“My pleasure, John.” He looked around. “Where am I, anyway?”
“You’re in the body of a young lady named Cameo. She was able to call you back by holding your harmonica.”
Lightning looked down at it, held in her small white hands. “You live in a strange world, John Nighthawk.”
Nighthawk laughed. “You don’t know the half of it, Lightning. I’m a hundred and fifty years old now. In my time men have walked on the moon and visited the planets of another star. Men can fly. They can read your mind. They can turn invisible and disappear. They can do most anything except bring peace to the world.”
Lightning shook his head. “Then I’m glad I’m where I am and you’re here. You was always one for stirring things up, John. I was the quiet one.”
They sat in silence for a moment like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in decades enjoying an unexpected meeting.
Then Nighthawk asked, “What’s it like, Lightning, where you’re at now?”
Lightning looked at him and smiled. “I can’t rightly say, John. It’s like I don’t know anything past the time my heart stopped beating, but there’s dreams, like, I can almost remember. Dreams of a place that feels like home.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“That’s all I can say.”
Nighthawk nodded. It was enough. He knew now that he hadn’t destroyed his friend’s soul all those years ago. If he had, Cameo would never have been able to call it back from wherever it was now.
“You got to get back right away?” Nighthawk asked.
Lightning Robert Nash considered. “I can sit awhile. Play some tunes.”
“That’d be nice,” Nighthawk said.
“You know this one,” Lightning said, and put the mouth organ to his lips and started to blow “Sweet Home Chicago.”
John Nighthawk clapped his hands and sung in a sweet baritone that age had not dulled.
Those who heard them faintly through the walls of Nighthawk’s small house were mesmerized by the music. It sounded like nothing they’d ever heard before, as if it were being played by spirits, or perhaps angels.
Las Vegas
Ray spent the afternoon with a special flying SWAT squad investigating Butcher Dagon’s progress through Las Vegas, which was marked by a tidal wave of unsubstantiated rumor and a smaller trail of very substantiated bodies spread across the city in no discernible pattern.
The SWAT team guys were all right, but Ray would have felt better if they’d had at least some other wild carders in the field who had some useful powers. It turned out, however, that the Las Vegas PD was not exactly on the cutting edge when it came to hiring non-nats. Not that the telepaths pulled off casino patrol by Captain Martinez didn’t have their uses.
The command center that Martinez set up to deal with the Dagon situation got over five hundred tips in the first four hours, thanks mainly to Ray’s suggestion to publicize the killer ace’s escape as widely as possible. It was hard to separate the few clearly authentic sightings from cases of mistaken identity from the ravings of the lunatic fringe, but the telepaths helped. They were able to immediately discredit the obvious loonies and attention-seekers, but plenty of dead ends were left that had to be investigated.
The widespread publicity also led to a series of unfortunate gaffes. Six portly tourists were mistaken for Dagon and arrested before they could be vetted and cleared by the telepaths. Two other innocents were assaulted by irate vigilante bands, one in a cheap dive off the strip, the other in a gay bar that was having teddy bear day. Fortunately neither were seriously injured.
Ray and the SWAT guys, backed up by experienced homicide detectives, investigated four bodies that were found with Dagon’s M.O.—excessively brutal violence—literally stamped all over them, but by the time the bodies had been discovered the crime scenes were cold. There were no witnesses, no clues as to Dagon’s current whereabouts.
Around sunset a fifth body was found behind an abandoned 7-11 in a poorer section of the city. It had been stuffed between the back seat and the floor of a vehicle that had been left in the alley behind the deserted building, the keys still in the ignition.
“What’s bothering me,” Ray said to the SWAT team commander,
“is, what is Dagon thinking? There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to his activities. Yeah, he’s out of jail, he’s on the run, but what’s he trying to accomplish here? What’s his ultimate goal in all this wandering around?”
“Maybe he’s changing his hiding spots,” the SWAT guy said. “But he can’t stay hidden forever, especially if he keeps littering the city with bodies. He must have some kind of goal in mind—maybe he’s trying to reach a safe house. Maybe someplace where he can connect with his gang again.”
