The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (35 page)

… and tasted blood!

He tried to close his mouth, to push
her away.
Spit it out,
something warned,
before it’s too late!

But Oversight held him too tightly,
her strength a force of nature.
The blood! The strange, obscene taste…

Jack felt it in his throat, a burning
heat, a penetrative force that shattered the walls and invaded his system in a
heartbeat, shot straight to the tip of every blood vessel, every nerve, and set
them ablaze.

His mind bathed in a river of blue
fire.

Is this the wasteland?

—
No, this is the Nexus
—

Oversight’s voice—not in his ears,
but in his mind!

He fell to his knees before her,
unable to stand, unable to see. Pain! Enormous and sharp, it swept over him in
waves.
Her blood must be poison.
“Oversight—”

He doubled over, mouth open to
scream, and managed only a guttural choking sound.
What have you done?
He sprawled upon the landing as if gripped by seizures … or revelations—
What
have you done?
—and
felt himself curling tighter and tighter, a fetal
ball, his brain burning in a fever that turned the world crimson and black,
scrambled it into sick images and sensuous visions and a prattling of endless
words, words, words that tripped across his mind in a speed defying reason, a
thousand voices all shouting at once, sensations matched measure for measure.

—
The wasteland is a dark place,
Jack
—

He opened his eyes—felt the lids
move—but saw only the nightmare visions cascading across his senses, a blind
man seeing within, the revelations of a lunatic. A dark angel stood over him
with great sweeping raven’s wings, her body draped in folds of black silk and
lace, shimmering, teasing. She looked down upon him. Her face might have been
that of Oversight’s; her voice might have been Oversight’s voice.
But
Oversight was not an angel. Not a black angel! Just a woman. That was all she
was—wasn’t she? Besides, if she was talking through the guise of a dark angel,
why weren’t her lips moving?

Jack gaped upwards, saw wings
spreading over him, darkening the sky. His mouth worked to make words, but
nothing would come.

—
You think the Wasteland bright
because the sun is full and hot in an unclouded sky, and the sand is as white
as bleached bones. But the Wasteland is the heart of darkness, Jack, and the
way back to the light is a tunnel, long, black and horrifying. You see that now
—

Another convulsion left him shivering
with cold, burning with fire. Fevered sickness. Cold bloodless death. Sleeping.
Dreaming. Dying. Living. Imagining.
Understanding
.

—Kreiger never understood what I was;
what he made me—

The dark angel’s face was lost to the
abyss of her spreading wings as they swept over the blood-colored sky, plunging
Jack ever deeper into the veil of blackness folding over him.

—That’s why he allowed himself to
fall in love with me—

And Jack discovered something then
that Ellen Monroe learned long ago, and could easily have told him if he had
but asked …
or listened
.

Jack Lantirn learned to fly.

ON A “JAG”

Oversight lifted the Caretaker easily
and placed him at the threshold of his writing room, even opened the door, but
she would not venture inside. It was forbidden.

The seizures had subsided now …
mostly. He laid still, body curled into a ball like an insect pricked by a
red-hot needle.

A part of her was sorry for that.

The blood had infused his system; there
was no turning back. Soon he would know. He would know of the Wasteland. He
would know of the Saloon. He would know of the Nexus.

Jack Lantirn would never be the same
again.

She perched atop the false front to
watch over him, balancing easily upon the balls of her feet. Jack shivered, a
hesitant trembling that ran through his body like the wind through an old leaf.
Mostly, he was still—as still as a corpse.

Soon. Very soon. Then he would know,
really and truly know.

After a time, his body relaxed. Gone was the convulsive tightness that
made him resemble something caught in the grip of a mighty fist, writhing as it
closed around him, crushing him. Now he lay with a kind of strange repose, the
languid expression of a lost dreamer caught deep in his own mind. She let him
stay that way a little while longer, listening absently to his gentle breathing
and feeling the cool wind of morning blow gently across the Wasteland, tug at
her eternal hair, brush her immortal skin.

No, Kreiger did not understand what
he had made, and though Kreiger frightened her—
terrified
her! The mad
god! Powerful and unpredictable and insane! —she could not allow him to regain
the Nexus. Forget his promises of paradise, his tales of compensation for services
rendered, or the hideous tortures he would mete out for her disobedience. He
could not hold the Nexus. It had twisted from his grasp two thousand years ago,
and all he wanted now was a way to make it free him from the Wasteland; free
him from the consequences of his own decisions. He would abandon it at the
moment of release, leave it empty to every charlatan, every card-trick shaman,
every sad magician and half-crazed juju priest medicine man who could find a
means across the desert or over the sea. The writers ended that insanity for a
time, the upheavals, the holocausts, the twisting of reality like so much
carnival taffy as the now-extinct covens and guilds tested their newest and
brightest by pitting them against the Nexus. Most were found wanting, their
bones turning the sand of the Wasteland white. Under the writers, the Nexus
became forgotten lore, a little known secret, the babble of madmen and lunatics
and lost dreamers. But Algernon was the last, and his protégé was not ready.

