Wild Cards [07] Dead Man's Hand (41 page)

The footsteps got louder. Jay squirmed along the couch, his useless hands still bound behind his back, and tried to get a good look into the next room.

Hiram Worchester stepped into the basement.

Jay blinked. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating. Then he gathered all the strength he had in him and screamed.
"Here!
Hiram, I'm back here!"

Hiram's head snapped around. Charm lurched to his feet and moved slowly out of the shadows. "Watch out!" Jay yelled.

He heard Ezili laughing.

Hiram was carrying a suitcase, huge and black, closed with three bright brass hinges. It was so large it was almost a trunk, but he carried it as easily as a normal man might carry a briefcase, and Jay realized he had made it light. Charm took it from him and set it on its end, reverently. Six hands began working simultaneously on the latches.

Jay Ackroyd went cold all over.

Hiram looked at him across the length of the basement. The ace looked rumpled and tired, his impeccably tailored suit stained with sweat. Jay met his eyes; they were full of pain, and shame, and something that might have been terror. He looked as though he was going to cry. When he raised a hand in a gesture that had grown all too familiar to Jay and rubbed at something on the side of his neck, Ackroyd wanted to cry himself.

Sascha stepped into view beside Hiram, his head moving slowly from side to side in tiny birdlike motions as his telepathy tested the waters. It was safe; Sascha nodded. "Open it."

Charm opened the suitcase.

Inside was a young girl, no more than four or five. She was tiny, fair-skinned, blond, naked. And smiling.

Clinging to her in an obscene embrace was a thing that looked like a cross between an aborted fetus and the biggest maggot Jay had ever seen. Its mouth was pressed to the side of her neck, and in the sudden quiet Jay could hear faint sucking sounds.

But its eyes were alive and alert. They found Jay in the darkness and considered him hungrily.

My nightmare, Jay thought wildly. He almost expected it to howl. Warmth spread across his thighs as his bladder let go.

"He is very afraid, master," Sascha said.

"Later I will taste his fear," the little girl replied. She climbed awkwardly from the suitcase and put a dainty hand on Charm to steady herself. She had a voice out of a Shirley Temple movie, but the words belonged to the thing on her back.

"Hiram," Jay pleaded. "Do something."

"There's nothing to be done, Jay," Hiram Worchester said softly. "I'm sorry"

Jay twisted helplessly against his bonds, trying to wrench his hands free. It was useless. He couldn't even
feel
his hands; for all he knew, they had fallen off an hour ago.

"They are strong, master," Ezili said. "Both aces," Sascha confirmed.

Hiram looked as though he was going to say something. Instead he turned to stare at a wall. Jay called out to him. "Make a fucking fist, Hiram. These guys are nothing compared to you. Pile on the weight until the goddamn leech is a thin film on the floor!"

"You don't understand," Hiram said. "Ti Malice is my master. I couldn't live without his kiss. How could I hurt him?" His huge body shook. "I could ... never... hurt him."

"I will try the boy first," the little girl announced.

If Blaise heard or understood, he gave no sign. They came into the room one by one; the girl first, with the creature Hiram had called Ti Malice glistening against her flesh, then Sascha, Ezili, the centipede, even Charm and the others. Only Hiram remained back in the other room. Blaise stared up at them blankly, then seemed to wake, as if from a deep sleep. "No!" he shouted, scrambling back across the filthy mattress, as far from Ti Malice as he could go. It wasn't far enough. "No, please."

"Interesting," the girl said. "I can feel it touching the mount's mind, trying to push her away." Stunted vestigial limbs stirred feebly as Ti Malice prepared to move to a new host.

"Not the girl," Jay screamed, "the thing on her back." Blaise gave him one quick, desperate glance, and in that moment, Jay truly knew the meaning of fear.

"Hold him for me," Ti Malice told Charm with the mouth of its child. The huge joker shambled forward.

The boy's violet eyes went back to Ti Malice and narrowed in a last desperate act of courage as his mind reached out for the parasite's.

Then Blaise began to scream.

4:00 P.M.

Brennan peered through the peephole when the doorbell rang. It was Fadeout, looking bothered and impatient. Brennan smiled and opened the door.

"All right, Quinn," Fadeout said as he stomped into the entranceway to the Magic Kingdom, "what's all this ... about ... ?"

