The Ninth Nightmare (25 page)

‘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 altitude.'

An-Gryferai flapped her wings even harder. The wind was howling and screaming now, and she felt as if she were swimming the butterfly 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 grass, 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 cluster of houses and barns and workshops, close to the edge of a leafless birch wood. The carnival had assembled 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 grass 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 ass? Let's go get 'em!'

THIRTEEN

Dogs of War

A
n-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 altitude, 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 nobody has been able to stop him yet. Not priests, not princes, not goddamned sorcerers, even. So let's be intelligent, shall we, and assume 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 altitude. 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 grass, 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 grass.

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 assembled 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 God,' 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 bloody.

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 muffled 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 bitch 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 shit! I don't believe it.'

Even Xyrena found it impossible to believe what she was looking at. The Great Dane had the head of a human woman. She was very pallid, with a heart-shaped face and raggedy brown hair and pale green eyes, although the whites of her eyes were bloodshot. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt and there were clusters of dark red sores around her lips.

She stared at Xyrena and Jekkalon and Jemexxa, occasionally blinking. Then she stood up on all fours and came trotting over to the bars of the cage.

‘Who are you?' she said, in a reedy voice, as if she were being half strangled. Xyrena could see now that there were crude stitch-marks all the way around her neck, where her head had been sutured to the Great Dane's body. ‘Do you live in the
village
? I've never seen you before.'

‘No,' said Xyrena. ‘We don't live in the village. We're just kind of passing through.'

‘You don't belong to the circus?'

Xyrena shook her head. She found the dog-woman both horrifying and fascinating, both at the same time, but more than that she felt desperately sorry for her.

‘You're naked but you're not naked,' the woman frowned.

‘Well, that's my armor,' Xyrena explained. ‘I'm a kind of a freelance warrior. Like a mercenary only I don't get paid for it.'

‘A warrior?' the dog-woman asked her.

‘Like I say, kind of.'

The dog-woman thought for a moment, and then she said, ‘Would you kill me?'

‘Excuse me? Would I
kill
you? Of course not.'

‘If I
begged
you to kill me, would you kill me?'