CHAPTER NINE : DARK CHEST OF WONDERS

{"Do not cry, Liebling.





It is not such a bad thing to die for one you love ...

when you can so easily die for nothing."

- Marlene Dietrich.}

From out of a billowing wave of black fog charged five bald almost-men, wearing robes darker than the mist from which they emerged. On their foreheads glowed fiery pentagrams. Their hissing snarls exposed their filed teeth.

"I refuse to be the meal of the day, boys," snapped Mark Twain, dropping the first two with his borrowed automatic.

"PieceFull!," shouted a Texas drawl. "Get 'em, boy. They're all yours."

A hellhound the size of Minnesota leaped from behind me, over my head, and smack into the other three Sons of Dagon. A figure hurried beside me.

His Stetson all a'kilter, Samuel McCord frowned, "Damn, Roland. You created this place. Didn't you know to stay the hell out of the back?"

Toya rushed up beside him. "I - I told him to come back here, Sam."

He pulled up short. "What on earth for? It was a suicide move, girl."

She didn't a chance to answer. A screaming figure in robes, half-male/half-female, rushed Sam. He spun and fired point-blank at the Split slashing at him with a jagged dagger. It jerked but kept on coming.

Toya swept out her bloody cutlass in a slashing attack with all her strength. The creature's melded head was nearly cut off. Nearly. PieceFull finished the job as he leapt over the thing.

Sam said, "Toya is good people. She was just mistaken is all."

Marlene tumbled like a gymnast as a scrambling spider the size of a pit bull made a snatch for her with one jointed leg. She flipped to a stop, aiming her luger. With a grimace of disgust, Marlene emptied her gun into the grasping maw in the center of long, scissoring pinchers.

She popped to her feet and clubbed a dwarf in a Nazi uniform who was slashing at her with a knife. "Are you insane? Can you not see Toya has her own agenda?"

All hell broke loose. Bast laughed as we struggled. Other things and humans kept rushing us.

A small redheaded girl in a dress, matching her hair, lunged for Mark Twain. "Hold on there, gal. I got no truck with you."

She hissed, spit flying from her mouth full of needle teeth, her eyes more frightening due to their being pure white. Mark emptied his automatic point-blank between those eyes. She lurched backwards to fall limp on the misty tiles.

Mark Twain kicked her still body . "That for trying to chomp on your elders."

He kicked her once more. "And I never liked your comic strip either!"

Toya side-stepped a rush of a creature half-Viking, half antlered biped. He twisted about to come at her again but found her cutlass already sticking through his chest. He looked down at it with a strange "What is that?" expression to his face.

It was replaced with a horrified "Not me?" look, then fell mewing strangely on the carpet. Toya wrenched her bloody cutlass from its twitiching body and turned to face another spider but this one had a screaming head instead of a body.

A shimmering caught my eye past a coolly watching Bast. The ghostly figure of the jazz vocalist, Amanda Carr, wavered into being beside a bubbling fountain of dark blood that had suddenly seemed to come out of nowhere.

She seemed to think this was some sort of stage show as I saw no concern at all on her pretty face. Or maybe Amanda had just played in some damn rough places. She had appeared in the middle of the song, "Rags And Bones."

"Now it's the fist through the window; it's the wine you brought,

It's a far cry from the shakles of cognitive thought,

It's the lines on the fridge door, just see how they've grown,

Up from little junk creatures made from rags and bones."

A were-goat lunged for Marlene. Instinctively, she fired her empty luger. It clicked uselessly twice. The monster bleated in husky bloodlust.

She went for her saber. The saber I held. The creature was right on top of her. She was going to be killed. Marlene pulled herself up straight and tall with the strangest sad smile to her lips.

No!

I leapt with everything I had to place myself between those slashing claws and Marlene. I cried out in surprise as I moved faster than I thought possible. I got between her and the attacking creature quick enough to spin and slash at it with the saber.

