“Fireblast,” breathed Ryan, but before the word hung in the air, the drama was played.
The G-12 coughed, the triple burst sounding like a single shot.
Finn jumped, the Model 92 Beretta pistol jerking into his fist. J.B. raised his Mini-Uzi, searching for the threat. Doc was fumbling for his Le Mat. Lori squeaked her dismay, and Krysty Wroth had drawn her Hamp;K P7A-13 9 mm handblaster.
The Cajun woman lurched sideways as all three bullets stitched into her, all hitting within a hand’s span, under the ribs on the left side of her body. Despite her great size and strength, the three bullets sent her staggering. The blanket fell away, revealing her nakedness. Blood came from the j bunched wounds, dark and thick, dappling her thighs as she tottered, fighting for balance.
“Bastard,” she said, in a normal, quiet conversational voice, sinking to her knees, then sliding in the dirt on her face, both hands clutched beneath her, holding the triple wound.
“Ryan! Ryan?”
“What is it, Finn?”
“You said she could go. You fucking said” His voice was rising.
“Look in her hand, Finn.”
She still livedif the residual nervous twitching and jerking of the body could be called living. Finn kicked her over with the toe of his boot, staring down as the corpse rolled on its back, breasts sagging, blood and urine trickling across the thighs and belly. . “In her right hand,” said Ryan. The fingers were clenched, and the man bent down and’ pried them open. Then he stood up and shook his head at what he saw, at what they all saw.
It was an open cutthroat razor, honed down over countless years until it was only a sliver of steel, hardly as wide as a man’s fingernail. The handle was of dull white bone, broken and mended with twine.
“Fucking double-poor crazy bitch,” said Finnegan, spitting into the staring eyes of the dead Cajun woman. Lori took a few steps away from the body, looking toward the nearest buildings, all shrouded with thick vegetation. “We go in there? Food? Shelter?”
“Shelter, yeah,” replied Ryan. “After a hundred years or so, I’m not so damned sure ’bout any food. Let’s go see. And let’s take care.”
THE FOUR MEN and two women moved out of the deep, lush greenery, picking their way along what had once been the farthest outpost of West Lowellton. They passed a partly completed suburban development of medium-priced housing that once pushed the sprawling frontiers of Lafayette deeper into swampland. Nearly one hundred years ago, in the remote past.
“MOUDONGUE?”
” Oui , Baron. Moudongue.”
“They are becoming of interest to me, my dear and loyal compatriot, Mephisto.”
“We’ll take them.”
“Such confidence. What of the teams of sec men out in the green?”
“Pecker said they’d gone.”
“Why were they not kept for me?”
“They were” The sec boss hesitated, wiping a hand down the leg of his white pants. He noticed that his fingers left a sweaty trail.
“Yes?” asked the baron, his voice as gentle as a maiden’s whisper. Mephisto found himself sweating a little more than before.
“They were taking a pig.”
“A ritual?”
“Yes.”
The exoskeleton creaked and groaned as Baron Tourment pulled himself upright, towering over the sec boss as he strode around the motel room, seeing himself reflected again and again as he passed the mirror over the oyster-pink washbasin.
“Had I given my permission?”
Mephisto had known the question was coming and had anticipated it from the moment one of the patrol teams in the swampwags had reported back to him.
“I had one in five blasted, Baron.”
“Only one in five?”
“They are useful to us, so close to the part of West Lowellton where the boy runs.”
The great leonine head nodded slowly, and Mephisto knew that he’d guessed right he would live for another day.
“Truly spoken. One in five? Good.”
“The outlanders took out one man.”
“Who?”
“Be la Tour. The one with the beard forked as if lightning had struck it.”
“Was he not the one who shot the black in the buggy a day back?”
“Yes.”
“Revenge?”
Mephisto nodded. “I believe so.’ We can ask when we take them.”