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  Some of Lauren's men were getting anxious. "Fire's getting close," said one. "Best go help Jak."

  "Sure. We'll go out the same way and round the far side. By the lagoon."

  He couldn't understand why Krysty shuddered at the word.

  Doc was still comforting Lori; the tall blonde hung on to him, her face buried in his chest. J.B. was fumbling with the knife, resheathing it. Ryan's arm was around Krysty.

  Then Mephisto appeared silently in the doorway, with two sec men at his elbow. All three of them had M-16s.

  "You're all fucking dead," he said, favoring them with a graveyard smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "ONE MOVE, AND YOU'RE all swamp-fodder." The sec boss looked mad, his eyes bulging, white froth hanging from the corners of his lips. His suit was stained with soot and mud and was torn across one shoulder. But the muzzle of his carbine was rock-steady.

  The men on either side of him were typical stony-eyed sec men, their uniforms also smoke-stained and scruffy; their guns covered the five people in the cellar.

  It was desperate ill-luck that none of the three men in Ryan's party were able to get immediately at a blaster.

  "Baron's making ready to leave the ville. Set up house somewheres else. I’m going with him with a few good men like Rafe and Pierre here. You bastards have done in one night what, the dirt-poor under the snow wolf haven't done in years." He stared at Ryan Cawdor with an intense curiosity. "Baron been doomseeing you, mister. Man with only one eye. Figured it would be his ending."

  Ryan said nothing, easing away from Krysty, freezing as one of the sec men shifted his aim to cover him more closely. J.B. hadn't moved an inch since Mephisto appeared. Doc had let go of Lori, standing with his hands on his hips, looking contemptuously at the three gunmen.

  "Don't look like his ending, mister. Looks more like your ending."

  "Why don't you take us to see the Baron?" asked Krysty. "You know he likes me and the straw hair. Might be angered if you don't."

  The sec boss shook his head. "Sorry, slut. It's going to be here. And it's going to be now."

  Ryan's reflexes were stretched adrenaline-tight, ready for a last desperate, hopeless try, before they were all ripped apart.

  It was Lori who checked the executions. She took a step away from Doc, teetering as she often did on her ridiculously high heels, drawing eyes as she wobbled. "I'm sick," she said. "Got to take clothes off." Her speech was slurred as if she were drugged.

  "Get the…" began Mephisto, his voice drifting away as the beautiful blond girl hoisted up her scanty red skirt and began to peel off her panties.

  Directly in front of the sec men, Ryan and J.B. were unable to risk any sudden moves. Doc Tanner stood a little more to one side, his shoulders stooped—a defeated old man, waiting for death.

  Suddenly the defeated old man had a cannon in his right hand.

  It was his thirty-six caliber percussion Le Mat revolver, nine-chambered. But the unique quality of the pistol was that it had a second smooth-bore barrel, chambered to take an eighteen bore single scattergun round.

  There was a smile on the wrinkled cheeks and a merry twinkle in the old man's eyes as he squeezed the narrow trigger.

  The boom of the explosion drowned out the crackling of the flames from the corridor. A great burst of black powder smoke filled the cellar, blinding everyone. Ryan heard screaming as he pushed Krysty to one side, the G-12 falling ready to his hands and snapping off a double burst toward the doorway.

  The Armorer's Uzi barked a quarter-second later. Some ballets whipcracked off the stone walls, pinging and ricocheting off the metal pipes. Some tore into soft flesh.

  As the smoke cleared, it was almost as though a master magician had performed a skillful illusion. Mephisto and the two sec men had disappeared. Then Ryan made out a pair of boots, sprawled in a corner, of the corridor, moving spasmodically.

  He edged sideways, seeing that all three of the baron's men were down and done. The single round from Doc's blaster, at point-blank range, had been perfectly aimed. The shot spread just enough to hit all three men at face level. Both guards lay kicking, one mumbling for aid through a mouth filled with blood. The lead had ripped into their eyes and cheeks, tearing flesh from bone. The impact had been sufficient to send them all staggering backward, easy prey to the torrent of lead that followed from J.B. and Ryan.

