by James Axler
Within fifteen minutes they heard a horn, and Pocket Rocket’s sharply raked prow chugged around the river bend. They’d flagged it down and quickly negotiated passage to Haven dockside. Which turned out not to be all that far, for a powered craft riding with the current.
Despite the travelers’ impatience, Murphy followed his standard practice of anchoring for the night, far enough out in the channel that nothing could leap aboard from an overhanging bough. The party slept on deck, crowding for shelter under a tattered canvas awning when a rain squall passed through sometime after midnight. When the sky had just begun to lighten predawn, Murphy and his two silent black crewmen cast off and got under way again.
Now Haven lay no more than a mile away. Krysty was scarcely farther. Ryan could feel her presence burning like a beacon.
“What’s going on?” Mildred asked. She had gone back to sleep curled up on a coil of rope astern when the little wood-plank vessel resumed the trip. Now she padded forward, stretching and yawning.
“It appears the Black Gang has found a way to bypass Tobias’s defenses, and fall upon Haven by water,” Doc said.
Ryan stifled a groan. “Thanks for helping make our case for us, Doc.”
“Don’t rag on the old wrinklie,” Murphy said. “Worked that out on my lonesome.”
He looked Ryan in the eye. “End of the line, folks. I can set you and your boats loose on the stream here. Me, I’d recommend you stay aboard as I put about and chug back up Blackwood Bayou as fast as Rocket’s mill will carry her out of harm’s way.”
“You can’t do this,” Ryan said. “You made a deal.”
“Tobias will pay,” Rameau said.
Bluebottle stood unspeaking behind him. The big rawboned guide had said nothing since they had surrendered to the swampies. He only hung around looking as if he had heard and seen blasphemies.
The Havenite boss was almost back in fighting trim, thanks to swampie herbal remedies. The Gotch Eye sting still hurt, he admitted, but he no longer felt weak or feverish, and had full use of his arm, which was about to come in handy in the fight for Haven. If only they could get to Haven.
“He’ll pay if he’s still baron,” Murphy said. “But wait. I just remembered. Chills got no use for jack. Back upstream we go.”
He started to turn to give the orders, then froze as he felt something hard and cool and uncompromising touch his neck.
“Okay, he’s behind me now, isn’t he? The mutie wolf-boy with that outsize handblaster of his.”
“Albino,” Jak said, cocking the Python. The captain seemed to shrivel even as he raised hands over his head.
“Sorry to play it this way,” J.B. said, picking up his M-4000 scattergun from the hatch cover where he’d set it to cover Murphy’s crew. They seemed disinclined to resist. “You don’t leave us much choice. We’ve got a friend in Haven, and we need to get there triple quick.”
“The captain is certainly correct that we dare not simply steam up to the Haven docks, with the pirates there in force,” Doc said.
“Then we’ll have to get as close as we can and hustle overland bastard fast,” Ryan said.
He turned, wincing, as another sharp explosion rapped out from downriver.
“That’s Black Joke’s recoilless, sure enough,” J.B. said.
Ryan’s guts twisted. Krysty! he silently screamed.
“KRYSTY.” THE WORD rang in her mind.
Krysty Wroth slept. She knew that much.
At some deep layer of her mind she remembered a storm. And a snake, a sudden pain, a sense of invasion as venom suffused outward from the bite. Then instead of the expected agony, a wave of dizziness, a wave that became a spiral, and carried her with it down and down…
Now—when was now? Where was now? And was that her lover’s voice that called her name?
Krysty, a different voice said in her dream.
“Gaia?” It wasn’t the voice of her body that spoke, but it was her voice.
I am that which you choose to personalize by that name, yes. As your subconscious is processing vast forces at work into a voice you appear to hear, and words you believe you understand.
“Why are you speaking to me?”
You are healed. Your body has long since healed itself from the Dream Snake’s bite. You have been kept unconscious through treachery. You sleep now under the influence of a drug.
