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"Those evil one, you monster," I shouted "What monsters make can be unmade"

"Ah The Wichita bruja Maybe the marks on the flesh can fade, but never those on the soul"

I knew that bruja meant "witch"--and didn’t I wish I had those powers!--but I could use the ones I did own

I shook out my spread arms I felt the familiar stretch acrossas it streaked down both arly camo shirtsleeves Butts of solid silver filled rasstwin braided silver whips, twelve feet long

I raised estured sharply down, like a conductor Narrohip ends touched earth and snaked up again toward the sky, conjuring an arch of snapping, sizzling blue lightning above us An electric branch of stor fanned out a hundred and fifty feet in the air fro even e

"Now Ric has sorass

El Deht ar, heavy whip arced high, poising for an instant right over Ric before snaking into its natural curve to curl doard his back

Ric held his ground, but lifted his right aresture to repel the whip Instead it suust of wind that spun the desert surface into dancing legions of swirling silver insects and reptiles The hissing, spitting, biting toxic dust devils numbered almost as many as the massed and leashed zo lord’s whip curled into a spiral, caught in thedervishes of dust, I gli to their feet They were loose and rushing forward into a seh the eerie, ht the dust devils cast, then ran down the last ridge, his heavy hip-held rifle spitting rapid rounds through the dust, blasting the limbs and heads off the frontline zoain, ht at El De a chupacabra on each side They curled into set would be the demon himself I shook ain in frustration

The dauard, useful only for hand-to-hand combat By the time it rent any Torbellino hench zo and how soon

An agile gray form advanced and retreated fros off to create a fallen wall of zoan: the others justfor zo sand I called Quick to join us, but the hirled rass yelled at Ric and the si over his shoulder

Ric shook his head "No need The dust devils are vacuu out the zoazed up at the sky Thetheitated dust stor Crosby’s face crooning ba-bub-bub-boo, like a fairy godfather about to bibbity-bobbity-boo a barrel cactus into an escape carriage and lizards into snorting steeds with a desert fox for a driver

"Don’t shoot through the dust," Ric ordered Tallgrass "I think"

And then thediamond pendant in the thorn forest

I tried to decipher the face I saw in it now, for it was different

The ht we lifted our arrass and I did Quicksilver ca us to sit and lift his throat to the sky and bay at the swelling s and wings froed louder If sheer noise would repel zoh The sap was closing

Meanwhile, Ric was ht

I ran to shake him out of his trance, but he turned eerie eyes ontointo the paled spikes of the silver familiar on my ar wildly for Tallgrass, who had lowered his weapon in confusion

Blood was pouring froazed down atevery point Then the silver melted like the moon and slithered up except Ric’s blood

I looked to heaven for help, for hope, and was horrified

The swollen face of the e of the false Maria fro lips and halo of a headdress were the face of the Whore of Babylon perforhtclub, who’d been hypnotized by her bared breasts and undulating pelvis, frozen by lust

I needed more than this sky-borne CinSim from Metropolis to counter real evil El Demonio’s cartel killers and zombie forces didn’t freeze at beauty bare

Unlike the htclub, I could tear my eyes from the sky-borne seductress I noticed the clouds on the horizon piling into the shape of the pillars supporting her hooch-koochy dance stage The crouching hills beneath them becamethe film’s Seven Deadly Sins

The Sins below her crouched on their haunches, supporting the platform the movie-screen succubus danced upon Five robed men and to the world and now they stood and advanced as one Their ghostly gray robes rese across the land

Behind theure of Death, its silver-bladed scythe sweeping left to right

The creepy filures--actual, not SinCims--rose to the top of the sky, and rolled over the human cartel killers at Torbellino’s back Guttural screaer, Greed, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, and Pride found and crushed the human bodies that harbored them

That shattered Torbellino’s ranks to the rear What about the forefront of the ar thunder car and crackling lightning whip?

Oh, God!