by Guy Adams
“No!” Arno cried, reaching out towards her even as the sound of a second shot bounced between the branches of the forest. He felt nothing, just a sudden blindness as he toppled on top of her.
“Not them!” cried the man who had appeared at the edge of the forest. “You stupid bloody idiot. It wasn’t them.” With a sob, the man vanished once more, returning to the room where he had been watching these events unfold.
“Harmonium,” said Jones, jumping from his rakh. “I’m here honey, it’s me, I’ve got you.”
He gathered her in his arms, pressing his face against her matted, dirty beard and whispering his love into her ears. “You’re safe now,” he said, “I killed those sons of bitches. You’re coming with me.”
She was like a deadweight in his arms, the shock and misery of her last few months suddenly overwhelming her. He carried her to his rakh, placed her across its back and mounted the saddle.
The rest of the procession were gathering around him now, staring past him at the dead bodies of Arno and Veronica.
“Get out of my way,” he said, his gun extended towards them, “or I’ll kill every last one of you.”
They didn’t need to be told twice, parting as he rode back the way he had come.
“Who was that?” one of them asked as Kane finally caught up, shoving his way through the crowd and coming to a halt by the bodies of Arno and Veronica.
Dead, he thought, looking down at them. As simple as that. Now the group, what was left of it, was his.
He looked up to see a tiny man walking towards them, his eyes nervously looking past Kane to the trail beyond.
“Has he gone?” the small man asked, scarcely able to believe he had come this close to Henry Jones, the husband of the woman he had so badly misused, and lived.
“And who are you, demon?” asked Kane.
“Demon?” the small man asked. “Me? I may not look much but I’m as mortal as you are.”
Kane stared at him. He supposed it was possible, he hardly looked normal anymore, after all.
“Has he gone?” the small man asked again, peering around Kane’s stomach like a child hiding behind its mother’s skirts. “The man’s a monster.”
Kane didn’t need telling on that score. As much as it might suit his plans, the rider had gunned down Arno and Veronica without a moment’s hesitation.
“His name’s Henry Jones,” the small man said. “He’s taking over the Dominion and I for one don’t intend to hang around long enough to feel the results.”
“Where are you heading?” Kane asked.
“Place called Wormwood,” the small man said. “It’s a gateway to the mortal world. Figured it was the safest place to go considering.”
“You know where it is?”
“Sure, it ain’t far, couple of days at most. Why, you want to come?”
“You’ll show us the way.” It wasn’t a question, Kane wasn’t about to hand over control of the group, not now that he finally had it.
“Sure,” the small man said, “no problem. Happy to help.”
“What’s your name?” Kane asked.
The small man nearly said ‘Preacher’ but stopped himself. He had left a few graves behind him on the trail that could be linked to that name. Perhaps it was better to let it fall by the wayside and go back to the name he had always used, back before a bullet in the head had sent him to the Dominion and a new life. “It’s been so long since I’ve used it,” he said, extending his hand and shaking Kane’s, “but I’m glad to make your acquaintance. You can call me Obeisance Hicks.”
10.
ABOVE THE DEPLETED crowd, turning and twisting in the air like smoke on the breeze, the shades of Arno and Veronica intertwined.
“She was right,” Arno said, his words almost as intangible as his body. “She always said my charitable nature would be the death of me.”
“You can only die once,” Veronica replied, “isn’t that what we thought?”
“This doesn’t feel like dying,” Arno admitted, though he became aware of something, some force, pulling at him as he rose ever higher on the wind. “It feels like changing.”
“I can’t hold you,” Veronica cried, “my fingers... my body... I’m nothing.”
“No,” Arno replied, “you’ll never be that.”
And they dispersed, on towards the Fundament.
WHAT AM I DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REVOLUTION?
(An excerpt from the book by Patrick Irish)
AND SO, TWO lessons were learned. Firstly, that casual, heartless pleasure I had taken in watching the stories unfold beneath me, as if they were nothing but fictions, was gone. It should never have been there in the first place. Arno and Veronica were dead, their souls moved on to the Fundament to be reborn in some other body, some other life. Even though they would exist again they wouldn’t do so together, they wouldn’t remember the people they had once been. There was no more Arno and no more Veronica, they would be fresh starts, ignorant of the love they’d known before. And for what? What purpose had their death served?
As a writer—and yes, I’m bringing this back to fiction even after having cursed myself for doing that in the first place, because it is the only frame of reference I truly understand—I had always condemned others for filling their stories with needless deaths. Characters expunged purely to make the reader feel miserable or sad seemed to me to be the laziest of actions. When you held the lives of your world in your hands then didn’t it give you the freedom to make them mean something? I am not saying that any worthwhile drama can be wrought without a little misery, but why kill just for the sake of it? What are you trying to achieve? Can you not manipulate your reader more cleverly than simply slaughtering those you’ve created? Justify all you do in the name of telling your story.
But of course the real world doesn’t subscribe to such dictates. Just as nobody is ever really able to call the story of life finished until death itself draws the line, people come and go pointlessly. They are not important. We are all the main characters in our own lives, but sometimes we have to accept that we do not have a starring role. Our narratives are blunt, boring and brief.
