'Leave it!' said Jemexxa. 'Come on, Jekkalon, we need to get out of here like now!'

But Jekkalon said, 'What was the point of us visiting this dream at all? We couldn't kill the Grand Freak, we couldn't catch Mago Verde, we couldn't save our mom! The least we can do is save this poor kid's puppy!'

With that, he kicked at the workshop door. It cracked, but stayed shut. He kicked it again, and again, and the third time it juddered open.

'Jekkalon!' said Dom Magator. 'Forget it! We don't have the time! It's a puppy, for Christ's sake!'

'It's the principle! We're supposed to be warriors, aren't we? Well, let's do some warrior stuff! Let's be heroes!'

He disappeared in through the door. Dom Magator said, 'Come on,' to Zebenjo'Yyx, and lifted his Sonic Blinder out of its holster. However rashly Jekkalon was behaving, they couldn't let him enter the workshop without backup. If the clowns reached the portal before they did, they would just have to fight their way through, regardless of the consequences - even if Dom Magator had to use his Absence Gun.

The workshop door led them into a narrow corridor. There was a changing room on the right-hand side, in which bloodstained coveralls and red safety helmets were hanging up on pegs. The air was thick with the sweet, cloying smell of dried blood and feces, as well as cigarette smoke and sweat.

The chopping noise was much louder now, as well as persistent sawing. One man was singing O Sole Mio, and two other men were whistling two totally different tunes, out of key. Dom Magator and Zebenjo'Yyx came to the end of the corridor and found themselves on a platform of planks and scaffolding overlooking the main body of the workshop. Jekkalon was already halfway down the steps, but it didn't appear as if anybody was paying him any attention. The workshop was crowded with at least twenty-five men, all of them in dirty coveralls, and all of them wearing red safety helmets, and all of them far too busy cutting and chopping to notice two or three strangers.

It looked as if Dom Magator had been right. Brother Albrecht must have drawn George Roussos into his nightmare tonight because he needed the skill of his workforce. These men were nothing more than dream figures, but this was only a dream, and while they were here, they could do whatever Brother Albrecht needed them to; and what they were doing was butchering.

The interior of the workshop had been set up as a meat-packing plant, with rows of stainless-steel hooks suspended from rails, and stainless-steel tables for cutting and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and disemboweling. There were two rows of pressure lamps hanging from the ceiling, hissing loudly, which illuminated the workshop with a bleached, unearthly light.

On the tables lay cattle and pigs and other more exotic animals, like llamas and mountain goats. The men were bent over them with boning knives and saws, cutting them in half and removing their legs and their heads. The cutting and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g tables were running with blood, and the paunch table, where cattle had their bellies slit open to let their bowels drop out, was thickly splattered with manure as well as blood.

Dom Magator looked around the workshop in disgust. When he was a restaurant inspector in Baton Rouge, he had visited more filthy slaughterhouses than he could count, mainly to find out how hamburgers had become contaminated with E-coli bacteria. But this place was a hundred times filthier, and the grisliest spectacle that he had ever seen.

's.h.i.t,' said Zebenjo'Yyx.

'Exactamundo,' said Dom Magator.

It was then that he realized that none of the slaughtered animals had been skinned - even the s.h.a.ggiest goat. Not only that, none of their meat had been cut from their carca.s.ses in the usual way - no steaks, no spare ribs, no hocks. He thought of Brother Albrecht's freak show and it dawned on him what was happening here. These animals weren't being butchered for their meat. Strictly speaking, they weren't being butchered at all - they were being disa.s.sembled so that their heads and their legs and their bodies could be mixed and matched with human beings.

'Jekkalon!' he told him. 'Jekkalon, we need to get out of here!'

But Jekkalon ignored him, and started to walk quickly along the side of the workshop. At the far end, in a shadowy corner, there was a row of cages with various animals in them. Dom Magator could make out at least three sheep and a German Shepherd.

For a few seconds, Jekkalon was out of sight behind one of the cutting tables. But then he reappeared, and he was carrying a golden Labrador puppy over his arm.

