The Six Messiahs

chapter 15

ALTHOUGH DESTINED FOR A BRIGHT FUTURE ONCE THE north-south lines in the territory connected through its terminus, Prescott, Arizona, had still not grown beyond much more than a whistle-stop. Doyle's charter was the only train in the yard when it arrived late that afternoon.

Six sturdy horses and two pack mules waited for them at the supply depot, along with the supplies Innes had ordered: maps, rifles, ammunition, medical kit, and a week's stores of food and water. The retired prospector behind the counter had been outfitting mining expeditions for fifteen years, even an occasional Englishman or two among them—the Arthur Conan Doyle name meant nothing to the old man; he wasn't a reader—but he had never seen an odder or more purposeful bunch than the one doing business with him now.

A younger man, whittling a stick near the cracker barrel, watched them finish their transaction, then got up and walked slowly over to the telegraph office.

As Doyle left the depot, he saw Jack and Mary Williams stepping down, once again the last to leave the train. Her energies seemed to have revived, color returning to her face, and she had changed into riding clothes and boots. Jack still looked as blank as a slate. She left him sitting on a rock outside the corral, holding a blanket tight around his shoulders, Edison's suitcase between his feet, as she went about the bridling of their horses.

Seizing the opportunity to question her alone, Doyle stole up alongside and whispered, "How is he?"

"Too early to say," she said, not looking at him, strapping a canvas valise to her saddlebag.

"But do you think it worked?"

"The healing was difficult."

"I could see that. Takes a while to recover, does it?"

"Sometimes there is no recovery," she said, glancing at Jack, huddled under his blanket, staring at the ground.

"When will we know?"

"That is up to him," she said, trying to close the door on the subject.

"Awfully indistinct, finally, isn't it? Your medicine," said Doyle in a flush of irritation.

"No more than yours."

She turned to him; he saw the effort and strain so clearly etched on her face and felt instantly remorseful.

"Hope we didn't disturb you last night," said Doyle.

"When?"

"We heard a scream; we came into the compartment."

"I do not remember," she said, looking at him directly.

He decided she was telling the truth.

"Mary. Can you tell me any better now what you think was ... wrong with him?'' he asked.

"I do not know how to describe it in your terms."

"In yours, then."

She paused.

"His soul was lost," she said forthrightly.

"Can you tell how, exactly?"

"The soul is able to travel far but must then find its way back. The way back into his body had been blocked."

"Blocked?"

"When the soul leaves, its place can be stolen."

"By what?"

"By a windigo."

"A what?"

"A demon."

The memory of the fleshy mass they had briefly glimpsed in her hands flashed before his eyes. He felt helpless, bumbling, and somewhat ill.

"How?"

"Does it matter?"

"Suppose it doesn't," said Doyle. "I've never seen anything like what we saw in that room last night."

She looked right at him again. "Neither have I."

"Mary, I—"

"My name is Walks Alone."

Doyle nodded, appreciating the confidence he knew her disclosure conveyed. "If there's anything I can do ..."

She shook her head. "It's up to him now."

Before he could ask her anything else, she led the two horses to Jack. Doyle watched her guide him slowly to his feet and up onto the horse. He did not look at her and still moved and responded to her touch like an obedient sleepwalker. Any thought taking place behind his clouded eyes remained obscure to observation. Doyle walked back toward the others.

Lionel Stern was the only stranger among them to horseback; they decided to put him on a large sedate gelding and let him bring up the rear. He was standing outside the corral, holding the reins out at arm's length, staring uneasily up at the animal.

"On principle," Lionel said to Doyle as he passed, "I'm against the idea of sitting on anything that's larger and stupider than I am."

Innes had seen to the purchase and the packing of the mules and with Presto was now studying a map laid out across a rock.

"The old fellow inside said we'd find a road, about here, that's not on the map," said Innes, drawing in an east-to-west line.

"What sort of road?"

"The nutters put,it in themselves; it's supposed to take us directly to their settlement," said Presto.

"How long?" asked Doyle.

"If we ride straight through, perhaps late tonight."

"What's this place, Skull Canyon?" asked Doyle.

"Stagecoach stop. We'll cut down through these hills and pick up the road ten miles west of it," said Innes, very much at home in the world of maps and tactical options.

"The old man said that over the last few years, they've had a steady stream of people passing through on their way to The New City," said Presto.

"Wide-eyed fanatics, the lot of them," said Innes. "He also told us they had five men come off a train and retain some horses early yesterday."

"They answer splendidly to the description of Frederick Schwarzkirk and company," said Presto, lowering his voice, with a glance at Walks Alone. "Including one with a rather unmistakable solid-blue glass eye."

Doyle s brow furrowed; he hadn't even considered that the attack on Walks Alone might be somehow connected to the league of thieves.

"Alarming," he said.

"Yes," said Presto, with a glance at Innes. "We thought so, too."

