The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

“Blood.”

That was really not the answer Nine Iron had been hoping for. On the other hand, he respected irrational bloodthirstiness as a character trait. (How could he not?)

He took a deep breath and began to pull his hand out. The teeth never clamped down, but they never withdrew, either, so as he pulled his hand away, the teeth cut shallow but still painful grooves in his skin.

More disturbing than the pain was the fact that as the blood ran in streams from his hand, the red tube began sucking, sucking hard. Like a kid with a milkshake and a narrow straw.

Nine Iron drew his hand all the way out, leaving behind a bit of skin and a bit of blood.

“Next time don’t ring the bell,” the Gudridan suggested. “Just knock.”

The stone wall that had seemed so stonelike just seconds before now grew soft and pulpy. Like stone-colored flesh rather than stone-colored stone.

Then an X appeared in the middle of this fleshy panel. The X grew, and each triangle became a sharp tongue. The four tongues then thrust out, and Nine Iron was confronted with one of the more unusual entryways he’d ever see.

He had to step on the bottom tongue to go through. It was spongy beneath his feet, and so hot he could feel it through the soles of his shoes.

He stepped into a tunnel that was not at all what he expected. No musty old boulders, no stalactites or stalagmites. No park ranger tour guide or souvenir shop.

The tunnel was twenty feet in diameter, and it was as alive and fleshy and moist as the sharp-tongued entryway. He was not in a cave; he was inside something alive.

The “door” closed behind him with a sound like smacking lips. The Gudridan had not come inside after him.

Nine Iron was a tough guy. But he was starting to get just the slightest bit nervous. Something about being inside a living thing was unnerving. But he walked steadily forward down the pulpy, red-glowing, gently pulsating tunnel. Because judging from what he’d seen so far, whimpering and begging to be let go probably wasn’t going to work. And there wasn’t much he could really shoot.

He walked for two minutes at a steady pace, and then noticed that the “floor” was sloping upward. The tunnel was coated with a viscous goo—not too thick, but enough that it made things slippery—so going uphill was not easy. Nine Iron wished hiking boots had been invented since those would be more helpful than the slick-soled Goochies he was wearing.

Soon he was on hands and knees, slipping and sliding and cursing freely as he made his way up the slope. Then, quite suddenly, he reached the end.

The tube or tunnel, or whatever it was, opened onto a sort of cavern the color of liver. In fact it might have been a liver: the only anatomy Nine Iron knew was the best places to stab someone. (His Nafia education was a bit one-dimensional.)

This chamber was a sort of massive eggplant shape with dozens of openings similar to the one in which Nine Iron now stood.

The bottom of the eggplant chamber was a membrane, like the skin of a drum. Tendrils rose like living stalactites or stalagmites (depending on which is the one that goes up) and they made a sort of forest like something you’d see on the floor of the ocean.

r /> Suddenly what looked like a very large wad of mucus (we try to avoid words like snot) came shooting from one of the tubes. It was followed quickly by two more. The wads—each the size of a boxing heavy bag, the color and consistency of a spit-saturated cigar, and coated with what you get if you leave chewed gum out in the sun—plopped onto the membrane.

There the stalactendrils seized each pellet and began sucking away the goo. This eventually, after way too much straw-sucking-on-the-last-of-a-milkshake noise, revealed three insectoid creatures like the one Nine Iron had shot on the pathway.

They didn’t seem to notice him but, once freed of encumbrance, began searching for the right tube. This involved counting on their fingers (not exactly base ten, as you can imagine) and then counting off tunnels. Finally they seemed to agree on the right tube, scampered up the slick side of the chamber, and slid into it.

Nine Iron was somewhat at a loss how to react to this. But he didn’t have to wait long, for now his eyes were drawn irresistibly to the prettiest girl Nine Iron had ever seen. She had an amazing amount of wavy red hair, skin so pale it was practically see-through, and eyes like emeralds. She walked through the sea of stalactendrils like one of those impossibly pretty girls who are always walking through fields of flowers in TV commercials for pharmaceutical products that turn out to cause oily discharge or make your hair fall out.

Of course TV had only recently been invented, so they didn’t have TV commercials for dangerous pharmaceuticals that cause oily discharge and hair loss yet. So Nine Iron could only note that she was quite an attractive girl.

Quite . . . attractive.

“Hi; you would be Paddy Trout,” the girl said.

She smiled engagingly so that Nine Iron thought he might just ask her out to a nice oat-gruel dinner. Then afterward they could attend a bearbaiting, or a bare-knuckle prize fight, or even, if she played her cards right, a cockfight.

“I’m Risky,” she said.

Nine Iron leered and said, “Risky, eh? I’ll bet—”

And right then he noticed that he couldn’t breathe. At all. Like something was choking him.

And then he noticed that the something was a snake that seemed to form from Risky’s long, luscious red hair.