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

  That caused a little panic, people looking around, judging, paranoid.

  “We’ll be careful,” he said, “we’ll be safe, and we’ll talk again soon.”

  And with that, Kane left them to their private conversations, satisfied that he had begun the shift in power he wanted. Soon, these people would no longer be looking to Arno for leadership, they’d be looking to him.

  WHAT AM I DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REVOLUTION?

  (An excerpt from the book by Patrick Irish)

  THE BRIEFEST GLANCE at Arno’s progress reassured me that trouble was brewing for that noble man and his partner. Kane was almost a mirror of Atherton, the soldier who was not content to follow, who could never truly rest until he had stirred up a mob. What the result would be I would find out in due course, first I wanted to know what had become of Henry Jones. The man who had set all of this in motion, but not—as was unquestionably the case with Atherton or Kane—out of a lust for power but rather through bitterness and, as much as the word seemed unsuited to him, love.

  Was there ever such a conflicted emotion? It brought euphoria and blood, creation and destruction. I would not wish to live in a world without it—though it had been some time before I had met someone towards which I was inclined to feel it, at least romantically—but I could only dream of the lives that had ended in its name. Perhaps that’s the writer in me thinking, is it love that takes the blame or the person who cannot endure it? We are inclined towards the tragic, we inventors of fictions, an unhealthy desire, perhaps. Unhealthy or not, I asked the room to find the man.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A GUN FOR A HUNDRED GRAVES

  1.

  “NOW HEAR ME,” said the voice of Henry Jones, echoing out over the plains outside Golgotha, “I am the God Killer, I am the wasting, I am the bullet in a thousand backs. I have taken the Exchange and toppled it. It didn’t please me. Will you risk the same? There’s a new power in the Dominion, and it is the ultimate power, the only power. It is me. And you would do well to remember before I come looking for you too.”

  Preacher listened to those words. He stirred them around in his head as if he were looking for a dead fly in a bean stew, then swallowed them. It would be what it would be, he decided, climbing onto his horse, despite its usual complaints, and continuing his slow progress towards civilisation.

  He had been lost in Saul’s Hex for the best part of three days. Allegedly, the area was named after a demon who had fallen foul of a local landowner. The demon cursed the soil and now it was a plot of land that stretched and contracted while you crossed it. In theory, the field was no more than an acre, in practice, some had been known to lose themselves in it for years. Preacher, having only skirted its edge, had been lucky he had camped out there, blithely ignoring the siren calls for help that came from deeper in. He was not a man naturally inclined towards helping others, so it was no hardship. He was lucky that he had enough provisions to keep both himself and his horse alive; had he chosen to eat the fruit that grew in Saul’s Hex he would never have found his way off it. The apples that hung there brought confusion rather than nourishment. He had bought a couple of packs of dried meat from a vendor on the road outside Chatter’s Munch. It was magically enriched, the vendor claimed, so that a small cube of it could keep your energy up for a whole day. That was certainly true, though Preacher found the hallucinations a distraction and he’d found riding with the runs almost as uncomfortable as the horse beneath him.

  His first promise to himself on leaving the field had been to find somewhere that offered proper food and drink. His belly needed rewarding.

  The outpost was the first opportunity to present itself and, despite the mess out back (when the trash in your bins appeared to be talking to itself, you just knew you had a major hygiene problem) he decided there was nothing they could serve that would make his guts riot any worse than the dried meat had.

  The owner sat in a rocking chair outside the front of the hut, surrounded by ramshackle tables and chairs. The creature contained aquatic blood, vestigial fins jutting out from its wrists and ankles, its eyes large and resting on either side of its head. It sprayed itself with green liquid from a can, alternating between dousing its scales and smoking a pipe so large the bowl rested in a cradle on the ground next to it. The pipe’s smoke bore a faint orange tint and when Preacher caught a breath of it, it made everything glow for a few moments.

  “What is that you’re smoking?” he asked.

  “You’ve got to take your pleasure somewhere,” it replied, “and who wants to look on a view like this without a little pharmacological enhancement?”

  Preacher could see the creature’s point. The landscape was a dirty yellow, the road lined with trees whose leaves looked like broken glass, glistening with the blood from careless birds.

  “What’s that you’re riding?” the creature asked him.

  “My horse.”

  “Horse? Never heard of one. Like a rakh, is it?”

  The species was known to Preacher, though he had never owned one. “A different beast, but it serves the same purpose.”

  Not that his horse gave exemplary service. Preacher wasn’t much of a burden, he’d been mortal once but his time in the Dominion had worn him down, altered him as sometimes this place did the most susceptible souls. He didn’t know where the magic lived, whether it was in the air he had breathed or the soil beneath his feet, but over time he’d begun to change. Now his outside appearance better reflected the man inside. He had lost a couple of feet and a few stone, his skin dry as sand, his fingers and toes little more than claws. He was a nasty little runt, a wizened, ugly bastard. Still the beast struggled to carry him; tired and undernourished, it limped its way across the Dominion, always appearing to be minutes from death. He took some pride in the dedicated regime he put it through, consistently rescuing it from the point of physical collapse with a burst of food and rest only to run it into the ground once more. He figured he could keep the thing alive for some time as long as he kept alternating between the carrot and the stick.

  “Hungry?” asked the outpost owner.

  “Ravenous.”

  “I’ve got some ribs good to go. You like Gwanish?”

  “No idea,” Preacher admitted. “Is it a local dish?”

  “I guess, maybe, I invented it. Some folks love it, others say it makes their stomachs bleed. I’ll let you try a spoonful. Best not to risk a whole portion until we know how good your digestion is.”

  “Maybe I’ll stick to the ribs.”

  The creature shrugged. “It’s all better than dirt and fresh air, which is about all you’ve got to look forward to on this road for a few miles.”

  “Then I’ll take my fill. You got drink?”

  “I wouldn’t get through the day without it. I’ll get the gas on first then bring you beer. Tie your animal up and grab a seat.”

  Preacher did so, doing his best to be upwind of the pipe smoke so he might clear his head a little before the meal arrived.

  “You hear that man earlier?” he asked the owner on its return. “Henry Jones?”

  “The God Killer?” the creature nodded. “Always someone wanting to rise to the top of the shit heap. Why people can’t be satisfied with carving themselves a little slice of life and eating it to the full I’ll never know. Never satisfied, some people.”

  “Sounds dangerous to me,” said Preacher, “like he wants to set the whole world burning.”

  “Good luck to him.” The creature had brought a tankard of warm ale. “Shit don’t burn so well.”

  Preacher took a sip of the ale. It was good and he set to work at it with enthusiasm, hoping the food would be of similar quality.

  It was, though the ribs were small and, he suspected, more likely to have come from a domestic animal than anything found on a farm. The meat was tender and the sauce hot enough to clean his teeth. The Gwanish also turned out to be pleasantly edible, like a jambalaya made out of something that wasn’t quite dead yet. It
wriggled in his mouth but the spices kept it from making a break from his plate and he shovelled down extra portions.

  Leaning back in his chair to enjoy another tankard of ale, he watched his horse work its way through a bucket of slops.

  “Don’t suppose you’ve got anything I can smoke that won’t make me see visions for a week?” he asked the owner.

  The creature went back into the hut and, after a good deal of rattling and cursing at the furniture, returned with a pouch of tobacco and some rolling papers.

  “I think that’s the stuff mortals like,” it told him. “Toe Backs I think they call it, though it ain’t got any toes or backs in it. Just leaves so they tell me, which seems like a stupid thing to burn up and breathe but what do I know of their ways?”

  “Tobacco,” Preacher said.

  “Sounds about right,” the creature replied, settling back into its rocking chair and taking a hearty lungful of smoke from its pipe. “Now, personally, I don’t smoke anything I haven’t caught myself. I’m a health freak about that sort of thing. You don’t want to put just any old rubbish in your body.”

  “Very wise,” Preacher said.

  “You mortal?” it asked him, once the effects of the smoke had lessened enough for it to form coherent thoughts.

  “Used to be,” said Preacher.

  “That’s the thing with mortals, always changing their state. Easier to kill than a crotch fly.”

  “Some of us,” Preacher admitted, “but what’s death but a change of address?”

  “A philosopher.”

  “I guess,” Preacher replied. “I do like to think about things. The human condition.” He looked at the creature. “Figure of speech,” he shrugged, “human or demon, we’re all just scratching out our time, aren’t we?”

  “That we are,” the creature admitted, “the trick is to enjoy the fact.”

  Preacher nodded. “Oh, I do, I do.” So saying he shot the creature in its amphibious belly, pulled on his gloves and forced its head into the glowing bowl of its pipe until it stopped screaming. The smoke gave him the most delicious visions as he watched the creature’s face bubble and reform, features of rubber and oil in the heat. It made his philosophical heart soar to see the world grown fat in colour and sound through a mixture of the drug and the creature’s expiring flesh.

  Once the deed was done, he gave his horse some water, helped himself to a few more spoons of Gwanish from the pot on the stove and rode on.

  2.

  “I’D SAY IT was a pleasure,” said Sister Franquesa, “but I never could abide a liar.”

  Jones took the glass canister she was offering, still not quite used to the way it buzzed in the palm of his hand, full of life.

  “Business as usual,” he told her. “You used to pay the Exchange, but now you pay me.”

  Sister Franquesa made a business of adjusting her robes, voluminous folds of crimson silk that had a habit of moving independently. “She needs to ensure she’s completely covered,” the Exchange had told him before they had entered. “One glimpse of her skin would kill a mortal.”

  “You realise,” said Jones, as the sister continued to play for time, straightening her veil, “that you don’t need to protect me from the sight of you?” He tapped at the patch of skin where his eyes should be. “Mortal I may be but you could be stark naked and it wouldn’t mean a thing to me.”

