by CW Lynch
"Since the beginning," replied Grace, her voice no longer the soft and self-assured purr that it had been, but now the cracked cackle of a crone. "There were no Kings before me. I started this whole story. I started your story too, my son."
"Whore," Adam replied flatly, and brought the pipe down onto Grace's head so hard that it split cleanly in two almost to her nose. She dropped to her knees, a sound like wind leaving her, before she fell face first to the floor. Underneath her, the ink that had been her blood moved like a flat fish, slithering and sliding across the floor until it found a crack and started to ooze its way to freedom.
"What was she?" asked Able, unaccustomed to speaking like this inside his own head.
"A story," replied Adam. "Maybe the oldest story there is."
"She called you 'son'"
"Long story."
"Are you really Adam King? What are you doing in my head?"
"Longer story still. I'll tell you everything later. Right now, we've got a King to kill."
Able Quirk felt the thing he called Magpye stir, somewhere deep in the undercurrents of his shared mind. The ghosts, to a dead man, lay silent. Able felt Adam's mind close, folding over on itself so that, without warning, there was suddenly an "inside" that Able was not a part of. He found himself drifting on the currents of the river of memory, just another ghost, his ties to the physical severed without warning.
"Wait!" he shouted.
But Adam King wasn't listening. As he'd said, he had a King to kill, and it seemed he could do it without Able Quirk.
HUNTING PARTY
Owen woke up and pain ran instantly through his shattered eye socket like a bolt of lightning. He didn't scream this time, but only because Taylor had stuffed a dirty rag into his mouth. He felt it pushing against the back of his throat, threatening to choke him if he struggled too much. His hands were both cuffed now, his arms tight into the small of his back, a metal pipe digging in between his shoulder blades. Taylor hadn't needed to secure his ankles, White's busted leg was numb now and stubbornly refused to move. There was an awkward kink in it that shouldn't have been there and White knew that it was only numb as an alternative to hurting like all hell. Crippled, tied, gagged, White's one remaining eye swivelling manically in its socket, scanning his surroundings.
He was at the same intersection that he had been. The detective in him slipped into crime scene mode and noted the absence of his eyeball. No sign of Taylor, but the trap was clearly set. His screams, that would bring them.
Cops without a family became a family. That was the mistake, the flaw in the plan. The blood shed on the streets made bonds of its own.
Owen twisted his head towards the sound of gunfire. Three shots at a time. Pop pop pop, pop pop pop. It was Rogers, it had to be. The guy's aim was like nothing White had ever seen, and he always shot in threes. Two in the chest, one in the head. Two in the chest, one in head. White had never seen Rogers pull his gun other than on the range, but practice did make perfect.
Rogers was getting closer.
Owen kicked with his one good leg and tried to drag himself out of the corridor. If Rogers saw him, he was dead.
***
Adam King walked calmly through the paper mill. He'd never been here before. When you owned as much property as the Kings, you were unlikely to set foot in even a fraction of it. Above him, he could hear gunshots and shouting, following them was as good a direction as any.
Submerged in his own mind, Able watched carefully. Adam was no fighter, that was for certain. He had pulled Malcolm forward and was letting him do the work, pistols raised and barrels hot. For his part, Malcolm had not disappointed. Over the past six months the mysterious Englishman had become more and more blood thirsty. Thankfully, Cane King seemed to have an almost endless supply of thugs and trigger men for Malcolm to sate his appetite on.
The other ghosts muttered and whispered but, for the first time since he could really remember, Able couldn't really hear them. Somehow, they were keeping their thoughts shielded from him. Or Adam.
***
Pop, pop, pop. Chest, chest, head.
Rogers worked his way methodically through Cane King's men. They were untrained, sloppy and confused. Tough, sure, and certainly scary. In the chaos of a street fight they'd be dangerous, but in the narrow corridors and cramped rooms of the paper mill they were getting in each other's way, tripping each other up and cutting across their lines of fire.
