“Hold it! Hold everything!
Everyone hesitated, then turned and looked at the Wolf’s head. It was grinning mockingly, its wet red mouth stretched wide. Dead men’s blood drooled and dripped.
“What about the Wolf?” snapped Natasha. “It isn’t doing anything.”
“He’s right,” said JC. “Kim isn’t the focal point.”
“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” said Natasha.
“No,” Erik said reluctantly. “The telepath’s right. The Wolf isn’t worried. Kim was only ever a decoy, a distraction. We’ve missed something. Damn. Damn! We’ve missed something important!”
“Then why did he have me killed?” said Kim.
“Because it was fun,” said the Wolf. And it laughed at them all.
Melody stepped forward, trained her machine-pistol on the Wolf’s left eye, and emptied the whole magazine into it. The great manufactured head soaked up the bullets and took no damage at all. Erik stabbed his Aboriginal pointing bone at the huge Wolf face. The bone exploded in Erik’s hand, and he cried out in agony as jagged splinters were driven deep into his hand. He cradled the bloody mess against his chest and fell back, moaning.
Happy cried out to Natasha. She looked at him, nodded quickly, and grabbed his outstretched hand. Their minds slammed together, and the combined strength of their joined thoughts struck out at the Wolf like a single shining lance. The Wolf opened its mouth, swallowed the attack whole, and took no harm at all. The head surged forward, its great jaws snapping at Natasha and Happy. They scrabbled backwards, letting go of each other’s hands.
JC brandished his monkey’s paw and advanced on the Wolf’s head, holding the burning fingers of the modified claw out before him. It was a forbidden weapon because it could give a man the power of a god, for a while; but even it was no match for the Great Beast. It burst into flames, hot and fierce, and JC cried out and dropped it. He grabbed for it again, but already the paw was nothing but ashes smeared across the platform. The Wolf’s head surged forward again, pulling more of itself into the world, but JC stood his ground. He whipped off his sunglasses and stared right into the Beast’s huge eyes. The Wolf sneered at him.
“And they help me see so clearly,” said JC. “Especially things that have been right under my nose all along. Kim isn’t the focal point of your haunting, and never was. There’s nothing of you in Kim. She’s a ghost, an unfortunate by-product of your actions. You’ve been waving her in front of me all along, to distract me. She isn’t the focus; her murderer is. That’s why you brought him here. By committing an act of murder in a certain place at a certain time, when the walls between the worlds were at their weakest, that act opened a door for you. Murder magic has always been a trait of your kind; you kill because you can’t create. In all the time you’ve been here, you haven’t made one new thing—only copies of existing things.”
He turned abruptly to Happy and Natasha. “I need the murderer’s spirit. Find it. Kim said he was still here, with us. Find him and put him back in his head.”
“He won’t stay long,” said Happy. “He’s too traumatised.”
“Put him back together for a while,” JC said urgently. “I need to talk to him.”
Happy and Natasha joined hands again, and concentrated. The Wolf cried out angrily, but no-one was listening to it. There was a sharp, cracking sound, and flecks of frost flew on the air as the frozen head turned slowly to look at Kim. The murderer blinked once, and his eyes cleared. He looked at Kim and tears started from his eyes, only to freeze before they were half-way down his cheeks. He worked his mouth, amid more harsh, cracking sounds, and Kim drifted forward to stand over him, to hear what he had to say.
“I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice full of all the pain and tiredness in the world. “I’m so sorry.”
The thick layer of frost covering his body exploded out from him as he stretched suddenly and forced himself up onto his feet. Great cracks appeared, in his clothes and in his frozen flesh, but he ignored them, all his attention fixed on Kim.
“My name is Billy Hartman,” he said slowly. “I never meant to kill you. Never meant to kill anyone. It was like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.”
“I gave you what you wanted,” said the Wolf. “What you dreamed of. Don’t say you didn’t.”
“We don’t always want what we want in dreams,” said Billy. “They’re just dreams!”
“Humans are so complicated,” said the Wolf. “You can’t even tell the truth to yourselves.”
“You don’t understand us,” said JC. “You never did. You may be realer than us, but we’re still more than you are.”
Billy glared at the Wolf’s head, able to face it at last, in the last few moments of his life. “You lied to me. Used me!”
“That’s all you’re good for,” said the Wolf.
Billy turned his head away, dismissing the Wolf, and studied Kim with his sad, betrayed eyes. “What’s it like, being dead?”
“You’re closer to death than I am,” said Kim, not unkindly. “I’m stuck here. I was going to do so many things . . . and now I never will.”
“I know,” said Billy.
“It’s hard to know what I feel about you,” said Kim. “Finally having a name and a face to put to my murderer . . . doesn’t really make any difference. You were used by the Wolf, like me . . . but you, at least, had some choice in this. I can’t forgive you.”
“That’s all right,” said Billy. “I don’t forgive me either.”
JC stepped forward. “You want a way to get back at the Wolf? Make it pay, for everything it’s done to you and Kim and everyone else?”
“There’s a way for me to put things right?” said Billy.
“No,” said JC. “What’s done is done and can’t be undone. But I can give you a chance to defy the Wolf and save the world from what it wants to do to us.”
“I’d give anything for a chance like that,” said Billy.
“There’s only one way that works,” said JC. “One chance to pay all debts. Sacrifice.”
Billy looked at the Wolf and smiled slowly. His frozen cheeks tore as his mouth stretched. “I can do that.”
“Not on your own you can’t,” said JC. “Take my hand, Billy, and walk with me.”
The dying man put out his hand, and JC took it carefully in his. The frozen flesh burned his hand, but he didn’t let go. The two men strode towards the huge Wolf head, and it snarled warningly at them. Kim suddenly flew forward, putting herself between JC and the Wolf.
“No! JC, you can’t do this! You mustn’t! You’ll die, and leave me here alone! What debts do you have to sacrifice yourself for? What was your sin?”
“Loving the dead,” said JC.
And he walked straight through her, his living lips briefly coming up against her dead mouth, for one last kiss, as his face passed through hers. The Wolf growled at JC and Billy, watching them carefully, grinding its great bone teeth together. JC stared right back into the Wolf’s huge eyes, and the Wolf blinked first. JC’s gaze was burning so very brightly, and the Great Beast could not match it.
“You,” said JC. “You brought people to this place, in blood and horror and suffering, and killed them, to build your face. You turned the station into a bad place and infected it with your presence—a psychic stain that will last for generations. So you could make a place of your own. You destroyed two lives: Kim and Billy. To make your portal into our world. You came here to destroy us all . . . because you could. One of the Great Beasts, with no soul, no conscience, and not even the faintest trace of true greatness. Even the smallest human is bigger than you. Right, Billy?”
“Right,” said Billy.
Fenris Tenebrae howled horribly, and the great head surged forward again. The massive jaws opened, and started to snap closed on Billy and JC, because it couldn’t bear to hear what they were saying. To silence and punish and hurt them because that was what the Wolf did. And as the jaws were slamming together, at the very last moment, Billy pushed JC back, with all the strength remaining in his frozen arms. So that when the terrible jaws
