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Winking at the senator's milling sec. guards, Benny
sauntered down to the tall wooden back gate and let himself out. He knew when
it was polite to leave.
Not that he wanted to. He could feel Nina's hungry
stare tugging on his manhood. Benny was sorely tempted to let her compare him
to lover-boy. He snorted contempt. It would be a slaughter. Connel didn't have
long now anyway. Be his last piece, hope he made-out the best of it, but yo.
The gate shut with a hollow boom and he sprinted for
the Uohali. Benny stuffed his things in a saddlebag. Intent only on escape
before the sec. guards finally came to their collective senses, he dragged his
bum leg over the saddle.
Benny scowled. “Better push, too much noise.”
Pain shot from his elbow. He ignored it. The old
injury in his spine brought a grunt from him. Benny ducked his head and shoved
on the bars.
Senator Griffin tore through the house. He burst
into Nina's bedroom. The virginal decor mocked his bulging eyes. Breath raw,
rasping harsh in his throat, he lunged at the Congressman from the Great State
of Arkansas. A bullet tugged at the sleeve of his coat. Griffin knocked the
gun aside.
A hand once callused by honest labor snatched a
handful of McNary's thinning carroty hair, dragged the screeching Congressman
to his feet. The other hand preceded to beat McNary senseless in ways even his
rough and rowdy cattleman father would have admired.
All the way down to the next estate, Benny could hear
McNary's pleading shrieks. With a low and lewd chuckle, Benny wondered if
Lover-Boy and Nina would survive this night. He rolled a laughing eye at the
heavens.
“Please God. Not her!”
What a waste that would be. All those great genes,
and in all the right proportions. Yo, but if it was already wasted on
Lover-Boy. He rolled his eye again and winked.
Benny hopped on the Uohali and kicked her down.
Finished with McNary, Griffin crept up. Red, enraged
eyes stared at the girl.
Nina scowled at the mess on her carpet.
“Hi, Daddy. Are you done yet? If you are, I want to
say it wasn't my fault.” She paused to frown at her father. He wasn't
listening, but when did he ever? “Daddy, why are you taking off your
belt?”
Nina swallowed hard and cringed away from the
towering storm of parental outrage.
Ever regal, Owl glared down at his whimpering slave,
Red McNary. Now red indeed, with all that blood seeping out of him. He settled
in to enjoy McNary's pain. What foolishness. Stupid. All humans were stupid.
He glanced at Nina, heard her screams as the belt cracked down where it would
do the most good. Children especially are stupid. So easy to make fools of
them.
Determined to put as much distance between him and
the senator, Benny traveled several miles before he stopped to dress.
A cruiser rolled up behind him. The cops hit the
lights in silent warning.
Benny snarled in harsh, outraged Wy:O:Ming
Old-Speech and Duetch at the interruption. One leg in the jeans, he hopped
back on and slammed away. The coarse jeans were wedged under his rump, a fold
pinched his sack. Not a good night.
With ease, the Uohali outmaneuvered the cruiser on
the twisted roads in this exclusive burb. It was a developer's dream. Nothing
simpler that to imitate a seventeenth century village with dark, winding
country lanes.
A too-natural-appearing grove of white birch flashed
in the headlamp. Benny whooped a laugh.
“Couldn't be better, my man,” he crowed, and
splashed through a shallow ditch to the other side. Muddy water followed him
into the shadows of the grove. The white trunks would glow in searchlights and
make it harder to see him.
Killing the bike, he slipped back through the trees.
He pressed his body to the wet, musty leaf mold.
The cruiser blew past. Benny laughed. It screeched
around the curves on two wheels, bubbles flashing in frantic silence. No
siren?
He wondered about that for a moment. Yo, yeah. Benny
grunted his contempt. 'Natch, yo. The cops wouldn't dare use a siren. Not
here. No more than the rich creeps liked streetlights to mar their fantasy
world.
