The explosion nearly careened Brock into the inky muck, but he kept his footing, digging his heels into the mucky slop that passed for solid ground in this cesspit. Staring up the sheer, glassy surface of the black wall that had bisected the room, he called out to his newly- made ally. “You ok back there?” It took a second to realize he couldn’t hear anything but ringing. He brought a hand to his neck, drumming the back of his skull with his fingers. It was a technique he’d picked up in the old days that always seemed to clear up his tinnitus. Shaking the disorientation off, he turned his eyes skyward, seeing the giant hole that’d been blasted into the roof of this place, and the floor of the tent above. “You alive over there, wolf girl?” He called again.
‘Wolf girl’, unfortunately, seemed to be nowhere on the premises.
She looked up and down a long, dusty corridor that seemed vaguely reminiscent of a hospital hall. “Huh? How did I get here? Wasn’t I just in an underground nonsense pit that was about to blow up?”
She walked cautiously down the hallway, looking out through windows onto some kind of dusky courtyard with stone benches and whispering trees. Did she get wounded in the boom, slip into a coma, and wake up just now, maybe with some amnesia and disorientation? That was possible, she supposed. What happened to that Brock guy, and her friends?
Her stomach growled.
“I’ll figure it out later.” she shrugged, and continued walking in search of food.
Instead, the floor gradually seemed to get dirtier, the hall darker, and the space more cramped. There were no windows for a long stretch, and even her canine vision only seemed to compensate so much. When it kicked in, she found that the floor had somehow segued into rusted grate, and she could hear industrial clanking noises deeper within the rusted-out pit of wherever the fuck she was. Did Cuppy leave one of those swap dolls in some abandoned factory, or something? It seemed in character with the lethally-absentminded space case, but it, like her first theory, was still inconclusive.
“I hate thinking.” she grumbled hangrily.
She hated unending hallways too. How long was this walk? She shifted into wolf form and began bounding, bounding, bounding - even at top speed though, she seemed to be going nowhere quickly.
Either way, Brock would soon realize he was alone down here in the chamber. When the black rain waves had crested just before the explosion, he lost sight of Freyja. As if a magic trick, presto! - she was gone.
“Shit.” Brock said into the silence, face growing somber. She mentioned she had friends up there, somewhere, perhaps he could still save them. He cast an angry glare through the hole in the roof with those green eyes that had seen far too many allies fall. He withdrew a carbon fiber grappling hook from his trenchcoat, threading it onto the barrel of his luger and firing up to a support beam in the big top tent above, which the hook secured itself to. He gripped the gun tight and tugged it sharply, engaging an internal coil and lifting him rapidly up the rope. Clearing the edge of the hole, Brock fired again, detaching the line as he somersaulted onto the sandy, blood spattered ground. He shuddered, going pale.
God damn it…I was too late. This was all a distraction. His thoughts screamed as he saw the rampant chaos all around, remnants of families and entertainers sliced to ribbons all around. Focus. Dwell on it and the distraction’s still working. Brock centered himself, reloading in a flash and taking in his surroundings. There was a semicircle of fighter-looking types facing off against some bloodstained, creepy jester, all of whom were looking his way. The claws on the jester’s hands told Brock all he needed to know, and he leveled his luger on the freak, firing six shots so rapidly it seemed like his gun had become fully automatic out of nowhere.
“Huh?!” Luchesi balked as the six slugs punched into his chest and head rapidly, giving him immediate and unpleasant flashbacks to Officer Dean’s identical ambush counterattack back when he cleansed the SBPD of its incompetent pork rinds.
“GODDAMN CHEAPSHOTTING SON OF A BITCH!” Luchesi clutched his bleeding skull and chest, wobbling on his feet, and toppled down the hole. A splash sounded off a few seconds later, spraying drops of black rain on the rim of the hole.
Sparta sniffed the fetid smell of liquid despair and twitched his nose, unsettled. Cuppy joined him.
“Oh fiddlesticks, is that the weird poop?” Cuppy asked. “That bodes poorly.”
Dai Funka looked back and forth between Brock, the sudden hole in the ground, and his comrades, wondering what exactly the hell was going on. “Is… is that it?”
“We’d better fuckin’ hope so. I met your friend, the wolf, down there. I don’t know where she went or…if she made it.” Brock said, stepping away from the hole to join the group. “I should’ve called for backup.” The trenchcoated man sighed, weary. He squoze a button on his watch, doing just that. If nothing else, maybe they could help extract some of the families. “You…a cop or somethin?” Cuppy asked. “Not quite, kiddo.” Brock replied. “I’ll explain better once we’re out of this mess.”
“Hold that thought.” Dai Funka pointed to the rim of the hole, as dozens of shades began skittering from the underside and out, like cockroaches vacating the drain hole of an infested sink. In tandem, misty tendrils of black rain began leaking out of the hole and spreading.
“Why the hell were there bombs under my stage?!” Leon asked, whirling on the newcomer. “What’s going on?”
One of the creatures clutched at Leon’s coat, and he flinched back in disgust. “Back off!” he punted it away. “Paparazzi.”
“Terrorists. The bombs, I mean, not these things. At least, I hope.” Brock says nervously, grabbing his backup gun from his ankle holster again. “Plenty of bad vibes to feed on, now, no doubt.” He muttered to himself.
A pair of gangly, spidery limbs hooked into the sides of the hole, as the gurgling sound of Luchesi’s grunts echoed up.
The Cuppy Bros tensed. “I don’t think we’re done here.”
Leon snapped at his siblings. “Get mom and dad out of here, and help clear out the uninvited guests!”
The shades darted up the stands, congregating toward the survivors wherever they were, chittering eagerly. A bowling pin from one of the juggling acts clobbered one in the back of the head, knocking it down as throngs of circus workers scrambled up into the seats to help cover the audience, and avenge the fallen. Kasper draped the wounded tiger over his back, grunting as he helped carry it and its floppy mangled paw to safety. A shade clutched at Cuppy, who drew a garrote wire taut around its neck, beheading it with a snare-like movement. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with these bottom feeders. Even so, the black mist began to permeate the arena, warping it as though it were a bending mirage. Voices seemed to grow farther away from each other, along with the ground itself, stretching and shrinking in random places like rubber. The flames encircled the mouth of the pit, and then began to form another circle around the arena floor itself, entrapping Leon, the Cuppy Bros, Sparta, Dai Funka, and now Brock. Cuppy felt the tension as Luchesi’s claws dug into the room, limbs cocked like a springtrap, the killer getting ready to fling himself high into the air for a do-over.