The monster wisped away like a clot of some diseased demon's nightmare. I was stunned. What had happened just then?

Now surrounded by three friendly Hellhounds, Sam looked over to me. “It wasn’t the sword, son. It was your love that would have had you sacrificing yourself for Marlene there.”

Marlene went pale. “H-His love?”

Mark Twain grunted as he held a Soyoko in a headlock, scrambling to keep from being ripped apart by flailing claws. “Like you once told me, Valkyrie :

Do not cry, Liebling, it is not such a bad thing to die for love when so many die for nothing.”

Marlene snatched up the jagged dagger by the dead body of the Split and flipped like an Olympic gymnast to where he struggled, slashing across the evolved raptor’s throat with the jagged blade.

“I never called you Liebling!”

Mark Twain winked at me. "Why, Missy, it was implied by that sweet voice of yours."

She glared at him, then stormed up to me. "I am a ghost! You would have died needlessly."

I reached out and pinched her shapely rear. She yelped, jerked, then raised a hand to slap me.

"You felt that, right? Here in Meilori's, you can be touched ... you can be killed."

Sam fired the Colt in his right hand straight at me. The bullet whizzed past by my left ear so close I flinched. I spun about. Another were-goat lay dead at my feet. Sam called out.

“Roland, fuss later. Fight now!”

Toya glared at me. “Writer boy, you want to kill Sam? You will if you make him watch your back as well as his!”

The three Hellhounds at his side, savagely tearing at our attackers, Sam calmly shot at the on-rushing attackers with a Colt in each hand.

The sound of the revolvers was deafening. My head would ring for weeks. If I survived this fight, that is.

A Knight Templar thrust his broadsword at me. I flicked it away barely in time. Mark Twain was suddenly at my side. He had holstered his empty .45.

He rushed up behind the man, taking the knight's helmeted head in both hands, and twisted sharp. I heard the loud snap like a breaking tree branch.

"I used to cut wood as a little boy. Still got the muscles from it."

Amanda kept on singing,

"Through the iron winter to the fires of June,

Through the five o'clock skyline to the dead-locked moon,

There's a flickering figure dancing alone,

Making her junk creatures out of rags and bones."

I stiffened. Amanda actually saw what was going on. She had just played in some rough places before and could keep her head.

And she knew a bit about the supernatural side of things. I blew Amanda a kiss. Bless her. She had been trying to tell me what I'd been missing.

I spun around, bent down, and placed the edge of Marlene's saber against Bast's throat. "Stop it! Stop attacking us right now."

"Do you really think that toothpick is a threat to me?"

Despite her words, every last creature slowly faded away.

"Well, it might smart some when I spank you with the flat of it."

Her eyebrow arched, and she almost smiled. "I begin to see what Gypsy sees in you."

The smile died as if it had never been on her lips, and she looked up coolly. "Took you long enough to piece it together. You'll need sharper wits than this to escape the next trap, Lakota."

I frowned. "Next trap?"

Toya tossed me something. I caught it with my left hand. Ouch. It was dry-ice cold.

Toya smirked, "You forgot your dark chest of wonders back there, writer-boy."

She quickly opened the door in the wall to my right. "I hope you can speak French."

"What?"

Toya shoved me into the passageway, slamming the door behind me. I reached for the door knob. It wasn't there. In fact, the door itself was disappearing.

I heard the cry of Sam faintly as if from a dream. "Toya! Have you gone crazy?"

Toya's laugh was even fainter. "Now, you're free, Sam. Free from his writing your days, forcing you to do things. Free to live your own life."

Light dawned. In more ways than one. Toya had always been my enemy. And I was far from Meilori's. I stepped backwards and fell over something. I turned about on the grass.

Grass? Where was I? The dying man sprawled beside me groaned.

"Save my little girl. Please."

Save his little girl? Who was going to save me?
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And here is the lovely Amanda Carr :