“Think you can just come in here like its nothin’, muck up the evening?” a smoky voice called to Elroy from the hallway.

  Steps resounded on the splintered floor of the Astoria Casino as the very large mafioso named Sonny stepped out into the main hall. A winding scar deformed his face, curled along with his lip. He puffed on a long cigar as he approached.

  Shivering nearby, shaken band members in the corner hid behind their podiums and stands. They had bore witness to the power of the Deuce, but were not in the line of fire. Sonny pointed to the director, without looking.

  “Get up, get us a tune to square down.” Sonny’s voice boomed almost as loud as the machinegun.

  Shakily, the band followed the command without a word. Elroy watched in silence as they hefted their brass instruments. The drums began to play a punchy beat, prompting a grin from the large mafioso.

  Sonny began to snap to the beat, feeling the music. “Yeah… that’s it… Play me on.”

  Deciding he had had enough of the show, Elroy flicked the pistol from his holster and fired a round off at Sonny. Thinking it was done, he holstered his gun. To his astonishment, the mafioso had not been shot dead like the others. He looked Elroy down, holding the large Comet round in his hand. Grinning, Sonny read the surprise on the gunslinger’s face.

  “They warned me there’d be Six-Guns comin’.” Sonny tossed the bullet behind his back, “Figured I’d come on down and see how well I could fare.”

  Lively tones and rhythms filled the air between the two men as they stood facing one another in the carcass of the casino hall.

  “You obviously don’t know who I am. They call me Ironhand Sonny, on account of my invincible hands.”

  Sonny showed his fingers to Elroy. The skin appeared discolored, the muscles underneath bulging.

  “It’s Alchemy, you boys know about that. I got my hands real fine from years of alchemical treatment. The Posse ain’t the only ones know how to swing, Jack!”

  Smelling the smoke, Elroy detected the rare Kitzelberry on the aroma. A focusing substance. The mafioso knew his stuff, thought the sorcerer. This wouldn’t be so simple.

  Removing his coat, Ironhand Sonny shifted his neck to limber up. Elroy knew he would have to engage in hand-to-hand, possibly catch a point-blank shot to Sonny’s gut or chest. The easy option was gone; it would have to go down the hard way. Both men stepped towards one another to close the gap. Those drums continued to pound away as the duel began.

  ^^^

  Running along the hallway, Tornado Joe followed the Yellow presence on the Currents. He had a gut feeling that he had very little time to stop the Doctor and save the remaining child. The hunt had taken him here, this had to be the end. Though he had failed to do anything for his teacher’s son, he could at least recover something from the whole affair. His heart began to beat faster.

  An explosion of Yellow burst through the Currents in front of him. Everything around him suddenly became corrupted with a creeping, writhing influence. Joe stopped in place, the hairs on his neck standing up. The oppression of the magic at play nearly cowed him, he had to keep frame. This was it, he was out of time. The door at the end of the hall stood between him and the source of the Yellow incursion.

  Gathering himself, he gripped the doorknob and breathed in. As he opened it he took in the sight before him. Several bodies lay on the floor, all adult men and women. They appeared to have been placed there in a ritual manner. Their eyes were missing, gone from their sockets. The floor lay painted red with blood, a circle of candles standing in between the bodies.

  All of that was secondary to the black hole in the room. It appeared unnatural to Joe, a fissure in reality itself. It looked like an antic from a Walt Disney cartoon. Tornado Joe knew just how bad this was. The other side of the hole gave him a glimpse into pure, undiluted Yellow, the likes of which no mortal man should see. It was beyond humanity, beyond sorcery, beyond Earth.

  “Right on time, gunslinger.” A voice shattered the ice in Joe’s veins, “Just in time to bear witness to the Seething Deep.”

  Near the hole a man in bright white suit and hat stood, holding a young teenage girl. The little blonde haired lady held Joe’s stare, pure horror in her eyes. She silently pleaded with Joe for help. The man, however, looked to Joe with haughty satisfaction. He remembered that look; the priest within the Bastion had given him the same look as he lit himself on fire, knowing full well he had won.

  “What do you think is gonna happen now?” Joe’s voice went cold, “You’re just about out of time yourself.”

  The Doctor took a step over to the hole, “I know what’s going to happen. You will watch as I take our vessel to the Other Side. It’s over.”

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  Without a word, Joe drew his pistol. He found he couldn’t pull the trigger. A hot feeling overcame him, radiating from his necklace. His muscles clenched and seized, shaking with the strain. The edges of his vision blurred a bit as he felt the corrupting influence of the necklace take hold.

  “At every turn, you Gradymen prove hapless in the face of our King.” The Doctor snickered a bit, “You put on that amulet of your own will. You too played a part, unknowingly. You let us take hold of your mind for weeks!”

  Tornado Joe crumpled down to his knees as the magic of the Yellow amulet overtook his Resolve. He struggled to keep his mind in one piece. Helpless, he could only sit and watch the Doctor take that young woman over to the tear in reality on the other side of the room. Even in the Bastion, as he watched the priest burn himself, he still had him own faculties. Now, he felt he had been taken as well.

  With a low laugh, the Doctor pushed the young lady into the hole. “Failure is starting to suit you, Gradyman. You haven’t realized it yet. We are a great flame, climbing high. We will overtake you. There are no men of the pistol who can extinguish us.”

  As his mind churned with the Yellow influence, Joe remembered those words on the grinning lips of his teacher.

