The Ninth Nightmare

nudie lady! You make me want to suck your breast buttons! You make me want to stick my fingers into your sticky pussy-pie!’

Jekkalon said, ‘Xyrena — want me to fry the little bastard? Just say the word!’

But Xyrena said, ‘No. We want to get your mom out of here, don’t we? And like Dom Magator said, we don’t know if they have any weapons, or some other way of defending themselves.’

Inside their helmets, they heard Zebenjo’Yyx say, ‘Keep cool, OK? Me and the Dom, we’re right outside now. We’re only seconds away if you need us.’

Xyrena, Jekkalon and Jemexxa followed Brown Jenkin as he bustled down the aisle toward the stage. The noise from the audience and the performers on the stage was deafening — shouting and whistling and clapping and stamping of feet. Jemexxa hesitated as they approached the apron, but the circus hands were right behind them, and one of them gave her backpack a shove.

‘Hey!’ Jekkalon protested, turning around and raising his fist; but Xyrena took hold of his arm and said, ‘Let it be, Jekkalon. You’ll have your turn.’

Brown Jenkin led them up three steps on to the stage, and they were immediately surrounded by a mass of clowns and freaks and little people, all pushing at each other so they could touch them and prod them and pull at Xyrena’s cloak. In their Night Warriors outfits, they were just as much of a curiosity to the carnival folk as the carnival folk were to them. Jekkalon elbowed his way through them, although one dwarf retaliated by kicking him in the shin.

‘You little shit!’ Jekkalon shouted at him, but by then the dwarf had scrambled back into the crowd.

‘Over here, strangers!’ called Mago Verde, and beckoned them over to the black coach-contraption. Its black leather canopy was still tightly closed, so that it looked like a giant woodlouse. Xyrena walked across the stage first, with a seductive sway of her hips. Mago Verde eyed her up and down with his eyes glittering, twisting the ends of his hair between his fingers.

‘Well, well! And aren’t you something? Where have you appeared from, you temptress? What a crown you’re wearing! You look like the Queen of Someplace-or-Other.’

Xyrena said nothing, but gave him a provocative smile.

Mago Verde’s hand moved down and adjusted the crotch of his pants. Xyrena kept on smiling because she knew what effect she was having on him — the same effect that she had on everybody.

‘You’re not from here, are you?’ asked Mago Verde. He leaned closer to her, so that she could see the fine fissures in his green-and-gray greasepaint. She could even smell it, as well as stale tobacco, and his vinegary body odor. ‘In fact, you are the Queen of Someplace-or-Other, aren’t you? Here, and there. The Land of Awake and the Land of Fast Asleep.

He paused, and then he said, ‘In fact — you’re not having this dream, are you, like all of these other poor suckers in the audience? You’re like me, aren’t you, honey-dripper? You’re just visiting. Except that — unlike me — you weren’t invited. Not by me, or Zachary, and not by Brother Albrecht, neither. So what in the name of all that’s unholy are you doing here?’

Xyrena took two steps nearer to him, so that she could lay both of her hands on the dusty shoulders of his black suit.

‘You got wood, don’t you?’ she murmured.

‘What?’ He leaned his head forward. He hadn’t heard her clearly, because of the hubbub from the audience and the freaks who were still crowding around them.

‘I said, “You got wood.” Your pecker is so hard you could drill a hole in the ground with it, and you’re just aching to push it inside me, aren’t you? You think you’ll go crazy with lust if you don’t.’

Mago Verde stared at her, and for the first time she saw uncertainty in his eyes. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he said, his voice even hoarser than ever, so that he had to clear his throat.

‘My darling…’ Xyrena purred at him. ‘I am anybody you want me to be, and then some. You feel like you’re going to explode, don’t you? Can you imagine me sucking you? Can you imagine the tip of my tongue swimming round and around you, like an eel?’

With a grunt of frustration, Mago Verde gripped both of Xyrena’s wrists and gradually lifted her hands off his shoulders. He was trembling all over with the sheer effort of resisting her, as if he were lifting two hundred-pound barbells instead of a woman’s arms. ‘Ringmaster!’ he shouted. ‘Open the canopy! Let the Grand Freak see who has come to pay tribute to him!’

Xyrena kept on smiling at him. ‘So that’s it! You don’t dare to give in to those baser instincts, do you? — not in front of your lord and master! But if the Grand Freak hadn’t been here, you would have done, wouldn’t you? You would have screwed me in front of all of these people, wouldn’t you, and reveled in it! You would have danced around the stage crowing like a barnyard cockerel! But oh, no! You don’t dare, do you? Not in front of your lord and master!’

In truth, Xyrena’s heart was banging inside of her breastplate and she was terrified about what was going to happen next. But she still felt an enormous power over Mago Verde, and over every man and woman and freak who was clustering around her. She aroused them, she made their blood tingle, in spite of themselves. Mago Verde wanted her. They all wanted her. She induced the kind of lustful hysteria that led men to rape the plainest of women and women to submit to men whom they hated. The ringmaster’s face was so congested that it was almost purple. His eyes were bulging and she could tell that she had pumped up his blood pressure, too.

He cracked his whip, however, and bellowed, ‘All hail to the Great Creator of Nightmares, the Arch-Dreamer, the Grand Freak himself, Brother Albrecht!’ — cracking his whip again and again to accentuate each syllable.

At the same time, he turned a handle on the side of the four-wheeled contraption, like the handle of an old- fashioned sewing-machine, and as he did so, the black leather canopy gradually began to fold up, revealing what was hidden underneath it.

Everybody on the stage dropped on to one knee — those who had knees — and everybody who was wearing any kind of hat or headgear removed it, and held it reverently against their chests.

‘Your crown, you bitch!’ Mago Verde hissed at Xyrena. ‘Take off your crown!’

‘I don’t take off my crown for anyone,’ Xyrena retorted. ‘You said it yourself, didn’t you? Yes? I’m the Queen of Someplace-or-Other.’

‘Then tell your friends to take off their helmets!’

‘They’re not my friends, they’re my bodyguards, and they never remove their helmets.’

Mago Verde was obviously furious, but it was too late now. The black leather canopy had been folded right back — and there, exposed for everybody to see — was Brother Albrecht, the Grand Freak, der Ursprungliche Sohn des Teufel, the Original Son of the Devil.

‘Shit,’ said Jekkalon, and Jemexxa whispered, ‘Oh, my God.’ Even Xyrena, who was trying to keep up her sassy streetwalker act, was taken aback. She had to take three quick breaths to steady herself before she said, ‘Dom Magator, he’s right here! Center stage! Brother Albrecht, in the flesh! Or what’s left of him.’

The four-wheeled contraption contained a shell-shaped seat, upholstered in worn black leather, and inside this shell-shaped seat sat Brother Albrecht. He was dressed in a sleeveless jerkin of brown velvet with a high collar embroidered with gold thread. His arms were nothing but stumps and his legs had been sawn off at the knees, but his shoulders and his chest were muscular and well developed. It was his face, though, that had caused Xyrena to catch her breath. He was devastatingly handsome, with sapphire-blue eyes and chiseled cheekbones and a wide, strong jaw. His lips were sensual and slightly parted, as if he had just finished kissing someone, or saying something deeply suggestive. His hair was long and blond and tangled, but tied up with fraying golden cords, and decorated with dead white flowers. He could have been the model for a Pre-Raphaelite portrait of Jesus.

Brother Albrecht’s jerkin was open to the navel, and like the naked men and women who had escorted his contraption on to the stage, his body was decorated up to the neck with a swarming mass of tattoos — scores of intertwined illustrations of devils and monsters and women performing grotesque sexual acts with dogs and goats