Krokodil Tears

Nguyen Seth clung to the shaking font as the Tabernacle shook. It was a small earthquake. The blood splashed his face.

He remembered Bruno Bonney, saw him through his daughter's eyes as her nails went into his throat.

The Dark Ones swarmed in the beyond, great wings flapping, tentacles uncoiling…

Fort Apache, Lake Havasu. Trooper Stack realized Leona was awake. He rolled over to kiss her, and saw tears on her face.

'Nathan,' she said, 'it's over. Us, I mean.'

Dr Proctor braked, and got out of the car. There was a voice in the night, howling. He opened the trunk, and distributed weapons about his person.

It wasn't Jessamyn screaming. It must be the Indian, Hawk-That-Settles. He had glanced over his stats, and discounted him. He was negligible.

He walked up the gentle incline towards the gate of Santa de Nogueira.

'Holiness, Holiness…'

On the other side of the world. Father Declan O'Shaughnessy approached Pope Georgi I in one of the inner chambers of the Vatican. The Holy Father was studying reports from Jesuit agents in Central America.

'What is it, Declan?'

'A disturbance. A big one. Our espers are speaking in tongues, and frothing at the mouth.'

'Is it an attack?'

'Who can say?'

'Call the inner council. Is Chantal available?'

'I think not.'

'A pity. Open a line to San Francisco. I would like to confer with Kazuko Hara.'

'Immediately, Holiness.'

As he left the Pope, O'Shaugnessy heard the Holy Father muttering to himself in Latin. Powerful prayers, he hoped.

'Houston, Houston, do you read?'

'Sure, Cloudbase. What's the buzz? You may be on Japan time up there, but it's four in the ayem Earthside you know.'

'Weird shit coming down, Houston. All our instruments went crazy just now.'

'Sounds like Japtech error to me. We have no anomalies.'

'Have you looked at the moon recently?'

'Sure, it's just out the window, what do you mean?'

'Take a look.'

'Freakin' hell.'

'Yeah.'

'Let's just class this as a monitor error, hey? Get some sleep, and it'll be better in the morning.'

'We told you. That's all we had to do. It's up to you now. Good night, Houston.'

'Good night, Digby.'

The Ancient Adversary stretched out its invisible, insubstantial form and detached itself from the chunk of rock. It was just a satellite, after all, more important as the focus of men's dreams and beliefs than as a collection of geological data.

It brushed through Camp Pournelle, comforted by the tininess of its mechanisms, the limits of their measures.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

'Miss…is there something?'

It was like coming awake. She hadn't been in a fugue or anything, but she did seem to have wandered off on some impulse.

'Miss?'

'It's all right, thank you, comrade.'

The zookeeper straightened his cap and walked away. Chantal Juillerat, S.J., leaned against the railings, and wondered what she was doing in the Moscow Zoo.

This wasn't a holiday. She was with Cardinal Brandreth's delegation. There was a demonic presence of some sort infesting the semi-secure database in the Roman Catholic church on Pushkin Prospekt. She was supposed to attend the preliminary exorcism, and give assistance.

She wasn't supposed to go to the zoo.

A party of chattering children pressed around her, faces to the railings, pointing.

The reptile opened its snout, and showed its teeth. The children backed away.

Chantal looked into the crocodile's mouth, and felt as if someone had walked over her grave.

She remembered a song from a film.

'Never Smile at a Crocodile.'

The moon was round again. Hawk's song was nearly done. His part in the pattern was almost over.

In Memphis, Tennessee, an old Op was up late in his tiny apartment, listening to his old records, drinking too much.

From the CD, his own, younger voice breathed 'Are You Lonesome Tonight?'

The thing is, he was…

Dr Proctor had expected a drawbridge, but there were just a pair of eaten-through wooden gates.

'Little pigs, little pigs,' he said to himself, 'let me come in.'

In the Outer Darkness, the wisp that was the spirit projection of Nguyen Seth was blown this way and that by the angry breaths of the Dark Ones. The Ancient Adversary had escaped. The Great Work was in jeopardy. One among the titans came forward, and latched onto Seth, hooks sinking into the Summoner's soul.

This was the one they called the Jibbenainosay.

Seth was pulled back through the wormhole to the tabernacle, and found himself in his body again.

He took off his spectacles.

Just beyond the Gateway, the Jibbenainosay wailed. In more years than a man should remember, Nguyen Seth had encountered many things, but he had never truly known fear before.

Now, he had met the Jibbenainosay.

'Hey, Chop-Chop, look at the drunken old Indian!'

They were Maniax, bored and hung-over from smacksynth and white lightning. They'd stumbled out of the Happy Chief Diner, where they'd stoked up on burro burritos and chilli dogs. They'd heard the Navahos had good drugs, but they'd heard wrong.

'Don't he howl, though?'

'Ain't that a Mothers of Violence track?'

'Nahh, sounds Sove to me.'

'D'j reckon he's a Red Indian?'

'Could be.'

'Freakin' commie.'

'Bet I kin plug his guts from here.'

'Way off, Chop-Chop. Let me try.'

'Hey, no fair. You gotta ScumStopper.'

'You gots the tools, Chop-Chop, you use them.'

The handgun spat flame and lead. The shot resounded through the valley, amplified in its echo as it bounced off the sugarloaf mountains.

'Freak, but that's a mess you've made.'

'Hell, I bet we can still lift his scalp.'

'Way to go.'