Death Draws Five

Chapter six

“Give me a hand, would you—” he asked, reaching out for the boy, but a voice interrupted from the doorway.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mr. Creighton.”

Jerry swiveled his head drunkenly towards the doorway. The woman standing there smiled at him. The little girl was pressed against her legs, watching Jerry as solemnly as before.

Jerry sat back weakly. “How’d you know my name?” he asked.

She smiled. It looked good on her elegantly-featured face. She was tall, lean-hipped, and long-legged. Her hair was blonde, her eyes a light blue, and her cheekbones, mouth, and nose exquisite. She could have been a model. She was a little old for that game now, but her features were of a classic delicacy that aged well. Her shorts and sleeveless pullover revealed that she took great care of her body. She was lean and lithely muscular, despite the two kids, who had to be hers. Somehow, she seemed familiar. Maybe she was a model and he’d seen her picture somewhere. Maybe she’d even been in the movies.

“My husband owns the land the camp is on, so we have an intimate interest in what goes on there.”

Jerry almost nodded again, but caught himself in time. So, he’d finally discovered the identity of the anonymous benefactor whom Father Squid always talked about. Or, he would when he actually met him.

“The boy—” Jerry said, and she nodded.

“I know. He’s still missing. My husband’s out looking for him now. Don’t worry. If anybody can find him, he will.”

“I’ve got to get to a phone,” Jerry said with some urgency. He wondered how much he should tell her. “If you know my identity, then you must know that I’m a private detective. The boy is under my care. Someone attempted to kidnap him last night.”

“We pieced together as much,” the woman said. “My husband... took care of the men who assaulted you last night. But the boy apparently slipped away while he was busy. Daniel couldn’t do much in the dark, but he went out at first light to try to track him.” She stopped and glanced over her shoulder, then looked back at Jerry. “I think I hear him coming in now. I hope he has good news.”

I hope, Jerry thought.

“Daddy!”

The little girl transferred her grip from her mother’s thighs to the waist of the man who appeared suddenly, silently in the doorway. He was no taller than the woman who leaned over the child to embrace him as well. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed like the girl and his skin was tanned from long exposure to the sun. He put one hand on the little girl’s back and hugged her close, saying, “Hello, sweetie.”

His hands were large and strong-looking and his arms muscled, not with the kind built by pumping iron but rather lean muscle won from hard physical labor. His face was weathered and harsh-featured, but its strong lines relaxed as he embraced his girl and leaned over her to briefly kiss his wife.

“The boy?” Jerry asked, still uncertain if he should use Fortune’s real name.

The man shook his head. “Vanished in the woods. I lost his trail where he stumbled on the county road. Couldn’t tell which way he went, right or left. But I’ve still got my people out looking for him. Don’t worry. He wasn’t wounded. And the men hunting you didn’t get him.”

“How do you know?” Jerry asked.

The man only looked at him. “I know.”

Jerry cleared his throat. It didn’t seem reasonable to press the point.

“I’m in your debt, mister...?”

He reached down and picked up his daughter, holding her on his hip with one arm around her waist. “Brennan,” he said. “Daniel Brennan.” He put his other arm around the woman’s waist. “This is my wife. Jennifer Maloy Brennan.”

“My mom’s an ace,” the little girl said.

“Jeez.” The boy, silent until now, rolled his eyes. “You don’t go just telling people that.”

Jennifer Maloy Brennan smiled. “We all have our little secrets. Don’t we, Mr. Creighton?”

“Uh,” Jerry said.

Brennan smiled at him. In other circumstances, Jerry could see how that smile could look disturbing. Dangerous, even. He felt that somehow, someway, he should know this man.

“Would you like some breakfast, Mr. Creighton?” Jennifer Brennan asked.

“Yes, I would, thanks,” Jerry said. “Mind if I change first?”

The Brennans looked at each other, quizzically.

“No, not at all,” Jennifer said.

“Thanks. I’ll be along in a minute.”

He had decided to get rid of the Dagon face. He’d had even worse luck than usual since acquiring it, and he definitely wanted to change it before running into Billy Ray again.

New Hampton: Camp Xavier Desmond

Ray felt pretty good when he awoke, even though he’d only had a couple of hours of sleep in the guest cabin that had been turned into a command post in the effort to find John Fortune. He lay back in the bunk, thinking over the past night’s events.

It had begun with promise that soon petered out into the drudgery of fruitless searching, though it had not been without its high points, especially the initial battle at the administration cabin.

Pann, Starfin, and Schaeffer had been doing their best to hold the line against the Allumbrado assault team, though they were not the ideal combat force. The blind telepath was somewhat limited in his capabilities. Elmo, though very tough when he could get his hands on someone, had to face armed Allumbrados, and Pann, though competent with a gun couldn’t get his tinks to do anything more useful than occasionally momentarily blind an opponent by blinking brightly in their vicinity.

Once Ray had arrived, however, the odds turned drastically in favor of the good guys. He single-handedly transformed what had been a moderately desperate situation into a cakewalk, going through half a score of numbnuts with guns as if they’d been a troop of girl scouts out for a midnight hike. Ray’s only disappointment was that he didn’t run into any aces while he was cleaning clocks. He knew Dagon was somewhere in the night, as supposedly was that blonde jerk who’d teamed with Dagon in the Vegas assault. Witness. Ray had hoped to run into him, but never did.

As soon as all of their opponents were groaning on the ground, Ray and the others lit out for the cabin where Creighton had stashed the kid, but Sascha knew that it was empty before they even got inside. They figured that Creighton had headed for the woods with the kid in tow, and went in after them, but it was a hopeless job.

They even brought Sascha along, hoping he could pick up the scent telepathically, but gave it up after a couple of hours of trying to lead a blind man through a forest at night. Ray broke away from the others after they’d heard a couple of gunshots in the near distance, but noises like that are notoriously difficult to track, especially in hilly, heavy forested terrain. Ray couldn’t do it.

He stumbled along in the dark. It was more luck than anything else that brought him back to the camp a couple hours before dawn. The whole area was quiet and secure. The Allumbrados, aces and numbnuts both, had all disappeared. Even their casualties. Camp administrators had the kids back in their bunks, fobbing them off with a story about a botched robbery. Ray and the men from the detective agency realized their best course was to get a couple hours of sleep, get up early and call for reinforcements, and then start the search in the morning when they could actually see what they were looking for.

Ray opened his eyes wide. He suddenly smelled coffee. The dwarf came into the cabin with two mugs and handed him one when he realized that Ray was awake. Ray sat up and took a sip. He grimaced. It was awful, but he didn’t care. It just felt good to be in the field again.

“Any news?” he asked.

“Creighton just showed up.”

“Alone?”

Elmo shook his head. “Didn’t have the kid, but he was with some guy. Also a joker, a little guy covered in fur.”

“Little guy?”

Elmo nodded. “About two feet shorter than me.”

Ray was about to crack a joke about that being really little, but caught himself in time. He was working on his sensitivity, and besides, he’d fought next to the dwarf the night before, and Elmo had done more than carry his own weight. Ray only nodded.

“The guy with Creighton was a local. In fact, apparently owns a lot of land around here, including the land the camp’s on. Knows it pretty good. He also has a team of these little jokers working for him, or something.”

“Doing what?” Ray asked, reminding himself again to refrain from the short jokes.

Elmo shrugged shoulders that would have been massive on a six-footer. “Got me. Maybe they gather nuts and berries for him. None of ‘em seem much bigger than squirrels, anyway.”

Maybe, Ray thought, short jokes are okay after all.

“They’ve been out scouring the forest since dawn. They’ll find the kid, if anyone can.”

“We should go, too,” Ray said.

“Creighton said to hang on for a bit. Ackroyd’s coming up from the city with reinforcements from the agency. Between us and this Brennan guy and his gang of munchkins, we should cover the area pretty good.”

Ray grunted. Ackroyd. He and the P.I. weren’t the best of friends, but what the Hell, that never stopped him from working with anyone before. “And the Allumbrados?” he asked.

Elmo shrugged again. “They may be out in the woods, but we haven’t seen ‘em or heard ‘em. Brennan has his gang keeping an eye out for them, as well.”

Ray nodded. “In the meantime, how about breakfast?”

“You read my mind. This way.”

Breakfast. It made Ray think of Angel. He wondered where she was, and if she was getting enough to eat.

New Hampton, New York: Onion Avenue

When the Angel finally arrived at New Hampton she discovered that there was no there, there.

It was on the map somewhere between Goshen and Middletown and Florida, but when she got there, she couldn’t find it. It was all just unmarked roads, many of them single lane, fields of lettuce, corn, pumpkins, and onions, and a few scattered houses. Even Florida, which she’d encountered when she’d gone too far down the quaintly-named Pulaski Highway (which was, at least, two lanes; one going each way), had a crossroads and traffic light. New Hampton, once she’d found it, proved to be devoid of such trappings of civilization.

She finally stopped at a small store on an unmarked county road where the bucolically named Onion Avenue branched off and wandered off to nowhere in particular. The sign outside the store said “Kaleita’s Groceries.” She went in to ask for directions. At least that was her intent, but she couldn’t resist first buying an ice cream sandwich from the old fashioned slide-top cooler which was humming like a berserk air-conditioner. She paid the proprietor and took a bite out of the sandwich as he searched through the register’s drawer for change. He was an old man who spoke English just like he was fresh off the boat from some old country. She wasn’t sure which one.

“Kid?” the old man repeated after she finally got his attention by asking the same question three or four times. Even then it was clear that he hadn’t really heard what she’d asked. “You’re looking for a kid? Not many kids around here. Mostly old people. Mostly old people.”

“No kids around here at all?”

“Nope,” the old man said. “No kids.”

The Angel frowned to herself. She was probably totally off the track. “Thanks.”

“There’s the kids at the camp, of course.”

She stopped. “Camp?”

“Yah. The summer camp up the road.”

“Road?” the Angel repeated.

“Yah. Lower Road. The road that runs by Snake Hill.”

The Angel told herself not to say “Snake Hill?”

“You can’t miss it,” the old man said. “Turn right out of the parking lot, go up the hill, take a right at the stop sign. You can’t miss it. It’ll be on your left after a mile or so.”

“Thanks,” the Angel said trying not to clench her teeth as she went out the door. She brushed by the guy who was waiting for her to go by so he could enter the store. The Angel looked at him suspiciously. He looked like a hippie. Like something off a 1960’s album cover, with ragged, holed bell bottoms embroidered with flowers and other designs, and bushy hair and a colorful silk scarf tied loosely around his neck. His shirt was outrageously colored and patterned and he wore tiny little glasses with purple octagonal lenses hanging on his long, narrow nose. The Angel didn’t have anything against hippies. Especially. She was just surprised to see one in this setting.

The hippie’s eyes were heavy-lidded. The Angel could smell fumes coming off him. It was some sweet smelling incense that made her eyes water. He smiled and nodded in her direction, and then caught sight of the SUV Ray had reserved at Tomlin International.

