Valentine's Exile (46 page)

Stepping carefully, Valentine crossed the egg repository, hoping the baby legworms were giving off enough lifesign to confuse the Reapers' senses.

He heard-felt-sensed motion behind.

A string of Reapers entered the egg chamber, clad in their dark, almost bulletproof robes, the first staring about as if to make sense of the small glows and vast shadows.

Valentine shoved Gail toward an A-shaped arch in a legworm's midsection. She turned around to protest, and her big eyes grew even wider, until they seemed to fill her face.

Gail shrieked. She instinctively reached for him, putting his body in between herself and the others.

As one, six Reaper heads turned in their direction. Valentine drew his .22 target pistol.

The lead Reaper dismissed the threat with a wave, a grotesque wigwag of its double-jointed elbow. It had a burn-scarred face, making its visage that of a badly formed wax mask.

Valentine pointed the gun at Gail's head. She squeaked.

The Reapers spread out, but came no closer.

“keep calm, brother,”
the leader said in the breathy voice that always brought Valentine back to the terrors of the night Gabriella Cho died.
“no one need die tonight. be warned: hurt her and we will peel off your skin and leave you raw and screaming
.”

He switched the sights of the pistol to the Reaper's yellow gimlet eye.

Valentine tried to still his hand.

“Not me,” Valentine said.

And shot.

He aimed at an egg, shot, switched targets, and shot again, as quickly as he could pull the hair trigger. The gun felt like a cap pistol in his hand.

But the bullets had an effect.

They struck the eggs and tore through them, sending fluid flying, splattering the Reapers. The egg chamber suddenly smelled like old milk. He stifled a gag.

Evidently Reapers didn't get nauseated, or had poor noses—they just wiped at the fluid in disgust.

All around, legworm digits twitched like fluttering eyelashes.

Valentine dropped the empty gun as he ran, pulling Gail along behind. Tons of legworm righted itself and he threw her under it, dove, rolled, felt its legs on his back as he made it to the other side. Snapping noises like garden shears came from the egg area.

Valentine drew his legworm goad, buried it in the back of one as it began to roll, and pulled Gail tight to him as they ended up on its back.

The earthen bowl writhed with searching legworms.

Valentine anchored one of his cargo hooks in the loose skin atop the legworm, and looped a chain around Gail. Her white fingers gripped it while the legworm's back rose and fell as it negotiated the lip of the crater.

A Reaper flew through the air. Well, half of one. Its waist and legs were still on the ground.

Another jumped atop the back of a moving legworm and ran toward them like the hero of a Western on top of a train, arms out and reaching.

Two legworm muzzles rose from either side, one catching it by the head and arms, the other by its waist.

“Make a wish,” Valentine said. Gail shifted position so that she wasn't resting on her belly, and gasped at the scene behind her.

The Reaper parted messily.

More legworms carefully stabbed down with their muzzles, lifted them covered with black goo and shreds of black cloth, then stabbed down again.

“Help!” Gail screamed.

A bony, blue-veined Reaper hand gripped her leg, pulling her off the legworm.

She clutched at Valentine and the securing chain. He shifted his grip on his legworm goad. He brought down the crowbarlike shovel edge on the Reaper's head. Skin peeled back, revealing a black, goo-smeared skull.

The Reaper made a sideways climb, more like a spider than a man, still pulling at Gail so hard that Valentine feared both she and the baby would be divided between the antagonists in Solomonic fashion.

Valentine crossed the shimmying legworm back, jumping as the Reaper swung its free arm. He buried the goad in the forearm holding Gail, and the Reaper released its grip.

Stars—a ringing sound—pain.

The Reaper had struck him backhand across the jaw. Something felt horribly loose on the left side of his head; bone held only by skin sagged at the side of his face. Valentine blindly swung with the goad as he backpedaled, then lost his balance. This time Gail screamed as he clutched at her to keep from falling off.

Valentine's vision cleared and he saw, and worse, felt, the Reaper straddling him. The goad was gone, his pistol was gone. He put up a hand against the tongue already licking out of the Reaper's mouth. It pulled his shirt open.

