The Ninth Nightmare Part 16

Xyrena said, 'Jesus! Wh.o.r.e's boudoir, or what?' but Dom Magator held up his finger to indicate that they should stay quiet. All the same, Katie had to agree with her. The bedroom was decorated in a style which she could only have described as Greek Billionaire Bombastic, with a gilded four-poster bed, and purple velvet drapes, and bow-fronted Regency nightstands. On either side of the window stood two life-size statues of Greek muses, Urania the G.o.ddess of astronomy and Thalia the G.o.ddess of comedy.

Dom Magator beckoned to them, and the Night Warriors gathered around the right-hand side of the bed, where George Roussos was sleeping. He was lying on his back in purple silk pajamas which matched the purple velvet drapes. His comb-over had strayed across the pillow like seaweed, and the bottom two b.u.t.tons of his pajama jacket were unfastened, revealing a huge furry stomach.

His wife Margarita lay with her back to him, a pink chiffon scarf tied over her head to protect her platinum-blonde pleat.

George Roussos was twitching and muttering in his sleep, and every now and then his left elbow would jerk up, as if he were trying to push somebody away.

'He's still having the carnival dream,' said Springer. 'Go on, Dom Magator. You know what to do. But let's do it quick.'

Dom Magator said, 'OK. Everybody ready for this? Here goes nothing.'

He raised both arms and pointed his fingers upward. There was a few seconds' pause, and then a sharp crackle. Two narrow streams of sapphire-blue light jumped out of the ends of his fingers and joined together in an apex next to George Roussos' sleeping body. A strong smell of ozone filled the air, and the two streams of light jerked and twitched like electrocuted snakes.

Slowly and evenly, Dom Magator lowered his arms, using the twin streams of light to describe a shimmering octagonal figure in the air, close to the side of the bed.

'This is the portal which will take you into this gentleman's dream,' said Springer. 'All you have to do is to step through it, and you will find yourself right inside his mind.'

Zebenjo'Yyx bent down and tried to peer into the center of the octagon, shielding his eyes against its intense sapphire-blue brightness. 'I can't see nothing inside of there, only pitchy-black dark.'

'Our friend here is dreaming about someplace dark, that's why,' said Dom Magator. 'Don't worry, I have plenty of night-vision goggles and gunsights if we need them. Let's just hit the bricks, shall we?'

'We can really step through here?' asked Zebenjo'Yyx.

'We really can,' Dom Magator a.s.sured him. 'And just to prove it to yourself, you can go first.'

Zebenjo'Yyx shook his head and lifted up both hands in mock surrender. 'That's OK, man, you've done this before. You go first. I'll stand back and watch how you do it.'

'Will you please just go?' said Dom Magator. 'I need to have somebody on the other side to cover the girls when they come through. It's called, like, chivalry. It's also called good tactical sense. We don't know what the h.e.l.l might be waiting for us through there, do we?'

'Yeah, precisely, man. That's what concerns me.'

Xyrena linked arms with him and said, 'Come on, big boy! Don't tell me you're chicken!'

'Who said anything about chicken?' Zebenjo'Yyx protested. 'There's a whole world of difference between "chicken" and "circ.u.mspect".'

All the same, he c.o.c.ked the arrow launchers on each of his forearms, turned to the rest of the Night Warriors, and said, 'This is it, then. Like my grandfather used to say, you can't make no omelets without breakin' no legs.'

'Eggs,' Xyrena corrected him.

'My grandfather wasn't just a cook. I know that now. He was Zebenjo the Arrow-Storm. So when he said "legs" I think he maybe meant legs.'

George Roussos let out a loud grunt and shifted his bulk sideways. At the same time, inside the octagonal portal, the Night Warriors saw lightning flicker, and they distinctly heard the rumbling of distant thunder.

Springer said, anxiously, 'Hurry, Zebenjo'Yyx! If our friend here changes his dream, or if he wakes up, we could have wasted this entire night's mission.'

Without any further hesitation, Zebenjo'Yyx ducked his head down and stepped through the portal. He vanished from the bedroom with a sharp snapping sound, like a high-voltage electrical short, as if he had never been there.

'He's gone,' said Jemexxa. 'That's incredible.'

