“It’s only because I love you,” he whispered some more. “You’ll understand. We’ll keep it a secret, okay?”
Vera’s face felt pinched shut.
Kyle’s open palm cracked her against the other cheek.
“
She’d never felt so helpless. She felt a thousand times worse than every other woman in history who’d been raped, because she was about to be raped by something far different from a man…
“I’m gonna come in you, Vera. I’m gonna make a baby in you…”
And if she had the means to kill herself, she knew she would. She’d lay open her throat without hesitance. She’d jump from a one-hundred-story window. She’d gulp down gasoline. Anything—
Kyle’s impressive pectorals flexed above her. The amethyst pendant swayed. He slapped her once more in the face, this time so hard she blacked out for a moment.
“Baby? Baby? I know you like it, that’s the only reason I do it. I’m gonna make love to you now. I’m gonna make you come—”
At the same moment, though, he…shrieked. High and hard like he’d just been gelded. A stubby hand reached around and snapped off the amethyst pendant. Two stubby fingers sunk into Kyle’s eyes, like fingers sinking into bowling ball holes—and then Kyle’s shriek hitched up to a full, chest-heaving scream. He was lifted off her. One stout hand bent his head back while another hand stuck the end of the big, antique pistol into Kyle’s ear, and—
The pistol-shot’s concussion made Vera’s ears ring. At once she was speckled by dots of black ichor. Kyle’s body collapsed to the matted floor. More black gruel slid out of the ruptured skull.
“The amethyst,” she was told by a high, articulate voice. “It’s a gift from our lord, our safeguard. And it protects the underlings from all physical harm. But without it…”A leather-thonged foot kicked Kyle’s broken pendant across the floor. “They are as mortal as you are.”
Vera feebly tried to wipe Kyle’s strange blood off her face. Her savior, whose own face she still could not see from the harsh backlight of the overhead fluorescents, continued in something of a remorseful tone: “The Kyl-Lemi served well, but he was becoming unreliable. He’s back now, from whence he came.”
A sizzling, like bacon frying in a pan way too hot, crackled in Vera’s ears. What had been Kyle’s corpse only a moment ago was quickly reverting to bubbling black slime before her eyes. Soon it evaporated altogether.
“Questions now? Of course. I will answer them all.”
Vera slid up to her feet against the service line. She could see now, the features of the man who’d saved her from Kyle. The short figure wore not the typical fine, custom-made garments but a mere sackcloth frock. He was completely bald and bereft now of the neatly trimmed goatee she’d always known him to wear. Yet despite all this, his identity was undisputable.
“Feldspar,” Vera whispered.
His words seemed to nod in the air. “Yes. But you may call me by my real name. You may call me Prince Magwyth.”
— | — | —
