A fourth member of the Blank People tore out of the room, but now Big Meat and Tiny Meat both launched streams of acid into its face. The creature hit the ground, rolled, flipped up onto Javier, bubbling and steaming and kicking crazi-ly, but Mira and Tabeth had Javier's unconscious body by the legs and they dragged him back toward the stairs.
"Hit the door! The door!" Nhu was screaming, cowering behind Haanz.
Five, six and seven fought to get through the door at the same time. A flurry of arms like biting hydra heads. Tiny Meat was knocked off his brother's shoulder to the floor. Big Meat was seized, and pulled into the cellar's gloom.
"Fuckers!" Mott roared, lunging forward with his gun but afraid to hit Big Meat as he disappeared screaming into the mass of bodies beyond-who knew how many. Then, abruptly, one of the Blank People broke out of the tangle and was jumping onto Mott like a lover, wrapping its legs around him, grabbing his head in its hands, and thrusting its thumbs into his eye sockets. The Choom wailed, went down onto his back, the thing still straddling him.
"Blast! Blast! Blast!" Satin bellowed, and he pointed the Decimator and fired. A gel cap loaded with corrosive plasma burst against the gray being's temple. Instantly, a luminous green fluid seemed to pour over the thing's faceless head, and run down the neck and upper chest like a burning lava. By the time the plasma flowed down the thing's arms and toward its belly, the head and neck were totally eaten away in its wake.
Still dissolving, the dead creature toppled sideways off Mott. But Mott did not sit up when relieved of its weight. Blood streamed out of his crushed eye sockets and trickled from his ears.
Nick was on the other side of the threshold, and made an attempt to stab at the keypad to close the door. He was grabbed by the wrist. Yanked off his feet. Pulled into the cellar. They heard his gun get off two shots before it was silenced.
Tiny Meat had righted himself, stunned, and turned toward the open doorway. "Big!" he screeched. "Big! You fucks! Fuck you, you fucking fucks!" And then he raced straight into the darkness, between the legs of the pressing bodies like a baby too small yet to even be walking. The others heard him continue his cursing, until the screamed curses degraded into just screams.
Barbie, also on the far side of the door, reached out to the keyboard next. She tapped some buttons, and the door began to close. Arms and half a gray body wedged themselves between the edge of the door and its frame, became pinned there. "Stand back!" Satin shouted, and fired several more gel caps. More hungry green fire spread across the reaching limbs and the upper body of the one that had almost made it through. Two arms dropped severed to the floor. In moments, there was nothing left of them but black smudges. The half a creature followed them with a thump, its own glowing green arms whipping uncontrollably. But these limbs shortened to stumps, and by then the thing wasn't moving anymore. It vanished too, again leaving only a kind of lingering shadow on the carpet.
The door slid into its groove. Barbie, of the five faces, tapped the key labeled, LOCK. They heard the control strip bleep as this was accomplished. The status light went from green to red.
The two gangs looked about them, dazed at their losses. Four of the Terata remained. Four of the Snarlers. And Mira bent over Javier, holding his face in her hands as she had done a mere hour before, when they had been alone in the bathroom together, and she spoke his name over and over.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
seances
Janice Poole was sitting behind her desk, and Jeremy Stake sitting on a corner of that desk, when someone rapped lightly on the biology classroom's door. It cracked open, and a girl of sixteen stuck her head into the room. "You wanted to see me, Miss Poole?"
"Come in, Caren," Janice told the girl. "I have someone here I want you to meet. His name is Mr. Stake, and he'd like to ask you some questions about your friend, Krimson Tableau."
The student had already ventured into the room but seemed to pause in a freeze frame at the mention of the missing girl. Caren Bistro was a fairly pretty girl, looking both proper and fetching in her school uniform, but she bore enough of a resemblance to her father Ron Bistro to unsettle Stake. Ron Bistro was the "Punktown Prince of Porn," the best-known male pornographic star in the city, and only recently Stake had watched a holovid of Bistro in a threesome with two androids, one patterned after the attractive wife of the current Prime Minister, and the other resembling the long-dead actress Brigitte Bardot. (And Ron Created Woman, he remembered the vid had been titled, and Bistro had portrayed a libidinous robotics designer.) Bistro made enough money to send his daughter to the Arbury School and to have bought her the kawaii-doll that presently poked up out of her backpack. Bup Be was its name; a Vietnamese expression for "doll." Bup Be had two black lines meant to represent its eyes, but no nose or mouth. Its long black hair was constantly stirring in a breeze without an apparent source; maybe it was being blown out of holes in the doll's own head, Stake speculated.
And her father made enough money to have bought Caren a nice, trendy Ouija phone.
Stake had at first thought to ask Yuki Fukuda to introduce him to this girl. After all, it was Yuki who had given him Caren's name. But he had feared that Caren would resent Yuki as much as Krimson had, and thus prove to be uncooperative. And so he'd approached Janice for assistance instead, figuring that her presence would intimidate Caren into being helpful.
"I already talked to the police about Krimson," Caren stammered, looking evasive. Too evasive for Stake's taste.
"I'm not the police," Stake told her, but he did not elaborate on just what he was, or who had hired him. "And did you tell the police about the messages from Krimson that you've been hearing on your Ouija phone?"
"Wh-what? Who told you that?" Caren said, glancing nervously from her biology teacher back to Stake. She looked like a deer poised to bolt. Bup Be turned its head ever so slightly, as if it were wary itself.
"Please sit down, Caren," Stake said, while he got off the edge of the desk and stood over her to be more physically assertive. She did as he requested, lowering herself into the nearest desk at hand. While he spoke, he tried not to look at the girl for too unbroken a stretch or with too much engrossment, lest he begin to bear a resemblance to Punktown's Prince of Porn himself, indirectly. "Caren, you know this matter is of the greatest importance; a matter of life and death. Krimson is your friend, and we need to do what we can to-"
"She's already dead," Caren interrupted him.
Stake stopped. Then asked, "So why do you say that?"
"Because of what you just said!" Caren whined. "Because I've heard her on my Ouija phone! Of course she's dead!" Tears began to cap her eyes.
"You recognize her voice?"
"She was my best friend! I know it's her!"
"And what kinds of things has she said to you?"
"Look, I really don't feel comfortable talking about this, okay? Krimson was scared of her father. She said he's a very scary guy. So if she was scared of him, then I'm scared of him, too. If this stuff gets back to him, he'll be mad at me for the things I know. The stuff Krimson didn't want him to know!"
"This won't get back to her father. I'm not working for her father. I promise not to involve your name in this, no matter what you tell me." Stake glanced at Janice. "You promise too, don't you, Miss Poole?"
"Of course! Caren," Janice said, leaning forward emphatically, "we only have Krimson's best interests at heart. If she is dead, then we have to establish that officially, don't we? Doesn't she deserve that? And if someone hurt her, doesn't she deserve to be avenged? The person who hurt her punished?"