******
New York City: Tomlin International Airport
When you return home after a sixteen-year absence and no one is there to greet you and there is no place for you to go, have you really come home after all?
The question ran through Fortunato’s mind in an endlessly repetitive loop like a not very difficult koan as he and Downs flew across the Pacific. There was little else to occupy him. He watched a thread of drool gather at the corner of Downs’ mouth as the reporter slept soundly in the first class seat next to him. Watching spittle drip down Downs’ chin was preferable, he soon discovered, to watching the movies available on the individual screens set into each of the admittedly comfortable seats.
The technological advances that Fortunato had missed out on while at the monastery were amazing, but unfortunately could do nothing about the quality of the movies they delivered. He watched about twenty minutes as some idiot named Jim Carrey cavorted like a fool as he played an ace with God-like powers. The best thing he could use his abilities for were turning his piece of crap car into a high-powered sports job and add a few inches to the circumference of his girlfriend’s already quite suitable breasts.
It would have been laughable if it wasn’t so unhysterically bathetic.
Downs awoke right before they landed in LA for the transcontinental leg of their seemingly unending journey. Unfortunately, his company proved little better than Jim Carrey’s.
The hours finally caught up with Fortunato and he fell asleep before they crossed the Midwest. He dreamed he was an ace again. All the women he’d once known—Caroline, Veronica, Peregrine, and many of the rest—paraded before him. He used his powers to increase their breast size to mammoth proportions. They all thanked him profusely before they left him alone and feeling utterly isolated. He awoke sweating as they landed at Tomlin International.
“Welcome home, Fortunato,” Downs said with a grin as the plane taxied to the gate.
But Fortunato felt nothing, nothing but empty.
Las Vegas: The Mirage Auditorium
A hideous staccato roar shattered the air like a hammer striking multiple metallic gongs in precise rhythmic succession. The Angel had no idea what caused the awful sound. She looked out on the stage horrified as one of the Living Gods floating above the stage crashed bleeding on Kitty O’Leary’s desk. The blonde anchorwoman sat frozen in her chair with a stunned expression on her face as the Living God writhed and bled all over her.
Siegfried and Ralph, accompanied by a pair of leashed tigers, had just been introduced to the audience. They stopped before O’Leary’s desk. Their cats roared in sudden fear, added to the growing commotion.
John Fortune and Peregrine sat on a sofa adjacent to the desk. The boy looked out into the darkness of the auditorium with a puzzled expression. Peregrine jumped to her feet, wings widespread, her face that of a bird of prey. She stepped in front of her son as another blast exploded out of the dark auditorium’s depths.
The Angel suddenly realized that a hail of bullets were screeching stageward, striking Peregrine and stitching a bloody line across her chest and hurling her back against her son as he sat stunned on the sofa. The sofa tipped over, spilling both backwards. Kitty O’Leary, her pert anchorwoman’s face spattered by a fine spray of Peregrine’s blood, started to scream in mindless terror, her piercing shrieks louder than tiger roars or gun blasts. The Living God fell off O’Leary’s desk and tried to crawl away. O’Leary’s screams were echoed by some audience members as a third wave of bullets hammered the air.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Ray blasphemed.
The Angel was too stunned to reprimand him. Ray moved before she could even gather her wits. She looked wildly at Creighton, but he was only a couple of steps behind Ray as they ran out onto the stage. Ray leaped crazily into the darkness beyond the lights while Creighton headed for the shocking tableau at center stage.
The Angel was completely unused to such chaos. What to do? she thought desperately, what to do? Her heart pounding with wild uncertainty, she followed Ray into the dark and saw men with guns running down the aisles. They seemed to be everywhere. The Angel couldn’t be sure how many there were. Ray didn’t seem to care.
