Page 6
Aces and Eights
Harvey Smith
We waited.
The one holding me suddenly tightened his grip, forcing the breath out of my lungs. Simultaneously, I heard a scraping sound from behind us. The others heard it too, because the two standing by the door spun around.
The creature holding me shrieked and convulsed, nearly crushing my chest. He dropped me. I hit and rolled over in time to see the werewolf who had been holding me go toppling over the rail. Luke, who must have been hidden on the roof or the next balcony over, had apparently stabbed the big beast with the long silver dagger he was holding.
The other two shape-changers rushed in then, leaping over me. The larger of the two slammed into Luke and began wrestling him toward the edge. To my surprise, Luke did not go over, but managed to hold his ground. Still fighting, they fell into a heap on the balcony floor.
Suddenly, I saw that the female werewolf, Kyla, had moved to the side, near the stair and was aiming the pistol, trying to get a shot in at Luke. From behind, I pushed her as hard as I could. Standing at an odd angle already, she could not maintain her position. She went down the stairs with a snarl and the pistol went over the edge and out of sight.
When I looked back over at Luke, he was getting up off the floor, blood stained dagger in hand. His opponent did not rise. "Get the bag," he said quickly.
Looking down at the landing below, I could see that Kyla had risen immediately and was climbing back up the stairs. Though she seemed to be limping, I was afraid of what she might do when she reached the top. Her appearance was not pleasant.
"The bag!" demanded Luke a second time.
I looked around. His bag was lying in the corner, against one of my ferns. I grabbed it and turned. Luke was waving his hand in the air before him. Before I could ask him what the hell he was doing, though, Kyla started to smolder. Halfway up already, she looked down at her fur, shrieked and leaped from the stair. She hit the concrete three floors below with a smack and rolled into the pool.
"Quick," Luke said, "give me the bag. She'll be back again." I handed him the bag and he began searching through it.
Looking over the edge, I could see that the wolf-woman was climbing out of the water. The one Luke had thrown off the balcony was now staggering toward the stairway, too. They were just moving upward when Luke reached out and took hold of my arm. "Come on," he said, "We're leaving." The air around me shimmered prismatically and a few seconds later we were standing in a candle-lit stone chamber.
Luke and I collapsed together. I heard someone shout and a bell began ringing. Then I passed out.
* * * * *
When I woke up, I was undressed and lying in bed. A woman came to my side immediately and began speaking in a foreign language. "Sorry," I said, "I don't speak it, whatever it is."
She nodded and left the room. I felt my shoulder with one hand and was surprised by the fact that I did not feel pain there. I pulled back the blanket and examined myself. There was no wound at all. Had I been unconscious that long, I wondered?
The woman who had tried talking to me earlier reentered the room with Luke walking behind her. His condition seemed to have improved greatly. He was dressed in loose black pants and knee-high boots. He wore a green shirt. "How do you feel?" he asked.
"Confused."
"Besides that." He dragged a stool over and sat next to the bed. "Physically, I mean."
"No pain, no teeth marks. How long have I been out?"
"Off and on for three days," he said.
"That bite sure felt a lot worse than�hey, wait a minute. I was bitten by a werewolf. Doesn�t that mean�"
"I'm afraid it does." His mouth formed a devilish grin, then his _expression changed to one of concern. The woman looked at Luke and said something in that same weird language. Luke answered her and she left.
"So you're a native of this place." It was a statement.
"Yes," he said. "I grew up here."
"Where is here, dammit?"
He chuckled. "I knew that one was coming."
"So how about an answer. I wrapped the blanket around me and sat up.
"You're in Jidrash, in the kingdom of Kashfa."
"Kingdom?"
"That's right."
"Why have I never heard of this place?"
"Because it's not on Earth."
"Are you trying to tell me that we're on another planet?"
"Nigel . . . I'm trying to tell you that you're in another reality, an alternate universe."
I said nothing. There was nothing I could say. I had seen strange people change into werewolves, had even fired silver bullets at them. And I had been bitten by one of the supposedly mythical creatures and now bore no traces of a wound that should have taken weeks to heal. If legends held true, I was probably in for a wild night come next full moon. Luke and I had been transported away from the balcony of my apartment to this place, Kashfa. If I could not believe all of the things that had happened to me on the night that I had set out to retrieve Luke's belongings, then my very sanity was in question. I did not feel mad, so: "You're from another dimension?"
"Yes, one of an infinite number. Your home, Earth, is only another among the infinite."
"Then the werewolves were from another dimension too."
"Right."
"How is it that they, or we, for that matter, moved from one place to another?"
"Magic. They used magic to get from one Shadow�that's what they're generally referred to as�to another. Magic in the form of a painting. A card," he reached into a pocket, extracted an ivory-inlaid wooden box, opened it, "like this one." He extended a pasteboard card with a detailed painting on it.
"This is you," I said.