Death Draws Five

Chapter two

John Nighthawk waited patiently at the baggage carousel for his luggage to arrive. If there was one thing he’d learned over the years, it was patience. Usher stood to his right, a silent monolith. Magda, dressed in a traditional black and white nun’s habit, a uniform which she habitually wore when they weren’t on a mission, stood to his left as baggage was disgorged onto the meandering belt. They all watched for the black satchel with the faded Vatican coat of arms decal on its side.

“I miss Grubbs already,” Usher complained as the bag they’d been waiting for finally appeared. He reached down and picked it up as it glided by. Toting and carrying had always been Grubbs’ job.

Nighthawk said nothing. Their stop at customs was expedited by their Vatican diplomatic passports. If the customs agent was dubious about the old black man, the bruiser who looked like a heavyweight champion, and the hard-eyed nun traveling under the auspices of the Holy See, it didn’t show on his bored expression. They carried no other luggage besides the diplomatic pouch, which of course went unexamined as they breezed through arrival formalities and exited Tomlin International.

A limo with Vatican diplomatic plates and two occupants was waiting for them at ground transport. The silent driver had the proper degree of unassuming servitude. The man with him was the handsome blonde man Nighthawk knew only as the Witness. He was one of two Witnesses who worked for the Cardinal. They were brothers. Nighthawk differentiated them in his mind as the Asshole and the Bigger Asshole. This one was the Bigger Asshole.

“Any problems?” the Bigger Asshole asked.

“We lost Grubbs,” Nighthawk said.

The Witness shrugged. “I’m sure he’s gone on to his proper reward. But, you got the Mandylion all right? No problems with that?”

Nighthawk shook his head. “No. No problems with that.” He gestured at the bag emblazoned with the Vatican crest.

“Put it in the trunk,” the Witness said.

Usher did, after the driver popped it open from where he sat behind the wheel. Usher slammed the lid and came around to the limo’s back door, but the Bigger Asshole shook his head.

“The help takes taxis,” he said.

Usher looked at Nighthawk, who nodded briefly. The big man sauntered over to the line of taxis at the nearby cab stand, followed by a stoic Magda. The Witness looked at Nighthawk, who looked back. The Bigger Asshole pursed his lips, but said nothing as Nighthawk opened the limo’s door and slid into the seat. The Witness got in, sat next to Nighthawk, and the limo pulled away from the curb.

“Is everyone else in town?” Nighthawk asked, more to pester the Bigger Asshole than because he was really interested.

“Everyone was,” the Witness said briefly. “Dagon and my brother left yesterday on a mission.”

“Where to?”

“Gomorrah,” the Witness smiled, “to fetch the Anti-Christ to cower in chains before the throne of Our Lord.” His smile turned to a frown. “Although there’s talk that others will join them soon via Blood’s tunnel. It seems that the Anti-Christ has his own cadre of aces.”

Nighthawk was startled. Despite the fact that he and his team had been sent to fetch the Mandylion, he hadn’t really believed that after all these years the Cardinal’s plan had finally been set into motion.

“It’s starting then,” Nighthawk said.

“Oh yes,” the Bigger Asshole said with a broad and glittery smile that looked more malevolent than cheerful. “And nothing or no one can stop us now.”

Las Vegas, Nevada: The Mirage

Ray stepped out of the heat of the early June afternoon into the sweet coolness of the Mirage’s air conditioned lobby and stopped for a moment to watch the tourists mill around while he considered his next move. All of a sudden he wasn’t so sure that this trip was such a good idea.

Sure, he had traded the utter boredom of the Peaceable Kingdom for the relative excitement of Las Vegas, but now that he was here, his pulses weren’t exactly pounding. Not yet, anyway. It all seemed... well... tawdry wasn’t a word he often used, but somehow it seemed appropriate. All around him middle-aged, middle class, Mid western tourists were avidly chasing excitement. Had he really joined their ranks?

What’s wrong with me? Ray thought. Am I actually developing some sense of values?

He’d started to notice some unsettling things lately. He’d been getting more tired than he’d ever been before. Pain lingered. It took longer to come back from injuries. Something that would have taken only a couple of hours to heal twenty years ago now took a day, sometimes longer. Everything seemed to hurt worse.

Not that I’m old, he told himself, but I do have a lot of mileage. Maybe the odometer is getting ready to turn over. Maybe it’s even running out. Nothing ever said that I could go on forever, my powers undiminished...

Ray’s uncharacteristic mood of introspection suddenly screeched to a halt as he noticed the woman approaching him from across the Mirage’s lobby. For the first time in a long time, he felt his pulse start to race. At least a little.

He wasn’t sure if she was beautiful, exactly. Her expression was far too gloomy, for one thing. Her features were bold rather than delicate, with a generous mouth, aquiline nose, and large eyes that looked haunted. By guilt, by melancholy, Ray couldn’t tell. Her skin was milk white, almost luminous in its pale perfection, contrasting vividly with her night black hair, which was thick and wavy and though bound in a heavy braid hanging down to the middle of her back seemed to be struggling to escape its bonds. Ray was not overly imaginative, but he could picture it blowing about her face in a gentle wind, or spilling in luxuriant waves over her pale-skinned shoulders.

She was wearing a black leather jumpsuit and black boots that came to her knees. She was built. Really built, with wide hips and large breasts confined as uneasily as her hair and long legs. Her leather jumpsuit clung tightly to her curves, as snug as a second skin.

She held an ice cream cone in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other, as well as the strap of a large duffel bag which she carried easily, without a sign of strain. She moved rapidly through the knots of tourists standing around the lobby. From time to time she looked up from the paper she was studying, but she was paying more attention to the ice cream cone than she was to her surroundings. She licked it rapidly, almost rapturously. She walked quickly.

She glanced up and their eyes suddenly met.

But it was too late.

Las Vegas, Nevada: The Mirage

The Midnight Angel was tired. She hadn’t slept in over forty-eight hours, and hadn’t eaten a proper meal—you couldn’t count the tasteless mess they served on the plane—in much longer. The flight from New York to Las Vegas had seemingly taken forever. The plane had been packed with Vegas junketeers eager to begin their carousing. Alcohol flowed freely and annoyingly uncontrolled laughter was all too common. She hadn’t been able to sleep at all.