Tugging on the damp jeans and tee shirt, Benny
stamped into his boots and followed at a safe distance. A perverse grin was
stretched out on his face, pulling the scar there into a leer. The scar ran
from the hairline, down through the empty socket of his right eye and ended at
about the neck of his tee shirt. The fender of his old Uohali Night Sun had
given him that particular love-bite. Other beauty marks were hidden under the
wet clothing, like the three grandfather Grey carved in his chest. Benny
rubbed them, cursing how they burned and stank of scorched flesh. Other scars,
worse scars, marred his soul.
The cruiser slowed, the lights wound down. They quit
the chase. Benny stayed back in the shadows. To his right, deep in the brush,
a thing moved, its breath sharp and labored. A smell of the grave clung to it
as it moved in a slow crawl towards Benny.
Another cruiser pulled up, stopped alongside the
first. Benny could hear radios crackle softly in the still night air.
“Streaker onna bike? Yo, wonder who that could
be.” Benny snorted a laugh. “Couldn't be us, could it, Hoss?” His grin
was cocky as he patted the gas tank. “The bad-boyez are havin' a rough one
tonight, but yo.”
The corpse slipped near. In its hands was an axe,
rusted, blackened with the blood of countless victims. The axe drew a slow arc
at the back of Benny's helmetless head. Measuring. A smile bared rotted gums
and broken teeth. To live again as a man . . . To be free of the pain of an
eternal dying.
Benny laughed and shook his head. He watched the men
share up a box of doughnuts and coffee.
“Your tax dollars at work,” he shouted and
glided by.
The men grinned back, shouting easy obscenities and
flew the bird at him.
Benny hit the four-lane. He moved into the light,
northbound traffic, eager to leave this political Fantasy Land. The wet jeans
and tee clung to him, refusing to dry in the sticky humidity and because of
the slow pace. The tee shirt acquired a mildewed smell somewhere, probably
from the saddle bag. When in Crestwood High School, he used to carry his gym
cruds in that side.
With a snarl, he began to scratch. The chlorine from
the pool was making him itch in uncouth places.
His head snapped around.
Benny snarled a happy leer. He leaned around through
the traffic, his middle finger up for the horn-blowers, and onto the
south-bound lane.
An unseen shadow, a spirit, followed close behind.
The motorcycle he rode was a rugged classic Uohali-Gold Sun, black, with
chrome chasing. A ride built by the Master Mechanic of all times. The ride did
not agree.
“So? You got a better way of getting around?”
Two Swords rapped out in a snarl. “Why don't you like being a ride,
'Heart?” He snorted at the answer and said, “Because I'm the fighter,
that's why I don't be the ride. As in Rider. R.I.D.-” He was in danger of
being bucked off. Two Swords' head went back, and he howled at the night-sun.
The moon smiled back, intent only on her beloved, the day-sun. From beyond the
Veil of the Sun, a howl drifted through the night.
The sword/motorcycle groaned and let it go. Benny
was what was important. Love was what was important, and she loved Benny.
A skull, half ravaged by time and decay. The stiff,
twisted coldness of the tomb. A distant shadow persisted in tracking them. Owl
rode the winds. His hatred of Benny and of Two Swords is all encompassing.
Rarely had he been cheated of his prey, and never since the first war against
the people of Light had he been frustrated time and again by any filthy human.
It would only be a matter of time before he fed. The Janissary Project would
see to that. A suicide was as good as a sacrifice.
Soon . . . but not soon enough, he would rule this
vomit the People of Light loved so well. Humanity, bah. They hated themselves
more than he hated them. He would wear the flesh of Greylov and hunt down
those who would dare come against him. Like Anna, Benny's mother. Her he had a
special ending. Soon, he would have Benny. To acquire the power of Light, he
had to have a body, and Benny was the one marked.
Because here, the flesh rules, not the old gods.
Spirit slaves were drifting away. They needed power
to remain in this world, to remain free of Shambala. Without the power they
were being forced back to the place of eternal decay.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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