She couldn’t tell what had happened to the first one, the one in the lead. He was already jack-knifing backward, flopping oddly like a broken doll as he flew through the air. Ray had his gun. He turned to glare at the Angel as she landed next to him on the auditorium floor and despite the fact that her heart was as a lion’s in the service of her Lord; she flinched at the expression on his face. It was like when she’d dropped the ice cream on his suit, only horribly, terribly more so. It was worse in that now, underneath it all, he was smiling.
“Can you use this?” he asked her. She shook her head curtly. She’d never fired a gun in her life. She didn’t like them. She didn’t need them. “Then fuck it,” he said, smashing the rifle’s stock to pieces against the floor, and beaning another assassin with the barrel as somewhere a tiger roared and people screamed as the audience tried to surge out of the auditorium, unconsciously hindering the gunmen from gaining the stage.
“On the frigging floor!” someone shouted after letting lose another wild burst of gunfire. “Get on the frigging floor or we’ll frigging shoot you all!”
Anger suddenly burned through the Angel’s breast, making her forget all her bewilderment and uncertainty. Whoever these men were, they were threatening the lives of innocents, and this she could not allow.
She lifted her arms to Heaven. “Save my soul from evil, Lord,” she prayed, willing it to come to her in her time of need, “and heal this warrior’s heart.”
And it did.
The fiery sword appeared in her hands. With a four-foot blade licked by flames from its plain cross hilt to its blunt tip, it was a weapon that could be wielded only by an ace stronger than most nats. The flames burning up and down its length lit the Angel’s face with an almost Hellish glow as she glanced swiftly about. It was difficult to see what exactly was happening, but Ray was spinning like a dervish and the gunmen were retreating before him. Some were out of his reach, and one of those was aiming at the figures clustered at center stage. She lunged, swinging her sword, and the fiery blade chopped through the gun’s barrel like a glowing knife through butter. The gunman turned to stare at her, and the Angel was gratified by the expression that she saw on his face. He slunk away. She turned to look for another victim, and she saw him: The blonde-haired man she’d seen in the Waldorf-Astoria’s parking garage, strong and tall and as beautiful as an angel. He came toward her slowly, smiling confidently. Smugly. He has reason to be smug, the Angel thought. He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
He was big, towering five or six inches over her and outweighing her by at least a hundred pounds. He wore track warm ups and a short sleeved shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and massive chest like silk. Perhaps it was. His arms were muscular, but not grotesque. Just pleasing, the Angel thought. His face was handsome without being pretty, with a strong jaw and high but not delicate cheekbones. His nose was hawk-like, his eyes bluer than seemed possible. His hair was a thick blonde mane that swept in loose coils to his shoulders. His coiffure might have looked dainty on some men, but he was masculine enough to carry it off.
“I am the Witness,” he said to the Angel. “I tell you now. Turn away from the path of unrighteousness, or I will be forced to teach you a lesson.”
“Lesson?” the Angel asked. She released her grip on her sword’s hilt and her weapon vanished. This Witness was unarmed and she had never used her blade against an unarmed man. She smiled to herself. For all his muscles, he had never faced the Angel’s God-given strength before.
“Yes.” His white, even teeth flashed in a dazzling smile. “It is called ‘the kiss.’”
Suddenly she realized that he was close enough to grab her and pull her to him. His grip was strong enough to damage an ordinary woman, but the Angel was not ordinary. As he wrapped his arms around her she could feel the heat radiate off his body in palpable waves. She could smell the scent of him. He wound his right hand in her thick hair and pulled her head back, exposing the strong column of her throat. He bent over her and brought his lips down on hers.
The Angel couldn’t believe the sensations that swept over her body. She wanted him more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. More than The Hand’s approval. More than Heaven itself. She closed her eyes, feeling hot and cold, weak and strong all at once. She wanted to possess him thoroughly and eternally. Her desire flushed her strength from her body as his tongue penetrated her mouth. She had experienced that only once before in her life and her mother had caught her and the boy and had beaten them both with a broom handle. Eventually the boy was able to run away home, but she couldn’t. She was home.
