Spires of Infinity (26 page)

“Do you try at being the most disgusting girl ever, or does it come naturally,”

Gabriel made a disgusted sound. “There’s unfeminine, and then there’s
you
. There’s not enough liquor in the universe to burn that image out of my head.”

“Oh stop being a baby,” Sam said. “It’s not like you’ve never seen me piss

before. I’m not shy, so no big deal.”

“And I’m trying very hard to forget, thank you very much! Don’t you have any

concept
at all
about feminine modesty?”

“Of course I do. Everyone pisses, why should I care if someone else sees?”

After a moment of silence she continued, sounding strangely vulnerable.

“When I was little I used to work at being as repulsive as possible to protect myself from being raped, and, well, you do something long enough and it sorta becomes part of you. You think it’s easy for a pretty, unmutated, parentless girl to make it through life in this world without being set upon? Well, there are my eyes and hair, but that’s not a big mutation at all, right? I mean, I think silver and gold are pretty colors, don’t you?

Anyway, I did what I had to in order to survive . . . and now I kinda can’t stop.”

Gabriel supposed all of her disgusting habits made morbid sense now. The fact that she’d had to become the way she was just to avoid childhood rape filled him with quite a bit of rage. The abuse of women he cared about had always been a heated subject for him. He wished that he could take her back to Earth where she’d be safe from all of the horrible things she’d endured here, and maybe allow herself to start acting a bit more feminine.

“Much better.” Rising, Sam cleaned herself with a hand and wiped it on what

was left of Devileye. “Oh, Mister Mittens, you came to rescue me too. You’re such a good little kitty.”

Mister Mittens limped over to Sam and she picked him up, giving him a noisy,

wet kiss on the nose, before letting him climb onto his customary spot on her shoulders.

“You call me a pervert, but whose peeking now,” Sam said with a knowing grin.

“You smell
awful
by the way.”

Gabriel realized how his watching the door must have looked to her. It hadn’t been out of anything sexual, more the desire to keep any more holes from being poked through them. God, what was sexual about watching a girl pissing? That was disgusting!

Of course, try explaining anything to a woman when she had it in her head that you were up to no good. Easier to move a mountain with your bare hands.

“Gabriel, thank you. I’ve never met anyone that would risk his life for my sorry, worthless hide. I’ve always been alone. I’ve always had only myself to rely on.”

Looking Sam over, Gabriel saw that she didn’t appear to have any serious

injuries. Her limp might slow them down, but then again, so would his. The gash in her cheek was ugly at first glance, but a little cleaning and stitching and it probably wouldn’t even leave much of a scar. If anything, the scar would keep her from looking so young.

“Are you all right?”

“I am now,” Sam gave him a lop-sided grin that showed one of her long, sharp

fangs. Placing a hand between her legs, she patted herself. “I thought I was gonna rot in here as this Chosen One’s plaything for the rest of my life. But entrance remains by invitation only. And for coming in here after me, you’ve got a standing invitation.”

Rolling his eyes, Gabriel was only mildly disgusted. Lately he’d found that she didn’t seem so much like jailbait to him, more like the grown woman her ID proclaimed her to be, if she still behaved a little childish from time to time.

“So, what’s the plan for getting out of here?”

Blinking at Sam, Gabriel had a deer in headlights moment. He’d been so focused on reaching her before someone stuck something in her that she didn’t want in her that he’d completely forgotten a plan for getting back out again. He had no idea how to get back to the tunnel, and the bar above was likely guarded by more than just the leftovers from earlier.

“Uh, well,” Gabriel was saved from having to give an answer by movement in the hallway beyond Sam. Drawing both of his pistols he shouted, “get back!”

It was too late. The weasel-faced, scale-skinned mutant from the bar darted

forward and grabbed Sam by the base of the tail, bringing the point of a crude spear to her throat. She gave an indignant squawk as he pulled her closer.

“The Chosen One requests your presence,” he said through a cruel gap-toothed

grin. “Take his weapons boys, and figure out who that on the floor used to be.”

