The Black Tattoo

  "Euugh! Gross!" said someone.

  The footballer woke up and looked down at his crotch, a look of total horror beginning to form on his face.

  Charlie just grinned and turned his back. The moment was gone. The strange shapes of the black tattoo had vanished back to wherever they had come from. Jack blinked.

  "Come on, man," said Charlie to Jack. "Let's go."

  No one tried to stop them.

  "Er... Charlie?" asked Jack, once they'd safely gone a few hundred yards farther down the path.

  "Yeah?"

  "Do you think it's safe? Using your... powers like that?"

  Charlie smirked. "Who are they going to tell?"

  In another moment, it seemed, they were standing outside the gate.

  "Take care, mate," said Charlie, turning to go.

  "Yeah," said Jack, to his friend's retreating back. "You too."

  JESSICA

  The demon didn't even bother to visit Jessica on the third night. By the fourth, she knew she was finished.

  The Scourge just stood there at first, a scarecrow figure of rippling shadows. Its arms hung loosely at its sides; its long, liquid fingers twitched lazily.

  "Humans," it told her, "with your little concerns: your tiresome and selfish preoccupations. I'd always thought demons were bad enough, but really — you people are something else."

  "Don't you ever shut up?" Jessica asked, and closed her eyes.

  She reached past the pain in her body. She reached past the terrible exhaustion in her head, the mental fatigue from keeping her circle going for so long — going further inside herself, further still. In her lap, her brown hands opened slowly. With a soft hiss, a thin blue spark appeared over her palms. She poured herself into it, and the spark began to grow.

  "Think of it," said the Scourge, "what it'll be like when I succeed. Think of the peace: the pure emptiness. The silence. All Creation finally consigned to the Void. All the noise, waste, and pointlessness wiped clean in an instant, when this witless boy helps me wake the Dragon, and at last we finish what it began..."

  While the demon spoke, the spark had swelled to the size of a marble. The magical bolt was spinning, picking up speed, its surface becoming a rushing blur of scorching white and deepest midnight blue. Jessica sent more of herself into it, reaching down inside for everything that she had left. Now the bolt was the size of a squash ball and beginning to crackle and spit in the dark, stifling air of the tattered circle. Jessica was as ready as she'd ever be. Slowly, savagely... she smiled.

  "It's a shame, in a way, that you won't be there to see what I mean," the Scourge was saying, "to see what your flyspeck of a 'brotherhood' has been supposedly preventing all these years, because—"

  "Here's an idea," Jessica interrupted. "How about you stop talking and come and get me if you can, eh? Or are you planning on boring me to death?"

  The Scourge looked at her. "I've kept you here long enough for my purposes," it said. "You were a useful false trail for the others while you lasted, but now I'm almost ready to make my move. In fact, there's just one more trick to play. Funny," it added, "isn't it, Jessica? All these years hunting me, preparing to face me, and that's all you were — a distraction. Still..." The demon shrugged, its shoulders and neck dripping together in long, tarlike strings. "If you're ready to die, I'll be happy to oblige you."

  "Do your worst," she told it.

  "As you wish."

  * * * * *

  Jack had been watching Charlie and Esme train all day. While Raymond kept watch at the Fracture, Esme had been putting Charlie through his paces on martial arts, acrobatics, weapons training, flying — the lot. Each new and amazing skill that Esme introduced to Charlie he seemed to master almost instantly, and without any particular effort. By the time evening was coming round, Jack was thoroughly, utterly fed up.

  He'd asked questions, made comments, and tried to keep his end up — and Esme had been polite enough to respond, even when (as seemed painfully obvious to Jack) his remarks had come less from any wish to share wisdom or advice than the simple desire to remind her that he was still there. But the fact of the situation was, he knew, that both she and Charlie were far too engrossed in what they were doing to take any real interest in him. After all (as he asked himself), why should they?

  They were superhuman: Jack wasn't. They were powerful and important: Jack wasn't. Charlie and Esme were getting ready to fight the forces of evil: Jack's job, apparently, was to sit there and watch. It was as simple — as typical — as that.

