Alexander C. Irvine (10 page)

The feathers of its cloak twitched in the still air and Archie felt a stirring in his left hand. He was clutching a penny-sized gold medallion with three feathers beaded onto it in a cluster. Its surface was worked in some sort of pattern, too faint to see in the dimness.

A quiet crackle sounded in the tense stillness of the hall, and Archie saw that the corn the two Dead Rabbits held was growing. Thin white roots sprouted from the stalks’ dusty ends, and the leaves and stalks smoothed and swelled. The ears of corn grew fat, hanging pendulously from the braid as they ripened before his eyes. The dwarf jerked one arm up, but it was already tangled in the rejuvenated leaves. They wound around his wrists, preventing him from dropping the woven strand, and crawled up to his shoulders. Royce was entwined as well, the stalks binding his legs to the railing.

Archie heard shouting from the street in front of the museum; the Rabbits stationed there sounded as if the same thing was happening to them.

“Tonacatl, maceh
uales tonacatl,”
the creature rumbled, its voice stronger now. Archie heard the words as
our substance, the sub
stance
of men.

It had reassumed a more human form, but its eyebrows were still crescents of tiny feathers, and patches of scale reflected moonlight from its forehead. The skin around its mouth and on the hand that had held the watchman’s heart shone a deep ebony as it looked out the window to the moon, murmuring words that echoed in Archie’s head. The feathers in his hand renewed their twitching.

There was a series of plops as the swollen ears of corn dropped to the floor. Their shroud of leaves peeled back and tiny human figures wriggled out, their knobby skin mottled yellow and red and white. They swayed as if drunk, bumping into the railing and each other before collapsing into mounds of corn kernels at the feet of the entwined Rabbits. Royce and the Geek stared like sleepwalkers at the rejuvenated mummy.

Archie registered another sound, a faint drumming of rain on the museum roof.
Rain, on a night this cold?
The mummy stood chanting to the moon as the sound slowly grew to a deafening crescendo, and then with a crash of shattering glass it was gone.

Riley st
een found
himself in an irksome situation. It was difficult enough to gauge the matrix of influences governing the chacmool’s reanimation without the sudden intrusion of bloody Archie Prescott, and the mayhem echoing from the museum’s upper gallery indicated a plan come partially, perhaps completely, unstrung. He reached into his pocket and extracted a damp paper package. Unwrapping it, he inhaled the calming scent of myrrh: his own strain of roses, one he’d worked obsessively to cultivate. He’d intended to don this tiny bud as a modest celebration of the night’s accomplishments. Now, it seemed, he needed it to soothe himself. At least it had been clipped at the proper time, when the afternoon moon had risen to obscure the seeing powers of the
hue
hueteotl,
Tlaloc’s only rival in antiquity and devotion among the Mesoamerican civilizations that predated the Aztec empire. The Old God, He Who Gives Men Faces, had thrown the Rabbit at the moon, and the
Tochtli’s
mischievous revenge was to blind him whenever the sun and moon shared the sky.

Steen hoped to avoid the Old God’s attention until the chacmool was safely in his grasp. The avatar of Tlaloc would certainly draw such attention, since one of the
huehueteotl’s
many incarnate aspects was Xiuhtecuhtli, Lord of Fire and Time—the opposed principle to Tlaloc, the god of earth and rain. The Old God was doubly difficult to understand because its nature was both male and female. Steen was in the habit of referring to the god using the masculine pronoun, as the Aztec priests had, but that habit could be dangerous. To ignore Ometeotl’s female aspects could result in fatal miscalculation, but the conflict inherent in the god’s duality made some simplification necessary. The one usual certainty when dealing with the
huehuet
e
otl
was that the
Toch
tli
interfered with its power. Unfortunately, the presence of the Rabbit brought its own tendency toward unpredictability, the kind of plan-corrupting chaos that had brought Archie Prescott to the American Museum tonight.

Steen covered his right eye and looked up at the moon, which was streaked with thin bright clouds. Even through this cover, the Rabbit was clear tonight, as he’d expected. Also clear, though, were other portents whose meaning for the night’s endeavor was uncertain. There was fire in the moon, a flickering about the Rabbit that could only mean that Xiuhtecuhtli had been awakened by the events taking place in the museum. And this on a day sacred to Tlaloc, when the prominence of He Who Makes Things Grow should have had dominating influence.
“Mit
zayani in ilhuicatl,”
he muttered—
the heavens split asunder.
Some vital piece of information was missing, and Steen had no idea how to begin pursuing it.

