Spires of Infinity (25 page)

“That’s the three-eyed freak that took Sam,” Gabriel whispered. “I can’t make out what they’re saying?”

Shifting on his shoulder, Mister Mittens leaned out into the corridor, his pointed ears perked forward and twitching from time to time.

“The Chosen One took Sam for his own,” the cat whispered. “He’s ranting about all the work he had to do to get her and how ‘horny’ he is.”

Gabriel hadn’t realized how hopeless he’d felt until now. If the Chosen One had lain claim to Sam that meant Devileye hadn’t touched her yet. Of course, there was the Chosen One to worry about now, but still, there was a chance she hadn’t been molested just yet.

Holstering his pistol, Gabriel drew his hefty knife so as not to alert what passed for security down here to his presence with a gunshot. When Devileye and an obvious underling came into view, oblivious of his presence, he waited for them to pass then jumped out behind them.

Pain flared in his chest and in his ankle as he sprang into motion. In a split second he’d driven his knife up to the hilt through the underling’s kidney, killing him without a sound. Placing his injured foot against the small of the scum’s back, he kicked him off the blade.

Turning his attention to Devileye, Gabriel had forgotten just how ugly the three-eyed, mutant was. Up close he reeked of days old urine and death. His clothing was stained dark in oily patches, and his skin was so pale that it was almost translucent.

Throwing aside his coat, Devileye whipped a miniature crossbow from his belt.

Allowing his Sa’Dhi to guide his movements, Gabriel felt strangely detached from his own actions, like someone else was using his body to go all Chuck Norris on the man.

His pain was distant and everything seemed to move in slow motion due to the flickering light.

Sidestepping, he kicked the crossbow away. The bolt loosed with a twang,

drawing sparks from the metal walls as it ricocheted dangerously. Before Devileye could draw the heavy knife on his belt, Gabriel threw him against a wall, pummeling him with a flurry of punches and kicks.

He was about to bash that horrible third eye right out of the man’s head when the connection to the Sa’Dhi broke. The sudden lack of anything resembling fighting skills left him feeling dazed and empty, causing his fist to swing wide and slam into the metal wall next to Devileye’s face. The third eye in his temple rolled to look at it, and he cringed.

Feeling incredibly helpless without the input from the Sa’Dhi, Gabriel acted like the miss was on purpose. As a lawyer, he’d learnt that the further you went over the top with bravado and theatrics, the more inclined people were to believe you. When he’d first started out, he hadn’t believed the older lawyers on that point, but then he’d seen them in action, and it was actually true.

Glancing at the Sa’Dhi as he shoved his knife close enough for Devileye to shave with it, Gabriel hoped that it wasn’t broken. He still had an hour before it should have cut out. He was going to have a hell of a time getting back out again without it.

Hopefully it just hadn’t recharged long enough after its last use.

“Didn’t I tell you I’d kill you for hitting Sam,” Gabriel growled. The pain from his broken rib added a coarse edge to his voice.

All three of Devileye’s eyes darted around fearfully, looking for salvation, but none came. Tossing the knife on his prisoner’s belt aside, Gabriel smiled darkly.

“You picked the wrong man to piss off today.”

“What do you want?”

“I want my friend back, and you’re going to take me to her. If she’s hurt in
any
way, I’m going to kill you slowly.”

“She belongs to the Chosen One now!”

Gabriel brought the tip of his obsidian black blade to the man’s third eye.

“She never was yours. And if you don’t want me to start cutting pieces off, you’ll take me to her now.”

Looking to the right, Devileye nodded. “That way.”

Shoving him on his way, Gabriel sheathed his knife and drew a pistol.

“Don’t try anything. I won’t kill you before you’ve taken me to Sam, but a man can live without arms.
Move
!”

Terror crossed Devileye’s face and he scampered off down the hall with Gabriel close behind, gritting his teeth against pain.

