Black Tattoo, The

  Suddenly, Number 3 stopped what he was doing and straightened up, his expression darkening.

  "Number Three?"

  * * * * *

  "I told you," Jack was saying to the elder Chinj. "You've got my promise."

  "And what use is that? The word of a soup-sucker."

  "And you've got a hostage," Jack finished through gritted teeth.

  "The Grand Cabal finds your terms to be acceptable," said the large Chinj to the elder's right. It turned to the elder. "May I remind you, my lord, that the Parliament has made its decision. The Chinj peoples have spoken — and you, I'm afraid, must abide by their wishes. Your truculence is unseemly."

  "But this is wrong, my brother," said the elder Chinj. "You cannot expect me to stand idly by and watch the long-awaited awakening being jeopardized."

  "Look," Jack interrupted. "This is a no-lose situation for you. If we do stop the awakening, then you've still got you consolation prize: you've got my promise that I'll come back, and I've left you Number Two as security."

  "Believe me, young human," hissed the elder Chinj, " your agony shall give me considerable pleasure."

  "Fine. Dissolve me, whatever, I don't care — but you never know," Jack went on. "If we fail, then you get your awakening thingamajig anyway. So you'll still be happy. All right?"

  "Hmph," said the elder Chinj.

  "Now if you'll excuse me," said Jack, "I've got to go and help someone save the universe. Before it's too late," he added grimly.

  "We too must make our preparations," replied the Chief Grand Cabal SpokesChinj. "We shall meet again."

  "Count on it," said Jack.

  He watched as the council head and the elder Chinj leaped into the air and flapped off back down the tunnel. His own Chinj stood by him, also watching them go. Then it looked up at Jack.

  "Sir," it began.

  "Jack," said Jack. "Call me Jack."

  "Jack, then," said the Chinj. "I must say, I don’t think I understand you very well. Not at all, to tell the truth."

  Jack looked at the bat creature. "It's pretty simple," he said. "I figured either you Chinj get me, or the universe comes to an end. I'm stuffed either way, so what difference does it make how it happens?"

  "Well," said the Chinj, "I suppose if you put it like that..."

  It paused.

  "Do you know, sir?" it said — and by the time Jack had thought to correct it it had already gone on — "I think that there may be more demon — more gladiator — in you than you suspect."

  They looked at each other. The Chinj was smiling. After a moment, Jack found that he was too.

  "Come on," he said. "Let's go find the others. I want to introduce you to an interesting human invention."

  "Oh, yes?" asked the Chinj, polite but dubious. "And what's that?"

  "Guns," said Jack, and smirked darkly to himself. "Lots of guns."

  He set off down the tunnel.

  The Chinj shrugged its small shoulders and set off after him.

  THE LAST BATTLE

  For another moment, the Scourge stared at Esme.

  "You still think you can win?" it asked. "Even after your failures before?"

  "Stop talking and find out," was Esme's reply.

  "As you wish." The Scourge unfolded its liquid-black arms.

  It took two steps, burred into motion, and before Esme had time to realize what was happening she felt a blow that took her breath away.

  It was like being swatted with an oil tanker. She was hurled back a clear forty feet straight through the air, landing with an impact that drove the air from her lungs. In front of her eyes, the air shimmered, shook, and the Scourge reappeared again. Now cool liquid fingers held Esme by the throat. Looking down the shining black surface of the Scourge's arm, she caught her own startled expression reflected in its face. Feeling her trainered feet leaving the sticky pink ground, Esem looked downward.

  She was dangling over the edge of the plateau.

  "Now," said the Scourge, its voice completely casual, "are you beginning to realize what a mistake you've made? Or do you need me to show you some more? Hmm?"

  Esme felt the dreadful grip loosen on her neck. Her windpipe released, she gasped for air. "You're—" she managed. "You're—

  "Yes," said the Scourge, enjoying the moment. "My strength has returned. I'm now quite capable of defeating you without the boy. So you," it went on, the grip going tight again, "have lost what little chance you had. Haven't you?"

