by David Finn
Suicide Sue smiled at Demorn, beckoning with one delicate finger. ‘You’re such a cynic, Demorn. It’ll be the death of all of us.’
Demorn walked forward into the shimmering blue door. She felt the lasers wash over her as she went into the heart of the club.
She grabbed Sue by the hand, their lips touching soft and hard, old hellos between old friends.
‘What are the lasers searching me for? They never try to take my Athena gun.’
Sue brushed Demorn’s nose playfully. ‘Maybe it’s just the right kind of vibe.’
She kissed Demorn again, half the monster. In a Firethorn memory flash, Demorn recognised the beast, she knew whose soul it was.
‘You wear the Minotaur,’ she breathed.
Sue whispered, ‘I wore it for you. We’re walking through our pasts.’
She vanished, leaving Demorn by the glittering doorway. Pulling her jacket close, she walked deep into the club. She always felt peaceful here. The layout was fabulously old-school, long darkly lit rooms, with shadowy booths, and a giant dance floor beneath crimson chandeliers.
A few couples waltzed slowly to classic slow songs, pink light falling down upon them. Demorn heard some retro mega-mix being played beneath the old songs, hypnotic Ki City beat.
Demorn walked up to the bar, feeling a couple of cool, clinical glances slide across her. That old sizing up, the kind of glances she had endured, and learnt to dismiss, growing up as a pretty girl in a den of thieves.
It was quiet, just a few club ghouls hovering over the ruins of one more wasted night.
A thin girl with long blonde hair and striking features, sitting by herself at the bar, looked into Demorn’s eyes. A girl who five hours ago would have been so beautiful, so wanted. But now the empty overrode everything in her gaze.
In a different mood, Demorn would have taken her back to her room. She knew how all the empties felt.
Sue appeared behind the wasted blonde girl, placing her delicate, white hands upon the girl’s neck. The girl turned from Demorn, looking into Sue’s ocean-green eyes.
A miniature sun hung in the air between them, the girl’s face suddenly shining with something radiant, something good and tender.
Sue took the girl’s hand, pressing it to her lips, and they slowly vanished together, fading as if they had never been there, the magic sun spinning for a little while before burning out.
Nobody even noticed. The girl’s half-drunk cocktail sat on the bar, something expensive with strawberry.
Demorn sighed, looking back over the couples slow dancing. She had seen this play out so many times, it was hard to believe that any of this was magic anymore.
Her eyes flicked to the booth tables, a cluster of three old men who had completely ignored her. A couple of them wore distortion cloaks. It didn’t matter, her magic eyes could pierce the shields.
A businessman living on his credit card, starving for pleasures that no longer sated him.
A Repeater monster with dead rotten eyes and a sickle, motionless.
An old fossil with encrypted codes all over him.
The music was pulsing, the mood was changing, brighter and sharper.
The barmaid asked her what she wanted. Demorn ordered a diet cola, bored.
She glanced at her invisible watch, noticing that time was frozen. She wondered how long Sue would be.
The girl behind the bar said something about Cher songs which made her laugh. She went to speak, when a hand brushed her shoulder. Demorn looked up dismissively, used to fending off advances.
But looking up, all she saw was a rainbow of lights, and in the middle of everything a purple sun lit up the whole universe, with Suicide Sue at the vortex.
Demorn felt the light infect every pore, soaking her mind, cleaning out the damage and the waste. She saw Asanti, not blown apart, but alive, dancing in the Memory Garden, more vivid than the virtual recreation in the Spire, but the real thing at last.
And everybody who had gone was alive. Everybody was alive, beneath the purple sun, with magic in the air.
6
* * *
Subdued electro music woke her a moment before her eyes opened. She went from alert to relaxed, realizing where she was.
Sue’s bed. Ki City. She unclenched her hand from her Athena pistol.
Her eyes cleared. The room was a chaotic mixture of pink and black. Furniture floated around them; the bed was not anchored to the floor.
Wall-high wide-screen TVs anchored the decor.
They were deep inside the club. They lay in a massive four-poster bed that Sue had once said was built for a kinky, kindly alien princess. A red dress, uncannily like that worn by the blonde girl was laid out at the end of the bed.