  So the afternoon had passed. Jack was just letting out something like his three hundred and seventy-fifth sigh of the day...

  ...when everything started to go wrong.

  "Oh!" said Charlie suddenly. He broke out of the complicated silat arm-trap-and-sweep combination he'd been working through with Esme up by the butterfly room's ceiling and dropped to the floor. His eyes were closed.

  "What?" asked Jack, without much interest.

  "It's... the demon," said Charlie. His eyelids were fluttering strangely.

  "What about it?" asked Jack.

  "I think I know where it is," said Charlie, frowning.

  "How?" asked Esme, landing in front of him.

  Charlie's eyes flickered open. "No time to argue: I can feel it, all right? It's at CentrePointTower right now! You take Jack. Let's go!"

  Esme stared at Charlie, but already she was looking at his back: in another second Charlie was out the door.

  "Well, okay," she said, turning to Jack. "Come on."

  Jack followed her out onto the landing — just in time to see Charlie throw open the door that led to the fire escape.

  Jack saw him stand there for a moment. In front of him, beyond the black iron railing, was the West End — its roofs, the traffic, the lights, and the empty air. Charlie spread his arms, leaped, and plummeted from sight.

  Jack hadn't had time to shout, or even move. He'd barely had time to register what was going on — namely that his best mate had just jumped off a tall building. Suddenly, Esme had take his arm in a surprisingly viselike grip.

  "Ready?" she asked.

  Her face beside him in the half-light was hard, fierce looking.

  "What?" Jack managed. "Now, wait. Hold on a second. Just — no! I can't fly! You can't carry me! And I am not just going to — WhAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

  His third step had been into nothing: his feet had left the ground.

  He was flying.

  The streetlights slid by in an orange blur below him. Jack saw what the roofs of red London double-decker buses look like from above, and the tops of trees seemed to skim his feet. He was still screaming, but his scream was lost in the roar of the exhaust-filled summer air whipping past him, turning hot on his face as they picked up speed. In front of him Jack could see Charlie's silhouette just ahead, blasting through the evening sky, his arms spread wide — and Jack suddenly found he had an enormous grin on his face.

  It was only a moment. It would stay with Jack forever —

  But then the huge, ribbed spine shape of an ugly skyscraper reared up in front of them. Charlie lurched out of sight. The earth was rushing up toward him — and they'd landed.

  There was a woman sitting on the ground, holding her hand out. There was something in her hand, something blue and white and impossibly bright at first, but quickly darkening, weakening, as the strange and horrible creature she was being attacked by surrounded and began to swamp her.

  Jack stared, trying to take it all in. That, he thought numbly, must be the Scourge.

  At that moment, the demon was a shapeless splatter of darkness, gathering and battening and convulsing round the woman like something between a giant black cobweb and a bat's wing. Esme had let go of Jack's arm now and was rising in the air again, standing between him and the demon, ready to fight.

  But Charlie got there first.

  "HEY!" he called.

  Abruptly the demon seemed to suck back into itself: now it was like a stick fig
ure made of darkness. In a movement so dazzlingly fast that you could barely see it, it leaped straight up the side of the building, vanishing into its shadowy concrete alcoves, and Charlie—

  "No! WAIT!" yelled Esme.

  —leaped after it.

  Jack watched with his mouth hanging open, seeing his friend haring up the wall of the big skyscraper, planting each foot as if he were running on the ground. It wasn't exactly "in a single bound," but Charlie was clearly capable in the "leaping tall buildings" department. In another second, Jack's superhero mate had disappeared from view.

  Jack looked down. The bolt of electric-blue something-or-other flickered out and disappeared, and the woman who'd been holding it sank back, unconscious. Esme only just caught her before her head hit the ground. Then, at last, there was a pause.

  "Is she okay?" Jack asked, pointing.

  It had been the first thing to come into his head, and he knew it was a stupid question as soon as he said it. Of course she wasn't okay. The expression on her face was calm, peaceful even, but as Esme took hold under her arms the woman's head lolled limply.

  "Get her feet," said Esme. "One, two, three."

