or
PGP of the Living Dead
by AstroGirl
GAUDA PRIME, THE DAY AFTER
"...Raising the dead..."
Avon's head snapped up. The old hag had been talking non-stop for hours: about the contents of the herbal tea he'd been drinking (after which he'd immediately stopped drinking it), about the tediously extensive local folklore of Gauda Prime, and, for quite some time now, about her own purported supernatural powers. She was worse than Vila. It had got to the point where he was almost considering abandoning her smelly tent and taking his chances with the Federation, just to get away from her prattling. So it wasn't really surprising that he'd completely stopped listening. Until now.
"What?"
"Raising the dead," she said, apparently delighted at having evoked a response from him at last. "Zombies, my lad! One of my specialties. Why, I remember, once, when old Farmer Zotkins..."
"You can raise the dead?" His voice was scornful and disbelieving. No ridiculous traces of hopefulness in at all. Definitely not.
She gave him a toothless grin. "Skeptic, eh? Watch this, sonny!"
With a surprisingly spry twist of her gnarled body, she reached up to a peg on the wall of the tent and plucked down the carcass of a small mammal, which had presumably been hanging there for later use in the stewpot. Unless it was for some other purpose he didn't particularly want to know about.
Avon opened his mouth to say something, but she shot him a withering glare. "No talking! Just sit there and don't interrupt. I got to concentrate for this."
So he sat there and watched in bemusement as she muttered and chanted over the creature's body, pulled out a filthy knife with which she deftly sliced a shallow cut into her own finger, sprinkled tiny drops of blood around the furry corpse, muttered and chanted some more, and finally leaned back with a groan as her eyes rolled upwards into their sockets.
Then she smiled at him again, wiped her bleeding finger on a dress-hem even filthier than the knife had been and, with a palpable air of satisfaction said, "There! Whattdaya think of that, then, Mr. Skeptic?"
He stared pointedly at the still-dead animal.
Which twitched.
She grinned. He gaped. The creature twitched again, shook its furry head, rose unsteadily to its feet and lurched for the tent door.
He set down his long-neglected teacup, deliberately ignoring the slight trembling in his hand. "Can you do that with a human being?"
"'Course I can. Much harder with people, though. Takes a terrible price, it does. Not one I'd be willing to pay, neither."
"Could you teach me?"
She regarded him calmly. "Oh, I think you're the type as could learn. Assuming you're willing to pay the price."
"Which is?"
"Well, to begin with, it requires a human sacrifice."
If she expected him to so much as blink at that, she was disappointed. "And?"
"And it'll cost you half your soul."
He smiled darkly. "I'm not sure there is that much of it left."
Keen eyes bored into him. "Oh, I'd say you've got just about that much left." She sucked absently at her injured finger without taking her gaze from him. "That should probably make it easier for you, truth be told."
"Well, then," he said, smiling in exactly the way you'd expect a man with half a soul to smile. "Show me."
"Wait just a minute, sonny. There's still the matter of my fee, ya know."
"What do you want?"
"What have you got?"
He spread his arms slightly, displaying for her everything he had left in the universe.
"That'll do," she said. "It's been a long time since I had a comely lad like you in me bed. Particularly without having to go to the trouble o' layin' a spell on him." Staring into her leering, wrinkled face, it was easy enough to see why.
He shrugged and began unfastening his tunic. Why not? He'd been intimate with far viler things than her.
And it wasn't like he had anything better to do.
FIVE DAYS AFTER
There was only one trooper guarding the room where the bodies were kept. For Avon's purposes, this was ideal. Using the rather... unusual stealth techniques the old woman had taught him (and trying hard not to think about the details of the payment she had extracted for that instruction), he crept up behind the unsuspecting trooper and efficiently clubbed the man into unconsciousness.
Avon dragged the body into the storage room and quietly shut the door behind him, confident that the occupants of Blake's former base remained unaware of his presence.
Carefully, he surveyed the room. Five beds. Five bodies. Five familiar bodies.
Five rather ripe familiar bodies, in fact. You'd think the Federation could have set up some refrigeration equipment in here. He hoped that wouldn't be a problem.
One of the bodies was staring at him.
"Damn it, Blake, don't look at me like that. I'm fixing it, aren't I?" He realized he was talking to dead man, and stopped, feeling embarrassed. Then again, with any luck, he'd have to get used to it, wouldn't he?
He pulled the knife from his boot, and with a snarl, hauled the unconscious trooper to his feet. He took a deep breath... and slit the man's throat.
Hoarsely, he began chanting as he grabbed the dying trooper by his feet and started dragging him in a slow circuit about the room, tracing a circle around the clustered beds with spurts of bright arterial blood.
When it was finished he rolled the trooper's body to the side, well out of the circle, and, still chanting, allowed his eyes to roll upwards into his head. He wasn't entirely sure just how serious the old witch had been about this particular part of the ceremony, but no matter how incongruously silly it made him feel, he was not about to risk omitting it. And at least he'd had a lot of practice at rolling his eyes upward, after all those times he'd been hit on the head.
When he looked again, the bodies were moving. One by one, they lurched to their feet and began to look around them with empty animal eyes.
"Brainsss..." hissed Tarrant.
The others immediately took up the chorus. "Brainsss... Brainsss... Brainssss..."
"Yes," said Avon. There was no fear in him. These corpses would not hurt him. They would obey him. He was their Master.
"Yes," he said again, throwing open the door. "Kill!"
They hardly needed the encouragement, practically knocking pieces off each other in their haste to get through the door.
In moments, he could hear screams. And gunfire. And more screams. And some rather disturbing slurping noises.
So, this was what one got in exchange for half a soul. Not a bad trade, he decided. Certainly much better than what he'd got for the first half.
He didn't even feel any different.
Much.
Smiling, Avon went forth to witness the carnage.
SEVEN DAYS AFTER
Avon and his army of zombies were gathered around the breakfast table. Avon sat eating his own meal in silence and trying not to look too closely at the contents of the others' plates. The others, for their part, were generally attempting the same thing, albeit with rather less success.
And then, of course, there was Vila.
"I can't eat this!"
Avon calmly lifted a forkful of his own breakfast to his mouth and chewed. "Why not?"
"Why not? Why not? Because it's a human brain, Avon, that's why not!"
"It's not like it's the first one you've eaten," Avon pointed out, quite reasonably. "I personally watched you rip the heads off of at least four troopers immediately after your reanimation."
Vila's corpse-green skin became even greener. "That was... That was different! I wasn't in my right mind then!"
"Well, if you want to stay in your right mind -- such as it is -- you will have to learn to adjust your diet. We have been over this, Vila. Without regular consumption of human cerebral material, you will begin to decay -- well, more than you already have -- and your mental functioning will be severely impaired, a form of deterioration which you, of all people, can ill afford to suffer."
"Unfortunately, Vila," said Tarrant, lifting a forkful of brain and regarding it with a grimace, "he does seem to be right about that."
"Shut up, Tarrant," they both said at once.
