The Wreckage of Paradise.pdf - Dice

“You had the chance to be her thrall, didn’t you?” thePrincess asked. “And Shadrannat’s, too.”“Yes. ”%‘Why didn’t you?” *“My worship is for Lucifer alone,” Chuck said, and his 0tone wasn’t defiant or grandiose or even crazy.(Mitch knew crazy. He and Chuck had met working asorderlies in a madhouse. So Mitch knew that crazy peopleoften sounded perfectly sane and stable and simple andtrue, just like Charles sounded now. Mitch wasn’t sure justwhat to think. Oh &it seemed like the best candidate.)The door opened, and in walked a rail-thin scarecrowof a man. This guy did look crazy.“Sorry I took so long,” he said. “I was examining thestrands.”Instinctively, Mitch turned to face this guy, and hishands came up ready, because he soundedcrazy too. Hewasdressed in oil-stained jeans and a rumpled Anaheim Angelssweatshirt. His head was shaved clean-a recent job, apparently,because the skin on top was badly sunburned, whilehis face was tanned and weathered. You could see a cleanline of demarcation where his hair had once offered protection.As he mentally filed away “the strands” with “host,”“Defiance” and “blank” in his rapidly growing list ofwordsto get explained, he realized why the newcomer’s eyeslookedso lemur-big andblank. The sunburned curves overeach eye socket showed that he’d shaved off his eyebrows,too.“Mr. Berger, Mr. Rodriguez, this is the Star Thorn.”“You can call me Dennis,” the guy muttered.“These are the men who saw our leader when he manifestedin Los Angeles.”Before, Mitch would have said Dennis the Star Thorn’seyes were lit, but he would have been speaking metaphorically.Now they brightened literally, twin white beamschanging the shadows on his face as he fixed his gaze-nowterribly blank in its brightness-on both of them.43