GHOST OF A CHANCE 40_THINGS CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE

Today is a somber day for those of us with Lakota blood :

The massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota was on this day in 1890,

the U. S. 7th Calvary gunning down hundreds of unarmed Lakota Indian warriors and their families.

As framed in Dee Brown’s influential, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, the massacre represented not only the culmination of the Indian Wars

but the mindset which began to form with the arrival of Columbus.

His last chapter described the Wounded Knee killings, his last paragraph describing the transport of the fifty-one wounded Indian survivors to shelter in a nearby Episcopal mission:

It was the fourth day after Christmas in the Year of Our Lord 1890. When the first torn and bleeding bodies were carried into the candlelit church,

those who were conscious could see Christmas greenery hanging from the open rafters.

Across the chancel front above the pulpit was strung a crudely lettered banner: PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN.



{Turquoise Woman back again. I will not comment on the irony of the above. You two-leggeds carry your own destruction within you. But I last left DreamSinger and his companions in Hell, fighting a losing battle in the inferno.

But things can always get worse ...

especially in Hell.}

The horn of Epona flashed up, blocking a downward sweep of a sword from a frothing bull-man. The unicorn staggered back a step at the impact.


I darted out with my borrowed sword, hooking the back hooves of the minotaur, sending it sprawling.

Crazy Horse, true to his word to protect Gypsy, spun, leapt in a graceful twirl, and blocked three separate blows from a man-bull, a black-scaled demon, and an evil frog-like creature whose name I was just as happy not to be familiar with. In fact, I would have been even happier not to be familiar with the disgusting thing at all.

A throaty voice shrieked above us : "Enough."


I looked up as the Sphinx of Thebes husked, "The Turquoise Woman."


Dressed in a clinging, moon-white buckskin dress, her alabastor arms held up high, Estanatlehi sailed gracefully down the endless depths of the rumbling hellsky.

Her living lightning hair flowed up as she slid down the inflamed face of Hell itself. The Lakota warriors respectfully hid their eyes from the length of supple leg revealed by her flight.

Long, long ago legends say that one warrior had allowed lust to fill his chest at the sight of her. Turquoise eyes had flashed. And only a pile of bleached, gleaming bones had remained of that unwise warrior.

She landed gracefully beside me, clucking her tongue at me. "DreamSinger, you risk the lives of my Spirit Warriors on pawns."

She gathered Gypsy up in her supple arms. "Come, noble cat."

The Turquoise Woman looked at my Lakota friends and last upon the Sphinx. "You all have earned passage to that Land That Knows No Shadows."

She flicked cold, unreadable turquoise eyes to me. "And you. You go to fight your true enemy : DayStar!"

Hell blurred around me. I was no longer on the plains of Hell. I was inside a burning church. The flames were spreading from where I stood as if my very touch were deadly to this place.

I was facing a stained glass window of Lucifer raising his fist to the closed gate to Heaven. Below it was a bronze plaque : FIRST CHURCH OF DAYSTAR.

Yeah, even in Hell, things could always get worse.
***

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER 39_WHEN THE STARS DROWN IN DARKNESS

{I am the Turquoise Woman.

Each life ends.

Whether it ends in whimpering

or in courage depends upon the soul facing that end.

It is, in fact, the only true epitaph your kind leaves.

DreamSinger, whom you know as Roland,

has entered the realm some call Hell to rescue Samuel McCord, whom he breathed into life with his words.

Now, riding Epona, the last unicorn, with Death behind him and Lakota Spirit Warriors beside him,

DreamSinger faces what seems to be the end. Let the words from his strange journal take it from here ....}



A distant roar sounded from all around us. Oh, crap.

Bristling along the horizon encircling us, hundreds of lost souls, creatures, and demons charged to replace their slain brothers.

I twisted around towards Death to see if she would scream again.

She sadly shook her head. "We near my Avatar and Samuel. I dare not scream again."