A loud crash from nearby; Lionel's saddlebags had fallen to the ground, and he was sitting upright on his horse, clutching the rear lip of the saddle, facing exactly backward.

"I may need a little help with this," said Lionel.

Frank could see the House of Hope from the window of his second-floor hotel room. Neat lines of cigar ash had accumulated on the windowsill; he'd been watching the front door of the place for an hour, as he had promised Eileen he would do when she left for the theater.

Jacob had not returned from his appointment with Reverend Day. Eileen marched over there to look for him at six o'clock and was turned away; their meeting was still going on, a black shirt told her; they did not wish to be disturbed. Her instincts advised her differently and she returned to the hotel in a tizzy. Frank calmed her as best he could and gave his word he would find Jacob and meet her at the theater after the show.

Not that he didn't have enough to worry about. The Chinaman had been in their wagon all the way from Wickenburg, she'd told him, including that morning Frank had seen them in Skull Canyon; he'd had the killer square in his sights and let him off the hook. Now Chop-Chop was probably on the loose inside The New City—Kanazuchi was the man's name; he was some kind of priest, from Japan, not China—and if the rest of what Eileen had said was to be believed, both he and this Jacob fella had been drawn out here by a nightmare both men were having about that big black tower.

In the old days, that alone would have been enough to drive him back to drinking.

One part of his dilemma had turned crystal clear, however; if he planned on making any serious time with Eileen—and he did, more than ever, after talking to her—putting a bullet through this Japanese would knock his chances down to less than zero. Which amounted to as big a rock and as hard a place as Frank could ever remember finding himself between.

He looked at his watch sitting open on the sill: half past seven. The play was supposed to start at eight. He wanted to take a stroll around the House of Hope but needed to wait until dark. He wanted just as much, if not more, to see Eileen on the stage.

Another angle had been taking shape in the back of his^: mind; it held out the prospect of a better outcome but carried a higher risk. He'd need his Henry rifle to pull it off and he'd more than likely get himself killed. Naturally that's the one he was leaning toward.

Frank put on his hat, walked out of the room, and peeked from the top of the stairs. Clarence and the nitwits still waited for him in the lobby. He tried doors along the hall until he found an open one, slipped out a window, shimmied down a rain gutter into the empty alley, and made his way to the intersection with Main Street; as evening came on, a large crowd of white shirts gathered outside the theater.

Seeing Eileen perform in this or any other show would have to wait. But it was about the best reason he could come up with for staying alive.

From the edge of the shantytown, Kanazuchi watched the last of the white shirts enter the theater. Torches burning in the brackets out front were beginning to work against the gathering dark. He waited five more minutes, then walked across' the empty street and down an alley toward the stables.

He had learned that Reverend Day lived in the adobe house across from the theater. This man would know the location of the underground temple and the books, of that much Kanazuchi felt certain; he was probably the man who had arranged the theft of the Kojiki.

Kanazuchi had waited hours for the Reverend to come out of the place the white shirts called the House of Hope; there had been no sign of him. The house was heavily protected, and its guards, all dressed in black, were more dangerous and better armed than the white shirts he had seen. To get inside, he would need the help of the Grass Cutter.

Curious: While watching from this vantage point, a short time after he began, Kanazuchi had witnessed a clear disruption in the white shirts' concentration, as if the control they moved under had suddenly lapsed. Some stopped dead in the street, others fell to their knees; a few appeared to be in severe pain. Minutes later, the control resumed and the white shirts instantly went on about their business as if nothing had happened.

No one approached as he entered the stable; the barn appeared to be empty. By the light of a single burning lantern, he entered the rear courtyard where the actors' wagons stood. He stopped and listened: no one there. Kanazuchi slowly parted the canvas on the back of the wagon he had ridden in and found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle.

"Eileen said not to kill you," said the man kneeling inside.

The hammer already cocked; finger edging down on the trigger.

If I attack, the bullet will still strike, Kanazuchi realized.

"I don't want to," said the man. "But I will."

Kanazuchi looked him in the eye. A serious man. He was good; nothing had given away his presence in the wagon. He knew how to hide and he undoubtedly knew how to kill.

"What do you want?" asked Kanazuchi.

"They've got Jacob. Eileen said you need him for something and that you'd want to get him back. That true?"

"Yes."

"Then I need your help."

Kanazuchi nodded. The man uncocked the hammer but did not lower the rifle.

"Where is he?" asked Kanazuchi.

"That big adobe."

"We must get him out."

"That's what I was hoping you'd say. Looking for this?"

The man tossed the Grass Cutter toward him; Kanazuchi caught the scabbard and pulled the sword in one blindingly fast move. The man's grip on the rifle didn't flinch.

"My name's Frank," said the man.

"Kanazuchi," he said, with a slight bow.

"Kana ... that mean anything in English?"

"It means hammer."

"Well, what do you say, Hammer," said Frank, finally lowering the gun. "Let's go raise a little hell."

