Death Draws Five

Chapter four

The Angel moaned softly as the Witness’s clenched fist opened and caressed her cheek, down along her jaw line. She had always been sensitive there. But she didn’t want him to touch her. Did she?

He stared dreamily into her eyes and said, “Knock, knock. Time to hit the road, Angel.”

She woke up, startled and confused. Billy Ray was standing in the open doorway between their connecting rooms. She realized that she must have left it unlocked when she’d collapsed into bed... how long ago, exactly?

She sat up, pulling the sheet up to her shoulders.

“What time is it?” she mumbled.

“Ten thirty two,” Ray announced crisply.

“I—it was already later then that—”

“In the A.M., sweet cheeks.”

She blinked at the realization that she’d slept so late, and blinked again when she realized that she was naked under the sheet, and Ray was staring at her.

The government ace, dressed in another impeccable suit, looked like he’d just rolled out of bed fresh from an untroubled night’s sleep. The bruises had disappeared from his face and all visible cuts had healed. He came into her room moving apparently without pain, though the Angel noted he moved gingerly when he sat down on the room’s other bed. Any other man she’d ever known would still be in a hospital. He smiled at her as he sat down, with none of the wild ferocity she’d seen when he was in the midst of battle. He had seemed to like the fighting. More than that, he’d reveled in it—

“What’s the matter?” Ray asked, his grin still in place.

“Oh.” The Angel forced herself to focus. “Nothing. What’s the plan?”

“The plan? We can discuss it in the car.” He stood and stretched like a sleek and self-satisfied cat. “You still look pretty beat, but we have things we have to do. Although,” he said with a thoughtful look, “if you want to catch a few more winks —“

The Angel sat up, wrapping the sheet around herself almost angrily.

“You don’t have to coddle me,” she said.

“No, but I’d like to,” Ray said with a leer. She just looked at him, and he shrugged. “Go take a shower. It’ll wake you up.”

That, the Angel thought, was a good idea.

“I could soap your back—” Ray offered as she stood with the sheet firmly wrapped around her. She stepped over the sweaty pile of clothes she’d discarded by the side of the bed, grabbed her duffel bag and headed for the bathroom. She slammed the bathroom door and, finally thinking clearly, locked it. “Anyway,” Ray called out through the door, “you can grab some more zzz’s in the car if you’re still tired.”

Car? The Angel thought. She turned the shower to cold and stepped under it. The icy torrent took her breath away and made her heart beat faster. For a moment she thought that it would be fun to have someone to soap her back. Maybe her front as well. Her hands slid over her flat abdomen, skirting the eight-inch scar that crawled over it like an ugly snake and the touch of it against her fingers banished all impure thoughts. She turned off the water. She dried herself, all but her hair, letting that hang down her back in an unmanageable curly mass. She took her spare underwear and black jumpsuit out of the duffel bag and dressed. When she came back into the bedroom. Ray was lying on the extra bed, legs straight out and crossed at the ankles, hands behind his head, watching some weird movie with masked wrestlers on the Spanish station. He glanced up at her.

“What?” the Angel asked, though she knew the look on his face meant that there was lust in his heart.

“Nothing,” Ray said. “That was fast. All right. Let’s go.”

“Where exactly are we going? If you don’t mind telling me?”

“Not at all.” Ray grinned. When he smiled like that he looked years younger, and just about as dangerous as a pussycat. “We’re going to take a trip outside of town and drop in on the Living Gods. One of them, Osiris, is a precog, and may have some insight as to what the Hell is going to happen next. Maybe even where they took the kid.”

The Angel dropped her duffel bag on her bed, thinking that somehow Ray had managed to wrest all control of this mission out of her hands. She didn’t like that. Also, she was hungry. “Well—”

“What?” Ray asked as her voice trailed off.

“Do we have time for breakfast?”

Ray made a show of checking his watch. “It’d be more like brunch, but, sure, why not?”

That’s something, at least, the Angel thought.

They paused in the corridor as they left the room; the Angel making sure her door was really locked. She didn’t trust those credit card-like keys.

“I hope he wasn’t the one who got greased,” Ray said.

She looked at him as they went down the hotel corridor. “Greased? You mean one of them was killed?”

“So the cops told me yesterday when I went down to the station.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you finally reported to the police?” the Angel asked. “Or bring me along?”

Ray shrugged. “What, let them bother you too? It was bad enough that I had to deal with them.”

“Did you tell them about The Hand?” the Angel asked anxiously.

He just looked at her. “You think that I was going to tell them that we’re here in Vegas to rescue Jesus Christ from a bunch of crazed Catholic cultists?”

The Angel breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t believed Ray capable of such subtlety. It was good to see that he had unexpected depths. “What about the Living Gods?” she asked as they made their way through the lobby to the coffee shop. Too bad, the Angel thought, they didn’t have a buffet.

“Like I said. One of them bought it during the attack on the Mirage. The cops didn’t know which one. Funny thing, the body’s already been released. Some kind of religious mumbo-jumbo.” He put his hands out as the Angel glared at him. “Not that I have anything against religious mum—ah, religion.”

A shame, the Angel thought, ruminating on the Living Gods. They were pagans, but in their own way they were innocents.

They seated themselves in the coffee shop and the Angel ordered the he-man breakfast from the menu, pancakes, three eggs (sunny side up), hash browns, ham, bacon, and sausage, with toast on the side. Ray, saying he’d eaten earlier, only had coffee.

She watched him watch her as she ate. She thought of ordering another side of ham, or maybe grits, but Ray’s scrutiny was making her feel self-conscious. She didn’t want him to think she was a glutton. Besides, she was all too conscious of the fact that she had no money to pay for the food she was consuming.

Ray didn’t seem to mind, though. He cheerfully slapped down his credit card and then added a way-too-generous tip that bought a smile to the attractive young waitress serving them. The Angel didn’t like that. She didn’t think it was proper for young women to use their physical attributes to gull susceptible men into giving them money. And if there was one thing she knew about Ray, it was that he was susceptible.

They exited the Mirage through the lobby and a valet bought a car up to them as they waited at the curb. The Angel looked it over disapprovingly. She didn’t know what model or year it was, but it was big, shiny, and expensive. “At least it’s not an SUV,” she muttered as she got into the front seat.

“What?” Ray asked.

“Nothing.”

Ray was a fast, yet precise and careful driver. He didn’t speed. Excessively. He didn’t change lanes. Excessively. He drove like he fought. Quickly, instinctually, and seemingly effortlessly. The car responded to his touch like a trained beast. It seemed to purr as it glided down the strip. Its seats were comfortable. The soft whisper of the dual climate control fanned her like sensual tropic breezes.

