Death Draws Five

I could, Fortunato thought, and I already did, at least partially. “You know that I turned my back on my powers when I left this country.”

“So the story goes,” Barnett said. “But I’ve heard strange things about your recent doings in New York City. People say you came back from the dead and stopped an ace from destroying the Jokertown Clinic. Hell, people are saying you’re still in New York doing all kinds of miracles. Healing the sick. Curing the deaf. Turning baking soda into crack, for all I know.”

“Careful,” Fortunato said. “Your prejudices are showing.”

“Hell, man, the only thing I’m prejudiced against is sin. You know that.”

Fortunato shook his head, as if unconvinced. “Was that your ace who attacked the Jokertown Clinic?”

Barnett laughed out loud. “Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. All I know is that someone with some very powerful underlings wants me dead, Peregrine dead, and our son dead.”

“That ain’t me,” Barnett said. “That’s the Cardinal’s boys.”

“The Cardinal’s boys?” Fortunato asked.

Barnett nodded affably. “Pay attention, now,” he said. “The boys after you are the Allumbrados, the Enlightened Ones, as they’re so puffed up with pride to call themselves. It’s an ancient and secret office of the Catholic Church. Goes way back. Has ties to another Holy Office that still exists officially, but hasn’t seen much action lately.”

Fortunato frowned. “The Inquisition?”

“That’s the one,” Barnett nodded. “These Papal boys are run by Cardinal Romulus Contarini. Real nasty stuff, actually. They hire all kinds of criminals and scum. Jokers and aces and real people alike—”

“’Real people’?” Barnett was so smooth that Fortunato had to occasionally remind himself not to forget where the evangelist was really coming from.

Barnett shrugged apologetically. “I don’t like to use the term ‘nats.’ It’s demeaning.”

“Uh-huh.”

“All right,” Barnett said. “Just between us, let’s cut the crap. You know that I’ve preached against the wild card, but it’s the virus I’ve preached against, not its victims. The virus has turned its prey into things both lesser and greater than human. They get my pity, my help, and whatever solace I can give them. But the virus—the virus has caused unimaginable misery in this world and it must inevitably be eradicated.”

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Fortunato said.

Barnett shook his head. “I haven’t. But the world has. There’s no doubt in my mind that the end days are upon us. The signs are all around. Israel. Moral decay. The wild card itself. The downfall of communism.” He paused and looked seriously at Fortunato. “The boy, John Fortune.”

Fortunato looked back just as hard at Barnett. “What about him?”

“He is, without a doubt, Jesus Christ reincarnate. The Second Coming is upon us and the battle of the Millennium is about to start.” Barnett held out his hand, forestalling Fortunato’s incredulous reply. “Now hear me out. I’m not the only one who realizes that John Fortune will play a critical role in the upcoming Struggle. Contarini and his Allumbrados believe this as well. Only, wrong-headed as usual, the damned Papists think he’s the Anti-Christ. They believe that he must die, while I know, I know as well as I know the love of my God, that he must be shielded. He must be sheltered and protected until he realizes his fate and brings about the Kingdom of God on Earth.”

Fortunato, who had edged forward on his seat during Barnett’s speech, sank back in the chair, flabbergasted at the ex-President’s words.

“I know,” Barnett said at the stunned look on Fortunato’s face. “How can they be so wrong? How can they be that stupid? Well, God has, if you forgive the metaphor, thrown us a curve ball on this one. I could hardly suspect myself that He would chose a stained vessel such as Peregrine to be the mother of His Son, but God does work in mysterious ways—”

“Wait a minute,” Fortunato interrupted, unable to contain himself any longer. “What about me?”

“Well, what about you?”

“I was there when he was conceived. I can assure you that this was not a case of virgin birth.”

Barnett shook his head. “We all have a place in God’s plan. Some of us just aren’t aware of what that place is.”

“And some of us,” Fortunato said, “are so certain that they think they can put others in their place.”

“Well, just so. Look. I know you want to help the boy. I want to help the boy. I showed you my hole cards. Time for you to show me yours. Go ahead. Read my mind. I’m not faking it.”

Fortunato smiled like a wolf. “All right,” he admitted. “I already did. That’s the only reason why I’m still sitting here, talking to you.”

“Outstanding!” Barnett beamed. “You know I’m telling the truth then. You know that I’m sincere.” He stood suddenly and went over to a large window over-looking his domain. “C’mere. I want you to see something.”

Fortunato levered himself out of the chair and joined Barnett at the window. He towered over the nat. They stood on the opposite side of many fundamental beliefs. But Fortunato had the distinct impression that Barnett was not only fearless in his presence, he was actually glad of Fortunato’s prowess and was confident that he could turn it to his service. If ego was a wild card power, Fortunato thought, he’d have it in spades.

“Look down there,” Barnett said, pointing to the square below them, pulsing with activity.

“At what?” Fortunato inquired.

“At all of it. Because all of it can be yours.”

Fortunato queried the ex-President with raised eyebrows.

“You want money? It’s there for the taking. You want power? Say the word and your word is law. You want entertainment, excitement? It’s available in infinite varieties in infinite supply. It’ll never run out. You want women?” Barnett winked at him. “We’re grown men here. You like that sweet little blonde thing out there at the reception desk? You can have her. You can have damn near everyone in this place and let me tell you, the infinite variety, the gut-grabbing excitement of that will never run out, my friend.”

Fortunato smiled again. “And in return all you want is my soul?”

Barnett put his hand on Fortunato’s shoulder and laughed aloud. “Your soul? You think I want your soul? Your soul can go to Hell for all I care, and it probably will.” Barnett shook his head, chuckling. “No. I want your help. I want you to join with my little group as we stand against those damned Papists.”

Fortunato put his hand on Barnett’s shoulder, and the smile on Barnett’s face slipped a bit as he gripped it hard. The decision came to him, suddenly it seemed, but with all the power of a revelation from God. Once this was over he would return to the monastery and rejoin his brothers on the pathway to enlightenment. But from now on he wouldn’t allow himself to be so single-minded. He would welcome messages, even visits, from the outside world, and perhaps he would someday walk in it again himself. But as nothing more than a father, as part of a family, and as a humble monk.

“That’s fine, then, because I don’t want money. I don’t want power. Not even women. I just want to see the boy, and be sure that he’s safe.”

“Hell, son, that’s easy enough. I could have him here in twenty minutes, if that’s what you want.”

Fortunato frowned. “Why haven’t you brought him in earlier then?”

“Jesus Christ, Fortunato, excuse my French, do you have to read my mind again to figure it out? The battle lines are drawn, son. Armageddon is coming as surely as the dawn, and we’re in the weak position. The enemy is legion. We are few and though our hearts are pure I’ve got more faith in guns and big, strong aces than I do in the virtue of our souls.

“He’s safer where he is now. Sure, the Cardinal has made a couple of lame attempts on him, but my people have done all right so far in thwarting the old Papal ass-kisser. I want John Fortune here only when we’re ready to meet them face to face and kick their sorry butts back to the Vatican.”

“And you think my joining your side will tip the battle?”

Barnett looked at him with a calculating expression. “Once you were the most powerful ace on the face of the Earth. Even that prissy little alien Tachyon thought so. Sure, there were guys around who could twist you into a pretzel. If you’d let them get their hands on you. But there was a time when there was nothing you couldn’t do.” He paused for a moment. “There was a time.”

Fortunato smiled. “I’m back.”

“Are you?” Barnett asked him. “I hope so. I truly hope so.” He went back to his desk, and toggled the intercom on his desk. “Sally Lou, sweetie. Get me Bruckner on the phone. Got a job for him. Thanks, honey.”

“Who’s Bruckner?” Fortunato asked.

Barnett smiled. “He’s the man you want when you have a special delivery that just has to make it through on time.”

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Manger

Ray woke up feeling great. He had a touch of indigestion, but that was only to be expected considering the amount he’d wolfed down before staggering back to Jerry’s hotel suite. They had an extra bedroom since they hadn’t called Ackroyd yet, so he hit the sack instead of making his way back to his room in The Angels’ Bower and conked out like a baby who’d just crawled a marathon.

He had no dreams, good or bad, and when he awoke it was with a totally clear head. There was no foggy pot-induced brain-cramping residue. He just felt fit and ready for the day. Ready for just about anything, in fact. He stretched lithely, feeling all his muscles glide smoothly in place, pain free and worry free for the first time in what felt like a long, long time. He went into the living room.

Mushroom Daddy was still snoring on the couch. He watched him for a moment, regarding him like one would a favored dog, thinking that the hippie wasn’t that bad after all. Thinking that somehow this would all work out. Thinking that he’d like to see Angel again, but that would have to wait. He should, he thought, go over to the Bower and see Barnett and find out exactly where she and the kid were.

Behind him, someone cleared their throat. He turned. Jerry and Sascha had come out of their bedroom. Jerry was yawning. Sascha was frowning.

“What,” Sascha asked, “does Barnett have to do with all this?”

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Yazoo City, Mississippi

The Angel and John Fortune reached Yazoo City by morning. The land through which they’d driven had changed from mountainous to flat, though the road became older, bumpier, and no easier on the old van. Sometimes the Angel thought it would take a miracle to get them all the way to Branson. Sometimes it seemed that it was only her faith that kept her going on this mad cross country trip, her faith and the eager innocence of the boy Savior sitting next to her, his eagerness for life radiating like heat.

“What’s planted in all those fields?” John Fortune asked as they rolled by mile after mile of flat Mississippi Delta country whose rich brown soil nourished rows of waist high plants.

“Cotton,” the Angel answered briefly. Cotton was still king in Yazoo, as it had been for centuries before her time. As it would be, probably, forever. It was a king she had no love for, nor loyalty to.

They broke through the flat landscape and ascended the rolling hills that hemmed in Yazoo City, seat of Mississippi’s largest county, home to ten thousand citizens. The rest of Yazoo County’s population was scattered in small hamlets and rural enclaves, on farms and plantations, around swamps and along the Yazoo River itself.

“Where’re we going now?” John Fortune inquired patiently. “Are we going to get to Branson soon?”

“Soon,” the Angel assured him. She hadn’t told him about her planned detour. She could barely articulate the reason for it to herself, let alone John Fortune. “I want to stop here first and visit my mother. If that’s okay.”

“Sure.” John Fortune said. He looked out the window, which had been rolled all the way down due to the van’s lack of air-conditioning. “Sure is hot.”

That it is, the Angel thought.

Heat was the most common sensation she recalled when she thought of her childhood. Wet, sticky heat that plastered her blouse to her back as soon as she put it on in the morning. That squeezed beads of sweat through her pores to trickle between her breasts and down her rib cage if she exerted herself the least little bit. Or even if she sat quietly in church while the fans rotated uselessly overhead.

Although miles from the twisting bends of the Mississippi River as it flowed down to the Gulf of Mexico, Yazoo was moist. Alligators still roared in the night in her acres of swamp and the catfish raised in her myriad lakes was an important cash crop. There was more than a touch of the primeval about it. The Angel felt they’d turned back the clock to somewhere to the middle of the last century. Or even the century before that.

“Nice houses,” John Fortune commented as they passed through a high-toned residential area. “Though some could use a new paint job.”

“Old money trying to stretch,” the Angel told him. “It doesn’t go as far as it used to.”

They drove by whitewashed two story homes and entered a part of the town where the houses were smaller and even more in need of paint. The lawns were wilder than the manicured yards of the affluent district, with cars up on blocks and ancient appliances scattered about as if their owners hadn’t enough energy to carry them further. Some—an old wringer washing machine here, and old sink there, even a toilet or two—had been turned into planters brimming with a profusion of flowers of all colors and descriptions, from tiny daisies white, blue, and yellow to columnar hollyhocks thrusting up to Heaven. Other abandoned appliances, especially the ancient refrigerators, were just rusting deathtraps, waiting for some kid to lock themselves in and suffocate.

The Angel took the narrow, twisting lanes automatically, turning without thinking until on the edge of the poorest part of town she drove through an open wrought-iron gate into a tree- shaded park with a scattering of white stones and gray monuments like candy tossed on a gently rolling field of felt. She parked the van and it gratefully shuddered to a well-deserved rest. John Fortune looked at her from the corner of his eye, without turning his head.

“Your mom’s here?” he asked.

“That’s right,” the Angel said. She got out of the van and after a moment he followed her.

It was quiet in the cemetery, and cool. Her mother’s grave was on the side of a hill sheltered by a giant pecan tree that spread its branches above a score of graves like a benediction. The slab was small, and bore only a name and two dates, 1961 - 2001. The Angel stood before it, then sank to her knees in the cool grass, putting her hands on the earth as if to caress that which lay underneath it.

“Hello, Mama,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve come to see you again.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “I know it’s been a long time since I been able to come by. I know I’ve been out in the world, which you told me was so evil and so dangerous, but there was just nothing here for me. Nothing for me to do, Mama. No way for me to live. You must understand that.”

Her mother had not wanted her to go out into the world. She had told her, over and over again, of its traps and perils. After all, she’d gone out herself and had gotten nothing out of it but a bloated belly and a daughter cursed at a very young age. Probably from the tainted blood of her beastly father, whom she never spoke of. But maybe, just maybe, by the evilness of her own contaminated soul.

“And I’ve been out in the world doing good. Really, I have. I bought someone to see you.” The Angel turned and beckoned to John Fortune, who was standing a respectful half a dozen paces back, watching uncertainly. He came forward as she gestured, and nodded briefly.

“Hello,” he said.

“You’re in Heaven, Mama, so you must know who he is. You must know something of what is planned for us poor sinners on Earth. You—”

“Must know he is the Devil incarnate,” a voice said behind them.

The Angel whirled, instinctively shielding John Fortune with her body. Behind them was an ancient mausoleum. Shimmering upon its cracked stone wall was a circle of darkness, a tear through the fabric of space. Two men and a thing had come through the tear. She recognized the Cardinal. The man with him was restraining something with a collar and leash that might have been human, but walked like a dog on four limbs. That had an inhuman face with deep set eyes and slavering jaws, and a long snout whose damp nostrils quivered as it sucked in great lung-fulls of air and tried to lunge at the Angel and her charge. A third came though the doorway and laughed. He was big and handsome as an angel with golden hair and large blue eyes and a strong, dimpled jaw. The Angel felt her stomach clench. She couldn’t tell if it was with fear, revulsion, or desire.

“I told you Blood would find her eventually,” the Witness said.

Contarini nodded. “Start with the girl. The boy is for later.”

He let go of Blood’s leash and the joker/ace leapt forward on all fours like a hound, drool frothing on his gaping jaws. The Angel tossed a stern, “Stay here,” to John Fortune, and stepped to meet him.

Blood sprung into the air screaming. She met him with a grim scowl, catching him with one hand on his throat and one on his crotch, pivoted, and slammed him to the ground with most of her strength. He hit like a bag of cement tossed from the roof of a five-story building, grunted, and got back to his feet. But he wavered as he came towards her, breathing heavily. The Angel could see that his heart was not in this.

She smiled. Even though he was bigger than her, he was no match for her righteous strength. The only thing that had saved him from the full force of the body slam was the thick sward and soft dirt he’d landed on. Nothing, she thought, could save him from her fists.

He leaped at her again, his powerful haunches launching him like a tiger. This time she met him with a hammering upper cut that spun him end over, sending him flying back in the direction he’d come. Contarini had to dodge his flailing limbs as he flew by.

The Cardinal ground his teeth in rage. “Useless creature,” he spat at the cowering joker who tried, but couldn’t get up. He turned to the Witness. “Take care of her! Teach her a lesson.”

The smiling ace stretched like a cat. His knuckles made crackling sounds as he clenched his hands into fists. He approached slowly, smiling confidently. Smugly, really. He had a reason to be smug, the Angel thought. He was still the most handsome man she had ever seen.

“Remember the lesson I taught you before,” he said as he approached. “Now it goes further.”

The sudden sound of the van’s horn startled them both. The Angel whirled to see John Fortune behind the wheel, a determined expression on his face, leaning on the horn and bouncing up and down on the seat as the van rolled over the bumpy sward, bearing down on them.

The Angel leaped away just as Fortune slammed on the brakes and spun the wheel. The van sideswiped the Witness. He didn’t even try to get out of the way. There was the thud of metal slamming into flesh and the van flung the Witness twenty feet in the air where he hit the spreading branches of the pecan tree that was nodding over the nearby graves. Branches cracked and broke and fell along with the Witness.

John Fortune wrestled the van to a stop and shouted out the driver’s side window, “Get in! Get in!”

