The Magpye: Circus (22 page)

"I'm going to bring your pain
back now, Able," said Magpye. "I've fixed your throat enough for
you to scream. Let me know when you're ready for me to take over
again."

The pain hit in an instant. At
first, it was so impossibly vast that Able couldn't comprehend it.
It felt like someone else's pain, seen and felt sympathetically,
but still remote, still distant. In the darkness, it felt like his
body went on forever and the pain in some parts of it was so very
far away. It wasn't until the second wave, as his mind grew
accustomed to the amount of pain and began somehow to process it,
that he realised how very small and broken he was. No human mind
had a concept for this much pain or being alive having been so
utterly and completely butchered. It was what unconsciousness was
for, but Able knew that Magpye would not allow that. The creature
would keep him suspended here in this state of agony and terror
until he begged it for its help.

But it wasn't the only person,
Able wagered, who knew the dark things that the Magpye claimed to
know. There was someone else who had at least claimed to know this
power, to call it his own. Someone who had studied a lifetime to
wield it.

And so Able did cry out in pain
and desperation, but it was not the Magpye's name that he
called.

The word that Able Quirk
screamed was "Dad".

Marv woke up face down in the
rain, the wet and gritty earth of the circus in his mouth. It still
tasted of burning, even after all this time.

He struggled to his feet, mud
sucking at his hands, elbows, knees, and feet. His first thoughts
were of Marissa, but she was nowhere to be seen.

"Please," he whispered to
himself, staggering in the direction of the hidden entrance to the
underground mausoleum. "Please let her have made it back…"

His clothes were soaked
through; the rain stung his eyes as he fumbled with the hidden
catch that opened the concealed door. He tried to imagine her
opening the door from the other side, imagined the light and warmth
from their makeshift stove welcoming him. He held the image in his
head, tried to make it real. He ignored his senses, magical and
mundane, when they told him those things weren't there, that they
weren't going to happen. Marv had always thought that Magpye was
the only one who could hear the ghosts of the circus, but the place
felt strangely empty around him now. He couldn't shift the feeling
that, around him, that emptiness was mocking him. Laughing at him
through the rain.

But… No ghosts.

No Marissa.

The door opened suddenly and
there was only darkness and cold beyond it. What else would there
be in a mausoleum?

No ghosts.

No Marissa.

Marv let his legs give in and
slithered down the wet stone steps that led down into their former
hideaway. He lay there, half in the underworld and half not and
felt the rain fall onto his face.

He had killed her. His hubris, trying to make Adam
King
his
creature, his hubris, letting him believe that
he had hidden Able from the Kings, then his cowardice that had
allowed him to leave both Able and Marissa behind whilst he saved
his own skin. It had been that same cowardice that, fuelled by his
magic, had brought Marissa back from dead. Not whole, of course,
not intact. That was beyond his power, beyond anyone's perhaps.
Even the dead creature itself, the Magpye, had not seemed able to
breathe a full and whole life back into Able. No, what had come
back of Marissa had been what Marv had remembered of her. He had
not saved her for her own sake, he had saved her for
his.

Marv, the great escape artist,
who could even find a trapdoor to slip out his own grief. That had
always been the way that his magic worked. No great arcane
workings, no rituals, no ceremony. It was more a reflex, an
ingrained defence mechanism. Marv always got away unscathed, always
had an out. The great escape artist indeed.

And that, of course, was the
answer.

Still on the ground, the rain
in his face, the unyielding stone steps in his back, Marv
tentatively flexed his fingers and breathed a sigh of relief.

It was there.

As familiar as his own skin, he
felt the magic back in his fingers. It felt as if every bone in his
hands was a spring, coiled and ready to explode. Invisible sparks
jumped between them, a web of potential energy.

Magic hid, it was its nature,
but there were times when it begged, yearned, cried out to be
free.

It was a whip that begged to be
cracked.

There was only one thing Marv
could think of to do.

"Marissa."

