For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) Read online

  “Dominion of Circles?”

  “I suppose you’d think of it as Hell, though, by all accounts, it ain’t what most people would imagine. There’s two Dominions, the Dominion of Circles and the Dominion of Clouds, though only one of ’em’s got much in the way of people in it. From what I understand Heaven’s kind of sparse.”

  “Hi,” came a voice from the stairs and McDaid stood up to shake the newcomer’s hand.

  “Name’s Hodge,” the man said, “you help Ma with her shopping?”

  “That he did,” Elspeth said, “he’s here with a bunch of politicians but he seems nice enough so don’t throw him out just yet.”

  Hodge smiled and scratched at his unshaven cheeks. “You’ll have to forgive her,” he said, “she don’t like mincing her words.”

  “Duggan McDaid,” McDaid replied, “and I don’t mind one bit.”

  Hodge sat down in another chair, brushing the dust from a pair of tatty looking bib pants. “Been working on the roof,” he explained. “God knows why, probably never even rains here. She say you’re with politicians?”

  “I work for the Governor,” he said, “he’s here with Senator Paddock.”

  “Governor of where?”

  “Nebraska.” McDaid wasn’t sure if it was a trick question. “That’s where we are after all.”

  “Not anymore you ain’t,” said Elspeth, “you left Nebraska behind the minute you crossed the town line.”

  “Nebraska,” said Hodge. “I thought we were in Texas.”

  “You know how it works, you silly ox,” Elspeth told him, “wherever we thought we were, we ain’t. Wormwood appeared all over the place. ’Cept when it didn’t.”

  “That’s clear then,” Hodge laughed. He looked at McDaid. “Lots of people came to find Wormwood, and they went to different places but somehow we all found it. Now that it’s actually bolted on to our world I guess it plumped for Nebraska.”

  Much of this was going over McDaid’s head, but he’d decided he couldn’t keep asking for explanations. Some if it he’d just have to take on face value.

  “So,” said Hodge, “you think the Governor’s going to try and cause trouble?”

  McDaid couldn’t find it in himself to give a political answer, these people were being straight with him so he’d be straight right back. “Nobody really believes what’s happened,” he said, “but when they do they’re going to have a hard time accepting it. It’s not every day you suddenly have a new world dumped in the middle of your state. Two new worlds, I suppose. I don’t know what they’re going to do. I guess it won’t be down to them anyway. They’ll report to the President, then the conversations will really begin.”

  “The governor... that is our governor... worries about war.”

  “I suppose it could come to that, but it’s all so ridiculous. On one hand, these people...” McDaid paused, catching a look on Elspeth’s face as she brought him his coffee, “no disrespect intended... but they’ve invaded the United States of America. But they’ve done so in a manner that makes it impossible to withdraw. At least, I assume so? Could this place be lifted up and placed elsewhere?”

  “I don’t think so,” Hodge replied, “nobody’s quite sure. It wasn’t supposed to have happened at all. Wormwood was a temporary gateway. Something went wrong...”

  “God was shot,” said Elspeth.

  Hodge sighed. “I know that’s what they’re saying, momma, but I’m trying to keep this purely factual. Let’s stick to what we actually know, shall we?”

  “Someone shot God?” McDaid asked.

  “Ahuh,” Elspeth replied, “made Himself mortal and someone took advantage. Bang. That’s why we’re all in this mess, His good hand is now off the reins and who knows where it’ll leave us?”

  “The point is,” said Hodge, trying to bring things back on track, “Wormwood became fixed. The temporary gateway stays open. It wasn’t an invasion, it was an accident.”

  “Accidental it may have been but the result is the same. In normal circumstances,” he shrugged, “and that seems such a pointless thing to say, nothing about this is normal, but the invaders would be asked to withdraw. We assume that can’t happen. So what’s the next step? They’re treated as immigrants? How many are there? Would they all be willing to become citizens of America?”

