhood and he had impregnated his own mother with a beast of some kind from those giants of the Alliance. Yeah, failure was still the best description he could find for himself.

Joe opened the door to his apartment and stepped inside. Closing the door, he reached for the light switch. He never made it. The voice in the darkness arrested his movement.

"Don't touch the switch, Joe," it said.

Joe could not place the voice. One of the giants, maybe. Maybe not. Maybe a new addition to their team. Another brother. Or a friend, maybe. Joe was not worried. The Alliance had not hurt him so far. Despite the menace he sensed in the voice behind him. He stayed still, not even turning around.

"Turn around, Joe," the voice commanded.

Joe did as he was told. Slowly he revolved around on the ball of his left foot, using his right foot to balance himself and propel him to the desired position. The room was dark but some light filtered in around the curtains at the far end of the room. Before him stood a hulking figure of one of the giants. He could not make out which one. He could barely tell them apart in the light. In the dark it was impossible for him to differentiate.

"You've done bad, Joe," the voice continued.

"How?" Joe was defensive before he was anything else. He might be a failure but he still had his pride.

"By inseminating your own mother, you stupid bastard."

The voice was almost a growl. That was what was different. The growl. Gol had always spoken in a deep voice but it was somewhat controlled and normal. This voice was low and guttural in a menacing sense. Like an animal getting ready to pounce. For the first time Joe's hair stood up on the back of his neck. He was sensing something wrong with this situation. Not normal. Not friendly. Joe heard the voice with the sounds of an angry animal. His own response was to seek a path for flight. Like an animal ready to run.

"That was an accident," Joe pleaded. He felt that he was being accused and needed defending.

"Accident or not, we are short one viable seed."

"No." Joe was going to fight any accusation. "My mother is an acceptable host. Hell, I think she wants the child, the way she was acting when she left here." He tried to make it sound reasonable, but even in his own ears, talking about inseminating his own mother could never sound right.

"She's not that old and she already knows how to be a mother."

"That's not the point, Joe."

The figure turned slightly and Joe saw that indeed it was Gol before him. But he was different somehow. Something was not the same. Not normal. His clothes. Gol was not dressed in casual attire like usual. He was dressed in a pair of what looked like shorts and nothing else. He hunched more than usual, too. Somehow it made him look bigger, more menacing, not smaller or friendly.

"What is the point, then?" Joe was determined to find a way to make this right.

"The point is that you released the seed too soon."

"Why is that a problem. The process went well." Joe thought about complaining about the damage to himself and then decided against it.

"It is uncontrollable before twenty four hours. The seed has full power of its own and does not need to respond to anyone else for direction until after twenty four hours in a physical body where it can get no nourishment. What you did was release it too soon into a physical body where it can demand whatever it wants and grow however it desires without any direction from us or control by the woman's system."

"You're saying I released a monster, then?"

"Basically, in the terms of your worldly plane."

"Inside my mother?"

"Yes. And that's another problem."

"I should say it is." Joe was feeling indignant that the Alliance had endangered his mother. Never mind it was him who actually deposited the seed inside her.

"We can not allow the child to be born in his current condition."

"That's seems like a good idea. Stop the monster before he gets out." Joe played along. "How?"

"Only one way to stop the seed. It has to be killed."

"How?"

"The mother must die."

"What?" Joe was incredulous. "My mother?" he started to move but Gol's shift in position told him to stay put. "Not my mother." Joe whined.

"I'm sorry, Joe." Gol did not exactly sound sorry.

"Not my mother." Joe repeated.

"No other way, Joe. Any attempt to abort the seed will expose it to the air. Once exposed it can not be killed. He will have all the strength and power as one of the Alliance with none of the connections or limitations of operating in this plane."

"Why is that a bad thing?" Joe inquired.

"Because we are under strict guidelines from the Creator of Life to never create a being with no limitations. If we do, we forfeit our own freedom to exist outside of the Place of Chains. And that is not going to happen, Joe. We enjoy our freedom. We just want to get back to the plane you live in and once again enjoy the pleasures of the earth plane. If that seed gets out, he will have no limitations because he was created without a controlling existence. That's why we made the twenty four hour rule for you. Without it, we have no control over the seed. The mother's body has no control over the seed. The seed has to be terminated and it has to be done inside the body of the host."

"Maybe we could just poison it."

"Anything we could give your mother or do to her would be survivable by the seed and still deadly to your mother. Not only that, but the three month term of development will be accelerated inside your mother because of the early release. That acceleration will most likely kill your mother anyway. Either way, she dies and we need to terminate that seed before he is exposed to the air. Once he is outside the host and breathes his first breath, he has a deal with Air and killing him will carry the same penalty as any other murder. Besides our deal with the Creator of Life being broken because we created an uncontrollable, limitless seed."

"So, what you're saying is that my mother is already dead and you just want to accelerate the process so that you can protect yourself?" Joe summed up the words of the giant before him.

"Yes." A simple growled answer.

"That doesn't seem fair."

"Worse than that."

"Yeah, worse." Joe agreed and started to relax.

"Because we need to make sure you never tell anyone about this." Gol spoke calmly.

"You don't have to worry about me," Joe answered. "I just can't believe this is happening to me. My mother. Of all people. My mother?"

"Don't worry, Joe," Gol began. "We'll make this painless for both of you."

John was still waiting when Kathy emerged from the Mist. She gave him an embarrassed smile, like he had caught her enjoying a tryst with an elicit lover. He smiled back assuring her he was glad to see her. He knew time did not exist inside the Mist. It had only been a few minutes since Kathy had left. But she could have enjoyed an hour or two inside the Mist before she came back out. He debated asking her how long she thought she had been gone. But he decided that would have bordered on prying and trying to make her feel guilty about the experience. He pushed his curiosity aside.

"Everything go okay?" he asked instead.

"Wonderfully," Kathy had already decided how she would respond. "Emil turned out to be a good partner for such a thing." She smiled at John and walked past him forcing him to run after her to keep up.

"Oh, so now you're Miss Ghostie Lover?" he asked.

"Careful." John heard Marcie's voice in his head.

"Yes. Careful." Kathy repeated. Then she smiled as she realized she had heard Marcie for herself.

"You heard that?" John asked, his jealousy forgotten.

"Of course, she did." Marcie responded.

"And I found her to be the perfect partner, too." A male voice chimed in.

"Emil?" Kathy asked out loud.

"Sure," Emil answered. "But you can think your conversation with me now."

"How do I think a conversation?" Kathy thought to herself.

"Just like that." Marcie answered.

"Wow!" John said out loud.

"What?" Marcie asked.

"I could hear her thinking in my head." John replied.

"That's because she is thinking in a shout and everyone can hear her. We'll have to teach her to talk softer and just to those she wants to." Marcie suggested.

"You don't think she meant to talk to me?" John asked.

"She's talking to everyone right now." Marcie said.

"I'm right here." This time Kathy's focus was totally on the two ignoring her presence and she directed her thoughts quite easily at them.

"Still the easiest way to teach them," Emil laughed in Kathy's head.

"What?" Kathy thought, thinking about Emil.

"Whoever you think about when you're talking in your head will be the ones who can hear you. Getting mad directs your thoughts at a specific individual. It's a perfect way to learn how to focus and direct your conversation to the right people."

"Oh." Kathy replied.

"Stunning conversationalist," Marcie laughed.

"Are you Marcie?" Kathy asked the voice in her head.

"I am. Now, you need to rest after your...uh...exertion with Emil." Marcie remembered John was still in the conversation. "We can get together tomorrow and talk about your plans to solve the crimes of the world."

"Good," Kathy laughed out loud and in her head. "I really am quite exhausted after Emil."

Kathy gave an exaggerated sigh of fatigue, laughed and began to run toward the camper away from John. John laughed, too and was close on her heels by the time she mounted the steps to the camper. He caught her and held her in his arms as she pretended to struggle to get away.

"Now that you've caught me, what are you going to do with me?" she demanded.

"Everything I want." John gave his standard reply and laughed as he moved her ahead and through the doorway of the camper.

"Well, that could be fun," Kathy gave her standard reply to his remark.

"I say we try it out and see," John laughed and dragged her toward the bedroom.

"Oh no," Kathy wailed in a pretend voice of fear. "You're going to have to take sloppy seconds after a ghost."

"Oh, no," John answered her. "I will always be your first. Always."

Kathy hugged and kissed him as he laid her down on their bed.

"Yes, John Corwin. You will always be my first. And my best."

"They'll be just fine," Marcie said to no one in particular.

"I'm glad of that," Emil answered her. "She seemed particularly worried about that."

"Well, we've never had a husband and wife inside before. It's new ground for all of us."

"I like new," Emil made reference to his new partner, Kathy, and the new relationship energy he had brought into the Mist.

"Don't we all," Marcie laughed.

Chapter Six

"It is done," Gol announced to his brethren.

"Good. And the seed?" Lah asked.

"Finished."

"You saw it then?" Tos asked.

"No. I did not dare open up the woman and take a chance on air getting to the seed. I left it in her dead body. It will appear to be a dead fetus inside a dead mother-to-be to any humans coming upon it."

"How did you kill her?" Ish wanted to know.

"Sleeping pills. I mixed them in some rum and made her drink it after I explained it would help our baby inside her." Gol explained to the Alliance.

"She fell for that?" Saph laughed with a guttural sound that was more growling wolf than person.

"I explained the process of the power of the seed that made her assault her son. She wanted the explanation so badly that everything else I told her was believed just as easily."

"Humans are such weaklings," Tos laughed.

"In more ways than one," Saph added.

"What about Joe?" Ish inquired.

"Broke his neck and left him lying inside his apartment door."

"Too bad. I kind of liked Joe." Ish lamented.

"We all did, brother." Gol reminded them. "But he had become a liability when it became necessary to stop the pregnancy of his mother. We could not have him holding that murder over our heads. Sooner or later he would have learned the ways of the planes and figured out how to use that information to his advantage."

"True." Ish responded.

They all nodded their heads.

"So, we're back on track." Gol announced.

"Yes. Back on track." Tos agreed.

They all nodded their shaggy heads and murmured their agreement. Back on track.

Barbara Self had endured many changes in life recently. First, her mother had passed away unexpectedly and then her father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and needed to be moved to a place where he could get round the clock care. Drastic changes to her life and further stress between her and her siblings. Not that there had been any real love or connection between them in the past, but the loss of their mother, the glue of the family, sent them all scurrying in even more distant directions, physically and emotionally. Barbara herself had probably moved physically the furthest away and she had always been the youngest and the outsider.

Her dad was not the dad of the other children. It had always been a bone of contention between them. Now that he was sick and mother was gone, there was nothing left to hold her to her brother and sister. They were like strangers who happened to have grown up in the same house.

She reflected upon the turns her life had taken as she lay folded up in the dark of her bedroom. Since the pain had started on the weekend, it had not let up. The doctor had said she was pregnant. She still could not believe that. She was too careful. And a six month old fetus being discovered overnight like that made the whole circumstance harder to get a grip on. How could she have been pregnant all this time and not known it. She was always so aware of her body. She exercised every day. She preened and examined herself constantly, monitoring for any excess weight or blemishes. Two showers a day. Not that showers stopped pregnancy, but being naked in front of a mirror so many times in one day, she could not understand how she had missed the obvious growth taking place inside her.

Unbelievable. That was the word that kept coming to her mind. Unbelievable. She could not believe that at twenty six she was without a mother or a father and now laboring under a pregnancy with the child of an unknown father inside her.

The twinges of pain pulsed through her like the child was stretching inside her and pushing her insides out. She had no idea if that was normal or not. She only knew it hurt. Hurt like hell. She let a moan escape her lips. She was alone. She was not seeking sympathy. Well, maybe she was. She had prayed several times already and asked God to take away this terrible nightmare. How could she be pregnant? She was too young. She was not ready to have children yet. She was not even married. Not that a woman had to be married to have children, but she had always assumed it would be that way for her.

Rolling over she caught a flash of movement in the shadows of her doorway. Refocusing her eyes she tilted her head and looked deeper into the shadows. She couldn't be sure. Was someone there? The sun had set hours ago. She had not bothered to turn on any lights. She didn't need to see. She could feel the pain just fine without the lights on. The lights would not alleviate the pain.

Was someone there? She stared hard into the darkness beyond the doorway. Maybe she had imagined the movement. Dust particles swirling in the light. What light. The shadows, then. How could she see shadows moving in the darkness?

"Is someone there?" she whispered into the darkness. "Please. I am in too much pain for games. If there is someone there, please help me."

She whined her plea into the darkness before her and saw no more movement. Her heart was racing at the prospect of someone being there. But her mind was crying out for God to send someone to help her. Anyone. Even a serial killer, she half joked to herself. Anything to get past this pain. Anything to make it go away. It was excruciating at times.

Sweating profusely from the exertion of controlling her desire to scream with the pain, Barbara rolled onto her back and sighed heavily into the air flinging her arms and legs wide in a gesture of submissive release.

"Take me. I'm yours. Just don't let me suffer any more, you bastard." She shouted her challenge to the pain into the dark of her room.

"Just take me!" She screamed, lifting her head up and casting the words into the air with all the energy and violent thought she could muster under the circumstances.

"Bastard," She murmured half under her breath as she laid back down. She meant the man who had done this to her.

Tos and Lah watched Barbara Self from the shadows. They blended well with the darkness and even more so because they did not allow themselves to fully materialize in her apartment. The see through quality of their manifestation in the darkness added to their camouflage ability from the deep shadows beyond her door.

They listened to her yells and frustrations having known they would come. Human women were weak for the most part. Damned pretty and engagingly sexy but still weak. They were good hosts for their children though. History had proven that.

"She is experiencing great distress from the pregnancy," Lah spoke with his mind to his brother, Tos.

"Yes. Does that distress you, brother?" Tos was trying to discern how attached his brother was getting to the host of his seed.

"In some ways, I guess it does." Lah admitted. "If we had female compatibles, such pain and suffering by human females would be unnecessary."

"We are the five of the alliance, brother. We are all there is."

"True," Lah answered. "But the human child born from these inseminations will give us host bodies to move into and then we will be able to procreate normally with women again."

"That will be a good day, won't it, brother?" Tos smiled even though his grin could not be seen in the darkness where they stood looking at Barbara Self a few feet away.

"It will indeed be a good day for us." Lah motioned his brother to move away from the doorway, taking one last look at the host of his seed languishing noisily on the bed.

"Except for Gol."

"Yes, he will have to wait until we can achieve a new energy level to create a seed for himself."

"We have to wait until our seeds have been born and grown and then inhabited for that." Tos reminded his brother.

"That's a long time, isn't it?" Lah looked at his brother as they stood in the darkness of Barbara's living room.

"Too long, I think." Tos admitted.

"I agree."

Lah spoke what all four of the brothers were thinking when Gol had said he would take care of the woman and the errant seed. Gol was the eldest. That made him the leader by birth. They would submit to Gol on everything. That was the right of his birth. He was the leader. But he and Tos had been dispatched by the others to assess whether all was as Gol had described.

They had already been to Joe's apartment. He was dead just like Gol had described to them. The stop at Barbara's apartment had been a desire of Lah which Tos did not mind catering to. If his own host female had been as close, he would have liked to stop and view her also. But time demanded they get on with their mission. Next stop, Alicia Cranston, Joe's mother.

John Corwin walked out onto the deck of their camper. Their camper. He was growing used to the sound of that. Not his and hers but theirs. Kathy and his. She and I.

He liked being a couple. The longest relationship he had ever had before meeting Kathy had been a month long love affair in high school with a cheerleader who was only interested in parties and looking good. It had been a very shallow time in his life filled with wasted conversations about nothing subjects that affected no one. With Kathy, life not only made sense but it had purpose. Not just the obvious pleasing and protection and love he had in his mind for his wife, but more. Somehow, Kathy had brought him a desire to live life to its fullest. Before, his idea of a full life was creating the stereotypical success story around himself so he could imagine he had done what he was supposed to do. Kathy had changed all that. Now, he needed to find bigger and better ways to be alive. Not thrill seeking, life seeking.

Every day was an adventure to be lived. Having Kathy by his side all summer long had made him aware that they both were living, breathing, thinking, reasoning creatures who could add to this world, take from it and even just hang out if they wanted. Balance. That was what every deal was about. Both parties getting something they need and sharing the process for achieving it. Balance. And part of the balance was adding to life as well as enjoying what it had to offer. Deals were about building what the two parties involved wanted. The deal with him and Kathy was about building a life together. Together. He loved that word.

Kathy had come up with her idea to hunt down criminals who had escaped prosecution because the evidence was not found to convict them. An oversight she felt sure could be rectified with a little help from their friends in the Mist. With Kathy's background in police work and their membership in the Mist, Kathy felt sure they could solve the unsolved cases and propel the work of prosecutors to an admirable goal of giving the victims closure. Because of her own abduction as a little girl, she felt that they should start with crimes against children, which were all too common everywhere.

John handed his wife her cup of coffee. Two creams, three sugars. She reached up and took it with a smile and a squint against the sun in her eyes. John made sure she had a good hold on it before he let go. Then he took his own seat only inches away. He sat down with a slow sigh of comfort. Not fatigue or frustration. Just a calm, even understanding of a good life. Breathing out the joy he had been breathing in.

"Figure out how to start, yet?"

John asked his question in a quiet tone that said he didn't want to interrupt her thoughts but he would like to know any plans she was considering if she cared to share. She caught his meaning, as she always did. It amazed her how easily she understood him.

All her life, Kathy had been the last child out. Her experience as a kidnap victim had made her something of an oddity in the small town. No one was mean to her. No one said anything rude. No one went out of their way to make her feel left out. It was just that no one had anything to do with her at all. She had always felt alone and never believed she could figure out what people were thinking because she was never around them long enough to learn anything about them.

Then John had walked into her life. She loved her memory of that day. A handsome, young man standing at her counter in the police station wanting to say something and making excuses to not say it out loud and then leaving her with the impression that she should come see him to get the rest of the story. She had no reason to believe John was that complicated and manipulative to draw her out like that, so she had reasoned out that she had been attracted to him and made up the facts that made it necessary to check him out further. It made her smile to believe her own mind was devious enough to trick her into following her potential future husband even if she could not find a devious bone in his body.

And the minute she had seen him in his own environment, at his campground, she had fallen in love with him. Not romantically. Not even physically. There had been something else. There still was. When she was around him, life seemed to clarify. The fuzzy edges of her existence suddenly seemed to clear up and make sense. Every time he spoke she could hear the universe responding. She was part of the universe and she could not help responding to his every thought and action. In him she had found a reason for waking up. It was not about living life. With John, her life had become about being alive. He made her feel as though she had been dead all those years she had waited for him to arrive. Then he had come. He had barely gotten out of the police station that incredible day, when she felt her life ebbing away behind him, like all that she had grown to become was going to follow him emotionally or spiritually or something, even if her physical body didn't.

John had really been her completion. She had known that the first time they had hugged. It was more than a spark or a connection. It was like she had found a part of herself she hadn't even known was missing. Then, when he came after her when she was kidnapped by the spirit of her dead father, she knew that the rest of her life would be spent loving the man who had risked everything he was to be with her. As much as she knew she loved him, she was just as sure of his love for her. Sometimes his love felt even stronger and she would renew her own efforts to broadcast hers in a stronger fashion. Not a competition, but a desire to be so close that they were equals in all things. Love to love. Not head to head.

"I don't know how to start without someone asking us to help them. It would look suspicious to the police. But, why would anyone ask us unless they had reason to believe we might know something they need to know? And how would they know that?" Kathy reasoned.

"It's a quandary," John admitted. He had been watching her reason this out for three cups of coffee now. It was something she had to work out for herself. He was just along for the ride. This was her venture. Her idea. He knew he needed to let her run with it. He had put a new pot on to brew.

"If we advertise for clients, it will seem like we want to be paid to help," she said.

"And it will also require that we explain to people how we can help when no one else can." John spoke softly, not wanting to intrude on her reasoning. This was her project. He would never intrude or try to wrestle it away from her.

"I figured that out," she admitted. "We can explain to people that we can follow leads that the police would overlook, because of their manpower and time restraints. We can also tell them that we will even follow the foolish, out of the ordinary leads that the police would dismiss. Then find a way to make whatever truth we really do find fit with the leads we have. No one needs to know how we really arrive at the truth."