She ached only slightly from yesterday’s battle, and was still hungry despite her large breakfast. The batteries that drove the awesome engine of her body were still not entirely recharged. She was still tired, more than she realized. Somewhere, after Ray hit the highway beyond the city limits, lulled by her comfortable surroundings and the smooth glide of the road beneath their feet, the Angel fell asleep.

She dreamed her interrupted dream again, and thought it true. She and the Witness faced each other, only this time there was love in his eyes, not contempt. They were fully dressed, and then they were naked as they day they’d been born, and the Angel felt no guilt about it. Well, not much anyway.

Any trace of guilt vanished when he touched her. His hands were gentle on her face, caressing her cheek, slipping softly to her throat. It was amazing that such a large and strong-looking hand could be so gentle as it trickled down the column of her neck lightly as the wings of a dove. It went lower and she shivered at the touch of his hand on her right breast. Cupping it gently. Whispering over her stiffening nipple.

She closed her eyes and their lips met in a soft, yet increasingly demanding kiss. The Angel’s breath started to come faster. He eyes opened and she was shocked to see that she was no longer in the Witness’s arms, but was being embraced by Jonah, the only boy she’d ever kissed, ten years ago.

That meant... that meant...

Suddenly her mother burst onto the back porch, screaming at them, saying vile dirty things. She swung a broomstick at them, snapping it across the Angel’s shoulders. She started to cry. Jonah bounded up from the back porch swing and lit out like the hounds of Hell were on his trail, and they may well have been. The Angel put her arms over her face and contracted into a ball as her mother screamed at her, waving the broken stick ferociously.

Only, as she opened her eyes again, it wasn’t her mother standing over her. It was Billy Ray. And it wasn’t a stick he was waving.

The Porsche suddenly swerved and the Angel awoke, startled. She reached out, not sure where she was, and caught in a spasm of sudden terror, grabbed the door handle and ripped it off.

Ray glanced sideways at her.

“Insurance isn’t going to cover that,” he said with a frown as she stared at the door handle in her hand. “Sorry I woke you. I had to swerve to miss a turtle in the road.”

“Tortoise,” the Angel corrected. It was better to babble nonsense rather than think about the meaning of her dream.

“What?”

“They don’t have turtles in the desert. They have tortoises.”

“Oh. Well. That’s good to know.” Ray drove on while the Angel looked at the door handle in her hand.

“Hang on,” Ray warned her. “I’m going to turn again. Don’t get all scared and rip the door off this time.”

“Sorry,” the Angel said in a small voice.

“Jeez,” Ray said, looking stolidly out the windshield. “Lighten up. I’m just kidding. Wreck the whole frigging car if you want. I put it on Barnett’s card.” He took a sudden turn, swinging onto a dirt road that meandered seemingly off to nowhere. “But wait until we get back to Vegas, okay? I don’t feel like legging it back through the desert.”

He glanced at her. She smiled back, briefly, but said nothing. He must think I’m a hysterical fool, the Angel told herself. And he’d be right.

The dirt road curved like a snake through the desert, leading finally to the mouth of a small canyon set into a meandering line of hills that provided the only topological relief in sight. Ray drove carefully, but they still jounced roughly, Ray swearing at every pothole and washout he hit. Though he didn’t blaspheme, so the Angel cut him some slack.

“I hope that was the right turnoff,” Ray muttered. “These hicks don’t mark their roads very clearly—yeah, there it is, ahead.”

It was a ranch, a hacienda of some kind that looked old to the Angel’s eye, but she was no architecture expert. She couldn’t even see the main house at first, because the grounds were surrounded by an adobe wall that had definitely seen better days. The Angel imagined that it had been built to keep marauding Indians out, but now it couldn’t keep out a herd of marauding cows. Though it was still twelve or fourteen feet high in some places, most of it had fallen to nearly ground level. Repairs were in progress, but although tools and ladders and mud bricks were all over the place, no one was actually currently working.

The gate stood wide open, the cross arm barely hanging by a single hinge. The wooden sign over the entrance was mostly in Arabic, with the English words “The Oasis—Welcome” neatly lettered below.

“Do you think we should just drive in?” the Angel asked.

Ray shrugged. “We’ve come all this way,” he said, and carefully pulled onto the looping dirt driveway that was bounded by a border of whitewashed stones. He stopped after the first curve and they stared out the windshield and then looked at each other. “I’ll be damned,” Ray said.

“Don’t blaspheme,” the Angel said automatically.

Suddenly, they were in paradise. It was as green as Ireland inside the walls of the old ranchero, with plants and flowers of every type and description abloom in vivid color. The grass looked like putting greens. Rows of corn, mostly hidden behind the main building, grew as tall as an elephant’s eye. Tomato vines thick enough to swing on climbed groaning trellises, green beans hung on netting draped between the vines, and squash the size of pumpkins and pumpkins like boulders were scattered among them. A pond of rather larger proportions than you’d expect to see in a desert was tucked into one corner of the grounds, surrounded by reeds and cattails. Lilies and lotus of every conceivable color covered its surface, providing shelter for the exotic waterfowl diving for aquatic bugs along its margins.

“These Living Gods are some gardeners,” Ray understated as he edged the car forward. He went slowly, careful not to squash any of the fancy-feathered chickens pecking among the driveway gravel. The birds squawked indignantly at the car’s approach, loud enough to alert those inside the hacienda. By the time Ray and the Angel had parked and gone up to the front door, a tall, bird-beaked joker opened it before Ray could knock. He looked sad, the Angel thought, though it was difficult to read the expression on his odd features.

“Hello, Thoth,” Ray said.

“Mr. Ray. Miss...?”

“This is Angel,” Ray said, and somehow the Angel suppressed the urge to correct him. “She’s my partner. Listen, I know this is a difficult time—”

The bird-beaker joker stepped aside and opened the door wide. “Come in,” he said.

The interior of the old house was cool despite the desert heat. Its floors were tile, the walls adobe brick. There was little furniture in the rooms they went through, but a riot of colorful rugs covered the floors and walls. Thoth led them out the rear entrance, where he stopped and turned to them as they stood on the threshold of the back yard where the other Living Gods were picking flowers from among the riot of blooms that grew there, or just standing talking or sitting silently, comforting each other as best they could.

“We are preparing our brother Sheb for burial,” he explained in a sadly ominous voice punctuated by weird clacking of his long beak. He gestured toward a square, blank-walled shed in the back. Out in the far reaches of the enclosed yard, out beyond that square shed, the Angel could see two of them digging a grave in the soft sand of the desert floor.

“You’re not,” the Angel heard herself blurt out, “mummifying him?”

