Death Draws Five

Chapter ten

“Do me a favor, Digger?” Fortunato asked. He and Digger had left Barnett’s headquarters, Fortunato excusing himself with the explanation that he had to get ready for his son’s imminent arrival. But something else was also on his mind.

The reporter looked up from his laptop where he’d been plinking out the latest chapter in the story of Fortunato’s return, using only approximately three fingers on each hand, but still making pretty good time. He was sitting at the desk in their suite in The Angels’ Bower. Fortunato was reclining on one of the semi-comfortable sofas.

“Sure.”

“Keep an eye on me. If it looks like my heart has stopped beating, call for help.”

Digger frowned. “Okay.”

Fortunato went slack as he used almost the last bit of energy stored in his body to go astral. He hovered above his unconscious form for a moment as Downs went quickly to the sofa. The reporter grabbed Fortunato’s wrist, frowning as he felt for a pulse. He released it after a moment, seemingly satisfied but still looking a little shaken, and moved the ace into a more comfortable position on the sofa, with his legs straight out, his head on a pillow, and his hands placed loosely in his lap. Though the result looked like a corpse waiting for a coffin, Fortunato was touched by Downs unexpected solicitousness, and he smiled as he flew through the closed window and out above the Peaceable Kingdom.

Fortunato had never been to a theme park before, so he had no idea how the Kingdom compared to, say, Disneyland. He suspected that they had the same kind of layout. He went a little higher so that the land below him looked like a Monopoly board, the various properties organized to allow for a smooth flow of people from one part of the park to another.

He’d glanced through the Kingdom’s brochures to familiarize himself with the lay of the land, so at least he knew what he was looking at. In front, to his right, was New Jerusalem, Barnett’s somewhat sanitary reproduction of a portion of that ancient city, containing all the locales relevant to Christ’s life and death—the Via Dolorossa, the Plain of Golgotha, even the rock-hewn Tomb of the Sepulcher—but condensed for the tourist’s convenience. There were also plenty of souvenir shops where T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and necklaces of rough-forged nails like those that pinned Christ to the cross could be purchased.

To his left was Rome of the Martyrs, including a scaled-down version of the Coliseum where various amusements were held, though no Christians were thrown to lions. All entertainments, the brochures said, were in good taste with no blood spilt, but one could still get an idea of the decadent and debauched practices of the pagan Romans. The underground Catacombs, which were obviously not visible from Fortunato’s viewpoint, came complete with grisly scenarios depicting the lives and deaths of the Martyrs, and were also quite popular.

Behind him was Medieval Land and the Vault of Heaven, all with attendant stores, restaurants, amenities, shops, and rides, but something drew Fortunato forward, to the Coliseum-dominated Rome of the Martyrs, as if what he needed could be found there.

He flew between the guardian statues of the Apostles, three each guarding a quadrant of the Kingdom. Something was calling him. It wasn’t the sounds made by the five thousand people attending the revival or seminar or whatever was taking place in the scaled-down Coliseum. It was the promise of energy that saturated the air. As he hovered over the center of the open-roofed structure, he was astonished to see that everyone, all five thousand or so attendees, were women. They ranged from the young to the old. They were all fairly well if not fairly tastefully dressed. They were virtually all white, but Fortunato could remember few Asian faces among the tourists, and even fewer Black. The fact that they were all women seemed somehow appropriate, as if he’d come full circle. Once he’d derived all his power from women. Now perhaps he would again.

His astral form hovered in the air above the Coliseum. A wooden platform below him bore a podium draped with banners proclaiming MAGOG—Mothers Against Gods or Goddesses—in intricate letters. A woman stood behind the podium, leading them all in song. She was flanked on either side by delegates in folding chairs. He didn’t know what the song was, but by its lugubrious tones and solemn, dirge-like beat, he assumed that it was a hymn. After the song ended, the woman standing behind the podium spoke, but Fortunato didn’t listen to her. He had other concerns.

He assumed the lotus position above the platform as currents of energy roiled below him like a tsunami starting to build in some far corner of the Pacific. Passion rose up among the five thousand. Their thoughts were chaotic, their need great. They wanted so badly to belong to something all important and good. They wanted so awfully to give of themselves to something greater, so he let them.

He accepted what they offered.

Energy flowed up to him like manna in reverse. It came in through the pores of his astral body, soaked into his insubstantial capillaries, was gathered into his veins and sucked into his invisible heart. Like a great explosion of terrifying light it burst into his brain and Fortunato was glad that his actual physical brain was safe on the couch in The Angels’ Bower, because his material organs could not have withstood the energy that pulsed like miniature bombs to every beat of his insubstantial heart.

It was too much. He couldn’t contain it all. He knew he had to give some back, and besides, it was the polite thing to do.

He looked at the woman behind the podium. She gripped the sides of the pulpit with an almost stricken look on her face, her teeth clenched, her hair, once so sensibly coifed, now disheveled in wild disarray, her very posture pleading and yet giving at the same time. Fortunato had seen that pose many times in the past. It required very little to push her over the edge, so he did.

A low, unbelieving moan growled out of her throat. She shook as if in an invisible wind, her eyes screwed tightly shut, her mouth slack and panting.

She wasn’t the only one in that condition. They all were. Some screamed, some laughed, some cried. Some fell out of their chairs, some leaped out of their seats. For some the sensation was nothing they’d ever felt before in their lives, for some it was as familiar as Saturday night. Some called on Jesus, some their husbands, some a boy nearly forgotten over the years. Some a girl. Some wanted a cigarette, but this was a non-smoking facility.