Dai Funka thought he recognized Brock’s colors, an observation he kept to himself. He preferred to forget about that part of his life, and all of its entanglements. Even so, Luchesi had reminded him uncannily of someone else. He’d seen his type before. The yokozuna grimaced as he reflected on the duel in the canyon, bleeding down his sides and panting heavily under the baking sun, the silver-haired fencer looking down on him from atop a high rock. Such smug, condescending arrogance and bloodlust in equal measure, perfectly blended into a haughty, punchable face. As then, so it was now. Terrorists, crime syndicates, and serial killers - it was all the worst kind of nostalgia.
Dai Funka grunted at Brock. “You’re Black Sun, yes? Help the civilians, we’ll take care of this monster.”
Brock’s face wrinkled in surprise for a moment, but there were more pressing matters to attend to, he could question how the sumo knew such things later. Brock dashed off towards the seating areas, carving a wide gash in the tent canvas with his boot knife and ushering the civvies out through it, keeping a wary eye out for shades as he did. There were far too many bodies left inside still, all attractive targets for shade feeding. “Where the hell are the cops anyway?” Brock muttered, glancing outside through the hole in the tent.
Where indeed? Carnival Top was truly an island in every sense of the word right now.
Luchesi launched himself out of the hole, twirled midair, and landed among Cuppy and the others in the circle of fire, sans Brock. He looked over his shoulder at the tent, freeing a flood of smoke from the fire, and twirling black rain fumes, as the surviving insects of his killing bottle fled into the night. He clicked his tongue, putting a hand on his hip. “They won’t get far.” he shrugged, then turned his attention back to the circle of adversaries surrounding him. “If looks could kill.” he gave another phlegmy giggle.
“You suck.” Cuppy said.
“Then come put me in my place. What are you waiting for, boys? Let’s play.” Luchesi licked his lips and crouched low, claws splayed and flexing.
Cuppy flung his arms to either side, spreading and interweaving a great spiderweb of fine threads, pulled taut and reinforced with metallic infusions to the microscopic level. There was the faint sound of guitar-like string plucks, as though the web all around them were miniaturized suspension bridge cables swaying in the wind. Like a spider, Cuppy intended to leave Luchesi’s lifeless husk strewn about this web, the murderous intent spread across his cherubic face in an unsettling contrast. Dai Funka raised his head and looked around, struggling to see the threads, but his astute ears picking up on the musical notes.
Leon shared a glance with Dai Funka. “I hear it too.” he nodded.
“Don’t bother running.” Cuppy growled. “I can feel you wherever you go.”
The circle of fire was itself encircled by a funnel of string going toward the underside of the big top, a bird cage encircling the contenders. Sparta growled and pawed at the ground, circling Luchesi, as Leon twirled his whip in a few warmup spins. Luchesi’s demonic eyes panned and bounced between the boy and his puppet, the circus fool, his oversized cat, and the fatass, gauging their movements, trying to decide who would strike first. He sized up Cuppy, deducing that he would be the biggest thorn in his side. If the brat fell, so did his cage and pesky feelers.
The jester flashed toward Cuppy, only to duck out at the last second as the rose whip grazed the tip of his nose, and recoiled back into Leon’s hand. The acrobat flourished and flailed, sending a chaotic zigzag of pink streaks across Luchesi’s area, forcing the harlequin to weave in between the lashes and strike back with his claws, redirecting and blocking the merciless whip strikes. Dai Funka knew Leon’s rhythm better than anyone. He steadied his breath, looked on, and gauged the beats. With a kiap, he lunged forward, thrusting a palm between the arcs of the blurring whip. The hard, unyielding open hand struck Luchesi in the side of the face, nearly unhinging his jaw and forcing him sideward, stars exploding into his vision. In that moment, thorned lashes ripped across his body, cutting his back, leg, and arm. He growled and tried to regain his footing, instead stepping into a snare which Cuppy drew tight, dropping the jester onto his back. His eyes opened to see Cuppet, arms held out straight to either side, clutching a scissor blade in either hand, wound with a great rope of yarn, like some kind of top. Cuppy retracted the yarn rapidly, spinning Cuppet, who rose into the air with a sound like the roar of helicopter rotors. The puppet’s legs lashed together, sewn by Cuppy’s string, and he descended while spinning, the bottoms of his feet bearing down on Luchesi together like a blunt drill tip.
Luchesi swore under his breath and severed the snare, flipping onto his feet and swatting at Cuppet. Instead, a swap doll broke on his claws, and Cuppet appeared at Luchesi’s back.
Behind me? Luchesi whirled and swat again.
Cuppy flexed his arm, yanking, and Cuppet was withdrawn on a cord. A shadow fell over Luchesi, who looked up to see Sparta leaping toward him. The Cuppy ploy had been a double fakeout to distract him from the enraged lion.
Luchesi stretched out his arms, ready to run the beast through with the force of its own pounce. Instead, bungee cords hooked either arm around the wrist and yanked his arms back - that infernal puppeteer’s work again, no doubt. Luchesi dropped onto his back even as his arms were bound behind him in another snare, raising his legs and jutting his boot knives out from the toes of his curling shoes. The straightjacket of cloth around his midsection stirred and ripped, long, gangly arms bursting from his sides and contorting backward, ligaments like rubber, lifting his whole body at once in an unnatural and sickening display. He folded backward grotesquely, and flung his feet up, toes first. The blades slashed the lion’s underside as he passed over his target, roaring in pain.
“Sparta!” Leon yelled. He lashed his whip about the jester’s new limbs, and yanked.
“Huh?!” Luchesi gasped as he was pulled into range of the sumo wrestler again, and met with a palm first to the gut, and then to the face, knocking the wind out of him and mashing his nose, flinging him back. Shaking his head to throw off the daze, he flexed his first pair of limbs and broke free of Cuppy’s snare, turning only to see Cuppet dance by him with his scissors. Luchesi spun and contorted himself, trying to evade the puppet, and seemed successful. However, as he touched down again, one of the blades he thought he was clear of turned its edge to face him again, and slashed his waist. Luchesi hissed and leaned away from the cut. Did Cuppet actually predict where Luchesi would dodge?
Leon’s whip broke the skin of his back, and a volley of Cuppy Surprise Pellets engulfed him, exploding into flames and a flash of blinding light. Luchesi shrank back, covering his eyes, and regained half his vision only in time to see Sparta slam a paw into him, sending him rolling, nearly gutted where the claws tore through his torso. He was thrown right into Dai Funka’s embrace, who bear hugged him from behind, pinning his arms and squeezing as hard as he could to crush the freak like a nutcracker. Luchesi screamed and felt his air getting cut off, his intestines compressing.
