Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
Chapter TWENTY-FOUR
It was entirely due to George's quick thinking that they didn't tumble down into the ravine. His skull was contorted in agony like the others at the excruciating tone that was suddenly carving through it, but he nevertheless managed to plant his hooves and cause just enough friction to prevent his passengers from going over the edge.
This was not just a noise. This was not an irritating sound like someone rubbing a balloon or scraping a chalkboard. It was a directed vibrational attack powerful enough to flip a car off a cliff.
Though due to George's instinctive actions, and the fact that the Fearsleigher's construction made it twice as heavy as a normal vehicle, it merely slammed on its side and slid perilously close to the drop's edge. Another few feet and it would have tumbled to the bottom. Such an impact would likely have killed most fursons, and left any survivors with half their bones broken. Easy prey for the things that waited in the woods.
Wherever the sound was coming from, it did not let up. Every few seconds, the tone would be repeated, kicking the Fearsleigher another inch towards oblivion and renewing the searing pain inside its passengers' ears. It was unbelievable. Impossible. Take the worst headache you've ever had in your life, bad enough to make you vomit, and double that. It made the acid burn Toby had endured earlier feel like a kiss.
But it was only pain. It couldn't compare to the physical and mental agony of being so terrified of your own skin you start ripping it off in chunks. And having been through exactly that less than an hour ago, was why Toby, despite the pain, was able to think semi-coherently.
He was in a heap in the backseat, lying on top of Piffle. She was writhing and groaning and clutching her head just like Zinc and Junella. Doll was nowhere to be seen, and Toby deeply hoped she wasn't lying somewhere at the bottom of the cliff. The Fearsleigher's interior was a mess. Broken glass was everywhere, along with anything else that hadn't been belted down when the car had tipped. Toby was immeasurably glad he'd had the foresight to put the caltrops away quickly, otherwise he and Piffle would have been the bread in a very bloody sandwich.
He tried to make his thoughts drill past the pain. He had endured pain before. Chronic, crippling, nerve-chewing pain. Fear could still knock him out with little effort, but pain was something he'd at least fought to a stalemate on occasion. He noticed Junella trying to pull herself up towards the shattered side window. Toby tried as well.
At least in the car there was something between them and the auditory assault. When the two of them poked their heads out, they got a fleeting glimpse of what was attacking them: a brown-furred male in a white jacket. But they also got a concentrated dose of audio power. Red blood sprayed from Toby's ears and black blood sprayed from Junella's. Their hearing turned into a dull void, but it didn't lessen the pain one bit. Whatever was happening to them, it seemed to target their heads from the inside out.
Toby fell back and accidentally elbow-dropped Piffle, who cried out in misery. He looked down and saw tears pouring from her eyes. In addition to the pain-vibration, she had broken glass punctures all over her side. Toby tried to say something comforting, but of course he couldn't possibly be heard. So he brushed her cheek gently, then gave it a kiss. That seemed to help. She managed a smile for a brief second.
Junella was finding success at beating back her pain with sheer fury. Whoever had done this to her and her passengers was fucking dead. She stepped around Zinc's moaning body to get to the glove compartment. She retrieved the crumpled map and wrote on it in her own waxy blood. She poked Zinc to get his attention so he could read it: "TIP CAR OVER. I'LL GO KILL"
Woozily, he nodded. He lifted a wrench to give Junella a boost and she hopped through the window to huddle behind the car. It was relatively safer here. Very relatively. Even though there was slightly less vibration getting through to her now, there was also a mere few feet of snow and slippery grass between her and a hell of a long drop. 'Never a guardrail when you need one,' she thought. She sunk her fingers in the ground to anchor herself as she peeked over the edge.
Just as she'd thought. This was no naturally-occurring nightmare; this was a carefully-planned trap. She'd only seen what was causing it for a second, but that was enough. At the top of a small nearby hill, a tuning fork nearly as tall as a goalpost, with some kind of cone attached, was pointed down at them. Beside it was someone operating it. Junella didn't know how it was possible to be anywhere near that thing and not feel its effects. Maybe the cone directed its vibrations to a certain spot? A sonic laser? Whatever. Even if she didn't know the details of how, she knew this fucker's motive. Down at the bottom of the cliff she could see a minor junkyard of vehicles crushed like empty potato chip bags. Whoever was doing this, their game was scavenging. Causing wrecks and then looting whatever they could from them. There might even be a second furson below whose job was to pickpocket the corpses before they could come back to life.
