******
New York City: Jokertown Clinic
The doctor had a white coat, a stethoscope, and the hindquarters of a horse. Palomino, Fortunato thought. Very handsome.
His front end was good-looking, too, with a blondeish, Californian surfer dude cast to it, but underlain with an uncommon strength and thoughtfulness. Fortunato thought that this was a man who had seen a lot, been through a lot, and had paid a price for all the knowledge he’d won from life.
“Bradley!” Digger said, glad-handing the joker doctor. Fortunato had met the reporter on the clinic steps, and Digger had commanded him to “Leave everything to me.” Considering the state that he was in, Fortunato thought that was a good idea. Digger seemed to know the place as well as the people in charge, and it took him only moments to get them up to Finn’s office.
“Good to have you back from Takis,” Digger said to the doctor with what seemed to be a fair amount of sincerity in his voice. “That must have been some exciting trip. You’ll have to tell me all about it.”
Finn seemed more weary than welcoming, but he returned the reporter’s handshake readily enough. “It was, and maybe I will,” Finn said. He glanced inquisitively at Fortunato who’d been silent since they’d been led into his cramped office by a legless joker in a nurse’s uniform. “Right now, I’m kind of busy.”
“Of course,” Digger said. “You always are.”
“Too many patients, too little time,” Finn said.
“Right. Actually, we’re here to see one of them.”
Finn questioned him with a raised eyebrow.
“Peregrine,” Digger said.
The doctor looked at then both. Fortunato returned his gaze steadily, his heart beating unaccountably fast, afraid that Finn would turn them away, afraid that he wouldn’t. “She’s in no condition to be badgered, Digger,” Finn said flatly.
“No, you misunderstand,” Digger said soothingly. He looked at Fortunato. “You two have never met?” he asked.
Fortunato shook his head. “No. I haven’t had the pleasure.”
Digger smiled his customary knowing smirk. “Dr. Bradley Finn,” he said, “this is Fortunato. He’s recently returned to New York from Japan.”
Fortunato could see that Finn was impressed by the mention of his name. Despite having tried to drown his ego for the last decade and a half, he was more than a little pleased that it still did carry weight.
“Fortunato.” Bradley moved around from behind his desk, his bootied hooves clicking hollowly on the carpeted floor. He held out a hand. “It’s very nice to meet you. I’ve read so much about you. Sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
“I’ve been away for a long time,” Fortunato said.
“Well, nice to have you back.”
“Not really,” Fortunato said. He released Finn’s hand. “I wish the circumstances of my return were different.”
“Of course.” The centaur looked thoughtful. “You want to see Peregrine, I understand, but she was severely wounded—”
“I want to know what happened,” Fortunato said. Even to himself his voice sounded dry. Curiously devoid of emotion. But it wasn’t missing, only constrained. He had to dam them all up. He was afraid what would happen if he gave into the feelings burning through his brain.
“She was ambushed while being interviewed about her son’s, er, your son’s, I should say, card turning.”
“Why?” Fortunato asked.
“No one seems to know. Maybe it was a plot to kidnap the boy. He was missing after all the furor died down. But there’s been no ransom demand. They left a score of wounded bystanders. Half a dozen dead.” Finn shook his head at the mystifying cruelty of it all.
Fortunato’s heart started to race again, but he managed to control his voice low. “And Peregrine?” he asked.
“She took more than half a dozen bullets, suffering massive internal injuries and severe wing damage. Frankly, it was fortunate that her husband had immediately arranged her transportation to the clinic. I doubt that they could have dealt with the vagaries of her wild card metabolism in Vegas.”
“She’s going to be all right, though?” Digger asked.
Finn shook his head. “Too early to tell. But she’s got a chance.” Finn gestured, encompassing the extent of his tiny office. “We may not look like much, but the Jokertown Clinic is state of the art when it comes to the treatment of wild carders, even for those suffering from such mundane things as bullet wounds. Even without Tachyon, we’ve got the most knowledgeable doctors in the world. That said, we just don’t know yet about Peregrine. She suffered damage to her internal organs. Part of her liver was pulped. Lost one of her kidneys. The delicate bone structure of one wing was smashed. There’s a serious question as to whether she’ll ever fly again.”
