by Guy Adams
“Hello again, my kind and considerate rider,” said Harmonium Jones. She was looking much improved from the time he had seen her last. Her hair and beard were clean and brushed, her skin scrubbed. Several meals had put some weight back on her and given her skin a more healthy glow. Her husband stood next to her, his head cocked, his face half in shadow beneath the brim of his hat. He was pointing his gun at Hicks.
“I believe you owe my wife an apology,” he said. “A considerable apology.” He cocked the gun.
“Fuck you!” shouted Hicks. “You’re going to shoot me whatever I say. I loved every minute of it! Every single damned mile grinding my old balls against the back of her lousy neck. Every tug of the reins, every single crack of my whip. So get it over with! Kill me!”
Jones put his gun back in his holster. “Kill you?” he asked, leading his wife away from the pit. “Where would be the fun in that? You can hang there a little longer first. Maybe a day or two.”
“Or a week,” said Harmonium.
“Or a month,” said her husband.
“Or a year...”
They joined Patrick Irish, who was stood watching at a distance. “You’re satisfied with our deal?” he asked.
Jones nodded. “The Exchange is happy to concentrate on business here in the Dominion for now. As for me, I couldn’t care less. We won’t interfere with the mortal world. Not yet, anyway.”
“That’s good enough,” said Irish, “things are delicate for now. It’ll take time for us all to adapt. I just needed room to breathe. Let the Dominion of Circles keep itself to itself for a little while, just until people get used to what they’re now sharing reality with.”
“What about the Dominion of Clouds?” Harmonium asks. “Now God’s dead, who speaks for them?”
Irish smiled. “Me, I suppose. Not bad for an alcoholic old hack, eh?”
14.
THE PRESIDENT DIED as the sun began to fall low on the horizon.
If the crowds had been large before, the hours of the afternoon had only seen them swell yet further as people continued to gather, a never-ending procession from Alliance to the strange, ill-matching mountain range that stood in that Nebraska plain, and the town it surrounded.
The mourning was cut by a sense of wonder, an awe that passed through them all as they moved in and out of Wormwood. Demonic caste and human intermingled both in the streets of the town and the land outside it.
Elspeth Gorman and her son, Hodge, sat out on the street, smiling at the passersby. Their next door neighbours, Remy and Boo, recently from the Bough, had decided to organise a barbecue and the air was thick with cooking food. Abernathy’s till was fit to burst with the sudden upswing in trade and he was caught in a state of euphoria and irritation, trying to fulfil orders.
“We need to set up a run to Alliance,” said Knee-High, “get more supplies coming in.”
“We?” Abernathy asked.
“Don’t tell me you don’t need a business partner,” the dwarf replied. “You wouldn’t have the first idea what you were buying.”
“I already have a business partner!” Abernathy replied. “He’s around here somewhere with a mop. William? William? Where in the name of duck teats is the tower of a bastard? William?”
But William couldn’t be found, so Knee-High got his deal.
Popo was returned to his hotel, dressed in a spare monk’s habit loaned by Father Martin, who accompanied the Incubus along with the rest of his brotherhood.
His return was well-received by those who had all but given up on him. “You’ll never get rid of me,” he’d said, twirling somewhat weakly in his borrowed clothes. “I’m far too fabulous to die.”
Father Martin, overcome by the sights around him but determined to try and retain an open mind hung back. He and his brothers had done their best to help Popo but it had become clear that the Incubus healed only too well on his own. All he’d really needed was a bit of rest. Father Martin suspected Irish had known that, but had wanted to force Father Martin into choosing the route his future would take. In that, he’d succeeded.
“You know,” said Brother Clarence, looking around, “it’s not quite as awful as I thought it would be.”
Father Martin nodded. “It never is.”
“What about...” the old monk hesitated, “well, what they were saying about God. Do you think He really can be dead?”
Father Martin thought about Irish. “Not in any sense that matters,” he said, and led his monks along the street in search of food.
Not everyone welcomed the intrusion of course, certainly not Fingers and Nyctos who stared out of their window at the influx of mortals and felt their thoughts turn to murder.
“Look at them all,” said Nyctos, the dark pulsing with anger. “We’re infested with apes.”
“Not for long,” Fingers replied, clicking his fingers in irritation, “just you wait. There’ll be more like us, willing to band together and drive these monkeys out.”
Which was undoubtedly true, but while there would be dissent on both sides, the union held, not least because of Lucifer’s announcement a few hours later.
15.
THE YOUNG MAN who up until recently had been a novice in the Order of Ruth and then a shop boy to Abernathy was on the edge of the Dominion of Circles, having decided to leave Wormwood behind and see where his feet took him. William looked out onto its rough and blasted landscape and wondered where he’d be tomorrow.
“Wherever I want,” he said aloud, smiling at the freedom of it.
