Dark Goddess

However, Billy-boy Porpoise had exhibited behavior patterns that were all too familiar to Kane. After inviting the two emissaries from Cerberus to a council with the promise of giving their proposal serious consideration, he had chosen treachery over diplomacy. Although not particularly surprised by Billy-boy’s choice, Kane had been enraged when Brigid was held hostage so as to force a new session of talks.

Shaster wheeled the Jeep down a crushed-shell driveway and braked to a stop at the foot of a flight of stone steps. Orchid stepped behind Kane and pressed the bore of the revolver against his back. “Let’s move it on up, sec man.”

Kane climbed the steps with the girl and Shaster walking behind him. At the top of the steps a gently sloping path curved through an area lush with shrubs and tropical plants—huge ferns, enormous, glossy elephant ears, green philodendrons and orange birds-of-paradise.

Kane heard the murmur of voices and the clanging rhythm of steel drums, as well as the bleat of trumpets and the wail of an electric slide guitar. He sidled between two date palm trees and came to a halt, looking down into a slightly sunken area dominated by a huge, blue-tiled in-ground swimming pool.

A score of people, most of them nearly naked and some of them completely so, milled around on the concrete deck of the pool. A four-piece reggae band played a vigorous piece that sounded like a tuneless racket to Kane’s ears.

He saw only two people in the pool. One was an enormously fat man sitting in an inflatable purple rubber chair, floating motionless in the deep end. A pink foam dolphin bobbed in the water beside his right hand. It was almost the same color as Billy-boy Porpoise’s bare skin.

On Porpoise’s left hand, reclining in an identical chair, was a tall woman of five-nine or so with flowing curves, long, lovely and unbruised legs—and an abundant bosom almost completely exposed by the two narrow triangles of yellow cloth that were scarcely more than token acknowledgments of clothing.

The woman’s thick hair shone with the fiery hue of molten lava, and although Kane couldn’t see her eyes behind the lenses of the sunglasses she wore, he received the distinct impression Brigid Baptiste was completely at ease as she lounged beside Billy-boy Porpoise.

Chapter 3

Kane strode down to the poolside, very conscious of how he was being ignored by the revelers. He wasted no time looking for hidden guns—it was enough to know they were around.

He saw a big moon-faced man, tall and wedge shaped, with a thick chest and wide shoulders that led to a size-eighteen neck. He had a flat face, with a bulging forehead and about two pounds too much jawbone. His hair looked like the sprout of black hog bristles. His skin was unhealthy, blotched, mottled by the scars of old radiation burns that came of digging around hellzones. The garish colors of the tropical-print shirt complemented his complexion.

The man’s gristle-buried eyes followed Kane’s every step, and the expression on his face was one of concentrated hatred. It took him a few seconds to put a name to the ugly face—Blister McQuade, the former pit boss of Mandeville who bore no one from Cerberus a feeling that even approximated goodwill.

A small girl, stark naked except for fluorescent pink body paint laid on in loops and a fall of blond, silken hair that covered her upper body like a cloak, glided up to him. Silently she handed him a fluted glass filled with a bright orange fluid.

Kane waved her off. “Too early for me, sweetheart.”

He spoke loudly in order to be heard over the band. Billy-boy Porpoise’s eyelids fluttered. His sagging pectorals with shocking pink nipples rose and fell. He inhaled, and then exhaled a deep breath, causing small wavelets to break at the pool’s edge.

He peered up at Kane with dark eyes surrounded by pouches of fat. They were round eyes with no discernible lashes and bore no resemblance to those found on a dolphin. Kane figured they had originally been intended for a barracuda but due to a production error, ended up in Billy-boy’s hairless head.

“Kane,” he said in a soft voice.

“Billy-boy,” Kane replied. “Sorry to wake you.”

“Nonsense. We were just conserving our strength.” He glanced toward Brigid Baptiste. “Weren’t we, doll-baby?”

Brigid did not reply, her face expressionless. With the sunglasses concealing her eyes, she might as well have been wearing a mask.

Kane nodded toward her. “Good morning, doll-baby. You’re looking rested.”

Slowly, she lifted the sunglasses and regarded him with dispassionate, emerald-green, jade-hard eyes. “I don’t know what would give you that idea.”

