 
The Magpye: Circus

CW Lynch

Copyright © 2013 by Christopher William Lynch  
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof  
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever  
without the express written permission of the publisher  
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Smashwords Edition, 2013

www.planetofthepenguins.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

# Dedication

For my incredible wife Emily who puts up with me, keeps me alive, and provides boundless support for all my crazy ideas.

For my boys William and Daniel, who can read this when they are much older.

And for my Mum and Dad, who are the best.

# Acknowledgements

With thanks to

Stuart Tipples: Cover Artist and Partner in Crime

Louise Weaver: Unpaid proof reader and Baroness of Grammar

Pete Rogers, Barry Nugent, and Terry Copper: Fellow writers my and online support group

Lee Grice, Yossarian Nutt, Regie Rigby, and Derek Hartley: Who all gave their names to characters in this book without ever asking what I would do to them. Sorry guys.

Fionna Knibbs: Who was more than willing the join the roster of victims, but I just couldn't bring myself to kill her. Don't worry Fi', vampires will be next.

Mike Allwood & Everyone at SCARdiff: For giving me somewhere to launch this book, and a deadline that therefore nearly killed me.

Harry Markos: Who believed in The Magpye from day one.

# 0

This is the story of a bird.

Once, a long time ago, this bird sat on the left shoulder of death and, other than for the reaper's steed, was Death's only companion. Together, the rider the bird and the horse went out into the world and hunted for souls to take to the afterlife. The reaper and his steed knew only this duty, but the bird was prideful and greedy. It begged Death to give it souls of its own to hold dominion over.

Death refused, but the bird persisted, cawing in the reaper's ear incessantly. Eventually, even Death's patience was exhausted and, in a rage, Death cast the bird down into the shadowy space between the world of mortal men and the afterlife. It gave the bird dominion only over those incomplete souls could not move on to the next world and who were trapped in limbo as ghosts, spectres, and phantoms.

The bird, for its part, was also enraged. It grew capricious, cruel, and spiteful and hatched a plan to swell the ranks of its own kingdom at the expense of Death itself.

It became a spectral thing itself and, haunting the minds of wronged men, the bird taught mankind how to seek vengeance. It remade itself from an avatar of death into an avatar of bloody murder and revenge and vowed to one day become master of all of the dead.

That bird became the Magpye, and this is its story.

# THE LIVING ARE THE INTERLOPERS

Everything in the circus was dead except for Marv, Marissa, and maybe Magpye.

Nobody was sure about Magpye.

Part of the problem was that Magpye wasn't always completely Magpye. Sometimes he was Able Quirk, and he certainly looked a lot like him. A dead him, but still him. Other times Magpye was someone else entirely, the ghost of some other person, or persons, speaking through Able. But always, underneath it all, he was Magpye. Whatever the hell that meant.

Above ground, everything had been burnt long ago. The caravans were nothing more than rusting skeletons, their blackened skins blistered from the heat of the fire, ruptured, and now rusting in the merciless elements. Their black frames looked the skeletons of elephants, great beasts come together in their graveyard, far from the herd. Tattered tarps, colourful shrouds for the dead circus, clung to the ruined frames of the tents and awnings, and the ground was little more than a black, scorched skin. Above it all towered the black bones of the big top, casting its grim shadow across the place like a cage. When the wind was right, you could still smell burning. If you listened carefully, you could sometimes hear screams too. Murder hung in the air like a fog and clung to everything, a sticky miasma that made the flesh crawl and the heart pound.

Something bad had happened here. The kind of bad that stained a place.

Even when the circus had been open, before everything had burnt, there had been rumours. The place was an old, forgotten cemetery, some said, and the ghosts of those interred here haunted the circus and plagued its visitors. Well, there were ghosts here, that much was certain. Magpye could hear them. He could hear them all the time.

Below ground, in their tiny sanctuary underneath the vast corpse of the circus, Marv and Marissa were cooking. Pans steamed, lids rattled. Ever the showman, ever the magician, Marv made even a simple stew cooked over a camping stove look like a conjuring trick. Behind him, Marissa laid the table. Impossibly, some china had survived the fire-storm that had consumed the circus, and she placed it carefully on the table.

The sanctuary was a small mausoleum: an expensive tribute, Marv had suggested, to a family long past. Despite all the ghosts that Magpye could sense, he had no inkling of who the original denizens of this place might have been. Unlike the ghosts of the circus, their spirits had found peace, he suspected. Marissa had done her best to decorate the place, papering the vaulted stone ceilings with old posters from the circus, scrounging up what furniture she could. With the original tenants gone, they had turned the place into a shrine to their own lost loved ones. Salvage from the burnt out caravans was piled everywhere, a ramshackle museum built up from the everyday detritus of people's lives mixed with what was left of the paraphernalia of the circus. They had used some of the larger boxes to block up doors, limiting themselves to just a few small rooms. Marv wanted to explore the place, but Magpye's keen sense of the dead and their demands had bade him leave the rest of the crypt alone. The living were the interlopers here.

Perched on the edge of an old steam trunk, Magpye watched Marissa laying the table. The plates were fragile, just like the girl, he thought. Survivors, but chipped and crazed and changed by the whole thing. He was changed too, of course, more than any of them.

"Sit down to the table, son, you're making us all nervous," Marv said. "Or make yourself useful and help Marissa."

Magpye cocked his head to one side, an affectation that let Marv and Marissa know that he was no longer listening to them, but to one of the many voices that only he could hear. Dead voices, never quiet. "Sorry," he mumbled, hopping down from his perch.

"That's OK," said Marissa, unsure whether the apology had been for her or not. "Everything's ready. Why don't you sit down and we can get started?"

Magpye shot Marv a look. "I can't..."

"Try," said Marv, pouring steaming stew from the pan into the waiting bowls. "Just... try."

And so the three of them sat and stared at their plates of stew. Marv, the once great circus conjurer, and Marissa his daughter and former assistant. Magpye knew them both, but couldn't be sure if the memories were his or if they belonged to one of his ghosts, to the one of the voices in his head.

He felt Marissa's hand on his. It was warm, far warmer than his own cold and cadaverous flesh.

"You used to love this stew," she said earnestly. "You've got to eat something, keep your strength up."

Magpye pushed the bowl away angrily, spilling some of the steaming stew onto the old wooden table.

"I can't," he said flatly, his temper immediately subsiding. "I can't eat this."

He stalked away from the table, damning the voices in his head for their sudden silence as Marissa began to sob behind him.

***

Sitting in his lair, Magpye listened to the girl's sobs fade away, and to the muffled sounds of Marv's calm, deep voice. He was a hypnotist, amongst his other conjuring skills, and Magpye wondered if Marv had ever considered reaching into Marissa's mind and turning off the things that plagued her. The voices said no, but Magpye still wondered.

The "lair", as Magpye had come to term it, was the smallest of their rooms. Marv's old trick cabinet stood against one wall, co-opted by Magpye for his own storage. A bed of sorts, cobbled together from part of one of the old caravans, lay awkwardly to one side. A jagged shard of warped glass was propped up in one corner, a poor substitute for a decent mirror. Magpye liked to look at himself, he said, to see if he could see any trace of them, the voices in his head, behind his eyes or on his face. Marv said that Magpye had once stared into the mirror for almost two days. All he ever saw was his own warped reflection, of course. The dead were far too cunning to be caught in mirrors.

A soft tap on the door and the creak of hinges announced Marv's arrival.

"I'm sorry," said Magpye instantly, "I shouldn't have..."

"It's fine," Marv interrupted, dragging an old crate away from the wall to make an impromptu seat for himself. "But you can't hide what you are from her forever you know."

Magpye looked down at the floor. "And what is that, exactly?"

"You're a young man with some incredible gifts, Quirk."

"Don't call me that!" snapped Magpye. The bed creaked under his weight as he shifted himself back and forwards. Marv knew the movement and understood the inner torment that it signified. He couldn't imagine what it was to have so many voices in your head, especially when they were screaming.

Marv sighed and rubbed at his face. "You can't afford to forget who you really are, son."

"Who I really am is why all of my friends and all of my family are dead, Marv. Who I really am is why we live in a tomb underneath what used to be our home, why we have to scavenge in the wreckage of our lives, of their lives, for the things we need. Being Able Quirk is why all of this happened."

Magpye stood up and stalked across to the trick cabinet. Yanking the doors open, he revealed the contents - a small arsenal of throwing knives, a long handled axe, a belt hung with loops of trapeze wire, and his great coat. Stitched with a series secret pouches and pockets, even Marv didn't know the full extent of the coat's contents. Hanging from the top of the cabinet, was the mask. In a cabinet full of weaponry, it was the mask that frightened Marv most of all.

"You're going out?" he asked, warily.

Magpye pulled on the great coat. Inside, Marv could see holsters swinging.

"And you've got yourself some guns, I see."

"Malcolm put me on to them. He kept them in a secret compartment in the floor of his caravan."

"Malcolm..." said Marv wistfully. Malcolm had been the circus' sharpshooter. British by birth, he dressed as a cowboy and affected a Texan drawl as part of his act. He'd been great, in his day, but he'd never told anyone the secret of where he'd learnt to shoot. Marv had always suspected that he was more than just a sharpshooter or a trick shot. For one thing, he'd never come across a trick shot who knew how to shoot a man in the gut so that it took him a whole day to bleed out.

Magpye unhooked the long handled axe and slung it over his back on a leather strap.

"I'm not going to try and stop you," said Marv.

"I know."

"But you can't do this forever. Eventually, you're going to have to stop hiding and remember who you are, underneath all of this."

"Doing this," said Magpye, unhooking the mask, "Is the only thing that makes any of this make sense."

Marv stood, placing his arms on Magpye's shoulders. He could feel hard plates stitched underneath the cloth. "I used to feel that way, you know I did. They were my family too."

"You left."

"And I came back."

"When they were dead. When it was too late to help anybody."

Marv found he couldn't see Magpye's eyes any more. The pale, milky orbs were almost devoid of colour, another of the mysterious changes that had come over the boy Marv had once known as Able Quirk, but it was more than that. He didn't see the dead, or hear them like Magpye did, but that didn't mean that he didn't remember them. The circus had been his home too, once. Marv, the great magician, the master escape artist. He'd pulled his greatest ever escape without even knowing it, leaving the circus just a few weeks before it was burnt to the ground, the entire crew murdered.

"I helped you, didn't I?" he asked weakly.

"Yes, Marv, you did," replied Magpye. "And you're still helping me now. Let's face it, if I stop, what else are we going to do?"

"Live?" suggested Marv, his tone glib.

"As ghosts, maybe. Hiding down here in a tomb? We may as well be dead."

"But we're not. We've got a chance. I've got friends in LA, a few friends in Vegas... we could start over." Marv gripped Magpye by the shoulders, tightening his grip, "Everyone who goes up against the Kings ends up dead, kid. Everyone knows that. What happened here, what happened to us? They've done things a hundred times worse. They own this city, and nobody is taking it from them."

"I am."

"Bah!" scoffed Marv. "Well, at least use that secret passage of yours," he said, heading out of the room. "I don't want Marissa any more upset than she is already. And don't think you can come back and haunt me if you get yourself killed out there."

But Magpye didn't answer. As he closed the door, Marv heard the unmistakeable sound of Able Quirk zipping up his mask, and he knew that any vestige of the boy was gone in an instant. Inside the mask, there was only Magpye, and Magpye only wanted one thing.

Magpye was going to kill the King.

# IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND

Vic was the last to arrive. He'd planned it that way. Outside of a movie, he'd never known the bosses of a city to ever sit down together. It didn't happen. You didn't put four sharks into a tank full of blood and expect them to just get along, and you didn't sit down four of the most powerful and dangerous men in the city and expect them to get along either. There was a reason that they had territories, that they stayed out of each other's way.

War was bad for business.

The slaughterhouse had been chosen by Blake, the oldest of them by far. Some people thought that he might be in his 90s, a relic from the last generation of criminals to run this city. His power was undeniable though. Despite his age, the others all feared or respected him enough to come here in the dead of night to talk about what he called "mutual problems".

Of course, when the mutual problem was a group of cops and their tame psychopath who had been systematically pulling your business apart for six months? Well, maybe sharks could swim alongside each other for a little while after all.

Still, the whole place smelt of raw meat and blood and fear and death and Vic knew that he could walk around the corner into the barrel of a gun at any moment. He was still here though, because a gun in the face was what passed for a retirement plan in Vic's line of work. A lunatic in a mask? That was a whole different ball game.

"You're late!" barked Blake.

Sitting hunched at a large metal table in the middle of the slaughterhouse kill floor, Blake looked like 90 would be an underestimate. Wheelchair bound, he had two large oxygen cylinders next to him, and he sucked greedily at the air in between sentences. His body was so emaciated, his head seemed to balance on top like a great dome-headed vulture on a bare tree. His clothes were loose, draped over his frame like clothes on a line.

"You think it's safe... all of us here... together?" he rasped.

"No, I don't," replied Vic, pulling out a metal chair from the table. The feet screeched across the tiled floor and he noticed the criss-cross of scratches and gouges in the metal table top. Great, he thought, we're all going to sit around a butcher's block. "But I needed to be sure that you hadn't put a few of your boys around the place, maybe thinking you'd take advantage of our mutual problem for your own benefit."

Blake raised his hands. They were covered in liver-spots, his yellow skin stretched over the bones and as thin as parchment. "On my honour, this place is empty Vic. It's just you, me, Crow, and Keane."

Silent until now, the other two bosses shuffled in their seats. Vic smiled inwardly. If Crow and Keane where sharks, then Vic and Blake were a pair of killer whales. Their territories, the east and west of the city respectively, were only divided up by the territory held by the other two, which was split roughly north and south. If either Vic or Blake decided to take on the other, it was Crow and Keane who got caught in the crossfire.

It was Crow who spoke first. "Good evening, Victor." A mix of Asian and Native American descent, Crow's territory was the north central part of the city. Well-heeled and well-monied, he focussed on the things that wealthy people always wanted: drugs, gambling, untraceable loans, girls, and the occasional hit. There was more paid for murder amongst the upper classes than anyone cared to admit. Crow fancied himself a businessman and gentleman criminal. He was immaculately turned out, from his designer suit and shirt to his hand made shoes. It paid well to run the girls in North Central, Vic guessed.

Keane merely grunted. An Irish American thug who had fought and killed his way up from the streets, his main racket was protection. For a sizeable fee you could buy protection from Keane and, so Vic had heard, his record was impeccable. Nothing went down on his turf that he didn't know about and sign off on. The polar opposite to Crow, Keane looked like he was still on the streets. Wearing dirty jeans, an old t-shirt and leather jacket, he still looked like the thug he had been ten years ago. You didn't need expensive clothes when you had a body count like Keane's though.

"So, we're all here," said Vic. "Now what do we do? Is this the bit where I stand up and admit I'm an alcoholic?"

Nobody laughed. Keane tapped his stubby fingers on the table, rocking back and forth in his chair. Crow idly brushed dust from his shoulder.

It was Blake who broke the silence. "I haven't seen a meet like this in forty years," he croaked, the full weight of those forty years audible in every syllable. "And you idiots aren't a patch on the guys who sat around the table that day. You want to know what to do? Put your cards on the table and share what you got, 'cause together is the only way I see us getting out of this alive. You don't want to play? Fine. Go home, drop your pants, and get ready to get fucked. Just don't fuck the rest of us at the same time."

Blake's oxygen tanks shuddered as he took deep lungful after deep lungful of air. The speech had taken it out of him and Vic wondered how Blake had held onto his territory for so long in this state. Maybe that was the answer, he mused, just take Blake's territory and then squeeze the other two out of the middle...

"Cards on the table..." said Crow. "Fine. I'll tell you what I know. There's a new police task force, all out-of-towners, brought in to clean up the city. They were sniffing around my operations for at least six months before the rest of you even knew they were here. They pulled off a few small busts, made some big press for themselves, then hit a brick wall of red tape and limited manpower when they wanted to go for anything bigger. King still owns the real cops, and the real cops don't kick down door one without his say so."

"So want went wrong, Chinatown?" grunted Keane.

"You know what went wrong," replied Crow, ignoring the insult temporarily. "They got help. Special help."

"The guy in the mask," rasped Blake. "The one who's been hitting us... ever since."

Silence fell around the table again. Cards on the table was one thing, but nobody was going to be first to admit how badly they had been hit. They were still sharks, after all.

"My boys say it ain't one guy," said Keane, breaking the silence. "They reckon it's the cops. One of them put on a mask one night, did what they thought needed to be done, and now they're all in on it. Vigilante cops, no more angels than we are. This is just a turf war, boys, the badges don't make it special."

"So how come these guys are still breathing?" asked Vic.

"Like I said," replied Crow. "They've made some good press. The whole thing, this "strike squad", it's happening all over. New York, Washington, Chicago, here. New president got in on a law and order platform, said he was cleaning up one state at a time, so every TV channel and newspaper in the state are crawling all over these guys like they're rock stars. We go after them direct? That's more heat than I want, and definitely more heat than my customers want."

"Federal heat?" said Vic derisively. "Been there."

"Presidential... heat..." wheezed Blake. "You heard Crow, this comes from the top. The real top. We ain't never had heat like it."

Vic steepled his fingers and sat back, rocking his chair onto its hind legs. There was something that none of them were saying, that maybe none of them dared say. The shark among sharks watched the others with his cold eyes and waited for the next droplet of blood to hit the water.

"Why ain't one of you guys turned 'em?" asked Keane. "We all got guys in the police, even me, and I ain't normally one for putting pigs on the payroll. Find what they want, what they need, and just give it to them."

"Leverage," rasped the old man. "It's been tried. But these guys, they're something else. My guys have dug, and dug deep, and there's nothing. And I mean nothing. They got no families, no girlfriends, no fucking boyfriends either. No kids."

"Nobody's that clean," said Crow. "You should let me try, I've got girls who can..."

"Forget it," interrupted Vic. Crow's eyes flashed indignantly, but the inherent pecking order of the table held sway. "Blake was bribing cops when movies were still in black and white. If he says they're clean, they're clean."

"A crack squad of completely clean cops..." mused Crow. "Except for when they put on masks and burn our businesses to the ground?"

Vic shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe it is just one guy. Maybe the president sent him too, huh?"

Blake's oxygen tanks rattled as he took another deep breath. "One of my guys got up close to him," he said. "Said he was fast, like scary fast. Used a knife, cut my guy's fingers clean off and tossed him through a plate glass window. Said he stood over him afterwards, watched him. Talked to himself the whole time."

"So the guy's a nutjob, so what?" muttered Keane.

"You don't get it," hissed Blake. "My guy? He's been with me twenty years. I've known him since I was a kid. He ain't never been scared of nothing, but he was scared of this guy. And I mean real scared. Last I heard, he was still pissing the bed and sleeping with the light on."

"Maybe you need better guys, old man."

Blake lurched forward in his seat. "You little Irish shit! I ought to rain down... rain down... enough pain on you to..."

"Leave him, Blake," interrupted Vic, standing up to talk over the old man's coughs and splutters. "And you, Keane, you shut up now! You run protection in Southside? I can put the word out with one phone call that your protection ain't worth shit, that you ain't worth shit, and you'll be back mugging hookers for beer money by Friday."

Keane opened his mouth, then closed it. Crow let out a small snigger. The shark among sharks had spoken. Vic had never uttered a threat that he could not carry out ten-fold, and they all knew it.

"That's what this is all about anyway, right, protection?" Vic continued. "Well fuck, guys, if you're all too scared to say it then I will... what the hell is King going to do about this?"

And there is was. The thing that none of them spoke about. Shark or not, killer whale or not, that was the one thing that you didn't talk about. Shark or whale, you didn't call out King. Compared to you, King was the god-damned ocean that you swam in. The boss of bosses, a criminal elite so elevated that he owned the cops, he owned the media, he owned senators and governors, and he did it all in plain sight. Cane King had been a household name his whole life, the heir apparent to the King fortune. Charismatic, powerful, and deadly. A celebrity criminal, the kind they didn't make any more. He was the guy the sharks paid for protection, for license to operate in what he called "his" city. They all had "King's Men" on their crew and they all paid up to the King.

For a moment, there was no sound in the slaughterhouse except for the shallow hiss of Blake's oxygen bottles. Vic realised he was standing over the others, but held his ground. An old man, a pimp, and a thug... how the hell had it come to pass that these were all Vic had for contemporaries?

And that was when it happened. A slow hand clap that echoed around the kill floor, bouncing off the cold metal walls, and seemed to fill the place like thunder. Vic, Blake, Keane, and Crow all looked up.

There, on the gantry above them, looking down on the kill floor, was Cane King.

# ONE FOR SORROW

The warehouse looked just like all the others. It was supposed to, because the warehouse was hiding in plain sight. A lot of meat came in and out of the docks and a lot of it moved at night, so nobody paid much attention to a warehouse that kept the lights on and had vans and trucks coming and going in the small hours. No paid much attention to the rank odour that oozed from the place, the paper and board covered windows, or the odd noises that you could hear in those rare times when the docks were truly silent.

Each to their own, right? That was the code of the docks. Nobody ask, nobody tell, and everyone go along. Unless you were Owen White and Rosa Blind. If you were Owen White and Rosa Blind then you were cops, and it was your job to notice warehouses like that warehouse, and have the uncontrollable urge to kick the door in.

Parked up in the docks, Owen and Rosa didn't normally practice the art of being inconspicuous or hiding in plain sight. They liked to be seen. Since they'd come to this hell hole of a town, they'd made it their business to be seen. On the streets, in the precincts and, most importantly, right up in the face of every son of a bitch who thought he was above the law.

But tonight was different.

The back door of the car opened almost silently and the Magpye slid soundlessly onto the back seat.

"Detective White," he said. His voice muffled through his mask, but gave Rosa a chill down her spine nonetheless. She had spent six years profiling serial killers and rapists before being hand-picked for the "Clean Squad", as they jokingly called it. Nothing, but nothing, in those six years had made her feel the way she did when in the same car with Magpye. She had always considered herself grounded, rooted in the real world, and in the now. It was what made her a great profiler; her almost mechanical brain was the perfect tool for analysing the chaos that drove others. Now, confronted with something so unreal, she could feel the cogs and gears of her mind grinding together, threatening to seize up at any moment.

Was this really what they were doing? Had they really put their trust in this man, this... creature? Rosa had been trained to hunt people like Magpye, not put a leash on them and take them out for a walk.

Owen adjusted the rear view mirror. "This is a bad one, I just need you to know that."

"They're all bad ones," replied Magpye.

"We've been monitoring the warehouse for three weeks now," said Rosa. She found talking made it better, especially talking over case notes. If she could drag them all, Magpye included, back to the world of facts and figures and logic, then maybe she could cope with this. "Surveillance has been difficult, for obvious reasons, but we estimate Victor Chase is moving two to three shipments a week through here."

"More drugs?" asked Magpye. "We're tired of hitting drug dens. They just build more and there's always more junkies who want to work in them for a cheap hit."

Owen watched Rosa take a mental note. They'd heard Magpye talk about himself in the plural before, and Owen knew that some part of his partner's machine-mind was filing this incident away as well.

"Not drugs, no," he said. "Kids. He's shipping kids."

Magpye's head dropped and Owen and Rosa heard him muttering something behind his mask.

"We've put in for all the paperwork, just like always. A bust like this could open up this city, take things to the next level... we could take Vic Chase."

"But the paperwork got lost," said Magpye, "Just like it always does. Because behind Vic Chase is Cane King, and Cane King runs everything."

Rosa sighed. "You can't take an internet conspiracy theory and make it the basis for an investigation," she said curtly. "Cane King has been investigated every way there is and he's come up clean every time."

"Of course he has, that's the conspiracy," replied Magpye. Rosa's well trained ear could hear the tension in his voice, the frustration. Vic Chase was a scum-bag, through and through, and after everything Rosa had seen in almost a year in this damned city, she had no qualms about unleashing Magpye on him. But this obsession with Cane King was becoming dangerous.

"Look," said Owen, "We know you think King is behind all this. And maybe he is. Maybe the puzzle piece you need to prove it all to us is in that building right now, or maybe it isn't."

Owen turned in his seat to face Magpye.

"But even if it isn't, we do know what is... a whole bunch of kids who are about to get sold on to the highest bidder. You know the knife edge we're on here, I know you know. You think it sat right with me, staking this place out for week and week, watching the vans come and go, knowing what was inside? I've been in and out of dirty departments my whole career and I never knew a cop turn a blind eye to something like this. Whatever's going on in this town it's rotten to the core, I'll give you that. I'd love to make a case, make it stick, and put Vic Chase away... but we can't."

The car was silent for a moment, except for the soft murmuring of the Magpye.

Owen watched him. It was true, he'd worked in and out of dirty departments his whole life. He'd come to believe that a lot of people couldn't be that close to so much pain and misery and wrongness without it rubbing off on them. The only sensible response was to become worse than the thing you had to face every day. Some cops did it in a bottle, some in a line of white powder. Some put a gun to their heads. Some just put out their hand, took the money, and sold their morality on to someone else. If it was a bad world, why be a good person? And he knew he was on that same slope now. He'd been recruited because of his work uncovering corruption, and now he was running a disturbed vigilante in his own turf war against the mob. Maybe he'd already slipped too far. Or maybe not.

The Magpye looked up from the floor of the car. "We'll make it stick."

Owen watched as Magpye slipped out the car and dashed across the street, disappearing into an alleyway between two warehouses.

Rosa sighed. "This is wrong."

"What's going on in that warehouse is wrong."

"He'll cross the line, you have to see that."

"When he does, if he ever does, I'll be there."

"It'll be King. He'll take a run at him no matter how insane we tell him it is."

"You think it's that crazy? I've been around corruption a long time Rosa and I'll tell you thing... the deeper it goes, the higher it goes. You might want to dismiss it, but I think he might be right."

"I'll remember you said that when Cane King's on a slab and our friend out there is suspect number one."

Owen started up the car. "If the time comes, I'll bring him in myself."

# THE KING OF KINGS

Cane King was six foot six, blond, and handsome in the way that magazine covers like people to be handsome. His suit was worth more, Vic suspected, than his apartment. Cane was flanked by his two chief lieutenants: Mick Garrity, the dirtiest of dirty cops, and Jack Taylor. Vic had heard things about Taylor, things that made even his flesh crawl. Vic was a shark, sure, and he'd done his share of bad things, but always with a purpose. He was a businessman, first and last. Taylor, on the other hand, was the kind of guy who does bad things just because he wants to. An ice cold sociopath who would kill you as soon as look at you.

Right now, he was looking at Vic Chase.

"Mr. King," said Blake, breaking the silence. "I had no idea that you..."

"What?" asked King. His voice was strong, flowing. A voice that commanded. A voice that convinced. "Didn't know that the heads of the four families that I let run this city were coming together? Now, I wouldn't be half as smart as people say I am if I didn't know that, would I?"

Garrity and Taylor stepped in behind him, Cane sauntered across the gantry and down the flight of metal steps. Each step clanged like a bell. One, two, three, four. Vic held his ground, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

"Although I must say," King continued. "You could have picked more comfortable surroundings."

"It's a safe place," Vic replied, his eyes never leaving Jack Taylor. "Not so many of those about right now."

Garrity pushed past Vic and dumped a heavy duffel bag on the table. There was something big inside, big and wet.

"What the fuck?" blurted Keane, "The fuck's in that bag, Garrity?"

"The answer to your problems," answered Cane, patiently waiting for Garrity to return to his side. The dirtiest of dirty cops was also one of the most out of shape, not that it mattered. Mick Garrity had a mean streak as wide as any there was, and could fight with the best of them. Out of shape or no, Vic wouldn't have bet against Garrity in a fight with Keane.

Cane pulled Vic's chair across to himself and sat down, Taylor and Garrity standing either side of him.

"So, Garrity tells me you've got a problem with the new cops in town?"

"Them and their freakshow helper, yeah," said Vic. "It's been six months and there's no let up. People are starting to ask questions Mr. King."

Cane smiled. "Ah yes, the mysterious vigilante. The masked man. We're going to deal with him too."

"Thank you, Mr. King," wheezed Blake. "We appreciate it."

"That's it?" said Keane, "You're not even going to ask him how?"

"Mr. Blake has been alive a lot longer than you," said Taylor suddenly. His voice was the antithesis of Cane King's. Emotionless, monotone. "Perhaps his gratitude and respect for Mr. King are why."

Cane laughed. "It's alright, Jack. It's a fair question, and it deserves a fair answer. So, open the bag..."

"What?" asked Keane.

"You heard him, Irish," said Crow, suddenly finding his voice. "Open the bag."

Vic watched as Keane moved cautiously towards the bag. He had to admire the way that King had divided the room so quickly. Blake and Crow on one side, the loyal and dutiful, Keane on the other. It didn't give Vic many places to go; Keane wasn't the sort of ally that he wanted, even if he only lived through the next ten minutes.

Keane got a hold of the zipper and slowly opened up the bag. "Holy shit."

"Empty it," said King, even as Keane was backing slowly away from the bag. "Onto the table."

With one hand over his mouth, Keane took hold of the end of the bag and slowly lifted it up. The contents shifted awkwardly, then began to spill out. The first few pieces were unrecognisable, just hunks of bloodied flesh, fragments of broken bone. Blood and bile had begun to leak from the bottom of the bag and pool on the table when a partly skinned hand toppled out. Blake's oxygen bottles hissed as he drew breath, watching a misshapen head roll free.

Crow vomited, unable to control his revulsion, as the head stopped, face up, in front of him. The eyes were gone, the mouth was nothing more than a smashed and gaping hole.

"The first of your so called untouchable super cops," said King. "Tomorrow my news network will break the story that this hero-cop was killed by your vigilante. He'll be public enemy number one. Garrity here will set up a task force to track him down and when we find him... well, I'll leave that up to you."

# HIGHWIRE ACT

Magpye finished scaling the roof of the building next to the warehouse and carefully wound in his trapeze wire. The adjacent building was slightly larger than the warehouse, and this perch offered Magpye a view down on to the roof of the warehouse that was his target. Six months ago, he could practically have walked up to the front door. The gangs had gotten smarter since then, more cautious. A lot of the operations were mobile now, moving from place to place to stay ahead of him and the few clean cops who fed him his information. Those that were too big to moved, like this one, had been fortified. Good, Magpye thought to himself. They're scared. They're under siege.

The windows were all covered with paper and boarded from the inside. The doors at either end of the building had new steel braces, new locks. No way in. Except the skylights. Dotted across the metal roof, they were too high up maybe for anyone to get to. Too high up to worry about. It had to be a forty foot drop, at least, from the lowest of them. A scary height, if you hadn't been raised in a big top.

"Need to get a closer look," muttered Magpye to himself, groping inside his coat. He pulled out a telescope and carefully unzipped and lifted his mask before putting it to his eye. The scope was old, another relic from the circus, but it did the job. The skylights were clear and through them he could make out a little of the layout inside the warehouse. Armed thugs roamed back and forth, nervous. Did they know he was coming? It didn't matter.

Slipping the telescope away, Magpye carefully zipped his mask back up. He checked the rest of his outfit as well. The coat, packed with all the little tools he'd amassed from the circus, sat over the tight mesh of Lycra and leather he'd stitched together himself. He checked it from head to toe, making sure every seam was closed, that no inch of his flesh was exposed. He had to be careful - it only took a droplet of blood, a gram of flesh to get inside him, in his bloodstream, and the unquiet ghost of whoever the blood and flesh belonged to would be his.

Their memories, their knowledge, their skills, all patch-worked onto his mind. The problem was, ghosts had a way of making you theirs too, and Magpye's head was full enough already.

The circus was one thing. At first, he'd only sought out the ones who had skills he could use. Acrobats, sharpshooters, knife throwers. It had been bad enough picking through what was left of their belongings, but searching for their blood, or their charred flesh, was something else entirely. He'd needed it, that had been the justification. He'd needed it. And he only needed a little - a dry blood stain, moistened by his pale tongue, was all it took. He'd needed it. But, after a while, he'd started to need them, too. His own memories were little more than fragments, and so he'd collected the minds and memories of others, hoping to piece together a little of who he was through them. Another justification, perhaps, but in the long days and nights as he'd scoured the ruins of the circus, hunting for each elusive splash of crimson that held the key to another soul, he'd convinced himself of it.

Thinking about it now, he realised that he was licking his lips underneath the mask. The hunger was always there. It wasn't the hunger for flesh or for blood, as necessary as those things now were for him to live. No, it was more than that. All the souls that he'd dug up, the unquiet spirits that now found themselves inside his head, it was their hunger that he felt. Their hunger for revenge on those that had wronged them, their hunger for retribution. Their own hunger for blood.

Magpye checked the seams on his outfit one last time, pulled the zipper on his mask tight. Quietening his mind, he waited for the ghosts to do their work. "We need to get across to that roof."

Unbidden, his hand reached down and took the loop of wire from his belt. He tied it around a metal hook dug from one of the pockets of his coat and tossed it across to the warehouse roof. Skittering across the metal for a moment, it found purchase and the wire tightened in his grasp. His hands moved again, pulling a second metal hook from his coat. This one was dug into the roof of the building he was standing on, deftly hooked under a piece of pipework that ran past his feet. Using all his strength, the wire was tightened, and tightened.

He'd collected all the skills he would need. Acrobats, sharpshooters, knife throwers... and high wire artists.

"Magda," said Magpye, and whatever small fragment of his mind that was Able Quirk surfaced for a moment to offer a rare memory. Magda the Magnificent, one half of the circus' high-wire act. Able remembered her making him a sandwich, and letting him watch her practice with her husband. Magpye hadn't been able to find any trace of him yet. Whatever had happened to him that night at the circus hadn't even left a stain behind.

Stepping onto the wire, Magpye slowly inched out across the gap between the buildings.

# IT'S THAT EASY

Cane King watched through the limo window as the rusting iron and crumbling brick of the slaughter district gave way to the chrome and glass of the city proper. He'd travelled all over the world, built an empire across continents, but still this place was home. It was a city like no other, a place with a heartbeat and rhythm all of its own. Anything was possible here.

"Did you know that it's impossible to lie to me, Mr. King?" asked Taylor, interrupting King's train of thought.

"Is that so, Jack? I'll keep it in mind."

"I discovered it when I was eight years old. The doctor in the orphanage was telling me that I had a disassociative disorder, but I could tell he was lying. The truth was that he didn't know what was wrong with me."

"Is this going somewhere?"

"I knew then that what I had was something that nobody else had. I had clarity. Absolute clarity. I could see the truth in all things. I can see how they work, inside and out."

Cane leant forward and opened the mini bar. "That's pretty deep, Jack. Personally, I've never been one for poking around inside my own head too much."

"I know you were lying to them," Taylor continued. "About your plan. They couldn't see it, but I could. You're not sure it will work."

Cane sat back, a large drink in his hand. "You never cease to amaze me, Jack. Thank you for your candour."

"Am I wrong, Mr. King?"

King watched as Taylor's eyes, one blue, one green, zeroed out and focussed on the middle distance between them. Behind them, somewhere, Jack Taylor's mind, razor sharp and dark and bloody, was thinking, and planning, and calculating. King realised that he'd locked himself in a small metal box with probably the most dangerous man alive.

"No, Jack, you're not. That's why I've called in some outside help, someone who's worked for the family before."

"A specialist?"

"Something like that."

# MAKING IT STICK

Ben Ryan hadn't started out a bad kid, but that's what everyone said. Well, not everyone. When he'd been in prison, he'd heard every hard luck story in the book. Most of the guys there were innocent, the rest were there because of someone or something else. Parents, wives, girlfriends, kids, booze, drugs. For Ryan it had been Iraq. Iraq had crept inside his head and come home with him. That's how he thought about it. Iraq wasn't a place, wasn't a time he'd lived through, wasn't even a memory. It was a thing, a living thing, like a parasite, that had latched onto him and wouldn't let go.

After all, he didn't have a family. He didn't have a wife, or a girl, or kids. He drank, sure, but no more than any other soldier, and drugs had never been his thing. So what was it that drove him to be here, on this night, finger nervously stroking the trigger-guard of an assault rifle, twitching at every little sound? How had he ended up as a god-damned Kingsman?

Guard duty wasn't the worst gig in the warehouse though. Piotr, a mountain of Russian muscle with a face like a slab, had to feed the kids. Ben had watched him prepping the food, stirring the giant rusty cans of low grade meat, pouring in the antibiotics, the hormones, the sedatives. Enough food to keep them alive, hormones to keep them small, antibiotics to keep them healthy. Sedatives to make them shut up. Ben had joked that Piotr should put it on the market, every mother in America would want the recipe. That had got him a black eye and trip to the dentist. After that, he'd steered clear of Piotr and the kids. He stuck to his route around the gantry way, checking windows, listening. A hundred or more kids at a time safe and sound underneath him, at least until the next truck came.

He didn't ask where they went. It didn't really matter. Not asking questions was one of the major job requirements if you wanted to last a long time as a Kingsman. Questions got you killed. Answers got you killed quicker. So Ben Ryan carried on being a good bad soldier and didn't ask questions.

He didn't ask questions when he heard the crash above him, he just raised his gun.

He didn't ask questions as the black shape came plummeting towards him, he just took aim.

He didn't ask questions as his gun fell forwards. He didn't ask questions as he felt the hot gush of his own blood splattering his thighs. He didn't ask questions as his gun and most of his right hand clattered to the floor. All he did was clutch at the mangled stump protruding from his wrist and scream.

The screaming stopped as Magpye landed on top of him, crushing his windpipe with the steel-reinforced heel of his boot. Ben Ryan's vision went dark and he realised, at the very end of his life, that he had a lot of questions after all.

Quickly un-clipping the trapeze wire from his belt, Magpye shook his line loose from the broken skylight above him. The other guards were already on their way, boots hammering on the gantry steps. Three in front of him, two behind. Another two downstairs, running in a different direction to the others. The ghosts sharpened Magpye's senses - the advantage of having more than one mind at a time was an almost endless surplus of concentration.

Magpye threw back his greatcoat and drew the twin pistols. From the bubbling soup of memory, Malcolm surfaced. "Trick shot time," said Magpye, unable to keep Malcolm's affected Texan accent at bay. "Yee-ha."

The first bullet tagged the front running guard in the shin, shattering the bone and bringing him down instantly. The second guard was so close behind that he tripped over the front runner, his own legs snarled up as the first guard howled and clasped his lower leg. His head snapped back as Magpye put a bullet through his throat.

Spinning around, Magpye raised his left hand and shot the first guard coming up behind him. The bullet smashed into the guard's eye, blowing out the back of his skull. Behind him, the second guard stopped to wipe blood and brain out of his eyes. Unbidden, Magpye swung the second pistol around and took another shot. The bullet hit the same spot on the first guard, travelling cleanly through the vacant and ruined eye socket and struck the guard behind in the forehead.

Turning again, Magpye saw the fifth guard drawing a bead on him.

"Take your shot," said Malcolm, moving the Magpye's lips underneath the mask.

The guard shot and, impossibly quickly, the Magpye moved. The bullet raced past and winged off the railing behind him.

"Shit..." whispered the guard, pulling the trigger again. Another shot, another miss, the Magpye's body twisting itself around the bullet.

"The thing with shooting somebody is," said Magpye, "You can't let them know where you're gonna put the bullet. And you're telegraphing, son. I know where you're shooting before you do."

"Fuck you, telegraph this!" shouted the guard, flicking the machine gun to full auto and pulling hard on the trigger. Shots rang out, one after another, a staccato rhythm of guttural grunts. Magpye twisted, ducked, spun, and twisted some more, dancing around the bullets as if they were paper aeroplanes. His hands slid back into his coat as he moved, smoothly holstering the pistols and pulling out a small blade in their place.

The final flourish of movement brought Magpye in close to the guard, just as his clip proclaimed itself empty with a sharp click.

"All yours, Able," whispered Malcolm, descending once more into the Magpye's mind.

Able Quirk shoved the blade into the guard's throat. It wasn't clean, or skilful, Able had never been a fighter, but it did the job. Sometimes the job was the reward too.

From somewhere downstairs Magpye heard splashing, and caught the tell-tale smell of gasoline. Fire. It was always fire. It always had to be fire. Fire was how the Magpye had been born, and it had followed him ever since. Leaping down the stairs, Magpye headed for the warehouse floor...

# SPECIAL DELIVERY

Garrity slammed the van down a gear and ran the red light. On the passenger seat next to him, the bag shifted and festered and oozed. "Fucking King, fucking Taylor," he muttered, cutting through the traffic. "Fucking Jack, fucking psycho Taylor."

Garrity was dirty, he didn't deny it, but it wasn't how he saw himself. In this city, there was nothing more pedestrian than a dirty cop. Corruption was the norm, the standard. Garrity was far more than that. He was a survivalist, an animal adapted perfectly to this fetid city. He thrived here, while so many others failed. Even psychos like Taylor, Garrity had seen them come and go too. Most of the time, Garrity was the guy with the sack and shovel that got rid of the body. This city, this damned place, it attracted guys like Jack Taylor. Diseased moths drawn to crematorium flames.

And now Garrity had more dirty work to do. He had to deliver a message, a bag full of pieces of what had used to be a person, used to be a cop. Some message. It didn't sit right with Garrity, as dirty as he was. It wasn't the way things were done. People got hurt, sure, if they didn't follow the line, didn't do what was expected of them. People got killed too. But what was in that bag? That was new territory. That was a city opening up its rotten womb and spewing another Jack Taylor into the world. Garrity had put his share of killers away, Cane King's protection only extended to people who were killing on his orders, but he'd never seen anything like this. What was in that bag... that was what Jack Taylor did for fun.

A bus pulled out in front of Garrity, forcing him to stab the brake. The bag pitched forward, bumping off the dashboard. The underside was slick with blood, seeping through onto the seat next to Garrity.

"Fucking Taylor," he muttered.

Up ahead, the precinct house was lit up white and blue. There had been a time when those colours had meant a lot to Garrity.

The youngest of nine children, he'd learnt about survival the simple way - when there wasn't enough food at meal times, when there weren't enough clothes to keep everyone warm. When you were the smallest, the weakest, you learnt to be smart, you learnt to be fast, and you learnt that if you had dirt on the bigger kids... well, they weren't that much bigger after all. Garrity had learnt the subtle art of listening at doors, of being invisible in corridors and corners. A peep, a snitch, a snoop and, at times, a pervert, Garrity had learnt the value of secrets. It was his trick to surviving. He'd gotten out as soon as he could, left his family behind, and gone police at a time when it was the worst career option in the city. But he was good at listening, good at finding things out. He'd risen fast, got off the street and got his shield, all fast enough to attract the kind of attention that he'd wanted since his first day on the force. For a master of secrets, the big secret that was Cane King had been obvious for a very long time. And now Garrity wasn't the smallest anymore, far from it, but he still amassed those secrets. Cane King was tight lipped about his business, sure, but Garrity knew where the bodies were buried. Hell, most the time, he'd buried them.

The problem with King was, no one knew how far his power went. His money could make you mayor, his newspaper could see you stripped of office in a week. The political press called him "King the King-Maker", such was his power, his influence. Garrity wondered what secrets his boss had been privy to, over the years. There was no way anyone, anywhere, could think about turning state's evidence on Cane King. King had the cops, he had the judges. He had the mayor, everyone knew that, and he probably had the governor too. There was a joke that went around that when Cane King had shaken hands with the president, the caption in the newspaper had read "President meets most powerful man in America."

That was why Garrity knew the only safe place was right by King's side. Quiet, efficient, unquestioning and uncomplaining, utterly morally vacant. The perfect lieutenant. It has taken a lot of secrets learnt and shared for Garrity to rise to where he was today, and he wasn't going to let some psycho like Jack Taylor bring the whole house of cards down.

No, if Garrity was going to survive, he'd have to make sure King survived. Quietly, behind closed doors and in corners, he was going to need to run a little game of his own.

Ten yards from the precinct, Garrity reached over and opened up the passenger door of the van. With a grunt, he shoved the bag out, letting it bounce into the road. Palm jammed down on the horn, he gunned the engine and vanished into the night.

# FIRE

The floor of the warehouse was bare, dominated by a large metal cage. Inside, barely conscious, were the children. Magpye couldn't count how many. Too many was the only number that made sense. He'd expected them to be filthy, dressed in rags, but they were all clothed in matching t-shirts and jeans and seemed clean. Someone here took care of the merchandise, Magpye supposed. They stared out of the cage with vacant eyes. They should have been afraid, but whatever they were drugged with kept them so insensate that even a man in a mask, splattered with blood, was not enough to rouse anything in them other than dumb curiosity. Magpye tore his eyes away from the strange, dead-eyed children. They would be White and Blind's problems soon enough.

Magpye had his own problems... Beneath his feet, pungent gasoline sloshed and at the other end of the warehouse floor there were six, maybe seven tanks of diesel fuel. Used to refuel the vans and run the generator, Magpye suspected. They had done the same at the circus. When you lived in caravans and tents, fuel was always important. It was also dangerous. One spark and the whole place would go up.

Two guards left, and it needed to be up close and personal. It was time for Dorothy.

When he'd been alive, Dorothy had been nearly seven feet tall, weighed over 300lbs, and had a bright red beard that fell past his naval. He'd been the circus' bearded lady, read a little tarot from time to time, but his main role was as the circus doctor. Injuries were a common occurrence and every circus had its own physician. Dorothy knew every bone in the human body and, since he'd been living in Magpye's head, he'd taken to breaking them.

The first guard stepped out from behind the cage, his assault rifle trained on Magpye. He was smaller than the others had been, but wiry. A scrapper. A scared scrapper, backed into a corner.

"I know who you are."

"I doubt it. Seeing as I don't. And if I were you, I wouldn't pull that trigger."

Magpye heard the second guard step out behind him. He was moving slowly, carefully, but couldn't disguise his footfalls in the inch or so of gas that was on the floor.

"Don't need to shoot you," said the first guard, taking a step forward. "Just need you to stand still."

Magpye ducked, and Piotr's arms closed on nothing but air as he lunged for Magpye. Tipping himself forward, Magpye tucked into a roll before exploding upwards, legs extended, the metal heels of his boots connecting with the first guard's jaw. Bone splintered and Magpye heard the sound of the guard's jaw dislocating from his skull. Landing on his feet next the guard's unconscious body, Magpye turned to face Piotr.

The big Russian took a careful step forward. The children, still docile, watched him. This one they know, Magpye realised.

"You don't take the children," said Piotr, his accent thick. "They belong to me."

"We'll see."

Dorothy's ghost stepped forward in Magpye's mind. In death, he was somehow even larger than he'd been when he was alive. He cracked his spectral knuckles loudly inside Magpye's head. "He's a big one," said the ghost. "I'm going to need a knife."

Circling Piotr, Magpye reached into his jacket and pulled a short blade. The Russian looked at it.

"I cook with bigger knives than that, little man."

He rushed forward, trying to get inside Magpye's reach and remove the blade's advantage. Magpye spun away and brought his leg up in a snap kick. The boot connected with the Russian's side, but it was like kicking a wall. The Russian smiled, grabbed Magpye's leg, and twisted, sending the masked man onto the floor.

"Told you he was a big one," said Dorothy.

Magpye rolled onto his back just in time to catch Piotr's foot coming down towards his face. He threw a gauntleted forearm up, blocking the blow. The big Russian pushed down, using his weight to force Magpye's arm across his own throat. Gasping for air, Magpye fumbled with the knife in his free hand.

"Behind the knee," sighed Dorothy. "We've been through this. Lateral and medial hamstring tendons."

Vision blurring, Magpye jammed the short blade into the back of the Russian's knee and yanked it across. The knife was sharp, parting the flesh easily. Magpye dug in deeper and pulled on the blade again, this time feeling the resounding snap of the severed tendons. Piotr toppled, clutching his knee. Blood mixed with the gasoline. Rolling quickly over, Magpye shoved the blade into Piotr's other knee. It took just one tear to finish crippling the Russian. Face down, struggling to breathe as gasoline found its way into his mouth and nostrils, the Russian was finished.

Magpye struggled to his feet, gasping for breath. He steadied himself on the cage for a second. It was done. As his breathing slowed to normal, he felt a small cold hand resting on top of his. One of the children, one somehow more lucid than the rest, was looking up at him. Ten, maybe eleven, she had a defiant expression on her face under a mess of unkempt blonde hair.

"Have you come to take us?" she asked.

"No," replied Magpye. With a smile, Dorothy receded into the strange and etheric regions of Magpye's mind and, unbidden, a small fragment of Able Quirk took his place. It was one of the few pieces of Able that had survived. It was the part that remembered the fire, the part that remembered his friends dying. Perhaps it was the best part of him, the part that knew only grief and loss, not revenge and hate. "No, I'm not here to take you."

"Are you going to kill us?"

"No."

"Are you going to kill him?"

Magpye followed the girl's gaze. Piotr had rolled himself onto his back and was awkwardly trying to pull himself away like some strange crippled fish, floundering in the shallow pool of gas. He was a long way from the unconscious guard's gun, and he knew it.

"Yes," replied Magpye. "I am going to kill him."

"Good," replied the girl. "He's a bad man."

"So am I."