Sue lay silent beside Demorn, a thin black blanket wrapped around her tiny, pale body, staring blankly at a gigantic image of bombs raining soundlessly down on a rain forest, dropping gracefully in symmetry.
Sue spoke in hollow voice, ‘The Tyrant will win this War, he will bring the Fleet home, I know it . . .’
Demorn rolled her eyes, getting up. ‘The Fleet? Jesus, Sue. The Fleet has been out there for generations. It’s one big PR gig, so you can have a flag to wave and feel good about it.’
Sue looked at her with blood in her eyes. ‘Fuck, you’re a cynical bitch.’
Sue reached out and grabbed a floating wine tray, pouring a glass. Her hands played self-consciously with a thick golden necklace, gaudy and out of place against her short black dress and pale skin.
Demorn read off a nameplate above the golden door that was the exit from this crazy room.
‘Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men.’ It was hard to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. ‘Really, Sue? Clichéd military quotes? Is that where we are now?’
Sue laughed, face ever so slightly flushed. ‘You’re such a cynical bitch! And what’s wrong with clichés? I bet you’ve dated a lot of clichés, you tough little heartbreaker.’
Demorn’s laughter was droll. ‘Touché.’
The soul mask lay next to the red dress, discarded like the girl. The hideous sight of the dead, rotting Minotaur morphed into a grey lumpy mass ridden with long yellow teeth. It revolted Demorn, she refused to look, hopping off the bed.
Sue took a sip of wine. ‘Maybe it’s where I am. God knows a lot of soldiers pass through these doors.’ She sighed thoughtfully, looking at Demorn. ‘Heaven knows where you are, dear.’
Demorn said, ‘Oh, I get paid to kill people and sometimes to find things. Life’s a peach.’
Sue giggled, pulling a funny face. ‘How exciting! And you have fallen into my parlor, why exactly? Have you come to kill me?’
Demorn let her brunette hair fall down across her eyes, suddenly shy, as if that would veil her from Sue. ‘Of course not. That would be awkward and distasteful. I would have to send Alex or somebody even more cold-blooded.’
Sue laughed, her voice kind. She drew a finger across her own cheek. A black line of creeping death followed her mark, instantly healing.
‘What happened to your scar?’
Demorn shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I was kind of reborn.’
Sue floated out of the covers, naked. She wore the decaying Minotaur head-mask. ‘Kind of?’
‘It happened in Firethorn. I’m vague on what happened.’
Sue placed a hand on Demorn’s forehead. ‘Who cares? You look lovely, but no fire warms those cold magic eyes.’
Sue withdrew her hand, wrapping the black blanket around her again, as it spun across the room, twisting around her. Her voice was melancholy. ‘Your soul is gone, Demorn, absent and lost. Who knows where? To the War, to a lover, to the Oceans of Time? For all these things take souls.’
Demorn chuckled. ‘You can see into me, Sue, you always could. But I don’t have the answer.’
Sue switched the topic. ‘Do people ask you where you got your glasses?’
Demorn laughed, touching her jacket pocket. ‘Not really. I don’t encourage ca
sual questioning.’
Sue clicked her fingers, taking a wooden box from the air itself. Red stains partially covered a royal crest. Her long fingers rapped across the surface.
‘There’s a whole legend. You slayed a dragon with your burning sword, that sat upon a holy box, opened by a blood-stained key.’
Demorn looked at her with distant, curious eyes. ‘That’s not what I remember.’
‘Oh really, what do you remember?’
Demorn’s eyes blazed, reflecting. Memories shifted and changed within her.
‘The dragon wasn’t a foul worm, but a gorgeous woman who could change form. She befriended our party, got close to me . . .’
‘Until you killed her, dramatically?’
Demorn smirked. ‘Well, friends can fall out.’
Suicide Sue was suddenly in the long red dress. It fit her body perfectly. The golden necklace gleamed, and didn’t look out of place anymore. Demorn admired her curves and flowing hair.
‘I’m guessing Little Miss Blonde at the bar won’t be needing her dress back?’
