“I’ve already told you what I see of our deaths. That shows you can trust me.”
“You to drown in an ocean of red. Me to speak with a tongue of silver and vanish through a mirror into a desert where I shall cease to be. Oh, yes. Yes, I heard all that.” He lowered his face close to her. “But you don’t think I’d be fooled by your carny medicine show gabble? Oh, no! Lies all lies, woman!”
He slapped her again, making her nose bleed.
“It’s truth,” she protested, swaying in his grip.
“Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.” He smiled at her. “Let us open up your new home, doomie slut.”
“No!” She screamed loud enough to shatter crystal at fifty paces, then dropped her head and sank her teeth into his wrist, making him curse and let her go.
Emma turned and started to run away, back toward the main part of the collection, toward the half-open door into the rest of the ville. And a last chance of life.
Jak, less than a hundred yards away, darting through a maze of narrow passages, heard the scream and began to run even faster toward its source.
Sharpe caught up with Emma in the main room of the mutie animals and reptiles, just past the doorway that led into the chamber where the vast glass case held the mysterious hidden monster in the warm sand.
“Stupe bitch,” he said, laughing delightedly. “Oh, yes, what a stupe bitch.” He paused, posing as he caught sight of his reflection in the mirrored glass.
“Please,” she whispered.
“No.”
He began a swift, brutal beating, holding her against the wall by one hand, while he punched and slapped at her with the other. Both eyes closed and her mouth split, blood trickling down her chin and over the front of her black dress.
“Doomies.do.what.they’re told.” Each word was punctuated by savage punches, knocking her head from side to side like a disjointed doll.
Emma slipped quickly into merciful unconsciousness, but the baron didn’t seem aware of it. Grinning mirthlessly, nodding as if he were agreeing to some whispered instructions from an invisible presence, he continued the beating.
Teeth splintered and sliced her tongue open, releasing a flood of scarlet.
“Lie there until you learn sense, doomie!” Sharpe snarled, suddenly throwing her to the floor.
Emma lay where he dropped her, half in the doorway between the rooms. She was on her back, mouth open, the flow of blood trickling steadily down her throat and into the air passages to her lungs, beginning to drown her.
RYAN, J.B. AND DOC had suffered another brief delay in their pursuit of Jak, and the baron and Emma.
Someone had loosed a pack of hunting dogs into the rear of the ville, and they came snarling toward the three outlanders.
At last Doc had the chance to use the Le Mat, aiming into the middle of the animals, pulling down on the trigger.
The.63-caliber shotgun round, fired at thirty feet, tore into the dogs with a devastating effect, killing three and injuring half of the rest of the pack.
The survivors, including the wounded, turned tail and scampered, howling, down a side passage and vanished behind a length of tapestry that concealed a small door.
“Ace on the line, Doc,” Ryan called as they hurried on.
JAK HAD HESITATED a moment as he heard the thunderous boom of Doc’s blaster and the barking of the dogs. But after the shot the noise faded quickly into stillness, and he ran on.
He was only a few paces now from the half-open door into the collection.
SHARPE HAD DRAGGED Emma into the middle of the room, beside the big glass case with its strange desert landscape. A trail of blood smeared along the floor, as he pulled her by the feet, head scraping along the concrete, most of it seeming to spill from her sagging, open mouth.
“Playing dead on me, doomie? We know how to deal with that, don’t we? Oh, yes, my precious.”
He let go of her feet and knelt astride Emma, hands gripping her throat, tightening.
“Wake up, little doomie. Wake up. Don’t play sound asleep.” He started to giggle, squeezing tighter. “Can’t see your silver tongue. Looks big and purple to me, doomie. Oh, no. Oh, no. It was my tongue that went silver. You sank. What was it?”