It was true that Krysty could sense no lingering trace of poison or other damage in her body. Even though she had a strange sense, as if inhabiting a stranger’s house.
You must move instantly. Otherwise no power of mine can save you.
When her eyes opened, she was falling to a hardwood floor covered by a crocheted rug from a height of less than a foot.
Something landed with great violence and a muffled impact just above her on the bed. Krysty hit the rug and rolled to the left, away from the danger.
She saw a creature crouching on the four-poster. It was perhaps the size of a very large dog. Its slenderness and general shape suggested a tailless cat, but it was hairless except for a lionlike mane of midnight hair. And the muzzle suggested a wolf or dog, although it was much shorter than either’s.
The monster turned and squalled at her, then leaped. It reached with hands humanlike, but sprouting curving black claws that glistened with what Krysty thought was fresh blood.
By reflex Krysty pulled up both legs and kicked out. Her bare feet struck the creature in its pale belly, beneath washboard ribs. The pouncing horror gasped as air was forced out of it. Then it was flung clean over the bed by the force of Krysty’s kick.
Krysty realized the power of the Earth Mother had charged through her body, giving her incredible strength.
Screeching furiously, the creature launched itself over the bed at her. Frantically, Krysty dodged. Her prehensile hair wound itself into a tight scarlet cap, mirroring her own agitation.
She flung herself toward the door. The creature struck where she had lain, just beside a bedside table where a kerosene lantern burned low. Gray light streamed through the open window, providing more illumination. Neither gave much.
The monster recovered from a skid across polished hardwood and slashed at her with its talons. Krysty threw herself onto the bed and rolled across it.
The creature seemed taken by surprise by the speed and strength that its prey’s muscles gave her. Krysty judged it was both stronger and faster than she was, although somewhat lighter. She had escaped damage at its claws or needle fangs so far because it kept underestimating her.
She feared it would learn fast.
Krysty rolled off the bed, turned, grabbed it by the wooden frame and hurled the whole several-hundred-pound mass in the creature’s face as it sprang at her again.
She hoped to crush it against the wall. Somehow it managed to push itself down in time not to get smashed by the massive frame. But the monster failed to reappear at once. It was injured or stunned.
Krysty bolted to the door. The scrape of nails on polished wood made her swerve aside.
A claw lashed out and raked Krysty’s left shoulder. The monster slammed into the door. Solid oak panels cracked on impact. The creature slid to the floor, gathered itself, then launched itself like a quarrel from a crossbow.
Krysty pulled a chest of drawers down between them. Agile as a monkey, the creature scrambled over it and leaped at her again, at her face.
The titian-haired beauty got her hands up in time to grab the monster’s upper arms. It tried to kick her and eviscerate her with its long-clawed toes. Controlling its upper body with her grip on its arms, Krysty twisted her hips. She tried to throw the creature away from her, but it got its feet on the floor and dug its claws into slick hardwood.
For a moment Krysty wrestled with the horror, strength against strength. Its breath stank of blood and ripped viscera. To Krysty’s shock, she realized the eyes, though slanted, were violet, and she thought she saw a trace of humanity there.
Shock made her concentration blink
. Fangs snapped for her face, but she yanked her head back in time. The jaws clashed shut just short of the tip of her slightly snubbed nose.
The creature seemed to smile at her.
With a whoomp the pool of kerosene spreading from the lamp that had been smashed by Krysty ignited. The woman had been too preoccupied even to notice the smell of spilled fuel. Garish yellow light filled the bedroom, as yellow and blue flames chased each other up the mattress’s underside. Smoke began to pool and bubble on the ceiling.
That distracted the monster. Krysty pushed its straining arms upward. Lowering her head, she thrust her shoulder against the monster’s breastbone, above a pair of curiously shrunken dugs. She put a foot against the wall behind her to brace and pushed with all her Gaia-granted strength.