There was no rest, the Angel thought, for the wicked.

She’s phoned The Hand right after her encounter with the Allumbrados in the Waldorf-Astoria’s parking garage. The Hand, though not exactly pleased with her news about Contarini and his aces, had been pleased with the way she’d handled herself.

“I knew you’d come through, Angel,” he’d told her. She’d smiled at his praise, puffed up with a pride that was almost sinful.

There was a thoughtful silence as The Hand pondered the information she’d relayed. The Angel could visualize his handsome face, his strong, dimpled chin, his wide brow crinkled with frown lines as he considered what to do.

“All right,” he finally said decisively. “I want you to go pick up the boy. We have to move fast. It’s important—vital—that you bring him to safety, so I’m sending you some help, an experienced agent named Billy Ray. He’s a top-flight man. Toughest bast—er, fellow I’ve ever run across, but I wouldn’t entirely trust him with all our plans.” He paused briefly and his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “Not sound, theologically speaking. But we use what tools we must. You’ll meet him in Las Vegas—”

“Vegas?” The Angel was so horrified with the thought of traveling to the American Gomorrah that she interrupted The Hand.

“That’s where the boy is. Actually, it’s a good thing he’s not in New York as the place seems to be crawling with Allumbrados right now. Take the first flight you can get. When you arrive at the Vegas airport check the Pan American customer service counter. I’ll fax you Ray’s photo so you can recognize him. Meet him in the Mirage lobby. That’s where the boy’s staying with his mother and bodyguard.”

“But—”

“No time for buts, honey. I know you can do this. We have to gather the boy to the safety of our bosom in the Peaceable Kingdom. I’ll see you soon.” He rang off before the Angel could further protest her exile to Las Vegas, but his final words of praise warmed her all through her flight across the continent.

The promised photo was in fact waiting for her when she’d arrived at the Vegas airport, along with the additional information that in a bit of fortuitous timing, Ray’s flight had arrived only a few minutes before her own. He was probably on his way to the Mirage, if he hadn’t reached it already.

Upon reflection, though, the Angel realized that maybe the timing wasn’t so fortuitous. She’d hoped to check into the hotel and maybe catch a few hours sleep. She definitely had to find something to eat. Her body burned calories at a prodigious rate. It seemed that she was always hungry. She ate and ate but never felt really satisfied. She worried about the sin of gluttony, but could she be considered a glutton if she never gained an ounce of weight?

It wasn’t really gluttony, the Angel thought, if you needed every mouthful you swallowed.

On her way to the pick-up spot for the hotel’s courtesy van, she stopped at an airport snack bar, looked over the menu board, and winced at the prices. They were outrageous. She had enough cash for a large soda and a couple of chocolate bars. Cadbury, the big ones with nuts and raisins. They were really quite nutritious.

She tried to eat slowly, but her hunger drove her to gulp down the chocolate bars quickly. Even so, a large soda without ice and three Cadbury bars failed to sate her appetite, but there was nothing to do about it but hustle off to the Mirage. Time was flying. She had to meet this Billy Ray. They had to make plans. She hoped he’d brought some money with him. Despite her careful shepherding of the funds The Hand had given at the start of her mission, she was almost stone broke.

Buzzing along on caffeine and sugar and lack of sleep, the Angel strode through the airport concourse, aware of every staring male eye, of every impure thought that must be hiding behind their bland but oh-so obvious expressions. She retrieved her one piece of luggage, a battered old duffel bag, from the revolving carousel, and went out into the blazing Vegas afternoon where she waited impatiently for the shuttle to come along on its appointed rounds and take her and about twenty other sweating tourists to the Mirage.

Hunger still gnawed at her. To take her mind off her grumbling stomach, she studied the photo that The Hand had faxed to her. This Billy Ray didn’t look like anything special. He wasn’t very big. Didn’t appear to be particularly muscular. Didn’t even look too bright, actually. Still, there had to be something special about him if he worked for The Hand. The Hand clearly had confidence in his ability, if not his ultimate loyalty.

The thought that he had so much confidence in her warmed her heart. The Hand was a handsome man. Even more importantly, he was a man of and for God. She had given him her complete trust when she’d joined his group. The Angel knew that her mother wouldn’t have approved of her straying out into the world, but her mother was no longer with her and she had to do something with her life. At least her mother would have approved of the Angel’s decision to utilize her abilities in the service of the Lord. The Angel was sure of that.

When the shuttle finally arrived at the Mirage, the Angel trooped off the bus with the rest of the tourists. She endured a suggestive glance from the driver as he handed over her duffel bag and sighed in unselfconscious pleasure as she entered the cool lobby. She glanced around. It was bigger and much more crowded than she’d ever imagined it would be. It might not be as easy to spot Billy Ray as she’d thought.

She did, however, immediately spot an ice cream stand near the lobby’s far wall. Her stomach rumbled out loud. She had about three dollars left from the money The Hand had given her. She realized then of course that even if she’d wanted to get a room and rest before meeting Billy Ray, she couldn’t possibly afford it. She did have enough for an ice cream cone, though. Maybe a double scoop.

The ice cream boy, tall and thin and wearing a chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla spotted white suit, eyed her insouciantly as she approached.

“What can I get for you?” he asked with a leer.

“Chocolate cone,” the Angel replied frostily.

“Two scoops or one?” Somehow he made his query sound like an indecent proposal.

She pulled all her money out from the right front pocket of her tight leather jumpsuit, and frowned at two sweaty singles.

“One,” she said with disappointment.

“Here,” the ice cream boy said grandly, adding an extra scoop to the cone. “Just for you, babe.”

The Angel hesitated, but greed overcame her and she accepted the pilfered scoop of ice cream. Tonight she would pray long and hard over this, she thought.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Anytime, babe,” the ice cream boy called out as she drifted back into the maelstrom of the lobby. “Come see me again sometime,” he added hopefully.

The Angel took a lick of her cone and shivered ecstatically as the cold chocolate melted on her tongue. She took another lick, pausing part-way through as she caught a glimpse of a man who could be the one she was looking for, glanced at the photo to check, realized that he wasn’t her quarry, then turned and saw that she was walking right into a man who was looking at her with an expression that could only be described as predatory.