Dom Magator said, 'Why don't you and Jekkalon go next? Then An-Gryferai and Xyrena. I'll bring up the rear.'

'Well, n.o.body can say that you don't have plenty of rear to bring up,' said Xyrena.

Dom Magator said, 'Good joke, Xyrena. But don't let's forget how dangerous this could be, and that some of us might get badly hurt, or even killed. So, you know, let's get serious, shall we? And keep our eyes open. And our ordnance ready. If there's any weapon you need apart from your natural allure - like a gun of any kind - you only have to ask.'

'Oh, I'm serious, mister, believe you me,' Xyrena retaliated. 'Don't let one or two wisecracks fool you. I've spent my whole life fighting and I can a.s.sure you that the skin underneath this armor is just as tough as the armor itself.'

Dom Magator looked at her through his green-tinted visor for a moment, and then he said, 'OK. Let's get hustling, shall we?' He could have told her that talking tough wasn't enough when you were fighting in the world of dreams, but he decided it was best if she found out for herself. Fighting in the world of dreams was terrifying, chaotic, and violently disorienting. Nothing and n.o.body ever stayed the same. The terrain could drastically alter right beneath your feet, from limestone b.u.t.te into fever-ridden bayou, and the weather could change, too, from a summer heatwave to a midwinter's blizzard, all without a moment's warning.

Jekkalon stepped through the portal, followed closely by Jemexxa. An-Gryferai went next. She had no idea what to expect, and the sharp snap! as she pa.s.sed from the real world into the dream world gave her a jolt. But immediately she felt rain pattering against her helmet, and when she stood up straight, she found herself on a hillside, under a black, lowering sky.

Lightning was stalking across the horizon on crooked stilts, as threatening as the Martian tripods in The War of the Worlds. Jekkalon and Jemexxa were standing only a few feet away to her left, while Zebenjo'Yyx had taken up a position on top of a low promontory off to her right, his right arm c.o.c.ked up like a sentry holding a rifle.

An-Gryferai waded through the gra.s.s toward Jekkalon and Jemexxa. 'Some dream for a meat-packer!' she shouted.

Jemexxa tilted her helmeted head toward her and shouted back, 'This is the same place that Kieran and me found ourselves, when we went through the door at the Griffin House Hotel! Except that the carnival was right at the top of the hill there, and now it's not!'

'It must have moved on!' said An-Gryferai.

Behind them, Xyrena appeared, closely followed by Dom Magator, with all of his guns and his swords and his serried racks of knives.

An-Gryferai shouted at Dom Magator, 'Jemexxa said that she and Jekkalon were here before, in this same exact place! She said that the carnival was up on top of the hill, but it's gone now!'

Suddenly, in her ear, as clearly and as warmly as if he had been standing right beside her, Dom Magator said, 'We don't have to yell at each other, An-Gryferai. We all have a close-communications system inside of our helmets, except for Xyrena, who has an induction loop in her crown. This means that we can talk to each other in our natural voices, at any distance. Switch is on the left-hand side, under your ear protectors.'

'Oh,' said An-Gryferai. 'I didn't realize.'

Jekkalon hadn't been listening. 'Are they the same, then?' he screamed. 'Dream time and waking time?'

'I can hear you, for Christ's sake!' said Dom Magator. 'You don't have to bust my G.o.dd.a.m.ned eardrums!'

'Sorry!' said Jekkalon. 'But it was only last night when Kiera and me saw the carnival here. So if dream time is the same as waking time, then they couldn't have traveled too far since then, could they? For starters, they would have had to pack up all of their tents, and all of their equipment, and hitch up all of their trailers, and that would have taken them hours.'

'Dream time is different, for sure,' said Dom Magator. 'But this carnival has more than dream people in it. It has real people, and you can't mess around with time too much when you have real people involved. Real people have to live out their lives sequentially.'

'So what does that mean?' asked Xyrena.

'It means that the carnival can't travel backward and forward in time, the same way that we can, as Night Warriors. So the whole shebang has to carry on like a real carnival, hour by hour and minute by minute and day by day. And that's to our advantage, now that we're hunting for them. They can't dream themselves back to nineteen thirty-six, for example, to get away from us.'

'In that case, let's go huntin' for them,' said Zebenjo'Yyx. 'I'm just itchin' to get my revenge on that freak who broke my frickin' back!'

