tumbling over her shoulders and down over her breasts. She was naked, and Dean
felt stirrings within him that were still new enough to be alien.
Phaedra stepped forward.
“I knew you’d come back one day, Dean. Back to where it’s safe.”
She held out her hand. Dean hesitated, then raised his own arm to take her hand.
Again why would she say safe?
As Dean’s fingers were about to brush against Phaedra’s, some instinct made him
suddenly pull back his hand.
She immediately changed. Her face hardened, seemed to grow old and lined in
front of him. She opened her mouth, and instead of speech nothing emerged but a
harsh and sibilant hiss, like a stickle that was about to attack. Her hair
seemed to disappear without Dean noticing where it had gone, and her hands grew
the ugly suckers typical of the mutie stickies. Her open mouth was filled with
sharp, needle-point teeth, and he could smell her fetid breath across the short
distance between them.
Although the sudden transformation was shocking, Dean showed the same sharp
reactions that had kept his father alive for many long hard years traversing the
Deathlands, and snapped onto his back heel, throwing his balance back to roll
with the attack. Phaedra—or whatever it was that had pretended to be her—came
forward and pitched into him. He used the creature’s momentum and his own
back-foot balance to throw it over his head.
The creature hit the wall behind with a sickening thud. They were close enough
for it to lose none of the initial momentum, and so it hit the hard surface with
some force—enough to knock plaster off the wall in chunks, dust filling the air.
Dean coughed, tears filling his eyes and blurring his sight.
He swore under his breath, not wanting to shout and risk taking in another
lungful of dust.
The stickie came at him, rising from the floor as though it had merely brushed
the wall. It hissed and spit at him, rushing at him with arms flailing.
Dean backed up and readied himself in a combat stance, prepared to take the
creature. He blocked one wild swing of its arm and followed with a
straight-handed thrust at the stickie’s exposed right side. He felt his fingers
penetrate the soft flesh with a sickening squelch, and he jerked his hand free
as quickly as possible, determined not to get stuck in the creature. It yelped
in fear and pain, pulling back, its thin blood spewing out of the ragged wound.
Anger, the fear and the pain were just about discernible in the black and
glistening eyes as it gave a cry and rushed for Dean once again.
Why, he thought, casting a glance around, was there never anything around to be
used as a makeshift weapon when a person really needed it?
It was a momentary lapse of total concentration that his father would never have
made: Dean’s youth and inexperience teaching him a harsh lesson.
The stickie was on him a split second before he was fully prepared. The flailing
arms were just a touch too quick for his defenses, and one of the hands glanced
across his face, the blow pulling at his flesh and scoring it.
The pain spurred Dean into complete concentration. He had to end this, and end
it now. He lowered himself and dived in underneath the flailing arms, pushing
against the stickie with all the power he could muster from his aching calf
muscles. It was enough to drive them back against the wall. Dean was ready for
the impact, and gritted his teeth as the impact jarred every bone in his body.
He heard the sickening crunch of splintering bone, the thin snapping sounds of
the stickie’s ribs giving way and the high, fluting whine of its cries of pain.
Every breath driven from its unprepared body, it sank to the floor, stunned, as
Dean stepped back.
The youth ignored the aches of his own body and focused his attention on the
task at hand. While the stickie was still sitting, dazed, Dean stepped forward
and took its head in his hands. Tensing his muscles, he jerked the head sharply