“I am aware of that,” Stitch said, moving a bit closer to the ornate throne upon which the Fthaggua leader sat.
“Come no closer!” the demon bellowed, maggots squirming at the corners of its horrible mouth.
“I have come only to return what I believe is yours,” Stitch announced as he removed the bag from his shoulder.
The leader squinted its yellow eyes as Stitch unzipped the bag. Reaching inside, he hauled out the burnt and blackened remains of the Fthaggua assassin.
“Am I wrong in assuming that this is yours?” Stitch asked, a cruel smile starting at the corner of his mouth. He tossed the charred remains at the foot of the leader’s throne, the dead Fthaggua assassin breaking into a hundred pieces.
The leader bolted up from his chair, the sudden movement spilling the bowl of extra-large maggots and sauce onto the floor.
“Guards!” he screamed at the top of his demonic lungs. “To me . . . guards!”
Stitch remained perfectly calm, simply looking about the large chamber.
There were no guards charging into the room at their master’s command. There was only silence, except for the screams of the Fthaggua leader.
“It seems that your security is a bit lax,” the large man said with an ominous chuckle.
Six demon bodies suddenly flew from the outskirts of the grand chamber, landing on the floor behind him.
The leader looked terrified, backing up until his legs struck his throne. He sat down heavily.
“Laying down on the job, so to speak,” Stitch said, moving closer to the leader.
Stitch could sense the others now, sauntering from the darkness of the room: Emily, Bogey, Dez, and the newest addition to their group . . . What was it she liked to be called? Packman. That was it.
There was something about her, something that had told him she should be a part of this. Stitch didn’t like to ignore these feelings, as they were usually something to be listened to.
Bogey had transported the others here earlier, and they had done their jobs well.
“You will all suffer for this!” the leader raged, jumping up from his throne. His bare belly began to glow a fiery red. It wouldn’t be long before he exploded, filling the chamber with living fire.
Stitch wasn’t about to let that happen.
The big man moved with incredible speed, reaching out and wrapping his hand tightly around the Fthaggua leader’s throat.
“I’d stop that if I were you,” the patchwork man whispered menacingly, squeezing with all his might.
The leader struggled in his grasp, his yellow eyes rolling back as he fought to remain conscious. Slowly the fiery glow began to fade, and the swelling in the demon’s stomach began to go down.
“That’s it,” Stitch said, plopping the demon’s butt back onto its throne. “No need to blow yourself up on our account.”
“Though I wouldn’t mind seeing it,” Bogey called out from behind him. Stitch was about to turn around and give him a look, but decided, What’s the use?
The demon’s head lolled as he tried to remain conscious.
“We’re just going ask you a few questions and then we’ll be on our way.”
The demon stared defiantly as the others came to stand beside him.
“Shall we begin?” Stitch asked.
They had made their way into another gigantic chamber.
The smell inside this particular section was even more disgusting than the others, the ground wet and spongy beneath his feet.
“It smells horrible in here,” Bram said, bringing a hand to his mouth as he and Lita continued to follow the soldiers loyal to the queen across the soft, unstable surface.
“What would you expect?” Lita asked offhandedly. “We’re inside his stomach.”
Bram stopped as thought he’d struck a wall. “Inside what?”
Lita turned slightly, not slowing down. “His stomach,” she repeated. “We’re inside Ureichuras the Monstrous’s stomach.”
“Wait a minute . . . we’re inside somebody’s stomach right now?” Bram asked, not really wanting the question confirmed.
“Yes, now come along. The Shriekhounds are probably already here and attempting to sniff us out. Being inside this decaying corpse actually helps us, but our good fortune won’t last forever.”
Bram moved his pack to his other shoulder, running to catch up with the girl and the others.
“I’m walking around inside a giant dead body,” he said, trying to get used to the concept. “Why am I so surprised?”
“Ureichuras was the last of the species called the Guurand,” Lita started to explain. “The Guurand were at war with the Specter for centuries, but eventually they were all exterminated.”
“And this is the body of the last one to die?” Bram questioned, looking around the vast chamber with a whole new perspective.
She nodded. “Many believed that this was the first indication that the ascension was at hand . . . the discovery of your world and the treaty brought by your father were the next.”
The passage was beginning to narrow, and Bram didn’t even want to think about where they would be walking next.
“This ascension,” he asked, trying to distract himself from the obvious. “What does it mean?”
Lita became very serious, gazing ahead at the loyal servants who bore the burden of her mother, the queen.
“The Specter have always been a violent race,” she said, her voice tinged with shame. “As a people, we believed that this was our purpose: to conquer any and all that we encountered for the good of our kind. Our magick users continuously worked at breaking down the countless barriers that separated our world from what we believed was ours to conquer. But there were ancient teachings that spoke of a new age for the Specter—a time when we would give up our warrior ways and usher in a new age of peace.”
Bram lost his footing, almost falling into the soft muck that coated the floor of the passage. Lita’s hands were quick, catching him before he could go down.
