Night Terrors (24 page)

“We have here a brother clown,” Big-Ears said. “One who not only remained bound to his Ideator–”

The crowd booed.

“He also works for the Shadow Watch!”

The boos became shouts of outrage. I’d known the Shadow Watch wasn’t exactly popular among the Incubi, but I hadn’t realized it was this bad.

Big-Ears continued. “When my family and I received word that poor, misguided Jinx here” – Big-Ears dropped the remote control to the sawdust and drew a double-barreled shotgun from his pants pocket – “was in need of rescue, we raced to his location and liberated him from his
Ideator!
” He almost spat the word this time, and the crowd’s roar of outrage grew louder. “Then we brought him here, to the Circus Psychosis, and we tried to get him to see that he was an
Incubus
, not a
servant!
More, that he was a
clown
– a creature of anarchy and chaos! How could such a being belong to an organization dedicated to” – he shuddered – “order?”

The rest of the clowns grimaced at the word, and one turned and vomited colorful paper streamers onto the sawdust.

“We offered him a place in our family,” Big-Ears said. “A new, glamorous life as a member of the Bedlam Brothers! And do you know what his reply was?”

The crowd grew quiet and listened closely. But before the clown could speak again, I stood.

“He told you to go fuck yourselves with a chainsaw.”

The clowns gaped at me, as did the surviving audience members. I ignored them all as I made my way to the front row, picking my way carefully through the carnage the clown car had left behind. I jumped onto the floor and started walking toward the center ring, my gaze fastened on Big-Ears. I had no weapons – no trancer, no M-blade – and I didn’t give a damn.

I glanced up at Jinx. He still hung limply, his head lowered. Not a good sign.

Big-Ears regained his composure. He lowered his weapon and grinned at me. “That’s precisely what he said.”

I shrugged. “We know each other pretty well.”

“And do you know what we did to him after he said that?” Big-Ears asked.

“Looks like you beat the shit out of him.”

Big-Ear’s grin widened to the point that the flesh at the corners of his mouth began to tear. “Oh, that’s the least of the fun we had with him. Since he wouldn’t join our act willingly, we decided to force the issue.” He gestured toward Jinx. “We were about to start target practice. We were going to let the audience choose which of us gets to take the first shot, but now that you’re here, I think we’ll extend that honor to you. So which one of us will it be? Personally, I hope you go for the flamethrower. We brought marshmallows.”

“No one’s going to shoot him,” I said calmly.

By this point I’d crossed two-thirds of the distance to the center ring.

“Really?” Big-Ears said. His grin turned into a sneer. “Maybe that’s because we’re going to be too busy shooting you.”

He raised his shotgun and drew a bead on me. Taking their leader’s cue, the other clowns also aimed their weapons at me. I knew I was helplessly outnumbered and outgunned, but I didn’t care. I was too damn angry to care.

I kept walking.

Big-Ears’ body tensed, and I knew he was going to fire. Without thinking, I started running toward him as fast as I could. I had no illusions that I could reach him before he fired, but at that moment, I didn’t really give a shit.

I didn’t look at the shotgun as I ran. I kept my gaze focused on Big-Ears’ eyes. In them I saw a mixture of glee, lunacy, and bloodlust that was nearly sexual in its intensity. I hoped this meant Big-Ears would want to extend our “foreplay” as long as possible, giving me a chance to try to take the shotgun from him. And I did manage to reach him, but when I was close enough, he spun the shotgun around in his hands, grabbed hold of the barrel, and wielding it like a club, swung the stock toward my head.

I saw the blow coming, and if it had been a human attacking me, I might’ve been able to avoid getting hit. But Big-Ears was an Incubus, and he moved so swiftly that there was little I could do. I was able to move sideways enough so the stock clipped me instead of hitting me straight on, which probably saved my life. Even so, it felt as if I’d been hit in the head with a block of concrete. Bright light exploded along my optic nerves, and I felt the world spin around me. The next thing I knew I was lying in sawdust with one hell of a headache.

I heard the soft shuffling sound of someone walking toward me. Then Big-Ears knelt down beside me, grabbed a handful of my hair, and lifted my head off the sawdust. That made my head hurt even worse, and I almost started to cry.

