The Magpye: Circus (29 page)

"I can show her to you," said
Adam, his psychic voice desperate. "I can show you your mother. I
can bring you to her through my memories."

Able didn't reply. The memory
of his mother had already raced past, her face a blur to him as
always, and been replaced with a psychedelic whirlwind of magic
with Marv at its centre. He felt the same intoxication that Adam
had felt, felt the release of escaping the life being foisted on
him, felt himself seduced by Marv into the world of the magicians.
It was Marv and the circus that Adam had loved. The memories grew
closer to the present, slowing as the inevitable end of Adam's life
grew closer. Despite himself, despite his conviction to be rid of
the ghost of his father, Able scoured the images that flowed past
for just a momentary glimpse of himself.

"They hid you," said Adam.
"They kept you from me."

"Liar," hissed Able. "You knew.
How could you not?"

Able watched as the night that
the circus burned replayed again in his mind's eye, this time
through his father's eyes. He saw how intertwined their fates were,
and always had been. Adam, the man trapped and seeking freedom.
Able, the boy who was free but who would become trapped in his
father's legacy. Two families, at war without even knowing it. And
all of it, all for a power that Able wished he had never known.

The power of The Magpye.

"Ending it," said Able,
choking, "Means ending the Kings. All of them. Including you."

"But why me
…
first?"

Adam's voice was growing
distant, echoing in Able's mind as if they were at opposite ends of
some unseen tunnel. Able felt his body convulse, felt the hooks
that kept Adam's ghost tethered to Able's mind tear free, each one
sending a wave of pain through Able's body that dwarfed the one
before.

"Why?"

Adam's voice grew quieter
still, his presence weaker. His memories were gone, leaving only
Able's memory of him. There was a blank space where he had been. A
hollow that ran through Able's mind and into his heart.

"He's gone
…" panted
Able, free from the pain. Inside the leather of the suit he felt
cold sweat on his skin. His mouth was full of bile and blood, not
all of it his. "Is it over?"

"Oh no, not yet," said the
sneering voice of the Magpye. "Doctor, it's time to get to
work."

"I'm not a doc
…"

"Oh come now," said the Magpye coyly. "You can have your
few secrets from Able, but you can hide
nothing
from
me."

Before Able could ask either
the ghost or the creature another question, Dorothy began his work.
It began with bones.

At first there was nothing,
just the blank space in Able's mind where Adam had been. Then, one
by one, there were the bones. Bones had been Dorothy's speciality,
breaks being a more common occurrence than anyone would like in the
circus. The spine came first, a vertebrae at a time, one on top of
the other linking together. Then the pelvis, the legs, before a rib
cage sprang forth like a blossom. Piece by piece, from memory,
Dorothy assembled the skeleton.

As the thing became complete,
Able felt the first knot of pain in his stomach. Nothing more than
a twist at first, an unnatural movement that sent acid up into
Able's mouth. Then, as Dorothy carefully began to build a
circulatory system around the skeleton, Able felt more twists and
turns inside of him. He felt a weight, something other than himself
inside himself, an alien something being grown to Dorothy's
design.

"I can't do this," said Dorothy. "The basics are fine, the
major arteries, veins but
…
there's more detail. Too much detail."

"We said that doesn't matter," said Able. "It doesn't need
to be perfect. It doesn't need to be
… complete. Just keep going. I've got a feeling that this
is going to get painful."

"Oh it is," chimed in the
Magpye. "And don't think I'll be letting you play any little tricks
to dodge your pain, Able. You want Adam King gone, you pay the
price."

Able gritted his teeth. There
was always a price.

"Just get it done, Dorothy.
Please."

Dorothy's work sped up, the
circulatory system growing random and confused in places. Arteries
crossed randomly with veins as Dorothy tried to correct his errors,
tried to trap the flow of blood as a heart, a tiny heart of
diseased grey muscle, grew out of nothingness and began to pump
spasmodically. Able felt it inside him too. A second heartbeat, out
of kilter with his own, a new life, an afterlife, born inside him
through the dark power of the Magpye.