'They won't be far away,' said Dom Magator. 'This is where our meat-packing pal started his dream, right here, which is why we entered it here. Judging by his physical condition, he couldn't have walked too far to catch up with them.'

He turned to Xyrena, as if he were challenging her to make some smart remark about his physical condition, but Xyrena simply shrugged. Then he said, 'An-Gryferai, how about taking off and having a look around? Just be careful - it looks like it's pretty d.a.m.ned blowy up there.'

An-Gryferai walked a few paces up the hill, with the wet gra.s.s lashing at her knees. Then she flexed her shoulders and spread her wings, and the wind immediately plucked her upward.

Dom Magator had been wrong; this weather was very much more than 'pretty d.a.m.ned blowy'. This wasn't at all like the warm, serene thermals in which she had floated so triumphantly over the Florida coastline. Here, the wind was harsh and cold and ill-tempered, constantly switching direction and velocity. Bursts of rain kept exploding against her helmet, and the lightning seemed to be crackling so close to her that she was afraid of being electrocuted.

She was buffeted by downdrafts again and again, and at one time she was almost beaten back down to the ground, and her boots actually kicked against the gra.s.s. But she struggled and dipped and spun, and tilted her wings to catch every rising gust of wind that she could, and at last she managed to fly up to the top of the hill.

She battled upward and looked around, repeatedly angling her wings to steady herself. It was clear that the carnival had been here, and only recently. The ground had been churned into glistening black mud by scores of criss-crossing tire tracks, and there was trash scattered everywhere - broken orange-crates, chicken carca.s.ses, dirty diapers, worn-out tractor tires. Near the center of the site a wide oval area had been covered several inches deep with sawdust, which is where the big top must have been pitched. Over on the right, a large bonfire was still smoldering, filling the night with acrid smoke, and stray sheets of paper were dancing across the muddy furrows as if they were panicking that they had been left behind.

'How's it going?' asked Dom Magator, inside her helmet.

'Jekkalon and Jemexxa were right: the carnival was here. I'm just trying to work out which way it went.'

'Maybe you're going to need a little more alt.i.tude.'

An-Gryferai flapped her wings even harder. The wind was howling and screaming now, and she felt as if she were swimming the b.u.t.terfly stroke through a mountainous sea. But gradually she managed to gain height, until she was nearly two hundred feet over the hilltop, and she could see more than ten miles in every direction. She adjusted the lenses in her helmet to improve her night vision and sharpen her focus. Two black crows tumbled past her, even more helpless in the wind than she was.

She could see now that the carnival had processed down the opposite side of the hill, like a vast Civil War army on the move. Its tractors and its wagons had crushed deep parallel tracks in the gra.s.s, and there were hundreds of hoof marks and footprints too, so she had no difficulty in working out which way it had headed. She adjusted her lenses yet again, turning her head slowly from side to side to sweep the distant horizon. Eventually, less than five miles away, half hidden by smoke and fog, she made out a cl.u.s.ter of houses and barns and workshops, close to the edge of a leafless birch wood. The carnival had a.s.sembled nearby, a collection of twenty or thirty trucks and trailers, as well as horse-drawn caravans and elderly automobiles. She recognized a huge black Packard Phaeton from the mid-nineteen-thirties, because her grandfather used to own one, although he had never driven it.

Refining her vision even more acutely, she saw dozens of carnival folk to-ing and fro-ing from the carnival wagons to the houses and workshops. Some of them looked like riggers and circus hands, because they were wearing plain gray coveralls and heavy-duty gloves, but others were dressed in far more fanciful costumes, with red-and-yellow striped tailcoats and long capes of faded velvet in oranges and greens and grays.

Several of them were hopping on crutches, or walking frames, and An-Gryferai saw at least two of them, legless like beggars from a Breughel painting, pushing themselves across the gra.s.s in little wooden boxes with wheels.

She spun around in the air, and gave the rest of the Night Warriors a furious wave.

'It's here!' she told them. 'Brother Albrecht's carnival is here!'

'Great,' said Dom Magator. 'Everybody ready for this? Everybody ready to kick some eight-hundred-year-old a.s.s? Let's go get 'em!'

THIRTEEN.