Finn’s calm recital of Peregrine’s injuries made Fortunato feel as if he’d been shot himself. The sickness that burned in his gut because of the deaths of all the people he’d lost over the years came back. It had been gone when he’d been in Japan, but now it was back.
“Can I see her?” he asked.
Finn looked at him thoughtfully. “She’s resting. Maybe sleeping. Her husband’s with her. Just got back into town himself.” He clip-clopped over to his desk and activated the intercom. “Jesse,” he said, “check and see if Peregrine’s awake.” They waited in silence for a few moments until the nurse replied affirmatively. “Okay. Come to my office and escort mister, uh, this gentleman to her room, would you?”
While they waited for the nurse, Finn lectured Fortunato about not tiring her out. Fortunato only half-listened. He was thinking about Peregrine. About the night they had made love and made their son, and Peregrine had supplied Fortunato with enough energy to defeat the murderous Astronomer in combat high in the skies over Manhattan. The next morning Fortunato had left for Japan. He’d seen her only once after that, some months later when she’d come to Japan on the World Health Organization sponsored tour. Occasionally he’d seen her photo in some magazine or newspaper. He’d never seen their son.
The nurse’s face looked relatively human but for the brightly patterned scales that covered it in lieu of normal skin. Her arms were oddly sinuous, almost boneless, and she had too many fingers. She looked at Fortunato curiously, but was professional enough to simply say, “This way, sir.”
As Fortunato followed her out of Finn’s office he could hear the ever-optimistic Digger Downs say, “Now, Dr. Finn, about this spaceship you took back to Earth, I heard that you stopped at many planets along the way—” He heard Finn sigh as if he realized he couldn’t escape Downs’ relentless interrogation, and then they were out of earshot.
The corridor was clean, quiet, and dimly lit. It smelled like a hospital. Not even the burning pungency of strong antiseptic could wipe out the odors of fear and pain and death and, somewhere underneath it all, hope. The nurse opened the door to Peregrine’s private room, one of the few in the clinic, and shut it softly after Fortunato slipped quietly inside.
The room was darker than the hallway outside, and Fortunato’s hypersensitive senses rebelled against the hurt and pain he could discern, not all of which emanated from the bandaged form on the bed attached to a raft of tubes and machines monitoring her heart, lungs, and brain.
A man sat in a chair by the side of the bed. He looked up as Fortunato entered, fear and pain in his eyes. He looked ordinary enough, fairly handsome with blonde hair and a darker beard. He nodded at Fortunato, and stood.
“I’m Josh McCoy.”
Fortunato nodded. He had never seen the man but he knew the name. “I know. I’m—”
“Fortunato.” McCoy said. “I know.”
Fortunato moved to the foot of the bed. “How’s she doing?”
“Sleeping, now. Trying to get some strength back...” McCoy’s voice trailed off as he looked at Peregrine’s quiescent form.
Somehow, seeing her lying there made Fortunato feel inadequate and inept. Like somehow he’d failed her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t with her,” he said, surprising himself as he realized the truth of his statement.
“Not your fault,” McCoy said. “I just wish I’d been there myself.”
Fortunato shrugged. “Probably nothing you could have done, except get hurt. Or killed, maybe.”
McCoy looked at him. “But at least I would have been with her. For her.”
Fortunato frowned. He shouldn’t have to defend himself, he thought, or the decisions he’d made about his life. Not to this man. Not to any man. He was about to reply to McCoy’s veiled accusation when the sounds of movement under crisp sheets came to his ears, and both of the men turned to look at Peregrine.
She’d opened her eyes. They were drugged with pain and morphine, but it seemed she recognize them both. She held up a hand taped to a board with tubes running up to an intravenous drip that Finn had ratcheted up in potency to work with Peregrine’s souped-up metabolism. McCoy sat down in the chair next to her bed and took her hand and put it against his cheek.