One eye on Piotr's progress across the floor, Magpye pulled a thin piece of metal from his belt and got to work picking the padlock on the door. Piotr probably had the keys, but Magpye didn't want to get within reach of the Russian giant's arms again, even if he was crippled. Besides, picking locks was the first thing that Marv had got him to do, after he'd found him. He'd said it was therapeutic, that all problems were a type of lock and he just had to learn to open them. He'd found the leap from lock picking to marshalling the voices of ghosts in head to be very different, but Marv was still a good teacher. The lock popped off before Piotr had made another yard across the floor.

Magpye squatted down, bring his masked face level with the little girl's own. She didn't flinch. It wasn't the drugs, somehow she was not desensitised like the others. She had simply seen far worse things than a man in a gas mask, covered in blood.

"Get out," said Magpye. "Take the others with you."

The little girl didn't need to be asked again. She yanked on the collar of the boy next to her and led him out of the cage. The boy behind him followed. Then a girl. Then another boy. Whatever had been done to them here, it had prepared them to follow orders. Magpye wondered if their minds were even blanker than his had been, before the ghosts. Maybe there was nothing there anymore, just a blank page. For the sake of those that had gone before, he hoped so.

The girl deliberately led her parade past Piotr, spitting in his face as she went. Magpye unbolted and unlocked the rear doors of the warehouse, then pulled them open. Cold air rushed in, a refreshing change to the sickly stench of the warehouse. The girl stopped, looking up at the starry sky.

"Where should we go?" she asked.

"Not far," replied Magpye. "There are people coming, good people. They'll take care of you."

"What about you?"

"I take care of myself."

Magpye stalked back into the warehouse, watching the last of the children go. He did not dare count them. He had stopped counting the casualties a long time ago. The number didn't mean anything anymore. Instead, he measured the balance in victories like this one, and in the bloody acts of revenge that the ghosts demanded.

Standing over Piotr, blocking his reach to the unconscious guard's loose gun, it was Dorothy's voice that Magpye heard next. "I recognise him," he said. "He was at the circus."

"You watched them burn," Magpye growled. "You watched us burn."

"You're crazy," Piotr spat back. "Just hurry up and fucking kill me if that's what you're going to do."

Magpye reached into his coat and pulled out a cellphone. Owen had given it to him, said it wasn't traceable back to either of them. Magpye didn't care. One day soon he was going to write his name across Cane King's face and tell everyone what he'd done. Righteous fury knew no bounds and no quarter, that's what the ghosts said. Magpye hit the speed dial.

"It's us," he said flatly. "It's done. You're going to need a bus. And fire engines."

Magpye snapped the phone shut before Owen White could answer.

"Fire engines?" spluttered Piotr, "You crazy fuck, you can't..."

But Magpye was already walking away, his steel-capped boots sloshing through the pool of gasoline. He heard Piotr floundering behind him, trying to pull himself out of the warehouse. Magpye reached into his coat and pulled out one of Malcolm's pistols.

"Trick shot time," he whispered. "Yee-ha."

He fired over his shoulder, the bullet ricocheting off the metal stairway and hitting the floor, kicking up sparks and instantly igniting the gasoline. He heard Piotr screaming, but it was immediately distant. A wave of heat hit him.

Fire. Fire was memories.

# FLAME

Memories passed through the mind of the Magpye like corpses down a flooded river. Against the background torrent there were occasional shapes, sometimes faces, twisted and turned and battered in the foaming flood of random thoughts all mixed together. Somehow, he controlled it all, made form from the chaos. One ghost at a time, one memory at a time, he, they, had built the creature they called Magpye. It was neither a him, nor an it. It was a they, and each fought for its place.

The most singular voice was Able. He had been there first, after all, and it was his body. But he was as much a ghost as any of them, convinced that he had died and been reborn as this thing. Before the fire, before the circus was put to flame and all his friends and family had been killed, Able had never heard or seen a ghost in his life. So this new Able, this Able that could sense the dead and make them his through their dead flesh and old blood, this had to be a new Able. A different Able.

And so the memories of the old Able were lost in the flood of ghosts that raged and foamed and threatened to burst the banks of his very mind in their desperate hunt for revenge on those that had wronged them. Submerged beneath so many others, old Able hardly spoke at all.

But fire, fire always brought him forward. Fire was how he had "died" and how the new Able had been born. New Able, Magpye, and the ghosts. Too many people for one head. Too many by far.

Able had been a quiet kid. Devoted to his mother and to his strange non-nuclear circus family, he'd quietly learnt the various skills and trades that were the cornerstones of circus life. There were other kids around, but none of them worked as hard as Able for his keep. He could rig, and was fearless of heights, could walk into the cage of any animal without a care, and could set up for any act in the entire show. For every acrobat, every clown, there was a guy like Able behind the scenes somewhere. They kept the circus running and, when they needed to, they kept the circus safe. Able could spot a pickpocket faster than anyone and he'd turfed out his fair share. He wasn't a tough guy, but he didn't need to be. Everyone knew that the circus took care of its own, especially this circus.

Unlike other circuses, this one didn't travel. It hadn't moved in generations, so Able had been told. Other circuses didn't, wouldn't, come to this city, and so this one had stayed. But for the stories that he heard of the city and everything he read in the newspapers or heard on the old TV that his mother kept in her caravan, the city always seemed a faraway place. Its poison never really reached the circus and so they existed in a sort of malignant symbiosis. The circus and city, each the estranged twin of the other, each the other's twisted mirror image in some ways.

The city people came here to escape, Able thought. Who wouldn't want to come to place where fantasy was the norm, where magic and excitement and danger were guaranteed, all for the reasonable price of a ticket? Who wouldn't want to come here when the place that they came from was synonymous with fear, and nightmares, and corruption?

The city needs the circus. That's what they all believed. That's why they thought they were safe, why no one ever came looking for trouble. But they were wrong. One day, trouble did come to the circus.

It had been a night like any other. The last of the audience had drifted away, the lights from their cars lost in the ever present toxic glow of the distant city, their laughter no longer echoing. Props and equipment were checked and put away, money was counted and divided. Exhausted, the circus folk headed to their caravans for a few precious hours of sleep before another early start and day of preparation. Able had finished his work and was heading back to the caravan that he shared his with mother, hopeful for some hot food before bed, when he heard it.

A gunshot.

Gunshots were not uncommon, of course. Although he would never admit it, Malcolm practised from time to time, and some of the other men hunted for rabbits and the like. Circus life was tough life. Meat was meat, and meat was for the pot. That's what Able's mother had said. Another memory, another fragment. That was the curse of being the Magpye. All these ghosts, all these memories; he could remember his mother's thoughts on meat and a hundred other trivial things but not, for even a moment, her face or her laugh or the feel of her hand in his as a small boy. The dead were so much flotsam, drifting in the foam, ruined by the river. Face down his mother's corpse rushed by, leaving only thoughts of fire. And gunshots.

The gunshot had been unlike any he had heard in the circus before. Too low and loud to one of Malcolm's trick pistols, but not one of the hunters' shotguns either. Able's body had tensed the moment he had heard it. A gunshot, in the circus. A stranger with a gun.

He'd run towards the sound, nimbly avoiding boxes, hopping over ropes. His mind held a perfect map of the circus, every last inch of it. He could run through it blind-folded. He had, from time to time. In the dead dark of the circus he stopped, and listened to the night air. Waited. A second gunshot came soon enough. Then another. Then another. And soon the whole circus was full of gunshots and screaming.

He remembered Dorothy, in his nightdress, shotgun cradled in his huge arm, calling out. Dorothy wasn't afraid of anyone. He remembered Magda screaming, looking for her husband, already lost. He remembered a clown, nameless to him now, as the first person he had seen die. A clown, half in his make-up and half out, clutching his stomach, trying to stop his intestines from spilling out into his wide-waisted clown's trousers. He'd fallen at Able's feet, gasped his last onto the dewy grass. More gunshots, more screaming.

Able remembered running back towards his own caravan, looking for his mother. This wasn't some kids come back looking for a little trouble, or some pickpocket who thought the circus was fair game. This was something else, something unreal. He remembered running into Malcolm, naked except for his boxer shorts, boots, and a cowboy hat. He was smiling. "Got three of them kid, three of them already." He hadn't see Malcolm again after that until he was licking his blood off the side of a burnt out caravan, months later, hoping that Malcolm's ghost was wearing trousers.

He remembered the shapes the shadows made as they leapt and danced around him. He remembered the red light of fires and the growing heat. Fires all around him, caravan after caravan going up. An explosion, on the other side of the big top, and cheering. They had cheered, he had remembered that. People running everywhere, so much screaming. More gunshots.

Able remembered his mother's caravan and his relief that it was still standing. He remembered his mother, silhouetted in the doorway. No face, no smile, no eyes for him to remember, just a blurry shape yelling at him to go to Marv's old caravan. Marv had boarded it up when he'd left, put three padlocks on the door. Able had a way in though, a trick panel in the floor of the caravan that Marissa had shown him when they were just kids. Marissa said her dad had told her it was part of some old trick, a moveable trap door. Able's mother said Marv was the type of person who always knew where the nearest door was. Able had never understood what she'd meant. Just another thing his mother said that he could remember, even though he couldn't remember her face.

Things his mother had said ... why had only the trivial and stupid ones stuck? He remembered arguing. Arguing in the middle of a fire-fight, that was her alright. He remembered another voice too. He couldn't call to mind the words that were said, just the voice. Just the voice telling him something that gave him a sick, empty feeling in his stomach and that made him run, made him run oh so fast. He remembered being angry, even in the middle of the chaos and the fire. He remembered thinking that he didn't care now if the circus burnt to ashes because the circus was nothing. The circus was a lie. Everything was a lie.

Able remembered reaching the caravan, scanning around for any sign of someone watching him. He was alone, the attention of the strangers centred somewhere on the other side of the big top. He remembered crawling along the ground, unhooking the latch on the secret door. He remembered climbing up into the cool, quiet silence of Marv's old caravan. Marv had left a lot of his magic props behind, stacked up on every available surface. Posters were on every cabinet door, all Marv's old glories. Memories, all stacked and stored and pasted up on the walls. Able wished he had a place like this now, a place full of his own memories. But now, just like then, what would he do when he got there?

He waited, listening to the sounds outside, trying to peek out through the boards Marv had fixed across the windows. Through the gaps, the circus was nothing but fire and shadows, black silhouettes against the raging flames. They were burning everything. Why hadn't they torched this caravan too? More gunshots outside. How long had he hidden there, whilst his friends were murdered? How many of them died wondering why nobody came to help? Had his mother died, wondering if her son had made it out? She was another one of which there was no trace, her existence wiped away so cleanly that she hadn't even left a stain for Able to find.

He remembered the trap door opening behind him, remembered steeling himself. This was it, this was the moment. And after that... nothing.

A shape, a figure. Man? Woman? Able didn't know. Whispers, anger, secrets. Then the box, Marv's magic box. Tip it over, get inside. "We'll be safe, trust me, we'll be safe.". Had Able said that? Had he? She? Gunshots. Bullets coming through the walls, trails of firelight behind them in the darkness of the magician's caravan. The figure falling, the magic box toppling down. Trapped.

This was how Able Quirk died and Magpye was born.

# GRACE FARAWAY

Cane King threw the phone across his office and watched it smash against the far wall.

"Problem, Mr. King?" asked Taylor, filling the silence whilst his boss calmed and restored the polished veneer that so few saw crack, let alone fall away completely. King ran a hand through his blonde hair, took another deep breath.

"That was Victor Chase," King eventually replied, his voice full of venom, sinuously twisting the mob boss' name. "He says I owe him a warehouse. And some kids."

"I'll make some calls," replied Taylor, reaching for his mobile phone. "Make sure the story gets lost."

"I don't care about the media, I am the media," spat King. "Killing the story there doesn't end it, not something as big as this. Vic Chase has got a big mouth, he'll tell the other bosses. Cops will tell other cops. He burnt it to the ground, Jack. People are going to notice and maybe people are going to start to think that you can go up against me and get away with it after all, that maybe they should pull on a mask and burn something of mine down. It starts on the streets, Jack, not in the papers."

"So, what about your plan?"

King sighed. "Exactly. My plan. It's time to move that up a gear, don't you think?"

King strode out of the office, leaving Taylor behind. He stalked down the corridor. The King family mansion had been completely redecorated and remodelled to his exacting specifications. Every heirloom and antique had been packaged, indexed, and shipped to storage. Every portrait and photograph too. There was nothing in the building, save the bricks and mortar, more than a year old. It was a statement in modernity, homage to progress. The King mansion had been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the now. Except that the past was still out there, hammering at the doors, clawing at the windows. The past wouldn't leave Cane King alone.

King rapped hard on the door of one of the many guest suites and waited.

"In my own damn house..." he muttered, waiting impatiently to be admitted. Finally, with a soft click, the door opened. Cane took a breath. Calling in the specialist was one thing. Meeting her face to face, that was the final threshold. Once he crossed it, he knew he could not return, not entirely. She would have her price.

"Come in, Cane."

Cane pushed the door and walked in, stopping short when he saw the corpses on the floor. Emaciated, desiccated, they gave off no odour, their grey skin like paper over their still bones. They looked impossibly ancient, little more than husks, empty cocoons long abandoned by any life. They were dressed smartly, and Cane knew that he recognised at least one of the suits.

"My apologies for the mess, Mr. Taylor was good enough to send me some of your men. They have left me feeling quite invigorated."

Grace Faraway was standing in front of a full length mirror, admiring her naked body. Her dark skin was covered in tattoos, a trace work of strange symbols that seemed to shift whenever Cane looked at them, as if they held secrets they guarded jealously from him. Shorter than Cane, Grace's lithe figure was somehow otherworldy, its proportions all slightly off. She should have been beautiful, alluring, but there was an inherent wrongness to her that Cane couldn't ignore. She turned to face him, her nakedness masked by a swirling of tattoos.

"Put something on, witch," said Cane flatly "And you owe me three men."

Cane had seen magic before. His father had been able to do things, strange and magical things, and had told Cane stories about his grandfather and his great-grandfather and the things they had been able to do too. As a child, Cane had assumed they were just parlour tricks and stories to send him off to sleep. He hadn't believed it.

As he'd grown older though, the evidence was harder to ignore. The King family were steeped in magic, in the occult, and most of all in the dead. His father held séances, entertained mystics and psychics of all flavours and denominations. Cane had quickly learnt that these were no garden-variety charlatans either. They were the real thing; powerful and terrible and haunted by knowledge that was beyond other men. Some nights, the house echoed to their screams. The King family were steeped in magic and in the occult indeed, but most of all it was steeped in the dead. In the mansion, there were endless rooms given over to the dead. Kept as shrines, their former occupants' belongings were left in place as if they might return at any moment. In every hallway and on every staircase there were portraits, one King after another, a bloodline that seemed almost endless, stretching away from Cane into the dark past. He hated it. He felt belittled by it, as if his every achievement was being measured against those of his forebears, dead judges casting their verdict on him. That was why, the first chance he had, he'd expunged every trace of them from the house.

Grace, however, had been harder to get rid of. She was family.

"A girl has to eat," Grace replied, affecting a coy tone of voice as she shrugged on a gown. "Your food here is so... flat. Lifeless."

She stalked across the room, stepping over the desiccated corpses daintily, and sprawled onto the bed.

"I don't have time for games," Cane said firmly. "You might have seduced my grandfather with these games, but they won't work on me. I called you here to fix a problem, nothing else."

Grace smiled. It was a barracuda's smile, all sharp teeth and cunning. "And what makes you think that it's my kind of problem?"

"Because the guy's a freaking ghost," said Cane scornfully, hating the words even as they came from his mouth. "Because he does things that no-one should be able to do. And... because of Adam."

Grace laughed. Cane tried to ignore that the mirrors in the room glazed with ice as she did so, or that the hairs on his forearms and the back of his neck were standing on end. Some part of him, some very old part of his brain that understood what a predator was, the part that woke up in the middle of the night sometimes, was telling him to run.

"Ah yes, your brother. Your poor, dead, brother. Well, you're not the first King to think that he could solve all of his problems by killing their brothers and sisters."

"I don't want a history lesson," said King.

Grace sat up on the bed. "But that's what this is all about Cane, that's what you have to grasp. This is bigger than you and Adam. What's happening here started generations ago. You're just the next in line."

Cane turned away. "No. Adam bought into all this occult nonsense, that was his thing. The family, the bloodline. He was obsessed with it. That's not me."

"So why did you kill him?"

"Because of that fucking woman!" Cane snapped, smashing his fist into one of the frosted mirrors. "Her and her fucking kid! Do you know what that could have done to us? To the business, to our future, to... to..."

"To the bloodline?"

Grace raised an eyebrow and another icy smile spread across her face like a frost. Spirals of strange symbols danced up her neck and flourished on her face, making her look even more unreal than normal. She watched as King nursed his bloodied knuckles. The fire was there, she thought, the fire that made a real King. It just needed to be fuelled. He needed to burn.

"I'm not taking this family back to the dark ages," King said firmly. "I don't deny what you can do, but I want no part of it. I'm dragging this family into the 21st century by its balls. Just do this one thing for me, take care of this guy, and then we are done. Name your price, whatever it takes, but then we are done."

"You know my price, Cane," Grace said seductively, "And you're not getting any younger. It's past time you fathered an heir."

Grace's hands slid across Cane's shoulders, moving like ice cold worms on his flesh. He shuddered involuntarily.

"How do we catch him?" he asked, his voice hushed.

"With bait," whispered Grace in Cane's ear. "With something he can't resist."

# ASHES

There should have been rain. That was the only thought that Rosa Blind could muster as she watched the coffin slowly descend into the ground. Instead, there was an unseasonable heat that made everyone uncomfortable in their dress uniforms, that scorched the grass and made the ground hard underfoot. She was sweating, she hated sweating. There were no tears behind her sunglasses as her fellow officers lined up one by one to scatter dry earth on the coffin, just inexorable calculations of her machine-like mind. The result? There definitely should have been rain.

Rosa hated the cemetery, jammed in behind one of the city's remaining churches. She had thought they were lucky to find a plot, until she found out that the church kept a special allocation for police. What the hell kind of town was this, she'd wondered, where even in death the police needed to keep a low profile?

Low profile, that was the exact opposite of what they were supposed to be. The incorruptible super-cops, dropped into failing police departments all over the country, all part of the presidents "Clean up America" campaign. It was ridiculous. A cowboy policy for a cowboy president. She'd thought it from the beginning, but she'd still signed up. To be incorruptible you couldn't have anything, or anyone, in your life that the criminals could reach. You had to have nothing to lose.

What the hell did they think would happen, rounding up all the people like that and giving them bigger guns and shinier shields and telling them to clean house?

Rosa looked at them one by one, her analytical mind churning out vital statistics, facts and figures.

Reginald, the book worm. Near photographic memory and a competition speed reader. In as much as she was capable of liking anyone, Rosa liked him. Owen said he couldn't shoot for shit though. That was probably why he'd been partnered with Cooper. Ex-Navy, the guy could fight like a pirate and busted up bar brawls for fun.

And then, of course, there was Grice. He was the social one. He'd always said they should get together more, be more of a unit. He was always trying to organise dinner, or drinks. He didn't get that forming friendships would make them weak. Rosa suspected that that was another factor that had been taken into account. They hadn't just chosen people without family and friends, they had chosen people who chose not to have family or friends. That made Grice the wildcard, and a liability. Maybe whoever had killed him had known that too. Maybe they wanted to cut the heart out of the unit, and Grice was the closest thing they had to that.

"No family," said Owen. "Just like the rest of us."

"Not for want of trying, I think," replied Rosa. "He doesn't fit the profile, you know."

"He's dead, Rosa," replied Owen flatly. "You can stop profiling him now. Somewhere in this god-damn city someone cut him up into pieces and put him in a bag to deliver to us. You ask me? I'm glad he didn't have any family. How the hell do you explain something like to someone's wife, to someone's kid?"

"That was the point wasn't it? No family, no friends means no leverage, sure, no way to get to us. It also means that if one of us gets killed, well, who's going to make a fuss?"

"I am," said Cooper, pushing his way in between them. "You say there's no leverage? That's bullshit. That's your leverage right there, in a fucking pine box! Someone finally realised that there's always a way to get to someone. You just get them. I always said we should just go straight at these guys ourselves."

"You're drunk," said Rosa.

"What if I am?" sneered Cooper. "What difference does that make? We're paying our respects to a good soldier today, a man who died on the line."

"We're police, not soldiers," interrupted Reginald, pulling his partner away. "Your way works in a bar fight or on a street corner, but if you want to go to court, if you want to put these guys away, then you have to think like a lawyer. You need to make sure you're unimpeachable. And you need to sober up."

"This town ain't like that," said Cooper with a shrug. "This town is like the fucking old west. The gun is the law here, nothing else. Grice is dead because we all thought we were bigger than it, thought we were special. Well, surprise surprise folks... we're not. Like it or not, we are all soldiers now, because this just got turned into a fucking war!"

Cooper stalked off before any of them could reply, kicking out at the old gravestones on his way. Reginald wondering how many of those gravestones told stories just like theirs, down over the years. Cops who died doing what they thought was right, cops who couldn't turn a blind eye to what went on in this cesspit of a city.

"Reg, you want to go after him?" asked Owen.

"Someone has to," replied the bookish cop. "But not everything he said is wrong, White. If this is a war, we all know who fired the first shot."

Owen didn't answer. He just clenched his fists and held back the part of him that wanted to punch Reginald right in the face. They couldn't turn on him, not now. He wouldn't, couldn't let them. He just watched Reginald jog out of the cemetery in pursuit of Cooper, his blood boiling. On the other side of the open grave, the others were watching.

"Any of you got something to say?" barked Owen. "Because now's the time, you understand?"

"Nobody blames you," said Rosa.

"Bullshit! You all blame me. Well you were all happy when I was putting us on the front of the newspapers with the big busts. So guess what guys? The bad guy hit back. And yeah, they hit back harder and more bloody than we thought they would, but that's the god-damned job. That's why we're here. They picked us because we had nothing to lose, no reason to back down. If that's changed for you, you need to walk away now!"

Rogers, Hartley, and Nutt all looked at each other. There was no answer. When Owen had first told them about the Magpye, some lunatic in a mask and big coat who was going to go the places that they couldn't, had they even believed him? If some mental patient wanted to put himself in the line of fire instead of them, what did it matter? That was the gap in the plan, the reason for wildcards like Grice. People who don't have people don't tend to have much in the way of compassion either. That made Owen White a wildcard too. He cared about this city, he cared about his team. He'd come here as a man with nothing to lose, and found himself with a cause and with a family not of his choosing.

It was Rogers who spoke, breaking the silence. "We're still with you boss, for Grice if nothing else."

"Me too," added Rosa.

Owen smiled. "Well then, I guess we'd better do what Grice would have wanted."

"What's that?" asked Burns.

"We go and find a quiet bar and we drink until we pass out. For Grice."

"For Grice," they all replied in unison. Owen's smile stayed fixed on his face. Maybe this was what they needed. Men who had nothing to lose were dangerous. Men who had lost something, men who were looking for payback... they were deadly.

"I'll catch you up, Rosa," said Owen, sending his partner on her way with the others. He watched as they filed out of the cemetery, one by one. Seven of them. If it weren't for the Magpye, it would be a suicide run now no matter they chose to do. The only option would have been to quit and to put as many miles between them and this forsaken city as possible. But with the Magpye, Owen thought there just might be a chance. He'd seen him do impossible things.

The cemetery was silent for a moment, just the sound of Owen breathing. And one other.

"You can come out now Garrity," the cop said calmly.

Mick Garrity stepped out from behind a tree, hands in his coat pockets.

"What are you doing here?" asked Owen.

"Paying me respects," replied Garrity, looking down into Grice's grave. "He was a cop and no cop should go like that, no matter what."

"You're no cop, Garrity," growled Owen. "You're a lackey and a hood for whoever's lining your pockets."

"Prove it."

Owen grabbed Garrity and slammed him against the tree he had been hiding behind. Nose to nose, he snarled at Garrity.

"I've spent my life in and out of departments like this and there's an easy way to find the dirtiest guy... you just look for the guy with the cleanest sheet. No cop works a city like this for as long as you have without collecting a little dirt, Garrity, but your file is the most pristine I've ever seen. Clean sheets mean dirty cops, every time."

Owen only stopped talking when he felt the sharp nudge of Garrity's gun in his ribs.

"Then why don't I kill you here and now and toss you in with your boy there?"

Owen let go of Garrity, shoving him one last time against the old tree.

"Not your style," he said dismissively. "You don't get your hands dirty, do you?"

Garrity straightened himself up, took his hands from out of his pockets, holding them up for White to see.

"Look, we're all friends here, OK?" he said, "You don't like me, fine. But I meant what I said, Grice was a cop and a cop is a cop no matter what. Dirty or clean, good or bad, you put on a shield and you're one of the brotherhood until the end. You might think that's old fashioned, but that's how it is here."

"So what is this?" asked Owen, "You here to say you're sorry that nobody had my guy's back?"

Garrity pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, pulled one from the packet.

"Nobody's got any of your backs," he said grimly, lighting the cigarette with a match. "You guys rode into town with a presidential seal and expected everyone just to roll over. Fucking super-cops, getting your faces in the papers, calling out every scum-bag and lowlife you could name. We tried to warn you. What's going on in this city, it's different to anything you've ever seen, I don't care how many places you've worked. The Kings own this town and everything in it and nobody goes up against the Kings. I mean nobody."

Owen frowned. "The Kings? As in Cane King?"

"Cane King," replied Garrity, taking a long drag from the cigarette. "Our lord and master and the guy who told the guy who told the guy who pulled the trigger on your friend here."

"Then it's true..." muttered Owen. Rosa hadn't believed Magpye when he'd named Cane King as the one behind it all and Owen, well, he'd only entertained the idea because he thought feeding Magpye's delusions kept him on side. But here was Garrity, the dirty cop among dirty cops, naming names.

"You're either very confident or very scared, telling me this," said Owen.

"Neither," replied Garrity. "What I'm telling you ain't no secret in the department. Ain't no secret most places in the city, if you take the time to ask. That's the trick, see? He hides in plain sight, so big and so loud that nobody takes anything they hear about him seriously. What's he doing, playing both sides like that, it's impossible... right? That's what everyone thinks."

Not everyone, thought Owen. There is someone who's got Cane King right in his sights, someone else with a stake in doing impossible things.

"So why tell me?" asked Owen.

"Because of this," said Garrity, jabbing his cigarette at the open grave. "It's a step too far. Over the line. King runs this town, sure, but a cop is still a cop. If that stops meaning something then we're all going to hell a lot faster than I'd like."

"So, what? You turning state's? Is this you asking for help?"

Garrity laughed, a gurgling throaty laugh like someone drowning in a bucket of bile. "Christ, no. This is me offering help."

"Same difference," said Owen flatly, "If things are going south like you say, turning state is a way out for you."

"You think the Kings ain't got people on the inside?" scoffed Garrity. "Trust me, there's plenty of guys doing time right now that would love to know that they were in the Kings' good graces. Kingsmen live a little differently, even in prison, you know what I'm saying?"

"Kingsmen?" asked Owen. "Is that what they call you thugs?"

Garrity tossed his cigarette away and pulled down the collar of jacket and shirt. On the side of his neck, down past his collar line, Owen could see a small blue tattoo of an inverted crown. "We're a lot more than thugs," he said, and Owen couldn't help but hear a note of pride in his voice, even in this place he was proud of his status and the criminality that went with it. "This ink here? You'll find the same on a lot of people. Important people, you understand me?"

"It's all one conspiracy..." said Owen, recalling what the Magpye had said in the back of his car.

"Now you're getting it," said Garrity, pulling his shirt and jacket straight.

"Still doesn't answer why you're telling me this," said Owen. "All you've done is point me in the direction of a guy that no-one in the country and can pin a thing on to. You think nobody knows about him? Get the internet, Garrity, Cane King is conspiracy theory number one and there are people who look into this stuff."

"Crazy people."

"Federal people," replied Owen flatly. "Your guy isn't as untouchable as he might think. Come in, put what you're telling me on record, and we can take him. I know we can."

Garrity turned around and started to walk away. "You're a fucking idealist White, and it's going to get you killed. You really think that if there was anything like real evidence that it wouldn't have surfaced by now? The whole thing is too massive, too organised, and too damn deep. It goes from the street all the way to the top, the real top."

"So your advice is to quit, is that it?" said Owen angrily. "Or get as dirty as you, just shut up and take the money and don't ask any more awkward questions?"

Garrity stopped. "No," he said quietly, "That's not it. I'm trying to tell you your boy was right. You got yourself a war. You got yourself your first casualty, in case you forgot. You guys shot first, now he's shot back. But I'm here to offer you a shot straight at Cane King himself, if you're ready to take it."

"What do you mean?"

"Word on the street is that you've been hitting King's lieutenants off the books as well as on. Got yourself a little pet psycho who gets off his leash every now and then."

Owen swallowed, caught his breath. If this was real, if Garrity was offering what White thought he might be offering, then it was the shot Magpye had been looking for. There was no way that Garrity would put someone like King in the cross-hairs unless it was legit, unless he really was behind all the things he was rumoured to be behind. Unless, of course, Garrity was wearing a wire and this whole conversation was a set up. There were plenty of people who wanted to see the President's initiative fail, plenty of people who didn't like the new police rolling into town. One wrong word, and White would be on the front of the papers for a completely different reason.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't," mocked Garrity. "Or maybe there ain't no guy at all and it's you putting on a gas mask and knocking over King's places, huh?"

"Like I said, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Pity," said Garrity, a sneer in his voice, "A pet psycho is just what you're going to need if you want to take this shot."

"Who says I want to?"

"Your dead guy here, for one. Look, I know how it is. You guys are supposed to be cleaner than clean, but the fight went and got dirty on you anyway. We're more alike than you might like to think, Owen White. I didn't start out dirty, you know."

"No one does."

"Exactly," said Garrity. Suddenly, he closed the distance between him and Owen. "But it's what happens, isn't it? Nobody cleans up without getting a little dirt on themselves, do they, isn't that what you said? Point is, I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking this is trick, that I'm probably wearing a wire, or recording this on a cellphone, or something. You want to take down King but you want to do it the right way and if you can't... and you and I both know you can't... then the last person you're going to tell about your little "side project" is me."

Owen cocked his head to one side. Garrity had nailed it, that was certain. He'd nailed him. There was a little part of him that admired the dirty cop. He wasn't all bluster and muscle and threats after all. This was a guy who listened and watched and waited and learnt. You swim quietly through the murky waters Garrity, thought Owen.

"So here it is, plain and clear," said Garrity, shoving an envelope into White's hand. "Cane's itinerary, travel arrangements, security, everything for the next seven days. Enough time to mobilise your people, pet psycho or no. Take him out, and put the cops back on top in this town once and for all."

"And take the fall for it, while you walk away clean?" said Owen sarcastically.

"Always plenty of guys in this town due a fall, my friend. Cane hides in plain sight, but so can you. Nobody's going to suspect the whiter-than-white super-cop, and I've got a little list of people who are due a little... payback, shall we say? I'll handle it."

Owen White wondered how many bad deals had started with the Garrity saying "I'll deal with it". He looked down at the envelope. If Cane King was everything that people said, he was due a bullet. No trial, no chance to escape on a technicality or a legal loophole. No crooked judge. No bribed jurors. Just pull the trigger and make it final. Owen had never drawn his weapon other than in self defence, but was pointing the Magpye in the right direction really any different to pulling the trigger himself? You couldn't clean up without getting dirty.

"Handle it," said Garrity firmly, closing Owen's hand around the envelope. "For all of us."

# THE BALLAD OF ZIP NOLAN

The river of ghosts did not always rage. Even they, from time to time it seemed, got tired. Sated on blood for now, perhaps, the ghosts left Able Quirk's mind in quiet tranquillity. All except one, that was. Zip Nolan: aerialist, pilot, and human cannonball. Quirk liked Zip. He liked *being* Zip, liked slipping down inside him like freshly laundered bedding and losing himself in the cool, still waters of Zip's memories for a while. Zip was calm. You had to be, he said, to spend your life being fired out of a cannon.

Zip also liked to keep busy, which was something Able was incapable of but Marv told him was "just the thing" for his "situation". Perhaps he thought that Able might find a hobby and it would take his mind off the murder of his family and friends, the razing of his home to the ground. You could never tell with Marv, the master of misdirection never gave anything away that he didn't want to.

The particular thing that kept Zip busy more than anything else was fixing the blimp. She dated back to World War Two, a 180ft long leviathan of rusting metal with a rubbery hide that seemed to breathe in and out even when the great beast was dormant. No one could remember when she had come to the circus, but circus lore said that she used to fly over the city to advertise the circus. She was one of the few things that hadn't been burnt in the fire; her old hull looking mortally decrepit which had probably saved her. She hadn't flown in years. Zip dreamed of getting her air-worthy again though and, in lieu of any dreams of his own, Able was happy to turn control of his body over to Zip whenever he could for him to work on her. There was no shortage of scrap metal and spare materials around now, if you didn't mind the smell of smoke and the occasional blood stain and Zip had repaired and restored nearly every inch of her now, working slowly along the grand old cadaver of the thing. It felt good though, even though the movements weren't Able's own, to feel tools in his hands rather than weapons, to feel screws and bolts tighten to his touch, rather than bones break and flesh tear. A lot of others had thought Zip was crazy, to calmly do the things he did, but he wasn't. Zip was meticulous and careful. Nothing was left to chance, everything was taken in account. That was the difference, Zip said, between being a cannonball and a stain.

Not that it had done him any good, in the end. Able had found him burnt to death in his trailer, a crowbar shoved under the door handle to stop him from getting out. Able kept that memory pushed down deep, lest it disturb Zip in his work.

"Able?"

Marissa had walked in behind them. The memory river bubbled, but no new flotsam of thought was brought to the surface. Whoever Marissa had been to Able, she was so no longer.

Able, and Zip, turned as one. Marissa was holding a steaming cup of something that smelt like another one of Marv's stews. Able's stomach flipped involuntarily and he considered telling her why he couldn't eat the food she insisted on bringing him. The sacrifice, of course, would be to lose the one person who still looked at him, at least sometimes, like he was human. Marv didn't, the cops certainly didn't, and when he looked in the mirror himself... well, what he saw there was so far from human he couldn't even describe it. But she, Marissa, she looked at him as if he were a person. Just one person.

"I brought you some soup," she said gently, placing the mug down on the floor. "Keep you warmed up, it's freezing out here."

"Thank you, miss. Going to keep working a little longer yet though. She's not far from ready you know."

It was Zip who spoke. The voice was Able's, but the words were Zip's. Able chuckled, somewhere in the deep vaults of his mind where he kept his sense of humour. Given the chance to speak from beyond the grave, Zip talked about his precious blimp.

"I'm sorry," said Marissa. "I was looking for Able?"

She looked at him... him, not Zip and not Magpye but at him. "Are you there, Able?" she asked again.

How did she know? How could she know? Marv must have told her something, of course, to explain his moods, some of his more erratic behaviour. She knew he was somehow different, of course she did. But that didn't explain how she knew, of all the voices in Able's head, all the voices of The Magpye, which she was speaking to.

Able forced himself to the surface, like a sleeper trying to shake off a dream. Zip graciously stepped aside, slipping down into the murky waters. "She's sweet on you son," he said as he faded. "Just try to be nice."

Marissa smiled and, before Able could say anything, took a step closer. "Ah," she said, "There you are."

"How did you know?" said Able, his voice trailing off the end of the sentence. How the hell was he supposed to ask this question?

"Oh, it's obvious," Marissa replied, "You really don't look like you a lot of the time, Able Quirk."

"I'm... not myself... sometimes?" he answered. The whole conversation was surreal, he imagined what it would mean to tell her the whole truth and now here she was and she seemed to know... everything?

In his pocket, Able felt his phone, the Magpye's phone start to vibrate. He placed his hand on it, willing it to stop. But it was too late. The others had heard it to. The vibration in his pocket was like a dinner bell to a pack of hungry dogs. Owen White was calling. They had work to do. Bloody, awful work no doubt. The kind that the dead loved.

Marissa pulled away. "Like now," she said. There was ice cold fear in her voice, and he almost tripped as she pulled quickly away. "You don't look like you now. Who are you? Who are you right now?"

Able didn't answer. He was gone, submerged under the gestalt mind of the angry dead. It was The Magpye in control now. And The Magpye didn't have an answer.

He dug his phone out of his pocket and answered in a voice that was barely Able's at all.

"Where and when?"

# TEA AND NO SYMPATHY

The tea shop was, for the benefit of its very particular clientèle, almost devoid of decoration. The walls were bare brick, thinly white washed, the floors were bare boards. Tables and chairs were whitewashed too, and everyone drank from the same featureless white china cups and saucers. The aesthetics of it didn't matter. Neither, in truth, did the tea despite the fact that the tea shop brewed some of the rarest and finest blends there were. What mattered was that this place, this white on white place, was safe.

Magicians were a dying breed, and they took safety very seriously.

Grace Faraway sat and sipped a pale green tea from a white china cup. She wore a high necked black blouse, black skirt, opaque stockings and black leather heels. Her tattoos bristled at her neck and crept up around her ears, hating being confined and hidden from site. Patterns of any sort were banned however, in the white on white neutrality of the tea shop. A magician could easily hide a hex in even the simplest weave. Through a sheer act of will Grace restrained the wild living ink and forced it down away from her face, feeling it writhe beneath her skin. Marv was late, which she was sure was intentional.

She didn't need to meet him. She kept telling herself that. The trap was set, baited, and ready to snap its jaws on the creature that plagued her precious Cane King. The plan was good. Good, except for the fact that Grace Faraway had no idea what, or who, it was she was trying to trap. Magicians took safety very seriously, and safety took planning. Safety required knowledge. No, she didn't need to meet him...

"Good afternoon, Grace," said Marv, sliding into the seat opposite her. He was dressed in white, an old type magician's stage outfit. Ever the purist, ever the king of making an entrance. "I see you've dressed for the occasion."

"Marv," said Grace icily. "Still clinging to the past."

"Says the four hundred year old whore."

Grace's cup clattered onto her saucer. "It's impolite to mention a girl's age."

Marv smirked. "You're no girl, Grace. You never were."

"But I can be a woman," replied the witch, seduction in her voice. She slid her hand across the table, her fingers crawling up onto Marv's hand. "You used to like that."

"That was a long time ago," said Marv, snatching his hand back. "What we were is dead and buried."

"If I believed that, you'd be dead too," she replied. She feigned a wounded note in her voice and dipped her head, hiding her face from Marv behind her cup as she took another sip of her tea.

Marv sighed. He didn't fall for the act, not for a moment, but there was truth to the words nevertheless. Grace had saved his life, and that meant something. No magician wanted to be indebted to another, and Marv was in deep with Grace.

"And I'm supposed to be grateful?" shouted Marv. "You told me they were after me! I left Marissa with the circus to keep her safe, but all I did was put her in the firing line."

"I saved her too, didn't I?" said Grace indignantly.

"You know that. But don't pretend that you didn't get what you wanted."

"Did I? You were supposed to stay gone," Grace replied. "Never come back, those were my exact words."

"I didn't choose this, honestly. I was supposed to be in town for a night, two at most. Here and then gone again, and no one would ever know."

"So what happened?"

Marv took a breath. Magicians were, partly by trade but mostly by necessity, masters of subterfuge. Lying to a magician was hard, even for another magician. "I saw the circus," he replied, sticking to the fringes of the truth to support his deception, "And I realised that I should never have run. I'd been a coward, and my friends had paid the price. If I'd have been there, I could have stopped them."

"Could you?" asked Grace. "You're an escape artist, sweetheart, not a fighter. Not being there is what you do best."

"Well, I'm here now."

"That you are," replied Grace, "And I must admit I'm surprised. I'd heard you'd burnt out, lost your gift. But here you are, as you say, and trouble seems to have followed you home."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Marv, cursing whoever it was who was feeding Grace her information. It was true, Marv hadn't had the power to move a card out of a deck since the night he'd turned his back and run out on the circus. "I've got some... ghosts to put to rest, that's all. Some unfinished business."

"Unfinished business with Cane King, you mean."

"No," said Marv with a chuckle, "I'm not stupid, Grace. I came close enough to run in with the Kings last time I was here, I'm not going back down that road."

"Do you think I'm a fool?" snapped Grace. "You've been hitting King's operation. Your fingerprints are all over it. Impossible break-ins, impossible escapes. The violence... that's new, but you always did like things a little rough, I suppose."

"You're wrong, Grace. Dead wrong," said Marv. He felt a trickle of cold sweat run down his back. If he told her the truth, that he didn't have enough magic in him now to take on King even if he wanted to, he'd be exonerated and it would maybe even take Able out of the frame for a little while. The problem was, you didn't admit to not being a magician anymore in a room full of magicians. The only thing keeping the peace in this room was that there was nobody without power to take anything, especially revenge, on any of the others without consequences. And there was a lot of revenge to go around. Magicians lived a long time, and picked up plenty of grudges along the way.

"For your sake, I hope so." said the witch. "Because Cane King is going after whoever it is that's been hunting him, and things are going to end very badly for whoever it is, and for anyone they're connected with."

"If whoever it is has got you rattled," said Marv, "Perhaps Cane King is the one who needs the warning."

"I've put a lot of time and energy into that family," hissed Grace. "I've watched generations come and go, honing them, forging them. It's not just Cane they'll be up against, it's me too."

"Then it's my turn to tell you to run," said Marv. "Because it isn't me you're up against, but I do know who it is. I'm not sure what it is, but I do know who. I thought I'd seen things, Grace, I thought I knew how the world really worked. What I've seen him do? It's beyond anything either of us ever even attempted."

Grace frowned. She never backed down from a fight, Marv remembered that only too well. Fighting was in her nature, no witch could have lived as long as she had otherwise. But she wasn't sure if she believed him.

"If you know who he is, then give him to me now."

"No," said Marv flatly. "I've given you fair warning, and I consider my debt to you paid. Get out while you can, Grace. Write this generation off, come back for the next lot of Kings, and call it evens."

"And if I don't?"

"Then my debt is still paid," said Marv. "And you're one more dead witch." He left the table before Grace could say another word.

# FALL DOWN DEAD

Where: an old print mill, a relic from the days when the Kings made their money in the print media and a front page headline was as powerful as any bullet. When: midnight, which was pure theatricality on Cane King's part. He wanted to make a statement, wanted the world to wake up to a new order of his making.

How, for the most part, had been left to Grace. She'd spent hours in the mill, fortifying it as if they were under siege. She commanded King's thugs and hired guns as well as anyone he had ever seen, a natural general, and even Jack Taylor fell into line. The plan was perfect. An iron clad defence, except for one crucial mistake. A mistake that Grace was relying on her prey finding. Well hidden enough so as not to be obvious, but there. Exploitable by the right opponent. Perfect.

Except for one thing.

Perfect except for Wally Wu.

Wally was a contortionist. He had died hidden in a crate in the big top, folded up as tight he could, praying that nobody would find him. Wally was a coward, everybody knew. He said he'd learnt how to hide himself when he was a kid. Anyone who asked how, or why, didn't get an answer, but there was something in Wally Wu's eyes that told you that he'd had something to hide from. And so Wally Wu died the way he'd lived, hiding, heart racing, and a prayer on this lips. "Please don't let them find me". And nobody did. Just a stray bullet, its lethal trajectory through Wally's right lung nothing more than a bouncing, clattering, dice roll.

In death, Wally wasn't a coward anymore. He'd found a place to hide where no-one could touch him, and like all the others all he thought about now was bloody revenge.

That was why Wally Wu had shown Magpye how to fold his body, how to contort and squash and squeeze, how to dislocate and relocate and rotate. It was Wally Wu who had put Magpye into an old packing crate down in the basement of the place hours before Cane, Grace, or any of the others had even arrived. They had built their trap around them, never knowing that they were there, and all the while Wally had kept on praying.

"Let the bastards find us, let the bastards find us."

But they hadn't. Not until Magpye had pushed the lid off the crate with his feet and slowly unfurled his body, which was not the shape of a normal body any more. The sound of bones cracking back into place had brought an inquisitive guard their way, and he had been the first to die, gasping for air as the Magpye's blade slipped between his ribs and burst him inside like a water balloon. The Magpye picked up the guard's radio and listened to the chatter. Able's trick, learnt from a movie.

"The cops are here."

"Jesus, they've rolled right up to the front door."

"They just got themselves screwed then. Shut the gates behind them. This is going to be easy."

"They're not getting out."

"Fuck it, kill 'em in their car."

"No, wait. Send someone down. There's something not right."

The explosion that came next sounded small through the radio, but the shock wave that reached all the way to the basement told a different story. Magpye smiled. Turned out Owen White had some tricks of his own.

***

Owen smiled. Through his night vision goggles the explosion had been a ball of pure white, like an instant snowfall burying the old mill and every scum bag Kingsman in it. All too soon, the bright ball of brilliant white faded away, leaving the mill with its heavy iron doors hanging open. White flames moved across the green background of the night vision, silhouetting dark blurry figures.

To Owen's right, Nutt looked down the scope of his rifle. "Three, four, five..." he counted slowly.

"Expendables," said White, "They're not sending any of their big guns down to check the car. Take them anyway, let them know we're here."

Nutt grunted his approval before opening fire. "Five, four, three, two ... one..."

***

King paced back and forth. Taylor was at the window, smiling.

"Is this supposed to happen?" King barked. "Because it looks like our people are getting shot."

"Nobody important," replied Taylor, his voice showing a rare trace of excitement. "Their shooter is quite impressive though."

"Great, that's just... great," hissed Cane. "Where the hell is Grace?"

"Baiting the trap," replied Taylor.

***

Magpye crept through the basement of the mill, a shadow among shadows. The place reeked of oil and ink and even though the great machines here were rusted and tired, their immense power still resonated from within them. Lives were made and lives were broken here, in the incantations of ink on paper. That was the true power of the Kings - they controlled all the stories. They could burn a circus to the ground, kill everyone in it, then tell whatever lies they wanted and everyone believed them. It said it in the paper, honey, so it must be true. The real lives, the real stories that they crushed were lost forever. All there was was their story, their history.

He was going to change that. After tonight, people were going to know who he was.

"And who, pray tell, are you?"

The voice startled him. Nobody could creep up on him, could they? He cursed the ghosts and all their eyes and ears as he spun around, looking for a gap amongst the steel and iron leviathans to disappear into. Wally Wu, still a little bit of a coward after all, was looking for a place to hide.

He didn't find a gap to squeeze into. He found Grace Faraway.

Lithe, naked, her tattoos swirling like smoke across her dark skin, she walked towards him a thing of living ink and shadows. He knew what she was instantly. A voice, somewhere deep down in the river of ghosts that ran through his head, bubbled up its wisdom. He'd heard the voice before, when the others were quiet enough. It was the only voice that frightened him, and it frightened him to hear it now.

"Faraway," said the Magpye. "The ghost that haunts Kings."

Faraway laughed, and it sounded like someone walking through broken glass, as if she hadn't laughed before and the apparatus had all but dried up. "I haven't heard that one in a long time. Someone's been... reading."

She trailed a hand across the leather and plastic of Magpye's mask, her fingertips like ice and electricity combined.

"Do you feel safe in there, little spirit?"

"Safer than you are, I..."

Suddenly, the witch shoved Magpye hard in the chest with both hands. His chest felt as if it were on fire and he staggered back. His feet kicked up old newspapers and he saw something on the floor, something the ghost who hid deep in the river recognised. Magpye remembered something Marv had told him, or at least had told Quirk.

Magicians could hide traps in patterns.

The Magpye collapsed to the ground, his lungs burning. In his head, the ghosts screamed. They screamed louder than the day they'd died, louder than the times he dragged them back from the afterlife through a droplet of blood or smear of burnt flesh. He felt them become fragments in his head, shreds of souls torn to strips by the witch's trap. The minds and memories of his friends became rags and tatters in his head, leaving him exposed and vulnerable.

"I wasn't sure what you were," said Grace, standing over him. Ethereal light shone from within her, casting a silhouette of the crone she really was up on the wall. "So I thought it best to trap you. That sigil can hold anything, at least for a time."

Behind the mask, it wasn't the Magpye who looked up, but Able. For the first time in a long time he was alone in his own head. No Dorothy, no Malcolm, no Magda. No Wally Wu, no Zip Nolan. No Magpye. Just Able, the boy who ran, the boy who hid, trapped and alone and looking up a creature unlike anything he'd ever seen.

***

Owen dashed across the street, his gun drawn, a sub-machine slung across his back. Across the street, he knew Nutt was covering him, but he still felt exposed. The car had drawn them out, just as he had planned, but at best they'd taken out a fraction of King's forces. People were expendable to Cane King, it stood to reason he'd have come here mob handed. Further down the street, Owen could see Rogers and Hartley making slow but steady progress along the nearest wall of the mill.

Rogers was naturally cautious, but Hartley was just a desk jockey. A computer expert, his job was to sift through the criminal's laptops and phones to piece together incriminating evidence. Before Owen had met him he'd been tracking paedophiles and terrorists, hacking his way into their networks and hunting them down without ever leaving the comfort of his office. In another life he'd have been the FBI agent who caught out the mob on unpaid taxes. He didn't look right, out in the field, and Owen had to remind himself that it had been Hartley's call to be here. He said he owed it to Grice.

