42

All of Mother’s previous veneer of civility and magnanimity proved to have been just that all along; just a veneer. What stood before Hunter now was more akin to a wraith, a maenad that screeched and wailed and stared at him with an emerald-burning gaze so intense he swore he could feel it on his skin. And even that, he now knew, was just another illusion, a shadow puppet masterfully manipulated by some unseen, alien puppeteer. She wasn’t the only threat Hunter had to keep an eye on, though. Not by a long shot.

Everywhere around him, the faithful of the Inner Sanctum were stirring from their prayer-like trance. They didn’t sound too happy about it, either; instead of stopping or at least dying down, their ceaseless whispered chants were now escalating into a furious crescendo that permeated and resounded through everything. They were still looking a bit out of sorts and all around the place, but Hunter would bet his last dollar it wouldn’t be long before they would be frothing at the teeth and rushing to tear him to pieces.

That would normally be a bad thing, but then Hunter would normally be trying to save his proverbial bacon, not use it as bait to draw all of the nasties’ attention on himself. If this was scripted, he’d have some line of witty repartee to shout at Mother’s face, some pre-asskicking one-liner or even a catchphrase. It wasn’t, though, so Hunter simply screamed the first thing that came to his mind:

“Ready get some, Mom?”

For someone who’d grown up on a rich diet of ‘80s nostalgia flicks, Hunter should have done better than that. Thank god Packman wasn’t around to hear it. Mother, on the other hand, mustn’t have been as genre-savvy. Bad or not, his attempt at a campy warcry did manage to taunt her. She raised her perfectly manicured hand and pointed at him, screaming like a banshee. As if jump-started, the spear-wielding low-ogres all suddenly centered in on Hunter, corpses dangling from their huge weapons like grim piñatas.

Hunter threw a glance towards the back of the Sanctum and caught a glimpse of Fawkes and Sister Peregrine dragging an unconscious Brother Aurochs towards the hall’s entrance. They were almost there. He just had to buy them a few more seconds, half a minute tops. He could do that.

The low-ogres that served as Mother’s honor guard weren’t charging at him, Hunter noticed. Not yet, at least. Unlike the feral low-ogre he’d been uncomfortably acquainted with back in the Halls, these ones acted intelligent. Their moves were ponderous, calculated. Their priority was to get between herself and whatever was threatening her. That struck Hunter as peculiar. Were they mind-controlled by the same alien human-centipede-thing that acted as Mother’s puppeteer? Probably yes, as were the whispering low-dwellers that worshipped it.

If that was the case, then the best way to keep everyone’s–and everything’s–attention on him was to ignore the bodyguards and drones and attack Mother directly. It was only logical. Then again, he could make a run for it himself, see if he could catch up with the others. Or maybe he could do some kind of feint, pretend like he’s about to attack, then do the old bait-and-switch. Or…

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, man” he scolded himself out loud. “Just fucking do it.”

By that point, what was another horribly traumatizing near-death experience? He’d had all the time in the world to worry about that later, so he did just that; he fucking did it. He tightened his grip in his glaive, screamed as hard as he could, and charged straight at Mother’s sneering face.

A low-ogre lowered his great spear and tried to turn him into a Hunter-flavored souvlaki, but he wasn’t very fast. Hunter easily dodged that, just swerving to the side. Another tried to flank him and do the same, and came very, very close. The tip of the spear missed him, but he crashed into the corpse that hung from it. It was Reiner’s corpse, he realized to his horror, tall and slender and blond and still dressed in leathers. Fuck. Not having the luxury to waste a single breath, he simply shoved it away and dive-rolled to the side, just in time to dodge another attack. Or at least he tried to; dive-rolling while holding an eight-and-a-half foot polearm was a messy affair, as it turned out. He had to either leave it behind, or risk tripping himself and becoming an easy target for the next giant spear that came his way. He chose the former, let go of the glaive, and kept running.

What would he even do without a weapon, even if he reached Mother? Give her indian burns and titty twisters? Nothing, he realized, but it didn’t matter. It never had. All that mattered was to keep her occupied, and he had done that; by now, Fawkes and the Brethren probably had made it out. Now it was time to pay the piper, like he’d known he’d have to from the very beginning.

Hunter slowed down to a walk and kept his eyes on Mother’s furious visage. To his surprise, he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t even worried about the world of pain and anguish that he knew was coming any moment now. He was past that. Hell, he was smiling. Could Mother see him, really see him? Could she understand she’d been had? He really, really hope she did.

He’d expected his last thoughts here to be of fear, or of his companions, or of duty and sacrifice, or even of some kind of Pyrrhic victory. None of these was true. The only thing he felt was a kind of smug, impish glee. He looked past Mother, under the canopy, straight at the darkness where he knew the alien thing’s head was. He raised his hand and gave it the finger.

When the tip of a giant spear finally found its back, he didn’t even scream. When the low-ogre heaved his now-dying body in the air, another grisly trophy for the honor guard to carry around, he didn’t even gasp. Every last drop of his willpower went to proudly, defiantly holding that middle finger up.

And, to his credit, he did keep it up to the very end, right until darkness came and took him.