The Black Tattoo (36 page)

— was
typical
.

Jack's mind lit up with a freezing-white blast of clarity.

And now, suddenly, he was angry.
 
Very angry indeed.

In his hand, much to his astonishment, was his knife.
 
He must have got it out before the shark had grabbed him.
 
His arm was free, trailing below the giant flying shark's lower jaw.
 
So Jack reached up with the knife — and he struck.

The first blow almost jarred the knife's handle from his grasp as it hit Lord Slint's hard snout.
 
Jack took a stronger grip.

"NO!" he shouted as he stabbed down again.

"NO, NO, NO!" he shouted, stabbing down on each word, oblivious to the soft
thunks
of the puncturing sounds echoing in his ears.

"I'm NOT!" he yelled.

"GETTING!"

"BLOODY!"

"KILLED!"

"AGAIN!"

On the last stab, Jack heard a soft and unforgettably revolting
smutch
as his knife hit home.
 
Then several surprising things happened at once.

Lord Slint's gray-pink mouth hinged open in a grimace of sudden and terrible agony.
 
He stopped swimming.
 
His marblelike eyes rolled back in his head.

And slowly, but with gathering speed, Jack and the giant shark demon began to fall.

"Oh, no," said Jack, feeling gravity take hold.

"Oh,
no!
" he repeated with feeling, as he kicked himself loose from the shark's mouth.

And then, suddenly, they landed.

*
       
*
       
*
       
*
       
*

"It is
you
who are weak," the Emperor had been saying.
 
"You who are overconfident."
 
On each "you" he flashed his power out again, making the Scourge jerk helplessly where it lay.

"Now..."
 
He paused, raising his hands for the killer blow.
 
"Now it's game over."

Then he froze.

Wham!
  
With a sudden and stunning impact, Jack struck the soft carpet — just a few scant inches from the jelly stuff.

Ker-splash!

Lord Slint, in comparison, wasn't so lucky.

Whether the giant flying shark was alive or dead before he hit the pool, it's hard to say.
 
Lord Slint did not have time to struggle or fight before the seething jelly stuff picked him clean.
 
In another second, even his great skeleton was gone, and there was nothing left of his carcass but an evaporating stain on the surface.
 
But Jack wasn't looking at that.

"
Huk
," said the Emperor — and stood there rigid, his golden eyes bulging out with shock.

There was a long, slow moment of silence in the room.

The Emperor had been poised to destroy the Scourge — poised to wreak final destruction on this mythical creature and add its powers to his own — when, quite by accident, he'd been distracted.
 
As the small gladiator — this "Jack" — had fallen from the roof, followed by Lord Slint, the Emperor had paused in what he'd been doing, to watch.
 
In that moment, while his attention was elsewhere, something extraordinary had happened.

Ebisu Eller-Kong Hacha-Fravashi, Suzerain Absolute of the Dominions of Hell, looked down at his chest.
 
Specifically, he looked down at the long spike of cold steel that had suddenly appeared there.
 
Already the area around the wound was filling up with blood, a spreading stain of bright red, made brighter still by the shining whiteness of the suit he was wearing.

"What?" asked the Emperor.
 
"How...?"

In answer, Charlie put his head up from behind the Emperor's shoulder, clenched his neck in the crook of his arm to get a better grip—

—the rammed the pigeon sword home, farther still.

"YES," hissed the Scourge, rising up weakly from the floor.

"
No!
" gasped Jack, watching from where he'd landed.
 
What Jack saw on Charlie's face at that moment appalled and horrified him.
 
This time, unlike before, there was no sign of the black tattoo.
 
This time, Charlie's killing rage was nothing but his own.
 
And there wasn't just rage on his face:
 
the fury was matched in equal measure by a savage kind of glee.
 
It was obvious to Jack — it was written, truly, all over his friend's face — that for the first time, Charlie was enjoying this new power he had found, unaided:
 
the power to kill.

"It's not fair!" the Emperor whined, drips of bright red blood coming out with the words, making even more of a mess of his suit.
  
"It's... not...
fair!
"

"
You are weak, Hacha'Fravashi
," the Scourge repeated, putting its face right up to its enemy's.
 
"
Weak and decadent.
 
You, and those before you since I was banished, have turned from the one true path.
 
With Gukumat's help, I will awaken the Dragon.
 
The whole universe will be returned to the purity of the Void.
 
And
you
," the Scourge finished, "
you and everyone else no longer have the power to stop me
."

As if in answer to the Scourge's words, the Emperor's golden eyes rolled up in his head.
 
His whole body went suddenly rigid in a last paroxysm of agony — then limp.

Into the pool
, said Gukumat.

"
Yes, into the pool
," echoed the Scourge, its husky whisper a shred of the commanding voice it had always used before.
 
"
Do it, Charlie.
 
Do it now
."

Slowly, wordlessly, Charlie let the pigeon sword's point tip forward, further and further, until finally the weight of the Emperor's body made it slip off the end — flopping into the jelly stuff with a splash.

It hissed delightedly as it received him.
 
The surface seethed and boiled.
 
There was a loud electrical sizzling sound.
 
Then silence.

Ebisu Eller-Kong Hacha'Fravashi was gone.

The Emperor is dead
, said the Overminister in his strange, multitudinous voice.
 
Long live the Emperor.

Charlie looked up.
 
Slowly, as if his mind were coming back from some place far away, his eyes regained their focus.

"Huh?" he said.

All hail to Charlie Farnsworth
, Gukumat intoned.
 
God of Rulers, God of the Dead, God of Darkness, God of Gods.
 