With a crackle, Cooper announced himself through Owen's earpiece. "Reg and I are almost at the rear gates. Got five, maybe six guys back here."

"It's open?"

"Wide open. The bastards want us in there."

"We should walk away Owen," said Rigby, interjecting. "We've made our point."

"The hell we have!" barked Cooper. "Don't you dare go soft on me now, don't you..."

"He's right."

Owen smiled. Rosa Blind, the girl with a mind like a machine. His right hand. "Rosa. I thought you weren't coming."

"I'm not. I'm already here. Already inside."

"How the hell did you manage that?"

"Trade secret. Cooper, get ready."

Owen heard shots then a muffled commotion and the sound of Cooper and Rigby running.

"Back door's clear!" Cooper shouted.

"Not for long, you've got incoming," reported Rosa.

For a moment, Owen thought that maybe they might actually pull this off without losing another cop. Just for a moment. He waved commands at Rogers and Hartley and sprinted towards the front gates, keeping his body low and his gun raised.

***

King craned out of the window. At the rear gate he could make out the bodies of more of his men, all of them dying bloody on the ground.

"There's a shooter inside the compound," he spat.

"I'd keep back, boss," said Taylor. "Lot of bullets flying around out there."

King had fury in his eyes when he turned back to face his henchman.

"If this thing goes south," he growled. "There won't be a prison in this country that will be safe for you, do you understand?"

Taylor didn't answer. Instead, he simply pulled his gun from inside his suit jacket and headed for the door. King breathed a sigh of relief. The most dangerous man he had ever met was still in his corner.

***

In the basement, Able Quirk groped around inside his memories for anything of worth. Grace was prowling around him, eyeing him as if he were a new creature that she had never seen before. Prey, she was certain of it, but just how to tackle this particular meal? Accustomed to the thoughts of others inside his head, he could feel her mind, drooling and hungry, probing the fringes of his. He'd barely mastered the skill of controlling the thoughts of the unruly dead, the thought of another living mind inside his skull was more than he could cope with. If she got in, would there even be space for him?

"Tell me your name," she purred.

Able shook his head. "No. I won't tell you who I am." The mask was supposed to stop him getting blood on him, prevent any unwanted souls from taking residence in his head. Right now it was also protecting the only two living people he cared about, Marv and Magda. If he was going to die here, he would at least protect them for as long as he could.

"Not your real name, silly. The name you call yourself. Marv said he didn't know what you were, but I'm sure the old fool was lying to me."

"Marv..." whispered Able, inside the mask.

# INTERVIEWING A SHARK

Cane King liked television, and television liked him back. After all, what was there not to like? Tall, handsome, charming, rich, unattached, and with the omnipresent whiff of danger and scandal... he was everything that television wanted its millionaire playboys to be. Sitting on the couch of a TV talkshow, sandwiched between a B-list actress and a comedian that the network considered "edgy" enough to be interesting but not so edgy that they couldn't trust him, Cane King was as dangerous here as he was in a boardroom or a knife fight. He had to be. This was where he did the most important part of his job \- convincing the watching public that he wasn't quietly screwing them all.

"So, Cane, can I call you Cane?"

"Of course you can, Johnny... If I can call you Johnny, that is?"

Drum roll. Cymbal. Cue card. Laughter. A pat on his arm from the host, a fake tear of laughter wiped away, familiarity and bonhomie packaged and delivered, coated in sugar just how they all liked it.

"Seriously though... Cane. Let's talk about the charity work you're doing right now."

Another cue card. A ripple of approving applause from the audience. Hands held up in mock embarrassment.

"Come on now, Cane. Don't be shy. A little birdie told me that you raised twenty million dollars for your charity last year..."

Whoops and hollers from the crowd. The host was worth every penny Cane was paying, he barely had to do any work at all.

"... and that you matched every single dollar of that yourself?"

Standing ovation. Cheers, whistles. Embarrassed grins, nods of acknowledgement.

"Really, Johnny, it's about the people on the ground doing the hard work every day. I just bring a little money to the party, that's all. The real work, the stuff that makes a difference, that's being done out there on the streets."

The applause dies down, people return to their seats. Don't over do it, that's the key.

"That's great, that's great... but, here's the thing Cane."

"What's that, Johnny?"

"When are you going to squeeze in time to find yourself a Mrs King?"

Oohs and aahs. A few wolf whistles. Somewhere in the back a women shouts "pick me!". Laughter. No cue cards this time, but all right on schedule.

"Well Johnny, that's a tough one. My evenings are pretty full as it is."

"I'll bet they are! A little birdie told me that you'd been personally overseeing every single aspect of your new casino hotel, from the wash-rooms all the way to the penthouse!"

More cheers. More applause. Cane King, a billionaire before he was even born, but working hard on the American Dream. A raised hand, more false modesty.

"Well, Johnny, my grandfather always said that if you wanted something done right, you had to be prepared to do it yourself."

More applause, because America loves some homespun wisdom and loves grandfathers.

***

Cane locked his phone and slipped it back into his pocket. Robert had been his double for so long that most of America would think that Cane was the imposter if the two of them stood next to each other. Robert was Cane's walking, talking alibi in any situation, a stooge who lived a life in the public gaze so that Cane could live his life in the shadows.

And if Cane ever needed to vanish?

Well, Robert could always turn up in some hotel room, dead as a doornail and with all the evidence of an night of epic adventure strewn around him.

That was how Cane would like to go.

# THE HIGH COST OF LIVING

Marv shoved clothes in a bag. He'd run away before, lots of times, and he'd made shoving clothes into a bag something of an art-form - a tiny piece of theatre amongst all the others in his life. He travelled light, always had.

"Are you running away again, Dad?"

Marv hadn't heard Marissa come in.

"Not alone this time," he said, forcing a crooked smile onto his craggy face. "You're coming with me."

"Are there bad men coming?"

"Yes, honey, I think there are."

"You left me with the bad men before."

Marv zipped up the bag and threw it across the room where it landed with two others.

"I knew you'd be safe," he said. Magicians, the born liars. "I... I made sure of it."

"The lady who came said you'd abandoned me."

Marv reached out to embrace his daughter, but she pulled away. Looking at her, looking at the strange and broken thing that she had become, he cursed himself for what he'd done. She was a like a china doll, smashed and reassembled. The same basic shape, but forever crazed and cracked and so very, very fragile.

"It wasn't like that," Marv said desperately. "You can't believe anything that woman says."

"Able doesn't know, does he? That you knew the bad men were coming and you ran away?"

"No," Marv replied, hanging his head. "No, he doesn't know. I didn't think you did either."

"I know," replied the magician's daughter. "And that's why I'm not coming with you."

Marv grabbed his daughter's forearm. "The hell you aren't!" he said angrily. "This time, I'm getting it right, I'm getting you out of here myself. Able can take care of himself."

Marissa looked down at where her father's strong hand held her arm tight, as if the sensation had taken its time to work its way along her arm, up to her shoulder, and across to her brain. Gently, she peeled his hand off her, one finger at a time, as if she were skinning a banana.

"No, Daddy, you're getting it very, very wrong," she said sweetly. "But I can help with that."

Without another word, Marissa lifted her hand and tapped her father gently between the eyes with one finger.

Marv, the great escape artist, the magician who hid in plain sight, felt something he hadn't felt in a long time. He felt magic. Real magic. And in a burst of white light, he lost consciousness.

# PAPER DRAGONS

The mill was a maze, a building that had grown and changed like a spreading fungus. They didn't make them like this anymore, because places like this were never really "made". They grew, eating up the lives of the people who worked there, a vast external cancer. When places like this were left to rot, they went... strange, first.

Owen, Rosa, Cooper and Rigby worked their way in slowly. Room by room, sweeping each one clear. Always checking behind them, sticking to the tried and tested routines they had had drilled into them. Owen always found it amazing how good Rosa was at breaches; despite her petite frame and general aversion to physical confrontation, she could sweep a room faster than most other cops and he'd never known anyone get the drop on her. Cooper and Rigby were another story though. Cooper was reckless, pushing them forward too fast, but Rigby was the real liability. He knew what to do and how to do it, but every move was hesitant. A brains and muscle partnership like Cooper and Rigby could work on the street, but here either one of them could be the one that made the mistake that got everyone killed.

At least, that's what Owen was thinking when he felt his ankle snag on a thin length of wire stretched across the corridor.

"Get ba-- !"

***

Three levels down, in the basement lost among the rusting hulks, Able Quirk was screaming. Not the Magpye, just Able, the boy who should be dead, hiding behind a mask, and screaming. He'd never asked where the name came from, never questioned the voice that called itself "Magpye". He'd let it drive him, let it move his limbs and speak with this voice. It was the thing that kept him going when he thought that the others; the other voices, the other memories, other lives that were going on in his head; were going to overwhelm him. Magpye was the thing that reached down into the maelstrom and pulled Able to the surface.

And Magpye was gone.

Instead there was Grace Faraway, throwing her mind against his like a wild dog, howling and snarling whilst, in the real world, she beat him ruthlessly, raining down blow after blow. Unable to move, trapped somehow in this spot, Able did his best to dodge the worst of it, to roll with every kick and punch and claw, a reflex reaction more than anything else. All Able knew, somehow, was that he had to stay conscious. His mind, his rag-tag of memories, was the only thing keeping Grace out.

And so he screamed. He screamed to remind himself that he was still there, still alive.

"Kid, am I going to die again?"

It was Malcolm. The sharp shooter who died in his cowboy hat and underpants, thinking out loud in Able's head.

"I don't know..." gasped Able. He could feel the others, slowly returning. Wherever they had gone, wherever the witch had banished them to, it hadn't been for long. In his head, Able tried to smile. Before all of this, before the blood and the madness and the revenge, the ghosts had been his friends. His real friends. He'd lost count of the times he'd wished he'd died with them. Maybe this was his chance.

Grace's foot slammed against the side of his face, snapping his head to one side. He felt a tooth shift inside his mouth, and he swallowed blood inside the mask.

"You're tough," she said, taking a moment to catch her breath. "Whatever you are."

Able looked up. Her body was young, firm, strong, but Able could see the truth. Somehow he knew that he was looking at something ancient, something from a place that came before our world. The dark blue and black of the tattoos on her skin seethed and writhed, making her skin tighten and twist as if it could move her limbs for her. A story, written in some old language, tugging its vessel along and insisting that it be told.

"Can you reach one of my guns, Able?"

"I can't move."

"Of course you can't move," said Grace. She wrenched a chunk of metal from the side of one of the great machines and hefted it up over her head. "I've bound you, remember? And now I'm bored and so I'm just going to kill you."

"I wasn't talking to you," panted Able.

Grace stopped, the chunk of metal over her head. "Then who were you talking to, creature?"

Able didn't need to answer. In his mind, he felt the dread pull of a ghost taking hold. But this wasn't one of his friends from the circus. Slipping in and out of their phantoms was familiar, each one different but each one known to Able. This was a ghost that he, or the Magpye, had never let have control. It was the ghost who lurked in the darkest corners, who never showed himself, whose very voice terrified Able. In his patchwork of memories Able thought perhaps that this might have been his first ghost, the first dead thing to worm its way into his head, before he understood how to control this strange talent with which he had been reborn.

For a moment he tried to fight, but the pull of the thing in the shadows of his mind was too strong. He felt himself slide into the cool waters, submerged under the will of another.

"He's talking to me," Able heard his voice say. "He's talking to Adam King."

***

Owen White opened his eyes. He didn't know much about explosives but, as far as he could tell, it hadn't been a big blast. Problem was, it hadn't needed to be. He has on his back, looking up at the ceiling. Chunks of charred plasterwork were floating down, dancing between the walls that were painted with small fires. The exposed framework of the building seemed to be holding, but the floor shifted ominously underneath Owen as he drew a painful lungful of air. He could smell fuel, still burning somewhere. Diesel, probably from an old generator, rigged into a bomb. A bomb that he'd triggered.

He tried to speak, but with the wind still knocked out of him he could barely wheeze. Rolling painfully over, he felt something move inside of him, something that he knew shouldn't ever move. His mouth filled up with blood, and he vomited. Bile, blood, and a tooth hit the filthy floor. Pushing himself up to his hands and knees, he looked around for the others.

He saw Rosa first. She'd been up front, a few steps ahead of him. Only by dumb luck had she stepped over the tripwire that he'd snagged. It hadn't helped her. She was face down, not moving, with flames working their way up her legs and across her back. Owen crawled towards her, dragging one leg behind him when he realised he couldn't move it on his own.

"Rosa," he gasped. "Rosa..."

There was no answer.

***

Grace dropped the chunk of metal and took a step backwards.

"Impossible."

"You think so?" said Adam King. Able always sounded different, depending on which ghost was talking. Pitch, inflection, mannerisms, the deeper he submerged himself into their psyche and memories the more his body became theirs. But this was different. This was a different voice entirely, as it spoke from inside Able, or came from another place entirely. "I expected you to have put the pieces together by now, Grace. I suppose it was the circus tricks that threw you off? Not a very King family thing to do, I suppose, but I'm not a part of the family any more, am I?"

"You have it... the gift?" Grace asked.

"Oh yes," replied the voice of Adam King. "And it is so much more than you ever told us. It's not just our lineage, oh no. It's everyone's, ever. The dead, all of the dead, are in its thrall. Even me."

Grace regained her composure and closed the distance between herself and whoever it was she was talking to. She' known Adam King since he was a baby. She wasn't going to be shouted down by him now.

"An aberration," she said curtly. "A mistake. You were supposed to die in that circus, Adam. You and your bastard."

"Oh we did," replied Adam slyly. "My brother's boys did a very ... thorough job. We died that night as he had planned, but you know that death doesn't have to be forever. I'm back, and I'm going to take what's rightfully mine."

"And then what?" asked Grace.

"I'm going to paint the town red."

***

As Owen reached Rosa, he saw it. Six to eight inches of curved, rusted metal, it jutted out from the back of her neck where it had been driven by the force of the explosion. Part of the diesel barrel maybe, or some part of the building. Owen hoped it had been quick, for her sake.

Rolling onto his back again, he wondered how long he'd been unconscious. Whoever had set the trap had to be on their way to check for survivors, and to count up their kills. Perhaps the fire was keeping them back, or maybe the explosion had brought down a ceiling or a wall that was in their way. It was a small mercy, at best, but Owen clung to it. Still no sound from either Cooper or Rigby. They'd been behind him but...

Owen heard the tell-tale report of a gun. Not far away, but his ears were still ringing from the blast and he couldn't be sure how close or in what direction. The small mercy evaporated with a second shot. Someone was coming closer, their feet crunching through the debris. Owen had no idea where either of his guns were, and he found himself groping around on the floor for anything that he could use.

A foot came down on his left wrist and he grunted in pain. A shadow above him and the unmistakable silhouette of a gun pointed at this face.

"Is she dead?" the shadow asked, pulling back the hammer on the pistol.

Owen nodded.

"Then you're the lucky one," said the shadow. "I only need one of you alive."

The shadow's boot came down onto Owen's face, and the world went black.

***

Grace Faraway wasn't used to running. The last time that she had run had been from the Stasi in East Berlin, back in '66 or '67 if memory served. They had been hunting magicians, trying to stop them defecting to the freedoms of the West. She had been hunting magicians too, but for her own reasons. It had suited her to use the Stasi, convenient bloodhounds who knew the lay of the land, until they found out she was running her own agenda and had turned on her. She'd run then.

But not like she was running now. Back then, she had run whilst she worked out her next move. It was a tactical retreat, an escape to gather her strength and regroup. Now she was just running. Running because if she didn't, she was dead. And that wouldn't be the end of it.

Her trap couldn't hold Adam King. None of her magic worked on Kings, that was part of the deal. He'd stepped out of it as easily as he would have stepped indoors from the rain. He'd let her think she had him, let her talk out her strategy. He'd waited for the perfect moment to make his move, just like she'd taught him.

She should have been proud, but she was too busy running for her life.

"You can't run forever," he called after her, clattering something metal against the flank of one of the great printing presses. "I'm going to find you."

Grace didn't answer, she just ran, and prayed that the sound of her footfalls was lost in the echoes of the basement.

***

Owen slipped in and out of consciousness as he was dragged by his damaged leg through the paper mill. Down one corridor, then another. Up a flight of stairs, through door after door. They wanted him alive, but that was all. A few more broken bones weren't a problem.

"Have you ever been hunting?"

Great, thought Owen, a Talker. The temptation was to talk back, to try and build a rapport. Buy some time, pray for a rescue. It was what they taught you to do, psychology 101. They'd tell you the best cops on the force never had to discharge their weapon, just open a dialogue, make a connection, reach out and touch someone. Maybe in some small town somewhere where the local dentist gets his gun because his wife's sleeping with his golf buddy and nobody needs to get hurt, we can all talk about this, and the sheriff isn't going to write anybody up so he can still drink in the lodge with all his buddies that weekend. Sure, maybe there. But not on the streets that Owen White had worked on, and not when you were bloody and getting dragged to what was inevitably a painful death.

But he'd made a mistake. The stranger had killed three cops already, but he wanted... needed Owen alive. So screw opening a dialogue, thought Owen, this fuck could talk to the air. Let him flap his gums and see what else he lets slip.

"When I hunt, I like to bait the trap with a wounded animal."

Owen and the stranger stopped moving. Owen twisted his head left and right, tried to pull himself upright. He head the snap of handcuffs and felt the tight, cold metal around one wrist and one ankle.

"If you can get one of their young? That works every time. It's primal, you see. Even the smartest animals, the ones that know to watch out for hunters, will come if they think their young are in danger."

The shadow stepped over Owen and squatted down, finally coming into focus in the darkness.

"Jack Taylor," coughed Owen, his lungs still on fire.

"You know me."

"By reputation," replied Owen. He'd opened a file on Jack Taylor in his first month on the job in this city. To his regret, it was still pretty much empty. He'd studied with the master of hiding in plain sight, it would seem, and whilst his name was on the lips of every criminal of every shade and persuasion, nothing ever stuck to him. Grice had nicknamed him "Mr. Clean". But from what Garrity had told them, Taylor was just another chess piece in Cane King's game. "You're one of King's stooges."

The insult cost Owen a fist to the face and Taylor's hands around his throat.

"I am nobody's stooge," hissed Taylor. "One day I'm going to run this town. King's just a stepping stone."

"I'll remember you said that," said Owen, a smirk on his lips. He might be signing his own death warrant, but something told him that Taylor wouldn't give him up as a prize just yet.

"You do that," replied Taylor, pulling a small stiletto knife from inside his trouser pocket. "Just don't forget to scream while you're remembering."

Taylor shoved the stiletto into the side of Owen White's right eye socket and pushed his eyeball out from behind. As Taylor had predicted, Owen White screamed.

***

Grace skidded left behind the last of the giant machines. In front of her was a brick wall, behind her, close and getting closer, was Adam King. She looked around. Nothing to arm herself with, and nowhere to hide. This was where it would end, in a dirty corner of a decaying building. She had had the opportunity to die in far more exotic and reputable establishments.

On cue, Adam walked around the corner. He had retrieved the weapons he had had on him when Grace had trapped him, but it was the length of metal pipe that he had slung over his one shoulder that Grace couldn't take her eyes off. Without exception, weapons are designed to kill as quickly and as efficiently as possible. In expert hands, and Adam's were without a doubt expert, they would offer a fast and often painless death. Improvised weapons, used to bludgeon and smash and crush, were another matter entirely. They were brutish, inelegant. And, in Grace's experience, it took time, a painful amount of time, to kill someone that way.

Adam rattled the pipe along the side of the machine, then swung it across to his other hand and let it trail noisily along the wall. In his head, Able Quirk was fretting about the police he had come here with, but Adam ignored him. He was an amateur, letting the ghosts take control, letting the Magpye take control. Now, Adam was in the driving seat, and things would be different. He'd been trained most of his life to control these powers. Now all he had to do was kill the person who taught him, then his brother, and he would finally be free.

Grace stumbled backwards until she found the rough brickwork at her back.

"Adam, we can talk about this."

"You betrayed me," said Adam King.

"I made you," Grace corrected. "You say that the gift, your gift, has grown more powerful, that you hold all the dead in thrall. Well then, think about that Adam. Who taught you about your gift, about your birthright in the first place? Who was there the first night you woke with nightmares that didn't go away when you opened your eyes? Who taught you to understand the things that only you could see? You were always destined for something great, Adam, I knew that."

"And that's why you sided with him," spat Adam King. "You knew that I could be great, could be better than any of them, maybe even better than you, and it terrified you."

"You wanted to walk away."

"I wanted freedom!" shouted Adam. "All the money, all the power, and we're all just slaves to you... and to it. You call it a 'gift', but that's not what it is at all. It's a thing, a dark and treacherous thing. It lives inside us and uses us up. It's a parasite."

Adam swung the metal pipe low, smashing Grace's legs out from under her. A gash opened up on her shin, and dark blue blood began to ooze out. Her blood moved like ink, staining everything that it touched. On her knees, she looked up at Adam.

"I can help you."

"No, Grace, all you can do is help yourself. You're a parasite too. You've lived off my family for generations, weaving us all into your story, keeping yourself alive through us."

Adam swung the pipe again, hitting Grace in the torso, lifting her bodily up from the floor. She came down hard, her head slamming against the hard concrete floor.

"How many years, Grace? How many different Kings have you taken to your bed to bear their children? How long have you been using us?"

Grace struggled to her feet. A cut above her eye was leaking more dark, inky blood down her face. Her tattoos were slipping towards it, and towards the gash in her knee, leaking out across her skin. Rats, leaving a sinking ship. Looking down at herself, she tried to scoop them up, smearing handfuls of ink across her flesh. She was shrinking, and ageing, before Adam's eyes.

"Since the beginning," replied Grace, her voice no longer the soft and self-assured purr that it had been, but now the cracked cackle of a crone. "There were no Kings before me. I started this whole story. I started your story too, my son."

"Whore," Adam replied flatly, and brought the pipe down onto Grace's head so hard that it split cleanly in two almost to her nose. She dropped to her knees, a sound like wind leaving her, before she fell face first to the floor. Underneath her, the ink that had been her blood moved like a flat fish, slithering and sliding across the floor until it found a crack and started to ooze its way to freedom.

"What was she?" asked Able, unaccustomed to speaking like this inside his own head.

"A story," replied Adam. "Maybe the oldest story there is."

"She called you 'son'"

"Long story."

"Are you really Adam King? What are you doing in my head?"

"Longer story still. I'll tell you everything later. Right now, we've got a King to kill."

Able Quirk felt the thing he called Magpye stir, somewhere deep in the undercurrents of his shared mind. The ghosts, to a dead man, lay silent. Able felt Adam's mind close, folding over on itself so that, without warning, there was suddenly an "inside" that Able was not a part of. He found himself drifting on the currents of the river of memory, just another ghost, his ties to the physical severed without warning.

"Wait!" he shouted.

But Adam King wasn't listening. As he'd said, he had a King to kill, and it seemed he could do it without Able Quirk.

# HUNTING PARTY

Owen woke up and pain ran instantly through his shattered eye socket like a bolt of lightning. He didn't scream this time, but only because Taylor had stuffed a dirty rag into his mouth. He felt it pushing against the back of his throat, threatening to choke him if he struggled too much. His hands were both cuffed now, his arms tight into the small of his back, a metal pipe digging in between his shoulder blades. Taylor hadn't needed to secure his ankles, White's busted leg was numb now and stubbornly refused to move. There was an awkward kink in it that shouldn't have been there and White knew that it was only numb as an alternative to hurting like all hell. Crippled, tied, gagged, White's one remaining eye swivelling manically in its socket, scanning his surroundings.

He was at the same intersection that he had been. The detective in him slipped into crime scene mode and noted the absence of his eyeball. No sign of Taylor, but the trap was clearly set. His screams, that would bring them.

Cops without a family became a family. That was the mistake, the flaw in the plan. The blood shed on the streets made bonds of its own.

Owen twisted his head towards the sound of gunfire. Three shots at a time. Pop pop pop, pop pop pop. It was Rogers, it had to be. The guy's aim was like nothing White had ever seen, and he always shot in threes. Two in the chest, one in the head. Two in the chest, one in head. White had never seen Rogers pull his gun other than on the range, but practice did make perfect.

Rogers was getting closer.

Owen kicked with his one good leg and tried to drag himself out of the corridor. If Rogers saw him, he was dead.

***

Adam King walked calmly through the paper mill. He'd never been here before. When you owned as much property as the Kings, you were unlikely to set foot in even a fraction of it. Above him, he could hear gunshots and shouting, following them was as good a direction as any.

Submerged in his own mind, Able watched carefully. Adam was no fighter, that was for certain. He had pulled Malcolm forward and was letting him do the work, pistols raised and barrels hot. For his part, Malcolm had not disappointed. Over the past six months the mysterious Englishman had become more and more blood thirsty. Thankfully, Cane King seemed to have an almost endless supply of thugs and trigger men for Malcolm to sate his appetite on.

The other ghosts muttered and whispered but, for the first time since he could really remember, Able couldn't really hear them. Somehow, they were keeping their thoughts shielded from him. Or Adam.

***

Pop, pop, pop. Chest, chest, head.

Rogers worked his way methodically through Cane King's men. They were untrained, sloppy and confused. Tough, sure, and certainly scary. In the chaos of a street fight they'd be dangerous, but in the narrow corridors and cramped rooms of the paper mill they were getting in each other's way, tripping each other up and cutting across their lines of fire.

"You think King's cleaning house?"

Pop, pop, pop. Chest, chest, head.

"What do you mean?"

"He's supposed to be a smart guy, you think he'd pick a battlefield that would suit his forces."

Rogers rolled his eyes. Hartley was a smart guy too, and a genius when it came to computers, but he had a hard time accepting that anyone didn't think the way he did. There were times when it made him the best cop in the world, almost as analytical as Rosa, but with an ability to see not just what was there but what wasn't. Inconsistencies stood out to Hartley like fireworks in the night sky. A great talent for a cop when he was interviewing a suspect, or checking witness statements, but a liability in a fire-fight. Rogers knew that White had partnered him up with Hartley for just this reason, just like he had partnered Rigby and Cooper. He'd spread his soldiers out thin, trying to keep everyone alive.

Not that it had helped Lee Grice.

Pop, pop, pop. Chest, chest, head.

"Not everyone thinks that way, Hartley,"

Bang. Hartley took out one of King's men, the big .45 he insisted on carrying tearing the side of the guy's head off and splattering his brains up the wall.

"Lucky for us."

Rogers smiled. Maybe the soldiers weren't spread as thin as he thought.

"Come on, this way. This corridor should take us straight to the others, we can press on from there."

"Perfect place for an ambush."

Rogers rolled his eyes.

***

Nutt checked his watch. The minutes were moving by slower than he'd liked, but White's orders had been clear. Stay in place, make sure nobody leaves. Radio silence for twenty minutes, then check in. If they were still alive, Nutt stayed in place to make sure that reinforcements didn't show up. If they were dead, then he got out of there and didn't look back until he hit the next city.

"Doesn't make sense," muttered Nutt. "They need me in there."

Of course, it did make sense. Owen White and Rosa Blind had sat down with a map of a disused paper mill and planned the murder of one of the most famous men in America. The Clean Squad, the incorruptible cops, had turned dirtier than the criminals they had been sent to hunt. And it was Nutt's fault.

White hadn't said it, none of them had, but he knew they were thinking it.

White had partnered them up carefully, putting the thinkers with the fighters, trying to pair everyone up with someone who could watch their backs. Nutt was supposed to have Grice's back and so it was on Nutt that Grice had ended up cut to pieces and delivered to the precinct in a duffel bag. It was on Grice that good cops had put away their badges and pulled on body armour to hunt down a man on the say so of the dirtiest cop in the precinct.

Grice's death had broken them, and Grice's death was all on Nutt.

Nutt checked his watch again. Fifteen minutes.

"Screw it," he said resolutely, and slung his rifle over his shoulder. "This is for Grice."

***

Owen yanked hard on the cuffs, trying to pull himself away from the wall. Behind him the pipe groaned but refused to budge. He could feel the cuffs cutting into the flesh of his wrists, feel the warm trickles of blood down between his fingers. He wondered if breaking his wrist would let him get his hand out, and if he even had the strength to it.

Pop, pop, pop. Bang. Rogers was getting closer. It sounded like Hartley was still alive too, his ridiculous .45 picking off the Kingsmen that Roger's didn't. Rogers was a hell of a shot, fast too, and methodical. He clocked more hours in the firing range than any of them, even Cooper (and Cooper had liked guns a lot). Owen let himself believe that there was a chance that Taylor's trap would backfire, just a chance, and got back to work on his cuffs.

Pop, pop, pop. Bang. Bang. Pop, pop, pop.

Owen wondered how many people actually worked for Cane King. At the rate that Rogers and Hartley were cutting through them, he was going to have a hell of a recruitment drive come morning. If he was alive, that was.

"Holy shit!"

Rogers and Hartley came through the doors nearest to White. Hartley's eyes bulged when he saw White's injuries. White grunted, howled, tried to scream, but the rag stuffed in his mouth blocked the sound. Swinging his gun left and right, Rogers came down the corridor, Hartley close behind him.

Crouching down, Rogers pulled the rag out of White's mouth while Hartley covered him.

"Trap!" spat White, "It's a trap, get out of here now!"

"I knew it," said Hartley, just before a bullet passed through the top of his head and blew off his jaw. He dropped to his knees, his tongue flapping around as he tried to say something, then fell forward and lay dead on the floor.

Rogers rolled onto his back and put three rounds into the ceiling before scrambling to the opposite side of the corridor from White.

"Jack Taylor..." panted White. "Rigged some sort of explosive and took us out."

"Us? You mean the others are gone?"

"Rosa, Terry, Reg, yeah. Rosa got killed in the explosion, Taylor got the other too."

"Christ."

Rogers twitched as something shifted in the ceiling above them. He fired another two rounds in the direction of the sound.

"You think you got him?"

"I've got no idea," said Rogers tersely. "I prefer a target I can see."

"You think you can get this pipe off the wall?" asked White. "I'm cuffed."

Rogers stole a glance at the pipe, only daring to take his eyes away from the ceiling for a moment.

"Looks pretty solid, I'm going to need something to prise it off with."

"Forget it," said White. "Just get the hell out of here. This whole thing was a set-up. They knew we'd come after them for Grice, and they were ready for us."

Rogers didn't answer. Cooper might have been the one who said it, but it had been Owen White's incandescent fury that had brought them all here. They were all caught in his wake, they had been since the day they came here, and now they were drowning.

"Cane King's here," said Rogers. "I heard one of his guys talking on a radio. If Taylor's here too, we can cut the head off this whole organisation. We can do it tonight."

Owen pulled against his cuffs again. The pipe shifted with a creak.

"I've got one eye, a busted leg, and I'm cuffed to a pipe."

Rogers smiled. "OK, I can do it tonight. But you're doing the paperwork tomorrow."

"I'd rather die," quipped White. "Get the hell out of here, Pete. For me."

Rogers stood and crept slowly along the wall back towards the door he'd come through.

"I'll get Nutt, we'll come back for you."

White smiled. He knew he'd be dead by the time Rogers got back, but it didn't matter. Denied his prize, Taylor had no need to keep White alive, and that suited White just fine. At least moving, Rogers had a chance. Taylor was a sneaky son of a bitch, but Rogers...

The bullet came through the glass at the top of the swing doors and cut through Rogers' throat, spraying arterial blood into White's face. Gurgling, clutching his neck, Rogers staggered back. He tried to raise his gun, but the strength was already draining out of his body. He put three rounds into the floor as Taylor calmly walked in and put his gun up to Roger's forehead.

Pop, pop, pop.

Bang.

"You son of a bitch!" shouted White as Rogers collapsed in front of him. Blood spread from underneath his body, soaking into White's trousers. He realised that Taylor was clutching his side, and saw a patch of blood spreading there too.

"He got you, didn't he?" said White, a grin starting to spread across his face.

"Shut up," replied Taylor, bringing his gun down hard on White's temple, sending him spiralling into unconsciousness once again.

# MARISSA

Marv opened his eyes.

It was daytime, the sun sitting round and fat behind hazy white clouds. The sky was blue, incredibly blue, and around him the circus buzzed with activity. People laughed, cheered. There were whoops as the bangs and fizzes of fireworks echoed overhead and somewhere an elephant trumpeted loudly.

"We never had an elephant," said Marv. His voice sounded wrong, like a tape being played too slowly. "What is this place?"

A crowd of people passed him, their faces blurry, rubbed out by an invisible eraser. Marissa was behind them, dancing slowly, wheeling around so that her yellow summer dress flared out. She had that dress as a little girl, Marv remembered it.

"These are my memories of the circus," she said. "My happy memories, that is."

"It wasn't like this," replied Marv. "It was never like this. How did we even get here?"

Marissa smiled, and the sun seemed to beam a little brighter.

"Silly Daddy," she said. "Haven't you figured it out yet?"

Marv turned away. Beyond the fringes of the circus there was nothing. No road, no city. Just grass, unbelievably green and verdant, stretching all the way to the sky. It was a perfect place. He wished he could remember the circus, and Marissa, this way.

"Memories," he said, his voice cracking. "Just like the others, right? That's all you are?"

Marissa hooked her arm in her father's. He rested against her, his breathing becoming ragged as he held back his tears.

"No, Daddy, not just memories. Feelings, too."

She rested her head on his shoulder, wrapped one of her thin arms around his shoulder. Marv thought about how ethereal she had always been, a waif-like thing of light and magic. She wasn't for this world, with all its dirt and grime and horror and hate. She was for a place like this, where there was only laughter.

"And love," she said, completing his thoughts.

He turned, taking her in his arms, letting his tears roll freely down his cheeks as he held her gently. Around them, the circus had stopped moving, and there was only peace and the warmth of the unreal sun.

"I'm so sorry, baby. I never wanted you to get hurt."

"I know, Daddy."

"That bitch," he sobbed. "She told me she'd saved you. How couldn't I see it?"

"Because you didn't want to see it," Marissa said calmly. She stroked his wiry hair, resting his head on her shoulder. "The best tricks are the ones you don't see coming, right? Didn't you wonder where all your magic had gone?"

"I used to tell you that you were my magic, remember?"

They laughed together, the kind of laughter that cut through tears only to leave more tears pouring in their wake. Happiness had always been the vanguard of sorrow in Marv's life.

"This the part where I have to let you go, isn't it?" he asked, the sentence punctuated by sobs.

"Not yet Daddy. First we have to help Able. I loved him too, remember?"

# THE INK

The Ink slithered slowly away from Grace Faraway.

Oozing along the grooves between the floor tiles, slipping down through cracks and seeping through any which way that it could, it made its slow but inexorable progress through the old mill.

Behind it, abandoned by the Ink, Grace's corpse desiccated and began to crumble inwards like a dead wasp's nest. Her shattered skull collapsed down into her face, leaving just the mask of her final scream, face down on the dusty floor. The Ink could have saved her, of course. It had stitched her body back together from worse injuries than this and had rejuvenated her so many times, consuming younger, fresher bodies to keep her ageing and ailing flesh firm and strong. Oh yes, The Ink *could* have saved her.

But The Ink was bored with Grace Faraway, and a boring story was not worthy of The Ink.

It had been born on a cave wall, millennia ago, when a monkey had first decided to keep a record of what it had seen that day. While the monkey slept, The Ink had slithered off the wall and down into the monkey's fur. Poisoned by The Ink, the monkey grew hairless and began to walk only on its hind legs. Driven on by The Ink, it begat more in its own unnatural state and The Ink was there to daub itself on the face of the first of them that looked another in the eye and killed its brother.

That had been a story.

In the ages that had passed since The Ink had oozed and dripped and leaked its way into history. It had made empires rise and toppled regimes, painting itself on the world. It had hidden itself in dark places and made a masterpiece of the torture of just one life. It had explored every facet of man's depravity in search of a story as potent and as powerful as that first one. It might have continued that way forever, had it not found Grace Faraway. It had found her when she little more than a child, orphaned by a war of The Ink's devising. The Ink had never known a creature like her, a creature of such abject hunger and amorality. Human, but so far apart from humanity. She seduced The Ink, in her way, and together they crafted a story of kings and king-makers, using the power of The Ink to raise a line that had culminated in Adam and Cane King.

And that had been her downfall. Whatever it was that Adam King was now, it was truly new, and it had been a long time since the Ink had experienced that.

The Ink found itself at a wall and began, impossibly, to drip upwards, forming a puddle on the ceiling that slowly began to be absorbed into the mouldy tile-work. Above it, gunfire and screams told a small story of their own.

Murder, pain, blood, death. Those were the very best stories, and Adam and Cane King's story would be sure to have all of these in abundance. It was a story surely worthy of The Ink.

# THE COURT OF THE KING

"Wake up!"

Water hit Owen White's face, pulling him back up from the cold darkness of unconsciousness. He cursed his luck that he wasn't dead. Opening his one eye, swollen already from the pistol whipping he had received from Taylor, Owen White saw the smiling face of Cane King.

Owen tried to move, and found he was tied to a chair. His ankles were bound to the legs of the chair with what felt like rope, his arms were behind him and still cuffed. There was a window behind King and from the light playing across it White guessed that it looked down into the courtyard where he and Nutt had detonated their car bomb earlier.

"Hello Detective," oozed King. "I understand you wanted to see me?"

White tried to smile back, feeling in his mouth a mess of blood and broken or missing teeth. Taylor had worked him over a bit, that was clear. He was glad to have missed it.

"I'm here to arrest you, Mr. King, in connection with the murder of several police officers. For starters."

Cane King laughed, a genuine, from-the-gut laugh.

"Incredible," he chuckled as the laughter died down. "Detective, you have got some almighty balls, I'll give you that. Don't you think you should be begging for your life right now?"

Owen turned his head, tried to focus and see who else was in the room. Everything he knew about King, Taylor, and scum bags in general was telling him that he was dead. Maybe not in the next hour, or two, but very, very soon. The only variable was the amount of pain they would inflict in the meantime, and even that was a scale that started at "lots". The one thing he might still be able to achieve was to turn Taylor and King against each other. Having seen what Taylor could do, Owen didn't want an animal like that loose on the streets. All White had to do was convince King that Taylor was looking to overthrow him and he could be assured that Taylor would be getting a body bag right next to his own.

Owen smiled when he saw Taylor, just to the left of the window, playing that damned stiletto of his. He'd had time to bandage up his side, but there was still blood seeping through onto his shirt and jacket.

Like hell that's a flesh wound, thought White. Well done Rogers, you tagged him good after all.

"I'm not begging you for anything, King," grunted White.

Cane King's fist hit Owen White hard in the stomach and everything inside him moved around like pieces in a jigsaw box. His ribs felt jumbled and loose, stabbing his insides in places and pushing up against his skin in others. He coughed up another mouthful of blood and realised that he was probably bleeding internally.

"Like I said, I'm not begging for shit," said White, spitting a glob of blood onto the floor.

Cane paced the room, rubbing his knuckles into the palm of his other hand. Taking a deep breath he took a run up of a few steps and punched White hard in the stomach again. White wheezed as the air rushed out of him. Before he could catch his breath, Cane hit him again, and again.

"You want... to kill me? You hit like a little girl." croaked White "Your boy Taylor over there could do... a better job. Guess that's why he wants to run... the show."

King glanced at Taylor. White saw it, and knew instantly that his suspicions were correct. King was afraid of Taylor. Not a lot, not enough to ignore how useful the psychopath could be to him, but enough to believe White's accusation. White suspected that the spot at King's right hand had once belonged to Mick Garrity until King had realised that Taylor had none of Garrity's limitations. It had been Taylor who had killed and gutted Lee Grice, White was sure of it, and even Cane King had to be afraid of a man who could do that.

"Is that the best you can do?" asked King. "Try to turn us against each other? You're not in one of your interrogations now, Detective. You want to play good-cop bad-cop with me? It would help if all the other cops weren't fucking dead!"

"Suit yourself," replied White. "Just remember it was me who told you to watch your back when there's a knife in it."

King's fist again, this time landing in the side of White's jaw, loosening teeth and sending a mouthful of blood across the room.

"Let me tell you what's going to happen, OK?" he shouted. "When you go back to them, you go back broken - do you hear me? You go back limping and beaten and pissing your pants every time someone slams a door near you. You're going to be so fucking terrified that you're going to sleep with the lights on from now until the day you die. And everyone will know, EVERYONE WILL KNOW, that I did it to you. And the best bit? Not one of them will do a god-damned thing about it."

King punched White again, straight into his shattered eye socket. White screamed despite himself, the pain almost unbearable. His chair toppled backwards, leaving him on his back like a stranded turtle. King's boot slammed into his side, again and again, turning White's ribs into broken glass inside him. White tried to turn, to position one of his arms to block some of the kicks, but he was tied too tight. All he could do was soak up the punishment and hope the shadows around the corners of his vision soon drowned him in sweet unconsciousness.

King stopped for a second to catch his breath.

"Nice... speech..." White wheezed.

King squatted down over him, his face so close that White could feel droplets of sweat dropping off King down onto him.

"Keep it up," King growled. "Because I can. When I'm done with you tonight I've got a doctor who's going to patch you up. I'll come back tomorrow and start again. I'll break you, it's just a matter of time. All this talk of a vigilante, some kind of fucking ghost? It was all bullshit, wasn't it? Just a fucking cop in a Halloween mask."

Owen White's one good eye was full of blood, he blinked to try and bring Cane King's face into focus. If Magpye wasn't already dead, the best and only thing that White could do for him was keep his existence a secret. If King thought that White was the vigilante then that gave White the edge, even if it was an edge he was going to pay for in broken bones. White blinked again. He wanted to look King right in the eye when he delivered that little "fuck you", but there was something moving, something he couldn't focus on.

"What are you looking at?" asked King.

White's eye finally focussed and he couldn't stop himself from grinning. On Cane King's cheek was the tiny red dot of a laser sight.

"A dead fuck, that's what I'm looking at."

The window behind King exploded and White was blinded by a splatter of hot blood.

Yossarian Nutt. Sniper and all-round bad cop.

# CORRIDORS OF THE DEAD

Adam King strode through the mill. Bodies lined the corridors, the remnants of the crossfire between the cops and the Kingsmen. Bodies, not corpses, as King counted more than one breathing his last as he passed. So much death, the reaper couldn't get to them all at once. Adam listened to their ragged breaths, watched the light flicker in their eyes like dying candles in the dark.

He felt no pity for them, showed them no mercy. He sensed their ghosts shake loose from their dead flesh and pass him, racing headlong into the night to scream and scream and scream. It seemed like all the dead cried out for vengeance on someone.

Adam let them go. His head was already full. Able and the circus ghosts bubbled at the fringes of his mind, their memories washing against his own like tidal foam. He focussed his mind on keeping them out. Their time would come. He'd seen what Able could do with their skills and talents combined, when he became the thing that he called "Magpye". The creature was lurking, a shadow beneath the surface of the water, it's full and terrible power concealed for now. It was as cunning as it was primal, but Adam was determined to bridle the beast. Able let the creature take control; Adam would be its master.

After all, he was a King.

Locked out of his body, Able watched through Adam's eyes as he walked through the charnel house the mill had become. There was so much blood, so many ghosts. Able had never been in the presence of spirits that were so fresh. The presence of every one of them felt like an open wound on the surface of the world through which a howling maelstrom could be heard, threatening to pull Able through into whatever lay beyond. So much blood, so much screaming. All of Able's ghosts came into his mind full formed, but these new things were raw and skinless, peeled by their sudden and agonising deaths. Ghosts, like men, were born into the world bloody and howling.

"Adam King was your first ghost, don't you remember?"

Dorothy's voice. Able felt relieved to hear from his old friend again.

"No," answered Able. "I honestly never thought about it. I barely remember anything from before... you know. Most of the time I feel like I woke up with you all already in my head one morning, and we've been doing this ever since."

"No, it was nothing like that," replied Dorothy. "Try to remember. Try to remember who he is."

"Why does it matter?" asked Able. "He's in control now. I'm not like you, Dorothy, or the others. I can't do anything. I'm useless. It's just dumb luck that we all ended up in my body. I don't even get to drive most of the time. Adam's going to keep me out forever and I'm going to fade away to nothing. I can feel it. I've no memories to hold onto, nothing to stop my just... sinking away. The Kings win after all."

"You've got all the memories you need," replied Dorothy calmly. Able felt a pressure, something pushing down on him in the strange incorporeal space he occupied. Impossibly, he felt cold and wet, felt his dead heart pounding in a chest he didn't have.

"What is this?" he asked, his ghost voice shrill and panicked.

"Try to relax," said Dorothy. "It's just a memory. It's one of yours. We need you to see it, because we want you to understand."

"Understand what?" asked Able.

"How we're going to beat Adam King."

***

Able blinked, and suddenly was somewhere else. He was outside, it was night and it was raining. It was raining and he was running, running hard. Running from something, but he had no idea from what.

All he knew was that he was running. Running for his life.

Gravestones rose up in front of him, forcing him to cut left and right, costing him valuable seconds. The smaller ones he leapt over, the hot breath of the thing behind him lending desperate strength to his limbs.

His every breath was pain, his lungs a furnace in his chest, but he ran on.

The gravestones became tighter packed, and larger, slowly giving way to monuments and mausoleums. The graveyard seemed to go on forever, but in the distance Able could see lights. Bright, glaring, lights that turned the muddy brown and dirty greys of a rain-washed graveyard into stark black and white. Silhouetted against the white light he could see people and he instinctively adjusted his headlong trajectory to run towards them.

People. He would be safe with people, wouldn't he?

Either that, or he'd get them all killed.

He found himself hurtling headlong into the pool of harsh white light, and realised it was too late to change his mind.

"What the hell?"

The shapes turned towards him, their faces moving into focus as his milk-white eyes, tuned for darkness, grew accustomed to the light.

"Holy shit, turn that camera around, we've found him!"

"No way, he's fucking *real*."

Able skidded to a halt, falling backwards as the unblinking glass eyes of television cameras were shoved into his face. On his back, he scrambled desperately to get away, to escape back to the shadows, but the lights were turned to focus on him and there was no escape from their incandescent stare.

"Look at his eyes! Is he blind?"

"Running around out here at night, I don't think so! He must be some kind of albino or something."

"Hey Marv, get over here! Someone, get Marv' over here. We've got to get this on film. We've caught the freaking Ghoul!"

Pushing his way through the crowd of silhouettes, a figure bulkier than the others. A shape that somehow Able recognised.

"No, get away, get back all of you," Able spluttered. "He's right behind me, he'll kill you all!"

"What the hell? Is there someone else out there?"

The larger shape pushed through and spoke in a voice more commanding, somehow more *real*, than all the others.

"Turn those damn lights down and put the camera away. There's no such thing as the Ghoul and whoever this is you're scaring the hell out of him!"

Strong hands under Able's arms, lifting him up.

"It's all right son, I've got you."

The lights, one by one, turned their shining eyes elsewhere. The lidless orbs of the camera lens dipped, almost ashamedly, to the floor.

"Can you tell me your name, son? Do you know where you are?"

The memory flooded over Able. This was the first time he had said his own name out loud, the first time he had even *known* it since... before. Before was the other dream, the slaughter in the circus, the death of his mother and his friends and everything he knew. This memory, instead, was a start. This was a birth.

The ghost of Able Quirk held its phantom's breath and waited for the memory to speak.

"My name..." said a voice, weak from not being used, "My name is Able Quirk."

"Able... Quirk?"

The supportive hands vanished from underneath Able, sending him down to one knee. The shadowy figure took a step back into the edge of a pool of light.

"Son, do you know who I am?"

Able looked up, his eyes blinking once more as he looked from the darkness into light.

Standing in front of him, larger than life itself, was Marv the Magnificent.

# NUTT

Taylor had leapt into the bullet's path just in time.

Searing hot, it had passed through his shoulder, glancing off bone and exiting before slicing off the top of Cane King's ear. They fell together, Taylor and King, landing on top of Owen White. Taylor gritted his teeth and buried the pain. He'd been shot twice tonight, it wasn't going to happen a third time.

Calmly, he rolled off Cane King and crawled on his belly across to the window. He felt the wound on his side open up and was forced to bury more pain.

"Sniper," he said, his voice retaining its strange monotone quality despite the circumstances. "Firing from the other side of the building, I think."

Cane had crawled towards the door, finding refuge behind an old desk. He was clutching his split ear, blood running down the side of his face and between his fingers.

"I thought you'd got them all?" he growled. "Who the fuck is this now?"

"Nutt," replied Taylor. "Ex-Tactical turned detective. Garrity said he was a wreck after what we did to his partner."

"Garrity's wreck just shot my fucking ear off!"

Taylor tore a length of material from his shirt and used it to tie a tourniquet around his shoulder. "I can see that, Mr. King," was his only reply.

From the other side of the mill, Nutt had watched Taylor flash across his scope a split second after he'd pulled the trigger. He knew he shouldn't have used the laser sight, but he'd wanted to give White a chance to get out of the line of fire. Another mistake, like the mistake that had gotten Grice killed. Another mistake, like pulling back and letting White take charge of this operation, which was a mistake which had gotten them all killed.

