Death Draws Five

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN’S

DEATH DRAWS FIVE

An original novel by John J. Miller

Copyright © 2006 by George R.R. Martin and the Wild Card Trust

An ibooks,. eBook

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Printed in the United States by ipicturebooks, LLC., New York. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. The ibooks colophon is a pending trademark of

J. Boylston & Company, Publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

John J. Miller

George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards XVII, Death Drarws Five

ISBN 13: 978 1-59687-297-4

1. Miller, John J., —

Science Fiction

ibooks.

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First ibooks printing January 2006

First Kindle Edition, April 2010

Cover art by Mike S. Miller

DEDICATION

In memory of Mookie, beloved and loyal companion for almost fifteen years, and for faithful companions everywhere.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges his obvious debts to all Wild Card writers over the many years and many books, without whose contributions this novel would have clearly been impossible.

Thanks, guys.

J erry Strauss and John Fortune walked through the double doors that opened onto the Mirage auditorium and stopped just inside the entrance to the cavernous room. Jerry didn’t like the way it was set up. He didn’t like it at all. About fifteen hundred seats clustered around a t-shaped stage whose runway projected deep into the auditorium. John Fortune had insisted on getting as close to the action as possible, so their seats were next to the stage, about half-way down the runway on the right side

The kid looked at Jerry. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

Jerry, who had chosen the appearance of Alan Ladd (circa The Glass Key) for this assignment, grinned at Fortune in Ladd’s semi-sinister manner. “Nothing, kid,” he said. “As long as the tigers don’t go berserk. If you haven’t noticed, our seats seem to be well within claw reach.”

“Ah, jeez, Jerry—”

Jerry could see the look of disgust on the kid’s face, and forestalled further complaint by holding up his hand. John Fortune had been closely protected, too closely in Jerry’s opinion, all his life. His mother, the beautiful winged ace Peregrine, had watched over him nearly every second of his existence. When she wasn’t able to watch over him personally, she hired men like Jerry for the task.

Jerry, who usually called himself Mr. Nobody, had almost as many names as faces. It got confusing sometimes. John Fortune knew him by his real first name, but as Lon Creighton he was Jay Ackroyd’s partner in the Ackroyd and Creighton Detective Agency. Peregrine had retained the Agency for nearly sixteen years to help shield her son from danger. Actually, from even the remote possibility of danger.

The irony, Jerry thought, was that John Fortune’s biggest danger was his own genes, and neither Jerry nor anyone else in the world could protect him from that.

“Okay,” Jerry said. “It’s cool. I guess I’ll have to just throw myself in front of you if a hungry tiger tries to make you his early evening snack.”

John Fortune grinned as they went down the aisle to their seats.

“Not much danger of that,” the kid said confidently. “Siegfried and Ralph have been performing in Vegas for more than twenty years and no one in their audience has been eaten yet.”

Jerry grunted. “There’s always a first time for everything,” he said.

Still, the kid was right. Peregrine’s paranoia was rubbing off on him. Vegas, after all, presented a carefully groomed environment that encouraged visitors to relax, have fun, and spend as much money as humanly possible. Of course, he’d done nothing but bodyguard John Fortune since they’d arrived for the premier of Peregrine’s latest documentary at the Vegas Film Festival. Not that he was a decadent hedonist who habitually sunk in the depths of every available fleshpot, but he’d hoped to catch the All Naked Review at the Moulin Rouge, or perhaps the charms of Brandy the Topless Magician, or maybe even the Midnight Fantasy at Jokertown West. Needless to say, having the kid in tow made all of that impossible. Jerry couldn’t even get in any gambling. If he was on his own he could have hit the casinos that catered to wild carders, but he couldn’t drag John Fortune along to those often-dubious establishments.

The show wasn’t due to start for half an hour, but the auditorium was already thronging with patrons seeking their seats as performers went through the room, warming up the crowd. Not that John Fortune needed it. Ever since they’d arrived in Vegas all he could talk about was Siegfried and Ralph. It hadn’t been easy to score tickets on short notice, but Peregrine had the connections and the bucks. Too bad, Jerry thought, she also didn’t have the time to accompany them to the show.

As they made their way through the press of tourists they stopped suddenly as a tall joker with the head of a bird stepped before them and looked down at them intently with unblinking eyes. He was a lanky six eight or nine with long thin legs, long thin arms, and a long thin beak that jutted at least a foot out of his head. His face was covered by fine, downy feathers, though his sleeveless Egyptian-style tunic (similar, Jerry thought, to that worn by Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments) revealed normal human skin on his arms and legs.

Jerry pushed himself protectively between the joker and John Fortune. He hadn’t guarded the kid all these years only to have him pecked to death by a skinny old bird-man.

“It is the one,” the joker intoned in a deep voice, punctuated by odd clacks as his beak broke off his words, peppering his speech with oddly-placed silences.

Jerry suddenly relaxed. He didn’t want to be bothered by paparazzi while working on a case, so he usually chose the appearance of old time actors, hence his current resemblance to Alan Ladd. But sometimes someone in the crowd still recognized him. Or rather, the particular face he’d chosen.

“Oh, well,” he said to the bird-faced man, “I get that a lot. Of course, I’m not really—”

He fell silent when he realized that the man wasn’t listening. The joker sagged awkwardly to his knees, as if suddenly over-balanced by his long beak. He bowed his head and held his hands straight out, his palms up.

“It is he blessed with the strength of Ra,” the bird man intoned. “The power of the sun is his, the fire to light the world.”

Jerry realized that the joker wasn’t talking about him, but John Fortune. And Jerry also suddenly realized that they weren’t alone.

They’d come from all over the auditorium, moving silently and swiftly through the tourists who were mostly too busy finding their seats to pay them much attention. A handsome, broad-shouldered dwarf. A sinuous, fur-covered female feline with claws on the tips of her fingers and toes. A lean bald man with a braided chin-beard who looked like a leather-faced rock star who’d somehow survived the turbulent sixties. A man and a woman, obviously siblings, floating hand in hand five feet off the floor.

Jerry realized that they were the Living Gods, jokers, deuces, and even some rather minor aces who’d taken their names from the old Egyptian pantheon. He remembered reading that they’d been driven from Egypt by the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism, but he couldn’t imagine the bizarre fate that had brought them to Las Vegas as members of Siegfried and Ralph’s performing troupe.

They gathered around Jerry and John Fortune, kneeling before the boy, reaching out beseechingly to him. John Fortune looked on in consternation, but not a little disguised delight, as they were led in murmuring prayer by the bird-headed joker, who Jerry now remembered was named Thoth after the ibis-headed god of knowledge and writing.

“How do they know me?” John Fortune asked.

Thoth rose slowly to his knees, throwing the floating brother and sister a thankful glance as they helped him stand. Thoth laid a hand on the shoulder of the man with the chin beard, the only one of the bunch who looked older than the bird-headed joker.

“My brother Osiris, who died and came back to life able to see the future, knew you when you were in your mother’s womb many years ago.”

Jerry nodded. “The World Health Organization sponsored tour to study the effects of the wild card virus around the world,” he told the kid, “before you were born, back in 1986 and ‘87.”

Jerry had read all about it in Xavier Desmond’s book, which had chronicled the fateful journey that had changed so many lives—his included. The plane full of aces and jokers and reporters and politicians had also gone to Sri Lanka where Jerry was a cast member of King Pongo, the giant ape movie being filmed in the island’s jungles. You might say that Jerry was the biggest cast member, as he was playing the big monkey himself. Jerry was then still the mindless Great Ape, a form he’d been trapped in since the mid-1960’s. During the Sri Lanka adventure Tachyon had freed him from the ape body, using his mental powers to return Jerry to normalcy.

If, Jerry reflected, you could consider his post-Great Ape life normal. Not many would.

Thoth frowned.

“Where is your achtet?” he suddenly asked John Fortune.

“Ac—achtet?” the kid asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar word. He looked at Jerry, who shrugged.

“An amulet of red stone,” Thoth explained, “given to your mother for safe-keeping. For you to wear when old enough, to guide you in the use of your powers.”

John Fortune glanced at Jerry, who shrugged again.

“You got me on that one,” Jerry said. “Maybe,” he added diplomatically, “Peregrine thinks he’s not ready for it. After all, he, uh, hasn’t come into his powers yet.”

And, Jerry thought to himself, the odds of him ever doing so were extremely unlikely. Still, sometimes you beat the odds. Las Vegas, after all, was built on that theory. Or dream.

Thoth conferred with Osiris in Arabic. They looked at John Fortune and nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “But Osiris says that your time will come soon.” The old man smiled peculiarly with his stiletto beak, but Jerry could see warmth and benediction in his eyes. “The blessings of Ra upon you and yours,” Thoth said, bowing deeply. He gestured at the other members of the Living Gods, who bowed as well. “We must be off about our duties,” he said.

Jerry nodded. “It was nice to meet you all,” he said. “We have to go now, too.”

He glanced at John Fortune, catching his eye after a moment.

“Yeah. Um, nice to meet you,” the kid said.

They all smiled, bowed, and, murmuring their farewells in Arabic, drifted off to various quarters of the auditorium.

“Weird,” John Fortune said. “Why do you think Mom never mentioned this prediction to me, or never gave me that achtet thing?”

“Your mom has a busy life,” Jerry said as they made their way toward the runway. “Maybe she put it away and forgot about it. Or, maybe...”

“Yeah,” John Fortune said a few moments after Jerry had fallen silent. “Maybe she thought they were all just nuts.”

“Maybe. But I’ve seen a lot of apparently nutty things in this world actually come true.”

“The power of Ra,” the kid said musingly. “What do you think that is?”

Jerry shook his head. He did that a lot around the kid.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I do know that it’s almost time for the show. We’d better hustle to our seats.”

As Jerry had feared, they were disconcertingly close to the action, which to his taste was loud, flashy, and somewhat nonsensical. John Fortune, however, loved it.

The show was Egyptian-themed, which explained the presence of the Living Gods, although there were also snarling white tigers jumping through hoops and a chorus line of babes tricked out in metallic bikini armor and Ralph transmorfigsising into a leopard and bevies of lions and Ralph getting crushed by a giant mechanical crocodile and prancing white stallions and Ralph getting spitted on a giant metal spear and almost- naked dancing muscular guys and almost-naked long-legged dancing girls and disappearing elephants and Ralph swinging ten feet above the audience on a wire and an evil queen sawn in half by a great electronic buzz-saw and endless costume changes involving flowing glittery capes and rhinestoned jumpsuits and thigh-high leather boots and puffy shirts with lace. And that was just on Siegfried and Ralph.

It was all so flashy and noisy and glittery and exciting. Jerry could see why the kid was into it. The white tigers were beautiful. Their apparent ferocity contributed to their magnificence. Siegfried and Ralph, though they wore a little too much makeup and a few too many spangles for Jerry’s taste, did have an authenticate rapport with and love for the beasts that they put through complicated routines. The big cats actually seemed to enjoy jumping through their hoops and leaping about like furry, four-legged acrobats.

That made it all the more terrifying when disaster struck like a lightning bolt from a clear summer sky.

Ralph was kissing a seven-hundred pound tiger on his nose pad when the tiger casually reached out, put his paw behind Ralph’s head, and drew him in closer. His massive jaws crunched together where Ralph’s neck met his shoulder. Then the tiger calmly walked back up the runway, dragging Ralph’s twitching body and leaving behind a smeared trail of blood. Jerry and John Fortune were so close to the action that a spatter of Ralph’s blood showered down at their feet.

John Fortune made a strange sound in his throat. Jerry tore his eyes away from the chaos on the stage and looked at the stricken expression on the kid’s face. At first Jerry assumed Fortune had been frightened by the horrific tiger attack, but then he realized that it was something more. Something terribly more.

“John—” He reached for the boy, cursing, as a man rushed by, bumped him, and knocked him to the floor. Jerry’s ankle twisted, the man stepped on it, and Jerry felt something give.

