'You said you wanted me more than anything?'

'Yes! Yes! Yes, curse you! Yes! I have to have you, you wh.o.r.e!'

'Do you want me more than life itself?'

'Yes!' he screamed at her, with spit flying out of his mouth. 'Yes-yes-yes-yes! Yes!'

When he said that, Xyrena took her hand away from his p.e.n.i.s and sank downward on to his hips, slowly allowed the weight of her body to take him deep inside her. He let out a terrible groan like a man having his bowels dragged out of him by a medieval torturer, part agony and part ecstasy, and his head dropped back into the gra.s.s.

Dom Magator turned back to the rest of the clowns. Almost all of them had their eyes closed now, and all of them were swaying backward and forward, as if they were anemones on the bottom of the ocean. He looked down at Xyrena, and she was rising and falling in the same rhythm, lifting her hips so high that the tip of the white-faced harlequin's p.e.n.i.s almost slipped out of her, hesitating, and then lowering herself slowly down again.

It was then that it began to dawn on Dom Magator what Xyrena must have understood intuitively. Each of these hundreds of clowns, physically, was an individual. Each one of them was dressed in a wildly differing outfit, and each one of them wore his own distinctive face-paint. If you killed any one of them, he fell, without affecting any of the others. But inside their heads, they were one and the same person. They all shared a common consciousness. They were all Brother Albrecht.

When Xyrena had aroused the white-faced harlequin, she had aroused all of these hundreds of clowns at the same time, just as she had affected Brother Albrecht when she had confronted him on the stage. Even now, it was possible that Brother Albrecht, back at the circus, was sharing this same s.e.xual excitement.

Xyrena rose up and down two or three more times, and then she said, 'Go, John! All of you! Go now!'

As if to emphasize the urgency of the situation, the seismic sensor in Dom Magator's helmet started to let out a repeated buzzing noise. George Roussos' eyes were flickering and he was only seconds away from waking up.

Dom Magator hurried Jekkalon and Jemexxa to the portal. They turned, and the portal lit up their faces in intermittent flashes of electric blue. 'We can't go without Xyrena!' Jemexxa insisted.

'Don't worry! Go! I'll take care of her! If she doesn't make it, we can always come back for her!'

Jekkalon and Jemexxa hesitated a split second longer, but then Zebenjo'Yyx forcibly pushed them toward the portal. 'Go! You supposed to be warriors! Warriors do what they d.a.m.n well tol' to!'

The twins disappeared through the portal with a sharp crackle of static. Then An-Gryferai landed nearby, folded her wings, and ducked through the portal after them, with another crackle. Zebenjo'Yyx caught a whiff of scorched feathers.

'Come on, man! Your turn!' he shouted. But Dom Magator was still hovering protectively over Xyrena as she continued to bring the white-faced harlequin closer and closer to a climax. The harlequin had started groaning again, and all of the other clowns had started groaning, too, in a hideous chorus, and swaying their hips even more lasciviously backward and forward.

'I'm OK, John,' said Xyrena, in a low, businesslike voice. 'I have this all under control. I'm sliding the needles out of my fingers right now.'

Dom Magator said, 'Zebenjo'Yyx - it's OK - she's just about to give our white-faced friend the needle treatment. Go! We'll be right behind you, I swear it!'

Xyrena bent forward over the white-faced harlequin, kissing his blackberry-painted lips and biting his neck. He was almost delirious, and his feet were arched with s.e.xual tension. He was right on the very brink of ejaculating, and his eyes were tight shut.

'Oh, yes!' he shouted. 'Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, my Lord Lucifer and every demon that ever was!'

Suddenly, however, he started to shudder, and to kick, and to toss his head from side to side. He made gagging noises, like somebody trying to be sick on an empty stomach. Gradually, Xyrena sat up straight and it was then that Dom Magator could see that she had spread both hands wide across his chest and run the long needles that protruded from the ends of her fingers into his ribcage.

There was a spitting, sizzling noise. The white-faced harlequin struggled even more furiously, and then smoke began to puff out of his lips. He uttered another extraordinary cry, more like a whoop than a scream, as Xyrena's needles brought the blood in his body to boiling point. His white skin was suffused with blotches of crimson, and he started to blister.

He stared up at Xyrena but he couldn't see her because both of his eyes had been poached white.

'You said you'd go blind for me, didn't you?' Xyrena reminded him.

He tried to speak, but all that came out of his mouth were more puffs of smoke. His head fell back and his bloated white face was mercifully covered by the gra.s.s.

'RIP,' added Xyrena, much more quietly. 'You said you wanted me more than life itself. Well, you got what you wanted.' She paused, and then she lifted herself off him. In the rigor of death, his p.e.n.i.s was still erect.