Cuppet pointed his lead scissor blade forward and charged as Dai Funka held Luchesi in place.
“Finish him!” the sumo roared.
Luchesi felt his rage break. The peasants were getting carried away.
Knives expelled themselves from Luchesi’s elbows, cutting Dai Funka’s generous love handles and netting a gasp. Luchesi broke free and whirled, cutting and tossing Cuppet aside. Sparta towered over him, and got a saber to the belly for his trouble. But then - another swap doll.
Cuppy had rigged a doll to Sparta, and in turn tied that doll to another. Attached to the daisy-chained second doll was a pull string that acted as the pin on a grenade when pulled, triggering an explosive pellet to blow up and destroy the secondary doll. As above, so below, the dolls worked in reverse the same as if the living body they represented were hit first. It didn’t matter if the person or their effigy was destroyed first, they would swap places all the same. Luchesi narrowed his eyes on the rigged doll that was thrown toward him in the wake of Sparta’s teleportation. He realized another of the moppet’s clever little explosives was attached to the doll. He gasped as Cuppy yanked the cord, triggering the explosion.
Won’t the damage transfer to the real person though?! Luchesi realized.
Emerging out of the wake of flames and smoke, Leon, his coat aflame, face ash-blasted and bruised, lunged toward Luchesi.
“LEON?!?” Luchesi shrieked, and felt a thorn-whip-wrapped fist crush his windpipe, thorns burying themselves in his throat. The jester stumbled back, hacking, trying to breathe. He gasped again as five sewing needles lodged themselves in his side, courtesy of Cuppy.
The big top tent had finally been cleared of civilians, Brock having ushered them into the blacked-out helicopters of Black Sun’s medical branch that’d landed outside, and the director of the agency strode back in, now with no distractions and far less to worry about. Brock circled the tent, carving another gash in the canvas with his knife and peering through. He was behind Luchesi, who seemed significantly worse for wear now. Another cheap shot, but honorable wasn’t exactly in his target’s vocabulary either. Brock drew his trusty luger, and the revolver he had as a backup gun, rapid firing both of them into Luchesi’s exposed back. Brock then tore through the canvas and started in a dead sprint towards Luchesi, with grace and speed unbecoming a man whose hair was just beginning to gray. His right hand tucked his luger back into its holster and withdrew the ornate double edged knife he’d been making good use of on the tent, the blade pinched between two fingers, a throwing position.
Luchesi roared toward the sky, this time with a distorted, layered effect, one that would have curdled the blood of anyone else in the vicinity, were it not for the current party’s collective nerves of steel. The bullets made wet plopping noises as they plunged into the jester’s exposed back, spraying inky black blood which spurted like foul geysers. Luchesi drooped backward, as though a few slugs had hit his spine dead-on. Dai Funka was briefly distracted, having watched Brock sprint.
He’s no spring chicken, so what was that about? Does he have modifications too? Are those crazy bastards really moving forward with that Aeberus program? he wondered.
Like Brock, he would have to find out later. Here was their opening.
The sumo wrestler charged and became a wave of blurring slaps. Luchesi’s arms were yanked to either side of him, one by Cuppy’s fishing line, the other by Leon’s whip, his lower set of arms sewn to his sides and his feet sewn to the floor. Dai Funka pummeled the jester’s face, chest, and stomach with dozens upon dozens of open-handed blows, making sounds like tiny explosions with each impact. Cuppy winced as the target of their ire was rocked in place over and over again, arms pulling on the binds that restrained him, but unable to muster up the strength in the face of the ongoing pummeling. Finally breaking away from the harite storm, Dai Funka palmed the sewing needles in Luchesi’s side, forcing them all the way into the jester’s body cavity. The beast shrieked again. Lastly, Dai Funka flexed his bicep as he had when he palmed the demonstration machine. An iron palm buried itself in Luchesi’s stomach, seeming to be a light love tap at first. But, at his back, Brock would see the air distorted as something that looked like a cylindrical pressure wave flew out of Luchesi’s back, blowing Brock’s hair back as it passed him, and breaking a line of the threads beyond.
Luchesi threw up a gout of black blood and fell to his knees, trembling. Cuppet took advantage, tagging in for the yokozuna, and dropped from above, spinning like a top again, but this time planting his feet in Luchesi’s back. The ground under the demon seemed to crack and kick up sand. More blood flew out of his mouth like toothpaste forced from a tube that was stomped on. Cuppy and Leon yanked their respective lines, yanking Luchesi on to his feet again in turn. Sparta descended, grabbing the jester’s throat in his jaws, biting in, and flailing him about, shaking him, spraying black blood everywhere like a morbid sprinkler. When he tired of thrashing his target around, Sparta slammed the jester into the ground again by his jaws, right on top of his head. Leon and Cuppet heard another series of groaning cracks, this time from the neck vertebrae.
Maybe he had more lives than Sparta, but this guy still had a physical body, and it sounded like, between Brock’s shots, the compression to his back from Cuppet’s stomp, and Sparta’s incidental piledriver just now, the spinal column was their target. Needed one more good hit. But what of those freaky claws and the jester’s unnatural range of rotation?
“Guess this is the ticket.” Leon said, squatting and powerlifting the dazed jester overhead, tucking the inverted harlequin shoulder to shoulder, legs pointed up toward the sky, their curled toes drooping like wilting flowers. Leon jumped onto Sparta’s back, then Sparta jumped high into the air, and then Leon jumped off of him, getting fifty or so feet up in total.
Eat this, you scum. Muscle buster time. Leon grit his teeth, and plunged toward the ground. He landed in a superhero landing, more or less, the sudden stop further compressing Luchesi’s back as the jester bore the brunt of the fall to the back of his neck, forced into Leon’s shoulder. There was a resounding cracking noise, then Luchesi fell off of Leon’s shoulder into a quivering heap, like a broken toy.
“Goal.” Cuppy nodded happily.
Sparta growled, hackles raised, claws digging tracts in the ground. Dai Funka observed the freaked out lion. “No,” he realized. “Not nearly so.”