"You think King's cleaning house?"
Pop, pop, pop. Chest, chest, head.
"What do you mean?"
"He's supposed to be a smart guy, you think he'd pick a battlefield that would suit his forces."
Rogers rolled his eyes. Hartley was a smart guy too, and a genius when it came to computers, but he had a hard time accepting that anyone didn't think the way he did. There were times when it made him the best cop in the world, almost as analytical as Rosa, but with an ability to see not just what was there but what wasn't. Inconsistencies stood out to Hartley like fireworks in the night sky. A great talent for a cop when he was interviewing a suspect, or checking witness statements, but a liability in a fire-fight. Rogers knew that White had partnered him up with Hartley for just this reason, just like he had partnered Rigby and Cooper. He'd spread his soldiers out thin, trying to keep everyone alive.
Not that it had helped Lee Grice.
Pop, pop, pop. Chest, chest, head.
"Not everyone thinks that way, Hartley,"
Bang. Hartley took out one of King's men, the big .45 he insisted on carrying tearing the side of the guy's head off and splattering his brains up the wall.
"Lucky for us."
Rogers smiled. Maybe the soldiers weren't spread as thin as he thought.
"Come on, this way. This corridor should take us straight to the others, we can press on from there."
"Perfect place for an ambush."
Rogers rolled his eyes.
***
Nutt checked his watch. The minutes were moving by slower than he'd liked, but White's orders had been clear. Stay in place, make sure nobody leaves. Radio silence for twenty minutes, then check in. If they were still alive, Nutt stayed in place to make sure that reinforcements didn't show up. If they were dead, then he got out of there and didn't look back until he hit the next city.
"Doesn't make sense," muttered Nutt. "They need me in there."
Of course, it did make sense. Owen White and Rosa Blind had sat down with a map of a disused paper mill and planned the murder of one of the most famous men in America. The Clean Squad, the incorruptible cops, had turned dirtier than the criminals they had been sent to hunt. And it was Nutt's fault.
White hadn't said it, none of them had, but he knew they were thinking it.
White had partnered them up carefully, putting the thinkers with the fighters, trying to pair everyone up with someone who could watch their backs. Nutt was supposed to have Grice's back and so it was on Nutt that Grice had ended up cut to pieces and delivered to the precinct in a duffel bag. It was on Grice that good cops had put away their badges and pulled on body armour to hunt down a man on the say so of the dirtiest cop in the precinct.
Grice's death had broken them, and Grice's death was all on Nutt.
Nutt checked his watch again. Fifteen minutes.
"Screw it," he said resolutely, and slung his rifle over his shoulder. "This is for Grice."
***
Owen yanked hard on the cuffs, trying to pull himself away from the wall. Behind him the pipe groaned but refused to budge. He could feel the cuffs cutting into the flesh of his wrists, feel the warm trickles of blood down between his fingers. He wondered if breaking his wrist would let him get his hand out, and if he even had the strength to it.
Pop, pop, pop. Bang. Rogers was getting closer. It sounded like Hartley was still alive too, his ridiculous .45 picking off the Kingsmen that Roger's didn't. Rogers was a hell of a shot, fast too, and methodical. He clocked more hours in the firing range than any o
f them, even Cooper (and Cooper had liked guns a lot). Owen let himself believe that there was a chance that Taylor's trap would backfire, just a chance, and got back to work on his cuffs.
Pop, pop, pop. Bang. Bang. Pop, pop, pop.
Owen wondered how many people actually worked for Cane King. At the rate that Rogers and Hartley were cutting through them, he was going to have a hell of a recruitment drive come morning. If he was alive, that was.
"Holy shit!"
Rogers and Hartley came through the doors nearest to White. Hartley's eyes bulged when he saw White's injuries. White grunted, howled, tried to scream, but the rag stuffed in his mouth blocked the sound. Swinging his gun left and right, Rogers came down the corridor, Hartley close behind him.