Ray glanced at her with pursed lips and a frown, but Thoth didn’t seem to mind. “No, Miss Angel,” he said. “I’m afraid that we are a much simpler people than our ancestors were. We have neither the time nor the money to do the job properly, but—”

He fell silent for a moment as one of his comrades came from the shed. Brown and thin and weathered as an old stick, the old man carried four small jars made from white stone. He looked at Thoth, nodded, and took the jars to a woman who had obviously recently been weeping. On a small table before her were a number of small human-like figurines, no more than six inches high, made of clay or stone

“—We do the best we can for our brother. He goes west with his vitals safe in their canopic jars, his ushbati to provide for him in the land of the dead, and our prayers for Anubis to aid him during the time of judgement.”

It didn’t sound all too different to the Angel than a Christian burial. Except that part about the canopic jars. And the ushbati figures. And, actually, Anubis. She felt bad that the poor man would be condemned to Hell because he was a pagan. Anyway, it was all the Allumbrados fault. It was something else that they had to pay for.

“That’s all he could ask,” Ray said.

The Angel stared at him, surprised at his unexpected compassion, as Thoth nodded his bird head. The other Living God—blasphemous as that thought was—gave the jars to the mourning woman and then joined them. He looked normal, if under-nourished and over-tanned by years of exposure to a harsh sun.

“This is my brother, Osiris. He speaks little English, but there is something he would tell you.”

Ray nodded. “His fame is great. I dared to come and interrupt your grief with the hope that he might have news of the boy.”

Osiris spoke rapid Arabic. Ray nodded. The Angel could scarcely believe that he knew what the man was saying.

“Alf shukr,” Ray said. “A thousand thanks for all. Our sorrow for your loss is great.”

“Our strength is spent,” Thoth said. “We are now all old, or weak. We only wish to pass the remainder of our lives peacefully among the oasis we have created in this desert, which reminds us so much of the home we have lost. We can aid you no more.”

“You’ve done enough,” Ray said.

Thoth shook his head. “We wish we could do more. But we have two favors to ask of you.”

“Name them,” Ray said, stepping on the Angel’s foot when she started to interrupt.

“Save the boy. Save the beloved of Ra,” Thoth said. “He is the great light who will illume the world.”

“We will,” Ray said. “And the other thing?”

“Avenge our brother,” said Osiris in heavily accented English.

Ray smiled. It was not the simple grin the Angel had seen earlier. It was not a reassuring sight to the Angel’s eyes. “That,” Ray said, “I can promise.”

Osiris grinned back, while Thoth grimaced like a vulture.

“No need to disturb you further,” Ray said. “We can see ourselves out.” He made a gesture of farewell to the old men, who bowed as Ray grabbed the Angel’s hand and hustled her back into the house.

“What did he tell you?” the Angel demanded.

“Where the kid is,” Ray said, smiling.

“How’d he know?”

Ray shrugged. “He’s a prophet. He sees things.”

“He’s a pagan!” the Angel said.

Ray shrugged again. “So?”

They went through the house. The Angel shut the front door carefully behind them. “So where is he?” she asked, her concern and aggravation growing.

“Now?” Ray asked.

“OF COURSE NOW.”

Ray grinned. She felt like punching him. “Osiris isn’t sure. He thinks somewhere in New York City. Some kind of jail, or hospital, or something.”

“That’s helpful,” the Angel said as they slid into the front seat of the car.

Ray twisted around and looked at the Angel. “But soon,” he said with a smile that had a tinge of crazy, “he’s going to camp.”

“Camp?” she repeated, as Ray started the car, gunned the engine, and then took off at a sedate pace up the driveway, and the rutted desert road beyond.

New York City: St Dympna’s Home for the Mentally Deficient and Criminally Inclined

Since he had the rank accorded an ace and was also a perfecti in the Allumbrados, Nighthawk had a private room set aside for his use in St. Dympna’s, though he rarely took advantage of that dubious perk.

The place made his skin crawl. Back in the mid-nineteenth century up through the latter part of the twentieth, when Dympna’s was a going concern run by a nursing order of the Church, it had housed hundreds of patients within its grim stone walls. Most were kept in the large dormitory-like rooms on the first floor, segregated by sex, if not always by mental malady. The private rooms on the second floor had been reserved for more affluent patients, while the third floor was for the staff. No one ever said much about the basement and what went on in there, not even now.

Officially, Dympna’s had closed some time in the 1970s and stood empty for over two decades before coming to Contarini’s attention. Interested in strengthening his power base, the Cardinal had secretly activated the decrepit pile of stones for use as a training station for credenti, the lowest rank of the brotherhood. The basement rooms also made a fine storage place for those who angered or inconvenienced the Cardinal.

Cameo currently occupied one of those basement rooms. Or, perhaps more accurately, cells. Nighthawk had hoped to spirit her away almost immediately upon their arrival, but the old horror pit was alive with unexpected activity. Usually staffed by a few sleepy credenti and some new recruits in the dormitory-like rooms on the first floor, now it was swarming with gunmen babbling about the day’s events in Vegas.

No obsequenti were present, but Nighthawk had learned from a couple of credenti that Butcher Dagon and the Witness had actually succeeded in their mission of capturing the Anti-Christ and had bought him back, bound, from Las Vegas. The Witness had gone to the Waldorf to report to the Cardinal (At least Contarini would be somewhat mollified, Nighthawk thought, by the success of the second prong of his master plan.) and Dagon was in the third floor infirmary, along with several injured credenti, recovering from wounds sustained in the boy’s snatch and grab.

The purported Anti-Christ now occupied a cell in the oubliette, probably next to Cameo, under close guard. Security was at an unprecedented peak. The old asylum hadn’t been as tightly locked down since ‘57 when an ace-powered psychopath had escaped the oubliette and slaughtered thirty-seven patients in the dormitory before being over-powered by a mysterious patient from the second floor who’d been catatonic for almost a decade before suddenly waking and stopping the carnage by seemingly draining the psychopath’s mind. The cryptic ace/patient had then escaped St. Dympna’s in a manner unknown to the rumormongers who delighted in telling such horror stories about the history of the old sanitarium.

Nighthawk could well imagine the torments a sensitive like Cameo was suffering while being locked in a cell that had housed generations of drooling psychotics, but there was nothing he could do except bed down in his tiny room on the third floor, wait awhile, and hope that something would break for the better in the coming hours.

He needed the rest, anyway. He wasn’t as young as he once was, though he was younger than he used to be.

Las Vegas: The Mirage

It was late afternoon by the time Ray and Angel got back to Vegas and had dinner at an all you can eat buffet. At first he tried to keep up with her, plate for plate, but gave it up after the fourth helping. She could eat like a bastard. It was a good thing, he thought, that she was so frigging active, otherwise she’d look like a balloon.

After dinner they’d gone down to the police station and tried to get an interview with Dagon, but the local donut chokers went coy on them. They wanted an order from Ray’s superior, and since Ray didn’t particularly want them to know who his current superior actually was, they left the station saying they’d come back. But they didn’t.

They didn’t know where the kid would be for at least a day, so the only constructive thing Ray could think of was to try to get Angel into the sack, but it would have been easier to break into maximum security to interview Dagon.