It was a 2003 Cadillac Escalade. The Angel had been distressed when she discovered that Ray had rented it, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. When she first got it out of the parking lot, it felt like she was driving a tank, but she quickly realized that it had a smoother ride, a much more comfortable seat, great air conditioning, and a killer sound system. It had a three hundred and forty-five horsepower V8 with four wheel anti-lock brakes, independent torsion bar front suspension, an AM/FM radio, cassette player, and in-dash six disc CD changer with eight Bose speakers, a pre-programmed equalizer, and a Bose subwoofer. It also had OnStar Virtual Advisor with e-mail access which, while the Angel thought was really excessive, she kept thinking that she should use when she was lost but wouldn’t because then she’d have to admit to herself that she was lost. She realized that it sounded like something Ray would do, but still... The transmission was a four speed electronically controlled automatic, but that was all right.

“Bitchin’ wheels,” the hippie said.

“Thanks.” She glanced at the beat up old VW van that was parked next to it, guessing that it belonged to the hippie. If it didn’t, it should have. “Your wheels are, uh, nice, too.”

“Thanks, man” the hippie said. “See you around.”

I doubt it, the Angel thought, but bit her tongue. There was no need to be impolite. She nodded and smiled briefly and got in the car and backed out of the lot onto the traffic-less road.

The Escalade, whatever that meant, took the small, steep high with a smooth purr. It was nice, actually, to drive something so big, so powerful, yet so quiet and smooth. She didn’t have a car herself, as she didn’t have a house nor much else in the way of material possessions, but she’d grown up a child of the South and had learned to drive on a succession of beat up junkers with clunky manual transmissions that her mother briefly owned before they’d been repossessed or died within months of chugging out of the used car lot. This vehicle was quite different, and, she had to admit, actually enjoyable to drive.

A small white-framed wooden church stood on the right side of the road at the hill’s crest. The Angel pulled off to the side of the undivided county road to get a better look at it. The sign board in the front said “Saint Andrew Bobula,” and listed the times for Sunday services. Pity. It was Papist, though it did remind her of the white clapboard churches her mother was always dragging her to. Not dragging her to. She went with her mother willingly because she wanted to. Because it was the correct thing to do.

She thought briefly about going in anyway to offer a quick prayer. It was her habit to attend service as often as was practical, but for the past couple of days it hadn’t really been practical. She made up for it by praying more than usual. When she had the chance. She hoped that her prayers would be to good effect. No. She knew they would be, even if appearances were to the contrary. The Lord, after all, had a plan, even if she wasn’t privy to it.

She went on past the church, glancing out the driver side window to her left where there was an entrance to a working gravel pit which had been eating away at the hillside for apparently quite some time. From her vantage point on the hill’s crest, the Angel could see a steam shovel down in the depths of the pit biting big chunks of dirt and rock out of the hillside.

Even here, she thought, in the middle of apparently peaceful country, they were destroying the land. Carving it up, chewing it to pieces, and spitting it out into dump trucks to be hauled away. She wasn’t against progress, but she could mourn the price of that progress, and what it cost the peace of the natural world.

She glided down the hill’s backslope and approached the T-intersection that the old storekeeper had told her about. She paused briefly at the stop sign, and read, thanks be to God, an actual road sign that said “Lower Road.” She hung a right. A long, steep, heavily-forested ridge loomed on the left. On the right the terrain was more open, sloping gently down to what looked like a small river meandering in the middle distance. She drove slowly, studying the terrain she passed. The thickly wooded ridge on the left must be what the storekeeper had called Snake Hill. It seemed to be totally undeveloped forest, fronted by open fields or meadows bordering the road.

She went a mile or more without seeing a single building, before noticing a cluster of rustic-looking dwellings standing in a big open area bordering the forest margin. A dirt driveway meandered from Lower Road to a parking lot that obviously served the buildings. She wondered if this was the long sought-for camp. She slowed down as she approached. Her heart beat a little faster at the thought that she was perhaps only moments away from again coming face to face with her personal savior. With Jesus Christ, himself.

A car, actually another SUV of some sort, was parked by the side of the road next to the driveway leading up to the scatter of buildings. Three men were standing around it, talking. Two were unfamiliar. But the third...

She pulled the Escalade over to the side of the road and killed the engine.

The third was Billy Ray. She stared at him. The three men looked back. Ray broke off his conversation and laconically headed in her direction.

“Well,” Ray said as she rolled down the driver side window. “Well, well, well. Look who finally showed up.”

“How did you get here?” the Angel asked, astonished.

He looked irritatingly smug. “It’s a long story,” Ray said. “I’ll tell it to you some chilly night. Right now, we don’t have time for chitchat. We’ve sent a couple of search teams out looking for John Fortune, and we’re about to head into the woods ourselves.”

“Looking for him?” The Angel asked.

Ray nodded. “He was here. So were Dagon’s boys. In fact, so was Dagon himself. Now they’ve all seemed to vanish. Creighton lost the kid in the woods somewhere. We assume that Dagon’s boys are out there, too, looking for him. We’ve got to get him first.”

The Angel felt lost. “How—Creighton? The bodyguard? He’s here, too?”

“Yep,” Ray said. “That’s him over there. The kind of geeky looking skinny guy. He’s a shape-shifter. We all got here via Blood.” He held his hand up, forestalling questions. “Don’t ask. It seems that these Allumbrados have a couple tricks up their sleeves we didn’t know about, including this joker-ace named Blood who can zap people transdimensionally from, say, Las Vegas to New Hampton. I got zapped here last night, right when Dagon’s boys—actually, supposedly they were led by Witness, but I never saw him—hit the camp. Creighton got the kid out, but lost him in the woods, later.”

“Witness?” the Angel asked, trying to keep up.

“Yeah. Your blonde boyfriend from Vegas,” Ray said laconically. “Remember?”

Blushing, she did. If the Angel felt lost before, now her head was swimming. “All right. Who’s the other man?”

“A guy I know named Ackroyd. He’s a dick”

“Must you swear so much?” the Angel asked, annoyed.

“I’m not swearing. Je—I mean, Go—uh, gosh. The guy’s a dick.” Ray sighed at the look on the Angel’s face. “A detective. A private investigator. He’s Creighton’s partner. He just brought a team of ops to help find the kid.” He turned and waved to them. “Hey, Popinjay,” he shouted, “come over and meet Angel!” Ray looked back at her. “He hates that nickname. I use it every chance I get.”

She rolled her eyes, got out of the Escalade, and stretched. She was hungry again, but this was no time to think of her stomach. John Fortune, the poor boy, was wandering somewhere around the woods. He was probably tired, and much more hungry himself. She could feel her Lord’s pain as her stomach rumbled in sympathy.

Ackroyd strolled up to the Escalade, followed by his companion. Ackroyd was a small man in a rumpled suit without a tie. Creighton was also small, in less formal clothes that fit him like he’d stolen them from someone who was bigger than him. He had a bandage high on his forehead. His real face was much less handsome than the one he’d worn in Las Vegas. She wondered why he’d changed it. He was young, but there was something about him, a sadness in his eyes, that showed that much was missing in his life. She wondered if his heart was filled with Jesus. It seemed unlikely.

“Nice wheels,” Ackroyd said sardonically. “Did you steal them off some geezer on a camping trip?”

Ray grinned. “What’s your ride these days, Popinjay?” Ray asked, then his face took on a sudden look of dismay. “Oh, that’s right. You’re from ‘The City.’ You never learned how to drive.” He looked around searchingly. “Where’s the subway stop that dropped you off in this god-forsaken place?”

“Yeah,” Ackroyd responded. “It is pretty rural.” He indicated his companion. “You know my partner, Creighton, I believe.”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “She met him the first time he lost the kid.”

Ackroyd grinned, but there wasn’t much humor in his expression. “Good to see that you’re still an all-around asshole, Ray.”

The Angel made a noise in her throat that was something between a derisive snort and an exasperated prayer, probably because for some obscure reason she felt somewhat compelled to defend Ray. Just a little, anyway.

“We’re here to do a job,” she said forcefully. “Not engage in juvenile repartee and spray testosterone around like skunks marking their territory.”

Ackroyd’s eyebrows went up. “Skunks mark their territory?” he asked Creighton, who only shrugged. He turned to Ray. “Who’s your girlfriend?”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” she said, aggrieved.

“This is Angel,” Ray said. He stood next to her, smiling. “She’s new,” he added, as if that explained everything.

Ackroyd nodded. “How’d the Feds get on the case already?”

“We’re not—” the Angel started to say, and Ray stepped hard on her foot. She shut her mouth and glared at him, momentarily too outraged to speak.

“—at liberty to say how we learned about it,” Ray said. “Confidential sources, and all.”

The Angel suddenly realized that Ray wanted to let Ackroyd and Creighton still think they worked for the government and not The Hand. She could see the wisdom in that. In fact, she should have thought of it herself. She castigated herself silently for a moment, then chipped in brightly, “That’s right.”

“Uh-huh,” Ackroyd said. He looked at Creighton, who shrugged again.

The Angel could tell that Ackroyd was suspicious. Suspicion seemed to be in his nature. But there was really nothing he could do, except disbelieve them. He seemed a man of little faith.

“So,” Ray said, “got any clues as to John Fortune’s current whereabouts?”

Ackroyd smiled. “Clues? Is that what we need?” He looked at Creighton as if for confirmation. “Jeez, Ray, it’s great when you Feds turn up to tell us that we need clues and all. I don’t know if that information came in Detecting for Dummies. That’s the book Creighton and I use to solve all our cases. Right, partner?”

“Knock off the horseshit, already,” Ray said. “Angel is right.”

“Yes,” the Angel chimed in. “Our job is to find the boy. Sparring with each other isn’t helping.”

Ackroyd sighed. “Wisdom from the mouth of babes.” He held up a hand to forestall another outburst from Ray or the Angel, or both. “But, you’re right. Both of you. What do you propose?”

The Angel felt Ray’s eyes on her. They were calculating. Though lust lay behind the calculation, he did seem to be focusing somewhat at least upon their job. “Well,” Ray said, “there’s two of us, and two of you. Why don’t we split our teams?”

“Good idea,” Ackroyd said. “I’ll go with Angel—”

“Uh, no,” Ray interrupted, shaking his head. “You and me, Popinjay. We’re a team. Like the old days.”

Ackroyd frowned. “Only if you knock off the ‘Popinjay’ crap.”

“All right,” Ray said.

“All right.” Ackroyd turned to Creighton. “I should talk things over with your little helper from last night.”

“Right.” Creighton spoke for the first time. His voice, the Angel thought, was the same as before, as deep and soft as his eyes. He seemed a gentle soul, unsuited for his profession. “There are some other things we should check out. Brennan told me about another settlement up the road that John Fortune might have stumbled into last the night. Or Dagon’s men, for that matter.”

“Right,” Ackroyd said crisply. “Check it out. Be careful.” He fished in his inside jacket pocket and tossed a cell phone to Creighton. Ackroyd frowned. “Too bad the kid wasn’t carrying one of these. All this tramping around the countryside wouldn’t be necessary. Anyway, be careful. Watch out for cows and other wild animals. And if you spot any of Dagon’s men—call immediately.”

