The Magpye: Circus (17 page)

And now, here they were, little
more than spectators as the Kings re-enacted the bloody history of
their forebears. Brother against brother, uncle against nephew, a
legacy of murder and death permeated their very souls and was
passed from one to the next in their shared blood.

"We should help him," said Able
to the others. "He's going to lose."

"Not yet," said Malcolm. His
fake Texan drawl had vanished. There was something hard and cold in
his real voice, the clipped British accent that Able had only ever
heard him speak with a few times before. Some fragment of Malcolm's
hidden memories bled through, and Able realised that it was a voice
that had ordered terrible things to be done, somewhere in Malcolm's
secret past. "We need him to be weakened. He will call for us, and
that is when you must strike, Able."

"Strike?"

"Take control," explained
Dorothy. "Force Adam out and take your body back."

"I don't know if I can," said
Able. "You heard what he said to Cane. He's studied this for years.
I don't have a clue what I'm doing."

"Trust us," said Magda, her
voice calm and confident. "As you always have. We are your family,
Able."

"So is he, apparently," said
Able, his psychic voice surly. "I'm a damned King too, aren't
I?"

"Oh my darling boy," soothed
Magda. "You are so much more than that. You might have Adam King's
blood in your veins, but you have your mother's too, and ours. You
are a son of the circus, Able Quirk."

Adam fired wildly. He'd
expected Malcolm's ghost to guide his aim, but the British trick
shot expert left Adam to his own devices and the bullets ricocheted
harmlessly off the old print engines as Cane King collided with
Adam and drove him off his feet.

Winded, Adam brought the
handles of the pistols down weakly on Cane's shoulders as Cane
lifted Adam upwards, his arms tightening around his brother's
ribcage. The coat offered no protection now, and Adam gasped as
Cane's grip tightened.

"All that time with your dusty
old books," growled Cane. "You should have spent some more time
learning to fight."

Malcolm's pistols flew from
Adam's grasp as Cane slammed him against one of the old printing
machines. Caught between the force of Cane's charge and the metal
plates in the back of the Magpye's coat, Adam felt a rib break and
let out a howl of pain.

Cane kicked the pistols away as
Adam slumped to the floor, clutching his side.

"Son of a bitch," he grunted,
spitting a mouthful of blood onto the dirty floor.

"You'd … know," replied Cane,
panting between words.

"Didn't know you could fight,"
said Adam. "Always assumed you had other people do it for you, like
everything else."

"You forget, I'm the
younger
brother.
Means I have to fight for
everything
. Grandpa
used to take me down to the docks, enter me in the bare knuckle
fights. Every Friday night, every Saturday night, from when I was
twelve years old."

Adam pulled himself to his
feet, shifting awkwardly inside the heavy coat. He shrugged it off,
letting it hit the floor with a clang. He wondered how the hell
Able had been able to move so quickly in the thing. They were in
the same body, so why did he feel so god-damn old compared to the
kid?

"All the time you were in the
library, playing prince to your little court of wizards, I was
learning how to beat up men three times my size. I learnt a lot of
important lessons in those fights. Learnt a lot from Grandpa too.
Stuff he never taught you."

Adam smiled. "You learnt to
fight men. Good for you. How are you with ghosts?"

Able felt the defences around
Adam King's mind drop. The cool waters of shared memory rushed
forward, eager to fill any void and to absorb Adam back into the
whole, but stopped without warning. Able felt the tug, the
oh-so-familiar pull of one mind on another, but remained somehow
motionless. Adrift, in limbo, neither shut out nor let in.

"Not yet," said Dorothy. "He's
still too strong."

Cane's fist hammered into
Adam's face, splitting his lip and cracking the bridge of his
nose.

Adam stumbled back, but stayed
on his feet.

"Something wrong?" asked Cane,
landing another solid body blow to Adam's already weakened
ribs.

"Ghosts…" muttered Adam,
managing to dodge a swinging blow from Cane and land a blow of his
own across his adversary's temple.

"Ghosts?" mimicked Cane,
swirling his hands through the air theatrically. "Is there anybody
there?"

