James Axler - Northstar Rising

"Time to start throwing some lead," he said to himself.

He picked up the nearest blaster from the polished steel racks in front of him. It was a Parker-Hale M-94, equipped with a folding bipod and a Smith & Wesson Startron 800 passive vision night sight. The Armorer worked the bolt and steadied the rifle on the sill of a broken stained-glass window. The sight brought the nearest stickie almost within touching distance. J.B. gently squeezed the trigger.

And heard the dry click of a misfire.

He dropped the blaster and snatched up the Nambu, hearing the same hollow, empty sound.

The French rifle, the same result.

A Walther PPK, plated with a thin layer of pure gold. Misfire.

J.B. dropped the last of the useless, malfunctioning weapons and turned to face the doorway of the church. The headless remains of a crucified man hung above the lintel, one leg missing. The stickies came silently walking through the dark entrance. Creepily they weren't hurrying, and some of them seemed to be smiling.

They reached out toward the helpless man with their spread, suckered hands, ready to draw the skin from the flesh, the eyes from the sockets, the flesh from the bones.

The life from the body.

The churning pain in J.B.'s head was close to unbearable. It was like having the needle tip of a scalpel drawn slowly around the inside of the skull, slicing tiny wafers of tissue from the brain.

The Trader stood near the shattered remnants of the altar, watching as the muties surrounded J.B. for their butchering.

"Help me," J.B. croaked, licking his dry lips.

The suckered hands were everywhere, bringing a sucking blackness.

"Help me?" J. B. Dix looked toward the gaunt, remote figure of the Trader.

"No."

Dr. Theophilus Tanner beamed as the puppy came bounding up the dusty street toward him, its tail wagging furiously. A speeding brougham bowled by, driven by a liveried negro, narrowly missing the eager animal. Doc glimpsed a beautiful, cold-faced woman, sitting back on the maroon velvet cushions, ignoring the common people.

The dog went to him, and he stooped to pat it. "Friendly little chap, isn't he, Emily?"

"He is, my dearest," Doc's pretty young wife replied.

The dog began to tremble. Emily Tanner backed away from it, lifting the hem of her skirt. She turned a worried face to her handsome young husband. "What's wrong, dear?"

The dog rolled on its side, legs jerking as if it were trying to run on the air. Its eyes were open wide, and it made an alarmed, whining noise.

"I guess it's hungry," Doc replied. "Best leave the animal, or someone could come along and set it ablaze. Happens all the time." There was a moment of sickening blackness. When it cleared away, Doc was strolling down Fifth Avenue with Emily on his arm. She was pushing a wicker perambulator that held baby Rachel. Emily was heavily pregnant. It was a beautiful summer morning, and the street bustled with horse-drawn carriages and cabs. A hansom had lost a wheel on the corner of Thirty-Second, and a sweating, swearing Irish policeman was struggling to clear the jammed traffic.

Doc took out a kerchief with a swallow's-eye design and dabbed at his brow. "By the three... something. Hot."

"When do we leave for Omaha, my prince among men?" Emily asked.

"Dog has too many heads, my dear. Cerberus by name and Totality by nature."

She smiled up at him, infinitely gentle. "Don't leave me, Theo."

"Of course not. Never and a day. Safe here, aren't we, Ryan?"

The one-eyed man was walking on the far side of the pram. He wore a patch over his left eye, but the other socket welled with black blood.

"Today's not safe, Doc," he replied. "Tomorrow's worse. Only safe place is yesterday."

The picture of nineteenth-century New York trembled and Doc fell to his knees, holding his head and rocking back and forth. The pain was appalling, swirling around inside his mind. Dark shadows sucked at all of his memories.

"Yesterday's safe," he muttered.

Emily, the baby, the pram... they'd all vanished. There was a gleaming horse tram, with walls of turquoise arma-glass. People were inside it, sitting upright and facing the front: a woman holding a little baby near the rear; a man in a hat and a young boy with stark white hair, carrying a puppy in his arms; a tall woman whose hair blazed like a New Mexico sunset. All were moving away from him.

"Come back to yesterday," Doc shouted, starting to run toward them.

But a swordstick of demonic agony tore into his head and he fell down, blood coursing from his nose. The blood ran over the sidewalk, which was built from patterned tiles that made up a star-spangled banner.

A mop-headed youth holding a battered guitar patted him on the shoulder. "Something's happening and you don't know about it. I'll let you be in my past if you'll let me be in yours."

It seemed like a good offer to Doc, but by the time he'd struggled to his knees the boy had vanished.

"Someone dug the dog a tomb," Doc said, nearly weeping from the sickness and his own weakness.

Emily kissed him on the cheek. "Stay here with me forever, my love."

"Yes," he whispered as the blackness enveloped him.

Krysty Wroth could usually control what happened to her mind when she was sleeping, or when she was making a mat-trans jump. The training that she'd been given by her mother, Sonja, back in her home ville of Harmony, meant that she possessed a variety of arcane skills. But even her mind was torn into the ether by the third, faulty jump.

She knew that the lover in her dream was Cort Strasser, knew him for one of the most evil beings to blight the Deathlands. Jordan Teague had been Baron of Mocsin, a notorious frontier pesthole, with festering alleys, gaudies and bars. To control somewhere like Mocsin meant "no more Mr. Nice Guy." But Teague couldn't have done it alone. He needed a sec boss who would be ten times more vicious and cruel.

Cort Strasser.

Krysty lay back in the soft, warm bed and moaned as he touched her. His long, strong fingers sought out the hidden places of her body, making her writhe with an overwhelming sensual delight.

She clasped the tall, gaunt figure to her, reveling in the lean tension beneath the corded muscles. He rolled above her, spreading her thighs with a brutal jab of his knee. One hand gripped her wrists and held them effortlessly still above her head. Sweat beaded the near-bald head. Thin eyes stared deep into her face, thin lips peeled off broken teeth.

"Ryan did that," she whispered. "Threw a blaster into your mouth."

For a moment Strasser hesitated, poised above her. His thick, powerful erection shrank between his thighs, and he lifted a clubbed fist threateningly.

"Keep your mouth shut, redhead slut," he hissed. "I'll tell you when to open it, and I'll tell you what to do with it. Understand?"

Krysty nodded. "And you'll give me a son?"

"If you're good to me, bitch. If you're not, it'll be one of my toys to remind you of how to obey your master."

A log fire was dying in the open hearth. A small brindled puppy was sleeping in front of it, head on its paws. And on the table by the fire was a selection of Cort Strasser's toys. A whip with a short, stubby handle was studded with nails. The thongs were plaited wire, and the tips were splinters of jagged glass. Next to it was a longer whip, with a single, cutting lash. There were knives on the table, as well as a number of sexual aids — phalluses of differing sizes and shapes, but all with some unexpected and cruel refinement.

"You ready, whore?"

Strasser's narrow mustache was glistening with perspiration, and he licked his lips. By lifting her head a little Krysty could see that he was once again fully erect.

"This isn't right."