“I was sure that you were dead,” Sam cried. “But you actually came for me. I never thought anyone would care enough to come for me!”
“I’d never live it down if I let myself be killed by a bunch of inbred hillbillies.
And I’d never leave you to rot in this place. What kind of man would I be if I did that?
What about you? Are you all right? Did they hurt you badly? Did they . . .?”
The only answer Sam gave was to put her arms around him, squeezing tightly
enough to constrict his breathing and send a burst of agony through his broken rib. As she cried like a baby, Gabriel held her, rocking her gently and whispering comforts until her tears began to subside. He hoped that she wasn’t too beat up to move.
“Gabriel,” Mister Mittens cried. “Watch out!”
Sam shrieked an unintelligible warning as Gabriel turned to see Devileye bearing down on him with a knife he must have had hidden somewhere. Shoving Sam backward, Gabriel put himself between her and the looming danger. Not long ago he likely would have used her as a human shield. The contrast in his way of thinking now was not lost on him. His ordeals on Ethos were changing him, and he thought that it was for the better.
Before, he’d thought only of himself. His law firm’s therapist had diagnosed him as a sociopath, someone without a shred of empathy for any other living being. Women hadn’t even been people to him, only objects of sexual desire. It didn’t matter how guilty a client was, only winning the case mattered to him, in the name of serving his perfect score, adding to his fame and fortune. He’d been shallow, and uncaring, thinking of nothing and no one but himself and his own reputation.
Actually caring enough about another human being to put her life before his own went in the face of everything he’d been when that bus made roadkill of him. Despite having killed a truckload of people to save their skins thus far, Gabriel thought he just might be changing in the way that the Northern Sage meant him to. It felt strangely satisfying to care about something other than himself for a change.
Reaching for a weapon, he found his holster empty, the pistol had fallen to the ground when Sam tackled him. He got his fingers around the hilt of his knife. Yanking it free, he slashed wildly at his attacker without the Sa’Dhi to guide him. It only occurred to him afterward to use one of the knife fighting moves he’d stored in the second Sa’Dhi.
There was no resistance to indicate he’d landed a hit, but Devileye’s knife hand flew away at the wrist. Looking at the stump of his arm stupidly, it took him a few seconds before horror and realization began to set into his features.
“My hand! You cut off my hand!”
All the anger, frustration, fear, pain and rage brought on by the day’s events seemed to well up in him at once. Throwing himself at Devileye, Gabriel rammed his knife into the man’s belly. Twisting it with a jerk, he spilled his guts, but that wasn’t enough for threatening Sam with rape. After a childhood of seeing his mother battered and bruised by his own father, he couldn’t stand to see another woman he cared about treated the same way. Something inside of him snapped and a tidal wave of repressed emotion burst out of him in one strangely familiar torrent.
Following the body to the ground, Gabriel stabbed and slashed over and over and over again. The muscles in his arm began to burn with exhaustion, but he was unable to stop. It felt right, like something he’d enjoyed long ago, and had wanted to do again ever since.
“Stop it, ” Sam shrieked, startling Gabriel back to himself. There was blood everywhere, and not much left of Devileye.
Dropping his knife, Gabriel gasped in horror, backing away.
“Oh my god,” he muttered.
What was happening to him? He wasn’t used to feeling emotions for other
people, and it seemed like it was driving him crazy. He was becoming a killer. Despite changes to his way of thinking, all of the people he’d killed seemed to be standing between him and the redemption he’d been sent here to seek.
“I’m all right,” Sam soothed. “I probably look a lot worse than I am. He didn’t hurt me, and he didn’t rape me. Neither did anyone else. Just calm down.”
Looking toward her with a very deep feeling of shame, Gabriel saw a strangely
motherly look on her incongruously youthful face. She didn’t look so young with that expression, and the bruises. It reminded him of his mother after his father had beaten her.
She’d always had a smile for him, despite her pains, both physical and emotional.
“I’m sorry,” he tried to find words to explain. “I didn’t . . .”
Stretching, Sam got to her feet. She limped over to what was left of Devileye in a way that indicated her thigh was paining her.
“I’ve gotta piss so bad. Locked me away in here and forgot about me! Gee, you think maybe the prisoner needs to eat, drink and visit the little girl’s room once in a while? Naw, I’m sure she’ll be just fine.”
To Gabriel’s horror she slid her pants down to her knees, squatting over the dead man.
He stared for a few seconds before he realized what he was staring at, and turned away. Trying to keep an eye on the open door without seeing her was no easy feat.
“What the hell are you doing!”
“Pissing on his corpse,” Sam said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“What does it look like? He was gonna do the most humiliating, dehumanizing thing possible to me. Lacking a dick to return the favor with, it’s the most humiliating, dehumanizing thing I can think to do to him. Take that, cocksucker!”
“Do you try at being the most disgusting girl ever, or does it come naturally,”
Gabriel made a disgusted sound. “There’s unfeminine, and then there’s you. There’s not enough liquor in the universe to burn that image out of my head.”
“Oh stop being a baby,” Sam said. “It’s not like you’ve never seen me piss
before. I’m not shy, so no big deal.”
“And I’m trying very hard to forget, thank you very much! Don’t you have any
concept at all about feminine modesty?”
“Of course I do. Everyone pisses, why should I care if someone else sees?”
After a moment of silence she continued, sounding strangely vulnerable.
“When I was little I used to work at being as repulsive as possible to protect myself from being raped, and, well, you do something long enough and it sorta becomes part of you. You think it’s easy for a pretty, unmutated, parentless girl to make it through life in this world without being set upon? Well, there are my eyes and hair, but that’s not a big mutation at all, right? I mean, I think silver and gold are pretty colors, don’t you?
Anyway, I did what I had to in order to survive . . . and now I kinda can’t stop.”
Gabriel supposed all of her disgusting habits made morbid sense now. The fact that she’d had to become the way she was just to avoid childhood rape filled him with quite a bit of rage. The abuse of women he cared about had always been a heated subject for him. He wished that he could take her back to Earth where she’d be safe from all of the horrible things she’d endured here, and maybe allow herself to start acting a bit more feminine.
“Much better.” Rising, Sam cleaned herself with a hand and wiped it on what
was left of Devileye. “Oh, Mister Mittens, you came to rescue me too. You’re such a good little kitty.”
Mister Mittens limped over to Sam and she picked him up, giving him a noisy,