Road Trip To Hell

The Best Defense...

Cover: Jason and Sebastian bursting through a door with weapons drawn.

"o... you're sure this will work?"

"Oh, I assure you, Mr. Jaspers,"  said the tall, sharply-dressed man behind the corner.    "All of our items are guaranteed to satisfy."

Mr. Payne handed his client the change... amounting to $752.32, all in large bills neatly arranged in the palm of his hand.   The money sat nestled among his thin his fingers like a speck of food in a bear trap.    Thomas Jaspers took the money almost as an afterthought.  He already HAD what he wanted.

He clutched the tiny, silk-lined box in his hand and leered wondrously at the contents:  Two platinum rings.   The outer surfaces were plain and unadorned, but the insides were engraved with delicate symbols carved into the metal.   The symbols were different for each ring, and one ring was larger than the other.    One was sized for a man's finger... the other, for a woman's.

"S-So..."  Jaspers stuttered as he stuffed his change into his pocket without counting it.   "She wears this... and I wear the other one... and I'll know?   I'll know if she's cheating on me?"

"You'll know whatever she's thinking, Mr Jaspers.   Just as we discussed before."

"And if it doesn't work?"

"It will."

"But if it doesn't-"

"Bring it back, and I will refund your money."

"The whole price?"

"Whole price?"    Mr. Payne gave his client a questioning glance.

"No restocking fees or anything?  Just... just gimme my money back?"

"The money.   Yes, I will refund the money, Mr. Jaspers.  IF you are not satisfied."

"Oh..."   Mr. Jaspers nodded slowly, still staring at the rings.  "Okay."    He reluctantly closed the box, then verified that his change was still safely in his pocket.  "Okay then.     Th-thanks."

"Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Jaspers."

Thomas took a second to look around the strange store... a huge place that seemed to specialize in everything.    Furniture, clothing, books, antiques ...  and, of course, jewelry.    Ahhh, yes, the jewelry.      Coventry and Payne had more of THAT than anything else, but that by no means implied a shortage of the bizarre and miscellaneous.   In one corner there was even a large stuffed bear that Thomas SWORE was looking directly at him no matter where he stood in the room.

"Uh-huh, yeah,"   Thomas said as he took what he hoped was a final look around.    He didn't want to come back here again... the place gave him the creeps.  Especially that bear.    And Mr. Payne.    "N-nice meeting you."

Thomas turned to leave... both happy and apprehensive about his purchase.

"Ahem!"    Mr. Payne cleared his throat.   "Mr. Jaspers?"

"Huh?"     Thomas stopped and reluctantly turned back around.     Mr. Payne was straightening his tie and smiling.   Thomas hated that smile.   If a scorpion could smile, it would look like Mr. Payne.

"I'm afraid I have a rather odd request to make,"  said the owner/salesman/creepiest man Thomas had ever met.

"W-wh-what's that?"

"You may wish to delay exiting the store for a few moments.   Might I suggest... hiding behind that rack of clothing against the wall?"

"Huh?"

"You see, a very angry black man with several extremely large guns is about to burst through the front door, and I'd hate for you to get hurt before you enjoyed your purchase."

"What-"

"Run along now..."   Mr. Payne waved Thomas in the general direction of the clothing rack.   Thomas glanced toward the door, where he saw a gray Mitsubishi 3000GT drive past.    He liked 3000GT's... but, for some reason, he didn't like THAT one.    Thomas crouched behind the rack of clothes while Mr. Payne hit the intercom button next to the antique cash register.      He spoke into the tiny speaker:   "Mr. White, our guests have arrived.    Have Mr. Pitt make the final arrangements back in the back room.    I'll take care of things up here."

"Of course,  Mr. Payne."  came a small, oily voice from the intercom.

"Very good."

Mr. Payne took his finger off of the intercom button and stepped out from behind the counter.    Thomas was half-kneeling behind the clothes... peering out from between two uncomfortable-looking fur coats.     Mr. Payne walked calmly over to the antique furniture section just as the door flew open and... exactly as Mr. Payne said... a very angry-looking black man with two EXTREMELY large guns stormed into the store.

he explosives went off perfectly... destroying both the hinges and the huge iron lock on the store's rear entrance.    Devoid of anything to hold it up, the thick metal door fell inward and hit the concrete floor with a-

BANG!

Before the echoes faded, Sebastian was on top of the fallen door, both swords drawn, eyes scanning the dimly lit room.   There was a side door that was just swinging closed.   Sebastian caught a glimpse of... he couldn't tell what.   But then a huge shape lumbered out of the shadows toward him.   The man had to be at least eight feet tall, with shoulders that could barely fit through a normal door.     It wasn't until the silent figure got closer that Sebastian saw the man's brown skin wasn't skin at all.   It was leather.    The dark eyes were just jagged holes that nevertheless seemed to radiate a cold malice.