  Esme closed her eyes. Her head was pounding, her vision was closing in: dark shadows were swallowing everything. As the seconds stretched out, Esme knew she couldn't wait: whatever she was going to do, she would have to do it now. Forcing herself, she reached down inside herself. She felt a shifting sensation—

  —then the Scourge's grip was gone, and she could breathe again. She staggered, looking around herself. She had reappeared on the other side of the platform, away from the edge. She could see the Gukumats, backing away all around her. She could see Charlie still sitting frozen on his throne. And as the air bulged and shook and a liquid-black shadow materialized in front of her, she could see the Scourge.

  "Good,." it said. "You're learning. It's a shame, really, that this thing between us has to come to an end. But it is going to end. Now."

  And with another blur of movement that was faster than the eye could catch, it launched its attack.

  Esme caught the first blow on her forearm, blocking it without thinking. Another blow instantly came lashing at her face and she swerved back to dodge it, swinging her elbows round and together to block the demon's follow-up to her body. Every blow that followed she managed to block, but every block she managed still hurt — and step by driving step, she knew, the Scourge was forcing her back across the plateau, away from the center, back toward the edge once again. Esme tried a leap—

  —and a muscular piston of darkness shot out from the liquid-black body, catching her by the waist and dragging her back down easily, even as a clubbing roundhouse punch swung in toward the right side of her head to punish her. She caught the blow again on the outside of her forearm: the impact drove a flare of pain right through her shoulders.

  But then, with her left, she struck.

  It was a solid blow: though it only traveled about a foot or so, it carried all her weight and strength behind it.

  It landed smack in the center of the Scourge's face.

  For a moment, Esme could actually feel the darkness spreading around her fist, taking her in. She pulled, and a tiny ripple of black spread around the spot where she'd struck, but her fist was now trapped — stuck fast.

  The Scourge's body began to shiver and shift. When the darkness resettled, an ink-black hand was on the point of her elbow, and the place where she'd struck had become another hand, gripping her at the wrist.

  Esme's arm was straight out. She had time to realize what was about to happen — when the demon retaliated.

  With a soft crack! the Scourge broke her arm once, snapping it back at the elbow by simply pushing against the joint.

  With a rippling pop! it took her trapped wrist and twisted it, a full one hundred and eighty degrees.

  It jabbed on her hand, shoving the bones back. By now, Esme's mouth was opening to scream. So then, only then — it released her.

  Esme fell on her back, paralyzed by pain, her arm flopping weakly by her side. The sharpened fractures had punched straight through the skin of her elbow, and the bone was sticking out by a clear inch. She stared at the wound. Then she looked up. The Scourge was towering over her.

  There was a pause.

  "Hurts, does it?" it enquired.

  Esme stared back, blinking, eyes wide with pain — but, determined not to give the demon the satisfaction, she said nothing.

  "These fighting skills of yours," it said, raising an admonishing finger, "they might work on Charlie, but they're not going to be of any use on me. Not now."

  Esme concentrated, concentrated on using her power to heal h
erself, but it was hard. The pain was incredible; it blanked out everything — everything except the Scourge's voice.

  "'Ninety-nine times out of a hundred'," it was saying, "'a fight'll be decided in the first few seconds' — isn't that what Raymond used to tell his students?"

  Esme closed her eyes, and with a terrible, twisting push, the bones in her arm began slowly to move back to their positions.

  "He was wrong, of course. Fights are more usually won — and lost — before they even begin. For instance, I would say that it's always a good idea to make sure you know how to win before you can win, yes? Otherwise," the Scourge added, turning its back on her and walking a few steps away, "you're going to lose. Painfully."

  It was done. Blood still ran from the wound, but the bones themselves were back in place, the fractures healed, the torn muscles beginning to mend. Sour adrenaline flushed through Esme's body, making every part of her feel heavy. But her arm and her fingers were working. She got to her feet.

