The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (55 page)

Hyde’s eyes focused suddenly, his
gaze manic, feral. His empty hand shot out, fingertips punching through the
dreg’s chest as if the monster’s hide was the rind of a rotted fruit and
nothing more. His fist tightened on the dreg’s collarbone, tearing it loose
like an overcooked chicken leg.

The gerrymander collapsed as if every
connective fiber, every strand of muscle, piece of cartilage and tendon in its
frame vanished. It slumped to the sand like a discarded sack of jelly, and
immediately calcified, flesh turning to dust: first a statue, then an
indiscriminate mound, and then nothing. A moment after it began, the
gerrymander was a vague outline of discolored sand, a memory and nothing more.

Unconcerned, Hyde took the short
knife and punched it through the surface skin of his own shoulder, the blade
popping free to glimmer wetly in the failing daylight. Hyde slid the living
bone through the newly created hole, withdrawing the knife and leaving the
protruding clavicle behind like some tribal initiation. And as his blood mixed
with the blood on the bone, a spasm shook his enormous frame, lips twitching
into something resembling a grin.

“Reggie?”

No answer.

Kreiger cleared his throat like a man
trying not to be officiously dismissed by some bureaucratic flunky whose desk
he had just been directed to. “Reggie?”

Still no answer.

“
Reginald!
”

“I’m sorry, Reginald Hyde isn’t here
right now. Leave your name at the sound of the tone, and he’ll get back to you
just as soon as he’s able. Beeeeeeeeep.”

This was followed by a high-pitched
giggle, a maddening, stuttering sound that grated at Kreiger’s nerves. He felt
his palms tighten upon the lightning rod, squeezing silent screams from the
metal as he entertained the question of what the inside of the fat sorcerer’s
skull would look like if he slashed it open with the focal lens, and sprayed
his addled brains out upon the sand.

“Papa Lovebone?”

“Yes Gusman, what can I do for you?”

It was a high, cheerful voice,
frighteningly pleasant given the shell it issued from. And still, the fat man
would not look at him, would not avert his attention from his recently tattooed
flesh still dripping with ink so black that it almost disguised the wash of
blood running freely down the ravaged skin of Hyde’s arms, legs, and belly. The
white wizard had sacrificed half a dozen dregs to Hyde’s gross collection of
manitous, all tied into him with bones and blood-ink traps and captive words;
all
rendered
like the gerrymander. Hyde was strong now, inhumanly so.
His mind was the price.

“Papa Lovebone, I want you to give
Reggie a message for me.”

“Sure Gusman. Loosey goosey, Gusman
boozeman, loosey gooseyman Kreiger. A message for Reggie. He won’t be back for
a while, though. He may not come back at all.”

“Is that so?” Kreiger leaned closer,
whispering into the man’s ear. “Tell Reggie, when you see him, that I am giving
him the girl.”

Hyde turned, as if aware for the
first time that Gusman Kreiger was actually there. He tipped his head, eyes
fixed and clear, absorbed by something perplexing and inconceivable that seemed
to be sitting directly beside him, invisible but somehow detectable. “The
girl?” he mumbled, voice nearly lost upon the Wasteland air.

“That’s right, Reggie. You know the
one I mean: the tall one, dirty blonde hair, smooth forehead, modest breasts.
She’s yours.”

“Mine?” Softly spoken, words that
lacked conviction, understanding.

“But I need you to focus, Reginald. I
need you to stay in control. Do that for me, and I’ll let you have her.” His
words, soft and seductive in Hyde’s ears, were like the gentle coo of a lover,
teasing the necromant’s mind with dreams he had not allowed himself for over a
century. Not since he first realized that he would never again know those
dreams, now hollow shells of dissatisfaction and longing.

“She will be mine?” Hyde asked
pathetically, turning, eyes looking up at Kreiger with an array of desperate
emotions: desire, confusion, lust, fear. “You mean it?”