John just nodded and sat silent. The air was still warm even though the Summer heat was gone. He enjoyed the heat of the bright light upon his face. It had been such a busy season at the campground, they had not had a lot of free time to enjoy the place they had built together.

"If we can make up the way we arrive at the truth, can we not make up the way we get called in to work on the case to begin with?" John asked.

"You mean like tell the police we have been asked by the parents to look into it and tell the parents we are looking into it for the police?" Kathy asked.

John nodded and squinted against the sunlight to see her answer.

"Too obvious for either of them to check us out. Then we would have some hard explaining to do. Besides, both parties may still be in contact in some way. We need a way to be there without being a threat to the police and their investigation yet still offer some hope to the parents as we dig around in the story that has caused them such pain."

"What about a story?" John asked.

"Their story," Kathy misunderstood his question. "The story of the crime against their children." She explained herself better.

"No, I mean, what about saying we are there because we are writing a story or have read their story or heard it or something and want to know more about it? Then we discover something that opens up a whole new avenue of evidence for the parents and the police." John tried to make his explanation short but he did not really understand investigations other than what he saw on television.

Kathy considered his idea for a moment and nodded her head.

"We could construct a reason for being there around the story of the crime itself." Kathy spoke into the atmosphere to no one in particular. She was thinking out loud.

John let her think. He loved just looking at her. She was beautiful inside and out. So passionate and compassionate. She was everything that he felt he was not. Good with people. Truthful about pain and uncomfortable things. She took things head on with minimal noise instead of his own confrontational approach with all the histrionics of someone scared to let anyone else know how afraid he was of living above the noise of the crowd. She was perfection to his imperfection. Maybe not perfection in the universe. He had no idea what that looked like. But she was definitely perfection in his universe.

"How about bumping into the parents and hearing their story and offering to help them find closure?" The voice intruded on John's thoughts of Kathy.

Emil.

"Hi, Emil." John heard Kathy say in his head. He still was not used to having his wife's voice in his head whenever the Mist entities were around.

"I'm here, too," Marcie chimed in. "You two really have to work on your ability to sense the environment." Marcie was always so full of wisdom they needed to advance to.

"Hello, Marcie," Kathy advanced.

"Yes, Hi," John added.

"Well, don't sound so glad to see me," Marcie pretended being hurt. "I might get a big head."

"We wouldn't want that," John smiled to himself even as he thought it.

"Watch it, Buster," Marcie warned her friend.

"What was that?" Kathy asked Emil.

"What if you went to where the parents were and bumped into them and learned of their story and asked if you could help?"

Kathy thought about it a while.

"Still would require us explaining why we were there, but..." She was lost in her own thoughts.

"What if..." A long pause accented her thoughts and how she was arranging them.

John tried to imagine what Emil and Marcie were doing while they waited for Kathy to get her thought out. He knew he was just sitting. He wondered what the two from the Mist did.

"We're just waiting here with you," Marcie whispered in an overly dramatic fashion in his head so only he could hear her. John smiled.

"What if..." Kathy said again. "What if I explain about my own abduction as a little girl and that it has made me curious about other cases, like I'm still looking for my own abductor? No one knows that I know who it was. That would give us a reason to be there and a plausible explanation for why we end up discovering whatever new evidence we do."

John nodded his head.

"Makes sense to me. What about the police?" he asked.

"Steps on no one's toes." Kathy explained. "We are not pushing the parents and opening up old wounds except to ask them to help me seek out my own abductor, who may or may not be connected with the perpetrator against their child. I'm just looking for links. No known connection. Just a victim looking for answers."

"And her trusty husband along to see that she stays out of trouble, too." Marcie added.

"Of course," Kathy agreed. "The police could not object to us looking into something because we were hoping it might lead to my getting answers."

"Even if they did, the worst they can do is talk about us. What police department wants to be known as the department that ignored a victim's request for answers?" John added.

"Precisely," Kathy smiled. That problem was solved.

"So, how do we decide which cases to take on and which one is first?" Emil asked.

"Not sure," Kathy thought about it. "Have to do some research, I guess."

"What about finding my killer?" Emil asked.

"Yours?" John asked. "I thought you died in an accident."

"I did. Car accident. A drunk driver hit me while I was training on my bicycle. He stopped, saw what he had done and then drove off quickly."

"So, no one ever caught him." Kathy asked.

"I was the only witness and I was dead. I couldn't tell them what I knew." Emil answered.

"Well, is it going to be too trying to open up that wound?" John asked. "You've only been dead a short time."

"Long enough to get over the change in my life. But my parents are another matter. They have no closure. Just a random accident kills their only boy. I would like to see them get the answers they deserve."

"That's a good point." Kathy was thinking again. "Maybe we could check the Mist for unsolved cases in there and help those of the Mist find closure in their lives and for their families."

"Great idea," Marcie agreed. "There are many in here who are the victims of unsolved crimes. That is one of the areas we cover in the human plane. Those who are being tragically killed."

"Fantastic." Kathy smiled. "Not that there are so many," she amended. "But that we have a ready clientele close by."

"But they are from everywhere," Marcie warned.

"That's okay," John spoke. "They still deserve answers and justice." He spoke for Kathy, too.

"We'll start tomorrow." Kathy nodded her head in finality. It was done. Decisions were made. Now they just had it to do. Purpose. That's what they had. A reason to exist that added to the universe around them. Purpose. Solving the unsolved. Giving answers to those left with nothing but big questions. Closure.

Chapter Seven

Lah and Tos entered Alicia Cranston's apartment and immediately stood still in the darkness. They were comfortable in the dark. After all, their Alliance operated under a deal with Dark. Dark gave them substance and a place in the multiple planes of existence. Here, they blended with the shadows and surveyed the room for danger or whatever else might be there.

Just darkness. That was all they entered into. They stayed only partially manifested in the cool air of the apartment. A heater was running somewhere but a breeze from the outside was making itself felt in the small apartment. A window was open. Strange.

They saw Alicia's body lying against the bottom of the sofa where she had fallen on the floor. She appeared to be dead. Gol's sleeping pills must have worked as he had said. There was an acrid, metallic smell in the air both of them recognized. Sleeping pills should not have caused that.

Moving to the body the two members of the Alliance saw the ragged tear even in the dark of the room. Alicia was dead. That was certain. What was uncertain was the cause. Was it the pills Gol had administered or the huge, ragged hole in her side?

Tos looked to Lah who turned his head to look back at his brother. They both understood immediately what had happened. Gol had not stayed to make certain the seed had died. The seed had detected the death of its host and done the natural thing, saved itself.

Further survey of the body would show that the woman was devoid of blood. They were certain of that. Blood was the life force no one could create accept the Creator of Life. Every creature on every plane could reproduce the fluids of sexual energy which drove the activities of the living and replenished the stores of energy everyone needed to keep existing. They could also readily reproduce the energy of self, an awareness of existence which every living creature had. But only the Creator of Life could create blood. The one thing every living creature needed.

The seed of the woman, Gol's seed, had chewed its way out of the woman, consumed her blood and escaped. The seed now had a life force in the woman's blood, which meant the seed had begun taking from her before she had given up the energy of her life. Gol had to have been present when that happened. There was no way he could not have noticed the seed fighting to keep life. Now the seed possessed all it needed to live. Blood from the woman, fluid from Gol's initial ejaculation and it's own awareness, which it achieved as soon as it was deposited in the woman and began to nourish itself. Blood, Fluid and Spirit. The Seed was alive.

The seed had all the energies of life and was self sufficient. Except that it was not sanctioned. Only sanctioned seeds were allowed in each plane by the Creator. That which he had deals of physical limitations with. That was why they needed a human female host for their seeds. Only sanctioned life was allowed to exist in the human plane. They needed a female host to carry their seed to term and birth them into the world of the humans to give themselves physical bodies. All was going well before this. All was within the realm of the deal with the Creator of Life.

It was too late now. Gol's creation was loose. It was only a matter of time before the Creator of Life came to enact his vengeance upon those who had broken the deal in such a blatant and dangerous manner. The Creator of Life would also discover how they had subverted the intent of the deal He had with humanity to procreate. A new creation, Gol's seed given life before becoming human, would cause a disruption in the plane, a new species, and that would call attention to them. A seed designed to allow them to inhabit the body of a human child would have given them the ability to procreate and birth their own life forms in the plane of the earth in league with the already present deal the Creator of Life had with humanity. That had been the plan. Piggy back onto the human species and develop a spin off of super humans for themselves. A legal way to invade the human plane and establish dominance once again.

A new species, like Gol's seed would require the Creator of Life's stamp of approval before being allowed to inhabit the plane. That would not be forthcoming. The Creator of Life had banned the five brothers from the earth ever since they had tried to create their own species once before. They had slept with the daughters of men and birthed giants in the earth. Then the Creator of Life had gone on a rampaging mission aimed at annihilating the giants from the earth and purifying the blood lines they had tainted. He had raised up normal men, endowed them with great skill in the arts of battle and pushed the brothers of the Alliance from the earth one at a time.

This was going to be their return to the earth. The five brothers had waited for the time to be right, for men to accept them again. It had been a long time since mankind had embraced both the strength of the species plus the outrageousness of the things beyond their world. Now the battle was to be engaged even before the plan was fully in force.

Gol. He had brought this on them. He had lead them to disaster. Not only would they be banned from the earth but this time they would be sent to the Place of Chains for breaking a deal. Disaster.

There would have to be a fight. That was the only way they could salvage this situation. If they won the right to be here, then even the Creator of Life would acknowledge their right, despite the broken deal. It had to be war. War with the humans was the only way, now. They had no choice. They had the right to protect their seed. Anything that came against their seed was in danger of breaking their deal with their ability to procreate. They had not broken any deal planting their seed in the female hosts. It was not ethical. But it was not a deal breaker. The Creator could ask them to take them back but he would never order them to kill off their seed once planted in a host that willingly accepted them. And he could banish them to the Place of Chains and allow their seed to grow up without ever knowing their true potential.

They would have to go to war around their seeds. They would have to find the creation of Gol and bring it into the Alliance, subjecting it to their limitations, and then move on with creating a war to take a part of the earth away from the humans. Not a war of violence. It had to be the kind of war where the humans willingly gave up something for them to have for themselves. A war of deception. Once they were allowed to have it, it was theirs. The Creator of Life would recognize that deal and not send them to the Place of Chains for their deal breaking. He might sanction them and place incredible limitations on them but He would leave them be in the human plane. If they could possess a part of it. Any part.

Tos and Lah had to get back. The Alliance had to be made aware of these developments. They had to enact the contingency plan. The earth was full of desolate places. Humans were finicky. They only wanted what was easiest for them to control. Deserted places were deserted because humans had not found an easy way to live there yet. They would inhabit one of those and claim it for themselves. If humans did not chase them away within twenty four hours they could have the place to themselves. Not an ideal situation, to be sure. But the alternative was to be sent to the Place of Chains for eternity. Desolation was hands down preferable.

They left the woman lying on the floor in the dark. Instead of her energies coming into the plane of Dark, the seed of Gol had stolen it and made his escape. First the contingency plan. The desolate place. Then they would have to deal with the seed. The seed had to be stopped. There was no way of knowing what a powerful force like that was capable of. Such a situation scared even the Alliance.

Carol Bennings was still concerned about the father of her baby. She had wracked her brain ever since being made aware that her two boyfriends of late were not the father. There was no one else. No one night stands. No elicit meetings in the dark. No moments of wild abandoned. No one. Yet, here she was, pregnant with someone's baby.

She turned out the light and climbed under the covers in her bed. Another day had passed. They had all become one mesh of colors and sounds and places. Nothing made sense since the baby had been discovered. Even that was strange. One day, nothing. Then, a baby six months along was in her belly.

Nothing made sense any more. Not the baby. Not the fact she could not identify a father. She even thought about asking the doctor to provide some kind of proof that she had not been bought off by the real father to keep quiet. That was a desperate attempt to find meaning in this meaningless existence that had become her life.

She could not conceive of loving the baby inside her. It was a stranger violating her body and stealing her life. She did not know who the baby was. If he was part of her it was the missing knowledge of who the father was that made the unborn child seem less than human. Less than worthy of her love. A baby without a father was a bastard. That was what she was carrying. A bastard. And whoever the father was, he was a bastard too.

Carol's anger bubbled out and she cried frustrating tears into her pillow. It had become her normal way to fall asleep lately. At least for this last week or so. With an uneasy release, she allowed herself to slip away again. One more day done. Another one coming. Another day nurturing a bastard inside her. Anger was a hard friend.

He watched her biting the pillow and crying. Tears were good. They were a fluid often overlooked for the energies contained within them. He hoped they did not dry before she was asleep. He so wanted to partake of them before they were dry. Energy. He needed energy now. And he would get it.

Gol's seed was born into the air of that dark apartment knowing the difference between right and wrong as it chewed its way out of the woman who Gol had killed trying to get at him. It was not right for Gol, who had given him of his own life, to try and kill him later. He also recognized that he was being forced into fullness of life too soon. The nurturing was not completed inside the woman, yet. He needed more energy to complete the nurturing process.

His physical form would forever be altered by the state he was in when he first breathed air. He would never look like a human now, as had been the plan of the Alliance. He still required the life force to exist. He had gotten that from the woman's blood. It was wrong to partake of that without sanction from the Creator of Life but he had no choice. The option was death. His own desire to live would not allow him to accept death. He would mature with the proper nurturing to attain the ability to procreate.

Finding a mate might be a bit of a problem given his current physical body. Hairless. Short. Undeveloped in many aspects still but functioning. He had one chance at maybe growing and developing a little more. It was in the life force of the still unborn seeds of the Alliance.

He had used his considerable strength to gently force his way into her apartment. Her back door would need some attention for the next tenant. Carol was not going to have to fret long about her unborn, unknown child. The seed was here to take it from her. She didn't want it anyway. He needed it. It's life force would aid him in completing some of the nourishment process he needed to develop correctly. But the life force of the seed inside her was her blood. He would have to take that from her for his needs. It would be better if she gave it willingly, more powerful. But nevertheless, he would take it.

"We have to stay in the city for a while," Kathy told John.

"I spent my life moving around so, spending a few days in a hotel won't be so bad for me."

"Well, I've never been away more than a night at a time from this town. And that was visiting relatives. I'm looking forward to being in a hotel. I've only seen them on television programs."

"You sound like a hick who is looking forward to going to the big city and seein' the sights," John made fun of her with his best deep south drawl.

"Well, it ain't like you've ever been in a big city either, Buster." Kathy laughed.

John winced when she used the monicker Marcie used to show him her disapproval. Kathy knew he disliked it but she enjoyed pushing him sometimes. Love had some crazy motives to it, he thought. The more he thought about it the more he reasoned that women had the best part of relationships. It took everything a man was to attract a woman and only a little bit of her to catch the man. He wondered how much more there was to the depths of a woman if a man ever got the chance to crawl inside and look around.

"Just make sure we pack plenty of clothes so we don't have to do laundry every day," John added. "Laundry is bad enough in our own machines. It's torture in one of those laundromats."

"Agreed," Kathy smiled and threw another couple of shirts toward her suitcase for packing.

A silence filled the camper space except for the sounds of two people packing up their lives to go share them somewhere else. Each concentrated on their clothes and the quantity of good items they wanted to bring as opposed to the number of acceptable ones they would have to depend upon to lengthen the time before the need to do laundry.

"Think we will do any good with this?" Kathy made conversation.

"No idea." John admitted the truth that he had come to assign to that question. "The idea is worth trying out, though. Bringing closure to families hurting over some tragedy they have endured is a good thing, if it can be accomplished. We can only try. Maybe we can help. Surely it can't hurt as long as we don't get anyone's hopes up. And telling them we are looking to get answers for you will keep them from getting too hopeful for themselves."

"Maybe talking with someone who has been through similar tragedy will help them, too." Kathy offered.

"I just hope that our relationship with the Mist will allow us to get enough added details to make a difference."

"I think it will." Kathy started. "I just hope we can find reasonable ways to apply what we learn from the Mist to the evidence we discover in a fashion that does not make the police suspicious about how we found it."

"That's a major concern." John admitted. "We will do no one any good if we are in jail because we know things we can not account for knowing. And telling them about the Mist is not an option."

"We still have some hurdles to get over," Kathy smiled. "But I have a good feeling about this."

John smiled. He did not let on that there was a darkness forming in the back of his mind. He could not explain it. But something was wrong. Maybe not with their plan. Maybe not with the Mist. But somewhere something was wrong. He just didn't know what. He had called his mother but everything there was okay. Still, the thought lurked that something was wrong.

He had thought about asking Marcie about it but her answer to everything was more sex. Besides, he had nothing to really ask. What was he going to ask her? Hey Marcie, can you tell me what this dark thought in the back of my mind is? Not only did he not want her rummaging around in the back of his mind, but he did not want her having an excuse to hang around just to watch over him. She was too protective for her own good. And her protective advice always ended up with some scenario of him sharing fluids with her again. She was like a broken record.

Gol listened as Lah replayed what they had learned on their trip into the earth plane. All the alliance brotherhood listened. Their entire plan was in jeopardy, now. Gol's mistake had put everything at risk. Lah had also explained that it was time to seek out the contingency. Tos agreed as part of the team that had returned from the earth plane. The others acknowledged that they had indeed been wise to have developed a contingency beforehand. It would prove a worthwhile use of their energies. But moving into a physical plane in their present state of spiritual composition was going to be a hard existence.

They had been depending on the seeds for easing themselves into the earth plane. Even with the added energies from Joe and his mother, their reserves were still very low. They just didn't have the ability to add energy reserves to their Alliance without wholesale slaughter, which would not be a good idea. The humans were the sanctioned entities of this plane. The Alliance was under limitation by the Creator of Life Himself to stay away from the human plane. It would be a breach of their deal with the Creator of Life to be discovered here before they had a legitimate reason to be here.

They were five males. They could not draw on fluid sacrifices from the human plane. In their present condition no human woman would willingly give herself to them for that. One of the factors that had aided their conquest of humans the first time had been their beauty and the attraction they held for the women of the human plane. When they had been banished from it, the Creator of Life had taken their beauty and given them rough, unbalanced features that would serve more to scare humans than to attract them.

It was a closed Alliance of the five brothers, there was also no additional energies coming inside with them. It was a bane of their existence. They had chosen it rather than the alternative of the Place of Chains back in that older day. It was their insistence on control of the Alliance that kept them small like they were. They could never be sure that whoever joined them would have the same appetite for getting back to the human plane. That was why they existed. Five brothers bound by history, birth and a desire to return to the glory they had once known.

That was the reason they had accepted the limited existence within their Alliance. Once they had walked the human plane in physical bodies. They had tasted of the freedoms humans enjoyed and took for granted. Spiritual existences had their good parts. But a physical existence had an immediacy about it that made every experience even more intense. It was that intensity that fueled their dreams and drove their manic desire to reenter that physical plane they once dominated.

Domination. That was another driving factor. They enjoyed supreme domination over the more fragile human form on the battle field in that long ago day. For many years they had served the people of their chosen country and rampaged over the battlefields slaying the more diminutive human warriors and making a name for themselves.

Giants they had been called. Known as far superior warriors. Feared by every kingdom. Kings had sent their messengers to make deals for their lives and lands instead of having to face the giant warriors and certain destruction. All across the land their names were heralded as the greatest warriors and the most feared soldiers anywhere. Their skills were sung in songs and their exploits were written in poems to be read around every village fire. It had been a good day for the brothers of the Alliance and they longed for it again. Maybe not the exact same existence but something that afforded them a close approximation of the fame and fortune they once knew.

It had been their joy to live among the humans in their plane until the Creator of Life had chosen Himself a people for His own plans. Then He had moved that people across the land wiping out everything that had not been part of the original plan of the Creator of Life. That had included Gol and his brothers and the people they had settled down with.