  “And if they’re not willing,” Hodge replied, “you have to realise, there ain’t a damn thing anyone could do about it. You’re looking at a population that far exceeds that of the rest of the world, many of whom have powers mortal men could only dream of. That’s the governor’s fear. If the mortal world tries to pick a fight, the Dominion of Circles will just slap it down. Hard. A lot of these folks are nice enough but folks are folks, you know? Some are good, some are bad. And when you’re bad with sharp teeth and claws that could open an iron stove like it was made of paper... Well, it don’t make for a long fight. He’s determined to find a way that we can all co-exist peaceably.”

  “You think he’ll find it?”

  Hodge scratched at his face and sipped his coffee. “I don’t think he’s got a chance. I only wish he had.”

  6.

  BILLY STOOD BACK to let the coach past.

  “There they go,” he said to Elisabeth, “the powers that be.”

  “Father barely slept for worrying about it,” she said. “He’s never liked responsibility. Leave him alone with his books and his inventions and he’s happy, force him to discuss things with other adults and all he really wants to do is crawl away and hide.”

  “Well, I doubt today’s talks are going to mean much anyway. They’ll posture a little bit, then run back to make their reports and recommendations, all of which will be ignored, then we’ll have the President’s men down here.”

  “At which point, the posturing will really begin.” She took his arm as they made their way towards the barrier. “Still, it could have been worse, we could be in England, then they’d have Cecil to deal with. He’d have taken one look at the place and resigned.”

  “Cecil?”

  “The Prime Minister.”

  “Oh. Him.”

  They’d reached the barrier by now. Billy withdrew his pocket watch. “Let’s make sure we’re synchronised.”

  She held her own watch next to his, adjusting it slightly so that it matched. “Thirty-seven minutes past eleven,” she said.

  “I’ll be back in a minute!” he said, and walked through the barrier.

  “Probably not,” Elisabeth replied, “you never are.”

  On the other side of the barrier, a few new faces were poking through the ruins left by the abandoned camp. Many of them from the Dominion of Circles.

  “What’s this for?” one of them asked, recognising Billy as he drew closer. She was one of the Kirby Clutch, an extended family who seemed to share a group mind. Billy had been struck by the way they rarely spoke to one another, their unnaturally small heads twitching as they sat together, pooling their thoughts. It had been Biter that had explained the way of them.

  “There’s hundreds of them,” he’d said, “dotted all over the Dominion. They just gather information. You want to know anything, ask a Kirby, they’ll set you straight.”

  She was holding up a pickled pig’s foot, drying out and covered in dust. “Is it an offering?” she asked, “a prize to the fallen God?”

  “If it is,” Billy replied, “it ain’t much of one.” Her head twitched, as if trying to translate his words into a meaningful answer. “It’s food,” he told her.

  The head twitched again and she placed the pig’s foot in her mouth.

  “No!” Billy laughed, “you don’t eat the whole thing, you’ll choke. It’ll taste disgusting anyway, it’s probably rancid from being left in the sun.”

  She swallowed and smiled. “We like rancid pig’s feet. Where can we find more?”

  He shook his head. “That you’ll have to ask Abernathy.”

  A mortal had walked up to them, staring at the Kirby. He was middle-aged, his
ginger beard twitching as he scrutinised the woman quite openly.

  “You new here?” Billy asked him.

  The man turned to look at him. “Come from Alliance,” he said, “see what’s what.”

  “That’s great,” said Billy. “What’s the time?”

  The man seemed confused by the question. “Time?”

  “Yes. The time. What is it?”

  The man pulled out his pocket watch. “A quarter of four.”

  “Great. And what day is it?”

  “What day?”

  “Yes. What day is it? Today.”

  “Thursday?” The man was utterly bewildered by this line of questioning and was clearly beginning to wonder if Billy were as outlandish as the Kirby.

  “The fourteenth?”

  The man nodded. As did the Kirby, absorbing all these brilliant facts for the benefit of the Clutch.

