The Black Tattoo (15 page)

And
then
—

—suddenly—

—they
all
took off.

"WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HEEEEE!" screamed Charlie, disappearing from view in a blizzard of fluttering wings.
 
The air was thick with them now, thick with the butterflies and the soft clattering sounds they made as they flew — a sound like the slow, soft crumpling of a million sheets of paper.
 
They followed each other, swinging round the room in a great arc, a seething, shivering, whirling mass of blurring bright painted colors.

Charlie danced on the spot, still screaming and waving his arms in the air as the butterflies dived and swooped all around him.

Esme, however, stood still.

For a second, as the air cleared between them, Charlie saw her.
 
Still grinning, he called out to her.

"What do you think?
 
Huh?
 
How about this?"

He made a casual gesture in the air with one hand, and suddenly tens, hundreds of the painted creatures were landing on her shoulders, on the skin of her bare arms.

Esme watched one on her hand,
 
She recognized it:
 
it was an early one.
 
Her brushstrokes had none of the finesse she'd developed later.
 
Without legs or antennae, it bumped against her blindly, each contact shaking tiny flakes of paint dust from its dark wings.

"They're alive," she said slowly.
 
"They're really alive."

"Yep," said Charlie.

"You can do this?" asked Esme.
 
"You can bring things to life?"

"Looks that way to me," said Charlie, smirking.
 
He too was covered in the oversize butterflies now, all over his arms and his hair.
 
Behind him, the rest of the great flock suddenly changed direction at once, sweeping the other way around the sides of the room.

"And you've done this," said Esme, "just to impress me?"

Charlie looked at her.

"It's a present!" he reminded her.
 
"Why?
 
Don't you like it?"

"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" asked Esme.
 
The butterflies leaped off her as she rounded on him, her hands shaking with sudden rage.
 
"Stop it!"

Charlie stared, his face slack with surprise.
 
"What?"

"Stop it!" shouted Esme.
 
"Turn them back!"

"Why?"

"Do it NOW!"

"All right!" said Charlie.
 
"All right!"

He blinked.

For a second, the butterflies froze in the air.

Then they fell.

Each one shattered into powder as it touched the ground.
 
In a moment, the floor was a mess of tiny flakes of paint.
 
The walls were covered in butterfly-shaped silhouettes.
 
These things were all that remained of Esme's seven years of work.

From opposite ends of the table, Esme and Charlie stared at each other.

"Don't ever," said Esme, "
ever
do anything like that again."

He stared at her for a moment.
 
Then he scowled.

"I'll do what I like!" he said.

"No, Charlie," said Esme quietly.
 
"You won't"

Something in her voice made Charlie stop dead.

He looked at her and grinned uncertainly.

"Come on," he said.
 
"I don't want to fight you, Esme."

Esme just looked at him.

"I mean, it was a present — right?"
 
Charlie's grin was wide again now, as if he were sure she'd still come round.
 
"I didn't mean anything by it.
 
I just wanted us to be friends."

"Well, that isn't the way to go about it."

The silence between them then lasted for a long time.
 
At last, Charlie's smile went hollow — and faded.

"Fine," he said suddenly.
 
He looked up and shrugged.
 
"
Fine
.
 
Well...
bye
, then."

He turned,
 
Already the double doors were opening to receive him.

"Charlie?"

He didn't answer.

"Charlie!
 
Wait!" she called.

But the doors clicked shut.
 
He hadn't looked back.

Esme was still staring when a loud, ugly buzz from the intercom broke the silence.
 
She went over to the door and pressed the button.
 
"Yeah?"

"It's me," said Raymond.
 
"Can you come down here and give me a hand a second?"

"What is it?"

"I've found Felix."

*
       
*
       
*
       
*
       
*

Raymond had only really wanted Esme to talk to:
 
even with Felix's unconscious body over his shoulder in a fireman's lift, he still climbed the stairs to the headquarters two at a time.

"He was in a private clinic out in the suburbs," he explained.
 
"He was checked in there by his housekeeper two days ago; that's why we couldn't find him till now."

"is he...?"

"Dead?" asked Raymond.
 
"No.
 
It's the Scourge's doing, that's for sure, but it's some sort of coma, like —
blimey
," he added as Esme opened the doors to the butterfly room and he caught sight of the scene beyond.

"Yeah," said Esme grimly.
 
While Raymond laid Felix on the table, she quickly told him what had just taken place.

"But how?" Raymond asked.
 
"I mean, I don't think even Nick had that much power."

Esme was pacing the floor.
 
"What worries me is the way Charlie was afterwards," she said.
 
"The way he left seemed awfully, I don’t know... final."
 
But then, noticing Raymond's look of dawning horror, she stopped.
 
"What?" she asked.

For another moment, Raymond just stood there by Felix's unconscious body, frozen by what had just occurred to him.

"Esme," he said — and gulped.
 
"I've never seen anything like this."
 
He gestured woodenly at the remains of the butterflies.
 
"I mean, bringing things to life!
 
Nobody in the Brotherhood's ever done anything remotely like this.
 
Ever!"

"So?"

"Well, what if...?" Raymond began — and fell silent.

Esme stared at him.
 
"Wait a second," she said, "let me get this straight.
 
Jessica wasn't the host, and neither was Felix — not if he's been in a coma for two days."

"Right."

"But the only other person who the host could have been is—"

"Nick!" Raymond finished for her.

"What about the test, though?" Esme asked.
 
"Choosing a new leader?"

Raymond shook his head.
 