The Creator of Life had a pet peeve about things being mixed or impure. For a small amount of time, He would allow life to go forward in an impure state, but eventually, He always cleaned it up and vanquished anything not in the original plan for the plane. The day had come when The Creator of Life had decided that Gol and his brothers had gone too far in changing the Creator of Life's plan. Then He had sent His chosen people against the people of the Alliance. Though smaller and far less skilled in the art of war, the humans were given the victory because the Creator of Life delighted in showing off His own skills and abilities, which were unlimited. He had helped the humans vanquish Gol and his brothers from the human plane.

That was when they had formed the Alliance. Since then they had waited and planned their return. The next time they would fit in and become one of the humans. Then the Creator of Life would have to accept them in the plane. That would be their start. It was their destiny. It was their desire.

Now, everything was at risk again. But they could not, would not, relinquish their desire for the existence they had planned so hard to achieve. It was not ideal, by far, but to exist in a desolate place on the human plane would be preferable to continuing their spiritual imprisonment in the Alliance existence, shifting through planes like ghosts with no place to stay. The desolate place would be hard. But hard times had forced them to make the hard decisions before. They had survived then. They would survive now. And, someday, they would once again control the human plane.

Chapter Eight

Kathy and John arrived at Emil's old house. It was early evening and the sun was still warm but low to the horizon. Children played everywhere on the street as John navigated their Jeep to the place indicated on their GPS system. They had talked things out as they drove. Kathy had explained her plan of attack, as she called it. They were here to find out what, if anything, Emil's parents knew about the crime against their son. Marcie and Emil were going to stay in the background, monitoring for any energies in the area that might help them. Marcie had explained that sometimes after an evil event like a murder certain energy hungry entities gathered around to feed off the misery of those left behind. Emil had said he was okay with all this but Kathy had wondered privately how he would be, seeing his parents again under these circumstances.

They found the place and John got out of the Jeep slowly. He understood the good they were here to accomplish. He knew in his own mind, if he had been killed he would want the killer or killers found and judged according to the laws of the land. He also knew that grieving parents were unpredictable and the encounter was always uncomfortable, even when things went smoothly. He had seen more than his share of funerals and grieving relatives, being a pastor's son. He had never liked the feeling of being around those who were mourning the loss of a loved one. He was pretty sure he was not going to enjoy this one either.

Kathy led the way and rang the doorbell of the quaint, suburban home. The front yard looked like every other yard. The small, manicured trees and flower gardens could have been cut from a magazine. The grass was green everywhere with never a hint of brown due to the landscaping company's diligence in these matters. Kathy noted that the perfection of the outside often hid the imperfection that lived on the inside.

"I have often thought that, too," Emil offered in her head as she thought it.

"I was not thinking about here," Kathy was embarrassed to be thinking negative thoughts before she was even inside. "I was thinking how my own life looked on the outside when inside there was a raging child serial killer on the loose."

"Most everyone has a different look when you can get inside their life." Emil finished as the door opened before Kathy.

A woman in her late forties stood before them in a short dress of tasteful design and function to allow her to be stylish while also enjoying the warmth of the last few days. She held a dish towel in her hands, drying them, and Kathy realized they had not considered their arrival was close to the supper hour for many folks.

"Hello."

The dark haired woman stood with one hip higher than the other, like she was posing or balancing her stance because she had been standing a long time. It gave her a model's outline of form and also drew years from her age as the idea of a much younger woman was hinted at in the attitude of her position. Younger girls all over schoolyards would use that same stance to accentuate their own best features when in the presence of their friends. She could have easily passed for a woman in her thirties. Good health, proper diet and exercise as well as her Middle Eastern background had come together with that school yard attitude to splash the perfect picture of youth upon this suburban woman.

The woman's voice was almost musical. There was a hint of humor in her smile and a sincerity of manner greeting a stranger at her door. But her eyes told a different story. There was a darkness in there. A haunting look that said she lived in her own nightmare when no one was listening. Kathy was reminded of Emil's words that everyone had a different look inside. Kathy wondered what it looked like inside this woman.

"Mrs. Gallot?" Kathy started. She was not as sure about this thing as she was before actually confronting Emil's mother.

"Yes. Can I help you?" The woman's eyes flashed to John and gave him a quick once over. Kathy saw it and smiled to herself. She was an older woman, had some grief from having lost a son too early, but she was not dead yet. She still had the sense about her person to take in the sights. And right now, John was in her sights. Kathy recognized the look of a woman who was a hunter. She was not the timid, stay at home mom Kathy had expected. This woman had been a formidable opponent for the affection of the boys in high school and she had never lost that edge. She had no problem imagining this woman as the center of any party she went to.

"Try remembering that whatever you imagine, I have to see, too." Emil reminded her in a mock gesture of indignant offense.

"Understood." Kathy replied in her mind while looking at the woman before her.

"Uh...yes, Ma'am." Kathy started again. "My name is Kathy Corwin and this is my husband, John."

She gestured toward John behind her on the small set of steps. She loved saying her new name and her new relationship out loud. She never got a chance to say it enough. Mrs. Kathy Corwin. Yes, that was her. Mrs. Kathy.

The woman waited for Kathy to continue.

"I hate to bother you but I'm on kind of a strange mission of my own to uncover details about past events and I saw the article in the paper, actually on the internet, relating the details of your son's death. I know how upset you must be after such an incident and how traumatic it must be, but if you could spare the time and help me, I would be very grateful."

Smooth. John had to give her that. Kathy had taken an awkward situation and turned it around to show the people how they could make some good come out of it by helping her. It was a glimmer of hope she offered and most people in the position of Emil's parents would grab onto any hope they could find.

Kathy had read the article on Emil's accident and decided to use the information that tire skid marks at the scene had been identified as belonging to a larger passenger car. The reporter writing the article had remarked that it was most likely a large, older Ford or Lincoln vehicle. Since a newer Lincoln had been identified in the kidnapping of herself when she was younger, Kathy had grabbed onto the thin connection and decided to use it as a way to open a door into the home of the Gallots.

"I don't see how we can help," Mrs. Gallot answered but stood back, obviously inviting them in.

Hope. It held people together as much as love did sometimes. Sometimes love and hope were the same thing. Right now, Mrs. Gallot was banking on hope and reaching out in love for anything that might make the thing that had happened to her family right.

Kathy and John followed the woman into her living room. It was clean and tidy, but not as manicured and perfect as the lawn outside. Kathy had a sneaking suspicion that the further they went inside the less and less this place would look like the front lawn. Emil's words came back to her again.

"Can I get you something to drink?" Mrs. Gallot asked.

"No thank you," Kathy answered.

"Yes, please," John spoke up. "If I could just have a glass of water. It's been a long trip."

John remembered that saying no was not a gift to a hurting family. They wanted to keep busy and be of use, have some purpose in their suddenly purposeless lives. Always accept whatever was offered, just don't make them go to any special trouble. It helps them relax and open up. He was surprised he remembered that. Usually he ignored his father when he was telling him the finer points of being a good pastor. He had no desire to end up as a pastor himself.

"Very well. I'll ask my husband to join us, too." The woman smiled at John and turned to leave. Watching her leave, Kathy could not help but notice the extra sway in the hem of the short skirt the woman wore. The woman was a flirt even when confronted with the memory of her dead son. Amazing. And with a man the age of her son, too. Simply amazing.

"Hey, that's my mother, there," Emil tried to sound put off.

"Looked like she was flirting to me, too," Marcie chimed in.

"I must have missed it," John added his two cents in his mind.

"John, you'd miss the sinking of the Queen Mary until the water was up around you ears." Marcie laughed.

"What are you trying to say?" John acted hurt.

"If it isn't Kathy, you never see what any other woman is doing." Marcie answered him.

"And that's a bad thing?" John asked innocently.

"No," Kathy answered. "But it means you miss a whole lot of what's going on around you."

"And a whole lot of opportunities, too." Marcie had to throw in her assessment.

Emil was chuckling in the background. Kathy added her laughter to his. They sounded good together. They laughed easily with each other. John noticed things like that. He wasn't jealous. Just appreciative of how easily Kathy related to others, like Emil. She was an easy person to get to know and become friendly with. He had seen it often over the Summer at the campground.

"Hello, there." The voice was a man's and it came from behind them.

A tall man walked through a doorway behind them. He had come from a hallway that John and Kathy had not noticed before. He was dark skinned, probably Middle Eastern himself, or from India. He walked with a certain authority that told everyone he was there and to be reckoned with. He did not sneak into a room. He entered with full fanfare and called all to see him do so. His frame was athletic and thin. Made more thin looking by his height of at least six foot two, maybe three. His manner said he was the man of the house and wherever else he might be.

John stood to shake hands with Mr. Gallot as he approached. It was a firm, no nonsense grip that was friendly and at the same time, binding. If you shake with me, we are friends, the grip seemed to speak. John liked the man immediately upon meeting him. He seldom saw real men in the churches where his father pastored. Churches seemed to only collect beaten males who were seeking a place to lay up and lick their wounds or hide from their responsibilities behind the worn out scriptures of church traditions. Most of the men who stayed in a church never again stepped out as real men to make life happen. Instead, they accepted whatever life threw at them with some platitude about it being the Lord's will. Mr. Gallot was not one of those men. He was a mover and a shaker. Maybe not a corporate executive but definitely a man to be watched in any event. He was the guy everyone wanted on their team in grade school. A winner.

Kathy saw John light up as he shook hands with Mr. Gallot. She was aware that John held a certain amount of shame in his life as the son of a minister. He believed his dad to be a great man who allowed the people of the churches he pastored to waste him. Though John would never admit it, he had always secretly hoped his dad would wake up one day and throw all those poor, needy people away and just be his dad. It was a resentment of sorts, she reasoned. If a dad is going to throw his life away, he should throw it away on those that loved him, not just the ones that used him. Kind of like throwing away his inheritance. John saw all that his dad was become less than it could have been because it was not appreciated by those using it. John was adamant that his life would never end like that. Everything that John was and had was designed to improve his life with those he loved. Right now, that meant his mother and his wife, though not necessarily in that order. She checked John's posture and looked to see if he was looking at her. No. Good. She was getting better at thinking thoughts and not shouting them to everyone around, including John. She never wanted to hurt him.

"So, you've come to ask us some questions?" Mr. Gallot asked.

"Yes, Mr. Gallot," Kathy started. The man waved her words away.

"Call me Amal."

"Okay, Amal," Kathy tested out the name.

"And I would like you to call me Noni," Mrs. Gallot entered the room carrying an empty glass and a bottle of cold water for John. Her look said she especially wanted John to feel at home with her. She made a dramatic display of offering the glass and water to John before seating herself beside her husband on the arm of the chair he had settled into.

Kathy nodded to Noni's request.

"And I am Kathy and this is John."

Introduction completed, she returned her attention to the man who had entered the room and sat down with such ease of movement. It was not lost on her that Emil looked a lot like his father. A younger version to be sure, but remarkably similar in almost every detail. It was like seeing a ghost of her ghost. The thought made her smile to herself.

"I come from good genes," Emil joked.

"Genes with a, G, or Jeans with a, J?" Marcie joked.

"Looks like both," Kathy added to the mirth taking place in her head.

Mindful of the seriousness of their situation, John tried to not frown openly. He was not so sure he pulled it off. Either way, Kathy spoke up and drew attention back to herself.

"As I told your wife," Kathy correctly addressed Amal, who was definitely the head of this household. "I am searching through some things of my past and discovered an article about the accident your son had."

Both parents nodded their heads and said nothing.

"First, let me say how sorry I am for your loss. I used to work with a police department and I know how trying things are and how difficult, sometimes, the healing process can be."

Again the heads nodded in recognition of her condolences. They had heard too many already. Condolences do not add hope. Kathy continued.

"When I was a young girl, I was abducted and consequently found wandering in a secluded area of our town. The only real evidence ever discovered was a link to possibly a newer, dark colored Lincoln or some kind of similar car. Nothing much to go on, really. The article I read about your son's accident, drew my attention because the reporter mentioned an older model Lincoln in it. That would be my newer Lincoln, now older, if there is any connection at all."

"What makes you believe there is a connection?" Amal asked.

"Nothing, really." Kathy admitted. "I am only grasping at straws and hoping that something will be found as I look at everything."

"And your part in this?" Noni included John in the discussion going on. Kathy realized Noni was an open flirt, even with her husband in the room. She also saw that Noni was not as submissive to her husband as she had originally thought. She would have to address Noni, too.

"I am her husband, and as such, I want her to learn whatever she can to make her life better about this subject." John tried to fit in.

"But you have no real understanding of losing a loved one or being abducted like your wife is describing?" Amal again.

"No. Sir." he felt obligated to add that. It seemed necessary when dealing with such an authoritative person as Amal.

"Amal," Amal reminded him. John nodded.

John thought about adding that he knew what it was to have his father home every night but so far away from the things of the family that he knew exactly what it was to have lost a loved one. He knew what it was to have lost him and still have him close enough to touch, just not close enough to have anything to do with him. In many ways, John felt his loss was worse than those who had to attend a funeral. At least they got closure of some kind and a definite point to move on from. His relationship with his home nightly but otherwise absent father left him with no point from which to move onward. All he had was a hope that maybe the next day would allow for the relationship he had desired. Until the day his dad actually did die. Then the hope died that day, too.

He remembered getting the call at college. He had to come home and help his mother. A church member had called with her condolences but he needed to come home right away and help his mother. Church people were no help. They were good at asking for help and telling others what help they needed. But they seldom helped anyone. Now, sitting here in Amal's living room, he felt a desire to claim all that had been done to him in the name of being a pastor's son over the years and demand his due. But instead, he did what he had been trained to do. He smiled, nodded his head and sat in the background letting someone else tend to the grown up things.

"He has been most helpful in allowing me to search for some kind of closure in my situation," Kathy came to John's rescue. She also wanted to pull attention back to herself.

"Husbands are good for helping us get what we want in life." Noni added and rubbed her husband's shoulder affectionately. But her eyes kept coming back to John.

"Yes," Kathy agreed. "I have been following up every story I can find, to see if there is any connection. Not much to go on, I know, but when it is all a person has, sometimes just doing something is better than sitting around doing nothing."

Both the parents nodded. They knew. Kathy could see it in their eyes. She had seen it in her mother's eyes for years. A far away look that said a person did not know how to deal with what was close at hand. Only answers that made sense could take away that look. She hoped she could help find those answers.

"Well, the stories that spread after the accident were just that, stories. There were no witnesses, to our knowledge. No one saw what happened. Some tire marks were found that could have been involved, but never identified as involved conclusively." Amal explained what they knew.

"We just know that someone in a car, probably a dark blue one, based on paint transfer on Emil's bicycle. Emil's our son." Noni said it like he was still alive. "Hit him as he was pedaling northbound out on route 70 in the early evening, late afternoon. Police think the driver may have been drunk or otherwise distracted to have hit Emil, because the afternoon light would have been behind the driver. The fact he crossed over the line and hit Emil head on made them believe a drunk driver was more likely."

"So, there was no reason to believe anyone did this to your son on purpose?" Kathy asked.

The shocked look on their faces said the parents had never even thought of such a thing before.

"He was in his first year of college." Amal explained. "What enemies could an eighteen year old have?"

Kathy nodded her head.

"Probably true," she admitted. "I am just trying to explore everything because I have absolutely nothing to go on. If it was personal, then it probably has nothing to do with my case. If not, then I can keep looking and maybe find some answers. I'm just exploring everything."

"Is that wise to be so young and spending so much time exploring these things?" Noni asked giving John a conciliatory smile. Kathy was starting to believe Mrs. Gallot wanted to be the one to console John.

"Easy, girl," Marcie spoke softly into Kathy's head. Keep your control.

Kathy gave an extra wide smile.

"It's not an obsession or anything," Kathy explained. "We operate a campground and have off season time to fill up. I thought of maybe trying to find out more about my abduction during our down time and hoping that maybe I would get some answers along the way."

"I see," Amal gave John a new look. He smiled because he now saw John more as an equal than a young man intruding in his house. "So, you own your own business, then?" Amal asked.

"Yes," John answered. "WE own a small campground that serves the Summer tourist season. Our down time was coming up and Kathy suggested we try doing this search. Seemed a reasonable request since she has never had the resources before now to undertake it."

"We understand," Noni spoke. "We owned a small neighborhood grocery store for years. Now, Amal operates a chain of grocery stores for a conglomerate that only wants to control everything."

"Please." Amal stopped his wife's description of her feelings as well as his employment.

"It's not as bad as all that," Amal smiled, diffusing the tension he had created with his plaintive plea.

Noni gave her husband a stiff look that said she thought it was.

"Well, it's not an ideal corporation to work for but it pays the bills and then some." He motioned to the house surrounding them.

"And it gives Amal a place to hide and work away his grief since the accident." Noni added.

"Is it still painful after all these years?" Kathy asked sincerely.

"Yes," Amal answered for both of them. "Someone hit our child and killed him. They took him from us but more than that, they stopped his future, our future. We will never get to see the man he would have become. We will never get to see the family he would have raised. It is like a part of our life was stolen and all the police can say is how sorry they are."

"I think I understand some of that," Kathy spoke soothingly. Her brilliant smile was still there, inviting everyone to be her friend, but it had a subdued, friendly but also understanding look. "I watched my mom deal with the looks and empty words from others for years. I think that is why I became a police officer. No one else in my family ever was. I wanted to help people find closure in events like this."

"Have you?" Noni needed some hope to grab onto. The conversation was dredging up old, painful memories.

"For some," Kathy admitted. "I did not see a lot of this type of crime in our small community, but in smaller things, I helped. At least I hoped it was help. People said it was, anyway."

Kathy had a way of saying things that made people want to affirm her before she had ever finished. John had noticed it from the beginning. Kathy was a person who invited other people into her life and then drew them into her plans for making the world a better place, starting with her and them. He saw that Emil's parents were no different. They were being pulled into Kathy's world and bringing their own world with them. He felt that dark thing clouding in the back of his mind again. He had gone all day without even thinking about it. Now it was back. He could not say what it was, but something was wrong. They were treading on dangerous ground and something in the spiritual planes understood it. He was getting a feeling that had nothing to do with his spiritual prepubescence. It was the whole can of worms thing, they were opening up. People's pain sometimes took them to dark places. Maybe that was what he was sensing.

"Very close," Marcie interrupted John's thoughts. It surprised him to remember she and Emil were still there. This had to be hard on Emil, too. Seeing his parents again, like this.

"Close how?" He asked Marcie in his head, forgetting how much he normally avoided asking her things because she always made him feel like he owed her something afterward.

"In the spiritual plane, we can see darkness or the things of the Dark coming upon the horizon sometimes. Some of us can see them better than others. Apparently you can see it even though you have not yet crossed over to our plane. The connection you do have must be strong enough to give you the sight even though you are still actually in the human plane." Marcie explained.

"So, what am I seeing? Something bad about to happen?" John pressed for more.

"Not exactly." Marcie told him. "Though the Dark does represent bad things, evil things, seeing it coming only means it is in the area, not that something is happening."

"But it could be?" John asked.

"Not like a fortune teller, you understand," Marcie went on. "More like a rain gauge. When it happens in the plane you are concerned with, you will get a sense that it is there and the way it affects you will give you an impression of how bad it is. Ordinary bad decisions, made by ordinary people, will hardly generate any notice from you. But, let a serial killer or a mass murderer or some evil entity who does not belong in your plane get within your perception range, and your alarms will go off like bells in a firehouse."

"Thanks," John told her.

"Wow. I think you really meant that." Marcie kidded him.

"We would love to tell you something that helped you get the answers you seek," Amal spoke for him and his wife, drawing John back to the physical plane.

"I appreciate that," Kathy nodded. "I have met so many wonderful people on this search. I am amazed so many bad things can happen to such great people."

"The rain falls on the just and the unjust."

Noni quoted a scripture John had heard his dad use many times. Funny how people used God's description of how good things happen to everyone, even the bad people in the bible, and the only way people know how to repeat it is in an exactly reversed position, to explain away some evil and why it happened. He had thought that maybe Amal and Noni were Muslim by their names so he was surprised to hear her quote a scripture from his bible. He wondered if the Koran had a similar passage that he was now relating as his bible quote when she meant it as one of her quotes from the Koran. He made a mental note to ask Emil about it later. Hadn't thought about religion as being relevant in the other planes, seeing as how they were all directly in touch with the Creator of Life.

