Hang Wire (37 page)

“Thought you’d need that,” said Benny. She smiled and sat on the arm of the sofa opposite.

Alison pulled herself upright. On the other sofa was a large, middle-aged man dressed in shirtsleeves. He snored softly, his breath vibrating his waxed handlebar moustache. He looked like the ringmaster of a circus.

“Don’t worry about him,” said Benny. “His name is Jack, and yes, he’s from the circus. He’s going to sleep for a while now.” Benny looked down at Jack and patted him on the head. Then she sighed, her other hand clutching her chest.

“Benny? Are you OK?” Alison sat the coffee down on the table and went to stand up, but the room spun around her. She sat down heavily, shaking her head.

“You need to sleep too,” said Benny. “The coffee will help with post-resurrection synapse realignment. Trust me.”

Alison blinked. “OK,” she said. She closed her eyes and the sensation of being on a ship in a rough sea stopped. She frowned. “Are you telling me I’m dead and brain damaged?”

“
Were
dead,” said Benny. “And any brain damage is temporary. That’s what the coffee is for. Drink up, dude.”

Alison opened an eye and reached for the coffee. She glanced at Benny, and she looked pained again. She also looked pale. Very pale.

“You’re the one who looks like the walking dead,” Alison said. She took another sip of coffee, then another. She felt better already. “And who said coffee was good for zombies?”

“That’ll be Kanaloa.”

Alison paused, then sipped again. “We haven’t met.”

“He’s the Hawaiian god of the ocean, life, and death.”

Another sip of the coffee. “OK.”

“You know him better as Bob.”

Alison nodded. Maybe there was something in the coffee, because she was in Ted’s apartment with a circus ringmaster asleep on the other couch, and Benny had just told her that the homeless guy who taught tourists the foxtrot down at Aquatic Park was a god.

“He doesn’t look like he’s from Hawaii,” she said, not quite believing what she was saying herself. “More like Oregon.”

“Then you don’t know your Hawaiian mythology,” said Benny, with a laugh. “In legend, Kanaloa was fair, while his brother Kane was dark. Two sides of the same coin, I guess.” She shrugged, then coughed and fell off the arm of the sofa.

“Benny!” Alison dumped the cup and knelt by Benny’s side. She was white, her breathing long and deep. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? I’ll call an ambulance.” She looked around but couldn’t see a phone.

Benny grabbed her arm. “It’s OK. Figured this would happen. Kanaloa has a lot to worry about right now. Don’t worry.” Then her eyes rolled back and the air left her lungs. She slumped on the floor.

“Shit, Benny, wake up!” Alison shook her, felt for a pulse. She didn’t find it. She wasn’t breathing. She pulled her arms out of the way, tilted her head back, ready for CPR.

Benny’s hand gripped her wrist, and Alison yelped in surprise.

“She is being looked after,” she said. Her voice was deeper – masculine, hollow and echoing. Her eyes were still closed. Alison shook the hand off her wrist and felt again for her pulse. Nothing. She pulled back her eyelids, but she didn’t react.

“Fear not,” said Benny in the deep voice. Alison backed away until she was against the sofa. Benny remained where she was on the floor. “This mortal has served the Heavenly Ones well. But she has endured too much and I cannot prevent the passing of this life from one form to the next.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Alison tore at her hair. This was all some twisted nightmare. Had to be. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I am Tangun, King and Founder. I returned to the Earth on a quest for a lost power, but my Golden Child has suffered too much. Kanaloa fights for us. I will protect the girl as we journey together beyond to the shadow realm. She has served with great honor.”

Benny stood, her image flickering between the Benny Alison knew, in a sports shirt and baseball cap, and a warrior clad in ceremonial garb from the Far East, gold plated armor over richly embroidered white robes.

“Benny?” Alison’s voice was tiny.

“It’s OK.” Benny now. She opened her eyes. “Look after Jack until Bob gets back. He’ll be able to explain everything. I have to go now. I’m being taken to meet the Heavenly Ones.” Then her image flickered and the warrior was standing there.

“We ride to the heavens, my friend,” said Tangun. He raised his arm, there was a flash, and the armor collapsed to the floor. Alison slid forward, but the robe was empty. Sitting on top was the huge helmet. Its front was a golden mask molded into a face. The face was laughing, frozen in time.

— XLIII —

SHARON MEADOW, SAN FRANCISCO

The ground shook, another tremor, stronger this time. The carnival construct – Belenus – staggered on its gargantuan feet, the carousel head spinning, the pipe organ wailing. Then it took a step forward, the ground shaking.

“And it’s awake,” said Bob, backing away.

Ted stared up at it. “What the hell is it? Is Belenus one of you?”

Another crashing step forward. The giant machine was unsteady, its framework of twisted metal grinding and screeching as the body moved. But it seemed to be adapting. It took another step, this time faster, with more certainty.

“Belenus isn’t real,” said Bob. “It’s a work of fiction, a fake Celtic god someone dreamed up. The Thing Beneath doesn’t have an identity. It’s alive, but it doesn’t think.”

BELENUS DEMANDS THE WORLD.

“You sure about that?”

Bob looked around at the torn-up carnival, the ground cracked from the tremors and carved up by the moving machines.

“It’s the two of them together,” said Bob. “The Thing Beneath, and the Cold Dark that lives in the machines. They’ve become one thing.”

Another step, another roar of the pipe organ.

“I hope you have a plan, Bob,” said Ted, “You’re a god, aren’t you?”