“That’s right,” Ray said. “And we’ll come kick their asses.”

“Let’s hope,” Ackroyd said. “Come on. I’ll catch you up on all our ‘clues.’”

The Angel could hear the quotation marks Ackroyd’s sarcastic tones put around the word as he and Ray went off down the road together. She looked at Creighton. He returned her gaze. Lust was lurking in the depths of his sad eyes. Men, she thought.

“The commune is down the road apiece,” he said, “We can walk to it.” He gestured towards the ridge with the summer camp nestled at its base. “This area is called Snake Hill. Used to be known for all the rattlesnakes around here, sixty, seventy years ago. Don’t worry. They’re all gone now.” He frowned. “At least, supposedly most of ‘em are. Anyway, their presence attracted a, a religious community, I’d guess you’d call it.”

“Ophiolatrists!” the Angel hissed.

“Huh?”

“I hate ophiolatrists!” the Angel said.

New York City: Saint Dympna’s Home For the Mentally Deficient And Criminally Inclined

The Cardinal was furious. He slammed the cell phone down on the oubliette’s floor and it shattered into miscellaneous bits of plastic and unidentifiable electronics. He was in the basement of St. Dympna’s with Usher, Magda, and Nighthawk, and the Witness, examining the damage that the big break out had caused when the call came from upstate. The old pile of stones was pretty much intact, though the same could not be said for the credenti who had been manning it. Some of the released prisoners had chosen to take revenge and they’d come out of the oubliette mad and armed with looted weaponry. Such a copious amount of blood had not been spilled in the old asylum in over fifty years. Then came the phone call from the younger Witness relaying the news from upstate. It wasn’t good.

“The reception is terrible!” the Cardinal swore furiously. “How do they expect me to even hear, let alone condone their whining excuses?”

Nighthawk only shrugged. He knew better than to interrupt the Cardinal in mid-rant. The Witness—the Asshole, as Nighthawk thought of him—tried to catch Nighthawk’s eye, but he refused to look at him.

“How many of those morons does it take to capture one boy?” Contarini asked rhetorically. “Even if he is the Anti-Christ?” He turned his gaze directly on Nighthawk. “It took only you to capture a girl after the idiots here let her escape. Just you! How many men do they have with them?”

“Twenty-six,” the Asshole answered.

Ass-kisser, Nighthawk thought. The man would sell out his own brother to gain favor with the Cardinal.

Contarini took a deep breath, struggling to control his fury. “Can those fools do nothing right? Must I handle everything, personally?” He glanced at Nighthawk. “Cameo was not as you promised, but at least you took care of her.”

Nighthawk kept silent, and only nodded, half to himself. He had taken care of her. He had given her sixty thousand dollars in cash and personally escorted her to the station where he put her on a train headed west. He had told her to go somewhere, anywhere. To get out of the city and stay out until she saw from the news that it was safe to return. She was a sensible girl. She took his advice.

She even gave him the silk choker from around her neck without hesitation when he asked for it. After he saw her off safely, he searched a couple of pawn shops until he found a cameo that was quite similar to the one that she’d worn, mounted it on her choker, stained the silk with some blood he’d gotten off a juicy beefsteak he’d purchased at a grocery store, and presented it to the Cardinal as proof that he’d handled the Cameo problem.

Contarini, if not delighted, had at least been mollified.

That was all right with Nighthawk. The Cardinal was never going to treat him like family. It wasn’t, Nighthawk realized, so much that he was black, though that was probably part of it. More like he was an American and, worse, a wild carder. But again, that was all right. He had gotten what he wanted out of this crazy affair. He felt better than he had in years, as if a tremendous weight had been lifted off his soul. He felt truly young again, without guilt or worry. His ultimate goal now was to extricate himself from this fiasco with a whole skin. It would not be easy. Things were not going the way Cardinal Contarini wanted, and when that happened bad things tended to happen to those around him.

“It’s occurred to me,” Contarini said icily, “that we can weaken the position of the Anti-Christ by destroying those close to him. I’ve learned that both the black-skinned Satan and his doxy, the Whore of Babylon, are patients in the Jokertown Clinic. Both have been severely wounded. Both are just clinging to life. Perhaps one of you can handle them, now.” He fixed the Witness and Nighthawk with his hard stare. “Perhaps two of you. Who wants the job?”

New Hampton: Snake Hill

Jerry looked at his new found partner dubiously. “Ophiolatrists?” he asked. “What’s that?”

“Snake worshipers,” Angel said briefly, her face set a frown that seemed habitual. She was quite good-looking, Jerry thought, despite her dourness. Her leather jumpsuit accentuated the lushness of her figure and her gloomy expression couldn’t eclipse the strong, handsome lines of her features. She wasn’t really beautiful because she lacked any hint of delicacy, but she had other qualities in sufficient quantity to more than make up for that.

They walked down the road in silence for several minutes. It was pretty obvious to Jerry that if there was going to be any conversation, he’d have to initiate it. It was in his experience pretty much always a good idea to talk to attractive women, because all good things started with talking.

“So,” Jerry said, conversationally as they sauntered together down the country road, shaded by the thickly-forested slope that came down to the verge, “how long have you worked for the government, Angel?”

“My name’s not Angel,” she said.

Jerry frowned. “Sorry. I thought Ray said—”

“I am the Midnight Angel,” she informed him. “Named after the hour of my Lord’s Passion in the Garden of Getheseme.”

“I—see,” Jerry said, thinking, Why are all the great-looking ones such nuts?

“This must be it,” she said, her full lips grimacing in distaste as they halted in front of a gated dirt road that led up into the heart of Snake Hill.

Jerry peered over her shoulder to read the hand-lettered sign nailed to the wooden gate.

The periods at the tips of the exclamation points were represented by slightly off-centered bullet holes punched through the wooden sign. The free-hand letters were actually well formed and on the edge of artistic. The spelling was surprisingly literate.

“Well, none of that fits us,” Jerry said. “I mean, you may work for the government, but you’re not a man—”

She turned and stared at him.

“I mean obviously. Not. So... I guess we can go in.”

Angel turned without a word and slipped the small wire loop off the gate’s upright post. Jerry didn’t take her utter dismissal personally. It seemed the usual face that she presented to the world. She swung the gate open and Jerry started to follow her onto the winding dirt path leading up Snake Hill when, with a laboring engine smelling of burning oil, an ancient Volkswagen mini-van painted in faded psychedelic designs of exploding stars and dancing mushrooms—with a big peace sign on the front panel—pulled up to the turn-off and chugged to a stop, sounding something like a lawn-mower with a bad choke.

A young man stuck his head out the driver side window. “Can I help you folks?”

Jerry glanced at Angel. She was looking at the newcomer with recognition and active suspicion, but didn’t seem prepared to comment. He stepped towards the van, smiling, ready to take charge.

“Maybe,” he said. “We’re looking—whoa!”

Pungent waves bearing the scent of marijuana wafted out from the open window and hit Jerry in the face with the force of a palpable blow. Suddenly he felt as if he’d been transported into a Cheech and Chong movie. The guy in the VW could have easily been a bit player in Up In Smoke. He was young, maybe in his late twenties—though Jerry was well aware that the wild card virus had transformed the phrase “appearances can be deceiving” from a cliché to an ultimate truth—but his hair style, dress, and general deportment seemed four decades out of phase. Though he was Caucasian, his thick, wiry black hair was fluffed up in a bushy Afro. He had a Fu Manchu mustache and large, sharply delineated sideburns that appeared more often in gay fantasies than in real life. He wore what appeared to be a paisley tie as a cravat, and had tiny, octagonal-shaped granny glasses, tinted purple, on the tip of his long, straight nose. His purple silk shirt had long, puffy sleeves and was patterned in a startling green and crimson orchid print. His ragged jeans were embroidered with, from what Jerry could see, flowers, smiley faces, and peace signs. He seemed to take no notice of the fact that Jerry, a complete stranger, could obviously detect the odor of mary jane wafting off him in waves approaching tidal in size and effect.

“—Uh,” Jerry caught himself. “Are you a member of the Church?”

The living museum-piece shook his head. “No, man. But these righteous dudes are like customers of mine.”

“Customers?” Jerry asked with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s right. I’m like, their grocer, man. All organic. All natural. All the best.”

Jerry glanced at Angel, whose frown had deepened. Actually, Jerry thought, it would do her a world of good to get stoned. It’d loosen her up a little. And if she stays around this guy long enough, she’d get high just from the contact. He coughed discreetly. The fumes were already starting to get to him.

Angel stood beside Jerry and stared suspiciously at the newcomer. “Really?” she asked. “Exactly what do you sell?”

The hippie smiled, unfazed by her glowering frown. “Hey, I know you, man. I mean, I seen you before down at Kaleita’s store driving that bitchin’ Cadillac SUV, though, really, man, I don’t much approve of SUV’s because they’re really bad for Gaea and all her children—”

“Answer the question,” Angel said severely.

Beaming, he jumped out of the van. Jerry took one breath and had to turn his head away. He could feel his eyes starting to water.

“I’ll show you, man. Come around and take a look at our mother’s generous bounty.”

Jerry shrugged at Angel, and they followed him to the van’s side where he’d already slung open the door, and stood proudly, gesturing at the baskets within.

Jerry had to admit that everything looked good enough to eat, even the zucchini, but he suspected that he’d been standing a little too close for a little too long to the sixties poster child and was at least a little high from the fumes the guy emitted like some kind of tangible pheromone.

Angel just looked blankly at the baskets of red, vine-ripened tomatoes, the bundles of scallions and red onions, crates of lettuce, the cucumbers and zucchini, and open burlap bags of potatoes that still had clumps of thick, rich soil clinging to them.

“What’s your name?” Jerry asked him.

“They call me Mushroom Daddy,” the horticulturist said, “because I grow the most bitchin’ ‘shrooms in Orange County. Got a special greenhouse for them with all the glass painted black and dirt that’s—“

Jerry nodded, forestalling the horticultural lecture he was sure was about to come. “I’m Creighton,” he said. “This is Angel.”

“Woah,” Mushroom Daddy said. “Angel. Cool. Creighton. Groovy, man. What do you folks want with the snake handlers?”

“Ah, well,” Jerry said, “we’re looking for a kid. A kid who’s been lost in the woods overnight. We hoped they may have seen or heard something.”

“Heavy,” Daddy said. “Why don’t you hop in the ol’ van and I’ll give you a lift. Their commune is about a mile up the hill. They don’t take too good to strangers, but seeing as you’re with the Daddy, they might to help you. They know just about everything that goes on around Snake Hill.”

“Groovy,” Jerry said.

Mushroom Daddy slammed the side door shut and slung back into the driver’s seat.

Jerry smiled at Angel. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll close the gate.”

She went around to the passenger’s side and gingerly got into the van. Mushroom Daddy started it up again. With much tender encouragement and delicate manipulation of the gas pedal, the engine finally caught. Jerry closed the gate and climbed into the front seat after the van inched forward, exchanging smiles with Daddy over a stiff-featured Angel as they chugged up Snake Hill, a Canned Heat tape playing softly on the eight-track.