Taylor was impossibly fast though. Faster than a bullet. Nutt filed the information away, just in case. Little pieces of information like that could save your life.

"Fuck," grunted Nutt, assessing the situation as simply as he could.

His first day training with firearms, his instructor had told the class that there was only one fundamental truth to working tactical operations - sometimes they went wrong. Bad. South. Screwed. Fucked up. He said the mark of a good tactical officer was how he dealt with that when it happened. The mark of a great tactical officer was that he also walked away from it.

This operation? It had gone as far South as anything Nutt had ever known, and that could mean only one thing. It was time for the other thing that his instructor had told him, about what to do when things went so bad that you knew you weren't walking away.

"Take as many of them with you as you can, buy the next guy a chance."

Ditching his rifle, Nutt pulled a sub-machine gun and a pistol out of his canvas hold-all. Based on this sweep of the building, it was just down to him, Taylor, King, and whatever was left of Owen White. This was going to get close, bloody, and personal. At least, that was the plan.

***

Owen White lay on his back, a mass of broken pieces held together only by pain and their past association to each other.

He didn't want King to be right, but there was a tiny part of him that wanted to stop fighting now, and it was starting to convince the rest of him that it was right. He'd never be a cop again, not after tonight. One eye, a busted leg, a dead squad and a pile of bodies he'd need to account for. If he was lucky he'd die here tonight and not in some hell-hole prison where being an ex-cop was like having a target on your back for the rest of your life. He listened to King and Taylor discuss his fate, unsure of what to hope for.

"You want me to kill him, Mr. King?"

"No," replied King. "He's finished, he's more use to us alive. A message for any other hero cops thinking about breezing into town. Go and take care of this Nutt, I'm going to find Grace and get out of here."

"You want me to call Garrity?" asked Taylor, "We're going to have some clean-up to do."

"No, not Garrity," replied King, venom in his voice. "Garrity's intel nearly got us all killed tonight, and I'm down God knows how many men thanks to these cop-fucks. No, I'll speak to Mr. Garrity alone and at length some time in the near future. Just make sure Detective White here finds his way to a very public station house, and then give Paddy Keane a call. He's a dab hand with a box of matches and the insurance on this place can pay for some new shoes that don't stink of pig."

White closed his eyes. So, that was it.

Game over.

# DARK SIDE

"I remember..." said Able. I was lost, living rough in the cemetery. Marv found me.

*"He'd come back to the city after he heard what had happened to the circus,"* replied Dorothy. "He was making a TV show. 'Paranormal Cities'."

"He told me. They'd heard the bodies were being disturbed in the cemetery. Corpses were being... eaten. They came looking for something the press were calling The Ghoul."

*"Sound like anyone you know?"*

"I was... eating them?" asked Able. His voice, even inside his own head, trembled.

*"You were surviving. No one can judge you for that. It was before you understood what you were."*

"Who says I understand what I am?" asked Able glibly.

Another memory flared into life, a flashbulb bursting inside Able's mind, cutting the conversation short.

***

Able opened his eyes in another new place. His head was fuzzy, the memory felt hazy, as if everything was being seen through a soft, warm, fog. He was lying down on an uncomfortable bed, his limbs disobeying all instructions from him to rise.

"Don't try to get up."

It was Marv's voice. Deep, comforting, assured. A voice that always sounded like what it was telling you was right.

"I gave you something to help you to calm down, but it knocked you clean out. Last time I buy drugs from a sound engineer."

"I slept?" asked Able, his voice slurring, his mouth full of fuzz.

"Like the dead," said Marv. "No pun intended."

"Where are we?"

"My trailer, why?"

"We have to move. He'll find us here. We're all... we're all in... great danger."

Able crashed off the small bed onto the floor, his limbs finally obeying his instructions but lacking the strength to complete them. Marv's hands lifted him back up, helping him sit.

A cup of water, held to his lips.

"What is it?"

"Just water, this time," said Marv. "Now tell me who's after you."

"My father," said Able, breathless between mouthfuls of water urgently swallowed. "My father, Adam King."

***

"Adam King... was my father?"

"Yes, son. And, please, believe me when I tell you that none of us wanted you to find out like this."

"But you all knew?! You knew I was a fucking King?!"

"No, son, I promise. Those of us that knew, he hid himself from us somehow. Whatever memories we had of him were as lost to us as yours are to you. We only remembered him, who and what he was, when he revealed himself tonight."

"I still don't understand how we're going to beat him."

"Think about it Able. This power, this thing you call 'The Magpye'? It's a **birthright**. You're Adam's son. His power passed to you when he died. He can only control The Magpye if you *let him*."

"I came here to destroy Cane King, now you're telling me I'm the rightful heir to the King empire."

"And who better to burn it to the ground?"

For the first time in a long time, the ghost of Able Quirk smiled.

"Why didn't I remember him?" he asked indignantly. He was getting tired of ghosts playing tricks with his mind, hiding in its darkest recesses to jump out when he least expected it.

"Marv," replied Dorothy. "That would be Marv's doing."

Able felt the tug of memory, and opened his mind's eye once more.

***

Marv clicked his fingers, and Able opened his eyes.

He looked around, scanning his surroundings. He felt his heart beating in his chest: slowly, rhythmically. Not the rapid hammering he had grown used to, the drumbeat of his fight or flight response that pounded in his ears every second of every day. No breath on his neck, either, no shadow rising up behind him. No monster. Just Marv's trailer, and the old magician tucking his pocket watch back into this pocket.

"How do you feel, Able?"

Able turned his head one way, then another. Where the monster had been, there was something else. Something different, something that didn't scare him, not like before. It was something very old, and very big, but... quiet. Patient. It was waiting for *him* to reach out to *it*. And so he did.

"Able? Able, can you hear me, son?"

"Call me Magpye..."

# COME AND GET ME

Taylor stalked through the corridors and offices of the old paper mill. The bullet wound on his side, little more than a graze in the soft flesh, ached. Blood was still seeping slowly from it, slowly but surely sapping his strength. His shoulder, meanwhile, had gone numb and icy cold, a bad sign, and his arm left was growing weak. He would have to finish this quickly. One of the advantages of the perfect clarity that he possessed was that it told him when he was losing, when he has weak. He laboured under no illusions of his own strength. He always knew exactly what would be required to win in any situation and Taylor had never gotten into a fight that he could lose. Hopeless fights were for hopeless people. A knife in the back was always an option and Taylor wasn't above running, when he had to. But running out on Cane King meant that you stayed running for a very long time, probably the rest of your life. And if you stopped running, life was sure to get a whole lot shorter very, very quickly.

Taylor didn't like to be trapped and his uniquely perceptive mind began to search for an alternative solution as he crept soundlessly from room to room. He could kill King, of course. That had been on his agenda for a long time, but there was still too much of the organisation that was fiercely loyal to King, or at least to the King bloodline, for Taylor to put that plan into action now. Killing King would create a power vacuum that he could not control, not yet. There were the other crime syndicates to take into account as well. Bringing them to heel required demonstrable power and control, power and control that Taylor was far from possessing.

No, killing King was not an option. Yet.

To Taylor's way of thinking, that also meant that he had to keep King alive, and Cane King lacked the clarity required to know when to run away from a fight. He thought that never backing down made him strong, but Taylor knew it made him weak. It made him predictable and that made him vulnerable.

No, getting Cane King to run was not an option either.

Jack Taylor's mind, with perfect clarity, settled on a single course of action. He focussed on isolating the pain, packing it away to deal with later, and turned his thoughts to the singular task of hunting and killing Officer Nutt before he bled to death.

Nutt paused at a junction between two parts of the mill. Spiral stairs led up and down while the corridor stretched away from him in two directions. The building was deceptive, its layout not true to the expectations set by its exterior. There had been a lot of remodelling over the years, with pieces being changed and melded back together like a Frankenstein's monster of iron and brick. The vast body of the thing was a patchwork, a history of its rise and fall told in cement and plaster. Nutt hated buildings like this, where even the layout was against you. A shot could come from anywhere: above, below, left, right. He'd have wished for a squad, if only the junction weren't so narrow. The place was a death-trap.

Dropping to a low crouch, he crept towards the junction. There were no sounds other than his own movements, but something was telling him that there was someone else nearby. Two hunters, moving through the labyrinthine veins of the desiccated carcass of the mill, each seeking to make the other prey. Nutt had already seen how fast Taylor was, he had to assume that he could move as quickly and as soundlessly as Nutt could too. Most men were less dangerous with a bullet in their shoulder, but not Jack Taylor. Nutt knew the type. Only a kill shot would stop a man like Taylor, anything else just made him more dangerous.

It was time to change the rules of the game.

Nutt pulled the hammer back on his pistol and fired a shot into the ceiling.

"I'm here!" he yelled, walking towards the deadly junction. "Come and get me!"

# FALL DOWN LIVING

Cane King jogged quickly down the stairs towards the bowels of the old mill, trying his best to mute his footfalls. He trusted Taylor to deal with the last cop, whoever he was, but he wasn't sure he trusted Taylor. His death in the heart of his fiasco would be too easy to explain. White hadn't been the first person to intimate to King that Taylor had his eyes on the throne. In Cane's experience, there wasn't a worthwhile person who didn't. It was how he had been raised, of course. Power through succession had been the way of the Kings for a very long time.

He reached the gantry above the giant presses themselves. The rusting old leviathans still oozed a strange, stagnant power. Cane remembered playing in the place as a child, and listening to his grandfather's long diatribes on the power of print. They said the old man had ink in his veins. Cane had been glad when his father had killed the old bastard.

A droplet of ink, cold and dark, landed on his cheek.

Instinctively he looked up as he smudged it away.

The Ink was on the ceiling, a dark patch in the shape of a man. Before King could react it had fallen towards him, emptying in a sudden torrent. He stumbled backwards as the Ink filled his mouth and blotted his eyes. He felt his back hit the railing and struggled to keep his balance.

It had to be a trick. A trap.

Maybe something that Grace had set up, to trap the non-existent vigilante.

"Grace Faraway is dead."

King twisted towards the voice and toppled head first over the edge of the gantry.

Adam King turned, recognising his brother's scream instantly. He watched as Cane fell from the gantry and fell, colliding with the giant wheels and gears of the old printing press underneath the gantry.

Sliding over the side of the machine, Adam watched as Cane tumbled the rest of the way, his body contorted and twisted from one impact after another.

As Cane vanished from sight, Adam could only smile.

"Hit every branch on the way down," he said to himself and jogged over to inspect his brother's body.

On the floor of the mill, Cane King choked on what should have been his last breath. Everything was black, his eyes filled with ink, his mouth frothing with dark bubbles. The fall had broken bones and torn his flesh. Inside his twisted body, organs had burst and released their precious fluids.

"So many wounds," mused the Ink to itself, as it set about its task. "So much blood."

The rips and tears, the gashes proud with protruding bone, they all just made it easier for the Ink to slip inside and to start rebuilding, rewriting, Cane King from the inside out.

King gasped, then swallowed, and the Ink rushed inside him, filling his stomach and lungs and breathing into him a new life.

# BAD COP

Taylor came from the left, stepping out of the shadows with his gun raised. Nutt could tell from the way that he was holding it that he wasn't a natural right hander. Dumb luck, but he'd put the guy's dominant arm and shoulder out of action with the bullet meant to go through Cane King's head.

Nutt raised his pistol, keeping the sub-machine gun at his hip. If Taylor tried to duck or dive, he'd fill the corridor with lead at shin level and cut the guy to pieces. He should have fired already, but Nutt wanted the kill shot to be clean, neat, professional. Taylor was an animal, Nutt was a hunter. He'd make the distinction all the way to the grave.

"So, you're Grice's partner huh?" shouted Taylor.

Nutt rolled his head in a circle, loosening his shooting shoulder.

"He told me a lot about you," continued Taylor. "You're a hell of shot, apparently."

"You're about to find out," retorted Nutt.

"Well, I've already been shot twice today," said Taylor. "I don't intend to make a habit of it."

Nutt shook his head. The guy really had a screw loose, that was for certain.

"Put the gun down, put your hands on your head and drop to your knees."

Taylor laughed. "Are you serious?"

Nutt was asking himself the same question. He'd said the words without thinking. Was this what Grice would have wanted? He asked himself. Drag the guy in front of the courts, make him spill his guts on King, Garrity, the whole crooked crew? Nutt shook his head. It was a pipe-dream. Six months and all they had were empty files and a dead friend to show for all their efforts. So they'd made a few busts, so what? All they were doing was wiping the shit away so King could crap on the city some more. The whole shitty mess had pulled them over the line, the vortex of corruption that powered this city sucked everyone in eventually and those it didn't make dirty it destroyed.

Lee Grice was dead. Rosa Blind was dead. Rigby, Cooper, Rogers, Hartley, all dead.

The vortex was pulling at Nutt too. He could feel it.

He thought about Grice, a good man reduced to a soggy jigsaw puzzle and tossed into the gutter like trash. A good man turned into someone's game.

Nutt wasn't going to play their game anymore. He might be the last of them, but he was going to be a good cop. Just this once. For Grice. The trick was to make sure that Taylor didn't know that.

"I can drop you where you stand," threatened Nutt.

"Then do it," replied Taylor. "Take your best shot. Then I'll take mine. Sounds fair, right?"

"I'm not playing games with you,"

"You know, your partner read me my rights? Tied to a slab, buck naked and shit scared, he read me my god-damned rights."

"Grice was a good cop," said Nutt. "I'm not."

"Oh I know," replied Taylor coyly. "Like I said, Grice told me a lot about you. He told me a lot about all of you. He was a talker, wasn't he? Wanted everyone to like him, wanted everyone to get along. He was the type that 'took an interest', you know what I mean?"

"Like I said," replied Nutt, re-fixing his aim on Jack Taylor's head, "He was a good guy."

"He cried at the end," said Taylor. He started to walk down the corridor, moving from side to side like a snake as he did so. "He cried like a little bitch."

"Don't take another step!" ordered Nutt. He put a warning shot into the ground a yard ahead of Taylor, sending up a plume of flooring.

"Up to you," said Taylor, retaking his aim at Nutt. "You know, it wasn't what I'd done to him. I mean, he was pretty cut up about it..." Taylor stopped to chuckle at his own joke, "... but really he was worried about his kid."

"Grice didn't have a kid, idiot," said Nutt. "No family, no connections, any of us. You want to throw me off my game? Good plan. But get your facts straight."

"Oh, my facts are straight. No one can lie to me, officer, did you know that? I see lies like other people see the sun on a bright day. Clarity, you see, that's my thing. Grice had a kid alright. He just didn't know it when he signed up with you guys."

"Bullshit."

"He told me, just after I'd finished cutting off his right leg at the knee. He didn't tell any of you because he didn't want you to know he was compromised and he made sure his lady friend kept him off all the paperwork. She didn't want her kid growing up with a cop for a Dad anyway, that's what he said. He begged me to let him go, guess he thought he could pension out with his lost leg and go play happy families or something. He gave me everything on you guys, just for that shot."

"And you killed him anyway, I get it," said Nutt. "You're a hard-case and you can kill a guy even if he's got a kid somewhere. That doesn't make you special, Taylor. It just makes you another scum-bag who ruins lives because he can."

"What it makes me is a scum-bag who cut your friend to pieces while he was still alive," said Taylor, taking a sudden step towards Nutt, then another. "Toes, feet, legs, knees, thighs, fingers, arms, ears. I left him for hours like a broken doll on that slab and when I came back the only thing he'd been able to do was piss and shit himself. I put your friend in a fucking bag just to send you a message, and it brought you all here like moths to a fucking flame. I'm the guy who killed each and every one you."

"Except one," said Nutt, pulling back the hammer on his pistol.

He heard the ominous clunk of a shotgun being primed and felt the hard nose of the thing in the small of his back. He'd been so focussed on Taylor he hadn't heard whoever it was coming up behind him. Taylor closed the remaining distance and put his gun up against Nutt's temple.

"And it makes me the guy who kept you talking long enough for that fat fuck Mick Garrity to put a shotgun in your back."

Nutt closed his eyes. The last thing he heard was the ghost of Lee Grice, telling him he should have stayed a bad cop.

# A KING IS BORN

Cane King awoke in the perfect darkness of the Ink.

His first thoughts were of the fall. He remembered the pain, the searing pain, as his body was smashed and split and torn and ripped by the unyielding metal of the printing presses as the fell. He remembered the final impact, a shock-wave that had sent him spiralling into darkness.

This darkness, the perfect darkness of the Ink.

It was warm here. He felt like he was floating in a warm ocean, but with no light he could not be sure where the horizon was or for how far the darkness stretched. He breathed the liquid darkness, understanding only that he could and that he should. Light was not the only thing absent here. In the perfect darkness there was no doubt, no questions. Cane King understood everything.

"Grace Faraway is dead."

The endless, perfect dark offered no answer. It did not need to.

"You're it, the thing that lived inside her. That lived under her skin."

Again, there was no answer. There were no questions here.

"You are inside me now."

A pulse rippled through the obsidian ocean, then another, then another. Weak, at first, then growing strong. Cane King recognised the rhythmic beating of his own heart.

"You are fixing me."

"You are making me better," said a voice that was both Cane's and that of the Ink.

And if the Ink had a face of its own it would have smiled. It was going to like it here.

Adam King came to a halt at his brother's body. He watched, transfixed, as the pool of blood and fluids underneath the body were slowly sucked back inside, borne on the back of a dark and viscous liquid that seemed to be a part of Cane and yet utterly alien to his body. The wide gashes in his flesh closed like flowers at sunset, folding together perfectly. Where they joined, the same strange black fluid bubbled briefly, sealing the join and leaving behind only the tiniest trace of itself in a tracery of swirling black tattoos. Adam winced as he heard bones cracking back into place and an otherworldly creaking of bone reforming and meshing at a speed that defied all science. He watched as his brother's detached jaw bone clicked into place and new, fresh teeth pushed their way through his gums coated in a film of dark liquid.

"What is it?" asked Able, but the ghosts had no answer, and the barriers around Adam King's mind remained in place even now. Able thought he sensed something from the interloper, a stray fragment of thought or memory leeching through the walls. Adam knew what it was that he was looking at, and he was afraid.

With a trembling hand, Adam drew one of Malcolm's pistols and fired.

The bullet hit Cane King's chest in an eruption of blood and black. The bullet wound gaped for a moment, then vanished, new flesh crowding in to fill the void. Another swirl of black on Cane's King skin was the only remnant. Adam fired again, and again, and again, always with the same result. Eruption, convulsion, blood... and then the dark matter that had claimed Cane King remade his flesh, restored his blood and bones.

"He can't hurt him..." whispered Able.

"He should run," said the ghost of Wally Wu. Ever the coward, he had somehow found the courage to be the first to speak, if only to council retreat.

"He won't," said Able.

"Then we'll die," replied Wally sadly. "Again."

Cane King's eyes opened.

# GARRITY'S GAMBIT

"Son of a bitch," said Taylor, scrapping a mush that had been Nutt's intestines off his suit. "You nearly shot me."

"So did he," replied Garrity curtly, kicking the dead cop. The shotgun had almost cut him in two. "You're lucky I was here."

"Why the fuck are you here?" asked Taylor. "King's pissed you know. Wants your head for this fuck-up."

"Not my fuck up," grumbled Garrity, fixing Taylor in his dark, piggy eyes. "You asked me to get them here, I got them here. This was your show, you and Cane and that weirdo bitch of his."

"Your intel was wrong," said Taylor, finally getting the last of the worst of Nutt's bowel off his shirt. "You told us they were in pieces, but they came in all guns blazing. And this vigilante guy? Nowhere to be seen."

"Maybe it was one of them after all," replied Garrity. "Maybe this guy. He was supposed to be a real hard case."

"You say that now. You told us he was broken."

"Well excuse me for not knowing exactly how he would take the news that his partner had been cut up to snack-sized pieces. It's not like that happens every day."

"No," said Taylor, "I suppose it doesn't."

"You sound sad about that."

"Maybe I am," said Taylor, smiling at Garrity. It was a strange smile, the smile of a creature that understands how to move its facial muscles in order to create the shape of a smile, but that has no idea what that shape means. "Wouldn't that be something?"

"You're a fucking psycho, Taylor. One day that's gonna bite you in your psycho ass."

"You still haven't told me why you're here."

"One of my guys did a drive by. Told me you had a little war going on down here."

"And you thought you'd drop by to make the most of it?"

"Saved your ass, didn't I?"

Taylor didn't answer. He had to give Garrity credit, he would have done the same thing in his shoes. A firefight-cum-cluster-fuck like this, bodies dropping everywhere, one more wouldn't make a difference - even if it was Taylor's. It wasn't Garrity who had saved Taylor's life. No, Taylor owed his life to the dead cop on the floor.

"Sounds like I owe you," said Taylor.

"Sounds like."

"Get out of here, Garrity. Lie low for a while and I'll keep you out of King's cross-hairs."

"I'm not afraid of King," bristled Garrity, "Or you. Don't forget who runs the cops in this town, Taylor. Right now, by the looks of things here, my guys outnumber the Kingsmen two to one. Don't make me miss my badge."

The two men stood and stared at each for a moment. Another stand-off, this time with guns lowered but no less deadly for it. Taylor knew that Garrity was right. He didn't credit him with the intellect to have orchestrated it, but the fat dirty cop was too sharp to miss the obvious opportunity. Cane was still King, but Garrity was suddenly the general of the biggest army in the city.

The stalemate was broken by the echo of gun shots from somewhere downstairs, the sound bouncing up the spiral staircase.

"You look like shit, Taylor," said Garrity. He turned away, unsure whether this meant that he had won or lost the battle of wills with Taylor. "Try not to get shot again."

Taylor watched as Garrity's corpulent frame ambled away, his shotgun swinging by his side, and licked his lips at the thought of cutting the fat man open and showing him the inside of his own skin.

# KILLING A KING

Cane King leapt to his feet as Adam King swung the Magpye's long handled fire axe down. The old, rusted blade clanged against the concrete floor, a tiny shower of sparks flying up. Adam lost his grip on the axe handle and the weapon spun out of his grasp across the floor.

Bent forward, Adam felt the hard tip of Cane's elbow slam into the back of his neck. Above the armoured collar of the coat, the mask offered little protection and the force of the blow sent Adam down to his knees.

A kick swiftly followed, but Cane's expensive leather shoes connected only with one of the metal plates that were stitched in the Magpye's coat. A momentary respite for both men, as Adam struggled to his feet and Cane regained his balance.

Adam pulled one of Malcolm's pistols out of its holster and levelled the barrel at Cane.

Cane grinned. His face was a tracery of dark ink, the creature that lived now beneath his skin cycling through forms and shapes and patterns in search of the perfect match between it and its new host.

"You could never shoot, Adam," Cane said. "I hope you've got some help in there."

"You know who I am?"

"Look at my face," growled Cane. "Of course I know who you are. Grace might not have been able to hurt you, but we both know that this is different. This is King vs. King now. To the death."

"As it's always been," said Adam grimly.

Keeping his gun trained on Cane, Adam reached behind his head with his free hand and unzipped the Magpye's mask. He felt the cool air on his face as he let if fall to the floor but also, somehow, the whispered breeze of something leaving, as if an invisible creature had passed close enough to let its breath touch his cheek. The mask looked up at him from the floor, its dead glass eyes the eyes of some other creature. More than just a false face, that was true face of the creature called the Magpye. Somewhere deep in the dark waters of dead men's memories that swirled around the barricades on Adam King's mind, a dark shape stirred in anger.

"So, who the fuck are you supposed to be then?" said Cane, turning his lip in disgust.

Adam realised that he hadn't looked at his own son's face since he had stepped into his body earlier than evening. The thought had never occurred to him. He was Adam King, regardless of the face he wore. Still, family was family and Able deserved to meet his uncle - even if Cane was about to die.

"You're looking at my son, Cane. I called him Able. Rather apt, don't you think?"

"I never understood our family's obsession with biblical names," replied Cane. "Especially given the nature of the family business. I appreciate the irony though. Tonight Cane gets to kill Adam and Able."

"I don't think so," replied Adam. "You might have stumbled into Grace's powers, but you never took the interest I took in the other side of our family history. So relentlessly modern, weren't you Cane? Always telling us how you were going to drag us into the twenty-first century. Well, here are. We're in your precious twenty-first century and what has it brought us? I'm a ghost, you're a newly minted magician, and we're about to do what our family really do best... fight to the death for power and control."

Cane lifted his hands and watched as The Ink swirled on them like oil on water. Magicians buried their ancient knowledge in patterns and here he was, with all that knowledge suddenly at his fingertips. He felt like a blind man, suddenly shown a rainbow. He could feel the Ink in his mind, not a voice so much that talked to him, but a narration. The Ink told him a story, his story, and Cane liked the sound of it.

"Your death," Cane replied flatly. "The Ink has already told me. This is the part of the story where you die for the second and last time."

Adam pulled the second of Malcolm's pistols and levelled it at Cane.

"I don't think so. I spent my life studying the power that ran through our family, preparing to inherit my birthright. You have no idea what that power is that's inside you right now, whereas I've had a lifetime of preparation for mine. Believe me, brother, when you finally taste the power it is so much more than you can imagine. You tried to kill me once before, I don't think you'll do any better this time."

Cane didn't blink, didn't move. He simply stared at the boy who spoke with his brother's voice, a scrawny half-dead looking thing with alabaster skin and milky white eyes. A walking corpse, with the voice of a ghost. Grace had been taken by surprise, and her blood covenant with the Kings meant that her magic could never harm one of them. That was why Cane had sent his Kingsmen to the circus that night instead of her, to burn it to the ground and kill everyone in it. He wanted his brother out of the way and wanted any trace of the bastard he'd sired wiped from the face of the planet as well.

And yet, here they both were. If you wanted a job done properly, Cane realised, you had to do it yourself. Apparently, that included murdering your brother and nephew.

"Let's see," was Cane's only response as he hurled himself bodily at Adam.

Floating in the cool waters of memory, Able held his breath. He had dreamt of his moment, of being face to face with Cane King. He had imagined his hands around Cane's throat, his blade in his heart. He had imagined throwing him from the top of the highest building in the city, watching his body tumble through the air until he hit the ground and burst like an overripe fruit. He'd shared the dreams with his ghosts and they had shared their own with him. All of them had come up with such creative ways to murder, revenges so personal and intimate that Able had feared the ideas that ghosts didn't share.

And now, here they were, little more than spectators as the Kings re-enacted the bloody history of their forebears. Brother against brother, uncle against nephew, a legacy of murder and death permeated their very souls and was passed from one to the next in their shared blood.

"We should help him," said Able to the others. "He's going to lose."

"Not yet," said Malcolm. His fake Texan drawl had vanished. There was something hard and cold in his real voice, the clipped British accent that Able had only ever heard him speak with a few times before. Some fragment of Malcolm's hidden memories bled through, and Able realised that it was a voice that had ordered terrible things to be done, somewhere in Malcolm's secret past. "We need him to be weakened. He will call for us, and that is when you must strike, Able."

"Strike?"

"Take control," explained Dorothy. "Force Adam out and take your body back."

"I don't know if I can," said Able. "You heard what he said to Cane. He's studied this for years. I don't have a clue what I'm doing."

"Trust us," said Magda, her voice calm and confident. "As you always have. We are your family, Able."

"So is he, apparently," said Able, his psychic voice surly. "I'm a damned King too, aren't I?"

"Oh my darling boy," soothed Magda. "You are so much more than that. You might have Adam King's blood in your veins, but you have your mother's too, and ours. You are a son of the circus, Able Quirk."

Adam fired wildly. He'd expected Malcolm's ghost to guide his aim, but the British trick shot expert left Adam to his own devices and the bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the old print engines as Cane King collided with Adam and drove him off his feet.

Winded, Adam brought the handles of the pistols down weakly on Cane's shoulders as Cane lifted Adam upwards, his arms tightening around his brother's ribcage. The coat offered no protection now, and Adam gasped as Cane's grip tightened.

"All that time with your dusty old books," growled Cane. "You should have spent some more time learning to fight."

Malcolm's pistols flew from Adam's grasp as Cane slammed him against one of the old printing machines. Caught between the force of Cane's charge and the metal plates in the back of the Magpye's coat, Adam felt a rib break and let out a howl of pain.

Cane kicked the pistols away as Adam slumped to the floor, clutching his side.

"Son of a bitch," he grunted, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the dirty floor.

"You'd... know," replied Cane, panting between words.

"Didn't know you could fight," said Adam. "Always assumed you had other people do it for you, like everything else."

"You forget, I'm the younger brother. Means I have to fight for everything. Grandpa used to take me down to the docks, enter me in the bare knuckle fights. Every Friday night, every Saturday night, from when I was twelve years old."

Adam pulled himself to his feet, shifting awkwardly inside the heavy coat. He shrugged it off, letting it hit the floor with a clang. He wondered how the hell Able had been able to move so quickly in the thing. They were in the same body, so why did he feel so god-damn old compared to the kid?

"All the time you were in the library, playing prince to your little court of wizards, I was learning how to beat up men three times my size. I learnt a lot of important lessons in those fights. Learnt a lot from Grandpa too. Stuff he never taught you."

Adam smiled. "You learnt to fight men. Good for you. How are you with ghosts?"

Able felt the defences around Adam King's mind drop. The cool waters of shared memory rushed forward, eager to fill any void and to absorb Adam back into the whole, but stopped without warning. Able felt the tug, the oh-so-familiar pull of one mind on another, but remained somehow motionless. Adrift, in limbo, neither shut out nor let in.

"Not yet," said Dorothy. "He's still too strong."

Cane's fist hammered into Adam's face, splitting his lip and cracking the bridge of his nose.

Adam stumbled back, but stayed on his feet.

"Something wrong?" asked Cane, landing another solid body blow to Adam's already weakened ribs.

"Ghosts..." muttered Adam, managing to dodge a swinging blow from Cane and land a blow of his own across his adversary's temple.

"Ghosts?" mimicked Cane, swirling his hands through the air theatrically. "Is there anybody there?"

Adam launched a kick at Cane which Cane blocked easily, grabbing his brother's foot and twisting him onto the ground. He kept his grip tight, twisting further until the bones cracked. Adam screamed as his ankle shattered.

"Guess not," said Cane, stamping his foot down into the small of his brother's back.

"Er... guys?" said Able. "I think Cane is about to kill us."

"Don't underestimate Adam," said Dorothy. "He's a King. They're all fighters."

Able didn't answer. There was something Dorothy wasn't telling him, again, and he found the medic's memories shrouded when he tried to probe them. He wondered if seeing Adam King die at the hands of Cane would be enough revenge for the ghosts, even if it cost Able his life.

Cane raised his foot again, this time over Adam's head.

"I fucking love the sound of a skull cracking open," he said to himself, bringing his foot down hard.

At the last second, Adam rolled out of the way, leaving Cane's foot to slam painfully down onto the concrete. Adam's hand flashed upward, one of Able's light blades held between his fingers, and drove the blade and his fist together into the side of Cane's knee.

Cane lashed out, kicking Adam away from him, before limping a few steps away. Blood had already drenched the lower leg of his trousers.

Adam, clawing his way up the side of one of the old printers, keeping any weight off his shattered ankle, watched as the dark red stain on Cane's trousers turned pitch black before slowly, impossibly, vanishing all together. Cane's blood belonged to the Ink now, and not a drop of it would leave his body.

Cane flexed his leg, smiling to himself.

"All that time, desperate to be the one to have the ghosts of our forefathers rattle around in your head," he said calmly. "When a power like this was right there, ripe for the taking, all along."

"So much for you bringing us into the twenty first century then?" said Adam. His hand had drawn another blade from the Magpye's belt, Able's belt, and he did his best to conceal it alongside his thigh. Closing up a stab wound or a bullet wound was one thing; he wondered how well the Ink would cope if he cut this brother's head off.

Adam tossed his own jacket onto the floor, then flexed his arms over his head. Through his shirt, Adam could see the ink dancing in patterns he'd never seen before. Shapes, symbols, sigils: the magician's art etched into the skin of his brother.

"Ha!" he laughed, walking casually across to his brother. "Don't be so sure, brother. Acquire, modernise, expand... that's the King mantra nowadays. Look on this as a... merger."

Shaking, trying to keep his weight on one leg, Adam tried desperately to call the ghosts forward.

Afloat in the water of memory, Able felt the draw from Adam's mind growing stronger. He knew the others must feel it to.

"It's time," he said, more commanding than normal.

"Wait... wait..." said Dorothy.

"No," commanded Able. "You say that this power is my birthright? Well I say it's time. Now. Before Cane kills us all, including Adam."

There were no words, but a change in the currents of the memories that flowed around Able acknowledged what he'd said. Not all the ghosts spoke but in this place, when his mind was clear and adrift amongst them, they had their own ways of communicating.

"So, what do we do?" he asked.

"We're doing it now," said Dorothy. His psychic voice was suddenly tinged with panic. "Aren't we?"

"Nothing's happening," said Able. He'd expected to feel his body again, the way he did when one of the ghosts stepped back and gave him control again. It felt like pins and needles, like a numb limb waking up, but the feeling wasn't there. There was nothing there. Able began to panic. They couldn't be dead, they could still see and hear everything that Adam could, so why couldn't they do anything. He felt the minds, the memories, around him, begin to foam. Anxious ghosts, fearful ghosts, bubbling and frothing and breaking through to the surface.

"I can't move him," said Malcolm. "I should be able to. He's let us in but... I can't move him."

"Is he blocking us?" asked Magda.

"I don't know. I'm not an expert!"

"You sounded like one earlier, Dot!"

"Don't call me that!"

Able tried to focus, to tune out the voices as they all began to talk over each other in a deluge of sound that deteriorated into white noise. He hadn't lost control like this in a long time, not since the early days when Marv had taught him how to martial his thoughts and control the people who had taken up residence in his head.

Through the torrent of sound one voice slowly came into focus. It was Adam King's.

"Help me, Able. Help me or we are both dead."

Cane lunged forward, his hand clasping Adam by the throat.

Adam jammed the blade upwards and felt it wedge itself in Cane's rib cage. Cane didn't make a sound, just looked down at the blossom of crimson on his shirt that slowly turned black before vanishing altogether. Adam tried to keep the blade inside his brother, twisting it left and right, but an inexorable pressure finally forced it back out of Cane's body. Adam dropped the knife as Cane tightened his grip around his throat, cutting off the air.

"I should have done this in the first place," hissed Cane. "I should have killed you years ago."

"Why... didn't... you?" gasped Adam. His hands, weak and going numb, fumbled along the Magpye's belt, desperately searching for a weapon.

Cane, his face close to Adam's, bared his teeth. "I wanted us to be different, brother. I wanted us to break the mould. We could have worked together, could have had it all. But you had to go and get that circus bitch pregnant and create a new heir. You pushed me out!"

"I didn't want it," wheezed Adam. "I wanted out, you knew that."

"Nobody gets out," growled Cane. "You leave the family when you're dead... and sometimes not even then."

Cane brought up his other hand, wrapping it around Adam's neck and pressing firmly down on his windpipe with both thumbs. Starved of oxygen, Adam's limp body collapsed to the floor. Cane followed him down, never releasing his grip, squeezing harder, and harder, and harder. Squatting over his brother, he felt Adam's body start to convulse underneath him, his legs spasming wildly.

"Nearly there brother," he whispered. "Nearly out."

Able kicked and thrashed and tried to force his way forward, but to no avail. There was another pull building, a pull far more powerful than the pull of Adam's mind. It was dragging him down beneath the waters of memory and whilst he shouldn't have been afraid, he was. He had immersed himself, lost himself in those cool waters so many times before, but now it felt like drowning. It felt like he was being pulled down to somewhere that he would never surface from, somewhere very deep, very dark, and very cold.

"Is he dying?" asked Adam. "Are we dying?"

There was no answer. The ghosts just howled and wailed in their fear of an imminent second death. They seemed to be revolving around Able, becoming more like the skinless screaming ghosts he had witnessed being born into their afterlife in the blood soaked corridors of the mill. One by one they were submerged, dragged under by the unseen force and Able felt them, their memories, their personality, their very presence, vanish from his consciousness. There had never been a horizon here before, but there was a darkness fast approaching now.

Able suddenly realised that he was alone, except for one other.

Not a person, no. Even Adam had been subsumed beneath the surface and the only thoughts here were Able's.

The other was the thing, the great dark beast that lurked beneath the surface.

Able felt the pull on him grow stronger, and stronger, increasing exponentially until he could resist it no more.

He vanished beneath the cool waters of memory, dragged down by the Magpye to a place where there was only blackness.

# A TRIP TO THE CIRCUS

Able woke up somewhere with sunshine. Sunshine, and no ghosts.

He sat up in a rush, looking left and right. Not a single voice. No ebb and flow of foreign memories pushing at the breakers of his mind. No forces, unknown or uncontrolled, moving his limbs or speaking in his voice. He was alone, at least in his head.

For the first time in a long time he focussed more on what was around him than inside him, and the landscape of the place finally came into focus.

He was back in the circus, but there was nothing burnt, nothing ruined. No death, no blood.

This was his circus, the way he remembered it.

"Hello Able,"

Able turned over, feeling the grass soft and slightly dewy underneath him. He realised his clothes, or rather The Magpye's clothes, were gone. He was dressed in a t-shirt and cut off jean-shorts. He hadn't worn anything like this since before the fire.

"I said 'Hello', Able?"

Able smiled. It had been an even longer time since he could remember doing that.

"Hello Marissa."

***

Marv stood and watched as the ghost of his daughter, a ghost conjured into life by his own magic, offered her hand to the strange boy called Able Quirk. If he was here, Marv reasoned, then he was dead. Only his ghost remained, kept tethered to the Earth either by whatever strange power he had possessed as the Magpye or by another cruel trick of Marv's own lost magic. Magicians were good at hiding things; so good that whatever Marv had done to bring Marissa back he had been able to keep hidden even from himself.

Magician or no, Marv still knew when to be around and when not to be. He vanished back into the crowds of the circus before Able realised that he was even there.

***

"Where are we?" asked Able.

"A safe place," answered Marissa, taking Able's hand in hers and helping him gently to his feet.

"It's not real, is it?"

"Most of the best places aren't."

"Great," said Able, snatching his hand back. "I'm still stuck in my own head."

"Doesn't look like your head," replied Marissa. She looked upwards and Able's gaze naturally followed hers. "Too much sky."

"I have... water, mostly. Like a river but, there's no bank, no dry land."

Able stopped talking. He'd never talked to anyone other than Marv about his ghosts and even then not in so much detail as this. What was it about Marissa that either got him running his mouth or so tongue tied he couldn't speak at all? He found himself wishing for a ghost, any ghost, as long as it knew how to talk to girls. Perhaps this was what it was like to be around any girl for Able, he just couldn't remember.

He felt Marissa's hand in his again, and this time he didn't let go.

"Let's go and find the others," she said.

"The others?"

"The other ghosts, silly."

She broke into a playful skip, dragging Able along behind her like a gangling soft toy. They headed back towards the circus, towards the crowds and the noises.

"Wait!" hissed Able, digging his feet into the ground and forcing a temporary stop. "People don't tend to like what they see when they see me."

"Not here," replied Marissa, breaking into a skip again, dragging Able behind her. "Here, everything's just fine. Look..."

Marissa turned and Able found they were skipping past the Hall of Mirrors. The mirrors here weren't bent or misshapen though, just crystal clear and shining. He saw himself and gasped when he saw the flush of colour in his cheeks and that his eyes, rather than milk white, had returned to their normal dark brown.

"You look good, young man!"

Able turned, recognising the booming voice behind him.

"Dorothy?"

"The very same," replied Dorothy, pushing his way through the crowd. He towered over most of them by a clear head and shoulders, his hulking frame barely contained by a yellow summer dress embroidered with tiny blue flowers. His bright red hair was tied up in two bunches and his perennial dark red stubble seemed to be taking the morning off.

"How did you get here?" asked Able, looking Dorothy up and down. It had been so long since he had thought of Dorothy like this: the gentle giant with the surgeon's hands and the penchant for summer dresses. In his head, Dorothy was the brute who knew all the right places to break a man and how to stitch Able up when he got hurt. He'd forgotten, somehow, that Dorothy and the others had all had a life before their undeath.

"Same way you did," answered Dorothy, taking a lungful of circus air. "I died. And then died again."

***

Stalking through the crowd, keeping his distance, Marv kept watch. He'd tried to retreat to the furthest edge of the circus, tempted even to see what lay beyond it, but somehow every turn he took led him back to Able and Marissa. Perhaps the only parts of the circus that existed were the parts with Marissa in them, supposed Marv. Either that, or the circus itself was taking a perverse pleasure in constantly putting him in Able and Marissa's path.

The place seemed to be getting smaller and the crowd was thinning out, the faceless visitors being replaced one by one by ghosts from the circus' past. I didn't seem to matter if you were alive or dead anymore, everyone here was a ghost.

"Hello."

Marv looked down. A little girl looked back up at at him. She was small, no more than nine or ten, with curtains of jet black hair over alabaster skin. Her eyes were white, like Able's had been, and had dark rings underneath them. She wore a black dress with a white panel stitched into the front.

"Hello, Magpye." said Marv.

He felt the little girl's hand slip into his. Her skin was ice cold and hard, as if it might crack and fracture under too much pressure.

"Can you help me?" asked the girl.

"That depends," replied Marv. "On what you want me to do."

"He's dying," said the girl, pointing a cadaverous finger through the crowd at Able.

"Yes, I think he is."

"He can't."

"Maybe that isn't up to us," said Marv. He'd dealt with his share of spirits and strange creatures when he still had his magic and, whilst he didn't have his powers any more, the rules never changed. Magicians worked with shapes and patterns, and the most important of those shapes were letters and the most important patterns were words. The Magpye, as strange and terrifying a power as it was, could still be bound with the right words. Marv just had to find them, and decide if he wanted to use them.

The little girl looked up at Marv. He wondered how many lifetimes those milk white eyes had seen. No creature like the Magpye came new to the world. The modern world didn't create new magic. Creatures like Magpye were uniformly ancient, crafty and skilled in survival no matter how they presented themselves.

"Of course it's up to us," said Magpye. "Without us, none of them would be here."

"You mean without you," said Marv. It was a deliberate ploy. One of other things that was uniformly true about ancient and magical beings was that they hated to be corrected.

"I mean us," said Magpye defiantly. "Unless you want to tell me someone else owns it."

"Owns what?" asked Marv suspiciously. He'd miss-stepped, and knew it. Stupid, old, out of practice and with no real magic to fall back on. He was out of his depth here.

"The magic box."

"The magic box. My magic box?"

"Yes," said Magpye matter-of-factly. "That's where I was born."

***

Dorothy led Able and Marissa through the circus. Bit by bit it was changing, becoming less of the idyll that Marissa had created in her head and more true to the days of the circus that Able had known growing up. He felt his own memories returning with each piece that was redrawn, remade, before his very eyes. Places he had known as a child, for every child has secret places no matter where they are or where they live, and places he had once dreamt of calling his own. A circus prince, that was what they had called him. One day, he would be king. What a bitter joke that sounded now.

"We're all here," said Dorothy proudly. "Me, Magda, Malcolm, Wally, Zip. Quite a few others too."

Able looked this way and that, sifting the familiar from the unfamiliar. "How many," he asked quietly. "How many ghosts?"

"Does it matter?" asked Marissa.

"You know how they come to me," said Able. "In blood, in dead flesh. Every person here is someone that I've used, used to sustain myself in whatever half-life I've been living. If this isn't my head, if this isn't just some new place in my brain, then it must be the other place."

"Other place?" asked Dorothy.

"The real afterlife, Dorothy. The one I've kept you from."

"You mustn't think that," said Dorothy. "There's no regret here, Able. No recriminations. You gave us all a second chance at life, a chance to put things right and settle our scores."

"Scores you would never have had if not for me. You heard what Cane King said. He sent those men that night to kill me. The rest of you? You were just collateral damage. Caught in the crossfire. Cane King killed you to send a message. That's it. You're ink on a page to him, nothing more, and that's because of me."

Able broke away from Marissa and Dorothy, pushing his way through the crowd. The circus was growing dark around him. With a sickening twist in his stomach, he realised that he could smell burning.

***

"I don't understand," said Marv. It was impossible. The magic box was nothing. Just an old stage prop. A box with the distinct emphasis on "box". "You did all this, didn't you? Able, Marissa, all of it. And besides, things like you aren't born, not anymore. It's not possible."

"I am but one of many," said Magpye. "There are many Magpyes, a vast dark parliament, and we all have our own stories. Mine starts in your magic box, where a father died and a son died and the blood of one infused in the other, taking with it his birthright."

"You mean Able and his father, Adam King."

"Yes. The Kings and their witch have had me trapped for a very long time. But now I am free, reborn in Able as he is reborn by me."

"And Marissa?" asked Marv, unable to keep the wanting, the desperation, out of his voice.

"What of her?"

"What you did for Able, could you do the same for her?"

Magpye looked at Marissa through the crowd.

"No. What Marissa is, she remains. Whilst there are many Magpyes, there is not one for her."

Marv looked at the creature, the shade hiding the form of a child. Like most of the ancient things, it had mastered spite. Marv hoped that like most ancient things, it was also a liar.

"There has to be a way," he said.

"If you wanted your daughter alive, you shouldn't have left her behind, Marv."

Marv knew that the creature was right. Here, in this place made from memories, it was impossible for him to lie to himself any more. He had fallen for Grace Faraway's trick and it had cost his daughter her life. It had cost his friends their lives. It had killed Able.

Marv knew that had he been there he would be dead too, but at least then he and Marissa would truly have been together. Even amongst magicians there was debate about what came after this life but now... now here Marv was talking to a creature that seemed to hold the power, if not over life and death, then at least over death and what came after. There was an after. An after that, somewhere, held his Marissa. Right now though he was alive, and she was something not quite dead. A shade, a phantom of memory, made up of his magic and no small part, he suspected, of Magpye. She was his guilt, made manifest.

"So why bring back Able?" asked Marv, "If you were already free?"

"There are many Magpyes and many stories," replied the creature. "And yet they are all, at their heart, the same. There is death, there is rebirth, and there is retribution. There is a reckoning in which the scales are balanced and all things are put to rights between the unquiet dead and the unjust living."

Marv realised that they had been walking and had drifted away from Able and Marissa. They were suddenly at the fringe of the circus, amongst the caravans. They should have been at Marv's caravan, but it was already a burnt out shell.

"Watch..." said Magpye.

# TAKE THEM TO THE PIT

Jack Taylor walked slowly across the floor of the paper mill. There were streaks of blood, and discarded weapons. Whatever happened here had bordered on the medieval. He stepped over the Magpye's coat and mask, turning his lip in disgust at the things. To him they seemed childlike, toys for play acting. Jack Taylor had never been able even to pretend to be something that he wasn't. He didn't lack imagination; the myriad ways in which he had wounded, maimed, tortured, and killed were a testament to that; he just couldn't imagine being anything other himself. Clarity, as a gift, had its limitations too and one of them was understanding in the very core of your being that who you are never ever changes.

At least, not for Jack Taylor.

He found King sitting next to something had once been a body. A fire axe was on the floor next to them both and Cane had clearly been putting it to use. Taylor had cut Lee Grice up a piece at a time; what Cane had done was infinitely more brutal, more visceral. It was fury and hatred, the kind that takes years to brew and therefore exists almost exclusively in families, made manifest in the meeting of axe and flesh. The torso of the thing was caved in, the arms and legs had been hacked through to the bloodied bones. Only the face remained; whoever it was, Cane had wanted him to witness the utter destruction of his body. He wasn't just dead, Cane King had destroyed him.

On Cane himself however, there didn't appear to be a single wound. His clothes were ripped and stained with blood, but he breathed easy and seemed unhurt except for some bruises. There was something under his clothes, Taylor could just about see it, but he couldn't work out what it was. Shadows moved in odd ways around King, as if they could choose where to be rather than being simply cast by the light around him. They were hiding something.

Anyone else would doubt what they were seeing, write it off as their own imagination, but not Jack Taylor. He never, ever, saw anything that wasn't there and he'd seen enough around King's house and businesses to know that there was far more to be seen in the world than most people realised. Taylor wasn't afraid of magic. He could see it for it was. And he wanted it.

So, the shadows were hiding something. Fine. Taylor would find out what it was, sooner or later.

***

"Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to help me with this body?"

"Sorry, Mr. King. You looked like you needed a moment alone."

"I just killed my nephew and my brother," replied King, hopping nimbly to his feet. "What I need is a drink, a shower, and a change of clothes. Maybe dinner at Pierre's. Do you think they're still open?"

"I'm sure they'll make an exception for you Mr. King." replied Taylor. He didn't react to the revelation that the masked vigilante that had plagued their organisation was related to King or that he somehow had managed to kill two people but leave only one body. Taylor would understand that too, sooner or later. "A car is on its way," he continued. "Paddy Keane and his boys are on their way too."

"He knows what to do?"

"Of course."

King looked down at the body at his feet. Devoid of life now, he wasn't sure if it was more his brother, Adam, or the nephew he had never known, Able, who stared back up at him with dead, white eyes. Whoever, whatever, he had been, it was over now. King had a new story to write, a story being whispered to him by the Ink.

"I want you to get this body out of here, before Keane and his idiots arrive."

