01.2 - Better the Devil Read online

  The poison had gotten into one of the Devil’s eyes, causing it to distend, to run like a half-fried egg—and a number of its legs were also mottled and twisted, some tapering to fused stumps. Its tail seemed intact but badly burnt, and it trailed across the ground limply as if its nerves had been destroyed—which, Lorenzo thought, would explain why the Devil hadn’t employed it against him this time.

  It could only have been a few knife thrusts away from death. He had done that to it. And he could finish the job right now. He could take it.

  If only he could reach it.

  The Devil was visibly rallying, throwing off the effects of this latest dose of venom. By the time he could escape the mantrap’s embrace, Lorenzo knew it would be on him again, back in a position of strength. But the force of the Devil’s attack had had an unintended consequence; its feet had churned up mud, exposed the plant’s roots and hacked into them, weakening them. The mantrap’s hold on Lorenzo remained firm; its hold on the earth was less so.

  His hands trembling, he put his blade to work in a sawing action, weakening that hold further, his own tiredness forgotten in the adrenaline high of the moment. First one green strand and then two more parted, but the shape of the Devil was always lurking in his peripheral vision—and as it began to recover its composure, to draw itself up to its full height again, Lorenzo knew that, ready or not, he had to act now.

  He threw himself at the creature, his right arm fully extended, pulling the mantrap after him, elated as its roots clung and strained and tore and gave just—just—enough for him to be able to drive his fang, his still poison-tipped fang, into the Devil’s gaping mouth. It roared again, struck out blindly, caught the side of Lorenzo’s head and almost snapped his neck with the force of the blow.

  For a second he couldn’t see anything, just black stars exploding. Then he blinked away his dizziness, and he saw the Catachan Devil looming over him…

  …for a second, then it let out an agonised shudder and its legs splayed out beneath it and, with a resounding crash, it flopped onto its stomach.

  Lorenzo leapt onto its back, found an exposed patch of flesh and focused all his attention upon that, upon bringing his knife arm up, down, up, down, stabbing away and just praying he could dig his way down to something vital. A claw came grasping for him, but he batted it away and he kept on cutting, cutting, cutting, establishing a mechanical rhythm until there was nothing left in the world but him and the slab of warm meat beneath him and his fang and the black blood in which he was steadily becoming coated, and he wasn’t even sure the Devil was alive, didn’t dare slop to check, but he knew he had beaten it. He could taste his victory.

  And then all he could taste was mud, because the Devil had found a last vestige of strength and it had bucked and thrown him, and he tried to stand but he could feel the mantrap on his leg reasserting itself, and he let out a scream of frustration as he was dragged away from his nemesis, watched it slip through his fingers.

  Then it was gone, swallowed by the surrounding jungle as quickly as it had emerged from it, and Lorenzo was alone and bloodied and caked in dirt and his trapped right leg was stinging, and he hammered his fists into the ground and he screamed out again and again, because he had been so close this time, so close to achieving what he had once thought impossible.

  So close. Not quite close enough.

  When Lorenzo came round…

  He was lying on his back in a clean, white bed, staring up at bright lights in a black ceiling, and the first thing that rushed back to him was a feeling of shame. They must have carried him into the Tower, Creek’s men, after he had… had…

  He was starting to remember, through a fog of confusion: half-walking, half-crawling, dragging himself across the tree line, and Creek had been there… hadn’t he?… and Lorenzo had been determined to meet him on his feet, to look him square in his black eyes, but he’d been too weak…

  He was not alone.

  His heart leapt at the realisation, and he scrambled onto his elbows, tried to sit to attention, but he couldn’t quite make it. He felt nauseous—anti-plague drugs, he guessed—and he could taste the chalky residue of water tablets on his tongue.

  Sergeant “Barracuda” Creek patted him on the shoulder in a curiously paternal manner. “Easy there, trooper,” the old soldier growled, “you’ve had a tough time of it, so I hear; it cost us three cans of synth-skin just to fix up that leg of yours.”

  “I… I almost had it, sergeant,” he stammered. “I was so close, but it ran from me and I couldn’t… Let me try again. Next year. I can train harder, try harder.”

  “You know the problem you’ve caused me, don’t you? The mess you made of that Devil—I hear it’s cowering in its den right now, gonna be laid up a whole lot longer’n you are. Means I’ll have to break in a brand new critter for the next initiation test.”

  “One more try,” Lorenzo pleaded. “I can beat it next time. I know I can.”

  “I don’t think you’re hearing me, trooper,” said Creek. “I wasn’t too sure about you, didn’t think you were ready to go off-world, not yet. But you did a good job out there. Real good. In fact, a whole better’n most. In the long run.”

  Lorenzo tried to say something, but no words came out. He didn’t dare let the words out, didn’t dare believe what he thought he was hearing.

  “What,” said Creek, his lips curling to expose a row of small, pointed teeth, “you thought you had to kill that thing? I wouldn’t have expected that from a vet, let alone from a newbie. You didn’t have to kill the Devil, Lorenzo. You just had to survive.”

  And then the half-smile faded, and Creek straightened up, very much the dour, brusque military man of a few days earlier again. “You ship out in seventy-two hours,” he barked. “The medics say you’ll be fit by then, or I’ll want to know the reason why. You’re going to war now, Trooper Lorenzo—and if you think I’ve been tough on you… well, let’s just see how you cope with a real challenge!”

  Scanning by Flandrel,

  formatting and

  proofing by Undead.