Jokertown: The Jokertown Clinic

Fortunato woke to darkness and pain. It was odd because he hurt so badly yet he couldn’t feel his body. He tried to lift his right arm and hold his hand in front of his eyes, but couldn’t manage it. He didn’t know if he was lying on a bed or perhaps the floor of the abandoned building, sitting in a chair or floating in a pool of water. Though he didn’t feel wet. All he felt was pain.

Then he thought of opening his eyes. He blinked at what he saw. It was himself. He was lying in a bed, and it didn’t look good. The white sheet hid most of his body, but it was clear that he’d been hurt very badly. His left arm, visible over the sheet, was bandaged from palm to biceps. A drip line ran up from his elbow to a bag of clear fluid hanging from a hook over his head. His nose was bandaged as if it’d been broken. His eyes were swollen nearly shut and horridly blackened. His entire face, in fact, was as bruised and battered as if he’d been in a fight, and lost.

Suddenly he remembered that he had. He remembered the confrontation with the Jokka Bruddas. They’d overwhelmed him almost immediately. He remembered getting a few good licks in, but it seemed pretty clear from his current state that he’d lost the fight. He looked awful.

Suddenly he wondered how he could see his entire body, head to toe, including his face, and the bed he was laying on. He wondered dully if he were dead. Killed, and maybe eaten by a bunch of under-age street punks. That would mark a glorious end to his career. The man Tachyon had once called the most powerful ace on Earth beaten to death by juvenile delinquents.

But he wasn’t dead. He certainly hadn’t been devoured. He was either asleep or unconscious, but he could see his chest rise and fall. The squiggles on the heart monitor over his bed seemed to be spiking in a nicely regular rhythm. He suddenly realized what was going on. He was projecting his astral form, hovering over what clearly was a hospital bed. Somehow his powers—or at least one of them—had come back to him, without the need for the Tantric magick that he’d once practiced to charge his batteries. Tachyon had told him that the rituals were simply a crutch for his conscious mind, but he’d never believed him.

Maybe the space wimp had been right all along.

He couldn’t tell for certain what had done it. Maybe the anger. The sheer impotence of being Fortunato and yet being unable to defend himself from some pissant street thugs, when once he’d defeated the Astronomer over the skies of New York. Maybe it had been the fear he’d felt when he’d realized that he could indeed be beaten to death by those children. Maybe it had been the realization that if that happened he couldn’t help his son.

He looked down at his body. He realized that although it might be dangerous, he had to stay out of it. His body wouldn’t last for long without his spirit to guide and animate it, but he had to take the chance that it would hang on at least for awhile. It was likely that the liberation of his astral form had been the work of his unconscious mind. If he returned to his body, there was no guarantee that he’d be able to leave it again. And his body wasn’t going anywhere for awhile. It looked too broken up.

His astral form was free to travel. To prove it to himself he floated out of his private hospital room and found himself in a familiar corridor. He realized that he was back in the Jokertown Clinic. He sped along the corridor, unseen and untouched by the nurses and patients he passed, though one joker perhaps blessed with a touch of second sight seemed to watch him as he floated by. But the joker said nothing and Fortunato slipped into another of the clinic’s private rooms, and found himself in Peregrine’s presence again.

She was sleeping. Josh McCoy was dozing in the chair by her bedside. Both looked tired and worn, Peregrine more so. Fortunato’s astral body hovered above her. He felt an overwhelming desire to hold her again, but he realized that he’d forfeited that right a long time ago. He reached out and touched her cheek, his incorporeal fingers slipping through skin and the flesh beneath.

He had to find his son, but he had nothing to go on. No clue as to where the boy might be. But Peregrine... she probably knew the latest news of his whereabouts.

He reached out with his mind, then hesitated. Suddenly he couldn’t bear the though of going into her consciousness and discovering her most intimate, most true thoughts. He looked at the sleeping figure of Josh McCoy. He wasn’t wild about this idea either. But he needed the information.

He entered McCoy’s mind. It was as easy as it had always been. He had lost nothing of his power. Nothing of his control. He touched lightly, looking only for information relevant to the search for his son. He didn’t want to pry deeply into McCoy’s private life, either.

Surprising, the first thing he discovered was about himself. About how he had sent out a psychic distress call when he’d been attacked by the Jokka Bruddas. How it’d taken Father Squid and his search team hours to discover his torn and battered body in the rubble of the abandoned building. How they’d found the dismembered corpses of the Bruddas among the wreckage of their headquarters.

Fortunato had no memory of killing them. It must have been his subconscious that had lashed out with the deadliness of a cornered lion turning on a pack of emboldened jackals, teaching them who was still king of beasts.

So be it, Fortunato thought. He took no pleasure in the killing, but neither did it bother him. He killed to live. That was the way.

He delved further into McCoy’s sleeping mind, seeking out information of his son.

The first that came up was his image. It startled him. The boy didn’t look exactly like him, but the resemblance was there, in the eyes, around the mouth. It was startling to see, and breathtaking in an odd, somehow exhilarating way. It was a bit of himself. There was no denying it. He stored the image in his own mind, and went on, finally uncovering McCoy’s memory of a phone call they’d gotten from a detective agency whose job it was to protect the boy.

He was safe, for now, at a camp in upstate New York at a place called New Hampton. His bodyguard was with him. They were sending along reinforcements just in case of another attempt to kidnap him.

He slipped out of McCoy’s mind and looked down at the sleeping Peregrine. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll find him. I’ll protect him. I promise.”

She stirred and sighed. He wondered if somehow she’d heard his unhearable words.

He suddenly felt younger than he’d felt for years. He felt as if the world about him was conquerable again. Like a wraith he rose in the air, through the room’s ceiling, up a floor and through Finn’s office where the young doctor was laying on his specially-constructed bed in a corner of the room, trying to snatch a few hours of rest, and then finally up through the clinic’s roof and into the open sky above.

The sun was still in the morning quarter. From the movement of nearby tree branches he could tell that it was fairly windy, but his astral form could not feel the wind itself. It was peculiar not to feel warm or cold, tired or, rested. To just be. It was, in a way, the perfect Zen state, but Fortunato couldn’t waste time meditating on it. He looked around for some landmarks to orient himself. He found the way north, and headed out over the city.

He flew without sensation, moving over the land without feeling motion on his unseen body. He discovered that he could judge distance, but not time. He did notice that once he’d reached the city line and found the concrete ribbon of the Thruway leading north that the sun had moved in the sky, so time must have passed. Before long—or so, anyway, it seemed—he was gliding over the fields and farms of rural Orange County where New Hampton lay. He knew that he was barely sixty miles north of the city, but he might as well have been in another world, a world of small villages, of dairy farms set among rolling hills, of green pastures, of rich land which grew a multitude of crops, of orchards and pocket forests that had been standing since before the Revolutionary War.

He was not on intimate terms with this part of the state. Like many urbanites he was a city boy through and through, but he was able to call to mind maps he’d seen in the past. He had also burned into his brain—more, burned into his spirit since his brain lay nearly comatose on a hospital bed far away—the image of his son.

He hoped that the boy’s image would lead him to him.

He came upon the camp in a rush while quartering the countryside, thankful that his astral form could see like a hawk. He rushed down, looking for the boy, but could not find him. He dipped into the mind of one of the camp administrators and discovered what had happened the night before, events which even McCoy and Peregrine were unaware of, and fled immediately before his sudden anger could do any damage to the brain he was scanning.

Fortunato burned hot with anger, yet cold with fear. He could feel the sensations run through his astral form because they weren’t physical manifestations, but mental. Fear and anger. Fear of loss. Anger at being afraid. Just what he had fled from, he realized, fifteen years ago. But he couldn’t flee now. His son was out there somewhere. Alone. Afraid. Maybe hurt. He had to find him.

I probably won’t be able to, Fortunato thought. There was too much territory to cover. Besides, the boy would have been spotted by now if he was moving about in the open. He was probably hiding, keeping undercover for fear of the kidnappers who had almost snatched him the night before.

If they haven’t gotten him in the meantime, Fortunato thought, then did his best to dismiss the idea. If they had, he was wasting his time. But he had nothing but time, and the need to fill it with something worthwhile.

Fortunato sank down to the ground and stood in the center of the camp, a ghost among the living. No one saw him. His astral form made no noise for them to hear. They were trying to go about their business as if everything was normal, but of course it wasn’t. There was still speculation as to what had happened the night before, and worries that the bad guys might attack again.

This is useless, he thought. Too much ground to cover. Too many places for the boy to hide. There had to be another way—

There was, Fortunato suddenly realized. If he could do it.

He rose up again into the sky and hung above the camp like an unseen specter. He simply had to try. There was no other recourse.

He had to move his astral body through time as he had through space. It was the only way he could hope to track the movements of John Fortune, and the killers who were after him.

New Hampton: the woods

Ray batted annoyingly at a flight of gnats that descended upon them as they moved from shadow to sunlight, swarming like a tiny pack of famished wolves on fresh, undefended meat. Ackroyd stood next to him in a clearing in the woods. They had already been to the house where Creighton had spent the night, but his host had already gone out to search for the kid. They’d picked up a guide, a funny little fellow by the name of Kitty Cat, and he’d gone ahead on the trail to try to scope out Yeoman’s current position. That was the name Ackroyd had used when talking about their host.

“So, you know this Yeoman character?” Ray asked. He was a little irritated. It was mid-afternoon, and hot. It wasn’t so bad among the trees, though they tended to block the cooling wind. He’d already resigned himself to the fact that he was going to ruin his suit. He was sweating so profusely that no amount of dry cleaning would get out the perspiration stains, not to mention the various blobs of dirt, muck, and otherwise unidentifiable forest debris. He wished he’d had time to change to proper fighting attire, but even if he had, his clothes were now sitting in an unclaimed suitcase somewhere at Tomlin International.

Ackroyd tried to take a deep breath without sucking in some gnats, and didn’t succeed. “Jesus,” he said, gagging and spitting, “we may have bugs in the city but at least they’re decent-sized roaches that you can chase into a corner and step on. This is all way too, too natural, to be healthy.” He waved ineffectually at the undiminished horde of gnats and took another resigned breath. “But Yeoman—well, you couldn’t say that I actually know the murderous son of a bitch, but I worked with him on some stuff, back, Jesus, was it really thirteen years ago?”

Ray shrugged as Ackroyd’s mind wandered momentarily in the past. “If you mean Chrysalis’s murder, yeah it was that long ago.”

Ackroyd looked at him sharply. “What do you know about that?”

“I’ve read the dossier. If you remember, at the time I was occupied by other things.”

“Oh yeah,” Ackroyd said. “Mackie Messer ripped you from chest to balls on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Live, on TV.”

“Yeah.” Recalling that still pissed Ray off. “My star turn on television. I had plenty of time to read when I was recovering in the hospital. A lot of stuff connected to that case is pretty unclear. At least officially. You were involved—somehow. So was this vigilante. This guy Yeoman, the papers called the ‘Bow and Arrow Killer.’”