Ray nodded. He looked thoughtfully at the back of the 7-11. It was boarded up and graffiti-ed to Hell and back. “You may be right,” he said, strolling toward the structure.
He tried the rear door. It was unlocked. He looked at the SWAT lieutenant, who stared back, and then silently waved his arms to his men to gain their attention. Ray opened the door slowly, and from inside the structure came the sound of some animal howling a long, drawn-out, lingering greeting. It sounded almost human.
“Jesus Christ,” Ray said. He threw open the door, and looked inside the abandoned store.
It was a dusty and dirty confusion of toppled shelves, of empty refrigerated drink banks, of merchandise racks tossed in untidy piles. And on the far wall was a door. It wasn’t a normal door. It was just a black-semi circle imposed upon the wall which once held shelves laden with motor oil and pet food and pork rinds. A couple of men were walking right through the blackness, disappearing as if they’d been cut in half, but seemingly unconcerned by what should be a discomfiting experience.
They looked back at Ray as he came through the door, and one of them shouted, “Jesus Christ! It’s that Ray fucker!” before he plunged further onward and disappeared.
A disconcertingly human-looking dog, or maybe a disconcerting canine-looking human, was standing next to the gateway. He was held by another man on a leash, and he was fawning over Butcher Dagon, who was in his human form. Dagon looked less jolly than usual. His clothes were tattered and bloodstained, and he was pushing disgustedly at what Ray now realized was a particularly unfortunate-looking joker, saying, “Down, Blood, down.”
He, too, turned to look at Ray. He didn’t look happy at Ray’s sudden appearance.
“Your ass is mine, Dagon,” Ray said happily. “Again.”
“Move it,” the man holding Blood’s leash said as Ray charged across the room, dodging empty merchandise racks, “you’ve got to go through first before Blood can close the gate.”
“Shit,” Dagon said, and plunged through the blackness, Blood and his handler on his heels.
If Ray had a clear shot across the room, he would have had him. He would have pounced on Dagon before he could disappear. As it was, he had to zigzag around and jump over half a dozen obstacles, and as he reached the far wall Blood’s handler had already dragged the joker through the blackness. Blood’s hindquarters were disappearing. The blackness was starting to dilate shut like the closing of a pupil in a bright flash of light.
Ray heard the SWAT team charging after him. He heard their cries of amazement. He didn’t hesitate. He hurled himself, diving arms outstretched at the shrinking pool of blackness. He went into it head first. The shouts from the SWAT team were cut off as if by a knife. He heard nothing. For a disconcerting moment that might have lasted hours for all he could tell, he saw nothing, neither darkness nor light. He felt nothing, neither coolness nor warmth. He wondered if this was what death was like. If this was the Big Nothing. The sensation, or lack of sensation, of a spirit plunging endlessly through limbo. He was suddenly afraid. This was something that could drive a man mad in little order. To be stuck inside his mind, feeling nothing, forever. He concentrated as hard as he could, questing outward with all his senses. Suddenly he felt a low thrumming
throb, and he realized that it was a single beat of his heart, stretching out impossibly long, its reverberations filling up the universe.
Abruptly, it ended.
He fell on his face on grass and dirt. It was dark, nighttime, wherever he was. Air felt cool and soothing on his skin. His knee hurt a little from where he’d landed right on a sharp-edged pebble. He breathed a sigh of relief. He was back again, somehow, in the real universe.
He looked up at the circle of men who stared down at him with varying degrees of disbelief on their faces. Butcher Dagon. The man and his leashed joker. Three guys with guns.
All right! Ray thought joyously. And he got to work.
A quick-as-a-cat leg-sweep brought down two of the men. He swarmed over them, punching and kicking as Dagon ran off into the night. As the third jerked his rifle into line, Ray yanked it away from him and tossed it away over the small, rustic building that was at their back. The man tried to run, but Ray snagged his ankle before he could take a step, and pulled him down, kicking and screaming and clawing at the dirt. Ray bounced his head once off the ground and he shut up.