The man wasn't a man at all...

It was a golem.    An artificial thing with the exaggerated form of a man, but none of intelligence.   And no soul.   It was stronger and tougher than it looked... and it didn't have any sense of pain or fatigue to interfere with its task, which was apparently to protect the building.   Sebastian would have to deal with the thing here and now.   He could duck around easily, but the golem would just follow him and turn up at the worst possible time.

Besides... the creature shouldn't present more than a momentary delay.

The air roared as Sebastian's blades swept into deadly action.     The boy circled around slowly, letting the golem get closer before lunging in-

SLICE!

The first sword split the fake man's abdomen open across the middle.   The golem's guts... composed mostly of sand, sawdust, small rocks and bits of metal... gushed out in a brief spray as the second sword went for its head-

KLINK!

The razor-sharp blade bit almost effortlessly through the leather and sawdust... but it encountered something very solid underneath.

Bones.

Not just bones... METAL bones.

"Hmm..."

Sebastian yanked his blade free of the golem's 'flesh' just as the creature made a slashing motion with its hand.... reaching for Sebastian's face.   The thing was slow and clumsy; Sebastian ducked out of the way, spun, then drove one blade completely through the creature, impaling it through the lower chest.    Golems usually fell apart when enough damage was done.  The only problem was reaching that point before they managed to get their hands on you.

The golem grabbed the sword and squeezed-

Krrreeeek-tink!

The blade snapped in two, leaving Sebastian holding a useless hunk of twisted metal.     Sebastian's remaining blade glinted in the light as it swept in a mighty upward arc, splitting the golem open from crotch to lower chest... where the blade met resistance from the golem's iron rib cage.    More of the golem's innards gushed out.... the monster deflated like a water balloon with a hole in it.

Metal clinked and squealed as the golem's skeleton... now bereft of the sawdust 'muscles' needed to hold it up... collapsed.   The creature took one step, and then fell... not with a thud, but with the hiss of flowing sand and the clank of iron.    It didn't even leave a proper corpse on the floor... just an unidentifiable pile of sawdust, leather, and metal.

Sebastian nodded and headed for the side door-

hissssssssss....

He stopped and turned as the golem rose.    Sand and sawdust flowed against the pull of gravity, re-filling the empty leather 'skin.'     The monstrous arms and torso inflated until the leather was tight and there wasn't so much as a speck of sand left on the floor.   Then then skin sealed itself, erasing the wounds that Sebastian had made without leaving a single mark.

The golem had reassembled itself.   Now it stood before Sebastian, completely whole and just as menacing as before.

"mmmhmmmm,"   said Sebastian.  "Now that's new..."

"REEZE!"   Jason shouted.

Mr.  Payne was standing in front of an antique desk, with one hand in the drawer.   Beside him was... nothing.      Jason quickly scanned the rest of the room, but, aside from a very creepy looking stuffed bear in the corner, it was clear.   He and Sebastian had been watching the place since yesterday, and he knew that there were two people in the store... Mr. Payne, who was currently staring down the barrels of Jason's .454 revolvers, and a little guy who was probably being hacked to pieces by Sebastian at this very moment.

Not that Jason felt bad about that.   Coventry and Payne had been selling cursed goods up and down the eastern US for months.   Maybe years.     They'd been collecting souls and putting Jason Brooks through hell since the moment he left Rock Springs.    Now it was time they sat at the receiving end of some of that pain.

"Move away from the desk, Mr. Happy,"  Jason ordered.   "Hand out of the drawer.  NOW!"

"Very well,"  said Mr.  Payne, he slowly pulled his hand out of the desk drawer.    Jason didn't like this man's aura.   It wasn't demonic but it was the darkest, most bizarre human aura he'd ever seen.    It looked like the man had been dipped in hot chocolate and rolled around in glitter.   The man himself wasn't that normal-looking either.   He was some odd mixture of races that Jason couldn't identify... light brown skin and strange eyes that weren't Oriental, but something else.    And he was dressed in a tailor-made suit that probably cost more than Jason's car.

Mr. Payne stepped away from the desk.    He was holding something in his hand... Jason couldn't tell what it was, but it didn't look like a weapon.

"Whatever you have, drop it."

"Are you sure you want that?"   Payne said smoothly.   Jason hated his voice.... it reminded him of every arrogant college professor he'd ever had, all rolled into one.

"Don't make me shoot your hand off,"  said Brooks.

"As you wish."

It was some kind of glass figurine... tiny and delicate.   The lighted gleamed brightly off of it as it fell.   It made a nice little 'pop' when it hit the hardwood floor and shattered into several small pieces.

