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d10
"'Lord Jesus!"
He spun on his-heels, his eyes wide with panic, face pale with terror, afraid
that his forbidden Christian oath might have been overheard. If it had, then
he was a dead man. Although standing up and breathing, he'd be as dead as a
pair of gator-
skin boots.
But the hair. It had moved under his fingers. Moved and tangled itself around
his palm with an infinitely gentle-slowness. The silken hairs had actually
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responded to his touch. Mephisto again looked over his shoulder and hastily
crossed himself, whispering the words "Sweet Jesus."
These strangers weren't ordinary mercies, hired from some frontier ville
farther west in Tex-Mex. They weren't drunken outlander pistoleers who'd slit
a throat for a handful of jack and a gaudy whore. Then who were they?
Behind him the door swung silently open on its oiled hinges. Mephisto heard
the creaking of the baron's leg-supports. His ears caught the rhythmic
chunking of one of the ice-making machines out in the kitchen units beyond.
"Are they awake, Mephisto?"
"Coming around."
"And we know nothing of them?"
"Nothing. Fine clothes and boots."
"Weapons?"
"Yeller hair had only a small pearl-handled PPK. Slut's blaster, .22. Nothing
else."
"Red hair?"
"Pistol. But a man's gun. Real stopper. Name on it's Heckler & Koch. Real
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handsome pistol. Silvered finish. Holds thirteen rounds of nine mil."
"The fat man who clipped you?" Tourment loomed over the helpless women, his
giant shadow stretching across the floor and onto the far wall of the
underground chamber. He leaned forward, stumbling, steadying himself on the
shoulder of his sec boss; he winced at the frightening power of the pincering
hand.
"He& he had a sub, firing triple bursts. I guess a big handblaster as well. He
was good. Most of the dead were on his sheet. But both of the women also
blasted men forever into the dark night."
"The big, big question, Mephisto, is: who are they? And where do they come
from? Are they friends come to aid our snow wolf? That most of all. Six was
the word from the village?"
"One was shot. Six left."
"Where, then, are the other three?"
"In hiding. I figure that they're with the West Lowellton gangs."
Tourment laid a hand on the thigh of Lori Quint, just above the top of her
high boots. She stirred but still didn't come round.
"I should have known, Mephisto, When my men didn't return& I should have known
that this was bad."
"Shall I stay, while& ?" He hesitated,, knowing what slippery ground this was.
"While I talk with these two little peaches? No. Go now. Wait, and I'll call
you when I'm done, and you can come back and& " The sentence drifted away into
a menacing silence. The sec boss left the room, shutting the door firmly
behind him, glad of the chance to go to get washed and changed. He knew that
Tourment wouldn't be wanting him for some time.
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KRYSTY WAS REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS. From the long years; of her mother's
training, she knew how to control her body: keeping still, maintaining a
steady breathing, keeping her eyelids from fluttering. Giving no clue at all
that she was reawakening.
It had been clear almost as soon as the swarnpwags came thundering in from
every quarter that the three of them were in deep trouble. The fight had been
short-
lived, ending with the gray stun-grens sailing toward them. Now her wrists and
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ankles were tied, her body strained into a cross. Her hearing and sense of
smell were extremely acute, and she lay very still, listening, trying to work
out where she was and who was there.
Lori had a distinctive smell, just as Ryan did, and Doc. Krysty knew that she
was there, close by. Finn carried the characteristic smell of a fat man who
sweated a lot. He wasn't in the room with them, but that didn't mean that he
was safe. Maybe the baron's sec men had him somewhere else; maybe he was dead.
There was a strange creaking sound, like metal and leather under stress. And
another smell. Sweat. But it was hardly human. A sour, feral scent like an
animal's, overlaid with some sort of perfume. Heavy breathing, like that of a
ponderous old man laboring to climb steps.
Krysty cautiously opened her eyes. She saw a giant black man who supported his
bulk with a metal frame, leaning over the sleeping Lori at a table only a few
feet away.
The man wore a fine midnight-blue suit, clearly hand-sewn. A wide leather-and-
silver belt around his stomach supported twin holsters, the flaps buttoned
down;
she couldn't tell if he were carrying blasters. His back was half turned, so
all she could see was his short neatly-trimmed curly hair.
The chamber was underground. All her wakening senses told her that; besides,
it had no windows. There were white strips of light in the ceiling, and
serpentine protrusions of different-colored pipes. The room was about forty
feet square, Krysty judged. She closed her eyes again as she suddenly,
overwhelmingly, caught the stench of fear that permeated the cellar. There was
blood there, as well.
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Her heart sank.
PRECISELY AT THE MOMENT that Krysty was recovering from the effects of the
stun grens, Ryan Cawdor, J. B. Dix, Doc Tanner and Finnegan were staring at
the peculiar apparition that suddenly stood before them, leaning against the
frame of the door.
"We ought talk."
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