Ted was right. Bob was a god. He was Kanaloa. He could do anything. And if he did, then he may as well let Belenus destroy the city, because that was exactly what Kanaloa would do once he started.

Unless…

“Can you talk to Nezha?”

Ted looked at Bob. “Talk to him?”

“If he’s in there with you, then I’m not the only god in town.”

Ted blinked, and looked over his shoulder quickly. Then he turned back to Bob and nodded.

“He’s here. He’s… me… I think.”

He held his hands out. A green glow played over his skin, increasing in brightness, crackling with gold sparks like a firework.

Bob smiled. “Then maybe Nezha the Last Magician and Kanaloa, god of the ocean, can fight this together. I need you to help control me. If I get out of hand, you need to stop me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Ted lifted his hands, and nodded. The green glow surrounded his whole body now. As Bob blinked, Ted’s image flickered between the ordinary guy in a brown jacket and a Chinese man with a long beard and long green coat.

Bob looked up at the carnival monster. It was standing still, swaying, the spinning carousel like a gyroscope, keeping the top-heavy construct balanced. The pipe organ droned on, but the thing wasn’t moving.

Yet.

Bob looked deep into the construct. It wasn’t moving, because it was
changing
, rearranging its internal structure, converting the mash of carnival rides into something far more complex. Each piece was shifting slowly, interlocking like a complex puzzle. Nuts and bolts and bars forming logic gates and switches, creating mechanical algorithms for life. A spine had formed, reinforced at the neck to better support the huge carousel. What had once been a dozen separate Nineteenth Century fairground rides was becoming a single machine.

It was becoming Belenus, the Celtic god who never was, made real in a collection of fairground attractions.

Bob braced himself on the ground. Now was their chance, before the construct finished remodeling. The solution seemed simple: separate the machines.

He glanced at Ted. Ted was looking up at the construct, his hands green fire.

“Ready?” asked Bob. Ted nodded without taking his eyes from the machine.

Bob summoned the ocean and rose into the air on the crest of a tidal wave. It carried him up, allowing him to leap onto the construct’s chest. The machine shook and sparked as the water flooded through it, shorting the electrical systems, making the lights over its surface flicker. Bob grabbed at metal panels and began to tear them off. He reached inside the grinding guts of the machine, the moving parts jamming against his arm. He began pulling at anything that was within his grasp.

As he did, he felt the hunger grow along with the lightness in his head. He could dissolve the entire machine with a thought. And… why not? It would be so easy. They were running out of time, and here they were, playing. Even as he ripped out one piece, another moved to compensate, the construct rebuilding itself around the damage. It was a waste of time.

And then, he thought, once he’d destroyed the machine, he could make sure that San Francisco was never in danger from earthquakes again. The tectonic plates could be realigned, fixed.

And then, he thought, he could make some alterations to the city. Make it better.

And then, he thought, he could begin again, teaching the inhabitants of the city what it was to have an angry god as their lord and master. Oh, they would walk over fire for him. They would feed him with their blood and their souls.

Kanaloa, god of the ocean, looked at the molecular structure of the machine he clung to, and started making some changes.

Ted watched Bob, clinging to the front of the swaying machine. He’d started pulling the thing to pieces, twisted metal debris falling to the ground as Bob threw bits over his shoulder. But the machine was large, and Bob was making slow progress. Ted was surrounded by green fire, but he knew that wasn’t really him doing it. It was Nezha, the echo of a godly spirit that was still inside him, whispering Chinese riddles into his ear in a constant stream. He didn’t understand any of it.

Then Bob stopped moving. He clung to the front of the construct as it rocked on its feet, but he’d pulled his hand out of its interior.

The whispering in Ted’s ear grew loud as the green fire in his hands flared bright. Suddenly he understood the words being spoken to him.

Ted shook his head. “I–”

“But–”

Ted looked up at the carousel.

Yes
, whispered Nezha.
There. The center. The nexus. I will help.

Ted vanished from the ground in a puff of green smoke and reappeared on the carousel, riding one of the wooden horses. The world outside was a multicolored blur; the carousel was spinning impossibly fast, but within its bounds it was still and quiet, like he was not in the real world anymore. Ted swung himself off the horse. Behind his back, he heard it rear and neigh; when he looked over his shoulder it was still. Then its eyes rolled around to look at him. Time seemed to be moving differently within the ride. Slower.

Ted turned back to the carousel’s hub. To the pipe organ, to the monkey with glowing red eyes that sat atop it. The organ and the monkey flickered like a zoetrope. Ted realized the carousel was still rotating around the stationary center.

“Why am I an acrobat?” Ted asked.

Time slowed to a crawl. The wooden horse behind Ted neighed again.

“But why the circus? And why me?”

“Except I didn’t know anything about it, did I?”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

The striped wooden pole next to Ted’s head exploded in a shower of splinters. He spun around, and saw the rides behind him now occupied by wooden soldiers. Here, in the in-between-world of the spinning carousel, they were alive and moving. Three reloaded their flintlock rifles while the other three were taking aim. Behind them, the world outside spun by in a silent kaleidoscope of color.

Ted turned back to the monkey and felt the bullets hit his back. There was pain and green fire. Then the pain vanished.

“Was that you?”

Quickly
.
I can protect you for only so long. We must reach the center.

The hub of the carousel was a step higher than the platform itself. Ted pulled himself onto the back of a horse that had a writhing starfish for a head, swung his legs around to the side facing the hub, and jumped. Behind him, the creature screamed in agony as it was shredded by another volley of shots from the soldiers.