Kill Baxter

by Human, Charlie

  ‘Er, sorry. I can’t help it. My mind won’t stop.’

  ‘A whale?’ Norris puts his hand to his mouth. ‘And a … no, that’s not … really …’

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I say, trying to think of pleasant things. Rainbows, puppies, rainbow puppies. ‘So you’re my True Self, True Will, whatever. So what now?’

  ‘I am not your True Will,’ Norris says with a sniff. My True Will is also kinda patronising. ‘You are merely the outer manifestation of a complex inner psychodynamic.’

  ‘That’s what she said,’ I say.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ He looks disapproving.

  I sigh. ‘Never mind.’

  Finding out that my psyche was inhabited by a funk band was one thing, but finding out that my True Self is a model-train enthusiast named Norris has got to rank up there with one of the great disappointments in my life.

  I sit down on my haunches. ‘So what now? What words of wisdom do you have that will unlock my magical power?’

  ‘Um,’ Norris says. ‘Well. There’s this …’

  We stare at each other. Norris looks at me with those different-coloured eyes and I can’t look away. His pupils are like peepholes into reality, and through them I can see the swirling maelstrom of matter and antimatter in his eyes. This is the part of me forged in dying stars and spat out in their cataclysmic explosions. The part of me that views each passing moment as an eternity and ten million years as the blink of an eye. Norris remembers everything: every sound I’ve ever heard, everything I’ve ever felt. He could tell me in detail about every single breath I’ve taken like he was a sommelier describing a fine wine.

  Norris is the union of the two parts of me. He is SienerBax and CrowBax, one part belonging to the Mantis god, the other belonging to the Octopus god. He contains the war between them; he is the vessel that trembles and shakes, a fault line running through him threatening to rip him, rip me, apart.

  But he withstands, and I realise why my mind chose to show my True Self as a boring model-train enthusiast. He is a blank spot, a greyness, a nothingness that contains everything. A giant flaming eye or an ancient sage couldn’t possibly hold all the contradictions and flaws of my psyche in one place. But Norris can.

  The split between Siener and Crow forms a rift through my psyche, and in that rift is magic, bone-raw energy that crackles and spits. Looking directly into that rift is madness, like looking directly at the sun. The rift is a tear, a flaw, a wound that bleeds into my psyche, and the only thing keeping my mind from tearing like tissue paper is Norris. He smiles at me, and in his mind-numbing boringness I see the industrial-strength grey putty that holds me together.

  Because of him, I can reach into that rift and draw out energy. It shudders through me like howling winds made of fire. I scream, and my tongue is a flame that splits in two and coils through the air.

  My eyes bulge to the size of plates, and I can feel the individual veins in them thickening like tree trunks; sinewy bulging vessels that thud with blood.

  My bones melt, pools of marrow lava oozing over the floor in radiant mandalas. My muscles scatter like birds, my nerves wound like wool over a giant loom. My organs take vacations, waving goodbye to me, suitcases in hand. Bye, liver. Bon voyage, kidneys.

  Such is the harrowing of a magician. Odin on the world tree, Jesus on the cross. I am left with nothing but the irreducible core. There are no blocks to magic because there is nothing but what I am, and what I am is what I am is what I am is what I am is what I am. If you know what I mean. I see now what I should have seen all along. I’m neither all good nor all bad, neither all Crow nor all Siener. I’m both: a grey smudge on a giant canvas. Relentlessly pursuing goodness is as stupid as relentlessly being an asshole. Both have their uses. The striving of this year falls away and I feel a deep breath fill me. I’ve been trying to suppress something that’s part of me. But I can’t any more.

  Like pieces of a yin-yang my two sides fit together, and like a key in a lock it opens my mind.

  I follow Norris’s eyes through a spiralling furnace of consciousness. Fire and light intertwine into a spouting volcano of awareness. I can do nothing but drink it all in.

  Lefkin appears like a point on a GPS, his enchantments falling away like burning paper. He’s in some kind of military facility in a set of tunnels connected to the sewers under the city. He has focused the power of the egregore through the powerful muti collected from the bodies of his enemies. The crown. It glows with a sick, dark light.