“How you doing, darling?” he asked in a low voice.
A ghost of a smile passed over Peregrine’s drawn and tired face where, Fortunato thought, her beauty waited patiently to reveal itself like the sun eclipsed by dark shadows. “Been better,” she whispered. Her eyes wandered across the room and took in Fortunato.
“You’re here,” she said.
“I’m here.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.
She glanced back at McCoy. “John?” she asked.
“He’s—he’s missing, but okay, as far as we know.”
Peregrine made a supreme effort and nodded. She looked again at Fortunato. “What’s this all about?”
That helpless feeling crawled around like a snake, biting Fortunato in the gut. “I don’t know,” he said. “What’s it ever all about? Some nut probably. Some fucking nut. You take care of one. Another takes his place. There’s no shortage of nuts—” Fortunato caught himself. He took a deep breath.
“I’ve never asked you for anything,” Peregrine whispered in words so low and slow that Fortunato could barely hear her. “But find him. Find him and bring him back safe.”
The snake coiled in Fortunato’s gut and clamped down on his intestines with its sharp fangs. He was being sucked into it all again, after almost sixteen years away. But how could he say no to his son’s mother? How could he not go find his son?
McCoy released Peregrine’s hand and stood up. “I’m coming with you.”
Fortunato shook his head. “No.”
McCoy’s fear and pain turned to sudden anger. “Don’t tell me no! You made him—I raised him. I changed his diapers. I helped him learn how to walk and talk. I helped him to grow into a good kid. Where were you all that time, you, you big hero?” McCoy’s voice rose with his anger. “Where were you?”
“Josh...” Peregrine said, reaching out to him.
Fortunato shook his head. “I just... I just don’t want to see anyone else get hurt.”
“He’s right, Josh,” Peregrine said in her soft, pained voice. “He’s made for this.”
I was, Fortunato thought. But that was a long time ago. Now, I just don’t know...
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Fortunato took his leave, but they had already seemed to have forgotten him. McCoy sat next to her, his head against the mattress by her side. Her hand rested on it, so weak it was barely able to stir the strands of his hair. McCoy had earned that place by her side through sixteen years of ceaseless loyalty. Fortunato had tossed it aside.
He left the room, went down the corridor and took a side staircase down to the lobby. He didn’t want to see Finn again. He sure as Hell didn’t want to see Downs. He didn’t really want to be alone either, but he didn’t have much of a choice with that.
He looked out at the street. It was fairly quiet this time at night, but there were still occasional cars, a taxi or two, trucks off on their delivery rounds. Pedestrians went by singly or in groups, without a glance his way. No one knew who he was. Why should they?
His son was out there. He didn’t have a clue where. He didn’t have a clue as to who took him or why they took him or what his condition was. In the old days he might have gone to Chrysalis. She knew everything that happened in this city, most things of import that happened in the world of wild carders. But she was dead. Once he might have gone out of his body and searched for clues himself, but those days, like his powers, were gone. He had thrown them away, just like he’d tossed Peregrine aside. And for what?
“Hey, old man.”
The voice that startled Fortunato out of his reverie was that of Carlos, spokesman for the Jokka Bruddas. He was accompanied by the behemoth with the pustule-ridden face whom Father Squid had called Ricky.
“Where’s the rest of the crowd?” Fortunato asked.
Carlos shrugged. “Don’ worry about them. It’s your skinny old ass that’s in trouble.”
If Fortunato hadn’t recently been hammered by the double emotional blows of Peregrine’s wounding and his son’s kidnapping, he would have been amused. Now he was just angry at these kids for wasting his time.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
Carlos shrugged again. “Don’ get snappy with me, dog, when I’m doin’ you a favor. Father Squid sent us to get you. He didn’t say what the problem was, but he said to get you and bring your ass back to the church andale, baby.”
Fortunato couldn’t imagine what the priest wanted, but knew that it must be important. “All right, let’s go.”
He started down the street, but Carlos grabbed his sleeve.
“This way, esse. We got a drive waiting.”