I had become distracted from the real questions I should have been asking, drawn into the tale of Henry Jones and the noble mission of Arno and Veronica. But they were not where the main action lay. That was in the town of Wormwood, the focal point of everything, the trigger that was soon to be pulled. No more viewing purely for the pleasure of it, from now on I would simply follow the threads of that town until their inevitable, catastrophic end.
But what of the second lesson? I had finally found my way into the world I was viewing. I had fallen through the floor of the Observation Lounge and onto the side of the road, narrowly avoiding death from one of the tree bombs. I had been there, for all the good it had done. I had cast no influence, I had been no more than a sobbing witness, but I had proven that it was possible. And if that were the case, could I really be nothing more than a spectator as the visions continued?
I wondered on that as I returned my attention to Wormwood.
CHAPTER NINE
THE BRUTE AND THE BEAST
1.
POPO HADN’T KILLED a sexual partner in decades. While not a claim many would feel the need to take pride in, for an Incubus it was a surprising achievement. It was all very well being of the higher caste, a rank of demon respected and feared throughout the Dominion, but if it meant you couldn’t sleep with someone without reducing them to a lifeless husk it was murder on a long term relationship. So he had adapted. It had been a surprisingly easy process but not one he chose to explain to the world at large. While an Incubus, like a Succubus, was a sexual demon, the force it fed on was not purely carnal. It was, for the sake of a term, ‘life force’ and while it was the act of sex that channelled that force, opened the mouth so to speak, he had soon found that he didn’t need the donor to be aware of the fact they were donating. This realisation provided a simple change to his dining habits, on
e that he had adopted ever since.
In the early hours of the morning, just before dawn, when most people were fast asleep, he would find himself somewhere quiet to sit, close his eyes and tap into the dreams of those around him. That was where the sex normally came into play on the part of the donor, it caught them at their most honest. However much people liked to pretend in the bedroom, dressing up in costumes, slipping on characters, it always boiled down to flesh and hunger. It was animal, it was real. For all the theatre leading up to it, there could be no lies at the point of orgasm. Sleep was similar, a time of dreams and lowered defences.
Popo would slip into a dream state, working himself to orgasm, becoming part of the subconscious world around him. Then, at the moment of climax, he would breathe in. In this way he could take all he needed, a little from each, nothing they would notice, but a feast that kept him healthy all the day long.
He kept the method to himself, not because he was ashamed of it but because he didn’t want people to view him as a danger. He took nothing from them they couldn’t afford to lose but they might not see it that way and the last thing he wanted was to be hounded out of town as an onanistic leech.
Since taking over the hotel he had taken to performing this ritual on its roof. From up there he could look out over the whole town, imagine each and every one of the sleepers around him as he teased himself with spit and thumb. Sometimes, when the connection was particularly strong, he could even visualise the dreams of the sleepers. He would sift through them, lifting out the erotic as extra fuel (another thing he would not have admitted to, as few like a voyeur). These little pornographic shows were fascinating to him. From the romantic to the bizarre, the simple to the bacchanalian. He knew all the town’s secret loves. He had witnessed Billy the engineer admit his lust for Elisabeth Forset, and she for him, but only within their separate beds. How he had longed to simply force the two into a double room and demand their honesty. Now, at least, it seemed he no longer needed to intervene, the barriers between them had fallen and they were finally together. He witnessed Biter, lost to a dream of countess jiggling rear ends, nose to buttock in a delirium of scent. He witnessed the ever fecund Fenella, her brood the eager helpers on the Land Carriage repairs. She was like him, a solitary lover, she needed only to dream to impregnate herself, each of her many children the product of nocturnal imaginings. What would the fathers think, he wondered, if they knew how their dream seed had helped to grow flesh? What would the noble Lord Forset say if he realised that the cheeky creature he had played peek-a-boo with the day before was his own dream child? Popo didn’t think the old man would approve.
He also witnessed the nocturnal thoughts of the governor’s aide Elwyn Wallace and his partner Meridiana. There was another solution to the long term problem of being a sex demon, he thought, find yourself a partner who can’t die then you can get up to whatever you like in the bedroom without fearing fatalities. Lucky for her.
He had finished his morning feed with a shiver and a sigh when he noticed movement on the street below. Crouching on the edge of the roof he recognised one of Fenella’s young, escaped from the house no doubt, and eager to play while others slept. He tried to see which child it was, they were all so similar with only the slightest variation in their features to differentiate them. He wondered if one of them was his. It would be a considerable blow to his pride if not.
The child was running towards the edge of the town and Popo decided he had better be the good citizen and capture it before it became lost.
He descended through the hotel, the nighttime chorus of snores and creaking bedsprings following him down the stairs.
Outside, he couldn’t see the kid. Adopting a gentle jog—he couldn’t move too fast, not so fresh from feeding, a process which left him bloated and dizzy for half an hour or so—he moved up the street in the direction he had seen the child running.
He passed the general store, the square, and jogged on towards the far side of town.
