Spires of Infinity (16 page)

“I promised the men here a shot at some grade A, tight and clean tail.”

Sam spit in his face.

Smiling, Devileye backhanded her so hard that she spun and stumbled, losing her balance and dropping to hands and knees. She cried out in pain as dirt was ground into her wounded hand.

Causing her to give another cry, indignant this time, Devileye slapped her

admittedly shapely backside. “You’re gonna make a lot of men
very
happy missy. And me first of all.”

The very second that Devileye and his lieutenant turned their attention away from her, Sam threw herself at the nearest one. Tackling the lieutenant to the ground, Sam sank her long, sharp fangs into his throat and tore savagely. He tried to scream, but the only thing that came from his mouth were frothy rivulets of blood.

Cursing, Devileye grabbed at Sam’s tail and yanked hard, pulling her back from her victim’s feeble attempts to stop the blood flowing from the gaping hole in his throat.

With a sharp cry of surprised pain, Sam straightened and rounded on Devileye. Gabriel could see her struggling to free her hands as she turned, and stepped forward to help, but several weapons were shoved menacingly in his face. She looked like a beast, her eyes wild, and blood streaming from her mouth.

“You’re a vicious one, aren’t you,” Devileye leered as he pointed his crossbow at the fallen man’s face and pulled the trigger, putting him out of his misery with a bolt in the eye. “I likes a little fight in my women, but there is a limit.”

Pulling back with his free hand, Devileye punched Sam in the eye. She fell

backward, limp.

Glaring hard, Gabriel thought of a thousand horrible things that he was going to do to Devileye. “I’ll kill you for that, and it won’t be fast.”

“Will you now? Well, I hate to point out the obvious, but you’ve got two feet in the grave yourself, don’t you?”

Gabriel smiled. “Just you wait and see.”

Staring him in the eye for a few seconds longer, Devileye picked Sam up and

slung her over his shoulder as she began to stir. Gabriel could hardly believe she was already coming to! He’d be out for hours after taking a hit like that. Mounting Gabriel’s cathor, he pulled Sam across his lap, holding the crossbow to her throat as she began struggling feebly against her bonds again. One of the other men handed him the reins of Sam’s cathor, and they began trotting away.

Devileye turned back and blew a kiss. “So long, Lawman.”

“
Samantha
,” Gabriel shouted. She jerked in the saddle and turned to look at him as though the sound of the name that she hated had startled her into full consciousness.

Her eyes focused on him with a mix of anger, fear and sorrow. “I
will
come for you. I
promise
. I’m coming for you!”

She nodded.

“Have your fun boys. Rape him or kill him,” Devileye shouted. “Rip him to

shreds ‘til your black hearts’re content. Bring the guns, and the cat. Nothin’ like a slab of cat with a bit of cornbread. I’ll see you back at the Haven after I’ve had me a little romp with some tender young NVM naughtyness.”

When Devileye and Sam were out of sight, Gabriel turned his attention to the

seven bandits surrounding him.

“So, which one of you wants to die first?”

Exactly as he hoped, the men laughed. Using their momentary distraction, he

dove for his weapons, catching them all in the crook of an arm as he rolled aside. Arrows pierced the ground where they’d lain. Throwing the shotgun over his shoulder he struggled to pull the pistols out of their holsters, dropping one in the process.

“Wingless,” he growled as he came up on one knee, knowledge and skills

flooding into his mind. Shotgun in one hand and pistol in the other, he took aim almost instinctively and began pulling the triggers. The revolver boomed like a cannon blast with each shot, and the shotgun was like thunder. The first round found its mark in the center of a man’s chest, blowing a fist-sized hole through it. The second clipped a bandit in the shoulder and struck the man behind him in the eye. The third missed completely.

The first shotgun blast blew a man’s arm and most of his shoulder away, killing him on the spot with shock.

Screaming a wordless cry of rage and unleashed adrenaline, Gabriel was one with his weapons, one with the men he was firing them at. He could almost sense their lives coming to an end around him.

The pistol in his right hand clicked, empty, leaving four men still to be dealt with.

Tossing the pistol aside, he threw himself backward to avoid more arrows, jumping to his feet with the shotgun held in both hands.

