Part 18 (2/2)

'My darling...' Xyrena purred at him. 'I am anybody you want me to be, and then some. You feel like you're going to explode, don't you? Can you imagine me sucking you? Can you imagine the tip of my tongue swimming round and around you, like an eel?'

With a grunt of frustration, Mago Verde gripped both of Xyrena's wrists and gradually lifted her hands off his shoulders. He was trembling all over with the sheer effort of resisting her, as if he were lifting two hundred-pound barbells instead of a woman's arms. 'Ringmaster!' he shouted. 'Open the canopy! Let the Grand Freak see who has come to pay tribute to him!'

Xyrena kept on smiling at him. 'So that's it! You don't dare to give in to those baser instincts, do you? - not in front of your lord and master! But if the Grand Freak hadn't been here, you would have done, wouldn't you? You would have screwed me in front of all of these people, wouldn't you, and reveled in it! You would have danced around the stage crowing like a barnyard c.o.c.kerel! But oh, no! You don't dare, do you? Not in front of your lord and master!'

In truth, Xyrena's heart was banging inside of her breastplate and she was terrified about what was going to happen next. But she still felt an enormous power over Mago Verde, and over every man and woman and freak who was cl.u.s.tering around her. She aroused them, she made their blood tingle, in spite of themselves. Mago Verde wanted her. They all wanted her. She induced the kind of l.u.s.tful hysteria that led men to rape the plainest of women and women to submit to men whom they hated. The ringmaster's face was so congested that it was almost purple. His eyes were bulging and she could tell that she had pumped up his blood pressure, too.

He cracked his whip, however, and bellowed, 'All hail to the Great Creator of Nightmares, the Arch-Dreamer, the Grand Freak himself, Brother Albrecht!' - cracking his whip again and again to accentuate each syllable.

At the same time, he turned a handle on the side of the four-wheeled contraption, like the handle of an old-fas.h.i.+oned sewing-machine, and as he did so, the black leather canopy gradually began to fold up, revealing what was hidden underneath it.

Everybody on the stage dropped on to one knee - those who had knees - and everybody who was wearing any kind of hat or headgear removed it, and held it reverently against their chests.

'Your crown, you b.i.t.c.h!' Mago Verde hissed at Xyrena. 'Take off your crown!'

'I don't take off my crown for anyone,' Xyrena retorted. 'You said it yourself, didn't you? Yes? I'm the Queen of Someplace-or-Other.'

'Then tell your friends to take off their helmets!'

'They're not my friends, they're my bodyguards, and they never remove their helmets.'

Mago Verde was obviously furious, but it was too late now. The black leather canopy had been folded right back - and there, exposed for everybody to see - was Brother Albrecht, the Grand Freak, der Ursprungliche Sohn des Teufel, the Original Son of the Devil.

's.h.i.+t,' said Jekkalon, and Jemexxa whispered, 'Oh, my G.o.d.' Even Xyrena, who was trying to keep up her sa.s.sy streetwalker act, was taken aback. She had to take three quick breaths to steady herself before she said, 'Dom Magator, he's right here! Center stage! Brother Albrecht, in the fles.h.!.+ Or what's left of him.'

The four-wheeled contraption contained a sh.e.l.l-shaped seat, upholstered in worn black leather, and inside this sh.e.l.l-shaped seat sat Brother Albrecht. He was dressed in a sleeveless jerkin of brown velvet with a high collar embroidered with gold thread. His arms were nothing but stumps and his legs had been sawn off at the knees, but his shoulders and his chest were muscular and well developed. It was his face, though, that had caused Xyrena to catch her breath. He was devastatingly handsome, with sapphire-blue eyes and chiseled cheekbones and a wide, strong jaw. His lips were sensual and slightly parted, as if he had just finished kissing someone, or saying something deeply suggestive. His hair was long and blond and tangled, but tied up with fraying golden cords, and decorated with dead white flowers. He could have been the model for a Pre-Raphaelite portrait of Jesus.

Brother Albrecht's jerkin was open to the navel, and like the naked men and women who had escorted his contraption on to the stage, his body was decorated up to the neck with a swarming ma.s.s of tattoos - scores of intertwined ill.u.s.trations of devils and monsters and women performing grotesque s.e.xual acts with dogs and goats and slavering demons. It looked, in fact, as if he had turned himself into a living blasphemy - a challenge to everybody who had faith. Look at me! I dare you to turn your face away! Christians took my arms and my legs and turned me into a freak and banished me for ever! Would you have any faith in the Lord, if He had allowed you to be reduced to this?

In a deep, blurry voice, he said, 'Mein achtes Geschank. My eighth gift. Is it here?'