He couldn’t be certain because of the damned clouds, but it looked like the Rabbit was holding a knife.

Glass shattered somewhere in the museum, and thicker clouds blurred the
Tochtli’s
figure. Damn Lupita and her schemes, he thought. She had argued that using the
mocihuaquetzqui
to scar the child was the only way to lay the proper groundwork for the coming spring’s sacrifice. Steen had reluctantly agreed, knowing that the use of the fire sprites would draw Xiuhtecuhtli’s interest but hoping to maintain the integrity of his plans by closely guarding the girl until she was needed. It seemed now that Lupita’s devotion to Xiuhtecuhtli had corrupted the entire process from the beginning, opening the Old God’s eyes to Steen’s plan.

And he hadn’t anticipated the girl’s escape, thinking her cowed by years of captivity. The fact that he hadn’t been able to locate her, despite his certainty that she was in New York, solidified Steen’s conviction that the
huehueteotl,
in one of its aspects, had taken an interest in his affairs. Killing the girl’s mother had proved to be the most damaging of Steen’s (or Lupita’s) errors; having died pregnant, she was no doubt a
mocihuaquetzque
herself now. Steen had given up smoking cigars since that thought occurred to him. He was never sure when a flame would acquire a life of its own.

A slight teenager wearing the red piping of the Dead Rabbits ran down the alley from Ann Street, fear etched on his pockmarked face. A living cornstalk was wrapped around his right arm, sprouting a husk that dangled at his wrist. “Jesus, Mr. Steen,” he gasped. “It’s gone, it—”

“What about the barriers?” Steen snapped, although the greenery adorning the youth’s sleeve answered the question for him. “Where did it go?”

“Right through the bleedin’ windows—Christ!” The youth had raised his arm to indicate a direction and noticed the cornstalk. He ripped it from his sleeve, shredding the fabric, and flung it away. Its torn end sprouted roots that sought purchase in the packed snow.

“Dammit, boy, where did the chacmool go?” Steen realized he was crushing the rosebud in his fist. He relaxed the tension in his arm.

The museum’s rear door banged open and Prescott appeared, his arms pinned by Royce McDougall and the hunchbacked carnival freak Steen knew only as the Geek. Like the frightened sentry, the two Rabbits were draped in snapped-off tendrils of cornstalk. Prescott’s coat was shredded and his shirtfront streaked with blood.

“Mr. McDougall!” Steen forgot about the sentry and the fresh rosebud. “Did Mr. Prescott touch the chacmool?” Steen fervently hoped that Prescott’s injury was due to an altercation with the two Dead Rabbits. If he had been in physical contact with the chacmool, the consequences would be impossible to predict. Like the
Tochtli,
Nanahuatzin’s father was a wild card, a further intrusion of uncertainty into an already tenuous plan.

“It touched him, that’s for damn certain,” Royce replied. “Nearly ripped his heart out like it did the watchman’s, but then it backed away. What the fuck is going on here, Steen?”

“Complications, Mr. McDougall. We must be rid of Prescott at once.”

Royce immediately nicked a knife from his sleeve, but Prescott reacted just as quickly, kicking Royce’s legs out from under him and nearly pulling free of the Geek as well. Steen reached into his coat for the small derringer he kept there, weighing the problems of an escaped Prescott against the consequences of killing him so near the site of the chacmool’s reanimation.

Steen cursed and cocked the pistol as Prescott took another step, dragging the Geek with him. What sort of misfortune would that bring down, killing Nanahuatzin’s father? But then Royce lunged forward and buried his knife in the back of Prescott’s left thigh.

Prescott shouted hoarsely and stumbled as his weight landed on the wounded leg. Royce leaped onto his back, another knife conjured from somewhere in his clothes, but Steen stopped him there.

“Enough! Just hold him.” Steen repocketed the derringer. “We can’t do anything now. Too much has already happened here tonight.”

Where else, then? Dockside would be appropriate. At least three establishments in the Fourth Ward featured concealed chutes for the disposal of deceased patrons. In addition, the brackish waters of the river would confuse the old gods’ sight.

“Decide, Steen,” Royce growled. Prescott cried out again as the Rabbit jerked the knife out of his leg. “Shut up,” Royce said, holding the bloody blade alongside Prescott’s jaw.

He looked to Steen again. “I want to be elsewhere when the police get a look inside.”