Blowing a hole the size of a basketball through a man that swiped at him with a knife, Gabriel danced back, avoiding more arrows. Cocking the shotgun, he sent the smoking shell casing flying through the air and jumped backward as the last three tried to tackle him.

Managing to dodge, Gabriel lost his grip on the shotgun, and it flew away from him.

Despite being outnumbered and disarmed, he felt an exhilaration that he had

never known was possible. For the first time in his life he felt really alive, like he was doing something he’d been meant to do. Taking the lives of men that sought his own felt strangely familiar, almost orgasmic. He felt invincible.

Eyes darting around for a weapon, Gabriel began to feel as though he’d been

meant for this sort of thing all along. He saw the faces of his childhood bullies transposed on the bodies of the men he killed. Johnny Montain who pelted him with unripened plumbs from the tree near the bus stop on the way to school, and Jason Deere who had first called him a girl’s name, calling his gender and sexuality into question.

They were Ryan Jonas who’d put him in the hospital for a month for no discernable reason, and Mark Romel who had made a point of splattering him with spitwads at every opportunity. He hated them all so very much, laughing as he killed one childhood demon after another.

An arrow bounced off his collarbone with enough force to spin him around,

possibly cracking it for all the pain it caused. Hitting the ground hard, Gabriel saw his other pistol, still in its holster and not far away. Rolling, he dodged more arrows. One of them sending a stream of blood across his face as it gashed his cheek.

Hand falling on the pistol, Gabriel brought it up without bothering to unholster it, and fired twice. Two more Children of the Chosen went down, leaving one more, but he appeared to have fled.

“Holy crap,” he breathed, clutching his free hand to his heart, which had to be beating at
least
four hundred times a minute.

“Impressive,” Mister Mittens said as he limped to Gabriel, favoring a hind leg.

“Except for one thing. If they’re all dead, how are we going to find their hideout?”

Sitting up, Gabriel scanned the wasteland in all directions until he saw what he was looking for, a single figure running like hell in the direction that Devileye had taken Sam.

“I left one alive,” Gabriel said as he pulled his pistol out of its holster and took careful aim.

He pulled the trigger and the dark shape on the horizon stumbled. Blood

exploded from his left knee and Gabriel saw his leg come apart as he fell to the ground.

It took a second for the scream to reach them across the distance.

Taking his time to retrieve and reload his guns, Gabriel bent and picked up the cat. The man wasn’t going anywhere with only one leg. “Come on. Let’s go find out where they took Sam.”

Picking up his hat last of all, Gabriel jammed it on his head before jogging toward the downed bandit. Mister Mittens climbed up his arm, and lay down across his shoulders as he normally did with Sam.

“If they’ve hurt her,” the cat muttered. “You’re a very violent man, aren’t you?”

“After a lifetime of repression, everyone gets violent every now and then.”

“That was more than mere released repression,” Mister Mittens said. “You

enjoyed
it.”

Gabriel was so startled by what the cat said that he stumbled to a stop, slowly turning to see the carnage he’d left behind. The realization of what he’d just done hit him hard enough to buckle his knees. Despite the fact that there was no other way out of the situation with his life, Gabriel had committed the worst of all sins not once by six times.

He was supposed to be working toward redemption here, but he’d killed those men and he’d
liked
how it felt.

“You can sick up later,” the cat admonished. “First go question that man before he bleeds to death. He’s our only chance at rescuing Sam.”

Nodding, Gabriel turned back to the task at hand.

When he neared the downed man, he drew a pistol in case he was still armed.

The red soil was stained with more blood than Gabriel would have thought a human body could hold. Whimpering, the man tried to stop the flow of blood by tightening his belt around the stump of his leg.

“Hello there. If you want to live long enough to bleed to death, you’re going to answer a few questions for me.”

“You’re not a man,” the bandit screamed. “You’re a demon!”

Shrieking like a prepubescent girl in the audience of American Idol, the man tried to crawl away before realizing the futility and trailing off into frightened sobs.

