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  "Quiet!" yelled Lauren, holding up a hand for silence. "These them. Got good guns. Help, we help 'em get women away baron. This is big one, friends. We hit hard and mebbe win forever."

  There were about a dozen of what Ryan figured were the top hands in the outfit. All had the killer look around the eyes and mouth. It was immediately obvious that they didn't much care for having four strangers suddenly in their midst.

  "Why the fuck we need 'em, Jak?" asked a tall woman whose lower jaw was disfigured with a livid scar zagging across her neck.

  "You don't need us, lady," replied Ryan. "Way I see it, if you keep alive and Tourment doesn't get no stronger, in about fifty years you might be able to put a real fucking fright up him."

  There was a general relaxing of tension, and some of them laughed openly. The woman spat on the floor and turned away in obvious disgust.

  "I don't like a bad winner, lady, but I sure hate a fucking sore loser," added Ryan, pushing it deliberately, knowing that this wasn't a place to back off even an inch.

  "Let it lay, Zee," snapped Jak. "We voted and they're in."

  "These women he got… mean a lot to you, brother?" asked the woman, still not beaten.

  "Do muties shit in their pants?" he replied, getting a bigger laugh and even a grudging half smile from Zee.

  Jak shook his head. "That's enough. There's some serious talk to go down. We know his place. Even got plans from city files. What we didn't have was blasters and mercies. Now we got 'em."

  Finnegan didn't much like that. "Not fucking mercies, kid. We go where we want and chill who we want to chill. You need us more'n we need you, kid."

  Suddenly there was a flicker of light, and Jak was in a classic knife-fighter's crouch in front of Finn, the blade dancing from hand to hand, faster than the eye could follow.

  "Don't call me kid, fatso."

  Ryan knew better than to try and step into a scene like this. Finn, despite his chubby, amiable exterior, was a bloody-handed killer and was quite capable of drawing on the boy and spreading him all over the far wall. If that happened, things would get hot. "Don't call me fatso, kid."

  Jak was balanced on his toes like a wind-blown feather, watching Finnegan, red eyes locked on the older man's face. "You got balls, fatso."

  "Kids like you, they got lotsa gall but no fucking sand. I could drop you before you could use the knife, kid."

  Lauren grinned wolfishly. "Sure you could. You're here cause you're good, fatso. Heard you chilled some sec men this morn. You draw, you mebbe hit me, but you're on your fucking back looking up at sky, wondering why you wanted to be a prick."

  Ryan could see a real risk, after the first combustible moment, that they might talk each other into killing each other.

  "That's it," Ryan said, feeling the ripple of disappointment around him. For a kid of fourteen, Jak Lauren had some serious respect from his people. They really thought he could take Finn.

  Maybe he could. Ryan wasn't going to find out. "It's gone noon," he said, showing his chron around. The place was badly lit, with a row of flickering lamps, in glass bowls with swimming fish engraved on them. At one end of the sloping room was a massive maroon curtain with golden tassels draped across it. From what he recollected, Ryan guessed that there would be a screen behind it.

  "Sure has. You're right, Ryan." The slim knife disappeared as quickly as it had sprung to his hand. Though Ryan was watching him intently, he hadn't seen where the boy had hidden it.

  "We talk about how we do this?" asked J.B., moving casually against the right-hand wall. It was second nature for the Armorer to seek out a position where he had his back against something solid.

  Jak half bowed to him. "Sure. Talk plan. Can't go until after dark. They're too ready. Tourment's no fool. Before talk, we'll show something to you. Rare. From before the quick sick came."

  "Food?" asked Finnegan, omitting the "kid" this time. "Sure. Always ready. Talk. Then go in and get the prisoners."

  Ryan spotted something in the use of the word. Something that meant more than just Lori and Krysty. "How many prisoners, Jak?" he asked. "Three."

  "Three?"

  "Yeah. Night 'fore last. Mephisto sec men snatch squad got lucky. Picked up my father. This time tomorrow Tourment'll have killed them all."

  "Then let's get to it," suggested Ryan. , The boy nodded, solemn-faced, the cascading white hair framing his skull like a silver halo.

