Chapter Fifty-Nine

Nick couldn’t lay there. He couldn’t wait. He tore the IV out of his arm and traveled the astral to his own front door.  Normally he would have just appeared inside but things being what they were he thought, no he knew, he was unwelcome in his own home.  Feeling a burning sick sensation in his stomach Nick opened the door.  “Annie?” He called out quietly. 

No answer.

“Kiki? Daddy’s home. Kiki?”

No answer.

No sound at all.

No radio.

No TV.

“Annie?” Nick called out louder. “Look I know you don’t want to see me but…Annie?”  The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and everything in him wanted to run and be far, far away from this place.  “Annie?  Honey?”

No one in the kitchen.

No one in the dining room.

No one in the living room.

Nick made his way back to the stairs and called up them. “Anybody? Hello?”  His legs started to twitch and he to force them to ascend the steps.  The wounded leg cried out in protest although it was properly wrapped and splinted.  He looked in Kiki’s room, it was empty.  Danny’s room was also empty and so was the bedroom they shared.  That left the bathroom. “Annie?” Nick whispered without hope. “Please, baby, answer me. Annie?”  With everything in him wanting to run in the other direction Nick laid his hand on the door knob and opened the door and screamed at the bloody horrible sight at the top of his well-developed lungs.  Hoping against hope that it wasn’t too late he made his way into the room on rubbery legs and fell to his knees beside the bath tub, which was still steaming with hot water.  “Oh, Annie.” Nick moaned, “Baby, please wake up.” He kissed the top of her bloodied forehead as tears ran down his cheeks.  Between talking to her on the phone and now, Annie had taken off her clothes, slipped into a hot bath, from the looks of the empty pill bottle she’d helped herself to a stash of Valium before slitting her wrists.  There was blood everywhere, the tub was full of it. It was on the tile and it dripped over the side of the tub in long streams where it made a little pool on the floor. There, below her dangling dead hand, on the floor was a yellow scrap of paper upon which she’d written four words in large bold scrawling hand;

IT’S ALL MY FAULT

“KIK! KIKI!” Nick screamed as he held the body of his dead wife half in and half out of the tub.  There was no answer.  Daddy’s Little Girl didn’t come running to him.

Lingering unseen in the room Hades wanted to offer his support but Death is no comfort in times such as this.  Instead, Hades sent Daniel to be with his Son in his time of great need.  Together the family—what was left of it—gathered in Nick’s house and grieved their losses before gathering themselves to battle once more.

Seated in his favorite easy chair in the living room Nick moaned through his tears. “He’s got Kiki. He’s got my little girl. Both of them, oh god, he’s got my daughters.”

“I know,” Calla said as she settled at his feet. “We’re going to get her back, I promise, Nicholas.”  Much as Pete had done for Kiki Calla rose to her knees and took her oldest Son in her arms to rock him back and forth while he wept.  She looked like some crazy exaggerated cartoon; the small gray haired old woman holding up a giant of a man. “I love you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. My Son, my baby.”

“I don’t know what to do. Momma, it hurts,” Nick moaned sorrowfully. “It hurts. I want to see them one last time. I didn’t even get to say good-bye.”  Still leaning heavily on his elderly Mother Nick looked up at Hade and tried to stop crying. “You can do that, I know you can. I want to see them. Now. I want to see them.”

Hades tried his best to dissuade Nicholas from that for the time being. “Danny’s fine.” Hades said confidentially. “He’s in the Fields awaiting his turn to come back.  He misses you but he’s alright.  My Brother greatly enjoyed being your Son, Nicholas. He thought you a good Father and Annie a good mother.”  Now his voice trailed off in hopes that would be enough.

It wasn’t.  “Annie?”

“She’s adjusting.”

“Adj—“ Nick didn’t like the tone of Hades’ voice. “What do you mean, she’s adjusting? To what? She is with Danny, isn’t she?  He needs his mother, you can’t separate them. I want to see her, both of them, now.” Nick felt the pit of his stomach tighten and turn.

