Jane only let out a choked gasp as the god's blade tore through her back. The taste of the bloody froth from Daria's mouth, cold as it was, tasted oddly sweet on her tongue. She felt as if a lightning bolt had ripped through her thrashing body before it also tore through Daria. She screamed in silent pain, as if she had been torn right out of her skin. Her spirit slammed into Daria's dying mind, bits and piece's of both Daria and Helen's lives flashing before her like a cloud.
A miserable Daria was enjoying Tom Sloan's company, even while she felt like she was dying inside, crying alone at night from missing Jane, not knowing if their friendship would ever heal. Helen screamed as Daria was being born, a sweating Jake holding her hand tightly. Daria squalled indignantly as the doctor swatted her bottom, her small pink hands clenched tightly, her brown eyes squinting at this new, unfriendly world. She was swiftly cleaned and handed to her sobbing mother, where she contentedly began to nurse, still staring at the world around her in wide eyed wonder. Daria and Quinn sat in the back seat of a car, Daria muttering "brat!" while Quinn screamed back "brain!" Jane saw the jealousy between sisters beginning, saw Daria's hope for a friend to share her thought's with fade, as Quinn became the "cute little girl, " all pink and laces, with female relatives cooing over her.
Daria became ever more isolated, living through her books. She made a few friends in Highland, always being invited to slumber parties because of her adult library card. She would read some of the racier classic's to the other girls, before she slowly realized that this just was being used, and she stopped. Daria participated in school, becoming a fashion editor. She was the brightest student, winning the Science Fair every year. But Jane felt the quiet pain growing in Daria's heart the whole time, the isolation, not understanding why people didn't like her, why they resented her intelligence, called her names. The resentment as baby Quinn was always surrounded by friends and admirer's.
Then, the sheer intensity as this person, Jane Lane, outcast painter, and neglected daughter, actually spoke to her in Esteem class. Jane cried as she saw how Daria thought of her, idolized her, so afraid of doing something that might lose her this new friend.
Jane abruptly shocked back to consciousness, if not reality. She bolted upright from where she had been laying face down, unable to breathe, spitting and sputtering. Her hands searched through the soft ash, found solid ground, and pushed her upright. She staggered to her feet, and wiping the dry ash out of her face and hair, stared around her.
She was standing in the middle of a thick forest, giant trees and dense brush. But it was all dried out, dead. The ground was covered with a thick layer of ash. The air itself was dry, smelled somehow metallic. The light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, lighting things completely but dimly. The silence was complete. Jane couldn't even hear herself breathe. Then she discovered why.
She wasn't breathing.
She stared at her hand. Her flesh was a rather dingy gray, with purple tones. Her skin felt cold, clammy. She was suddenly glad she couldn't see her face. Her body matched the land around her, dead, in a dead land. If she took too long, could she ever go back? She remembered Su-sa-no-o had promised that Daria could be saved.
He hadn't said anything about Jane's return.
Jane stared around her wildly. She had just been swept along, out of her feeling for Daria. What kind of feeling? Friendship? Yes. Daria was her one, true, only real, friend.
Or was it love?
Jane sat stunned. Love?
Did she love Daria?
The cynical teenager she had spent every moment with that she could since she had met her?
Did she love Daria Morgendorffer?
And did Daria love her?
Was it possible?
Sure, she thought Daria was attractive enough under her decidedly drab clothing. She had seen Daria in the showers after Physical Education, and no, that wasn't it. It was something else.
Daria completed her. She and Daria had quarreled several times, noticeably over the Tom Sloan encounter, and they had both been miserable. Daria was her friend, close and personal. She did love the stubborn, cynical but still fragile, young woman she had known. She hadn't thrown away her life for Daria.
She had given it.
For the first time since this whole crazy affair had begun, a feeling of peace settled over Jane. She would save Daria, no matter what.
Because she did love her.
Jane pushed herself upright, feeling a surge of confidence in what she was doing. She stared at the nightmare landscape around her, feeling the warmth inside her build up like a steadily increasing flame. Something glinted at her, like a jewel, from the branches of a low tree, and curious, she carefully pushed aside the dry leaves to see what it was. It was a small squirrel glaring at her, but it was long dead. Its yellow eyes hadn't rotted, but instead shrunken into tiny bits, almost gem-like. Its flesh had shrunken to tightly coat its bones, and its hair was matted, thick with the powder ash. Uneasily looking around her, Jane now saw other small animals, all of them staring at her, even in their death with an almost insane hatred of her.
Jane shuddered, but carefully moved through the thick brush, and discovered something else. The plants around her were dead, but they weren't plants at all. When she accidently broke off a small twig, the "dead" bush trembled, and a woman's scream shattered Jane's newfound confidence. She stared in horror at the plant, and noticed something else. Where she had damaged it, was a bright, red, drop of blood. She held up the twig she still held. It was bleeding too. The entire forest seemed to be watching her now, with a slowly building anger. She very carefully put the twig down, and careful not to brush against any more of the plants surrounding her, edged away from the still trembling bush.