Adam launched a kick at Cane
which Cane blocked easily, grabbing his brother's foot and twisting
him onto the ground. He kept his grip tight, twisting further until
the bones cracked. Adam screamed as his ankle shattered.

"Guess not," said Cane,
stamping his foot down into the small of his brother's back.

"Er… guys?" said Able. "I think
Cane is about to kill us."

"Don't underestimate Adam,"
said Dorothy. "He's a King. They're all fighters."

Able didn't answer. There was
something Dorothy wasn't telling him, again, and he found the
medic's memories shrouded when he tried to probe them. He wondered
if seeing Adam King die at the hands of Cane would be enough
revenge for the ghosts, even if it cost Able his life.

Cane raised his foot again,
this time over Adam's head.

"I fucking
love
the sound of a
skull cracking open," he said to himself, bringing his foot down
hard.

At the last second, Adam rolled
out of the way, leaving Cane's foot to slam painfully down onto the
concrete. Adam's hand flashed upward, one of Able's light blades
held between his fingers, and drove the blade and his fist together
into the side of Cane's knee.

Cane lashed out, kicking Adam
away from him, before limping a few steps away. Blood had already
drenched the lower leg of his trousers.

Adam, clawing his way up the
side of one of the old printers, keeping any weight off his
shattered ankle, watched as the dark red stain on Cane's trousers
turned pitch black before slowly, impossibly, vanishing all
together. Cane's blood belonged to the Ink now, and not a drop of
it would leave his body.

Cane flexed his leg, smiling to
himself.

"All that time, desperate to be
the one to have the ghosts of our forefathers rattle around in your
head," he said calmly. "When a power like this was right there,
ripe for the taking, all along."

"So much for you bringing us
into the twenty first century then?" said Adam. His hand had drawn
another blade from the Magpye's belt, Able's belt, and he did his
best to conceal it alongside his thigh. Closing up a stab wound or
a bullet wound was one thing; he wondered how well the Ink would
cope if he cut this brother's head off.

Adam tossed his own jacket onto
the floor, then flexed his arms over his head. Through his shirt,
Adam could see the ink dancing in patterns he'd never seen before.
Shapes, symbols, sigils: the magician's art etched into the skin of
his brother.

"Ha!" he laughed, walking
casually across to his brother. "Don't be so sure, brother.
Acquire, modernise, expand … that's the King mantra nowadays. Look
on this as a… merger."

Shaking, trying to keep his
weight on one leg, Adam tried desperately to call the ghosts
forward.

Afloat in the water of memory,
Able felt the draw from Adam's mind growing stronger. He knew the
others must feel it to.

"It's time," he said, more
commanding than normal.

"Wait… wait…"
said
Dorothy.

"No," commanded Able. "You say
that this power is my birthright? Well I say it's time. Now. Before
Cane kills us all, including Adam."

There were no words, but a
change in the currents of the memories that flowed around Able
acknowledged what he'd said. Not all the ghosts spoke but in this
place, when his mind was clear and adrift amongst them, they had
their own ways of communicating.

"So, what do we do?" he
asked.

"We're doing it now," said
Dorothy. His psychic voice was suddenly tinged with panic. "Aren't
we?"

"Nothing's happening," said
Able. He'd expected to feel his body again, the way he did when one
of the ghosts stepped back and gave him control again. It felt like
pins and needles, like a numb limb waking up, but the feeling
wasn't there. There was nothing there. Able began to panic. They
couldn't be dead, they could still see and hear everything that
Adam could, so why couldn't they do anything. He felt the minds,
the memories, around him, begin to foam. Anxious ghosts, fearful
ghosts, bubbling and frothing and breaking through to the
surface.

"I can't move him," said
Malcolm. "I should be able to. He's let us in but… I can't move
him."

"Is he blocking us?" asked
Magda.

"I don't know. I'm not an
expert!"

"You sounded like one earlier,
Dot!"

"Don't call me that!"

