by Faith Hunter
Truett’s slashed down with the hook-knife.
Adam took another step.
Dietrich looked up, smiled, and whispered something not meant for human lips to form.
The trichnobezoar shrilled like a tea kettle and exploded into a wall of spiky tendrils. It doubled, then tripled, growing exponentially in the blink of an eye. Adam took the brunt of it, the hair tentacles driving into him and lifting him off his feet. They held him up, struggling in the air, as the edge of the hook-knife parted the scar tissue on the back of Truett’s hand.
They drove the giant into him like a battering ram before he could do anything with the magick that welled up from the cut.
Everything went away as five hundred pounds of reanimated flesh crushed him to the ground.
~*~
Everything burned.
His wrists, the ligaments along his arms, his shoulder sockets. The heat even radiated across his chest and down his sides. His chest felt like it was being squeezed in a vise, deoxygenated air like lead in his lungs.
He cracked one eye open.
He hung from bound wrists ten feet or so over a bubbling pit of slag run-off that smelled like a dead man.
Across from him hung Adam, strung up the same way except chain bound his wrists instead of rope. The giant’s feet were much closer to the bubbling surface of the run-off and he stared at Truett with a doleful, lambent eye.
Both of them were naked.
Adam’s voice came over the gurgling of the death pit below them.
“I thought I had a lot of scars.”
Truett studied the man hanging across from him, using the exercise to keep his mind from tilt-sliding into chaos. Muscle lay over muscle, sometimes in ways he’d never seen them do in nature, as if the groups had been jumbled together. Stitching scars traced along his skin, trailing around each joint and also breaking free to zig and zag across a well-formed chest, over thick slabs of lats and sleek obliques. One thicker scar swooped across his hip, curving along the bone and spilling onto a meaty thigh.
Adam’s member hung in a thatch of blonde hair incongruent with the hair on his head. It drooped, a sleeping python as thick as Truett’s own wrist.
Despite his pain, things low in Truett’s body tightened.
Damn fool, it ain’t been that long.
Adam kept staring at him, as if nothing else was going on and they were standing in a field on a spring day. Truett was aware of what Adam saw. His scars weren’t neat, they weren’t clean and precise. They lay on his skin in hard lines of knotted flesh and in slick patches where he’d used the magick inside him to try and make this shitty, broken world livable for the weaker and the helpless. The magick Ann had showed him how to use required sacrifice of a specific kind and he’d made them every time.
He looked up at the rope that held him. The knots around his wrists were tight, the hemp interlocked in a way that his weight kept them taut. He hung where the strainer had been earlier, swung out on a bar over the run-off pit. The cut on the back of his hand from earlier was now a wide flat burn.
A voice rose up to him. “I had that cauterized while you were unconscious.”
He looked down and found Dietrich on the edge of the pool looking up at them. Cauterizing the wound...the man knew how his magick worked.
Dietrich held up Truett’s hook-knife. “I also have your athame. You’re helpless so no need to struggle.”
Helpless?
Damn bastard wasn’t so smart after all.
Adam growled. “I’m going to kill you for Lucille.”
Truett wondered at the even tone the giant had. Adam’s voice sounded almost normal. The muscles of his own chest and sides were jumping, spasming, and the pressure of his body’s weight hanging made it near impossible to do anything more than sip the air. A lesser man, a man who hadn’t suffered so much self-inflicted pain or faced down the damn, fucking horrors he had in his line of work, would have been in a full-blown panic by now.
Or dead.
Dietrich sighed, mouth turning down. “I really liked her. I wish it had been different.”
“Liar,” Adam growled.
“Truly.” Dietrich shrugged. “You’ll never believe me, but that doesn’t make it less true. Not that it matters. You’ll be following her soon enough.”
“Worse than you have tried. Death isn’t a threat to me. I’ll drag myself out of hell and rip the guts from your corpse.”
Truett pulled up on the ropes, dragging air into his lungs so he could speak. “Why’d you summon...that thing?”
