Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Van found his voice first. “You’re smaller’n I expected, son. Somehow I didn’t think you’d fit under a helmet.”
“Small as an evil thought, a worm in the brain,” King Sorrow said. A puff of blue smoke rippled out from beneath the dented
rim of the helmet. “Even a small notion can burn down a whole city. One such as myself expects to be addressed with the honorifics
that are his due, Donovan McBride . . . but I s’pose every king must have his fool and a fool need not bother with the niceties
of court.”
“How does one as magnificent as yourself expect to be addressed, my lord?” Gwen asked.
“His Excellency. His Most Glorious Majesty. Crucifier of the Catholics, perpetrator of the pogroms, mass murderer of the Muslims.
Or, Underfoot, simply Lord will do.” Another streamer of smoke and then he added, “Gwendolyn and Arthur. I knew a Gwen and an Arthur once. She was a
whore. He was worse.”
“Oh? Tell us, Lord—what’s worse than a hoor?” Gwen asked.
“An idealist.”
“Your gracious sovereign,” Colin said. “We humbly petition you to defend us in our hour of need—and to this end we have performed
great deeds and are prepared to make sacrifice.”
“We have brought you a heart to feast on,” Arthur said, putting two fingers on the edge of the gold-rimmed platter.
“I have a better idea,” said King Sorrow. “Let’s riddle instead. If any of you can stump me, I’ll pile that plate high with gold chain.”
“And what if you stump us?” Allie asked.
“Then I will tear out your tongues and make a necklace of them, so your mewling voices will never disturb me again. You woke me from a deep sleep and a fine dream.”
“Of what do dragons dream?” Arthur asked.
“Fire,” King Sorrow said. “What else? Did you know that the obese will not burn so much as melt? They bubble away like a tallow candle. When a modern woman burns, she smells like bacon steeped in maple syrup. I don’t
remember women of the ancient world smelling so sweet, but that’s refined sugars for you. Your modern diet, you know, is almost
as bad for the health as knowing me, mate.”
“I’m too baked for riddles,” Allie said.
“Hah,” King Sorrow replied. “You aren’t baked yet but lose a few riddles to me and you will be.”
“Thank you, no, m’lord,” Colin said. “We honor you with a human heart and ask only that you rid us of our meddlesome foes.”
Two fine tendrils of smoke streamed from the darkness beneath the helmet.
“If you promise me a life, I expect to receive one,” King Sorrow said. “All arrangements are final, no substitutions acceptable . . .
unless you offer to substitute yourself. Know that I require time to come through from the Long Dark to the thin light of your world. As you can see, I am now only
a shadow of myself. But given time I will wax like the moon. With time, I will crack the fragile shell of your reality like
an egg and be born into it in all my splendor. Upon Easter morning whomsoever you name will cease to trouble you: your enemies
and all who would defend them. There will be no safe shelter for them. No army will shield them from me.”
King Sorrow never said kill, but Arthur could not pretend—not then, not later—that they didn’t all understand what he meant.
“What if they come for us before you’re ready?” Donna asked, her voice harsh, ready to be angry. “Fat lot of good you’d do
us then.”
“Are you afraid your enemies will take you like Cady, Donna McBride?” King Sorrow asked. “Take you to die in terror and pain?”
“Don’t you dare mock Cady Lewis,” Donna said.
“You think I would mock a poor dead child? If only she had been one of my subjects, Donna. I would’ve skinned the men who hurt her, while they were alive.
” He paused. The helmet seemed to wobble this way and that, ringing faintly.
“If you assent, I will mark you all . . . invisibly. You will only see my mark when you need to see it. The mark of a serpent, twining its way around you in a protective sheath. Touch two fingers to the serpent’s head—one
touch!—and I will leap from the Long Dark to protect you from any man or woman who would do you harm. Although, I suppose
you might still be killed by ambush. There are limits even to my regal powers. But console yourself! If one of you were to
fall, struck down by a cowardly attack from behind, five would remain to call me down upon your assassin.”
“That’s not as consoling as you might think,” Van said.
“Take heart. It is surprisingly difficult to truly catch an adversary unawares, Donovan. The fox always hears the blast of
the horn and the yaps of the approaching dogs. Perhaps not one victim in a thousand fails to see it coming, and such sorry
souls are almost always distracted with some perverse business of their own—the thief counting his money while his accomplice
readies the ax. That will have to be enough . . . and if it isn’t, then goodbye and good night to you.”
