The Ninth Nightmare

razed to the ground before we leave this dream.’

‘You got it, dude.’

By now the howling rabble of circus folk was almost on them. Dom Magator stood in the center, with Zebenjo’Yyx on his left-hand side and Jekkalon and Jemexxa on his right. Xyrena stood back behind them. She knew that her time would come, but it wasn’t yet.

‘No more nightmare! No more nightmare!’ screamed the clowns and the freaks. ‘Real! Real! Real!’

Up above them, the huge white cumulus clouds boiled up, taking on the shapes of skulls and phantoms and human faces with their mouths dragged down in agony. The whole of Brother Albrecht’s dream was thirsting for battle.

TWENTY-TWO Full Circle

The circus folk were less than a hundred yards away. ‘No more nightmare! No more nightmare! Real! Real! Real!’

Dom Magator waited until the last possible moment, and then he said, very quietly, ‘OK, everybody. Let ’em have it.’

Zebenjo’Yyx released a blizzard of arrows from both hands. They clattered and whistled as they flew from the release mechanisms on his forearms, and the clowns collapsed into the wheat by the score, their bodies bristling like porcupines.

Jemexxa kept her back to the circus folk, so that she could raise the palm of one hand and reflect a bolt of lightning into Jekkalon’s hand. The lightning jumped from one twin to the other with an ear-splitting crack, and Jekkalon aimed it into the thickest part of the crowd. It exploded with such force that they could see a visible shock-wave ripple across the field, and fragments of clown and clothing were blasted high up into the purple sky.

Now Dom Magator hefted his Scythe Rifle up to his hip. He squeezed the trigger and it uttered a piercing, continuous scream. A stream of liquid lead poured out of the muzzle like water from a high-pressure hose, cutting the circus folk into pieces as he slowly swung the rifle from left to right. Soon the field in front of them was heaped with bodies and the wheat was stained rusty with blood.

Within minutes, fewer than a dozen clowns and circus hands were left standing, apart from three or four freaks — one of them a boy with six legs, like a huge spider.

‘You want some more, you bastards?’ Dom Magator yelled at them, and he shocked himself by the harshness of his own voice. ‘There’s plenty more where this came from! ’

The circus folk hesitated for a moment, and then they turned around and began to scamper and hobble back toward the black tents.

‘Come on,’ said Dom Magator. ‘No time to waste. This is where we go for the Grand Freak himself.’

They stepped gingerly through the scattered bodies. Xyrena kept saying, ‘My God, my God, what have we done?’ but Dom Magator didn’t answer her. He remembered the first time that he had fought a battle in a nightmare, and inflicted casualties, and he remembered how shocked he had been, even when he had woken up the following morning.

‘We’re on our way, An-Gryferai,’ Dom Magator told her. ‘See if you can pinpoint Mago Verde.’

‘OK, but I’ll have to dive down lower. They’re all hiding themselves underneath their awnings now.’

‘Be careful, that’s all.’

He saw An-Gryferai circle over the big top, and then dive downward. But suddenly she appeared to jerk, and thrash, and her wings folded up. She disappeared from sight behind the tents, and he could hear a shout of triumph from the circus folk.

‘An-Gryferai! An-Gryferai! What’s happened? An-Gryferai, get back to me!’

Over his intercom, he picked up struggling noises, and static, and somebody saying, ‘Got her, the bird-bitch! Got her!’

He heard An-Gryferai grunting with effort, and then saying the single word, ‘— net!’

‘Did you hear that?’ he asked the other Night Warriors. ‘Sounds like they’ve caught her in a snare!’

They began to jog more quickly toward the circus. The morning was even hotter now. Their boots crunched through the trampled wheat stalks and the black pennants on the big top made a lazy, slapping sound. As they approached the outlying tents, a single figure appeared, in a black tuxedo, with a bright green smile. He waited for them patiently as they came nearer.

‘Well, well, what a surprise!’ Mago Verde called out. ‘It appears that I’m guilty of mistaking your identity, tin man! But then one lard butt looks so much like another!’

‘Where’s An-Gryferia, you creep?’ Dom Magator demanded. ‘If you’ve so much as touched her, I’m going to rip off your head off and piss down your neck!’

‘An-Gryferia? Is that her name? The bird-bitch who blew up poor Flammo? She’s OK for now, maybe a little bruised. But I warn you. If any of you try anything funny, she’s going to suffer. And not just suffer for now, but for ever and ever, amen. She wants to be a bird-woman? We can make her into a bird-woman for real!’

Dom Magator lifted his Scythe Rifle. ‘This is the end, you piece of shit. This circus is going out of business, permanent.’

‘I don’t think so,’ grinned Mago Verde. ‘You know why I came here tonight. That’s why you followed me. I have a ninth sacrifice for Brother Albrecht, and once we’ve enhanced his appearance, so that he begs us to stay with the freak show for the rest of his life, it will be time to pack up the tents and hitch up the caravans and trundle our way through to the wonderful world of wakefulness!’

‘Take me to An-Gryferai,’ said Dom Magator, pulling back the bolt on his rifle. ‘Take me to An-Gryferai or so help me I’ll cut you in half.’

‘I was going to anyhow,’ said Mago Verde. ‘Come on, tin man, follow me!’

He turned around and started to walk between the tents toward the big top, his thumbs in his lapels, strutting like Charlie Chaplin. Zebenjo’Yyx looked at Dom Magator and said, ‘What do we do now, man? He might have caught An-Gryferai, but we can’t let him take this circus through to the real world, can we?’

‘Let’s play it as it comes,’ said Dom Magator. ‘I don’t want any casualties if I can help it. Especially not An- Gryferai.’

Mago Verde led them through the archway that said Albrecht’s Traveling Circus & Freak Show and into the big top. Inside, the noise was overwhelming. The Night Warriors stood in front of the stage and looked around, and every seat was taken — by a clown, or a freak, or a dreamer. This was going to be Brother Albrecht’s big night — the night when he and his circus at least broke the sacred sanction that had kept them imprisoned in the world of dreams for over eight hundred years.

‘Here’s your precious An-Gryferai,’ said Mago Verde. And there she was, on the far side of the stage, gagged with a red scarf and tightly bound to a wooden chair, her wings folded behind her. A tattooed strong man in a leotard stood next to her, grinning toothlessly, holding a long-bladed knife in his hand.

An-Gryferai stared at the Night Warriors with her eyes wide, shaking her head from side to side as if she were appealing to them not to surrender.

Zachary, the bald Freakmaster came strutting up to them, wearing his long black rustling raincoat. He smiled at Jekkalon and Jemexxa and he obviously recognized them, even with their helmets on. ‘We meet again, then! Kieran and Kiera! Your mother the Demi-Goddess is very well, you’ll no doubt be pleased to know! You will see her in a moment!

Then he turned to Dom Magator and said, between gritted teeth, ‘Your weapons, please, all of them.’

‘You’re kidding me,’ said Dom Magator.

Zachary, still smiling, shook his head. ‘We can’t allow you to jeopardize Brother Albrecht’s greatest night, now can we?’