The Talisman

He lifted the vial from his pocket and swung it by the chain attached to the little spoon.
    ‘Get out of here.’
    Sloat waggled the vial closer to her face.
    Lily sat up in bed as smartly as a striking snake and spat in his face.
    ‘Bitch!’ He recoiled, grabbing for his handkerchief as the wad of spittle slid down his cheek.
    ‘If that crap is so wonderful, why do you have to sneak into the toilet to take it? Don’t answer, just leave me alone. I don’t want to see you again, Bloat. Take your fat ass out of here.’
    ‘You’re going to die alone, Lily,’ he said, now perversely filled with a cold, hard joy. ‘You’re going to die alone, and this comic little town is going to give you a pauper’s burial, and your son is going to be killed because he can’t possibly handle what’s lying in wait for him, and no one will ever hear of either one of you again.’ He grinned at her. His plump hands were balled into white hairy fists. ‘Remember Asher Dondorf, Lily? Our client? The sidekick on that series Flanagan and Flanagan? I was reading about him in The Hollywood Reporter – some issue a few weeks ago. Shot himself in his living room, but his aim wasn’t too cool, because instead of killing himself he just blew away the roof of his mouth and put himself in a coma. Might hang on for years, I hear, just rotting away.’ He leaned toward her, his forehead corrugating. ‘You and good old Asher have a lot in common, it seems to me.’
    She stonily looked back. Her eyes seemed to have crawled back inside her head, and at that moment she resembled some hard-bitten old frontier woman with a squirrel rifle in one hand and Scripture in the other. ‘My son is going to save my life,’ she said. ‘Jack is going to save my life, and you won’t be able to stop him.’
    ‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we?’ Sloat answered. ‘We’ll just see about that.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE BLASTED LANDS
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    1
    ‘But will ye be safe, my Lord?’ Anders asked, kneeling down before Jack with his white-and-red kilt out around him like a skirt.
    ‘Jack?’ Richard asked, his voice a whiny, irrelevant skirl of sound.
    ‘Would you be safe yourself?’ Jack asked.
    Anders twisted his big white head sideways and squinted up at Jack as if he had just asked a riddle. He looked like a huge puzzled dog.
    ‘I mean, I’ll be about as safe as you would be yourself. That’s all I mean.’
    ‘But my Lord . . .’
    ‘Jack?’ came Richard’s querulous voice again. ‘I fell asleep, and now I should be awake, but we’re still in this weird place, so I’m still dreaming . . . but I want to be awake, Jack, I don’t want to have this dream anymore. No. I don’t want to.’
    And that’s why you busted your damn glasses , Jack said to himself. Aloud, he said, ‘This isn’t a dream, Richie-boy. We’re about to hit the road. We’re gonna take a train ride.’
    ‘Huh?’ Richard said, rubbing his face and sitting up. If Anders resembled a big white dog in skirts, Richard looked like nothing so much as a newly awakened baby.
    ‘My Lord Jason,’ Anders said. Now he seemed as if he might weep – with relief, Jack thought. ‘It is yer will? It is yer will to drive that devil-machine through the Blasted Lands?’
    ‘It sure is,’ Jack said.
    ‘Where are we?’ Richard said. ‘Are you sure they’re not following us?’
    Jack turned toward him. Richard was sitting up on the undulating yellow floor, blinking stupidly, terror still drifting about him like a fog. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll answer your questions. We’re in a section of the Territories called Ellis-Breaks—’
    ‘My head hurts,’ Richard said. He had closed his eyes.
    ‘And,’ Jack went on, ‘we’re going to take this man’s train all the way through the Blasted Lands to the black hotel, or as close to it as we can get. That’s it, Richard. Believe it or not. And the sooner we do it, the sooner we’ll get away from whatever just might be trying to find us.’
    ‘Etheridge,’ Richard whispered. ‘Mr Dufrey.’ He looked around the mellow interior of The Depot as if he expected all their pursuers to suddenly pour through the walls. ‘It’s a brain tumor, you know,’ he said to Jack in a tone of perfect reasonableness. ‘That’s what it is – my headache.’
    ‘My Lord Jason,’ old Anders was saying, bowing so low that his hair settled down on the rippling floorboards. ‘How good ye are, O High One, how good to yer lowliest servant, how