Vito stood at the edge of the sandy cliff and looked down at the train of warriors and vehicles in the valley below. “Naarwulf,” he said quietly, “keep those human guards in there, and post a few other human guards around the perimeter. We’ll let him rest a day, then see if he’s fit to move.”
“Khan...” said Naarwulf, then drifted off.
“Yeah? What?” Vito looked at Naarwulf, then at Ramos. Ramos had a crazy grin slapped on his face as he looked back and forth between the two.
“I like him,” Ramos said suddenly. “Yeah, I’ll admit it. I like him! He’s a tough li’l shit, you know?”
Vito shook his head, then laughed. “I do, too,” he said. “I don’t want to kill him. Not yet, I don’t. He’s... he’s honest, he’s strong. He’s a good guy.”
“You wanna make him one of us?” said Ramos.
Vito nodded.
Naarwulf blurted out, “Are you trying to get Ganson killed?”
Vito regarded him, then said, “In a way, yes. But, the way I see it, I gave him enough dogs to stay alive, if he’s smart and he really wants to stay alive. But, yes, Naarwulf, I think he’s clever in a sneaky kind of way and frankly I’m tired of him. I’ll use him while I can, though. And he has a lot of friends, so I don’t want either of you two taking any initiative about murdering him.”
Both nodded.
Vito turned away and looked down onto endless lines of marching beasts, their eyes shining in the torchlight.
I’ll make you understand, Wodan, he thought. I’ll make you understand why the world must be destroyed.
* * *
Wodan stared at the ceiling of the tent. He slid his tongue between the gaps in his teeth and tried to lay as still as possible, for he hurt worse than he’d ever hurt before.
He felt ridiculous, as if he’d gone insane but was suddenly cured. Why did he ever think that he would be capable of breaking the bonds that held his wrists? Perhaps fighting the dogmen earlier had been a stroke of luck; perhaps the one he’d beaten hand-to-hand was a runt, a weakling. He closed his eyes. His confidence had been superhuman, at least, but his body was only tired and sick and wracked with pain. He felt as if he’d thrown himself into the deepest pit in the world, a place so far from home that he may as well no longer exist.
Despite his agony and his frustration, he doggedly clung to the idea that there was something growing inside of him. Perhaps that force was powerful, even unstoppable… but perhaps it had ideals of its own. If that was true, then he had no doubt that it would have given him the strength he needed to kill someone like Barkus or Boris or Aegis Vachs, the former Prime Minister of Haven. But why had it abandoned him now?
Barkus had preached slavery, but Vito spoke of freedom. Was it possible that the nameless force actually admired Vito? Vito was a tyrant, but he was also a strong man. Did the “Blood King”, as Wodan had called it, think that Vito was the sort of man their species needed?
Even as Wodan chastised himself, and hated the fact that he did not understand what was happening to himself, and wished that he could have burned up the last spark of his life to kill Vito and cause this army of brutes to turn on itself… he admitted to himself that, on some level, he did not believe that Vito was an evil man.
Chapter Eighteen
Pillar of Salt
“Khan!” shouted a dogman, running in such a panic that he stumbled and fell to his knees. “Great Khan, the prisoner! He is gone!”
“Redeemer on a cross!” Vito hollered, jumping up immediately. “I just about knew some dumb shit like this would happen!”
Vito ran with a crew of dogmen around the long, narrow precipice that separated his quarters from Wodan’s. He’d left four human guards in the tent, and a gang of humans were strung out all along the hill, all armed, all fully-awake and at attention. Had they given Wodan to a group of sex-starved dogmen in exchange for goods or favors? As Vito tore across the precipice, kicking up sand before him, he saw the horde marching in the valley below; growling in the darkness, a force the likes of which the world had never seen, perfectly ready to knock over an entire city - but quite useless, it seemed, when it came to stopping a man nearly beaten to death from getting away from them.
Vito skidded to a stop at the site where Wodan had been held. He saw men wandering about in confusion, wide-eyed and yelling to one another. He saw the wide tarp under which he’d kept the prisoner, now fallen over on the ground in a folded mass.
“The hell happened!” screamed Vito.
