eyes. Those shooters are all ye have, her eyes said. Without 'em,
you might as well be back in the tent we dreamed around ye,
caught up in our slings and awaiting our pleasure.
Instead of shooting, he dropped the revolver back into its holster
and launched himself at her with his hands out. Sister Mary uttered
a scream that was mostly surprise, but it was not a long one;
Roland's fingers clamped down on her throat and choked the sound
off before it was fairly started.
The touch of her flesh was obscene - it seemed not just alive but
various beneath his hands, as if it was trying to crawl away from
him. He could feel it running like liquid, flowing, and the sensation
was horrible beyond description. Yet he clamped down harder,
determined to choke the I out of her.
Then there came a blue flash (not in the air, he would think later;
that flash happened inside his head, a single stroke of lightning as
she touch off some brief but powerful brainstorm), and his hands
flew away from h neck. For one moment his dazzled eyes saw
great wet gouges in her flesh - gouges in the shapes of his hands.
Then he was flung backwards hitting the scree on his back and
sliding, striking his head on a jutting rock hard enough to provoke
a second, lesser, flash of light.
'Nay, my pretty man,' she said, grimacing at him, laughing with
those terrible dull eyes of hers. 'Ye don't choke such as I, and I'll
take ye slow yer impertinence - cut ye shallow in a hundred places
to refresh my thirst First, though, I'll have this vowless girl ... and
I'll have those damned bells off her, in the bargain.'
'Come and see if you can!' Jenna cried in a trembling voice, and
shook her head from side to side. The Dark Bells rang mockingly,
provokingly
Mary's grimace of a smile fell away. 'Oh, I can,' she breathed. Her
mouth yawned. In the moonlight, her fangs gleamed in her gums
like bone needles poked through a red pillow. 'I can and I -'
There was a growl from above them. It rose, then splintered into a
volley of snarling barks. Mary turned to her left, and in the
moment before the snarling thing left the rock on which it was
standing, Roland could clearly read the startled bewilderment on
Big Sister's face.
It launched itself at her, only a dark shape against the stars, legs
outstretched so it looked like some sort of weird bat, but even
before it crashed into the woman, striking her in the chest above
her half-raise arms and fastening its own teeth on her throat,
Roland knew exactly what it was.
As the shape bore her over on to her back, Sister Mary uttered a
gibbering shriek that went through Roland's head like the Dark
Bells themselves. He scrambled to his feet, gasping. The shadowy
thing tore at her, forepaws on either side of her head, rear paws
planted on the grave-shroud above her, chest, where the rose had
been.
Roland grabbed Jenna, who was looking down at the fallen Sister
with a kind of frozen fascination.