Tarrant's mouth spasmed shut with an audible click, and he gave Avon a murderous glare. Dayna and Soolin exchanged a glance. Blake, still under a "don't talk to me" order from the day before, silently got up and left the table.
Avon just smiled. "Of course, if you want to turn back into the mindless, ravening beast you were when I first raised you, by all means, continue to fast. The results might be amusing."
Vila stared down at the raw mass of gray-red goop that constituted his "breakfast" and swallowed. "Can't I at least have something alcoholic to wash it down with?"
"At this hour of the morning? Besides, you couldn't metabolize it."
Vila gave him an anguished look.
"If it makes you feel any better, you might consider the possibility that, for all you know, that particular organ might well have belonged to the man who killed you." He grinned soullessly. "Think of it as poetic justice."
Vila picked up his fork, looked at the plate, looked at Avon, looked at the plate again. He put the fork down.
"Avon!" he wailed. "I can't! Don't make me! I can't!"
"Vila." Avon's tone was perfectly reasonable, and Vila looked up at him with hopeful eyes. "Shut up and eat your brains."
Vila's hand lurched out, grabbed the fork, scooped up a huge, gooey chunk, and popped it neatly into his helplessly struggling mouth.
Avon smiled.
"May I be excused, please?" said Dayna. "I think I've had enough."
TWO WEEKS AFTER
"On your knees, Blake."
Blake fought it, of course. He'd never accepted the Federation's power over him, and he'd be damned if he would accept Avon's.
He knelt anyway.
"Avon, don't you think..."
"Shut up!"
His mouth closed itself at Avon's command, but his glare continued, effortlessly conveying the proverbial thousand words.
Avon merely grinned past him. "Well, now, this makes quite a change, doesn't it? You taking my orders. Perhaps there is some justice in the universe, after all."
The muscles of Blake's jaws clenched.
Avon looked down at him, his smile turning cold. "It is justice, Blake. After all you've put me through, after all I've done for you, you owe me. And I do intend to collect."
Blake hardly needed the use of his voice to convey what he thought of this assertion.
Avon laughed, sounding disturbingly like a kid with a new toy. A streak of panic flashed through Blake. He'd be willing to bet that Avon was the kind of child who'd taken his toys apart to see how they worked.
"I am your master now. I created you. You will do what I command."
Blake rolled his eyes to show how bored he was with all this oratory. Really, the man sounded like a villain in a melodramatic holovid.
Avon's hand shot out, tangling in Blake's limp hair, forcing his head down. "Don't struggle," he said, just as Blake's nervous system had finished sending out its first "struggle" command. The two impulses waged a brief, convulsive war, before Blake's nervous system remembered that it was dead and gave up. No trusting anything these days.
Avon removed his hand from Blake's hair and placed in on his own hip. Which he then thrust forward suggestively.
"Anything I command."
Blake gave him a you've-got-to-be-kidding look.
"Oh, yes." Avon was clearly getting off on this. He was purring like a cat with a facefull of cream.
Oooh, bad image.
"I can make you do it. I will make you do it."
Blake wondered if Avon appreciated the staggering opportunities for deadly comeback lines that damned "shut up" command was forcing him to miss. It was almost more annoying than this whole sexual humiliation thing Avon apparently was intent on. To have a deadly comeback line and not to be able to use it on Avon... now that was unfair.
"First," he said in a voice that was entirely too pleased with itself, "kiss my boot."
So Blake did it. As if that proved anything. Then he raised he face to gaze into Avon's with all the defiance and insolence he could muster.
And saw Avon staring at his boot with a queasy look on his face.
They both stared for a moment at the slimy chunk of flesh stuck to the toe. Blake tentatively touched his face, found himself unable to repress a slightly hysterical thought about "giving Avon lip," and decided maybe it was just as well he couldn't speak, after all.
Avon gave a pale, shaky chuckle and said "On second thought, perhaps I don't care to add necrophilia to my list of vices after all."
Blake smiled. Avon shuddered.
"Go away, Blake."
Well, that was one order that Blake didn't mind obeying. He gladly turned around and went, leaving Avon alone to shake the gunk off his shoe and contemplate the thought that perhaps the old gypsy woman wasn't looking so bad, after all...
FIFTEEN DAYS AFTER
"This simply can not be allowed to continue!" Tarrant's death-pale face was tinged with the pink of indignation.
"Tarrant's right." Soolin's voice cut across the noises of assent made by the others. "Avon was always difficult to deal with, but this time he's gone several light-years too far."
"He's had me working on that captured ship of his day and night for the last week," Tarrant went on. "The only reason he let me stop long enough to come here tonight is that I finally convinced him that if he didn't let me have a brain break once in a while, I'd start leaking into the engines!"
"At least he hasn't turned you into his personal slave!" countered Vila. "Cleaning up after him, waiting on him hand and foot... 'Vila, fetch this,' and 'Vila do that!' 'Bring me my breakfast, Vila!' 'Wash the stains out of my leather, Vila!' 'Go saw open some troopers' skulls, Vila!' Do you know how ripe those dead troopers are getting?"
"All right, Vila," Dayna cut in. "We get the idea!"
"Absolute power," said Blake, who was at least being allowed to talk today. "And Avon's been corrupted absolutely."
"Not that Avon took much corrupting," added Tarrant.
"I don't like being a zombie, Blake!" Vila wailed. "Brain-eating makes me nauseous, and I'm afraid Avon's going to order me to jump off a cliff one day just for a laugh, and all the best bits of me are falling off! And I can't even have a little drink to forget my troubles!"
"I have to agree with Vila," said Dayna. "Much though I hate to admit it. Although..." A wicked smile crept onto her face. "I must say, there is a certain attraction to the idea of vengeance from beyond the grave. If Avon ever lets me, I would take great delight in eating Servalan's brain personally."
"Yes, well, one thing at a time," said Blake. "The question is, what are we going to do about Avon?"
"I think what you're really asking, Blake, is 'How do we kill him?'"
"Soolin!" Dayna sounded shocked.
"I don't like it, either, Dayna, but be practical..."
"No," Blake interrupted her. "No. There's been enough killing. Even if it were possible."
"Haven't you ever heard the phrase 'turnabout is fair play,' Blake?" Tarrant said nastily.
Blake glared at Tarrant grimly, and he lapsed back into silence.
"No," Blake said again. "We're not going to kill him. But Tarrant is right: this can't be permitted to continue. Even the Federation never had this kind of control over people."
"If you still consider us people," Soolin said.
Blake ignored her. "We have to find out the source of this power of his, if we're going to manage to defeat it."
"Oh, that's easy!" said Vila. "He learned it all from some old woman, he said. Out in the hills, somewhere."
"Wait," said Soolin, looking surprised. "An old witch woman? In a tent?"
"You know her?" asked Blake eagerly.
"I know of her," said Soolin. "Everyone on GP does. People used to tell stories about her, to frighten children into behaving. I even saw her once, from a distance. I ran the other way. I was six." She frowned. "It can't be the same woman, though. She must've been close to a hundred then."
