Mysterious Cairo (9 page)

"No," Cage said sternly. "You've taken their lives. Isn't that enough?"

"No, Cage, it is not," Payne answered. "For Suten-hotep to live, he needs everything they have. Dreams, desires, hopes. These are the things we crave."

"You're vampires!" Cage declared, lifting his pistol and pointing it at Payne.

"No, Angus Cage, we are not vampires," Payne replied coldly as Sutenhotep drew in the contents of the second jar. "Sutenhotep is a mummy. And I am ... I am a showman!"

Hur-ree! Hur-ree! Hur-ree!

"You're a fraud," Cage countered as Sutenhotep stepped in front of the third jar. "You deal in deceit and trickery. Nothing in here is real. It's all an illusion!"

"Illusions are my stock and trade," Payne said, his carnival voice shifting into the creaking sounds of a house of horrors, "in that regard you are quite correct. But I would not say that nothing is real. On the contrary, everything is quite real. I just choose to hide the reality."

"Hide this!" Cage shouted, shoving the bell jar from its pedestal. Unlike the display cases, the jar shattered into a hundred shards of glass. The sound it made was music to Cage's ears.

Payne's face paled at the sight of Cage's violence. Even Sutenhotep turned to regard the destruction of the eleventh jar. For a long moment everything was still. Cage watched the two through a haze of gray smoke that was quickly fading away.

"You should not have done that, Cage," Payne said. "I had such hopes for you." Payne moved quickly then, leaping toward Cage with terrible fury etched into his features.

"Go to hell," Cage said, squeezing off two shots from his Browning. Both hit their marks, knocking Payne to the ground in mid-leap.

As he landed in a heap, Payne toppled a number of the black candles. Their flames leaped around the stone chamber, seeking something to burn. A few licks of flame found Sutenhotep's discarded wrappings. The pile erupted into bright fire.

"Destroy him," Payne ordered Sutenhotep, slapping at the flames which had found purchase on the sleeve of his black suit. He stood up slowly, seeming to ignore the slugs which had taken up residence in his chest. "If you want to live again, kill Angus Cage!"

Sutenhotep hesitated, then advanced upon Cage. Cage kept the circle of bell jars between himself and Sutenhotep, trying to decide if his Browning would do anything to the mummy. He glanced at the curtain quickly, seeing Payne rush out of the chamber, trailing sparks of bright red fire. But it wasn't Payne, not the Payne that Cage had come to know. It was more a shadow-thing of shifting shapes and flowing forms. It was, he knew, the real Quentin Payne.

"You have taught me well, Angus Cage," Sutenhotep said with some degree of effort. It sounded as if his vocal chords hadn't been used in a thousand years. Make that three thousand, Cage corrected. "I am sorry that we have come to this, but I want to live!"

Cage toppled another pedestal. Its jar shattered in a symphony of breaking glass. "One Mobius is enough for any world to deal with, Sutenhotep," Cage said. He pushed over another jar. "You belong to a different time."

"I belong here!" Sutenhotep shouted, grabbing Cage with his strong arms. "Who are you to deny me a chance to live?" He swung Cage into the wall, knocking the air from him and shattering his left shoulder in an explosion of bone and blood. Cage screamed, but managed to fire a shot into Sutenhotep's chest.

The bullet startled the ancient man, causing him to throw Cage away from him. Cage sailed across the chamber, knocking over three more bell jars before he crashed into the far wall. He barely had time to realize that his pistol had fallen from his hand when the sharp pain in his shoulder spread throughout his body and almost knocked him out. He held on to consciousness with an extreme effort of will, for he saw that Sutenhotep was coming toward him to finish the job he started.

"Why are these things always so damn strong?" Cage wondered as he struggled to sit up. It was hard to gain his balance with only one good arm, and he slipped before he got his feet underneath him. From Cage's angle on the ground, Sutenhotep looked even bigger than he remembered. And he looked very, very angry. "At least I still have my hat," he mused as the ancient man drew closer. That's when Cage noticed his own shadow. It was dancing along the wall, flickering in a blaze of candle light. He turned his head, ignoring the pain it awakened in his shoulder, and looked for the tall, fat black candle he knew had to be nearby.