“As do I, Mr. McDougall, but some forethought is required here.” Steen paused a moment longer, then made his decision. “In the wagon, all of you. We’ll take Mr. Prescott to the Old Brewery and conclude our business there.”

The Brewery, located in the Five Points scarcely a block from Prescott’s former residence, would still be echoing from the events of seven years before. Those echoes, and the fact that it stood on a filled-in swamp, might help to occlude the vision of observers. Steen cast another quick glance at the moon. Certainly the night’s activities would be better brought off as secretively as possible, and the fact that the Brewery was home to New York’s most desperately wretched citizens would be of assistance as well—their constant misery would swallow Prescott’s more acute anguish like a thick fog swallowing the smoke from a gunshot.

Or so he hoped.

The decision made, Steen relaxed enough to unwrap the fresh rosebud again. He pulled it free from the slice of potato he used to keep the stem moist. “Mr. Prescott,” he said, affixing the fresh bloom to his lapel and inhaling its sepulchral scent, “kindly indulge my curiosity. Why were you here tonight?”

To his surprise, Prescott laughed shortly. “I heard the mummy was a fraud,” he said.

“Well, I hope your doubts have been sufficiently assuaged,” Steen said. “With any luck, I won’t have to convince everyone in the same fashion.”

Royce hauled Prescott upright and shoved him toward the back of the wagon. The Geek was already inside. “I’m still curious,” Steen continued. “How does concern over the veracity of Mr. Barmum’s exhibit result in your skulking around back doors on a frigid midnight?”

“Look, Steen,” Prescott said. “If you’re going to have Paddy here stick a knife in me again, I frankly don’t see why any of this matters. Why were you here with a dozen Dead Rabbits and a wagonload of dead corn? You know a hell of a lot more about this than I do.”

Prescott’s bravado drained away as he tried to shift his weight. Grimacing, he said, “But since you ask, Bennett wanted me to have a look around.”

“Ah. This is the latest episode in his feud with Mr. Barnum, then?” Steen found the explanation plausible, but the appearance of Archie Prescott of all people on this night was certainly an unlikely coincidence. If coincidence it was. Steen wondered how much, if anything, the man knew about his daughter.

Best, he decided, to render the question irrelevant. “Into the wagon, Mr. Prescott. Bennett will have to wait another day for his scandal.”

Royce and the
Geek squatted at the back of the wagon, blocking the only exit. Relax, Archie told himself. If Steen really wanted to kill you, he would have.

But was that true? Clearly Steen had planned carefully for this evening, and just as clearly those plans had gone disastrously wrong. Why did Steen seem so certain that Archie knew something about the mummy? And what the hell had happened in there? The thing had been set to gut him like it had the guard; then for some reason it had drawn back. Why?

Archie shifted uncomfortably, wedged in among poles and boxes and bundles, puppets hung from the ceiling knocking against his head. The guard’s face, slack and impotent with terror, would not leave his mind. Archie wondered if he had looked the same when the creature had ripped open the front of his shirt and bent over him. The gashes it had left on his chest smarted as he moved around, but the bleeding had stopped. His leg, on the other hand …

“Why didn’t the booger kill you?” Royce said suddenly.

“I don’t know. You nearly did, though. I could be bleeding to death.”

“Nah.” Royce seemed undisturbed. “Just a poke in the muscle. Perhaps later, though,” he said, and Archie heard the smile in the Rabbit’s voice.

Later. Why were they waiting?
We can’t do it here,
Steen had said. But why—apart from the fact that murders took place there every day—would the Brewery be … safer?

That was it. Steen thought Archie posed some danger to his plan. But again, why?

Never mind, Archie decided. If he thinks I’m dangerous, so much the better. Pleading ignorance won’t help now.

The knife was buried under belt, shirt, and coat. Royce would surely notice if he tried to reach it. And Archie had no other weapons except surprise.

Acting before he could think better of it, Archie launched himself toward the back of the wagon, plowing into Royce and knocking him half out of the curtained doorway. He cocked his fist to throw a punch—but wait, no, something in that hand, mustn’t lose it—

The moment of hesitation cost him. As Royce grappled at the curtains to stop his fall, the Geek caught Archie with a hammering roundhouse, smashing his head into the corner of an ironbound trunk. Pain exploded in Archie’s ear and he collapsed across the trunk, his feet scrabbling weakly on the floorboards.
What’s in my hand?
he wondered dazedly, his unfocused eyes barely registering the moon outside—

And what fire burned in the moon? It couldn’t stay here under that
moon; the Rabbit watched, and l
ike an old woman the Rabbit was
a go
s
sip.
It
was weak despite the meal, and needed a place in the womb of earth to rest, away from the fire in the moon, away from the people and the stabbing light that swept across them like the Eye of the Old God itself. It stood and ran as fast as its wasted legs could carry it.