“Angel!” A voice spoke her name from far away, warningly.
She opened her eyes and his face was upon hers, so close that she could barely focus on it. He was smiling. But it wasn’t in joy or with need or even in lust. It was the smile of a conqueror reveling in his superior strength. In his imposition of his will upon another.
The Angel was suddenly horrified. As much as she could never admit it to herself, she had longed for an embrace such as this. Her need was so great as to approach desperation. This man could have been the answer to all her dreams. He was as handsome as she could ever imagine a man to be. His strength matched hers. It had seemed that his desire matched hers as well, but she now realized that they desired two totally different things.
She needed love. If it couldn’t be spiritual, she realized now openly and to her shame, at least it could be physical. Her mother had not succeeded in beating that sin out of her. She had only driven it deep into her soul where it had finally blossomed with undeniable lust.
But the Witness needed only to conquer. To take. To impose his will and then immediately discard. She saw it on his face and read it in his sneering expression and forced embrace. No matter how great her need, the Angel could not countenance this. But did she, she desperately wondered, really have a choice?
She twisted her neck. Her lips slipped away from his, and the Witness looked down at her and laughed, which only confirmed her worst fears. She pushed against him, but he was the strongest man she’d ever encountered. There was no doubt that he was an ace himself. One of her arms was trapped between their chests. The other was pinned against her side by his encircling arm. She could find no leverage to help her break free. He knew this as well, and laughed at her again.
“The Kiss,” he said, “is only the first lesson I’m going to teach you, slut.” Desperately she brought up her knee, trying to smash his groin, but it struck his massive thigh and rebounded. “Every time you strike me,” he said in a curiously tender voice, “I’ll strike you twice. Then I’ll take you, whether you’re conscious or not.”
The Angel clenched her teeth and hit at him again and again with her knee, but he only laughed. She writhed in his grasp like an animal caught in a trap. She’d gnaw her own leg off to escape him, but there was no such easy remedy to her awful situation. She’d been in his embrace for only seconds, but it seemed like an eternity.
“Christ, Witness, score on your own time. Right now we’ve got a bloody job to do.”
The Witness looked up, frowning. It was the jolly little chubby man whom the Angel had also seen in the Waldorf’s underground garage. He frowned himself a little, and suddenly he didn’t seem so jolly.
“Ah, Dagon,” the Witness said sulkily, then when the jolly little man’s expression turned even less jolly, he quickly released the Angel. He looked back at her scowling ferociously. “All right. But I’m not done with you, slut. I’ll see you again, and then I’ll give you what you deserve for tempting a Godly man.”
“Butcher Dagon.” It was the voice that had called out moments before, warning the Angel when she’d been in the Witness’s grasp. Now she recognized it. The three of them turned to see Billy Ray brushing futilely at the bloodstains that had utterly ruined his impeccable suit. “What brings you to these parts?”
The little man was looking jolly again, like everyone’s favorite uncle. He smiled. “You recognize me?”
“Sure,” Ray said. “I’ve seen your picture in the paper a few times. Usually above the caption ‘Crazed Killer Strikes.’”
Dagon laughed. It was a jolly sound, but out of place in the auditorium’s chaotic atmosphere filled with wailing and crying and screaming. “I don’t recognize you, but I think I can identify you by the way you went through our spear-carriers. Billy Ray, isn’t it?”
Ray nodded.
“So,” Dagon said thoughtfully, “somehow the government has become involved. Interesting. Still, you are outnumbered and outgunned.”
“Yet, we’re kicking your asses.”
Billy Ray grinned a mad grin, and Butcher Dagon shook his head and changed.
The thing facing Billy no longer looked chubby or jolly or even remotely human. It stood upright on two thick legs. It had arms encased in slab-like muscle, a bullet head set directly on broad shoulders, and a prehensile tail as long as its body. Dagon’s clothes had vanished along with his human form, either destroyed during his instantaneous transformation or somehow absorbed into his new, thickly pelted body. The Angel couldn’t tell which. She had little experience with shape-shifters.
