Siege Perilous by Nigel Bennett; P.N. Elrod

Author:Nigel Bennett; P.N. Elrod
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0743488547
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2004-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The room heat on high, Charon was thoroughly kicked back in one of the penthouse suites at the Cambridge Hotel. Unable to sleep for the pain, he'd ordered some good booze from room service, lined up his pill collection, and popped the ones that might help him get through the next few hours until he came up with Plan B. It didn't used to be like that for him. He always had a Plan B, with C, D, E, and F if needed, but these days it was harder and harder to focus on more than one thing at a time. Like the rush he'd gotten on the pyramid. No distractions from that gleeful joy. The downside being no way around the misery he was going through now. His body was giving him royal rotten hell as the disease worked to reassert itself for the setback he'd handed it.

Waiting for the meds to kick in, he distracted himself from the stubborn pain and the frustration of his failed hit on Dun by flipping through his complimentary copy of the Toronto Times.

It had all the usual Strum und Drang side by side with the repetitive daily-living crap. That was the way of things: total disasters are fine so long as they don't happen to you, isn't it a pity, but all's well here. You'd think seeing the global body count piling up and having each catastrophe presented in graphic detail over their dinner, not to mention forty-eight times a day on the boob tube, would wise people up about the world being a Nasty Place to Live. Yet—and this was the knee-cracking kicker—there was always an undercurrent of shocked surprise in the reporting. Was it an act put on for the masses, or what? He was still trying to figure that one.

Huh. They should live a stretch of his life, see the things he'd seen—and done. That'd turn them inside out. Literally.

"And, man-oh-man, you ain't seen nothing, yet," he chuckled, then paused and winced, his breath short again. Things were getting worse, more painful than before. He took a different pill, chugging it down with the whiskey. You weren't supposed to do that, but Jesus palomino, he was dying, what's the worst that could happen now?

He gave it ten, then popped an extra. The edge slowly softened and withdrew for the time being. That had been a bad one. He'd have to wind things up here quick while he could still function.

So, how to take out fang-boy and his doll of delights . . . hello . . . ?

Drawn by the headline, he fastened on a short inside piece below the fold about the bizarre accident on 401 that morning, a car going out of control on ice, a freak gust of wind slamming it into—he grinned at the name of the woman driving: Sabra du Lac. It just had to be witchy-girl. Who else could have a moniker like that? Jeez, they didn't even try to get her a decent cover name when she relocated here from the other coast.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.