"If she can teach people how to raise the dead," Dayna pointed out rationally, "then who's to say she can't still be alive herself?"
"Soolin," said Blake. "Do you know where to find this woman?"
Soolin shrugged. "I'd know where to start looking."
"Good." Blake smiled. "We know what we need to do next, then. One way or another, we are going to break Avon's control."
"What are you giggling about?" Tarrant asked, staring at Vila, who was, indeed, giggling.
"Well, it's quite a pun, really, isn't it?" There was a horribly smug look on his face. "The zombies are..."
"Don't say it!" Dayna groaned, anticipating him.
"...Revolting!" He ducked quickly as Tarrant threw a spanner at him.
SIXTEEN DAYS AFTER
The old woman came out of her tent just as Soolin, Blake and Vila crested the top of the hill.
"Left you late enough, he did," she said as they approached. "Still I suppose that couldn't be avoided."
"You know who we are?" said Blake.
"I know whose you are," she said, scanning him up and down with an appraising look. "Hmm. Nice, strong aura, though. Good work, there."
Appearing to dismiss Blake entirely, she turned to Vila, gently tilting up his chin and examining the flesh of his face. He gave her a nervous smile.
"Good animation, too. Not much lurching, fine muscle control." She released Vila's chin and grinned at him, a look that was, if possible, even more disturbing than her stare. "He did do the eye rolling!"
"The reason we've come to find you..." said Blake.
"The reason you've come to find me," she interrupted brusquely, "is that you don't like being undead. Right?"
"Right!" said Vila enthusiastically.
"Actually..." Blake began.
She cut him off again. "Right. That's people for ya. Never satisfied. No, undead ain't good enough. They wanna be alive. Never mind that undead beats dead, which is what ya were. No, they want it all. No gratitude, just greed. Gimme, gimme, gimme!"
"How much?" asked Soolin dryly.
The old woman cackled. "I like your style, young woman! Very direct." She squinted at Soolin for a moment. "Wait. I know you, don't I? Yes... Little girl who ran away crying!"
Soolin seemed to have difficulty deciding whether to look embarrassed or surprised, and finally managed to settle on her usual cool aloofness. "How much?" she repeated.
"'T'ain't a question of money, dearie. 'Tis a question of what your fancy-educated master would call 'entropy.' A corpse is a corpse. You can make it get up and walk around, but you can't turn it back into a live body. Not with any kind of magic I ever knew of, anyway."
"So we're stuck like this?" moaned Vila. "Forever?"
"There, there." She patted him sympathetically on the shoulder. "I'm sure you'll get used to it, my boy." She peered at his face again, frowning. "Maybe we can get you cleaned up a bit. Preservation spell, take some of that green from yer eyeballs..."
"Actually," said Blake, his very best I-am-in-control-of-the-situation voice completely drowning out Vila's eagerly positive response, "What we really want to know is how to break Avon's control over us."
"Ah. So it's not yer physical state that's botherin' ya, is it? It's the geas." She almost sounded approving.
"The what?" Vila's brow wrinkled up in confusion.
"The geas, my lad!" she cried, clapping him on the shoulder with rather surprising force. "The compulsion to obey your master."
"Avon is not our master," growled Blake.
"Ah, but he is. That grates on you somethin' fierce, doesn't it? But he's the one what raised you, and the power over you is his. It's a fundamental part o' necromancy. There ain't no gettin' around it."
"So there's nothing we can do?" said Soolin, fingering her gun as though suddenly itching to use it on Avon, geas or no geas.
The old woman's eyes unfocused for a moment, and she went utterly still.
"Er, lady?" said Vila at last, passing a hand in front of her eyes. "Lady? Are you all right?"
Her eyes snapped back into focus and locked in on Vila with a glacier-melting gaze. "O' course I'm all right! I'm just thinkin', is all!"
She turned back to Blake. "All right," she said brusquely. "Here's the thing you got to know about necromancy. If you want to undo somethin' like this, you got to give back whatever thing it was that the necromancer gave up to do the spell in the first place. Right?"
"I'll take your word for it," said Blake with a hint of amusement.
"Smart lad. All right. Thing is, the half a soul your Avon gave up..."
"What!?"
She glared at Blake for the interruption. "Half his soul," she snapped. "Half his soul. Completely standard in this sort of thing. Anyway, the thing is, he gave it up to animate you, and if you give it back you'll all be ordinary non-walking corpses again. And undead, as I said before, bein' preferable to dead, I can only assume you're not wantin' that. Besides which, he's not likely to want it back after it's been used to animate you lot. Half a soul tainted with that kind o' dark magic is far worse than no soul at all."
"But?" said Vila hopefully.
She smiled and pinched his cheek. "But, zombie-me-lad, one half o' a man's soul is just as good as the other half, and your Avon's left bits and pieces of his all over the place. Get those back to him, and, well..." She winked.
"And you can do this for us?" asked Soolin dubiously.
"I can give you the means to do it yourself," said the witch. "I'm too old to go gallivantin' around the galaxy collectin' bits o' soul. Besides, who'd feed my lizards?"
"Thank you," said Blake, relief and gratitude in his voice.
"Don't thank me yet," she said, casting an amused glance in Soolin's direction. "We still ain't discussed my fee." She looked Blake carefully up and down, then shook her head. "If you were a little less decomposed, I'd be tempted to ask ya for what yer master paid. As it is..." She grinned toothlessly. "I'll take cash."
Blake smiled and began digging into his pockets.
SEVENTEEN DAYS AFTER
Vila, despite his protestations, had managed to wrangle more freedom out of Avon than any of the rest of them and was pretty much allowed to wander the base as he pleased. It was Vila, therefore, who'd been elected to go and explain things to the other two.
The other two, currently, were staring at Vila as if he'd lost his mind.
"So we have to go and find these pieces of Avon's soul?" Dayna was obviously struggling to take this seriously.
"Personally, I was a little surprised to find out he ever had one," replied Vila. "But that's the idea, anyway."
"And she expects us to believe that, this strange old woman of yours?"
"You didn't see her, Tarrant! She was... spooky. If she says she can put half of Avon's soul back, I believe her!"
"Well," said Dayna slowly. "It's certainly clear that she has some kind of power. We've had first-hand evidence of that." She held out her own hands before her, examining the loose, gray-tinged flesh with a grimace. "And there were witch doctors on Sarran who could do some pretty amazing things, whether you call it magic or not."
"Well, that's as may be," said Tarrant. "But I still find it hard to believe that we're supposed to work this magic -- or whatever it is -- with... with that!"
The three of them stared for a moment at the objects Vila was carrying. Even he had to admit they didn't look like much. He held up the forked twig, cleared his throat, and began in what he thought of as his Lecture Mode (as distinguished, of course, from Avon's far less congenial Lecture Mode, which tended to make audiences rapidly wish they were elsewhere, preferably somewhere where people didn't think they were too stupid to live).
