by James Kahn
“The Word, the written Word,” they all chimed in.
David put his hand on Joshua’s shoulder. “Join us,” be said quietly.
There were two quick knocks on the door, and suddenly everyone was up and running in all directions.
“What is it?” whispered Josh, on David’s heels out the side door.
“They’ve discovered us. Run for it!” David rasped.
“Who?” Josh asked as they raced down a long dark hall.
“JEGS, BASS, Vampires. Who knows? It’s all the same. We’ve only enemies in all the world. Trust no one but your own, lad.”
They emerged at water level, under the wharf; ran along a slippery catwalk and up a flight of splintered stairs to the dock. No sooner had they reached the upper level than shouts and shuffles echoed from down the promenade. Someone cried out. Joshua crouched to get a better look, and in that moment an arrow zinged by, creasing David’s scalp.
The Scribe leader stumbled, fell, and got up again, blood oozing from his wound. “Split up,” he whispered, and disappeared down an alley.
Josh circled around behind a blacksmith shop, cut across two back streets, and came out near the bar he’d originally entered. He slowed to a casual walk, quieted his breathing, forced himself to stroll toward the pier. A moment later he sensed the presence of animal behind him, though, and turned in a flash, hand on knife. It was Beauty.
“You appear to be in need of a good animal alibi,” said the Centaur. “May I join you?”
They walked the waterfront without haste, letting Joshua’s adrenaline dissipate as he told his story to Beauty. Occasionally Josh would jump—at the sound of a distant yell, or the swoop of a sea bird—but he finally settled down. Beauty told his end of the interlude, though there was little to tell. He’d found a back entrance, waited, heard a ruckus, came back out front—and found Josh wandering calm as a tide pool.
They decided to go back to the Casa Blanca, to give this new information to Jasmine and formulate a plan. There were still many loose ends, but among them, now, Josh felt the thrill of glimpsing the end in sight. Unconsciously, they picked up their pace back toward Sum-Thin’s bar.
Out of the black night leapt an animal: small, dark, sinewy. It wrapped itself around Joshua’s face before he even registered its attack. First he was aware of the creature’s black, warm fur, then two piercing blue eyes staring point blank into his own; then a hot growly voice: “Where werrrrre you?”
It was Isis.
She licked his face madly, until he finally tossed her to the ground. Laughing, he knelt down and scratched her roughly between the ears, his hand vibrant with her purrs. She was leaning so far into his massage that when he stopped she fell over sideways. On her back, legs in the air, still purring, she looked at them fondly. “You’re alive,” she said.
“No less than you, Fur-face. We were prisoners of time for a time, but now we are free. And what use have you made of yourself since our separation?”
“Saw your girrrl,” she purred smugly.
Josh started. “What! Here?”
Isis nodded. “Gone nowww,” she mentioned in disinterested afterthought.
“Gone where?” Josh demanded. “What happened?”
“South,” pouted Isis. She was annoyed that Joshua’s interest and affections had transferred so quickly to the girl with the blood-smell. “With Vampires,” she added in a tone of disapproval. This did not have the desired effect, though, for rather than make Joshua renew his focus on Isis, it just made him more distraught. She gave him a consolation prize: “Scree here, though. Mrow.” She sidled up to Joshua’s ego. She suspected she could get Joshua’s attention off the lost girl-Human by mentioning the broken-beak; and she was right.
“Scree? The Griffin?” Joshua’s face relit.
“Where?” came in Beauty, fists clenched.
She saw immediately she could endear herself with this information. “Herrrre,” she purred coyly, and began slinking up the wharf with an occasional flip of her tail. The others followed.
They quickly came to a scummy bar called The Pit Fall. A sign in the window said NO HUMANS ALLOWED and beside it the mummified skeleton of a man hung by the neck from the rafters. Various creatures did various revolting things among the shadows inside. A small Accident bit off and ate its own fingers at the bar; two Vampires molested a young Equiman; a frothing Satyr fondled a corpse. And perched in a corner, sharpening its talons on the skull of a newly dead reptile, was the green-and-gold, broken-beaked Griffin.