A barrel-chested guard stood over the fallen tarp. “Uh, Khan! We was outside the tent, just keeping watch, but all of a sudden we, uh, heard a gun go off and the tarp just fell down! We ran fas’ as we could, then we... we saw this!”
The guard lifted up a section of the tarp. The bodies of Wodan’s four human guards were strewn about, drenched in blood, bodies contorted unnaturally, heads twisted on broken necks, noses mashed up into purple faces.
“Ye gods,” hissed Vito, bending over the scene. Naarwulf ran up beside him, sniffing the air. Vito found Wodan’s binding rope among the bodies. “He must’ve had a knife on him. And none of you idiots found it!” He looked at the rope more closely and saw that the rope had not been cut at all. It was frayed at the ends, as if it had burst apart. He dropped the thing as if he’d been burned by it.
Vito rose to his feet and scanned the area. He saw hills on either side, shadows, darkness made for creeping.
“Spread out!” he shouted to his men. “He... he couldn’t have gotten far, he was injured! Find him! Find him and...”
Vito wanted to recruit him, but he knew that Wodan was dangerous. Perhaps too dangerous, too far gone to be saved.
“Dead or alive, I don’t care,” said Vito. “But find him!”
The men scurried away, shouting into radios. Vito turned away, confused and angry. He heard Naarwulf mutter, “Couldn’t have gotten far…” and he stopped in his tracks.
“Wait! He’s here!” Vito shouted, running back to the site. “He’s still in the tent! He’s-”
Vito, Naarwulf, and a dozen others ran back to the fallen tent. Vito picked up one end of the heavy tarp, flung it into the air and cast it aside. He scanned the bodies - one of them was on its belly, face concealed.
“Got you!” said Vito, lifting the body up by its jacket. The face - was only some dead hick, a nameless goon. Vito dropped him to the ground slowly.
“Alright,” said Vito, sighing heavily. “He’s in the hills somewhere. How, I don’t know. Just spread out and find him!”
The men nodded and spread out to find the ghost.
* * *
Wodan waited until the voices shrank into the distance. He pushed the dead body away from his face, saw that no one had remained in the area, then flung the dead body away and crawled out of the sand.
Now Wodan knew for certain that something was happening to him. As soon as Vito had left him and Wodan was done with feeling sorry for himself, he’d closed his eyes and gone into a sleeplike meditative state. He was convinced that he could feel his ribs and muscles mending. He could feel himself burning through energy reserves, sweating as the pain grew and grew while flesh rearranged and knit itself together. Eventually he’d felt fingers probing his pockets, then his shoelaces; he opened his eyes and saw one of the four guards grinning, his features loutish and only vaguely human. With an incredible surge of strength Wodan kicked the man and flung him across the tent with such force that the man crashed into another guard, then both of them toppled into a support beam. While the tent fell with unnatural slowness, Wodan pulled his rope bindings apart with little effort, then darted toward another guard with superhuman speed. Before the man could react, Wodan was behind him with an arm around his neck and had his gun unholstered while another guard was still fumbling with his own, eyes wide with disbelief. In a fraction of a second Wodan shot and killed three of the guards, then jerked and snapped the last guard’s neck. As the tent fell and he could hear other guards shouting outs
ide, Wodan dug into the sand so fast that he could feel flesh tearing from his palms, then threw part of his body into the shallow grave and pulled a dead guard to cover his face, arm, and part of his torso.
His mind was still spinning like mad as the goons lifted up the tent and discussed the matter, their words slow and fearful and angry and dull. Only Vito had come close to finding him; if he’d picked up the right guard’s body, he would have seen Wodan sticking out of the sand.
The whole thing seemed like a dream, but Wodan could see that he was now alone on the sandy face of the cliff. He could hear an army marching in the valley down below and men shouting in the surrounding hills. He was tired, so exhausted that he wanted only to sleep – no doubt, it was the price he’d paid for his unnatural strength and speed. Finding and killing Vito was no longer an option.
He crouched and glided into the dark hills, clambering over stone and flitting between groups of men who stomped about and squinted at shadows in vain. Despite his exhaustion, he knew that his friends would be killed during the exchange for Sylas if he did not make it there in time. He knew that he would have to be a ghost if he wanted to survive and save the others.