'Hier, Ihre Anbetung,' chittered Brown Jenkin. 'Recht vor Inhnen. Allbe bereit geandert zu werden.'

Brother Albrecht arched his back so that he could peer over the side of his black contraption, where Maria Fortales was sitting tied to her bentwood chair. He stared at her for a long time without saying anything. Maria Fortales was sobbing now, not only from the persistent pain from her double amputation, but in utter despair and disbelief. She repeatedly threw her head from side to side and kept twisting her body in her efforts to get herself free.

'Sie ist volkommen,' Brother Albrecht nodded, at last. 'She is perfect. Sie haben gut getan, Mago Verde. You have done well.'

Mago Verde bowed in acknowledgement. 'For you, master, anything. I know that you will reward me generously when the time comes.'

'Her new arms?' asked Brother Albrecht. 'Ihre neuen Arme? Are they ready yet?'

Xyrena was surprised that he spoke English, even if he did speak it with a very thick German accent, and not with any kind of German accent that she had ever heard before. A medieval German accent, she guessed. But then she thought: this is a dream, after all, and it's his dream, so I guess he can speak any language that he wants to, in his own dream.

Mago Verde waggled the fingers of both hands at the ringmaster. Whatever this signal meant, the ringmaster clearly understood it, because he wheeled around on his heel and let out a piercing two-fingered whistle. From behind the curtains somebody called out, 'Almost ready, signore! Almost ready!'

'Then quick! At the double! You are keeping the Grand Freak waiting!'

Mago Verde leaned over the side of Brother Albrecht's seat and said, 'Your attention, please, your wors.h.i.+p. Before we give this divine young lady her new arms, I have to tell you that we have three unexpected visitors.'

Xyrena tilted her head toward her microphone. 'Are you there, John?' she asked Dom Magator. 'It looks like we're going to be needing some backup in a couple of minutes.'

'We're right outside the big top, sweetheart. Locked and loaded, both of us. An-Gryferai is dead overhead.'

Brother Albrecht focused his sapphire-blue eyes on Xyrena and gave her a penetrating look that made her feel as she had become as transparent as water, and that he could see right through her armor to her naked body, and into her very bones. Into her thoughts, too, and her emotions, and everything that she had ever said or done or cared about.

'How can a visitor be unexpected?' he said. He looked at Jekkalon and Jemmexa, too. 'How can you three people walk into my dream without my dreaming it? Es ist nicht moglich.'

Jekkalon stepped forward. 'No disrespect, dude. We heard about your circus and we just wanted to take a look for ourselves. Me and my sister, we're acrobats. Trapeze artists. We have a kind of professional interest, if you know what I mean. We only wanted to size up the compet.i.tion.'

'Mago Verde?' Brother Albrecht demanded. 'How did these people get here? Are they real, or do they come from somebody else's dream?'

'Oh, they're real all right, your wors.h.i.+p. As real as I am. But I don't yet know where they come from, or how they got here.'

Brother Albrecht said to Xyrena, 'Come here, Fraulein. I want to look at you.'

Under her breath, Xyrena said to Dom Magator, 'He wants me to come closer. With any luck I'll give him the twitch, too.'

'Just play it cool, Xyrena,' Dom Magator warned her.

'What's he going to do? Grab ahold of me? Chase me round the stage? The guy doesn't have any legs.'

'Just watch yourself, that's all. He hasn't survived for eight centuries without having some kind of serious power.'

Xyrena approached the black contraption and then stood in front of Brother Albrecht, her chin tilted up defiantly, her coronet s.h.i.+ning, her heavy golden cloak rippling behind her in a wind that n.o.body else could feel.

Brother Albrecht said, 'What is your name, Fraulein?'

'Xyrena. Well - among others. My daddy used to call me his little Fruit-Loop.'

'Are you real, Xyrena?'

'The last time I looked in the mirror, yes.'

'You come from the waking world, nicht wahr? How did you get here? You realize that this is my dream, this circus? Mein Traum, verstehen Sie?'

'I know that. But you have plenty of real people here already, don't you? We didn't think you'd object to two or three more. And we're only pa.s.sing through, you know? Like Jekkalon says, we're taking a professional interest, that's all.'

Brother Albrecht's left eyelid twitched, as if he had a nervous tic. As haughty as he was, Xyrena guessed that their appearance in his dream had not only baffled him but troubled him, too. It was even more obvious that he was beginning to feel the effect of her s.e.xuality. He s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably in his seat, and between his thighs his brown velvet jerkin had visibly started to swell, and she knew that she was arousing him.

'Tell me, Xyrena,' said Brother Albrecht. 'Do I know you?'

'I very much doubt it, unless you've ever been to The Knick Bar in Milwaukee.'

'Are you a witch?'

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