Jack Yeovil - Comeback Tour

"I had a dizzy spell," she replied, "lost a few hours. Whose side are we on?"

"The green-faced guys."

"It figures."

There was an explosion nearby, and Elvis cringed. Concrete chips rained against his back and the Cadillac's flank like hailstones.

"We have to get underground," Krokodil said.

"Sweet thing," Elvis began, "there's just one thing I forgot to ask earlier…"

"Yes?" Her smile was dazzling.

"What the freak are we here for?"

WAGNER: MALTHUS.

Simone Scarlet knew suddenly, with a blinding clearness like the rapture her born-again Mammy had promised, that she had to help the ghosts stop whatever Roger was doing.

PENCIL LEAD: CALCUTTA.

The drowned astronaut reached out, and laid a nearly substantial hand on her heart. The cold seeped through her.

Her mother had been reborn, but her mama-loi aunt stayed with the old ways. She remembered prayers to Damballah, Shango…

GORDONSTOUN: ROSEMARY.

The Mad Old Man looked at her, and knew what she would do. He wasn't sure whether he should try to stop her.

The Revelations poured into her mind. There was magic nearby. A powerful houngan was in the area. She must find him, and tell him to work his miracle. Then the ghosts could become solid enough to intervene on the earthly plane.

BRUIN: COPPERPLATE.

The Sister was nearly through now. There wasn't much time.

"Blood," Roger said calmly. "We've not spilled enough blood. The sacrifice has yet to take."

GODHEAD: BROOKLYN BRIDGE.

Roger looked around. Simone realized her saviour was searching for someone to kill. It could even be her.

"Tozer," Roger snapped, "pick your three least capable men and lay them down in the bed of the elevator shaft."

RAWHIDE: TRAVOLTA.

The Brother in charge of security didn't question the order, but he took a few seconds choosing. Roger's face darkened. Simone realized how close he was to a breakdown. He seemed so strong, so solid. And yet he had been walking a knife-point. There was a great blackness in his life.

GREENBACK: FIBONACCI.

Tozer hauled a fat woman, a near-albino blonde boy and a grey middle-aged man out of his line of defence. That left only Waltons, Simone noticed.

None of the potential sacrifices complained as Tozer pushed them at gunpoint into the shaftbed. The woman lay down with an ecstatic look on her face, delighted to be of service to the Church of Joseph. The middle-aged man just sat down without a word and stretched out, resigned to everything. The albino hesitated, and Tozer chopped his gunbutt into the back of the boy's skull, dropping him senseless.

CALEDONIA: ARABESQUE.

"Bring the platform down," Roger ordered.

The drowned man hugged her from behind, his face flattening against the back of her head. Her dress was wet, and her inner eyes were opened. She heard guitar music, and knew the conjure man she must find was a singing shaman. They weren't common, but she had known one in New Orleans, a piano player in the GenTech recreational house who sprinkled chicken blood into his instrument and wrung tortured music from the keys while telling the girls' fortunes.

SPINDRIFT: SEAVTEW.

Tozer was reconnecting the elevator, a fistful of wires jammed together in a sparking tangle as he wound insulated tape around it.

PIDACOR: ??????

Keystone beeped angrily. Sister Addams jumped, tears starting from her eyes. The screen flashed at her.

PIDACOR: ??????

She checked her list, and stared at the screen. The beeping continued. Roger looked as if he were shaking with painful rage.

PIDACOR: ??????

Addams saw the error, and pressed CANCEL, ending the alarm.

PICADOR: DALE ARDEN.

Tozer had the elevator controls working now. The platform was descending.

The albino was moaning. The fat woman was singing "Tis the Gift to Be Simple." She was no conjure woman. Her voice was cracked, and grated on Simone's ears.

CARDINAL: CHEOPS.

"Blood sacrifice," Roger muttered.

BRONISLAU: CHOP SUEY.

The Josephite hymn was cut off with a sickening crunch as the platform ground into the elevator bed.

Simone couldn't stop herself looking. The blood was welling up in the cracks, and dribbling into the bunker. Tozer was slumped, grey-faced, against the far wall, trying not to be sick.

"How soon, Addams?" Roger barked.

Addams nodded.

HOUSEMARTTN: SHOTGUN.

"Very soon. Elder."

AXOLOTL: PLINY.

Simone broke away from the ghost, her mind spinning, her body tingling from her partial possession.

Fonvielle could have tried to stop her, but he just looked away.

She ran for the elevator, and snatched the controls from Tozer.

BR1GADOON: FONTAINBLEAU.

She pushed the Brother away from the platform, and pressed the UP button. She glimpsed Roger's astonished face as she rose, and heard bullets striking the durium-sheeted underside of the platform.

She was being pushed upwards on a solid column. There was a lead shield at ground level which could squash her as flat as the three sacrifices.

But, oddly, she wasn't worried about that…

Krokodil felt the rumbling in the shaft beneath the cover. Someone was coming up.

The Ancient Adversary awoke and uncoiled inside her, swallowing her consciousness at a gulp.

With inhumanly strong hands, she bent back the lead-durium shielding and rolled it like linoleum.

Elvis just raised an eyebrow and pouted, but the lizard-faced army officer in the beret was astonished.

The shield wrenched free, breaking into three pieces. She spun the largest fragment into the air, and sailed it thirty feet across the launchpad. It scraped the concrete with a harsh scream that set teeth on edge.

The elevator platform surfaced, exposing to light a shivering black girl in a thin white silk dress.

The girl looked her in the eye, searching for something she didn't find. She turned away from Krokodil and looked at the others.

She had seen many wonders, obviously. The girl looked at Raimundo Rex, Captain Marcus, Hiroshi Shiba and the others without seeming to see anything unusual.

"Heyyy," said Raimundo, "chiquitaaaaah! Whass happenin' bay-beeeee?"

The girl ignored him, still looking for something, for someone…

The Ancient Adversary relinquished control of Krokodil, and disappeared back into the depths of her mind. She felt pain in her torn and bloody hands.

"Which of you…?" the girl began.

Then she saw Elvis, and sank to her knees.

The Op looked behind him, then thumbed his chest with a sullen "who, me?" expression, and shrugged.

Krokodil remembered the way 'Ti-Mouche had treated Elvis in the swamp. She was the host to a magical being, but he had a touch of the pure-bred, pure-born voodoo in him somewhere.

"Conjure man," the girl said.

Elvis shifted his collar. The Suitcase People were staring at him.

"Yes," said the alligator exec, "yes. Conjure man." He clapped his forefeet together.

"You must help them."

There were dark figures among the Suitcase People, shadows becoming human. Krokodil recognized the spirits of the dead.

Elvis passed a hand over his hair, shaping it perfectly.

"Help them?" he asked. "How?"

"You have magic…"

The girl's words were intently serious. She knew exactly what she was saying.

"…you must use it."

Shiba had slithered off. Krokodil wondered where he had gone.

Marcus was wrestling with the elevator controls. "It's no good," he said. "They've disconnected them down there. We'll have to blast our way in. If that's possible."

"No," the girl said, "use the magic."

Krokodil realized how young the girl was, and felt another history of ill-use and exploitation. Perhaps another Daddy like Bruno Bonney, certainly a string of artful torturers…