"Nick wasn't looking for a new leader.
 
He wasn't even looking for new recruits:
 
the Scourge was controlling him!
 
What it wanted was a new
host!
"
 
He paused.
 
"And it found one."

They looked at each other.

"Oh, no..." Esme whispered.

SORRY'S
 
NOT
 
GOOD
 
ENOUGH

It was the same night:
 
it was stiflingly hot, and Jack was having bad dreams when the knocking sound got loud enough to wake him.
 
He sat up in bed suddenly.
 
Still wrapped up in his dreams, it took him a while to realize that the knocking wasn't in his head, it was coming from the window.

Jacks curtains were thin.
 
Normally, the orange of the streetlight outside came through them quite strongly.
 
At that moment, however, a large black shadow was blotting out most of the light.

Jack got up and pulled the curtains open.
 
Jack's room was three floors up off the ground, but there, waiting outside as if he were standing on solid ground, was Charlie.

He was smiling.
 
His arms were out at his sides; ink-black tattoo shapes were dripping down them, coiling restlessly under his skin.

Jack opened the window.
 
"Charlie, what the hell are you doing here?"

Charlie just smiled.
 
"Nice to see you too," he said.

"What time is it?" asked Jack.
 
When Charlie didn't answer, he looked back at the glowing red digits of the clock on his bedside table.

"Jesus, Charlie!
 
It's four in the morning!"

"Yeah?" said Charlie.
 
"I didn't check.
 
You were certainly out for the count."

"Yeah, well, that's because it's
four in the morning
," Jack repeated, since the information clearly hadn't gotten through the first time.

"Jack," said Charlie, "we've got to go somewhere."

Jack looked at him.
 
"What?"

"You and me," said Charlie.
 
"You see, I've just had the most amazing idea.
 
But I want you to come with me."

"Come with you where?"

"To the demon world," said Charlie.
 
"I want you to come with me to Hell."

There was a pause.

Jack looked at Charlie carefully for a moment.
 
Then he put both hands on the windowsill and leaned forward, looking out and down.
 
Charlie slid back in the air a few inches to make room.
 
Jack looked past his friend's feet, at the ground below, then he looked up at him again.

"You're steady as a rock," he said.
 
"Getting pretty good at this flying thing now, eh?"

"Jack," said Charlie, "help me on this.
 
I don't want to do it alone."

"Do what?"

"Open the Fracture."

"Ah," said Jack.

"Raymond'll never let me do anything," Charlie spat.
 
"And Esme..."
 
His expression turned hurt and puzzled looking.
 
"Well, I don't think me and her are going to get on, man.
 
That's all."

"What are you talking about, Charlie?"

"A real adventure," said Charlie.
 
"Don't you see?"

His eyes took on a weird gleaming quality that Jack didn't like one bit.

"You and me," said Charlie, "we don't need the Brotherhood.
 
We're better at fighting demons than they ever were.
 
And now we've got the chance to go somewhere
no one else's ever been
.
 
So how about it?
 
What do you say?"
 
Charlie had got so excited that he'd actually started bobbing slightly in the air.
 
Now, however, as he leaned forward for Jack's answer, the bobbing subsided until he hung still once more.

Jack looked at him.

"Give me a minute," he said.
 
"I'll get some trousers on."

Jack changed out of his pajamas quickly.
 
He was thinking quickly too, and his thoughts went something like this:

There was no point in saying no.
 
That was obvious.
 
Whatever Charlie was intending to do, he was almost certainly still going to do it whether Jack came with him or not.
 
But if Jack did go with him, then there might be a chance to warn the others or stop him somehow before it was too late.

In moments, he was ready.
 
He was dressed lightly:
 
black jeans, black T-shirt, and his favorite trainers.
 
In his back pocket, he had his phone, with Esme and Raymond's number already programmed into it.

"Okay," he told Charlie.
 
"I'll meet you outside."

Charlie shook his head.
 
"No good mate," he said.
 
"Your folks are downstairs, asleep in front of the TV screen, their heads lolling.
 
He almost smiled.
 
They'd be snoring.
 
They'd be stiff in the morning too:
 
his dad was always particularly bad when they'd spent the night on the sofa.

Should he tell them he was going?
 
Yeah, right
, he thought:
 
what would he say?
 
Besides, if he managed to warn Esme and Raymond in time, then maybe he'd be back in his bed before his folks even woke up.
 
But Jack sighed:
 
somewhere in his heart, he knew already that probably wasn't how the night was going to end up.
 
Not with his luck.

Typical.

Grimly, he swung his legs up onto the windowsill, took hold of Charlie's hands, and stepped out into thin air.

"Let's go," said Charlie.

"All right," said Jack.
 
And they were off.

Jack's home, his street, shrank below his feet and vanished into the night.
 
There was a rush of hot air, a sensation like huge black wings closing around them both — then they were stepping out of the shadows onto Charing Cross Road, in London's West End.

From the front, the Light of the Moon looked a bit like a cinema.
 
The entrance was a sort of wide stone porch, supported by three fairly ridiculous-looking cream-colored pillars.
 
The doors themselves consisted of six panels of thick sheet glass, with large and ugly vertical brass handles stuck onto them.
 
The darkness beyond the glass was total:
 
everyone who worked or drank there was long gone — but the street itself still had a few stragglers passing by.
 
The boys waited until no one was looking.
 
Charlie put his hand on one of the heavy locks, Jack heard a soft
click
, then Charlie was pushing through into the dark, empty space of the pub that was a gateway to Hell.