Chapter Twenty-One

     Candy wasn't sure where she was.  It was very dark, and she felt as
though she were inside the stomach of some beast.  She reached out and her
fingertips hit something hard and damp.  She squinted, trying to narrow her
vision, but it did no good.  She still couldn't see beyond the tip of her nose. 
Keeping her hand against the unknown surface, she took several cautious
steps forward.  Whatever path she was following twisted and turned,
confusing her even more, if that were possible.
     The last thing she remembered was...Dolph!  That slime, that bottom-
dwelling cretin!  She never wanted to see him again, never!  Oh, who was she
kidding?  If he were standing in front of her right now she would probably...
     "Kick him, that's what I'd do."
     The sound of her own voice was as comforting as ever.  She had
never been able to make her mother understand that talking to herself wasn't
a sign of mental illness, as her mom had feared; though, at this point, Candy
was not at all certain of her own mental stability.  Carrying on a conversation
with the air was just a way to keep from getting too lonely.  And right now,
she desperately needed to feel as though she had a friend beside her.
     She rounded a corner and entered a room that was filled with light. 
Candy grimaced with annoyed confusion as she realized she was inside some
kind of cave.  Was this a ship malfunction or had Dolph sent her to a cave? 
Why?  Had he really been so thoroughly finished with her that he wanted her
to rot in some desolate cavern?
     Stepping into the large room, Candy marveled at the light that
seemed to be coming from the walls.  She had heard of caves being lit by
phosphorescent deposits on the walls.  She guessed that explained the light
here.  If the situation had been different, she might have found it beautiful. 
As it was, her annoyance and threatening fear made her a tad indifferent to
the splendor of nature.
     "Star?"
     Candy's breath caught in her throat as that familiar voice shocked her
immobile.  The paralysis only lasted a heartbeat.  Then she was whirling
around to confront the bastard who had broken her heart!
     "You son-of-a..."
     The condemnation died on her tongue as she saw Dolph lying on the
floor of the cave, blood spilling through the fingers of the hand he had
pressed to his abdomen.  Feeling her world narrow to the small patch of dirt
and rock where he lay, Candy took a faltering step toward her love.
     "Star, I'm sorry."
     His voice, once so strong and vibrant, was now barely a breath. 
Candy's throat constricted as sobs and words fought for superiority.
     "Dolph...?"
     He coughed in answer, blood slipping from one corner of his mouth. 
As she began to kneel beside him, he held up his hand to stop her.
     "Star, my sword.  Please, love."
     Candy followed his pointing finger to where his sword lay on the
ground several feet away.  She wondered why she hadn't noticed it before. 
As she bent to retrieve it, a black-gauntleted fist closed around the hilt and
lifted.  Candy raised her head to find Vierig standing within inches of her. 
She gasped and stepped backward.  The only logical explanation came
quickly to her mind.
     "A dream, this must be a dream."
     She pointed an accusing finger at the black-clad Viking warrior.
     "You're dead!"
     Vierig's long black hair flew as he dropped back his head and
laughed.  His ebony eyes trapped hers in their vengeful gaze.
     "A dream?  Or a walking corpse?  Which am I, Beauty?"
     He brought Dolph's sword slicing across Candy's forearm, the all-to-
real stinging pain bringing renewed clarity to her foggy brain.
     "Viking medicine is beyond your meager understanding.  Is your
back not unscarred though my blade bit into your flesh?"
     Candy frowned.  It was true, she couldn't find a single mark on her
back where she knew she had been cut.  She had meant to ask Dolph about it
but the crumb had sent her away before she got the chance.  Vierig's voice
brought her back to the problem at hand.
     "Did you think I would allow this," he pointed the sword at Dolph
and sneered, "weakling to kill me?"
     His hate-filled glare returned to her.  His voice lowered to a hiss.
     "And you!  You thought to steal my ships from me?  Vierig, the
greatest Viking warrior that ever lived?  You sought to dishonor me and take
from me the symbols of my leadership.  For that, I brought you to watch the
disgrace of this worm you took to your thighs."
     Like a cobra, Vierig's arm snaked out to grab Candy around the waist
and drag her up against his body.  All along her back, she felt the painful
impact with his rigid body-armor.  Holding her secure with one massive arm,
he pointed again with Dolph's sword.
     "See him there, Beauty?  See his blood spilling out onto the already
soaked ground?"
     Dolph stretched out his hand to Vierig.  His neck and shoulder were
stained with the blood that ran from his mouth.  Candy knew deep in her
heart that no one could bleed that much and still have a long life expectancy. 
She struggled with all her might to wrench free of Vierig's hold but to no
avail.  He was so strong!  In answer to her screamed, "Let me go!" his
laughter filled the cavern.
     "Watch, Beauty, watch as your great Viking lover dies like the
coward he is.  No sword, no glory."
     As Candy stood helplessly in Vierig's grip, Dolph's hand fell slowly
to the ground.  His beautiful green eyes, dull now with impending death,
pleaded with her.  For what she wasn't sure.  He smiled, a weak gesture.