A kick to his punctured thigh shocked Archie awake. “Not dead yet, are you?” Royce’s face loomed above him, lit only by gaslight that leaked through the torn curtains.

Seeing Archie’s eyes flutter open, Royce nodded. “Just as well. I don’t want Steen angry tonight. Although I don’t suppose it makes much difference to you, does it? And I’ll be frank: I haven’t got a desire to kill a man the booger passed over. Still, business is business.”

Royce grinned and returned to his station at the rear of the wagon. In the pale wash of gaslight, his shadow swayed back and forth as the wagon rocked on its springs.

“Shouldn’t be long in any event,” the Geek piped up, quacking a grotesque laugh.

Archie found that he couldn’t fathom the joke. The thick cobwebs in his skull cocooned it, hid it away from him. He hurt in more places than he could count, and he had very little doubt that these were the last few minutes of his life—why then was the thing in his hand the only direction his mind would focus? Feathers, he felt feathers, tied together with some kind of cord. Beads bunched at the other end around a flat piece of metal like a coin, and was the coin moving somehow or was that his head?

He was suddenly terribly afraid that he would drop it.
Must hide it,
he thought, knowing it would make no difference if— when—he died tonight. And a pocket wouldn’t do; it had to be next to his skin where he could feel it.

Archie rolled over onto his side, bringing down a row of puppets whose strings he had tangled in his escape attempt. He curled into a fetal position and groaned more emphatically than was necessary. Feigning a struggle to disentangle himself from the web of strings, he thrust the beaded feather into his underpants, nestling it securely in his crotch. It might smell when—if—he recovered it, but it would be safe.

“Our boy Archie’s feverish, Geek,” Royce observed. “Musta cracked him a good one.”

“Guess so,” the Geek agreed.

“Maybe he’ll do us a favor and die before we get there.”

The wagon slowed and turned a corner, its springs squeaking as it bounced onto a rougher surface and came to a clattering halt. Not waiting for a command, Royce hauled Archie to the back of the wagon and out onto the street. The Geek hopped down beside them.

They had stopped in a narrow dirt alley behind the Brewery. Archie could see the building itself looming over them, fires flickering behind its rows of grimed windows. A smokestack caught moonlight, throwing a long shadow into the alley where they stood. His head was still reeling from the blow he’d taken; something was funny about the moonlight. He squinted upward, trying to figure out what it was.

Steen said something, Archie couldn’t hear what. In response, Royce turned suddenly and drove his fist into the pit of Archie’s stomach. Archie
whuffed,
and his knees hit the ground as Royce sapped him across the bridge of his nose.

He tried to vomit up the crippling pain in his gut, choked instead on the blood flooding from his sinuses into the back of his throat. Bloody vomit sprayed from his mouth and nose. Royce stepped to one side and let go of Archie’s collar as he brought the sap down again. A vast distant bell rang in Archie’s head; he pitched over onto his side, his stomach heaving again—

looking for the stars, but they too were obscured by fires floating over the street, casting strange shadows that merged and split as it ran. Surely it had run afoul of the
tzitzimeme,
the spirits of darkness; surely they had built this insane city of tall buildings like teeth to bite down on it as it ran, feeling the blood cool on its mouth, the heart,
yollotl,
beat out the last of its strength to feed limbs that at last were free. Its breath steamed and the air bit at its lungs, stealing already the warm life of the heart within
—Toniatuh,
the Sun, was very far away, and the rains too. He Who Makes Things Grow was silent, resting, giving his avatar only a few hours’ strength; it had to get away from the people staring wide-eyed like
pipil
turkeys. It stumbled down a narrow alley, seeking the ground, the earth that gave life, searching among mounds of garbage and filthy snow.

Snow, so close to the sea—

“Ahoy, Archie Prescott.” The sap tapped briskly on Archie’s forehead. “Look sharp. We’ve not finished here yet.”

Archie opened one eye. The other was stuck shut, whether by mud or blood he didn’t know. He saw Royce’s boots, the red piping on his trousers. Beyond Royce he could see Riley Steen shrouded in long coat and wide hat, the fresh rose pinned carefully to his lapel. Archie clenched his teeth and tried not to vomit again.