Chapter 22: The Chosen One

“He didn’t have to pull my tail so hard,” Sam grumbled for about the seventy-

third time. “It
still
hurts! I bet that’s what it feels like to get kicked in the nads!”

Glancing around at the rather large group of armed men surrounding them,

Gabriel saw that her ranting was beginning to grate on them as well.

Grumbling curses foul enough to curdle milk still inside the cow, she began the entire tirade for the seventy-fourth time. Their situation was completely hopeless, and all she could complain about was a sore tail. She seemed to have taken some sort of miraculous escape as a foregone conclusion. Everything else seemed to pale to her beside someone yanking on a respectable girl’s tail. Respectable being
largely
a matter of her own opinion, as evidenced by her relieving herself on a dead guy right in front of him not ten minutes past.

They came to a stop before a door that looked no different from any other in the plain metal hallways of the Haven, except that it was twice as wide. Sam took the opportunity to scratch herself in a very unladylike manner, shooting challenging glares around to all, as if daring them to say something about it.

The scale-skinned weasel opened the door with his hand on the control panel.

Splitting into two halves, the door slid open with jerking, halted motions and a sound like someone trying to change gears in a truck without pushing the clutch down all the way.

The room beyond was about half the size of a basketball court, seeming huge in the claustrophobic Haven.

Colorful curtains that had certainly seen better decades, if not centuries, decorated the walls. They were stained with blood, and possibly other bodily fluids as well.

Running across the length of the room and up three steps to a raised sort of stage, was a filthy red carpet, bearing several black smears that Gabriel preferred not to guess at. To either side of the carpet in the center of the room were crudely painted, black circles on the metal floor with red splotches, which were most definitely bloodstains, all around them.

The steps up to the stage were only as wide as the carpet, leaving a three-foot drop down to the rest of the room to either side. Straight back from the steps was a metal throne that seemed to be part of the floor.

Sitting in the chair was a boy no older than eight. He was shirtless, with almost bone white skin, and there was a jagged, ugly surgical scar down the length of his sternum. His only clothing was a pair of ragged blue jeans with holes in the knees. With his right hand down his pants, he looked very much like Sam. In fact, his greasy hair was the color of silver, and his beady little eyes were the same metallic gold. Not only that, but his face bore a great resemblance to hers. He could have passed for her little brother in a heartbeat.

When he realized he was not alone anymore, the boy yanked his hand out of his

pants with a guilty look in his weird, golden eyes. He did not seem to have any outward mutations that Gabriel could see as he cocked his head to the side in the exact way that Sam did when she was examining something. With how often Sam implied that her mother rented out her naughty bits, perhaps this boy actually was her half brother.

“He looks like you.”

“That bleeding
whore
,” Sam snarled, obviously seeing the same resemblance Gabriel did. “It’s one thing to sleep around for rent money, but selling your body to the Children of the Chosen? Was she
insane
! No wonder she’s dying of whatever the hell she’s dying of!”

Gabriel and Sam were roughly pushed down the red carpet toward the boy while

the doors labored closed behind them. Coming to a stop before the stage, the mutant thugs dropped to one knee with heads bowed, speaking as one.

“Our lives to serve the Chosen One.”

That
kid
was the Chosen One? That
kid
provided food, money and women to the Children of the Chosen? He probably wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if he had one.

“You’ve gotta be
kidding
me! I’m supposed to be sex slave to a kid whose balls haven’t even dropped yet! And
hello
we’re
obviously
related to each other! Great way to lower the depth of the gene pool there guys. Bravo.”

Rolling her eyes in disgust, Sam began clapping sarcastically. Gabriel wouldn’t have thought a clap could even
be
sarcastic, having no actual tone and all. What made it so incredibly comical though, was that Mister Mittens sat up on her shoulder, rolling his eyes in the exact same way at the exact same time, and began clapping his forepaws together. It was almost as though they’d spent all night rehearsing it. Gabriel tried extremely hard not to laugh, and only an embarrassing snort escaped him.