“You’ve got a few choices here. You can hold that tourniquet and die slow. You can let yourself bleed to death and die a bit faster. Or another bullet could put you out of your misery. So, which way would you like to go? Quick and painless, or long, drawn out suffering?”

“What do you want,” the man rasped.

“Where did your boss Devileye take the girl,” Gabriel asked.

“He ain’t the boss of the Children of the Chosen. The Chosen One is.”

“Is that so,” Gabriel asked, pulling the hammer back on the pistol and pointing it at the man’s other leg.

“Wait,” the bandit cried, waving a hand at him frantically. “
Stop
! Head east a day. That’s where the Children are, in Haven Maple.”

“Thanks,” Gabriel turned in the direction he thought was east and walked away.

“Hey! What about me!”

“I don’t have bullets to spare on mercy for murdering, raping bandits like

yourself. Take the fate you deserve and rot out here.”

“You certainly were beaten as a child, weren’t you,” Mister Mittens asked.

“This way
is
east, right,” Gabriel ignored the comment as he started jogging, his injured collarbone jolting painfully with every step.

“Yes,” the cat replied.

“Good,” Gabriel holstered his pistol. “Hold on Sam. I’m coming.”

The sun began to set behind him and Altima set in front of him. Soon it would be very dark, and the temperature would drop to an almost unbearable degree. He couldn’t stop. Every time he thought of stopping for the night the image of that three eyed, inbred monstrosity ripping off Sam’s clothes, and having his way with her pushed him to keep going. He was
not
going to let that happen to her. His earlier tiredness was completely forgotten as he pushed screaming muscles to keep running ever eastward after her. If they’d hurt her, if they’d even looked at her inappropriately, there was going to be hell to pay. Sure, she might be completely insane, but then again, so were all women. He didn’t want to lose her. If he had to spend the rest of his life on this crazy, messed up world, she was the one he wanted to spend it with. She was the only human being other than his mother that he’d ever felt anything besides hatred for.

He only hoped he had enough ammo. Besides half a box of shells in his pocket, and the ones lining his belts the rest of his ammo was in his saddlebags.

“Just hold on. I’m coming for you.”

Chapter 15: World of Conformity

Noise beat at Kari from all directions, and an acrid underscent, while not

overpowering, seemed to permeate the air. It came close to making her sensitive nose burn.

“Oh
wow
,” Jonathan cried. “Look at this place!”

The world around her was a sight beyond her wildest imaginations. Hundreds of blocky towers of metal and mirrored glass spread out in every direction. She saw one man dangling from a rope
cleaning windows
hundreds of feet above the ground as if it was nothing to give a second thought to.

Metal vehicles of every shape, size and color packed the streets, their engines whirring as they followed lanes colorfully painted on the bluish pavement. More darted through the sky, weaving between the massive buildings, following lanes indicated by floating posts with flashing red lights atop them.

Lining both sides of the streets were wide cement sidewalks with the occasional fenced off tree to break the gray monotony. Thousands of people flowed along the walks, wearing odd, drab clothing, consisting of trousers, a button up shirt and a dark coat, despite it being pleasantly warm. Men and women wore the same clothing, and had their hair cut and styled in the same way. It was hard to tell most of them were even women at all. There was not an obese person in sight. Everyone looked fit, trim, and they were all within a few inches of each other height-wise.

“There’s so many people,” Kari said. The noise of all of them going about their daily business had her ears ringing.

“I know,” Michael said with a lop-sided grin. “Isn’t it great!”

Gesturing to her own garb and bowstave, Kari nodded to the people around her.

“We really stand out.”

“We’ll just say we’re foreigners,” Jonathan said. “It’s true, after all.”

It wouldn’t be the first time, but it was more their weapons she worried about. No one else appeared to be carrying any. What if there were laws against it?

“Maybe they’ll think we’re in costume like that one world,” Michael suggested.

“Just tell anyone that asks that we’re on the way to a convention until we can blend in better.”

Frowning at her brothers, Kari noticed that something about the haze in the air of this world seemed to be interfering with the illusions she’d placed on them before leaving the last world. When they moved she could see distortions around them like heat rising from sun baked ground. Unless someone was looking for it, it wasn’t very noticeable, but it irked her that her illusions were not perfect.