Shit, Jerry said to himself. He didn’t think it was broken, but it hurt like sudden Hell. The last thing he needed was a bad ankle as the crowd around them dissolved into crazed panic. He stood and swore again as he tried to put his weight on it. No go. He tried to ignore the awful pain. Something was wrong with John Fortune, and Jerry was afraid that he knew what that something was.

“John—” he repeated. When he took the kid in his arms, he knew for sure.

John Fortune’s eyes were glassy. His breath was rapid and harsh. His skin was flushed. Jerry put a hand on the kid’s forehead. He didn’t have to be a doctor to know that Fortune was running a temperature.

And was radiating a pleasant, orangish-yellow glow.

His skin hadn’t changed color. It was still the normal pinkish hue called “white,” if actually darker than usual, as if he were blushing all over. But the kid was projecting a dim aura, almost like glowing halos around his face and hands, that was clearly visible in the dark auditorium.

“Shit,” Jerry swore again.

The boy’s card had turned, and he was doomed.

The Wild Card virus, let loose on Earth almost sixty years previously by cold-hearted Takisian scientists to test its ability to turn ordinary people into super beings, worked after a fashion. It killed ninety percent of those it infected. Usually in horrific ways. In many cases, however, the dead were the lucky ones. Another nine percent of the virus’s living victims were twisted in body or mind, typically in terrible ways. A final one percent did receive some kind of ability, ranging from the ridiculously useless to the cosmically sublime. Jerry himself had turned over an ace. But he knew that the kid, who had inherited virus-tainted genes from his parents, was most likely a dead man. But only if he was lucky.

“W-w-what’s happening to me?” John Fortune stuttered through clenched teeth. He was sweating visibly now. His hair was plastered to his forehead and his shirt was already soaked as water ran out of his body in rivulets. “I feel so weak.”

Jerry couldn’t crouch over him anymore. His ankle was killing him and his thighs were beginning to ache. He kneeled on the floor, trying to ignore the tumult around them as the audience fled, Siegfried stood frozen in horror, and the company of performers stuttered around him in their bright costumes like a flock of frightened birds. Jerry put his arms around the kid, holding him close.

No one could help John Fortune now. It was all in the hands of God, or the cosmic crapshoot, whichever was in charge of human affairs. But whatever was happening to him, Jerry wouldn’t let him face it alone. He’d failed to protect the kid from this most awful danger, the danger that Peregrine had foreseen and tried so fruitlessly to prevent, but he’d stay with him and hold him and comfort him as best as he could. It was all he could do.

“Your card’s turned, John,” he said quietly. He felt the kid’s arms tighten around him, holding him hard. He heard him gasp. The kid knew the odds of living through this as well as Jerry did. The fact that he wasn’t sobbing aloud spoke volumes about his courage.

Moments passed. John Fortune’s fevered body pressed tightly against him; his breath was ragged in Jerry’s ear. After what seemed an eternity, John Fortune said, “You’ve hurt your ankle.”

“How do you know that?” Jerry asked, astounded.

“I’m not sure,” John Fortune said. “I can feel it. Somehow. I think... I think that I can fix it.”

“Hold on—” Jerry began, but, almost immediately, a wave of relief washed down Jerry’s throbbing leg. It settled around his ankle like a soothing puff of cool air and the pain began to fade. After a few moments Jerry sat back and then slowly stood. He put his foot down gingerly. There was no pain. No pain at all. He and John Fortune looked at each other.

“How do you feel?” he asked the boy.

John Fortune considered. “Warm. Still scared. But—” he looked at Jerry, a smile dawning on his face. “—I’m still alive. I made it.”

Jerry looked at him, even more astonished than Fortune himself.

“More than that,” he said. “It looks like you’re an ace.”

“An ace!” the boy said jubilantly. His smile was beatific. “Yeah, man, an ace!”

He and Jerry grinned like idiots.

“Take me backstage,” John Fortune said. “I think I can help Ralph.”

They looked up. The troupe of Living Gods hovered on the edge of the stage, watching them.

Thoth raised his arms to the Heavens.

“All praise to Ra,” he intoned, and the others took up his chant.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

Turin, Italy: Cattedrale di San Giovanni

J ohn Nighthawk had always been fascinated by churches. He’d been inside hundreds during his long life, from humble whitewashed clapboards in the Deep South to magnificent cathedrals in both the United States and Europe. As far as he was concerned, the humble and the grand both had their pluses and minuses. It was hard to experience a personal, intimate relationship with God in a cathedral. They were also usually extremely drafty. On the other hand, a cheap wooden shack didn’t quite capture the glory of God on high and they were also prone to falling down after a very few years. Surprisingly, though, decades of experience had taught Nighthawk that both kinds of houses of worship were relatively easy to break into.

“Cattedrale di San Giovanni,” the big man standing at Nighthawk’s right read from the Turin guidebook he’d taken from his hip pocket. He gestured at the structure across the plaza and then looked innocently at Nighthawk. “Isn’t Giovanni Italian for John?”

“That’s right,” said the other big man, who was standing at Nighthawk’s left.

The big man on Nighthawk’s right smiled. “Is this cathedral named after you, John? You’re probably old enough.”

There was quiet laughter from the other big man. The woman standing between them remained stone-faced, as always.

“Don’t blaspheme,” she said.

Nighthawk smiled and shook his head. “This church was erected in 1491. You don’t think I’m that old, do you?”

Speculation about Nighthawk’s age was something of an on-going joke with his team. It was impossible to pin down precisely, although he was certainly older than Usher and the others. A small black man with very dark skin, Nighthawk was about five foot five and maybe a hundred and forty pounds. At first glance his face appeared unlined. Close observation in good light, however, revealed a fine network of wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. The lines on his forehead also deepened to legibility when his face crinkled in laughter or a frown. He could have been a hard fifty or an easy-going sixty-five. His hair was still dark but his hands had the rough, gnarled look of someone who’d done physical labor for a good portion of their life. At least, his right hand did. His left was hidden by a black kidskin glove, despite the warmth of the early summer evening.

“Anyway,” Nighthawk added, “you’ve got the wrong John. This cathedral was dedicated to John the Baptist. And if you’re done playing tourist, Usher, you can put the guidebook away so we can get down to the job.”

Usher took Nighthawk’s rebuke good-naturedly and stuffed the guide back into his pocket. He was a big man, six four or so, and strong as an ox. Nighthawk knew that Usher was also the smartest member of the team. He was black, but light-skinned enough that there was a time when he could have passed for white, if he’d wanted to. If he could have gotten the kink out of his hair. Curtis Grubbs was the other big man. He was white, from somewhere in rural Alabama, but somewhat to Nighthawk’s amusement, was Usher’s sidekick and yes-man. He wasn’t quite as big as Usher, but he had a touch of the wild card and was as strong as two oxen. He followed orders if you gave them slowly and in great detail. The woman, Magda, was dark of hair, dark of eye, and dark of mind. She was from some European country that hadn’t been a country for very long. She spoke with a slight accent that made her voice husky and sexy. She was ruthless, quick, and dedicated. Sometimes too dedicated. She was a fanatic. She followed Nighthawk’s orders because he was in charge and also because she feared him, but he never knew when she’d get a wild notion to disobey a directive she reckoned blasphemous. He had to watch her constantly. Sometimes she was more trouble than she was worth, but, again, he had to remind himself who he was working for.

They’re a good team, Nighthawk thought. Maybe a little short on brains, but that was to be expected. He had also been offered the services of the Witnesses, but turned them down despite their potent ace powers. Their tendency to grandstand often turned them into liabilities. He’d also passed on Blood. He didn’t think a joker-ace who had to be led around on a leash so he wouldn’t molest stray pedestrians or passing cars would fit in on a mission where stealth was necessary.

It was past midnight, but there were still people on the street. Damn tourists, Nighthawk thought. It was unlikely to get much quieter, so he signaled Usher to move. The big man nodded and slipped quietly into the night. He crossed the Piazza Giovanni, keeping to the dark side of the street, blending naturally into the shadows like a big cat or a seasoned mercenary, which he’d been before signing with the Allumbrados as an obsequentus. Nighthawk figured that the big man had joined the Enlightened Ones for the pay. He had neither Grubbs’ naive credulousness, nor Magda’s vicious fanaticism.

Usher crossed the plaza in shadow, unobserved, and after ten or twelve seconds Grubbs followed him across the square. He was not as quiet or as inconspicuous as Usher, but he tried hard to emulate him. After both men had vanished in the night Magda followed at Nighthawk’s nod.

She was halfway across the plaza when a burst of sudden revelation struck Nighthawk like a thunderbolt. As always, it exploded across his brain almost too fast to grasp. The figures in it were dark and grainy like in an old time movie, and the poorly lit scene they played was open to several interpretations. But one thing was certain.

One of the team would die that night. Nighthawk couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t be him. Caught in the grip of awful fear, the old man looked across the plaza at the ancient cathedral, wondering if that night he would find the answer to the question that had haunted him for the last sixty years. The gloved fingers of his left hand closed around the old harmonica that he always carried, currently in his inside jacket pocket. It was his lucky piece as well as a reminder of past friends. He smiled to himself, but without humor.

“Maybe we find out tonight, Lightning,” he said quietly. “Maybe finally tonight.”

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Las Vegas, Nevada: The Mirage

Peregrine tried to slam the newspaper down on the hotel suite desk, but since it was open it only fluttered limply. Still, Jerry got the message that she wasn’t happy.

“You could have been hurt!” she said angrily to John Fortune, who watched her glumly as she paced about the room. “Even killed!”

“There was no danger of that,” Jerry interjected.

Peregrine paused in her pacing and turned her eyes upon him. Suddenly he was glad that she hadn’t packed her titanium talons for the trip.

“You know that how?” she asked in a voice gone quietly silky. Through long experience in body-guarding John Fortune, Jerry knew that when she used that tone she was at her most dangerous. She looked at him with the eyes of a lioness sizing up an antelope for the kill. Even though she was in her late forties, Peregrine was still one of the most beautiful women Jerry had ever seen. Tall, lean, and athletic, her stunning wings matched a still stunning figure that had made only the slightest concession to age and gravity over the years.

“I made sure we kept far away from the tigers when we went backstage,” Jerry said quietly, but his words did little to mollify the angry ace.

“Tigers!” Peregrine spat, as if he’d said mosquitoes or something equally insignificant. “I would expect you to handle tigers.” Jerry’s chest expanded at the unanticipated praise. Suddenly, her eyes narrowed. “Maybe,” she added. She paced some more around the room, then stopped and looked at her son. He was still glum. Still handsome. Still normal looking, except for that orangish-yellowish glow that hovered around his head and the exposed skin of his hands and arms like halos. “But how do you know that simply using his power isn’t dangerous? He’s just a boy. I would expect him to be excited when he turned his card. But you should have known better.”

“Aw, Mom,” John Fortune said, “I had to go help Ralph. You should have seen him. The tiger had grabbed him by the neck and there was blood everywhere! He would’ve bled to death if I didn’t do anything. But I healed him. Ask Jerry. He was right there all the while, making sure nobody crowded us or anything. I just held Ralph and concentrated and he healed right up. It was easy.”

“No,” Jerry said, shaking his head, “your mother’s right. There’s no telling how dangerous using your power might be—”

“Listen to him,” Peregrine said.

“It’s not dangerous,” John Fortune said, his impatience showing in his tone. “I’m fine.”

Peregrine put the back of her hand against his forehead. “You feel warm to me.”

“Aw, Mom.”

“Could just be the effects of a speeded-up metabolism,” Jerry offered.

“Could be,” Peregrine said. Suddenly, she enwrapped her son in her arms and wings and held him to her tightly. She closed her eyes, fighting back tears. “If you only knew how worried I’ve been for you, all these years.”

“Aw, Mom,” John Fortune said, his head muffled against her chest. Jerry was envious. “I’m all right. I knew I would be. My card turned and now I’m an ace, just like you and my father. I mean, Fortunato.”

Peregrine nodded, unable to speak for a moment, as years of desperate worry seemed to squeeze out of her body. But some still remained.

“Promise me one thing,” she said as she still held him tightly. “Don’t use your power again until we get home and have you checked out at the Jokertown Clinic.”

