Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,79

him before. I didn't know, I truly didn't know..."

"Know what?"

"That my will had been broken by my feelings for you."

"You love me?"

"How was I to know?" The magus sighed.

And Joshua laughed here, despite the dire circumstances. "Of course you do, but it is not me, it's what I represent. I am not sure yet what I am to do, but I know that I am here in the name of my father. You love life so much that you would brave hell to hold on to it, it's only natural that you would love the one who gave you that life."

"Then you can banish the demon and preserve my life?"

"Of course not, I'm just saying that I understand how you feel."

I don't know where she found the strength, but the diminutive Joy came from behind me and hurled the heavy lance with as much power as any soldier. (I felt my own knees starting to buckle in the face of the demon.) The bronze tip of the lance seemed to find its way between two of the monster's armored chest scales and drove itself a span deep under the weight of the heavy shaft. The demon gasped, and roared, opening his massive maw to show rows of saw-edged teeth. He grabbed the shaft of the lance and attempted to pull it out, his huge biceps quivering with the strain. He looked sadly down at the spear, then at Joy, and said, "Oh, foul woe upon you, you have kilt me most dead," then he fell back and the floor shook with the impact of his huge body.

"What'd he say, what'd he say?" Joy asked, digging her nails into my shoulder. The demon had spoken in Hebrew.

"He said that you killed him."

"Well, duh," said the concubine. (Strangely enough, "duh" sounds exactly the same in all languages.)

I had started to inch forward to see if anyone was still alive in the girls' quarters when the demon sat up. "Just kidding," he said. "I'm not kilt." And he plucked the spear from his chest with less effort than it might take to brush away a fly.

I threw my own lance, but didn't wait to see where it hit. I grabbed Joy and ran.

"Where?" she said.

"Far," I said.

"No," she said, grabbing my tunic and jerking me around a corner, causing me to nearly coldcock myself on the wall. "To the cliff passage." We were in total darkness now, neither one of us having thought to grab a lamp, and I was trusting my life to Joy's memory of these stone halls.

As we ran we could hear the demon's scales scraping the walls and the occasional curse in Hebrew as he found a low ceiling. Perhaps he could see in the dark somewhat, but not a lot better than we could.

"Duck," Joy said, pushing my head down as we entered the narrow passage that led to the cliff above. I crouched in this passage the way the monster had to crouch to move in the normal-sized halls and I suddenly realized the brilliance of Joy's choice in taking this route. We were just seeing the moonlight breaking in through the opening in the cliff's face when I heard the monster hit the bottleneck of the passage.

"Fuck! Ouch! You weasels! I'm going to crunch your little heads between my teeth like candied dates."

"What'd he say?" asked Joy.

"He says that you are a sweet of uncommon delicacy."

"He did not say that."

"Believe me, my translation is as close as you want to the truth."

I heard a horrible scraping noise from inside the passage as we climbed out on the ledge and up the rope ladder to the top of the plateau. Joy helped me up, then pulled the ladder up behind us. We ran to the stable where the camel saddles and other supplies were normally kept. There were only the three camels that Joshua and Balthasar had taken, and no horses, so I couldn't figure out why we were taking the time to stop until I saw Joy filling two water skins at the cistern behind the stable.

"We'll never make it to Kabul without water," Joy said.

"And what happens when we make it to Kabul? Can anyone there help? What in the hell is that thing?"

"If I knew, would I have opened that door?" She was remarkably calm for someone who had just lost her friends to a hideous beast.

"I guess not. But I didn't see it come out of there. I felt something, but nothing that