“It’s enough for me,” Colin said, glancing around the table at the others. Arthur moved his chin in agreement, saw the others
nodding from the edges of his vision.
“I get aggravated pretty easily,” Donna said. “I usually want to kill three or four people a day. How often is too often to
use this mark you’re talking about?”
“I advise you to employ it sparingly. To strike before I am ready, I must draw from your internal energies, your own will
and life force. I can fight a war for you, Donna McBride. But to use the mark in your own defense will leave you as aged and weary as if you had fought the
war yourself. Is this acceptable to you? Your liege swears his protection and in turn you offer me a sacrifice on Easter day.
Are we agreed?”
“The people we’re talking about,” Colin said, “are a pointless evil, like AIDS. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for myself,
I would see them gone. Blasted from the face of the Earth.”
“I’d see them gone,” Gwen said, “and my friend Arthur safe from them.”
“Hell, yes,” Donna said.
“I’m in,” Van said.
“Do it,” Allie agreed.
A moment’s silence followed.
“And you, Arthur Oakes?” King Sorrow asked. “I take it the enemies who haunt all of you are your own particular curse. Do
you agree to my terms, with a full heart?”
“With gratitude, Lord,” Arthur said. “As for a full heart, it’s here for you when you’re ready to dine.” Touching the plate
again.
There was a bassy rumble of laughter. “You understand, should you lose your nerve, only one of your own lives will do as a
replacement for those you name.”
“If it’s them or me,” Arthur said, “I choose them. Jayne Nighswander and Ronnie Volpe.”
“My precious subjects,” King Sorrow said, “I live only to serve you.”
“Possibly for dinner,” Gwen said, and King Sorrow laughed again.
Another blue stream of smoke came from beneath the helmet . . . followed an instant later by something that at first glance
looked like a garter snake escaping across the green felt of the card table. When it unwound, slipping rapidly toward the
china dish, Arthur had to repress a cry of revulsion. It was a tongue, forked at the end, glistening with spit, and at the sight he flashed to a memory of his own face, reflected in water, and
a tongue just like it spilling from his own mouth.
The tongue flicked at the heart on the plate, delicately tasting it—then coiled around it and pulled it across the table, leaving a wet, brown smear on the felt.
The helmet rocked, tipped back just enough to drag the heart into the darkness beneath.
As the tongue vanished, Arthur thought he saw the eye again, peering out at him from beneath the helmet, small now, no bigger than his own fist. It was the same eye he had seen through the open door: a golden iris slit by the vertical pupil of a snake.
The eye blinked like the shutter of a camera snapping shut and springing open again, fixed upon him.
Arthur’s chest tingled with horror. He wanted to scream.
Instead, he grabbed the lid of the helmet and flipped it over.
It thudded softly on the felt, in the watery light of early morning.
Arthur stared as the helmet rocked back and forth. It was hard to think, as if he had just been jolted awake from a nightmare.
It had been Scatterday night when he grabbed the edge of the helmet to flip it over, but it was well after dawn by the time
it landed upside down. Wolf Messing’s helmet looked like it had been used as an ashtray, a few burnt roaches and some fragrant
ash in the bottom.
He peered around him, to see if anyone else had noticed how suddenly the morning had come, springing upon them like a tiger
from the tall grass.
Arthur was alone at the card table. Van sat on the couch in his boxers and a T-shirt, a hand clapped over his face. Allie
was behind him, massaging his neck. Gwen stood over Van with a glass of water and some Excedrin from the candy jar on Llewellyn’s
desk.
“I feel like I swallowed a live snake,” Van said, and Arthur almost laughed and thought, Be glad it didn’t swallow you. “I ain’t had the spins like this since I drank a pitcher of beer and climbed on a mechanical bull one time.”
The door behind the desk—the door into the spare bedroom—was open and Colin stood in it, in a white T-shirt and white jockeys.
He was stringy and fit, not an ounce of extra fat on him, and his skull had recently been shaved. He came upon every day fresh
made, as if he had been stamped out by a machine. Movement behind him caught Arthur’s eye, and he saw Donna roll over in the
tangle of sheets, yawning, in a halter top and a G-string. She struggled out of bed, wrapping herself in the sheet, and joined
Colin at the door.
“Nothing makes a weekend like a bale of primo weed and a black mass,” Colin said.
“Ugh,” Donna said. “So this is what Saturday morning looks like. I hate it.”
But she was wrong. It wasn’t Saturday. It was Sunday. Saturday was gone—had vanished with King Sorrow. Twenty-four hours of
their lives, gone in one bite.