Happily Ever Awkward (The H.E.A. Files, #1)(56)
Before Demog realized what was happening, the Sword had spun across the chamber and sliced the weight from its chain in a burst of sparks.
The machine relaxed with a monstrous groan.
Laura gasped in relief.
But Paul stood helplessly, for although he had saved Laura, he had left himself completely defenseless.
Demog strode around the frame of the lifeless torture device, heading straight for Paul. The Terror’s face looked more like a skull than it ever had before.
“Well,” he said. “What a noble sacrifice.”
Then he reared back to deliver the death stroke.
41
3… 2… 1…
Jack scrambled up the side of the Shadowkeep, wedging his fingers and toes into cracks between the shiny stone blocks. Swarms of enemies surged up the wall below him, and he kicked at any who got too close.
Because pirates were used to climbing unsteady rigging, it was easy for them to climb the irregular stone wall with daggers clenched between their teeth.
Because Zombies were used to being creepy, it was easy for them to scuttle up the stone surface like a wave of pale spiders.
Because Jack was scared out of his mind, it was easy for him to climb so fast that no one could catch him.
“Damnation!”
Captain Head lowered his telescope. He stood at the bow of a longboat surrounded by his handpicked pirate bodyguards. They were the meanest of the mean, the bloodthirstiest of the bloodthirsty, the snarlingest of the snarly.
“Bravado’s on the tower!” he bellowed with such fury that his jaw scraped shavings of rust from his cannonball cheek. “The scurvy coward’s trying to get away from me! Open fire, you mangy dogs! Blow a breach in ’im big enough to sail a ship through!”
As the pirate bodyguards rowed furiously for shore, the cannons spread along the side of the Bloody Vengeance began to fire, belching sheets of flame over their captain’s head.
Explosions burst across the side of the Shadowkeep, jolting loose stray clumps of pirates and Zombies. Jack barely hung on amid the firestorm.
Shaking his fist at the Bloody Vengeance, Jack yelled in exasperation, “Oh, come on! Don’t you think this is a little overkill?!”
As if in response, hundreds of puffs of smoke materialized over the mouths of the countless cannons ranged along the Vengeance’s deck as well as those protruding from the checkerboard of gun ports along its hull.
Apparently not.
Jack scurried higher as the barrage of explosions leap-frogged up the side of the tower, closer and closer, somehow just missing him as they passed by, but blasting the wall directly above him.
Ducking his head, he dug his fingers into the cracks and struggled to hold on as an avalanche of rubble cascaded over him.
42
…BOOM!
When the wall of the torture chamber exploded inward, Demog was understandably surprised. And when a section of the ceiling collapsed on top of him, he was understandably crushed. By the time the rubble finished clattering and the dust finished swirling, only his right hand remained visible, thrust between two rocks like a stubborn, demonic weed.
His fingers twitched for a moment then went still.
Jeremy the Zombie’s face, which always wore a generally slack-jawed look of surprise due to the degenerative effects of his undead condition, took on a look of actual surprise, his eyes literally popping out of his head.
Yes, literally.
He had to push them back in.
“I don’t believe it,” Jeremy said as he readjusted his eyeballs. “I thought nothing could stop a Terror…”
Not wasting a moment, Paul raced to Laura’s side and immediately began untying and untangling and unbuckling the myriad straps that bound her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Tears cut through the dust on her cheeks.
“Laura, don’t cry—”
“I’m not crying,” she said. “I just… I got dust in my eyes. Paul, I thought you were dead.”
“Yes. Right. I’ll tell you about it later,” he said. “Right now, we’ve got to get out of here.” He had just started working on the straps around her waist when something behind him grunted like a Dragon in heat.
Paul scooped his Singing Sword from the floor and wheeled about, thinking Demog had recovered, but the sound hadn’t come from the Terror.
It came from a dusty figure clawing its way through the hole in the wall. The figure was named Jack Bravado. It heaved itself to its feet, pointed an accusing finger at Paul, and said, “Next time… next time I get to cut the rope.”
43
THE LOGIC OF ASTEROIDS
Holding Judgment over his head, Seeboth pointed the energized sword at the full moon and recited lost words of unspeakable power. Though the power itself might have been unspeakable, the lost words, curiously enough, were not.
“Ahnataa sabaokt fiat deonon,
The Unmaking Vortex to this world I summon!”
At one time conventional wisdom held that the world was flat. It was entirely reasonable for primitive man to have reached such a conclusion, for if the world was not flat, how could a primitive man stand upon it? Somewhat less reasonable was primitive man’s conclusion that his flat world was balanced precariously upon the back of a Giant Oyster. Primitive religions sprang up, teaching primitive man to live in constant fear of the Day of the Great Shucking, an event which, it was said, would unleash the Pearl of Doom. It is worth noting these primitive religions ultimately died out because they failed to grasp the nature of reality in three key respects: