Walkers (60 page)

‘You have shown no love of my father until now,’
he grated, his voice echoing inside
Kasyx’s head.
‘Prove that you are sincere,
in your change of affections. Embrace me
first.’

Kasyx tried to sidestep the embryo
Devil, but the half-born creature took hold of his arm. Kasyx repelled him with
a sharp burst of power. The Devil screamed out, and Kasyx pushed him aside, and
lunged at Yaomauitl, triggering as he did so the mental formula that would
totally discharge his energy.

Yaomauitl, however, was too quick.
He whirled his cloak around, and knocked Kasyx away, sending him flying into
the thick of his own offspring.

‘Kasyx!’
screamed
Tebulot. But then there was a mind-splitting explosion that turned the world
into dazzling white, and cracked the atoms in the air. When Tebulot could open
his eyes again, Kasyx was standing with his arms straight up in the air, his
hands glowing electric blue, while juddering curtains of pure energy flickered
all around him, creeping and jerking across the ground, and discharging
themselves with ferocious spittings and cracklings.

Samena saw Yaomauitl transfixed for
just one moment, his huge cloak raised to shield his eyes. She unhooked an
explosive arrowhead from her belt, and fitted it on to her finger, and took aim
at him. But at the very second she fired, a lance of light, Yaomauitl’s cloak
suddenly collapsed to the ground, empty, and Yaomauitl was gone. Her arrowhead
zipped away through the darkening sky, and vanished without exploding.

The wild bursts of energy gradually
died away. Tebulot and Samena slowly approached Kasyx, who was standing on the
hillside surrounded by the abandoned armour of all of his enemies, and by the
dead bodies of forty or fifty embryo Devils .

They were curled up and glistening
and red, like baby birds who had fallen out of the nests. Blowflies began to
buzz around them, even though it was snowing.

‘Kasyx?’ asked Tebulot, gently.

Kasyx lowered his arms, and looked
down at his hands. ‘I’m all right,’ he said, at last.

‘I’ve used up all of my energy, but
I’m all right.’

Samena put her arms around him and
held him close. ‘Kasyx,’ she said, and her voice was so soft that he could
hardly hear it.

‘I’m sorry that this was the only
way,’ said Kasyx, looking around at the carnage.

‘Yaomauitl escaped,’ said Samena. ‘I
tried to shoot him, but he disappeared.’

‘Back to the waking world,’ said
Kasyx. He didn’t have to add that they would never return there; that their
lives would only last as long as this dream lasted; and that this dream would
be the last thing that they would ever see.

‘You’re totally out of power?’
Tebulot asked him.

‘Flat,’ said Kasyx, with a wry
smile. ‘I’m not exactly the Duracell of Night Warriors, am I?’

‘I still have
some
energy left,’ said Tebulot. He lifted his weapon to show that
the charge-scale was still glowing.

‘I have some too,’ said Samena.

Kasyx slowly shook his head. ‘I
shouldn’t think that it will be enough, even with the two of you. But here,
let’s try anyway.’ He beckoned them to stand either side of him, and place
their hands on his shoulders. He closed his eyes, and felt their small reserves
of energy draining back into his system.

‘Well?’ asked Tebulot, anxiously.

Kasyx touched his fingers to his
forehead. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry. A little more, perhaps, and we could risk
it. But I won’t even be able to draw the octagon with this amount.’

Tebulot dropped his machine on to
the ground. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Nice try.’

It was at that moment, however, that
they heard a yell. A wild, high yell, as if somebody were whooping with glee.
They turned and looked up, and there, streaking across the floor of the valley,
came Xaxxa, both fists held high in the air, triumphantly. He landed beside
them, and shook them all by the hand, and then admired the devastation all
around them. ‘Man, how did you
do
this?’

‘More important,’ said Kasyx, ‘how
did you get away from those spears?’

‘World War One fighter-pilot trick,’
explained Xaxxa. ‘I saw it in the George Peppard movie
The Blue Max.
If somebody’s chasing you, you dive straight for the
ground, right – but you pull up at the last moment, and they can’t.’