Ackroyd shook his head. “My main interest was catching Chrysalis’s murderer.”

“And Yeoman’s main interest?”

“The same.” Ackroyd said.

From the look on Ackroyd’s face, it seemed to Ray that both men were involved in the case for personal rather than political or financial reasons. Chrysalis had been an important person about Jokertown. Ray had seen her in the flesh once or twice. Though “seen her in the flesh” was something of a misnomer, since her flesh was actually invisible. She was all bone and blood vessels and interior organs covered by ghostly muscle. Kinky. But not really his type. He liked it when they had some meat on them. And you could see it. Kind of like Angel, in fact—

Ray jerked his train of thought back to the present. “Is he an ace?” Ray asked. “The dossier wasn’t clear on that point. Like the compiler wasn’t sure.”

“I’ll tell you,” Ackroyd said, “I’m not sure myself. I’ve seen a lot of wacky powers over the years, but being real good with a bow an arrow just doesn’t seem... likely. And he got in plenty of situations where a little super-strength or super-speed or mind control or some damn thing would have been useful—only he never seemed to use anything like that.”

“What’s he like?”

Ackroyd looked at him. “I told you. He’s a murderous son of a bitch. As soon as put an arrow through your eye as look at you.” Ackroyd paused to hawk up another gnat. “You’ll like him.”

Ray swallowed his retort as a little creature about two feet tall came scurrying through the grass towards them. It was Kitty Cat, the guide they’d picked up at Yeoman’s house. He was completed covered with a calico pelt and had feline-irised eyes. Otherwise, he looked fairly human for a two-foot tall joker. He was talking quietly into a cell phone as he came out of the forest into the small meadow where he’d told Ray and Ackroyd to await his return.

“Okay,” he said. His voice was rather deeper than Ray would have expected from such a tiny frame. “The Boss has a group of guys in his sights. He doesn’t know who they are, but they’re sure as Hell not locals. Care to come up for a look?”

“Sure,” Ackroyd said.

Kitty Cat looked uncertain. “Can you guys can make it through the woods without raising too much of a racket?”

“I majored in sneaking in detective school,” Ackroyd said.

Kitty Cat nodded. “Uh-huh. Well, these guys all got automatic weapons, and they’re as likely to nail my tiny little ass they are yours if they hear something crashing through the woods. So for Christ’s sake, be careful!”

“I’ve managed to sneak past a few trees in my day without tripping over myself,” Ray said.

“Let’s go then.” Kitty Cat hitched up the fanny pack embroidered with “Hello Kitty” that he wore slung over his shoulders like a backpack.

Ray nodded at Ackroyd, and the dick followed the joker back into the woods. Ray had to hand it to him. He was good at sneaking. They could have all been tiny little jokers for all the noise they made. It helped that they followed Kitty’s trail and that he kept them away from fallen leaves and other ground debris. It was cooler inside the trees, and darker. Ray started to feel the excitement start to ratchet up, and he had to concentrate to keep a silly grin off his face. Now, if this Yeoman was as good as he supposed to be, he thought, maybe he’d lead them to some real action.

He came out of nowhere, wearing cameo forest fatigues and a dark, short sleeved shirt. The skin of his face and arms were painted with stripes of green, brown, and black paint, and he was carrying a strung bow with an arrow loosely nocked to the string. He’d drifted out from behind a shield of leafy branches like smoke. No. Ray would have smelled the smoke. Like a shadow of moonlight on a dark, quiet night. Ray smiled to himself. This Yeoman was good.

They stopped. Ackroyd wore a disgusted, jeez what now expression, but he kept his silence as Yeoman faced them with a finger held to his lips. Kitty Cat vanished somewhere into the forest. Yeoman waved them on, his very posture telling them to be quiet and careful.

They crept forward, slipping through the branches from behind which Yeoman had emerged. It was a thick shrub, facing the edge of a small forest glen where five men were sprawled in various attitudes of tired discontent. They watched the men fan themselves and bitch.

“Dammit, Angelo,” one said, “I thought you were bringing the water.”

“Me?” Angelo, young yet vicious-looking, replied with sullen anger. “What am I, your donkey? Lincoln freed the slaves, man.”

“Yeah,” said a third, sprawled out with his back against a tree. His automatic rifle leaned against the tree-trunk as well. “That means nobody gets to drink anything.”

“You could have brought the water,” Angelo riposted.

“All right, all right,” the fourth said. He was the oldest of the group. Dark, Hispanic looking, and very hot and very uncomfortable. Ray was happy to note that his suit was looking a lot worse for wear than Ray’s own, even though the chump had known that they were going to be traipsing through the goddamned woods like a pack of Boy Scouts. He was also the only one of the five who wasn’t armed, though he could have been packing in a shoulder holster or belt rig. “I don’t want to hear any more of this shit. Yeah, we’re thirsty. Yeah, we’re hot. But we got to find this Fortune kid. The sooner we walk our section, the sooner we get back to the car and some cold beer. Tony, how’s it looking?”

Tony was looking at what appeared to be a U.S.G.S. quadrant map. Looking confused.

“Jesus, Jesus,” he pronounced the second ‘Jesus” as “Hay-seuss,” “it’s hard to figure out where we are with all these trees all around us.”

“We’re in the frigging woods, Tony. There’s going to be a lot of trees.”

The fifth was lying flat on his back, rifle by his side, eyes closed, panting like a horse who’d been run too hard and too long.

It was Angelo, Ray decided. He was the one to watch. He still had his hands on his rifle. He was young. He was annoyed. He’d be the one. Fortunately, he was the closest to the clump of bushes where they were hiding.

Ray, standing between Yeoman and Ackroyd, glanced at them right and left, then gestured towards the clearing. Yeoman gave him a sardonic, be my guest look. Ackroyd looked at him like he was crazy. Ray nodded, knowing he was foolish for relying on a man he didn’t know and a man he didn’t really trust, but he was getting tired himself, and mostly he wanted answers. And there were five walking, talking encyclopedias in the clearing before them. He slithered though the bushes with amazing agility, though truthfully he was more concerned with snagging his suit than making noise.

He stepped into the clearing, smiling. “I’m looking for some scumbags who’re trying to kidnap a kid,” he said conversationally. “Seen any around here?”

The five men looked at Ray as if he were a lunatic escaped from a near-by asylum, and when they started to move Ray was already among them. Angelo, as Ray had suspected, would the first to react, and the fastest. He started to lift his gun and shift into a comfortable firing position, but that was one action too many.

Ray was on him, still smiling, as Angelo lifted his rifle, and Ray plucked it from his hand like taking candy from a baby. He threw it back over his shoulder into the woods as Angelo started to stand, muttering, “Loco motherfucker,” and reaching for his back-up piece snugged down in a belt holster in the small of his back. Ray took his arm and he broke it just like that, still smiling, and Angelo howled as Ray swiveled in one continual motion and kicked him in the chest hard enough to lift him off his ass and propel him into a tree across the clearing. In the same motion Ray reached out and snagged the gun from the guy who was lying stretched out on the ground and tossed it into the trees alongside Angelo’s.

The guy opened his eyes and sat up to see Ray standing over him, still smiling, and Ray’s fist came down once and the guy went back down again, no longer interested. The one who had bitched to Angelo about the water was swinging his gun around but an arrow came from out of the bushes, shining like silver as it tore through the sunlight, and pinned him through his shoulder to the tree he’d been leaning against.

Tony looked up with his mouth hanging open, the map still spread across his knees. Then he was gone, an audible “POP” sounding above the wounded man’s screams as air rushed in to fill the vacuum that had been Tony, his map, and a layer of the dirt he’d been sitting on.

That left Jesus, who was smart enough not to draw his weapon as Billy Ray stepped towards him. “Who are you?” Jesus asked. “What are you doing?”

“I told you, Jesus,” Ray said. “We’re looking for some scumbag kidnappers.” Ray got close to him, so close that he stumbled back a step or two. “That just happen to fit your description.”

“You a cop?”

Ray’s smile broadened. “If I was a cop,” he asked, “could I do this?”

He slapped him stingingly, left, right, left. Jesus stumbled back again.

“Come on out,” Ray called. “I think we’ve got it all under control.”

Yeoman and Ackroyd stepped out of the shrubbery. Ray turned his smile to them. He was genuinely happy, if somewhat disappointed in the short duration and easiness of the fight.

“You know, Ackroyd, you were right.” He nodded at Yeoman. “I do like this guy. Good shooting coupled with a nice sense of timing.”

Ackroyd shook his head. “You’re as crazy as he is.”

“Maybe,” Ray said. He looked at the groaning man. “Get rid of him.”

The man looked up, fear in his eyes. “No—no don’t kill me—”

“Wait a minute,” Yeoman said, as if knowing what was going to happen. “Let me retrieve my arrow.”

He strode over to the tree, grabbed the shaft and pulled hard as the man cringed. His victim screamed as it came out of the tree trunk and through his torn flesh. Yeoman looked at the shaft critically, wiped the blood off it on the man’s shirt, and put it back in his quiver.

“Maybe I can salvage it,” he said to no one in particular. He stepped aside. “Okay. Do your stuff.”

The man moaned again. He looked at Ackroyd, pleading in his eyes. “No. Please. Don’t hurt me no more. Please.”

Ackroyd gave him a tight smile. “Sorry.”

He clenched his right hand into a pistol shape, his forefinger pointing at the target, his thumb pointing straight up at the sky. There was another “POP” and he was gone.

“Jesus Christ,” Angelo said, panting for breath as he crouched on the ground clutching his broken arm. “What’d you do to him, man?”

“I sent him to a far better place,” Ackroyd explained. He looked at Ray and Yeoman. “What do you think? Him next?” He indicated Angelo with a gesture of his cocked fist.

Ray knew that Ackroyd had probably popped his first target off to the holding pen at Riker’s Island, or some other similar location. That was how his power worked. He was a projecting teleport who could send anyone, or anything small enough, any place he was familiar with. The gun that he made with his right fist was the mental crutch he leaned on to make his power function. He’d probably sent the second stooge to an emergency room somewhere.

Of course, the stooges who were still their captives didn’t know that.

“Hey man,” Angelo pleaded. “I’m hurt. My arm’s broke and I think you broke a couple of ribs too.” He grimaced convincingly.

“Is that all?” Ray asked in disappointed tones. “I was trying to crush your spleen.”

“My spleen don’t feel too good, either,” Angelo said placatingly.

Ray shrugged. “Waste ‘em.”

Ackroyd turned to him. Angelo tried to scuttle away, but he moved gingerly as if he did have several broken ribs. Ackroyd popped him away without any difficulty, as he did the fourth man, who was still lying unconscious on the forest loam.

Ray, Yeoman, and Ackroyd turned to Jesus. Jesus swallowed, audibly.

“What do you guys want?” he asked.

They advanced on him. “Answers,” Ray said.