Kanazuchi stood aside as Frank climbed out of the wagon. They looked at each other warily, a perceived sense of professional kinship and common cause delicately balancing the scales against powerful self-preserving instincts. Each waited for the other to make a first move; then, like dance partners, both turned and walked in step toward the stable.

"Took my sidearm when I rode in but they left the rifle with my saddle gear. They didn't look for the one in my boot," said Frank, touching the butt of the spare Colt in his holster.

"Mistake."

"This town's sicker than a bag of drowned kittens."

"It is like a clock; wound up, running down."

"Getting sloppy," said Frank, nodding. "You feel it, too."

"Yes."

"This freak show's coming to a head," said Frank.

"Remove the head, the body will fall."

"Now there's something I know you're good at."

"Sorry?"

"That's sort of a joke, Hammer."

Kanazuchi thought for a moment, then nodded. "I see."

They stopped just short of leaving the alley at the edge of Main Street. Ghostly laughter followed by applause drifted toward them from the theater, then faded to an eerie silence. Lights burned in windows on both floors of the House of Hope; they could see at least six of the guards in black patrolling its broad front porch.

Frank struck a match on the side of the barn and lit a cheroot. "Figure this Reverend A. Glorious Day's the one we want," said Frank.

"Twelve men guard the house; only three in back," said Kanazuchi, watching their movements.

"Move around much?"

Kanazuchi nodded. "They change every hour."

Frank glanced at his watch. "Had a notion about how we might get inside."

Frank explained as they crossed Main Street. Kanazuchi agreed. They turned down an alley and approached the back door of the House of Hope.

Three guards sitting on the porch armed with Winchesters and Colts. Frank walked five steps ahead, hands over his head; Kanazuchi behind him—Frank's pistol in his belt, the Grass Cutter out of sight down the back of his shirt—pointing the Henry rifle between Frank's shoulders.

The guards stood up. They wore loose black clothes; their eyes clear and alert. Not the same group of men, but their manner reminded Frank of the ones he'd seen ride up to the House earlier that day.

"I found this man walking in the stable," said Kanazuchi.

"I already told you, you stupid slant-eyed son of a bitch," said Frank, staggering and slurring his words, "wanted to make sure they were taking care of my horse—"

"Be quiet," said the lead guard.

"He had the colic few weeks back, can't be too careful; those damn kids weren't even tending to—"

Kanazuchi smacked the back of his head with the rifle butt; Frank stumbled and fell forward on the stairs.

"He told you be quiet," said Kanazuchi.

All three guards looked down at Frank curiously, rifles lowered. Frank curled his hands near his stomach and moaned as if he was about to be sick.

"He's one of the visitors," one of them said.

"Yes. He has been drinking," said Kanazuchi.

"Take him to corrections," said the lead guard.

Two of the guards reached down to grab Frank by the arms just as he slipped Kanazuchi's long knife out of his shirt; as they stood him up Frank drove his shoulder into the chest of the lead guard, knocking him back hard into a column, then grabbed him around the face and plunged the knife in behind the man's left ear. He died without making a sound.

From behind, Frank heard two sounds like a rush of rainwater; when he turned, the bodies of the other two guards were falling to the porch and their heads were rolling down the stairs. Kanazuchi's sword was already resting back in the scabbard.

Damn. This guy knew his stuff.

Kanazuchi tossed Frank his rifle; Frank cocked it one-handed, then exchanged the long knife for his pistol. Kanazuchi slid the wakizashi into its scabbard; Frank holstered the Colt. They moved to either side of the back door and waited.

"Didn't have to hit me so hard," whispered Frank.

"More authentic."

"Glad I wasn't playing dead."

No one came; none of the guards from the front had been alerted by the skirmish. Frank tried the door; it opened.

Dim lamps lit the interior hallway. Thick carpets muffled their steps. Plush furnishings throughout the house, oil paintings on the walls, a crystal chandelier hanging over the stairs in the front entryway. Not a spittoon in sight. Fancier than a St. Louis whorehouse.

They heard a raised voice in a parlor to their left, crept up on its partially open sliding doors. Inside, four more of the black shirt elite being jawed at by an obvious superior, a tall, blond fella with a foreign accent; the same bunch Frank had seen arrive that afternoon.

"... the wire says they got off the train in Prescott and left on horseback this afternoon. Look for them on the eastern road. Five men, one woman. They should be carrying a book with them. Let them ride through; take them when they pass the gate. The Reverend won't release our money to us until he has that book. Go."

The four men started for the sliding doors; Kanazuchi and Frank slipped across the hall into a dark room as the men moved off toward the front of the house.

"Not you, Mr. Scruggs."

One of the four, a baby-faced man carrying a briefcase, stopped obediently; the blond man put an arm around his shoulder and walked him toward the door.

"You stay with me," said the tall one.