  "What's next?" the Scourge asked. "What would you like to try now?"

  Esme was thinking. She hadn't bargained on the Scourge being so powerful outside Charlie: in this respect, it was true, she had miscalculated. Despair was clawing at her heart, a sense of doom and failure that a less disciplined fighter might have allowed to overwhelm her. Shoving the feeling aside, forcing herself to concentrate, Esme accepted the mistake and began to consider what it was she could actually do about it.

  There was only one answer. Esme shut her eyes — and reappeared somewhere else. It didn't occur to her that the skill was coming to her more easily each time she used it: there wasn't time. She reached up, drew the pigeon sword, and, at a speed that hurt to watch, she charged, now —

  — at Charlie.

  With the fight going the way it was, there was no other option. Mercy was a luxury she could no longer afford. She would find a way to make her peace with what she was about to do later, when the stakes weren't so high. It was, after all, a straight choice now: Charlie or the universe.

  One of them had to die.

  Charlie's eyes were glazed: he was utterly oblivious. Before the Gukumats could stop her, Esme had blasted past them like a thunderbolt. She raised her arms for the killing stroke. The girl and the sword become one long, glittering streak in the air.

  With a ringing crack and an impact that traveled up Esme's arms and shook her to the core, her stroke was parried, stopped dead in mid-flight, less than a foot from the target.

  "No, no, no," said the Scourge. "That's quite out of the question, I'm afraid."

  For a moment, Esme froze.

  The demon had caught her easily: it had simply appeared at the last moment between her and Charlie and had met the edge of the pigeon sword with a swordlike object of its own. The shape mirrored that of her own weapon — it had the same graceful curve and proportions of the classical Japanese katana. But it, like the Scourge, was still a glossy ink black. As she watched, with a last oily shimmer the darkness of the blade seemed to ripple away: it was only then that the cold steel was revealed beneath.

  "Swords, is it, next?" asked the Scourge, without much interest. "Very well. If you insist."

  It took a step toward her, its liquid feet pooling on the soft pink floor, and Esme sprang back into a guard position, watching carefully, waiting. With a rustle of silk, the Gukumats formed two rows, a long line of space to either side of the combatants.

  "Ready?" asked the Scourge.

  Esme said nothing.

  "Then let's begin."

  Instantly, the space between them turned to a scissoring blur of steel.

  It was impossible for a bystander to tell where one attack ended and another began. One by one, all the gladiators that were trapped in the bubbles above gradually stopped trying to escape and stared instead at the dreadful combat that was taking place below them. All Hell seemed to fall silent, except for the stinging hiss of sword on sword.

  Esme was fighting on instinct — instinct and her years of training. If she'd stopped to think out each move, she'd've been lost, instantly. As it was, the battle was all going her opponent's way, because all she could do was react. Each swirling, whistling block and parry sent little ripples of fatigue up her arms. Each deft dodge, left, right, up, down, back — sometimes the Scourge came so close that she could actually feel the air move as her opponent's blade slid past her face — left her a little slower, a little more tired.

  Obviously, she realized, she was going to lose.

  It wasn't a question of pessimism. The Scourge was keeping pace with her easily: though it seemed to take every ounce of her speed and strength to meet those of her enemy, every attack she launched was parried and riposted smoothly and, apparently, without effort. As she began to tire — as the speeding blades slowed until the sharper-eyed bystanders found themselves actually able to see the swords apart from each other — it seemed the Scourge was even slowing down with her.

  "Really," it said, meeting a lunge from Esme with a twisting movement that all but jerked the pigeon sword from her fingers. It followed it up with a vicious slash at her legs that Esme had to jump to avoid. "Is this the best you can do?"

  In reply, Esme spun on her feet. Leaning forward into the stroke, she dropped her hands: she brought the sword round in a blow at the demon's waist that would have sliced a man in two.