New Hampton: The black dirt

The afternoon heat had come, though in his astral form Fortunato couldn’t tell if it was a delightful seventy-five or a humid ninety. His insubstantial body was beyond all such considerations. He was worried that he’d been gone so long from his physical body that he might have trouble reintegrating with it, but he thrust that worry away as best he could. Other concerns took precedence.

He drifted aloft, keeping a watchful eye on the unfolding landscape as he scudded about like an unseen cloud. After all, he could get lucky and stumble upon the boy by chance, unlikely as that was. He couldn’t afford to ignore that possibility, however slim. He couldn’t afford to ignore any chance, no matter how slight.

The country below him was quiet and peaceful. Houses were dispersed among acres of farmland or forest or clung together in small groups of half a dozen or so on single-lane county roads. He drifted at one point over a hillside that was being eaten away by a gravel pit, which appeared to be the only sign of industrial activity anywhere in his sight. Ironically, right across the road from the pit was a small country church, closed up and silent.

He was within a mile of the camp, but the terrain had changed. It was much more open, with tiny copses of forest stranded on isolated hills. The land generally sloped downwards to form a large, open bowl, like the bottom of a waterless lake. This area was squared off into fields planted with various crops. Fortunato could see corn and tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber, and, mostly, row upon row of onions sprouting from the thick, rich soil that was blacker than his own skin. In the near distance, less than two miles away, the silver ribbon of a small river ran through this rich black dirt.

He could feel the energy entrapped in the soil even from his vantage point thirty or forty feet in the sky. It was opulent, fertile earth, unlike the thin city dirt which supported the concrete and steel environment that he was much more familiar with.

Energy...

He dropped to the Earth like a bullet, coming to rest in a field that was planted half in cucumbers and half in onions. The soil was soft and crumbly, full of brown clods of organic material that also testified to its richness. It radiated energy it had drunk that day from the sun, and ancient, even more potent energy seemed to infest its every particle. Fortunato couldn’t feel the warmth it threw off, but he could see it dissipate into the air like shimmers off a mirage. The older energy seemed an integral part of the soil. Fortunato put his face into the dirt and saw the tiny pellets of power being drawn up the roots growing in it. He could see the dirt nourish the plants as they grew to their full richness.

If this energy feeds crops planted in it, Fortunato thought, it could feed much more as well.

Fortunato sank through the dirt as if it were the sky. He felt no sense of claustrophobia when it closed over him and he was fully interred within it as if the field were his vast grave. He sank lower and lower. Ten feet into the soil, the energy was more abundant, more vibrant, as decades of farming had only leached away bits of it. Twenty feet down it sparked and coruscated like alien-looking sea creatures living in the ocean depths. Thirty feet down Fortunato hit bedrock and stopped.

Floating in the dirt as if it were the sky, he emptied his mind until it was a complete blank. The void of him begged to be filled.

And so it was.

Suddenly he stood on the surface of a great lake whose shores lapped the slopes of what were hillsides in his own time. The land around him was lush and wild. Man had never drunk from this lake or boated upon it or polluted it with his waste and industrial run-off. It was pristine and free. The forests surrounding it were impenetrable, except for the great mammoths and other immense beasts that roamed the lake’s margins and rocky beaches.

Fortunato realized that he was seeing this land as it was thousands of years ago, before the coming of man. The lake seemed as if it would go on forever. But even landscapes change with the millennia. The Earth subsided, twisted, and moved. The climate turned drier, hotter. The lake started to shrink. The forests around it, the plants that grew in it, all died. They surrendered their richness and metamorphosed into thick black dirt that accumulated over the thousands of years it took the lake to die.

But the lake hadn’t really died. It had simply changed. It had transformed from a fluid state to rich black soil. The clumps of organic material in the soil were plants compressed into layers of peat, then broken up thousands of years later by man’s plows.

But Fortunato was down with the energy that had lingered for millennium. For longer than man had been on this continent. In the upper levels of the black earth it had slowly been leached away by farmers for two hundred, two hundred and fifty years. Down where Fortunato lingered, it was still pristine.

And, like most energy, it was begging to be used.

He embraced it. He drank it in. It filled him fuller than the sexual energy of the Tantric rituals ever did. He could feel it coursing through his astral form like lightning contained by the invisible shape of his insubstantial body. When he could drink no more of it he burst out again into the sky.

One moment he was at the bottom of the Pleistocene lake. The next he was in the sky above the camp. He willed to be there the night before, and he was. He heard the commotion and saw his son. He saw the detective protect him from the kidnappers, witnessed their flight into the woods. He followed them as they moved like actors in a tape set in fast forward, burning minutes of time in seconds, hours in minutes. He went with them as they wandered lost in the woods. He saw the detective’s bravery during the brief firefight. Saw the unexpected arrows lance out of the night and thought, My God, it’s Yeoman!, saw his son stumble back into the forest. He followed him dodging and hiding, watching as he discovered the small church and spent a fitful night there. Then he saw him cautiously go out the next day, find the store at the foot of the hill and buy some bread, cold cuts, ice cream and soda which he took back to the church. Fortunato could understand the agony of the boy’s indecision, unsure of which hand might be raised against him, cautiously waiting for help, eventually deciding that he had to go find it himself. He went back to the store to ask to use the phone, and immediately tried to leave when he recognized that the others in the shop were enemies. They went after him. He tried to run but Fortunato knew that they would catch him, and he was in his astral form unable to touch anything upon the corporeal plane. The men were closing around his son and Fortunato knew that his only slim hope was to reach out and touch a receptive mind, to find someone who could understand his pleas and come to help the boy.

Fortunato shouted for help, but he was afraid that no one would hear.

New Hampton: the woods

Jesus hung tough for awhile, but once they got him talking he wouldn’t shut up. It was Jay’s threat to teleport his gonads to a subway stop somewhere in the Bronx that broke him. Ray didn’t think that Ackroyd could actually do it, and he was pretty sure that he wouldn’t even if he could, but it was Ray’s experience that macho shit bags like Jesus were quite attached and often abnormally concerned about the state and condition of their gonads. Jesus started singing like the Jokertown Boys after Jay’s threat, revealing some items of interest, as well as some things that Ray already knew.

“It’s not like we’re committing a crime or anything,” Jesus confided, splitting his attention between Jay and the razor-sharp broad tip arrow that Yeoman was playing with as he looked on with dark, unrelenting eyes.

“Kidnapping isn’t a crime?” Yeoman asked flatly.

“Well, sure. If we were actually kidnapping someone. That would be a crime, sure. And a sin. But since we’re working for the church, what we’re doing can’t really be a sin, can it?”

“Wait a minute,” Ackroyd said. “The church?”

“Sure,” Jesus said confidently. “I am an obsequentus in the Allumbrados. We take our orders from the Cardinal. Directly.”

“You want to translate, that, please?” Ackroyd said.

Jesus shrugged. “Of course. Obsequentus—an ‘obedient’ in the Order of Allumbrados, The Enlightened Ones. That’s the middle rank in the Order, between credenti and perfecti,” Jesus added helpfully.

“You do this full time?” Yeoman asked in disbelief.

“Well, it’s more of a part-time thing—”

“Between drug sales,” Ray put in dryly. He had seen Jesus’ type often enough. He recognized his probable affiliation with the Colombians like a street-savvy cop could spot a pickpocket working the crowd in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

Jesus shrugged. “Hey, a man’s got to eat. But you guys, you ruined my chance. If I found the kid I would have been promoted to perfectus.”

“Enough,” Ackroyd said. “What’s all this about the church? You’re talking about the Catholic Church?”

“I’m not talking about crazy-ass Protestants,” Jesus said. “I’m talking Mother Church. Rome. The Vatican.”

“What do they want with John Fortune?” Ackroyd asked, obviously having a hard time believing all this.

“I’ll tell you,” Jesus said, leaning forwards conspiratorially. “Then maybe you let me go.”

Yeoman snorted. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Jesus made gestures for them all to come closer, and Ray found himself leaning forward as if Jesus were telling ghost stories around the campfire. They all did. “John Fortune ain’t no kid. He’s the Anti-Christ.”

“Anti-Christ?” Ackroyd repeated.

Jesus nodded. “It’s true. He’s the Devil.”

“Jesus Christ,” Yeoman said.

Jesus pointed at him. “Exactly. Jesus Christ is coming. The End Times are upon us. Jesus and Satan will battle for the fate of the Earth. Jesus will win of course, but the Allumbrados have been doing all they can to smooth his way for him.”

“Like... kidnapping... John... Fortune,” Ackroyd said slowly. He and Yeoman exchanged glances as if this was the first time they’d ever agreed on anything.

Ray himself would think the whole thing was nuts if he hadn’t Barnett’s solemn assurance that John Fortune was actually Jesus Christ in his Second Coming. He wasn’t sure that he believed Barnett, but at least he was on the side that was trying to rescue the boy, not the one trying to drag him in front of some inquisition. For now his seemed to be the right side in this crazy affair. For now.

Ackroyd and Yeoman looked at him, and he shrugged. Now was not the time, Ray decided, to open up. “Sounds nuts to me,” he said.

“Got any more questions?” Ackroyd asked, looking from Ray to Yeoman.

“How many teams are out looking for the boy?” Yeoman asked.

“Three others, as far as I know.” Jesus paused. “They’re not all Allumbrados, though. Most of the guys on my team weren’t, though a couple were credenti.”

“Running short on nutcases?” Ackroyd asked.

Jesus looked very badly like he wanted to say something, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Bye-bye,” Ackroyd said, pointed, and popped.

Jesus had time for one startled, betrayed look, then he vanished.

“Where’d you send him?” Ray asked.

“Where he belonged. Bellevue.”

“Probably not a bad choice,” Ray said innocently.

Ackroyd sighed and looked around the forest clearing. “Not what do we do?”

“Pray we find the boy,” Yeoman said, “before these nutcases do.”

Amen, Ray thought, but just nodded.

New Hampton: The Snake Handlers’ Commune

Jerry and the Angel helped three of the commune members, Josaphat, Josiah, and Jehoram, carry the bushels of produce into the kitchen. It was hard to be so close to so much tempting food, because Jerry had a bad case of the munchies from the contact high he’d gotten off Mushroom Daddy. He didn’t think he could wait for dinner.

Hungry as he was, it was clear that Angel was hungrier. Ravenous, in fact. The boys left them in the capable hands of Hephzibah, an old woman who looked like an extra from The Grapes of Wrath, who ran the commune’s kitchen. When she learned that they were both hungry she put out a supply of leftovers—cold fried chicken, home-baked bread, mashed-potatoes, corn on the cob, green bean casserole, tomato and cucumber salad, and a couple of apple pies—and watched in awe as Angel packed away enough food to feed a platoon. Jerry was getting a little embarrassed by Angel’s gustatory display, but the food was so good and he was so munched out that he really wasn’t all that far behind her in the leftover demolition. To assuage his conscience he slipped Hephzibah a couple of twenties that Ackroyd had given him earlier to cover the cost of their generosity.

