|
|
|
|
|
|
|
an act of final desperation, Cyrus managed to get a foreleg up under her chin, but the way she was going he knew that wasn't going to hold her for long. He cast one last longing look up at the moon as he felt her teeth dig into his flesh. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In the midst of his trance, the Dark Man's lips peeled back from his teeth in an anticipatory grin of triumph. He hadn't expected the ruse with the drowned woman to work, but now it appeared that it might actually succeed, and with the man Trigg out of the way, the redheaded woman would be child's play. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
But at the crucial instant, just when he could feel the woman's teeth ripping into Trigg's neck, the sorcerer was distracted by a new presencea dark outline hovering over him with a rope of blinding green psychic energy shooting out of the top of its head. Before he could react, the Dark Man felt an explosion of pain in the middle of the zombie's back and he immediately broke the psychic link he had used to control the zombie. His mind floated free in the ether, bobbing like a blade of kelp lolling lazily in calm waters. Frustrated and yet intrigued, the sorcerer took a moment to examine this new and totally unexpected development. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The energy band was green enough, but it displayed a noticeable lack of power and sophistication. The color spectrum was flawed by intermittent bursts of pale yellow, signifying a mind fraught with debaucherywhich in and of itself wasn't bad, but in the Dark Man's experience indicated a weak resolve. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As Paula had earlier, he made the decision to follow the strand back to its source, and in no time he had located the secret room and selected a suitable hosta fat cockroach wallowing among the dust bunnies atop a display cabinet full of ancient tools of torture. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The two men in the room were strangers to himone short and pasty-faced, the other big as an ox. But it didn't take the Dark Man long to locate the remnants of Bryan's psychic |
|
|
|
|
|