The Black Tattoo (53 page)

With a ringing
crack
and an impact that traveled up Esme's arms and shook her to the core, her stroke was parried, stopped dead in mid-flight, less than a foot from the target.

"
No, no, no
," said the Scourge.
 
"
That's quite out of the question, I'm afraid
."

For a moment, Esme froze.

The demon had caught her easily:
 
it had simply appeared at the last moment between her and Charlie and had met the edge of the pigeon sword with a swordlike object of its own.
 
The shape mirrored that of her own weapon — it had the same graceful curve and proportions of the classical Japanese katana.
 
But it, like the Scourge, was still a glossy ink black.
 
As she watched, with a last oily shimmer the darkness of the blade seemed to ripple away:
 
it was only then that the cold steel was revealed beneath.

"
Swords, is it, next
?" asked the Scourge, without much interest.
 
"
Very well.
 
If you insist
."

It took a step toward her, its liquid feet pooling on the soft pink floor, and Esme sprang back into a guard position, watching carefully, waiting.
 
With a rustle of silk, the Gukumats formed two rows, a long line of space to either side of the combatants.

"
Ready
?" asked the Scourge.

Esme said nothing.

"
Then let's begin
."

Instantly, the space between them turned to a scissoring blur of steel.

It was impossible for a bystander to tell where one attack ended and another began.
 
One by one, all the gladiators that were trapped in the bubbles above gradually stopped trying to escape and stared instead at the dreadful combat that was taking place below them.
 
All Hell seemed to fall silent, except for the stinging hiss of sword on sword.

Esme was fighting on instinct — instinct and her years of training.
 
If she'd stopped to think out each move, she'd've been lost, instantly.
 
As it was, the battle was all going her opponent's way, because all she could do was react.
 
Each swirling, whistling block and parry sent little ripples of fatigue up her arms.
 
Each deft dodge, left, right, up, down, back — sometimes the Scourge came so close that she could actually feel the air move as her opponent's blade slid past her face — left her a little slower, a little more tired.

Obviously, she realized, she was going to lose.

It wasn't a question of pessimism.
 
The Scourge was keeping pace with her easily:
 
though it seemed to take every ounce of her speed and strength to meet those of her enemy, every attack
she
launched was parried and riposted smoothly and, apparently, without effort.
 
As she began to tire — as the speeding blades slowed until the sharper-eyed bystanders found themselves actually able to see the swords apart from each other — it seemed the Scourge was even slowing down with her.

"
Really
," it said, meeting a lunge from Esme with a twisting movement that all but jerked the pigeon sword from her fingers.
 
It followed it up with a vicious slash at her legs that Esme had to jump to avoid.
 
"
Is this the best you can do
?"

In reply, Esme spun on her feet.
 
Leaning forward into the stroke, she dropped her hands:
 
she brought the sword round in a blow at the demon's waist that would have sliced a man in two.

The blade did pass straight through the demon, right where a man's waist would be.
 
But the ink-black body simply sealed itself up after it, and, with a movement that was almost too quick for Esme to catch, the Scourge repaid her for her trouble with a straight-arm punch in the face with the pommel of its sword.
 
She blinked and shook her head, momentarily stunned.

That was when the Scourge struck again, stabbing Esme through the shoulder of her sword arm.

The pigeon sword fell from her fingers.

Not bothering to remove its own weapon from her body, the Scourge advanced toward Esme; as she staggered back, shuddering at the pain, it put one glistening foot on Raymond's last gift where it lay and snapped the pigeon sword cleanly, up near the butterfly-sharped guard.
 
Then it stopped and looked at her.

"
I'm sorry if this offends you
," it said, "
but I must be honest:
 
I'm beginning to lose interest
."

With another ripple, the steely glint of the Scourge's weapon vanished, swallowed under the glossy darkness, and the part of the thing that had impaled Esme suddenly changed shape.
 
Widening and twisting in the wound in her shoulder, the demon lifted Esme upward until she was teetering on tiptoe, and though her jaw was set and her lips bitten shut against crying out, tears were running down her face.

"
You're better than this
," said the Scourge, bringing its own face up to hers.
 
"
Aren't you
?"

With a soft, sucking sound, the darkness retracted.
 
Esme dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, next to her shattered sword.

"
Surely we've passed the point where physical violence is going to solve anything, don't you think
?" the Scourge asked.
 
"
Punching.
 
Kicking.
 
Going at each other with pointy objects.
 
It's all so
limited
."

"
Come on
," it added, leaning over her.
 
"
Why don't you show me what you can
really
do
?"

But then...

AWAKENING

For Charlie, now, there was silence:
 
absolute silence except for the low thump of his own blood pumping in his ears.
 
Seated on his throne, he looked down at his arms, at the black tattoo shapes still swarming and pulsing there — and then he looked out at his kingdom.

He saw the ranks of Gukumats, stretching in every direction.
 
Beyond that, he saw the vast serried legions of the demon peoples — the whole gross, adoring mass of his subjects, screaming and cheering from all around him.
 
The view changed:
 
for a second, all Hell seemed to expand and bulge — and now, suddenly, he could see further still.

Darkness slid through him like icy water, glimmering and glittering with tiny points of light that Charlie was suddenly able to identify as...
stars
.
 
