The Black Tattoo (42 page)

"Is this the, er...?"
 
he whispered.
 
"Do I—?"

"
Say yes, Charlie
," said the Scourge.

"Yes!"

"'
The Void is pure in my heart
'."

"The Void is pure in my heart!"

Approach
, boomed Gukumat's voices, in the same eerie, thunderous unison.

And instantly, the darkness blazed into light.

*
       
*
       
*
       
*
       
*

"I know why the Scourge was exiled," Felix began.
 
"I know why it was imprisoned."

Felix had returned from Hell.
 
He'd had no choice in the matter.
 
And now he was delivering the Scourge's message.

Esme stood in the butterfly room's ruined doorway.
 
She was dressed in black — black combats and a black hooded top with the sleeves pulled well down — and she held the pigeon sword clasped to her chest.

The rest of the room was filled with men with guns.
 
Their last attempt to keep Esme sedated had ended badly:
 
there had been
 
a number of casualties, and now the Sons of the Scorpion Flail had decided on a policy of keeping a discreet and careful distance.
 
They looked nervous.
 
But Felix had only eyes for her.

"Go on," said Esme quietly.

"Well," said Felix, "we in the Brotherhood always believed that if the Scourge were ever allowed to escape and make its way back to Hell, it would form an army of demons and lead it back to conquer the Earth."
 
He shrugged.
 
"We were wrong."

"Tell me, Felix," said Esme.

"All our religions are false," Felix said.
 
At this, a couple of the Sons began to shift awkwardly.
 
Felix ignored them and pressed on.

"There's no benevolent Creator watching over us all.
 
There's no divine justice, no grand master plan.
 
There's just this...
being
that made the universe and has been asleep ever since.
 
The demons call it the Dragon."

He took a step closer toward her.

"I've seen it," he said.
 
"The Scourge took me to the lower part of Hell, far below where the demons live, and showed me where it sleeps."

His voice dropped almost to a whisper.

"It's huge, Esme.
 
You can't imagine how big it is:
 
the brain just can't take it in.
 
All of Hell is built on its back, and I don't think it's even noticed.
 
And now the Scourge is going to wake it up."

"So?" said Number 2.

Felix gritted his teeth.

"The sole purpose of the Scourge's existence," he explained, "is to wake the Dragon.
 
For the whole of its life — longer than we can possibly imagine — it's been trying to do this one thing.
 
Once, before, it almost succeeded:
 
instead, the Scourge was sent into exile — imprisoned, here on Earth.
 
But ever since then it's been biding its time, waiting for another chance.
 
And now, thanks to this boy Charlie, that chance has finally come."

"The chance for what?" asked Number 3 quietly.

Felix didn't want to say it.
 
It felt too much like another betrayal.

He took a deep breath.

"The Scourge hates all living things," he said.
 
"Even — it seems — itself.
 
The Scourge will use Charlie to help it wake the Dragon, and if the Scourge succeeds, if the Dragon wakes... the universe will come to an end."

He paused.

"The whole of Creation will be wiped out:
 
everything
will cease
to
exist
.
 
Instead, there will be on Void:
 
nothingness.
 
'Purity,' the Scourge calls it.
 
Forever."

There.
 
He had said it.
 
Immediately, the thing inside him woke up and began its work.
 
Felix could feel it.
 
There was no turning back now.

It was an odd sensation.
 
When the Scourge had told him what was going to happen to him, he'd been expecting to panic when the time came.
 
Now that it was here — now he could see it happening and feel the slow seeping cold moving all the way through him — he felt strangely calm.
 
He looked down at his hands.
 
Already they were becoming translucent.
 
Another moment, and a dull metallic line began to make itself visible through the flesh of his wrists.
 
The line was the other side of the handcuffs the Sons had put him in
 
when they'd found him as he stepped back through the Fracture.

When he'd returned from Hell, Felix had brought his death with him.
 
Now he was fading away.
 
Literally.

"My message is this," he said.
 
"The only thing that can stop the Scourge from waking the Dragon — the only thing that can stop the universe from being destroyed — is you, Esme.
 
This is what I was summoned to tell you.
 
Either you return to Hell and face the Scourge again, or, well..."
 
He shrugged miserably.
 
"You get the picture."

The handcuffs fell to the floor with a dull clank.

"That's it," he said.
 
"That’s the end of the message.
 
I don't know what the Scourge wants with you:
 
it's obviously a trap.
 
Bus as you can see," he said, holding his hands up in front of his face, "I had no choice."

His hands were completely transparent now.
 
Through the thin misty shapes that were all that remained of them, Felix and Esme looked at each other.

"I'm sorry, Esme," said Felix, keeping his gaze on her thirstily for as long as he could.
 
Esme was, after all, the only person he cared about in the whole world — even though she was the one person who could never have cared about him.
 
He didn't mind, he realized.
 
He loved her anyway, just the same:
 
he
loved
her, he told himself, and the realization cast a last wisp of warmth through the freezing, creeping cold inside him.

Esme stared back at him.
 
Her eyes were bright.

Then suddenly, silently, Felix disappeared.

The Brotherhood of Sleep was finished:
 
the last surviving member of the generation that had let the Scourge escape was gone, and the demon's vengeance on its jailers was complete.

Almost.

"Jack," Esme whispered.

"What?" said Number 2.

"Jack," she told him.
 
"I need Jack."

THE MISSION

"So..." said Jack to Esme later.
 
