The Magpye: Circus (28 page)

Marv stopped. The pot and the
plate had been luck, mostly, perhaps a little magic coupled with a
lifetime of slight of hand and stage magic. Fighting simply wasn't
his thing. If he hadn't poured all of his magic into Marissa, he
probably wouldn't have even been here when this hired gun walked
down the stairs. Just like the night the circus burned. Grace had
been the one who warned him, but he'd always wondered what part his
strange and uncontrolled reflex of magic had played in it. Why else
would the warning tell him that Marissa was safe, that he was the
only one who needed to run? Grace was many things, but Marv had
always doubted if even she could be that cold. Had he, or his
magic, somehow sensed the danger coming? Could Marv's magic have
forced Grace to give him the warning that would save his life, even
at the cost of his daughter's?

It made sense to Marv, at least
a kind of sense that let him sleep a little better some nights.
Maybe that was his magic too. It had saved him from facing his
grief, what was a little excuse to salve his conscience on top? It
was better than the alternative - better to believe in a wild and
uncontrollable magic that cursed you to survive at all costs than
to simply accept that you were a coward who would even run out on
on your own kid to save your worthless skin. Yeah, there were a lot
of lies that were better than that.

Marv did know one thing for
certain though. He knew that was staring down the barrel of a gun
and that was the kind of situation that he let magic handle on its
own. Wherever Marissa was, he hoped it wasn't important. Marv
blinked and, wherever his daughter was, she ceased to exist as
Marv's magic rushed back to him.

"You know who I am, Jack?"
asked Marv. If it hadn't been for the familiar crackle of magic in
his fingertips, he would have wondered where the words, and the
bravado, were suddenly coming from. Magic. Sometimes the right
magic was just having a fast mouth and a decent line in
bullshit.

"I don't ask questions," said
Taylor. It was a lie, of course. After that night in the
paper-mill, questions were all he'd had. He'd supervised a lot of
the work on the old King place when Cane had had it gutted and
modernised, and he'd made sure he knew where everything was stored.
It was an insurance policy, because you never knew what dirt there
was to be found in old family papers. Paper, that fragile thing
that people hoarded and wrote their secrets on. Since things had
taken a turn for the decidedly weird, Taylor had spent any spare
moment he had working his way through the King family archives.
He'd found more than he'd expected. The King family history was
long, and strange, and oh, so bloody. He'd learnt that there were
things in the world far more strange than he had once thought but,
with perfect clarity, he had accepted them into his world-view. One
by one his questions were being answered, which was why he hadn't
been surprised when Cane had asked him to pick up a guy that King
referred to as "the magician".

Anyone else would have run.
Jack Taylor just pulled a gun and stared the new world in the face
with bared teeth.

"Well, I'll tell you,"
continued Marv. "I'm The Magnificent Marvolo Chevalier. I'm the
greatest escape artist the world has ever seen."

"A circus act?"

"Oh no, I'm the real kind of
magician. The very real kind."

Taylor steadied his aim on the old man. Bang to rights, in
his cross-hairs. There was no dodging that
… was there?

"And that's why you're going to pay attention to me right
now," said Marv. "You're going to
…"

Taylor pulled the trigger and
put a bullet into Marv's right leg.

He had been right. There was no
magic-ing your way around a bullet.

Marv blinked with confusion and
fear as Jack Taylor, the man with a smile like a shark, stood over
him. Marv's magic hadn't saved him. It hadn't done anything at all.
What the hell was happening?

Taylor ended Marv's confusion
with the sole of his expensive shoes and a trip into swirling
unconsciousness.

Able kept his body low and
tight over the frame of the motorbike as he raced through the
city.

He had seen a lot of death,
seen people die bad and bloody, killed men with his own bare hands.
He had shot, stabbed, cut, sliced, and maimed. He had burned, he
had buried. But in all of his short and brutal career, his blood
soaked afterlife as the thing called Magpye, he'd never seen a
creature as wretched and broken as Owen White.