* * *
“Hurry it up!” shouted the leader of the riders. Three other goons revved the engines to their motorcycles, strapped on painted helmets, and checked the ammunition in their weapons while a fifth man hurried around a bend in the pass holding his crotch, desperately needing to take a piss.
“All these idiots and dogs runnin’ around, they won’t find jack,” shouted the leader. “We’re gonna head to the exchange and catch up with the escaped prisoner there - that’s where he’s headed!”
“But ain’t he on foot?” said one of the riders. “How’re we gonna find him that far away, when we’re ridin’ and he’s walkin’?”
“Idiot!” shouted the leader. “That’s why I do the thinkin’ around here. Don’t you think he’s going to try to steal a ride so he can meet up with his friends?”
After a few minutes, the rider returned around the corner. His helmet was on and he walked with a lighter step than before.
“You get your twat all emptied out?” the leader bellowed. “Fresh tampon feel all snug an’ clean?”
The rider raised a thumb into the air, then mounted up with the others.
“We’ll find that bastard,” said the leader, revving his engine, “if it’s the last thing we do!”
* * *
They rode hard and fast through the twisting lanes between the cliffs for an hour or more until they came to sand that stretched out in squat, sloping dunes. They followed the leader’s direction as they raced with one another, jumping dunes wildly. Eventually they saw the pale tower of salt in the distance, shining in the moonlight. There were flashes of light all around it, and they knew that Ganson and his dogs were fighting the outnumbered humans of Pontius.
The leader glanced back and signaled to his men to prepare themselves. Something did not seem right, so he stared at his men riding behind him. There were only three, not four. Just when he realized this, he saw one of his riders pull up behind another and shoot him from behind, causing the bike to flip over the top of a dune and crash into the sandy trough below.
The leader shrieked and drew his rifle from its sheathe; he sharply turned about, sending up a cascade of sand, and watched in horror as the betrayer calmly pulled alongside the last rider and fired a single bullet into his helmet. The betrayer cast his empty handgun to the side.
The leader grinded to a stop and lifted his rifle. The betrayer gunned his engine and flew at him with suicidal abandon.
He’d found the escaped prisoner, alright.
* * *
The land around the great pillar of natural stone was strewn with boulders and stones worn smooth by a thousand years of dust storms. When Ganson arrived with his dogs and Sylas, he’d found that the five boys were in the middle of setting up a fortified position atop a cluster of boulders perched against the stone pillar. When the boys refused to come down, the negotiations quickly turned violent.
Ganson and his crew of dogmen crouched in the boulder-strewn land beneath the pillar, lighting up the night with gunfire. A pile of dead dogs caked with blood and filled with bullets lay at the bottom, victims of an unsuccessful storming. Jon fired round after round from the machinegun; perched above him, Chris fired with his Hargis sniper rifle. In the distance, Sylas lay on the ground unconscious with a single watchdog standing over him. Ganson considered calling up the dogman and holding the boy hostage once more to break the others out of their siege.
“You! You! You! You!” barked Ganson, pointing to several dogmen. “You’re going to make another charge at them! You dogs over there - get ready to provide cover!”
“Ganson!” shouted another dogman, sidling up beside him. “I found a truck tucked away behind some boulders, not far from here! I think I saw someone inside!”
“Fine!” barked Ganson. He tossed a belt of grenades at the dogman, then said, “Go take care of it!”
The dogman grabbed up the grenades and ran in a crouch. Expecting Jon’s machinegun to target the runner, one dogman lifted his head and was immediately shot by Chris’s sniper rifle. Ganson watched the dog lying on the ground, dead eyes staring back at him and blood pouring from his mouth in accusation.
Ganson roared in frustration, then said, “Charge!” and several dogmen leaped over their cover while others leaned out and fired up at the boys.
“Ammo!” Jon screamed, crouching low. “Ammo, goddammit!”
Jake fumbled with the belt, loaded the machinegun, then ducked down again as bullets smacked near their cover. “This is the last of the heavy ammo!” Jake cried. “That’s all of it, man!”