Kreiger was not oblivious to Reginald
Hyde’s growing erection, blood and black ink moving freely down his member.
“Yes, Reggie. I promise.”

“What must I do?” he begged, crawling
towards the white wizard on hands and knees, lips trembling with anticipation
both vulgar and frightening. “Tell me, and I’ll do it. Anything.
Anything!
Please!
”

Kreiger straightened, looking down
upon Hyde’s fawning and debasement. This was why the necromant could never hold
the Nexus; why he would never amount to anything without the wizard. The fat
Cast Out lacked focus, his efforts expended upon the pursuit of primitive
pleasures.

Kreiger, on the other hand, had a
very clear picture of exactly what the future would hold for him. “Come with
me.”

*    *     *

Rebreather stared into the shallow
trench carved under the rails. More than a dozen bodies of wasted dust runners
and shriekers and other Wasteland monstrosities lay alongside the tracks,
bodies carelessly covered by sand. Exhaustion had destroyed them; exhaustion
and the depletion of power throughout the Wasteland. Too much was being
expended out here where none existed except in accidental pockets and chance
streams. He knew that, felt it down deep in the marrow of his bones, the pit of
his balls, which no longer spoke to him except in moments of fear. Now both
balls and bones were whispering tales of horror and exhaustion of which his
mind refused to listen, but that his flesh could no longer ignore.

He was close now, and each passing
minute brought him closer still. He would reach heaven’s gate, or drop
alongside those Wasteland dregs like so much ill-stacked cordwood, another
casualty in the endless ledger that was the history of the Wasteland.

He heard Kreiger come up from behind,
his the practiced hearing of an animal that regards every intrusion as a
threat. Perhaps, after so long in the Wasteland, it was.

“There is a matter we must attend
to.”

Rebreather turned, eyes panning the
Saloon. So close. So very, very close. And as far from his reach as the setting
sun.

“The barrier has nearly collapsed. If
the Caretaker does nothing at all, conserves his stolen power like a miser
hoarding pennies, it still won’t last beyond tomorrow.

“Unfortunately, neither will they,”
Kreiger gestured at the dregs. They had ceased their labors upon his approach,
standing upright in the shallow cut of dust, eyes vacant, zombies awaiting
their next command. “So you appreciate the predicament we will be in if the
walls fall only to reveal that we have no army left to storm the gates.”
Kreiger’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Or fend off any resistance he can
muster.”

Distant forms moved upon the high,
half-ruined stairway of the Saloon, and something on the building’s peak
scuttled like a caged animal.

“Bullets?” Rebreather asked. The few
he possessed, safeguarded for more than a century, had corroded to ruin over
the course of hours. Like the dregs, the energy that kept them whole was
running out.

Kreiger looked ruefully at his tall
companion and extended his hand, the polished brass casings and dulled gray
tips of two 50mm rounds cupped in his palm. The evening light transformed them
into shimmering gold, their tips black and lethal as poison. That same light
made Kreiger’s face the color of a molten idol, a loving saint, a demon god.
“Only two, I’m afraid. The magic goes away. Even now, there is no guarantee
they will both work. One or both may misfire.”

“Two would be best, but one will
suffice.” Rebreather took the bullets with reverent gentleness, as though
holding a living butterfly or a robin’s eggs. “It will be … costly.”

Kreiger nodded grimly. “Nothing worth anything is without cost, and we
are about to lay claim to the throne of God.” He tipped his head to the
remaining dregs. “Use them as you will.”

Rebreather secreted the bullets away,
turning his gaze to the looming shape upon the barren sand, the alien
construction a blasphemy against the purity of the Wasteland. Concealed behind
the mask, eyes narrowed upon those who gloated over him from heaven’s high
walls, who held the power of the universe in their hands and plundered it for
their small wants and petty dreams. He felt the subtle weight of the bullets
like saint’s medallions, and the glass lenses reflected back that gloating
stare at the false Caretaker, his guardian, and his last construct who could
not be allowed to leave on the last train home.