The Angel responded to the panic in his voice. Her first thought was to check to see if the Witness was still alive, and if he was, to kick his ass as hard as she could. But she realized John Fortune was right. They had to get out of there. Fast.

The sliding door on the driver’s side was crumpled inward, but was still holding on the frame. That was good. The van engine’s was idling at such a high rate that it was threatening to sputter out at any second. That would be bad. She reached the passenger’s side door and pulled it open. John Fortune floored the gas pedal before her butt hit the seat. The van slewed around crazily for a moment, then the tires gripped the turf and they headed for the unpaved road running though the cemetery.

As the Angel glanced back she saw Cardinal Contarini crouched behind one of the monuments, shaking his first at them and screeching something in Italian. The joker looked up groggily, a blank expression on his inhuman face. The Witness was still laying under the broken tree limbs on her mother’s grave.

That was close, she thought, leaning back in the seat. She looked at the boy who, beyond denial, was her savior. He was concentrating on guiding the van over the winding cemetery lane, but he glanced back at her.

“See,” he said. “I told you I could drive.”

She smiled at him. His smile glowed back at her like the shining sun. They left the cemetery, hitting the city streets. The van rattled along making alarming sounds as John Fortune cruised at a sedate thirty miles an hour. The Angel realized that there was no way it was going to get them to Branson. It would be lucky if it got them beyond the city limits. She guessed that this situation could be classified as an emergency, and she reached for her cell phone. She hit The Hand’s number on the speed dial.

“President Barnett’s of—”

“Sally Lou!” the Angel said, trying hard to control her voice so that John Fortune wouldn’t get more worried than he already was. “Let me speak with President Barnett—fast!”

“He’s in conference now,” she said in the snootily superior voice that she liked to use on the Angel.

“I don’t care if God the Father Himself is in there planning Armageddon with him,” the Angel said in a tone that made John Fortune stare at her in surprise. “Connect me with him. Now.”

Pleased when Sally Lou connected them without another word, she barely gave The Hand the chance to say Hello before she blurted out their situation. He took it like he took everything else. With calmness and poise.

“Can you hold out for twenty minutes, honey?” he asked sedately.

“Twenty minutes? I don’t—”

“You’re going to have to,” he said just as soothingly. “Twenty minutes. That’s all. I promise you.”

The Angel took a deep breath. She had The Hand’s assurance. Though he was just a man like everyone else and a sinner as well, he had never let her down. In any important sense, anyway. “All right,” she said. “Twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes,” Barnett confirmed. “Where are you, exactly?”

She told him.

“Fine. Get to the highway. Wait by the Yazoo City on-ramp. Don’t move from that spot. Help is on the way. Gotta go make it happen.”

He hung up. The Angel listened to the dial tone than looked at John Fortune, who was gazing at her with a trusting expression.

“Help is on the way,” she told him. Though how in the world it would arrive in such a short time was utterly beyond her.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

Ray tried to explain his position as they took the escalator down to the elevator bank in the lobby, but Jerry wasn’t in a forgiving mood. Mushroom Daddy listened with amiable interest while Sascha just listened, as usual.

“It’s not like I lied to you,” Ray said. “Or even wanted to lie. You and Ackroyd made some unjustified assumptions the first time you saw me, and went right on assuming from then to now.”

“And you let us,” Jerry pointed out for the fifth or sixth time. “You let us think you and Angel were working for the government.”

Ray shrugged. “There’s no skin off your nose, is there?”

“No skin off my nose?” Jerry said, just this side of outraged. “It’s a lot different thinking that we were going into this with government backing—or at least governmental knowledge and consent—and then discovering that the ‘government’ in this case was Leo Barnett.”

“Hey,” Ray said, “he was the President once, wasn’t he?”

“Was,” Jerry said. “That’s the operative word.”

Ray shrugged. “Look, you’re an ace. If you call changing your face an ace—”

“I do more than change my face,” Jerry said hotly.

“Yeah, okay, whatever. I’m not saying you’re a deuce, exactly. But you know how it is. The life of an ace is complicated. You can’t tell me you’ve never had a secret or two. Especially if your power is changing identities. Hell, your name’s probably not even Creighton.”

That stopped Jerry cold. Ray was right. Righter than he knew. Jerry’s whole existence was based on shifting identities. On lies he constantly told others. And himself. He was never just plain old Jerry Strauss. Most of the time he was someone else. The Projectionist. The Great Ape. Lon Creighton. Jerry Creighton. Alan Ladd. Butcher Dagon. Everybody but Jerry Strauss.

If Ray realized that he scored, he kept quiet about it. They eventually made it to the elevator bank, and Ray punched the button for the penthouse. The boys were on guard in the corridor. They must have received word of some kind of possible attack, because they had their handguns out and leveled as the elevator doors swished open.

“Hey, man,” Daddy said. “That’s so not cool!”

“Relax,” Ray said to both Daddy and the Secret Service men. “It’s me. You’re safe.”

One put up his weapon with an audible sigh, the other was more hard ass about it. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” he said, pointing the barrel of his gun to the floor, but not holstering it. “Billy Ray. A blind guy. A hippie—”

“Don’t worry,” Ray said. “I’ll tell them not to kick your ass.”

“We’ve got to see Barnett,” Jerry said. “Is he in?”

“He’s already got company,” the armed agent said doubtfully, “but...”

“I’ll vouch for these guys,” Ray said.

“Even the hippie?”

“He’s undercover CIA,” Ray said quietly as he went on by. The others followed him.

Sally Lou was on the phone when they entered the waiting room. She jumped nervously as Ray and the others tramped in.

“Guilty conscious?” Ray asked.

“Why, why ever would I have a guilty conscious?” she asked.

“Just a joke,” he said. “Buzz the big guy. Tell him we’re coming in.”

“He’s with someone—”

“So am I,” Ray said.

Ray led the way. In the office Barnett was behind his desk, beaming. Sitting before the desk frowning was someone Ray hadn’t seen in years. “Fortunato,” he said. He stopped. The others piled up behind him.

“Come in,” Barnett said affably. “You’ve bought some friends, I see. Good, good. We’re just sitting around here chatting, trying to decide who’s gonna go to Yazoo and pick up John Fortune in”—Barnett checked his watch—“just about fifteen minutes from now.” Barnett looked at Fortunato. “Billy Ray would be a good choice, don’t you think?”

Fortunato didn’t look totally convinced, but he nodded nonetheless.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower, coffee shop

John Nighthawk and his team sat in the hotel coffee shop, enjoying a late breakfast.

Usher had a plate piled high with scrambled eggs, bacon and ham, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, with toast, and a side of pancakes. He was still of an age when he could eat and eat and not put on an ounce. Magda had a cup of grapefruit juice and toast. Dry. She didn’t particularly worry about her weight, but was of an age when she took nothing joyful out of life, and always would be. Nighthawk had his coffee and donuts. He was of an age beyond caring about his weight. It helped that he had an ace’s metabolism.

He scanned the sports page, noting last night’s box scores. He was pleased to see that the Dodgers were doing better. Hanging at about five hundred, Brooklyn still had room to improve, though as a life-long Dodger fan he had little room to complain about the last thirty-five years or so. Still, with Gooden joining Strawberry in retirement two years ago, the last tie to Reiser’s glory years had been cut and they were casting about for a new leader and new team identity. This Reyes kid looked good. His headlong style of play reminded Nighthawk a little of Honus Wagner.

His cell rang. He flipped it open, listened, and said a few quiet words. He hung up, and looked at his team. “Enjoy your breakfast,” he said. “It starts soon.”

Usher nodded and shoveled half a pancake, loaded with butter and syrup, into his mouth. Magda grinned and started to pray aloud. Nighthawk put the paper down and took a drink of coffee. It was cold. Suddenly, so was he.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Yazoo, Mississippi: the Highway Interchange

The van’s engine chugged like an asthmatic with a smoker’s cough and the door rattled against the frame like a skeleton with rheumatism.

“We’d better stop and switch places,” the Angel.

“Ah,” John Fortune said, “I’m doing okay.”

“Yeah,” the Angel said, “but we’re headed for the highway. I’d better take over. Park it and slide over. Better not turn the ignition off. I don’t know if we could get it started again.”

John Fortune pulled over to the side of the street. He put it in park, and slid over on the seat. The Angel lifted herself up to scoot over him, but suddenly she felt his arms around her, pulling her down to his lap. He kissed her, half on the lips and half on the cheek. His skin was warm, as if he were burning with fever, but dry. He wasn’t sweating.

“John—” she said, pulling away.

“I know, I know. I just couldn’t help myself.”

“Help yourself to a seat over there,” she said, indicating a spot next to the passenger side door. “There’s a time and a place for everything, and this is neither.”

“Will it be time when we get to Branson?” he asked hopefully.

The Angel bit her lip as she pulled away from the curb. He was her Savior, but he was just a boy. A good-looking boy, but a boy. She felt nothing for him but awe coupled with an instinct to guard and protect that was surely maternal in nature. But she couldn’t bring herself to disappoint him completely.

“We’ll see. Things will be hectic when we get there. You’ll be an important figure, with a lot to do.”

“I’ll always have time for you, Angel,” John Fortune said, and she smiled a smile of genuine affection.

They made it back to the highway in minutes. She pulled off to the side of the entrance ramp, turned off the van’s engine, and checked her watch.

“What’s going to happen now?” John Fortune asked.

The Angel shook her head. She was as mystified as he was. But whatever was going to happen, she knew that it had better happen soon. They waited five or six minutes, and then a dark shadow suddenly appeared on the side of the overpass buttress, though there was nothing to cast it.

“Angel—”

She nodded. “I see it.”

The gate had opened again. Blood and his handler came through the hole in the concrete buttress first. The joker ace lifted his head up to the sky, his snout sniffing. Cardinal Contarini followed, as did the Witness. The Angel’s heart sunk further when a squad of well-armed minions a dozen strong followed. They fanned out and slowly approached the van where it sat at on the highway verge.

Contarini smiled, but there was nothing of good will in it. “I told you that we’d be better prepared this time.”

The Angel clenched her teeth and tried the engine. “Don’t flood, don’t flood, please don’t flood,” she pleaded as she pumped the gas pedal.

“Take your foot off the gas and your hands off the wheel,” Contarini ordered, “or we’ll shoot you down right now.” He gestured and his Allumbrados took braced firing positions.

The van’s engine suddenly caught and purred quietly like a cat. The Angel took her hands off the wheel. She could think of only one plan. It wasn’t much of one, but it was the only hope they had.

“John,” she said quietly out of the corner of her mouth, her lips unmoving. “I’m going to floor it on the count of three. I want you to open your door and fall to the ground. Roll. Roll hard and far away.”

“What are you going to do?” the boy asked. For the first time ever she heard fear in his voice.

“What I have to,” the Angel said quietly.

“You’d better get out of that ridiculous vehicle before I count five,” Contarini shouted.

“Angel—”

“Please.” She looked at her Lord. She loved him like she never loved anyone else, with pure, undying affection, and the taste of her failure was bitter in her mouth. “Please, John—”

“One,” Contarini said.

“One,” the Angel whispered.

“Two,” Contarini shouted.

“Two,” the Angel whispered.

John Fortune looked at her, his face fixed with fear, and suddenly his eyes went wide and his arm flew up, pointing back down to the highway.

“Look!” he shouted.

When The Hand had said it would take twenty minutes for help to arrive, it was one of the few times in Angel’s experience that he was wrong. It took eighteen.

The southbound lanes of the highway were empty but for a roaring wind and flashing lights that had no apparent origin. Suddenly, as if it had broken through a landscape-painted canvas, an eighteen-wheeler pulling a silver trailer just appeared as if it had been placed there by the hand of God.

Perhaps it had, the Angel thought.

It was highballing maybe a hundred miles an hour and it hardly slowed down as it took the Yazoo City exit. It was upon them like an angry behemoth before they even realized it, flashing past the van in a New York minute. She saw a heavy-set man with a cigar clenched between his teeth and a cap on his head behind the wheel, which was on the wrong side of the cab, and she saw Billy Ray grinning like an idiot next to him and then they went by.

Contarini screamed like a woman. Blood pulled away from his handler and was running like a dog from the highway. The Witness stood mute and astonished as it barreled down upon them and Contarini shouted, “Shoot you fools, shoot!” and automatic gunfire split the morning like continuous rolls of thunder, only to whine and ping against the glass and grill of the cab’s front.

The Allumbrados scattered at the last moment as the driver downshifted and fought the wheel with consummate skill, throwing the truck into a skid that swung the trailer among the gunmen, tossing bodies like tenpins. Only a few escaped. Before the truck came to a screeching halt in a swirling cloud of dust the passenger side door opened and Billy Ray was among them.

The Angel blinked. He moved like a dancer, but his graceful steps brought pain and destruction to his partners in the bloody ballet. He struck with hands and feet, elbows, knees, and head. A single blow to each opponent. That was all it took. Some tried to shoot, but they missed him. Some tried to run, but they weren’t fast enough. Contarini was among the first to go down. The Witness the last. He towered over Ray like a giant. He swung his powerful right arm at Ray, but it moved as if in slow motion. Ray dropped to the ground. He put all his weight on one leg, doubled under him, and lashed out with the other. His foot caught the Witness on the right knee cap and the Witness screamed like a horse with a broken leg, and went down rolling in the dust clutching his leg and shrieking.

“It’s only a dislocated patella, pussy,” the Angel heard Ray sneer.

“Wow...” John Fortune said.

The Angel woke from her trance. “Come on!”

She threw open the door and grabbed John Fortune’s arm and hauled him after her, half dragging him as she ran towards the waiting truck, passing bodies, groaning and silent, that littered the ground. The Witness watched her go with his face clenched in pain. He mouthed gibberish at her and tried to crawl toward her and John, but suddenly Ray was between them.

“Back off, asshole,” he said, and the Witness stopped, groveling in the dust.

Ray looked up at her and she saw his face gleaming like a saint’s in an ancient icon.

“Ray—” she said, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to her and covered his mouth with hers. He returned her kiss with equal fervor until the driver shouted out from the cab, “Time enough for that later. We’d best be getting on,” and he gunned his engine for emphasis. He had an English accent.

Ray broke the kiss and looked at her with startled eyes. She looked away, blushing at her terrible boldness. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, but she did know that she’d savor the memory of that kiss for a long time.

“Come on, come on, I ain’t got all night. Manchester United’s on the telly in”—the driver checked the wristwatch on his beefy, hairy forearm—“half an hour and I got a ways to travel to get home.”

The Angel jumped into the cab after John Fortune, and the wheels started rolling as Ray leaped up and slammed the door shut.

“Scoot over,” the trucker said. “There’s room for all.” He concentrated on negotiating the downhill ramp back to the highway and had his rig going eighty by the time they hit the main road again.

He glanced over at the Angel and John Fortune, grinning around his foul-smelling cigar. “I’m John Bruckner,” he said by way of introduction, “Order of the Silver Helix and freelance lorry driver. The call me the Highwayman. I bet you thought we were in for it when those yobbos started shooting?” He patted the dashboard lovingly. “Nah. Not to worry. This is my special rig. All tricked out for those ‘difficult’ deliveries. Hang on, now,” he warned.

The Angel was too dazed to comment as the speedometer crept up to one twenty and then passed it effortlessly.

“Here comes the short cut,” Bruckner called out, and everything shimmered and they were suddenly someplace else

The landscape through which they passed was bizarre. The color of the ground, the quality of the light, the very angles of the cliff-faces and rock formations they flew by were utterly alien. When she saw some of the rocks move as if they were living things, she had to look away. The Angel glanced up at the sky. The sun was green.

“It’s kind of freaky,” Billy Ray said in a low voice, “but don’t worry. Bruckner will get us through.” His hand rested lightly on her left thigh. She put her own down on his, not to remove it, but to enjoy its warmth. Ray smiled crookedly. There was blood on his face, possibly his. She touched his cheek, wiping it away. She laughed.

“What?” Ray asked, frowning.

The Angel shook her head. “I—” It was hard to explain. She gestured all around, at the bizarre landscape, at her companions. “I haven’t felt so good in a long time,” she finally said. “Have I gone crazy?”

Billy Ray grinned. “You think I’m qualified to pass judgement on someone else’s sanity? Me?”

“We’ll see,” she promised.

“Do me a favor, Digger?” Fortunato asked. He and Digger had left Barnett’s headquarters, Fortunato excusing himself with the explanation that he had to get ready for his son’s imminent arrival. But something else was also on his mind.

