Route 666

mutual comfort.

Jazzbeaux pouted and leaned on a Blood Bowl console. She let her tongue play over her lower lip and fluttered her single eyelash.

'You should have more fun, Rachael,' she said, meaning it.

Harvest looked blank.

'Fun is not an early priority.'

Before she went into the private sector, Rachael Harvest was a Denver beatcop. She'd rounded up Jazzbeaux back in her gladiatrix days and they'd played Mama-Daught games neither wanted to remember much in the harshness of the '90s. But the Op always made Jazzbeaux feel twelve.

'How's blat, Jessamyn?'

Jazzbeaux shrugged. She knew the woman cared (under the armour plate, the Op was a dogoodnik) but she'd never understand. For her, everything was right or wrong and pick-yourself-up. She'd never had a Daddy like Bruno Bonney. And she'd never have a daughter like Jessamyn Amanda…

'Must be business openings this anno,' Ms Harvest mused. 'Especially in pharmaceuticals supply. If I were a smart fillette, I think I'd pass them up. Prospects are strictly short term.'

Out of the Op's sightline, Sleepy Jane hefted a blowpipe and took aim. She usually packed tranks but she had a variety of interesting psycho-active darts.

'I wouldn't exhale if I were you, Miss Porteous,' Harvest said, not turning her head. 'If someone were to give that thing a good shove, you'd lose those expensive steel-core teeth.'

The blowpipe went down.

'How do you do that, Rachael? A pineal peep implant?'

Harvest didn't crack a smile.

'Jessamyn, Jessamyn, what to do about you?'

'Here's a radical concept, how about getting off my back and leaving me the freak alone?'

Jazzbeaux fancied a wind of disappointment blew across the Op's smooth face. Jazzbeaux would have killed for Harvest's complexion.

'One day, my dear,' Harvest said, 'there'll be a reckoning 'twixt thee and me.'

'Won't that be something to see, though?'

Jazzbeaux knew she was flouncing like a lolita, shoving hips against her skirt and blowing bubbles with non- existent gum. It was uncanny how far back the Op took her.

'Jessamyn, grow up,' the Op said, a feeble parting shot. She slipped back into 'Nola Gay and the door descended. The windows were one-way opaque.

The 'Pomps drew fingers and popped off gun-noises at the V12, thumbs recoiling. Sweetcheeks had a bad case of hiccough-giggles and had to be slapped on the back.

Jazzbeaux wondered why she let Redd Harvest get to her.

'Dance on my finger, ladylove,' she said, not loud enough for the car's sensors to pick up.

'Attention,' a computer-generated speaker said, 'your warrant status and current locale have been down- loaded with the nearest node of the Highway Patrol net.'

'I'm so scared,' So Long said, exaggerating. She'd kept quiet and hung back while Harvest was out of her car.

'Nola Gay did its famous nought-to-ninety trick and zoomed off for the desert horizon.

'Thank Cristo for that,' Andrew Jean said. 'I've been sitting on the message for minutes. How does Moroni, Utah sound to you? It's up near Silver City and Spanish Fork. Ghost town.'

'Snazz.'

Moroni? Irving specialised in ghost towns with silly names. II would have scouted the site. The commission was to find absolutely neutral territory for negotiations. Somewhere, the DAR rank equivalent of Andrew Jean would be receiving the same message.

Jazzbeaux gave Andrew Jean the nod.

'I'll tap in an acceptance. Boyar, it looks like you're invited to single combat. A duel of honour and business.'

Andrew Jean knuckled keys, authorising the transfer of funds to II, accepting the site. As the message was processed, the Virtualsex simulated an affirmative orgasm. The Daughters must have gone with Moroni, too. It used to be form for both sides suspiciously to turn down the first proposal but Irving got offended easily.

'Nola Gay was out of sight. The Psychopomps' ve-hickles were neatly parked in the lot, under armed guard.

'Girlie-girls,' Jazzbeaux announced, 'we've got klicks to cover 'fore tomorrow night. So let's move out.'

V

In the Outer Darkness, the Old Ones swarmed, awaiting the Summoning. The Dark Ones Who Stand By Themselves. The Summoner felt their immense excitement, their unknown activity, reach through the Planes of Existence, focusing on his own beating heart. The Power of the Crawling Chaos was almost too much to contain in one mere physical body.

Blood had been spilled on the Path of Joseph. The Channels were opening. Not enough blood yet, but a start was made on the Great Invocation. The ritual, more ancient even than those it was to summon, had been commenced. Again.

The Road to the Shining City must be marked out for the Dark Ones and their Servitors, just as landing lights mark out an airfield runway. The spilled blood would guide the Dark Ones to the Earthly Plane, to the Last City.

More blood, more blood!

The Summoner assessed his work and was well pleased. He had travelled this route before, spilled blood before. Since then, he had had time to wait, time to live. Now the cycle could recommence. Lines came into his head, and he followed them through…

Turning and turning in a widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned …

The Irishman had known more than he understood, the Summoner mused, and had died too soon to realise what he was talking of. He was one of the so-called magicians. They had all been fools and children, playing conjuring tricks, never really grasping the cosmic significance of the old rites. He had known them all, and seen them for what they were: the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley, A. E. Waite, Arthur Machen, the Si-Fan, the Illumanati, the Adepts, Fools and children.

The Summoner was happier with his collection of half-mad geniuses: De Sade, Poe, Aspern, Edvard Munch, Bierce, Gustave von Aschenbach, Kafka, Howard Lovecraft, Meyrink, Scott Fitzgerald, Jake Lingwood, Plath, Michael Reeves. Poets and painters and fabulists and freaks. Taken before their times, they had been worthy offerings to the Dark Ones. Nothing so pleased his masters as the waste of human potential. Sometimes he flirted with exposure, allowing the sacrifices to learn a little, letting it seep into their work. He was quite a patron of the Arts. Sometimes, through carelessness, someone doomed to early disgrace and death grew wise and slipped away.

He thought of the singer, Presley, who had so nearly been his toy but who had diverged from the path laid out in blood and gold. The Summoner knew Presley was out there in the world. His was a sacrifice which would be completed some day.

Now the secret societies, the love cults, the freemasonries were gone. The poets and philosophers