  Doc joined them, beaming at his success, manipulating the action, on the smoking Le Mat, ejecting the spent cartridge and reloading from one of the capacious pockets in his old frock coat. He shifted the hammer so that it rested over one of the thirty-six caliber rounds.

  "Upon my soul, Mr. Cawdor, but that was vastly enjoyable. To see the wicked so smitten and righteousness triumphant."

  "Early days, Doc,"' grinned Ryan, watching the wounded sec men. "But you done real good. And you, Lori," he called. "Fucking great."

  "Thank you," said the girl, breathing hard with excitement. "Wanted to see the motherfuckers drown in their own shit and blood."

  "You done that," J.B. commented dryly.

  "The matter is not quite concluded," Doc said, looking down at the three men. One of the guards was already still, his chest and stomach ripped apart by the G-12 or the Uzi, his blood and bone and intestines mingling on the floor. The second sec man was dying, his face shredded from taking the worst of the Le Mat's shot. He was moaning, rolling from side to side, his hands holding his ribs from where blood oozed.

  "The quality of mercy is not strained," said Doc. Still smiling broadly, he knelt and placed the muzzle of his pistol into the raw hole where the sec man's mouth would have been. He squeezed the trigger. The bullet bounced the man's head off the stone, killing him instantly. Doc thumbed back the hammer once more, turning to look at Mephisto.

  The sec boss was dying. Several pieces of shot had pocked his face, one bursting his left eye. And more bullets had stitched across his chest from Ryan's and J.B.'s shooting. But he still breathed, flat on his back, his carbine thrown several feet away. Smoke drifted down from the main part of the burning building, and the heat was growing appreciably.

  The firing from the front entrance had slackened. Ryan guessed that Jak Lauren's army had vanquished most of the baron's shattered forces.

  Mephisto blinked up through the blood that ran down over his one good eye. "Still won't catch Baron. Too clever for you."

  Krysty looked coldly down at him. A sudden anger washed over her, and she spat in the dying man's face, wanting to tear and hurt him. Lori was at her side, also looking down at the sec boss with bitter hatred on her lovely features.

  "Bastard killer," Lori said, lifting her foot and stamping down with all her weight. The heel of the red leather boot struck Mephisto in the center of his one good eye, splattering it to a bloody liquid. The tinkling silver spur hooked in the corner of the socket, and the girl jerked at it. Mephisto shrieked in stunning pain as his head was rolled backward and forward. Finally the spur was wrenched clear, tearing the flesh away like raw meat.

  Doc straightened, leveling the antebellum pistol, squeezing, the trigger once more. The ball splintered the blood-slick forehead of the sec boss, killing him.

  "Should have left him-gut-shot," said J.B.

  "Better dead," Doc said, bolstering the heavy gun.

  Ryan looked along the corridor. The billowing smoke was tearing at his lungs. "Gonna be roasted if'n we don't move fast."

  "That mother said the baron was making a run. Which way? "'asked Krysty.

  "Got to be across the far side. By the lagoon."

  "There is boats there," said Lori.

  "Boats?"

  "Canoes. Small ones," amplified Krysty. "And the biggest mother of a gator I ever seen in my life. Makes the one that tried for Finn look like a baby."

  Ryan hesitated, then turned to the Armorer. "J.B. we gotta go help Whitey and his group? Sounds like it's going well."

  "Want me to go check? And you go after the baron?"

  "Yeah. Take Doc
and the women."

  "Sure."

  "I'll come," said Krysty.

  Ryan shook his head. "Way I look at this, it's kind of personal. It's like a debt."

  "You don't owe anything to anybody, Ryan," said Doc Tanner. "Except myself. Now let's move."

  THE BLAZE HAD BECOME a full-fledged firestorm. A gusting wind tugged and howled about the inferno that had once been the Best Western Snowy Egret. Jak's men were already mopping up, trailing and killing any of the bewildered and demoralized sec men they could find.

  Some had managed to escape the withering fire of the assault party and headed blindly toward the depths of the swamps. As Ryan and his group emerged from the smoke at the rear of the motel, Jak saw them and came dancing over. Hearing their news, he told them of his own total success.

  "Not total if some of the sec guards have 'scaped free," said J.B.

  "The Cajuns don't love 'em. With Tourment gone, they'll kill 'em all. Cajuns or the swampies."