  “Thanks,” said Billy, “you’ve been very helpful.” He walked back towards the barrier.

  “Hey!” called the man. “You one of they demons?”

  “Nope,” Billy replied, “no demons here.”

  He stepped back through the barrier. Elisabeth had gone, but he wasn’t altogether surprised. He walked up the road a little and found her sat on the bench outside the general store talking to Abernathy.

  “I need to open up a whole new supply line,” the shopkeeper was saying, “find a way of buying this muck you mortals like. You know, cows and peas and stuff.”

  “I got bored,” she told Billy, “so Ben has been entertaining me.”

  “She’s teaching me the point of rhubarb,” Abernathy said, “but I’m just not getting it. If you want something sharp that takes the skin off your teeth, drink acid, that’s what I say.”

  “It’s the dessert form of acid,” she agreed, holding out her watch to Billy. “You’ve been gone hours.” The watch said it was nearly half past two.

  “Actually,” Billy held up his own watch, “I’ve been gone five minutes. Guess what day it was.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Thursday.”

  “What day is it over here?” asked Abernathy. “I never really bother with days. When they’re all the same who keeps count?”

  “I do, darling,” said Elisabeth “and it’s Sunday.”

  “Great, that next to a Thursday?”

  “No.”

  “Well it seems to me that I’m better off. If you mortals can’t come to an agreement why should I bother?” He went back inside to increase some of his prices. That never failed to make for a cheerful afternoon.

  Elisabeth was jotting down the time in her notebook. “The differential is definitely narrowing. I shall tell father when I see him, he’ll get all excited and add it to his graph.”

  “At least, with time moving faster over here, I could hang around for a few months and not lose my job,” said Billy. “It certainly stretches your holiday.”

  “You really think you’ll ever go back to it anyway?”

  Billy shrugged. “I suppose it seems unlikely. Got to do something for money though, can’t survive off fresh air.”

  “Maybe,” she said, pulling him down onto the bench next to her, “you should just marry someone rich.”

  “I guess that’s one solution,” he agreed. “Know anyone?”

  Elisabeth kissed him on the lips and smiled. “No. You?”

  7.

  MCDAID HAD FINISHED his coffee and chatted awhile, accepting that his employers were likely to be several hours. After very little prompting he’d even helped Hodge with his repairs. Once he’d decided that loitering any longer was to risk a long walk home, he left Elspeth’s house and made his way back towards the main street. Noticing that the carriage was still waiting outside the Governor’s house, he decided to take a walk along the main street, if only so that, when the inevitable cross-examination came later, he could say he had.

  His time with Elspeth and Hodge had calmed some of his nerves. As grotesque as some of the sights were he tried to approach them with an open mind. He was not always successful—perhaps a braver man than he could come face to teeth with the rotating maw of the voracious Acka and not give out a startled cry, but for him it was involuntary—but he no longer viewed every resident of Wormwood as the enemy.

  He even partook in a jug of something that was like, but wasn’t quite, iced tea at one of the tables outside Madame Mimi’s Refreshatorium. It occurred to him after a couple of glasses that the liquid may have contained something mildly narcotic, as he felt as if he were floating for half an hour or so after drinking it. For a few minutes he panicked slightly, imagining the dressing-down he would likely get from his employer if he appeared insensate when they collected him, but—and no doubt this was also a side-effect of the relaxing brew—he decided it was all in the name of experience and he’d argue as much if pressed. That decided, he found himself enjoying the sensation of weightlessness as he ambled along the street, browsing in the shops and smiling at the folk he passed.

  “Well look at you,” came a voice from one of the doorways. “Stranger in town?”

  He looked up to see what appeared to be a creature entirely composed of hands. Its limbs were extended fingers, its body a cluster of clasped palms, a knuckle raised as if for a head. With mild curiosity—that ‘iced tea’ really was doing its work, he decided—he looked to see a mouth but the creature seemingly possessed none, the palms that made up its torso merely parting slightly when it spoke, the sound escaping from between them.

