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dress.
"Doomiesdowhatthey're told." Each word was punctuated by savage punches,
knocking her head from side to side like a disjointed doll.
Emma slipped quickly into merciful unconsciousness, but the baron didn't seem
aware of it. Grinning mirthlessly, nodding as if he were agreeing to some
whispered instructions from an invisible presence, he continued the beating.
Teeth splintered and sliced her tongue open, releasing a flood of scarlet.
"Lie there until you learn sense, doomie!" Sharpe snarled, suddenly throwing
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her to the floor.
Emma lay where he dropped her, half in the doorway between the rooms. She was
on her back, mouth open, the flow of blood trickling steadily down her throat
and into the air passages to her lungs, beginning to drown her.
RYAN, J.B. AND DOC had suffered another brief delay in their pursuit of Jak,
and the baron and Emma.
Someone had loosed a pack of hunting dogs into the rear of the ville, and they
came snarling toward the three outlanders.
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At last Doc had the chance to use the Le Mat, aiming into the middle of the
animals, pulling down on the trigger.
The .63-caliber shotgun round, fired at thirty feet, tore into the dogs with a
devastating effect, killing three and injuring half of the rest of the pack.
The survivors, including the wounded, turned tail and scampered, howling, down
a side passage and vanished behind a length of tapestry that concealed a small
door.
"Ace on the line, Doc," Ryan called as they hurried on.
JAK HAD HESITATED a moment as he heard the thunderous boom of Doc's blaster
and the barking of the dogs. But after the shot the noise faded quickly into
stillness, and he ran on.
He was only a few paces now from the half-open door into the collection.
SHARPE HAD DRAGGED Emma into the middle of the room, beside the big glass case
with its strange desert landscape. A trail of blood smeared along the floor,
as he pulled her by the feet, head scraping along the concrete, most of it
seeming to spill from her sagging, open mouth.
"Playing dead on me, doomie? We know how to deal with that, don't we? Oh, yes,
my precious."
He let go of her feet and knelt astride Emma, hands gripping her throat,
tightening.
"Wake up, little doomie. Wake up. Don't play sound asleep." He started to
giggle, squeezing tighter.
"Can't see your silver tongue. Looks big and purple to me, doomie. Oh, no. Oh,
no. It was my tongue that went silver. You sank What was it?"
The golden eyes were wide open, protruding from the dark, swollen sockets,
staring sightlessly over
Sharpe's shoulder. Blood still poured between her purpled lips.
The body shuddered as though possessed by a violent ague, then went completely
limp.
The baron continued to squeeze at the slender neck for several seconds, then
he stopped and sat back on the body, his face puzzled. "Doomie's can't die,"
he whispered.
He stood and kicked at the corpse, shaking his head when there was no
resistance, wiping his hands down the front of his white robe, staring at the
crimson smears. He looked at the dead woman, a small ocean of
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matting her black hair.
"Dead?" he said in a loud conversational voice. "Drowned in an ocean of
crimson?"
JAK HAD OPENED THE DOOR silently, hearing strange grunting sounds from one of
the farther rooms, then a silence.
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"Dead? Drowned in an ocean of crimson?" The voice was unmistakably that of
Baron Sean Sharpe.
Jak tiptoed onward, seeing a single shadow, motionless, thrown on the wall of
the room that he was in, coming through the door of the chamber that he
remembered held the bizarre mutie creature that lived deep beneath the surface
of the pale sand in its cage.
"So? What the fuck do I care?" It was Baron Sharpe, but who was he talking to?
"Plenty of doomies on the beach. And fish in the ocean. Ocean of crimson.
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