There was a saying that all bullies were cowards at heart. That was a nice

sentiment, but in the real world it rarely mattered if a bully was a coward or not. He usually had at least half a dozen lesser bully minions to solidify his rule and woe to anyone he felt the urge to splatter. You don’t need to be brave when you have an army underlings. Even if all the nerds of the world united against them, the bullies would likely still remain in power. Still, this particular bully seemed to have actually wet his pants in fear, so perhaps the saying was true after all. Bringing a smile to Gabriel’s face, it felt like revenge against every bully that had ever picked on him during his childhood, especially his worthless father.

Leading Gabriel through a maze of hallways, Devileye abruptly stopped in front of a door that looked no different from any other. Placing his hand on the control panel beside it, he whimpered when it flashed red and a disembodied voice from the wall told him his access was denied.

“You see? Only the Chosen One and his priests can open it.”

Gritting his teeth, Gabriel scowled hard enough that Devileye cringed away from him.

“The Imperial Seal,” Mister Mittens suggested.

“The what,” Gabriel asked.

“Your badge, idiot! It has your Imperial Authorization Code, does it not? If this was an Imperial facility, it might accept your code.”

Shrugging, Gabriel supposed it was worth a try. Removing the gold plaque from his pocket, he examined it from every angle with one eye, keeping the other on his prisoner. There didn’t seem to be any sort of code on it, and there wasn’t any sort of way to input a code into the control panel if there was, only a USB port.

“Open it up,” Mister Mittens hissed in vexation.

Glancing at the cat, Gabriel wondered how he was supposed to do
that.
Then he noticed the fine seam on one end. He pushed against it and the top of the badge came free with a click revealing a USB connector.

“It’s a flash drive,” Gabriel said in realization.

As he reached to plug his badge into the outlet, the control panel flickered and sparked, and a small stream of black smoke began rising from one of the corners. A hydraulic motor labored in the wall, and the door slid haltingly open to reveal Sam framed in the light of the hall with darkness behind, holding a wad of wiring in her hands.

“It worked,” she cried excitedly as she dropped the wires and turned to make a run for it.

Stopping up short when she realized that Gabriel was standing outside the

doorway, Sam froze, staring at him in complete disbelief. Her eyes took in the blood soaking his clothes, and the cowed Devileye before returning to his face.

“G-Gabriel,” she asked quietly. Her eyes began welling up with tears. “I thought you were dead!”

Throwing herself at him, Sam almost tackled him to the ground in an embrace.

“You came for me,” she cried. “I can’t believe you actually came for me!”

Stumbling awkwardly in a circle, fighting to remain upright, Gabriel finally lost his balance and they both tumbled back into the cell in a heap. Mister Mittens leapt free before they fell, but landed on his bad leg with a catlike hiss.

“I’m here to rescue you,” Gabriel said as he began extricating his limbs from hers.

He noticed that her wounded hand had not been tended, and appeared to still be oozing a little blood. She was also developing one mother of a black eye from the punch that Devileye had given her. There was still dried blood around her mouth and chin from the man she’d killed too.

“I can’t believe you actually . . . that anyone would ever . . . why did you come for me, you idiot,” Sam began sobbing. “I could have gotten myself out.”

“Sam. Are you all right?”

Putting his arms around her, Gabriel offered what comfort he could. Shaking,

Sam leaned into him, and for just a moment Gabriel never wanted to let her go. Strange emotions of the variety he never thought he’d be able to feel began to surge through him.

Sam was the first woman he’d ever met in his adult life that he’d seen as a person rather than an object, and he found that he cared deeply for her. Her battered condition filled him with rage, reminding him of what his father had done to his mother, and he wanted nothing more than to chase away her tears and take her out of this horrible, evil place.

“I was sure that you were dead,” Sam cried. “But you actually came for me. I never thought anyone would care enough to come for me!”

“I’d never live it down if I let myself be killed by a bunch of inbred hillbillies.

And I’d
never
leave you to rot in this place. What kind of man would I be if I did that?

What about you? Are you all right? Did they hurt you badly? Did they . . .?”

The only answer Sam gave was to put her arms around him, squeezing tightly

enough to constrict his breathing and send a burst of agony through his broken rib. As she cried like a baby, Gabriel held her, rocking her gently and whispering comforts until her tears began to subside. He hoped that she wasn’t too beat up to move.

“Gabriel,” Mister Mittens cried. “Watch out!”