Frank and Kanazuchi waited until they heard the front door close before stepping back into the hall. Through curtains they could see the guards patrolling the front porch. Keeping one hand on the pommel of his sword, Kanazuchi nodded toward the stairs; Frank acknowledged and they went up; stopped on the landing when they heard the creak of a floorboard above.

A black shirt came into view, looking down over the balustrade to the entrance hall below.

Kanazuchi whipped his arm forward and the handle of his knife appeared in the guard's throat; he slumped to the floor, silently clawing at the blade. Kanazuchi took the rest of the stairs in three steps without making a sound, put a foot on the guard's neck and snapped it.

This guy really knows his stuff, thought Frank.

Frank followed him up. They entered the first door to their right off a central hall. Kanazuchi closed and locked the door behind them. Brighter light. A lived-in feel, more than the other rooms they'd seen. Book-lined shelves. Work on a desk. A large globe. A Bible, open on a reading stand.

"Reverend Day," said Kanazuchi.

Frank knelt down to examine dark stains on the carpet.

"Blood here," said Frank. "Fresh; maybe two hours."

"Jacob," said Kanazuchi, looking at broken glass littering a corner.

"Looks like he put up a fight. They dragged him out... this way," said Frank, following the smeared trail of blood; it stopped abruptly before a blank panel of wall.

Both men studied the wall.

Shouts from the back of the house, relaying quickly around to the front, an alarm; someone had found the bodies.

Frank and Kanazuchi looked calmly at each other. They heard footsteps pounding up the stairs outside but neither man hurried. Frank traced a barely visible seam running parallel to the line of the rose-colored wall paper. Kanazuchi discovered a discolored spot on the paper, slightly darker from an accumulation of skin oil. He touched his finger to the spot and pushed; a catch released and the wall panel swung open along the seam, revealing a narrow passage.

The doorknob to the office behind them rattled; the lock held. They heard a jangle of keys. As a key was inserted, Frank dropped to one knee, fanned the handle of the rifle, and emptied the fifteen shots in the Henry's chamber through the door in under five seconds, followed by six from his Colt. Kanazuchi ran to the door and opened it.

Four black shirts dead in the hall outside.

This man is good, thought Kanazuchi.

More shouts outside and below, reacting to the gunfire, the alarm spreading beyond the House. Frank followed Kanazuchi into the concealed passage. Scuffed bloodstains led them down a flight of stairs, through a short corridor, and out a one-way door into the pantry of the House's kitchen. They paused in the darkness; Frank calmly reloaded. Footsteps and raised voices multiplied around them.

"The Reverend is not here," said Kanazuchi.

Frank snapped the filled chamber back into the Colt. "No shit."

"They took Jacob out that door." Kanazuchi pointed to the door where the stains ended. "I could not see it from my position."

"Well," said Frank, hearing movement upstairs in the passage behind them. "We can't stay here."

They stepped silently across the kitchen and out the door, through a small storage room and into a narrow alley on the north side of the house. Bloodstains and footprints ended, impossible to track farther in the dark. There was no one in the alley, but they heard a mob running toward the House of Hope from every direction. A bell started ringing at the top of the black church.

Kanazuchi led them into the tangled shanties, and they ran from the rising commotion until they left it in the distance. The huts were empty; most of the town was in the theater watching the show. The two men ducked under a shabby tin lean-to.

"Good news is," whispered Frank, "they don't know what we look like."

"Every one of them will search for us," said Kanazuchi, his expression never changing. "We don't know where Jacob is."

"That's the bad news."

Moving as steadily through the rough terrain as Lionel's riding skills would allow, they found The New City road shortly before seven o'clock. Innes took the lead, reading their map flawlessly; Walks Alone guided them through two uncertain stretches. Doyle watched Jack throughout the ride for any signs of life beyond subsistence. None appeared. He gave no response to Doyle's questions, eyes focused on the horizon, face emptied of expression.

Open desert stretched out before them, and as the moon rose in the clear sky, they accelerated their pace to a steady gallop, Lionel clinging to the lip of his saddle for dear life. Two miles along, the horses shied severely, nearly throwing Innes; something spooking them off to the right. Doyle saw dark wings circling above them in the moonlight.

"Night owls?" he asked.

Walks Alone shook her head. She dismounted and moved through a narrow path in an outcropping of rock to their right. A call came for them to follow; the party dismounted, walked their horses in through the passage. Fifty yards on, the horses balked at the final opening. Jack and Lionel stayed behind; the others crept through the rest of the way, weapons drawn.

The full force of the smell hit them as they cleared the rocks. Three dozen vultures scattered.

An afternoon in the hot sun had ruined the thirty-eight corpses in the clearing beyond the terrible outrages already committed on them. Most of the men had been shot; a dozen had suffered under knives. Carrion birds had done the rest of the damage.

Glad we got here after dark, thought Doyle; the blood looked black in the moonlight, abstract.

"Don't touch any of them," said Doyle.