"What the hell was that?"  said Jason.  "Donovan-"

ROOOAAAARRRR!

"WHOOA!"

Jason turned just as the 7-foot tall 'stuffed' grizzly bear leapt off of its pedestal and charged across the room, upsetting display cases and smashing everything in its path as it headed straight for Jason.

"Ah, hell-"

Jason fired three shots at the charging animal... one through each eye and one dead-center through the forehead.    The hollow point slugs turned the bear's brain to chunky red sludge.   The animal lurched forward and collapsed on top of something that looked expensive-

SLAM!

-Just as Mr. Payne vanished through a door behind the counter.

"A bear... he attacked me with a bear."

"You sound disappointed, Jason."

"Well... a little..."

Jason started to follow Mr. Payne, but the second he turned, Donovan shouted a warning:

"JASON BEHIND YOU!"

Jason spun and found himself staring in the face of a full-grown African lion... in mid leap... teeth bared... claws headed right for his face.

A normal man would have ended up as bloody strings of meat hanging from the beast's teeth, but the Affinity flared to life and put Jason's shocked mind on auto-pilot.  He had no idea he was even moving... the revolvers came up instantly, and Jason's fingers were just blurs on the triggers as he emptied both weapons into the lion's chest, neck, and face.   Then he quickly spun out of the way so that the beast didn't fall on top of him-

WHUMP!

Blood splattered across the floor when the beast hit.   The lion lay sprawled and motionless...

"Okay,"  Jason huffed.   "Not disappointed any more.  Where did THAT come from?"

"The bear."

Jason looked back at the bear... which wasn't there any more.    Then at the lion... which ALSO wasn't there.   Standing where the dead lion had fallen was a very large... and very living... gorilla.

The beast pounded its chest and roared, producing a sound that rattled the store windows and made Jason's ears hurt.

"Donovan, what IS This thing!"

"Looks like a gorilla."

"REALLY!?!?"

Jason returned his empty revolvers to their holsters and drew the second set of .454's.    When the animal charged, Jason fired six shots:  elbows, shoulders, and knees.     The gorilla collapsed... not surprising, since it had no working limbs left to support it.

But the animal continued to roar and howl in pain as blood pumped out of its wounds.

Jason just stood by and watched.

"What does its aura look like?"  said Donovan.

"Like... a gorilla, I guess,"  Jason shrugged as he reloaded his weapons.    "I don't see anything demonic about it.    Should I kill it?"

"No, this isn't a demon we're dealing with.    It's a spell... you kill one animal and it'll just be replaced with another.   This could go on forever."

"These are REAL animals?"

"Yes.  Summoned from somewhere by Payne's magic.  When you kill them, they go back where they came from and the magic summons something else."

"You mean, somebody's gonna be pulling MY bullets out of a dead lion in a zoo somewhere?"

"Probably."

"Nice.   I like this guy Payne better and better-"

"Leave the gorilla.   We'll have to make Payne undo the magic before we can end his suffering."

"Who's suffering?"  said Jason as he hopped over the counter.   "Payne's, or the gorillas?"

The door behind the counter was locked... of course.   Jason shot the lock off and pushed it open.

The hallway beyond was like something out of a carnival funhouse.   The walls were distorted, with not even a remote sense of geometry.   And even worse, the surreal hallway kept changing... flowing from one impossible form to another right before Jason's eyes.   Parallel lines seemed to converge at one moment and then veer away from each other in the next.   Straight edges weren't straight, but the curved ones were.  Doors opened... closed...and vanished entirely as the floor rose and fell like a turbulent ocean.     The walls breathed in and out, and the ceiling undulated in harsh spasms with no rhythm or pattern at all.

The very sight of the hallway made Jason's stomach churn.

And at the end of the hall was Mr. Payne.    There was a door behind him, and he was flipping through his keyring for the correct key to make his getaway.

"I thought I told you to FREEZE!"   Jason shouted.   His voice echoed strangely down the impossible hallway.

Mr. Payne looked up at him... and laughed.   Then he went back to calmly fitting keys into the lock at the end of the hall.

Jason raised one weapon... he aimed...  and fired.

Jason saw the bullet zip down the hallway... not because his eyes could follow the supersonic projectile, but because the bullet was slowing down.   It had gone halfway down the hall's length when it halted in mid-air.   It hung there like a movie special-effect... then it fell... sideways.   The bullet rolled up the wall to the ceiling, then down the other  wall toward the floor.    Somewhere along the way the projectile got flipped around.   It changed direction again, and started moving along the wall back toward Jason, tracing the ever-changing outlines of several doors along the way.   It picked up speed rapidly, until finally it pulled away from the wall and came at Jason at the exact same speed at which he'd fired it.

