'Then you would, without question or debate, qualify as a willing sacrifice.'
As soon as I passed Vayl, I heard a shot. One glance back showed Cassandra diving off to the right while Aidyn began to topple backwards, a dark and gaping hole in the middle of his forehead. Vayl closed in on Aidyn fast, a sword-wielding juggernaut that didn't stop until Aidyn's head flew from his body and the smoke of his remains stained the ceiling.
The Deganites milled around, showing the whites of their eyes as Cole swung his gun back towards them, having done all he could to pull the odds back into our favor. He looked ready to bolt, but he stood his ground, which made me enormously proud. I gestured for his gun and he immediately tossed it to me. I sprayed the wall just above the Deganites' heads. 'Run! Run! Run!' Like good little sheep they obeyed, surging toward the stair wreckage in a babbling mob. Even though it looked more like a tornado victim than a means of egress, people were still finding a way to climb up towards freedom.
I turned the gun on the Tor and opened up. I'm not sure, but I think I might have been screaming while I shot her so full of holes she looked like a puzzle with several missing pieces. Moments later Vayl joined me, firing Bergman's weapon. He caught my eye and I realized we were both grinning, a couple of crazy hyenas tackling one badass lion.
The Tor back-peddled fast, squawking and bellowing by turns. She grabbed Bozcowski from his latest fishing expedition and held him in front of her like a shield. His body bounced like a marionette as our bullets struck him.
'Put me down you freak!' he demanded, his voice rising up the scale to a shriekish whine. 'Let me go you disgusting piece of swamp rot!'
She conceded, in a way, by wrapping her maw around Bozcowski's head and snipping it off as if it were a piece of thread. His body wafted away like the smoke from a newly doused fire.
And I thought we had her. I honestly did, that's how bad I wanted it to be true. Then she lunged.
Even in the midst of battle, when moments move like hours, the Tor was a red blur. Fangs the size of my hand sank into my right side. It felt like two flaming skewers had pierced me through and through, sending bolts of electric pain shooting through the rest of my body. I felt myself sinking into the agony, as if it was a tar pit from which I could never escape.
The Tor-al-Degan shook me. My feet left the ground and, even as a red haze of torment settled over my brain, I thought distantly that I must resemble an old dog toy, frayed around the edges and in desperate need of retirement.
I pressed my gun against her skull, shot until my magazine was empty, and she would not let go. Dimly, a mere echo in the booming crush of sound that was my blood rushing, my ribs breaking, my lung collapsing, I heard Vayl yelling, urgent, adamant orders I knew I must obey if only I could decipher the language he barked them in.
Then I was outside, above, watching from a place so quiet, so warm, so
I moved toward it. Who wouldn't? But something stopped me, tugged at me, pulled me back. I looked down, perplexed, and then I saw the problem. The Tor had grabbed onto a trailing ribbon of my essence with one of the tentacles that flanked her jaw. I watched her reel me in, panic beginning to eat at the edges of the brief peace I'd found. But I was aware of more, as if I could see everyone and everywhere at once.
The last of the Deganites had reached the door and was climbing through. Cassandra had crawled to Bergman and was rolling him over. He winced and grabbed his side, saying something to her that caused her to turn him further and grab at something he'd been laying on.
Cole had moved to Vayl's side, where they both fought to force the Tor to release my body. Cole delivered a flurry of blows to the Tor's mid-section, at least one connecting soundly enough to break her arm, elicit a high- pitched scream. Vayl leapt onto the Tor's back and sunk his fingers into her throat. Frost crackled up her chin and across her face. He dug deeper and the frost turned to ice. No more sounds escaped her throat, not even when he broke her jaw with one powerful blow of his fist.
My body dropped to the floor, bouncing slightly before it settled into the ooze. Cole immediately went to work, inspecting wounds, searching for a pulse. But Vayl stayed put, hacking away at the Tor's tentacles with bloody fists. I realized he could see me, that he knew…
The Tor-al-Degan was eating my soul. Slowly. With the relish of a connoisseur.
Once I'd thought maybe I was crazy, and the fear of losing my sanity, losing
Second by second, the Tor was ingesting the best, and the worst, part of me. I was losing myself inside the horrifying red hell of the Tor's gaping maw. I struggled. I fought. I prayed. I tried desperately to tear myself free. But the slow torture of my ultimate destruction went on. And though I had no voice, I began to scream and scream and scream…
A voice rang across the room, Cassandra's deep, rich tones washing across me like warm, clear water. She'd come forward to stand by Cole as he worked furiously over my cooling body. In her right hand she held the pyramid, the key. And in her left hand she held the Enkyklios, echoing the words as she heard them from the small vision of a Seer who had stood in a long distant past and saved the world for a time.
The Tor bellowed and shook her head, denying the power that had suddenly appeared, demanded her allegiance. But Cassandra would not relent. And moments later I was free. Flying. Soaring toward that stained glass rainbow of a lifeline and following it straight to the top.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
'You know, I thought I was headed to heaven,' I said as I looked out the window. The skyline of Las Vegas glared back at me. I stood in a lavish suite, definitely high-roller territory, surrounded by plush furniture, satin