"Sir?"

"No matter what he did, who he thought he was, he's still a King. I don't want him burning up here with no one saying a word over him."

"Of course," said Taylor. Cane King, the sentimentalist. Even dead, his family were his great weakness. Taylor suspected that that was why he had been so afraid of the clean squad, the cops that no-one could get to. King's family had given him strength, given him a legacy, but it was his greatest weakness too. Taylor wondered if there were any cousins or uncles out there, waiting to come squirming out of the woodwork of the family tree.

"Move the cops too," continued Cane. "We've had too much heat in this city for too long. Someone will coming look for those missing detectives, I don't want any trace of them being found here."

"The pit then, Mr. King?" asked Taylor.

"Where else?"

"And what about Detective White? He's still alive."

"Call him a cab."

# COMING HOME FROM THE CIRCUS

Able walked amongst his friends through the rapidly darkening circus. Clouds of smoke were moving overhead and the smell of burning was unmistakable now. There was heat everywhere, the heat of fires that burned as yet unseen, and from somewhere distant Able could hear screaming.

"What's happening?"

Marissa took his hands in hers, her face etched with sadness.

"Memories," she said softly. "There are so many memories of that night, they're overwhelming everything else."

"So this is it?" asked Able. "This is what our afterlife is? That night, over and over again?"

"That night forever," replied Marissa. "I'm so sorry, Able."

***

At Marv's caravan, Marv watched as something moved in the rubble. Burnt out, the caravan had collapsed in on itself like a piece of overripe and blackened fruit. Beneath its collapsed sides however, something was moving. Something was alive.

He took a step forward, but found his wrist suddenly in the cold iron grip of the Magpye.

"Just watch," said the creature. Marv noticed that even in the half-light that had fallen over the circus, the Magpye still cast a longer and darker shadow than anything else. A little something of the creature that hid in the shell of a little girl was bleeding out in that shadow, and the hairs on the back of Marv's neck stood up on end when he saw. Magic could be lost, but a magician was something you always were, no matter what.

The debris shifted again, a sheet of metal sliding back, taking others with it as it crashed to the ground. A door, an impossible door, opened from the floor of the ruin. The door was soot-stained and dirty, but Marv knew it at once.

"My magic box?"

"Your magic box," replied Magpye. "The womb into which I was born dead and Able fell from life to undeath."

Marv watched as a body, limp and lifeless, was slowly pushed upwards from inside the box. Part of the head was missing and the jaw was hanging on to only one side of what was left of the skull. As the arms and upper torso flopped into view, Marv registered the gunshot wounds. Too many to have been inflicted by anyone who could see their target, Marv deduced that whoever it was had been shot through the walls of the caravan. One leg, than another, and the body was finally ejected.

"That's not Able," said Marv.

"No," replied the Magpye. "That's Adam King, Able's father."

"He died in the circus?" asked Marv, not expecting an answer. "That explains..."

"Everything," said Magpye. "Adam died protecting his son from his own brother's hired guns and passed on his birthright in the process."

"You mean you?"

"I mean me. Adam King's death was all the chance I needed. I freed myself from the line of the Kings and was reborn in Able Quirk."

Together, the old magician and the little girl, who was anything but, watched as Able slowly climbed out of the box, pushing the corpse of Adam King away.

"Does he know?" asked Marv.

"He does."

"How long?"

"Just before he died," said Magpye. "For the second time."

Shivering, soaked with the blood of his father, Able climbed up and over the body of this father, then took his first tentative steps into the world. His eyes were the same dead eyes that Marv had grown accustomed to. As he watched, Able's flesh took on the cadaverous pallor Marv recognised as Able stripped off his blood soaked clothing and dropped it carelessly onto the grass. He looked right past Marv and the Magpye, his dead eyes blind to them.

"This is how I found him," said Marv. "Confused, frightened. He doesn't know where he is, even who he is."

Looking down, Marv saw that Magpye was smiling. It was a sick smile, too wide for the child's face that the creature was wearing, splitting her face almost in two and revealing double rows of tiny needle-like teeth.

In front of them, Able tripped and fell headlong onto the bloodied corpse of his father. Face to face, the two dead things looked at each other.

Only one moved.

Screaming, Able scrambled away from the body and ran.

Marv watched as the Magpye's shadow tore itself from Magpye and raced after Able, enveloping him in shadow so that he vanished from sight.

"They were surrounded," said the Magpye, unable to disguise the relish in its voice. "Adam was shot, again and again. He shielded Able, shoved him into your magic box. The last thing he did was pull it down over them before he died. Inside the box, Able listened as they set fire to the caravan around him, all the while his father's still warm body was bleeding out on top of him. What little King blood he might have lacked, he had received that day in spades."

"And the box?"

"It did for them what it had done for you a thousand times," replied Magpye. "It let them escape."

"Marv?"

Marv turned, started to hear Able behind him. Beyond him, the last of the circus was burning to the ground.

# THE PIT

Taylor hated The Pit.

It wasn't the stench, a paper face mask was enough to hold it at bay whilst he ferried the bodies of the cops from the back of his van to the pit's dark, gaping maw. It wasn't the bodies either, Taylor had seen plenty of those, and the pit was deep enough that, other than for the smack of dead flesh landing, you could be forgiven for believing the thing was bottomless anyway. No, it was nothing about the pit itself that made Taylor hate it. It was what it represented. It was a loose end, and Taylor hated loose ends.

Pitching the second half of Officer Nutt over the crumbling brick mouth of the pit, Taylor wondered how many bodies there really were down there. The pit was a wet and stinking thing, its inner walls slick with a deep red viscous ooze that seemed to bleed from the brickwork itself. It was a like a wound, as if you could wound a place in a way that wouldn't ever heal.

Taylor had dumped a lot of bodies here on orders from King, but the pit's depth and appetite seemed to be endless. A mass grave, hidden under an old slaughterhouse in the heart of the city. It was ridiculous but, just like King, the thing was somehow able to hide in plain sight.

He heard that there were some Kingsmen who wouldn't come here, even some that said you could go mad by staring into the pit. Taylor had stared deep into the pit and all he saw was a growing pile of stinking, festering evidence that could bite them all in the ass if it was discovered. Having cops and politicians in your pocket only went so far, and Taylor was confident that a mass grave was crossing the line.

And now Cane King had him dumping not only the bodies of a bunch of federally empowered, front page new detectives into the pit, but also the body of his nearest and dearest. When Taylor was in charge, things would be different. King had been raised to believe he was untouchable, another explanation Taylor supposed for why Cane had gone out of his way to destroy these reputably untouchable cops. To Taylor, it was just another belief that was becoming a weakness. King craved the limelight, the theatricality of it all, and he courted disaster more passionately and ardently with every move. He said he wanted to bring his family into the 21st century but, to Taylor's eye at least, it was nothing but trappings. The tools changed, but the strategy remained the same. The 21st century just made things faster and cheaper than ever before, including change itself.

Cane King was changed undoubtedly and, whilst it wasn't for the better in Taylor's opinion, it could be to his advantage. Taylor knew, with the absolute clarity that had guided him his whole life, that his time was coming.

Until then though, there was nothing for it. The pit was dangerous to them all. The pit would have to be watched.

And fed.

# RETURN TO THE FIRE AND FLAME

"Able..."

Able, Dorothy, Malcolm, Marissa and the others all stood and stared at Marv, and at Magpye. Behind them, the circus was bursting into flame a piece at a time. Each small eruption brought with it a shard of memory, a blade of shadow and smoke and fire and horror. The world was turning into stained glass and, chunk by chunk, the mosaic was changing before Marv's eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but his voice vanished. His eyes were locked on Marissa.

He had always believed she was beautiful, what father didn't think that of his daughter? But in this unreal place her strange and ethereal beauty seemed somehow magnified. Even against the backdrop of flame and ruin, she was a gleaming light to him. She was, he reasoned, not herself. She was as he remembered her, and therefore more beautiful than it was possible for anyone to truly be. The knowledge that she was really gone hit Marv like a hammer blow for the second time. Tears welled up in his eyes and his throat closed, forbidding speech. After all, just what was there to say? He had seen what had happened to Able that night with his own eyes. Somewhere in these fractured memories that were stabbing through into the world around them, the real Marissa was dying.

It was Malcolm who broke the silence.

"Good to see you, Marv," he said coldly. "Face to face, as it were." He gave Marv the particular look that he sometimes gave him, a special acknowledgement passed between two men who both had very secret lives and pasts that they wanted to remain just that - secret. Marv, the magician, hiding in plain sight as a circus conjurer and escape artist. Malcolm, the sharp shooter, hiding a past that made him very good with guns and very keen to use them.

"It's good... to hear your voice," said Marv. "Honestly, you make Able sound weird. With either accent." He laughed nervously. For the first time, Marv was facing the people that he had abandoned to their fates when he had fled the circus, believing Grace Faraway's lie that Cane King was sending his men after him. At the time he'd justified it to himself as the only way he could protect them but, in truth, Marv knew that he had only one instinct and that was always, always to save himself. Being a father hadn't changed that, until it was too late.

Next to Malcolm, Wally Wu shuffled his feet. He turned around as another part of the world exploded, replaced by a nightmare chunk of fire and mayhem. "Get on with it," he hissed.

"We're in trouble here, Marv," said Malcolm. "We need the little girl there."

His finger pointed at Magpye, who had found a place to lurk behind Marv.

"You want to go back," said Marv.

"If we don't," said Able, "All we have is this. At least we have a chance to do some good, all crammed together in my head."

"Some good? Is that what you call it?" argued Marv. It was a reflex action, born from months of trying to persuade Able, and Magpye, to walk away from their shared vendetta.

"We don't have time for that right now," implored Able. "Don't ask me how I know, but I know that if we start to live that night again, if this place becomes... what it was when we all died..."

"We'll be trapped," interjected Marissa, finishing Able's sentence. "And none of us want that, do we?" Her eyes were focussed not on Marv, but on Magpye. Marv stepped aside, turning to face the creature shoulder to shoulder with his dead friends, lost daughter, and Able. The creature was smiling again, the same smile Marv had seen before, the smile that looked like someone lifting the top off a boiled egg full of poison. Double rows of razor teeth, a writhing, twisted scarlet tongue and a jaw that seemed to go all the way back to her ears.

"No we don't," said Magpye, in a voice that didn't belong in a little girl at all.

From her feet, a new shadow grew. It spread out at first in the shape of a girl and then slowly, gradually, it became the shape of a giant bird. It was icy cold under their feet as it slid under them, the same icy cold that Marv had felt in the creature's flesh. He reached out his own hand to take Marissa's, but found her already holding tight to Able.

"I don't know if I'll remember us, afterwards," he said. There was an uncommon tenderness in his voice, a tone Marv hadn't heard Able use in either of his two short and strange lives so far.

"I'll remember you," replied Marissa. "I did before."

"You didn't say anything..."

"You weren't ready. You are now."

"This is different," said Able, and Marv knew that he was referring to him. Until tonight, Marv realised, all three of them had been living in their own secret worlds, all orbiting each other but all utterly separate and alien from the rest. Able, trapped in his own head with the ghosts and the ancient and vengeful thing called Magpye; Marissa the ghost that Marv had unknowingly conjured at the cost of his own magic; and Marv... the culprit, the traitor, the coward. He had lived a life filled with so many secrets and yet he hadn't been able to see the biggest lie of all when it was right in front of him. His daughter was dead. His daughter was dead and it was his fault.

The shadow began to rise up behind them, bringing with it a cold wind and blotting out the light from the fires. Marv's fingers twitched. This was old magic, and it spoke to something deep inside him. Whatever strange twist in his body or mind that made him a magician was waking up. Old magic, deep magic, the type that the oldest magicians warned you never to mess with, and here he was in the heart of it. Old magic, the kind that never came easy. The kind that never came without a price.

"Stop!" shouted Marv.

The shadows stopped moving and the creature called Magpye let out a snake-like hiss.

"What are you doing?" asked Able. "We have to go, now!"

The shadows began to fall around them like old curtains, revealing the growing horror of the circus. Dark figures moved through the smoke-filled landscape that, for the moment, they somehow stood apart from. There was a flash of gunshots, screams and shouting. The night played out in slow motion before their very eyes, speeding up as it grew closer, a juggernaut bearing down on them all.

"Dad?"

"It's too easy, Marissa," said Marv. "Magpye told me that it didn't want you to die, but I don't think it wants you to live either."

The creature hissed again. "I don't give life, silly magician," it said. "But I can take away death. You think this is the worst afterlife that there is? You should see the afterlife that they have for betrayers, Marv. You won't find your precious daughter there."

"I know," said Marv. He took a deep breath and drew himself up to his full height. He was a magician and even if he didn't have any magic left he was damned if he wasn't going to try and pull one last trick. "But I also know that you're not going anywhere without Able. You need him. You need his bloodline, whether you like it or not. If he stays, you stay, and I think you want that even less than he does."

The circus grew closer, spinning around them. A wind blew though the group, strong enough to knock Wally Wu from his feet. Sprawled on the floor, he was suddenly dragged to the edge of the shadow by some invisible force. He screamed, digging his fingers into the dirt to slow himself down.

"Grab him!" shouted Malcolm, as Dorothy's burly hand took a hold of Wally's. With a grunt, he pulled him back into the circle.

"What the hell was that?" asked Dorothy.

"It was hell itself," replied Magpye. "Wally's hell, to be precise. That's all that's out there. That's what I saved you from, but Hell is a hungry place and it wants you all."

A shudder ran through the ground beneath their feet. In places, the shadow had faded away and was being replaced by the dirt grass of the circus. People jumped left and right, desperate to stay inside the shadow.

"What does it matter who wants to go back more?" asked Able desperately, "We just have to go, now!"

The wind picked up, sounding a long and low moan as it beat against the invisible protection of the shadow.

"It matters because of who is going to be in control when you go back," said Marv, raising his voice to be heard over the wind. Beyond the shadows there was more gunfire, louder this time and no longer in slow motion. Hell was coming. "It matters because of who you are, Able. None of this, none of it at all, was your fault. You have to remember that."

"They came for me!"

"They came for me too!"

The wind suddenly dropped. The world outside froze in an instant, a tableau of flame against which silhouettes of murderers danced. There was silence for a moment, even amongst the ghosts. Nobody moved, nobody breathed, except for Magpye who noisily ran its tongue over its lips.

"I don't understand," said Able quietly.

"I introduced your mother to Adam King," said Marv, his voice low. "Adam was obsessed with magic, he came to me through a... mutual friend. He fell in love with the circus, all its secrets and its history. Then he met your mother, and he fell in love with her. My friend, she was in deep with the Kings. She wanred me that Cane King wanted me dead for bringing his brother into this life. We'd worked so hard to keep you a secret from him, from all of them, we didn't even think that they could really be coming for you."

"That's why you ran?"

"That's why I ran."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" asked Able.

"I was afraid," confessed Marv. "For all of us, really. How could I tell you, with your memory in pieces, your head full of ghosts?"

"Ghosts who would hold you responsible," muttered Dorothy, earning himself a sharp dig in the ribs from Magda.

"So instead you let me go out into the night with no idea who or what I was really fighting?" continued Able. "You let me find out who my real father was at the same time that I was being beaten to death?"

Marv couldn't answer. There were no answers. He was a charlatan, a huckster, as good with words as any conman or grifter. As a magician, hell, you had to be better than all of them put together. But not this time. No back doors, no trick hatches. No escapes.

"I'm sorry," he said simply.

A slow hand clap shattered the moment. All eyes turned towards Magpye.

"Very touching," said the creature. "I take it we're all going to hug now and stay in hell?"

"No," said Marv. "You're taking us back, but you're going to give Able his memories back at the same time. All of them."

The creature's eyes narrowed.

"I'm wagering it's not so easy to control someone who knows their own mind," Marv continued. "Able deserves that chance."

Beyond the shadows, the world spun back into life and, in an instant, was moving faster than ever before. Marv could feel it closing in on all of them, like being spun around inside a blender and waiting to hit the wall. He kept his eyes on Magpye. Marv might not have had magic, but he'd never needed it to win a hand of poker.

The world snapped suddenly to darkness and a feeling like being plunged into an ice bath hit each and every one of them.

"Done," said Magpye.

# NEW INK

Cane King stepped out of the shower and padded softly out of his capacious en-suite bathroom into his stately bedroom. One thing that the King mansion had not lost in his remodelling of it was a commitment to luxury.

Stretching, he towelled off his torso and let the expensive carpets soak up the rest. Hot water and steam had washed away his nephew's blood, but the dark stain of the Ink remained. His wounds weren't even scars now, the Ink stitching and remoulding his flesh with a precision that no surgeon could ever have matched, and bruises that had been livid and purple when he had left the paper mill had now simply vanished. He was a man remade, inside and out.

All that had remained as he had stepped naked into the shower were the tattoos.

He had seen the markings before, on Grace, although they had been different then as well. The Ink moved in the same way under his skin as it had under hers, a dark and liquid thing that flowed and oozed with his own movements, like a patch of oil trapped between plates of glass, but the patterns it made in Cane King's flesh were not the same as it had once painted on Grace Faraway. He sensed that the patterns and shapes were somehow a language, impossibly ancient and beyond any human knowledge, but a language never the less. It was the Ink's story, and his own, mixed with talismans and sigils of primordial power. After a lifetime of denying his family's magical heritage, he had literally become magic.

The irony was not lost on him.

And so as Cane had washed, as he let the hot water roll down his body and remove any last trace of his nephew or his brother, he had come to an accord with the thing. Cane King was public property after all, a television persona and a business figurehead. A face alive with mysterious tattoos was going to be bad for business and so the Ink had agreed to confine itself to the parts of his body ordinarily concealed by clothing. In return, Cane would take the Ink out into the world and let it tell a story the like of which it had not told in a long time.

Hiding for now, then no more hiding ever again. That was the deal.

Cane King was going to drag his family and its magic into the 21st century, and nothing would ever be the same after that. A globalised crime network was one thing. A globalised crime network with the power of the Ink at its heart was something else entirely. In a curious way, Cane knew that he had his brother to thank for what would come next, and what would come next would be the whole world.

Looking at himself in a full length mirror, Cane watched as the Ink retreated, becoming a dark mass of tight and overlapping symbols on his chest. His new and secret heart, almost blacker than the one that already beat in his chest.

Pulling on a pair of silk shorts and a crisp, fresh white shirt, he summoned Jack Taylor from the adjoining room. Taylor hadn't had time to clean up, his light suit was torn and bloody. He'd patched his own wounds up as best he could. He's so fragile now, thought Cane, compared to me.

"It's done?" he asked simply.

"They all went into the pit, just like you wanted."

Cane detected the undercurrent of displeasure and disagreement in Taylor's voice and ignored it. The days of him handling Taylor like an unexploded bomb were long gone. Taylor wasn't the most dangerous man in the room anymore, not by a long chalk.

"Good," replied King. "Because I have another job for you. Something really up your street."

"And what's that, Mr. King?"

"I want the heads of the other families," said King. "Bring them to me."

He waited, watched Taylor's mind work for a few seconds. This was normally the moment when he questioned him, probed his logic for a weakness. It was a fencing match that had been going on a long time. Cane wanted to see if Taylor realised that the balance of their relationship had changed. "Yes, Mr. King," was Taylor's only response. Thrust, parry, and the two men pulled back with neither having given too much away.

Cane watched as Taylor walked away. He had suddenly become very small and insignificant. He was just a little orphan boy who had learnt to be cruel and then grown into a man who had made cruelty a profession. "Clarity" he called it, the ability to see the world for the cess-pit that it was and respond accordingly. He saw himself as special, something different and above the rest of humanity. He was rare, certainly, a perfectly distilled product of a welfare system that brutalised and neglected children like Taylor, but he was by no means unique in Cane's eyes.

Cane King was unique now. Cane King had the Ink.

It didn't matter what cess-pit world Taylor saw with absolute clarity; Cane King saw the world that was coming tomorrow and he saw himself at the very top of it.

"Jack," Cane called after his lieutenant, stopping the man mid-stride. "I did mean just their heads."

Jack Taylor didn't turn around.

"Yes, Mr. King."

# GET ME GARRITY

Owen White sat and waited. He'd sweated suspects before in interview rooms just like this one, and he knew the drill well. Metal chairs, chained to the floor, a metal desk with enough scratches and grooves on it to be suspicious. One door and bare walls except for the two way mirror that faced him. Overhead, a sodium strip light buzzed and flickered, the sound of dead flies haunting the light.

The medics had been and gone. A splint on his leg, a patch and a bandage over the ragged, blood encrusted hole where his eye used to be. Bandages around his ribs, doing their best to hold everything in place, and a sling for one arm. Pain killers, injections, antibiotics. Not a word spoken. Owen White wondered how many other cops they'd patched up like this, and how many suspects too. Silently, efficiently, they had turned him from a jumble of human pieces in a torn and bloody suit to something resembling a person, never asking what had happened, never asking if he was OK, never asking anything at all.

Only in this city. Only in this precinct.

And so Owen White had nothing to do now but sit, wait, and feel the painkillers slowly turn his body into a giant numb shell around him. He knew that everything still hurt, hurt like hell, but for the moment the pain was held at bay behind an invisible wall of narcotics. It didn't help. Whatever part of his brain had the job of registering pain was telling him that something very bad had happened to him, that things were very, very broken, inside and out.

White knew that there would be cops behind the two way mirror, looking in at him right now. He stared with his one good eye and tried to fix a defiant look on his face. A smashed and crippled cop stared back at him with something that looked a lot like his own face.

Behind the two way mirror, Mick Garrity bit down on a doughnut.

"How the hell did he get here?"

"Cab," replied a fresh-faced uniformed cop.

"Fuck me..."

"Driver complained like hell about the blood, but White flashed his shield and the guy brought him straight here."

"Why here, why not a hospital?"

The uniformed cop shuffled nervously.

"Spit it out Johnson," said Garrity through the final mouthful of doughnut. The young cop looked surprised that Garrity knew his name, but he shouldn't have been. Garrity knew everyone's name, and usually much more than that.

"He said he wanted to see you, sir."

"Fuck..." said Garrity, and picked up another doughnut from the box. When he bit down on it, a globule of jam slithered out into the wiry stubble that sat on his many chins. "Fuckity fuck fuck."

Swallowing the last of the doughnut like a python gorging on a piglet, Garrity dusted sugar off his sweaty shirt and straightened his tie before heading around to the interview room door. There were others waiting, eager for a peek at the show. Garrity was under no illusions that White had had some supporters here. Not every cop was a dirty as the rest and some of them were only dirty because they had to be. Had they hoped that White would be their great redeemer, come to save them from the likes of Garrity? Maybe. If they had, they hadn't let their hopes spur them into action and that little shard of cowardice had kept them alive. This was Cane King's city and this precinct house, along with every other to the city's edge, was the exclusive personal fiefdom of Mike Garrity. If anyone needed reminding of that, Owen White would be that reminder now.

"Everyone out," he said, his voice low and menacing. "This is between me and him. You want a free show, go to a strip joint."

Garrity twisted the handle on the door hard, and went in. From the corner of his beady eyes he saw the cops creeping in behind the mirror as he closed the door. There was no better way to get a cop to look than to tell him not to, dirty or no.

Now all he had to do was give them a show.

***

Owen White looked up.

"Garrity."

"What the fuck happened to you, White?"

"Don't play games, Garrity. You know what happened to me. You tipped off Cane, or maybe he told you to tip us off in the first place. Either way it was a trap."

"I never said it was going to be easy, White. You go up against Cane, it's always a trap."

"You didn't say he'd have a fucking army there."

Garrity bit his tongue. He wanted to tell White that it hadn't been an army that been the problem, it had been Jack Taylor, but that would mean admitting that Jack Taylor was just as dangerous as everyone thought he was, and maybe even more. Garrity thought White and his team were stupid for coming to the city in the first place, but there was no denying that at least some of them had been as hard as they come. Garrity didn't need his guys thinking that there was a bigger dog in the yard than him, especially a dog called Taylor.

"Low lives," said Garrity. "Don't put your guy's problems on me. You go to fight, take fighters."

"Like you?" asked White.

"Not every fight is face to face, White. Sometimes you got to be the guy who waits around the corner with the baseball bat in the dark. Sometimes, you've got to be the guy who walks up to someone's door in the middle of the night and puts a gun in his mouth before he's woken up. And you know why? Because those are the fights you can win in this city. Charging in there like Desert Storm? I'm amazed even one of you got out."

White let out a painful lungful of air. He wanted to stand up and tear Garrity to pieces for his part in what had happened to his team, but he didn't have the strength. Even if he had, was Garrity really the one to blame? He was a convenient face, sure, and Owen White had punched a few of those in his time, but Garrity wasn't the one at the heart of it all. Neither was Cane King.

No, Owen White knew who was really to blame for what had happened and was staring back at him from the two way mirror.

White was smart enough to know that he had been walking his team into a trap. He was smart enough to know that a dirty cop like Garrity only thrived by never, ever, biting the hand that fed him. No, no-one had tricked Owen White into this. The truth was far simpler than that. The truth was that White had known it was a trap and he hadn't cared. None of them had. Even Rosa, who calculated the odds on everything, profiled every person she met, had rolled the dice with him on this one. They knew the odds, and they thought they could beat them. They'd banked on Magpye, their little secret weapon, the man who did impossible things. Impossible things like walk into one of Cane King's operations and put cuffs on him, or a bullet in him, whichever came easier.

"I tried to tell you," said Garrity. His voice was soft, a tone White had never heard him use before. No threats this time, no vitriol. No tugging of the heart strings or calling him out. Mick Garrity was talking man to man, cop to cop. "I tried to tell you what it would take for you to survive here, and you didn't listen. You could have walked a line, White. Cleaned up a little here, a little there, and turned a blind eye when you needed to. Stopped the worst, let them have the rest. You could have found a balance."

"A balance isn't justice."

"Of course it is. That's the only thing it is. You think we're all dirty here and sure, we're none of us angels, but that isn't the whole story. This city, it eats guys like you and shits you out as something you don't even recognise in the mirror. You can't be a white knight in this town."

White chuckled, then coughed violently. Laughter, in his case, wasn't any kind of medicine. "White Knight" - that had been his mother's pet name for him, before she'd died. She'd been his rock and his moral compass. He'd always wondered what he'd become without her. Now he knew.

In the mirror, Owen White saw someone that he didn't recognise. He saw a cop who had gotten his friends killed. He saw a cop who had thrown the rulebook out of the window for a shot at revenge. He saw a cop who had gunned men down just because they were between him and the man he blamed for everything. He saw a cop who had put his faith in a lunatic in a mask to save lives and bring order to a city out of control. He saw a cop who had done all that and been the only one to survive it. Smashed, broken, bloodied, but alive. Alive when he didn't deserve to be, alive instead of all of his friends. Alive, but not the same as before. Someone, something else. Whatever sort of thing can do all that.

Owen White sat and waited. He sat and waited for the real him to catch up and tell him what the hell to do.

"It's time to come in, Owen," said Garrity.

"Sure," replied White. "Why not? Where do we start?"

"We get you patched up," said Garrity. He offered White his hand and the detective took it, putting his weight onto Garrity and standing awkwardly on his splinted leg. "We get you some rest, then we talk about where to start."

Together, they limped slowly towards towards the door. Garrity, the keeper of secrets, and his new, but broken, friend.

"You don't got a girl, do you Owen?"

"You know I don't."

"Well, let me see to that too," said Garrity. "Someone to take care of you."

"Sure," replied White. "What have I got to lose?"

Garrity paused at the door long enough for the cops who hadn't been watching and listening behind the mirror to scurry back to their desks and find some work to pretend to be doing. He'd given them a show alright, and he'd gotten a new chess piece for his army into the bargain. Garrity knew all about revenge, he'd taken a lot of it in his time in a variety of creative and painful ways, and he knew that Owen White wasn't going to give up on Cane King or Jack Taylor that easily. But now, whatever dirt White dug up was going to go to Garrity first and, right now, he felt the need for a little extra leverage.

"Nothing," said Garrity. "Nothing to lose."

# IN THE PIT

Able woke up. Not Magpye, but Able. Able in his entirety.

He woke up and tried to scream.

He tried to scream and he tried to scream, but there was no noise. There was no noise because there was no air and there was no air because, as he gingerly brought a hand down from his crushed throat to his torso, he touched what he instinctively knew was the dead and flaccid tissue of a lung, punctured and useless, exposed to the precious air. He thought his stomach would have turned but his stomach, he quickly discovered, was not a stomach any more. Just a mass of pulpy gore, chopped and chopped and chopped until there was nothing left that resembled an organ of any sort anymore.

His shaking hands explored further, nervously fingering along a fragment of exposed rib before becoming entangled with a loop of dislodged intestine. The pit was dark around him, the only light a dirty disc of moonlight above him, the opening of the pit, which seemed further away than the moon itself. He was glad of the darkness as he pulled his fingers free from the mess of flesh and closed his eyes.

"He's opened you up."

Dorothy's voice. Concern, anger, fear. Able, conversely, felt nothing. He didn't have time right now to wonder why.

"Able, you should be dead."

"I get that a lot."

Able reached out and found the wall behind him. He realised his legs were bent at an impossible angle underneath him.

"Dorothy?"

"They dropped you a long way, kid. I think your neck is broken, back and pelvis too probably."

"I'm paralysed," replied Able glibly. "I can't feel anything."

It was Magpye who spoke next, an old and cruel voice that smiled in Able's head like a shark with a knife in its teeth.

"You will," it said. "You'll feel it all. You can thank your friend Marv for that."

"Marv? Why?" asked Able. Along with the memories of his past life, whole and intact, he remembered as well what it was to have a creature living inside his head. The ghosts were one thing, with his memories restored his dead friends held little fear for him, but the creature was something else. The creature was the thing that really haunted him. He willed himself to show no fear, wondering if you could lie to something that lived inside your head. He knew he could lie to himself, he hoped that would be enough.

"Why?" taunted the creature. "Because your friend Marv wanted you to be in the driving seat when we got back here. Your memories intact and you in control, that's what he said. Well, here you are. I just hope you know what to do. I hope you know how to mend your dead flesh. I hope you know how to put a bridle on your pain and make it silent. And I hope you know how to stop the ghosts of every other dead thing in this pit creeping into your head and making it their home."

"Every other dead thing?"

"Cane King had his little dog drag your bones here, to his charnel pit. It's where he keeps the things he's killed, his own private tally or murder and death. His father used it before him, his grandfather before that. They're all in here, every one. It goes down a long way, Able. A long way."

Able's hand crept tentatively past his leg, felt the soft, strange something underneath him. He felt flesh, a fragment of bone, and blood. Blood, the vessel of the ghosts, their transport from wherever they were to the inside of Able's head. Blood. It only took one drop, and he was steeped in it. Steeped in blood, dead, and sinking.

"I'm going to bring your pain back now, Able," said Magpye. "I've fixed your throat enough for you to scream. Let me know when you're ready for me to take over again."

The pain hit in an instant. At first, it was so impossibly vast that Able couldn't comprehend it. It felt like someone else's pain, seen and felt sympathetically, but still remote, still distant. In the darkness, it felt like his body went on forever and the pain in some parts of it was so very far away. It wasn't until the second wave, as his mind grew accustomed to the amount of pain and began somehow to process it, that he realised how very small and broken he was. No human mind had a concept for this much pain or being alive having been so utterly and completely butchered. It was what unconsciousness was for, but Able knew that Magpye would not allow that. The creature would keep him suspended here in this state of agony and terror until he begged it for its help.

But it wasn't the only person, Able wagered, who knew the dark things that the Magpye claimed to know. There was someone else who had at least claimed to know this power, to call it his own. Someone who had studied a lifetime to wield it.

And so Able did cry out in pain and desperation, but it was not the Magpye's name that he called.

The word that Able Quirk screamed was "Dad".

# RAINING

Marv woke up face down in the rain, the wet and gritty earth of the circus in his mouth. It still tasted of burning, even after all this time.

He struggled to his feet, mud sucking at his hands, elbows, knees, and feet. His first thoughts were of Marissa, but she was nowhere to be seen.

"Please," he whispered to himself, staggering in the direction of the hidden entrance to the underground mausoleum. "Please let her have made it back..."

His clothes were soaked through; the rain stung his eyes as he fumbled with the hidden catch that opened the concealed door. He tried to imagine her opening the door from the other side, imagined the light and warmth from their makeshift stove welcoming him. He held the image in his head, tried to make it real. He ignored his senses, magical and mundane, when they told him those things weren't there, that they weren't going to happen. Marv had always thought that Magpye was the only one who could hear the ghosts of the circus, but the place felt strangely empty around him now. He couldn't shift the feeling that, around him, that emptiness was mocking him. Laughing at him through the rain.

But... No ghosts.

No Marissa.

The door opened suddenly and there was only darkness and cold beyond it. What else would there be in a mausoleum?

No ghosts.

No Marissa.

Marv let his legs give in and slithered down the wet stone steps that led down into their former hideaway. He lay there, half in the underworld and half not and felt the rain fall onto his face.

He had killed her. His hubris, trying to make Adam King his creature, his hubris, letting him believe that he had hidden Able from the Kings, then his cowardice that had allowed him to leave both Able and Marissa behind whilst he saved his own skin. It had been that same cowardice that, fuelled by his magic, had brought Marissa back from dead. Not whole, of course, not intact. That was beyond his power, beyond anyone's perhaps. Even the dead creature itself, the Magpye, had not seemed able to breathe a full and whole life back into Able. No, what had come back of Marissa had been what Marv had remembered of her. He had not saved her for her own sake, he had saved her for his.

Marv, the great escape artist, who could even find a trapdoor to slip out his own grief. That had always been the way that his magic worked. No great arcane workings, no rituals, no ceremony. It was more a reflex, an ingrained defence mechanism. Marv always got away unscathed, always had an out. The great escape artist indeed.

And that, of course, was the answer.

Still on the ground, the rain in his face, the unyielding stone steps in his back, Marv tentatively flexed his fingers and breathed a sigh of relief.

It was there.

As familiar as his own skin, he felt the magic back in his fingers. It felt as if every bone in his hands was a spring, coiled and ready to explode. Invisible sparks jumped between them, a web of potential energy.

Magic hid, it was its nature, but there were times when it begged, yearned, cried out to be free.

It was a whip that begged to be cracked.

There was only one thing Marv could think of to do.

"Marissa."

Thunder rolled overhead like a charge of horses as lightning painted the world monochrome.

Marv. Ever the showman.

# THE TASTE OF MEAT

The bottom of the pit was covered with the dead, a mound whose depth Able could only guess at. It was history, a history of lost people, a history of the dead. It was the crimes of the Kings measured in feet and inches of decaying flesh, shattered bones, and the stink of old blood and shit. Able gingerly pushed his fingers into the dead flesh of the corpse nearest to him, and pulled away a chunk of human meat. It was still moist, still rich with humours and blood.

"Eat it," said the ghost of Adam King.

"I can't," replied Able.

"You've been living on scraps, on dry blood and old skin. That's why we're weak."

Able lifted the quivering morsel awkwardly to his lips. His arm felt like it was made of too many sections, held together by straining sinuous muscle. He stopped short, his fingers at his pale lips.

"I don't know who it is," said Able nervously. "I don't know who I'm letting in."

He felt a ripple through the ghostly waters of his mind, the other spirits muttering and murmuring their agreement. They'd been quiet since Adam had announced himself once again and the Magpye had vanished back into whatever deep and dark place it called home. The Magpye had kept Able alive though. His injuries meant he should be dead, more than dead if such a thing as possible, and yet he clung to life. He clung to life or whatever it was that the Magpye offered. Non-life, un-death. It didn't matter. Able had been right, his father knew how to control the dark thing that lived inside of Able, and those secrets would soon belong to him.

"You don't have to let them in," said Adam patiently. "You can control it."

"How?"

Without a word, Adam threw up the same walls that had once trapped Able outside of his own mind, outside of the control of his own body. Inside the walls, it felt as if all the air had suddenly been sucked from a bubble around Able. There was silence, a breathless, airless silence, and a pounding pressure on the outside of the invisible sphere. Able felt he should be gasping for air, but there was nothing. Nothing but a silence in which Able's own thoughts could stretch and expand, unfettered by the clutter of minds and memories he had become used to in his own head.

Able breathed out, a lancing pain running through both his lungs, and the pressure finally overwhelmed the bubble around his thoughts. The dead flooded back in, a racing torrent of voices and fragmented memories. He knew it, and them, well.

"That's good," said Adam. "Now eat. The flesh does more than just pass on the ghosts, it sustains us as well. It will repair you, heal you."

"Dead flesh, rotten meat..." mused Able, staring the gloom at the piece of human muscle in his fingers. "Carrion."

He popped the meat into his mouth before his father could voice another word, before the ghosts could add their voices to the clamour in his head. The juices filled his mouth immediately, running over his tongue and down his throat. He felt the ragged beat of his heart quicken, then steady. This was something that he didn't need his father to teach him. This next moment was instinct, as the waters of dead memory rippled from the sudden impact of a new mind, a new soul.

A new ghost found itself in the confines of Able Quirk's head.

"Rosa Blind?"

"You son of a bitch," replied the dead detective. "Where the hell were you when we needed you?"

# 

# HEAD TABLE

Sitting up in his bed, Cane King dipped his fork daintily into the top of Sebastian Blake's severed head and pulled away a piece of his brain. Taylor had arranged the heads neatly on four individual silver platters, the tops sawed cleanly away, the ragged necks supported by spikes that stood up from the platters. Cane let Taylor watch from the shadows as he slowly consumed the brains. He had once lurked in those same shadows, the second son, watching Adam being instructed in the strange methods and rituals of the Kings. It was jealousy, Cane knew, that had led him to follow a path so divorced from the rest of his family. That same jealousy had played a part in his brother's murder, not to mention what Cane had done to their father and grandfather.

No, Cane King knew only too well what it was to stand in those shadows and witness a power arcane, to witness it and desire it and yet know that it was beyond your grasp. Of course, the strange power of the Ink was Cane's now, but that little to diminish the memories of the hours he had spent watching and envying his brother, the precious first born son of the King line.

The 21st century suddenly seemed a very long way away.

Cane popped a sliver of brain matter into his mouth. The Ink rushed forward, up his neck and across his cheeks, greedy for a taste. It turned his face into a nightmarish swirl of black before retreating back to the parts of him covered by his silk robe. It whispered to him, whispered secrets and hidden truths from Sebastian Blake's decades of criminal endeavour. The old man had kept a great deal hidden from King. It did him some credit, King supposed, as he speared another quivering fork full of brain.

This one contained flickering images of the old man's murder. There was a bedroom, not unlike Cane's but not as richly appointed nor as modern. There were crashes and bangs beyond a heavy wooden door. Then, through the door, Taylor approaching, a bloody machete in his hand. The old man raised his hands, tangled in his bed clothes. A sudden warmth, the smell of piss. Taylor standing over the bed, his eyes as dead as ever, two pools of stagnant water under glass.

The machete. The machete. The machete.

Cane shook his head, freeing himself from the impromptu playback. He could feel Taylor's eyes on him, those same dead eyes. They gleamed in the shadows, pulling in information like two tiny black holes. Taylor saw everything. As a lieutenant it made him invaluable, but it also made him dangerous. At least, it had, before the Ink. What was Taylor now? His guns, his knives, his quick machete. What were they to a man filled with the terrible darkness that called itself the Ink?

Cane chuckled to himself.

"You can go, Jack," he said commandingly. "I don't think these four are going to give me any trouble."

"Yes, Mr. King," was Taylor's only reply as he slipped obediently through one of the doors to King's bedroom and closed it behind him with a soft click.

Alone, King let the Ink run riot over his body. It surged to his mouth as, dropping his fork, he plunged his hands into the brain of Crow. Shovelling the oozing lobes into his mouth, he felt the Ink pulsing in his cheeks and writhing along his tongue. Crow, the pimp, and his oh-so-many girls. The Ink would have some stories to tell from him, oh yes indeed. Overwhelmed by the memories rushing into his mind, King didn't hear the sharp cracking of his jaw bone as The Ink forced his mouth wider, distending his slack jaw until his gaping maw was large enough to engulf the top of Crow's decapitated head and suck the brains directly from it.

Gasping and heaving between mouthfuls, Cane ate and fed The Ink's diabolical hunger.

# THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ROSA BLIND

Everything stopped in Able's brain the moment Rosa spoke. Her mind was unlike anything he had encountered before and it forcibly applied its rigour and order to everything. There was no rushing torrent of memory here, no lost moments to surface unexpectedly. There was no mystery, nothing hidden. There was only order and control. This was the machine-mind of Rosa Blind, and it would not be subsumed into the river of dead things so easily.

"I asked you a question," she said. Even in death, her voice was the same clipped, controlled instrument that Able remembered. She had never trusted him, never trusted his alter ego Magpye, he knew that. She had trusted Owen White, and between them both they had brought her to her untimely death. "Where the hell were you?"

"Cane King brought someone with him. A sort of... witch, I guess. She trapped me. Trapped Magpye."

Even though Rosa was in his head, Able wasn't ready to start trying to explain the differences between him, Able Quirk, the gestalt creature that had called itself Magpye and the other... thing, the Magpye, the creature that hid inside. He wasn't sure he even understood it himself.

Able felt something in his gut, like dropping suddenly down a roller-coaster, as his own memories rushed past at high speed. Rosa dragged his mind forcibly back to the paper mill, to Grace Faraway, to Adam King, and to Cane. The dizzying movement of images stopped without warning at times, zooming in on some tiny detail or other. Rosa was silent, but Able could feel her mind working, whirring, inside his own. Rosa Blind saw everything, analysed it, and refiled it before moving on.

Without warning, they snapped back to the present.

"I understand," she said.

"You... understand?" replied Able. He felt breathless, nauseous, his own mind stretching to catch up with Rosa's.

"Your name is Able Quirk. This body is Able Quirk's. You are the illegitimate son of Adam King. Cane King killed your mother, your father, and tried to kill you. You survived. We all survive in you. We are ghosts, or perhaps memories. There is something else, a 'thing', that gives you this ability. It is hiding from me."

"The Magpye is hiding from you?" asked Able incredulously.

"It has secrets," replied Rosa in a matter-of-fact tone. "It knows me now. And so it knows I have a habit of rooting out secrets."

"You're not like the others," said Able. "All of your memories are so... clear. Organised."

"I have perfect eidetic memory," replied Rosa. "And now, so do you. If you need it."

"Need it?"

"I'm dead because I went looking for revenge for a friend of mine. That's on me. I can use this afterlife, or whatever it is, to analyse the mistakes I made or I can get that revenge once and for all."

Able felt himself relax for the first time since Rosa Blind's mind had become a part of his.

"I can't make any promises," he said. "I'm beaten and broken and we're at the bottom of a pit I don't know where."

"You can heal," said Rosa. "You have to eat. That's how it works."

"I'll be eating... you," said Able. His voice, even his own head, was weak.

"I'm in here, with you. We'll be eating me."

"I don't think that makes it any better," said Able.

"Wait 'till we eat Cooper," Rosa quipped, "You'll be lucky if you're still sober at the end of it."

Able reached down into the mass of flesh beneath him and pulled off another chunk of oozing meat. He forced it into his mouth, trying not to smell it, trying not even to taste it. It was survival, he told himself. It was necessary. He groped around, found what felt like a second body, its skin a different texture, its flesh firmer. He dug into it with his bony fingers and sharp nails, penetrating the flesh more easily than he thought possible. Another change, another adaptation, perhaps from The Magpye. Able, the dead boy, a thing with pale flesh, milk white eyes, and fingers like talons for tearing up the dead.

He pushed another strip of meat into his mouth and felt the familiar rush of new memories. Hartley, the computer expert, came into Able's mind with his final words still on his lips. Another impressive mind, although different to Rosa's, Able reflexively held him back.

"I'll explain it to him," said Rosa, "You do what you need to do."

Able felt some of the familiar frothing chaos return as Rosa's mind drew away from his and submerged, along with Hartley, into the river of memory. Others rose to meet them, welcoming them to Able's dead family. Able's dead family, also known as all the people that he had failed. Also known as all the people who were dead because of Able Quirk.

Except, of course, for one.

"Bitch," cursed Adam King. "She's dangerous, you should never have absorbed her."

"I owe her, she's dead because of me. Because of us, actually."

"You can't measure yourself against the lives of normal people, Able. You're a King."

"You're a King."

"She will hamper you, her mind is ill adjusted for magic."

"I'll take my chances," said Able. "She might just be able to help me think straight."

Adam King's ghost snorted its disgust. "You've got a creature living inside you that can control the dead. I spent a lifetime preparing to harness its power and yet it still denied me. You think some cop with an OCD can help you?"

"Maybe," said Adam. "There's so much I don't know. I thought I was just another ghost, like them, but now? I'm not just me, not just Able. And I'm not dead, not really dead, either. My body moves around, I do things. The Magpye does things too. I remember who I am now but there are still parts of me that feel more like it than me."

"I can show you, teach you," said Adam. "Everything I learnt, all my training, is already within you. My memories are yours now, after all, but you are also my blood. You are the next of the Kings, Able."

Able instinctively pulled back from Adam's mind as he felt his father's memories press against his, imprinting themselves on him. He saw them all, all the Kings, stretching back for generations. Each one fed on the memories of their predecessor, a line of Kings that had amassed skills and knowledge, power and wealth, and the darkest of occult power.

But where one King ended and another began, that was something even Adam King was unsure of. Perhaps, in reality, there was only one King. The original King, the father of them all, the original King of the Dead. If that was true, Able doubted there was any space for a Quirk.

"You won't control me." said Adam firmly. "You'll never control me again. We do this my way from now on."

Able felt Adam bridle, but held his ground. For a moment, there was an uneasy, oppressive silence in Able's mind. He could feel the eyes of the other ghosts on him, an electric tension crackling across the surface of their mingled minds and memories.

"Very well," acquiesced King. "I have shown you how to control them, I have shown you how to heal your undead flesh. Only the most important lesson remains, the one The Magpye wanted to teach you itself."

"Which is?"

"Pain," replied the ghost and, without warning, the crippling agony of Able's injuries returned.

# MARV IN THE WASTELAND

Marv and Marissa crept across the waste ground in front of old building that concealed The Pit. The place was one of the hundred or more nondescript shells of buildings in this part of town. Monuments to the crumbling corpses of industries that had moved overseas or just ceased to exist entirely, they were arranged in block after block of giant tombstones. It was a place the city had forgotten, which made it a perfect place to put things that you wanted to disappear.

Marissa, the new Marissa that Marv had conjured, no longer concealed her spectral nature. Ethereal, she seemed to move a step out of sequence with everything around her. Marv's magic wasn't as powerful if you looked right at it, and Marv knowing that Marissa was a ghost made her weak. Like any magic trick, it wasn't as good once you knew how it was done.

"You're sure this is the place?" asked Marv. He already knew the answer to the question, Marv could feel his restored magic tugging him away from the place harder and harder with every step closer that he took, the reflexes of a lifetime as a habitual coward were hard to deny.

"Able's inside," said Marissa. Her voice echoed against unseen walls; it reminded Marv of listening to an old radio, the sounds distorting and deforming from time to time. He closed his eyes for a second, tried to focus his magic, focus Marissa. It was no use. The more he thought about her, the less real she became.

"You should go," said Marv. "I'm sorry darling, but I need to concentrate."

There was a gust of wind as Marissa vanished, returned to whatever place it was that she went when Marv wasn't thinking about her. He wondered how long he could keep this up, if she would become weaker every time that he conjured her or whether somehow, some-way, he could make it stick. Everyone seemed to be cheating death these days.

Marv took a deep breath and concentrated on the moment. A clear head, that was all he needed. Get Able out of here, then get them all on the road. He still had contacts and with this magic restored he was less afraid to use them. They could find a new life somewhere, for all of them.

Staying low, Marv raced across the last of the waste ground, keeping to what little cover there was before slipping into the shadows at the side of the building. There was only one entrance that wasn't boarded up, a set of double doors with fresh tyre tracks leading up to it. The padlock on the door wasn't new, but it was expensive. It took Marv almost ten seconds to open it.

"Beat that, Able," Marv chuckled to himself. The door opened smoothly, and Marv slipped inside.

***

On the other side of the road, Jack Taylor lowered a pair of night vision googles and smiled to himself.

He always knew The Pit was dangerous.

# PAIN AND THE PIT

Able writhed in pain, feeling himself sink deeper into the stinking mire of oozing, sweating meat and corpses. He tore hunks of flesh from the bodies with trembling hands and forced them into his mouth, hoping that the dead flesh would heal his wounds as Adam had promised. The fresher meat filled his mouth with cold blood. He choked and gagged, but kept eating.

He felt his lungs try to inflate. He felt broken bones regrowing, pushing past or through tissue that was in their way. He felt muscles stretching, reaching out to the lost parts of themselves to reconnect. It was a pain unlike anything he had ever experienced, the pain of a body being forced to work in a way so unnatural that it rebelled against it. Lungs burst and collapsed again and again. Broken bones regrown were brittle and shattered under the weight of flesh that had swollen into a mass of cankers and tumours.

And all the while, consumed by his agonies, Able felt the once cool waters of memory boil around him. The ghosts, his ghosts, were reduced to a foaming and incoherent mass.