Brock’s rapid approach ended in the well-aged man handspringing, knife still poised in hand. On the downward arc of the acrobatic maneuver, he released the blade, and it sunk like an anchor right beneath the fallen Luchesi’s sternum with a hissing squelch. Black steam puffed around the knife with every beat of Luchesi’s warped heart, whose aorta had just been punctured by the shimmering edge of German steel. The jester’s head, staring at the hilt of the knife buried in his vital-est organ slowly fell, muscles giving out under the strain of blood loss. A final ragged breath left his sore-ridden lips, and the arena went still for a moment. The team collectively stared at Luchesi’s corpse. “I think that’s-” Brock was cut off by a disgusting sound, like slabs of raw meat sliding against one another under the thin veil of Luchesi’s pallor.
A grisly, wet inhalation, sharper than the knife that’d just pierced his heart, came next. Cuppy’s strings broadcasted the breaking of bones within the battered jester’s limbs, and the shifting of foul, viscous liquids rushing through a body devoid of pulse. Luchesi curled into the fetal position, body shaking in unsettling tremors. Dai Funka could hear Luchesi’s teeth chattering…no, snapping together or…falling out? The latter theory was proven correct as the small bits of shattered enamel and bone lolled lazily from the downturned corner of Luchesi’s lips, trailed with ink-stained blood. Ragged, desperate gasps for air followed as Luchesi seemed to gain lucidity again, and he sat up, immediately unsettling the party as he regarded them with distended eyes, as if they were trying to worm their way out of his sockets. Luchesi’s jaw quivered, then disjointed, hanging limply in front of his neck. It reminded Cuppy of a swingset, blown in the wind.
A throaty cough sputtered from Luchesi’s crushed windpipe, and those horrible, popping eyes grew wider still, then rolled back in his head as a gout of black rain drained from Luchesi’s mouth, evoking the image of a black mamba snake, and smaller streams poured from his eyes and nose. His body contorted, bones cracking and stretching as he arched his back, hands clawing at the dirt floor of the arena in a grotesque spider crawl backwards, towards the open pit blown in the ground. Luchesi knelt at its edge. An inhuman scream pierced the air, and Luchesi raised his hands to the air, as if in praise of some dark deity. The shades in the pit flew out like a plague of locusts and swarmed him, each one burrowing itself into a facial orifice of its choice. Luchesi’s screams of agony echoed through not just the tent, but the whole of the island. Finally, the cloak of buglike shadows parted, revealing a horrific figure. A hairless head with black, lidless shark eyes, gums wracked with fangs that resembled shards of stabbed-in glass behind shriveled lips that could never hope to hide them, was set upon the bony shoulders of a disturbingly gaunt, starved-looking frame, stretched painfully to be nine feet in height. Thin skin, alabaster white, hung from Luchesi’s elongated bones. His four arms, skeletally thin, ended in foot-long, scythelike protrusions of bloody bone that were once fingers. The figure lurched forward, grasping under its ribs where a stomach might’ve been, hissing a demonic cry. “So…hungry!” Lushcesi retched, his jaw hinging open like a bear trap as he began to charge at Dai Funka.
Cuppy tilted his head and held his chin, surveying this development, much the same way an IT guy might look at a finicky computer, troubleshooting. “Uh huh… well. That’s certainly… something.”
Dai Funka twitched, his eyes awash with horror and disgust. “What the hell is that… thing? It smells like ass.”
Sparta looked back and forth between the abomination that had sprouted from Luchesi, and the others, before apparently deciding they had this handled, and began trotting off. Leon grabbed the lion by the tail. “The hell you going? Get back here and do your job.”
Sparta growled, displeased with this development.
“Fair weather-ass lion.” Leon gave him a steak to shut him up and renew his loyalty.
Meanwhile, the shades swarming the stands were largely intercepted by the rest of the Valentine Family, reinforced by a sudden troupe of mob suits swarming from the employee tunnel entrances. Kasper struck down a shade, piercing it through with his saber, and cringed as he heard bursts of semiautomatic fire mow down other shadows gliding beyond the radius of the tent grounds and surrounding carnival.
“Hold the line!” the combined security forces implored, desperate to contain whatever this scourge was from spreading. But, they were outnumbered and outgunned, more and more wraiths slipping by as the seconds ticked on. Soon, they would be swarming all of Carnival Top if nothing was done.
Below, in the fight pit, the biker gang (or at least, what Freyja had left of it) answered the surprise call to arms that came knocking on their door.
“What’s going on here?!” the redheaded gangster with finger stumps shrieked, grabbing for his pistol and dropping it, forgetting that his dominant hand was a no go from now on.
Rougal covered him, pumping a shotgun round into the shadowy thing in the guise of a leopard that tried to pounce on his underling. “Whatever they are, they’re intruders. Light ‘em up, boys!”
The silver-haired Chinese man in the brown vest who called himself Thunderfist cracked out his knuckles and his neck, arcs of electricity starting to flare out from his ankles and surge up his legs. “About time I had some fun.” he smiled.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Neither of these groups could confer with each other to acknowledge or confirm that, in both cases, they were targeted first because of their proximity to the underground, and the darkness it harbored. The shades, picking off random schmucks here and there throughout the months, had gathered their strength, sucking out mouthfuls of human soul matter through trembling lips and moist eye sockets, in preparation for this moment, when a great calamity bridged the Void with the islands. The increase in strength and reality the more souls the horde devoured was exponential in nature, and when they reached the tipping point, they would be able to swarm Carnival Top and devour it utterly. Lord Crocus had made the preparations, given them this sampler platter of the banquet to come, brought to them beneath a fine silver lid by the butler that was Luchesi. Oh, how delicious the fear in the air!
Luchesi himself seemed to distort the air around them. No, not the air - it was more like the fabric of reality itself was warping, as though in the presence of a black hole. The actual hole at their feet, the one which had been blown out from the floor, moved in waves like a fluid thing.
“This like the Backyards you talked about?” Leon asked Cuppy over his shoulder.
“Uh uh.” Cuppy shook his head. “This is probably the Void, or something close to it. My apartment is on the borderland of the Backyards, I think it’s called an Interstice or something? Maybe they have those for intersections of Void and earth too?” he scratched his head, gears turning.
“Is now really the best time to theorize?” Leon asked, feeling the air grow cold.
“Something’s coming.” Dai Funka crouched, feeling foreshocks from the dancing hole at Luchesi’s feet.