Home!

With deliberate slowness, the tall
Cast Out nodded.

*     *     *

“How’s your eye?” Ellen asked.

“My what?”

“Your eye.” She gestured at him. “It
was all red this morning. It looked like you might have scratched it. Does it
hurt?”

“No. I never … checked it.”

“Let me see.” She scooted down a
couple steps so that she was directly above him, and said: “Look at me.”

It was impossible for him not to. She
hovered six inches away, peering at his eye critically, one hand keeping a
thick shock of her hair from flopping down in his face. And he thought how
wonderful she smelled. Not like Oversight—Ariel November now—with her rich,
exotic, sweet smell, raw and sexual and enigmatic. Sitting beside Ellen like
this, staring up into her eyes as she tried to take care of him, he was
overwhelmed; she was an early spring day, dew on grass, fresh petals too new to
burst out in that bee-maddening, lazy drowse of summer.

“It looks okay,” she said, still
concentrating upon his eye. “A lot better than this morning.”

He nodded, trying to think of a way
to say what needed to be said, what he didn’t want to say.

“By the way, I liked what you wrote,”
she said, not giving him the opportunity. “About Alex and Lindsay and
Oversight. The city of Janus, and Mr. Quince, and Armageddon. I liked it.” She
looked away suddenly, as if the confession embarrassed her. “I don’t think I
got it all, but I liked it.”

“Thank you,” he said, a little
embarrassed. He had never been very comfortable with compliments, especially
about his writing. It wasn’t that he didn’t like them; he simply wasn’t very
good at
accepting
them.

“Did all of that really happen to
them?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And you made it happen? You wrote it
all down and it happened to them exactly that way?”

“Yes.”

“Are they going to be happy where
they are?”

“I think so. Reasonably, anyway.
They’ll live out their lives just like anyone; have good days and bad days,
like anyone. And like anyone, they’ll know when they’re happy because it won’t
be like those times when they’re not. That’s about all there is, really.”

She nodded, thinking this over for a
moment. “And it will seem real to them? To us?”

He nodded, not speaking for his own
sense of dread. Soon she would ask. She would have to. She would ask because it
was stupid not to, stupid not to realize the hole he was trapped in. How were
the two of them getting out? How was it possible with only one ticket? How
could they both escape?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t
know. I don’t…

“Let’s get something to eat,” she
said abruptly. “I’m starving. You’ve gotta be hungry after sleeping all day,
nothing but nutmeg-laced coffee for two days straight.”

“You know about that?”

“It was impossible not to. I cleaned
up a little while you were asleep.”

He looked away ruefully, glad she
only knew about the nutmeg. There was so much more to it than that.

“Let’s go see what’s left in the
vending machine,” she added, “provided that hasn’t disappeared along with
everything else.”

He was only too eager to get down
from the stairway. “Actually,” he said, “I could really go for some coffee.”

“Haven’t you had eno—?”

Her voice trailed away, words stolen
into the empty air. She was standing up, looking tall and alone against the
haphazard stair and the deepening blue of the empty, cloudless sky. She was
barefoot, something he hadn’t even realized until just then, and her feet were
tensed upon the naked wood, tendons taut, toes curling defensively. She was
wearing the same jeans she had found that first day, and an ill-fitting,
button-down shirt that was swimming around her, the tails hanging out and
draping halfway to her knees, the sleeves rolled up three times just so that
her hands wouldn’t disappear. A breeze—forget where it might have come from, or
where it was blowing to—swept some of her hair, dark like buckwheat honey,
across her cheek and into her eyes, and she held it back casually with one
hand. He thought, looking up at her now, that she looked exquisitely beautiful
in no way he could exactly explain except that he would forever think of her
this way, eyes scanning the distant horizon, a dimple in her brow magnified by
the slanting rays of a distant and imaginary sun, the look of the searcher, the
dreamer.