Doyle looked to his left. Jack had come through the rocks and was standing off to the side, staring at the mangled bodies. His features contorted, animated by the beginnings of thought and, Doyle thought, the first stirring of rage. Something fierce in him, triggered by the smell of blood.

Doyle stepped forward and picked up a badge lying in the sand.

"Deputy," he said, reading the badge. "Phoenix."

"They're all wearing them," said Walks Alone, wading in farther.

"Lionel, stay where you are," said Doyle, kneeling to examine a body and seeing him appear in the opening.

"What is it?" Lionel asked.

"Just stay there."

"Most of them middle-aged, obviously sedentary," said Doyle.

"Does this make any sense to you?" asked Presto.

"They don't look like lawmen," said Innes.

"They're not. They're volunteers," said Doyle, studying a bloodstained piece of paper he had plucked from inside one victim's coat. "A posse; I believe that's what you'd call them. Looking for this man."

Doyle held out the flier, Presto lit a match, and they saw a crude pen and ink sketch of a diabolical-looking Asian man above a brief, lurid description of his alleged crimes.

" 'Chop-Chop the decapitating Chinaman,' " read Innes. " 'Wanted for ten terrible murders throughout the Arizona Territory. Suspected in countless other dastardly crimes.' "

"Busy little bugger, isn't he?" said Presto.

" 'The most dangerous man alive,' " read Doyle, darkly amused. "At least they resisted the impulse to hyperbolize. And a five-thousand-dollar reward. That explains the volunteers."

"Good God, could one man have done all this?" asked Presto, looking out at the slaughter around them.

"Not by himself. These men were caught in a crossfire," said Doyle, pointing to two sides of the clearing. "From here and there, behind the rocks. Four men, at least."

"With repeating rifles," said Innes, from behind the rocks. "Shells all over the place."

"And they all still have their heads," said Presto. "Hardly this Chop-Chop's traditional modus operandi..."

The flier was snatched out of his hands; Jack had walked up behind them and now held the paper, staring at the picture intently.

"What is it, Jack?" asked Doyle softly.

"He knows," said Walks Alone.

"Knows what?"

"That man is in the dream," she said, pointing to the flier. "One of the Six."

Jack looked up at her, agreement shining in his eyes.

"Then we can conclude these men were tracking him toward The New City when they were attacked," said Doyle.

Jack handed back the flier and ran purposefully toward the horses.

"Let's go," said Doyle.

"We should provide them a proper burial first," said Presto, looking around at the vultures gathering again at the perimeter.

"The desert will take care of it," said Walks Alone, moving back to the opening in the rocks.

"Bad form, don't you agree?" asked Presto of the Doyles.

"Yes," said Doyle, starting after her.

"Haven't you seen this fellow in the dream yourself?" asked Innes.

"Suppose I have, now that I think on it," said Presto in his peculiarly indifferent way, staring at the drawing. "Not much of a likeness, finally."

"Hope the bloke's half as good with that sword they say he's carrying as you are with your rapier," said Innes, running after Doyle.

"Let's hope he's on our side," said Presto quietly. He crossed himself, intoned a silent prayer for the dead, and left the scene of the massacre.

Jack was already on his horse by the time the group returned, and he galloped off to the west with Walks Alone close behind him before the others mounted. No one said a word as they scrambled to keep up with them; the secret delight Doyle felt at the signs of Jack's recovery was tempered by thoughts of what might be waiting for them in The New City.

The shirts made for a peculiar audience, thought Eileen. But why should that be different from anything else about them? Their attentiveness to the claptrap, Ruritanian melodrama bordered on reverent. Applause broke from a field of white in uniform bursts as unexpectedly as thunder. All their responses—laughter, sighs, gasps—came in a chorus, like one mind with the same thought expressing itself with a thousand voices.

Rymer had seemed irrationally pleased by the Players' lackluster rehearsal that day and he could not stop raving about The New City Theater. Was it only her imagination or was the man behaving even loonier than usual? For all his excitement, you would have thought the late Edwin-fucking-Booth was going to be in the audience that night.

She had to agree with him on one point: To her eye the theater's backstage facilities looked functional and well de signed, if a bit rudimentary, but the auditorium itself was a stunner, plush and fancy as any she'd seen in New York or London, let alone the horse opera circuit they'd been hunting for the past six months. Perhaps the sight of such velvety opulence had thrown Bendigo into some fever-dream of Broadway; he was ripping through the text tonight as if they could hear him clear across the Hudson.

Eileen had played her first-act scenes—nearly deafened by Rymer's rampaging histrionics, most of them blasted only inches away from her face—but instead of retiring to the dressing room, she found a quiet spot in the wings where she could look out and study the audience.

Disturbed: Frank had not come back with news of Jacob, but he had told her it might take until after the curtain came down. Trying to silence her fears. She could depend on Frank McQuethy to keep his word, of that much she felt certain. In the presence of such a—there was no other way to put it— such a man, under any other circumstances it would have been herself she wasn't sure she could trust.