“It broke free from a chunk of Wormwood brought in by some slag miners out in Starvation Flats, killed the whole crew on that shift, everybody except me.” He threw his hands wide, the skin of his arms hung off the narrow bones, gently swaying under outstretched arms. “My mama had witch blood in her veins. The Hungry kept me as its pet. I feed it, keep it satiated and entertained. Without me it would’ve eaten every soul in Modest. You two will buy everybody else a few weeks.”
Truett pulled up, dragging in more air. “Don’t...play the...hero.”
“I’m no villain!” Dietrich cried.
Adam’s chains rattled as he swung slightly side to side. “Call your master, you sonnuvabitch. Get it here so I can shove it up your ass.”
Dietrich’s face twisted. He pointed the hook-knife at Adam. “The Hungry comes. From the outer dark and the utter deep it comes to devour.”
Beneath them the water began to boil.
Adam looked over. “You got a plan, cowboy?”
Truett didn’t speak, his lungs hurt too much. He jerked his head in a nod and began twisting his wrists in the ropes. Immediately the skin lit up like it had been set on fire and the knots squeezed, pulling deep into his joints. His fingers had been cold when he came to, now they set to tingling with electric jolts of pain.
The water in the pit churned beneath his feet, droplets of it splashing up on his soles and shins. The oily surface turned dark as something massive swam up from below.
Truett sawed his wrists faster.
The skin tore, rope fibers ripping scar tissue open. Truett yanked himself up a few inches, gasping for air, his movements sapping what little oxygen he had. The ropes grew wet with lymphatic fluid.
Bleed dammit.
The Hungry broke the surface of the pool, surging up from the depths of it in tendrils of inky darkness. Set inside the mass of it were hundreds of chitinous mouths in all sizes, razor-bill beaks snapping and seeking things to pulp and swallow. The thing in the room earlier was a tiny echo of this massive creature, a cuttlefish to a Kraken, almost nothing compared to the greater thing that now spread beneath them.
“Starting without you.” Adam flexed, pulling his arms apart. The chains binding him ripped in a squeal of tortured metal, chinging as the links separated and flew into pieces. He dropped like a stone, falling onto the Hungry.
Truett used his whole body to twist in the ropes.
From the shore Dietrich screamed something he couldn’t understand.
Adam landed on the Hungry, wide feet slipping on the oily surface. He dug into the darkness with crushing fingers as a dozen small mouths bit deep into his reanimated flesh.
The ropes around Truett’s wrists blushed pink as he began to bleed.
The magick in his belly kicked to life, just a twitch, and he pushed it onto the ropes, turning his lymphatic fluid into acid. The ropes began to smoke.
He glanced down, still pushing his magick as hard as he could. Adam was coiled in a dozen tentacle-like strands of darkness. He tore at them with the viciousness of a lion, ripping free handfuls of the black and tearing the beaks off any mouths that came near his hands and tossing them away. He was doing damage but he was losing, inch by inch being enveloped by the darkness.
A rope broke, burned apart by the acid.
It started a chain reaction.
One by one the ropes separated and Truett slipped down a fraction of an inch with each until they simply gave out and
he was falling.
The pressure on his body disappeared and he sucked in one glorious chest full of air before he slammed into the rubbery surface of the Hungry and it was driven right back out of him.
Get up you damn idjit!
He scrambled, trying to get his feet under him. The skin of the thing roiled, bouncing him around. On his stomach he slipped across the slick, oily surface. His hand fell into an open mouth the size of his head and he jerked his hand out just as the beak snapped shut, nearly losing his fingers, the edge of the beak skinned his knuckles.
A tendril of darkness wrapped his bicep, anchoring him in place. He didn’t fight it, using it to keep from sliding as he pushed to his feet. The mouth on the end of the tendril swung down, latching onto the muscle of his shoulder. It sank deep into his muscle, cutting out a plug of flesh the size of his thumb. Blood geysered from the wound as the tendril yanked free. Truett grit his teeth against the jolt of pain that shot through his chest and latched onto the rush of magick under his skin, called out by the bleeding wound.