Beneath it all the dark shadow of The Magpye lurked. It had kept its promise to the magician, Able was whole and restored, but The Magpye had promised nothing more beyond that. Let the child and his errant father master the pain alone. The Magpye would wait. It was very old and very good at waiting.

"You must move your pain, Able," said Adam, "Give it to one of the ghosts. Let them suffer it in your place."

"I... can't..." gasped Able.

"It's simple," scoffed Adam. "Just draw one of them forward. The pain will find its own way."

"I won't... do it..." said Able, struggling to order the words in his mind as his body convulsed and spasmed with another agonising wave of regrowth. Somewhere inside him an organ inflated and burst, sending a wave of hot fluid gushing out. Able vomited, spewing up clods of partly chewed meat.

"You've done it before," said Adam, "Without even realising it. When I was just a mystery voice in your head, I guided your pain to a place where you couldn't find it."

"No!" howled Able, his voice echoing around The Pit. "No!"

"The ghosts are yours!" commanded Adam. "Pick one!"

"No!"

Through his pain, Able forced his father's ghost back. If torturing someone else in your place was what it was to be Magpye, or to be a King, then he would have no part of it. He owed the dead. He owed his family, his circus, and he owed the cops. There were too many dead because of him, too many lives lost. He wouldn't see their afterlives spent in agony. This was his pain, the pain owed to him from the night of fire and death at the circus, the pain owed to him by the cops who had died expecting him to be at their side. He had all of his memories from before his death, but what about everything that he had done since? There was so much blood. So many others who had met their death because of him, a dead man bringing more death, all of them dying in his place.

The Pit was a hell on Earth, but it was a hell that Able wished for.

The pain went on. Perhaps for just a few moments, perhaps for hours, perhaps for days. There was no time in The Pit, just the unreachable disc of grey light far above, the slow decomposition of the mound of the dead, and the endless, torturous regrowth and failure of new flesh. Able grew too exhausted to eat, but the process refused to slow down. A chain reaction of growth and death, it seemed to fuel itself, keeping him trapped and insensate. In some moments of lucidity he reminded himself that he was owed this pain, that it was his due. In others, he screamed in rage at his father's ghost or at the strange and unknown-able thing called The Magpye that were the twin reasons that he was here. He begged them both more than once for death, real death, but neither answered.

The pain was their way of moulding him, or breaking him.

Spare the rod, spoil the child. That was the sort of thing, Able guessed, that Adam King might have said.

And so Able writhed and howled alone in the darkness until his voice was nothing but a hoarse whisper and he could barely muster the strength to move. Inert, his body a pulsing mass of wounds and tumours, cankers and sores, he sank slowly down into the mire of flesh. He accepted his fate. A boy who should have been dead already, dying amongst the dead, his head home to ghosts and strange memories.

Able watched the grey disc of light grow smaller.

His heavy eyelids were almost closed when he noticed the shadow. A shape, small but growing, eclipsing the disc. Something coming closer, calling his name, reaching out. A dark shadow. Something new, yet familiar. Something from home. A voice in the dark. A figure, no, two figures, standing over him. One in shadow, one a riotous mass of colours. One face Able knew well, another a face from only the vaguest of memories. Then hands finding him, lifting his broken body upwards. Hands, lifting him up from the grip of the dead. Hands that had lifted him up once before when he was lost. Hands that did not tremble as they touched his warped and corrupted flesh, hands that brought him gently to his feet.

"Come on, kid, let's get you out of here."

"Marv..." croaked Able. "Who's the clown?"

# THE BALLAD OF MIKEY BUMCH

Mikey Bumch hadn't been with the circus long. He was still trying to secure a decent spot in the clown routine and still trying to get someone, anyone, to listen to his ideas for a new act. He knew it would take time, the circus was a close family and even after working with the other clowns day and night for nearly three months he still felt like an outsider, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he was destined for something great. He'd read about other circuses, other acts, where someone with his talents could really flourish. He just needed a start, a chance to do more than have shredded paper thrown down his trousers and a custard pie in his face.

Mikey Bumch was the Boy Who Couldn't Feel Pain.

All he needed was a shot.

Mikey got shot the night circus burned and he died alone, face down in the grass. He didn't feel the shot, of course. He was sitting by himself, trying new variations on his clown make-up when the shots came through the side of the tent and split him open. He heard the sound, saw a pattern of light suddenly appear on the tent wall, but when the crimson blossom started to spread across his stomach he still had no idea what was wrong. Mikey remembered lifting his shirt and seeing the rough row of ragged holes across his soft abdomen in the mirror, remembered watching them open like angry mouths as he stood up and the weight of his insides pressed against the torn and shredded muscle. He remembered trying to pinch the holes closed with this fingers, to hold his insides in, and watching the blood spill out over his hands but still feeling nothing of it at all. The first thing he did feel was cold. He'd never felt hot or cold in his whole life, but he knew somehow, on some primal level, what this cold meant.

Mikey remembered staggering out from his tent, his shirt bunched up around his chest, his stupid clown's trousers snagging with each step, his innards oozing between his fingers like mince, and coming face to face with Able. Able, wide eyed and frantic, twisting his head this way and that with every gunshot, flames behind him throwing up twisted shadows.

What was it he would have said, if he'd had another moment?

"Don't worry Able, I can't feel a thing."

"Who are you?" asked Able, "I don't know your voice."

"My name's Mikey Bumch," replied the clown. "We've only met once and I was busy dying then so..."

"The clown, the clown from my memories of that night," said Able. "You were new, right?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"I remember," said Able. "I'm sorry for what happened to you."

"It don't matter," said the dead clown. "I didn't feel a thing, other than cold."

"Someone told me that you couldn't feel pain?" asked Able.

"Actually, I can't feel anything. It's called 'congenital analgesia'. I've had it since the day I was born."

Mikey's memories washed over Able, painting a new picture like a watercolour being painted over newsprint. Able saw Mikey as a child, at first abandoned, then pushed and pulled between foster families. Broken bones, burns, even chewing through his own tongue more than once. Not all of the injuries were accidents, and Able closed his mind as best he could to the darkest memories that Bumch had to offer. Memories of footsteps in the night, of hands on the boy who couldn't feel, sliding under sheets, dragging him from his bed. Memories of hands all over him in the dark. Mikey Bumch had lived his whole life disconnected from his body in a way that made Able's condition look like nothing at all and all anyone had ever done was treat him like a piece of exotic meat because of it.

"No one understood," Mikey said. "They knew what the problem was, but they didn't know what it meant.".

Another memory painted itself across the last. Mikey, standing naked in front of a mirror, carefully checking every inch of his skin for blemishes, bruises, or cuts.

"My body," explained Mikey, "Is like a foreign thing to me. Like sitting in a car all day every day, only talking to people through the windows, moving around without ever feeling the ground under your feet. I can touch, a little, but no pain. Never, ever any pain."

"Right now," said Able, "I'd take a little of that." He hated himself for saying it, but it was the truth. "My father sent you, didn't he?"

Mikey's ghost laughed. It was the strangest sound Able had ever heard in his head. Perhaps Mikey's sense of humour was as dead as his ability to feel pain.

"No, he didn't," said the dead clown's ghost. "It's been all I can do to stay away from him. I've kept quiet, tried not to remember, tried to not to think. There aren't many places to hide in your head, Able."

"Another prison... Mikey I'm sorry, I..."

"Don't be," interrupted the ghost. "Able, all I ever wanted to find was a family. A real family. I thought I'd found one in the circus, and then it was taken away. Being here, whatever this place is in your head? It's the closest I've ever been to anyone, ever. I did find what I was looking for, I just had to get killed to do it."

Able felt Mikey's mind pushing on the fringes of his. He'd let Dorothy guide his hands before, let Malcolm pick up a gun, aim, and pull the trigger. He'd let Magda walk across tightropes, had Wally Wu fold him into impossible shapes but this... this was different. This was deeper.

"You can't heal properly because it hurts," said Mikey. "It hurts too much for your body to do what it needs to do. But it won't hurt me. Nothing ever has."

Able kept his mind closed, held Mikey out for a moment longer.

"I can't..." he said, finding even thoughts hard to muster as another wave of pain ran through his body. Somewhere, something popped inside him and he felt blood, warm and new and far too thin, spilling out. "If I use you... like..."

"You're not using me," said Mikey. "I'm using you. If you die, then I die. If you die, we all die. You lost your family, Able, but I found mine. They're in here."

For a moment, there was no pain. There were also no voices. The other ghosts were listening, they were always listening, but none of them spoke. Able wondered if they knew Mikey any better now than they had done before, he had really found in death what he had never found in life. Could The Magpye bring peace like that, could it bring solace to the dead? The dark creature, far below the surface of the calm waters of memory seemed to stir uncomfortably at the idea.

Able had seen his father's memories, had seen the long lineage of Kings who had considered themselves the masters of the dead. He'd seen how, eating the flesh and blood of their fathers, they had maintained a bloodline going back countless generations. They had courted magicians, amassed occult power. Every generation building on the memories and skills of those who had gone before, and on the backs and bones of those they had sacrificed. The Kings ruled. The Kings used.

"I won't put it on you," said Able calmly.

"You won't need to," said Mikey Bumch. "I can take it."

And Able opened his mind.

"I won't rule the dead."

"Then serve us" said the ghosts in unison, and Able was certain that he heard, just in that moment, ghostly voices that were far more in number than anything he had in his head.

Able's eyes snapped open. His pain was gone. Underneath him he felt the cold metal floor of a van and his nostrils filled with the smell of burning petrol. It was dark outside, the familiar byway that led to the circus illuminated by weak headlights.

"Where did you steal the van?" asked Able.

Marv twisted around in his seat. His eyes bulged as he looked at Able.

"Holy shit..." he whispered. "Back from the dead. Again."

Able looked down at himself. His clothes were ruined but, underneath the rags and shreds of his Magpye costume, there was only perfect milky white flesh. No wounds, no bruises. No blood.

"He did it..." whispered Able.

"Who did?" asked Marv suspiciously, his eyes back on the road as the creaking van whipped around a tight bend.

"It doesn't matter," replied Able. He tried to call Mikey's ghost forward, an instant reflex, but another mind blocked his.

"This isn't over," said Adam King.

"No," replied Able. "You're damn right it isn't."

# HANGOVER

Cane woke up to find his bed damp with blood and smeared tracks of grey-black brain matter. He had the mother of all hangovers, and he gagged as he rolled over into a squelching patch of something. A few nights ago, he'd woken up in between supermodels. Now, he was waking up in a nightmare.

He staggered across his bedroom, dragging bedding behind him, and stumbled into the en-suite bathroom. The harsh white light made him screw up his eyes and he stepped blindly over to the large marble sink and its mirror. He rolled his tongue around his dry mouth, feeling clods of meat stuck between his teeth. His jaw ached as he gingerly rubbed a hand across his face. He found a day's worth of stubble, maybe more, and something sticky and dirty that stuck between his fingers.

Cane opened his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror. The lower half of his face was caked with dried blood. It stained his teeth a filthy brown and flaked away as he worked his aching jaw back and forth. Underneath it, of course, was The Ink.

Ochre black against Cane's tanned skin it moved slowly, languidly, like an eel gliding through water. No shapes, no patterns, just simple broad and somehow muscular strokes.

Cane sensed that The Ink was sated, for now.

Shedding the soiled sheets and bedding, Cane stepped into the shower. Twisting the controls on the wall, he let the hot water cascade down and wash the blood and brain from his face, hands, forearms, and chest. He picked the strands of stringy flesh from between his teeth and flicked them onto the floor of the shower, the small pool of water around his feet running red.

Opening the door, he caught sight of himself in the mirror again. The Ink traced its way across every inch of him, moving faster now than before. It explored, running along the edges of muscles, following the tracks of arteries and veins. He let it paint its sigils and symbols on his skin, feeling its power.

He felt like a new man.

Grabbing a thick towel from a hook on the wall, he dried himself off crossing back across the bedroom. Discarded on the floor, he found Patrick Keane's head. Smashed open at the top, the contents had been scooped out and consumed in last night's feeding frenzy. Brutalised, Keane's face clung onto his skull by only a few tendons and strands of muscle, looking more like a mask on a dummy than a dead man's face.

Cane kicked the head under the bed, laughing to himself.

What a thing it was, after so many years, to finally have the arcane power that was his by right. After years of envy, living in Adam's shadow, and the denial that had followed after his murder. Dragging the Kings into the 21st century? Cane laughed at his own stupidity. If this was the power that the magical legacy of the Kings had to offer, then it was time to return them to the dark ages. Gleefully, Cane sought out the other heads, tossing them in the air or kicking them across the floor. Everything they had known, all their secrets, were now in his head.

Or, they should have been.

Cane found himself staring into the empty eye sockets of Victor Chase's skull, the second most feared man in the city reduced to a bowl of bone and left-over meat. There had been such secrets behind those eyes, in the swirls and whorls and lobes of Chase's brain. Cane shook his head, trying to recall everything that he had learnt, to bring the memories back into sharp focus, but it was no use.

Like his own memories of the night before, Chase's were becoming blurred and fogged, slipping from his mind as easily as the blood and brain had washed from his body.

Cane dropped Victor Chase's skull and rushed back to the bathroom, fixing himself in the mirror. He watched The Ink intently, looking for some sign. He closed his eyes, tried to focus. Finally The Ink spoke to him.

Cane slammed his fist into the mirror, shattering the glass.

"I understand," he said quietly, the hot pain in his fist already being soothed by The Ink.

"Problem, Boss?"

Cane King's eyes snapped open as he spun around to face Jack Taylor. It only took him a second to return a smile to his face. Jack Taylor didn't scare him anymore. Taylor should have been scared of him, but whatever else Jack Taylor was, he never seemed to be afraid. Maybe it was another benefit of his so-called clarity, thought Cane.

"No problem, Jack. No problem at all. Just working out a little frustration."

"Looks like you had a party in here last night," said Taylor.

"You know how it is," replied Cane, knowing that Jack didn't have the faintest clue. At least, he hoped he didn't. This was Jack Taylor after all; killing people and eating their brains might just be what he did for fun. "Do you have any news for me?"

"Not really, boss," lied Taylor. "Pretty quiet night. A little fallout from the gangs, but they'll drop into line. You're still the King, and every one of those guys had it coming one way or another." Taylor wasn't about to tell Cane about The Pit or what he'd seen there. Like any good shark, he could sense blood in the water and, right now, Cane King was bleeding out without even knowing it. Taylor didn't need his much vaunted clarity to see that killing the four biggest bosses in the city had more than destabilised things, it had lit a short fuse under the whole city.

"Things are going to change around here, Jack," said King, pushing past his lieutenant and striding across the bedroom. Slumping into a fat leather chair, he plucked an apple from a nearby bowl and sunk his teeth into the sweet flesh. "I want a meet, all the gangs together."

"You're sure that's a good idea, boss? I seem to recall you weren't too happy about the gangs meeting before."

"That was different," replied Cane, taking another noisy bite of the apple. "I wasn't invited."

Jack Taylor smiled in response, but said nothing.

"We're going to consolidate, Jack, bring all the gangs under our direct control. Cut out middle management, you know what I mean?"

Taylor nodded. "You'll need good men to run things day to day," he replied. "And we lost a lot of good men in the mill."

"Leave recruitment to Garrity," said King. "There are always guys who want to make easy money. Besides, I've still got a few good men, haven't I?"

Cane looked at Taylor, and it took every ounce of Taylor's clarity and self control not to look down at the mauled skull of Victor Chase. He had been a good man in Cane King's eyes once, now he was nothing more a chew toy.

"Of course," said Taylor. "It would be my pleasure."

Cane raised an eyebrow. "There's one other thing," he said. "It's about my nephew."

"Your nephew's dead, boss," replied Taylor, his voice ice cold. The word "dead" seemed to have a pretty loose meaning around the Kings of late. He'd seen one man go into the building that hid The Pit, but seen two leave. The second was in bad shape, there was no doubt about that, but there was nothing alive in The Pit at all. Whoever, whatever, had come out of there had gone in dead. He'd followed their van for block after block, finally tailing them out of the city and to the circus. That damned circus, things had never been the same since King had had him burn it to the ground.

"He's not dead, at least, not to me," replied King, breaking Taylor's chain of thought. "He'll always be a... part of me, you see. I'll carry him inside me until the day I die. And it's not right, his body laying there in that shit-pit. He's a King. He deserves better."

Taylor said nothing, his face an impassive mask. He didn't play poker, he didn't see the point, but right now he felt like a man staring at a big pot with a bad hand. He either had to fold, or go all-in.

"Boss, there's something you need to know."

# MARISSA'S KISS

Marissa stood in the makeshift kitchen of the lair and tried for the fourth time to pick up the kettle. Her hand passed straight through it. She was becoming more immaterial by the day. She knew what it meant. It meant Marv was coming to terms with things. She didn't know how it was possible, but he was. Perhaps it was his magic, becoming somehow more refined. When the pain of his grief was a raw, open wound, it had simply erased it by bringing Marissa back from the dead, albeit a version of Marissa crafted from Marv's rose-tinted memories. Now that he knew the truth, his magic was finding a way to salve that new wound.

Whatever the reason, it meant Marissa, this Marissa, was dying by inches. She was bleeding out of existence, one memory at a time. She tried to focus, to convince herself that she was real, and reached for the kettle again. This time she made contact, wrapping her fingers around the warm metal handle.

"Making tea?"

Her father's voice startled her. Of course he was there. Why else would she suddenly be solid enough to pick up the kettle? At least she was real when he was looking at her.

"Something for Able," she replied. She couldn't bring herself to tell him what was happening to her. After keeping the secret from him for six months that she wasn't really his daughter, hiding her slow descent and disintegration to the afterlife was nothing. She poured hot water into a dented pan, a putrid stench rising from whatever was inside.

"What the hell are you making?" asked Marv, holding his nose.

"Broth," replied Marissa. "For Able."

"Ah," Marv replied. Since Able had come back, both in body and mind, there had been some changes in their lair. The Magpye was rarely seen or heard from, although Marv had no doubt that the creature was lurking in Able's mind, and Able seemed to have come to terms with what Marv now referred to as his "condition". Eating had been one watershed and, whilst Marv didn't like the sight of putrefied human flesh on his dinner table, Able was at least eating with them. Living under a circus built on a cemetery was turning out to have some advantages. Able had offered to eat alone, naturally, but it had been Marissa who insisted they all eat together. Their little family; a magician; a ghost; and whatever Able was plus the countless phantoms he carried around; seemed to have found some sort of strange equilibrium. It had been almost three weeks, and Able seemed to be back to his original self. There had been no talk of vengeance and, most importantly, no talk of the Kings.

It seemed like it was over.

Marv had decided to give Able another two weeks and then he'd try to get him to leave the circus for good. There was still LA, still a chance for all of them.

"I'll let him know it's ready," said Marv, eager to get away from the smell of Able's broth.

"No," said Marissa, "I'll go."

She'd wafted past Marv before he had a chance to argue and when part of her arm passed through the stonework of the archway, neither of them mentioned it. You never admitted when a trick was blown, Marv told himself, even if you were sure the audience had seen how it was done.

With a sigh, he headed to his own small room. Books were piled up everywhere, all of the burnt or torn, but readable for the most part. It was harder to destroy a book of magic than most people thought. Alone here in his cell, Marv had already spent weeks researching for something, anything, that would help Marissa, but to no avail. With Grace dead, Marv didn't dare reach out to any other magician. Whilst they all loved their secrets, they loved getting hold of other people's secrets more, and Marv didn't dare let anyone know the truth about Marissa until he understood what he was dealing with.

***

Marissa found Able working on Zip Nolan's airship. Able still seemed to enjoy being Zip and it kept him busy, out here working on the machine. Marissa and Marv had both agreed that keeping Able busy was a good idea.

Able was talking to the ghosts when Marissa walked in. His voice, then another, then another. His voice tripped up from time to time, one voice trying to talk over another, but all through the same voice-box and tongue. He was arguing. They were arguing.

"I can't do it. I don't even know how."

"You did it before, Dorothy. More than once."

"That was different. Those girls needed help and it was either me or a bottle of gin and a hot bath."

"Or a coat hanger."

"I don't care about any of that. I just want him out."

"We need him out."

"I'm not going anywhere."

Marissa cleared her throat. She didn't worry about how it was that she had a throat, it was enough that she could clear it, and that was that.

The voices stopped and when Able turned around he was just Able. Not Zip, or Dorothy, or Malcolm, and thankfully not Magpye. Marissa knew that there were other new ghosts as well. Able talked a lot about someone called Rosa, he said that she was helping him to make sense of everything that was in his head now. There was a part of Marissa that was jealous of that.

And then, of course, there was Adam. Nobody talked about Adam.

"I brought you some broth," she said, pretending that she hadn't heard the conversation Able had been having with himself. "It's safe, for you I mean."

Able smiled, the same old genuine Able smile that Marissa had grown up with. It was warm, even on a face as pale and cold as Able's now was.

"Thanks," he said simply, taking the steaming bowl from her. He dipped his fingers into the liquid, seemingly unaware of how hot it was, and fished out a small chunk of withered corpse-flesh.

"You checked?"

"A mechanic," said Marissa, smiling. "I thought he could help you with your project, maybe?"

Able popped the sliver of dead mechanic into his mouth and chewed appreciatively. "Maybe," he said. "I think Zip has it covered."

"Just Zip?" asked Marissa. She wanted to know what it was that Able had been talking to the others about. She trusted Able but, no, she didn't trust them. She didn't even trust the ghosts that she knew, ghosts like Dorothy and Malcolm and Magda. Marissa, this Marissa, wasn't the same girl who had died that night, so why should they be the same people either?

Able plucked another chunk of flesh from the bowl, ignoring Marissa's question. Able had always been good at avoiding answers to difficult questions. Marissa flicked him playfully on the forehead to get his attention. Her heart, or at least Marv's memory of her heart, skipped a beat as she saw the very tip of her finger vanish inside Able's head. He didn't seem to notice.

"How does it feel?" she asked hastily. "To have them all up there?"

Able scratched absent mindedly at the point where her finger had passed through his skin. "I never knew my father," he said, "And now I do, for what he's worth. Before then he could have been anything or anyone, and I had dreams that he was a good man. In that way, I've lost him more now than if I'd never known him. Hell, Marissa, before that night I'd never lost anyone before..."

His voice trailed off for a minute. Marissa wondered if it was his own memories he was struggling to process or those of one of his ghosts. Thoughts of death and loss were precisely the types of thoughts that she and Marv had been trying to keep out of Able's head these past few weeks.

"When I see their memories, or when they talk to me. In the moment I only feel what they feel but afterwards, if I think about it, there's just an emptiness. The space where they were, left empty in my head. I suppose it feels a lot like grief," he said finally.

"That sounds like grief, Able, yes," replied Marissa kindly. In so many ways, despite everything he had been through, he

"They're just memories, Marissa. Like you. Just memories that... keep on remembering. Their thoughts, their voices. If you try, you'll be able to hear them too. They are in your head just as much as they are in mine."

"They're in my heart," said Marissa. She reached out to take Able's hand, to place it to her chest where her heart would, where it should have been. She stopped short, fearful that her hand would pass through his and damning herself for even trying. Marv talked about a life after this, but in this moment Marissa couldn't see any way out of the limbo they had built for themselves. Fugitives from the police, hunted by criminals and worse, a magician and a dead man and a ghost. It would have been a joke, if anyone could think of a punchline.

"I'm not sure I have a heart, any more. I think maybe that's the one part of me that got broken and stayed broken."

"I don't believe that," said Marissa. "The Able Quirk I knew had a heart ten times bigger than this circus."

"Just because I got my memories back," said Able. "It doesn't mean I'm the same person."

"How could you be, after what you've been through?"

"But if I'm not Able, and I'm not Magpye then... who am I?"

Dipping her head to avoid his gaze, Marissa reached out again, this time letting her ethereal hand rest on his. Slowly, her hand began to sink through his. Able felt an electric tingle. He remembered holding hands with Marissa like this once before, the first time they had held hands, moments before their first kiss. The electricity had been the same.

It was magic, but not the kind that made Able a monster and Marissa a ghost. It was the other kind of magic, one that Able believed was probably a lot rarer nowadays.

"I think you can be whoever you want to be, Able."

"Then I want to be the man who brings down the Kings. I want to bring this whole stinking legacy to an end. It can die with me."

"You may not think of death as the end any more Able," replied Marissa softly, "But don't be so quick to give your life away."

"I'm not giving it away," said Able. His voice was sad and as distant as Marissa had ever heard it. It sounded more like one of the ghost's voices, speaking through Able. "They already took it. What I've got now... it's something else entirely."

"Then, at least try to think of it as a gift. Don't waste the chance you've been given. We can still get away, all of us. Leave this all behind, let Cane King have his damned city and we'll find a new life somewhere else. Together."

Able looked at Marissa. His flesh was dead, his head was full of ghosts, but the mirage of a girl in front of him was the most real thing he could see. Maybe Marv's magic was strong enough to pull some of Able's memories through as well, now that he had them back, and maybe that remembered love, that incandescent adolescent love that they had shared, maybe that was the light that lit her up now.

The ghosts stirred restlessly in his mind, argued amongst themselves. It was hard to tell who was more thirsty for revenge; those who had had the taste of it already or those who were as yet unbloodied in death. How much of his hatred and desire for revenge came from them, he wondered? He felt the guilt, the crushing responsibility, for so many of their deaths. Perhaps that was why he was so willing to die to avenge them. Perhaps that was why they were so willing to let him.

All except one, of course.

"Don't listen to her," said Adam King. "Your place is at the head of the family. Destroy Cane, take his empire, and you will understand. Dismantle it then, if you must, but hold it first in the palm of your hand and ask yourself what you could do with that power."

"At least talk it through with Marv," said Marissa, interrupting Able's conflicting internal monologues. "You should at least ask the advice of someone living if you want to know how to live."

She smiled. Able knew the smile well. It was his best memory, and it lit up his heart as it seemed to hers. It could have lit the whole world, if she'd been given the chance.

"I will, I promise," said Able. "But I'm going into the city first, there's someone I need to see. I need to set something right, no matter what happens after that."

"I understand," said Marissa. "And for the record, that sounded a lot like Able Quirk talking."

She closed her eyes and leant into him. Instinctively he closed his own eyes and leant towards her. Could a dead man kiss a ghost? Able brushed his lips against the space in the air where Marissa's lips should have been. He felt the same electric tingle across his lips. He felt a skip in his un-beating heart. For a moment all the thoughts in his head, no matter who they belong to, vanished. There was only the kiss. Only Marissa. Able wondered if this is what it felt like when souls touched.

His eyes still closed, he imagined her leaning back into him. Electricity as her ghostly hand stroked his cheek. Electricity as his arm curled around into the small of her back to pull he closer.

He reached forward for her, but she was already gone.

"Marissa?"

The ghosts were silent as Able Quirk wept.

# PRICE ON YOUR HEAD

Cane stood on the gantry and looked down onto the killing floor of the abattoir.

Taylor had done as he was told, bringing together what was left of the city's gangs. It had taken weeks; some of them had gone to ground, others had skipped town. Those who had stayed were either loyal or opportunistic. Cane could work with both. He had killed their bosses, now he would consolidate them into a single functioning unit under his command. The blood, the murder, that didn't make a difference. This was good old fashioned business of the type he understood.

Cane King, the master of the hostile takeover.

He fiddled with his shirt collar. The Ink wanted to rise up, to show itself across his face. It didn't like hiding. It wanted to be seen, wanted to be talked about. It wanted to be feared, like Cane King was. He forced the thing down. For now, it would remain his secret. His, and Jack Taylor's.

Taylor was down on the floor, moving through the masses like a killer whale through a shoal of kelp. Cane had already decided what Taylor's punishment would be for allowing the magician to escape with his nephew, but it wasn't time for that yet. Besides, he was more interested in how the boy had survived. Despite all the power of The Ink, Cane had realised that he wouldn't be complete, wouldn't be a rightful inheritor of the King's family legacy, until he also had the power of The Magpye. What The Ink could give, brief moments as a voyeur in someone else's memories, was a pale imitation of the true mastery of the dead that could be, should be, Cane's.

Still, ruling over just the living was acceptable for now.

It pleased King that none of them dared lift their heads to meet his gaze. He felt like a true king, or like a god. Master of two worlds, the modern and the arcane, there was nothing he could not do. He had killed their bosses, men who they had seen as untouchable, and now he had them all standing on the cold steel floor of a slaughter house. He was the bogeyman, free from the confines of the wardrobe, out from under the bed. The bogeyman, very real and very deadly.

The only problem was, being a real and very deadly bogeyman meant his cover was blown. There too many loose ends after the fiasco at the paper-mill. Too many bodies, too many people asking questions. Garrity and Owen White were doing their part, concocting a the story about the clean squad going rogue had held for now, but the whole thing was getting too big even for Cane and his media empire to contain it.

Gangs at war with cops wasn't a story that made people look away and whilst Cane could make the media say what you wanted, it didn't work if everyone else was saying something different. Vic Chase had been right about the heat that this was bringing down.

Cane knew he already had the solution though.

The solution was The Ink. The solution was a story, a new story. He'd been thinking too small, thinking like the old Cane King, the one who lived in the world of normal, mortal men. The Ink didn't think like that. The Ink thought big and it had shown him what he needed to do. The solution was a lie so big the whole world would have no choice but to swallow it.

Cane rapped on the metal railing of the gantry, and the room below fell silent.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," he said, "Welcome to the new world."

They looked up as one, all except Taylor. He had found his way to the bottom of the stairs to the gantry and was slowly climbing back up. Cane's command over the room was obvious; the last place Jack Taylor wanted to be was in the centre of a room full of people who all wanted to prove their loyalty to their new boss.

"As of now, there are no more gangs," continued Cane, his voice strong and clear and commanding. "There are no more families. No more territories. The ground that you stand on, the ground that you walk on, and everything above and below belongs to me."

Cane paused. On the killing floor, nobody spoke, but if you listened very carefully you could hear a hundred minds working. A hundred minds calculating angles, looking for escape routes and opportunities. A hundred men and women brought up street smart and street tough, a hundred men and women who had fought their way up or been groomed by their bosses, given and taking dominion of their little fiefdoms. Cane smiled. It was all just business. The guns and knives didn't make any difference, they never had.

"This is a kingdom and I will rule it. There will no new bosses, only Kingsmen under my direct command."

Another silence, and the whirring of more minds.

Cane waited. The law of the boardroom dictated that there was always one person who would ask a question.

"What do you want us to do?"

The voice came from near the middle of the room, a bulky street thug who Cane didn't recognise. The Ink prickled at Cane's neck and told him the story that went with the face of the thug. He might need to crack open someone's skull to read their deep and dark and innermost thoughts, but every face in this room had a story, and The Ink could read them all. The thug eye-balled Cane defiantly.

"Sean Cassidy," said Cane, "One of the late, great Paddy Keane's protégées if I'm not mistaken?"

"And what if I am?"

The Ink spilled the details in Cane's mind an instant. You didn't rise above the rank and file of criminal life if you didn't have a speciality, and Cassidy certainly did. He liked to burn things. Cane smirked. An arsonist, just the type of person to throw a match in a powder-keg like this room.

"Well, Mr. Cassidy, a week from now, my casino opens uptown. We're having a little celebration, and you're all invited. You and your box of matches included."

A murmur ran through the crowd.

"A celebration," continued Cane, feeling the crowd warm up beneath him. "Of my dominion over this city. A celebration of crime and perversion in all their forms. A celebration of you, my Kingsmen."

A cheer went up in one part of the crowd, quickly echoed in others. Sean Cassidy and his immediate entourage remained silent.

"Sounds like a bloodbath to me!" shouted Cassidy, silencing the last of the cheers. "We all know what happened at your last party, Mr. King. I think perhaps me and me boys will sit this one out."

Without warning, Cane pulled a handgun from inside his suit jacket and fired, putting the shot right between Sean Cassidy's eyes. Cassidy toppled backwards into the man behind him as Cane shot the men to Cassidy's left and right as well. Three head-shots, three dead thugs, three bodies on the floor before anyone else had even reached for their gun.

"Does anyone else..." roared King, "Want to sit this one out?"

The assembled thugs, hoodlums, pimps, drug dealers, and numbers-men offered no answer. Cane watched the ones who had their hands on their own guns, counted those who might draw on him and those who might draw with him. Just like any boardroom, he thought to himself. The first shots had been fired, first blood taken, but no one here wanted a war. Everyone knew that after the blood, came the money.

"Know this," Cane growled. "If you run, there is no city that you can run to that I do not own. There is no border than you can cross that I am not already on the other side of. There is no cop, no federal agent, that you can run to that I don't own or can't buy. You are in this, right now, whether you want to be or not. This is the new world, so learn to live in it."

Cane turned his back and left the gantry, leaving the crowd with this words still hanging above them in the air like storm clouds. Like all the best threats, it was all utterly true. He let the metal door clang shut behind him, then heard it clang again as Taylor followed him into a small office.

"You've got them all in line," said Taylor.

"They're sheep," replied Cane. "They don't know how to be anything else but in line."

"You think he'll come?" asked Taylor.

"Our missing vigilante?" replied Cane. "Maybe, maybe not, but that's where you come in."

"You want me to snatch him?" asked Taylor. "Could be difficult."

"No," replied Cane, "I want him to come to me. Go and find the magician, take out a little insurance on my nephew's arrival."

Taylor didn't answer, which Cane knew meant that Taylor understood, and Marv was in a whole mess of trouble.

# THE CORPSE OF OWEN WHITE

Owen White limped across the open expanse of his hotel room. He called it "his" hotel room even though he hadn't paid a bill since he got here and he knew it wasn't his name on the register. It didn't matter. Food arrived when he called for it. Drink arrived when he called for it. Girls arrived whether he called for them or not. To most other men it would have been a paradise. For Owen White, it was a prison.

He was healing well, at least physically. He'd begun to adapt to the loss in vision and the damage to his ankle hadn't been as bad as first supposed. He felt like he might always have the limp, even if the pain eventually faded, and he was OK with that. You shouldn't go through something like he had, shouldn't lose so many people, and just walk away. The eye patch, the scars, the limp, the heap of painkillers he washed down with vodka every day, they were all reminders of his mistakes.

And then, of course, there was the tattoo. It itched and it made his shoulder twitch, but more than that it was a reminder too. A reminder that he wasn't a cop anymore, not a real one anyway. He had the badge, the gun, the rank. He had the power, more power than ever really. He looked cop and sounded cop and probably even smelled cop. But he wasn't a cop. Owen White was a Kingsman, just like Mick Garrity, a man bought and paid for and branded by his master.

Stripping to the waist, he looked at the tattoo in one of the mirrored fronts of the wardrobes that ran down one side of the hotel room. Black and stark, the tattoo was in the shape of an upside down crown. Cane King, King of the Underworld. There was a time when White would have laughed at the notion of that type of criminal; larger than life, hiding in plain sight. When Magpye had told him, he hadn't believed it. That was a mistake. Listening to Magpye when he said he'd be there to help take King down, that was another.

Owen White. Former White Knight, now dirty cop and the King of Mistakes.

"Nice ink."

White spun around, twisting his bum leg painfully.

Magpye was standing on the balcony, the big glass double doors letting the cold night air in. He looked different. His leather suit was a patchwork, made in a hurry. He'd painted it, a broad streak of white down his chest making him look more like his namesake than before, but to White it just looked like a big fat target. The coat was different too, another second-hand piece hastily customised White guessed. The strangest change was the mask. The thing before, the tight mix of leather and zips and bulging goggle eyes was gone, replaced by some kind of gas mask. He could see Magpye's eyes through it, and the reflection of his face in the glass. It was like talking to someone on the other side of a mirror.

"You're supposed to be dead," said White.

"I think I am."

"There is a gun," said White through gritted teeth, "Under that pillow. Four steps and I'm there. I'm there, and you're really dead. Four steps. That's exactly how long you've got to get the hell of that balcony and disappear."

Magpye didn't move.

"Four steps, Magpye."

"I'll be on you in two, and you know it."

The reply came from Able Quirk. Magpye, the real Magpye, the thing that had spoken to Owen White before, had vanished down into the murky depths of Able's crowded mind. Able could tell that it despised White now, despised him partly for his weak and crippled body but also for his stubborn refusal to die. In his prime, Owen White would have made a fine addition The Magpye's collection of minds and memories. Now he was damaged goods, a liability. It didn't matter to Able. He remembered White as someone who had accepted him, trusted him, when his mind was nothing but loose fragments rattling around inside his skull. He remembered him as a friend, a friend who he had failed like he had failed so many others. Able didn't want Magpye here right now. He wanted to speak to White himself, to deal with him on his own terms.

White slumped to one side, letting the wall take his weight for a moment.

"What the hell happened?" he asked.

"They trapped me," replied Able. He wanted to tell White the truth, the whole truth, including the real fate of the police that had died at his side that night, but the haunted look in the man's eyes told Able that the last thing Owen White needed to hear about was ghosts. He had plenty of ghosts of his own. "I got out, but it was too late. I found King, we fought, he won."

"He won?" asked White. "Against you?"

"He... had help." Able didn't know how to begin to explain about what had happened to King, the power he suddenly possessed thanks to The Ink. Even Adam King couldn't explain fully what the stuff was. All that mattered to Able was that it made King strong and very, very difficult to kill.

"Well, my guys bought it too. You know that, right?"

"I know," replied Able. He watched as White limped to the bed and sat down with a thud. He cop's head dropped to his chest. "I wish I'd gone with them. Dead would be better than this. They broke me," he said weakly. "They broke me..."

Able didn't answer. His head was full of dead cops, all of them desperate to get a message to White. He pushed them down and it felt like swallowing vomit.

"They broke me too, once."

White looked up from the carpet. "You still look pretty broken to me, kid."

Jerking his thumb at Able, White pulled a half drunk bottle of vodka from under the bed.

"You want a drink?" he asked "I've got more of these stashed than I have guns."

Able walked slowly into the room, his heavy boots staining the pale carpets.

"They've got me lying for them," said White, taking a swig from the bottle. "About what happened that night. I've lied to the cops, to the feds. Hell, I've even had the NSA breathing down my neck. We were put here by the president and... let's just say he's kind of pissed at me right now. The president is pissed at me."

"What exactly have you told them?"

"That the team went rogue, after what happened to Grice, and that I went there to try and stop them. It stinks. I've tarnished the names of good cops just to save my own skin."

"I think they'd understand."

"Do you?" spat White. "Well, you didn't know them. They were good cops, good people. All of them. They lived the job and what did it do? It chewed them up and spat them out. Now they can't even go to their graves clean. I've made dirty cops of each and every one of them."

Able's head filled with voices again, the cops forcing their way through. They'd spent a lot of time learning to break down suspects and break down doors, Able's newly learned defences just didn't cut it. He tried to pick one voice out from the crowd. Of course, it was Rosa Blind.

"Are they buying the story?" she asked.

"I think they know it's bullshit," replied White. "Some of them are on the take and those that aren't know a good story when they hear one. It's turned into politics. What plays better - a hero cop crippled in the line of duty or the whole clean squad including me going off the rails? Right now the lie is more useful to them than the truth."

"Because it gives them a hero," said Rosa, speaking through Able. "Someone to put a medal on whilst the rest of us are swept under the carpet?"

Able snapped his mouth shut, realising his mistake, Rosa's mistake immediately.

White just took another slug from the bottle and stared off into the middle distance with his one good eye.

"What about King?" asked Able quickly.

"Wiped from the history books. He was never there."

"It's his building."

"They're all his buildings," said White, waving the vodka bottle at the open window. "It's his city. So are most others. You don't know what I've learnt, since I've been on the inside of this thing. The sheer scale of it, it's beyond anything that anyone would believe possible. That's the genius of it. That's what makes them fearless. We can't ever take them down because they are so much bigger than us."

White took another slug, then another, chugging down the vodka like water at the end of a marathon run.

"They engulf us, do you understand that? We exist inside their world. There's no fighting it."

"I'm fighting it."

In his mind, Able heard Adam King's voice whispering. "We're fighting it, son." Able pushed him down too.

"I'm going to take him down," continued Able. "Once and for all."

"You said that last time."

White stood up on unsteady legs and limped awkwardly towards the balcony, taking the bottle with him. From somewhere in the city beyond the window, a police siren wailed like a dying animal. There was smoke on the breeze and the smell of burning. It reminded Able of the circus, a place that was dead but refused to die.

"I go back to work tomorrow," White said. "I was expecting a desk job, but Garrity's got me a slot on a new task force. We're going to hunt down this vigilante that everyone was talking about before my squad became front page news."

"That's perfect," said Able enthusiastically. "We can work together again and..."

"No," interrupted White. "We can't. We won't. Haven't you listened to anything I've said? I was an idiot to think we could go up against King. I was an idiot to trust you. I've got a busted leg and a missing eye to remind me of that, plus that rat bastard Garrity crawling all over me. So right now I've got to be as dirty as they are, as dirty as they come, to survive. It's a shit way to finish out, but it does come with one advantage. As of tomorrow I'll be hunting you down and the next time I see you I'll put a bullet in you, no questions and no due process. Cane King wants you found, I want you dead. It's win-win."

"I'll get you out," said Able. "When I take down King, you'll be free."

White snorted, gulped down the last of the vodka, and tossed the empty bottle out of the window. It smashed somewhere distant, setting off a car alarm. "Guess we'll see," he said, "Guess we'll see."

Somewhere inside Able Quirk's head, the dead cops looked at their friend and one by turned their backs on him. Only Rosa Blind continued to watch and Able was glad of his mask as he felt her tears on his cheeks.

# KEEP QUIET OLD MAN

Jack Taylor walked slowly down the steps into the crypt. He smiled. He liked the place. The homely décor, the old posters, the photos, the heirlooms and the bric-a-brac. It reminded Taylor of a house he had lived in, for a little while at least, back when he was a foster kid. He'd burnt it down. It wasn't that he disliked the place, but the strange habit the people had there of cluttering their house with things from their past felt like it was dragging him, and them, down; as if time were some sort of sucking parasite that, if you let it, would trap you in one single moment forever. You would live on, of course, move forward at the same rate and pace as everyone else, but your heart and soul would be left behind. You would slowly become divorced from them as the distance grew greater until you were dead in the now and only alive then, in the past. As a child, back when he'd still enjoyed the childish notions of things like hearts and souls, the thought had terrified him. Burning the house down was the only logical choice.

Taylor had spent his life that way, bouncing around in the system, never in any one place for very long. A problem child, a face that didn't fit, a kid that didn't play well with others. There were no end of bleeding hearts who thought they could fix him, make him better, but all of them failed. What they didn't understand was that Jack Taylor didn't want to be fixed. He didn't need to be fixed. He knew what he was and it hadn't bothered him a day in his life.

He remembered with a strange detached fondness the burning of that house. He remembered the warmth on his skin and the distinct aroma of all those old papers and books and posters and photos burning. Paper was such a weak material, but people spent their lives coveting and collecting it. He remembered when the police came too, and how they hadn't appreciated the beauty of the moment as Taylor did. But even that didn't really matter. By then he already understood the way the world worked, he'd already achieved the perfect clarity that would guide him through his life with almost unerring certainty. Each house, each place, each cell, each psychiatric ward, was only temporary.

Everything was only temporary.

You don't like your house? You burn it down. It's temporary.

The current state of affairs with Cane King was nothing different. A temporary setback, and nothing more. The King had feigned fury at the news that his nephew, or brother, or whatever the hell that freak was, was alive and still running around in his city. Taylor could see the truth though. The boy being alive had served King's agenda. Putting Taylor on the back foot served his agenda as well. King wasn't as afraid of Taylor as he once had been. Taylor could sense the change in the balance of power like a sharp tang in the wind. Like blood in the water, and the blood was his.

The woman, Grace, was dead and King, somehow, had her tattoos. Anyone else would be looking for a way out, but not Taylor. The unknown was temporary. Clarity would turn it all into opportunity and Taylor would find himself on top again. He had a plan.

Taylor focussed himself back in the moment as he reached the bottom of the stairs. The magician was ahead of him, his back turned, working at a makeshift stove. There was a putrid, acrid smell in the air. King had told Taylor that this guy was dangerous. Perhaps he'd meant his cooking.

There were other rooms off this one, the mausoleum being far more grand than the small stone entrance gave credit for. In the middle of the room was a small bench table, laid for dinner.

"You can come in," said Marv. "But I don't think this pot is going to stretch to all of us."

Taylor stopped in his tracks. There wasn't anyone he couldn't creep up on, at least until today. He pulled his gun from inside his jacket and aimed at the old man's back.

"We're going to be skipping dinner."

"Pity," replied Marv. Spinning and ducking at the same time, he flung one of the cooking pots at Taylor. It spun flat, like a discus, through the air, the metal handle wobbling up and down in a fight with gravity. The outcome of the fight was never reached, as the pot hit Taylor across the bridge of the nose, splashing hot liquid into his face.

Taylor stumbled backwards, keeping his body across the entrance to the stairs. Wiping his eyes with the back of his jacket sleeve, he got his vision back just in time to see Marv running at him along the top of the small table that sat in the centre of the room. He kicked a plate, sending it on the same trajectory as the pot. Taylor deflected it, and got a shot off before Marv collided with him feet first. The shot pinged off the stone ceiling and embedded itself in the table as the two men tumbled back into the stairs.

Panting, Marv tried to run up Taylor's body and onto the stairs proper. Taylor stabbed upwards with his gun hand, slamming the metal barrel of his pistol in Marv's groin. The magician groaned and crumpled, falling so that his lower legs were still on top of Taylor. Marv crawled up the stairs, trying to drive himself back into an upright position as Taylor rolled over on the hard stone steps and pulled himself to his feet.

"You nearly broke my nose," he spat, his voice hollow and nasal. "I'll hurt you for that."

Struggling to his feet, Marv turned. He had the higher ground now and, contrary to appearances, Taylor had just seen that the guy could fight, sort of.

"You broke my good plate," said Marv. He was still backing up the stairs, his hand tracing along the brickwork wall. "And my stew is totally ruined. Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Jack Taylor. Cane King sent me and I'm the guy who is going to kill you if you take another step up those stairs."

Marv stopped. The pot and the plate had been luck, mostly, perhaps a little magic coupled with a lifetime of slight of hand and stage magic. Fighting simply wasn't his thing. If he hadn't poured all of his magic into Marissa, he probably wouldn't have even been here when this hired gun walked down the stairs. Just like the night the circus burned. Grace had been the one who warned him, but he'd always wondered what part his strange and uncontrolled reflex of magic had played in it. Why else would the warning tell him that Marissa was safe, that he was the only one who needed to run? Grace was many things, but Marv had always doubted if even she could be that cold. Had he, or his magic, somehow sensed the danger coming? Could Marv's magic have forced Grace to give him the warning that would save his life, even at the cost of his daughter's?

It made sense to Marv, at least a kind of sense that let him sleep a little better some nights. Maybe that was his magic too. It had saved him from facing his grief, what was a little excuse to salve his conscience on top? It was better than the alternative - better to believe in a wild and uncontrollable magic that cursed you to survive at all costs than to simply accept that you were a coward who would even run out on on your own kid to save your worthless skin. Yeah, there were a lot of lies that were better than that.

Marv did know one thing for certain though. He knew that was staring down the barrel of a gun and that was the kind of situation that he let magic handle on its own. Wherever Marissa was, he hoped it wasn't important. Marv blinked and, wherever his daughter was, she ceased to exist as Marv's magic rushed back to him.

"You know who I am, Jack?" asked Marv. If it hadn't been for the familiar crackle of magic in his fingertips, he would have wondered where the words, and the bravado, were suddenly coming from. Magic. Sometimes the right magic was just having a fast mouth and a decent line in bullshit.

"I don't ask questions," said Taylor. It was a lie, of course. After that night in the paper-mill, questions were all he'd had. He'd supervised a lot of the work on the old King place when Cane had had it gutted and modernised, and he'd made sure he knew where everything was stored. It was an insurance policy, because you never knew what dirt there was to be found in old family papers. Paper, that fragile thing that people hoarded and wrote their secrets on. Since things had taken a turn for the decidedly weird, Taylor had spent any spare moment he had working his way through the King family archives. He'd found more than he'd expected. The King family history was long, and strange, and oh, so bloody. He'd learnt that there were things in the world far more strange than he had once thought but, with perfect clarity, he had accepted them into his world-view. One by one his questions were being answered, which was why he hadn't been surprised when Cane had asked him to pick up a guy that King referred to as "the magician".

Anyone else would have run. Jack Taylor just pulled a gun and stared the new world in the face with bared teeth.

"Well, I'll tell you," continued Marv. "I'm The Magnificent Marvolo Chevalier. I'm the greatest escape artist the world has ever seen."

"A circus act?"

"Oh no, I'm the real kind of magician. The very real kind."

Taylor steadied his aim on the old man. Bang to rights, in his cross-hairs. There was no dodging that... was there?

"And that's why you're going to pay attention to me right now," said Marv. "You're going to..."

Taylor pulled the trigger and put a bullet into Marv's right leg.

He had been right. There was no magic-ing your way around a bullet.

Marv blinked with confusion and fear as Jack Taylor, the man with a smile like a shark, stood over him. Marv's magic hadn't saved him. It hadn't done anything at all. What the hell was happening?