Their eyes met and she recognized him. It was the man in the photo. The man The Hand had called Billy Ray.

And then they collided.

As the Angel bumped into him words of apology were already on her lips, but his expression suddenly turned horrified and he moved quicker than anyone she had ever seen, smooth and graceful like Fred Astaire gliding around Ginger Rogers on the dance floor in those movies that her mother had always punished her for watching whenever she caught her. He was no longer staring at her, but rather at the ice cream cone which she clutched in her hand inches—just inches—from the jacket of his spotless, expensive-looking suit. The suit was very nice. Impeccable, really. He didn’t look like he’d just gotten off a plane after a long flight. He looked like he’d just come from a glamour shoot. Except, he wasn’t very handsome. There wasn’t anything really wrong with his features. His crooked nose was a little too long. His mouth a little too thin-lipped. His jaw line somehow unfitting. They just didn’t seem to all add up. It was almost like he’d had facial reconstruction surgery and had chosen randomly from a menu provided by the doctor.

His pale green eyes had transferred their gaze to her ice cream cone and its imminent impact with his faultless suit. The Angel jerked her arm back quickly and gravity did the rest.

The top scoop of chocolate shot forward in a flat trajectory and landed right where his lap would have been if he were sitting down. He looked at the soggy mass of ice cream sliding slowly down the front of his pants, then back up at the Angel.

His eyes were wild

“Oh,” the Angel said. She hunkered down and tried to wipe the mess from the front of his pants. A glob of ice cream ran down his right pant leg, leaving a rather noticeable trail. Then she realized what she was doing. All she could say was “Oh,” again.

The fury disappeared from Ray’s face, to be replaced by an expression of sudden bemusement. “If you keep that up we’ll have to get a room.” He grinned crookedly. “Good thing we’re already in a hotel.”

The Angel stood up before him. She could feel a blush infuse her features, and that made her blush all the harder.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the way you introduce yourself,” Ray said, “but who the Hell are you, anyway?”

The Angel realized she was staring at him from the distance of only a few inches. Their eyes were on the same level. Their bodies were chest to chest, almost touching.

“The Hand sent me to meet you—”

“The Hand?” Ray interrupted.

She reached out and grabbed his arm to forestall, she was sure, another off-color comment. She had always thought it a corny cliché of romance novels, which she knew she shouldn’t read but sometimes couldn’t help herself, but his eyes did burn into hers. For a wild moment she thought he was going to kiss her right there, right in front of all the passers-by who were glancing curiously at the scene being played out before them.

Then he said, “Let go of my arm. It’s going numb.”

The Angel released him, flushing again with embarrassment. Once again her cursed body had shamed her. If she had hurt this agent of The Hand. If her clumsiness had damaged him—

Billy Ray flexed his hand to get the feeling back in his fingers. He smiled at her.

“That’s quite the grip you’ve got,” he said.

The Angel backed away, confused by his lightning-quick mood swings. “We must go,” she said. “We have a job to do.”

“Maybe,” Ray allowed. “If by ‘The Hand,’ you mean Leo Barnett.”

The Angel started, barely suppressing her urge to clamp a hand over his mouth. She looked wildly about to see if anyone had heard him blurt out his ridiculous indiscretion. “You’re not supposed to say his name,” she informed Ray in a ferocious whisper.

“What, Barnett’s?” he asked innocently.

“Shhhhh!”

“All right, all right,” Ray said, laughing. “Let’s go somewhere where we can talk about this job we’re supposed to do together.”

“Where?” The Angel asked suspiciously.

“I suppose the coffee shop would do,” Ray said with a tinge of disappointment in his voice. “Although a room—”

”The coffee shop,” the Angel said definitively.

“All right,” Ray agreed, easily enough. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“The Midnight Angel,” she told him.

“Angel,” Ray repeated, nodding. “Cool. It fits you.”

“Not ‘Angel,’” she corrected. “The Angel.”

Ray frowned. “Whatever,” he said as they moved off together through the lobby. “I’m not going to call you ‘The.’”

New York City: The Waldorf-Astoria

Though it had been decades since he’d last seen it, the Waldorf-Astoria’s lobby was much as John Nighthawk remembered. Intimate lighting caressed dark wainscoting, potted palms, marble accents, and expensive carpets, as well as a huge bronze clock that dominated the room like an art deco behemoth. Nine feet in height and two tons in weight, its marble and mahogany base was topped by a bronze Statue of Liberty that gleamed in the twilight-lit lobby as if it had just been polished. Other statues incorporated into the ornate clock included Queen Victoria, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Ulysses S. Grant. It looked like a bastard to dust.

As I know well, Nighthawk thought. He had dusted and polished it himself often enough, ages ago in another lifetime before the Takisian virus had changed him and all the world.

The woman he’d been sent to meet was in a dark corner of the lobby, wraith-like in a vintage dress that made it look as if she’d been waiting for a dinner date for the last seventy-five years or so. The only thing that ruined the effect was her over-sized handbag. A small clutch purse would have gone much better with her black beaded dress and pert hat crowned by a single egret feather. Her ensemble brought back memories of the nineteen-twenties to Nighthawk. Some of them were fond.

Up close, she looked impossibly young in the uncertain light. Her brown eyes were as large and innocent as a doe’s. Her long, wavy hair cascaded down to the middle of her back like a golden waterfall. Nighthawk knew her real name, her background, and her ace abilities. But he called her the name she preferred, the name she’d taken from the bit of antique jewelry she wore on a black silk ribbon choker around her slender, elegant neck.

“Miss Cameo?” he asked.

“Cameo will do,” she replied.

Nighthawk nodded. “Mr. Contarini sent me to escort you to his tower suite,” he said. Contarini hadn’t resorted to a fictitious name for this business, but he wanted Cameo kept in the dark about his relationship with the Church. Nighthawk paused, glancing around their corner of the lobby. “I thought that you were going to bring a bodyguard with you?” he asked.

“That’s right,” the young ace said. “I did.”

“Where is he?”