Dogs of War An-Gryferai dipped and wheeled over the brow of the hill, flapping her wings, waiting for the rest of the Night Warriors to catch up with her. She stayed as close to the ground as she could while still keeping the circus in sight, even though it wasn't easy. At this low alt.i.tude, she had to battle against mischievous crosswinds and abrupt drops in air pressure. Her shoulder muscles were aching with the effort, but she didn't want to fly any higher in case any of the carnival folk happened to look back and catch sight of her, Dom Magator had already warned the Night Warriors that it was a priority to surprise Brother Albrecht, if they could, because they had no idea if or how the carnival folk could retaliate.

'Let's just put it this way,' Dom Magator had said, 'this guy has been traveling around with his freak show for eight hundred years, kidnapping women and children and cutting their arms and their legs off, and inflicting all manner of deformities on them, and n.o.body has been able to stop him yet. Not priests, not princes, not G.o.dd.a.m.ned sorcerers, even. So let's be intelligent, shall we, and a.s.sume that he has some way of defending himself?'

Now the Night Warriors had all gathered at the top of the hill. An-Gryferai beat her wings strongly so that she gained another twenty feet in alt.i.tude. She focused her lenses toward the carnival and transmitted into each of the Night Warriors' helmets a high-definition 3-D image of what she could see. She showed them the wide trail of tire-tracks and footprints that the traveling carnival had left behind it in the long wet gra.s.s, and then she showed them the settlement beside the birch trees, and the carnival site itself, half obscured by drifting woodsmoke and mist.

Dom Magator said, 'We need to pinpoint Brother Albrecht's exact location. If we can take him out first, I think we'll have much less organized retaliation from the rest of the freaks.'

'My guess is he's goin' to be real well protected,' said Zebenjo'Yyx. 'Like the gang leaders in Brightmoore and Hamtramck. You couldn't get near those brothers for guns and muscle.'

'Why don't I go down there and look for him?' Xyrena suggested. 'I mean, I don't look threatening, do I?'

'Absolutely the opposite,' Don Magator agreed. 'But are you sure that's a good idea, going down there unarmed? We don't yet know how these people react to strangers. They might blow you away as soon as look at you.'

'They're entertainers, aren't they? Trapeze artists and jugglers and clowns, and very special people. I don't think they'll give me any trouble.'

'OK, but I think Jekkalon and Jemexxa should go with you. They're both acrobats, so if anybody's going to get a warm welcome from carny folk, I guess they will. Besides, they don't look like they're carrying weapons, even though there's plenty of lightning around for Jemexxa to zap them with, if she needs to. Zebenjo'Yyx and An-Gryferai and me, we'll take up tactical positions as close as we can without being seen, and cover you.'

An-Gryferai flapped down to earth again, with a nimble skip, and shook the rain off her wings. 'All ready?' asked Dom Magator. 'Here goes nothing.'

The five Night Warriors fanned out and began to walk toward the carnival. Over their heads, the electric storm became even more dramatic, with lightning crackling from one cloud to another and thunder rolling almost continuously. Chilly rain slashed sideways across the gra.s.s.

Dom Magator switched on the heat sensors that displayed infrared body images on his visor. This allowed him to make second by second checks on the movements of the carnival people, in case any of them betrayed signs that they had caught sight of the Night Warriors coming toward them. But they all appeared to be far too preoccupied, swarming backward and forward between the carnival site and the settlement by the birch trees.

Suddenly - right in the center of the carnival trucks and caravans - he saw four tall poles being erected, with black pennants flying from the top of them. Within less than thirty seconds, in a series of huge convulsions, the big top began to rise, like a harpooned whale rising from the depths.

At the same time, all around it, twenty or thirty smaller tents and marquees were mushrooming up; and off to the right, a large gang of circus hands were bolting together a long row of animal cages. They a.s.sembled the cages in only a few minutes, and then at least a dozen trucks were noisily backed up to them. The trucks' rear doors were thrown open, and ramps dropped down with a fusillade of banging and clattering. After a few moments, trainers dressed in flamboyant coats and tall hats and wigs appeared, leading out tigers and bears and elephants and zebras.