The reporter looked up from his laptop where he’d been plinking out the latest chapter in the story of Fortunato’s return, using only approximately three fingers on each hand, but still making pretty good time. He was sitting at the desk in their suite in The Angels’ Bower. Fortunato was reclining on one of the semi-comfortable sofas.

“Sure.”

“Keep an eye on me. If it looks like my heart has stopped beating, call for help.”

Digger frowned. “Okay.”

Fortunato went slack as he used almost the last bit of energy stored in his body to go astral. He hovered above his unconscious form for a moment as Downs went quickly to the sofa. The reporter grabbed Fortunato’s wrist, frowning as he felt for a pulse. He released it after a moment, seemingly satisfied but still looking a little shaken, and moved the ace into a more comfortable position on the sofa, with his legs straight out, his head on a pillow, and his hands placed loosely in his lap. Though the result looked like a corpse waiting for a coffin, Fortunato was touched by Downs unexpected solicitousness, and he smiled as he flew through the closed window and out above the Peaceable Kingdom.

Fortunato had never been to a theme park before, so he had no idea how the Kingdom compared to, say, Disneyland. He suspected that they had the same kind of layout. He went a little higher so that the land below him looked like a Monopoly board, the various properties organized to allow for a smooth flow of people from one part of the park to another.

He’d glanced through the Kingdom’s brochures to familiarize himself with the lay of the land, so at least he knew what he was looking at. In front, to his right, was New Jerusalem, Barnett’s somewhat sanitary reproduction of a portion of that ancient city, containing all the locales relevant to Christ’s life and death—the Via Dolorossa, the Plain of Golgotha, even the rock-hewn Tomb of the Sepulcher—but condensed for the tourist’s convenience. There were also plenty of souvenir shops where T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and necklaces of rough-forged nails like those that pinned Christ to the cross could be purchased.

To his left was Rome of the Martyrs, including a scaled-down version of the Coliseum where various amusements were held, though no Christians were thrown to lions. All entertainments, the brochures said, were in good taste with no blood spilt, but one could still get an idea of the decadent and debauched practices of the pagan Romans. The underground Catacombs, which were obviously not visible from Fortunato’s viewpoint, came complete with grisly scenarios depicting the lives and deaths of the Martyrs, and were also quite popular.

Behind him was Medieval Land and the Vault of Heaven, all with attendant stores, restaurants, amenities, shops, and rides, but something drew Fortunato forward, to the Coliseum-dominated Rome of the Martyrs, as if what he needed could be found there.

He flew between the guardian statues of the Apostles, three each guarding a quadrant of the Kingdom. Something was calling him. It wasn’t the sounds made by the five thousand people attending the revival or seminar or whatever was taking place in the scaled-down Coliseum. It was the promise of energy that saturated the air. As he hovered over the center of the open-roofed structure, he was astonished to see that everyone, all five thousand or so attendees, were women. They ranged from the young to the old. They were all fairly well if not fairly tastefully dressed. They were virtually all white, but Fortunato could remember few Asian faces among the tourists, and even fewer Black. The fact that they were all women seemed somehow appropriate, as if he’d come full circle. Once he’d derived all his power from women. Now perhaps he would again.

His astral form hovered in the air above the Coliseum. A wooden platform below him bore a podium draped with banners proclaiming MAGOG—Mothers Against Gods or Goddesses—in intricate letters. A woman stood behind the podium, leading them all in song. She was flanked on either side by delegates in folding chairs. He didn’t know what the song was, but by its lugubrious tones and solemn, dirge-like beat, he assumed that it was a hymn. After the song ended, the woman standing behind the podium spoke, but Fortunato didn’t listen to her. He had other concerns.

He assumed the lotus position above the platform as currents of energy roiled below him like a tsunami starting to build in some far corner of the Pacific. Passion rose up among the five thousand. Their thoughts were chaotic, their need great. They wanted so badly to belong to something all important and good. They wanted so awfully to give of themselves to something greater, so he let them.

He accepted what they offered.

Energy flowed up to him like manna in reverse. It came in through the pores of his astral body, soaked into his insubstantial capillaries, was gathered into his veins and sucked into his invisible heart. Like a great explosion of terrifying light it burst into his brain and Fortunato was glad that his actual physical brain was safe on the couch in The Angels’ Bower, because his material organs could not have withstood the energy that pulsed like miniature bombs to every beat of his insubstantial heart.

It was too much. He couldn’t contain it all. He knew he had to give some back, and besides, it was the polite thing to do.

He looked at the woman behind the podium. She gripped the sides of the pulpit with an almost stricken look on her face, her teeth clenched, her hair, once so sensibly coifed, now disheveled in wild disarray, her very posture pleading and yet giving at the same time. Fortunato had seen that pose many times in the past. It required very little to push her over the edge, so he did.

A low, unbelieving moan growled out of her throat. She shook as if in an invisible wind, her eyes screwed tightly shut, her mouth slack and panting.

She wasn’t the only one in that condition. They all were. Some screamed, some laughed, some cried. Some fell out of their chairs, some leaped out of their seats. For some the sensation was nothing they’d ever felt before in their lives, for some it was as familiar as Saturday night. Some called on Jesus, some their husbands, some a boy nearly forgotten over the years. Some a girl. Some wanted a cigarette, but this was a non-smoking facility.

Fortunato shared it all while siphoning the maelstrom of energy that they’d released. The crush of emotion would have killed many men, but his ace-enhanced mind and his Zen training pulled him through, though it was the wildest experience he’d ever had in the course of a wild life. He basked in a glow of warm satisfaction for a moment, but suddenly he burned with his own need to go, to do, to find again his son.

His eyes opened and focused on Digger Downs, who was standing over his body sprawled on the couch, staring down at him with concern.

“It’s all right,” he told the reporter. “I’m back.”

“I guess you are,” Downs said. “Where the Hell have you been?”

Fortunato shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not the kind who kisses and tells.”

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The Short Cut

“What is this place?” John Fortune asked. He was flushed with excitement. Sitting next to him, Ray could feel the heat flowing off of him in waves.

“The Short Cut, lad,” Bruckner said expansively, as if that explained everything.

It was good enough for Ray. He looked out the windshield. The green sun was moving slowly but perceptibly across the sky. Soon it would set, though “soon” in this place seemed a concept hard to define. The road was flat, straight, and well-maintained, though the plants crowding its verge were like nothing Ray had ever seen. They were like trees, but their branches had no leaves. The trunks were bulbous, fleshy things, in shades of green, violet, and vermilion, shot through with scarlet veins which circulated a fluid which Ray was uncomfortably sure resembled blood. He watched them suspiciously as they whizzed by in Bruckner’s lorry, something bothering him. He realized that their branches were moving, though not in a wind. They writhed in several different directions at once, as if at their own volition.

He was about to point this out to Angel when something, suddenly and out of nowhere, hit their windshield with a horrific splat, squashed against it and spattered like a water balloon tossed out of ten story building. A wash of purplish goo instantly covered the windshield. Bruckner clenched his teeth on his cigar as he turned on the windshield wipers.

“This could be a problem,” he said, downshifting as the wipers and the windshield glass itself started to smoke.

“This ever happen before?” Ray asked.

“Rarely,” Bruckner said, “sometimes the locals raise a bit of a tussle.”

“This place has locals?” Angel asked.

Bruckner grinned without humor. “Oh, yes. Best if we stay clear of them, but sometimes we don’t have much of a choice. They used to be real quiet. Never bothered me. But in recent years... something’s stirred them up. It’s like, sometimes, they want my truck.” The lorry braked to a halt, and he looked over at Ray, Angel, and John Fortune. “We’d better get that windshield off before the acid eats all the way through. But not to worry. I carry spares.”

“And the locals?” Ray asked.

“Figger you and the lady can handle them, me lad. That’s why you’re here, after all. The boy can help me replace the windshield. You two guard our flanks, front and back.”

“Guard them from what?” Angel asked.

Bruckner grinned again. “Anything that looks strange.”

Ray and Angel exchanged glances. Ray nodded, and she put her hand on the door handle.

“Oh, one more thing,” Bruckner said.

“What?” Ray asked, starting to get annoyed.

“Funny thing, but guns don’t work in this place.”

Ray shrugged.

Angel said, “I’m covered.” She paused for a moment, frowning. “At least, I hope so.”

“I carry some stuff in the back you can use.”

Ray nodded. “All right. I’ll go to the back, with you. Angel, watch the front.”

“All right,” she said.

“All right,” John Fortune said.

They all looked at Bruckner.

“All right,” the Brit said. “Let’s do it.”

The air, like everything else in this place, was strange. It felt odd on Ray’s tongue. It had a bite to it, like a summer night after a lightning storm. The quality of light was also odd, probably because of the different colored sun, now hanging on the horizon.

Bruckner rolled up the trailer’s rear door, and for all his size, lightly leaped up into it. A weapon rack was bolted on one side of the wall. Swords, spears, bow and arrow.

Too bad Yeoman isn’t with us, Ray thought.

“What do you fancy?” Bruckner asked.

Ray decided to keep it simple.

“Those.” He nodded at the brace of morningstars.

“Good choice,” Bruckner said. “But watch out for splatters of what passes for blood among these boyos. Sometimes it can be corrosive.”

Ray nodded, and Bruckner tossed him the weapons. Their handles were black iron, as long as his forearm. Their heads were the size of Texas grapefruit, spiked. The chains attaching handle to head were about two feet long. Ray swung them once or twice to get their feel. He nodded to himself, and ran through an extemporaneous kata as John Fortune watched with his mouth open. Like all weapons, they felt like he’d been born with them in his hands.

“Right, me lad,” Bruckner said, clapping John Fortune on the shoulder. “Ever change a windshield before?”

“No,” the boy said.

“Nothing to it,” the Brit said cheerfully. “Give me a hand with these suction cups.”

Ray turned his back to the truck, scanning the land. It was flat and relatively featureless. If there’d be trouble, it would come from the weird forest a dozen yards from their flank.

Bruckner and John Fortune got the spare windshield from the case where the trucker kept it among a plethora of other spare parts, and part of Ray listened as they went to the front. Bruckner greeted Angel, who answered in a steady voice, and then issued a stream of commands as he and the boy attacked the ruined windshield.

Thoughts of Angel slipped languorously through Ray’s mind, though most of it was focused on the odd-moving trees, if that’s what they were, bunched by the side of the road, if that’s what it was.

Suddenly it became darker, almost without a sense of transition. Ray looked back to the horizon, and saw that the green sun had gone under. The light took on a quality that Ray had once seen while snorkeling in the Bahamas at a depth of thirty feet. It seemed denser, darker, and somehow a lot less friendly. A full moon rose rapidly on the other side of the horizon, splotched and diseased looking, shining with a greenish, almost phosphorescent light the color of gangrenous flesh.

As if the rising of the leprous moon was a signal, things started coming out of the oddly moving trees.

They were many-legged, spider-like creatures whose bulbous bodies were held high off the ground by too many skeletal legs. Big spiders were one thing, Ray thought, but these had heads and features that were disturbingly human. Except for their protruding fangs which dripped ichor which steamed when it spattered on the ground. They scuttled like crabs, moving fast. Their bodies, white and bulging and hairless, were the size of large dogs.

“Angel,” Ray called out. “You’d better get over here. Quick.”

There were twenty or so in the pack, and they didn’t seem to be afraid of Ray.

Ray whirled at a sudden sound at his side, but it was only Angel. She looked as if she were about to make a remark, then saw the spider-things. “My God!” she said.

“Don’t blaspheme,” Ray reprimanded.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t blaspheming. I was praying.”

“Pray harder,” Ray said, “because here they come.”

The arachnids were on them, tittering like high school girls as their fangs clacked together, dripping steaming ichor.

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

Ray caught a burst of light in his peripheral vision, and the arachnids reared back, screaming, as Angel plunged into their midst, her flaming sword held high. She screamed. Ray couldn’t tell if it was from anger, fear, or revulsion, as she swung her sword and sheared through the front set of legs of one of the things. It collapsed, grimacing ferociously. Angel lunged. Her sword speared the thing’s body, white and hairless like a dead fish, and it burst like a balloon, spattering her with droplets of ichor that steamed as it ate into her fighting suit.

“Watch out for their blood!” she shouted in warning, pirouetting to cut the legs out from under two others that were trying to circle them.

Ray realized that they were in a bad spot. He danced into the midst of their attackers, swinging right and left with the morningstars. One missed, the other crunched an all-too human-looking face. The spiders’ titters changed to disturbing high-pitched screams, but they still came.

Ray turned and twisted like a dervish. He saw Angel shouting wordlessly as she held off half a dozen of the things with long sweeps of her sword. Thankfully, the spiders seemed more afraid of her, or perhaps it was the light emitted by her weapon, than they were of him. So many gathered about him that he had to shift constantly to avoid their lunging, clacking jaws. Luckily they couldn’t spit venom, but it was only a matter of time before they’d both be splattered with enough of the poison to do some serious damage.

The pack was all around them as Ray caught something out of the corner of his eye—a human figure, talk and bulky, dressed in a long leather duster that swept to the ground, standing and watching.

Perhaps, Ray thought, directing.

Ray moved in a seemingly random pattern as he attacked the hunters, taking off a leg here, battering a head there, pulping a squishy abdomen, clenching his teeth as venom spattered, clinging to and eating away his fighting suit. It soon looked as if gigantic destructive moths had been at it.

Half a dozen of the things were broken around Ray, screaming like girls with broken arms, but still dragging themselves after the pack, their fangs clattering angrily. He hadn’t spotted Angel in long moments, but he could still hear her fighting at his back as his seemingly irregular movements took him in a curving path to the observer watching the hunting pack, maybe ten feet away. One of the spider-things stood at his back, between them.

Another hunter lunged at him from the front. Ray pulped its head like a bug on the bathroom floor, whirled, and dove to the ground. He slid between the legs of the arachnid behind him, who stood there with a look of almost human astonishment on its caricatured features. He raked the bottom of its gut as he went by, twisting desperately to avoid the deluge of steaming fluid that burst from it like a ruptured bladder, and grunted aloud when some splashed on the back of his hand. He turned a complete somersault and came to his feet face to face with the observer, morningstars raised high.

And he froze.

The thing had no face. Its head was a featureless white cone that tapered to a wet red tentacle that quivered like an eager tongue.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Something clung to its neck, its mouth fastened onto its dead white flesh, its large eyes regarding Ray with unblinking hatred.

“Ti Malice!” Ray blurted aloud.

Not many knew about the obscene Haitian ace who had wreaked unaccountable havoc before vanishing from human ken over a decade and a half ago, but Ray was a compulsive reader of secret government files and there wasn’t much he didn’t know about obscure aces. Especially the bad ones.

The Haitian’s tiny arms encircled the thing’s thick white neck, his slug-like body hung down its back. Malice rose up, his mouth coming free from his mount’s neck with an audible slurping sound. Malice’s mouth was like that of a lamprey: round, ringed with tiny, sharp teeth, and a tube-like tongue that sucked the blood from his host. He hissed at Ray, spitting dark, purplish blood. The thing he rode raised its featureless face to the moon and somehow howled, sending shivers down Ray’s back.

It moved. But Ray moved faster.

He blocked the thing’s lunge with one of the morningstars and swung the other like it was a baseball bat and Ti Malice’s head was the ball.

He hit a home run. Malice’s head splattered at the impact. The feeble grip of his arms around the creature’s neck broke, and Malice shot backward and hit the ground twenty feet away, bounced and rolled, leaving a smeared trail on the thick, gray grass which twitched agitatedly above the tiny body, and finally closed over it like hungry snakes.

The creature slumped to the ground, shuddering all over. Ray stood over it, undecided. It lifted an arm, as if in supplication, and behind him Ray sensed all movement stop. He held his blow as the thing stood. Not quite human-shaped in its long trench coat, it regarded Ray with its featureless face. Ray forced himself to look back. Forced his gorge to stay down. After a moment, without making sound or gesture, it walked backwards among the trees.

What was left of the hunting pack followed it, taking a wide berth around Ray as it did so. As they vanished among the eerily-moving trees, Ray let out a long breath he didn’t realize that he’d been holding. He turned to look at the battlefield, the ground splashed with ichor and littered with smashed and slashed spider bodies and parts.

“Angel!” he called, and realized that she had slumped to her knees, her head down, unmoving.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

Jerry started to feel a little uncomfortable under Barnett’s smiling scrutiny. Ray departed to go on this mysterious mission to pick up the kid and Fortunato excused himself as well, leaving only Jerry and Barnett alone in his office. Jerry cleared his throat and spoke, just to break the increasing sense of tension the inscrutable Barnett had been projecting.