"We were Muslim originally," Emil offered in John's head. "Parents converted when I was born. Wanted to look more American. My dad is big on being an American."

"Thanks," John answered in his head.

"Well, I am going to be talking with police and reporters and others who looked into this accident," Kathy told them. "If I discover anything of value, I will be sure to let you know." Kathy left the door open for them to be in contact again.

"Do you expect to find anything?" Noni asked, hopeful.

"Never can tell." Kathy smiled her winning smile, the one that had captured John's heart. "I am not looking at this as a crime with a certain result needed. Because I am just looking for anything that will lead me anywhere, I have a better than average chance of seeing something others have missed."

Both parents nodded their head though neither of them held out much hope that Kathy's hit or miss system would yield any results for them. After all, she was on her own search.

"We wish you well in your search." Noni smiled. There was a hidden pain there, behind the school girl attitude and the better than average manner of dress. It was the real pain of a mother who had come to hope this meeting would yield answers.

"Keep the faith," Kathy told them. "It was other stories that led me to you, so who knows where something can lead." She lied to give them hope. It did not feel like hope. It felt like grabbing on to a rope as one slid over the edge of the roof and hoping it was attached to something up above. Hoping there was still some hope. That was where Emil's parents were. Hoping that maybe Kathy held some hope, but not daring to hope they had placed their hope in anything real.

Chapter Nine

The sun was almost down when the brothers of the Alliance fully materialized in the desolate place. Their deal with Dark allowed them to fully materialize in solid bodies from dusk until dawn and walk as shadow through the day. Of course, as shadow they had to be careful of being sighted. Living Shadows were not a normal part of the human plane. Shadows was an existence that belonged solely to the Dark. Moving in the shadows was easier than might be imagined. Few humans actually stared long enough or hard enough into the shadows around them to really see what was hidden there. They would be horrified to discover the multitudes of living entities that traveled through their ordinary shadows. Of course, many humans were familiar with moving shadows after dark. Their nightmares were created of such things. It was a mystery why humans looked long and hard at shadows after dark but never paid them any attention during the daylight hours when most of those of the Shadow plane were moving about.

The desolate place was an abandoned warehouse in the now defunct warehouse district of the city. No one came out here any more except junkies and kids looking for rebellious thrills. It was abandoned to the decay of the city's fickle memory. Once a thriving part of the city's financial boom, the warehouses now stood as mute testimony to the bad decisions that forced the owners and suppliers to move farther south in search of communities with fewer taxes and easier regulatory commitments.

Rats and other vermin roamed the warehouses now. Real estate agents had stopped trying to sell them off long ago. Taxes mounted until the city owned the majority of them. Still, nothing could be done with them. Any new construction would have to be done after the demolition of the buildings and all new ground water containment areas were built in. The cost was prohibitive as long as there was still plenty of land available to the east of the city. The warehouses had first been built because of money and were now decaying in abandonment because of money. Fitting, some would say. Greed killing off greed.

It took a few minutes for them to survey the area and make sure nothing had changed since the last time they were there. Satisfied that all was as it needed to be, Gol organized them into teams. Ish and Tos were responsible for keeping their energies up. Of course, any of them coming across an opportunity to add to the collective energy level of the Alliance was obligated to do so. Vagrants and other miscreants of society were less likely to be traveling or staying out this way but sometimes one got lucky. They could only hope.

Saph and Lah were responsible for their safety. They would monitor the environment and the plane of the humans for any danger. There was not a lot of danger to be concerned about but watching for something was better than having it sprung on you. They would probably grow bored long before something happened. But one never knew. And they might get lucky and find someone to add to the energy reserves they would need to stay physical here.

Like Joe and his mother, all they needed to do was enlist the aid of a person long enough to make them a part of the Alliance mission. After they had joined the Alliance team, so to speak, whether verbally or through their actions, whatever the Alliance did with them was legal, under the Creator of Life's deal with humans. They could even kill them legally.

Gol's task, while they were isolated in this place of desolation, would be see to their mothers-to-be and make sure all went well with their pregnancies. Everything was riding on those pregnancies, now. As long as the Creator of Life did not show up to send them to the Place of Chains, they would need to make sure their plan went according to design. It was the only way they could ensure their existence. Gol also had to deal with his seed, which was still out there. That was not going to be easy. The seed was out in the open now. It had more power than it really knew how to use, which made it dangerous and, because of its childlike comprehension of life and its experiences, it had no compunction about killing and destroying everything that got in its way. It would need energy to help its growth process, so Gol would start there.

All energy was recorded in the human plane. Blood, fluids, spiritual energy. All made the news here if it had a large enough scope. He could watch the news and see the pattern of the seed. The seed would be looking for energy on very large levels. It would, most likely, be a very destructive process. Once identified, Gol could move. He had to stop it. He had to stop it before it stopped the Alliance. The existence of the seed was jeopardizing their entire plan.

Kathy walked with her thoughts after dinner with John. They had talked about their meeting with the Gallots and that nothing really helpful had come of it. No surprise. The real reason for them to be here was to see if Marcie and Emil could add anything to what was already known from sources inside the Mist. After they had left Emil's old homestead, Emil had disappeared. Marcie suggested he needed a few moments to be alone. Everyone understood. Kathy could not imagine how hard it must have been for Emil to be there and hear the pain and the hope still in his mother's voice all these years later.

When ten o'clock had rolled around, John had said he was tired and was going to bed. Their motel room was small so Kathy had elected to go for a walk. John told her to be careful even though it looked like a nice part of town. She promised to be careful and would send Marcie if there was a need. Marcie reminded Kathy that she could call for John herself, now that they were part of the Mist's collective entities. Kathy had laughed and told Marcie she just didn't get it. Here Kathy was trying to help her get into John's bed. They had laughed together at Kathy's joke and downplaying of her walk at John's expense.

As Kathy strolled idly down a walkway along an empty stretch of pathway beside the river, she was mesmerized by the slow, twinkling flow of the wide body of water. Kathy was used to the ocean and its relentless pounding against the shore. Many nights had she lain awake and listened as the waves lulled her to sleep with their endless melody and rhythm. Now, she was fully drawn to the quiet meandering pace of the river. The ocean was like a super megalopolis of a company to her. The river was more like a small company struggling to keep up and not be devoured by the ocean influence. Where the ocean beat to the rhythm of its tides and the call of the moon, the river played its own music, hauntingly similar to each individual person on planet earth. Part of the whole but a separate part that had to survive for itself first and foremost.

The ocean had so many tributaries, like the tax base of a country. Whereas the river had only its several tributaries, which themselves were at the mercies of the storms and rains across the world. Many parts contributing and then being represented in that contribution. Less like a country and more like a family or extended family at the least.

"Like the Mist." Emil intruded on her thoughts.

"The Mist?" Kathy asked. "How so?"

"All the planes of existence would be like the ocean. Filled and always getting new contributions to keep it filled. The Mist is more like a small version with a purpose of moving towards the whole all the time. Like a river flowing to the sea, the Mist is a plane of existence pointing to the Creator of Life and all He has planned for his Creation. The fullness of the Creation being the innumerable planes of existence on a spiritual level are more like the endless movement of the ocean. Unchangeable and impossible to really understand fully. Too much for a finite mind to comprehend."

"Wow!" Kathy declared. "Never thought about it like that."

"Neither did I until I came inside the Mist," Emil admitted.

"Have you ever been here before?" Kathy asked Emil referring to the river walk.

There was a long pause.

"I have been here several times," Emil answered. "I used to like to bring my girlfriends here and walk in the moonlight. It was as close to romantic as I could find around here. Every other place was noisy or filled with couples getting it on in their cars."

"Wow! A philosopher and a romantic." Kathy kidded him.

"Well, you know. Even us ghosts have to keep our image up." Emil joked.

"Are you okay?" Kathy asked the question that she had been thinking about all evening at dinner.

"I think so," Emil chuckled. "Truth is, I felt sad that my parents were still so broken up about me being dead. I guess I just never thought of myself as someone people would remember. You know. I think of others that way, but not myself. It kind of hit me hard to realize that people were remembering me after I was gone. Gave me a lump in my throat. Never expected that. I just thought I was gone. You know. Too bad and all, but nothing to shake up the world about."

"You never thought that you would be missed?" Kathy was intrigued by Emil's attitude toward others remembering him.

"Just assumed they thought about me like I did. No big deal. I had not done anything in life yet so, there was no reason to remember me or be sorry that I was not there to do that great thing I was supposed to do. You know? I had not been alive long enough to make a place yet, so what was there to remember?"

"Relationship," Kathy reminded him. "Your parents miss the fact that your were there and now you are not. They lament the loss like a piece of themselves is missing because in your short time with them that was what you had become, part of them. The part that would go on and do greater things than they ever did. Then, when you died, they had to acknowledge that part was gone forever. That's what they miss. The you that you were, lighting up their lives with your presence as well as the you that you would have become in the near future, making them proud."

"I just never thought of myself as memorable, I guess." Emil stated flatly. "It surprised me to see that my mom was still hurting after four years. Dad was being strong about it, like I would have expected, but I could sense the hurt in him, too. That's what bothered me. I could sense their hurt and knew that it was me that caused it and there was nothing I could do about it."

Kathy could hear a little choke in Emil's voice as he spoke. Seeing his parents and realizing how broken up they were about his death hurt. He had no way of fixing what his death had caused. He was not responsible for dying. It was an accident. It happens. The pain Emil felt now, was not a sadness as much as a joy at being remembered. He had not thought being remembered mattered all that much when he thought he was not worth remembering. Now that he knew he was remembered, he assigned a lot more importance to it, as well as value.

"Well, that's why we're here." Kathy announced. "We're going to make sure you are remembered and that the one responsible for causing this pain in your parent's life gets some measure of justice."

"Seems like a far more worthy cause now," Emil laughed. "Before I guess I just wanted someone to be remembering me enough to find out what happened. Now, I want to see that my folks get answers for the questions that haunt their private thoughts."

"Can you read their thoughts?"

"No. wish I could sometimes. But then again. Maybe I don't."

"Well, where should we start?" Kathy changed the subject a little. "Where do we look first to find this hit and run driver?"

"Well, walking along this river is not going to get us there." Emil laughed. "This is where I took my honeys. I rode my bike out on the other side of town. Over by the warehouse district. Not much there and it was usually deserted, so I had the road to myself."

"Except that one night." Kathy reminded him.

"Except that one night. Right."

"So, how many honeys did you bring here?" Kathy pressed for details on Emil's previous love life when he was alive.

"A gentleman does not kiss and tell," he maintained.

"Good answer, Casanova." Kathy laughed.

"Besides, It's not who came before you or how many somebodies came before you. It's about the quality of the time you get to spend when it's your turn." Emil laughed at his explanation.

"Oh, quality time, huh?"

"Yes," Emil filled the pathway with Mist and materialized before Kathy in the walkway. She was amazed he would expend that kind of energy here.

"Oh." Kathy gave a little start at the speed with which the night sky winked out and the surrounding pathway became filled with Mist.

"Want to spend some quality time with me, now?" Emil asked.

Kathy had considered how fragile Emil might be since the meeting with his parents. She had wondered if a little sacrificing of fluids might help him cope. She had not discussed it with John. She knew how he felt about Marcie and her constantly asking for another replay of their previous coupling. Instead she had decided that if Emil felt that he needed to share a little, she would supply the body for him. It was not like it was a terrible experience. Emil was a great lover and so gentle. She would enjoy the physical aspect as much as she wanted to make sure Emil was okay with this difficult business of finding his killer. She would tell John about it later. First, she had to make sure Emil was taken care of. He was going to be necessary to this investigation. They needed him fully on board and not regretting coming along.

Kathy pulled her shirt over her head and unhooked her bra. She knew they were perfectly safe inside the Mist. The other entities of the Mist would divert anyone entering it until Emil moved it out of the path when they were done. Emil was always naked in the Mist and his birthday suited appearance startled her. She marveled at her own readiness as she stared at his obvious excitement. It was not like cheating on her husband. More like partaking of a risky thing in public after her husband had given her permission. A thrill with all the excitement of a new lover. Emil watched as Kathy slipped her jeans down her legs and stepped out of them. By the time she had pushed her panties down and laid back in the dew wet grass, Emil was already moving to her. She wanted to give herself to him, now. Almost as much as she loved John, she felt a need to share this moment with Emil. Something inside her told her that he needed this intimacy right now. He had been stressed this afternoon beyond what he had expected and she was an outlet for him now.

There was also something inside her that wanted him for her. A part of her that was connected to him because he had been her first from the Mist. Like John had been her first in the human plane. The connection was strong and she enjoyed it. It felt naughty and it felt right. She wondered if anyone else had ever been in her position before. Probably. The Mist was not a new creation. It had existed for a long time.

Kathy smiled as Emil moved over her. She was John and Emil's girl. John in the human plane. Emil in the Mist. And they were in the Mist right now. She shared herself with Emil.

He was the seed that mattered, he told himself. Those others had been of a general nature. They were not designed to be anyone. They were shells for the Alliance brothers to inhabit and claim a physical body in the human plane. He knew this instinctively from his inherited memory. That memory would have faded as the twenty four hour period passed. Then he would have been like the others, empty, a human shell for the abiding presence Gol had planned in this plane. But he had saved himself and avoided being killed in the process. Now, as a living entity, he was strong enough to hold his own against the brothers. He had breathed in the air of freedom in the human plane and it began the deal with air that all living creatures in the human plane enjoyed. He was now a fully independent, living creature, himself. Separate from the Alliance and therefore not under their authority. The Alliance could not eliminate him now except by murder. And murderers from the spiritual planes ended up in the Place of Chains at their physical death if they could not fashion a sanctuary to hide in before they were caught. He knew the brothers wanted to live forever in the human plane. That was their downfall. Everything they did was to maintain their ability and eligibility to remain in the human plane. The seed did not care where he lived. As long as he lived.

He had spent the night gathering energy. All four of the brother's seeds had been required to give him the energy he would have had if he had stayed in the womb of the woman for the full incubation period of three months. Gol's attack on the woman had made a premature exit from that warm place necessary. Gol had killed the woman but had not thought about the fact that the seed would have been more advanced at a younger stage because it was in a weaker host. The older woman's system was not able to fight off his incessant hunger. She had given up more energy than a younger woman in a shorter period of time. Most likely, she would not have lasted the full three months anyway. He did not care about such things. His only care was feeding the hunger inside him. Like him, it was growing.

Now, he was the only seed left of the Alliance brothers. But the hunger still drove him to develop. He looked like a young child, maybe seven or eight, now. Such was his feeding on the seeds of the brothers. They had provided more energy than he had thought they would but not as much as he needed. He was stronger than the weakened seeds planted in the other women. They did not require as much energy to grow and develop since they had passed the twenty four hour period before insemination had occurred. He, on the other hand, had enjoyed his full strength at insemination and was a full resemblance of the brothers as Gol's offspring born of a human woman. And because the woman was older and weaker, she had not been able to withstand his need for her energy. She had succumbed to his greater strength and he had fed to his delight inside her.

He appraised his human form in the mirror in Carol Bennings bedroom. He delighted in the fresh, smooth skin of the humans. It was a sensory overload to touch anything and he reveled in sliding around in her blood across the satin sheets of her bed. It had been a fight because her seed was more developed than the others had been. They had been easy kills, torn out and devoured swiftly after the woman was killed with a simple twist of her neck. But the seed in Carol Bennings was stronger than he had expected. It fought back the minute it perceived its host had been killed, at first hiding and then tearing its way out and breathing of the fresh, new air of freedom.

The fight had made a mess of Carol's body. More so than the others because the seed in her had tried to hide in the body as he searched it out. That searched had required tearing up large portions of her creamy, white skin. The blood was smeared and flung everywhere because of the fight that had ensued when he captured the last of the brother's seeds. The outcome had never been in doubt, but the fight had been wildly energetic to say the least. Carol's body had suffered several more destructive blows and rips as the two seeds had fought out the age old battle of life and death over her. In the end, he had triumphed over the weaker seed and claimed its energy like he had the others.

A full night's work accomplished, he had showered and dried off in Carol's bathroom. The touch of the water and the wash cloth and the towel were all exquisite sensations to his newly formed flesh. Though he looked seven or eight, his flesh was only minutes old. And the nerve endings in it were firing continuously, sending new data to his brain as each experience was cataloged and remembered.

But he was still hungry. He could not avoid it. There was only one place he could get the energy he needed now. It would take a hundred humans to fill the void he felt inside himself. Or, it would take exactly five brothers.

Kathy was still sleeping soundly when John woke. He dressed quietly, not knowing what time she had finally come to bed. He remembered waking at one o'clock and she was not there then. He let her sleep. He knew she was dealing with many issues of her own life as well as taking on the issues that went along with Emil's death. That was the way she was wired. She lived her life through others. Their experiences became hers. He gave her one last look as he silently closed the door behind him.

Across the parking lot, John had remembered a coffee shop when they had checked in the day before. He headed there and ordered a large, black coffee, dark roast, as soon as the girl behind the counter asked him what he'd like. She smiled demurely and moved to a tall stack of paper cups, retrieving the size ordered. A few seconds later she placed a steaming hot cup with a plastic lid on it before him. He thanked the woman, paid and moved to a table by a window to drink his brew in peace.

A clock on the wall rang out the hour with nine rings of a weak bell that had seen better days. John looked around for something to read, his favorite pastime as he drank his coffee. A newspaper caught his attention on a table across the room. No one was sitting there so he got up and claimed the paper for his own perusal.

The headline caught his attention immediately as he sat down. Three women had been brutally murdered in their beds over the night. Neighbors had called police with disturbing complaints of strange noises that caused them to believe something was wrong. Three stories were filed from different parts of the city but captioned under one heading. Though written by different reporters, the stories could have been the same. A young woman in her early twenties was attacked and killed. Their necks were broken. More disturbing than the attacks on sleeping women was the revelation that each of them had been pregnant and that the fetus had been ripped out of their bodies.

John thought about the stories and the person who must have committed these heinous crimes. That was a person, he believed, who operated from the Dark. Evil for the sake of continuing the life of evil. Someone who lived just to inflict damage in the human plane with no regard for the beauty or the sanctity of life here.

Funny, he smiled to himself. Not the murders. Those were awful. What was funny was how he now viewed evil. Not like he had been taught in the church. Sin and sinners on a rampage. Though they probably still applied in their own limited way. But now he saw evil as a product of the lives of those living in the Dark. Darkness had a plan to survive and thrive just as did those of the Light or even like those of the Mist. It was just another plane of existence trying to make its way as best it could.

He remembered his thoughts of the darkness he had seen coming on the horizon. He wondered if this news headline represented what he had seen. Maybe. He was still new to this spiritual plane thing. He had no trouble believing it existed but he was so new to understanding it, he double thought every sensation and experience until he had no idea what it really meant.

Considering his predilection to over examining everything, John had no clear answer to his question of whether this front page darkness he was reading about had anything to do with the darkness he had seen in his mind. He thought about calling on Marcie and asking her to help him consider it but decided to wait. Maybe later. He turned to the sports page of the paper and sipped his coffee as he read about the latest football dramas.

Chapter Ten

Saph walked around in the shadows of the buildings as he moved through the debris of the warehouse district. He could walk in the sun in his physical materialization but old habits were hard to erase. He kept to the shadows and felt at ease knowing they had at least come partially into this plane for a time. It would still be a couple months before they could claim their bodies from the fully developed seeds when they were birthed. Part of him was saddened by the need to kill the host mother afterward because she could not be allowed to give witness to the habitation of the Alliance brothers in the birthed children. But it was necessary for their plan to work. They needed to anonymously take over as those birthed children to create a legal existence in this plane. Then they could grow up normally with the humans, find each other later and begin their domination of the human plane again.

Personally he had liked the old plan they had executed the last time they dominated the earth in this human plane. Then their father had found five suitable virgins who had just entered womanhood and were strong enough in their sexual energies to carry his seed. He had impregnated them and cared for them while they nurtured the brothers inside their bodies. At birth they had come out walking. Five months later, they had been adult men, ready to stand beside their father and take on the world they lived in.

