Horrors of the Dancing Gods

it's not you but most likely Irving or even Larae who'll set hands on it, if anyone does.

She got up and went over to a window and looked out. Although it was very dark inside the car, by her own night vision and faerie sight she saw her reflection in the glass, and she didn't like what she saw at all.

She was taller, thicker built, and more of a sexual bombshell than ever. She was also taking on a golden glow, and the reds in her skin were beginning to darken uniformly. She was far more than halfway across the line from Kauri to Succubus; it was almost impossible to see her old self anymore. It was something that should have angered and repelled her as the sight of such creatures always had before, but…

It didn't.

She began to wonder if she could even try a legitimate tryst with Irving, whether she dared do so. The very idea she still had reservations about that provided some encouragement, but it didn't answer the question. Would Irving help her, or would she harm him irreparably?

She stood there, studying that reflection, wondering how she could solve this problem, or, worse, if she really wanted to.

Shortly before midnight they reached the other station. It wasn't much different from the one they'd left, except it had no zombies, no jungle, no old houses, no… well, not much of anything, period.

The welcoming committee consisted of one very large, very tall fat guy who spoke and was dressed like something out of the Arabian Nights and had that method of speaking where you could virtually see the exclamation marks.

'Welcome! Welcome, effendis! Please accept my humble greetings to you all on getting this far! Come! Come! I am Ali ben Hazzard, your host for this next and final leg of your journey! Please! Come this way! We have tents over here, and sweet teas and fine coffees,_, and a way to relax and get some sleep!'

They all looked at Thebes. 'Is this guy legit?' Marge asked him.

'Oh, yes. He manages the prepaid expeditions to and from here,' the little man assured them. 'Why do you ask?'

'Well, um, hasn't anybody told him that for a guy named Ali ben something who talks and dresses like that, he's not an Arab or a Persian? That in fact he's a Mongolian, or so it seems?'

'Oh, yes, that. He knows. He just hopes you will not notice. I think there probably was an Ali ben Hazzard many, many years and a number of owners ago. He is actually an improvement over the last one I knew here. He was a snake man with a nasty complexion and big reptilian eyes and all the rest. Made it next to impossible to believe anything he said. He kept saying everything with a forked tongue.'

Marge let that one pass.

Hazzard's setup, virtually invisible from the air, was actually quite elaborate. Big tents, thick rugs, and silken coverings, all the comforts of a nomadic home.

There was good stuff there, too: not just the teas and coffees promised but wines as well, and sweet rolls and a savory stew that ben Hazzard assured them had nothing more sinister in it than Iamb.

'I didn't think there was anybody this straight and up and up on this whole continent,' Marge commented to Thebes.

The little man gave his Lorre-like chuckle. 'Oh, he is one of those who is more or less the dishonest side of Yuggoth, really. You see, he offers absolutely safe and honest service at an incredibly exorbitant price.'

'What's dishonest about that?'

'Why, I would think that it is obvious. What is a criminal enterprise? It is there to supply those things, regardless of cost, that society has deemed illegal or immoral but that the people want anyway. Here, everybody cheats, so you pay through the nose for honesty. It is that simple.'

Marge shook her head as if to clear it. 'Yeah. Simple as calculus. Never mind.'

Ali ben Hazzard was a good host, and after they had eaten and drunk their fill, he took them to a large trough where there was actually tepid water for washing off, then showed them their small tent. It was big enough for them all but wasn't exactly built for privacy.

'It is too late to make the journey tonight, so rest!' their effusive host told them. 'Tomorrow you will rise, eat, and have a fairly easy day on your own, and then we shall set off after an early dinner while we still have some sun but the shadows begin to cool.'

'We're not going to travel tomorrow during the day?' Irving asked.

He chuckled. 'You must be joking, young sir. It is about as cold as it gets right about now and will remain this way until about dawn! Within an hour, the temperature will climb several degrees an hour and will not begin to decline until the sun is very low. At midday this desert is hot enough to fry brains!'

Thebes nodded to confirm this. 'It is probably about thirty now — ninety-two or so Fahrenheit. Tomorrow, forty-five, even fifty is not unheard of, and fifty-five is common farther inland. Is that not so, friend Ali?'

'Indeed it is, effendi! Not for nothing is the Great Rift often called the Worse Than Death Valley! So sleep!'

And after a while they did. After the discomforts of the ship's deck and its eternal wetness and hard sacks, the rugs and silk over sand were a blessed relief.

Marge, of course, did not sleep but wandered outside. The heat made no difference to her; she felt neither cold nor warmth in any measure, and once you've jumped into liquid lava a few times, the kinds of temperatures bandied about for this desert didn't seem all that big a deal.

She was simply trying to decide _.what to do.

It took a couple of hours, with late half-moon rising well in the sky, before events made her decision for her.

Someone stirred, then slipped as silently as possible out of the tent, probably too troubled to sleep or perhaps just overtired. Marge was surprised to see that it was Larae.

A thought suddenly struck Marge, and she found it quickly maturing into an irresistible impulse, and she'd been faerie too long to resist one of those.

She went up behind Lame as the girl stood not far from the tent, looking at the moon. Suddenly she heard someone and turned and saw not Marge but Irving there. Only it wasn't Irving, not exactly. It was some kind of dream Irving, some idealized Irving from her own mind and fantasies…

Although very real, the cleansing eventually would lead Larae back to sleep, in which she'd have more peaceful dreams and awake refreshed, unsure of any true action but remembering it as a kind of fantasy pleasure.

Larae had certainly been in need of it, and Marge was quite pleased that she'd been able to control it and limit it to the old ways. Not long ago she could have gone a week or more before feeding again from a load of guilt like that, but after this she was still hungry. She might be able to restrain herself, pace things, if Irving didn't present an opportunity, but Marge knew she'd find it next to impossible not to follow through if Irving should walk out of the tent at some point the way Larae had.

It was worse than she'd thought. She was becoming insatiable…

Within twenty minutes a disturbed-looking Irving came outside to look at the moon.

The heat of the day fully lived up to its billing, and the current Ali ben Hazzard still lived up to his effusive hospitality, although Poquah found himself paying for all sorts of extras that might well have been considered essentials. Guaranteed wholesome food, for example, was horrendous; no guarantee, well, that was pretty cheap, but you use those grungy pots over there. Water? No problem! Oh, you want a cup! Well, that's different!

Irving and Larae both slept very late and awoke quite close to each other. It was very strange how he felt this morning, the boy thought, but damn it, she seemed somehow ten times more attractive than before — and he'd been attracted to her since his first glimpse of her back on the big boat.

But it was wrong, damn it! He couldn't get around that. He couldn't do what he really wanted to do with her, even though somewhere in the back of his mind was a nearly perfect sensation that somehow they'd done exactly that, impossible though it was. They could be friends, but how could they truly be lovers?

Larae felt no such reservations even though she had exactly the same sensations and vague half memories that must have come out of dream but still seemed so real. She would try very hard to break down that conflict