When Frank returned with Jacob after the show, the three of them would ride out of town and she would file Bendigo Rymer neatly in with the rest of her mistakes. Let the penny-pinching crackpot keep her damn salary; tonight was her last performance with the Penultimate Players. One more clinch with Bendigo and her prison sentence ended.

Then what? She would travel east with Jacob, make sure he returned safely home. Beyond that; well, yes, she loved the old man dearly, but be realistic, love: Is living with Rabbi Stern honestly the sort of Me you see for your retirement, settling on the Lower East Side, doing the washing up in your babushka, seeing him into his declining years—and how far off can they be? Now Frank McQuethy, on the other hand ...

A row of men wearing black caught her eye—the first she'd seen in anything other than white—above stage right, in the | foremost of the mezzanine boxes. Standing around one man sitting alone in the first row of seats beside the rail. She shielded her eyes from the glare of the footlights.

Reverend Day.

Their meeting must have ended. She felt a dizzying flutter in her chest. But that should be good news. Frank and Jacob would be waiting for her. Why was her heart sinking?

The hard edges of the Reverend's face as he watched the play seemed lit from within by some wicked, hideous glee, radiating cold intelligence and cruelty, his head permanently craned to one side on that awful thrusting stalk of a neck.

Jacob was not safe and she knew it.

She heard a distant popping sound, like a string of firecrackers somewhere outside the theater, followed by faint shouts and the deep sounding of a bell—the actors suddenly looked silly; the real world intruding into their fragile, posturing make-believe, the illusion exposed as hollow and mildly ridiculous.

The guards in the box straightened up at the sounds; the Reverend spun around and gestured, two of them quickly exited. The Reverend's attention withdrawing from the action on stage—Bendigo strutting around, waving his sword, in the throes of heroism. None of the other actors aware ...

A handful of black-shirted guards burst back into the box, led by the huge man in the long gray coat Eileen had seen on the street; Reverend Day turning to them, voice rising in alarm, competing with the actors now.

"No! NO!" shouted Reverend Day.

Heads turning in the audience, a buzz of confusion. Chaos in the box on the verge of boiling over.

"NO! NO! NO! NO!"

Reverend Day screaming at the men around him; they recoiled from his rage. The actors losing their way, falling out of character, staring out at the disturbance. Stagehands peering up from the wings. Bendigo dropping his focus in the scene, tracing the problem to its source, then marching impatiently down to the footlights.

Reverend Day wheeling around, limping to the edge of the box, shouting at the audience, all eyes turning to him, a desperate eagerness distorting his features.

"IT COMES! IT COMES! THE SIGN! IT IS BEGUN, MY CHILDREN! THE TIME!"

Instant a storm of terror sweeping through the white shirts below; moans, wailing, screams, men and women both. Terrible, piteous, abject.

"THE TIME OF THE HOLY WORK IS HERE! THE MOMENT OF OUR DELIVERANCE!"

The white shirts staggered out of their seats and up the aisles, crawling over each other, rushing to perform some unknown action at a station they needed desperately to reach.

'Excuse me

"TO YOUR STATIONS, EVERY ONE OF YOU, AT ONCE. THE MOMENT IS AT HAND—"

"Ex-CUSE me!"

Bendigo Rymer standing downstage center, indignant as a peacock, wagging his sword up at the box.

Ghastly silence. Reverend Day staring at the man in shock.

"Really, sir. We're TRYING to give a per-FOR-mance here. A damn GOOD one, if I DO say so my-SELF. I am sure that what-EVER this is a-BOUT is all VERY im-POR-tant. But I don't sup-POSE it is TOO much to ASK... if it could WAIT until AFTER we're FIN-ished."

No one breathed. Bendigo puffed up, staying his ground.

Reverend Day laughed. A chuckle, genuinely amused, turning into a rolling, sustained guffaw that grew until its echoes rolled off the theater walls. The audience laughed with him; laughter building to a set of waves that roared and crashed down on the stage, shaking the scenery, knocking Bendigo's confidence out from under him. He took two faltering steps back, sweat dripping off his clammy made-up face. His sword drooped, he looked around desperately for support but instinctively the other actors onstage stepped away, avoiding his eye, smelling imminent theatrical disaster.

The laughter cut off suddenly. In the silence, Reverend Day leaned over the edge of the box and smiled at Bendigo Rymer.

"You're finished."

He gestured sharply with his right hand; the curtain plummeted to the stage, isolating Bendigo on the skirt of the proscenium. Fear putting the whip to his nerves, Rymer groped along the curtain to find an opening.

The Reverend bunched his hands into fists and twisted: The suspenders holding Bendigo's trousers broke away with a loud snap; his pants dropped and settled around his ankles. Reacting to the sound before realizing what had happened, Bendigo took a step downstage and crashed onto his chin.

Behind the curtain, actors and stagehands turned tail and ran, scattering out of the theater in a dozen directions. Eileen, alone, paralyzed with fright, watched from the left side of the wings.