Thunder rolled overhead like a
charge of horses as lightning painted the world monochrome.

Marv. Ever the showman.

The bottom of the pit was
covered with the dead, a mound whose depth Able could only guess
at. It was history, a history of lost people, a history of the
dead. It was the crimes of the Kings measured in feet and inches of
decaying flesh, shattered bones, and the stink of old blood and
shit. Able gingerly pushed his fingers into the dead flesh of the
corpse nearest to him, and pulled away a chunk of human meat. It
was still moist, still rich with humours and blood.

"Eat it," said the ghost of
Adam King.

"I can't,"
replied
Able.

"You've been living on scraps,
on dry blood and old skin. That's why we're weak."

Able lifted the quivering
morsel awkwardly to his lips. His arm felt like it was made of too
many sections, held together by straining sinuous muscle. He
stopped short, his fingers at his pale lips.

"I don't know who it is," said
Able nervously. "I don't know who I'm letting in."

He felt a ripple through the
ghostly waters of his mind, the other spirits muttering and
murmuring their agreement. They'd been quiet since Adam had
announced himself once again and the Magpye had vanished back into
whatever deep and dark place it called home. The Magpye had kept
Able alive though. His injuries meant he should be dead, more than
dead if such a thing as possible, and yet he clung to life. He
clung to life or whatever it was that the Magpye offered. Non-life,
un-death. It didn't matter. Able had been right, his father knew
how to control the dark thing that lived inside of Able, and those
secrets would soon belong to him.

"You don't have to let them
in," said Adam patiently. "You can control it."

"How?"

Without a word, Adam threw up
the same walls that had once trapped Able outside of his own mind,
outside of the control of his own body. Inside the walls, it felt
as if all the air had suddenly been sucked from a bubble around
Able. There was silence, a breathless, airless silence, and a
pounding pressure on the outside of the invisible sphere. Able felt
he should be gasping for air, but there was nothing. Nothing but a
silence in which Able's own thoughts could stretch and expand,
unfettered by the clutter of minds and memories he had become used
to in his own head.

Able breathed out, a lancing
pain running through both his lungs, and the pressure finally
overwhelmed the bubble around his thoughts. The dead flooded back
in, a racing torrent of voices and fragmented memories. He knew it,
and them, well.

"That's good," said Adam. "Now
eat. The flesh does more than just pass on the ghosts, it sustains
us as well. It will repair you, heal you."

"Dead flesh, rotten meat
…" mused Able, staring the gloom at the piece of human
muscle in his fingers. "Carrion."

He popped the meat into his
mouth before his father could voice another word, before the ghosts
could add their voices to the clamour in his head. The juices
filled his mouth immediately, running over his tongue and down his
throat. He felt the ragged beat of his heart quicken, then steady.
This was something that he didn't need his father to teach him.
This next moment was instinct, as the waters of dead memory rippled
from the sudden impact of a new mind, a new soul.

A new ghost found itself in the
confines of Able Quirk's head.

"Rosa Blind?"

"You son of a bitch," replied
the dead detective. "Where the hell were you when we needed
you?"

Sitting up in his bed, Cane
King dipped his fork daintily into the top of Sebastian Blake's
severed head and pulled away a piece of his brain. Taylor had
arranged the heads neatly on four individual silver platters, the
tops sawed cleanly away, the ragged necks supported by spikes that
stood up from the platters. Cane let Taylor watch from the shadows
as he slowly consumed the brains. He had once lurked in those same
shadows, the second son, watching Adam being instructed in the
strange methods and rituals of the Kings. It was jealousy, Cane
knew, that had led him to follow a path so divorced from the rest
of his family. That same jealousy had played a part in his
brother's murder, not to mention what Cane had done to their father
and grandfather.

No, Cane King knew only too
well what it was to stand in those shadows and witness a power
arcane, to witness it and desire it and yet know that it was beyond
your grasp. Of course, the strange power of the Ink was Cane's now,
but that little to diminish the memories of the hours he had spent
watching and envying his brother, the precious first born son of
the King line.

