'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 shiny emerald-green suit, pushing 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 pushing 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 thrashing 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 worship. 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 worship! 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 shiny 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 shield himself. Brown Jenkin kept close behind him, still screaming and chattering.

Jekkalon swung from one trapeze to another, until he was dangling right over Mago's Verde head. He held out the palm of his hand and aimed it at Mago Verde, and told Jemexxa, 'Now!'

An intense flash of lightning jumped out of Jemexxa's hand and struck Jekkalon's with an ear-splitting bang. At the very last second Mago Verde grabbed Brown Jenkin under the arms and heaved him up in front of him. Brown Jenkin didn't even have time to shout out before his head exploded. Brains and bone shrapnel were sprayed all over the audience who were standing around him, and a cloud of brown smoke rolled up into the air, mostly from his scorched tweed coat.

Mago Verde slung Brown Jenkin's body aside and vaulted over the next row of seats, and then the next. Jekkalon swung after him, from one trapeze the next, but Mago Verde managed to keep dragging members of the audience in front of him, one bewildered dreamer after the other, so that Jekkalon didn't dare to take a shot. If he killed any of the real people who had been drawn by Brother Albrecht into this dream, he couldn't be sure what would happen to them in real life.

Mago Verde rolled over the last tier of seats and disappeared. Jekkalon swung after him on his trapeze, spinning in a wide circle, but he couldn't see him anywhere.

'You nailed him yet?' asked Dom Magator. He was panting hard.

'Not yet. I lost him. He probably escaped out back, where we snuck in. Do you want us to go after him?'

But Dom Magator said, 'Forget him for now. We got ourselves a whole lot of trouble on the stage.'

Jekkalon twisted around on his trapeze and saw that the clowns and the freaks and the circus hands were gathering protectively around the black contraption in which Brother Albrecht was sitting. But they were not just shielding their lord and master from Jebenzo'Yyx and Dom Magator. They were tearing open their shirts and their blouses and their silky clown costumes and baring their chests, as if they were inviting the Night Warriors to kill them.

Even Brother Albrecht's entourage of naked tattooed men and women were cl.u.s.tered around him, too, their arms held wide open, making no attempt to protect themselves. Xyrena thought that it looked like a nightmare production of Hair.

'You will leave my dream now!' Brother Albrecht shouted at the Night Warriors, and he was incandescent with anger. 'You will leave my dream now, all of you, whoever you are, and you will never return!'

Dom Magator climbed up the steps on to the stage. A white-faced clown came waddling toward him, as if to intercept him, but Dom Magator waved his Absence Gun at him, and said, 'You want to cease to exist? You're going the right way about it,' and the clown gave him a horrified grin and waddled away. Dom Magator approached Brother Albrecht.

'Sorry, pal,' he told him. 'Me and my friends can't leave just yet. We came here to bring this whole disgusting charade to a well-deserved conclusion and we won't be saying our goodbyes until we've done it. Now, if this collection of oddities and short a.s.ses know what's good for them, they will elect to stand peacefully aside and let us get on with the business in hand.'

He lifted his Absence Gun, double-c.o.c.ked it, and leveled it at the clowns and the freaks who had gathered themselves between him and Brother Albrecht. He saw a pretty little pale-faced girl standing directly in front of the Grand Freak. She had straggly brown hair and a long floral dress with a lacy collar. She gave him a hesitant smile, but when he looked down at her feet he realized why she probably wasn't afraid to die. She had the black-and-tan paws of a German Shepherd, instead of feet.

He thought that he would probably be doing all of these people a big favor, canceling out their existence as if they had never been born. But he knew that it wasn't his call.

Xyrena stepped up beside Dom Magator, and said to Brother Albrecht, 'Don't you have a conscience, Mister Grand Freak? You're responsible for all of these people. You wouldn't want to see them hurt.'

'I have seen them hurt!' they heard Brother Albrecht shout back to them, although he was barely visible behind the jostling crowd of freaks. 'I hurt them myself, and often! And mutilated them! It's all part of the show! All human life is pain and suffering and disappointment, no matter what lies G.o.d tells you! Pain and suffering and disappointment are the price we have to pay for being born!'

Dom Magator aimed his Absence Gun and tried to get a fix on Brother Albrecht's head, but the freaks kept moving and nodding and leaning at different angles so that he found it impossible.

'What you are trying to do is fruitless!' Brother Albrecht added. 'Now I want all of you to leave my dream and never come back! You will see it again, soon enough, when I bring it to the waking world! You will hear our music and see our black flags waving, and you will know that we have come to preach the truth about G.o.d, and the fallacy of human charity, and the pleasures of endless agony!'

'Not a fricking chance,' said Dom Magator. He nearly caught Brother Albrecht in his cross hairs, but the pale little girl moved her head into his line of fire, still smiling at him.

'Man, I think you should go for a shot whatever,' said Zebenjo'Yyx. 'How many of these freaks are goin' to survive, when this circus breaks up? Most of them, they're only dream people anyhow. You can't hurt n.o.body who's only a dream!'

But at that moment Brother Albrecht shouted out, 'Flammen! Flammen! Geben Sie mir Feuer!'

'What?' said Zebenjo'Yyx. 'What in h.e.l.l's name he talkin' about?'

They soon found out. The fire breather came stalking toward them, stiff-legged, his face still smudged with soot from his last display, like a marionette which has just been s.n.a.t.c.hed out of a bonfire. His cheeks were swollen, his eyes were watering, and Dom Magator suddenly realized that he had a mouthful of lamp oil.