'I got it!' he said.

He reached the steps that led up to the platform where Dom Magator and Zebenjo'Yyx were standing. As he started to clamber up them, however, one of the slaughtermen looked up from the pig that he was cutting apart, and roared out, 'Hey! You! Where the h.e.l.l do you think you're going with that dog?'

Jekkalon ran up the rest of the stairs so fast that he collided with Dom Magator when he got to the top. By now, all of the slaughtermen had turned around and seen what was happening, and they came rushing toward the bottom of the steps, brandishing axes and boning knives and saws. They were led by a thick-necked giant with a bare, blood-spattered chest, who was bellowing like a bull.

'Get out of here!' Dom Magator told Jekkalon. Then, to Zebenjo'Yyx, 'Give me some covering fire, will you?'

Zebenjo'Yyx held up both arms and rattled off two streams of quarrels. The giant slaughterman was already mounting the steps, but he let out one last stentorian bellow and then he toppled backward, bringing down three of his companions with him. His body was unceremoniously heaved aside so that the rest of the slaughtermen could start to climb the steps, screaming and shouting even louder than before.

Dom Magator took two or three steps back, then lifted his Absence Gun, with the focus set in three stages, from narrow to medium to panoramic. That meant that a concentrated wave function would hit the slaughtermen first, and then two further wave functions would hit the killing floor, and then the entire workshop itself.

Two of the slaughtermen reached the top of the steps and came lurching toward him. They were both wearing brown leather skullcaps and floor-length leather ap.r.o.ns, and both were carrying bloodstained axes. They looked solid enough, but their faces were smudged and unfocused, with dark holes for eyes and no distinct features. Dom Magator knew that this was because George Roussos was dreaming about them, and although George Roussos knew how many slaughtermen he had working for him, he had no clear idea of what each of them actually looked like.

'Give us back that dog, you thieving b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' growled one of them, in a thick Polish accent.

'Or else what?' said Dom Magator.

'Or else you wind up like one big hambooger.'

The slaughterman came forward, swinging his axe rhythmically from side to side, like The Pit And The Pendulum. Although the man's face was so blurred, Dom Magator could tell that he was grinning.

'You don't know how much I'm looking forward to this,' he growled, swinging his axe faster and faster, in a figure of eight, until it whistled.

Dom Magator pulled the first trigger and - instantly - the slaughterman vanished, as did the rest of the slaughtermen scrambling up the steps behind him. Their knives and saws and axes fell to the floor with a clattering, ringing noise, like hand-bells. Technically, this was a paradox, because the slaughtermen had never existed to pick up their knives and their saws and their axes in the first place. But the paradox was only temporary, because the Absence Gun was set to eliminate their tools, too, and all of the cutting tables where the animals were being dismembered, and then the whole building.

There was a barrage of ear-splitting thunderclaps as the air rushed in to fill the vacancies left by the non-existent slaughtermen. Even inside his heavy protective helmet, Dom Magator was temporarily deafened. But he fired again, and again, and then there were two more catastrophic bangs, so violent that the ground quaked beneath his feet.

When he lowered his Absence Gun, Dom Magator saw that there was no workshop any more, no killing floor, no animals and no slaughtermen. He was standing in a briar thicket, with nothing in front of him but trees. The rain was still dredging steadily down, and when he turned around he saw the shack where Michael-Row-The-Boat-Ash.o.r.e-Hallelujah was sitting on the porch, and Jekkalon, and Jemexxa, and Xyrena, and Zebnenjo'Yyx, all standing around him.

He looked back to the trees where the workshop had been. But there had never been a workshop, and there had never been any slaughtermen. He felt at least half satisfied with what they had achieved. Even if they had not yet succeeded in putting an end to Brother Albrecht and his hideous traveling carnival, they had at least thwarted his attempt to create even more freaks.