  In my mind I can see the egregore rearing up, twisting and spitting like a serpent. I instinctively move away from it. With the power of my True Self I’m stronger. The blocks to my magic have fallen away. But I’m not that strong. Not yet.

  I spiral back down in cascading waves of perception. I need to destroy that crown.

  I open my eyes. Kyle is standing over me, swinging Anatole wildly back and forth to keep a crowd of cyclists and geeks at bay. He holds out his hand, his face strained like he’s constipated. He’s trying to do magic.

  ‘Kyle!’ I hiss.

  He looks down at me.

  ‘I genuinely don’t mean to put you down, or undermine you in any way. Seriously.’

  He frowns.

  ‘It’s just that, you know, people are good at different things. Wishful thinking, but I don’t think you’re ever going to …’

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘Finish it, Bax. You don’t think I’m ever going to do magic. I’m never going to throw fireballs, or levitate, or cross dimensions. Well, you know what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ll never do any of those things …’

  ‘Um, Kyle,’ I say.

  ‘No, Bax, I’m talking now. Maybe I’ll be stuck as some humdrum ordinary guy. But I’m never going to stop trying, I’m never going to—’

  ‘KYLE! Look at your finger.’

  A tiny flame shimmers on the end of the index finger that he’s pointing at the crowd. It sputters and flickers but stays there, tiny, miserable, but proud.

  ‘BAX!’ Kyle screams. ‘I DID IT! I’M MAGIC!’ He does a little jig, capering up and down like a full-blown lunatic. ‘I’m magic, motherfuckers!’ he screams at the crowd. ‘I am going to force-choke each and every one of you assholes!’

  ‘Kyle,’ I hiss again. ‘Kyle!’ He turns to look at me, and despite our situation, I can’t help but grin at the expression of glee on his face as he capers up and down. ‘You probably won’t be able to do that yet,’ I say.

  He shrugs. ‘Yeah, but soon. Soon!’

  The crowd are starting to overcome their fear of Kyle’s erratic sword-swinging and tiny flame and start to push forward, a bristling wall of knives, hammers and spades.

  An eerie, whooping battle cry that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end sounds through the community centre, and Harold appears, splattered in blood. His salmon polo shirt has turned maroon and he has a tie wrapped around his head like a bandanna. He raises his bloody hockey stick and whoops and yowls like a wolf. The Fallen swarm around him in a pack. The cyclists, geeks and boy-band groupies turn to meet him. Even jacked up on the insane power of the egregore, they look slightly uncertain at the prospect of facing Harold and his little army.

  ‘Well,’ says Harold, thumping the hockey stick into his palm. ‘Lookie what we have here. Tell me again about how you signed an online petition to have me removed from broadcasting. Tell me again about the jokes you tweeted about me.’ He holds up his hand and then chops it down decisively, and the Fallen whoop and rush to battle.

  ‘Kyle,’ I say as the brutal clash of bats, knives and hammers erupts around us like a storm. ‘We need to get out of here. I know where his lair is and I know what he’s using to focus the egregore.’

  ‘Lead the way,’ Kyle says. ‘I’ll protect you.’

  We slip through the carnage and out on to the street. In the dim light I see a familiar figure walking towards us, his trench coat flapping in the breeze.

  ‘Ronin!’ I shout. ‘Jesus, are you OK? Things are getting pr
etty crazy. I can’t even begin to—’

  Ronin strides up to us and bludgeons Kyle across the face with the back of his fist. My skinny best friend drops to the ground like he’s been poleaxed.

  ‘RONIN!’ I scream. ‘Don’t make me shoot you!’

  He swings a punch at me and I block it with my elbow by reflex. I look into his eyes and know that it’s over. This is the bad part of him, the part of him that was unleashed on the Border, the part that he’s been trying to shut the door on his whole life. The egregore has kicked that door wide open. He advances on me, serial-killer eyes bulging in his head, his face curled in an ecstasy of blind hatred.

  ‘Oh, you run,’ he says, nodding his head. ‘That’s what I tried to do. But the wolf caught me in the end. Like I’m going to catch you.’

  Around us people are destroying things, killing, ripping each other’s faces. I can feel the egregore writhing through the city like a mad dark cobra, twisting, spitting out hate and violence.

