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shield or to recognize that it had been prepared especially to keep him out. |
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Ah! the Dark Man thought. I do not know you, my friend, but you obviously know me. How can this be? |
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The Hungan had long suspected that the Rand woman was only a pawn for someone else. Could this be the one? He noted the clay bowl and the crystal and again, as Paula had earlier, he drew the proper conclusions. |
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I may not always know where the redhead is, but I bet you do. I'll just watch awhile and see what happens. |
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The roach settled down in the filth to drain the juices from a dead fly. Its eyes, shiny and black, never wavered from the two men beside the table. |
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Cyrus had just about run out of ideas when the zombie's body abruptly stiffened. Then the woman's mouth flew open, spilling a river of stinking black water into his face. She let out a horrible, grinding moan, pushed herself up with one arm and began clawing at her back with the other. |
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Cyrus quickly wormed his hind legs up under the woman's chest and kicked out with everything he had, and she went somersaulting head over heels across the beach, landing with a splash on her back in the surf. When he looked up, Kyna was standing over him with a broken tree branch in her hand and a face that looked as pale as porcelain in the moonlight. |
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"I . . . I . . ." was all she could manage to say. |
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After scrambling to his feet, Cyrus ran to the water's edge. The woman was rolling back and forth in the icy surge, a jagged hole in the middle of her back leaking bits of greenish flesh and maggots into the water. |
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"It was the only thing I could think of," Kyna said as she dropped the limb. |
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Cyrus waded out into the water and without further ado, slammed his paw down on the woman's head, splattering her skull like a rotten watermelon and showering himself with stinking bits of gray matter and bone. He stood over the body |
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