My heart went sick and cold as a familiar voice, DayStar's, laughed to my far right. "Do you know what the third white meat is? Cat!"

I saw only his hands appear out of thin air. They held Gypsy, my cat, her eyes wild with fear.

DayStar's hands hurled her directly in the path of the charging monstrosities of Hell.

She yowled, and I could have sworn it sounded like my name.

I tugged on Epona's mane to head for Gyspy. Death placed a bitter cold hand on my shoulder.

"We cannot turn. My Avatar and Samuel are close."

"Fine!," I snapped. "Have a great trip."

With a grunt of pain, I flipped my leg over Epona's head, scratching it on her razored tusk. I slipped off and hit the ground in a run towards Gypsy.

Sitting Bull yelled after me. "She is just a cat."

"Wrong! She's MY cat."

A minotaur lunged for me. I slashed across his eyes with Marlene's saber that healed. The manbull bleated shrilly.

"I - I was blind. Now, I see."

It shot up startled into the flaming hellsky. Suddenly Death was beside me. She was floating.

"If you insist," she husked and snatched Marlene's saber from my hand.

"Marlene will soon need this."

And Death was gone. Just like that. And I was weaponless ... except for harsh language.

A heavy weight hit me in the back as claws gouged into me. I huffed. Another creature slashed me across the chest. I reeled sideways and shouted in pain.

I grabbed its arm, pulled back on its wrist, slamming the flat of my palm against its elbow as hard as I could. A sword dropped to the ground.

I bent and snatched it up. I looked for Gypsy.

I spotted her. She was moving so fast it was hard to follow.

Sparks flew from her claws as she bounded across the broad chest of a stone golum. She leapt to the werewolf in front of her, ruining its eyes with those same claws.

Never in one spot long, she sped between legs, up furry chests, across massive backs. She yowled in defiance, heading straight for me.

Something big and furry lunged at me. I slashed. It grunted but kept on coming. A razored tusk sprouted from its chest.

Epona reared beside me. "I leave no friend behind."

Gypsy screamed in pain.

I looked to the sound. She was bleeding, holding up her left front leg.

Suddenly, a blur of lightning appeared next to her. Crazy Horse, human-size now, blocked a talon with his hatchet and drove his knife into a scaled chest.

He looked at me with a crooked grin and spoke in Lakota, "If I die for a cat, I will never forgive you."

I realized the other six Sioux Spirit warriors were fighting all around me. Human-size and without lightning bolts, they were having trouble standing their ground.

Gall scowled to my left. "You would die for a cat?"

I bent next to Gypsy, who nuzzled her head against my palm, and said, "I would die for family."

He nodded. "That I understand."

Gypsy growled low, glaring up at the hellsky. I followed her line of sight. Oh, crap.

A sphinx. An honest-to-Cleopatra Sphinx.

Gypsy rose, holding up her injured leg and baring her teeth.

The Sphinx rumbled, "Later, granddaughter of Bast. Your death is mine. I will slay all who would take that from me."

Epona reared, thumped a charging troll in the throat with her two front hooves, and whinnied, "Whatever. Fight now. Threaten later."

In answer, the Sphinx chomped off the troll's head and spat it back out. "Tasted worse than it looked."

I made a face. It had looked pretty bad.

A giant bull-man, wearing human skulls for shoulder decorations, tried to cleave Red Butte in two with a war-ax, only to have it wrested from his grip by the warrior.

Red Butte twirled it and brought it down in a huge blow which split the BullMan's head in two.

Muttering low and harsh, the five Lakota who remained unarmed quickly picked up fallen weapons,

from swords to hatchets to axes as Crazy Horse kneeled next to Gypsy and whispered, "They feed on you only after I am slain."

Slashing at his attackers with hatchet and knife, Sitting Bull yelled at us.
"Form a circle!"

Epona looked a question at me, and I answered it, "The Power of the World always works in circles. All life tries to be round. The sky is round."

I looked up to the fires sweeping across the skies. "Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing -- and always come back again to where they were.