But soon, maybe.

Or maybe not.
There was every possibility that Jack
would fulfill Kreiger’s bleak expectations.

She climbed down from the narrow
ledge and walked silently towards the dreaming Caretaker, Nail watching from
the rooftop. When she approached, he dropped down, a warning expression behind
eyes as black as boiling tar. Oversight did not think he would attack. She
thought he understood; thought the Nexus understood. The Nexus was no more
sentient than the Saloon itself, an assemblage of parts and magic, wood and
stone, nails and wires; thoughtless matter and energy, and nothing more. But
the Nexus needed a Caretaker and Jack would do well … if he survived. And as
the Caretaker watched over the Nexus, so the Guardian watched after the
Caretaker. She assumed Nail knew she had his best interest in mind.

It was only an assumption, though.
Nail might still try to kill her. And while the Dust Eater possessed the
necessary brute force to fend him off, she might not fair so well. Sufficiently
broken, Kreiger might not bother to repair her, might leave her to perish.

Interesting…

“Take him inside,” she told the
Guardian, then walked to the edge of the roof and stepped off, falling silent
and carefree to the hardpan two stories below. She dropped catlike upon the
ground, ignoring the inhuman act as easily as she ignored the small spurts of
dust from beneath her boots. Kreiger did not make bad things, only bad
decisions.

Around the corner, she found Alex
sitting alone on the porch.

“I need to talk to you,” she said
softly, crouching down by his side.

“Just—go—away!” he answered heavily.

“I know why you did what you did.”
Her hand came to rest on his arm, and her touch raised goose flesh upon his
skin. “I know why you tried to kill Jack. And Leland, too. And I know why you
tried to steal the tickets.”

He shrugged, but did not move from
her touch. He only raised his head, looking out over the Wasteland to avoid her
gaze. “Why did you let …?” he faltered, searching for words. “Why would you
allow him … Quince …
to—
” He spit out each word like bile, but could not
finish the accusation, the truth too much for his young ego.

Oversight answered slowly, words
carefully chosen. “Kreiger frightens me, Alex. I don’t expect you to
understand—I hope you never do—but more than anything else in the universe, he
terrifies me. I can’t defeat him and I can’t escape him; not even in death. And
he knows that. And so do I.” She let out a breath, and realized she was
shaking.
God, how these creatures affected her.
“I hate him for what he
makes me do and how he makes me feel, but I cannot stop him. He’s my maker.”

“But I thought … I mean after you and
I … after we made love—” He stopped abruptly, embarrassed by speaking the words
out loud, as if afraid someone might hear. Old concerns from an old existence
lost behind him, but not so far as to be forgotten entirely. She found it
charming and sad, guilt a strange form of baggage to carry to the grave. She
smiled absently, gently touching the side of his face, a discolored bruise on
his cheek from his fight with Jack; she caressed its edges.

“The only time I misled you was when
I said I didn’t care. I knew it would drive you away, keep Leland from sending
the Dust Eater to kill you. I know it doesn’t mean much now, but I didn’t want
you dead.”

Alex shrugged, and she wondered if
she had been correct in being forthright. Why were people so difficult? Dregs
were simple, sensible, basic. They wanted to eat her, so she killed them.
Simple. Sensible. Basic. But these others were so different, so complex and confused
and confusing all at once.

And yet you care.

“I don’t know why you affect me,” she
said, speaking as much to herself as to Alex. “I care about you, but I
shouldn’t. There’s no way for me to leave this world. No way for me to leave
and no way for you to stay behind. We are impossible, you and I.”

“Why can’t Jack do something about
it? If he’s remaking reality, or whatever it is he’s supposed to be doing, why
can’t he remake yours, too? Why can’t he make a dozen tickets and make everyone
happy? You. Me. Even the Cast Outs.”

She stroked gently at his hair. “He
is only one man, Alex. He has been given the power of a god, but not
the
God. How much more difficult it must be to be a small god. A person has
limitations and accepts that. A small god knows only that there are
limitations, not what they are or why they exist.”

He turned to her, his gaze weary from
the sleepless night. “I’m … I’m sorry. For what I said. What I did.”

