Haven's Blight (30 page)

Suddenly the Gaia strength fled Krysty. She dropped with a painful jar to her hands and knees, panting and trying not to throw up in a sudden wave of nausea. She breathed in huge shuddering gasps, not yet gripped by the usual total weakness.

The air was clean and cool down here near the floor. That helped.

Krysty raised her head. What had been a monster was melting and reforming into a shape like that of a young woman. Already the face was almost human. A lovely face, she saw. The horrific snarling visage of moments before had been a cruel parody.

She saw her backpack standing in the corner, by what had been the foot of the bed. She forced herself to her feet.

She picked up the bag and shouldered into the straps. The flames had begun to spread, already eating through the ceiling. She had to get out of here now, but her way out was blocked by the unconscious…young woman. Krysty could tell that she was still breathing. But barely.

Krysty faced a choice. She owed the young woman nothing, as far as she could see. She had been trying her level best to mutilate and kill Krysty, mere hammering heartbeats before.

But had her mind and character changed as well as her form? How culpable was the person taking shape before Krysty’s emerald eyes of the terrible acts and intentions of the monster she had been?

Strength was flowing back into Krysty’s muscles. Oddly, she was regaining her normal power. Apparently payback for the supercharge would come later.

“Thank you for looking out for me, Mother Gaia,” she said. “I hope what I’m about to do isn’t triple stupe.”

She went to the door, stopped, slung the woman across her shoulders, pack and all, in a fireman’s carry. The woman was noticeably lighter than the monster was. Her limbs were slimy. Krysty realized there was a pool of some kind of liquid on the floor where she had lain.

Her lips skinned back from her teeth in a grimace of disgust. Something was going on here she didn’t understand. She felt no overwhelming urge to learn the details. Only to get away from this place now.

For the first time she became aware of the sounds of gunshots, muffled by distance. A substantial battle was raging not far away. That, and the increasingly hot, vigorous and smoky fire threatening to choke her with the stink of burning feathers and kerosene, were excellent reasons to move.

Out in the hallway she saw the remains of what a quick tally of heads and limbs suggested were three dead men. For some reason the only one whose features were untouched had a remarkably well-manicured mustache and pointed beard, and in the staring wide gray eyes the most concentrated look of horror Krysty had ever seen on a human face.

Despite her burden, Krysty went quickly down the two flights of stairs. She encountered no living person inside the big house. Instinctively she shied away from the front door. Casting around, she soon found herself in a large, spotless kitchen, which had a back door.

She left the woman, still completely unconscious and now completely human, on the lawn well clear of the house. She could smell gunsmoke now, hear shouts as well as shooting. A serious explosion made her wince as it assailed her ears.

Leaving a beautiful naked woman lying out in the open in the midst of a battle wasn’t the kindest thing to do, but it
was
kinder than leaving the mysterious shapeshifter to burn alive. And there was a limit to how much even Krysty Wroth’s big heart bled for someone who had just tried to rip her limb from limb.

Wearing only a gossamer nightgown and unwilling to linger long enough to root in her pack and do something about, she slipped into the woods.

Chapter Thirty-Two

As soon as Amélie Mercier heard the ringing impact of something heavy and metal on the steel door of her laboratory, she knew her fate was sealed.

She closed her laboratory notebook, placed it in an insulated safe beneath the desk and locked it. The safe itself was bolted to the concrete floor. The pirates wouldn’t easily dislodge it. She hoped it would survive their depredations and the…necessary consequences.

She had already made preparations. Now certain final details had to be attended to. She carried them out punctiliously, her whole being focused on following proper procedures. Procedure, detail—those defined a well-ordered life.

Finished, she sat in her scavenged swivel chair facing the door and waited.

At last whatever massive metal object the raiders had found to use as a battering ram got the better of her door. It crumpled, tore away from the hinges. Light only just beginning to show a golden color poured in.

It was followed by men with rough voices and pawing hands, whose breath and bodies stank. Mercier didn’t resist them. She knew it would do no good, might only enrage them at worst. In any event she was no fighter. She lived by and for the mind.

Although if she had had the chance, perhaps her heart could have won a place in her existence. But that would never come to pass now.

They stripped her naked. She felt light-headed. They mauled and slobbered on her small, firm breasts, licked her neck, even her face, with their disgusting, reeking, viscous slobber. She bore it all with detached calm.

Nor did she give them the pleasure of showing fear or resistance, or anything at all, when they bore her down on her back on the cool concrete floor. She lay limply passive as they pulled her legs apart.

The others chanted and cheered as the first man prepared to rape her.

No one noticed when her right hand groped out, beneath her desk, and found an igniter. Clicked it.

