I never travel anywhere without condiments.
The pepper filled Max’s eyes and nose, and he fell backwards, sneezing so hard it shook his whole body, while his eyes screwed shut around streaming tears. He couldn’t even hold on to the Aquarius Key, let alone concentrate enough to operate it, and the metal box fell to the ground before him. So I just stooped down and took it away from him. Suzie nodded respectfully to me.
“You always did know the best ways to fight dirty.”
She kicked Max briskly in the ribs with her steel-toed boot, just enough to take the fight out of him. He grunted once, and then glared up at us from his knees, forcing his watering eyes open. He was squeezing his injured hand with the other so tightly the bleeding had almost stopped. There were no signs of pain or weakness or even defeat in his dark face; only an implacable hatred, while he waited for his chance to come round again. Suzie shoved the barrel of her shotgun into his face.
“I get paid the same whether I bring you in dead or alive,” she said, her voice cold and calm as always. “On the whole, I tend to prefer dead. Less paper-work.”
“I am not carrying anyone that large out of here,” I said firmly. “Unless I absolutely have to. So let’s all play nice, then we can all walk out.”
But Max wasn’t listening to either of us. He was staring at something behind me, and even before he said anything, I could feel all the hackles on my neck rising.
“Ah, hell,” said Max Maxwell. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse…”
Suzie and I turned to look, and there standing in rows behind us was a small army of the Nightside’s very best bounty hunters. Heavily armed and armoured, they stood unnaturally still, all of them grinning unpleasantly, while their eyes glowed golden in the gloom, like so many candle-flames in the depths of Hell. Their wide grins showed teeth, like hunting dogs who’d brought their game to ground at last.
The loa had found us.
Max laughed suddenly, a flat, breathy sound. “Protect me, Suzie, Taylor. If you want your bounty money.”
I looked at Suzie. “Do we really need the money that badly?”
“Always,” said Suzie. “It isn’t the principle of the thing, it’s the money. No-one takes a bounty away from me.”
“Maybe we could split him down the middle,” I said.
“Tempting, but messy. And I don’t share.”
I sighed. “Things are in a bad way if I have to be the voice of reason…”
I stepped forward, conspicuously putting myself between the loa’s hosts and their prey, and they all fixed their glowing unblinking eyes on me.
“We know you, John Taylor.” It was hard to tell where the voice came from. It could have been any of them, or all of them. It sounded almost…amused. “We know who and what you are, probably better than you do yourself. But do not presume to stand between us and what is rightfully ours.”
“And I know you, lords of the loa,” I said, keeping my voice reasonably polite and respectful. “But this is my world, not yours, and Max is mine. He will be punished severely, I promise you.”
“Not good enough,” said the voice, and the whole possessed army surged forward as one.
Max reared up suddenly, catching me off guard. He snatched the Aquarius Key away from me with his one good hand and twisted it savagely, shouting Words of Power. And all the bounty hunters screamed, as the possessing loa were forced out of them. Dozens of men and women crumpled to the ground, twitching and shuddering and crying hot tears of relief. For a moment, I actually thought the threat was over. I should have known better.
All around me, all the old rides and machinery creaked slowly back into life, wheels turning, machinery stirring, while the wooden Merry-Go-Round horses slowly turned their heads to look at us. The loa had found new hosts. A slow, awful life moved through Fun Faire, burning fiercely inside cold metal and painted wood, and out of the mouths of oversized clowns and Tunnels of Love and Horror came the outraged screams of the defied loa.
Max was hunched over, struggling to manipulate the Aquarius Key with just the one good hand, trying to open a door that would take him away. Suzie clubbed him in the side of his head with the butt of her shotgun, and he hardly felt it. She hit him again, and while he was distracted I moved in and snatched the Key away. Max glared at me, grey lips pulling back to show grey teeth.
“I will kill you for this, Taylor. Make you crawl first; make her crawl. I’ll let you watch helplessly as I violate your woman. Do her and do her till she bleeds, until her throat rips from screaming. Tear her apart, body and soul. I’ll send her to Hell…and then it’ll be your turn.”
I looked at Suzie. “Kneecap him.”
She blew off his left kneecap with her shotgun. His leg burst apart, blood spurting, and Max collapsed, crying out in agony as he clutched at his leg. I looked down at him.
“Shouldn’t have threatened Suzie, Max. No-one messes with me and mine.”
I turned my attention back to Fun Faire, coming slowly alive like a great beast stretching after a long sleep. Lights were snapping on all around us, flaring blue and green and pink in the dark. The huge rides creaked and groaned as rusting metal stirred to life again. Suzie moved in beside me, swinging her shotgun back and forth, restless for a target.
“John, what’s happening?”
“The loa have possessed the whole damned fairground,” I said. “All those exorcisms must have left it wide open…”
“Can’t we get Max to throw them out again?”
“Possibly,” I said. “If he wasn’t currently preoccupied with holding his shattered leg together.”
“It was your idea.”
“I know, I know!”
The dodgem cars came first, smashing through the reinforced sides of their stand and heading straight for us at impossible speed. They hammered through the shadows, their wooden sides already splitting as they struggled to contain the terrible energies that were animating them. Suzie stood her ground and blasted the first car at point-blank range. It exploded in a shower of wooden spikes and splinters, some of which pattered harmlessly against the front of Suzie’s motorcycle jacket. The rest of the dodgem cars were already upon us, so Suzie and I threw ourselves in opposite directions, out of their way. The cars swung round and over each other to come after us, their garishly painted faces grinning the same grin I’d seen on the faces of the possessed bounty hunters. The loa were having fun. The loa were playing with us.
I ran down the moonlit paths between the slowly stirring stands, and the cars came after me, calling out now in terrible voices. I could hear Suzie running, not far away, and yelled for her to intersect with me at the next crossing of the paths. We both arrived at the intersection at the same time, and I grabbed Suzie by the hand and pulled her to the ground. The cars came up on us too fast to stop, and flew right over our heads to slam into each other head-on. There was an explosion of splintered wood and released uncanny energies, and when Suzie and I scrambled to our feet again, their was nothing left of the dodgem cars but gaily painted wreckage.
“We need to get back to Max,” said Suzie. She’d already pulled her hand out of mine, the moment we were safe. She couldn’t bear to be touched for long, even when I was saving her.
“Max isn’t going anywhere on that leg,” I said.
“He could crawl,” said Suzie.
So back we went, to face the loa again. I sometimes wonder which of us is crazier—Suzie for suggesting these things or me for going along with them.
She was right. We found Max at the end of a long bloody trail, crawling for the exit, dragging his useless leg behind him. We’d just caught up with him when the snub-nosed planes came flying down at us from the Tilt-A-Whirl. They’d broken free of their supporting struts and shot through the air towards us on stubby wooden wings. I just hoped someone had got around to removing the heat-seeking missiles. Suzie shot them out of the air, one by one, just like pigeon shooting. (There are no pigeons in the Nightside, and people like Suzie are the reason why. Sometimes you can’t even find a dove to sacrifice when you’re in a hurry.) The last plane crashed to the ground not five feet away from us and gave up its ghost. Suzie looked at me as she reloaded her shotgun.