“Nice office,” he said. “It looks familiar.”

Barnett nodded. “It’s a copy of the Oval Office in the White House. I felt very comfortable there.”

“Uh-huh,” Jerry said.

There was another long minute of silence until Barnett seemed to feel that he’d softened Jerry up sufficiently, and spoke again.

“I just like to get to know my friends, Mr. Creighton,” Leo Barnett said, “so I can tell them more easily from my enemies. It is Mr. Creighton, isn’t it?”

Jerry’s guilt for ragging on Billy Ray for lying to him returned, redoubled.

“Well,” Jerry said after a moment, “let’s say that’s my name for the purposes of this discussion.”

Barnett nodded after another a long moment of silence stretched between them. “I see that in your own way you’re a careful man. I can understand that. Even admire it. I’m a careful man as well, and I like to know whom I’m dealing with. I had you checked out by some of my connections, and you don’t add up. Your past is shadowy. The history that does exist is rather unusual. By the way—I hope you don’t mind my excluding your man Sascha from this little conversation. Though I’m willing to trust you to a point, I don’t like the idea of exposing myself to a telepath, even a low-grade one, for any length of time.”

“That’s all right,” Jerry said amiably, even though he detested Barnett’s pompous tones. “Why are you leaving Mushroom Daddy out of the discussion?”

Barnett raised his eyebrows. “Because he’s a complete flake? Because besides being an unknown goofball, he’s also apparently a drug dealer? He positively reeks of the marijuana smell.”

“How do you know what marijuana smells like?” Jerry asked him.

Barnett smiled, not prettily. “Enough. We have to lay our cards on the table. I’m afraid that although we’ve gathered John Fortune to our bosom, he’s not entirely safe. The Allumbrados will still come after him, and Cardinal Contarini—who is the head of that detestable organization—has aces working for him. The boy will be in danger when, not if, they discover we’ve got him here at the Peaceable Kingdom. Since it’s your job to protect him, and it is also totally in my interests that he remain safe, I suggest we join forces until we can break the back of the Allumbrados and they no longer pose a threat to the boy’s safety.”

Jerry was loaded with questions. “That’s all well and good,” he said. “I agree in principle, but somebody’s gotta explain some things to my satisfaction.”

“All right,” Barnett said.

“All right,” Jerry repeated. It occurred to him that he had only Nighthawk’s word on the Allumbrados. It would be nice to have another, although clearly not necessarily unbiased, viewpoint. “What exactly is your interest in John Fortune, anyway? And who in the Hell are the Allumbrados and what do they want with the boy?”

“They are tools of Satan and they want him dead,” Barnett said succinctly, “while we want him to stay very much alive.”

“But why, for Christ’s sake?”

“Because,” Barnett explained impatiently, as if this were the dozenth time he had to go over it, “he is Christ.”

“Christ?” Jerry asked, nonplussed. “You mean, like Jesus Christ?”

Barnett sighed. “Yes, of course. Are you a believer, Mr. Creighton?”

“A believer?” Jerry asked. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“There is no guessing, Mr. Creighton, when it comes to matters of faith. You have either accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, or you haven’t.”

“Well,” Jerry said. “I guess I haven’t.”

“Then I’m not going to bother to explain things that you can’t comprehend. No offence, Mr. Creighton.”

Jerry wasn’t feeling particularly gracious, but he didn’t want to argue theology with the ex-President. He grunted.

“I’ve written a tract that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Leo Barnett said, “that John Fortune is Jesus Christ, Our Savior, and that his coming will usher in the Millennium and the Kingdom of God on Earth. If we can keep the Allumbrados from getting their way.”

“Wait a minute,” Jerry said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with the boy over the years. He’s a nice kid and he might make a decent ace when he grows up, but he’s never given any indication that he’s divine.”

Barnett shrugged. “There are any number of reasons why you believe that. Perhaps you’re not particularly perceptive, Mr. Creighton. Or perhaps He’s not ready to reveal Himself as yet, as part of His Divine Plan. Perhaps He’s testing you, and us all. Or perhaps, just perhaps He Himself is not yet aware of His Divine Nature.”

Barnett flipped a hand with each reason. The longer that he knew him, the more glad Jerry was that he’d never voted for the bastard.

But that was then, this was now. Barnett did control some powerful—Would minions be the word?—yes, minions, who would be helpful in protecting the boy, especially if the crazies were still after him. “All right,” Jerry said, although reluctantly. “I guess Fortunato seems to think you’re okay. I can trust his judgement. For now, I agree that we should combine forces.”

“I applaud your wise decision,” Barnett said. “Are there any more aces in your organization?”

“Well, there’s Peter Pann and Topper and maybe Ezili. And Jay Ackroyd, of course.” Jerry thought about it for a moment. “Other than Jay, I don’t know if any of them would be particularly useful in a fight with these Allumbrados if they have goons like Butcher Dagon working for them.”

“Can you get Ackroyd here?”

Jerry shook his head. “He’s got a badly broken ankle. He’d be more of a liability than an asset, as much as he’d like to be here for the denouement.”

He was happy to see that he stumped Barnett with that last word.

“All right,” Barnett finally said, after puzzling over it for a moment. “Just as well, then. Let’s all get together again soon. I’ll let you know when John Fortune arrives.”

“Branson will certainly be safer if we take him someplace else,” Jerry said.

Barnett made a denigrating gesture. “Who cares about Branson? It’s John Fortune’s future that worries me.”

Jerry frowned. “There’s a lot of innocent people here. An ace battle of any size could cause a lot of casualties—”

“Not my concern,” Barnett interrupted. “We must do whatever will be best for John Fortune.”

Jerry stood. He was really glad that he’d never voted for this asshole. “All right,” he said tonelessly. He nodded and left the office, Barnett watching him with eyes as calculating as a cruising shark’s.

“How’d it go?” Sascha asked, standing as Jerry walked out of Barnett’s sanctum.

“Yeah, man, what’s up?” Mushroom Daddy asked.

“Remind me never to stand between Barnett and something that he wants, no matter how nutty it is,” Jerry said.

“He’s that bad?” Sascha asked.

“He’s worse,” Jerry said. “Much, much worse.”

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The Short Cut

The Angel looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. They were so soft that first she thought it was one of the spiders returning for the kill, but it was only Billy Ray. He dropped down to the ground before her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, a concerned expression on his face.

“Burning—” she said, straightening up on her knees. She could see Ray’s concern turned to horror as he realized that the top of her jumpsuit had been slashed open by the snick of a spider’s fang, and then stained with the beast’s ichor after she’d gutted it.

“Shit,” Ray said. “Hang on.”

She watched him with a strange detachment. It was partly the pain from the acidic fluid soaking the front of her clothes, partly, she supposed, the effect of the venomous vapor as it stunned its victim.

Ray grabbed her jumpsuit at the waist and ripped it at the seam. It flew apart at the force of Ray’s strength. He yanked her top away before she knew what he was doing. Underneath the jumpsuit, the front of her sports bra had been snipped in two by the creature’s fangs. One breast was still covered by the fabric of the cup, the other had slipped free.

She felt his hands on her stomach and rib cage. Oddly, it didn’t bother her. It took her a moment to realize that he was using a rag torn from his own fighting suit to carefully blot away the ichor that eaten through her jumpsuit. Fortunately, it had taken most of the venom’s corrosive strength to work through the leather, though her skin was burned in several spots as if touched by a lighted match. Her mind began to clear as Ray ministered to her, and she realized for the first time that she was half-naked before him.

“Think we got most of it,” Ray said, his head bowed before her, concentrating on his task. “This is some strong shit—Jesus Christ!”

The realization that Ray glimpsed her breast flashed through the Angel’s mind, but somehow it didn’t bother her as much as she thought it might. But when she looked at him she saw that he was still concentrating on her stomach, and self-revulsion grabbed her as she realized that he’d seen the scar.

“What happened here?” Ray asked, looking up into her eyes for the first time.

She was caught by his gaze. She couldn’t look away. She knew the scar was hideous. It started at the top of the hidden patch of thick dark hair that grew at the juncture of her thighs and crawled like a pink meandering snake for eight inches up and across her flat, white abdomen.

“My mother did it,” the Angel heard herself saying. Her voice came as if from a great distance.

“Your mother?” Ray asked incredulously.

She nodded. “I came to her the first time I bled. I had no idea what was happening to me. I thought I was sick. That I was going to die. She told me to stop crying. To be calm. That it was the curse that came to all women, but she would save me from it. From that curse and all the curses that came from it. She took me into the kitchen and took a knife out of the drawer and tried to cut out my uterus.”

“Good God,” Ray said.

The Angel was so lost in memory that she didn’t even reprimand him. “I would have died on the kitchen floor if my ace hadn’t turned right then. Somehow I survived the wound, though I’ll never have children. Which is a blessing. They’ll never have to worry about the curse of the wild card.”

Ray grabbed her upper arms so hard his fingers bite into muscle and flesh. “Listen,” he said in an insistent voice, “the wild card virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people. It’s destroyed a lot of lives. Maybe millions. It is a curse, but so’s the goddamned flu. You lived through it. You lived and became something, I don’t know, bigger than human. Stronger. Wilder. More vital and more goddamned beautiful than any frigging angel. For you the wild card wasn’t a curse. It was a damned blessing. Millions of women would kill to be you. Don’t waste your life worrying about some crazy fears your whacked mother had. She was her. You’re you. You’re one in ten million, babe. Never forget it.”

A dam broke in the Angel’s mind. “Do you really think so, Billy?”

“Of course I do, and jeez, don’t cry—”

She threw herself upon him, bearing him down on the ground, her arms going around him and her lips seeking his. They hit his chin, then slipped up and covered his mouth just as he was saying, “Hey!” and she silenced him with her tongue. She saw a startled look in his eyes and then they caught fire and one hand was tangled in her hair and the other was seeking her breast that was swinging free. She shifted her hips giving him more room and his hand found and cupped it, his thumb running over her suddenly hard nipple and she sucked on his tongue in a sudden stab of delight.

She had never felt anything like this. Never. The ecstasy of prayer. Of fasting. Of privation. They all paled beside the sensations that were running like fire on her nerves. Her pelvis pushed against him and she could feel the sudden hardness between his legs even through the fabric of their clothes. She wanted him. She wanted him more than she wanted her God, more than she wanted Heaven.

“Angel,” he panted in her mouth.

“Angel,” John Fortune said, coming around to the back of the truck, “we’re finished. Bruckner says—”

She looked back wildly over her shoulder as John Fortune stared at her, stricken. “Angel?”

“John—”

He turned and ran back to the front of the truck without a word.

Stricken, she turned to look at Ray. “He has a crush on me.”

It sounded so lame as she said it, but Ray only shrugged. “Not a surprise,” Ray closed his eyes for a moment then stood and helped her up. “We’ll talk to him later. Explain things. In the meantime, it’s probably a good thing he interrupted us.” Ray looked around. “This is not exactly the place to lose our heads. We might have really lost them.”

“Is it just an interruption?” the Angel asked, half-afraid of his answer, whatever it would be.

“It better be,” Ray growled.

Bruckner’s voice came from the front seat of the lorry. “Get a move on, will you? It’s getting late. I don’t like to be on the road when the moon’s up.”

The Angel took a step away. Ray caught her hand.

“Here,” he said gruffly. “Can’t have you running around like that.” He stripped off the top of his fighting suit. His body was wired with cabled muscle. The Angel wanted to feel it pressed tightly against her, to run her hands over it all. He smelled of the sweat of battle. He put his shirt around her shoulders, brushing the remaining bra cup off her other breast. He palmed it for a moment and she shivered as the nipple stiffened. She shrugged into the shirt and buttoned it, almost groaning at the unexpected pleasure of the material kissing the tips of her naked breasts.

He kissed her lightly on the lips, unexpectedly gentle. “Go on up to the truck,” Ray said. “I better recover Bruckner’s morningstars.”

She nodded, and ran up to the front of the truck. Bruckner gunned the engine, grinning.

“Climb up, lass. Let’s hit the road.”

John Fortune held the cab door open. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes.

“John,” she said softly, “we’ll talk later.”

He said nothing. She brushed by him, feeling the heat of him.

“You too, lad, let’s get rolling.”

John Fortune swung up to the seat next to her. Bruckner engaged the gears and the truck started to roll.

“Hey!” Ray shouted from the rear. “Don’t forget me.”

The Angel could see him in the rear view mirror. He smiled, bent down to pick up the morningstars, straightened, and started to run toward the truck. He looks like an animal, she thought. A wild, untamed animal. The sudden thought worried her, but she knew that she had gone so far that she couldn’t go back. Not this time.

The truck was rolling, but not fast. Ray caught up quickly, running easily. He had both morningstars in one hand and held out the other for John Fortune to give him a boost up through the open door. The boy reached out, their hands touched and Ray started to pull himself up into the seat. Suddenly, terribly, he screamed.

The stench of burned flesh speared the air.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

Barnett had conceded that Fortunato should have a chance to greet his son in relative privacy, so Fortunato was waiting alone for the truck when it rumbled to a halt by the Bower’s rear service entrance. It disgorged three passengers from the front seat, and took off again with a farewell blast of its air horn. The driver seemed to be in a hurry.

Fortunato recognized all three. Billy Ray, of course. The woman who called herself the Midnight Angel. And his son. His eagerness at finally seeing the boy for the first time face to face was tempered by the realization that something had gone terribly wrong during the last moment of the rescue. He couldn’t bear, for the moment, to delve into their minds

“He didn’t mean it,” the Angel said.

Ray’s teeth were clenched against the pain shooting through his hand. He gripped it the wrist with his other hand.

“I’m sorry,” John Fortune said worriedly. “I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t control it for a moment—”

“It’s okay,” Ray said in a strained voice. “I’ll be all right in a little bit.”

He held the fingers of his hand apart from each other as they curled in pain. They were burned so badly that their skin was black and flaky. Fortunato could smell the stink of seared flesh.

“Ray,” he said, “are you all right?”

“Yeah, fine,” Ray said shortly. “I should go get some salve for this burn.”

“What happened?” Fortunato asked.

“An accident,” Ray said. “I’ll be all right.”

Ray was sincere in his attempt to ease the boy’s obviously troubled mind, but Fortunato could detect uncertainty in his voice and manner. Not for his own ultimate recovery, but at what really lay behind his injury. Fortunato only nodded.

“Thank you for bringing my son back safe,” he said. He turned to the Angel, and nodded at her as well.

“My pleasure,” Ray said.

“Take care of your hand,” Fortunato told them. “We’ll talk more later.”

“I’ll go with Billy,” the Angel said, glancing back at John Fortune, who was holding back with a worried expression on his face. “We’ll talk soon, John,” she said, but the boy only nodded.

As they went by him, Fortunato could sense something was growing between the two of them, and he refrained from looking any deeper into their minds. He felt only gratitude for what they’d done for him. He felt as if he would be in their debt forever.

He looked at the boy, and John Fortune looked uncertainly at him. He wondered what he should say. “Hello,” Fortunato finally said.

“Hello,” his son replied.

Fortunato could see himself in the boy’s features, in the golden tan color of his skin. But Peregrine was there, too, and it made him sorry for what he had missed over the years. Of what could have been his. But those years were over and done with. There were more to come, and those were the years which concerned him.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

His son nodded. “Mom showed me pictures. She said you were the most powerful ace ever, but you gave it up.”

“Did she say why?” Fortunato asked.

Fortune looked thoughtful, as if Fortunato’s question had put aside the fear and doubt that had been foremost in his mind. At least for a moment, anyway. “She said that you couldn’t pay the price of being an ace anymore. That the world weighed heavy on you, and you had to leave it behind.”

“Your mother,” Fortunato said, “is perceptive. And most kind.”

It struck Fortunato for the first time exactly why Peregrine had been so protective, perhaps overly so. She wasn’t afraid so much of crazies out to kidnap him for gain or harm him for thrills. She was afraid of his very nature, afraid that the dynamite he carried in his genes might explode at any second.

Looking at him you saw a handsome, easy-going boy on the verge of manhood. But if you knew his background, if you lived with it every second of every minute of every hour of your life, you knew that some day he was going to explode and most likely die. His genes were infected with the wild card. There was no doubt about it. Both his parents had it, so it was sure that he did. It awaited only expression, in many cases caused by some surprise or shock that would turn his card; then it would kill him.