She had the last gratification of seeing her potential rapist’s eyes bulge from his filthy face as the flames enveloped him. Then the explosive combination of pure oxygen from the concentration machines, and the acetylene gas took over, shattering the lab’s interior and everything inside in a yellow flash.

Amélie Mercier felt an instant of searing dragon’s breath. Then nothing.

“T
HAT
SMOKE
,” Jak said, pausing as he led the group through the woods toward Blackwood’s house. He had learned the trails and paths around the ville hunting with his local friends. “Not like.”

Ryan frowned at the white and brown smoke. It was coming from about the direction Jak told him the big house lay.

“Krysty,” he said. Slinging his Steyr, which he had been carrying in his hand, he started to run.

“Hey,” J.B. called, “you’re heading into a battle, remember?”

“I’m heading toward Krysty!”

A
T
THE
EDGE
of a little clearing, with knee-high grass and flowers and dense brush on the far side, Jak stopped short. He held up an urgent hand. “Someone coming.”

The two companions had run half the distance to the big house, close enough for Ryan to see the smoke streaming from the high-peaked roof of the big white building. And not from the chimney pots. His being rebelled against stopping now, with his lover trapped in a burning building. But if Jak told you to stop in the woods, you stopped. Or the odds were you were on the fast track to the last train west.

Then the albino teen sniffed and said, “Oh.”

The brush stirred across the little clearing. Jak straightened. Instead of aiming his Colt Python, he pointed its vented barrel at the ground. Ryan frowned. This wasn’t Jak’s usual behavior.

A figure stepped from the brush. Ryan had an instant impression of ivory skin, contrasting with scarlet hair that stirred though there was no breath of breeze in the clearing. A very familiar voice was cursing a backpack for hanging up on the brush.

It wasn’t possible.

“Krysty?” he said tentatively, as if afraid she was an illusion that would vanish into air.

She looked at him with hot green eyes. “Ryan,” she said, “where the hell have you been?”

Then they were in each other’s arms, their mouths joining in a long and searching kiss.

They didn’t break free until the others joined them. “Sorry to intrude on you young lovers,” Mildred said, “but we’ve got a situation here.”

“A spontaneous remission, by the Three Kennedys!” Doc exclaimed. “So our journey into swampie land and the sacrifices our companions made were in vain.”

“What’s he talking about, lover?” Krysty asked.

“You got bitten by a snake. You went into a coma. We had to go stop a war with some swampies to bring you out of it. Or so we were told.”

He looked at the others. “Not so sure it wasn’t necessary. Maman Fucton told me my just being there might provide kind of a lifeline to bring Krysty back. Thought it was just a metaphor at the time.”

He teetered on the brink of saying why she said she told him that, then he didn’t. There were some things a man just didn’t have to talk about. Also the thought of talking about how Maman Fucton said his love and devotion were the key to Krysty’s pulling out of her deathlike trance put a knot in his tongue.

“What about that herbal packet Maman—that is, the swampie shamaness gave you to heal Krysty, Ryan?”

Ryan frowned a moment, then laughed. “Reckon she gave it to me so I’d feel I got something for my pains. Something happened there, and I believe it helped Krysty pull out. As to what, I’ll never know. And I’m fine with that.”

“And what will you do with the packet now?” Mildred said.

He shrugged. “Hang on to it, I guess. Who knows what it might come in handy for.”

“So where to now, Ryan?” J.B. asked. He nodded toward the sounds of shots. “That isn’t our battle now. Especially given what we know.”

“I don’t know as it isn’t our battle,” Ryan said. “These people did right by us. Mostly. Anyway, I made my deal with Papa Dough. I aim to carry it through, Black Gang or no Black Gang.”

“That’s fair,” J.B. acknowledged.

“Ryan, the most amazing thing happened to me,” Krysty said.

“Not now, Krys—”

“Mother Gaia wakened me just as I was attacked by some sort of horrible creature. I knocked it out and it turned into a young woman with long black hair!”

Ryan pursed his cheeks and let a lot of air slide out his mouth. “We got a lot to fill each other in on. But we also better get a move on, if we want there to be anybody left to help against the pirates.”

“You can go ahead and start,” she said, laying her pack down in the grass and opening it up. “
I’m
going to get out of this nightgown and put some clothes on as we talk.”

“I
S
IT
A
GOOD
SIGN
or a bad sign when the shooting and shouting starts to die down like this?” Mildred asked.

“Depends on who it means won, Mildred,” J.B. said.

Giving wide berth to the burning house, which they feared would prove a beacon for trouble, they had worked their way close to the main square. Now they crouched in an alley that ran between structures of brick and planks from the local mill. An empty wagon and some crazily stacked crates and barrels offered concealment from casual observation.

Mildred’s heart hammered in her chest. She was acutely aware that even now they might be surrounded by blood-thirsty enemies. So what else was new? she asked herself, trying to drain the tension.