Valentine groped at his belt. He had another cargo hook. . . .

Gail struck the Reaper across the back of its neck with her hands interlocked, but it ignored her the way it would a butterfly alighting.

Valentine brought up the cargo hook—feeling the pointed tongue probe at his collarbone—and buried the hook into the Reaper's jaw, returning pain for pain. He pulled, desperate, and the black-fanged mouth closed on its own tongue.

The Reaper's eyes widened in surprise and the tongue was severed. The cut-off end twitched on Valentine's bare chest. Valentine slid and gripped the Reaper by its waist with his legs. It brought up its bad arm to try to pull the hook out, fumbling with the chain.

Valentine pulled, hard, putting his back muscles into the effort, straining—God, how his jaw hurt as he gritted his teeth—the Reaper looking oddly like a hooked bass with eyes glazed and confused—
hurt it bad enough and the Kurian shuts down the connection?
—and the Reaper's jaw came free in a splatter of blood. The Reaper swung at his eyes but Valentine got a shoulder up. He punched, hard, into the open wound at the bottom of its head and groped with his hand wrist-deep in slimy flesh. He dug with fingers up the soft palate.

The Reaper's eyes rolled back into its skull as he squeezed the base of its brain like a sponge.

Gail whacked it again and it toppled off the back of the legworm. Valentine sucked in air and pain with each breath.

“You look funny,” Gail said.

“I bet I do,” Valentine said, though it hit his ears as “I et I oo.” Valentine examined his chest. The tiny wound from the Reaper's tongue had a splattering of Reaper blood all around it. It itched. He tore up some of the fiberglass-like legworm skin and blotted the tarry substance away.

The legworm they rode waved its snout in the air as it hurried around the perimeter of the pushed-up earth. When it slowed to redescend into the pit, Valentine removed his first cargo hook, used it to lower Gail, and dropped off himself. He retrieved his goad and the other cargo hook.

This time she clung to him as he carried her, running for the telephone poles.

Valentine heard voices, and turned toward the sound.

“I can't believe you used me as bait,” Thatcher said.

“I got it, didn't I?” Duvalier chided.

“A second later and it would have popped my head off.”

“Uh-uh. I never leave less than a second and a half to chance, sweetie. Wait—”

The last was at the sound of Valentine setting Gail on her feet again.

“It's us,” Valentine said, holding his jaw. He came into what might pass for a clearing—thick grasses rather than trees—around an old barn. The telephone poles lined a road like the Roman crucifixes on the Via Appia.

Duvalier knelt down, working.

Valentine stepped up and found what he expected, a headless Reaper.

“Hell, Val,” Duvalier said.

“Uf igh,” Valentine tried. “Rluff nigh.”

Thatcher seemed lost in his own thoughts as he stared at the Reaper corpse. “You should have seen it—the Reaper was coming for me. I tried to fire but my gun was on safety, and before I could even flick off it reached, and there she was behind it.”

“Big tactic,” Duvalier said, examining the robe she had stripped off the Reaper for black—and poisonous—subcutaneous fluid. “Lying in the grass like a snake.”

“You're one of those . . . one of those Hunter-things,” Thatcher said.

“You have a problem with that?” Duvalier asked.

“Offerz,” Valentine garbled. “Oturs.”

"The others?” Duvalier said. “I dunno. I didn't hear any screams.”

“Are there any more around?” Thatcher asked.

“Ope nog,” Valentine said.

Thatcher took a better grip on his gun and looked warily around. “How do you know?”

“He knows,” Duvalier said. “He just knows. Leave it at that.” She gave him his rifle back, as though glad to give up an unpleasant burden.

“Can we sleep soon? How about in that barn?” Gail asked.

Valentine waved tiredly. “Attitude, Gail,” Duvalier said.

“Stick the attitude. My feet are killing me,” she said hotly.

“I think she's getting better,” Thatcher said.

It took them a while to find the trail of Dr. Boothe and Pepsa. Valentine found their marks in the long grasses. They'd cut over to a legworm trail and followed it up the hillside.