Ray got to his feet. The deformed joker cringed before him, huddled against the man holding his leash. “Don’t hurt Blood none, mister,” the handler said. “It ain’t none of his fault what went on.”
“What the Hell is he?” Ray asked.
“He’s an ace, Blood is,” the man said, nodding vigorously. “He can open gates, like, to connect places what are far away from each other. Bring them next door, like. Only,” the man shrugged helplessly, “he ain’t too smart. It ain’t his fault we fell in with bad men.”
“It’s your fault, then?” Ray asked. He stepped closer to the two and Blood whimpered piteously.
“It is,” the man said. “It is my fault.” He put his hand out in a gesture as piteous as Blood’s whimpering. “You don’t know these people, mister. Yeah, I got ourselves mixed up with them. I’m trying to look out for the boy. I’m his brother.” He put his hand down on his Blood’s head, protectively. “I got us working for them, which was a sure enough mistake. These people are mean, mister, I mean mean.”
“Yeah, well, so am I.”
The man nodded. “I know, mister. They’re afraid of you. They truly are.”
That made Ray feel at least a little better. “Well, where the Hell are we, anyway?” he asked.
“Some place called New Hampton,” the man said, and Ray almost did a double take at his revelation.
“The camp?” Ray asked. “The camp where John Fortune is hiding out?”
The man nodded vigorously.
“How they Hell did they discover that the kid was here?”
The man shook his head. Blood, sensing that the mood of the conversation was shifting, tried to smile. “I don’t know. They don’t tell me shit. Just, have Blood take us here, have Blood take us there. You’d think it was easy on the fellow for all they put us through—”
“We all got problems,” Ray said flatly. “Focus on mine.”
“Yessir.”
“The boy’s here?”
“Yessir.”
“They’ve come to get him again?”
“Yessir.”
“Why, for Christ’s sakes?”
“Well, that’s just it. The Allumbrados think he’s the Anti-Christ whom they have to bind in chains if the real Jesus Christ is to come to restore his Kingdom on Earth.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Yessir.”
Ray didn’t bother to explain that he was just exclaiming, not questioning. Though, in a way he was. This was no time, though, to sort through dubious theology. There’d be time for that later. Maybe.
“How many men have they got?” Ray asked.
“About twenty, counting me’n—”
“Aces?”
“Well, there’s Blood—”
“I know that,” Ray said impatiently.
“—And now Dagon, of course. The Younger Witness—”
“Younger Witness?” Ray repeated.
“Yeah, there’s two Witnessess to Revelations. They’re brothers—”
Ray nodded. “One’s big and blonde—”
“The other’s dark and skinny.”
“Right,” Ray said grimly. “I’ve seen the blonde one in action. He the younger one?”
The man nodded.
“Any more aces?”
The man shrugged. “Nighthawk and his team are supposed to be here, but the Cardinal couldn’t find Nighthawk. He was real peeved about that—”
A cascade of gunfire echoed through the still night, waking it up. Ray turned toward the rolling thunder of sound like a dog on point, practically quivering with eagerness. He turned back to Blood and his brother.
“All right,” he said. “Stay out of this. Get out if you can. But stay out of my way. You’re only getting one warning.”
Blood’s brother nodded. “Yessir. Thank you sir.”
“Don’t thank me,” Ray said, before he vanished into the night. “Just obey me.”
And then he was gone.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
New Hampton, New York
Jerry was in the administration office drinking coffee with the boys from the agency when Sascha Starfin, the blind telepath, suddenly put his mug down. There was just an unbroken expanse of skin where his eyes should have been.
“What is it?” Jerry asked.
“Men approaching,” he said. “Ten or so. They want the boy.”
Damn it, Jerry swore to himself. “How the Hell did they track us down so fast?”
Peter Pann, the immaculate Englishman, shook his head. “Damned if I know. But we can worry about that later. Get the boy. Vanish.”
