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  It shook its head in amazement. “How could she be gone?”

  Emily smiled. “I guess you’re not quite so all-powerful after all, huh?”

  Now it glowered at her, its nostrils flaring again. “You must not mock me.”

  Emily laughed harder than ever. Great, heaving belly laughs. So immense was her amusement that she was unable to speak for a time, even as the creature screamed and raged at her, demanding her submission. It wasn’t because her fear had deserted her. Quite the contrary. It was greater than ever. But the part of her that feared this thing was overpowered by a kind of mad fatalism. She was going to die. No matter what. She was going to suffer. A lot. No matter what. So she might as well laugh in the fucker’s face while she could.

  But the laughter abruptly ceased when it surged upright, seized her by the neck, and lifted her off her feet. Its face was inches from her own as it screamed at her: “I AM THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS AND LORD OF THE WASTELANDS! YOU WILL NOT MOCK ME!”

  A choked gargle issued from Emily’s constricted throat, a sound that could have been mistaken for a desperate plea for mercy—if not for the quivering grin still stretched across her sweat-shiny face. The thing screamed again, lifted her higher, flexed its arms, and threw her across the room. Emily was airborne for only an instant, but in that time she felt almost giddy, like a kid again, strapped into the wickedest roller coaster at Six Flags. Then she hit the wall, hard, and tumbled to the sofa below, knocking Zeke sideways as she bounced off the edge of the sofa and rolled to the floor. Her whole body sizzled with pain as her open mouth tasted dirty carpet. She sensed the thing coming at her, charging hard, and tensed, certain it was about to fling her across the room again.

  Instead, it upended the coffee table and tossed it aside. Then, gripping a handful of her hair, it hauled her upright and forced her into a kneeling position. With its other hand, it gripped its genitalia and pushed it toward her mouth. “You will submit to me. You will pleasure me. You will worship me.”

  And Emily laughed again. She raised her gaze to look right into the thing’s blazing eyes. “You’re so pathetic.”

  A momentary flicker of confusion shone in its eyes. Its mouth twitched. “You’ve lost your mind, haven’t you? You’re…” It frowned, seeming to strain for a word. “…you’re hysterical. I’ve broken you utterly.”

  Some of the giddiness drained out of Emily then, but she remained resolute. “Keep telling yourself that. It really is funny, though. For a self-styled ‘destroyer of worlds’, you’re not very impressive.”

  Its eyes went wide at that statement. “Empty words. This is nothing more than…bravado. You know you are doomed, so—”

  “So I’m telling the truth as I see it,” she cut him off. “You’ve got all these powers and unearthly abilities and look at the shabby use you’ve put them to. Yeah, you’re plenty scary, but from what I’ve seen, you’re little more than a garden variety pervert. You want to force yourself on me one more time?” She laughed disdainfully. “Go ahead. It means nothing. And what’ll you do when you’ve used me up? There’s no one left to terrorize. This world is dead.”

  It nodded. “And I killed it.”

  Emily shrugged. “Did you? My, but that’s interesting. You come here on some kind of inter-dimensional crusade or jihad, or whatthefuckever, kill damn near everybody on the planet, and other than rape you can’t think of anything to do with the last bitch standing. So ultimately everything you’ve done is meaningless.”

  It tightened its grip on her hair, eliciting a wince of pain. “I’m done listening to you, cunt. You are nothing. You are beneath me. And I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

  Emily started to retort, but it twisted her hair tighter still. “I said I’m done listening to you.“ For a moment its face contorted with rage, then it grinned so broadly the taut skin of its cheeks resembled half-moon-shaped peach wedges sliced with razor-precision. “But I’m not through debasing you. You imagine you can shame me into doing other than what I wish to do? Laughable.” It chuckled. “But just to prove to you that I’m not quite out of tricks, I think it’s time you were reacquainted with a mutual friend of ours.”

  Another pained wince turned into a frown, and Emily said, “What are you—”

  “He’s talking about me, sweetheart.”