Fortunato shared it all while siphoning the maelstrom of energy that they’d released. The crush of emotion would have killed many men, but his ace-enhanced mind and his Zen training pulled him through, though it was the wildest experience he’d ever had in the course of a wild life. He basked in a glow of warm satisfaction for a moment, but suddenly he burned with his own need to go, to do, to find again his son.

His eyes opened and focused on Digger Downs, who was standing over his body sprawled on the couch, staring down at him with concern.

“It’s all right,” he told the reporter. “I’m back.”

“I guess you are,” Downs said. “Where the Hell have you been?”

Fortunato shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not the kind who kisses and tells.”

The Short Cut

“What is this place?” John Fortune asked. He was flushed with excitement. Sitting next to him, Ray could feel the heat flowing off of him in waves.

“The Short Cut, lad,” Bruckner said expansively, as if that explained everything.

It was good enough for Ray. He looked out the windshield. The green sun was moving slowly but perceptibly across the sky. Soon it would set, though “soon” in this place seemed a concept hard to define. The road was flat, straight, and well-maintained, though the plants crowding its verge were like nothing Ray had ever seen. They were like trees, but their branches had no leaves. The trunks were bulbous, fleshy things, in shades of green, violet, and vermilion, shot through with scarlet veins which circulated a fluid which Ray was uncomfortably sure resembled blood. He watched them suspiciously as they whizzed by in Bruckner’s lorry, something bothering him. He realized that their branches were moving, though not in a wind. They writhed in several different directions at once, as if at their own volition.

He was about to point this out to Angel when something, suddenly and out of nowhere, hit their windshield with a horrific splat, squashed against it and spattered like a water balloon tossed out of ten story building. A wash of purplish goo instantly covered the windshield. Bruckner clenched his teeth on his cigar as he turned on the windshield wipers.

“This could be a problem,” he said, downshifting as the wipers and the windshield glass itself started to smoke.

“This ever happen before?” Ray asked.

“Rarely,” Bruckner said, “sometimes the locals raise a bit of a tussle.”

“This place has locals?” Angel asked.

Bruckner grinned without humor. “Oh, yes. Best if we stay clear of them, but sometimes we don’t have much of a choice. They used to be real quiet. Never bothered me. But in recent years... something’s stirred them up. It’s like, sometimes, they want my truck.” The lorry braked to a halt, and he looked over at Ray, Angel, and John Fortune. “We’d better get that windshield off before the acid eats all the way through. But not to worry. I carry spares.”

“And the locals?” Ray asked.

“Figger you and the lady can handle them, me lad. That’s why you’re here, after all. The boy can help me replace the windshield. You two guard our flanks, front and back.”

“Guard them from what?” Angel asked.

Bruckner grinned again. “Anything that looks strange.”

Ray and Angel exchanged glances. Ray nodded, and she put her hand on the door handle.

“Oh, one more thing,” Bruckner said.

“What?” Ray asked, starting to get annoyed.

“Funny thing, but guns don’t work in this place.”

Ray shrugged.

Angel said, “I’m covered.” She paused for a moment, frowning. “At least, I hope so.”

“I carry some stuff in the back you can use.”

Ray nodded. “All right. I’ll go to the back, with you. Angel, watch the front.”

“All right,” she said.

“All right,” John Fortune said.

They all looked at Bruckner.

“All right,” the Brit said. “Let’s do it.”

The air, like everything else in this place, was strange. It felt odd on Ray’s tongue. It had a bite to it, like a summer night after a lightning storm. The quality of light was also odd, probably because of the different colored sun, now hanging on the horizon.

Bruckner rolled up the trailer’s rear door, and for all his size, lightly leaped up into it. A weapon rack was bolted on one side of the wall. Swords, spears, bow and arrow.

Too bad Yeoman isn’t with us, Ray thought.

“What do you fancy?” Bruckner asked.

Ray decided to keep it simple.

“Those.” He nodded at the brace of morningstars.

“Good choice,” Bruckner said. “But watch out for splatters of what passes for blood among these boyos. Sometimes it can be corrosive.”

Ray nodded, and Bruckner tossed him the weapons. Their handles were black iron, as long as his forearm. Their heads were the size of Texas grapefruit, spiked. The chains attaching handle to head were about two feet long. Ray swung them once or twice to get their feel. He nodded to himself, and ran through an extemporaneous kata as John Fortune watched with his mouth open. Like all weapons, they felt like he’d been born with them in his hands.

“Right, me lad,” Bruckner said, clapping John Fortune on the shoulder. “Ever change a windshield before?”

“No,” the boy said.

“Nothing to it,” the Brit said cheerfully. “Give me a hand with these suction cups.”

Ray turned his back to the truck, scanning the land. It was flat and relatively featureless. If there’d be trouble, it would come from the weird forest a dozen yards from their flank.

Bruckner and John Fortune got the spare windshield from the case where the trucker kept it among a plethora of other spare parts, and part of Ray listened as they went to the front. Bruckner greeted Angel, who answered in a steady voice, and then issued a stream of commands as he and the boy attacked the ruined windshield.

Thoughts of Angel slipped languorously through Ray’s mind, though most of it was focused on the odd-moving trees, if that’s what they were, bunched by the side of the road, if that’s what it was.

Suddenly it became darker, almost without a sense of transition. Ray looked back to the horizon, and saw that the green sun had gone under. The light took on a quality that Ray had once seen while snorkeling in the Bahamas at a depth of thirty feet. It seemed denser, darker, and somehow a lot less friendly. A full moon rose rapidly on the other side of the horizon, splotched and diseased looking, shining with a greenish, almost phosphorescent light the color of gangrenous flesh.

