The Black Tattoo (34 page)

So, thought Jack, it was true, then.
 
The last little hope that maybe they weren't going to fight, the last ridiculous chance he'd been clinging to, winked out inside him and died.
 
Jack gave the Chinj a long look.

"My friends are going to kill each other," he said slowly.
 
"
Thrilling
isn't really the word I'd use to describe it."

THE EMPEROR

Charlie lifted his arm, and living darkness poured down over his hands.
 
His fingers vanished under the velvety warmth, closing together and extending — and now Charlie held in his hands an exact replica of the pigeon sword.
 
The long, curved blade glinted in the light, its tip lining up between his eyes and his opponent's.

"All right," he said.
 
"Let's do this."

Charlie and Esme were standing in the Emperor's throne room, facing each other along the narrow strip of bloodred carpet that led up to the thone itself.
 
The great domed ceiling loomed above them.
 
All around them, the rippling jelly stuff that made up the rest of the room's floor heaved and subsided like an oily sea. Past Esme, the Emperor was lolling on his throne, grinning.
 
For a second, Charlie looked at him.

Esme was standing between him and the throne — literally.
 
The only way to get to the Emperor — the only way to avenge Jack and carry out the Scourge's plan — was through her.
 
Charlie didn't want to hurt her.
 
He didn't want to kill her.
 
But Esme had followed him here.
 
She had got in his way.
 
And now there was no choice.

Esme's amber eyes remained fixed on his, her expression neutral.
 
She held the pigeon sword by its dark wooden scabbard in her left hand, loosely, up near the hilt; her right hand was stuck nonchalantly in the pocket of her combats.

"You haven't drawn your sword," Charlie pointed out.

"Full marks for observation," she replied.

Charlie sighed.
 
"Look," he said.
 
Already he was angry with her.
 
"Do you want to do this or what?"

Instead of answering, Esme gestured at him with the pigeon sword's pommel.

"That thing in your hand," she said.
 
"You ever used one before?"

"Esme," said Charlie wearily, "just draw your sword."

"You think you're a match for me?"

"Draw your sword!" Charlie repeated.

"Or what?" said Esme.
 
"What do you think you're going to do?"

"Fine," said Charlie, running the hand that wasn't holding the sword through his hair angrily.
 
"
Fine
."

He set his feet a little apart, spreading his weight.

"Ready or not, then," he said, with a smile that showed his teeth, "here I come."

He took his sword in both hands, leaped into the air, and flew at her.

SHINNNG!
 
WHUD!

Warding Charlie's blade off easily with her still-scabbarded sword, Esme had stepped toward him.
 
Her whole body weight, therefore, plus whatever forward momentum Charlie had put into his attack, was concentrated in the heel of her right hand as it struck the point of Charlie's chin, palm open, hard.
 
She'd hit him that way before — in exactly the same place, in fact — one of the very first times they'd fought.

Charlie's head snapped back.
 
The force of the blow lifted him off his feet.
 
He sailed a clear ten yards back through the air — and crashed, eyes wide with surprise and shock, on his back.

"You're an idiot, Charlie," she told him.

Still without drawing her weapon, Esme advanced on him.
 
Her amber eyes flashed down at him fiercely.

Charlie got to his knees, then his feet, pointing his sword toward her, frowning uncertainly as she approached.

"I gave you a chance to start making up for what you've done," Esme said.
 
"You rejected it.
 
If it wasn't for that, I might almost be feeling sorry for you right now.
 
As it is, I'm just sick of the sight of you.
 
You're an
amateur
," she spat, knocking his blade almost out of his hand with the still-scabbarded pigeon sword.
 
"An
accident
," she added, dealing Charlie's blade another smacking blow.
 
"And this—"

SHANG!

"—has gone on—"

SHING!

"—long
enough
."

Charlie was holding his sword high up in front of his chest, expecting her to hit it again.
 
He was completely unable to defend himself, when Esme took her sword by its grip and lunged, low and hard.

The steel-capped tip of the pigeon sword's scabbard crashed into his stomach.
 
Doubled up around her blow, Charlie flew back again, the breath driven out of him in a long and undignified gasp.
 
When he next looked up at her, he was grimacing with pain.

The black tattoo — its curves, its hooks, its spikes — was spreading under his skin, pouring down his arms like oil, running up into his face.

"When you're ready," Esme told him.

Bristling with rage, Charlie got up and started toward her.

Esme's thoughts went something like this.

All she needed, she knew, was an opening, a chance to strike at Charlie before the Scourge could take over and protect him.
 
To get it, she planned to needle Charlie, probing mercilessly at his swollen pride until she provoked him into an error big enough to give her the opportunity she wanted.
 
Then she would take her chance and...

And what?
 
Kill him?

Esme frowned, not moving, as she watched him getting closer and closer.

The only way to get at the Scourge, she told herself — the only way to do what she'd spent her whole life training to do — was through the boy.
 
She knew this.
 
And the boy was an idiot.
 
He was stupid and selfish and seemingly entirely lacking in self-control.

But — and this was the problem, now that it came down to it — did being an idiot mean that Charlie deserved to
die?

Suddenly, when he was still outside normal striking distance, Charlie made a snapping motion with the wrist of his right hand and flung something at her.

It wasn't the sword — at least, not anymore.
 
In the fraction of a second that it took to cross the space between them, the weapon in Charlie's hand had somehow lost its shape, the glinting steel vanishing and stretching and liquefying.
 
