For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) (21 page)

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

“Tobacco,” Preacher said.

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

“Very wise,” Preacher said.

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

“Used to be,” said Preacher.

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

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

“A philosopher.”

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

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

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

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

2.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Am I asking for anything else?”

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

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

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

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

“And so it begins.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I want it back.”

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

“To find her.”

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

“I reckon.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know her.”

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

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

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

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

“And why would you do that?”

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

“On my way there next.”

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

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

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

3.

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

“They pay?” she asked.

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

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

“She hasn’t seen Harmonium.”

“And you believe her?”

“I do.”

“Then on we go.”

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

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

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

4.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No word from the farm?”

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

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

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

“Damn straight,” Yuma agreed. “I wouldn’t be without them.”

Phatter-Gee looked at the half-finished slogan on Yuma’s back. ‘MORTALS EAT MY SH’ it said, only a couple of letters away from a culinary suggestion. He thought about mentioning the mixed message but decided he’d likely only get one of his limbs bitten off. Yuma was not known for either consistency or restraint.

“As long as they know their place,” said Brinkle, happy to qualify his boss’s opinion without fear of losing body parts.

“In the stable,” agreed Yuma.

“What about Henry Jones?” Phatter-Gee asked, barely aware that he was saying it until the words had left his beak. Noticing that Yuma had bared his fangs, he decided to try and get his opinion in first in case it saved him a beating. “That fucker’s sure got a cheek ain’t he?” he said, “trying to lord it over the demonic castes.”

Yuma’s fangs didn’t vanish but the man nodded and Phatter-Gee decided he’d got away with it.

“He’ll soon learn,” said Yuma, “when he comes around here looking for his cut.”

“We’ll give him a cut, won’t we, boss?” laughed Brinkle.

“We certainly will,” Yuma agreed, climbing back onto the bench and gesturing towards his nearly-finished tattoo. Phatter-Gee returned to work, the needle hammering its way through the inch or so of hard scale. The ink hissed, cut with extra Snark venom in order to give it clarity on this rough canvas. Phatter-Gee had spilled a couple of drops of it earlier and last time he had looked it was still eating its way through the earth beneath his parlour.

“Hey,” said Brinkle, “you think we should try and turn some of his memories into Buzz? Imagine what it would be like to smoke the moment God got His.”

Yuma snorted. “You believe that spongy little half-life managed to kill God and you’ll believe anything,” he said. “Fucker’s full of nothing but shit and air.”

“Guess so,” Brinkle agreed. “He must have managed to take the Exchange out though. I know a guy in Golgotha who swears he was there when it fell. Saw that tower smack the earth like a felled tree. Way I hear it, he killed so many that day the Fundament’s still choking.”

“Yeah?” Yuma tried to stretch his leg, as it was cramping again. “Well, I reckon it’ll fit one more if he shows his face around here.”

5.

O
N THE EDGE
of Chatter’s Munch, Henry Jones brought his rakh to a standstill and took a moment to centre himself.

“What are you doing?” the Exchange asked, impatient to get business done. “We won’t get our due sat here.”

“According to Sister Franquesa I’m unlikely to get our due anyway,” Jones said. “These boys don’t like mortals. It’s a matter of principle to them. The only way we’re leaving this town with anything other than bullets in our back will be if we kill for it.”

“You think you’re up to the challenge?” the Exchange asked.

“With you watching my back.” Jones removed his guns from his holster, checked they were fully loaded and returned them. He hadn’t needed to be sure but it was part of the ritual, running his thumb around the cylinder, feeling each bullet in its chamber. A blessing, a little prayer to the God of Gunfighters. “After this,” he said, “it’s time we set down some roots. A base to work from. People need to see me setting up a crew, making a statement.”

“Perception?”

“Damn right. The most powerful force in the Dominion does not spend his days sleeping by the side of the road and getting sores on his ass.”

“I thought you wanted to visit each of the other gangs personally.”

“I do, and will, but we’re raising empires here and that means staking your claim on a patch of land.”

“You could have had a tower but you had us destroy it. I miss it.”

“I bet you do, but you’ll have a new tower soon. Something better.”

“That would take some building.”

“For an ambitious thing like you? You’ll love every moment.”

The Exchange smiled. “I grow to like you, Henry Jones. I hope you are not shortly to die.”

“You and me both.”

6.