On the slopes, the hordes of clowns were milling around, bewildered and shocked. They had shared the white-faced harlequin's pa.s.sion so they must have shared his pain. Dom Magator picked up Xyrena's armor for her and took hold of her hand. 'Come on, Rhodajane, we need to get out of here p.r.o.ntissimo!'

'I'm not decent!'

'Who cares? Even when you were decent you weren't decent! Now, go!'

He pushed her through the dazzling blue portal - crackle! - and followed right behind her - crackle! - just as the first of the clowns reached them, howling and waving their knives and their clubs. One of them managed to pull back the elastic of his catapult and fire a pebble into the Roussos' bedroom. Zebenjo'Yyx was kneeling close beside the portal and in retaliation he loosed off three arrows.

Dom Magator said, 'No! They won't-'

But it was too late. The arrows. .h.i.t the bedroom wall and stuck there, shivering like wheatstalks in the wind. The instant he had stepped through it, Dom Magator had closed the portal behind him, and the way through to Brother Albrecht's nightmare had been sealed off.

'Sorry, man. Didn't want them comin' through after us, is all.'

'They wouldn't have. They couldn't. They can stop us from getting through but they can't get through themselves. They'd be fried.'

Zebenjo'Yyx plucked his arrows out of the bedroom wall and slotted them back into his quiver. Meanwhile Xyrena was fastening the buckles on her gilded armor and tugging her cloak straight. On the bed next to them, George Roussos was still asleep, but he was beginning to stir, and they could see his pupils darting from side to side beneath his eyelids as he came closer and closer to waking up.

'Let's go,' said Dom Magator. 'We didn't manage to knock out Brother Albrecht tonight, but we learned a whole lot, didn't we, and next time we'll make sure we do it right.'

'What I don't understand is why the Absence Gun had no effect on him at all,' said Jekkalon. 'You zapped that meat-packing plant, right, and everybody in it. Why couldn't you zap Brother Albrecht?'

Dom Magator shook his head. 'I have no idea. But right now, it's past six a.m. We need to get back to our beds. Thanks, everybody. For a first outing you all did real good.'

They embraced each other in a circle, and as they did so they rose upward through the ceiling of George Roussos' bedroom, and up through the bedrooms above it, and out on to the rooftop of The Drake Tower. It was light now, and Lake Michigan was sparkling with early-morning sunlight.

An-Gryferai spread her wings and peeled away to the south-east, to Florida. The rest of the Night Warriors flew east toward Cleveland.

Meanwhile, George Roussos swung his legs out of bed, and stretched, and yawned. He hadn't had such a bad night's sleep in years. Nothing but nightmares about cutting up animals - all kinds of animals, not just cattle and pigs and sheep. And clowns, and he had always hated clowns, ever since he was a small boy.

He checked the clock on his nightstand. Six seventeen. Time to take a shower and get to work. But then his eye was caught by the framed wedding photograph next to the bedside lamp.

He reached over and picked it up. He said, 'What the f.u.c.k?'

The gla.s.s in the photograph was shattered like a spider-web. He stood up, still frowning at it, and as he did so he trod on a smooth brown pebble.

EIGHTEEN.

The Sleepers Awake Kiera opened her eyes to see Lois Schulz smiling at her.

'At last you're awake, my darling, Gott zu danken!'

Kiera blinked and looked around her. She was no longer in the fourth-floor room that Springer had booked for them at the Griffin House Hotel. Instead, she was lying in a hospital bed, in a sunlit room with pale green walls and framed prints of pink orchids all around. When she tried to turn over and sit up she realized that her left arm was connected to a vital signs monitor.

'Lois? Where is this? What am I doing here?'

'University Hospital, my darling. Kieran is here also.'

'What am I doing in a hospital? I'm not sick!'

'Oh, you're not sick? Hah! You could have fooled me!'

'Why, what happened?'

'Who knows, already? Yesterday evening I came to your hotel room to take you and your brother to the concert and you were gone. I went crazy! My first thought was that you had been kidnapped! You know, for ransom or something like that! It was only by chance that one of the maids said that she had gone into another room on the fourth floor to take in some clean towels, and she had seen you both asleep, and recognized you. Otherwise, we would have had the police searching the whole of Cleveland! The whole of Ohio, even!'

'I'm sorry,' said Kiera. 'We really didn't mean to worry you.'

'Worry me? Worry me? Even when we found you, we couldn't wake you! Believe me, we tried! I shook you! I screamed in your ears, wake up, wake up! But you wouldn't wake up, neither of you, so what did I do? I called nine-one-one of course. I thought maybe you'd both been taking that Georgia Home Boy or that Special K or whatever.'

Kiera said, 'Lois, you know we never take party drugs. You know that.'

'Well, of course. The doctors gave you a blood test and he said you were clean like whistles. He tested for everything and he couldn't understand why you wouldn't wake up. He thought maybe it was some kind of a coma.'

'I don't know. Maybe we were just exhausted.'

