Your creation has your woman... you're the real monster...
NO!! I thought I could buy some time...this thing I let out...he doesn't care whoshe is! I won't let him hurt her...he's not going to hurt anyone ever again!
Dad taught me the technique...just the right pressure...
Her fingers were ready, the timing was perfect, but she never had a chance to apply the self defense that her father had insisted she learn. The body wedged so tightly against hers shifted again, but this time the detaining grip registered something familiar -- a touch that was both protective and reassuring.
White knuckled fingers tingling in readiness suddenly relaxed against the gun's surface. The word uttered into the stillness had abruptly stayed his need to act.
"Sherry...."
"Nick!" Slider exhaled with deep relief as his eyes took in the conversion. "Thank God...Sherry, are you all right?"
Nodding numbly, Sherry's nerve-wracked body caved into the arms surrounding her. She felt his chest rise and fall, the breaths slow and labored.
"I'm sorry, Sherry... I'm so sorry..."
His lips brushed against the back of her head as he whispered the words, and her heart trembled again with a new ache.
"It's...it's okay, Nick," her voice cracked as she stared straight ahead into the anxious eyes of Slider.
"No...it's not okay," the voice behind her muttered hoarsely, " but it will be again."
*******************
Del's smooth face was impassive but his eyes were ever vigilant as his car swung into the tree arbored street. Everything was coming to a head...he could feel it. What had been a wild goose chase was going to end at a house on this road. He could kick himself for trusting his sister again, yet, somehow, he knew exactly why she had kept him off track. He was not so removed from humanity to be oblivious to her feelings -- no matter how unreasonable her actions. She was in love.
Love did strange things to people. He had been stung by its damaging barb a few years back and nothing had quite obliterated the hurt that still lodged in his heart. Maybe that's why he was so adamant about protecting her from its powerful sting. He didn't want her to suffer...she had been through to much in her life...she deserved only the best now.
Dios...chiquita...you never make it easy...
He had been struck by her stubborn resistance to all his protestations concerning her choice of a husband. All he could see then was that she had been emotionally manipulated and refused to admit to the extreme risk she was taking in marrying a man like Manning. All that maniac has done...it should have sent firecrackers of warning off in her hea!. Now she might be risking everything again, but for the first time, his mind flipped to a possibility that he had never considered -- the fact that she might really know what she was doing.
*******************
He's back...the voice is the same as before...
Edwards' fingers still rested on the gun handle, but from all that he had heard, he now had a much more definitive picture of the fractured personality of Todd Manning and knew what he was dealing with. This man is sick...
There had been a case...about ten years ago...one in which he had had to make a decision that would affect another man's future. The very day of that decision came back to him with clarity. He had testified in a man's behalf when everything pointed to his guilt. Without that testimony, the man would have ended up in prison. Edwards had gone on sheer instinct, and he had been right. Now he had another decision to make -- one concerning a man who might also face iron bars for a long time.
******************
The face of evil in front of all of them had steered Vicki back to her own troubled past. This alter was not unlike one of her own alters who had been on a rampage of destruction and hell bent on wiping out her own sanity. Seeing those crazed, unrelenting eyes and the savage curl of his lips, she had cringed inwardly that someone like this had actually been a part of her. Most people never saw into the haunted interiors of their baser natures. Unfortunately she and her brother had seen it all.
Todd had said that they lived under a curse. She had denied it. The curse had been their parentage and what it had done to them. The hardest part was understanding why she and her brother had been so susceptible to this psychosis when others who had had similar backgrounds weren't. Even she had wondered if there weren't some genetic predisposition for what had happened to them.
Her psychiatrist had told her something that had helped her after the alters integrated. Those other people withsimilar backgrounds did not have the same combination of factors involved. No two cases were exactly alike. Different people resolved their problems with different manifestations. Todd's alters were unique to him even though there were similarities to hers. Somehow, they had both dealt with their problems with the same disorder, and their entire identity makeup had been compromised. You're still searching, Todd...but maybe...God willing...not for long...
******************
Sherry squirmed to release herself from Nick's arms, but Nick determinedly pulled her in closer to him.
"No...don't go...not yet."
"Nick...I..."
"Stay...please...for me...there's not...much time left...."
Sherry turned her head with shock written on her face. She met the solemn eyes which locked into hers and then closed briefly and reopened as if trying to control some force inside him.
"You know I never meant to hurt you...I wouldn't let him...you do know that, don't you?"
She nodded, completely mesmerized by the insistent, probing stare that had replaced the look of pain.
"...I was afraid...just plain afraid. I did what I thought I had to, but Slider was right...I am a monster."
"No, Nick," Sherry tugged on his arm. "He didn't really mean it...that's not true."
"Isn't it? There are different kinds of monsters, Sherry...you saw one kind, but he was only the end result of what I had specifically designed. It all comes back to me."
"...I pulled all the strings...I sat back, watched the passion play unfold and stepped in when I needed to. It was easy to be the director from afar, but it was horribly empty, too....until...until I met you."
His eyes lowered suddenly, and Sherry sensed that he was revealing something to her that he had never told anyone.
"...and there were times...times when actions and events exploded out of my control...and I was powerless to stop them from happening. There was nothing left to do but pay the piper, and pay...we all did."
"Nick, you don't have to..."
Turning her around to face him, his hands gripped her arms with such intensity that it hurt.
"Yes...yes, I have to, Sherry...because it's you who has to understand...you're the only one that matters!"
