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?’
Xyrena didn’t know what to say. She opened her mouth and then she closed it again.
‘Look at me!’ the dog-woman insisted. ‘I used to be pretty. I used to have a husband, and children. I used to be so happy. Now look at me. I’m not even human any more.’
‘What happened to you?’ asked Jemexxa.
‘A clown happened to me. A clown with a gray face and gray hair and a bright green smile.’
‘What did he do to you, this clown?’
‘I first saw him at the Empire Fair, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I used to live. It was so long ago now that I can’t even remember when it was. I saw him smiling at me through the crowd and I smiled back at him, and he gave me this little wave with his fingers. Then I took the children home and he was waiting for me, in my living room. How he got there before me and how he got into my house I shall never know.
The dog-woman’s eyes suddenly filled up with tears. ‘That was the end of my happiness. That was when hell started.’
‘This clown—’ Xyrena prompted her.
‘Most of the freaks call him Mago Verde, or the Green Magician, but Zachary always calls him Gordon. Zachary — he’s the Freakmaster — he’s in charge of all of the living exhibits, like me.’
‘Gordon — that wouldn’t be Gordon Veitch by any chance?’
‘I don’t know. I only know Gordon.’
‘And he’s still here now, with the carnival?’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘Yes. But he’s always coming and going. Sometimes he disappears for days on end, but then he comes back and shuts himself up in his caravan for weeks and nobody sees him. All of the other clowns hate him. The freaks hate him and the animal trainers hate him. But the Grand Freak thinks he’s wonderful. The Grand Freak treats him as if he was Jesus Christ, almost.’
The dog-woman was out of breath now, and panting painfully. Xyrena waited for a few moments, and then she said, ‘The Grand Freak? Who the hell is the Grand Freak?’
‘Brother Albrecht. He calls himself the Grand Freak because he wants everybody to pity him. He doesn’t want anybody to forget that he was beautiful once and how much he’s suffered. But he doesn’t care how cruel he is to other people. He loves to see them tortured — even little children.
She paused again, to catch her breath. Then she said, ‘Please kill me. Please. I tried to strangle myself with my collar, and once I tried to bite off one of my paws so that I bled to death, but Brown Jenkin found me, both times.’
‘Who’s Brown Jenkin?’
The dog-woman gave a shivery shake of her head. ‘He’s a what rather than a who. Half a human being and half a rat. But he helps Zachary to keep his eye on all of us freaks, just to make sure we don’t harm ourselves. I’m sure that he has some kind of a sixth sense, because when one of us can’t take it any more, and wants to end it all, he always sniffs it out, and stops us.’
Xyrena said, gently, ‘Tell me your name.’
‘My name? You don’t need to know my name to kill me. It would be easier for you if you didn’t know it.’
‘Please, tell me your name.’
‘Elizabeth. But my husband always called me Betsy.’
‘Well, listen, Elizabeth, I can’t kill you.’
‘Why not? You said you’re a warrior. Don’t you have a gun?’
‘I couldn’t kill you if I wanted to because you’re still real.’
‘What are you telling me? That this is only a nightmare? Then how come I never wake up?’
‘Because this carnival is all a dream, but not your dream. It’s Brother Albrecht’s dream. Over the years he’s imprisoned dozens of real people inside of it, so that they can’t escape. We think that he sends this Gordon character back to the waking world to find victims for him — innocent men and women just like you — and then he brings them back here and turns them into freaks for his carnival.’
‘So you can’t kill me but I can’t ever get away?’
‘You can get away, Elizabeth, and you will, just as soon as we can deal with the less-than-brotherly Brother Albrecht. And Gordon the Clown, too, while we’re at it.’
Tears were streaming down Elizabeth’s filthy cheeks and she was shivering with misery. Jemexxa put her hand through the bars of the cage and stroked her tangled hair. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Trust us. Just let us break up this carnival and then you’ll be free. Our mom’s here, too — the Demi-Goddess. We want to save her, too.’
Elizabeth was too exhausted to say any more. She crept back to her bed of straw and lay down, her ribcage rising and falling with effort.
Xyrena said to Dom Magator, ‘Did you pick up any of that?’
‘Yes, most of it, especially that Grand Freak stuff. Good going, Xyrena.’
He said something else, but his voice was drowned out by another drum roll from the big top, and another fanfare of trumpets, and more applause.
‘I think it’s time we went in and took a look-see,’ said Xyrena.
Jekkalon said, ‘There’s a flap in the canvas in back, that’s how we got out the last time. With any luck we should be able to sneak in without too many people seeing us.’
Jemexxa looked up at the thundery clouds. ‘I think I could use some charge first.’