Cameo held out her handbag. Nighthawk took it from her and looked inside. Among the usual trove of feminine paraphernalia was a battered old fedora.

“A hat?” Nighthawk said.

Cameo nodded. “How perceptive of you.”

He handed the purse back to her. He knew all about Cameo and her hat. He had researched her thoroughly before entering in negotiations with her on the behalf of the Cardinal. However, he didn’t think it prudent to let her know that he knew.

“Don’t sass your elders, missy,” he said briefly. “If you’ll come this way.”

Cameo accepted his rebuke in silence. They went to the elevator bank and took one nearly to the top of the Waldorf’s Tower block, the suite on the forty-first floor where Contarini always stayed when he was in New York City. Nighthawk led her to the apartment, opened the door with his key, and took her through the anteroom, a couple of sitting rooms and living rooms, to arrive at last in a spacious library.

Glassed-in ceiling-to-floor bookcases covered two adjacent walls. Most of the glossy black bookshelves now housed vintage bric-a-brac of various sorts, though some books and folios were still on the shelves. A comfortable-looking sofa and matching love seat ranged against the two other walls. The rest of the furniture consisted of a black wood desk which matched the bookshelves, and scattered leather chairs and floor lamps. The ancient reliquary that Grubbs had given his life to obtain was on a low coffee table in front of the sofa. The Cardinal waited on the sofa with an aura of impatience clinging to him like a wet swimsuit. He was incognito, wearing a six thousand dollar Armani suite with suave elegance. Usher stood silently at one end of the sofa. Magda, looking as disapproving as always, at the other.

Contarini didn’t bother to rise as Nighthawk and Cameo entered the room.

“I am Romulus Contarini,” he announced in his deep actor’s voice. His English was colored by a slight Italian accent that only made it sound more lyrical than English usually does. His handsome lips were pursed as he gazed at Cameo, as if he didn’t approve of her obvious youth, or perhaps of her, herself, in general. Nighthawk knew that the Cardinal didn’t like wild carders, though he was not averse to using them to further his schemes.

Cameo nodded. “Mr. Contarini. Nice to finally see you face to face after so many chats on the telephone.”

She glanced at Usher and Magda, but Contarini didn’t bother to introduce them.

“Nice to see you,” he said, coming down slightly on the last word. “I’m glad that you weren’t foolish enough to take the down payment we had deposited in your account, and...” He paused, as if groping for a word.

Cameo’s eyebrows rose. “And abscond with it?”

Contarini inclined his silver-haired head.

“Are we not both business people, Mr. Contarini?” Cameo asked. “We both have reputations to maintain. I trusted you enough to come to this—” Cameo paused for a moment as she glanced around the sumptuously furnished room “—elegant but rather private meeting place to channel an unknown object for a fee of two hundred thousand dollars. If I trusted you enough to accept your offer, surely you trusted me enough to fulfill my part of the bargain.”

Contarini grunted inelegantly as Nighthawk suppressed a smile. He thought he was going to like Cameo just fine. After she finished her business with Contarini, he had something else for her to do, something that was as important to him as this rigmarole was to the Cardinal.

The Cardinal turned to Usher, and nodded at the reliquary. “Open it.”

The big man bent over the old box. They had looked inside it just once before while they were on the road to Rome, just to make sure that they hadn’t been tricked into stealing a decoy. They hadn’t.

The Cardinal leaned over and removed a rectangular length of stained linen, folded upon itself several times. His fingers caressed it as he lifted it from the box; his lips murmured ancient Latin prayers. He held it to his chest for a moment, his eyes lifted to Heaven.

Nighthawk glanced at the others. Cameo was watching the Cardinal, uncertain, frowning. Usher stood as relaxed as always, instantly ready to run, to leap across the room, to dive to the floor, to do whatever the next second might call for. Magda’s eyes were riveted on the Mandylion, as if wishing she were the one caressing it. A sheen of sweat covered her forehead. Her lips were clenched in passionate desire that was almost lustful.

Contarini took a deep breath, as if he were wallowing in the scent of the cloth which had once covered the dead, bleeding body of Jesus Christ, and then suddenly held it out to Cameo.

“Take this. Sit there.”

Cameo looked from the Shroud to Contarini’s face, to Nighthawk.

“Is that the Shroud of Turin?” she asked, wide-eyed.

Nighthawk only nodded.

Cameo wet her lips. “Where...how...” Her voice ran down.

“Don’t ask, missy,” Nighthawk said softly. “Just take it. Or walk away.”

Contarini thrust it again toward her. “Take it,” he said commandingly, “and call Our Lord and Savior.”

Cameo hesitated for a moment. Any sane person would, Nighthawk thought, and then she took the Shroud from Contarini and sank into the luxurious old armchair he’d indicated. She took a deep breath and held it. For a moment her eyes were unfocused, and then her expression changed utterly and it was clear to Nighthawk that someone else was looking out of her eyes at them. Nighthawk felt his heart skip a beat, then hurry as if to catch up. He swayed on his feet, caught in the grip of powerful emotion, torn by fear and hope intermingled, as he had been on that day in 1946 when he lay dying in a hospital bed as the Takisian virus came raining down out of the sky and touched him with the glory of God on high, turning him into something more than human but perhaps somewhat less than angelic.

“I say,” Cameo said in an uncertain voice. “Wha—what’s happening?”

Contarini fell down on his knees, muttering wildly in Italian, his head bowed as if he were afraid to look upon his Lord revealed. Magda stared as if she’d been gaffed, her cheeks puffed out in astonished ecstasy. Only Usher, Nighthawk saw, observed unperturbed, still ready for anything.

“My Lord!” the Cardinal finally said, holding out his hands beseechingly.

The person looking out through Cameo’s eyes focused on him

“My Lord?” she repeated. “What’s this all about?” She looked around. “Why am I here in my apartment again? I died, didn’t I?”

Nighthawk had the sudden realization that something had gone terribly wrong.

Contarini frowned. “Died—yes, and risen as before. But—your apartment! I don’t understand. What do you mean? Who are you?”