“But what if I have to save someone—”

She pulled away, held him at arm’s length.

“John,” she said sternly, “you have your whole life ahead of you. You have years and years to save people. And listen to me. There’s a big lesson you have to learn right now.”

“What’s that?” the kid asked.

“No matter how powerful you are, no matter how much time and effort and sweat and blood you expend,” Peregrine said slowly, coming down hard on each and every word, “you can’t save everyone.”

The boy was silent for a long moment, as if digesting her words.

“All right,” John Fortune said quietly.

“Believe me,” Peregrine said.

Jerry nodded. “Believe her.”

He knew. Sometimes that was the hardest thing about being an ace of all.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Branson, Missouri: The Peaceable Kingdom

Billy Ray was in Loaves and Fishes, lingering over lunch and wishing he was anywhere in the world except here, when the kid tracked him down. Ray didn’t particularly look like an ace, let alone a dangerous one. He was an average-sized five ten, one hundred and seventy pounds. His suit was expensive and neat, without wrinkle, spot, or blemish. Though a couple of years on the wrong side of forty, he looked younger. His green eyes were sleepy-looking. His features were bland, if a little ill fitting. His broken-angled, rather prominent nose stood out from the rest of his face. He moved slowly, almost languidly. He was even more bored than he looked.

As the kid approached, Ray looked up from his plate piled high with beef ribs and chicken fried steak with gravy and biscuits, green beans, corn on the cob, and real scratch-made mashed potatoes, not from a box. He liked Loaves and Fishes because it was all you could eat, but lately he’d been losing interest in food as well as everything else. He knew what was wrong, but he knew also he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“Hi, Mr. Ray,” the kid said.

Ray sighed for about the billionth time and said, for about the billionth time, “I told you not to call me mister.”

“Okay, Billy.” Ray knew that wouldn’t last long. It never did. If the kid was anything, he was respectful. Alejandro Jesus y Maria C de Baca looked like he was about fourteen years old. Slight, slim, dark haired, dark eyed, always smiling, always cheerful, fresh out of spook school and so goddamned respectful that he sirred waiters. It was clear to Ray that Nephi Callendar, their boss at the Secret Service, had teamed them up specifically to annoy Ray.

“Say, mi—uh, Billy, President Barnett wants to see you, right away.”

Ray sighed. God, he hoped that it wasn’t for another prayer session. “Did he say why?”

The kid shook his head. “Nope. I was with him when he saw something in the paper that got him real excited, and he wanted to speak to you right away.”

Ray sighed again. He caught himself, realizing that he was doing entirely too much of that lately. He looked down at his lunch. He wasn’t hungry now, anyway.

“You want some lunch, kid?” Ray asked his colleague.

“I already ate, sir, uh, Billy. But it’d be a shame to waste all that food. I can box it up and drop it down at the homeless shelter after our shift.”

Ray nodded.

“You do that,” he said. He left Loaves and Fishes and strolled through Barnett’s vision of Heaven on Earth to his headquarters centrally located on the top floor of The Angels’ Bower hotel. He had to cut through the part of the park called New Jerusalem to reach it. As always, the Via Dolorosa was crowded with tourists, so Ray took the back way that looped around the rides, exhibits, and concessions. He went by the twenty-foot high statues of the Twelve, wondering, not for the first time, how they’d decided which apostle was bald, which one had a big honker, and where in the Hell Judas was. He could hear the faint screams of the faithful as the Rapture took them to Heaven and then dropped down to the Pit with a stomach-flipping hundred and eighty degree turn that piled on over three gees of acceleration as it fell forty stories straight down to Hell.

Roller coasters, Ray thought disgruntledly. Maybe he should take a ride. Put some excitement into his life.

It was, he had to admit, his own fault. He’d smart-assed his way here, calling his boss “Nehi” one time too many. Before the ink had dried on his orders he’d found himself, accompanied by the kid, exiled to the suburbs of Branson-fucking-Missouri to wet nurse an ex-President as he whiled away the years running his crazy-ass theme park in the middle of redneck Heaven. Of course, by law every ex-President was accorded Secret Service protection, but the odds of Barnett being stalked by an assassin in the Peaceable Kingdom were about as great as him running a Pagans Get-In-Free weekend special.

It was a Hell of a way to wrap up his career, but not entirely unexpected. Ray had ruffled too many feathers along the way, and not just by being a smart ass. He’d played a major role in breaking the Card Shark conspiracy and saving Jerusalem—the real one, not Barnett’s Disneyfied version—from getting a-bombed to Hell, but it had cost him not only April Harvest, the only woman he’d ever come close to loving, but also a meaningful career in the government. As it turned out, the government had been riddled with Card Sharks, and no one was exactly pleased that Ray helped expose that little fact. Sometimes Ray wondered if they’d rooted them all out. Probably not. Probably some unexposed Sharks were still pulling strings. And that had been the problem. Ray had embarrassed the string-pullers and decision-makers, the powers behind the throne and the voices in charge. Publicly he was a hero. Privately he was just another wild carder who knew too much. A wild carder with a reputation for flying off the handle and running his mouth when peeved.

That explained the next seven years spent in the shit holes of the world, but at least the tedium of those years had been broken up by episodes of real excitement. Among other things, he’d helped the Muhajadeen against the Soviets, and when the Soviet Union went to pieces he helped the people of Afghanistan against the Muhajadeen. He served a tour in Peru, teaching the Shining Path the real meaning of fear. He was on the team of international aces who went into Baghdad and snatched the tin-plated dictator Saddam Hussein, catching him cowering in his gold-fixtured bathtub, after Saddam had kicked the U.N. weapon inspectors out of his crappy excuse for a country.

Ray hadn’t minded the lack of recognition or applause. He’d spent seven years doing what he did best, kicking ass if occasionally forgetting to take down names. But now, he was rotting in paradise.

He breezed into Barnett’s office. Sally Lou, Barnett’s blonde receptionist, looked up from her magazine. She was sleek and sexy looking, and Ray suspected that Barnett had hired her for something other than her typing skills. She could have put some of that long-sought excitement back into his life, but it seemed to Ray that as far as she was concerned, he was just another one of the hired help.

“The President—”

“Yeah, I know.” He waved as he strode by. He paused at Barnett’s door, nodding at the Secret Service guys standing to either side of it, nats in dark suits and sunglasses, for Christ’s sake, knocked once and went on in before its occupant could reply. What more could they do to him for being a smart ass? Send him to Antarctica? Even that would be an improvement over his current situation.

“You wanted to see me?” Ray asked, stopping before the big desk and the man behind it, who was reading a newspaper spread out on its teak surface.

Barnett smiled. “Yes, I did,” he said.

Leo Barnett was still a handsome man, even after serving eight years as President of the United States. He was tall and still slim even though he was pushing sixty, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and dimpled as a baby’s butt. Ray couldn’t help but wonder how he did it. Ray had been with the Justice Department for almost twenty-five years. He’d spent a good portion of that time body-guarding presidents and presidential candidates, and he’d noticed early on that the presidency, even just running for the office, tended to wear a man down. It put bags under his eyes, creases in his face, and dye in his hair. Not Barnett, though. He looked as wrinkle-free today as he did the day he ascended to the office. Ray wondered what his secret was.

“Have you seen the papers today, Billy?” Barnett asked, slapping the open newspaper with an immaculately manicured hand.

Ray shook his head. He didn’t bother reading the news. He was more used to making it.

“It seems as if a new ace has joined our constellation of heroes.”

“Is that so?” Ray asked with a modicum of interest.

“Indeed it is,” Barnett said, and looked down at the paper spread out in front of him and began to read. “...‘Ralph Holstedt, partner and star performer in the famous Siegfried and Ralph magic act featuring white tigers and other dangerous beasts was severely mauled during yesterday’s matinee performance when a half-grown male tiger playfully grabbed him by the throat and dragged him from the stage. Fortunately for the performer, John Fortune, son of the beauteous ace Peregrine and the mysterious Fortunato, who has spent the last sixteen years in seclusion in Japan, was in attendance and for the first time publicly revealed his own ace. Fortune, who to all accounts was glowing a mysterious but pleasing shade of orange-yellow, took the performer in his arms and almost instantly healed the wound threatening the magician’s life. The newly-revealed ace, a good-looking boy in his mid-teens, politely refused all requests for interviews and was seen leaving in the company of a man who witnesses said bore an uncanny resemblance to 1940’s actor Alan Ladd.’” Barnett looked up at Ray. “What do you think of that?”

Ray shrugged. “I think that Ralph was one lucky tiger-lover.”

Barnett sat back in his chair, nodding. “Yes. But doesn’t it strike you that someone else in that scenario was fairly blessed in the luck department?”

“John Fortune,” Ray said. He knew what the odds of drawing an ace were as well as anybody. “Of course.”

“Exactly,” Barnett said, as if Ray just answered the million-dollar question.

Ray shrugged again. He didn’t see the point.

“These are troubling days, Billy,” Barnett said. “Some say,” his voice dropped dramatically, “the End Days.”

Oh shit, Ray thought. It didn’t take Barnett long to drag religion into even the most mundane conversation. Ray himself wasn’t much of a believer in anything. But Barnett could make almost anything sound reasonable when he was orating. After all, he’d been elected President of the United States. Twice.

“But it’s 2003,” Ray said. “If you’re talking about the, uh, millennium, surely that passed—”

Barnett shook his head.

”Actually it’s just around the corner, my boy,” Barnett said. “Time-keeping was not an exact science when the Bible was written two thousand years ago. Records were not precise. The calendar as we know it is a relatively modern invention. Anyway, you’d expect an error of a year or two to crop up over a couple of millennia, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose,” Ray said, noncommittally. He still had no clue as to what in the Hell this had to do with a kid saving some Vegas magician from his over-grown kitty cat.

Barnett nodded. “Of course. Hell, nobody took notes on the year when they wrote down the Bible. Nobody even cared. Besides—the signs are the important things, and all signs say that Apocalypse is approaching.”

“What signs? Tiger attacks in Vegas?”

Barnett frowned, the twinkle suddenly gone from his baby blue eyes.

“The prophecies, my boy. The continued existence of Israel, the nation whose existence you helped preserve, and don’t think I’ve forgotten that, is but one of them. But let’s not get bogged down in detail now.” Barnett opened the middle draw in his desk. He took out an impressively thick manuscript. “Here. I wrote a book about it. Not intended for everyone of course. Wouldn’t want a panic among the general populace. But give it a study, my boy. You’ll see. It’s all very convincing.” Barnett handed the volume to Ray. It was heavy. “This is strictly for people within my organization, I guess you’d call it.”

Ray looked up from the thick manuscript to Leo Barnett. “Organization?” he asked warily.

“A think-tank I founded after I had the honor of serving as President of this great nation. The Millenarians. We believe that the time of the Apocalypse is at hand.”

“That’s a bad thing, isn’t it?” Ray asked doubtfully.

“Not at all, Billy, not at all.” Barnett explained. “Though many people believe that. Apocalypse means simply ‘unveiling’ or ‘revelation.’ It is the time when the truth will be revealed for all to see. When the Lord Jesus will return to this earth to usher in a thousand years of peace and prosperity for those who believe in his name.”

Ray’s expression was unchanged.

“Well, read my manuscript,” Barnett said. “It explains everything.”

“All right,” Ray said as sincerely as he could.

Barnett frowned.

Apparently, Ray thought, I don’t sound quite as sincere as I think I do.

“We need a man of your talents, Billy,” Barnett said earnestly, turning up the wattage of his charm. “To guard me and, um, other figures important to the Parousia—that’s the founding of Jesus’ kingdom on earth, which will usher in the thousand years of peace and prosperity of the millennium.”

“I thought you said that the End Days were approaching. Doesn’t that mean like, the end of the world?”

“It does,” Barnett said seriously. “But only after the thousand year peace of the Millennium. And only, of course, if we triumph in the upcoming conflict. We have foes, Billy. Powerful foes. Some might say satanically powerful foes.”

Here we go, Ray thought. He knew this just wasn’t going to be a simple little story. “I’m already guarding you,” Ray pointed out. “Exactly who are these others who need guarding?”

