The Black Tattoo (12 page)

"Help me get up, Jack," Jessica repeated.

It was the Scourge.
 
It had obviously doubled back somehow and had come back to finish Jessica off.
 
There was no sign of Charlie or Esme.
 
And now — as Jack continued to stare at it — the demon began to walk toward them.

"Jack,
help me up
, dammit!"

"Right," said Jack.
 
"Right."

"Get behind me," Jessica told him.

She was only standing with an immense effort of will.
 
Taking a deep breath, refusing to let her legs buckle beneath her, Jessica looked away from the demon that had come to kill her and down at the boy instead.

"Okay," she said.
 
"It looks like this is it."

She smiled sadly."

"I'm sorry, Jack," she said.
 
"You shouldn't have got into this.
 
None of us should."

She turned, took another deep breath, then, with more venom that Jack had ever heard in a person's voice before, she said:

"I hope you choke, you piece of—"

And suddenly, the Scourge was on her.

It leaped, crashing into Jessica, instantly knocking her flat.
 
For a second or two Jessica and the demon wrestled with each other before the Scourge pinned down her arms and brought the blank black shape of its liquid face right up to hers.
 
Jessica fought as hard as she could:
 
she wriggled and snarled, but as Jack stared, utterly helpless, a strange haze of light began to emerge from Jessica's face, a smoky gray light that crossed the space between her and the demon — crossed it and was instantly
absorbed
.
 
Suddenly, Jessica gave a long, gasping sigh — impossibly long, as though all the breath were being sucked out of her body.

The demon was sucking out her life, Jack realized.
 
The Scourge was sucking out Jessica's life, right in front of him!
 
Before he could even think about what to do to stop it, Jessica shuddered and went rigid.
 
The dreadful noise stopped; there was a long, frozen moment — then Jessica went limp and fell back.

The demon lifted its eyeless, blank face from what it had been doing.

And it looked at Jack.

Now it was getting up.

And now it was
coming for him
!

What?
 
said Jack's brain.
 
No way!
 
This was totally unfair!
 
His
job wasn't dealing with demons!
 
His
job was sitting and watching!
 
Numb with fear, Jack backed away, tripped over a gravestone, and fell over.
 
In a kind of ecstasy of panic, unable to take his eyes away from the demon, he kicked out frantically with his feet, trying to push himself away back across the ground.
 
But it still kept coming.
 
The ink-black figure kept walking toward him, a step at a time.
 
Closer it came, until suddenly—

"HEY!" said a voice.
 
"HEY, YOU!"

Jack looked up.
 
Standing behind the demon... was Charlie.

With a soft thump, twin balls of flaming orange light appeared in his hands.

"EAT
THIS
!" Charlie yelled, and flung them, catching the demon square in the middle.
 
Suddenly, to Jack's utter amazement, the demon's body was a mass of flames.

And then the Scourge began to scream.

It was like the screech of brakes, like paper tearing slowly in your head.
 
The black shape of the demon turned fluid, shooting out in all directions and snapping back in an effort to escape the magical fire, and the flames made great
whoomph
ing sounds in the air as the Scourge flung itself about.
 
The screaming kept going, on the same dreadful single note.
 
The demon flapped wildly, pounding on the ground.
 
The flames seemed to tear upward, straight through the demon's body, then—

WHUMP!

They vanished, leaving nothing but a few twinkling blue sparks floating in the empty air.

Silence.

"HAH!" yelled Charlie.
 
"HAAAAAAH!"

Esme elbowed past him and leaned down over Jack.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

Jack looked up at her, at her lovely face staring down at him in concern.

"Yeah," he said.
 
"I'm fine."

She smiled at him!

"But I think it got Jessica," he said, watching her smile vanish with an ache in his heart as she caught sight of Jessica's lifeless body.

Esme felt for a pulse.

"Is she——?"

"Yeah," said Esme miserably.
 
"She's gone."

"I got it, though!" said Charlie, dancing on the spot.
 
"I
got
it!
 
The Scourge is dead!
"

SWORDS AND PIGEONS

They were back at the theater.
 
At last, the doors opened.
 
It was Esme.

"You can come in now," she said.

Jack looked at Charlie.
 
They'd been waiting outside in the passage for almost twenty minutes while Esme gave her report to Raymond about what had happened with Jessica.
 
Still, for a moment Charlie stayed where he was, leaning against the wall.
 
Eventually, making it perfectly clear that it was in his own time and not because anyone had asked him to, Charlie detached himself and made for the door.
 
Esme stood aside to let him through.
 
Jack sighed, followed him, caught sight of the room beyond — and blinked.

The room they were standing in now wasn't quite as big as the butterfly room, but it was still impressive.
 
A large, coal-fired forge, presently unlit, with a wide, blackened metal flue poking out of the top of it and leading up through the ceiling, dominated the center of the space.
 
The forge was surrounded by workbenches, racks of tools, and several large pieces of machinery, one of which Raymond was standing over and adjusting.
 
He had his back to them, and as the boys came in he didn't turn round.

"This is the armory," said Esme.
 
This didn't really need explaining, Jack felt, because the walls of the room were entirely covered in weapons.

There were axes:
 
single- and double-headed, from small throwable hatchets and tomahawks to a five-foot-tall thing with giant gleaming steel half-moons that could probably chop Jack in half just by him looking at it.
 
There were throwing stars, glaives, and knives of every description — some sheathed, some hanging in their cases with their blades exposed.
 
Most of all, there were swords.