A slender woman with a fair complexion, Brigid Baptiste’s high forehead gave the impression of a probing intellect, whereas her full underlip hinted at an appreciation of the sensual. Her mane of thick hair hung in a long sunset-colored braid, tossed over her left shoulder.

As he sat up straighter in his floating chair, Billy-boy Porpoise’s pudgy fingers pulled a lever that activated a small prop positioned at the rear of the seat. With a faint whir, the chair moved toward the concrete steps at the shallow end of the pool.

Grasping the handrail, Porpoise heaved himself out of the pool, rolls of fat jiggling as he mounted the steps in a slow, careful motion. Water streamed from his balloonlike belly, dripping down his tree-trunk-thick thighs. Although at first glance he appeared naked, he wore tiny Speedo briefs, almost absorbed by the multiple bulges of flabby, wet flesh. His dripping body was totally hairless, heavy pendants of fat creasing his torso and limbs. Barely visible within the folds of the man’s triple chins wealed the trace of an old scar, the memento of a long-ago throat cutting. Sunlight glinted from the multitude of rings on his pudgy fingers.

Brigid rolled out of her chair and swam with languorous strokes to the edge of the pool, effortlessly heaving herself out of the water. She casually padded barefoot toward a buffet table. It required a great deal of effort on Kane’s part to fix his attention elsewhere.

The girl who had offered Kane the drink picked up a multicolored beach towel only slightly smaller than a sail and carefully began patting every part of Porpoise’s skin dry. He smiled at her fondly. “Thank you, Dixie.”

He lifted his arms so Dixie could wipe down the undersides. Each touch of the towel sent little ripples jiggling over the expanse of pink flesh. Trying not to allow his revulsion show on his face, Kane guessed the man stood a little less than six feet tall, but probably tipped the scales at four-hundred-plus pounds.

Reacting to a gesture from Porpoise, the reggae band instantly stopped playing, as if a volume control knob had been turned all the way down. As the girl blotted the swag belly that rolled out and nearly hid his pelvis, the pink man said genially, “I’m a little surprised you came back, Kane…especially after last night’s failure.”

“What failure was that again?” Kane asked in a bored tone, as if he inquired only to be polite.

Porpoise shook his head in good-natured frustration. “It doesn’t matter. It’s enough you kept your word and returned here.”

“It’s not like I had a choice.” Kane nodded toward Brigid, who was examining the items on the dessert cart with great interest. “You baited the hook pretty damn effectively.”

Porpoise smiled. “Thank you.”

“Is that what this party is about? Celebrating that I came back?”

“Hardly. I’m holding it in honor of a former acquaintance of yours who may become a business associate.”

Kane glanced toward Blister McQuade, snapped off a salute with a finger to the brow and called, “Yo, Blister. How you been?”

To Kane’s surprise and great unease, McQuade’s lips writhed back from his broken, discolored teeth in a grin. “Gotcha, Kane. Finally gotcha.”

“You got me?”

McQuade chuckled, a sound like old bones being crushed underfoot. “Well, you’re sure as shit got, ain’t cha?”

“You have a point.”

Turning back to Porpoise, Kane demanded, “Is this whole routine just a trap to turn me over to some smalltime trash like Blister?”

Dixie held up a pink terry-cloth robe and Porpoise thrust his arms into the voluminous sleeves. “Come now,” the fat man said patronizingly. “You and Brigid are bright people. You’re too valuable to me to waste you like that.”

“I don’t get you.”

“You must’ve known when I permitted you to walk in here yesterday that there was a chance I’d take one or the both of you hostage.”

“To force Cerberus to deal with you,” Kane stated. “To trade our freedom for weapons. Like I said to you yesterday, it’s not going to happen.”

If Porpoise had possessed eyebrows, they would have arched upward over his scalp. “I think you’re very much mistaken. It’s not so much your freedom I’m bartering with, but your reputations.”

Brigid dropped the pretense of being uninterested in the exchange. She turned around, demanding sharply, “What do you mean?”

“The so-called Cerberus warriors are more than just legends in the Outlands,” Porpoise said, his eyes glinting shrewdly. “You’re symbols, valuable propaganda tools, far beyond your reputations as baron blasters.”

Like “sec man,” the term “baron blaster” was old, deriving from the rebels who had staged a violent resistance against the institution of the unification program a century earlier. Neither Kane nor Grant enjoyed having the appellation applied to them. Their ville upbringing still lurked close to the surface, and they had been taught that the so-called baron blasters were worse than outlaws, but were instead terrorists incarnate.