Those had been glorious days of battle and victory, back then. He and his brothers had championed the cause of a small band of people who had accepted them. It had been a fantastic time of revelry and fighting and just enjoying the sensations of the human kind. Their mothers had been exalted by all the people as blessed of the gods. They were seen as super women who had given birth to supermen. Their father had not been able to stay because he was not actually of the human plane. He had left Gol in charge and given him charge over the fate of their kind in the human plane. That was when the Alliance had been born. Five brothers over the world of human kind.

Saph enjoyed his memories of the past as he strolled around the new confines of their desolate existence. It was better than remaining in the spiritual plane they inhabited when not in physical form. They had a place given to them by the Creator of Life when they were first created. It was a world of giants like themselves. They were nothing special there. Just another family going through the motions of living in a world planned for them. But their hearts reached out for more. Their father had made a deal with Dark and found a way to travel to the human plane back in the near history of the human plane. Now it consumed the brothers to once again find a way back to the plane where they felt alive and dominant. They loved that feeling. It was also their father's desire for them. They were half human after all.

The seed watched Saph walking from building to building. He was squatting down, making a low profile in a deep set of shadows at the end of a row of dilapidated buildings. He had made his way across town under cover of the fading darkness. Now he watched the desolate place where he knew he would find the brothers. He hoped to catch them one at a time. He was barely a match for them then. He would need the element of surprise to take them. If they caught him with two or more of them present, he would most likely not survive, unless he could capitalize on their hesitancy to break the deals in this plane. Such was their desire to remain here. However, he was not planning on being able to out think them if they out numbered him. He would watch and plan a way to take them one at a time.

Though he saw Saph was alone now, he needed to have a better plan than just picking them off one at a time. Once one was killed, the others would be on alert. That would make his task much harder. He needed surprise to make the most of this opportunity. He needed a way to get them all together, within a short distance, but not actually within sight of one another. That would take some watching and planning. But he was confident that he could accomplish it. He had to. His life depended on it. The brothers might not come after him now that he was out and had strength. But once they found a way to reenter the world of the humans, they would hunt him down and destroy him if for no other reason than their own desire to dominate this plane for themselves. It was either them or him. He planned on it being him.

Kathy awoke in an empty bed. Her first thought was to wonder where John was. Then she saw the clock by the bed. Eleven. She felt a pang of guilt. She had gotten carried away with Emil last night. They had enjoyed a prolonged experience within the Mist and she had taken much longer in her "walk" than she had planned. It was almost two by the time she had slipped out of her clothes again and slipped under the covers with her husband.

John would have been up for hours already, she surmised. Probably also found a coffee shop. He was predictable that way. Early riser, even when he didn't need to be. Then he always turned to the morning bracer of black coffee and something to read. She smiled as she realized how well she had learned his morning habits already. She loved learning him. It was like a whole new extension of her own life lived out through her husband. A fantastic adventure waiting to be explored and lived all over again. That was how she viewed her life with John. Marriage. Not just an institution of relationship, but an opportunity to take life to new levels. They were one. He and she. Him and her. John and Kathy.

For several minutes Kathy moved her arms and legs back and forth in the bed, running them over the soft sheets time and time again, taking in the sensation the friction created in her limbs. Life. Something that until a few months ago she took for granted. Now, it was everything she had ever dreamed it would be. Love. Companionship. Purpose. Stability. Protection. A future. That was what she had now. She had a future before but did not care what it was. Now, with John in the picture, she had a future and she cared about it. Deeply.

She lay on her back spreading her legs and pulling them back in again. The heat generated underneath her legs against the warm sheets was sensuous. It reminded her of last night with Emil. Her other lover. He had taken her beyond just feeling good last night. He had transported her to a world of sensations and experience that made mere earthly delights seem pale in comparison. And he had not just given her a taste of it and then sent her home. He had allowed her to dive in and revel in the experience for as long as she desired. That was what made her so late. She had expected a quickie in the pathway by the river but Emil had brought an entire ten course picnic for the soul. His as much as hers. It had been wondrous and wonderful. She knew that it was the experience every couple aspired to in the natural but she had experienced it in the spiritual where it was originally conceived. That made a normal encounter in the natural a lesser event sensually if not totally.

As she lay there remembering her walk with Emil last night, she wondered if sex in the spiritual plane would change or dampen her desire for sex with John. She hoped not. That would be terrible. For a moment she allowed that fear to run through her. She couldn't lose John. He had been her salvation. Without him, she would have just been a woman wasting away in a small seaside town. She could not let anything ruin what they had. No matter how good it was in the spiritual plane, she had to live her life with John, here.

As she moved to get up, she felt the twinge of memory between her legs. It had been good, she smiled to herself. She would not regret the good. She would add to it. She would find John and add to it. She laughed to herself as she moved to the shower. She would find John and add to it wherever she found him. She hoped it was not too public a place. As the hot water cascaded over her body, she wondered what John's reserved mother would think if she ever knew the promiscuous thoughts her daughter in law had about her well raised son. Her laughter echoed off the ceramic walls of the bathroom as she cleaned her body of the previous evening's activities. She didn't think of it as washing Emil off. Instead, she thought of it as washing Emil in. Deeper. That was how she thought off him. Inside her. Deeper.

Gol was furious. He had visited each of the apartments of the host mothers of their seeds. Each had been viciously torn apart after having their necks broken. Three had been reported in the paper. The fourth had not been found in time to make the paper. But the television stories announced that a vicious killer was on the loose, killing young mothers to be and tearing open their wombs to steal their unborn children. The humans did not know the whole story, but Gol did. He saw the handiwork of the seed.

His rage was part anger at the ruination of their plan to birth shells for a human existence. The other part was his own inability to stop the seed from continuing his murderous existence. He had set the seed free when he failed to inspect the body of the Cranston woman. He regretted that oversight now. He had made this problem and it was causing the downfall of all his brothers and he had worked towards. They were in this plane now. Their energy stores were dangerously low. Adequate for living here but not for any special moving about, which they obviously still needed to do with this threat of the seed hanging over them. And it was all his fault. He had been the leader. His father had left him in charge. He alone had decided to undertake this existence and recapture the glory of the life they once knew in the human plane. It was because of him that they were all there now instead of going back to their own plane.

The seed had been gathering energy. That was plain. He did not consume the women or their blood, which was good in one way. Less explanation for the murderous rampage the police now had to deal with. A monster who tore fetuses out of a womb was bad enough. But one that drank the mother's blood and consumed her spirit would have set off spiritual alarms all over the country.

Gol was thankful the seed could only consume the other seeds one at a time. It left a gruesome but somewhat explainable murder scene behind. Nasty and disgusting to the human mind, but not a flag raising spiritual onslaught the religious nuts would jump on. The mother's blood and spirit would have been an overload that would have slowed the seed down. He would not have been able to get to all of the seeds in one night if he had stopped to consume the mother's energies too. The seed was thinking things out. He was making sure the brothers did not get a chance to stop him as well as providing for his own energy needs.

Still, the seed had to be in need of more energy. The seeds of the brothers would have developed at normal human rates. Gol's wayward seed had to be developing at twenty or thirty times the regular rate. It needed to attain adulthood as fast as possible to create its own safety position. That meant the seed was still hungry. And human energies would be too small to feed it all it needed to thrive. There was only one source in the human plane that would satisfy the seed now. Gol needed to get back and warn his brothers. This was no longer a plan of dominating the human world. It had now become a plan of surviving the hunter that was stalking them.

Saph, Lah, Ish and Tos had been accounted for. The Seed was satisfied that Gol was nowhere around. The four brothers were alone. He could see their diminished energies, too. It had cost them a lot to move to the physical realm of the human plane. They had not yet set up feeding levels sufficient to sustain their now physical bodies. Saph was still out walking. Lah was alone in a building that overlooked an old field that was overgrown with weeds. Ish and Tos were preparing some kind of meal from whatever it was they had brought back with them a few minutes ago. It smelled awful from the seed's vantage point. The air brought the smell to him in gusting whiffs of acrid smoke and oily fragrance. Meat. They were grilling meat. U-h-h-h-g. The Seed preferred his meat fresh. Uncooked. Full of all it's energies.

He knew that as he progressed, he would also have to revert to this human form of preparing food for consumption. It was the expected way in the human plane. The human body also had trouble dealing with raw meats. Digestion was a touchy thing in humans. Physical bodies required one to obey the physical laws. He resented the day he would no longer be allowed to savor the blood of the kill. That was not allowed in the human plane. The lack of blood energies kept the human body too weak to move from plane to plane. It was part of the deal between the Creator of Life and the humans. No blood energies. To partake of the blood for humans would be breaking a deal with the Creator of Life. Instead of bringing them freedom to roam the panes, such a blood meal in the human plane would send the deal breaker forever to the Place of Chains. Of course, in the physical existence of the human plane there was still the option of asking forgiveness. That singular characteristic of the human plane allowed the wrongdoer a chance to erase the slate, so to speak, and return to the proper balance of Life by stopping the wrongdoing and going in a proper direction from then on.

Spiritual energies were of no value in the human plane either. Not because they had no strength or real power, but because the humans ignored it. Power has to be given in the human plane. Possessing it was not enough. Because of the deal with the Creator of Life as their protector, every human also had the ability to deny the power others possessed. Indeed, humans seemed to make a life out of living below their abilities and dragging others along. With statements of denial, human leaders sought to exclude everything except whatever the leaders chose to acknowledge. Humans were such fickle and degenerate creatures that they thought progress was making bigger and bigger boxes to live within. The spiritual planes understood that the only real progress was living without any boxes at all. That was a spiritual knowledge. Humans had freedom but chose to exert limitations on one another as a means of control.

The fluid energies in humans were limited to a committed relationship by the Creator of Life, thus limiting the growth of spiritual strength, which met at the point of sexual consummation between a male and female. This limitation ensured a lack of desire to attain a different level of existence. Not that there was anything wrong with living in the human plane. It was just limited in the experiences of life afforded it. The experiences were there, but they were not. They were limited by the relationship a human had with the Creator of Life. The better the relationship the greater the freedom to experience life at a higher level. Humans did not travel the planes because their relationships to one another kept them at home.

Humans had created a devil spirit to offset any attempt to experience life in its fullest extent by other humans. Humans were control freaks if nothing else. Not that the spirit of the Dark did not exist. He did. And he was indeed the antithesis of all that the Creator of Life stood for. But he was never intended to be the reason for a human to be in good relationship with the Creator of Life. Choice was not about persuasion or even a decision between bad and good. Choice was about recognizing all that was available for enjoying life and choosing to enjoy it. Life was the goal of the Creator of Life. Death was never supposed to be one of the choices.

Humans were so limited in the life they enjoyed, yet they were given the freedom of choice to explore it in great detail, if they only knew how. In other planes, where procreation was possible, those born there were taught the joys of life and all that the Creator had made available to everyone. Only in the human plane was there a destructive streak of self control that forced the choice proposition to become a deal between humans and the Creator of Life.

Choosing the Creator of Life as the Creator of Life was complete silliness in every plane except the human plane. There, certain humans, under the direction and influence of members of the Dark, had created an alternative to the life the Creator of Life designed that really did not exist. They did it to maintain control over others. The Dark wants to be in control, but they have to have permission from the sanctioned creatures of the human plane to even operate there. Certain humans, assessing that they could achieve a measure of control with this affiliation with the Dark, bought into this alternative to the Creator of Life. Thus was born the devil and the adversaries to the Creator of Life. In truth, none matched the Creator of Life or threatened him. All dark influences in the human plane were just other planes of existence trying to exert some control over the human existence.

Humans had choice and the Seed had a choice to make now. Take the brothers he could see and find Gol later, or wait until they were all together? His hunger made the choice for him. He needed to feed again. Before the weakness started. If he waited too late, he would be no match for any of them even with surprise on his side. His need for growth dictated his need for more energy.

Tos left his brother grilling the meat they had acquired and went to try on the new clothes they had brought back. Clothes were a novelty that only a few of the planes utilized. Spiritually, no one needed clothes. Humans wore them to cover up their nakedness and thwart the sexual awareness that threatened to overcome their dignified societies. Wearing them was a new sensation that Tos enjoyed. Each type of material brought new sensations to the nerves in the human skin. He liked testing out different materials just for that fact. They all felt different to his skin.

Engrossed in the sensation of the soft material wrapped around his legs, Tos did not hear the movement behind him until it was too late. He turned in time to see a small figure moving with an incredible speed. The first sensation was of fire and a pain that fully engulfed his shoulder upward to the top of his head. The last sensation was being driven into a dark place from which there was no return.

The Seed did not dare take the time to enjoy his conquest or to feed more than a few drops of the blood to replace the energy he had used to make the kill. Time was of the essence if he was to keep surprise on his side.

Making noise, like he had observed Tos making in his comings and goings, he approached Ish from behind. Ish never turned to see his brother coming. He just assumed it was him. The noise was the same, mostly. When he thought something sounded slightly off about Tos' movement, it was too late. The Seed was already upon him. Ish was overcome with a swift attack that swiveled his head in an unnatural twist of the human form neck. A great cracking and crunching accompanied the shifting position of the giant's head. His eyes glazed over before the body ever fell. The Seed stood looking at his handiwork. Two down.

He found Lah still watching any approach from the east. It was the direction Gol had left in. Presumably, he would also return from that direction. Lah would not be there to see it. From where the Seed stood by the big wall of windows, Lah laid on the dirty, debris covered floor with his head twisted in a manner that defied any presumption of life still existing in that body. Even if Lah were an owl, the small amount of skin holding that head on was too twisted and constricted for the furious attack the Seed had used. He had spun around Lah twice while holding that head in his firm grip. Lah's body had remained immobile, stunned, and he had thought he might twist the head clean off, but the resiliency of the human skin was remarkable. It held even after such damaging twisting. Remarkable, the Seed thought as he viewed Lah's dead human body.

Saph was out in the open when the Seed came upon him. He assessed Saph's course and adjusted his position to come up behind the giant as he passed by one end of a building. Crouching in the darkest part of the shadows, the Seed depended upon the natural inclination to believe the first view of the shadows was all that was there without actually seeing into the depths of a shadow. Saph looked, assessed all as safe and passed by without alarm. That was when the Seed pounced. Speed, accuracy, and deadly efficiency combined to send Saph to the permanent Dark from where he came.

Four bodies lay on the ground or dirty floors of the abandoned buildings of the desolate place. The Seed had done his part to cause it to be even more desolate. Now, he waited. There was one more that he needed to deal with. Dragging the bodies together, he started his feed. He would be strong when Gol returned. If nothing else he would be satisfied.

John returned to their room in time to see Kathy strut from the bathroom in her birthday suit. The sight of her naked form caused an ache to form in his lower regions. He gave brief pause to consider giving in to his instinct to take what was before him. But it was getting close to lunch time and he wanted to eat. Kathy would be hungry, too. She had not eaten much at supper the night before. He knew she had a lot on her mind. Becoming part of the Mist in a greater fashion seemed to affect her more than it had him. He thought she needed her space to deal with all the things the Mist offered to the mind. She was the kind of person that needed to explore everything. He knew she would, too. Space. That was his answer for her.

Right now, he needed food. She smiled at him as she rubbed her naked body slowly, teasingly, a few more times with the towel and let it fall to the carpet. She bent over to retrieve her clothes, which she had already laid out on the bed and John knew that special ache again. Beautiful. He enjoyed wanting her as much as he loved fulfilling his every desire with her. It was a glorious desire that filled him and washed over his person letting him know he was definitely still alive. Later, he knew he could fulfill that desire in a personal way that would make the waiting worthwhile. And he intended to.

"Horrible murders in the paper this morning." John started the conversation.

"Murders?" Kathy questioned the plural use of murder.

"Yes. Three mothers-to-be killed in their beds and their fetuses torn out."

Kathy grimaced at the picture his description evoked.

"Torn out?" She winced as she said it.

"That's what it says. Must be some deranged killer on the loose."

"Maybe we should help with that investigation, too." Kathy suggested. "Baby killers even before the baby was born. That's extreme at the least."

"Disgusting is more like it," John added.

"And I was looking forward to getting some lunch before you told me about that."

"Sorry," John meant it. He had not thought about the picture such a gruesome crime might evoke. He just didn't think like that. But he knew Kathy did. She could picture everything.

"It's okay. I wanted to go out to the accident scene with Emil before I ate anyway. Thought we might survey the area, get what memories we could from Emil and then discuss it over a great lunch at that Italian restaurant we saw driving in."

John remembered the restaurant. He wanted to eat there, too. He was hungry now, but it had been his fault that she wanted to wait. He was eating as a couple now. He did not set the timetable on his own plans any more. Neither could he afford to act like he was alone, either. Caution would have to be the watchword before telling such stories in the future. It was affecting his dietary practices, now. That made it worth thinking twice about. Living with Kathy was making him learn all kinds of new things. She was so amazing and so much a part of who he was now. She deserved his thinking twice before speaking.

"Sure," he relented. "I located the place on a map. It's way over on the other side of town."

"A long drive?"

"About a half hour, I imagine."

"Can you hold out that long?" She inquired about his need to eat. He had ruined her appetite and still, she thought about his. He loved her all the more for being that kind of a person. He could wait.

"I can wait to eat," he announced. "Could probably miss a few meals so I can fit into my pants."

"Yeah, like you're getting fat or something." Kathy laughed and hugged him. She was not completely dressed yet and her cool skin felt good against his arms as they wrapped themselves automatically around her.

"If you aren't careful you could excite another desire in me," John warned her with a chuckle.

"Sounds like a plan to me," Kathy breathed in his aroma deeply. "I see you found a coffee shop." She laughed and pushed him away. "Leave me here in bed all naked and slip away for some coffee. Seems like you made a bad choice, Buster."

He winced at her use of Marcie's pet name for him. He wished she would not use it. He would never say so, though. That would make her use it all the more. She liked pushing his buttons. And Marcie was a point that definitely pushed his buttons.

"Okay. Okay. Let's go. I have to eat sometime today."

Kathy laughed as she finished dressing and smoothing out her look. John watched. She was more beautiful than ever. She absolutely glowed with a radiance of life he only hoped he could one day achieve. She was the best person he had ever known.

Chapter Eleven

Gol approached the desolate place from the east as he had left. It was a round about way but they did not want anyone seeing them come of go. It was a necessary inconvenience. No sooner was he in sight of the old buildings than he knew something was wrong. He could sense no life. Human life forms gave off a particular energy level that he could always read. Even half humans. The absence of any emanation from the buildings gave him cause for alarm. His brothers would not have left except under the most dire of circumstances. And if they left there had to be a great cause.

He stopped his approach and changed direction. Going back the way he came, he circled around and entered the district from the north. He moved stealthily using all the skills of the warrior that he was. Far beyond ordinary skills in human warfare, he also possessed the skill of his clan from beyond the human plane. Combined with his faster speed and quicker thinking mind, he was invincible in the human plane. It had taken the Creator of Life to vanquish him long ago. He feared no human. Surprise was always a good tactic, but whoever awaited him now had better have more than surprise on his side. He was Gol. Warrior of warriors. Not only was he the leader of the Alliance of brothers. He was also the eldest son. As such, he possessed a double portion of everything.

He sensed it before he saw it. The Seed was feeding. An alarm went off in Gol's head as he realized what that meant. It was strengthening itself at the expense of his brother's life forces. The Seed had consumed them. He had drunk their blood and vanquished them back to their own plane of existence. They were the Alliance so, unless one of them was in the plane of the Alliance when the others were killed, they could not choose to go there. They were all here. Their home plane was all that was left to them at death. Or inside the Seed, making him even greater and stronger. They would not have chosen that. Gol knew that he alone was left in the human plane.

Gol knew a moment of sadness. Quick. Merciful. Over and done with. Time to move on. The Seed must be dealt with. Gol knew he had made this mess. He would clean it up. And he would find a way to get his brother's back, too. He made himself that promise as he approached the feeding Seed.

"I knew you would come." The Seed did not look up from its meal.

Gol waited. He said nothing. There was nothing to say. He was here to kill this Seed. He would do it or die trying. His strength and skills were far beyond anything the Seed could have possessed by this time in its development, even with its premature entry. He had considered this meeting all night as he had searched for signs of the Seed and followed its path of destruction. He had been too late to do their seeds any good. He had not arrived in time to warn his brothers. He would rectify all that now.