Sue looked mock surprised. ‘There’s a reason they come to my boudoir. The last choice is theirs.’
Demorn looked bored. ‘What an odd choice, though. To be eaten alive by a mind vampire in a chintzy bedroom.’
Suicide Sue laughed, grabbing her hand. Demorn floated up in the air, too. It felt exhilarating and dream-like, like something from childhood on Asanti.
Demorn magic eyes glistened. She could see through the room suddenly, she could see metal chains upon Sue’s wrists, charring her pale skin, inscribed with old runes from forgotten places.
She grasped the chains, and the room collapsed upon itself. A burning salt was in the air, and below them, the ocean was dark, flecked with breaking waves. Burning stars were inlaid within the water. She could see that some of the stars were the corpses of fallen gods.
Sue’s hand was on her ruby heart, blending with the Sword tattoo above her breast. The gnashing dead thing was upon Sue’s face, the sorcery rotten and corrupt, rippling with power.
We snuck through the time portal when we were just children and you tore your skin on the metal spikes . . . and the dragon showed mercy, she showed mercy.
Demorn gripped her arm.
‘Stop! Just stop, Sue, it hurts and I don’t want to think about the past. Jesus, it feels like we’ve had a thousand pasts.’
I CAN’T FEEL YOUR WOUND ANYMORE DEMORN I CAN’T FEEL YOUR WOUND ANYMORE WHERE DID IT GO . . .
The ocean grew angrier, the churning waves boiling with burning stars falling from a dark sky. They were so many colours, so many species of dying and dead creatures who had once been called gods. Demorn screamed to anything that would listen, as the magic coursed through her body and bones, her mind and personality blown apart, helpless before the hurricane.
Suicide Sue laughed, on the verge of insanity. On the horizon, gleaming silver towers shone.
Demorn saw herself reflected in the waves, blown up to immensity.
She had become a dread creature with a long burning sword in her hands, a tall, spiked crown upon her head. The waves glowed with an ominous fire, vengeance and death in her eyes.
‘I barely feel anything, not even wounds,’ Demorn sighed to the death-mask of the Minotaur.
Sue looked at her, for a single moment a lithe, pale woman again, wrapped in the black blanket.
The chains burnt on her wrists, fire across iron, rising from the water, reaching them high in the air. A chain snapped around Demorn’s ankle with a vicious snap.
‘You did too many deals with too many gods. That’s why you’re as trapped as all of us.’
Demorn laugh was bitter and empty. ‘I’m trying to save you, you crazy bitch.’
The monster mask was rotten. Yellow teeth gnashed. ‘Then save me.’
The chain gripped. Sue released her. Demorn fell into dark waves, Xalos erupting from her heart into her hand, so that she was the mirror of the waves.
When she vanished under the cold water, her reflection stayed, a haunting memory of the Princess of the Swords. Nothing vanished for it was not a dream.
Suicide Sue knew this, drifting over the waves, towards the distant towers. It was not a dream, not while the chains still clasped them.
7
* * *
Demorn ran through the dark forest, and the creatures howled, angry eyes shimmering from shadows. Her sword burnt low with purple fire. Her black kimono was ripped. Blood ran down her arm.
She looked up to a sky she didn’t recognise, the stars a hideous blur. The moon glowed a baleful red. If this was Firethorn, it was a fractured reverse of the place she knew. Perhaps true evil had won.
She steadied her mind. The trees around her lit up with Corizan sorcery, trapping her in a circle of witchcraft. The Devil Beast screamed.
Demorn’s lip curled back in a sneer. She called out in Asanti.
‘IF THIS IS THE FINAL DEATH THEN LET THE BATTLE SING!’
The words felt good and cool in her heart, and Xalos caught fully aflame.
The Devil Beast reared up. The circle of witches sang a death song behind the undead creature. Fear flickered in Demorn’s heart. She would never escape it. It was her Fate. It was her future. It was her past. It was her death.
No, Sword Princess. It doesn’t have to be the final battle.
A lithe hand grasped her arm as the softly accented voice floated through her head. Demorn’s golden armband glowed, burning her skin for the first time in years.
‘Toxis!’
