“I don’t see much humor in it. I’m afraid to go to sleep, afraid he’ll try to make me perform again.”
“I don’t blame you. But if it’s any consolation, I imagine you can put up psychic shields against his influence. Besides, he’s probably learned what he wanted to learn. Next time, though—”
Mildred realized what she was saying and didn’t complete her thought. Krysty picked up the thread. “Next time, though, it may be in the flesh.”
Smiling encouragingly, Mildred said, “You were too strong for Kaa.”
“Barely. Alpha’s influence operates on a different level entirely. Lust, love, protectiveness. I may not be able to withstand all of that.”
Mildred touched Krysty’s hand, which felt cold and clammy. “We’ll all help you, when and if the time comes.”
Krysty’s intense emerald gaze fixed on Mildred’s dark eyes. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? When and if the time comes, I might not want you to.”
Chapter Eight
The flat western horizon slowly swallowed the sun, painting the sky a lurid red and splashing the desert with purple pastels.
Ryan, Krysty, Dean, Jak, J.B., Doc and Mildred moved out of the redoubt. The silver-haired man used the ferrule of his ebony swordstick to punch in the three-digit code on the keypad. The massive slab of vanadium steel slowly squealed down, the bottom edge joining the floor with a dull boom.
The redoubt had been stripped of everything useful that could be carried. Besides the dozen jugs of water distributed among the seven friends, they also packed bed linens to serve double duty as tents and makeshift burnooses, if need be.
Ryan followed the wheel trace cutting across the desert floor, and the others followed him. He didn’t speak. Once again, he and his friends were embarking on another nightmare passage, another long march into the unknown, into the domain of another megalomaniac.
He accepted that Deathlands seemed to breed them, and he had collided with a lot of them in his time. The names were legion, and it was difficult to keep track of them all. Hell Eyes, whoever he was, was just the latest entry in a long line. Ryan had once toyed with the notion that he and his companions had been dispatched by some all-powerful force to scour the rad-blasted shockscape and impose some kind of order on chaos, a last gasp of freedom against tyranny.
The concept had both amused and repulsed him. He was too pragmatic to truly believe he and his people were pawns in a war between Light and Darkness. Yet, not even he could deny that he and his group seemed to lead exceptionally charmed lives. Still, he knew their string of good fortune couldn’t last forever. He had made too many enemies among too many powerful barons, brought too much hell in his wake.
One day, if the baronies managed to put aside their territorial squabbles and unite, he and people like him would be hunted down like criminals. Poseidon had hinted that such overtures to unification were already under way in some places.
Ryan swallowed a weary sigh. The lush valley of Ti-Ra’-Wa seemed farther away than ever.
In the short span of time between the setting of the sun and rise of the moon, the desert became shrouded in more than dark. It was pitch-black, and J.B. unlimbered a small flashlight so they wouldn’t lose the trail.
Mildred stumbled over an irregularity in the ground and would have fallen if Dean hadn’t caught her. She smiled wryly and said, “I thought desert nights were supposed to be clear.”
Dean wiped at the sheen of perspiration on his face. “Yeah, well, they’re supposed to be cool, too. This one is almost as hot as the day.”
By the time a half moon had risen, providing enough illumination so J.B. could turn off the flash-light, they had trudged over three miles. Krysty, snatching a backward glance, could see no hint of the half dome of the redoubt rearing out of the sands.
Though the sandy soil was hard packed, they occasionally crossed areas where it was loose and their feet bogged down in it. Fortunately, except for a few shallow dunes and drifts, the terrain was board flat.