The Ninth Nightmare Part 27

'Yeah,' said Dom Magator. 'And you, too, Springer, whatever the h.e.l.l you are.'

He stepped through the portal. The crackle of energy was much fiercer than it usually was, and showers of sparks bounced off his armor.

He found himself in Brother Albrecht's dream again, but this was a very different landscape from the dark and rainy hillside that they had visited last night. This was a sunbaked prairie, with fields of tawny wheat stretching all the way to the horizon, and not a single tree in sight. The sky was purple, with huge white c.u.mulus clouds rolling slowly across it from west to east.

An-Gryferai turned around and said, 'There it is. Look.'

About a mile away, they could see a small towns.h.i.+p, with a church spire and a water tower and a single main street lined with stores. A few hundred yards to the south, Brother Albrecht's circus had been set up, with its black tents and its black caravans and its black pennants flapping in the summer breeze.

Very faintly, they could hear the discordant strains of In The Good Old Summertime. An-Gryferai s.h.i.+vered. For some reason, she found the sound of that music even more unsettling than that cl.u.s.ter of black tents. It was like all her childhood fears returning to visit her. And more than anything it reminded her of Daisy, her dead sister, and Daisy's persistent nightmares about circuses.

'How about an aerial reconnaissance?' Dom Magator asked her.

'Is that such a good idea?' said Zebenjo'Yyx. 'As soon as those clowns see An-Gryferai circlin' around, they'll know we're here, won't they?'

'Yes, they probably will. But they'll soon spot us, right out here in the open, even if they haven't spotted us already. And don't tell me they haven't been expecting us.'

'In that case, I ain't takin' no chances,' said Zebenjo'Yyx. He c.o.c.ked the quarrel-firing mechanisms on both of his forearms. 'One peep out of any of those freaks, and they're goin' to wind up seriously ventilated.'

An-Gryferai took a short run through the wheat field, flapping her wings. The air was warm and she rose quickly, until she was nearly a hundred feet up. She looked up at the clouds as she flew, and she saw that as they rolled their way from one horizon to the other, they continually changed their shape, from ghostly galleons with tattered sails to monstrous dogs with bulging eyes. For a brief moment, she thought that one of them looked like the face of her dead grandmother, watching her with sadness in her eyes.

As she approached the towns.h.i.+p, she could make out its name painted on the side of the water tower, Melancholy, IA. The main street was almost deserted except for three or four pick-up trucks and a few pedestrians. She could see a store with a sign saying Clavicle's General Supplies and a barber shop named for its proprietor, W. Severe.

Melancholy could have been a typical mid-West farming community except for the its purple sky and the fact that its perspective was all wrong and everything about it was out of proportion. An-Gryferai caught sight of a German Shepherd at the far end of the street that was almost twice the size of its owner, but as they came nearer, the German Shepherd shrank and its owner grew taller. At the other end of the street, the church was no bigger than a doll's house.

She circled around the towns.h.i.+p twice, and then she angled her wings and wheeled toward Brother Albrecht's circus. The big top and all of the other tents had been erected in the same pattern as last night's dream, with the animal cages in a line between the caravans. The site was teeming with circus hands and clowns and freaks, as well as scores of ordinary, bewildered-looking people who must have been dreamers. She was sure she glimpsed Mickey Veralnik amongst them, but she could have been mistaken.

'D.M? I don't think the show's started yet,' she told Dom Magator. 'Everybody's milling around outside. But there are ten times more dreamers here than there were last night. It looks like Brother Albrecht is really pulling them in.'

'No sign of Mago Verde?'

'Not so far. I'm going to go round one more time, lower this time. I don't think anybody's noticed me yet. Maybe they think I'm a turkey buzzard.'

She swooped around the big top once again. She could hear the organ music playing, and the braying of a distressed donkey. As she circled over the caravans, however, she heard a high voice screaming out, 'Lookit! Up there! Up in the sky! It's that bird-woman!'

She twisted her head around and saw a midget clown in red suspenders jumping up and down and frantically pointing up at her. 'There! It's that bird-woman! The one who blew up Flammo!'

Another clown tossed a tent peg up at her, which hit her on the left thigh. Then a circus hand threw a mallet, and another clown tossed up a bucket. A whole shower of tent pegs flew up, as well as throwing knives and more buckets. She urgently beat her wings to gain more height, so that none of the missiles could reach her. Then she tilted herself back toward the west, so that she could rejoin the rest of the Night Warriors.