He dumped it into the darkness that held him turning it stone solid. The Hungry fought him, screaming against his magick but he still had enough firm dark to stand. He searched for Adam and found him nearly buried in liquid darkness.
A dozen mouth-filled tendrils swung toward him, unspooling over the solid dark, ready to tear him to pieces.
Reaching up, he snapped the end of the tendril around his arm off into a length of solid dark with a razor-sharp beak on the end.
Swinging it down, he drug the edge across his own thigh. The beak was sharper than his hook-knife and cut deep, parting the skin and slicing through muscle. The pain of it throbbed to life instantly, a drummer inside him, the magick growing with each beat. He didn’t mean to cut so deep. This much blood loss and he wouldn’t last long.
He took it, gathering it inside himself.
The mouths drew closer.
The magick swelled, pushed against his skin, compressed his organs, making his joints pop as his bones vibrated in their housings. He held on, shutting it in, letting it compound until it felt like he would burst apart.
Adam disappeared into the enveloping darkness.
The mouths snapped, inches from his flesh.
Truett let the magick go.
It roared out of him, rushing from his skin in a flashfire of heat. The darkness bubbled, rolling back under the onslaught. The tendrils flailed, losing mouths in a hailstorm of scorched enamel. He pushed, taking a step onto the sticky, melty aftermath of his magick, driving it further, washing it over the quivering lump of dark that was Adam cocooned. His magick ripped at the darkness, peeling it off the reanimated man. The Hungry heaved, trying to get away from the pain of the hex. As the dark melted off him, Adam tore his way free, unaffected by Truett’s magick.
Exhausted, the spellslinger dropped to his knees.
The Hungry began to sink, sliding into the pool to lick its wound.
Adam crawled over. “You hurt it. A lot.”
Truett hauled air into his lungs. “It ain’t dead.”
“Can you kill it?”
Truett shook his head. “There ain’t enough cutting I can do for that.”
Adam nodded. They both looked around. Grey water rose as the Hungry sank beneath them.
Adam stood, dragging Truett to his feet. “You can’t survive the pool. It’ll strip your skin off.”
“What’re you doing?”
The giant scooped Truett up in his arms. “Land loose, it’ll hurt less.”
Before he could say anything Adam began running over the surface of the Hungry, running toward the shore, giant feet slapping on the quivering dark. At the edge where the water rose he stopped and flung Truett as if he were a child.
The naked spellslinger flew through the air, crossing over the water as if he were dreaming.
Until he began to drop.
Then the ground rushed up and hit him like a giant fist. He rolled across the sand, the grit scrubbing his skin raw. His body turned into one giant ache, all the individual hurts combining into one. He got up out of sheer stubbornness, crawling through the fog of pain.
He looked over the water and saw Adam, waist deep in the sinking darkness of the Hungry. The giant had torn free one of the cuttle beaks the size of a wagon and was using it to dig his way into the creature. He lifted it over his head and drove it down. The Hungry heaved at the impact, roiling and bucking, sending water splashing up on the shore. Truett took several steps back as Adam disappeared, falling inside the creature.
He must’ve broke through.
The Hungry flopped in the pool, sinking completely beneath the brackish water.
Truett felt the air shift behind him and fell to the ground, rolling. Dietrich stumbled over him, arm outstretched and off balance where he’s tried to slash Truett with the hook-knife. The gangly sorcerer landed beside Truett who rolled, throwing one leg over and sitting on him. Dietrich bucked, trying to throw him off.
Sand had packed into the wide cut on Truett’s thigh, sealing it almost completely. There was still a trickle of blood that seeped, still a corner of the incision open. The blast of magick he’d used to free Adam had drained him, sapped him, but that trickle, that little opening gave him just enough magick to double his weight. He sank into Dietrich’s midsection, cutting off his air. The man under him stopped kicking, unable to move his torso under Truett’s hex-affected weight, Dietrich began gasping for air and pushing against Truett’s hips. The spellslinger leaned over and snatched up his hook-knife where it had been dropped.