Dagon’s new body had brindled black and brown fur covering it from head to toe, beady, wild-looking eyes, a long snout full of sharp, gleaming teeth, and keen-looking claws sprouting from his finger and toe tips. His tail whipped back and forth like an angry snake and copious amounts of saliva drooled from his wicked jaws.
“Je-sus,” Ray said emphatically, and Dagon charged.
They collided like smashing meteors, and the ensuing battle was so fast, so frantic, that the Angel could barely discern who was who most of the time and was certainly unsure which one had the upper hand. They tore at each other like enraged wolverines on amphetamines for twelve or fourteen seconds and then broke as suddenly as Dagon’s initial attack.
The transformed ace leaped back six or eight feet and the combatants stood staring at each other, panting and bloody. It was hard for the Angel to say who was worse off. Ray was down to his shoes and underwear and a few shreds of clothing. He was bleeding from too many places to count. While some of the shallow bites and scratches healed right before the Angel’s astonished eyes, a big flap of skin and flesh hung on Ray’s muscled chest and his upper right arm bled profusely from where Dagon had mangled it with his jaws.
Dagon didn’t look much better. One eye was swollen shut and his right arm was dangling uselessly, the shaft of his broken forearm sticking out jaggedly through his torn flesh. The Angel realized that at least some of the blood dripping from Dagon’s slavering jaws was his own, not Ray’s, as the hairy ace spit out some broken fangs.
Ray smiled crazily, and at that moment the Angel wasn’t sure which of the two combatants she feared the most.
“Round two?” Ray asked.
Dagon said something. The Angel couldn’t understand his words, either because of his injuries or perhaps his transformed vocal cords. But whatever he said was angry and vicious.
They hurled themselves again at each other. Ray managed to grab Dagon’s broken arm. He yanked at it and the transformed ace screamed in a disturbingly inhuman, high-pitched whine. The crazed smile was now fixed on Ray’s face like a horror mask as they strove breast to breast, Dagon’s tail whipping around as if it had a mind of its own. It finally struck Ray’s neck, clung, and wrapped around, pulling tight. The Angel could see it sink into Ray’s flesh like a garrote. Ray clenched his teeth and the tendons and muscles in his neck jumped out like granite ridges.
Dagon tried to rake Ray’s stomach with a clawed foot, but the angle between them was wrong. Ray whipped his head back and forth, but Dagon’s tail was tight as a constrictor around his neck. Ray’s face started to turn red, the vein’s bulging out on his neck and forehead. Ray grabbed Dagon’s tail with both hands and Dagon howled with what sounded to the Angel like fiendish glee.
Ray looked horrible. His face was turning even darker. He frantically tried to pry the strangling tail from around his neck, but it was stronger than nylon rope. The Angel started to go to them, but the Witness, who had also been watching with an approving smile on his handsome face, blocked her path and shook his head.
The Angel clenched her fists as Ray stopped prying at Dagon’s tail, grabbed it with both hands and brought it up to his mouth. He lowered his head and bit down, hard, grinding his teeth like a starving dog trying to crush a bone for its marrow.
Dagon screamed again and tried to pull away. Ray continued to gnaw at his opponent’s tail while yanking at it with all his strength. It suddenly parted with an audible snap and Ray catapulted backward, past the Witness. The Angel caught him, staggered, and went to the floor with him on top.
Dagon hopped about like his feet were on fire. His tail whipped like a decapitated snake, spattering gobs of stinking ichor all over. The Angel helped Ray pull the coil of tail away from his throat as Ray gasped greedily for air.
Dagon frothed at the mouth, wildly screaming words that were mostly unintelligible, but which seemed to contain the phrase “Kill you, fucker,” in various combinations throughout. The Angel blushed.