The life of all Two-Leggeds is a circle from childhood to childhood."

I glared at the nearing Darklings, hate raw in their screaming throats. "And so it is in everything where Power moves."

Epona and Sitting Bull yelled as one. "Form a circle!"

And then the Darklings were upon us.

Borrowed shields and short swords, Epona's pounding hooves, Sphinx claws, Lakota ax and hatchets, my own flashing sword --

all were blurs as they met a wave of slashing claws, tearing fangs, and hissing weapons. The sounds of metal grating upon metal, screams, grunts, and curses were all about our small band.

I saw nothing clear, only a flurry of dark bodies leaping at me.

I heard the wet thud of blades sinking into flesh, the whimper of wounded Darklings sinking to the ground.

Clear up my arm, I felt the numbing impact of sword-blocked swords and lunging talons.

Out of the corner of an eye, I saw Burnt Thigh go down with a bloody wound to the side yet stagger back up to his unsteady feet.

But despite the pounding of steel upon steel, the rending of flesh by fang, I and my new friends stood our ground, stood it, and smiled grimly to one another.

And to this day, still do the Lakota sing of this battle over their campfires,

though the dark weighs heavy upon their spirits and the whispers of doubt and fear mock them.

It is a song of courage against despair, of light raging against the coming of night.

And when wounded Time draws her final, faltering breath,

when the moon herself has become blood, and the gasping stars slowly strangle on the darkness,

even then will the Lakota stop in the midst of their Death Song, stand tall, and look to one another and remember --

-- remember when one small, defiant band of noble spirits fought, not for glory, not for land, nor for power -- but for one small life and the bond that one brave heart feels for another.
***
Read the passage that begins "And to this day ..." with the first minute of the following music. I wrote those words to this very tune :

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER 39_WHEN THE STARS DROWN IN DARKNESS

{I am the Turquoise Woman.

Each life ends.

Whether it ends in whimpering

or in courage depends upon the soul facing that end.

It is, in fact, the only true epitaph your kind leaves.

DreamSinger has entered the realm some call Hell to rescue Samuel McCord, whom he breathed into life.

Now, riding Epona, the last unicorn, with Death behind him and Lakota Spirit Warriors beside him,

DreamSinger faces what seems to be the end. Let the words from his strange journal take it from here ....}



A distant roar sounded from all around us. Oh, crap.

Bristling along the horizon encircling us, hundreds of lost souls, creatures, and demons charged to replace their slain brothers.

I twisted around towards Death to see if she would scream again.

She sadly shook her head. "We near my Avatar and Samuel. I dare not scream again."

My heart went sick and cold as a familiar voice, DayStar's, laughed to my far right. "Do you know what the third white meat is? Cat!"

I saw only his hands appear out of thin air. They held Gypsy, my cat, her eyes wild with fear.

DayStar's hands hurled her directly in the path of the charging monstrosities of Hell.

She yowled, and I could have sworn it came out, "Roland!"

I tugged on Epona's mane to head for Gyspy. Death placed a bitter cold hand on my shoulder.

"We cannot turn. My Avatar and Samuel are close."

"Fine!," I snapped. "Have a great trip."

With a grunt of pain, I flipped my leg over Epona's head, scratching it on her razored tusk. I slipped off and hit the ground in a run towards Gypsy.

Sitting Bull yelled after me. "She is just a cat."

"Wrong! She's MY cat."

A minotaur lunged for me. I slashed across his eyes. It bleated shrilly.

"I - I was blind. Now, I see."

It shot up startled into the flaming hellsky. Suddenly Death was beside me. She was floating.

"If you insist," she husked and snatched Marlene's saber from my hand.

"Marlene will soon need this."

And Death was gone. Just like that. And I was weaponless ... except for harsh language.

A heavy weight hit me in the back as claws gouged into me. I huffed. Another creature slashed me across the chest. I reeled sideways and shouted in pain.

