Part 19 (1/2)

'A witch? What kind of a compliment is that?'

'You have magic about you. You are fascinating me. But of course you are aware of that, yes? You are doing it deliberately. You think because I am a fallen priest that I do not know how to resist your allure.'

His words sounded very stilted, every syllable perfectly p.r.o.nounced, as if he were reading them from an English phrase book.

Xyrena shook her head. 'Not a witch, Your Freakness. Only a woman. But then you know all about women, don't you? How dangerous they can be. How much you can lose, if you're not very careful.'

Brother Albrecht was about to reply when all of the clowns and the freaks the animal trainers shuffled noisily backward, and the audience filling the big top let out a low moan of apprehension, like the moan of pa.s.sengers when an aircraft hits an air pocket and drops several hundred feet without warning. Through the crowd of performers on the stage emerged a thin Italian-looking man dressed in a s.h.i.+ny emerald-green suit, pus.h.i.+ng in front of him a large wire cage on wheels. He was closely followed by a sallow man with an iron-gray hairpiece and heavy George Burns spectacles. This man was wearing a long white lab coat spattered with brown stains, and thick brown leather gauntlets.

They were greeted and led forward to the front of the stage by the ringmaster, who cracked his whip and shouted out, 'Ladies and gentlemen! Perversions and distortions! I give you Signore Guido Serpente, reptile charmer of unparalleled mesmerity, and Doctor J. Friendly, surgeon of a thousand unimaginable agonies!'

Signor Serpente pushed the cage right up to the edge of the stage, and then stepped away. Jemexxa was closest to the cage, but at first she couldn't understand what was inside it. All she could see were gray dusty-looking coils, like worn-out hosepipes.

'Voila!' Brown Jenkin cried out, prancing around the cage. 'Sind hier die neuen Arme fur dieses reizende Madchen!'

At first, Brother Albrecht didn't take his eyes away from Xyrena. But then he said, 'Let us talk later, Fraulein. For now, this is more important.'

'You're the boss,' Xyrena smiled at him. Mago Verde had noticed the effect that Xyrena was having on his lord and master, and was glaring at her with undisguised venom.

Brown Jenkin unfastened the catch on the door of the cage, and then Doctor Friendly reached inside with both hands. The 'hosepipes' immediately reared up and it was only then that Jemexxa realized what they were: two huge snakes, each at least six feet long, and each as thick as a human arm. They both had flat, anvil-shaped heads, yellow eyes, and forked tongues that flickered out between their fangs.

'Oh my G.o.d!' she said. 'I'm totally terrified of snakes!'

Jekkalon took hold of her arm and pulled her back, and Xyrena came up and stood close beside her.

'What the h.e.l.l are they going to do with those?' asked Jekkalon.

But suddenly it became horribly clear. Signor Serpente returned to the front of the stage, this time pus.h.i.+ng a hospital gurney, with a grubby sheet draped over it. On top of the gurney jingled a tray of surgical instruments, scalpels and forceps and clips, as well as a kidney-shaped steel dish containing needles, sutures and swabs.

Brown Jenkin jumped up next to the gurney like an eager child and s.n.a.t.c.hed one of the scalpels. With a rat-like chattering noise, he scurried around to the back of Maria Fortales' chair and began to slash at the cords that bound her. Maria Fortales was screaming now, but Brown Jenkin ignored her, and Mago Verde was actually smacking his hands together in delight and laughing at her. Brother Albrecht heaved himself up even higher in his sh.e.l.l-shaped seat, using his knees for leverage, so that he had a better view of what was happening.

Once Brown Jenkin had cut through the last of her cords, three of the circus hands came forward and lifted Maria Fortales out of her chair. She kicked and jackknifed her body and carried on screaming until her voice was nothing but a reedy squeak, but the circus hands bundled her on to the gurney and strapped her down with wide canvas belts, one around her chest, one around her pelvis, and another round her knees.

Doctor Friendly had meanwhile lifted one of the snakes out of the cage. Xyrena didn't know what kind of snake it was, but she guessed that it was venomous, because he was gripping it tight behind its jaws so that it couldn't bite him. It writhed and twisted even more violently than Maria Fortales, so that two of the circus hands had to help him stretch it out on the gurney right next to her, and keep it pinned down.

Brother Albrecht's eyes were blazing blue with excitement, like the flames from two blowtorches, and he repeatedly kicked the side of his seat with his amputated left knee. 'Frau und Schlange!' he said, in a voice quivering with excitement. 'Woman and snake! Gerade wie der Garten Eden, noch einmal! Just like the Garden of Eden, all over again!'