“Christ,” Barnett said.

Ray waited a beat, but Barnett added nothing to what Ray initially thought was an uncharacteristic expletive.

“Christ,” Ray repeated. “You mean, Jesus Christ?”

“Jesus Christ,” Barnett confirmed. “The Second Coming of the Son of God is upon us.”

“Well,” Ray asked, “where is he?”

Barnett cleared his throat. “Apparently,” he said, “in Las Vegas.”

“You don’t mean John Fortune?”

Barnett nodded earnestly. “I do. You have to trust me on this, Billy. Years of study have led me to this conclusion. His act of healing this, uh, animal tamer, is only the final indication of his real identity.”

“And you’re sure of this?” Ray asked.

Barnett pursed his lips. “Sure? Well—reasonably. And we’re not the only ones who think so.”

“No?”

Barnett nodded. “There are others who have come to a, well, similar conclusion abut the boy’s importance. But they want to harm him. He has to be protected from them.”

“But—”

“No, Billy,” Barnett shook his head. “If you truly want to serve me—and the Lord—you must go to Vegas, get the boy, and bring him back here where we can protect him from these others.”

“Who are they?” Ray asked.

“The Allumbrados,” Barnett said, almost spitting as he pronounced the name. It sounded fairly sinister to Ray.

“So, you want me to go to Vegas, pick up the boy, and bring him here for safekeeping?” he recapitulated.

Barnett nodded. “Yes.”

Ray suppressed a smile. “If you say the boy needs help, then that’s good enough for me,” he said.

Barnett beamed. “The Lord will reward you,” he said.

I’m so out of here, Ray thought.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

New York City: Waldorf-Astoria Parking Garage

The Midnight Angel lurked in a dark alley overlooking the entrance to the Waldorf-Astoria’s underground car park, a troubled expression on her face.

She didn’t care for New York City. It was much too big and loud and fast. It smelled funny and sounded worse. She felt claustrophobic on its busy streets, hemmed in by the towering concrete and steel cliffs. She’d been born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, and though—contrary to her mother’s advice—she’d willfully deserted the town of her birth to seek her fortune in the wider world, she still wasn’t accustomed to many aspects of that world.

She also didn’t much care for skulking. Skulking in shadows didn’t match her sensibilities. She was much too forthright to skulk. There was no room for deception and lies in her make-up, for such were the tools of Satan. But what could she do? The Hand had sent her on a mission where subtlety was necessary. She’d told him that she was not the person for this job, as she found it difficult to blend into even familiar surroundings. At five eleven and a tautly-muscled one forty-five, she was long-legged, wide-hipped, and big-bosomed. If things had been otherwise, she’d have borne many babies and raised them in the way of the Lord. But that life was closed to her. Her body, as suitable for childbearing as it was, was to her ever-lasting shame also cursed with the mark of the wild card. She carried the stain of the alien beast. Her mother had drummed into her early on that she must find another way to serve the Lord. Of course, the Angel was not following the path that her mother had mapped out for her, but her body, curse that it was, was also her blessing. God had burdened her with it, but it was a burden she bore meekly in his service.

The Hand had made her see that. She’d been with him for a year, and the Angel burned with an almost sinful pride that he trusted her so much that he’d sent her on such an important mission. To know that The Right Hand of God held her in such high regard made her little short of ecstatic. It’d be better if he didn’t look at her with such fire in his eyes and lust in his heart, but she forgave him. Even though he was The Hand he was still only a man and, therefore, a weak sinner. Anyway, it was her fault. She tempted him with her body, though the Lord knew she didn’t mean to.

The Angel tensed as a long black limo pulled up to the entrance of the hotel’s underground parking lot. The car had Vatican diplomatic plates. It had to be the one she’d been expecting. She waited until it entered the building’s dark bowels, and then followed. There was no booth attendant this late at night, only an automatic ticket dispenser. She slipped under the wooden arm that bared entrance to the urban cave stinking of oil, gas fumes, and waste, praying to the Lord for strength and cunning.

God knows she needed it. She was on the track of the Allumbrados and she knew that her quest was dangerous. The Hand had sent others to investigate them who had simply disappeared after relaying the most uncertain, though provocative hints that the Enlightened Ones, as they styled themselves, were preparing for action.

The Hand knew that something big was imminent. He knew the general warning signs as well as the Allumbrados did, though as Papists their knowledge had to be imperfect. The Allumbrado conspiracy, however, had thrust its roots deep into the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. They could call on the vast powers and riches of that ancient institution whereas The Hand had only himself and his loyal minions, such as the Angel, to rely upon. Not that the Allumbrados had defiled everyone in the Church, of course. Most Papists were not satanic. They were just misguided.

The Angel, keeping to the darkness that enveloped the parking structure like a choking shroud, suddenly caught her breath. The limo’s dome light winked on as the driver opened the door and scurried around to let out his passengers.

The first to emerge was a patrician-looking man in his late sixties, but still tall, handsome, and distinguished, with a head of thick, white hair. He wore the black, scarlet-trimmed regalia of a Cardinal of the Papist church. It was, the Angel realized, just as The Hand had feared. Cardinal Romulus Contarini had come to America. He was a Dominican, of course. His sect had had an intimate connection with the Holy Office (A very bland name for something as terrible as the Inquisition, she thought) for a very long time. Contarini led the section of the vast and shadowy Vatican bureaucracy which dealt with theological purity. He was the highest-ranking member of the Allumbrados that The Hand’s agents could uncover. Before he’d suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, The Hand’s man in the Vatican had said that the Cardinal was possibly headed for the United States. This was obvious confirmation of the news he’d probably given his life to deliver.

Contarini was not alone. Three men got out of the limo with him. One was short, chubby, and bearded. He looked soft and jolly, like everyone’s favorite uncle. The other two had such similar facial features that they were probably brothers. But one was tall and strong looking while the other was thin, round-shouldered, and slumping. The tall, strong-looking one was possibly the most attractive man the Angel had ever seen. Her heart caught at the angelic handsome-ness of his face, which was white as unflawed marble. His eyes were as blue as Heaven, his hair a golden torrent with wave and thickness to rival her own. His lips...

She could almost taste them in her sudden desire. They were full, sensuously curved, and red as a woman’s. But his features were masculine, with a broad forehead, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw. His short-sleeved shirt exposed arms muscled like a blacksmith’s.

The Angel felt herself breathing heavier and then suddenly the silent parking garage echoed with the trilling opening notes to the “Ode to Joy.” She had forgotten to turn off her cell phone, and it rang at the worst possible time. Her hand fell to her side pocket, grabbed the instrument and silenced it.

Perhaps, she thought, they hadn’t heard.

The men stopped on their way to the elevator. The Cardinal looked impatient, but the jolly little man gazed into the darkness where the Angel lurked, holding her breath. His cheery blue eyes suddenly focused with a startling intensity.

“Someone’s out there,” she heard him say in a British accented voice.

“Witness—” the Cardinal said.

The two men, different, yet alike enough in features to be brothers, looked at each other. The tall, handsome one said, “Check it out,” and the other, grumbling to himself under his breath, moved off toward the darkness where the Angel hid.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Turin, Italy: Cattedrale di San Giovanni

The cathedral’s two-story exterior was white marble, a little worse for age and blackened by five centuries of urban pollution. The detached bell tower on the cathedral’s left was constructed of darker, less noble material—simple brick—and was also some two hundred years younger. The intricate dome of the Capella della Sindone, a few decades older than the tower, loomed behind the cathedral. Their target was in the chapel.

Nighthawk waited in the shadows until the others had crossed the almost empty piazza. Traffic was sporadic, but there were still a few pedestrians wandering about, and Nighthawk had not reached his advanced age by being reckless. He waited until Usher and Grubbs had entered the cathedral through the middle of the three doors in its front façade—Usher pausing only the briefest of moments to force the cheap padlock that tried to deny him entry—and then he crossed the dark piazza in an unhurried stride as Magda surreptitiously joined her teammates inside San Giovanni.

It was dark inside the cathedral. The interior was lit only by some still-burning votive candles and a dim nightlight or two scattered like far-away stars among the massive columns of the gothic-style nave.

“We need the stairs at the end of the presbytery,” Nighthawk said in a quiet voice which a trick of acoustics turned into a reverberating whisper.

Usher thumbed on a pencil-thin flashlight and slashed it around the darkness.

“This way,” he whispered in an imitation of Nighthawk, grinning at the echoing sibilance of his own words.

They followed Usher down the aisle, past the rows of empty pews to the high altar set upon a dais in the rear of the nave. Two stairways flanked the altar. They were black marble, which contrasted vividly with the soft pastels of the cathedral’s painted interior. The stairs spiraled upwards into a small antechamber from where Nighthawk and his team could see inside the chapel’s central room.

The Capella della Sindone was the masterpiece of the baroque architect Guarino Guarini. It was a perfectly round chamber of black marble roofed by an intricately decorated six-tiered dome that was said to enclose a bit of Heaven in its complexly ornamented cupola. Nighthawk could feel its holiness in his soul. He gazed upward, as if expecting to see cherubim and seraphim dancing like flights of fireflies through the enshrouding shadows.

An intricate baroque altar of black marble ornamented with detailed bronze friezes, sat atop three marble steps under the center of the soaring dome. The altar was surrounded by what looked like golden bars, but according to the guidebook the apparently metal bars were actually only gilt wood. Four marble angels holding unlit silver lamps clustered protectively around the altar like holy guardians. A reliquary, an iron box covered in intricate silver facings and spangled with precious stones, sat atop the altar’s highest point, protected by a gilded iron fence.

“There,” Nighthawk said quietly, gesturing at the reliquary.

Grubbs grinned. “Like taking candy from a baby,” he said.

He went up the marble dais, brushing away the gilt wood fence contemptuously as if it wasn’t even there. One of the guardian angels stood close enough to give him a boost up the altar. He clambered up to the altar’s pinnacle and braced himself to get a good grip on the gilded iron bars caging the reliquary. He pulled hard and a length of grillwork broke away with a loud screech.

Nighthawk glanced around the darkened room. It was probable that the chapel had a security system of some kind, but they’d been unable to discover any details concerning it. A brotherhood called the Savoias was charged with protecting it since an anti-religious fanatic had tried to burn it down a couple of years before.

“Careful,” Nighthawk hissed.

“Don’t worry,” Grubbs said in a too-loud voice. He reached out and lifted the reliquary effortlessly, though it must have weighed several hundred pounds. He held it over his head triumphantly. “The Mandylion is ours!” he said ecstatically, and John’s revelation suddenly came true as a single shot rang out from somewhere in the shadows and struck Grubbs right in the middle of his chest.

Grubbs’ expression changed only slightly, crossing that thin line from ecstatic to pained, and he slipped from his perch atop the altar, falling heavily against one of the statues that decorated the altar’s middle tier like a tiny bridegroom on an overly-ornate wedding cake. The reliquary slipped from his fingers, bumped the same statue and bounced with a thunderous boom onto the marble altar, then rolled downward and crashed through the remnants of the gilt guardrail.

The reverberations from the single shot still echoed across the chapel as Magda and Usher both fired into the darkness from where the bullet came. Nighthawk moved in the shadows, black in black, and reached the dying man at the base of the altar. Grubbs was numb and confused, but he felt and clearly recognized the sharp talons of death crawling up his body as organs shut down and blood flowed like a river from the hole punched out through his back. The dying man spoke despite all his terror and confusion.

“John!”

“Hush,” Nighthawk said in a soft whisper.

“John, what happened!”

“Time to sleep, boy,” the old man told him. “Time to rest.” He took his glove off, reached out and touched Grubbs’ left cheek and stopped his heart.

He had only a moment in which to act. Grubbs’ soul was leaving his body, taking with it the energy that would have powered his life to its natural conclusion if he hadn’t stopped a bullet some forty-odd years ahead of schedule. Nighthawk stripped it of that energy, leaving it weak and uncertain.

Nighthawk had no concrete knowledge, but little hope for the nature of the ultimate destination of Grubbs’ soul. But Grubbs’ fate was out of his hands. He had to concentrate on the situation unfolding around them, or there was little doubt that they’d all be joining Grubbs on that Hell-bound train before the night was over.