Jerry was so taken with the simply prepared, yet unbelievably fresh and tasty fare that he didn’t even think of pumping Hephzibah for information on John Fortune’s whereabouts. Neither did Angel. They were both surprised when the sounds of an electric guitar wafted through the air, penetrating even Jerry’s dazed consciousness that was threatening to slip into a digestive torpor after he’d polished off the last of the potato salad.

“That’s the call to worship,” Hephzibah said. “I hope you’re both satisfied for now.” She looked at Angel, who had glanced up disappointedly from the fragments of the apple pie she’d just devoured. “Supper will be after service. If you’re still hungry.”

A loud belch escaped Angel. “Excuse me. Please.”

At least, Jerry thought, she had the grace to look mortified

Hephzibah waved it away. “That’s all right, honey. Long as you enjoyed everything.”

Angel looked down guiltily at the empty platters and plates and pie tins, as if aware for the first time of the devastation they’d wrought. Jerry wondered if she actually enjoyed anything in life.

“It was great, all of it.” He looked at Angel. “I guess we should mosey on up to the, uh, services. Right, Angel? We have to thank Uzziah”—he was the commune’s leader—“for your generosity to a couple of strangers.”

“Friends of Daddy are friends of ours,” Hephzibah said. “Besides, the generosity you receive is equal to the generosity you give.”

Jerry frowned. “Wasn’t that a Beatles’ song?”

Hephzibah leaned forwards as if revealing a great confidence. “Close. You can learn much from the lyrics of Lennon and McCartney. Almost as much as from the Book itself.”

Jerry nodded. “I’ll remember that.”

Angel seemed sunken even deeper in a digestive stupor than Jerry. Not unlikely, Jerry thought, if this was the first time she’d experienced a marijuana high. Which was probable. First-time users usually didn’t get off much, but Jerry suspected that just as the Daddy’s vegetables were so tasty, his other produce, as it were, was probably as potent in its own particular way. Jerry took her by the arm and helped her step away from the table.

“See you at the service, then,” he said, steering Angel out of the kitchen.

Everyone seemed to be moseying towards a whitewashed structure set on a high point a little bit apart from the scatter of other structures. It was in better shape than most of the other buildings, with a fresh coat of whitewash and a well-maintained wood frame and shingled roof. The sounds of the guitar called to them.

“Say,” Jerry said. “Isn’t that ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Angel said. “It sounds like rock and roll and I know nothing about the Devil’s music.”

“Oh, lighten up for once, would you?”

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Angel said. “It will be dangerous for both our bodies and our souls.”

“Yeah, well, we have to check them out. We’ll get a gander at their service. Ask a few questions. Maybe slip Uzziah a couple more twenties to take care of the damage you did to their larder—”

“You ate their food as well!” Angel said, stung.

Jerry sighed. She seemed to be one of those women who didn’t respond well to criticism, no matter how mild. “Let’s not go comparing who did what to the refrigerator, all right?” Jerry said.

Angel was reluctant, but she followed him. As they ambled up the hill to the church, Jerry noticed an oddly-decorated tree standing off by itself. He wasn’t sure what kind of tree it was. It had bottles of all colors, shapes, and sizes tied to its branches by strips of cloth. The bottles hung close enough together that when a wind blew they jangled softly against each other, making an odd, strangely pleasing music that could be heard even above the wailing tones of the electric guitar.

“What is that thing?” he asked, wondering.

“It’s a Spirit Tree,” Angel said.

“Spirit Tree?”

She nodded. “That’s what I said.” They stopped to look at it for a moment. “They’re common down South, but then so are snake cults. I ‘spect these people came up from somewhere near the Appalachians, bringing their snakes and Spirit Trees with them.”

“What’s it supposed to do?” Jerry asked.

Angel reached up and touched a cobalt blue bottle that had once held a stomach tonic, looking at it as if it contained the secrets of the universe. “Oh, the noise they make in the wind is supposed to scare away ghosts. Or maybe catch them if they get too close.” She let go of the bottle and it swung back, tinkling softly as it glanced against one of its fellows. “Anyway, that’s the foolish superstition. Come on,” she said, as if suddenly galvanized. “We’re missing the beginning of the service.”

They went on up to the church where they found seats in one of the back pews. It was already filling up. There were maybe thirty people inside with a dozen or more still filing in. The wooden pews were skillfully handcrafted. The floor was laid wooden planks, polished, and cleanly swept. The church’s interior was whitewashed plaster. The walls were unadorned except for some folksy portraits of Jesus Christ, most of which concentrated on the more gruesome aspects of His life. Christ scourged. Christ crucified. Christ with the crown of thorns. Most of the images made Jerry shudder. They resembled scenes more suitable for horror movies than a church, though he wasn’t really familiar with anything but the staid upper-class Protestant services he’d largely abandoned once he became an adult.

A simple plank altar stood against the rear wall. Before the altar was a wooden podium, hanging on the wall behind it was a nicely executed wooden statue of Christ on the cross. Even from their vantage point in the back, Jerry could see the agony on Christ’s face, the pain in his thin, rope-muscled body as it hung from the nails driven through his mutilated palms. It was a powerful if morbid bit of folk art. It seemed to hit Angel even harder. She stared at it from her knees on the pew’s unpadded rail, her lips moving in mumbled prayer.

The band was to the left of the podium. Daddy was playing the guitar, a shiny red Fender that looked like it would be far more at home in places where they played the Devil’s music that Angel so abjured. He wasn’t bad. Daddy caught Jerry’s eye, smiled, and briefly waved at him. Jerry waved back. He seems like a nice enough guy, Jerry thought. He sure raises some great-tasting vegetables.

The rest of the band was musically less certain. A teenaged boy sat behind a scanty drum set that consisted of a base and a couple of snares. A couple of women beat raggedly on tambourines, and a geezer had a big pair of cymbals that he whacked together at seemingly random intervals. He did seem to be having fun, as did the rest of the congregation. They were singing the lyrics to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

“I told you that’s what the song was,” Jerry whispered to Angel, who had stopped praying, but was still kneeling on the rail, her clasped hands resting on the pew in front of them. She looked around as if she’d found herself suddenly cast into the lion’s den.

Daddy, apparently leading the band, segued into a rocking version of “I Saw The Light,” which the congregation took up without missing a beat.

It was hot inside the little wood structure, and crowded. The pew where Jerry and Angel sat was full, as were most in the small church. The congregation, the men dressed in worn jeans or stiff polyester pants and neatly pressed shirts buttoned up to their necks, the women in ankle-length dresses with lace collars and tiny flower prints and sensible black shoes, were singing and clapping along enthusiastically with the band, when Uzziah made his entrance.

He walked quietly down the center aisle while Daddy led the congregation through one more chorus of “I Saw The Light,” a worn black Bible in one hand and a long, narrow wooden box carried by a leather strap in the other. He reached the podium, put his Bible down, and went to the altar and set the wooden box upon it as the congregation’s sing-a-long ground to a ragged but cheerful halt.

Uzziah looked out upon the congregation, a thoughtfully serious expression on his lined, darkly tanned face. “Ain’t it hot in here?” he asked in a soft voice than nonetheless penetrated to every corner of the suddenly quiet church.

Somehow Jerry didn’t think that he was talking about the weather.

“I said,” Uzziah said again, “ain’t it hot in here?”

This time a chorus of “Yes,” and “Amen” burst out from the congregation. Jerry looked around out of the corner of his eyes. A growing rapture was evident on many of the faces surrounding him as Uzziah opened his Bible and read the first thing his eyes seemed to strike on the page.

“ ‘And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out Devils; they shall speak with new tongues’—”

Uzziah paused briefly and there was a sudden great intake of breath as if everyone knew what was coming next. When he spoke again his voice was raised, was exulted like the roar of a lion, though he seemed to put no more effort into these words than those that had come before.

“—‘THEY SHALL TAKE UP SERPENTS’—”

Pandemonium swept through the church like a whirlwind, leaving in its wake shouting, stamping, singing, crying people as Mushroom Daddy led the ragged band through a very up-tempo version of “What A Friend We Have in Jesus.” The energy and power exhibited by the tiny congregation was almost frightening. Jerry had never seen anything like it before. Everything that had previously transpired was the merest warm-up. It damn well was hot in there.

He glanced at Angel, and suddenly froze at the look on her face. Her features were stiff and wooden, as if paralyzed, with her eyes bulging and her teeth clenched and showing in the dead rictus smile of her mouth. A line of spittle ran down her chin. Jerry wondered if she’d had a seizure of some kind, and then she began to speak like a meth freak who’d mixed his speed with acid. Jerry couldn’t understand the rapid-fire words she spit from her mouth. He didn’t even know what language they were in.

Tongues, he thought dazedly. She’s speaking in tongues.

He looked around wildly, wondering what he should do. The others in their pew watched with interest but no special concern, as if this was not a terribly unusual occurrence. Jerry supposed that it wasn’t.

One man marched up and down the aisles like a wind-up toy, loudly proclaiming his love for Jesus while clapping his hands almost in rhythm with the band. Others prayed or testified in loud voices. In front of the congregation, near the simple altar, Uzziah opened the long narrow box and took out a snake.

It was a thick, gray-mottled four foot long serpent that he held fearlessly in his hands, its rattles buzzing with a determined noise that could be heard over the band playing, the congregation singing and praying, and Angel loudly proclaiming in tongues. Uzziah held it behind its head with his right hand and supported the rest of its thick, coiled body with his left, its face so close to his own that its flickering tongue caressed his lips with its questing touch.

Jerry suddenly felt that they should get out of there. He knew that he had to get Angel’s attention. He had read somewhere that it was dangerous to try to wake sleepwalkers. He hoped that the same wasn’t true of tongue-talkers.

He gripped her upper arms and tried to turn her to face him in the pew. “Angel!” Briefly he considered slapping her face, then thought better of it and tried to shake her out of her trance. “Angel! It’s Jerry—” Christ! He had forgotten what name she knew him by. “Jerry Creighton!” he amended swiftly. “Snap out of it! You’ve got—”

Her eyes focused on his, without a hint of recognition in them. Only anger.

“Shit,” Jerry said.

Angel shrugged, easily breaking his grip. He reached out to her and she grabbed his arm, pivoted, and threw him against the wall. She flung out her other arm, caught the pew’s backrest and shattered it into kindling. The people around them scattered as splinters flew among them like shrapnel. The band ground to an uncertain halt.

Apparently, Jerry thought as he crouched on the polished wooden floor, this was an unusual occurrence, even by their standards. He took a deep breath. Nothing was broken, though he’d hit the wall with the impact of a multi-story fall onto concrete. Fortunately, due to his wild card power, his bones were rather flexible.

He looked up to see Angel panting and staring at him. In other circumstances it might have been arousing. But her stare was fixed and it seemed that she was panting with anger, not passion. She launched herself at him, and Jerry did the only thing he could think of to possibly ensure his survival.

He curled up on the floor in a ball, his face buried in the crook of his elbows, his hands protecting his head, his knees tight against his gut. He felt something go by him like a train in the night and there was a mighty crash as Angel smashed through the church’s wall.

“Jesus Christ,” Jerry whispered, as if he was praying or cursing.

