Роджер Желязны - Warriors of Blood and Dream

A chaos boiled in the hall. Someone screamed, and a man's voice said: "Hold it, you son of a bitch—"

There was a gunshot.

Brenda turned in time to see a body fly past the open door to the hall, smashing into the wall hard enough to dent plaster.

And Elk was there. His shoulder bled, and blood streaked the side of his face. His eyes burned. A guard tackled him from behind and Elk shrugged him off, somehow got the man's arm in a twisting grip. Bone splintered.

"Little Hawk!" Elk commanded. " Fight him !"

Two more guards tackled the old man. He got one off, and the other hit him in the head with a flashlight. Elk's head snapped sideways, but his elbow connected hard enough to shatter teeth. The guard went down, still holding on—

Then the guards looked into the sleep room.

And they saw.

And froze.

Elk lurched to his feet. "Fight!" he thundered. "Find your power spots. Find the lines of light!"

David's scream was the howl of a dying hurricane. "I can't!"

Elk staggered forward, dug a shaking hand into the leather pouch at his waist.

"Hold him, David. For your mother." He pulled out a handful of sand.

Trias stared at him, fist stuck against her mouth, wordless and wide-eyed. Her lips moved without making words.

Elk drew a line of sand completely around David's cot. He sat heavily on the floor, drew his pipe from his knapsack, lighting it with shaking hands. He calmed as it came to life.

The thing on the bed howled, turned, grabbed David's face—and crawled into his mouth, distending his head horribly, forcing his lips impossibly wide. Brenda heard the bones creak, saw David's mad eyes staring into the ceiling, saw its head and shoulders disappear, watched David's throat swell as it passed, and at last saw the thing's blood-smeared skeletal feet disappear between David's crimsoned lips. The waking David disappeared back into the sleeping David's chest.

David vibrated on the bed, his body distending as if being struck stupendous blows from within. His screaming seemed to be coming from farther and farther away.

Elk blew smoke to the four directions, and then to the sky.

The scream boiled back up at them, but now it was a demon's scream. It grew louder, and louder, and peaked, and David's entire body spasmed, throwing him into the air.

Then he crashed back down, and was still.

Nothing. Then . ..

The floor began to shake, the red-and-black tiles cracking, separating as they watched, as if some terrible pressure were pushing from beneath.

Brenda took a step forward, and Elk grabbed her arm. "Stop."

"What's happening?" She looked shell-shocked.

"It's just beginning," Elk said.

"Didn't you kill the thing? The demon?" The glass window in the door shattered, and the plaster split along the wall in a ragged vertical seam.

"Only David can do that," Elk said. "All I could do was confine him to David's body. David's dream."

"What?"

"Think, woman! The Mimbrino was coming into our world. Through David. There's no one alive who knows how to deal with something like that. There hasn't been anyone for five hundred years who knows about these things. Really knows . David is the only one on an equal footing with it."

Two of the guards had made it to their feet. They stared at the boy, and at the petrified Trias, at the buckling floor, unable to move or think. The alarm bells shrieked. They ran.

"This is David's fight," Elk said. "It's always been."

"What can I do?" Brenda asked, desperately.

"Let your boy be a man," he said. "That's all that there is."

"That is my mother! Those are my friends!"

David roared it, snatched his hand from the grip of the cold dead thing that walked in the form of his father.

It recoiled and hissed at him.

I gave you a chance, boy, because I saw something in you that I could have used. Now, I'll rip it from your body!

David watched the Mimbrino melt, turn into a wave of energy that peaked and crested like a tsunami and rolled in to cover him

A bungee line of light snatched David out of the way, to a spot that glistened as if wet—but felt dry.

Some little thing in the back of his mind said: He's lying ! He didn 't destroy you before because ...

He's too weak. All the strength he has, he takes from you, and the more you fight him, the more he'll get !

Ants. Ants everywhere and they bit like fire. David concentrated, and the heavens burst with water, carrying them away....

And in the water they flowed into a thousand thousand piranha, biting, tearing, and David grew a shell and watched their teeth breaking against his shell—

And they shook, vibrating like a million operatic sopranos, and he felt his shell vibrating and cracking, cracking, and he split into a thousand smaller Davids, each one whole, and scurried away as the sound turned into a synthesizer gushing out a techno-pop, cut and scratch rap version of the Death March.

David deliberately soured his notes, and the synthesizer cracked and shattered. Suddenly he was sound ripples vibrating in a water funnel swirling around and around and around and sucking him down into hell—

Brenda turned to look at Trias. The doctor had vanished. Brenda whipped her head back toward the door and saw the doctor in the hallway, tearing a fire ax from the wall. When Trias turned back, her lip was bitten through, her eyes wide and crazed and fixed on David.

Those mad eyes flickered from David to Brenda. "It's the only way," she said, very, very reasonably. "He'll destroy us all!"

Brenda screamed and threw herself between Trias and her intended victim. She grabbed the ax handle as Trias stepped, as the weapon came up, and held on for life and love.

Then Elk was there, striding through the crazy-quilt sliding world of Westside Memorial's sleep lab like an avenging angel. Elk grabbed the ax just beneath the head, and spit out his words. "You ignorant, cowardly, self-righteous bitch! We're supposed to help him!"

Elk twisted, and Trias's ax was in his hand. Brenda flew one way, Trias the other. The doctor slammed into the wall, and slid down, gibbering. Elk strode up to her, the shifting whirling colors painting his face into a death mask. He raised the ax and slammed it down—

Next to Trias's head. Trias soiled herself, and fainted.

Elk turned just in time to see Brenda heave herself up, and crawl the last foot to the edge of the sand circle before he reached her. "No! Don't break it!"

Brenda lost control, words tumbling out in an avalanche of grief. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. David, please. Come back to us. God in heaven, I'm so sorry—"

David, halfway down the funnel now, stretched out his hand to her, reaching nothing, finding nothing, but hearing her words and finding in them, as he swirled toward an eternity of blood and madness, a line of light—

A widening pool of light.

An image. A memory.

He and his mother, on the road together. Laughing.

He and his mother, sharing barbecue at a roadside restaurant. And there was the whisper of a sadness in her eyes. It was—

He and his mother and his ...

And his ...

Father. Road trip. New Mexico. Camping. By the river. Just a moment, one moment. He was five years old, and asleep. He yawned awake, and crawled out of the tent. Mommy and Daddy were—

There, in the moonlight. Holding each other. On a blanket spread out in the moonlight. Naked. Sweat-slicked. Kissing, groaning into each other's mouths, oblivious to the rest of the world. And in their eyes, unmistakably—

Love. So deep and complete and scathing that it burned into his soul. A fire bright and hot enough to consume its own substance in years instead of decades.

David crawled back into the tent, eyes wide and wondering.