As if the rising of the leprous moon was a signal, things started coming out of the oddly moving trees.

They were many-legged, spider-like creatures whose bulbous bodies were held high off the ground by too many skeletal legs. Big spiders were one thing, Ray thought, but these had heads and features that were disturbingly human. Except for their protruding fangs which dripped ichor which steamed when it spattered on the ground. They scuttled like crabs, moving fast. Their bodies, white and bulging and hairless, were the size of large dogs.

“Angel,” Ray called out. “You’d better get over here. Quick.”

There were twenty or so in the pack, and they didn’t seem to be afraid of Ray.

Ray whirled at a sudden sound at his side, but it was only Angel. She looked as if she were about to make a remark, then saw the spider-things. “My God!” she said.

“Don’t blaspheme,” Ray reprimanded.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t blaspheming. I was praying.”

“Pray harder,” Ray said, “because here they come.”

The arachnids were on them, tittering like high school girls as their fangs clacked together, dripping steaming ichor.

“Save my soul from evil, Lord,” Angel said, “and heal this warrior’s heart.”

Ray caught a burst of light in his peripheral vision, and the arachnids reared back, screaming, as Angel plunged into their midst, her flaming sword held high. She screamed. Ray couldn’t tell if it was from anger, fear, or revulsion, as she swung her sword and sheared through the front set of legs of one of the things. It collapsed, grimacing ferociously. Angel lunged. Her sword speared the thing’s body, white and hairless like a dead fish, and it burst like a balloon, spattering her with droplets of ichor that steamed as it ate into her fighting suit.

“Watch out for their blood!” she shouted in warning, pirouetting to cut the legs out from under two others that were trying to circle them.

Ray realized that they were in a bad spot. He danced into the midst of their attackers, swinging right and left with the morningstars. One missed, the other crunched an all-too human-looking face. The spiders’ titters changed to disturbing high-pitched screams, but they still came.

Ray turned and twisted like a dervish. He saw Angel shouting wordlessly as she held off half a dozen of the things with long sweeps of her sword. Thankfully, the spiders seemed more afraid of her, or perhaps it was the light emitted by her weapon, than they were of him. So many gathered about him that he had to shift constantly to avoid their lunging, clacking jaws. Luckily they couldn’t spit venom, but it was only a matter of time before they’d both be splattered with enough of the poison to do some serious damage.

The pack was all around them as Ray caught something out of the corner of his eye—a human figure, talk and bulky, dressed in a long leather duster that swept to the ground, standing and watching.

Perhaps, Ray thought, directing.

Ray moved in a seemingly random pattern as he attacked the hunters, taking off a leg here, battering a head there, pulping a squishy abdomen, clenching his teeth as venom spattered, clinging to and eating away his fighting suit. It soon looked as if gigantic destructive moths had been at it.

Half a dozen of the things were broken around Ray, screaming like girls with broken arms, but still dragging themselves after the pack, their fangs clattering angrily. He hadn’t spotted Angel in long moments, but he could still hear her fighting at his back as his seemingly irregular movements took him in a curving path to the observer watching the hunting pack, maybe ten feet away. One of the spider-things stood at his back, between them.

Another hunter lunged at him from the front. Ray pulped its head like a bug on the bathroom floor, whirled, and dove to the ground. He slid between the legs of the arachnid behind him, who stood there with a look of almost human astonishment on its caricatured features. He raked the bottom of its gut as he went by, twisting desperately to avoid the deluge of steaming fluid that burst from it like a ruptured bladder, and grunted aloud when some splashed on the back of his hand. He turned a complete somersault and came to his feet face to face with the observer, morningstars raised high.

And he froze.

The thing had no face. Its head was a featureless white cone that tapered to a wet red tentacle that quivered like an eager tongue.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Something clung to its neck, its mouth fastened onto its dead white flesh, its large eyes regarding Ray with unblinking hatred.

“Ti Malice!” Ray blurted aloud.

Not many knew about the obscene Haitian ace who had wreaked unaccountable havoc before vanishing from human ken over a decade and a half ago, but Ray was a compulsive reader of secret government files and there wasn’t much he didn’t know about obscure aces. Especially the bad ones.

The Haitian’s tiny arms encircled the thing’s thick white neck, his slug-like body hung down its back. Malice rose up, his mouth coming free from his mount’s neck with an audible slurping sound. Malice’s mouth was like that of a lamprey: round, ringed with tiny, sharp teeth, and a tube-like tongue that sucked the blood from his host. He hissed at Ray, spitting dark, purplish blood. The thing he rode raised its featureless face to the moon and somehow howled, sending shivers down Ray’s back.

It moved. But Ray moved faster.

He blocked the thing’s lunge with one of the morningstars and swung the other like it was a baseball bat and Ti Malice’s head was the ball.

He hit a home run. Malice’s head splattered at the impact. The feeble grip of his arms around the creature’s neck broke, and Malice shot backward and hit the ground twenty feet away, bounced and rolled, leaving a smeared trail on the thick, gray grass which twitched agitatedly above the tiny body, and finally closed over it like hungry snakes.

The creature slumped to the ground, shuddering all over. Ray stood over it, undecided. It lifted an arm, as if in supplication, and behind him Ray sensed all movement stop. He held his blow as the thing stood. Not quite human-shaped in its long trench coat, it regarded Ray with its featureless face. Ray forced himself to look back. Forced his gorge to stay down. After a moment, without making sound or gesture, it walked backwards among the trees.

What was left of the hunting pack followed it, taking a wide berth around Ray as it did so. As they vanished among the eerily-moving trees, Ray let out a long breath he didn’t realize that he’d been holding. He turned to look at the battlefield, the ground splashed with ichor and littered with smashed and slashed spider bodies and parts.

