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Leadem, Christopher

"The Mantooth"


'But if you're really worried,' she said placidly, 'Wait for
me at the Vale of the Obelisk. I'll meet you there at noon, to tell
you of our love-making. And then we'll say goodbye, forever.'
She strode out, and left him shaking. He fell to his knees and wept,
much as William had screamed, to find his lover dead. He was alone in a
dark cave, too small and dank for a man.....

*

William did not wake, because he had not slept. He told himself that he
was letting it build inside him, mounting toward the kill. But in truth
he was far beyond even that. The amphetamines he had injected though
every voice of body and mind cried against it, ate him like a cancer.
He had lost all control. This would be an act of vengeance, but not his
vengeance. Somewhere in the mincer of pain and loss he had become the
very thing he had fought all his life against, what he swore he would
never become: an instrument in someone else's, someTHING else's
hands. He could not admit this. He could not admit, or think, of
anything. For his mind was no longer his own. Not by a conscious act
of submission---
He gave a violent cry and hurled a bottle at the crumbling half-wall.
As it shattered, as he saw the broken glass and knew what it could do to
human flesh, he remembered his purpose.


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