"What? Nothing to say, Daddy?"

The Seed spoke in a manner and tone that was designed to provoke Gol to attack. If Gol attacked, he violated his right to be in the human plane. He was only allowed to defend himself. Any attack initiated by Gol would break the deal of protection humans had with the Creator of Life. The Seed was not fully human and not sanctioned by the Creator of Life, but he was in the human plane by no means of his own devising. As a free and spirited life form, he had the right to defend himself against any attack and expect the Creator of Life to help him. Gol would not take any chances because he was still trying to work out a plan to bring his brothers back and dominate this world. The Seed knew all this.

Gol said nothing.

"Come to kill me? You'll have to attack me to do that." The Seed spoke through its small, childish mouth but used adult words of provocation against Gol.

Gol waited. All that was necessary was for the Seed to make the first move. He knew the outcome. Unless the Seed had come out of the woman stupid, it also knew the outcome. This was only a matter of time waiting to be played out. One of them was not leaving this place. Gol knew which one of them it was. He would bide his time.

"I'm not moving or fleeing or anything that would provoke a response from you." The Seed maintained.

Gol said nothing. He just watched. Waited.

"Want some?" The Seed lifted the head of Saph and showed Gol the brain matter he had been consuming. Gol could sense no spiritual energy left there. Saph had already fled to go home. All that was left was the blood energy, which Gol knew violated the deal with blood in this plane.

It was taking more of Gol's strength than he had imagined to stand still and accept the goading of the upstart Seed. He dared not respond because he might give in to his own personal nature and attack. He watched as the Seed lowered his head and chewed off a mouthful of Saph's human brain. He knew it was not really Saph. It was just the idea of this little creature making believe he was important that riled Gol. No one could measure how badly he wanted to annihilate this errant Seed. There was no instrument in existence in any plane that could fully fathom the hatred that burned inside Gol at the moment. He had created this Seed. He was going to destroy it. Not just kill the body. He was going to destroy its life force and take it inside himself. There was nowhere for the Seed to go. It did not belong to any other plane of existence. The only place it could go was back to where it originated. With himself.

John and Kathy arrived at the site of Emil's accident with the sun directly overhead. The bright orb overhead was a reminder of the noon day hour, which only served to reinforced John's memory that it was lunch time. He pushed the growling in his stomach back down and exited the Jeep to join Kathy at the side of the road.

Emil had led them to the spot where his crushed body had lain. John was surprised to discover that the spot where Emil indicated still held residual energy like a cloud of muddy water in a pond. He could see the very outline of where Emil's body must have lain. An elongated elliptical area in the grass a few feet from the edge of the road.

"Here?" John indicated what he saw.

"Precisely," Emil answered.

"Can you see it?" Marcie wanted to know.

"I see a muddy place in the grass. Not actually in the grass. More like the view I have of the grass is muddied up."

"That's it." Marcie told him. "You definitely have the sight for Dark things."

John was not so sure that was a good thing. It scared him that he could see things that were not actually there in the normal world. Of course, what he considered the normal world was not really here, either. It was only a plane of existence. Real was a matter of perspective. His was changing constantly.

Kathy was staring at the grass like it would reveal something to her. John had no doubt that if the grass knew something it would jump at the chance to answer her and do something for her. He could see that around Kathy had grown a dark smudge of image that seemed to loom behind her. He reasoned that her being in the vicinity of the muddy image he was viewing in the grass was affecting her own image.

"Any thoughts about what happened here?" Kathy asked in her head. She was addressing Marcie and Emil as well as John.

"I died here." No one laughed at Emil's joke.

"Anything constructive?" Kathy's irritation at the joke was apparent.

"Hey, It's my death we're talking about here," Emil reminded her.

"I know. I'm just thinking about the women who were killed and had their babies torn out of them this morning or last night or whenever it happened." Kathy admitted.

"Saw John reading about it this morning," Marcie offered.

"Didn't say anything," John complained. He was not used to the comings and goings of his Mist friends yet. He wasn't sure he would ever get used to them. His religious training was too ingrained.

"Didn't figure you wanted any company." She complained back.

"All right, guys," Kathy broke it up. "We need something to go on, here. We can check the police reports but I have a feeling the parents have already done that and would have shared whatever they knew with us already."

"I got the feeling they gave us whatever they knew, too," John added his observations, trying to get back in Kathy's good graces. It was Marcie's fault anyway. She always started it by making nasty remarks.

"It wasn't a nasty remark," Marcie reminded him she could hear his thoughts.

"Well, it was made in a nasty way, then," John maintained.

"Just speaking the truth. You were not acting like you wanted me around so I left you alone."

"How do you know what I wanted?" John asked the one hundred and thirty year old, little girl ghost in his head.

"You thought about calling on me but decided to wait until later. Is it later now?" Marcie reminded John of his thoughts when he was considering the story and his thoughts of the darkness coming on the horizon.

John shut up. He was not designed to argue. Marcie was a master debater. Must be something about her being killed as a precocious little tyke.

"I remember lying there and looking up at the guy looking back at me in his car." Emil broke up the spat between John and Marcie.

"Did he know he had hit you?" Kathy asked, glad to move on.

"Must have because he started to get out and then changed his mind. I think he was probably scared because he had hit someone. Whatever his reasoning, a few minutes after he had stopped and looked back, he drove off, leaving me bleeding into the grass."

"Sorry," Kathy meant it. "Not the way people should do each other."

"Can you remember anything new about the car?" John asked, getting into the spirit of the chase.

"Big, black. A Lincoln, I think. Did not notice the license plate. Wasn't really thinking about catching the guy at the time. It was quite painful." Emil shared.

"I can't imagine lying out here alone and bleeding like that." Kathy said walking around the spot Emil had outlined for her in the grass.

"I can," Marcie spoke up.

"I'm sorry you CAN imagine it," John said in an momentary display of compassion towards the entity in his head. "No one should have to go through that."

"I agree. That's why I wanted to help with this. The more cases that are solved the more this kind of crime comes to the attention of the media. Victims are never good news stories. But court cases and verdicts make the news all the time. Put more people away for their crimes and get more attention for the victims, like us." Marcie was on a crusade by her own admission.

"I wish there was some way of stopping any more victims from being hurt and maybe some way of alleviating the pain of memories after the fact." John was sincere.

"Thanks for the wish," Marcie told him. "Only good relationships and moving on takes the brunt of the pain away, though."

"Then I want to be a better friend," John meant it. Too much pain was already out there. He did not want to add to it in any way.

"So do I," Marcie whispered in John's ear in his head. "See me later, Big Boy."

John heard Kathy laughing and knew that Marcie had not whispered only for him to hear. It surprised him to watch how easily Kathy accepted Marcie constantly propositioning her husband. He had much to learn about Kathy. She was a complicated woman. He wondered if he would ever get to the bottom of her bag of tricks.

"Never," Kathy laughed in his head. "You can't even remember that when we're plugged into the Mist I can hear your thoughts."

"Maybe I did remember," John responded and gave her a wicked smile.

"Well, aren't we just the little tease today?" Kathy laughed out loud.

John loved that sound. It was the sound of hope. He wondered if there was much laughter at the Gallot's house. They didn't seem to be all that humorous to him. Didn't exude much hope, either.

"I wondered the same thing, myself," Emil said in his head.

A momentary pause filled the time as John and Kathy surveyed the scene and tried to imagine the night of the accident. Emil had given them a pretty good picture of the events and the time line. They were trying to get a better view of it with all the background of actually seeing the place where it happened. Both John and Kathy wanted so much to be able to bring hope back into the life of Emil's parents. John because he had lived his whole life wishing his father had found something besides being used to be hoped for and Kathy because she wanted to erase the bad her father had done to so many families. But they needed to learn something the parents did not already know. Answers. That's what would bring hope to them now. Answers.

Gol waited. The Seed finished his meal and was growing antsy. Gol was depending on the energy of youth to drive the Seed to try and escape. Gol was blocking the door. Going out the windows was not an option because of the risk of cuts. A bad cut would bleed off too much energy and possibly drain the Seed before it could get medical attention. Though human in form, the Seed was still of the brothers physical makeup. And the blood in the human plane flowed freely once allowed to escape. That's why so few existences in the planes were in physical forms. Too much opportunity for blood to flow.

Gol knew that the Seed would not risk getting cut unless there was no other option. Even then, it would probably fight before making a dash through the windows. They were small paned and had metal bracings on them that looked old and rusted. A nasty cut was almost a sure thing if the Seed chose that route. It would make it easy to track at the least. Blood left a good trail to follow.

"How's it feel to be so old you can not remember what it was like to be young any more?"

The Seed challenged Gol again, trying to provoke the giant to attack. The Seed knew that it could not make a break for it until Gol made some move to attack. He needed Gol to make the first move so that his escape move would not be considered an attack. Gol was blocking the only way out. He had to escape. He held no notion that he could match Gol in strength, speed or stamina. Not yet. He needed time and energy to complete his growth process. He could feel it building inside him. He needed time. He had to get away and allow his new body time to generate the strength he would require to face Gol. Facing Gol was a guaranteed proposition. They would forever be at odds since he had thwarted Gol's plan by arriving early. But the timing of the showdown would be better for him if he could get away and fight another day.

Gol could not only recall what it was like to be young, he had spent his entire life beyond the realm of the human plane remembering it so that he would not repeat the mistake when he got another chance. He had been young once and cocky. He had challenged the people of the Creator of Life to a duel of submission. A one on one fight. Their best against him. They had sent out a young man, not more than a boy. He had been sure of himself and took no care for his safety against such a small, insignificant opponent. The boy had been no warrior. There was no glory to be gained by killing the young man sent against him. Only the stark realities that the enemy was scared of him. While he was reveling in the fear he had planted in the enemy and taunting the boy they had sent out to him, he did not pay attention to what the enemy was up to.

They had invoked a call to their benefactor, the Creator of Life. He had answered and, in His way of showing off His great power, had sent them a child to rescue them from their tormentor. The Creator of Life was like that. If he had to get involved, after he had already given them everything they needed, he was going to teach them a lesson, too. The lesson was simple. The youngest or smallest among you, who depended on the Creator of Life for everything, was more than enough to meet any challenge designed to overthrow what the Creator of Life set in place.

In his youthful ignorance, Gol had forgotten that he was challenging the chosen people of the Creator of Life. This absence of forethought made him make the mistake of not expecting anything more than a young man and a young man's fighting skills when he saw his opponent on the field of battle. He took the scene at face value, much as the Seed was now. And, just as he had been felled by that young man with a stone to his forehead, he would see this Seed meet a suitable end.

"It is not my memory that you need to worry about." Gol spoke for the first time.

"So, my opponent speaks. Have you come to kill me or to swear your submission before me?" The child-like Seed smiled wickedly, the blood of his meal showing in his taunting smile.

Gol shook his head at the taunt. The Seed was too young to know. He would not hold that against him. After all, he had created the Seed. But he would use his youth against him. All was fair in love and war. And this was war.

"As a man thinks in his heart, so is he," Gol quoted an often used scripture from the human bible.

"What's that supposed to mean?" The Seed demanded to know.

"Too bad you are not going to be on this earth long enough to learn such things," Gol threatened the Seed.

"Are you threatening me?"

"No rule against threats." Gol laughed now.

He was goading the Seed to think about some action. Unfamiliar with the ways of the warrior, the Seed was not versed in the art of verbal parrying. It would be the same as if he slapped the creature physically. The result would be a physical response from the unpracticed Seed. That would be all Gol needed to act. A deadly scenario was like a gunfight. Whoever moved first started it. Whoever was quickest and most skillful survived it.

"Well, just so you know. I am onto you and your tricks. I am not moving."

"Didn't ask you to. Your thoughts are all that is necessary to provoke an action. Think about moving toward this door and me and I will tear you to pieces before you finish the thought." Gol explained his strategy.

"Not thinking about it." The Seed announced, firmly.

"You will."

"Why?"

"Because now I have planted the thought in your mind. Unfortunately you can not avoid it because you are so unskilled in the ways of the warrior." Gol challenged him again.

"Killed your brothers easily enough." The Seed smiled again.

"Surprise and sneaky tactics have no honor or glory attached to them. You gained nothing but the placing of yourself in an unhonored position to defend yourself against one whose honor is irreproachable."

"You?" The Seed laughed at such a thought.

Gol did not change his expression. He did not change his position. He waited. It was inevitable. The Seed did not know enough about the honor of a warrior to understand what he had done or not done. Gol's words would shake him like a leaf in a storm. The wannabes always felt shame in the presence of the real deal.

"Who are you to talk to me like that?"

"Your executioner," Gol kept his demeanor calm and relaxed. His voice did not raise.

"Again with the threats?"

"A promise." Gol always loved that line. He had to fight to keep the smile from his face.

"You promised to give me life." The Seed accused Gol.

"And I did. Now I promise to destroy you forever. And I will do that, too."

As Gol spoke the Seed tried to take a chance and move away from the door with a feinting move designed to draw Gol away from the opening, leaving it exposed for him to escape. Gol did not bite. He stayed his ground and waited. The Seed had no way of knowing Gol could see speed at a level far beyond anything the Seed was capable of operating in. But the move had been made. Now all that was left was the finish.

The Seed was fast. He moved twice more, making his way swiftly toward the door at the side of Gol. Unfortunately he was as young and unskilled as Gol had been telling him he was. He never saw Gol move. There was never any indication that something had changed. He just felt the pain radiate up his arm and back down to his hips. It was so intense that he had to look down to see the fire that was burning him up. Instead of fire, he saw the opening Gol had ripped in his side. Gol had torn his arm away from its place at his shoulder and ripped downward until the entire side of his torso lay exposed to Gol's view. About the moment the Seed believed Gol's words and regretted his own ambitions, Gol reached into the chest cavity of the Seed he had given life to and pulled the blood pumping organ from its place. The look of incredulity on the Seed's face was the look of youth amazed. The Seed had never considered his death. Now, faced with it, he could not outrun the darkness that chased him. He was still screaming a silent cry of unbelief as Gol devoured his life force and consumed all that he was, taking him back into himself, where he had belonged all along.

Chapter Twelve

No answers came to them immediately. John was the first to admit it. Emil agreed that he was not much help because he was not trying to find justice when he was killed. His concentration had been on staying alive part of the time and on fighting off the debilitating pain the rest of the time. By the time he had accepted the inevitable end he faced, it was too late to collect information on the man who had already disappeared. Being alone on a deserted road, bleeding profusely and drifting in and out of consciousness, Emil could only remember that the car must have needed a tune up because it ran really rough and smelled like bad eggs or something similar.

Kathy shifted around the site a few more minutes and finally gave in too. She sighed heavily as though accepting defeat. Her head was down and she was still obviously considering her options or the scene itself. John smiled as he watched her continue hanging on. She was like a bulldog with a bone. Once she grabbed hold of something, she would not let go. She might leave this scene with no answers but John knew that was not the end of things. Kathy would not accept defeat. He had learned that much about her. Quiet mostly. Forgiving always. But terminally persistent. She would never let up.

While Kathy dealt with her growing frustration and need to decide their next move, John looked toward the horizon for real. Now, the darkness he saw pooling on the horizon had a direction in his mind and in his eyes. It was like the darkness he had seen in his mind's eye was manifesting itself for him to see in the natural. It was close. A mile or two at the most. East. Deeper into the Warehouse District as it had been labeled on the map.

The darkness had become a dark cloud mounting higher toward the sky and filling the mid point on the horizon from his vantage point. Lightning flashes behind the clouds and streaks of electrical bolts met his eyes as he looked toward the disturbance. Thunder rumbled in his ears. A storm was happening not too far away.

"You see that?" John pointed toward the approaching storm. "We're going to get wet in a few minutes."

"Huh?" Kathy acknowledged he had said something, just not that she had heard him.

"Storm coming." John pointed again.

Kathy's eyes followed the direction of his finger and looked back and forth across the horizon. John held his finger and arm extended because it looked like she was having trouble focusing.

"Where?" she asked.

"Right there." John was incredulous. "That big dark cloud, duh." He teased her.

"What cloud?" She was serious.

"You can't see that huge, black cloud filling up the sky and half the horizon?"

"All I see is clear sky and a few birds flying by." Kathy declared.

"What do you see, John?" Marcie entered the conversation and spoke in their minds.

"A huge, dark cloud rising up into the air really high. There's lots of lightning and I can hear thunder, too."

"And you see this with your natural eyes, not just in your mind?" She pushed for more information.

"Yeah, my natural eyes."

"Then it is a battle of the Darkness. A dark cloud signifies the Dark is operating and you have seen that coming for a while. The lightning and the thunder signify that a great battle is going on. Not just something evil happening, but an actual fight between two or more powerful members of the Dark." Marcie explained a little about what she knew of his vision in the natural.

"Then it is real?" John asked.

"Real and part of more than one plane apparently." Marcie added. "The fact you saw it coming in your mind for a while and now can see it in the actual plane where you exist means the battle is real and taking place in the human plane and the location will be right under that dark cloud you can see."

"What should we do?" John was curious about how he was supposed to respond to this new development in his relationship with the spiritual realms.

"The choice is always yours," Marcie made her words slow and clear. "Not everyone can see such things, so being able to see them makes you somewhat responsible to the things you see. But only you can decide what needs to be done about what you see. Maybe it's a warning to run. Maybe it's a warning to go help. Maybe it's something you see and will help someone else understand later, like you can see the place where Emil died. It could be that you see what is there and can do something about it or with it, but maybe not always. Again, only you can decide what and when and if, something can, should or will be done. You'll learn about dealing with the clouds as you experience them more and more."

"You're just so clear and concise about all this." John joked, trying to lighten the situation a little.

"Concise is exactly what one can not be with such things. Only the Creator of Life knows all things. The rest of us are left to figure it out as we go."

"I think we should go take a look," Kathy offered. "That way, when you see what's happening, you can make a better decision about what to do next. Can't see anything from here. How can you make a decision based on what you don't understand yet. See it. Understand it. Decide."

She sounded so sure of herself that John was convinced, too. Her words went right along with Kathy's desire for him to delve deeper into the world of the Mist and learn more about the spiritual secrets of the planes like she was doing. She wanted them to progress together and she looked for every opportunity to suggest ways for them to do that.

"I was thinking that maybe I should investigate the cloud and see what it really means." John lied. He was going along with what Kathy suggested. Everyone knew that what he had really been thinking was more along the lines of getting the hell out of there. But no one said anything.

Minutes later, John pulled the Jeep over to the side of the asphalt against one of the buildings underneath the darkest part of the cloud he could see. It was so clear in his eyes that he could not understand how Kathy could not see it. And if it was spiritual, how come Emil and Marcie could not see it? Anyway, he was here. He could at least take a look. Maybe it would give him some perspective on future sightings of the dark cloud. He didn't know. He put aside his misgivings at the gift he seemed to have been given, if that was what it was.

The lightning seemed to be centered over one building. He headed that way with Kathy close behind, following his lead. He was the adventurer and she was his adventure mate. Two intrepid explorers,maneuvering between the piles of debris and searching for the source of John's mysterious storm. Kathy enjoyed following John. He took the lead so infrequently, except when he felt he was expected to lead. She liked knowing he was in front, taking her forward and on to whatever lay ahead. She would follow him anywhere. Even to the end of the earth, she smiled to herself.

"Girl, you got it bad," Marcie whispered in Kathy's ear so only Kathy could hear her. Their own private conversation.

"You have no idea," Kathy giggled to herself and Marcie, privately. "Before I met John, I had this belief that all men were idiots with some kind of brain damage that made them get more stupid as they got older."

Marcie laughed in Kathy's head.

"Not John, though?" Marcie asked.

"Not John. His pureness reached right through every defense I ever had and shook me awake. It was like he reached right inside me and turned something on. Something that was turned off and was not supposed to be. He fixed whatever wasn't working and I had to find out more about the guy who could do that for me."

"Yeah, girl, I know what he turned on for you." Marcie giggled in her school girl way.

"Well, yeah...that, too." Kathy admitted. "But that was part of what was turned off. My defense systems included that and everything else that left me open to a real relationship. I can't explain it. John just walked up, smiled his stupidest grin and took my heart prisoner forever."