"YOW!!"    Jason jerked back and threw himself flat against the all beside the door.   The bullet zipped past him, went through a wall, vanished out into the street.

The hallway had tried to hit him with his own bullet.

"Donovan, is this for real... or is it an illusion?"

"Looked real to me."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

"tay out here and watch the car, Ashley.   Stay behind and make sure nobody goes out the side exit, Ashley.    It's too dangerous for you, Ashley.   HMPH!"

Ashley folded her arms across her chest and leaned back onto Sebastian's car.   It was parked in an alley beside the building.    There was one door leading into the store... the only entrance that hadn't been kicked down by Jason or blown up by Sebastian.   So far, no one had tried to use it.

"Like I haven't been taking care of myself for YEARS before either of them showed up.   Guess they didn't THINK about that!  Uh-huh..."

Suddenly the door opened.   There was a soft 'click' as it unlocked, and then a loud creak from the metal hinges... the door opened slowly, revealing nothing but a suspiciously dark hallway beyond.    For a second she thought there was something there... but there wasn't.

Ashley didn't move.   She didn't have to.   She kept her eye on the doorway as she reached out with her mind... searching....

Her mind touched his just as the man crept out into the alley.   It was the little guy... no more than 5'2" tall, and weighing somewhere on the lighter side of 100 pounds.   He, like his boss, was immaculately dressed... perhaps even more so.

Mr. White carried a small briefcase in one hand and a folder of documents in the other... obviously it was the important stuff that he didn't want Brooks or Sebastian to find... like perhaps a list of where all those cursed items were sold.

"HEY!"    Ashley shouted.    "What... you think you could just go out the side door and sneak away?    No, I don't think so!"

Mr. White tried to run...

"You can't move,"  Ashley informed him.   She'd already burrowed into his mind and paralyzed him.    There was nothing physically preventing his muscles from operating... she just told his brain that he couldn't move, and his brain believed it.

Or at least, it as SUPPOSED to.

Mr. White turned toward her and smiled.

Suddenly, Ashley was trapped.   She was still inside Mr. White's mind... but she was no longer in control.  She'd already started digging through his thoughts and memories, but now all access was shut off as abruptly as a door being slammed in her face.   The natural flow of thoughts and impressions she usually found inside a person's mind suddenly stopped... leaving absolute blankness, a perfect, white emptiness that stretched on forever.   Ashley tried to pull back, but something was holding her.   She pulled harder.   The *something* yanked her in deeper.

"Now, Ms. Ricks,"  said Mr. White.   His voice was high and smooth...  Ashley heard it with  her ears AND her mind.  "SURELY you didn't think that you were the ONLY psychic in the world, did you?"

"xcuse me..."   Marilyn Dobbs elbowed her way through the crowd of well-dressed men and women standing outside the elevator.    The throng of lawyers, secretaries, paralegals, and other 'professionals' didn't even have the decency to let her off before shoving their way on.    A few of them caught a not-so-gentle elbow to the side as Marilyn squeezed past.    Her appointment with her lawyer hadn't gone well, and she wasn't in the mood to be jostled, ogled, or crowded.     Plus, she was in a hurry... she had to pick up Alexis from daycare before they decided to charge her for a full day.

The office building's impressively expensive lobby was alive with people.  Housing seven law firms, three advertising companies, and two investment firms, the building had more arrivals and departures than most airports.  Marilyn made eye contact with just about everyone as they passed... not because of any particular need to do so, but because her training as a cop was hard to put down, even if she WAS on suspension.   She checked everyone out... scanning their faces and expressions for something unusual or familiar.   Glancing over their clothing for the tell-tale signs of a concealed weapon.  A few people saw her doing it and gave her strange looks in return, but she couldn't help it.   It was her job.

And today, it saved her life.

She saw the face first.  The expression jumped out at her even before she recognized the features.... a kind of crazed anger mixed with a far-away gaze normally she normally saw only on drug addicts.    The eyes were locked on her, but they appeared to be looking THROUGH her rather than at her.   The man wasn't wearing a suit or anything even remotely business-casual... jeans and a plain brown shirt that was untucked from his belt and hanging loose around his waist.   The man's hand was hanging suspiciously at his side...    Instinctively, Dobbs slowed down to take a second look.   Then she recognized him.

It was Brandon Phillips... the private detective that her husband had hired to follow her around and be a general pain in the ass.    But the last time Dobbs had seen him, he didn't look like a psychopathic serial killer in LSD.    Something had happened to him...

Dobbs had just inhaled... getting ready to say something to the man... when Phillips' hand moved.   It was a sudden, easily detectable motion... his hand reached up under his untucked shirt and grabbed something.