Whatever it was now, it was long and black, and it hissed through the air with something like eagerness.
 
Esme stepped smoothly aside, expecting the weapon to pass her, but it turned to follow her—

—and caught her round the neck!
 
It wrapped right round her throat, then constricted, its coils tightening and crushing inward round her neck like coils on its prey.
 
Excruciating pain flashed and fizzed through her whole body like a thousand-volt dose of electricity.
 
Instantly, Esme drew the pigeon sword and severed the whatever-it-was just inches front of her chin.
 
Dropping the scabbard, she reached up with her left hand, grabbed the wriggling black tentacle thing that still clung to her neck, and flung it away.
 
Spreading her arms, she leaped backward, out of Charlie's reach.

Something was wrong with the places where the weapon had touched her — badly wrong.
 
The skin of her neck when she felt it had that deadened, bulbous feeling that comes just before blistering.
 
Where she'd touched it, her fingers were numb, cold, as if they were frostbitten.
 
Holding the pigeon sword up in front of her, she stepped back, stepped back from Charlie for the first time — and stared.

Leaving no mark, the ink-black severed part of the weapon slid across the carpet in a liquid blob.
 
Just before reaching Charlie it transformed, becoming a strange kind of ferretlike creature, scampering back up Charlie's leg before vanishing into the blackness that now bulged and rippled all over his body.

Charlie smiled.

"Cute," said Esme, through her teeth.
 
"Very cute."

Still smiling, a smile that was horrible with the way the tattoo was now swarming up into his face, Charlie started to walk toward her again.

"That's quite some toy you've got there," Esme told him.
 
"Something the Scourge gave you, maybe?
 
Like it knew you couldn’t do anything to me with an actual
sword?
"

Charlie shook his head as if to clear it but kept walking.

Well, there was no way she could risk another blow like that.
 
So, no mercy, then.
 
No more games.

Without any further warning, she attacked.

With an echoing
crack
, Charlie found himself parrying a sizzling slash that — if he had stopped to think instead of instinctively lifting one demon-reinforced arm to block it — would certainly have ended the fight there and then.

Esme frowned.

CHING!
 
CHING!
 
CHING!
 
CHING!
 
CHING!

Esme launched a stinging succession of lightning blows, but Charlie's reinforced arms seemed to move by themselves as they caught and blocked them.

She feinted and spun, shaping for a wide cross-body slash but suddenly converting it into a roundhouse kick that struck Charlie hard in the ribs.
 
He staggered back.
 
But not as far as she'd hoped.
 
He was protected, shielded —
armored
somehow — by the same liquid stuff as his weapons.

So Esme did the feinting kick.

She began the move in textbook style, leaping off her left foot into a spinning midkick with her right.
 
With utter predictability, Charlie lowered his hands to protect himself, at which point Esme folded her right leg into a further 180-degree spin, letting her left foot scythe up over Charlie's guard, striking him in the face.

Bingo
.
 
Charlie flew back a good ten feet—

—twenty—

—and smacked into the nearest wall.
 
He sank to his haunches, propped there, his head lolling.
 
There.
 
Now, before things got any worse, it was time to finish it.

Esme leaped, flinging herself through the air toward her enemy.
 
She let out a scream, raising her sword over her head with both hands as the bloodred strip of the throne room floor slid past underneath her.
 
She brought the pigeon sword out and down, concentrating all her speed and strength into the two feet eight inches of hissing steel and the enemy that would die at its edge.

The curves and hooks of the black tattoo seemed to bunch in Charlie's face.
 
Charlie's still-open eyes rolled up in his head, showing only the whites.
 
Charlie's hands came up.
 
The palms slapped together.

And the blow stopped, two inches short.

He had caught her blade between his hands.

"
There
," said the Scourge, through Charlie's mouth.
 
Eyes filled with darkness locked on Esme's.
 
"
That's enough
."

Charlie's body swung upright, the steely grip on the sword never loosening for a moment.
 
The pigeon sword's point was now just an inch from Charlie's right eye, but Esme found herself forced to step back or lose her grip on her weapon completely.

"
Again
," said the demon inside him, "
it comes down to this
."

Esme gave an extra wrench on the pigeon sword.
 
The blade was pressed flat between his palms with a superhuman strength.
 
Apart from flexing the sword slightly, her efforts had no effect whatsoever.
 
Esme pulled and twisted as hard as she could, but the sword might as well have been trapped in stone.

"
Give the weapon to me
," the Scourge told her.
 
"
Now
."

"Never!"

The air between them began to flare and smoke as the demon's magic coursed out and around her — a bulging, crackling field of power.
 
Her hands were still clasped around the pigeon sword's gilt, clinging desperately to Raymond's last gift to her, but the air around her was closing in, clamping down all around at her.
 
Suddenly, she felt her feet lifting off the ground.
 
She felt her grip beginning to weaken, her strength giving out, and then, horribly, it was over.
 
Her fingers left the sword.
 
Now she was flying through the air, flung back and upward by the Scourge's power from one side of the throne room to the other, and in the long slow moment, the moment before she hit the opposite wall, she realized what it was that had defeated her.

Herself.

WHAM!

The impact stunned her.
 
She slid to the ground, her legs folding under her, and the world turned black in front of her eyes.

There was a sound in her head like the sea, whispering in her ears.
 
For a whole second she felt like drifting away on it.
 
But she shook her head, hard.
 
Tasting blood in her mouth, warm and coppery, she opened her eyes, and looked up.