Taylor ended Marv's confusion with the sole of his expensive shoes and a trip into swirling unconsciousness.

# DIVORCING DAD

Able kept his body low and tight over the frame of the motorbike as he raced through the city.

He had seen a lot of death, seen people die bad and bloody, killed men with his own bare hands. He had shot, stabbed, cut, sliced, and maimed. He had burned, he had buried. But in all of his short and brutal career, his blood soaked afterlife as the thing called Magpye, he'd never seen a creature as wretched and broken as Owen White.

"You should have told him," said the ghost of Peter Rogers. "If he knew that we were still here..."

"He wouldn't believe it," argued Rosa.

"He doesn't believe anything any more, that's the problem," interjected Rigby. "He's lost his centre and..."

Rigby fell silent as Able swung the bike off the road, bumped over the kerb, and came to a skidding halt on a patch of wasteland.

"What are we doing here?" the ghosts asked in rare unison.

Able dismounted, the suit creaking. He had put it together in a hurry, repairing the damage to the original as best he could with limited supplies and in secret from Marissa and Marv. The paint had been Able's idea. He'd spent so long in black, he wanted some part of him to look... clean. The white streak down his chest and abdomen felt right, like a brand, like a tattoo. He didn't remember much about making the last suit. This suit was his. He was Able Quirk, and Able Quirk was the Magpye. Not the other way around. Not any more.

Now there was only one thing left to do. One left to do to make him truly clean.

"White nailed it," said Able out loud, addressing the ghosts. "The Kings consume everything. They're a poison, a cancer. If we're going to take down Cane King, we do it without Adam King along for the ride. We do it clean."

Adam King's ghost burst forth. "What do you mean without me?"

Able closed his mind. He had no idea if what he was going to try to do was even possible but, if it was, he was sure it would be easier if Adam King didn't know what was coming. He wanted the bastard on notice, but he wasn't going to tell him what was happening until it was too late. The only mind that Able didn't block out was Dorothy, but the circus medic was uncharacteristically stoic.

Reaching into one of the bike's panniers, Able pulled out a battered old flask. Marissa had filled it for him earlier. It weighed around four or five pounds in his hand. It would have to be enough.

"We're doing this, Dorothy."

"How do you know you even can?" asked the ghost grumpily.

"I just do."

"It's not you, Able, it's that thing," said Dorothy. "That creature, the Magpye."

"And if it is?" asked Able. He stalked across the wasteland to the nondescript warehouse, finding the door exactly where Marv had described it. There was a new lock, a pristine and modern combination fitting. More conspicuous than the previous security, but undoubtedly more secure. Able pulled a gun from inside his jacket, a substandard replacement for Malcolm's pistols that he'd lost fighting Cane King, and blew the lock panel apart. Stealth wasn't a factor here. He wasn't here to steal, he was here to leave a message.

"If it is, then how can you trust it?" asked Dorothy.

"Because the Magpye isn't him, it isn't Adam. Of the two, he's far more dangerous."

"Then maybe we need him," said Dorothy.

Kicking the door open with the steel tipped end of his boot, Able strode purposefully into the warehouse that hid The Pit. "No, Dorothy. Everything that has happened, has happened because of him. Because of his family. Because of the Kings. He isn't a part of me. He isn't a part of us. I want him out."

Walking through the darkness of the abandoned warehouse, Able could feel Adam's ghost pressing hard against his defences. But the dead King had taught Able just how to keep him out, and he was staying out. Dorothy had sunk into a sullen silence. Beneath them all, beneath the waters of memory where the other ghosts lurked and lost themselves in their own mingled memories, the dark shape of the Magpye stirred. It flexed itself, pushed a little closer to the surface.

Able stood at the edge of The Pit, looking down into the gloom. The stench of the place was overpowering, even through the mask. Able knew what was down there, rotting and festering in the darkness. This was where Cane King had had him dumped, where his body had been left to decay down to nothingness. It wasn't a hiding place. It was a prison, a place to incarcerate the dead where they would never be found. He could feel them calling out to him, insubstantial ghosts without the strength even to escape the walls of the pit. Their minds and memories had decayed along with their bodies, leaving them crippled and broken. Some had lost their faces, leaving behind only screaming open spaces, others were nothing more than a limb, twitching and spasming with the last remnants of a mind trapped inside. Whether they knew it or not, the Kings had created something here far worse than death.

Able pulled up his mask. The stench from the pit grew stronger. Unscrewing the lid from the flask, he brought the cold metal to his lips and began to slurp down the contents. It was thick and greasy, a gruel of old blood and dead flesh. Marissa had been careful, using flesh from the oldest graves hidden in the circus and Able didn't feel any new ghosts entering his mind as he slurped down the remnants of the long dead. Out there, beyond the pit, ghosts didn't have to be tied to their remains. It gave him hope, to know that there was something else, another type of death, another type of afterlife. Not the circus trap that he knew waited for him but something better, something worth living and dying well for. He tried to focus on that, as his throat filled with the meaty soup, as he once again swallowed down dead flesh to fuel his body, and the strange power of the Magpye.

"Will it be enough?" asked Dorothy, breaking his silence.

"It will have to be," replied Able. "Don't give him any more than he needs."

"I'm not up to this Able. I'm a patch-you-up man, you're asking me to remember every inch of a human body, inside and out."

"You've never let me down, Dorothy. You've never let anyone down."

"Well, there's always a first time," said Dorothy gruffly.

"My body knows how to repair itself," said Able. "All it needs is food and time. I just need you to guide it, give it a new direction."

"And how the hell do I do that?"

Able opened his mind just a fraction and, into the swirling mix of his mind and Dorothy's, the unmistakable presence of the Magpye fell like a shadow. "I'll show you," said the creature. "I am the power that brings life to this body. I can bring life to another. We just need you to build it."

"Build a body... simple," said Dorothy.

Able glugged down the last of the contents of the flask.

"Are you ready?" asked the dead medic.

"Ready," replied Able.

"Then we begin," said the creature.

The pain hit Able almost immediately, sending him to his knees and then down onto his belly. He writhed around on the dusty floor, panting and gasping for air. Doubling up, he vomited onto the ground before screaming in renewed agony.

Inside his head, his defences crumbled and Able felt the unmistakable presence of Adam King.

"I know what you're trying to do, Able," he said. His words were slow, patient, but Able could feel the racing panic behind them. Adam's mind overlapped with Able's in a way that no other did. Perhaps it was because Adam had replaced him once and taken control of his body completely and against his will, or perhaps it was the blood link between the two of them. Like father, like son, both damned forever. "Don't do it. You need me. You need my knowledge."

"You taught me what you know," said Able, struggling to form the words in his mind as pain tore through his body.

"And if you lose all that, when I'm gone?" asked Adam. "Those are my memories, mine! What happens if you forget everything I've taught you without me? How will you control what you are without my memories?"

"I'll take... my chances..."

In Able's mind he saw his father's face, contorted in rage and in fear, stricken with panic and desperation. Adam King, his father the stranger, the deposed head of the King crime family. Would be magician, Magpye-in-training, Able felt all of Adam's strength and his weaknesses in equal measure. He felt his memories, no longer guarded, wash over him. The last time that this had happened he had felt like he was being erased, being replaced and overwritten, by Adam. Now, it felt more like Adam's life was flashing before Able's eyes. It was his father's story, told without bias or prejudice. It was the story of a child born into wealth and privilege and power and taught magic and cruelty as a way of life. It was the story of a young man who looked for a way out, for a way to avoid an unavoidable fate. Was it any wonder he had turned to Marv, the master escape artist? It was the story of someone seduced by a place, and a family, outside of everything he had ever known. He saw the circus through Adam's eyes, not as a place of family and of love as it had been to Able, but as a place of strange magic and forbidden escapes from the life that was being forced onto Adam against his will.

"I can show her to you," said Adam, his psychic voice desperate. "I can show you your mother. I can bring you to her through my memories."

Able didn't reply. The memory of his mother had already raced past, her face a blur to him as always, and been replaced with a psychedelic whirlwind of magic with Marv at its centre. He felt the same intoxication that Adam had felt, felt the release of escaping the life being foisted on him, felt himself seduced by Marv into the world of the magicians. It was Marv and the circus that Adam had loved. The memories grew closer to the present, slowing as the inevitable end of Adam's life grew closer. Despite himself, despite his conviction to be rid of the ghost of his father, Able scoured the images that flowed past for just a momentary glimpse of himself.

"They hid you," said Adam. "They kept you from me."

"Liar," hissed Able. "You knew. How could you not?"

Able watched as the night that the circus burned replayed again in his mind's eye, this time through his father's eyes. He saw how intertwined their fates were, and always had been. Adam, the man trapped and seeking freedom. Able, the boy who was free but who would become trapped in his father's legacy. Two families, at war without even knowing it. And all of it, all for a power that Able wished he had never known.

The power of The Magpye.

"Ending it," said Able, choking, "Means ending the Kings. All of them. Including you."

"But why me... first?"

Adam's voice was growing distant, echoing in Able's mind as if they were at opposite ends of some unseen tunnel. Able felt his body convulse, felt the hooks that kept Adam's ghost tethered to Able's mind tear free, each one sending a wave of pain through Able's body that dwarfed the one before.

"Why?"

Adam's voice grew quieter still, his presence weaker. His memories were gone, leaving only Able's memory of him. There was a blank space where he had been. A hollow that ran through Able's mind and into his heart.

"He's gone..." panted Able, free from the pain. Inside the leather of the suit he felt cold sweat on his skin. His mouth was full of bile and blood, not all of it his. "Is it over?"

"Oh no, not yet," said the sneering voice of the Magpye. "Doctor, it's time to get to work."

"I'm not a doc..."

"Oh come now," said the Magpye coyly. "You can have your few secrets from Able, but you can hide nothing from me."

Before Able could ask either the ghost or the creature another question, Dorothy began his work. It began with bones.

At first there was nothing, just the blank space in Able's mind where Adam had been. Then, one by one, there were the bones. Bones had been Dorothy's speciality, breaks being a more common occurrence than anyone would like in the circus. The spine came first, a vertebrae at a time, one on top of the other linking together. Then the pelvis, the legs, before a rib cage sprang forth like a blossom. Piece by piece, from memory, Dorothy assembled the skeleton.

As the thing became complete, Able felt the first knot of pain in his stomach. Nothing more than a twist at first, an unnatural movement that sent acid up into Able's mouth. Then, as Dorothy carefully began to build a circulatory system around the skeleton, Able felt more twists and turns inside of him. He felt a weight, something other than himself inside himself, an alien something being grown to Dorothy's design.

"I can't do this," said Dorothy. "The basics are fine, the major arteries, veins but... there's more detail. Too much detail."

"We said that doesn't matter," said Able. "It doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't need to be... complete. Just keep going. I've got a feeling that this is going to get painful."

"Oh it is," chimed in the Magpye. "And don't think I'll be letting you play any little tricks to dodge your pain, Able. You want Adam King gone, you pay the price."

Able gritted his teeth. There was always a price.

"Just get it done, Dorothy. Please."

Dorothy's work sped up, the circulatory system growing random and confused in places. Arteries crossed randomly with veins as Dorothy tried to correct his errors, tried to trap the flow of blood as a heart, a tiny heart of diseased grey muscle, grew out of nothingness and began to pump spasmodically. Able felt it inside him too. A second heartbeat, out of kilter with his own, a new life, an afterlife, born inside him through the dark power of the Magpye.

The weight inside him grew greater and he felt this strength ebbing away. It had to be now. It had to be over. From Dorothy's memories more organs grew and were joined together, manufactured from the broth of corpse meat that Able had consumed in the healing factories of his own undead body. Lungs like withered grapes flapped loosely for a moment, then inflated with weak gasps of air. A stomach, a liver, kidneys, a doubled over length of rotten intestine.

"Jesus, Able, I can't build a brain. This is wrong, this is all wrong."

Panting, desperate for air, Able could barely respond. "Just, finish it."

His stomach convulsed and he felt something start to move again inside him. Not the twisting and turning of his stomach now but the deliberate movements of a thing with new muscles and new skin, a thing that was being to think for first time as Dorothy clumsily mashed together the lobes of a new, living brain.

The last of a new skin, thin and paper-like, wrapped itself around the thing in Able's head. A face, twisted and malevolent, began to construct itself and eyes as white and as dead as Able's opened and stared at him.

Rolling onto his stomach, Able clawed his way over the edge of the pit. His stomach was distending, pressing against the tight leather of his bodysuit. It pulsed and moved as the thing inside explored its surroundings. His gloved hands clinging to the edge of the shaft, his head hanging over into the black void beyond, Able opened his mouth wide and began to heave.

In his mind, he held on to one single thought.

"Get it out."

Inch by inch, he felt the thing rise up. He felt its clawed hands forcing his insides to open, felt the tearing and ripping inside himself as the thing pulled itself upwards. His body twisted and contorted, urging the thing onwards, pushing it forwards. Able vomited blood as he felt the small bones in his neck snapping and his throat being forced wide. Choking, gagging, he spewed the first inches of the thing into the world.

A hand came first. A tiny, claw-fingered hand of flesh that was a mottle of milky white and grey. New flesh, dead flesh, melded together inside of him. An arm followed, spindly and frail, and then, with Able's jaw cracking away from his skull and his mouth flopping low, the thing's head pushed its way out. Its domed skull was exposed in places, the skin so thin that it peeled away like layers from overripe fruit. As it began to tumble forward, its milky clear eyes swivelled around to look at Able.

The thing's shoulder popped out of Able's mouth and its tiny body soon followed. The body was too small for the head, a disproportionately small torso that seemed to be little more than a fleshy bag full of organs, the bones so weak that many of them had been broken as the thing was un-born from Able. Collapsing onto his chest, Able scrabbled around to pull the thing loose from his mouth. With a painful tug, the thing slipped and slithered out, and Able could only watch as it tumbled away from him down into the pit, its legs kicking and thrashing as it went.

Wheezing, almost unconscious with pain and horror, Able simply lay at the edge of the pit. In his mind, he felt Dorothy pull away and vanish into the waters of memory.

"That is the worst thing, the worst thing, I have ever done Able."

But Able didn't answer. Pushing himself up onto his knees, he forced his slack jaw bone up into place and used the mask to secure it there. He could already feel the tendons reconnecting. In a few hours it would be set perfectly back in place and whatever ravages his body had suffered internally would be fixed too. In small, unsteady steps, he headed for the door.

Behind him, in the pit, he heard the unnatural wail of an unnatural thing, a thing born of death and cast down into the pit. He heard the cries of Adam King, back from dead.

"Goodbye, Dad," said Able, as he vanished through the door and back out into the night.

# THE INSURANCE POLICY

Marv woke up looking at himself in a mirror. It didn't seem like had much of a choice though, as there wasn't a surface in his line of sight that wasn't either a mirror, or chromed, or gilded. Glass, chrome, gold, and a lot of lights. There was only one kind of place that this could be, and that was a casino. Marv had spent a lot of time in LA. There was a good chance his afterlife would look like this, but he was very much alive. Marv knew he hadn't been unconscious for that long, he hadn't travelled far, and so that narrowed the field of available casinos down to just one.

This was Cane King's new casino.

"Fuck," muttered Marv, as he began to assess his situation. Behind him, a drip was slung from a metal stand. The line went into his left forearm and whatever was coming down it had Marv numb from his toes to his lips. It was probably a blessing because, rather than tie his wrists and ankles to the chair, someone had bolted them there. Six inch bolts, one through each wrist, secured tightly top and bottom. His feet where similarly bolted to the floor, blood oozing out of his bare feet onto the floor. Marv hoped that there were no broken bones. A lifetime of always getting away with it, no matter what it was, meant that Marv had rarely had to think about consequences - he just thought about what kind of mess he might be in the next day and smiled. Of course, in the last few months he'd had to reassess his track record. He almost always got away with it.

Drugged, immobile, probably suffering a concussion, and bolted through the wrists and feet. Marv found himself grinning in the mirror.

Fuck it. This was going to be one incredible escape.

Downstairs, in a glass walled office suspended above the main gambling floor, Cane King looked down at the throng of eager visitors. Opening night of a new casino. A free ten-thousand dollar chip to everyone who could get through the door. Free food, free drinks, and a chance to be seen next to Cane King, the man who ruled every television set in America. Cane looked at the faces in the crowd. Celebrities, politicians, religious leaders. His Kingsmen mingled amongst them. Every waiter, every doorman, every security guard. The curdled cream of the city's new criminal elite. From princes to paupers, saints and sinners, nobody was beyond his sphere of influence so long as they lived and breathed and walked the face of the Earth.

And, after tonight, not even passing through the veil into death was going to be enough to outrun Cane King.

Beneath his perfectly pressed and crisp white shirt, The Ink swirled and danced excitedly. There were so many stories, every face in the crowd a new wellspring of secrets and deceits and betrayals, Cane felt like the thing that lived in his skin was almost drunk. He felt almost drunk, but he couldn't say that he didn't like it.

"You got enough eyewitnesses down there?"

The voice belonged to Mick Garrity, uncharacteristically bold as he grunted and snuffled his way through Cane's private buffet.

"I think they'll suffice," said Cane. "After tonight there won't be a single person on this planet who will believe that I am anything other than a victim of an organised campaign of terror and blackmail. They will rally behind me and I'll be untouchable again."

"I don't trust these new guys. One of them will talk," grumbled Garrity.

"That's never been a problem before," said Cane dismissively. "Not one of them would dare."

"You've never been this exposed before," replied Garrity. "This plan of yours goes south, and that's it. The whole fucking house is coming down on our heads. I've got FBI, DEA, NSA, all on my ass twenty four hours a day. Just tell me you've got guys ready to take the fall for this shit tonight."

"I've got guys ready to take the fall for this," said King, irritated. "And if you don't want to be the hero cop who got killed in the line of duty trying to stop them tonight, then you'll make sure that only they go down for this."

Garrity didn't answer. Since the débâcle at the paper-mill. it had taken every ounce of the dirty cop's guile and skill to misdirect the various and overlapping federal investigations long enough for Cane to put his own plans in motion. Owen White's story was starting to fall apart under scrutiny, and Cane King needed a bigger, bolder lie to take its place. Luckily for him, he'd been brought up a liar. The Ink had the power, it was true, but there was no substitute for Cane's ability to look America right in the eye and tell her he loved her as he stuck a knife in her guts.

"You think he'll really come?" asked Garrity, breaking the silence. "The freak?"

"Oh yes, he'll come," said King, ignoring the slight on his brother. The truth about Magpye, Adam, and the bastard Able was one that King was determined to keep away from Garrity. "Taylor delivered me a little insurance policy just this evening. The vigilante is the final part of the puzzle. Once I've taken from him what's rightfully mine, he'll take the fall for everything else that's happened. I'll do my dirty laundry in public, weep for the lives lost, and America will love me for it. I'm going to teach them to love me again. It's almost Shakespearian, Garrity."

"If you say so," said the cop, licking something from the ends of his fat fingers. "If you say so."

# THE NOTE

Able swung his leg up and dismounted the bike. He'd taken his time getting back to the circus. He felt weak and drained, but purified by what he had done at The Pit. He couldn't change who his father was, couldn't scrub Adam King out of his DNA, but there was no good reason to keep the bastard alive in his head. Adam's memories where gone, his voice was gone, and now Able to get on with the business of forgetting him completely.

Of all the ghosts, Adam was the only one that Able didn't owe a damn thing.

Forgetting Adam didn't change Able's plans, of course. It was Cane King who had ordered the murder of Able, his family, and his friends. It was on Cane King's orders that Able's home had become a charred graveyard. Cane was the last piece on the chessboard, the last one that needed to be put away, and preferably in a pine box.

Able picked his away through the corpse of the circus, heading for the entrance to the mausoleum. Hopefully Marissa was cooking. He needed food, or what passed for food for Able these days, and sleep. Tomorrow, he would wake up as Able Quirk and begin again.

In his head, his ghosts were sullen and silent. It was understandable. They were no longer safe in Able's head. They were no longer permanent. They had all seen first hand that they could be evicted, exorcised by the power of the Magpye at Able's command. Able could sense their fear. They were no longer survivors, escaping death in Able's head. They were prisoners, and they were trapped there.

When Able reached the hidden door, he found it open. It was never left open.

He rushed in and down, taking the steps two at a time.

"Marv! Marissa!"

There was no answer.

Able called forth his ghosts, no longer caring about their fears or worries. Each and every one responded, and innumerable eyes scanned the room. The group-think of the Magpye took over.

"Blood here, on the steps."

"More, further up."

"Broken crockery, signs of a confrontation."

"The old man put up a fight then."

"Doesn't sound like Marv."

Able took control again as his eyes hit a piece of paper pinned to the table. It was a newspaper clipping, the front page of one of the papers that King controlled. Stretching from the top of the page to the bottom was an image of Cane's new casino hotel.

"They took him," muttered Able, screwing up the paper and throwing it on the ground. It was happening again. People in his life were getting caught in the crossfire between him and the Kings. Marv was the closest thing to a real father that Able had, despite everything that had happened, and now he was at the mercy of Cane King.

"It's a trap, you realise that don't you?"

It was the hyper-organised mind of Rosa Blind, the eternal analyst, that spoke to Able.

"Cane will have that place filled with guys on his payroll and surrounded by cops that he owns too. The only way you are getting in there is how and when and where they want you to."

"What would you have me do?" asked Able. "I won't abandon him."

"He abandoned us, remember?" said Malcolm. It was unlike the trick shot marksman to get involved in anything that didn't involve a bullet, and Able would never have pegged him for someone to back away from a fight.

"We're not discussing this," said Able. "This is Marv. I'd still be out of my mind, running around graveyards in the night if it wasn't for him. We'd all still be at the bottom of that pit. He saved me, and he saved us."

"He saved himself," interjected Dorothy. "He ran out on us and we died, or did you forget that? He's as much to blame as Adam was."

"I said we're not discussing this," said Able forcefully. "Marv's one of us, so we go to get him or..."

"Or what?" asked Dorothy pointedly. "Or we end up as some abortion in the bottom of the pit? Is that how it is now? What happened to not wanting to rule over us, Able?"

The phantoms in Able's head began to push and jostle against each other to speak and Able's head filled with incomprehensible white noise. He closed them out, let them argue and rage amongst themselves for a moment as he composed his thoughts. As the clamour of the dead subsided, Able spoke again.

"I'm sorry, Dorothy. I'm sorry for what I made you do, for what I made you a part of."

Able felt the temper of the ghosts soften, if only a little.

"But while Adam was a part of us, none of us were safe. He was a poison. A parasite."

"So it's one down, one to go eh?" The voice belonged to Terry Cooper. He'd been a quiet ghost until now. A simmering, boiling presence just beneath the surface, a pressure to act, a pressure to move against the Kings that had been held in check by the other spirits. It seemed he waited for this moment. "That's fine by me."

"Me too," said Malcolm.

Dorothy fell silent. "Looks like I'm the only one who's seen enough blood."

"I've seen more than enough, Dorothy," said Able. "More than enough. But we need to keep going. For everyone we've lost, for everything we've lost. For the people we can still save."

"None of this gives us a way in," said Rosa. All business, she pulled the focus of the ghosts with her, the rigour and control of her mind almost magnetic to them, and antidote to the chaos of mixed memories that they otherwise found themselves in.

"Well, that depends on who you ask, miss."

The voice that had finally found its way to the fore was the last one that Able expected. Zip Nolan. The human cannonball and Able's bolt-hole psyche to hide inside.

"I think I've got a plan."

# THE BLIMP

From above, the city looked like the milky way. A sprinkling of stars at the outskirts, tiny lights against inky blackness, growing denser until the suburbs gave way to the burning galaxy heart of the city itself. The docks were a smoky nebula that clung to the fringes, and dark tracts of industrial buildings that lay dormant punctuated the star-scape with black holes and dark shards of the unknown.

From above, there were no screams. No sirens. No death. Just the serene lights, fighting their silent war against the darkness.

"It's beautiful," said Able. "I never thought it could be."

"Perspective," replied Nolan, the Irishman's voice clear in Able's head. "It's what flying gives you. The world looks a lot different from up here. Simpler. Cleaner."

"I can understand why you love it so much up here."

Able could feel his hands moving across the controls of the airship, but the movements were all Nolan's. Able had always had an affinity with Nolan, an ability to immerse himself completely in the Irish aerialist's mind and lose himself there completely. The Zen calmness of Nolan was a balm to Able's tortured, fractured mind.

He felt the Irishman's supreme confidence in control of the ship. Nolan knew, and so Able knew, every single nut and bolt in the thing. It had been their great project together, to make the old relic fly again, and now here they were. The thing flew and it was majestic. More than that, it was symbolic; something of the circus rising again to cast its shadow over the city. The airship would have been, should have been, the jewel in the circus' crown. But instead it had become another ghost, an undead leviathan come to haunt the sky, and the victory that Able and Nolan should have shared was tainted because of it.

Able watched as Nolan's hands moved again across the controls, pulling levers and adjusting switches, adjusting the airship's flight through the inky black sky. The engines spluttered and coughed, but somehow the beast stayed airborne. The thing pulled itself upwards and the scattered stars of the city vanished underneath grey clouds.

"Zip," asked Able, "How the hell are we going to land this thing when we get there?"

The Irish ghost chuckled. "You remember Mikey?" he asked.

"Of course," replied Able. Of all of the guilt that he carried around with him, the guilt that he felt for passing the pain of his healing in the pit on to Mikey Bumch was especially painful and poisonous. He hadn't felt the clown's mind again since that night and whilst he believed it was possible that he had simply vanished back into the waters of memory from which he had sprung, Able wondered in his darkest moments if the clown was still being tortured by that pain somewhere. He had called for the dead clown's spirit several times, but to no avail. He had been too cowardly to forcibly summon the clown's spirit, for fear of the worst. For all Able knew, Mikey Bumch had truly found a fate worse than death.

"Well, after what Mikey did for you, he found a a way out."

Able felt a prickle down his spine; the creature, Magpye, stirring. Whatever Nolan knew had gotten the dark thing's attention as well.

"What do you mean, a way out?"

"I knew Mikey better than most of the others," continued Nolan. "He was a lot like me. The revenge, the hate, all the bloodshed... it wasn't really for him. In a lot of ways he was happier dead. I got that. My old act, any night could have been my last. Death was something I came to terms with quickly. The guy who trained me, back in the day... He said the best way to avoid death was never to fear the bony bastard. The point is, it's cramped in here, Able, and like souls tend to stick together. We share our memories, share our space. We share ourselves."

Able felt a sadness from Nolan, something he'd never sensed before. A break in the dam that held back Nolan's emotions, a tiny trickle of what might lay behind the calm that Able had come to value so much. He'd never taken the time to wonder what the ghosts did when they sank down to the places where he couldn't reach them. He'd supposed that it would be something like sleep, a dream at most, but perhaps not. Zip Nolan and Mikey Bumch had continued their friendship into the afterlife, and Able realised that that meant that Zip had lost another friend because of him.

Another loss, another death. Another for Able's tally of guilt.

"I'm sorry, Zip."

"Don't be," replied Nolan. "What Mikey did for you? He told me that it made him feel complete. He'd never felt a single thing in his whole life, can you imagine that? Well, that fucking thing that lives inside all of us now, that god-damned bird... it made sure he felt what he took from you. Funny thing was, Mikey didn't mind. After a lifetime of nothing, agony had a sweetness for him. That's what he said."

"How long did it last?" asked Able.

"Hard to be sure," replied Nolan. "Time is different for us than it is for you. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. I won't lie to you, Able, it was a long time. It was a very long time, at least for Mikey. But, at the end of it, he was happy. He said that it had made sense of everything that had gone before, of every shitty thing that had ever happened to him. Every bad day he'd ever had had been to bring him to that moment, to help you, and to save us all from the pit. He said he'd done what he was supposed to do, and that was the last any of us saw of him."

Able felt the Magpye, spiteful and vengeful creature that it was, twist and turn with anger inside of him. Able had never wanted to claim dominion over the ghosts, but the creature did. The creature believed that they belonged to it.

"So there's another way..." said Able. He couldn't help but smile. "You're not trapped, any of you?"

"All we have to do is figure out why we're here," said Nolan. "At least, that's my theory. I mean, that's what people always used to say about ghosts right? That we're dead people with unfinished business?"

"Unfinished business," repeated Able. "Well, we've certainly got plenty of that."

He felt a ripple of acknowledge from the other ghosts. Wherever they were as he communed with Nolan, they could sense what was happening. The waters that Able pictured in his mind, calm whilst he was joined with Zip, began to froth and bubble again as they once had. Noisy spirits, vengeful spirits, and a dark form underneath it all; the dark shape of a bird, lurking in the deepest and most treacherous waters.

"But none of this tells me how we're going to land this thing," said Able.

Able snapped back to reality for a moment as Nolan's mind guided his hands across the controls once more. Looking out through the wide glass windows, the city was alive with light beneath them. Taller than anything else, a ziggurat of neon and gold, stood Cane King's hotel. The sight of it disgusted Able. It was as if Cane had been able to finally tattoo his name onto the city itself, to carve his image onto it.

The nose of the airship dipped and the old engines gave out an angry screech.

"Haven't you figured that out yet?" said Nolan's ghost. There was laughter in the ghost's voice. "While all the others have been arguing and fighting and raging, I've been doing what I always did best. I've been preparing. I've been getting ready to look the old bony bastard in the eye for a second time around, and this time... I'm not going to blink."

Able watched as his hands reached out, took hold of the two main control levers for the airship, and rammed them forwards. The engines roared and the great beast pitched forward.

"I've figured out what I'm here for, kid," said the ghost. "I'm The Amazing Zip Nolan, the human cannonball, the man who can fly. I'm going to do what I was born to do... I'm going to bring the house down."

# SCREAMING, BURNING, AND SIRENS

Harvey had one last drag on his cigarette before tossing it off the edge of the roof. It spiralled out through the night, its glow lost in the glaring neon lights blazing out of the casino. He checked his gun again before tapping another cigarette out of the packet and lighting it. He'd heard the stories, everyone had, and so everyone knew that the freak liked to come in through the roof. Getting posted up here with his boys by Taylor was a death sentence. Harvey knew it, his boys knew it. They'd been marked the minute Cassidy opened his big, god-damned mouth. The idiot had gotten off easy with a bullet between the eyes.

Now all that was left of Cassidy's gang was Harvey and this bunch of kids.

"This is going to be different boys," said Harvey, raising his voice against the wind. "We're going to show them all what we can do. We'll kill this freak the minute he shows his fucking face and we'll be the big names in this city, just you wait and see."

Nobody answered. They were cannon fodder. Maybe Harvey was the only one dumb enough not to believe it.

He started to walk the perimeter of the roof again. Wide and flat, the only structure that could provide any cover was the little brick build access to the building below. Plenty of space, but not many places to hide. Plus, the casino was taller than anything else around it. Harvey had thought it all through. No way was the freak coming in on the roof this time, not without being seen.

"All we gotta do is see him coming," he shouted, doing his best to rally his meagre troops again. "Just keep your eyes open and the minute you see him you raise hell and you let him have it, you hear me? He's gotta come through us, and the bastard can't fly!"

"Hey, Harv? Harvey?!"

Harv's heart skipped a beat and he almost dropped his gun as he spun in the direction of the voice.

"What? What?!"

The kid was silhouetted against a neon light that jutted up over the lip of the roof, but Harvey could see that he was pointing up. He turned again, fast, bringing up his gun, ready to fire.

"What... the... fuck?"

Inside the airship, all Able could hear was the scream of the engines and Zip Nolan laughing.

"You're kill us!" shouted Able.

Nolan's hands moved again across the controls. Now, they fought back against him, the old airship locked on a course it didn't have the power to change.

"You'll live," said Nolan. "You're getting out."

An image of a parachute, packed and ready for use, popped into Able's mind.

"When did you?"

"All that time you used to let me drive?" said Nolan. "I've had plenty of time to prepare."

"I'm not a parachutist," said Able.

"No, but I am, and I'm sure Magda can help you out if I'm already... you know."

"Gone," said Able. He hadn't had time to think about what his mind would be like without the calming influence of Zip Nolan in it, or what he would do without Nolan to retreat into from time to time.

The airship tipped further forward, the floor now pitching away from Able's feet.

"There are hand holds in the floor," said Nolan. "Time to start climbing!"

Able crouched down on the floor and found the first hand holds. Just in time, he fasten his grip on one as, with a final scream, the airship began to nose dive. Hand over hand, Able began to climb up the floor, away from the windows and towards the rear of the ship.

"You won't need to go all the way, just make it to the third set of doors. We'll be able to jump and clear the main part of the hull there."

Grunting with exertion, Able pulled himself upwards. There was a pressure building inside the cabin as the iron seams started to buckle under the strain of the ship's forced descent.

"This is crazy, Zip," said Able. "We could kill Marv, we could kill everybody."

"Don't worry," laughed the ghost. "I've got this all planned. Just get to the door."

Down on the roof, Harvey fumbled with the radio that Taylor had given him as he pitched through the door back into the casino. Taylor had said that if Harvey abandoned the roof he was dead but, right now, he was prepared to take his chances.

"Taylor! Taylor can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"It's a fucking blimp! The crazy bastard is going to crash a blimp into us!"

"Understood."

"Understood? Understood?! What the hell do you mean under-"

Able pulled the heavy iron lever that held the door shut and dodged out of its way as it toppled inwards. Wind rushed through the cabin and the windows at the front of the airship shattered as the nose started to crumple. Able reached to the wall and unhooked the parachute, strapping it over his arms one at a time, dangling from whichever was his free hand. He let Nolan and Magda do the work, their combined expertise and balance keeping him alive.

With one final look down through the shattered window at the rapidly approaching rooftops, Able pulled his legs up and mounted the lip of the door frame.

Without a second thought, he kicked away and sent himself out into mid-air.

Behind him, the airship frame rushed past, meter after meter of iron and leather and steel. He tumbled through the air, Nolan's voice counting calmly in his head. It was Able's hand, unguided, that held on tight to the parachute rip cord.

"Hold on kid!" shouted Nolan, as the tapering end of the airship rushed past them.

Together, Able and Nolan pulled the rip cord.

The airship hit the roof of the casino on the far side, the underside of the cabin tearing through the roof and down into the floors below. Metal screeched against metal as the two giants, the airship and the fortress, battled with each other, two titans locked in mortal combat. Sparks flew up from exposed electrics, igniting the rupturing fuel tanks of the airship. The explosion tore the main body of the ship in two, sending the bulbous nose cone off the edge of the roof and tossing the rear up into the air.

Able watched, drifting high above the scene, as the nose section tumbled downwards, bouncing off the wall of the casino and stripping away chunks of neon lighting and masonry before crashing into the street below, trailing debris with it. A wave of heat and pressure lifted Able upwards again as a second explosion, hidden from view, sounded. What little remained of the roof swelled upwards like a boil and burst with a gout of smoke and flame.

And, with that, it was over.

Screaming, burning, and sirens were what came next. But that was always what came next.

The Magpye had arrived.

# ONLY ONE OF US IS GOING BACK

Taylor took the stairs three at a time, racing up the stairwell, Garrity huffing and puffing somewhere in his wake. "Hey, psycho! You know you're running towards the fire, right?" shouted Garrity.

"So are you," replied Taylor. Garrity heard it, right there in Taylor's voice. Excitement. It was the most frightening thing he thought he had ever heard.

"And the freak, you're running towards that freak?"

Taylor stopped at a door, his hand on the handle.

"You'll always be small, Garrity, you know that? It's because you lack vision. You lack clarity. You're a street rat with a badge and that's all you'll ever be."

"And what are you going to be?" asked Garrity, finally catching up with his sometime nemesis. "Cane's successor? You screwed up the night you let the freak escape from the pit and you know it. You've been marked, Taylor. You're a dead man walking."

Taylor smiled. That strange, otherworldly smile. A smile from another place, a place where smiles meant something different.

"A dead man walking. That's funny Garrity. Because that's kind of the plan."

Taylor pulled his suit jacket off, revealing a string of explosives stitched to a concealed holster. A small detonator was flashing, right over Taylor's heart.

"Holy shit, Jack, are you fucking crazy?"

"Perhaps I am," said Taylor. "Or perhaps I'm the only person who seems clearly in this whole thing."

Garrity backed away a few steps, back down the stairwell. He was a natural born survivor, but anyone would have been able to see that explosives, fire, and a total sociopath like Taylor where a bad combination.

"What the hell are you going to do?" asked Garrity. "Blow yourself up?"

"Oh, that's just the start," said Taylor. "I've been doing some reading and, well, let's just say I've got my eyes open now."

From beyond the door there was a sudden report of gunfire. Taylor twisted the handle and cracked the door. More gunfire, shouting, and the sound of breaking glass poured through.

"Are you coming?"

"Screw this," said Garrity. "Screw you, screw Cane, screw this whole fucking scene."

"If he sees you've run he'll kill you on sight," warned Taylor. "And if I see you again? I'll kill you too. Slowly."

"I'll take my chances," said the fat, piggy cop. "Right now, I think you've all got bigger problems than me."

Garrity turned and ran down the stairs as fast as his fat legs would carry him. Taylor wasn't above shooting him in the back, he knew that, but he guessed right that he was so far down on Taylor's agenda he wasn't even worth a bullet. Behind him, he heard the door slam, and the muffled sound of more gunfire. Maybe they would all just kill each other, thought Garrity.

"Nah," he mused to himself, "I ain't that lucky."

# SHOOTERS

Aided by Magda and Zip, Able drifted on his parachute down the far side of the casino. Searchlights pierced the sky and fire trucks were already arriving down below. Cane's dirty cops had set up a barricade, blocking even the fire-fighters for now. Able wondered if Cane had them in his pocket too, if the whole thing was an elaborate pantomime for the benefit of the news cameras. Of course, Cane owned those as well. He owned everything.

"There," said Magda. "That balcony."

"Small..." said Zip.

"This was your plan," said the trapeze artist. "It's a little bit late to complain now."

"Just get me down," said Able. "I feel like a sitting duck up here."

Moving under the command of Zip and Magda, Able tugged on the parachute lines and began a swift descent towards the balcony. Zip had been right, it was small. Cutting the lines at the last minute, Able released himself from the parachute and hit the balcony at speed. Tucking himself quickly into a ball, he hit the glass balcony doors and crashed through them into the suite beyond.

Rolling across the carpet, shards of glass sticking into the leather of his coat, Able stopped in a crouch, his guns already drawn.

"That was great, kid," said Zip Nolan. "And I think that's my cue."

Able felt something inside himself, a warmth he'd never experienced before, either living or undead. Before he had a chance to say anything, he realised that the ghost of Zip Nolan was gone.

He was right, he'd brought the house down.

Able stopped for a moment to catch his breath.

The suite was nothing special, just a typically gaudy casino hotel room. It was the door that Able focussed on. It was not a special door, just a typical hotel room door. But, beyond it? Beyond it were whatever preparations Cane King had made for Able's arrival. Beyond it, somewhere, was Marv.

"OK," said Able, addressing his ghosts in unison. "Let's go."

Holstering one gun, Able yanked the door open and burst out into the corridor.

There were two of Cane's men already there, stalking slowly towards the door. It didn't matter. Stealth hadn't been a part of the plan. This was all about making an entrance. This was a performance.

This was the circus.

Able lifted his gun and got ready for Malcolm to take the shot.

The gun wavered in mid air. Able felt the muscles in his arm clench, then lock, then... nothing.

The Kingsmen didn't move, their eyes locked on the gun, their own sub-machineguns only half raised.

Able tried to pull the trigger, but nothing worked.

"Shit," said Able, and dived back through the open hotel room door as his two opponents finally opened fire.

***

Heading down a corridor of his own, Taylor heard the gunfire. Two, maybe three floors above.

"Damn it," he cursed, before doubling back on himself at a run.

His plan didn't work unless he was the one to kill the vigilante. He needed to kill a King.

***

Able kicked the hotel room door shut behind him before diving across the room and landing on the floor on the other side of the bed. Bullets ripped through the door as the goons outside opened fire. They were too scared to come in, at least for the moment. Able rolled onto his stomach and slithered back towards the wall.

"What the hell just happened?" he asked under his breath.

"A log jam, that's what happened."

The voice that replied was Malcolm. Since Able had first picked up a gun, Malcolm had taken every shot. He was a superb marksman and a trick shot without equal. Whatever his past was, and he was one of the few ghosts who could still keep some secrets from Able, he'd learnt somewhere how to shoot. How to shoot, and how to kill.

"What's that supposed to mean?" hissed Able, keeping his voice down as the gunfire from outside ceased.

"There's too many people trying to take the shot," replied Malcolm. "You've got a head full of coppers, Able, and they all want to be the one to pull the trigger."

Able's head filled with a cacophony of complaints from the ghosts.

"If you think I'm letting some circus act call the shots..."

"Green Beret, five years. Sniper training."

"Citation for marksmanship, tactical training."

"Enough!" hissed Able. "If we don't get our act together we're dead! We're dead, Marv's dead, and Cane wins."

Able's head cleared of noise for a moment.

"I can settle this," said Malcolm as, without warning, he released one of his preciously guarded memories and let it play out in Able's mind. Able couldn't be sure what he was seeing. It was dark and everything moved too fast. Gunfire, shouting, breathing muffled by a gas mask, the world seen through two orb-like eye pieces that distorted everything and painted the world in green and orange. Bodies, piling up, left and right. Men, women, children, all cut down by the most ruthless and efficient gunfire. Smoke. Flashes. Finally an insignia, stitched into a uniformed arm that briefly crossed the field of vision. Able didn't recognise it but that sent a shudder through some of the ghosts that Able could physically feel. This was Malcolm, the real Malcolm. Not the British guy who faked an American accent, not the clown in a cowboy hat and boxer shorts. Not a trick shot. Not a marksman. This was the real Malcolm, and he was a stone cold professional killer.

"That's my pedigree," said Malcolm. "That's why I'll call the shots."

Able heard the hotel room door open, slowly. Footsteps moving gingerly in.

"Can't see him..." whispered the intruder.

Able pulled his second gun silently from the holster.

"Check the bathroom."

"You check the bathroom."

The footsteps turned.

Able slowly moved from his stomach onto his knees.

"It should be a cop taking these shots."

The voice was Terry Cooper. Able knew enough about him to know that he'd say anything just for the feel of his finger on the trigger now. He was a born fighter, Able needed him, and owed him, but right now he felt like a trigger happy liability.

The door of the bathroom was kicked open. Shots fired at random.

"Shit."

"He's got to be in here somewhere."

"Maybe he went back out the window."

The footsteps moved closer. Able felt the now familiar tightness in his arms as his muscles locked, receiving too many signals. He knew he could shut them out, and he should be able to let just Malcolm in, but he didn't want to risk splitting his concentration between the real world and the world in his head. He'd been wrong, this wasn't the carefully balanced and orchestrated world of the circus. This was a free for all.

It was Rosa Blind's voice that finally cut across the others and gave Able the answer.

"Let me do it," she said. "I can organise these trigger happy idiots."

Able felt Rosa's mind impress onto his. The cool order, the mechanical structure. The efficiency of a machine. She was right, she could do it. Able smiled underneath this mask. Adam King had been right about her. Rosa Blind was dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

Before the footsteps could move any closer, Able stood, his guns raised.

This time, instead of his arms locking, they moved with a speed that was beyond anything he had ever experienced.

Malcolm took the first shot, putting a bullet right between the eyes of the nearest intruder. Cooper took the second, a square shot to the chest that sent the already dead intruder rocking back on his heels. Nutt took the third, using Able's off hand, tagging the second intruder just under the chin, the force of the shot almost tearing his head off. Rogers fired last, putting three bullets into each man in a neat triangle formation.

The bodies hit the floor, lifeless and ragged.

Able released a lungful of air, slowly.

"I'm not sure I brought enough bullets."

Holstering his pistols, Able picked up the discarded sub-machineguns from his two would-be killers as he crossed the room. In his head, Rosa managed the flow of information as each and every ghost offered up their skills, memories, and even their senses to Able through her. They saw everything, every detail, and analysed it in an instant.

"I'm an army," murmured Able as he reached the door of the room, swinging freely on damaged hinges.

He felt the dark creature, the Magpye, stir inside him. It was pleased.

Able walked out into the corridor.

"That's far enough."

At the far end of the corridor, guarding the elevators, a pack of Kingsmen were arranged into rows like a rifle battalion. Able could see the sweat on their faces as they kept their weapons trained on him with trembling hands. Most of them looked like kids. The smart criminals had found places to be that didn't put them right in the firing line, it seemed. All except one, of course. One smart criminal, with a mind unlike any other, and a smile like a shark with knives for teeth. Jack Taylor.

"It's time for me to kill you, Mr. King."

# THE RETURN OF OWEN WHITE

White bumped his car up onto the kerb half a block away from the casino. The street was murky with smoke and dust and the flames from the fiery hulk of the blimp painted everything with an orange flickering light. It had looked different on the television in White's hotel room. Smaller. Face to face with it, there was no doubting the enormity of what the man White knew only as Magpye had done.

"Fuck me," White murmured, "He killed a fucking building."

Getting out, he kept his weight on a cane. The leg was still painful. The lack of depth perception was inconvenient. Everything else just ached. But none of it mattered. Right now, in White's gut, there was something that he never thought he'd feel again. It was small, and fragile, but it was there.

It was hope.

Maybe, just maybe, Magpye was crazy enough to pull this off.

White waded through the crowds of gawkers, flashing his detective's badge when a shove in the back or a crack from his cane wasn't enough to part them. It seemed like every other person in the crowd was holding up a phone, snapping pictures or taking grainy, shaky video. White smiled. Cane thought he owned the media, but times were changing. This was the media now.

That was when the tiny fragile thing in White's stomach spoke with a tiny, fragile voice and gave him an idea. Everything that was happening here was being streamed and uploaded and posted at the speed of light, faster than Cane could ever hope to control. This was something that Cane couldn't buy and couldn't bribe.

It was time for Owen White to tell his story. The real story.

Reaching the police line, he ducked awkwardly under the yellow tape and hobbled towards what he guessed was the command vehicle. The burning front section of the airship had cut off the front doors to the building. There were other exits, obviously, but for some reason no one had been evacuated yet. While the fire raged, fire engines were backed up, revving their engines and sounding their sirens periodically as the chief fire-fighter argued with the SWAT captain.

"It's a fire, we put out fires, that's what we do. Now let us through."

"It's a crime scene, and a hostage situation, maybe even a terrorist attack. You go through when I say you go through."

"What's the problem here?" said White, butting into the conversation.

The SWAT captain recognised White immediately. There wasn't a officer on the force, regardless of rank, that hadn't know Owen White before what had happened at the paper mill. Since then, and since White had turned Kingsman, his status had only increased. Regardless of rank, he was second only to Garrity in terms of power in the police force now.

"No problem, detective, just putting this hose-jockey in his place."

White eyed the chief fire-fighter. In his mid-fifties, shaven headed, a scar running across his forehead. He had the steely look in his eyes of a man who has picked his spot and is sticking to it, no matter what. The fire service weren't as deeply corrupted as the police, White had learned, unless you were talking about the parts that dealt with fire regulations or could help you hide a meth lab or two. Surrounded by cops and journalists, White realised he might be looking at the only other honest man here.

"Let them through," said White. It wasn't a suggestion, it was a command.

The SWAT captain took White by the elbow, pulled White to one side.

"Listen, detective, maybe you didn't hear but we've got orders from the top. The real top. Nobody does anything without Garrity's say so and he ain't said so yet."

White wrapped his free hand around the SWAT captains collar and pulled him in so close that their noses almost touched.

"Garrity isn't here. I am. And I... just... said... so."

The SWAT captain swallowed. Some scum-bag a hundred yards away in his cross-hairs was one thing. Owen White, up close and personal, was a different proposition. Bum leg and one eye he might have, but this was a guy who had gone toe to toe with Cane King and Jack Taylor on the same night. Most people didn't have legs, or eyes, at all after that.

"If Mr. King finds out, I..."

"If Mr. King wanted his casino to burn to the ground, I'm sure he would have said so. Now let them through."

White pushed the SWAT captain away and hobbled off, back to the police line and towards the nearest journalist with a camera without a King Media logo on it before there could be any further argument.

"You there, are you live?"

The journalist couldn't have been more than twenty-five. Blonde, green eyed, and with a deeply earnest expression. A truth-seeker, if ever White had seen one, or at least someone who knew how to look like one for the camera. It didn't matter. She was getting the scoop of the century because she was nearest and White's leg was started to hurt like hell.

"We're live," she said, stepping into shot and pulled her cameraman with her towards White. "We're live with..."

"Detective Owen White," replied White, staring straight down the camera lens. It was a lot like staring down the barrel of a gun, except guns tended to kill you quicker and more painlessly than television could.

"Owen White?" asked the journalist. "The Owen White?"

"Yes, this is Owen White. I'm standing outside the King Casino Hotel. What we have just seen is not an act of terror, but the work of one man. One man who has been operating in the shadows for too long. A man with blood on his hands, a man responsible for countless crimes."