They hadn’t expected an armed and trigger-happy guard. This was, after all, sacred ground. But times were different. Terrorists were ready, willing, and able to strike anytime, anywhere, and the Capella della Sindone had been attacked in the past. Clearly, Nighthawk realized, they had underestimated the strength of the Savoias’ resolve and willingness to shed blood in protection of their sacred charge.

“Usher,” he said in a calm but strong voice, “retrieve the reliquary. Magda—keep up the suppressive fire.”

He caught a glimpse of her teeth shining in a feral smile. She was a fanatic. She had no more regard for the lives of the Savoias’ than if they were animals. Nighthawk did. In a strange sense, they were all part of the same brotherhood, though it was a truism that families often fought bloody battles amongst themselves.

She ripped the darkness with automatic fire as Usher scuttled forward to retrieve the reliquary. Bullets flew. They whined off marble surfaces, smashed through stained glass, and even bit through flesh here and there. Three members of the Savoias fell as Magda screamed in some Slavic tongue that Nighthawk didn’t recognize. He reached out eagerly with his mind. Two were dying, dissipating their precious energy into the void. He held himself back. He couldn’t get greedy and slow of thought and action. He needed his wits about him if he was to lead his team to safety. He could already feel Grubbs’ energy crackling though his system like logs added to the furnace of the engine that drove his body. He smiled. He didn’t feel a day over eighty. They had to get back to the Holy See where they had diplomatic immunity from most conceivable crimes, and even from some inconceivable ones. From there they would take the Mandylion over the ocean, back to New York, where the others waited.

For a few moments it was tricky. Nighthawk didn’t like blind firefights where anything could happen. But he felt no sign of a coming revelation, and again, he was right.

Usher retrieved the chest. Nighthawk and Magda laid down suppressive gunfire, and no one came out of the chapel after them. After that it was only a matter of keeping quiet. Of keeping to the darkness and avoiding the growing search. Their car was ready. They made it past the roadblocks before they could be set up.

They reached Rome at dawn and Nighthawk took the reliquary into the Vatican before the rest of the tiny city-state was even waking up. Only then could Nighthawk relax. He’d gotten the Mandylion, the actual burial cloth, the Shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, into the hands of the Allumbrados. That was the hard part. The rest, getting it to New York and the Brothers who waited there, would be easy.

The mission was practically over. It had cost the life of one of his team members and an uncounted number of Savoias, but it had been worth it. Returning Jesus Christ to the world would be worth it all.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

New York City: Waldorf-Astoria parking garage

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

She stood up, leaning over the driver’s side door of the vehicle next to her. It was an SUV, big, shiny, and new looking. She wondered at the idiocy of a city dweller buying a vehicle like this. Was it excessive pride? Envy? Of course, maybe she was guilty of immoderate judgement herself. This was a hotel parking lot, after all. Maybe the SUV’s owner lived in the country somewhere and actually needed it.

She had, she suddenly recalled, little time for moralizing.

She punched through the window effortlessly, her arm protected by a leather gauntlet and full body, form-fitting leather jumpsuit. A burglar alarm clanged raucously as she quickly leaned in through the shattered window and slipped the transmission into neutral. She shoved the SUV, sending it skittering toward the Allumbrado, who had halted his approach when the alarm started to scream.

The Angel peered out from behind the car in the next parking slot—it was a late model Ford of some sort, and she approved much more of its lack of ostentation and relative utility than she did of the conspicuous and consumptive SUV—and watched as the Allumbrado, suddenly frowning, make a complicated set of hand gestures as the SUV bore down on him.

He finished with his left hand clenched into a fist, held chest high. His right hand was next to it, palm open. He pushed that hand out, extending his right arm fast, like he was throwing some kind of open-handed punch at the SUV, which was now almost upon him.

A wall of force met the SUV head-on. Its front end crumpled as if it had hit an invisible fence and it rebounded backwards right at the Angel as a sudden wind buffeted her, stirring her long, thick hair in its passing.

Her heart pounded with desire. She wanted nothing more than to stay and fight this man, but she knew that there was a chance, however slim, that he and his companions might overpower her and prevent her from getting her message to The Hand. She scuttled back among the parked cars as her opponent threw another force wave in her general direction, setting off numerous car alarms as the vehicles in the wave’s pathway rocked as if in an earthquake.

The message was foremost in her mind as she slipped away in the darkness.

The Cardinal has come. And he has brought aces with him.

But also, not so far buried, was an image of the man who accompanied the Cardinal. The handsome, strong-looking one.

There, she thought, was a proper foe.

Or perhaps, something else entirely.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Hokkaido, Japan

It was two in the morning, about an hour and a half before the unsui would strike the sounding board with his wooden mallet, waking everyone for the start of the long monastery day, but Fortunato was already awake.

He’d been having trouble sleeping lately. Not even lengthy recitation of the Heart Sutra, which by virtue of its hypnotic repetitiveness was supposed to pacify the chanter by affording him a glimpse into his true nature, could lull him to sleep. It never had, and Fortunato was beginning to suspect it never would. He was having trouble sleeping because he was beginning to suspect that he had made a mistake.

I’m sixty-two years old, Fortunato thought.

The zendo, the hall where the monks practiced zazen and which also doubled as their sleeping quarters, was pitch dark. It was silent but for the various rustlings, snortings, and snorings of the other fifty-some monks who slept fitfully or soundly on their tatami.

He envied them their slumber.

He realized that part of his problem was physical. After sixteen years of a fairly rigorous vegetarian diet, Fortunato was even leaner than he’d been as a pleasure-loving ace in New York City. The temple’s harsh physical discipline helped keep him fit, but he’d developed arthritis a couple of years back, presumably from sleeping on a hard, cold floor on only a thin straw mat wrapped in a single blanket. It had settled in his neck and shoulders and was getting worse with every passing month. Now he was even occasionally feeling biting pain in his long, thin, fingers. Pain was something to be endured as part of monastic life, as there were few drugs in the monastery’s frugal medicine cabinet, except for aspirin for fevers and colds, tiger balm for sore muscles and joints, and Preparation H for the hemorrhoids brought on by hours and hours of sitting on a hard floor in the lotus position.

Worse yet, the brief Hokkaido summer had barely started and the season would turn again all too soon. Fortunato did not look forward to the change. In Hokkaido the winter came early and lingered long. The winter winds were razor sharp and the snowfall was measured in feet, not inches. He had a single quilted blanket from which the mice had already been stealing stuffing. He couldn’t in all good conscience blame them for taking the cotton batting to line their nests against the terrible cold.

Lately Fortunato had been beginning to suspect that this portion of his life, the ascetic self-denial of pleasure, was as much of a dead end as his earlier years spent reveling in Tantric sex, drugs, and the sheer gusto of life as one of the most powerful aces in the world, a life he’d turned his back on in a quest to find his true nature in the way of a Zen monk.

Dogen, his Zen roshi and head of the small monastery, had told him when he’d first asked to join, “If you want to live in the world you must admit your power. If you want to feed your spirit you must leave the world.”

Only, Fortunato thought as he lay staring into the indecipherable darkness, his spirit was as hungry as ever. Have I actually progressed down the Tao this last decade and a half, he wondered, or become petrified, congealed in an unbreakable lump of amber closed off from the world? Is that what I’d really wanted?

He wondered why.

There was a sudden disturbance in the zendo, as a fully-dressed figure made his way among the sleeping monks. Fortunato recognized Dogen’s secretary and chief assistant. Fortunato had disliked the man ever since he’d entered the monastery, and the feeling was mutual. He had a sour look on his face, as if he’d been up all night sucking lemons, as he nudged Fortunato with his tabi-covered foot.

“Wake up,” he said in a voice loud enough so that those next to Fortunato stirred, grumbling in their sleep. “Dogen wants to see you.”

Fortunato didn’t question him, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of offering useless answers. He rose silently on stiff joints, and followed him out of the room. They went wordlessly down dark and silent corridors, Fortunato wondering what Dogen wanted at such an unlikely hour. This wasn’t the first time he’d been summoned to the abbot’s private quarters. He’d gone there plenty of times for instruction, to receive a new koan to meditate upon, or even for conversation about his varied experiences in the outside world. He’d even been summoned into the abbot’s presence once or twice for disciplinary measures.

But, Fortunato reflected, not for the latter reason for years. The last time had been after Tachyon’s visit. Fortunato had gone over the wall after the little alien Fauntleroy had left and spent a week drunk in the village at the base of the mountain. But those days had passed. He couldn’t even begin to guess why Dogen wanted to see him now.

Dogen nodded as his assistant led Fortunato to the open doorway of his small, austere office.

“Leave us,” he said as Fortunato stared at the man sitting uncomfortably cross-legged on the mat before Dogen’s low desk. The man smiled up at him like they were long-lost friends.

“Hey, Fortunato,” Digger Downs said. “Long time, no see.”

Fortunato looked from the star reporter of Aces! magazine back to Dogen, mystified.

“Indeed,” he said, and entered the room, bowing to the abbot. He looked back at Downs. Downs was a small, lean, brown-haired, brown-eyed man pushing a well-preserved fifty. Fortunato hadn’t seen him since he’d entered the monastery. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by,” Digger said with a smile much too bright for so early in the morning.

“You were in the neighborhood at two o’clock in the morning?” Fortunato asked in disbelief.

“Well,” Digger allowed. “It did take me awhile to get here from Tokyo. I left as soon as the news broke. I wanted to be the first to get your reaction, and,” he added with some satisfaction, “it looks as if I am.”

Fortunato sighed and closed his eyes. He had no reason to like Digger Downs. The man was, at best, an obnoxious pest. But over the years he’d tried to learn how to put such feelings away. He opened his eyes to see Dogen observing him with silent reproof. His master knew that he was letting himself get caught up in a swirl of unpleasant emotion. Yet again.

“Digger,” Fortunato said patiently, “pretend that this is an isolated monastery on a secluded mountain top in far north Japan.”

“Man, I don’t have to pretend,” Digger said. “It was Hell getting here.”

“We don’t get much news about the outside world.”

“Excellent!” Digger beamed. “Then I can get your exclusive reaction to the news regarding your son.”

“My son?” Fortunato asked. Suddenly, his stomach felt as if it had dropped out of his abdomen. He had never seen his son. The last time he’d seen Peregrine, weeks before entering the monastery, she’d been heavy with their child. Up until then he hadn’t even known that she was pregnant. He’d told her that he’d be there for her and the child. And then he’d gone into the monastery. Not even Tachyon, who’d come in person begging for his help, not even the telegram announcing the death of his mother, had induced him to leave his sanctuary.

And now...

He looked at Digger. The man was smiling, but that didn’t mean he was the bearer of good news. He cared for the story, not the implications the story might have for those caught up in it. It seemed unlikely that he’d travel all this way to impart good news... whatever that could possibly be.

Fortunato had a sudden premonition that had nothing to do with the powers he’d left behind so long ago, but had everything to do with being a wild carder. And the parent of one.

“Has,” his voice suddenly went raspy and he swallowed hard, “has his card turned?”

Downs nodded. “Yes—and,” he added quickly as he saw the expression on Fortunato’s face, “don’t worry. The boy lucked out. He turned over an ace.”

“An ace!” Fortunato felt a sudden rush of relief underlain with pride he quickly realized was unjustified. The boy had come unscathed through the most dangerous moment in a wild carder’s life. The expression of the virus was the ultimate crapshoot against horribly-stacked odds. Everything after that was just living. But the boy had had to experience it without Fortunato’s help. Not, he realized, that he could have done anything but watch the boy die if he’d pulled a Black Queen. But still...

“Yeah,” Downs continued, “and he immediately used a healing power of some sort to save the life of a Las Vegas performer who’d been mauled by a tiger.”

“Tiger?” Fortunato asked, having trouble focusing on what the reporter was saying.