Bendigo Rymer struggled to his knees, the uncomprehending look of an injured child in his eyes, a picture of dumb confoundment. Laughter rolled over him from the audience again; a harsh, disembodied, joyless pounding that never paused, never varied.

Reverend Day propped himself up on the edge of the box, waved his hands like an orchestra conductor, the buttons on Bendigo's blouse popped off and danced across the stage. The laces on his corset roped in and knit tightly together, stays groaning with effort, cinching his belly into an hourglass; she could hear the breath being squeezed out of Rymer's lungs. His wig rotated on his head, the absurd Prince Valiant haircut falling over his eyes. He crawled blindly on the floor, then appeared to gradually lose control of his movements, until he was jerked abruptly upright to his feet, lifted by a dozen invisible hands.

Eileen looked past Rymer, saw Reverend Day manipulating his fingers in the air as if he were controlling a marionette. Bendigo danced, arms hanging limply in the air, a pathetic shuffling encumbered by his fallen trousers....

And Eileen remembered where she had known A. Glorious Day.

His name was Alexander Sparks; she had seen him practice this same impossible nightmarish possession on another man ten years ago, a small, dear Cockney burglar named Barry. Inside the dining hall of a manor house on the Yorkshire coast. Along with six other lunatic, diseased aristocrats, Sparks had directed a plot against the Royal Family; she had fallen quite by accident into the outer tendrils of its web, but eventually found herself at its center, combatting the Seven along with Sparks's brother, an agent for Queen Victoria, and a young doctor who had gone on to become a famous author. Eileen left England for America hard on the heels of that experience and had never seen any of them since.

But Alexander Sparks had looked nothing like this Reverend Day and she could find no explanation for the discrepancy, unless over time the man's demonic heart had slowly wormed its way to the surface. If this was the same person, it certainly explained his iron grip on these people; she had seen him perform similar black miracles the last time. Yes; the idea that the revolting, twisted body and visage that bound him now reflected the man's true nature was only too easy to believe.

He had not recognized her for some reason. But why that was and for what purpose this misbegotten city had been born remained questions she could not begin to answer. Cold terror pinned her to that spot backstage as securely as a railroad spike.

With a manic smile carved on his face, Rymer's dance ended and he flopped to the stage in a deep curtsy; Eileen could hear the muscles in his legs ripping away from bones as his body contorted.

A flurry of gestures from Day: Bendigo flew to his feet again, his hand drew the saber from his belt, and he marched up and down the stage, sword raised, in a mockery of military high-step. Dead laughter from the audience doubled, deafening. For one terrible instant, Bendigo caught Eileen's eye; she saw conscious agony and horror bleeding through his eyes, but words could not break past the hideous smile that had stilled his voice before his body whipped around and marched away again.

She regretted every misfortune she'd ever wished upon the man; this humiliation was something no human being should endure. Tears in her eyes, she wished for a gun to release the poor bastard from this misery; the rest of its bullets she wanted for Reverend Day.

Bendigo came to a halt and gave a salute to the box. The Reverend raised his hands over his head and Rymer rose softly into the air, his bare spindly legs windmilling comically as if he were running up invisible steps. He soared up and over the audience, then hung suspended at the Reverend's eye level. The Reverend wiggled one hand; Bendigo's black wig flew off and scampered away in the air like a terrier. The laughter reached a hysterical crescendo, then stopped dead.

"Now do tell, Mr. Rymer; I hear that you have been harboring a secret desire to play Hamlet," said Reverend Day, in an exaggerated hillbilly twang.

Wheezing for breath, Bendigo nodded slightly; his own dim response. Eileen saw a twitch of excitement light up the pathetic fool's eyes, even a small stirring of pride.

"Well now, don't be shy, why don't y'all treat us to a little sampling of your melancholy Dane, you insolent, uncivilized cur?"

The audience applauded wildly, stomped their feet and whistled, egging him on to perform. Bendigo saluted Reverend

Day with the sword, acknowledged his audience with a grateful wave. He took a step back in midair and lowered his head; a moment of introspection, the actor preparing for his entrance. The audience went silent.

Bendigo turned back around, in character now, bobbing like a cork in the water. With the pinched corset torturing his voice to a strangled parody of his rich baritone, he cried out, "To be, or not to be; that is the question."

Reverend Day leaned on the edge of the box, sly boredom, propping his chin up, the fingers of one hand drumming his cheek while the other waved idly in the air.

In response to Day's gestures, with each succeeding line of the soliloquy Bendigo raised the sword and ferociously slashed himself across a part of his body; nothing spared, arms, legs, back, chest, neck, face. Each cut opened gaping wounds.

"Whether tis nobler... in the mind... to suffer the slings and arrows... of outrageous fortune ... or take arms ... against a sea ... of troubles and by opposing end them."