Ray lay in his bed in the Mirage alone, trying hard not to think of Angel on the other side of the connecting door. It had been a long, not very productive couple of days. Sure, he’d gotten to kick some ass, but those frigging Allumbrados had managed to get away with the kid, Peregrine was laying in a hospital somewhere with tubes stuck into her arms, and as yet he hadn’t even managed to get a chuckle out of Angel, let alone a civil word.

That Witness, though...

Ray added his name to the list of jerks whose ass he’d like to kick. He didn’t like the way Angel had looked at him when they’d first come face to face. He especially didn’t like the way the pretty boy had treated her. It’s one thing to best someone in combat. It’s another thing to humiliate them. Ray hated bullies, and it was clear that this Witness was one.

But maybe Angel had learned a lesson. She’d done okay after initially putting herself in a hole by letting the Witness get the upper hand. Ray had thought about stepping in to even things up a bit, but he knew how he’d feel if someone had done that to him. It wouldn’t have made him happy.

And speaking of being not happy, Ray thought. He leaned over to the phone, suppressing a groan as his still unknit ribs scraped against each other, and got an outside line. He dialed a number he knew well, and it was picked up on the second ring.

“President Leo Barnett’s office.”

“Alejandro?” Ray asked. Of course it was the kid. Who else would answer in that irritatingly perky manner? “Gimme Barnett.”

There was a brief silence. “Uh, sorry, mis—uh, Billy. No can do. He’s in closed conference with Sally Lou.”

Ray was about to ask, At this time of night? but instead grinned sourly at the phone. “Is that what they’re calling it now?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” Ray said. “Listen, you been following events here?”

“Yes, sir,” the kid said. “President Barnett’s not real happy.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve smiled more in my life,” Ray said. “What’s the latest news?”

“There’s not much in the way of recent developments. It’s not general knowledge, but we found out that Peregrine’s husband had her flown out of Vegas on a medivac Lear, back to New York. Thought they could do a better job for her at the Jokertown Clinic than in the Vegas hospital. John Fortune’s still missing. So’s his bodyguard.”

“His bodyguard’s a shapeshifter,” Ray informed the kid. At least, it seemed likely from the info he’d gleaned from Osiris’s tale. “So I figure he impersonated Butcher Dagon—who’s in a Vegas lockup —and took off with the kid.” Ray frowned into the phone. He had to keep his kids straight.

“Well, that’s something,” his kid said. “What happened to Dagon?”

“I kicked his hairy ass,” Ray said. “Angel helped,” he added, to be fair.

“Boy, she’s something,” the kid said.

“You got that. Listen. Tell Barnett that me and Angel are taking the first flight tomorrow morning to Tomlin.”

“How come?” the kid asked.

“We have a line on Fortune,” Ray said. “Something that weird old fart Osiris told me. He’s not sure where Fortune is right now. He thinks he may be in New York City—which at least narrows it down a little. But soon the kid—Fortune, that is, is gonna show up in some summer camp in a whistle-stop called New Hampton, just north of the city. Angel and I will be there to meet him.”

“Okay,” the kid said. “You got it, Billy. Gee, I wish I could be with you and the Angel doing something useful instead of sitting around here in the office while President Barnett takes meetings.”

Ray shook his head. “No you don’t, kid,” he said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one. Besides, I’m not really sure we could use your talents. Yet.”

“Ah, it’ll all work out fine, Billy. You’ll see.”

“Yeah.”

“But you and the Angel be careful, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Say Hello to the Angel for me?”

“Yeah.”

“Good ni—”

“Good night, kid,” Ray said, and hung up. He still had things to do, and he didn’t want to spend twenty minutes getting off the phone. He called the airport and got reservations for two on the first plane in the morning headed east. It was an early flight which didn’t leave much time for sleep. He sighed, called the desk for a five o’clock wake up call for him and Angel both, and settled back down on the bed. He wasted most of the night thinking about Angel in the room next to his, while his body went about the business of repairing itself, muscle, bone, sinew, and nerve.

It was quite used to that, by now.

New York City: St Dympna’s Home for the Mentally Deficient and Criminally Inclined

It was still some hours before dawn when Nighthawk heard a soft knock on his door. Years of strenuous living had taught him how to awake instantly and fully.

“Yes,” he said, sitting up in bed.

“Phone call for you, Mr. Nighthawk,” a respectful voice said softly.

“I’ll be right with you.”

He was wearing his shorts and tee shirt in lieu of pajamas, so he took a moment to put on pants, shirt, shoes, and jacket and run a brush through his hair. Nighthawk always figured that since he could meet his end at any second, he should always be well dressed when he went out in public. If he was going to end up in Hell, he certainly wanted to look his best. And if he was going to Heaven, he was sure it would be expected. When he opened the door to the corridor an unfamiliar face awaited. Nighthawk figured that he was a recently recruited credenti. The new recruits always got stuck with the jobs nobody else wanted, like nighttime security.

“Yes?” Nighthawk asked.

“It’s Usher. He’s calling from the Waldorf and wants to talk to a perfecti.”

“All right.” He followed the credenti to the office where a couple of Allumbrados were hanging out, supposedly guarding the building but, Nighthawk suspected, actually bullshitting and eating donuts. At least, the open, mostly empty donut boxes and half-filled coffee cups near every hand led him to suspect that that was the case. The three of them, including the message boy they’d sent to get Nighthawk, watched with interest as he took a seat behind the old-fashioned desk.

“Usher,” Nighthawk said into the telephone.

“John,” the big man said with surprise. “Good thing you’re still there.”

“I didn’t feel like coming back into the city after getting Cameo settled.”

“Yeah.” Since Usher and Magda were acting as Contarini’s private bodyguards, they’d returned to the Waldorf right away after escorting Cameo and Nighthawk through Dympna’s wrought iron gates. “Listen. We may have a problem.”

“What else is new,” Nighthawk said, sorting through the leftover donuts on the desk stop. “Ah. Raspberry filled.” He took a bite and chewed softly.

“No time for snacks,” Usher said. “We’ve discovered that Butcher Dagon apparently isn’t really Butcher Dagon.”

“Really?” Nighthawk said. He looked pointedly at the coffee cup that one of the credenti held until the recruit scrambled to his feet and got Nighthawk one for himself.

“Who is he, then?”

“We’re not sure,” Usher said. “It seems the real article is in a Vegas jail cell.”

“Interesting,” Nighthawk said. “I’d better check it out.”

“We can be there in half an hour.”

“You’d better. I don’t have much confidence in the local talent.”

Suddenly the three credenti were looking everywhere in the room but at Nighthawk.

“Okay, John. We’re on the way.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me and Magda and the Witness.”

“Which one?”

“The big one.”

