it.
'Sure has. You're right, Ryan.' The slim knife disappeared as quickly as it had sprung to his hand. Though Ryan was watching him intently, he hadn't seen where the boy had hidden it.
'We talk about how we do this?' asked J.B., moving casually against the right-hand wall. It was second nature for the Armorer to seek out a position where he had his back against something solid.
Jak half bowed to him. 'Sure. Talk plan. Can't go until after dark. They're too ready. Tourment's no fool. Before talk, we'll show something to you. Rare. From before the quick sick came.'
'Food?' asked Finnegan, omitting the 'kid' this time.
'Sure. Always ready. Talk. Then go in and get the prisoners.'
Ryan spotted something in the use of the word. Something that meant more than just Lori and Krysty. 'How many prisoners, Jak?' he asked.
'Three.'
'Three?'
'Yeah. Night 'fore last. Mephisto sec men snatch squad got lucky. Picked up my father. This time tomorrow Tourment'll have killed them all.'
'Then let's get to it,' suggested Ryan.
The boy nodded, solemn-faced, the cascading white hair framing his skull like a silver halo.
Chapter Eighteen
Krysty wroth was angry with herself. Angry that she'd let her emotions govern her good sense. Mother Sonja's often repeated motto, Strive for Life, had been momentarily forgotten.
It was scant consolation that Baron Tourment's evening roll call would be two sec men short.
They'd come in a couple of minutes after the giant ville chief had lumbered clumsily out. They were both small, with sallow complexions, looking as though they'd been standing out in the rain for too long. When they spoke, she heard the nasal tones of the bayous and guessed they came from Cajun stock. The one with a small mustache looked around thirty; the other, with a three-day stubble on his chin was nearer twenty. Both men carried greased M-16 blasters.
There hadn't been time for Krysty to do more than hiss a warning to the sobbing Lori to try to hold out and tell the baron nothing. Then the sec men were walking cockily to stand between them.
'Yellow hair or red?' one said.
'Yellow.'
'Why?'
'Already got her snatch warm and waiting. Red's got hers sewn up in her pants. Baron might guess ifСn we cut her naked.'
The one with the mustache, called Neal, ran a hand under Lori's disarranged skirt, giggling as she wriggled at the touch, 'Warm and wet, Alain. And yellow as a possum's guts.'
Krysty had tried. 'You do that one more time, you sack of cancerous pus, and I'll snake on you to the fucking baron.'
'He don't care,' said Alain, nibbing a hand thoughtfully over his rough chin. 'Long as we don't do no mortal hurt. He don't give a fuck.'
'Why not do yellow first? Then fuck red in the mouth; and see how she likes it.'
'I'd bite it off, if it's big enough to get my teeth in.'
Both guards laughed. 'First off, Alain here'd push the muzzle of his old blaster half a foot up your fucking nose, bitch. You even set your fucking teeth in me, and they'll be wiping your fucking brains off the ceiling.'
It crossed Krysty's mind to let them. Lie there and blank her mind clear of what was happening to her. She could do it. She'd done it before, back in Mocsin with the sec boss there. Kurt Strasser. Before she'd met Ryan Cawdor.
But there was Lori.
The girl, despite her bizarre upbringing, had an oddly unflawed innocence. If Krysty lay there and allowed these two brutish pigs to do what they wanted, she knew they wouldn't stop at a simple fucking. That would just set them on other ways of humiliating and hurting them both.
'Gaia, help me,' she whispered, closing her eyes, trying to relax and draw on the immense power of the Earth Mother. Part of Krysty's mind told her this would be futile. But she recalled what Ryan had said about leaving a place a tad cleaner than when you came to it. That she would do.
The cords that bound her ankles and wrists were made of waxed whipcord, tied so tightly that there was blood seeping from under the nails of her fingers and toes, burst from the swollen flesh. The pain had been easy to control, but she worried that she might not be able to function well in a fight.
'Help me, help me, help me,' she repeated, drawing on the strength in the way that her dead mother had taught her, way back in Harmony.
'Be real good fucking this. Better'n that 'fayette slut with boils on her tits,' sniggered Neal.
'Yeah.'
'Me first.'
'Sure. Like my bun well buttered,' cackled the younger man.
Drool hung from the corner of Alain's narrow mouth. He put his head back and laughed again, and Krysty saw the way the cords of his neck stood out like strips of thin iron.
The girl took a deep breath, her mind wandering back unbidden to a fine summer's day in Harmony. She would have been around sixteen years old then and filled with devilment. Carl Lanning, a fresh-cheeked boy who would pluck her cherry, was the son of the blacksmith, Herb. The lad had teased Krysty about her powers, challenging her to show him. The forge had been deserted; the fires had slumbered with a dull red glow, and the hammers were ranged on the walls. She'd picked up a freshly hammered iron shoe, the holes rough-edged and silver. 'Go, Krysty,' Carl had encouraged her, watching. He'd fallen silent, unbelieving as she'd gripped the horseshoe, putting a surge of incredible strength into her hands and wrists. She twisted it as though it was saltwater taffy, then dropped it to the floor of the forge where it rang like a bell.
Peter Maritza and Uncle Tyas McNann had learned of her trick, taken her into the smoke-scented parlor and sat her beneath the framed picture of a racehorse called Skyrocket. They had taken her to task for abusing her unique gift, warning her she must use it sparingly and wisely. 'Only when you must, girl,' Peter had said.
Now, watching the two men prepare for their corrupt sexual pleasures with the helpless Lori, Krysty's lips moved.
'Now I must, Uncle.'
Both men had their backs to her, fumbling with their trousers, their blasters laid on the stone by their feet.
'Gaia, help me,' whispered Krysty, feeling her energy increasing until it seemed as though her body might burst with it.
The cord around her right wrist snapped with a sharp sound, like a metal spring failing. The left followed only a moment later. She began to sit up, the bindings breaking together as she flexed both legs.
'What the fuck!' said Neal, looking around. Alain hopped off balance, his eyes wide as saucers in his pinched face.
Even Lori, lying still, opened her eyes at the crack of the cords disintegrating, unable to believe what she saw.
Gripping the table's edge with both hands, Krysty pushed herself off, aiming her feet toward Neal's face; the tapered heels of her boots sledgehammered toward his mouth.
'You...' he began, the word rammed back into his throat as Krysty's boots struck.
The power of her attack was utterly devastating.
The silver-patterned leather heels hit the sec guard plumb in the center of his gaping mouth; the blow tore his lip into tatters of bloody flesh, splintering his few remaining teeth into shards of bone. His lower jaw cracked like