Able tried to focus, to tune
out the voices as they all began to talk over each other in a
deluge of sound that deteriorated into white noise. He hadn't lost
control like this in a long time, not since the early days when
Marv had taught him how to martial his thoughts and control the
people who had taken up residence in his head.

Through the torrent of sound
one voice slowly came into focus. It was Adam King's.

"Help me, Able. Help me or we
are both dead."

Cane lunged forward, his hand
clasping Adam by the throat.

Adam jammed the blade upwards
and felt it wedge itself in Cane's rib cage. Cane didn't make a
sound, just looked down at the blossom of crimson on his shirt that
slowly turned black before vanishing altogether. Adam tried to keep
the blade inside his brother, twisting it left and right, but an
inexorable pressure finally forced it back out of Cane's body. Adam
dropped the knife as Cane tightened his grip around his throat,
cutting off the air.

"I should have done this in the
first place," hissed Cane. "I should have killed you years
ago."

"Why… didn't… you?" gasped
Adam. His hands, weak and going numb, fumbled along the Magpye's
belt, desperately searching for a weapon.

Cane, his face close to Adam's
,
bared his
teeth. "I wanted us to be different, brother. I wanted us to break
the mould. We could have worked together, could have had it all.
But you had to go and get that circus bitch pregnant and create a
new heir. You pushed me
out!
"

"I didn't want it," wheezed
Adam. "I wanted out, you knew that."

"Nobody gets out," growled
Cane. "You leave the family when you're dead… and sometimes not
even then."

Cane brought up his other hand,
wrapping it around Adam's neck and pressing firmly down on his
windpipe with both thumbs. Starved of oxygen, Adam's limp body
collapsed to the floor. Cane followed him down, never releasing his
grip, squeezing harder, and harder, and harder. Squatting over his
brother, he felt Adam's body start to convulse underneath him, his
legs spasming wildly.

"Nearly there brother," he
whispered. "Nearly out."

Able kicked and thrashed and
tried to force his way forward, but to no avail. There was another
pull building, a pull far more powerful than the pull of Adam's
mind. It was dragging him down beneath the waters of memory and
whilst he shouldn't have been afraid, he was. He had immersed
himself, lost himself in those cool waters so many times before,
but now it felt like drowning. It felt like he was being pulled
down to somewhere that he would never surface from, somewhere very
deep, very dark, and very cold.

"Is he dying?" asked Adam. "Are
we
dying?"

There was no answer. The ghosts
just howled and wailed in their fear of an imminent second death.
They seemed to be revolving around Able, becoming more like the
skinless screaming ghosts he had witnessed being born into their
afterlife in the blood soaked corridors of the mill. One by one
they were submerged, dragged under by the unseen force and Able
felt them, their memories, their personality, their very presence,
vanish from his consciousness. There had never been a horizon here
before, but there was a darkness fast approaching now.

Able suddenly realised that he
was alone, except for one other.

Not a person, no. Even Adam had
been subsumed beneath the surface and the only thoughts here were
Able's.

The other was the
thing
, the great dark
beast that lurked beneath the surface.

Able felt the pull on him grow
stronger, and stronger, increasing exponentially until he could
resist it no more.

He vanished beneath the cool
waters of memory, dragged down by the Magpye to a place where there
was only blackness.

Able woke up somewhere with
sunshine. Sunshine, and no ghosts.

He sat up in a rush, looking
left and right. Not a single voice. No ebb and flow of foreign
memories pushing at the breakers of his mind. No forces, unknown or
uncontrolled, moving his limbs or speaking in his voice. He was
alone, at least in his head.

For the first time in a long
time he focussed more on what was around him than inside him, and
the landscape of the place finally came into focus.

He was back in the circus, but
there was nothing burnt, nothing ruined. No death, no blood.

This was his circus, the way he
remembered it.

"Hello Able,"

Able turned over, feeling the grass soft and slightly dewy
underneath him. He realised his clothes, or rather
The Magpye's
clothes
,
were gone. He was
dressed in a t-shirt and cut off jean-shorts. He hadn't worn
anything like this since before the fire.