“Then get out your damned rifle an’ kill somebody!” Jon shouted, his face lighting up as he fired the heavy machinegun.
Cedrik held a handful of sticks of dynamite over their fire, eyes wide with terror as the wicks flared up, then tossed them over the precipice one after the other without aiming. Blast after blast shook their fort of stone. Jon leaned over the side, saw several dogs rising among pieces of their devastated comrades, then fired down at them and cursed the rate at which their ammo was disappearing.
Ganson could see that the boys would soon break. He knew that when it happened, it would happen suddenly and without warning. Unfortunately, he had already lost two-thirds of his team. He couldn’t give up; he had to return to the Khan victorious. Finally he lifted his radio and said, “You with the prisoner! Lead him out! Get him over here!” No reply came. Ganson crawled on his belly toward the other side of the large boulder that provided cover and peeked around the side. Someone rode toward them on a motorcycle with a rifle perched on the handlebars. Even though it hurt his pride, he would gladly accept backup. Still, why was only one rider sent?
Wodan rode straight toward the dogs crouched behind the boulder. Seeing that he was dressed in the same black leather and denim as many riders were, they hesitated – then he fired round after round into them. Startled, the pack scattered and fired in all directions. Wodan leaped the crest of a dune, revved his engine in midair, fell straight onto a dog, and grinded a tire into his face such that the skin whipped free from the skull. The bike slammed into the ground and Wodan turned in a great sweep. Ganson and his dogs crouched and fired as Wodan jumped the bike onto a stony rise and rode hard and fast along the ledge. Bullets tore through the bike and Wodan pushed off and leaped into the air as the bike crashed and caught fire. Wodan fell atop Ganson, hit the ground rolling hard, and ended up on top of the dogman. The others hesitated, fearing to hit their leader, then Chris’s sniper rifle felled one after another.
Ganson fought desperately against Wodan, who clung to him stubbornly. In the distance, the boys’ supply truck exploded with incredible force; in a wash of brilliant white light, Ganson elbowed Wodan so hard that his helmet shattered around his head. Wodan looked down into the eyes of the dog and fixed him with his terrible gaze
. Ganson was transfixed by the gaunt, shining face, the grim-set mouth a checkerboard of missing teeth. Wodan lifted his open palm and brought it down like the tail of a scorpion. Ganson grabbed the wrist in both hands but the arm slipped through like an oiled snake and fingers hard as steel twisted into Ganson’s eye sockets. Two fingers in each eye drilled through egg yolks and the noble-blooded dog howled with fangs spread impossibly wide. As soon as Wodan felt bones shatter under his fingers, he jerked his hand free and let the victim fall to the ground, flopping and splattering the sand with red.
Wodan looked about and saw a few dogmen fleeing in panic. Crack rang the blow from Chris’s rifle, and one by one death found them all. He looked up at the stony rise, saw Jake with his rifle shaking in his hands as if the weapon was trying to fly away, then saw Jon standing on the ledge with the Coil Magnum smoking in his hands. Cedrik rose from his position and stared down at Wodan, his mouth gaping in shock.
Chris called down from far above. “What the hell was that explosion?”
“It was the truck, I think!” Wodan shouted. “Where’s Justinas?”
“With the truck!” said Jon, scrambling down.
“Sylas is close by,” said Wodan. “I don’t know if he’s still alive.”
“I’ll get him,” said Cedrik. He lifted a heavy motorcycle from their holdout and carried it down the rock ledges.
Jon ran ahead of them. Chris glanced at Wodan quickly, then turned away and muttered, “Can’t believe you’re still alive, man.”
As they ran, they saw black smoke hanging in the air directly behind a stack of boulders. The stench of gunpowder, burning diesel, and seared metal was overpowering. They ran past the lower half of a dogman resting in the sand, the remains of one who’d stood too close to the Pandora’s Box he had carelessly opened.
They came to the wasted remains of their truck, tires melted, sides bulging outwards, the cab blackened and twisted. Jon ran to the cab, dove inside - then cursed and backed away slowly. Without turning Jon raised his arms slowly. The others stopped.
Demonworld Book 4: Shepherd of Wolves Page 17
