Mistress of death, p.22
Mistress of Death,
p.22
Yet why had she helped me, against her own kind? And why had she vanished the moment the job was done? She hated me, she said. I was out to destroy the demon cult, and she was an addict. She would probably die in the agonies of an impossible withdrawal.
So Kan-Sen must have been right. Ilunga had a thing for me, however she might deny it. After being labeled as a traitor she had no certain future with the demons. So she had helped me.
Could she have had the foresight to raid the Kill-13 supplies while I was facing Kan-Sen? In that case she was gone—and I could not begrudge her that escape. Obviously she was not about to go on a demon-conversion binge that would only exhaust her own supply of the drug.
So it was neatly ended. I sat by Chiyako, holding her head in my lap and her hand in my hand. I was bleeding from a hundred cuts, but it didn’t matter. I felt the cleansing heat of the encircling fire. Perhaps this way was best. If Chiyako had killed me before, they would have tortured her to death, then executed Ilunga and rebuilt the Kill-13 factory in the Honduras or elsewhere. This way the job was really done, for the leadership and knowledge were gone.
A shape came toward me. It hauled me away from my dead love, away from the fires, and I was too weak to resist.
“No, Kali!” I gasped. “I am not one of your demons.”
“White master, you’re going to live!” Ilunga said as she heaved me up over her shoulder with demon strength. Her tone indicated that the words she meant were “Honky bastard”; strange that she should not say them directly.
And so the black mistress had the most exquisite vengeance of all. She saved my life.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1974, 2001 by Piers Anthony and Roberto Fuentes
ISBN: 978-1-4976-5775-5
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Piers Anthony, Mistress of Death