Big-Ears leaned his face close to mine.

“Nice try, bitch. Now we’re going to have some playtime with you before we take care of your
partner
up there.”

The crowd, which had been watching our little drama play out with silent, rapt attention, now burst into wild applause and cheers. But soon I detected another sound, soft at first, but quickly increasing in volume. The crowd heard it too, and they grew quiet once more.

It was the sound of laughter. Dark, dangerous, batshit-crazy laughter.

I managed to tilt my head enough to look up and see that Jinx was awake. It was his laughter I heard – that we all heard – and his eyes gleamed with a level of madness I’d never seen in him before, that I’d never imagined was possible. In that moment, I should’ve been terrified. But I wasn’t. I was relieved. Jinx was alive, and better yet, he sounded pissed.

“It was fun
hanging out
with you clowns for a while,” he said, his voice low and filled with menace. “But no one –
no one
– hurts my mommy.”

I couldn’t hold onto consciousness any longer, and as my mind fell into darkness, I heard the sound of wire snapping, followed by screams of agony and terror. And then I heard no more.

TEN

“Audra? Can you hear me?”

Jinx’s voice was muffled, as if I was hearing him through yards of cotton. I tried to open my eyes, failed, and tried again. This time I was successful. I saw Jinx’s clown face looking down at me, concerned. He was a bit blurry, but otherwise I could make him out just fine.

“Yeah,” was all I could manage to say. The word came out as little more than a croak, and I wasn’t confident that Jinx could understand it. He must have, though, for he smiled and nodded.

“Good.”

As my head started to clear, I realized I was lying on Jinx’s lap, and he was cradling me in his arms. During the entire time that we’d been together – from the moment of his full Ideation, really – I’d rarely touched him, and I’d never touched him like
this
. There was nothing romantic or sexual about it, but there was a powerful intimacy to it all the same.

I let Jinx hold me for a moment or two longer as I waited to see if I would remain conscious. When I was confident I was in no immediate danger of slipping back into nothingness, I asked him to help me stand. He did so, gently, and when I thought I was capable of standing on my own, I motioned for him to step back. He did, but he didn’t move far, in case I started to fall.

I looked around. My head felt like a bass drum being pounded on by Godzilla, and I had to move my head slowly to keep it from hurting even more. We were standing near the bleachers. The tent was empty, except for scattered food wrappers, uneaten snacks, and dropped souvenirs that people had left behind in their panic to escape. The clown car remained in the middle of the center ring, but the long metal rods Jinx had been bound to were bent and twisted, as if they’d been subjected to hurricane-force winds. Scattered through the center ring were blood-soaked bits of clothing, chunks of meat, bone, and viscera that I took to be pieces of the Bedlam Brothers. Jinx was covered in gore, and since he’d been holding me, so was I.

I glanced down at Jinx’s wrists. The wounds he’d suffered from being bound with wire were in the process of healing.

I nodded toward a particularly large piece of clown lying on the blood-soaked sawdust nearby.

“Remind me never to make you mad.”

Jinx grinned, and despite the fact that at that moment he was a nightmare clown with a blood-stippled face, his grin didn’t look sinister to me in the slightest.

“So…” Jinx said. “Took you long enough to get here. What did I miss?” He looked around at the carnage he’d wrought, and his grin took on a darker edge. “And who else can I hurt?”

 

Another good thing about Nod: the residents are so used to seeing bizarre shit that they barely gave Jinx and me – and our blood-stained clothes – a glance. We headed centerwise, toward Oldtown and the Rookery. The Bedlam Brothers had taken Jinx’s acid-spraying flower, but they hadn’t been able to find Cuthbert Junior in whatever hidden dimension Jinx stores it in, so at least we had one weapon.

Jinx had healed enough by this point that outwardly he appeared uninjured, but he walked more slowly than usual, and he favored his left leg. But what really told me that he was still hurting on the inside was how quiet he was. He had to be pretty bad off not to talk. Normally, I might’ve been glad to have a break from his nonstop chatter, but now his silence worried me. I hoped he would continue to heal as time wore on.

“Did you learn anything from the Bedlam Brothers?” I asked.

Jinx rubbed his abdomen and grimaced. “I picked up a few more tricks for rearranging someone’s internal organs without removing them first, if that’s what you mean.”