“You can’t visit with her,” Hades said firmly.  “Not for a while.  She is settling in after that you may come see her if you like.”

“What’s going on? What happened to Annie? Why isn’t she in the Fields?” Annie took her own life, that was true, but surely Hades and even the Judges could overlook such a thing for him, their Prince, and for Annie’s sake.  She must have been so goddamn desperate, so alone, just like Nick was now.  How could they damn her?

Hades did not want to be the one to break the news to the already grieving father and husband but it seemed he had no other choice. It seemed so cruel.  “Nicholas, Annabelle, she, slept with another man while you were gone. She had a affair and for that she must spend some time in Tartarus to atone. When she is done there you may come visit her. I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this.”

The last bit of Nick’s sanity gave way.  How could she do that?  After all these years together and everything they’d been through, how? “Who?”

“She brought a friend home with her,” David said trying to spare Hades who already felt bad enough over the situation in having to take Nick’s son and his wife in a single day.  “That guy, Randy, the physical therapist from the SGC.”

“That little shit? She slept with him? In my bed?” Nick looked around quickly. “Where is he? I’m gonna kill him!”

That was a good question; where was Randy? Surely if he’d been here taking care of what had become his business then Kiki and Annie would still be here as well. He’d been there when Danny’s body was discovered and he’d taken the boy and his mother away. Where’d he gone after that?  Did he take Kiki with him? This time it was Calla who voiced the dark thought the others had running through their minds? “What if it was him? Wolfgar? What if he was here the whole time and we didn’t know it?”

To her question there was no voiced answer other than a collective mumble and nod. Nick started to cry again.

Ares took Jack aside though his own heart was broken.  “Nicholas is obviously the target here. Wolfgar won’t stop until he’s taken everything from him…from us.”

Jack offered no descent.  “What are you going to do about it?”  Not that Jack was any fan of the God of War but it was good to see the old bastard up and grousing once again. In times such as these, War was cold but useful.

“I’m going to kill him.” Ares said as a matter of course.  “You’re sure there are no ships up there?”

Jack jumped right back in command once they reached the SGC and took control of the situation.  They’d scanned the skies near and far if there was a ship up there then it had some new type of cloaking device more sophisticated than anything they had come across before.  “There’s nothing. Just to be sure, we’re up there looking around the old fashioned way and so is Thor and his fleet.  If there is something there we’ll find it.”

“But will you be in time?” He looked past Jack to where Calla and Daniel were huddled around their Son offering him what comfort they could.

“It’ll be all right,” Calla was saying, “Danny and God sent me back so I could stop him…”

The word was like a lightning bolt in the room to t hose who hadn’t heard her utter it yet.  Nick pulled away from her, she might as well have told him that the bowl of fruit on the table spoke to her or the plant over there in the stand.  “What did you say?”

“Calla? Honey?” Daniel asked softly and reached out to her but she just stared back at him as though she’d said the most natural thing in the world.

“She, ah, she had some type of dream, Danny,” David ventured, “says God saved her.”

“And Danny.” Calla added quickly her eyes wide and trusting. “You don’t believe me.” Although she didn’t want to leave her Son in his time of great grief she reached up for Daniel who was still holding a hand out to her.

“I believe you, sweetheart.” Daniel said easily and kissed her cheek. God, it was so good to see her like this!  When he left for Sengul, for an hour or two or a day at most, she was so frail and sickly.  Now she was more like her old self, even if ‘old’ was still a word that applied to her.  As David quietly explained to him just before Daniel raced down here to be with Nick, no one was sure just how ‘better’ Calla was or how long it would last. She’d been woken from her sleep early and Sam and Morpheus feared the effect the Dust had on her would only be temporary because of it. “I do.”  He believed she had a dream and that she dreamed about God but not that God actually came to her in it. “What else did God say?”