Following Carlos down the street, he turned left into the alley running alongside a wing of the Clinic, and suddenly thought, Where’s Ricky? He turned around to see the hulk behind him, grinning like a melting wax dummy as his fist descended in a blur.
Fortunato’s last thoughts were, Christ, I am getting too old, and darkness dropped on him like a falling cliff.
The Angel moaned softly as the Witness’s clenched fist opened and caressed her cheek, down along her jaw line. She had always been sensitive there. But she didn’t want him to touch her. Did she?
He stared dreamily into her eyes and said, “Knock, knock. Time to hit the road, Angel.”
She woke up, startled and confused. Billy Ray was standing in the open doorway between their connecting rooms. She realized that she must have left it unlocked when she’d collapsed into bed... how long ago, exactly?
She sat up, pulling the sheet up to her shoulders.
“What time is it?” she mumbled.
“Ten thirty two,” Ray announced crisply.
“I—it was already later then that—”
“In the A.M., sweet cheeks.”
She blinked at the realization that she’d slept so late, and blinked again when she realized that she was naked under the sheet, and Ray was staring at her.
The government ace, dressed in another impeccable suit, looked like he’d just rolled out of bed fresh from an untroubled night’s sleep. The bruises had disappeared from his face and all visible cuts had healed. He came into her room moving apparently without pain, though the Angel noted he moved gingerly when he sat down on the room’s other bed. Any other man she’d ever known would still be in a hospital. He smiled at her as he sat down, with none of the wild ferocity she’d seen when he was in the midst of battle. He had seemed to like the fighting. More than that, he’d reveled in it—
“What’s the matter?” Ray asked, his grin still in place.
“Oh.” The Angel forced herself to focus. “Nothing. What’s the plan?”
“The plan? We can discuss it in the car.” He stood and stretched like a sleek and self-satisfied cat. “You still look pretty beat, but we have things we have to do. Although,” he said with a thoughtful look, “if you want to catch a few more winks —“
The Angel sat up, wrapping the sheet around herself almost angrily.
“You don’t have to coddle me,” she said.
“No, but I’d like to,” Ray said with a leer. She just looked at him, and he shrugged. “Go take a shower. It’ll wake you up.”
That, the Angel thought, was a good idea.
“I could soap your back—” Ray offered as she stood with the sheet firmly wrapped around her. She stepped over the sweaty pile of clothes she’d discarded by the side of the bed, grabbed her duffel bag and headed for the bathroom. She slammed the bathroom door and, finally thinking clearly, locked it. “Anyway,” Ray called out through the door, “you can grab some more zzz’s in the car if you’re still tired.”
Car? The Angel thought. She turned the shower to cold and stepped under it. The icy torrent took her breath away and made her heart beat faster. For a moment she thought that it would be fun to have someone to soap her back. Maybe her front as well. Her hands slid over her flat abdomen, skirting the eight-inch scar that crawled over it like an ugly snake and the touch of it against her fingers banished all impure thoughts. She turned off the water. She dried herself, all but her hair, letting that hang down her back in an unmanageable curly mass. She took her spare underwear and black jumpsuit out of the duffel bag and dressed. When she came back into the bedroom. Ray was lying on the extra bed, legs straight out and crossed at the ankles, hands behind his head, watching some weird movie with masked wrestlers on the Spanish station. He glanced up at her.
“What?” the Angel asked, though she knew the look on his face meant that there was lust in his heart.
“Nothing,” Ray said. “That was fast. All right. Let’s go.”
“Where exactly are we going? If you don’t mind telling me?”
“Not at all.” Ray grinned. When he smiled like that he looked years younger, and just about as dangerous as a *cat. “We’re going to take a trip outside of town and drop in on the Living Gods. One of them, Osiris, is a precog, and may have some insight as to what the Hell is going to happen next. Maybe even where they took the kid.”
The Angel dropped her duffel bag on her bed, thinking that somehow Ray had managed to wrest all control of this mission out of her hands. She didn’t like that. Also, she was hungry. “Well—”
“What?” Ray asked as her voice trailed off.
“Do we have time for breakfast?”
