LITMIR.BIZ

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course,” Brigid directed.

      Grant nodded, glad to have the woman’s eidetic memory to rely upon. He followed her directions, and Kane popped over the top of the cab, firing a single shot into the ground before them. As soon as the bullet struck the obsidian glass, it burst like a bubble, producing a circular gap, dropping down into another lava tube. This was dark and empty, thankfully, but the shattered surface now had a hole three feet in diameter. The pickup could span it, but Grant looked at what each side of the truck would be rolling through. The last thing he needed was to drop and crash through the hole and break an axle, but he also didn’t need to put the tires on anything less than sure ground. He hit the optic zoom, switching from infrared to see if there was any sand or other particulate that could compromise their traction.

      “Okay, that’s going to be bad,” Nathan spoke up over the line.

      Grant glanced to the bed of the truck. “What?”

      “I’m picking up something flying,” the young man from Harare said. “Bat-like shapes are the best I can make out through the smoke and from this distance. No way to gauge their size.”

      “Bat-like,” Grant repeated. He tromped the gas and shot toward the small hole before them, gritting his teeth and hoping that the lava tube around the burst bubble could hold them. If it didn’t, then he hoped that the sheer speed of the pickup could keep them from getting stuck.

      The obsidian beneath the truck’s tires held, and the pickup didn’t suddenly lurch as its two tons of weight cracked into the lava tube beneath them.

      Good—they were back toward a plateau of solid rock, not solidified and cooled lava, and Grant hit the brakes before he got too close to the edge. He glanced back. “Kane, any updates?”

      “Kane?” Grant repeated, his concern evident in his tone.

      “They’re Kongs!” Thurpa shouted. “Kane’s gone bye-bye!”

      Grant looked back into the bed, seeing his friend sitting ramrod still and staring straight ahead.

      “Bad enough we’ve got those goddamn terror-dactyls, but Neekra’s attacking him now,” Grant growled.

      Brigid whirled and saw Thurpa lunge back toward Kane, who lifted his gun, aiming it toward them at the pickup’s cab.

      Chaos erupted, just as gouts of steam burst through sections of lava tubes weakened by the truck’s passage.

       Chapter 5

      Thurpa’s statement that Kane had gone “bye-bye” was hardly a complete diagnosis of the current mental and physical state of the former Cobaltville Magistrate. However, even as Kane watched his right arm rising, the Sin Eater snapped to extension into his palm, a hydraulically launched weapon that turned a simple pointing motion into a death sentence in most cases, he had to agree someone outside of his skull would get the same impression.

      He even could hear Grant’s grumbling over the Commtact as Thurpa lunged, pushing Kane’s hand up and away from his two friends, the youth pitting his personal strength against the possessed Magistrate.

      Kane could feel the struggle but only through a numb, dense filter. His psyche had been partially dislodged from his body, allowing his telepathic opponents to move into his limbs.

      Kane had to assume that it was multiple opponents because he could “feel” and “see” two entities, though it could have been just his mind trying to make sense of what was going on. Tendrils wound around him, snakelike tentacles of darkness seizing his limbs, squeezing his chest. Even as he was grasped by the alien thoughts, he was reminded of the quicksilver monstrosity that had been the living navigation chair that he, Brigid and Grant hunted down in the swamps of Louisiana. The horror took that form, and now he could understand the horror that Brigid had been subjected to as he twisted, pulled, fought to escape the sticky, clutching tendrils.

      “Get out of my head, you bitch!” Kane growled as he pulled against the forces assailing him. The other “entity”—a shadowy form zooming between Kane’s view of the world and his embattled mind—looked over its shoulder at the ongoing struggle.

      “Your friends are going to die,” came a voice no human on Earth ever had. It was deep, rumbling, all pervasive. It might have been male, but it had an odd, sexless quality. The vibrations of those words burrowed deep into Kane, like termites chewing through the heart of a tree, and threatened to sap his strength.

      Kane’s immediate reaction was to rage further, writhing and tugging himself from the smothering grasp of his opponent.

      “You’re going to shoot them,” the shadow before him taunted. Kane’s right arm tore free from the engulfing mass of darkness, and he reached out, fingertips brushing the icy flesh of the mocking void.

      “I’ll rip you out of my skull first!” Kane bellowed. “I’ll shred you into ribbons!”

      Snatching whips of inky blackness slapped around Kane’s wrist and forearm, and he continued to stretch forward, wrestling loose from the grabby opposition.

      Something slammed him in the chest, hard as a hammer, and Kane felt the breath explode from his lungs. This was not a psychic attack; this was something in real life, and he squirmed his head, trying to see around the void-thing that stood before his vision. The taunting monster cackled, brilliant white teeth visible behind tenebrous lips, rows of gleaming, almost luminous fangs, serrated triangles in layers. Kane kicked, driving himself out of the slithering tentacles grasping at him.

      “I will end you!” Kane roared.

      And the bubble of his perceptions popped.

      He was back in the bed of the pickup truck, Thurpa kneeling astride his chest, fighting to keep Kane’s wrists pinned to the metal so that he didn’t fire the Sin Eater inadvertently “Kane! Wake up!”

      “I’m up now,” Kane grumbled. “How long have you been wrestling me?”

      “Twenty seconds,” Thurpa returned. “We’ve got a dozen Kongs swooping after us.”

      Kane glanced around. He could see Lyta and Nathan firing their guns into the sky, the powerful arms of the winged horrors allowing them to swoop, flip and soar, dodging the lead thrown their way, even as the pickup truck twisted and turned on the rocky ground.

      Kane rose to one knee, foot braced so that he could pivot against the wall of the pickup bed. He did a quick examination of the Sin Eater, but aside from the magazine needing replacement, it was ready to go. Thurpa had managed to render the gun a single-shot weapon, and Kane could see where the single bullet punched through metal, avoiding Nathan. Kane had to admire the young man’s courage and forethought.

      “Our one saving grace is that they are reluctant to go through the clouds of smoke. Their sense of smell must be as acute as their hearing,” Brigid stated. “Use your forearm display panels to turn on the ultrasonic sensors for your hood.”

      Kane glanced away from the sky, brushing his shadow suit’s sleeve. He grimaced and realized that he was not going to have the time or dexterity to do so, not when the Kongamato were in full-on assault mode. He did, however, keep his eyes peeled, covering the others. He switched to his rifle, scanning the thick smoke, spotting the things as they barely showed up through the hot clouds of volcanic ejecta.

      No wonder Brigid said for them to turn on their ultrasonic sensors. The Kongamato had been operating with their bat-like sonar, putting out “pings” of intense noise, inaudible to human ears, which would bounce off of a solid object. In the spouts of steam and hot sulfur, they were actually cooler and harder to see, disappearing behind bright splotches of reds, yellows and oranges.

      “Cover me,” Kane said to his partners in the back. He turned to Grant. “We’re going to need a steadier platform.”

      “As soon as I find an inch of ground that isn’t slick as ice or threatening to come apart,” Grant answered. “Tremor!”

      The

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