Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

surging this way and that like a living gray sea, but he stood firm, and the stone waves broke helplessly against the power that surrounded him. The Blood Runners lost control of the stone, as their massed will shattered on his certainty, and Owen laughed at their shocked faces.
    The Blood Runners called on the only weapon they had left. They drew recklessly on the power of the Summerstone, and altered themselves. Their white flesh ran like water, reforming into horrid nightmare shapes, with jagged teeth and staring eyes, barbed tentacles and great clutching hands with claws like needles. They rose up like horned specters, and fell upon Owen, all of them at once, and he went to meet them with his sword.
    Driven almost beyond sanity by the terrible choking screams from her captive alternate, Hazel reached deep inside herself, and drew recklessly on the power she'd absorbed from the Summerstone. Need and necessity brought that power roaring to life within her, almost consuming her mind in the awful white fires of its intensity. She knew she couldn't wield such power for long in her weakened condition, and didn't care. She would do what she had to, and worry about paying the price later. She drove the sedatives from her body, as she had once rejected the drug Blood, and her mind was clear and sharp for the first time in weeks. She could feel the computer brains circling around her thoughts, trying to contain and control her, but they were now nothing more than small children plucking at the hems of her skirt. She swept them aside with a single thought, and focused her attention on the doorway within her. She still wasn't strong enough to keep it closed against Scour's will, but there was still one
    thing she could do. She drew on all her strength, and forced the door open as wide as it would go. She called, and an army of Hazels came crashing through into the world of stone.
    Scour spun around in surprise as one by one the severed heads exploded, pink and gray brain tissues spattering across the stone floor. He straightened up, blood dripping thickly from the scalpel in his hand, while the mutilated thing at his feet kicked and squealed in its wide pool of blood. And from out of nowhere, from places even farther from reality than his own stone world, came twenty Hazel d'Arks, with guns and swords and axes, and a bitter cold rage in their eyes. Scour turned and ran, sending his headless bodies to cover his retreat.
    Their deaths bought him enough time to reach the door of his cell and pull it open, and then he saw what was happening outside and stopped dead. He glanced back at the advancing warrior women, and then disappeared in a shimmering energy field.
    Hazel d'Ark sat up on the trolley, tearing through the leather restraints as though they were cloth. She ripped the IV feed out of her arm, and threw it aside. She started to thank the alternates who had come to answer her call, but they were ignoring her, clustered around the whimpering thing on the floor, trying to wrap the bloody tatters of her bodysuit around her blood-streaked body. Hazel swung down from the trolley and started toward them, and Midnight Blue and Bonnie Bedlam turned to face her and block her way. Their faces were grim. Hazel nodded slowly to them.
    "Thanks for coming, guys. I was in real trouble there, for a while."
    "We didn't come for you," said Bonnie flatly. "We came for her." She gestured at the tortured Hazel being comforted by the others.
    "Send us home. Hazel," said Midnight Blue. "Send us all home. And don't call us again, because we won't come."
    "What?" said Hazel.
    "You only call us when you're in peril," said Bonnie. "Never a thought for us, as we bleed and hurt and die to save you. We've had enough. We have our own lives to lead. If scum like the Blood Runners can overpower and use you, how can we know who else might be calling the next time we answer your call? Who might be waiting for us with torture instruments in their hands. No, Hazel. It's over.
    Save your own ass from now on."
    "Send us home," said Midnight.
    Hazel nodded jerkily, and one by one her other selves blinked out of existence, back to their own worlds. Finally only Hazel was left in the stone cell, feeling abandoned and very alone. And then she heard a sound behind her, and spun around, ready to face Scour with her bare hands if need be, and there was Owen Deathstalker, standing in the doorway with a bloody sword, soaked as always with the blood of his enemies. He