by David Finn
‘It’s just the start,’ she said.
Sue’s mirrored reflections smiled, and some howled. ‘Are you okay? Do I scare you?’
Demorn blinked, letting her eyes gradually lose the visions.
‘No, nothing scares me anymore, least of all the people I love.’
‘Aw. Come look at this then!’ Sue said excitedly, and she ran out onto the balcony in the Sun.
Demorn slid her purple glasses on and followed Sue to the balcony. It was almost dusk and the sky was a beautiful mix of light pink and baby blue, a gorgeous painting above the city.
Sue levitated slightly off the ground, legs crossed, her bathrobe fluttering in the slight breeze.
Demorn breathed in the dry, warm Vegas air. Their penthouse was up high, with a great view. She looked toward the distant horizon, the empty beauty of the desert, so at odds with the hot energy and crowded madness of the Strip.
Sue turned around, and her face was the sliding mirrors of death.
‘Did you really just say love?’
She’s just a kid, Demorn realized, we’ve only just met. I should be able to control my heart. We were strangers just days ago. Is this what it had come down to? Seeking refuge in those least equipped to give it?
Demorn ran her hand across her face. A sudden part of her wanted to change all this, change the path they took.
‘Everything is beautiful.’ Demorn sighed, pulling Sue toward her.
‘It’s Frank’s last show, before he goes back to LA. Would you like to be my guest tonight?’
The girl looked away with an absent wisdom, floating near the balcony railing. ‘You’re only half here aren’t you, Demorn?’ Sue looked at her tenderly, wide-eyed. ‘I’ve been in your penthouse all week, every day since we met at the store. You’ve been so good to me . . .’ Her hand fluttered nervously across her neck. ‘I just felt like maybe more than a guest.’
Demorn looked away, deep toward the distant desert, making sure her eyes did not betray her, wishing her voice would do the same. Wishing she didn’t know how it all played out.
‘It’s me who’s the guest, babe. You’re more to me than something random or fast. But I don’t know what, and I don’t know for how long.’
Sue came down to earth, touched Demorn’s hand, smiling brightly.
‘It’s OK! Gawd, you’re so serious, hon. I was only teasing. What’s back in LA?’
Demorn smiled. ‘My office, a tiny apartment. Jobs, contracts. People I can’t stand. It could be anywhere. I can’t stay anywhere long, never could.’
Sue kissed her neck lightly.
‘I know what it’s all about, Demorn. We dig comics and cute girls. You don’t have to burn your heart out on me.’
Demorn gazed back into those blue eyes. ‘Sometimes I wonder what heart is left.’
Sue giggled. ‘That’s some deep emotional shit!’
Demorn went to laugh, but her magic eyes wouldn’t stop and go along with the joke. She looked at Sue and saw only the phasing skeleton. The passing of flesh to dust and fire. She wanted to tear her eyes away. She knew it was her own fault, not Sue’s. She wanted to look at the meaningless multi-colored lights of the strip and see banal, drunk tourists.
‘I’m so fucking sick of it,’ Demorn said, taking off the glasses, not caring about the glint of the dying sun. ‘I’m so sick of this.’
Sue kissed her tenderly. ‘It’s a Quest, isn’t it? What are you looking for? What do those shining eyes really see?’
‘They see too much,’ she murmured.
‘Don’t take it all so seriously, hon. The Deaths is just my stage act. Yeah, I can make the audience see black flowers drifting through their mind while I sing my silly songs. I make them all lighthearted and magical and just a tiny bit scared. So what? It’s Vegas, we all have to turn a buck.’
Her hand guided Demorn’s eyes back to her face. All she could see was the black flowers and the haunting melody behind everything, a secret song . . .
Demorn said, ‘But my eyes see more than that.’
Sue wore her crooked smile. ‘Because you go too deep.’
She clicked her fingers. The Strip became a garden. Perfumes ran up from the street, onto the balcony.
Sue levitated higher into the air, her robes electric fire.
Music poured around them. Demorn staggered on the balcony, but Sue held her with an invisible force.