  ‘Ronin,’ I scream as I dodge behind a parked Smart Car. ‘This isn’t you. Remember all that stuff that happened before the Border?’ The tiny car seems a flimsy shield between me and him. I feel what it is to be locked in the sights of this lethal and terrifying man, and it’s not a good sensation.

  He slides across the bonnet of the car and neatly drops me with an elbow to the chin. I hit the pavement and cover my face as he rains down punches, each one harder than the last.

  In a desperate attempt to stop getting hit, I catch him in an armlock that the Boer taught me. We struggle. It’s a testament to the Boer’s teaching that I’m able to hold him at all. It’s not going to last. Ronin is far too strong and far too skilled. He’s going to break free and bludgeon me to death.

  Something glints in the corner of my eye. I stretch out my hand, grab the hip flask that Ronin kept with him as a reverse psychology tactic, fumble to open it with one hand and then roll forward and hold it to his mouth. He breaks my grip and I cringe against the pavement and wait for death.

  Instead I hear a gurgling like a baby that’s found the breast. As he sucks at the flask, I watch his eyes change from extremely murderous to just mildly murderous and drunk. I look out at him and I see that alcohol has become his barrier, his protector, his insulator. It has shielded him from all the millions of tiny paper cuts that life deals on a daily basis. Sober he is vulnerable. Drunk he exists on a Ronin-shaped psychic island that not even an evil group mind amplified by drugs can touch.

  ‘Sparky?’ he says as I watch him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Get the fuck off me.’

  I roll off him and help him to his feet.

  ‘Well.’ He slaps his chest roughly. ‘I feel much better.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I say, nursing my jaw. ‘Happy for you.’

  I hear a groan and see Kyle struggling to stand. I walk over and help him up. He has a massive raised bruise on the side of his face. He looks at Ronin warily and clutches Anatole in both hands.

  ‘He’s sane again,’ I say.

  Kyle raises a sceptical eyebrow.

  ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Sorry about … you know.’ Ronin gestures to Kyle’s face.

  ‘That’s OK,’ Kyle says. ‘Because I’m MAGIC!’

  I tell Ronin about Lefkin, the crown and the tunnels.

  He nods and takes another sip from the hip flask. ‘We need to regroup with the others. Our rendezvous point is near the docks. Let’s find them, and then we can figure out how we’re going to get into the sewers.’

  13

  YUCK DRAGON

  THE CITY IS crawling with various groups out for blood, so we have to stick to the back streets. We keep to the shadows and duck behind cars whenever anybody comes close. We huddle next to a Chinese shop called Happy Tom Tom and wait until a group of lawyers brandishing baseball bats pass. The egregore presses up against my skull, a dull thumping knocking at my brain.

  I keep a watch on Ronin in my peripheral vision. He is humming happily, occasionally taking out his hip flask and looking at it like a proud father. So far so good.

  We run and duck for another couple of hundred metres and I see the huge transport cranes at the docks up ahead. ‘Almost there,’ I whisper to Kyle. He gives me a thumbs-up. His ability to produce that tiny flame has faltered, but that hasn’t affected his confidence. He makes a show of ducking behind things like he’s a superhero. I smile. At least he’s happy.

  We step out into the road and Ronin curses and kicks a nearby car.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  He points.

  It’s Meptu, flanked by four Skinsects, and with the air support of about two dozen faeries. Her fat slug body inches forward, leaving a trail of that viscous black liquid.

  ‘Come out, boys,’ she shouts. ‘We’ve got something to finish. Nobody escapes the Grim.’

  ‘What’s a Grim?’ Kyle asks.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘You really, really don’t want to know.’

  ‘Run!’ Ronin shouts and fires a few shots at the advancing faeries.

  I push Kyle ahead of me and we sprint back up the road. The faeries split into two groups, one flying up in formation and cutting in front of us in a pincer movement.

  ‘Shit.’ Ronin sprints across the road and kicks in the door of Happy Tom Tom. We follow him in, and I help Ronin shove a display case full of novelty lighters in front of the door. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I think we’re safe in here for the moment.’

  A hologram picture of Jesus flies off the wall and I duck as it whizzes by. A volley of faerie arrows thud into the face of a knock-off Barbie on the shelf above us. Acupunture Barbie, get her while stocks last.

