White Devil Mountain (36 page)

“I don’t know. But we can’t stay here any longer. You want me to keep fighting that goon forever?”

“Get him outside, then. I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

The doctor’s attitude had done a complete about-face, and Lilia gazed at her with extreme sternness before suddenly stepping forward.

“Stop it. You can’t kill her!” Lourié cried, trying to shield the doctor.

Pushing past the boy, the Huntress said, “Don’t worry.”

Suddenly she delivered a sharp kick to the doctor’s jaw that knocked her out, then threw the woman over her shoulder before standing up straight again. Without warning, the Huntress groaned and staggered. Even though she’d gained the regenerative powers of a Noble, the pain of the wounds she’d just received was still fresh.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll manage. Just hurts a little, that’s all.”

“I’ll help carry her, too.”

That offer caused Lilia to roar with laughter. “Funny, you didn’t look like a comedian to me. By the way, the punch you got in on that guy’s flank—that really did the trick. You self-taught?”

Though he flushed, Lourié nodded. “I got teased a lot, so a warrior who came to our house once showed me how to fight.”

“That was a pretty good punch.”

Lourié didn’t know what to say. Lilia had done something he couldn’t believe: she’d rubbed the top of the boy’s head.

Just as her hand was about to touch him, Lourié had backed away reflexively, but he immediately got an apologetic look on his face.

“Sorry.”

Lilia made a fist and pantomimed belting him. “You’re an open book, aren’t you. We’re even now.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Okay, let’s get going. Freak!” the Huntress exclaimed, kicking the right half of the duelist’s body into the corner of the room while it still attempted to reattach itself to its mate. She then headed for the door. Checking that there was no one in the corridor, she stepped outside. They had no destination. They were completely aimless.

Lilia brought up the rear, and when they’d gone about twenty yards, Lourié felt an incredible force tighten around his torso.
Above me?
he thought, and at that very instant he was pulled up with terrific speed, disappearing into the depths of the ceiling.

II

Lourié had been caught by a creature’s tentacle. It lurked in a dance hall some five floors above the one Lourié was on, sending hundreds of its tentacles creeping throughout the castle in search of prey. It was one of the creatures that’d escaped from containment. Most of its tentacles had been discovered by the guards and lopped off, rendering them useless, but those that remained were busy snatching up castle guards and other monsters and delivering them to its writhing body a mile and a quarter away. The tentacle covered that distance in five seconds. The speed was so great Lourié blacked out, and the next thing he knew, he could make out something down below—a squirming ocher mass fifteen to twenty feet beneath him that covered half the floor of the dance hall with its body and tentacles. Its body split open in the shape of a cross, exposing a crimson maw. He was being dragged toward it!

The boy heard the flapping of wings overhead. Two brick-colored winged creatures nose-dived right past Lourié. Just before they pulled up, they released a yellowish fluid on the monster on the floor. Judging from the scent that assailed his nose, it must’ve been urine.

The cruciform mouth swallowed it. The titanic beast twisted its body. Its tentacles flailed in unison, looking like the approach of great, crushing waves. Those waves were then disrupted, lashing madly, twisting together to form bizarre patterns. One tentacle landed a blind strike on one of the flying creatures. It vanished into the beast’s trembling maw.

Lourié suddenly felt himself being released. The problem was, he was falling headfirst. He landed on something soft. A scream filled his mouth. He was on top of the monster. All around him was a wall of squirming tentacles. There was no gap in it.

At that very moment, the wall rose en masse in one direction. The flying creature had returned. It released its deadly urine.

The boy spotted a gap in the tentacles he thought he could manage to slip through. The flying creature dove straight for him. Beneath it, white smoke rose. If it sprayed him, he’d melt right down to his bones.

Lourié ran. Beneath his feet, the beast felt like a wineskin full of liquid. He jumped. Tentacles brushed his face and hands. A chill a thousand times worse than he’d get from seeing a snake shot through his body. His feet froze.

“No!” he shouted, running. In shouting, he seemed to forget the chill.

He was through! Beyond the wriggling mire he could make out the floor of the hall and a small door. That’s where he’d go. His way out.

Hope bubbled up within him. Lourié started to run. Pounding across the hard floor, he had to reach that door.

Will I make it?
Lourié thought.

w
The Nobleman bugged his eyes. A gravity field powerful enough to crush D down to atoms had suddenly disappeared. Leaning out from the observation tower, Gilzen stared down at D, who was also looking up at him.

“My, that barrier was made with the aliens’ knowledge. I’m surprised you could—”

“Old. That stuff is old hat,” D’s left hand jeered from the vicinity of the Hunter’s hip, having just come away from the barrier. “That thing was using ten-thousand-year-old technology, but we’ve had all that time to evolve. Ol’ Gilzen might be a stupider foe than we thought!”

D quickly bent down and grabbed a spear that lay by his feet. The corpses of soldiers littered the floor.

“Can you catch this, Gilzen?”

The Hunter didn’t plant his feet or even twist at the waist, he merely stood straight and hurled the weapon with the motion of his right arm alone.

Easily catching it one handed, Gilzen let out a gasp of astonishment. The palm of the hand that’d caught the spear was covered with blood. His skin had split open.

“You’ve improved since our first encounter,” Gilzen commented with delight. “So, shall we face off after our discussion? Don’t be surprised. That is what I agreed to!”

“That was more of your babbling,” D said softly. “Should I come up after you, or will you come down here?”

“Don’t be so hasty. First, have a look at this.”

Gilzen reached his left hand into the tower and grabbed something. That
something
turned out to be the boy Lourié, trussed up with a slender rope.

“Captured already?” the hoarse voice said with disgust.

“I caught him just a short while ago in a dance hall not currently in use in the castle. He’s possessed of remarkably good fortune, having fled from the thousand-armed one when it tried to eat him. D, would you now see him forfeit that life here?”

“I told you before. He’s nothing to me.”

“Cease your cold-blooded posturing. Your blood may be cold, but it’s not frozen solid. As evidence of that—look!”

Gilzen took the scepter in his right hand and touched it to the boy’s right shoulder. Though it only appeared to press against Lourié lightly, his arm burst right out of the socket. Letting out a scream that didn’t even seem human, the boy fainted.

“What are you doing?” the hoarse voice cried out. “Stop it. Stop it right now. You call yourself a Noble, you
bastard
?”

Gilzen responded with mocking laughter. It was the sort of bold laugh where it seemed you’d be able to see right down his throat, and it still echoed while he unveiled his next hellish tableau. Raising his scepter, Gilzen smashed the boy’s limbs, ripped them off, and then for the coup de grâce, made a vertical swipe that cut him in two before the Nobleman threw him to the ground. Each terrifying act had wrung a scream from the half-dead Lourié, and the instant he was dashed against the stone floor he let out a single low moan and moved no more.

“What’s wrong, D? Don’t tell me you’ve fallen into despair. There’s still something I would have you do, in order to accomplish the desires of the great Gilzen. Come. I’ll be waiting farther in.”

The duke’s golden cape whipped in the wind as he vanished, and then D walked forward. He didn’t even glance at the brutalized corpse. But as they passed by it, the hoarse voice said, “Oh, what’s this?” as if its eyes had gone wide. It’d noticed that the dismembered body and all that blood weren’t real.

“Dear me, that was so realistic it had me fooled. For an organic automaton, it was really well done. Yessiree.”

“You just don’t know when to give up.”

With that one remark, D squeezed his hand into a fist. A small scream rang out.