Michael was hugging the golden Labrador puppy in his arms. Dom Magator walked across to him and said, 'We have to go now, Michael. But we'll be back, young feller, I promise you, and we'll get you out of this nightmare, and find you a really happy dream where they give you Cheerios and your mom can come visit you. At least you have your puppy back.'

'Thank you,' said Michael. His mouth was turned down and he was trying very hard not to cry. 'You won't forget about me, will you?'

Jemexxa hunkered down beside him and stroked the puppy's head. 'We won't forget you, Michael. Ever. When me and my twin brother go on to the stage next time, we'll sing Michael, Row The Boat Ash.o.r.e, and we'll dedicate it especially to you.'

'Does your puppy have a name?' asked Xyrena.

Michael nodded. 'He's called Froggy.'

'Froggy? That's a pretty unusual name for a puppy. Most kids would have called their puppies, like, Doggy.'

Michael rested his cheek against the top of the puppy's head. 'That's what my mom used to call me when I was a baby. She said I looked like a little froggy.'

Dom Magator saw that one of the needles on his seismic sensor had started to tremble. That meant that George Roussos was now rising through the last phases of REM sleep toward consciousness, and that he would soon be awake.

'Right,' he said. 'Now we really do have to get the h.e.l.l out of Dodge.'

SEVENTEEN.

Flesh Forward They ran in silence, like six shadows flickering between the tree trunks, their feet making barely any noise at all. They startled a few deer, and as they reached the edge of the trees, half a dozen gray grouse burst out of the undergrowth in alarm, like feathered bombs. But they kept on running. They had to circle around the right-hand side of the hilltop to stay out of sight of the clowns from Brother Albrecht's circus until the very last moment.

As soon as they were clear of the trees, An-Gryferai started to run even faster, and flap her wings. She lifted off into the drizzle, and rose higher and higher as if she were climbing up one invisible flight of stairs after another. Soon she was almost a hundred feet over their heads, and a hundred yards ahead of them.

Although it was still raining it was gradually beginning to grow lighter, and the mist was shining like a breathed-over mirror. An-Gryferai switched on her green fog-lenses, and, as she beat her wings and rose up to more than two hundred feet, she could see the rabble of clowns and freaks pouring over the hilltop and hurrying down the long gra.s.sy slope. The leading clowns were already less than a quarter of a mile away from the Night Warriors' shimmering octagonal portal - the portal that was their only way back into George Roussos' bedroom, and the world of reality.

'Dom Magator-' she panted. 'They've almost reached the portal already. There's no way we have any chance of reaching it before they do.'

'In that case, sweetheart, we'll have to meet them head on. I still have plenty of fancy ordnance left. But if we're forced to use the Absence Gun - well, that's just too bad. I'm worried that I might hit the portal, that's all. If the portal doesn't exist any more - we're Gregged, believe me.'

'In that case, let's hustle,' said Zebenjo'Yxx. 'It's not goin' to do us no good standin' around discussin' nothin', and that's for sure.'

They ran even faster, with An-Gryferai sweeping and swooping overhead. Inside his helmet, Dom Magator could hear them all panting in chorus. He thought at first that they might have a chance of reaching the portal first. But as they came around the hilltop, however, and ran down the slope together, they saw that the clowns were already waiting for them - hundreds of them. They were standing in a long line, their pointed hats drooping, their make-up streaked by the rain. They weren't moving. Most of them had their arms folded, and they were simply staring at the Night Warriors with a combination of real and painted hostility.

The white-faced harlequin with the blackberry lips was standing right in front of the portal. It appeared that he was the leader, since all of the other clowns were standing well back. He was holding a curved scimitar which he kept circling around and around, so that it flashed in the mist like a steel propeller. Directly behind him, framing him, was the crackling blue electric portal, and by the expression on his face it looked as if he was challenging the Night Warriors to try to reach it.

Dom Magator stepped up to face him. 'How about letting us pa.s.s, pal?' he shouted out. 'We didn't come here to hurt none of you, believe me.'

'Oh!' replied the white-faced harlequin, in a croaky, drawn-out voice. 'What about the fire breather? I think you hurt him somewhat. And what about Doctor Friendly? Looked like a pincushion by the time you'd finished with that unfortunate fellow, didn't he?'