  They swung her up off the ground. She was horribly light — in fact, she hardly seemed to weigh anything at all. Plus, Jack couldn't help noticing, she was... well, a bum. A homeless person. And to be honest, she didn't smell too good.

  "Head toward the church," said Esme.

  Across the street from the towering skyscraper a small old church was standing there looking stranded and abandoned. They shuffled hurriedly toward it, Jack struggling to keep up. Esme took them down a narrow alley at the side of the church and out into its tiny graveyard. They'd been lucky so far: no one else had been there to witness Charlie's lunatic charge after the demon, but it wouldn't hurt to keep away from any curious eyes on the street.

  "Okay, put her down here," said Esme, stopping beside an ancient stone slab set into the grass. "You stay here with her," she told Jack.

  "Wait!" said Jack. "Who is she?"

  "It's my aunt," said Esme, softly. "It's Jessica."

  Jack blinked.

  "Listen," said Esme. She gestured at the unconscious woman lying on the grass between them. "Take care of her, okay?"

  "Sure," said Jack, in the gruffest voice he could manage.

  Esme gave him a wan smile. Then, with a graceful gesture, she let her hands fall to her sides, palms spread: she was already lifting into the air again. Jack blinked again — and she was gone.

  "Be careful!" he shouted — and then felt very silly indeed.

  He looked around himself, at the graveyard and the woman who was still lying on the ground.

  "Right," he said. Then again: "Right."

  * * * * *

  Some time passed — Jack wasn't sure how much. It was only a few minutes, probably, but however long it was, it wasn't enough for him to get used to Jessica's smell. The combination of unwashed human being and (odd but true) boiled cabbages emerging from the unconscious body next to him was surprisingly powerful, even in the open air. It was getting dark too. The evening sun was setting fast, and what little light penetrated the graveyard from the streetlamps outside came through only as a thin kind of orange-blue haze. Plus, Jack had left his shirt behind at the theater and had only come out in a T-shirt. He was getting cold and hungry too. All in all, in his opinion, it was a pretty typical sort of situation.

  He didn't get to be able to fly or do kung fu or chase demons up the sides of tall buildings — no, of course he didn't. His job, apparently, was to stand around waiting with smelly, trampy ladies in graveyards in the dark, while all the important stuff happened somewhere else. Typical.

  "Ohhhh," said Jessica suddenly, making Jack jump. She sat up and, opening a pair of eyes that were every bit as astonishingly amber as Esme's, gave Jack a level look.

  "Who are you?" she asked.

  "I'm, er... Jack," said Jack.

  Jessica kept looking at him. Clearly, that answer alone wasn't going to be enough for her.

  "I..." began Jack, then tried again. "We — I mean, the others — well, we, ah... rescued you, I suppose."

  "You're from the Brotherhood?"

  Jack nodded.

  "Damn."

  It wasn't quite the reply Jack had been expecting. He waited, watching Jessica look around at the graveyard, its empty spaces and its cold gray slabs.

  "Listen," she said suddenly, "what was your name again?"

  "Jack," said Jack.

  The amber eyes narrowed at him. "I don't like our position here, Jack." Jessica gestured at the old black stone of the back of the church. "If the Scourge comes back, we'll be better off over there, with the wall behind us." She looked at him again. "Can you help me?"

  Jack's brain was still coping with the possibility she'd mentioned of the demon's return. "Er..." he said.

  "I've been sitting cross-legged on a cold concrete walkway for seventy-two hours straight," said Jessica. "My legs went numb after the first four."

  Jack blinked.

  "You're going to have to carry me," Jessica added, seeing that she wasn't getting her point across.

  "Right," said Jack, standing up. "Of course. Right."

  Jack was fourteen years old and of an average height for his age. His mother was always telling him that he was about to grow in huge spurts, but it hadn't happened yet: Jessica was taller than him, if only by an inch or two. He looked down at her, at the thin brown skin of her hands and face, and her narrow bony wrists jutting out of her filthy old overcoat.

  "What?" she asked him.

  "Nothing," said Jack.

  "Come on, then." She beckoned.

  Jack did as he was told. Jessica's hands in his felt dry, waxy, and horribly delicate, like he could crush them by mistake if he wasn't careful.