“All right,” Nighthawk said. He hung up the phone and stared thoughtfully into space for a moment while he finished his coffee and donut. The Bigger Asshole. He’d better, he decided, move fast.

“What is it?” one of the credenti asked. Nighthawk looked at him steadily until he added, “Sir?”

“Possible security breach,” Nighthawk said, rising from behind the desk.

“Want us to come with you, sir?”

Nighthawk shook his head. If they saw what he was planning to do, he’d have to kill them all, and Nighthawk just wasn’t that bloodthirsty.

“No. Give me the keys to the infirmary.” One of them took a ring of keys off his belt and handed the proper one to Nighthawk, who nodded his thanks and crossed the room in his soft, measured tread. He stopped at the door and added, “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, come after me.” He thought twenty minutes should give him plenty of time, if things went well. If they didn’t... it probably wouldn’t matter. “In the meantime, finish your donuts.”

He closed the office door softly behind him and went down the corridor lit dimly by infrequent night lights. It’s just like the Cardinal, Nighthawk thought, to be stingy with the electricity. You’d think he was paying the bills personally.

The infirmary was a three-room suite with an entrance off the corridor. The key fit the outer door, but, surprisingly, Nighthawk discovered that it was already unlocked. He opened it quietly and slipped into the reception area, which was dark and silent. A closed supply room was attached to the reception area. The infirmary itself, where the sick or injured were bedded, opened off the reception room, and by order was also locked at night when there was no nurse or doctor in attendance. Contarini had a loyal medical staff on call, but they only spent the night if a patient was in danger. In this case, Nighthawk understood that they’d transported a badly wounded credenti to a friendly hospital where there’d be no questions about how he’d gotten hurt.

Nighthawk stopped before the infirmary door. It was ajar. He listened intently, but heard only random rustling movements of sleeping men. Moving as quietly as approaching death, he took the glove off his left hand and then slowly opened the door wide enough for him to look inside. There were four beds. Three were occupied by injured men, now sleeping, none of whom looked like Butcher Dagon. The fourth, with disturbed bedclothes, was empty. Nighthawk glanced at the inside of the door, and frowned. A smear of blood on the lockplate was still dripping sluggishly to the floor. He touched the stain gingerly, then rubbed his fingertips together. The blood was still relatively fresh.

He checked the outer door and discovered that it too had a bloodied lockplate.

“Curious,” Nighthawk said quietly to himself, wiping the blood on his fingers on a tissue he took from the box on the reception desk.

He moved like a ghost into the dimly-lit corridor, swiftly and silently, and went down the stairway that led to the floors below.

New York City: Jokertown

It must have been a tough day at the monastery, Fortunato thought as he awoke and tried to sit up. I hurt all over. He paused, frowning. And my tatami smells like someone’s pissed on it.

He opened his eyes suddenly remembering a fist the size of a small boulder crashing into the back of his head. He sat up, groaning, and looked around. He was no longer in the alley. It was dark and he couldn’t tell exactly where he was, but it didn’t look good and it smelled worse.

After a moment his eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he realized that he was in an abandoned building. Probably not in an interior room because light was filtering through holes in the walls and down through the floors above. It was artificial light, and it wasn’t abundant. The building was apparently located in an area with few functioning streetlights.

Fortunato wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with buildings that looked like they’d gone through the blitz and then been taken over by clans of cave-dwelling troglodytes who weren’t picky about personal sanitation or garbage disposal. When he was a kid he’d often played in similar ruins. Sometimes he and his friends would stumble across drunks and jokers while exploring derelict structures, but such creatures were usually more scared of him than he was of them. Though there had been exceptions.

He swiveled unto his hands and knees, grimacing in disgust at the urine, blood, and come stains on the mattress the Jokka Bruddas had dropped him on. At least, he thought, they didn’t just dump me on broken glass and nail-studded debris. But he wasn’t in the mood to be particularly forgiving to the thugs who’d ambushed, then kidnapped him. He was in the mood to hit back. Hard.

He pushed himself to his feet, swaying as a wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm him.

Concussion, damn it, he thought.

He clenched his teeth and staggered like a drunk, sending bits of building debris and a couple of empty liquor bottles skittering across the floor, eventually colliding against a wall mostly reduced to naked studs. The few wall panels that remained were covered with gang graffiti.

Not much has changed since I was a kid, Fortunato thought. This must be the Bruddas hangout. The center of their turf. The desire to get even with the joker punks was suddenly quenched by the realization that he was in danger. Potentially fatal danger. Got to get out of here.

He pushed away from the wall and stood straight, scowling darkly at nothing. He suddenly realized that he was thinking like the old Fortunato, not the Fortunato who had spent fifteen years trying to learn how to cloak himself in serenity. Worry about that later. Worry now about getting your ass out of here before those punks show up and finish you.

“Well look who’s awake,” a voice said from behind him. “That crazy old Fortunato.”

Too late, he told himself grimly.

Carlos and his gang of tormentors came from somewhere inside the abandoned structure where probably the rooms were intact and the garbage less ubiquitous. Their numbers had been augmented by an extra eight or ten other jokers. Fortunato squinted at them blearily. Some of the newcomers were possibly female.

Ricky, the giant, stooped low so he could get through the doorway into Fortunato’s room. His high voice squeaked something that Fortunato’s still-dazed brain couldn’t quite make out. Most of the others laughed.

“Careful, Ricky,” Carlos said in mock fear. “He’s Fortunato! He’s a mean old ace. Why, my Dad told me that he can fly. He can throw lightning with his hands. Watch out, hermano. All you can do is hit him. Like you done before.”

The girl (at least Fortunato assumed it was a girl) clinging to his arm tittered, and repeated, “Hit him, hit him, hit him!”

The rest of the Bruddas took up the chant. Ricky smiled as he approached, bowing at the waist so his face was almost level with Fortunato’s. Fortunato stood as straight as he could, even though his head whirled with vertigo and he felt like puking. He moved fast and was almost on target. His fist struck the joker in the cheek, and stuck there.

Ricky’s flesh was coated with a layer of slime with the consistency of thick mucilage. Fortunato pulled, and the joker’s skin stretched a good half foot until it was taut, but he couldn’t yank his fist free. Ricky laughed. He grabbed Fortunato around the waist with his titan-sized hands and lifted him high, smashing him against what was left of the room’s ceiling.

Fortunato grunted, absorbing the blow as best he could, though nausea-tinged pain washed through his system like a tidal wave.

“Don’t break him, Ricky,” Carlos said. “Let us play with ‘em, too. We wanna teach the old bastard a lesson. Let us show him who’s the power in J-town, now.”

His fellow gangbangers howled as Ricky tossed him contemptuously to the floor. Fortunato felt glass shards rip his clothes and score the flesh beneath as he skidded half a score of feet to right in front of the Bruddas. He looked up, groaning in pain. All he saw was a sea of horrific faces surrounding him. He knew they were eager for his blood.