“Who are you talking to?” asked a voice from beside him. He looked down to see a young girl.
“Where did you come from?” he asked, looking around. “Your parents around somewhere?”
“I don’t have any,” she replied. “I’m on my own. Unless I can walk with you for a little while?”
William thought about it, but didn’t see he had much choice. He could hardly leave her here by the side of the road. “I guess,” he said.
“Thanks.”
So they walked off towards Hell together, he with his sack of provisions and her with her wooden toy train, trailing behind her in the dust.
16.
LUCIFER WAITED UNTIL the dawn to address the people. He knew he had to allow a little time to pass after the death of both Harrison and Morton, but he also wanted to make his statement while the memory of those gentlemen’s passing still lingered. The crowds were in mixed spirits but that was when they would be at their most amenable, Irish had assured him, so he climbed on top of the Land Carrage, still stood out there in the plain, and held up his hands for silence.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “thank you for allowing us to join you in remembering those who were so recently taken from us. I want to assure you that what I’m here to say is intended to honour their memory rather than taint it. Your leaders came to me wanting to form a union between my people and yours. I respected that and hoped to achieve the same. So, with that in mind, I want to announce my intentions here and now. You have lost a great leader, I only wish I could have arrived here in time to save him. But I could not. I can, however, honour his wishes by saying that I intend to honour his last wishes for the future. In order to do that I intend to run for President.”
The response to this was beyond measure, the reporters ecstatic as they scribbled in their notebooks, the people unable to quite believe what they were hearing.
“Your country wisely believes in democracy,” Lucifer continued, “so the choice will be yours. Let this be my final proof to you that I do not come here to do anything but build a union between us. I am not your enemy, I am not your invader, I am a man who wishes to serve you and protect you. I am yours if you’ll have me. What comes tomorrow is up to you.”
WHAT AM I DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REVOLUTION?
(An excerpt from the book by Patrick Irish)
I NEED HARDLY tell you whether Lucifer achieved the position. It is, after all, a matter of history. The Vote Lightbringer campa
ign—that name, Lucifer, always so contentious and better avoided—the attempts by Democrat and Republican alike to derail his rise to power. They claimed it unconstitutional, that he was unfit as a candidates until, of course, it was shown that Lucifer had been a citizen of the country since the Constitution itself was drawn up (indeed, he had walked its roads long before it) and thereby perfectly eligible under law.
They claimed it would herald an era of terror and violence, and, certainly, there were times when that seemed to be so. Yet the fighting, the riots, the attacks on his party in general and his person in particular, they were all nothing compared to the destruction that might have been. The vast majority accepted him, as the landslide vote proved. People are very simple creatures, they want to feel safe, they want to be reassured. With Lucifer in power most citizens felt that their fears were needless; if there were one candidate that could guide them through the turbulent times ahead it was the candidate that knew the dangers Hell had to offer. Not only did he know them, but he could fight them. All a voting public ever really wants is a steady, safe hand on the rudder and that was what Lucifer offered.
So it was that six months later, the results of the emergency ballot were unveiled and a new man sat beneath the roof of the White House.
I visited him that night. Possibly I was feeling smug. As you will have gathered by now I can be susceptible to the more base human emotions.
“Happy?” he asked, sat in the solitary light of the lamp on his desk, a scattering of papers in front of him.
“Yes,” I admitted. “It worked didn’t it?”
He didn’t answer that, just stared out of the window at the remnants of the celebratory banners and ribbons that hung from the trees and the windows.
“I spent so long avoiding authority,” he said, “preferring to live my own life, out of His shadow.”
“His shadow has long since dispersed,” I said.
He looked at me. “It never will,” he replied. “But I shall continue to do my best while it falls over me.”
I left him to his brooding, knowing better than to argue.
I thought I might return to the mortal world, give up this temporary pretence of godhood for an honest life amongst my peers. Somehow it’s never happened. I still sit here, watching life unfold beneath me. Sometimes I visit, but I’m determined not to get too involved. I think it’s time we all made our own way, don’t you?
I warned you that stories never really end. Of course they don’t, they just change. The day that Lucifer took his place in the White House was a beginning, not an ending. The years that followed, the crises and the victories, the bad years and the good, were all, in their own way, just as—if not more—important than the events of those few months that saw our world become something fresh and new.
I could tell you more. About Elwyn and Meridiana’s child and the chaos it brought? About Black Tuesday, when the Exchange finally made its mark on the mortal world? How Biter took on the Chicago gangs? About the Texas assassination, and the attempts on behalf of the grassy knoll—or Branches of Regret as we know him—to uncover the murderer? Or what about the Great War? Demonic castes and mortal soldiers fighting side by side while the world burned?
No. Stories never end. They just become history.