Then, the hole expanded and swallowed up everything within the ring of fire. Those at the fringes, in the rest of the big top, would see spacetime frozen within, distorted and discolored as though the area had been colored in a sepia filter. It reminded Kasper at once of how he had heard that, should an observer witness an object fall into a black hole, they would never actually see the absorption. Within, beyond the threshold of the event horizon, not only was gravity no longer escapable, it distorted all such that the only direction existing was down, further into the hole. Time, too, ceased to exist at this threshold. Any who observed something fall in would see the object slow, and stop on the rim, then eventually fade. This comparison in mind, Kasper didn’t want to think about what would happen if they tried to approach the boundary.
As for Team Cuppy, they found themselves in some hazy place, at once where they had been on the circus floor, yet separated from it by dimensional walls. It looked like some sort of rendering error in a computer game, an impossible empty which ignored all laws of spatial physics. Luchesi let out a terrible blend of a cackle and wail as he began to sink into the rift, whose spiraling shades of gray and black began to unwind into quivering, wormlike protrusions, pulling themselves tighter like a million drawstrings as what was once the jester disappeared in their embrace.
“We should evacuate as quick as we can.” Brock advised, jogging over to the tear in the tent and holding the flap open for the rest of the crew. “This place could suffer some kind of dimensional collapse at any time, and we don’t want to be part of that.” He added, squinting into the sunlight to see several speedboats approaching the borders of the island, each flying a pure black flag. “My people will make sure nothing leaves this island but us.”
Within the glitched frame of Carnival Top’s reality, Sparta glared at Leon for what felt like a very long time. This was bullshit.
“Suck it up.” Leon said without looking. “It’s not like we’re going to die, so quit being melodramatic.”
The lion rolled its eyes, grunting.
Dai Funka felt cold, even through his fluffy layers of blubber, and realized that his breath was icy mist. Despite himself, his nipples hardened.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.” he said to the Cuppy Bros, a hint of shame poking through the facade of stoicism.
Cuppy looked up at the gangly titan of a jester and whistled. “Alright, coffee break over. Let’s kill it.” he started stretching out. Cuppet made wood noises in agreement, scraping his scissors together.
Luchesi rocketed out of the void, clinging like some diseased spider to the rafters that spanned the big top tent’s frame. “Empty…Need to…eat.” The gangly abomination choked, long strands of black spittle oozing from his gaping maw. Lightless eyes, looking more like hollowed sockets from this distance, seemed to stare directly through the party, and Luchesi’s translucent, eel-like fangs bristled and ground against themselves. He sprang from the rafters, tackling Cuppy as he landed on the boy with all his weight, which despite his sallow, bony frame, had definitely increased. Luchesi’s jaw unhinged and he leaned down towards Cuppy’s skull, his tongueless mouth reeking of rot and sulfur.
Cuppy recoiled, thinking this jerk needed a breath mint. Or a hundred breath mints. He didn’t have a breath mint, but he did have something for the occasion. He grabbed a new format of Cuppy Surprise Pellet from his bag. It was bright green. It was too close quarters and too short notice to bother with the slingshot, so he instead flicked the pellet into Luchesi’s yawning gullet, as if shooting a marble.
…
“Hey, Cuppy, what are you doing?” Richie had asked him a few days ago, watching the moppet pouring over his little chemistry table, mixing and matching liquids in glass beakers and carefully pouring the solution from one of them into a little pellet through a tiny hole.
“Making more bombs.” Cuppy had chirped happily.
“Every man needs a hobby, I guess.” Richie sweat. “You, uh, you don’t do these experiments in the house, right?”
“Shush, focusing.” Cuppy said.
The pellet began foaming up, boiling over like a kettle of rice foaming up.
“Uh oh.” Cuppy blinked.
“Uh oh? What’s uh oh?” Richie asked, breaking into a cold sweat.
Inside, Holly, filing her nails, heard a boom! that shook the couch. Freyja looked up from behind the counter, an entire chicken in her partially-morphed wolf jaws, and her ears laid back.
“Boys will be boys, I suppose.” Holly shrugged.
Out in the muddy crater where Cuppy’s work bench had been, Richie, covered in soot and his hair blown back, glared at Cuppy, folding his arms and tapping his foot.
“Science is all about trial and error.” Cuppy shrugged, his cloak in tatters.
He threw it into a laundry basket of other shredded cloaks. Soon, he’d have to sew some more together.
Richie left to walk around the forest and blow off some steam, and came back later to see Cuppy carefully, hesitantly prodding one of his pellets he had left on a table. With a fully-extended pool skimmer. He dropped down into one of his Viet Cup tunnels for a few seconds, then cautiously popped back up, meerkat-style. The pellet hadn’t blown up.
“Ok, this one’s stable.” he smiled.
He moved on to more pellet types.
“This one fragments, this one bursts into arcs of lightning, that one explodes into a cloud of pepper spray,” he excitedly walked Richie around the table, showing off his work as though they were fudge samples at a candy store. Richie cracked a smile at the mental comparison in his head, not knowing that Freyja had already mistaken one of these bad boys for chewing gum. Cuppy still had the pawprint in his ass.
“What are you making now?” he asked Cuppy, the latter weighing some odd-looking plants. He was wearing what appeared to be protective gloves.
“Good things come to those who wait.” Cuppy smiled.
He got up and walked toward Richie, holding a bundle of the plants in either gloved hand, one hand going up, the other going down, as if he were a scale and trying to decide the right amount to crush and pack into his new pellet model. Before he could decide and ask Richie for his opinion, he heard a caterwaul. Doubtless, Snaggles had fallen into another one of Cuppy’s pit traps while looking for squirrels to catch again.
“I better go handle that.” Cuppy said. “Here, hold my nettles.” he placed the plants in Richie’s hands.
Reflexively, Richie complied.
“.....” Richie’s eyebrow twitched. “AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!”
…
And now, the Nettles Pellet made its debut.
Luchesi’s fleshy throat was instantly crop dusted by the powdered nettles, and it sent the gangled creature reeling onto his back, gagging in pain and swiping his four claws wildly. “He’s distracted, kick his ass!” Brock shouted, reloading his pistols. Luchesi rolled onto all fours, or all sixes in his case, uttering a haggard screech. His stygian eyes were burning, leaking with heavy streams of black rain. His nostrils occasionally birthed a locust shade that had filled its body with Luchesi’s withered essence, and as he hacked up more of the black rain, the resulting puddles of vomit were also crawling with the things. Cuppy had been a poor choice in target, so Luchesi turned his attention to Dai Funka. All that flab he carried would be filling, surely. The mutated jester somersaulted into a low crawl, going for the sumo’s ankles.
“No.” Cuppy, reusing Cuppet’s slingshot function, slammed into Luchesi’s back like a rocket. The monster crumpled backward again, spewing black rain vomit from its mouth, which became wafting mist that eerily floated away, as though his blood defied gravity.