"This is an, um, soul-piece-locator. It's like a dowser... a downsing... a..."
"A dowsing rod?" Dayna cut in impatiently.
"Er, yeah, one of them. Only for souls, y'see. You take hold of it by the forky bits, and you say the magic words, and it points you to where the, er, bit of Avon's soul is. Works with star charts, too, she said. Just hold it over the map and write down the coordinates where it points!"
"And I suppose the jar is to hold these soul pieces once we've caught them?" Tarrant smiled. His white teeth gleamed disturbingly against slimy black gums.
"That's right!" Vila peered closely at the object in question. It appeared to be an entirely ordinary glass jar, complete with screw-on top, except for the (mercifully unidentified) small bone tied just below the mouth on a piece of grubby string. "The string's to keep the bits you've already got from getting out again until you're ready, I think. Somehow. I don't know what the bone's for, but she said not to mess with it."
"All right, Vila." said Tarrant with exaggerated tolerance. "I'll go get the star charts. Why don't you show us how it works?"
A few minutes later, Tarrant's worktable was cleared of various half-assembled stardrive parts and the massive hardcopy star charts salvaged from Scorpio lay unrolled across it.
"Well, go on, Vila." The teeth gleamed again. "Work your magic!"
"Right. Here goes." Vila cleared his throat, grasped the prongs of the stick firmly in either hand, held it poised above the chart, and began chanting nonsense syllables in a slow, careful voice. He was rather proud of himself, actually. He'd been muttering the words under his breath all morning, and was pretty sure he had them completely perfect.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Dayna spoke up gently. "Vila, are you..."
And then Vila gave a yelp as the soul-dowser nearly yanked his arms from their sockets... and came to a quivering stop pointing, not at the star chart, but directly at the far wall.
Dayna snorted. "It doesn't work!"
"Yes, it does," Tarrant's voice was a near-whisper. "You know what's off in that direction, Dayna?"
Vila let go of the implement. It hovered there in mid-air for a moment, shivering, before clattering to the floor. "The tracking gallery," he said in a horrified whimper.
All the blood had been cleaned up. Vila knew this, because he'd been the one who'd had to do it. He had hoped never to set foot in the room again, and Tarrant and Dayna practically had to drag him over the threshold this time.
"All right, Vila. Try it now." Tarrant took a deep breath, trying not to shiver. He'd always thought that the old saying about someone walking over your grave was mere superstition.
Vila held the slender twig in both shaking hands and began reciting the words in a rapid, breathless fashion. It jerked in his grasp and aimed itself promptly at a spot in the middle of the room.
He gulped. "This is it, all right."
"I suppose it really shouldn't be surprising," said Tarrant.
"It all worked out nice for Avon, didn't it?" Vila's voice was suddenly bitter.
Dayna looked affronted. "What do you mean?"
"He got the satisfaction of shooting Blake... without any of the guilt. 'Cause he 'fixed' it, didn't he? A little black magic, make it all better! And now he's got just what he always wanted: a bunch of 'friends' who'll hang on his every word and always do what he says and can't possibly ever betray him."
"Is that what we're doing now?" She sounded disturbed. "Betraying him?"
"No! We're helping him. Giving him back what he's lost." Tarrant paused. "Well, at least some of it. Assuming this works, that is." He chuckled sadly. "I never thought I'd be looking to get the Avon of Xenon Base back, but he'd certainly be an improvement on the current version."
He turned to Vila, visibly dragging his mind back to the business at hand. "All right. What do we do now?"
"I dunno. Open the jar, I suppose."
Dayna, who was holding the jar, looked at it and shrugged. "All right. Here goes!" She unscrewed the top.
There was a scream. Or at least, something like a scream. And something like a rush of air, and something like... Well, something like something that was hard to describe, really. A wave of emotion crashing over them, painful and sweet and over too fast to be experienced properly.
Dayna held up the jar, a look of shock and wonder on her face. There was something in it.
EIGHTEEN DAYS AFTER
"So this is part of Avon's soul," said Blake, peering into the jar. Within it something blackly luminous writhed like liquid smoke, beating uselessly against the glass walls of the container.
"Pretty much what I would have expected it to look like," said Vila. "Dark and shifty and hard on the eyes."
"It looks like it's trying to get out," commented Dayna. "I don't think it likes being trapped in there."
"I'm not surprised," Blake said with a faint, sad smile. He reached out and trailed his fingers along the glass. The trapped soul-fragment stilled for a moment under his touch. He stroked it gently through the jar for a moment, then withdrew his hand. It writhed more violently than before.
Blake fixed the others with his stare. "Next piece," he said grimly.
The star chart was unrolled once again, and this time when Vila completed his incantation the rod merely quivered slightly in his hands, tugging him gently across the starry map until it came to rest above a spot on the map indicated only by the symbol for a star system and a set of coordinates.
"That seems vaguely familiar," said Tarrant. Blake peered eagerly over his shoulder as he looked up the planet's identity.
"Where's... Malodaar?" he asked innocently.
Vila groaned and buried his head in his hands.
Tarrant and Dayna gave him sympathetic looks, but Soolin flashed a macabre smile and said "Oh, I don't know, Vila. I should think you'd be flattered."
Vila made a rude gesture at her without ever lifting his hands from his eyes.
THREE WEEKS AFTER
"All the repairs are complete," Tarrant reported. "And I've finished installing the drive. Your ship" -- he put the slightest annoyed emphasis on "your" -- "should be spaceworthy."
"Good," said Avon, lounging comfortably back into the chair in what had once been Blake's office.
"There's just one thing."
"Oh?" Avon sounded bored, as if Tarrant were keeping him from some more amusing pursuit, like ordering Vila to polish his boots.
Tarrant took a deep breath. "Yes. I'm pretty sure I've managed all the repairs successfully." And a hell of a job it had been, too. If Scorpio's stardrive had been any less advanced, it would hardly have been worth the effort of salvaging. "But there's some doubt in my mind as to whether Dr. Plaxton's drive will function compatibly with this particular type of ship. There's a chance -- a small but nonzero chance -- that the resonant feedback from the main engines could interfere with the stardrive and destroy the ship. I'm afraid that there's not really any way to tell without a test flight. I'd say a fairly long one, in fact. At least four or five days, to allow for the maximum energy buildup." Which, purely by coincidence, of course, just happened to be the round-trip flight time to Malodaar.
Avon looked annoyed. "Really? Well, then, I suppose you will have to make one."
"Me? Oh, of course, me. You wouldn't risk your own neck, would you Avon? Not when you have an army of slaves to take all the risks for you!"
Tarrant fought the temptation to cross his fingers behind his back for luck, the memory of his last conversation with Blake playing over in his mind. Blake had proved to be a veritable fount of Avon Manipulation tips. "Reverse psychology might work," he'd said, "as long as you don't overdo it. Make him think your own reasons are selfish and irrational and he'll probably delight in overruling you."
"I can see why he likes to order you to keep quiet," Tarrant had said with amusement. "But at this point, I think I know how to deal with Avon better than you do."