Ray rose to his feet, staggering unsteadily, as if drunk. “Watch out,” he muttered to the Angel, pushing her aside. “The weasel’s coming back for more.”
The Angel couldn’t believe that Ray had strength left in reserve. He met Dagon in mid-charge, but before they could collide Ray launched himself feet first, face up and back parallel to the floor, as if he were a soccer player attempting a bicycle kick and Dagon’s genitalia were the ball.
Dagon screamed as he connected. The force of Ray’s kick propelled him right at the Angel, who wound up and hit him with everything she had on the point of his jaw.
Pain jumped through her hand, ran up her arm, and jangled through her shoulder. Her hand went numb, which was actually something of a relief, as Dagon changed direction again. He flew back towards Ray, hit the floor, rolled at Ray’s feet, and lay there bleeding.
Ray looked at the Angel crazily. “Hey, we’re a team,” he said, but his smile suddenly turned to an even more frightening frown. “But let me tell you something. The next time you pull that blazing pig-sticker out of the sky, I want you to gut that fucking blonde asshole before you put it away again. All right?”
The Angel smiled feebly and nodded.
“Where is that scumbag, anyway?” Ray asked, looking all around.
Before either of them could spot the Witness, every light in the auditorium suddenly cut out. The room turned pitch black. Ray swore, blundering about in the dark. The Angel stood where she was, counting a slow twenty before the lights on the stage went back on. A handful of seconds went by before the Angel and Ray realized that John Fortune was missing, as was the Witness, and some of the gunmen who had still been conscious when the lights went off.
The taste of failure was a bitter gall in the Angel’s mouth.
J erry had been in tough situations in the past where lives were on the line, but this was almost overwhelmingly desperate. If Ray hadn’t charged onto the stage he might have hesitated for a long time, but when the government ace had leaped into action something in Jerry made him follow Ray into the heart of danger.
It certainly wasn’t his brain. If he’d thought about it at all, he’d have run away from the flying bullets. Whatever it was that made him accompany Ray was something deeper in his make-up. His heart. Perhaps his gut. His reaction was more instinctive than rational. Jerry would have sighed to himself if he’d had the time. He’d always considered himself a smart guy, and this was just crazy.
Ray executed a sharp right and hurled himself into the off-stage darkness. Sudden sounds of fists hitting flesh and bone, the cracking of those bones, and screams of pain, quickly followed. Jerry didn’t follow Ray. Realizing that people on the stage needed help, Jerry passed by Siegfried and Ralph, who were petrified by fear but otherwise unharmed, and headed for Kitty O’Leary’s desk where the hysterical anchorwoman was covered in blood.
“Get your tigers out of here before something terrible happens,” he said to the entertainers as he went by. “Again.”
They glanced at each other and then took his advice and ran, their leashed cats roaring wildly as they bounded after them. Jerry dropped down to one knee when he reached O’Leary’s desk and checked the body propped up against it. It was the male half of the pair of floating Living Gods. Jerry didn’t know his name. Blood pumped sluggishly from a series of horrific puncture wounds in his torso. As Jerry grabbed his wrist to feel for a pulse, the injured man suddenly focused his large, beautiful eyes on Jerry’s face, and said something in Arabic. Jerry looked on helplessly as he vomited a gout of blood and died.
Jerry stood, suppressing a sigh. He didn’t have time for pity. He examined O’Leary quickly for wounds and discovered that none of the blood splashed on her chest and face seemed to be hers.
“Shut up,” he said, and “get down.”
She just kept screaming, so he grabbed her shoulders and shook her. When that didn’t catch her attention, he slapped her, adrenaline making his open-palmed blow a little harder than he’d intended. She shut her mouth and looked at him in amazement and anger flared in her eyes. Jerry was suddenly glad that he looked like tough guy Alan Ladd. It made it all the easier to act the part.
“I said, shut up,” he repeated, putting his hand on the top of her head, “and get the Hell down.”