“Thanks,” Bram said, a little embarrassed. “Wouldn’t want to land in that.” He looked down, wrinkling his nose in distaste. The smell was still really horrible.
“Our mother wanted to believe in those ancient prophecies,” Lita said, letting go of his arm. “Seeing them as a path to enlightenment. But others saw them as a path to weakness.”
“Barnabas,” Bram said.
“One of many, but the most powerful of the bunch,” she said. “His beliefs were that the Specter were not strong enough—that their next stage in evolution should make them the most dangerous force in all reality, and from what we have been told, he has found some sort of secret weapon to help him achieve this goal.”
“What kind of a weapon?” Bram asked.
“We’re not sure,” Lita said. “All we know is that it was powerful enough to turn my mother’s army against her, and to cause her to hide in the corpse of a giant like some carrion-eating . . .”
His sister’s anger was defused by sight of the soldiers ahead, stopping suddenly, gazing around the passage in which they now stood.
Bram remained silent, peering through the darkness, searching for signs that they had been found.
The Shriekhounds attacked en masse; exploding through the rotting, membranous walls of the dead giant’s digestive tract.
“Back!” Lita cried, directing the soldiers and their most precious package.
She drew a sword, standing her ground as the screaming creatures galloped toward her.
“Do you have another one of those?” Bram asked, taking a stand behind her.
“Half-breed,” a voice called to him.
Bram turned just in time to catch a sword as it was tossed his way.
“Don’t cut yourself in half,” one of the soldiers said, taking his stance in front of the queen’s unconscious form with his brethren.
“I’ll try not to embarrass you too badly,” he said to the warrior.
Bram bent his body forward, hefting the swo
rd in one hand, getting used to its weight. Not long ago, Stitch had demanded that he practice his swordplay, the two of them sparring whenever the opportunity arose, between averting world-endangering calamities, of course.
At this moment, he was glad his friend had insisted.
The Shriekhounds came to a stop, their blind faces moving around as they sniffed the air. It was as if they smelled something else in the air other than their prey.
“What do you think that’s all about?” Bram asked his sister.
“Not sure,” she said, eyes fixed to the pack of monsters before her. “Maybe they’re checking to see if there are more of us.”
“I can think of a couple of guys back home we could really use about now,” he said, making reference to his Network friends.
“But they’re not here, Brother,” Lita said, a steely resolve in her voice. “So it looks like it is totally up to us.”
“Looks that way,” Bram answered.
He was thinking of attacking first, but Lita beat him to it.
She let out a horrible scream, something that would have made him think twice about facing her in battle.
Inspired by the battle cry, he did the same, but it didn’t have quite the ferociousness that hers did. He was going to have to work on that.
The Shriekhounds were at first startled, jumping away from them as they attacked. But it wasn’t long before the monsters returned the favor, their clawed hands and feet reaching out for flesh to tear from bones.
“Don’t let them pass!” Lita cried, swinging the blade with devastating efficiency. “Remember, we are the first line of defense between these foul beasts and the queen.”
Bram was impressed. He had been trained for combat by some of the finest warriors on the planet, and from what he was witnessing it appeared that his half sister had had similar training.
The Shriekhounds were very animal like, stumbling and tripping over themselves to get to him and Lita in their bloodlust.
Bram had lost count of how many he had killed, and still they continued to come at him.
“How many of these things are there?” Bram asked, bringing his blade down on one of the grotesque things’ bald skulls, cutting it in two like a ripe melon.
“Barnabas is desperate to see our mother dead,” Lita answered breathlessly. She killed one of the beasts with a devastating blow through the shoulder, and then cleaved another’s head from its body. “He’s probably sent every one he had in his breeding pens.”
For a moment Bram thought there might have been a light at the end of the tunnel. The remaining Shriekhounds, their numbers severely diminished, were holding back, no longer attacking.
“This is good,” Bram said, taking the moment to catch his breath.
“No it’s not,” Lita answered. “They don’t do things like this . . .”
The corridor was suddenly filled with the cries of reinforcements, their overwhelming presence like a wave of evil flooding down the rotting passage at them.
“We have to retreat,” Bram said to Lita, and then to the soldiers.
The armored warriors held their ground, refusing to listen.
“Listen to me,” Bram cried. “We have to move back or we’re dead for sure.”
The Specter soldiers looked to Lita, who struggled with Bram’s words.
“He’s right,” she said. “We have to go back.”
The soldiers acted at once, picking up the queen’s stretcher and carrying her back the way they had come.
The passage was too tight for the number of Shriekhounds pouring down it, and their foul bodies became wedged as they struggled to reach them.
Bram and Lita followed the soldiers, stopping every so often to dispatch a beast that managed to free itself from the logjam of Shriekhound bodies.
They were in the stomach again, searching for a place to make their stand against their foes’ overwhelming numbers.
Bram wracked his brain, trying desperately to remember something—anything—that they could use in their defense. But no matter what he thought of, it just wasn’t enough.
The Specter soldiers hid the queen behind what looked like large, cancerous growths, and joined Bram and Lita.