“What’s with the crowd, Steen?” said the Geek, from outside Archie’s limited field of vision. “You ain’t putting on a puppet show, here.” Raggedly dressed clusters of people had begun to appear in doorways and windows that opened onto the alley. Other shadows blocked much of the light leaking from the Old Brewery. One group of young men stood close together between the wagon and the rear wall of the Brewery. In front of them stood a young guttersnipe cradling a rabbit in his arms.
I’ve seen him before,
Archie thought.
God, does he live in the Brewery? Poor little arab; no wonder he never lets that rabbit out of his sight.

“Point well taken, Mr. Charles,” Steen said to the Geek. “At times people need to be reminded that cerrain transactions should be accorded a measure of privacy.”

Steen noticed the boy clutching the rabbit, and Archie saw his composure slip a bit. Had he glanced at the moon just then? “Rabbits are filthy, son,” Steen spat. “Misfortune and drunkenness. Let it go.”

The boy shook his head and tried to retreat into the group of men behind him. Archie’s groin began to throb as the strange feather token seemed to amplify his heartbeat. In the small of his back, the knife grew uncomfortably warm, and Archie saw with a dazed shock that one of the young men was Mike Dunn. And was he smiling?

Steen looked into the sky again, and whatever he saw shattered his restraint.
“Let it go!”
he roared, four fingers of one hand extended toward the boy. The rabbit exploded into flames, its squeal lost in the
whoosh
of the fire—

and the Eye of the Old One was open now, searching it out in a foreign place to feed its ancient body to the fires. A shock rippled through the night sky, and the winter breeze became more cautious in its flow. In the Moon, the Rabbit was laughing, and the city smelted like the temple atop Mount Tlaloc, when the wind from the sea swirled with smoke rising from the fires waiting to be fed with wailing children—

The boy’s thin screams subsided into a series of whooping sobs. Archie blinked and tried to lift his head. The alley had emptied; light shone again from the Brewery, and the moonlight fell squarely on the charred corpse in the filthy snow. For a moment, Archie was sure that the smoke and steam formed a woman’s face. Helen’s face?

Then the breeze blew it away and the only sounds were the boy’s diminishing sniffles and Mike Dunn’s ghastly chuckle as he walked over to the dead rabbit.

“You’ve certainly woken him now, haven’t you?” Mike said merrily.

“No,” Steen said with difficulty. To Archie he looked terrified, barely able to keep his composure. “No, I believe you did.”

“Fair enough.” Mike smiled a jaunty farewell and walked slowly away toward the Brewery. “But you should have known better than to do that while I was around.”

He strolled around the corner of the building, leaving a clear trail of footprints in the snow.

“God damn it,” Steen said, carefully enunciating each syllable. “Royce, listen to me very carefully. Follow my instructions exactly if you wish to avoid the fate of that damned rabbit.” He covered his right eye and gazed at the moon for a long moment.

“I’m listening, Steen. What do we do?”

“Mr. Prescott, can you walk?”

In spite of himself, Archie laughed, a short bark that became retching. “Shut up,” Royce said, and kicked him in the leg.

All the color bled out of Archie’s vision, and the remaining gray pulsed in rhythm with the throbbing in his hamstring and groin. Through the roaring in his ears, he heard Steen say, “The question was rhetorical, Mr. Prescott. Get up.”

Archie struggled to his hands and knees but could go no farther. “Assist him, Mr. McDougall,” Steen said.

“What?” Royce said. “What did we come down here for?” Even through the aftershocks of the Geek’s blow, Archie noticed the whiny tone that crept into Royce’s voice. Only a boy, Archie thought. A hard, cold boy, true son of the Five Points.

“Do it. I am leaving very shortly, and your survival will be much more probable if you listen to me until then.” Stepping carefully, Steen reached the front of his wagon and climbed into the seat.

“Christ,” Royce said. He slipped the leather sap inside his coat and gripped Archie under the arms, hauling him upright. Archie thought he should resist somehow, but he couldn’t even raise his arms. He slumped in Royce’s grasp like a drunkard.

Steen held up an open palm from the driver’s bench of his nightmare wagon. “When I leave here,” he said, “I will follow Orange Street to Grand and thence to Broadway. Whichever course you choose after your business here is concluded, do not set foot on any of those streets until the sun is well risen. Is that clear?”

