Wild Cards: Death Draws Five (11 page)

Eerily, it seemed as if the world had stopped to watch their breathtaking exhibition of violence. He saw Angel, some stiff who was much too good-looking for his own good, and even a few of the goons with guns as well as some of the crazy-scared onlookers pause to take a breath as Ray and Dagon tore at each other like gladiators from another, much more savage age.

For a moment John Fortune was forgotten. Even Peregrine slipped from his mind until the epic battle ended with the brilliant one-two punch of Angel and Ray cold-cocking the British ace.

Jerry saw the handsome guy climb onto the stage. Some of the surviving gunmen followed him. Fortunately none were near Jerry. He knew that he had only a few moments in which to make the right move. Peregrine was now beyond any help he could give her. There was only the kid, his sacred charge, to consider. He suddenly knew what to do.

He ripped off his clothes and the lights went out as he took on mass.

The auditorium fell into utter darkness. It was all very much like that night back in ‘65 when he’d turned into the Big Ape and sucked enough energy out of his surroundings to start a chain reaction that blacked out New York City and ultimately most of the eastern seaboard.

Energy to mass, as the equation went. This time around, he needed a lot less mass, so he siphoned off a lot less energy. Enough, probably, to blow most of the electric circuits in the auditorium, maybe in all of the Mirage. He welcomed the darkness. It made his task easier.

Jerry knew that he had to work fast. He added pounds of flab to his transformed frame. He didn’t have time to get his features exactly right, so he puffed them up into a pulpy mess. His hands were already bloody, so he smeared them on his face and torso, blurring more detail. He groaned realistically and threw himself down, huddling on his side, his hands over his still-changing face. Someone kneeled next to him.

“Dagon?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

Jerry squinted upwards.

“Wh—who?” he quavered.

“It’s the Witness,” said the handsome guy in a voice decidedly lacking pity. He leaned closer. “I’m surprised you’re already conscious. Man, you got your ass kicked.” The Witness looked up. “Juan—Sam—let the others grab the kid. Come over here and give Dagon a hand,” he said with open contempt. “And for God’s sake, get something to cover him up with. He’s fat and bloody and naked. Come on. Move. Move!”

The last was a general order shouted to everyone as the two men Witness singled out came to Jerry’s side.

“Here you are,” one of them said, slipping a cloak around Jerry with surprisingly gentle hands. “Up you go. Come on, before that asshole Ray finds us hanging around here on the stage.”

Jerry moaned convincingly. They hustled him away, right behind another pair of gunmen who were dragging a limp John Fortune into the wings.

“What about the others?” one of the men supporting Jerry asked as they passed Witness, who was waiting impatiently.

“They knew what they were getting into,” he said shortly. “Let’s get the Hell out of here.”

Jerry kept his face burrowed in the cloak as best he could. He was sure he hadn’t copied Dagon’s features perfectly, but the bruising and swelling and blood that he’d smeared on his face seemed to be an adequate disguise.

The kidnappers, with Jerry and John Fortune in tow, burst out into the sunny parking lot where a van was waiting for them. The two thugs hustled Jerry into the back with six or seven other gunmen, as well as John Fortune, who was only now starting to come around.

The Witness hustled to the front of the van. Its engine was already racing and it started to move before he could slam the passenger-side door shut. They pulled away from the Mirage quickly and immediately headed for the side streets off the strip.

Jerry couldn’t see out of the van’s windows. He didn’t know this part of Vegas —no tourist did—and he was immediately lost. The muscles joked and kidded with macho toughness now that the fight was over, except for the one who cradled his broken arm and endlessly cursed Ray.

They drove for perhaps twenty minutes. Jerry’s mind raced in high gear the entire time, but he was unable to construct a workable plan to escape from the gang. John Fortune groaned awake halfway through the trip. One of the gunmen told him to sit down and shut up, and the kid wisely took his advice. Jerry tried to catch his eye, but Fortune wouldn’t look at him.

Finally they stopped before an abandoned, boarded-up 7-11. The asphalt parking lot shimmered in the summer heat, drooping weeds poking up through the aimless cracks in its surface like dying flowers on the floor of Hell.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Witness ordered.