“Angel!” he called, and realized that she had slumped to her knees, her head down, unmoving.

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

Jerry started to feel a little uncomfortable under Barnett’s smiling scrutiny. Ray departed to go on this mysterious mission to pick up the kid and Fortunato excused himself as well, leaving only Jerry and Barnett alone in his office. Jerry cleared his throat and spoke, just to break the increasing sense of tension the inscrutable Barnett had been projecting.

“Nice office,” he said. “It looks familiar.”

Barnett nodded. “It’s a copy of the Oval Office in the White House. I felt very comfortable there.”

“Uh-huh,” Jerry said.

There was another long minute of silence until Barnett seemed to feel that he’d softened Jerry up sufficiently, and spoke again.

“I just like to get to know my friends, Mr. Creighton,” Leo Barnett said, “so I can tell them more easily from my enemies. It is Mr. Creighton, isn’t it?”

Jerry’s guilt for ragging on Billy Ray for lying to him returned, redoubled.

“Well,” Jerry said after a moment, “let’s say that’s my name for the purposes of this discussion.”

Barnett nodded after another a long moment of silence stretched between them. “I see that in your own way you’re a careful man. I can understand that. Even admire it. I’m a careful man as well, and I like to know whom I’m dealing with. I had you checked out by some of my connections, and you don’t add up. Your past is shadowy. The history that does exist is rather unusual. By the way—I hope you don’t mind my excluding your man Sascha from this little conversation. Though I’m willing to trust you to a point, I don’t like the idea of exposing myself to a telepath, even a low-grade one, for any length of time.”

“That’s all right,” Jerry said amiably, even though he detested Barnett’s pompous tones. “Why are you leaving Mushroom Daddy out of the discussion?”

Barnett raised his eyebrows. “Because he’s a complete flake? Because besides being an unknown goofball, he’s also apparently a drug dealer? He positively reeks of the marijuana smell.”

“How do you know what marijuana smells like?” Jerry asked him.

Barnett smiled, not prettily. “Enough. We have to lay our cards on the table. I’m afraid that although we’ve gathered John Fortune to our bosom, he’s not entirely safe. The Allumbrados will still come after him, and Cardinal Contarini—who is the head of that detestable organization—has aces working for him. The boy will be in danger when, not if, they discover we’ve got him here at the Peaceable Kingdom. Since it’s your job to protect him, and it is also totally in my interests that he remain safe, I suggest we join forces until we can break the back of the Allumbrados and they no longer pose a threat to the boy’s safety.”

Jerry was loaded with questions. “That’s all well and good,” he said. “I agree in principle, but somebody’s gotta explain some things to my satisfaction.”

“All right,” Barnett said.

“All right,” Jerry repeated. It occurred to him that he had only Nighthawk’s word on the Allumbrados. It would be nice to have another, although clearly not necessarily unbiased, viewpoint. “What exactly is your interest in John Fortune, anyway? And who in the Hell are the Allumbrados and what do they want with the boy?”

“They are tools of Satan and they want him dead,” Barnett said succinctly, “while we want him to stay very much alive.”

“But why, for Christ’s sake?”

“Because,” Barnett explained impatiently, as if this were the dozenth time he had to go over it, “he is Christ.”

“Christ?” Jerry asked, nonplussed. “You mean, like Jesus Christ?”

Barnett sighed. “Yes, of course. Are you a believer, Mr. Creighton?”

“A believer?” Jerry asked. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“There is no guessing, Mr. Creighton, when it comes to matters of faith. You have either accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, or you haven’t.”

“Well,” Jerry said. “I guess I haven’t.”

“Then I’m not going to bother to explain things that you can’t comprehend. No offence, Mr. Creighton.”

Jerry wasn’t feeling particularly gracious, but he didn’t want to argue theology with the ex-President. He grunted.

“I’ve written a tract that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Leo Barnett said, “that John Fortune is Jesus Christ, Our Savior, and that his coming will usher in the Millennium and the Kingdom of God on Earth. If we can keep the Allumbrados from getting their way.”

“Wait a minute,” Jerry said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with the boy over the years. He’s a nice kid and he might make a decent ace when he grows up, but he’s never given any indication that he’s divine.”

Barnett shrugged. “There are any number of reasons why you believe that. Perhaps you’re not particularly perceptive, Mr. Creighton. Or perhaps He’s not ready to reveal Himself as yet, as part of His Divine Plan. Perhaps He’s testing you, and us all. Or perhaps, just perhaps He Himself is not yet aware of His Divine Nature.”

Barnett flipped a hand with each reason. The longer that he knew him, the more glad Jerry was that he’d never voted for the bastard.

But that was then, this was now. Barnett did control some powerful—Would minions be the word?—yes, minions, who would be helpful in protecting the boy, especially if the crazies were still after him. “All right,” Jerry said, although reluctantly. “I guess Fortunato seems to think you’re okay. I can trust his judgement. For now, I agree that we should combine forces.”

“I applaud your wise decision,” Barnett said. “Are there any more aces in your organization?”

“Well, there’s Peter Pann and Topper and maybe Ezili. And Jay Ackroyd, of course.” Jerry thought about it for a moment. “Other than Jay, I don’t know if any of them would be particularly useful in a fight with these Allumbrados if they have goons like Butcher Dagon working for them.”

“Can you get Ackroyd here?”

Jerry shook his head. “He’s got a badly broken ankle. He’d be more of a liability than an asset, as much as he’d like to be here for the denouement.”

