Cybermancy by Kelly McCullough

Author:Kelly McCullough
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The sound of shattering glass filled the universe, and it was both Eris’s laugh and the cracking of the great ebony sphere. The dark fires faded as the black globe fell to ruin around us. Exposed within was another pearl, this one with all the rainbow highlights of the real thing. Eris’s coils clutched tighter, catching this new sphere within them. But there was no resistance. It was like squeezing Jell-O, and together we sank into the core’s surface.

So this was how the great powers played the hacking game. Smashing aside barriers that I would have been hard-pressed to finesse. I didn’t like the style much, though it obviously had its strong points—effectiveness for example. I had just a moment to enjoy the idea that we’d beaten the system before I noticed the shards of blackness springing back into place behind us. We were in all right, but I suddenly had doubts about getting back out. Then the spheres were gone, and we arrived in a new frame of reference.

We were in the open, though mist, swirling gray and pearlescent, provided the illusion of boundaries. Beneath us lay harsh black volcanic rock, and I could hear waves breaking somewhere not too far away. Perhaps because of the way the ocean sounds came to me, or perhaps for some other reason, I felt certain that we were on a small island. I was about to share my thoughts with Eris when I noticed the guardian, or really, her foot.

It was a big foot, one that rearranged my sense of perspective. Now instead of a knight-errant riding a serpent of epic proportions, I felt like an action figure strapped to the back of a garter snake. A garter snake in very real danger of being stepped on. The foot, definitely feminine and a scant ten feet away, appeared to be formed of living purple-veined marble, hard and cold yet still alive and vital. My eyes traced upward, drawn to follow the living-stone column of the ankle up into the mist. As if on cue, the gray curtain parted, and I found myself staring past a curvy body into an enormous veiled face.

“We should have just stayed in Hades,” said the bat-shaped Melchior. “It would have saved everybody a lot of trouble.”

He had a point. In addition to her veil, the giantess also wore the world’s biggest mirror shades. That was all to the good. It prevented me from meeting her gaze, a circumstance that would have resulted in my getting stoned, and I don’t mean blissed-out. But circumstances could change at any moment, and that would mean game over, because I wasn’t the only one in the company of snakes. The enormous guardian had seen my serpentine steed and raised me about a hundredfold. Her hair was alive, and it was looking at me. I had just found the world’s biggest gorgon, and every single strand of her hair appeared ready to strike.

“Who?” asked the guardian in a female voice both strange and strangely familiar.

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