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Harvey stood against the door, his grotesque bulk blocking it. One of his pretty little pistols was in his right hand, pointing at Lori’s stomach. The man was whistling tunelessly to himself, gesturing for her to hurry. His cloak hung open and he had unzipped his hunting breeches, re-vealing his tiny, budlike penis. Lori had taken off her top, showing her breasts, and she was now, slowly, stepping out of the skirt.
“She is my daughter, Baron Harvey. A child. Can you not spare her?”
“You croak on like some raven, old man. Mebbe I should close your beak,” Harvey sneered, pointing his pistol at Doc’s anxious face.
Lori was naked at last, hands by her sides, making no effort to cover herself from the baron’s stare. His cock was struggling toward a partial erection, and there was a thread of spittle hanging from a corner of his mouth.
“I’ll not…” Doc began, nearly weeping in his help-less frustration.
“Don’t, Doc,” she called out. “Don’t hurting me. I’m used fit. Don’t watch it, Doc.”
Lori was crying.
“Like tears and fears, child.” The baron laughed. “Lie down and spread ’em.”
“Beware of the teeth,” Doc shouted, voice cracking with emotion.
“Keep her mouth shut. Mebbe fill it later, know what I’m meaning, huh?”
“Not the teeth in her mouth, my lord!”
“How’s that?”
“Shames me to admit it to a great noble like yourself, and you ready to do her honor, but the girl’s a mutie, my lord. Don’t show much. Normal, apart from the teeth
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in…in her…you know, my lord. Can do fearsome harm to a double-stud in the coupling.”
“Teeth…inside her…in her…teeth in…teeth for… You mean she could bite my cock off with… ? You can’t…”
“Try her, my lord,” Doc babbled. “Times they only close a little. But they have razor-sharp points to ’em and… she can’t help it, my lord. It’s being a mutie.”
Harvey drew back, reaching down to zip himself up again, the gun wavering. “Muties should be shot and killed,” he muttered.
“She is a good girl, my lord.”
“So many dead today,” the baron said, letting himself out of the cell, leaving the key dangling in the lock. Without a backward look he left the guardhouse.
Doc let go of the bars, finding great weals across his palms.
Lori started getting dressed again, unconcerned by what had nearly happened. “Doc?” she asked.
Somehow there wasn’t enough air in the cell for him to answer. So he cleared his throat and tried again. “What is it, child?”
“That about teeth in my… you know?”
“Yes, Lori?”
“Ain’t true, is it?”
Doc laughed, feeling suddenly a great deal better than he had for some time. When he’d finished laughing, he pointed out the key to the blond girl.
ryan led the way, now only a few paces from the end of the drawbridge. There was still no sign of any threat to them. The ville seemed utterly deserted. Jak was behind him, carrying the M-16. Then came Krysty, followed by
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Nathan with his blaster in his hand and J.B. with his drawn knife.
The sky was darkening, and the air over the Shens seemed heavy and threatening. The wind rose and fell, driving a whirling column of dust ahead of Ryan’s boots, which collapsed in on itself as it reached the water of the moat.
“See any guards?” Ryan asked. Nobody answered him.
Suddenly, with no warning, there was a figure in the main gateway to the huge house, under the spiked port-cullis, a staggering person in burned clothes that shone and glittered. Ryan’s first thought was that he was seeing some monstrously fat, drunk old gaudy whore. Then he saw the two matched Colts pointed at him.
And he realized.
“Harvey!” he shouted.
“Farewell, brother!” Baron Harvey Cawdor bel-lowed, opening up with both blasters.
Chapter Thirty-Four
A small-caliber pistol-like Harvey Cawdor’s pair of .22 Colts-wasn’t the most accurate of weapons over any kind of distance. And it took a lot of skill and control to hit a target under any kind of pressure.
It didn’t help much if you were stark mad, either.
Ryan dived to the cobbles, hearing the pettish snap of the blasters, bullets kicking off the stones around him. As far as he could tell, none of them went within three yards of him.