His voice faded as he spotted Brennan standing before him, and so did he. But Brennan was ready.

He slammed the door behind the ace, and as Fadeout disappeared, Brennan threw the contents of the metal canister he'd been holding right at him. A fine white powder fluffed out from the container, coating Fadeout from head to toe and sprinkling the floor all around him.

Fadeout blinked astonished eyes, and sneezed. His tongue came out and licked the corner of his mouth. "Jesus Christ!" he exploded. "That's cocaine!"

Brennan nodded.

"Do you know how much money you just threw at me? Jesus Christ! We're talking millions!"

Brennan dropped the canister and drew and aimed his .38 right between Fadeout's eyes. "We're talking dead," he said flatly.

Fadeout backed away with enough white powder clinging to him to make him look a six-foot-tall sugar donut. "You're angry," he said to Brennan.

"You're right," Brennan said. "Calm me down."

"What do you want?"

"Chrysalis's diary." Brennan gestured with his gun. "Or your head, either one. I figure you've read it already. I figure that I can find Deadhead somewhere. I figure he's hungry"

Fadeout barely suppressed a shudder at the mention of Deadhead, the psychotic ace who could access people's memories by eating their brains.

"Well, okay, I guess we can come to some kind of accommodation. It's at my apartment. We can go and pick it up-"

"You can call and have it delivered."

"That's fine, too."

"This way." Brennan gestured with his gun, and Fadeout walked ahead of him, slowly and carefully. "In here," Brennan said.

He led the way to Quinn's combination boudoir and rumpus room, where Quinn himself was already installed in the chair that Brennan had once been held captive in.

"Bummer," Quinn said when they entered the room. He apparently was off his 'lude low and his brain was functioning somewhat normally.

Fadeout fixed him with a steady glare. "We'll talk later," Fadeout said.

"Sit there," Brennan ordered.

Fadeout sat on a chair next to Quinn, and Brennan tossed him a straitjacket he'd found among Quinn's collection of bondage devices. Fadeout slipped it on wordlessly, then Brennan awkwardly tied him into it. To make doubly sure, he further tied Fadeout into the chair using some leather restraints that were also part of the Eskimo's unusual collection.

"Now, about that call," Brennan said.

Fadeout, who by now had given up all pretense at invisibility, grumbled, but did as he was told.

Brennan sat and watched the two as they waited for the delivery to be made. Once or twice Fadeout tried to start a conversation by offering apologies and excuses, but Brennan was having none of it. A look at his face was enough to shut Fadeout up.

Finally the doorbell rang, and Brennan went to answer it. A Werewolf in a Mae West mask was at the door. He handed Brennan the leather-bound journal and looked at him expectantly.

"That's it," Brennan told him. "You're not a delivery boy. You don't get a tip."

The disappointed Werewolf went down the driveway as Brennan went back into Quinn's bedroom.

"Well, it's been delivered," Fadeout said. "How about letting us go?"

Brennan turned to Quinn. "You have servants?"

"Yeah, man. Sunday's their day off."

"So they'll be back tomorrow?" Quinn nodded.

"They'll let you loose then," he said, and turned to go.

"Okay by me," Quinn said. "Guess I'll cook some acid and meditate on the lessons I learned today."

Fadeout, though, was not so phlegmatic. "Hey, Cowboy!" he called. "Let me loose!"

Brennan shook his head. "Don't push it. You're lucky I'm not leaving you dead."

"Come on!" Fadeout implored, but Brennan just kept walking. "You bastard!" Fadeout yelled, and then he broke into shrill, mocking laughter. "You think you're so damn smart! You'll see what good that stupid book does youl"

Brennan kept walking and left the house, leaving its door open, hoping against all odds that some burglars would come by and empty it. He stopped before Fadeout's brand-new BMW and decided to take it back to the city. He thought about Fadeout's mocking words as he hot-wired the car, and his curiosity compelled him to open the journal.

As he scanned the pages, he realized that in a sense Fadeout was right. There was not a single fact, a single piece of concrete data in the whole book. It was a personal journal where Chrysalis had kept her thoughts, where she wrote in clear, plain, feeling words about her doubts, fears, and anxieties.

Brennan turned to the entry for the day, well over a year and a half ago, when he had offered her his protection and love and she'd turned him down. That was the last day he had seen her alive.