‘But what took you so long?’ asked
Tebulot.

‘In
The Blue Max,
they didn’t misjudge it and halfway concuss
themselves, that’s what took me so long.’

Kasyx said, ‘Xaxxa – how much energy
do you have left?’

‘I don’t know, why?’ asked Xaxxa,
frowning.

‘Give it to me,’ Kasyx told him.

Xaxxa gave Kasyx a strange,
perplexed look, but placed his hand on Kasyx’s shoulder without asking any
questions. Kasyx felt the energy streaming into his body, adding to the small
store of energy that Tebulot and Samena had given him.

‘Well?’ asked Tebulot, anxiously.

The ground was beginning to rise and
fall beneath their feet. They recognised the rhythm – it was the rhythm of the
dreamer’s breathing, as he slowly began to wake up. The world began to shudder
and tilt, and they knew that if they were unable to escape from this dream,
they would soon dwindle into absolute nothingness, forgotten by all humanity as
if they had never existed.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Kasyx. ‘I’m not
at all sure.’

‘Well,
try,’
Tebulot urged him. ‘You have to try.’

‘Very well,’ Kasyx agreed, and held
up his hands. He drew the octagon in the air – only a faint and glimmering
octagon, but enough for them to see. They clasped hands, and Kasyx directed the
octagon to rise up over their heads.

‘I pray we make it,’ Samena said.
The ground trembled beneath their feet, and as the dimly flickering octagon
slowly descended all around them, they all said, ‘Amen.’

J
ohn Lund was strolling slowly along
the promenade, past Henry’s cottage, when he saw an unfamiliar young man in a
grey turtle-neck sweater and grey slacks obviously trying to force open the
front door. John stood and watched the young man for a minute or two, the early
morning breeze flapping his shapeless coat, and then he approached him, and
lifted his Panama hat, and said, ‘Excuse me, young man, I don’t think that this
is your house.’

The young man snapped around and
stared at him. John was startled. For the young man’s eyes were blazing yellow,
like a panther, or a demon, and his mouth was drawn back from his teeth in the
most terrifying snarl that John had ever seen.

‘I, er... I… seem to have made a
mistake,’ he said, weakly, and replaced his hat on his head, and started to back
away.

Instead of running off, or
continuing to force open the front door of Henry’s cottage, the young man
followed John down the path to the promenade, and took hold of his arm. He was
strong. His hand felt like an iron claw. He said, softly, ‘You know who lives
here, old fellow?’

John swallowed, his stringy
Adam’s-apple bobbing up and down in his soft cotton shirt-collar.’ Yes, sir. I
know who lives here.’

‘Then come with me. I’m paying him a
visit.’

‘Young man, I don’t think I...’

‘Come along,’ the young man urged.
He leaned so close that John could smell his breath. It was foul, as if he had
been drinking, or chewing cloves of garlic. ‘Your friend won’t mind if you pay
him a visit, will he?’

‘It’s kind of early,’ John
protested, as the young man almost frog-marched him up the path.

‘It’s nearly seven-thirty. That’s
not early. And, besides, some people like to be woken up by their friends,
don’t they?’

John didn’t know what to say to
that. All he could do was stand helplessly by while the young man eased open
the front door with the blade of a long mechanic’s screw-driver, and then
kicked it sharply to break the mountings that held the security chain.

‘There we are, old Kasyx must have
been expecting us,’ the young man smiled.

‘Old who?’ frowned John. ‘You must
have the wrong place. The man who lives here is called Henry Watkins. He’s a
professor of philosophy at the University of California.’

The young man hissed with laughter.
‘Henry Watkins! Now, that’s a romantic name, don’t you think? Well, he may be
Henry Watkins to you, but he’s Kasyx to me, and this house stinks of Kasyx!’

John said, ‘You’re not thinking of
stealing anything, are you?’

The young man’s eyes gleamed yellow.
‘I don’t think there’s anything worth stealing, do you? A few books, a few sentimental
photographs, a couple of bottles of liquor. A microwave oven. No, no, I don’t
think I’m going to steal anything.’