  Chapter Eighteen

  KRYSTY WROTH WAS ANGRY with herself. Angry that she'd let her emotions govern her good sense. Mother Sonja's often repeated motto, Strive for Life, had been momentarily forgotten.

  It was scant consolation that Baron Tourment's evening roll call would be two sec men short.

  THEY'D COME IN a couple of minutes after the giant ville chief had lumbered clumsily out. They were both small, with sallow complexions, looking as though they'd been standing out in the rain for too long. When they spoke, she heard the nasal tones of the bayous and guessed they came from Cajun stock. The one with a small mustache looked around thirty; the other, with a three-day stubble on his chin was nearer twenty. Both men carried greased M-16 blasters.

  There hadn't been time for Krysty to do more than hiss a warning to the sobbing Lori to try to hold out and tell the baron nothing. Then the sec men were walking cockily to stand between them.

  "Yellow hair or red?" one said.

  "Yellow."

  "Why?"

  "Already got her snatch warm and waiting. Red's got hers sewn up in her pants. Baron might guess if‘n we cut her naked."

  The one with the mustache, called Neal, ran a hand under Lori's disarranged skirt, giggling as she wriggled at the touch, "Warm and wet, Alain. And yellow as a possum's guts."

  Krysty had tried. "You do that one more time, you sack of cancerous pus, and I'll snake on you to the fucking baron."

  "He don't care," said Alain, nibbing a hand thoughtfully over his rough chin. "Long as we don't do no mortal hurt. He don't give a fuck."

  "Why not do yellow first? Then fuck red in the mouth; and see how she likes it."

  "I'd bite it off, if it's big enough to get my teeth in."

  Both guards laughed. "First off, Alain here'd push the muzzle of his old blaster half a foot up your fucking nose, bitch. You even set your fucking teeth in me, and they'll be wiping your fucking brains off the ceiling."

  It crossed Krysty's mind to let them. Lie there and blank her mind clear of what was happening to her. She could do it. She'd done it before, back in Mocsin with the sec boss there. Kurt Strasser. Before she'd met Ryan Cawdor.

  But there was Lori.

  The girl, despite her bizarre upbringing, had an oddly unflawed innocence. If Krysty lay there and allowed these two brutish pigs to do what they wanted, she knew they wouldn't stop at a simple fucking. That would just set them on other ways of humiliating and hurting them both.

  "Gaia, help me," she whispered, closing her eyes, trying to relax and draw on the immense power of the Earth Mother. Part of Krysty's mind told her this would be futile. But she recalled what Ryan had said about leaving a place a tad cleaner than when you came to it. That she would do.

  The cords that bound her ankles and wrists were made of waxed whipcord, tied so tightly that there was blood seeping from under the nails of her fingers and toes, burst from the swollen flesh. The pain had been easy to control, but she worried that she might not be able to function well in a fight.

  "Help me, help me, help me," she repeated, drawing on the strength in the way that her dead mother had taught her, way back in Harmony.

  "Be real good fucking this. Better'n that 'fayette slut with boils on her tits," sniggered Neal.

  "Yeah."

  "Me first."

  "Sure. Like my bun well buttered," cackled the younger man.

  Drool hung from the corner of Alain's narrow mouth. He put his head back and laughed again, and Krysty saw the way the cords of his neck stood out like strips of thin iron.

  The girl took
a deep breath, her mind wandering back unbidden to a fine summer's day in Harmony. She would have been around sixteen years old then and filled with devilment. Carl Lanning, a fresh-cheeked boy who would pluck her cherry, was the son of the blacksmith, Herb. The lad had teased Krysty about her powers, challenging her to show him. The forge had been deserted; the fires had slumbered with a dull red glow, and the hammers were ranged on the walls. She'd picked up a freshly hammered iron shoe, the holes rough-edged and silver. "Go, Krysty," Carl had encouraged her, watching. He'd fallen silent, unbelieving as she'd gripped the horseshoe, putting a surge of incredible strength into her hands and wrists. She twisted it as though it was saltwater taffy, then, dropped it to the floor of the forge where it rang like a bell.