Dai Funka took advantage, and slammed another shockwave palm into the freak. It huddled over, whiplashed this way and then that by Cuppy and Dai Funka’s pincer attack, but dug its feet into the ground, avoiding going down this time. The shockwave burst out of its back… and hit Cuppy, who had been right behind it. The moppet went flying toward the edge of the Void stasis chamber.
“...sorry.” Dai Funka said, averting his eyes and tapping his fingers together.
Leon’s whip lashed around the creature’s throat like a noose, and the Lion Tamer pulled, trying to reign the beast in and instead finding his feet sliding.
Luchesi wrapped four trembling hands around Leon’s whip, his jaw cracking open so wide that his chin nestled between the points of his collarbone, and yanked it hard with freakish strength, sending the performer flying towards the twisted hunger hole.
Sparta, perpendicular to Leon, leaped and snatched his master out of the air before he could land neatly down Luchesi’s esophagus. Luchesi’s stomach felt ready to turn on itself, and he was flooded with rage again. This was quite enough nonsense, he needed to chow down on someone, and these selfish assholes just weren’t agreeing with him! He tossed the whip aside flippantly, netting an offended grunt from Leon that his family heirloom was being treated so dismissively. His priorities were clearly in order.
Sparta circled, sprinting around and round, and flung Leon onto his back. The lion sprung from behind, aiming for Luchesi’s back. The nightmare jester folded himself backward instantly, as such should have snapped the spine if he still had it or was confined by the limits of human anatomy, and threw his unhinged jaw open wide. A sound like gurgling swamp muck roared, and a fountain of sizzling, boiling black liquid flew out of his mouth - some kind of caustic black rain derivative. It engulfed Sparta and Leon, painting them black, and threw them backward to the ground, drops flinging off and eating smoking divots into the floor. Sparta roared and Leon screamed, rolling around, trying to shed themselves of the burning slop. Leon threw his soaked mane back like the star of the world’s most offputting shampoo commercial.
Cuppy grimaced. That looked painful. “I probably should have made a Water Pellet.” he thought.
“Swap doll, please!” Leon snapped, clutching at his eyes.
Cuppy lifted his hand, full of pin pricks. “Can’t, running low on juice.”
Luchesi landed like a spider dropping from the ceiling behind him. “Let me help you look.” he crooned.
The ghoul lifted himself off the ground with his lower set of arms, swinging himself into an exaggerated kick right to Cuppy’s face, sharp, moldy toenails making cuts along the youthful skin. An audible growl of Luchesi’s stomach made him groan wrathfully, and he crawled towards one of the trampled circus-goer corpses, scooping a whole leg into his gullet before his jaws wrenched shut, severing the limb as he swallowed it whole. Distracted thoroughly by the temptation of relieving his hunger, Luchesi began gorging himself on the body, only to be riddled with a half dozen fired bullets from Brock’s two guns. “Get away from the body ya fuckin’ reprobate!!” Brock yelled, green eyes burning with ferocity. Luchesi felt like his impromptu meal was leaking out of his bullet wounds just as fast as he could hork it down, and he writhed in torment at the wringing sensation in his guts. Luchesi began to emulate a backstroke, clawing through the dirt away from the corpse, uttering animalistic, guttural yells.
He inhaled, filling his shriveled lungs as best he could. “Kill me, make the pain go away!!” He sobbed in a voice that sounded a little closer to that of his human self. Brock’s eyes widened. This was more demonic than anything he’d fought before, and he felt a bit shocked that his guns were working so effectively. Not even holy or anything. He thought, smirking. His earpiece radio crackled to life. “Sir, we’ve got a problem. Potentially hostile third party has arrived, may need your hand at the front if you can spare it.” Brock growled to himself. “Alright, I’m on my way,” He replied. “I’ll be back!” The commander shouted to his allies, before exiting the tent. Luchesi groveled harder, heavy streams of black rain tears streaming down his misshapen face.
Cuppy stopped, and tilted his head. “Huh. Poor thing.”
Leon, Dai Funka, and Sparta simultaneously snapped at him. “DON’T SYMPATHIZE WITH THE MONSTER!”
Cuppy cringed. “Alright alright, sheesh!” he dug out his ear.
Luchesi’s dominant voice seemed to be subsumed into the maelstrom of voices and presences within. His body bubbled like a roiling hot spring getting ready to fire off a geyser spot, and huge tumor-like swells of flesh struggled to overtake each other, each briefly taking on a tortured or cackling face, as if faces had been pushed up against rubber from beneath. It seemed to be an amalgamation of the shades, their captured souls and the remnants of their memories and woes, and, buried somewhere inside… Luchesi himself. The head vibrated back and forth unnaturally, screaming. Everyone covered their ears, feeling as though their eardrums were being stabbed with ice picks. It even brought Cuppy and Leon to their knees. Only Cuppet, not sensing sound quite the same way others did, stood resolutely, unblinking eyes staring blankly at the writhing abomination.
Within, Luchesi found himself in an empty nothingness, naked, shivering, still inundated with the black rain that froze every cell of his body. Part of him was still drowning at the bottom of that sea of corruption, endlessly defiled by the vengeful ghost of his own slain victim. Part of him was eternally reliving the childhood trauma that pushed him into the hateful current he was eventually swept up in. Crocus’s promises - lies - rattled and echoed through his shredded, gangrenous soul.
What are you doing, you worthless fool? Crocus asked. Get a hold of yourself, the elixir of life is rejecting you. Or are you giving up on your kingdom? He swept his arm to a dancing panorama mirage of Luchesi’s beloved Backyard, with its ivy trellis and stained-glass greenhouse panes. It smelled of the park path he liked, before it was bulldozed and cleared away. Only now did he realize that he liked that path in the first place because it reminded him of his mother’s garden - the same garden that went up in flames with the house when, bankruptcy and the reclamation of his family estate on the horizon, he had set the place ablaze and never looked back.
Luchesi had a fragment of a memory sweep through his mind, of him, at six or seven, sitting in his jester-themed pajamas that his mother had knit for him, playing with blocks in the living room.
“Luchesi!” the fat man, breath reeking of cheap booze, slammed into the room.
The blocks fell over, and Luchesi startled, cringing away.
He didn’t remember the inciting incident, if there even was one, only getting flung down the hallway, and spending a few weeks in a feverish daze as his mother applied cold presses to his forehead and kept close vigil, even as she bore bruises on her arms, more and more each time he saw her.