“You know what’s funny, old man?” Carlos asked with a mocking smile. He reached into his back pocket and took out a rolled up magazine, an old issue of Aces! Digger, no doubt, Fortunato thought, would be pleased. The joker finally found the page he was looking for, opened the magazine and held it out for Fortunato to see. Fortunato squinted at it, but he couldn’t quite make out the photo. “You are Fortunato.” Carlos looked back and forth from the photo in the magazine to Fortunato, lying in the debris at his feet. “At least, you look like the old motherfucker. Well, whatever.”

Carlos tossed the magazine over his shoulder, where it landed on the floor with the other, less savory garbage.

“It don’ matter,” he said, explaining the situation to Fortunato. “We win, in any case. If you are Fortunato, we beat you until you nice and tender, then we cut you, we cook you, and we eat you.” Carlos smiled. “I get your liver. I hope you not a drinking man, because I like them nice and tender. It’s, like, a sacrament. Body and blood, man. Body and blood. If you not, if you just a crazy old man, we still get a nice meal. See, fucker, any way, we win.”

He drew a knife from a sheath he carried in the small of his back. It wasn’t a fighting knife. It was a filleting knife.

Fortunato tried to stand as they closed around him. He couldn’t rise. His head hurt like a beaten gong. His insides felt wrong where Ricky had squeezed him. All he could do was roll over on his stomach, pull his knees in and cover his head with his arms as the blows started to fall. Some of the jokers kicked him, some beat him with boards and pipes and other handy weapons. He quickly lost track of what was happening as he drowned in an ocean of sudden pain.

I’m Fortunato, he screamed silently. I’m Fortunato. It can’t end like this. Blood thundering in his ears, agony washed across him like a tidal wave. He screamed, “Help me, someone help me.”

As total blackness claimed him, he couldn’t even be sure that he had spoken aloud.

New York City: St Dympna’s Home for the Mentally Deficient and Criminally Inclined

Jerry stood before the locked door, twisting his forefinger like a key in a lock. There was a click as the lock sprung, and he extricated his finger from the keyhole. A couple of inches of bone, shaped like a key, protruded from the tip of his bloody forefinger. A skeleton key, Jerry thought.

He rarely had the opportunity to use this aspect of his shape-shifting powers. Even though it kind of hurt when he extruded the bone through the meat of his fingertip, it pleased him when he had the chance to exercise this particular talent. As far as he knew, it was unique in the wild card world. He turned and waved a silent good-bye to his erstwhile companions. Their presence had been something of a pain in the butt, as he had to wait until he was sure they were all asleep before he made his escape, but they had also helped him in their own way. First, one of them had supplied Jerry’s current outfit. Jerry had waited until he was sure that they were all asleep before rummaging through their clothes to find something that fit, but it was better making his escape in the sweaty and bloodstained fatigues than in a hospital gown with his ass sticking out.

Second, they were all more severely wounded than Jerry was pretending to be, so he was able to wave most of the medical attention away from himself, insisting that the nurse check them out before turning to him. It would have been pretty embarrassing if they’d discovered that Jerry wasn’t really injured at all. In fact, one of his companions had been so badly hurt that they’d taken him to a real hospital. The medics hadn’t yet returned to the infirmary, which made Jerry’s escape all the easier.

He crossed the dark reception room and listened carefully, his ear against the door, but there was no sound in the corridor outside. He inserted his finger in the lockplate of the door to the corridor, hoping that he wouldn’t have to grow another key. It took time to mold the bone around the intricacies of a lock, and he wasn’t sure how much time he had before a guard might show up. He wasn’t sure if the corridors were guarded at all, but even if they weren’t there was always the chance of running into someone going to the kitchen for a snack. The last thing he wanted to do was raise an alarm. He was one against how many he couldn’t even began to guess. He could only trust to the efficacy of his Dagon impersonation, and to lessen the chance of someone penetrating it, move quietly and stealthily. Jerry was good at that, but he had a feeling he would need more than skill to spring John Fortune. He would need luck as well, and that was something he hadn’t been blessed with.

It could be worse, he thought. I could really be hurt as bad as Dagon had seemed to be.

The corridor was quiet and dimly lit by infrequent nightlights. Following the way he’d originally come, he found the staircase, and, as they did on the way up, by-passed whatever was on the second and first floors and went directly to the basement.

That area of the rambling old building was not quite as well appointed as the rest of the structure. The walls were rough-dressed stone blocks. The floors were actually flagstone. The basement reminded Jerry uncomfortably of every dungeon he’d seen in every medieval epic ever filmed. The rooms leading off the main corridor were dungeon-like cells with stout oaken doors that had tiny iron-barred windows set into them. All that was missing was the fat, hairy-stomached turnkey with a hunchback and black hood.

Jerry stopped to look down a corridor lit even more dimly than those on the floor above. His noise suddenly crinkled in disgust. “What’s that smell?” he asked himself quietly.

It was dampness compounded by a rank animal odor that was teasingly familiar. Jerry cat-footed by the first cell, heard an odd sound and stopped and looked in through the tiny window set in the cell door. In the dim light he could discern a twisted shape, human turned animal. He realized that this was also the source of the peculiar smell, as waves of it streamed through the window, gagging him.

It was the joker they’d led around by a leash, the one they called Blood. He was sleeping curled up in a pile of straw in one corner of the stone-floored room. Something about the very sight of the creature made Jerry shiver.

Then he woke up and looked right at Jerry. His lips curled back from his protruding teeth in a silent snarl.

Jerry froze. He didn’t want the joker to raise a ruckus and alert whatever guards may be lurking around the dungeon. He smiled. “Good boy,” he said lowly in as kindly a tone as he could muster. “Good do—good fellow.”

Blood cocked his head in an inquisitive manner, and got up from the pile of hay, stretching luxuriously. He went to a corner of the cell, lifted his leg and urinated on a pile of newspaper spread out evidently for that purpose while Jerry kept his feelings of disgust off his face. There was no telling how smart this creature was, and he didn’t want the thing pissed at him. Blood stretched again and ambled over to the door, looking up with what Jerry took to be a hopeful expression.

“What do you want?” Jerry looked around for something to placate the joker, and noticed a large can of Spam sitting on the floor near the cell door. He picked it up and held it in the window for Blood to see. Blood started to drool.

“Quiet now!” Jerry ordered as the joker showed signs of growing excitement. Somehow Jerry was certain that opening the can would be beyond the joker’s capabilities, so he detached the key and cranked the lid open himself. He slid the slab of glistening meat by-product from the can and tossed it through the barred window. Blood caught the slab in his mouth and capered back to his pile of hay where he carefully arranged himself and started to bolt it down as Jerry wiped his hand on his pants, fighting the queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“I’ve got to get out of this place,” he told himself.