The red cloaked figure was a blur, half-in, half-out of reality. As the Devil Beast screamed, Demorn saw the figure dancing around her, the ash staff moving in a blur.
Toxis’s lips brushed her face. Her soft voice echoed through Demorn’s mind.
Do not be so eager to welcome the end of all things, Princess.
The huntress flickered in and out of reality. Demorn’s magic eyes saw the abyss. A golden armband glowed on her skin. Demorn clung with a savage passion onto Toxis’s arm. She saw a burnt out skeleton. She saw a King in the Land of the Dead.
Toxis slapped her face sharply. The vision shattered.
Yes, I’m a ghost. There are fields beyond the mortal plain.
The Devil Beast charged. The death song had started to weaken and kill her. The witches echoed through her brain, harsh Corizan words, italicised, laced with churning power.
YoU have Lost YOur ICE SKELETON IT HAS BEEn DraGged FROM you. YOU ARE JUST WEAK FLESH NOW.
Demorn sneered. ‘I’m not that weak.’
The armbands burned. She raised the Sword to face the Beast, as a translucent spiral of energy came into the clearing, lighting up Demorn and Toxis.
She slid out of the dimension. She saw the ominous red moon; she felt the White Fort burning by the Ocean. The spiral vortex tugged at her, modifying her clothes and her age, falling through time. Demorn no longer held the hand of anybody.
Her vision cleared. The forest was vast and evil. But she saw into the heart of it, beneath the cheapest spell, beyond the circle of the witches, for their magic wasn’t the equal of the true gods.
She saw the Lost Labyrinth, she saw the puzzle of it, gleaming chrome towers with energy channels. Riddles upon ancient source stones. She saw the old name of Babelzon screaming from the stones and instantly forgot as the same spell overwrote her magic eyes. She saw the minotaurs were pawns, killed and killing by a formula that was ritual. She saw the birthplace of the Worms.
Then it all vanished in a blurry collage of swift falling night, a faint whiff of burning by the sea, sad memories of a lost Firethorn.
Demorn was staring at a glowing image of Wrecking Ball on a comic store window. The air was a freezing air-conditioned cold. It was dark. Her head throbbed.
Demorn heard the tinkle of a wind-chime. The electric flicker of a scan surged through her. Lights flickered upon the door.
A dead metallic voice spoke from speakers attached to the door, devoid
of emotion.
STATE YOUR BUSINESS.
She said: ‘Stryker always wore his badge.’
The lights blinked on. She was in a comic store. A young woman with short black hair, wearing a Green Lantern shirt, was behind the counter.
The store was a cornucopia of delights, sparkling action figures, comic books both old and new.
‘Hey, Sue. Great store.’
‘Demorn,’ the girl said with casual surprise. ‘I thought you had forgotten about us.’
Demorn flipped a peace sign.
‘Sorry, I’ve been out of range. Will lasers cut me down if I get the password wrong?’
Sue giggled. ‘I wish it was that cool. I’m supposed to be closed, y’know. I don’t even know what I’m doing here so late, all by myself.’
‘Late? I thought it was only about midday.’
Sue looked vague, sifting through entries on her computer. Faintly, poppy music was playing.
‘Nah, it’s like 9.30 at night. The shipment came in today, people came and bought most of it. Now I’m just here, being bored on the internet, pretending to be interested in news about European politics . . .’
She looked over Demorn. ‘I’m not interested in European politics.’
‘Me neither. Ours are enough. I’ve missed my comics.’
‘Where were you?’
Demorn was looking over the colourful posters on the walls. Her brain felt empty, almost clean.
‘I’m not sure. Away.’
When she looked at the comic racks there were so many titles she didn’t know. She saw a attractive, muscled black woman, blood upon her mouth, wearing a short red cloak, fending off a Varangian with her ash staff.
‘I know this character, from somewhere.’
Sue floated across the room, taking the book off the shelf, matching the poster.
‘It’s an indie title, Toxis the Huntress. Solo black female with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Twist is she was bitten by a vampire god.’
Sue shrugged, her feet touching the floor. She wore sheer black leggings which made Demorn’s heart flutter a little.