“Scree,” whispered Josh. He started to enter, but Beauty held him back.
Isis put up her paw. “You stay herrre. Bird will commme.” With which she strutted straight into the bar.
Josh and Beauty watched through the window as the small Cat sauntered over to the Griffin, squatted, and urinated on the creature’s claw.
With a screech, the Griffin spread wing and tore around the room in circles after the crazy Cat, who jumped over the bar, under tables, between chairs, and finally out the front door. A second later when Scree emerged from the tavern hot on Isis’ tail, Beauty was there. He grabbed the Griffin’s extended wings from behind, at the base, and twisting down with all his force, broke the animal’s shoulders. Scree gasped in pain and surprise.
Josh and Beauty immediately dragged the crippled beast around the corner and into a lightless alley. Beauty held it down, squirming. When it got its first good look at Joshua, it spat. ” ‘Uman stink,” it cawed. “Keep talking,” whispered Josh, coming close, his knife out. “The right words may ease your suffering.” He stared at the gnashing creature through the memory of his family’s gored remains. He raised his blade and tickled the Griffin’s throat. “Keep talking,” he repeated solemnly.
“You remember when you took your name?” Jasmine reminisced nostalgically. They sat along cushions on the smoky floor, near enough to touch without touching.
“Do I not. You walked into my room the day I woke up from the surgery. I felt like Frankenstein’s monster. I said I must look hideous—different face, different gender … different being. And you said I looked like ‘somethin’ so fine.’ That was all you said. I swore to myself I’d keep those words with me forever, and took them for my name on the spot.”
“Do you know what I promised myself on that day? That we should never be apart.” Her eyes twinkled at her adolescent naivete.
“Well, I am glad one of us knows how to keep a promise,” Sum-Thin warmly scolded.
“Ah, but it was grand while it was,” Jasmine pursued. “The better part of a century, I make it.”
“The best part, by far, Jazz. The very best.”
They studied one another with that peculiar love it is possible to feel for an earlier time of life, when—in retrospect—things seemed more simple, more pure.
“We had this town by the tail a hundred years ago,” Jasmine let her memories wander to and fro. “Right after the Ice Change, remember? Nobody knew which way was up, except us …”
“I remember. Refugees were flooding in. Running from the Ice up north, and from the mosquitoes in the south …”
“And everyone looking to get right or get out. What a time that was. Running drugs, smuggling emigres out to the islands, selling everything from bearskins to bug repellent…”
“It was a time, was it not,” Sum-Thin began replaying the same movie. “We have seen many changes, you and I. The bacteriological warfare just after I became Neuroman strikes me now—I’d have certainly died if you hadn’t persuaded me in time to have the operation; my health, even for a Human, was never good …”
“The Germ War, yes. Not many people left after that one. They had to abandon the space colonies, I remember, because—”
“The space colonies, God, I’d forgotten about those …”
“How could you forget, they made such a big deal about them in the last half of the twenty-first century, all those orbiting stations, and moon colonies, and space probes—they were going to save us, it w
as going to be a new era …”
“It was a new era, all right…”
“Wonder whatever happened to them?”
“The colonies starved, the orbits degenerated, re-entered, and crashed, the probes are on eternal probation,” Sum-Thin smiled.
“Then there was the Limited Nuclear War …” Jasmine was becoming almost gleeful at this resurrection of historical catastrophes.
“Ah, yes, July 4th, 2117. Limited to major cities …”
“And then the Clone Wars …”
“Now there was a war. Human ingenuity at its quintessence. Thousands of Human Clones created to restock the race, and then all the other creatures we created take it as the final insult and destroy them all…”
“Ah, the Age of Beasts …”
“Literacy becoming a religion …”
“And the Coming of Ice. My favorite natural disaster.” The reverie was off-tilting, taking a slightly hysterical tone, like a gyroscope starting to lose speed.
“Yes, the Ice Age. We really peaked with that one, you and I. The ruling queens of Ma’gas’, we were …”
“We have to write this all down, it’s too good to lose …”
“And then you left me.” Sum-Thin’s words froze the patter. The gyroscope stopped.