This only increased her anger. No one did this kinda shit to her and lived to tell about it. She was already thinking of ways to trap whoever this was in their own personal inescapable hell. But first she had to get to them.
'Think,' she ordered herself. Cutting her ears off wouldn't do any good. Her eardrums had already blown out and she was still experiencing a migraine so bad she wanted to borrow Toby's hammer and bash her skull in with it. 'Wait... would that work?' Nah. How could she squash her own brain yet still remain alive to go after the guy? So, could she shield herself somehow? She mentally rooted through everything in the Fearsleigher. She could maybe pry a door off and walk behind it, but the sound had force behind it, and every additional pulse was punching the car another inch towards the cliff. Any kind of shield would just act like a kite and send her sailing. Whatever she was gonna do, she didn't have much time to do it.
Just then Toby jumped down from the back window to join her, slipped, and nearly went off the cliff. Junella had to leap forward to grab him.
"Thanks!" he said. Even though she couldn't hear, it was easy enough to read his lips.
That gave her an idea. Something about different senses, and getting around them. And Toby. Toby hitting the moon with a paint can.
Oh, this idea was so stupid she had to act on it instantly before her rational self could destroy it.
The skunk leapt up the side of the Fearsleigher and wriggled through the window. Piffle had gotten herself standing, which was excellent. "Mind if I borrow these!?" Junella shouted.
Piffle heard a trace of mumble and looked up. Then she yowled in shock as the skunk grabbed both her antennae, yanked them straight off, and plugged them into her own head.
As utterly dumb as the idea was, it worked. Junella felt an entirely new sense awaken within her. Her antennae swiveled around, seeming to feel the environment like a blind man's fingers. She directed them at the tuning fork. The 'vision' was blurred and wavy from the extreme vibrations, but she could still 'see' the bastard standing there.
Junella cackled with vicious glee and jumped off the car towards her foe, needlefingers glinting in the moonlight.
Meanwhile, Piffle was a bit miffed that her friend had stolen two very sensitive parts of her anatomy. But when she saw what Junella was using them for, she couldn't help but be astonished at the ridiculous brilliance of it. She rubbed the little round divots where her antennae used to be. She was in so much pain already, that extra burst had startled her to her senses. She looked around and saw that Zinc was standing through the open window, trying to tilt the car up from the inside with his wrenches.
He looked over and saw she was looking back. He over-enunciated each word, hoping she could make them out: "Get George! Help me!"
Piffle nodded and saluted. She jumped and used her wings to carry her up and out of the car. Another head-splitting pulse hit her then, and this time it was Toby's turn to catch her before she slid off the edge.
With Piffle's weight no longer added, Zinc tried to convince himself this would be easier. His wrenches were as strong as Satan doing pushups, but leverage was important too. Tipping the Fearsleigher would be a hell of a lot easier from outside, but that would mean exposing himself directly to the sonic pulses, which might knock his eyes and ears clean off. Then he'd be really screwed. So he clamped his wrenches to the window frame and pulled. He moved it perhaps an inch. Turning around and doing it from the other side, he got a bit more leverage, but he was going to need some horsepower to help him, and soon.
Together with Toby, Piffle huddled in the meager shelter of George's ribcage and managed to convey the plan while they unstrapped him from his harness. She communicated mostly through hand gestures, since everything she said was blasted to nothingness as soon as it left her mouth. Poor George was not used to pain. As a normal nightmare, he'd rarely ever felt it. In the old days, he'd been swift enough to outrun anything that might cause it. This sonic attack hurt about half as much as the alchemical fire that had gotten him imprisoned, and it was only the strength of George's duty to his masters that helped him stagger to his feet and leap behind the car. George could not hear Zinc's shout of relief when he put his skull to the metal, but with all four of them pushing together, they actually got the skate-car back on its skates. The others slumped to the snow from the effort, but George had to remain standing and brace himself against what little ground there was remaining between the car and the cliff, to keep it from retreating any further towards the edge. His skull was battered with fresh suffering with every new pulse. Yet he dug his hooves in and persevered. The others hunkered down behind the car's massive metal blades to consider their next move.
Meanwhile, Junella was enduring suicide-inducing levels of agony. Her plan with Piffle's antennae had worked; she could sense their attacker clear enough to head towards him. But that also meant she was walking forward into the tuning fork's sensory assault. This was pain that would have driven an average furson into a coma. Junella was pinning everything on the hope that her sheer raging need to kill this motherfucker would overcome whatever he threw at her.
