She tightened her grip on his neck. He began to feel his throat closing. She knew just what she was doing, the way she dug her thumbs down into the sack of his craw, pressing it up so that it would be sucked down into his windpipe and make the throttling require less force. Easier on the hands.
He could no longer breathe. He waited. His penis stirred. Sex and death were so close. He felt his sheath draw back. Two of the girls giggled. One of them stretched herself. Children gathered closer.
Time passed. She wasn’t allowing even a trickle of air. Flashes came into his eyes, and air hunger now caused his body to torsion, throwing his abdomen forward and his head back. Amid peals of childish laughter, his bladder evacuated.
Air rushed in, sputtering as the sac of his craw fluttered in his windpipe, then snapped back where it belonged. He coughed, tried to gain control of himself, then flounced back, helplessly kicking the air.
As he gagged and spat mucus, everybody laughed. Kids ran up and spat on him and slapped him as he crawled to his feet.
“He pissed on us, Momma,” one of them yelled. Then another, older one, “Kill him, damn you, you old hag!”
“Nobody kills him,” she muttered.
A boy, his face flushing with eagerness, came toward him with a throating knife. “Let me! Let me get blooded, Mom!”
“Stay away from him, you little shit.”
“Dad, listen to her!”
“Obey your mother,” Beleth said.
“You people are such assholes.”
“Watch your mouth, boy,” Beleth said. “I’d just love to beat the shit out of you.”
“You don’t have the right.”
“Shut up, both of you,” Echidna snarled. She spat. “I’ll let your sisters whip you senseless, Marol.”
Little girls swarmed her, dancing around her, pulling at her skirts. “Oh, mommy, mommy please! Yes, he deserves it, please!”
“Later, we’ll talk it over.” She clapped her hands once, and all the children withdrew. “Now listen to me, Samson. We need you to go back there and win this thing.”
“I will, ma’am.”
“How dare you lie to me!”
His blood literally dropped to his feet.
“Look at him,” one of the fashionistas hissed, “he’s scared to die.”
He thought he’d passed this hurdle. But the agent was small stuff compared to the larger problem, which was that nothing close to a billion people were going to make it through the gateways, because two-moon earth was not ready, not even close, and that was the real reason he’d been called back. “I will not get a billion people onto earth, it’s true. But I have something else that I am going to bring out. Echidna, I have the greatest treasure in history, and I lay it at your feet.”
“This had better be good, Samson. Hyperbole annoys me.”
“I have human souls in captivity. Beautiful, healthy ones.”
Her eyes widened. The only ones Abaddon ever captured were ugly, and had to be sifted for the good bits, a sweet memory here, a compassionate act there—the things that smelled and tasted so good, that could be relived endlessly, like a delicious food that would never be finished.
“A few souls changes nothing.” She sighed. “Let’s get him stripped. Get the skin off, I haven’t got all night.”
Somebody grabbed him from behind. The boy who had wanted to kill him came forward, a silver molting hook in his hand. He smiled up at Samson. “This is not gonna be fast, you shit.”
“Ma’am! Wait, ma’am. I have more than a few. More, ma’am!”
She gestured toward the eager boy, dismissing him.
“Mom!”
“How many do you have, Samson?”
“Ma’am, I have ten million of them.”
The silence that fell was absolute. This was, indeed, the greatest treasure in the history of the world.
“Ten million good souls?”
“Ma’am, any one of them is better, more fulfilling, more delicious than the best you have ever eaten in all your memory. Fabulous, rich emotions. Delight, love, sweetness, all the best stuff, ma’am.”
He saw the calculation in her eyes. “Where are they?”
He could feel the boy getting ready, could see his scales shimmer with eagerness. He had to be careful, here, or she would kill him for insolence. “Ma’am, they are under the stable gateway, ready to be brought through. I have them connected to two-moon earth’s core. They cannot escape. I can bring them through.”
She gestured toward the boy, who swiped the air in front of Samson’s torso, then hurled the molting hook at one of the board members, who dodged it, hissing and spitting.
The boy glared at him as he adjusted his uniform. “You’ll be back, bitch,” he said. “And when you get back you an’ me, we got a date, do.” He ran his fingers across Samson’s throat.
Samson backed away, bowing until he was off the gold floor and onto the marble. When he saw its blackness, he almost wept with relief.
On the way down in the lift, fear became rage. How dare they, those grunting, greedy oru. He’d like to tear their living skin off their bodies with a molting hook, even her, yes, especially her. Tear it right off!
The elevator opened and he stepped out into the lobby. As he crossed it toward the great steel doors, he gloried in the fact that the guards were now indifferent to him. Delightfully indifferent.
The doors slid open to the wide esplanade of freedom, and he went through. So beautiful, life, despite the pain, the losses, the struggle, all of it. Life itself unfolding, so sweet.
How dare they throw away his life for the amusement of a mere child! His life! As he descended the steps, part of him wanted to cry out to the brown sky, “I lived, I went to the top on a black ticket and I lived!” He did not cry out, though. As befitted a general, he strode.
He was walking toward the bus stop when a wonderful Shu, the best aircar in the world, came swooping down so close that he had to duck, lest he be clipped by it.
It stopped, though, and hung there, its yellow surface gleaming, its black windows revealing nothing of the interior. Then the passenger door went up and a pureblood leaned out. “Hey, you Marshal Samson?”
“I’m General Samson.”
“I’ve got orders to deliver this to a Marshal Samson. You got your number ID?”
Samson produced it.
The salesman thrust the ID card into the slot. Samson heard the car’s confirming bell. The salesman hopped out. “She’s yours, Marshal. Ever driven before?”
He forced himself not to gape. It was stunning: instead of killing him, she’d given him a gift of one of the finest sports vehicles in the world, a wonderful, beautifully made creation that belonged only to the highest of the upper classes. Merely possessing such a thing raised you into the aristocracy.
He entered the car. The fine interior gleamed with exotic metals, greens and silvers and golds. The leather was pale and as supple as cream. Human, without a doubt, and young.
He glanced across the dashboard, a forest of gleaming gold buttons, none of which he understood. Apparently, the car had every option you could imagine. “I have no idea how to run this.”
“You don’t need to know. It’s ensouled.”
He was momentarily too amazed to speak. Shu ensouled perhaps a thousand vehicles a year. Such a car would cost a man like him ten lifetimes of income. Driving it identified him as one of the world’s most powerful, most elite people.
“Is the soul…human?”
The salesman laughed. “Maybe next time, mister. It’s a good one, though. Very smart, very compliant. You need to ride a human ensouled vehicle very carefully, you know. They’re fast and really, really clever, but they can be tricky.”
Indeed, they’d been known to smash themselves to bits in the hope of getting release. It didn’t work, of