But he had beaten that, hadn’t he? His son had a chance for glory. He’d grabbed the one in a hundred chance to be an ace. But even so, turning an ace could be almost as great a curse as turning a joker, or drawing the black queen. The names of ace victims were legion, from the earliest days of the wild card on. Brain Trust. Black Eagle. Kid Dinosaur. The Howler. Hiram Worchester. Desperado. The list went on and on. Fortunato couldn’t remember all the aces who’d suffered because society eventually turned on them.

That was why Peregrine had protected their son so fiercely. Fortunato saw it now. Seeing his son in the flesh for the first time, he knew why she did it. And he knew that, ultimately, she was doomed to fail.

“I’d like to call Mom,” John Fortune said. “Tell her that I’m safe.”

“That’s a good idea,” Fortunato said. “Do you want anything else?”

Fortunato could tell that he held back something. Something he was afraid to or was unwilling to discuss with this stranger that was his father. Finally, he said, “I’m awfully hungry.”

“Let’s get you some food, then. I have a suite in the hotel. We can order room service. Talk and get to know each other a little.”

“Cool.” John Fortune smiled.

Ah, Fortunato thought, the resilience of the young.

“Mom told me about you,” John Fortune said, “as soon as I was able to understand why I had a different name from my Dad. But now that you’re here and all, what should I call you?”

“Call me Fortunato, if you want. And I’ll call you John.”

“Sweet,” John Fortune said. “Fortunato.” He tried it out, and smiled. He seemed to like the sound of it.

Fortunato put out his hand. John Fortune reached to take it, then hesitated. It was clear that he was afraid, but not for himself. He was afraid that his touch would burn Fortunato, like it had burned Ray.

Fortunato took his son’s hand it. He was prepared. His relaxed, smiling face didn’t change expression. But he was glad that he’d just taken on a load of energy. He built a wall, a buffer, between his flesh and his son’s. Otherwise, caught in the trap of the boy’s hand, his own hand would have cooked, would have burned worse than Ray’s. He released John Fortune’s hand, and together they turned and went through the hotel’s service entrance.

“Are you going to stay in America for awhile?” John Fortune asked. He seemed to be totally unaware of the heat his body was generating. His skin looked normal, except of course for the for the glowing halo. It wasn’t flushed or even sweating.

“Yes,” Fortunato said, the fear again biting his insides like a great viper. “Yes, I am.”

He suddenly realized that his son might not have drawn an ace,

after all.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Manger

Usher went to the suite’s door, peeked through the peephole, and turned back to Nighthawk.

“The gang’s all here,” he said, and opened the door. Contarini came in. His faultless suit had recently been faulted. He had grass stains on his knees. His white shoes were scuffed with dark Mississippi dirt. There was a bad tear in his jacket’s breast, and one sleeve had been partially torn free of its shoulder. His silk shirt was wrinkled, soiled, and sweat stained. He didn’t look happy. “It didn’t go well?” Nighthawk asked.

Contarini shook his head wordlessly, and collapsed into the nearest chair. He scowled at the vinyl upholstery. “They have the luck of the Devil riding with them,” the Cardinal said.

Usher and Nighthawk exchanged glances. “Naturally,” Nighthawk said. “What happened?”

Magda fluttered helplessly about the Cardinal’s as if she couldn’t decide whether to shine his shoes, sew his clothes, or wash and iron his shirt, as he told him in minute and surprisingly profane detail what had happened, pausing to shoo Magda away when she’d finally annoyed him too much.

Nighthawk sighed. “I guess they’ve beaten us now, for the moment. We’ll continue to keep an eye on them. The boy will be easy to spot. Perhaps you should return to return to New York, to rest and consider the next move.”

Dagon and the Witness nodded in agreement. “That would be smart,” Dagon said.

“No.” They all turned to Contarini, whose voice had taken on the chill of doom. “I want this farce ended. Now.”

“Now?” Dagon repeated. “I don’t—”

The Cardinal fixed him with a stare that quailed archbishops. “Not ‘now,’ literally. But as soon as possible. I want this ended. I want this Devil’s spawn in our hands. I want to return him to the Holy See, or, if that is not possible, I want him dead.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Nighthawk asked. This was the first time that the Cardinal had actually called for the boy’s death. The pressure, Nighthawk thought, was finally getting to him. “In this place? After all, Las Vegas is one thing—”

“This place is no different!” the Cardinal blazed at him. “It’s a low class tourist trap for fat, comic book reading Americans. They have no clue as to the strength and tenacity of the Allumbrados!” He turned his bleak gaze onto Nighthawk. “Blood is not far from this… this disgusting fairyland. I want you to supervise him as he brings in all the obsequentes that we have. All armed. We’ll take the Devil spawn as soon as they’re all in place.”

“If you drive Blood too hard,” Nighthawk said, “you’ll kill him.”

“Let him die and be damned,” the Cardinal said. “His only chance at salvation is to die in Christ’s service, anyway. He should welcome the opportunity.”

We’ll see about that, Nighthawk thought. He suppressed a sigh as he stood.

“I guess this means we’ll have to skip supper at Loaves and Fishes,” Usher said.

Nighthawk nodded.

“Pity,” Usher said. “They have great grits.” He looked at the Witness, who scowled back at him. “You can’t really get them outside the South,” he said seriously

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Manger

Ray was tired, but he could not sleep.

His hand hurt, but it was bandaged and healing, as were all his numerous other wounds. He was jazzed as he always was after a fight, though it hadn’t been much of one. The Witness might have provided some real competition, but he’d been a disappointment. It kind of disturbed Ray when he screamed like a little girl. The trip through what the Brit had called ‘the Short Cut’ had been disturbing as well. Sure, he’d got to put a period to the career of Ti Malice, and that counted for something, but fighting spider-things wasn’t exactly his cup of tea. And although he’d suddenly gotten to know Angel a lot better than he had before, he couldn’t find her. She’d vanished after he’d gotten his hand bandaged, and the Peaceable Kingdom was one damn big place when you were trying to find a single angel in it.

He paced his room. It was usually like this. The adrenaline took forever to leave his system, making him edgy and keeping him awake no matter how much he wanted sleep. He looked out the window of his room. Night had come to the Peaceable Kingdom, and he was back to wishing that he was just about anywhere else in the world.

He started, uncharacteristically, at the tentative tap at his door, a single knock, unrepeated.

“Who is it?” Ray asked.

“The Angel,” she said quietly, barely audible through the door.

He was before it in a moment, and opened it. She stood in the hallway, blinking, her hair mussed, her leathers dirty and sweaty, scuffed and torn, still wearing his shirt. She was beautiful.

“Come in,” he said, and she did.

She stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. “John Fortune is asleep,” she said. “Fortunato is with him.”

“Good,” Ray said. “He okay?”

Angel shook her head. “We don’t know. He’s frightened, exhausted. The Hand—”

“What’s with all this ‘Hand’ sh—stuff?” he asked.

“That’s his title,” Angel said. “The Hand of God.”

“Jeez,” Ray said. “And to think I knew him when he was only the President of the United States.”

Angel closed her eyes, and Ray could see that suddenly she was on the verge of tears.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” he asked. “I didn’t mean anything. You can call him The Spleen of God for all I care. What’s wrong?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath, controlling herself. “Nothing. Nothing. I’m just tired. The job is done. We’ve saved him from the Allumbrados. But...”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “The job is done, but life goes on, doesn’t it?”

Angel looked down at the floor. “I don’t want to be alone,” she said in a small voice. “I can’t be alone, any more.”

“You don’t have to be,” Ray said. He came close, but didn’t touch her. He felt an odd sensation. For a moment he couldn’t identify it, then he realized that it was fear. He was afraid to touch her, he realized. Afraid of how she would react.

“I meant to take a shower, to clean up, but I don’t have any other clothes—”

Ray laid a finger softly against her lips. At the touch of his flesh on hers, his fear was suddenly gone. He smiled, but suppressed a relieved sigh. “You don’t have to apologize.”

She finally looked at him. She had the darkest, largest eyes he had ever seen. They were two sad bruises in the alabaster of her face. “My mother never let me listen to music,” she said, seemingly irreverently, “except in church. She thought that music was the tool of Satan. But sometimes she’d drink, like that night she cut me, and listen to a records she had from when she was young. She’d listen to them over and over again. They were all scratched and hissing so you could barely make out the words. One of them had a song on it that said something like, ‘I’m afraid of the Devil, but I’m drawn to them that ain’t.’ I didn’t understand the words then, but I think I understand now why she listened to that song. I think I know what it means. I think I’m the same way as my mother.”

She looked seriously at him.

“I think you think too much sometimes,” Ray said, bending his head to hers.

Unlike their first kiss, this one began soft, but didn’t stay that way for long. It grew in hunger and passion. Her mouth tasted so good that he wasn’t sure how she got out of her clothes or even whether she or he had taken them off.

She was magnificent. That was all he could think. Her breasts were heavy and dark tipped. Her nipples were already erect. She moaned when he caressed them. Her breath hissed inward when he took one in his mouth. Her hips were wide, her waist narrow and ribbed with muscle. Her thighs were lean and sinewy, the juncture at them dark and inviting. He put a hand there and she shuddered against his body. He trailed his fingers across her flat abdomen, tracing the path of the scar as it twisted upon her stomach.

“It’s so ugly,” she said.

“Nothing about you is ugly, Angel.”

“You’re not just saying that?” she asked in a whisper.

He bit her neck gently where it curved into the ivory strength of her shoulder. “Have I ever lied to you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shivering as his kisses went up the column of her throat, “but you’d better not now.”

They fell on the bed. She was already ready. It seemed like she had been for quite awhile now. She closed her eyes. “Thy will be done,” she said, and gasped when he took her.

It was a wild ride. Ray had never experienced anything like it before. She was strong and eager and he didn’t last as long as he wanted to. He did have the pleasure of bringing her to at least one screaming orgasm before he succumbed himself and shuddered against her in what seemed like an endless stream of pleasure. They lay together, panting, and Ray shook his head.

“I’ve never screwed like that before. You’re so strong. So hungry.”

“I’ve never screwed before. Period.”

“Well,” Ray said, “that was one Hell of a first try.” He leaned back on one elbow, but couldn’t keep his hands from the silken skin of her breasts. Their nipples puckered again at his first touch. “Did you like it?”

She closed her eyes. “It was glorious.” She opened them and looked seriously at Ray. “When can we do it again?”

He laughed. “With any other guy, it might take awhile. But, lucky you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Don’t you know that one of my powers is regeneration?” he asked.

Her laughter turned to groans of delight as his mouth closed over hers.

The corridor leading from the elevator to Barnett’s sanctum was lousy with Secret Service agents, and the second string—Mushroom Daddy, Digger Downs, and that kid Secret Service agent whose name Jerry kept forgetting—were in the reception room with Sally Lou. She looked as cool and desirable as ever.

Only Barnett and Fortunato were inside. Barnett looked up sourly as Jerry knocked and entered. He was not, Jerry realized, in a good mood. He turned to Fortunato. “You were saying about the boy?”

He must be really worried about something, Jerry thought. It’s actually showing on his face.

Fortunato shook his head. “He finally fell asleep. I didn’t want to wake him.” Fortunato looked bleakly at Jerry. “He should be dead. I’m afraid that he didn’t draw an ace after all, but a Black Queen.”

Jerry felt Fortunato’s words like a hammer blow to his guts. “That can’t be,” he said. “He was fine—”

“Was fine,” Fortunato said with grim finality. “It seems that his Black Queen is an odd bitch. Slow acting, but progressing geometrically. His body temperature rose well over fifty degrees during the night. I can’t even begin to guess what it is now. I’m not a doctor, but I can recognize death when I see it coming. How high can his temperature go before his body just burns up?”

“Maybe it’s part of his ace metabolism,” Jerry said hopefully. “Maybe his body won’t burn.”

Barnett nodded eagerly. “Yes, of course. He is divine—”

They looked at him and frowned. Fortunato spoke. “Maybe he is,” he said, though his tone indicated his dubiousness, “but his surroundings aren’t. How long until he’s a danger to everything around him?”

“You can’t know for sure that he will be,” Barnett said. He looked like a man who was fighting hard to maintain an unlikely viewpoint.

“He burned Billy Ray by just touching him,” Fortunato said in a leaden voice that lacked all hope. “He would have burned me if I hadn’t shielded myself. And the process seems to be speeding up. He’s getting hotter, faster. If it keeps going at this pace, by evening he’ll consume everything around him. He won’t be able to control it at all.”

A depressed silence settled over Barnett’s office.

“There’s one possibility left,” Jerry said. He and Fortunato looked at each other, and nodded. “The Trump,” they said together.

Years ago, Dr. Tachyon had managed to concoct a cure for the wild card virus, but it was so dangerous in itself that it was only administered when a patient was facing inescapable death.

Barnett frowned. “Isn’t the Trump pretty unsafe?”

“Fifty percent fatality rate,” Fortunato said, looking at no one.

“You can’t...” Barnett began, but his voice ran down to silence.

“We must,” Jerry said, “if we’re sure the kid is going to die. Or pose a danger to his surroundings.” He looked at the ace sitting next to him. “Sorry, Fortunato.”

“No,” Fortunato said heavily. “You’re right. But we have to be sure.”

Jerry nodded. “The Jokertown Clinic has the only supply of the Trump.” He sighed deeply. “I’ll fly back to the city and get a dose. By the time I get back we should know for sure if we’ll have to use it. One way or the other.”

It was hard for Jerry to volunteer to fetch the Trump. Very hard. Over the years John Fortune had become something like the son he’d never had. He’d seen him grow up to be a nice kid. He’d seen him apparently beat all the odds and become an ace. Now death was again panting over his shoulder. It would have been easier, Jerry thought, if he’d just drawn a Black Queen that day in Vegas. But the kid deserved better than that...

“Hang on,” Jerry said, looking at Fortunato. “He almost beat the odds when the virus struck him. He has an even better chance with the Trump.”

Fortunato nodded. He looked at Barnett. “If you believe in the power of prayer,” he told the ex-President, “get down on your knees for the sake of my boy.”

To his vast surprise, Barnett came around his desk, sank down on his knees and bowed his head. “Let us pray,” Barnett said.

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

“We don’t know exactly where the boy is,” Nighthawk told the Cardinal, “but we will soon.” He frowned. “There may be something wrong with him, though,” he said.

The Cardinal interrupted angrily. “If we injured him somehow, all the better. The assault teams are in place. Start the attack.”

Nighthawk nodded equitably. “As you say.”

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

The Angel didn’t quite know where she was when she woke up. It was still morning by the bedside clock. She’d slept deeply, almost as if she’d been drugged. As she lay drowsing she realized suddenly that her bone-deep weariness was gone. She felt refreshed. Somehow replete. She turned and looked at the rumpled bed beside her, and Billy Ray was gone. She sat up, holding the sheets around her breasts, feeling the touch of the fabric everywhere on her naked skin. The room was quiet and empty. Billy Ray was gone.

She felt so... ashamed. They did things last night she could scarcely imagine, let alone believe. And she had reveled in it all. She had lain in his arms panting with lust like an animal. She had kissed him, willingly. She had joined with him willingly. She had laughed with him between bouts of love-making. She...

Wasn’t ashamed, actually. It surprised her to realize that. She wasn’t ashamed of what she’d done. It had been a wonderful night, wonderful and glorious in a way she’d never experienced before. She wanted to have other nights like that with him.

But Billy Ray was gone.

Maybe her mother had been right. Men used you to sate their lusts, then cast you aside, leaving you with the consequences of your actions. A swollen belly and a child to burden you for years. Well, the Angel thought, at least that last couldn’t happen to her.

The song her mother had played obsessively said that love is touching souls. The Angel was sure that more than their bodies had touched last night. She was sure their souls had as well. At least hers had. That was the only way to explain the complete and utter ecstasy she’d found, coupled with a sense of peace and rightness that she’d never felt before in her life. She’d found that. But there was no telling about Ray.

And now, he was gone.

“Just like a man,” she said aloud, and suddenly the door opened and Billy Ray came into the room with an armful of packages.

“Hi, babe,” he said, grappling with the packages and the door, finally managing to close it without dropping the boxes he carried. “You’re finally awake.” He paused. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

The Angel realized she was glaring at him. She sank down into the bed and pulled the sheet up to her chin. “Nothing,” she said in a small voice.

He spilled the packages on the bed and sat down next to her. “Okay. I had to get something to eat after last night’s workout.” He grinned wickedly at her, and put his hand on the sheet over her upper right thigh and squeezed. “I don’t sleep much anyway. You looked like you needed your rest, so I didn’t want to disturb you by ordering room service. Also, I knew you didn’t have any clothes so I picked up a few things for you. You can do a proper shopping later.”