The vibrations seemed to boil her organs. She could feel cracks appearing in her skin. Little black dots appeared on the snow below. Her scarf was streaked like zebra hide. She was driven to her knees, but she dug her finger-needles into the snowy soil to pull herself onwards.
With her antennae, she could 'see' that the little man was not yet fleeing. He still thought he could stop her by thwacking the fork again and again and again, pummeling her to pieces with the vibrations.
Her forehead split and black wax drizzled down her muzzle like hot fudge. She licked at it. 'You're just giving me more reason to keep on going, genius.'
Meanwhile, Toby, Piffle and Zinc were trying to think of a way to help Junella. Any attempts to shoot or throw something at their mysterious assailant was impossible. Getting a good shot meant exposing one's head to direct contact with the vibrations, which meant one was instantly too scrambled to aim. But that gave Zinc an idea. The turret. With wild gesticulations and a lot of screaming, he conveyed to the others that it had a scope you could look through to aim, it had gears to hold it in position wherever it was pointed. Plus the turret itself would provide a bit of shielding. And, best of all, Junella had already reloaded it since last time.
Toby gave the plan a thumbs-up and gave Zinc a 'good luck' pat on the shoulder.
Zinc grinned in a 'Who said I was gonna fire it?' way.
Toby unsubtly freaked out: 'ME!?'
Wrenches are not good for playing charades, but Zinc managed to get across his worry of losing his arms and ears the second he poked his head out. He would not be good at aiming if that happened. And he pointed out Piffle's compound eyes and lack of antennae. She nodded, acknowledging that she wouldn't be that good of a shot either.
So, despite still feeling like fiery hands were crushing his head to a pulp, Toby accepted his assignment. Zinc and Piffle helped him climb up on George's back. Toby weighed so little, being a stepping-stool was not a distraction from bracing the car, even though their vehicle was shuddering like it might break apart after each successive pulse.
Toby crouched behind the turret. He'd gotten a faceful of vibration for a split second and it was not something he wanted to experience ever again. He grabbed onto the metal and pulled himself weakly up towards the scope. The glass cover had exploded outwards and the innards were somewhat cracked, but the metal crosshairs were intact. Good enough. Toby swung the turret around, trying to decide what to hit. He saw the furson banging on the tuning fork. 'Might be a rabbit.' Big feet and buck teeth, but where were his ears? Toby didn't think he had the stomach for shooting another furson directly, and the guy was darting back and forth behind the giant fork anyway. Poor Junella looked like a chocolate bar under a heat lamp. Chunks and streams of her were turning the snowy ground around her a murky grey. But still she kept crawling forwards. Toby could not hear her screaming, but he was sure she was internally. He couldn't imagine the pain she was going through.
A thought materialized in his mind: 'I have the power to stop my friend from suffering.' It gave his courage a boost. Despite the lighting and thunder tearing his own brain to shreds, he looked through the scope and tried to think where to aim. The base of the fork? Could he tip it over? Maybe if he hit it at the middle he'd topple it. But that was a big if. What was a better target?
The cone. Obviously.
Toby ratcheted the turret into firing position and slammed his hand down on the button.
The ever-oncoming sonic pulses nearly drowned out the sound of the turret firing, but the hooked spear sailed from its barrel like a stork in flight. It passed over the road, over Junella's twitching form, and impacted the directional cone, tearing it away like shredding newspaper.
The rabbitish furson shrieked and spasmed. The effects of the fork were no longer aimed in only one direction, but instead radiated out to slam anything within its perimeter. Including its operator.
It was exactly the advantage Junella needed. The rabbit had flung himself away from the fork and was now rolling and twitching on the ground several feet away, which meant he sure as hell wasn't pounding on it anymore. The effects of his last sonic blast faded for her, but he was still dealing with it.
Junella willed the parts of her still capable of movement to head straight towards her enemy. She'd kept her cutlass stored safely in her hip to keep it from being knocked away, but now she retrieved it to use as a crutch.
The rabbit was wailing in pain, back arching, feet kicking. He caught a glimpse of what looked like a living oil spill coming straight at him with a big curved sword, and he jumped to his feet pretty damned fast. His head was still ringing and his vision would not focus, but he knew what direction 'away from that monstrosity' was.