Eileen knew their blades were severely dulled down for stage combat; Rymer was striking himself with inhuman strength. Blood rained on the audience but the white shirts offered no reaction, looking straight up, not even raising a hand to shield their faces from the splatter as it pelted down.

"To die, to sleep—no more—and by a sleep to say we end the heartache ... and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to!"

A devastating blow nearly severed Bendigo's left hand at the wrist; bones shattered, hanging by a thread of flesh. Sheets of blood cascaded down his face from cuts along his scalp; agony informed every word he spoke, and Eileen thought she could hear an occasional desperate cry break through beneath the words.

" 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep—to sleep—perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub—"

Bendigo screamed as he thrust the point of the sword clear through his lower abdomen below the corset, straining with both hands to break its blunt tip through the resistant skin of his back.

Eileen sobbed and turned away, blinded by tears and rage, trying to pull herself to her feet.

Reverend Day stood in front of Bendigo and began to slowly applaud, banging his simian hands together; the audience picked up the rhythm and the clapping grew into a booming, rhythmic beat.

"—for in that sleep of death ..."

Bendigo's voice failing, face collapsing, gray as ash, all the emotion breaking through, underlining his final words.

"... what dreams may come ... when we have shuffled off this mortal coil... must give us pause ..."

Eyes open, Bendigo died, suspended limply in the air. The audience rose to their feet, applause growing steadily to a thundering crescendo.

"Bravo! BRAVO!" shouted Reverend Day.

The audience amplified the mocking tribute.

Reverend Day twirled his hand; Bendigo's body revolved and bowed low in each direction, dumb acknowledgement of the only standing ovation offered to him in a long and mediocre career.

Eileen stumbled blindly to the rear wall. A lantern burned on a hook near the door. She plucked it off and hurled it at the fallen curtain; the lantern shattered, the oil spread, ignited by the wick, and began to burn.

As the flames licked up the arch, she turned and ran out the back door of the theater.

Dante had never seen a play before. Frederick and he walked in late, after the show had started, settling into seats behind Reverend Day in a box above the stage. He guessed the actors were telling some kind of story down there, but he didn't feel much interest in trying to work it out. He liked the colorful pictures of the mountains and the pieces of a castle that rolled on and off the stage, and the uniforms on the soldiers were fun to look at, too; bright red with lots of shiny buttons.

But most of all he liked that girl with the black hair and her titties pushing out the top of her low-cut dress. He slipped a hand inside his briefcase and rubbed a thumb along the edge of a knife, daydreaming about how nice it would be to use it on her. The Reverend and Frederick had made him feel so free about his work that anything seemed possible. When it was over, he might even ask them to let him have that girl to play with.

Everything started to go wrong when that big fella Cornelius rushed into the box; he said shots were being fired and some guards had been killed; and when the Reverend stood up and started screaming, Dante could see a big, red cloud come off him like a barrel of black powder exploding.

Whatever the Reverend yelled at those people below made them real scared, even Frederick went a little pale, but as far as Dante was concerned, it felt like the real fun was about to begin. Then that fat actor floated right up into the air in front of them and began to cut himself, and Dante knew that he'd been right; this was better than freaks at a sideshow.

When the fire started, Reverend Day screamed at the people in the white shirts again, "TO YOUR PLACE, GO, GO! WAIT FOR THE SIGNAL!"

Whatever had been holding up the actor's body let go, and it plopped down onto the seats like a loose hank of rope. The people in white shirts were so busy rushing to the doors, shouting and screaming, that they started stepping all over each other; couple of 'em got crushed in the stampede. Dante leaned over the balcony and watched from his seat, rocking back and forth, laughing; this was a hell of a lot funnier than anything those dumb actors had been doing.

Reverend Day whirled round on the men in the box.

"Call out the Brigade," he said to Cornelius. "Everyone knows their responsibilities; follow the Plan."

"Yes, sir," said Cornelius, and he ran out of there.

"How many of your men are left to me?" he asked Frederick.

"Nearly sixty," said Frederick.

"Assemble them at the church for the Holy Work. Then you come alone to the chapel and bring me that book as soon as our visitors arrive. You have one hour before the Work begins."

"What about the fire?" asked Frederick, nodding toward the flames shooting up the curtains.

"Let it burn. Let it all burn."

Frederick gestured for Dante to follow him and started out; the Reverend clamped a hand on Dante's arm.

"No," said the Reverend. "He stays with me."

Dante could see Frederick's jaw working; he was mad. He clicked his heels, nodded sharply, and left the booth. Reverend Day held out a hand to Dante; he giggled and snuggled up under his sheltering arm as they walked out of the box and down the mezzanine hall. Smoke rolled in around them filling the air, temperature rising from the spreading flames, but they never hurried their pace.

"How do you feel, Mr. Scruggs?"

"I feel good, sir. I feel real good."

"That's fine, boy. That's just fine," said Reverend Day, holding him closer as they started down the stairs. "It's going to be a glorious night."