The Dark Master of Dogs

by Chris Ward

  ‘Aha, we have arrived,’ Kurou said, lifting one hand to shade his eyes like a ship’s captain looking for land. ‘Your journey is nearly at an end. All I ask is that you act with the grace befitting of a princess, and I will assure that your little girlfriend and her family are safe forevermore. Isn’t that quite the bargain, sire?’

  Patrick shook his head as the floats began to line up in the central square. His own, maybe controlled by Kurou in some way Patrick couldn’t see, headed straight for an executive stand outside the town hall. Urla Wynne stood up, beside her a ghost in a suit and wearing sunglasses.

  Maxim Cale.

  Patrick’s heart ran cold. The rising political leader, the man many expected to win the next election by a landslide. A man who, by the non-voting youth in particular, was feared throughout the country.

  ‘We go way back,’ Kurou said, as though reading Patrick’s thoughts. ‘None of it is pleasant. Long have I been considered the enemy, but now I offer a gift to your country. The gift of freedom from an oppressor whose grip is something your countrymen cannot yet understand, and will not until it is too late. You, my young friend, are the messenger, a beautiful angel from the heavens who will deliver my delicate gift.’

  Patrick felt a strange sense of calm as the float came to a stop. Someone was making a speech but he could no longer hear words. Could no longer hear anything except the blood pumping in his ears. He turned, not wanting to look at the face of the woman who had imprisoned and ordered him to the gallows, who had allowed her men to beat and rape Suzanne night after night. Nor indeed the man towering beside her, with a sunshade held over his head making him appear almost twice as tall, the man many whispered would be the end of all freedom, despite a seemingly unbreakable grip on the public vote.

  He turned instead to face the gathered crowd, feeling as he did remote controls fixed to his legs lifting him into a standing position, walking him forward.

  Closing his eyes, he thought of Suzanne, of Tommy, of the boat leaving for Porlock, of freedom.

  And of his brother, Race.

  His eyes met the glitter of familiar eyes beneath a hood halfway back across the crowd.

  And the world turned once more.

  ‘My brother!’ he screamed, forcing himself forward, moving not for the stage where a frowning Maxim Cale was rising to his feet, a tiny plastic crown appearing no bigger than a doll’s in giant hands covered with black leather gloves, but for the garishly coloured human lifting its feet in a bizarre frog dance as he lifted a wooden flute to his misshapen lips.

  ‘Been a long time,’ Kurou sang in a gravelly, tuneless voice. ‘Been a long time since we danced together, at the farmer’s ball, all those years ago.’

  His back arched and something flew from the end of the flute. Urla Wynne dived in front of Maxim Cale as something glittered in the air and struck her in the chest. Then, from all around came a sudden roar as fireworks burst forth from the assembled floats, shooting not up into the sky but in haphazard, wayward directions, igniting other floats, marquees, food stalls and awnings alike. In moments the entire square was a hell of raging flames and screams of terror.

  Patrick’s hand closed over Kurou’s clothes and pulled him tight. ‘We die, we die together,’ he muttered, scowling up into Kurou’s hideous visage.

  ‘So be it,’ Kurou said, twisting the flute around to reveal an electronic button taped to the other side. ‘Oh, Maxim,’ he called, his voice rising to a birdlike squeal. ‘Don’t stray so far. It’s time for the curtain call.’

  His finger jabbed down.

  44

  Kurou

  He was aware that he had failed from the moment Patrick turned away from the stage, jogging the surface of the cart, putting him an inch off balance, causing his dart to fly a couple of inches farther to the left than intended, allowing Urla Wynne to make a heroic sacrificial dive and take the poison intended for Maxim Cale.

  A fraction. How his life had been defined by them, almost from conception. Had the rough living of his mother perhaps not contributed to his deformities, or the finding of an old robotic toy forgotten in a dump not ignited his incredible talent, or a thousand other things, he might be standing on the on the executive stage where Maxim Cale now stood.

  Or maybe not.

  He might be forgotten in a distant crowd, a no one.

  He had been someone, that was for sure, but even the greatest of men eventually came to an end.

  And a life’s work could never truly be completed until its creator’s death.

  So he had missed. But he still had the bomb, his backup plan.

  Something had hold of his finger, pushing it aside. Rough, strong hands, like those of a man crossed with a dog. It batted his hand like a man swatting a fly, then turned, knocking him away, hands ripping at Patrick’s dress and the brace beneath, tearing it open, pushing the boy away and turning back, powerful body and arms and shoulders pulling the bomb jacket tight as its hood fell back and the doglike snout made a shape that could have been laughter.