Smoke clawed at her eyes, her throat and laboring lungs. She ignored it. There was nothing but the dire need to channel every ounce of strength the Earth Mother had granted her.
Usually Gaia’s strength lasted a short time, and drained her. She would pay for this later with bone-deep aches and total weakness. But first she had to survive long enough for there to be a later.
Step by straining step, Krysty forced the monster back. It tried to snap at her nape, but her shoulder was locked beneath its chin. It was stronger than she was, even with her great strength. But she had gotten lower, and the simple advantage in center of gravity was making the difference.
Her hair lashed at the monster’s cheeks and blazing violet eyes to distract it.
Krysty heard the flames crackle, felt the heat on the top of her head. Smoke began to claw its way down her nasal passages and throat to her lungs. If they fought here too much longer, the smoke would incapacitate them, and then the flames would have their way.
The smoke took on a sudden acrid foulness as the monster’s mane ignited. It whipped its head around.
Krysty let go with her right hand, cocking it back in a fist. The monster’s left arm began to whip toward her. Krysty’s straight right deflected the slash in passing, her fist catching the side of the narrow thrusting face as it turned back toward her. She felt and heard bone crack.
The creature squealed, and Krysty felt the tension go out of its muscles. She had stunned it, if only momentarily.
Seizing her advantage, Krysty flexed her knees. Then with every ounce of the strength that seemed to flow up from the Earth itself, through the foundations of the big house, through its wooden planks and beams that had once been living trees, and up into her body through the bare soles of her feet, she picked up the monster and flung it hard against the door.
The back of its head struck the frame so hard the wood cracked again. The monster collapsed in a tangle at the foot of the white-painted door, as if all its joints had come apart at the same time, and left it a jumble of dissociated bones in a pale skin bag.
At once it began to change. The sharp feral features seemed to soften and spread. The muscles like bunches of wire and steel cable began to bunch and shift inside the smooth pale skin.
Suddenly the Gaia strength fled Krysty. She dropped with a painful jar to her hands and knees, panting and trying not to throw up in a sudden wave of nausea. She breathed in huge shuddering gasps, not yet gripped by the usual total weakness.
The air was clean and cool down here near the floor. That helped.
Krysty raised her head. What had been a monster was melting and reforming into a shape like that of a young woman. Already the face was almost human. A lovely face, she saw. The horrific snarling visage of moments before had been a cruel parody.
She saw her backpack standing in the corner, by what had been the foot of the bed. She forced herself to her feet.
She picked up the bag and shouldered into the straps. The flames had begun to spread, already eating through the ceiling. She had to get out of here now, but her way out was blocked by the unconscious…young woman. Krysty could tell that she was still breathing. But barely.
Krysty faced a choice. She owed the young woman nothing, as far as she could see. She had been trying her level best to mutilate and kill Krysty, mere hammering heartbeats before.
But had her mind and character changed as well as her form? How culpable was the person taking shape before Krysty’s emerald eyes of the terrible acts and intentions of the monster she had been?
Strength was flowing back into Krysty’s muscles. Oddly, she was regaining her normal power. Apparently payback for the supercharge would come later.
“Thank you for looking out for me, Mother Gaia,” she said. “I hope what I’m about to do isn’t triple stupe.”
She went to the door, stopped, slung the woman across her shoulders, pack and all, in a fireman’s carry. The woman was noticeably lighter than the monster was. Her limbs were slimy. Krysty realized there was a pool of some kind of liquid on the floor where she had lain.
Her lips skinned back from her teeth in a grimace of disgust. Something was going on here she didn’t understand. She felt no overwhelming urge to learn the details. Only to get away from this place now.
For the first time she became aware of the sounds of gunshots, muffled by distance. A substantial battle was raging not far away. That, and the increasingly hot, vigorous and smoky fire threatening to choke her with the stink of burning feathers and kerosene, were excellent reasons to move.