Slider heard his words and was astounded at what he was hearing. Nick was finally assuming responsibility for everything. The alter who had wanted to sever his ties with all that was Todd had even given up his last chance to escape. What had changed his mind? Was it seeing Sherry in danger? Or was it the greater realization that he could no longer call the shots with Todd's personality? Maybe it's both...
The delicate tips of his long fingers slid down the silky surface of Sherry's skin, touching each spot randomly in a desperate attempt to commit the memory of it in his mind.
Precious...time is precious...I have to drink in her eyes and memorize every breathtaking feature...
Rumbling...pain...fear...
As much as he had hated Nick's interference in Todd's life and his interference in his own, Slider now found it difficult to watch the outer veneer of Nick's proud bearing begin to erode under the forces at work within him.
"It's not over, Nick," Slider spoke up. "This isn't what you think it is."
"And what's that, Slider...say it...it's written all over your face...my death, right?"
"You won't die, Nick...you'll just be reborn."
"Reborn? I'm disappearing, Slider...get it? Everything that I am is going to be absorbed."
"That's how it was in the beginning, Nick...before you split with Todd."
"Yeah...in the beginning...when I talked to his mind. After I left, he never could pin me down...I was always a big mystery to him...some phantom presence. Sometimes I think he sensed me, but his memory of me never lasted. All he knew was that he could feed off of my strength when he needed to."
"What he needed then, and now, was all of you, Nick...you inside and a part of him and not as some separate and isolated fountain of power. Your separation from him left him floundering...without an identity...only the one that he saw reflected back to him by his friends as well as his enemies."
More pain...harder...faster...
Nick shut his eyes again, but managed a scowl as he listened to Slider. "What does that matter now? That's ancient history...what's done is done. Anyway, you must feel victorious, Slider, ole' pal...you played the game to the end and won. You get to watch me back out of this world for good, but...you have to admit, I did give you a few surprises."
"Damn you, Nick!" Slider's eyes blinked with the fresh poring in of emotion. "I never expected you to do what you're doing now...you have surprised me...this sacrifice...it's..changed you."
"Yeah, you psych guys...you think you know it all," Nick said sourly as a grayish pallor spread out across his face.
All this time Sam had said nothing -- waiting for some kind of cue from Slider that he could jump in. A form of paralysis had overtaken him while he had witnessed Pete appear. He couldn't believe he was actually seeing the alter who had abducted Tea and started the chain of events that had led them to this house...the house of his memories.
Watching Nick touch Sherry's face, he glanced over at Tea to see her reaction. What can this be doing to her? She has to stand here and see Todd...or rather, this alter, in love with another woman.
Her face was a testament to fortitude, but he knew that she was suffering. It sent a chill straight through him when he imagined what she must have gone through to seek out Todd. She could have started over, but instead she's persevered and is right here...front and center...watching...waiting...for a moment to come that will tell her she's done the right thing. This is real love...
"Hold onto me," Nick whispered in an even lower tone, so only Sherry could hear him.
Death had never really been a consideration, and now he could feel the fear of nonexistence boil up inside him and almost overwhelm the other, real hits of pain cycling through him. Slider had said that he wouldn't die, but how did he know? Where will I be in Toddy's mind? I'll only be a small blip on the big screen...I don't want to be erased...
"Nick...Nick, listen to me!" Slider's strident voice zoned into Nick's confused thoughts. "This is just the process...it had to happen...sooner or later. You'll be in a different form, but you won't be lost...trust me on this!"
"Trust." Nick's darkening face lightened briefly. "What a concept...for all of us. Know what? We're back to the first move...the first square. We did have trust once...it was just for an instant, but it was there. Then, it all changed...and that word was stricken from the rules..."
"Then it's time to put it back, Nick...you can do it...you can be the one to show him the way and push out the doubts."
"Now why would I want to do that?"
"Because...because you need him, too."
"I don't need him...I only need Sherry!" Nick lashed out.
"If that were true, then you would have found a way out of this, Nick," Slider countered. "I know it, and you know it. There's more at stake here than just love...there's who you are."
"You and your cockeyed analysis! How convenient that I'll be out of the picture and you'll be around to pick up the pieces," Nick snarled, his implication loud and clear.
"She made a decision, Nick, and even if she hadn't, she knows that it would never work out in the future."
"Stop it!" Sherry ordered. "Nick, I agree with Slider...you don't know what you need...and Slider, don't presume anything about me!"
Nick's arms tightened around her. "Don't be angry, Sherry...not now..."
Sherry let him engulf her body in his arms, surrendering to his desire to keep her there. "You need to listen to what he's saying, Nick...he does know some things...it will make this...easier."
His dark hair fell forward across his cheeks as he leaned toward her and whispered again. "You make it easier..."
"Then...I'm right here," her arms squeezed his sides gently. "Promise me... promise me that you'll believe in who you are...never let go of that."
In the low light she saw something glisten and realized that tips of his lashes were wet...perhaps from pain or fear...or maybe...unbelievable sorrow.
Convulsive shivering shook him and waves of nausea dragged through his insides as the tempest battered away at his body and psyche. The faces furthest from him were dimming like dampened fires, and gradually he could hear only her voice speaking soothingly to him. Does it have to be so damn cold?
He could still see those sympathetic eyes glittering with droplets of moisture and feel the soft warmth of her arms and hands against him. How good this would have been...like nothing else on earth...
Another few seconds and he could no longer feel her. Beautiful, slanted eyes...stay with me...
A voice apart from him droned out her name in agony. He heard it from a distance as the tunnel to the outside world began closing up. The icy torment entombed and possessed him, as he stumbled blindly toward an opening ahead radiating pure energy and heat.