“We’ll hold them,” Elmo Schaeffer said. He was about four feet tall and almost as wide. He was strong, even for a wild carder, but Jerry was not sanguine. A blind telepath, a strong dwarf, and a man who could call upon tiny little fairies that he called “tinks” to do his bidding.
Somehow it just didn’t seem like enough.
But Jerry didn’t waste time arguing. He slipped through the back door, keeping low to the ground and moving fast into a copse of trees. From there it was a short shot to the guest cabin where John Fortune was still resting after his ordeal of the past couple of days. He made the trees and looked out back toward the admin building. A squad of armed men had converged on it. Gunfire rattled the night and Jerry worried about the men inside, all of whom he’d worked with for years, all of whom were friends.
It was a tough business, Jerry thought, but the customer always had to come first.
And then he ran into a brick wall.
Fingers like steel cables grabbed him from behind, whirled him around. His eyes went wide with astonishment. His lips formed the word “Ray!” but before he could say anything a punch exploded like a sledgehammer in his gut and the only thing holding him up were the fingers from Ray’s left hand digging like claws into his shoulder.
His lips worked frantically but no sounds, other than a wheezing grunt, came from his mouth. Ray was winding up for another blow and all Jerry could do was shake his head feebly, his eyes wide and horrified as it descended like a thunderbolt.
Somehow, at the last instant, Ray pulled it. Most of it, anyway. It still rocked Jerry’s mid-section and he felt like puking. He held on grimly, because he knew that the last thing he wanted to do was throw up all over Billy Ray. It might, in fact, be the last thing he would ever do.
“What’s the matter, Dagon,” Ray sneered. “Can’t take it all of a sudden?”
Somehow Jerry sucked air into his laboring lungs. “Nuh-nuh Dag’n,” he wheezed.
Ray looked at him skeptically.
“Jer-jer-ry.”
Ray frowned.
Shit, Jerry thought. All those identities, all those names were really catching up to him. For a moment he couldn’t remember the name that Ray knew him by. It had blown out of his brain like the air from his lungs. He forced another shuddering breath do
wn his trachea. It hurt like Hell. “Cray-ton,” he managed to gasp.
Ray’s eyebrows went up. “Creighton? The kid’s bodyguard?”
Jerry nodded weakly.
“Jesus, man,” Ray said, “it is you. That’s how you managed to get away with the kid. By mimicking Dagon.”
Jerry nodded again, relief in his eyes.
“Hey, man, I’m sorry.”
“All right,” Jerry wheezed. “Breath coming back. Can stand now.”
Ray let him go and he stood bent over, his hands on his knees. Sounds of commotion came to them from the cabin.
“What’s going on?”
“Cabin attacked by Dagon’s men,” Jerry said. “Our men trying to hold them off.”
“Where’s the boy?” Ray asked.
“I was going to him.”
“All right,” Ray said. “I’ll go help them hold off Dagon’s goons. Dagon himself is back, too, by the way. I saw him run off a few minutes ago. You vanish into the woods with the boy. We’ll find you, eventually.”
Jerry nodded.
“Can you walk?”
Jerry nodded again, and took a step, gingerly.
“All right,” Ray said. “Good luck.”
Jerry waved back as Ray ran toward the sounds of conflict. All right, Jerry thought. All right. All I have to do is walk. And breathe.
The first few steps were agony, but his breath soon came back and all he had to deal with was the rolling waves of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him with every step. Somehow he fought it down and made his way to the guest cabin where it was still and dark.
He entered quietly and went to John Fortune’s bunk. There was no need to turn on a light, because the kid’s face, arms, and hands were glowing softly like a beacon in the night as he slept fitfully.
John Fortune had had a quiet day, only getting up once to eat. Jerry didn’t want him to leave the cabin, and he was glad when the kid didn’t argue. It wasn’t surprising that he was feeling a little down after his long ordeal. He was also running a temperature. Maybe he’d picked something up in the Hellhole they’d imprisoned him in, but all in all he was in pretty good shape. He just needed a little rest. Which he wasn’t going to get tonight.
Wild Cards: Death Draws Five Page 18