  Kurou fell to his knees. The flute lay an arm’s length in front of him.

  One single press, to extinguish it all, and end what had begun more years ago than he liked to consider.

  He shrugged. There was nothing else left.

  His finger reached out, snaking toward the button.

  Boom.

  Epilogue One

  Suzanne

  ‘Will you get the fuck into the boat?’ Dill Hedgers was saying in a voice Suzanne could barely hear. ‘We have to go.’

  ‘He’ll come,’ she said, looking back along the curve of the beach from the little breakwater where the boat was moored. Twilight had fallen; full dark would be upon them soon.

  Tommy put a hand on her arm. ‘He’s right. There’s no more time. We can’t wait any longer.’

  Suzanne turned. Kelly sat in the bottom of the little motorboat, a blanket over her knees. Frank stood on the breakwater, a look of sorrow on his face. Tommy, who had arrived yesterday and paid Dill Hedgers twice the asking price, nodded.

  Suzanne took a deep breath. ‘Two more minutes.’

  Dill Hedgers rolled his eyes and gave the boat’s wheel a frustrated thump. Frank looked about to say something, but closed his mouth, busying himself with a loose hem on his shirt sleeve. Kelly watched Suzanne, saying nothing, while Tommy put his hands back into her pockets.

  The lights from the promenade left the beach cast in shadow. The water lapped gently at the shore.

  ‘Patrick … where are you?’

  Suzanne glanced back at the others. No one was looking at her now. She knew they wanted to leave, but no one wanted to share in her sorrow, that he was gone, that he would never return, that she would never see him again.

  She turned back to the beach.

  A shadowy figure walked near the shoreline, caught in intermitting lines of light and shadow. His head was bowed, hands in pockets, his feet kicking at the water. He was the right height, the right build.

  ‘Patrick,’ she gasped, not wanting to feel desperate, but at the same time never having felt so desperate before. ‘Patrick, come on.’

  The figure walked along the shoreline, not looking up, maintaining a steady, almost casual pace. Suzanne swallowed. Her hands squeezed tight over a rust-crusted rail along this side of the breakwater. She took a deep breath, turned back to the others, and nodded.

  ‘It’s time,’ she said.

  Epilogue Two

  Maxim Cale

  There was nothing left of the man who by various names had called himself both Professor Kurou and Doctor Crow besides a few shredded items of clothing and some scattered feathers as though a cat had got at a bird. Maxim Cale walked through the wreckage of the carnival, his advisors beside him holding the sunshade over his head, wondering what he could do or say to somehow turn this calamity into an advantage. Everywhere he looked, people were crying or consoling, still in shock, searching for loved ones, searching for the remnants of destroyed lives.
>
  Luck, something he would need a lot of in years to come, had saved him. As the bomb went off, the stage had collapsed, a section of scaffolding shielding him from the worst of the blast. He had suffered several flesh wounds, but beneath a fresh suit they were already repairing themselves.

  Urla Wynne was dead, her body found among the wreckage, and while he appreciated her act of sacrifice in taking a poisoned dart meant for him, he was glad she was dead. He wanted no such weakness in positions of power.

  Her assistant was also dead, killed privately in a moment of anger. Maxim was uncertain how he felt about that, but ruthlessness was another trait he would have to embrace in order to succeed.

  And things would have to change. Once his position was assured, he would lock himself away, dictate his rule from a position of safety, a tower at the world’s end if necessary. Never again could he compromise his safety to such an extent, when there was so much work that needed to be done.

  But positives. How could he gain something from this disaster?

  Nearby, three DCA agents were leaning over something lying on the ground. It couldn’t be a human, because wires protruded from various parts of what was left of its body.

  Maxim didn’t need to ask what it was. He had seen it moving through the crowd, the creature which had taken most of the bomb blast, saving dozens of lives, most likely including his own.

  He let his mind drift.

  Huntsman.

  The word seemed to come from nowhere, as though it had been floating in the air, waiting to be found.

  ‘Have what is left of it brought to London,’ he told his advisors. ‘It might prove of some interest to my scientists, and its technology of some future use.’

  As his men got to work giving orders, Maxim Cale turned, taking in the mess scattered across the square. It would be so nice to get back to London, away from this nothing little town.

  END

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