She had been trained since childhood to hone this empathy by being in tune with the electromagnetic energies of the very Earth itself. By tapping into these deep pools of energy, Krysty was forced to sacrifice her humanity in order to become a creature with untold strength.
The transformation lasted only a limited time, and took a terrific toll on her physical and mental being. Still, she’d tried her best to free them from the armaglass trap, but her efforts had ultimately proved useless. Her human frame could only trap and house the near molten force for so long before her bodily functions began to shut down, and she had pushed way beyond her limits this time.
She was dead twenty minutes after the attempt. Mildred noted the last of the woman’s vital signs as they faded away.
A second bitter tear welled inside the duct of Ryan’s blue eye.
“I know you, Ryan,” a voice said. “I remember your face.”
The rangy, muscular man whirled at the words, peering into the gloom of the room, trying not to look down at the limp, unmoving bodies.
“I remember what a cold-eyed, bitching bastard you were. Even as a young kid.”
The voice came from none of the people at his feet. Ryan tried to focus and came up with the face from his own brain to go with the easy, mocking tone.
“Harry?” Ryan asked, startling himself with how flat and dry his own normal baritone came out. “Harry, is that you?”
“If you say I am, I guess I am,” Harry Stanton replied. The King of the Underworld of Newyork was sitting across from Ryan in a far corner of the hexagonal-shaped room. His eyes twinkled and he smiled broadly. He was dressed in the same outfit as Ryan had last seen him wearing many months ago amid the ruins of old Manhattan Island. Harry favored red and crimson apparel, and with his long beard and ample girth, he looked like a Deathlands version of jolly old Saint Nick.
Only Santa Claus had never looked so maniacal when smiling.
Ryan actually knew a bit about Christmas. He’d read an illustrated children’s booka poem really over and over as a kid during his privileged childhood as the son of Baron Titus Cawdor in the ville of Front Royal. There was time for reading then. All the time in the world for anything he might have wished, until his mad brother and equally insane stepmother had taken all of that away from him.
“‘Merry Christmas to all,'” Ryan said weakly.
” ‘And to all a good night,’ ” Harry finished. “Never took you for a poet, Ryan.”
“I’m just full of surprises,” he said after considering the concept.
“Oh, now, that I can certainly attest to, yes. Ryan Cawdor? A one-eyed chill-crazy bastard, filled to the apex of his pointy head with jolly surprises.”
“What brings you out here?” Ryan asked, bored already with the rambling chatter that Harry adored.
“Out here, you say? Oh, we’re outside?” Harry asked with a smirk, staring at the oppressive armaglass walls surrounding them.
“I mean, in here, I guess,” Ryan added lamely. Fireblast, but he feltbroken. Drugged. Weary. All fought out.
“You’ll do, Ryan! You’ll do fineyou always have, damn your luck,” Harry boomed. “Last time I saw you, you left me and my men asshole deep in a blizzard back among the skyscrapers of my beloved Newyork, Newyork.”
“It wasn’t personal, Harry. Otherwise I never would have left you stuck there alive. You saved my ass. J.B.’s, too.”
“Glad to know you remember. Hell, I had to, Ryan. We had a history. I was there, you know, only a few weeks after you first joined up with the Trader. Damn, you were a sight back then,” Harry mused, his ruddy face glowing with the memory. “You were too busy keeping the cheeks of your ass pressed together and walking tough to notice me, except as a potential enemy.”
“My instincts weren’t that far off.”
“Yeah, me and the Trader, we go way back,” Harry continued. “And since you were there in training pants running along behind, you and I, we go back, as well.”