“It is,” Royce said.

The Geek gaped silently at the burned rabbit.

“Good. Mr. Prescott is to walk into the Old Brewery unaided. You will follow him single file, stepping exactly in his tracks.”

Even given the night’s events thus far, this last struck Archie as ridiculous. “Why—would you rather I waltzed?” He wheezed a laugh. “I haven’t—I’ve got no reason—”

“You have every reason in the world, Mr. Prescott,” Steen said. “Think of your friend Michael Dunn. He found himself in a similar situation on a night I think we both remember.”

Steen’s words pinched off the last of Archie’s laughter. God, he thought. Was living like Mike Dunn the only alternative to being murdered by Irish thugs and dumped in the Old Brewery? If it was … well, in death there would be Helen. And Jane. Maybe I’ll finally see that rabbit in the moon, Archie thought absently. Jane, you can show me.

“I see you take my point,” Steen said. He gathered his horses’ reins. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

“Hold on, Steen. What about in the Brewery? Any instructions there?”

“See that Mr. Prescott remains there.” Steen snapped the reins and his wagon creaked and rattled away down the alley toward Orange Street.

“Charlie, Jesus, let’s go,” Royce said. The hunchback was still staring at the burned carcass lying in the snow. At the sound of his name, he jerked and looked around.

“Where’d Steen go?” he said suspiciously. “And what the hell did he do to this rabbit?”

“Never mind for now, or the same thing’s going to happen to us,” Royce said. “Now pay attention.” He repeated Steen’s instructions.

“What makes you think he won’t run away?” the Geek wanted to know, indicating Archie.

“Jesus’ sake, Charlie, he’s stabbed in one leg and can’t hardly walk from the clout you gave him. That rabbit could catch him if he decided to run. All right? Go on then, Prescott.”

Royce shoved Archie in the back, knocking him off balance. He fell to his hands and knees and remained there, chuckling weakly through the clotted blood in his throat.

“What’s so goddamned funny?” demanded the Geek.

“Nothing,” Archie said, and coughed. Just wondering if you need to follow my handprints as well, he thought. Strange; once death became a foregone conclusion, he could laugh about it. Then he thought of Mike Dunn again, leaving bare footprints in the snow, and stopped laughing.

The nearest door in the Old Brewery’s crumbling brick facade hung open a dozen steps away. Archie stood carefully, the effort setting his groin throbbing and his head spinning with strange images of leaping flames and Helen’s solemn face. He steadied himself and walked through the doorway.

Once inside, he turned to watch first Royce and then the Geek step carefully in his tracks and over the threshold. Bodies shifted in the darkness behind him, and Archie wondered how many witnesses there would be to his murder. He briefly considered running, realized how much easier it was simply to give up.

Better to face it, he decided. Think of Helen and Jane.

“I warned you, didn’t I?” Royce said from the doorway. “Bastard, I warned you—did you a fucking favor—and tonight you nearly get me killed. Twice.”

The blow came from nowhere, splitting Archie’s lips and knocking him over backward. It was funny, really, the way Royce was killing him out of injured pride, to prove he was the meanest b’hoy in Manhattan; preaching to the choir, Archie thought, his broken mouth smiling in the darkness as the two Rabbits methodically kicked him in the back and ribs, grunting with the effort and spitting curses between kicks. You don’t have to convince me that this Royce McDougall is one mean son of a bitch. Seems like the mummy could have saved us all a lot of trouble by just taking my heart for dessert. Archie’s mind emptied and blind instinct took over; he rolled away from the Rabbits, coming up short against a wall where he rested for a moment—

feeling the strange texture of burned timbers, breathing the taste of blood and the dead smell of old fires, hearing dim noisy voices outside and unspoken thoughts, wondering at the strange shape of this sanctuary. Here the Eye could not see. Here it would be safe until He Who Makes Things Grow called again. Here it could rest…

“Hey, friend.” Royce spoke into Archie’s ear, breathing heavily. “You’re a mess, aren’t you? Face is all busted up, you’ve pissed yourself… . God. And that ear is the worst—looks like a bloody carbuncle on your head.”

Royce shifted and Archie felt the Geek move closer. His ear was ruined, he supposed, but he couldn’t feel it; all of the pain had drained into a tiny pool in the bottom of his mind.

“That ear has to come off, boyo; lucky we have the Geek right to hand. He’s been doing this for years, haven’t you, Charlie? He’s just the man for your situation.”