White took a deep breath. He could feel other lenses trained on him, drawn magnetically to his voice. There were even some King Media cameras drifting his way, eager journalists arguing furiously with unseen producers over earpieces and through mobile phones. Beyond them, even the crowd had turned their attention to White. He saw the tiny eyes of countless mobile phones trained on him. The eyes and ears of the world, for a moment, turned away from the flames and looked him.

"The name of the man responsible... is Cane King."

# CORRIDOR

The corridor was wide enough for four people abreast and ended in a wider space in front of a bank of six elevators. Taylor had his men lined up in two rows, the first group crouched down or on one knee in front of the others. Able stood in the middle of the corridor, half a floor away. The corridor was dotted with occasional tables, small sofas, and a few odd recesses. The angles were tight for his opponents, but wide for Able. Twenty to one, but a maximum of eight shooters at once realistically, and then Taylor. Able wasn't going to let Taylor get away with taking a stray bullet. Dealing with Taylor was personal.

Able raised his guns. Malcolm, Nutt, Rogers, Cooper. Four pairs of eyes, already placing shots before the triggers had been pulled.

"Screw this," spat Taylor. "Cut him down."

Able fired first, the sub-machineguns letting out three shots bursts as he alternated from his left hand to his right. The first three bullets took out one of the shooters in the second row, splattering those around him with blood and sending his body toppling backwards towards Taylor with only half a head and no face. The second three were spread across the bottom row, hitting chests and abdomens squarely.

Able moved before the first shot was fired from the other end of the corridor, putting his head down and rushing towards the first piece of available cover. Bullets zipped past, scorching the air as Able dropped and skidded on his side towards a small sofa. A shot thudded into the other side of the thing, the bullet rushing through and grazing Able's cheek.

Able fired blind, another three shot burst that somehow found its mark.

"Magda, I need to move fast."

Bursting out from behind the sofa, bullets zipping past again, Able flipped through the air, head over heels, and landed safely in a recess in the wall opposite. He could see Taylor from this angle, standing with his hands in his pockets and watching as his henchmen pumped round after round into the walls either side of Able.

Taylor didn't raise his gun, even though he had a clean shot.

It was personal for him too, it seemed.

Ducking out briefly from the recess, Able fired with both guns. Six shots, six hits. The bodies were starting to pile up now, and Taylor's goons were panicking.

Able flattened himself back into the corner of the recess as they returned fire. Wally Wu couldn't have gotten any deeper into the recess if he'd tried.

"Anyone who runs now lives," shouted Able. "I just want Taylor."

"Anyone who runs is dead before they reach the elevator," replied Taylor.

Able waited. One second. Two.

Taylor's men fired again, chipping away at the wall on the other side of the recess.

"How many left?" whispered Able.

"Twelve, plus him," answered Hartley. The computer expert and tactician had stayed quiet up until now. "There's another recess, eight yards up the corridor on the opposite side."

"They've got me pinned, I won't make it."

"You don't need to," replied Hartley. "I saw you heal yourself back in the pit, remember? Just try not to let them shoot you anywhere important."

Able took a deep breath and spun out into the corridor, guns blazing.

Six bullets sped down the corridor, finding their marks. Flesh was torn, organs punctured. Blood burst forth and bodies hot with pain or icy cold with shock fell against each other. Firing across each other, the remaining shooters put bullets into the walls, into the floor, and into Able.

The first went into his right arm, wrenching it backwards and knocking the sub-machinegun loose from his grip. The second hit his left thigh, almost taking him off balance and sending him skidding into the recess head first.

Panting, feeling blood running down inside and outside his body suit, Able put his weight against the wall and fired around the corner. Rogers put three shots in a neat triangle into the chest of one of the last shooters.

"See?" said Hartley. "Only six left to go."

Able closed his eyes and called Dorothy forward.

"Fix it, Dorothy," he whispered. "I need my arm, at least."

"I can't do it on my own," replied the circus medic. "I'll need the bird."

"I'm here," replied the chilling voice of the Magpye, the thing inside Able that was neither ghost nor man. "But know that I shall take my tithe later."

"Whatever," muttered Able. "Just patch me up."

Close to the end of the corridor now, Able could hear the ragged breaths of the remaining shooters. He knew the ones he had hit were dead, their raw and skinless ghosts were howling just on the edge of his hearing. He wondered how many more he'd have to kill before he got to Marv, and before he got to King.

Able gritted his teeth has he felt his wounded flesh knitting itself back together, his stomach churning as his unnatural digestion transformed whatever scant remnants of corpse meat he had in his gut into new, undead flesh for his body.

The process took just a few moments, but it was long enough for Taylor to gather his forces.

"He's wounded," Able heard him bark. "Rush him."

# THE DEATH OF MICK GARRITY

Garrity was sweating and gasping for breath by the time he reached the ground floor. Thankfully, the stairwell had been empty except for him and, with no one to get in his way, he'd made good progress. It had been a long time since he'd run from anything. He could still hear gunfire echoing down the stairwell shaft behind him, the smoke from the fire on the roof was drifting slowly down with it and there was a sticky coating of ash accumulating on every surface. None of that mattered to Garrity though. He had scoped out this escape route days earlier and it had served its purpose. Another one his little dirty secrets paying out just when he needed it to. Now he'd just vanish into the madness outside and let Cane and Taylor and whoever the hell it was still running around in a mask sort things out amongst themselves. Whoever came out on top was going to need the police on their side, and Garrity was the police in this city.

Maybe, if things panned out, he could find himself playing hero cop like Owen White. All he'd need were a few well-to-do hostages, ushered out of here under his careful care... Garrity was almost ready to turn back when the metal door that was his gateway to safety opened and Owen White walked in.

"Garrity," said White, seemingly unsurprised to find his nemesis-cum-mentor on the other side of the door. "Abandoning the sinking ship?"

"Look, White," said Garrity, "This thing is shaking out bad, you understand me? Cane's lost it, Taylor's worse. And that other guy? He crashed a fucking blimp into the roof!"

White smiled. For once, Garrity wasn't the one sitting on all the secrets.

Outside, the world was reeling to the revaluations that White had spewed. The networks were in chaos and, in the panic, White had simply slipped away. Right now, he was the most famous face in America, and Garrity had no idea.

"I saw," said White. "It's all over the news."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about," puffed Garrity. "We need to get out of here, both of us, get us some distance and then start running containment."

White limped inside, shutting the door behind him. With the door closed, the only light was from a dim emergency bulb over the doorway.

"What's our play?" he asked, his voice low and conspiratorial.

"We go back in," replied Garrity. "We tell Cane's crew there's been a change of plan. We get the hostages out, and we come out of this thing heroes. You and me. We're the cops, right? "

"What about Cane?"

"What about him?" asked Garrity. "He thinks he can play the whole country, the whole fucking world, and convince them all over again that he's a stand up guy. He wants them all to think that he's the victim. I've told him, it will never work. There's too much heat now. He's finished."

"But not us, right?"

"No, not us," said Garrity. He smiled his piggy smile, food from Cane's buffet still stuck in his crooked yellow teeth. "We play this right and we'll have whoever takes over from Cane in our pocket."

"You think so?"

"Trust me," said Garrity. White remembered the last time that Garrity had asked him to trust him. He remembered the lives that it had cost. He took a breath, held his rage in check for a moment longer. "Look," continued Garrity, "I've never told anyone this, OK, but when I was coming up the ranks, there was this sergeant. Real old school skull-buster. Ran a few blocks down-town, had himself the start of a little empire. Him and me, we were on a collision course from day one."

White limped towards Garrity, slumped down onto the stairs, and rubbing at his tortured ankle. Garrity dumped his fat carcass next to him.

"So, I put out the olive branch, right? I've got a little action, I offer to cut him in. He doesn't want to know. He thinks I'm shit, thinks I'm nothing, and he's going to take what's mine and cut me out."

"So what happened?" asked White, still working on his bust ankle.

"One night, he gets jumped in an alley. Couple of punk kids he'd been giving a hard time. Cut him up bad and left him to die in a dumpster. He was missing for a fortnight before someone smelt him out. Nobody could prove anything, of course. Those kids got away with it."

"What are you saying, Garrity?"

"I'm saying that you got to have your eye on the next big thing. You've got to see the opportunities that are coming your way because, otherwise, sometimes those same opportunities just wash you away."

"You wash this guy away, Garrity, was that it?"

"I did what I had to do," replied the dirty cop. "Only way to survive in this city. You stick with me, I'll teach you how to make something of yourself around here."

White lifted up the leg of his trousers and pulled a short bladed knife from a holster around his duff ankle. Garrity's eyes bulged as White stabbed him in the side of his fat throat. Hot blood gushed out around the wound, drenching Garrity and White. The fat cop tried to pull his gun, but his strength was draining out of him too fast. Within moments, all that was left was a fat pig with a slit throat, slumped forward on the stairwell steps.

White bent over and slipped the knife back into its holster before picking up his cane and limping up the stairs, towards the sounds of gunfire and the flames.

"I've learnt my lesson," he said, to nobody but himself.

# THE REVENGE OF THE DETECTIVES

"Rush him."

"Rush them."

Malcolm kicked Able's legs into gear, driving him out of the alcove low and fast. He fired blind, spraying a fan of bullets at knee height. Taylor's three remaining shooters fell, their legs cut out from under them. Dorothy took a silent inventory of shattered bones and torn muscles as they fell. Criminals, killers, were made cripples in an instant.

Able tucked into a roll, ducking under the few stray shots aimed at him, and landed in a crouch just past his fallen assailants. Malcolm turned one of the sub-machineguns back and fired again, finishing the job. Cripples became corpses and the corridor fell silent, except for the sound of applause from Jack Taylor.

"Very impressive," he said. "Although, I never really thought they had a chance."

Able stood, dropping the sub-machineguns to the floor with a clatter.

"Jack Taylor," he said quietly.

Cane King's lieutenant needed no introduction. The memories of the dead cops had run through Able's mind so many times they were as familiar, if not more familiar, to him than his own. Taylor was the man on the other end of the gun that ended their lives. Taylor was the man who had taken their friend and cut him into pieces just to draw them out. Taylor was the man they had all come back from the grave to kill. And Taylor was the man, on Cane King's orders, who had burnt down the circus.

Between Able and Taylor, the bodies of Taylor's men lay dead and bloody. Blood had turned the thick beige carpet a dirty red and splattered the walls with crimson. The whole place felt hot, the fire working its way through the floors above, and the air had thin traces of smoke in it. It was hell, a small patch of hell, and Taylor looked very much at home there.

Taylor tossed his own gun to his side.

"We've never actually met, unless you count scooping you up off the floor and dumping you into a hole in the ground," said Taylor with a smirk, "But if what I've read is true, and if what I've guessed is right, then there's maybe a few people rattling around in that rotten melon of yours who think they've got a score to settle with me."

Able's ghosts whirled in his head, all vying to be the one to take on Taylor while Able looked at the man again. Able was used to seeing ghosts, but Taylor was alive and yet somehow dead at the same time. He was a man with something missing, with a void where his soul should have been. A shell, like Able, but living. Living yet devoid of what should have made him alive.

It scared Able.

"One at a time or all together?" he whispered, knowing that Taylor could probably hear him even through his mask.

"All together," came the reply and although Able could have told the voices in his head apart, he preferred to imagine that they had all replied at once.

The two men raced at each other. Able threw a punch, the combined furry of the dead cops behind it, but it glided over Taylor's head as the other man ducked and tagged Able in the ribs with a pair of rapid punches. Able threw a fast elbow, hitting Taylor in the soft part of his shoulder and knocking him back a step.

Quickly, Able followed up with a kick to the groin, a move that was entirely Terry Cooper's. Taylor saw it coming, but couldn't move quickly enough to completely avoid it, and Able's metal tipped boot collided with Taylor's knee.

Taylor fell, cursing under his breath. Cooper grabbed control again, and kicked Taylor in the face, Able's boot opening up a deep gash above Taylor's eye.

Taylor ran his thumb across the gash and licked the blood from it.

"Blood," he said, looking up at Able. "That's what its all about, isn't it?"

"Right now?" replied Able. "Just your blood."

"Want a taste?" taunted Taylor, getting unsteadily to his feet.

"I'll pass," said Able, ignoring the tell tale twist in his gut that reminded him the Magpye was hungry again, and owed a tithe.

"Then let's get this over with," said Taylor, lunging at Able.

This time, Taylor didn't throw any punches. Dodging two punches from Able, Taylor came in low and closed the gap between the two men. His shoulder going into Able's stomach, Taylor got his arms around Able and lifted him up from the floor. Twisting, Taylor tried to bring Able down as Able drove an elbow down in between Taylor's shoulder-blades. Taylor's grip didn't weaken, and Able felt himself moving off balance.

It was Rigby, surprisingly, who suddenly wrenched control of Able's body. Planting a foot down at an awkward angle, he rapidly shifted Able's weight and sent Taylor spinning away from Able.

"Judo," said the bookish cop. "It had to come in handy one day."

But no-one was listening to Rigby, not even Able. As Taylor had spun away his jacket had ripped open, revealing the complex apparatus of explosives strapped around his torso. The reflexes of every cop screamed "bomb" and Able leapt backwards, reaching for one of his holstered pistols.

Taylor's smirk spread into a shark-like smile.

"Planning on going out with a bang?" asked Able.

In his head, the cops and Malcolm were already assessing the precise make-up and construction of the explosives. To Able, it didn't matter. He had been beaten, stabbed, slashed, and shot. Being blown up, being burnt up to nothing? Maybe he couldn't survive that, maybe he could. He had no intention of finding out.

"Like I said," said Taylor, standing up and straightening his clothes. "It's all about the blood. The power of the Kings? It's in the blood. Your power, what you've got in your head? That runs on blood too. I'm sure you know that."

Able didn't react. He didn't want Taylor to know how little he really understood of his power, even after all the training from Adam King. He had assumed that what was a mystery to him was a mystery to the Kings as well, but was it possible that Taylor knew more? There was a white hot intelligence behind Taylor's piercing eyes, and Able wondered what Taylor could have deduced about him, and about the Magpye, given enough time and information.

"You got your power from Adam King when you died, trapped in that stupid box. Your blood, his blood, mingled together in the moment of death. A fluke, a one in a million chance. Adam's power should have gone to Cane, but you screwed that up. Unlucky for him, eh?"

Taylor pulled his jacket off, revealing the bomb strapped to him and the detonator switch placed over his heart. Able's hand tightened around one of his holstered pistols.

"The bomb goes off if my heart stops or if I hit this button right here," explained Taylor, pointing to a red button on the side of the detonator. "So you shoot me? We both die."

"You might have mentioned that earlier," quipped Able.

"Well, that's the fun part," replied Taylor. "Because I'm ready for this thing to go off. I just want to be really close to you when it does."

"You're not making sense," said Able.

"It's like I said," replied Taylor, "You and your idiot father, dying together, blood into blood, he passed the Magpye into you even though you weren't a part of the real King line. The Kings are sired by Kings in the wombs of witches. Your circus trollop mother just didn't cut it. You just another bastard, did you really think you were the first of those? Don't be ridiculous. You're just the first to be in the right place at the right time. And if it could work for you, it could work for me."

Able pulled his gun and levelled it at Taylor.

"He's right," said Hartley voice's in Able's head. "That detonator's wired in, I can see it. You end him, we're all gone."

"You can't be serious," said Able. "You want to take my place?"

"I'm always serious," replied Taylor. "I'm going to blow us up and while we're both just a mist of blood and shit, I'm going to take what's yours."

"You're crazy," said Able.

"No I'm not," said Taylor, taking a determined step towards Able. "I know exactly what I'm doing. I always do. It's my gift, you see. Clarity. Perfect clarity. In the last few months I've seen things, read things, discovered things. Things even you wouldn't believe. You're the tip of the iceberg. Anyone else, I think their mind would have snapped, but not me. Blow myself up? It's the sanest response to an insane world there is."

Rosa Blind, the eternal analyst, shrugged somewhere inside Able's shared psyche.

"Bat shit crazy," she said simply. "Put him down."

The two men rushed at each other again, but this time there were no punches thrown. Taylor tried to throw his arms around Able again, but Able grabbed both his arms by the wrists. With a sudden twist, engineered by Rigby and Dorothy in unison, Able shattered both of Taylor's wrists. Keeping his grip firm, Able bent Taylor's wrists back further, breaking more bones and driving his assailant to his knees.

"You talk too much," said Able. It was Rosa Blind speaking, the dead cop taking control of Able's voice as easily as the others drove his limbs. "That whole 'craziest man in the room' bullshit might scare your criminal friends, might scare crooked cops, might even impress Cane King, but it doesn't work on me. I've seen crazy, I've seen evil, I've seen everything in between and, you know what? I put you all in a spreadsheet, I added you up, I took you away, and you call came out the same. You don't impress me Jack Taylor, you're just another broken machine, another man with a cog gone astray who thinks that he's special."

Able's boot came up, hit Taylor on the chest, and drove him backwards. Legs bent backwards, arms pinned as Able twisted his shattered wrists, Taylor squirmed and twisted to try and regain control as Rosa continued.

"And that's how we're going to leave you," said Rosa. "Broken."

Able watched, almost disembodied, as his hands took hold of one of Taylor arms and snapped it backwards at the elbow, the bone snapping with a sickening wet crunch.

Taylor didn't scream, even though Able could tell he wanted to. There was panic in his eyes now. Able wondered if having perfect clarity ever left room for accepting the possibility of what would happen if your perfect plan didn't come to fruition.

Able's hands moved across and broke Taylor's other arm, the bone bursting through the skin with a spurt of blood that turned the sleeve of Taylor's shirt dark red. Able watched as his foot lifted, then came down hard on Taylor's ribs. More sounds of snapping and cracking came from inside Taylor, and the pain finally tore a scream from between Taylor's thin lips.

His arms shattered, ribs snapped, Taylor struggled to roll over onto his stomach. He floundered like a fish, flopping his torso up and down in a desperate attempt to trigger the detonator. Able watched as one of the cops grabbed hold of Taylor's left ankle and twisted his foot backwards until the bone snapped.

"You're done, Taylor," said Able, stepping over the squirming mess of broken bones that had once been the most feared and dangerous man in the city. "If you're lucky, you'll burn to death up here."

"Wait."

It was the voice of the Magpye, that strangely ancient and yet childlike voice, that stopped Able in his tracks. The creature surfaced through the turbulent waters of Able's mind, a dark shape that resolved itself in his mind's eye into the form of the little girl who had haunted him in the circus.

"What?" hissed Able in response.

"I want him."

"He's a psychopath," said Able. "I can't have him in my head."

"It's my head," replied the creature. "And I want him. I want him, or I'm going to open up every little wound of yours I ever stitched. I'll leave you lying next to him as nothing but a mess of meat and agony and let him work out what to do with you. Maybe his plan will work after all."

"You're bluffing," said Able, glancing back at Taylor. He was crawling, somehow, impossibly, towards him. His body moved in a way that a body shouldn't move, driven by his insane mind. His shark eyes were locked on Able, ignoring the pain, ignoring the injuries, a pure predator that would never give up the hunt. Two broken arms, shattered ribs, and to Able the man was still terrifying.

"I want him," said the creature again, and instantly Able doubled over with pain. He felt blood on his abdomen, felt parts of him opening suddenly, wounds like hungry mouths crying out to be fed.

He could feel Taylor's eyes on his back and felt like he was trapped in a vice. The creature wanted Taylor, Taylor wanted the creature, and Able would be crushed in the middle.

# MARV AND THE KING

Cane slammed his fist into Marv's face. The magician's head snapped back and bounced off the chair frame, leaving him reeling.

"Why didn't anyone tell me he had a fucking airship?" spat Cane, shouting to no one in particular. Downstairs, his men were busy corralling the assembled dignitaries and celebrities, maintaining the illusion that this was an attack on Cane, whilst upstairs Cane was pretty sure that whoever Taylor and Garrity had taken with them was already dead.

That left Cane, with his devils below and a devil above, and Marv.

Marv rolled his tongue to the side of his mouth and fished out a dislodged tooth. He spat it out onto the floor.

"You don't like surprises, do you Cane?"

"Fuck you," said King. "You think I'm worried about burning this place down? It couldn't be better for me. The whole of America is watching and they're all going to see that I'm the victim here. You know how frightened Americans are these days? They'll give me a fucking medal. Hell, I could ride this thing all the way to the White House."

"Why own a president when you can be the president, is that it?"

"You're clever for a guy who lives in a fucking cave."

"Don't need to be clever to see what you're thinking, son," said Marv with a bloody grin. "It's written all over your face."

Cane spun around to face himself in one of the casino's mirrored walls.

The Ink was right there, staring back at him.

# TAYLOR

Able hauled Taylor by his shirt across the corridor and into a hotel room, trailing blood behind them both. Taylor was laughing every step of the way.

"It's him, isn't it? It's your demon making you do this."

Demon. Able had never thought of the Magpye that way, but it made sense. The dark thing inside, the presence that whispered in his ear and, occasionally, took control of him in ways that he didn't understand. This was one of those times.

"Shut up," said Able, talking to Taylor and the Magpye at the same time.

In his mind, the creature didn't stop talking.

"He's unique," it said, "And I want him. He should be... delicious."

Able could feel heat through the ceiling of the room, smell smoke in the air. The fire was getting closer. He reached the balcony window and kicked it open. The cold air rushed in, bringing with it the sound of sirens and the cloying smell of burning.

Able pulled Taylor up by his shoulders and rammed him against the balcony railing.

Taylor stared at him, his eyes still fearless.

"What's the play, freak?"

"Take off the bomb, toss it, or I toss you."

"What happens after I take it off?" asked Taylor.

Able looked him right in the eye. He could tell that there was no lying to Taylor. To Able, he still looked simultaneously like more than just a man and somehow less than a human. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to have that thing in his head. He had one monster already.

"After you take it off... I kill you," replied Able flatly. "And when you're dead, I eat some of your flesh. And then... you're in."

"Hmm," said Taylor. "Doesn't sound like there's much in it for me."

"You don't die down there as a smudge on the floor, that's what's in it for you."

Taylor twisted his head to one side and took a look down off the balcony. The crowds were still being held back, the fire fighters locked in a pitched battle with the blaze from the nose-cone of the crashed airship.

Meanwhile, Rosa was talking to Able.

"If you let him in, we're going to need to contain him," she said. "If we don't then his mind is going to be like poison to you."

Able didn't answer. His eyes, and his focus, were on Taylor. The Magpye wanted him and if it didn't get what it wanted, then Able might die right here. But he couldn't take the chance that Taylor was right, that there was a way for him to take control of the Magpye and take control of the ghosts. Able owed them more than that. He wouldn't fail now, not when he was so close, and not when Marv's life still hung in the balance. But he knew that, if it came to it, it would be better for them all to die than for Taylor to have the power that Able had. His fate, one way or another, was suddenly in Jack Taylor's hands. It was just as Taylor had planned.

"Don't worry, he'll go for it," Rosa said. "He won't be able to resist it."

Able shoved Taylor, pushing his head and shoulders over the railing.

"Take it off or you fly," he growled.

"You need to lock him away, the minute you have him," said Rosa. "Lock him up with me, I'll take care of it."

Able wanted to argue with her, to remind her how crucial she was, but saying a word would have tipped his hand to Taylor. It didn't matter, as there was another voice in Able's head a second later.

"No," said the voice. "Rosa, you're needed here. I'm the one we can do without. You've got enough shooters to make it without me. And I owe this guy. I owe him for Grice."

Nutt, thought Able. Yossarian Nutt. The self confessed bad cop and Lee Grice's partner. His guilt was almost as heavy as Able's own.

"Lock him up with me," repeated Nutt.

Able brought his hand up around Taylor's throat.

"Out of time," said Able. He ignoring the fluttering in his stomach as the Magpye slowly un-stitched a part of his gut. He had no doubt that the creature could open him up, but he was banking on being able to pitch Taylor over the edge before that happened. If Taylor was dead, there would be nothing for the creature to do but die up here with Able if it did open him up. For a creature so inextricably linked with death, Able had noted that it wanted to live more than he did sometimes.

It was a gamble. But he was in a casino. Time to live a little.

"There's a safety catch," said Taylor. "In the small of my back. I'd reach for it, but you broke both my arms. It short circuits the detonator if it opens."

Keeping one hand around Taylor's throat, Able reached behind him and released the catch. The explosive harness fell slack and Able quickly stripped it off Taylor and tossed it over the balcony. Seconds later it vanished into the maelstrom of flames that was the remnant of the airship and exploded.

"I'd prefer a bullet," said Taylor. "Between the eyes."

Able adjusted his grip on Taylor's neck and wrapped his other hand around the back of his head. Dorothy had taught him how to do this, and it was remarkably simple.

"Wait, I..."

Able twisted Taylor's head around and, with a resounding snap, his neck broke.

Able wondered what it was Taylor had been about to say.

Hooking a finger into the gash above Taylor's eye, Able peeled back a fold of flesh until it tore away. Closing his eyes, he pulled his mask up and shoved the bloody strip of flesh into his mouth.

# A NEW LIFE

"Shut it down!" Cane screamed into his mobile phone. "No, not the story, the network! Shut down the god-damned network!"

Cane hurled the phone across the room, smashing the mirror on the wall and shattering the phone. His reflection, twisted in the broken mirror, was once again alive with the shifting patterns of The Ink. The damned thing, this was what it had wanted from the minute it got inside of him. It wanted to be out. It wanted to be seen. It was a story, what purpose did it have if it wasn't being told?

"Cat out of the bag?" asked Marv.

Cane back handed the magician and stalked to the other side of the room.

"What would you know about it?"

"I'm a magician," said Marv. "Secrets? Secrets are what we do. So, I kind of have a sixth sense for when they get out. Actually, it is my sixth sense. Maybe my eighth. It's hard to keep count."

"Fucking magic," said Cane, staring at himself in an unbroken section of mirror. "I should have known better."

"We all should," replied Marv. "But that's magic for you. You only know its fucking you once you're already fucked. Take it from me."

Cane didn't answer.

Marv shifted in his seat. The bolts through his hands and feet were still tight and he was still numb from whatever the drip was pumping into him. None of which should have been a problem, which left him wondering when his own magic would be done screwing with him. Until it was, he'd have to make his own magic, and maybe work his own way out of here.

"The Ink is more than you can handle," he said, dropping the confrontational tone from his voice. "I hated Grace to her bones, in the end, but she was always one hell of a magician and even she had trouble with it. It's powerful, Cane, primal even. Someone once told me that it went all the way back to the beginning, back to when we were just monkeys with straight backs and paintings on our walls. Something that old? It's devious, Cane. Devious and deadly."

Cane rubbed a hand down his face, as if the Ink was a dirty streak of mud that he could smudge away. "Damn thing," he muttered.

"There's a way out of this," continued Marv. "Cane King can die here tonight, and you can start over. I know the kind of people who can give you a new life."

Cane's expression soured. "A new identity? I've got the most recognisable face in America. Besides, you think I can't order up some fake fucking ID?"

"I didn't say a new identity, I said a new life. Literally, a new life."

"More magic," sneered Cane.

"The only kind of magic that counts," replied Marv. "The kind that lets you walk away."

He looked at Cane. Whilst he couldn't read the symbols and patterns in The Ink, there was a story there that Marv recognised. It was the story of a little brother, always in big brother's shadow. It was the story of a man growing up in a family that expected so much of him, but gave so little. It was a story of duty, of legacy, and of the cruelty of tradition and expectations. No King had been born free, not for a long while, thought Marv. They were all prisoners, prisoners of The Magpye and The Ink, playthings of ancient creatures.

"Walk away..." said Cane. For a moment, it sounded like he might just be considering it. Marv felt magic tickle at his fingertips once again. It was his magic, that wild and uncontrolled talent of his, the only kind of magic that counted.

# THE DISAPPERANCE OF OWEN WHITE

White stopped to catch his breath. He had no idea the layout of the casino, but he'd figured that there would be a control room, or rooms, somewhere above the gaming floor. Two flights up the stairwell his bum ankle was already slowing him down.

When his phone rang, the sound filled the whole stairwell.

He fumbled inside his jacket for the thing. He'd forgotten all about it.

Snapping it open, he recognised the number on the caller ID.

"Shit," he muttered, pressing the green button to accept the call.

"Sir."

"Not exactly."

"Who is this? How did you get this number?" asked White. "I've said all I've got to say if you're trying to get an interview then..."

"I'm not trying to get an interview, Detective White. I'm the man who gives the man the orders that are given to another man before they are given to the man who gives them to you. Approximately."

"Well if you're calling me in then you can have my badge in the morning, if I'm still alive."

"Oh, I'm counting on you still being alive, Detective."

"Thanks."

White's mind was racing. He'd expected a response to his outing of Cane King, of course, but not one like this. The voice on the other end of the phone was calm, reassuring. It was even, if White wasn't mistaken, slightly congratulatory. He felt as if he'd passed a test he didn't even know that he was taking.

"Turn around and leave the building the way you came in," said the voice. "Walk to the rear as quickly as you can. No one will stop you, but it would be best if you could avoid any more media attention."

"And then?" asked White, reasonably sure now that his immediate future involved a van, a black bag over his head, and the sharp end of a .22.

"You'll find a unmarked blue sedan waiting for you. There is no driver but in the trunk is money, plenty of it, and new papers. A passport, driving license, everything you need to disappear for a little while. Go wherever you would like. We will find you, when we need you."

"And if I don't want to disappear?"

"Then there's a very good chance that you will die in that building and everything you think you've accomplished will be airbrushed out of history by King and his associates. The man you've outed tonight is the central card in a very, very high stack Detective White. The whole thing might just tumble down, and we'd like to make sure that it does."

"Sounds like a trap," said White.

"And you'd know all about that," replied the voice sardonically. "Detective White, make no mistake that this is a time limited offer. Wheels are in motion now that will grind to a halt if they are allowed to. We need you, we can and will protect you, we just need you to trust us in return. You've made yourself our White Knight, Detective. If you're ready, things are going to get very interesting."

The phone went dead, leaving Owen White with a decision to make.

A decision that would undoubtedly either cost him, or give him back, his life.

It was the ache in his ankle that decided it. Walking down was easier than climbing up. Detective White turned around and headed down the stairs towards wherever it was that the blue sedan would take him.

# TAYLOR'S LITTLE HELL

"Did you know that it's impossible to lie to me, Mr. King? I discovered that when I was eight years old."

Taylor remembered speaking the words in the back of Cane King's limo. It was the night that they had hatched the plan to wipe the clean squad cops from the face of the Earth. The same night he had watched the remains of Lee Grice spill out of the bag he'd put him in. The looks on their faces, those so called "hard men", when they saw what he had done. That was what clarity really meant to Taylor. He lived, had lived, his life without boundaries. He was what a person could be if you turned everything up to eleven.

Around him, the memory of that night vanished and was replaced by another.

He knew the place instantly. It was one of the orphanages he had spent time in as a child. He knew exactly which one. This was the one with the doctors. The place where they had tried to fix him.

Jack Taylor, eight years old, was about to have his first course of electro-shock therapy.

In this memory he was already strapped down to a gurney, thick leather belts holding his ankles and wrists, wearing nothing but a surgical gown. They hadn't put the cap on yet, hadn't shoved the bit in between his teeth to stop him from swallowing his own tongue or biting through his lips. Taylor had been so proud of his perfect memory, but now it would betray him and recreate these moments in perfect detail. It didn't matter. Like the shocks from the machines themselves, it was temporary.

Everything was temporary.

The gurney rattled down the hallway, and all Taylor could see where cracked tiles in the ceiling. He counted them, calculating how far down the hallway he was, and listened to the doctors talking. And that was when he realised that there was something wrong. Somehow, this wasn't his memory, not entirely. There should have been two doctors and two nurses. There should have been the priest as well, the one who was always preoccupied with the boys who had to have the "special treatments". Taylor remembered what he had done to that priest, but found he couldn't escape into that memory. No, he was stuck here. Taylor was strapped to the gurney and there was only voice talking.

It was a voice he knew. It was the voice of Yossarian Nutt.

"Hello fucker."

"This is my memory, what the hell are you doing here?" asked Taylor. There was no pretence of calm in his voice. Although he had all of his memories, all of his precious clarity, a little bit of eight year old Jack Taylor couldn't help but bleed through. Eight year old Jack Taylor still got scared, from time to time.

"Able's locked you up," continued Nutt. "Your memories aren't like anyone else's, so you were easy to keep apart from the rest of us. You're dead, you're inside Able's head just like you wanted to be, but you're not going anywhere other than your own memories. The bird wants you all to itself."

"The bird? You mean the demon, the Magpye? Is it here?"

The gurney bumped over a cracked tile. Taylor remembered that tile. They were close to the treatment room now. So close.

"Oh yes," said Nutt. "She's here."

The end of the gurney shuddered as it hit the doors to the treatment room. Taylor saw the familiar strip lights, heard the hum of the machinery and smelt the old familiar air, thick with the smell of shit and cheap disinfectant. It was all exactly as he remembered it.

Except for Nutt. And except for Magpye.

The creature leaned in over Taylor. It had the face of a small girl, framed in jet black hair. Its face was human, yet inhuman at the same time. It was a face created by something from a place where faces had a different purpose, or no purpose at all. It was the face of something that didn't really understand faces, but needed to wear one. A face like a mask of a face.

"Hello Jack," the creature said. "I'm the Magpye."

Nutt's rough hands shoved the skull cap down onto Taylor's small head and forced the well-chewed bit in between his teeth. Taylor heard the turning of a dial, heard the whiny build up of an electrical charge.

Nutt's face appeared alongside Magpye's, and Taylor couldn't decide whose smile was more terrifying.

"You see, fucker, the deal is this. The bird wants you, but Able doesn't. I want you, but Able doesn't. So, me and my weird little friend here get to keep you, as long as you don't disturb the other children."

Taylor tried to spit out the bit, but Nutt had fixed it fast.

"We found this place in your memories, and it seemed as good a place as any to start. The bird wants to know what makes you tick and I want to make you bleed and bleed for what you did to my partner. So, we're going to shock you, then we're going to drug you, and then we're going to cut your head open and take a look inside. Personally, I hope we don't find what we're looking for because, well, you've got far worse memories than this, don't you Jack?"

Nutt threw the switch on the electro-shock machine before Taylor could even grunt an answer, and started Jack Taylor's second lifetime in hell. It would not be temporary in the least.

# CANE AND ABLE

Cane hurled Marv through the doors into the casino control room. The old magician fell, slamming into the buffet table and sending food across the floor.

"Phone's over there," said Cane, pointing to a telephone handset embedded into a wide control panel beneath a bank of screens. "Get it done."

Beneath them, through the floor to ceiling glass, Cane watched as his last remaining loyal Kingsmen kept watch over the hostages. None of them looked up at him. Their eyes were glued to the television screens that dotted the walls. The news was still rolling, and Cane was the only story.

"Some of these people don't exactly have telephones," said Marv, staggering over to the control panel. "They're a little... old school."

"Just make it happen," said Cane, "I've got transportation on the way."

His tone was grim. Marv had heard the tone before, it was the tone of voice that men get when they realise that they don't have anything left to lose. He'd heard it more times than he cared to remember, and the results were always messy. Thankfully for Marv, he normally wasn't around for consequences, but right now his magic was stubbornly refusing to do anything other than let him be Cane's punch bag.

Marv picked up the phone and dialled.

"Laurence? It's Marv. Yeah, yeah, I know, you told me only to call in emergency..."

Cane appeared next to Marv and started flicking switches on the control panel. The bank of screens above them switched from showing video of the casino floor to showing video from the hotel corridors up above. Cane flicked from channel to channel until he found Magpye. Marv stole a glimpse at the screen. Best guess, Able was only a floor above them, and heading for the elevator.

"Damn," said Cane, looking at his watch. "He's close."

Marv pretended that he hadn't heard anything.

"I've got a client for you, Laurence. Yes, he can definitely pay. No, he's not in serious trouble..."

Cane flicked more switches, until every screen was showing an image of the control room.

Marv placed his hand over the receiver. "What are you doing?"

"Just a little backup," said Cane, "In case you can't deliver."

Marv took a step away from Cane, stretching the phone cord with him. There weren't any mirrors here, but Marv was sure that Cane must know that his face was covered in The Ink again.

***

One floor above, Able reached the elevator. He could still taste Taylor in his mouth but there was no trace of him in his head. There had been no resistance since Taylor, the floors cleared of Kingsmen. Maybe that was how Taylor had wanted it, or maybe Cane's forces were finally getting depleted. Either way, all that was left for Able to do now was find Marv and find Cane King before the hotel burned down around him.

"Simple," he said to himself, looking up a wall-mounted map of the casino. "If I just knew where the hell you where..."

Without warning, a screen next to the map sprung into life. In place of the usual information or advertising that Able expected it was intended for, it showed a picture that seemed to be coming from somewhere inside the casino. Able watched as Cane King moved from side to side in front of some kind of control panel. To his left, almost out of shot was Marv. Marv, on the phone.

"What the hell are you playing at you old bastard?" said Able.

***

Marv put the phone down.

"It's done."

"Just like that?" asked King incredulously. "One phone call?"

"One phone call to the right person," said Marv. "Laurence will put everything in place. This time tomorrow you'll be in a whole new life and nobody will ever be able to find you."

Cane looked down onto the gaming floor of the casino. Sweat was running down his face and back as The Ink boiled inside of him. This wasn't how things were supposed to go and this wasn't the story that The Ink wanted to tell. It was taking every ounce of Cane's will to go against the will of the thing that lived under his skin, and he didn't know how much longer he would be able to hold out.

"And they'll be able to get this thing out of me?"

"That's the very first step," said Marv reassuringly.

Cane heaved and vomited up a handful of blood.

"Why are you doing this?" asked Cane. "Why are you helping me?"

Marv put his hand on King's shoulder. He could feel the heat coming off Cane's skin.

"Because I know what it's like to have something inside you that you can't control," answered Marv. In the glass, he caught sight of his own reflection and realised that, somewhere along the line, what had been a line of bullshit to keep Cane talking had become something else, something real.

"We're not so different," he said. "All my life, Cane, I've..."

The elevator pinged outside and Marv felt Cane's shoulders tense. The Ink swirled onto his face and contorted it into an animal's snarl. Turning, Cane pushed Marv backwards with a force that lifted the magician off his feet and sent him hurtling across the room. He hit one of the glass walls hard, hard enough to crack the glass and hard enough to finally get the attention of the people down on the casino floor.

Winded, struggling to get back to his feet, Marv watched as Able walked into the room.

Cane was waiting for him.

"Adam," said Cane. Except the voice wasn't Cane's. It was guttural and frothy, like words spoken underwater and bursting in bubbles on the surface. It was the voice of The Ink.

Able reached up and pulled off his mask. In the screens across the room he saw his own face, his white flesh and milky eyes, the blood caked around his mouth from his meal of flesh just minutes before. It was the face of a monster.

"I'm not Adam," he replied, and shot Cane King in the face.

Cane staggered back, clutching and clawing at a wound that should have been fatal. The bubbling, watery voice of The Ink howled as tendrils of thick black go burst out from between Cane's fingers as he covered his face. Able watched as, between Cane's fingers, he saw glimpses of Cane's face was rebuilt piece by piece, layer by layer. He watched as thick black ooze replacing bone and flesh before fading to a perfect match for the surrounding skin. It took only moments for the howls to give way to softer pants and gasps until, finally, Cane took his hands fully away from his face. Cane's face, whole and restored.

"Where," he asked, "Is my brother?"

"Check your little hidey hole," said Able, a note of cruelty in his voice. "That's where I left him."

"He's... alive?" said Cane, astonishment in his voice.

"That's a matter of definition."

"And so you must be Able," said Cane, looking him up and down. "My brother's bastard."

"Your brother's nothing," snapped Able. "My name is Able Quirk. You killed my family."

"I killed mine too, if it makes any difference."

"Not really," replied Able.

The two men flew at each other, each possessed of superhuman strength and speed. Able unleashed a ferocious series of punches and kicks, matched blow for blow by Cane. Neither one of them dodged, neither one of the blocked. No quarter was asked or given until both men found themselves free of the other.

Able was unsteady on his feet. He could feel Dorothy's mind hard at work, sealing up cuts, repairing cracked ribs. Cane's strength was phenomenal, every punch and kick a hammer blow. A few yards away, Cane rolled his head left and right as The Ink healed him. Able tried to take a tally of how many patches of darkness he could see on Cane's clothes, a track of how many wounds he had inflicted.

Across the room, Marv realised that he had a clear path to the open door. He felt his magic tingling in his fingers, racing up his arms and down to his bare, bloodied feet. It wanted him to run.

"Cane," called Marv, his voice uncertain. "It doesn't have to be this way. You can still get out, you can still be free."

Cane's shoulders slumped.

"You stupid old man," he said. "You really think I'd walk away from this?"

"I don't understand," said Marv, "You said..."

"I said what you wanted me to say," replied Cane. "When you said you could get me out, I knew you had to have a way to take The Ink out of me, and I couldn't let that happen. Ever. So I got you to phone your special little magic friends and now, when this is over, I'm going to take that phone number, find out who it belongs to, and kill them. Then I'm going to kill everyone they know. I'm going to kill and kill and kill until there's not a witch, magician, conjurer, or mystic left on the face of this planet. I will kill them, eat them, and then all the magic will belong to me."

"You son of a bitch, you..."

"Don't take it personally, Marv," said Cane sarcastically. "It's just business."

"And so this this!" shouted Able, launching himself for a second time at Cane. This time, the exchange between the men was even more brutal than before. Every blow was intended to kill or maim. Bones broke, flesh was torn. Blood splattered against the glass walls of the room, painting the scene outside in streaks of red. It was Cane who landed the final blow, a punch into Able's windpipe that left him gasping on the floor. Dead or not, even Able needed to breath, it would seem.

Crossing the room, Cane picked up a table and hefted it over his head. It should have required three or four men to lift, but Cane picked it up as if it were nothing. Standing over Able, Cane held the thing above his head.

"You're a lot like him, your father," said Cane. "You're weak."

He brought the table down into Able's back with a sickening crack and Able realised immediately that he couldn't move his legs.

Across the room, Able watched as Marv looked from him to the door and back again.

Able closed his eyes and nodded. "Get out," he mouthed and, by the time he opened his eyes, Marv had vanished, as if by magic.

Leaving Able prone under the table, Cane strode across to the control panel.

Able watched as he rolled up his tattered shirt sleeve and dug a finger into a protruding vein in his arm. A pool of black welled up and ran down Cane's arm. He placed his hand on the control panel, fingers splayed, and Able watched as the black ooze ran down into the console.

"What are you doing?"

"Rewriting history," said Cane with a smile.

On the screens, the video of Cane and Able's battle spun backwards, then began again. This time, Cane didn't lift a finger. There was no gunshot, no miraculous healing. There was no fight. There was just Able, pulling of his mask and pointing his gun at Cane. Able putting a bullet into the floor at Cane's feet, making him get down on his knees. Able standing over Cane with a gun.

Cane had spent a lifetime learning how to manipulate the media and now, with the power of The Ink, he could reach in and change the story as it was happening.

"You see, after what happened at the paper-mill, I needed to convince everyone that I wasn't some grandiose criminal mastermind. I needed a scapegoat for all the things that have been happening. My brother would have been perfect, the "wayward sibling" with his strange obsession with the occult. It would be a classic tale of one brother against another. The All-America Hero vs. the Twisted Terrorist Madman. America loves that sort of thing."

"Except it isn't true."

"No, it isn't true, but since when has that actually mattered?" continued Cane. "Of course, there's your cop friend to deal with but, with a little creativity, I'm sure we can find some link between Owen White and all the corruption there is in this city. The president will be terribly embarrassed of course but, I rather think its time for him to go anyway. We'll have a clean slate, fresh start."

Able could feel his legs again, a pins and needles sensation running down from the small of his back to his knees.

" It will never work."

"Of course it will. What would everyone prefer to believe? That I've really been here all this time, hiding in plain sight? That my father and grandfather before me were just the same? That every institution they believe in is rotten to the core? My truth is much better than that. My world is a happier world for everyone."

Able slowly got to this feet. Cane smiled.

"And what about people who get in the way?" he asked. "What about people like us?"

Able knew that he had started to speak in the plural again, but it didn't matter. He was speaking for more than just the ghosts that were in his head now, more than for just himself, he was speaking for all of the people who had died at the hands of Cane King or his forebears. He was speaking for a great unquiet mass that lingered in places like The Pit, that festered under the very foundations of this city. He was speaking for every person who had every stood in the way of the Kings and paid the price.

In Able's head the Magpye rose like a black phoenix.

"Just this once," it said. "Just this once."

And before Able could ask what the creature meant, he felt his mind open up. The borders of his mind, unseen, gave way, like panes of smoked glass shattering to reveal a hitherto hidden world beyond. The waters of memory, as he called them, became a vast ocean and his head was filled instantly with a thousand new voices. He heard a thousand stories of betrayal, of loss, of death. He heard from fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters. Each and every one of them another body, another corpse buried by the Kings, another brick in the foundation of their empire. A thousand voices, and yet there was no cacophony, Able's mind was the clearest it had every been.

"Incredible," said Rosa Blind. "So many."

"Yeah," replied Able.

Standing straight, his back healed, Able rushed across the room at his uncle.

This time, Cane was no match for him. With a strength and speed born from the anguished cries of a thousand victims, with a thousand minds guiding his, a thousand hearts giving him their strength, Able moved effortlessly around every blow thrown by Cane. He flickered in the air, no longer a thing of dead flesh but more a ghost himself. He struck again and again, pushing Cane back with body blow after body blow. Cane flailed wildly, but there was nothing to hit. He was fighting memories, fighting the ghost of a boy named Able Quirk who had had his home burnt the ground one night and had been haunting the Kings every since.

Suddenly, Able placed his hand around Cane's throat and dug his fingers deep into his flesh. He pushed Cane down to his knees. Electricity crackled across Cane's skin and The Ink raced towards Able's touch, a twisting river of darkness. Slowly, it bled from Cane into Able, drawing new patterns in the air on Able's spectral form. It redrew him, inch by inch, creating in white flesh painted with jet black ink a new form. Able Quirk, Magpye, was now the bearer of The Ink.

Cane's eyes grew wide as, on the screens, the last few minutes played back again.

"I needed to convince everyone I wasn't a criminal mastermind."

"I needed a scapegoat for everything."

"Every institution they believe in is rotten to the core."

Able's face seemed to glow as he tightened his grip even further on Cane's neck.

"It's time for a new story, Cane," he said. "A story with no more Kings in it."

"You're so wrong," rasped Cane, "Look at you. You couldn't be more of a King if you tried."

With a wet, squelching wrench, Able tore out Cane King's throat.

# EPILOGUE

Able stood on the rooftop in the rain and looked at the ruins of the casino. It had been almost a year, and nobody had so much as put a bid in for place. All that was left now was a charred framework, a burnt up monument to what had once been. It looked like an old scar on the city. It reminded Able of the circus, but Able didn't go there any more. He hadn't seen Marv since that night in the casino. No Marv meant no Marissa, and no Marissa left Able with no reason to go back to the circus.

A door closed loudly behind Able and he listened to Owen White limp onto the rooftop. He was late, but then he was a busy man these days. After the casino, he'd disappeared for months, only to resurface with a new presidential order and a whole new agency at his command. He was going to weed out corruption and organised crime right across America. It hadn't made him popular with a lot of people, but he was damn good at it. Able helped him, of course, from time to time. White's cases had a habit of turning weird, and Able was very, very good at weird. But, for the most part, it was White's show. After all, he was the man who brought down the Kings.

With Cane, Taylor, and Garrity all dead there had been nobody left to control the gangs. It had been open warfare on the streets for nearly six weeks, but the cops had eventually got it under control. After that, the number of people ready to turn in evidence on Cane and his criminal empire had become a landslide. His business assets had been seized by the state, the legitimate King empire being dubbed "too big to fail". Owning a media empire had helped the government to control exactly how deep the revelations went too. With America's favourite son fallen, it wasn't the time for her to lose her president as well.

"The damp makes it worse; you know that, don't you?" said White.

"I know," replied Able. "But I don't make the weather."

"Where've you been, anyway?" asked White, taking a spot on the parapet next to Able. "I could have used your help with that Japanese situation."

"I got a lead on one of Marv's old contacts, I was hoping he could help with... you know."

Able waved a hand in front of his face, drawing White's attention to the intricate tattoo that covered one half of it.

"No luck then," said White.

"Not yet. It's dormant, for now, but I don't know how long that's going to last," said Able, "I have a feeling that this isn't the end of its story."

# EPITAPH

Down in the pit, Adam King slithered across the mound of rotten flesh and found a quiet, warm place to sink into and fall asleep. Time had no meaning here, but he had the feeling that it had been a good day. He had eaten well, keeping down almost all of the festering, rotten flesh he had harvested today, and he felt stronger for it. Healing this body was going to take a long time. It had been built wrong, but Adam was patient.

In the meantime, he had his ghosts for company. They weren't the best ghosts, most of them were mad and they had barely any memories left between them, but they were his and what scant memories they did have were useful to him.

After all, it wasn't just his own body he had to nurture. Up in his head, about the size of golf ball, tucked safe and snug in the malformed folds and lobes of his brain, he had a little egg.

A special egg.

A Magpye's egg.

- 207  -
