Wild Cards: Death Draws Five

by John J. Miller; George R. R. Martin

  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.