There were foils, with long blades stretching to points so sharp you could hardly see them.
 
There were cutlasses and scimitars — curved and wicked looking.
 
Every edged or stabbing weapon Jack had ever seen or heard about seemed to be represented somewhere — and a fairly high proportion that he hadn't.

"Nice collection," said Charlie, pretending not to be impressed.
 
"Where'd you get 'em all?"

"One or two of the older pieces belonged to the Brotherhood," said Esme.
 
"But most of them Raymond made himself."

"Come 'ere," growled Raymond without turning around.
 
"I've got something to show you."

Winding their way between the long workbenches, the boys went over to take a look.
 
On the table beside Raymond lay a long bundle of thick black canvas, which the big man proceeded to unwrap.

"This," he said to Charlie, as the contents were revealed, "is what I've been working on for you."

It was a sword.
 
A big one.
 
It had no grip, no handle yet:
 
the long, gently curved, dull blue-colored blade stopped abruptly, revealing the short, rough oblong of the naked tang beyond that.
 
But it was already an impressive-looking weapon.
 
It was shaped like a katana, a Japanese sword, the ones samurai warriors used.
 
Even unfinished, the sword looked beautifully proportioned and elegantly, utterly deadly.

"
Cool
," breathed Charlie, and reached out to touch it — but he suddenly found he'd grasped a pair of goggles instead.

"Put 'em on," grunted Raymond.

"Jack?" called Esme.

Jack turned as Esme tossed another pair of goggles to him:
 
he caught them — just — and smiled at her.
 
She didn't smile back, just pulled her own pair down over her eyes and walked over to join the boys in watching what Raymond was about to do.

The big man flicked a switch.
 
A low electrical hum sprang up from the machine, rising to a whine as it gathered speed.
 
The machine had a small wheel, not much bigger than Jack's fist, and it was this that was being spun by the motor.

"Watch this, now," said Raymond, lowering his goggles.
 
He took Charlie's unfinished sword and pressed it, gently but firmly, against the wheel's surface.

The wheel screamed, and an instant shower of sparks sent bright blue splashes across Jack's retinas, even behind the dark goggles.
 
The sparks sprayed a clear two feet ahead of the wheel as Raymond ground the long blade twice, once for each side of the sword's traditional single edge.
 
His strokes were smooth and easy looking, following the curve with a steadiness born of years of practice.
 
Then he turned the sword over and started again, grinding twice more.

Jack frowned, looking at the sword as best he could through the gusting sparks:
 
was he imagining it, or was the sword actually getting smaller?

Raymond turned the sword over and ground it yet again.
 
And again.

Now Jack was sure of it:
 
the sword
was
getting smaller.
 
And then the realization hit him:
 
Raymond wasn't sharpening the blade.
 
He was destroying it.
 
He was destroying Charlie's sword!

The wheel ground and shrieked as it bit into the steel.
 
Fat sparks flew as Raymond pressed at the remains of the sword mercilessly.
 
Jack watched where the sparks fell, watched their glow fade from white to orange and finally to black on the pitted surface of Raymond's workbench.
 
The long, curved blade became a stumpy blunt nub.
 
Then Raymond tossed the last bit of it aside, laid his goggles down carefully, and switched off his machine.

As the whine of the machine dropped back down to silence, Raymond unhooked a dustpan and a brush from under the workbench.
 
He swept at where the sparks had landed, collecting the filings into a neat pile before transferring them to a nearby bucket.
 
The he picked up the bucket and set off for the door at the far end of the room, before the boys had time to do anything other than stare.

"What the hell did you do that for?" spluttered Charlie finally.

"Just watch," said Esme quietly.

They followed Raymond into a storeroom of some kind.
 
Long metal shelves lined the walls to either side.
 
Raymond reached up to the top right-hand shelf and brought down a small sack of something, which he proceeded to pour into the bucket, mixing it in well with what remained of Charlie's sword.

"Mind how you go," he said to Jack, surprising him.
 
"There's no railing or nothing so don't be getting too close to the edge now."
 
The he opened another door, which took them out onto a roof.

The night air was cool, and the sky was stained a weird kind of violet by the orange color of the London streetlights.
 
The roof at the back of the theater was wide and flat, and at its center stood a big square crate made out of roughly nailed wooden slats.
 
The crate was almost as tall as Jack was, and there were fluttering and cooing noises coming from inside it.
 
Jack could hear the noises even under the sound of the West End traffic, which was surprisingly loud now that they were outside, even up where they were.

Raymond had turned his back again and was sprinkling great handfuls from the bucket over the top of the crate, provoking a frenzy of flapping and cooing from inside it.

There was a pause.

"Erm... what are you doing?" asked Jack.

"Feeding these pigeons," said Raymond.

"We can see that," snapped Charlie.
 
"What we want to know is, why're you feeding them bits of sword?"

"They haven't eaten since I caught them," said Raymond.
 
"They're hungry."
 
Then he went back to the feeding — smiling and making absurd little kissing noises at the pigeons, while the boys kept staring at him.

The boys looked at each other.
 
Then they looked at Raymond again.
 
Presently, he turned around and looked at Charlie.

"I've been making swords," he said, "for thirty years now, near enough.
 
I'm going to tell you how it's done."

Charlie stared at him, then shrugged.
 
"All right," he said.

"Find yourself a nice bit of metal," Raymond began.
 
"I'm simplifying, obviously.
 
Then you heat it up in a forge.
 
Around fourteen hundred degrees is best, I find, but 'bloody hot' will do for a rough description.
 
With me so far?"