Monster Planet(65)

Erasmus came loose with a howl, a noise only an animal could make. His claws came up and he raked the green phantom across the belly, tearing open skin and flesh. With another scream he jumped away and headed deeper into the forest, moving as fast as his dead legs could carry him, following no trail that Ayaan could see but merely stumbling through the brush and smacking into tree limbs like a man possessed.

She had a feeling that was exactly what he had become. She saw a round space had been hollowed out of the tree, behind its wide knot. Inside someone had placed an hexagonal mirror, its frame made of human finger bones. Dark energy streamed from the thing'magic'and Ayaan was careful not to look into the glass. Instead she took the green phantom's staff and used it to smash it into bits of silver and jagged glass.

Then she turned around, and realized what fate had offered her.

The green phantom lay disemboweled on the path. His ancient, dried-up guts slithered onto the ground next to him, his hands trying in vain to keep them in. He wasn't even looking at her. Ayaan could kill him easily, smash in his head with his own staff or fire a bolt of her own particular kind of darkness directly into his brain. It would take a mere second of her time. The handless ghouls coming up the path would destroy her or perhaps the Tsarevich would kill her from a distance but that was immaterial.

She stepped closer to the green phantom, intending to finish him off'and then she stopped.

I see his heart. His black and dead heart!

The words moved through her head like a pebble rolling around on her tongue. Half her face lost all feeling and a thin trickle of drool fell from her numb lip.

You be caution in all things.

The words stopped her in her tracks.

'It's your big chance, now,' the green phantom said. He looked up at her with bitter fear in his eyes. 'If you want to prove yourself. If you want to live.' He had the remote control in one hand, the control that could activate the wards on her neck.

'Yes,' Ayaan said, 'I want to live.' The words fell out of her mouth. She had thought nothing of the kind.

'Then you'll go after him. You'll go after that furry cocksucker who just gutted me and you'll find out what happened. Yes or no?'

Ayaan sucked breath into her lungs, trying to clear her head, but the unnecessary air just wheezed out of her again. 'Alright,' she said, all thought of killing the green phantom gone. It just wasn't in her head anymore. She could feel where the thought had been but she couldn't remember what it might have been.

Your friend has friend in me,she thought. A curious thing to think, but it didn't bother her too much.





Monster Planet





Chapter Fifteen


Sarah's ankle caught on something metal and she went down, hard, the skin of her elbows coming off on the pavement, leaves and bits of vine bursting up around her like green smoke. 'I'm alright,' she told Ptolemy, and started to get up.

The thing she'd tripped on was metal, black metal spotted with rust. She could kind of make out its shape, hidden under tons of vegetation, small trees and blowsy bushes that shook in the wind. She had tripped over a wing. The entire metallic object, which had to be fifteen feet across, was an airplane, a small airplane turned upside down with its nose buried in the ground.

She would have looked at it some more if she hadn't heard an air horn just then. The sound vented up out of the tree-clogged streets on every side. She couldn't tell which direction it came from. 'What do they want?' she asked, as if she didn't know the answer.

Maybe she didn't. When she reached into her pocket for the reassuring angularity of her pistol, her fingers touched the soapstone scarab instead.

they Celt came for relics the relics of the Celt,Ptolemy told her.

Sarah got to her feet'her ankle felt sore but not broken'and they headed uptown again. Away from the last place they'd seen the mold maiden. If she tripped again Ptolemy was going to have to carry her. She didn't doubt that he could but it would hurt her image as the leader of this farce.

'You were supposed to watch the Tsarevich,' she told him, panting a little. There was a kind of natural trail up Broadway, a strip of bare pavement where the trees hadn't taken over quite yet. The hot asphalt felt strangely good under her feet. 'Those were my orders.'

and were so I sentries did but there and were I sentries,he told her.i spotted was i spotted

It actually helped a little to know he wasn't perfect. 'So you came looking for me, to report?'