He sensed Richie’s past as well, as though Crocus’s memory were bleeding into his. He too, it seemed, had one connection in this world, the same - a loving mother. Both had been turned out onto the streets and left to their own devices, kicked around from then on, until they ultimately arrived where they were fated to. How could it be, that for that endless sea of time between the ruination of his life, and his finding hope in his new friends, that Richie hadn’t cracked and come to the same conclusion? It wasn’t Luchesi who was crazy, the only rational reaction to such horrors was to snap and toss one’s heart away. It was far too heavy of a burden. Had a flicker of this contempt and denial gone across his soul when he saw Richie staring down on him from above the street light, looking so high and mighty even while bleeding out?
Hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you
I feel good
Help
Pain! The pain!
Richie Richie Richie!
Hate, hate, hate, HATE!
A whirlwind of parallel and dueling emotions, trains of thought, and emotions surged through Luchesi like a storm. In the frenzy of fractured facets of his psyche trying to wrangle a hold of the conglomerate being, one eventually took control.
From outside Luchesi’s body, Cuppy and the others watched one of the swells upon his chest dominate and force the others to regress, before its features took on more definite shape. It shifted into the shape of the cackling comedy mask, and gentle blue eyes filled out the empty eye sockets. The grin twisted and spoke as an organic mouth would, and addressed the crowd. As it did, the creature rescinded its feral posture and stood in a facsimile of how he had during his initial run as the Checkered Slasher, the jester persona, at least for a few minutes, now piloting the beast.
“Right…” he giggled, the sound echoing as if down a chasm. “Now isn’t the time to be controlled by hunger pangs. I have so many new tricks I’d like to try out, with such power at my hands. Let me show you a real circus!” he said.
His four hands clenched, then released with crackling fireworks that sent confetti and live doves flying from his palms. With that proclamation, the indefinite circle of hazy reality around them began to shape itself in accordance with the clown’s whim.
The silhouette of a ferris wheel appeared behind the jester, and he cracked out his knuckles, leaping onto the top gondola and leaning forward at an angle that should’ve sent him plummeting to the ground, but instead started the wheel rolling towards the group, sharp teeth emerging from its edges like those of a circular saw blade. At the sides of the approaching wheel, giant snakes uncoiled themselves from the ground, spawned out of nowhere. The distorted sound of carnival music filled the air, but the music slowly became more and more disheveled, detuned and crackly, the approaching ferris wheel’s paint cracking off into rust as the snakes seemed to wither. “He’s losing his grip on this persona.” Leon said, lashing his whip and slicing the jester right in that beaming, insane grin, flaying a long gash in his cheeks and giving Luchesi half of a glasgow smile.
“Is that good or bad for us?” Dai Funka scratched his head.
Luchesi had a moment to steel his nerves, and the gash in his face began to reform a bit.
“My money’s on good.” Leon said. “He’s more unpredictable as a savage beast, but it also means he’s in a corner and thrashing around desperately. I think that’s a good sign that he’s running low on one-ups.” the Lion Tamer dusted his coat off, grimacing as he realized that corrosive slop had eaten huge holes in the material and left discolored stains spreading outward from the edges of the holes. The second degree burns across his chest and his half-blind eyes were a dick move too, come to think of it.
The jester began grandstanding again, and the ferris wheel came off its hinges, rolling like the world’s biggest, most homicidal quarter. Cuppy and Cuppet sprang backward as it rolled across the fairgrounds, sawing them in two and separating the stringy siblings from Leon and co. Cuppy realized the gorge was spreading the plates too far apart, and he turned round to look for a way to circle back, only to find that he was now in a funhouse hall of mirrors, as though moving from one frame on a roll of film to the next. He was also separated from Cuppet. Hundreds of Cuppys looked back at him throughout the maze, and he began walking, looking for an exit and trying to think this through.
“I know a guy you’d probably get along with.” he mused, thinking of El Cuco and the gordita of death’s similar fondness for elaborate houses of horror disguised as fun zones for children.
Leon and Dai Funka, back to back, found themselves seemingly back on the circus floor of Carnival Top.
“Are we out of that weird shadow sphere?” Dai Funka asked.
“No way. He’s fucking with us.” Leon said.
His correct answer was applauded, and he looked up to a tight rope overhead, where Luchesi stood on one leg like a crane. Whether he had shifted shape back into his Venetian clown disguise from earlier, or else this was a false body and an extension of his will was unclear, but either way, it fluttered down to the floor, and beheld them. This iteration of his costume was more regal in nature, a fluttering purple cape at his back, and his costume had become a bit more vibrant, the black and white scheme interwoven with a bright red vest about his chest, and a teal sash about his waist. His mask was one half white, and one half black, with different kinds of jewels set into holes encircling the forehead.
“How kind of you to show yourself.” Leon sneered, reaching for his waist - and realizing his whip was in some other slice of this weird dimension. His fingers grabbed at nothing, and he blinked for a second before regaining his composure. He sprinted at Luchesi.
“Green light.” the jester drawled, swaying and bobbing its head.
“Huh?” Dai Funka wondered.
Heedless, Leon kept up the pace, closing in on the monster, ready to kick him in that dumb masked face of his.
“Red light.” Luchesi said.
A square, like a neon tile, lit up bright red beneath Leon, and dozens of small cuts ripped open across Leon’s body, as though he were slashed from every direction by a bunch of letter openers. He grunted and grabbed his slashed upper arms.
Luchesi jingled his bell noises toward Dai Funka.
“Up, Gunta, up.” he chuckled.
Erupting from beneath him, a big yellow ball with a red star on it burst out of the ground, suddenly and unexpectedly forcing the sumo wrestler to try to balance himself on the unstable footing. He swayed and pinwheeled his arms trying not to fall off, face painted with confusion and frustration. This bastard was just playing games with them.
Another ball emerged bellow the first one, and then a third beneath that one. The tower of big rubber circus balls rolled about, Dai Funka’s soles slicked with sweat as he took in the sudden height he was thrust into. Tiring of waiting for the big lummox to lose his balance and come crashing down, Luchesi snapped his fingers, and the balls burst, one after the other, from the bottom up. Each pop was like a firework propelling the next in the stack higher, ultimately throwing Dai Funka up and plunging him hard onto his back from several stories. He groaned and arched his back on the ground.
Luchesi thrust out his arm, and a fiery red ring flew down his sleeve, expanding into a hula hoop which he twirled round and round. He tossed it at Leon, and it fit itself over Leon’s chest before contracting like a bear trap, pinning his arms. Leon screamed from the pressure, before the hoop burst into searing flames and then exploded, sending Leon tumbling backward.
