do. They really had them by the balls, even Sam who technically didn’t have any, though sometimes he did wonder.
Grabbing Sam’s arm, Devileye dragged her toward the Cathors. Yowling and
hissing, Mister Mittens sprang from her shoulders into his face, clawing and biting for all he was worth. Bashing at the cat until it fell away, he cursed prolifically. His bloodied face did not slow him down, as he kept dragging Sam away. When they reached where an underling with the look of a lieutenant or some such had led the cathors, her wrists were bound roughly with a length of rope.
“I promised the men here a shot at some grade A, tight and clean tail.”
Sam spit in his face.
Smiling, Devileye backhanded her so hard that she spun and stumbled, losing her balance and dropping to hands and knees. She cried out in pain as dirt was ground into her wounded hand.
Causing her to give another cry, indignant this time, Devileye slapped her
admittedly shapely backside. “You’re gonna make a lot of men very happy missy. And me first of all.”
The very second that Devileye and his lieutenant turned their attention away from her, Sam threw herself at the nearest one. Tackling the lieutenant to the ground, Sam sank her long, sharp fangs into his throat and tore savagely. He tried to scream, but the only thing that came from his mouth were frothy rivulets of blood.
Cursing, Devileye grabbed at Sam’s tail and yanked hard, pulling her back from her victim’s feeble attempts to stop the blood flowing from the gaping hole in his throat.
With a sharp cry of surprised pain, Sam straightened and rounded on Devileye. Gabriel could see her struggling to free her hands as she turned, and stepped forward to help, but several weapons were shoved menacingly in his face. She looked like a beast, her eyes wild, and blood streaming from her mouth.
“You’re a vicious one, aren’t you,” Devileye leered as he pointed his crossbow at the fallen man’s face and pulled the trigger, putting him out of his misery with a bolt in the eye. “I likes a little fight in my women, but there is a limit.”
Pulling back with his free hand, Devileye punched Sam in the eye. She fell
backward, limp.
Glaring hard, Gabriel thought of a thousand horrible things that he was going to do to Devileye. “I’ll kill you for that, and it won’t be fast.”
“Will you now? Well, I hate to point out the obvious, but you’ve got two feet in the grave yourself, don’t you?”
Gabriel smiled. “Just you wait and see.”
Staring him in the eye for a few seconds longer, Devileye picked Sam up and
slung her over his shoulder as she began to stir. Gabriel could hardly believe she was already coming to! He’d be out for hours after taking a hit like that. Mounting Gabriel’s cathor, he pulled Sam across his lap, holding the crossbow to her throat as she began struggling feebly against her bonds again. One of the other men handed him the reins of Sam’s cathor, and they began trotting away.
Devileye turned back and blew a kiss. “So long, Lawman.”
“Samantha,” Gabriel shouted. She jerked in the saddle and turned to look at him as though the sound of the name that she hated had startled her into full consciousness.
Her eyes focused on him with a mix of anger, fear and sorrow. “I will come for you. I promise. I’m coming for you!”
She nodded.
“Have your fun boys. Rape him or kill him,” Devileye shouted. “Rip him to
shreds ‘til your black hearts’re content. Bring the guns, and the cat. Nothin’ like a slab of cat with a bit of cornbread. I’ll see you back at the Haven after I’ve had me a little romp with some tender young NVM naughtyness.”
When Devileye and Sam were out of sight, Gabriel turned his attention to the
seven bandits surrounding him.
“So, which one of you wants to die first?”
Exactly as he hoped, the men laughed. Using their momentary distraction, he
dove for his weapons, catching them all in the crook of an arm as he rolled aside. Arrows pierced the ground where they’d lain. Throwing the shotgun over his shoulder he struggled to pull the pistols out of their holsters, dropping one in the process.
“Wingless,” he growled as he came up on one knee, knowledge and skills
flooding into his mind. Shotgun in one hand and pistol in the other, he took aim almost instinctively and began pulling the triggers. The revolver boomed like a cannon blast with each shot, and the shotgun was like thunder. The first round found its mark in the center of a man’s chest, blowing a fist-sized hole through it. The second clipped a bandit in the shoulder and struck the man behind him in the eye. The third missed completely.
The first shotgun blast blew a man’s arm and most of his shoulder away, killing him on the spot with shock.
Screaming a wordless cry of rage and unleashed adrenaline, Gabriel was one with his weapons, one with the men he was firing them at. He could almost sense their lives coming to an end around him.
The pistol in his right hand clicked, empty, leaving four men still to be dealt with.
Tossing the pistol aside, he threw himself backward to avoid more arrows, jumping to his feet with the shotgun held in both hands.
Blowing a hole the size of a basketball through a man that swiped at him with a knife, Gabriel danced back, avoiding more arrows. Cocking the shotgun, he sent the smoking shell casing flying through the air and jumped backward as the last three tried to tackle him.
Managing to dodge, Gabriel lost his grip on the shotgun, and it flew away from him.
Despite being outnumbered and disarmed, he felt an exhilaration that he had
never known was possible. For the first time in his life he felt really alive, like he was doing something he’d been meant to do. Taking the lives of men that sought his own felt strangely familiar, almost orgasmic. He felt invincible.
Eyes darting around for a weapon, Gabriel began to feel as though he’d been
meant for this sort of thing all along. He saw the faces of his childhood bullies transposed on the bodies of the men he killed. Johnny Montain who pelted him with unripened plumbs from the tree near the bus stop on the way to school, and Jason Deere who had first called him a girl’s name, calling his gender and sexuality into question.
They were Ryan Jonas who’d put him in the hospital for a month for no discernable reason, and Mark Romel who had made a point of splattering him with spitwads at every opportunity. He hated them all so very much, laughing as he killed one childhood demon after another.
An arrow bounced off his collarbone with enough force to spin him around,
possibly cracking it for all the pain it caused. Hitting the ground hard, Gabriel saw his other pistol, still in its holster and not far away. Rolling, he dodged more arrows. One of them sending a stream of blood across his face as it gashed his cheek.
Hand falling on the pistol, Gabriel brought it up without bothering to unholster it, and fired twice. Two more Children of the Chosen went down, leaving one more, but he appeared to have fled.
“Holy crap,” he breathed, clutching his free hand to his heart, which had to be beating at least four hundred times a minute.
“Impressive,” Mister Mittens said as he limped to Gabriel, favoring a hind leg.
“Except for one thing. If they’re all dead, how are we going to find their hideout?”
Sitting up, Gabriel scanned the wasteland in all directions until he saw what he was looking for, a single figure running like hell in the direction that Devileye had taken Sam.
“I left one alive,” Gabriel said as he pulled his pistol out of its holster and took careful aim.