  Emily’s mouth dropped open at the sound of that hated voice. She shook her head as a combination of horror and disbelief settled in her stomach like a lead weight. “No.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  The creature relinquished its hold on her hair and stepped away, allowing her to see Aaron emerge from the kitchen area. He grinned as he walked slowly toward her. The way the skin crinkled around the folds of flesh where his eyes used to be made her stomach flip. He started shedding his clothes as he neared her, undoing the buttons of his shirt slowly, as if performing a striptease. His shirt fell away from his torso and dropped to the floor. Then he undid the button of his khaki trousers and slid the zipper down. He barely broke stride as he stepped out of the pants and kept coming toward her. She had a weird feeling of being ogled, as if he could see her even without his eyes.

  “Oh, he can see you. As clearly as you can see him.” The creature laughed. “I’ve enhanced the perceptive abilities of his brain in preparation for this special moment. He no longer needs eyes.”

  Emily shook her head again. “That’s crazy. That can’t be.”

  Aaron licked his lips. “But it is.”

  Emily felt bile in her throat as she watched Aaron’s organ grow hard as he came closer to her. A whimper emerged through clenched teeth. The mad laughter of moments ago seemed as far away as the happiness she’d once known with Warren Hatcher. “Please…please don’t do this.”

  Aaron laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Emily. Mind you, I don’t mind hearing you beg. It’s music to my fucking ears, matter of fact. But it’s pointless. You’re about to get what’s been coming to you for a long time and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  Then he was standing right in front of her, his stiff cock pointing at the top of her head like a divining rod.

  Emily closed her eyes.

  Aaron slapped her. “Look at me!” He laughed again. “Hah! Remember when you said that to me, bitch?”

  Emily’s eyes fluttered open and she looked up at Aaron through a veil of tears. “You don’t have to do this, Aaron. There’s got to be some spark of humanity left somewhere inside you. This…thing killed the rest of our kind, Aaron. It destroyed our world. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  Aaron nodded. He licked his lips again. “It does, Emily. It means I owe this motherfucker a debt of eternal gratitude. Our race needed wiping out, in my opinion. And, hell, he did me the favor of leaving you alive. You’re all I need of the human race.” He made a low moan of pleasure. “And you’ll be happy to know I don’t plan to kill you. You’re gonna live out the rest of your natural life as my slave. Starting now.”

  Emily shook her head again. “No.” But there was little conviction left in her voice now.

  The creature said, “Take her now.”

  And so Aaron did as his new master bade.

  Flash was pretty far along Salvation Road now. So far there was no evidence of unusual activity anywhere. There was no activity of any sort, unusual or otherwise. This was a dead place. He was now passing through what had been the trendy Hillsboro Village stretch of 21st Ave. To his left and right were an array of once-posh cafes and boutiques.

  Here and there were the jagged black slashes in the fabric of reality, but he wasn’t afraid of them now; they looked as dead as the world around them. As he continued on down the road and surveyed his surroundings, he found it hard to believe anything momentous could occur here.

  Yet he believed everything the old man had told him. Somewhere along Salvation Road lurked a creature which, if it wasn’t the ultimate evil in all of the multiple planes of existence, it was pretty close.

  And, Flash mused with a wry,
tired grin. It’s my job to defeat it. It’s a crazy old world, ain’t it?

  Flash was thinking about the odd scheme outlined by the old man last night when he moved around the hulk of a rusting box truck and saw a beautiful woman appear in the distance. He couldn’t quite make out her face yet, but he could tell she was beautiful by the outline of her slim yet shapely body and by the way she moved, somehow graceful even in the obvious throes of panic. She moved like a gazelle streaking across an African plain.

  She hadn’t seen him yet. And Flash didn’t want to spook her, so he moved back behind the box truck and peered around a flap of rusted metal to observe her approach. He stood stock-still, listening for her approach. For maybe thirty seconds, there was only more of that same silence and dead stillness. Then he heard the first sound of bare flesh slapping against pavement, followed by the huff of labored breathing. Flash waited a little longer, standing still until he was sure the woman was no more than twenty feet or so away.