As she flew over the main entrance to the big top, past the sign which read Albrecht's Traveling Circus & Freak Show, a man stepped out from underneath the archway. A man in a dusty black tuxedo, with ragged white hair and a pale gray face and a sharp green grin.

He looked up at her, his arms folded, but because of his make-up she couldn't tell if he was really grinning or not. She guessed that he was probably scowling.

'He's here!' she told Dom Magator. 'Mago Verde is already here! I just saw him standing outside the big top!'

'In that case, we'll have to go in right now. You keep circling around, An-Gryferai. I need you to be ready to dive down and grab Mago Verde's victim, if she's here. The rest of us will have to try a full-frontal a.s.sault.'

An-Gryferai wheeled around again. Below her, the circus hands and the clowns and the freaks were already picking up pitchforks and tent pegs and machetes and beginning to pour between the tents toward the western side of the circus site, where the Night Warriors would be coming from. They were whooping and howling and calling out, 'No more nightmare! No more nightmare! Real! Real! Real!'

Out in the wheat field, Dom Magator lifted a heavy chrome-plated carbine from the rack on his back. He unhooked a long magazine from his belt and clicked it into the carbine's rear handgrip.

'What's that?' asked Zebenjo'Yyx. 'Not another one of your pansy-a.s.sed Knock-'Em-Off-Balance-But-Don't-Hurt-'Em Guns?'

'Not this time,' Dom Magator told him. 'This time I've brought something seriously lethal. A Scythe Rifle.'

'A what do you say?'

'You'll see. And pretty soon, too. Here they come.'

Through the heat-distorted wheat field, trampling down the crops as they came, over a hundred clowns and circus hands and freaks came storming toward them.

'Oh my G.o.d,' said Xyrena. 'We don't stand a cat in h.e.l.l's chance.'

'Yes, we do,' Dom Magator retorted. 'So long as we don't lose our nerve. What are they? Clowns, OK? Clowns and tent riggers and midgets. And what are we? Natural born highly-skilled warriors. Absolutely no contest. Now remember - don't fire until you see the reds of their noses.'

'We're about to get ourselves slaughtered to death and you're makin' a joke out of it?' Zebenjo'Yxx protested. 'You're really somethin', man!'

'What do you want me and Jemexxa to do?' Jekkalon asked.

'Hit as many of the clowns as you can. But don't use up all of your energy, Jemexxa. I want to see that circus razed to the ground before we leave this dream.'

'You got it, dude.'

By now the howling rabble of circus folk was almost on them. Dom Magator stood in the center, with Zebenjo'Yyx on his left-hand side and Jekkalon and Jemexxa on his right. Xyrena stood back behind them. She knew that her time would come, but it wasn't yet.

'No more nightmare! No more nightmare!' screamed the clowns and the freaks. 'Real! Real! Real!'

Up above them, the huge white c.u.mulus clouds boiled up, taking on the shapes of skulls and phantoms and human faces with their mouths dragged down in agony. The whole of Brother Albrecht's dream was thirsting for battle.

TWENTY-TWO.

Full Circle The circus folk were less than a hundred yards away. 'No more nightmare! No more nightmare! Real! Real! Real!'

Dom Magator waited until the last possible moment, and then he said, very quietly, 'OK, everybody. Let 'em have it.'

Zebenjo'Yyx released a blizzard of arrows from both hands. They clattered and whistled as they flew from the release mechanisms on his forearms, and the clowns collapsed into the wheat by the score, their bodies bristling like porcupines.

Jemexxa kept her back to the circus folk, so that she could raise the palm of one hand and reflect a bolt of lightning into Jekkalon's hand. The lightning jumped from one twin to the other with an ear-splitting crack, and Jekkalon aimed it into the thickest part of the crowd. It exploded with such force that they could see a visible shock-wave ripple across the field, and fragments of clown and clothing were blasted high up into the purple sky.

Now Dom Magator hefted his Scythe Rifle up to his hip. He squeezed the trigger and it uttered a piercing, continuous scream. A stream of liquid lead poured out of the muzzle like water from a high-pressure hose, cutting the circus folk into pieces as he slowly swung the rifle from left to right. Soon the field in front of them was heaped with bodies and the wheat was stained rusty with blood.

Within minutes, fewer than a dozen clowns and circus hands were left standing, apart from three or four freaks - one of them a boy with six legs, like a huge spider.