Crouching down, Rogers pulled the rag out of White's mouth while Hartley covered him.
"Trap!" spat White, "It's a trap, get out of here now!"
"I knew it," said Hartley, just before a bullet passed through the top of his head and blew off his jaw. He dropped to his knees, his tongue flapping around as he tried to say something, then fell forward and lay dead on the floor.
Rogers rolled onto his back and put three rounds into the ceiling before scrambling to the opposite side of the corridor from White.
"Jack Taylor…" panted White. "Rigged some sort of explosive and took us out."
"Us? You mean the others are gone?"
"Rosa, Terry, Reg, yeah. Rosa got killed in the explosion, Taylor got the other too."
"Christ."
Rogers twitched as something shifted in the ceiling above them. He fired another two rounds in the direction of the sound.
"You think you got him?"
"I've got no idea," said Rogers tersely. "I prefer a target I can see."
"You think you can get this pipe off the wall?" asked White. "I'm cuffed."
Rogers stole a glance at the pipe, only daring to take his eyes away from the ceiling for a moment.
"Looks pretty solid, I'm going to need something to prise it off with."
"Forget it," said White. "Just get the hell out of here. This whole thing was a set-up. They knew we'd come after them for Grice, and they were ready for us."
Rogers didn't answer. Cooper might have been the one who said it, but it had been Owen White's incandescent fury that had brought them all here. They were all caught in his wake, they had been since the day they came here, and now they were drowning.
"Cane King's here," said Rogers. "I heard one of his guys talking on a radio. If Taylor's here too, we can cut the head off this whole organisation. We can do it tonight."
Owen pulled against his cuffs again. The pipe shifted with a creak.
"I've got one eye, a busted leg, and I'm cuffed to a pipe."
Rogers smiled. "OK, I can do it tonight. But you're doing the paperwork tomorrow."
"I'd rather die," quipped White. "Get the hell out of here, Pete. For me."
Rogers stood and crept slowly along the wall back towards the door he'd come through.
"I'll get Nutt, we'll come back for you."
White smiled. He knew he'd be dead by the time Rogers got back, but it didn't matter. Denied his prize, Taylor had no need to keep White alive, and that suited White just fine. At least moving, Rogers had a chance. Taylor was a sneaky son of a bitch, but Rogers…
The bullet came through the glass at the top of the swing doors and cut through Rogers' throat, spraying arterial blood into White's face. Gurgling, clutching his neck, Rogers staggered back. He tried to raise his gun, but the strength was already draining out of his body. He put three rounds into the floor as Taylor calmly walked in and put his gun up to Roger's forehead.
Pop, pop, pop.
Bang.
"You son of a bitch!" shouted White as Rogers collapsed in front of him. Blood spread from underneath his body, soaking into White's trousers. He realised that Taylor was clutching his side, and saw a patch of blood spreading there too.
"He got you, didn't he?" said White, a grin starting to spread across his face.
"Shut up," replied Taylor, bringing his gun down hard on White's temple, sending him spiralling into unconsciousness once again.
MARISSA
Marv opened his eyes.
It was daytime, the sun sitting round and fat behind hazy white clouds. The sky was blue, incredibly blue, and around him the circus buzzed with activity. People laughed, cheered. There were whoops as the bangs and fizzes of fireworks echoed overhead and somewhere an elephant trumpeted loudly.
"We never had an elephant," said Marv. His voice sounded wrong, like a tape being played too slowly. "What is this place?"
A crowd of people passed him, their faces blurry, rubbed out by an invisible eraser. Marissa was behind them, dancing slowly, wheeling around so that her yellow summer dress flared out. She had that dress as a little girl, Marv remembered it.
"These are my memories of the circus," she said. "My happy memories, that is."
"It wasn't like this," replied Marv. "It was never like this. How did we even get here?"
Marissa smiled, and the sun seemed to beam a little brighter.