  "I'm going after the baron. Seems he's gone 'cross the lagoon in a canoe." Ryan pointed to the left of the raging fire.

  "I'm coming," said Jak.

  "No. He's mine."

  The boy pointed behind them, to the mutilated corpse of his father, still hanging from the flagpole. "Not after that. Mine."

  "Time's wasting," J.B. said.

  Ryan looked into the boy's crimson eyes, seeing the flames reflected in them; the mane of white hair, torn free from its binding, swayed in the strong wind. Ryan was a good judge of men, and he saw that he would have to kill the fourteen-year-old if he wanted to stop him from going after Tourment.

  "First one there chills him Whitey," he said, turning and leading the lad toward the lagoon and the mysterious island.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  SO FEROCIOUS WAS the blaze, so all-consuming, that within twenty minutes of the swampwag crashing into the front of the motel, virtually the entire building had been devoured, leaving only columns of twisted metal and stone and a windblown mound of glowing ashes.

  Jak Lauren overtook the older man, leaping easily over the corpses of the sec men strewn along their way, turning and grinning at Ryan, his teeth bared in animal pleasure. The big .357 was in his right hand. Through the parking lot they ran, blinking as the wind blew a golden cascade of sparks all around them.

  "There," shouted Whitey. "No sign."

  The concrete dock, scattered with cinders, was deserted. Near the metal boats they saw the body of a sec man sprawled near the edge of the water, his neck snapped with a single crushing blow. Jak Lauren gestured at it. "Baron's work. Least we know we're on the trail of giant bastard."

  The moon still sailed above the light clouds, its silvery glow strong enough to cast blurred shadows all around. The surface of the muddy lagoon glittered and danced with a million points of white, like a watery galaxy of stars. On the far side, Ryan could make out land, and a peculiar building standing on it.

  "What's that?"

  "Tourment's voodoo temple. Sacrifices of hornless goats. Girls slaughtered. Children defiled. The dead made to live."

  "And the living made to die," completed Ryan.

  There was no sign of life on the island opposite. Ryan squatted down, shading his eye against the moonlight, trying to make out what was happening. He saw some low shrubs and stunted live oak trees: enough cover to hide a platoon.

  "What's on the other side?" he asked.

  "Swamp comes on far edge. Way through in good light. Trails like gut-slit moccasin snake. Baron never find in this dark. Wait up, then try. Don't forget his legs real fucking weak. Like crutches. Die in thick mud. We take care, and we got him."

  The lad slipped to the edge of the dock, looked searchingly over the water, then untied one of the boats and climbed in. Ryan went to join him, but Jak was too quick.

  "Take your turn, Ryan. He's mine. See you later," And he was gone, the paddle slicing in and out of the ooze, the canoe darting, arrow-straight, toward the far bank.

  "Fireblast!" hissed Ryan, taking the next boat along, easing himself into it cautiously. He was aware of how low in the water he was now set and recalled that there were giant mutie alligators infesting the swamp.

  By the time he mastered the flimsy craft, rotating it twice before attaining the right direction, Jak Lauren has already grounded his canoe and hopped out on the slippery shore. He waved triumphantly at Ryan before disappearing into the brush, his white hair blazing like a beacon.

  Halfway across the lagoon, Ryan's paddle grated against something hard and serrated. Something that moved away with a sullen reluctance. It felt a little like a massive submerged log, but every nerve in Ryan's body told him that it wasn't.

  He worked harder, bending all his muscles into each thrusting stroke, feeling the boat shoot forward faster, a gurgling wave breaking under the bow. His ears caught a strange sound behind him: a thin, hissing noise, like escaping steam. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the water parting and something chasing after him.

  The instant the bow of the canoe slid into the pebbles and mud, he leaped from it. His blaster ready, he spun around to face what had been pursuing him. But the water was calm and still, with only the faintest suggestion of a ripple toward the deeper part of the swamp.