The weight inside him grew
greater and he felt this strength ebbing away. It had to be now. It
had to be over. From Dorothy's memories more organs grew and were
joined together, manufactured from the broth of corpse meat that
Able had consumed in the healing factories of his own undead body.
Lungs like withered grapes flapped loosely for a moment, then
inflated with weak gasps of air. A stomach, a liver, kidneys, a
doubled over length of rotten intestine.

"Jesus, Able, I can't build a
brain. This is wrong, this is all wrong."

Panting, desperate for air,
Able could barely respond. "Just, finish it."

His stomach convulsed and he
felt something start to move again inside him. Not the twisting and
turning of his stomach now but the deliberate movements of a thing
with new muscles and new skin, a thing that was being to think for
first time as Dorothy clumsily mashed together the lobes of a new,
living brain.

The last of a new skin, thin
and paper-like, wrapped itself around the thing in Able's head. A
face, twisted and malevolent, began to construct itself and eyes as
white and as dead as Able's opened and stared at him.

Rolling onto his stomach, Able
clawed his way over the edge of the pit. His stomach was
distending, pressing against the tight leather of his bodysuit. It
pulsed and moved as the thing inside explored its surroundings. His
gloved hands clinging to the edge of the shaft, his head hanging
over into the black void beyond, Able opened his mouth wide and
began to heave.

In his mind, he held on to one
single thought.

"Get it out."

Inch by inch, he felt the thing
rise up. He felt its clawed hands forcing his insides to open, felt
the tearing and ripping inside himself as the thing pulled itself
upwards. His body twisted and contorted, urging the thing onwards,
pushing it forwards. Able vomited blood as he felt the small bones
in his neck snapping and his throat being forced wide. Choking,
gagging, he spewed the first inches of the thing into the
world.

A hand came first. A tiny,
claw-fingered hand of flesh that was a mottle of milky white and
grey. New flesh, dead flesh, melded together inside of him. An arm
followed, spindly and frail, and then, with Able's jaw cracking
away from his skull and his mouth flopping low, the thing's head
pushed its way out. Its domed skull was exposed in places, the skin
so thin that it peeled away like layers from overripe fruit. As it
began to tumble forward, its milky clear eyes swivelled around to
look at Able.

The thing's shoulder popped out
of Able's mouth and its tiny body soon followed. The body was too
small for the head, a disproportionately small torso that seemed to
be little more than a fleshy bag full of organs, the bones so weak
that many of them had been broken as the thing was un-born from
Able. Collapsing onto his chest, Able scrabbled around to pull the
thing loose from his mouth. With a painful tug, the thing slipped
and slithered out, and Able could only watch as it tumbled away
from him down into the pit, its legs kicking and thrashing as it
went.

Wheezing, almost unconscious
with pain and horror, Able simply lay at the edge of the pit. In
his mind, he felt Dorothy pull away and vanish into the waters of
memory.

"That is the worst thing, the
worst
thing, I
have ever done Able."

But Able didn't answer. Pushing
himself up onto his knees, he forced his slack jaw bone up into
place and used the mask to secure it there. He could already feel
the tendons reconnecting. In a few hours it would be set perfectly
back in place and whatever ravages his body had suffered internally
would be fixed too. In small, unsteady steps, he headed for the
door.

Behind him, in the pit, he
heard the unnatural wail of an unnatural thing, a thing born of
death and cast down into the pit. He heard the cries of Adam King,
back from dead.

"Goodbye, Dad," said Able, as
he vanished through the door and back out into the night.

Marv woke up looking at himself
in a mirror. It didn't seem like had much of a choice though, as
there wasn't a surface in his line of sight that wasn't either a
mirror, or chromed, or gilded. Glass, chrome, gold, and a lot of
lights. There was only one kind of place that this could be, and
that was a casino. Marv had spent a lot of time in LA. There was a
good chance his afterlife would look like this, but he was very
much alive. Marv knew he hadn't been unconscious for that long, he
hadn't travelled far, and so that narrowed the field of available
casinos down to just one.

This was Cane King's new
casino.