He shoved hard enough to push her to the floor and she crawled under the stage furniture. That was the safest place for her. He turned away, hoping she’d stay put. He couldn’t waste any more time on her.
More sounds of gunfire and terror came from the auditorium. Ray, and Angel, Jerry supposed, were keeping the bad guys off the stage. At least for the moment. Jerry went swiftly to the overturned sofa where Peregrine huddled over the bloody, unmoving body of her son. He vaulted over the divan and went down to one knee beside her. Her teeth were clenched. She was panting like a hyperventilating dog, or a woman trying to give birth.
“He’s all right,” she gasped out. “Not hurt. Hit his head when the sofa went over. Just knocked out. Be... all... right...”
Her voice started to fade. Jerry took her arm and half lifted her off the boy, wincing at what he saw. A line of slugs stitched sideways across Peregrine’s body from her loins, across her abdomen and chest to her right wing where feathers had been shot away and delicate bones shattered.
“Christ,” he said in a low voice.
It didn’t look good. He stripped his off shirt, ripped it to rags and applied pressure bandages as best he could to what seemed to be Peregrine’s worst wounds. Her only response was to moan feebly. There wasn’t anything else he could do for her, and he realized that Peregrine didn’t have much time left if she didn’t receive immediate medical attention. He turned his attention to John Fortune, thinking that Peregrine really needed his new-found ace abilities. But the kid was still out cold.
What a time to get knocked senseless, Jerry thought. He tried to revive the boy, but the best he could get from him was an unintelligible groan. He could feel a knot on the back of the kid’s skull the size of a golf ball. He must have really slammed his head hard on the floor when the sofa had tipped over on them.
Jerry felt as useless as Rock Hudson in the opening scenes of one of his screwball comedies. He didn’t want to mess around with the kid, in case he had a real head injury. And Peregrine needed expert attention, fast. Someone would have to help. Angel, he thought. Or Ray...
Jerry stood and went swiftly to the edge of the stage, shielded his eyes from the light and looked out just in time to see Ray go mano a mano with a chubby little guy who looked like someone’s favorite older uncle until the guy suddenly turned into something that wasn’t so avuncular. Jerry recognized the transformed man. He was the British killer ace called Butcher Dagon.
Eerily, it seemed as if the world had stopped to watch their breathtaking exhibition of violence. He saw Angel, some stiff who was much too good-looking for his own good, and even a few of the goons with guns as well as some of the crazy-scared onlookers pause to take a breath as Ray and Dagon tore at each other like gladiators from another, much more savage age.
For a moment John Fortune was forgotten. Even Peregrine slipped from his mind until the epic battle ended with the brilliant one-two punch of Angel and Ray cold-cocking the British ace.
Jerry saw the handsome guy climb onto the stage. Some of the surviving gunmen followed him. Fortunately none were near Jerry. He knew that he had only a few moments in which to make the right move. Peregrine was now beyond any help he could give her. There was only the kid, his sacred charge, to consider. He suddenly knew what to do.
He ripped off his clothes and the lights went out as he took on mass.
The auditorium fell into utter darkness. It was all very much like that night back in ‘65 when he’d turned into the Big Ape and sucked enough energy out of his surroundings to start a chain reaction that blacked out New York City and ultimately most of the eastern seaboard.
Energy to mass, as the equation went. This time around, he needed a lot less mass, so he siphoned off a lot less energy. Enough, probably, to blow most of the electric circuits in the auditorium, maybe in all of the Mirage. He welcomed the darkness. It made his task easier.
Jerry knew that he had to work fast. He added pounds of flab to his transformed frame. He didn’t have time to get his features exactly right, so he puffed them up into a pulpy mess. His hands were already bloody, so he smeared them on his face and torso, blurring more detail. He groaned realistically and threw himself down, huddling on his side, his hands over his still-changing face. Someone kneeled next to him.
“Dagon?” an unfamiliar voice asked.