Ray made a show of checking his watch. “It’d be more like brunch, but, sure, why not?”
That’s something, at least, the Angel thought.
They paused in the corridor as they left the room; the Angel making sure her door was really locked. She didn’t trust those credit card-like keys.
“I hope he wasn’t the one who got greased,” Ray said.
She looked at him as they went down the hotel corridor. “Greased? You mean one of them was killed?”
“So the cops told me yesterday when I went down to the station.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you finally reported to the police?” the Angel asked. “Or bring me along?”
Ray shrugged. “What, let them bother you too? It was bad enough that I had to deal with them.”
“Did you tell them about The Hand?” the Angel asked anxiously.
He just looked at her. “You think that I was going to tell them that we’re here in Vegas to rescue Jesus Christ from a bunch of crazed Catholic cultists?”
The Angel breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t believed Ray capable of such subtlety. It was good to see that he had unexpected depths. “What about the Living Gods?” she asked as they made their way through the lobby to the coffee shop. Too bad, the Angel thought, they didn’t have a buffet.
“Like I said. One of them bought it during the attack on the Mirage. The cops didn’t know which one. Funny thing, the body’s already been released. Some kind of religious mumbo-jumbo.” He put his hands out as the Angel glared at him. “Not that I have anything against religious mum—ah, religion.”
A shame, the Angel thought, ruminating on the Living Gods. They were pagans, but in their own way they were innocents.
They seated themselves in the coffee shop and the Angel ordered the he-man breakfast from the menu, pancakes, three eggs (sunny side up), hash browns, ham, bacon, and sausage, with toast on the side. Ray, saying he’d eaten earlier, only had coffee.
She watched him watch her as she ate. She thought of ordering another side of ham, or maybe grits, but Ray’s scrutiny was making her feel self-conscious. She didn’t want him to think she was a glutton. Besides, she was all too conscious of the fact that she had no money to pay for the food she was consuming.
Ray didn’t seem to mind, though. He cheerfully slapped down his credit card and then added a way-too-generous tip that bought a smile to the attractive young waitress serving them. The Angel didn’t like that. She didn’t think it was proper for young women to use their physical attributes to gull susceptible men into giving them money. And if there was one thing she knew about Ray, it was that he was susceptible.
They exited the Mirage through the lobby and a valet bought a car up to them as they waited at the curb. The Angel looked it over disapprovingly. She didn’t know what model or year it was, but it was big, shiny, and expensive. “At least it’s not an SUV,” she muttered as she got into the front seat.
“What?” Ray asked.
“Nothing.”
Ray was a fast, yet precise and careful driver. He didn’t speed. Excessively. He didn’t change lanes. Excessively. He drove like he fought. Quickly, instinctually, and seemingly effortlessly. The car responded to his touch like a trained beast. It seemed to purr as it glided down the strip. Its seats were comfortable. The soft whisper of the dual climate control fanned her like sensual tropic breezes.
She ached only slightly from yesterday’s battle, and was still hungry despite her large breakfast. The batteries that drove the awesome engine of her body were still not entirely recharged. She was still tired, more than she realized. Somewhere, after Ray hit the highway beyond the city limits, lulled by her comfortable surroundings and the smooth glide of the road beneath their feet, the Angel fell asleep.
She dreamed her interrupted dream again, and thought it true. She and the Witness faced each other, only this time there was love in his eyes, not contempt. They were fully dressed, and then they were naked as they day they’d been born, and the Angel felt no guilt about it. Well, not much anyway.
Any trace of guilt vanished when he touched her. His hands were gentle on her face, caressing her cheek, slipping softly to her throat. It was amazing that such a large and strong-looking hand could be so gentle as it trickled down the column of her neck lightly as the wings of a dove. It went lower and she shivered at the touch of his hand on her right breast. Cupping it gently. Whispering over her stiffening nipple.
She closed her eyes and their lips met in a soft, yet increasingly demanding kiss. The Angel’s breath started to come faster. He eyes opened and she was shocked to see that she was no longer in the Witness’s arms, but was being embraced by Jonah, the only boy she’d ever kissed, ten years ago.