I grabbed its arm, pulled back on its wrist, slamming the flat of my palm against its elbow as hard as I could. A sword dropped to the ground.

I bent and snatched it up. I looked for Gypsy.

I spotted her. She was moving so fast it was hard to follow.

Sparks flew from her claws as she bounded across the broad chest of a stone golum. She leapt to the werewolf in front of her, ruining its eyes with those same claws.

Never in one spot long, she sped between legs, up furry chests, across massive backs. She yowled in defiance, heading straight for me.

Something big and furry lunged at me. I slashed. It grunted but kept on coming. A razored tusk sprouted from its chest.

Epona reared beside me. "I leave no friend behind."

Gypsy screamed in pain.

I looked to the sound. She was bleeding, holding up her left front leg.

Suddenly, a blur of lightning appeared next to her. Crazy Horse, human-size now, blocked a talon with his hatchet and drove his knife into a scaled chest.

He looked at me with a crooked grin and spoke in Lakota, "If I die for a cat, I will never forgive you."

I realized the other six Sioux Spirit warriors were fighting all around me. Human-size and without lightning bolts, they were having trouble standing their ground.

Gall scowled to my left. "You would die for a cat?"

I bent next to Gypsy, who nuzzled her head against my palm, and said, "I would die for family."

He nodded. "That I understand."

Gypsy growled low, glaring up at the hellsky. I followed her line of sight. Oh, crap.

A sphinx. An honest-to-Cleopatra Sphinx.

{See : http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/07/gypsys-tale-you-call-this-safe.html }

Gypsy rose, holding up her injured leg and baring her teeth.

The Sphinx rumbled, "Later, granddaughter of Bast. Your death is mine. I will slay all who would take that from me."

Epona reared, thumped a charging troll in the throat with her two front hooves, and whinnied, "Whatever. Fight now. Threaten later."

In answer, the Sphinx chomped off the troll's head and spat it back out. "Tasted worse than it looked."

I made a face. It had looked pretty bad.

A giant bull-man, wearing human skulls for shoulder decorations, tried to cleave Red Butte in two with a war-ax, only to have it wrested from his grip by the warrior.

Red Butte twirled it and brought it down in a huge blow which split the BullMan's head in two.

Muttering low and harsh, the five Lakota who remained unarmed quickly picked up fallen weapons,

from swords to hatchets to axes as Crazy Horse kneeled next to Gypsy and whispered, "They feed on you only after I am slain."

Slashing at his attackers with hatchet and knife, Sitting Bull yelled at us.
"Form a circle!"

Epona looked a question at me, and I answered it, "The Power of the World always works in circles. All life tries to be round. The sky is round."

I looked up to the fires sweeping across the skies. "Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing -- and always come back again to where they were.

The life of all Two-Leggeds is a circle from childhood to childhood."

I glared at the nearing Darklings, hate raw in their screaming throats. "And so it is in everything where Power moves."

Epona and Sitting Bull yelled as one. "Form a circle!"

And then the Darklings were upon us.

Borrowed shields and short swords, Epona's pounding hooves, Sphinx claws, Lakota ax and hatchets, my own flashing sword --

all were blurs as they met a wave of slashing claws, tearing fangs, and hissing weapons. The sounds of metal grating upon metal, screams, grunts, and curses were all about our small band.

I saw nothing clear, only a flurry of dark bodies leaping at me.

I heard the wet thud of blades sinking into flesh, the whimper of wounded Darklings sinking to the ground.

Clear up my arm, I felt the numbing impact of sword-blocked swords and lunging talons.

Out of the corner of an eye, I saw Burnt Thigh go down with a bloody wound to the side yet stagger back up to his unsteady feet.

But despite the pounding of steel upon steel, the rending of flesh by fang, I and my new friends stood our ground, stood it, and smiled grimly to one another.

And to this day, still do the Lakota sing of this battle over their campfires,

though the dark weighs heavy upon their spirits and the whispers of doubt and fear mock them.