  Then he stepped back outside and into her path. She came hurtling at him, too fast to see the new obstacle in her way, and Flash braced himself for impact. She ran straight into his open arms, shrieked, and they both went tumbling to the ground. Flash landed painfully on his back, absorbing the worst of the impact. The woman’s wide, bugged-out eyes stared crazily at him, then she tried to pull away.

  And Flash said, “I’m not here to hurt you, Jasmine.”

  The use of her name made the woman freeze. She gaped at him, her mouth hanging open, making her look like an awestruck child watching a Fourth of July fireworks display.

  Flash sighed and sat up, wincing at the way his back suddenly ached. “I’m here to help.”

  Jasmine shook her head. “How did you know my name?”

  “I didn’t until just now. It’s weird. The old man told me I’d know your name, that it’d just come to me, and goddamned if he wasn’t right.”

  Jasmine kept on shaking her head. “You sound crazy.”

  Flash smiled. “I know. It can’t be helped, really. But I’m not crazy. And I meant what I said. I’m here to help. Somewhere along this road is a place, probably an apartment, where a very bad entity, a kind of demon or dark god from another world, is doing a very bad thing. I’m supposed to defeat it. And I have a notion you know where this thing is.”

  Jasmine shook her head yet again. “Maybe I do. But you can’t make me go back there.”

  Flash’s expression became more solemn. “I don’t intend to, Jasmine. I just need you to point the way. I’ll take care of the rest myself.”

  Jasmine laughed harshly, a humorless, despairing sound. “You really are crazy. Nothing can beat that thing. I shouldn’t tell you where to go. It’d be suicide.”

  Flash gripped her wrist. Hard, making her share his sense of urgency. “Tell me.”

  Jasmine tried to twist free of his grip, but he held fast to her. So she surrendered, but her eyes were aglow with a defiant intensity. “Fine. I’ll send you to your death. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Tell me,” Flash said again.

  So she told him where to find the dark thing.

  Aaron came almost instantly. When he was through bucking against her, he pulled out of her and stood up, throwing his fists exultantly into the air. He let out a child-like yell and jumped up and down. Unable to bear the sight of the vile man’s triumph, Emily rolled onto her side and sobbed silently into the hanging sofa skirt. It was so monumentally unfair and wrong. She’d fought so hard to fend the sick bastard off in their previous encounters, had thought him vanquished forever after leaving him alone and sightless in that apartment. But now, through some miracle of dark magic, he was having the last laugh. Quite literally, so it seemed. She should’ve bashed his brains out when she’d had the chance, she reflected bitterly.

  Emily remained on her side, her face hidden, until the creature said, “Look at us, Emily.”

  A command. Her instinct was to resist, but she felt the first pinprick spot of warmth touch her brain and decided resistance was futile. She rolled onto her back and stared up in mute horror at the two naked monsters. The tableau was at once absurd and utterly terrifying, like some drug-induced hallucinogenic vision. A leering, waking, psychedelic nightmare.

  Aaron grinned and said, “I wish I had a camera. She looks so hot all beaten up, sweaty, and broken like that.”

  The creature said, “I tire of you.”

  Aaron was still grinning when he said, “What?”

  His eyeless gaze was still riveted to Emily’s chest. He never saw Rothron reaching for his back. But he flinched when he felt fingers press against his spine. Then his mouth popped open and his limbs jerked spasmodically. He shook his head back and forth and appeared to be trying to scream. The creature turned Aaron’s body sideways so Emily could see what was happening to him. Her lips curled in disgust at the sight of the creature’s hand pushing through the flesh of Aaron’s back, sliding in as easily as a hand pressing through cookie dough.

  It smiled at her and spoke in an incongruously conversational tone. “See the way he’s twitching? I have my hand wrapped around his spine. In a moment I’ll tear it out of his body and leave him senseless and dying on the floor.”

  Emily sat up. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She let out a big breath and said, “Okay.”

  The thing’s smile widened. “That’s it? Just ‘okay’? Where’s your humanity, Emily? Surely you must have some small spark of it somewhere way down at the bottom of your broken soul. Right?”