That meant... that meant...
Suddenly her mother burst onto the back porch, screaming at them, saying vile dirty things. She swung a broomstick at them, snapping it across the Angel’s shoulders. She started to cry. Jonah bounded up from the back porch swing and lit out like the hounds of Hell were on his trail, and they may well have been. The Angel put her arms over her face and contracted into a ball as her mother screamed at her, waving the broken stick ferociously.
Only, as she opened her eyes again, it wasn’t her mother standing over her. It was Billy Ray. And it wasn’t a stick he was waving.
The Porsche suddenly swerved and the Angel awoke, startled. She reached out, not sure where she was, and caught in a spasm of sudden terror, grabbed the door handle and ripped it off.
Ray glanced sideways at her.
“Insurance isn’t going to cover that,” he said with a frown as she stared at the door handle in her hand. “Sorry I woke you. I had to swerve to miss a turtle in the road.”
“Tortoise,” the Angel corrected. It was better to babble nonsense rather than think about the meaning of her dream.
“What?”
“They don’t have turtles in the desert. They have tortoises.”
“Oh. Well. That’s good to know.” Ray drove on while the Angel looked at the door handle in her hand.
“Hang on,” Ray warned her. “I’m going to turn again. Don’t get all scared and rip the door off this time.”
“Sorry,” the Angel said in a small voice.
“Jeez,” Ray said, looking stolidly out the windshield. “Lighten up. I’m just kidding. Wreck the whole frigging car if you want. I put it on Barnett’s card.” He took a sudden turn, swinging onto a dirt road that meandered seemingly off to nowhere. “But wait until we get back to Vegas, okay? I don’t feel like legging it back through the desert.”
He glanced at her. She smiled back, briefly, but said nothing. He must think I’m a hysterical fool, the Angel told herself. And he’d be right.
The dirt road curved like a snake through the desert, leading finally to the mouth of a small canyon set into a meandering line of hills that provided the only topological relief in sight. Ray drove carefully, but they still jounced roughly, Ray swearing at every pothole and washout he hit. Though he didn’t blaspheme, so the Angel cut him some slack.
“I hope that was the right turnoff,” Ray muttered. “These hicks don’t mark their roads very clearly—yeah, there it is, ahead.”
It was a ranch, a hacienda of some kind that looked old to the Angel’s eye, but she was no architecture expert. She couldn’t even see the main house at first, because the grounds were surrounded by an adobe wall that had definitely seen better days. The Angel imagined that it had been built to keep marauding Indians out, but now it couldn’t keep out a herd of marauding cows. Though it was still twelve or fourteen feet high in some places, most of it had fallen to nearly ground level. Repairs were in progress, but although tools and ladders and mud bricks were all over the place, no one was actually currently working.
The gate stood wide open, the cross arm barely hanging by a single hinge. The wooden sign over the entrance was mostly in Arabic, with the English words “The Oasis—Welcome” neatly lettered below.
“Do you think we should just drive in?” the Angel asked.
Ray shrugged. “We’ve come all this way,” he said, and carefully pulled onto the looping dirt driveway that was bounded by a border of whitewashed stones. He stopped after the first curve and they stared out the windshield and then looked at each other. “I’ll be damned,” Ray said.
“Don’t blaspheme,” the Angel said automatically.
Suddenly, they were in paradise. It was as green as Ireland inside the walls of the old ranchero, with plants and flowers of every type and description abloom in vivid color. The grass looked like putting greens. Rows of corn, mostly hidden behind the main building, grew as tall as an elephant’s eye. Tomato vines thick enough to swing on climbed groaning trellises, green beans hung on netting draped between the vines, and squash the size of pumpkins and pumpkins like boulders were scattered among them. A pond of rather larger proportions than you’d expect to see in a desert was tucked into one corner of the grounds, surrounded by reeds and cattails. Lilies and lotus of every conceivable color covered its surface, providing shelter for the exotic waterfowl diving for aquatic bugs along its margins.