Junella watched the coward trying to stumble away towards the trees and snarled. She knew there were hunks of her legs melting down the hillside and it should have been impossible to stand. She did anyway. Blood gushed from the cracks in her vinyl flesh as she braced herself against her sword and hauled herself vertical. She let out a pitiful wail and was glad it was silent.
The rabbit stumbled into the snow. He got up again with surprising quickness. He looked back at the gooey black zombie pursuing him. His horror turned to hate.
Junella couldn't see his eyes behind the cobalt-glass safety goggles he was wearing. But she could see he had a nosebleed. And from within his jacket he pulled a double-ended tuning fork that he brandished at her like a weapon.
She did not want to find out what that thing did. She wondered if her arm was strong enough to throw her sword accurately.
As it turned out, she didn't have to.
The rabbit shouted "Awwk!" as two surprisingly strong tiny plastic hands grabbed his right ankle and yanked. He faceplanted hard, like someone had kicked a barstool out from under him.
Doll, now that Junella was aware of her again, fell backwards too. Inanimate as usual. But she had achieved what she'd set out to do.
When she'd been thrown from the car during the initial attack, it was only pure luck that kept her from tumbling down the cliff. Thankfully, no one was looking at her so she was able to dig in with her stubby fingers and keep herself from falling. Despite her hollow head, the vibrational attack still hurt like hell. Doll saw red. It had taken her a long time to circle around the car into the forest behind their attacker. Crossing the road was especially worrisome since she had no cover. But the fact that everyone else was too distracted to notice her helped a lot. She kept on the edges of the tuning fork's range, running as fast as her pudgy plastic legs could carry her. And when she saw the rabbit take a dose of his own medicine and start running right towards her location, she quickly positioned herself where he'd trip over her. She'd figured he'd see her and immobilize her before she got the chance to attack. When he turned his back on her, it was like giving her a Christmas gift.
Seeing her enemy humiliated by a kids' toy gave Junella's will a shot of schadenfreude-fueled energy. She limped quickly over to him and planted the tip of her cutlass in his back. Not enough to kill him. Just enough to touch bone and make him squeal.
"You don't even wanna imagine what I'm gonna do to you if you don't stay still!!" she roared. She'd noticed before that his ears seemed awfully tiny for his species, and up close she realized that, oh yes indeed, he was definitely deaf. It looked like someone had long ago ripped both of his ears out at the root, leaving two mangled, ugly, badly-healed stumps of scar tissue behind. Apparently he was a fan of comic books, as he'd turned his disability into a crime theme.
Junella could not let him know that in her current condition she probably couldn't even take Toby in a fight. 'Well, maybe Toby,' she rethought. Still, there was no shame in calling for backup. "GEORGE!!!" she bellowed, hoping the others had recovered enough to regain their hearing.
They had. In fact they were all whooping with joy that the headache was finally over. Their skulls still rang with the aftershocks, their facial muscles still twitched, and every sound hurt, but that couldn't stop them from celebrating. George, being a nightmare construct, recovered quickest and quite clearly heard Junella's call. He nodded to the others to indicate where he was going and galloped off.
George arrived so swiftly Junella almost hated him. Crossing the distance between the Fearsleigher and the fork had felt like eighty miles to her.
"Yes, Madam Brox?"
"Stand on his limbs," she ordered. "Gently though. Hurt him, but don't break anything. Yet."
"Yes, Madam Brox!" he said with a grim smile. George would have been about the size of a Clydesdale if he'd had any meat on his frame. But the weight of his bones alone was near 200 pounds. One can imagine a rock-hard hoof pushing that much weight onto one's arms and legs would not feel very good. Both he and Junella relished the thin whines of agony their attacker squeaked out when George got himself positioned.
'He's not going anywhere soon,' Junella thought with a smile. She gave a thankful nod to George, then walked over to Doll and picked her up cringingly by two fingers. She brushed some snow off the toy's dress. "Credit where credit's due; that was a nice assist. Thanks. Keep it up and I might be able to stand the sight of you."
Doll did not respond, but thought of some things she could have said to that.
Junella plopped her down on George's back. She didn't want to hold the thing any longer than she had to, but honor demanded she at least spare her inanimate passenger from having to toddle back to the car on her tiny feet.
"Am I to incinerate him, Madam Brox?" George asked with a gleam in his eye.