Planets and galaxies swam past like beautiful jellyfish, twinkling in the surrounding blue-blackness of space, close enough to reach out and touch.
 
Black holes opened in front of him like flowers.
 
Suns — whole solar systems — blazed into being, then shrank and winked out as he watched.

At the same time, the noise in his head was changing.
 
The sound of his own pulse in his ears had gone, mixing with the crowd noise, mutating and modulating downward into something darker, thicker, deeper.
 
It was all around him:
 
throbbing and seething, and all the time it was getting louder and louder.

Ba-BOOM!

              
Ba-BOOM!

                          
Ba-BOOM!

                                      
Ba-BOOM!

It was inexcapable, dreadful, unspeakable, the noise.
 
It was as if every creature in the universe were banging on a drum and screaming at him at the same time.
 
The noise assaulted him on every level, getting more and more irritating the more irritated he got.

And suddenly, Charlie found himself wishing he could do something about it.

Here he was, at what should have been the proudest moment of his entire life, and what happened?
 
There was all this noise, interrupting.

All there ever was for him was noise and interruptions.

Whenever things went well for him, there was always something going on to spoil it.
 
Esme and Jack were a prime example:
 
they could've left him to get on with stuff, they could've trusted him a little — but no!
 
Of course, they'd had to interfere.

His
dad
, too, instead of messing everything up, could've—

Surrounded by light and life, sitting on his throne in the center of the universe, Charlie blinked.

Dad
, he thought.

He thought of his mother's expression at the breakfast table that morning when his father had told them he was leaving.

He thought of his dad sitting alone in a Chinese restaurant and how Charlie had told him he was
"never going to forgive him.
 
Never."

He frowned.

Well, he told himself, he didn't care about that — not anymore.
 
He'd taken steps.
 
He'd left all that behind.
 
And there — it occurred to him — was the answer.

The universe shimmered and roared around him, waiting for whatever Charlie was going to think next.

This, he thought — the noise, the lights, the stuff going on around him now — was all no different.
 
His days of weakness, of being at the mercy of events, were gone.
 
He alone — he, Charlie — had the power; he was in complete control of his destiny.
 
Nothing was going to get in his way or hurt him anymore in any way whatsoever — he wouldn't allow it.
 
He could just decide, and whatever he wanted would be so.

Well, the noise and the lights were getting to him.

He'd had as much as he was prepared to take.

So he decided.

Let it out
, a voice echoed in Charlie's head
 
Let it all out, open your heart, and LET ME IN.
 
YES!

It would all...
 
just have... to
STOP
.

As soon as he'd completed the thought, he felt something move inside himself.
 
The thing that had been waiting inside him, waiting for this moment for longer than Charlie could possibly have imagined, suddenly seemed to give a great, convulsive LEAP.

In front of his eyes, the vision was sucking back into itself like someone had pressed rewind.
 
The black holes slammed shut, the suns brightened and went out again, and the planets and galaxies were flung past him and back into their appointed places.
 
The view shrank and collapsed.

Then he was back on his throne, and at last the horrible noise was dying down.

Charlie let out a big sigh, glad it was all over.
 
He had an odd taste at the back of his mouth — a strange, coppery taste that he couldn't identify at first — and to be honest, he was feeling a bit weird.
 
He made to lift his hands to rub his eyes and found to his surprise that he couldn't:
 
his arms seemed to be stuck to the throne somehow, as if they'd been glued there.

Odder still, the black tattoo seemed to have vanished:
 
of the great swirling pattern of curving blades and hooks, there was now no sign whatsoever.
 
All there was was his own bare skin and the nasty taste that stayed in his mouth no matter how many times he swallowed.

Blood
, he realized suddenly.
 
It was blood.

Something's wrong here
, he thought, beginning to panic:
 
something was definitely wrong.
 
Everything looked different.
 
The Gukumats weren't looking at him — no one was.
 
And underneath him, behind his back, the throne was moving again.
 
With a speed that was shocking to Charlie, he saw that it was growing again.
 
Tonguelike petals of moist-looking meat were curling upward in front of him, closing inward, blotting out the scene outside..
 
Charlie gave a last, great effort to escape his throne:
 
his left arm came slightly free of its armrest—

—and his eyes widened in horror.

The movement had released a pool of dark red liquid.
 
Two thick dribbles of his blood just had time to run over the edge of the armrest before thin tendrils of pink shot out, lassoing his arm and yanking it back into position.

The throne went back to what it had been doing.
 
It went about its work with redoubled strength now, battening down hungrily until Charlie's flesh quivered with each terrible
suck
.
 
The realization, when it came to Charlie, was sudden and devastating.

The charade was over.
 
The throne was killing him.

And now, at long last, Charlie began to get an inkling of just what an idiot he'd been.

MAGIC

Suddenly, a great thunderclap rang out.
 
Rolling around and back from the distant walls, it was loud enough to silence the entire hordes of Hell.
 
Everyone — Esme included — looked at the throne.
 
In this sense, Charlie had finally got his wish, but the petals of meat had already closed, blocking him from sight.

In the silence, a strange, rushing, gurgling sound became audible, getting nearer and nearer until it seemed to be coming from all around.
 
Closer it came, an encroaching silvery tinkling hiss, quickly growing to the thunderous roar of an approaching torrent.