They could hear the Shriekhounds bounding down the fleshy tunnel toward them and prepared for the horror that was to come. The soldiers raised their weapons, staring unblinkingly into the passage—looking the inevitable in the eye.
They had to be afraid, but they didn’t show it.
Bram wished he could have been so brave.
The Shriekhounds flooded the chamber, their screams and cries of excitement nearly deafening in the confines of the dead giant’s stomach.
This is it, Bram thought, glancing quickly at his newfound sister. He was surprised to see that she was looking at him as well.
“Nice to have met you,” he said as he turned his gaze back to the shrieking wave coming at them.
“Likewise,” she responded. “It’s a shame that I wasted so much time hating you.”
If the current situation hadn’t been so dire, he would have taken a certain amount of comfort from her words, but now . . .
The Shriekhounds were upon them; maybe less than ten feet away. Bram braced himself, feeling his feet sink into the soft, spongy surface of the giant’s stomach.
At first he didn’t recognize the sound.
Multiple explosions like mini-thunderclaps filled the air, and he watched in shock as bursts of red appeared on the bodies of the Shriekhounds just before they fell dead to the ground.
More hounds stampeded into the room, stomping upon their dead, but it didn’t seem to matter.
The thunder continued, and more of the attacking monsters were torn up.
And suddenly Bram realized what he was hearing.
Gunfire.
Someone was firing guns at the attacking Shriek-hounds . . . but who?
The gunfire continued; staccato bursts of death that seemed as never ending as the Shriekhound hordes. Bram spun around, his eyes searching for the source of their salvation.
The figure emerged from deep within the giant’s stomach, weapons the likes of which Bram had never seen clutched in each of its hands.
And as strange as the weapons were, their rescuer was even stranger.
At first Bram thought his eyes were playing tricks, but the closer their gun-wielding savior got, he knew that wasn’t the case.
Their rescuer looked like a turtle, although this turtle was at least six feet tall, walked upright, and was a really good shot.
Bram watched him blast away at the Shriekhounds, a blazing weapon in each clawed hand, and when the guns were out of ammunition, the turtle would drop them to the floor, its arms temporarily disappearing inside the shell, only to emerge with another piece of armament ready to dispatch death.
The gunfire seemed to go on forever, and the bodies of the dead Shriekhounds piled up to block the entrance.
Bram’s ears had started to ring, a high-pitched whine nearly drowning out the other sounds in the chamber as the turtle’s guns finally went silent.
Lita and the Specter soldiers turned toward the strange creature that had saved them from certain death. From the way they glared at each other, though, Bram could already tell there were going to be problems.
“Boffa kill many, many Shriekhounds,” the turtle said, its voice loud, with a hint of an accent that strangely enough reminded him of Russian or one of the other Slavic countries.
Bram’s eyes grew wide as the shelled creature dropped its two smoldering guns and its arms disappeared inside its shell, emerging with two more weapons, only these were larger.
“And now he will add Specter to the pile.”
The Fthaggua leader nervously took a drink from a stone goblet by the side of his chair.
“I’m waiting,” Stitch growled, leaning his scarred face close to the demon’s and gripping the arms of its throne. “And I don’t like to wait . . . it makes me very . . .”
Stitch r
ipped the arms from the chair, one side and then the other.
“. . . impatient.”
The Fthaggua demon dropped its cup of fluid to the ground, its beady eyes glued to the ominous form of Stitch looming over him.
Using his crutches, Dez left the others to stand beside the patchwork man. “Do you want me to look around inside his head?” he asked.
The demon snarled, pointing a long, clawed finger. “You will stay out of my head!” it screeched.
Stitch dropped the chair arms and pushed his face even closer.
“Then tell us who hired one of your assassins to kill our leader,” Stitch growled. “Or I’ll tell him to take a walk through your head and to not be gentle.”
Dez noticed the creature’s beady eyes darting across to a table nearby. It wasn’t the first time that he noticed the beast looking over there. Leaning on his crutches, he turned to see what the Fthaggua was looking at.
“Perhaps a special arrangement could be worked out,” the leader said. “For a price I will reveal what you seek and—”
Stitch grabbed the demon by its throat, yanking it up from its seat.
“You actually think we’re going to pay to hear you talk?” he asked.
The demon choked, its scrawny legs pinwheeling in the air as it attempted to find solid ground.
“I think he’s waiting for something to happen,” Dez spoke up.
Stitch looked over. “What do you mean?”
Dez pointed with one of his crutches. “I caught him looking over there a couple of times.”
They all looked.
It was an hourglass-shaped device, although this one was filled with something that looked an awful lot like blood dripping from one compartment down into another.
“Cool,” Bogey said, walking over for a closer look.
“Look but don’t touch,” Emily warned the Mauthe Dhoog.
Stitch shook the demon like a rattle. “Is that it?” he asked. “Are you waiting for something or somebody . . . an appointment perhaps?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the Fthaggua croaked. “I’m just a businessman attempting to keep the spawn of my seed in viscera and . . .”
Bogey clumsily stumbled against the table, knocking the blood-filled hourglass from its perch to the floor where it shattered.