"Nope. Just keep him cozy for a moment. I'll be back in a jif." She turned and began limping down the hill. Her purpose for this was twofold. For one, her vinyl body had its advantages, one of which was that she could slowly-but-surely heal without needing to die first. So long as she could reassemble any pieces she'd lost, they'd eventually ooze back together and re-solidify. Also, her will automatically kept her from melting in hot temperatures, but the same was not true for anything that fell off of her. This was actually fortunate, because it meant she could simply step in any little puddles of herself she found and feel the little tickly trickles of herself flow up towards her core. (The flecks of herself on her scarf were already on the move.)
Her second purpose was to ask Toby to come back up the hill with her.
At the moment when she'd pinned the rabbit down with her sword, she'd felt a small twinge of guilt. This was not normal. And it took her a moment to identify where it had come from. Her client. Or rather, her knowledge of what he'd no doubt say at seeing her do such an unladylike thing. She imagined him cringing at such cruelty, and thus, she cringed as well. This would not do.
When she'd been crawling towards the bastard, she had wanted nothing more than to kill the living shit out of him. But that wasn't going far enough. Whatever death she put him through, he'd regenerate after. No, she had to teach him a more permanent lesson. Her mind flipped through its internal photo album of obscene tortures she'd witnessed or participated in. Now here she was flinching at such monstrous acts, and all because of her milquetoast client. (Piffle too, to a lesser extent. Junella didn't know as much about her, but she was sure the hamsterfly would have given her at least a stern look and a 'tsk tsk' for kicking a downed opponent.)
Junella arrived at the car, where Zinc, Piffle and Toby were all lying against the skate blades and panting in relief. "Much obliged," she said as she ripped off her antennae and threw them back to Piffle.
"I hope they helped," she said as she screwed them on.
Junella nodded. Then she looked down to Toby. "Mouse. Come here. I need you for something."
Toby looked startled. "Me? What for?" He'd assumed George was perfectly capable of whatever it was Junella was doing up there (and he preferred to not know the details of it).
The skunk reached out a hand to help him up. She did not say another word.
Her expression was as cold as the snow he was sitting in. Though he couldn't tell what that chill was directed at. Toby took her hand and followed when she turned to walk back up the hill.
"What do you want from me, boss-lady?" Zinc called out.
Junella didn't look back. "Play patty-cake with Piffle if you feel like it," she grunted.
Piffle giggled at this.
A few steps later, Junella had a better idea. "Actually, see if you can get the windows fixed!"
"I liked the first idea better!" came his reply.
Toby got a smile out of that, but it quickly vanished as he looked back at Junella's face. The skunk's eyes were clear but her expression was locked tight as a fortress. Her gaze was somewhere indistinct in the distance, like she was giving intense thought to something.
The mouse looked ahead and could see the squirming, struggling rabbit trying to wiggle out from underneath George's hooves. The stallion was as placid as could be, not needing the slightest effort to keep his captive captive.
Toby's heart sank. He had an idea of why Junella had brought him over to see this. "Do you want me to kill him? Is that it?" he asked in a weak voice. "To toughen me up? I honestly don't think that I could."
"I don't either," Junella sang simply.
He felt uneasy. Whatever she had in mind, it was going to make his mouth taste sour. "Then what?"
"I want you to watch, that's all." Her voice was toneless. Her expression like still water.
"Why!?" Toby yelled. "What are you going to do to him?"
She flinched at his tone. She turned angry, but only for a moment before her calm returned. She took a step towards the mouse and put a cracked, leaking paw on his shoulder. "This isn't a judgment of you, Toby. Just some much-needed advice. Your attitude is going to get you killed someday if you don't change it."
He didn't have time to ask what the hell she meant by that, because she put the fingers of her other hand over his mouth. Gently. Neither could speak now, but she told him with her eyes to just listen.
He fidgeted in embarrassment and confusion for a second, but then nodded. He would at least hear her out.
"You still believe in mercy, Toby," she said when she took her hand away. He noticed that she was calling him by his name now. Not just 'mouse'. And there was a trace of concern in her voice too. "That's not a bad thing. But too much of anything is poison. Too much mercy will kill you."
He was about to protest, but she put her hand back on his lips, firmer this time.
"This isn't back home. And this isn't a storybook with some sappy happy ending. This is here. And right now, we have in our possession someone who just put us through a living hell. And only because, by luck, we didn't die in a crash at the bottom of a cliff like he'd planned. He was going to kill us and loot our bodies, Toby. Do you understand that?"