He was happy to see that he stumped Barnett with that last word.

“All right,” Barnett finally said, after puzzling over it for a moment. “Just as well, then. Let’s all get together again soon. I’ll let you know when John Fortune arrives.”

“Branson will certainly be safer if we take him someplace else,” Jerry said.

Barnett made a denigrating gesture. “Who cares about Branson? It’s John Fortune’s future that worries me.”

Jerry frowned. “There’s a lot of innocent people here. An ace battle of any size could cause a lot of casualties—”

“Not my concern,” Barnett interrupted. “We must do whatever will be best for John Fortune.”

Jerry stood. He was really glad that he’d never voted for this asshole. “All right,” he said tonelessly. He nodded and left the office, Barnett watching him with eyes as calculating as a cruising shark’s.

“How’d it go?” Sascha asked, standing as Jerry walked out of Barnett’s sanctum.

“Yeah, man, what’s up?” Mushroom Daddy asked.

“Remind me never to stand between Barnett and something that he wants, no matter how nutty it is,” Jerry said.

“He’s that bad?” Sascha asked.

“He’s worse,” Jerry said. “Much, much worse.”

The Short Cut

The Angel looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. They were so soft that first she thought it was one of the spiders returning for the kill, but it was only Billy Ray. He dropped down to the ground before her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, a concerned expression on his face.

“Burning—” she said, straightening up on her knees. She could see Ray’s concern turned to horror as he realized that the top of her jumpsuit had been slashed open by the snick of a spider’s fang, and then stained with the beast’s ichor after she’d gutted it.

“Shit,” Ray said. “Hang on.”

She watched him with a strange detachment. It was partly the pain from the acidic fluid soaking the front of her clothes, partly, she supposed, the effect of the venomous vapor as it stunned its victim.

Ray grabbed her jumpsuit at the waist and ripped it at the seam. It flew apart at the force of Ray’s strength. He yanked her top away before she knew what he was doing. Underneath the jumpsuit, the front of her sports bra had been snipped in two by the creature’s fangs. One breast was still covered by the fabric of the cup, the other had slipped free.

She felt his hands on her stomach and rib cage. Oddly, it didn’t bother her. It took her a moment to realize that he was using a rag torn from his own fighting suit to carefully blot away the ichor that eaten through her jumpsuit. Fortunately, it had taken most of the venom’s corrosive strength to work through the leather, though her skin was burned in several spots as if touched by a lighted match. Her mind began to clear as Ray ministered to her, and she realized for the first time that she was half-naked before him.

“Think we got most of it,” Ray said, his head bowed before her, concentrating on his task. “This is some strong shit—Jesus Christ!”

The realization that Ray glimpsed her breast flashed through the Angel’s mind, but somehow it didn’t bother her as much as she thought it might. But when she looked at him she saw that he was still concentrating on her stomach, and self-revulsion grabbed her as she realized that he’d seen the scar.

“What happened here?” Ray asked, looking up into her eyes for the first time.

She was caught by his gaze. She couldn’t look away. She knew the scar was hideous. It started at the top of the hidden patch of thick dark hair that grew at the juncture of her thighs and crawled like a pink meandering snake for eight inches up and across her flat, white abdomen.

“My mother did it,” the Angel heard herself saying. Her voice came as if from a great distance.

“Your mother?” Ray asked incredulously.

She nodded. “I came to her the first time I bled. I had no idea what was happening to me. I thought I was sick. That I was going to die. She told me to stop crying. To be calm. That it was the curse that came to all women, but she would save me from it. From that curse and all the curses that came from it. She took me into the kitchen and took a knife out of the drawer and tried to cut out my uterus.”

“Good God,” Ray said.

The Angel was so lost in memory that she didn’t even reprimand him. “I would have died on the kitchen floor if my ace hadn’t turned right then. Somehow I survived the wound, though I’ll never have children. Which is a blessing. They’ll never have to worry about the curse of the wild card.”

Ray grabbed her upper arms so hard his fingers bite into muscle and flesh. “Listen,” he said in an insistent voice, “the wild card virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people. It’s destroyed a lot of lives. Maybe millions. It is a curse, but so’s the goddamned flu. You lived through it. You lived and became something, I don’t know, bigger than human. Stronger. Wilder. More vital and more goddamned beautiful than any frigging angel. For you the wild card wasn’t a curse. It was a damned blessing. Millions of women would kill to be you. Don’t waste your life worrying about some crazy fears your whacked mother had. She was her. You’re you. You’re one in ten million, babe. Never forget it.”

A dam broke in the Angel’s mind. “Do you really think so, Billy?”

“Of course I do, and jeez, don’t cry—”

She threw herself upon him, bearing him down on the ground, her arms going around him and her lips seeking his. They hit his chin, then slipped up and covered his mouth just as he was saying, “Hey!” and she silenced him with her tongue. She saw a startled look in his eyes and then they caught fire and one hand was tangled in her hair and the other was seeking her breast that was swinging free. She shifted her hips giving him more room and his hand found and cupped it, his thumb running over her suddenly hard nipple and she sucked on his tongue in a sudden stab of delight.

She had never felt anything like this. Never. The ecstasy of prayer. Of fasting. Of privation. They all paled beside the sensations that were running like fire on her nerves. Her pelvis pushed against him and she could feel the sudden hardness between his legs even through the fabric of their clothes. She wanted him. She wanted him more than she wanted her God, more than she wanted Heaven.

“Angel,” he panted in her mouth.

“Angel,” John Fortune said, coming around to the back of the truck, “we’re finished. Bruckner says—”

She looked back wildly over her shoulder as John Fortune stared at her, stricken. “Angel?”