'If you were so exhausted, why didn't you tell me? Why did you sneak off and hide like that? Don't you trust me to take care of you? I could have maybe rescheduled.'

'Oh, get real, Lois. You think you really would have?'

'Well, maybe not. But how exhausted do you have to be to sleep through a seven-and-a-half million-dollar concert? Do you know what the penalties are going to be? The refunds! Do you have any idea how much our insurance premiums are going to go up? You were exhausted? G.o.d made the whole world and He took only one day off!

She paused for breath and then she said, 'At least your next concert isn't until Sat.u.r.day. I should have such luck.'

'I'm sorry, Lois, truly I am. But there are some things which are much more important than money.'

'Name one. Please. I'd love to know what it is.'

At that moment the door opened and Kieran appeared. His hair was sticking up as if he had just woken up and he was wearing yellow hospital pajamas. 'Hi,' he said. 'You're awake!'

'Oh, great,' Lois greeted him. 'The other Comatose Kaiser. So how are you feeling?'

'OK, I guess,' Kieran told her. 'Kind of bushed, but that's all.'

'How can you be bushed? You two, you've been sleeping all night like dead people!'

'I've been telling Lois how sorry we are,' said Kiera. 'But I have tried to explain that money isn't everything.'

'Kiera's right,' said Kieran. 'So we miss one concert. It isn't the end of the world. Unlike the end of the world, which is the end of the world.'

'I would just like to know what it is that means more to both of you than your careers.'

Kieran sat down on the end of the bed. 'Our mom, Lois. Our mom is more important. And, like I say, the end of the world. That's more important, too.'

Lois looked from one twin to the other. 'Your mom. Your mom? You know how sorry I am, but your mom is long ago pa.s.sed over.'

'Pa.s.sed over, yes,' said Kieran. 'But not pa.s.sed away.'

'I don't know what that means, Kieran. I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about.'

'If it comes to the end of the world, Lois, then believe me, you will.'

David shook Katie's shoulder and said, 'Wake up, sleepyhead. I have to be gone in an hour. I made you coffee.'

Katie sat up in bed and frowned at him. 'What time is it?'

'A quarter of eight. I thought I'd let you sleep a little longer.'

'Urrgghh,' said Katie, falling back and wrapping her head in the pillow. 'I feel like I haven't slept in a week.'

David pried the two sides of the pillow apart. His face was very serious. 'That's what I wanted to talk to you about. You were so restless last night. In fact "restless" is the understatement of the century. It was like you were having a full-scale fight with somebody. Flapping your arms and kicking your feet and twisting around and shouting.'

'Shouting?' said Katie, staring at him suspiciously. 'What was I shouting?'

'All kinds of stuff. Something about how stormy it was, and how you couldn't lift somebody out through the roof. I mean, really weird things like that. You said you could see some circus, but it was too far away and you needed to gain more height. I swear to G.o.d you sounded like you thought you were flying.'

Katie reached up and touched his cheek with her fingertips. 'It was only a nightmare, David. That's all. Maybe I've been working too hard.'

'All the same, when I get back from Denver you and I are going to go talk to Aaron. Or Miriam, if you'd prefer.'

'David, I keep trying to tell you. I'm perfectly OK.'

'No, you're not. Something's happened to you. You've changed.'

She looked at him for a long time without saying anything, trying to communicate with her eyes that she had changed, yes, but that her feelings for him were as strong as ever, maybe even stronger. How could she possibly tell him that she was An-Gryferai, and that she had flown in a rainstorm over a circus, and s.n.a.t.c.hed a fire breather into the air, so that her fellow Night Warriors could blow him up?

How could she make him believe that she had fought against clowns and freaks and barely escaped from the most terrible nightmare that had ever threatened the human race?

'I love you, David,' she said, very softly.

'I still want us to talk to Aaron. Will you do that for me?'

Katie nodded. 'Of course I will. I have changed, I know that. But it's not for the worse, and it doesn't affect you and me. People grow up, that's all. Even when they reach our age, they can discover really important things about themselves that they never knew before.'

'So what have you discovered about yourself that's so important?'

'I think I've discovered that I'm much braver than I thought I was; and much more adventurous.'

'Braver?' David plainly couldn't understand what she was trying to tell him. But he leaned forward and kissed her forehead and said, 'OK. That's good. We'll talk about it some more when I get back. Just take care of yourself, you hear?'

John was woken up by a furtive tapping on his bedroom door. He opened his eyes and looked up the sloping ceiling above his bed. Then he turned his head to check what time it was. Ten after eight. Jesus. He felt as if he had been drinking tequila slammers all night.

More tapping. He knew who it was - Mrs Gizmo, his landlady. She always knocked like that, as if she was afraid to disturb him. 'John?' she called out, querulously. 'John? Are you awake? I don't hear you snoring!'