Dobbs halted in her tracks... her own hand already digging into her purse and grabbing the .38 semiautomatic.    But she didn't draw.   She waited... her eyes locked on Phillip's hand.   He could have been pulling out a camera, a wallet or a court summons.   She couldn't draw until she saw-

-the glint of metal-

Dobbs drew her gun...

-the unmistakable butt of a pistol.

And a quick glance at Phillip's face told Dobbs that SHE was the intended target.

"GUNNNN!!!"   Dobbs shouted.

There was a collective gasp/scream from the entire lobby.   Followed by a shriek as Dobbs' purse fell away from her shoulder...  leaving her weapon exposed in her grasp as she raised her hand.     It was a smooth tracking motion... she didn't point-aim-fire... she swept the weapon across her field of vision as she kept her eyes fixed on Phillip's chest.    When the gun swept across his chest, she fired twice-

POW!
POW!

A double-tap that left two red holes in Phillip's torso... one right the through the heart and the other through the right lung.   The impact send Phillips staggering backward.   He took one step, and his legs gave way underneath him.   He fell... and as he did, his hand came out of his shirt.

The hand was empty.

Phillips hit the floor just as the corporate security officers... armed rent-a-cops... drew their own weapons and converged on the scene.

"FREEEZE!"
"DROP THE WEAPON!! DROP THE WEAPON!"
"DROP IT, LADY!"

"I'm a COP!"   Dobbs shouted back at them.

"DROP THE WEAPON!"

Dobbs clicked the safety on her weapon and let it fall from her fingers.

"I am a POLICE OFFICER!"   she replied.  "THIS MAN HAD A GUN!"

"DOWN ON THE FLOOR, LADY!   GET DOWN ON THE @#%&! FLOOR!!!"

"POLICE OFFICER!"  Dobbs repeated as she slowly got down on her knees.   The security officers grabbed her arms and twisted them painfully behind her back.    She could have resisted...

-actually, she could have kicked their asses all over the building-

...but that would have just gotten her shot.  Besides, it would all be straightened out soon enough...  as soon as they found her badge...

...which was resting somewhere in her captain's desk drawer.   She was on suspension.  There WAS no badge.

She was screwed.

"Wait, Wait, I can explain!"  Dobbs screamed as the officers shoved her face-down onto the floor.   "He had a gun!  He had a gun and he was going to SHOOT!"

"How is he?"   said one officer.

"Dead,"  answered another.   "No gun."

"What do you MEAN 'no gun'!   It was in his HAND!   He was drawing it from his belt!"

"SHUT UP, LADY!"

Marilyn felt the handcuffs clicking onto her wrists.

"HEY!  I'm a COP!   Just call captain-"

"SHUT UP!   'SHUT UP' MEANS YOU SHUT YOUR #*@#! MOUTH!"

"No police ID in her purse..."

"This guy is unarmed."

"Call the police!"

"I AM the police!"  Dobbs screamed at the top of her lungs.  "I'm A POLICE DETECTIVE!    FIND THE GUN!   FIND THAT MAN'S GUN!    ISOLATE THE BUILDING... SOMEBODY MAY HAVE WALKED OFF WITH IT... HE MAY HAVE HAD AN ACCOMPLICE!!"

"Call the cops; we've got a live one here... She thinks she's a cop."

"Oh, this is gonna make their day."

"...dear God, she shot that man in cold blood..."

"I think we're gonna be on the news, boys."

"NO!  I'm A COP!  I'm TELLING you I'M a POLICE OFFICER!  My ID is back at the station!  Listen to me!  LISTEN TO MEEEEEE...!"

"m I supposed to be impressed?"  said Ashley.

"No,"  Mr. White replied.  "Just mildly distracted-"

Ashley felt something grasping at her.   She recoiled... fighting futilely as Mr. White's mind closed in around her.  Suddenly the field of emptiness became a flat, barren landscape riddled with craters and deep, yawning chasms.     It looked like the surface of some alien world... a world that had died a long, long time ago.

Ashley was there.   She felt the rock beneath her feet.   She smell the dust burning her nose... the dry air sapping the moisture from her skin.      She knew that her body was still in an alley in Atlanta, but her mind was here.

So was Mr. White.

He appeared before her, arms folded, flashing a sinister smile.

"Welcome, Ashley.    And... goodbye."

Mr. White started to change... growing taller and broader as his clothes fell away, revealing the dark, shadowy thing beneath.   His body skipped medium and large, leaping instead from small directly to humongous.. and still growing.     His face vanished, becoming one gigantic mouth ringed with curved teeth.   His arms unfolded... and lengthened.   The fingers of each hand merged into long tentacles, each tipped with a single flesh-ripping talon.    Tiny eyes opened up at various places on its body... and they were soon joined by several secondary mouths that all opened at once in a terrifying roar.