  “Just visiting,” McDaid told it. “I’m here with the Governor.”

  “Lucifer?”

  McDaid was momentarily thrown. “Not really,” he said, assuming the creature meant some insult towards his employer, “though certainly Mr Poynter has some enemies. He’s here to talk to your people about, well, you know... what’s going to happen now you’re living in America.”

  “I’m living in America, am I?” the creature said, its palms clapping together in amused applause, “and here I was thinking you were now living in the Dominion.”

  “Who you talking to, Fingers?” came a voice from inside. It was so dark inside the building McDaid couldn’t discern the speaker, though the shadows appeared to move.

  “Some mortal,” Fingers replied. It was silent for a moment, then turned back into the doorway. “Come in,” it said, one of its digit limbs beckoning him.

  McDaid couldn’t think of a polite reason why he shouldn’t.

  As he stepped inside, Fingers extended a limb and pushed the door closed behind him. “Apparently he’s here to tell us what we have to do now we’re under mortal rule.”

  “I didn’t mean it quite like that,” McDaid said, staring into the darkness to find Fingers’ friend. The darkness moved once more, shifting across the walls and floor as if a light was being shifted, altering the shadows. McDaid realised that Fingers’ friend wasn’t in the darkness, they were the darkness. “Anyway, it’s just talk.”

  The darkness moved towards him, sliding along the floor like oil.

  “There’s a lot of talk these days,” said Fingers. “Nyck and I don’t like it much.”

  “Nick?” McDaid asked, confused.

  “Nyctos,” the darkness said, “people just call me Nyck. Are you afraid?”

  McDaid wasn’t, though, having been asked, he suddenly realised that perhaps he ought to be. “No,” he said, “should I be?”

  “Mortals always used to be afraid of me,” said Nyctos. “I would slide over their heads and they’d lose themselves in my infinity. They’d scream but nobody would hear them except the darkness.”

  “He’s showing off,” said Fingers. McDaid, whose nervousness had now returned, was about to insist that he wasn’t when he realised Fingers was referring to Nyctos. “He misses the old days when he had power, rather than just moping around in corners with an empty belly.”

  “I still have power,” Nyctos said, “see how it trembles?”

  “You’re an old ham,” Fingers
laughed, those palms clapping together again. It prodded at McDaid. “You scared of the dark?”

  “Not really,” McDaid replied, which wasn’t entirely true but it seemed such a childish fear that he was reluctant to admit it here. “I guess I used to be.” He made for the door. “I should be going,” he said, “my friends will be waiting for me.”

  “Your mortal friends?” Nyctos asked.

  “Yes, they’ll probably be finished now and we’ll need to be getting back.”

  Fingers moved so that it was between McDaid and the door.

  “What about Biter?” Nyctos asked.

  McDaid didn’t understand the question, but when Fingers replied he realised it hadn’t been addressed to him. “I don’t see him around, do you?”

  “I guess not. Though if he gets to hear then we’ll be on Lucifer’s shit list.”

  “Then I guess,” Fingers loomed behind McDaid, pushing him towards Nyctos, “we’d better make sure there’s no evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?” McDaid asked.

  Fingers placed two limbs on McDaid’s shoulders, forcing him to his knees, staring into the darkness of Nyctos’ body.

  “I see your fear!” the darkness said. McDaid felt the tips of Fingers’ limbs pressing on either side of his head.

  “Please don’t,” he said, “I don’t want to...” then Fingers pinched off his head like it was extinguishing a candle. McDaid’s body tumbled forward into the darkness of Nyctos’ belly, spurting fruitlessly into the black.

  8.

  INSIDE THE STORE, Abernathy threw William a broom and suggested he got on with the business of using it.

  “And stop looking so damned thoughtful all the time,” he told him, “it encourages the customers to do the same. A thoughtful man is a man that puts things back on shelves rather than buying them.”