'You want some more, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds?' Dom Magator yelled at them, and he shocked himself by the harshness of his own voice. 'There's plenty more where this came from!'

The circus folk hesitated for a moment, and then they turned around and began to scamper and hobble back toward the black tents.

'Come on,' said Dom Magator. 'No time to waste. This is where we go for the Grand Freak himself.'

They stepped gingerly through the scattered bodies. Xyrena kept saying, 'My G.o.d, my G.o.d, what have we done?' but Dom Magator didn't answer her. He remembered the first time that he had fought a battle in a nightmare, and inflicted casualties, and he remembered how shocked he had been, even when he had woken up the following morning.

'We're on our way, An-Gryferai,' Dom Magator told her. 'See if you can pinpoint Mago Verde.'

'OK, but I'll have to dive down lower. They're all hiding themselves underneath their awnings now.'

'Be careful, that's all.'

He saw An-Gryferai circle over the big top, and then dive downward. But suddenly she appeared to jerk, and thrash, and her wings folded up. She disappeared from sight behind the tents, and he could hear a shout of triumph from the circus folk.

'An-Gryferai! An-Gryferai! What's happened? An-Gryferai, get back to me!'

Over his intercom, he picked up struggling noises, and static, and somebody saying, 'Got her, the bird-b.i.t.c.h! Got her!'

He heard An-Gryferai grunting with effort, and then saying the single word, '-net!'

'Did you hear that?' he asked the other Night Warriors. 'Sounds like they've caught her in a snare!'

They began to jog more quickly toward the circus. The morning was even hotter now. Their boots crunched through the trampled wheat stalks and the black pennants on the big top made a lazy, slapping sound. As they approached the outlying tents, a single figure appeared, in a black tuxedo, with a bright green smile. He waited for them patiently as they came nearer.

'Well, well, what a surprise!' Mago Verde called out. 'It appears that I'm guilty of mistaking your ident.i.ty, tin man! But then one lard b.u.t.t looks so much like another!'

'Where's An-Gryferia, you creep?' Dom Magator demanded. 'If you've so much as touched her, I'm going to rip off your head off and p.i.s.s down your neck!'

'An-Gryferia? Is that her name? The bird-b.i.t.c.h who blew up poor Flammo? She's OK for now, maybe a little bruised. But I warn you. If any of you try anything funny, she's going to suffer. And not just suffer for now, but for ever and ever, amen. She wants to be a bird-woman? We can make her into a bird-woman for real!'

Dom Magator lifted his Scythe Rifle. 'This is the end, you piece of s.h.i.+t. This circus is going out of business, permanent.'

'I don't think so,' grinned Mago Verde. 'You know why I came here tonight. That's why you followed me. I have a ninth sacrifice for Brother Albrecht, and once we've enhanced his appearance, so that he begs us to stay with the freak show for the rest of his life, it will be time to pack up the tents and hitch up the caravans and trundle our way through to the wonderful world of wakefulness!'

'Take me to An-Gryferai,' said Dom Magator, pulling back the bolt on his rifle. 'Take me to An-Gryferai or so help me I'll cut you in half.'

'I was going to anyhow,' said Mago Verde. 'Come on, tin man, follow me!'

He turned around and started to walk between the tents toward the big top, his thumbs in his lapels, strutting like Charlie Chaplin. Zebenjo'Yyx looked at Dom Magator and said, 'What do we do now, man? He might have caught An-Gryferai, but we can't let him take this circus through to the real world, can we?'

'Let's play it as it comes,' said Dom Magator. 'I don't want any casualties if I can help it. Especially not An-Gryferai.'

Mago Verde led them through the archway that said Albrecht's Traveling Circus & Freak Show and into the big top. Inside, the noise was overwhelming. The Night Warriors stood in front of the stage and looked around, and every seat was taken - by a clown, or a freak, or a dreamer. This was going to be Brother Albrecht's big night - the night when he and his circus at least broke the sacred sanction that had kept them imprisoned in the world of dreams for over eight hundred years.

'Here's your precious An-Gryferai,' said Mago Verde. And there she was, on the far side of the stage, gagged with a red scarf and tightly bound to a wooden chair, her wings folded behind her. A tattooed strong man in a leotard stood next to her, grinning toothlessly, holding a long-bladed knife in his hand.