“These Living Gods are some gardeners,” Ray understated as he edged the car forward. He went slowly, careful not to squash any of the fancy-feathered chickens pecking among the driveway gravel. The birds squawked indignantly at the car’s approach, loud enough to alert those inside the hacienda. By the time Ray and the Angel had parked and gone up to the front door, a tall, bird-beaked joker opened it before Ray could knock. He looked sad, the Angel thought, though it was difficult to read the expression on his odd features.
“Hello, Thoth,” Ray said.
“Mr. Ray. Miss...?”
“This is Angel,” Ray said, and somehow the Angel suppressed the urge to correct him. “She’s my partner. Listen, I know this is a difficult time—”
The bird-beaker joker stepped aside and opened the door wide. “Come in,” he said.
The interior of the old house was cool despite the desert heat. Its floors were tile, the walls adobe brick. There was little furniture in the rooms they went through, but a riot of colorful rugs covered the floors and walls. Thoth led them out the rear entrance, where he stopped and turned to them as they stood on the threshold of the back yard where the other Living Gods were picking flowers from among the riot of blooms that grew there, or just standing talking or sitting silently, comforting each other as best they could.
“We are preparing our brother Sheb for burial,” he explained in a sadly ominous voice punctuated by weird clacking of his long beak. He gestured toward a square, blank-walled shed in the back. Out in the far reaches of the enclosed yard, out beyond that square shed, the Angel could see two of them digging a grave in the soft sand of the desert floor.
“You’re not,” the Angel heard herself blurt out, “mummifying him?”
Ray glanced at her with pursed lips and a frown, but Thoth didn’t seem to mind. “No, Miss Angel,” he said. “I’m afraid that we are a much simpler people than our ancestors were. We have neither the time nor the money to do the job properly, but—”
He fell silent for a moment as one of his comrades came from the shed. Brown and thin and weathered as an old stick, the old man carried four small jars made from white stone. He looked at Thoth, nodded, and took the jars to a woman who had obviously recently been weeping. On a small table before her were a number of small human-like figurines, no more than six inches high, made of clay or stone
“—We do the best we can for our brother. He goes west with his vitals safe in their canopic jars, his ushbati to provide for him in the land of the dead, and our prayers for Anubis to aid him during the time of judgement.”
It didn’t sound all too different to the Angel than a Christian burial. Except that part about the canopic jars. And the ushbati figures. And, actually, Anubis. She felt bad that the poor man would be condemned to Hell because he was a pagan. Anyway, it was all the Allumbrados fault. It was something else that they had to pay for.
“That’s all he could ask,” Ray said.
The Angel stared at him, surprised at his unexpected compassion, as Thoth nodded his bird head. The other Living God—blasphemous as that thought was—gave the jars to the mourning woman and then joined them. He looked normal, if under-nourished and over-tanned by years of exposure to a harsh sun.
“This is my brother, Osiris. He speaks little English, but there is something he would tell you.”
Ray nodded. “His fame is great. I dared to come and interrupt your grief with the hope that he might have news of the boy.”
Osiris spoke rapid Arabic. Ray nodded. The Angel could scarcely believe that he knew what the man was saying.
“Alf shukr,” Ray said. “A thousand thanks for all. Our sorrow for your loss is great.”
“Our strength is spent,” Thoth said. “We are now all old, or weak. We only wish to pass the remainder of our lives peacefully among the oasis we have created in this desert, which reminds us so much of the home we have lost. We can aid you no more.”
“You’ve done enough,” Ray said.
Thoth shook his head. “We wish we could do more. But we have two favors to ask of you.”
“Name them,” Ray said, stepping on the Angel’s foot when she started to interrupt.
“Save the boy. Save the beloved of Ra,” Thoth said. “He is the great light who will illume the world.”
“We will,” Ray said. “And the other thing?”
“Avenge our brother,” said Osiris in heavily accented English.
Ray smiled. It was not the simple grin the Angel had seen earlier. It was not a reassuring sight to the Angel’s eyes. “That,” Ray said, “I can promise.”