“What are they going back in that direction for?” Thatcher asked.

Valentine shrugged, resolved to communicate with hand signals. Gail groaned as they started up the hill.

They caught up to the pair, Boothe hiking along behind Pepsa carrying the gun in one hand, her medical bag slung.

Valentine elbowed Duvalier, pointed, and made a T with his hands. She nodded and slipped into the bushes, gripping her walking stick like an alert samurai carrying his sword.

"What's the matter?” Thatcher asked, keeping his voice low.

Valentine found he could whisper coherently. He spoke into Duvalier's ear.

“Something's wrong,” she said. “Somebody's been giving us away.”

Back in the legworm valley, Valentine heard hoofbeats. Two legworms and perhaps a dozen men on horseback were investigating events in the pit. They looked like native Kentuckians intermingled with Grogs.

“Let's catch up,” Duvalier said.

They went up the hill as quickly as Gail's weary, unsteady legs would allow.

The vets must have heard them coming. Both turned around. Pepsa looked frightened.

Boothe brought up the pistol and pointed it between them.

Shit. Guessed wrong
.
Why didn't I just shoot the pair of them?

Because they might not be in it together
.

“Hey, Doc, it's us,” Thatcher said.

“Guns! Drop them,” Boothe said. The gun shook in her hands as she pointed. Tears streamed down her face.

“
Epsah!” Valentine shouted, shouldering his rifle, sighting on the first Kurian agent he had ever looked upon.

The U-gun burned. Its stock burned him, the trigger guard; he felt the flesh on his hands cook; the agony of the steam in the Kurian Tower redoubled and poured through his nervous system. Drop it, all he could do was drop the gun.

Don't~think~so, a voice in his head said.

Thatcher brought up his rifle—
what the hell?
—the burning agony left, relief and wonder at freedom from pain but why was Thatcher shouldering his rifle with the barrel pressed to his collarbone and the butt pointed at Pepsa

Blood and bone flew from Thatcher's shoulder, the gun fell, the spent cartridge casing spun

and before it completed its parabola Duvalier was out of the Kentucky grass, sword held up and ready

Stupid~bitch!

Duvalier screamed, dropped her sword, jumped back from it as though it were a snake striking—

Valentine grabbed his short legworm pick, lunged up the hill

Boothe turned her gun at Pepsa, no, not at her, at a patch of dark shortleaf pine behind her, and fired.

Behind him Thatcher screamed. Valentine was still three strides away, the pain came, the legworm pick lightning in his hands . . . no, fire, hot blue flame that burned—

Lies. They fight with lies
.
Lies can't change steel to flame
.

He raised the pick, screaming in agony, fighting the pain with sound.

You~dumbfuck~terrorists, Pepsa said between his ears.

And he threw, sent the pick spinning at her, watched it hit, saw the point bury itself in one fleshy breast, a gurgle, went to Boothe, took the hot gun from her shaking hand, pointed and fired—

Where~are~you~lord?

Another shot—HEEELP~the~burn!—the gun clicked empty, even as she toppled over he straddled her, hitting her with the pistol butt, silencing the screaming from between his ears by caving in her skull and the awful warble of her tongueless mouth, but nothingness yawned beneath him like a chasm, he felt himself tottering at the edge of an abyss.

Duvalier picked him up off her corpse, pulled him out of the darkness. Hoofbeats. The loom of riders in the darkness. Words, Boothe bending over Thatcher, applying pressure as Duvalier waved the riders over. Finally the strange emptiness in his head left, and he could distinguish faces again.

“Haloo, Bulletproof. You're far from home. What hospitality can fellow tribesmen offer?”

They bartered the Reaper's robe for transport and found their way back to the Bulletproof. In a few days they again knew Kentucky hospitality in a chilly, Z-shaped valley fed by artesian springs, his jaw braced and bandaged with baling wire by Boothe. Valentine learned to appreciate smashed cubes of legworm flesh, slathered in barbecue sauce sucked through a straw. He also got mashed squash, pumpkin, and corn, eating out of the same pot as the resident babies.