He went on down the corridor, glancing into every cell he passed, fighting the impulse to call out loud to John Fortune. Most of the cells were empty. A few were occupied by men who were either sleeping or gazed at Jerry with dull, lifeless eyes that seemed to be without a spark of intelligence. He moved past these rapidly, afraid that they might say something, might make a plea that he couldn’t answer.

He arrived at the next to last cell in the row. He still had the entire other side of the corridor to check, but he was getting fearful that something had gone wrong, that they’d already taken John Fortune somewhere, that they’d done something awful to him and he’d never get the kid back. When he looked in the cell he saw in the dim light a slim, youthful body standing half hidden in the darkness and hope again flared to life.

“John,” he whispered urgently, and the body moved, quick as a cat, running silently to grip the bars of the window set in the thick door, and he knew right away from the shape of it, from the long, flowing hair, that this was not John Fortune.

“Who are you?” she cried. “Did Nighthawk send you?”

“Nighthawk?” Jerry asked, confused.

It was a young woman. She was beautiful, but with her face was screwed up so tightly that he knew she was barely clinging to this side of sanity. Her familiarity gnawed at him until he realized that she was Cameo, a somewhat well-known ace who would have been much better known if she’d actively sought out publicity.

“What are you doing here?” Jerry asked in a low voice.

“Nighthawk brought me here,” she said in a quick whisper, almost more to herself than Jerry. “The Cardinal made him. He said he was going to free me soon, but he hasn’t come. I can’t—I can’t take this place much longer. This place is mad, insane with death and misery. It drips from the walls, running in puddles up to my knees—”

“All right,” Jerry said in low, soothing tones, “all right.” Her voice was rising, almost hysterically. He tried to shush her, but it was already too late.

“Quiet out there!”

The command came from inside what looked to be a larger room at the end of the corridor, perhaps the office, or the hangout, or whatever you wanted to call it, of the freak show’s keeper. Jerry could hear someone moving around, probably in response to Cameo’s growing frenzy.

“Can’t sleep with you yelling like a crazy woman! You make me come out there and I’ll give you something to yell about!”

“All right,” Jerry said. “I’ll get you out of here.”

“My hat,” Cameo demanded. “Get my hat!”

“All right,” he repeated again, helplessly making placating gestures. “Just be quiet for a minute.”

“My hat,” she repeated, insistently.

Jerry nodded vigorously, striding towards the guard room to discover the modern day equivalent of a medieval torturer manning the dungeon as he practically bumped into a large, fat, and unshaven man coming out of the room with a snarl on a face that could have only been improved if it had been wiped clean and redone. The man started and blinked dumbly for a few moments as he stared at Jerry. He was wearing a dirty undershirt, dirty jeans, scuffed shoes, and, of all things, a battered fedora.

“Bu-Bu-Butcher Da-Da-Dagon,” he stuttered with a degree of fright that was almost comical. “Wha-wha-wha are you do-doing he-he-here?”

Jerry kept his smile to himself. At least his disguise was working. He had no idea what Dagon’s voice was like, so he modeled his British accent on Roger Moore.

“I’ve come for Cameo,” he said. He remembered something that she’d said, and inspiration struck him. “The Cardinal wants her.”

The dungeon-keeper bobbed his head in mute and complete agreement. He turned and led the way back into his office. There wasn’t much too it. A wooden table with a scarred surface that looked like someone had been playing mumblety-peg on it. A few wooden chairs that looked scarcely capable of supporting the guard’s bulk. A large handbag teetered on one corner of the table with a pile of junk spread out before it.

“This her stuff?” Jerry asked.

“Uh-huh,” the jail keeper replied.

Clearly someone had dumped her over-sized purse and searched through the accumulated mass of feminine paraphernalia. There was a lot of stuff, most of which Jerry didn’t care to examine too closely. For a moment he was worried, because the all-important hat she’d demanded wasn’t present. Jerry turned and looked at the turnkey, frowning.

“Where’s the hat?” he asked as flatly as he could, discovering that it was hard to be menacing and yet sound like Roger Moore.

“Uhhh.” It seemed to be the guard’s favorite word. Sheepishly, he removed the battered fedora that was perched jauntily on his head, exposing a forehead that couldn’t have contained a teaspoon full of brains. He held it out apologetically to Jerry.

Jerry had expected some kind of female-type hat, but if this was the one in the bag, this was the one she must have been talking about. He swept all of Cameo’s other paraphernalia into the purse, figuring there might be some other vital bit of equipment she needed. He took the hat from the guard as he swept out of the room, paused in the doorway and took a key ring that was hanging from a spike hammered into the wall. The keys were iron, appropriately massive for the old cells. Jerry had thought he’d be able to do his skeleton key trick to open up the cell doors, but judging by the size of the keys in his hand, he’d have to stick two or three fingers into the massive lockplate to be able to duplicate the key, and he didn’t think that would have worked too well.

He paused and turned to the guard. “Stay here. I don’t want to disturb your rest any further.”

He hoped that he’d managed an appropriately sinister turn of voice and the jailer would obey. He didn’t want the man peering over his shoulder while he went through the cells freeing not only John Fortune and Cameo, but all the prisoners.

He went back out into the corridor, and his heart suddenly seemed to catch in his throat as he saw a dark figure. For a moment he panicked, and then he realized that the man seemed to have more of a waiting than lurking attitude, and he didn’t seem very menacing at all. He was a small, older-looking, very dark-skinned black man neatly dressed in a dark suit with a faint pinstripe, white shirt, and polished black shoes that would have been very stylish fifty, sixty years ago. It looked, in fact, like something Bogart would have worn in Casablanca. The old man carried it off very well. He looked sharp, in the parlance of an earlier generation. Except for the black glove that he wore on his left hand. What’s up with that? Jerry wondered.

“You shouldn’t be prowling around the oubliette alone, Dagon,” the old man said in a sweet, soft voice that revealed his deep south roots. There was, however, a peculiar emphasis on the word “Dagon” that Jerry didn’t like.

“Just checking things out,” Jerry said, trying to sound like Dagon but suspecting already that he was wasting his effort.

The old man nodded. “Perhaps we should introduce ourselves,” he said formally. “My name is John Nighthawk. I am in the employ of Cardinal Romulus Contarini, whose hospitality you are currently enjoying at Saint Dympna’s Home For The Mentally Deficient And Criminally Inclined. And you are?”

“Butcher Dagon?” Jerry asked, trying but failing to keep an interrogatory tone out of his voice. He knew now that his cover was blown, but at least he wasn’t being confronted by a pumped-up muscle head like Witness or a stone killer like Dagon. He figured that he should be able to handle this old man, though he realized that appearances in the wild card world could be utterly deceiving.

