“Is he not beautiful?” she cried. “Ismy son not beautiful, as fair as the summer sun?”

These were her last words.

Five

Her face didn’t freeze, exactly, but stilled.Her cheeks and brow and throat, flushed dark with the exertions of childbirthonly a moment before, faded to the waxy whiteness of orchid petals. Her shiningeyes grew still and fixed in their sockets. And suddenly it was as if Susannahwere looking not at a woman lying on a bed but the drawing of awoman. An extraordinarily good one, but still something that had been createdon paper with strokes of charcoal and a few pale colors.

Susannah remembered how she had returned tothe Plaza–Park Hyatt Hotel after her first visit to the allure of CastleDiscordia, and how she’d come here to Fedic after her last palaver with Mia, inthe shelter of the merlon. How the sky and the castle and the very stone of themerlon had torn open. And then, as if her thought had caused it, Mia’s face wasripped apart from hairline to chin. Her fixed and dulling eyes fell crookedlyaway to either side. Her lips split into a crazy double twin-grin. And itwasn’t blood that poured out of that widening fissure in her face but astale-smelling white powder. Susannah had a fragmented memory of T.S. Eliot

(hollow men stuffed men headpiece filledwith straw)

and Lewis Carroll

(why you’re nothing but a pack of cards)

before Mia’s dan-tete raised itsunspeakable head from its first meal. Its blood-smeared mouth opened and ithoisted itself, lower legs scrabbling for purchase on its mother’s deflatingbelly, upper ones almost seeming to shadowbox at Susannah.

It squealed with triumph, and if it had atthat moment chosen to attack the other woman who had given it nurture, SusannahDean would surely have died next to Mia. Instead, it returned to the deflatedsac of breast from which it had taken its first suck, and tore it off. The soundof its chewing was wet and loose. A moment later it burrowed into the hole ithad made, the white human face disappearing while Mia’s was obliterated by thedust boiling out of her deflating head. There was a harsh, almost industrialsucking sound and Susannah thought, It’s taking all the moisture out of her,all the moisture that’s left. And look at it! Look at it swell! Like a leech ona horse’s neck!

Just then a ridiculously Englishvoice—it was the plummy intonation of the lifelong gentleman’s gentleman—said:“Pardon me, sirs, but will you be wanting this incubator after all? For thesituation seems to have altered somewhat, if you don’t mind my saying.”

It broke Susannah’s paralysis. She pushedherself upward with one hand and seized Scowther’s automatic pistol with theother. She yanked, but the gun was strapped across the butt and wouldn’t comefree. Her questing index finger found the little sliding knob that was thesafety and pushed it. She turned the gun, holster and all, toward Scowther’sribcage.

“What the dev—” he began, and thenshe pulled the trigger with her middle finger, at the same time yanking back onthe shoulder-rig with all her force. The straps binding the holster toScowther’s body held, but the thinner one holding the automatic in placesnapped, and as Scowther fell sideways, trying to look down at the smokingblack hole in his white lab-coat, Susannah took full possession of his gun. Sheshot Straw and the vampire beside him, the one with the electric sword. For amoment the vampire was there, still staring at the spider-god that had lookedso much like a baby to begin with, and then its aura whiffed out. The thing’sflesh went with it. For a moment there was nothing where it had been but anempty shirt tucked into an empty pair of bluejeans. Then the clothes collapsed.

“Kill her!” Sayre screamed, reachingfor his own gun. “Kill that bitch!”

Susannah rolled away from the spidercrouched on the body of its rapidly deflating mother, raking at the helmet shewas wearing even as she tumbled off the side of the bed. There was a moment ofexcruciating pain when she thought it wasn’t going to come away and then shehit the floor, free of it. It hung over the side of the bed, fringed with herhair. The spider-thing, momentarily pulled off its roost when its mother’s bodyjerked, chittered angrily.

Susannah rolled beneath the bed as a seriesof gunshots went off above her. She heard a loud SPROINK as one of theslugs hit a spring. She saw the rathead nurse’s feet and hairy lower legs andput a bullet into one of her knees. The nurse gave a scream, turned, and beganto limp away, squalling.

Sayre leaned forward, pointing the gun atthe makeshift double bed just beyond Mia’s deflating body. There were alreadythree smoking, smoldering holes in the groundsheet. Before he could add afourth, one of the spider’s legs caressed his cheek, tearing open the mask hewore and revealing the hairy cheek beneath. Sayre recoiled, crying out. Thespider turned to him and made a mewling noise. The white thing high on itsback—a node with a human face—glared, as if to warn Sayre away fromits meal. Then it turned back to the woman, who was really not recognizable asa woman any longer; she looked like the ruins of some incredibly ancient mummywhich had now turned to rags and powder.

“I say, this is a bit confusing,”the robot with the incubator remarked. “Shall I retire? Perhaps I might returnwhen matters have clarified somewhat.”

Susannah reversed direction, rolling outfrom beneath the bed. She saw that two of the low men had taken to their heels.Jey, the hawkman, didn’t seem to be able to make up his mind. Stay or go?Susannah made it up for him, putting a single shot into the sleek brown head.Blood and feathers flew.

Susannah got up as well as she could, grippingthe side of the bed for balance, holding Scowther’s gun out in front of her.She had gotten four. The rathead nurse and one other had run. Sayre had droppedhis gun and was trying to hide behind the robot with the incubator.

Susannah shot the two remaining vampiresand the low man with the bulldog face. That one—Haber—hadn’tforgotten Susannah; he’d been holding his ground and waiting for a clear shot.She got hers first and watched him fall backward with deep satisfaction. Haber,she thought, had been the most dangerous.

“Madam, I wonder if you could tellme—” began the robot, and Susannah put two quick shots into its steelface, darkening the blue electric eyes. This trick she had learned from Eddie.A gigantic siren immediately went off. Susannah felt that if she listened to itlong, she would be deafened.

“I HAVE BEEN BLINDED BY GUNFIRE!”the robot bellowed, still in its absurd would-you-like-another-

cup-of-tea-madam accent. “VISION ZERO, INEED HELP, CODE 7, I SAY, HELP!”

Sayre stepped away from it, hands heldhigh. Susannah couldn’t hear him over the siren and the robot’s blatting, butshe could read the words as they came off the bastard’s lips: I surrender,will you accept my parole?

She smiled at this amusing idea, unawarethat she smiled. It was without humor and without mercy and meant only onething: she wished she could get him to lick her stumps, as he had forced Mia tolick his boots. But there wasn’t time enough. He saw his doom in her grin andturned to run and Susannah shot him twice in the back of the head—oncefor Mia, once for Pere Callahan. Sayre’s skull shattered in a fury of blood andbrains. He grabbed the wall, scrabbled at a shelf loaded with equipment andsupplies, and then went down dead.

Susannah now took aim at the spider-god.The tiny white human head on its black and bristly back turned to look at her.The blue eyes, so uncannily like Roland’s, blazed.

No, you cannot! You must not! ForI am the King’s only son!

I can’t? she sent back, leveling theautomatic. Oh, sugar, you are just… so… WRONG!