The 21st century suddenly
seemed a very long way away.

Cane popped a sliver of brain
matter into his mouth. The Ink rushed forward, up his neck and
across his cheeks, greedy for a taste. It turned his face into a
nightmarish swirl of black before retreating back to the parts of
him covered by his silk robe. It whispered to him, whispered
secrets and hidden truths from Sebastian Blake's decades of
criminal endeavour. The old man had kept a great deal hidden from
King. It did him some credit, King supposed, as he speared another
quivering fork full of brain.

This one contained flickering
images of the old man's murder. There was a bedroom, not unlike
Cane's but not as richly appointed nor as modern. There were
crashes and bangs beyond a heavy wooden door. Then, through the
door, Taylor approaching, a bloody machete in his hand. The old man
raised his hands, tangled in his bed clothes. A sudden warmth, the
smell of piss. Taylor standing over the bed, his eyes as dead as
ever, two pools of stagnant water under glass.

The machete. The machete. The
machete.

Cane shook his head, freeing
himself from the impromptu playback. He could feel Taylor's eyes on
him, those same dead eyes. They gleamed in the shadows, pulling in
information like two tiny black holes. Taylor saw everything. As a
lieutenant it made him invaluable, but it also made him dangerous.
At least, it had, before the Ink. What was Taylor now? His guns,
his knives, his quick machete. What were they to a man filled with
the terrible darkness that called itself the Ink?

Cane chuckled to himself.

"You can go, Jack," he said
commandingly. "I don't think these four are going to give me any
trouble."

"Yes, Mr. King," was Taylor's
only reply as he slipped obediently through one of the doors to
King's bedroom and closed it behind him with a soft click.

Alone, King let the Ink run
riot over his body. It surged to his mouth as, dropping his fork,
he plunged his hands into the brain of Crow. Shovelling the oozing
lobes into his mouth, he felt the Ink pulsing in his cheeks and
writhing along his tongue. Crow, the pimp, and his oh-so-many
girls. The Ink would have some stories to tell from him, oh yes
indeed. Overwhelmed by the memories rushing into his mind, King
didn't hear the sharp cracking of his jaw bone as The Ink forced
his mouth wider, distending his slack jaw until his gaping maw was
large enough to engulf the top of Crow's decapitated head and suck
the brains directly from it.

Gasping and heaving between
mouthfuls, Cane ate and fed The Ink's diabolical hunger.

Everything stopped in Able's
brain the moment Rosa spoke. Her mind was unlike anything he had
encountered before and it forcibly applied its rigour and order to
everything. There was no rushing torrent of memory here, no lost
moments to surface unexpectedly. There was no mystery, nothing
hidden. There was only order and control. This was the machine-mind
of Rosa Blind, and it would not be subsumed into the river of dead
things so easily.

"I asked you a question," she
said. Even in death, her voice was the same clipped, controlled
instrument that Able remembered. She had never trusted him, never
trusted his alter ego Magpye, he knew that. She had trusted Owen
White, and between them both they had brought her to her untimely
death. "Where the hell were you?"

"Cane King brought someone with him. A sort of
… witch, I guess. She trapped me.
Trapped Magpye."

Even though Rosa was in his head, Able wasn't ready to
start trying to explain the differences between him, Able Quirk,
the gestalt creature that had called itself Magpye and the other...
thing,
the
Magpye, the creature that hid
inside. He wasn't sure he even understood it himself.

Able felt something in his gut,
like dropping suddenly down a roller-coaster, as his own memories
rushed past at high speed. Rosa dragged his mind forcibly back to
the paper mill, to Grace Faraway, to Adam King, and to Cane. The
dizzying movement of images stopped without warning at times,
zooming in on some tiny detail or other. Rosa was silent, but Able
could feel her mind working, whirring, inside his own. Rosa Blind
saw everything, analysed it, and refiled it before moving on.