"Fuck," muttered Marv, as he began to assess his situation.
Behind him, a drip was slung from a metal stand. The line went into
his left forearm and whatever was coming down it had Marv numb from
his toes to his lips. It was probably a blessing because, rather
than tie his wrists and ankles to the chair, someone had bolted
them there. Six inch bolts, one through each wrist, secured tightly
top and bottom. His feet where similarly bolted to the floor, blood
oozing out of his bare feet onto the floor. Marv hoped that there
were no broken bones. A lifetime of always getting away with it, no
matter what it was, meant that Marv had rarely had to think about
consequences - he just thought about what kind of mess he might be
in the next day and smiled. Of course, in the last few months he'd
had to reassess his track record. He
almost
always got
away with it.

Drugged, immobile, probably
suffering a concussion, and bolted through the wrists and feet.
Marv found himself grinning in the mirror.

Fuck it.
This
was going to be one incredible
escape.

Downstairs, in a glass walled
office suspended above the main gambling floor, Cane King looked
down at the throng of eager visitors. Opening night of a new
casino. A free ten-thousand dollar chip to everyone who could get
through the door. Free food, free drinks, and a chance to be seen
next to Cane King, the man who ruled every television set in
America. Cane looked at the faces in the crowd. Celebrities,
politicians, religious leaders. His Kingsmen mingled amongst them.
Every waiter, every doorman, every security guard. The curdled
cream of the city's new criminal elite. From princes to paupers,
saints and sinners, nobody was beyond his sphere of influence so
long as they lived and breathed and walked the face of the
Earth.

And, after tonight, not even
passing through the veil into death was going to be enough to
outrun Cane King.

Beneath his perfectly pressed
and crisp white shirt, The Ink swirled and danced excitedly. There
were so many stories, every face in the crowd a new wellspring of
secrets and deceits and betrayals, Cane felt like the thing that
lived in his skin was almost drunk. He felt almost drunk, but he
couldn't say that he didn't like it.

"You got enough eyewitnesses
down there?"

The voice belonged to Mick
Garrity, uncharacteristically bold as he grunted and snuffled his
way through Cane's private buffet.

"I think they'll suffice," said
Cane. "After tonight there won't be a single person on this planet
who will believe that I am anything other than a victim of an
organised campaign of terror and blackmail. They will rally behind
me and I'll be untouchable again."

"I don't trust these new guys.
One of them will talk," grumbled Garrity.

"That's never been a problem
before," said Cane dismissively. "Not one of them would dare."

"You've never been this exposed before," replied Garrity.
"This plan of yours goes south, and that's
it
. The whole
fucking house is coming down on our heads. I've got FBI, DEA, NSA,
all on my ass twenty four hours a day. Just tell me you've got guys
ready to take the fall for this shit tonight."

"I've got guys ready to take the fall for this," said King,
irritated. "And if you don't want to be the hero cop who got killed
in the line of duty trying to stop them tonight, then you'll make
sure that
only
they go down for this."

Garrity didn't answer. Since
the débâcle at the paper-mill. it had taken every ounce of the
dirty cop's guile and skill to misdirect the various and
overlapping federal investigations long enough for Cane to put his
own plans in motion. Owen White's story was starting to fall apart
under scrutiny, and Cane King needed a bigger, bolder lie to take
its place. Luckily for him, he'd been brought up a liar. The Ink
had the power, it was true, but there was no substitute for Cane's
ability to look America right in the eye and tell her he loved her
as he stuck a knife in her guts.

"You think he'll really come?"
asked Garrity, breaking the silence. "The freak?"

"Oh yes, he'll come," said
King, ignoring the slight on his brother. The truth about Magpye,
Adam, and the bastard Able was one that King was determined to keep
away from Garrity. "Taylor delivered me a little insurance policy
just this evening. The vigilante is the final part of the puzzle.
Once I've taken from him what's rightfully mine, he'll take the
fall for everything else that's happened. I'll do my dirty laundry
in public, weep for the lives lost, and America will love me for
it. I'm going to teach them to love me again. It's almost
Shakespearian, Garrity."