'Hit the deck!' he shouted, and at that instant, with a soft roar, a huge ball of orange fire enveloped the Night Warriors, so that their armor and their costumes were set ablaze. Xyrena was the most vulnerable: she wore only a crown instead of a helmet, but Dom Magator spun himself around as the flames rolled toward them and shielded her face with his upraised hand. All the same, Xyrena yelped as the fire singed her hair.

Zebenjo'Yyx blew out the flames on his forearms, and then twisted around and around, furiously trying to see where the fire breather had disappeared to. 'You all right, Xyrena?' he asked. 'You not burned or nothin'? Everybody else OK?'

Jekkalon had swung back from the rear of the big top now, and he landed on the stage next to Jemexxa. Small flames were still flickering on her legs but he quickly smacked them out.

Dom Magator looked back toward Brother Albrecht's contraption, to see if he could manage to get a clear shot this time. For a fleeting second he saw Brother Albrecht's face, in profile, and Brother Albrecht looked angrier than ever. All this tussling was holding up his eighth sacrifice, after all - and not only that, Zebenjo'Yyx had killed his surgeon and one of his snakes. Dom Magator saw him sharply in his sights, and was just about to fire when an elderly woman with blood-red eyes deliberately blocked his line of sight. She had an expression on her face that explicitly challenged him, 'Go ahead, if you dare - kill me! There's nothing I'd like better!'

Zebenjo'Yyx came up to join him, still stiffly sticking out his right arm, ready to fire. 'Where's that fire-eatin' mother? He almost choked me.'

Before Dom Magator could answer him, there was another soft roar, from the other direction this time, and for a second time the Night Warriors were enveloped in a huge ball of flame. Zebenjo'Yyx fired off five or six arrows, two of which were blazing, but the fire breather was far too quick for them, and pushed his way back into the crowd. Dom Magator checked his infrared sensors to see where he might have gone, but for the few vital seconds in which he might have located him the ambient heat was far too high, and all he could see was dancing black ghosts, like a Balinese shadow-theater.

'n.o.body hurt?' he asked.

In the confusion the clowns and the freaks and the children had all started to drag Brother Albrecht's contraption back toward the rear of the stage.

'I still say take the G.o.dd.a.m.ned shot!' shouted Zebenjo'Yyx. 'Back in Hamtramck, you wanted to waste somebody, you just cruised by and you sprayed the whole street, no matter who was standin' there! Sometimes it's the only way, man, believe me!'

But Dom Magator looked up toward the ceiling of the big top and said. 'I got a better idea. An-Gryferai - you hear me?'

'I hear you!'

'Can you cut your way in through the roof?'

'You bet! Be glad to! You don't know how stormy it's getting out here!'

'OK, then - do it! Then fly straight down here to the stage and grab the guy in the orange flame outfit! He's a fire breather, and he's being a royal pain in the a.s.s! Take him outside and drop him as far away as you like, and from as high as you like! Just get rid of him!'

'There's a pretty murky-looking pond in the woods,' An-Gryferai told him. 'I could drop him in there. That would put his fire out.'

Within just a few seconds, Dom Magator heard a rippling, rumbling sound overhead. An-Gryferai was slicing open the thick black canvas with one of her claws, and the wind was making it flap like a sail.

She made a cut over twenty feet long, and then another cut diagonally across it, in a star shape. The howling of the wind and the sudden cold spray of rain on their heads made everybody in the auditorium look up. Without any hesitation, An-Gryferai folded her wings and came plunging through the cut, head first like a skydiver.

Down below her, on the stage, she could see the flame breather in his orange leotard, circling around the back of Brother Albrecht's black contraption. He was obviously trying to reposition himself so that he could spurt out another blast of fire at her fellow Night Warriors. He was filling his mouth with lamp oil from a large gla.s.s flask and he was almost the only performer on the stage who wasn't looking up at her.

She came soaring down, and as she did so, with a brisk clicking noise, she extended her mechanical claws. She hit the flame breather in the back, her claws crunching deep into his deltoid muscles, and with three strong beats of her wings she lifted him clear off the stage and high up over the audience. He tried to shout out in shock, but his cheeks were bulging with lamp oil and he breathed most of it into his lungs.

She lifted him higher and higher, while he spluttered and choked and kicked his legs in a vain attempt to wrestle himself free - even though he would have dropped more than seventy feet if he had managed it. An-Gryferai beat her wings harder and harder, until she had almost reached the ceiling of the big top. But as she rose nearer and nearer to the star-shaped cuts she had made in the canvas, she realized that the fire breather was much heavier than she had estimated him to be, and that she would have to spread her wings much wider than the cuts she had made in order to be able to lift him out of the big top and into the open air.

Not only that, the storm outside was howling even more fiercely than before, and she didn't think that she had the strength to battle the downdraft that was blowing in from outside - not when she was carrying a struggling man who must have weighed nearly two hundred pounds.

Maybe she should do what her grandmother Gryferai had done to the Black Shatterer, and simply let go of him. But there was no guarantee that the drop was enough to kill him, and put him out of action for ever.

'Jekkalon!' she gasped. 'Jemexxa!'

'What's wrong, A-G?' asked Jemexxa.

'I can't lift him out through the roof - he's far too heavy and the wind's too strong!'