Regardless, the reputations of the core Cerberus warriors had grown too awesome, too great over the past five years for even the most isolated outlander to be ignorant of their accomplishments, even if it was an open question of just how many of the stories were based in truth and how many were overblown fable.

Kane folded his arms over his chest. “How can our reps be of any use to you?”

Porpoise accepted a glass from the girl and sipped at it appreciatively. “In the three years I’ve run my operation from here, rarely a month has gone by without word of the notorious Cerberus marauders. Even before I settled here, reports were circulating about your group.”

Brigid smiled coldly. “And you thought we were fairy tales?”

Porpoise shook his head. “No, I figured you were real enough. I wasn’t sure how much of what I heard was true or just folklore…like how you assassinated Baron Ragnar, blew up a major baronial outpost in New Mexico, took out a couple of Magistrate Divisions, destroyed Ambika’s pirate empire and royally screwed a big Millennial Consortium operation.”

He raised his glass in Brigid’s direction. “I really must thank you for that, doll-baby. Saved me the trouble of dealing with the competition.”

“All true,” Kane declared flatly. “And that’s just the stuff we let our PR department circulate.”

Porpoise’s eyes flicked back and forth between Kane and Brigid. “I personally don’t care about the other stuff or even it’s true or not. What’s important is if the outlanders believe it.”

Brigid frowned. “Why?”

“Their belief in the tales makes you extremely valuable assets. Once word spreads that you’re working for Billy-boy, whatever agenda Cerberus is putting together will fall apart. They’ll be flocking to me as their new hope.”

Kane opened his mouth to retort, then shut it. Porpoise was far more perceptive than his initial assessment. The Cerberus agenda called not just for the continued physical survival of humanity, but for the human spirit, the soul of an entire race.

Over the past five years, the Cerberus warriors had scored many victories, defeated many enemies and solved mysteries of the past that molded the present and affected the future. More importantly, they began to rekindle of the spark of hope within the breasts of the disenfranchised fighting to survive in the Outlands.

Victory, if not within their grasp, at least had no longer seemed an unattainable dream. But with the transformation of the barons into the overlords, all of them wondered if the war was now over—or if it had ever actually been waged at all. Kane often feared that everything he and his friends had experienced and endured so far had only been minor skirmishes, a mere prologue to the true conflict, the Armageddon yet to come.

The Cerberus warriors had hoped the overweening ambition and ego of the reborn overlords would spark bloody internecine struggles, but in the two years since their advent, no intelligence indicating such actions had reached them.

Of course, the overlords were engaged in reclaiming their ancient ancestral kingdoms in Mesopotamia. They had yet to cast their covetous gaze back to the North American continent, but it was only a matter of time.

Before that occurred, Cerberus was determined to build some sort of unified resistance against them, but the undertaking proved far more difficult and frustrating than even the cynical Kane or the impatient Grant had imagined. Even two years after the disappearance of the barons, the villes were still in states of anarchy, of utter chaos, with various factions warring for control on a day-by-day basis.

“For the sake of argument,” Brigid said, “let’s assume you’re right, that our colleagues view us the way the Outlanders do. Wouldn’t it make more strategic sense to be known as our ally?”

Porpoise sipped the piña colada. “Not really. From both a personal and business perspective, becoming a Cerberus satellite would be detrimental to my business model. I’ve got a lot of overhead.”

“You’re a goddamn pirate,” Kane rasped impatiently. “Whatever you need, you steal. Overhead, my ass.”

“I’m an entrepreneur,” Porpoise countered defensively. “A visionary. I’m building a colony and when I’m done, I’ll be the major trading port on the gulf. I’ve got big plans—a rut farm, casinos, a major marketplace. But I need personnel.”

“Personnel?” Brigid echoed, a contemptuous undercurrent in her tone. “Slaves, more like it.”

Porpoise snorted disdainfully, blowing orange froth over the rim of the glass he lifted to his lips. He gestured expansively to the people assembled at poolside. “Do they look like slaves to you?”

Eyeing the naked, docile Dixie, Kane remarked, “Now that you mention it—”

“Enough.” Anger entered Porpoise’s voice. “The colony I’m building will be self-sufficient and will not owe its existence to the fucking barons or to Cerberus. So here’s the deal, Kane—I know you’ve got people hidden in Coral Cove. From the reports I’ve received, there’s usually four of you out in the field…doll-baby here, an ex-Mag named Grant, you and a little albino piece. You’re going to write out a list of what Cerberus will give me to expand my operations and I’ll arrange to have it delivered to them.”

