Krokodil Tears

sugarbowl.

'How careless,' he said. 'It should have been plastic. I suppose aluminium is cheaper than any petroleum byproduct in these troubled times.'

'Ottokar…'

Dr Proctor stood over Russell, the spoon in one hand, his other on the Treasury man's shoulder.

'Dr Proctor,' said Duroc. 'Hurry up. We have a very brief window of opportunity here.'

'It's a moment's work, Monsieur.'

Even Duroc didn't want to watch the Devil at work. By the time the screaming was over, he had Bean stripped of his uniform.

'Is this your size?' he said.

'A little generous over the belly, but we can tighten his belt.'

Dr Proctor stripped out of his whites, and pulled the uniform on. They would have used Gilhooly's clothes, but there was a little blood on the collar.

'Ready?'

'Yes, Monsieur.' Dr Proctor held up the teaspoon. It was red.

'What are we waiting for?'

'Cook's privilege,' the Devil said, 'I get to lick the spoon.'

VII

'Jesse, what's wrong?'

'I don't know. Hawk. It all seems so crazy, sometimes. The Dreams, the prophecies. I'm a girl from the Denver NoGo, not some picstrip superheroine.'

'You've come a long way from the NoGo.'

'Have I? Have I really?'

'You know the answer. What were you? A petty criminal, a sociopath. You've killed, you've robbed…'

'That was just a phase, you know. You grow out of it.'

'The people you killed won't grow out of it.'

'I've never killed anyone who wouldn't have killed me.'

'That's not true.'

'…you're right.'

'How do you feel about that?'

'…I don't know. It doesn't seem like the same girl. With the gangcult, it was different. You just kept riding along with the pack, you did what was expected…'

'You were the leader of the pack.'

'Yes, but that just meant the others expected more of me.'

'Would you go back, if you could?'

'I'd bring back Andrew Jean and Cheeks and the others, yes.'

'That's not what I asked. Would you ride with the gangcults again? Waiting for the Op or the Maniak who'd take you down?'

'No. I'm too old, anyway. But no.'

'And what else have you got to do?'

'Save the world?'

'Don't make that sound so bad, Jesse.'

'Isn't it? This world isn't all that worth saving, if you ask me.'

'You can't spend your whole life killing your father.'

'What's that got to do with it?'

'Your father brought you into this world, and your father was scum, therefore you reject the world.'

'That sounds too easy to me. My father wasn't the only slimeball in the world. For a start, you should meet my mother, wherever she is. Rancid Robyn.'

'But the world isn't all slime.'

'Isn't it? Apart from you, everybody I know is dead. Or ought to be.'

'We will do our parts, and things will be better.'

'I've heard that all my life.'

'This time, maybe…Things are different, aren't they?'

'Different? Yes. I've never been a monster before.'

'You're not a monster. You're a Spirit Warrior.'

'Jesse Frankenstein's-Daughter, the Spirit Warrior.'

'You must take the feelings you have for yourself and channel them. You will need all your emotional capacities.'

'It's starting soon?'

'It's starting now.'

VIII

Dr Proctor slipped the chip into the auto's music system, and Fast-Forwarded to the 'Nessun dorma!' As the Unknown Prince, Sir Oswald Osbourne, the greatest operatic voice of the '90s, poured it out. Osbourne apart, the Met's Turandot was rather minor, he supposed, but you could never tire of the 'Nessun dorma!' The aria ended, and he skipped to the finale. 'Cera negli occhi tuoi' and 'Diecimila anni.' Then, the applause.

The incar computers told him he was in Southern Arizona. He let the machines do all the driving. He had been through this area in '89, when he was just starting out on his Devil-work. He had liked it because it reminded him of the endless mesas and sandy canyons of the Road Runner cartoons, Zoom and Bored (1957), Wild About Hurry (1959), Fastest With the Mostest (1960), Tired and Feathered (1965).

There had been a gangcult then. The Backburners. They had flagged him down to kill him and rob him. He must have added fifteen or twenty to his score that night. He never kept count. That was for the pettifoggers, the lawyers and the journos.

There were seventeen books in print about him, not counting his autobiography, and he'd been in five movies. He preferred Steve Martin's performance in Tas, the Newman version, to any of the others. Michael Caine had been especially poor in A Devil With Women, and Dustin Hoffman out of his depth in Have Axe, Will Travel. Still, none of them were quite what he saw when he looked in the mirror.

Poor Oliver. He would never get out of the mess he'd been left in. And heads would roll at Sunnydales. More heads, he corrected himself.

Once he had discharged his debt of honour with Seth, he might take the Elder up on the offer of a home in Deseret.

But he might prefer to wander the byways of the United States, playing his tricks. He had about a hundred million dollars stashed in accounts, safe deposit boxes and secret caches throughout the country. His face could be changed.

And the Devil would dance again.

Duroc had been able to give him quite precise information regarding the whereabouts of Jessamyn Bonney. His