This guy clearly, Jerry thought, lacked patience. Mystified, Jerry allowed himself to be half-dragged to the convenience store’s front door, which proved to be unlocked. Three men were waiting inside. One had a gun, another held a leash, and the third one wore it.

This last unfortunate was obviously a joker. His body was twisted so that his legs were thick hindquarters, his arms scrawny forelegs. His face had a vaguely canine look, with a snout underslung by a long jaw, no chin, and drooping ears that could have belonged to a hound dog. His skin was unfurred, but sallow, blotchy, and unhealthy-looking. His expression was not intelligent.

“Let’s go, Blood,” his handler said.

The joker looked at him, snuffling eagerly.

“Home, boy. Let’s go home. There’s a nice steak waiting for you. Nice and raw and dripping.”

Blood drooled, grinning idiotically, and walked on four limbs toward the store’s back wall, and then through it in a tunnel that suddenly appeared the instant before his nose would have touched the wall. They all followed him. Jerry was totally mystified, wondering what the Hell was going on.

It was cool and quiet on the other side of the tunnel, which opened into a small room built of naked stone. The room had no windows to the outside and was lit by a single unreachable bulb dangling from a naked fixture in the ceiling. The only door leading out of it was iron, with a tiny barred window. The small chamber smelled of ancient sickness that seemed to have soaked into the very stones of its walls and floor. Jerry didn’t know where they were, but suddenly he was afraid.

Blood howled for his meat.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

New York City: The Waldorf-Astoria

John Nighthawk watched Contarini stare at Cameo as if she’d just hooked a quarter from the collection plate, or done something equally unforgivable. Usher and Magda looked on with interest. Usher’s seemed mild. He really had no dog in this fight. Nighthawk knew that he was along just for the paycheck. But Magda’s expression was hurt compounded with fury.

If there’s trouble, Nighthawk thought, it’ll come from her.

Magda looked at Cameo as if she’d expected the Second Coming to occur right before her eyes and instead had been given a third rate vauDeville act. (Which, Nighthawk realized, was pretty much close to what had happened.) The nun looked from the transformed Cameo to Nighthawk, to Contarini, searching for a clue as how to react. Cameo posed no immediate threat to the Cardinal or anyone else. But, obviously, things hadn’t gone right. The Shroud should have produced Jesus Christ. Instead they’d gotten... someone else. It was clear that Magda had no idea who Cole Porter was, but Contarini, whom Nighthawk knew was a well-educated sophisticate, quickly showed that he labored under no such handicap.

“I don’t understand.” The Cardinal’s voice sounded like cracking ice on a frozen lake in the Italian Alps. “What... where is Our Lord? Why do we have this, this degenerate writer of, of degenerate popular songs instead of Our Lord?”

Nighthawk, who knew a little about music, couldn’t agree with Contarini’s assessment of Porter’s talents and was also more than a little amused that the Cardinal’s fury had made him almost tongue-tied. More importantly, he had an explanation regarding Porter’s unexpected appearance.

“It seems,” Nighthawk said quietly, “that we may have been a little impetuous in insisting that Cameo do her reading here instead of her usual room in Club Dead Nicholas.”

Everyone, even Cameo channeling Porter, looked at him with interest.

“What do you mean?” the Cardinal asked.

Nighthawk shrugged. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Look around. This is Porter’s apartment. When he was in New York he lived in the Waldorf-Astoria, since, when?”

“Nineteen thirty-four,” Porter said. “Though I did move once, from another room in the hotel to this very apartment. It’s so much more spacious than my old flat.“

”Did you brought your furniture with you?” Nighthawk asked.

“Some,” Porter allowed.

“Like the chair you’re sitting on?”

“Yes,” Porter said. “It’s a very comfortable reading chair. Naturally, I brought it along for my library.”

Nighthawk looked at Contarini and spread his hands in a silent, there-you-have-it gesture.

“Are you saying,” the Cardinal said in his low, dangerous voice, “that somehow the spirit, the soul, of this, this sodomite jingle-writer—as expressed in his chair—somehow overcame the potency of Our Lord Savior’s soul—as expressed in his Shroud?”