“Hey, man, you all right?” a concerned voice asked.

He didn’t have to turn around to realize who it was as Mushroom Daddy’s clinging aura of essence of marijuana announced his presence.

“Yeah,” Jerry said. “I guess.”

“Let me help you up, man.”

He gripped Daddy’s offered hand and the hippie hauled him to his feet. He clung to him for a moment until his head cleared. They both watched Angel run through the settlement, then stop suddenly and reverse her field.

“She’s coming back,” Jerry said. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

They watched in silence for a moment, then Daddy shouted, “No she’s not, man! She’s stealing my van! She’s stealing my frigging van, man! Man, that’s so not-cool!”

They watched in astonishment as Angel flung the van’s driver side door open and vaulted into the driver’s seat.

“How’d she start it without the key?” Jerry wondered out loud as the engine roared into life.

“The key’s in the ignition, man, where I always leave it.”

Jerry looked at him.

“What?” Daddy said. “We’re in the country man! Nobody steals shit here. Everyone’s, like, all honest and cool, man. Besides, before I thought about keeping it in the ignition I kept forgetting where I’d put it and then I’d have to go all the way to Middletown to have a duplicate made. Oh, man!”

He said the last in a disgusted voice as the chugging motor finally caught and Angel spun the wheel and roared down the unpaved road, kicking up a spray of dirt and gravel like a contrail in her wake.

Jerry sighed deeply. He turned around. Everyone in the congregation was staring at him, even the rattlesnake who was draped around Uzziah’s shoulders like a feather boa. The snake, in fact, had possibly the friendliest expression in the whole group.

“Sorry,” Jerry said with a tentative smile that no one, not even Mushroom Daddy, returned.

New Hampton: the Snake-Handlers’ Commune

This has been an unsettling experience all around, the Angel thought. She’d felt odd ever since getting out of the hippie’s van, but had turned away the strangeness with vast quantities of the snake-handlers’ unbelievably excellent food. She felt better after eating, but now she realized that she should have resisted Creighton’s notion to attend the ophiolatrists’ services. She wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with what went on in their places of worship. He mother had taken her along when she’d attended several such churches during her quest for spiritual enlightenment. They had also frightened her. The loud music. The crazed testifying. Tonight, for some reason, she felt herself terribly susceptible to their call.

She prayed to the Lord for strength to remain calm. But for some reason he chose to deny her prayer. Part of her watched in horror as some strange spirit rose up in her and she heard herself confessing her sins, her wanton desires, fortunately speaking in no language of Earth. Which, when she thought about it, frightened her even more.

Then she heard the Voice.

The Angel was terrified at the sound of it in her head. She had never really experienced anything like that before. Clearly, she was in the grip of the Holy Spirit and it frightened her. She knew that she was not worthy.

“John Fortune is at Kaleita’s Groceries—he’s being taken by a group of armed men. Someone has to rescue him! Someone out there who can hear this—please! Help!”

The voice of the Holy Ghost was deep and masculine. It spoke to her alone. At least no one else acted as if they heard it. It spoke with great urgency, telling her that the boy was in danger, telling her that she had to reach him, fast. It was clear that if she didn’t he’d fall into the hands of their enemies and The Hand’s plans would come to nothing. The Millennium would be denied and Jesus Christ would not take his place as God’s Regent upon the Earth. It was up to her and her alone, unworthy as she was, to rescue him.

She ran almost blindly from the church. The man called Creighton—useless as he’d been throughout this entire affair—stood in her way. She removed him. She had no time to find the door. She went through the wall.

As she ran down the hill the Spirit Tree cheered her on, the bottles tied to its branches clanking musically in the wind. She remembered the store on the county road, about two miles from where she stood. It would take her about seven or eight minutes to get there on foot, maybe less if she ignored the roads and cut cross country.

Too long, she thought. Too, too long. The boy’s kidnappers would be gone by then and the Holy Ghost’s warning would have been wasted.

Then she remembered the van sitting before the ramshackle barn and hope sprang into her breast. If only, she prayed. If only...

She ran to it, flung open the driver’s side door so hard that it rebounded and slammed against her backside as she leaned into the cab. Praise the Lord, she silently prayed. The idiot left his keys in the ignition.

She vaulted into the seat and turned the key, gunning the gas pedal. The engine groaned like a feeble old man with a hangover. Gently, she told herself. Be gentle and patient. For once... take your time...

She eased up on the gas and the engine sputtered to life. She engaged the clutch and winced as it sounded like she ground a few pounds of the transmission into metal filings. The van bucked and humped like an unruly mustang, but slipped into gear. The Angel shot backwards, scattering the chickens who’d been peacefully pecking their day’s ration of feed, ground another month’s worth of life out of the transmission, finally found first and headed on down the road.

It was twisty and not exactly well-banked, so she couldn’t get it much over forty. She skidded through the last turn, suddenly remembering the wooden gate that stood as a barrier between the sect’s private lane and Lower Road. It hadn’t looked too sturdy, she thought hopefully.

It turned out that it wasn’t. She crashed though it like she’d crashed the wall of the church, braking into a power turn and skidding momentarily on the van’s two right tires, her right hand flying off the steering wheel and hitting the eight track’s volume knob, blasting the Canned Heat tape up to full volume.

“Going Up The Country” wailed out her window, which she’d cranked down to reduce the smell of Mushroom Daddy’s peculiar incense which actually wasn’t as bad as it had seemed at first. Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic as she slewed onto Lower Road, her heart hammering in her chest. She wasted a couple of seconds searching for the right gear as the van lurched crazily up the road, finally found the right sequence, and took it to high as fast as she could. It roared and clattered like a metallic behemoth that should have been extinct long ago, but it responded gamely to her urging and the Angel got it up to over seventy.

The left-hand turn off Lower Road was tricky, but she negotiated the down-shifting with only minor grinding of the gears. The last stretch of road was a long glide up a steep hill, then down again. The grocery store was on the left, at the base. Mere moments had passed since the Holy Ghost had delivered His message, but would she be in time?

The van lurched over the crest of the hill like a prancing mustang, its front tires well off the road. It hit hard and slewed sideways. The Angel bounced up off the driver’s seat, bashed her head on the roof and lost control. Her hands flew off the steering wheel, her feet off the gas pedal. The van spun downhill as the Angel shook her head, trying to clear the stars out of her eyes.

God is with me again, she thought, as she realized that the on-coming lane was clear of traffic. She gamely fought the van for mastery, and through sheer strength managed to haul it back into the right hand lane. But it was facing the wrong direction halfway down the steep hill and in imminent danger of stalling. She clenched her teeth and slammed it into reverse. Gravity did the rest.

The Angel looked at the mirror mounted outside the driver’s side window. Her right foot found the gas pedal again and she stomped it. The van shot backwards down the hill, weaving dangerously as it approached the grocery store’s rutted parking lot. Two cars, were both big black boats of some unfamiliar make and model, were already in the lot. A handful of men stood around watching as two others tried to stuff a wiggling and fighting boy in the back seat of one of the cars.

It was John Fortune. She was, thanks be to God, in time.

She roared into the parking lot backwards, the wheels throwing pebbles like bullets. More through luck than any sort of skill managed to screech into the narrow slot between her enemies’ cars. She stood on the brake with both feet, hitting her head again against the van’s roof and ignoring the pain as the VW slammed to a halt an inch from jumping the curb and crashing into the storefront behind it. She was out of the van before the amazed on-lookers stopped flinching from the shower of pebbles thrown by its squealing tires.

“Release the boy!” she cried in a voice like the ringing of a great iron bell.

There was a moment of silence as everyone, John Fortune included, stood stock still and stared at her, her chest heaving, eyes wild, hair streaming back like a valkryie just come down from Valhalla.

The Angel broke the silence. She growled like a she-wolf, driven to inarticulate fury by their failure to respond to her command, and reached both hands high above her head while saying aloud her short prayer, and called down the fiery sword. She struck one of the cars, hitting the roof dead on center, slicing all the way through to the pavement. The blade threw off coruscating sparks that sent half the on-lookers diving away, screaming and batting at the cinders burning their hands and faces and setting their clothes on fire.

She took a step forward, swinging her sword in a great arc and bringing it down again on the car’s roof with all her strength, cutting through roof and side-panels and neatly bisecting the vehicle. It collapsed in the parking lot with a groan of tortured metal.

“Jesus Christ!” one of the men said.

She turned and back-handed him, sending him flying over the wreckage. “Don’t blaspheme!” she said, and moved around the front of the van which was still chugging in place, pointing her sword at the two men who were still holding John Fortune. “Release the boy,” she repeated, this time in a voice low and hard and full of undefined menace.

They did, but only to reach for guns holstered at shoulder and belt.

The Angel moved faster than seemed humanly possible. She pulled her hands apart and the sword vanished. She slapped one of the men down before he could pull out his gun. The other drew, fired hastily, and his shot spit harmlessly over her shoulder. She closed on him before he could fire again. She grabbed his gun hand, twisted, and heard things break. Some were parts of the gun, some were parts of his hand.

He went down screaming. There were two other men at the front of the car. One had a pistol out, the other was reaching into the car’s front seat for a rifle. The Angel hunched over and scooped John Fortune up with one hand. She reached with the other and snagged the bottom of the car’s driver side rear panel, right by the tire. She grunted with effort and stood, veins pulsing on her neck and forehead, throbbing as if they were going to burst. The muscles in her legs, buttocks, back, and right arm cracking with strain, she heaved.

The car flipped up into the air.

The man reaching for the rifle was thrown to one side. The man with the pistol said, “Oh, shit.” He dove aside but the car came down roof first, mostly on him. He screamed like a cockroach meeting an inescapable size twelve shoe bottom.

The Angel whirled and tossed John Fortune into the van’s passenger side seat as gently as she could, leaped into the van herself, ground a bit more of the transmission to dust, whirled out of the parking lot, and sped off down the county road, across a bridge over a little river and out into open rolling country bordered by lettuce fields and occasional farm houses, going in the direction opposite the camp, away from the useless Creighton, from the useless Billy Ray, and from the blasphemous and scary, if generous, snake handlers. She hoped they wouldn’t think too unkindly of her. She took a deep breath and for the first time took a second to turn off the Canned Heat tape. Enough of that, she thought.

She glanced at John Fortune, who was staring at her like she was some kind of figment from an awful dream. She calmed her breathing, ran a hand through her wild hair.

“Hello, John,” she said in as calm a voice as she could manage. “How are you?”

“I-I’m all right,” he said in a small voice. “Who are you?”

She smiled kindly. “I am your friend. You can call me the Midnight Angel.”

He looked her over carefully. “Are you taking me to my mother?”

Here, she thought, it gets difficult. She could not lie to him.

“No, John.” She looked back out through the windshield. It was best that he learned the full truth as soon as possible. “Have you ever been to Branson, Missouri?”

“No.”

“There’s a theme park there,” she said, trying to put the best possible face on it. “With rides.”

There was a momentary silence, and she glanced back at the boy, afraid of what she might see.

John Fortune nodded. “Cool,” he said.