Osiris grinned back, while Thoth grimaced like a vulture.
“No need to disturb you further,” Ray said. “We can see ourselves out.” He made a gesture of farewell to the old men, who bowed as Ray grabbed the Angel’s hand and hustled her back into the house.
“What did he tell you?” the Angel demanded.
“Where the kid is,” Ray said, smiling.
“How’d he know?”
Ray shrugged. “He’s a prophet. He sees things.”
“He’s a pagan!” the Angel said.
Ray shrugged again. “So?”
They went through the house. The Angel shut the front door carefully behind them. “So where is he?” she asked, her concern and aggravation growing.
“Now?” Ray asked.
“OF COURSE NOW.”
Ray grinned. She felt like punching him. “Osiris isn’t sure. He thinks somewhere in New York City. Some kind of jail, or hospital, or something.”
“That’s helpful,” the Angel said as they slid into the front seat of the car.
Ray twisted around and looked at the Angel. “But soon,” he said with a smile that had a tinge of crazy, “he’s going to camp.”
“Camp?” she repeated, as Ray started the car, gunned the engine, and then took off at a sedate pace up the driveway, and the rutted desert road beyond.
New York City: St Dympna’s Home for the Mentally Deficient and Criminally Inclined
Since he had the rank accorded an ace and was also a perfecti in the Allumbrados, Nighthawk had a private room set aside for his use in St. Dympna’s, though he rarely took advantage of that dubious perk.
The place made his skin crawl. Back in the mid-nineteenth century up through the latter part of the twentieth, when Dympna’s was a going concern run by a nursing order of the Church, it had housed hundreds of patients within its grim stone walls. Most were kept in the large dormitory-like rooms on the first floor, segregated by sex, if not always by mental malady. The private rooms on the second floor had been reserved for more affluent patients, while the third floor was for the staff. No one ever said much about the basement and what went on in there, not even now.
Officially, Dympna’s had closed some time in the 1970s and stood empty for over two decades before coming to Contarini’s attention. Interested in strengthening his power base, the Cardinal had secretly activated the decrepit pile of stones for use as a training station for credenti, the lowest rank of the brotherhood. The basement rooms also made a fine storage place for those who angered or inconvenienced the Cardinal.
Cameo currently occupied one of those basement rooms. Or, perhaps more accurately, cells. Nighthawk had hoped to spirit her away almost immediately upon their arrival, but the old horror pit was alive with unexpected activity. Usually staffed by a few sleepy credenti and some new recruits in the dormitory-like rooms on the first floor, now it was swarming with gunmen babbling about the day’s events in Vegas.
No obsequenti were present, but Nighthawk had learned from a couple of credenti that Butcher Dagon and the Witness had actually succeeded in their mission of capturing the Anti-Christ and had bought him back, bound, from Las Vegas. The Witness had gone to the Waldorf to report to the Cardinal (At least Contarini would be somewhat mollified, Nighthawk thought, by the success of the second prong of his master plan.) and Dagon was in the third floor infirmary, along with several injured credenti, recovering from wounds sustained in the boy’s snatch and grab.
The purported Anti-Christ now occupied a cell in the oubliette, probably next to Cameo, under close guard. Security was at an unprecedented peak. The old asylum hadn’t been as tightly locked down since ‘57 when an ace-powered psychopath had escaped the oubliette and slaughtered thirty-seven patients in the dormitory before being over-powered by a mysterious patient from the second floor who’d been catatonic for almost a decade before suddenly waking and stopping the carnage by seemingly draining the psychopath’s mind. The cryptic ace/patient had then escaped St. Dympna’s in a manner unknown to the rumormongers who delighted in telling such horror stories about the history of the old sanitarium.
Nighthawk could well imagine the torments a sensitive like Cameo was suffering while being locked in a cell that had housed generations of drooling psychotics, but there was nothing he could do except bed down in his tiny room on the third floor, wait awhile, and hope that something would break for the better in the coming hours.
He needed the rest, anyway. He wasn’t as young as he once was, though he was younger than he used to be.