The Angel was almost over whelmed by his casual thoughtfulness. “I—I can’t accept these things from you—”

“Why not?” Ray frowned. “Besides, I found Barnett’s charge card among the remains of your jumpsuit, and put everything on it. The jumpsuit was a total loss, so I tossed it. Hope you don’t mind.”

The Angel shook her head, barely holding back her laughter. She had climbed again from the pits of despair to the very heights. “Of course you did,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Never mind. How’s your hand?”

Ray frowned, and held it up. He looked at it as if it were an alien object someone had grafted to the end of his arm without him realizing it. He stripped the tape away and the bandage underneath. The skin covering his once-burnt flesh was smooth and pink as a baby’s bottom. He grinned and wriggled his fingers.

“All right,” Ray said, as if surprised. “It healed pretty fast. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so hungry. Grab a shower and get dressed and let’s go get something to eat. I’m hungry again and I’ll bet you’re famished.”

He was right. She was ravenous. She started to slip out of the other side of the bed, the sheet still drawn around her, and Ray grabbed it and pulled it away. Her first reactions were to cover her breasts and loins with her hands, but that was ridiculous. She blushed, but leaned close to him.

“I could drink a case of you,” she said, “and still be on my feet.”

“What?” Ray said, frowning.

“It’s our song,” she told him, and laughed at his befuddled look. She grabbed him and kissed him hard, then let him go and, still blushing, walked self-consciously to the bathroom, his eyes following her every step.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

The anteroom was even more crowded after they piled out of Barnett’s office when the meeting ended. Barnett stayed behind to continue his prayer vigil.

Digger Downs had been chatting up Sally Lou and Mushroom Daddy was watching the kid Secret Service agent, Alejandro something or other, who was ostensibly on guard duty, make Sally Lou’s pens and pencils wriggle around on her desk as if they were snakes.

“Very cool, man,” Daddy said. “Animation. That’s a power I could dig. Kind of like Mickey in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Ever watch that movie stoned, man? The dancing mushrooms are just hilarious.”

Sascha was gone. Barnett had intercommed Sally Lou to get Jerry a reservation on the next available flight to New York. Sascha had gone ahead to the airport to make sure there weren’t any screw-ups. Downs looked intently at Jerry and Fortunato as they exited Barnett’s office, dropping his try at charming Sally Lou. “Something’s going on,” he said. “I can tell.”

Fortunato grimaced. “I suppose I owe you the whole story. The boy’s down in our suite, still sleeping. Come along, and I’ll tell you.”

They left the office together, and Sally Lou turned to the phone bank.

“What’s up, man?” Mushroom Daddy asked Jerry, breaking off his conversation with the Secret Service kid, who looked somewhat relieved.

“Heading back to New York,” Jerry said. “I’ve got to pick up something at the Jokertown Clinic.”

He figured there was no sense in spreading the real story around. Mushroom Daddy nodded.

“Might as well go with you, man,” Daddy said. He looked very sad. “I was planning on driving my van back, but it doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen. It’s gone, man. I only had three hundred thousand miles on it.”

Jerry felt sympathetic. To a point. “Shit happens, man,” he said.

Mushroom Daddy nodded philosophically. “Ain’t that the truth.”

Sally Lou looked up from the phone she’d just answered, blank-eyed.

“Uh,” she said, “Uh—”

“What is it, man?” Daddy asked.

“Armed men are attacking the Bower,” she said in an oddly-calm voice, as if stunned by the news. “They’re trying to reach the penthouse.”

“Shit,” Jerry said. “The Allumbrados! Get Barnett on the horn.” She nodded rapidly.

“Tell him what’s happening,” Jerry said. “Tell him to freeze the elevator banks. With any luck we can catch a bunch of those assholes between floors if they’re dumb enough to try to come on up on the lifts. Call Fortunato’s suite. Call Ray. Try to find Angel. Let them know what the Hell is happening. We’ll go downstairs and check things out.”

“I’m coming with you,” Alejandro said.

“Your duty’s with Barnett—” Jerry began.

“My duty is to stop anyone coming after him. He’s safe here with the other agents guarding the corridor, at least for awhile. Besides, you’ll need me downstairs.”

“All right,” Jerry said. “No sense wasting time arguing over who belongs where. Come on.”

They went to the north stairwell at a run, stopping only briefly to tell the agents on duty in the corridor what was happening, and headed downstairs. They went down half a dozen flights, before Alejandro, leading the way, suddenly pulled up short.

“What’s the matter?” Jerry asked. “You okay?”

Alejandro nodded silently, and drew an automatic from his shoulder holster. “I am,” he said. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid that I can’t say the same for you two.”

“Hey, man,” Mushroom Daddy said, “that’s so not-cool.”

“I don’t want to do this,” Alejandro said, “but blood must sometimes be spilled in the service of the Lord.”

“What are you talking about?” Jerry asked. “You’re a Secret Service agent!”

Alejandro nodded. “I am. I am also a perfecti in the service of Our Lord, a somewhat higher master whom I am even more tightly bound to serve.”

Shit, Jerry thought. What—

Mushroom Daddy moved. He swiveled on one foot, lashing out with the other, catching the turncoat secret service agent on his gun hand. The agent lost his grip on the automatic, and it went clattering down the stairs. Alejandro went after it like a cat after a fleeing mouse.

“Run!” Daddy said, and for once the hippie made sense.

He and Jerry turned and fled back up the staircase. Jerry hit the steel fire door just as a bullet ricocheted off it near his head, reverberations from the gunshot pounding his eardrums like tiny hammers. He and Mushroom Daddy pushed through the door, then closed it behind them, leaning against it and breathing deeply.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Jerry panted.

“Bruce Lee movies, man,” Mushroom Daddy said. “He’s the king.”

“Well, thanks,” Jerry said.

“No problemo, man,” Daddy said. “Even a pacifist has to kick ass sometimes.” He paused to take a deep breath. “What do we do now?”

Jerry shook his head. It was clear that the plan to go back to the city to get a dose of the Trump has no longer feasible. There was nothing much they could do, now, that seemed remotely helpful.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

Angel was still sufficiently self-conscious to dress in the bathroom.

Pity, Ray thought. He loved watching beautiful women get into clothes. And out of them, for that matter. He was particularly interested in seeing her in the underwear he’d picked up. Though he was sufficiently realistic to get her a plain, boring sports bra to wear under her new jumpsuit, he’d also picked up a few rather more lacy numbers for casual wear. He stuck with thong panties all around, though. You couldn’t beat those for looks and all-around wearability.

Angel came out of the bathroom, a concerned look on her face.

“Don’t you think this is a little low cut?” she asked, gesturing at the front of the new outfit.

Ray shook his head in admiration. “No,” he said. “I’d say that it’s just about right.”

“And a little too bright?” she asked.

He shook his head again. “Nope. It’s about time you got out of black, babe. It has its place in a wardrobe, but it can get depressing if you wear it all the time. Red suits you.”

“If you say so,” Angel said uncertainly.

Ray nodded enthusiastically. “I do. Now let’s eat. I’m starved.”

She smiled. “Me too.”

Ray’s room was on the first floor above the lobby and shop level. When possible he always took rooms on the first floor. He didn’t like to deal with elevators in either emergencies or on an everyday basis. They went down a flight of stairs that led from the room block to the hotel lobby, and Ray immediately knew that something was wrong. He could smell it even before he saw it. It was an odor he knew well, a mixture of blood and gunpowder residue.

“What in the bleeding Hell?” he asked aloud.

He and Angel stared at each other, then gazed around the lobby. It was deserted, except for a couple of bodies laying in pools of blood. Some were moving feebly or groaning, most were not.

“We’ve got to help them,” Angel said.

Ray grabbed her arm as she started forward. “First we have to find out what the Hell is happening,” he said. “Split up. Look around outside. I’ll check the lobby. Don’t go far, and if you see anything that might explain this, for Christ’s sake, come and get me.”

Angel nodded. “Don’t blaspheme,” she told him.

“Right.” He grabbed her by the upper arm. “And whatever you do, be careful.”

She smiled briefly, dazzling him, and was gone. He turned and headed for the shops lining the lobby.

The only person in the first one he went into was a gray-uniformed security guard who was bravely defending the deserted store from non-existent looters. The guard was a badly shaken youngster with badly shaking hands. Ray was glad he didn’t have a gun or else he would have shot someone, probably himself, out of fear-induced ineptitude. He flinched when Ray marched up to him and tried to duck under the counter by the cash register, but Ray hauled him up.

“Get a grip, Howard,” he said, reading the kid’s name off his tag above the fancy badge pinned to his shirt pocket. He reached for his own identification wallet, flipped it open, and shoved it into the kid’s face. “My name is Billy Ray. I’m a federal agent. You got that Howard?”

The kid stuttered a frightened, “Y-y-y--yes s-s-s-sir,” that Ray almost interrupted three or four times out of sheer impatience.

“What’s going on out there, Howard?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the kid said. “But there’s dead men out there in the lobby. Some of them are security guards.” He said that as if it were the most shocking thing imaginable, and started to cry. Ray shook him by the collar until his teeth rattled.

“Snap out of it, goddamn it,” he said. The Allumbrados had come after them. Again. It had to be them. The persistent bastards. But no one would believe the story if he told it the way it really was. He let go of Howard’s collar, took out a pen and scribbled a name and a phone number on the back of a card he took out of his wallet. “I want you to call this number,” he said in clear and precise tones. “Tell them Billy Ray told you to report to Nephi Callendar. Tell him that a gang of aces are trying to assassinate ex-President Leo Barnett under the guise of robbing the hotel. Tell him to get help out here, pronto, or else the Secret Service will have a dead ex-President on their hands. You got all that Howard?”

The security guard nodded.

“What’s my name, Howard?”

“Uh. Leo Barnett?”

Ray slapped him once across the face, fairly hard, then grabbed his shirt before he could fall down. “Wrong, Howard. My name is Billy Ray. It’s on the other side of the card. The man I want you to call is named Nephi Callendar. I’ve written his name on this side of the card. Now, what’s the story?”

“Uh, Leo Barnett is, uh, robbing the hotel, and—”

Ray sighed. “Just tell them Billy Ray said to get their asses down here or else there’ll be a dead ex-President on the five o’clock news. You get that right, and there’ll be a promotion for you. You fuck up, Howard, and I’ll hunt you down myself and kill you. You got that?”

“Yessir,” Howard managed.

Ray sighed. It was the best he could do. If he made the call himself they’d only want him to stay on the other end of the line and answer useless fucking questions. The odds were, anyway, that help wouldn’t arrive in time. Whatever was going down here was going down fast. But there was always the slim chance that the Feds could show up in time to be useful.

Now, Ray thought, to collect Angel and get up to Barnett’s office, fast. That was where the bad guys would be headed, after the kid who was ensconced in Fortunato’s suite on the floor below Barnett’s HQ. If Barnett, or Fortunato, or somebody was on the ball, they’d have already stopped the elevators, maybe catching some of the bad guys in frozen steel cages. He couldn’t count on that, though. He could count on the fact that the Cardinal probably sent a shit load of bad guys on this little adventure. He was probably really pissed by now.

Ray cut through the lobby at high speed, closing his ears to the cries of the wounded civilians he passed. No time for you now, he thought. Just hang on, hang on and we’ll get to you ASAP. If we can.

He spotted Angel just outside the tall glass doors leading up to the lobby’s main entrance at the top of the set of marble stairs. She was looking out into the courtyard in front of the hotel and the surrounding parking lot.

“Angel—”

She turned to him, and silently gestured outwards. In the courtyard were the Witness and Butcher Dagon, both. They were surrounded by armed goons. Alejandro Jesus y Maria C de Baca stood on the lowest step of the marble stairs, looking up at Angel.

Ray grinned his crazy grin. “Alejandro,” he called. “Now’s your chance, kid. Let’s see your stuff.”

Alejandro nodded slowly. Behind him, the Witness and Butcher Dagon approached, though the gunmen kept their distance. Alejandro did or said nothing until the two aces joined him. He looked at them and nodded, then he looked up at Ray.

“It’d be best if you just gave up, Billy. I don’t want to see either you or Angel get hurt, and I’m afraid you’re pretty well out-numbered.”

Ray frowned. His pulse beat with sudden anger. “Why you little bastard,” he said. “I always thought that you were too polite.”

Alejandro shrugged. “I’m sorry to hear that. I am a great admirer of yours.”

“Yeah, well, I never liked you.”

“He gave you good advice,” Witness said. “You’d better take it. We have to join the party inside. If you let us pass, we’ll just let you go. If you try to slow us down, we’ll kill you.”

“How’s your knee, you prick?” Ray asked. “Still walking with a limp?”

Witness scowled, but Dagon grabbed his arm and shook his head.

Alejandro shrugged again. “As you will, Billy.”

“Call me ‘Mr. Ray,’ you traitorous shit.”

Alejandro turned and looked over his right shoulder, a frown of concentration on his youthful features.

Angel lifted her arms to the Heavens. “Save my soul from evil, Lord,” she intoned, “and heal this warrior’s heart.” Her sword appeared as always, a roaring flame in her hands. She smiled at him. He was happy to see that her smile was without the taint of fear. “Stand with me, Billy,” she said. “‘One sword at least thy right shall guard.’” she semi-quoted.

Ray grinned crazily. “‘One faithful heart shall praise thee,’” he responded in the same spirit. “With all due respect to Thomas Moore.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Why, Billy. I’d never guess you went in for poetry.”

“Stick around, babe. I’m full of surprises.”

“I believe I will,” she said, nodding.

From the parking lot came the sound of ancient stone groaning.

“Oh, crap,” Ray said.

The statues of the three apostles that stood in front of The Angels’ Bower climbed down creakily from their daises and approached the lobby entrance like arthritic giants.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

John Fortune could no longer sit on the bed without the sheets smoldering. The glow of his halo was so bright that it made Fortunato’s eyes ache. Downs, at his side, stared at the boy with a gaping mouth. The reporter was so stunned by the unexpected turn of events that he didn’t even ask Fortunato any questions.

John Fortune wore his sneakers to insulate the bottom of his feet so that he wouldn’t leave burn marks on the carpet. A wet towel was wrapped around his waist. Fortunato was afraid that anything else would burn. He had to get a new one every few minutes and exchange it with the one his son was wearing. There was no sign as to how high his temperature would eventually go.

“Maybe,” Fortunato said, “you’d be more comfortable in the bathroom. You could lie down in the tub for awhile. Rest some.”

“I’m okay,” John Fortune said, “but, yeah, you might be right.”

He seemed to realize what Fortunato didn’t want to say. That he was becoming a fire hazard in a hotel room that had so many flammable objects in it.

“I’ll go with you. We can talk for awhile.”

“That’d be nice,” the boy said.

As they headed for the bathroom, the doorbell suddenly rang. Fortunato stopped, looked at Downs. “Digger,” he said. “Go with John. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Downs nodded. “Jeez,” he asked the boy, “does it hurt?”

John Fortune looked more bewildered than frightened. “No. Not really. It’s just... strange. I feel warm, but it’s not uncomfortable. The heat feels soothing. I am hungry, though.”

Fortunato watched them go off together, then went to the door and peered out through the spy hole. He quickly unlocked the door when he realized who was outside. The ace who called himself Creighton came in, accompanied by the enigmatic Mushroom Daddy.

“What happened?” Fortunato asked, then realized there no time for niceties. He read the story from Creighton’s mind. He glanced at Mushroom Daddy, who looked back innocently at him. Fortunato took one stab at his mind, but could not gain access to it. The man clearly was a mystery, a puzzle that would be interesting to solve, but Fortunato had no time for idle past-times. “All right,” he said. “I get it. Alejandro is out of our hands, for now, and there’s no time to retrieve the Trump, anyway. It’s no longer an alternative.”

“Right,” Jerry said.

Fortunato nodded. The only question was what to do now, and Fortunato had no answer for it.

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower, lobby

“Inside,” Ray shouted, and the Angel followed him unhesitatingly.

They went back into the lobby through the tall glass doors, the statues following them ponderously, like twenty-foot high golems.

“How is this possible?” Angel asked.

“It’s that frigging kid,” Ray said. “His power is animation. He can make inanimate objects obey his will. And apparently his will is for them to squash us.”