"What's the plan again?"

They were standing in the Light of the Moon.
 
It was late in the evening of the following day.
 
Number 2 had finally bowed to Number 3's repeated requests and closed the pub down:
 
the place was deserted apart from Jack, Esme, and the Sons of the Scorpion Flail, who were busily checking their equipment.

The Sons looked tense.
 
Fair enough, Jack decided:
 
when he'd made his first trip to Hell, he'd done it without thinking.
 
These guy, by contrast, had had a whole day to worry about what they were getting themselves into.

Esme adjusted the strap of the pigeon sword on her back and gave him a tired look.

"Jack," she said, "we've been through all this.
 
Until we go in, we don't know what we're dealing with.
 
I've got to tackle the Scourge — we know that much.
 
You've got to do whatever you can with Charlie."
 
She sighed.
 
"That's all we can say for sure at this point."

"But what about these Sons guys?" Jack asked quietly, taking a step closer to her.
 
"D'you really trust them?
 
After they, like, chained you up and everything?"

Esme bit her lip.

"I was dangerous," she said.
 
"They didn't know what I might do."
 
She shivered.
 
"
I
don't know what I might do.
 
Besides," she added, banishing the thought quickly, "Jessica sent for them.
 
They can't be completely useless — can they?"

"I suppose we need all the help we can get," said Jack dryly.

"Not all the help," Esme replied, looking around.
 
"Too many and I'll have to be watching their backs, as well as yours and mine."

There was a pause.

"So," said Jack.
 
"That's it, then."

"What is?"

"The plan."
 
Jack tried a grin.
 
"The plan is there is no plan."

"That's about the size of it," said Esme, with, Jack was glad to notice, a grim but definite smile.
 
"Yeah."

"Business as usual, eh?" Jack quipped.
 
His own smile faded.
 
"Listen, there's, er, something I've got to tell you.
 
It's about Charlie."

"What about him?" Esme asked.

Jack took a deep breath.
 
"Esme," he said, "you can't kill him."

"Now, I know how it is," he went on quickly.
  
"If it's a straight choice, Charlie, or, like, saving the universe, then I guess you've got to do what you've got to do.
 
But before things get that far, I just wanted to say... well..."

He looked at Esme.

"Charlie's an idiot," he told her.
 
"I know he's an idiot.
 
He's stubborn, impatient, arrogant, pigheaded, and, you know, sometimes he's a bit of a knob.
 
"But" — he shrugged helplessly — "he's my friend.
 
He's got into this thing and it's gone over his head:
 
he doesn't know what he's doing.
 
And I want you to know that... well, whatever happens, I still think there's a chance we can save him.
 
Okay?"

There was another pause.

Jack didn't claim to know very much about girls.
 
He couldn't figure out what Esme was thinking.
 
Her expression at that moment was, to him, unreadable.

"Jack," she said, "I don’t know if we'll get the chance later, but..."
 
She trailed off and looked down at her feet.

"What?" asked Jack.

"Well," said Esme, "I just wanted to thank you."

Jack stared at her.

"What for?"

Esme looked up at him, and Jack found himself transfixed by her amber eyes.
 
Suddenly, he noticed a strange kind of tightening in his chest.
 
His right kneecap, of all things, seemed to be twitching uncontrollably by itself:
 
he hoped she didn't notice it.
 
She really was, he decided again, very pretty indeed, actually.

"You brought me back," she said.

"Back?"

"Back from Hell," Esme prompted, smiling now.
 
"When I was unconscious.
 
That was you, right?"

"Oh," said Jack.
 
"Er, yeah."

"Well, you know... thanks," Esme told him.

"S'allright," Jack managed.

"I'm glad you're coming with me," said Esme.

And suddenly, she was giving him a hug!
 
Esme was giving
him
— Jack! — a
hug
, and a stray hair from her elastic bands was tickling him on the nose!
 
But just as suddenly as the hug had begun, it was over.
 
Esme stood back.

"Good luck," she told him, looking into his eyes again.
 
"And try to stay out of trouble, all right?"

"You too," said Jack.
 
His ears were going red.

Esme smiled bleakly and turned away.

"Last check, gentlemen," said Number 2, and instantly the big pub was echoing with the nervous clicking and clinking of equipment — guns, ammo, who knew what else? — being rechecked for what must have been about the seventeenth time.
 
Jack heard a flapping sound, then the Chinj swooped down to land on Jack's shoulder.
 
Looking around, Jack caught its eye. The creature had arched one bushy eyebrow:
 
it was smiling and giving Jack what looked suspiciously to him like a saucy look.
 
Jack scowled.
 
Then he noticed that the fiddling sounds of the Sons and their gear had stopped abruptly.

"What,. may I ask," said Number 2, marching up to Jack in the sudden silence and pointing at the Chinj, "is
that?
"

Jack sighed.
 
"It's a Chinj," he said gamely.

"How do you do?" asked the Chinj.

"What," said Number 2, still managing not to shout, "is it doing here?"

"He's not very polite, is he?" said the Chinj.

"It's kind of a long story," said Jack quickly, "and I figured it would only hold things up if I mentioned it before.
 
The main thing is, it's coming with us."

"It most certainly is not!"

"And since it actually comes from Hell, It might be able to, I don't know, show us around a bit," Jack finished.

"I think you'll find I can really be quite helpful," put in the Chinj with a winning smile, doing its best.