Part 17 (1/2)

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 cl.u.s.ters 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 st.i.tch-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 pa.s.sing 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 h.e.l.l 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 n.o.body 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 h.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.+very 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 s.h.i.+vering 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-G.o.ddess. 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 p.r.i.c.kling, 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.