She reached behind her and twisted two L-shaped levers, one on each side of the rack of storage cells on her back. Then she raised both hands, palms outward, as if she were praying to some Native American sky deity. In fact she was dowsing for negative electrical charges building up in the clouds — that type of cloud-to-cloud-to-ground lightning known as an ‘anvil crawler.’ At first she felt only a slight tingling sensation in the tips of her fingers, but as she slowly moved her hands to the right, the tingling became an uncomfortable prickling, like nettle rash, and then a sharp fizzing sensation that penetrated right under her fingernails. Within less than thirty seconds, however, she had located the point of maximum atmospheric tension — well over a hundred kiloamperes. It was located only about three and a half miles away, in a huge black cloud that was hanging over the summit of a hill. She lifted her hands higher and waited.
‘This is not going to take too long, is it, honey?’ asked Xyrena. ‘We need to get into that big top before one of these freaks catches us and turns us into poodles.’
Jemexxa didn’t answer her. She knew that there was no need, because a few seconds later a fan-shaped array of lightning lit up the clouds, spitting and shriveling like burning human hair. Four or five branches jumped directly toward her and struck the open palms of her hands. There was a sharp crack and a superheated blast of air which almost knocked them over and for a few moments they were all blinded. But with a high-pitched jittering noise, like a horde of rats scuttling up a drainpipe, the charges ran up the insulated cables on Jemexxa’s arms, and into the capacitors on her back, and she promptly twisted the two L-shaped levers back to their closed position, and snapped them shut.
She glanced up at the head’s-up display inside her helmet. It read 270c.
‘That should more than do it. Two hundred seventy coulombs.’
Jekkalon said, ‘That’s incredible. I even know what a coulomb is. How the hell do I know what a coulomb is? I flunked every single science subject when I was in high school.’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Xyrena. ‘I don’t understand any of this Night Warriors malarkey. But suddenly I know things that I never ever knew I knew. I even know who wrote In The Good Old Summertime, would you believe?’
Jekkalon said, ‘Dom Magator? We’re going to enter the big top now. Not by the front entrance — we’re going in back.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll have An-Gryferai keep you under close surveillance, and Zebenjo’Yyx and me will move in closer and cover you. If it comes to any shooting, though, make sure that you hit the deck real quick. Zebenjo’Yyx isn’t called the Arrow Storm for nothing, and I’ll be toting my Absence Gun and my Boomerang Knife.’
‘Be careful, though,’ put in Jemexxa. ‘Most of these people are innocent victims, and some of them are real.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ Dom Magator assured her. ‘My Army buddy Rick Mantovani was killed in Iraq by friendly fire, but there’s nothing even remotely friendly about an Absence Gun, no matter who’s firing it.’
Jekkalon led the way between the smaller tents and marquees toward the back of the big top. Above their heads, the thunder and lightning were moving away now, but the rain was drumming down harder then ever. Jemexxa began to have an uneasy feeling that George Roussos might be close to waking up, in which case they would have to exit this dream as quickly as possible. Springer had warned them that if this happened, the dream wouldn’t simply collapse around them, leaving them standing by George Roussos’ bed, where they had first entered it. This happened with normal dreams and nightmares, but this dream wasn’t normal. This was Brother Albrecht’s dream, and George Roussos was only dreaming it because for some reason Brother Albrecht wanted him to.
If George Roussos woke up while the Night Warriors were still here, inside this dream, the only way for them to get out of it would be
to wake up Brother Albrecht, if that were possible, or kill him.
They reached the back of the big top. Rainwater was spouting off the sloping roof and splattering on to the grass all around them. Inside, they could hear music playing — lewd, discordant blues — and people shouting and cheering. Every now and then there would be another drum roll, and another screech of trumpets.
Jekkalon made his way along the wall of black canvas, punching and tugging at it to find the flap from which they had escaped the last time they had dreamed that they were here. As he was still struggling to locate it, a motley group of clowns and circus hands suddenly appeared through the rain, less than ten yards away, accompanied by a woman with a pair of mechanical wooden legs, like the legs of two artists’ easels, all joints and struts and pulleys, which made her at least six inches taller than any of her companions. Her unnatural height was emphasized by a huge black tricorn hat that looked as if it might have been worn by an encephalitic pirate.
The Night Warriors turned their faces to the canvas so that no light would be reflected from the lenses in their helmets, and stood perfectly still. They stayed that way while the group passed them by, talking and tittering. One of the clowns shouted out, ‘Who’s this, then?’ and let out a laugh that was almost a series of screams. Xyrena thought for a split second that he must have seen them, but the group continued walking, and so the clown must have been laughing about somebody else altogether. The group disappeared around the next corner of the big top, and the last the Night Warriors heard of them was the arthritic creaking of the woman’s wooden legs.
After a furious search along the back of the tent, Jekkalon at last discovered the flap. He held it open while Xyrena and Jemexxa pushed their way through.
Unexpectedly, the big top was crowded with hundreds of people. All the gasoliers were alight, but even so the illumination inside the tent was strangely dim, as if they were looking at it through a fine gauze curtain. The air was humid and stuffy and smelled of wet soil and human sweat. Although there was so much music and drumming and cheering, the sound was muffled by the dark red velvet drapes that hung all around the auditorium. At least a dozen trapezes hung from the roof of the tent, swaying slightly, as if some acrobat had recently swung from one to the other.
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