"Time to die, Angus Cage," Sutenhotep said as he reached for Cage with long, regal fingers.

"I couldn't agree more," Cage replied. He found the thick candle and grabbed hold of its fat base. With speed born of long years of practice and a moment of desperation, he shoved the candle's flame into the ancient wrappings that still covered the lower part of Sutenhotep's body.

The hungry flame danced over the dry wrappings, setting them on fire. Sutenhotep squealed. It was the same squeal that the shadows outside the shop made. Mobius, Cage knew, might laugh maniacally, but he would never squeal. The fire spread quickly, engulfing Sutenhotep in a cloak of burning light. He squealed again, then raced for the shimmering curtain. In his rush to extinguish the flames, Sutenhotep didn't care that he shattered the remaining bell jars, leaving gray smoke and broken glass in his wake.

The black curtain refused to part for Sutenhotep, so the flaming man ran into it. The curtain squealed as the fire leaped for it, adding its unnatural voice to the song of pain and fear which Sutenhotep sang. It finally pulled back, leaving the portal to the front of the shop wide open. Sutenhotep plunged through, still burning, still squealing.

Cage listened for a moment, catching his breath. From the other room he heard more squeals of fear and pain. With a herculean effort, he rose from the floor. He could see shadows thrown by dancing flames as he stumbled toward the portal. Thick smoke was gathering around the open portal, and the flames were finally adding heat to a shop that Cage had found to be cold and damp. Cage felt the heat, and he hoped he would have enough time to get out before the shop fell in fiery ruins.

He paused at the opening between the two halves of the shop. The front room was decorated in smoke and flame, and the maze of display cases was on fire. Cage could see dark shapes writhing in the flames. It looked as though the shapes were dancing in the fire, keeping time to an inferno beat. The screams that rose out of that pyre told a different story, however. The shapes were in agony, dying as they fed the flames with their own mutable flesh and the discarded dreams they guarded.

Cage was about to move on when something fell on him from above. It took him only seconds to recognize the shimmering black curtain. Now it was a sheet of fire, and it was trying to smother him beneath its own oily flesh and the burning flames that made it scream in pain. It snaked around his back, a sheet of hot, bubbling flesh crawling toward his neck and head. Cage slammed into the wall, crushing the flaming curtain between himself and the shop. Unlike the stone chamber, the front room had normal walls of wood and plaster. The fire leaped from the curtain and raced up the wall, eager to continue its devouring dance. The curtain, all but devoured itself, fell away from Cage in a fiery heap. Cage brushed out a few burning embers on his denim pants and tossed his burning shirt into the nearest blaze. Then, without another hesitation, he rushed toward the front door.

"Help me, Angus." Cage heard the voice call to him from out of the flames as he reached the open door to the alley. "I don't want to die again."

He looked back into the burning room. Clemeta was standing about ten feet away, trapped inside the flame-filled maze. She was hidden in shadows, bent over as if in pain while fire burned all around her. Cage stepped toward her, but an intense blast of heat and fire held him at bay.

"Clemeta!" Cage called to her. He remembered watching one Clemeta die a horrible death. He did not think he could stand to watch another Clemeta go through such agony. "Clemeta, can you hear me?"

Cage felt hot smoke burn his lungs as he tried to reach her. "Clemeta, you have to help me," he called, hoping she could hear him over the crackling flames. "Can you reach out your hand? You have to try!"

At the sound of his voice, Clemeta's head jerked up. She straightened, though it seemed to take a great amount of effort. The flames were higher now, the smoke thicker, and Cage could barely make out Clemeta's shapely form within the inferno. He saw her reach toward him with one slender hand.

"Save me, Angus Cage," Clemeta cried. "I will be whoever you want me to be. Just save me."

Cage stretched out his own hand in return, reaching across the flames to take Clemeta's hand. "A little further, Clemeta," he coaxed, "I can just about feel your fingers." Then, as he brushed her fingers with his own, Cage saw Sutenhotep's Clemeta. This Clemeta was no longer outlined in Payne's proper lighting, however. She was spotlighted by the blaze of an inferno. In this light, Cage saw her as she really was.