"Yes, but..." He tried to think of a way to articulate the slithering knot in his gut. This felt wrong no matter what the rabbit had tried to do to them. "But what are we, if we have him helpless and then torture him? What does that accomplish besides we get revenge? I'm not saying we let him go free, but... Can we throw him in the trunk? We're going to this Ectopia place, right? Don't they have cops there?"
Junella had to give him credit for at least coming up with an alternate option. "No dice, sorry. That'd only work if EC's cops gave a damn about anything that happened outside the city. And even if they did, they'll interview him too. Why should they believe us over him? We ain't got what happened on video."
Toby nibbled his finger in frustration. There had to be another way besides whatever horrible thing Junella was planning.
She saw what he was thinking and squashed it. "No. You're not talking me out of this. That's the point. That's why I need you to stand here and keep your mouth shut and your eyes wide. I get that heroes don't kick the bad guy when he's down. But I ain't no fuckin' hero. I'm a survivor. And I'm someone you're relying on to keep you surviving too. This is a hard, ugly lesson you need to learn, Toby. You need to see what people like me have to do to get by in a world like this."
Toby looked desperately to George, hoping he might back him up.
The stallion was as stone-faced as Junella. He spoke in as neutral a tone as he could. "I fully understand your reluctance, Sire Toby. But I find myself in agreement with Madam Brox's logic."
Toby gnashed his teeth. He briefly considered pulling rank on George and reminding him that he was still a servant and Toby was his master. But he knew if he did that he'd hate himself for weeks (and rightfully so).
So he stood with his feet in the snow and watched as Junella turned away from him and towards their prisoner.
"Thank you, George. Now please, roll him over. Face up. I want him to see me." She looked down to the shivering mess at her feet.
George's hooves were swift. As feather-light as he could, he stepped off the rabbit's limbs, then repositioned the wretch with a careful kick. Figuring it was expected of him, he stepped back on to make sure their prisoner did not have a hope of escape.
The rabbit let out a fresh groan at this. It wasn't bad enough having divots slowly dug into his flesh on one side...
Junella noticed he was sensible enough to not start yapping at her. Nice. At least he recognized that he was screwed good and hard, and there were no magic words to make his situation any better. She leaned down to pull off his cobalt goggles, then tossed them aside. She wanted to see his eyes. They were wide and brown and alert. He was scared shitless, but smart. Hopefully that meant he'd be responsive to what she was about to teach him.
She took a closer look at those gnarled ear-stumps. "Deaf, huh? Can you read lips?"
He nodded a strong affirmative.
'That makes this a hell of a lot simpler,' she thought. She positioned herself so her face was right in the center of his vision. She normally didn't need to move her lips when she spoke, but now she made sure to enunciate perfectly, so he'd get every last drop of her message. "What's your name?" she asked softly.
He sputtered at first. She was a quiet one. Oh fuck, the raging ones were bad, but the quiet ones were far more dangerous. "...R-Rither!" he finally forced out of his trembling throat. "Calvin Rither!"
Junella stood with her hands on her hips, looming over him. "Why are you alive right now, Calvin?"
He felt quite sure that if he didn't get this question right, he would suffer plenty for it. An 'I don't know' would be worse than suicide. "Be-because..." He stalled for time. "Because killing me would be too quick?"
A broad smile unrolled across Junella's face. "You are smart."
Toby cringed and started wringing his tail in his paws.
Junella knelt down and picked up the double-ended tuning fork he'd wielded at her. From the way he grimaced, she could see it was important to him. "Oh? This your favorite toy? I've got a sword I like a lot. It'd make me plenty mad if someone took it from me. But then again, that's exactly what you were planning to do, wasn't it?" She sheathed the fork in her other hip. "Mine now."
His face screwed up into a tight rictus. He barely restrained himself from screaming at her.
"Aww, don't like it when the tables are turned?" she cooed. "You're lucky I don't know where you live, else I'd tie you up and make you watch as I stole everything you own. I might even take your clothes if I feel like it. This big-ass fork of yours? It's going on our roof rack. Someone in EC'll pay a pretty penny for it." She grinned at how much he struggled when she said that. "No more meal ticket, asshole. This racket of yours is over."
He couldn't contain himself any longer. "And what if I have a family to feed!? What if I have to provide for them out here in this godforsaken forest!?"