  Ronin smashes open a display case and grabs a pair of wooden nunchaku. He swings them over his head in a vicious arc and I’m splashed with faerie blood as he brains one of the little bastards. I fire a few shots into the air but the faeries are too quick. I reach into the display next to me, but the only weapon I can find is an electrified fly swatter in the shape of a tennis racquet. I feel something whizz past me and I lash out, to be rewarded with a satisfying fzzzzzzt as a faerie is barbecued.

  We don’t have time to celebrate. We’re pelted with a barrage of heavy plastic paperweights, and one hits me in the cheek and reopens the cuts that were just beginning to heal. Kyle rips a couple of plastic kids’ shields out of their packaging and hands me one.

  ‘I hate Obayifo,’ Ronin says as he ducks down behind the shelving next to us.

  ‘Yeah, I must admit I’m not their biggest fan myself,’ I reply.

  I tell Kyle to cover his eyes, and then try to muster a combat spell that the Boer taught me. I chant in Xhosa, spit on the ground, and draw a symbol in the saliva with my shoe. Usually at this point the spell would fizzle out like a defective firecracker. But meeting my True Will, beige jumper and all, was like entering the correct password into my brain.

  A flash spell explodes and burns like napalm, torching four faeries and sending them flaming and screaming into a giant box of bouncy balls.

  ‘Booyah!’ Kyle shouts as we run. ‘That was great, Bax.’

  ‘First time it’s actually worked,’ I say.

  But the faeries don’t back down. They’ve found a catapult, and two of the little bastards work in tandem to send heavy objects flying our way. I’m hit in the back by a flying snowglobe and tumble to the ground.

  I look across to where Ronin is being strangled with the straps of a fake Hello Kitty bag. Kyle has ripped open a kids’ bow and arrow set and pulled off the suction heads on the arrows, replacing them with tiny cocktail forks. He pins two of the faeries attacking Ronin to the wall.

  I crouch and run quickly down an aisle filled with colourful stationery. I’m about to turn the corner into the clothing aisle when Meptu slams into me, her sheer bulk sending me sprawling into a display of mugs shaped like dogs. I’m cut by pieces of falling ceramic and lie entangled in a mess of broken mugs and shelving.

  Meptu approa
ches, her T. rex arms holding a cheap katana in front of her. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘So ends your participation in the Grim. The odds were never in your favour.’

  She raises the katana and is about to stick it into me when the back of her head explodes. Her body collapses like a deflating balloon and oozes black liquid everywhere. I drag myself from the shelving and stand up.

  Ronin hefts the Blackfish on to his shoulder and gives me a smile. ‘That has got to rank in my top ten all-time favourite moments.’ He turns around. ‘The rest of the faeries will run. Time to—’

  A Skinsect pounces on him and pins him to the ground.

  ‘Ronin!’ I shout, but another one of the giant stick insects grabs me in its spindly arms and slams me against the wall. Its mouth opens and the long, spiked proboscis extends, pushing forward like a needle towards my neck. I punch frantically at its arms, but it doesn’t let go.

  Then Kyle is there, with Meptu’s katana in one hand and Anatole in the other. He slashes at the Skinsect’s leg. It drops me, hissing and shrieking, whipping around and burying its teeth in Kyle’s shoulder. He lops off one of its arms and then, clumsy and off-balance but still ultimately impressive, spins and decapitates it.

  He holds his bloody swords above his head and gives me a grin. I pick myself up off the ground and limp towards him. There’s a series of gunshots and then a blood-splattered Ronin joins us. He looks at Kyle and the grin drops off his face.

  ‘Did that thing bite you?’

  ‘Er, yeah,’ Kyle says and touches his shoulder gingerly. ‘But did you see how I decapitated it?’

  ‘Shut up and listen to me. They’re poisonous. Like deadly poisonous.’

  Kyle frowns. ‘Now that you mention it, I’m not feeling that well.’ He stumbles, and I rush over and loop my arm around his shoulders.

  ‘You’re going to start feeling weird. Their poison is a psychedelic. It may be enjoyable, but don’t succumb to it. It’ll still kill you. We need to get you to King. Just don’t give in to it, OK?’

  ‘Things aren’t so bad, you know?’ Kyle grins hazily. ‘Things are good.’