     "You got your wish, Star."
     An obviously painful cough interrupted him.
     "Look away, love."
     Suddenly, Candy remembered her wish that Dolph die in some cold,
dark place without his sword.  An anguished scream tore its way from her
throat and, with a strength she hadn't known she possessed, she pulled herself
out of Vierig's hold.  Throwing herself to the ground next to Dolph, she
screamed, "I didn't mean it, Dolph!  I love you!"  She stared down into
lifeless pools of the deepest green.  He hadn't heard her.  Grabbing his
shoulders, she started shaking him, her screams echoing off the cave walls.
     "Dolph...Dolph, please come back.  Dolph!"
     Candy awoke clutching her tear-soaked pillow, her screams filling
the empty apartment.  Anger - at herself, for continuing to have the same
stupid nightmares for weeks; at Dolph, for destroying what they had, or what
she thought they had, without even a backward glance - flared inside her
brain.  With a shouted, "Damn it!" she flung the pillow across the room.  The
clock on the bedside table said 6 AM.  Rolling onto her stomach, Candy
pulled the covers over her head and willed herself not to think about Dolph. 
Her thoughts obediently flowed to the memory of her return to Earth.
     As the lightheadedness of transport left her, she realized that she was
standing on the side of a freeway in bright sunshine.  The pain of Dolph's
betrayal swelled inside her chest and quickly spread to the rest of her body,
sending her into a collapsed heap on the side of the road.  She vaguely
remembered the Nevada Highway Patrol finding her there.  Unable to get
much of an intelligible response from her, the officer called an ambulance.
     Candy spent two days - or daze, as she thought of them now - in the
hospital, trying to explain what had happened to her.  At first, she had tried
the truth.  Big mistake!  Most of those two days had been spent trying to
convince the doctors that she wasn't having a psychotic episode.  Finally,
frustration getting the better of her, she told them that she had been abducted
and assaulted by a roving gang of bikers after her car broke down in the
desert, and was just too embarrassed to admit it.  They accepted that
explanation with ease, spouting a textbook full of psycho-babble about not
blaming herself and extending all the offers of therapy that she could use in
two lifetimes.  She had never appreciated the sunshine as much as she had the
morning she stepped onto the sidewalk in front of that hospital.
     Still, the harsh light of day quickly drained her spirits and left Candy
feeling lost and abandoned, like a runt-of-the-litter kitten dumped by the side
of the road.  Wondering what she was going to do now, Candy shoved her
hands into her jeans pockets and found a folded bundle.  Pulling it out, she
saw that it was cash.  Lots of cash.  A bitter laugh escaped her.
     "Stolen, no doubt."
     Counting it, she found $5,000 in tens, twenties & fifties.  
     "Five thousand.  Not bad wages for a few weeks work.  Especially
with travel and room and board thrown in."
     Resisting the angry, but illogical, urge to throw the money into the
nearest garbage can, she shoved it back into her pocket and began the long
climb back to a normal way of life.
     With a lie about experience and a short dress that she bought at a
local thrift store, she fulfilled her dream of a lifetime ago and got a job as a
cocktail waitress at The Excalibur Hotel and Casino in lovely Las Vegas,
Nevada.  Using what she thought of as her 'ill-gotten gains' - the money from
the Vikings (she refused to think of it as having come from Dolph) - she
rented a small apartment in West Las Vegas.  She bought a used car that was
a disgrace to the word 'automobile', but it got her where she needed to go. 
But other than to work and back, and an occasional trip to the grocery store,
there didn't seem to be much of anywhere she wanted to go.
     No matter how hard she tried, Candy just couldn't forget Dolph. 
Everything she saw reminded her of her Viking lover.  The dragons that
decorated the hotel brought sharp-edged memories of Dolph decked out in
his ruby-eyed-dragon-adorned chestplate.
     Children often ran through the casino carrying play swords won in
the carnival-like area on the lower level of the casino.  As they parried in
play, Candy remembered Dolph and Vierig engaged in the real thing. 
Visions of blood on the ground and the light of life leaving a man's eyes
made her want to shake those children - or, better yet, their parents - and tell
them that death wasn't a game.  It was a bloody, ugly, horrible reality! 
Thankfully, she kept herself under control.
     Then there were the men, a seemingly endless stream of them
propositioning her.  Candy's Scottish temper was often just a whisper away. 
After a particularly obnoxious guy had hounded her half the night, she finally
turned on him.
     "Look, I've been out of the country for a while.  Did the word 'no'
change meanings while I was gone?  I can see by the stupid look on your face
that it didn't.  Or is that just the way you always look?"
     Though that had taken care of him, he had lots and lots of like-
minded brethren.  Candy compared each to Dolph.   Of course, they all came
up lacking.  She knew she wasn't being fair, to them or herself, but she just
couldn't help it.  Not yet.  'Someday,' she promised herself, 'someday, I'll be
over him.'  It had been six weeks since her vision of rock-hard muscles
wrapped in a golden mane had been reality and not just a memory. 
'Someday' showed no signs of arriving.