  “Perhaps,” she replied. “You think I should risk it? What’s the worst that could happen? I end up with the God Killer’s blood on my hem and the whole Dominion owes me a favour?”

  “You make it sound like I’m a problem to be solved.”

  “Maybe you are. I don’t know. At least we knew what the Exchange wanted: a cut of our profits.”

  “Am I asking for anything else?”

  “No. Not yet, but we all saw your macho posturing in Golgotha. It’s only a matter of time before you destroy something else.”

  “It’s not my plan to destroy anything. I just want to bring order.”

  “When men say that it’s always a warning of damage to come.”

  Jones couldn’t see the point in arguing. She’d paid, his business was done. He didn’t like being in the sisterhood’s abbey, its geography was always on the move and the smell was driving his senses up the wall. “There is one thing I want,” he admitted.

  “And so it begins.”

  “I think you’ll be surprised.” He tapped at his head. “Take a look at this.”

  He had gone through this process a number of times now. He had shared the memory with the Triumph Ark, the forces of Sunday Crew, Mr Gristle and his army of bones, all of them had come up short. Perhaps this time it would be different.

  Sister Franquesa took the memory of the face of Harmonium Jones and smiled. “Oh, how sweet.”

  “You wouldn’t think so if you met her.”

  “Not the woman, the emotion that comes with the memory. I wouldn’t have put you down as the loving kind. I’m tempted to keep this to warm me when the winter comes.”

  “I want it back.”

  “Of course you do. What else do you want?”

  “To find her.”

  “She’s here, in the Dominion of Circles?”

  “I reckon.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know her.”

  “But you’ll make enquiries amongst your people. Ask around.”

  It wasn’t a request and she didn’t treat it as such. “No problem.”

  “There’s a healthy reward in it for you.”

  She shrugged. “If I find her I’m happy to give you the information for free.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  “Because, Mr Jones, that’s the first hope you’ve given me that you might not tear the Dominion apart. She’s all-important to you. I assumed you craved power and blood, actually you just crave her. I find that reassuring. Besides, you’re going to need friends. Have you paid a visit to Chatter’s Munch yet?”

  “On my way there next.”

  “Then prepare for the worst. They don’t favour mortals. They’ll die rather than pay you.”

  “Then I’ll be happy to respect their wishes.”

  “And so,” she sighed, “we’re back to destruction.”

  3.

  THE EXCHANGE WAS waiting for him outside, sat on the drawbridge that connected the abbey to dry land. Beneath her stolen feet the waves of the Crystal Wash did their best to reach up to her, the solid blades of spume eager to chop those dangled legs right off.

  “They pay?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he replied, handing her the canister.

  She weighed it up for a moment. “Either their profits are up or she was trying to flatter you,” she said. She opened her mouth much wider than should be physically possible—beyond the teeth, the absence of the abyss—and dropped the canister inside.

  “She hasn’t seen Harmonium.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “I do.”

  “Then on we go.”

  Jones climbed back on his rakh, pulling the Exchange up and sitting her on the front of the saddle.

  “Tell me,” she said, “what if we never find her?”

  “Ain’t going to happen,” he told her and spurred the beast on towards Chatter’s Munch.

  4.

  IN PHATTER-GEE’S TATTOO parlour, the air was thick with Buzz vapour and the whirring sound of his tattoo iron. The man himself was flexing one of his dorsal arms, trying to get some strength back into it. He could always use one of the others for a while but the aching limb was his steadiest and he didn’t want his client having any cause for complaint. One smudge and he’d likely have his beak snapped off. Last time that had happened he’d been off solids for weeks before it had grown back.

  “You nearly finished?” asked Yuma. He kept getting cramps in his thigh and he wanted to get off the table and walk around a little.

  “You think it’s easy getting this done on your skin?” asked Phatter-Gee. “Thes
e scales of yours are so thick I keep having to replace the needles.”

  He took the opportunity to do so, Yuma stretching his legs and taking a blast from the Buzz pipe offered to him by Brinkle, his lieutenant.

  “Shit, that’s good,” said Yuma, as the drug coursed through his system; the memory of a troubled birth, plucked from the mind of a mortal and condensed down into a blast of experience that set Yuma’s muscles quaking.

  “It’s the best,” agreed Brinkle, “some of the last from Greaser’s private stash. Who knows when we’re going to get more of that quality, that shit’s getting scarce.”

  “No word from the farm?”

  Brinkle flicked his forked tongue in the air, a gesture of disgust. “I don’t think Shinder has the first fucking clue what he’s doing. It’s going to be an age before we’ve got a reliable supply.”

  Yuma sighed and took another hit. This time it was a fist fight in a bar, blow after blow, broken glass and flying teeth, boiled down into one pharmaceutical punch. He reeled from it, reaching out to grab hold of the bench he’d been lying on to get his ink.

  “Who says mortals don’t have their uses, huh?” laughed Brinkle, taking the pipe back and grabbing a hit of his own, this a one-night stand sweated out in a boarding house in Seattle.