"You should have told him," said the ghost of Peter Rogers.
"If he knew that we were still here
…"

"He wouldn't believe it,"
argued Rosa.

"He doesn't believe anything any more, that's the problem,"
interjected Rigby. "He's lost his centre and
…"

Rigby fell silent as Able swung
the bike off the road, bumped over the kerb, and came to a skidding
halt on a patch of wasteland.

"What are we doing here?" the
ghosts asked in rare unison.

Able dismounted, the suit creaking. He had put it together
in a hurry, repairing the damage to the original as best he could
with limited supplies and in secret from Marissa and Marv. The
paint had been Able's idea. He'd spent so long in black, he wanted
some part of him to look
…
clean. The white streak down his chest and abdomen felt right, like
a brand, like a tattoo. He didn't remember much about making the
last suit. This suit was his. He was Able Quirk, and Able Quirk was
the Magpye. Not the other way around. Not any more.

Now there was only one thing
left to do. One left to do to make him truly clean.

"White nailed it," said Able
out loud, addressing the ghosts. "The Kings consume everything.
They're a poison, a cancer. If we're going to take down Cane King,
we do it without Adam King along for the ride. We do it clean."

Adam King's ghost burst forth. "What do you mean
without
me?"

Able closed his mind. He had no
idea if what he was going to try to do was even possible but, if it
was, he was sure it would be easier if Adam King didn't know what
was coming. He wanted the bastard on notice, but he wasn't going to
tell him what was happening until it was too late. The only mind
that Able didn't block out was Dorothy, but the circus medic was
uncharacteristically stoic.

Reaching into one of the bike's
panniers, Able pulled out a battered old flask. Marissa had filled
it for him earlier. It weighed around four or five pounds in his
hand. It would have to be enough.

"We're doing this,
Dorothy."

"How do you know you even can?"
asked the ghost grumpily.

"I just do."

"It's not you, Able, it's that
thing
," said
Dorothy. "That creature, the Magpye."

"And if it is?" asked Able. He
stalked across the wasteland to the nondescript warehouse, finding
the door exactly where Marv had described it. There was a new lock,
a pristine and modern combination fitting. More conspicuous than
the previous security, but undoubtedly more secure. Able pulled a
gun from inside his jacket, a substandard replacement for Malcolm's
pistols that he'd lost fighting Cane King, and blew the lock panel
apart. Stealth wasn't a factor here. He wasn't here to steal, he
was here to leave a message.

"If it
is
, then how can you
trust it?" asked Dorothy.

"Because the Magpye isn't
him
, it isn't
Adam
. Of the two, he's far more dangerous."

"Then maybe we
need
him," said
Dorothy.

Kicking the door open with the
steel tipped end of his boot, Able strode purposefully into the
warehouse that hid The Pit. "No, Dorothy. Everything that has
happened, has happened because of him. Because of his family.
Because of the Kings. He isn't a part of me. He isn't a part of us.
I want him out."

Walking through the darkness of
the abandoned warehouse, Able could feel Adam's ghost pressing hard
against his defences. But the dead King had taught Able just how to
keep him out, and he was staying out. Dorothy had sunk into a
sullen silence. Beneath them all, beneath the waters of memory
where the other ghosts lurked and lost themselves in their own
mingled memories, the dark shape of the Magpye stirred. It flexed
itself, pushed a little closer to the surface.

Able stood at the edge of The
Pit, looking down into the gloom. The stench of the place was
overpowering, even through the mask. Able knew what was down there,
rotting and festering in the darkness. This was where Cane King had
had him dumped, where his body had been left to decay down to
nothingness. It wasn't a hiding place. It was a prison, a place to
incarcerate the dead where they would never be found. He could feel
them calling out to him, insubstantial ghosts without the strength
even to escape the walls of the pit. Their minds and memories had
decayed along with their bodies, leaving them crippled and broken.
Some had lost their faces, leaving behind only screaming open
spaces, others were nothing more than a limb, twitching and
spasming with the last remnants of a mind trapped inside. Whether
they knew it or not, the Kings had created something here far worse
than death.