He eased up a bit, allowing the sorcerer to draw in just enough air to speak.
Tears ran down the man’s face. “How did you do that? Why did you do that? When it comes back it’ll make me pay for you hurting it.”
Truett knew how monsters worked. Dietrich had called himself the Hungry’s ‘pet’. The implications of what that could mean sent a chill through him. “It’ll be down for a bit. Where’s my clothes? I gotta town to evacuate.”
Dietrich’s eyes went wide. “You can’t take away its food!”
“I’m gonna send everybody packin’, call in the cavalry to put this sumbitch down, and then we’re stringing you up.” Ann could have the other spellslingers here after sundown.
Dietrich opened his mouth. One strange syllable, a low gurgling noise, rolled from the back of his throat.
Truett hit him in the mouth, his fist full of hook-knife handle.
He felt the jawbone break under his knuckles.
“No more spells.” He pointed the hook-knife in Dietrich’s face. “Try it again and I’ll gut you and toss you in that fucking pond with your master.”
Something moved in the water, a dark shape.
Truett moved off Dietrich, watching Adam walk out of the pool. Oily water streamed off him as he walked onto the shore. His left arm bent at an odd angle, jutting away from his body in a way it was not designed to do. Once he stood on the sand he reached over and took the wrist in his other hand and yanked. The broken arm twisted around, bone sliding back into place with a brittle sound. Adam flexed the fingers of that hand and shook the arm. Satisfied that it was fixed, he walked over to them.
Truett stood. “That thing coming back?”
Adam shook his head. “I doubt it. Found a hole to a weird place. Stuffed it in there and dropped a rock on it.”
Truett grunted. “Might work.”
Adam looked down at Dietrich. The sorcerer had crawled to a sitting position and sat hugging his knees to his chest.
Truett pointed. “You still want him?”
Adam sighed. “I’m tired.”
“Not an answer.”
“He’s got to pay for Lucille and the others.”
“At my hands he’ll get a necktie dance.”
“Good enough.”
~*~
Truett watched the last bit of life kick out of the dead sorcerer as he dangled over the pool of run-off. He felt nothing for the sight o
f it, only glad to have his clothes, his six-gun, and his coat back. His thigh throbbed under his pants, stitched up from his kit. It would heal.
Eventually.
And leave another damn big scar when it did.
Adam pulled his own shirt on over his head. “Didn’t think you meant to hang him so soon.”
Truett spit tobacco juice. “No need to wait around.”
Adam nodded. “So that’s that.”
“Yep.” Truett looked at the giant sideways. “Where you off to now?”
“Don’t know.”
“You should go to Lost Vegas. There might be a place for you where I work.”
Before Adam could speak a lilting female voice came from behind them. “Don’t you think I should be the one to make a job offer, McCall?”
They both turned to find a woman standing just a few feet behind them. Midnight hair and kohl-colored eyes stood in stark contrast to the gleaming white coat that wrapped her slender form.
“Ann,” Truett said.
Adam remained silent. Considering what he was and the thing he’d just killed, a woman who appeared out of thin air was nothing to be alarmed at.
She stepped close, kissing Truett on his cheek. “Be a dear and introduce us.”
“Adam, this is Ann, my boss.” Ann stuck her hand out. “Ann, this is Adam,” The giant took it as Truett continued, “he killed a...”
Ann yanked down on Adam’s arm, pulling him to his knees on the ground. In a blink she was behind him, dainty hands under his jaw. Heavy-lidded eyes opened wide in surprise as her fingers curled in, puncturing the skin and wrapping around his jawbone. Leaning back and twisting, she tore Adam’s head off his neck and tossed it over her shoulder. It sailed through the air hitting Dietrich’s body, bouncing off and tumbling into the pool below.
Blood dark with age spurted from the torn stump of Adam’s neck as Ann grabbed the body by the shoulders and hurled it into the oily water as if it were a sack of rags.
When she turned to Truett the blood had disappeared from her coat and it gleamed once more.