"One taste, one question." The mud sloshed as Abbagor took another step in our direction. It looked as if playtime was over. "But here is a question for you. I see all. I know all. I am all. Did you think the passing of the Auphe at your hand would escape me?" Another step, slow and ponderous. "Did you think I wouldn't know what you've taken from me?"
Ah, shit. I knew. We'd destroyed what he considered his only real rivals and, in an odd way, his only real love. At least, we'd thought we had. We'd taken away the battles, the blood, the happy-go-lucky massacres. Yeah, we'd ruined his good time. And now, after playing with us, he was about to ruin ours. Never mind that it turned out the Auphe weren't completely gone, although they'd apparently kept a low enough profile that even the troll who knew everything hadn't known about their survival. We could tell Abbagor his information was thirty-six hours out of date, but I sincerely doubted he would buy it. And why would he want to try when it was so much more fun to kill us? As much as Abbagor liked to talk, he liked to kill more. And killing us would be the best part of his day.
But first he had to catch us.
We ran, but not before I fired the shotgun. I didn't hope to kill Abbagor; I already knew the futility of that. I just hoped to slow him down long enough for us to make our escape. As hopes went, it wasn't a big one, but you took what you could get. I had time for only two successive shots before the troll was out of the mud and on us. The first shot shredded his neck in a spray of meat and viscous purple blood. The second tore away half of his face, revealing the bone beneath. It only made his grin wider as the flesh peeled away. "Aupheling, don't go," bubbled playfully through the blood. "You are all that is left to me now. The last of my nemesis. My companion in pain and pleasure."
Uh-huh. If only that were true. My shoulder ached from bearing the brunt of the shotgun's recoil, but I didn't let that hold me back… especially once I saw what the troll had been hiding under the mud. His once-mighty muscled legs were now green mottled bone wreathed in ligaments, tendons, and bands of naked muscle. They also were hosting the occasional chunk of putrefying flesh that stubbornly refused to release its grip. The legs of a corpse, yet they moved—and moved damn fast. It was like seeing long-flattened roadkill come to life and chase you.
With our feet churning up the filth, Niko and I headed for a tunnel opening. It wasn't the one we came through, but any port in a troll-made storm. We were nearly there when the crude doorway crumbled instantly, collapsing in on itself. For a split second of confusion, I thought I actually had brought that grenade I'd been wishing for earlier. But no… a crumpled half of a steel beam was buried in the dirt above where the opening had been. Great. The troll was actually throwing pieces of the bridge at us now, as if the Brooklyn Bridge could spare any. God knew what else he had squirreled away in that pit of mud… a small Volkswagen maybe? I'd been accused more than once of having a hard head, but that much of a test I didn't want to put it to.
Both Niko and I whirled around and split hastily into opposite directions as Abbagor hit the now-solid wall where we had just stood. The blow shook the entire cavern, and more earth and rock showered down. The place was falling apart; a sick troll apparently wasn't much in the home-improvement-and-repair field. Swiveling, I backpedaled as I fired the shotgun again, this time hitting the monster in the back. If he'd been a man, he would've gone down as limply as cooked spaghetti. Of course he wasn't a man. He was a killing machine whose time had finally come. It was too bad that the extroverted son of a bitch wanted company on that ride.
Back twitching from the shot, he turned and literally exploded into a mass of weaving tentacles, several of which flashed across the expanse between us and wrapped around my legs with astonishing speed. Or it would've been astonishing if I hadn't seen it the last time Abbagor had tried to kill us. Dropping the gun, I scrambled for the knife that had saved my ass with the bodachs. We'd see if it stepped up a second time. I was aiming a quick slice to free myself when I was jerked bodily in the air and tossed. I landed squarely in Abby's keepsake box.
Drowning in mud is not something I recommend.
Drowning in mud that reeks of a thousand and one-slaughterhouses, not surprisingly, is even worse. The force of my fall took me completely under the cloying liquid, and I struggled desperately to find the surface. I'd thought the mud was five feet deep, but I'd thought wrong. It was deeper. The mud was thin, but it wasn't water and swimming was pretty much out of the question. It pressed against my nose, mouth, and blind eyes with the cool touch of the grave. Lungs burning, I continued to thrash frantically only to feel myself sinking deeper. Then the hard grip came on the back of my neck, and I was pulled upward, and yanked onto firm ground. As thanks to my rescuer, I rose to my hands and knees and promptly puked on Nik's shoes. That I'd made it this far without tossing my cookies was something of a miracle, but to be swallowed whole by the stench… there was nothing left to do but turn my stomach inside out. There were a lot of things to curse the Auphe over, but I never guessed their acute sense of smell might be the one that did me in. The filth on me, the air around me, it was all so noxious that I actually felt my nervous system began to short-circuit. It beat anything the government whipped up in their poison gas labs, hands down.
I could feel my brother's presence hovering above me, hear the hiss of his blade cutting through the air. Pieces of gray tendrils began to fall like rain around and onto me. Sliced, diced, and still moving with sluggish life. I did my best to ignore them and focused on trying to clear my darkening vision. Breathing would've been nice too. Instead I vomited again.
"Cal."
That reached me. Through fading vision and hearing that went in and out like a bad cable connection, it still reached me. Swallowing convulsively, I looked up just in time to see Niko disappear upward. I struggled up to a kneeling position to bring him back into sight. Dangled by the neck from a twisted tendril noose, he swung a deadly accurate sword only to be snagged anew before he dropped more than a few inches. The troll could've broken a comparatively frail human neck in less than a heartbeat, but where would be the fun in that? Now, watching my brother's face slowly shift from olive to lavender, then deep purple… that was entertainment. Or it would've been if it had gotten that far. I wasn't about to let it. I was halfway around the mud pit before I even realized I'd managed to struggle to my feet. It was more a drunken stagger than a run, but it took me where I needed to go and that was all that mattered at the moment. Spots were swimming across my vision, but I sucked in air fiercely and managed to clear the majority of them. When I reached Abbagor I could see well enough to pick out my target. My knife, although coated with mud, was still in my hand and I wasted no time in putting it to use. Diving under flying tentacles, I chopped at what was left of the troll's legs. The bone, as big around as my waist, was far too thick to make a dent in. Instead I focused on what I could damage. The tendons, the ligaments, the gray-green muscle—I tore at it all with steel and sheer rage. Bare seconds passed before I was snared again, but it was long enough. Decaying flesh disintegrated under my knife, and suddenly hamstrung, Abbagor fell.
But not before he threw Niko.
My brother flew through the air in a hurtling rush and hit the edge of the tunnel where we had entered. The packed earth gave way and he tumbled on through. He hit hard, hard enough that he lost his sword. It pinwheeled lazily through the air, silver and bright.
And then it was over, all of it. Abbagor hit the ground, bringing everything, including me, down with him. The impact was like a bomb going off, and the cavern began to fall apart. Dirt and concrete fell in massive chunks and the glowing fungus that lit the place began to flicker and die. I saw the doorway Niko had disappeared through cave in as the other one had. At least he was out. The tunnel was smaller, more stable. It would hold. It would. It had to.