He beckoned John to follow him
across the living-room to the corridor which led to the bedroom. John
reluctantly did what the young man wanted, and even more reluctantly looked
into the bedroom itself, where he could just glimpse Henry lying asleep.

‘I don’t know what you’re up to,’ he
told the young man, hoarsely, ‘but I really think you’d better leave now,
before you get yourself into any real trouble.’

The young man hissed again. ‘Real
trouble? Surely you’re joking. Only one person here is in real trouble, and
that’s Kasyx. He’s asleep, you see, his mind is away somewhere else, dreaming;
but just supposing that his mind came back and found that it no longer had a
body to go to?’

‘Are you a student of his?’ John
demanded. ‘I don’t understand any of this, but it sounds like nonsense to me,
and dangerous nonsense at that. If I were you, young man, I’d leave – because
if you don’t leave, I’m going to call the police, and then you’ll
have to
leave.’

Without warning, the young man
produced a surgical scalpel out of his pocket, and held the blade up so that
the point of it almost touched the tip of John’s nose. John stared at him
soulfully and the young man stared back.

‘Have you ever wondered what it must
be like to be one of those unfortunate people who are gravely disfigured?’ the
young man asked. ‘One of those unfortunate people who can never go out in
public without people staring at them in utter shock, because their faces are
so badly distorted? No nose perhaps, or a terrible cleft in the upper lip, or a
cheek that is nothing more than gristle?’

John squinted down at the point of
the scalpel, and said, almost inaudibly. ‘It’s okay. I won’t call the police,
if it’s all the same to you.’

‘You are a man of great
intelligence,’ the young man smiled. ‘Now, come into the bedroom, and let us
see what fun we can have with your friend Henry Watkins here.

The man that I call Kasyx.’

‘You’re not going to hurt him?’ John
whispered, anxiously.

‘Oh, no,’ the young man replied.
‘I’m not going to hurt him. You can’t hurt somebody who isn’t here, can you?
And Henry Watkins isn’t here, at least not yet. This is nothing but his
physical body. His real personality is far away from here, further than you, my
dear old friend, could even conceive possible.’

John said, in a hopeless voice, ‘I
pray to you, young man, don’t hurt him. Please.

He’s a very old friend of mine, and
a very good man.’

‘Good, by
your
lights,’ the young man agreed. ‘But to my way of thinking, he
is the worst of all possible pests. He is meddlesome, pompous, and
sanctimonious. He deserves to die for his hypocrisy alone.’

‘I pray to you, please,’ John
repeated, but the young man turned on him, and lifted the scalpel, and there
was no need for him to warn John any further. John was a brave man, in his way,
but a fatalist, too, and he knew exactly what would happen if he tried to play
the hero. No nose perhaps, or a terrible cleft in the upper lip? Or even death.

The young man approached Henry’s bed
and leaned over Henry with a satisfied, foul-breathed grin. He touched Henry’s
face, and turned to John and grinned at him when there was no response. Then he
tugged down the covers, and bared Henry’s chest, with its wiry grey hair, and
its slightly paunchy nipples, and he prodded Henry’s skin with the point of his
scalpel as if he couldn’t decide exactly where to start his first incision.

He stood back. ‘I want his heart,
you see,’ he told John. ‘I want to cut his heart out, and hold it pumping in my
hand. That will satisfy justice. A single heart for all of my children; nobody
can complain about that.’

‘You’re crazy,’ said John. ‘You
can’t cut his heart out.’

‘You don’t think that I can?’ the
young man grinned. ‘But you’re going to watch me do it! You’re going to witness
it, in person! Come over here, come closer! I want some of the blood to pump
out on you, so that everybody will know for sure that you actually stood there
and watched it happen!’

The young man snatched at John’s
arm, but John screamed, ‘Let me go! You’re crazy! Let me go!’

The young man twisted John’s arm
around behind his back in an agonising half-nelson, and held the scalpel up
against his withered throat. ‘I could end it all now,’ he breathed, in John’s
ear. ‘I could cut your throat right through to your vertebrae, and then we
could see who was crazy!’