An-Gryferai stared at the Night Warriors with her eyes wide, shaking her head from side to side as if she were appealing to them not to surrender.

Zachary, the bald Freakmaster came strutting up to them, wearing his long black rustling raincoat. He smiled at Jekkalon and Jemexxa and he obviously recognized them, even with their helmets on. 'We meet again, then! Kieran and Kiera! Your mother the Demi-G.o.ddess is very well, you'll no doubt be pleased to know! You will see her in a moment!

Then he turned to Dom Magator and said, between gritted teeth, 'Your weapons, please, all of them.'

'You're kidding me,' said Dom Magator.

Zachary, still smiling, shook his head. 'We can't allow you to jeopardize Brother Albrecht's greatest night, now can we?'

'Go screw yourself,' said Zebenjo'Yyx. 'You ain't havin' my arrow storm stuff.'

'Well, that's your choice,' Zachary told him. 'But if you don't hand over your weapons, your feathered friend here is going to be disemboweled before you can blink.'

Dom Magator looked across at An-Gryferai. He had seen other Night Warriors give their lives in the struggle against evil, and Brother Albrecht's circus was one of the greatest evils that the world had ever faced. Corrupt, cruel and merciless. But how could he allow An-Gryferai to be cut open, right in front of him?

He unbuckled the rack of rifles on his back, lifted it off, and lowered it on to the ground. Zebenjo'Yyx said, 'No, man! Sheeit! You can't do that! We're goin' to be defenseless!'

Even Jekkalon said, 'Yes, come on, D.M.! We're warriors, dude! We know what the risks are!'

But Dom Magator shook his head. 'I can't let them butcher An-Gryferai, not in cold blood. Not when I can stop them.'

'And how many other people are going to be butchered, because we didn't stop Brother Albrecht? Thousands, maybe! Millions! You know what Springer told us! The whole d.a.m.n planet is going to go to h.e.l.l!'

Dom Magator loosened his belt and let all of his knives and handguns and ammunition magazines drop with a clatter around his feet. Zachary snapped his fingers and one of the circus hands came over and collected them up.

'Now your friends,' he said. 'Come on, please. We're running out of time here.'

's.h.i.+t,' said Zebenjo'Yyx, and reluctantly unfastened the arrow-firing mechanisms on his forearms. Another circus hand lifted the curved quiver off his back.

Jemexxa took off her power pack and that was carried away, too.

Zachary approached Xyrena. She looked up at him with a challenging expression on her face.

'And what weaponry do you have, beautiful lady?' he asked her.

Xyrena shook her head. 'Only my irresistible looks, baldy.'

'She's Xyrena the Pa.s.sion Warrior,' put in Dom Magator. 'That says it all. Don't tell me she isn't turning you on already. She can turn on a cigar-store Indian.'

'OK...' said Zachary, although he didn't look totally convinced. 'Now why don't you people take a seat beside the stage? I believe that Brother Albrecht is quite keen for you to watch his final sacrifice. He always savors the taste of revenge.'

A clown with a miserable blue face led them to a collection of chairs not far behind An-Gryferai. They sat down together, feeling defeated, not even talking to each other. An-Gryerai twisted her head around to look at them and her expression was filled with pain.

Almost immediately, there was a shrill fanfare of trumpets, and the curtains at the back of the stage were drawn back. The audience clapped and whistled and whooped with excitement as the ringmaster came striding out in his bottle-green tailcoat, cracking his whip.

'Ladies and gentlemen and those who cannot decide which they want to be! Welcome, welcome, welcome to Albrecht's Traveling Circus and Freak Show! Today is the most momentous day that this circus has ever known! Today is the day that we make our ninth and last sacrifice to Brother Albrecht, and return this circus at last to the world where it rightly belongs!

He spun around on the heel of his black polished jackboot and cracked his whip again. 'I give you! Albrecht's Traveling Circus and Freak Show!'

The audience rose to their feet, roaring with excitement, as the stage was flooded with scores of clowns and freaks. Dom Magator saw Jekkalon and Jemexxa's mother, the Demi-G.o.ddess, being wheeled to one side. To his horror, he also saw Maria Fortales, Brother Albrecht's eighth sacrifice. Her face looked more like a Mayan death-mask than a human face, with empty eyes. The operation on her arms had been completed by another surgeon, and now she had two huge cross-bred pythons writhing from her shoulders. Their jaws had been wired together to prevent them from biting anybody while they were on stage.