“Who am I?” Cameo repeated, more in indignation than as an actual question. “Who are you, sir, and what are you doing in my apartment? I—what’s that voice in my head saying? I... I’m a woman!” she exclaimed, holding her hands out, examining them in what Nighthawk thought was half shock, half delight. Her hands went down to her thighs, gripping them, hard. “I’ve got both of my legs!”

Suddenly, Nighthawk knew. “Mr. Porter,” he said quietly.

Cameo looked at him. “You know me? What am I doing here? Am I alive, again? What—the voice in my head! It’s all so confusing!”

“What’s happened?” Contarini demanded in a shrill voice, just on the edge of losing control.

“Apparently,” Nighthawk said, immersed in memories of long ago when he’d worked in this hotel and known quite well the man who had lived for many years in this very suite, “Cameo has channeled the spirit of someone we hadn’t intended.”

“If not the spirit of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” Contarini demanded, “then whose is it? For God’s sake, whose?”

Nighthawk cleared his throat. “Apparently,” he said, “it’s Cole Porter.”

Contarini’s eyes looked as if they were going to bug out of his head. Magda observed the proceedings with a baffled expression that was quickly sliding toward unimaginable fury while Usher tried unsuccessfully to smother a snort of uncontainable laughter.

Las Vegas: The Mirage Auditorium

The overnight transformation of John Fortune from anonymous teenager to wild card ace who’d saved the life of a popular Vegas entertainer was big news. The fact that Peregrine hadn’t allowed any interviews had only heightened the frenzy. It got to the point where neither John Fortune nor Peregrine, nor even Jerry, could leave the hotel suite without being besieged by reporters and stalked by hordes of gawkers. Jerry had quickly realized that the only way to break the siege was to give the public at least something of what they wanted.

“Give ‘em an interview,” he’d told Peregrine. “Break the story and the pressure will go away, like the water through the dam in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman.”

Peregrine had looked askance at his metaphor, but ultimately agreed with the substance of his argument.

“All right. Arrange something,” she’d said, holding up a hand as Jerry nodded. “But make sure it’s not exploitive. I don’t want my son treated like a media freak.”

“In this town?”

“Do the best you can,” was Peregrine’s final order.

He did, and as he stood in the wings looking out upon the Mirage’s stage, the very place where it had started, it looked as if things might work out after all.

He’d approached the Mirage publicity people with a complete concept. Have a local media personality interview John Fortune and his mother live on the very stage where his card had so recently and dramatically turned. Siegfried and a very grateful Ralph would take part in the program. Have a few tigers prowl about. Small, cute ones. Not the one that had attacked Ralph. The Living Gods would hover in the background as Siegfried and Ralph described the horrific events of that terrible night the show had gone all wrong, praise John Fortune for his fortitude and quick thinking, explain to everyone that the audience had been very safe indeed, present John with a lifetime pass to the Siegfried and Ralph revue as the kid said a few blushing words, and then smiles, hugs, and handshakes all around.

The Mirage publicity people liked the concept. Peregrine, when Jerry described it to her, liked the concept, especially the idea of using a local celeb—if she wasn’t going to exploit her son on national television, neither was Barbara Walters—who ultimately turned out to be Kitty O’Leary from Channel Seven KASH Eyewitness Evening News.

It all came together nicely, Jerry thought, observing from the wings. The auditorium was packed with an eager audience. Peregrine looked beautiful on the comfy sofa which was part of the temporary set arranged on the stage. They opened the program with Peregrine and the extremely photogenic Kitty O’Leary chatting about how difficult it was being a mother in modern times, especially when you had to worry about the wild card virus as well as drugs, alcohol, and unprotected teen sex.

Jerry suddenly felt a restless presence at his side and looked at a nervously smiling John Fortune who had joined him in his vantage spot in the wings.

“Hey, you look great in make-up,” Jerry cracked, trying to break the tension a little for the clearly agitated kid.

“Thanks a load,” John Fortune said with heavy teenage sarcasm. He took a deep breath. “I’m not so sure about this television stuff. What if I say something stupid?”

“Then you’ll join the ranks of everyone else who’s ever been on TV,” Jerry said. He punched the kid in the shoulder in a comradely manner. “Be cool. You wanted to be an ace.”

“Yeah,” John Fortune agreed. “It’s so much better than the alternative.”

“The point is,” Jerry said, “when you’re a star, you have to take the sour with the sweet.”

Of course, Jerry thought, I’m so utterly anonymous that I constantly change my face and I call myself Mr. Nobody. Who am I to preach to the kid? But then—nobody ever said that you have to live what you preach.

“But I’m not a star,” John Fortune muttered.

Jerry suddenly knew what to say. “You’re not a star now, kid, but after you go out on that stage, you’ll come back one!”

John Fortune suddenly smiled. “You think so?”

“I know so,” Jerry said, thinking, Thank God for “Forty-Second Street.”

Sudden applause welled up from the audience.

“Cue,” whispered one of the back-stage flunkies, making a shooing motion in John Fortune’s direction.

“You’ve got the genes, you’ve got the talent,” Jerry said. “Go knock ‘em dead.”

John Fortune nodded silent thanks and stepped out onto the stage, a fixed grin plastered on his face. The Living Gods had already appeared, presenting a colorful background chorus as the kid made his way onto the set. Jerry could see Siegfried and Ralph, with, yes, a pair of leashed tigers, waiting for their entrance cue in the other wing.

Better the kid than me, Jerry thought, remembering with little fondness his pitiful career as the shape-changing comedian known as the Projectionist. Still, there was no sense dwelling on his own past. He smiled as he realized that the long-running drama he’d been a peripheral participant in over the last sixteen years was finally coming to an end. And a happy end at that. John Fortune wouldn’t need a bodyguard any more. He’d cheated the odds and won a well-deserved chance at life. Sure, “ace” wasn’t the safest occupation, but Jerry didn’t know any that went around with a coterie of bodyguards. Even Peregrine wouldn’t make him do that. With her son having cleared the biggest hurdle in his life she was sure to back off and give him some room to breathe.

“You Creighton?”

Jerry turned. His eyes went wide in surprise as he recognized the speaker. “Billy Ray?”

Ray glanced at his companion, a smoking babe in a leather jumpsuit with a body like a young Sophia Loren and a frown on her handsome face. Ray’s expression suddenly matched hers.