“It’s big news,” Downs said. “Flashed all over the world. I’d like to get our interview in the can, because half the media in Japan is hot on my trail. Not to mention the plane-loads of reporters from other countries heading here to get your reaction to the story. But, “ he added triumphantly, “as usual, I’ve scooped them all. Lucky for me I just happened to be on Tokyo to interview the new ace, Iron Chef—”

“Plane loads?” Fortunato interrupted.

Downs nodded. “Of course. Like I said, big story. Beautiful ace mother, mysterious ace father. Kid beats the odds, becoming a hero overnight—”

Fortunato looked at Dogen, who looked back calmly.

“This is a monastery,” Fortunato said to Downs. “They can’t swarm all over it with their camera crews, mobbing the place. Think of the disruption it would cause.”

Downs shrugged. “Think you can stop them?”

“I—” Fortunato knew the answer as well as the reporter did. He looked again at Dogen. “I can’t allow the entire monastery to be disrupted because of my presence. What should we do?”

“What we must,” the ageless abbot said calmly.

Fortunato nodded. There was only one solution to the problem. “Then I must take the cause of disruption elsewhere. I must leave the monastery.”

“Leave?” Downs asked, suddenly frowning. “You’re not going to leave before I can interview you?”

Fortunato looked at him. “I don’t care about your interview,” he said. He paused, frowning. “But I have nowhere to go.”

It was true. He’d turned his back on his own country, his own society, his own identity as the most powerful ace of his time, to make this monastery his home. But the rest of Japan was as foreign as the far side of the moon.

“Go?” Downs asked. He suddenly snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! Come back to America! On me. Well, on Aces! anyway. It’ll be great.” His eyes focused outward as if reading an imaginary headline. “PRODIGAL SON RETURNS. Or something like that. It’ll play great with the kid becoming an ace and all!”

Fortunato frowned. It didn’t exactly sound appealing. Besides, there was as little for him in America as there was in Japan. His mother was dead. His girls were all gone. There was nothing but Peregrine, married to another man these fifteen years or more. And his son...

He looked at Dogen, who smiled his gentle smile.

“Perhaps Mr. Downs is right. You can’t deny that lately you’ve been restless. Perhaps it is time that you walk in the world again, to get a fresh perspective on what you’ve given up and what you have now.”

Fortunato smiled wryly. There was no way to hide anything from Dogen. The old man knew Fortunato’s mind perhaps better than the ace did himself.

“Perhaps you’re right.” Fortunato said.

“Right? Of course he’s right,” Downs said, looking from one to the other and smiling broadly. “Cripes, what a story! I can see it on the cover of Aces!: “Fortunato’s Return to America.”

“Do you think anyone will care?” Fortunato asked thoughtfully.

“They will when I get done with it,” Downs promised.

Fortunato, though, wasn’t so sure.

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

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

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

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

“Any problems?” the Bigger Asshole asked.

“We lost Grubbs,” Nighthawk said.

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

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

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

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

“The help takes taxis,” he said.

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

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

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

“Where to?”

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

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

“It’s starting then,” Nighthawk said.

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

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ Las Vegas, Nevada: The Mirage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She glanced up and their eyes suddenly met.

But it was too late.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ Las Vegas, Nevada: The Mirage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Chocolate cone,” the Angel replied frostily.

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

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

“One,” she said with disappointment.

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

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

“Thank you,” she said.

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

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

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

And then they collided.

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

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

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

His eyes were wild

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

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

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

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

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

“The Hand sent me to meet you—”

“The Hand?” Ray interrupted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shhhhh!”

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

“Where?” The Angel asked suspiciously.

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

”The coffee shop,” the Angel said definitively.

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

“The Midnight Angel,” she told him.

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

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

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

New York City: The Waldorf-Astoria

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

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

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

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

“Miss Cameo?” he asked.

“Cameo will do,” she replied.

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

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

“Where is he?”

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

“A hat?” Nighthawk said.

Cameo nodded. “How perceptive of you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contarini inclined his silver-haired head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Take this. Sit there.”

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

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

Nighthawk only nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Las Vegas: The Mirage Auditorium

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

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

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

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

“In this town?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Fortune suddenly smiled. “You think so?”

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

Sudden applause welled up from the audience.

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

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

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

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

“You Creighton?”

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

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

“Do I know you?” Ray asked.

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

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

Ray was still frowning. “You look familiar.”

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

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

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

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

Jerry nodded. “That’s right.”

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

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

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

“Well—“Angel began.

“You see—“ Ray said.

And suddenly all Hell broke out on the stage.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

New York City: Tomlin International Airport

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Fortunato felt nothing, nothing but empty.

Las Vegas: The Mirage Auditorium

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

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

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

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

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Ray blasphemed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ray nodded.

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

“Yet, we’re kicking your asses.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Round two?” Ray asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Angel smiled feebly and nodded.

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

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

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

J erry had been in tough situations in the past where lives were on the line, but this was almost overwhelmingly desperate. If Ray hadn’t charged onto the stage he might have hesitated for a long time, but when the government ace had leaped into action something in Jerry made him follow Ray into the heart of danger.

It certainly wasn’t his brain. If he’d thought about it at all, he’d have run away from the flying bullets. Whatever it was that made him accompany Ray was something deeper in his make-up. His heart. Perhaps his gut. His reaction was more instinctive than rational. Jerry would have sighed to himself if he’d had the time. He’d always considered himself a smart guy, and this was just crazy.

Ray executed a sharp right and hurled himself into the off-stage darkness. Sudden sounds of fists hitting flesh and bone, the cracking of those bones, and screams of pain, quickly followed. Jerry didn’t follow Ray. Realizing that people on the stage needed help, Jerry passed by Siegfried and Ralph, who were petrified by fear but otherwise unharmed, and headed for Kitty O’Leary’s desk where the hysterical anchorwoman was covered in blood.

“Get your tigers out of here before something terrible happens,” he said to the entertainers as he went by. “Again.”

They glanced at each other and then took his advice and ran, their leashed cats roaring wildly as they bounded after them. Jerry dropped down to one knee when he reached O’Leary’s desk and checked the body propped up against it. It was the male half of the pair of floating Living Gods. Jerry didn’t know his name. Blood pumped sluggishly from a series of horrific puncture wounds in his torso. As Jerry grabbed his wrist to feel for a pulse, the injured man suddenly focused his large, beautiful eyes on Jerry’s face, and said something in Arabic. Jerry looked on helplessly as he vomited a gout of blood and died.

Jerry stood, suppressing a sigh. He didn’t have time for pity. He examined O’Leary quickly for wounds and discovered that none of the blood splashed on her chest and face seemed to be hers.

“Shut up,” he said, and “get down.”

She just kept screaming, so he grabbed her shoulders and shook her. When that didn’t catch her attention, he slapped her, adrenaline making his open-palmed blow a little harder than he’d intended. She shut her mouth and looked at him in amazement and anger flared in her eyes. Jerry was suddenly glad that he looked like tough guy Alan Ladd. It made it all the easier to act the part.

“I said, shut up,” he repeated, putting his hand on the top of her head, “and get the Hell down.”

He shoved hard enough to push her to the floor and she crawled under the stage furniture. That was the safest place for her. He turned away, hoping she’d stay put. He couldn’t waste any more time on her.

More sounds of gunfire and terror came from the auditorium. Ray, and Angel, Jerry supposed, were keeping the bad guys off the stage. At least for the moment. Jerry went swiftly to the overturned sofa where Peregrine huddled over the bloody, unmoving body of her son. He vaulted over the divan and went down to one knee beside her. Her teeth were clenched. She was panting like a hyperventilating dog, or a woman trying to give birth.

“He’s all right,” she gasped out. “Not hurt. Hit his head when the sofa went over. Just knocked out. Be... all... right...”

Her voice started to fade. Jerry took her arm and half lifted her off the boy, wincing at what he saw. A line of slugs stitched sideways across Peregrine’s body from her loins, across her abdomen and chest to her right wing where feathers had been shot away and delicate bones shattered.

“Christ,” he said in a low voice.

It didn’t look good. He stripped his off shirt, ripped it to rags and applied pressure bandages as best he could to what seemed to be Peregrine’s worst wounds. Her only response was to moan feebly. There wasn’t anything else he could do for her, and he realized that Peregrine didn’t have much time left if she didn’t receive immediate medical attention. He turned his attention to John Fortune, thinking that Peregrine really needed his new-found ace abilities. But the kid was still out cold.

What a time to get knocked senseless, Jerry thought. He tried to revive the boy, but the best he could get from him was an unintelligible groan. He could feel a knot on the back of the kid’s skull the size of a golf ball. He must have really slammed his head hard on the floor when the sofa had tipped over on them.

Jerry felt as useless as Rock Hudson in the opening scenes of one of his screwball comedies. He didn’t want to mess around with the kid, in case he had a real head injury. And Peregrine needed expert attention, fast. Someone would have to help. Angel, he thought. Or Ray...

Jerry stood and went swiftly to the edge of the stage, shielded his eyes from the light and looked out just in time to see Ray go mano a mano with a chubby little guy who looked like someone’s favorite older uncle until the guy suddenly turned into something that wasn’t so avuncular. Jerry recognized the transformed man. He was the British killer ace called Butcher Dagon.

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.

“Uh-uh,” he said. He looked inside, and frowned. He reached in and took out a battered old fedora that had definitely seen better days. “What’s this?” he asked, bemused. “I thought you were lugging a hand cannon around with you, and it’s just an old hat?”

“Don’t let her touch it,” Nighthawk said warningly.

“Whatever you say, boss,” Usher agreed.

Cameo glared at Nighthawk, who offered her the slightest of shrugs.

Nighthawk glanced at Contarini. The Cardinal stared with eyes wide open at nothing at all but the scene of loss and devastation playing in his head. Nighthawk could almost feel sorry for him, if he didn’t dislike the stiff-necked old bastard so much. Magda, taking her cue from her beloved leader, wore a lost-soul expression that also would have been touching if Nighthawk hadn’t known her better. She looked as if she wanted to comfort Contarini, but was stopped by the fact that human emotions were so foreign to her that she just didn’t know how to do it. Only Usher looked cool and composed, and openly wondering as he observed the by-play between Nighthawk and Cameo.

Nighthawk could do nothing now. He could only get the girl away from Contarini as quickly as possible. And then see what he could do about St. Dympna’s.

“Come with us,” he said quietly, and for once something went right. She nodded, and followed him without a word, Magda and Usher bracing her like prison guards on death row. Nighthawk looked back as they left the library to see Contarini still staring fix-eyed at nothing.

Christ’s supposed Shroud was tossed carelessly over Cole Porter’s unoccupied reading chair.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Las Vegas, Nevada: The Mirage

The blood had been the hardest thing. That, and the screaming. The Angel couldn’t decide which was worse. She also didn’t like the memory of the Witness’s lips grinding against hers, but she was a warrior for the Lord and she could deal with wounds and indignities. It was the suffering of the innocents that bothered her so.

She’d fought for The Hand before, but never in a battle this intense. It wasn’t so much her and Ray fighting the Allumbrados. The fighting had been fine. Thrilling, even. Except when it came to the Witness. The Angel knew that she hadn’t acquitted herself well with him. But she realized she shouldn’t dwell on that. Or on the blood. Or on the screaming, especially of the innocent tourists caught in the indiscriminate firing. Of Kitty O’Leary, screeching like a maniac behind her desk. Of Peregrine and the bloody sheet wrapped around her as they took her off on a gurney. She shouldn’t dwell on all that, she knew, because it was part of the Lord’s plan. But the blood—

“Hey.”

The Angel’s eyes focused and she realized that Ray was standing before her.

“You okay?”

His once immaculate suit was torn into rags. His body didn’t look much better. His face was battered and bloody. A vivid purple welt like the scar from a noose colored an arc around his neck. A flap of skin and meat hung down from his upper chest, exposing the muscle underneath, as well as a glimmer of bone. He was still bleeding from half a dozen body wounds and he held his side as if he had broken or at least rearranged ribs.

But he’d proved himself more competent than she thought he’d be. He’d handled himself quite well and his fighting technique had been, well, a revelation. He was faster than she was, if not stronger. And, she had to admit, much more deadly with a killer instinct that at times was frightening.