The Voice of the Void, whose breath is the wind and whose rage makes all worlds tremble.
 
Lord of Crossing-Places, King of All Tears, and the Suzerain Absolute of the Dominions of Hell.

"Hail," the Scourge answered, bowing deeply.

Jack just stared.

But then, slowly—

— warily —

— Charlie started to smile.

TRUST ME

"Not being funny or anything," Charlie was saying, sometime later, "but — when I thought you were dead?
 
It really... sucked."

Jack looked at him.

"Being on the receiving end wasn't all that great either," he replied.
 
"But, you know, thanks."

There was a pause.

Behind Jack, the blazing light of the Fracture beckoned and shrieked.
 
In front of him stood Charlie, smiling in a way that Jack suddenly found completely and utterly exasperating.
 
Past Charlie's shoulder he could see the Scourge, making a great show of conversing with Gukumat but doubtless listening to every word he and Charlie said.

Suddenly, he didn't care.

"At the risk of stating the completely bloody obvious," he began, "this is a staggeringly bad idea.
 
Don't you think?
 
I mean, for one thing, what the Hell am I going to tell your folks?"

"Huh?" said Charlie.

"Your parents," Jack prompted.
 
"Remember them?
 
Come on, man, they're gonna be frantic!"

Charlie's face darkened.
 
"Tell 'em whatever you like," he growled.

"Sure," said Jack.
 
"I'll tell them that you've gone off to become Emperor of Hell—"

Acting
Emperor of Hell
, said an officious voice, and Jack realized that Gukumat was looking at them.
 
He has not yet been crowned.

"Whatever," Jack muttered.
 
He looked back at Charlie.

"Come on," he told him.
 
"Come back with us."

"I want to stay, Jack," said Charlie, shaking his head.
 
"I'm telling you, there's nothing for me" — he gestured at the Fracture — "over there."

"Oh yeah?" said Jack.
 
"And what's for you here?"

"Anything I want," said Charlie simply, and smiled.

Jack looked at that smile.

"Well," he said, "I suppose that this is it, then."

"Yeah.
 
I guess it is."

There was another pause.

"Listen," said Jack.
 
"You're not going to get into anything
evil
here, are you?"
 
He was trying to keep the tone of his voice light and joshing, but the effect sounded pathetic, even to him.

"Trust me," said Charlie, smiling.

Yeah
, thought Jack sadly.
 
Right
.

"Well," he said, "good luck."

"Yeah," said Charlie, sticking out a hand.
 
"You too."

They shook.

"But I think you're making a big mistake," Jack told him.

Charlie tore his hand out of Jack's and stalked off, scowling.

Jack sighed.

"
Mr. Farrell
," said a voice.

Jack whirled round, and there — it's ink-black face mirroring his own — stood the Scourge.

"
What I'm going to say is quite obvious
," it said, "
but I thought I'd make it clear to avoid any... misunderstandings
."

Jack just looked at it.

"
I have been merciful with you this time.
 
If our paths cross again, I can't guarantee I may be so again.
 
I would earnestly advise you, therefore, not to interfere in the future
."

"Is that right?" said Jack, doing his best.
 
"Well, I guess that depends on what happens between you and my friend over there, doesn't it?"
 
He gave the Scourge his most threatening look — and saw from his reflection that it wasn't very impressive.

"
You humans
," said the Scourge.
 
"So melodramatic.
 
And so dreadfully,
dreadfully
predictable. You have been warned, Jack Farrell
."

It turned and drifted smoothly away.

"Yeah," said Jack to its retreating back, "what
ever!
"
 
But it didn't turn round.

Jack sighed again and put his hands on the bar at one end of the ordinary-looking hospital trolley that was standing beside him with Esme laid out on it.

Esme's face was completely blank, utterly, horribly lifeless except for the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing.
 
There was nothing anyone could do, God had said.
 
Physically, there was nothing wrong with her — and it wasn't magic either.
 
Her unconsciousness was somehow self-induced, self-inflicted:
 
she could wake up at any time, or she might never wake up at all.
 
Personally, Jack had his doubts about this analysis, but his opinion, as usual, didn't seem to count for much.

He looked back at Charlie, who immediately looked away, pretending not to have been watching him.

Jack sniffed.
 
If he was going, it was time to go.

He turned his back, took a deep breath, and started pushing the trolley.

Its wheels squeaked, with a low keening sound almost like a human voice.
 
The squeaking stayed audible for a surprisingly long time as the boy and the girl passed into the crackling whiteness of the Fracture—

—and vanished.

Charlie watched them go.
 
Then he turned away.

END OF BOOK TWO

BOOK THREE

THE MASTER OF NONE

THE CATCH

Charlie Farnsworth stood on the edge of the Needle and looked out over Hell.

The gargantuan mountainlike shape of the palace seemed to swell out beneath his feet.
 
Beyond, the glory of Hell's fantastic landscape seemed barely contained by its purple-blue horizon.
 
Everything Charlie could see — the sea of fire, the five great roads, all of it — now, supposedly, belonged to him.
 
But Charlie still wasn't happy.

"What did Gukumat mean?" he asked the ink-black figure standing beside him?
 
"What was that about my just being 'acting' Emperor of Hell, exactly?"

"
It is just as the Overminister said, Charlie
," the Scourge replied carefully.
 
"
You have killed Hacha'Fravashi.
 
You have taken his place on the throne.
 
But you have not yet been crowned Emperor
."

"So?
 
What's the holdup?
 
Why can't you just crown me and get on with it?"

"
I'm afraid
," said the Scourge, "
that it's not quite as simple as that
."