Blake had winced at that. Oops.
At any rate, Tarrant was about to see whether he'd been right. The cold smile on Avon's face seemed a promising sign.
"You're the pilot, Tarrant."
"I'm expendable, you mean!" He was finding that he didn't remotely have to fake his indignation.
"If you like. A functional, fast-moving ship could prove vital to the safely of all of us, should the Federation return. I'd say that's worth the risk – if it as miniscule as you claim."
"You can't expect me to make a four-day test flight on my own!"
"All right. Take Vila." Avon smiled that sick smile of his. "He is only slightly less expendable than you are."
"That's an order, is it?" said Tarrant through gritted teeth. "Mr. Zombie Master, sir?"
"Yes. Now get out!"
Smug bastard. Serve him right if they did blow themselves up, depriving him of his precious stardrive and two-fifths of his zombie slaves and whatever might be left of that dark, twisted mess he so laughably called a soul.
Tarrant found himself so irritated that he couldn't even properly appreciate his rather stunning victory in the Avon-Manipulation Olympics.
So he went and shook the soul-jar until its contents turned a seasick grey and began flailing desperately against the glass. Petty, but it did make him feel better.
He met with Vila later in the Zombie Liberation Front Headquarters (better known as Blake's bedroom, so designated because it was, aside from the universally-avoided tracking gallery, the one room that Avon displayed a strange reluctance to enter) to give him the good news.
Needless to say, Vila did not take it well.
"Why me?"
"Because, according to Avon, you're almost as expendable as I am," Tarrant responded bitterly.
"Don't make me go back there, Tarrant, please. Take somebody else!"
"Look, Vila, you wouldn't exactly be my first choice, either. But Avon ordered me to take you, so I don't get a choice in the matter, either. You're coming along if I have to tie you up and haul you onto the ship bodily, whether I like it or not, so there's no use protesting."
"But why do we have to go at all?"
"Vila..."
"No, Tarrant, look." A forlornly hopeful expression had crept onto Vila's face. "We've got a piece of his soul already, right? It's a pretty big piece, too." He fumbled the jar out of its hiding place in Blake's dresser drawer, holding it up for Tarrant's inspection. "See? Fills up close to half the jar! Why can't we just call that enough? Sneak into his room while he's sleeping or something and, you know," he shrugged, "give it back to him."
"Because," said Tarrant with exaggerated patience, "he needs the whole thing back in order to break his hold over us. Haven't you been paying any attention at all? One piece won't work!"
"Well, OK, OK, but what if we gave this one back to him, anyhow? It might make him, you know, a little less nasty. And then maybe I could talk him out of making me go..."
"Oh, that's a lovely idea, Vila." A bright smile started to form on Vila's face, then faded again as Tarrant continued in his most deeply sarcastic tone. "Let's alert him to what we're doing so he can order us to put a stop to it. Wonderful! Or did you think he wouldn't notice he'd suddenly got a large chunk of his soul back?"
"All right, all right," muttered Vila morosely. "It was just an idea. Can't blame a guy for trying."
"Yes I can," said Tarrant, smiling. "Come on. We need to get packed." He reached out and gave the soul-jar another solid thunk before sequestering it back into its hiding place, watching the contents' gyrations with a faint amusement.
He turned back to Vila and allowed his expression to soften a little, magnanimous in victory. "I know it's difficult for you," he said, a trace of real sympathy in his voice. "But it is necessary. And at least this way he won't suspect a thing..."
They were up to something. Avon had come close to dismissing the impression, but even his supreme confidence in his newfound power was insufficient to overcome a lifetime's habit of suspicion. The stray looks he'd caught them exchanging, the way they tried to arrange the breaks in their work shifts to overlap... Little things, to be sure, and even he might not have thought much of them, if it weren't for the strange feeling that had been niggling in the back of his head of late...
But it paid, in situations like this, to listen to one's instincts. He placed his hand on the intercom button, intending to call Vila in here and order him to explain just what was going behind his back. He pressed the button down...
No. Wait. There it was again.
He released the intercom button and leant back, closing his eyes, trying to focus on the maddeningly vague sensation. Yes, there it was again, definitely: an odd feeling tingling lightly across those senses the old witch woman had taught him to use. Like something inside him, and yet external. Something disturbing... Disturbed? Perhaps even slightly painful.
Hmm.
His eyes snapped open, half-formed thoughts chasing each other around the inside of his head. Grimly, he held onto the faint thread of sensation and followed it...
...and nearly ran into Tarrant and Vila coming out of Blake's quarters.
Fortunately, they seemed as oblivious as he had nearly been, and Avon was able to duck quickly back around the corner and watch them without himself being seen. Vila's face wore a furtive, unhappy look, Tarrant's a smug one. Yes, they were up to something, all right. In Blake's quarters?
There being no good, rational reason not to enter, Avon did. And knew immediately that whatever-it-was was in here. Yes, there, in that drawer...
He knew what it was immediately, of course. Impossible not to recognize one's own soul, however bizarre and unaesthetic one might find its appearance.
Well, well, well. So this was their game.
Ignoring the soul-fragment's frantic attempts to beat through the glass and rejoin with him, Avon carefully placed the jar back into its drawer. And smiled. And did nothing.
TWENTY-FOUR DAYS AFTER
Tarrant handed Vila his helmet.
"All right, now, you know what to do? Just stay in the airlock. You've got your mag boots and your tether, so you should be fine, even with the door open. When I'm in position, according to the dowsing rod, I'll signal you, and you open the jar." He flashed a slightly-rotten smile. "Simple. Right?"
"If it's so simple, why don't you do it?"
"Because I have to fly the ship. In you go!" He gave the quivering Vila a none-too-gentle shove, propelling him towards the looming airlock door.
"I mean it, Tarrant. Don't make me go in there!"
"Oh, come on, Vila. You're already dead. What's the worst that can happen?"
Vila swallowed, trying not to think about that.
"I have to get back up to the flight deck, Vila. Now, put your helmet on!"
Vila found himself obeying without thinking about it, in much the same way as he did with Avon these days. And then he was standing in the airlock. Over Malodaar. Just the situation he'd always wanted to find himself in. As if having nightmares about it wasn't bad enough.
He watched the soul-bits inside the jar swirling around with each movement of his shaking hands. Rather hypnotic, actually. Interesting to watch. Much better than looking at the empty nothingness outside the now-open outer hatchway, or the ugly, looming bulk of the planet below him.
"You damn well better appreciate this, Avon," he told the jar. "You just damn well better. Oh, what am I saying? Of course he won't appreciate it. He'll probably be furious. Probably take away my brain ration in retaliation. It's not worth it. It's not. It'll never work, anyway, so I don't know why I'm out here risking my life. That's it. I'm not doing it. I'll just go back inside. Maybe Tarrant won't even notice the jar's not any fuller."
"Vila?" Tarrant's voice crackled over Vila's suit-com. "We should be in position. Open the jar... now!"