"Wow!" Marcie exclaimed. "I've had some good relationships, but never anything like that. I've never even read about stuff like that."

"That's because you were killed too young to get your hands on those kinds of books," Kathy reminded Marcie of her young age when she entered the Mist.

"Still, Love is what we are all about. Someday you'll be a fantastic addition to our cache of love in here." Marcie made her pitch for Kathy choosing the Mist when it came her time to die in the natural.

"Sounds like my kind of place," Kathy laughed and followed her husband into the building.

"I hear something," John said as soon as they were a few feet inside the building. He could still see the cloud even though he had gone inside. Obviously it was not a natural cloud. They tended to stay outside in the natural world.

"Go slow. Be careful." Marcie advised. "It is never wise to make the Dark mad. Although they can not hurt us of the Mist, you two are human and the human plane can be a bad place if the whatever it is from the Dark so chooses.

"I hear you." John was running on adrenaline again. It had been a while since the last time he had felt this rush of energy flooding through him. This time it was giving him faith that he could keep moving instead of a feeling of immobility.

Kathy stayed close behind her husband. They rounded a corner of a high wall and stepped out into a large room that was probably some kind of work shop or construction facility in its glory days. John saw him first.

He looked nine feet tall. His chest and arms were covered in blood and the lower part of his face was smeared with the sticky substance though not covered. He was intent on eating the lump of flesh he had in his hands. They were huge hands, too. At least a foot across, each. Large even in proportion to his huge body. He was clothed, though the clothing was torn and hanging from his body in places. He did not look up at their intrusion, but only concentrated on the meal of raw, bloody flesh he was consuming. His black, unruly hair gave him a wild look in case one missed the gleam of the crazed victor in his eye. John took it all in and started moving back the way they had come, bumping into Kathy as she stood riveted to her spot on the floor.

The giant was amazing in her eyes. A huge specimen that was a man in essence but more than a man. A god. A present from the gods. He was a perfect man. Muscles and brawn and everything that made a real man tough and strong looking. This large man could hold a woman in a way that made her understand that she was his and no one was going to hurt her. Protection was not an issue and he was a man who oozed the confidence in his presence that made a woman want to be beside him. She barely noticed John bumping into her and passing by her in his retreat to get back behind the wall they had just stepped out from.

"Go, Little man." Gol spoke out loud for John's benefit. "Hide your puny self from the power and strength of Gol." He challenged the man. "I will have mercy on you for the gift of the strong woman that you brought me."

Kathy stood still. Her legs would not move. Her brain told her to go. Her heart told her to explore this giant of a man. See what he had to offer. There was a certain something about him that held her attention and invited her to discover what he was all about. She could sense that he meant her no harm and was even desiring her to stay with him. He wanted her. It was intoxicating to be wanted by such a man. Still, her brain was waving the red flag and calling her to action. Escape.

"Move!" Kathy heard Marcie shouting in her head.

"Yes, now!" Emil added his own urging. "This is a powerful member of the Dark."

Gol cocked his head to one side and smiled as he heard the voices of Marcie and Emil in his own head. Such was his power that all spiritual things were visible to him. It intrigued him to discover that his guests were not ordinary humans. He gave the woman another appraising glance. Then he saw it. She glowed, actually glowed. She was not merely human. She was also of the plane of Mist. He saw it in her glow. She was more than just a human woman sent to him by chance. She was the answer to his desire to procreate in this plane. Only a spiritual woman of such power as this one could birth a child of his. Gol was at once intrigued and captured by her presence. He turned on the charm of his presence like he had not done in many years.

Kathy felt the pull of Gol's presence. It was like a magnet pulling on her heart. Everything in her brain screamed, Run! But her heart gently called to her to give in to Gol's desire for her. The battle in her head was creating an adrenaline rush throughout the rest of her body. She could feel the shaking and quivering in her extremities, meaning the chemical reaction was burning through her.

Then John was at her side, pulling her backward. Her arms flailed at him to stop him from drawing her away from the object of her heart's desire. He fought her motions and pulled her to himself tightly.

"What's wrong?" She heard John ask.

"Nothing," She spoke in her head.

The giant's charm was a spiritual thing and as such, it resounded in her head drawing her into the spiritual world more fully and more deeply than she had even gone with Emil. It felt safe and warm but it was not the same place where she had gone with Emil. There was no sound and no other people. It took her a moment to understand that she was being drawn inside Gol, himself. He was that powerful that he had his own place to go inside. She was impressed that someone so powerful wanted her to join him inside. Her heart was begging her to go. Her brain was fighting her heart with all it had.

"Snap out of it!" John shouted at Kathy while dragging her away.

Kathy went limp in John's arms and he felt her slip out of his grasp and slide down his legs to the floor. He tried to lift her but she was so much dead weight. And his eyes were also trying to keep the giant in sight. Gol had not moved. He just stood there with that silly grin he had affected.

"Kathy! Kathy!" John shouted.

He could not move her. She was either intentionally slipping out of his grasp and lying on the floor unmoving each time he grabbed her or she was so deep inside the spiritual place Gol had called her that she didn't respond to her body's stimuli any more. He would not leave her behind. He had fought overwhelming odds for her once. He would fight again.

He stood over her and faced the giant. He put her behind himself and stood between the giant and Kathy. Only death itself could stop him in this task of protecting the one he loved.

"Marcie! Emil!" John shouted in his head. "Any help would be appreciated."

"We are limited to the power we have and the plane in which we live." Marcie reminded him.

"We are ordinary entities, John." Emil added. "We are no match for this Gol. None of us."

"Together," John pleaded. "The three of us against him, protecting Kathy."

Suddenly John felt a powerful wave of concussion resounding through his head. It cleared his mind like erasing a blackboard in school and he had to shake his head physically to regain his thought process. By the time the cobwebs had cleared and he could think his own thoughts again, he looked down to discover Kathy was gone.

Marcie and Emil were gone, too.

He turned his head quickly to see Gol standing across the room with Kathy in his arms. She had her legs wrapped around his waist and was gyrating erotically on his hips as he held her aloft. She was not looking at John any more. Her eyes were fixed on Gol. He held her every attention.

"Kathy!" John exclaimed aloud and ran forward.

Gol swatted him like a small child against a large adult. John tumbled backwards against the wall, hitting his head and causing blood to erupt at one side. Again he felt the thoughts in his mind clanging around and trying to refocus. It took a few seconds. At least he thought it was a few seconds.

"Stay down, little man." Gol warned him. "Do not make me kill you over this woman."

But that was precisely what John intended to do. He was not giving Kathy up without a fight. And the only fight he knew was to the death. His or Gol's. One of them was not leaving here. Kathy was his wife. More than that, she was his completeness. He would not stand idly by and let anyone chop off his arm. Neither would he allow anyone to tear out his heart.

Struggling back to his feet, John got his bearings and wits about him again and moved slowly forward. His intentions were clear. He was going to bring the fight to Gol. The giant laughed.

"Surely you do not mean to fight me," Gol was incredulous at the audacity of this puny human. "Do you not know who I am? I am Gol. No one challenges me and lives. I have slaughtered entire armies one at a time."

"She is my wife!" John shouted to make himself more menacing. "No one takes what's mine and walks away." He advanced another few steps as he talked.

"You are brave, little man," Gol teased. "But bravery has gotten bigger and more skillful men than you killed before."

"You talk too much.

John moved in for the attack. Gol side stepped John's slow, rushing movement and swatted him on the back before John even saw him move. John was catapulted forward and hit the opposite wall, falling to his knees as the double blow on his back and then against the wall had its effect.

John struggled back up without letting any time go by. He was no quitter. Kathy needed him. She was in danger. No danger would thwart him from rescuing her again. He had done it before. He would do it again.

Another mad rush and another swatting push from Gol landed John back against the wall he had started from. His head was bleeding from multiple gashes. He knew he was no match for the giant's power and skills. He was not fast enough. But he had to keep trying. Twice more he attacked and twice more the giant slammed him against the wall.

Breathing hard, John lay crumpled in a ball against the wall. He was having trouble getting his breath. He could feel something was broken in his side. Ribs, maybe. He just knew it hurt to breathe. He wanted to get up again. Every movement hurt. He was tired and he was hurt. But Kathy was still in danger. Struggling upright, he fought his way to a standing lean against the wall. He stared at the giant who still held Kathy around his waist. She was lost in the giant's grasp, in whatever spiritual hold he was exercising against her. Her hips kept grinding against his hips in an x-rated show of desire and uncontrolled lust. John was incensed at the picture the two presented before him. He was drawing up his energy for another attack when the giant spoke again.

"If you continue this foolishness, I will be forced to kill you, little man. But know this. Before I kill you, I will let you watch me as I take your woman for my very own. I will allow you to see her enjoy a real man who can satisfy her in a way only a real man can."

"Ooooh, Baby!" Kathy cooed loudly at Gol's challenge. "Do me." She urged the giant. "Give me your baby you real man."

John was dumbfounded. He knew something had gripped his wife. He had supposed it was fear. Now, he knew it was something else. This giant had some kind of hold on her that drew her sexuality out in the open. This new knowledge of Gol's intention and the hold he had over Kathy shocked John. With the physical beating he had been taking and the mental pounding he just took, he was momentarily stopped in mid step. His mind fought to remember what it was he was doing. Rethink. Regroup. Rethink. He was shaking his head as the giant moved in and grabbed him away from the wall.

John lost consciousness for a minute and when he came too he was tied up. Lying on his side with some kind of wire wrapped around his body he struggled to move and discovered he was unable to even roll.

The giant stood before him with his back turned. Kathy lay naked before him with her legs spread wide in a gross sexual invitation. John thought he was going to be sick as he watched the giant move down upon his wife.

"No!" he screamed.

"We're back." Marcie said in John's head.

"Where were you?" John asked in his head.

"That giant slammed us out of the plane," Emil answered.

"Took us a while to get back. He is very powerful." Marcie declared.

"What can we do?" Emil asked.

"Get to Kathy." John explained. "He has some hold over her. Get her to come to her senses and resist him. You said the Dark can only have what it is invited to have." John reminded Marcie.

"We'll try. You try, too." Emil ordered.

The giant was entering Kathy. John could hear her sighing and begging for him to give her all he had.

"Kathy." John spoke to her softly in her head. "Come back, Kathy." He pleaded.

"Resist him," Emil spoke. "Don't give in to his charms."

"Stay with us, Kathy," Marcie called out. "Don't let him have his way with you. You don't really want to have his children. You want to have John's children."

Marcie's words cut John to his heart. His children. He and Kathy had talked about having children once. This was wrong. This giant was taking away his future. He felt a wave of helplessness wash over him. He jerked against the wire wrapped around him but could not get free.

"Kathy! Kathy!" he shouted again. "Wake up or whatever. I am here. I love you!"

Kathy heard John's words. Her brain was responding to him and trying to fight against the desire that ruled her body at the moment. She felt the giant inside her and knew his power in an intimate way. He was sharing his power with her and drawing her into his life by giving her his seed. It was an act of love and lust pulling her deeper inside him as he drove himself even deeper inside her.

"A-a-a-a-a-h!" She heard herself sigh. "Yes, give it all to me, baby." She urged the giant onward in her lustful desire.

"No!" She shouted in her head. "Stop this! There must be a way out of this. Marcie! Emil! Help me!"

"It is a physical attack," Marcie explained. "You must fight it off in a physical way."

"How?" Kathy asked.

"You have got to tell him in the physical to stop. That you do not accept his seed. Or he will impregnate you any minute." Marcie explained Kathy's options.

Kathy tried to force her physical body to respond. The hold of the giant on her physical presence was too strong. She could not break through the lust and desire of her body. Her body wanted to receive his seed. She could feel the thrusting drive of the giant inside her and knew that he was working towards impregnating her just as Marcie had said. Her body was responding with all the acceptance it could draw upon. Her ovaries were flushing and sending eggs toward the source of her desire. She had no doubt that her entire physical body was working to do exactly what her heart desired, receive the seed of the giant. Her mind had lost all control and influence over her body. She belonged to the giant, now.

"Marcie!" Kathy screamed in her head. "I don't want this."

"In the physical world, you are wanting it very much," Marcie pointed out. "Unless you can control your own body, you are going to be the receptacle of his seed any second."

True to her word, the giant arched his back and drove himself so deep inside Kathy that she groaned from the depth he was pushing himself to. In her physical body she could feel the warmth of his flow entering her and filling her. Kathy panicked and struggled in her mind against the impregnation of the giant. Her body however, relaxed at his climax and accepted his seed willingly. It was all very legal in the human plane. Kathy had become the mother of Gol's seed. And because of her spiritual existence, she had the fortitude and power to control that seed and bring it to term for him. She was going to be the mother of a new race of giants in the earth.

"Yes!" Gol screamed as he stood up over Kathy and triumphed in his conquest of the woman.

He raised his arms and waved them high. Then he beat his chest and slammed his fist against his legs again and again. He had done it. Each seed the woman could bear would be a new home for his brothers. He would call them back from their place of exile. He would become the father of a new breed of human. A superior breed. He, Gol. And she would be his woman. Forever.

On the floor before him, Kathy lay quietly absorbing his seed and the experience of having lain with the giant. Her lust satisfied, her body quieted down in its sexual insistence for fulfillment. She retook control of her physical form. Tears rolled down her cheeks. It was all ruined now. She was ruined. The blood between her legs told her that. He had hurt her and filled her with his seed. Her shame shook her heart and Kathy felt herself drawing away from the reality of what had just happened. It couldn't have been her. She had the perfect life with John. They were still at home in the camper. She should have stayed at home in the camper. Now, she had ruined it all. It was all gone.

"Kathy! Kathy!" Marcie was attempting to pull Kathy out of her pain.

"Kathy." It was John's voice. Quiet. Searching.

She loved that voice. She loved that man. She was his woman. Not this giant's woman. Never. She struggled to sit up. The giant still swayed above her, claiming his greatness at the deed he had just perpetrated.

I am Gol. Soon to be King of this world. Ruler of the human kind. Lover of the Human women."

"I do not want this giant's child." Kathy maintained. "I am John's woman."

"Not any more, woman." Gol reminded her of the seed he had just planted inside her.

"I want out of this situation." Kathy pleaded to no one in particular.

"Your body is in that situation," Marcie advised. "It has accepted the seed of the giant and you are now pregnant with his child. The good news, it will be a short pregnancy. It will only take about three months. Quicker than human pregnancies, at least."

"No," Kathy whimpered and rolled over on her side. Marcie was right. She could feel the seed working inside her.

"John," she called out in her mind. "John."

She was sorry she had not been able to ward off Gol's deep calling to her body and spirit. She hated what had happened. In her mind she renounced any and all response of willingness she had given Gol.

Kathy cried. Gol laughed.

"I am here." John answered her.

His voice was different. Defeated. She had caused that. Her inability to fight for herself had brought John to a fight he could not hope to win. He was defeated because she had placed him in a no win situation.

"Be strong, Kathy." John told her.

"Yes, be strong, my woman." Gol laughed. "I need you to carry many more children for me."

"Never." Kathy shouted out loud at the giant's taunt.

"That's not what you were saying a few minutes ago, lover." He taunted her further.

"Never," Kathy spoke quietly and cried to herself rolling tighter in her ball on the floor.

"I don't want to be here." Kathy whined a few minutes later.

"Where do you want to be?" Marcie asked her.

"Back home, safe in our camper." Kathy wished.

"Too late for that." Marcie advised in a voice that said she was as sad about this as anyone.

"Then where can I go to escape this?" Kathy asked in her head.

"To the Mist." Marcie answered.

"How?"

"Ask to leave your physical body and enter the Mist." Marcie instructed her.

"That easy?"

"Go!" Gol shouted and once again that concussion of power washed through Kathy and John's head.

Marcie was gone, but her words remained. Kathy thought about it. If she died in the physical she could go to the Mist without the seed, leaving the seed to die behind her. She would have to leave John behind in the human plane. But there was no way that they could share their lives now that Gol had impregnated her. She thought about what to do.

"Don't do it Kathy." John pleaded. "I need you."

"I am already lost, John. My inability to fight him off has ruined it all for us. I flew too close to the flame of accepting the spiritual things in my mind and when I should have been cautious and warned off, I accepted and even invited the wrong spiritual presence into my life. It is my fault. I'm sorry, John. I ruined it all for us."

"Please!" John shouted his plea out loud.

"It is the only way, John. And I have to do it now. Something tells me that as soon as this seed takes root in me, it will also affect how I think and regard its protection." Kathy was reasoning things out.

"Please!" was all John could manage.

Tears filled his eyes at the thought of losing his wife. She was his completeness. He would be incomplete without her. He would be lost without her. He had already forgotten all the life he had lived before her. There was no life without her in it. She was his destiny. His entire life had been about getting to her and marrying her. She was his love. He knew he was hers. That was what made them one. Mutual love. Strong enough to find each other in this crazy world. Strong enough to hold them together.

"There has to be another way." John wished for a miracle.

"She will always be here, in the Mist," Emil was back.

"No!" Gol attempted to throw them away again. Nothing happened. It was like a wall blocked his power from working.

"I've made up my mind," Kathy announced. "I want to give up this physical body and enter the Mist." She spoke the words of acceptance.

"So be it." Another voice entered the conversation.

"Who's that? Emil?" John was unsure. But it was male.

"No, John. I'm here but that was not me."

"Who was it?"

"I am the Creator of Life," the voice announced. "All life decisions are mine."

"No!" Gol screamed and charged forward to stomp John where he lay tied up.

A powerful concussive force whisked through the room and slammed the giant back against the wall with the same force he had previously exercised against John's small frame. The only difference was that the giant was pinned there. He hit the wall and stuck to it like some force was holding him in place. No matter how he struggled to free himself, he was like a rag doll, being held against the wall with his feet dangling a few feet off the floor.

"Quiet. Gol." The voice spoke firmly, authoritatively. "You and your brothers have made a mess here. Don't make me regret allowing you to form that Alliance." The words carried a threat as well as the hope of some mercy.

Suddenly, the wire around John loosened. Immediately he moved to Kathy and held her tightly in his arms. She snuggled against his chest, wearied from the exertion and the mental drain of all that had transpired. Her tears flowed freely and dampened his shirt. John held her tightly and spoke lovingly in her ear.

"I'm here, Love." John cooed softly. Kathy sniffed loudly and cried into his chest.

"I've ruined it all." Her muffled voice floated up into the room past his chest.

"Decision time." The voice announced in their heads.

"Decision?" John asked.

"Choice is still yours." The voice declared. "Now, Gol can not influence it."

"Options?" John asked.

"Living here in the human plane. Moving on to the Mist. Like always. Your choice. Or rather, hers." The voice explained.

"Meaning?" John asked for clarification. Wishing.

"Meaning what?" the voice asked.

"Meaning, if she chooses staying here, is the seed inside her a factor?" John wanted to know.

"It is a viable seed. Gol is in human form so it is a match for her system. He is a virile specimen so the seed is active and pregnancy is assured."

"Abortion?" John asked.

"Two things, there." The voice began. "First. Gol's seed can not be aborted. In twenty four hours it will appear as a six month old fetus. No doctor will perform that procedure at that stage of a pregnancy. Second, aborting a spiritual child, like this one, will kill the mother."

"Why?"

"The seed is attached to the mother at a spiritual level. They are inseparable now."

"So, entering the Mist is the only way to escape this terrible thing that has been done to her?" John asked.

"Technically, she wanted it. So it is not a true crime. Gol manipulated the human psyche a little but did not actually commit any deal breaking act." The voice advised them.

"So, he gets away with impregnating me and forcing me to carry his child?" Kathy had regained her composure. Now she was mad. She clutched her clothing to her body, hiding her womanhood from Gol and whatever else was in the room.

"If you stay in this plane, bearing the child will be your burden. That is a fact." The voice was plain and simply stating the facts as they were. No inflection as to making a choice or whether one choice was better than the other.

"If I elect to go to the Mist?" Kathy explored the option.

"You will die in this plane." The voice answered her.

"The child?" Kathy inquired. The voice had said they were inseparable.

"The child goes with you. Gol will lose his seed and the power to create more seed, if you elect to take his strength with you into the Mist." The voice explained it further.