'He deserved it. Trying to sew snakes on to that poor girl's arms. How sick is that?'

'Depends on your definition of sick, my friend. Life is sick, from beginning to end. Think how we're born! Our faces squeezed out of our mothers' nether regions like rabbits out of a tight pink hat! Only to grow, and suffer, and then to decline, and our teeth to drop out, and finally our hearts to seize up, and our bodies to become a tumbling ma.s.s of maggots! Don't you call that sick?'

'Listen, bro - are you goin' to let us through or what?' Zebenjo'Yyx challenged him, raising his right arm and clicking the elaborate wooden levers that prepared his arrows for firing.

The white-faced harlequin shook his head from side to side and made a tick-tocking sound with his tongue as he did so. 'The Grand Freak wants you to stay here. The Grand Freak wants you to join his circus. Think of what wonderful attractions you would be! The fat man and the bird woman and the black archer and the glittering twins, not to mention the naked woman who isn't naked at all!'

Out of the side of his mouth, Jekkalon said to Jemexxa, 'How much lightning do you have left? We could cremate this idiot in two seconds flat!'

But inside their helmets Dom Magator quickly said, 'No, Jekkalon! This close to the portal, one of your lightning strikes could short it out. Then we could never get back.'

High above their heads, An-Gryferai was circling and circling through the clouds, sometimes appearing, sometimes disappearing. 'Hey, D.M. - how about I dive down and grab him?' she said. 'He wouldn't survive a drop of two hundred feet, would he? And then we'd be clear to go.'

But Dom Magator looked at the crowds of clowns a.s.sembled on the other side of the portal. If An-Gryferai swooped down and hoisted this white-faced harlequin up into the air, and let him drop, the rest of the clowns would fall on them like a human tsunami, and six Night Warriors wouldn't stand a chance. For all of their arrow storms and wave-function rifles and intuitive throwing-knives, they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Brother Albrecht could dream up as many clowns as he wanted to, and they would never be able to kill them all.

'I'll make you a deal, OK?' Dom Magator suggested to the white-faced harlequin. 'You let us go through that portal, and out of your way, and I won't use my Absence Gun on you.'

'Your what?' croaked the clown.

'Oh - you never heard about Absence Guns? You know what an Absence Gun can do? It doesn't kill you. It doesn't even hurt you. It simply makes sure that you never existed, ever. You get hit by an Absence Gun and your parents never had you.'

'I'm not making no deals with you, tin man,' the clown retorted. 'The Grand Freak sent us here to bring you back to the circus, and that's exactly what we're going to do.'

Dom Magator hesitated. Zebenjo'Yyx could easily take out the white-faced harlequin with a quick storm of arrows; or Dom Magator could use a weapon against him that posed less of a risk of damaging the portal than the Absence Gun. But it would be suicide. If they brought down the white-faced harlequin, the rest of the clowns would never let them escape. They would either tear them to pieces right here and now, or tote them triumphantly back to Brother Albrecht's circus, where they would be cut apart, and sewn back together again with limbs taken from all kinds of animals and reptiles, and that would be even more unbearable than death.

Inside Dom Magator's helmet the seismic sensor quivered again. George Roussos was stirring, which meant that he had only minutes to make up his mind, if that. But before he could decide what to do, Xyrena came forward and touched his arm.

'Let me try, John,' she murmured. 'Maybe this is one situation that can't be solved by firepower alone, if you know what I mean.'

'What the h.e.l.l can you do against all of this rabble?'

'Watch me.'

Without saying anything else, she walked right up to the white-faced harlequin, her crown glittering and her gilded cloak idly flapping. The white-faced harlequin stopped whirling his scimitar around and around and looked her up and down, his eyes restless with prurient interest. Raindrops were quivering on her gleaming metallic b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the sensual curve of her stomach, and dripping from between her legs.

'So, my lovely lady... who are you?' he asked her, in his frog-like voice.