  He was motionless for a moment, gathering his self-control about him like a protective cloak, checking his bearings. In the moonlight, he could barely make out the tracks of the albino through the mud. But he saw a rowboat a few yards farther along, toward the building. Examining it, he discovered some extraordinary marks in the mud. Someone had fallen, and fallen again, and dragged himself along by hand. There was one clear print, and Ryan stooped and placed his own hand in the seeping mark. The fingers were nearly four inches longer than his. "Fuck it," he sighed. Tourment was going to be a difficult man to take if it came to close combat between them. The mud also showed the truth of the leg-supports. Great furrows vanished into the bushes where the land was less wet. Despite, or perhaps because of his enormous size, the baron wasn't going to find it easy to move.

  The fire was dying behind him as he set out to move inland. The temple was open, and it was obvious that nobody was hiding there. The island was apparently no more than a half mile in length, but he had no idea how wide it was. The undergrowth closed in around him.

  He never heard the swampies.

  One moment he was up and walking; the next he was rolling over on his hands and knees, the G-12 pulled from his grip, someone's arm around his throat, another attacker hanging on his waist, kicking at his legs. There was the stench of gasoline and sweat as he grappled with the oily bodies.

  Despite the shock of the sudden attack, Ryan was able to immediately retaliate. Heaving up, feeling the hold loosen on his waist, he snapped an elbow back as hard as he could, hearing a rib break, and a strangled gasp of pain. The arm was off his throat, and he was able to wriggle to his feet, drawing the panga, the best weapon for hand-to-hand combat.

  There were three of them.

  Two men and a woman. Muties, like the ones they'd seen on the day they arrived in Louisiana. All of them were around five feet tall, stumpy, squat and muscular. Dressed in torn pants and shirts, they had flapping sandals of hacked rubber on their feet. They stared at him blankly, the sockets of their eyes surrounded by odd scars. The woman held a small crossbow, and the men were armed with machetes shorter and narrower than Ryan's own weapon.

  They breathed noisily through open mouths, their arms hanging by their sides. Standing gazing at Ryan, they seemed to be waiting for him to make the first move. Suddenly the woman raised the bow, aiming it jerkily at Ryan's belly.

  The thought darted through his mind that this was a squalid and foolish way to die. Alone in the muddy darks, gut-shot with a wooden arrow. He tensed, ready for a desperate dive at her, his senses telling him it would be too late and too slow.

  The bow twanged, and the shaft hissed through the air several yards over his head. Ryan stared as the woman staggered sideways, her nai
lless fingers plucking at the hilt of the slim dagger that sprouted from her neck like a bizarre pendant.

  "Take the others, stupe!" hissed Jak Lauren, darting from the undergrowth, a knife in each hand.

  The fountain of blood from the woman's severed neck pattered around them; she fell to her knees, then rolled heavily on her back. Her legs spread, and Ryan noticed with revulsion that a small residual penis dangled from her naked belly.

  An instant later one of the swampies was on top of him, its dank, noxious breath hot in his face. The machete hissed toward him, and he wriggled around, blocking the blow with his forearm. He stamped on the creature's foot, making it mew like a kitten, breaking away from him.

  "Cut its throat!" called Jak Lauren, who was fencing around the other mutie, his knife glinting in the moonlight.

  The noise might warn Baron Tourment that they were close. So it was important that they dispose of this threat swiftly.

  The swampie came shuffling in, waving its steel blade, grunting with the effort of each feinting blow. Ryan backed off, considering drawing the SIG-Sauer P-226 9 mm blaster. But the ground underfoot was slippery. One mistake, and he would be down and done for.

  He darted in and back, stooping as though he'd slipped, one hand going down into the slimy mud. As he straightened, he saw the mutie looming over him, blank eyes like a shark's. Ryan threw a handful of dirt straight into those eyes. The swampie staggered away, grunting in anger.

  The eighteen-inch blade of Ryan's panga flitted out and back and out again. Slick with blood. He cut the swampie across the lower forearm, and again across the top of the right thigh. Both had been deep, slashing blows that opened up the flesh into scarlet lips. The creature's machete dropped, and it hopped back, squeaking feebly.

  Ryan waited, remembering how hard it had been to kill the living-dead muties before. Dodging around his opponent, Jak Lauren had been grabbed around the chest. But the mutie howled in pain, releasing him, looking in bewilderment at its stubby fingers, which streamed with blood from a dozen cuts; the tiny slivers of razor-steel sewn into the albino's clothing again proved their worth.