‘You’re only half here, Demorn, half a person. Shimmering in and out of time. Where do you belong?’
The words seared her, almost burnt her mind. Demorn held tightly to the magic force field, as the world became a forest of darkness, with scattered pinpricks of sharp light. The crowds were no longer aimless Vegas tourists, lost inside the casinos and vast malls, but souls inside a cage that sparkled like Xmas lights, and that cage was locked inside a far greater one, and her eyes faded out before she could see the end.
She looked back at the stars. Their brightness was mixed with dark, neither wholly good nor bad. She could feel pure joy and horror. So many naked promises and lies. Her eyes could see the Serpents that swam in the Innocent’s lake, curled deep in the consciousness of the swarm.
She could see the shining towers of Firethorn inside the stars, ghosts of her sisters and comrades. She could see the void which ate the Huntress and took her soul, lurching to the abyss, as the tattoo upon Demorn’s arm burnt with a real pain and she was empty inside—
Sue closed the vision. The curtain either fell down or rose up, Demorn could not tell. The action shifted back to the street. Shuffling tourists in the Vegas late day heat. The skulls stopped burning. The black flowers faded to faint perfumes.
‘It’s all pretend, like a play.’
The waterfall was just a waterfall. The crowd was the crowd. Restless, active, human. Everything felt flat, drained of magic. The advertisements were just that. Shining blank adverts for a future they would never reach.
Demorn said, ‘There’s more to you than tricks—’
Sue smiled sadly. ‘But I love my little tricks, don’t you see! Stop looking for my soul, Demorn. It’s mine, not yours.’
Sue floated away, back to the bathroom, the white robe slowly falling off her lithe body. A pale angel, unmarked and pure.
‘Don’t worry about tomorrow, or quests, or anything like that. It’s not worth worrying about. The dark play tells me secrets of the future, too.’
‘What does it say?’
‘That you’re a badass and we’re not chained to each other. I buy a club or something. I get a stupid stage name I should be embarrassed about, but I think it’s kinda cool. Plenty of weird things happen. So enjoy this, enjoy us.’
Demorn laughed, but she was closer to crying. It was so haunting. It didn’t matter what the year was. It didn’t matter what city they were in. They never owned each other, they only felt each other, a strange, rare fondness mixed with love. Two fundamentally different people who had found each other amongst the buzz and clutter of lives.
And I’ve let her all through my heart, Demorn realized. The thought was laced with an arc of irrepressible sadness, but she didn’t really know why.
As she heard the shower being turned on, Demorn went back to the bed. She reached under the pink pillows and pulled out her pistol, checking it. She strapped the gun onto her ankle holster and dressed. Dark brown slacks, a light green silk shirt and pale orange throw-over.
She flicked on the TV, tossing herself back onto the bed. As always, the War took immediate precedence, a fleet of black aircraft bombing a thick, green jungle, ancient stone temple ruins barely rising from the tree-line.
Demorn sat there, transfixed, as the neutron bombs rained down, god knew where, for god knew what, exploding into white nothingness, killing everything on repeat.
It took Sue’s gentle hand to shake Demorn from her reverie. Sue’s fingers brushed her face, wet with tears. Demorn opened her eyes. Her mind was a static void.
A man sat across the bed, dressed in a perfect
black suit. He was familiar but he was nobody. She knew his name then she didn’t. His face turned into a wizened horror.
She heard Sue screaming. And saw Sue standing beside her, silent.
Demorn’s hand flew to her gun. They weren’t in Vegas anymore. It was a different room. Sue was older, with heavy makeup and wearing a Suicide Sue band t-shirt, nothing covering her legs. Ghosts of the entourage littered the room.
Neutron bombs exploded into nothingness on the TV, blinding white light. As they exploded, Demorn remembered who the man was, all the places they had met before, and the greater jail that encircled them.
But as the final bomb fell onscreen, she had forgotten.
He hadn’t moved. He sat on the bed, suave. He flashed from youth to waking death. Demorn kept remembering and forgetting who he was.
‘What is it?’
