“The price of my flesh would be your life, gunslinger. He has got me with child. Not his, but the child of a great king. If you invade me...” She let the lazy smile complete her thought. At the same time she gestured with her huge, mountainous thighs. They stretched beneath her garment like pure marble slabs. The effect was dizzying.
The gunslinger dropped his hands to the butts of his pistols. “You have a demon, woman, not a king. Yet fear not. I can remove it.”
The effect was instantaneous. She recoiled against the chair, and a weasel look flashed on her face. “Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me! You dare not touch the Bride of God!”
“Want to bet?” the gunslinger said. He stepped toward her. “As the gambler said when he laid down a handful of cups and wands, just watch me.”
The flesh on the huge frame quaked. Her face had become a caricature of terror, and she stabbed the sign of the Eye at him with pronged fingers.
“The desert,” the gunslinger said. “What after the desert?”
“You’ll never catch him! Never! Never! You’ll burn! He told me so!”
“I’ll catch him,” the gunslinger said. “We both know it. What is beyond the desert?”
“No!”
“Answer me!”
“No!”
He slid forward, dropped to his knees, and grabbed her thighs. Her legs locked like a vise. She made strange, lustful keening noises.
“The demon, then,” he said. “Out it comes.”
“No—”
He pried the legs apart and unholstered one of his guns.
“No! No! No!” Her breath came in short, savage grunts.
“Answer me.”
She rocked in the chair and the floor trembled. Prayers and garbled bits of scripture flew from her lips.
He rammed the barrel of the gun forward. He could feel the terrified wind sucked into her lungs more than he could hear it. Her hands beat at his head; her legs drummed against the floor. And at the same time the huge body tried to suck the invader in. Outside nothing watched them but the bruised and dusty sky.
She screamed something, high and inarticulate.
“What?”
“Mountains!”
“What about them?”
“He stops... on the other side... s-s-sweetJesus!... to m-make his strength. Med-m-meditation, do you understand? Oh... I’m... I’m...”
The whole huge mountain of flesh suddenly strained forward and upward, yet he was careful not to let her secret flesh touch him.
Then she seemed to wilt and grow smaller, and she wept with her hands in her lap.
“So,” he said, getting up. “The demon is served, eh?”
“Get out. You’ve killed the child of the Crimson King. But you will be repaid. I set my watch and warrant on it. Now get out. Get out.”
He stopped at the door and looked back. “No child,” he said briefly. “No angel, prince, no demon.”
“Leave me alone.”