“And what I am supposed to tell these contacts of ours?” Kane asked impatiently. “That me and doll-baby have decided to stay here and par-tay with you and Blister? You don’t think they’ll buy that, do you?”

Porpoise shook his head. “No, and that’s why I’m not going to sell it. I’m keeping you here as hostages, plain and simple. That’s the deal. If they don’t accept it, then they can take parts of you back home, Kane. I’ll keep doll-baby around until she bores me…which, after hearing her talk, probably won’t be that far in the future.”

Kane sighed, presenting the image of seriously pondering Porpoise’s words. At length he said, “I have a counterproposal.”

The fat man cocked his head at a quizzical angle. “Which is?”

Matter-of-factly, Kane said, “If you let us go in the next hour, those contacts of mine you mentioned won’t raze this trading port of yours to the ground. It’s an either-or situation, Billy-boy. The safety of your giant plushy-pink ass depends on you making the right choice.”

Porpoise’s expression did not change, but his gaze shifted, eyes looking beyond Kane. Glancing over his shoulder, Kane saw that Blister McQuade had moved closer. He was not alone. Shaster and Orchid stood slightly behind him and both of them were armed with pistols.

Billy-boy snapped his fingers and turned away. He said, “Hurt him.”

Chapter 4

Kane’s battle-trained muscles, tested and refined in a hundred situations where a fraction of a second gave him all the edge he needed, exploded in a perfect coordination of mind, reflexes and skill.

Kane jumped for Billy-boy Porpoise. The obese man yelled and tried to fend Kane off with one hand. Kane caught the flailing arm, hooked it at the elbow and wrenched it around ruthlessly in a hammerlock. He muscled Porpoise around in front of him. It was like trying to wrestle with a beached whale.

At the same time, Brigid Baptiste snatched up a short-bladed knife from the buffet table and laid the edge against the side of Porpoise’s throat, right above the scar. Orchid, Shaster and McQuade rocked to halts as Porpoise squawked hoarsely, gesturing with his free hand for them to stop.

Orchid raised her revolver, sighting down its length, training the bore on Brigid. “Want me to kill your know-it-all bitch, Kane?”

Brigid pressed the knife harder against Porpoise’s neck. “Want me to kill Billy-boy? No? Then stand aside or I’ll finish what a throat slitter started a long time ago.”

The woman’s tone was hard, grim and confident. Even Kane knew she wasn’t bluffing, so that meant her loathing of Billy-boy Porpoise was profound.

McQuade’s eyes narrowed. “You kill him, then you’ll die sure as shit.”

“We know that, Blister,” Kane said with a genial smile, bearing down on the hammerlock. “But if we do it our way, nobody has to die and this happenin’ party place will stay standing. If we do it anybody else’s way, then just about everybody here will be dead.”

McQuade scowled, fists clenching. “You’re so full of shit, Kane.”

“Are you one-hundred-percent certain about that?” Brigid asked, a taunting note in her voice. “I don’t think Billy-boy is…are you?”

Porpoise sighed heavily, sounding like a dolphin expelling air from a blowhole. “All right, all right. You two can leave. Neither one of you is worth all of this bullshit—”

To Kane, it felt as if Billy-boy Porpoise suddenly exploded within his grip. He twisted wildly to the left, then hurled himself to the right, kicking backward with both heels. The knife blade in Brigid’s hand dragged along the side of his neck, drawing a thread of blood.

Kane tried to bear down on the hammerlock, to force Porpoise to his knees, but the man exhibited enormous strength. He kicked out with a huge splayed foot, catching Brigid in the stomach and driving her backward.

With his free hand, Porpoise jabbed up and behind him at Kane’s eyes, fingers hooked like claws. Kane lowered his head and saved his vision, but Porpoise secured an agonizingly tight grip on his hair. He heaved with his shoulders, as if performing an expansive shrug, then tore free of his terry-cloth robe, leaving it in Kane’s hands.