And, for better or for worse, this was mine.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THE HEAVEN'S GATE books have lived in my head for far too long. Unwanted lodgers who cluttered up the place and never did the washing-up or contributed towards the rent. Naturally, once I finally brought them outside and looked at them in daylight they bore no resemblance to the shadowy, indistinct creatures I always imagined them to be, but it's a relief to finally evict them from my brain and put them into yours. The fact that I was able to do so rests entirely with the frankly gorgeous people at Solaris.
In the Rebellion Oval Office, President Jason and Vice President Ben could easily have pressed the large red button but resisted.
Jonathan Oliver (Calamity Jon as we've never thought of him but might now) pointed out the targets; David Thomas Moore (whose hairy face brings the banks of the Gristle to the minds of fearful onlookers) polished the ammunition; Michael 'The Moustache' Molcher (who sounds like a really shit Cab Calloway song now I come to think on it) ensured there was a crowd to see the first shots fired; Lydia 'I Fed it to the Fucking Dog' Gittins ensured the crowd continued to grow (despite my best efforts); Kit 'What Is it with this man and commas?' Scorah steadied my aim; Jake 'Pretty Boy' Murray and Dominick 'Tentacles' Saponaro designed my jackets and Pye 'O' Parr and Sam 'Sam' Gretton stitched it beautifully together. Finally, Gareth 'sign here' Busby and Martyn 'The Dollar' Wiggins ensured the papers were legal and the funds were there for gunpowder.
I cannot thank all of them enough. These books mean a great deal to me and the fact that the above folks allowed it all to happen puts in their debt, every single one of them.
As always, my posse had my back. Mother wasn't quite as disgusted with this one as the last (though she was VERY cross about the horse) and Debs just laughed at the nasty bits, proving that there's nothing more satisfying in life for a despicable man as the love of a despicable woman. I love them both.
And if you've read this far I love you too, you mad, word-starved fool.
Appaloosa Elim is a man who knows his place. On a good day, he’s content with it. Today is not a good day. Today, his so-called “partner” – that lily-white lordling Sil Halfwick – has ridden off west for the border, hell-bent on making a name for himself in native territory. And Elim, whose place is written in the bastard browns and whites of his cowspotted face, doesn’t dare show up home again without him.
The border town called Sixes is quiet in the heat of the day, but Elim’s heard the stories about what wakes at sunset: gunslingers and shapeshifters and ancient animal gods whose human faces never outlast the daylight. If he ever wants to go home again, he’d better find his missing partner fast. But if he’s caught out after dark, Elim risks succumbing to the old and sinister truth in his own flesh - and discovering just how far he’ll go to survive the night.
‘If you loved Stephen King’s Dark Tower series you will find his book right inside your wheelhouse. I loved it.’
Paul Kearney
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One day every hundred years, a town appears, its location and character different every time. It is home to the greatest miracle a man could imagine: a doorway to Heaven itself. The town’s name is Wormwood, and it is due to appear on the 21st September 1889, somewhere in the American Midwest.
There are many who hope to be there: travelling preacher Obeisance Hicks and his simple messiah, Soldier Joe; Henry and Harmonium Jones and their freak show pack of outlaws; the Brothers of the Order of Ruth and their sponsor Lord Forset (inventor of the Forset Thunderpack and other incendiary modes of personal transport); and finally, an aging gunslinger with a dark history.
They will face dangers both strange and terrible: monstrous animals, predatory towns, armies of mechanical natives, and other things besides. Wormwood defends its secrets, and only the brave and resourceful will survive...
‘If there wa was ever a writer who could write in Technicolor, it’s Guy Adams; his creations leap off the page at you and make you jump back in shock.’
Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review
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A WEIRD WESTERN, A GUN-TOTING, CIGA
RILLO-CHEWING FANTASY BUILT FROM HANGMAN’S ROPE AND SPENT BULLETS.
Wormwood has appeared, and with it a doorway to the afterlife. But what use is a door if you can’t step through it?
Hundreds have battled unimaginable odds to reach this place, including the blind shooter Henry Jones; the drunk and liar Roderick Quartershaft; that most holy, yet enigmatic of orders, the Brotherhood of Ruth; the inventor Lord Forset and his daughter Elisabeth; the fragile messiah Soldier Joe and his nurse Hope Lane.
Of them all, Elwyn Wallace, a young man who only wanted to travel west for a job, would have happily forgone the experience. But he finds himself abroad in Hell, a nameless, aged gunslinger by his side. He had thought nothing could match the terror of his journey thus far, but time will prove him wrong.
On the road to Hell, good intentions don’t mean a damn.
‘A Tour de Force... I could not put The Good, The Bad and The Infernal down. 10 out of 10.’
Daily-Steampunk.com
‘Supernatural cowboys and steampunk Indians... saddle up for an enjoyable ride.’
Starburst Magazine
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