Selecting a scalpel, Doctor Friendly held the snake tightly in his left hand, about eighteen inches from the end of its tail. Then, without any hesitation, he cut off those last eighteen inches, slicing through its muscle with his scalpel and then clipping through its spine with a pair of surgical pliers. The snake was thras.h.i.+ng so furiously from side to side that the two circus hands had to use all of their strength to keep it on the gurney, but Doctor Friendly continued his operation unperturbed, as if he had undertaken this type of surgery dozens of times before.

Mago Verde approached the gurney and bent over Maria Fortales, and underneath his green painted grin he was grinning for real. She had stopped screaming now, out of exhaustion, but she stared up at him in absolute terror, and Jemexxa could see that she was saying something to him. She couldn't hear what it was. The crowd and the circus folk were all making far too much noise, but from the movement of her lips she was sure that it was 'please.'

Doctor Friendly ripped off the adhesive tapes that were holding the thick gauze pad over Maria Fortales' left shoulder. He pulled off the pad, which was caked with dried blood, exposing raw, half-healed muscle and a sawn-off stump of white humerus.

For the first time he turned around to Brother Albrecht and addressed him directly. He had a warbling, monotonous voice, almost as if he were chanting plainsong in church rather than talking.

'This is now the most interesting part of the operation, your wors.h.i.+p. And also, I have to admit, the most difficult. I attach the muscles and nerves of the human shoulder to the muscles and the nervous system of the snake. In this way, our dear young woman here will be able to use the snake as a subst.i.tute for her absent arm.

'I will also connect the snake's cloaca to the young woman's internal organs so that it will be able to eat and sustain itself and use her digestive system to dispose of its waste.

He paused, and took off his spectacles. His eyes rolled around as if they were two planets in contra-rotating orbits. 'These snakes are a crossbreed of both reticulated python and krait. Python for strength and size; krait for its venom, which is sixteen times more toxic than cobra venom. When she has both snakes attached in place of her arms, this young lady will be the most dangerous female that any man has ever met. They will not hurt her, of course, because they will depend on her for their very existence! But Medusa the Gorgon will be nothing compared to this charmer! Imagine the shows that you can put on, your wors.h.i.+p! Challenge the men in your audience to make love to her, and see if they can escape with their lives!'

Mago Verde clapped again, and whooped. Unable to clap, Brother Albrecht closed his eyes and nodded his handsome head in tacit approval. The audience, both men and women, shrieked and whistled with excitement. They might have been dubious about Brother Albrecht's freak show when they first arrived in his dream, but now they were growing ever more aroused. Xyrena could see that Brother Albrecht was aroused, too, judging by the bulge in his jerkin. He mouthed something at her, but it must have been in German, because she couldn't even lip-read it.

Doctor Friendly replaced his spectacles, picked up another scalpel, and started to cut at the muscle of Maria Fortales' shoulder. The pain must have been unbearable, because she found her voice and screamed even louder than before.

Xyrena turned to Jekkalon and Jemexxa and said, 'Enough, already! I'm calling in Dom Magator. I'm not standing here watching this girl being butchered. You with me? As soon as they come busting in, Zebenjo'Yyx can zap that doctor and put him out of action. You go for Mago Verde.'

'What about the Grand Freak?'

'I think we should leave the Grand Freak to Dom Magator. He's the one with the Absence Gun. One shot from that and that'll be the finish of him. He won't even be history.

'John?' she said. 'Did you hear that? We need you in here like now.'

'Busting in already, baby - have no fear!'

FIFTEEN.

Skirmish In h.e.l.l Soon after Xyrena and Jekkalon and Jemexxa had disappeared into the big top, every clown and circus hand and freak had crowded in through the illuminated archway to see the show, and within minutes the carnival grounds had been deserted, leaving only the animals and the quasi-animals sitting miserably in their cages.

Dom Magator and Zebenj'Yyx had cautiously climbed to their feet and looked around. 'Clear,' Dom Magator had decided, and behind his fearsome African mask, Zebenjo'Yyx had nodded.

They had scrambled over the ridge where they had first taken cover, and then they had dodged their way through the rain toward the big top. They had run with their shoulders hunched, like a two-man SWAT team - Zebenjo'Yyx keeping his right arm held out straight in front of him in case he needed to shoot off a sudden burst of quarrels, and Dom Magator holding up his Absence Gun, with his finger on the trigger, ready to fire.