Releasing his grip on Kane’s hair, Porpoise heeled around, snatched the hem of the robe and hurled it up and over the taller man’s head. A fist pounded into his stomach, jarring him several feet to the left. As he tried to struggle free of the enveloping robe, a hard object struck the side of his head through it, and what felt like Billy-boy’s forearm pile-drived against his chest, knocking him down.

A rain of blows and kicks fell on him, his ears filled with breathless curses and furious female shrieks. Pain flared all over his body. He heard Brigid’s voice raised in anger.

Two more kicks, landing just below his rib cage, drew a grunt of pain from him. Rolling onto his back, Kane tensed every muscle in his body and performed what gymnasts refer to as a “kip-up,” the easiest and quickest way to go from lying prone to an upright posture. He kicked his legs straight out at a thirty-degree angle, bent his knees swiftly, planted his feet and used the momentum of the kick to spring erect.

The draping folds of the robe fell away and Kane glimpsed a glitter above his head, descending in an eye-blurring arc. Half turning he caught a slender wrist in his right hand and twisted viciously, hearing bones snap like brittle wood. A female voice screamed in pain. Kane caught a fragmented glimpse of Dixie falling to her knees, cradling her broken arm. The knife Brigid had wielded lay at her feet.

Kane snaked his upper body to the right and spun backward with his right fist. The ram’s-head punch impacted solidly with Blister McQuade’s chin. Pivoting on his toes, he shot his elbow into the man’s throat.

McQuade staggered backward, holding his throat in both hands, his tongue protruding from his mouth. He toppled into the pool, raising a great splash that sloshed water on everyone in the vicinity. Kane whirled toward Porpoise.

For all of his bulk, Porpoise launched himself forward nimbly, cannonballing his entire weight into Kane’s torso, forcing him backward, smashing all the wind out of him. Kane crashed over two deck chairs before hitting the concrete deck and skidding several feet.

Fighting off the instinct to curl up, he shambled to his feet, only to be knocked down again by the butt of a gun that came down like a hammer on the top of his head.

The pool became a huge black hole and Kane plunged into it headfirst.

HE BECAME AWARE of a blessedly cool trickle of water on the flushed skin of his face. Kane did not open his eyes or otherwise move, trying to adjust to the fierce throbbing pain in his skull, pulsing in cadence with his heartbeat.

His thought processes were remarkably clear, and he remembered everything up to the point where he had been cold-cocked. Shame made a bitter taste at the back of his throat. He had misjudged the entire situation with Porpoise, but he couldn’t have left Brigid in the man’s custody while he, Grant and the other members of Cerberus Away Team Alpha staged an assault on the compound.

The thought of Brigid motivated him to open his eyes. He saw nothing but patterns of dark gray and pitch black. He tried to sit up but the effort sprayed his brain with needles and he bit back a groan. He lay back down.

“Kane?”

“Baptiste?” His whisper was a hoarse rasp.

“Right here.” He felt the cool, damp touch of cloth against his forehead.

Squinting, Kane could barely make her out, kneeling over him, dabbing at his face with a wet cloth. Gingerly, he touched the crown of his head and felt the moisture, as well as a very tender lump. His scalp wasn’t split, so he assumed the liquid was water. He tried to focus on Brigid again, but his blurred vision prevented him from fixing on single reference points in the darkness.

He got his hands under him and slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, silently enduring a spasm of vertigo and nausea.

“Are you all right?” Brigid asked, voice pitched very low. “That little bitch Orchid really laid one on you.”

Kane started to nod, thought better of it and said, “I really hate being whacked unconscious and then waking up somewhere else.”

Brigid forced a chuckle. “It’s a pretty clichéd transitional device, isn’t it?”

Assuming her question was rhetorical, Kane felt around him. His fingers touched damp sand. “Where are we?”

“Some sort of storage shed, about a hundred yards away from the pool.”

“How long was I out?”

“About half an hour, I think.”

“They didn’t hurt you?”

“Not seriously. Billy-boy made some over-the-top threats about forcing me to be the bottom bitch in an offshore whorehouse. I guess he figured that would scare me into obedience.”

Kane grinned, even though the motion hurt his cheeks. “Billy-boy is one enterprising bastard, isn’t he?”

“He makes me want to puke for a week,” Brigid shot back coldly. “Can you stand up?”

“Let’s find out.” Carefully, Kane heaved himself to his feet. He stumbled and Brigid put out supporting hands. He probed various aches and pains around his body, particularly his ribs. Nothing felt broken.