Out in the hallway she saw the remains of what a quick tally of heads and limbs suggested were three dead men. For some reason the only one whose features were untouched had a remarkably well-manicured mustache and pointed beard, and in the staring wide gray eyes the most concentrated look of horror Krysty had ever seen on a human face.
Despite her burden, Krysty went quickly down the two flights of stairs. She encountered no living person inside the big house. Instinctively she shied away from the front door. Casting around, she soon found herself in a large, spotless kitchen, which had a back door.
She left the woman, still completely unconscious and now completely human, on the lawn well clear of the house. She could smell gunsmoke now, hear shouts as well as shooting. A serious explosion made her wince as it assailed her ears.
Leaving a beautiful naked woman lying out in the open in the midst of a battle wasn’t the kindest thing to do, but it was kinder than leaving the mysterious shapeshifter to burn alive. And there was a limit to how much even Krysty Wroth’s big heart bled for someone who had just tried to rip her limb from limb.
Wearing only a gossamer nightgown and unwilling to linger long enough to root in her pack and do something about, she slipped into the woods.
Chapter Thirty-Two
As soon as Amélie Mercier heard the ringing impact of something heavy and metal on the steel door of her laboratory, she knew her fate was sealed.
She closed her laboratory notebook, placed it in an insulated safe beneath the desk and locked it. The safe itself was bolted to the concrete floor. The pirates wouldn’t easily dislodge it. She hoped it would survive their depredations and the…necessary consequences.
She had already made preparations. Now certain final details had to be attended to. She carried them out punctiliously, her whole being focused on following proper procedures. Procedure, detail—those defined a well-ordered life.
Finished, she sat in her scavenged swivel chair facing the door and waited.
At last whatever massive metal object the raiders had found to use as a battering ram got the better of her door. It crumpled, tore away from the hinges. Light only just beginning to show a golden color poured in.
It was followed by men with rough voices and pawing hands, whose breath and bodies stank. Mercier didn’t resist them. She knew it would do no good, might only enrage them at worst. In any event she was no fighter. She lived by and for the mind.
Although if she had had the chance, perhaps her heart could have won a place in her existence. But that would never come to pass now.
They stripped her naked. She felt light-headed. They mauled and slobbered on her small, firm breasts,
licked her neck, even her face, with their disgusting, reeking, viscous slobber. She bore it all with detached calm.
Nor did she give them the pleasure of showing fear or resistance, or anything at all, when they bore her down on her back on the cool concrete floor. She lay limply passive as they pulled her legs apart.
The others chanted and cheered as the first man prepared to rape her.
No one noticed when her right hand groped out, beneath her desk, and found an igniter. Clicked it.
She had the last gratification of seeing her potential rapist’s eyes bulge from his filthy face as the flames enveloped him. Then the explosive combination of pure oxygen from the concentration machines, and the acetylene gas took over, shattering the lab’s interior and everything inside in a yellow flash.
Amélie Mercier felt an instant of searing dragon’s breath. Then nothing.
“THAT SMOKE,” Jak said, pausing as he led the group through the woods toward Blackwood’s house. He had learned the trails and paths around the ville hunting with his local friends. “Not like.”
Ryan frowned at the white and brown smoke. It was coming from about the direction Jak told him the big house lay.
“Krysty,” he said. Slinging his Steyr, which he had been carrying in his hand, he started to run.
“Hey,” J.B. called, “you’re heading into a battle, remember?”
“I’m heading toward Krysty!”
AT THE EDGE of a little clearing, with knee-high grass and flowers and dense brush on the far side, Jak stopped short. He held up an urgent hand. “Someone coming.”
The two companions had run half the distance to the big house, close enough for Ryan to see the smoke streaming from the high-peaked roof of the big white building. And not from the chimney pots. His being rebelled against stopping now, with his lover trapped in a burning building. But if Jak told you to stop in the woods, you stopped. Or the odds were you were on the fast track to the last train west.
