Dark World: Dark and Darker

As usual, mousing over strange text will reveal a gloss, not counting the fragmentary German.

(The story begins here.)
(The last recap is here.)

“Where are—” Dr. FitzHugh began.

“We have dealt with your apes according to our usual efficiency. You may have a better fate. You could be useful to us, Doctor. As for you, Herr Lassiter, you shall come with us. We have assembled an expeditionary force to explore this new world; we just require you to open the way for us.”

“You murdered them!” Dr. FitzHugh gasped as he and the others were shepherded from the cabin.

“One murders human beings,” the newcomer said in an accent clearly obtained at an English university. “Subhuman races may be slaughtered like any other animal—useless evolutionary by-products. If you wish, you may join them in the lake.”

Darren glanced at Dr. Fleming, but there were too many guns in too large an area for a simple solution. “I’ll tell you what I told Dr. FitzHugh,” he said. “If you go in, you can’t come back. This door works only one way.”

“For inferior races, perhaps. Some have returned, and what a subhuman can do, the Master Race shall surely do even more easily. But you need not worry about returning. We shall take Herr Lassiter, Dr. FitzHugh, and perhaps the other doctor, this Fleming, with us. You are dead weight, so to speak.”

“Even though I’m not from an inferior race?”

“You have spent so much time with them that you have become like them.”

Darren started to reply when he noticed something that froze the words in his mouth: despite the calm of the clearing, Lassiter’s hair was stirring as if in a breeze Darren could not feel.

The sky grew dark, and there was now a hill where a moment before there had been only trees. A familiar voice called, “Benevenit, amicos! Veni a vor nov hem!”

“Gnädige Frau, wir—” the man in black began, but the dark lady took no notice.

“Veni! Seque vor desires e intra! Li tenebres comanda vos!”

The man in black struggled against an unseen force. “Nein,” he growled. Slowly he raised his gun and fired at the woman, but with no effect.

Darren looked around. The black-clad forces were beginning to shamble toward the woman, but at least for the moment, the rest were hanging back, eyes shut against the sight. Darren suspected they saw it anyway.

The flock of would-be wolves reached the foot of the hill, and Darren and the others fell on the ground gasping as the darkness gave way to the normal afternoon light.

Next: Open and Shut