John Nighthawk shook his head. “Time to put all the bullshit aside, son. I’m afraid that Butcher Dagon is currently a guest of state of Nevada, city of Las Vegas. I’m afraid also that if we want to get out of here, we don’t have much time. A team of heavily armed mercenaries backed by aces is going to show up in a very few minutes. It’d be better if none of us were here to answer their questions.”

Jerry sighed. Once again, it seemed as if nothing were really as it seemed. He was getting tired of playing this game. “What do you want?” Jerry asked.

“I want Cameo,” Nighthawk said. “I want to get her out of here. Since you came here with John Fortune, I assume you want him, and you also want out. I have no objection to that.”

“Just what do you people want with him?” Jerry asked. “Who the Hell are you, anyway?”

Nighthawk shook his head. “There’s no time for long explanations. Let me just say that Contarini is the head of an order known as the Allumbrados, which means ‘The Enlightened Ones.”’ They believe that John Fortune is the Anti-Christ—”

“What?” Jerry couldn’t believe his ears.

Nighthawk held up a forestalling hand, the gloved one. “We can talk about this or we can get the Hell out of here.”

Jerry nodded. “All right. Let’s get the Hell out.” He and John Fortune could ditch this crazy old coot as soon as they hit the fresh air. “Cameo’s this way.”

He led the way to her cell where she was still clinging to the bars, her eyes just this side of crazy.

“Nighthawk!” she hissed. “You promised—”

“I know,” the old man said placatingly. “I’m here now. Let’s just get out of here, and you can chew me out as much as you want.”

That seemed to mollify her a little, but when she saw that Jerry had her bag, she thrust her thin arm through the barred window. “Gimme!” she demanded.

Jerry could see that the bag wouldn’t fit through the bars, so he just handed her the hat. She snatched it from him and pulled it through the narrow opening, further squeezing it out of shape. She clapped it on her head without bothering to smooth it back into form.

“Open the door,” she said.

“Working on it,” Jerry said. Fortunately there were only half a dozen or so over-sized keys on the ring. He dropped her bag with the rest of her stuff by the door and started trying keys. The third one worked on Cameo’s door. As soon as he heard the lock click he pushed against the massive door, opening it slightly. He turned, looking down the corridor, and he moved on to a cell just a few doors down and across the way where he saw hands glowing a faint, pleasant yellow-orange gripping the bars.

“Jerry!” John Fortune called out in his excitement, perhaps too loudly.

“John, I’m here.” He went to the window and looked in at the kid clinging to the bars, a lost, scared look on his face.

“Jeez, I’m glad to see you,” John Fortune said. He fell silent, looking worried. “Voices in the corridor just woke me up. It really is you, isn’t it, Jerry?”

“It’s me all right. We’ll get you out of there in a second.”

He tried one key. It didn’t work. He put a second in the lock and failed to turn the tumblers. He rattled a third key as a voice said, “Step away from that door. We’ve got you covered.”

Jerry looked over his shoulder to see two men standing in the mouth of the corridor. Damn it, he thought. Nighthawk!

They both had guns. Rifles. In the darkness Jerry couldn’t be sure what kind. They did have him covered. “I said,” the one on the right reiterated, “step away from the door.”

Jerry complied, swearing to himself under his breath. He’d been so damn close!

The two men were so focused on Jerry that they didn’t see the door to Cameo’s cell swing open silently. They didn’t see Cameo herself, witchfire dancing like fireflies around and between her hands as she held them up. They didn’t see her, until it was too late.

Sparks crackled between her hands like a Jacob’s ladder in the lab set in the old Frankenstein movies and then balls of electricity shot from her pointing fingers, striking the barrels of the men’s rifles, running up the metal and dancing over their bodies like sparkling aurora borealis. The men themselves danced a brief jitterbug, and when the sparks faded they fell silently to the floor. The air suddenly smelled of hot metal and burned flesh. In his kennel, Blood howled hopefully.

“Jesus,” John Fortune said in his cell.

Jerry agreed. He turned back to the door and fumbled through the rest of the keys before he was able to open it. It finally swung wide and John Fortune came out. “Am I glad to see you,” he said, hugging Jerry.

“Me too,” Jerry said, holding him tight for a brief second. “We’ve got to move.”

“That’s right,” a voice said from a pool of blackness where no light touched an area of the corridor. John Nighthawk stepped out into visibility, putting his glove back on his left hand.

“Jesus Christ,” Jerry said, “are you goddamned invisible?”

Nighthawk shook his head. “That’s not one of my powers.”

“Why were you hiding there?” Jerry asked, as Cameo joined them in the corridor. She still wore the hat. Jerry didn’t care to look into her eyes.

“I had a vision while you opening the door to the boy’s cell.”

“A vision,” Jerry asked.

“That is one of my powers.” He turned to look at John Fortune, and frowned. “He is very powerful. Much more powerful than even you know. But he is not the Anti-Christ.”

“What?” John Fortune asked.

“You will take him out of the city,” Nighthawk said to Jerry. “I saw that. Others will follow. Some will be your enemies. Some will be friends. Some will be strangers. Some will help you.”

“Could you be any more specific?” Jerry asked.

Nighthawk shrugged. “That is the nature of visions,” he said. “They’re always open to interpretation. All I know is that you will go north, out of the city, to a place of forests and fields and happy children—”

“Hey!” Jerry said suddenly.

“You know this place?” Nighthawk asked.

Jerry nodded. “I think I do.” He paused, and looked from Nighthawk to Cameo, who still looked a lot scarier than a beautiful, ethereal blonde had any right to look. “What about you two?”

“Our paths have crossed yours only briefly. We have other things to settle. But—” Nighthawk paused, frowning. “I don’t think I’m done with you all yet. I don’t...”

“We’ve got to go,” Cameo prompted as his voice ran down.

Nighthawk shook himself, as if trying to escape unpleasant memories of future events.

“Yes, we do. But first—the other cells—”

Jerry nodded. Anything to cover their tracks, anything to spread confusion, would be a good thing. It took only moments to free the other prisoners. There were five of them. A couple of them weren’t in very good shape, but their fellow escapees helped them up and out of their cells. Jerry was expecting trouble from the jailer in his little guardroom, but he’d heard the commotion in the corridor. He probably smelled the stench of burned flesh. For once his pea-sized brain processed the information correctly, and he decided to stay safe and snug in his little room.

The escapees went by the bodies of the two men at the foot of the stairs. John Fortune paused for a moment, looking at them, at their burned skin and smoke still rising off their cooling corpses. Jerry was glad that the light was dim.

“Should—should I try to help them?” the kid asked Jerry.

Jerry shook his head. “Remember what your mother said. You can’t help everybody. Some people are beyond your help. Some people don’t deserve it.” He glanced down at the bodies. “I’d say these guys fit into both those categories.”

John Fortune nodded and they went swiftly up the stairs hearing lonesome, hopeful keening coming from Blood’s cell.