“John—”

He turned and ran back to the front of the truck without a word.

Stricken, she turned to look at Ray. “He has a crush on me.”

It sounded so lame as she said it, but Ray only shrugged. “Not a surprise,” Ray closed his eyes for a moment then stood and helped her up. “We’ll talk to him later. Explain things. In the meantime, it’s probably a good thing he interrupted us.” Ray looked around. “This is not exactly the place to lose our heads. We might have really lost them.”

“Is it just an interruption?” the Angel asked, half-afraid of his answer, whatever it would be.

“It better be,” Ray growled.

Bruckner’s voice came from the front seat of the lorry. “Get a move on, will you? It’s getting late. I don’t like to be on the road when the moon’s up.”

The Angel took a step away. Ray caught her hand.

“Here,” he said gruffly. “Can’t have you running around like that.” He stripped off the top of his fighting suit. His body was wired with cabled muscle. The Angel wanted to feel it pressed tightly against her, to run her hands over it all. He smelled of the sweat of battle. He put his shirt around her shoulders, brushing the remaining bra cup off her other breast. He palmed it for a moment and she shivered as the nipple stiffened. She shrugged into the shirt and buttoned it, almost groaning at the unexpected pleasure of the material kissing the tips of her naked breasts.

He kissed her lightly on the lips, unexpectedly gentle. “Go on up to the truck,” Ray said. “I better recover Bruckner’s morningstars.”

She nodded, and ran up to the front of the truck. Bruckner gunned the engine, grinning.

“Climb up, lass. Let’s hit the road.”

John Fortune held the cab door open. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes.

“John,” she said softly, “we’ll talk later.”

He said nothing. She brushed by him, feeling the heat of him.

“You too, lad, let’s get rolling.”

John Fortune swung up to the seat next to her. Bruckner engaged the gears and the truck started to roll.

“Hey!” Ray shouted from the rear. “Don’t forget me.”

The Angel could see him in the rear view mirror. He smiled, bent down to pick up the morningstars, straightened, and started to run toward the truck. He looks like an animal, she thought. A wild, untamed animal. The sudden thought worried her, but she knew that she had gone so far that she couldn’t go back. Not this time.

The truck was rolling, but not fast. Ray caught up quickly, running easily. He had both morningstars in one hand and held out the other for John Fortune to give him a boost up through the open door. The boy reached out, their hands touched and Ray started to pull himself up into the seat. Suddenly, terribly, he screamed.

The stench of burned flesh speared the air.

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

Barnett had conceded that Fortunato should have a chance to greet his son in relative privacy, so Fortunato was waiting alone for the truck when it rumbled to a halt by the Bower’s rear service entrance. It disgorged three passengers from the front seat, and took off again with a farewell blast of its air horn. The driver seemed to be in a hurry.

Fortunato recognized all three. Billy Ray, of course. The woman who called herself the Midnight Angel. And his son. His eagerness at finally seeing the boy for the first time face to face was tempered by the realization that something had gone terribly wrong during the last moment of the rescue. He couldn’t bear, for the moment, to delve into their minds

“He didn’t mean it,” the Angel said.

Ray’s teeth were clenched against the pain shooting through his hand. He gripped it the wrist with his other hand.

“I’m sorry,” John Fortune said worriedly. “I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t control it for a moment—”

“It’s okay,” Ray said in a strained voice. “I’ll be all right in a little bit.”

He held the fingers of his hand apart from each other as they curled in pain. They were burned so badly that their skin was black and flaky. Fortunato could smell the stink of seared flesh.

“Ray,” he said, “are you all right?”

“Yeah, fine,” Ray said shortly. “I should go get some salve for this burn.”

“What happened?” Fortunato asked.

“An accident,” Ray said. “I’ll be all right.”

Ray was sincere in his attempt to ease the boy’s obviously troubled mind, but Fortunato could detect uncertainty in his voice and manner. Not for his own ultimate recovery, but at what really lay behind his injury. Fortunato only nodded.

“Thank you for bringing my son back safe,” he said. He turned to the Angel, and nodded at her as well.

“My pleasure,” Ray said.

“Take care of your hand,” Fortunato told them. “We’ll talk more later.”

“I’ll go with Billy,” the Angel said, glancing back at John Fortune, who was holding back with a worried expression on his face. “We’ll talk soon, John,” she said, but the boy only nodded.

As they went by him, Fortunato could sense something was growing between the two of them, and he refrained from looking any deeper into their minds. He felt only gratitude for what they’d done for him. He felt as if he would be in their debt forever.

He looked at the boy, and John Fortune looked uncertainly at him. He wondered what he should say. “Hello,” Fortunato finally said.

“Hello,” his son replied.

Fortunato could see himself in the boy’s features, in the golden tan color of his skin. But Peregrine was there, too, and it made him sorry for what he had missed over the years. Of what could have been his. But those years were over and done with. There were more to come, and those were the years which concerned him.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

His son nodded. “Mom showed me pictures. She said you were the most powerful ace ever, but you gave it up.”

“Did she say why?” Fortunato asked.

Fortune looked thoughtful, as if Fortunato’s question had put aside the fear and doubt that had been foremost in his mind. At least for a moment, anyway. “She said that you couldn’t pay the price of being an ace anymore. That the world weighed heavy on you, and you had to leave it behind.”

“Your mother,” Fortunato said, “is perceptive. And most kind.”

It struck Fortunato for the first time exactly why Peregrine had been so protective, perhaps overly so. She wasn’t afraid so much of crazies out to kidnap him for gain or harm him for thrills. She was afraid of his very nature, afraid that the dynamite he carried in his genes might explode at any second.