Glass shattered as the first statue hunkered down and smashed through the doors, showering shards all over the lobby’s interior. To her shame, the Angel was unsure which of the apostles this stature represented, so she thought of it as Peter. Even though it was a holy figure, she screamed an inarticulate battle cry and hurled herself at it, swinging her sword as hard as she could.

“Hamstring the bastard!” Ray shouted.

It was a good idea, but the Angel decided to aim even lower. The bastard couldn’t walk if it didn’t have any feet, she thought, and immediately wondered if Ray was being too great of an influence on her. Her sword skimmed the floor and chopped at Peter’s ankle. It clanged against stone, shivering in her hands. Her arms went numb almost up to her elbows, but she felt her blade bite deep. A sizeable chip flaked off Peter’s ankle, running up into his calf. The force of her blow caused the statue to sway like an oak in a storm. She suddenly wished that she had John Bruckner’s morningstars. With those she could reduce the statue to rubble in a matter of minutes.

One of the other statues, Call him John, the Angel thought, was crowding past Peter. John took a ponderous swipe at the Angel as Ray called out a warning. She ducked and the very tips of John’s fingers brushed against the back of her shoulders, hurling her backwards on the floor. She slid a dozen feet, broken glass scraping her leather jumpsuit, but it held.

Ray darted forward, grimacing in anger. He leaped at Peter, planting one foot on the statue’s injured leg, and swarmed up his chest like a monkey climbing a cliff. He rammed his shoulder under Peter’s chin and heaved. The ponderous sculpture tipped over backwards and fell hard to the lobby floor with all the grace of a drunken sailor.

The Angel levered herself to her feet and bounded after Ray. As Peter reached for Ray with his left hand, The Angel swung her sword and sheared through his wrist. His hand flew off and shattered on the lobby floor.

Ray kept going. He slid between John’s immense, widely-braced thighs. The statue bent forward slowly at the waist and tried to catch him as he went by. He missed and the back of his exposed neck presented a tempting target. The Angel braced herself and brought her sword down like a headsman’s ax. Her first blow bit deeply. Using all her strength, she yanked the blade free desperately, and wound up and swung again as the apostle turned his head and looked at her disapprovingly. She said an apologetic prayer under her breath as her second blow caught him in the side of the throat and John’s head sprang from his neck. Thank God, the Angel thought, that it’s not bleeding. She dodged around the statue’s blinding groping arms, following Ray whose slide took him against the legs the third statue. James, the Angel christened him.

Ray’s hands dragged on the floor, and a smear of blood followed him as glass shards sliced into his palms, but that was the least of his worries. James caught him in his marble hands, and lifted him high. He squeezed, and Ray screamed. Oh, God! the Angel thought.

The statue lifted Ray high over his head and the ace spasmed. The Angel thought that Ray was trying to jerk himself away from the giant’s crushing grip, but there was no way he could escape from the statue’s cruel hands.

But he wasn’t, the Angel suddenly realized, trying to pull himself free. He was throwing something. Something clear and sharp that he’d grabbed off the floor as he slid by.

A nine-inch long, razor sharp glass shard glimmered in the sun as it flew to its target and buried two thirds of itself in Alejandro’s stomach. The Allumbrado cried out and gripped it, cutting his palms deeply as he tried to pull it out of his gut, and failed. He looked at Ray with a stricken, unbelieving expression. The Angel saw their eyes meet for a moment, and then Alejandro slumped to the ground. The statue, holding Ray above his head like a fond father might playfully hold his infant son, kept leaning back, back, back, until it fell backwards against the steps leading into the lobby, shattering into several hundred chunks of rock.

Ray hit the ground behind it, rolled, and came to his feet. He twisted briefly, as if trying to put a sore back back into place, and the Angel could see the crazy grin on his face. “Never send a boy to do a man’s job,” he said to Dagon and the Witness, who were standing ten feet away, and suddenly, like that, he was on them.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

John Nighthawk stood before the door to Fortunato’s suite. Usher and Magda were pressed against the wall out of sight on one side of the door. Blood and his handler were on the other. He looked at Usher, nodded, and raised his hand to knock, when the thunderbolt of revelation struck him.

Danger was in that room. Danger for the entire world. Nighthawk saw fire consume everything. The land was blackened, the oceans boiled away. Even the very air was aflame. And the boy was the center of all, surrounded by flame but not devoured. Perhaps Contarini was right after all. Perhaps the boy was the Anti-Christ. The warning in Revelations regarding false prophets ran through his mind along with the images of all-devouring flame. He had to think about this, but now was not the time. His hand wavered, then came down on the door to Fortunato’s suite, knocking politely.

After a moment, it opened a crack. A small, neatly dressed man peered out. He cleared his throat. “Yes?” he asked.

“We’re here for the boy,” Nighthawk said.

“Boy?”

Nighthawk smiled. “John Fortune. There’s no sense standing behind the door. We can take it down in an instant, if we have to.”

The man seemed to think for a moment, then opened it all the way. “I’m Digger Downs,” he said as Nighthawk came in. “Reporter for Aces! You’re?”

“Anonymous,” Nighthawk said as he entered the suite.

Downs started to close the door, but Usher, followed by Magda and then Blood and his handler, pushed by. “Hey—“ Downs began, then fell silent when he saw the weapons Usher and Magda carried, and the look on Magda’s face. Nighthawk knew that Downs really wanted to say something when he caught sight of Blood, but he kept his mouth shut.

Nighthawk looked around the room. “Where’s the boy?” he asked.

“He was here—”

Nighthawk looked Downs in the eye. “It’s better you bring the boy out than we go looking for him.”

Magda jacked a round into her automatic shotgun for emphasis.

“Hey,” Downs said, “if it was up to me—ah, Fortunato.”

Nighthawk recognized him as he came out of one of the bedrooms. He was tall, thin, and light-skinned. Energy shimmered the air around him like heat waves in a desert. Blood, who had strange senses of his own, whimpered at the sight of him, and cowered behind his handler’s legs. If I drained him, Nighthawk thought, I could keep going for another century. At least.

“You can’t have him,” Fortunato said flatly. “Unless you go through me.”

Magda brought her shotgun up with a cry of pure rage. Fortunato glanced at her, and she froze, literally, in mid-scream, her mouth open, face contorted, shotgun almost leveled.

“Impressive,” Nighthawk said. “How many minds can you handle at once?”

Nighthawk nodded at Usher.

“Dad—it’s all right.” John Fortune came from the same bedroom Fortunato had. He looked a little disheveled, a little frightened, but basically all right. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of me. I’ll go with them.”

Nighthawk smiled at him. “Good boy.”

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower, courtyard

Ray knew that the only thing that kept him from immediately being blown to shit and back by the Allumbrado gunmen was the fact that they’d blow Witness and Butcher Dagon along with him. He decided to stay nice and close to them.

Ray got in one lick on Dagon before the British ace could transform, an open-handed slap that split his lip and knocked him on his ass. Dagon transformed as he lay on the ground glaring at Ray, but was too wary to attack immediately. He and Witness circled Ray carefully. Out of the corner of his eye Ray could also see the gunmen creeping up and around him, also trying to encircle him. He realized that if they got close enough to aim carefully, he’d be in trouble.

Something the size and general shape of a softball whizzed by and struck one of the gunmen between the shoulder blades, knocking him flat. He didn’t get up. Almost immediately another chunk of stone from the shattered statue struck a second gunman in the chest. Instead of rebounding, it stuck there, squishily

Ray laughed. “Good girl, Angel,” he said.

Some of the Allumbrados fired at her, but she crouched low behind some of the bigger statue chunks, then popped up a moment later in another spot and let fly with another stone, taking most of another gunman’s head off.

The Witness suddenly turned and ran, heading for the lobby. Angel leaped up. A storm of gunfire knocked her to her feet. She was hit, Ray was sure, at least once.

“Angel!” he shouted.

“I’m okay! I’m going after him!” Ray watched her start to crawl back toward the lobby, carefully keeping to cover.

“Remember, Angel,” he called after her. “He’s afraid. He’s afraid of pain.” He looked at Dagon, grinning. “But I’m not.”

Dagon’s animal-like jaw slavered string-like lengths of drool.

Ray stood still, stretched like a cat, and grinned. He watched Angel slip into the lobby, get to her feet and run after the Witness, who had vanished up the staircase. He felt something pride, awe, and lust rush through his system. He suddenly realized that he was in love.

“Well,” he said to Dagon. Looks like it’s just us boys.”

Dagon gibbered something unintelligible.

“Let the fun began,” Ray said.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower, Fortunato’s suite

Fortunato looked at the boy, frowning. John Fortune nodded almost imperceptibly as he went by him. Fortunato opened his mouth as if to speak, but held his peace.

“Let’s go,” John Fortune said.

Nighthawk looked at him. “You’re not glowing,” he said.

John Fortune shrugged. “I stopped doing that awhile ago.”

Nighthawk removed the glove from his left hand, and put his fingers out, almost on John Fortune’s face. Fortunato darted into the old man’s mind. He almost rebounded in surprise at what he saw there. Ancient power, tempered by wisdom and grace. He realized that Nighthawk meant them no harm.

Nighthawk’s hand dropped down and he smiled. “Nice try.”

“What?” John Fortune asked, bewildered.

“It’s no good, Jerry,” Fortunato said. “He knows.”

“What?” John Fortune said.

“That you’re the bodyguard,” Nighthawk said.

Jerry Strauss slumped. “It was worth a shot,” he said.

Nighthawk nodded. “I suppose.” He put his glove back on his left hand. “Now where’s the boy?”

“He’s in the bathroom,” Fortunato said with sudden hope that somehow Nighthawk, with all his strange powers, might be able to help his son.

Nighthawk looked at his troop. “Wait here,” he said. He paused, looking at Magda. “Take her gun away,” he told Usher. “I don’t want her to come to pissed and armed with an automatic shotgun.”

Usher nodded. “You’ll be all right?”

Nighthawk looked at Fortunato. Fortunato nodded.

“For now,” Nighthawk said.

They headed for the bedroom, the disguised Jerry Strauss following. Fortunato stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Thank you for trying to save my son.”

“It didn’t work,” Jerry said.

“This wasn’t the only time you tried. And succeeded.”

“It’s my job,” Jerry said. “But it was always a pleasure, as well.”

“This way,” Fortunato told Nighthawk, leading the way to the bathroom. The hippie was still with his son. He looked worriedly at Fortunato and the others.

“He’s getting hotter, man. I tried to help him, but there’s nothing I can do.”

Fortunato nodded. Nighthawk stared at John Fortune as he stood naked in the shower stall. His halo was an angry aura, flickering like rays from a tiny sun.

“John, are you okay?” Fortunato asked.

The boy shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m hotter. Now I can’t touch anything cloth without burning it.”

Fortunato swallowed hard.

“We need the Trump,” Jerry said. “But there’s no damn time.”

Nighthawk looked hard at the boy. John Fortune looked back at him. He seemed more puzzled than frightened, but Fortunato knew that he was putting the best face he could on his fear. He suddenly was very proud of his son. Very proud, and very frightened for him.

Nighthawk suddenly seemed to come to a decision. “Yes, there is,” he said.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower courtyard

The Angel raced up the stairs, taking them as quickly as she could. At first that wasn’t too quick, as she smarted from the ricocheting slug that had bounced off her back and knocked her down and, she was sure, bruised her badly. But she couldn’t let a little thing like that stop her. By the time she reached the third floor she was taking the steps two at a time as she headed for Barnett’s office. She was sure that the Witness was after Barnett, and she wanted to head him off before he could harm The Hand.

She was breathing hard when she reached the upper floor, and went through the secret panel in the service corridor that allowed direct access to Barnett’s office, bypassing Sally Lou’s domain. She burst into Barnett’s office, and paused. Barnett was on his knees in front of his desk on his knees, praying aloud. There was no Witness.

Barnett fell silent when she came into the room and rose up.

“Angel!” he exclaimed when he realized that it was her and not some form of sudden death. “I knew you would come to me in the time of my need!”

“You’re safe,” she breathed.

“Of course,” he said. “Now that you’re here.”

She looked around the room. “Where’s John Fortune?” she asked. “Fortunato, the others?”

Barnett’s eyes looked wild. “Burning in Hell with that demon child, I suppose.”

“What?” the Angel asked. She realized that something had gone very wrong.

Barnett came up to her. He was sweating and disheveled. She had never seen him like this before. “I was in error,” he said. “I confess my sin to you, before God. The boy is not Christ, but a demon burning with Hellfire—”

”What are you saying?” the Angel asked, aghast.

“It’s true. Even Fortunato admits that the boy is out of control. That he burns not with the Grace of Our Lord, but with the flames of the Pit. Unless he is stopped he will turn the Earth into an inferno.”

“You’re crazy,” the Angel blurted, and was immediately appalled at the words that slipped out of her mouth.

“No, no I’m not,” Barnett said. “The revelation has come unto me. He is a child of the Pit. You must go to him,” he said, suddenly sly, “and slay him.” He looked at her, nodding approvingly. He put his arms around her and tried to pull her to him. “Then come to me, and comfort me in my hour of need, for I am in sore need of succor.”

“You fucking idiot,” the Angel said, shocking herself again, but at least avoiding blasphemy. She pushed him away, and he fell on the carpet. “I was with him for a long time. There’ s no evil in him. He may—” Her world took another lurch, but it had been doing a lot of that lately. “You may have been wrong. He may not be our Savior. But he’s not a demon. That’s just stupid.”

Barnett looked as if he were shock. “Foolish woman—”

He never finished his thought. The door to his sanctum’s secret entrance suddenly burst open, showering bits and pieces into the room. The Angel threw up an arm to deflect fragments of flying door and blinked when she saw the Witness limp into the office.

He smiled. “My prayers,” he said, “have been answered.”

The Angel stood silently, staring at him.

“I saw you enter the stairwell,” the Witness said, “And decided to follow you. I awaited outside the door to hear the revelations of this pathetic fool whom you’ve wasted your time following. It was good to hear him finally admit his error. To acknowledge that we Allumbrados have been right all along—”

”I say,” the Angel said, suddenly utterly sure that she was right, “that you’re both wrong. John Fortune is an innocent child, nothing more. Neither savior nor demon.”

The Witness laughed contemptuously. “Stupid woman. What do you know? First, I shall beat you senseless to save you for later. Then—” he looked at Barnett, cowering on the carpet—“I will slay this false prophet, this supposed man of God.”

“Ambitious,” the Angel said. “But deeds, not words, are what counts in this world.”

“Remember that when I throw you on that desk and make you beg for your life, slut in the costume of a Devil,” the Witness sneered.

The Angel shouted in righteous wrath and sprung like an unforgiving fury at the Witness. He grabbed her, catching her around the waist, but leaving her arms free. That was a mistake. Her first blow cracked his left cheekbone, her second knocked out two teeth. The third smashed his right eye socket, the fourth glanced off his forehead. Already she could feel his grip around her waist slacken.

“Ray was right!” she hissed into his face. “You’re a weakling who’s afraid of pain. But I’m not!”

She head-butted him, smashing his nose flat, and the Witness groaned and let her go. She dropped to the floor, pivoted on her right foot, spun to gain momentum, and kicked him through the wall. He hit the wall of the corridor beyond, bounced, and fell flat on his face.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

New York City: Jokertown Clinic

However this all worked out, Nighthawk decided that he had to try to save the boy, and perhaps the world. “Come with me,” he said to the bodyguard.

Jerry looked at Fortunato, who nodded, and then followed Nighthawk back into the suite’s living room.

“Blood,” Nighthawk said.

Jerry groaned. “Not this again?” he asked.

Nighthawk nodded, then turned to the joker/ace. “You’ve been to the Jokertown Clinic?” he asked.

“He’s been a patient there,” his handler confirmed.

Nighthawk took his leash. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Finn’s office,” Jerry said helpfully.

Blood turned to the nearest wall, and after a moment a black circle appeared in it. When they passed through Blood’s tunnel through space, nausea hit Nighthawk like the mother of all hangovers. Somehow he managed not to throw up as they walked out the hole in the wall in Finn’s office, right before the astonished doctor who was standing behind his desk trying to catch up on some paperwork.

“John Fortune?” Finn asked in an unbelieving voice.

Jerry shook his head. “Nope. Jerry Strauss.”

“This is John Nighthawk,” Jerry said. “I believe you know Blood.”

Finn nodded dazedly. “He’s been a patient.”

“Thank God for that,” Jerry said. “Otherwise he couldn’t find his way here so quickly. Listen, Dr. Finn, we’re on the clock. We need a dose of the Trump Virus. And we need it fast.”

