“Ah. How interesting. Perhaps, if there were time, we could learn something from this for use in later models.” He glanced away. “But no. When the pattern is made whole tonight, Juno’s function will be at an end.”
Rope said nothing, watching the sparkle of joy in Tze’s eyes.
“Miss Hi has given of herself to whet the blade. The role of absolution now falls to you, Heywood. The young one, Lam, has been prepared.” Tze placed a hand on Rope’s shoulder. “I rely on you to commit the deed when the moment comes.”
“For the King,” Rope gave the rote reply.
Tze smiled again and boarded the flyer. Rope watched it vanish toward the high ridge of Victoria Peak, where spotlights danced on the low clouds. In the pocket of his coat, the metal cover of The Path of Joseph tore at his skin. “Such an arrogant man,” he said to the air. To think Tze imagined he might cage a Dark One and become the master of the Desire-God. In Joseph’s name, it would be Rope’s pleasure to show him the error he had made in trusting a secret agent of Elder Seth.
Ko sat on the chair, blinking. “I’m not feeling anything. This is looped.”
Fixx ignored him. “Give it time.”
The pill had disintegrated the moment he swallowed it, and now Ko was having second thoughts, his pulse racing and his hands getting sweaty. He sniffed the air and caught a whiff of something strong and redolent. “You smell that?”
“Like a steakhouse.” Fixx frowned.
Ko was on his feet, making for the door. “Where’s all the…? People are-” His bare feet (bare?) slapped on warm liquid and he glanced down. The grey tiled floor in the corridor shimmered, darkened. It became a purple-red pool, moving to fill the space before him. Tendrils of the blood-stuff inched up the walls.
“Oh. Shit. It’s happening.”
Fixx was following him. “Go with it. Don’t fight it.”
Ko panicked. “No. Damn it man, this was a jagged idea, I want out.”
“Weakling,” sneered another voice. Ko saw Feng, crouched at the pool’s edge, looking at his dark reflection. “Your first instinct is always to run.”
Fixx rubbed his chin. “Who’s your friend?” Ko swallowed. “It’s, uh, a long story. ”
They followed the meat smell out of the decaying hospital, past huge boles of greenish fungus that were consuming the crumbling concrete. Outside, Hong Kong had transformed into a fleshy, mutant parody of the city. Pieces of perception detached and reformed; they blindsided Fixx and hammered into his thoughts, alien invaders spitting memory-seed.
He saw landscapes of wet flesh, the stench of boiled skins and torched meat. And so many screams; they pushed and pulled, rising and falling from sexual cries of pleasure to noises that chilled the blood in his veins.
Fixx did not question the new arrival, this man the thief called Feng. The aura about the swordsman was strange and complex, the shades similar to Ko’s. Somewhere down the bloodline these two shared ancestry; the op wondered if either of them knew it. He toyed with the bones in his pocket. They felt spongy and indistinct.
“There she is,” said Feng, pointing with his sword. Along the leathery highway, Nikita was sitting on a couch made from dead dogs. Faint whisps of face and body sat about her, giggling and laughing. She was dressed in a tattered Dior delta, streaked with mud and fluids. Fixx heard Ko gasp when she turned her face to them. Half of her skull was bared, flesh seared away. Blood ran from the torn eye socket, dripping into the wineglass in Nikita’s hand. Now and then, she would laugh as if in response to some unheard joke and sip at the contents of the glass.
Feng angrily used the blade to dissipate the wraiths, and Ko stepped closer, taking the burnt twigs of bones that were Nikita’s ruined right hand. “Sis?” he asked. “It’s me.”
“Little brother.” She gave a languid nod. “You should run. He’s coming.”
“Who’s comin’?” asked Fixx.
The flesh-world around them began to tremble. “The King,” she said.
And more than anything, Ko wanted to look away, but inside his mind, there was no place to seek shelter. A frigid hurricane of blue ice ripped into them, and above Tze loomed, a towering god wreathed in noxious smoke and shimmering darts of painful colour…
Ko felt his ire surge at the sight of the man’s grinning face. For a moment, he felt the weight of a weapon in his hand, and saw Feng’s sword in his grip. But then Tendrils of liquid night emerged. They stabbed out and penetrated, rushing through flesh and savaging his mind…
Fixx held on to him, but it was no good. They slipped on a new surface of sheer ice and fell Into visions of…
Black skies filled with blinded stars.
Emerald serpent forms, congealing, forming a monstrous snake-god; a mouth of snaggle teeth, eyes blue pools of destructive sensual energy.
Jade Dragon…
Juno screaming, lit across a stage of razorblades and glass, a puppeteer’s strings tied to her limbs, ranging away over her head.
Tze above, hands on the strings, directing and laughing.
In the water…
Grinning mindless salarymen in bars choking on mouthfuls of blue capsules.
Masks floating, black-clad hands pouring thick drums of azure syrup into wheeling falls of clean water.
Children across the city sharing one nightmare.
I’m the quiet mind inside, pretty voice…
Through sheaves of flashing pixels, inside flexing waveforms.
Lies and compulsions sewn into every singing word, every rhythm and bright sparkling vision.
Legions sleeping awake at their d-screens, absorbing.
All thinking the same way…
The blue, in everything, in each breath of air, each bite and sip.
All eyes on Juno.
At the tower, Rope bearing the wageslave’s throat before a multi-bladed knife.
A rip in the sky…
Opening.
The Jade Dragon tearing through.
Slashing.
Ending the world…
Ripping.
And no one to stop it…
“Out!” Ko screamed. “Get me out!”
He felt Feng’s fingers around his wrist and then…
Ko hit the ground and felt asphalt beneath his fingers. He barely got to his feet before he vomited explosively, bringing up thin, watery bile.
Fixx was nearby, sitting on his haunches. It took a moment for Ko to realise that they were on the roof of the hospital building. “How did we get up here?”
“Sleepwalkin’,” offered the op, casting the bones and reading them. “Damn. That was heavy.” He looked up. “Your buddy, Feng. Got us free of it.”
Ko looked at his feet and shivered. “Is Nikita all right?”
“No change. Same for all those poor fools.”
The thief found his attention drawn up to the distant shadow of the peak. “All that was true… That mad bastard is gonna summon a demon, rape the world…” Ko grabbed at Fixx. “We can’t let that happen!”
But the op’s attention was elsewhere, staring down at the hospital parking lot. “First things first,” he said, pointing. “We got company.”
A silver Mercedes Vector drew to a halt, and from inside came three distinctive figures. A man and two women in identical suits, faces hidden behind gaily-painted opera masks.
The Road to the Shining City must be marked out
For the Dark Ones and their Servitors
Just as landing lights mark out an airfield runway
The spilled blood would guide the Dark Ones to the Earthly Plane
To the Last City
Message embedded in Happy Carp beer commercial, origin unknown.
15. Enter the Dragon
Blue Snake came into the hospital first, with her sister White Snake and Qin Hui following close behind. Blue and White had not been born as siblings, but in their service to the Cabal they had been made so, in manners far beyond the level of crude genetics. Their masks were negative images of each other. Where her visage was dominated by azure colours, honeyed filigree and pale trim, her sister’s facade was white with blue and gold detail. Their masks were the faces of two mythic characters, serpent-spirits who guarded a mountain in legend. By contrast, Qin Hui’s face was dominated by death-white, with facets of black and pink; his name was taken from a perfidious politician of the Song Dynasty, whose hands bore the blood of the renowned hero Yue Fei-if the stories of the playwrights were to be believed.