“Yes,” she finally lied. The next sentence came out unbidden from her mouth. “Tell me something.”

Ray brushed at his cheek, smearing a trail of clotting blood. “Sure.” He waited a moment, frowned, and then asked into the silence between them, “What is it?”

The Angel forced herself to focus. “Do you ever get used to the blood?”

“The blood?” She could see that he was puzzled. It was almost as if she’d asked him if he ever got used to the air he breathed, or the food he ate. “If blood bothers you, you’re in the wrong line of work, ba— uh, Angel. The people we deal with bleed all the time.” He grinned, and it was not comforting. “Better them than us, but we have to bleed too, sometimes. It’s the nature of the job.”

She nodded. She believed his words, but she wasn’t sure that she understood them. She’d have to pray over it and seek the Lord’s guidance.

“What do we do now?”

“Now?” The word came out of Ray as a long sigh. “Now we wait for the paper pushers to show up and start asking stupid questions.”

The Angel looked around the auditorium. It was quieter now than during the attack, but almost as chaotic, though the chaos had a controlled feel to it, as the men and women in EMT uniforms worked to alleviate the pain and suffering that surrounded them.

It wasn’t long before a florid-faced man with a dark rumpled suit and short rumpled haircut that screamed “COP” approached, looking as if he’d rather have a gun than a notebook in his hand as he faced them

“Now just who the Hell are you two?” he asked unpleasantly. “Witnesses said you two played a major part in the fight—”

“Somebody had to protect the citizens while you were out chugging donuts,” Ray said.

“Just a minute—”

“I’m going to reach into the back pocket of my pants,” Ray said, “and get my I.D.” He frowned. It was not a pleasant sight. “If the pocket’s still attached to my ass.” Fortunately it was, and the I.D. wallet was still in it. He took it out and showed it to the cop. “I’m Agent Billy Ray. Secret Service. This is Agent Angel.”

“You—” the Angel started to say, but he froze her with a look.

That doesn’t, she thought as the cop frowned at Ray’s I.D., happen very often.

The cop looked up. It was hard to say if the realization that the Feds were on the case made him more or less truculent. “Ray. Yeah, I guess I heard of you. Well,” he said gruffly, “you’ll have to come down to the station and make a statement.”

“Certainly, officer.” The Angel was amazed at the sudden courtesy in Ray’s manner and tone. “Do you mind if I stop bleeding first? Maybe change out of my rags? Get my broken ribs bound up?”

The cop’s florid features grew redder. “No,” he said shortly.

“Excellent, officer.” Ray took the Angel by her upper right arm and moved off. She went with him without a murmur. “We’ll stop by as soon as possible. Perhaps tomorrow morning. Whatever the doctor says.”

The cop opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He waved them on.

“You didn’t have to lie,” the Angel said when they were out of his hearing.

“Lie?” Ray asked innocently.

“I’m not a Secret Service agent.”

“Did I say you were a Secret Service agent?” Ray shook his head. “No.”

“You said—”

“I said ‘Agent Angel,’” Ray quoted himself. “And didn’t you tell me yourself that you’re an agent of the Lord?”

“I,” the Angel paused. “Maybe. I—I probably said ‘instrument of the Lord.’”

Ray shrugged. “Agent, instrument. Let’s not get technical. Now, be quiet for a moment.”

They’d reached the exit, which was blocked by uniformed cops. The Angel didn’t even listen to Ray’s explanation as he showed them his identification. Something about clearance levels and need-to-know and having to report back to the chief immediately as to what had happened. She was suddenly so tired that she really didn’t know how he’d managed it. The sleepless hours, the exhausting travel, the mentally and physically draining combat had finally caught up with her. Suddenly they were outside the auditorium.

People stared at them as they went through the lobby, but the Angel for once hardly noticed, let alone cared. She could hear the buzz of conversation. They were already whispering about the “Mayhem at the Mirage,” as she and Ray went to the elevator bank. Unsurprisingly, no one else got on the elevator with them as they went up to the connecting rooms that Ray had rented earlier.

Ray looked at her judiciously in the hallway outside their rooms as he handed her the electronic key for her half of the suite. She took it from him, and managed to insert it into the lock on the third try. She opened the door and stumbled into the room.

“You’d better get some rest—” Ray began, and she closed the door in his face.

She thought about taking a shower, but barely managed to peel off her torn and bloodied fighting suit and slip off her sweat-soaked underwear before collapsing onto the cool, welcoming bed.

If she dreamed, she didn’t remember.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

New York City: Jokertown

Fortunato ditched Digger Downs at Tomlin International as soon as they cleared customs and reached ground transport outside the terminal. He’d had enough of the man’s company on the long flights across the Pacific and over the country. He needed some time to himself, some time to think about his return to a land he’d left behind sixteen years ago along with a life he had no desire to renew.

Before getting into the cab waiting in line at ground transport, he took a few hundred in expense money from Downs, as well as a cell phone so they could keep in touch. Fortunato marveled at the slim piece of equipment before he slipped it into the pocket of his robe. Portable phones had gotten a lot smaller since the last time he’d used one, but Fortunato was sure that they wouldn’t be the only marvel to meet his eyes.

The cabby glanced up into the mirror as he pulled away from the curb. He had a turban and a long, thick beard, and he wore white robes. He spoke barely understandable English.

“Where to, Mack?”

It was, Fortunato reflected, good to back in the good old U.S.A. And that was the question. Where to?

“Manhattan,” Fortunato said. Who in New York, he pondered, did he still have ties to?

Peregrine. He had no idea where she lived or what her phone number was. Besides, she was still in Vegas with the boy. His mother was dead. Miranda...Veronica... the last he’d heard from her had been a telegram telling him of Ichiko’s death. He’d ignored it. He could hardly drop in on her now, even if he knew where to find her. There were others, but time had not been good to his friends, allies, and or even his foes.

Xavier Desmond, the one-time unofficial mayor of Jokertown and one of the best clients Fortunato had when he ran his string of geishas, had been dead over fifteen years. Cancer had taken him soon after that memorable round the world trip on the Busted Flush, right after Fortunato had taken up the monastic life.

Chrysalis, purveyor of fine drink and even better information, had followed Des into death not long after. Her Crystal Palace had burned to the ground.

The amiable Hiram Worchester, one of the aces Fortunato had been closest to back in the day, had gone down for her murder. Though not a lot of news had reached Fortunato while he’d been isolated in the monastery, that had, and it had shocked him. He understood that Hiram had retired from public life. Even his fabulous restaurant, where Fortunato had first met the unbelievably beautiful Peregrine and had commenced his final battle with the Astronomer, was no more.

Yeoman, whom he’d traveled with to the gut of the Swarm... there had been a bond between them born of mutual respect and shared danger. But as far as Fortunato knew there hadn’t been an Ace of Spades killing for a long time. He had no idea what had happened to his one-time comrade. They hadn’t exactly been swapping Christmas cards the last decade and a half.

Even Tachyon, the whiny little space wimp, was gone. He’d run back to Takis when the going had gotten tough. First he’d come to the monastery begging for help. Then he’d gone back to his own planet, trapped in a woman’s body, like... like a man running to a monastery on a distant and remote island, cutting himself off entirely from his old life. Cutting himself off from family, friends, lovers, comrades, and enemies. Cutting himself off from everything.

Christ, Fortunato thought, is that what it’s come down to? Unflattering self-comparison to that little alien Fauntleroy?

Fortunato stared out of the taxi window, knowing that he had to get out of the awful, self-pitying, introspective mood into which he’d fallen. It wasn’t doing him, nor anyone else, any good. He had—

“Stop,” he said suddenly, and the cabby took him for his word. He yanked the taxi’s wheel hard right and they squealed to a halt against the curb. The cabby thrust his head out the window and screamed words at the driver of the car behind them, who had swerved and barely missed side-swiping the cab, and was now going down the street with his hand sticking out the driver-side window, middle finger extended.

“Amateur!” the cabby screamed as his final insult. He caught Fortunato’s eye in the rear view window. “Your destination, Mack?”

Fortunato nodded. Even if this wasn’t his destination, he realized he’d better get the Hell out of that cab if he wanted to live through the first day of his return to New York.

“Yes, this’ll do.” He got out of the cab and nearly did a double take when he saw the fare. He counted off a couple of bills and added a ten. “Here you go.”

The cabby didn’t seem overly excited by a ten-dollar tip. Times had changed.

“Thanks, Mack,” he said, and roared off to his next adventure, almost clipping a passing Caddie as he pulled away from the curb.

Fortunato looked around. He should have been surprised to find himself in the heart of Jokertown, but he wasn’t. It was almost as if he’d been magically drawn to there. As if he were a pigeon who’d returned, almost unconsciously, to home territory. He smiled to himself. Jokertown hadn’t changed much. It was just as dirty as it had been in his day. Just as crowded. Just as damned funky.

He put out a hand to touch the curb-side glass and plastic phone booth that was plastered with handbills advertising the next rave at the Freak Zone (The Hottest New Joker Hang! Nats With Masks Welcome!). Pedestrians with too many or too few limbs, with fur, with feathers, with skin like leather, with skin like silk, with extra mouths, noses, ears, or eyes, passed him by without a glance. To the jokers he was nothing, just a tall, skinny black guy. Maybe a nat, maybe a hidden joker. Maybe strung out, maybe grossed out. It was all the same to them. They had their own problems.

He used to be Fortunato. Tachyon had once called him the most powerful ace of all. Once, they all would have known who he was.

He didn’t know where it came from, but sudden anger churned his gut as if he’d ingested a five-star curry. He knew it wouldn’t go away, so instead he focused on it to the exclusion of all else, building a pyre that burned hotter and hotter until he could incinerate all the frustrations of the last day.

The last day? he asked himself. How about the last sixteen years?

“Hey, old man, what you doing?”

The voice was young, careless, and uncaring. It tore Fortunato from his standing meditation to the dirty, noisy present of the Jokertown street. He focused his eyes on a group of kids standing around him. There were half a dozen of them. They weren’t threatening, but Fortunato had the sense that they could be, in a heartbeat. All the pedestrians around them had suddenly faded from the scene. Their innate urban dweller senses perceived imminent danger and they either crossed the street or turned and retraced their steps when they saw the knot of juveniles surrounding the lone man.

The kids were all jokers. Some, like the slag-faced hulking giant who stood behind the speaker, were severely marked. Others, like the speaker himself, whose only visible abnormality was a rather attractive pair of feathery antennae that sprouted where his eyebrows should have been, were only touched by what was still regarded as the taint of the wild card, even after all these years.

Fortunato looked at them tolerantly. They were his people. He could have been one of them, if he hadn’t been inhumanly lucky in the cosmic crapshoot. Their expressions, as they looked back at him, ranged from totally blank to utterly hostile.

“I’m just standing here,” Fortunato said, finally answering the spokesman’s question.

The spokesman snorted. “You on our corner, man.”

Fortunato’s eyebrows rose. This was the old game that had been played on the streets for generations. He himself had played it, before he’d gone on to bigger games.

“Your corner?” he asked.

“Yah,” the kid replied. “We’re the Jokka Bruddas, dig, and like I spoke, you taking up space on our corner. You owe us, man.”

“Owe you?” the anger in Fortunato’s gut flared at the gangbanger’s insouciance. “I owned this corner, this street, and all those around it before you were born, boy. You’d best believe that.”

There was no fear in the boy’s eyes. “Yeah? Who are you supposed to be, old man?”

“I’m Fortunato,” he said.

There was a moment’s silence as they all stared at him, then the kid started to laugh and all his followers joined in. “Fortunato!” He shook his head. “You ain’t nothing but a crazy old man. Fortunato, he dead, old man. Been dead many a year. Everybody knows.”

“Knows what?” Fortunato said through clenched teeth, his gut roiling as the anger threatened to explode all bonds.

“He died years ago, before I was born. He flew up into the sky and fought the Devil. They fought all night, throwing lightning and thunder at each other. My daddy told me. He saw it. Fortunato was strong, but the Devil, he stronger. Fortunato fell from the sky like a stone and burned all up and the Devil took his soul to Hell because he was a pimp and a whore-runner.”