  Peter Maritza and Uncle Tyas McNann had learned of her trick, taken her into the smoke-scented parlor and sat her beneath the framed picture of a racehorse called Skyrocket. They had taken her to task for abusing her unique gift, warning her she must use it sparingly and wisely. "Only when you must girl," Peter had said.

  Now, watching the two men prepare for their corrupt sexual pleasures with the helpless Lori, Krysty's lips moved.

  "Now I must, Uncle."

  Both men had their backs to her, fumbling with their trousers, their blasters laid on the stone by their feet.

  "Gaia, help me," whispered Krysty, feeling her energy increasing until it seemed as though her body might burst with it.

  The cord around her right wrist snapped with a sharp sound, like a metal spring failing. The left followed only a moment later. She began to sit up, the bindings breaking together as she flexed both legs.

  "What the fuck!" said Neal, looking around. Alain hopped off balance, his eyes wide as saucers in his pinched face.

  Even Lori, lying still, opened her eyes at the crack of the cords disintegrating, unable to believe what she saw.

  Gripping the table's edge with both hands, Krysty pushed herself off, aiming her feet toward Neal's face; the tapered heels of her boots sledgehammered toward his mouth.

  "You…" he began, the word rammed back into his throat as Krysty's boots struck.

  The power of her attack was utterly devastating.

  The silver-patterned leather heels hit the sec guard plumb in the center of his gaping mouth; the blow tore his lip into tatters of bloody flesh, splintering his few remaining teeth into shards of bone. His lower jaw cracked like a dry twig, dislocated, the awesome force actually ripping it from its socket so it flapped loose as he staggered backward. He was momentarily lifted clear off his feet.

  But the effect of the kick didn't stop there. Krysty pushed off like a gymnast, her boots crushing Neal's nose, destroying both cheekbones, pulping the left eye to watery jelly. Fragments of bone were driven upward through the soft palate into the lower part of the brain, beginning the irrevocable process of death.

  Alain was still teetering, his trousers falling to his ankles and revealing a shrinking penis and sagging balls. Had his reflexes been honed, there was a split-second when he might have gone for his blaster and shot Krysty, while she was still recovering her balance, nearly slipping in Neal's spouting blood. But his hands went in panic to his groin as his eyes searched for a way out. His mouth opened with the beginnings of a request for mercy. "Lady…" he began.

  "I don't have the time," she hissed, swinging around, pivoting on the right foot, the left lashing out toward his abdomen.

  This time it was the toe that did the damage. The craftsman who had worked away, chiseling silver into points to ornament the western boots, could never have dreamed a hundred years ago how lethal those elongated tips could be.

  Though Alain tried to fend off the kick with his hands, he might as well have tried to throttle a cyclone. Three fingers were crushed and broken, the thumb on the right hand agonizingly dislocated. The foot powered on, puncturing his scrotal sac, transforming his testicles to crimson rags of gristle, nearly severing his penis. With the cracking of bone, the entire pelvic girdle opened up. The guard staggered back, banging against the table, his face as white as parchment, a mask of silent pain. Falling to his knees, he collapsed, blood fountaining from his ruined groin, legs kicking and jerking spasmodically under the colossal shock.

  Turning from the dying men, Krysty effortlessly snapped the cords at Lori's wrists and ankles.

  "How did you kill them like that?" stammered the blond girl, instinctively hoisting her panties back to their rightful position.

  "I guess it's 'cause I'm a fucking mutie, girl."

  "Can you open door?"

  Krysty shook her head, feeling the familiar wave of weariness touching her temples. Using the powers always left her drained and enfeebled. It was the price that her mother had warned her that she must pay.

  "Too tired. Must sit down, or I'll…" At her feet, the body of the younger sec guard finally ceased thrashing. Blood oozed silently across the floor. There was no sound from beyond the bolted door to indicate that anyone had heard anything from inside.

  Lori swung her long legs elegantly over the side of the table and rose. She put her arms around Krysty, hugging tier tightly and feeling how the red-haired girl was trembling.

  "Be fine," she said. "Them fuckers dead. Got what wanted. Don't cry, Krysty. Be fine. I won't talk. Nor you. Even if that giant mutie mongrel kills us. One day Doc and Ryan and J.B. an' Finn'll do for him. Beg pardon, but it's fucking true."

