"What shitting projectors?"
Lamia pointed below... or along the course of the corridor, if what the ugly bastard said was true. "There," Lam said. "I know you can't see em, but take my word for it, they're there.
Either side."
Flaherty was watching with a certain fascination as Jake's mistyjungle clearing continued to change before his eyes into the deep dark forest, as in Once upon a time when everyone lived in the deep dark forest and nobody lived anywhere else, a dragon came to rampage.
Flaherty didn't know what Lamia and the rest of them were seeing, but before his eyes the dragon (which had been a Tyrannasorbet Wrecks not so long ago) obediently rampaged, setting trees on fire and looking for little Catholic boys to eat.
"I see NOTHING!" he shouted at Lamia. "I think youah out of your shitting MIND!"
"I've seen em turned off," Lamia said quietly, "and can recall near about where they lie. If you'll let me bring up four men and set em shooting on either side, I don't believe it will take long to shut em down."
And what will Sayre say when I tell him we shot the hell out of his precious mind-trap?Flaherty could have said. What will Walter o"
Dim say, for that mattah? For what's roont can never be fixed, not by such as us who know hmu to rub two sticks together and make afire but not much more.
Could have said but didn't. Because getting the boy was more important than any antique gadget of the old people, even one as amazing as yon mind-trap. And Sayre was the one who turned it on, wasn't he? Say aye! If there was explaining to be done, let Sayre do it! Let him make his knee to the big boys and talk till they shut him up! Meanwhile, the gods-damned snot-babby continued to rebuild the lead that Flaherty (who'd had visions of being honored for stepping so promptly into the breach) and his men had so radically reduced. If only one of them had been lucky enough to hit the kid when he and his little furbag friend had been in view! Ah, but wish in one hand, shit in the other! See which one fills up first!
"Bring youah best shots," Flaherty said in his Back Bay/John F. Kennedy accent. "Have at it."
Lamia ordered three low men and one of the vamps forward, put two on each side, and talked to them rapidly in another language. Flaherty gathered that a couple of them had already been down here and, like Lam, remembered about where the projectors lay hidden in the walls.
Meanwhile, Flaherty's dragon-or, more properly speaking, his da's dragon-continued to rampage in the deep dark forest (the jungle was completely gone now) and set things on fire.
At last-although it seemed a very long time to Flaherty, it was probably less than thirty seconds-the sharpshooters began to fire. Almost immediately both forest and dragon paled before Flaherty's eyes, turned into something that looked like overexposed movie footage.
"That's one of em, cullies!" Lamia yelled in a voice that became unfortunately ovine when it was raised. "Pour it on! Pour it on for the love of your fathers!"
Half this crew probably never had such a thing, Flaherty thought morosely. Then came the clearly audible shatter-sound of breaking glass and the dragon froze in place with billows of flame issuing from its mouth and nostrils, as well as from the gills on the sides of its armored throat.
Encouraged, the sharpshooters began firing faster, and a few moments later the clearing and the frozen dragon both disappeared. Where they had been was only more tiled hallway, with the tracks of those who had recently passed diis way marking the dust. On either side were the shattered projector portals.
"All right!" Flaherty yelled after giving Lamia an approving nod. "Now we're going after the kid, and we're going to doubletime it, and we're going to catch him, and we're going to bring him back with his head on a stick! Are you with me?"
They roared savage agreement, none louder than Lamia, whose eyes glowed the same baleful yellow-orange as the dragon's breath.
"Good, then!" Flaherty set off, roaring a tune any Marine drill-corps would have recognized: "We don't care how far you run-"
"WE DON'T CARE HOW FAR YOU RUN!" they bawled back as they trotted four abreast through the place where Jake's jungle had been. Their feet crunched in the shattered glass.
"We'll bring you back before we're done!"
"WE'll BRING YOU BACK BEFORE \WRE DONE!"
"You can run to Cain or Lud-"
"YOU CAN RUN TO CAIN OR LUD!"
"We'll eat your balls and drink your blood!"
They called it in return, and Flaherty picked lip tile pace yet a little more.
ELEVEN
Jake heard them coming again, come-come-commala. Heard them promising to eat his balls and drink his blood.
Brag, brag, brag, he thought, but tried to r un faster, anyway.
He was alarmed to find he couldn't. Doing the mindswap with Oy had tired him out quite a little b-