“They weren’t whores,” Fortunato ground out, “they were geishas.”

The boy shrugged. “You Fortunato? Go ahead, hit me with a lightning bolt. Fly. They said you could even stop time. Go ahead, old man. Do it. You better have more’n your mouth because we’re going to cap your ass and take everything you have.”

Fortunato’s anger called on the power, but nothing responded. He had shut it away for too long. He had turned his back on it, and now when he needed it, it wouldn’t respond. And Fortunato knew, suddenly and desperately, that he really needed it. The giant whose face was a lava field of pitted sores grinned horrifically, and stepped forward. Fortunato tensed.

“Are you all right, my son?” a deep, concerned voice asked. Suddenly, all around them, was the smell of the sea.

They all turned to see a man in priest’s robes who was not as tall as Fortunato, and more than twice as wide. His skin was a shiny, glabrous gray. His round face had nictating membranes over his eyes instead of normal lids, and a fall of short, constantly twitching tentacles where his nose should have been. His hands, folded over his comfortable paunch, were large, with long attenuated fingers that twitched bonelessly. Vestigial suckers lined his palms. He smelled like the ocean on a pleasant summer day.

“Father Squid,” Fortunato said.

“My son,” the priest of the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker, acknowledged with a bow and a smile, “or should I call you ‘my brother’?”

“Whatever you call me, Father, it’s good to see you.”

Though not a touchy-feely person, Fortunato, accepted the priest’s embrace gratefully. Held against his broad chest, the smell reminded Fortunato of boyhood summer days spent at the beach. They hugged for a long moment, then Fortunato backed away.

Father Squid looked at him critically. “You look tired, my son.”

“I’ve been on a long journey.”

Father Squid nodded. “I’m glad to be here to welcome you home.” He gestured benevolently at the bangers standing all around them. “I’m glad that some of my flock has already welcomed you.” There was shuffling of feet and almost inaudible murmurs. “But it might be best if you were to come down the street to my church, and rest for awhile. We can catch up on the happenings of the last fifteen years.”

That suddenly sounded like a good idea. Father Squid was a well-known, well-beloved figure about Jokertown. Or, Fortunato thought, at least he was the last time he knew anything about Jokertown. But something the joker priest said wasn’t right. Fortunato frowned as he glanced at the street sign on the corner.

“We’re across Jokertown from Our Lady of Perpetual Misery,” Fortunato said. For a moment he wondered if his mind was going. If he was starting to forget details of his previous life. “Aren’t we?”

Father Squid smiled behind his fall of nasal tentacles. “The old Lady of Perpetual Misery,” he explained, “burned down almost a decade ago. We moved our premises here after the fire to a desanctified Roman Catholic Church in an abandoned parish.” He leaned forward to speak in a low voice. The odor of the ocean wafted from his ample form “Frankly, the insurance money didn’t go as far as we thought it would, and the real estate in this part of Jokertown is cheaper.”

Fortunato glanced at the Jokka Bruddas still standing around, some shuffling their feet, some glaring, and nodded.

“Right,” Father Squid said, smiling again. “This way.” He paused for a moment and glanced at the youths, taking them all in with his kindly, but penetrating gaze. “I haven’t seen you boys at confession lately. Or, come to think about it, even Mass. I hope you’ll be there this Sunday.”

“Ah, Father,” said their spokesman.

Father Squid’s gaze turned somewhat less kindly. “Carlos.”

The joker hung his head. “Yes, Father.”

The priest looked at the giant with the terrible face. “Ricky, you make sure Carlos makes it to Mass, won’t you.”

“I will, Father,” the giant said in a curiously high, sweet voice, the words of an angel issuing from a Hellhound’s mouth.

“All right,” Father Squid said with a nod. “We’ll see you boys soon.”

Carlos mumbled something as they walked away. To Fortunato it sounded like a slurred threat, but he ignored their words and their unblinking glares, as he went off down the street with the amiable joker priest.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

New York City: To St. Dympna’s

On the way down from the Tower, Cameo, said to Nighthawk, “I don’t think I like the sound of St. Dympna’s.” She paused momentarily. “Whatever it is.”

Nighthawk shook his head. “You shouldn’t,” he said. “It’s a charity hospital for crazy folks. It’s been shut down for years, but the Church still holds the deed and Contarini uses it as his sort of unofficial headquarters. It’s where the obsequenti have their barracks and Blood his kennel.”

Cameo frowned. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s an awful place,” Nighthawk agreed.

The elevator came to a stop and Nighthawk politely waited for her to exit, holding the door for her and then following her into the lobby with Usher and Magda still at her side. He paused for a moment to look around. Whenever he stood in the Waldorf-Astoria’s lobby, it made him feel as if seventy years had fallen off the age of the earth. And off him.

She gazed at him.

“So,” she said, “you’re not taking me there. Right?”

Nighthawk looked around the lobby. So many memories. There was a maid he’d loved, lived with, and lost to a younger man who’d been a flashier dresser and had better prospects. She was young then, when he was old, but now she’d be ancient, if she’d somehow managed to survive. Nighthawk suppressed an introspective sigh. The past had been weighing heavily on him lately. He had to rid himself of it, one way or the other.

He looked at Cameo, wishing he’d gotten some really useful ace ability, like telepathy. But that, he thought, would have just made things too easy. “I have no choice,” his voice said. His eyes pled, Trust me. Just trust me for a little while longer.

“What if I scream?” Cameo asked conversationally.

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Usher said.

Magda just smiled.

It was the nun’s smile, Nighthawk thought, that decided her. For now. Her gaze withdrew. Her eyes became hooded. It wasn’t exactly as if she lost all interest in her surroundings, but she acted as if she were preoccupied with something else more important, as if she were conversing with unseen spectres.

Maybe, Nighthawk thought, she was.

Usher went to the parking garage while Nighthawk, Cameo, and Magda waited on the street. It was late, and almost quiet. Cameo looked at Nighthawk, ignoring the silent nun.

“Can’t I go and find some place to go hide until this is all over?” she asked. “Whatever this is.”

Nighthawk nodded approvingly. “That would be the thing to do.” He paused, frowning. “Unfortunately, this will only be over, one, if Contarini dies, or, two, when Jesus Christ again walks this earth. I ain’t saying which is more likely. At this point, I don’t know.”

“Contarini is that determined?”

“He’s a fanatic. Fanatics are usually fairly determined.”

“And you’re not?” Cameo asked him. “A fanatic, I mean?”

Nighthawk laughed. “Not like Contarini. I have faith, but I’m not blinded by it. I have... questions. That’s why I took this job. I’d done some work for Contarini’s Allumbrados in the past—”

A big black Mercedes pulled up to the curb, Usher behind the wheel. Nighthawk opened the rear passenger side door and gestured for Cameo to enter. She got in gracefully and slid across the seat. Magda started to follow her, but Nighthawk took her forearm with his gloved left hand and shook his head.

“In the front,” he said, “with Usher.”

She stared at his gloved hand on her arm, then looked up at Nighthawk as if she were going to dispute his order, but dropped her gaze after a few moments. She pulled her arm away and got into the front passenger seat, obviously perturbed.

Nighthawk got in the back and toggled the dark glass panel into place between front and rear seats. Magda twisted backward to glare at them as the panel slid into place. Usher pulled away from the curb, melding easily with the light stream of traffic.

“She doesn’t like you,” Cameo observed.

“No,” Nighthawk said. “But, even better, she fears me.”

Cameo looked him over coolly. “Why?”

Nighthawk smiled. “Pray you never find out, missy.”

She seemed to consider this for a moment, then nodded.

”All right,” she said. “You mentioned ‘Allumbrados,’ what does that mean? Who exactly are they?”

“It means ‘the Enlightened Ones.’ They’re an ancient brotherhood within the Church. Cardinal Contarini is their current leader, but they’ve been around since medieval times. Some say back to the time of the Inquisition, to which they had tight ties.”

“Contarini’s a Cardinal?” she repeated, half to herself, as if not totally surprised. “I’m not totally surprised,” she said. “The stink of sanctimony clings to him like cheap aftershave.”

Nighthawk smiled. That was a pretty fair assessment.

“But these Allumbrados, what exactly do they believe in?”

“They believe in the Millennium,” Nighthawk said. “They believe that Jesus Christ will return to the earth. That after casting Satan and his minions into the pit He’ll establish a Kingdom of Peace and reign for a thousand years. Then He’ll fight the Devil one last time, and in this final confrontation will be victorious. Then the world will end and the righteous will go to Heaven to spend eternity praising God.”

“Literally?”

“Oh, yes. They believe this to be the pre-ordained fate of the universe. They believe that they can help this process along and hasten the coming of Parousia.”

“Parousia?”

“Sorry,” Nighthawk said. “You hang around these people enough and you forget how to talk like ordinary folk. Parousia is just a fancy word for Jesus’ Kingdom on Earth.”

“So, they hired you to help them?”

“I got them the Shroud, didn’t I?” Nighthawk asked with some indignation. “I found you to channel Jesus’ spirit so the Cardinal could discover how exactly they could help bring about Jesus’ return. Is it my fault you got Cole Porter instead?”

Cameo had to fight back a smile. “No.”

“Anyway,” Nighthawk said, “that’s only part of the plan.”

“The other part being?”

“The other part being destroying the Anti-Christ, who Contarini believes has already appeared on Earth, as Scripture has predicted.”

“That’s crazy,” Cameo said. “Just who is this supposed Anti-Christ, anyway?”

“The Spawn of the Whore of Babylon and Satan himself.”

Cameo shook her head. “I’m still in the dark.”

Nighthawk sat silently as Usher drove with quiet, sure skill through the empty streets. The Mercedes windows were all blacked out so Cameo could have no clue where they were going. That was part of the reason why he had activated the barrier between the front and back seats. He also didn’t want Usher or Magda to hear their conversation. He slouched back on his seat.

“The Whore of Babylon is a famous television star and documentary film producer who has dared to oppose the Church on pretty much every social issue imaginable. Abortion rights. Ordaining women for the priesthood. Homosexuality. Even the doctrine of papal infallibility which, it turns out, was invented in the nineteenth century. Plus, she’s a wild carder.”

“Peregrine?” Cameo hazarded.

Nighthawk nodded. “That’s right, missy. Now, Satan himself: He’s also a wild carder. He deals in sex, drugs, and violence. Or at least used to. He’s black—”

“Fortunato! But,” Cameo said, “he’s been in that monastery in Japan, what, it seems like forever now.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Nighthawk said. “If he doesn’t come out when things start happening, Contarini will send someone after him. And,” Nighthawk added significantly, ”things have definitely started to happen.

“And the Anti-Christ,” Cameo said thoughtfully. “Their son, John Fortune.”

Nighthawk nodded again. “You got that right. The only known offspring from the union of two aces. That’s important to Contarini. Wild carders are equivalent to demons in his theology. He believes we’re all damned from birth. That we’ll all suffer the agonies of Hell for eternity.”

“Yet you work for him,” Cameo said with an edge of disgust in her voice.

Nighthawk shook his head. “I don’t work for him. I take his money. There’s a difference.”

“A vague one,” Cameo said.

“No. An important one. I told you before—I took this job for a reason.”

“The money?” she asked.

Nighthawk shook his head silently. His gaze turned inwards as if he were reliving memories of old, unforgettable, unpleasant events.

“No. I took this job because I wanted to see if you were the real thing, or just some kind of fake.”

“It wasn’t my fault that I got Cole Porter, either—” Cameo began, but Nighthawk interrupted her.

“No, I believe you. You’ve convinced me that you can channel the dead.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Your trust, for now.” He frowned. “We’re probably all right, here, now. If we’re being taped, we’re both dead if the Cardinal ever hears this conversation—”

Cameo snorted. “I thought you weren’t afraid of the Cardinal.”

“I’ve lived a long time, missy,” Nighthawk said, “and I didn’t do it by being stupid. Of course I’m afraid of the Cardinal. If you had any sense, you’d be too. I can’t afford to openly oppose him. I’m one old man. He has the Allumbrados. Aces. Money. More thugs with guns than I could kill in a year.”