“Do I know you?” Ray asked.

“Uh. No. No, I don’t think so,” Jerry said. Too many faces, too many identities, he thought. It was getting difficult to keep straight who and what each of his many guises was supposed to know.

Of course, he and Ray had crossed paths before, when Jerry had been wearing another face. The last time... the last time had been during the Battle for the Rox, when he and Ray had been part of a government team sent in to smash Bloat’s joker rebellion. It was a long story without a good ending, and he didn’t care to dwell on it.

Ray was still frowning. “You look familiar.”

“I got that type of face,” Jerry said in his best Alan Ladd imitation. “I recognized you, of course. Who wouldn’t?”

“Oh, well.” Ray’s frown vanished. He glanced at his partner, visibly preening. Her frown deepened a fraction.

“How’d you know me?” Jerry asked before Ray had too much of a chance to think about his previous reply.

Ray gestured over his shoulder. “Guy back there told me you’re the kid’s bodyguard.”

Jerry nodded. “That’s right.”

“This is Angel,” Ray said, indicating his partner. She looked at Jerry sourly as he glanced at her. He decided not to voice any of the half dozen or so puns on her name that had immediately popped up in his brain.

“She’s new,” Ray added, as if that explained everything.

“What’s the government want with the boy?” Jerry asked.

“Well—“Angel began.

“You see—“ Ray said.

And suddenly all Hell broke out on the stage.

New York City: Tomlin International Airport

When you return home after a sixteen-year absence and no one is there to greet you and there is no place for you to go, have you really come home after all?

The question ran through Fortunato’s mind in an endlessly repetitive loop like a not very difficult koan as he and Downs flew across the Pacific. There was little else to occupy him. He watched a thread of drool gather at the corner of Downs’ mouth as the reporter slept soundly in the first class seat next to him. Watching spittle drip down Downs’ chin was preferable, he soon discovered, to watching the movies available on the individual screens set into each of the admittedly comfortable seats.

The technological advances that Fortunato had missed out on while at the monastery were amazing, but unfortunately could do nothing about the quality of the movies they delivered. He watched about twenty minutes as some idiot named Jim Carrey cavorted like a fool as he played an ace with God-like powers. The best thing he could use his abilities for were turning his piece of crap car into a high-powered sports job and add a few inches to the circumference of his girlfriend’s already quite suitable breasts.

It would have been laughable if it wasn’t so unhysterically bathetic.

Downs awoke right before they landed in LA for the transcontinental leg of their seemingly unending journey. Unfortunately, his company proved little better than Jim Carrey’s.

The hours finally caught up with Fortunato and he fell asleep before they crossed the Midwest. He dreamed he was an ace again. All the women he’d once known—Caroline, Veronica, Peregrine, and many of the rest—paraded before him. He used his powers to increase their breast size to mammoth proportions. They all thanked him profusely before they left him alone and feeling utterly isolated. He awoke sweating as they landed at Tomlin International.

“Welcome home, Fortunato,” Downs said with a grin as the plane taxied to the gate.

But Fortunato felt nothing, nothing but empty.

Las Vegas: The Mirage Auditorium

A hideous staccato roar shattered the air like a hammer striking multiple metallic gongs in precise rhythmic succession. The Angel had no idea what caused the awful sound. She looked out on the stage horrified as one of the Living Gods floating above the stage crashed bleeding on Kitty O’Leary’s desk. The blonde anchorwoman sat frozen in her chair with a stunned expression on her face as the Living God writhed and bled all over her.

Siegfried and Ralph, accompanied by a pair of leashed tigers, had just been introduced to the audience. They stopped before O’Leary’s desk. Their cats roared in sudden fear, added to the growing commotion.

John Fortune and Peregrine sat on a sofa adjacent to the desk. The boy looked out into the darkness of the auditorium with a puzzled expression. Peregrine jumped to her feet, wings widespread, her face that of a bird of prey. She stepped in front of her son as another blast exploded out of the dark auditorium’s depths.

The Angel suddenly realized that a hail of bullets were screeching stageward, striking Peregrine and stitching a bloody line across her chest and hurling her back against her son as he sat stunned on the sofa. The sofa tipped over, spilling both backwards. Kitty O’Leary, her pert anchorwoman’s face spattered by a fine spray of Peregrine’s blood, started to scream in mindless terror, her piercing shrieks louder than tiger roars or gun blasts. The Living God fell off O’Leary’s desk and tried to crawl away. O’Leary’s screams were echoed by some audience members as a third wave of bullets hammered the air.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Ray blasphemed.

The Angel was too stunned to reprimand him. Ray moved before she could even gather her wits. She looked wildly at Creighton, but he was only a couple of steps behind Ray as they ran out onto the stage. Ray leaped crazily into the darkness beyond the lights while Creighton headed for the shocking tableau at center stage.

The Angel was completely unused to such chaos. What to do? she thought desperately, what to do? Her heart pounding with wild uncertainty, she followed Ray into the dark and saw men with guns running down the aisles. They seemed to be everywhere. The Angel couldn’t be sure how many there were. Ray didn’t seem to care.

She couldn’t tell what had happened to the first one, the one in the lead. He was already jack-knifing backward, flopping oddly like a broken doll as he flew through the air. Ray had his gun. He turned to glare at the Angel as she landed next to him on the auditorium floor and despite the fact that her heart was as a lion’s in the service of her Lord; she flinched at the expression on his face. It was like when she’d dropped the ice cream on his suit, only horribly, terribly more so. It was worse in that now, underneath it all, he was smiling.

“Can you use this?” he asked her. She shook her head curtly. She’d never fired a gun in her life. She didn’t like them. She didn’t need them. “Then fuck it,” he said, smashing the rifle’s stock to pieces against the floor, and beaning another assassin with the barrel as somewhere a tiger roared and people screamed as the audience tried to surge out of the auditorium, unconsciously hindering the gunmen from gaining the stage.

“On the frigging floor!” someone shouted after letting lose another wild burst of gunfire. “Get on the frigging floor or we’ll frigging shoot you all!”