It didn’t work.

“That fearful cannon has remained silent for some minutes,” Doc said.

“Recoilless blaster takes a spell to reload,” J.B. said.

At a sign from Ryan, Jak prowled ahead. A handful of moments later he was back, looking agitated.

“Square full pirates,” he reported.

“Very well,” Doc said. “The cessation of combat appears to be a bad thing, then.”

“Still our fight, Ryan?” J.B. asked.

“Still our fight.” Mildred knew the Armorer wasn’t being timid. Only practical.

“What’s our move?”

“Let’s get a better look at the situation,” Ryan said.

Jak led them into a side yard. There was a chicken coop but no chickens, and a little garden, a couple of chairs on a swaybacked porch. Mildred could detect no signs of life anywhere in the building or immediate environs. Any occupants had either fled the fighting or joined it.

They crouched by a fence that allowed them to look through knotholes at the plaza, still a block or two away.

Before she should squelch it a groan escaped Mildred. “They’ve got Tobias.”

E
VEN
KNOWING
what he did, it angered Ryan to see the baron in such a state. Naked from the waist up, he staggered under the weight of a huge timber beam, which had been tied across his broad shoulders with thick ropes and his arms lashed to it. He looked badly beaten. His long white hair hung lank in a face that was a mask of bruise and blood. Blood streaked his body. Laughing pirates prodded him along with the muzzles of longblasters.

“This isn’t good,” he said. “Mebbe he didn’t play entirely straight with us about his sister, but he doesn’t deserve this. We’ve got to try to do something. Doc, you pair with Jak. Mildred and J.B., you’re the other team. Krysty, you’re with me.”

“Always, lover.”

“We’re north of the square. J.B., Mildred, try finding a position on the west side near this end. Doc and Jak, you take up position on the north side.”

“If we sneak around to east and south,” J.B. said, “we’d be firing them up from the rear, sitting clean astride their route of retreat. That throws a good scare into folks. Does a lot to even out triple-bad odds.”

But Ryan shook his head. “Two reasons. First, it’d take too bastard long. Second, when those coldhearts break and run, do you want to be sitting right smack between them and their ride out of town?”

J.B. chuckled. “Right, Ryan. I hear you.”

“Infiltrate as far forward as you safely can, find some good firing positions. Teammates watch each other’s backs. Standard stuff. Wait for me to shoot my longblaster.”

“What about you and Krysty?” J.B. asked.

Ryan showed his teeth in a grin. “I been lugging this fancy sniper rifle all over the Deathlands. Time to do me some sniping.”

“W
E
’
RE
NOT
seriously thinking of taking on this pirate horde all by ourselves, are we?” Mildred asked as she and J.B. slipped through a deserted hardware store.

“We’ll see.”

“It’s nuts! There’s a hundred of them out there.” She gestured through a front window. “They’ll roll right over us!”

“They’re pirates, Millie. Not looking to get shot. They’re out for loot and a good old time. Hit them hard and right, they’ll just scatter.”

“What if they don’t? Besides, even if Ryan needs to pay off the debt to the swampies, can’t we just wait until the pirates pull out and talk to whoever’s left in charge of the ville then?”

“Might not be so eager to listen to us if we didn’t help when the chips were down. Anyway, I’m so sure this fight’s done. These Haven folks are tough. I think they may muster a counterattack here before long.”

“Aren’t we staking our lives on a lot of ifs?”

J.B. gave her a quick tight smile. “Haven’t we always?”

J
AK
HUNKERED
DOWN
next to a wag piled high with cargo covered in waxed canvas. It was one of a line of similarly laden wags parked with tongues down along the west side of the square. That was one of the things about the ville: people could leave their goods out like that and not have to worry about them getting stolen. The kids he’d run with since coming here all took that sort of thing for granted, which struck him as being strange.

Well, they left their stuff out safely until
now.

He glanced over at Doc, crouched behind the next wag in line with his big handblaster in hand. Jak felt a slight resentment being saddled with Doc, but he had to admit the old man handled himself pretty well in a fight. He didn’t make too much noise creepy-crawling, either—by the standards of people who weren’t Jak Lauren.

He’d learned to make allowances.

They had a narrow path between buildings handy, so they could pull back if they needed to run. That was always important to Jak—knowing you had a way out.

With a hunter’s patience he settled down to watch events over his front sight, and wait for Ryan’s shot to start the party.

M
OST
OF
H
AVEN
’
S
buildings stood a single story high. For some reason several of the rare two-story structures clustered just half a block back from the square’s northwest corner, around one that actually sprouted a third story. It was barely more than a little square room with a roof and big windows looking all four directions. Ryan reckoned it was likely a watch tower.