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The Mohawk-Buu stood over him. A cold smile played on the too handsome face, stark with hate.
"Die for me, little Wolf's bastard. Die so I can kill. Die so that I may feed on your mother's sanity, on your uncle. Yea, shall I reward her for all these years of defeat."
It was dark in here, just a dim, reddish cast of light from the wheezing boilers. Sweat pooled on his face and ran under the cheap eye patch. It felt right to Benny. It felt good, this room. A fitting place to run the last ride.
The darkened sun leaned over Benny, listening to the sub-vocalizations of Benny's thoughts. He uttered a hollow laugh and waited, wanting to capture for all eternity Benny's last expression before tormenters captured him. The Mohawk-Buu had a special place set for Benny, one he would never escape from.
"Come. Do it, Wolf Cub. I desire to see thee, brat, when thou realize that thine troubles are just begun.
"I am Death."
Benny looked at the scalpel. He took a deep breath and lay it on his wrist. It felt so cold, its beauty so deadly. Benny's hand jerked up to throw it away.
"Remember the corpses? Remember the dude in the morgue?"
The Mohawk-Buu reached into Benny and gave splinters of bone a delicate twist and he smiled.
A shrill moan escaped Benny's mouth. His eye bulged and he cried out. The nerves in his legs twitched at the pain. When it subsided, the legs were again dead wood. He brought the scalpel back to his wrist.
Benny paused for a moment, head bowed in apology to his mother, Uncle Charlie, Toddy. What he was doing was wrong, but living in a chair for the rest of his life . . . Benny gripped the scalpel and cut himself. A small trickle of blood ran out. His nostrils flared with joy at the scent of blood.
"Drink it, Benny."
Benny raised the welter of blood to his mouth, closed his eye and smelled it.
He was five again, starving for the love and approval of his grandfather, old man Grey. He would cut into the flesh of a living animal, his grandfather guiding his hands and murmuring a chant, rip out its heart, catch the blood in a challis for the men in the coven. Old man would give him a hug, a real hug, not the clutching and panting he gave when forcing himself into Benny.
Even now he craved to be loved by that man. Old man Grey never let him drink, and he always wondered why.
Sacrifices must be pure. To drink would have added something from the animals that they used, something wrongful.
Horror flashed through Benny. He choked and shuddered. Not animals. That old man never sacrificed animals. The Buu spurned animal sacrifice as unworthy.
"God. Oh my God."
Weeping, sobbing children.
He was no better than that bastard.
Blood ran from his mouth and coated the bathrobe.
Let it end now.
Sobbing, he opened the wound further and brought the wrist back to his trembling mouth.
Eagle-Woman shook her head and moaned. With one plump hand she covered Benny's glazed, staring eye.
"It's over, Two Swords. He's gone from us."
The Guardian fell to his knees with a cry and clutched at her feathered robes.
"Mother? Let me call for help. I can bind the wounds until someone gets here." He grasp Benny's arm and pressed against the sluggish flow of blood.
The Mohawk-Buu sneered a laugh.
"So? I warned thee, Guardian Two Swords, that thou waste thy time. Yea, and the time of our beloved Mother." He inclined his head to the Eagle-Woman. She gave him a cool look. "His grandfather Grey was patriarch of the clan, and did sell me the boy. Long have I waited."
His eyes darkened with rage.
"Now I claim what was to be mine from before this aging universe was formed by thy breath, Mother." He stared at Benny with a barely vailed greed. "Now do I claim what was mine. Now I shalt wear his flesh and rule mankind."
He tried to enter the body and screamed, "It burns. It burns"
Mohawk-Buu tore away from Benny..
"How can this be?" he shrilled, slapping at the burns on his robes and body. "He is dead. You." He snapped his fingers at the one of his slaves. "Come. Take him now to the cell." He indicated Benny's spirit as it tried to move from the body.
Sooty black tendrils hissed up from minute cracks in the floor. They swayed, grew, thickening into a shadowed forest of snakes edging away from the Woman. Benny-spirit shook his head. He glanced in despair at the massive Guardian. Two Swords was helpless without Benny's voice to permit him to act.
"Man, I . . . please?" he blurted at Two Swords.
"Thou hast lost, bastard-child."
Two Swords lowered his head. His eye sockets burned black with the pain of his loss of Benny. Benny floated free of the body.
A tendril lanced though Benny's leg.
Others closed in, weaving in and out of each other, chittering like rats, hungry rats smelling death.
"No.
Two Swords snatched up the Mohawk-Buu and rammed him through the walls of the boiler room, down, through tons of rocks, deep into the heart of the earth, passed the blackened Gates of Hell, into the seething rock at the very edge of the Pit.
Eagle-Woman darted passed them. She threw herself between the Guardian and the Pit. Her hands went up, she screamed for Two Swords to stop.
The towering Guardian roared, "He goes in. He dies for the murder of too many I loved. Let me by, Mother. I'll carry this beast-master and myself into eternal damnation before I let him murder another of my Charges."
"Please, Two Swords," She whispered. "Please -" Stone crumbled from beneath her feet and she screamed. The Eagle-Woman steadied herself on shifting rocks.
Black lightening competed with the shrieks of the dammed, rolling from the vaulted caverns. A red cast of light glowered in sullen hate.
"Look. Please, look." She held Her hands above her five-foot, two inch body, swaying to the echo of distant earthquakes. A pebble rattled down and as matter met the anti-matter of the Pit exploded with the force of a mega ton nuclear bomb. Her robes crackled in the furnace heat, the feathers shimmered and took on a fierce golden glow, the eagle screamed, wrapping around Her to protect Her.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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