Looking at him you saw a handsome, easy-going boy on the verge of manhood. But if you knew his background, if you lived with it every second of every minute of every hour of your life, you knew that some day he was going to explode and most likely die. His genes were infected with the wild card. There was no doubt about it. Both his parents had it, so it was sure that he did. It awaited only expression, in many cases caused by some surprise or shock that would turn his card; then it would kill him.

But he had beaten that, hadn’t he? His son had a chance for glory. He’d grabbed the one in a hundred chance to be an ace. But even so, turning an ace could be almost as great a curse as turning a joker, or drawing the black queen. The names of ace victims were legion, from the earliest days of the wild card on. Brain Trust. Black Eagle. Kid Dinosaur. The Howler. Hiram Worchester. Desperado. The list went on and on. Fortunato couldn’t remember all the aces who’d suffered because society eventually turned on them.

That was why Peregrine had protected their son so fiercely. Fortunato saw it now. Seeing his son in the flesh for the first time, he knew why she did it. And he knew that, ultimately, she was doomed to fail.

“I’d like to call Mom,” John Fortune said. “Tell her that I’m safe.”

“That’s a good idea,” Fortunato said. “Do you want anything else?”

Fortunato could tell that he held back something. Something he was afraid to or was unwilling to discuss with this stranger that was his father. Finally, he said, “I’m awfully hungry.”

“Let’s get you some food, then. I have a suite in the hotel. We can order room service. Talk and get to know each other a little.”

“Cool.” John Fortune smiled.

Ah, Fortunato thought, the resilience of the young.

“Mom told me about you,” John Fortune said, “as soon as I was able to understand why I had a different name from my Dad. But now that you’re here and all, what should I call you?”

“Call me Fortunato, if you want. And I’ll call you John.”

“Sweet,” John Fortune said. “Fortunato.” He tried it out, and smiled. He seemed to like the sound of it.

Fortunato put out his hand. John Fortune reached to take it, then hesitated. It was clear that he was afraid, but not for himself. He was afraid that his touch would burn Fortunato, like it had burned Ray.

Fortunato took his son’s hand it. He was prepared. His relaxed, smiling face didn’t change expression. But he was glad that he’d just taken on a load of energy. He built a wall, a buffer, between his flesh and his son’s. Otherwise, caught in the trap of the boy’s hand, his own hand would have cooked, would have burned worse than Ray’s. He released John Fortune’s hand, and together they turned and went through the hotel’s service entrance.

“Are you going to stay in America for awhile?” John Fortune asked. He seemed to be totally unaware of the heat his body was generating. His skin looked normal, except of course for the for the glowing halo. It wasn’t flushed or even sweating.

“Yes,” Fortunato said, the fear again biting his insides like a great viper. “Yes, I am.”

He suddenly realized that his son might not have drawn an ace,

after all.

Peaceable Kingdom: The Manger

Usher went to the suite’s door, peeked through the peephole, and turned back to Nighthawk.

“The gang’s all here,” he said, and opened the door. Contarini came in. His faultless suit had recently been faulted. He had grass stains on his knees. His white shoes were scuffed with dark Mississippi dirt. There was a bad tear in his jacket’s breast, and one sleeve had been partially torn free of its shoulder. His silk shirt was wrinkled, soiled, and sweat stained. He didn’t look happy. “It didn’t go well?” Nighthawk asked.

Contarini shook his head wordlessly, and collapsed into the nearest chair. He scowled at the vinyl upholstery. “They have the luck of the Devil riding with them,” the Cardinal said.

Usher and Nighthawk exchanged glances. “Naturally,” Nighthawk said. “What happened?”

Magda fluttered helplessly about the Cardinal’s as if she couldn’t decide whether to shine his shoes, sew his clothes, or wash and iron his shirt, as he told him in minute and surprisingly profane detail what had happened, pausing to shoo Magda away when she’d finally annoyed him too much.

Nighthawk sighed. “I guess they’ve beaten us now, for the moment. We’ll continue to keep an eye on them. The boy will be easy to spot. Perhaps you should return to return to New York, to rest and consider the next move.”

Dagon and the Witness nodded in agreement. “That would be smart,” Dagon said.

“No.” They all turned to Contarini, whose voice had taken on the chill of doom. “I want this farce ended. Now.”

“Now?” Dagon repeated. “I don’t—”

The Cardinal fixed him with a stare that quailed archbishops. “Not ‘now,’ literally. But as soon as possible. I want this ended. I want this Devil’s spawn in our hands. I want to return him to the Holy See, or, if that is not possible, I want him dead.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Nighthawk asked. This was the first time that the Cardinal had actually called for the boy’s death. The pressure, Nighthawk thought, was finally getting to him. “In this place? After all, Las Vegas is one thing—”

“This place is no different!” the Cardinal blazed at him. “It’s a low class tourist trap for fat, comic book reading Americans. They have no clue as to the strength and tenacity of the Allumbrados!” He turned his bleak gaze onto Nighthawk. “Blood is not far from this… this disgusting fairyland. I want you to supervise him as he brings in all the obsequentes that we have. All armed. We’ll take the Devil spawn as soon as they’re all in place.”

“If you drive Blood too hard,” Nighthawk said, “you’ll kill him.”

“Let him die and be damned,” the Cardinal said. “His only chance at salvation is to die in Christ’s service, anyway. He should welcome the opportunity.”

We’ll see about that, Nighthawk thought. He suppressed a sigh as he stood.

“I guess this means we’ll have to skip supper at Loaves and Fishes,” Usher said.

Nighthawk nodded.