For a moment, Vila considered ignoring the voice and just going back inside, anyway, but, no, Tarrant would just make him come back out and do it all over again, and then he'd be nasty all the way home, and Vila got enough nastiness from Avon these days, thank you very much.
He fumbled at the lid, normally dexterous fingers unfamiliar and clumsy inside the suit gloves.
And he dropped the jar.
"No!"
"Vila? What's happening?"
"Er..." He made a rapid grab for the jar, which was hovering weightlessly in front of him, and succeeded in getting his fingers wrapped around it. "Er, nothing, Tarrant. Just getting ready to open the thing."
"Well, get on with it!"
"'Get on with it!'" Vila mimicked under his breath. Very carefully, he unscrewed the lid.
Suddenly, there was something on his faceplate. He screamed and batted frantically at it before he realized what it was. It clung to him, black and amorphous and diseased-looking, writhing spasmodically as if it were trying to tunnel through his faceplate to get to him. He could feel it, emotion radiating from it: grief and guilt and a hot, desperate urge to live. He screamed again.
"Vila?" He jumped, nearly dropping the jar again, before he realized it was just Tarrant.
Desperately, he brought his fingers up to claw at the mess attached to his face... coincidentally, bringing the jar up closer to it as well. The soul-fragment pulled back from him slightly, and Vila would swear, later, that it looked at him, in a sad, sorry sort of way... And then it was gone.
"Vila?" Tarrant sounded mildly panicky now. "Vila? Are you all right? Answer me!"
"I'm still here."
"Did you get it?"
He held the jar up in front of his face. It was definitely fuller than before.
"I got it." His voice sounded squeaky and pathetic in his own ears. "Can we go home now? Please?"
THIRTY DAYS AFTER
This is never going to work twice, thought Tarrant, the knowledge of where he was going to have to go next weighing heavily on his unbeating heart. But I suppose I've got to try.
"Avon," he said, "I think the Terror is going to need another test flight."
Nobody had ever admitted to painting the name Terror from Beyond the Grave on the side of Avon's new spaceship, but nobody had bothered to paint over it, either, and, absurdly, somehow the name had stuck.
Avon simply sat there, feet propped up on Orac, a look of utter unconcern on his face. "Fine."
"You see, I think there's still some..." Tarrant stopped, replayed Avon's last utterance through his mind just to be sure he'd heard it right, and blinked.
"Fine? Just like that?"
"You're the pilot," said Avon mildly. "I trust your judgment. If you say the ship needs another test flight, who am I to argue?"
"Oh." It was all Tarrant could think of to say. Well, except for "Who are you, and what have you done with Avon?" but that probably wouldn't be the smartest thing to say right now, would it? After a moment's reflection, he tried, "Anxious to get rid of me?"
Avon smiled. "Yes." Oh, well, perhaps that explained it. "Take Vila with you, if you like." He held up a hand. "No, wait. Take Blake. He's scarcely doing anything useful. How long will you need this time?"
Tarrant did some quick calculations. "Um, another five or six days?"
"Fine."
"Fine," Tarrant echoed, feeling a little numb, and went to tell Blake they'd both be going to Terminal.
THIRTY-FOUR DAYS AFTER
Tarrant was surprised when the light switch actually worked. Dim lighting revealed dust and dirt, pieces of medical equipment scattered about the floor, and a gaping hole where part of a wall had fallen, spilling rubble out into the darkness of the corridor beyond.
More interesting, though, was the flickering image that had appeared on the wall screen: Blake, looking much younger and considerably less putrefied. The real Blake stood there staring at it as if hypnotized, absently wiping at the fluid that leaked from his facial scar and shaking his head.
Tarrant shook his own head and looked around the room again, as if expecting to see Avon's soul hanging around here somewhere looking embarrassed. Instead he saw the body.
"Blake..."
They both huddled around the still form, half-buried in the rubble. The cool, dry air of the underground complex had left her remarkably well-preserved. A wild, desperate thought came rushing into Tarrant's mind.
"Blake, what if..."
Either Cally's corpse had transferred her mind-reading abilities into Blake, or he'd seen that ridiculous light of hope on Tarrant's face and correctly interpreted it. "Would you be willing to give up half your soul, Tarrant? Do you think Cally would want that?"
"No," he said softly. "It was just a passing thought. Never mind." He reached out and closed her eyes. "We should give her a decent burial, though." At least that'd be more than we got.
Blake nodded. "When we've finished here."
They stood, both of them staring sadly down at the corpse for a moment longer. Suddenly, Tarrant found some appalling, unwelcome portion of his mind wondering what condition her brain was in, under that desiccated skull. His undead salivary glands began to water, even as his stomach clenched.
"Then, for god's sake, let's do what we came to do so we can get out of here!"
Whatever Blake was thinking, he certainly seemed to agree on that point. He had already retrieved the jar from his capacious pocket and was unscrewing the lid.
Three separate soul-pieces rushed passed them, one from somewhere in the vicinity of Cally's body, and two from father down the corridor, where they'd watched the Liberator break up, where Servalan had told Avon that Blake was dead. All of them seemed to be screaming and sobbing.
"I'm really starting to hate this job," said Tarrant, watching as Blake replaced the lid with noticeably trembling fingers.
FORTY DAYS AFTER
The members of the Zombie Liberation Front stood staring at the clearly marked spot on the star chart with expressions of glum resignation (or, in Vila's case, incipient panic).
Tarrant apparently felt the need to utter the word, anyway, possibly for dramatic effect: "Earth."
"Let me guess. Servalan's basement." Vila sounded as if he were desperate for someone to contradict him.
Dayna made a valiant attempt at it, just not in the way he would have hoped. "Except it isn't Servalan's basement anymore," she pointed out smugly.
The others exchanged a collective nervous glance.
"Well," said Tarrant finally with an apologetic grin, "actually, it is."
"What?"
"Servalan's managed to worm her way into the presidency again," said Blake. "After the previous holder of the position met with an unfortunate accident, of course."
"Seems she's taken credit for the deaths of a bunch of notorious terrorists," added Tarrant. "Namely, us. Between that and whatever else she's been getting up to, it seems 'Commissioner Sleer' has become quite popular with the Federation of late. Enough so that it no longer particularly matters to anyone who she used to be."
"How do you know that?" Dayna's voice was disbelieving. "Don't tell me Avon let you have access to Orac?"
"Who needs Orac?" said Vila. "It's been on all the Federation newsfeeds!"
"Then why didn't I know about this?"
Vila grinned. "Maybe you should watch the news vids more often."
"Why didn't anyone tell me?" She looked about ready to spit nails.
"Because we knew you'd get that look on your face," said Soolin.
Dayna glared at her and had her mouth open to fire off a retort when Blake broke in. "Can we stop arguing amongst ourselves and concentrate on the business at hand, please?" His voice was soft and low, but at the sound of it the others quickly lapsed into a sulky silence.