The Absence Gun looked like a Gatling machine-gun, with five rotating barrels, except that the barrels were made of pale green ceramic and the gun itself had a stock like a rifle. It worked on the principle of quantum decoherence, producing a wave function which made it a scientific impossibility that its target had ever existed. It was the third stage beyond the paradox of Schrodinger's cat, in which a cat in a sealed box was both alive and dead at the same time. Anybody who was. .h.i.t by an Absence Gun was neither alive nor dead, and never had been.

Over by the trees, An-Gryferai took a short run and launched herself into the air, her wings softly thundering. She quickly gained alt.i.tude, and flew up high over the top of the tent. Then she started to wheel around the four black pennants which were flapping wetly from its flagpoles. She was buffeted by the wind and the rain, and blinded by fitful flashes of lightning, but she managed to keep steadily circling, waiting for Dom Magator to give her the word to attack.

For the past ten minutes, Dom Magator and Zebenjo'Yyx had listened closely to everything that had been happening to Xyrena and Jekkalon and Jemexxa, so that when they pushed their way in through the main entrance and marched side by side into the auditorium, they had a good idea what would confront them. Even so, as they reached the stage, crowded with clowns and freaks and fire breathers, and with Brother Albrecht sitting in his black contraption in the center, Zebenjo'- Yyx said, 'Jesus Ker-ist! This ain't no circus! This is h.e.l.l on wheels!'

All around them the audience were baying with bloodl.u.s.t, both men and women. They sounded like a pack of hounds, more than three hundred of them, closing in for the kill. Many of them standing on their seats so that they could get a better view of Maria Fortales as Doctor Friendly prepared to suture the snakes on to the stumps of her shoulders. One woman had lifted her nightdress at the front and was gnawing at the hem in excitement.

Trumpets were blaring, drums were rattling, and the clowns and freaks were stamping their feet on the stage, so that the noise was overwhelming.

'Zebenjo'Yyx, sic that b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the white coat!' Dom Magator ordered. 'Jekkalon - Jemexxa - hit that fricking clown! The green one!'

Brother Albrecht caught sight of them. 'Who are these?' he shouted, and he was so angry that flecks of spit flew from his lips. 'Wer traut such, meinen Albtraum einzutragen? Who dares to enter my nightmare?'

But without any hesitation, Zebenjo'Yyx raised his right hand again. Lincoln couldn't consciously understand how he knew how to fire his arrows, but for some reason he did. Not only that, he did it with speed and casual expertise, as if he had let them off hundreds and hundreds of times before. He raised his right arm and pointed it directly at Doctor Friendly. Then he closed his fingers, and squeezed his fist tight, striking Doctor Friendly with six arrows. There was a sharp rattling sound as the arrows flew out of the release mechanisms on his forearm. Doctor Friendly was thrown backward by the impact and hit his head against the front wheel of Brother Albrecht's contraption. The two circus hands who had been holding the snake down ducked sideways for cover, but Zebenjo'Yyx raised his left arm and shot both of them, two arrows in the chest and one between the eyes for each of them. The snake twisted and rolled off the gurney and dropped with a thump on to the stage. Before it could slither out of sight, Zebenjo'Yyx shot it with seven arrows, all the way along the length of its body. The final arrow nailed its jaws to the floor.

Mago Verde, however, didn't wait. He struggled through the crowd of performers to the far side of the stage, and leaped off, forcing his way between members of the audience up the right-hand aisle. Brown Jenkin whirled around and saw him, and shouted out 'Attente moi! Mago Verde! s.h.i.+t-merde you b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Wait for me!' He immediately jumped after him and struggled up the aisle close behind him, s.n.a.t.c.hing at his coat and screaming at him. 'Attente moi! Attente moi! Wait! They will schneiden me if they catch me! You know that!'

But as Mago Verde tried to escape, Jekkalon pushed his way to the rear of the stage, where two vertical ladders ran up to a trapeze platform. He scaled one of the ladders so quickly that he looked like a human spider. He paused for only a split second, balancing on his toes. Then he swung from one trapeze to another, double-flipping and triple-flipping, flying over the audience toward the rear of the auditorium. The audience looked up in amazement, and immediately hushed.

Jekkalon reached the last trapeze platform well before Mago Verde had managed to fight his way up the aisle to the back of the big top. 'OK, Jemexxa!' he called out. 'Give me some of that sweet, sweet voltage!'

Jemexxa, who was still on the stage, lifted her right hand, with its s.h.i.+ny reflective palm. Jekkalon did the same. Mago Verde seemed to guess what was likely to happen, because he started to struggle back down the aisle again, and then he ducked his head down and hunched his way along a row of seats, trying to use members of the audience to s.h.i.+eld himself. Brown Jenkin kept close behind him, still screaming and chattering.