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second demon bounced off the floor and skidded to a halt, its engine gasping
and completely jammed by dozens of broken balloons.
When the third and last demon flew out a window, sputtering and wheezing
as it plunged to its death in the waters below, jon-Tom concluded his song,
sent a silent thank-you from the Fourth Dimension to the Fifth, and waited
while the balloons evaporated to see what Markus might try next.
He didn't look scared. Not yet. But neither did he look quite as sure of
himself "You were right, kid. You were right and I was wrong. You're not a
punk. You know your stuff.
Maybe we should make a deal after all." He started toward the younger
man. "Here, a peace offering: okay? Better we work something out between us
than we keep trying to knock each other off."
Jon-Tom eyed him suspiciously, but this time Markus's hand brought forth
no homicidal houris, no mechanical assassins. Just a simple bouquet of
flowers.
"Be more appropriate if you were a broad," Markus said, "but this is the
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best I can think of. Don't flowers say it ail?** He waved the bouquet at his
erstwhile opponent.
Jon-Tom grinned, found himself nodding in agreement. Only problem was,
he didn't want to nod. Nodding he was, though. Maybe it was because the Howers
smelled so beautiful, so fresh and relaxing.
Relaxing. He hadn't been able to relax in a long time. The flowers told
him it was okay to relax, to take it easy. A wonderfully reassuring, cloying
miasma issued from the bouquet.
"That's it, kid. It's all over. Nothing else to fight about. We'll just
kiss and make up. Hell, what's there to fight about? There's plenty here for
us to shareeeeee...."
Somehow Jon-Tom backed away from that soporific spiel, until his back
was against the near wall and he couldn't retreat any further. Did he want to
retreat?
The small part of him that hadn't been drugged by the bouquet's aroma
was frantic. Sing something! Sing anything, the first thing that comes to
mind, so long as it has something to do with flowers!
Van Halen didn't sing about flowers. Neither did Men With Hats or Motley
Crue or Godwanna. Blooms and daisies weren't the stuff heavy metal anthems
were made of.
Not every great new group was that heavy, though.
In fact, there was one...
He started to sing, amazed at how appropriate the music was. So it would
be better if he were a broad, would it? Somehow that fit too.
This time he didn't sing to Markus. He sang to the bouquet. "'Karma,
karma, karma camelliaaa, you come and go, you come and go, oh-oh-oh.'"
It was hard for him to duplicate Boy George's smooth, slightly buttery
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sound, but he managed, and the duar spit out everything from the background
guitar to the harmonica solos. As Markus stared in I shock at his hypnotic
handful of blossomathey began to depart in time to the lyrics. Their petals
spinning like the blades of tiny helicopters, they lifted [from his fingers
and, traveling neatly in single Hie, |circled once around Jen-Tom's head
before flying off gin perfect formation through the nearby high window.
| Leaving behind in Markus's hand a paper cone |,which concealed a
five-inch-long stiletto.
t Markus stumbled away from the spellsinger, reI'treating back toward
the throne- His hat was askew on his head, and he'd lost a couple of buttons
off his cheap white shirt. He looked less like Markus the Ineluctable and more
like a cheap bum.
"You're through here, Markus," Jon-Tom told him, "Quit while you're
ahead, before I really gel into my music. Is over, finished."
i' Markus pulled himself together, seeming to draw fresh strength from
his proximity to the throne and the power it represented. "You think so, kid?
You think I've had enough? Hell, I've just been playing up till now. Kid
stuff. I thought that would be enough, but I was wrong. It's over, all right,
but not for me. For you."
His face was wild, his expression full of concentrated fury. Everything
he'd built here, everything he'd taken from a world he'd been pulled into
against his will, was slipping out of his grasp. He was hanging onto his
sanity by emotional fingernails. No, he wasn't finished. He was Markus the
Ineluctable, Emperor of Everything, and no skinny punk-rocker was going to
take that away from html, Removing the top hat, he held it in his right hand
while whispering and passing the wand over the i opening. Then he tapped the
brim several times. At f first nothing happened, and Jon-Tom found himself
hoping that the magician had finally reached his limits.
Then something came creeping out of the hat.
The room darkened as the sickly green vapor emerged. It pulsed with
inner evil, curling around the legs of chairs, clinging to the floor as it
crept down the steps from the dais. It moved slowly, exploring the environment
into which it had been summoned.
Markus eyed it uncertainly, and it occurred to Jon-Tom that his
opponent, in his anger and fury, might have overextended himself, might have
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called forth something stronger than he'd intended to.
Certainly that expanding cloud of poisonous green sprang from a source
of evil far stronger than perfumed bouquets and faceless demons. There was
nothing even faintly amusing about it. Despite its apparent insubstantiality,
it was real in a way none of Markus's previous conjurations could match.
The magician glanced down into his hat. Apparently he saw something he
didn't like, because he dropped it as if it had burned him and stepped back
toward the throne, never taking his eyes from it. The hat tumbled down the
steps, rolling to a stop on the floor. The frightening cloud continued to pour
forth from the dark opening, You could see through it, but the effort wa&
dizzying.
Furthermore, there were shapes inside the cloud, shapes that wrenched
and heaved in agony at their surroundings. They moaned softly as they fought
to escape their nebulous prison. The sound was chilling.
Vapor reached the ceiling and began to spread out sideways. Jon-Tom
wanted to run, to get out of that room. The threat that was Markus had been
reduced to insignificance by the cloud. Markus no longer mattered. Only
getting away, getting out of there, getting away from that, mattered.
But a wispy tentacle of ichorous green brushed his foot, and he found he
couldn't move. It was Just a tiny thing, an airy caress. It paralyzed him in
his tracks.
And it was so cold.
Eyes in the cloud then, small and piercing, floating above a round oval
of a mouth. They hovered within the fog, sleepy and indifferent. The shapes
flashed and slipped around eyes and lips as they fought to escape.
The cloud spoke softly in a patient, irresistible voice. Jon-Tom felt a
chill strike him with each word.
"I've come for you. It is good that you called me."
Green vapor filled most of the room now. It was starting to spread out
along the wall behind him.
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Soon it would engulf him completely. He knew what would happen then. It
would suck him up inside itself, to join those other helpless, moaning
stiapes.
Then he knew what it was that Markus had conjured up, had called forth
out of the depths of his fury and frustration. Instinct told him.
His body might be frozen to the spot, but he found he could still talk.
Maybe the vapor wanted him to talk. Maybe that was a final gift it gave to all
that it swallowed up.
"You... you're Death, aren't you?"
An eloquent silence was his reply. Jon-Tom could feel the cold dosing in
around him, patient, irresistible.
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