She could feel a yielding.
She blocked off all noise, all outside sounds, everything that was not a part of her.
And in her mind, she smiled....
And began to sink into the feathery, cotton-wool softness.
And as she began to sink, so she could feel, within her, a... stirring.
Scale marched back down the long room, smacking the coiled bullwhip against the side of his leg. The feel of it was reassuring, as though it was a trade-off for the power he had so swiftly, so devastatingly, lost less than an hour ago. He would do her now, do everything to her he could think of. Then having assuaged the raging fire in his loins he would flay her, destroy her with the whip. Then he would leave. That was it. He had no idea where he would go, what he would do, because he was not thinking that far ahead. In his mind was a confusion of images — fireballing explosions, red hair, stabbing rifle-flashes, white flesh, soaring tracers, skin that was slick with blood. He marched like a robot, cackling to himself, muttering disjointedly, not even knowing himself what he was saying. Smacking the whip against his leg.
He strode out from under the sagging beams that supported rotting planks and headed for the bed. He did not see the woman as a woman, as a flesh-and-blood human being. Merely as a shape. He threw the whip down on the trash-strewn floor and grabbed at the shape, his hands fumbling, then yanking the loose clothing, ripping it, tearing off long strips of it, clenching fingers at her panties and pulling. He reached for the knife at his belt, sliced the cords that bound those limbs, wrenched them apart, heard the shape screaming... screaming....
Screaming! It was as though someone had thrust a spear deep into her soul. Such agony! The psychic shock exploded through her, jolting every nerve end in her body.
She came alive. Her eyes burst open. She saw Scale looming over her, staring down at her, his mouth wide, his jaw spittle flecked.
He whispered "Blood." His voice was thick, the sound coming from the back of his throat. He said, "Bleedin'. Ya bitch. Y'evil fuckin' slut. Ya bleedin'."
His eyes slowly focused on her face and locked on to her eyes. He was breathing stertorously, his brutish frame trembling. Then a frown spread slowly across his scaled face, a frown half of bewilderment, half something else. Half... recognition. Krysty shivered uncontrollably at that look. She knew it for what it was.
He suddenly thrust his face down at her and his foul breath gusted over her face. His left hand shot out, clutched her throat, pulled her half up from the bed. She gagged in pain and terror. He started to smile as he peered into her eyes. Then he began to chuckle, a harsh, rasping sound, the ugliest sound.
"Yeah," he breathed slowly. "I know you, ya bitch." Triumph suddenly flooded into his voice. "I knowyou!" He unclasped his fingers, shoved her back against the bed, his body shaking as the huge storehouse echoed to the harsh, jarring, malevolent noise of his cackling.
He flicked open his belt, kicked off his boots. He unzipped his pants, thrust them down. Still laughing, he exposed himself, his penis thick and erect. He stroked it, held it firmly, his eyes suddenly narrowing as he stared at her, a crafty expression sliding across his face.
"Yeah. I know you. I got who you are. Hell of a thing, huh? You know..." his tone had become bizarrely conversational, "...I was gonna kill ya. But not now. Oh, flo, not now. Gonna keep ya all for myself!"
He stepped forward, his tongue dragging across his thick lips.
Krysty thought, I was just on the point of it; I was nearly there, so nearly there. Then she thought, I can still do it. All I need is just a little more time. Once he's inside me, thenI can do it. It's the only way. It's the only blasted way...
Then she saw his attention had been caught by something else, something above her. He was staring upward at the ceiling, at the gloom high in the rafters, his mouth gaping ludicrously, his features frozen into an expression of stunned shock.
She wrenched her head back, her eyes penetrating the shadows, felt horror and loathing flood through her as she glimpsed what he was looking at. A glimpse was all she needed, all she wanted. Clinging to a beam by one suckered hand, its twin free, the suckers writhing as they groped for the wall, was something she had never seen before, only heard about.
A sticky.
Scale jumped back frantically, his face livid, his arms swinging wildly. He shrieked curses as he turned and dashed for the door.
And howled with frenzied fury as another sticky dropped from the shadows above.
At any other time the sight of this half-naked man in a state of near terminal panic, with his rapidly softening erection, would have been comical. Hilarious. But Scale was throwing off psychic waves of unadulterated terror. Krysty could feel it as though it was something physical. He saw death and agony clawing at him and he wanted neither.
Scale sprang toward the crates, grabbed the nearest weapon to hand, a .45 automatic. The gun stabbed flame, the thunder of the shots filling the barn. He emptied the mag into the sticky by the door and the sticky took every round, was thumped back against the wall with their jarring impact.
Krysty saw, with fright-flecked eyes, the slugs slam into greasy flesh around stomach and thighs. Then saw the creature stagger to its feet, red stuff oozing from wounds that were not gaping holes but mere liplike slits, already closing as though sucking the bullets in. The sticky squealed with rage, snorting its fury down its half-formed nostrils, and lunged at Scale, its sucker hands outstretched.
Scale tore a box from one of the piles and heaved it at the thing. The creature's fingers caught the heavy object and held it, almost as though the box had suddenly become a part of it, a clublike extension of its arms. It swung the box and smashed it into Scale, slamming him over into a stack of crates, which swayed, teetered, crashed to the ground.
That saved Scale. The crates rolled and tumbled, some splitting open and sending cans of food spraying out. The sticky blundered into the avalanche and was hammered off balance, going down under what for a normal being would have been a bone-crushing weight of tins. Scale scrambled up and darted to one side, then disappeared down the long storehouse toward the far end.
Krysty, her mouth dry with fear, risked another glance upward. Another sticky was bounding along the wall, high up, like a crazed spider, hand over hand, its long arms supporting its weight with only an occasional kick with its suckered toes to keep balance. Both creatures were naked save for tattered pants. The sticky made it to the upper chamber and vanished into the gloom.
Breathing a prayer, the red-haired young woman closed her eyes again. Concentrating, she let her mind do the work, let it dive into itself so that the light within increased even as her focus became smaller and smaller. Her ankles were now free from her outstanding new strength, her magic, and she could run for it, but her wrists were still tied and without the use of these she might just as well be hobbled again. All she wanted were a few seconds, just a few. She felt the familiar lightness in her head, a feeling like that of bare electric wires of almost no voltage brushing her wrists.
This was power. Woman power in earth: the mind as place. This was strength over material things, a power so strong and so centered in one place that it commanded all it touched. But she wanted desperately to open her eyes, to check for new threats, new horrors that might even now be looming over her. It seemed to her, in the power state, that she had been in a totally vulnerable position for literally minutes on end.
Then she got up, her hands free though her wrists throbbed, the torn cords falling away, her eyes darting to the pyramid of cans so very close to her.
Nothing stirred. She could hear no sounds from the other side of the barn. She put her legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge for a few seconds breathing in deeply, oblivious of the general stench of the place. She got to her feet, shakily. She was still wearing her boots but her jump suit was in shreds, ripped and torn from breasts to knees. It looked like an animal had been at it, which was pretty much the truth. Glancing down, she saw streaks of blood staining the insides of her thighs and was aware of the dull ache in her womb. She gathered up what remained of her panties — flimsy shreds of cotton — and screwed up one strip. Squatting, she inserted it deftly into herself as a makeshift tampon. Then, still breathing quickly and managing to control the shivering fit that threatened, she hurried across the room to the open box of grenades.