'In hiding. I figure that they're with the West Lowellton gangs.'
Tourment laid a hand on the thigh of Lori Quint, just above the top of her high boots. She stirred but still didn't come round.
'I should have known, Mephisto, When my men didn't return... I should have known that this was bad.'
'Shall I stay, while?..' He hesitated, knowing what slippery ground this was.
'While I talk with these two little peaches? No. Go now. Wait, and I'll call you when I'm done, and you can come back and...' The sentence drifted away into a menacing silence. The sec boss left the room, shutting the door firmly behind him, glad of the chance to go to get washed and changed. He knew that Tourment wouldn't be wanting him for some time.
Krysty was regaining consciousness. From the long years; of her mother's training, she knew how to control her body: keeping still, maintaining a steady breathing, keeping her eyelids from fluttering. Giving no clue at all that she was reawakening.
It had been clear almost as soon as the swampwags came thundering in from every quarter that the three of them were in deep trouble. The fight had been short-lived, ending with the gray stun-grens sailing toward them. Now her wrists and ankles were tied, her body strained into a cross. Her hearing and sense of smell were extremely acute, and she lay very still, listening, trying to work out where she was and who was there.
Lori had a distinctive smell, just as Ryan did, and Doc. Krysty knew that she was there, close by. Finn carried the characteristic smell of a fat man who sweated a lot. He wasn't in the room with them, but that didn't mean that he was safe. Maybe the baron's sec men had him somewhere else; maybe he was dead.
There was a strange creaking sound, like metal and leather under stress. And another smell. Sweat. But it was hardly human. A sour, feral scent like an animal's, overlaid with some sort of perfume. Heavy breathing, like that of a ponderous old man laboring to climb steps.
Krysty cautiously opened her eyes. She saw a giant black man who supported his bulk with a metal frame, leaning over the sleeping Lori at a table only a few feet away.
The man wore a fine midnight-blue suit, clearly hand-sewn. A wide leather-and-silver belt around his stomach supported twin holsters, the flaps buttoned down; she couldn't tell if he were carrying blasters. His back was half turned, so all she could see was his short neatly-trimmed curly hair.
The chamber was underground. All her wakening senses told her that; besides, it had no windows. There were white strips of light in the ceiling, and serpentine protrusions of different-colored pipes. The room was about forty feet square, Krysty judged. She closed her eyes again as she suddenly, overwhelmingly, caught the stench of fear that permeated the cellar. There was blood there, as well.
Her heart sank.
Precisely at the moment that Krysty was recovering from the effects of the stun grens, Ryan Cawdor, J. B. Dix, Doc Tanner and Finnegan were staring at the peculiar apparition that suddenly stood before them, leaning against the frame of the door.
'We ought talk.'
Ryan, like the others, had immediately swung his gun toward the stranger, who showed no awareness of his own vulnerability.
He was the strangest person that Ryan had ever seen, even in ten years of traveling through the Deathlands, with its many nuke-ravaged muties.
Around nineteen years old, Ryan guessed. Very short. Barely five three, weighing around 120 pounds. But 'thin' wasn't the right word; 'lean' was a lot better. The lad looked well-muscled and powerful. He wore pants and a vest of leather and canvas, dyed in irregular patches of brown, gray and green, giving a camouflage effect. Ryan had a keen eye for a fighting man, and he instinctively felt that, despite the boy's slight stature, he was someone to be reckoned with. He held himself well, leaning against the door, his body tensed like a steel spring. Ryan also noticed that the thick material of his clothes glittered here and there, and he guessed there were small pieces of keen-edged metal sewn in. There was no sign of a concealed blaster. But Ryan's intuition told him that the stranger would be a knife man.
But above all it was the head and face that drew attention.
The face was thin and pinched, like a starved rat's. The nose was narrow, with a crooked scar sliced across it. Another jagged, cicatrix seamed the left cheek, tugging the corner of the mouth upward in a crooked smile. The most startling feature of the face was the eyes. Set in caverns of wind-scoured white bone, they were a brilliant glowing red. Like twin rubies set in ivory. The lad's skin was pallid beyond belief, like some creature that had spent its existence beneath a damp stone. And the hair.
A tumbling mane of purest white, fine as spun silk, dazzling in the dim light.
'You're the snow wolf,' said Ryan.
'That question?'
'No.'
'Yeah. That's what call me.' He seemed more economical with words than even J. B. Dix.
'Spray painter. Run West Lowellton.'
'Yeah.'
'And you are no friend to Baron Tourment?' asked Doc Tanner.
There was the first sign of a smile. 'If'n he was drowning, I'd piss in his face. That answer it?'
'Why are you here? And what's your name?'
'Jak Lauren. I'm here 'cause sec men taken women. See why you're here. See if you help us. We help you.'
'My name's Ryan Cawdor, Jak. This is J. B. Dix, Finnegan, and Doc Tanner.'
Each of the party got a long blank stare from the penetrating eyes and the briefest of nods.
'Where from, Ryan?'
The answer was a finger, pointed roughly north.
'Going?'
The finger swiveled and pointed roughly south. The gesture got a snatched grin.
'Want help?'
Ryan glanced at the others, seeing the faint gestures of agreement. 'Could be, Jak. First we talk some.'
'Sure.'
Lori awoke, already struggling against the tight cords that bound her to the table. She realized immediately that it was useless. The monstrously tall figure of Baron Tourment loomed over her, his right hand between her spread legs.
Before she could speak, the girl saw Krysty staring intently at her from the table at her right.
'Try not to tell him anything,' hissed the flame-haired girl.
'No,' replied Lori, her voice trembling as she fought against nausea from the hangover of the grens that had scrambled her brains.
Tourment turned to look at Krysty, his voice calm and serene. 'Open your mouth again, slut, and I'll rip your tongue out from its roots.'
She closed her eyes again, using all her self-control to maintain her breathing and not panic. Maybe Finnegan had escaped, she told herself, and Ryan would find some way of rescuing them.
Krysty swallowed hard at the realization that she had never felt so frightened or so helpless in her entire life.
Ryan and the others listened to the albino boy rattle off his account of life in West Lowellton. How Baron Tourment controlled the whole area, apart from a section of West Lowellton. Some of what he told them they already knew, or had guessed. The baron made his headquarters in another big abandoned motel, not far away. Jak Lauren's gang consisted of about forty fighters. Most of them men, was all he'd give out. He was also careful about his weapons.