Calla slipped an arm around his waist and leaned against him.  So long since she’d been wrapped up in his arms and being here now in the midst of all this death and chaos was a slice of heaven.“That we would be reunited but it would be a long and treacherous journey. He was guiding me to you when Danny called to me.”

 “God was going to bring you to me?”

Trying to forget his anguish for a few moments Nick rose to stand behind his parents. “Do you have any idea what you’re saying, Mom?”  God. What was all of this God talk? If there was such an entity why would he allow Wolfgar to kill Danny, an innocent little boy? Why let him take Kiki and allow Annie to suffer?  Nick was still trying to understand Annie’s note, why she felt responsible for everything that happened to the kids and why she took her own life.  Took herself away from him when he needed her the most.

“Yes, He said He was taking me to my One True Love…that’s you.” She said  to Daniel with a grin but from somewhere in the back of the room there was a groan. “What?” She asked of Hades and everyone turned to look at him.

“Nothing.” He protested easily. “Go on with your story.”

“It’s not a story. He said we were going on an important journey.”

Morpheus ventured into the conversation.  “Where did this important journey take you?”

Calla told them about the Blue Town on the Blue Bay and of the wedding cake shaped lighthouse. She told of how the polite people turned into debaucherous sinners but that God rescued her and He guided her through them, away from them.

“This important journey,” Morpheus said without trying to give away the alarm he felt, “did it take you upward?”

Calla thought that an odd question and answered right away. “ No,” she said almost sadly, “we kept walking down and down and down as though the descent would never end.”

Hades and Morpheus exchanged a worried but knowing glance. “That wasn’t God.” Hades said sternly. “It was him, Wolfgar.”

“No, it was God. Why would Wolfgar send me back to face him?”

“Yeah,” Daniel said, “why?”

“He didn’t.” Hades said flatly.  “He was taking you to the backdoor of the Underworld.  If Danny hadn’t been so near death already he could not have intervened, could not have called out to you and warned you.”

David knew it was true. He watched her dream that first night in the SGC and he knew, he knew, Wolfgar had been there. He’d gotten to her in her dreams.  “Why not just kill her?” Calla sucked in a harsh breath. “Sorry, Sunshine.  But why not? He poisoned Danny. He wormed his way into the Girl’s lives and Aiden’s. He could have just…killed her…at any time.  Why go through all of this?”

“Because she has to be delivered.” Hades confessed.

Now those wide trusting emerald eyes blinked. “To who?”

“Oblivion. Wolfgar knows who you are and what the reward is for returning you.”

“And that would be?” Calla led.

“Power everlasting and unending.”

“You know that story you didn’t wanna tell before?” David coached. “I think it’s time you started talking.”

“Uncle?” Calla whispered uncertainly and not without fear.  “What am I?”  She clutched Daniel around the waist while waiting to hear the answer.

“You’re Calla Jackson, you’re my Wife, that’s who and what you are.” Daniel told her knowing that might not be the whole truth. If only that was all she was then he’d be a happy man. Daniel looked at Jack and then Nick and finally Ares before he opened his mouth again.  “Wolfgar destroyed Sengul,” he said as calmly as he could. “He killed everyone there because he thinks he’s God and he has a divine right to dole out punishment to the wicked.”

“Killed them all?” Calla asked as her arm tightened around Daniel’s waist. “All? An entire planet? An entire race? Gone?” Daniel nodded.  “My children?” She stuttered softly. “The ones they took?” Her free hand caressed her lower belly.

“They’re gone, Kitty, I’m sorry.” He kissed her forehead wishing this whole thing was over.

Next to him Calla nodded and drew in a breath while holding back her sorrow. “Uncle, you must tell us all that you know.”

“Hades, answer her.” Ares demanded. “Answer all of us, go on, tell your tale, I don’t care what rules it breaks.  Right now you should be more afraid of me then anyone or anything else.”

End of Chapter Fifty-Nine of
Golden Years
by Moon Mistress
a/k/a Lisa Beth Darling
Go to
Chapter Sixty