Chapter 6.2: Sacrifice (continued)
“Get up, loverboy, you’ve got a date with destiny.”
Dead Boy grunts as a hard kick jabs him in the ribs. He refuses to open his eyes though. He won’t give Katana that respect. Not just yet.
“I said, get up!” Katana delivers another kick hard enough to rattle his spine.
Dead Boy rolls over with a groan so he doesn’t have to look her in the eye. He half rises to his knees and spits blood on her rubber-toed sneakers and growls, “Took ya long enough.”
She kicks him in the chin, sending him flying to the ground again. A cackle of maniacal laughter echoes around him from both sides, like a pack of hyenas he’d once seen in an old world documentary.
He opens his eyes and looks around warily. Katana is standing above him with hands on hips—no need for magic swords now that her quarry is all but incapacitated. Three men are standing behind her with makeshift clubs in their hands. And even more disconcerting, a pair of twin teenage boys are sitting on their haunches on either side of Dead Boy, with tongues lolling crazily out of their drooling mouths like starving dogs on a hot day.
All have frost-covered eyes.
Dead Boy stares at Katana defiantly. “If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with already.”
“Oh, you’d like this to end so easily, wouldn’t you?” Katana scowls and spits back at Dead Boy, catching him on the shoulder. “As much as I would love to finish you off, this fight is over,” she says through gritted teeth, “now get up. You’re coming with us.”
He has no choice but to comply, which is harder said than done considering the amount of pain his body is in. His left knee flat-out buckles after his first attempt. Two of the armed thugs step forward to yank him roughly to his feet, and once he’s steadied his wobbly legs, he feels he can perhaps walk unassisted—if only very slowly. Regardless, the thugs keep a firm grip on both elbows and start dragging him forward far too quickly for him to keep up.
Heading away from the blue light, everything is almost pitch black. A very faint light filters down through the murky fog above, just enough to see the completely featureless barren landscape of the lakebed. It’s giving us more light than it gave me on my way down here, Dead Boy thinks, then he realizes out loud, “Wait, how do we even know which direction to go?”
“We follow the Hounds!” Katana says. She points at the twins, who are scrambling around on all fours, their faces low to the ground, sniffing like dogs. Then with a pair of blood-curdling howls that sound nothing like real wolves but are terrifying nonetheless, they both take off in the same direction.
The troop marches forward, Dead Boy half-walking, half being dragged along. They are led by ‘the Hounds’, who constantly scamper ahead on their hands and feet in wide circles, staying just barely visible in the dim light.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
On and on they walk. Nobody says anything to him or each other, which is fine by Dead Boy. He doesn’t feel much like talking to Katana. He’s not even sure she’s human anyway. What kind of person has frozen eyes, grows ice from their hands?
It’s probably just some trick by the wraiths, Dead Boy thinks with a wry sigh. When we get out of here, she’ll probably grow tentacles out of her ass and strangle me to death or something.
Eventually, the ground starts sloping upward, and they begin to pass the ice spikes jutting from the ground. He wonders if he can break off one of the smaller spikes, use it as a weapon, but what would be the point? The lake would probably just dump him back down to the bottom again as punishment, and he’s so tired of being victimized by this brutal environment.
At least the lake seems to be letting them walk out of here without harrassment, he realizes as he looks around in wonder. And it’s true. On his way down here, everything was all crazy geometry and odd-angled danger at every second. And now? The ascent up the lake’s sloping side is so uneventful, it would be downright boring if not for his struggling, aching muscles. At least he’s still partly being dragged out of here, which makes the climb significantly easier.
He thinks of his family as he climbs. About his good friends topside, Raz and Carlita, and about Soda and the other great friends he’d made down in the Crypts. Jamar.
I’ll never see any of them again, he admits to himself. This is the end of the road. I’m done for.
After some time, the slope grows even steeper, making it impossible for Dead Boy to continue forward without the use of his hands. Without hesitation, one of Dead Boy’s escorts slings him over his back. He rides the rest of the way clinging desperately to the man’s shoulders—the slope turns into a veritable cliff for the last twenty yards—and then they are clear and Dead Boy’s on his feet once again. He breathes a sigh of relief as they walk through Lake Merced’s waterless shallows, grateful to be alive in the cold misty air instead of the heavy, unnatural fog that had filled his lungs down below.
But his breath catches in his throat as he sees what they are walking toward. Before them, rising majestically up out of the white fog, is the ice giant looking larger than ever before. As the Hounds howl in triumph, the massive giant turns its gigantic bulk and waves one enormous fist in the air.
Dead Boy cringes, certain the giant is going to pummel him. Unable to bear being splattered unawares, he glances anxiously upward and screams when he sees that fist actually is hurtling down toward him, coming straight at his face with unfurling fingers that threaten to squash him between thumb and index like a cockroach being ground down for protein.
Dead Boy tries to run, but he is still pinned between two thugs holding him tightly by the elbows. There is a brief moment when the men suddenly let go before the giant ice hand scoops him up and hoists him high into the air in one swift motion.
Up, up he soars, at least three stories high, held in the palm of the ice giant’s massive hand. He realizes with confusion that the fingers are not squeezing him in the slightest—in fact, it’d been almost gentle when it picked him up.
And then, the hand is swooping in toward the giant’s face. Or what would be its face, Dead Boy supposes—up close, the small boulder of ice that composes the giant’s head is as featureless as it’d looked from the ground. Dead Boy sits mutely on the giant’s palm, staring blankly back at this thing with no eyes.
Except, now there are two eyes. Or rather, two small holes in the ice that rapidly crumble, creating a single larger crater that wipes away the giant’s face completely as the ice melts and molds away to reveal a figure standing within.
A person that Dead Boy knows all too well.
“Hi Del,” Jamar says, flashing his familiar wide smile under foreign frosted eyes. “Welcome to the family.”
###