Junella's eyes narrowed. Her volume rose like she'd turned the knob till it snapped off. "WHAT IF WE'D BEEN ONE, HUH!? What if we'd been a family with a buncha babies in the back!? What then, fuckface!? Would you have tipped us over the cliff then too? I'll bet you would have! Cowards like you are the WORST!!" She spat black saliva in his face, then pried his eyes open to make damn sure he could see her words. "When I fight someone, when I kill someone, I make sure they see my eyes first. So it's fair. So they know exactly why they're gonna die. Not like you. You wanna kill without getting your hands dirty? Just flick 'em over the edge and they're nice and quiet and still when you get to them? You don't have to deal with seeing the lights in their eyes go out. Fucking coward. There is NO ONE worse than your kind!"
He was shuddering, trembling. But his eyes had gained the defiance of someone who knows they're in so deep there's no farther down they can dig. "This is what people like me have to do in a world like this," he parroted back to her.
Junella pushed one of her finger-needles up into the soft triangle beneath his jawbone. "Excuses, excuses," she purred darkly. "You don't need to. Why don't you pack up and move to Coryza? Or can't you get through the clouds? You're two hours' walk from EC; why don't you go there and panhandle until you can afford a taxi ride? You don't NEED to take from innocent people, you liar! You do it BECAUSE IT'S EASY!!!"
He flinched hard. And he stared back into Junella's eyes with molten hatred. But he didn't say one word of denial.
Junella took a moment to gather her composure. She didn't anticipate hating the little germ this much. "You don't think about what your victims go through," she whispered. "But you will." With a few swift strokes of her cutlass, she rendered his jacket and pants useless. They'd fall off him the moment he sat up. If she drew a little blood by accident, she didn't care.
She stood back up. She still spoke to Rither, but turned her eyes to Toby. This was the part she wanted him to see. "I told you I wouldn't kill you, Calvin, and my promises are gold. But that just means I won't kill you today. I'm going to leave you here, but I'll be coming back this way in a while. And when I do, I'll hunt you. If I find so much as one of your fingernails left in this forest, I will personally deliver you to Dysphoria and drop you in. Got me?"
The rabbit was utterly stunned she was giving him any chance at all. Moving would not be easy now, but he believed her. He was smart enough to know when to be afraid. "I got you."
Junella moved as if she were about to walk away, but then stopped. She turned back and leaned against George's leg, looking down at her prey. "Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. There's a bunch of Bozos 'bout a half mile away. We fucked 'em up good, but they won't stay that way much longer. I'm surprised they're not here already. Wherever it is you live, you'd better get there quick and lock your doors."
"I will, I will!!" Rither shouted. "Thank you for letting me go!"
She smirked. "I didn't say it was gonna be that easy, did I?"
Seeing the playful twinkle come to her eyes, the rabbit's hopes plummeted. Those eyes were windows to a plane of infinite sadism. Oh god, whatever she was about to do to him was going to be unspeakable.
Junella actually giggled, glad that he'd had this revelation. "Let's make your situation a bit more interesting, shall we? George, would you be so kind as to give each one of your hooves a good sharp twist?"
The rabbit's heart skipped a beat.
"YES, Madam Brox!!"
Toby was about to cry out to stop this, but he was too stunned to react in time.
*CRUNCH*SNAP*SNAP*SKLUTCH*
The sound of bone breaking is awful enough to make some people heave. Toby nearly did.
Rither was shrieking high-pitched yelps of mindless excruciation. The left and right humerus. Both femurs. All four bones destroyed with the slightest effort. His limbs were a casserole of muscle, marrow and sharp little shards. The pain was so intense, he started to go blind as well as deaf.
Junella sighed with satisfaction. "You can step off now, George. You were fantastic."
George did, and gave her a nod to signal a job well done. "What a delightfully insidious mind you have, Madam Brox. I look forward to many years of service with you."
"Ditto." She was doubly pleased to see that, without even being asked, George then went over to the big tuning fork and began knocking it loose so they could take it with them.
Rither was still lying on the ground blubbering, so Junella gave him a light kick in the ribs to get him moving. "Clowns comin', remember? Better haul ass unless you wanna get caught!"
The rabbit was in no condition to speak complete sentences, but he did manage to push his agony aside just long enough to let her know with a look how unfathomably deep his hatred was.