"All right. It seems to me that this in fact presents with us a golden opportunity." He ignored the others' incredulous stares. "Servalan is officially ascending to the presidency three weeks from now. At that time, there will be a grand reception at Residence One, with all the major political figures of the Federation in attendance. This could be a perfect chance to kill two birds with one stone!" His eyes were blazing fire now, which was rather disconcerting, considering that they were also somewhat green and puffy.
"You mean attack Servalan's party, don't you?" Vila squeaked.
"Strike off the Federation's head," blazed Blake, "and leave the entire Administration crippled!"
"Isn't that what Anna Grant tried?" said Vila. "Look where it got her!"
"Yes, and the same thing's likely to happen to us," commented Soolin dryly, "if Avon discovers the real reason why we're there."
"You weren't there, Soolin. Don't make jokes about it. It wasn't funny."
Soolin raised an eyebrow at Tarrant's apparent, and rather uncharacteristic, defense of Avon.
"We," said Blake, "will not make the mistakes that Anna Grant made."
Soolin and Tarrant quit looking at each other and turned to Blake, identical puzzled looks on their faces, as it occurred to them to wonder how on earth he knew about Anna Grant, and, for that matter, why he hadn't so much as blinked at the mention of Servalan's basement.
"Dayna told me," he said.
"Trying to justify Avon's current mental state to him?" Soolin asked her.
Dayna made a growling noise.
"Can we please try and remember who the real enemy is here?" asked Tarrant with annoyance.
"Avon?" said Soolin.
"The Federation," corrected Blake grimly, determined not to be led off the track. "If we can get in touch with the rebel groups on Earth, tell them to be ready to seize control once we have the leaders captured..."
"Or killed," interjected Dayna darkly.
Blake ignored her. "It could work! It will work!"
"Aren't you forgetting one thing?" asked Vila.
"Yes," said Tarrant. "How do we get Avon to go along with this plan of yours?"
Blake smiled. "Oh, I think I can convince him." He rose and made for the door, as if the entire issue had been settled.
It was Tarrant who gave voice to the thought written clearly on four separate faces. "Uh, Blake, I'm not sure that's really such a good idea. Maybe one of us..."
But Blake just grinned. "Don't worry. I can deal with Avon." And before Tarrant could properly formulate another sentence, he was already halfway down the corridor that lead to "Avon's office."
For a moment, no one seemed quite capable of speech, not even Vila.
"Is he even allowed to talk to Avon today?" said Soolin finally.
Nobody answered.
"What could have possibly made you think that I'd be interested in carrying on this ludicrous war of yours, Blake?"
Blake carefully did not say "Because you did it for two entire years after I was gone." Much as he wanted to. Instead he said, "Because you know you can never be entirely safe while the Federation still exits."
"I hardly see how participating in a guerilla assault on the presidential palace can be considered conducive to my personal safety."
"You needn't come, Avon, if the danger concerns you that much. The rest of us can handle it." Oddly, he wasn't sure whether he'd be relieved or disappointed if Avon were to agree to that.
"Oh, no." Avon had a weird, faraway look in his eyes. Well, weirder than usual these days, which was saying something. "No, if we are going to bring her down... I intend to be there to see it."
"Is that a yes?" Blake found he wasn't breathing. Then again, he mainly only kept doing it out of habit these days, anyway.
Avon appeared to be considering it for a long, expressionless moment. "Yes."
A huge grin spread across Blake's face and, quite without thinking about it, he reached forward to clasp Avon's leather-clad shoulders in the closest thing to a hug one could get with Avon without being in danger of losing some of one's more valuable body parts.
Avon pulled away quickly, grimacing with distaste at the faint trails of slime Blake's fingers had left on his jacket.
"Go eat something, Blake. You're starting to decompose again."
"Yes, sir!" Blake snapped him a mocking salute and left, triumphant.
See, Tarrant? Nothing to it!
SIXTY-ONE DAYS AFTER
It was, of course, far less bloodless than Blake had hoped. Not that Avon much minded. In fact, he was rather enjoying himself.
The sight of the mildly decomposed bodies of known-to-be-dead rebel terrorists lurching towards them had proved to be quite satisfactorily demoralizing to the Federation security forces. The fact that said undead bodies refused to be stopped by bullets or laser blasts didn't hurt either, of course. The occasional brain-eating was really just the icing on the cake of intimidation.
Vila, in particular, had got very much into the spirit of things. Avon had actually been quite impressed by the ferocity with which the usually violence-aversive thief had ripped off the skull of Madame President's Chief Financial Advisor and happily guzzled down his cerebral matter in front of a roomful of fainting dinner guests.
He'd doubtless feel slightly sick about it later, of course. Vila always did. Still, Avon regarded the prospect of having to put up with his complaining about it tomorrow an entirely fair trade. Mentally, he patted himself on the back for having made the decision to keep Orac's newly-developed artificial brain formula secret from them until after the operation. Dwindling brain supplies had obviously given his zombies that lean, hungry edge.
Speaking of which... Here came Dayna, striding into the room he'd just finished securing, self-satisfaction evident in every line of her body. Her megawatt grin was almost a match for Tarrant's, on one of his better days... at least, if you ignored the splatters of blood around it and the occasional reddish-gray scrap lodged between her gleaming teeth.
She was holding an only slightly gnawed-on brain in her hands, thrusting it out towards him as if awaiting his approval, a cat proudly laying a dying mouse at its master's feet.
"Servalan!" she crowed triumphantly, lifting it closer for his inspection. "I finally did it! This--" the brain shook in her excited hands, sending tiny drops of blood flying across the room "--is the woman who killed my father!"
It actually took him a moment to get his face under control, mainly because he couldn't quite decide which of his mixed emotions it would be safe to reveal. Regret was hardly appropriate, and open revulsion would surely damage his imperturbable image. Jealousy over making the kill would seem somewhat churlish. He finally settled on a look of quiet, predatory satisfaction, only to discover it completely wasted, as she'd already turned away from him and was skipping back out the door, Servalan's brain still held triumphantly in front of her.
Ah, to be young and undead.
He wondered where the others had got to. Though it was just as well they were now mostly out of sight. Blake's rebel friends had finally shown up -- amazing to think that some of Blake's supposed allies had actually come through for once, though he supposed there was a first time for everything -- and while an army of undead was a fine thing for striking terror into the hearts of one's enemies, it might prove a bit difficult to explain to one's friends.
Avon glanced through the door, spied a uniform-clad figure trying to sneak down the hallway in an apparent break for the exit, and calmly shot him in the back.
Now, where was I? Ah, yes. The others. Well, of course he knew where they would be.
They'd be in the basement.
Smiling, he headed for the stairs.
Vila wasn't quite sure why he'd ended up with the jar. Except for the fact that he always seemed to end up doing everything. Not that he really wanted to contemplate some of the things he'd done today. What he really wanted was to get out of this dank, miserable basement, and away from the blood and gunfire upstairs, steal away somewhere with a nice bottle of something and get very, very drunk. Not that he could.