“A hundred years is a long time,” Jasmine said quietly. “It was time to leave.”
“I know, it was the right thing for you. I remember, old Dundee used to come into town for supplies, and tell all his wild stories about the Terrarium, about the Howlers, and the Vampire colonies, and the lost cities and strange sorcerers—and your eyes would turn glassy, and your breath quicken.”
“I stayed down there fifty years. It was a grand old time I had, but you know, I always missed you not being there to share it with me. Ten times a day I wanted to be able to nudge you and say ‘Look at that! Look at that!’ “
Sum-Thin smiled again, her lids heavy with what they’d lost, what they still had. “You found others, I was told.”
“Lon, for a while,” Jasmine nodded. “The noblest Vampire I know.” Briefly, she let herself think of Lon. “I’ve been alone for sixty, seventy years, now, though.”
“And I, since the day you left.”
Jasmine touched her old friend’s cheek delicately, traced its outline down the perfect hollow, along the fine lips. “So you haven’t left the bar in all that tune,” she said with tender regard.
“No need,” Sum-Thin shrugged. “All come to me. See—even you are here again.”
“Maybe. You certainly seem to’ve found your niche. Me, I’m still searching for mine.”
“Rolling bones gather no flesh,” Sum-Thin advised.
Jasmine sensed her dear companion of so many years was becoming reserved once again, retreating into her cloud of philosophy. “I’m not sure anymore of flesh really has much value,” she retorted.
“What, then? The ‘Great Spirit’?” Sum-Thin gently sneered.
“Energy, maybe. You mean you’ve never had an intimation of some singularity to the universe in all your three centuries?”
“Yes, I’ve had such feelings, but I always lie down until they pass over.” She laughed, and this seemed to thaw the momentary chill that had congealed their space. When she went on, it was as if some undefin-able tension had resolved between them, left them at peace. “Energy without substance, without flesh—it is nil, Jazz. Matter is what matters in the universe. Energy flow, Oneness, underlying Singularities—meaningless abstractions, luxuries of meditation. Matter is the Without Which Not: without which not space, nor time, nor thing nor thought. This, then, is the All.” She reached over, lay a considered hand on Jasmine’s breast; measured, weighed, contemplated, and palpated the matter; then fell back finally to her pillow, her eyes closed, mouth askew.
Jasmine smiled at her old friend. “Philosopher-stoned again.”
“Blarney-stoned, you mean. But ah, the opium billows my cloud.”
Jasmine rose. “It’s been good to see you again, Sum-Thin, but these bones of mine have got to get rolling.”
“Having a tilt at the new animal, are you?”
“I might. When I finish helping my new friends find their people.”
“Well, luck to you all. To be honest, it would make my Teflon heart glad to see the new animal fall. I don’t like what I hear of the beast.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, nothing specific. I am afraid they’re making a cult of it, though. The inner circle even calls itself LOS ANGELES—Associated Neuroman Genetic Engineers, Lords, et Sages.”
“Well, it’s pretentious enough to be a cult. What’s the power base, though?”
“The animal.” She stood, and the two Neuromans faced each other, joined by all they’d seen together, separated by all they’d seen alone; connected by waves of darkness and light.
They touched hands.
“Perhaps,” said Jasmine, “it’s time to spend some tune here again; after this hunt.”
The curtain parted at that moment, admitting Joshua, Beauty, and Isis. The Cat walked directly to a corner pillow, where she sat mutely licking her paw. Josh and Beauty stood tautly at the entranceway.
Jasmine looked from one to the other. “What,” she said.
“We found the Griffin,” Josh replied. “Bal took our people to the new animal’s castle. The Vampire lives there. He kept some of the captives for his own, he gave the rest to the animal.”
“The Griffin?” asked Jasmine.
“The Griffin is dead,” Beauty spoke with a quiet finality. Josh kept his gaze fastened to the floor.
Sum-Thin stared deeply into Joshua’s desolation. “Nothing is sweeter than the pursuit of revenge,” she said, “and nothing more hollow than success.”
