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He heard panting and saw Colin running wildly down the path, feet muddy, favoring one leg, but fear driving him through the pain. A cloaked Reaper, its face white-painted with eyes and lips blackened to imitate a skull, thin chest similarly decorated to enhance the ribs, skipped along behind him, raising first one long arm and then the other in a sort of dance.
"and i run and you run and i run and you run ...", it sang as it hopped.
Could he catch it unaware?
The Reaper halted, pointed a long black-nailed finger at Valentine, "you! you wait your turn! gimpy's first!"
Colin sprawled, tripping on the same hole that had injured him earlier, "oh, you've tripped, get up, you're not finished yet. run run run little silly man".
They disappeared toward the buildings, the Reaper harrying its prey like a dog driving a lone sheep.
Valentine angled toward the western wall. Twelve feet of brick, with trees well cut back, was topped with electrified fence.
"Don't even think about it", a megaphoned voice from the trees called. Valentine searched the timber, saw a hunting blind. "He's busy with the others. If you hurry, you'll make the finish line easy".
Valentine trotted back into the woods.
He ran faster as he saw the two red lights, broke out of the trees and up a long meadowed path, thick with night dew. Valentine saw more lines of fencing, angling toward the finish line. A couple of New Universal Church robed types stood before a candlelit table with food and bottles and a trophy cup.
But there was a cold piece of evil lurking just on the other side of the victory tape.
Valentine sensed a Reaper under the table, alive and pulsing. A final shock for the winner?
He couldn't say why that one little detail bothered him more than the nests of sharpened pungi sticks on the path, or the humiliation of being stripped in front of joking guards. He turned and trotted back along the path toward the buildings.
* * *
He found them on the other side of a little wall-less Japanese building, between two gardens filled with stones. The Reaper loomed behind Colin, poking him in the kidneys with a long, black fingernail, urging him toward Mona, crying, holding out one hand as a plea to stop and covering her sex with the other. Valentine could hear the breathy, high-pitched voice.
"one two three four, I declare a food war. five six seven eight, the winner gets to make the gate".
The Reaper jumped and landed next to Mona, who tripped and fell.
"you can take him. he's out of breath, wounded in the foot! go for his other leg!"
Colin jumped on her, got his fingers around her throat.
"now rape her! spread her legs, inside, inside, and i'll let you live". It hung over the couple, its cloak drawing a curtain around them...
Valentine flitted between trees, put the cement of the little pagoda between himself and the scene.
"No! No, please! Oh God!" Mona screamed.
Something at the base of his spine woke up and twitched. It ran hot up his back, perched between brain and skull atop his head like a spider.
Valentine hopped up on top of the pagoda, and made the jump with the thoughtless ease of a house cat leaping to a kitchen table. Dirt and clinging plants fell, displaced by his weight, but before they hit the ground he was a gargoyle shape half-hanging from the pagoda roof.
Below, the Reaper opened its jaw and shot its tongue toward Colin's back, teeth following. Colin screamed.
The greenery hit the ground next to the Reaper. It turned its head; eyes followed the trajectory up...
And met Valentine on the way down.
He landed atop the Reaper, driving the femur down toward the great beehivelike organ that sucked down the blood. It reached up, backward-hinging arms moving for him, but Valentine was off it, moving on white-hot instinct, hardly knowing what his body was going to do next.
He swung a stiff-fingered uppercut, felt fingers break through skin, grabbed the Reaper under its hyperextended jaw, fingers closing on bone, dragged it off Colin, who had a gaping, tongue-sized wound in his back. Valentine whipsawed and the Reaper sprawled.
He held its white-painted jaw in his hands.