  KRYSTY WROTH WAS STILL ANGRY with herself. If she'd waited, then a better chance might have come. A chance to chill the baron himself and go out on that. Or even a glimmer of a break. Now she'd have to invent a story that the men had freed her and that she'd been lucky enough to take them by surprise. It would be some hours before her strength would return.

  Her acute hearing caught the noise of Tourment's clumsy braces creaking outside; then the bolt grated back. She held tightly on to Lori's hand to keep herself from trembling.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE LIGHT FROM THE MOVIE PROJECTOR lanced through the humid darkness of the Adelphi Cinema, West Lowellton, centering on the glittering screen. Jak Lauren sat in the middle of a row of plush seats, with his top fighters in the rows around him. Ryan sat next to the lad, with Doc on one side, and J.B. and Finn a few seats down on the other side.

  The albino had insisted they watch this, telling them it would last only about ten minutes. "It's all we got left. We watch special times. Like now. Kind of gives heart. How it was 'fore the winters came."

  Though he was desperate to get on with the task of saving the women, Ryan knew that there was little point in rushing in like headless muties. The baron wouldn't have risen to his pomp and power if he were a stupe. That meant caution. He'd also captured Jak's father, so it would take a good plan to beat him.

  Doc was astounded to find that some of the vid-house's equipment was still in working order. Jak showed them a booklet, dated January 2001, listing the attractions on at, the Adelphi. They'd been in the middle of a retrospective season, with movies from the 1970s and 1980s. And even earlier. Names that meant nothing to Ryan or the others, but that brought a sparkle of enthusiasm to the rheumy eyes of Doc Tanner.

  "John Ford and Sam Peckinpah," he exclaimed. "They were showing The Wild Bunch and Ride the High Country. With She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Last Hurrah the same day. That was Clint's final movie, 'fore he took up with all that politicking."

  "We got bit of one left. Culpepper Cattle Company. Heard of it, wrinkly?"

  Doc ignored the insulting nickname from the snow-haired lad. "Heard of it, sonny! By the three Kennedys! You'll ask me whether I've heard of…of, what's his name? Damn, it's left me."

  "All else was gone. But in top shelf of closet was single round tin, and in it was piece of vid. Means a lot, Ryan."

  So they sat and watched it. Doc was the only one there who knew what it was about, but his memory was sadly selective and imperfect. All he could recall, to the dumb fascination of Lauren and his gang, was that it was about a lad leaving home
on a cattle drive and how he grew up and became a man. That a local land baron—the word aroused a mutter of hushed whispering—was going to drive some settlers off. There were some gunmen in it, and they finally came to the aid of the boy and the settlers.

  It began with a scratching sound and much jerkiness, but it gradually improved. The volume was weak, coming through a single speaker, wired to the side of the screen. But it was enough. Ryan watched the flickering images with a naive wonderment. He was in a movie house, watching a film!

  There were some wagons being dragged into a line by the gunmen. The settlers, kneeling in prayer, were singing "Amazing Grace." In the distance was the unmistakable outline of the local baron and his own team of blasters.

  "Comes back to me," whispered Doc, along the row. "Names and the faces. Gary Grimes is the kid. That's Geoffrey Lewis with the kind of squint. Bo Hopkins, giggling there, with the smooth face. Man with long hair… don't know. Could have maybe been Wayne Sutherlin. He was in it. The other man's an actor called Luke Askew. One of my favorites. What happened to…"

  "Shut up, Doc," hissed J.B.

  "Hell of a firefight," sighed Finn. "Way to fucking go."

  At first, the defenders gunned down several of the hired pistoleers. But there were too many of them, and one by one the defenders were picked off. Crimson sprayed as they died in slow-motion. Finally it was the kid and the old man who led the attack. The boy had a blaster nearly as big as he was, but he froze and was about to get himself chilled. Then the one whom Doc had said was called Luke Askew rose—from the dead, it seemed—and stabbed the attacker, the two men falling together, locked in each other's arms.

  Ryan felt the short hairs rising on the back of his neck as the single, pure voice of a woman came swelling with the old hymn again. The skinny preacher with crazed cowardly eyes told the boy they wouldn't stay.