Luchesi threw his head back and cackled.
Within the house of mirrors, Cuppy looked around, seeing Luchesi’s gliding reflections zigzagging across the mirrors. Cuppy held a fistful of garotte wires, waiting, his threads trailing and trying to sense the foreshocks before the jester’s approach. They sensed rumbling, and then the rumbling was beneath Cuppy’s feet. A wall of mirrors exploded - and Cuppet, riding Sparta, stepped proudly through. Cuppy’s face lit up. “Perfect timing, you guys!”
Back in the faux circus arena, Dai Funka and Leon were both panting raggedly, the jester hovering above them and waving his arms around like a conductor. Thousands of bits of confetti were swirling around like a snowstorm at his command. As he gestured downward, the gales slammed into his prey, bits of confetti cutting them with each passing wind, some embedding themselves in their skin. They were whipped about by the edged winds, feet digging streaks in the ground. Dai Funka tried to plant himself and brace against the irritating tiny blades, for all the good it did him.
Luchesi raised his arms, and the winds eased up for a bit, carrying the confetti dancing into the sky overhead again, like a vibrant halo of shimmering rainbow. Long party streamers, twisting, slithering, and hissing like snakes, emerged from his sleeves and began crawling through the sky.
“Great, what’s he doing now?” Leon looked up, blinking against blood dripping from a cut above the eye.
The streamers zigzagged and struck the ground like gaudy lightning bolts, rumbling and surging. One hit a few feet from Dai Funka, and he felt an electric charge run up his leg and make his stomach lurch. He grunted, and called a warning to Leon over his shoulder. Leon tried to dash backward out of their flight path preemptively, but the streamer cut a right angle at the last moment and struck the place where Leon landed. He felt like a bolt ripped through him, and it brought him to one knee.
Luchesi waved his arms again, and the confetti storm descended once more, raining down on the weather-beaten warriors.
“Quit with the theatrics already!” Leon yelled up at the jester. “Come down here and fight!”
Luchesi giggled ominously. “In such a rush? The big finale can’t get here soon enough for you, eh?”
He began to float down toward them, flanked by a circular gyre of confetti and tendrils of streamers slithering around it, looking like some kind of biblically-accurate angel-clown mashup.
“In that case,” he sprouted his claws - then abruptly retracted them and flew back up, “have some more party favors anyway!” he rained down confetti and streamers, cackling maniacally.
Great. Psychotic, bloodthirsty, and obnoxious.
Eventually, Luchesi did descend, regarding the exhausted wrestlers before him. His body heaved up and down as he chuckled. “You wear my glitter well. Take it to the grave!”
He unfurled his claws, arms splitting apart into the familiar four, and hooking around, his elbow joints poking out the back like dislocated knobs. The backdrop at Luchesi’s rear shattered apart like glass, and Cuppet flew toward the harlequin, scissor linked together and its jaws spread open wide. The shears cleaved the creature in two at the waist, splitting it apart. No, not quite. Cuppet pulled a huge gash from the jester’s belly to its hip, cutting him half in half. The thing twirled and spun back up into the air, as if drawn by marionette strings himself, and folded like a cloth or a blanket as Cuppy, fist encased in the Thimble technique, punched into him. The thing that had seemingly been Luchesi though was only a mantle, shrouding and entangling Cuppy as he fell to the ground, rolling around in confusion and trying to free himself. He managed it, shredding the empty clothes apart with his wires.
He looked over at Leon and Dai Funka. “You ok?”
“Are you?” Leon asked.
“Cuppy is fine.” Cuppy nodded.
He looked up and saw Luchesi gliding back and forth across the boundary of the replica big top. He heard jeering in the stands as throngs of slashed, mutilated corpses twisted and stirred in the seats, drinking in the spectacle. It seemed Luchesi could literally fill a circus stadium with his body count.
He cast his fishing line skyward, and snagged Luchesi’s regal form, reeling him in, out of the air.
“No use.” the jester said, and spat up another ball of sizzling black sludge.
Cuppet blocked the fetid gunk from landing on Cuppy, the goo breaking apart on his scissor blades over Cuppy’s head, remnants hissing on the broad side of the arts and crafts implement.
The jester form slipped away from something, leaving it bare, the costume falling away like a cast-off snake skin, and the group realized that they saw a black tentacle writhing in the sky, its tip akin to a finger in a finger puppet. The tendril retracted, and the facade of the big top was lifted away, revealing Luchesi’s monstrous form, like the fleshy, pale-skinned shiva with its four scythe-like arms, crouched over the arena. It was as a child playing with a doll house.
“Onward, to the final act!” he boomed down, and plunged all sixteen giant claws into the ground.
It shook, fractured, and began to crumble apart, as though hollow, dropping the group screaming into unknown darkness. Their falls slowed and came to a stop, as though they had sunk through thickening syrup, and their feet tapped gently to the ground. Looking around, Cuppy and co realized that they were back where they started, on the twisted nightmare fairgrounds, a macabre parade passing through the littered streets in the background. The sun was setting, casting the scene in twilight. Luchesi emerged from the ground in front of them as though rising from a theater trap door, his arms crossed, leaving his long claws dangling over each other, scraping the ground. The comedy face embedded in his sickly chest gyrated and giggled, fighting back the screaming voices within each trying to overtake control. Black rain was wept simultaneously from the eyes in the mask, and those of the head lolling on the beast’s neck and shoulders.
“This is too easy.” Luchesi said. “Cuppy, I choose you to be the first of my victims.” he lifted a gangly arm and pointed its four long blades at the small boy.
Cuppy stared, unflinching.
“That’s a good look, kudos.” Luchesi said. “Richie had that expression too. I can’t wait to snuff the hope from your eyes, just like I did his.”
Cuppy’s eye twitched. “What did you say?”
“Oh, did I not tell you?” Luchesi feigned ignorance. “I crossed paths with the filthy tramp on my way to this show. Sadly, he couldn’t make good on his promise to dethrone me from the divine garden. I killed him hours ago.”
Cuppy’s face fell, and he heard Leon and Dai Funka gasp. The boy’s eyes seemed to waver for a few moments, on the verge of tears. Instead, they hardened, and Cuppy’s blank face became a twisted, feral scowl.
“Don’t you lie to me… DON’T YOU GIVE ME A CROCK OF SHIT LIKE THAT!” he roared.
…
Earlier…