  "Now, up we go."

  He did his best.

  "Wah!"

  But her legs wouldn't support her: Jessica slid out of his grip and sat back down on the edge of a gravestone, hard.

  "oooh," she said, grimacing with pain.

  "Sorry!" said Jack. "Sorry! Sorry!"

  "Don't you get taught anything anymore?" she asked. "Telekinesis? Levitation?"

  "No," said Jack. "I mean — well, not me." He broke off. Jessica was staring at him again now. "I'm just... kind of tagging along," he said miserably. "I don't have any... you know... powers."

  "Wonderful," said Jessica. "Oh, that's just wonderful."

  Seeing Jack's expression, she softened a little.

  "Look," she said. "Here's what you do. You just crouch down in front of me here, with your back to me... Yup, that's right. Now, let me get a grip on you."

  Quickly, she slid her arms around Jack's neck. Jack did his best not to flinch.

  "Right. Now stand up.l"

  He did, taking Jessica with him. She was now hanging off his back. Her head was perched next to his, on his right shoulder. Her breath was warm and nasty, and her hair was itchy on his cheek.

  "Reach up and grab my elbows," said Jessica. "Right. Now put me down over there."

  Jessica weighed next to nothing, and her body was so swaddled in clothes that Jack couldn't really feel her at all. It was okay, he supposed. Weird but okay. Apart from the smell, obviously.

  "Listen," she said, once he'd set her down, "I don't think we have much time."

  "Why?" asked Jack. "What do you mean?"

  "I know what the Scourge is going to do," Jessica told him. She paused and shook her head. "This thing — it's bigger than anything! Now, I've sent for help, and for what it's worth, help's on its way. But someone's going to have to follow the Scourge to Hell and stop this before it's too late. I just wish I could figure out who."

  She sat back against the black stone walls of the church and sighed.

  "The Brotherhood's finished," she said. "Raymond, the rest of us — and that idiot, Nick — we're useless. Worse than useless. Maybe we always were."

  She looked up — and froze.
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  "Oh no," she whispered, making Jack stare at her again. Then, "Look, quick. Help me up."

  Jack looked in the direction Jessica was looking and blinked.

  A patch of shadow in the darkness at the far end of the graveyard was behaving... oddly. As he watched, the darkness seemed to wobble and shake. It bulged, taking on a strange kind of shape — and then a figure was standing there at the end of the graveyard. A weird stick figure made out of liquid darkness — completely, utterly black.

  "Help me get up, Jack," Jessica repeated.

  It was the Scourge. It had obviously doubled back somehow and had come back to finish Jessica off. There was no sign of Charlie or Esme. And now — as Jack continued to stare at it — the demon began to walk toward them.

  "Jack, help me up, dammit!"

  "Right," said Jack. "Right."

  "Get behind me," Jessica told him.

  She was only standing with an immense effort of will. Taking a deep breath, refusing to let her legs buckle beneath her, Jessica looked away from the demon that had come to kill her and down at the boy instead.

  "Okay," she said. "It looks like this is it."

  She smiled sadly."

  "I'm sorry, Jack," she said. "You shouldn't have got into this. None of us should."

  She turned, took another deep breath, then, with more venom that Jack had ever heard in a person's voice before, she said:

  "I hope you choke, you piece of—"

  And suddenly, the Scourge was on her.

  It leaped, crashing into Jessica, instantly knocking her flat. For a second or two Jessica and the demon wrestled with each other before the Scourge pinned down her arms and brought the blank black shape of its liquid face right up to hers. Jessica fought as hard as she could: she wriggled and snarled, but as Jack stared, utterly helpless, a strange haze of light began to emerge from Jessica's face, a smoky gray light that crossed the space between her and the demon — crossed it and was instantly absorbed. Suddenly, Jessica gave a long, gasping sigh — impossibly long, as though all the breath were being sucked out of her body.

  The demon was sucking out her life, Jack realized. The Scourge was sucking out Jessica's life, right in front of him! Before he could even think about what to do to stop it, Jessica shuddered and went rigid. The dreadful noise stopped; there was a long, frozen moment — then Jessica went limp and fell back.