"Silly Daddy," she said. "Haven't you figured it out yet?"
Marv turned away. Beyond the fringes of the circus there was nothing. No road, no city. Just grass, unbelievably green and verdant, stretching all the way to the sky. It was a perfect place. He wished he could remember the circus, and Marissa, this way.
"Memories," he said, his voice cracking. "Just like the others, right? That's all you are?"
Marissa hooked her arm in her father's. He rested against her, his breathing becoming ragged as he held back his tears.
"No, Daddy, not just memories. Feelings, too."
She rested her head on his shoulder, wrapped one of her thin arms around his shoulder. Marv thought about how ethereal she had always been, a waif-like thing of light and magic. She wasn't for this world, with all its dirt and grime and horror and hate. She was for a place like this, where there was only laughter.
"And love," she said, completing his thoughts.
He turned, taking her in his arms, letting his tears roll freely down his cheeks as he held her gently. Around them, the circus had stopped moving, and there was only peace and the warmth of the unreal sun.
"I'm so sorry, baby. I never wanted you to get hurt."
"I know, Daddy."
"That bitch," he sobbed. "She told me she'd saved you. How couldn't I see it?"
"Because you didn't want to see it," Marissa said calmly. She stroked his wiry hair, resting his head on her shoulder. "The best tricks are the ones you don't see coming, right? Didn't you wonder where all your magic had gone?"
"I used to tell you that you were my magic, remember?"
They laughed together, the kind of laughter that cut through tears only to leave more tears pouring in their wake. Happiness had always been the vanguard of sorrow in Marv's life.
"This the part where I have to let you go, isn't it?" he asked, the sentence punctuated by sobs.
"Not yet Daddy. First we have to help Able. I loved him too, remember?"
THE INK
The Ink slithered slowly away from Grace Faraway.
Oozing along the grooves between the floor tiles, slipping down through cracks and seeping through any which way that it could, it made its slow but inexorable progress through the old mill.
Behind it, abandoned by the Ink, Grace's corpse desiccated and began to crumble inwards like a dead wasp's nest. Her shattered skull collapsed down into her face, leaving just the mask of her final scream, face down on the dusty floor. The Ink could have saved her, of course. It had stitched her body back together from worse injuries than this and had rejuvenated her so many times, consuming younger, fresher bodies to keep her ageing and ailing flesh firm and strong. Oh yes, The Ink *could* have saved her.
But The Ink was bored with Grace Faraway, and a boring story was not worthy of The Ink.
It had been born on a cave wall, millennia ago
, when a monkey had first decided to keep a record of what it had seen that day. While the monkey slept, The Ink had slithered off the wall and down into the monkey's fur. Poisoned by The Ink, the monkey grew hairless and began to walk only on its hind legs. Driven on by The Ink, it begat more in its own unnatural state and The Ink was there to daub itself on the face of the first of them that looked another in the eye and killed its brother.
That had been a story.
In the ages that had passed since The Ink had oozed and dripped and leaked its way into history. It had made empires rise and toppled regimes, painting itself on the world. It had hidden itself in dark places and made a masterpiece of the torture of just one life. It had explored every facet of man's depravity in search of a story as potent and as powerful as that first one. It might have continued that way forever, had it not found Grace Faraway. It had found her when she little more than a child, orphaned by a war of The Ink's devising. The Ink had never known a creature like her, a creature of such abject hunger and amorality. Human, but so far apart from humanity. She seduced The Ink, in her way, and together they crafted a story of kings and king-makers, using the power of The Ink to raise a line that had culminated in Adam and Cane King.
And that had been her downfall. Whatever it was that Adam King was now, it was truly new, and it had been a long time since the Ink had experienced that.
The Ink found itself at a wall and began, impossibly, to drip upwards, forming a puddle on the ceiling that slowly began to be absorbed into the mouldy tile-work. Above it, gunfire and screams told a small story of their own.