Josh turned his anger outward. “The world’s a better place with that monster dead.” Silence surrounded him.
Sum-Thin’s eyes were fine slits. “What was the Griffin’s name?”
“Scree,” answered Josh.
Sum-Thin’s eyebrows raised a notch. “In that case,” she said, “please have one last drink on the house before you go.” She bowed at the waist and ushered them out to the bar. “Eyeball,” she said to the Cyclops bartender, “one drink for my guests, for the road.” With which she bowed once more, and disappeared into her back room.
The barroom was swirling with crosscurrents. Vampires, Satyrs, Humans, Harpies, Furies, Devils, Gargoyles, and mixed breeds of every genotype drank, gamed, and conspired from floor to loft. Jasmine, Josh, and Beauty stood at the bar and took three coffees, while Isis sat warily by the exit. Josh told Jasmine briefly about his meeting with the book-people; then about Isis’ tale, which—insofar as Josh had been able to determine from the marginally articulate little Cat—was that she’d abandoned the hunt here, when it had seemed likely that Josh was dead, and thenceforth had eked out a fairly “borrrring” existence as an alley cat, keeping close tabs on the Griffin she knew to be somehow responsible for Joshua’s disappearance; until suddenly she’d become aware that Josh was in the city, and tracked down his smell as soon as she could.
Finally, Josh told Jasmine about the information Scree had given them.
“So it’s the castle we want, at the mouth of the Sticks,” Jasmine said softly.
“How far is the Sticks?” asked Beauty.
“Not far,” Jasmine answered, “but it’s through more jungle from here. The easiest thing would be to hire a boat, take it down the coast and get put ashore a bit south of the river. I’ve no idea how we’ll get inside the castle once we’re there.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Josh spoke moodily. He was feeling surly after the encounter with Scree. It had gone badly: the lust of vengeance had wilted in the face of the broken, snapping Griffin. He’d been urged on by Venge-right so long, and finally the moment came, and he was impotent. It was Beauty who had to do the deed. Now Josh found himself confused and seething.
“Maybe,” said Jasmine, “but you can’t just storm
a castle with rocks and wishes. You need a plan. We don’t even know—”
“We know they’re there, we know we’re going to get them.”
“Yes, yes, but Neptune’s Middle Fin, Joshua, you can’t—”
A hand slammed down on the bar with such force as to startle everyone in the room into silence.
“Blasphemy,” rasped a voice. A figure stood back, facing Jasmine: it was the tense form of a naked woman, a black hood over her head, an upright trident branded into her right shoulder. Through two slits cut in her hood, green eyes stared out furiously. She gripped a saber.
“The hooded woman,” whispered Josh.
“Be careful,” Beauty spoke softly to Jasmine’s ear, “she’s Born-Again.”
The hooded woman stood away from the bar. Behind her, the man with no arms and the head of a bird stood like her shadow, making clicking sounds from its open beak. “You profane the Lord’s name,” said the hooded woman.
“I meant no disrespect,” Jasmine said gingerly. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.”
“You have not offended me, wretch. You have offended my Lord.” The hooded woman slammed her blade on the bar to punctuate the accusation. All eyes were fixed on Jasmine, awaiting her response.
“Please,” said Jasmine, pausing to point the request with a measure of menace. “Accept my apology.”
The hooded woman may have been drinking. “I demand satisfaction,” she hissed. “A duel.”
The Bird-man clacked like a ratchet. The crowd murmured. Eyeball, the bartender, knocked quietly thrice on Sum-Thin’s door, and the Oriental Neuroman immediately came out, stood beside the bar, watched.
Josh stepped forward. “You know me,” he said to the hooded woman. “I have the water-power.”
She squinted at him, her green eyes flaming.
He went on. “My friend here is helping me on my journey. I apologize for her.”
The hooded woman shook her head once. “The challenge is not to you.” Then, to Jasmine again: “Here and now. Choose your weapon.”
The room came alive. In an excited hush, tables and chairs were moved to the walls, leaving a huge clear Space in the center of the floor.