“Pity,” Usher said. “They have great grits.” He looked at the Witness, who scowled back at him. “You can’t really get them outside the South,” he said seriously

Peaceable Kingdom: The Manger

Ray was tired, but he could not sleep.

His hand hurt, but it was bandaged and healing, as were all his numerous other wounds. He was jazzed as he always was after a fight, though it hadn’t been much of one. The Witness might have provided some real competition, but he’d been a disappointment. It kind of disturbed Ray when he screamed like a little girl. The trip through what the Brit had called ‘the Short Cut’ had been disturbing as well. Sure, he’d got to put a period to the career of Ti Malice, and that counted for something, but fighting spider-things wasn’t exactly his cup of tea. And although he’d suddenly gotten to know Angel a lot better than he had before, he couldn’t find her. She’d vanished after he’d gotten his hand bandaged, and the Peaceable Kingdom was one damn big place when you were trying to find a single angel in it.

He paced his room. It was usually like this. The adrenaline took forever to leave his system, making him edgy and keeping him awake no matter how much he wanted sleep. He looked out the window of his room. Night had come to the Peaceable Kingdom, and he was back to wishing that he was just about anywhere else in the world.

He started, uncharacteristically, at the tentative tap at his door, a single knock, unrepeated.

“Who is it?” Ray asked.

“The Angel,” she said quietly, barely audible through the door.

He was before it in a moment, and opened it. She stood in the hallway, blinking, her hair mussed, her leathers dirty and sweaty, scuffed and torn, still wearing his shirt. She was beautiful.

“Come in,” he said, and she did.

She stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. “John Fortune is asleep,” she said. “Fortunato is with him.”

“Good,” Ray said. “He okay?”

Angel shook her head. “We don’t know. He’s frightened, exhausted. The Hand—”

“What’s with all this ‘Hand’ sh—stuff?” he asked.

“That’s his title,” Angel said. “The Hand of God.”

“Jeez,” Ray said. “And to think I knew him when he was only the President of the United States.”

Angel closed her eyes, and Ray could see that suddenly she was on the verge of tears.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” he asked. “I didn’t mean anything. You can call him The Spleen of God for all I care. What’s wrong?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath, controlling herself. “Nothing. Nothing. I’m just tired. The job is done. We’ve saved him from the Allumbrados. But...”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “The job is done, but life goes on, doesn’t it?”

Angel looked down at the floor. “I don’t want to be alone,” she said in a small voice. “I can’t be alone, any more.”

“You don’t have to be,” Ray said. He came close, but didn’t touch her. He felt an odd sensation. For a moment he couldn’t identify it, then he realized that it was fear. He was afraid to touch her, he realized. Afraid of how she would react.

“I meant to take a shower, to clean up, but I don’t have any other clothes—”

Ray laid a finger softly against her lips. At the touch of his flesh on hers, his fear was suddenly gone. He smiled, but suppressed a relieved sigh. “You don’t have to apologize.”

She finally looked at him. She had the darkest, largest eyes he had ever seen. They were two sad bruises in the alabaster of her face. “My mother never let me listen to music,” she said, seemingly irreverently, “except in church. She thought that music was the tool of Satan. But sometimes she’d drink, like that night she cut me, and listen to a records she had from when she was young. She’d listen to them over and over again. They were all scratched and hissing so you could barely make out the words. One of them had a song on it that said something like, ‘I’m afraid of the Devil, but I’m drawn to them that ain’t.’ I didn’t understand the words then, but I think I understand now why she listened to that song. I think I know what it means. I think I’m the same way as my mother.”

She looked seriously at him.

“I think you think too much sometimes,” Ray said, bending his head to hers.

Unlike their first kiss, this one began soft, but didn’t stay that way for long. It grew in hunger and passion. Her mouth tasted so good that he wasn’t sure how she got out of her clothes or even whether she or he had taken them off.

She was magnificent. That was all he could think. Her breasts were heavy and dark tipped. Her nipples were already erect. She moaned when he caressed them. Her breath hissed inward when he took one in his mouth. Her hips were wide, her waist narrow and ribbed with muscle. Her thighs were lean and sinewy, the juncture at them dark and inviting. He put a hand there and she shuddered against his body. He trailed his fingers across her flat abdomen, tracing the path of the scar as it twisted upon her stomach.

“It’s so ugly,” she said.

“Nothing about you is ugly, Angel.”

“You’re not just saying that?” she asked in a whisper.

He bit her neck gently where it curved into the ivory strength of her shoulder. “Have I ever lied to you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shivering as his kisses went up the column of her throat, “but you’d better not now.”

They fell on the bed. She was already ready. It seemed like she had been for quite awhile now. She closed her eyes. “Thy will be done,” she said, and gasped when he took her.

It was a wild ride. Ray had never experienced anything like it before. She was strong and eager and he didn’t last as long as he wanted to. He did have the pleasure of bringing her to at least one screaming orgasm before he succumbed himself and shuddered against her in what seemed like an endless stream of pleasure. They lay together, panting, and Ray shook his head.

“I’ve never screwed like that before. You’re so strong. So hungry.”

“I’ve never screwed before. Period.”

“Well,” Ray said, “that was one Hell of a first try.” He leaned back on one elbow, but couldn’t keep his hands from the silken skin of her breasts. Their nipples puckered again at his first touch. “Did you like it?”

She closed her eyes. “It was glorious.” She opened them and looked seriously at Ray. “When can we do it again?”

He laughed. “With any other guy, it might take awhile. But, lucky you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Don’t you know that one of my powers is regeneration?” he asked.

Her laughter turned to groans of delight as his mouth closed over hers.