  Emily’s mouth was a tight, grim line. “No. I don’t think I do.”

  The thing winked. “Good.”

  Then it finished the job on Aaron, doing exactly as it had promised. Emily watched stone-faced as the grisly mess that was all that was left of Aaron dropped to the floor. The creature, grinning, held the extricated spine in its hand like some kind of bloody trophy.

  “Am I your hero now, Emily?” it asked in a smooth, quietly insinuating voice. “Am I your knight in bloody armor? After all, I just vanquished your most hated enemy.”

  Emily’s face remained expressionless as she said, “No. You haven’t.”

  The creature’s face exhibited mock offense. It slapped its free hand against its chest. “No!” Then it shook its head and frowned. “You’ve cut me to the quick, Emily.”

  “I’d like to cut you,” she said, her voice flat, uninflected. “I’d cut your heart right out.”

  The thing’s expression took on a quizzical cast. “Would you really, Emily? Because surely you know that in doing so you’d be killing your long lost love as well.” It laughed at the obvious flicker of doubt that crossed her face. “Oh, it’s true. He’s still very much in here with me. And I could return him to you if I wished.”

  “Shut up.” Emily’s face hardened again. “You’re lying. You’re just taunting me.”

  The creature shook its head. “I am not.”

  It knelt to pick up the discarded kitchen knife.

  Emily flinched and braced her palms on the carpet, preparing to scoot backward.

  “Relax.” The thing’s voice remained low, calm, almost soothing. “I’m not going to hurt you. Not this time. In fact, I am giving you the opportunity you’ve desired.”

  It flipped the knife around, holding it by the blade, proffering it to her.

  “Take it.”

  Emily bit her lip. Her gaze flicked from the knife to Warren’s face and back again. She hesitated only a moment longer before snatching the knife from its hand. Gripping it tightly in her fist, she surged to her feet, snarled, and raised the blade high over her head. The creature just stood there smiling, with its chest thrust forward in invitation.

  Emily cursed herself for hesitating, but she couldn’t help it. She had to know something before slamming the blade into Warren’s body. “Why are you doing this? Why would you do all you’ve done then let me kill you so easily?” She trembled and helpless tears leaked from her eyes.
“You’re just fucking with my head again, aren’t you?”

  The thing’s expression was very solemn. It exuded a degree of sincerity so convincing Emily almost bought it. The eyes lacked that maniacal fire she’d become used to and now had a soulful look that reminded her painfully of Warren. “You nailed it earlier, Emily. Except for you, there’s nothing left in this world. Without lands to conquer and living things to subjugate, my existence is an empty, joyless thing. I’m asking you to kill me as an act of mercy. If not for me, then for Warren.”

  Emily’s hand was still high over her head, but it was shaking badly. “Why won’t you kill yourself, then?” She sniffled as more tears coursed down her face. “Leave Warren’s body and…and…”

  It smiled again, almost warmly. “Ah, there’s the rub. I can only be killed in a corporeal form. Therefore, if you wish me dead, you must also kill your lover. Remember, I’m responsible for the deaths of billions. Surely you can make this sacrifice to avenge all those lost souls.”

  Until that moment Emily had believed her heart to be a dead thing, a cold lump devoid of human feeling, but now she knew she’d been wrong. It was as alive as it’d ever been, just weary and battered. And now she could feel that still-pulsing vitality too painfully as she considered Warren Hatcher and the way the love they’d once shared had shaped their lives. She loved him still, and could never love another so intensely. Though much pain had stemmed from their relationship, she believed a life in which they’d never crossed paths would’ve been a lesser life, a duller, colorless existence. She knew Warren would say the same. Accepting this was easy. What wasn’t easy was the way thinking about it made her not-dead-after-all heart feel like it was breaking all over again—and for the last time.

  Her eyes narrowed to glistening slits as her voice emerged in a terse whisper: “Yes. I can make this sacrifice.”

  The creature smiled again. It thrust its chest forward further still, spread its arms in a Christ-like crucifixion pose, and closed its eyes. “I await your vengeance and mercy, Emily.”