Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

in. Part of him wanted so badly to just run away and hide, but he was a Paragon, and a Deathstalker, and there were some things he just didn't do. He gunned the engine of his gravity sled and aimed it at the nearest ELF, shooting forward like an arrow from a bow. His eyes were very cold and very steady, and full of death.
    The rogue esper actually hung there for a moment in midair, unable to believe a mere human had dared to defy him, and then he dropped quickly back into the surging mass of the crowd below, hidden and secure behind his human shields. Lewis lost sight of him and shot by overhead, cursing silently.
    He could leave his sled behind, drop down into the crowd himself, and go after the ELF. He had a face now, and a general position. But if he did, and couldn't find the ELF fast enough, the human thralls would fall on him, on their master's orders, and tear him apart. They'd probably be weeping while they did it, but that wouldn't help Lewis.
    He turned his sled around in a tight arc, and there was Finn, slumped Half-conscious over the controls of his drifting sled. The ELFs' attack must have got through his esp-blocker. Lewis hit the accelerator on his sled, but the nearest ELF had already shot through the sky to drop onto Finns sled, grinning widely at the thought of possessing and then draining so famous a Paragon. And Finn Durandal turned around, also grinning, and the ELF knew he'd been had. Finn's hand came up with a disrupter in it. This close, the sled's esp-blocker was strong enough to blow away the ELFs psionic defenses, and Finn laughed softly at the look on the ELF's face. At that range, the disrupter bolt tore the ELFs head right off his shoulders.
    Lewis cheered and whooped, but his voice was quickly lost in the roar of shock and anger that went up from the other ELFs, as they dropped quickly back into the safety of their crowd. Finn ignored the cheer and the lamentations. He just kicked the headless body off his sled, and went looking for someone else to kill.
    Out on the sands, a hundred or so of the crowd had been sent forth by the controlling minds to shout
    ELF propaganda at the hovering Arena security cameras. The rogue espers knew that by now the major news media would have struck a deal with the hiding Arena security people, to allow the media access to the security camera feeds, so they could broadcast the atrocity to their viewers live, as it happened.
    News commentators were probably already doing anguished voice-overs, decrying the horror and tragedy of it all, but the bosses knew what sucked in the viewers. Human blood and suffering, in close-up. The ELFs knew that too, and were taking advantage of it.
    So men and women who'd been made to tear out their own eyes and cut off their own noses, their hands dripping with the blood of innocents, chanted ELF demands to the unblinking cameras, calling for their own subjugation to ELF rule and the destruction of the esper gestalt. They sneered at the Paragons who'd come to save them, laughed at the dead and dying in the crowd, and taunted the viewers with their own helplessness. We are unstoppable, said the ELFs, through their thralls. And when we're finished here, we'll come for you. We'll come for all of you, and play with you till you break.
    And in the cheap seats, on the terraces, and in the private boxes, the possessed crowd raped and tortured and maimed each other, howling and crying like the damned as they did.
    Lewis was so distressed and angry by now, he could hardly breathe for the tightness in his chest. Hot tears stung his eyes, but he wouldn't give in to them. There'd be time for grief later. He glared about him; studying the sands, suddenly sure he was missing something. Where were the gladiators? There would have been dozens out on the sands, entertaining the crowd, when the ELFs attacked. They must have run for cover the moment they realized what was happening, protected by their own esp-blockers. (All gladiators were protected from all kinds of outside influence; how else could the betting be kept honest?) They were probably huddled together in their cells under the Arena. They should have stayed and fought, thought Lewis angrily, but he already knew what Finn would have said to that.
    It's not their job. And they'd probably only have got in the way, anyway.
    Lewis pushed that thought aside, to follow another. He was closing in on something, something important. The gladiators would have left the sands by the main