“Kneel before the Chosen One,” scale skin slammed his spear against the back of Gabriel’s knees, dropping him to the floor. The jolt sent searing pain through his broken rib. Protesting vulgarly at similar treatment, Sam’s voice seemed a distant buzz compared to the pain.

“You look like my mother,” the Chosen One said in a girlishly high pitched voice, leaning forward to examine Sam. “You will be my mother now.”

“The hell I will. I don’t want anything to do with that whore’s leavings!”

Blinking at her, the boy was obviously unused to having his desires refused.

Confused, he seemed to be trying to see inside of Sam’s skull to find what was wrong with her. Gabriel silently gave his sympathies. He’d been trying for weeks now, to no avail. When Sam did nothing but glare at him, the boy looked to his minions as though expecting them to admit the joke.

“But,” the boy protested petulantly. “I’m the Chosen One!”

“So what,” Sam made a rude gesture that was likely lost on someone that young.

“We might have the same mother, but I’d rather rot in hell than have anything to do with any of the Children of the Chosen.”

“Rhys,” the boy shouted to the scale-skinned weasel. “Make her obey me!”

Planting himself in front of Sam, Rhys raised his spear over his head with the intent to bludgeon her with it, but he was interrupted before he could.

“
Stop
,” the Chosen One screeched. “What are you doing! Don’t hit my mother!

Just make her obey me!”

“She won’t,” Gabriel said. “And you can’t make her. That’s the way the world works, kid. Try getting
any
woman, much less this one, to do something she doesn’t want to. Might as well try moving a mountain, it’ll probably be easier. Plus, trust me, this one bites.”

“Who is this man that thinks he can speak to me,” the boy demanded.

Rounding on Gabriel, Rhys swung his spear butt at him. The world exploded in

darkness with little twinkling lights. He’d always thought that seeing stars only happened in cartoons. Apparently not. With no memory of falling over, he found himself on the floor while Rhys recounted the events in the bar aboveground.

“He was carrying these,” Rhys put Gabriel's guns in a pile on the ground before the steps reverently with the sheathed knife atop. “And this.”

He held up Gabriel’s golden Imperial Badge.

“The Imperial Seal,” the Chosen One’s eyes narrowed. “He’s a Lawman!”

“He claims he’s not,” Rhys said as Gabriel tried, and failed to get back up to his knees. The world seemed to be tipping unpredictably. “Likely he killed one and took his belongings.”

“Very well,” the boy nodded. “Then he won’t be missed. Kill him.”

“No,” Sam cried.

“No,” a sly look passed across the boy’s face. “Then maybe you’ll accept a deal.

You be my mother, and I let him live.”

Before Sam could do more than glare, Gabriel forced himself to his feet.

Swaying, he looked at the boy. Keeping his eyes on the throne, he wished his vision would stop going in and out of focus.

“What happened to the women here? I haven’t seen a single one. What happens

to the women that get taken? What happened to your mother?”

“My men like women,” the Chosen One sounded bored. “They like to play games

with them, but the women never seem to want to. They always try to fight and scream.

My mother was different, of course, paid by my father to give birth to his heir. She was allowed to leave with her life after her contract was up, but I want her back
now
!”

“That’s not a game,” Gabriel slurred drunkenly. His head seemed to be clearing, but far too slowly for his taste. “They’re hurting those women far worse than if they were beating them. Don’t you get it, kid? Women are people just like you. You can’t give them away like a prize!”

“Enough,” the Chosen One ordered. “If you will not be my mother, then you will watch this man die. I’m bored. Entertain me. Give him his knife and put him in the ring.”

A cheer rose up from Rhys and his men.

“I’ll give you a chance to free yourself,” the boy smiled in a way that could only be described as pure evil. “Fight my men in the ring. If you kill all nine, you may go free.”

“What about Sam,” Gabriel asked.

“She’s mine,” the boy said. “You will not take her from me!”

“We’ll see about that,” Gabriel muttered as he swayed and stumbled, fighting just to remain on his feet. The floor seemed to pitch and yaw like a boat in a storm. He probably had a concussion and really couldn’t see himself surviving more than two seconds fighting in his condition.