Anger suddenly burned through the Angel’s breast, making her forget all her bewilderment and uncertainty. Whoever these men were, they were threatening the lives of innocents, and this she could not allow.

She lifted her arms to Heaven. “Save my soul from evil, Lord,” she prayed, willing it to come to her in her time of need, “and heal this warrior’s heart.”

And it did.

The fiery sword appeared in her hands. With a four-foot blade licked by flames from its plain cross hilt to its blunt tip, it was a weapon that could be wielded only by an ace stronger than most nats. The flames burning up and down its length lit the Angel’s face with an almost Hellish glow as she glanced swiftly about. It was difficult to see what exactly was happening, but Ray was spinning like a dervish and the gunmen were retreating before him. Some were out of his reach, and one of those was aiming at the figures clustered at center stage. She lunged, swinging her sword, and the fiery blade chopped through the gun’s barrel like a glowing knife through butter. The gunman turned to stare at her, and the Angel was gratified by the expression that she saw on his face. He slunk away. She turned to look for another victim, and she saw him: The blonde-haired man she’d seen in the Waldorf-Astoria’s parking garage, strong and tall and as beautiful as an angel. He came toward her slowly, smiling confidently. Smugly. He has reason to be smug, the Angel thought. He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen.

He was big, towering five or six inches over her and outweighing her by at least a hundred pounds. He wore track warm ups and a short sleeved shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and massive chest like silk. Perhaps it was. His arms were muscular, but not grotesque. Just pleasing, the Angel thought. His face was handsome without being pretty, with a strong jaw and high but not delicate cheekbones. His nose was hawk-like, his eyes bluer than seemed possible. His hair was a thick blonde mane that swept in loose coils to his shoulders. His coiffure might have looked dainty on some men, but he was masculine enough to carry it off.

“I am the Witness,” he said to the Angel. “I tell you now. Turn away from the path of unrighteousness, or I will be forced to teach you a lesson.”

“Lesson?” the Angel asked. She released her grip on her sword’s hilt and her weapon vanished. This Witness was unarmed and she had never used her blade against an unarmed man. She smiled to herself. For all his muscles, he had never faced the Angel’s God-given strength before.

“Yes.” His white, even teeth flashed in a dazzling smile. “It is called ‘the kiss.’”

Suddenly she realized that he was close enough to grab her and pull her to him. His grip was strong enough to damage an ordinary woman, but the Angel was not ordinary. As he wrapped his arms around her she could feel the heat radiate off his body in palpable waves. She could smell the scent of him. He wound his right hand in her thick hair and pulled her head back, exposing the strong column of her throat. He bent over her and brought his lips down on hers.

The Angel couldn’t believe the sensations that swept over her body. She wanted him more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. More than The Hand’s approval. More than Heaven itself. She closed her eyes, feeling hot and cold, weak and strong all at once. She wanted to possess him thoroughly and eternally. Her desire flushed her strength from her body as his tongue penetrated her mouth. She had experienced that only once before in her life and her mother had caught her and the boy and had beaten them both with a broom handle. Eventually the boy was able to run away home, but she couldn’t. She was home.

“Angel!” A voice spoke her name from far away, warningly.

She opened her eyes and his face was upon hers, so close that she could barely focus on it. He was smiling. But it wasn’t in joy or with need or even in lust. It was the smile of a conqueror reveling in his superior strength. In his imposition of his will upon another.

The Angel was suddenly horrified. As much as she could never admit it to herself, she had longed for an embrace such as this. Her need was so great as to approach desperation. This man could have been the answer to all her dreams. He was as handsome as she could ever imagine a man to be. His strength matched hers. It had seemed that his desire matched hers as well, but she now realized that they desired two totally different things.

She needed love. If it couldn’t be spiritual, she realized now openly and to her shame, at least it could be physical. Her mother had not succeeded in beating that sin out of her. She had only driven it deep into her soul where it had finally blossomed with undeniable lust.

But the Witness needed only to conquer. To take. To impose his will and then immediately discard. She saw it on his face and read it in his sneering expression and forced embrace. No matter how great her need, the Angel could not countenance this. But did she, she desperately wondered, really have a choice?

She twisted her neck. Her lips slipped away from his, and the Witness looked down at her and laughed, which only confirmed her worst fears. She pushed against him, but he was the strongest man she’d ever encountered. There was no doubt that he was an ace himself. One of her arms was trapped between their chests. The other was pinned against her side by his encircling arm. She could find no leverage to help her break free. He knew this as well, and laughed at her again.

“The Kiss,” he said, “is only the first lesson I’m going to teach you, slut.” Desperately she brought up her knee, trying to smash his groin, but it struck his massive thigh and rebounded. “Every time you strike me,” he said in a curiously tender voice, “I’ll strike you twice. Then I’ll take you, whether you’re conscious or not.”

The Angel clenched her teeth and hit at him again and again with her knee, but he only laughed. She writhed in his grasp like an animal caught in a trap. She’d gnaw her own leg off to escape him, but there was no such easy remedy to her awful situation. She’d been in his embrace for only seconds, but it seemed like an eternity.

“Christ, Witness, score on your own time. Right now we’ve got a bloody job to do.”

The Witness looked up, frowning. It was the jolly little chubby man whom the Angel had also seen in the Waldorf’s underground garage. He frowned himself a little, and suddenly he didn’t seem so jolly.

“Ah, Dagon,” the Witness said sulkily, then when the jolly little man’s expression turned even less jolly, he quickly released the Angel. He looked back at her scowling ferociously. “All right. But I’m not done with you, slut. I’ll see you again, and then I’ll give you what you deserve for tempting a Godly man.”

“Butcher Dagon.” It was the voice that had called out moments before, warning the Angel when she’d been in the Witness’s grasp. Now she recognized it. The three of them turned to see Billy Ray brushing futilely at the bloodstains that had utterly ruined his impeccable suit. “What brings you to these parts?”

The little man was looking jolly again, like everyone’s favorite uncle. He smiled. “You recognize me?”

“Sure,” Ray said. “I’ve seen your picture in the paper a few times. Usually above the caption ‘Crazed Killer Strikes.’”

