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at all, her flesh and bones incinerated in a flash; but Jode was awash in
searing flame.
Third: Dreamsinger turned toward the burning alien. The light of the flames
lit her face with orange intensity, but the Spark Lord's expression was blank.
She'd been caught by surprise when Jode and the Caryatid acted. I think
Dreamsinger had expected someone to attackher, she wasn't prepared to be
ignored, treated as if she meant nothing compared to more important targets.
Now as she approached Jode-in-flames, I couldn't tell if she intended to put
out the fires incinerating the alien or to stoke them higher. Dreamsinger
apparently couldn't decide either she moved slowly, distractedly fingering the
-rod in her hands, finally coming to a bemused stop in front of the
Lucifer ablaze.
Which is how she was standing when the Element gun went off.
She was hit by a volley from all four barrels bullets, fire, acid, sound. The
first three attacks stopped short of their target as the force field around
Dreamsinger's armor blazed into violet life. Bullets turned to molten lead as
they hit the energy barrier; fire and acid splashed the violet glow but
couldn't reach the gawky girl inside. Only the hypersonic waves got through...
and I assume they would have been stopped as well if Dreamsinger had been
wearing her helmet.
Without that helmet, she was vulnerable to simple sound. Amidst the clatter
of bullets and the whoosh of flame, she gasped and crumpled to the floor.
A Spark Lord defeated. Unconscious.
Elizabeth Tzekich raced around the corner of the laser cage and ran to what
she thought was her daughter. Knife-Hand Liz held an Element gun; its barrels
were still smoking.
Tzekich was followed by the same two bully-boys we'd seen in Nanticook House.
They'd all come around the far side of the prison cube: moving quietly, hidden
by the great alien mound in the cage and by the noise the rest of us had been
making.
I didn't know how long Tzekich had been listening, but obviously she hadn't
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understood that the girl who looked like Rosalind was actually an alien
shapeshifter. Or maybe shehad heard and didn't believe it. We'd told her the
previous night that her daughter was dead, replaced by some kind of double...
but she hadn't believed it then, either. And who knows what goes through a
mother's mind when she sees what looks like her daughter enveloped in flame?
She only had our word this wasn't the real Rosalind; and she wasn't prepared
to trust us.
Not when her daughter was burning.
The moment Tzekich reached the fiery Jode, she tossed her gun aside and
whipped off her thick winter coat. She used the coat to swat the flames,
muffling Jode's body when the fire had been beaten down enough to be
smothered. By then, Jode's face was black and flaky, scraps falling from the
creature's cheeks like bits of burnt paper; but the Lucifer still retained
some semblance of Rosalind, enough to fool a frantic mother. Tzekich was
murmuring teary words in a language I didn't understand leaning close as if
she wanted to kiss the girl but was too afraid of damaging the blistered face.
"You know what's going to happen," I whispered to Annah.
"Yes," she said. "If the Lucifer's still alive..."
"It is. Bits of it. Remember, each curd is a separate organism. What Opal
called cellules."
"And even if the cellules on the surface got burned, there are plenty alive
underneath?"
"Right. So as soon as Knife-Hand Liz gets too close..."
Annah shook her head. "Jode won't attack her. Jode will say, 'Oh yes, I'm
Rosalind, please save me, Mommy.' Anything to kill time until the cage runs
out of power and the thing inside gets loose."
"How can we stop it?"
"We can't. Only Sebastian can. He can start the Falls flowing again.
Reconnect the cables he cut."
I looked into the prison cube. There was no sign of the boy under the mass of
black that had deluged him. The giant Lucifer had returned to the main part of
the cage, hauling the boy with it like a crocodile dragging a meal back to its
lair. "How do we know he's still alive?"
"We don't," Annah said. "But his psionic powers give him a chance. They might
have formed a barrier between him and the monster. An air bubble."
"If he's still alive and his powers are working, why hasn't he escaped on his
own?"
"I don't know. Maybe he needs our help."
That almost made me laugh. "So we just waltz into the cage and rescue him?"
Annah pointed to the Element gun I was holding. "The flames and acid should
drive the monster back. And Sebastian's powers will protect him from the
blasts. I hope." She shrugged. "It's the only chance we've got to beat Jode.
What all the others died for. We have to try."
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I hesitated. "What if the Ring tries to stop us?"
She kissed me, soft and sweet. "Leave the Ring to me. You save Sebastian."
Before I could react, she scrambled to her feet and shouted, "Hey! You!
Knife-Hand Liz!"
I don't know if the Ring-folk had realized we were there we'd been down on
the floor and out of the action, on the opposite side of the cage. Now the two
bully-boys whipped up their guns, so jumpy they might have cremated Annah on
the spot; but she held her hands high and harmless, her own Element gun slung
out of sight behind her back.
"Hello," she said, walking slowly toward them. The Ring-men tracked her with
their gun barrels. "We've never met, but I know you. Do you know me?"
The bully-boys stared without answering. Elizabeth Tzekich, cheeks smeared
with tears, looked up from what she thought was her daughter. "I've watched
you from a distance. The don on Rosalind's floor. What the hell's going on?"
"My friends told you everything last night. A monster killed your daughter
and took her place. That creature is now at your feet."
Tzekich looked down at the burnt figure wrapped in her coat. A whisper came
from Jode's throat. "Mother..."
"It thinks you're gullible," Annah said. "It wants to play on your
sympathies. Then, when you're no longer useful, it'll kill you as heartlessly
as it did Rosalind."
"So you claim."
"Talk to it," Annah said. "In your own language. Ask questions only your
daughter could answer."
Tzekich stared piercingly at Annah. Then she turned to the Lucifer at her
feet and said something in her native tongue. Jode only groaned, "Please,
Mother, it's me..."
In English. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]