Jack Yeovil - Krokodil Tears

"But the world isn't all slime."

"Isn't it? Apart from you, everybody I know is dead. Or ought to be."

"We will do our parts, and things will be better."

"I've heard that all my life."

"This time, maybe…Things are different, aren't they?"

"Different? Yes. I've never been a monster before."

"You're not a monster. You're a Spirit Warrior."

"Jesse Frankenstein's-Daughter, the Spirit Warrior."

"You must take the feelings you have for yourself and channel them. You will need all your emotional capacities."

"It's starting soon?"

"It's starting now."

Dr Proctor slipped the chip into the auto's music system, and Fast-Forwarded to the "Nessun dorma!" As the Unknown Prince, Sir Oswald Osbourne, the greatest operatic voice of the '90s, poured it out. Osbourne apart, the Met's Turandot was rather minor, he supposed, but you could never tire of the "Nessun dorma!" The aria ended, and he skipped to the finale. "Cera negli occhi tuoi" and "Diecimila anni." Then, the applause.

The incar computers told him he was in Southern Arizona. He let the machines do all the driving. He had been through this area in '89, when he was just starting out on his Devil-work. He had liked it because it reminded him of the endless mesas and sandy canyons of the Road Runner cartoons, Zoom and Bored (1957), Wild About Hurry (1959), Fastest With the Mostest (1960), Tired and Feathered (1965).

There had been a gangcult then. The Backburners. They had flagged him down to kill him and rob him. He must have added fifteen or twenty to his score that night. He never kept count. That was for the pettifoggers, the lawyers and the journos.

There were seventeen books in print about him, not counting his autobiography, and he'd been in five movies. He preferred Steve Martin's performance in Tas, the Newman version, to any of the others. Michael Caine had been especially poor in A Devil With Women, and Dustin Hoffman out of his depth in Have Axe, Will Travel. Still, none of them were quite what he saw when he looked in the mirror.

Poor Oliver. He would never get out of the mess he'd been left in. And heads would roll at Sunnydales. More heads, he corrected himself.

Once he had discharged his debt of honour with Seth, he might take the Elder up on the offer of a home in Deseret.

But he might prefer to wander the byways of the United States, playing his tricks. He had about a hundred million dollars stashed in accounts, safe deposit boxes and secret caches throughout the country. His face could be changed.

And the Devil would dance again.

Duroc had been able to give him quite precise information regarding the whereabouts of Jessamyn Bonney. His sources must be superb. T-H-R had been after her for years, and according to them she had just dropped out of sight.

But Duroc's people must be practically inside her skull.

The Monastery of Santa de Nogueira. He had never heard of it, and it wasn't on most maps, but the Josephites had left directions in the car.

They had also left him with a stimulating array of toys, which he had put to good use already. He was pleased to discover there was a Mid-West Armaments firm called Acme Incorporated, and had tried out their electroknives on a hitch-hiker from Tucson. They were barely serviceable tools, but he kept them for the value of the name.

From a post office in Dos Cabezos, he sent a card to Rex Tendeter and the others on Monsters' Row. Tracing in the blood of the sheriff, he wrote "HAVING A LOVELY TIME, WISH YOU WERE HERE, LOVE OTTOKAR." He hoped the Sunnydales people would let the message get through. The monsters deserved a touch of hope. After all, if Dr Ottokar Proctor could get out, then so could they…

Since he reached the world, the media had been crazy. If he'd actually committed all the murders they were trying to pin on him, he ought to get a Nobel prize for inventing teleportation. They had him striking in New York and San Francisco within the same twenty minutes. He was as often reported and as seldom identified as Neil Gaiman. Perhaps, after he had carried out his current commission, he should go after the graphic novelist and collect the Pan-Islamic Congress' bounty on his head. No, that would demean his Art, importing a touch of too-crass commercialism to the hallowed process of murder.

He had given some thought to the problem of Jessamyn Bonney. He had listened through the Dead Rat tapes several times, and made notes on her capabilities and achievements. He had especially admired her methods in the cases of Susie Terhune and Bronson Manolo. Nothing showy, just a simple display of fatal force. She was no Artist, but she was certainly a competent enough craftswoman.

He read up on Dr Threadneedle, and looked at his autopsy reports. The conclusions were obvious. Jessamyn had something a little extra.

But he had killed people with bio-implants before. Plenty of them. He had sought out the strongest of the strong and left them howling, begging for merciful death.

Jessamyn would be no different.

There was only room for one God of Pain, and Dr Proctor was the ranking applicant for the position.

The moon rose over the desert.

He was alone in the courtyard. It was late. Jesse was sleeping. There was a wind coming across the sands, coming nearer. And in that wind. Hawk knew, was the Devil.

"What the hell…" he said.

Faintly, he heard a voice in the wind, singing…

…singing "Se quel guerrier to fossil…Celeste Aida," Dr Proctor drove across the sands. Santa de Nogueira was off the road, but the Josephites had given him an auto that converted into a sandcat.

The monastery stood up ahead, silhouetted against the night sky like an Arabian Nights palace. Aida was most apt.

If Duroc's information was correct, Jessamyn Bonney was in that ancient castle, a princess waiting for her dragon.

Dr Proctor's smile turned into a grin, and his eyebrows lowered. Those few witnesses left alive who had seen this expression come over his face had testified that he truly did resemble the cartoon character from whom he had taken his nom de homicide.

He chuckled in the back of his throat, his eyeteeth digging into his lips, and relaxed. He was the economist again, the calm pundit of the teevee shows and the press conferences, the smooth liar who had gently pushed the richest, most powerful nation in the world into a monetary cesspool from which it would take centuries to recover.

He looked at himself in the mirror, and twisted his mouth like Daffy Duck. "You know what," he said to himself, "you're dethpicable!"

He felt the killing excitement building in his water.

In the Salt Lake City tabernacle, Nguyen Seth picked up his spectacles, and slipped them on. The darkness cleared, and he peered into the pool of blood in the font.

The smoke cleared, and he saw the monastery. Duroc had chosen his catspaw well.

This was a fit night to raise the Devil.

Jesse shifted, disturbed. Faces were coming at her at great speed. The crocodile whispered in her ear, calling ladybug, ladybug. He urged her to fly away home…

…your house is on fire, your children are gone.

Her eye opened in the darkness, and she saw that Hawk-That-Settles had gone from their cell.

Moonlight was flooding in through the windowslit.

In the Outer Darkness, the Ancient Adversary strained towards the wormhole. It was time to be spat out into the physical universe, to join with its Vessel, then seek out its prey…

Dr Proctor turned off the sound system, and concentrated. He found the Devil inside himself, and summoned the creature up. His friends on Monsters' Row would be proud of him.