She shook her head. “You were being
true to what you are. Not what you thought you were in another world and
another reality, but what you really are.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s okay,” she said, kissing him
softly upon the lips. “You’re not the one who needs to understand.”

Then she stood up and walked across
the porch to the Pepsi machine. “I need something to drink,” she said, wiping
at the corners of her mouth. “Would you like something?”

Alex shook his head, no, her remark,
like the relieved look upon her face, going unnoticed.

*     *     *

Slowly, reality melted back into place.

Cracking his eyes, Jack found himself
on the floor of his writing room, no idea how he got there. He remembered
Oversight, remembered kissing her lips, tasting blood, seeing …
things.

He shuddered, the floor shivering with him.

The room was exactly as it had been
before: nothing out of place, nothing different. But there was nothing the same
about it at all. Images burst through his eyes, searing his brain. The chair
breathed quietly near his desk, waiting for him to come out of his stupor. The
Jabberwock stared, the screen a vast blue eyeball, a slice cut from the sky.
Books and objects occupying the shelves considered him with curiosity, a god
becoming.

Jack arose slowly, the world still
unsteady, boards shrugging beneath his feet like a breathing leviathan. But he
moved easily in the uneasy reality, not noticing the pitch and yaw of the world
as he crossed to his desk, staring down at it as if he had never seen any of it
before.

Maybe he hadn’t; not really.

He was beginning to understand.

The coffee machine dripped a thick,
dark espresso-like brew rich with a mélange of spices, cinnamon and nutmeg and
peyote. A mug—
my Heavy Metal mug
, he thought distractedly—sat beside it,
sugar and cream doled into the bottom, waiting only for the coffee to be poured.
A notebook lay open on the desk, a pen uncapped and ready beside it. On the
screen of the Jabberwock, a single phrase, white on blue:
ANYTHING YOU NEED
.

He poured a cup of coffee, stirring
it with a spoon that had not been there a moment ago while an Elton John cover
of
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
started up on the CD Player. Outside
the window, he saw the unfathomable chasm of madness, tracks like white-hot
chrome sailing across the nothing, supported on empty space and insanity.

Strangely solid, that
. It was not even madness so much as
acceptance of the unreal, the inconceivable, the
insane
. When dealing
with the infinite, there was no answer outside of the range.

He hadn’t understood before—before
Oversight and her gift. The Sanity’s Edge Saloon was the cradle of imagination,
the womb from which all dreams sprung, and everyone was nothing more than a
dream, a story full of detail and diversity that made each unique and separate
and wholly wonderful. The only commonality was their beginning and ending: on
the first page they were born into the world, and on the last page they left
it. Everything else was uniquely their own.

In the Jabberwock, five stories
waiting to be born, waiting to take their first sweet breath of life, to crawl,
to walk, to run,
to fly
! And trapped there with them, Jack struggled to
recreate himself.

The whole world shuddered, and Jack
saw his hand trembling; psychosis perhaps, or some side effect of his
consumption of… of…

He reached out to the coffee cup,
breathing in the intoxicating aroma, his hold upon this new reality tenuous. It
had been there all along, this new, grander, wider reality. He simply refused
to see.

Where do unicorns go when they die?

It was the riddle put to him outside
of Cross-Over Station; the riddle he did not know the answer to. Not then.

Anywhere they want. Do you
understand? Anywhere they want.

No.

But that was before. Before here.
Before now. Before the Saloon and the Nexus and the Wasteland and the Cast Outs
and Ellen and Oversight and…

“Yes.”

The coffee scalded his throat, but he
savored the heat, the forcible infusion of spice into his system. His eyes
drifted shut, opening to the strange world within.

The Cast Outs were small, petty and
vindictive, guilty of a host of crimes that under other circumstances would
make them annoying, unpleasant, pitiful individuals. But here, they were wise,
godlike, blessed with knowing, with understanding.

Jack did not know, did not understand
…
but he was learning
.

Kreiger understood the fundamental
truths of reality and unreality, actual and potential, how the two twisted
together in the Nexus, realities flowing in and out like a thousand rivers
flowing through one narrow conduit, plowing through it with a force to shatter
worlds before erupting out the other side to carry on their course. But
anything passing through the Nexus was changed forever, altered. For centuries,
the Tribe of Dust lived on what leaked from that impossible conduit of
universes and times, the lead-laden sweat of an uninsulated pipe. And from those
scant bits, they endured the Wasteland, creating something resembling order;
demented and twisted in their own image, but order nonetheless. They were
powerful. Limitless. Unbound.

Insane
!