He finally caught sight of the child, dragging a length of wood behind it. It was an off-cut from the repairs to the Land Carriage, Popo guessed, now turned into a toy to draw lines in the dirt of the road.
“Hey kid,” he called, keeping his voice low for fear of disturbing the sleeping town. Perhaps it was too low for the kid to hear, or maybe it was just feeling willful as it continued to run towards the barrier, bursting through it and out into the world beyond. Popo growled. The kids were under strict orders from their mother to stay within Wormwood’s limits.
He gave chase and crossed the barrier, momentarily disorientated by the sudden light that hit him on the other side. He had forgotten how time shifted differently on both sides of the barrier. Who knew what day he had walked out into? Who knew what day would greet his return, for that matter? He could be out here for minutes only to find he’d been missing for a day on his return. Damn kid.
He rubbed at his eyes, cursing the dizziness that still coursed through him. After a feeding he liked to do nothing more than lie back and doze. All this running around was throwing his equilibrium. Certainly, if he had been at his best, he’d not have let the mortal that had crept up behind him get so close. There was a loud crack as the length of wood the kid had been playing with hit the back of his head and he fell to the ground, suddenly aware of the presences around him.
“Foul beast,” someone said, “look at the state of him! Shameless!”
“I think we all know what he was going to do to this thing when he caught it,” said another.
He was clubbed once again and he felt consciousness slipping from him. The last thing he saw was the sight of Fenella’s squealing child, held aloft by one spindly foot, being scrutinised like a fish netted from the river.
2.
“WAKE UP,” A voice said to him. The pain in his head had spread it seemed, both his hands and ankles throbbed so hard he dreaded to think what he was going to see when he finally opened his eyes. He decided it was probably for the best to keep them closed.
“I won’t ask again,” came the voice. “I’ll just set to work on you with something sharp until you find feigning sleep impossible. Perhaps I should just remove your eyelids, that might force you to be more polite and look at the man who is talking to you.”
“Is this violence really necessary?” asked another voice.
There’s hope yet, Popo thought, if at least one of these people has the spirit to ask that question.
“Perhaps it would be better if you left, Father,” the first voice replied, “I have no wish to upset you. But before you do, I’d advise you to take one more look at this beast and reassure yourself that we’re dealing with something beyond God’s mercy, and therefore beyond ours too.”
“I thought God was supposed to be all-merciful?” Popo asked, scared at the way his voice sounded so weak. He opened his eyes. “Isn’t that what mortals always say?”
He was in a small tent, five men surrounding him. He looked at his hands, sickened to see they had been nailed, rather than tied, to the chair he was sat on. No doubt the same could be said of his ankles, though he was in no position to strain and check.
“See how he mocks the Lord?” said one of them, the one who had been doing most of the speaking, “like a true child of Satan.”
“Actually,” Popo replied, trying not to let his fear show while taking the opportunity to assess the man, “Satan was one of God’s most loyal helpers.” The man was tall, his moustaches full and preened, a man who took pleasure in his image. There was nothing to be ashamed of there. Popo, while not one for clothes (there wasn’t a pair of trousers that could accommodate him) had been known to succumb to vanity on many occasions. The look in the man’s eyes, however, was worrying indeed. Despite his words there was no sense of fervour there, he was not a man who thrilled at the good book, his gaze was calm and cold. His religious affectation was a means to an end. “Last I heard,” he continued, “he’d retired from a life of testing the faithful. I believe he’s now ru
nning a trout farm somewhere in England.”
The cold-eyed man feigned anger. His mouth contorted but his eyes told the truth, chilly and practical, as he stepped in and dealt Popo a slap with back of his hand. “No more blasphemy,” he said.
He turned to the man Popo assumed was the ‘Father’ due to his monk’s robes. “Leave us,” he told the man, “this is not going to be quick or pleasant and I have no wish to upset you further either with his words or my responses.”
The monk hesitated for a moment and Popo realised he had misplaced his flippancy. He had played into the cold man’s hands with his talk of Satan—though he had spoken truthfully as far as he was aware. The monk nodded and stepped outside the tent, leaving Popo to the attention of the cold man and his three colleagues.
“There,” said the cold man, “that’s probably for the best. We don’t want to distress the Father any further, do we?” He looked to the other three men. “Are the rest of you happy to stay and do what must be done?”
“It’s clearly a devil,” said one, a pudgy man with yellow skin.
“You can count on me, Mr Atherton,” said another, “I won’t blanch when the going gets tough.”
“I know you won’t, Phil,” said Atherton, “you’ve a strong heart.”
“Me too,” said the final man, ageing disgracefully beneath an unruly mop of grey hair. “I’m only too happy to take a swing at the cursed thing.”
No doubt the old codger felt he had to compensate for Phil’s enthusiasm, Popo thought. He even placed a wonderfully heavy emphasis on the last syllable of ‘cursed’.
“I don’t know what you think needs to be done, gentlemen,” said Popo, realising it was likely fruitless to try and talk his way out of the situation but willing to try, “but I’ve done nothing to you. I was merely trying to fetch back the child of a friend.”