Clemeta was nothing more than the withered remains of a three thousand year old corpse. Parts of her dusty flesh had decayed over the centuries, regardless of the care with which she had been preserved. Gaping holes exposed the white bone of her arm. Her high cheek bones stretched thin, cracking flesh into a skeletal mask. Her eyes were empty sockets, and her stomach was an open hollow of ribs. Inside the hollow, black eel-like shapes squirmed and wriggled among the remains of dried organs. Her voice, so soft and sexy, emerged from the eels and not from her dry, cracked lips.

"Help me, Angus," the eels cried in a chorus of Clemeta's voice. "I want to live."

"I'm sorry," Cage managed to choke out. He closed his hand and withdrew it. Her own hand, more bone and dried flesh than shapely appendage, closed upon hot licks of flame.

"What is the matter, Cage?" Quentin Payne sneered as he dropped onto Cage's back. He wasn't heavy, but he intertwined too many arms and legs around Cage's body to be anything close to a normal man. Cage recalled the hallucination he had experienced in the gin joint. He suddenly knew that the images he had seen were real, and that the real Payne was now wrapped around him, some horrible cross between a giant slug and a spider. He felt short, sharp hairs scratch his bare back and shoulders. He felt cold, sharp claws grab his head and turn it toward the flames.

"Is she not everything I promised?" Payne laughed. "Is she not a tempting morsel of flesh and blood? Can you really just stand here and watch her die again, Cage? Can you?"

Cage felt hot blood drip down his face as Payne's claws dug into his flesh. The showman was forcing him to look at Clemeta, to watch as the flames drew closer to her ancient, withered form.

"I can make her beautiful again, Cage," Payne assured him. "It all has to do with the way the light hits her. She has exquisite features, you know. Save her, Cage. Save her and she will be yours forever!"

"She's already dead, Payne," Cage shouted. "She died a very, very long time ago. The fire is simply finishing what nature started." Cage saw the flames finally find Clemeta's body. For a moment, he saw her features as they had been in life — dark, expressive eyes, an upturned nose, a pouting, wet mouth. Then he saw her as she was — a walking corpse. It was consumed in a burst of dust and fire.

Angus Cage turned, stumbling into the alley with Payne holding fast to his back. Already the fog was burning away, and he could feel the Cairo heat quickly replacing the cool dampness that once clogged the narrow alley. Most of the shadows were gone as well. The few that remained huddled at the far end of the alley like frightened mice.

"We had a done deal, Cage," Payne rasped. His carnival voice was dying. Cage imagined that it was being consumed in the same flames that devoured Clemeta and Sutenhotep. "You owe me, bounty hunter. You owe me."

Cage felt the spider limbs tighten around him, cutting off his air. Payne—whatever he was—meant to strangle him. Cage did not want to be strangled. He smashed the insect-thing into the wall of the nearest building, wincing as his own shoulder protested with biting pain. He smashed into it again. This time he was rewarded with Payne's squeal. A third time was the charm, and the Payne-thing released him. Cage sank to his knees, taking in great gulps of air as he crawled away. As he struggled to his feet, he remembered an old saying. It danced in his head the way the fire danced in the gutted remains of
Oddities and Ends.
"Let the buyer beware," he laughed. "Let the buyer beware, indeed."

Cage looked around the alley for Payne. He spotted him huddled among the remaining shadows, watching the fire burn through the ruined shop. Payne's form was unstable, constantly shifting between human and shadow slug. Two bullet wounds in his chest leaked dark ichor, and a few of his spider limbs were bent and broken. He glared at Angus Cage with malevolent eyes. No matter what shape his form took, Payne's eyes remained the same.

Cage turned his back, and started to walk away.

"Going somewhere, Cage?" Payne asked, but his carnival voice was almost gone, used up in one too many illusions. "You must want a better look at me. Hur-ree, hur-ree! Step right up! But the show will cost you. It always does. You cannot just walk away!"

But Angus Cage could do anything he pleased now, and he had had enough of carnivals and exhibits and dark memories. He wanted to get his shoulder fixed up and his cuts looked at. He wanted a shower and a hot meal. He even wanted another crack at Mobius, criminal mastermind from Terra turned Pharaoh of Earth. He wanted to get back to the real world, and that was far from this narrow alley.