"What," she had written, "am I so afraid of? I'm not afraid to show my hideous deformity to the world every day-in fact I revel in the discomfort my appearance causes, in the revulsion it evokes. I have to live with it every day; so should everyone else."

"I make men make love to my ugliness as the price for the information they seek. Why can't I give myself to one who might love me for myself? Is it fear? Fear that he doesn't really care, that he's using me, that he'll drop me the moment he achieves all he wants?"

"I'm such a coward."

"Good-bye, my archer, I shall miss you. I shall miss what might have been between us."

The journal hung loosely in Brennan's hands. He didn't want to read any more. He hadn't the right. No one had. He only skimmed the last few entries to make sure they contained nothing that could possibly relate to her death. Then he took the cigarette lighter out of Fadeout's brand-new BMW and burned the journal to ashes there on Quinn's thick, green lawn.

"So fresh," Blaise said. "Intense. Exquisite."

He was naked on the mattress, Ezili spread out beneath him, cocoa-colored thighs spread, her legs locked around his waist as he thrust into her heat. She was covered with a fine dew of perspiration, and she screamed every time the boy pushed into her.

"Slowly, my precious one," Blaise commanded, but of course it wasn't him at all, it was the creature that clung to him like a pale white leech, its mouth pressed to his neck, its tiny eyes closed so it might better enjoy the sensations flooding through the boy's body. "This mount has never known a female," it said. "It grows very excited. Slowly, Ezili-je-rouge, slowly."

Obediently, Ezili slowed beneath them. She showed her teeth when she laughed. "I will make it last," she promised. Her fingers reached up and played with the boy's nipples.

Jay turned his face away from the tableau and found Hiram Worchester standing above him. The huge ace looked as anguished and helpless as Jay had ever seen him. "Untie me," Jay whispered. "Now, while they're occupied."

Ezili was screaming again, her voice husky with pleasure. For a long time, Hiram Worchester said nothing. There was only the wet, angry sound of flesh on flesh, and Charm's guttural singing from the next room. Finally Hiram turned away and walked off without saying a word.

"Now!" Ti Malice said in Blaise's voice. The boy's body jerked in orgasm. Ezili's legs tightened around him, and she laughed.

5:00 P.M.

Jennifer was awake when Brennan returned to Father Squid's. She and the priest were playing chess. When she saw him, she stood and threw her arms around him and kissed him, then held him at arms' length. "Why did you let me sleep through all the excitement? You almost got yourself killed without me!"

"Almost," Brennan agreed. He threw himself down on the sofa and sighed deeply.

"What's the matter?" Jennifer asked.

Brennan shook his head. "It's all gone. I've used up all the possible clues. There's nothing left to investigate. Bludgeon, Oddity, Wyrm, Morkle, Quasiman. None of them did it. Her journal was no help. Her... files ... have been burned. Everything and everyone else has vanished into thin air. Sascha, Ezili, her master. . ."

Jennifer sat down beside him and laid her hand on his cheek.

"Is there no one else to question?" Father Squid asked. Brennan shook his head wearily. "I don't think so, Father."

"There's me," a small voice peeped.

Everyone turned to see one of the homunculi come out shyly from behind the couch.

"How long have you been there?" Father Squid asked. "Awhile. I was watching. There is nothing else I can do."

"Can you help?" Brennan asked, desperate for any information. "Have you heard of any of those names?"

"Ezili," the homunculus said. "I've heard that name."

"Yeah," Brennan said. "A lot of people have. Only no one knows where she is."

"Perhaps she's at the loft."

"Loft?" Brennan said, suddenly sitting upright on the sofa.

"Yes. When Sascha started acting strange, the Lady wanted to know about this woman he was seen with. We followed her to a loft near the East River. Two of my brothers went there, but they never came back."

"Do you remember this address?" Brennan asked in a low voice.

"I think so," the homunculus said.

Jennifer looked at Brennan. "You're not going alone this time," she said.

Brennan nodded. It was only a few hours until dark.

"I'll make it get up and do a little dance," Blaise had said when he'd first seen Charm in Piedmont Park. The memory had still been there, in the back of the boy's mind, and his master had found it and been amused.

Charm had been dancing for almost forty minutes now. One of the pairs of legs, attached to the female body in the middle, had stopped moving twenty minutes ago, but the rest of the joker continued its grotesque shuffle.