power was feeding him.
“Don’t try to slip away.” Felon could feel the old flesh shiver beneath his grip. That’s how they did it. “Can’t surprise me.”
“Oh I wouldn’t think of it.” The Marquis was recovering his dignity. His voice had changed slightly, losing some of its lilting tones. “ You are in charge.”
“Slip away?” Driver growled. “He got a whole firin’ squad on him”
“Tell him.” Felon flicked his head toward Driver.
“The Compact prohibits…” An imperious tone entered the Marquis’ voice.
Felon snarled at the old face. He wanted to kill.
The Marquis’ voice gasped.
“Felon?” Driver piped up. “Any fool can see he’s an old faggot in women’s clothes.” He looked seriously at the Tiny. “I thought we was playin’ that part down, but if the gloves are off, a horse is a horse.”
“He’s an Angel,” Felon snarled the unbelievable words. “He hid it well.”
“An Angel? Come on!” Driver laughed. “ He ain’t no Angel I ever heard of back at Catholic school.”
“The scent.” Felon felt a killing rage growing in him again. “Don’t know what side he’s on.”
“What scent? I can’t never smell nothin’ around him, except all that toilet water he soaks in.” Driver turned to Tiny, shrugged.
“They stink of cinnamon.” Felon slipped his arm across the Marquis’ throat and started to choke him.
46 – Sophie
Conan was placing packs around the open manhole when the hair stood up on the back of his neck like one of those spinner spiders had creep and sneaked into his helmet. The prickly sensation made him spin on his heel, the blades of the death-flower blooming glimmer-sharp.
A slim form in black stood there, leaning into the shadow, in filmy dress and slip-on shoes doing a spook show in the grim. Unmoving, she floated in the shadow-stuffed entrance to a tunnel that led to the sleep and yawn chambers. A white face framed by long black hair hung on the breeze like a spirit. The face was plastic, a mask of a little girl’s smile: the lips pink, the cheeks red, with thin arching eyebrows. The head tilted left then right asking questions. It was Sophie.
Conan looked out at her from his own mask, though his was of metal and looked like the grill of an old-time motorcar, something the older boys found and threw down some stairs to make it cling-clang-bang. But the little fighter had the finger on it ever since. Just the same he got his point across to her quick with a shift and shake of his head. No, Sophie!
But Sophie shook her mask back at him like she was a mirror, and pointed at her chest as if she knew better. The skin on her bare arms and calves was as white as her mask or the snow the kid-books yakked about.
Conan just shook his head again and twitched the sharp fingers on his murder-glove. Why couldn’t she understand? Mr. Jay didn’t want a creepy dead girl on a mission as important as this one. As it was he picked Conan, the Quinlan boys and Liz, the girl who led the first mission to save the stupid-Squeaker. There would be no place for a spook-with “no” all in capital letters.
But Sophie stepped lightly, cautiously forward. She nodded and pointed at herself again. One of the eyes on her mask was taped shut and gray. A dark brown eye gleamed and glared from the other.
Conan just shook his head like it was all he had to do and even tisk-tisked like the gramps in the old movies did. Then he made a go-get-the-fuck-off-it gesture with his hands. It wasn’t that he had a problem with Sophie; he liked her, in fact-but not in a kissing-hug-me-baby kind of way because he was done with that.
But on more than one occasion he’d watched her hush-hush secretly when he found her quietly dancing in a glimmer-beam of light that somehow made it through Zero into the Maze. And at other times he’d seen her sitting stooped, nodding her head and moving her hands like she was talking to a crowd of people with questions and microphones. That was okay with Conan, since he liked the gentle moves she made as she danced. In some way it reminded him of his mom and even got his sniffer sniffling.
But most of all he liked her because he’d heard her story many, many times told at chirp-slurp and supper and at night as the sleep and nightmares came on, or at other times with other boys on watch who knew the yak, and told it to keep their peepers open and wide.
It was a story that ran neck and neck with his own. A crazy boy escaped the Prime’s Orphanage and told the fighters before he ran away and never came back. Conan heard that the Prime caught Sophie after the Change and put her in his Orphanage. He heard that the Prime had to kill Sophie’s mother to catch her. He heard that the Prime was taking the girls for himself, and letting his friends do the Bad thing to them. And Conan heard that the Prime took the prettiest and made them prettier and married them, and wanted to keep them for babies when the Change started changing.
Sophie drew Conan’s attention when she took another cautious-hush step toward the bags. Her eye watched him, and she pointed at herself and nodded her fake and plaster face. The little fighter heard that the Prime chose Sophie for a wife, and married her and made her do the Bad thing, and worse. And Conan heard Sophie was alone in a room after it happened, and he heard that she took the Prime’s gun and shot herself in the head.
So Conan heard that the bullet killed her all right, and but mostly it killed her face-and the Change wouldn’t let her stay dead in hell no more. Conan heard poor Sophie woke up out of Blacktime without her life, or her childhood or her smile. The Prime found her zombie-dead- walking and ugly so he threw her out in the street, and that was where the Creature said the fighters could find her.
Conan didn’t go that time, the Creature wouldn’t let him, but one of the fighters took pity on Sophie and stole her the mask from an abandoned old playhouse on Zero. She wore it ever since.
Conan knew she was a strong spirit-spook to keep going-going-pink-bunny-gone. And he knew that she would be good in a fight, especially when she couldn’t get killed even by bullets or knives or stones. But the other fighters didn’t think she could do an order when she got one, and up until now, she’d didn’t care a yawn or yak about what they were doing.
The little fighter stood by the bags as Sophie came up to him, her head tilting silently left and right-more questions by chin and wag. She reached out and stroked the blades on his fist-kill with her dead fingers and he smiled inside his mask. Then he shrugged because he was no King-and-Queen and couldn’t say, so he nodded up the corridor when sounds came echoing toward them. Sophie turned rigidly and melted into the shadows. Conan watched her go, some weird feelings in his chest and eyes that only started after he hugged that Mr. Jay.
The Creature led the way out of the tunnel. Behind her came the Quinlan boys, wiry muscled twins about ten years old who were great fighters and friends of Conan and Liz. All the fighters wore their armor and padding and carried weapons of all kinds for blasting and cutting and killing.
The Creature looked down into Conan’s mask with the new look she’d given him earlier. It tickled inside his chest again and his eyes twitched as he nodded.
Mr. Jay’s face was prune-pinched with concern when he looked around at his little troop with watery eyes. “Doesn’t seem right,” he yakked shaking his head. “I know you’re all older than me, but I can’t shake how you look.”
“And how do we look?” The Quinlan boys asked, raising their shoulders and stepping stiff-legged forward. Short swords hung at their waists opposite small caliber pistols. Their faces were grim as bone breaks and tight underwear.
Mr. Jay only looked worried a second before the twins released the tension with a same-time laugh.
“Sorry,” Mr. Jay groaned, found his pack and slung it over his shoulder.
“The Creature says Liz and the Quinlans know the way into the Tower,” the Creature said quickly. “They’ve been in before.” She cleared her voice. “The Creature thinks you must not be captured. The Prime does his Devil work in the Orphanage and the Creature has seen his friends. Do not fight, we think, unless you must.” She set a hand on one of the Quinlan’s shoulders and then his brother’s. “It will take a day and more by the secret ways unseen. There is a place, and a friend and a rest before you get there. The Quinlans know this also.”
Mr. Jay had his metal stick in one hand as he helped Liz into her pack. She puffed on a cigarette and groan- cursed at the straps.