Junella just smiled. And as he began the impossible task of rolling himself back into a crawling position so he could attempt the even more impossible task of getting away in time, she kept on smiling.
She walked over to where Toby was doubled over in shock, holding a hand over his mouth to keep his puke in. She leaned her elbow on his shoulder. "There you have it. I just ordered the merciless torture of a helpless prisoner. And a handicapped one too! Pissed at me yet?"
Toby shoved her away, sickened. "You don't have to act like you enjoyed it so much!"
"But I did," she said. "And I won't lie about that."
Toby turned away from the sobbing, wailing man trying desperately to make his broken body move. He skittered back down the hill towards the car.
Junella followed the mouse, not allowing him to simply turn away from this. Her tone was close to mocking, but not all the way. "If you care so much, why doncha just go back there and hit him on the head with your hammer? He'll die and go back to normal. You can end his suffering in a flash. Why not?"
He stopped and looked back. He could. She was right about that. He felt the presence of his hammer within its portal sheath. "...Because I don't know what he'll do to us then."
She nodded. She was glad to see that her lesson had had some effect. The mouse was practically steaming from how furious he was at her, yet he still realized she was right. "Good."
Feeling helpless with frustration, he pointed in her face. "But what makes you any better than him, huh!? How are you any less a monster!?"
She actually stepped back a little, not expecting such volume from him. But she was ready for it. It was an argument she'd heard many times, and it was one she absolutely despised. "Because I don't treat innocent people like that, Toby. I don't sit and wait for someone I've never met to come by, then ambush them and take what they've got. Every ounce of pain he's feeling right now? He wouldn't be feeling NONE of it if he'd just left us alone. We wouldn't have even known he was there. He's in the position I put him in because he chose to make himself a part of my life!"
Toby stood there staring at her for a moment longer. He wanted to argue. He wanted to call it all bullshit. But he couldn't. From every angle he looked at it, Junella's reasoning was rock solid. But it felt like a tumor on his heart nonetheless. And what made it worse was not knowing if that ugly feeling inside him was right or wrong.
He clenched his teeth in frustration and started walking towards the car again, nearly crying. "Fine!! You're right about everything, Junella! But I hope you don't care that he's gonna hate you forever for this, and he's probably gonna come after you someday!"
She kept pace behind him, just long enough to reply. "Better me than someone else, Toby. Least I'll be ready." And then she let him go.
She stood there, a few yards away from the road, and watched the mouse run back to join the others. She didn't know how things would turn out with him now. She wondered what names he'd call her. This client had some honor to him, and a bit more spine than she'd first assumed. So she was relatively confident he wouldn't just stomp off again. But he'd hate her for a while for this, and she didn't blame him. She hoped she hadn't wrecked his relationship with George too. But this had to be done. This was a bitter pill that had to be forced down his throat eventually. She believed, genuinely, that his sense of mercy would sooner or later have dire consequences for him. Forgiving someone unwisely is a great way to paint 'stab here' on your own back. A long time ago, a friend of hers had said, 'the fight is never over until your enemy is no longer your enemy.' She liked that. It allowed room for forgiveness when a foe showed they were worthy. But it also conveyed that, if someone is a threat to you, it is in your best interests to erase that threat.
She looked over her shoulder at the moaning rabbit. He'd actually managed to start crawling. 'Huh. Hardy li'l bastard.'
The sensible thing to do would have been to cut off his limbs, cauterize the stumps, then put him in a sack and drop him in Dysphoria like she'd said. (And she hadn't made that threat idly. She would be back here on the return trip.) But for now, little Calvin would attempt to run along home and almost-inevitably find himself surrounded by red noses. If he had a partner-in-crime, they'd probably rescue him from the Bozos after a while and kill him back to normal. Then they'd plan their revenge.
Junella did not like knowing that she had enemies. She liked loose ends cut off cleanly. But maybe the mouse's influence had rubbed off on her a little after all. This was more mercy than she'd normally show. At least if the rabbit had the tiniest shred of decency, he might find some empathy with what he put his victims through. He might take her advice and move the hell away. Or he might start up a new ambush somewhere else.
Junella did not find it easy to trust the better nature of other people.
But if he was a fool, and did what she was expecting, she would be ready. At the slightest sound of a tuning fork from now on, her cutlass would be in her hand and she would use it till it got satisfied.
She turned back up the hill to help George, then rejoined the others. They had to get moving again. The sooner the better.
*****