Ashley yawned.

The monster roared again...  the sound shook the entire landscape.   The monster's bulk surged toward her... the ring of teeth surrounding its mouth began to rotate rapidly like a buzz saw.

"Ohhh, I am so underwhelmed,"  said Ashley.   She raised her arm just as the beast struck-

CLANG!

-and the thing rebounded off of the giant shield that appeared in Ashley's hand.     Claws, teeth, and talons scratched at the shining metal, but the shield held.

"First rule of spiritual warfare:"  said Ashley.  "There are no rules.    Second rule of spiritual warfare:   Anything you can to, I can do BETTER!"

Suddenly, the shield became a set of iron jaws that snapped shut around the White-monster's head.   Metal spikes pierced its shadowy flesh, digging deep and nearly tearing the top half of its body off.

"AEEEEEERRRRRGGGH!"   the thing squealed.    Hopelessly trapped and spurting blue-black ichor from its wounds, the thing's body became a cloud of darkness that flowed out of the trap's jaws and re-solidified... whole, unharmed, and even uglier than before-

KA-CHUNK!

Until Ashley's bastard-sword cleaved its head in two, and continued going right down through the center of its chest.

"KREEEEE-"

The thing looked up at Ashley, who was now 14 feet tall and covered in medieval plate-mail from head to toe.     One of the creature's tentacles wrapped around the blade and shot up to Ashley's arm, where it seized her wrist and held her tight as the creature sewed itself back together.   Ashley tried to pull her arm free, but the White's grasp was too strong.   That wasn't surprising, since this was HIS mind.

Ashley was trying to unwrap the probing tentacle from her arm when the creature threw itself onto her... its mouth clamping down on the faceplate of her helmet.  Sparks flew from its teeth as they began to punch through.    White's tentacles encircled her, and his shadowy body oozed over her armor... covering her completely.   Then, with a quick thought, Ashley caused dozens of long, serrated blades to protrude from her armor...  thrusting into White's body at all angles.

"EEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

Instinctively, the White-creature pulled away.

But the blades in its body were serrated... with sharp, backward-pointing spikes.   The very act of pulling away literally tore the creature to shreds.

There wasn't even anything left to scream... pieces of the thing just fell to the ground and sank into the sandy soil as they dissolved.

Ashley retracted her spikes and waited.

"Aww, come on!   You can't give up NOW!    You almost had me!   Really!    I mean.... I was almost sort of scared there... for a second...   You know, maybe you should give the whole monster thing a break and try something else-"

A giant white fist burst from the ground and grabbed her.   Ashley's armor barely withstood the incredible strength of the fist as it carried her up into the air.   Below her, a huge section of the landscape crumbled and fell away, revealing the incredibly mountainous form of Mr. White... smiling as he crushed her in his enormous fist.

"HAHAHAHAAAA!!!"  He bellowed.

"Oooooo, a giant, version of yourself,"  said Ashley.   "Now THAT'S original..."

Mr. White brought Ashley closer to his face and opened his mouth.   A set of iron teeth sprang out from his jaws.

"OO!  And long sharp teeth!    I don't think I've EVER seen that one...  oh, brother...   Hey, how about a BREATH  MINT!   Wait... I think I've got one..."

Ashley's armor began to glow bright, electric green... so bright that it seemed like Mr. White was holding a small star in his fist.     Ashley had never actually SEEN weapons-grade Plutonium, but she imagined that was how it looked.     But then...what it LOOKED like didn't really matter at this point-

The thermonuclear explosion blew Mr. White's body apart... and burned even the smallest pieces to a fine gray powder that fell like snow all around the underground bomb shelter that Ashley had created with just a thought.

"Damn, that was easy,"  she mused.

And then she opened her eyes.    Her REAL eyes.

Mr. White was laying on the ground by the door... with blood oozing from his ears and a thin line of drool descending from the corner of his mouth.   His eyes were wide open and staring blankly into space.

"Third rule of spiritual warfare:"   said Ashley.  "The one with the best imagination wins."

"ou're going to have to go in there after him."

"What!?   Have you SEEN that place!  I ain't goin' in there!"

"He's getting away, Jason!"

"Okay, okay... here goes-"

The instant Jason set foot in the hall, he felt the forces of gravity go haywire.     Everything was wrong... there were TWO downs and NO ups... his feet were sticking to the walls, which was strange because his feet shouldn't have been ON the walls.    Jason kept moving, forcing himself to run despite the fact that he was now running along the ceiling.    He kept running... even when every sense told him that he was standing still... he kept running.     The hallway moved past him as if he were moving backwards... and sideways.     Ahead of him, Mr. Payne had slipped through the door and was gone.     But every other step Jason took alternated between bringing that door closer and sending it farther away.