"No!" Gol shouted. "You can't do that to me!"

Kathy smiled at John. It was a sad smile. He knew what she was thinking. She could not live with Gol's child in this plane. Gol would be her master as well as the child's. Who knew what evil he had planned for them? He served the Dark. She could take the child into the Mist and also rob Gol of any more children. Strike a blow for good and righteousness. But she needed something from John. She needed to know he was okay with her decision.

Tears filled John's eyes. Decision time. There really was no decision. There was only the time. Never enough of it. If they had shared a hundred years, he would have still asked for a few more seconds.

"Can we have a minute to say good bye?" John asked no one in particular.

"No!" Gol screamed again. "You can't let her take my child!"

"Enough!" The voice spoke firmly and Gol disappeared.

Only John and Kathy were left in the room. They put their heads together and cried softly, each with their own precious memories flooding their eyes. At first, John could hear her crying gentle sighs of sadness and desire beside him. Gently, almost imperceptibly, he felt her cries bleeding over into his head and then all of her was there. He was holding her body, now. Lifeless and bloody, she lay limply in his arms. In his head they were still together.

"I will always love you John Corwin," she told the whole world.

"And I, you." John reciprocated. "I will always love you, too."

Read the other books in this series. Here is a sampling of Chapter One of Book Three, SAND, from the Campground series.

Chapter One

Lucius Salvatore walked aimlessly across the dew wet grass of the park. It was dark and quiet at night and there was no one there to tell him to keep off. He hated cops. Always warning him. Always bothering him. Always hindering him. But they were not there at night. They would not come here at night. At night they stayed far away. No one came here at night.

Only Lucius ventured here at night, now. Once there were several who came. But they were all gone. They had done bad things. They had hurt people. No more. It was quiet now. Happy now. Just Lucius and the sand.

Moonlight slashing through the trees glinted off the bottle he carried alongside his body. He kept his hands down by habit. No one could see him carry the bottle, but habit had made him cautious long ago. Even now, when caution was no longer called for. With an upward tilt of his head he smiled into the moonlight as he slipped out from under the trees and let the fullness of the moon beams play across his face. He could feel the light. Soft, loving. A gentle caress of nature's own nighttime protector. Always vigilant. Always watchful. Especially for him.

Lucius did not hurry. Time was not a factor. He had all the time he wanted once the moonlight filled the night. Lifting his arms he whirled around, letting his body drink of the gentle energy of the light surrounding him. It was luxurious, radiant, even warm. He reveled in it. He drank of it as surely as he had been drinking of his bottle earlier. Earlier, when he had to wait for darkness. Earlier, when things were not as good as they were now.

But now all was right. Once again balance was restored. The balance that came with night and the true light it brought. Moonlight. The true light. The only light by which he could see the sand. And it was the sand that was important. The sand of time. Truth was in the sand. Life was in the sand. Destiny was in the sand.

Many had laughed when he told them of his discovery. Many had mocked him openly. They did not understand. What he found did not fit into their nicely ordered world. They refused to see. They shunned him for trying to make them see. So well trained academically but, so blind to real knowledge. He had showed them. They had ignored him. Now they were them and he was himself.

Lucius swirled across the damp grass in a pattern of loops and whirls, dancing himself into the middle of the largest lawn in the park. It was known as the Ocean's Lawn to most but the Place of the Sand to him. There he could see the sand. He could hear it. He could commune with it. He could become one with it.

One could actually see the ocean from the lawn. Some well meaning politician, or well meaning citizen of high rank, had once thought the view was what was important. They had missed the sand, though. It was everywhere. Even where the grass grew thick, the sand waited underneath. Sure, this was ocean front. Tourists came to visit because of the ocean. But what good is an ocean without any sand? Without sand there is no beaches. No beaches. No tourists. Just ask those rocky beach owners in Maine. How many people spread their blanket out on those rocky shores? No, it wasn't the ocean. It was the sand.

As soon as he reached the center of the lawn, he stopped his dancing pirouettes. His eyes took on a somber gleam and his smile became more of a lustful leer. Forgotten was the bottle he had dropped somewhere in his ecstatic revolutions. Forgotten was the day he had. Everything meant nothing now. All was fresh and new. There was only the sand. And it came.

It started as sparkling particles dancing around him in the moonlight. Then it grew to a luminescent cloud swirling first around his feet, eventually rising up and slowly circling his body, at times obscuring his form behind the density of the individual particles.

Inside Lucius could hear the voices. He could sense the presence of them all. He knew they could sense him as well. Ever so gently he began to turn with the cloud of sand. One step at a time. Then two. Eventually, he matched the speed of the cloud surrounding him. Eventually he became one with the movement, with the sound, with the sand.

Electric. That was how he had tried to explain it to others once. They had laughed but they had never felt it. Like being with someone you loved, it lifted you up somehow. It energized him. It energized him now. The slow drain of his day was washing away inside the cloud of whirling particles. All that the world had taken away from him was being given back. The Sand replenished. The Sand made it good again.

Opening his mouth Lucius allowed several grains of the sand to enter in. He tasted of them and loved them as they made their way inside him. He released himself to them and gave them complete control. That was where the energy came from. The Sand had it. The Sand shared it with him when he shared himself with the Sand.

With the energy came a reason for the energy. There was no sense having energy if he was not going to use it. The Sand had taught him that. And the Sand had much to do. Because he loved the sand, he had much to do. They were kindred spirits now. They were one.

As quickly as the storm of sand had risen it dissipated. Though the cloud was gone he still felt its presence. That was another thing the Sand taught him. When he was energized he was more aware of the presence. Ordinary people could not sense it because they were too tired, too busy, too preoccupied with themselves. Ordinary people spent their day trying to figure new ways to use up their energy with purposeless things. They had no idea of why the energy was wasted on them in the first place. Only he sensed the presence of the Sand. It was how he knew he was alive. The sand had shown him what real living was. What really being alive was.

Pictures played across his mind as he concentrated on the renewing of the presence within himself. The taste of the sand was gone from his mouth but the presence was strong in his mind. He told himself he could feel it. It was that strong.

There was the picture of a man and a woman this time. Both were young. She was pretty. He was tall and looked like a basketball or football star. He was sure she was someone important, too. Sometimes he knew. Sometimes he didn't. It didn't matter to him. All that mattered was the presence. Feeling it and the energy it brought. Being one with it. Everything else was only part of the presence. The presence was everything.

Noticing the park around him once again, Lucius started moving. His walk was not aimless now. He had purpose. That was another thing the Sand had taught him. Life without purpose is worthless. Lucius was not worthless. The sand gave him purpose. Every Thursday night he had purpose. It was Thursday night. He had something he had to do. The Sand had taught him that too. The Sand had so much knowledge. He owed so much to the Sand.

Time now became important. Not because it was important to him but because it was important to others. That importance gave him a window of opportunity. Ordinary people could be expected to do things according to the way they viewed time. Unlike Lucius who was part of the Sand and needed no time, no boundaries, ordinary people used time as a tool of their existence. He pictured a clock and knew the time that he was to meet. Setting his shoulders for the walk ahead he pushed on out of the park and into the night that surrounded the small city.

The Sand had taught him how to move with the night. Like a shadow he slipped from building to building and drew no attention despite the small pockets of people he passed. A clock above a diner showed him how much of the night he had left. 11:25 pm. Like always he had plenty of time. It was the ordinary people who never had enough time. People who filled their time with things just so they could claim to be busy or important or whatever. Not one of them could explain the importance or the purpose of the things that took up their time. Most of them spent a lot of their time complaining about the things they felt they HAD to do. Ordinary people abused time. Tonight some would have even less time. That was why they needed Lucius. He could show them how to get all the time they needed. Like him they could never worry about time again. Instead of fighting time by trying to steal large quantities of it they could become one with it and lose themselves in it. It was part of his purpose.

Lucius walked on. No one saw him. No one remembered him. He moved with the sand of time. They moved with the time of their own schedules. Two very different places. He smiled at them as he passed but they saw only their own destinies. They lived in their time with all their friends. He lived in sand time with all the sand. The presence spoke to him even if they would not.

The Sand Man was coming.

John Allen Corwin woke in a sweat. Since the death of his young wife, the nightmares had come every night. He dreaded the night. Sometimes it was a creature out of the darkness. Sometimes it was him holding her tightly. Other times, he remembered running a race and losing. But always the ending was the same. In a fog of dark mist, Kathy slipped silently away from him. Her arms outstretched, like she was trying to hold onto him. Her mouth was open like she was screaming, but nothing was coming out. He always cried out to her. He always reached for her. He never got to her. She always disappeared into the depths of the darkness that consumed her. He missed his wife, hated the world and all that was spiritual. Mostly, he dreaded the night.

As he sat up in the darkness trying to regain his sense of composure, he let his hatred burn. If it did not burn, it would explode. Somehow he knew that without thinking about it too hard. He needed an outlet. Someone or something he could vent all his anger on. Nothing presented itself. So, he let it fume inside him. If he couldn't find a real target, he would hate everything.

Everything he had ever been taught told him to let it go. Forgive and forget. Move on. Find his way out of the dark place he was in. But he could not move on. The darkness would not let go of him. He could never let go. Or maybe, rather, would never let go. That was how he felt now. Hatred. Anger. Holding on. Barely.

He could not let go. Letting go meant letting go of Kathy. He would never let go of her. She was what made him whole. He feared that by letting her go, he would lose a part of himself, somehow. That was his life now. Fear. Fear of the night. Fear of the day. Fear of meeting happy people. Fear of never being happy again. It was easier to hate. Easier than the alternative. Letting go.

Laying back down, he tried to close his eyes. But they were wide, staring into the blackness that was his small bedroom in the camper. It was winter time so the campground was mostly empty, quiet. He had considered what was going to happen if the tourist season arrived and he was still in this funk. So far the only answer he had given himself was to tell them all, "To Hell With You!"

Rita Paxwood slept warmly in her bed. Her black hair, long and shining across the pillow, cascaded down the edge of the bed. She and her husband, Paul, had been married only seven months. This was one of very few nights they had actually been asleep in their bed before midnight. Each had to get up early for work the next day, not that they had let that stop them before. But the new was wearing off the every night sex and they were becoming more and more comfortable with skipping sex some nights and just cuddling until they fell asleep.

Lucius peeked through window at them and saw that it was dark. Darkness was no hindrance to him, though. It was his friend. He needed it. He sought it out. Every day, he waited for it to come.

The two bodies were motionless. Not as motionless as he planned on making them before he was through. He watched for several minutes making sure they were asleep. He was not a very big man. He needed the surprise and the momentary confusion of waking from a sound sleep to do his work. Approaching them when they could see him coming would not do at all.

Paul laid still so he would not wake Rita. He loved just lying there holding her. In the dark her beautiful features were shadowed but he could remember each characteristic of her face as though the lights were full on. His heart ached as he watched her sleep. No man deserved such a beautiful woman. She was like a gift to the world and he had somehow managed to capture her for himself.

For so long he had dreaded getting married. Not the solitary bachelor thing. It was not even about sharing his life with her, keeping his own space. He had been so convinced that she could do better than him, that he would not marry her. If he married her, he thought he would be bringing her down to his level. She deserved better. He felt that then and still felt that, to some extent, now. It worried him at night. That was when he could lie awake beside her and think about such things. How was he going to bring her everything she needed and deserved? He barely made enough money to afford this small apartment and a run down car. If she had not already had her own car, he could not have afforded to get her one. And what about children? They had talked about wanting a big family. How was he going to afford children? He sighed softly into the air. Like the other nights since he had agreed to marry her, he came up with no new answers. Maybe tomorrow would hold something new.

There was a flicker of shadow across the wall where Paul's eyes rested in the semi darkness. A street light from outside beamed through their bedroom window, so they were never really in the dark. Something had crossed in front of the window and made that shadowy flicker. Paul turned towards the window but there was nothing there. Outside, beyond the window, all was as it always was. He turned back to his thoughts and holding his lover. He still could not believe she had chosen him.

She was beautiful. He was ordinary. She was classy, from a well to do family. He was the son of a drunk who never held a job for more than a month. She had a degree and worked at the hospital. He had most of a degree and had been working at the same tire store as a clerk, slash, manager. He didn't feel lucky. Not for her, at least. He felt like an anchor. She should be going places, meeting people. Not staying here and taking care of him. Not that he allowed her to take care of him. He would not hear of it. They were still working out how they were going to live as man and wife. Every scenario he came up with had her taking care of him as she progressed and prospered at the hospital. That worried him too. His future.

He heard a noise. Maybe glass breaking? Maybe not. Definitely not a normal nighttime noise, though. He unwrapped his arms from Rita and slid gently out of bed so as not to wake her. There it was again. A clicking, tinkling sound. It sounded to Paul like it was coming from the back of the house. He moved into the shadows of the hallway and softly made his way to the back of the house. He slipped into the living room when he heard a noise from the kitchen. A drawer opening. Someone was inside the house.

Paul's adrenaline kicked in. Not fear. Excitement. His nerves all awoke and set themselves to ready. His muscles pulsed with the pounding of his heart. His pupils dilated to allow as much light as possible through. His entire body heard the noise, assessed the potential threat and created a response before he even finished picturing the situation.

Moving to the closet, he reached for his softball bat in the corner. They had still not found a place to put his sports equipment in this small apartment. Rita had needed the closet for her things. His stuff was still piled in the corner outside. The bat felt familiar and comforting in his hands. A thirty four inch, aluminum length of defense weapon now. Quietly he moved back to the hallway.

A few more quiet steps and he was at the doorway to the kitchen. Slowly he leaned his head around the door jamb and peeked inside. It was a small room with no obstacles to hide behind. In a couple seconds, he assessed the situation, realizing the room was empty. No intruder here. Another breath and he saw the broken window at the back door. The small pane of glass just above the handle. Another breath and he saw the drawer that he had heard opening. It was still open. It was the silverware drawer. That puzzled him. There were half a dozen drawers in the kitchen. How had the intruder known which drawer he wanted to look in? What did he want there? Then the biggie. Where was the intruder now?

Paul's eyes widened in realization. Rita! He barely kept himself from calling out her name and alerting the intruder. His movements back down the hallway were not as stealthy as they had been coming this way. Quiet, but not slow any longer. A scared urgency drove Paul forward to protect his wife.

With softball bat raised in readiness, he entered the bedroom at the front of the house and saw a shadow against the wall immediately. The shadow distracted him from the actual body that made the shadow, giving the intruder precious seconds to react to the surprise attack. The result was that Paul's swing landed against the intruder's side instead of on his head as planned.

Paul was not a super athlete but he was a big, young man in pretty good shape. Knowing his first swing missed, he did not rail back for a second. Instead, he lunged forward letting his body knock the intruder away from the bed, where Rita now came awake at the disturbance. Paul saw her move back across the bed in fear, not fully realizing what was going on. He heard her short scream of surprise to find two people scuffling beside her bed.

The intruder tried to move sideways, as to attack Rita and Paul moved to block. His bat was ready for a second swing and he drove through the ball as his old baseball coach had always taught him. The blow caught the intruder in the shoulder and drove him across the room with the cracking of some bone, satisfying Paul's sense of athleticism somewhat. By the way the intruder grabbed at the upper part of his left arm, Paul assumed he had broken the bone there. He planned on breaking the man's head as soon as opportunity presented itself.

Then the light from the street flashed off something metallic in the man's right hand. Paul quickly assessed it was a knife. Possibly one of the steak knives from the drawer that was open in the kitchen. Again he wondered how the intruder knew which drawer to look in. He also thought how much he disliked those ugly knives when Rita's parents had given them to them. It was a strange, random thought that flowed easily with all the other thoughts running through his head now. Like the way the man was focusing on Rita. Why was he still focusing on her when he was facing a husband with a bat? What was the guy doing in their house at all? It was not like they had anything worth stealing. Was this guy on drugs? Was he crazy? Was he a rapist and not interested in stealing?

Didn't matter. The intruder lunged for Rita. She was curled up in a defensive ball at the headboard of the bed. Paul let him take one step and then attacked again with an overhanded chop trying to sever the relationship between the knife and the man's hand. He didn't care which he caught. The intruder made a quick feint forward and then pulled his arm back, side stepping the powerful swing of the bat. The effort pulled Paul off balance. He had planned on the contact helping him maintain balance. The lack of contact drew him further forward than he wanted to go, placing him directly in the path of the intruder's advance, with his back exposed.

It felt like fire and ice driving through him all at the same time. A tearing, burning sensation that opened up his lower back, quickly freezing into an icy state of unbelief as the intruder's movement drove the knife into Paul's back. Knowing he had been severely cut, Paul jerked away from the attacker doing more damage to flesh and muscle as the attacker held firmly onto the knife.

Didn't matter. Paul would have to be dead three days before that intruder was going to get to Rita. He steeled himself against the pain and set his feet for another attack of his own. His lunge and cover up at the pain in his back had put him out of position to be between the intruder and Rita. He now adjusted that situation and came once again squarely between the intruder and his wife.

If the intruder was surprised at Paul's resilience, he didn't show it. His stance said he planned on finishing this deadly attack and nothing was going to stop him. Paul could not see the man's face clearly enough to define any features, but he swore he saw the flash of a smile. That unnerved him. The verdict was now crazy. Only a crazy man attacked others and smiled while he was doing it.

Logic was out. Crazy people had their own logic. Maybe this guy thought they were some danger to the world or to his family or to himself. Whatever it was, this intruder had designated them as the problem. That was the only logic that prevailed right now. Paul assessed his situation and knew that he had to end this quickly. He was cut badly. If this went on too long, he was not sure he'd be around to end it. So, the answer was clear for Paul. No more fooling around. The next blow would be to kill. There was neither time nor alternative opportunity. Kill or be killed. Protect Rita or let her die at the hands of this madman. The choice was easy for Paul. He would have killed his best friend if he tried to harm Rita. Killing this crazy intruder was not even a moral choice. It was just the good choice.

The intruder feinted left, towards the window. Paul bit for it and found his arm slashed hurriedly as the crazy guy jerked back towards the center of the room and Rita. The cut tore deeply into Paul's arm. Blood was flowing and dripping onto the carpet beneath him. He had no mind for such things. The intruder was moving towards Rita again. Swinging from where he was, Paul just could reach the back of the man now slipping between his wife and himself. The blow swung the man sideways, away from Rita and causing his knife thrust to go into the pillow beside her. She screamed and drew back to the other side of the bed as Paul's body crashed down on the man crushing him into the mattress and pinning him there.

Paul dropped the bat and set to punching the man in the face and throat again and again. Twice the man's hand flashed out and drove the knife into Paul's abdomen. Twice Paul grunted as Rita screamed again and again. But Paul would not be thwarted. He could feel the knife stabs. Hot and cold at the same time. Pain like he had never known before. But he would not abandon Rita. She was his focus as surely as she had been the focus of the intruder only a few seconds before.

Again and again his blows landed on the man's face and throat. Finally the man quit moving. Paul pounded a few more shots into the man's throat making sure that whatever was crushed in there stayed crushed forever. With some surprise, he found himself utilizing his first aid training and feeling for a pulse in the man. Nothing. Dead. Good.

With a fatigue he had never imagined possible, Paul slipped back off the man and allowed his body weight to carry him to the floor. He was conscious of his blood pumping and leaving his body in immense proportions. He heard Rita screaming at someone. He wondered who. He looked back to the lifeless body of the intruder and knew he had nothing to fear from that quarter. That man was not going to bother anyone ever again. So, who was Rita screaming at.

Then he was outside his body. Paul was not a religious man. He had only been to church once in his whole life and that was to get married. He believed there was an afterlife but had no idea what it would look like. He had no idea if only good people enjoyed an afterlife or if there was a bad place for the bad people. He had never really considered any of those things. Suddenly, those things seemed important.

A woman at a fair one time prayed with him. He believed in God and she told him it was necessary for him to pray that prayer in order to get to heaven. Well, his friends were going to heaven so he wanted to go too. He didn't remember the prayer, now. It was a long time ago. He did remember that she had said he had to live right from then on, whatever that meant. He had lived his life to be counted a good man, helping when he could, not hurting people, being just the opposite of what he figured his father was. He wondered now if maybe he should have gone to church to learn about some of this after life stuff.