  The blade did pass straight through the demon, right where a man's waist would be. But the ink-black body simply sealed itself up after it, and, with a movement that was almost too quick for Esme to catch, the Scourge repaid her for her trouble with a straight-arm punch in the face with the pommel of its sword. She blinked and shook her head, momentarily stunned.

  That was when the Scourge struck again, stabbing Esme through the shoulder of her sword arm.

  The pigeon sword fell from her fingers.

  Not bothering to remove its own weapon from her body, the Scourge advanced toward Esme; as she staggered back, shuddering at the pain, it put one glistening foot on Raymond's last gift where it lay and snapped the pigeon sword cleanly, up near the butterfly-sharped guard. Then it stopped and looked at her.

  "I'm sorry if this offends you," it said, "but I must be honest: I'm beginning to lose interest."

  With another ripple, the steely glint of the Scourge's weapon vanished, swallowed under the glossy darkness, and the part of the thing that had impaled Esme suddenly changed shape. Widening and twisting in the wound in her shoulder, the demon lifted Esme upward until she was teetering on tiptoe, and though her jaw was set and her lips bitten shut against crying out, tears were running down her face.

  "You're better than this," said the Scourge, bringing its own face up to hers. "Aren't you?"

  With a soft, sucking sound, the darkness retracted. Esme dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, next to her shattered sword.

  "Surely we've passed the point where physical violence is going to solve anything, don't you think?" the Scourge asked. "Punching. Kicking. Going at each other with pointy objects. It's all so limited."

  "Come on," it added, leaning over her. "Why don't you show me what you can really do?"

  But then...

  AWAKENING

  For Charlie, now, there was silence: absolute silence except for the low thump of his own blood pumping in his ears. Seated on his throne, he looked down at his arms, at the black tattoo shapes still swarming and pulsing there — and then he looked out at his kingdom.

  He saw the ranks of Gukumats, stretching in every direction. Beyond that, he saw the vast serried legions of the demon peoples — the whole gross, adoring mass of his subjects, screaming and cheering from all around him. The view changed: for a second, all Hell seemed to expand and bulge — and now, suddenly, he could see further still.

  Darkness slid through him like icy water, glimmering and glittering with tiny points of light that Charlie was suddenly able to identify as... stars. Planets and galaxies swam past like beautiful jellyfish, twinkling in the surrounding blue-b
lackness of space, close enough to reach out and touch. Black holes opened in front of him like flowers. Suns — whole solar systems — blazed into being, then shrank and winked out as he watched.

  At the same time, the noise in his head was changing. The sound of his own pulse in his ears had gone, mixing with the crowd noise, mutating and modulating downward into something darker, thicker, deeper. It was all around him: throbbing and seething, and all the time it was getting louder and louder.

  Ba-BOOM!

  Ba-BOOM!

  Ba-BOOM!

  Ba-BOOM!

  It was inexcapable, dreadful, unspeakable, the noise. It was as if every creature in the universe were banging on a drum and screaming at him at the same time. The noise assaulted him on every level, getting more and more irritating the more irritated he got.

  And suddenly, Charlie found himself wishing he could do something about it.

  Here he was, at what should have been the proudest moment of his entire life, and what happened? There was all this noise, interrupting.

  All there ever was for him was noise and interruptions.

  Whenever things went well for him, there was always something going on to spoil it. Esme and Jack were a prime example: they could've left him to get on with stuff, they could've trusted him a little — but no! Of course, they'd had to interfere.

  His dad, too, instead of messing everything up, could've—

  Surrounded by light and life, sitting on his throne in the center of the universe, Charlie blinked.

  Dad, he thought.

  He thought of his mother's expression at the breakfast table that morning when his father had told them he was leaving.

  He thought of his dad sitting alone in a Chinese restaurant and how Charlie had told him he was "never going to forgive him. Never."

  He frowned.