"Keep going!"  said Donovan.

The floor heaved upward beneath Jason's feet, throwing him off balance.    Jason fell... he didn't know whether he hit the wall, the floor, or the ceiling.. it really didn't matter, because everything was moving.     Jason was on his hands and knees, with gravity pulling him in two directions... now three... now back to just two.  His limbs hurt from the effort of just keeping himself still.      He thought that maybe he could get up... but if he did, which way was he going to go?   He couldn't tell any more...

"Donovan?"

"Uhhh..."

"You're supposed to be helping me OUT,  here!"

"...this is very odd..."

"Odd?  Ah, screw it, I'll just start over-"   Jason picked a direction and threw himself into whatever force was pulling him that way.    He hit... something... floor?  wall?   And slid on his stomach for what seemed like forever, until he finally hit something else-

A door.

THE door.

He was at the other end of the hall.

"Well I'll be damned!"

Jason reached up, grabbed the doorknob and threw the door open.  He literally tumbled into the adjoining room, but he came up into a crouched position with both guns drawn... thankful that the forces of gravity had returned to normal.

Jason was in a rectangular room with three doors other than the one he'd just come through.     As far as he could tell, the room served no purpose whatsoever.   It was empty.

"What is this place... a maze?"

"Very likely.  Demons like mazes."

"Yeah, but... I think this place is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!"

"Your point being?"

"Never mind."

Jason was about to open the first door when all three doors sprang open.

And THREE identical Mr. Payne's grinned at him from three identical hallways.

"Well, now, it seems you have a bit of a problem,"  they said at once.  "Can't chase us all at once... so which one do you catch, mmm?"

All three Payne's started running down the hallways.

"Problem?"   Jason aimed his weapons and fired.   The five-shot revolvers roared and kicked in his grasp-

BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!

Thud!
Thump!
Whump!

"...ten bullets... six kneecaps.   What's the problem?"

The Payne-duplicates were all on the floor, bleeding profusely from where their knees used to be.    Jason grabbed the closest one... but the 'man' dissolved into a puddle of rotting, worm-infested goo as soon as Jason's hands touched him.    Jason went down another hallway to the next duplicate.

THIS Payne raised his hand and tried to throw something at Jason.    Jason shot out his wrist.   One hollow point at just the right spot almost took the hand completely off.

"AAAAH!"

"You're the real one,"  said Jason as he grabbed Payne by the throat.   "You're under arrest."

"You're not a police officer, Mr. Brooks-"

"Oh yeah.  You're right...   that means I get to do THIS!"

CRACK!

Jason drove the butt of his revolver into the center of Payne's face as hard as he could.     Payne's nose made a very satisfying 'crunch'... so he did it again.

CRACK!

he golem hadn't taken its first step toward him when Sebastian attacked.  His blade moved like some deadly shredding machine, hacking chunks out of the golem with strikes that paired raw force with deadly accuracy.   The blade rebounded off of the creature's skeleton again and again as Sebastian dodged the beast's clumsy fists.   The floor around them became littered with scraps of leather and clumps of sand.     Within seconds, bits of bare metal gleamed out from within the golem's ruined body as Sebastian hacked the 'flesh' from its bones.     The golem even had a skull.. .beneath its nonexistent face was a lump of misshapen metal that soon bore scratches from Sebastian's blade.      The face was gone.    And then the chest... revealing the lattice of iron bars that was, literally, a rib cage.      Sebastian's blade drew bright flashes of sparks from the cage as he hacked away at whatever was left to cut.

The attack was quick, fierce... and complete.

In just a few seconds, Sebastian had reduced the golem to a teetering metal frame standing in a pile of leather and sand.   And then the metal frame finally fell-

KLANG!

Immediately followed by...

hisssss......

The pile of sand, sawdust and rocks began to swirl violently, carrying bits of leather like debris tossed into a stormy sea.       The  metal skeleton began to creak as the leather skin reattached itself and the underlying 'flesh' flowed back into place.    This re-assembly was even faster than the first.  In the blink of an eye, the golem was already intact enough to move.

A half-formed hand suddenly reached out for Sebastian's leg.   Sebastian stepped back, but the golem's OTHER hand... this one still just a jumble of metal with pieces of leather crawling over it... caught him by surprise.    The appendage clamped onto Sebastian's left foot.   There was almost no strength behind the grip at first, but the fingers clicked together, trapping Sebastian's ankle as the arm re-formed... becoming stronger...

