She’d taken the young Joshua Mote as her lover, allowing Doc and Ryan to catch her in the midst of a particularly randy bit of sex. She’d offered no explanation for her illicit affair, no apology to the man she’d wronged. A woman had needs, Doc knew that, but a woman should also have decency and compassion.
And his sexual equipment and plumbing worked just fine, thank you very much.
At that moment in time, his eyes filled with the sight of her betrayal, Doc had never missed his wife so much.
Lori Quint. She’d been headstrong, that one, with the unproved wisdom and brazenness of youth. One moment she was as valuable an ally as could be hoped for in Deathlands, quick to protect herself and her companions by firing off.22-caliber rounds from her pearl-handled PPK.
Other times, however, a darkness revealed itself behind her laughing eyes. She’d back-talk Ryan or pick verbal fights with Krysty. She’d ignore J.B.’s advice and Doc’s pleading and plunge headlong without regard for what might be hiding around the corner.
Behind her, the yellow and orange and red petals of the onrush of fire opened like an expectant flower, but this was no inviting garden bud-this was a serpent of flame.
The tall blond girl was silhouetted against the towering wall of yellow-orange fire as it swept toward her, hot tongues of flame licking at her boot heels.
“My sweetness, my lovely fawn,” Doc whispered, the pet names cruelly ironic as he watched them engulf the girl, watched helplessly as she fell, and melted, within the fringes of the inferno. Then he could watch no more as his eyes filled with tears of regret and loss.
So close.
How many had died?
First his beloved children, and then Emily, and now his newly found angel, Lori.
Next off, the entire world and almighty man and his loves and hates and accomplishments and regrets, all dead, all dead.
And as for the good Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner? Hell, ol* Doc just kept on living. Perhaps he’d still be doddering around at the end of time, perched on the arid edge of eternity, the tails of his faded frock coat flapping around his legs in the buffeting winds as the universe finally wound to a stop. What good was his regained youth now?
Doc stood above an ocean of time and was amused to discover that the color of temporal fluid and mass was a wickedly shimmering blue.
“Boo hoo, blue hue, toodle loo, to you,” he whispered, reaching up with a hand. The age spots had returned. Doc smiled wistfully, pulled the string to the single blue bulb hanging from the ceiling overhead and turned out the light.
Chapter Six
Darkness.
“Without a doubt, that sucked,” Mildred said, her voice broken and weak.
Ryan opened his eye. Above, the hexagonal configuration of metallic disks housed in the ceiling fixtures of yet another mat-trans unit shone down impassively on him, the massive amounts of energy sent surging through them mere seconds before now spent and fading away. Ignoring the sensation of nausea, Ryan turned his face to the wall and found himself looking at a new color of armaglass.
The jump had been successful. The dingy gray walls of the North Carolina redoubt were gone, left behind and forgotten.
“Takeoffs aren’t the problem. It’s the landings,” J.B. stated, the jump dream still fresh in his mind as his own pained voice offered up a mirror of Mildred’s.
“What color is this, anyway?” Ryan asked, gesturing toward the armaglass wall. He was sitting up now, trying to ease the pounding in his brain. “Blue?” Mildred ventured. J.B. nodded. “Yeah. Blue. Haven’t seen this shade of blue before, though.”
“I have. In dream,” Jak said. The albino was already squatting on his feet, his ruby eyes scanning the walls and his comrades.
“He’s right. Saw this shade of blue in my jump dream, too,” Ryan replied, squinting his eye and looking at the armaglass.
“I used to wonder if they would ever run out of colors for the armaglass. As many colors of blue we’ve encountered, I guess they were starting to get desperate,” Mildred said.
J.B. shrugged. “Either that, or some higher authority liked blue.”