“When the hell did I become public enemy number one?” Kane muttered under his breath as the foremost members of the crowd rushed at him, their mismatched weapons raised. With a sigh of resignation, Kane began selecting targets and squeezing the trigger of the Sin Eater. Four perfectly placed rounds blew out the kneecaps of the nearest of the approaching crowd before they swarmed on Kane.
TO THE SIDE of the silo, Grant was having his own problems. He hurried along the alleyway between buildings toward the stone marker half buried in the dust. Two feet away, the hooded figure who had attacked them was lying on his back, limbs flailing like a bug where Grant’s shots had taken him down once more. Yet already the man seemed to be recovering. These cultists—“firewalkers” was one term that had been popularized among the Cerberus personnel—could miraculously change the density of their flesh in some way that Grant and his teammates had yet to fully comprehend. The trick required fierce concentration, and all of these firewalkers had to keep their minds still to reach the condition of stonelike flesh. One way to stop them retaining such a degree of meditation had been to use concentrated sound, which irritated the firewalkers so that they could not achieve proper concentration.
Grant shrugged out of his rucksack as he knelt by the stone block poking up out of the ground. Swiftly he undid the straps on the cloth backpack and reached inside, pulling out a metal pyramidal device of roughly one foot in height, its protective cloth sleeve dropping free and wrapping over itself as the wind dragged it a few feet across the ground. Grant ignored it, his attention fixed on the chrome pyramid itself. The metal was scuffed and marred from where it had been hurriedly stored, and Grant brushed dirt from its surface as he flipped down a control panel close to the base of the interphaser unit. Grant watched as the tiny display came to life, a series of lights flickering on in quick succession.
Suddenly, Grant saw movement from the corner of his eye and turned his head in time to see the robed man leap off the ground and spiral toward him like some vicious ballerino. Leaving the interphaser in place by the stone marker, Grant rolled aside, and the robed man’s kicking feet slapped against the ground where Grant’s hand had been just a second before.
From his crouched position on the ground, Grant swung the Copperhead up one-handed, the bullpup design ideal for such a move. But even as he depressed the trigger, his robed assailant shoved the muzzle aside with a violent flick of his wrist. Grant’s shots went wild, slamming against the grain silo and drilling through the brickwork with powdery little orange bursts of dried clay.
Then the robed man’s fist struck Grant across the jaw with the force of a thrown brick, and the huge ex-Magistrate blinked back hot tears as his vision blurred. Blindly, Grant lashed out with his left palm, slapping the robed figure away with a mighty sweep of his limb. Grant felt more than saw the figure fall from him, heard as he struck against something hard with the sound of breaking wood.
Wiping a hand across his eyes, Grant pushed himself to his feet, bringing the Copperhead to bear once more as he searched for his target. Before Grant could react, the robed figure came leaping out of the shadows of the lean-to, barreling into the ex-Mag like a cannonball. The pair of combatants crashed back to the ground once more, and Grant’s breath was driven out of him in a loud gasp. To the side of his head, Grant saw the flickering lights of the interphaser as it tried to lock on to the parallax point. Come on, good buddy, he thought, let’s make us a door out of here, already.
Then the robed figure’s hands clamped around Grant’s throat, exerting tremendous pressure as he attempted to snap the ex-Mag’s neck.
KANE FOUND HIMSELF struggling under the pressure of the mob, a heavy man clinging to his back and weighing him down. It reminded him of the worst moments of the obligatory Pit patrol, back in his days as a Cobaltville Magistrate. Each time he shoved one person aside, another rushed to take his place, kicking and clawing at him—ineffective against his shadow suit but still enough to wear him down so he couldn’t get back to the interphaser. With one determined shove, Kane wrenched the man from his back, tossing him over one shoulder in an urgent flexing of muscles. The heavyset man rolled away across the ground, tumbling over and over until he splashed into the shallow stream.
Before Kane could extricate himself from the angry mob, he felt someone clutch at his Sin Eater, a pair of hands yanking at his right arm. He pulled his hand free, then swung the blaster around to shoot his attacker. Kane’s finger depressed the guardless trigger, but he whipped the pistol aside with just a fraction of an inch to spare. His attacker—attackers, in fact—were two children, a blond-haired boy and his sister, the elder of them perhaps eight years old.
Kane’s bullets went wide, blasting harmlessly into the sky as he cursed under his breath. Bad enough that the adults had become indoctrinated into this cult of stone worship, but Kane wouldn’t forgive himself if he went and shot an indoctrinated child.
With the echo of his wasted shots still fresh in his ears, Kane crashed forward as someone tackled him from behind, sacking him like a quarterback. Again Kane hadn’t noticed the attacker coming at him from his left; he had somehow been blindsided. Kane flailed for several steps before slamming into the ground with bone-shaking force. And suddenly he was breathing nothing but water, the clear stream washing into his mouth and nose. Kane choked as someone slammed him with a savage punch to the back of his head.
Just a few steps away, Rosalia spun on her heel as a young woman came at her, slashing something at her face. It was the same woman whom Grant had noticed on their walk through the village, thirty-something years old with a weather tan to her features. Rosalia dipped out of reach as the woman slashed at her, recognizing the nine-inch knitting needles in the woman’s hands.
Off to Rosalia’s left side, a man was rushing at her with a cosh in his hand, raising it overhead to bring down on her head. There was a blur of motion, and something leaped at the man. When Rosalia looked again she saw her faithful dog had clamped its jaws around the man’s arm, wrenching him around and around as it snarled angrily.
Rosalia ducked again as the woman with the knitting needles whipped one of them at her face. Then Rosalia’s left leg stretched out and whipped back in a blur, catching the other woman’s ankle and tripping her off balance. The woman cried out as she slammed against the ground, but Rosalia was already moving, turning back toward the alleyway beside the silo.
“Come on, you slow poke,” she snapped at her dog as she rushed toward where Grant had set up the interphaser. “¡Vamanos!”
As she ran down the alleyway with her scruffy- looking dog at her heels, Rosalia saw Grant struggling beneath the pressure that the robed figure was exerting on his throat. Grant was urgently raising the Copperhead, but he was unable to bring it around enough.
In a blur of movement Rosalia brought the fingers of her left hand up to her lips and blew, unleashing a piercing whistle that caused her dog to whine even as she drew her right arm behind her in a graceful arc.
The robed figure turned at the noise, and Rosalia saw his lips were pulled back in an animal snarl. The knife shot from Rosalia’s right hand like a dart, cutting through the air and embedding itself beneath the robed figure’s hood. The robed man cried out in a splutter of pain, falling away from Grant as he reached for the thing embedded in his face.
As his assailant’s hood fell back, Grant saw that Rosalia’s knife had pierced his left eyeball, burying its point there to an inch or more of its shining length. “Nice aim,” Grant acknowledged as he rolled out from under the hooded man.
“There’s always a chink in an opponent’s armor,” Rosalia said, “if you know where to look.”
Kane had done something similar to this before, using the piercing noise of a warning alarm
