going for the creepycrawlies, what am I supposed to target?” We waited for Raoul’s word on the subject since it had been his plan in the first place. “Gorgons are very nearly godlike,” he admitted. “The best we can hope for is to harry her until she finds us too painful to deal with and decides to go play with easier prey. So, Lotus, just try to make her bleed.”
“I’m a lot better with the sword than I used to be,” I said, “but damn, Raoul. Considering her defenses, that’s kind of a thin plan.”
“If you can think of anything heftier, speak up,” he said. We were in such desperate straits he didn’t even sound irritated.
Vayl said, “Why did it have to be snakes? Her hair could have been crawling with rats and I would have gladly faced her a thousand times over.”
I didn’t have to look at him to know his jaw was tight as a vise. I reached for his hand and gripped it. “I’l make you a deal,” I whispered. “I’l protect you from those snakes if you agree to get me out of the assassination business.”
He looked at me sharply. “You are finished?”
I looked at him squarely. “I risked my soul for my country. I carried a damn demon around inside me for the good old US of A. I think I’ve done enough, don’t you?” He squeezed my hand. “What if you find you miss it?”
“I figure Bergman can keep us busy enough to make sure we’re never bored. But this way I can say no to the missions that make my skin crawl. Plus I can make time for my family whenever they need me.” I raised our hands like we were about to shake. “Deal?”
“You know I would do nearly anything to avoid those serpents. But this I would have done in any case.” He raised my fingers to his lips, kissed them, and said, “Deal.” Feeling about fifty pounds and ten years lighter, I said, “I don’t guess anyone brought a mirror?” Silence al around. “Didn’t think so. Wel , that whole reflect-the- evil-eye-back-on-the-nasty-gorgon scheme probably never worked in the first place.”
As the bridge continued to rise from the depths of the Moat and the gorgon led Roldan to its front edge we moved to meet them. Waiting silently at our end of the bridge, hands gripping our swords or rubbing the sweat off on our jeans and then finding a new, more comfortable position on our weapons, we watched the bridge rise to its zenith. Water poured from the jaws, femurs, and shoulder blades of flesh-picked bodies that had been interlocked so tightly that you couldn’t tel where one began and another ended. What you could make out clearly were the moans and groans coming from the souls trapped inside them. And we were supposed to step on these people?
Desecrate their skeletons, break their bones under our feet just so we could fight and probably die on top of them?
Al excel ent points. So when the gorgon and her pet werewolf reached mid-bridge I was ready. I didn’t even flinch when Raoul yel ed, “Charge!” like some damn cavalry captain. I just hauled off right along with Vayl, Zel , Helena, Astral, and Lotus, and fol owed his orders to the letter.
I’d never fought a gorgon on a bridge made from scum-covered skeletons. As Lotus had predicted, it’s a tricky proposition. First of al , the footing sucks. Also, the footing sucks. Which is what I discovered the first, second, and third times I fel into the water.
“Fuck!” became my battle cry as I fought beside some of the toughest warriors I’d ever encountered. And for once I wasn’t the biggest potty mouth in the bunch.
“Take that, you manky bitch!” cried Lotus as Raoul’s sword found an opening, causing the gorgon to spin toward them. Lotus shoved her dagger at the monster’s face with such hope in her eyes that I felt her disappointment in my own heart when she missed wide and nearly went al cementy before Vayl yel ed a reminder at the last second for her to avert her eyes.
“Fuckaroo!” she cried. “That was too fucking close to shitsvil e for me!”
“Lotus!” Vayl objected as he dodged a lunging snake and spun aside to make room for Zel to move in low with a stab to the gorgon’s thigh that Helena fol owed up with a slash at her ribs, which also connected.
“What?” Lotus demanded, backing off before the gorgon’s nest of hair-snakes could reach out and turn her into a quivering blob of poison-fil ed organs.
I sighed as I pul ed myself out of the water—again. “I think your language offends,” I explained, having been on the receiving end of that tone many times myself.
She huffed. “It’s how I talk! It’s how I was raised, for shit’s sake!” I put my hand on Vayl’s arm as he twitched, al his dreams of a wel bred daughter going up in flames when Lotus added, “Speaking of which, let’s take this gorgon down quick, shal we? I’m in dire need of a crapper.”
“Did my child just say ‘crapper’?’” he asked the world at large.
“Yeah,” I told him. “But you should look at the bright side of this.”
“There is a bright side?” he asked incredulously.
“Of course. At least she’s potty trained.”
With Roldan pretty much a no-show—he barely noticed he was surrounded and seemed to have no desire to take on his wolf form and jump into the fight—we concentrated on his mistress. While Lotus took wild pokes with her dagger that sometimes landed, the rest of us took turns making the gorgon wish she’d stayed topside chowing on the old wolf’s mortality where she could digest in peace. Looking back, I have to think the battle would’ve gone down in history as a lot more militarily important and political y influential than it ended up being if I’d just kept my mouth shut. But, uh…
I said, “Roldan, you mangy old mutt. How on Earth did you talk yourself into rol ing over for some cobra-haired bitch who wouldn’t give a shit if the moon became a strip mine?” His vacant gaze, which had been wandering across the landscape like a dreamy painter’s, locked on to mine. “What did you say?” His lips drew back from his unbrushed teeth, and even from ten feet away I could smel the stench of decay blasting out of his throat. It was as much a psychic odor as a physical one, making my brain shrink for cover. And I realized, looking into eyes