“No,” Nighthawk suggested quietly. “I’m saying that the scientists and skeptics have been right all along.”

“Che?” Contarini’s anger made him slip into his native language.

“Like the scientists and skeptics have said all along, maybe this isn’t really the burial cloth of Jesus. Maybe it’s a fake.”

For a moment Nighthawk thought that the Cardinal was going to have a stroke. The churchman’s face turned white, then a dangerous-looking red. Veins stood out on his forehead and he swayed on the sofa as if tossed by unfelt winds. Finally he steadied himself and stared at Nighthawk like a malignant demon or a righteous angel. Nighthawk couldn’t decide which.

“It isn’t,” he hissed. “It is real. It is the burial cloth of My Lord and Savior. My faith tells me so.”

“This is all so fascinating,” Porter said, eyeing them closely, “but what does it all have to with me?”

Nighthawk shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, and thought silently to himself, and everything. Nighthawk knew that he had to end this farce soon. Magda was picking up on the Cardinal’s distress. There was no telling how she’d react if the Cardinal made a hasty, unfortunate decision.

And if she reacted badly, his chance to learn what he’d hoped to learn when he’d accepted this mission would probably vanish. It was clear, whatever the Cardinal’s faith told him, that the Shroud was a fake, but this little comedy had shown Nighthawk one thing: the undeniable durability of the soul. There was life after death. The soul did transcend the death of the body. What had been a matter of uncertain faith had suddenly become a matter of certain fact.

He had so many questions he wanted to ask Porter, but he couldn’t ask them now. Not in front of the Cardinal. He hated to see the revenant go, but Porter had to go back to wherever he’d come from before the situation blew up in their faces. There’d be other opportunities to get answers to his questions. Now, for the benefit of all involved, Nighthawk knew that he had to end this scene as quickly and quietly as possible.

“Mr. Porter,” he said in polite tones, “would you come here for a moment? There’s something I’d like you to see.”

Porter looked at him from across the room. “I’d love to, but you see—” He interrupted himself, laughing. “Of course. I have legs that work now. One forgets after doing without for so long.” He glanced down at Cameo’s limbs. “Such slender, pretty ones, too. I would have been quite the popular chap in the old days. But, no, of course, I suppose it wouldn’t have been the same.”

He stood with a sigh, and Cameo swayed as her body broke contact with the chair. She reached out as if to steady herself against the chair’s arm, then snatched her hand away before touching it. She looked from Nighthawk to Contarini, ignoring the two who stood behind her like door guards in a medieval hall.

“It didn’t go as you expected.” It was a statement, not a question.

Contarini stared at her, frowning. “No. It didn’t. Not at all.”

Nighthawk didn’t like his expression, or the inflection of his voice. It didn’t take a revelation to realize what the Cardinal was contemplating. The only question was how far the Cardinal dared to go.

“Nighthawk.” The churchman snapped the ace’s name without looking at him, his terrifying gaze reserved solely for Cameo. “Take this... take our... visitor... out of my sight.”

Nighthawk suddenly relaxed. Whichever way Contarini wanted to go, he, Nighthawk, would actually be in control of Cameo’s destiny. And he’d find a way to work things out.

Nighthawk went to her side. “Come with me,” he said quietly.

She looked at him, made a move to her handbag. Nighthawk shook his head briefly, almost imperceptibly, but she noticed. She looked at him for what seemed a long time, and then she finally nodded.

“Take her to St. Dympna’s,” Contarini said in detached, almost uncaring tones. He gestured vaguely. “Usher and Magda will accompany you.”

“I don’t need—” Nighthawk began, but Contarini interrupted him with a lion’s roar.

“Don’t tell me what you need or don’t need!” he shouted. “I tell you what to do. You obey. Capice?”

Nighthawk bowed silently. Usher moved as quietly as a jungle cat on a deep pile carpet, and before Cameo had a chance to react, he grabbed her handbag away from her. She made a single convulsive motion toward snatching it back, but Usher just shook his head and held it out of her reach.