Jack Yeovil - Route 666

"Sergeant, I said the raiders were staying at the motel. I did not say they were there at this moment."

Quincannon had been halfway to the door. He turned, looking highly fed up. Somehow, the Elder had made a fool of him.

One of the gaudy girls turned on her barstool. She had an eyepatch.

"Hello preacherman," she said to Elder Seth, "come for your shades?"

So, she was back here again, facing the preachie. She had his glasses on a thong around her neck. She was horribly tempted to look at him through the shades, but terror prevented her. She remembered Herman Katz's shrivelled skull and the bloody hoofprints If inoffensive things were made horrible, what would be revealed of Elder Seth through his magic mirrorshades? The circuits of her optic implant buzzed, and she had the feeling it was too late, that having looked through the glasses, she would forever see more than she should.

"Hands away from those guns, yellowlegs," she said, pulling the rainbow scarf away from her semi-automatic pistol, "or I'll redecorate the saloon with your insides."

The sergeant and the two troopers held their hands out in front of them and looked at each other. The sergeant carefully set his shotgun down between plates of half-finished food and stood away. Jazzbeaux would rather not fight all three, since she knew a little about the Cav weapons training. Everyone else in the saloon was quiet. The jukebox was running down, some Kenny Rogers number slowing to a growl. The barman was backing away.

"And keep those pretty-pretty fingers off that scattergun you got down in the slops, darlin' dear."

The barkeep slapped his hands on the bar and left them there. Jazzbeaux nodded appreciation and blew him a kiss. He flinched. She turned back to the Elder.

"If you want the shades, you'll have to take them, lover."

Elder Seth walked across the room. Jazzbeaux felt the Psychopomps with her – Andrew Jean, Sleepy Jane, Sweet-cheeks – edge away, leaving her alone at the bar. It was between her and the preacherman. She flipped the safety and chambered a round.

The Elder stood in front of her now. If she exerted just a hint of pressure on the hairtrigger, she'd fill his chest with explosive bullets. He'd be cut clean in two. She had the unhealthy feeling that his face still wouldn't move.

She flicked her tongue in and out. "Come on, preachie!"

He was as close to her as a dancing partner now, the barrel of her gun resting on his sternum. Jazzbeaux felt she was alone in the universe with the man.

His hands came up and he took the shades. She was sure he would rip them away, but he merely lifted them to her own face and eased the bars over her ears. She shut her eye but felt silly, then looked through the glass.

The Elder's face changed in a second. The features became liquid, flowed into each other, and became features again. But different features. He had her daddy's face, she realised. Bruno Bonney's face when he was hopped up on zonk, and pulling his studded leather belt out of his jeans, mishkin drool on his chin, pain in his brain, death on his breath.

"Jessa-myn," Elder Seth said with her dead daddy's voice, "gimme the scav. Gimme the scav now, or it'll go harsh with you."

Her forefinger had gone to sleep on the trigger. She tried to fire the gun but her godrotted finger was stone. It wouldn't move. The gun shook and she tried to gouge into the preacherman's chest with the barrel. His hands were on her now, fingers digging into her waist.

"Jessa-myn!"

Her cheek was wet, she knew. She was crying. No, her optic was leaking biofluid. She tried to singe through the patch, to blast the preacher's hat off. The amendment wouldn't burn and she had a feedback headache.

She had ripped out her daddy's throat when he had tried once too often to take things out on her. That had been her first, and she had done it with just claw-gauntlets. Now, when she needed to kill him again, she had a fine piece of high-precision deathware ready and couldn't bring herself to exert the pull you'd need to open a tube of Pivo.

Elder Seth had his own face back but her Daddy's hung just behind his skin, ready to peer through at her.

Bruno Bonney wasn't done with her yet.

Elder Seth took the gun away from her and put it on the bar, between shot glasses. His other hand crept up her side, sliding through her armpit, reaching around her back, pulling her to him.

He leaned his face close to hers. She thought he was going to kiss her and shuddered at the anticipation of his reptile touch, but he just let his eye loom as close to the lens of the spectacles as her own was behind it.

She didn't want to look into his huge eye. She knew she'd be dead if she did that.

But she looked …

…and she saw such horrors.

Outside everything, the Summoner held the girl by the shoulders and watched her face as the truth crowded into her mind…

After nearly a century and a half, he was back. The name didn't matter: Spanish Fork, New Canaan. The place had other names It was a site of predestined power. Once, he had put his mark here Now, he would rekindle the flame.

Across the featureless, white plain rushed a crimson wave, driving before it hordes of ghosts.

The girl shivered and screamed, pestered by her own phantom. She was crying for her father, or crying against her father. It didn't matter. Nichevo, as she would say.

Horsemen passed by, their eyes shot away. Farmers trudged from the fields, hair askew on encrusted scalps. Pilgrims were borne down under the rush of blood, and embedded into the white sands. An eternal battle continued, as the living and the dead clashed, vast ignorant armies in a war only the Summoner truly understood.

Here, the Dark Ones walked, preparing themselves for the earthly plain. The desolation was magnificent.

This was, for the Summoner, a peaceful juncture, a moment of calm. He was poised on the lip of the next phase of the ritual, the mass spilling of blood. At this second, he was alone with this tiny girl, almost intrigued by the rudimentary workings of her mind.

"Jessa-myn," he said to her, in her father's voice, "now it's just us two, all alone and the evening ahead of us."

She was still horror-struck.

In the girl, the Summoner sensed the seed of something fine, something strong, something strange. When the moment was over, he should snuff her like a candle before her flame grew to a brushfire. It was even conceivable she could hinder him. She had the makings of a spirit warrior inside, as a marble block conceals the statue that must be dug out by the sculptor.

But he would miss her. There were so few in his league. It would be a shame to finish her before she could truly test him.

That was sentimental nonsense. There were others, and they would come forth when it was time. They would give him enough trouble. There was a woman in Switzerland, a man in Rome. And there were men and women in the United States, already bloodied in the Dark Ones' killing grounds. The Op in Memphis, the woman from Denver, the Navajo, the horseman…

He took Jessamyn's head and turned it away from his face, admiring her clean profile as she saw the plain extending away to infinity. Her white face was pinked by the reflection of the crimson wave that towered across the plain, rushing closer…

Jessamyn breathed something that might have been a profanity or a prayer.

In the torrent, creatures danced. They might be called demons and imps. Lost souls were turned inside out and left behind on the sands, exhausted forever. The wave ate everything…The Summoner was unique. He could ride the wave…