Very quietly, she thought to herself, "And who were you before you died?"
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Lester Gupty carefully locked the door of the master bedroom behind him, the white faces of his wife and children filling the normally placid middle-aged man with fear. The strange things happening to both his neighbors and Tricia were shaking him to the core. Why was his daughter suddenly so afraid of poor Quinn? The poor girl was probably dead with her friends, frozen in the drifting snows. Lester had never believed in ghosts, but staring out the window in his kitchen door, he was starting to change his mind. The snow blew into strange columns, almost, but not quite, forming human figures, that would collapse.
He looked at the small hammer he had been carrying around and sighed. The thing was poor enough as a tool, and wasn't worth much as a weapon, either. His neighbors had rifles, pistols. Would they attack his home for food and heat? Would they murder him, and then his family, just to survive? Horror stories he had been told by his grandparents back in Poland, of the horror of the Nazi occupation, reminded him of just how low human beings could sink.
A sudden chill swept over him, bringing to mind a saying his grandfather had often said.
"I'm mortally cold, mother. I feel that someone is walking on my grave."
A cold grave. A frozen grave. Why was this happening? Was it sheer chance, a combination of circumstances? A blind blending of weather patterns? This was New England, they always had heavy snow in the winter. People got lost and died, even nice young women like that Quinn. Lester frowned. Normally, such a disappearance called into action hundreds of people, searching for those lost. Even with this massive snowstorm, something more should have been done. Where was the National Guard, the State Police? From what he knew of Quinn's parents, they were the type to move Heaven and Earth for their children! Where were they? Why were they silent?
Suddenly, Lester stiffened, as an overwhelming presence fell across him. Darkness poured itself across him, as he stood shivering in his kitchen. He just knew something was standing just outside the flimsy wooden door and plate glass, something that was very old, and very evil. Deep contempt, an almost insane mockery of the entire human race swept over him. He trembled, wanting to run down the hall, hide himself with Lauren, with Tricia and Tad, to hide in the closet, or under the bed, he would be safe then, even if the others died.
No! Lester slammed his hand down on the counter in anger. He would not hide, would not sacrifice his family. He hefted the hammer, almost a toy and shaking, walked slowly over to the back door, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl of rage and fear. With a grunt mixed of both hate and fear, he pulled the curtain aside, staring out the frost-covered window into the blowing snow.
At first, he saw nothing, other than the snow, swirling across his back yard, the drifts piled high. Then slowly, a massive shape slowly seemed to form before him, a distorted, angular thing, that shifted even as he stared at it. It crouched down, staring at him, with enormous, bulging eyes. Blue eyes. Blue eyes, framed by stray tufts of, if it had been clean, Lester would have recognized instantly as strawberry blonde hair.
Quinn Morgendorffer's hair.
As it was, Lester only stared deeply into the monsters eyes, like a child staring into a snow globe, at the writhing, tormented figure deep inside the massive orbs. The figure steadily grew clearer and clearer, trapping Lester in fascination, to see what it was. It was naked, showing every bone, every rib, the skin stretched tightly across the skull like face. It was every picture of starvation Lester had every imagined, concentration camp corpses, children from Third World countries staggering in ruined war-torn streets.
Lester saw raging storms, of rain and snow, Native American children, settlers huddled in fragile houses of bark, hide, and timber, starving as wolves howled outside their flimsy shelters. The sheer fragility of life caused him to gasp. The creature opened its massive jaws, almost in a grin, it's rows of uneven teeth a dull yellow, old blood crusted on its thin lips.
He stared at the thing, frozen, unable to move a muscle. He heard a dim whispering, like a voice from the stars, so far away, a familiar voice he had never thought he would ever hear for the rest of his life. The voice of an incredibly beautiful young woman, still childish in many ways.
"Mr. Gupty, I'm so sorry, I'm so very sorry, please, forgive me."
The quiet, pitiful voice was abruptly blasted away as the creature shot one long ungainly arm forward. The huge hand blasted though the back door like a wrecking ball. The jagged claws on it speared deep into Lester's stomach, the force slamming him into the back wall of the kitchen, snapping his spine. Lester screamed loudly, before he choked on his blood, staring in disbelief at what the creature had done in only a few seconds, his shock preserving him for a precious few seconds of life. The creature pressed its face close to Lester's, it's massive rough tongue flicking out to taste the blood pouring out of his gaping mouth.
In its huge eyes, Lester only saw his own death. He saw Lauren and Tad torn apart into bloody ribbons. He saw a dirty, foul little cabin where a mindless animal that once had been human writhed in the grip of an unspeakable labor. He saw a black haired young woman without a face howling in madness across the snows, while another one crawled through the earth, her own insane hunger close to a match for the thing killing him. Then, the massive claws flexed, ripping him apart, and Lester Gupty knew nothing at all.