Finn nodded. “Of course,” he said.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

Fortunato went back into the living room, pacing impatiently, almost unable to bear the thought of what he was about to do to his son. He only had to wait a few minutes. Nighthawk came back through the hole in the wall, leading Blood. He gave him to his handler, and both he and Jerry followed Fortunato back into the bathroom where the boy was burning so hot that no one could approach him. Jerry put a syringe, already loaded with the Trump, by the side of the tub.

“Okay, John,” he said, “you’ll have to inject yourself, but that’s no big deal. You can do it.”

The boy looked at them. Fortunato could read the fear in his eyes. “I know it’s scary,” he said, “but it’s your best hope.” Am I condemning him to a terrible death, Fortunato thought, or saving him from one? He could barely breath. He couldn’t imagine how the boy felt.

“Hey,” John Fortune said, his voice cracking only a little, “I’ve beat worse odds before.”

“That’s right,” Jerry said. “You can do it, kid, I know you can.”

John Fortune reached for the syringe. His hand trembled only a little. He took it in his hand, and the glass melted like snowflakes on a griddle. Fortunato felt something like death pass through him as everyone groaned in anger and frustration.

“There’s only one thing left,” Nighthawk said. He took the glove off his left hand and stepped forward.

Peaceable Kingdom, The Angels’ Bower, courtyard

Dagon growled like a beast. He took a step backwards, and was suddenly among the Allumbrados, claws and teeth flashing. Screams etched stricken expressions on the gunmen’s faces as the Butcher moved through them.

“Dagon!” Ray shouted.

He must have heard, but he paid Ray no attention. The Allumbrados were dead in moments, all of them, and suddenly Dagon turned back into a naked tubby man.

“What the Hell are you doing?” Ray asked.

Dagon smiled. “Turning coats, right?”

“We’ve got to fight this out,” Ray said.

“Do we?” Dagon asked with raised eyebrows. “We tried that once before, and neither of us liked it very much.”

“I liked it enough to try it again.”

“Ah, but I don’t, dear boy.”

“I should kick your ass.”

“Don’t be a dolt,” Dagon chided him. “Don’t you have more important fish to fry? You shouldn’t even be wasting time talking to me.”

Ray ground his teeth in frustration. The bastard was right. “This isn’t over between us,” Ray flung over his shoulder as he rushed back into the Bower’s lobby.

“For now,” Dagon said smiling, “it is.”

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

“No!”

Fortunato stepped in front of Nighthawk, blocking his path to the boy. The old man looked at him with sorrowful eyes.

“You know how dangerous he is,” Nighthawk said in a soft voice. “He’ll burn hotter and hotter, but he won’t die. He’ll eat up the world, maybe even ignite the atmosphere. He has to be stopped.”

A noise came from John Fortune, a squeak of fear that he couldn’t control.

“I know,” Fortunato said replied in equally low tones. “But you can’t do it.”

“I only have to touch him for a moment—”

“He’s too hot already. You’ll die before you can touch him. Your flesh will shrivel and burn.”

Nighthawk smiled. His eyes crinkled and Fortunato could see something of the true age that was in them. “I’ve had a long life,” he said. “Maybe it was my fate to live it this long so I’d be here today to stop him.” He paused and looked at Fortunato pityingly. “It’s quite painless, you know.”

“You’ll throw your life away for nothing. But maybe I can do something,” Fortunato said. “Besides. I’m his father.”

Nighthawk looked at him steadily for a long moment. Then he nodded.

Fortunato nodded back, then he looked at Jerry Strauss and Mushroom Daddy. “I want to be alone with my son.”

“You sure about this?” Jerry asked him.

Fortunato nodded again.

“Good luck, then,” Jerry said. He and Nighthawk exchanged glances, and Fortunato was aware of the surprise they felt about being on the same side of this conflict.

“Luck, John,” Jerry said.

“Luck, boy,” Nighthawk said.

“Thanks,” John Fortune said in a small voice that could barely be heard as they went out of the bathroom.

Mushroom Daddy paused on the thresh hold, turned and said, “God bless us, every one,” and closed the door as he left the room.

Fortunato turned to his son and smiled. “Are you frightened?”

John Fortune nodded. His halo danced like the rays of an agitated sun. “Yes.”

“I am too. That was why I went to Japan, you know.”

“You were afraid?” John Fortune asked, as if surprised at Fortunato’s admission.

“Yeah.” Fortunato sighed. “Afraid of losing more pieces of myself. More of the people around me. Afraid of being the most powerful ace in the world, yet in the end being alone.”

“You’re not alone now.”

“Neither are you.” He held out his arms. “Come to me, son.”

“I’ll hurt you.”

Fortunato shook his head. “I’m Fortunato. Nothing can stand before me. Not the Astronomer. Not the Swarm. Not even the wild card virus.”

John Fortune got out of the bathtub. Fortunato could feel his eyebrows curl and singe as his son stepped closer, but he didn’t flinch. There was a nanosecond of horrible pain as they almost touched. Then Fortunato stopped time.

His astral form fled his body, but maintained a thin thread, a tenuous link to draw energy through, for it would take tremendous amounts of energy to implement his plan. Fortunately, size was a meaningless concept on the astral plane. Fortunato went down into his son’s body. He propelled his consciousness through his son’s bloodstream, flashing like a corpuscle through his veins.

Searching, he found the changes wrought by the virus in John Fortune’s brain, nervous system, and all the cells throughout him. Fortunato wasn’t an expert, but he knew that it didn’t look good. The cells were twisted abnormally, blasted and sickened. This will be rough, he thought. The enemy was almost numberless, and he was only one man.

He broke himself into a million fragments and ordered them into battle against John’s body. He fought it cell by cell, shifting, rearranging, and cleansing, but never harming. He burned energy at a prodigious rate as he willed John Fortune’s cells to repair the damage the wild card virus had done. Thankfully, he didn’t have to guide them in the process, to tell them exactly what to do. They knew themselves, wired deep in the mysteries of their DNA, how to correct themselves. He just had to supply them with the energy they needed, and the time. He gave freely of both. He hoped he had enough.

He settled in for the longest, most difficult battle in his life.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

Ray knew where he would find the Angel. He went to Barnett’s headquarters as quickly as he could. The corridor leading to Barnett’s office sanctum was empty. Ray rushed into the reception area to see Sally Lou sitting behind her desk and the two Secret Service agents crowded around the door leading into Barnett’s office, looking in but afraid to enter.

Ray brushed by them as if they were children, and they didn’t even protest. He took in the room with a single glance. Barnett was on his knees, praying loudly. Angel was standing by him with her hands on her hips and a frown on her face. He also noted that a hole had been punched through one of the sanctum’s walls. The Witness lay in the corridor beyond. He didn’t look too good.

Ray rushed up to Angel. “You had me worried there—” he began.

“Sometimes,” Angel said, “you think too much. Kiss me.”

He did, with enthusiasm. He could have kept it up for a long time, but he realized that things weren’t finished, by any means.

“John Fortune—” he said, somewhat breathlessly as he pulled away from her.

She nodded. “He’s in Fortunato’s suite. There—something’s wrong with him,” she said with a concerned expression. “His temperature is rising. The Hand—Barnett said that it was out of control.”

Ray glanced at Barnett, who was loudly praying for guidance and forgiveness. He nodded. “Let’s go.”

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

Time was meaningless on the astral plane. Fortunato couldn’t tell how long he’d been fighting. It seemed like forever. He gave of himself with every single battle with every single recalcitrant cell of his son’s body. He knew that he didn’t have much left. He needed help, but there was no one to give it. If he’d had a physical body, he’d be exhausted. Even without one, he was still exhausted. That was a sign of the desperate state he was in.

But all throughout a hard life, Fortunato had never given up. Never once. Not even when he’d gone to Japan, he finally realized. It had been a step in his evolution that he’d had to take. A time to rest, reflect, and learn. It had not been a wasted sixteen years if it had enabled him to do this.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

Ray and Angel barged into Fortunato’s suite. Inside it looked like the Jokertown Clinic’s emergency room on Saturday night, crowded with patients and worried on-lookers. Some of them seemed to be members of the other team, Ray realized, but nobody seemed to care, so he didn’t.

“John?” Angel asked, staring at a worried-looking figure standing near the doorway to one of the bedrooms.

He shook his head. “No. It’s me.”

“Creighton,” Ray said.

“My name’s not Creighton. It’s Strauss. Jerry Strauss. I just wanted you to know that.”

Ray nodded.

“John’s in the bathroom, with Fortunato,” Jerry said.

“They’ve been in there a long time,” Mushroom Daddy said.

“What’s going on?” Ray asked.

A little old black man standing next to a big young black man armed with an automatic weapon said, “He’s trying to heal him.”

Ray shook his head. Time enough later to sort out who was who. “Well—has someone checked on them lately?”

No one said anything.

“Someone should,” Ray said.

Still no one said anything. He looked at Angel, who nodded. He went quietly through the bedroom, Angel at his side. He listened at the closed bathroom door, but heard nothing.

“Should I open it?” he asked quietly.

Angel nodded again.

He hesitated, took her hand, then quickly opened the door. Fortunato was lying on the bathroom floor, his son in his arms. As they watched, John Fortune’s golden aura flickered and went out. Ray and Angel stared at each other for a moment, then rushed into the bathroom, vaguely aware of the crowd that had gathered at the door behind them

Ray gently lifted Fortunato off his son and felt his wrist. He looked at the Angel, then at the others crowded around the bathroom door. “There’s no pulse,” Ray said flatly, as if he could hardly believe it himself. “Fortunato’s dead.”

“The boy?” Angel asked in a shaky voice.

“He’s all right,” Fortunato said. He lifted his head and opened his eyes and gripped Ray’s arm hard. It was the only thing that prevented the stunned ace from dropping him. “He’s all right. Tell Peregrine not to worry. He’ll just be a normal boy now. Tell her I took the virus... away...”

“God,” Ray said. “My God. You have no pulse. You’re dead.”

Fortunato smiled. “That’s right,” he said, and he kept smiling as his body slumped in Ray’s arms.

John Fortune opened his eyes, looked around the room, looked at everybody crowding around the doorway, looked at Fortunato’s limp body in Ray’s arms. He asked in a quiet voice, “What happened?”

The Angel went to him and put her arms around him. She said nothing, but held him as he cried, until he stopped shaking.

The Feds arrived on the scene, as usual, half an hour too late. Agents from half a dozen bureaus wandered about the lobby of the Angels’ Bower in a daze, watching as EMTs helped the last of the wounded civilians.

Ray and the Angel sat in the lobby’s wreckage with John Fortune. The Angel held the boy’s hand while he stared numbly into space. Jerry Strauss, who wore his real face, Sascha, back from his fruitless trip to the airport, and Mushroom Daddy stood around them. Barnett was up in his penthouse, praying and refusing to come down. The Witness was still unconscious in the hallway. Magda was still frozen in Fortunato’s suite. Ray figured it would be better to leave them up there for now. Couple less thing to worry about.

“Man,” Ray said. “I don’t even want to think about trying to explain all this.” He looked at the old black man who had just joined them, and the young big black man at his side. “Like where in the Hell you fit into it.”

“Us?” John Nighthawk said. “We were never here.” He and the big guy strolled away.

Jerry looked at Ray expectantly.

“Go ahead, take off,” Ray told him. “I’ll save a ton of the paperwork for you.”

“Thanks a lot,” Jerry said sourly, turning to go.

“And Jerry—” Ray added.

“Yeah?”

“It was fun.”

Jerry paused. “It was. In an odd sort of hallucinogenic kind of way. Come on,” he added to Sascha and Mushroom Daddy.

“I wonder if I can find another van,” Daddy said wistfully. “Hey! We could drive back together!”

Digger Downs came by, his tape recorder in his hand. “Hey, guys,” he said.

Ray looked at him unenthusiastically. He still hadn’t forgiven Downs for once dripping blood on his fighting suit, sixteen years ago. “What do you want?” Ray asked.

“The story,” Digger said. “What happened between John Fortune and his father during those last moments?”

“Can’t you leave the kid alone?” Ray asked.

“No,” John Fortune said quietly. “I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him about the most powerful ace in the world, and the final gift he gave me.”

The Angel nodded. “Your father would want the story to come from you.”

Downs had his tape-recorder out and was listening with a wide grin—Visions of a Pulitzer probably dancing in his head, Ray thought—as Billy Ray and the Angel strolled away.

“Well,” Ray said, gesturing at the devastated lobby and the squads of cops and federal agents wandering around it in a daze, “alone at last. Got any plans for this evening?”

The Angel shook her head. “Do you?”

“I was thinking of a good meal, a hot shower, a romp in the sack, and then about twenty hours of sleep. How’s that sound?”

“Billy—” She stopped, started again. “I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”

“We can always find some time for that. I guess.”

“Do you really believe that you and I can make it?”

Ray shrugged. “I don’t know. I believe we’d be crazy not to try, though. Besides, I could drink a case of you. Whatever that means.”

“You remember our song!”

“Remember it? Hell, I’ve never even heard it.”

The Angel smiled and put her head on his shoulder as they stepped through the debris littering the lobby floor.

“By the way,” Ray said. “You look bitching in red.”

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Cardinal Romulus Contarini sat alone in Nighthawk’s suite. He jumped when Nighthawk opened the door and came in on silent feet.

“Well?” he asked.

Nighthawk sighed. “Well, you were wrong, as usual.”

“Wrong?” Contarini said angrily. “I was not wrong! I am righteous in my faith and in my wrath! We will begin again,” he said, a cunning look in his eyes. “The diabolists cannot match the might of Mother Church—”

“But you were right about one thing,” Nighthawk said thoughtfully as he approached the Cardinal. “There is a false prophet in this story.” He removed the glove from his left hand. “It was you,” he said, reaching for the cowering churchman.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

He had barely said Hello, when suddenly it was time to say goodbye. But life, and death, are like that, Fortunato thought. He remembered the last great Zen lesson.

Enlightenment comes to you only when you stop looking for it.

He stood some where, on some thing, the universe open before him.

The End

DEATH DRAWS FIVE starred:

Billy Ray...............................................................created by John J. Miller

Fortunato.............................................................created by Lewis Shiner

John Nighthawk...................................................created by John J. Miller

Jerry “Mr. Nobody” Strauss...................................created by Bud Simons

The Midnight Angel..............................................created by John J. Miller

Co-starred:

John Fortune.............................................created by Gail Gerstner-Miller

Ellen “Cameo” Allworth......................created by Kevin Andrew Murphy

Leo Barnett...............................................created by Arthur Byron Cover

Peregrine..................................................created by Gail Gerstner-Miller

Digger Downs........................................................created by Steve Perrin

Mushroom Daddy............................................... created by John J. Miller

The Witness (The Bigger Asshole).................... created by John J. Miller

Butcher Dagon.....................................................created by John J. Miller

Cardinal Romulus Contarini...............................created by John J. Miller

Dr. Bradley Finn.........................................created by Melinda Snodgrass

Featuring:

Jay “Poppinjay” Ackroyd............................created by George R.R. Martin

John “The Highwayman” Bruckner...........created by George R.R. Martin

Father Squid.........................................................created by John J. Miller

Daniel “Yeoman” Brennan...................................created by John J. Miller

The Living Gods........................................created by Gail Gerstner-Miller

Usher, Magda, and Curtis Grubbs.......................created by John J. Miller

The Witness (The Asshole)..................................created by John J. Miller

Alejandro Jesus y Maria C de Baca.....................created by John J. Miller

The Jokka Bruddas................................................created by John J. Miller

Sascha Starfin.......................................................created by John J. Miller

Blood and Buck....................................................created by John J. Miller

With:

Josh McCoy...............................................created by Gail Gerstner-Miller

Peter Pann..................................................created by George R.R. Martin

Jennifer “Wraith” Maloy-Brennan........................created by John J. Miller

Elmo Schaeffer......................................................created by John J. Miller

Special Guest Appearance:

Cole Porter

CHAPTER TWO

New York City: Tomlin International Airport

CHAPTER THREE

Las Vegas, Nevada: Mirage Auditorium

CHAPTER FOUR

Las Vegas: The Mirage

CHAPTER FIVE

New York: Heading North on Route 17

JOHN J. MILLER

CHAPTER SIX

New Hampton, New York

CHAPTER SEVEN

New York City: Jokertown Clinic

CHAPTER EIGHT

In the air to Branson, Missouri

CHAPTER NINE

Peaceable Kingdom: Barnett’s Office

CHAPTER TEN

The Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

APOCALYPSE