‘A Repeater Monster,’ Sue said.
A horrible chill ran down Demorn’s spine.
‘What’s that?’
‘My future,’ Sue said.
Demorn fired on instinct, emptying the clip.
They were back in the Vegas hotel room. The TV was shattered. A couple of bullet holes in the wall.
There was no man sitting on the bed.
Demorn regulated her breathing and her heart, holstering her gun. She almost didn’t want to look at Sue.
‘So what time does Frank go on?’ Sue asked.
Demorn couldn’t help but smile. ‘Late, like the ’80s.’
End Interlude
Interlude 3
The Beast
The big man woke in a bed that was too small for him. Slowly, he opened his leaden eyes. He was holed up in a cheap, run-down motel room. It smelt of stale pizza and old sweat.
He grunted, and looked beside him. The girl had left. The impression of her small body was imprinted on the sheets, and through his ruined nose he could still smell her perfume.
Sun splashed through the blinds, unwelcome. Cars roared down the highway outside. It was hot, always hot. He groaned. He wanted the world to go away. But the world never went away. It just kept on jabbing at you, nonstop. Gut, face, gut, face.
He staggered to the tiny bathroom and poured water over his face. He was bloated and beat up, one night’s bad rest hadn’t done much to heal him.
He turned on the TV but it was playing the same boring zombie movie it had been yesterday. Every few minutes the movie flashed to awful, cheesy ads for cars and things he didn’t want.
The phone rang. It was an old fashioned phone, the kind that rings and rings — you just can’t ignore it.
Angrily he grabbed at the receiver.
‘What!’
The voice on the other end was cold and unfriendly.
‘Sam. Sam, Sam. Where are you?’
The big man choked in shock at the voice, unable to put words together.
‘I’ll tell you where you are. You’re broke. You’re old. You’re a nowhere man, Sammy. And it ain’t cute and you ain’t pretty. Meantime, I got a pretty offer.’
‘I gave up on all that.’
‘Damn right you gave up, Sam! It’s time to GET BACK. Time to take what is ours.’
The big man groaned in frustration. His massive hand snapped the plastic phone into pieces.
But the voice laughed harshly through the shattered handset, cruel and without sympathy for old fighters past their prime.
‘Put it back ON. Or you don’t get any more little party girls. No more like last night.’
Sam furiously ripped the phone cord from the socket, finally stopping the noise. But it felt like that cold voice on the phone was still laughing, still ordering him about.
Sam went to his old beat-up suitcase, clumsy old hands trembling as he pulled at the shirts and jumpers that had seen better days.
He pulled out the mask, the orange and green stripes faded now. He hadn’t worn it in a long time. The material was frayed. The mask had taken a lot of hits since the glory days; he wasn’t even sure if it still worked. Was the magic all gone?
In his clogged brain the reasons for giving it all up were murky and forgotten, lost behind beers and the bad fights.
But the mask felt good in his tired, arthritic fingers, almost calling to him. He felt the steel black whiskers. They were still supple and fine, unaffected by time.
For a moment he was lost in his thoughts and hazy memories, feeling the sun on his back, while he prowled, huge and young and hungry, through jungles filled with beasts.
A car howled by outside, bringing him back to now. The room was so hot and stale. There was no turning back, no better life to look forward to, no future. It all led to dead-end jobs for bad money, and a whole lot of drunken fighting.
I used to fight for something better. There used to be something better, Sam thought. I’m always running. I ran so far I almost forgot it was there.
The broken phone suddenly rang and rang.
He put the monster mask on.
The world became clear and sharp and filled with thunderous pain.
Guard Dog growled, deep and savage. His gigantic form was pressed up against the tall concrete wall. The ash spear was embedded in his chest, just below the shoulder.
With a grimace, he seized the spear and snapped the wooden shaft.
With his keen hearing he could hear distant howling as the remainder of the Guard was slaughtered. It stopped soon enough; the Guard did not scream easily and never for long.
He looked around. The bodies of many dead Varangians were piled around him. With grim satisfaction he smiled. So deep within the Ogre’s lair, and not dead yet.