Sebastian hammered at the arm with his sword.   The first few blows bounced off of the bare metal, but then the leather had knitted itself back together and now the sand was adding bulk... and strength... to the appendage.

The golem's head was complete now.   Empty eyes stared up at Sebastian as it sat up... still gripping the boy's leg with exponentially-increasing force.

Sebastian abandoned his attacks on the golem's still half-formed arm and instead, thrust his sword into the golem's throat, just below the chin.   He sawed his blade back and forth.. seeking the joint where the skull joined the neck.   When the blade wiggled into place, he yanked up-

POP!

The golem's head flew off and hit the floor not far away with a muffled 'thunk.'    The creature's regeneration halted, and the arm went limp.   Sebastian managed to pull his leg free just as

-thunka-thunka-thunka...

The severed head began to rolling toward the headless body... faster and faster, as if attracted by some unseen force   And as it got closer, the golem's regeneration continued.   But it halted when-

WHUNK!

Sebastian kicked the head out into the alley.   It hit a trash can and rolled out of sight...

...until...

-thunka-thunka-thunka...

...it came rolling right back through the door.

"You must be joking,"  said Sebastian.

He watched the head roll closer,  and as it passed him he reached down and snatched it up.   He tucked the golem's head under his arm and headed for the door, leaving the inanimate pile of sand and metal behind.

"ey, look what I found,"   Jason announced.   He was dragging the unconscious Mr.  Payne from the hallway back into the adjoining room when Sebastian came through one of the other doors.

"Is he alive?"  said Sebastian.

"Yeah.   What's that?"

Sebastian held up what looked like a severed human head... or rather, a poor model of one made out of leather.

"Regenerating golem,"  Sebastian explained.  "With a metal skeleton."

"Riiiight."

"Hey guys!"   Ashley came through the other door, carrying Mr. White's briefcase.

"I thought I told you to stay outside!"  Jason and Sebastian both said at once.

"Sorry... I don't take orders from chauvinistic assholes very well.   Maybe next time."

"You could've gotten hurt."

"By THAT guy!?"  Ashley smirked.  "Please."

"You didn't happen to see my Corvette on your way in, did you?"

"Nuh-uh."

"What about the dragon?"  said Donovan.

"No sign of him.   OR my car."

"Sebastian, why are you carrying around a head?"

"Regenerating golem."

"Uhhh-huh.  And you're carrying around its head because.... why?"

"Does anyone else get the feeling that this was far too easy?"  said Sebastian.

"EASY!?"  said Jason.  "I got attacked by a GORILLA back there!   AND a bear... AND a lion..."

"And did you find any that particularly difficult?"  said Sebastian.

"Well... no... but-"

"Yeah, I was kind of expecting... you know..."  said Ashley.  "I mean, we've been stomping demons at every little redneck town on the way... and now that we get here, all we gotta do is hit a few guys over the head?"

"All?  Donovan, YOU tell 'em about the funky hallway... my stomach can't take thinking about it right now-"

"Jason, what was the first thing you saw when you came through the door?"

"What?"

"The first thing you saw?"

"Uhhh.... Mr.  Happy here standing by a desk.   Why?"

"Are you sure?  Is that all you saw, or is that just all you REMEMBER seeing?    Was there something else?"

"Yeah, there was a... a..."   Jason got an eerie feeling that he was forgetting something.   But he couldn't remember what.

"What about you, Ashley... what did you see?"

"Somebody opened the side door and I looked in and all I saw was a... wait a minute..."

"Does somebody mind clueing me in, here?"   said Jason.

"There WAS something there, I just can't remember it.   Its like my mind keeps warping around it every time I try."

"Me too,"  said Sebastian.  "Before the golem... right after I came through the door there was-"

"Oh shit,"   said Jason as the suspicious feeling that he was forgetting something became a definite fact.   "It was..."

"...a mirror."

And suddenly everything went white... and then dark... and then Jason, Ashley, and Sebastian were somewhere else.

They were tied to three sturdy chairs in the center of a dimly lit room.   Jason's weapons were in a pile in the corner, along with Sebastian's arsenal of swords and knives.

And directly in front of them were three antique, floor-length mirrors.... into which they'd been staring from the moment they'd first set foot into the store.   There was one positioned directly in front of each door... three traps waiting to be sprung.  Everything that happened after the instant they looked into the mirrors was an illusion.   And... while their minds were occupied with phantom enemies... Mr. Payne and Mr. White had disarmed them all and tied them up.

"Well now, Mr. Brooks,"  said Payne.  He smiled at the trio of prisoners.   "Tell me... just how stupid does one have to be in order to fall for the same trick twice?"

[To Be Continued]

copyright 2005 by Dark Icon Entertainment