Streaming smoke, he began to walk purposefully toward the giant creature. “‘The Lord is my shepherd,’” he intoned in his deep, dry voice. “‘I shall not want.’”

Slowly Monster lowered the foot Crypt Kicker’s acid had injured.

“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’” Crypt Kicker said, inexorably advancing, “‘I shall fear no evil: for thou art with me.’”

Monster raised a fist.

Crypt Kicker raised his in reply. “‘Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me!’” he screamed, and charged.

Lightning blasted him back twenty meters.

Monster came forward to gaze down at the sprawled body of his antagonist. Crypt Kicker didn’t move. He did smolder some.

Monster roared his victory cry and walked on. The night was alive with small, soft things. He longed to hurt them all.

Billy Ray had never run from a fight in his life. He wasn’t about to start for this oversized green puke-bag, no matter how horny he was.

Carnifex was reckless, but he wasn’t stupid. He just knew when to make a tactical withdrawal.

Monster strode by the temple. Carnifex launched himself from the pagoda roof in an ace-powered leap.

Monster felt a tiny impact on the back of his calf. He paid it no mind. Whatever it was was too small to hurt him. His mighty cock vibrated with the lust for pain.

Everywhere were tanks and soldiers. Monster looked, and it was good.

It was time to smash.

For all its troops the People’s Army had not been able to concentrate overwhelming numbers against the rebels. The country was too wracked by rebellion. The government could not pull many troops from any one area without simply writing it off. Hanoi was unwilling to surrender a square centimeter of Vietnamese soil to its foes.

That was a mistake.

PAVN had committed its finest armored troops to this fight. If they could claim a one-sided victory over the rebel main force, it would go a long way toward reestablishing its credibility as being in control, in the eyes of the world and, more importantly, in the eyes of Vietnam. It would not matter if rebel losses were insignificant compared with the rebellion as a whole. This is the world of Maya; appearance is all.

The PAVN soldiers were brave. Some of them ran; most of them didn’t. They hung in firing at the monster for all they were worth.

Unfortunately the energy of their shells only strengthened him. Their defiance just amused him. And whetted his appetite for destruction.

He smashed, and slew, and tore asunder. Loops of gut hung from his fangs, and blood ran down his claws.

Grunting, sweating, swearing beneath his breath, Carnifex scaled Monster’s back. The creature’s shark-like hide offered little by way of footholds. He was making his own, plunging his fingers and kicking his feet bodily into Monster. Monster obviously was not regarding him as a sufficient irritant to do anything about.

He wasn’t letting himself think about what that implied.

He had just reached the right shoulder blade when another fusillade of tank shells slammed against Monster’s chest. Carnifex hugged the reeking flesh. “Jesus!”

It was sheer luck he hadn’t been dislodged by the explosive impacts. Hell, I’m lucky nobody’s back-shot this big son of a bitch. But Monster wasn’t leaving anybody in his wake in any shape to fire him up from behind.

The vibrations stopped. Carnifex could feel the creature swell with power.

“I’m not getting paid enough for this,” he grunted. He resumed climbing.

The AT-6 Spiral missile streaked toward the T-72. Belew kept his eye on the target and willed the missile to it, his desire transmitted through the medium of UHF radio signals that guided the rocket. He could feel the missile slide through the heavy moist air with silky, sliding sexual friction. Could feel the impact, and then release as the tank exploded.

He did not pump his free fist and yell, “Yeah!” This was deeper than that.

Eight missiles in the Havoc’s load. Eight tanks shattered. He was batting 1,000.

He could see flashes lighting the sky to the southwest. It looked as if there was a major tank battle going on, with some Brobdignagian arc-welding thrown in. Belew had no idea what was happening; his team didn’t have the firepower to hold up one end of such a display.

Somebody was giving the PAVN spearhead a hard time. He had the radio turned off; the chatter distracted him, spoiled the purity of his fusion with the machine. For the moment he didn’t much care what was going down over there. He was loose in the enemy rear as an airborne killing machine. He was out of weapons that would bust their tanks, but his ship was still gravid with bombs and 57mm rocket pods, and he had plenty of ammunition for his four-barrel 12.7mm Gatling. A modern armored formation sucked fuel and resupply. And that meant… soft targets.

There, on a black ribbon of paved road: the shiny steel-dachshund shape of a fuel tank-truck. He banked and stooped like a heavy-metal falcon.

With a grunt of Gargantuan effort Monster raised the forty-two-tonne T-64 off the ground, then military-pressed it over his head.

And Carnifex leaned over the massif of his right brow. Stiffened to a blade, his fingers speared for the yellow slit-pupiled eye.

Reflexively Monster shut the eye. Despite the dizzying distance to the ground, Carnifex let himself fall. He grabbed a handful of lower eyelash, caught himself. Then he hauled himself up to try to pry the lid open.

Monster tossed the battle tank away. He took Carnifex’s hood between the clawed tips of thumb and forefinger and plucked him off.

Dangling mere meters before that vast, hideous face, in the full smokestack blast of his polluted breath, Carnifex shook his fists in defiance.

“Go ahead and swallow me, scumbag!” he yelled. “I’ll chimney up your throat, punch through the roof of your mouth, and eat your fucking brain!”

Monster studied him a moment more. Then he flipped him away.

His impertinent foe already forgotten, Monster surveyed the scene. There were broken and burning tanks everywhere. Nobody was shooting at him anymore. He was out of victims.

He raised his claws to the cloudy heavens and roared in disappointed rage. The lust in his loins had not been slaked. He had a world of hurt yet to inflict before he could find release.

Then something caught his yellow eye, a kilometer or so beyond the trees, in the midst of an expanse of cultivated fields. A tiny hamlet, dark, surrounded by its little bamboo fence.

Innocence. Helplessness. They drew him like a magnet. His cock pulsating with excitement and need, he lumbered toward the village.

He had almost reached it when a voice spoke in his head: “Wait.”

He stopped, growling resentment at the intrusion. The massive horned head swiveled left and right, looking for the source of the irritation. Fury beyond fury piled upon the anger that blazed within him. No one told him to wait.

“This isn’t you. I know it’s not.”

He raised clawed hands, roared a shattering wordless affirmation: IamIII!

“No. You aren’t. You’re an illusion, an aberration. I’m speaking to the real you. That which is buried deep inside. That which is… good.”

Monster shook his head, as if to cast forth the insistent voice. He hated the voice. He wanted to find where it came from, and smash, and kill. It said things that must never be said to him.

“Isis… Moonchild. It’s me, Eric. Your love.”

NO! Negation erupted from the molten core of him.

“Yes.” Images flooded his mind: Isis and Eric, holding hands by candlelight, walking out along the paddy dikes beneath the moon’s benevolent face. Gentle; loving.