It is a song of courage against despair, of light raging against the coming of night.

And when wounded Time draws her final, faltering breath,

when the moon herself has become blood, and the gasping stars slowly strangle on the darkness,

even then will the Lakota stop in the midst of their Death Song, stand tall, and look to one another and remember --

-- remember when one small, defiant band of noble spirits fought, not for glory, not for land, nor for power -- but for one small life and the bond that one brave heart feels for another.
***
Read the passage that begins "And to this day ..." with the first minute of the following music. I wrote those words to this very tune :

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?
****************************************
And here is the lovely Amanda Carr :

CHAPTER EIGHT : ROB THE CRADLE TO FILL THE GRAVE

{"Love forgives,


not because it sees less,



but because it understands more."
-Samuel McCord.}

Looking like the Queen of Winter, Marlene Dietrich studied me with wet eyes, filled with hurt and longing. She took her hand from mine, turning from me.

For long, silent heartbeats, Marlene stood hunched over. I caught the sound of low sobbing. I wanted to go to her.

But some instinct warned me not to. Some battles have to be fought alone for the victory to mean anything.

She suddenly spun back around and wrapped me in her arms.

"You see me as I truly am and still care?"

"Of course, Marlene."

She husked, "Only for you would it be an 'of course.' Ich liebe dich!"

She kissed me fiercely as if afraid I would suddenly disappear. Her lips were hungry. Her tongue touched mine. I kissed back. In all our times together, her touch had always been ... well, ghostly. But here ...

I stiffened.

I pulled back. "Marlene, I can feel you."

She smiled wickedlly. "I would hope so."

"No. I mean ...."

"Mean little and soon will mean less," purred a growl of a voice.

Mark Twain muttered beside me. "I refuse to be killed by a cat."

I followed his gaze and the sound of the purred voice. Oh, why the hell not?

A supple woman dressed in robes befitting Cleopatra sat at a pyramid-shaped table glaring at me. Her body was beautiful. Her head was that of a cat's. And she was swaying slowly. I grew cold as I recognized the rhythm.

Oh, crap.

It was the rhythm of my beating heart.

"I am Bast. Gypsy is my granddaughter. My beloved offspring -- whom you have left in the hands of a monster."

She smiled like the Cheshire Cat. "So it is fitting you should die by the claws of one."

Her fingers became deadly-looking talons, and she turned to Marlene, "You have robbed the craddle only to fill the grave, ghost."

I held up an open right palm. "Hey, wait a minute. Listen, Bast. Elu's a lot of things, but he is Apache. And Apaches are never shabby."

Her furry brow puckered, "Shabby?"

"Yeah, shabby. And breaking a trust would be considered shabby to an Apache. It would be seen as beneath him."

Bast slowly nodded. "So you felt her to be safe. Wrongfully but sincerely."

I went cold. "Gypsy's in trouble? What kind of trouble? And how do I get to her?"

Bast chuckled, and it didn't go lower than her sharp fangs. "Worry not about her trouble, fleshling. Rather worry about the death approaching you from behind."

My two friends and I turned around as one.

Mark Twain pulled the automatic from his shoulder-holster. "Damn Shadowlanders have found us at last."

Marlene passed me her saber, pulling out the luger and snarling, "The Sons of Dagon."

I grunted, "For this I'm losing sleep?"

***
{And to this day, still do the Lakota sing of this battle over their campfires, though the dark weighs heavy upon their spirits, and the whispers of doubt and fear mock them.

It is a song of courage against despair, of light raging against the coming of night.

And when wounded Time draws her final, faltering breath, when the moon herself has become blood, and the gasping stars slowly strangle on the darkness, even then will the Lakota stop in the midst of their Death Song, stand tall, and look to one another and remember --

-- remember when one small, defiant band of noble spirits fought, not for glory, not for land, nor for power -- but for the love each had for the other.

- DEATH-SONG OF THE LAST LAKOTA}
************************************