He heard one of the Varangians stir, barely alive, and he tore the feeble man in half. He looked up, above the concrete corridors, to a purple sky blazing with neon flashes.
With an effort of willpower, he focused his mind to forget the pain. He nimbly leapt up the concrete wall, quick fingers finding the tiny ledges and grips, his huge, powerful body at odds with the ease and grace of his climb.
From atop the concrete bulwark he looked across the channels of concrete. Laser conduits crisscrossed through the maze, flickering in temp and speed.
The scent of the Ogre was unmistakable inside the maze, a mixture of perfume and blood across everything. Guard Dog overrode his own pain and let his senses feed out. He caught the direction, and leaped across the concrete channels, hunger flaring in his stomach.
Guard Dog saw the face of the Ogre suddenly waver and flash to that of a young and scarred, evil-looking human. The Ogre was holding a massive two-handed axe to the throat of a crippled Guard. The Ogre’s huge pig-like face snarled viciously. His voice was not deep like he expected, but thin and cruel. ‘Who are you? To invade my lair? With your band of wannabe assassins . . .’
Guard’s Dog voice was a snarl in reply. ‘We killed a lot of Varangians for wannabes.’
The Ogre guffawed. ‘Lackeys are lackeys, you cocky bastard.’
The Ogre cleaved the head off the remaining Guard, laughing as he did so, the head bouncing randomly across the filthy room. The mind-blast from the dead Guard blew through Dog’s neural link, some last desperate thought about a girl back in Boston.
Guard Dog roared in rage. The Ogre drew his fat finger along the bloody axe, and sucked on the blood. His face reverted to the burnt, scarred monstrosity.
‘I wish I was a vampire or something, ’cause this tastes nice.’
Dog charged at the Ogre, thoughts caked blood-red. The mighty axe swung wildly at him, fizzing by his head, as he slid to the ground at the last moment, crash tackling the Ogre. The electro-axe span from the Ogre’s grasp.
With grim, feral determination, ignoring the blood still pulsing from his shoulder, Dog used his superior strength to force a choke-hold, every muscle in his body tensed and close to breaking — he viciously snapped the Ogre’s neck.
There was a single moment where he thought he might die, exhausted. He rolled off the carcass.
He ripped the amulet off the Ogr
e, the leather strap snapping. The Ogre became a man.
‘Nice work, Guard Dog,’ a woman said.
She wore an impeccable white jumpsuit covering her head to toe. A pistol was in her hand, a faint electric discharge around it.
‘Sorry I took so long to get here. The Ogre protected himself well from casual intruders.’ She shrugged, looking at the dank cave and the pile of bodies, Varangians and Palace Guards. ‘Didn’t help him much in the end.’
He clambered up. She held out a hand. ‘I’m Alex, I work for the Innocents. Big fan, back in the day.’
He didn’t know what to say. ‘I have fans?’
‘Millions. You’re a sentimental favorite, Guard Dog, the old champ. Most people think you’re dead, though.’
She popped open the lid on her rig, revealing her young, sexy face and long platinum blonde hair. She smiled disarmingly, with a freshness at odds with her chilly personality and merciless diamond eyes.
‘But I’m not most people. I’m the person looking to buy your contract.’
He growled, fearful of the words.
She seized the spear handle and wrenched it from him. Dog gasped, stifling a cry of immense pain. Dark blood gushed from the wound. He knew it would never heal.
‘You don’t get to die yet, Guard Dog, not yet.’
She forced a potion into his mouth and he half-choked on it, then gulped it down, addicted to the bitter taste of life.
He groaned as the spear hole closed over. The potion made him nauseous as it churned through his big body, healing him bit by bit.
She drew his face to hers, and pecked him on the cheek.
His senses flared and all he could see and smell was her, her sexy, strong perfume, her long blonde hair. All these things he desired.
She stroked his matted hair, played with the edges of the mask.
‘You did well, my Guard Dog. You killed the Ogre. You got his amulet. You righted a great wrong.’
She blew him another kiss. ‘Who reps you now?’