Able pulled up his mask. The
stench from the pit grew stronger. Unscrewing the lid from the
flask, he brought the cold metal to his lips and began to slurp
down the contents. It was thick and greasy, a gruel of old blood
and dead flesh. Marissa had been careful, using flesh from the
oldest graves hidden in the circus and Able didn't feel any new
ghosts entering his mind as he slurped down the remnants of the
long dead. Out there, beyond the pit, ghosts didn't have to be tied
to their remains. It gave him hope, to know that there was
something else, another type of death, another type of afterlife.
Not the circus trap that he knew waited for him but something
better, something worth living and dying well for. He tried to
focus on that, as his throat filled with the meaty soup, as he once
again swallowed down dead flesh to fuel his body, and the strange
power of the Magpye.

"Will it be enough?" asked
Dorothy, breaking his silence.

"It will have to be," replied
Able. "Don't give him any more than he needs."

"I'm not up to this Able. I'm a
patch-you-up man, you're asking me to remember every inch of a
human body, inside and out."

"You've never let me down,
Dorothy. You've never let anyone down."

"Well, there's always a first
time," said Dorothy gruffly.

"My body knows how to repair
itself," said Able. "All it needs is food and time. I just need you
to guide it, give it a new direction."

"And how the hell do I do
that?"

Able opened his mind just a
fraction and, into the swirling mix of his mind and Dorothy's, the
unmistakable presence of the Magpye fell like a shadow. "I'll show
you," said the creature. "I am the power that brings life to this
body. I can bring life to another. We just need you to build
it."

"Build a body
…
simple," said Dorothy.

Able glugged down the last of
the contents of the flask.

"Are you ready?" asked the dead
medic.

"Ready," replied Able.

"Then we begin," said the
creature.

The pain hit Able almost
immediately, sending him to his knees and then down onto his belly.
He writhed around on the dusty floor, panting and gasping for air.
Doubling up, he vomited onto the ground before screaming in renewed
agony.

Inside his head, his defences
crumbled and Able felt the unmistakable presence of Adam King.

"I know what you're trying to
do, Able," he said. His words were slow, patient, but Able could
feel the racing panic behind them. Adam's mind overlapped with
Able's in a way that no other did. Perhaps it was because Adam had
replaced him once and taken control of his body completely and
against his will, or perhaps it was the blood link between the two
of them. Like father, like son, both damned forever. "Don't do it.
You need me. You need my knowledge."

"You taught me what you know,"
said Able, struggling to form the words in his mind as pain tore
through his body.

"And if you lose all that, when
I'm gone?" asked Adam. "Those are my memories, mine! What happens
if you forget everything I've taught you without me? How will you
control what you are without my memories?"

"I'll take
… my
chances…"

In Able's mind he saw his
father's face, contorted in rage and in fear, stricken with panic
and desperation. Adam King, his father the stranger, the deposed
head of the King crime family. Would be magician,
Magpye-in-training, Able felt all of Adam's strength and his
weaknesses in equal measure. He felt his memories, no longer
guarded, wash over him. The last time that this had happened he had
felt like he was being erased, being replaced and overwritten, by
Adam. Now, it felt more like Adam's life was flashing before Able's
eyes. It was his father's story, told without bias or prejudice. It
was the story of a child born into wealth and privilege and power
and taught magic and cruelty as a way of life. It was the story of
a young man who looked for a way out, for a way to avoid an
unavoidable fate. Was it any wonder he had turned to Marv, the
master escape artist? It was the story of someone seduced by a
place, and a family, outside of everything he had ever known. He
saw the circus through Adam's eyes, not as a place of family and of
love as it had been to Able, but as a place of strange magic and
forbidden escapes from the life that was being forced onto Adam
against his will.