Once the animals were all safely locked up, the trucks were driven away to the far side of the carnival site. Meanwhile the trailers and horse-drawn caravans were being marshaled into a rough semicircle. It all happened so quickly that it was like watching a speeded-up movie. Electricians climbed up ladders to suspend strings of red lights between the cages and the caravans and the tents, and in front of the big top an archway was hauled up into position. A generator blurted, and all the lights flickered on, while the illuminated lettering over the archway spelled out Albrecht's Traveling Circus & Freak Show.

After a few more seconds, the Night Warriors heard music on the wind, occasionally interrupted by thunder. In The Good Old Summertime, played on a barrel organ.

'My G.o.d,' said Dom Magator. 'If this doesn't make me feel like a kid again.'

They had reached a low ridge about a hundred yards away from the perimeter of the carnival site. Dom Magator sent Zebenjo'Yyx off to the right, so that he could cover Xyrena if and when she entered the big top. He sent An-Gryferai off to the left, close to the settlement of houses and barns, so that if she needed to take off and fly, the birch trees behind her would make it harder for anybody on the ground to see her.

He gave Xyrena a quick embrace, his heavyweight armor clanking against her gold-plated breastplate. Then he shook Jekkalon and Jemexxa by the hand, and said, 'Break a leg, OK?' All of a sudden he felt like Uncle Buck, not only because he was so well built, but because he really cared for these two young twins. They were good-looking, they were hugely successful, and they had nightly faced audiences of thousands. But this was their first time in Night Warrior combat. Dom Magator was confident that they had inherited all of the tactical skills they needed, but they had no experience yet of how harrowing it could be, fighting in nightmares; how bizarre, or how b.l.o.o.d.y.

Xyrena and the twins started to walk toward the carnival tents. As they did so, from inside the big top, the Night Warriors heard a m.u.f.fled drum roll, and then a man bellowing through a megaphone. They couldn't make out what the man was saying, but his announcement was immediately followed by a discordant blast of trumpets and a smattering of applause.

'Sounds like show time,' said Zebenjo'Yyx.

'Xyrena, Jekkalon, Jemexxa...' said Dom Magator. 'You take it real easy, you hear me? And keep us up to the minute, OK? You need us, you just yell, and we'll be right there before you can say "catfish po'boy with everything on it".'

Xyrena circled around the back of the caravans and trailers, with Jekkalon and Jemexxa staying close behind her. Just as before, when Kieran and Kiera had explored the carnival site on top of the hill, all of the trailers had black blinds drawn tightly down at the windows, although they could hear voices and music and occasional bursts of shouting from inside some of the trailers, and there was a pungent smell of tobacco smoke on the wind.

From the direction of the big top, they heard another drum roll, longer this time, followed by another fanfare of trumpets, and another round of applause.

'I think we should go see what's going on,' said Xyrena. 'If it's some kind of show, then the chances are that the Big Cheese is going to be there.'

'Can't we find our mom first?' asked Jekkalon.

'Come on, Jakki, you know what our priority is,' Xyrena told him. 'We have to pull the rug out from under this freak show as soon as we possibly can.'

'You will help us find her, though?'

'Like I said to my first husband, I promise I'll try to keep my promise, but I can't promise.'

They walked along the line of animal cages. The stench of tiger's urine and elephant's dung was overwhelming, and made Xyrena's eyes water. The tiger snarled at them listlessly, but its eyes were dull and its fur was patchy and even if it managed to escape from its cage, Xyrena doubted if it had the strength even to run after them, let alone eat them. The bear was in much the same condition, sitting in one corner of its cage, endlessly rocking backward and forward like a mental patient in a rundown asylum.

In the last cage a Great Dane b.i.t.c.h was lying on her side on a heap of dirty straw, apparently asleep. Her pale honey-colored coat was caked with black mud and she was so undernourished that her ribcage was showing.

Jemexxa went up to the bars of the cage and said, 'Such a beautiful dog. We used to have one when we were little - Princess, we called her. We used to be able to ride on her back, like a pony. Look at her - how could they treat her so bad?'

'Come on,' Xyrena urged her, 'we have to get going.'

But just then the Great Dane stirred on her straw, and lifted herself up on her front paws, and turned her head around. Jemexxa clamped both hands over her mouth and took two staggering steps backward. Jekkalon said, 'Holy s.h.i.t! I don't believe it.'