Jerry squinted upwards.
“Wh—who?” he quavered.
“It’s the Witness,” said the handsome guy in a voice decidedly lacking pity. He leaned closer. “I’m surprised you’re already conscious. Man, you got your ass kicked.” The Witness looked up. “Juan—Sam—let the others grab the kid. Come over here and give Dagon a hand,” he said with open contempt. “And for God’s sake, get something to cover him up with. He’s fat and bloody and naked. Come on. Move. Move!”
The last was a general order shouted to everyone as the two men Witness singled out came to Jerry’s side.
“Here you are,” one of them said, slipping a cloak around Jerry with surprisingly gentle hands. “Up you go. Come on, before that asshole Ray finds us hanging around here on the stage.”
Jerry moaned convincingly. They hustled him away, right behind another pair of gunmen who were dragging a limp John Fortune into the wings.
“What about the others?” one of the men supporting Jerry asked as they passed Witness, who was waiting impatiently.
“They knew what they were getting into,” he said shortly. “Let’s get the Hell out of here.”
Jerry kept his face burrowed in the cloak as best he could. He was sure he hadn’t copied Dagon’s features perfectly, but the bruising and swelling and blood that he’d smeared on his face seemed to be an adequate disguise.
The kidnappers, with Jerry and John Fortune in tow, burst out into the sunny parking lot where a van was waiting for them. The two thugs hustled Jerry into the back with six or seven other gunmen, as well as John Fortune, who was only now starting to come around.
The Witness hustled to the front of the van. Its engine was already racing and it started to move before he could slam the passenger-side door shut. They pulled away from the Mirage quickly and immediately headed for the side streets off the strip.
Jerry couldn’t see out of the van’s windows. He didn’t know this part of Vegas —no tourist did—and he was immediately lost. The muscles joked and kidded with macho toughness now that the fight was over, except for the one who cradled his broken arm and endlessly cursed Ray.
They drove for perhaps twenty minutes. Jerry’s mind raced in high gear the entire time, but he was unable to construct a workable plan to escape from the gang. John Fortune groaned awake halfway through the trip. One of the gunmen told him to sit down and shut up, and the kid wisely took his advice. Jerry tried to catch his eye, but Fortune wouldn’t look at him.
Finally they stopped before an abandoned, boarded-up 7-11. The asphalt parking lot shimmered in the summer heat, drooping weeds poking up through the aimless cracks in its surface like dying flowers on the floor of Hell.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Witness ordered.
This guy clearly, Jerry thought, lacked patience. Mystified, Jerry allowed himself to be half-dragged to the convenience store’s front door, which proved to be unlocked. Three men were waiting inside. One had a gun, another held a leash, and the third one wore it.
This last unfortunate was obviously a joker. His body was twisted so that his legs were thick hindquarters, his arms scrawny forelegs. His face had a vaguely canine look, with a snout underslung by a long jaw, no chin, and drooping ears that could have belonged to a hound dog. His skin was unfurred, but sallow, blotchy, and unhealthy-looking. His expression was not intelligent.
“Let’s go, Blood,” his handler said.
The joker looked at him, snuffling eagerly.
“Home, boy. Let’s go home. There’s a nice steak waiting for you. Nice and raw and dripping.”
Blood drooled, grinning idiotically, and walked on four limbs toward the store’s back wall, and then through it in a tunnel that suddenly appeared the instant before his nose would have touched the wall. They all followed him. Jerry was totally mystified, wondering what the Hell was going on.
It was cool and quiet on the other side of the tunnel, which opened into a small room built of naked stone. The room had no windows to the outside and was lit by a single unreachable bulb dangling from a naked fixture in the ceiling. The only door leading out of it was iron, with a tiny barred window. The small chamber smelled of ancient sickness that seemed to have soaked into the very stones of its walls and floor. Jerry didn’t know where they were, but suddenly he was afraid.
Blood howled for his meat.