Xyrena reached out and laid her hand on his sloping left shoulder. 'You don't need to know my name, Clown. You want me. Isn't that enough?'

He stared at her for a long time with those kohl-blotched eyes. Xyrena was the least heavily-armed of all the Night Warriors, but in her own mesmerizing way she was one of the most lethal. And she was fearless, too. To approach the harlequin so closely, and to start stroking his white-painted cheek, that took ice-cold nerve, especially since he was still gripping his scimitar, and he could have slashed her throat at any moment.

'You want me so bad, don't you, Clown?' said Xyrena. 'So what if it's raining, and so what if hundreds of your fellow pranksters are watching us. What do you care? You want me here and now - right here in the gra.s.s.'

'Jesus, Xyrena,' said Dom Magator.

But Xyrena murmured, 'Get ready, John. As soon as he's distracted, you guys make a dive for the portal.'

'What about you?'

'I'm a big girl, John. I can take care of myself.'

All of the Night Warriors had heard her. An-Gryferai circled down closer, and said, 'I'm ready, Dom Magator. Just give me the word and I can fly straight through.'

'I'm not sure I like this,' said Dom Magator. 'In fact I don't like this at all.'

'Well, neither do we,' Jekkalon retorted. 'But what choice do we have? You want to end up with some orang-utan's face, instead of your own?'

Now Xyrena was untying the ruff around the white-faced harlequin's neck. She whirled it teasingly around her finger and dropped it into the gra.s.s. Then she started to unb.u.t.ton his sodden wet clown suit. She tugged it off his shoulders, revealing a narrow white chest with a prominent ribcage. He neither helped her nor resisted her, but his nostrils flared and he began to breathe very deeply, his chest rising and falling, and his eyes never stopped roaming over her gold-plated b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Uneasily, Dom Magator looked around at the crowds of clowns gathered on the slopes. He would have thought that they would have started to become restive by now, especially since their leader seemed to have temporarily forgotten what the Grand Freak had sent them here to do. But they were all staring at Xyrena with as much fascination as the white-faced harlequin, and some of them were clutching their clown suits between their legs and rhythmically squeezing their fingers.

Xyrena knelt down in front of the white-faced harlequin and wrenched his pants all the way down, tearing the thin white cotton as she pulled them over his shoes. Now he was completely naked, except for his white conical hat. His p.e.n.i.s was standing up as stiff and white as a bone, with only the faintest tinge of purple on the glans. His s.c.r.o.t.u.m had shrunk so tight that they had almost disappeared inside his body.

'Lie down,' Xyrena ordered him, but she said it very gently and warmly. 'Lie down, Clown, and you can have me.'

The white-faced harlequin lay down in the long wet gra.s.s. He looked thin and vulnerable, more like a boy than a man. Xyrena unfastened the buckles that held her armor in place, and opened it up, like a golden seash.e.l.l. Underneath, she looked exactly the same, except that now she really was naked - her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were real b.r.e.a.s.t.s, that swung when she moved, and her nipples knurled tightly in the rain. She laid her armor on the ground, and then she approached the white-faced harlequin as he lay in the gra.s.s in front of her.

'Come on!' she taunted him. 'How much do you want me?'

'I want you more than any woman I ever met,' he croaked back at her.

'Do you want me more than diamonds? Do you want me more than gold?'

'Yes, yes!'

'Would you go blind for me?'

'Anything!'

Xyrena smiled and said, 'That's what I needed to hear.'

She tossed back her cloak and then she knelt astride him, her head held high, with a strangely serene smile on her face. With her left hand, she took hold of his erect p.e.n.i.s and guided it up between her thighs, until the glans was nestling between the parted lips of her v.a.g.i.n.a. She looked down for a moment in satisfaction, but when the white-faced harlequin attempted to force his p.e.n.i.s deeper inside her, she gripped him very tight, so that he couldn't.

He struggled for a moment, b.u.mping his hips up and down. 'What are you doing to me?' he demanded. 'I want you! I want you!'