“Anything
useful
,” I clarified.

“Only that they work for the Fata Morgana.”

I stopped walking and stared at him. “What did you say?”

“They wouldn’t stop going on about her, especially the big-eared guy in the bowler hat. ‘The Fata Morgana will bring about a new order.’ ‘Both Earth and Nod will be forever changed once the Fata Morgana is finished with her great work.’” He made a face. “If my wrists hadn’t been wrapped in wire, I’d have jabbed knitting needles into my ears so I wouldn’t have had to listen to his blathering anymore.”

The Fata Morgana was one of the oldest known Incubi. Just how old, no one was certain. I didn’t know much about the Fata Morgana – I’d never met her, in fact – but Sanderson seemed to have a great deal of respect for her. She’d served on the Nightclad Council sometime in the past, but she’d had nothing to do with them for at least a century, probably longer. As far as I knew, she had no known connections to the Lords of Misrule, but anything was possible.

“Let’s keep going,” I said. “The sooner we can report to Sanderson –
and
get a shower and change of clothes – the better.”

Our boss wouldn’t be thrilled that we – all right, mostly
me
– had decided to disobey his orders to stay off the case, but he needed to know what we’d learned so far. Even if in the end it helped out those two divas, Damon and Eklips. Whatever was going on, it was way more important than any grudge I was carrying against them.

We continued walking, and I filled Jinx in on everything that had happened to me since his abduction by the Blacksuits/Bedlam Brothers. With each block we traveled, Jinx became stronger, until he’d returned to his normal obnoxious self. My head began to hurt less, but I was still dragging ass big-time. It must’ve been obvious as hell, because at one point, Jinx said, “Do you want to try and score some rev somewhere?”

I was tempted. First Dreamer, how I was tempted! And I knew that Night Jinx wouldn’t give me grief about using the drug, unlike his Day Aspect. But I’d come this far without any chemical help, and I decided to keep it up as long as I could.

“I’m fine,” I said.

Jinx looked as if he might argue the point, but he didn’t push the matter.

Newtown isn’t as dangerous as the Cesspit, but no place in Nod is entirely safe. During our trip, we encountered our fair share of tough guys and gals who thought it would be fun to rough up a pair of Shadow Watch officers who looked as if they weren’t, shall we say, at their best. Trying to attack us wasn’t the best decision they ever made.

Eventually, we crossed over to Oldtown, and as we approached the Rookery, I knew something was wrong. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was, but then Jinx put it into words for me.

“There’s nobody standing guard.”

The main gate was open, as it always was except in the most dire emergencies, but there were no guards posted. A minimum of two guards – one human, one Incubus – are on duty at all times. I had never in my years as an officer seen the gate unguarded. If I hadn’t been so sludge-brained, I would’ve noticed the missing guards right away.

“Better get Cuthbert Junior out,” I said.

“Way ahead of you.” Jinx giggled as he reached into his jacket and pulled out his sledgehammer. The hammer’s head was smeared with tacky blood, strands of hair, and bits of what looked like brain matter.

But before we could pass through the unguarded gate, I saw a trio of figures coming down Chimera Street toward us. It was Russell and Bloodshedder, and between them – her wrists bound together with a negator serving as handcuffs – was Shocktooth.

Since I’d brought Jinx up to speed, he knew that Russell wasn’t an enemy, if not exactly a friend yet. But either Jinx had forgotten, which was entirely possible – given the chaotic nature of his mind when he’s in his Night Aspect – or he didn’t care. He let out a deafening bellow of rage, raised Cuthbert Junior over his head in a two-handed grip, and started running toward Russell and Bloodshedder, his giant bare feet making meaty slapping sounds as he ran.

Russell showed no reaction to Jinx’s charge, but Bloodshedder growled and sprang forward.

The demon hound slammed into Jinx before he could swing his hammer, and she knocked him to the ground and pinned him with her front paws. Then she lowered her head to Jinx’s body and began devouring him. Jinx shrieked in agony, and I dashed forward, praying I could reach him before Bloodshedder did too much damage. Russell stood next to Shocktooth and kept hold of her while he watched his Incubus savage mine, seemingly unconcerned.