Sam shrieked an unintelligible warning as Gabriel turned to see Devileye bearing down on him with a knife he must have had hidden somewhere. Shoving Sam backward, Gabriel put himself between her and the looming danger. Not long ago he likely would have used her as a human shield. The contrast in his way of thinking now was not lost on him. His ordeals on Ethos were changing him, and he thought that it was for the better.

Before, he’d thought only of himself. His law firm’s therapist had diagnosed him as a sociopath, someone without a shred of empathy for any other living being. Women hadn’t even been people to him, only objects of sexual desire. It didn’t matter how guilty a client was, only winning the case mattered to him, in the name of serving his perfect score, adding to his fame and fortune. He’d been shallow, and uncaring, thinking of nothing and no one but himself and his own reputation.

Actually caring enough about another human being to put her life before his own went in the face of everything he’d been when that bus made roadkill of him. Despite having killed a truckload of people to save their skins thus far, Gabriel thought he just might be changing in the way that the Northern Sage meant him to. It felt strangely satisfying to care about something other than himself for a change.

Reaching for a weapon, he found his holster empty, the pistol had fallen to the ground when Sam tackled him. He got his fingers around the hilt of his knife. Yanking it free, he slashed wildly at his attacker without the Sa’Dhi to guide him. It only occurred to him afterward to use one of the knife fighting moves he’d stored in the second Sa’Dhi.

There was no resistance to indicate he’d landed a hit, but Devileye’s knife hand flew away at the wrist. Looking at the stump of his arm stupidly, it took him a few seconds before horror and realization began to set into his features.

“My hand! You cut off my hand!”

All the anger, frustration, fear, pain and rage brought on by the day’s events seemed to well up in him at once. Throwing himself at Devileye, Gabriel rammed his knife into the man’s belly. Twisting it with a jerk, he spilled his guts, but that wasn’t enough for threatening Sam with rape. After a childhood of seeing his mother battered and bruised by his own father, he couldn’t stand to see another woman he cared about treated the same way. Something inside of him snapped and a tidal wave of repressed emotion burst out of him in one strangely familiar torrent.

Following the body to the ground, Gabriel stabbed and slashed over and over and over again. The muscles in his arm began to burn with exhaustion, but he was unable to stop. It felt right, like something he’d enjoyed long ago, and had wanted to do again ever since.

“
Stop it,
” Sam shrieked, startling Gabriel back to himself. There was blood everywhere, and not much left of Devileye.

Dropping his knife, Gabriel gasped in horror, backing away.

“Oh my god,” he muttered.

What was happening to him? He wasn’t used to feeling emotions for other

people, and it seemed like it was driving him crazy. He was becoming a killer. Despite changes to his way of thinking, all of the people he’d killed seemed to be standing between him and the redemption he’d been sent here to seek.

“I’m all right,” Sam soothed. “I probably look a lot worse than I am. He didn’t hurt me, and he didn’t rape me. Neither did anyone else. Just calm down.”

Looking toward her with a very deep feeling of shame, Gabriel saw a strangely

motherly look on her incongruously youthful face. She didn’t look so young with that expression, and the bruises. It reminded him of his mother after his father had beaten her.

She’d always had a smile for him, despite her pains, both physical and emotional.

“I’m sorry,” he tried to find words to explain. “I didn’t . . .”

Stretching, Sam got to her feet. She limped over to what was left of Devileye in a way that indicated her thigh was paining her.

“I’ve gotta piss so bad. Locked me away in here and forgot about me! Gee, you think maybe the prisoner needs to eat, drink and visit the little girl’s room once in a while? Naw, I’m sure she’ll be just fine.”

To Gabriel’s horror she slid her pants down to her knees, squatting over the dead man.

He stared for a few seconds before he realized what he was staring at, and turned away. Trying to keep an eye on the open door without seeing her was no easy feat.

“What the hell are you
doing
!”

“Pissing on his corpse,” Sam said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“What does it look like? He was gonna do the most humiliating, dehumanizing thing possible to me. Lacking a dick to return the favor with, it’s the most humiliating, dehumanizing thing I can think to do to him. Take that, cocksucker!”