Dagon laughed. It was a jolly sound, but out of place in the auditorium’s chaotic atmosphere filled with wailing and crying and screaming. “I don’t recognize you, but I think I can identify you by the way you went through our spear-carriers. Billy Ray, isn’t it?”

Ray nodded.

“So,” Dagon said thoughtfully, “somehow the government has become involved. Interesting. Still, you are outnumbered and outgunned.”

“Yet, we’re kicking your asses.”

Billy Ray grinned a mad grin, and Butcher Dagon shook his head and changed.

The thing facing Billy no longer looked chubby or jolly or even remotely human. It stood upright on two thick legs. It had arms encased in slab-like muscle, a bullet head set directly on broad shoulders, and a prehensile tail as long as its body. Dagon’s clothes had vanished along with his human form, either destroyed during his instantaneous transformation or somehow absorbed into his new, thickly pelted body. The Angel couldn’t tell which. She had little experience with shape-shifters.

Dagon’s new body had brindled black and brown fur covering it from head to toe, beady, wild-looking eyes, a long snout full of sharp, gleaming teeth, and keen-looking claws sprouting from his finger and toe tips. His tail whipped back and forth like an angry snake and copious amounts of saliva drooled from his wicked jaws.

“Je-sus,” Ray said emphatically, and Dagon charged.

They collided like smashing meteors, and the ensuing battle was so fast, so frantic, that the Angel could barely discern who was who most of the time and was certainly unsure which one had the upper hand. They tore at each other like enraged wolverines on amphetamines for twelve or fourteen seconds and then broke as suddenly as Dagon’s initial attack.

The transformed ace leaped back six or eight feet and the combatants stood staring at each other, panting and bloody. It was hard for the Angel to say who was worse off. Ray was down to his shoes and underwear and a few shreds of clothing. He was bleeding from too many places to count. While some of the shallow bites and scratches healed right before the Angel’s astonished eyes, a big flap of skin and flesh hung on Ray’s muscled chest and his upper right arm bled profusely from where Dagon had mangled it with his jaws.

Dagon didn’t look much better. One eye was swollen shut and his right arm was dangling uselessly, the shaft of his broken forearm sticking out jaggedly through his torn flesh. The Angel realized that at least some of the blood dripping from Dagon’s slavering jaws was his own, not Ray’s, as the hairy ace spit out some broken fangs.

Ray smiled crazily, and at that moment the Angel wasn’t sure which of the two combatants she feared the most.

“Round two?” Ray asked.

Dagon said something. The Angel couldn’t understand his words, either because of his injuries or perhaps his transformed vocal cords. But whatever he said was angry and vicious.

They hurled themselves again at each other. Ray managed to grab Dagon’s broken arm. He yanked at it and the transformed ace screamed in a disturbingly inhuman, high-pitched whine. The crazed smile was now fixed on Ray’s face like a horror mask as they strove breast to breast, Dagon’s tail whipping around as if it had a mind of its own. It finally struck Ray’s neck, clung, and wrapped around, pulling tight. The Angel could see it sink into Ray’s flesh like a garrote. Ray clenched his teeth and the tendons and muscles in his neck jumped out like granite ridges.

Dagon tried to rake Ray’s stomach with a clawed foot, but the angle between them was wrong. Ray whipped his head back and forth, but Dagon’s tail was tight as a constrictor around his neck. Ray’s face started to turn red, the vein’s bulging out on his neck and forehead. Ray grabbed Dagon’s tail with both hands and Dagon howled with what sounded to the Angel like fiendish glee.

Ray looked horrible. His face was turning even darker. He frantically tried to pry the strangling tail from around his neck, but it was stronger than nylon rope. The Angel started to go to them, but the Witness, who had also been watching with an approving smile on his handsome face, blocked her path and shook his head.

The Angel clenched her fists as Ray stopped prying at Dagon’s tail, grabbed it with both hands and brought it up to his mouth. He lowered his head and bit down, hard, grinding his teeth like a starving dog trying to crush a bone for its marrow.

Dagon screamed again and tried to pull away. Ray continued to gnaw at his opponent’s tail while yanking at it with all his strength. It suddenly parted with an audible snap and Ray catapulted backward, past the Witness. The Angel caught him, staggered, and went to the floor with him on top.

Dagon hopped about like his feet were on fire. His tail whipped like a decapitated snake, spattering gobs of stinking ichor all over. The Angel helped Ray pull the coil of tail away from his throat as Ray gasped greedily for air.

Dagon frothed at the mouth, wildly screaming words that were mostly unintelligible, but which seemed to contain the phrase “Kill you, fucker,” in various combinations throughout. The Angel blushed.

Ray rose to his feet, staggering unsteadily, as if drunk. “Watch out,” he muttered to the Angel, pushing her aside. “The weasel’s coming back for more.”

The Angel couldn’t believe that Ray had strength left in reserve. He met Dagon in mid-charge, but before they could collide Ray launched himself feet first, face up and back parallel to the floor, as if he were a soccer player attempting a bicycle kick and Dagon’s genitalia were the ball.

Dagon screamed as he connected. The force of Ray’s kick propelled him right at the Angel, who wound up and hit him with everything she had on the point of his jaw.

Pain jumped through her hand, ran up her arm, and jangled through her shoulder. Her hand went numb, which was actually something of a relief, as Dagon changed direction again. He flew back towards Ray, hit the floor, rolled at Ray’s feet, and lay there bleeding.

Ray looked at the Angel crazily. “Hey, we’re a team,” he said, but his smile suddenly turned to an even more frightening frown. “But let me tell you something. The next time you pull that blazing pig-sticker out of the sky, I want you to gut that fucking blonde asshole before you put it away again. All right?”

The Angel smiled feebly and nodded.

“Where is that scumbag, anyway?” Ray asked, looking all around.

Before either of them could spot the Witness, every light in the auditorium suddenly cut out. The room turned pitch black. Ray swore, blundering about in the dark. The Angel stood where she was, counting a slow twenty before the lights on the stage went back on. A handful of seconds went by before the Angel and Ray realized that John Fortune was missing, as was the Witness, and some of the gunmen who had still been conscious when the lights went off.

The taste of failure was a bitter gall in the Angel’s mouth.