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Show Acting Alone Page 364 half-blinded by greenish blasts of something resembling lightning that seemed to come after the things resembling thunderclaps. He tried to ignore the rustles and occasional glimpses of something non-indigenous with small tusks that seemed to skitter along under the cloud of dust behind him, to skitter and grunt and nip at his Achilles tendons, something all bristly, chasing him, making his teeth itch up underneath the gums, his scrotum crawl back up his soft thigh to safety: Nature-horror and -disgust come to verminous life. Sam didn't need to force himself to ignore one particular sight, though; for he completely discounted it almost before he saw it: A huge, gaudy, wingless bird lurched across a nearby clearing in pursuit of a man in clerical garb, who screamed and hopped a white picket fence and tried to submerge himself among the shallow, steaming spring waters of a peculiar-looking grotto, or shrine. A mangled doberman (DalZynnia?) hung from a tree by its toughening entrails, its eyes sucked out and cast elsewhere. And, of course, it was merely a low branch that just reached down and tried to coil around Sam's crawling scalp. Sam let his nature-revulsion and his windsails bestow wings upon his heels. He sped away, through the open refectory door, back down the stairs. He could hear the drums and the Latin party favors and the voices filtering up from behind the washroom wall-hanging - Have mercy on us. . . Have mercy on us. . . Have mercy on us. . . Now to confront a Jewkiller, poetkiller. |