  ‘We snuff their fire, Joey boy.’

  “Don’t… be so sure of that…” Tornado Joe bitterly coughed out the words as the Doctor withdrew into the hole.

  As soon as Joe had been left alone, the hole disappeared. Though the incursion of magic from the other side had gone, the necklace around Joe’s neck still gripped him. He struggled against it, sitting alone on the bloody floor with his pistol in his hand.

  ^^^

  A poker table crumbled underneath Elroy as Ironhand Sonny tossed him into it. With a groan, the gunslinger tried to process what was happening to him. Those thick hands gripped him and picked him up, throwing him across the room yet again. Struggling to his feet, Elroy wiped blood from his lip.

  “What’s the matter, big guy?” Sonny snapped to the beat of the music as he walked over, “Not so tough if you ain’t shootin’ huh?”

  His mind raced for options. Elroy knew if he pulled his gun again that Sonny would just bat the bullet away. He had already tried to shoot him three times. It simply wasn’t working. The sorcerer knew he would have to come up with something quick, or this monster of a man would kill him.

  “We got a word for you shooty types, who ain’t shit without their guns. We call them Bumblebees. Soon as they lose their stingers, they’re dead.”

  A Critical Moment hit Elroy as he watched Sonny grip the baby grand piano and pick it up over his head. So caught in disbelief at the display of strength, Elroy froze in place.

  “Catch a tune!” Sonny barked as he tossed the piano at the amazed gunslinger.

  Elroy was thrown back as the instrument struck him and shattered against the ground. He lay bleeding in a pile of broken strings, bent hammers, and scattered keys. All the while, that band just kept playing their jazzy number.

  “Ok bumblebee…” Sonny picked up Elroy again, “Time for the final beat, yeah?”

  Pressing him to the edge of the stage, Sonny wrapped those iron hands around Elroy’s neck. The squeeze cut off his windpipe. His vision blurred as he felt his enemy strangling him to death. He could still here that damned music. There had to be some way out of this, he thought.

  The music. Of course.

  Elroy made the Rite of Release with his fingers and focused on the loudest trumpet in the band, the one with the clearest sound. He burned up a lot of his Resolve to employ Sonic Transmutation on the bright notes as they came his way. Picturing the shape of the waves, he tightened and sharpened them.

  His life began to slip as Sonny’s grip clenched his neck. Yet still he focused. The waves; tighten and sharpen, tighten and sharpen.

  Suddenly the notes transformed into a harsh whistle, battering the eardrums of everyone in the room. The very last note became a concussive blast, smashing Sonny’s ears. The large man reeled back and clasped his bleeding ears with both hands. A single moment of recoil was just enough for Elroy to pull his pistol and shoot Sonny between the eyes. In a panic, Elroy kept shooting until he heard the dull click of his hammer on a spent round.

  He gasped and wheezed, regaining himself, as he watched Sonny crash backwards into a broken table. The music had stopped, and Sonny fell silent in death. The dreadful stillness of the destroyed hall overtook Elroy as he found his breath. The absence of music had let the muted sounds of police sirens through yet again.

  ^^^

  On his knees in the back room of the casino, Tornado Joe fought the Yellow influence as hard as he could. He simply had no control over himself. Laughter rose in his mind, untold numbers of voices cackling and wailing. They were laughing at him, alone in this horrible place. Complete defeat, complete manipulation; the shame of it crawled up Joe’s back like some grisly creature. He looked at his pistol, those voices rising and shouting with glee.

  The barrel turned as his arms moved against his will. He watched in horror as the gun turned on him, his own hand guiding it to his chin. Chants and screams tore through him as he felt the cold Gellerite muzzle pressing underneath his chin. His thumb shakily pulled the hammer back, spinning a loaded chamber into battery.

  “Joe!” the voice of Chauncy Higgs cut through the maddening chorus.

  In a moment, all the horror and shame of defeat fell away. Chauncy’s Suggestion laid siege to the winding influence of the necklace. Both forces tugged at his mind, Yellow driving him to anguish as Chauncy drove him towards calm. That moment of struggle granted Joe his arms back. He threw away his pistol with his right hand and tore the necklace away with his left.

  Immediately the influence of the Yellow King left him. He fell back onto the floor, his mind now calm, and breathed deeply. Feeling as if he had shrugged a great weight off, Joe stared up at the ceiling. All those feelings which had built up over the past weeks slid away. His anxiety, his bitterness, it all melted. Things had become clear.

  “You good, Joe?” Chauncy slid down to his side quickly, “Anything broken?”

  Joe placed a hand on Chauncy’s arm. “You have no idea… You are a lifesaver.”

  “What happened? Where’s the girl?”

  Tornado Joe lay in silence for a long moment, trying to process things.

  “She’s… She’s gone, man…”

  Sitting up, Joe took a look at the spot in the room where the hole had been. “That Doctor won, took her somewhere out of here, like the cultist said in Chicago.”

  Chauncy pursed his lips, “I see. We were too late.”

  “Yeah, too late…” Joe looked over to his friend, “I’m sorry, Chaunce. I let that thing get to me, I think. I just… I wanted to win.”

  “I know…” He nodded, “I know.”

  “Let’s call it for now.” Joe looked to the necklace on the ground nearby.

  It lay among the eyeless dead, now covered in blood.

  “Let’s call it quits.”