"Well, go on Vila, what are you waiting for?" Soolin turned from him to Tarrant. "This is the spot, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Tarrant. "Go on, Vila, open it."
Vila pulled himself up out of his personal pit of self-pity, more or less, and wrapped his blood-slick fingers around the lid.
There were footsteps on the stairs. Vila looked up in sudden panic, saw Soolin and Tarrant draw their guns...
"Blake!" He almost dropped the jar in his relief. Blake descended the stairs and moved aside so Vila could see who'd come along behind him. "And Dayna! You two nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought you were Avon!"
Dayna simply laughed at him. She was licking her fingers and grinning as if she'd just achieved a life-long dream. Vila very carefully didn't ask.
Instead he turned to Blake, holding the jar out tentatively. "You want to do the honors, Blake?"
Blake scratched absently at the fresh collection of bullet holes his torso had accumulated to keep Avon's company and shook his head. He had just achieved a life-long dream, Vila suddenly realized, but at the moment his attention seemed entirely focused on the jar. "Just hurry."
Vila unscrewed the lid, bracing himself against the now-familiar (though no less disturbing) sensations as the screaming streak of blackness hurled itself at him from the ancient brick wall and was sucked into the jar with its fellows.
They all gathered round and peered at the jar.
It was full.
And that, of course, was when Avon came in.
He was smiling, as if being in this place didn't bother him, didn't mean anything to him at all. "Thank you," he said mildly, coming forward to inspect the jar still held in Vila's outstretched hand. "It really was very considerate of you to go to trouble of gathering this up for me. But I believe I should be taking it into safekeeping now."
"We were going to give it back to you!" Vila almost winced at the pathetic defensiveness in his own voice.
Avon's smile grew even creepier. "But I don't believe I want it back in the way you intended to give it to me, Vila."
Tarrant stepped forward, his voice angry and disgusted. "Avon..."
"Shut up. Don't move. That goes for all of you." Obediently, resentfully, they all froze. "Except you, Vila. Give me the jar." He stretched out his hand.
Vila watched helplessly as his arm extended towards Avon. He felt ready to cry, as he hadn't felt since Malodaar, and that had been Avon's fault, too. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair! They'd won Blake's revolution, won freedom for the masses, and they were all going to live out the rest of their unnatural lives as slaves to this smiling, egomaniac bastard! It wasn't FAIR!
Suddenly, Vila was fighting it, fighting it with every ounce of will in his body. His muscles trembled, his hand shook, but he kept reaching forward, reaching forward, watching it all happen in slow-motion, as Avon's fingertips closed in, almost touching... It's not FAIR!
His fingers convulsed, slipped, skidded, still slick with blood, against the glass.
The jar fell.
He watched, openmouthed, as it plummeted towards the hard stone floor of the basement, as Avon, his face a mask of shock, made a frantic grab for the tumbling, falling jar...
The sound of shattering glass was astonishingly, impossibly loud. Vila watched as the shards flew upwards in a bright-edged cloud, the trajectory of every tiny piece etched in perfect detail on his mind. He saw the string snap, the tiny piece of bone go flying to land amid the shards. For a moment, all was utterly silent, even the sounds of gunfire and shouted orders from upstairs miraculously stilled.
The silence was broken by the sound of Avon's screams.
"No! No!" He was flailing madly against the smoky black mass that had gathered around his head. "No! I don't want it! I don't want it! Vila!"
Vila involuntarily started forward at that cry for help, his feet crunching loudly on the broken glass. He lifted a hand towards Avon, uncertain whether he actually intended to try and wave the stuff away or to hold Avon still so it could get at him, or even whether it would have made a difference one way or another, but by the time he had finished the gesture, it didn't matter.
Avon's soul was pouring itself up his nose, into his mouth, his eyes, his ears, the pores of his face. He made a horrible choking noise, as if the stuff were suffocating him... and, just that suddenly, it was gone.
Avon slumped to the floor.
Blake shouted Avon's name and came rushing to his side.
"We can move!" shouted Dayna. "We've done it! It worked!"
We? thought Vila, rather unkindly. But why bother saying it? They wouldn't give him any credit. They never did.
He looked down and saw, much to his astonishment, that there were tears on Avon's face. Oh, great. He'll kill me for having seen that. Well, at least he can't order me to do it to myself any more...
He
turned back towards the others, who were still standing there, looking
as shell-shocked as he felt. For once. Buoyed up but that thought, he
actually managed a shaky smile. "Well," he said. "I hope that old witch
woman doesn't mind us losing her jar!"
Good. If they were busy rolling their eyes at him, it meant they weren't looking at Avon.
By the time they did, Avon was standing again, looking as if he had himself fully under control. Of course, he also looked as if he were standing in a room full of hostiles. From the look on Tarrant's and Soolin's faces, he might be right. Even Dayna didn't look like she quite knew how to feel. Come to think of it, Vila figured he probably ought to be thinking about the idea of getting revenge on Avon, too, after the hell he'd put them all through in the last two months. Not to mention that little matter of getting them all killed in the first place.
They all looked over at Blake, still standing there beside Avon, not saying a word. If anybody was justified in taking it all out on Avon, it was Blake.
Blake smiled. His eyes twinkled. He clapped Avon on the back.
"Come on, Avon," he said jovially. "Now that you're back to yourself again, it's time to meet your adoring public."
"What?" The question came from five separate throats, Avon's not least among them.
"The masses," said Blake casually, "need a figurehead. Can't you hear them out there?"
Indeed, now that their attention was drawn away from Avon, they could hear them. The sound was faint, but to be heard through the thick cellar walls at all, it must be coming from a huge mass of people. Hundreds of people, cheering, shouting, chanting...
"It's your revolution, Blake." Avon's voice was raspy, but controlled.
"Our revolution, Avon. Or, rather, your revolution." He smiled at the stunned incomprehension surrounding him. "They'll need someone to lead them, now. A famous rebel leader." He grinned at Avon.
"Of course," said Dayna, stepping forward uncertainly. "But surely, you, Blake..."
"Look at me. Look at all of us! The people of Earth are hardly going to accept a rotting corpse as their figurehead!"
Horrible comprehension was dawning on Avon's face. Vila suppressed a giggle at the sight.
"No, Blake...!"
"Yes, Avon." He leaned in close, almost whispering in Avon's ear, though not low enough for the rest of them couldn't hear. "I think you owe me."
Tarrant grinned dangerously. "You know, Avon, I think he's right."
Soolin simply fingered her gun and smiled.
"Damn you, Blake."
Blake made a sweeping after-you gesture towards the stairs. Avon simply stood there for a minute, casting an icy gaze across them all in turn.
Then he sighed, turned, and climbed the stairs, followed close behind by his soon-to-be Zombie Behind the Throne, who was already pouring out advice on what to say in his victory speech.
This time, Vila did giggle. "Well," he said, bounding over to the stairs himself, "it looks like Blake's got his revenge!" Not quite how we expected it all to turn out, I suppose, but we got there in the end!
Laughing, his fellow undead followed him... to meet Avon's public.